All the leading black youth activist orgs in Chicago promote defunding/abolishing police.
It's worth noting the age difference - that defunding police is popular among younger people of color, and unpopular among older people of color, still by and large subscribing to the tough-on-crime approach.
Yes, they do. They also don't speak for the neighborhoods themselves, the same way white defund activists don't speak for... well, anyone but defund activists, I guess. It's a distinctively unpopular idea, a demographic crossover flop of a scale I can't think of anything else to match.
A lot of the ideas underneath defund have legs! In most places, the police should stop doing traffic enforcement (replace with unarmed compliance patrols, the way we handle parking tickets) and obviously, police shouldn't be doing mental health wellness checks anywhere. No-knock warrants should be outlawed in almost all circumstances.
There are lots of other structural reform ideas Defund hasn't really touched; for instance, police should be licensed by their respective states, so that misconduct can result in a revocation that preempts union contracts. Civilian oversight bodies should be given more authority.
It's just that advocates for these ideas centered the least popular and least important aspect of the policy.
I'd despair except the idea behind a national police reform policy push was, I think, ill-conceived from the jump. In Oak Park, where I live, a switch of just 2-3 trustees in our 2021 elections would give us a majority that could rewrite the police general orders, and whatever ordinances govern our police union contract. That's like 10,000 votes, not 70,000,000.
What's more, if you watch town board meetings --- which is easier to do in the C19 era because they're all online --- you'll notice that one of the most powerful bits of evidence in support of any policy idea is "what do the neighboring townships do". It likely won't take many trustee board flips to get a decent snowball rolling.
Not to mention what a terrible slogan it is. Almost exactly the opposite of Black Lives Matter, it takes the most unlikely and poorly thought out aspects of the police reform movement and makes it front and center.
Its a dumbfounding gaffe on the part of the activists using it as a rallying cry.
It's worth noting the age difference - that defunding police is popular among younger people of color, and unpopular among older people of color, still by and large subscribing to the tough-on-crime approach.