Dialogue surrounding the defund police movement is alive and well in Oak Park and, under the leadership of the new village board, is likely to continue. That’s the view of Trustee Arti Walker-Peddakotla expressed last week during a virtual discussion hosted by the Oak Park public library.
“I’ve actually spoken to all of the new incoming board members since they’ve been elected and each of them seem like they are willing to at least engage in this conversation,” said Walker-Peddakotla during a May 7 discussion.
Titled, “Defunding the Police: A Discussion with Elected Women of Color,” the event featured Walker-Peddakotla and Cicely Fleming, alderwoman of Evanston’s 9th Ward. Both women are advocates of defunding police. The library held the virtual discussion as part of its anti-racism and restorative justice programming.
“I think the defund word,” said Fleming, “I think a lot of people equate with abolition and they’re two different terms.”
While she believes abolition is a “viable conversation,” Evanston is discussing defunding, according to Fleming. Defunding entails diverting police funds into increased social services.
“I think some people would tell you in Evanston that we accomplished that,” said Fleming. Evanston’s 2021 budget, passed last November, included the elimination of 11 police positions, four of which were vacant, to offset the financial burden of COVID-19.
“That money did not go to anything else that was going to help the community; it just went back into our general fund balance,” said Fleming.
Using funds generated by eliminating two positions have gone toward creating an alternative mental health response model, she said.
“The other model is only funded at $200,000 and our police department is still funded at $40 million,” said Fleming. “And so it’s still very uneven.”
Oak Park’s 2021 budget included $26.3 million for policing compared to the 2020 budget at $25.5 million, with pension hikes accounting for the majority of the increase.
The library’s discussion allowed panelists to freely express their views on defunding in an atmosphere devoid of defensiveness or opposition — a marked difference from previous discourse held at the village board level in Oak Park.
When asked how elected officials can reframe the public’s perspective on defunding police, Walker-Peddakotla didn’t sugarcoat her response.
“Don’t do what the last board did,” she said. “What the last board did was create a fear-mongering response, which was all about, ‘Oh my God, crime is going up and we need police.’”
In Walker-Peddakotla’s experience, elected officials feel they know what’s best for the community and are unwilling to engage in conversations that challenge that belief, holding their own views in higher esteem than those of constituents.
“Does your view and your lens of policing, which is often a white lens, where you haven’t actually interacted with police on a daily basis — does that really matter in this conversation?” she said.
That reality, according to Walker-Peddakotla, is tough for elected officials, especially those with sizeable egos, to realize.
“Your view in this case actually doesn’t matter. What matters is that people are feeling pain from being surveilled by police,” she said.
With three new trustees and a new village president freshly sworn in, Walker-Peddakotla shared her aspiration that the new board will be more open to discussing defunding.
“I’m hopeful that the board dynamic around this topic is at least improved and that we’re going to be a little bit different,” she said.
Library assistant Adam Paradis, who facilitated the discussion, made further note of Oak Park’s rocky history surrounding the topic, mentioning last August’s failed resolution to defund police, which culminated in disappointed youth protesting outside Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb’s home while also doing damage to his backyard garden and furniture.
Even with a new board, Walker-Peddakotla said, she does not believe the new village board would vote to defund the police should a resolution be presented.
“I don’t think we have seven votes, a full board to vote yes on this issue,” she said. “We may not even have four votes.”
Paradis also brought up the advisory referendum question to defund police, brought to the April 6 ballot by then-village trustee Dan Moroney, who has been widely critical of the defund movement. The non-binding referendum did not pass, with 68.04 percent of the votes against defunding the Oak Park police department.
“That referendum, in my opinion, was racist and a white supremacist referendum that was designed to sway an election and not get certain people elected,” said Walker-Peddakotla.
While Oak Park has recently flirted with the idea of reparations for Black residents, Evanston has already made the commitment. In March, the Evanston city council approved the Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program, created to preserve, stabilize and increase homeownership to build intergenerational wealth among Black residents.
Through the program, eligible residents can receive up to $25,000 in housing assistance and mortgage relief. The program has an initial budget of $400,000, which comes out of the $10 million Evanston collected in tax revenue from recreational cannabis sales.
The path to passing that historic piece of legislation was far from easy for Fleming, who discussed how it impacted her mental health.
“I had a really hard go for the last month or two months about reparations,” said Fleming. “That was super-hard for me just as a Black person.”
She received encouragement from Black constituents who thanked her for representing their interests and for speaking on their behalf.
Walker-Peddakotla told attendees that pushing for defunding police and other social justice initiatives has had a noticeable impact on her mental, as well as physical, health, but building lasting change spurs her to continue.
“I really do hope that more people walk away from this conversation wanting to know more about defunding and abolition, not thinking of it as a negative.”
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