Defund to Abolish brought together community organizers, legal practitioners, and activist scholars to unpack and explore strategies to defund and abolish the police, and engage with the imaginative possibilities of a police-free world.

Para leer más sobre el Coloquio Desfinanciar Para Abolir en espańol, ¡haga clic aquí!

Learn more about our panels below, and more about our panelists here. You can find our brochure here in English and Spanish, and a Take Action resource here in English and Spanish.

Organized by NYU Review of Law and Social Change Colloquia Editors Aiesha Krause-Lee, Claire Lowinger-Iverson, and Lauren Wilfong, with the support of the RLSC Colloquium Committee, in partnership with NYU Black Allied Law Student Association and Latinx Law Students Association, with the co-sponsorship of 40+ NYU Law organizations, and the generous fiscal support of the NYU Law Student Bar Association.

Video: Day 1 (Panels I & II)

ASL interpretation is available on the Spanish language recording.

Video: Day 2 (Panels III & IV)

American Sign Language simultaneous interpretation provided by All Hands In Motion. Contact them at: http://www.allhandsinmotion.com/contact.

Panel I: Defund Means Defund

February 9, 2021 5:30-6:45pm ET

Panelists contextualized the current moment, discussed the divide between reformist and abolitionist strategies, and laid out a vision for the future of the movements to defund and abolish the police.

Jamelia Morgan (moderator) | University of Connecticut School of Law
Andrea Ritchie | Interrupting Criminalization
CeCe McDonald | The Black Excellence Collective, Black Excellence Tour, and Black Youth Support Network
Kempis “Ghani” Songster | Amistad Law Project and Abolitionist Law Center
Mimi Kim | Creative Interventions
Mon Mohapatra | 8 to Abolition

Read the full transcript of the panel here, and highlights from the panel here.

Panel II: Abolishing Police Across Intersecting Systems

February 9, 2021 6:45 – 8:00pm ET 

This panel highlighted examples of how policing and criminalization show up in major institutions and industries as varied as technology, education, immigration enforcement, and sex work, and strategies organizers are using to remove police from these systems and spaces.

 
Read the full transcript of the panel here, and highlights from the panel here.

Panel III: Communities Without Police – We Keep Our Communities Safe

February 10 5:30- 6:45pm ET

Panelists shared concrete examples of abolitionist strategies for community safety and discussed their vision for community safety systems that do not rely on policing. 

 
Read the full transcript of the panel here, and highlights from the panel here.

Panel IV: Defunding the Police in Practice

February 10 6:45-8:00pm ET

Organizers waging campaigns to defund the police in cities across the U.S. reflected on different strategies and tactics to defund the police, what barriers they have faced, and what strategies have proved most effective.

 
Read the full transcript of the panel here, and highlights from the panel here.