Amid Police Reform Failures, Activists Lay Out 8 Steps to Abolition

Last week, the nonprofit Campaign Zero released the "8 Can't Wait" platform — a list of police reforms they claim would reduce police violence by 72%. But Black abolitionists say these reforms have already been widely implemented since Black Lives Matter was born out of the Ferguson uprisings in 2014, to little change. Abolitionists have responded with their own platform, "8 to Abolition." Mychal Denzel Smith, fellow at Type Media Center, calls the "8 Can't Wait" platform a set of "milquetoast" reforms. "What they do is change the rules of engagement for police." Smith says "8 to Abolition" is by contrast a set of "actionable items that you can do that strike at the heart of policing. It reduces points of contact with police."