When board meetings are not enough: A poem for abolition

A few years ago, I ran into Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark at the city food bank. I was there with my mom, picking up a holiday food hamper. Charlie was shaking hands and giving out turkeys at the door.

Although we were on friendly terms at the time – something that has since changed because of my involvement with anti-police brutality campaigns and his ongoing support of the Saskatoon Police Service – the run-in seemed visibly awkward for him. I sometimes wonder if he felt shame, or simply pity.

I don’t know what it feels like to come face-to-face with folks who supported you and who believed in you after you have broken your promises. I do know that when your fridge is empty, when you live with poverty and unstable housing, and when you have multiple family members and friends who have been killed by the cops, there is no time to feel awkward or ashamed about the things we do to survive this place. Shame and awkwardness belong – or should belong – to those who have the political power to make structural changes and choose not to.

I do know that when your fridge is empty, when you live with poverty and unstable housing, and when you have multiple family members and friends who have been killed by the cops, there is no time to feel awkward or ashamed about the things we do to survive this place. Shame and awkwardness belong – or should belong – to those who have the political power to make structural changes and choose not to.

Years after that meeting, on November 29, 2021, with Clark still serving as mayor, the Saskatoon city council unanimously approved the city’s budget for 2022 and 2023. Once again, the most expensive part of the budget will be the SPS, whose portion of the city’s expenditures in 2022 will be $119,710,000.70 – 21 per cent of the city’s total budget – a number that will increase again in 2023, to $124,620,000.50.

I was the only delegate to speak against giving the cops more money at the council meeting where the budget was discussed. No other organization in the city posed a question or challenged the proposed increase. Although the fight for abolition is everywhere, including here in Saskatoon, the word is rarely spoken, especially in spaces of settler governance. Part of the challenge of resisting the continued growth of police budgets and departments is that those of us who struggle against police brutality in our daily lives are exhausted to the point of burnout. What little time we have is spent on the ground, ensuring people have housing, food to eat, and are protected from toxic drugs, we can no longer afford to expend energy in board meetings.

In this moment there exists no spreadsheet of convincing statistics, nor any exhaustive study of critical theory that will change the minds of those who still cannot or will not envision a world beyond police, prisons, and punishment. We cannot afford to spend our time bargaining with colonial governments for our humanity.

In this moment there exists no spreadsheet of convincing statistics, nor any exhaustive study of critical theory that will change the minds of those who still cannot or will not envision a world beyond police, prisons, and punishment. We cannot afford to spend our time bargaining with colonial governments for our humanity.

So instead of spending my time arguing futilely with a city council that had already made up its mind, I used my allotted five minutes to read aloud a poem  in memory of the 31st anniversary of Neil Stonechild’s murder at the hands of the Saskatoon Police Service, as well as for Kimberly Squirrel and the many lives stolen by carceral violence in this city.

I own no land, no guns, and no property of interest to those who exist to protect and serve such ownership. What I can offer is a poem that I wrote about my own experience confronting eight police officers standing on my street one summer’s day. It is a poem shaped with bare hands and a hand-me-down heart, a poem which I have aimed directly at the police who occupy our lands and violently restrict not only our movements, but even our visions of what is possible.

                                                                                                                    

 

Eight cops on our block and me

standing in the street in my pajamas

asking why.

the answerer sneers:

“because we travel in packs

like wolves.”

 

 

The man looks to his commanding

officer for a subtle grin

an affirmation

that his statement was correct

and being met with silence

gives the same effect.

 

 

That night I fall asleep to the

low bassline

hum

of the police plane above the inner city.

I dream about wolf teeth

and in the morning I wake to sirens.

 

 

I was taught that the best way to become

unafraid is to face the fear head on.

I buy a book about wolves and

learn that mostly,

they want nothing

to do with the violence of humans.

 

 

Sometimes, in our stories

wolves even

save the whole world

and everyone in this hood knows

cops do nothing

but suffocate these worlds to the ground.

 

 

I sit with fury in my chest

for each relative stolen

by those who claim no distinction between

the use of terror

in cruel service of occupation

and struggle in hope of a better existence.

 

 

I want the young ones in our communities

to grow up knowing

that an abbreviated life is not inevitable

and although we are captured and culled

they remain the real trespassers

on still wolfen land.

 

 

That night I fall asleep to the

low bassline hum

of the police plane above the inner city.

I dream about running free

and in the morning

I wake.