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I'm not sure why @jacobinmag is so invested in erasing the Movement for Black Lives, with non-sense like this.
A thread.
A thread.
1) I agree that we want a politics of redistribution rather than anti-discrimination and that only moving money around in a city budget by itself is insufficient. But that isn't what the movement is calling for. It's a gross misrepresentation.
2) It's also deeply disingenuous to suggest that this movement is unconcerned with crime, violence, and other harms. The whole point is to improve community safety in places where policing has been a major source of harm. Look at the work of @CharleneCac, @OsopePatrisse.
3) At the center of this analysis from people like Ruth Wilson Gilmore to Angela Davis is that policing/prisons facilitate austerity and racial oppression. So, any liberation movement, must directly address their functioning.
4) Any effort to develop a multiracial coalition for redistributive politics must take on the role of police; that is how poor people experience capitalism, given their exclusion from formal employment.
5) There is extensive evidence that when there is sustained organizing in communities of color to defund police and invest in communities that people support it and win victories. Police out of schools, decriminalizing drugs, homelessness, and mental health is happening.
@jacobinmag has an obligation to speak directly with movement leaders rather than having arm-chair theorists dismiss them. Stop being afraid of racial justice organizers. They have something to teach you about anti-capitalist organizing and you can't win w/o them.
Just to be clear, they have covered the movement and my views, which I appreciate. But they need to have actual on-the-ground organizers from communities of color involved.
There have been some good takes on this issue in @jacobinmag: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/defund-police-nyc-nypd
And my own views: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/defund-police-nypd-brutality-protests
But if you search "Jacobin" and "Defund the Police" on Youtube, this is what you get. Chibber and the video team have to be called out for this.
