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by perfmode 2191 days ago
Amen.

For much of U.S. history, law enforcement meant implementing laws that were explicitly designed to subjugate Black people and enforce white supremacy. That’s why Black people, along with hundreds of thousands of others, are calling for city, state, and federal governments to abolish policing as we currently understand it. We must divest from excessive, brutal, and discriminatory policing and invest in a vision of community safety that works for everyone, not just an elite few.

We know the safest communities in America are places that don’t center the police. What we’re looking for already exists, and we already know it works. We need look no further than neighborhoods where the wealthy, well-connected, and well-off live, or anywhere there is easy access to living wages, healthcare, quality public education and freedom from police terror.

We can’t stand by while our city, state, and federal governments continue to fund an excessive, brutal, and discriminatory system of policing. We will no longer be told that what we deserve is not politically viable or logistically possible. We will no longer be deprived of what others have long enjoyed in this country: basic rights, safety, and freedom.

1 comments

> We know the safest communities in America are places that don’t center the police.

Worth thinking about: https://www.wsj.com/articles/good-policing-saves-black-lives...

This disregards broader system dynamics. We are not simply looking to cut back on policing and stop there. The objective is to invest in people and attend to their fundamental needs in a way which produces lasting change. This goes beyond the particular short-term reactions to parameter changes in the system.

Through the lens of Donella Meadow's work in complex systems, we can we policing pulling back and homicides increasing as:

9. Constants, parameters, numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).

8. Regulating negative feedback loops.

7. Driving positive feedback loops.

Yet, this movement seeks to operate at a greater leverage point of:

2. The goals of the system.

1. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.

--- Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to...