1) This is a thread on three policies I support that I think could achieve real antiracist effects. At the end I'll briefly discuss why I think these are the kinds of things we should be focusing on and talking about *right now* instead of fighting over theory *right now*...
2) Above I emphasize *right now* because I want to be clear that I'm not interested in devaluing theoretical or conceptual discussions, but in recognizing when it's time to move on policy.
3) So (a) I think we need a dramatic shift of resources from police departments to other kinds of first responders in the social work realm. Accompanying that we need to decriminalize petty drug offenses and dismantle much of the carceral state.
4) (a) is a wholesale shift from retributive to restorative justice models. In practice, massive downsizing of prisons, demilitarization of police, funding shift from policing to social work and community building. Per M. Kaba, reduce total interactions btw police and citizens.
5) (b) we should enact reparations, both as a program of official state recognition and as massive injection of state funding into programs I describe here:
6) (c) universal healthcare and universal basic income. Likely these would make (a) easier and less resource intensive. Likely they would also untether people from what is for most people one of life's main sources of unfreedom: the corporate workplace.
7) (c) is important in particular because antiracist *approaches* at the individual level and *best practices* at the institutional (employer) level are always coopted. They move the chairs around in a locked room. By contrast...
8) actual freedom comes from the ability to make choices with one's time, from not having to fear for one's safety, from not having to fear retribution from a boss for failure to comply, from not losing one's health insurance and livelihood bc of caprice.
9) Given what's happening in the world right now, I just don't see any amount of awareness training or privilege acknowledgment or call-outs or any such thing dramatically changing entrenched and fortified institutional racism. Pushing specific state policies, on the other hand..
10) is in my view the most effective thing an 'ally' can do. I put that word in scare quotes because I think it, too, has been coopted and defanged to stand for some superficial aesthetic instead of a politics of action. /end
