“I don’t think it’s possible to reform something that’s never functioned properly in the first place,” says Michael Sawyer, a Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies professor at Colorado College. One of those roots is a fundamental pessimism about the possibility of successful police reform. The roots of the push to defund the police lie in a set of ideas that have been popular in some segments of American society for decades. The former takes a more gradual approach to defunding, seeing abolition as a long-term goal to be reached through important intermediate steps the latter argues that the gradualist approach is “dangerous and irresponsible, offering a slate of reforms that have already been tried and failed that mislead a public newly invigorated to the possibilities of police and prison abolition.”ĭespite those disagreements, almost all of the movement’s adherents share the same end goal of a future in which the number of armed police is drastically reduced, and are largely informed by the same theories and academic framework that originally birthed the idea of police abolitionism. Two newly prominent organizations, #8Can’tWait and #8toAbolition, highlight this divide. As a recent New York Times headline reads: “ Yes, We Literally Mean Abolish the Police. But this line of argument is made more difficult by the movement’s more radical advocates, who insist that the phrase should be interpreted literally. Mainstream progressives have been quick to explain that the movement is merely an attempt to “reimagine” the role of police in American society, paired with a prudent reallocation of some of the tax dollars being spent on law enforcement. In material terms, however, it remains to be seen what “defunding”-often used interchangeably with “dismantling” or even “abolishing”-actually means. Most Americans are skeptical of the policy but its presence has become an increasingly influential feature of our political discourse. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S.In the wake of the widespread protests galvanized by George Floyd’s death, the idea of “defunding” the police, a fringe proposal consigned to university campuses and left-wing activist groups as recently as a few weeks ago, is now being debated seriously by politicians, media commentators, and organizers across the country. Last Monday, Donald Trump announced that he had officially filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice. Monday AugTrump Announces Lawsuit Against DOJ After “Illegal” Mar-a-Lago Raid when discussing the 2022 midterm election: A BIG RED WAVE IS COMING! This would seem to be the obvious outcome seeing what this country has endured over the past 18 months under the rule of the party Monday AugAmericans, Republicans must Remember 2020, Avoid Complacency in Midterm Electionsīy Matt Kane We’ve all heard the same phrase echoing throughout the U.S. Her boyfriend abandoned her. “I was scared to pieces. Back then, if you had money, there were some girls who got abortions, but I couldn’t deal with WASHINGTON, DC, Aug 29 - A famous senior citizen recalled on paper what happened when, as a young girl, she found herself to be pregnant. Tuesday AugNew Players Join the Old Timers in the Pro-life Movement The student debt saga is the ultimate manifestation of Tuesday AugStudent Loan “Forgiveness” is a Liberal Sacrifice to Millennial ResentmentsĪMAC Exclusive - By Daniel Berman Perhaps more than any other prominent issue today, Joe Biden’s recent action on student loan “forgiveness” captures the generational and class divides that have grown up in the United States over the last twenty-five years. While an unorthodox strategy, it worked well in the toxic political atmosphere of that cycle in which the pandemic dominated the I can see ĪMAC Exclusive - By Barry Casselman President Joe Biden spent most of the 2020 presidential campaign in the basement of his Delaware home - out of sight and sound. Word is these states are all planning – bless their hearts – to ban the sale of gas-fueled cars in a dozen years, by 2035. Something akin to prohibition – outlawing alcohol from 1920 to 1933 – is happening in California. Tuesday AugBanning Gas Fueled Cars? Sure. The military never got involved, but an angry crowd, encouraged by political actors, did When most people think of the death of democracy, they think of a terrible coup led by a mob and finally supported by a perverted military. Tuesday AugOur Country Is Slipping Away, but It’s Easy to Miss

Defund the police infographic