Defund the Police? Not good enough - revolution now!
Yes to freedom, democracy and human rights! No to fascists and thugs!
My greatest heroes are Gandhi and MLK, and I passionate support justice, equality, freedom, civil liberties, constitutional democracy and UNIVERSAL human rights. What to do about police brutality, or police over-stepping their bounds, is a hard question, though. If you just defund the police, street gangs and organized crime will then run the cities, towns and neighbourhoods. Clearly that won't work.
I'd suggest something like Rojava is doing, and the Zapatistas are also doing. Create community-controlled, transparent and accountable police forces, controlled by a radically democratic process and structure, with the main power in all areas of society, including the courts and the police, controlled at the community level, democratically, with openness, transparency and accountability, and with power NOT centralized at the state or federal level.
The closest thing the US has come to that was the Black Panthers. Maybe their time has come again. But look into Rojava's example. When you have police officers, from the local community, predominantly women, who are both from the community and are accountable to the community, and they are armed with AK-47s, crime plummets, safety soars, and police violence drops to near zero. Nobody fucks with a grandmother carrying a machine gun.
Think about it. But those are just my own thoughts. The people need to figure out and decide these things for themselves, democratically - at the LOCAL level.
Furthermore, now that the Chief of Police of Canada's capital has resigned, for refusing to break up the peaceful truckers' protest and Freedom Convoy, the question of community-controlled policing becomes a subject of immense immediate relevance - and popular power.
The elite have clearly abandoned the people - black, white, people of colour, all of them, and poor black people and people of colour in particular. Worse yet, the business and political elite are driving the people into a “new normal” of authoritarianism, which we are supposed to just swallow, and to bow down to in obedience, unthinking deference to authority, and docile conformity. Something has to change. And the time is now, I'd say.
Put on your jack boots, and welcome the new gulag society, or together make a stand.
The choice is clear.
Non-violent revolution, from below, and NOW!
J. Todd Ring,
February 16, 2022
#defundThePolice #BLM #revolution #FreedomConvoy #TruckersProtest