> It means to abolish the police by removing funding.
No, as someone actually in the “abolish/disband” camp, I can confidently say it is a different (and smaller) segment of the movement than the “defund” camp (and even for the vast of the “abolish” camp, it doesn’t mean to eliminate the law enforcement, including armed response, functions served by the police from local government but to disband the existent monolithic centralized local paramilitary law enforcement agencies and reorganize local community services with law enforcement as an organizationally decentralized function distributed throughout local government.)
Of course, those of us who are in the abolish/disband camp tend to see the “defund” camp (who want to divert resources and some functions to other local service organizations and not make the police responsible for as much) as a better-than-nothing compromise position that can break the vicious “reform” cycle where every police problem that rises to the level where it is accepted than something needs to be done leads to more funding being dumped into police coffers at the expense of other agencies, necessitating an expanded police role, and leading to even more police problems.
I disagree with your views, but I appreciate your brief clear expression and the confirmation that your viewpoint does actually exist. This is the sort of thing I would like to see more of.
The “defund" people mostly don’t tend to deny that the “abolish” camp exists, they mostly just tend get upset when people mistake (honestly, or even moreso when it is clearly for rhetorical convenience) them for us. Both camps recognize that, in terms of persuasion, the “abolish” camp has a harder task.
My experience (which can also be seen here in this thread) is usually that someone will come out vocally opposing the idea that "defund" and "abolish" mean what they say. The person doing this doesn't really seem to hold either one of these beliefs to the extent that they actually want specific actions or could break down what it means, but they vaguely defend parts of it and brush off other parts (like 'actually abolish') as not real and only held by extremists.
This is frustrating because one gets into a debate where the other side doesn't really hold a set of beliefs and it ends up being an inaccurate discussion of what the movement wants instead of about what should actually be done.
Which leads to my conclusion that the vast majority of people don't really have any specific thoughts on what they want to happen but a vague attachment to a slogan and a dubious explanation of what the people with actual ideas want. This is why I appreciate your viewpoint in that you actually have one and haven't steered into pointless quibbling about who wants what or if ideas even exist in a movement.
A followup question for you which might help me understand what you really want to happen:
I was the target of a road rage attack this week. A broken window and minor damage and inconvenience to myself in the process. From the law enforcement environment (or whatever you choose to call it) you would find ideal, what does the response look like?
The thing that I find so frustrating about this is that I agree with like 80-90% of what this person is arguing for, but it seems ridiculous to me to present this as "abolish the police", and to think that if we did all the things proposed, we could abolish the police.
As some examples of things I agree with: I think prison should be used much more rarely. It is a terrible thing to imprison someone, and should only be done if someone is an immediate danger to others. Otherwise other punishments should be used. We should also dramatically improve conditions in prisons. But there will still be prisons.
I think crime would greatly go down if there was less inequality and more investment in marginalized groups of people, and if systems that oppress people like policing were fixed. But I think there will ~always be crime, and always be police.
I think the latter involves things that would be largely popular with people. The former is a tougher sell, but I think things are slowly moving in that direction. I'm not convinced calling these proposals "abolishing the police" is actually helping that cause.
That is a very straw manned interpretation of the phrase. I don't particularly love the phrase myself but this is a dishonest interpretation. Of course a few people probably believe that but it's a giant movement and the large majority do not seem to think that way at all... Maybe take more opinions than a couple op eds.
Have you even spoken to anyone or gone to an event? I live in a city with a lot of demonstrations and you quickly learn that isn't the phrases intent or ideology for nearly everyone except extreme outliers and agitators.
You keep jumping to singular examples when I just explained yes, you can find extreme outliers, but you are ignoring the large majority of people and their intent. And you keep pointing to op eds and sensationalized news stories OF COURSE those will find the extremes and put them on a pedestal.
Look a little deeper and actually go to an event or talk to some real people and you find out what real people believe, I promise you the phrase doesn't mean no police anymore for most people in most places. YES it's a massive movement with outliers.. the two things can and do exist at the same time, lumping them all together or saying it's an even distribution is either intellectually lazy or dishonest
Pick a slogan with an obvious interpretation, tell everyone it isn't what you mean, tell everyone that the only people that really mean it are outliers, continue to push it hoping it really comes true.
A protest march and slogan graffiti aren't invitations to come converse, they are statements. Most of the people I meet might have vague sympathies for these messages but don't participate and obviously don't have those views.
When I see people shouting at each other in the street (in my own experience), chanting on megaphones, businesses boarding up their windows, and people piling trash on the street to keep police and others away... it isn't exactly an invitation to come see what people are about.
It's especially manipulative doublespeak. Say one thing, mean another, and demean anybody who dares to take your message at face value.
I'm judging people with what I see. I see the actual movement with either vague messages that are hard to interpret as not extreme and specific messages that are impossible to interpret any other way. The only people I see trying to have the "reasonable" message are folks online acting as apologists for the protests trying to defend what they "actually" mean with nothing to back up their claims.
The protest nearest to me and most recent for a couple of days had "DEATH TO US MARSHALLS" tagged on the boarded up window of a nearby business. You'll excuse me for not wanting to approach people still demonstrating in the presence of messaging like that.
Ok sure complain about the phrase if you want I get that, whatever it just feels like an odd complaint given the situation. It's kind of hard to organize a giant movement and this is what you get.
Yes it's a muddled mix but two things jump out quickly. One you're not going to get attention marching with notepads and whispering. And two they don't need to cater their message to anyone's ideas but their own you are asking a totally different generation to appeal to another. Yes it might be a better political idea, but this is a young emotional movement. I don't know how people can expect a sophisticated perfect message and a completely unified front... It's just not realistic
I'm not saying you have to go to demonstrations if you dont want to, but if you want to find out the truth though you probably should it is worlds away from what you are describing you just said your only experience is through news and online forums. Yes there will be some messaging like that. Obviously I don't agree with that, or lots of other ideas and sentiments, but I still listen to everything they have to say. There will be a few extremes and colorful language but do all those folks really want to kill marshalls? Highly doubt it. Again it's getting attention and people are pissed off... These are young activists not campaign managers
There is a large protest movement that is doing a terrible job achieving its goals, if its goals are to actually effect change.
It's not on me or anyone to go decypher what a movement is trying to be. Yes, messaging is hard, but if you're a movement without a message, all you are is a bunch of angry people in the street occasionally causing riots.
If you're hanging around in a protest where folks are advocating killing federal marshals (protestors can't always spell very well) you aren't exactly... not endorsing that message.
You're getting down to my point.
I've generally been opposed to recent protest movements. I think they have done a lot of harm (property damage, human lives, destruction of community resources) and very little good (confused message, no clear goals, encouraging extreme hostile views and actions).
The protests have served as a venue for people do demonstrate their virtue and a mechanism for increasing divisiveness and ultimately have done considerable harm to achieving any of the goals they might conceivably want if someone thoughtful was taking charge.
"We don't have anything to say but we're going to talk loudly anyway and expect other people with more sense to solve our problems for us" isn't a great message for a protest movement. You can't elect the right people if you don't know what you want. You can't change hearts and minds if you haven't figured it out for yourself first. And most importantly, if you have a bad message or no message and you're perfectly happy to associate yourself with the people who do have violent, destructive messaging, intent, and actions... the people who might be on the fence to support your cause are going to become your opponents... not just opponents of the extremes you tolerate, but opponents of everything you're choosing to associate with those extremes.
It is very odd to call it gaslighting when it's a giant movement, attributing something like that to a young group of people with a wide ranging message looks very odd and because you don't look below the surface at all you have no understanding of the deeper meanings or you choose to ignore them. And it is very odd to expect a group of young activists to have a perfectly crafted message for you to understand... you're not realistic at all
"It's not on me or anyone to go decypher what a movement is trying to be. Yes, messaging is hard, but if you're a movement without a message, all you are is a bunch of angry people in the street occasionally causing riots.
If you're hanging around in a protest where folks are advocating killing federal marshals (protestors can't always spell very well) you aren't exactly... not endorsing that message"
This is a truly bizarre perspective to have... you're saying that someone is basically endorsing everything at a demonstration when all they are doing is listening to what is going on... THE DEFINITION OF HAVING AN OPEN MIND you think is a bad position to take... You sound very close minded and you mix rioters and demonstrators with another wave of your hand, yikes! Try going out into your community with an open mind. I'm not saying I would run up beside a banner that says that and be all buddy buddy, because thats a crazy statement, but it would behoove you to not just lump in an entire legitimate movement with one crazy person, because also like I said there's no way those people actually advocate killing people... thats so obvious!!! You found one crazy person or someone looking to stir shit up that's all.
You seem to have a really skewed perspective of this and on top of that are resorting to childish arguments like spelling errors... get real you don't know anything about me or most of these protestors (I won a spelling bee bitch but go ahead flex some more). I said I went to one demonstration and you have a slew of ideas and prejudgments.
Black lives matter doesn't have leaders. ANyone claiming to be is a charlatan. It doesn't matter what this person said, most BLM supporters and defund the police supporters don't want to abolish the police.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...