The Why of “Defund the Police” [UPDATE]

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[Update at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

Apart from the purely economic rationale that a function which has so repeatedly failed should not continue to be funded, there are ample reasons why policing as we know it in this country needs to be deconstructed and replaced — in shorthand, defund the police.

Last night on HBO, John Oliver did an amazing job of discussing the problems with policing in America. It’s so good I can’t add anything. It’s a primer from which we should start.

Yet Oliver’s work was tremendous not just because it examined the history of this country’s failure to reform policing, but because the end of his program gave a black voice a platform long overdue (31:56).

I want to reverse what he did by insisting you listen to author Kimberley Jones first, her entire comment and not just the excerpt Oliver shared. This is a powerful statement you should not miss:

And then watch John Oliver’s program last night. In this order you can see that everything about policing in America has been constructed on lies.

You’ll hear and read puzzlement about calls to defund the police.

What does it mean? asked because their privilege has never forced them to look carefully at how fucked up policing is in the U.S. (note carefully the person and context surrounding them when they ask).

What do they want instead? as if “they” are a separate group, disclosing the bias at the root of the problem.

Why can’t we just fix it? again, privilege blinds those who ask to how fatally flawed policing has been from the start. Some who have internalized this country’s systemic oppression will also ask this same question.

The wealth of this country was built on economic theft, and American policing has been constructed to preserve this massive looting of hundreds of years of black lives.

What Kimberley Jones doesn’t point out is that the looting didn’t stop with black lives. The ground Americans stand on was stolen from yet more brown people who were eradicated, and then farmed and developed by stolen people under whips and chains and at gun point. The theft continues apace under a legal system which ensures the gap of wealth remains uncrossable, that power likewise remains solely in the hands of those with wealth.

There is no fixing a police system designed to protect capital created from ongoing crime.

 

Defund the police, by which it means see with clear eyes the original sin of placing preservation of property rights over human rights, the original sin of treating some humans as less worthy than others.

Defund the police, by which it means to re-prioritize our spending with those same clear, open eyes with an aim to realize reasonable distributive justice, developing and preserving human lives.

 

UPDATE — 09-JUN-2020 11:15 AM ET —

Because there’s a lot of complaining about the unofficial slogan, “Defund the Police,” I think these couple of tweets are worth consideration.

Quit complaining. Focus: we need to change how we ensure public safety. What are you doing about it?

Start attending your local county/city/town/village council meetings. Research your local law enforcement entity’s performance. Are municipalities measuring complaints against law enforcement along with use of force? What has your locality done to ensure there is adequate access to mental health care, addiction, housing, and domestic crisis intervention, all of which affect the number of calls to police?

You can also do other research right now before you attend a local meeting.

Citizens Police Data Project – https://www.CPDP.co

CPDP takes records of police interactions with the public – records that would otherwise be buried in internal databases – and opens them up to make the data useful to the public, creating a permanent record for every CPD police officer. Examine this as a model for tracking your local law enforcement’s performance.

Mapping Police Violence – https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

A research collaborative collecting comprehensive data on police killings nationwide to quantify the impact of police violence in communities. Check your state against others for trends in death by cops.

Police Use of Force Project – http://useofforceproject.org/

This Campaign ZERO project investigates the ways in which police use of force policies help to enable police violence in our communities. Read their report examining 100 communities.

Police Union Contract Project – https://www.checkthepolice.org/

This Campaign ZERO project reviewed police union contracts and police bill of rights legislation to examine how they make it more difficult to hold police accountable. Read their summary report of 81 cities in 15 states.

The Open Policing Project – https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/

This project at Stanford University aims to help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public by collecting and analysing data from police traffic stops across the country. Read their findings.

Policing Project – https://www.policingproject.org/

This NYU School of Law project works to ensure accountability and democratic participation on the front end, before police violence requires ineffective back-end accountability. Read their work to date.

National Police Accountability Project – https://www.nlg-npap.org/

A National Lawyers Guild project dedicated to holding law enforcement accountable for misconduct. If you’re a lawyer, check for one of their online webinars.

 

This is NOT an open thread. Please stick to this topic in this thread.

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56 replies
    • Eureka says:

      Erica Buddington’s excellent mega-thread from May 29, 2020 (Black Wall Street and Rosewood are in there). The point is that it goes on… and on… and on… :

      Erica B. :”This #thread is for those of you struggling to comprehend that the recent murders are just a fraction of racial violence in the United States. We are protesting for #GeorgeFloyd #BreonnaTaylor, #AhmaudArbery AND hundreds of years of oppression. Let’s begin your history lesson. …”
      https://twitter.com/ericabuddington/status/1266531249914601472

  2. earlofhuntingdon says:

    To illustrate the need for disbanding, reimagining, and reforming a necessary institution, here’s one reason why “good” officers don’t intervene to stop bad ones.

    A Buffalo, NY, police officer intervened in a case similar to George Floyd’s. The Chauvin counterpart in that case punched out the officer who tried to stop him. The would be good Samaritan was then charged with obstruction and later fired without her pension.

    The insanity of what that system protects – the abusive officer, his union, the department, the local prosecutor and judicial system, the mayor, and their priorities – needs wholesale restructuring.

    https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/1269992783357583360

  3. earlofhuntingdon says:

    A movement is afoot. A federal judge has prohibited the Denver police from using certain riot-control weapons, such as rubber bullets and teargas-like chemical agents, writing that, “property damage is a small price to pay for constitutional rights.”

    That priority may not survive review by Roberts’ majority, if they ever got the case. But it is a necessary declaration of priorities and an essential one, if we are to build the political will to remake what “we” mean by to serve and protect.

    https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1269408868481724416
    https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/national/article243334866.html

  4. jaango says:

    When you become a long invested political writer, Common Sense arrives on a daily basis. To wit, disbanding the police is not going to happen, but “reorganizing” the local police department is a necessity, especially when the union management team is not dedicated to this Common Sense, and thusly, the privilege of entertaining the political mix that is the Mayor and the City Council, not addressing this lack of Common Sense, is today’s behavior when the focused attention on the Protest and on the Pandemic, is today’s requisite reality and demand.

    And for those of us as Chicanos, we remember well the latest onset from the policing systemic. As such, Arizona’s SB 1070, was our latest demonstration for this lack of Common Sense–that it took a local federal court to eliminate SB1070, and yet retained the seminal element for “show me your papers” and which, today, is another version of privilege of the white majority.

    Of course, if the Anglo will not listen to “Chicanos Talking To Chicanos,” not having such a connectivity, amply demonstrates that our future is in the ascendance given the New Demographic Construct. Consequently, this “talk” is now being addressed in the format of a Municipally-Owned Internet News Service

    In closing, Chicanos will soon arrive with the “new Ideas” that realigns the politics of tomorrow.

  6. Peter W Gabel says:

    Iceland has armed citizens and unarmed police.
    “A policy of unarmed police officers clearly has a better chance of working in countries where citizens don’t have access to guns. But what about in Iceland, where there are an estimated 90,000 guns in a population of 323,000? The country has one of the lowest global crime rates in the world and, the BBC reports, the majority of crimes that do occur don’t involve firearms.”
    https://qz.com/727941/how-do-police-handle-violence-in-countries-where-officers-dont-carry-guns/

    • Rayne says:

      That will not work in the U.S. where racism is a factor in abuse of guns by both private citizens and public servants. Iceland is a comparative monoculture and only has a population of 364K. In contrast, my county and one of its neighbors have more residents and far more diversity. We would have to lock down and isolate these two counties as if they were an island nation and adopt a uniformity of culture which Americans would find stifling.

      Better examples would be other Five Eyes nations which are nearly as diverse, allow gun possession by citizens, but avoid use of deadly force in policing. UK is probably the closest example.

      • rip says:

        Or Australia which recently banned semi-automatics after a horrific mass-shooting. I think the Australian social model is close to the US but perhaps without as much history as slavers.

  7. RMD says:

    As John Oliver’s snip from Tucker Carlson’s show demonstrates, the term “defund” isn’t the best choice of words to express needed and politically supported change. Too easily gainsayed by the right to falsely portray the need for change as “the left” wanting to eliminate police entirely.
    such bull feces.

    Thank you Rayne for this post…and, if you’re reading John, thanks to John Oliver for an excellent show.

  8. Jenny says:

    Thanks Rayne. John Oliver – spot on.
    Peaceful protesters protesting excessive police force. Police in turn using excessive force against peaceful protesters.
    Police war mentality reflects war tactics against citizens. Warring on the inside is warring on the outside.
    System favors the police. Gone is protect and service the public. We saw citizens terrorized and brutalized.
    This is EXPOSING the problem. Change is needed to where the police serve and protect the community. We the People need to create change by constructing a new world respecting, accepting and helping one another. It is happening. We the People are finally waking up. Change comes from within.

    “External circumstances will not change until internal belief systems change.” Myles Munroe

  9. Raven Eye says:

    I’m a kinda visual guy, so forgive me this approach…

    So if we decided to Defund and Re-fund, how would it go?

    Let’s say I went into the high school gymnasium, brought in a couple of library ladders, and removed all the championship banners from the end wall. Then on the left side of the wall I would post a column of “problems” that needed to be regularly addressed by the city’s governing body (and in some cases, the county). On the right side I would post the desired end-state for each of those problems. In the middle of the wall I would make a column of all the city departments and divisions for which there was a reasonable expectation of involvement – with a fair number of blank boxes. We might add, for example, the library system. (A few rows of comfortable chairs in mid-court and a box of binoculars would help.)

    Somewhere between the middle and the right columns should be the ways and means of achieving the end-states. And between the left and middle columns the ways and means by which the city could expect to learn about the problem.

    Somehow our city is expected to connect the three columns with lines of information and effort. How many of those lines would be “police only”? Or any “-only”?

    If this is one way that Defund might look, I’d be for it. On the other hand, my limited experience in county government impressed upon me how tactical the operations of governance can be. The most important cycle for the departments and their components is the annual budget cycle. Most of the folks working at local government are at the “nozzle end”. Who would fund enough efforts by an initial range of differently-sized cities so that a decent range of models that could be developed? My experience with city governments around the country tell me that state codes/laws make a difference, and even neighboring cities within the same state can have distinctly different approaches to governance and management.

    Can we afford to do this? Can we afford not to do this?

  10. Francine Fein says:

    For starters, Demilitarize. Uniforms shouldn’t communicate threat. I saw an interesting picture of LEGO police toys showing the evolution in their uniforms that reflect the changes toward militarization. Kids see these.

    On a more positive note, I read “What Happened to Crime in Camden.” The Camden Police Department was disbanded, reimagined, and born again as the Camden County Police Department in 2013, with a shift toward community policing. Crime decreased dramatically (statistics were from 2018). This quote from their Chief, J. Scott Thomson, speaks to me: “For us to make the neighborhood look and feel the way everyone wanted it to, it wasn’t going to be achieved by having a police officer with a helmet and a shotgun standing on a corner.”
    https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crime-in-camden/549542/

  11. Ginevra diBenci says:

    Thank you, Rayne, for mentioning the extirpation of native people as part of our nation’s entwined original sin. Survivors of those genocides have mingled in the blood of some like me who aren’t in most regions labeled with ease, and in some, mercifully, not at all. I remember a different time, but the past few weeks have given me a perverse hope: young people do not remember what I do, and they are able to imagine a future I no longer dared dream of.

    • Rayne says:

      Same. I can’t forget what colonialism did to the first nations here in addition to the lives it stole from the African continent. I should be crawling with relatives but I have very few on my father’s side because his people were wiped out by disease. I should speak his family’s language but almost no one remains who is fluent save for a great-uncle who suffers from dementia; everyone else had the language suppressed out of them one way or another. And the land which should have been ours is up for grabs. When my father dies there’s little to keep it from being developed by corporations over the bones of my family.

  12. Ern says:

    Semantics is everything. Instead of defund, shouldn’t there be a much different word? Are they looking to privatize it?

    This is one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen.

    • Rayne says:

      Semantics is what the right-wing and centrists are hung up about.

      Really need a session on framing this with George Lakoff so we can concentrate on what needs to be done and making it happen rather than semantics.

    • jerryy says:

      I know this is a late comment on a thread that will soon move to the back pages, but …

      It was not that long ago that “Black Lives Matter” was a phrase that caused a lot of consternation, hand wringing, and general freaking out. Now it is painted on the street leading up to the White House. And rural voters are indeed taking to the streets to support it.

      The phrase may irritate some, but it will flush the issues out of the shadows.

      (Yes, “Taking It To The Streets” is a Doobie Brothers song.)

  14. Savage Librarian says:

    Kimberly Jones and John Oliver, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your righteous anger and wise words. There is no way we can move forward without acknowledging and acting on them. Long ago I did something similar but nobody gave me any hugs afterward. Instead, I was suspended and then demoted and removed from my work site. There weren’t any cameras or cell phones to document events. But I know the scene still plays in the heads of some people. (As an interesting side note, there were some Ukrainian Americans involved in this experience.)

    Rayne, I think I mentioned this long ago, Rosewood even played a small, tangential part in my own case against discrimination, but even that was twisted around to be used in a way to be exploited. Government officials were so hell bent on winning that they even tried to argue that I, as a white person, had no standing to speak up for people of color. That didn’t work, so they tried to buy me off. Nope, no thanks, not for me.

    Several years after I regained my position as a manager, I was asked to give a brief presentation to the library board which happened to be meeting at my location. The city’s ethics officer was excused and told she could leave. She resisted, but they insisted.

    Then I calmly tried to show how a proposed policy was actually an example of systemic structural racism. I had an official interagency report to back me up, large, professional graphics and handouts. Some of the board members visibly took note and I was successful in getting my point across and in getting the policy deferred.

    But administrators were furious with me. I thought I might be fired on the spot, but I wasn’t. Some time passed when an incident occurred with the elevator. Billows of smoke poured out of the elevator mechanical room, but the men from the fire department
    packed up to leave without even having checked the elevator itself. When I asked them to, they were visibly irritated. Unbelievable!

    Not long after that I was jerked around by being transferred twice, until I finally retired before the third time.

    It is truly mind boggling how rich racists have been successful in manipulating and corrupting democracy (eg. individuals like James McGill Buchanan, Koch brothers; multiple corporations, banks, courts, academia, etc.) Even people who like to think of themselves as fair (regardless of ethnic or racial background) get sucked in by ambition, faulty logic and the social, physical and psychological need to maintain control and status, and to simply survive.

    But I am extremely grateful to be alive in this historic time. I was starting to have serious doubts about the fate of democracy. And I had just about lost hope that people would step up and commit to the path of justice and equality.

    Now I can see that the voices were always there, just as I had always believed they might be. We the people are not giving up. I am so thankful. This is a time for restructuring. Defunding is a real and viable means to move forward. It does not mean abolishing. It means starting by reallocating funds to social service areas that even police think should not be in their purview. Having seen how bad actors are so destructive, we finally can see how to make a more civil society.

    Now, technology has given the public the means to document these kind of abuses. And people are much more diverse, savvy and willing to show the wrongdoing. Many obstacles are still ahead, but I am so grateful for all the people who are willing to invest in the struggle for a more perfect union.

    No way are people going to roll over and ignore another stolen election by Trump and Putin and all their thugs. They can’t possibly deny the power and force of all our spirits. We’re going to VOTE them gone. Yes, we are!

    And to Kimberly Jones, I say, “Damn right, they should be glad that you want equality and not revenge!”

    • Stacey says:

      I completely and totally agree: “white people should be glad that black people want equality and not revenge” and also I would add
      that they don’t believe black people DON’T want revenge. That’s how projection works. White people put themselves in black people’s shoes and say “If I were treated this way for centuries I’d have lost my shit and just slit their throats in the night a long time ago!” If I imagine that I would be vengeful if I were them, I can’t imagine them not being vengeful, but that imagination is MINE. I’m seeing them or their reaction through the eyes I imagine they see me through. If I would be vengeful, I can’t believe they wouldn’t be vengeful in that situation. We always tell more about ourselves when we project onto others than we do about them. This same dynamic is at work with men thinking women’s equality will bring about some epic amount of time where we stomp on them with our high heels and grind them into the mud. Toxic masculinity and toxic subconscious holdings of privilege and power are informing those beliefs and projections.

  16. bmaz says:

    “Defund The Police” is one of the dumbest and most counterproductive slogans for liberals and progressives ever in history. Like bellowing about “Antifa”, it plays right into the Trumpian hands. It is inartful, at the very kindest, better characterized as stupid. Rephrase and replace.

    • Savage Librarian says:

      I was startled when I first heard that word and phrase. It definitely lends itself to being easily exploited. It would be good to replace it with something more appropriate and to talk about the complexity of the issues.

      • bmaz says:

        Yes. The diffuse sentiment behind it has long been the case and long true. But as a lead slogan, it is horrible.

      • Tom says:

        They used to talk about the need to get smart on crime, not tough. The focus on reinventing the police, however, overlooks the larger social justice issues involved.

        One of the things that struck me when I worked in the child protection field was the number of people who would phone the police when they had questions about, for example, anger management or addiction counseling for their spouse or partner, or custody/access arrangements regarding children, or dividing assets if a couple split up, or questions about the law in general. These folks seemed to view the local police as a sort of resource centre and were always surprised when an officer would show up at their door to check things out, sometimes leading to an open police investigation and a referral to our agency if children were involved.

      • vicks says:

        I had to google the phrase to understand it.
        To quote Ronald Reagan “If your explaining you’re losing.”
        No disrespect to those that are attached to the phrase or whose attitude towards those arguing the semantics is “tough beans” but I have the feeling that a lot of people who WOULD support the position, don’t get it either.
        The opposition (as usual) is miles ahead of “explaining” it
        Jim Clyburn suggested that “burn baby burn” hijacked the progress of the Civil Rights movement.
        On the brink of what may be history in the making, why risk letting what is clearly a confusing slogan risk doing the same?

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      I don’t know its origins, but if the phrase is an example of Democratic campaign PR, we’re doomed.

      As you and others say, the principles behind the phrase are necessary and good: redesign and reinvent law enforcement; set new priorities that go beyond protecting local oligarchic power, and include peaceful engagement of the all the citizens who deserve to be protected and served; execute, oversee, and hold accountable where things go wrong. That’s a tough fight. It will mean undoing centuries of competing priorities.

      Those who hold the monopoly on the legal use of force will use it. In the heat of events, the temptation to slip from engagement into coercive control is like wanting the apple from that tree. Somebody will take a bite. The design of political oversight of law enforcement has to take that into account.

    • harpie says:

      Trump has accused Biden of wanting to defund the police, but Biden does not support defunding the police.

      And, neither do most Congressional Dems:
      https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/08/defund-police-democrats-307766

      I have yet to read/hear of a politician saying “Defund the police!” It’s always something like “protesters”, or “activists” who are said to be saying/supporting it.

      What some politicians are saying is that these voices deserve to be heard.

      Sen. Elizabeth Warren said defunding is “not the term I would use” but emphasized the need to “listen to the pain and the lived experiences of the people who are protesting.”
      Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine predicted that Congress would not defund the police. […]
      Rep. Al Green […] “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to reimagine what policing would be like, and improve upon it,” Green said. […]

      In the mean time, here’s what Dems DID:
      Democrats unveiled new legislation to overhaul US police policy and add accountability. Here’s what’s in the bill.
      https://www.businessinsider.com/summary-justice-in-policing-act-democrats-2020-6

      It’s getting some pretty good reviews.

      • harpie says:

        Here’s the ACLU statement on this bill. They’re not happy about the amount of money police are being allocated:

        ACLU STATEMENT ON INTRODUCTION OF THE JUSTICE IN POLICING ACT OF 2020
        https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-statement-introduction-justice-policing-act-2020
        JUNE 8, 2020

        […] While many of the reforms in this bill are laudable and vital, more must be done to change the role of police in our society fundamentally. There can be no more Band-Aid or temporary fixes when it comes to policing, which is why we are calling for divestment from law enforcement agencies and reinvestment into the Black and Brown communities that have been harmed by over policing and mass incarceration. The role of police has to be smaller, more circumscribed, and less funded with taxpayer dollars. […]

        As the bill moves toward committee consideration, the ACLU will work to ensure that federal dollars are spent investing in the kinds of services that help build stable, safe Black and Brown communities. Funneling this money into law enforcement represents a missed opportunity to fix the hurtful legacy that police violence has left on these communities

      • harpie says:

        “DEFUND THE POLICE!!!” is what TRUMP and his GOP WANT this discussion to be about because they LIKE the way policing happens in the USA.

        • harpie says:

          Maybe even more so, the very existence of Trump and the GOP DEPENDS on the the existence of the way policing happens in the USA.

    • Rayne says:

      Dude. I mean this in the nicest possible way from one contributor/mod to another: is this constructive at all?

      “It’s got a bad name. I haz to flounce it.” ~shaking my head~

      • Rayne says:

        I have to go offline for a while because I’m really angry.

        I don’t see anybody among the right-wing arguing how stupid “Antifa” is as a name for a target of a non-existent entity which exists solely as a psy-op to manipulate people. Nope. They grab their guns and line the streets, waiting for the Soros buses which will never come.

        FOCUS. What’s the goal here? Stop killing Americans, especially black Americans. BLACK LIVES MATTER as a slogan hasn’t been good enough to fix this because it’s not about words. It’s about deeds.

        • bmaz says:

          The goal is to do it in a productive way that does not play right into Trump’s hands. “Defund The Police” does exactly that. Also, too, Toure is a nimrod.

        • Tom says:

          “… how stupid “Antifa” is as a name …” I agree. In my mind, the word keeps transferring into “Auntie Faye” or “Aunt Fifi”.

        • Franktoo says:

          Rayne wrote: “I don’t see anybody among the right-wing arguing how stupid “Antifa” is as a name for a target of a non-existent entity which exists solely as a psy-op to manipulate people. Nope. They grab their guns and line the streets, waiting for the Soros buses which will never come.”

          If only this were true! I spent a long time trying to identify the “good people” Trump claimed were present defending the Confederate status in Charlottesville, because I couldn’t find any answers in the press. Eventually I found legal agreements that the city of Charlottesville had negotiated with about a dozen organizations that gave up their right to return to that city in exchange for avoiding prosecution for their actions during the violence. Most of the groups signing such agreements were from the alt-Right (the NY and Pennsylvania Light Foot Militias and Roger Stone’s friends the Proud Boys come to mind), but two of the groups were militant left-wing organizations: Redneck Revolt/John Brown Gun Clubs (with 30 local branches) and the Socialist Rifle Association (60 chapters). What scared me the most was learning that these right-wing groups are activity recruiting police and former military personnel.

          I personally find these right-wing militias to currently be far more threatening than the left-wing groups because of their alliance between conspiracy sites, foreign propaganda and the Trump phenomena. However, according to a 2018 survey by two political scientists that has occasionally been cited by the media,

          https://www.dannyhayes.org/uploads/6/9/8/5/69858539/kalmoe___mason_ncapsa_2019_-_lethal_partisanship_-_final_lmedit.pdf

          “Nine percent of Republicans and Democrats say that, in general, violence is at least occasionally acceptable. However, when imagining an electoral loss in 2020, larger percentages of both parties approve of the use of violence – though this increase is greater for Democrats (18 percent approve) than Republicans (13 percent approve).”

          https://www.dannyhayes.org/uploads/6/9/8/5/69858539/kalmoe___mason_ncapsa_2019_-_lethal_partisanship_-_final_lmedit.pdf

          After the death of George Floyd, support on the left for violence has likely grown. I provide this information not to troll you, but to remind you that confirmation bias (a weakness that all humans possess) makes it extremely difficult to assimilate and remember facts that conflict with our most deeply-held beliefs. And because this website seems to be dedicated to pursuit of the truth about important political events. However, if facts like the ones I cite upset this community, I will self-censor in the future if asked.

  17. Troutwaxer says:

    If we really want to fix policing, how about we end the war on (some) drugs and maybe legalize prostitution as well?

  18. peternz says:

    The New Zealand police have just finished a 6 month exercise with rapid response armed units that were instigated by the senior police to patrol areas that they considered at risk from gun offences.
    The communities that were targeted were mainly Maori and islanders..
    This created conflict within these communities as they had not been asked if they thought this was needed.
    The public reacted by lobbying the government and saying that it destroyed the community / police partnership.
    Yesterday the police commissioner released a statement saying that the exercise was a one off trial that would not be put into general use as it was not the style of policing that the New Zealand public wanted.
    [ change of name,sorry Rayne.This one is more suitable]

  19. RMD says:

    Police departments get an extraordinarily high proportion of taxpayer money.
    A bar chart titled “General Fund 2020 Proposed Budget Summary for Columbus, Ohio–Total Budget” while incomplete* displays enormous disparity in department allocations, esp w regard to Police.
    *The AP, however, has critiqued this widely distributed graphic as not telling the whole story.
    https://apnews.com/afs:Content:9016672022

  20. posaune says:

    I hope it’s ok to share this somewhat-OT, but interesting and uplifting info:

    For work, I participated in a zoomed planning project meeting, discussing planning and preservation for minority communities. It included along with the Preservation Division, guest speakers from the National Trust for HP, a preservation professor from New Haven, a DC planning office guy, etc.

    The National Trust guy said that they had a board meeting yesterday and that Decatur House was discussed (the historic house on Lafayette Square, filled with graffiti during the protests) . . . about which Bill Barr was so upset.

    Turns out that the part of the building with the new graffiti was actually the slave quarters back in the day. The National Trust has decided to preserve
    the Decatur House graffiti as “historical in its own right,” documenting the BLM movement. To protect the writing — not to be painted over.

    This is impressive to me: architectural preservation has always been such a lily-white slice of life!

    And it will drive Bill Barr crazy to see it preserved.

  21. harpie says:

    THEY’RE SCREAMING WHO THEY ARE!

    TRUMP campaign announces, Trumps’ first rally since March 2nd will be in Tulsa, Oklahoma next Friday, JUNE 19
    https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1270817688739352577

    Via Quinta Jurecic:
    https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1270819691162939400
    4:46 PM · Jun 10, 2020

    So…Juneteenth.

    In the city where the Tulsa Massacre took place in 1921. As he’s pushing back against anti-racism that he sees as a threat to his presidency. This symbolism sucks.

    Rayne and Eureka have info about Tulsa in the first comment above.

    • harpie says:

      KIMBERLY JONES:
      [rough transcript from the above video]

      [3:10] If I right now decided I wanted to play Monopoly with you, and for four hundred rounds of playing Monopoly, I didn’t allow you to have any money, I didn’t allow you to have anything on the board, I didn’t allow for you to have anything.

      And then, we played another 50 rounds, of Monopoly. And everything that you gained and that you earned while you were playing that round of Monopoly was taken from you.

      That was Tulsa. That was Rosewood. Those are places where we built black economic wealth, where we were self-sufficient, where we owned our stores, where we owned our property, and they burned them to the ground.

      [4:44] So if I play 400 rounds of Monopoly with you, and I have to play and give you every dime that I made, and then for 50 years every time that I played, and you didn’t like what I did, you got to burn it like they did in Tulsa, and like they did in Rosewood, how can you win?

      How can you win? You can’t win. The game is fixed.

      [5:08] So, when they say, why do you burn down the community? Why do you burn down your own neighborhood?

      It’s NOT OURS!
      WE DON’T OWN ANYTHING!
      WE DON’T.OWN.ANYTHING!! […]

      • harpie says:

        About the social contract:

        [5:30] But the person who fixes the situation IS KILLING US! So the social contract is BROKEN! And if the social contract is broken, why the fuck do I give a shit about burning the fucking football hall of fame, about burning the fucking Target.

        YOU BROKE the contract! When you killed us in the streets, and when you didn’t give a FUCK!

        YOU BROKE the contract when for 400 years we played your game and built your wealth.

        YOU BROKE the contract when we built our wealth again, on our own, by our bootstraps in Tulsa and you dropped bombs on us. When we built it in Rosewood and you came and you slaughtered us.

        YOU BROKE THE CONTRACT, so FUCK your Target. Fuck your Hall of Fame. As far as I’m concerned, they can burn this bitch to the ground, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

        And they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.

    • harpie says:

      This is a very informative thread [also thread reader app at the end] [via Cheryl Rofer] by Jared Yates Sexton:

      https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/1271098397483847680
      11:14 AM · Jun 11, 2020

      All right. Let’s talk about how the Confederacy survived the Civil War, was absorbed into our culture, laws, and politics, and remains an everpresent threat we must destroy. I didn’t know any of this until I started researching American Rule. 1/

      First things first, the Confederacy is hardly dealt with in our history or curricula. There’s a reason the Civil War is reduced to a history of battles and military maneuvers.

      To look any deeper would mean an actual reckoning with white supremacy and power in America. 2/

      The truth is that the Confederacy considered itself the true ancestor of America and that the North had betrayed America’s founding and purpose as a white supremacist state.

      It wasn’t a different country. It was America interpreted as a white supremacist nation. /3 […]

      It’s a very detailed thread marching through history, with links and photos
      The following is #40 [!]

      There’s a reason Donald Trump is supported by these people. White supremacists see him as their warrior, a president who will explicitly stand up for them and continue hiding the Confederacy in culture while furthering its surviving goals.

      He is a Confederate president. 40/ [photo][…]

    • harpie says:

      https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1270839572839182338
      6:05 PM · Jun 10, 2020

      One of these things is not like the other. [screenshot]

      From the screenshot:

      Friday: Marine Corps bans Confederate flag display
      Monday: Army open to changing Confederate names of bases
      Tuesday: Navy says no Confederate flag display
      [Wednesday]: Trump says no Confederate name changes on US bases
      [Wednesday]: Pelosi wants Confederate statues removed from Capitol
      [Wednesday]: NASCAR bans Confederate flag from its races

    • harpie says:

      THEY’RE SCREAMING WHO THEY ARE [again]
      [Jacksonville, KKK edition]

      Trump Will Give Convention Speech in Jacksonville, Capping a Dispute Over Safety
      The move from Charlotte, N.C., where the Republican convention was originally planned, came after the president demanded to hold an event without social distancing rules.
      https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/politics/trump-jacksonville-rnc-speech.html

      From the article:
      https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1271244087358885892
      8:53 PM · Jun 11, 2020

      “The event for Mr. Trump in Jacksonville coincides with one of the darkest days in the city’s history … the 60th anniversary of ‘Ax Handle Saturday,’ when a white mob organized by the Ku Klux Klan attacked mostly black civil rights protesters…”

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