“Defunding the police absolutely does not mean that we eliminate all cops and just succumb to ‘The Purge.’ Instead, it’s about moving away from a narrow conception of public safety that relies on policing and punishment, and investing in a community’s actual safety net. Things like stable housing, mental health services and community organizations.”
—John Oliver explains ‘defund the police’ – and why it doesn’t mean ‘no police’
Everyone needs to get off this “they shouldn’t brand it ‘defund’ the police” bullshit.
We called it “global warming” and they didn’t like that so we changed it to “climate change” and they didn’t like that so we changed it to “the global climate crisis” and they still won’t take it seriously.
We rebranded “gay marriage” to “same sex civil unions” to “marriage equality” and they still fucking fight it.
The problem isn’t the fucking “branding,” the problem is we have to constantly fucking pander to the lowest common denominator because godforbid we piss of the middle America pearl clutchers who are going to spend all their energy fighting challenges to the deeply broken status quo no matter what we propose to address our staggering pile of social issues.
👏 It doesn’t matter what we call it, they’re going to fight it anyways. 👏
Defunding the police is a fucking hellagood idea that could radically transform our communities in an insanely positive way and maybe instead of us treading water in some endless thought exercise of how can we rebrand shit so it’s more palatable to the mythic middle, we demand people pull their heads out of their asses and educate themselves.
Police killed 1,098 people in 2019.
Our tax money is funding murder.
I’m a little more interested in stopping that than worrying about the icky feelings the word “defund” brings up in some person who has access to all the information in the world on what “defund the police” means but are too fucking lazy to research it and would rather just inform themselves on issues with their gut reactions to scary words.
—natalie michelle
Flommist Natalie Michelle doesn’t have a bio. She just rants. Copyright © 2020 Natalie Michelle.
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