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Our Demands Priorities voted on at June 8, 2020 rally

  1. Defund and demilitarize the police
  2. End Project Greenlight and facial recognition
  3. Drop all charges and citations against protesters
  4. Stop all evictions
  5. Drop citations received by Detroiters during the stay-at-home order
  6. Legally define all sex in police custody as rape.
  7. Prosecute and fire any police officer involved in police brutality
  8. Stop criminalizing homeless people
  9. Make Detroit a Sanctuary City
  10. Create an independent office for disabled citizens
  11. Restore and maintain running water for all Detroiters
  12. Release all non-violent offenses
  13. Requirement for all DPD officers to live in Detroit
  14. No use of rubber bullets / military tactics
  15. Decriminalize all recreational drugs
  16. Invest in mental health and substance abuse services
  17. Charge officers who hide badges
  18. Enforce the duty to intervene for officers
  19. Abolish foreclosures
  20. End police union funding of District Attorney's office
  21. End cash bail
  22. Make police accountability accessible
  23. End jailing of juveniles

Political Code

  1. We fight for liberation and we actively resist a racist state that lynches and brutalizes Black and oppressed people.


    — Detroit Will Breathe is an integrated, youth-led, militant organization fighting against police brutality and systemic racism in Detroit. Our local struggle is part of a broader struggle, born out of a nationwide and international response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. The state is built upon the oppression of Black and Brown people and sustains a racist structure that we are determined to dismantle, beginning in Detroit. We stand against state violence in the many forms it takes on, such as gentrification, police brutality, mass incarceration, school closures, immigration policy, and wage theft. This is the fight for life.
  2. We will do what is necessary.


    — We express militancy through organized, collective resistance to state violence, unwavering defense of all Black and Brown lives, and a commitment to liberatory politics firmly grounded in the reality of oppressed people’s lived experience. We use a diversity of tactics to confront oppression. We do not kneel; we do not run; we do not back down to bullies with badges.
  3. Fighters need to learn how to think and thinkers need to learn how to fight.


    — Education is the cornerstone of militancy. To win our fight we must understand our struggle. When we learn, we realize our power and how to wield it.
  4. Our power is in the streets, not in the hands of politicians, preachers, or self-proclaimed leaders.


    — The political system has failed over and over to represent the material interests of the Black, Brown, and working class people of this country. We are most effective through direct action in the streets; we will only engage with politicians on our terms. Mass movements are the only path to liberation for oppressed people. 
  5. If you work with the police, you work for the police.

    — Police have acted as agents of state violence since their beginnings. We will not cooperate with the perpetrators of violence in our communities. 
  6. We will take back what was stolen.


    — Detroiters, like Black and oppressed people around the world, have been stolen from and displaced from their communities, all while being told by politicians that there is no money to fund the services they need. Detroiters have always sought to invest money into services that benefit everyone, only to have that money taken away for private interests. DPD’s $330 million per year budget belongs to the people. We demand the defunding of the police so that resources can be refunded into communities for housing, healthcare, water, jobs, recreation, transportation, and education. 
  7. No one is above reproach and no one is disposable.


    — Within the movement, it is our responsibility to embody the society we envision by practicing restorative justice. We take interpersonal harm and sexual assault seriously through a restorative justice framework that seeks to protect those who were harmed and provide opportunities for change to those who have caused harm. In order to create a just and safe environment, we require that people who have caused harm take accountability for their actions and work on themselves before fully participating in our movement spaces. We keep us safe without acting like the police.
  8. The fight for Black liberation is an intersectional fight.


    — Our fight is the fight of Black and Brown people with disabilities. Our fight is the fight of undocumented immigrants and refugees. Our fight is the fight of the international working class. Our fight is the fight of Black and Brown women. Our fight is the fight of Black and Brown trans people and the entire LGBTQ+ community. Our fight is the fight of sex workers, houseless people and all others whose poverty is criminalized by the state. Our fight is the fight of people around the world who are subjected to, and resist, US imperialism, economic exploitation, and settler colonialism.