The absurd over the top condescension aside (and FFS is that condescending), when in history has overreach of people pushing for reform ever prevented it? Seriously, the neoliberal whinging is painful. “Go slow” has been chanted at every social justice movement ever, and in none of them has going slow ever lead to better outcomes.
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Black people: Cops are literally fucking murdering us.
White Centrists: Yes, but can we discuss the optics of the name you’ve got for your plan? I mean, “Stop Cops From Being Able To Murder Us” sounds so harsh. How about “Let’s Politely Ask The Police To Be Nicer To Black People”?
Seriously, don’t blame Black people who have been working on this problem for decades for your lack of imagination or willingness to do the hard work of a Google search.
Look up what your town or city spends on policing. Now take half of that and split it between education and housing. Or infrastructure. Imagine how nice your city would now look without homeless people (because they have homes) and schools in proper repair with up-to-date books and adaptive technology for all students. Without potholes in the street and with sidewalks to walk safely on. Imagine your city without drug addicts on the corner, but in safe places where they can access treatment if they want it. Imagine if, instead of a police precinct, there was a walk-in clinic where you could access medical services or mental health care, paid for by the city. Imagine a nicer library.
Police budgets take all that from you and pour it into guns, tanks and propaganda designed to make you feel afraid so you’ll approve more money for the police budget. But some fuckers can’t let us have that nicer world, because they need to argue over “branding”.
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What if you put half the energy used here in being a contrarian about tactics to better use promoting mutual aid organizations, calling Representatives, organizing marches, writing letters, or supporting minority owned businesses? Not even all the energy, just half.
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ImAgInaTiOn iS HaRd WoRk, ThO
ImAgInaTiOn is especially hard when you’re so used to a built media environment that caters to you as the absolute default that you get offended over sassy Internet brands not being polite enough.
You make excellent points. I’d far rather imagine and work for a better future, one where millions in tax payer dollars aren’t pissed down the drain to settle police brutality suits, where the root causes of inequality and despair are recognized and addressed.
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I have said literally nothing about going slow. You are confusing the symbolism of picking a name that feels like a purity test, with actual policy. The actual policy should be enacted immediately. The name doesn’t mean shit. The only value the name has is its value in getting policy enacted, now. If I thought naming the movement Purple Lions Fun Time Party would result in legislation being enacted now, I’d advocate for that name.
Whatever it. It’s done. I won’t be shocked when we learn this name was picked by Russian psyops or 4chan trollies both for its inability to convey the goal of the campaign, ending police corruption and transforming policing, and not changing funding levels; and for it’s ability to scare people for sounding like a movement to get rid of police.
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Maybe you should read or watch a news program, then. There’s 60% public approval for BLM and the anti-police brutality protests right now.
Or maybe read the BBS you’re posting on, where it’s been posted several times that the terms “abolish the police” and “defund the police” have come directly from BLM protesters since before it was cool.
Or just carry on being one of those tools who doesn’t listen to the people they claim to want to help, since you know better than them. That always goes really well.
Correction: There’s 74% approval for the anti-police brutality protests right now. My polling figures were from 4 days ago.
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What? I didn’t mention any name, neither did your post that I replied too. That is some remarkable deflection.
As for you not saying anything about going slow, despite not using that term, your post I replied to was all about preventing a conservative backlash. That is the same argument that is always used against reform movements, to not push for too much because it will cause a backlash. And its BS.
The only reason reform gets inacted is because people push. For instance, if you look at the words of MLK, he was a radical by the standards of every US generation. It was only in the context of militants talking about truly radical reform that he was briefly viewed as centrist enough to be listened to. If we want shit to change now, the way to do it is to amplify voices calling for radical change (regardless of whatever names, slogans talking points, branding, or any other superficial quibble there might be).
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Worth noting that the right certainly has no worries about sparking a backlash. They thrive on the backlash. Meanwhile it seems we worry incessantly about offending people who will never support us in any way. Those who still side with the Nazis will not come to our side. We need to focus on inspiring those already on our side to think that maybe, for just once, we are on their side.
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The specter of a right-wing backlash is one of the primary tools that moves the Overton Window rightward.
“Shh! Don’t say that out loud. The Conservatives might hear you and backlash!”
Meanwhile, those conservative give fuck all about creating a backlash. As you say, they want a backlash, so that they can play their victim card.
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We actually lucked out with our uniformed SRO, Officer Darden. Middle aged black guy with enough humor to laugh when we joked about the DARE van he drove (I shit you not it was car 420!)
It was the UC’s you had to keep your eyes out for- usually they posed as substitutes, and often would blow their cover forgetting to turn off their radios. These were the bastards you’d see jump out of nowhere during hallway fights, throw down, then next thing you know kids are getting hauled off in cuffs.
Of course there were also random search days, where Akron PD would bring in metal detectors and dogs, those days were pretty terrifying honestly, and at least several kids would be hauled off in cuffs every time. Eventually I wised up and started skipping search days- everybody tossed their drugs and cigarettes and knives and water bottles of booze by the train tracks that ran alongside the school, so my friends and I would fill our bags up and get absolutely lit by noon, all the while ducking truancy officers out driving trollies till school got out.
The moral of the story? ACAB
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No. Treating ourselves and our communities as a market place or a commodity in the first place is one of the CORE problems in our society. We are human beings, not brands.
FFS.
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See, where I am from, the closest I saw to cops in my school was the time they decided to set up a speed trap in the school zone and busted the always drunk gym teacher (who, hilariously, was also tapped to give the sex and drugs lectures) just as the school buses were arriving. And that wasn’t really my school, just the one we were temporarily sharing while our gym was being finished.
That’s the thing so many Americans aren’t grasping: there was a time when you, too, didn’t have SROs and UCs running around, and those days weren’t any less safe. So many “cop functions” have no purpose except to expand police powers and brainwash the populace into believing that they’re neccessary.
There were drugs and booze at my school, too. One of my classmates murdered his best friend in what was widely believed to be a drug deal gone bad. Another got so drunk and high that he decided to eat cigarettes in class – believe me when I say that you never want to smell tobacco-booze vomit – and there were no cops. Damn right, fights happened. No cops, no search days, no metal detectors. If you had proposed it, there would have been an uprising.
I mean, cops didn’t make your school any safer than mine, clearly. My guess is that they were probably about the same, except yours had the added violence and fear of getting your life destroyed because you were in the wrong hallway when something went down.
A world with significantly less cops is highly achievable. And it’s really not as scary as some would have you believe.
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Corruption is not a disembodied abstraction we can pound into ingots like Sauron on Mount Doom.
If there is corruption, that’s just another way of saying the cops are corrupt. The only way to get rid of “the corruption” is to get rid of the cops. If we can’t get rid of all of them at once then getting rid of half of them is a good start.
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Part of the answer is because a few people have made it very profitable for themselves to do so.
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The police presence never resolved anything, just straight funneled kids into the carceral industry. A few of my friends got their records started over bullshit at school that should’ve been de-escalated. Once you get your sheet going cops look for every reason to ring you up- already a criminal in their eyes, no matter that you’re 15. From that point it’s often just a matter of time.
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Not everyone who voted for him is his base. A big chunk, yes. But not all. Don’t make the mistake of lumping everyone into one group. And since elections are often decided by tenth of a percent, you don’t make things any more difficult than necessary to win.
That’s not the same as defunding the police, as the John Oliver segment you posted even notes. But if even you are confusing the defunding with abolishing, then that reaffirms that calling it defunding is a stupidly simplistic adjective. If I’m mistaken and they are the same, then I have no problems going out on a limb and predicting defunding/abolishing will go nowhere.
Why the insistence on scoring an own goal with a confusing name? You keep arguing the policy is good idea, which I have NEVER disputed because I support it. I just facepalm at the name. You seem to keep arguing that everyone who doesn’t support it must be Trump’s base, which is demonstrably false, and not worth convincing, which is foolish.
“Defund the police” is already the compromise position.
It’s also a step towards abolition, but even for non-abolitionists: it is an undeniable fact that American police are ludicrously over-funded, to almost as extreme a degree as the US military. Even if one is completely opposed to abolition, a massive reduction in police budgets is simple common sense, purely from a fiscal prudence and spending priorities POV.
This is blatantly absurd:
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That is what Ukraine did, more or less, although the motivation was to eliminate corruption rather than brutality (and Americans trained the new police). Officers from the old force could join if they were retrained and passed “integrity checks”.
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The political ramifications of the phrase are not something that those of us not running for office (ie, most of us) need to worry about. That is for the politicians, and has already dealt with: Biden has said he doesn’t intend to “defund the police”. (What he actually intends to do is yet to be seen, but he’ll likely support policies that polls say most want.)
However, it is a perfectly good phrase for those of us who are not running for office to use, and milder than what we used to chant during the police riots of the late 60s/early 70s.
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