What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

meat too

"these people were always going to vote for trump. they are conservatives, fuck these people, leave them behind forever imo"

Idk I think that 70% stat and similar ones you see when you slowly explain liberal policy proposals using words no longer than 6 letters indicate that many of these ppl are open to the ideas but the messaging has failed. When i hear about "defund the police" or whatever I, yknow, read up on it. THESE PEOPLE DO NOT READ. (Facebook doesn't count.)

The people who most love the policy of defunding the police, also love the slogan. if you point out the vulnerability of the slogan to distortion by your opponents, then you obviously hate the policy, or you don't sufficiently love the slogan, which we all must agree is excellent no matter what anyone says about it.

tbf, I think it is a powerful slogan for motivating a particular segment of the voting population who have an immediate, intrinsic understanding of what it means in terms of bettering their lives. so, it's great for organizing in over-policed communities. I think it is much less useful in wider general elections, where the decisive majority of voters do not suffer from over-policing. Those middle class communities would be more receptive to a message that they are over-funding the police for too little benefit in return. It's a small change in emphasis, but in the tiny confines of a slogan, every change of emphasis is huge.

"Shrink bloated police budgets" maybe? Then you immediately open the conversation on the subject of why the budgets are bloated and make the police defend their budgets against that charge.

wait until these people find out that "defund" *is* the compromise, and many people prefer abolition

j/k mostly

C -, for that xgau tweet

haha

when you start babies on solid food, you don't make them chew

I have previously shared on ILX the story of my husband working to sign people up for the ACA in a red county in California. The number of people who didn't realize they were participating in the ACA already or didn't realize that Obamacare and the ACA were the same thing was shocking to him.

While certainly evidence of the utter stupidity of our population, it is also evidence that conservatives branding the ACA as Obamacare did a great deal to dissuade people who might have otherwise used it because they were racist.

Many people think the police deserve less funding and money, and quite a few of these people might actually be conservative! But the right has done a great job of portraying a common sense policy initiative with the taint of Black Marxism, so to speak, and while I hesitate to engage with such shenanigans, rethinking the phrase might actually be a good idea if we want to see fewer murders at the hands of pigs in this country, as well as more resources going to services that need funding...

And I mean, I fucking hate cops. I really do think rethinking it is a good idea.

How about 'Terrorize the police'?

That's the quiet part you don't say loudly.

I feel like "demilitarize the police" is a good baby step on the path to abolition for those wishy washy folks

Trolling aside, 'Demilitarize the police' has a better ring to it imo.

xp

In tandem with 'Defund the military'.

To be honest, might be as simple as switching it to a more positive verb.

ppl certainly not acting in good faith when they pretend their objection is not only about the phrase more than the sentiment, but about *other people’s* potential response to the phrase, and certainly nothing to do with their own interests. serious case of pundit brain

Defund the police sounds like a whole lot of people losing their jobs.

good

demilitarize the police seems to not imply disarmament, which should also be one of the compromises, if we must continue to have police (imo we musn't)

Well I mean we don't need to imagine other people's "potential" reactions when we have their actual reactions to go on

but that’s not what it is!

ppl certainly not acting in good faith

Left, I'm certain that you are very certain about other ppl's bad faith.

Fund Our Future (with money taken from police budgets)

also police militarization seems like a relatively recent phenomenon. whereas police brutality is extremely not new

Seems like BLM and DTP are both slogans designed more to create an in-group than a coalition.

I disagree in the case of BLM.

DTP sounds radical. It IS radical. The Left continually swings for the fences and then wonders why they strike out. Start with smaller goals. Like table said, might result in fewer police murders if a temporary compromise is baked into the messaging.

People who are pro-abolition trying to figure out ways to get further toward the goal by switching messaging isn't bad faith. It's being fucking practical because people are dying and communities are suffering.

I have two ACAB tattoos, have been arrested numerous times, and fucking hate the police, and I think it's a good idea to try alternate approaches.

To be honest, might be as simple as switching it to a more positive verb.

Empower the Police! Remove domestic disputes, mental health calls, non-lethal confrontations, etc from their list of responsibilities so they can focus their training on detective work. (This involves reallocating their budgets to fund the agencies more suited to dealing with these tasks and removing those call responsibilities from the police, empowering them to focus on their core function)

obv needs workshopping but this is the general idea, cast taking money away from the police as a good thing for the police

I would accept “legalize crime!”

I don't want to re-litigate BLM because I think it has finally become well-understood, but it feels like it took so much work just to get people to understand the slogan, and I'm not sure what the point of all that work was.

this is all so bleak

Lots of countries have very low amount of police murders while having an extensive police force. There’s a bit of exceptionalism in the american left when they refuse to learn from other existing and successful models and go for their own radical situations, bit of the same with the landlord/housing debate. On the other hand, I can’t help but think how permantly baked racism is in the police force and it might be true that it is helpless. I don’t know!

djp otm in that the idea that drew me further toward abolition was thinking about how many jobs the cops have that they aren't qualified for and suck at

Police hate the cities they work in and see themselves as at war with the populations they police. If there are models for denazifying the police let us know.

Yep. And the number of teens and young adults with criminal records, needlessly, because a cop intervened during a mental health crisis.

this is all so bleak

― a nice person (Left), Wednesday, November 11, 2020 2:15 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not to be snide, but read the room.

Yeah VHS, tbh you have no idea what you're talking about as regards police in the US. Best to bow out.

A lot of the problems with the police are the result of a whole bunch of essential nets being defunded than the cops receiving funds in the first place.

a lot of the problems with the police are older than you're suggesting

Left (& others), do you think it's ok to scheme in order to achieve your political aims in the face of unreasonable resistance or does the winning strategy consist of figuring out what's right and meet a priori then unambiguously subscribing to its terms until they become a reality?

for the record I am good with "demilitarize the police" and think it has good optics

A lot of the problems with the police are the result of a whole bunch of essential nets being defunded than the cops receiving funds in the first place.

― Van Horn Street

you realize those two things are directly related, right? Do I really have to post graphs of the grossly disproportionate budgets?

All I'm saying is that standing on it's own 'defunding the policing' is basically an austerity measure that will create more poverty, unless you have somewhere clear in the message that it is first and foremost a transfer of police funds towards better forms of care and institutions, which has discussed right now, is not always evident outside of some circles. That lack of evidence ensure that the message runs a risk of being confused.

lmao the police aren’t poor

They can get a real job

“Austerity measure”, the gall.

lol how the fuck is that going to create more poverty? just one of the nearly immediate benefits would be breaking the cycle of court and ticket costs spiraling out of control for low income folks