The 613-819 Black Hub’s strategic plan starts with this:
Good evaluation is hard in any field but especially hard regarding advocacy because:
- Success can take years;
- Many people, groups contribute to success so it’s hard to evaluate the impact of your organization;
- There is often an active opposition working against you; and
- Good evaluation can be prohibitively expensive (i.e. measuring changes in public opinion).
Despite these challenges, advocacy work can, and must, be measured to:
- Know if strategies are working; and
- Demonstrate success to Black communities, potential recruits and funders.
Many people only consider final outcomes like successful policy change as “wins” but there are many other types of success that are important to measure to maintain optimism – and momentum. This post describes two big wins, and one partial win, that we lead or participated in during 2021 – and how we plan to follow up on each of them in 2022.
Compassion not Cops – In February 2021, we launched our Compassion not Cops campaign to produce a proposal for an alternative, non-police mental health crisis response system for Ottawa. We raised $25,000 in three months to pay the consultants who produced an excellent report that people continue to reference in efforts to freeze the Ottawa Police Service budget.
Getting cops out of Ottawa schools – We supported the Asilu Collective which led the successful campaign to get cops out of Ottawa schools by ending the Ottawa police’s School Resource Program. While Asilu members maintained pressure on Ottawa Carleton District School Board trustees by regularly presenting at Board meetings, we continued to raise the issue during our many presentations to the Ottawa Police Services Board. We also joined Asilu members on the OCDSB’s Review of Police Involvement in Schools working group.
Freezing the Ottawa Police Service budget – We joined many other groups in leading a year-long campaign to freeze the Ottawa Police Service budget. We presented almost every month at Ottawa Police Services Board meetings, applied pressure by demanding answers of the OPS via email and Freedom of Information requests and had supporters calling and emailing city councillors right up until the day councillors voted on the budget. In the end, the Board and council didn’t freeze the OPS budget. They gave the OPS an $11 million increase instead of the $14 million the OPS asked for. Many saw this as a loss but it wasn’t as it was the first crucial step in making any big change: legitimizing the idea that it can even happen. The $3 million reduction showed for the first time that the Board could give the cops less than they ask for.
Another success related to the police budget was the City Hall sit-in organized by the Ottawa Black Diaspora Coalition during City council’s vote on the police budget. The sit-in showed you don’t need lots of people to produce very powerful symbolic moments. One of those moments was when one of the OBDC sisters – who’s about 6ft 2 – started speaking with a megaphone right after city officials – backed up by the presence of several police officers – told the organizers they couldn’t use a megaphone. As soon as they started speaking, a police officer approached and said something to them. They stopped speaking, looked down at the officer without saying anything – then turned back to the crowd and continued speaking with the megaphone. The officer melted into the background. I spoke after them, also with the megaphone – and said that I hoped that, by risking being arrested, I would inspire young brothers and sisters to rise to a new level of militancy.
In 2022 we plan to follow up on all these successes.
Compassion not Cops – We launched the Compassion not Cops campaign partly in response to the Ottawa Police Service launching a process to create an alternative mental health response system. The problem is the police were leading it, including handpicking the “Guiding Council” that would manage the project. When we and others raised this, the OPS quickly agreed to let the City lead the process. Only they didn’t. After much asking, we got a copy of the Guiding Council’s terms of reference and saw that the OPS was now on the Guiding Council.
At the Nov. 2020 Ottawa Police Services Board meeting OPS Chief Peter Sloly made it very clear that the OPS would be at any table creating an alternative mental health response system – he just failed to mention that they were now back at the head of that table. We responded by saying that we did think there was a role for the OPS in developing an alternative, non-police mental health response system. It’s similar to the role an abusive husband plays when his wife finally decides to leave him. He needs to be around to give her the keys to the house and the car and the wifi password – but he will absolutely not be at the table with her team that will help her design her new life without him.
Chief Sloly and the police union, the Ottawa Police Association, called the police Board and City Council’s decision to give the OPS an $11 million raise a “cut”. Why would the Chief and the OPA say that? They’d say it because they know that, because the Board and Council didn’t cut large amounts from their budget and free it up to go to things that actually keep us safer, like mental health programs – that the crises will keep happening – and then the OPS can say, “You see what happens when you cut our budget?” – and ask for an even bigger increase next year. In 2022, we will use our Compassion not Cops study to counter this narrative.
Cops in schools and the police budget – Succeeding in getting cops out of schools was a huge success. Keeping them out will require continued vigilance as we fully expect the OPS to try to maintain its connection to schools through some form of layered policing.
In his March 2021 Spring magazine article, Layered policing’ expands police amid calls to defund, Jeff Shantz said:
In response to community calls to defund police and fund necessary social resources, cities across the country have instituted “layered policing.” From Lethbridge to Saskatoon to Kitchener-Waterloo, these moves would actually deploy more police throughout the community, and embed policing in everyday social life. All while presenting a model in which social services are framed as policing functions (or policing “partnerships”).
We expect the OPS will push for continued strong involvement in the mental health response system, framed as “partnerships” with social service agencies, while fighting any reductions to their budget that would free up money to go to these “partner” agencies. We also see them attempting to continue to try to deploy more cops in the community under the guise of the Neighborhood Resource Team program, which is their latest name for “community policing”.
The OPS NRT program has gone from $2.5 million and 18 officers in 2019 to over $11 million and 89 officers in 2021. And the OPS is currently leading an evaluation of the program that’s pretty much guaranteed to conclude that the program is great and should be further expanded. The project started in fall 2019 when the OPS hired Carleton professor Linda Duxbury to lead it. After we found out about the project, we met with Duxbury and asked her why no Black groups were included in the project description for her project on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council website (SSHRC gave her almost $200,000 for the project). She said she had included Indigenous groups.
Duxbury’s NRT project is yet another example of the OPS ensuring that anything that’s meant to hold them accountable, or evaluate them, produces positive reviews they use to justify asking the Board and City Council for more money. We will continue to expose this in 2022 in the run up to the vote on the OPS’ 2023 budget – and the Oct. 2022 Ottawa municipal election.
We will also work to have similar successes in 2022 in areas beyond policing by increasing our efforts to connect with – and be guided by – community members most affected by the systems we’re trying to change.
La lutta continua.