I've already hit on why #8cantwait bugged so I decided to do some digging just to see what's up. Campaign Zero is a project of We the Protestors which is affiliated with an Obama Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Already I'm laughing.
The Obama Foundation promotes them but their available paperwork is all kind of circuitous and lacks detail. They've worked hard to conceal this information which is weird because 501c3's like to celebrate their donors.
NPs are pretty transparent cuz the people that donate to them WANT to be recognized as being good lil millionaires yet I couldn't find who their current donors are (though I found something about their 2017 board.) All we have on the website is 3 members of the "planning team."
Campaign Zero has been around for a while but until this past week, no one talked about them. You can do a quick Google News search to check. But obvs they didn't come up with this overnight. What's clear from all their research and website is they had money, time, and resources.
(Which is weird because organizations that do work that actually advances the fight against white supremacy in a significant way usually don't.)
The campaign itself had no excitement behind it. No one cared. They didn't even care. Search their tweets, they've barely mentioned it. Then on June 1st after it was ABUNDANTLY clear that a revolution was afoot, all of a sudden Obama rolls in promoting this. Hmm.
On the Day of the Black Squares, corps include Campaign Zero on the lists of where to donate alongside orgs that have been doing this work for years. Celebrities start encouraging people to donate to them. People start saying this is a movement backed by BLM members.
Essentially, all of the money, energy, and resources that HAD BEEN going to these orgs all of a sudden were being pointed to them. It was being touted as an affiliate of BLM while BLM didn't mention it at all. Their movement to defund the police was being kneecapped.
Which brings us back to Obama. This is centrist sedation. This is the stroking of the head, I promise it's gonna be alright if you just take your medicine shit that got us here. These are the toothless policies. They are not enough. Not this time. Not ever again.
This is a government plan, not an activist plan. And y'all wanna trust the government? After they've been beating our asses for a week straight? After they occupied their own country? After they've been breaking the constitution like a fucking Kit Kat?
Obama had his time. He didn't fix it then. Why the fuck would he be able to fix it now. Ferguson happened UNDER OBAMA. #8cant wait was trotted out not in conjunction with the #DefundthePolice movement but in response to it.
Because of our pushback on this incrementalization, they WILL join us in calling for an EXPLICIT defunding of the police. Period.
