This morning, black lives advocates assembled outside Uptown Espresso in South Lake

This morning, black lives advocates assembled outside Uptown Espresso in South Lake Union to decry the treatment of #BlackLivesMatter protesters by Seattle police. The location was important: this was the spot where, exactly one year ago today, teacher Jesse Hagopian was randomly pepper sprayed by a panicked SPD officer while talking on the phone to his mother.

Hagopian was joined by several others including lawyer Nikkita Oliver and photographer Jay Trinidad, not to mention city councilmember Kshama Sawant. But perhaps most interesting was the call by Marissa Johnson, one of the two #BlackLivesMatter organizers who shut down Bernie Sanders’ speech last year, to abolish the Seattle Police Department. (It was not clear how many of the other activists agreed with this goal.)

Here’s the full transcript of her speech:

I said this six months ago to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders: that Seattle is our nation’s Mecca of white hypocrisy. As we stand here today, that is still true.

I could tell you lots of stories about what I’ve experienced here in Seattle over the past year. I could tell you stories of mothers being beaten down on the ground and arrested and taken from their children. I could tell you stories of minors being maced by the police. I could tell you stories of grown men putting their hands on me. Even last year, down this street at MLK, there are photos of me with a grown man with his hands around my neck.

I could tell you about all of that, but it’s not necessary. We already know what’s going on:

Seattle hates black people. Well, I guess, Seattle doesn’t hate black people. Seattle loves black people, like misogynists love women.

This city is very important in terms of our national conversation for Black Lives Matter. And that’s what I want to speak about. Seattle has been so crucial in the fight for black lives across the nation, and repeatedly over the last year you have seen some of the biggest stories concerning police brutality and youth incarceration and overall engagement in the presidential election happen right here in this city.

Now how does that happen when we are one of the most progressive places, arguably, in this country? How is it possible that we have had some of the biggest scandals, in terms of policing, when we have on paper one of the most progressive use-of-force documents in the nation?

Well, it’s because Seattle is a model for the future. Nationally, everyone looks to us to see what will the future look like, if we can just educate people more. If we become more liberal. If we elect the right candidates.

Where it gets us is a future where white supremacy still reigns, but looks different. What we see in this white progressive utopia is that black people are still enslaved, they are still brutalized, but now it’s even worse because someone will tell you they love you while sticking their foot in your face.

That’s why black resistance in Seattle is so key. Because when we resist here against what is supposed to be a utopia, against what is supposed to be progress, we show the world that hope in white liberalism is death. And that the only solution is black self-determination and the full abolition of the police state.

And so I here, on the behalf of Black Lives Matter and on behalf of the work here in Seattle, am calling for the complete and utter abolition of the Seattle Police Department. And I think we’ve seen lots of examples about why this needs to happen and reform isn’t possible here, even under the federal consent decree.

The federal consent decree has very little meat in it. The majority of what it proposes is the creation of the CPC–the Community Policing Commission. They’ve been very unsuccessful thus far in getting any reforms passed, and specifically blocked. The mayor himself specifically appointed everybody on that committee. And when I confronted them last year, when they had me do an event for them, none of them could tell me what their jobs were or what their role was. Furthermore, they put forth numerous reforms for the city to approve, and the mayor has blocked them at every step. And then most recently we see this meeting that’s going on with SPD trying to reform and be in compliance with the DoJ. And yet who do they invite to the table? None of the names that they’ve most brutalized, and all of the people who are going to be in the most agreeance with them. This whole notion of accountability is a complete sham. And even worse, it’s dangerous for us, because it gets people in the illusion of thinking that there’s some progress being made.

So instead I’m calling for the people of Seattle to wholly call out this farce of reform on behalf of both the Seattle Police Department and the DoJ, who’s blocked reform efforts, and instead push for the full abolition of the police department. We already know who SPD is. They’ve been the same way for a century. They’re corrupt, they’re unaccountable, they’re violent, and they’re incredibly incompetent at their jobs and they’re going to stay that way.

So as Jesse said, people will continue to hit the streets. But they’ll do even more than that. We’re going to keep on dismantling from the inside out–in respectable ways, in underground ways–until the Seattle Police Department is abolished. Thank you.

Asked what she’d replace police with, Johnson responded with the following:

The community already does a lot of things that the police are supposed to do right now on their own, and do it way more efficiently. So for instance I’m a nanny. The Seattle police killed a man named Sam Smith this summer. He’s a white man, actually. They killed him, he had a knife, they said he ran into an SPD car, right? And if you watch the dashcam video there, I watched it with a friend, there’s a lot of ways you can deescalate that situation where no one has to die.

Many of the things that we say the police department does–we want them there to keep people safe, and yet they kill folks, beat folks. We want them there to protect our belongings, and yet they don’t actually do that for certain populations. So my argument is that the community is already doing a better job at maintaining public safety, is already doing a better job at keeping me safe. And that that happens when we’re connected together. So in the instance of Sam Smith who died, who was murdered by the Seattle Police Department–potentially, had someone called a nanny, a doctor, a teacher, instead of the police department, they could have created a situation to give that young man space, to deescalate the situation, and he might still be alive today.

And so when people say, ‘What are we going to do without the police?’ basically what they’re asking is, ‘What are we going to do when we have to take care of ourselves?’ And I want to remind everybody that we know in this city that the police are not here to protect the everyday person. We saw this with WTO. We know who they’re here to protect. They’re here to protect the one percent. They only allow the middle class to exist. And that’s why white folks as well, middle class white folks when they got out on the streets, got their asses handed to them just like black people. And so instead I’m calling on the community to step up, to take care of one another, to keep each other safe. I spoke to a police officer about a year ago as I was waiting in the police department to bail some people out of jail from Martin Luther King Day. And I was talking to him about police [and prison] abolition, and he said, ‘You don’t want me to let the people who are in this jail right here out on the streets. Some of them are murderers. Some of them are rapists. Some of them are thieves.’

You know what I told him? ‘I know some people. Some of them are murderers. Some of them are rapists. And some of them are thieves. But they have badges on like you, so they walk the streets. Or they have lots of money, so they walk the streets.’

The truth is we already live with murderers and rapists. We allow them to flourish, some of the most powerful people. So let’s be honest about the fact that police and prisons are not about our fear of violence. They’re about our wanting to control poor people. That’s why I push for police abolition.

Above: footage of teacher Jesse Hagopian being pepper sprayed at last year’s MLK day.