Lots of well meaning criminal justice reform advocates are lecturing #BLM activists and their allies on their political communication strategies, their “framing & messaging,” their chosen political slogans, such as #DefundThePolice.

As @MrAnthonyWeiss says—“What sentient being can look at the last 6ish years of the BLM/Defund/Divest-Invest movements & say, ‘Those people don't know how use words to change the world’?There are mountains left to climb,but where we are now would have seemed unthinkable in 2013.”

And as @MaythaAlhassen says—“The ‘defund’ resisters are revealing themselves as the folks who would have blamed abolitionists for calling for an end to slavery ‘why not call for a reform to slavery?’ ‘To end all of slavery is just bad messaging’ ‘what will take slavery’s place?’”

Progressive critics of #DefundThePolice slogans and messaging tell activists that such framing must be abandoned because it costs votes, it reduces voter support for criminal justice reform measures. For them, that pragmatic criterion alone determines the value of the slogan.

But first, it’s not always clear which way that pragmatic criterion cuts. #DefundThePolice slogans and framing figured centrally in our successful Measure J defunding effort in LA County, even though the word “Defund” wasn’t on the ballot.

Even though a particular slogan or framing may turn off many voters, it also may galvanize and energize many others (the “base”) to such an extent that it results in a net gain. But let’s assume it results in a net loss at the ballot box.

Even if the #DefundThePolice slogan fails that pragmatic test by reducing voter support for measures associated with it, that’s not the sole test of its value. By that test, activists never should have put the slogan #BlackLivesMatter at the center of their framing & messaging.

The value of a political slogan doesn’t lie only in how appealing it is to the general population, but also in how it “speaks to the choir,” if you will—how it bonds them, bolsters their internal solidarity, strengthens their sinews of connection, unifies and rallies them.

It may also express in distilled form a core substantive value or goal that kinder and gentler formulations miss:

For instance, reframing defunding with alternative slogans like, say, “Fund Healthcare and Housing for the Have-Nots” misses that we don’t simply want more health care & housing (we want them, too), we want fewer violence workers in our midst—“defund the damn violence workers!”

Whether the benefits of a political slogan in promoting solidarity and asserting a movement’s core values outweigh any electoral loss is a value judgment that movement activists must make, the ones who have been getting kettled and caged by police over the last six years.

Once a rhetorical train has left the station, as it did with “Black Lives Matter,” good allies stop harping on the need for a different rallying cry and start patiently and painstakingly explaining what it “means”—for instance, the phrase means “Black Lives Matter, too.”

I’ve had no more difficulty explaining the meaning of the phrase #DefundThePolice than I’ve had explaining the meaning of #BlackLivesMatter And as the voters of LA showed, once #DefundThePolice was explained in rallies & door to door canvassing, it prevailed at the ballot box.