Anytime I say #AbolishThePolice someone inevitably comes along and asks “but who will keep us safe without the cops?” and meanwhile thousands of regular people in Minneapolis have spontaneously self-organized a round-the-clock patrol of the city, replete with a city-wide intelligence network and radio dispatch system, to keep themselves safe from violent assaults by the police.
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@HeavenlyPossum Rural coastal Maine, for all intents and purposes, has no police. They weren't abolished, they never existed in the first place.
I can go on about why everyone is not killing each other but I'll not.
@HeavenlyPossum every time we say “defund or abolish the police” we just make another Trump voter. Let’s quit promoting false dichotomies - We can control our borders without ICE. We can make our streets safe without masked thugs shooting citizens in the face. The problem isn’t the what, it’s the how.
The problem is people like you collaborating with fascists and advocating for borders (talk about "false dichotomies" Jesus fucking christ 🤦♂️)
@RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum Look, as far as I’m concerned it’s every human’s natural right to walk as far as their two legs can carry them. Virtually none of my fellow Americans agree with me on this, so it’s not a position I waste time advocating. Likewise abolishing the police is a non-starter for the same reason. You don’t win elections that way. You win elections on your shared values, not your fringe ideas.
@Hordearius @RD4Anarchy @HeavenlyPossum believe it or not some people are invested in liberation, not "winning elections." People like you are at very best spineless enablers, at worst fascists yourselves who know not to say the quiet part out loud. And I'm not inclined to think the best of you.
@HeavenlyPossum Is it the actual police assaulting people, or is it primarily the SA (ICE) gangs of thugs? The whole point of policing is that it is by consent of the people. What seems to be going on over there in the USA seems the opposite of that.
ICE is a police force.
The fact that one cop murdered a woman in broad daylight in Minneapolis and other cops quickly spirited him away to protect him and other cops have made no effort to arrest him and still other cops have arrested people for protesting this murder is a good illustration of the role of policing.
@HeavenlyPossum This is such a complex issue that I don't want to say this but 'The Institution' is always - by definition - a subset of the general populace; for example ICE and Immigration etc. are self-selecting subsets of the U.S. population who are (presumably) attracted by job security and the 'keep us safe' argument against a broad-brush, self-selecting subset of the Minneapolis population. So the issue is NOT the institution but the discrepancy between it's ideals and those who either
@sjcooke66 @HeavenlyPossum The police in the US started as slave patrols. ‘Nuff said.
@HeavenlyPossum so maybe the problem isn't so much the police as a concept, but rather those who run the institution as a whole?
I've noticed that the lack of people participating in the local political system is a bigger problem than the US. And when I mean participation I'm not talking about just voting, but getting involved in the decisions local councils make and getting their voice out before disaster happens.
@antonio_oliveira @HeavenlyPossum Any institutionally legitimized structure of power will always attract and outsizedly benefit those who would do ill on others with it, because it's too juicy a target not to, and the institutional legitimization makes it possible for it to be above criticism.
So no, the concept of police is the problem. The reason ad-hoc networks don't suffer from this problem (or at least not to such a severe degree) is because they're not institutionally legitimized, and they live or die by people's willingness to participate in it. They can't self-perpetuate.
