[Editor's Note: The following article is part of BlackOut: A Five-Year Retrospective on Portlandās Racial Justice Movement, a joint publication from Donovan Scribes and the Portland Mercury. Written exclusively by Black Portlanders, the purpose of BlackOut is to remember and reflect on the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, and the 100+ days of protests in Portland that same year. You can find BlackOut in print at more than 500 locales citywide, inserted inside the Mercury's Food Issue.Ā You can read all the BlackOut articles here.]
Iām often asked why I came to identify as an abolitionist. Frankly, I donāt see any other option.
Since the great awakening of 2020, reimagining has become all the rage in progressive circles. Referencing John Brown and Susan B. Anthony, both anarchists and fairly liberal people have taken to reimagining themselves as abolitionists, focused on the liberation of all oppressed people. As āDefund the Policeā and āBlack Lives Matterā patches made way for Ukrainian flags, Pride symbology, Israeli flags, and eventually watermelons, nonprofits began to flirt with the idea of calling tax-deductible charity work āmutual aid,ā all while the police continued to kill more and more civilians each year under the Democratic president who was supposed to save us from Donald Trumpās vision of America. Despite being jailed by police and notably assaulted by the US military, Iāll never regret joining the fray in 2020. But Iāll never forget the disorganization, ignorance, and egos that allowed our cause of dismantling the Portland Police as we know them to be undermined, commodified, and ultimately silenced.
Imagination is a core component of liberation; indeed, it is a necessary ingredient for any concept of self-determination. Imagination allows us to problem-solve simple and complex issues, to step off of the written page, and to create pathways that never existed before. But imagining doesnāt change our material reality. To boot, Oregonians have been āreimaginingā public safety for the last five years, and materially, very little has changed regarding policing in our state. From 2021 through 2024, police in Oregon killed another 78 people, compared to 51 in the four years prior. Clearly, imagination has its limits, especially when we only imagine within the framework of what already exists.
In 2020āa year that saw an unprecedented 6,000+ documented uses of force by the Portland Police Bureauācitizens of Portland reimagined police oversight, drafting and passing the most restrictive police oversight bill in the nation with more than 70 percent of voting Portlanders in favor. This effort came three years after City Council passed a resolution demanding that police wear body cameras. In 2022, a measure was passed to ensure background checks and training for firearm buyers in an effort to reduce civilian gun crime. As of 2025, the oversight board does not exist, the gun control measure remains held up in the courts, and a bodycam policy that ironically eschews transparency finally took effect in 2024. Apparently, democracy too has its limits, especially when those tasked with enforcing the laws are themselves above it.
The Portland Police Association (PPA), the longest active police union in the nation, has a long history of outsized power. The first president of the PPA, Otto Meiners, was a member of the German-American Bund, a group created to promote Nazi values, and for 82 years theyāve kept their foot on the pedal, pestering Black people and defending racist and abusive police. As recently as 2021, then-PPA president Brian Hunzeker and two other officers were caught attempting to frame the first Black woman to sit on City Council, Jo Ann Hardesty. This stunt cost the union $680,000 in a 2023 court settlement, and Hunzeker was fired by Mayor Wheeler, only to be reinstated on a union challenge that the punishment was ādisproportionateā and exceeded the precedent āstandards of discipline in the Bureau.ā None of this is listed on the City of Portlandās History of the Police Bureau webpage, probably because the union negotiated a contract that mandates that the City must not āembarrassā police officers caught breaking the law.
Living in a nation with a recent history of racial slavery and apartheid that maintains the most prisoners in the world, where 69 percent of the inmates are of the global majority, and there exists a constitutional amendment that allows prisoners to be used for slave labor, there seems to be clear imperative for reigning in police abuse, especially when the police are protected by an association born of Nazi and KKK influence. Personally, I struggle to see this as complicated.Ā
This is where the how comes into question. Often framed in the false binary of reform versus abolition, changing how we achieve community safety is the big money question. So letās talk money. When a department within a company is failing, we almost always resolve the issue by drastically cutting funds and eliminating the problematic employees, right? In more cases, we eliminate the department altogether. Think about it. When was the last time a company failed to meet any of its goals and everyone got a raise, new cars, a plane, and a 20 percent budget increase? The only applicable answer is the police. And no other company fails goals like the police do. Between murdering and assaulting their customers in the thousands, failing to solve the majority of their cases, failing to prevent crime, using their badges to enrich themselves, intimidating lawmakers, and defending racism, thereās not a legal industry that even comes close. Still, large swaths of society view the policeās unchecked power as necessary for the āgreater good.ā
Yet, as we reflect on the current times, where human rights such as abortion and free speech are under attack nationwide, who is it that is tasked to arrest women crossing state lines to terminate their pregnancies? Who is tasked with arresting college students for expressing their political beliefs? Who is tasked to work with ICE to detain immigrants in schools and places of worship? In many states around the country, who arrests citizens for feeding the homeless? The reality is that police are but a single option in an array of tools that can be used to increase public safety, and when we use a single tool to try and fix everything, we not only endanger the entire project, but we lose sight of the toolsāsuch as education, shared wealth, and mental health accessāthat truly keep us safe.
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Abolition is neither a call for anarchy nor violence. Abolition is the goal of dismantling laws and systems that do not serve usāby any means necessary.
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I realize that when most people inquire about abolition, theyāre usually having thoughts of violent revolution. People worry about destruction, chaosāanarchy. They worry about being able to get to work, their Tesla getting spray painted, or going to the supermarket to get imported avocados at any time of the year. Abolition is neither a call for anarchy nor violence. Abolition is the goal of dismantling laws and systems that do not serve usāby any means necessary.Ā
Few abolitionists believe that fighting the armed forces of their city, state, or nation is a winning strategy. This isnāt 1794 France, nor Cuba in 1959. Despite whatever aesthetics people get off on, nobody is wheeling a guillotine down to City Hall to collect heads. Personally, I believe that we should be building and patronizing systems that do serve us, so that we can starve those systems that donāt. It sounds simple (and it is!), but the world that we live in is intricately connected, and so many of us depend on broken systems because we lack the education and discipline to exercise our freedom from them. This is why diverse communities are so important.
If I can farm, and you can sew, and she can teach, and he can cook, we can start to break away from the systems that keep us in danger. If we can start to divest from companies that abandon our values, then we can begin to support companies that do. If we can stop calling the cops on each other, and start modeling what it means to live in community, then we can start to defund the public services that we donāt want.
I aim to follow in the footsteps of the long tradition of Black abolitionists that came before me. From Fredrick Douglas to Harriet Tubman, Paul Cuffe to Toussaint Louverture, the lessons of our ancestors light the way forward. And frankly, I donāt see another option.
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Mac Smiff is a father of four and a goat herder who's better known for his journalism, community-building, and activism around Black culture and housing. He currently consults for Ease & Abundance LLC, operates the online blog We Out Here Magazine, curates The THESIS, and manages a JOHS-funded housing program for Ground Score Association.
