"Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" by Mariame Kaba. New York Times, 2020-06-12, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
>But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.
Later in the article:
>What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all?
Even Kaba, who has been advocating for the abolishment of police and prison for a long time, doesn't just want these establishments gone. She wants all of the funding and resources currently budgeted for these establishments to go towards resolving the root cause of most violent crimes.
The spin that my conservative relatives were told by Tucker Carlson and friends was that "these people want anarchy and free reign to commit crimes" (paraphrasing). While anecdotal, it does seem that conservative media conveniently forgot to mention the rest of the argument to my relatives.
Slogans, headlines, and protest chants repeat the emotional overreaction, and then when questioned they retort "oh, well, we didn't mean it 'literally'.". This is Trump level political discourse.
160 years ago, Lincoln and Douglas were able to hold civil debates about slavery, which gave Lincoln the popularity he needed to win the presidency. I'm not sure how public discourse has decayed so significantly when we're more educated than ever.
I think this is the key takeaway from the opinion piece:
> As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.
I find it an interesting idea to be honest. I don't know that I'm convinced one way or the other, but it definitely seems an interesting area for research and innovation. We innovate solutions to all kind of problems, it seems it has been a while since we've tried to innovate solutions around crime reduction and prevention.
(This is not a disagreement, this is mostly conversing on the nuances of exploring the policy given our current political setting. )
And like you say, nobody is allowed to be wrong or fail in politics anymore, which means we're not allowed to experiment at the local or regional level, or to rollback policies, or just have any kind of rational retrospective. Nope, now it's all ideological, like religion, you can't possibly push a policy that failed, or have a bad idea. That just means you're weak and shall be casted away for the better sharlatan to take your place, he is never wrong, if you doubt how right he is, you shall be jailed or mocked, if his policies don't work, we shall endure them and believe in them even harder.
> By Mariame Kaba
> Ms. Kaba is an organizer against criminalization.
(1) They don't understand the difference between editorial content and reporting, because the media outlets they follow do their best to blur the distinction, all the way down to not even making a distinction organizationally or professionally, and making it seem like more legitimate sources of information don't make that distinction either. So the biggest red flag is that they don't even realize that there are professional standards and practices for keeping those things separate, and they don't understand things like fact checking or there being burdens of proof applied before something considered news reporting is published. To them, editorial content and news reporting are the same thing, with the same minimal burden of proof, because those are the nonexistent standards of literally every source of "information" they have.
(2) They think that when a media outlet voluntarily issues corrections (not from a lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit), that it's a sign that that outlet is less reliable than the places they go that never ever issue corrections unless legally forced to. The reality is completely flipped around, but that's their mentality. Culturally, that dovetails with "never admit being wrong" and "never apologize", which are ideals that resonate REALLY REALLY hard with people in these propaganda bubbles. The lack of accountability makes them trust untrustworthy sources even more, not less. Accountability makes them trust trustworthy sources less, not more.
I would add (3), how they react if they find out that something they themselves put out there isn't true. Watch what happens if they find out something they posted objectively isn't true. Instead of retracting it, they'll say something like, "well it doesn't matter, the meaning of the message is the same", or "well it doesn't matter the fake news media does it all the time". Which is the exact same thing that pathological liars and con artists say when their lies are exposed- that everyone does it, and maybe even that they are victims of hypocrites for being called out on it, because they assume the people calling them out surely lie about stuff all the time too. They're always looking for excuses to do worse, not better, and for excuses to think of themselves as victims, and for any possible reason to lower the bar for themselves rather than raise it for everyone.
Granted, a lot of that got walked back later, but it did happen. I live close enough to the CHOP that you can't really make me believe there wasn't an huge, loud, violent movement that unambiguously wanted to get rid of cops, period.
As far as serious people (true Scotsmen) go, I guess you're defining them as rational, learned experts. But I would urge you to at least pay attention to what crazed maniacs think too, since it turns out they can do some damage if you ignore them long enough.
This is not a "true Scotsman" argument. There is a meaningful difference between fringe elements acting on their own and powerful politicians or people with actual influence actively encouraging, directing, or praising that fringe. That is what separates the riots that happened last year from what happened at the Capitol on Wednesday.
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/06/26/minneapolis-city-council-appro...
So there would still be officers, but the department would be rebuilt from the ground up. Sounds like a great idea. Some departments can’t be fixed and have to be rebuilt.
I don't think any serious person is saying that "no serious person was saying we should abolish the police."
Abolitionism has been a strong movement, close to the core of American values of liberty, since the beginning of professional police and the Charleston Watch, before the civil war.
I am a serious person. And I do not believe that the institution of the police is the best way for a nation whose laws are based on the commonlaw tradition to establish justice or promote safety. Especially in 2020, when there are cameras everywhere and the capacity to report emergencies at lightspeed, I think that continuing to fund and empower this particular experiment is irresponsible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
I have to admit I find it pretty disheartening that mainstream liberals are for the most part just as unwilling to take a critical look at the most extreme, “all cops are bad”, toppling statues of Abraham Lincoln and burning down police stations subset of the left or even acknowledge that it exists, as the mainstream republicans have been of condemning the trumpism/q-anon alt right.
15% of the roughly 200M adults in the US is 30 million people.
If presented as total elimination of police departments, the survey might have missed support for more nuanced calls to dismantle police, said Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity. “One notion of abolition is the need for discontinuity from the violent and racist past of law enforcement,” he said.
It’s not saying that it already includes both groups.
I'm the first person to argue that 'defund the police' was a terrible slogan to adopt, but that's precisely because everyone jumps to saying "but we don't actually mean have no publicly subsidised law enforcement". Even if the rafts of related reform proposals are still far too idealistic for the real world, it's not a position comparable to the Q faithful having the numbers to win primaries.
Other people being wrong or behaving badly doesn't make it ok to break the rules.
Compare the two phrases in google trends for example. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=defund%20the%20po...
At the peak in mid-June it was a 100:7 ratio.
Stop trying to "both sides" this, because this is not a "both sides are just as bad" situation. We just saw the top level leadership of a major national party endorse and praise a terrorist mob that tried to overthrow the US government. The president literally said he "loved" those people when he told them to go home. That is problematic on a completely different level from anything that has happened on the left.
But why are you so quick to get so defensive? Why can nobody openly acknowledge their own side’s faults?
Going back to the topic at hand about abolishing the police, I don’t understand why I never hear anybody say “yeah you’re right, abolish the police is a bad way to say it. Here are the things we actually want. Wr should tweak the messaging to make it more clear”. Everyone is so insistent on doubling down on the abolish/defund language. And if someone doesn’t understand that this is now just a code for a more nuanced agenda, then we’ll extend our outrage to them too!
All you've done here is ask that people on the right ignore your fringe groups, but would you do the same? Or would you do what they're doing and engage in hyperbole to make you deal with them?
Both your parties are junk to me, so I'm happy to keep saying "both sides" until you all get your bad behavior under control.
Nobody needs to "make" the right own their extremists because they have done so already.
> On June 18, a volunteer medic intervened during a sexual assault in a tent in the occupied park area; the alleged perpetrator was arrested.[133] NPR reported that day, "Nobody inside the protest zone thinks a police return would end peacefully. Small teams of armed anti-fascists are also present, self-proclaimed community defense forces who say they're ready to fight if needed but that de-escalation is preferred."
Spenser Rapone, who attempted to infiltrate the US Military, received notable support and has gone on to be a speaker at events [1][2]
This gives a better spectrum picture of what's going on [3] and this statement sums it up fairly well:
> According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University, if Reinoehl is implicated in the case, "it would mark the first time in recent years that an antifa supporter has been charged with homicide" as "hard-left violence has generally been less fatal and more directed towards property, racists and to a lesser extent police and journalists" which is unlike "the white supremacist and the far right, which glorifies mass violence by loners and small cells against minorities and enemies". Gary LaFree, chairman of the University of Maryland's criminology department, stated that "the case could potentially be included in the university's Global Terrorism Database as the first act of terror linked to antifa".
Left-wing radicalist groups tend to be self-organizing cells which makes them hard to track, much like the group Anonymous from back in the early days of the internet. This has precedent through history as well. [4]
The way your message and my message differ is that I'm not going to provide rhetorical cover fire for either of your groups. They're both disgusting and you both need to own them, because you all provided the foundation or lack of accountability that gave them material presence and impact.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone#D...
[1] https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/06/19/commie-c...
[2] https://www.ncnewsonline.com/news/local-man-west-point-grad-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...
They already do. Barack was training and arming "moderate" rebels in the takeover and destruction of Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Hillary Clinton was laughing when she heard Gaddafi was killed.
On Tuesday night, a cop killed a man in Modesto - it was the 4th person killed by the same cop [1]. As you say, their are serious questions to ask about the police force and militarization. However, the racist/right wing thing is far too reductionary and fails to capture lack of proper training, lack of proper post-shooting responses, etc.
1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/krng...
IIRC, there have been big scandals about that in Germany recently. The neonazis have been infiltrating the military there, too, to the point where they had to disband an entire special forces unit, because it was too far gone to be cleaned up.
Honestly, the liberal fixation on gun control seems a really short sighted to me, given that kind of infiltration and the general right-leaning nature of law enforcement and the military [1]. It seems far more likely to me that liberals (and minorities) would someday need to rise up against an oppressive government than conservatives would be, even though conservatives like to fantasize about that kind of thing more.
[1] Proven very clearly by the events in Kenosha: police shot an unarmed black man in the back, but didn't even stop an armed white kid who just shot three people.
I believe it’s been established as fact that Jacob Blake was armed with a knife when he was shot. I’m not drawing any conclusion about the justification [not comparison], but he was not “unarmed”.
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/new-audio-shares-the-mo...
I stand corrected, though it doesn't detract any from my overall point.
The shooting was still BS:
> Blake details returning to his SUV while in possession of the knife. It was that knife that Sheskey said he saw moments before the DA said Sheskey followed his training and began firing until there was no longer a threat. Sheskey shot Blake seven times, paralyzing the 27-year-old father of three.
I don't think someone holding a knife and walking away from you can be properly categorized as an actual "threat."
"P.O. Sheskey stated 'Blake, for the first time, showed intent to harm by driving the knife towards his (P.O. Sheskey's) torso.' P.O. Arenas also said, 'at that moment, he feared the armed subject (Blake) was about to stab P.O. Sheskey.' He (P.O. Arenas) would have tried to stop Blake's advances with the knife, but 'he did not have a clear shot due to the positioning of the door.' P.O. Sheskey 'feared that Blake was going to stab him, and he could not retreat because the child could be harmed, taken hostage, or abducted by Blake.' 'For these reasons, he discharged his firearm towards Jacob Blake.' He stated that he later determined that he shot (7) shots and did not stop until Blake dropped the knife."
That's from the independent evaluation at https://www.kenoshacounty.org/DocumentCenter/View/11830/Use-..., video at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-police-keno....
I'm so glad I have a desk job.
I think you’re talking about the KSK (Kommando Spezialkräfte, Special Forces) and it was only partially dismantled. Still, that’s bad enough, obviously.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/ksk-aufloesung-umstru...
As for 20th century Europe, we are already there when armed terrorists invade the Capitol in an attempt to, as they themselves said, overthrow the government.