In the wake of a number of murders committed by police in the United States and Canada, CUPW joins an ever-important number of voices that are calling to DEFUND THE POLICE.
While attention about the senseless police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis featured widely in Canadian media, Black and Indigenous people in Canada were also killed at the hands of the police. This is nothing new. There are examples across the country that show the extent of this practice: Black Torontonians account for 8% of the city’s population but are 20 times more likely to be killed at the hands of the cops. As for Indigenous people, the stark figures out of Manitoba show that 60% of people killed by the cops are Indigenous, to cite but one example.
All too often, police resort to excessive force rather than de-escalation. The call for re-thinking the police as a coercive arm of government, and a stop to funding “guns and gadgets” is urgently overdue.
CUPW’s National President, Jan Simpson, says “systemic racism hurts everyone, and as workers, we must stand unified against such injustice. We must fight to dismantle systemic oppression”.