This chapter examines the past decade of organizing against the carceral state under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” (BLM). It draws on my collaborative research with Color Of Change and the movement for transformative justice alternatives to prison and policing for gendered violence. I look at recent BLM mobilizations through three lenses. One tracks BLM’s macro-level gains for community power at the situational, institutional, and systemic levels. Another documents the micro-level psychological empowerment processes of Black queer feminist approaches that center Black joy, political education, and care for Black women. Lastly, I look at the meso-level organizational settings that bridge individual psychological empowerment and capacity-building with macro-level outcomes like policy changes and culture shifts. Drawing on Han, McKenna, and Oyakawa’s concept of the “prism” (2021), I coin the term “Black prism” to describe organizations like Color Of Change that build political homes to amplify the power of Black constituents.

Changes aimed at limiting unnecessary contacts come in many forms, including deterring racist 911 abuse in the first place and punishing it when it occurs, increasing dispatcher and police discretion to ignore frivolous 911 calls, mandating alternative, non-police responses to quasi-emergency situations for which an armed officer is not necessary or helpful, and rethinking how police respond when they are required to react. Many of these proposals derive from the same basic premise: that a fundamental reallocation of police resources is both required and desirable if society is to prevent the continued weaponization of racial fear and the continued abuse of law enforcement by private actors.

Paul Butler considers NWA’s 1988 song, “Fuck tha Police,” as an invitation to think about putting the police on trial for crimes against African Americans. It examines the resonance of “Fuck tha Police” over time, up to and including the George Floyd inspired protests. It will also use the song to analyze how civilians should feel about cops in a democracy. Are they a positive good, as many white people might suggest, a necessary evil, as some people of color might suggest, or an unnecessary evil, as suggested by the “defund the police” movement? Butler also will explore the meaning of the trial metaphor in the song – what would it mean for African Americans to put the police on trial? What would be the crime and the appropriate punishment?