Aspinator wrote:
In the BLM movement one of their platforms is to "defund the police". A word that is not so scary to the right would be re-allocate. When the right hears the word defund the police, they go in a tizzy. They say BLM wants to abolish the policeforce. That could not be further from the truth; BLM wants to re-allocate the budget given to the police departmen by the taxpayers. Thoughts?
Some of the BLM organizers and people associated with the movement
do want to abolish the police. Abolishing the police and reallocating money say to mental health professionals is not a zero-sum proposition.
To oversimplify things progressives tend to believe BLM people when they say they do not want to abolish the police. "Conservatives" believe "defund the police" is a code term for abolishing the police or defunding the police is the first step to designed to soften up the public for eventual abolition.
I would rethink the idea of anti defunding police is only a conservative thing
Americans Don’t Want to Defund the Police. Here’s What They Do WantQuote:
Last month—more than a year after the murder of George Floyd, and several months after a Minneapolis police officer was convicted for killing him—a consortium of news organizations asked 800 Minneapolis voters what they thought of the city’s police department. Most viewed the department unfavorably. Nevertheless, three-quarters of the poll’s Black respondents said the city shouldn’t reduce its police force. Black voters were considerably more opposed to this idea than white voters were. When the poll offered an alternative—replacing the police department with a “Department of Public Safety,” which might include cops but would focus on public health and be more closely supervised by the City Council—white respondents favored the idea. But Black respondents, on balance, rejected it.
These results were no fluke. The same thing had happened in July, when pollsters asked similar questions in Detroit. That survey, commissioned by the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, presented a list of eight issues and asked residents which was the biggest one facing the city. White respondents were slightly more likely to choose police reform than public safety. But Black respondents named public safety as their top concern, and they ranked police reform last. White residents opposed defunding the police, but Black residents rejected it even more decisively.
The findings in Minneapolis and Detroit are part of a larger story. When people are asked what they really think about criminal justice, the answers are complicated. Many white people are open to police reform, and many Black people are wary of curtailing law enforcement.
One of the worst things to propose, politically, is defunding the police. Americans reject that idea by about 40 percentage points. Democrats and people of color are against it. The only idea that’s less popular is abolishing the police, which, in an Economist-YouGov poll taken this month, lost by 45 points among Black Americans, by 64 points among Democrats, and by 76 points among all voters.
_________________
“Self Acceptance is a process not a performance”
“You are autistic enough. And you always have been”
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 18 Jan 2022, 2:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
17 Jan 2022, 4:41 pm
