[harimau777]

I don't think it's that activists are content. Rather I think it's that a combination of people returning to work, the end of Covid financial support, and high inflation means that people can't protest anymore. There's probably also a lot of fatigue after protests were going on for months.

I'd also contest whether activists really got much of what they were asking for. They generally weren't asking for simply no-police. Rather they were asking for issues like poverty, mental illness, and homelessness to be addressed rather than just being policed.

[throwaway894345]

People protested for half a decade before COVID. Even if they couldn’t get out and protest, they could still engage in social media, and yet it seemed like their enthusiasm for the subject largely evaporated, even on social media. Even the cheapest of symbolic stuff like “#BLM” in Twitter handles and bios seemed to largely disappear. It very much feels like they cut policing in the name of black Americans and then lost interest when policing drove up crime rates, particularly in black communities.

> Rather they were asking for issues like poverty, mental illness, and homelessness to be addressed rather than just being policed.

I’m sure some were asking for those things, but mostly this was a media retcon when it was becoming apparent that “abolish the police” was jeopardizing Biden’s election campaign (“when protesters say ‘abolish the police’ and ‘all cops are bastards’, surely they’re really advocating for more spending on social services, right?”).

[harimau777]

That wasn't my experience. From the start I heard people saying that "defund the police" was a poor slogan because it didn't convey to most people what activists actually meant.