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I'm totally on board with that plan (it would be nice if there were someone I could call to check on a possibly-suicidal friend who wouldn't show up with guns d
by anchpop 6y ago
I'm totally on board with that plan (it would be nice if there were someone I could call to check on a possibly-suicidal friend who wouldn't show up with guns drawn). Americans are four times more likely to be killed by cops than Canadians, and 1 in 1000 young black men is killed by a cop (or some number along those lines). Clearly something should change.
My question is, why call it "defund the police"? The core of the idea is that, in many cases we can change our response from involving police officers to involving some other group who will hopefully be able to do a better job. The fact that this can be accomplished by reallocating funds from the police department, to avoid needing to levy taxes to raise revenue, seems like almost the least important part of the plan. Even then, "defund the police" is only the first half of "defund the police and use the additional funding to create another group that picks up some of the police's responsibilities".
My feeling is that many people view police with antipathy, so they like the slogan and concept of "defund the police" because it feels like a retaliation against the police. I strongly suspect that other ideas, some of which may be much more beneficial than changing the response, will be ignored if they can't be phrased as a tactical strike in the culture war.
Here's one list of proposals [0] for police reform, many of which seem very promising for how little cultural sway they have (delegalize police unions, abolish QI, decriminalize victimless offenses, etc.) I wonder if they have so little sway because they can't be phrased in a sufficiently incendiary manner.
(And by the way, just because there's antipathy towards the police doesn't mean the police are directly at fault. For instance, if police are made to enforce unpopular legislation like the war on drugs, that will obviously make people dislike them but the root problem is somewhat upstream)
[0]: https://medium.com/@yudkowsky/a-comprehensive-reboot-of-law-enforcement-b76bfab850a3 https://medium.com/@yudkowsky/a-comprehensive-reboot-of-law-...
- novok 6y agoI don't know if the the more reasonable but equivalent slogans got replaced by the more spicy ones in some sort of meme survival of the fittest, or if it's a trend of today's social movements to use divisive or easy to misunderstand slogans on purpose. Ex: "Black lives matter too" vs "black lives matter". or "replace / reboot the police" vs "defund the police". The police one I'm having a hard time thinking of a slogan that would be better, maybe that's why it stuck.
- jancsika 6y ago> "Black lives matter too" vs "black lives matter" time travels back to a nearby counter-protest, yells: "All Lives Matter, Always." time travels back to the future And now you're back to square one.
- GhostVII 6y ago> 1 in 1000 young black men is killed by a cop Given that ~300 black men are killed by police each year, I don't think that math checks out. Agree with police reform, although we probably need more funding in many places, not less.
- ceejayoz 6y ago300/year * an average lifespan of 78 years = 23400. Multiply that by 1,000 and you get 23M. There are 38M Black and African Americans in the USA, approximately half of which are male. The math checks out fine.
- GhostVII 6y agoYea that makes sense, surprising to me that it works out
- torstenvl 6y agoIt doesn't work out. A 78 year old is not a "young black man."
- ceejayoz 6y agoI would suspect the ages of people shot by police are weighted fairly heavily in the younger category. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 > Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.
- torstenvl 6y ago300/19740000 = 0.0000152 → 0.999984802431611 chance of not-being-killed-by-police per year. pow(0.999984802431611, 69) = 0.998951909443727 chance of never being killed by police. → 0.001048090556273 chance of at some point being killed by police → just over 1/1000 over a lifetime. The math checks out... if we ignore the "young" part.
- moron4hire 6y ago> Americans are four times more likely to be killed by cops than Canadians I didn't know death by Canadian was something we tracked specifically :P
- roel_v 6y agoIt's an overarching term for people OD'ing on maple syrup and those being trampled by moose.
- tstrimple 6y agoBecause left wing rhetoric comes from grass roots ground up sort of activism. Right wing rhetoric is much smoother because they have full marketing teams and PR backing them. One is organic. One is designed. Organic movements are messy. Carefully designed messages are nice and succinct. One example of right wing consolidation around their designed messaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
- YarickR2 6y agoSo, how do you like right wing rhetoric in Capitol ? Messy ? Organic ?)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kaens 6y agoyou call it defund the police because they are disproportionately overfunded.
- pseudalopex 6y ago8 Can't Wait caught on. It isn't incendiary. It does fit on a protest sign.