THREAD: One enduring truth you don't hear police mention when they talk about "crime waves" is this: violence is higher in countries that are more unequal, and violence is higher in U.S. states that are more unequal. Structural inequality kills. Let's look at the data:
In groundbreaking work studying decades of data from around the world, leading researchers found a number of things that you should know about how inequality determines all of the problems that cops, prosecutors, and judges tell you we need cages for. equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/…
Homicide rates are higher in more unequal rich countries:
Drug use is higher in more unequal countries:
Mental illness is more prevalent in more unequal countries:
Human caging by the government is more prevalent in more unequal countries:
Human caging by the government is more prevalent in more unequal U.S. states:
People trust each other less in more unequal U.S. states.
This is profound evidence that what you've been told by powerful people who profit from human caging is wrong. If police and prosecutors made us safe, the U.S. would be the safest country in world history. No one else has spent remotely close to the trillions that we have.
You can explore more in depth how and why powerful people created the myth of linking our health and safety to police, prosecutors, and prisons here:
THREAD. Did you know that at about 1/3 of all stranger homicides in the U.S. are perpetrated by police? But there's something hidden here that is important to understand in this authoritarian moment.
First the basics: The vast bulk of physical and sexual violence in our society is *not* perpetrated by strangers, but by people who know each other. Obscuring this fact is a critical feature of copaganda in the news. People are shocked to hear it. Why?
A simple answer is that the news makes people extremely scared of strangers--the person next to you at CVS, the person walking down the street, the unhoused person in a tent, the anonymous burglar, etc. These are the kinds of crimes associated with surveillance, policing, etc.
THREAD. In Trump's speech to an unprecedented gathering of generals, he announced he was preparing to order them to use U.S. "cities as training grounds for our military." I want to highlight a few other bone chilling statements and put them into context that media obscures.
First, although it didn't get as much coverage, Trump also said the U.S. is facing "a war from within" against "the enemy from within." This essentially declared to military leaders--who Hegseth had just essentially told he would be purging of disloyalty--a new civil war.
Second, Trump specifically added that this "war" was something the "people in this room" (i.e. military generals) would "straighten out" in domestic deployments to cities run by Democrats "one by one." He added: "inner cities" are "a big part of war now. It’s a big part of war."
THREAD. I happened to be in Portland yesterday to give a university lecture as Trump called it “war ravaged Portland” while illegally ordering the deployment of the U.S. military to use “full force.”
This kind of outrageous misinformation would not be possible without the culture of fear spread for years by the mainstream media. He is playing on the prodigious ignorance and irrational fear cultivated by the way the news media distorts our sense of safety.
Portland, needless to say, is nothing remotely like what Trump describes. But the mass media has created an entirely delusional public perception of what threats we face and from whom.
THREAD. PBS recently aired a dangerous news segment, full of misinformation. The incident is not only embarrassing for PBS and Democrats, but it portends dark days for the future of our society that it was published. People at PBS should be doing some deep soul searching.
First, the article is a mind-boggling interview with the Democratic New Mexico governor. She validates and increases hysteria about street crime at the same moment such crime (which was and is down) is the precise (and false) pretense of national authoritarian takeover.
Worse, the reporter (cheering along like an AI-bot) lets Governor do it at a time of near-historic crime lows in New Mexico. Even worse, reporter lets her demand more authoritarian repression as a solution to fear, despite the evidence that this is like flat-earth stuff.
THREAD. I don't know what there is left to say about the New York Times and Democrats, but documenting their support for fascism still feels important. If there's any chance to walk back from the fascist cliff, we must see why things like today's article are so dangerous.
The article today is premised on the idea that--while some Dems are uncomfortable with Trump deploying military to cities without consent--they want more federal resources (even military) to flood their cities for surveillance, police, prosecution, and prison.
As with any article, ask yourself: Why is this a news story? Who benefits from it being news, from how it's framed, from what info is included and what is ignored? Always look: who are sources quoted, and which perspectives are ignored? Take a look at the sources in order:
THREAD. For over a decade, I've been working across the country to challenge unconstitutional cash bail. So, why is Trump trying to entrench it?
The for-profit cash bail industry exists only in U.S. and Philippines. Even though you're presumed innocent, you're stuck in a jail cell while you wait for your day in court if your family doesn't have cash to pay a private company to secure your release.
Basing bodily liberty on a person's access to cash destroys millions of lives. It makes us all less safe. It's unconstitutional. But it makes a lot of people a lot of money, and it gives huge leverage to prosecutors and police to force people to plead guilty in low-level cases.