Before we directly address the question, it is important to restate some of the basic propositions from the Defund the Police movement, and abolitionism more generally. The first is that it is about presence, not absence. It is focused on building the type of society that does not require heavily armed police and mass imprisonment. For Ruth Wilson Gilmore, for example, it is both a long-term goal and a practical policy programme that requires investment in social goods that enable a productive life. ‘It’s obvious that the system won’t disappear overnight … no abolitionist thinks that will be the case’. Reforms are needed, but they need to be reforms that actually change the order. As Patrisse Cullors acknowledges, ‘we need to have a movement around divestment – to divest from police and prisons and surveillance and to use that money to reinvest in the communities that are most directly impacted by poverty and the violence of poverty’.

The second proposition which is foundational to answering the question of what is to be done is developing a movement built around alliances. The Defund the Police movement has brought together a range of groups across differing perspectives and with various agendas. While there may be a common view on the need to take resources away from police and to expand and develop community responses to social needs, there is less uniformity on the question of abolitionism – that is whether the police and prisons should be abolished. Gilmore has consistently stressed the need for creating and building alliances – the need to build a popular front to make connections and pursue transitional goals: ‘Solidarity is something that’s made and remade and remade. It never just is’, thus it is good practice for ‘people engaged in the spectrum of social justice struggles to figure out unexpected sites where their agendas align’. Building alliances also needs to avoid what Davis and Martinez referred to as the ‘oppression Olympics’.

Building coalitions for challenging, defunding, and moving to abolish the police requires thinking about the connections between groups of people who bear the brunt of state violence, criminalisation, and imprisonment, and the common interests and connections that exist, rather than emphasising hierarchies of oppression.