Dear friend,
Black leaders and organizers are calling for the strategic defunding of police departments and demilitarizing of our communities. The struggle to defund police will take many forms, and we all have a role to play. As JVP, we are committed to bringing our all to support Black liberation at this historic moment.
Over the last two years through our Deadly Exchange campaign, over 20,000 of us have demanded the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stop organizing exchanges between U.S. police departments and Israel’s police and military. Groups like #8toAbolition are calling us in to intensify this pressure – and we need your voice now:
Tell Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, to stop organizing exchanges between U.S. police departments and Israel’s military and police.
The ADL, a self-proclaimed Jewish civil rights group, is the largest non-governmental trainer of police in this country, including facilitating an exchange of worst practices between U.S. police, ICE and FBI, and the Israeli police and military.
This moment is a reckoning. Every institution in the U.S. is being called right now to cut their ties with the police. Cities and schools and unions nationwide are severing their relationships with police, banning tear gas, and slashing police budgets, and we can join this momentum for real change.
If the ADL wants to affirm their “solidarity with the Black community,” why haven’t they ended these programs?
Let’s be clear: U.S. police exchanges with Israeli forces are not responsible for the centuries of deadly violence American police have dealt to Black people on our streets. The militarized tactics and technologies acquired through police exchange programs go directly to executing the unchanged mission of the American police, established long before the founding of the state of Israel.
Defunding the police will not happen overnight, but the ADL can stop organizing police exchanges today.
There’s a deeper story to be told here. Our government gives billions to fund Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestinians. Arms companies “field test” their weapons and technology on occupied Palestinians. Organizations that claim to speak for Jewish community defend the state of Israel while paying lip service to Black lives.
It's time for the single biggest trainer of police in the United States to look at what system it is supporting in both Palestine/Israel and the U.S.
Our call is simple: tell the ADL their “solidarity” with Black lives in the U.S. means nothing if they maintain their partnerships with the U.S. police and glorify the tactics used by the Israeli military to oppress Palestinians.
In solidarity, and until we are all safe.