After a Season of Protest, Police Reform Is on the Ballot
At least 20 local initiatives qualified for the November ballot after the death of George Floyd, some tackling police funding, resources and oversight.
Photographer: Cory Clark/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Black Lives Matter protests brought people into the streets in the middle of a pandemic. Now, it might bring them out on Election Day. Demands for police accountability, criminal justice reform and racial justice have been translated from rallying cries and protest signs into initiatives on state and local ballots.
“All of this is just a culmination of the years of organizing that has happened by Black folks,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, the executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC). While some of the measures were proposed directly as a response to the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the calls for change that followed, others had been in the pipeline for years or months, only to gain new momentum this spring.