BOSTON (WHDH) - Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Nubian Square before marching three miles to City Hall Plaza Wednesday in support of defunding Boston police.
The march was organized by the youth from the emerging For the People coalition and called on city councilors to trim the police budget by 10 percent and reinvest that money into a youth jobs program, violence prevention and public schools.
“Put those resources into helping benefit our community, education, healthcare, security, food security there’s a lot of issues we need here,” Demonstrator Tchad Cort said. “We need funding.”
Black youth spoke throughout the march and subsequent rally about their support for the reforms.
They are calling for a cap to the police’s overtime budget, a complete defunding for military-style training, exercises and weapons, the phasing-out of police in public schools, and defunding facial recognition technology.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” protester Frady Brown said. “Boston doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to racism and reputation comes from the police force. But I think at the end of the day we’re showing our power right now, you know what I’m saying? This is really important for everyone to see. And we’re going to keep going until something happens, something changes.”
Mayor Martin J. Walsh spoke earlier in the day on the budget and said he did not feel that defunding police was the way to end systemic racism.
“What I was hearing last week was cut the budget, reduce the budget, take police overtime away,” he said. “Now the conversations are how can we take money in the police department and redirect it towards mental health care and equity training.”
Boston City Council budget deliberations are expected to conclude this week.
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