Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
I’d been thinking quite a bit about parallels to healthcare. It seems to me for any good or noble or heroic thing humans do for each other, there will inevitably be some number of people that try to put themselves between you and that thing and say “you can have the thing, but I want something for me first.” Call them middle-men, rent seekers, whatever you like, but when you go to build a system for getting that good thing out to as many people as possible, dealing with that kind of parasitic presence is one of the biggest things you have to keep in mind.
In healthcare they mostly want money. In law enforcement they mostly want power. You can condemn them as harshly as you want, but moral condemnations won’t change the fact that they’re always going to exist and your system needs an effective way to deal with them.
On June 09 2020 05:31 ChristianS wrote: Maybe somebody can help me understand why I’m supposed to like “Defund the police.” Obviously it’s hard to convey complicated policy proposals with simple slogans, and we should expect a certain amount of good faith effort to find out the policy behind the slogan from observers who read the sign and aren’t sure what it means.
But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win.
If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances.
I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying?
Few factors at play. One major one is to make a distinction from reactionary liberal reformist co-opting. People have been agreeing with reforming police for decades. If people having palatable messages to get behind supporting reformist reforms was the problem, we wouldn't be here.
You'll notice on the previously linked resources the failure of "let's train police" initiatives is another. It's clear in "Defund" that we're not advocating to fund departments to "improve"
Sure, and I certainly see why “reform the police” is insufficient. “Defund” effectively communicates that it is doing more than “reform.” But basically all of my initial associations on hearing the slogan seem tangential to the injustice, and if I then go read about policy proposals “defund the police” is meant to represent, they seem only vaguely related to the slogan.
I have no special talent for writing slogans, so I don’t have an alternative proposal. Much of IgnE’s post the other day was (if I understood it right) critiquing the “abolish the police” slogan. I suppose there are trade-offs either way, and each slogan will have its own common misconceptions that proponents will have to work to dispel. To me, something like “black lives matter” does a much better job of centering on the real injustice - it’s about people, not about money - but it might be easier to concisely communicate the problem (complex as it is) than to communicate a solution (which is usually at least as complex as the problem).
On June 09 2020 05:31 ChristianS wrote: Maybe somebody can help me understand why I’m supposed to like “Defund the police.” Obviously it’s hard to convey complicated policy proposals with simple slogans, and we should expect a certain amount of good faith effort to find out the policy behind the slogan from observers who read the sign and aren’t sure what it means.
But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win.
If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances.
I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying?
If I'm understanding the slogan and movement right, it's to streamline what the actual officers do and open up funding to other agencies that would be more appropriately tasked with handling a given situation. Instead of having officers do the job of say, social services, actual social services would be able to hire more people and get those people involved to handle a lot of issues. There isn't a need for an armed person to show up and handle a situation. It only heightens tensions.
The finances and injustices are tangential, but only insofar as that the finances are hopefully going to go to preventing said injustices from recurring in the future. It's like renovating your house. You could save money by doing it yourself, or you could hire someone more qualified to get it done. The person (or persons) you hire are going to be specialized in that one area that is needed, instead of you doing it all yourself, which means it will either take forever, or more often than not, not be completed.
On June 09 2020 06:15 Simberto wrote: I'd guess that it has something to do with the rightwings mania about defunding planned parenthood?
It certainly has appeal outside of centrist/liberal circles for the budgetary aspects. As has been pointed out, the Republicans have gotten on board from the angle of disempowering police unions and taking their leverage over their state and local budgets. Libertarians like it because it weakens state control by disempowering their enforcement mechanisms, and the left likes it because it's their idea.
I'm no sloganeer myself but one benefit about it is that it gets reflective people to realize just how little they know about police and policing and how reactionary they can be when confronted with the idea of a society without police.
What will be a sticking point going forward (frankly I don't have much patience for people that aren't at least at "defund the police is good") is the disconnect people have between the racist enforcement of our laws and the larger structural issue of police protecting capital. Connecting the racist enforcement of our laws with the racist exclusion from our economy in the US won't be easy amid generally terrible and exploitative economic conditions. Luckily at least the "Work really hard and your boss might be able to afford a new car" line of argument hits better.
Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
It's a good hub for a lot of other useful information about related movements as well.
Doritos Deray put a more centrist version and tacked on the word "abolish" later but that's just sheepdog shit imo.
Do you support that list? I find quite a few of those lines to be antithetical to basic worker rights.
I think that list looks pretty good. Of course, it's a giant reform program that effectively calls for an end to the war on drugs (rightfully so), but seems like a good list. Not sure society can do without prison, but the US can definitely do with far fewer and far more humane ones.
Starting off with funding mental health care, animal control, social workers etc. so all those jobs don't get rolled into the beat police's duties seems.like a no-brainer tho.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
On June 09 2020 06:02 ChristianS wrote: I’d been thinking quite a bit about parallels to healthcare. It seems to me for any good or noble or heroic thing humans do for each other, there will inevitably be some number of people that try to put themselves between you and that thing and say “you can have the thing, but I want something for me first.” Call them middle-men, rent seekers, whatever you like, but when you go to build a system for getting that good thing out to as many people as possible, dealing with that kind of parasitic presence is one of the biggest things you have to keep in mind.
In healthcare they mostly want money. In law enforcement they mostly want power. You can condemn them as harshly as you want, but moral condemnations won’t change the fact that they’re always going to exist and your system needs an effective way to deal with them.
On June 09 2020 05:31 ChristianS wrote: Maybe somebody can help me understand why I’m supposed to like “Defund the police.” Obviously it’s hard to convey complicated policy proposals with simple slogans, and we should expect a certain amount of good faith effort to find out the policy behind the slogan from observers who read the sign and aren’t sure what it means.
But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win.
If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances.
I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying?
Few factors at play. One major one is to make a distinction from reactionary liberal reformist co-opting. People have been agreeing with reforming police for decades. If people having palatable messages to get behind supporting reformist reforms was the problem, we wouldn't be here.
You'll notice on the previously linked resources the failure of "let's train police" initiatives is another. It's clear in "Defund" that we're not advocating to fund departments to "improve"
Sure, and I certainly see why “reform the police” is insufficient. “Defund” effectively communicates that it is doing more than “reform.” But basically all of my initial associations on hearing the slogan seem tangential to the injustice, and if I then go read about policy proposals “defund the police” is meant to represent, they seem only vaguely related to the slogan.
I have no special talent for writing slogans, so I don’t have an alternative proposal. Much of IgnE’s post the other day was (if I understood it right) critiquing the “abolish the police” slogan. I suppose there are trade-offs either way, and each slogan will have its own common misconceptions that proponents will have to work to dispel. To me, something like “black lives matter” does a much better job of centering on the real injustice - it’s about people, not about money - but it might be easier to concisely communicate the problem (complex as it is) than to communicate a solution (which is usually at least as complex as the problem).
I think there are serious linguistic antecedent problems in follow-on conclusions about improving “community services.” You might want to be spending more money on community arbitration, resources, dispute resolution, education, courts, etc. But you are defunding the “police” where “police” means people with guns who conduct traffic stops and frisk stops.
I will be very keenly interested to see if desired outcomes improve in places that experiment with different policing structures.
So, cops slashed the tires of every vehicle at a k-mart parking lot near a protest. They got filmed doing it - stabbing every single tire multiple times. US Cops behaving badly is basically not very noteworthy (sadly), but I remain astonished at the brazenness of their public statements when they get caught :
Source : article of Star Tribune, local paper in Minnesota / short video by mother jones
"State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires … in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement," Gordon said.
Gordon said the patrol also targeted vehicles "that contained items used to cause harm during violent protests" such as rocks, concrete and sticks.
"While not a typical tactic, vehicles were being used as dangerous weapons and inhibited our ability to clear areas and keep areas safe where violent protests were occurring," he said. As in all operations of this size, there will be a review about how these decisions were made."
Deputies from Anoka County followed state orders and joined the patrol and also cut the tires on vehicles on Washington Avenue, said Anoka County Sheriff's Lt. Andy Knotz.
Knotz said the deputies got their directions from the state-led Multiagency Command Center [MACC], which was coordinating law enforcement during the protests connected to the death on May 25 of George Floyd.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Those were immediate red flags for me as well. Some very quick explanations:
Whatever pension you've accrued until dismissal was already yours, not the holder's.
Around these parts slashes/freezes are done for all public workers across the board in times of crisis. To single out police as the only public workers that can never get a raise sounds like it should break about 50 different laws.
I'm sure we can agree that justified complaints are somewhere below 100%. You can be immediately fired for a complaint, but to have a rule that requires immediate firing upon a complaint is another thing entirely.
If the investigation goes the way of the cops, assuming it was in good faith, they lost wages through no fault of their your own. Sure, you can pay them back but for all you know they could have been evicted or defaulted on a loan in that time, this opens up a can of worms.
All in all, to me that list reads more like something aimed at prawns in District 9 than at people that eat and pay their bills with their labor. And this is coming from someone that finds police culture in the US outrageously toxic.
Is there really an appetite for policies like BLM proposes ? I can't think of a single person I know that would even remotely vote for anything like that.
On June 09 2020 06:02 ChristianS wrote: I’d been thinking quite a bit about parallels to healthcare. It seems to me for any good or noble or heroic thing humans do for each other, there will inevitably be some number of people that try to put themselves between you and that thing and say “you can have the thing, but I want something for me first.” Call them middle-men, rent seekers, whatever you like, but when you go to build a system for getting that good thing out to as many people as possible, dealing with that kind of parasitic presence is one of the biggest things you have to keep in mind.
In healthcare they mostly want money. In law enforcement they mostly want power. You can condemn them as harshly as you want, but moral condemnations won’t change the fact that they’re always going to exist and your system needs an effective way to deal with them.
On June 09 2020 05:36 GreenHorizons wrote:
On June 09 2020 05:31 ChristianS wrote: Maybe somebody can help me understand why I’m supposed to like “Defund the police.” Obviously it’s hard to convey complicated policy proposals with simple slogans, and we should expect a certain amount of good faith effort to find out the policy behind the slogan from observers who read the sign and aren’t sure what it means.
But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win.
If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances.
I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying?
Few factors at play. One major one is to make a distinction from reactionary liberal reformist co-opting. People have been agreeing with reforming police for decades. If people having palatable messages to get behind supporting reformist reforms was the problem, we wouldn't be here.
You'll notice on the previously linked resources the failure of "let's train police" initiatives is another. It's clear in "Defund" that we're not advocating to fund departments to "improve"
Sure, and I certainly see why “reform the police” is insufficient. “Defund” effectively communicates that it is doing more than “reform.” But basically all of my initial associations on hearing the slogan seem tangential to the injustice, and if I then go read about policy proposals “defund the police” is meant to represent, they seem only vaguely related to the slogan.
I have no special talent for writing slogans, so I don’t have an alternative proposal. Much of IgnE’s post the other day was (if I understood it right) critiquing the “abolish the police” slogan. I suppose there are trade-offs either way, and each slogan will have its own common misconceptions that proponents will have to work to dispel. To me, something like “black lives matter” does a much better job of centering on the real injustice - it’s about people, not about money - but it might be easier to concisely communicate the problem (complex as it is) than to communicate a solution (which is usually at least as complex as the problem).
I think there are serious linguistic antecedent problems in follow-on conclusions about improving “community services.” You might want to be spending more money on community arbitration, resources, dispute resolution, education, courts, etc. But you are defunding the “police” where “police” means people with guns who conduct traffic stops and frisk stops.
I will be very keenly interested to see if desired outcomes improve in places that experiment with different policing structures.
I suppose how much of a problem it is depends how much we buy the argument that in case of ambiguity the obligation largely falls on the confused listener to seek additional information to clarify the ambiguity. GH certainly takes that position quite a bit. Taken to the extreme the slogan could be a pure virtual signifier, say “x” (easy to fit on a sign), and all concrete information would be communicated on follow-up. How much of the obligation to identify ambiguity and seek resolution falls on the speaker and how much falls on the listener is non-obvious to me.
The problem isn’t just linguistic either, though. The movement’s goals and methods could be interpreted broadly enough to be supported by just about everyone, or narrowly enough that no two supporters agree. Fitting continuous distributions into discrete categories always involves some amount of somewhat-arbitrary bucketing, but deciding what set of goals or methods or outcomes comprise “defunding the police” seems fundamental to deciding whether or not to support that platform.
I feel out of my depth on all of this. I think I understand some of the problems just well enough to be bewildered by them, but not well enough to know where to even begin trying to parse them. All I can think to do is keep showing up to protests and, wherever possible, let those better-informed than me plot the course.
On June 09 2020 06:02 ChristianS wrote: I’d been thinking quite a bit about parallels to healthcare. It seems to me for any good or noble or heroic thing humans do for each other, there will inevitably be some number of people that try to put themselves between you and that thing and say “you can have the thing, but I want something for me first.” Call them middle-men, rent seekers, whatever you like, but when you go to build a system for getting that good thing out to as many people as possible, dealing with that kind of parasitic presence is one of the biggest things you have to keep in mind.
In healthcare they mostly want money. In law enforcement they mostly want power. You can condemn them as harshly as you want, but moral condemnations won’t change the fact that they’re always going to exist and your system needs an effective way to deal with them.
On June 09 2020 05:36 GreenHorizons wrote:
On June 09 2020 05:31 ChristianS wrote: Maybe somebody can help me understand why I’m supposed to like “Defund the police.” Obviously it’s hard to convey complicated policy proposals with simple slogans, and we should expect a certain amount of good faith effort to find out the policy behind the slogan from observers who read the sign and aren’t sure what it means.
But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win.
If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances.
I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying?
Few factors at play. One major one is to make a distinction from reactionary liberal reformist co-opting. People have been agreeing with reforming police for decades. If people having palatable messages to get behind supporting reformist reforms was the problem, we wouldn't be here.
You'll notice on the previously linked resources the failure of "let's train police" initiatives is another. It's clear in "Defund" that we're not advocating to fund departments to "improve"
Sure, and I certainly see why “reform the police” is insufficient. “Defund” effectively communicates that it is doing more than “reform.” But basically all of my initial associations on hearing the slogan seem tangential to the injustice, and if I then go read about policy proposals “defund the police” is meant to represent, they seem only vaguely related to the slogan.
I have no special talent for writing slogans, so I don’t have an alternative proposal. Much of IgnE’s post the other day was (if I understood it right) critiquing the “abolish the police” slogan. I suppose there are trade-offs either way, and each slogan will have its own common misconceptions that proponents will have to work to dispel. To me, something like “black lives matter” does a much better job of centering on the real injustice - it’s about people, not about money - but it might be easier to concisely communicate the problem (complex as it is) than to communicate a solution (which is usually at least as complex as the problem).
I think there are serious linguistic antecedent problems in follow-on conclusions about improving “community services.” You might want to be spending more money on community arbitration, resources, dispute resolution, education, courts, etc. But you are defunding the “police” where “police” means people with guns who conduct traffic stops and frisk stops.
I will be very keenly interested to see if desired outcomes improve in places that experiment with different policing structures.
I suppose how much of a problem it is depends how much we buy the argument that in case of ambiguity the obligation largely falls on the confused listener to seek additional information to clarify the ambiguity. GH certainly takes that position quite a bit. Taken to the extreme the slogan could be a pure virtual signifier, say “x” (easy to fit on a sign), and all concrete information would be communicated on follow-up. How much of the obligation to identify ambiguity and seek resolution falls on the speaker and how much falls on the listener is non-obvious to me.
The problem isn’t just linguistic either, though. The movement’s goals and methods could be interpreted broadly enough to be supported by just about everyone, or narrowly enough that no two supporters agree. Fitting continuous distributions into discrete categories always involves some amount of somewhat-arbitrary bucketing, but deciding what set of goals or methods or outcomes comprise “defunding the police” seems fundamental to deciding whether or not to support that platform.
I feel out of my depth on all of this. I think I understand some of the problems just well enough to be bewildered by them, but not well enough to know where to even begin trying to parse them. All I can think to do is keep showing up to protests and, wherever possible, let those better-informed than me plot the course.
This is a perfectly valid position to have. Material support is always good too, money, water, snacks, poster materials, etc. for people that don't feel they can make it out to the protests themselves. I'm no expert in abolition, I consider myself a supportive student. The last bit is particularly difficult for white (or white-adjacent) activists generally. They aren't used to not being centered or their personal concerns not being the focus of development.
The idea of just following experienced Black and Indigenous leaders (that aren't part of their liberal coterie) is really a big problem a lot of people have trouble seeing, confronting and reconciling into their actions. A lot of people think because they don't know about these people/this research/theory they/it must not exist or be more knowledgeable/qualified than they are generally or specifically.
Angela Davis has been writing and speaking on this stuff for a long time. Being a first-hand victim of the weaponization of the police state against political dissent in the US gives her great perspective as well. The FAQ posted earlier by Tomato, and the resource I posted are great places to learn more about the general political positioning. Of course much/all of it is rooted in marxist analysis as well.
To be frank, the discussion on the slogan is an echo of "Black Lives Matter is too alienating, radical, offensive, unclear in their demands, etc."
EDIT: I've been at this for years and am still just getting started. It is a process and people shouldn't get frustrated when they sit down for an hour and can't play Beethoven at the end. It's okay to learn chopsticks first and work our way up. We shouldn't get in our feelings if someone points out we're trying to play a Coltrane solo and we can't keep 4/4 straight while playing Mary Had a Little Lamb.
EDIT2: If it wasn't clear I consider myself somewhere around chopsticks. I'd torture this a bit more to add the concept of an instrument that requires an embouchure too if it made sense to anyone.
On June 09 2020 06:33 GreenHorizons wrote: Just as a matter of clarification there's a lot of cooption taking place on what is actually being called for. Now there's a lot of liberal and 'progressive' folks all over the chart but a brief synopsis of what "Defund the police" means can be found here:
Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.
Prohibit private-public innovation schemes that profit from temporary technological fixes to systemic problems of police abuse and violence. These contracts and data-sharing arrangements, however profitable for technologists and reformists, are lethal.
Reduce the power of police unions.
Until the police are fully defunded, make police union contract negotiations public.
Pressure the AFL-CIO to denounce police unions.
Prohibit city candidates taking money from police unions and stop accepting union funds.
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Demand the highest budget cuts per year, until they slash police budget to zero.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
No hiring of new officers or replacement of fired or resigned officers.
Fully cut funding for public relations.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Require police, not cities, to be liable for misconduct and violence settlements.
It's a good hub for a lot of other useful information about related movements as well.
Doritos Deray put a more centrist version and tacked on the word "abolish" later but that's just sheepdog shit imo.
Do you support that list? I find quite a few of those lines to be antithetical to basic worker rights.
Which ones ? If you're thinking about the unions ones, police unions don't work the same way in the US as in the EU.
I would pick those:
Withhold pensions and don’t rehire cops involved in use of excessive force.
Slash police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.
Immediately fire police officers who have any excessive force complaints.
Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.
Those were immediate red flags for me as well. Some very quick explanations:
Whatever pension you've accrued until dismissal was already yours, not the holder's.
Around these parts slashes/freezes are done for all public workers across the board in times of crisis. To single out police as the only public workers that can never get a raise sounds like it should break about 50 different laws.
I'm sure we can agree that justified complaints are somewhere below 100%. You can be immediately fired for a complaint, but to have a rule that requires immediate firing upon a complaint is another thing entirely.
If the investigation goes the way of the cops, assuming it was in good faith, they lost wages through no fault of their your own. Sure, you can pay them back but for all you know they could have been evicted or defaulted on a loan in that time, this opens up a can of worms.
All in all, to me that list reads more like something aimed at prawns in District 9 than at people that eat and pay their bills with their labor. And this is coming from someone that finds police culture in the US outrageously toxic.
What laws would it break?
Public sector workers the world over get shafted on below inflation pay rates all the time, including nurses in the U.K.
Not getting good pay raises? How generous are the raises vast swathes of minimum wage private sector workers get? People who are paid so badly the state has to subside their wages?
Oh that’s legal?
I would have an issue with the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ aspects of this, and that’s about it.
It’s worth bearing in mind that police are the only ‘employees’ of the state that have the powers of initial legal enforcement and the monopoly on employing state-sanctioned violence.
If they genuinely care about serving their communities, as some do, or merely want the odd extra blowjob after flashing the badge at the very least they should be held to higher standards than almost any other basic profession there is out there.
As it stands the opposite is true, indeed the active resistance and abject failure to self-regulate may lead, in the current political climate to over/regulation.
And who cares really at this point? Had enough time to clean house. We can split hairs on legality but you have a job that doesn’t even need a college degree, gives you legitimate force in employing violence for the state AND if you overdo it you’re effectively protected and immune from consequences.
A few of us have touched on this subject: cops manufacturing crime because they are super bored and basically encouraged to do so.
This Twitter thread is really worth reading because it is supported by what most cops say: the work is very tedious, boring, and often nothing going on. I really recommend people read this to understand why it makes sense to burn the whole tree down, not try to selectively deal with "bad apples". This is a giant issue that minor pushes won't solve. Abolish all police departments yesterday.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/YpJxCUN.jpg)
