#defund the police fund our communities

[callese]

[edenfenixblogs]

What are you doing to help black people?

Several things! (A Note on My Personal Limitations: I am not black. I am unable to protest for health reasons. I do not have much money at all)

I elevate black voices whenever I can

I joined an anti-racism book club where I can learn how to be a better ally and unlearn as much systemic prejudice as I can

I do not tolerate anti-black racism from anyone in my life for any reason. I call it out every time, publicly.

I donate (when financially possible) to several causes devoted to both long term and immediate aid to to black people including: various bail funds in my current state and my home state, the southern poverty law center, the Homeless Black Trans Women gofundme, the ACLU, and others.

I consistently educate people in my life about the goals of BLM — including defunding the police — in order to reduce their knee jerk reactions and foster better understanding.

I shut the eff up unless I can help. I’m no savior; I know this. I don’t break into conversations that don’t involve me. I just listen. Most of my public advocacy is amplifying black voices on issues that affect the black community without adding my irrelevant opinions as white-passing person.

Privately, I have and continue to reach out to the several black people in my life to let them know I support them and that I am listening. I listen to them vent to me about their pain and suffering. I let them tell me if I’ve fucked up somehow without getting defensive. Then I apologize sincerely and onboard the new information and don’t do whatever the offending action was again. I have not had anyone tell me I’ve fucked up in that way in over a decade, though. I did, however, realize (during my continuing journey of learning how to be anti-racist) that I’d held problematic opinions as a teenager (nothing crazy. Just ignorant teen bullshit borne from growing up as a liberal in a red state and thinking I was more progressive than I actually was at the time) and proactively reached out to the black friend I’ve known since my teenage years to say that I know I was an idiot back then and I’ve learned a lot since then and I will continue to learn and to apologize.

My work involves public communications. In my role, I continually advocate for anti-racist, black-affirming language in our company guidelines and publicly disseminated materials, even when that means confronting my boss—who is a white man.

I vote in every election in which I am able, researching every politician and bill thoroughly from multiple sources and voting as leftist as possible and educating people in my life about these bills details and the politicians platforms and records.

I am not perfect and don’t claim to be. I only claim to try my best to continually improve.

I don’t make a habit of sharing private communique and am only doing so now because this post asks for receipts. Here are some excerpts from conversations had during 2020 when tensions were a little higher. I decline to share receipts from more recently, as those conversations include more private and more identifying information. The pictured conversations involve friends I’ve had since pre-school, high school, and college. Again, this is not something I would normally share, because saying “I have black friends” is tacky and gross. But I am trying to respect your request for my commitment to the black community, which does of course include my friends. It feels wrong not to mention them in this context, even though I feel awkward saying it at all. Im also sharing only the start of longer conversations, as my friends’ pain and concerns are not for public consumption.

Idk if replying to your question alerts you, so tagging you just in case. @phantomdiebe

[prolifeproliberty]

So. If a 13 year old CHILD is raped and becomes pregnant, as *has happened* you belive that since she won’t die in a miscarriage, she should birth and mother that baby?

Lemme guess, you’re all for schools getting defunded and teachers paid less so your government can give more guns to cops. And of course recruiting those undereducated children raised by families who couldn’t give them the best care into your military machine as pig for the slaughter

“Oh no we can’t have abortion? Well we’ll just have to kill them after birth. Lower the gun restrictions so a school shooter can get them. Or someone we invaded 20 years after putting them in power for anti-communist paranoia! They’ll be dead eventually! We just have to make sure the mothers are beaten down and impoverished first! Can’t have women safe and Happy oh no!”

- I’ve answered this a million times. Rapists deserve to rot in jail or get the death penalty. Children conceived in rape do not deserve the death penalty. I personally know people conceived in rape - they are no less human, no less valuable than you or me. They aren’t “rape babies,” and they aren’t in some way “evil” or “corrupted.” They’re people.

- It is possible to save both the 13-year-old and the preborn child. Therefore we must attempt to do so. No matter what happens, the 13-year-old will need support and counseling as she heals from the trauma of the rape, as well as either the trauma of abortion or the trauma of giving birth at her age. There is no trauma-free path here, just the path with more death and the path with less death.

- I am for reducing the funding of schools, but I don’t want to give that money to police for guns. Look how that worked out in Uvalde. Instead, I want families to keep their tax dollars and be able to find the best education for their child. I’m actually a public school teacher, and a huge advocate for homeschooling. The public school system is rotten to the core and currently collapsing in on itself.

- I don’t want children to die. Which is why I want responsible adults to be allowed to carry firearms in order to protect themselves and innocent children from mass shooters. We saw the mall in Indiana just recently where an armed civilian prevented untold loss of life by taking out the shooter.

- I work closely with organizations that help mothers and their children. Texas provides significant funding to the Alternatives to Abortion program, which funds community organizations that help mothers as well as women’s healthcare (which doesn’t include abortion, because killing children isn’t healthcare).

- I think America is imperialist and shouldn’t be invading other countries. We probably agree on most foreign policy issues actually. Our military spending and military activity is out of control.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, a close ally of Donald Trump, vowed to defund the federal police over the indictment of the former president.

Talking to Fox News on Sunday, the Ohio congressman and chair of the House Judiciary Committee said that Republicans will look into defunding the agencies responsible for investigating Trump and ordering his indictment, which was voted for last week by a Manhattan grand jury over the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump denies any wrongdoing, calling the investigation a political "witch hunt."

"We control the power of the purse, and we're going to have to look at the appropriation process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones who are engaged in the most egregious behavior," Jordan said in an interview with Fox News's Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures after being asked what his committee can do against the alleged "weaponization of government."

"So, the DOJ [Department of Justice] and the FBI?" said Bartiromo, seeking clarity.

"Yes," responded Jordan. "And what I'd really like, frankly, I'd really like for the government to stay out of the election process."

Jordan has long been a loud opponent of calls for defunding state police in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the protests that followed. But the Ohio Republican's support for law and order does not apparently extend to cover federal law enforcement agencies, which he argued in the Fox News interview have been "turned against the very same people they are supposed to serve."

Calls for defunding the police in 2020 and the following years have included both ideas about completely eliminating the police and proposals to reshuffle funds now dedicated to state police and limit officers' functions.

In January, Jordan condemned calls to defund the police, saying that the attacks against law enforcement discourage "enough good people" from becoming police officers. "We shouldn't have this whole attitude about defund the police," he said on NBC. "That's a problem when you're trying to attract the best to protect our communities."

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee hasn't been the only Republican to call for defunding the Department of Justice and the FBI in the wake of the investigation into Trump.

Last month, Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, another loyal supporter of the former president, called for "defunding some of these bad agencies—the FBI, the DOJ," saying she won't vote for legislation to fund the government unless these agencies' funds are cut.

"I've made up my mind. I will NOT vote for a budget that funds the two tiered justice system in America," she tweeted on March 17. "The Democrat controlled DOJ and FBI top brass are political and have weaponized their power against the right to persecute everyone with conservative values and aligned with Trump, but refuses to prosecute the left for their crimes. The Republican controlled budget must defund the two-tiered justice system and reign in the politically weaponized DOJ and FBI, or I will not vote for it."

The investigation that led to Trump's indictment last week was conducted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which makes the probe a state-level case. But the New York investigation isn't the only ongoing probe into the former president, who is also being investigated for the possible mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-A-Lago residence and over his role in the Jan. 6 riots. Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed the Justice Department's former public integrity chief Jack Smith to oversee the DOJ's criminal investigations of Trump.

In early March, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz also called to "defund and get rid of" agencies including "the FBI, the CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of them if they do not come to heel" during the Conservative Political Action Conference, as reported by USA Today.

Newsweek has emailed Greene's and Gaetz's teams and called Jordan's team for comment.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jess Piper at The View from Rural Missouri:

“It’s the statehouses, stupid.” That quote is by David Pepper and I think about it often. I live in Missouri with a GOP supermajority and 22 years of of the worst sort of governance.

Want to see extremism? There are currently three bills being sent to the Governor’s office for signing: One to defund public schools, another to defund Planned Parenthood, and the last to make sure Missourians can’t sue the Bayer corporation for their Round-Up caused cancer. True story. So, where are the Democrats and voices of dissent? They are nearly silenced with a superminority and a Democratic Party that has been almost non-existent in my district for at least a decade. The proof is in the legislative pudding. The Democratic Party lost the plot when they pulled out of rural America leaving huge swaths of the country to be taken over by the GOP. I should know…I am a rural person, a former teacher, and a former Democratic Nominee for State House. I did not receive funding from the Democratic Party to run my race — not a penny, and this is very common in rural races. We have been left to our own devices and many have just decided to acquiesce to Republican rule rather than fight on our own.

I refuse to give up. What’s the point of running in a district you know will not flip for a few cycles? What’s the point of funding a nominee who will likely lose? Because local candidates do the hard work. They talk to their neighbors and district. They put a Democratic message out in their community. They let voters in their area know that Democrats aren’t gun-grabbing communists, but they do want to fund public schools, pave roads, keep the local rural hospital open, and create jobs for their kids so they don’t abandon the farm or the small town. Progressives have a message that rural folks like if we can just keep the message consistent by having nominees on every ballot every single year. If you have a nominee, you have someone talking to their neighbors. Without a nominee, there is no one knocking doors, or making calls, or attending forums, or spreading the message about progressive polices.

[...] Rural Democratic voters are almost certainly voting at the top of the ticket, and this November, that means a Presidential nominee, maybe a Senate position, and possibly a Governor, but many are stopping there. The research from Sister District indicates that Democratic and women voters are more likely to roll-off than Republicans and men. They don’t feel confident that they know enough about the down-ballot nominees to keep voting. The research concludes that decreasing roll-off by 1-2% would result in massive state legislative gains. It also states that 60% of roll-off voters rank Federal elections as the most important. That stat made me gasp. You and I know that statehouses are where awful and hateful laws originate. We know that GOP-dominated states are doing the bidding of the wealthy and of corporations, but if Democrats aren’t even voting for the state legislative races, we are going to keep losing our states to the extremists. This extremism then bleeds out into the country.

Jess Piper wrote a quality Substack post on why Democrats should NOT abandon Rural America (or anywhere for that matter).

[jerseydeanne]

Trump was right. By November we all will be questioning ourselves if we even have a country any more?

Oh my Gawd! I did see this! If you have an abusive spouse you're on your own.

Don't get rid of your gun!

We have exhausted what funds were budgeted for fuel with several months to go before the budget reset,” the sheriff wrote Tuesday as the state-wide average rose above $5.20 a gallon.

“I have instructed the deputies to attempt to manage whatever calls are acceptable over the phone,” he said, detailing how they would be calls that were non-life-threatening or not currently in progress.

“I want to assure the community that safety is our primary goal,” he insisted, stressing that his officers would still be sent out to “any call that is in progress with active suspects.

Keep defunding the police, and this is what you get a recording.

Thank you for calling Isabelle county police. Press one if this is a life-threatening emergency, two for a trained counselor for all domestic violence, and three for all other troubles. Elevator music comes on after two minutes. You get. Your call is important to us; don't defund the police next time.

Thank you for your ask!

Love, JD 😜💋

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

yah i got a flyer in the mail from a political candidate that was like "My Opponent has said HE believes in DEFUNDING the POLICE! Vote for my crusty Republican ass to make our communities SAFE!" and i was like. awesome great flyer my guy, you have successfully secured my vote for the other dude.

It's funny to me also because I early voted so like, anything they say aint gonna change shit bcuz i already voted. But also god yeah, you know sometimes I wish we lived in the reality conservatives think their opponents are going to do because I'm 99% sure their opponents aren't going to actually defund the police and at most might just not approve of giving more funding to the police.

[canichangemyblogname]

When I tell people that the United States is a failing state, people often scoff. Because they're imagining an Armageddon in their heads, something Chernobyl-style or Purge-style. They're imagining the images coming out of Haiti and Yemen and Syria of burned-out cars and shelled-out buildings and children lying in hospitals, so thin it looks like there's barely flesh on their bones. They're imagining their government tying people up to posts on the side of the street and leaving them for dead, they're imagining "security forces" beating people to death and the spray of automatic gunfire in the streets.

They're saying, "That happens to other people. It doesn't happen here." They're really thinking, "That doesn't happen to white people."

We have watched for decades as police beat and execute black people in the street and throw them in cells to leave them for dead. We have watched the justice system fail for decades. We have watched the empty promises of emancipation manifest right before our eyes. And we have done little to provide the people of this country with equitable public services. In fact, just to spite integration and civil rights, communities defunded many public services. Community centers? Privatized. Electricity and water? Privatized. Natural gas? Privatized. Student loans? Privatized. Airports? Privatized. Bus and rail services? Privatized and scaled back to make room for the private car. We've also been witnessing the increasing privatization of medical services and educational services. Our history is full of the privatization or corporatization of public services with the purpose of pricing people out, namely black and brown people who have been prevented from building generational wealth.

Did you know that the inability to provide public services is a marker of a failed state?

How about the loss of the monopoly on the legitimate use of force? The erosion of legitimate authority? The erosion of decision-making processes? Uneven economic development? Concentrated wealth? High inflation? Mass violence? Ethnic or racial violence? Religiously-motivated violence? Police brutality? Collapse of the middle class? High debt? Insurrections or riots? Resource shortages? Lack of access to drinkable water? Hight debt? How about environmental destruction?

When I tell people that the United States is a failing state, I am making a commentary on how our racism will lead us to complete political, economic and social collapse.

There are several indicators that the non-profit Fund for Peace uses to look at the functionality of a state, including the following questions:

Do private militias exist against the state?

Is there paramilitary activity?

Do private armies exist to protect assets?

Are the police considered to be professional?

Is violence often state-sponsored and politically motivated?

Is the government dealing well with any insurgency or security situation?

Are there accusations of police brutality?

Is there a high availability of weapons?

Is leadership representative of the population?

Are there factionalized elites, tribal elites and/or fringe groups?

Is there a sense of national identity? Or are there calls for separatism?

Does hate radio and media exist?

Is religious, ethnic, or other stereotyping prevalent and is there scape-goating?

Does cross-cultural respect exist?

Is wealth concentrated in the hands of a few?

Is there a burgeoning middle class?

Does any one group control the majority of resources?

Are resources fairly distributed? Does the government adequately distribute wealth through its tax system and taxes?

Is the Judicial system representative of the population?

Are victims of past atrocities compensated or is their a plan to compensate them?

Are war criminals apprehended and prosecuted? Do the public feel they are properly punished?

Are there feelings of or reports of ethnic and/or religious intolerance and/or violence?

Are groups oppressed or do they feel oppressed?

Is there a history of violence against a group or group grievance?

How are intertribal and/or interethnic relations?

Is there freedom of religion according to laws and practiced by society? Are there reports of violence that is religiously motivated?

Are there reports of vigilant justice?

Are the reports of mass violence and/or killings? Are there reports of violence that is racially motivated?

What is the government debt?

How are the interest rates – actual and projected?

How is the inflation rate – actual and projected?

What is the productivity?

How is the unemployment – current and rate of unemployment?

How do people view the economy?

Do the laws and access to capital allow for internal entrepreneurship?

Is there a large economic gap?

Is the economic system discriminatory?

Does economic justice exist?

Are hiring practices generally fair – legally and the perception of others?

Do equal rights exist in the society?

Are there laws protecting equal rights?

Is the education provided relatively equal?

Is there a housing system for the poor?

Do ghettos and slums exist?

Is there a relatively high proportion of higher educated people leaving the country?

Is the middle class beginning to return to the country?

Does the government have the confidence of the people?

Have riots occurred?

Is there evidence of corruption on the part of federal officials?

Do political rights for all parties exist?

Is the government representative of the population?

Have there been recent peaceful transitions of power?

Are elections perceived to be free and fair?

Are there reports of politically motivated attacks and assassinations?

Are there reports of armed insurgents and attacks?

Have there been terrorist attacks such as suicide bombings and how likely are they?

Is the population growth rate sustainable?

Is population density putting pressure on areas of the state?

Is there a high likelihood or existence of diseases of epidemics?

Is the food supply adequate to deal with potential interruption?

Is there a short-term food shortage that needs to be alleviated?

Is there are high likelihood of droughts or is there currently a drought?

Do sound environmental policies exist and are the current practices sustainable?

Is a natural disaster likely, recurring?

If a natural disaster occurs, is there an adequate response plan?

Has deforestation taken place or are there laws to protect forests?

Does resource competition exist and are there laws to arbitrate disputes?

Is there access to an adequate potable water supply?

Are refugees likely to come from neighboring countries?

Are there resources to provide for projected and actual refugees?

Are there sufficient refugee camps or are refugees integrated into communities?

Are there reports of violence against refugees?

Are conditions safe in refugee camps?

Are IDPs likely to increase in the near future?

Are there resources to provide for projected and actual IDPs?

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

speaking of. it is like, without a doubt, a fact that the protests of 2020 benefited joe biden and the democrats richly in november. peoole of all ages and all walks of life were galvanized to participate in politics after that. and with good reason! it was important to get trump out and important to vote in general because our local governments fund the police and the jails (and our state government funds the prisons) and they are all the more available for agitation. they live where we live (for the most part lol). and our local community is where organizing should start, anyway.

but thats a tangent. because they benefited from “defund the police” and “black lives matter” and tearing down statues and blocking highways and all that and then joe biden et all got into office and immediately shat on those people. and frankly, we expect it on the campaign trail and even in office but the repeated and over the top trashing of these people, plus the tone deaf and empty analysis from the politicos is too much lol. if democrats lose this year and in 2024 it is not going to be because they lost the moderates and independents, sorry. and if you can’t see that you need to talk to real people and stop listening to james carville

[callese]

[foreverlogical]

The White House on Monday called the House Freedom Caucus’ budget proposal a ‘five-alarm fire,’ arguing that their spending cuts would endanger Americans’ safety.

The White House referred to the conservative GOP group as the “extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus” in a statement and said their proposal would be “a disaster for families in at least five key ways.”

The key ways, according to the White House, include endangering public safety, raising costs for families, shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and undermining American workers, weakening national security, and hurting seniors.

The statement argued that the proposal would make the border less secure because it would eliminate funding for more than 2,000 border agents and allow for “an additional 150,000 pounds of cocaine, nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl, nearly 2,000 pounds of heroin, and more than 17,000 pounds of methamphetamine into our country.” 

Biden’s budget included funds to hire an additional 350 Border Patrol Agents, $535 million for border technology at and between ports of entry, and $40 million to combat fentanyl trafficking.

And, the White House argued the Freedom Caucus proposal would defund the police and make communities less safe because it would eliminate 400 local law enforcement positions and could mean a hiring freeze at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

The White House also said the proposal would scale back rail safety inspections, especially in the wake of the train derailments in Ohio that lead to a politically-charged situation over President Biden not visiting the site. The statement claims the proposal would lead to 11,000 fewer rail safety inspection days next year alone and 30,000 fewer miles of track inspected annually.

And, it said the proposal would jeopardize air safety and increase airport security wait times by an average of 30 minutes because it would shut down services at 125 Air Traffic Control Towers across the country. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week said there have been “more mistakes than usual” in U.S. air travel after dozens of close calls, calling for the industry to figure out the causes.

The Freedom Caucus has said they want to cap overall discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels for 10 years while allowing for 1 percent growth per year, which would be a $131 billion cut from current levels.

Citing the Congressional Budget Office, the White House said on Monday that Republicans would need to eliminate everything in the rest of the federal budget if they want to balance the budget in 10 years without raising taxes on the wealthy or corporations and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense, and some veterans’ benefits.

The White House has been using the Freedom Caucus as a foil as Biden prepares to launch his reelection bid, seeking to cast the group as the face of the GOP.

Biden released his budget on March 9 and the next day he went after the House Freedom Caucus during remarks, saying there isn’t much to negotiate with the conservative group after they released their new spending demands. 

He argued that the Freedom Caucus' demands include cutting all spending other than defense by 25 percent, which is a characterization the group later disputed.

[beardedmrbean]

FIRST ON FOX: Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for private security through her campaign since December 2021 when she launched her second bid for governor, despite being a board member of a foundation that wants to abolish police and personally backing an anti-police initiative.

Between December 2021 and April 2022, Abrams' campaign doled out over $450,000 to Executive Protection Agencies (EPA Security), an Atlanta-based private security firm. The company’s website says the group provides executive protection that comes with a "keen eye with a thorough knowledge of the venue through threat assessment" for its clients.  

The nine payments from the Abrams campaign to EPA Security ranged from $39,335 to $56,760.

This is not the first time Abrams has paid for private security. The Fair Fight PAC, a committee that is part of a network launched by Abrams, spent more than $1.2 million on security services last year with the same firm as the Abrams campaign, according to filings. 

STACEY ABRAMS GROUP PAID OVER $1.2 MILLION TO PRIVATE SECURITY FIRM LAST YEAR

Abrams recently insisted to Axios that she supports increased police funding and officer pay as her role with the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation has become a political liability. 

Over 100 sheriffs in the Peach State condemned Abrams over her ties to the foundation and her "soft-on-crime policies," which followed Gov. Brian Kemp calling on her to resign from its board. The attention follows numerous Fox News Digital reports on her involvement with the group.

The Marguerite Casey Foundation has repeatedly voiced support for defunding and abolishing the police, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

They have also awarded millions to professors and scholars who advocate anti-capitalist and prison abolitionist views. 

"I do not, and have never said, and have never supported defunding the police," Abrams told Axios while emphasizing that she has no control over the group's grants as a board member. 

However, Abrams backed an expanded anti-police initiative from the foundation shortly after joining its board in early May 2021, Fox News Digital also reported.

The board, including Abrams, unanimously approved the 'Answer the Uprising' campaign in late May 2021, which involved increasing financial support to left-wing groups working on law enforcement issues. The initiative also established a coalition with other grant-making organizations that provide backing to defund the police groups.

The Marguerite Casey Foundation in 2020 directed grants to left-wing groups that want to defund police, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black Organizing Project and Louisville Community Bail Fund.

OVER 100 GEORGIA SHERIFFS CONDEMN STACEY ABRAMS OVER 'DEFUND THE POLICE' FOUNDATION TIES 

Abrams also previously signaled support for defunding police while attempting to redefine it. 

During the George Floyd unrest of 2020, Abrams repeatedly tried to rebrand the "defund" aspect of the movement as favoring the "reformation and transformation" of law enforcement instead of abolishing policing.

"We have to have a transformation of how we view the role of law enforcement, how we view the construct of public safety, and how we invest not only in the work that we need them to do to protect us but the work that we need to do to protect and build our communities," Abrams said in June 2020. "And that's the conversation we're having: We'll use different language to describe it, but fundamentally we must have reformation and transformation."

"We have to reallocate resources, so, yes," she said in another interview that same month when asked if police budgets should be reduced. "If there is a moment where resources are so tight that we have to choose between whether we murder Black people or serve Black people, then absolutely: Our choice must be service."

Shortly after, Abrams advocated for the "redistributive allocation of dollars" from police budgets so "we are not simply investing in public safety, but we're building a safer public through education, through health care, through food security, through affordable housing, and that we not see these things as being in conflict, but they have to be part of a holistic vision of what America should look like, what law enforcement and what society should look like in the 21st century."

The Abrams campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's media inquiry.

[ahagia-sophia]

Went to the [Redacted] DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) chapter convention today. I’m gonna be reporting all this back to my party head tomorrow so I figured I might as well review my notes in tumblr form

The party is pleasantly queer with visibly trans people in leading (respected) positions. One of their officers was discussing trans healthcare and access to HRT as I stepped in to the convention.

The DSA is committed to defunding the police and creating alternative response forces. They were behind the coalition that put the petition to the city government to reallocate funds toward a Mental Health Crisis Response Team (acronym pending).

As a result of all their pushes, and the general rising leftist sympathy in the region, the city council is experiencing split votes (still not quite sure what that means and I’m also not sure if I wrote down the term they used correctly) which imply socialist sympathies at the city level. This is good news.

They have a strong positive feeling toward us and desire us at every public event

The desire to have armed leftists (who aren’t part of their party) standing behind them is a strong one. I’m going to push for the [Redacted] to have a uniformed representative at socialist rallies and marches. That uniformed presence will probably be me, as I’m going to most of these events anyway.

At least one of their officers runs a completely separate organization. Is this an isolated occurrence or is a core part of how their party functions?

The DSA are focused on coalition building and uniting the various leftist parties with the local unions. Which, if successful, would be an immense win for the local left wing.

There are some sympathetic universities around here that I need to talk to. If we could get access to a large kitchen it would really let us up our game when it comes to feeding the hungry. I got a lead on one at the convention.

The DSA are putting together a socialist night school with the goal of educating people. I think the we can help out with this, and I also think we should attend. It would foster community. If we showed up regularly it would give them a class to work with and build around. In return we place ourselves in more places where sympathetic eyes can see us and we have a greater shot at solid recruits.

The DSA has a bit of funding, which I’m hoping we can piggyback on.

I still don’t know what we’re after in [Redacted] or what our short term agenda is. I need this information.

I’ve drafted short dossiers on all of the DSA officers so that I know who to talk to about what. I was very lucky to observe an election, made it very easy.

It seems that there’s not a lot of communication between the parties (most people could only name one member of the [Redacted] party and even then it was hesitant. I need to fix this.)

The DSA has about double the active members (small) that we have (very small). I think a marriage (or at the very least a few dates) between us could be very beneficial.

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

What are your thoughts on police reform/abolition?

lmao you are the second anon to ask me this question since last night.

so police. i think law enforcement as an institution is good. police abolition is just stupid. i think people have a fairy tale idea of what something like that would entail. the reality is that it probably wouldn't be pretty.

i do, however, think we should probably abolish police /unions/. and, ideally, i would love to see police departments just entirely purged and wholly replaced with new blood. at the very least the largest and/or most corrupt police departments. i know this is unrealistic though (would be so expensive to train wholly new recruits and we'd lose so much experience and expertise). it's just a fantasy of mine. but i do think get rid of police unions will make it a bit easier to get rid of the bad apples. this is important. we want to facilitated the removal of bad cops as much as possible.

not sure exactly how we'd do it but we need to figure out a way to identify the bad apples and keep them from policing. maybe some kind of public database of police that have a history of misconduct or excessive force? also having higher standards and enforcing them more strictly. and maybe some way to incentivize police officers to report misconduct from fellow officers?

instead of defunding the police i actually think we should considerably increase their funding. so they can have better training, recruit more police, update equipment, and hire social workers/mental health professionals.

which leads me to my next point: i am cool with the idea of making social workers/mental health professionals and /additional/ supplementary part of policing. but i believe they would still require a police escort. so, a call that might normally require 2 officers will now include 2 officers + a (probably educated, more expensive) mental health professional. so again, we need to /increase/ funding.

police are overworked. they are spread too thin. they do too many different jobs. i think police should be more compartmentalized and specialized. instead of expecting cops to be masters of all trades there should be dedicated community police, "regular" police, (probably state/federal-level) dedicated paramilitary/SWAT/crime suppression units, crisis intervention specialists, etc.

on top of all that, i really would love to see more involvement from the community itself. i want to see more neighborhood watches, citizen patrols, militias, civic guards, etc. i want everyone to be armed and vigilant.

more funding for state and federal oversight and investigating and prosecuting public corruption.

some people say police should be demilitarized. i agree with this to some degree, which is why i mentioned "community police" above. these would be mostly demilitarized. probably unarmed or equipped with non-lethal weapons (though, in certain circumstances, maybe one or two or all members of a given patrol unit could be armed). but i don't think we can reasonably expect to demilitarize the police across the board and, in some case i think we should even make the police /more/ militarized (the state/federal paramilitary i mentioned above). we live in a very violent and widely armed society. i think it's reasonable that police are equipped to deal with these risks. as long as we want to be an armed society we should expect the police to be armed as well. thinking otherwise is absurd to me.

also, some people bring up ending qualified immunity. i think this is dumb. it shouldn't end it. i think it's required for police to effectively do their jobs. i do think we need to rein in the scope of it or make some more clearly established standards because some rulings based on qualified immunity are really stupid. but i'd say that 99% of the time they are fair.

but if i'm really being honest, i think this issue is mostly overblown. of the most pressing issues facing our country right now this doesn't even make the top ten or twenty imo. of course, i think there's always room for improvement but i think people take for granted the excellence of american police. people want to talk about police corruption and police brutality but they've never been to another country, except maybe some european countries. if you want to see real police corruption visit mexico. our police are like knights in shining armor in comparison. we have third world crime but first world quality policing. i think that's a noteworthy achievement on its own.

i think it's more of a public perception issue (largely because of exacerbation by the media) than an actual issue. people say "the police" are corrupt but there is no single organization called "the police." we have thousands of different police departments. i don't deny that there are probably some individually corrupt police departments but this seems to be more of a localized issue (with its own unique causes) than something widespread or systemic.

[your-krazy-uncle-bob]

By Victor Davis Hanson

October 26, 2022

Our two parties have both changed, and that explains why one will win, and one lose in the midterm elections.

The old Democrats have faded away after being overwhelmed by radicals and socialists.

Moderates who once embraced Bill Clinton’s opportunistic “third way” are now either irrelevant or nonexistent.

Once considered too wacky and socialist to be taken seriously, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the performance-art “squad,” the radicals of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her hard progressive wing are today’s Democratic Party kingpins.

The alienating radicals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter often serve as the new party’s shock troops on the streets. They opportunistically appear to push the party to embrace no-bail laws, defunding the police, and the destruction of the fossil fuel industry.

Since none of those positions poll even close to 50 percent with the public, the Democrats routinely either slur their opponents as racists, nativists, and climate denialists or obsess on another Trump psychodrama distraction from the Russia collusion hoax to the Mar-a-Lago raid.

What “blue dog” centrists are left in the Democratic Party either keep mum or, like Tulsi Gabbard, flee in disgust.

Donald Trump also recalibrated the Republican Party and helped to turn it into a nationalist-populist movement that would rather win rudely than lose politely. The MAGA agenda pushed Jacksonian deterrence rather than unpopular nation-building abroad. It finally focused on fair rather than just free trade.  Republicans now unite in demanding only legal immigration and promoting domestic investment rather than globalist outsourcing and offshoring.

In response, many of the old Bush-Romney country-club wing left in disgust. Others licked their wounds as fanatical NeverTrump something or others.

Both parties have also been radically changed by additional issues of class, race, and wealth.

Compare the income profiles of voters, whether by ZIP codes or congressional districts. A once lunch-bucket carrying, union member Democratic Party has become the enclave of three key constituencies.

First, there is the subsidized and often inner-city poor.

Second, the meat of the party, is the upscale, bicoastal professional and suburban credentialed classes.

Third, the real rulers of the party are the hyper-rich of Big Tech, Wall Street, Hollywood, the corporate boardroom, the administrative state, the media, and the legal world. Almost all these institutions have lost public confidence and poll miserably. Their cocooned leaders are never subject to the ramifications of their own often unworkable policies.

In contrast, Republicans this election cycle concerned themselves mostly with material issues of the battered middle classes—inflation, the price of fuel and energy, a secure border, crime, parental control of schools, and realist foreign policy.

Reforming social security, reducing capital gains taxes, and pruning back regulations are still doctrinaire Republican agendas. But they are not iconic of the middle-class dominated party as they once were in the age of Ronald Reagan.

Democrats, as the champions of the well-off, remain redistributionist and seek to tax the middle class to fund ever more government programs.

Joe Biden canceled some student loans. He printed lots of money. And he expanded entitlements. But even these calcified Great Society issues are drowned out by the real concerns of the professional leftist elites who run the Democratic Party.

After all, they do not worry much about the price of diesel fuel, or whether border communities are swarmed by illegal immigration. They are indifferent to whether it is unsafe to take a late-night subway ride. And they are not too worried about being mugged or whether they can splurge for a weekend steak.

Instead, condescending Democratic movers and shakers are obsessed with climate change and sermonize about ending fossil fuels. Diversity, equity, and inclusion—all mandated equality-of-result agendas—are their cultural religion, along with transgender advocacy, and abortion on demand in all 50 states.

The net result of these radical shifts is that Republicans began bonding with the neglected working classes and those without college degrees. That way they drowned out left-wing racial obsessions with ecumenical class concerns.

In the process, the new Republican Party in 2022 is poised to win 45-50 percent of Hispanic voters and a near record number of African-American men.

In our changed political landscape, poorer Republican candidates are routinely outspent in most of their races. Conservatives are more likely to be canceled by left-wing anti-free-expression institutions like Facebook and Twitter. Their access to online knowledge and communication is often warped by monopolies and cartels like Google and Apple.

The Democrats claim Republicans are racists. But they cannot explain why record numbers of minorities are now deserting the Democrats, and the blue-state urban areas they run, to join the new Republicans.

As Republicans diminished the role of race, the Democrats grew ever more obsessed about it—and ignored class. The Oprahs, Meghan Markles, and MSNBC anchors of the world fixate over skin color in direct proportion to their own affluence, status, and privilege—as their hypocrisy turns off the middle classes of all races.

In sum, the party of old left-wing progressives has become one of rich regressives. And once country-club Republicans are becoming a party of middle-class populists. And the election will reflect both those changes.

[redheadgleek]

Lyft driver: yeah, the delays around rush hour are pretty bad. You know, with the Biden’a Build Back Better, there’s all of this construction going on.

Me: well, sometime you have to take advantage of those funds and actually improve the infrastructures.

Driver: oh hey, you’re from Portland. Have things gone back to normal, you know after the defund the police stuff?

Me: there was some diverting of money to much needed community resources. And don’t worry, our police are very well funded, despite their protests, so I guess it’s back to normal.

Driver: are there a lot of Teslas up there?

Me: yeah, they’re popular. Are you seeing more here?

Driver: yeah I think they’re moving a plant here, or Texas. They’ve been in Northern California, but you know those taxes are just so horrendous.

Me: you mean those taxes that he doesn’t pay?