“America desperately needs to rethink it’s priorities for the entire criminal justice system, with Floyd’s death drawing urgent national attention to the necessity for police reform. Activists, civil rights organizations, academics, policy analysts, and politicians have drawn up a sprawling slate of policies that might help end police brutality, eliminate racist policing, improve trust between cops and the communities they work in, and lower crime levels all together.
A more radical option, one scrawled on cardboard signs and tagged on buildings and flooding social media, is to defund the cops completely. And what might that mean in practice? Not just smaller budgets and fewer officers, though many activists advocate for that, it would mean ending mass incarceration, cash bail, fines and fees policing, the “war on drugs,” and police militarization, as well as getting cops out of schools. It would also mean funding housing first programs, creating subsidized jobs for the formerly incarcerated, and expanding initiatives to have mental health workers respond to emergency calls instead of men with guns.
More broadly, the demand to divest from policing doubles as a demand to invest in safety, security, and racial justice. This week cops in riot gear tear gassed teenagers. Humvees patrolled by the White House and military helicopters buzzed protesters. And all at the same time health workers fought COVID-19 wearing reused masks. This is not serving. This is not protecting. The American Prison-Rape Anticultural State is the enemy. The police are the anarchists. And even were we to take them as the good guys, America’s police be prepared for the wrong enemy. Militarized United States police forces need to go back to serving communities first. They certainly do absolutely nothing that will aid in the struggle against the plague. Which is where we are now – in the age of the plague. What can the police do to help fight the plague instead of acting as a vector for it?
…
We have to make space for new politics, new ideas, new formations, and new people.
The election of Biden may stop the misery of another Trump term, but it won’t stop the underlying issues that have brought about more than a hundred thousand covid-19 deaths or continuous protests against police abuse and violence.
Will the federal government intervene to stop the looming crisis of evictions that will disproportionately impact black women?
Will it use its power and authority to punish police, and to empty prisons and jails, which not only bring about social death but are now also sites of rampant covid-19 infection?
Will it end the war on food stamps and allow African-Americans and other residents of this country to eat in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?
Will it finance the health-care needs of tens of millions of African-Americans who have become susceptible to the worst effects of the coronavirus, and are dying as a result?
Will it provide the resources to depleted public schools, allowing black children the opportunity to learn in peace?
Will it redistribute the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to rebuild devastated working-class communities?
Will there be free day care and transportation?
If we are serious about ending racism and fundamentally changing the United States, we must begin with a real and serious assessment of the problems. We diminish the task by continuing to call upon the agents and actors who fuelled the crisis when they had opportunities to help solve it.
But, more importantly, the quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone. It must conquer the logic that finances police and jails at the expense of public schools and hospitals. Police should not be armed with expensive artillery intended to maim and murder civilians while nurses tie garbage sacks around their bodies and reuse masks in a futile effort to keep the coronavirus at bay.
We have the resources to remake the United States, but it will have to come at the expense of the plutocrats and the plunderers, and therein lies the three-hundred-year-old conundrum: America’s professed values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, continually undone by the reality of debt, despair, and the human degradation of racism and inequality.” ~ Douglas Dietrich 6/11/2020
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~ THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN EITHER SIDE ‘O’ THE PACIFIC – AMERASIAN AGENT ‘O’ THE PEACOCK ǼNGÆL مَلَك طَاوُوس (“TAWOÛSÊ-MELEIK [‘MELIEK TA’‘OUSI’]”) – HOLDS THE KEY TO BREAKAWAY PERCEPTION
– Renegatus Humanus Arma ab Massa-Eruditio
(THE “Renegade Human Weapon ‘o’ Mass-Instruction”);
The Germanic Surname “Dietrich” – as Transliterated into The Ænglish – means “(The) Master Key, Skeleton Key, (a) Key That Can Open All Doors” :
THE LAST Д‘ТРĂЦКОГОÙЛ‘ВYЕА’c (“D‘TRĂCKOGOÙL‘ŴYEA’s [‘SON-‘O’-DIETRICH’s,’ or ‘SON-‘O’-A’‘DRAGON’s’];” pronounced “Dī Traiykh-Kohk-Goowhll VYāyh’s” and Ænglobastardized “DRACULA’s”) 中國人 (“ƵChuṑnggkGHuóuárén [literally ‘Middle-Kingdom People’s,’ id est ‘Chinese’]”) Lineage-Derived Surname is 「林 (“Lin [the iconographic character for ‘Tree’ represented in plurality – id est ‘Forest’ / ‘Jungle’]”)」; both ‘o’ his First Name Elements 「一 (“yĪ [‘One,’ ‘Singular,’ ‘Throughout’ – id est ‘Totality’]”)」 and 「平 (“Píng [‘Calm,’ ‘Peaceful’ / ‘Flat,’ ‘Level’]”);」 combining as 「一平 (“yĪ-Píng [‘Striving Toward Attainment ‘o’ Peace;’ ‘To Tie,’ as in ‘Even The Score’ / ‘To Draw-Up;’ ‘A-‘leveling’ / ‘An ‘Evening Up’ / ‘A-‘Reckoning’ – id est ‘Cosmic Balance’ / ‘Divine Retribution’]”);」 – Familial and First Name Elements combining yet a’‘gain (in Proper Asian Order) as 「林 一平 (“Lin yĪ-Píng [‘Path ‘o’ Environmental Harmony’ or ‘Law ‘o’ The Jungle;’ something akin to ‘Gǣĩǣn Sustainability’]”)」。