My head and heart have been abuzz since my last post. I've been trying to keep up with parenting and with work, but it's hard when you live a few miles from the epicenter of history-in-the-making. I've mostly spent my time refreshing Twitter to try to follow what's going on. I rarely use Twitter, but for its myriad faults, it is a good resource for constantly changing, fast pace stories like this one -- too good, actually. I see how addictive it can be. Even right now I have to resist the urge to look at it, and I've only been off it for, like, a minute. The main reason I don't like Twitter, in general, is because it feels like every conversation is turned up to 100 -- everything is over-the-top; it's all outrage, all the time. But right now that outrage is completely justified, so I don't mind it. The other problem with Twitter is the misinformation and the bubble effect. Those are still problems, but at the moment I'd rather live with them and get current information than lag behind.
Anyway, it seems as if things are relatively peaceful in the DC tonight -- at least, I don't hear the incessant droning of helicopters. It was pretty quiet last night too, I think. (It's been quiet in my little nook each night, except for the aforementioned helicopters.) My breakdown on the property damage is as follows: At first it was the protesters. It wasn't suburban anarchists or Antifa or far-right agitators, it was the actual people who were actually protesting George Floyd's death. It was an understandable insurrection (to use the language of Maxine Waters). But in the days after that, it was more the people who just wanted to pointlessly fucking shit up and the opportunistic looters. Now, that seems to have mostly stopped. I could be wrong about all this -- how could anybody possibly know for sure? -- but that's how it seems to me.
The thing about all the wilding, however, is that I'm a thousand times less scared of it than I am of the actual authorities who are supposed to be keeping the peace. It's the police, the military, the National Guard, the prison riot patrol or whomever it is that Trump has posted around the city that have me way more on edge than the looters. It's kept me from joining any of the protests down by the White House, and it makes me feel guilty -- like I'm letting the authoritarians win -- but I would feel like I'm abandoning my family if I left. When there's unease, the thought of not being near my family eats away at me. It's not totally rational, but it's completely real. And then I start worst-case-scenarioing it, and I think, What if something happened to me? What if I got hit by car or maimed by police or killed by some vigilante nutjob? And, oh yeah, Covid-19 is still running rampant through our society. It hasn't stopped just because we've been preoccupied with other things. The thing that viscerally terrifies me more than anything is something happening to my boys or something happening to me, so that they grow up without a dad. That's why I haven't been down there yet. But I might go tomorrow. After all, my feelings explain exactly why people are protesting. My biggest fear is every father's biggest fear, and I'm sure many black dads feel like they don't have the luxury of sitting it out like I do.
I did partake in a little family-friendly protest in my neighborhood -- people holding Black Lives Matter signs and getting cars to honk. It was cool, and it actually might not have been that little. I counted at least 50 people, and they were still going strong past my line of sight. There could have easily been a couple hundred people. I wanted to walk further to get a better idea of the scale, but a massive rainstorm hit, so I huddled under a tree, until my sign deteriorated. I was legit moved by the demonstration, to be honest. I got really choked up when I saw this little girl with her family holding a sign: Stop Killing Black People. I've gotten choked up a few times watching clips on Twitter, and I'm not one to get choked up. But it's the kids -- always the kids.
Another thing I've been doing a lot is donating money to the cause. This comes with its own problem, amplified by my own decision-making neurosis, in that I don't know which organizations are the best ones to donate to. I only have so much money to give -- what's the optimal allocation? In the end, I gave to a few causes friends posted on Twitter, and I gave to one of those umbrella groups that splits your donations evenly among a bunch of organizations. I also donated to this organization called Campaign Zero, which has their 8 Can't Wait project. That might have been a mistake, as I've since read a decent amount of criticism of their group by other Black Lives Matters activists. I don't know. I'm not going to sweat it. I stress out about how to donate money before I do it, but not after I do it, because it's done. I can't take it back. If it was the wrong cause -- oops -- I'll take the L and move on. If I let myself get too hung up on it, then I would never want to donate to anybody, but that's not the right approach. $0 to everybody certainly isn't the optimal allocation.
The thing about 8 Can't Wait is that their solutions are actually not my preferred solutions -- which entails essentially abolishing police forces as we know them (see below) -- but I figured theirs are more politically doable in the short-to-medium-term. I've become much more of a political pragmatist as I gotten older, which is kinda weird considering my ideals have gone the other way; I'm more ideologically extreme now than I was when I was younger, but I'm more pragmatic in terms of politics. I try hard (maybe too hard) to avoid the fallacy of "the smart political move is to adopt all the policies I believe in." Bringing it back to the Twitter bubble, many of the people I saw criticizing 8 Can't Wait were also criticizing Joe Biden for not going far enough with his policies and his rhetoric concerning police brutality. And that's fine. If you want a presidential candidate to come out more strongly about this issue, I'm not going to argue with you. But they weren't just criticizing the content of his words, but also the political ramifications of them, and that I just don't understand. To have a chance at winning Biden has to bring together a very diverse coalition (that's one of the problems Dems have that Reps don't, since they can play almost entirely to rural white Christians) and much of this coalition just isn't there yet with extreme police reform. I think politically Biden's words in the past few days have helped him more than they've hurt him.* He's offering baby steps, but it's probably baby steps or nothing. Plus, your baby steps are somebody else's giants leaps. Not everybody thinks what you think. But they might be open to your way, if they see over time that it's correct.
*With the big caveat that nobody really knows such things for sure.
With all that said, here is my 8 Can't Wait: A Citizen's Reimaging of Police.
1. Make an Official National Apology to Black People for Past Police Brutality
Yes, this is only a symbolic gesture, but symbols can be meaningful. Plus, this is only my first point. Plus, plus, I'm open to the idea of some sort of tangible reparations for black people. I haven't worked out all details just yet.
2. Abolish the war on drugs; abolish the war on crime; abolish the term "the war on" as it pertains to societal problems in general.
Police should be peacekeeping civil servants, not warriors.
3. As a follow up to above, cut all military style weaponry and machinery from the policy budget
Reallocate any savings to social services.
4. Divide municipalities into districts; each district has its own electable sheriff responsible for the beat policing in that district
Sheriff's must live in the district they represent. A citywide police department would still be utilized for detectives, special ops, etc.
5. Each sheriff has their own group of "cops" to handle distress calls
I use quotes because only a small percentage of them would be cops like we think of them. Most of the first responders to distress calls would be actual peacekeeping civil servants. They would not carry guns, but they would have self-defense training. There's no reason to bring a gun to the vast majority of distress situations -- a loud party, a fender-bender, a stolen laptop, etc. Only if the situation warrants an officer with a gun can they be dispatched. I know the criticism of this is that it puts cops lives in danger, but you know what else puts cops lives at danger? Having a large segment of the population view them as an oppressive gang and care very little about their well-being.
6. Deescalation is key, even if this means letting a suspect get away temporarily
Again, police should be peacekeepers, not warriors. "Dominating the battlefield" makes everybody less safe -- officers, suspects, and innocent bystanders. Deescalation should be the goal, first and foremost, even if this means letting suspects flee. I've heard in DC they already do this for high speed car chases. It makes sense, as typically the chase is gong to be way more dangerous than having the suspect at large. Also, with cameras everywhere and facial recognition and all that, you will probably catch them later.
7. Open up the books
Keep data for each type of response call and make this data open to the public.
8. Do not use armed or uniformed policed for protests
As we painfully watched this past week, police only escalate the chances of violence at protests (especially those that are explicitly protesting the police). It's the warrior mentality; it's the us-against-them mindset; and it's the contempt so many of them seem to have for anybody who dares to hold them accountable for their bad actions. It's virtually impossible to have a peaceful protest when police have such a heavy-handed presence, because ultimately somebody in a protest of hundreds of people is going to do something wrong -- they're going to throw a water bottle, or they're going to block traffic, or they're going go somewhere that's fenced off -- and then the police respond and the protesters get mad, and then it's on, and once it's on, police think it's open season to brutalize anybody and everybody in their sight.
The security at protests should be like at a concert -- a bunch of bouncer-looking folks with highlighter-yellow t-shirts and walkie-talkies, walking with the protesters, not presenting like a battlefield opponent. These bouncers can handle (or ignore) all the small stuff, and if they see looting or arson, they can call for backup to that specific area. This could easily be done with the GPS in our smartphones. Would this work in the case of a full-blown, wide-spread riot? No, of course not. But nothing really works in that case. There would still be extreme moments to call in armed officers, but not for things like being on your stoop after curfew.
That's it.
Black Lives Matter.
Until next time...
Anyway, it seems as if things are relatively peaceful in the DC tonight -- at least, I don't hear the incessant droning of helicopters. It was pretty quiet last night too, I think. (It's been quiet in my little nook each night, except for the aforementioned helicopters.) My breakdown on the property damage is as follows: At first it was the protesters. It wasn't suburban anarchists or Antifa or far-right agitators, it was the actual people who were actually protesting George Floyd's death. It was an understandable insurrection (to use the language of Maxine Waters). But in the days after that, it was more the people who just wanted to pointlessly fucking shit up and the opportunistic looters. Now, that seems to have mostly stopped. I could be wrong about all this -- how could anybody possibly know for sure? -- but that's how it seems to me.
The thing about all the wilding, however, is that I'm a thousand times less scared of it than I am of the actual authorities who are supposed to be keeping the peace. It's the police, the military, the National Guard, the prison riot patrol or whomever it is that Trump has posted around the city that have me way more on edge than the looters. It's kept me from joining any of the protests down by the White House, and it makes me feel guilty -- like I'm letting the authoritarians win -- but I would feel like I'm abandoning my family if I left. When there's unease, the thought of not being near my family eats away at me. It's not totally rational, but it's completely real. And then I start worst-case-scenarioing it, and I think, What if something happened to me? What if I got hit by car or maimed by police or killed by some vigilante nutjob? And, oh yeah, Covid-19 is still running rampant through our society. It hasn't stopped just because we've been preoccupied with other things. The thing that viscerally terrifies me more than anything is something happening to my boys or something happening to me, so that they grow up without a dad. That's why I haven't been down there yet. But I might go tomorrow. After all, my feelings explain exactly why people are protesting. My biggest fear is every father's biggest fear, and I'm sure many black dads feel like they don't have the luxury of sitting it out like I do.
I did partake in a little family-friendly protest in my neighborhood -- people holding Black Lives Matter signs and getting cars to honk. It was cool, and it actually might not have been that little. I counted at least 50 people, and they were still going strong past my line of sight. There could have easily been a couple hundred people. I wanted to walk further to get a better idea of the scale, but a massive rainstorm hit, so I huddled under a tree, until my sign deteriorated. I was legit moved by the demonstration, to be honest. I got really choked up when I saw this little girl with her family holding a sign: Stop Killing Black People. I've gotten choked up a few times watching clips on Twitter, and I'm not one to get choked up. But it's the kids -- always the kids.
Another thing I've been doing a lot is donating money to the cause. This comes with its own problem, amplified by my own decision-making neurosis, in that I don't know which organizations are the best ones to donate to. I only have so much money to give -- what's the optimal allocation? In the end, I gave to a few causes friends posted on Twitter, and I gave to one of those umbrella groups that splits your donations evenly among a bunch of organizations. I also donated to this organization called Campaign Zero, which has their 8 Can't Wait project. That might have been a mistake, as I've since read a decent amount of criticism of their group by other Black Lives Matters activists. I don't know. I'm not going to sweat it. I stress out about how to donate money before I do it, but not after I do it, because it's done. I can't take it back. If it was the wrong cause -- oops -- I'll take the L and move on. If I let myself get too hung up on it, then I would never want to donate to anybody, but that's not the right approach. $0 to everybody certainly isn't the optimal allocation.
The thing about 8 Can't Wait is that their solutions are actually not my preferred solutions -- which entails essentially abolishing police forces as we know them (see below) -- but I figured theirs are more politically doable in the short-to-medium-term. I've become much more of a political pragmatist as I gotten older, which is kinda weird considering my ideals have gone the other way; I'm more ideologically extreme now than I was when I was younger, but I'm more pragmatic in terms of politics. I try hard (maybe too hard) to avoid the fallacy of "the smart political move is to adopt all the policies I believe in." Bringing it back to the Twitter bubble, many of the people I saw criticizing 8 Can't Wait were also criticizing Joe Biden for not going far enough with his policies and his rhetoric concerning police brutality. And that's fine. If you want a presidential candidate to come out more strongly about this issue, I'm not going to argue with you. But they weren't just criticizing the content of his words, but also the political ramifications of them, and that I just don't understand. To have a chance at winning Biden has to bring together a very diverse coalition (that's one of the problems Dems have that Reps don't, since they can play almost entirely to rural white Christians) and much of this coalition just isn't there yet with extreme police reform. I think politically Biden's words in the past few days have helped him more than they've hurt him.* He's offering baby steps, but it's probably baby steps or nothing. Plus, your baby steps are somebody else's giants leaps. Not everybody thinks what you think. But they might be open to your way, if they see over time that it's correct.
*With the big caveat that nobody really knows such things for sure.
With all that said, here is my 8 Can't Wait: A Citizen's Reimaging of Police.
1. Make an Official National Apology to Black People for Past Police Brutality
Yes, this is only a symbolic gesture, but symbols can be meaningful. Plus, this is only my first point. Plus, plus, I'm open to the idea of some sort of tangible reparations for black people. I haven't worked out all details just yet.
2. Abolish the war on drugs; abolish the war on crime; abolish the term "the war on" as it pertains to societal problems in general.
Police should be peacekeeping civil servants, not warriors.
3. As a follow up to above, cut all military style weaponry and machinery from the policy budget
Reallocate any savings to social services.
4. Divide municipalities into districts; each district has its own electable sheriff responsible for the beat policing in that district
Sheriff's must live in the district they represent. A citywide police department would still be utilized for detectives, special ops, etc.
5. Each sheriff has their own group of "cops" to handle distress calls
I use quotes because only a small percentage of them would be cops like we think of them. Most of the first responders to distress calls would be actual peacekeeping civil servants. They would not carry guns, but they would have self-defense training. There's no reason to bring a gun to the vast majority of distress situations -- a loud party, a fender-bender, a stolen laptop, etc. Only if the situation warrants an officer with a gun can they be dispatched. I know the criticism of this is that it puts cops lives in danger, but you know what else puts cops lives at danger? Having a large segment of the population view them as an oppressive gang and care very little about their well-being.
6. Deescalation is key, even if this means letting a suspect get away temporarily
Again, police should be peacekeepers, not warriors. "Dominating the battlefield" makes everybody less safe -- officers, suspects, and innocent bystanders. Deescalation should be the goal, first and foremost, even if this means letting suspects flee. I've heard in DC they already do this for high speed car chases. It makes sense, as typically the chase is gong to be way more dangerous than having the suspect at large. Also, with cameras everywhere and facial recognition and all that, you will probably catch them later.
7. Open up the books
Keep data for each type of response call and make this data open to the public.
8. Do not use armed or uniformed policed for protests
As we painfully watched this past week, police only escalate the chances of violence at protests (especially those that are explicitly protesting the police). It's the warrior mentality; it's the us-against-them mindset; and it's the contempt so many of them seem to have for anybody who dares to hold them accountable for their bad actions. It's virtually impossible to have a peaceful protest when police have such a heavy-handed presence, because ultimately somebody in a protest of hundreds of people is going to do something wrong -- they're going to throw a water bottle, or they're going to block traffic, or they're going go somewhere that's fenced off -- and then the police respond and the protesters get mad, and then it's on, and once it's on, police think it's open season to brutalize anybody and everybody in their sight.
The security at protests should be like at a concert -- a bunch of bouncer-looking folks with highlighter-yellow t-shirts and walkie-talkies, walking with the protesters, not presenting like a battlefield opponent. These bouncers can handle (or ignore) all the small stuff, and if they see looting or arson, they can call for backup to that specific area. This could easily be done with the GPS in our smartphones. Would this work in the case of a full-blown, wide-spread riot? No, of course not. But nothing really works in that case. There would still be extreme moments to call in armed officers, but not for things like being on your stoop after curfew.
That's it.
Black Lives Matter.
Until next time...
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