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Detroit Protest Organizers Present Extensive Demands To Mayor And City Officials

With aspirations for change beyond racial justice, organizers instead left the meeting disappointed and “out of patience.”

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The Detroit Free Press, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Police Chief James Craig met with organizers of protests on Tuesday to discuss 11 demands for the city to consider after George Floyd’s death.

The demands were as follows:

  • Defund and demilitarize the police
  • End Project Greenlight, a public-private community partnership that uses real-time camera surveillance throughout the city, and facial recognition software to identify suspects
  • Drop all charges and citations against protestors
  • Do not carry out eviction orders
  • Drop citations received by Detroiters during the stay-at-home order
  • End “consensual” sex between police officers and those under custody
  • Prosecute and fire any police officer involved in police brutality
  • Do not criminalize homelessness
  • Make Detroit a sanctuary city, a municipal jurisdiction that limits cooperation with the national government’s effort to enforce immigration law
  • Create an independent office for disabled citizens
  • Restore and maintain running water for all Detroiters

The demands, according to a news release, “reflected the aspirational vision of the type of society they want to live in, one free from police violence and punitive measures as a way of solving social issues experienced by working-class and minority communities.” The organizers who attended the meeting, however, left unsatisfied. 

“Here on Day 12, we’ve run out of patience,” Tristan Taylor, one of the protest leaders, said. “We are done with black and brown bodies paying the price of patience.”

According to another organizer, Nakia-Renne Wallace, the meeting was the only one  the group would concede to conduct in private due to the fact that the only action by the city appeared to be to create “a bunch of subcommittees.”

The Detroit Free Press  said that more demands were listed, but were considered less of a priority to organizers because they are not directly under the mayor’s authority. Those demands included: 

  • Release all non-violent offenders
  • Make it a requirement that all Detroit police officers live in the city
  • Stop using rubber bullets and military tactics
  • Decriminalize all recreational drugs
  • Invest in mental health and treatment for substance abuse victims
  • More punitive charges against officers who hide badges
  • Make it a duty to intervene for other officers
  • Abolish property foreclosures
  • End police union funding of district attorney’s office
  • More accessible structures for police accountability
  • Provide care for juveniles instead of jailing.