“Reform the police” is literally the same number of letters as “defund the police” and a way better message. For some reason leftists absolutely love to label good ideas in self-defeating ways. “Defund the police” is a republican’s wet dream - they’d work to turn the movement into having that slogan as a way of defeating it, but it turns out the idiots who spread it did their jobs for them.
Any time you have a slogan where you have to immediately say “wait, it’s not what it sounds like, it’s a good idea, hear me out”, you have a terrible fucking slogan. It’s basically designed to scare old white people into thinking you want to get rid of the police and create chaos. Any reform message gets lost when you just alienate your audience right off the bat and confuse them about what you’re proposing.
In contrast, “medicare for all” is a pretty good slogan. Gets to the point, not alienating. I’m surprised they didn’t shoot themselves in the foot by trying to name that movement “no more private doctors!” or something.
That would be Fox and other right wing propaganda sites that kept using it months after any of the protestors did.
Yeah, unfortunately, there wasn’t a focus group made before people took to the streets angry about their neighborhoods being terrorized by police forces. Many of those on the streets meant it completely literally. They would rather have no police than to continue to put up with the daily harassment and oppression. I don’t think that no police is better, but I am not the one who is being dehumanized, denigrated, tormented and even killed by those police, so I don’t judge those who are in that position as harshly as some seem to like to do. If someone has just been tasered and beaten by a cop for not recognizing the cop’s authority enough and being disrespectful, I’m not going to tell them that them calling for this abuse and maltreatment to stop is a “terrible fucking slogan”, and scares old white people.
Which is why it was never adopted by any politician, or even any activist with any real clout, just some people angry about the way they were treated in their own homes.
I understand why the right keeps bringing it up as a boogeyman to scare old white people, what I don’t understand is why individual members of the left shoot themselves in the foot by bringing it up as well.
I’m not, as the “they” you refer to in the first part of this post are an entirely different “they” than you refer to in the latter. Much as it would be easier if it were true, the left is not a hivemind, and generalizations rarely have any accuracy to them at all.
The problem with “reform the police” is that everyone wants that; they just want different reforms. Taking away the Geneva Convention-prohibited weapons is one reform. Giving them Abrams would be a different reform.
That’s exactly why it’s a good slogan. Everyone can have different ideas about what it means as they chant the slogan together. It creates the impression of unity and lessens the appearance of divisions in your coalition. It’s a slogan, not a policy paper.
I still think “FIX THE POLICE” is even better. It’s simpler and a touch subversive, because it can sound like “Fuck the Police” when chanted. But apparently no one but me likes that idea.
Fix the police also has overtones of “neuter the police”, which i think gets at the core value. I liked it, too.
But at the time, i argued with a couple of progressives who strongly supported the slogan, and assured me i was just giving aid and comfort to the right in questioning it. They didn’t say, “we’re pushing to abolish/fix/reform the police, now”. They said, “we need to take away their money”.
I was referring to the M1A1 Abrams main battle tank (which some police departments would doubtless want a few of). Giving the police Stacey Abrams would be a completely different sort of reform, one which I’d probably be in favor of.
Personally, the slogan I’m in favor of is “Establish the police”. We really do need a body dedicated to enforcing the laws, maintaining order, serving justice, and keeping the peace. And so we should establish such a body. Because we don’t have anyone who does any of those things right now.
No one ever likes clever slogans. I tried “Refund the Police” in the sense of, “This police I just bought is defective, I’d like a refund!”, but it never went anywhere.
Bob Bolus? He isn’t the guy who was trying to set up a Super Bowl trucker tie-up. He’s the guy who started a convoy from Pennsylvania, but it fizzled because he was the only Big Rigger who showed up. There were a few cars and a few pickup trucks and a SUV and I think these were the guys who got lost on the Interstate and finally gave up.
I think this was NOT the same guy who started a convoy but he was the only one who showed up and on top of that, he had two flat tires. That was a different convoy fizzle.
BTW, how would you like to go through life with a name like Bolus?
