Police Foundations: Policing’s Corporate-Sponsored Secret Weapon
As the nation demands justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and every Black person murdered by racist cops, calls to defund the police are gaining traction nationwide.
We have to keep up the pressure and hold local leaders accountable. But to divest from policing and invest in what keeps our communities safe, healthy, and housed, we also have to address policing’s secret weapon: Police foundations.
While police budgets are public documents that must be approved by local elected officials, police foundations exist as a backchannel to funnel private money and resources toward law enforcement. Police foundations help cops acquire surveillance tech, military weapons, SWAT team equipment, and other tools that are used to terrorize Black and Brown people.
More than 200 police foundations in the U.S. allow corporations — including Verizon, Walmart, Starbucks, Amazon, Bank of America, Target, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Chevron, Wells Fargo, Waffle House, and many more — to contribute to police departments outside of public funds.
Join us to demand corporations like Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Target divest from police foundations and refuse seats on police foundations’ boards.
Corporate Enablers
Police foundations don’t work for us and are not accountable to anyone but their major donors — the corporations that pretend to be “woke” on social media but help prop up over-militarized police forces behind closed doors.
Across the country, police foundations directly support the continued hyper-surveillance of Black, Brown, and Indigenous neighborhoods. They give cops military equipment and fund crime hotlines and “deputy for a day” programs that enable vigilantes to terrorize our communities. And their boards are filled with top executives from some of the largest corporations in the world.
When activists began calling on corporations to cut ties with police, foundations in at least four major cities took down public information on their partners and board members.
We are committed to holding these corporations accountable. We demand that they immediately divest from the police foundations that have helped militarize the police and put our communities in danger.
Add your name now: Call on corporations to divest immediately from police foundations and refuse any positions on police foundation boards.
Add your name to the petition!
Organizations Who Have Signed
- 350 Butte County
- Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro
- Black Market KY
- Black Visions
- Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
- Center for Popular Democracy
- Chicago Community Bond Fund
- Civil Rights Corps
- Climate Finance Action
- CODEPINK
- Corporate Accountability
- Daily Kos
- Faith in Minnesota
- Greenpeace USA
- International Indigenous Youth Council
- ISAIAH
- Mijente
- Mosquito Fleet
- Movement Alliance Project
- National Bail Fund Network
- One Love Global
- Organizing Black
- People’s Climate Movement – NY
- Philadelphia Bail Fund
- Public Accountability Initiative / LittleSis
- Public Justice Center
- Rainforest Action Network
- Reclaim the Block
- Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
- Stop the Money Pipeline
- The Promise of Justice Initiative
- Women’s Environment and Development Organization
- Worth Rises
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by Color Of Change