Thread by @WomensLibFront

This, x1000, about the “defund the police” slogan. If they don’t mean that—even though all the founders have made recent public statements supporting full prison abolition, which means an end of the criminal justice system—then they should say something else.

https://twitter.com/libbyemmons/status/1307776356722376704

Prison abolitionists start from believing that even violent crime needs to be decriminalized. The movement’s 2001, Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex, mainly complains that women haven’t bought what they’re selling.

incite-national.org/incite-critica…

Instead of addressing the serious objections they identified, or coming up with viable strategies for, say, dealing with serial killers, the Incite! statement closes with a list of diversionary talking points to redirect objections with, mostly, whataboutery.

Nearly 20 years on, the prison abolition movement doesn’t have any better answer for what to do with serial killers if we dismantle the criminal justice system and replace it with restorative justice community meetings.

What they have now that they didn’t then is the social media mobs & critical theory frameworks to punish disagreement with prison & policing abolition with the “white supremacist” label.

This is how they get ordinary people to spontaneously compare a 9-11 call to a mob hit.

‘Oh, but “defund the police” doesn’t *really* mean that,’ we hear from all directions. Look. Yes it does. Yes. It. Does.

They’re smart people. If they meant something else, they would have said it.

m4bl.org/policy-platfor…

What happens within the prison abolition movement is that women are told that the greatest source of sexual violence is actually the prison system, and everything else pales. These devoted activists then do things like not report rape to the police.

fpiw.org/blog/2016/08/1…

This is not to say that reporting rape to the police is generally a satisfactory experience. Sometimes, as with many other aspects of human endeavor, it’s a disaster.

propublica.org/article/false-…

But an ineffective state monopoly on the use of force does not result in a good environment for women. Without the deterrent effect of an orderly society and the potential of a criminal justice response, things are objectively worse.

unicef.org/somalia/child-…

The US tried ending the police and the military and starting from scratch, already. Not here though. In Iraq. It was such a crashing disaster, it created a vacuum of power into which men from all over the world poured their dreams of female slavery.

theguardian.com/world/2017/jul…

Why should any of us assume that we know Patrice Cullors’ mind better than she knows it herself, when she talked about prison abolition to Teen Vogue in 2019?

teenvogue.com/story/black-li…

When Opal Tometi told students at Notre Dame, as reported in the IndyStar in 2019, that she was a prison abolitionist, she did not seem confused.

indystar.com/story/news/201…

When Alicia Garza was featured in the Profiles in Abolition video project in 2016, organized by Critical Resistance, an organization whose primary goal is prison abolition, it would be insulting to question the sincerity of her participation.

indystar.com/story/news/201…

Not everyone who affirms that black lives matter, & police reform is necessary, believes in criminal justice abolition. But there are plenty of people who do, and they include the main thought leaders, and many allies, of the Movement for Black Lives.

time.com/5848318/black-…

To add, here’s a thoughtful exploration of the issues brought up by Black Lives Matter supporters, by commentators who agree that we have serious problems with racism and police violence, but have concerns about how news stories are being contextualized.

An example of the woke hypocrisy, defunding the police for thee, calling them at the first sign of trouble for me.

https://twitter.com/drdina1/status/1308544209373130752

When we use the language of prison abolitionists, what we focus on are the useful, but sometimes disconcerting, institutions whose negatives they want to play up. But what are they, in a civilized society that doesn’t lock people up for their opinions, meant to oppose?

What we should be saying is that prison abolitionists, police abolitionists, want to abolish the criminal justice system. They want to decriminalize everything, including violent crime of every conceivable type.

A prison abolitionist world means decriminalizing murder and rape.

A prison abolitionist world means decriminalizing domestic violence and sexual harassment.

It means that if a riot breaks out, there’s no one to call to fix it. You and your neighbors would be responsible for talking everyone down through a restorative justice mediation. Or not.

When they talk about defunding police, as a step towards abolition, you can see the direction this will take in Seattle.

They’re going to cancel the police, and let a pimp figure out how fix it. Does this still sound like a good idea to anyone?

nypost.com/2020/09/22/sea…

People will call us names for this, but that isn’t going to mean that their reasoning is any more coherent than it was before they called us the names.

Prison abolitionists really want the decriminalization of everything, including the decriminalization of all brutality towards women, such as the legalized rape of the sex industry.

rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2020/0…

They’re not kidding, or being ironic, or trying to shock people out of complacency, when they say things like, “there’s no prison abolition without the decriminalization of sex work.”

They really believe these things that they keep saying they believe.

And whereas anti-trafficking advocates are right to be worried about academics promoting the sex industry ...

https://twitter.com/spaceintl/status/1308649704310353920

...woke activists and movement leaders are pushing a legalized sex trade hard.

If you’re woke, if you’re “anti-racist,” if you support “black trans women,” you’re supposed to support legalization of the sex trade now.

Major organizations have built a platform around support for a legal trade in rape, in selling women’s bodies, and many of the usual actors in pushing gender identity are leading this charge, as well.

Two-thirds of Democratic Party voters, a majority of voters under 45, and a slight majority of all voters, now things it would be at least somewhat acceptable to legalize the purchase of sex.

newrepublic.com/article/156349…

This is the result of a massive lobbying effort, and one that’s likely to make it onto the Democratic Party’s official platform if the momentum continues.
dataforprogress.org/memos/decrimin…

OpenDemocracy: “Decarceral alliances in the fight to decriminalize sex work: Ending mass incarceration and ending violence against sex workers are the same project.”

opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-traf…

Make The Road New York: “Prison Abolition Requires Decriminalizing Sex Work” (reprint)

Make The Road NY is a project of The Center For Popular Democracy. Looks like they have a lot of friends.

The Center for Popular Democracy has affiliates all over the country, with local branding, so they don’t sound like they’re part of a bigger, national project.

The Center for Popular Democracy has 55 national affiliate organizations with unique, local branding. They’re heavily tied into the movements that have been taken over by critical theory, and all of their most alarming, fringe policies travel together.

The example of Make The Road NY isn’t a rogue affiliate, in their love of sex trade legalization and criminal justice abolition. This is CPD’s coalition statement on presidential candidates embracing the decriminalization of prostitution:

populardemocracy.org/news-and-publi…

From the CPD statement, presented as from “black and brown-led grassroots organizations”: “We will also continue to fight for policies ... including non-carceral responses to gender and gun violence, ... decriminalizing sex work ...”

The phrase “non-carceral responses to gender ... violence” means decriminalizing rape and domestic violence.

“Decriminalizing sex work” means legalizing pimping and sex buying.

They want these policies to be carried into the White House.

But until they make this federal policy, woke towns like Seattle are going to try to cancel the police, and deal with crime by maybe pretending they don’t have it.

mynorthwest.com/2173992/rantz-…

It might not save the city a lot of money in the long run, to just make the whole of King County an autonomous zone though.

patch.com/washington/sea…

It might just lead to another 525% increase in crime. But the ‘real’ violence is that some of the people responsible for that crime might get arrested, or go to jail, right? So it’d all be good, according to some ... but probably not to the victims.

nypost.com/2020/07/02/sea…

The calls to abolish the criminal justice system aren’t a mistake, and they haven’t been misinterpreted. They’re exactly what they sound like they are.