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I don’t understand the point of this survey. They could have also asked whether people think water is wet or not. The debate here is not about police presence,
by dmode 6y ago
I don’t understand the point of this survey. They could have also asked whether people think water is wet or not. The debate here is not about police presence, but (1) what type of presence and (2) what the alternatives are. Absence an alternative, of course people will say they want the same police presence. I would be curious to see if the question is framed along the lines of “Do you want 10% of police budget be spend on mental health” or “Do you want 15% of police budget on rehabilitation and integration”, on housing, on schools etc. That will tell is what the trade offs are and what people feel about those trade-offs
- weswpg 6y agothis wouldn't happen if it weren't for the slogan "abolish the police" proponents need to accept that it's just bad framing
- bshoemaker 6y agoThe slogan is defund. I.e. reduce
- brendoelfrendo 6y agoPerhaps the "defund" is so entrenched in the conservative playbook as meaning "eliminate by starving of operating capital" that using "defund" to mean "free up capital to be re-prioritized to other social causes" simply seems nonintuitive or alien to them.
- weswpg 6y agoalso, the dictionary definition of 'defund' means "to withdraw funding from" if you wanted to campaign on partially defunding the police, then you'd get a different reaction. i'm not aware of any previous major political movements which used the slogan 'defund X' to mean 'partially reduce funding to, but continue to support sufficiently to ensure proper functioning of X" so if (a) defund doesn't imply "partially reduce funding" and (b) the word defund has not historically been used that way and (c) plenty of activists say "literally abolish the police" [1] then if people are failing to interpret it the way you'd like, the burden is on proponents to have a better slogan to communicate their message [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
- weswpg 6y agoif you're unaware of the slogan "abolish the police", you haven't been following all that closely. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
- dmode 6y agoNever heard the slogan. The popular slogan is “defund the police” and is already been applied in the sense that some funding is being redirected to other services. SF has a police budget of $750mn and I think they are redirecting $40 mn to unarmed response to non violent mental health issues. Which is great IMO
- dgellow 6y agoNew York Times: “Yes, we mean literally abolish the police”. That’s the title. Implying there is an associated slogan, and that part of people saying it are serious. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...