I am not about to tell anyone how to feel or how to do activism (especially non-white people) but I saw an Instagram post from @/urdoinggreat that basically said calls to arrest the police just wastes our energy and validates a corrupt system and wowza I am thinking about that
Link to the post here (if anyone knows if they have twitter pls send me their @,) & I’ll post a brief transcript in the next tweet instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“We want justice... and the only justice that a lot of us know is within the criminal justice system that we already know does not work, so we end up calling for measures that validate a system that we have already decided does not work.”
@/urdoinggreat : instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“Asking for these cops to be arrested and charged is not only a waste of our energy, it also actively validates a system that we’re claiming to be against.“ instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“Asking for these cops to be arrested is asking for the system to work in our favor, when we are saying out loud... that at its core it will never work in our favor. So we need to do something radically different.” instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“I don’t know that there is justice for the murdered. What we can do is throw all of our collective energies into making sure that this never happens again. Abolition is how we make sure this never happens again.” instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“We have to decide what it is that we want, and what actually gets us there. Arresting the cops does not solve the problem of police violence. Abolishing police *does* solve that problem. Defunding their departments does solve that problem.” instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“The systems we’re talking about here are so long-standing and deeply entrenched into our ideas of right and wrong, our ideas of what justice looks like, of what it means to ask for justice...” instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
“We need to be able to interrogate the way that these systems reflect themselves in our interpersonal relationships, how they reflect in our reactions when horrible things happen.” instagram.com/p/CB3jbYzj9dQ/…
Again I’m the last person who can tell anyone else how to feel or how to pursue justice and I think there are a lot of good voices to listen to right now, I just thought this perspective was also one worth listening to and considering and engaging with.
& if you’re wondering what specific things we can call for, #8toAbolition has a great list that I reference every time I write my reps. & I’m interested in hearing other ideas of things people are doing to to bring about this different kind of justice!
8toabolition.com/defund-the-pol…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.