https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997...
Sitting member of Congress: "We can’t reform this."
https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/13817027443...
Activist with 475k followers whose name is currently: "DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE"
https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome
Ben & Jerrys: "This system can’t be reformed."
https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1381743962558504969
When activists say they want to abolish the police, they “100%” mean they want no more police, Noor says.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte...
NYT op ed: "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.
"to stop providing money or as much money to pay for something"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/aboli...
"to put an end to something, such as an organization, rule, or custom"
Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib are police abolitionists. They're also quite unusual in Congress in this position.
"Defund the police" and "abolish the police" aren't the same thing. That's the point.
Also, within activist circles, the most radical interpretation always wins. You're on HN and so you claim you want to "divert resources" but within "ACAB circles," the winning argument is always the most radical (prison abolition, prison = slavery, police are modern slave catchers, violence against police is justified). This pull to the extremes is what disturbs me about radical movements. It's possible that these movements have a positive effect when they interact with moderates and some kind of compromise is struck but the movements themselves are quite scary.
"Defund the Police" is very easy to interpret as "abolish" or "practically abolish". Which means it's very easy to twist even the less extreme politicians' and activists' meaning toward that end. This sets them up for abuse from their opposition who then cost them possible supporters.
The fact is, many people on the right wouldn't mind if police were a little less of a daily presence in their lives. They also have family members and friends with mental health issues and don't want to see them (or their caregivers) shot in the street because the first response is the armed police instead of medical or social services. They also don't want a gas cannister shot into their infant or toddler's bed.
But a phrase like "Defund the Police" is so easily turned to use the meaning of the most extreme speakers, who really do mean something closer to "Abolish the Police" than "Redistribute funds from the police to deal with the causes of societal issues instead of (just) the results". Once that's done, you've essentially lost and the more moderate voices who mean the latter and not the former get discredited in many people's view. They're saying one thing with, to those individuals at least, a very clear meaning which is at odds with what the moderates claim they mean.
There is always a risk that people chanting "defund the police" mean they want to, simply and literally, defund the police. If they want something different they should be chanting that instead.
I think there's an easy way to figure out what people mean when they chant a slogan. Talk to them.
"In my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words"
Well, even if your experience is correct, so what? Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies, including what the current police would turn into, is still removing 100% of the funds from the existing organization and redirecting them. No one is arguing to remove that funding and then setting that money on fire.
They'll all have different opinions on what, in the detail, the phrase means. Large political crowds generally can't handle complex ideas.
That is why the slogan matters, it is the bit that coordinates what the goal is.
> Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies...
There are a few options. Major ones include:
1) This project is renaming the police.
2) This project is changing what they do.
It probably isn't going to be 1, because then it wouldn't be worth the fuss. So the question is, which responsibilities of the police are we jettisoning here? Because the slogan suggests all of them. "Better funding for mental health" uses quite different syllables from "defund the police".
I'm sure there are people with some great ideas in the crowd. But the ones in charge might be the people who believe, literally, that the point here is to defund everything the police do. There is a real risk people mean what they say.
The truth is: clarity require lots of words, and that makes a terrible slogan. Most people react stronger to a slogan than a nuanced discussion, so the messy slogans will remain.
It is dishonest to say you've "demonstrated" that anything happened "regularly."
And it is dishonest to conflate the entirety of the time elapsed - it's indisputably clear who has the better historical reputation.
And it is dishonest to suggest that a false allegation of X is moral justification to begin doing X.
https://time.com/5099513/martin-luther-king-day-myths/
> In the 1960s, the vast majority of white people, South and North, disapproved of the movement’s tactics. In a May 1961 Gallup survey, only 22% of Americans approved of what the Freedom Riders were doing, and 57% of Americans said that the “sit-ins at lunch counters, freedom buses, and other demonstrations by Negroes were hurting the Negro’s chances of being integrated in the South.” Just before the March on Washington, Gallup found only 23% of Americans had favorable opinions of the proposed civil rights demonstration.
> Lest we see this as Southerners skewing the national sample, in 1964—a year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act—a New York Times poll found a majority (57%) of New Yorkers said the civil rights movement had gone too far. “While denying any deep-seated prejudice,” the Times reported, “a large number of those questioned used the same terms to express their feelings. They spoke of Negroes’ receiving ‘everything on a silver platter’ and ‘reverse discrimination’ against whites.” Fifty-four percent of those surveyed felt the movement was going “too fast.” Nearly half said that picketing and demonstrations hurt the Negro cause, and 80% opposed school pairings to promote school desegregation in New York City public schools.
"You're being divisive!" has long been the cry of the status quo. The arguments made against BLM and Defund - including the "it's communism!" stuff; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Little_R... - are very, very familiar.
Just because a complaint has been heard before doesn’t mean it’s wrong, indeed it could just as easily mean it’s being said again because it is valid.
Dismissing people who have a valid criticism as ‘the status quo’ to be ignored, is by definition divisive.
It is the literal opposite of inclusive behavior.
I'm not inclined to assume "BLM is communism!" as valid criticism. Bad faith actors work really hard to derail conversations about racism and police reform; at a certain point, you have to dismiss the same age-old arguments that've been made and debunked at every step along the way.
See also: All the anti-miscegenation arguments that turned into anti-gay marriage arguments that turned into anti-trans ones, with basically just a find/replace for the term used.
Returning to the point at hand, I believe I've sufficiently demonstrated that MLK's sterling reputation is a more recent phenomenon, and at the time of his actual actions he was being treated and discussed similarly to how many activists are today.
When he was murdered, he had a disapproval rating of 75% [1]. People accused him of being a communist. The FBI literally attempted to blackmail him into committing suicide [2].
The widespread admiration for him over the past few decades is a result of the shameless whitewashing of his legacy. In that regard, Malcolm X was far more successful — his image has not been co-opted by people to oppose the very ideals for which he fought.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/04/04/martin-lut...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
That is due to a change that was made in the last year. [1]. Historically, that dictionary has defined defund as "to stop providing the money to pay for something". The change to the Cambridge dictionary entry was made recently in response to the "defund the police" discussions, so we can't use the newly changed meaning as always having meant to "divert some money".
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/2020*/dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/defundThey've obviously written the definition in light of US political events. Pretty weird. It doesn't make sense to define words in context of current political events, they are supposed to have more staying power than that.
I would prefer language meaning to be more static, it irritates me to hear people using "literally" to mean "really" but we must accept change. It's easier to put on shoes than to carpet the whole world.
Science-based activism typically does have a tactic of discussing within “committees” called peer-reviewed journals that which is considered the consensus and that which is not for that journal’s “community”.
Second, it still makes no sense. I am a very strong supporter of violence intervention, mental health services, restorative justice, etc.
But police are and poorly trained. Defunding them will lead to more problems.
We need to fund police training, and create alternative services.
The ‘defund the police’ mantra is clearly just a polite version of FTP.
I don't know what community you refer to, since many people who I've seen call for defunding of the police want the police abolished.
If the community wants more support from outside themselves, pick a better slogan