THREAD. The current celebration in the media of armed police as the liberal response to lack of housing, healthcare, and other inequality caused by the hoarding of wealth has the chance to be a watershed moment of consciousness for many ordinary people.
In the second half of the 20th century, police perfected a marketing strategy to portray their role as protecting against "violent crime." They did this even as police devote only 4% of their total time to what they call "violent crime." nytimes.com/2020/06/19/ups…
Police and the real estate developers, corporate interests, and corrupt municipal bureaucrats who represent the interests of people who own things have a problem: Despite police manipulation of almost useless "crime stats," their own stats show violent crime near historic lows. 
With "violent crime" at near historic lows, the core function of police is expressing itself more clearly: providing the threat of imminent violence and the indiscriminate wielding of that violence to protect accumulations of wealth:
https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1470957050465333253
Many people can see the U.S. careening toward fascism and the world tumbling toward ecological catatrophe. The response of liberal political leaders to all this has been to back a reactionary right-wing movement to empower the police, military, and immigration bureaucracies.
The failure to respond to existential threats and inability to meet people's basic needs (including safety) will kill the liberal political elite as we know it. The Q is whether fascism will take over or whether people will together in mutual aid to build their own solutions.
Never forget that the choice liberal Mayors are making is to empower armed government bureaucrats who smile as they make quilts out of the desperate signs of unhoused people, crush the wheelchairs of people living on the street, and drag Black men by rope on horseback to a cage.
Most people (not on twitter) get at a deep level that at a time of unprecedented threats to survival (environmental, fascist, migration, viral pandemic, abortion, etc...) how ridiculous it is for liberal Mayors and corporate media to be hysterical about "retail theft."
This thread is very heavy, so here is a photo of one of my favorite kitten friends, sitting in a box.
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