PAC embodies new approach to public safety

ATLANTA — Amid Americans’ national reckoning on racism, a coalition of progressive groups is forming a political action committee to back local candidates who want to redirect money away from traditional police departments into other social services.

An outgrowth of the “defund the police” movement, the WFP Justice Fund is led by the Working Families Party and the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project. The PAC has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and plans immediately to begin accepting contributions and vetting candidates to support.

Organizers described the effort Monday as a counter to the political power of police unions and a way to continue informing voters about what the “defund” push means. The result, they said, would be a shift in local government budgets and public safety systems around the country.

“We’ve abided by an era where ‘law and order’ was this stamp of approval, where law enforcement endorsements somehow signified legitimacy,” said Maurice Mitchell, executive director of the Working Families Party, which backs democratic socialists and progressive candidates at all levels of government.

“So we are creating a counterbalance that can create the space for elected officials to do the work that’s being demanded from the streets,” Mitchell continued, adding that the goal is “divestment from things that aren’t working and investment in things that are working.”

The PAC’S organizers point to public polling since George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man, died May 25 under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer.

Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project and sits on the new PAC’S board, said that shift opens the door to policy changes. Yet Byrd and other organizers said they are aware of the fraught politics surrounding calls to “defund the police.”

PAC organizers said they aren’t necessarily looking for candidates who pledge absolute elimination of police forces.

“There have been people that have tried to create a straw man argument to suggest that this movement is somehow about abolishing the police altogether tomorrow,” Mitchell said. “This movement is about public safety.”

Byrd made it clear that she wants Americans to understand her stance that local policing is rooted in enforcing fugitive slave laws before slavery was abolished and the Jim Crow segregation laws that followed abolition.