Abolish the Police

Do you or somebody you know think that #AbolishThePolice is unrealistic? It might be because you haven’t taken the time to understand what it means, the reasons for it, and why it actually makes a lot of sense. [Thread]

— Bridget Eileen (@TravelingNun) June 4, 2020

This is an interesting thread on what a major strand of ‘abolish the police’ thinking means, in line with Vitale’s suggestions, proposing that it’s not about literally getting rid of all policing / hating all cops, it’s about removing functions the police should never have been handed in the first place until policing, as it exists today, is unrecognisable.

The responses broadly break down into ‘why do u hate all cops and want to get rid of all policing?’ and ‘why do u not hate all cops and want to get rid of all policing?’.

this argument could be moot if the police abdicate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/citizen-patrols-make-statement-in-minneapolis/2020/06/06/cc1844d4-a78c-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html

There seems to be a real split on whether abolish the police actually means abolish the police or not.

This is maybe more of a #DefundThePolice train of thought but I like it:

I always had this vague idea that we could find money to provide real social services in this country if we cared, but now that I’m looking up city and county and state budgets, it is 10,000% clear that the money was always there.

— Courtney Milan 🦖 (@courtneymilan) June 7, 2020

ppl who want to abolish the police vs ppl who want to abolish the police eventually vs ppl who don't

if the former sentiment gets more popular the latter group can easily pass as those in the middle

i know this is off topic but i think it's important people stop saying things like this

Drugs are destroying people’s lives in this country. So instead of providing access to treatment and recovery support and helping people escape addiction, we criminalize and send the police. Unless they’re white... in that case, they need treatment and recovery.

this is really, really not how it works ime

I was going to point that out as well. It’s kind of a canned woke person thing to say that just doesn’t reflect reality.

this is very much in line with the thread SV posted:

But so long as we’re talking about what the “defund the police” movement could mean in practice – in addition to cutting budgets – here are some ideas.

— David Menschel (@davidminpdx) June 7, 2020

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/06/01/police-reform-america-poll?fbclid=IwAR1zSeSHV_MpelKniX2DApwavH-iz5qMQW49qmVfg0GG0oKriHWDQCKKxG0

reducing funding for police has 15% support among republicans and 16% support among democrats. I genuinely don't know the answer to this, and it's something I struggle with: as a coms strategy, do you think a catchy hashtag with an ostensibly wildly unpopular policy idea does more good or more harm -- the good I could see is drawing people in to look into the idea more, the harm is just shutting people down entirely.

Catchy slogans is the only thing in my young life I’ve observed to be capable of (slowly) reshaping reality and public support around them.

Medicare for All certainly seems to work that way. But it also describes what it is pretty accurately, there's not much explanation needed. Give everyone access to the system we already know and mostly like known as Medicare as a means of delivering universal healthcare. Abolish ICE otoh (which I think also accurately describes what it is) seems like it kind of fizzled out.

OTOH, wonky bullshit like Eight Can't Wait is almost unquestionably dead on arrival.

my company once used "mind the gap" to explain budget cuts

that's because too many people remember Eight is Enough

reminds me of that one scene in Community

"For Green week, we're changing our name to Enviro-dale"
"We're ALREADY CALLED GREENDALE!"

Like let's devise a slogan that (1) has no inherent content or relationship to its subject matter and (2) requires people to remember eight different policy items, none of which are referred to in any way by the slogan, and also to remember the complex relationship of each of them to each other and to data.

"Campaign Zero" = same thing. Zero what? I keep hearing that and mixing it up with Vision Zero, the NYC program to end traffic deaths.

But even "zero" tells you SOMETHING, like we are trying to achieve zero instances of something, you can at least glean that much.

Eight Can't Wait reminds me of the "It Can Wait" campaign to reduce traffic deaths due to texting/mobile phone use while driving.

Also, I think 8 is too large a number for lowest common denominator messaging which is where we're at in US society -- I feel like 5 is the absolute maximum.

This is why “abolish the police” and even “defund the police” are winners, that’s just one thing.

How about the older and more venerable 'fuck the police'?

yes -- i think abolish is more exciting than defund. Defund sounds kinda blah ... like "lowfat" ... or a 40 degree day

"fuck the police" implies the continued existence of the police ...

Also, I think 8 is too large a number for lowest common denominator messaging which is where we're at in US society -- I feel like 5 is the absolute maximum.

― sarahell, Sunday, June 7, 2020 11:31 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Five for Fighting

“Fuck the police” is kind of just a phatic construction, it’s not a policy prescription. “Cuck the police” otoh is a policy I’ve seen gaining in popularity.

Abolish is more like "fat free" -- the Coke Zero of leftist slogans

Police Zero Sugar

Crop the Cops

Vanilla Cops

Eat the Pigs?

Throw the police into the sea without liferaft or donut

Disarm the police

can't shoot if you have no arms

Again, I think the slogan needs to clearly refer to what the movement wants -- I feel like "fuck the" "cuck the" and "eat the" all presume that police continue to exist. If the goal is an absence of police, as we currently view the concept or symbol of police, then Abolish is quite good. The language should clearly state that the value "police" is going to be reduced to zero. Otherwise it implies a reformist strategy, which the abolitionists seem to be against.

yeah it's not like people in the 1800s rallied behind "defund slavery" or "reform slavery"

8 ways to make slavery less awful for slaves

Is the police slavery?

there was probably an 8-point plan out there to reform slavery that said you can have a slave you just need to submit the proper reports, and your overseers must make attempts to deescalate each day before beginning work XPPPPP

harbl otm -- i think it covered topics like the appropriateness of beatings and sexual relations

it is not a good comparison but now that i think about it in relation to cory booker's crappy new police reform bill it's like, you guys just don't think this is all that bad

and another thing: i find it humorous that one of the points is body cameras and another is "end private policing." i do not know what they mean by private policing. but many people are not aware that a big part of the infrastructure of body cameras is data collection and storage by axon formerly known as taser international. not good, folks, not good.

I think independent surveillance of police, i.e. ordinary citizens filming police with their cell phone cameras as much as possible, is way more effective and important than body cams.

xp thank you for that, also any links that anyone has about the ineffectiveness of said cameras w/r/t stopping police abuse would be most welcome

and yes agreed about citizens using cell phones

fuck the police" implies the continued existence of the police ...

Media tactics: Scaring WHITE citizens to believe that BLACK PEOPLE want less police or no police. STOP IT. How about good police? DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE.

— Ice Cube (@icecube) June 6, 2020

BTW, I do want to just momentarily turn back to this though, bc I think it's a dodge:

there is something else wrong with using restorative justice approaches in schools, which is that when it's done the kids go back to the same shit. which is also what happens when you put the kid on probation, so idk. it's like neither available remedy is the problem.

― contorted filbert (harbl), Saturday, June 6, 2020 3:35 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Like that is not the point I was making at all. H (my wife) is not saying "nothing works, let's throw up our hands" she's saying "I'm glad we can call the police as a last resort to break up violence that otherwise threatens and harms bystander students and school employees who try to break it up." So you need an answer to that, because that is the lived experience of a lot of people, that, in fact, there are situations where the police handle violence that others are not capable of handling. It's not *all* just perception and propaganda.

What about people who don’t have guns and badges but are nevertheless larger than high school students

We don’t need every municipality to have a single clearinghouse for on-demand muscle for all purposes. How many people do you really need to staff the department of student-grabbing? Why do they have to be cops?

thx again harbl

https://theappeal.org/body-cameras-and-tasers-rake-in-billions-for-axon-but-theyre-no-panacea-for-police-violence/

a lot of high school students are pretty large, like people tend to be pretty close to full-grown at 17

IDK why they "have to be cops" except that the "school security officers" are apparently ineffective in these situations

moms imo

i wasn't dodging, i didn't think! you seemed to bring those up as two separate points (1) the presence of police to solve the immediate problem and protect the physical safety of teachers (who i am very sympathetic to--they shouldn't be at risk like that!), and (2) "also" restorative justice didn't work.