Defund the Police? An Abolition Curriculum from the Mennonite Church USA

April 22, 2021 8:20 AM

Defund the Police? An Abolition Curriculum. "In the wake of continued high profile police shootings across the United States, many people in the [Mennonite] church pushed for an Anabaptist-oriented response and resources that helped us to move as a church into solidarity with the pain and brutality being felt and witnessed on Black, brown and Indigenous people. This curriculum is our response...This curriculum is an initial guide for congregations who are desiring to begin or continue their reflection on what it means to engage the forces of state, their commitments to non-violence and how to act to end policing and police brutality."

"The curriculum will address the following topics:

Week 1: Individual and Community Safety
Week 2: The Purpose of Policing in the United States
Week 3: The History of Policing and Police
Week 4: Transformative Justice
Week 5: The Landscape of Policing – Incarceration and Bail
Week 6: The Landscape of Policing – Policing Our Children, SROs, School-to-Prison Pipeline
Week 7: The Landscape of Policing – Police and the Streets
Week 8: The Landscape of Policing – City Hall, Political Change and Revolution
Week 9: Review and Closing – 8 to Abolition and Next Steps"

posted by MonkeyToes (4 comments total)

Excellent. The Mennonites have quite a bit of history of engagement with this issue, but sadly I feel like a number of my Mennonite relatives have tilted toward a more reactionary stance.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:24 AM on April 22, 2021

The Mennonites have a pretty solid historical reasoning for at least mistrusting the police or law officers in general. Stuff like this rekindles my hope that they'll get through some of their deeper skeletons. I'm always rooting for them, even if i'm not a part of the church.

aspersionscast, mine too. makes me sad.
posted by gorestainedrunes at 11:18 AM on April 22, 2021

Thank you for this. My Quaker meeting (overwhelmingly white) has been trying to lean hard into the question of how to be an anti-racist community, and we're going deeper than we have as a community in the past. It's hard going. This curriculum could be of use to us.
posted by Orlop at 2:56 PM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

My Quaker meeting (overwhelmingly white)

But you repeat yourself.

None of the peace churches (Mennonite, Quaker, Brethren) have a particularly diverse history, which makes this stuff harder.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:11 AM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]