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.
1800s version. Man, that L.Garrison had terrible “messaging”. Too bad us UnStuckers weren’t around back in that day to show him the errors in his ways.
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testing testing 1…2…3
do you receive me? over.
So you get to call me out for condescending tone, while spewing nothing but condescension.
#1 - yes
#2 - I have made many posts itt to the effect of what can be done and will continue to do so, ignoring the glib one liners, and you going forward
#3 - that’s up to you, I don’t assume the police cannot be reformed because I see no reasonable alternative to some level of policing (along with 99.9% of the rest of society - including most actual minorities who actually have skin in this game)
There is zero content in the rest of this sophist argle bargle.
And you ignored my extremely simple direct question - what do you want to replace capitalism with? Or are you just an anti-capitalist with no solutions you can verbalize succinctly?
I get the impression you (and these anarchist kids in Portland and elsewhere) see the BLM movement as a convenient ride to hitch on your way to a ??? revolution.
I don’t get the impression you (you personally - as ChrisV is pointing out - everyone in the abolish the police crew has a slightly different take and agenda) give a shit about what the people and communities who are the overwhelming victims of police brutality actually want. Except in the sense that you think their lives must be better in a post-police anarcho-Marxist utopia or whatever - due to first principles - and you know better than them what’s good for them.
I’m done here.
Pretty sure mods can’t ignore people give me mod real quick so I can check
This is so lazy. Abolish ICE is a great example. Do you see any of us on here saying reform ICE? No. Nor would we be saying reform slavery.
There is no moral justification for slavery. It’s inherently evil. Most everywhere else had already abolished it by 1850.
There is nothing inherently evil about being able to call 911 if your drunk ex is banging on the door with a gun. Every city on earth has police. Police in the US are out of control in many places for what I believe are fixable reasons. You’re talking about something that has never really been tried and offering nothing but vague solutions.
This does weirdly feel like the old AC days of 2p2 politics right down to the high-fives and piling on.
And you’re talking about solutions that we know will be ineffective. Both the “abolish the police” and “reform the police” camps recognize that they don’t have all of the details in place and still have a lot of work to do to figure out a solution.
Team Abolish doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for community policing, and the fear is that victims of crime (meaning people who currently call 911) won’t have an adequate avenue to turn to if they’re being assaulted.
Team Reform doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for preventing cops from abusing citizens, and the fear is that victims of crime (meaning people who are abused or murdered by the police) will continue to be victimized.
Somehow the response to Team Reform is “yes, this is a longggggg process, change happens gradually, let’s take the first common sense steps and then figure out the rest”. The response to Team Abolish is… not that.
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And this is absolutely not true.
It’s certainly not a majority view around these parts.
I’m not calling you out for condescension to make you feel sad. ZOMG why do some UnStuckers assume everything is personal. I’m pointing out, primarily to the lurkers, this: There are much deeper issues involved that the stilted narrow confines of Q#2. And… these deeper issues are being dismissed, sometimes condescendingly, by certain folks, including fellow UnStuckers.
Again, I didn’t present these three sub-topics for you to give me your feelings regarding them. My point is that these are all fully legitimate sub-topics of the overall “WTF to do with the police”. That none of them should be dismissed, and certainly not in a condescending way.
Now the following are just my feelings… so sue me if I go astray. You DGAF about #1 or #3. You are only really interested in chatting about #2. While OTOH, @ ggoreo has made it clear that he’s not really interested in chatting about #2. Which is all fine & good… nobody needs to chat about what they don’t care to chat about.
But you are doing the exact same thingee you are whining about.
When you carry on about “where’s the proposals” you are assuming your feelings about #1 are “true”, and are dismissing #3 as silly. When others respond to that with “abolish the police”, they are assuming that your feelings about #1 are “false”, and are dismissing #2 as prearranging deck chairs.
Here’s the difference however: I’m going to predict that those on the “abolish” side would be generally happy to have an in depth chat about #1. You, and again it’s my only my feelings, would never be able to sit still for any substantive chat regarding #1. Your feelings are made-up, and you aren’t going to change them.
This is true with reformist types in general, regardless of topic.
And this was the larger point I was trying to make. So… and again it just makes me LOL that you have characterized a quite polite and very on-topic chat as “not letting go”… I guess I’ll “let you go” now, if you really want to stop chatting about the issues at hand.
I ignored this Q because it’s not even close to being on-topic regarding even this off-topic “abolish” derail in this, the real-time protest thread. Start your own thread if you want to chat about this.
Oh boy… another “outside agitators” screed, and more patronizing crap about how black folk cannot have a class consciousness on their own. Of course, to hold such an opinion you’d have to studiously ignore… the three founders of the BLM Network, and all those you condescending call “kids”. And this obscure dead labor organizer dude too…
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.
“ In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.”
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”
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Show me one unstucker besides Ins0 or wireless bro who thinks ICE shouldn’t be abolished.
Needs a reform and massively (but not completely obviously) defund option.
I voted defund given your definition.
There have been plenty of effective solutions. Police departments have reformed. State laws have fixed things. Just because you’re not personally aware of them or don’t believe them doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
As we’ve pointed out “not that” is not a solution to the legitimate duties that cops carry out. Most of the people in these marginalized communities do not want “not that”. They want not-racist, not-trigger-happy, not-abusive police.
What that polling found was, it’s true, for instance, African Americans have a less favorable view of local police, but it’s still very favorable. So white people have a 79% favorable view of the local police, Hispanic 77%, and black people 58%. And even given that the numbers are very close in terms of when you pull the different groups on whether or not they want to see more police officers hired into their communities. So among white people, 65% say they support that and 13% oppose it; among Hispanic folks, 64% supported and 13% oppose it. And among black people, 60% supported and 18% opposed it. So it is a little bit less popular in black communities, but not that much.
I know vox, liberal, evil. So then show me a different poll which shows the people in these communities really want what you think is best for them.
I think you’re way off base if you think meat and the police are interchangeable in this context. People’s relationship to meet versus their relationship to police are nothing alike. There are a large portion of people for whom the police provide safety and security. Meat is essentially a luxury item that people like because it tastes good. When you suggest abolishing the police, you’re tapping into a way different set of emotions than you are when you try to make people feel guilty or ashamed by calling meat murder. The reaction you are going to get is going to be fundamentally different. Taking away people’s perceived security is going to inspire fear and opposition. Calling meat murder might inspire some shame or guilt, but that doesn’t threaten people on the same way.
We’re arguing about here. I’m responding to the dunking on/BestOf/high-five bro I just got from catface - to the effect that me and the others on unstuck who don’t think abolish the police is realistic, wouldn’t be for abolishing slavery.
Show me an example of a state that has fixed things. Please.
You realize you’re the kid in the well right now, right?