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On June 11 2020 02:23 IgnE wrote: When I say "equal opportunity" I just mean along lines of skin color, generalizable to any particular feature you want, even if, as you say, it still requires a sorting mechanism. One might imagine some gated class sorting mechanism (like college) that perfectly represented an arbitrary number of population subgroups.
Theoretically, from a vacuum, I guess? You know I'm not a fan of attempts at class reductionism though because we do have real material conditions and history to contend with.
The question we are considering is whether it is possible within a liberal democracy to get rid of institutional, juridical racism, or at least reduce it so much that "racism" as an explanation of outcomes does not offer any additional explanatory power. Whether you want to deny that it's possible to totally eliminate "racism" tout court is not really important so as long we agree that reducing racism to some "vacuum" level where the background average is zero would be a good (maybe the best) result.
So we can elaborate on the question, and ask whether liberal democracy can achieve that via a series of reforms internal to its method of government or whether the only way to eliminate racism is revolution. That leads to a subquestion: what is the difference between reform and revolution?
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
EDIT: I guess there is another distinction to be made between "revolution" with regard to policing and "revolution" with regard to liberal democracy. A liberal democracy may very well decide to "get rid of" police entirely through its internal governing mechanisms. This might be characterized as a "revolution" within the context of police and a "reform" within the context of liberal democracy. The question would then turn on whether the prison/police abolition movement felt that revolution was necessary to overturn a democratic practice that refused to abolish the police. This is what I am arguing against.
I think it's a bit more simple in that the uprisings throughout US history are demonstrative of liberal democratic framing/norms failure to resolve these contradictions between their platonic form and material character.
The easiest way to articulate it might be that a non-racist US might not have land on which to exist.
did you hear the phrase “this is what democracy looks like” at the protests? was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist?
If you shoot for the stars and miss, you at least hit the moon or something.
Or you get dismissed out of hand because it looks like the trajectory is straight into the ground, rather than some sort of upward direction, stars or otherwise.
I think the second defund the police caught on, the chance for national change ended. Not dense inner cities with heavily leftist voting populations, but across the country.
It's just all nonsensical. Places like Minneapolis actually mean defund the police, since there are real city council members advocating for exactly that. Seattle is trending that way too. Activists took over some blocks after police bailed on East Precinct, declared it an autonomous zone, and published a list of demands:
The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition. We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police. At an equal level of priority we also demand that the city disallow the operations of ICE in the city of Seattle.
In the transitionary period between now and the dismantlement of the Seattle Police Department, we demand that the use of armed force be banned entirely. No guns, no batons, no riot shields, no chemical weapons, especially against those exercising their First Amendment right as Americans to protest.
We demand an end to the school-to-prison pipeline and the abolition of youth jails. Get kids out of prison, get cops out of schools. We also demand that the new youth prison being built in Seattle currently be repurposed. ...
I find it quite radical, and regressive as hell, so I would be a little comforted if it's some catchy name that stands in the place of tired old "reform the police" mottos. But some people mean it as defund. Conservatives know defund from defund Planned Parenthood, defund NPR, defund import-export bank. And we mean defund, cut the funding of, get rid of all taxpayer means of support.
Have fun with the populist fervor. The movement is starting to look more along the lines of Occupy Wall Street. I don't even knock too hard the cool sense of community and meeting people that think like you and exploring politics from a changed approach. That's all political activity, and it will be instructive to the individual seeing what comes from it.
With some rephrasing 2 seems reasonable and 3 is. I honestly think the Police fills an important function, so I don't agree with 1. I do not want to go back to people guarding their neighbourhood, where leaving the city block is the same as not having done anything and hangings without due process being the norm.
Automatically being investigated when any of those tools are used and the investigation result being public seems a reasonable demand for 2. That combined with full time cameras to enable those investigations.
I can count your rephrasing. #3 has some laudable goals, but ending youth jails for real violent young criminals is treating the victims like crap and worsens the perception that you can get away with it.
Can you point me to a study showing that jailing youth has the purpose you are describing? All information I have read suggests that imprisoning children has a very detrimental effect and that psychological therapy has a very positive impact. The whole discouragement thing just isn't how it all pans out.
It is time to stop respecting police and treat them like the deviants they are. Most middle ground solutions still pretend police are good people and I won't entertain that kind of nonsense.
With all due respect, I’m gonna wait until this frenzy has passed to go dispassionate statistics with you, given the animated takes you’ve been laying down recently. Denying the blackness of black people, calling for treating the police as deviants, comparing WW2 soldiers to two-bit thug student activists in antifa. It’s too recent, or you’re too extreme on this issue for me to think any engagement is worthwhile. Let’s do a discovery and analysis after some time and distance from the sizzling hot takes.
Danglars doesn't wanna justify his zeal for jailing minors unless you stop saying things he doesn't like, Mohdoo. Why that same criticism doesn't apply to the use of garbage phrases like "two-bit thug student activists in antifa" is beyond me.
By the way, as of yesterday morning, Bill Barr's Antifa Busting DoJ has yet to arrest a single person affiliated with antifa in relation to the protests. Better tone down that crazed language if you want to have a real conversation, Danglars.
He’s perfectly welcome to say that people like me, that think favorable comparisons of between antifa and WW2 soldiers shows remarkable delusion, signify someone he’s not willing to engage on the issue. GH has had the same and I’m sure nettles has the same impact on people, whether or not they say it out loud. I’m sure there’s enough people around that think it’s a far enough comment on the antifa demographic.
The wheels of justice turn slowly. Barr has defended his statements regarding far-left groups twice in interviews since the initial one. He even extended it to say he’s seen evidence of far left groups pretending to be far right groups. Arrests and future public release of investigations at their conclusion will tell the tale. I think one interview was with CBS and other was Fox News.
On June 11 2020 02:23 IgnE wrote: When I say "equal opportunity" I just mean along lines of skin color, generalizable to any particular feature you want, even if, as you say, it still requires a sorting mechanism. One might imagine some gated class sorting mechanism (like college) that perfectly represented an arbitrary number of population subgroups.
Theoretically, from a vacuum, I guess? You know I'm not a fan of attempts at class reductionism though because we do have real material conditions and history to contend with.
The question we are considering is whether it is possible within a liberal democracy to get rid of institutional, juridical racism, or at least reduce it so much that "racism" as an explanation of outcomes does not offer any additional explanatory power. Whether you want to deny that it's possible to totally eliminate "racism" tout court is not really important so as long we agree that reducing racism to some "vacuum" level where the background average is zero would be a good (maybe the best) result.
So we can elaborate on the question, and ask whether liberal democracy can achieve that via a series of reforms internal to its method of government or whether the only way to eliminate racism is revolution. That leads to a subquestion: what is the difference between reform and revolution?
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
EDIT: I guess there is another distinction to be made between "revolution" with regard to policing and "revolution" with regard to liberal democracy. A liberal democracy may very well decide to "get rid of" police entirely through its internal governing mechanisms. This might be characterized as a "revolution" within the context of police and a "reform" within the context of liberal democracy. The question would then turn on whether the prison/police abolition movement felt that revolution was necessary to overturn a democratic practice that refused to abolish the police. This is what I am arguing against.
I think it's a bit more simple in that the uprisings throughout US history are demonstrative of liberal democratic framing/norms failure to resolve these contradictions between their platonic form and material character.
The easiest way to articulate it might be that a non-racist US might not have land on which to exist.
did you hear the phrase “this is what democracy looks like” at the protests? was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist?
Not the particular ones I went to but that's definitely out there. Some issues though.
The white washed MLK jr. was and succeeded as a democratic reformist (though painted in the mainstream of the US at the time as a radical I struggle to imagine a modern parallel to). Near his assassination (some say prompting it) he along with radicals (that saw him as sheepdoging radicals into reformism) and unionists began to find common ideological ground. It centered in many ways around The Poor People's Campaign, which didn't erase or deprioritize racial equity and justice, but saw it as inseparable from a larger economic justice and freedom from a capitalist system that necessitated an unacceptable exploitation no matter how it is distributed. Again, without losing sight of the material conditions within which he and others saw themselves.
Then the feds/racists finished marginalizing, imprisoning, and assassinating everyone (largely with bipartisan support, including the support of the NAACP sometimes going forward) Resurrection City died on the vine (and has been expunged from Kings legacy in schools), Nixon and Reagan proceed to continue to target political dissent with an increasingly fascist police force, crack the unions, the crack and aids epidemic hit and are criminalized and ignored by the government. A downward spiral ensues where marginal gains post Jim Crow and Civil Rights act are eroded to dust and an affluent white feminism/lgbtq movement that all but completely erases the work of Black people from Sojourner Truth and Mary Ann Shadd Cary to Bayard Rustin and Marsha P. Johnson (as well as other PoC) takes over, combined with a neoliberal third-way economic framing that quite clearly (and frequently pointed out by disingenuous critics on the right) undermines the social justice mask they put on top of it.
That's the general frame of reference from which I draw when pondering something like:
was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist
but the question necessarily suggests the questioner is not using that same general frame of reference.
There's an element of a Proletarian Dictatorship vs Bourgeois “Democracy” going on there too, but I didn't want to stray too far.
On June 11 2020 02:23 IgnE wrote: When I say "equal opportunity" I just mean along lines of skin color, generalizable to any particular feature you want, even if, as you say, it still requires a sorting mechanism. One might imagine some gated class sorting mechanism (like college) that perfectly represented an arbitrary number of population subgroups.
Theoretically, from a vacuum, I guess? You know I'm not a fan of attempts at class reductionism though because we do have real material conditions and history to contend with.
The question we are considering is whether it is possible within a liberal democracy to get rid of institutional, juridical racism, or at least reduce it so much that "racism" as an explanation of outcomes does not offer any additional explanatory power. Whether you want to deny that it's possible to totally eliminate "racism" tout court is not really important so as long we agree that reducing racism to some "vacuum" level where the background average is zero would be a good (maybe the best) result.
So we can elaborate on the question, and ask whether liberal democracy can achieve that via a series of reforms internal to its method of government or whether the only way to eliminate racism is revolution. That leads to a subquestion: what is the difference between reform and revolution?
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
EDIT: I guess there is another distinction to be made between "revolution" with regard to policing and "revolution" with regard to liberal democracy. A liberal democracy may very well decide to "get rid of" police entirely through its internal governing mechanisms. This might be characterized as a "revolution" within the context of police and a "reform" within the context of liberal democracy. The question would then turn on whether the prison/police abolition movement felt that revolution was necessary to overturn a democratic practice that refused to abolish the police. This is what I am arguing against.
I think it's a bit more simple in that the uprisings throughout US history are demonstrative of liberal democratic framing/norms failure to resolve these contradictions between their platonic form and material character.
The easiest way to articulate it might be that a non-racist US might not have land on which to exist.
EDIT: Not to look a gift horse in the mouth btw, but there's some space in between durp and Antidisestablishmentarianism
I wonder how much of the fighting between those advocating “reform” and those advocating “abolish and/or defund” is necessary? There’s been plenty of discussion of the ambiguity of slogans lately so I won’t press that point, but it seems like most “reform” types have some immediate policy changes they want to see, and most “defund” types recognize that implementing their solutions won’t be immediate and PDs will continue to exist in the interim, so is there any reason these things can’t happen in parallel?
For instance: it seems obvious to me that badge cam footage should be required to be automatically sent to an independent organization that maintains electronic records and audit trails. Both citizens and police could submit requests to see the footage, but neither would have the power to erase or hide footage. Ultimately you’d like to move to a system where cops are legally obligated to keep the camera on at all times, and switching it off or covering it is a punishable offense on its own, in addition to lending a lot of credibility to any accusations of malfeasance while it was off.
The criticism is probably “badge cams won’t fix police violence,” and that’s probably true. They haven’t so far, anyway. But it seems clear that these reforms would at least be better than existing badge cam systems. They’re more consistent with transparency, accountability, rule of law, and due process. If we do abolish the police and replace them with other systems, there’s no reason that can’t happen simultaneously with reforming badge cams, and it’s likely that whatever system we replace police with would have use for badge cams anyway, so it’s not like building the infrastructure would be a waste.
There’s some risk, I suppose, of mild reforms stealing some of the popular support for more radical reforms, but that’s not really a reason to not do them, unless there’s a reason they would actually impair our ability to do the more radical stuff (some might, but that’d be case-by-case). And for those opposing any reform at all on the grounds that “the proposals out there are too radical,” it’d give them no place to hide (Danglars may or may not be in this category, I don’t want to speak for him). If anything, enacting the mild reforms immediately while emphasizing the caveat “this is good but not nearly enough,” then moving the conversation back to the more radical stuff seems like it might be the quickest way to dispatch with that line of resistance.
And people like to pretend he has a history of lying to the public, when it’s really partisanship regarding the Trump-Russia counterintelligence probe and Mueller report, or perhaps ignorance. I think history will vindicate him, and perhaps even the current investigation of the investigators will push people off their prior beliefs regarding who was in the wrong. Likewise, respectable people can disagree on whether pardons were justified or necessary in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair.
Regardless, he must be questioned and have good responses for his continued statements regarding far left groups and rioting/looting after more people have been charged by the justice department for federal crimes. I haven’t even seen good stories on how many of the hundreds arrested during the riots have been charged. This is speculation on my part and premature, but keep with your biases for and against Barr if that’s your wish.
On June 10 2020 11:20 JimmiC wrote: There is so much to unpack when it comes to the US and the issues around the police and crime. You have the rampant systemic racism. You have civic governments often looking for arrest "stats" to help in the next election instead of actual results. You have a massive amount of poor people considering the countries wealth. You have prohibition and a unwinnable "war on drugs" You have the mass, mostly unregulated gun ownership making being police a much more dangerous job than most countries. You have a for profit healthcare system which means prevention is not a priority since they want more customers and their customers to stay for longer, which is the opposite of what your society should want. You have a for profit prison system which means to succeed they need more customers who stay longer, which is exactly the opposite of what your society should want. You don't tackle the mental health issues of the poor or of the police. You have a police forces and unions who operate like gangs protecting their own regardless if they should and massive amounts of PSTD since there is so many shootings (both at them and others) where the police are first on the scene or involved.
Simply defunding the police is not going to accomplish anything without understanding that none of these issues work independently of each other.
The first and easiest step would be to tackle all the gun issues, by regulating it FAR FAR more and making them so much less accessible. Your police are armed to their teeth because so is the populous. Can you imagine the stress of every traffic stop even being a possible interaction with some one with a gun? You can make a great case for why police forces need to make a report for each time they uuholster their gun in other countries, not so much in the US. You could vastly disarm the police if you disarm the populous as well. It is very strange for me to that people on the left even are against this when it works EVERY where else. It is clear why it does not happen, gun and weapons companies are big business and make big donations to all politician's, and the more they can sell to people the more they can sell to the police. It is a vicious circle that everyone on the outside knows the solution for but some how the NRA's amazing marketing campaign has convinced people that guns some how equal freedom, hell they even took some of the wording out of the second amendment to the point where many Americans believe it says their slogan to help them sell more guns rather than what was actually written. (The actual "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment
What the NRA doesn’t like to admit is that guns were regulated in early America. People deemed untrustworthy — such as British loyalists unwilling to swear an oath to the new nation — were disarmed. The sale of guns to Native Americans was outlawed. Boston made it illegal to store a loaded firearm in any home or warehouse. Some states conducted door-to-door registration surveys so the militia could “impress” those weapons if necessary. Men had to attend musters where their guns would be inspected by the government.
If American's do not end their gun issues, they will likely never fix their police. This has become so accepted that the satirical news site the Onion has been able to regularly repromote its article “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
But if that is a unwinable battle the next best place to start is dealing with the nations mental health issues.
I really doubt that all the people who want to be police are psychopath's as has been suggested, heck I don't think there would even be enough psycopaths. But I don't doubt that given the massive stress, horrible events they both witness as first responders (not just murders, rapes, assaults and so on but also gruesome car accidents and so on), that they become very desensitized to violence and gain more and more prejudices both because of the culture they are surrounded with, but also because of the horrible things they see and experience. If you blame the people in the police for the problems instead of the system, you are no different than the people who blame the people committing the crimes instead of the system. On a case by case basis either can be true, but when it is this widespread it becomes clear that the conditions of the system are what is broken, and what breaks the people.
So this means making sure that everybody poor, rich, everyone in between has medical care, that includes mental health. It means moving the system from treating the symptoms (all stages criminally, policing and incarceration, and healthcare for that matter) to treating the causes. There is actually a huge savings in doing this for the overall system the problem is because of how everything is structured "for profit" the people who could are incentivized not too. The easiest way to do this is make it government funded. That way the government and the people are better off if the system works better and therefore costs less. Right now hospitals want you to be sick (it is not surprising that the US has some of the worst overall health) and the prisons want you to get jailed, stay jailed and come back to jail once you get out. (In fact judges have gotten in trouble for taking kick backs from prisons for sentencing people longer and to their facilities). So for socialist's the government oversight is likely a positive and for capitalists, all the money being wasted in that system can now be spent on various other goods. And all the criminals in jail can now because customers and positive members of the economy.
The people who are against the "defund the police" movement are right to be questing it, because no system in the world operates without some sort of policing. You can't stop paying the police, and make the job even more stressful and worse for mental health, while you are doing it and expect all the violence to magically go away.
What you need is a full system overhaul where all the various stages are pulling together for the same goal. No one has found the perfect system yet. But there are many that are functioning a lot better than the US.
The Netherlands would be a great place to start since they are actually closing prisons because they don't have enough "customers" instead of bursting at the seems.
And there are a bunch of other countries that you could also look at that have actual well (MUCH MUCH better than the US) functioning systems and take the best aspects from all of them.
It is actually more drastic societal changes that are needed to improve the situation than defunding the police. And it means spending a lot more money up front to end up saving even a bunch more at the end.
It does not take much analysis to see that taking the police completely out of the picture when you see how well armed the Boogaloo boys, Proud boys (strange how they all call themselves boys, I guess they also know they are not mature enough to be men, but I digress), gangs and various other well armed and bad intentioned groups that left to their own idea of justice will not end as a benefit to society. You don't even have to get into the criminal gangs in the US and beyond, because you have so many "legal" or legal adjacent gun owners who are not the people you want in control of justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement#:~:text=The boogaloo movement, members of,they call the "boogaloo".
This seems like another case of American exceptionalism where you can easily look at other countries and see what they are doing and copy them, hell talk to them and see how you can do what they do and do it better. Otherwise if the answer is more of the same you are going to keep getting the same results. Defunding the police is just going to make people buy more guns, I bet it already has. Sure "guns don't kill people, people kill people" but you are not putting any effort or money into fixing the people, you are just creating more messed up people who kill people with more guns. You need to attack the root issues which is way to many mental health issues and culture that creates more. Then you mix in a fetishist attitude about guns and gun violence and you get what you have now.
The answer is not some confusing message and something that has never worked anywhere. The answer is in finding out what has worked in other places the best and customize it to work for your unique setting.
I've slowly learned that the "Defund The Police" movement and related sets of ideas are extremely diverse, and everything falling under that three-word catchphrase can end up hiding some of the more constructive, comprehensive solutions. For example, I've seen many clarifying posts and messages that the "Defund The Police" movement actually means something like this:+ Show Spoiler +
Now, a lot of these exploratory ideas are things I can easily get behind. I think these potential options would actually help those who want to protect and serve communities, because it would put less pressure on cops. They're currently asked to do wayyy more than they're trained to do (or that any one person should be expected to do, for that matter). The proponents of these ideas are intending to alleviate that burden and allocate a significant amount of resources towards additional, necessary professionals who can work parallel to the police, and often resolve conflicts without the required intervention of law enforcement.
The biggest problem, I think, is that the phrase "Defund The Police" does a poor, unclear job of getting these points across. We have to keep in mind that a large percentage of Americans couldn't even manage to comprehend a three-word catchphrase that was literally and semantically crystal clear ("Black Lives Matter") without throwing in absurd extrapolations about other lives not mattering... if we're starting off with another three-word message that already isn't equally clear because of the word "Defund" and has a negative connotation attached to it, then the DTP message is already dead on arrival. I'm sure that there are other catchphrases that can be used that could have a better chance of resonating with people, like "Alleviate Blue Burden" or something else that's equally loaded and contrived. People can look at that and actually ask what that means (or, if they recognize Blue = Police, probably infer that the movement is to help the police in some way... which might not be the worst context in the world, especially if we're trying to persuade more people to join the cause).
All this being said, if you're an advocate of completely defunding and completely abolishing law enforcement, then the phrase "Defund The Police" does a pretty good job of laying out your central thesis. If, instead, you're looking for a broader financial reform that includes law enforcement and a variety of other entities, then I think you need a better, broader catchphrase.
It's important to note that "defund the police" comes specifically out of the abolitionist movement. Work that goes back decades. Work that included dialectically moving past reformist strategies like you see there. The stuff you're seeing there DPB is the centrist reactionary cooption of that phrase and is at the core of the discordance between the tepid reforms listed and the phrase "defund the police".
Now reformists are free to do what they wish, but it's important to know this distinction and not try to tell people that do want to abolish the police (because reformism has categorically failed them) that they actually want to go back to fruitless reformist strategies.
That's definitely fair, and it sounds like those who don't want to literally defund and abolish the police should probably run a parallel movement and message.
On June 10 2020 23:03 PhoenixVoid wrote: Hashtag slogan-making is a tricky thing. Defund The Police is an excellent bundle of firewood to throw on the flames and are not the words worth dying on. You can play semantics all you want over, "Well, we don't literally mean defund or abolish the police and instead here's a 10-point proposal list of reforms you aren't looking at", but the public has a tendency to latch on simple phrasing that skirts around nuance. I'd think "Rebuild the Police", "Rethink Policing" or "Rebuild Justice" strikes me as the tone that would satisfy most. We're talking an enormously complicated problem spanning policing, criminal justice, the legal system, the medical industry, prisons, institutional racism, hospitals, education and economic fairness that cannot be captured by three words that imply on face value that slashing police budgets will correct the problem that the Floyd protests exposed.
Agreed. A different and distinct message would probably help, for both movements' sakes.
Appreciated. Also important to note that what you're talking about is a counterrevolutionary movement and stands in opposition of defunding and abolishing the police, despite the superficially overlapping goals.
Sure; I think it's very clear that many people who want police reform and other progress are more interested in working within the system and making more measured changes, which would definitely be different than abolishing the police (and vice-versa).
On June 10 2020 23:15 Mohdoo wrote: I think starting the goal post super far away is great for these types of movements. Yell at centrists you want to destroy the entire institution of policing and they'll actually give a shit and listen to you.
If you shoot for the stars and miss, you at least hit the moon or something.
I tend to agree. If the messaging is on the far end, the compromise just comes when it's time for implementation. If you start compromising before that point, then the compromise goes too far and you don't end up getting almost anything you needed. If messaging about defunding and abolition results in a more level approach involving rebuilding what exists in a more accountable way by the time it comes to action, that's still valuable progress. If you start your message with the compromise built-in, you end up selling the cause short.
It's easy to forget that there is a constant disconnect that exists between an ideology and the messaging it uses. Trumpers were and probably still are happy with their "Build the Wall" messaging even though it never resulted in a wall. It's just how it works.
I generally appreciate the strategy of trying to start as close to your ideal side as possible, so that any ground you give through compromise still nets you a greater win than if you started exactly in the middle and conceded more. That being said, there's also the risk that starting off at too extreme of a position may deter the other side from even coming to the table to talk with you (i.e., "they're not serious in making an equitable deal if we need to start at such an extreme position").
It seems to be all about a careful balancing act between getting as much of your side as possible while still convincing the other side that you're willing to negotiate with them in good faith.
I respect you and your efforts to better navigate this issue by getting informed from where you can. I implore you and anyone else that wants to seriously understand the abolitionist perspective (and get a sense of the robustness behind the work) ignore me and the particular platform (for people with bias against them), and give this person a listen.
While many people, including myself are relatively new to the abolitionist movement Ruth Wilson Gilmore has a deep and personal understanding of the work, a personal and generational history in the liberation movement in the US, and a lifetime of experience in this particular struggle between reform and radical changes to police and prison.
It's an hour+ of interview I've only partially gotten through at this point, but going forward would love to discuss the content with anyone that might consider themselves curious about abolition but drawn to more traditional channels of reform.
Thank you for this link. The written introduction on the page is promising. I don't have time to listen right now, but will do in the next few days. I'm curious if my earlier dismissal of the idea of abolition requires revision. Time to learn.
On June 11 2020 02:23 IgnE wrote: When I say "equal opportunity" I just mean along lines of skin color, generalizable to any particular feature you want, even if, as you say, it still requires a sorting mechanism. One might imagine some gated class sorting mechanism (like college) that perfectly represented an arbitrary number of population subgroups.
Theoretically, from a vacuum, I guess? You know I'm not a fan of attempts at class reductionism though because we do have real material conditions and history to contend with.
The question we are considering is whether it is possible within a liberal democracy to get rid of institutional, juridical racism, or at least reduce it so much that "racism" as an explanation of outcomes does not offer any additional explanatory power. Whether you want to deny that it's possible to totally eliminate "racism" tout court is not really important so as long we agree that reducing racism to some "vacuum" level where the background average is zero would be a good (maybe the best) result.
So we can elaborate on the question, and ask whether liberal democracy can achieve that via a series of reforms internal to its method of government or whether the only way to eliminate racism is revolution. That leads to a subquestion: what is the difference between reform and revolution?
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
EDIT: I guess there is another distinction to be made between "revolution" with regard to policing and "revolution" with regard to liberal democracy. A liberal democracy may very well decide to "get rid of" police entirely through its internal governing mechanisms. This might be characterized as a "revolution" within the context of police and a "reform" within the context of liberal democracy. The question would then turn on whether the prison/police abolition movement felt that revolution was necessary to overturn a democratic practice that refused to abolish the police. This is what I am arguing against.
I think it's a bit more simple in that the uprisings throughout US history are demonstrative of liberal democratic framing/norms failure to resolve these contradictions between their platonic form and material character.
The easiest way to articulate it might be that a non-racist US might not have land on which to exist.
did you hear the phrase “this is what democracy looks like” at the protests? was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist?
Not the particular ones I went to but that's definitely out there. Some issues though.
The white washed MLK jr. was and succeeded as a democratic reformist (though painted in the mainstream of the US at the time as a radical I struggle to imagine a modern parallel to). Near his assassination (some say prompting it) he along with radicals (that saw him as sheepdoging radicals into reformism) and unionists began to find common ideological ground. It centered in many ways around The Poor People's Campaign, which didn't erase or deprioritize racial equity and justice, but saw it as inseparable from a larger economic justice and freedom from a capitalist system that necessitated an unacceptable exploitation no matter how it is distributed. Again, without losing sight of the material conditions within which he and others saw themselves.
Then the feds/racists finished marginalizing, imprisoning, and assassinating everyone (largely with bipartisan support, including the support of the NAACP sometimes going forward) Resurrection City died on the vine (and has been expunged from Kings legacy in schools), Nixon and Reagan proceed to continue to target political dissent with an increasingly fascist police force, crack the unions, the crack and aids epidemic hit and are criminalized and ignored by the government. A downward spiral ensues where marginal gains post Jim Crow and Civil Rights act are eroded to dust and an affluent white feminism/lgbtq movement that all but completely erases the work of Black people from Sojourner Truth and Mary Ann Shadd Cary to Bayard Rustin and Marsha P. Johnson (as well as other PoC) takes over, combined with a neoliberal third-way economic framing that quite clearly (and frequently pointed out by disingenuous critics on the right) undermines the social justice mask they put on top of it.
That's the general frame of reference from which I draw when pondering something like:
was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist
but the question necessarily suggests the questioner is not using that same general frame of reference.
There's an element of a Proletarian Dictatorship vs Bourgeois “Democracy” going on there too, but I didn't want to stray too far.
The question does not necessarily suggest the questioner is not using the "same general frame of reference." The question doesn't actually suggest anything. Your answer seems to be "his strategy of civil disobedience was reformist but he was moving towards revolutionary action and would have become revolutionary if he hadn't been assassinated." This answer assumes that civil disobedience is reformist, which I think is a workable definition. It also seems to answer the question: "would MLK have continued his strategy of civil disobedience to push through democratic reforms concerning larger justice and economic freedom" in the negative. This is not obvious to me.
In discussing "material conditions" we need to clarify some issues. One is a simple matter of causality. We can easily see that racism was necessary to the creation of the USA, to erect its borders, to claim the "land it stands on" in your formulation. But the causal presuppositions for something's existence are not necessarily baked into what something "is." Everyone can endorse the facts as you've laid them out. But you often just lay out facts and imply their relevance without necessarily linking these facts to present concerns. I can agree with your entire historical description but disagree about whether such contingent historical facts are necessary aspects of the democratic liberal order. So a couple posts ago when I said
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
I am pointing out that your recounting of a contingent history is not by itself an argument that civil disobedience cannot work, that democratic liberalism cannot address racism, and/or that the bloody and heinous history of slavery in the west necessarily requires a "revolution" (still a fuzzy term) to abolish racism. This is because I don't think that the contingent racist history we have is a necessary structural feature of democratic liberalism, even if it was the actually existing historical path by which we have arrived at our current place.
There is another popular protest slogan: "babies aren't born racist." I think this is right. I think that every generation must understand the world from the beginning. It is possible to understand differently: that is built into the claim that race is not a natural fact. It would therefore be possible in principle that a new generation might be less racist, and eventually perhaps not racist. (Frank Wilderson, taking the opposite position, would argue that actually racism is structurally necessary for the psychic well-being of white people within liberal democracy, and that the "world" would have to end—and a new world made, i.e. revolution—in order for racism to disappear)
Compare capitalism. I think it is a necessary structural feature of capitalism to have a surplus labor supply. There are a variety of ways one could ensure a stable supply of surplus, expendable labor, including a state-sanctioned sorting mechanism that divides the population and matches human capital to jobs. It is not totally implausible that any successful effort to abolish this sorting mechanism and eliminate surplus labor would necessitate a new form of life that does not resemble liberal democracy enough to still be called that. I think it quite plausible that any attempt to abolish the exploitation of labor would by definition be a revolutionary overthrow of capital, since capitalism is substantively defined by the exploitation of labor. Though the question is still open I think whether reform can lead to revolution just like adding grains together can form a heap.
On June 11 2020 02:23 IgnE wrote: When I say "equal opportunity" I just mean along lines of skin color, generalizable to any particular feature you want, even if, as you say, it still requires a sorting mechanism. One might imagine some gated class sorting mechanism (like college) that perfectly represented an arbitrary number of population subgroups.
Theoretically, from a vacuum, I guess? You know I'm not a fan of attempts at class reductionism though because we do have real material conditions and history to contend with.
The question we are considering is whether it is possible within a liberal democracy to get rid of institutional, juridical racism, or at least reduce it so much that "racism" as an explanation of outcomes does not offer any additional explanatory power. Whether you want to deny that it's possible to totally eliminate "racism" tout court is not really important so as long we agree that reducing racism to some "vacuum" level where the background average is zero would be a good (maybe the best) result.
So we can elaborate on the question, and ask whether liberal democracy can achieve that via a series of reforms internal to its method of government or whether the only way to eliminate racism is revolution. That leads to a subquestion: what is the difference between reform and revolution?
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
EDIT: I guess there is another distinction to be made between "revolution" with regard to policing and "revolution" with regard to liberal democracy. A liberal democracy may very well decide to "get rid of" police entirely through its internal governing mechanisms. This might be characterized as a "revolution" within the context of police and a "reform" within the context of liberal democracy. The question would then turn on whether the prison/police abolition movement felt that revolution was necessary to overturn a democratic practice that refused to abolish the police. This is what I am arguing against.
I think it's a bit more simple in that the uprisings throughout US history are demonstrative of liberal democratic framing/norms failure to resolve these contradictions between their platonic form and material character.
The easiest way to articulate it might be that a non-racist US might not have land on which to exist.
did you hear the phrase “this is what democracy looks like” at the protests? was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist?
Not the particular ones I went to but that's definitely out there. Some issues though.
The white washed MLK jr. was and succeeded as a democratic reformist (though painted in the mainstream of the US at the time as a radical I struggle to imagine a modern parallel to). Near his assassination (some say prompting it) he along with radicals (that saw him as sheepdoging radicals into reformism) and unionists began to find common ideological ground. It centered in many ways around The Poor People's Campaign, which didn't erase or deprioritize racial equity and justice, but saw it as inseparable from a larger economic justice and freedom from a capitalist system that necessitated an unacceptable exploitation no matter how it is distributed. Again, without losing sight of the material conditions within which he and others saw themselves.
Then the feds/racists finished marginalizing, imprisoning, and assassinating everyone (largely with bipartisan support, including the support of the NAACP sometimes going forward) Resurrection City died on the vine (and has been expunged from Kings legacy in schools), Nixon and Reagan proceed to continue to target political dissent with an increasingly fascist police force, crack the unions, the crack and aids epidemic hit and are criminalized and ignored by the government. A downward spiral ensues where marginal gains post Jim Crow and Civil Rights act are eroded to dust and an affluent white feminism/lgbtq movement that all but completely erases the work of Black people from Sojourner Truth and Mary Ann Shadd Cary to Bayard Rustin and Marsha P. Johnson (as well as other PoC) takes over, combined with a neoliberal third-way economic framing that quite clearly (and frequently pointed out by disingenuous critics on the right) undermines the social justice mask they put on top of it.
That's the general frame of reference from which I draw when pondering something like:
was MLK jr a revolutionary or a democratic reformist
but the question necessarily suggests the questioner is not using that same general frame of reference.
There's an element of a Proletarian Dictatorship vs Bourgeois “Democracy” going on there too, but I didn't want to stray too far.
The question does not necessarily suggest the questioner is not using the "same general frame of reference." The question doesn't actually suggest anything. Your answer seems to be "his strategy of civil disobedience was reformist but he was moving towards revolutionary action and would have become revolutionary if he hadn't been assassinated." This answer assumes that civil disobedience is reformist, which I think is a workable definition. It also seems to answer the question: "would MLK have continued his strategy of civil disobedience to push through democratic reforms concerning larger justice and economic freedom" in the negative. This is not obvious to me.
In discussing "material conditions" we need to clarify some issues. One is a simple matter of causality. We can easily see that racism was necessary to the creation of the USA, to erect its borders, to claim the "land it stands on" in your formulation. But the causal presuppositions for something's existence are not necessarily baked into what something "is." Everyone can endorse the facts as you've laid them out. But you often just lay out facts and imply their relevance without necessarily linking these facts to present concerns. I can agree with your entire historical description but disagree about whether such contingent historical facts are necessary aspects of the democratic liberal order. So a couple posts ago when I said
My position is that it seems possible in principle to get rid of racism via reform, where "reform" means utilizing the legitimate methods of liberal democracy to enact change. I don't see the necessity of revolution (where "revolution" means enacting change outside of liberal democratic norms). Typically one would argue either that eliminating racism within liberal democracy is not possible in principle (afro-pessimism perhaps, but I find this unconvincing or at least under-theorized) or that it is not possible in practice. But its being merely impracticable does not necessitate anti-racist "revolution," without an explanation of how revolution makes it more practicable. Any such explanation would have to be an explanation that affirms its impracticability within liberal democratic norms while affirming its practicability outside of those norms. I don't know of any such convincing explanation.
I am pointing out that your recounting of a contingent history is not by itself an argument that civil disobedience cannot work, that democratic liberalism cannot address racism, and/or that the bloody and heinous history of slavery in the west necessarily requires a "revolution" (still a fuzzy term) to abolish racism. This is because I don't think that the contingent racist history we have is a necessary structural feature of democratic liberalism, even if it was the actually existing historical path by which we have arrived at our current place.
There is another popular protest slogan: "babies aren't born racist." I think this is right. I think that every generation must understand the world from the beginning. It is possible to understand differently: that is built into the claim that race is not a natural fact. It would therefore be possible in principle that a new generation might be less racist, and eventually perhaps not racist. (Frank Wilderson, taking the opposite position, would argue that actually racism is structurally necessary for the psychic well-being of white people within liberal democracy, and that the "world" would have to end—and a new world made, i.e. revolution—in order for racism to disappear)
Compare capitalism. I think it is a necessary structural feature of capitalism to have a surplus labor supply. There are a variety of ways one could ensure a stable supply of surplus, expendable labor, including a state-sanctioned sorting mechanism that divides the population and matches human capital to jobs. It is not totally implausible that any successful effort to abolish this sorting mechanism and eliminate surplus labor would necessitate a new form of life that does not resemble liberal democracy enough to still be called that. I think it quite plausible that any attempt to abolish the exploitation of labor would by definition be a revolutionary overthrow of capital, since capitalism is substantively defined by the exploitation of labor. Though the question is still open I think whether reform can lead to revolution just like adding grains together can form a heap.
This is why I don't like arguments of class reductionism cloaked in what I see as a pointless intellectual exercise in what bourgeois democracy could theoretically be.
That's an argument for you to have with the faux "intersectional" reductionism of liberals/Democrats. If it's any consolation, I too lament that no one is willing to pick up that petard in defense of the capitalism which underpins the rest of their politics.
On June 11 2020 06:25 JimmiC wrote: Portland is one of the most progressive cities in NA when it comes to environmentalism, which leads to me presuming they are progressive in other ways. Is this an accurate presumption?
edit: HOLY SHIT 63,000 emails about police violence and budgeting. (10 % of population of Portland).
Portland is progressive in some ways and terrible in others. It is not as diverse as the other west coast cities. It has a really bad history with racism and segregation. Look up the history of Vanport, OR if your curious. In the here and now we have had our fair share of housing issues, and homelessness, police brutality issues, air quality issues (oftentime adversely effecting the poor communities) and more.
Put it this way. Portland is my home and I love it but it’s not all just roses and hippies.
All speakers calling in have been absolutely wonderful so far. Complete agreement to defund the police.
Highlight:
Portland is 6% black Among cars pulled over, 59% are driven by Black People Among acts of police violence (recorded), 30% is committed against Black People
Weed industry pays a ton of taxes that goes straight to police. The whole thing needs to go. Don't give them a dime.
90% of police calls have nothing to do with violence or theft.
On June 11 2020 06:50 Mohdoo wrote: All speakers calling in have been absolutely wonderful so far. Complete agreement to defund the police.
Highlight:
Portland is 6% black Among cars pulled over, 59% are driven by Black People Among acts of police violence (recorded), 30% is committed against Black People
Weed industry pays a ton of taxes that goes straight to police. The whole thing needs to go. Don't give them a dime.
90% of police calls have nothing to do with violence or theft.
I feel like this could go back to what Evanston, IL is doing in regards to the weed sales there; reinvesting back into the black community in the form of reparations in some capacity. I'm sure the tax money could be better put to use than giving it to the police, which in turns funds their violence to PoC. I'll look to see if I can find any stories about how Evanston has moved along with its proposal, but I don't think it has launched or will launch due to suits against the city for the terrible way they phrased it.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Q4x2bVN.jpg)
