Welcome!

More and more – in cities around the world – people are calling for police forces to be defunded and abolished.  In Winnipeg / Treaty 1 Territory / Homeland of the Metis Nation, Indigenous Peoples have been fighting back against police violence since settler police forces first arrived on these lands.

The fight continues and this means more people are asking questions like: what does police “abolition” mean? What about defunding – what would that look like? Is the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) as harmful as critics say? What would a world – or our city – look like without the police?  

We believe awareness and self-education are an important building block in the movement to abolish the police and create communities of care.  

We also know that many people who want to learn more about police abolition aren’t sure where to start looking for answers to questions they might have. We hope this page will help. This is a living resource that we will add to over time. Keep checking back in!

Visit our ABOUT  page to learn more about Winnipeg Police Cause Harm and our mission to defund the Winnipeg Police Service.

WPS Abolition 101

• Read: Abolishing the police is the only reasonable response to Winnipeg Police killings, says James Wilt in this article for Canadian Dimension
• Listen: Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land argues that policing isn’t the solution to the city’s meth “crisis” in this short interview with CBC’s Ismaila Alfa
• Read: Mariame Kaba responds to skeptics of abolition in her New York Times op-ed, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police”
• Watch: Angela Davis explains that abolition is actually a reallocation of funds for the construction of a better world in this brief interview with Democracy Now!
• Read: Building the World We Want: A Roadmap to Police-Free Futures in Canada, a comprehensive document compiled by Robin Maynard
• Read: How Transformative Justice Responds to Violence Without the Carceral System, a short article from TransformHarm.org by Reina Sultan
• Check out this introductory six-week study guide for new organizers from Abolition Journal, and this Indigenous Abolitionist Study Guide from the Yellowhead Institute

More from our blog:

• The history of WPCH
• WPS Patrol Sergeant Jeffrey Norman’s 22 year-long track record of abuse
• The movement to defund the police in Winnipeg
• When Winnipeg police caused harm in 2020
• Why reducing the WPS budget is a pandemic solution

We are working on gathering learning resources about the following topics. Stay tuned.

• Police-Free Schools
• Disability Justice
• Abolition Feminism
• Racial Justice
• Decolonization
• LGBTQ2S* Liberation
• Migrant Justice
• Anti-Capitalism
• Climate Action
• The Right to the City
• Mental Health
• Harm Reduction
• Transformative Justice

Please get in touch if there are any resources or themes you would like to see included. You can reach us at wpgpolicecauseharm@gmail.com.