The only thing that irritates is how intractable it all feels. Humanity has changed bigger, more difficult, more entrenched systems before; the frustration I feel is in not seeing where to start with this one. But I bet there are models out there, even for places like ours. Thank you for once again laying it all out so clearly!
Thanks, Nia. That is my irritation about it too. We had some momentum in Missoula it seemed but it just ... fizzled out. The organization that started out as a BLM thing changed their name and then just disappeared. I made multiple efforts to contact them and never got a response. It's all weird.
What we did in Denver- during the pandemic I used to livestream City Council meetings and give commentary like a football game. Then, organized a group to start giving mutual aid in front of the Capitol Building so Council Members and media would have to walk through it, and swathes of unhoused, to get to the meetings. We called it Monday Night Mutual Aid and taught people how to sign up for public comment- “show up to raise awareness, then go into the meeting to raise the ROOF”. One year in its steadily growing; we serve around 500 per week. Protests are not enough without policy to codify the changes we want to see. This is one way of channeling that energy. IDK what the pertinent issue in your area would be, ours is the exploding number of unhoused, but that’s a strong, simple place to start.
I think this particular issue is very hard to get a grip on. Funded through the city but also the county, getting a grasp on where the funding goes and what it's used for (extremely opaque and also messy; I mean, look at the Flathead's private funder of Two Bear Air Rescue, which "belongs" to the sheriffs department), and even having some kind of community relationship from the police department's end itself. Investing in that kind of training program doesn't indicate that the department has an interest in that kind of relationship; how the community is able to hold a police department accountable for its actions within, for, and to the community is maybe at the core of the problem. It almost feels like every community needs its own version of a truth and reconciliation commission but how do we begin?
It really does, and hearing a new councilperson tell me a senior councilperson got mad at him for getting the public involved just smells like garbage from all sides. Feels more like shmoozing and social climbing than government.
Did you see that the city also agreed to move the Crisis Intervention Team from Missoula Fire Department to Missoula Police "given Missoula's reliance on trained law enforcement officers to respond to calls involving a mental health crisis." Does anyone in the city really think people join the police because they want to be empathetic social workers and actively work to defuse and deescalate complicated problems of substances abuse, mental illness and poverty? Police are simply agents of the state hired to enforce the criminalization of poverty - a perpetual, recurring feature of capitalism.
I didn't see that and yes, you are exactly right. And that is what "Defund the Police" really means. Eliminate some of those armored bodies and replace them with crisis professionals who defuse situations with humanity and compassion, not bullets.
One of the most important blogs you have written. I once saw a policeman about to shoot a scared, bewildered dog, and I screamed at him, "Don"t shoot. I know how to rescue him. He cocked his rifle and sneered at me, "Nobody tells me what to do." I suppose because I am a white middle aged woman he did not shoot me as I calmly gave the dog some food and water and slipped a leash on him and led him away. I was amazed at the cockiness of the policeman.
Great article. I see this; I was one of those white guilt ladies who didn't know anything real in the 60s because my education was so poor then. Yet I also saw, while signing up for some green-policy movement then, how an angry young man reveled in the chance to grab a leadership role that allowed him a scratch of power and a megaphone. And a way to further humiliate women.
This is my point. At 78, I am exhausted by so much that I see; that I finally DO see, after a white middle-class privilege, how thorough and widespread the fear of not being "someone" radiates through society, ravages any sense of empathy or compassion, allows people I love to rush toward authoritarianism like Trump, defend nonsense in order to support evil. It exhausts me. The scope of it!
I can only proceed by focusing on one small area to work in--now it is helping various efforts with small, continuous donations and yes, writing letters, etc. But also educating my grandson, with "Maus," with "On Tyranny," with the desperate importance of being kind. And my son is kind, even though troubled with chronic depression. And my daughter is finally, in her way, also becoming kind.
We too who are awakening, even though slowly, must be encouraged, not disparaged. Signing e-petitions might be a start toward a stronger stance. Yes, encourage seeing FURTHER, but don't dismiss altogether.
It's a hard journey every damned inch, isn't it, for all of us.
I'm happy for people who do anything at all, yes. My experience with online petitions is all they've ever done is increase the emails from organizations I never heard of asking me for money. That is frustrating too, the deluge of asks for money I get. It is unrelenting.
Big picture it feels endless and hopeless. But at the bone, humanizing the incarcerated matters. Stories. (No humans are disposable although there are plenty I struggle to find compassion for.)
“ for all its smug self-assurance about being “progressive” and “democratic,” my community remains—with some few occasional and notable exceptions—a bastion of white supremacy that only cares about white people.” yes. Thank you.
And thank you for adding footnote 4. I’m an abolitionist and spend way too much free time begging people to care about city budgets. When you said, “Policing is the ultimate flex of white supremacy and it’s the one, like the endlessly expanding military budget, we seem least inclined to really do anything more about than occasionally grumble and shake our fists at.” I felt seen. People seem to just accept that policing is dangerous and think it’s a few bad apples. Begging for change feels impossible. You criticize Biden it Democratic structures and people just scream REPUBLICAN and shut right down.
Denver. I was born in TN though, my dad started practicing police brutality law in 1983. The movement is small but it is SO MUCH BIGGER than back then.
Looking at the Dunbar-Ortiz statistics made me realize that the official COVID death count will eventually match the number of incarcerated people. Which…well, I’m going to shove down all the feelings that brings up for a later day.
Don’t have the stomach to read the Killology article at the moment but the excerpt about “implying the sexual pleasure of police officers is amplified following a violent confrontation” jumped out. I think the Killology trainers accidentally said the quiet part out loud, because there’s always been a line connecting sexual pleasure and fascist militarization.
Police culture is absolutely on some Jeffrey Dahmer-esque shit and we’re just supposed to be ok with it instead of being disgusted and alarmed.
You are exactly right. We are just supposed to be okay with it, to be okay with getting patronized by elected officials who get boners at the mention of a "command center."
"But we have to do something. It is a life or death situation."
Exactly. No action too small. Against all odds. When I arrived in 1974, traumatized, with very little money or visible power in this small university town in a lightly populated county in the northwest corner of Washington State, it was whiter than it is now, with the exception of the Lummi Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe and a growing population of farm workers. I will die here with very little money or visible power, doing what I can, knowing that the beloved community is growing, throughout the world, visible and invisible.
Have been thinking about this too--frustration doesn't seem to run deep enough for the entrenched racism in policing. Policing in America originated in slave patrols to stop 'fugitive' enslaved people and stop any slave rebellion. It is an inherently racist practice borne out by decades of cruelty and needless incarceration and needs to stop. And its directly tied to the proliferation of american gun culture as well. I've been so disheartened to see defund the police receive the expected backlash. It was squarely taking issue with that history, legacy, and outcomes we still have to witness. Thanks so much for writing this.
The only thing that irritates is how intractable it all feels. Humanity has changed bigger, more difficult, more entrenched systems before; the frustration I feel is in not seeing where to start with this one. But I bet there are models out there, even for places like ours. Thank you for once again laying it all out so clearly!
Thanks, Nia. That is my irritation about it too. We had some momentum in Missoula it seemed but it just ... fizzled out. The organization that started out as a BLM thing changed their name and then just disappeared. I made multiple efforts to contact them and never got a response. It's all weird.
What we did in Denver- during the pandemic I used to livestream City Council meetings and give commentary like a football game. Then, organized a group to start giving mutual aid in front of the Capitol Building so Council Members and media would have to walk through it, and swathes of unhoused, to get to the meetings. We called it Monday Night Mutual Aid and taught people how to sign up for public comment- “show up to raise awareness, then go into the meeting to raise the ROOF”. One year in its steadily growing; we serve around 500 per week. Protests are not enough without policy to codify the changes we want to see. This is one way of channeling that energy. IDK what the pertinent issue in your area would be, ours is the exploding number of unhoused, but that’s a strong, simple place to start.
Yes, housing and the unhoused are huge here right now. Thank you.
I think this particular issue is very hard to get a grip on. Funded through the city but also the county, getting a grasp on where the funding goes and what it's used for (extremely opaque and also messy; I mean, look at the Flathead's private funder of Two Bear Air Rescue, which "belongs" to the sheriffs department), and even having some kind of community relationship from the police department's end itself. Investing in that kind of training program doesn't indicate that the department has an interest in that kind of relationship; how the community is able to hold a police department accountable for its actions within, for, and to the community is maybe at the core of the problem. It almost feels like every community needs its own version of a truth and reconciliation commission but how do we begin?
It really does, and hearing a new councilperson tell me a senior councilperson got mad at him for getting the public involved just smells like garbage from all sides. Feels more like shmoozing and social climbing than government.
It seems like that is a sign this new councilperson should be doing more of that.
That's exactly what I told him.
;)
Did you see that the city also agreed to move the Crisis Intervention Team from Missoula Fire Department to Missoula Police "given Missoula's reliance on trained law enforcement officers to respond to calls involving a mental health crisis." Does anyone in the city really think people join the police because they want to be empathetic social workers and actively work to defuse and deescalate complicated problems of substances abuse, mental illness and poverty? Police are simply agents of the state hired to enforce the criminalization of poverty - a perpetual, recurring feature of capitalism.
I didn't see that and yes, you are exactly right. And that is what "Defund the Police" really means. Eliminate some of those armored bodies and replace them with crisis professionals who defuse situations with humanity and compassion, not bullets.
One of the most important blogs you have written. I once saw a policeman about to shoot a scared, bewildered dog, and I screamed at him, "Don"t shoot. I know how to rescue him. He cocked his rifle and sneered at me, "Nobody tells me what to do." I suppose because I am a white middle aged woman he did not shoot me as I calmly gave the dog some food and water and slipped a leash on him and led him away. I was amazed at the cockiness of the policeman.
Thank you, Sandy. What a harrowing experience that must have been.
Great article. I see this; I was one of those white guilt ladies who didn't know anything real in the 60s because my education was so poor then. Yet I also saw, while signing up for some green-policy movement then, how an angry young man reveled in the chance to grab a leadership role that allowed him a scratch of power and a megaphone. And a way to further humiliate women.
This is my point. At 78, I am exhausted by so much that I see; that I finally DO see, after a white middle-class privilege, how thorough and widespread the fear of not being "someone" radiates through society, ravages any sense of empathy or compassion, allows people I love to rush toward authoritarianism like Trump, defend nonsense in order to support evil. It exhausts me. The scope of it!
I can only proceed by focusing on one small area to work in--now it is helping various efforts with small, continuous donations and yes, writing letters, etc. But also educating my grandson, with "Maus," with "On Tyranny," with the desperate importance of being kind. And my son is kind, even though troubled with chronic depression. And my daughter is finally, in her way, also becoming kind.
We too who are awakening, even though slowly, must be encouraged, not disparaged. Signing e-petitions might be a start toward a stronger stance. Yes, encourage seeing FURTHER, but don't dismiss altogether.
It's a hard journey every damned inch, isn't it, for all of us.
I'm happy for people who do anything at all, yes. My experience with online petitions is all they've ever done is increase the emails from organizations I never heard of asking me for money. That is frustrating too, the deluge of asks for money I get. It is unrelenting.
absolutely!!!
Big picture it feels endless and hopeless. But at the bone, humanizing the incarcerated matters. Stories. (No humans are disposable although there are plenty I struggle to find compassion for.)
Stories, stories, stories, yes.
“ for all its smug self-assurance about being “progressive” and “democratic,” my community remains—with some few occasional and notable exceptions—a bastion of white supremacy that only cares about white people.” yes. Thank you.
And thank you for adding footnote 4. I’m an abolitionist and spend way too much free time begging people to care about city budgets. When you said, “Policing is the ultimate flex of white supremacy and it’s the one, like the endlessly expanding military budget, we seem least inclined to really do anything more about than occasionally grumble and shake our fists at.” I felt seen. People seem to just accept that policing is dangerous and think it’s a few bad apples. Begging for change feels impossible. You criticize Biden it Democratic structures and people just scream REPUBLICAN and shut right down.
Thank you for being an abolitionist. May I ask you where you live?
Denver. I was born in TN though, my dad started practicing police brutality law in 1983. The movement is small but it is SO MUCH BIGGER than back then.
Looking at the Dunbar-Ortiz statistics made me realize that the official COVID death count will eventually match the number of incarcerated people. Which…well, I’m going to shove down all the feelings that brings up for a later day.
Don’t have the stomach to read the Killology article at the moment but the excerpt about “implying the sexual pleasure of police officers is amplified following a violent confrontation” jumped out. I think the Killology trainers accidentally said the quiet part out loud, because there’s always been a line connecting sexual pleasure and fascist militarization.
Police culture is absolutely on some Jeffrey Dahmer-esque shit and we’re just supposed to be ok with it instead of being disgusted and alarmed.
You are exactly right. We are just supposed to be okay with it, to be okay with getting patronized by elected officials who get boners at the mention of a "command center."
"But we have to do something. It is a life or death situation."
Exactly. No action too small. Against all odds. When I arrived in 1974, traumatized, with very little money or visible power in this small university town in a lightly populated county in the northwest corner of Washington State, it was whiter than it is now, with the exception of the Lummi Nation and Nooksack Indian Tribe and a growing population of farm workers. I will die here with very little money or visible power, doing what I can, knowing that the beloved community is growing, throughout the world, visible and invisible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naj6zZakgEg
I love that clip. Thank you.
“A useful bone to chew on” indeed. Thank you Chris.
Thanks, Melissa.
Thanks, Chris. Still chewing and it seems very tough.
Have been thinking about this too--frustration doesn't seem to run deep enough for the entrenched racism in policing. Policing in America originated in slave patrols to stop 'fugitive' enslaved people and stop any slave rebellion. It is an inherently racist practice borne out by decades of cruelty and needless incarceration and needs to stop. And its directly tied to the proliferation of american gun culture as well. I've been so disheartened to see defund the police receive the expected backlash. It was squarely taking issue with that history, legacy, and outcomes we still have to witness. Thanks so much for writing this.