We reject Smyth’s attack on the credibility of the Manitoba Research Alliance. Community-based and accountable research is essential for understanding social conditions from the lived experiences of minoritized communities. Community-based research is and should be the basis for setting policy in the interest of all communities not only those in positions of power.
The city is responding to very real safety concerns by shuffling more money into policing and away from services we rely on to get through our everyday lives. For the people who suffer most from this shrinking of the public sphere they are not only left unsupported, their preventable crises are increasingly likely to be met with police, whose toolbox is limited and often actively damaging.