Who Really Keeps Us Safe?

Why Oakland’s activist spirit for police accountability and human rights is more urgent than ever in the era of Project 2025.

More police have never made us safer—and Oakland is the proof.

While politicians point to crime rates to justify bloated police budgets, what they rarely acknowledge is what those numbers don’t show: the trauma of over-policing, the unchecked violence of rogue officers, and the deliberate defunding of the very resources that actually build safety—like housing, healthcare, employment and education.

Oakland is a case study in this contradiction. And for over a decade, Cat Brooks has been one of the clearest voices demanding we face it.