Abolishing the Police

You just slip into agreeing with me, which is fine. That’s right and it’s why a Black Lives Matter sign in 2013 was very provocative.

That surely depends. Barbara Lee can absolutely run on “Abolish the Police”.

I didn’t say it wasn’t provocative. I said it was less provocative than “Defund the Police”.

I suppose if that’s your position also, then we’re on the same page.

Terrible take.

A big point there is that BLM is not very provocative anymore. Times change and they changed because there were people pushing boundaries.

I have no doubt that if we work at it long enough maybe we can get there with Defund the Police. Can we just call it something else for 5 months? That might just help the plan come to fruition.

Who is “we”? If the “we” is me and what I post on this forum, then the answer is no. I already told you I didn’t even have an “Abolish the Police” sign at the protest - though that’s more about not wanting to get shot than about campaigning for Joe Biden.

And I have no illusion that the police in the US will be defunded in any significant way in my lifetime. Maybe in some pockets, but that’s something.

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I’ve already explained that on Unstuck you can call it what you like. What I’m saying is that Dem establishment or really any Dems in power right now are better off not calling it that. At least not right now. When they’re hammering out the legislation, they should ask for exactly that starting from right now.

“Wait” is centrist-speak for “never”. Why should we accept the notion of working towards change with all deliberate speed instead of feeling the fierce urgency of now?

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It may be centrist speak, but in this case since I used it, I can tell you exactly what I mean. You don’t need to guess.

Keep working towards it right now.
Use a different label for the next five months. After that, I don’t care as much. Changing the label increases the chance of Trump loss. That’s a part of the “working towards” that you mention. A very important part.

I do. Probably even a lot more back then. The point of the pics wasn’t just to show the difference between Sanders and the old man. It was to show how much their costumes have changed

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Unfortunately, he’s right. Defund the police isn’t going to sit quite right with the average American family and there’s so much daylight between the real left and Dem establishment they may as well be two different parties at this point. Centrist Dems certainly do NOT want to defund the very thing that helps monetize most urban areas jails

I’m one of the more center-left bougie posters on this forum and “defund the police” is something I would happily sign off on. Holy fuck these cops have tanks and drones and shit and when they’re scared they have this backup army of shady-ass guys in full body armor who won’t even identify themselves, The fucking SS RUC in Northern Ireland didn’t have these kinds of toys and those guys were up against dudes with Molotovs and machine guns and RPGs imported from Lebanon and shit. These asshole cops want more toys because they’re afraid your grandpa might try to throw down. They have too many toys, slash their funding until they learn to play nice.

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Maybe. Certain minor crimes could be handled by a non-police law enforcement body, I don’t know if counterfeit money would be in that category. Honestly, my best idea about handling counterfeit money is “make bills harder to counterfeit so that people don’t even try it”, which is something other countries have managed to do. It also goes without saying that none of the abolish the police crowd will have any specific ideas about handling a guy using counterfeit money other than “hold a community meeting about it” or “well it’ll be better than what happens now, that’s for sure”.

I don’t know if this is convergent evolution or whatever but the parallels between the police state of North Ireland in the 80’s and your hometown in America in 2020 are uncanny as fuck. I encourage everyone to read up on The Troubles because that’s where we’re headed, from Disband the RUC to Defund the Cops it seems to me that history has a tendency to rhyme.

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lol and who the fuck are you? Hey, maybe we should ask minorities if they support “abolishing the police”?

Even the proposition “cut funding for police departments” is opposed by a plurality of minority voters, maybe as the self-appointed Voice of the Voiceless you should go have a word with them about this.

We can always murder the person using it.

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JFC. I cannot believe this inane discussion. Every social movement was scary to the vast majority of the society when it was first discussed. That is the whole idea dontchaknow.

Social movements are inherently grassroots movements which are inherently slow-moving. This nascent movement does not need (or probably want) Joe Biden to campaign on “Abolish the Police”. First, that would be premature. Second, Biden would be a terrible flag-bearer for ATP.

I want to say more but I don’t want to piss off anybody in this thread. I may post more tomorrow if the discussion is still going strong.

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Community meeting is overkill for a single fake $20. Maybe if it happens on the regular. The second part is obviously true. It’s not like there’s jail time for passing a counterfeit $20. Unpayable fine and something on your record is about what would happen if the police don’t murder you. “No soup for you” is more appropriate. Tell the other merchants in the area.

What petty crime? Smoking pot?