It’s 2AM and I have a million things on my plate rn, but the “Defund” discourse has rattled some THOUGHTS around my old noggin, and I’m deciding to vom some of those out onto your TL rn.

I'm uncomfortable with the way ppl are claiming that "Defund the Police" was a grassroots demand. It was not. It was a coordinated national campaign deliberately (and effectively!) enacted by NGOs and other networks of organizers

This isn’t to discount that demand or run down the organizers who helped bring it to prominence. I just think it is an important fact when we are trying to accurately map out the topography of the current struggle over “Defund.”

There was no unified grassroots demand in the uprisings. "Abolish the Police" was one, "Fuck the Police" was another (honestly, more prevalent) demand. But the streets never spoke with one voice.

"Defund the Police" was a deliberately crafted message intended to introduce enough lingual slippage into the voiced demands of the uprising in order to build a broad coalition that could include both reform preservationists and abolitionists.

This coalition was intended to point the energy in the streets towards legislative (or, at least, budgetary) demands in both the near and medium term, while claiming political space for mainstream political debate about reducing the state's capacity for harm.

And, as was sold to some, the eventual normalization of abolitionism within political discourse.

However, this lingual slippage has two sides: it can allow for the creeping of radicalism into the mainstream on one hand, but, on the other, it allows for co-option and neutering of a nascent radicalism by diffusing the meaning of the words in the demand.

Ofc, this isn't, like, a profound insight or anything, and the people who were responsible for crafting and spreading the"Defund" propaganda were, I'm sure, very aware that this would be part of the process.

But I think it's important to frame the liberal discourse about the language of "Defund" in this context. The neutering of the concept has become WILDLY prominent within the liberal discourse I have seen.

It's like everyday, Joe Schmoe libs have a script they were all assigned to memorize and regurgitate: Every reply thread on social media has soooo many variations on "Defund doesn't MEAN defund! It ACTUALLY means blah blah blah..."

And, on the other hand, the other emergent organized orthodoxy among liberals has been the complete rejection of the compromise language of "Defund."

These two prongs have been (at least) fairly effective counterinsurgency tactics, and the success of that counterinsurgency has been, at least in part, a result of the contradiction within the "Defund" demand:

"Defund the Police" is *supposed* to mean *both* "abolish" and "do not abolish."

Liberals who have spent time and energy since the uprisings explaining (to fellow police preservationists) that "Defund" does not mean "abolish" are resentful for having been put in that space of contradiction...

...and many are, at least in my amateur observations, moving towards the full rejection of the "Defund" demand and the political space it opens up for abolition.

The push towards this complete rejection is being coordinated from the very top echelons of the Democratic Party, including Obama himself.

This group is gaining traction, ofc, bc they have the full power and interest of the state behind them. But they're also gaining traction bc they are effectively heightening the foundational contradiction in the “Defund” demand.

I think that's important to understanding this struggle. And I also think it's important to resist the framework that reduces the struggle over "Defund" to the grassroots vs the top-down establishment. It isn't.

It is primarily a struggle between poles within a broad concept of the Democratic Party tent: between the "establishment" neoliberal apparatus and the "progressive" reform tentpole, which is organized mostly through NGOs and other similar national and local networks

The “progressive” tentpole is working to deliberately introduce and maintain a contradiction in public discourse in order to build a legislative-oriented coalition around the phrase “Defund” that can hold abolitionists and reform preservationists.

The “establishment” tentpole is working to disrupt that nascent coalition by heightening the contradiction in the deliberately crafted language put forth by the “progressive” tentpole. They are looking to resolve the contradiction of “Defund” in a way that marginalizes abolition.

So, as radicals, as abolitionists, as members of the unfunded grassroots, how should we orient ourselves to this struggle?

Is the idea to align with the reformist “progressive” pole and attempt to strategically perpetuate the contradiction of the “Defund” messaging? Or is it to agitate to heighten that contradiction to attempt to resolve it in a way that precludes preservationism?

And, ofc, where is this struggle taking place? Esp during the pandemic. The dems are doing a full on media blitz to attempt to close off any political space opened by the “Defund” movement. How can the liberal state media apparatus be countered?

Most of my abolition organizing has involved trying to spread propaganda through non-digital channels: tabling, organizing protests, helping create physical agitprop to include with food distribution, etc. Its been a challenge to effectively maintain all these efforts thru COVID

This is probably a personal shortcoming, but I feel I really need to share physical space with someone I don’t know in order to quickly build the kind of openness and rapport necessary for effective propaganda.

I feel my organizing has been very hamstrung by the absolute need to socially isolate and maintain effective social distance from people.

So, I don’t have answers to these questions. At least, not ones I am confident in. But I think it’s always important to accurately diagnose the state of play in a conflict, and I thought it might be helpful to try to articulate it as I see it.