I mean, one of the issues is that lots of people in American can’t and won’t call the police in emergencies because they know that will make it worse. All this sort of “what do you do if you get raped” “what do you do when you get robbed” stuff just ignores how terrible the cops in America are today. Your imagination of what the police are isn’t always true.
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Just don’t know how else to respond to your claim that we need the police so that they can do things that they don’t actually do. They also can’t be compelled to do it either.
I’m assuming you meant to include the bracketed [think this] above. If that is the case, I’m assuming you didn’t separate those espouse who “abolish” from those who do not. If those two assumptions are correct, I’m submitting that was a garbage-in, garbage-out poll.
That’s hardly true. A perfect example is another abolition, the abolition of slavery in the US. Those abolitionists varied widely regarding both means & ends. But what is true as a bedrock: reformism won’t and can’t be effective.
LOL no. Virtue signalling is RWNJ crap. The real world of activism doesn’t work that way. What’s being emphasized is 100% practical and operational. That is again: reformism doesn’t work. I’ll repeat again: saying “X cannot be reformed” == “abolish X”.
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Someone asked for an alternative to policing on my NextDoor and I told them that if they were in danger they could call me and I’d come over and help and meant it.
wirelessgrinder voted yes and is on team abolish, several of the other abolishistas who were posting in the thread simply ignored the poll because they didn’t want to answer the question. microbet is in favor of actually abolishing the police, ask him. So is ggoreo. There was an NYT article explaining that, no, abolitionists really do mean ABOLISH THE POLICE.
This has also been done to death but if your slogan polls at sub 50% of politically educated people even understanding what the hell you mean, your slogan sucks. What you’re arguing is that “abolish the police” means something completely different to “abolish ICE” and that we’re dumbasses if this is not obvious to us. In reality, as I said, the slogan functions as a way to elide the distinctions between activists and make it look like there’s a coherent idea of what to do when there isn’t.
Which, like “abolish ICE”, meant “permanently get rid of”, not “come up with a better way to do slavery”. See also: “abolish the death penalty”, “abolish the monarchy”, “abolish apartheid”, every other time the word “abolish” has ever been used in human history.
Words you’re looking for include “replace” and “disband”. I’m not trying to be a semantic nit here, this is the means by which utopians are attempting to co-opt the movement.
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There are functioning police forces elsewhere in the world. There are not functioning large cities without police forces. If what you mean is “disband US police departments and build something more like Iceland’s police” then say so. By saying “abolish” you’re allowing the movement to be flown straight into the ground by people who mean “abolish”. The reason the slogan focuses on the destruction of the current system, as I keep saying, is that the movement pretends there is agreement about what to build instead when there isn’t.
Edit, which is also the reason I said this:
How else do you describe a movement where Sabo is so supremely unconcerned with what comes next that he doesn’t even realise there are people in the thread who don’t think there should be state law enforcement at all? “Burn it all down” is lazy and easy. “What should things look like instead” is hard.
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I presume all the other NextDoorers also immediately offered their services?
If we had a society consisting entirely of microbets, the question of how to deal with criminal offenders probably wouldn’t arise.
I think we are talking about different things here.
It seems you want to chat about what you consider poor “messaging” choices by those who use the watchwords “abolish the police”… which is an entirely different subject than what those who do use those watchwords might want to accomplish.
I don’t really care about slogan polling. Not my cup of tea,
This is what I mean about unseriousness about accomplishing anything, like “It’s not my job to have good messaging and make my ideas coherent and attractive to you” when that is in fact literally the job of political activists. Otherwise it’s just jacking off in public.
If you ask a Medicare For All proponent to explain what that is, they’ll do it, and if you say “But Joe Biden is calling this public option thing Medicare For All” they’ll say “that’s bullshit, that’s not what that means, here are the differences”. But if you ask activists to explain what “Abolish The Police” means you get 10 different answers from 10 different people and when you explain that other people are giving totally different answers, they’re like “oh well not really my problem”. I’m not sure how to interpret this other than that people are deep down aware that they’re not in possession of any serious proposal.
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I think the practical political value in “abolish the police” is its shock value among centrists. Political messaging is about being as loud as possible, including media coverage. Facts and coherent ideology don’t matter. Normies hear that and think “those people are angry at cops and there are a lot of them, maybe we should do something” which is good enough.
Boiling your position down to a catchy slogan is more important than whether the slogan makes sense. You don’t have to have any kind of coherent plan behind it, us liberals will think of something.
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Dude, we’re not doing activism here. We are conspicuously wasting time chatting around our tiny virtual water cooler. It’s not my job to do jack shit. Your’s neither. Further, I’ve been saying here, and back on 2+2 before then, for over 10 years, that I’m not trying to change anybody’s minds here.
Again: advertising (“messaging”) for something != that something. The slogan “where’s the beef” isn’t the meat product between the buns. A discussion could be had regarding the efficacy of that slogan selling that burger. A discussion could be had about the quality of that burger. They are not the same discussion.
Now, unless you are a pro in the advertising business… you’re pretty much a random on the interwebs more-or-less pulling stuff out of your butt. Me too. Why would I care to hear your feelings that “adjust” would poll 2.7% higher than “realign” among six foot or taller lesbians in “battle ground” states?
As I mentioned, not my cup of tea. But if we must only view the world trough Mad-Men eyes… consider this.
The intended “demographic” for those watchwords might not be the general public. It’s obviously not you. Instead, it could be the “demographic” of those who actually get off their butts and out into the streets. I think you’ll have to admit in your Mad-Men obsessed heart, that “abolish the police” has had some success with that “target audience”.
No. The serious proposal is that the pix cannot be touched up, we need to start with a blank canvas. What you are doing is complaining that nobody can say what the final pix will look like. Example: “what would happen if you dialed 911?”
Anyone can play this stupid nit-pick the hypothetical game for any substantial possible change. Well, if they can find someone fool enough to play along.
You won’t get a society of significantly better people without first abolishing capitalism (and with it consumerism) that indoctrinates people with ideas of materialism and greed (and of course, violence against others).
What’s needed is an almost Blakean revolution of the heart.
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The person in question responded by thanking me and saying something, I forget exactly what, that pretty clearly implied that he had that covered because he had a gun. No police needed!
I can just imagine a bunch of enlightened unstuckers crowing about how slavery abolitionists haven’t even come up with a plan for how plantation owners are supposed to make money if we get rid of slavery. Some people are saying they’re fine with indentured servants, some people aren’t - you can’t even agree on what you mean by abolish slavery! And we’re still waiting on an example of large scale cotton and tobacco production that DOESN’T rely on slaves.
That’s not even getting into the practicalities - black people don’t exactly have the highest approval ratings, and meanwhile like 50% of our presidents have been southern white men.
Why don’t we focus on laws that prohibit certain TYPES of lashings, and maybe make a publicly accessible record of the abusive slaveowners. We can hire some people to travel from plantation to plantation and give sensitivity training. Maybe require some type of two year degree before being eligible to bid at slave auctions. You know, something that has a realistic shot of becoming law. If we’re really lucky, in 10 years we can pass a law mandating that a minimum of 15% of slaveowners are women or POC.
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I don’t think most regular people hear “abolish the police” and think positive things about the message or about the people pushing the message. Normies, or whatever you want to call them, will think of it as advocating anarchy. I don’t really think that helps when you are talking about law enforcement that, unfortunately, a huge important/influential portion of the population views in a positive light.
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More amateur Mad-Men musings ITT. To a majority of UnStuckers it seems, how something is marketeered in the mass media >>>> what that something actually may be.
