NARAL stands with Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County’s statewide policy demands, especially the top priority to defund the police. These policy demands are critical steps towards ending systems of white supremacy and creating equity across communities.
Budgets reflect our priorities.
The call to defund the police is a call for investment in the urgent needs that disproportionately impact Black communities including healthcare access, education, social services, and more. Through investment, we can work to make sure every person, every parent, and every family is able to thrive.
The list of demands put forward is a response to hundreds of years of systemic oppression and the failure of reforms to address urgent needs and injustices. The call to defund the police comes after multiple attempts to change the culture of policing, which has failed Black communities and Black people.
There can be no reproductive freedom without freedom from state violence and oppression.
Each and every person should have the freedom to chart their own reproductive destinies — to decide if, when, and how to start, grow, and raise a family and to be able to raise their families in safe, healthy environments, free from state violence and systemic oppression.
Racism is a public health crisis that preserves a culture of white supremacy and is central to reproductive oppression
Black women are four times more likely to die from childbirth than white women (Source) and abortion rates in the Black community are 5 higher than in white communities (Source), we know that systemic racism is prevalent in our health care systems and that the Black community is disproportionately impacted by barriers to abortion care.
NARAL is a historically white-led organization. As we follow the lead of Black leaders on dismantling racism in the world, we know we need to do more to dismantle the systems of racism in our own organization.
- We are listening, learning, and reflecting on the experience of allies, members, current and former staff, and board members to make good on our commitment to anti-racism.
- We know this requires daily discipline to live our values through our internal culture, our external campaign priorities, and our alliances within the progressive movement.
