美语听力素材:废除警察局与取消对警察的资金支持有何区别?(1)

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But we begin tonight with Raeisha Williams. Ms. Williams, good evening and thank you for being here to tell your story. As a member of that community in Minneapolis, do you want to see a police presence maintained in your community? Absolutely, absolutely, and I want to make a correction, I'm not for dismantling, I'm for defunding, which are two very different things. So, explain, what is the difference and what do you want to see actually happen? Yeah, so dismantling is to make something completely different of new and defunding is doing just what it's talking about. It's taking funds out of one pot of funding and moving it over. Well, when I talk about defunding, I'm talking about moving funds to community resources. Unfortunately, police do not have the insight, the understanding, the capability, or the training to take care of all of the issues that take place in community. And so, when we're talking about that, we're talking about mental health issues. We're talking about domestic calls. Let's take some of that funding and repurpose it in the community's hands with organizations who are on the ground doing the grassroots work. I know your brother was a victim of gun violence in that city and that has prompted you to be an activist in your community. You say you feel like your voice isn't being heard. What are they not hearing from you? 

Well, I was an activist before my brother. God bless his soul. Tyrone Williams was murdered by gun violence and Tyrone himself was an activist. What prompted me to become more involved in gun violence and anti-gun violence was my brother's death. But what they're not hearing is, is that as a community, we are citizens, we're American citizens that help build this country. And we're not asking for the police to be completely abolished. What we're asking for is equal treatment. What we've asked for from the beginning of time since we've landed here as slaves in America. Equal treatment so that we as citizens get the same treatment as our white citizens. When African Americans typically call the police for help or when they're in the need, the call time is much longer and the line for them to arrive to the scene is greater. These are statistics that are already out there.