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The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. It's only recently that "defund" has been conf

The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. It's only recently that "defund" has been conflated with "abolish," which has always been a very very small niche of the police reform community.

roenxi 5y ago
Is there a consensus committee that announces what 'the community' thinks? Because in my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words. There is always a risk that people chanting "defund the police" mean they want to, simply and literally, defund the police. If they want something different they should be chanting that instead.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  "There is always a risk" I think there's an easy way to figure out what people mean when they chant a slogan. Talk to them. "In my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words" Well, even if your experience is correct, so what? Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies, including what the current police would turn into, is still removing 100% of the funds from the existing organization and redirecting them. No one is arguing to remove that funding and then setting that money on fire.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > Talk to them. They'll all have different opinions on what, in the detail, the phrase means. Large political crowds generally can't handle complex ideas. That is why the slogan matters, it is the bit that coordinates what the goal is. > Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies... There are a few options. Major ones include: 1) This project is renaming the police. 2) This project is changing what they do. It probably isn't going to be 1, because then it wouldn't be worth the fuss. So the question is, which responsibilities of the police are we jettisoning here? Because the slogan suggests all of them. "Better funding for mental health" uses quite different syllables from "defund the police". I'm sure there are people with some great ideas in the crowd. But the ones in charge might be the people who believe, literally, that the point here is to defund everything the police do. There is a real risk people mean what they say.
- brutusborn 5y ago
  Our language is full of ambiguities, and this is one. Both interpretations are listed in the Cambridge dictionary. The truth is: clarity require lots of words, and that makes a terrible slogan. Most people react stronger to a slogan than a nuanced discussion, so the messy slogans will remain.
  - zepto 5y ago
    That doesn’t mean a bad slogan like Defund the police isn’t just divisive, ill-advised, and harmful.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      There's nothing activists can do that won't be labeled "divisive, ill-advised, and harmful". See how Martin Luther King Jr. was portrayed in the 1960s, for example. https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574 https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574
      - torstenvl 5y ago
        That's the trope, but it's also completely wrong. It was, after all, MLK and not Malcolm X who achieved so much of the progress in the 1960s. And it was the Log Cabin Republicans, not HRC, that won the fight for gay marriage. Advancements for minority groups are better facilitated by building bridges than by burning them.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        MLK was regularly accused of burning bridges at the time, as I've demonstrated in the link.
        torstenvl 5y ago
        You posted a Twitter link to one caricature cartoon in an unnamed paper. It is dishonest to say you've "demonstrated" that anything happened "regularly." And it is dishonest to conflate the entirety of the time elapsed - it's indisputably clear who has the better historical reputation. And it is dishonest to suggest that a false allegation of X is moral justification to begin doing X.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  > Is there a consensus committee that announces what 'the community' thinks? Science-based activism typically does have a tactic of discussing within “committees” called peer-reviewed journals that which is considered the consensus and that which is not for that journal’s “community”.
YinglingLight 5y ago
>The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. source? or just feels?
Jtsummers 5y ago
But it's a reason to choose your words carefully. "Defund the Police" is very easy to interpret as "abolish" or "practically abolish". Which means it's very easy to twist even the less extreme politicians' and activists' meaning toward that end. This sets them up for abuse from their opposition who then cost them possible supporters. The fact is, many people on the right wouldn't mind if police were a little less of a daily presence in their lives. They also have family members and friends with mental health issues and don't want to see them (or their caregivers) shot in the street because the first response is the armed police instead of medical or social services. They also don't want a gas cannister shot into their infant or toddler's bed. But a phrase like "Defund the Police" is so easily turned to use the meaning of the most extreme speakers, who really do mean something closer to "Abolish the Police" than "Redistribute funds from the police to deal with the causes of societal issues instead of (just) the results". Once that's done, you've essentially lost and the more moderate voices who mean the latter and not the former get discredited in many people's view. They're saying one thing with, to those individuals at least, a very clear meaning which is at odds with what the moderates claim they mean.
- alecb 5y ago
  When did Hacker News become so tediously and odiously consumed with "moderate voices," which 99% of the time is just self-consumed owners of capital who have a fervent interest in maintaining the status quo.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    I don't think HN is "tediously and odiously consumed with 'moderate voices'". That comment was made by an individual, me in this case, not by some hypothetical Hacker News entity. What about the comment makes it odious or tedious?
  - dang 5y ago
    Your account looks like it has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Actually, not so much primarily as exclusively, which is really bad. Would you please stop doing that? It destroys what this site is for, regardless of which ideology you're for or against. (See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation, if you want it.) We ban accounts that do this, and your account has unfortunately crossed far into bannable territory. I don't want to ban you (you've been here for 14 years!) so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (Re your (presumably rhetorical) question about HN - that's like asking why a large data set clusters around the mean with bell-shaped tails on either side. You can't expect any large-enough population sample to be that different from the population at large.)
throwkeep 5y ago
Sitting member of Congress: "No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed." https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997534216 https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997... Sitting member of Congress: "We can’t reform this." https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/1381702744310943750 https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/13817027443... Activist with 475k followers whose name is currently: "DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE" https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome Ben & Jerrys: "This system can’t be reformed." https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1381743962558504969 https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1381743962558504969 When activists say they want to abolish the police, they “100%” mean they want no more police, Noor says. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matter-activist https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte... NYT op ed: "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" 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...
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Highlighting "a very very small niche" of politicians/activists isn't really debunking the "a very very small niche of the police reform community" claim. I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.
  - MikeUt 5y ago
    Perhaps they should have chosen a slogan where the dictionary definition differs from the opinion of "a very very small niche".
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/defund https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/defun... "to stop providing money or as much money to pay for something"
zepto 5y ago
Firstly, I’ve heard plenty of people say they mean abolish. Second, it still makes no sense. I am a very strong supporter of violence intervention, mental health services, restorative justice, etc. But police are and poorly trained. Defunding them will lead to more problems. We need to fund police training, and create alternative services. The ‘defund the police’ mantra is clearly just a polite version of FTP.
d0100 5y ago
> has been a consensus in the community If the community wants more support from outside themselves, pick a better slogan
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Yes, it would help, but a provocative slogan also has its own merits. It usually serves to highlight the very culture it is criticizing. If those criticized took even just one minute to think about it or talk to somebody they disagree with instead of reading from news sources and forums that are highly angry and cherry-picking, then they would easily realize what their "enemies" want. In this way, a provocative slogan exposes these people. However, provocation almost never has more upsides than downsides. But one of the vanishingly few cases where it's hard to blame somebody for resorting to it happens to be where any individuals within your government are using their power to mistreat, unjustly imprison, beat, or kill you, and where there is a large group of politically extreme citizens cheering for that.
justanotherguy0 5y ago
Feel free to use whatever slogans you want, and I'll feel free to ignore you
IncRnd 5y ago
Defund literally means, "prevent from continuing to receive funds." So, when people hear "defund the police" they rightly take that to mean "stop funding the police". I don't know what community you refer to, since many people who I've seen call for defunding of the police want the police abolished.
ryandrake 5y ago
I'd rather "de-fang the police" than defund them. The problems people complain about aren't budget issues, they are behavior issues: Excessive use-of-force, Escalation instead of de-escalation, Casually committing crimes on the job due to immunity, Racial bias, and the culture of good officers covering for bad ones. These can be reformed while still recognizing the positive role a well behaved and well funded police force plays in communities.

roenxi 5y ago

Is there a consensus committee that announces what 'the community' thinks? Because in my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words. There is always a risk that people chanting "defund the police" mean they want to, simply and literally, defund the police. If they want something different they should be chanting that instead.

lostcolony 5y ago
"There is always a risk" I think there's an easy way to figure out what people mean when they chant a slogan. Talk to them. "In my experience the community is quite divided on most topics and tends to come to a consensus using the literal meaning of words" Well, even if your experience is correct, so what? Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies, including what the current police would turn into, is still removing 100% of the funds from the existing organization and redirecting them. No one is arguing to remove that funding and then setting that money on fire.
- roenxi 5y ago
  > Talk to them. They'll all have different opinions on what, in the detail, the phrase means. Large political crowds generally can't handle complex ideas. That is why the slogan matters, it is the bit that coordinates what the goal is. > Defunding the police -as it currently exists-, in its entirety, and directing those funds to different agencies... There are a few options. Major ones include: 1) This project is renaming the police. 2) This project is changing what they do. It probably isn't going to be 1, because then it wouldn't be worth the fuss. So the question is, which responsibilities of the police are we jettisoning here? Because the slogan suggests all of them. "Better funding for mental health" uses quite different syllables from "defund the police". I'm sure there are people with some great ideas in the crowd. But the ones in charge might be the people who believe, literally, that the point here is to defund everything the police do. There is a real risk people mean what they say.
brutusborn 5y ago
Our language is full of ambiguities, and this is one. Both interpretations are listed in the Cambridge dictionary. The truth is: clarity require lots of words, and that makes a terrible slogan. Most people react stronger to a slogan than a nuanced discussion, so the messy slogans will remain.
- zepto 5y ago
  That doesn’t mean a bad slogan like Defund the police isn’t just divisive, ill-advised, and harmful.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    There's nothing activists can do that won't be labeled "divisive, ill-advised, and harmful". See how Martin Luther King Jr. was portrayed in the 1960s, for example. https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574 https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574
    - torstenvl 5y ago
      That's the trope, but it's also completely wrong. It was, after all, MLK and not Malcolm X who achieved so much of the progress in the 1960s. And it was the Log Cabin Republicans, not HRC, that won the fight for gay marriage. Advancements for minority groups are better facilitated by building bridges than by burning them.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        MLK was regularly accused of burning bridges at the time, as I've demonstrated in the link.
        torstenvl 5y ago
        You posted a Twitter link to one caricature cartoon in an unnamed paper. It is dishonest to say you've "demonstrated" that anything happened "regularly." And it is dishonest to conflate the entirety of the time elapsed - it's indisputably clear who has the better historical reputation. And it is dishonest to suggest that a false allegation of X is moral justification to begin doing X.
9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
> Is there a consensus committee that announces what 'the community' thinks? Science-based activism typically does have a tactic of discussing within “committees” called peer-reviewed journals that which is considered the consensus and that which is not for that journal’s “community”.

YinglingLight 5y ago

>The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. source? or just feels?

Jtsummers 5y ago

But it's a reason to choose your words carefully. "Defund the Police" is very easy to interpret as "abolish" or "practically abolish". Which means it's very easy to twist even the less extreme politicians' and activists' meaning toward that end. This sets them up for abuse from their opposition who then cost them possible supporters. The fact is, many people on the right wouldn't mind if police were a little less of a daily presence in their lives. They also have family members and friends with mental health issues and don't want to see them (or their caregivers) shot in the street because the first response is the armed police instead of medical or social services. They also don't want a gas cannister shot into their infant or toddler's bed. But a phrase like "Defund the Police" is so easily turned to use the meaning of the most extreme speakers, who really do mean something closer to "Abolish the Police" than "Redistribute funds from the police to deal with the causes of societal issues instead of (just) the results". Once that's done, you've essentially lost and the more moderate voices who mean the latter and not the former get discredited in many people's view. They're saying one thing with, to those individuals at least, a very clear meaning which is at odds with what the moderates claim they mean.

alecb 5y ago
When did Hacker News become so tediously and odiously consumed with "moderate voices," which 99% of the time is just self-consumed owners of capital who have a fervent interest in maintaining the status quo.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  I don't think HN is "tediously and odiously consumed with 'moderate voices'". That comment was made by an individual, me in this case, not by some hypothetical Hacker News entity. What about the comment makes it odious or tedious?
- dang 5y ago
  Your account looks like it has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Actually, not so much primarily as exclusively, which is really bad. Would you please stop doing that? It destroys what this site is for, regardless of which ideology you're for or against. (See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation, if you want it.) We ban accounts that do this, and your account has unfortunately crossed far into bannable territory. I don't want to ban you (you've been here for 14 years!) so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (Re your (presumably rhetorical) question about HN - that's like asking why a large data set clusters around the mean with bell-shaped tails on either side. You can't expect any large-enough population sample to be that different from the population at large.)

throwkeep 5y ago

Sitting member of Congress: "No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed." https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997534216 https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997... Sitting member of Congress: "We can’t reform this." https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/1381702744310943750 https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/13817027443... Activist with 475k followers whose name is currently: "DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE" https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome Ben & Jerrys: "This system can’t be reformed." https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1381743962558504969 https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1381743962558504969 When activists say they want to abolish the police, they “100%” mean they want no more police, Noor says. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matter-activist https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte... NYT op ed: "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" 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...

ceejayoz 5y ago
Highlighting "a very very small niche" of politicians/activists isn't really debunking the "a very very small niche of the police reform community" claim. I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.
- MikeUt 5y ago
  Perhaps they should have chosen a slogan where the dictionary definition differs from the opinion of "a very very small niche".
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/defund https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/defun... "to stop providing money or as much money to pay for something"

zepto 5y ago

Firstly, I’ve heard plenty of people say they mean abolish. Second, it still makes no sense. I am a very strong supporter of violence intervention, mental health services, restorative justice, etc. But police are and poorly trained. Defunding them will lead to more problems. We need to fund police training, and create alternative services. The ‘defund the police’ mantra is clearly just a polite version of FTP.

d0100 5y ago

> has been a consensus in the community If the community wants more support from outside themselves, pick a better slogan

happytoexplain 5y ago
Yes, it would help, but a provocative slogan also has its own merits. It usually serves to highlight the very culture it is criticizing. If those criticized took even just one minute to think about it or talk to somebody they disagree with instead of reading from news sources and forums that are highly angry and cherry-picking, then they would easily realize what their "enemies" want. In this way, a provocative slogan exposes these people. However, provocation almost never has more upsides than downsides. But one of the vanishingly few cases where it's hard to blame somebody for resorting to it happens to be where any individuals within your government are using their power to mistreat, unjustly imprison, beat, or kill you, and where there is a large group of politically extreme citizens cheering for that.

justanotherguy0 5y ago

Feel free to use whatever slogans you want, and I'll feel free to ignore you

IncRnd 5y ago

Defund literally means, "prevent from continuing to receive funds." So, when people hear "defund the police" they rightly take that to mean "stop funding the police". I don't know what community you refer to, since many people who I've seen call for defunding of the police want the police abolished.

ryandrake 5y ago

I'd rather "de-fang the police" than defund them. The problems people complain about aren't budget issues, they are behavior issues: Excessive use-of-force, Escalation instead of de-escalation, Casually committing crimes on the job due to immunity, Racial bias, and the culture of good officers covering for bad ones. These can be reformed while still recognizing the positive role a well behaved and well funded police force plays in communities.