15 ms·
Granted the let's get rid of all police was fringe. But the let's have fewer police officers and more counselors and call that defunding the police was pretty
by JamesBarney 5y ago
Granted the let's get rid of all police was fringe. But the let's have fewer police officers and more counselors and call that defunding the police was pretty popular. At least among my friend group in Houston, and it was especially popular among the more politically engaged of my friends, the ones more likely to volunteer or vote in a primary.
- tptacek 5y agoIt's easy to find groups of people online who believe in getting rid of all the police, and even easier to find people in favor of reducing the number of police (before this issue became a political football, reducing police headcount was a bipartisan idea in local politics, as was pushing back on their unions). But where the issue has been put to the test with real voters, it has failed dramatically. That the primary system elevates fringe candidates is, yes, a problem. But those candidates lose. Like I said, we have an exceptionally mobilized defund movement in Oak Park, with demonstrations, proposed ordinances, and candidate slates. They got slaughtered. We're a single-party municipality; being outed as in any way sympathetic to Republicans is fatal here. It came to nothing: liberals don't want to defund the police.