Alternatives to Calling the Police
Anti-Racist Education for Asian Diaspora in Canada during COVID-19
Link to share: https://bit.ly/asians-dont-call-cops
Notes: This document was first created in May 2020 and is an ongoing work in progress! We hope this can be a living and collaborative document - please add links, resources, paragraphs or suggest edits to language if you have capacity and want to contribute! Thank you to everyone who has helped contribute to writing and added links so far.
We recognize that there are many existing resources and google docs before this one on alternatives to calling the police. Our goal for this document was to compile some of these resources and place them in the context of anti-Asian racism, in Canada, during the COVID-19 pandemic—and what we hope can be a broader dialogue around interracial solidarity.
This document was compiled by a small group of Asian writers and organizers in Canada. Our learning is made possible by the work of Black and Indigenous organizers, writers, and prison abolitionists. If you have suggestions for resources or language to add to the document, please email: asiancanadianabolition@gmail.com
Table of Contents
Context: COVID-19 Anti-Asian Racism
What’s wrong with calling the police?
What could I do instead of calling the police?
Prison/Police abolition readings and resources
Context: COVID-19 Anti-Asian Racism
Our communities have been feeling the effects of systemic racism surfaced by this pandemic. There’s been a stark rise in hateful behaviour and violence targeting East and Southeast Asians (who tend to be coded as “Chinese” under the white gaze). Asian migrant workers who are undocumented or who do not have a SIN are ineligible for CERB. Our governments are deprioritizing the humanity, health and safety of essential low-wage workers, who are disproportionately racialized. Take Cargill’s High River Meat Plant, where 70% of the workers are Filipino—and where over 900 workers have contracted COVID-19.
Many Asian communities are, understandably, scared. We’ve seen communities come together across Canada to launch anti-racism initiatives in response to the heightened anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic. We are concerned that a number of these “anti-racism” initiatives encourage light-skinned Asians to call the police. In placing trust in the police, these initiatives legitimize the violent role the police play in upholding settler colonialism and white supremacy, and the violence that the police and prison systems in Canada continue to inflict on Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities.
Calling the police is never an “anti-racist” response. Light-skinned Asians must not prioritize their perceptions of safety over the safety of other Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities. Asian anti-racist organizing must learn from, and act in solidarity with, Black and Indigenous communities. It must interrogate the ways we can be complicit in perpetuating anti-Black racism and settler colonialism, while also experiencing oppression under white supremacy. Rather than centering the concerns of middle-class East Asians, a pan-Asian community response must prioritize the struggles of poor and working class Asians, Asians without status, Asian sex workers, Asians living with mental illness, queer Asians, Black Asians, South Asians, and Muslim Asians—who are more likely to experience the impacts of state surveillance and police violence.
Working towards racial justice means going beyond individual incidents, to understand the root of stereotypes and racial violence with aspirations of eliminating racism in a way that benefits all people living under the oppression of white supremacy. This means working in solidarity with all communities impacted by racism and engaging in community-led approaches, rather than top-down “solutions” that continue to rely on the state.
We recognize that there are many resources and docs before this one on alternatives to calling the police. Our goal for this document was to compile some of these resources and place them in the context of anti-Asian racism, in Canada, during the COVID-19 pandemic—and what we hope can be a broader dialogue around interracial solidarity. If these ideas are new to you, we urge you to also take time to learn about the deeply racist and colonial nature of police and prisons—and to talk to your Asian family and friends about it. We’ve provided some suggested readings on prisons and policing to get you started. This document is only possible due to the work of Black and Indigenous organizers, writers, and prison abolitionists. Our learning is ongoing.
What’s wrong with calling the police?
The police are an inherently racist and colonial institution. The RCMP was historically created by the Canadian state as a means to control Indigenous people—to restrict their movements, to suppress Indigenous traditions, and to apprehend Indigenous children and place them in the violent residential school system. Today, the RCMP, and other Canadian police forces, continues to inflict violence on Indigenous people—from violent police assaults and abuse of Indigenous women, girls and Two-spirit people, to the recent RCMP raids on Wet’suwet’en land defender camps. Just last month, the Winnipeg police shot and killed Eishia Hudson, a 16-year old Indigenous girl.
Canada also has a long history of anti-Black racism, in which the police have played a central role. Today, Black people are 20 times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than white people in Toronto. Across major cities like Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, Toronto, and Edmonton, Black and Indigenous individuals are racially profiled and subject to over-policing and police assaults.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many cities in Canada have seen increased police powers and hefty fines as a means of enforcing physical distancing. Grassroots groups have expressed concerns around how these heightened police powers will disproportionately target Black, Indigenous. racialized, and homeless individuals who are already subject to over-policing.
Calling the police can increase the risk of violence. The police exist to make white people feel safe (and to some extent, those assimilating into whiteness)—while abusing, killing, and incarcerating Black, Indigenous, migrant, and racialized individuals, and those living with disability or mental illness. When light-skinned Asians encourage other Asians to call the police, they are prioritizing their own perception of safety in a way that legitimizes police violence and risks putting the lives of those experiencing over-policing in danger. And we should remember that the Asian Canadian community has also been impacted by police violence: in 1997, Edmond Yu was shot and killed by the Toronto Police on a TTC bus.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that the police will find that a racist act occurred. Often, the victim will bear the burden of adequately “proving” that a racist act occurred. When racist incidents happen without witnesses, the police will engage in a credibility contest of weighing each person’s account. Victims who don’t present as “ideal” or “believable” (i.e. middle or upper class, able-bodied, white, speaks English or French without an accent) are at further risk of trauma and/or criminalization by the police.
We cannot rely on the state to keep our communities safe from anti-Asian racism. We have already seen how the state has failed to protect some of the most vulnerable communities during the pandemic. In response, community members have shown up for one another through mutual aid efforts—helping each other with groceries, cooking, errands and more. Asian communities can learn from mutual aid practices as a response to the rise of anti-Asian hate—by supporting one another instead of turning to the police and the state.
Readings
A Condensed History of Canada’s Colonial Cops, The New Inquiry, by M Gouldhawke (2020)
Shining Light on the Dark Places: Addressing Police Racism and Sexualized Violence against Indigenous Women and Girls In the National Inquiry, by Pamela Palmater (2016)
Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, by Robyn Maynard (2017)
We face a public health emergency, and criminalizing the marginalized can worsen the crisis, Halifax Examiner, by El Jones (2020)
Submission to the Government of Canada on Police Abuse of Indigenous Women in Saskatchewan and Failures to Protect Indigenous Women from Violence, Human Rights Watch (2017)
No CBC, You Shouldn’t Just ‘Call the Police’ If You See a Racist Attack, VICE, Manisha Krishnan (2020)
What could I do instead of calling the police?
In response to COVID-19 anti-Asian racism:
Source: What to Do When You See or Experience COVID 19 Hate, Chinese for Affirmative Action
More Resources on Bystander Intervention for Racist Attacks
Don't be a Bystander: 6 Tips for Responding to Racist Attacks, An Abolitionist Approach - Video by BCRW and members of Project NIA (2017)
Hollaback Guide on Bystander Intervention (2016)
In response to people not physically-distancing during COVID-19
Cities such as Toronto are implementing “snitch lines” and encouraging people to report fellow community members and neighbours to the police for non-compliance with physical distancing. Here are some alternative actions you can take, in this infographic by Katarina Bogo:
More Resources on Alternatives to Calling the Police
12 Things to Do Instead of Calling the Cops, Zine by Sprouted Disco
Vikki Law: Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons, Video with Victoria Law
Feeling for the Edge of your Imagination: finding ways not to call the police, Imagine Alternatives
Stop Law Enforcement Violence Toolkit, by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
What to do instead of calling the police: A guide, a syllabus, a conversation, a process by Aaron Rose
Prison/Police abolition readings and resources
A Growing Asian-American Movement Calls for Prison Abolition, Truthout, by Karyn Smoot & Andrew Szeto (2016)
Who’s Left? Prison Abolition, Interview with Mariame Kaba - Comic by Flynn Nichols (2017)
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis (2003)
Prison Culture: How the Prison Industrial Complex Structures Our World, blog by Mariame Kaba
We Can’t Police Our Way out of the Pandemic - Dialogue Series [Video]
COVID-19, Biopolitics and Abolitionist Care Beyond Security and Containment, Abolition Journal, by Eva Boodman (2020)
Readings: How do Asians uphold white supremacy and settler colonialism? What does meaningful solidarity look like?
Black and Asian American Feminist Solidarities: A Reading List, by Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective (2020) [Video Discussion Here]
We Will Not Be Used: Are Asian-Americans the Racial Bourgeoisie?, by Mari Matsuda (1991)
On Terror, Captivity, and Black-Korean Conflict, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, by Tamara K Nopper (2015)
Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit, by Grassroots Asian Rising (2016)
The coronavirus crisis has exposed China's long history of racism, The Guardian, Hsiao-Hung Pai (2020)
The revolution will be translated, Briarpatch Magazine, by Jane Shi (2020)
People of Colour in Treaty, by Robinder Kaur Sehdev (p. 263 of the PDF)