My mom talked to me recently about how uncomfortable she was with "defund the police." The wording made her anxious. What would that mean for her safety?
Let me tell you what happened in that conversation, and why I think using uncomfortable language matters here.
Let me tell you what happened in that conversation, and why I think using uncomfortable language matters here.
I told her that I did in fact mean it literally, and then explained what it means to me: divesting from the concept of policing as we know it, and asking instead, what does the community need? What skills are required to deliver that? What structure is needed to deliver that?
I told her that if we remain tied to the concept of police as the solution to a HUGE range of community needs, it's very very hard to imagine other ways of solving problems. We must be able to first imagine not asking or paying police to solve those problems.
Then we had a discussion about what that might look like, and where modern policing comes from.
Is she now repeating "defund the police" to her friends? Maybe not yet. But it was a deep, nuanced, and productive conversation.
AND...
Is she now repeating "defund the police" to her friends? Maybe not yet. But it was a deep, nuanced, and productive conversation.
AND...
I firmly believe that the only reason we had that conversation at all was because abolitionists have been spreading the challenging, uncomfortable message of "defund the police."
If the message had been about reform, she'd have stayed comfortable, and we'd never have talked about it at all.
New ideas are uncomfortable at first. Let people be uncomfortable with them. Let *yourself* be uncomfortable with them.
New ideas are uncomfortable at first. Let people be uncomfortable with them. Let *yourself* be uncomfortable with them.
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