A World Without Police

A World Without Police is maintained by a collective of organizers from across the U.S. and internationally. We work to connect people struggling against the everyday violence of the police, and to provide practical, organizational and theoretical tools for use in our movement.

We believe police violence and exploitation cannot be ended through reforms (better trained, better monitored, more friendly cops) but only with the total abolition of the police as an institution. As we explain on The Problem page, this is because police forces maintain the inequalities of capitalist society, and will continue to be violent and racist as long as they exist.

At the same time, we know police abolition is only possible as part of a broader revolutionary project to abolish the state in its entirety, along with capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. The struggle against the police cannot be divided from the broader movement or treated as a single-issue campaign.

This is because “the police” is more than just a group of men and women who wear badges: it is also a historical project of division, upholding a social order where the lives of black, POC, poor, queer and trans people’s lives are forfeit. If we only disband police departments, their role could be replaced by non-uniformed security guards, white supremacist militias and patriarchal family networks without fundamentally transforming our social relations. A world without police–not simply as police exist now, but as a form of division–requires revolution.

For these reasons, we build our movement with police abolition as a goal, while recognizing that our struggle includes the total abolition of the state and capital. Local campaigns can work toward these ends by degrading the power and effectiveness of police forces on the ground, and building the capacity of our communities to govern themselves and keep themselves safe. Instead of providing police new tools and legitimacy through reform, this strategy lays the basis for a truly free society.