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Thanks for the emphasis.
This.
All of this.
Really just a sidenote, to take out some steam of this potboiler discussion: in fairness, I think the point @Dioptase1 was making it possible to embrace the term(s) for politicians. I think they tried to make that destinction upthread. I, for one, do not see it as tone policing, but as a valid sorrow: I agree with them that “defunding” the police is a term which would have been seen as political suicide three weeks ago.
But times change!
Pushing hard for that change is what is needed now. And then, Biden better be fast changing to.
I think I will stop for today and let things cool off for the night on this side of the planet.
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That’s my problem. We need to stop pretending that the vast majority of politicians are on our side and that with the right magic words, they’ll come to our aid. That’s exactly backwards. We need politicians, like AOC, like Bernie, like Ilhan Omar, like Brian Sims who are going to stop playing the marketing game, and start doing their jobs, which is serving us and representing us, not seeing who can have the most donations and appeal to the most people. We need people who are going to actual stand up for what is right, who can actually look at shit and say to their constituents, “wow, this shit is absolutely broken. How can we change this for the better for all of us.”
We’ve played this “lets get the middle” bullshit for too long, and it’s not improving the lives of billions of people across the world. Maybe it’s beyond time to stop pretending this is working and start working on actual solutions instead of marketing slogans?
Rest up! The fight continues!
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And it seems that is the default treatment if you are a person of color.
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I want to come back to this, because it’s like a sweet poison. At the time I write this, 50 Happy Mutants liked this post. If there are African Americans in that group, then I apologize to you; my bad, and if you think that the movement needs a better name, more power to you. For everybody else, why do you think it’s a good idea to change the name of, as @Wanderfound quoted, “a global movement about black liberation” that’s been going on for decades? What gives you the right?
I consider myself an ally of the ongoing civil rights movement. One of the primary actions of a good ally is to listen. I’m outspoken, and learning to shut up and listen to the people who are being directly affected by systemic racism is hard work for me. But I put in the work, because otherwise I’m just another overconfident, under-talented white guy who fails up easier than falling.
If you want to be an ally, learn to listen. Your role in this movement is to support BLM, not to lead BLM. It’s not for you. It’s not your skin in the game.
Trying to rename either “defund the police” or “abolish the police” into something softer and more digestible to the white middle class is to water-down and fundamentally change the movement - and that will kill it as surely as over-watering a plant.
And whatever you do, don’t use “reform.” That ship has sailed. Minneapolis BLM leaders said it best when they talked with Mayor Jacob and he would only talk about “reform:”
ETA: One more thing. While I like this sentiment a great deal:
Don’t conflate BLM with electing a Democrat to the Presidency and/or getting rid of Trump. They aren’t the same thing. They can be parallel efforts, but seriously, don’t hijack the energy of BLM to get Biden elected. That’s just wrong.
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Serious question, how many spenders on that list are American?
My guess is at least 50%.
I would like to be wrong.
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“More for Education, Less for Occupation”
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These are not parallel facts; they are intersecting facts.
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This reminds me of arguments I’ve heard about the use of the phrase “white privilege.”
Some people I know have made noises about how it’s not so much what the phrase is actually used to mean that’s the problem but that many white people THINK it means “all whites are better off than all blacks” or some other strawman argument so maybe we progressives should just drop the phrase entirely and use another one. Same for “Democratic Socialism” or other phrases that set off the conservatives.
I never bought that argument because anyone who can’t stand to listen to a few seconds of explanation on the actual meaning of those phrases probably isn’t going to be persuaded to come over to the cause anyway.
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I really liked Emily VanDerWerff’s introduction to this topic: “The Narrative Power of ‘Abolish the Police’”
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Forum posters on the internet love to change the subject from whatever the actual subject is, to the current president, and/or his current opponent, way too much
Any topic that’s not about Trump or Biden should not have multiple posts in it about the election
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Your tax dollars at work:
And if you’re thinking that the cops are there to protect the kids, I’ll remind you that the US police response to terrorist attacks on anti-racism protests has been primarily to facilitate the attacks and protect the attackers from retribution.
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If you’re thinking that we just need to reform the police into friendly unarmed British bobbies, I invite you to read this thread:
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Thank you for sharing that. One of the things I think that article highlights is the fundamental difference between “reform” and “abolition.” With reform, you take the same cops, and in the best case scenario you pay them the same to do less work, while still empowered to kneel on the necks of POC. Abolition (or defunding) fires the police, then maybe considers rehiring a few of them to do a much simpler job, with less power and more oversight. Meanwhile, hiring a mostly new group of people to to do much of the job that had been deferred to police: traffic enforcement (separate from), social work (separate from), mental health care (you get it now), community relations, crime investigation, homeless intervention, domestic violence response, etc.
Because, at the end of the day, if you reform and rename, but keep the same people who have been doing a shitty job for 20 years, you’re not going to get a different result.
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This is the department that shot their implicit bias trainer.
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