Socialist Felon William Lawrence Worked to Defund Police, End Prisons
Socialist felon William Lawrence worked as a strategic advisor for a socialist far-left group “fighting for a world without prisons, policing, surveillance, and punishment.”
Lawrence himself has said, “defund the police,” “we are going to defund the Lansing police,” and “cops are bad at stopping crime, hey I’ve got an idea, let’s get rid of them.”
“It’s no surprise that a socialist felon wants to get rid of police and prisons. William Lawrence is a liberal lunatic who is completely unfit to serve in Congress.” – NRCC Spokesman Zach Bannon
Read more from The Midwesterner here or see excerpts below:
William Lawrence worked to defund police, end prisons as ‘strategic advisor’ for far-left Dream Defenders
The Midwesterner
Victor Skinner
September 23, 2026
Socialist U.S. House candidate William Lawrence is working to convince Michiganders he no longer wants to defund the police, but his work as a strategic advisor for Dream Defenders and his own social media posts are complicating those efforts.
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“William Lawrence is an organizer and social movement strategist,” read a bio on multiple essays Lawrence penned for Convergence and The Forge in 2022. “He was a co-founder of Sunrise Movement, where he helped shape and popularize the Green New Deal. He currently works as a strategic advisor for Dream Defenders, and is developing a new popular organization in his hometown of Lansing, Michigan.”
The host of The Sustainability Agenda described Lawrence in similar terms the same year, noting “he currently works as a strategic advisor for Dream Defenders, a social change organization fighting for a world without prisons, policing, surveillance, and punishment.”
Dream Defenders call for “freedom from prisons and police,” alleging “police were never meant to protect and serve me and you.
“They started as slave catchers hired by wealthy plantation owners,” the group’s website read in 2022, when Lawrence served as “strategic advisor.” “Businesses started the first organized police force in Boston in 1838 to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places. These early business owners kept their profits by incentivizing poor white people to turn against enslaved black people and side with the rich who steal from us all. And the first American prisons started as work camps for newly freed slaves. Police and prisons, since their founding, have always been about safety for the haves while wreaking havoc for the have-nots.”
Other archived materials show Dream Defenders advocates for an “end to the current prison and policing system,” as well as a ban on bail and probation.
“By virtue of being born, each of us has the absolute right to people-centered humane justice, mediation, resolution and violence prevention, an end to the current prison and policing system including immediate banning of bail and probation and reinvestment of the money spent on prisons and police into social services in our community that address the root causes of poverty and violence,” according to the nonprofit.
“We know that prisons aren’t about safety or accountability but about control and domination over large segments of the population, especially Black people, in order to make a profit. We are different from prison reformers because reformers often create situations where incarceration becomes even more entrenched in our society,” the website reads. “Instead, we are fighting for solutions that will produce decarceration, fewer people behind bars and a future world without prisons.”
Dream Defenders also explicitly identify as socialists working to put an end to the “capitalist police state.”
“Like many revolutionary organizations, we believe that it is not enough to simply oppose capitalism or to fight for freedom within it, but that we must be actively fighting for a new alternative,” according to Dream Defenders’ 2024 archived website.
The group has worked to spread its message in public schools, pushing lesson plans that glorify the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S. designated terrorist organization since 1997, among other far-left movements.
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