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This is going to be a thread and I would like to begin by saying, @voxdotcom, I remain tired of you and your writers. 1/ https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1273209625198956545
First of all, are white people committed through a blood oath to only quote MLK Jr. and ignore all of his contemporaries? When you are born, do you sign a document by which you agree to sanitize his legacy and ignore any other revolutionary from the civil rights era? 2/
Secondly, Gandhi was literally anti-Black so that's an embarrassing person to add into the mix of "non-violent" people you jack off to 3/
"Violence is not, to be clear, the only thing the government does. The US spends more on health care and education, at both the national and state levels, than on the military and police." The existence of the United States IS VIOLENCE. It is a settler-colonial nation built by 4/
stolen people on stolen land...Seriously? The US government doesn't only do violence? That's actually its whole thing. The US perpetuates violence against Black and brown people both at home and abroad, continuing its neoliberal settler-colonial agenda as far as it can 5/
“Most of [the people rioting] are young, and I just wonder who were their parents?” asked Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). “What did they teach them? How did they get educated to believe this an appropriate response? Contrast that to what Martin Luther King Jr. did.” HOW DARE YOU 6/
WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS? Black and brown children's parents are systematically abused, oppressed, incarcerated, and KILLED. So, their desire to riot, to light the streets on fire comes from the injustice being done to them AND THEIR PARENTS for generations 7/
"There is much the state does that is meant to protect citizens from violence, including policing, which really does work to reduce crime." Reduce crime? What crime? Does it reduce the crime that police officers commit against us? Does it deter rapists? 8/
Locking millions of people away for years on end doesn't reduce crime, it gets rid of people you don't want to have the opportunities white people have. You can go mask off, Ezra, the rest of your writers sure have. 9/
"It is not, however, as easy as saying that if the state simply receded, leaving a vacuum where law enforcement currently sits, that society would become less violent in turn." NO ONE IS ASKING FOR THAT! Have you read abolitionist theory? Do you know what Ruthie says? 10/
Abolition is presence. The presence of life-giving structures, of community care, of safety and security for all WITHOUT carcerality. 11/
AGAIN MORE GANDHI?! DID YOU EVEN GOOGLE WHO GANDHI IS??? THE STREETS ARE FILLED WITH PROTESTORS AND RIOTERS BECAUSE OF ANTI-BLACKNESS BRO 12/
"The question nonviolence asks is what if the state put, at the least, equal energy and effort into developing tools of nonviolence and training agents in their use?" STOP TRYING TO TRAIN POLICE OUT OF KILLING PEOPLE?! ITS NOT WORKING. ABOLITION IS THE ONLY WAY. 13/
Patrick Skinner, a police officer...told me that he always asks trainees: “If you didn’t have a badge and a gun, how would you handle that situation? Because I guarantee you, if you walk into that situation with your gun and badge out, you’ll use them.” great 14/
"In restorative justice, the focus is not on what perpetrators have done but on what victims need. In some cases, that is imprisonment." um no the fuck it isnt 15/
"I will not pretend, in this piece, to be able to fully imagine the workings of a state that truly seeks to follow the ethos of nonviolence wherever it can." Ok then why didn't you just cite the people who had fully imagined that? 16/
"It is time for the lesson they taught to be learned. Not by protesters, furious at the violence inflicted upon their own by the state, but by the state itself, which should aspire to more than controlling the violence that can be inflicted upon its citizens." this is bull 17/
I am embarrassed you took the time to write this entire piece without citing Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, Andrea Ritchie, Rachel Herzing, Mia Mingus, or others who have done far more work in imagining a better world than you ever will. 18/18
