Abolish the Police

And, you know, the real inflection point in our polling was the Lafayette Park incident,

I'm sure this is largely true, but #bunkerboy was what, two days earlier? The White House with all the lights out, and Trump testily estimating exactly how long he'd been down in the White House bunker. It was incredibly reminiscent of the 'GWB peers down at Katrina from Air Force 1' moment - a crystalization of weakness and fright in one image that GWB never recovered from. I feel like Lafayette Square was possibly - probably? - an attempt to wrest back the narrative of strong leadership that he could already feel slipping away.

Glad Democrats pushed so hard for a “Department if Homeland Security”

It was a Republican proposal from the first and they were all on board. All the Dems had to do was contribute enough votes to acquiesce to it, which votes were easy enough to find in the immediate post-9/11 period.

Not quite the right thread, but this story speaks to so much of why abolition seems like the sanest response to the irredeemably racist & ableist carceral regime, ruled over by cruelly punitive bigots who adhere to 19th-c. moral psychology ("incorrigibility" as an official term ffs). Every detail is enraging: https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention

Why do now, what can you promise to do a year from now and then hope people forget what you had promised a year ago... https://t.co/fVonuLX44t

— Jeffrey St. Clair (@JSCCounterPunch) July 19, 2020

maybe they'd rather do it when there's a possibility for a democratic senate + president or is that too obvious

And maybe that possibility (because it is most certainly in no way a guarantee right now) would be greater if they'd get off their asses and start working on it now, while their constituents are being shot, beaten, tear gassed, and kidnapped in unmarked vehicles nationwide, desperate for any modicum of support politically, legislative, or otherwise?? Or is that too obvious? It's not like they've ever passed any serious legislation that's made any actual headway into honestly "reforming" the police in the history of their party, regardless of past control of the house/senate/presidency.

And besides, if they're going to indefinitely waffle around and put off any attempts at simply mere police "reform" (which we know is a fruitless and misguided endeavor to begin with)... then they're never going to get to the conversation and position they should already be at, which is outright defunding and abolition.

or is that too obvious

yeah so obvious i factored that in, Harpo, along w/ Dem leadership being shitburgers

Good profile, which was linked on the I may destroy you thread, and relevant to Abolish args.

https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/sarah-schulman-conflict-is-not-abuse.html

Interesting article. The case that book seems to be making seems strange to me, though

I'm intrigued as to how many schools in teh UK have a police presence. It surprised me when i heard taht Scotland had an equivalent to the SRO pretty widespread in its school system. & that came in as part of what was supposed to be a more widespread attempt to redress teh balance of poverty in the schools but appears to have been easiest to add a function to an existing force than to do anything more direction of fit, fit to purpose.

So is there a police officer in a similar role elsewhere in the UK.

the premise of the book seems pretty straightforward to me

I tuned out during the victim-blaming

have you never been a victim and lashed out in ways you wish you hadn't or would ha be e handled differently in retrospect

maybe not the thread for this subject tho

That is hideous, unreadable, and presumably all wrong https://t.co/YOivOzrknM

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) August 4, 2020

I didn't realize "BORK THE BLUB" was an urgent message, but hey.

https://www.seriouseats.com/images/20090102-swedishchef.jpg

no no no it clearly says "BOCK THE BLUP"

idk how closely this particular fascist monument is being guarded but in theory it would be very easy to make an f word

how many schools in teh UK have a police presence

idk if or how often there’s a permanent physical presence inside the school (certainly outside, with the school’s blessing, often enough) but schools/colleges/universities do work w police & use that relationship to discipline or disappear certain types of kids and/or their families- so there is pretty much always a kind of police presence. but it’s so specifically targeted that most ppl don’t notice or care

Swedish chef post got me cackling

I’ve seen multiple liberal Americans citing UK cops as a positive example for the US to aspire to. fuck that

Correction: Manchester Evening News has asked us to point out the violent restraint used by GMP officers involved repeatedly using a knee to strike him in the head, rather than kneeling on his head. This distinction is apparently important to understanding his subsequent death

— Netpol (@netpol) August 26, 2020

compared to the Labour Party at least the Democrats seem to feel compelled to pretend to give a shit

thread title remains a better slogan/position than “defund” btw. it still means exactly what it sounds like

"compared to the Labour Party at least the Democrats seem to feel compelled to pretend to give a shit"

The protests are bigger in number and ongoing. It's not a comparison that can be reliably made.

I was careful not to suggest the democrats *actually* give a shit, out of the goodness of their hearts or whatever

the difference is those most targeted by the police are still considered marginal enough to be written off entirely by the UK workers party, who have been keen to disavow even the emptiest gestures they were briefly pressured into making a while back

“I feel like my prison experience of artmaking in prison, and the hurdles that come with it—my fears and hopes and goals . . . all of me—finally I’m not alone in it and can see that there are so many others like me. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted, like I don’t have to keep trying to convince people what this whole experience is.”

https://www.artforum.com/print/202007/nicole-r-fleetwood-in-conversation-with-rachel-kushner-83681

i am going to that show on opening day and buying that book. pretty excited about it.

was just reading that article last night. i would love to see that show

re: upthread discussion of DV https://gothamist.com/news/after-six-months-rikers-nurse-stands-accused-murder-case-she-says-was-self-defense
every day i wish there was even a tenth as much said about prosecutors in this discussion as police. but now the "progressive prosecutors" are on twitter talking about police reform (at least the one in my city is) while their line attorneys argue to keep people like this in jail. the "violence on both sides" argument is garbage and they know it.

prosecutors are police. i don’t know why (apart from electoral cynicism) some people seemed to react to the statement that [person now professionally involved in pretending to oppose trump’s police state] is a cop like it was an absurd insult or hyperbole rather than a literal description. there are way more cops than the ones on the street

they literally are. if they're not being police they are covering up for them. also they marry cops ALL the time.

oh also if you click the “was drunk” link in that article it goes to another article where they talked to the building super and he had seen the guy drunkenly trying to get into the building and wouldn’t let him in because only she was on the lease, not him. so they know this and are just maliciously keeping this woman locked up because she was a traveling nurse six years ago. traveling means you come home!

Left and harbl, glad at least some of us are on the same page re: prosecutors. Felt like I was going absolutely bananas watching people defend *politician* as not being a cop when it is so obvious that she is!

but if we abolish the police, armed militia members will have free reign to do whatever they want: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/austin-police-release-boogalo-bois-minneapolis-precinct.html?via=taps_top

Conservative rhetoric turns out to be projection again. Although I'm still a little unclear about that story. Are they saying the buggalo bro started the fire, or just that he was there?

NYPD officers in Flatbush were allegedly saying “Trump 2020” over and over again on their patrol car’s speaker tonight.

They stopped when someone started filming but couldn’t resist one more — in violation of the NYPD’s policy against endorsing candidates on duty. pic.twitter.com/BJMv4UCvnd

— talia ‘stop filming faces’ jane (@itsa_talia) October 25, 2020

NYPD officers in Flatbush were allegedly saying “Trump 2020” over and over again on their patrol car’s speaker tonight.

They stopped when someone started filming but couldn’t resist one more — in violation of the NYPD’s policy against endorsing candidates on duty. pic.twitter.com/BJMv4UCvnd

— talia ‘stop filming faces’ jane (@itsa_talia) October 25, 2020

whoops that second one was supposed to be a different clip

anyway, yeah

In my neighborhood:

https://www.inquirer.com/news/west-philadelphia-police-shooting-locust-20201026.html

fuck em

Disturbing video. Mere blocks from where the MOVE bombing occurred, too.

These fucks have been running a helicopter in circles around the neighborhood all night. Hardly slept. Kept thinking of the way this man's mother screamed and walked to her son's body in the middle of the street.

The FOP put out a statement that said they were thinking of the officers and their families. They shot a man ten times, when he was in mental health crisis, in front of his mother. On the block he grew up on.

These ratfucking SOBs are waging war on all fronts against the population they are ostensibly supposed to serve. They all need to go.

otm

Fuck em all

fuck, that's a hard story. sounds like a terrible fucking night all around, i'm sorry table.

The sound his mother makes after the shooting is over will haunt me for the rest of my life. (Normally don't watch videos, stumbled upon it trying to figure out what the fuck was going on last night).

there’s so much in this @NewYorker
story abt the vise grip the police of Vallejo have on the city and its politics, but *this*? No words. https://t.co/XYnVike5Ht pic.twitter.com/2JuJcR40JE

— G.D. (@GeeDee215) November 17, 2020

Vallejo PD is disgusting.

All PDs are disgusting

i couldn't find an easy tick/check gif but fuck yes

✅

APDAD