Thread by @JoshuaSealy

Absolutely phenomenal conversation with two thinkers I deeply admire: @policingblack & @DesmondCole.

🧵 of highlights below 👇🏽

https://twitter.com/DesmondCole/status/1369667143164456966

@policingblack: Black people are at the fault lines of abandonment and harm, yet at the same time, are at the forefront of remaking the world and imagining abolitionist futures. We are at one of the most horrific—and most exciting—times.

@policingblack: The problem is not *disproportionate* policing, but *policing itself*.

Policing is multi-sighted, and must be construed broadly in abolitionist projects.

The carceral system institutionalizes anti-Blackness through various techniques, despite recent reforms.

@policingblack: Require non-reformist reform, i.e., abolition. Not only do “Black Lives Matter”, but policing as a practice/institution must be challenged in terms of its legitimacy.

Should divest from policing & reinvest in communities denied safety under the status quo.

@policingblack: Also must decriminalize sex work, drugs, borders.

Abolition is in the air. Not a cynic about the mainstreaming of abolition—value this “shift in common sense”, though mindful of dilution. This is the collective victory of organizers—it did not happen overnight.

@policingblack: Should acknowledge those on the front lines of this movement. There’s a tendency towards erasure of radical black activists, especially women, queer, & trans activists. We should pay dues in real time to the architects of this moment. Freedom work isn’t glamorous.

@policingblack: Abolitionists often viewed as idealists, but many of the abolitionists I know are staunch realists. They want abolition because of the “absolute failure” of reform—the “sheer inhumanity” of a system not designed to heal, but to kill.

@DesmondCole: Redundant to say “police violence”, as Christina Sharpe reminds us—it is just policing.

We are so aware of violence abroad, yet fail to grapple with it here.

E.g., Police spike strip w/ man driving infant, resulting in car accident & firing on car, killing both.

@DesmondCole: This story informs reform. Why isn’t it a story here, yet stories of violence abroad are?

We cannot reform police accountability systems because they are designed to protect *the police*, not *the public*.

@DesmondCole: We don’t learn the names of police officers who harm us because they are narrated as the heroes in our stories. There is “simply no urgency for accountability”—no disclosure about police violence. Expected to “trust the police will police themselves.”

@DesmondCole: Even when the SIU finds police killings, no charges. They did not forget to charge the police. The police are given months to craft alibis of accountability. This is all by design. This is a system beyond reform.

@DesmondCole: We spend loads of money on Black and Indigenous people: for policing, jail, prisons, & child apprehension. Not that the state doesn’t spend money on us. That the state spends money on punishing us rather than caring for us. This is the reorientation of abolition.

@DesmondCole: So many don’t know the names of those killed in Canada:

-Regis Korchinski-Paquet
-D’Andre Campbell
-Ejaz Choudry
-Chantel Moore
-Julian Jones
-Rodney Levi
-Eishia Hudson

All Black/Indigenous. And the police always characterize violence as if it were inevitable.

@DesmondCole: Despite all this, and advocacy for defunding, city council declined. All they did was, instead, invest in body cameras—they do not *stop* violence; they let us *watch* it. We have to do more. We must move beyond the “wishful thinking” of police reform.

@DesmondCole: The cruelty of the city, in the middle of a pandemic, spending money on destroying encampments rather than housing people, the end result of decades of failed housing policy. This is an “unquestionably new moment” to reimagine how we think of safety.

@policingblack: It may not be *easier* to think of the end of policing rather than an alternative, but the end of policing is more *necessary*. Police deployed to manage injustice. This is why it feels impossible to imagine alternatives. We have a multiplicity of needs.

@policingblack: Noise violations. Mental health. We throw police at everything. What is exciting is to think of all the other things that could be funded and supported and that our communities deserve—this will bring Black and human flourishing. Must adopt a kaleidoscopic vision.

@DesmondCole: In a white settler colonial system dominance and control is always preferable. What is the alternative to the strap in school? We used to beat children out of seeming necessity for control. Thinking you need to replace the strap brought SRO’s to schools.

@DesmondCole: We don’t need to think of alternatives. We need to think about who is harmed and who is helped. If we want *finality*, the police make sense. If we want *support*, police are the last option.

@DesmondCole: We saw this posture with the pandemic, too. Do we respond with good health policy, or with dominance and control? We should not take an enforcement approach to a public health issue.

@DesmondCole: We should avoid reasserting government control and punishment, and pursue care and education. Think: paid sick leave. Think: guardian angels in Quebec. These choices reflect our mismatched priorities. Yet how much money has been given to corporations?

@DesmondCole: This pandemic has reinforced the power of the few over the power of the many.

@policingblack: The pandemic has highlighted egregious forms of disposability. Police killings doubled. Covid tore through shelters, prisons, migrant detention centres. This was a choice.

@policingblack: Vaccine apartheid follows colonial lines.

But also saw experiments that were considered politically impossible, then done overnight, once the broader public was impacted, e.g., universal income. When lives that matter are at stake, changes can happen quickly.

@policingblack: We saw migrants released from detention and everything was fine. All about priorities. Change is possible. It’s always been a matter of political choice to be a death-making society. If we understand our conditions as an emergency, we could act to change them.

@policingblack: SRO discussion over. Remove police from schools yesterday. No reason to expose children to police. Time for action.

@DesmondCole: Conversation is always majority white comfort vs. legitimate fear and unsafety of Black/Indigenous kids. Need health/food not police.