The most upsetting thing about this is it reveals the powerful understand abolitionist principles and how to take action on them. They only adopt abolitionist language, however, to further entrench existing inequality, rather than the other way around. chicago.suntimes.com/2020/4/29/2124…
#Lightfoot understands moving resources from communities who don't need them and redistributing them to those that have been historically denied them. But instead of applying this principle to housing, a living wage, access to education and healthcare, she applies it to policing.
She uses the language of 'addressing need,' but the need she refers to--the need to end inter-community violence--is born from lack of access to basic resources, not lack of access to being policed by the state. (The south and west sides have never lacked this "resource.")
A similar hypocrisy was revealed when #Lightfoot said members of a predominately white church disobeying social distancing orders "needed to be educated" about #COVID19, and that her administration would "avoid mass arrests." chicago.suntimes.com/platform/amp/c…
This was days after telling youth on the West and South sides they would be arrested and taken to jail if they were disobeying social distancing. wbez.org/stories/black-…
As MLK famously said, "We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor." The powerful understand abolition perfectly. They only apply its principles to themselves and their neighborhoods, while denying them to ours. #CareNotCops
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