It’s hard to blame people for misunderstanding slogans that supposedly don’t mean what the plain meaning would suggest. Perhaps the young activists should say what they mean and mean what they say and then all those “older folks” might not miss the point.
"They" are many people. I suspect that many of them don't understand that it's a motte and bailey argument. But I suspect that some of them do understand, and are doing it deliberately.
> It’s hard to blame people for misunderstanding slogans that supposedly don’t mean what the plain meaning would suggest.
I find it very easy to blame people who are not willing to spend 10 seconds researching what a movement stands for. We can't say that it's okay to read three words on a sign, interpret it in your own context, and then blame the movement when you don't "understand" it. It's a slogan! What do you expect for a less-than-five-word sentence that people can unite under?
At a minimum, I'd hope that if you asked 5 people who were uniting under that less-than-five word slogan what that slogan meant, in terms of desired policy, that at least 3 of those 5 people would agree with one another.
All the supporters I have talked to are in favor of "reform", yes. The specifics of what exactly it means to "defund" the police varies pretty significantly between supporters though -- some say "obviously we still need police but maybe try sending in a social worker for the homeless guy who is lying unconscious onthe ground" and others say "defund means entirely defund, as in abolish, I mean what I say" (I'm assuming that is the slogan in question, but not entirely positive because the post I was replying to was vagueposting).
I’ve heard hundreds of supporters speak and the message is fairly uniform: reduce the operational scope and budget of police significantly and use those resources on programs - proven to work elsewhere - which help people and communities in ways that are more appropriate to the specific problem and more efficient in reducing crime. The degree in which the scope/budget varies, but of course some people are arguing for what they think is realistically achievable and others are arguing their ideal; both are valid debate strategies and don’t necessarily mean that they aren’t aligned.
The few people I’ve heard say “remove police entirely,” when asked to elaborate, meant that the entire organization/concept of policing should be rebuilt from the ground up, not that there should be no one in society available to respond to crimes occurring.
I'd expect something that's not so much more extreme than the idea it's trying to communicate. If people march around saying "tear down the bridges", tagging bridges with little Xs where the demolitions should start, I'm not gonna stick around to hear that they actually mean rural highways should be better funded.
I'm willing to invest time, but I start from the assumption that the slogans and symbols of the marchers are honest attempts to explain what they're marching for.
> I find it very easy to blame people who are not willing to spend 10 seconds researching what a movement stands for.
Then you suffer from a profound lack of empathy.
I invested your "10 seconds". Google took me to a site called Defund the Police[1].
Reading this site, it seems that they want to... defund the police. As in, take the majority of their funding away, and put it somewhere else (nominally into social programs).
Not making a value judgement here, but I'm pretty sure this thing does what it says on the tin.
> I invested your "10 seconds". Google took me to a site called Defund the Police[1].
Weird. That page is not even at page 1 for me. Wikipedia comes up first for me and would generally be my go-to source for these topics.
> Reading this site, it seems that they want to... defund the police. As in, take the majority of their funding away, and put it somewhere else (nominally into social programs).
> Not making a value judgement here, but I'm pretty sure this thing does what it says on the tin.
Yes? This is correctly what the movement is about. The misunderstanding we're talking about here is that people assume it means only cutting down police funds without investing it anywhere else.
It's as straightforward as it sounds: Instead of funding a police department, a sizable chunk of a city's budget is invested in communities, especially marginalized ones where much of the policing occurs.
Wikipedia states
"Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources. Activists who use the phrase may do so with varying intentions; some seek modest reductions, while others argue for full defunding as a step toward the abolition of contemporary police services.
> The misunderstanding we're talking about here is that people assume it means only cutting down police funds without investing it anywhere else.
You'd think conservatives would be all for that - smaller state, lower taxes
> You'd think conservatives would be all for that - smaller state, lower taxes.
I think conservatives might get behind defunding the police if those funds were routed back to the taxpayer, rather than to expanding social programs -- or any government program, for that matter.
Moving money from a strongly conservative part of the government to a strongly leftist part of the government looks too much like a power grab to gain traction with conservatives.
You'd also get conservative buy-in if it came with a pro-gun stance.
If citizens are going to police their own communities, then they need to have the option to carry and employ arms as necessary for the task.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for give-and-take in criminal justice reform -- prisons and drug policy should also be on the table! -- but it requires both sides putting things of equal value on the fire, and I don't see that happening.
> The misunderstanding we're talking about here is that people assume it means only cutting down police funds without investing it anywhere else.
Pretty sure people understood that part.
Edit: I am also seeing downvotes on my above comment, which seems to indicate that a fair number of people disagree with the assessment that "defund the police" means "defund the police".
I would expect a slogan that is not so insane that that it constantly has be explained and interpreted by apologists. Lets cut the crap. Defund the police means defund the police.
