You know how I am always talking and teaching about budgets and learning how to read, understand, and change them is a revolutionary act of protest... Let me walk through a few tweets that provide examples why as you wake up this fine morning...

On the front end of Ferguson, I talked through how the city budget was bolstered by tickets and fines. And when you look where that money went, almost 50% of the budget went to policing.

Through these movements again and again, person dies, I look at fines and fees and budgets.

Now watch this:

To follow that life cycle, poor folks are over policed. Those that govern their communities take their meager resources thru fees and fines and pay for their pain. Those that leave them in fear take that money to other communities where they live well... and judge those who paid.

They use those payments from poor folks to fund their homes and pay property taxes to fund better schools that allow them to get into better colleges and better jobs for better pay and then... they vote against the interest of the poor folks that got them there. A cycle continues

So when I hear people say defund the police, I understand why but I don't know if all the folks realize just how close they are to the answer... It's right there in the budgets they publish year after year...

Even here in DC. I see contractors in King Ranch Fords driving into the city every morning with Maryland tags and political stickers... to work under government contracts paid for by DC residents. They will take those payments back to their suburbs and judge us DC residents. Sigh

So then they push past fees and fines and start causing more pain by killing folks. And when they kill those poor folks, the same people that took their money and voted against their interests protect their killers. So the people wake up and push back. And now we are here. Again.