What we don't tell people (about carceral policy)
August 11, 2023 2:40 PM Subscribe
There’s plenty of truth to the complaint here but I do not think activists can deflect all responsibility for the public getting the impression that their thinking is too fuzzy and abstracted. There’s a site linked from the article, described as “proposing actual, tangible, often beautiful things.” I clicked on an article titled “Abolitionist Alternatives.” It looks like this:
What Mariame Kaba terms the “horizon of abolition” is both temporal and spatial.10 What is the temporality of abolition? How is it different from modes of secular eschatological and messianic revolutionary time? Abolition is untimely, casting off the illusion of capitalist and colonial time as a measure of civilizationist progress.
There’s a place for this sort of writing, but it is the furthest thing from a tangible alternative. I’m cherry-picking by definition here, although it was genuinely my first selection of something that looked like it might be relatively concrete based on the title, but are folks really going to tell me it isn’t a common issue?
posted by atoxyl at 3:47 PM on August 11, 2023 [23 favorites]
What Mariame Kaba terms the “horizon of abolition” is both temporal and spatial.10 What is the temporality of abolition? How is it different from modes of secular eschatological and messianic revolutionary time? Abolition is untimely, casting off the illusion of capitalist and colonial time as a measure of civilizationist progress.
There’s a place for this sort of writing, but it is the furthest thing from a tangible alternative. I’m cherry-picking by definition here, although it was genuinely my first selection of something that looked like it might be relatively concrete based on the title, but are folks really going to tell me it isn’t a common issue?
posted by atoxyl at 3:47 PM on August 11, 2023 [23 favorites]
I don't know that Kaba, Davis, and Vitale are being particularly evasive when asked for media quotes by publications, though. The newspaper is going to have advertisers and owners who have a vested interest in a pro-police stance that is not going to be countered by significant reader demand/curiosity encouraging journalists to go to these people and platform their views, warts and all.
posted by Selena777 at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think people are often pretty rigorous in describing the problems with the status quo, but a lot less so in describing alternatives. And I think the common response to questions about how we will protect people from serious crime in a post-carceral future - to turn it around and ask how well the system really protects people now - is a bit underwhelming as a rhetorical approach. People don’t find it that hard to imagine a change making things a lot worse, even if they know things are bad now.
I will say, to try to be a little bit concrete, that my personal vision of what abolition could mean has always been something of an anti-trust vision. Break up The Police, that sanctioned violence monopoly that has come to view itself as a military at war with the rest of society; bring down the blue wall. But in the end, we will probably still be left with some people doing things that resemble policing as we know it - just fewer, in a more professional way, and with more problems solved in other ways, that are unlike policing as we know it.
posted by atoxyl at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
I will say, to try to be a little bit concrete, that my personal vision of what abolition could mean has always been something of an anti-trust vision. Break up The Police, that sanctioned violence monopoly that has come to view itself as a military at war with the rest of society; bring down the blue wall. But in the end, we will probably still be left with some people doing things that resemble policing as we know it - just fewer, in a more professional way, and with more problems solved in other ways, that are unlike policing as we know it.
posted by atoxyl at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
The newspaper is going to have advertisers and owners who have a vested interest in a pro-police stance
I think the point about which side the media has an established, sympathetic relationship with is absolutely fair and well-supported going back as far as the news business does.
posted by atoxyl at 4:04 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think the point about which side the media has an established, sympathetic relationship with is absolutely fair and well-supported going back as far as the news business does.
posted by atoxyl at 4:04 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I agree that transformharm.org site is a really bad example resource for anyone who is not terminally academic. But it's not hard to find much better resources. It took me two seconds to land on https://defundthepolice.org/alternatives-to-police-services/ which is much more down to earth.
posted by Rhedyn at 4:23 PM on August 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Rhedyn at 4:23 PM on August 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
That is much more the kind of thing I like to see (at least as far as introductory material) thanks!
posted by atoxyl at 4:43 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 4:43 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Rhedyn, that link isn't completely foggy, and I'm fascinated by the idea of splitting investigation from enforcement. It could make a lot of sense.
I'm not sure the link is good about those rare occasions when it's important to control an actually dangerous person.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:29 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure the link is good about those rare occasions when it's important to control an actually dangerous person.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:29 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I got to this line:
Much of the interview, which was filled with false misinformation...
which totally hoisted a red flag, but I decided to keep going on the premise that it might have been someone else doing the copyediting. Okay, even though I have indeed read many of the arguments presented by activists, and put them in the usual Why Progressives Get Nowhere category of Arguments That Are Loathed by Persuadable Voters in Districts that Aren't Deep Blue, of which defund/abolish are right up there in the top three, I'll keep going to see whether this presents something not-insane.
And then I get to:
removing policing and surveillance of the subway
and haha fuck no.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:58 PM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
Much of the interview, which was filled with false misinformation...
which totally hoisted a red flag, but I decided to keep going on the premise that it might have been someone else doing the copyediting. Okay, even though I have indeed read many of the arguments presented by activists, and put them in the usual Why Progressives Get Nowhere category of Arguments That Are Loathed by Persuadable Voters in Districts that Aren't Deep Blue, of which defund/abolish are right up there in the top three, I'll keep going to see whether this presents something not-insane.
And then I get to:
removing policing and surveillance of the subway
and haha fuck no.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:58 PM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
But in the end, we will probably still be left with some people doing things that resemble policing as we know it - just fewer, in a more professional way, and with more problems solved in other ways, that are unlike policing as we know it.
That could be the Nordic model of policing. Proper multi-year education and training, de-escalation as the first option before use of force, use of a gun is very rare and each instance is officially investigated, etc. High level of trust in police, typical ACAB arguments sound downright absurd as a result.
There’s something peculiar about American progressive thinking. ”Policing is broken, so it must be abolished”! A jump from one extreme to the other, as if there are no options in the middle, some of them tried and true. See also, ”Capitalism is broken, let’s do communism!” Like, how about no?
posted by jklaiho at 12:56 AM on August 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
That could be the Nordic model of policing. Proper multi-year education and training, de-escalation as the first option before use of force, use of a gun is very rare and each instance is officially investigated, etc. High level of trust in police, typical ACAB arguments sound downright absurd as a result.
There’s something peculiar about American progressive thinking. ”Policing is broken, so it must be abolished”! A jump from one extreme to the other, as if there are no options in the middle, some of them tried and true. See also, ”Capitalism is broken, let’s do communism!” Like, how about no?
posted by jklaiho at 12:56 AM on August 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Sorry - I got to the quote from Glenn Greenwald - and I stopped reading. If this is your argument as to opinions we need to contest - just call it a clownshow and be done with it.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/locked-up-pfaff
Pfaff discusses the ratcheting up of punishment that has been a feature of the US legal system, " there ought to be a law against it" - and how the prison industry encourages carceral policy.
Some douche in Norway shot up a young persons political convention with multiple deaths and received a 25 year sentence, reviewable and so will likely never be released. The US is executing prisoners regularly.
Where do you think I will feel safer?
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 3:05 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/locked-up-pfaff
Pfaff discusses the ratcheting up of punishment that has been a feature of the US legal system, " there ought to be a law against it" - and how the prison industry encourages carceral policy.
Some douche in Norway shot up a young persons political convention with multiple deaths and received a 25 year sentence, reviewable and so will likely never be released. The US is executing prisoners regularly.
Where do you think I will feel safer?
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 3:05 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here is what I understand about defund/abolish the police, having just read a bit here and there, and respecting BLM and other voices on the ground to know what they are talking about (which I generally do not expect to involve any Foucault).
1) No-one is proposing that there should be no service that people can call for help when they are threatened with violence.
2) What they are proposing is that "police" especially in the USA is an irredeemable concept grown on poisoned ground, that sucks up all available resources and wields power to protect itself, while doing a bad job of providing safety and often being more of a danger than the danger it is supposed to protect against.
3) Their argument, which seems very credible to me, is that if we start from scratch, in good faith, to build a set of services to provide safety and minimise crime (which is what we should do), that set of services would be very different from "police" as we know it.
4) And further, I understand their argument from experience to be that to have any hope of doing that requires defund/abolish, because there is a long history of reform efforts coming to nothing, and meanwhile police departments are sucking up huge amounts of resource and funding that would be needed for something better. And it requires the dramatic language of defund/abolish, because otherwise all we get is another round of resented and ineffective sensitivity training.
posted by Rhedyn at 3:32 AM on August 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
1) No-one is proposing that there should be no service that people can call for help when they are threatened with violence.
2) What they are proposing is that "police" especially in the USA is an irredeemable concept grown on poisoned ground, that sucks up all available resources and wields power to protect itself, while doing a bad job of providing safety and often being more of a danger than the danger it is supposed to protect against.
3) Their argument, which seems very credible to me, is that if we start from scratch, in good faith, to build a set of services to provide safety and minimise crime (which is what we should do), that set of services would be very different from "police" as we know it.
4) And further, I understand their argument from experience to be that to have any hope of doing that requires defund/abolish, because there is a long history of reform efforts coming to nothing, and meanwhile police departments are sucking up huge amounts of resource and funding that would be needed for something better. And it requires the dramatic language of defund/abolish, because otherwise all we get is another round of resented and ineffective sensitivity training.
posted by Rhedyn at 3:32 AM on August 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
Most police abolitionist activism has come via black liberatory movements. This is because, policing is a direct outgrowth of Western chattel slavery. From the mindset of those on the black left, you cannot reform something that was developed to keep me in bondage.
Those of you that dismiss abolition as ridiculous, understand that you are speaking from privilege. The snark is not a good look.
posted by anansi at 4:53 AM on August 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
Those of you that dismiss abolition as ridiculous, understand that you are speaking from privilege. The snark is not a good look.
posted by anansi at 4:53 AM on August 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
Those of you that dismiss abolition as ridiculous, understand that you are speaking from privilege. The snark is not a good look.
Well, that's going to do great with persuadable voters.
And I'm not dismissing abolition as "ridiculous"; I'm dismissing it as "something that will get a Republican sweep in all about about six of 435 House districts".
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:08 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, that's going to do great with persuadable voters.
And I'm not dismissing abolition as "ridiculous"; I'm dismissing it as "something that will get a Republican sweep in all about about six of 435 House districts".
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:08 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kristin Richardson Jordan's actual policy proposals (rather than deducing them secondhand).
posted by idb at 5:20 AM on August 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by idb at 5:20 AM on August 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Alec Karakatsanis has many pieces of writing beyond this one documenting the way that the media reinforces the status quo around policing and justice. I particularly find it interesting that he documents the tactical mechanisms at play and the organizational sophistication of police media departments. For example, it is easy for media to present a certain viewpoint if you provide them with free footage, easily contacted "experts" and prepackaged data that supports your point of view.
posted by idb at 5:29 AM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by idb at 5:29 AM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm dismissing it as "something that will get a Republican sweep in all about about six of 435 House districts".
...which is why we need better media coverage, the point of the article. (which doesn't actually endorse any of the proposals it brings up).
It's telling that even on MetaFilter personal safety concerns immediately short-circuit discussion of real policy alternatives. This plays directly into the hand of the cops! Nobody (or at least not TFA) is asking you to give up personal safety, they are asking society to have a less one-sided discussion about how that safety is maintained and what its costs are.
posted by ropeladder at 5:40 AM on August 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
...which is why we need better media coverage, the point of the article. (which doesn't actually endorse any of the proposals it brings up).
It's telling that even on MetaFilter personal safety concerns immediately short-circuit discussion of real policy alternatives. This plays directly into the hand of the cops! Nobody (or at least not TFA) is asking you to give up personal safety, they are asking society to have a less one-sided discussion about how that safety is maintained and what its costs are.
posted by ropeladder at 5:40 AM on August 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
I didn’t like Greenwald as an example either, Barbara Spitzer. Now that Tucker’s lost his White Power Hour the closest he gets to mainstream media is like, Rumble or something. There’s so many serious examples of mischaracterization of defund in msm that I’ve seen though that I continued reading to get the gist of what the author was saying.
posted by Selena777 at 5:50 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 5:50 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
As far as I can tell, people mean a range of different things when they say "defund the police".
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:37 AM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:37 AM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you're willing to slam abolition without making the slightest effort to read up more on it, maybe this thread isn't for you.
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:54 AM on August 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:54 AM on August 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
outgrown_hobnail: “And I'm not dismissing abolition as "ridiculous"; I'm dismissing it as "something that will get a Republican sweep in all about about six of 435 House districts".”Okay. So what will it take to get white people to turn against the police state?
posted by ob1quixote at 8:16 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am generally on board with what Karakatsanis writes (here and elsewhere) but if I were to have a quibble, it's that he occasionally cherry-picks data too. I agree with his policy solutions/goals, but I don't think either side of this debate are particularly good at speaking to each other in good faith.
For example, early on he presents Greenwald's argument "that poor people want “better policing” not reduced policing" as a "bad faith argument" and yes, provides evidence of poor people advocating for reduced policing. But that's not proof that "all poor people" think the same. Hopefully we can agree that this is a thorny topic of debate, and from what I've observed of some different cities I've lived (with reputations of crime) there is no one position everyone of any identity category (wealth, race, gender, etc.) agrees is the correct one.
Maybe this sounds like a minor quibble, but I think the left does itself and its goals a real disservice when (even in this thread) people respond to people's concerns or disagreements with the idea of abolition/defund with suggesting that their ignorant, lazy, too privileged, etc. Those things are no doubt true in some cases, but meeting people's concerns/views with insults just makes people get defensive and retreat into their current views. And sometimes actually these assumptions are just wrong.
Anyway, it would be nice if the NYTimes employed Karakatsanis as an editor for anything they published on the police.
posted by coffeecat at 8:19 AM on August 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
For example, early on he presents Greenwald's argument "that poor people want “better policing” not reduced policing" as a "bad faith argument" and yes, provides evidence of poor people advocating for reduced policing. But that's not proof that "all poor people" think the same. Hopefully we can agree that this is a thorny topic of debate, and from what I've observed of some different cities I've lived (with reputations of crime) there is no one position everyone of any identity category (wealth, race, gender, etc.) agrees is the correct one.
Maybe this sounds like a minor quibble, but I think the left does itself and its goals a real disservice when (even in this thread) people respond to people's concerns or disagreements with the idea of abolition/defund with suggesting that their ignorant, lazy, too privileged, etc. Those things are no doubt true in some cases, but meeting people's concerns/views with insults just makes people get defensive and retreat into their current views. And sometimes actually these assumptions are just wrong.
Anyway, it would be nice if the NYTimes employed Karakatsanis as an editor for anything they published on the police.
posted by coffeecat at 8:19 AM on August 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
The problem with abolition/defund is that not that they lack some good and/or interesting ideas, it's just that their bad ideas are so bad that we can't admit them to any serious dialog. No one is going to let Harvey Weinstein make movies again because Miramax produced some great pictures in the 90s.
posted by MattD at 8:32 AM on August 12, 2023
posted by MattD at 8:32 AM on August 12, 2023
When I talk with black people, sometimes they talk about calling the police the same way a white person would. I don't ask for where they stand on defunding the police because that doesn't seem like a conversation which would go well.
I live in Philadelphia, which isn't notable for having good police. I don't think black people are a monolith.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:37 AM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I live in Philadelphia, which isn't notable for having good police. I don't think black people are a monolith.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:37 AM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
The irony is strong in here when people feel compelled to loudly state, in reaction to a piece about how the media only gives space to two positions on policing — the status quo and even more of the same, that they don't know anything about other options. Kind of proves Karakatsanis' point.
posted by ssg at 9:06 AM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by ssg at 9:06 AM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Okay. So what will it take to get white people to turn against the police state?
A sufficient quantity of white people feeling significantly victimized by it.
Which will be tricky, as in general, the people whose support would be needed are not prominently or actively targeted by the kinds of LEOs that need to be disarmed.
On the right side of the spectrum, it's hopeless; they're happy to declare in perpetuity that LAW AND ORDER are necessary to keep frothing hordes of savage animals from overwhelming a thin blue line of brave soldiers and murdering us all in our beds. So we move more towards the center, and we run into the usual problem -- people are only politically motivated in proportion to how personally affected they are by stimuli.
If something affects them, their family, their friends, their neighbors, people in the news that they respect, etc. and affects their health, their freedoms, their wallets, their jobs, their civil rights, their faith in the structure of the society they live in, etc., both of those in roughly descending order, they will have reasons to at least take notice of what's going on. There is a side order of "if those somethings benefit people of whom I do / do not approve" and "if those somethings PUNISH people of whom I do / do not approve" as motivators. The old "I will vote against a thing that would benefit me to keep THOSE PEOPLE from benefitting from it" gambit at work, familiar to anyone who watched Obamacare's progression.
I'm a lily-white suburbanite. I can go years on end without interacting with police in any way in any circumstances, and when I do it's at the level of "sorry, Officer, I didn't realize I was driving that fast" or "I was turning left and this guy's car hit mine." I see evidence of police brutality and overreach all the time in the media that I consume. I understand that the problem is many times worse than gets reported. I care about these things because I choose to. But the vast majority of people do not care, or at least care enough to vote accordingly, because they have no personal frame of reference regarding what is happening or where or to whom.
posted by delfin at 11:29 AM on August 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
A sufficient quantity of white people feeling significantly victimized by it.
Which will be tricky, as in general, the people whose support would be needed are not prominently or actively targeted by the kinds of LEOs that need to be disarmed.
On the right side of the spectrum, it's hopeless; they're happy to declare in perpetuity that LAW AND ORDER are necessary to keep frothing hordes of savage animals from overwhelming a thin blue line of brave soldiers and murdering us all in our beds. So we move more towards the center, and we run into the usual problem -- people are only politically motivated in proportion to how personally affected they are by stimuli.
If something affects them, their family, their friends, their neighbors, people in the news that they respect, etc. and affects their health, their freedoms, their wallets, their jobs, their civil rights, their faith in the structure of the society they live in, etc., both of those in roughly descending order, they will have reasons to at least take notice of what's going on. There is a side order of "if those somethings benefit people of whom I do / do not approve" and "if those somethings PUNISH people of whom I do / do not approve" as motivators. The old "I will vote against a thing that would benefit me to keep THOSE PEOPLE from benefitting from it" gambit at work, familiar to anyone who watched Obamacare's progression.
I'm a lily-white suburbanite. I can go years on end without interacting with police in any way in any circumstances, and when I do it's at the level of "sorry, Officer, I didn't realize I was driving that fast" or "I was turning left and this guy's car hit mine." I see evidence of police brutality and overreach all the time in the media that I consume. I understand that the problem is many times worse than gets reported. I care about these things because I choose to. But the vast majority of people do not care, or at least care enough to vote accordingly, because they have no personal frame of reference regarding what is happening or where or to whom.
posted by delfin at 11:29 AM on August 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
There’s something peculiar about American progressive thinking. ”Policing is broken, so it must be abolished”! A jump from one extreme to the other, as if there are no options in the middle, some of them tried and true.
In my experience, people arrive at the position of "abolish" because they've seen the failure of so many half-measures. Police around the country have been diversified, trained in de-escalation, forced to take training to help them understand people unlike them, and on and on. And yet they're out here killing people.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:56 AM on August 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
In my experience, people arrive at the position of "abolish" because they've seen the failure of so many half-measures. Police around the country have been diversified, trained in de-escalation, forced to take training to help them understand people unlike them, and on and on. And yet they're out here killing people.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:56 AM on August 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have read Mariame Kaba's work and one thing it helped me see all around is the copaganda. For the cops to improve even the slightest bit, they must always get more funding. They can never move even a penny of their existing budget. (The NYPD's budget is in the BILLIONS, by the way. I wonder how much is spent on helping unhoused New Yorkers stay safe?)
My former home of Minneapolis has a new police chief who has been presented as very a level-headed, good-hearted guy who can fix policing in the city. He wants a big funding push in order to do it.
Somehow, policing can never be fixed by right-sizing or downsizing or reassessing priorities. It can only be fixed through large new expenditures for the cops.
This framing is complete bullshit and it is everywhere.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:04 PM on August 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
My former home of Minneapolis has a new police chief who has been presented as very a level-headed, good-hearted guy who can fix policing in the city. He wants a big funding push in order to do it.
Somehow, policing can never be fixed by right-sizing or downsizing or reassessing priorities. It can only be fixed through large new expenditures for the cops.
This framing is complete bullshit and it is everywhere.
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:04 PM on August 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
Coming in late on this thread, but thought of the recent publication of an internal survey of Seattle PD leadership from June of 2020 shows that PDs already have some ideas about how to improve/restructure their services. Police unions are the primary blocker in this specific instance.
"By August 2020, SPD and Mayor Durkan’s office were aware that “up to 45% of SPD patrol service hours do not require an officer,” according to a Budget Change Decision Points memo."
posted by SoundInhabitant at 12:12 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
"By August 2020, SPD and Mayor Durkan’s office were aware that “up to 45% of SPD patrol service hours do not require an officer,” according to a Budget Change Decision Points memo."
posted by SoundInhabitant at 12:12 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Civilization existed for thousands of years without "police". There were guards, soldiers, and other weaponized humans patrolling the streets for various reasons, with varying results. "The police" are just that same thing, but with more money and more autonomy, and without meaningful oversight.
There's been a rebranding, beginning with Robert Peel's copper stars and high-sounding "principles". For a while England's "coppers" had a good, if vague, reputation. Now London has The Met, a flying squad of machine-gun-toting, high-strung wannabe "standard-issue street soldiers".
The "militarization" of the police is nothing but a return to type. Poor and marginalized folks have been victimized by the police since before "the police" was a thing. By "victimized" I mean that the police have acted like an occupying military force in poor quarters.
I know I won't convince anyone. I just want the others who know what I know and have experienced what I have, to know that there are others out here. We might even be the majority.
But it doesn't matter as long as we are not counted.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:00 PM on August 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
There's been a rebranding, beginning with Robert Peel's copper stars and high-sounding "principles". For a while England's "coppers" had a good, if vague, reputation. Now London has The Met, a flying squad of machine-gun-toting, high-strung wannabe "standard-issue street soldiers".
The "militarization" of the police is nothing but a return to type. Poor and marginalized folks have been victimized by the police since before "the police" was a thing. By "victimized" I mean that the police have acted like an occupying military force in poor quarters.
I know I won't convince anyone. I just want the others who know what I know and have experienced what I have, to know that there are others out here. We might even be the majority.
But it doesn't matter as long as we are not counted.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:00 PM on August 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Police around the country have been diversified, trained in de-escalation, forced to take training to help them understand people unlike them, and on and on. And yet they're out here killing people.
You don't think America's police unions have effectively thwarted any serious reforms? Like "cleaning house," where significant numbers of police are replaced wholesale with people who will be hired, trained and educated differently? They can't even put the "police gang" members in LA in some kind of rubber room, FFS.
posted by Selena777 at 1:11 PM on August 12, 2023
You don't think America's police unions have effectively thwarted any serious reforms? Like "cleaning house," where significant numbers of police are replaced wholesale with people who will be hired, trained and educated differently? They can't even put the "police gang" members in LA in some kind of rubber room, FFS.
posted by Selena777 at 1:11 PM on August 12, 2023
I think in movements on the left that include people with diverse viewpoints there’s a reluctance to summarize the movement’s core ideas for the general public, since that’s taking it upon yourself to decide what the movement is about, or to try to describe another person’s views instead of letting them speak for themselves.
Unfortunately that means a lot of articles like this saying “movement X has tons of good concrete ideas, despite what the naysayers would have you believe” instead of listing those ideas.
You also see this with anarchism where there are a century’s worth of articles about how anarchists aren’t just bomb-throwing nihilists without really explaining what some common anarchist beliefs are.
posted by smelendez at 1:45 PM on August 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Unfortunately that means a lot of articles like this saying “movement X has tons of good concrete ideas, despite what the naysayers would have you believe” instead of listing those ideas.
You also see this with anarchism where there are a century’s worth of articles about how anarchists aren’t just bomb-throwing nihilists without really explaining what some common anarchist beliefs are.
posted by smelendez at 1:45 PM on August 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I know I won't convince anyone
Convince anyone of what? This seems more or less true:
There were guards, soldiers, and other weaponized humans patrolling the streets for various reasons, with varying results. "The police" are just that same thing, but with more money and more autonomy, and without meaningful oversight.
and it’s why I am amenable to the idea of “abolishing the police” in the sense of rethinking the concentration of power in the hands of The Police, separating out the parts of their ambit that have no good reason to be performed by heavily armed men, and approaching law enforcement from the ground up in a more scientific and humane way - although of course The Police are arguably the end result of a prior attempt to do this.
But it gets talked about in a very hazy way sometimes that makes it sound like proponents are trying to sell a future that is not only post-police but post-law or post-guards, and given those thousands of years of history it’s understandable if people are a little skeptical.
posted by atoxyl at 2:09 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Convince anyone of what? This seems more or less true:
There were guards, soldiers, and other weaponized humans patrolling the streets for various reasons, with varying results. "The police" are just that same thing, but with more money and more autonomy, and without meaningful oversight.
and it’s why I am amenable to the idea of “abolishing the police” in the sense of rethinking the concentration of power in the hands of The Police, separating out the parts of their ambit that have no good reason to be performed by heavily armed men, and approaching law enforcement from the ground up in a more scientific and humane way - although of course The Police are arguably the end result of a prior attempt to do this.
But it gets talked about in a very hazy way sometimes that makes it sound like proponents are trying to sell a future that is not only post-police but post-law or post-guards, and given those thousands of years of history it’s understandable if people are a little skeptical.
posted by atoxyl at 2:09 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
We'd posts on how police around the country were separately trained to be murderers.
Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones (FPF)
posted by jeffburdges at 2:26 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones (FPF)
posted by jeffburdges at 2:26 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
You don't think America's police unions have effectively thwarted any serious reforms?
Absolutely, and that is part of why I question the efficacy of police reform. I don't really have the answers/specifics about what police abolition vs police reform would look like. But I think we are primed to assume, at minimum, that reform is possible & sensible and abolition is not. In reality, only reform has been attempted and has not been successful. So I question the starting assumption that reform is the more logical solution.
posted by Emmy Rae at 3:27 PM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Absolutely, and that is part of why I question the efficacy of police reform. I don't really have the answers/specifics about what police abolition vs police reform would look like. But I think we are primed to assume, at minimum, that reform is possible & sensible and abolition is not. In reality, only reform has been attempted and has not been successful. So I question the starting assumption that reform is the more logical solution.
posted by Emmy Rae at 3:27 PM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Now London has The Met, a flying squad of machine-gun-toting, high-strung wannabe "standard-issue street soldiers".
The London Met are fucking awful, and have killed more than a couple of innocent people in recent decades, but that description is so hyperbolic and removed from reality it's almost funny.
I'm on team "a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch" - fire the fucking lot of them, and start over. But you will always need people to carry out policing functions, which means you will always need police, even if you choose to use a different word to name them.
I am mildly terrified by the ideas of the (UK) abolitionists I knew, because they really are abolitionists - they want rid of any kind of police altogether. They make arguments like the ones in the article kicked by Rhedyn:
One common refrain in opposition to defunding the police assumes that our society will not be able to effectively respond to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence.
Which is just bollocks. I'm a trans woman. In the last five years, I have had to call the police twice because someone was actively trying to break into my flat, while I was in it, one of the times with the explicit and express intent and purpose of hurting me. Both times the police showed up and took the guy away before they could finish breaking down the door or wrestling with me to get in the window.
(Neither was charged for the incidents. One just slept off his booze in a cell and was sent on his way. The other decided to fight the police, bit one of them on the face hard enough to draw a large amount of blood, and was only charged with meth possession.)
I am not on board with any plan that leaves me maimed or dead twice over because of having no recourse in that situation. And any plan I have seen that does leave me a solution is effectively just police by another name.
(The more nuanced arguments about limiting the scope of what police do, and their funding, particularly in a US context, I am on board with. But in my experience people with those arguments don't call themselves abolitionists.)
posted by Dysk at 4:52 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The London Met are fucking awful, and have killed more than a couple of innocent people in recent decades, but that description is so hyperbolic and removed from reality it's almost funny.
I'm on team "a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch" - fire the fucking lot of them, and start over. But you will always need people to carry out policing functions, which means you will always need police, even if you choose to use a different word to name them.
I am mildly terrified by the ideas of the (UK) abolitionists I knew, because they really are abolitionists - they want rid of any kind of police altogether. They make arguments like the ones in the article kicked by Rhedyn:
One common refrain in opposition to defunding the police assumes that our society will not be able to effectively respond to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence.
Which is just bollocks. I'm a trans woman. In the last five years, I have had to call the police twice because someone was actively trying to break into my flat, while I was in it, one of the times with the explicit and express intent and purpose of hurting me. Both times the police showed up and took the guy away before they could finish breaking down the door or wrestling with me to get in the window.
(Neither was charged for the incidents. One just slept off his booze in a cell and was sent on his way. The other decided to fight the police, bit one of them on the face hard enough to draw a large amount of blood, and was only charged with meth possession.)
I am not on board with any plan that leaves me maimed or dead twice over because of having no recourse in that situation. And any plan I have seen that does leave me a solution is effectively just police by another name.
(The more nuanced arguments about limiting the scope of what police do, and their funding, particularly in a US context, I am on board with. But in my experience people with those arguments don't call themselves abolitionists.)
posted by Dysk at 4:52 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
So you know how the mefi threads about getting rid of car-centric city planning evoke "you want to make grandma ride a bicycle in the rain!" level of comments?
I think folks in this thread need to read up on what police abolition actually entails. We're not even having a discussion on the same thing.
Which, funny enough, proves the article completely correct that the media fails to explain what "defund the police" means.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:21 PM on August 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think folks in this thread need to read up on what police abolition actually entails. We're not even having a discussion on the same thing.
Which, funny enough, proves the article completely correct that the media fails to explain what "defund the police" means.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:21 PM on August 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones (FPF)
And the 98-year-old co-owner of the newspaper, present for the raid of her home, died the next day. The cops didn't shoot or beat her... but they didn't have to.
posted by delfin at 9:34 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
And the 98-year-old co-owner of the newspaper, present for the raid of her home, died the next day. The cops didn't shoot or beat her... but they didn't have to.
posted by delfin at 9:34 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence.
I was going to sit this thread out, but no. Just no.
My wife and i were nearly carjacked near the airport at 5 am.
If there hadn’t been cops milling around the Shell station we might have gotten killed.
posted by ducky l'orange at 9:45 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was going to sit this thread out, but no. Just no.
My wife and i were nearly carjacked near the airport at 5 am.
If there hadn’t been cops milling around the Shell station we might have gotten killed.
posted by ducky l'orange at 9:45 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think folks in this thread need to read up on what police abolition actually entails. We're not even having a discussion on the same thing.
Thing is, there is no agreement. There are many links to people advocating for some kind of change to policing on this thread, which are pretty damn different in scope and how much police they want to have left afterwards, how they want that organised exactly, and they are all using the same language.
It doesn't just mean what you, or I, or anyone wants it to mean. And different contexts with different policing philosophies and approaches (like different police forces - not LA county vs SF, but US vs UK, armed police vs unarmed police, policing through violence vs policing by consent, etc) will produce wildly different ideas, and reactions to those ideas.
posted by Dysk at 10:53 PM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thing is, there is no agreement. There are many links to people advocating for some kind of change to policing on this thread, which are pretty damn different in scope and how much police they want to have left afterwards, how they want that organised exactly, and they are all using the same language.
It doesn't just mean what you, or I, or anyone wants it to mean. And different contexts with different policing philosophies and approaches (like different police forces - not LA county vs SF, but US vs UK, armed police vs unarmed police, policing through violence vs policing by consent, etc) will produce wildly different ideas, and reactions to those ideas.
posted by Dysk at 10:53 PM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m cherry-picking by definition here, although it was genuinely my first selection of something that looked like it might be relatively concrete based on the title,
1) there are easy-to-read and digestible arguments that have been popularized such as 8toabolition
2) the fact that these aren't popular is a problem with the fact that police unions and newspapers have teams staffed to manage SEO, a tedious and complex-for-the-layman process requiring regular upkeep, labor for which largely volunteer-run or non-profit groups can't afford to pay for and for which the thousands of white, male SWEs who do know about this stuff definitely aren't the ones turning out to organizing events for
3) the reason why you do see so much academia on the topic is because it's one of the few gatekeeper institutions that's actively embraced dedicating sections of its discursive space to discussing abolition. coincidentally, the point of the the article is that gatekeeper institutions like corporate media (which, again, take up all the top results for search engine results) are extremely bad at providing good representation for abolitionist positions
4) you'll also see bad faith efforts to report those accessible sites above as malicious or terroristic, something that's actively happening to protestors here in Atlanta which, to an 'agnostic' search engine provider, is enough cause to scrub references to within their product
5) and yes, plenty of left-leaning types are pretentious as hell - and these are, in my experience, predominantly white men of a certain type inside of the space probably best represented by Verso's US publisher, a white man credibly accused of being a fucking creep such that the Verso Board had to release a letter of apology who, as of last check, is still listed as a Director at the publication - the college mansplainer, the quibbler on convention, the guy who at your meetings will quibble with you on minor convention even while you're attempting to organize just a basic fucking canvassing effort - the people who care about Leninsm vs Stalinism vs Trotskyists or whatever the hell - yes they do suck, agreed
posted by paimapi at 7:09 AM on August 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
1) there are easy-to-read and digestible arguments that have been popularized such as 8toabolition
2) the fact that these aren't popular is a problem with the fact that police unions and newspapers have teams staffed to manage SEO, a tedious and complex-for-the-layman process requiring regular upkeep, labor for which largely volunteer-run or non-profit groups can't afford to pay for and for which the thousands of white, male SWEs who do know about this stuff definitely aren't the ones turning out to organizing events for
3) the reason why you do see so much academia on the topic is because it's one of the few gatekeeper institutions that's actively embraced dedicating sections of its discursive space to discussing abolition. coincidentally, the point of the the article is that gatekeeper institutions like corporate media (which, again, take up all the top results for search engine results) are extremely bad at providing good representation for abolitionist positions
4) you'll also see bad faith efforts to report those accessible sites above as malicious or terroristic, something that's actively happening to protestors here in Atlanta which, to an 'agnostic' search engine provider, is enough cause to scrub references to within their product
5) and yes, plenty of left-leaning types are pretentious as hell - and these are, in my experience, predominantly white men of a certain type inside of the space probably best represented by Verso's US publisher, a white man credibly accused of being a fucking creep such that the Verso Board had to release a letter of apology who, as of last check, is still listed as a Director at the publication - the college mansplainer, the quibbler on convention, the guy who at your meetings will quibble with you on minor convention even while you're attempting to organize just a basic fucking canvassing effort - the people who care about Leninsm vs Stalinism vs Trotskyists or whatever the hell - yes they do suck, agreed
posted by paimapi at 7:09 AM on August 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
A sufficient quantity of white people feeling significantly victimized by it.
Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, in part because it's also sort a subject of curiosity for me in today's political climate. I've come to believe that it's a matter of critical mass, like the Drug War casualties. There is a certain subpopulation of people that it appears that they're willing to otherize and ostracize under the idea that people who have negative interactions with law enforcement must have "had it coming" somehow even if the reasons appear unclear upon first glance and are sort of disposable, the price of doing business and keeping crime in check. This subpopulation can and statistically does include in-group members. In these interactions, barring the extremes like for instance, the Daniel Shaver/Karen Garner cases, the public tends to throw their sympathies behind the officer. There is certainly not a desire for a grassroots response and the tendency to do this in the black community is seen as further evidence of an inherent dysfunction - misplaced loyalty - when it's a result of generations of disproportionate targeting and therefore community impact resulting in a scenario where it's easier to see the arrested party as a neighbor and the policeman/woman as an outsider.
posted by Selena777 at 7:36 AM on August 13, 2023
Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, in part because it's also sort a subject of curiosity for me in today's political climate. I've come to believe that it's a matter of critical mass, like the Drug War casualties. There is a certain subpopulation of people that it appears that they're willing to otherize and ostracize under the idea that people who have negative interactions with law enforcement must have "had it coming" somehow even if the reasons appear unclear upon first glance and are sort of disposable, the price of doing business and keeping crime in check. This subpopulation can and statistically does include in-group members. In these interactions, barring the extremes like for instance, the Daniel Shaver/Karen Garner cases, the public tends to throw their sympathies behind the officer. There is certainly not a desire for a grassroots response and the tendency to do this in the black community is seen as further evidence of an inherent dysfunction - misplaced loyalty - when it's a result of generations of disproportionate targeting and therefore community impact resulting in a scenario where it's easier to see the arrested party as a neighbor and the policeman/woman as an outsider.
posted by Selena777 at 7:36 AM on August 13, 2023
If there hadn’t been cops milling around the Shell station we might have gotten killed.
There are similar anecdotes that end with "If that random dude hadn't had a handgun that he acquired via the gray market; I don't know his name because he said 'I got warrants' and fled as soon as he heard a siren." That doesn't mean that in the aggregate it's a good idea to let Frank carry a Desert Eagle in his waistband when he's picking up his kids from elementary school on a Friday afternoon.
For large swaths of Americans (especially people who live in America but don't have the "proper" documentation to do so), cops are significantly more likely to inflict violence than to prevent it.
posted by Etrigan at 8:36 AM on August 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
There are similar anecdotes that end with "If that random dude hadn't had a handgun that he acquired via the gray market; I don't know his name because he said 'I got warrants' and fled as soon as he heard a siren." That doesn't mean that in the aggregate it's a good idea to let Frank carry a Desert Eagle in his waistband when he's picking up his kids from elementary school on a Friday afternoon.
For large swaths of Americans (especially people who live in America but don't have the "proper" documentation to do so), cops are significantly more likely to inflict violence than to prevent it.
posted by Etrigan at 8:36 AM on August 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Etrigan, I was also thinking about perpetrators of violence who flee, though. If someone is physically attacking someone and they stop and leave specifically because of the likelihood/impending threat of arrest/incarceration, is that an example of "police preventing crime", or does that not count?
posted by Selena777 at 8:45 AM on August 13, 2023
posted by Selena777 at 8:45 AM on August 13, 2023
Pretty much, yes.
We in suburbia witness the occasional extreme incidents in the news -- the likes of George Floyd, Philando Castile, people of color getting flat-out executed by police without posing even a remote threat to said officers. There is outrage. There is a demand for justice. But amongst suburbia, there is not a sustained demand for systemic change because these are viewed as the product of bad apples, poor judgment, isolated racist officers rather than a systemic problem. They don't see such prejudice in action every day in their community, certainly not in their household. The inner cities are often viewed as some kind of demilitarized zone, a wild west of drugs and crime, rather than a place where actual people live.
And, believe me, there are lots of 'moderate' politicians who will never get behind any kind of police reform in a million years, simply because all it takes is one violent incident and subsequent shrieks of "DEMOCRATS ARE SOFT ON CRIME!" for them to feel vulnerable.
There are many forms of policing. It is very difficult to replace a militarized, prejudiced, entrenched system with a more scientific, humane attempt at managing crime, even more so to do so quickly rather than taking baby steps towards it. As many have noted, we are not in a utopia; violent crime exists, and police do play a role in preventing it. As many have noted, police are absolutely a wild card in many, many other incidents that often lead to pointless and unnecessary violence and death. Nothing is going to simply solve the problem; it's more of a matter of where the pain points will be most prominent.
posted by delfin at 8:45 AM on August 13, 2023
We in suburbia witness the occasional extreme incidents in the news -- the likes of George Floyd, Philando Castile, people of color getting flat-out executed by police without posing even a remote threat to said officers. There is outrage. There is a demand for justice. But amongst suburbia, there is not a sustained demand for systemic change because these are viewed as the product of bad apples, poor judgment, isolated racist officers rather than a systemic problem. They don't see such prejudice in action every day in their community, certainly not in their household. The inner cities are often viewed as some kind of demilitarized zone, a wild west of drugs and crime, rather than a place where actual people live.
And, believe me, there are lots of 'moderate' politicians who will never get behind any kind of police reform in a million years, simply because all it takes is one violent incident and subsequent shrieks of "DEMOCRATS ARE SOFT ON CRIME!" for them to feel vulnerable.
There are many forms of policing. It is very difficult to replace a militarized, prejudiced, entrenched system with a more scientific, humane attempt at managing crime, even more so to do so quickly rather than taking baby steps towards it. As many have noted, we are not in a utopia; violent crime exists, and police do play a role in preventing it. As many have noted, police are absolutely a wild card in many, many other incidents that often lead to pointless and unnecessary violence and death. Nothing is going to simply solve the problem; it's more of a matter of where the pain points will be most prominent.
posted by delfin at 8:45 AM on August 13, 2023
it's funny to me that the neoliberal take on policing that Rockstar had when it came to Red Dead Redemption 2 - that the day of bandits and outlaws were finally over, that there does exist unnecessary violence begetting the existence of the likes of the Pinkertons and so on, that capitalism isn't the issue that causes desperation even though Dutch keeps saying we need money and everyone is dying due to the actions of Cornwall, that this is the universal opinion here on policing in an ostensibly left leaning political forum
wrt policing and trans people - I think it's fairly commonly cited that Stonewall was a riot about police brutality in queer spaces. a neoliberal take on this is that it's a cost-benefit equation - cops will keep me from being killed, yes, but also they perpetrate violence against trans folks, the quote in the article stating that "trans people are 3.7 times more likely to experience police violence and 7 times more likely to experience physical violence when interacting with police than cisgender victims and survivors."
wrt police immediately preventing a carjacking - that was a really stupid scary situation and I'm definitely happy you didn't get jacked. I also think that it's possible that things like property crime in the US is just inherently more violent because of how common gun ownership is (resulting in a step-up in violence by perps) and that it is more common in general because of our objectively horrible lack of social services, the existence of a massive school-to-prison pipeline, and criminal hardening against police violence (resulting in further step ups of violence to stay level)
I think there are probably peaceful and actually economically viable reasons why we should have affordable housing, basic income or at least just fucking food for people in poverty, and schools that aren't carceral and teach community-specific life skills instead of dedicating so much time and funding to teaching the insipid propaganda that is the 'US history' curriculum, for eg, and that all of this will greatly reduce the probability of crime ever needing to exist, that underground economies need to exist which allow the shuffling around of these goods
abolition, as the media says, has you thinking 'police gone.' that's not abolition, it is not simply 'police gone.' abolitionists like me do not proclaim simply 'police gone', slack jawed, glassy eyed, empty in the head, stupid as the day we were born. abolition is a suite of social services and community-driven organizing and development that is being proposed to counteract the desperation that brings with it violence in an inherently violent, individualistic society that arms itself to the teeth, it is a new way of existing cognizant of power dynamics and hiearchies often unacknowledged in our day-to-day, it is asking for an understanding that we are all in this, suffering together, and it is together that we can best find the solutions
perhaps it would be worth it to people to read about this other side of abolition, the side that this post is explicitly pointing towards as existing but is poorly covered. perhaps it would be worth it for people to develop an understanding of what abolition entails before pronouncing it a failure of a project because the police this one time didn't harm me and actually did their jobs, nevermind the survivors (or not) of police brutality and their stories of the escalations towards violence that's inherent in just about every interaction with the cops for BIPOC
- 8toabolition.com exists and is very digestible
- Alex Vitale's 'The End of Policing' is a meatier read but there's also a million interviews with him if you want the basic ideas
- Haymarket Books has an entire section devoted to it full of books of theory but also accessible, entry-level texts on it
- AK Press has a whole section too including A World Without Police
which inspired an ATL org which has its own
- accessible online Study Guide for Abolition which has just a ton of resources
posted by paimapi at 9:19 AM on August 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
wrt policing and trans people - I think it's fairly commonly cited that Stonewall was a riot about police brutality in queer spaces. a neoliberal take on this is that it's a cost-benefit equation - cops will keep me from being killed, yes, but also they perpetrate violence against trans folks, the quote in the article stating that "trans people are 3.7 times more likely to experience police violence and 7 times more likely to experience physical violence when interacting with police than cisgender victims and survivors."
wrt police immediately preventing a carjacking - that was a really stupid scary situation and I'm definitely happy you didn't get jacked. I also think that it's possible that things like property crime in the US is just inherently more violent because of how common gun ownership is (resulting in a step-up in violence by perps) and that it is more common in general because of our objectively horrible lack of social services, the existence of a massive school-to-prison pipeline, and criminal hardening against police violence (resulting in further step ups of violence to stay level)
I think there are probably peaceful and actually economically viable reasons why we should have affordable housing, basic income or at least just fucking food for people in poverty, and schools that aren't carceral and teach community-specific life skills instead of dedicating so much time and funding to teaching the insipid propaganda that is the 'US history' curriculum, for eg, and that all of this will greatly reduce the probability of crime ever needing to exist, that underground economies need to exist which allow the shuffling around of these goods
abolition, as the media says, has you thinking 'police gone.' that's not abolition, it is not simply 'police gone.' abolitionists like me do not proclaim simply 'police gone', slack jawed, glassy eyed, empty in the head, stupid as the day we were born. abolition is a suite of social services and community-driven organizing and development that is being proposed to counteract the desperation that brings with it violence in an inherently violent, individualistic society that arms itself to the teeth, it is a new way of existing cognizant of power dynamics and hiearchies often unacknowledged in our day-to-day, it is asking for an understanding that we are all in this, suffering together, and it is together that we can best find the solutions
perhaps it would be worth it to people to read about this other side of abolition, the side that this post is explicitly pointing towards as existing but is poorly covered. perhaps it would be worth it for people to develop an understanding of what abolition entails before pronouncing it a failure of a project because the police this one time didn't harm me and actually did their jobs, nevermind the survivors (or not) of police brutality and their stories of the escalations towards violence that's inherent in just about every interaction with the cops for BIPOC
- 8toabolition.com exists and is very digestible
- Alex Vitale's 'The End of Policing' is a meatier read but there's also a million interviews with him if you want the basic ideas
- Haymarket Books has an entire section devoted to it full of books of theory but also accessible, entry-level texts on it
- AK Press has a whole section too including A World Without Police
which inspired an ATL org which has its own
- accessible online Study Guide for Abolition which has just a ton of resources
posted by paimapi at 9:19 AM on August 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
« Older Choice of shoes on the deck of an almost 400 year... | Eric Adams's Administration of Bluster Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Boy, lemme tell ya, once you realize that's what (far too many) reporters do, you're going to start keeping track in every such story, and they're all like that. At best, it's skewed 3-1 just on people and far worse than that on column inches.
posted by Etrigan at 3:43 PM on August 11, 2023 [29 favorites]