[yareal]

It's especially funny to me, an anarchist, who believes that self organizing communities built around wellbeing for all would be radically better than today's world. If the police are the only thing between today's world and "luxury space communism", maybe the police need to be re evaluated.

[magnetowasright]

Also an anarchist! Totally agree. Oh how I dream of it!

It's been very frustrating watching so much police violence, corruption, etc. being openly reported internationally and nothing changing, at all. In Australia (and from what I've heard of the US) there's not much of an effort to try and suppress news of or spin better PR over the horrific stories of police brutality and corruption any more. Like they're not even bothering to keep up pretence and plausible deniability any more. It feels like we're unfortunately a long way from re-evaluating the police even very strictly within the current political frameworks we have. Gotta try to stay optimistic and active, though!

[someuser2345]

What exactly is the difference between your "self organizing communities" and the cities and towns we have today? Nobody is forcing you to live in a city, you are free to move to any other city in the country.

[yareal]

Cities of millions of people are too big to effectively be a self organized community, imo. And I have moved to a city or town that operates closer to my ideals.

But the other thing that's important to remember is that those communities need to be organized for the well being of all, and there aren't such places today.

Also, there's a practical element. Capitalism is here and powerful. I still need to eat, so I participate. I just also spend a lot of time and money on mutual aid (I have a spare house I rent at "cost of maintenance" to families in need, because I believe housing should not be a commodity. Do I take what I can out of the capitalist mode and put it into the anarchist mode.)

[zo1]

And you don't think self-organizing communities built around their well-being will ever decide to do anything against those that go against its well-being? What if they end up making a defacto police force anyways, what then?

Also an anarchist, though not the kind you probably are ("anarcho capitalist" vs "anarcho space communist"). Either way, I don't have a rainbow happy view of human nature, and as such I don't think you can get away from having bad guys that require some sort of police or enforcement.

[yareal]

It's important to separate the roles police play. Sometimes they are detectives, solving crimes. Sometimes they are traffic enforcement, mental health interventions, noise violation enforcement, violent robbery halters, etc. Not all of these roles need be filled by an armed central full time force.

While I'd personally push for removing most of those roles from a police force, and I believe that communities could do so safely and better with more community run organizations, as an anarchist I believe it should be up to communities to decide what's right for them. If a group decides they really want police, then they should do that. I'd disagree with their decision, but that's ok.

[lolinder]

> as an anarchist I believe it should be up to communities to decide what's right for them

Isn't this more or less what's already happening today? Some communities have scaled back their police force dramatically, others have maintained theirs or even scaled them up.

Is the difference just that you'd prefer to see us start from a clean slate and choose from the buffet table, rather than have to migrate from legacy systems?