To be clear, I’m interested in takes from people who agree with this:
If your take is “current police forces should be dismantled and we should build new ones to do the same job”, then fine.
I’m not sure whether you’re making this argument, but the idea that was floating around that the police offered no resistance to the MAGA chuds is wrong, there were something like 140 Capitol Police injured.
Yeah I’m not sure “the police tear gassing and beating people is fine, they’re just doing it to the wrong people” is a common abolitionist take.
I can’t access the NYT article even when I tried to do so in incognito mode, so if there are points in there that you feel are important to our convo, please let me know what they are.
That is not my take. However it is that we choose to construct our institutions in the future, they will not be doing the “same job”. Because the core functions of the police as currently constructed are to enforce the property rights of the haves vs the have nots(evictions, defend capital against labor, etc), be the front line goons that start our community members on the school to prison pipeline, and protect the class and race based hierarchies inherent in a white supremacist capitalist country by beating the shit out people protesting, among other things.
While this is true, the disdain is the result of asking good-faith questions months ago and getting misdirection and nonsense in response. Back then I asked “what’s the plan to control lunatics who are willing to use violence to get what they want” and there wasn’t an answer. Then lunatics willing to use violence to get what they want attacked the Capitol and the mainstream position on the forum was anger that there weren’t more cops there and conspiracy theories about evildoers not deploying the military on the streets. I have to conclude that the number of people who are serious about Abolishing The Police is very small.
The only take that makes sense is this:
Because obviously. Like, we had a situation where the organs of the state were violently attacked. Community models of restorative justice aren’t much help there. What was required was armed agents of the state. So unless you want to be like “hey maybe armed agents of the state are a necessary evil” you have to be like “well the state shouldn’t even exist”. And while I don’t have a problem with people arguing that, it is - as I said months ago, again - a refusal to discuss what to do about the difficult problem of law enforcement reform in the US without first tackling the completely unrealistic task of dismantling statism and capitalism in the United States.
I don’t refuse to discuss police reform. For example, requiring all or most officers to live wherever they work would be a good reform. Fewer police. Many of them routinely not carrying fire arms. Much less military type equipment. I’m happy to talk about police reforms.
I know the world is full of bloodthirsty law and order xenophobic nationalistic patriotic bootlickers and there’s never going to be no state and no police and no borders. Duh. But still, Abolish the Police!
“Abolish the Police” is kind of like “Repeal and Replace”. People might think it’s a good idea in theory, but ultimately, they’re going to balk unless you convince them that a world without the police/Obamacare is better than the status quo. It’s really easy to be against something. It’s a lot harder to be for something.
Abolish the Police works if you whip people up into a frenzy where they are so mad at the cops that they think that anything must be better than this, the “what do you have to lose” argument. This can be done by treating cops as the Other and saying that there is no such thing as a good cop, or that they are so few that you can treat them as such.
If we talk about guillotines for billionaires, then why not guillotines for cops? I’m not quite there yet, but I’m open to being convinced that is the appropriate line to take.
Maybe one of those slightly resembled being serious. Maybe not. But, maybe that’s your point. You’re here to make fun of liberals and their histrionics.
Violent protests and beyond met minimal resistance.
I don’t need to label the groups.
Police abolition largely already exists for white supremacists and for the rich.
We still pay to be policed.
This is a very short FAQ
It features the following
“Sure, in this long transition process, we may need a
small, specialized class of public servants whose job is to
respond to violent crimes.”
The goal is not in fact, to Thanos snap all police and do nothing afterwards.
While offensive language and personal insults are protected by the First Amendment, “fighting words” that have a tendency to incite a confrontation are not protected by the First Amendment. (See Chaplinsky v New Hampshire.)
I would expect the Supreme Court in its current configuration to uphold at least part of this, if it becomes a law. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Court vote 9-0 to uphold the part about “gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response” if this leads to a court case.
Touching a cop has always been assault when they want it to be. That’s nothing new. I know someone who was beaten and arrested because she touched a cop with one finger after being dared to do it by the cop.
I expect this SCOTUS to not uphold that telling a cop you want to defund them is an assault even if you call them a pig.