"Of course, people at the time felt a range of anxieties about abolition. Slave owners worried about their plantations, and the profits that the labor camps wrought. White overseers feared joblessness. Both feared the loss of superiority. Some Black people had reservations about how they'd sustain themselves without the steady, yet violent, income from their owners. Police abolition triggers similar anxieties today: moral, economic, and otherwise. But if abolitionists had waited to convince every single person that freedom was worth the pursuit, Black people might still be on plantations. Slavery's violence and oppression was riskier than Black people's plans, imagination, and will to be free. So they held the uncertainty in their bellies and started planning. Some started running. Rather than waiting for comforting answers to every potential harm ahead of us, let's plan. Run. Dream. Experiment. And continue to organize, imagine, and transform this society toward freedom and justice without police and violence."
Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists