By Mikayla Patel and Sophia Esparza
On April 15, Smith College announced its intention to gift the City of Northampton $200,000 to support the efforts of the Mayor of Northampton, David Narkewicz, in creating a Community Resilience Hub – a decision that could potentially distract from the efforts and goals of Northampton Abolition Now and other local abolition organizations.
By May 18, Major Narkewicz is expected to present his new proposed budget to the city of Northampton. The upcoming one year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd and the movement that followed looms over organizations like Northampton Abolition Now who are pushing for the funding and necessary budget changes to work toward equitable community safety in Northampton.
Northampton Abolition Now voiced its concerns regarding the announcement from Smith College at The Spring into Abolition Festival this spring, an event hosted by various local abolition organizations. In an interview with member Ashwin Ravikumar, he stated that the proposed Community Resilience Hub is “in no way a substitute for a new department of community care, divesting from policing, and creating new leadership by those who have been most impacted by policing.”
Last summer, the Black Lives Matter movement gained attention in a surge of protests and uprisings, demanding what the Northampton Abolition Now website describes as “a radical reimagining of public safety.” Inspired by this movement and motivated to take action, a group founded Northampton Abolition Now last June with a “goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment,” according to their website.
Ravikumar explained to The Sophian that since its establishment, the group has continued to “organize to move resources away from the police and into community led and peer led alternatives that truly keep us safe, while keeping our focus on shrinking the size, scope and power of policing.”
The demands of Northampton Abolition Now center around three issues of concern, all of which Narkewicz and Northampton City Council can resolve immediately. The first is to immediately reallocate the $880,000 cut from the Northampton Police Budget last June to community needs within this fiscal year. Ravikumar and Ya-Ping Douglass, also a member of Northampton Abolition Now who spoke to The Sophian, stressed that these needs must be decided by the people who have been impacted by unlawful policing and state violence.
Secondly, Northampton Abolition Now is demanding the establishment of a new Department of Community Care by May of 2021, stating that this new department “must be accountable to communities in Northampton who are most impacted by criminalization and policing” and “work towards dismantling systems that uphold oppression.”
The third demand states that Narkewicz and City Council must defund the Northampton Police Department by 50% in the 2022 fiscal year and allow the Department of Community Care to lead the reallocation of funds.
There has been a lack of definitive action from the office of the Mayor and City Council in response to these demands. In June of 2020, the Mayor and City Council created the Northampton Policing Review Commission as an early response to the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2021, the Commission released a report that included an in-depth analysis of the nature of policing in Northampton. The report strongly recommended the creation of the Department of Community Care.
Ravikumar told The Sophian that “The mayor is now waffling and delaying,” using the creation of a Community Resilience Hub as a way to evade the demands of Northampton Abolition Now and delay creating the Department of Community Care. Now, a donation from Smith College “risks distracting the city from [other] recommendations of the policing commissions review report,” said Ravikumar.
While continuation and expansion of the Resilience Hub is recommended in the Policing Review Commission, Northampton Abolition Now feels that the narrowed concentration on this project, which the mayor started prior to the establishment of the Policing Review Commission, is not sufficient to address their demands to defund police and reinvest in community initiatives led by marginalized people who have been most affected by policing.
The Sophian reached out to Mayor Narkewicz for comment and was directed to a video of an April 15 City Council meeting where he announced Smith’s donation to the Resilience Hub.
Ravikumar added that the proposed Community Resilience Hub has “an entirely different purpose than what the Department of Community Care would do … it is not going to be led or shaped by people who have been impacted by policing.” The City of Northampton website states that the primary purpose of the Community Resilience Hub “is to coordinate resources distribution and services…in preparation for, during, and in recovery from major disasters or disruptions.”
Ravikumar believes that the Smith student body is in the unique position to pressure the administration into stepping back from its donation involvement with the Community Resilience Hub. This donation has the potential to be a turning point in the movement towards divesting from police abolition. If allocated the proper funding, the City of Northampton will have the opportunity to ignore the demands and work of Northampton Abolition Now and many other abolition organizations, and direct its attention to the construction of the Community Resilience Hub; An opportunity it appears to be inclined to take.
Douglass told The Sophian that $1.6 million has been allocated from the marijuana use fee, profits from the Northampton marijuana industry, toward the Resilience Hub without being “accountable to Black and Brown people who have been impacted by the war on drugs.” Douglass called this, “morally reprehensible.” She further said that the hub is just another “run of the mill nonprofit run by white middle class leadership.”
Of the donation to the Resilience Hub, President McCartney said, “We are proud to support Mayor Narkewicz’s efforts to advance this project serving those community members most at-risk, which is in alignment with Smith College’s mission and values as an institution.”
Smith College is a crucial part of the City of Northampton, as a prominent institution and investor in the community. Ravikumar said, “Smith College and Smith students have a powerful voice…to support the movement for Black lives and to insist that the city moves away from policing and reinvests in community.”
[Image: Curran Roundhouse Building, which the mayor executed an option to purchase for potential reuse as the Community Resilience Hub. (Photo via northamptonma.gov)]
