Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, wants us to take "Defund the Police" very, very seriously:
Her new book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook, offers 12 steps in the form of a guidebook that everyday activists can use to fight for an abolitionist present and future—and her bold, humanistic approach can be previewed in a recent essay for Variety.
“When people hear the word abolitionist,” Patrisse writes, “they usually think of slavery.” As with abolishing slavery, she argues, there can be no compromise, no half measures, and no rest. Is “defund the police” a literal call for a total, complete shutdown? For Patrisse and other abolitionists: absolutely. “This is not about fixing a broken system, we are not looking for better food or more access to education in prison. We are looking to abolish the entire system.”
This is about the last thing we need right now. But if you want to hear Cullors talk about it in more depth, click the link and sign up for her conversation with Mother Jones's James West on Thursday.
This is the EXACT CRAP that sane Democrats need to denounce.
It is f**king absurd.
100% agree. Eschaton will no doubt try to flame KD for this, but what purpose do statements like this -- which have ZERO chance of ever affecting policy but have significant electoral downside -- need to be made? I've never heard a convincing rationale.
It also allows in doing so for positioning.
Strategic denunciations of fringe Weirdos and combine it with attack on other guys Fringe.
Now name me the ELECTED Democrat office-holders who support this. Not just "defund the police" but total abolition.
Something I've been meaning to ask: if Republicans don't have answer for the racist treacherous behavior or words of some its elected officials (some of whom are members of Congress!) or members of "conservative" media please explain to me why Democrats have to answer for some activist who holds no elective office, has never run or been elected to anything? Hmmm?
Give the abolitionists credit for this: at least they're honest. Most abolitionists, at least those in some sympathy dance around the topic like they're on Dancing with the Stars
Everytime a Squadratic Evasion type pops off about #defundthepolice, the lamestream media will remind that "leader of the Defund Movement, Patrice Cullors, has emphasized that the results would be the excision of all budgetary outlays to municipal police, & the shuttering of precincts & laying off of police officers". Even if Cullors is as much a public figure as an adjunct professor of creative writing at Ottumwa Community College, actual elected officials echoing her allows the GQP front organization known as the lamestream media to inject her into the campaign.
actual elected officials echoing her
Please point some of these officials out.
Ever heard of politics?
Only a fool tears down his old house before finishing construction on his new house.
Sometimes you have to tear the old one down first to make room for the new one.
The Chris Abele Theory of home remodeling.
(Hyperlocal Milwaukee County real estate reference.)
So one random person says something stupid or short-sighted and we all have to care? I’ve literally never heard of Patrisse Cullors ever before today… and certainly did not elect her to represent any jurisdiction I live in… so it’s unclear what exactly I or anybody else is supposed to do to shut people like her up (assuming that I believe her speech is dangerous for my political party and not simply a relatively-unknown person shouting into the void). Googling her, it appears she teaches at a school I’ve also never heard of and is credited with coming up with the BLM hashtag. Woo-hoo. There really needs to be a threshold for “someone of public importance” before we all must respond to their words.
This. This. This.
I am also tired of the mainstream taking whatever Cullors says even remotely seriously. Can you imagine what an equivalent voice of the super far right is saying today?
Yet, until recently, the R's never get tarred with whatever their lunatic fringes say.
And that goes for those saying we have to "denounce it" - why? How about we have to actually adopt something before accepting any blame for it?
NEver get tarred?
That's absolutely false.
Rarely do Democrats use successful tactics to tar, yes that would be true, but poor overly eggheaded intellectualised Left communication strategies that mostly talk to the Pre Convinced do not mean never, they mean you need to improve your game
Its never get TARRED.
With emphasis in all caps, not on the word never.
Right now, the 43%, the R base, all think that if a Dem is elected some form of "defunding" is going to happen and under some Dems the Cullers "complete elimination of the police" is going to happen.
And they vote accordingly. The Dem party is tarred.
I would say that right now, maybe a percent or two, tops, of the Dem base believe that if Trump is reelected he will put alligators in the rio grand and machine gun migrants "in the legs." That's the phrasing Trump more or less said, and he's not even "tarred" with that.
Its an asymetrical situation. And yes, R's (as in the entire party, nope, Lindsay Graham does not get a pass) do not, and as far I as have seen have never been, tarred with the positions of their lunatic fringe.
Cullors is a lot more obscure a figure than Alex Jones or Jack Posobiec, & those two motherfuckers are respected members of the greater lamestream community.
I think it's fair to say that the lamestream Sulzbergerians, Bezosites & Broderers, Murdochelles, et. al., are not nutpicking the the messageboard detritus of the right if they aren't even doing the same to the broadcast versions.
Have you ever though that the role you are playing is EXACTLY the role Soviet "useful idiots" played?
And you're even proud of it!
The US really should adopt the british term Tankie, or better yet figure out a modified version; it captures so much of what goes on here.
Never heard of the dope and would just happy not to have been introduced to her. Why does Mother Jones talk to a fringe moron?
Right. I missed when Patrisse Cullors was appointed head of the DNC. This seems like the 2022 version of nutpicking, where people would go through comment sections looking for the wackiest, most unhinged comment and then use that to discredit the entire post. Running around making sure every too far left comment is sufficiently denounced by the Dems strikes me a non-optimal political strategy.
Here is the problematic scenario. A report asks a Democratic politician or candidate 'do you support the BLM movement?' The politician says yes, THEN Fox News runs tape of the more radical positions of the BLM founders....
Yeah, this.
This is just a BLM leader saying this. It's her opinion, and she's entitled to it, and it's not entirely without merit - but BLM messaging has never been mainstreamed within the Democratic Party, so... I don't understand why this is allegedly a big deal.
If it were one of the farther-left, actually-elected-to-office Democrats saying it, then sure. But notably, those people aren't.
If this is amplified by media and presented as some sort of lefty or Democratic position, that's dereliction of journalistic duty. Which happens all the time, so it's kind of expected that that's what's going to happen at this point given the state of modern journalism, but that's not really the point. The point is that anti-hyping this sort of thing like this only plays into that hand.
The correct course of action is to just effing ignore it as so much noise, because that's exactly what it is.
Yup. Don't know who she is, and her idea is extremely stupid, but you can always find SOMEONE with an extremely stupid idea. The concept that democrats need to spend their time denouncing every idiotic idea anyone comes up with is also stupid. If this woman happens to come up in an interview with an actual prominent democrat, they should say something along the lines of "i don't know who that is, that idea is stupid and has zero to do with the position of the democratic party. let's move on to real questions".
It's Sistahs Souljah all the way down.
Watch few to zero Dems embrace this -- and the GQP to go crazy using it as a campaign issue. The MSM will love it, too, because ... The CONTROVERSY!
... which consists of next to nobody supporting that point of view, not that anyone will be informed of this fact.
Joe Biden needs a Patrisse Cullors, whoever the hell that is, moment, I guess. The world awaits.
honestly, this is a perfect setup for biden (if someone asked about it) to call it out as nonsense and antithetical to what democrats stand for, while also stressing the need for serious reform. Draw a bright line between the nuts and the serious reformers who actually are part of the party and who define our party platform.
Can we find someone of higher profile to denounce for advocating "defunding the police"? At least 99% of the public has never heard of this person.
And if the answer is no then this whole discussion is laughable and pathetic.
US political discourse has been laughable and pathetic for decades.
Indeed. So maybe Kevin can do his little bit to minimize it by letting whoever the hell Patrisse Cullors is shout into the void rather than ascribing world-historical significance to it.
BLM and wokeness are couple of bees in Kevin's bonnet.
KD is Techie Bill Maher.
Ever since never won a political race Bob Shrum got a permanent chair on the cable news commentary shows.
Bob Shrum walked so Van Jones could run.
I think there has always been a schism between the casual understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement and the exact goals of the BLM leadership.
There is broad, and even bi partisan, support that wrongful death/and mistreatment of blacks by the police is immoral and totally unacceptable.
In contrast, some of the exact rhetoric such at defund the police, end prisons, dismantle the nuclear family, reparations, overthrow capitalism, let incarcerated people and non US citizens vote etc are not broadly popular.
I'm fairly certain that dismantling the nuclear family (who even thinks of that as a widespread policy goal rather than a personal preference?) and non-citizen voting aren't even a thing (barring non-federal elections, for which there are many valid reasons to allow and encourage non-citizen voting).
But of course incarcerated residents/citizens should get to vote, regardless of incarceration status. Disenfranchisement is disenfranchisement, full stop. Unless one has committed literal treason, one should be able to vote.
For better or worse, non-citizen voting, at the local level at least, is a thing…
No matter what you may think of these various positions ATTRIBUTED to the BLM leadership, they are not popular (based on the majority of polling I have seen).
So, do you have that attribution about non-citizen voting (in actually relevant elections; in local elections it's basically a nothingburger) and allegedly wanting to dismantle the nuclear family? Because it sure seems like you or somebody else just made it up - especially the family one.
But again, not that BLM leaders' positions are Democratic positions.
cmayo - I think many of the so called positions attributed to BLM are likely taken out of context. While others are just not politically popular.
My point is the universe of people who believe policy brutality focused on black males is too often inappropriate. However, one can believe, for example, that George Floyd was an example of too common police action and STILL not support many of the BLM stated beliefs.
A right wing article with quotes about BLM 'positions'
blog.acton.org/archives/116471-explainer-what-does-black-lives-matter-believe.html?
utm_term=black%20lives%20manifesto&utm_campaign=Blog+Posts&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=9098040689&hsa_cam=1342215022&hsa_grp=106229721498&hsa_ad=534905241028&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-928856809827&hsa_kw=black%20lives%20manifesto&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6PKtjJCj9gIVyB6tBh11UgdTEAAYAyAAEgKDYPD_BwE
Re non-citizens voting: "No taxation without representation." If non-citizens can't vote, they also shouldn't be taxed.
They are not citizens. No taxation without representation has always applied to citizens (previously subjects owing allegience to) of the sovereign. Non citizens choosing to live in a jurisdiction are not subject to such a principal.
Although if you Lefties wish to adopt yet another ridiculously idiotic piece of political malpractice....
This is hypocritical. You can't both believe "that wrongful death/and mistreatment of blacks by the police is immoral and totally unacceptable" and have "rhetoric such at defund the police ... [is] not broadly popular."
The current system creates murder by police. If you don't want to figure out how to take the current system apart and put it back together in a different fashion, then you don't want to end murder by police, and you actively support immoral and unacceptable.
Well we're about to see what Defund the Police in action looks like in the Ukraine.
Let's see if Patrisse is willing to learn from that experience (spoiler alert, no she's not)
"Under martial law, Ukrainian [criminals] with real combat experience will be released from custody and will be able to compensate for their guilt in the hottest spots of the conflict." - President Zelensky
(My understanding is that while this sort of thing can work in the context of aggressive officer control, eg French Foreign Legion, it's generally gone about how you would expect when done hastily as a last-ditch effort. And, remember, how much of the downside of the French Foreign Legion was done far away and never reported...)
BTW, as an aside, it's interesting to compare the actions on the ground, like releasing and arming psychopaths, or risking WW3 by having European fighters engaging against Russian fighters with the happy talk we're getting of brave Ukrainians easily fending off Russia...
It's a really sad comment on the total uselessness of the US mainstream media, the arc from CNN in Iraq1 through NYT and Iraq2, to now, that the ONLY (I mean this seriously, the ONLY) adult analysis I can find is via OANN. My god, WTF???
And yet, it's an OANN journalist that is providing numbers, talking about finance and logistics, considering second, third, and fourth order consequences, even as the mainstream media feeds us a bizarre combination of obvious propaganda and puff pieces that look like they're done by the same people who do the Olympics, like the sexy sniper (all Russians have learned to fear her!!!), and the same moronic posturing that's poisoned the US for the past 30+ years (herstory, latinx) gets to show its colors in fights over Kyiv vs Kiev!
Pretty much the exact opposite. "Defund the police" is about not having an armed response to every interaction in society. Creating an armed response doesn't tell us jack shit about defund the police.
Young Woman Yells at Cloud
So why repeat it? Does it even pass your “At least this many followers on Twitter” to be meaningful metric?
Must be about time for another fundraising push… on that semi-related topic, Mother Jones has posted the IRS 990s for their last two fiscal years, ending June 30, 2020 and 2021
Did losing Kevin affect their bottom line?
I think the money spent switching to VOX's comment infrastructure & the resulting loss in engagement is what did it.
>> This is about the last thing we need right now.<<
This is the problem with Democrats in a nutshell. Some nutty person says something stupid and inflammatory and Democrats are all “Oh noooos, you can’t say that! That will hurt all liberals. The right wing will use it against us to scare the undecided and low information voters!!! Must clutch pearls!!!”
Meanwhile on the Republican side of things elected leaders speak at white supremacy conventions and embrace the most lunatic of ideas and that is viewed as a big “meh”.
Kevin writes about Democrats need to talk up Biden. What we really need, in my opinion, it to constantly point out the Republican lunatics and state the horrors that the Republican Party has embraced. When asked about this person the question should be immediately turned around to what Republicans who actually have power advocate.
The leader of the Trump Republican Party just expressed his admiration for the stable genius of Vladimir Putin, who had acquired Ukrainian "real estate" so cheaply. Remarks that not only sabotaged his country's relations with other nations, but were also supremely stupid and uninformed.
But let's talk about some Black activist instead.
Amen to that. Why can't Republicans be forced to defend what Steve Bannon says every day on podcast? Hmmm?
You don't have that quite right. The problem with Democrats is that someone advances an idea that is a bit outside the box to explore actually fixing a longstanding problem in society. And Democrats are all "Oh no! That will hurt us ever-so-slightly right-of-center conservatives!"
Democrats aren't liberals, and Democrats aren't progressives. The liberals and progressives will certainly make an alliance since the Republicans have been bat-shit crazy for at least 50 years now, but we aren't going to stop thinking about and exploring ways to make forward progress.
But you're right that we all need to find better ways to educate Americans about the Anti-American ideals of Republicans, and make sure more Americans vote on election day to preserve American ideals.
"...we are not looking for better food or more access to education in prison."
What does she have against people in prison? Shame on her. She sounds like one of those god-awful Republicans.
I'm glad Biden didn't nominate for the Supreme Court after all.
On the one side:
Defund the police
On the other side:
Beat the police to death with flagpoles
I would be curious to hear some police union boss' choice between these two
who do you think was doing some of that beating....
Abolitionist? Really? Someone's got a very high opinion of themself.
Patrisse Cullors must have replaced Saul Alinsky as Head Liberal. I'm surprised it wasn't in the news.
I can feel it... calling in the Ayers tonite....
I’m a white dude so I shouldn’t comment at all. But this interview is out…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/28/i-have-a-lot-of-resentment-patrisse-cullors-on-co-founding-black-lives-matter-the-backlash-and-why-the-police-must-go
For what it’s worth…
Poverty and policing moulded the rest of her personality. “It felt like we were being hunted as kids,” she says. “I remember waking up in the middle of the night and hearing the helicopters and seeing them shining their light in our window.” The light was trained on her brother Monte and his friends hanging out outside.
“Everyone talks about the war on drugs; we don’t talk about the war on gangs,” she says, recalling a time in the 90s when disproportionate resources were mobilised towards inner-city gang policing. Helicopter policing is “fucking expensive,” she says, and a sign that the campaign was “essentially the federal government declaring a war on brown and Black children and calling them domestic terrorists. We were living in a literal war zone. That is the context that made me an abolitionist.”
So again she supports capitalism. That is what black gangs basically are.
Cullors is a dyke black racist. She isn't even a real socialist either. She humps the bourgeois, loves debt based expansion and ripping every negro off for their worth.
Far left???? White workers will show you what socialism is really about honey.
Are you channeling GGALLIN?
A serious question for Kevin.
Why should a controversial position by Cullors be a source of worry for Democrats right now ("about the last thing we need right now")?
She (a) not an officeholder, (b) not running for office, (c) a complete nonentity in our media today (I doubt more than a fraction of 1% of the tens of millions who marched in BLM protests ever knew her name), and (d) no longer affiliated with the BLM organization.
She is a virtual nobody, a private citizen heading no organization and with no following.
In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood: Why should I care?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjHbaR_OAQ
Meanwhile, back in the real world of today's politics, there was a white supremacist convention in Florida last week (AFPAC) during which four current Republican officeholders (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lt. Governor Janet McGeachin, Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers) were speakers.
Why should a controversial position by a nobody be great cause for concern, yet the only mention of AFPAC at this blog is a jokey reference to has-been Joe Arpaio talking about his racism? No mention of the four elected Republican politicians who willingly fanned the flames of Confederate and Nazi ideology.
Cullors merits grave concern.
Arpaio gets an "isn't that amusing?"
Greene, McGeachin, Gosar, Rogers get crickets.
There's something seriously fucked up about that. It's the same attitude that damned HRC (but her emails!) and gave us Trump in the first place.
That a hundred times more worthy of concern than anything that Cullors said.
No, Midwestern single issue voters gave "you" Trump. They also gave us Obama. Your still not getting it.
This 👍 X 1000
I suspect Kevin spends most of his time on the internet, immersed in political news and commentary, and has come to mistake that for the reality experienced by 90% of Americans. Cullors will probably become a notorious figure in the online political world, at least for a while. Most Americans will remain unaware of her existence.
Thank you!
+11
If the right can make her into a talking point that up-for-grabs voters hear about, she's a problem for Democrats.
If the right cannot do this, she's not a problem for Democrats.
I believe it really is that simple.
There is an old joke whose punch line is "what do you mean "we", white man"? Cullors is entitled to her own opinion (1st amendment and all that) but it's HER opinion; "we" don't have to take any ownership of it at all.
It's true that both sides will try to make the most extreme extremists on the other end of the political spectrum into representatives of that whole side of the spectrum, but there's no reason why anyone has to fall for such transparent manipulation.
She's not a Democrat, but FOX & right-wing radio & more than a few actual Democrats (not just Kevin) will behave as if she is the chair of the DNC & chief policy maker.
> This is about the last thing we need right now
We don't need bold innovative thinking outside the box? Damn, everything must be going absolutely swimmingly right now.
Dems could another Sistah Souljah Moment here.
It is funny how bad ideas refuse to die. The naivety on display here is the one on display by the anarchists; an absurd misjudgment of human nature.