Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower
Minnesota gets real redneck real fast as you leave the cities. Meanwhile, a veto-proof majority of our City Council just voted to (if I can sort through all the misinformation and contradictory claims) take steps to defund and dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with . . . well, they have not gotten that far yet as far as I am aware, but I’m sure whatever they come up with will be fine. In the meantime, it is supposed to be 96 degrees and humid today, so I am urging everyone I know to play this out their windows on repeat all day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KEVdHKsi9w |
Killer Mike has given a lot of good interviews since the Floyd killing. In each, he emphasizes the need to strategize and plan and make specific demands.
I understand the symbolism of defunding cops, but that forces the question, "What do we put in their place?" It'd be best to move with more strategy, like say:
1. Immediately taking all cops with a history of complaints off the street immediately;
2. Banning the acquisition and use of discarded military hardware by all police;
3. Banning the use of predictive police measures in inner cities (IBM and Palantir sell predictive software that, in coordination with cameras and racial profiling, basically turns many inner cities into versions of the movie
Minority Report, none of which protects people in the inner cities as much it controls them, in the most Orwellian sense).
But the biggest pivot the movement needs to make is perhaps the hardest. It has to focus on the legislators who pass "tough on crime" laws and the courts that sentence people under them. These cops would not be emboldened to send four officers to deal with a suspected bad check if the legislature hadn't passed crazy laws that make such petty crimes on par with serious crimes.
The movement needs to target legislators who stand behind cruel and mindless laws and call them out as: (1) racists; and, (2) fiscally irresponsible. Jailing people drives up taxes needlessly and does nothing more than convert petty criminals into more serious criminals. The protestors should start demanding the resignations of judges that sentence harshly on small crimes and legislators who've run on tough on crime platforms. Make those fuckers defend themselves in the press.
