DEFUND THE POLICE is an illustration I made for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) a few days after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It was then adopted by People's City Council LA, a member of Black Lives Matter-LA's #PeoplesBudgetLA coalition demanding a city budget that divests from policing and invests in the wellbeing of our communities. The graphic was embraced by protesters across the country, dozens of whom contacted me on social media to send me pictures of the design hand-drawn on a protest sign, wheat-pasted on a wall in their neighborhood, or freshly screen-printed on their living room floor. It mutated and proliferated, truly becoming the people's design. Due to the popularity of the illustration, I sold it as a t-shirt and raised $6,400+ for the Movement for Black Lives. Finally, it was printed as a prize for a fundraiser raffle by YAYA Network, a group of NYC-based youth activists mobilizing for education justice and police-free schools.
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Defunding the police was — and remains — one of the core demands of protesters and Black-led organizations all over the country. Black lives matter, so we must curtail and ultimately abolishing one of the main perpetrators of Black oppression and death. To work toward this, we’ll need to hit pigs where they’ll feel it — their money-bloated bellies — and redirect their coins to resources that actually keep people safe.
This illustration, which I made entirely in Adobe Illustrator, is rife with symbolism. The use and style of the pig is an homage to Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party Minister of Culture (and one of my favorite political artists) who popularized and brought to life this epithet for police. The fat piggy bank represents the exorbitant share of every U.S. city's budget allocated to law enforcement. The hammer signifies working class power and references the destruction of property, such as the Minneapolis 3rd precinct, during the George Floyd protests.
Los Angeles, CA
Brooklyn, NY
Portland, OR
Los Angeles, CA
Pittsburgh, PA
