Abolish the Police

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.

what if they went back to the practice of corporal punishment in schools? would that make disorderly students more respectful of school staff?

lots of countries don't have any sort of security let alone police presence in school

High schools as cauldrons of violence waiting to erupt (and not in a school shooting way) seems uniquely American (and British) - while we're talking about radical social change (ie abolish the police) maybe we're also talking about the changes to society that don't make high school SWAT teams necessary in Germany.

and there are plenty of schools in the US that don't really have this either -- a lot of it seems to come down to the schools having to take on managing the results of general social problems and injustices in that they are responsible for taking care of kids

which brings us right back to "there are better things we can do with this money than give it to cops"

we had a deputy officer in middle school but he wasn't a constant, threatening presence, he chilled in his car most of the day.

It's easy to speak in generalities. I am talking about the school my wife teaches in and what happens there. And btw this is an extremely well-funded public school that is majority well-off kids and tends to be on the cutting edge with progressive policies etc.

if I was a high schooler today and constantly saw metal detectors and armed cops walking up and down the hall, I'd probably freak the fuck out

How do we feel about Norwegian cops? Geir?

he prefers cops that are off the beat