I'm struggling to understand how people:
1) Just witnessed how public opinion around the term "Black Lives Matter" changed drastically as folk became more educated about what it means.

2) Slide right into popping off about how "Defund the Police" is a "bad marketing term."

Imagine seeing this chart, and spending all your energy arguing about if "defund" is the the right marketing term to get non-Black people to understand what's going on.

The originators didn't change the term "Black Lives Matter." Non-Black people just eventually educated themselves about what's going on.

"All Lives Matter" is not, and was never, a better marketing term.

Whiteness centers itself. If Whiteness doesn't understand massive injustice, it's never because of ignorance and callous indifference on behalf of the one who doesn't understand. It's because the impacted race has failed to persuade!

If only they'd used the right words! If only they'd protested in just the right way!

This is a perverse inversion of responsibility. Not only are Black people responsible for ending their own suffering at the hands of White folk, they're also responsible for ever so gently educating the White folk about what White folk are doing to them.

Instead of arguing about "Defunding is playing a game with words," consider being embarrassed that it took a knee on a neck for you to even realize this staggering level of injustice and the financial implications of it.

Instead of asking Black people to thread the needle of lingusticly prompting you to action without causing you to clutch pearls, consider being part of the solution, or at least being quiet.

And before you suggest that "Defund the Police" is just a starter slogan shouted by understandably angry but unfortunately, uneducated, and uninformed, Black women online... who have no clue how branding, and policy change works in the real world...

Just consider...

That it might be the work of highly educated experts in the field, who have studied this for decades. One of whom might be a professor of law at Yale University. Who worked on police policy under the Obama administration.

And yes, they're Black women. Because of course.

Before you pop off about if you do or don't support "Defund the police," at least take a moment to understand the term. Take a moment to read the works and policy proposals of the Black women at the center of that movement.

Get it right this time.

Perspective: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Defund-San-Francisco-police-Chief-Bill-Scott-15328129.php

In SF, we spend 100s of millions a year "policing" the homeless community in the Tenderloin, that is plagued by substance abuse.

How's that policing working out for you? How do you enjoy your daily game of "human feces hopscotch?"

Say you're a "good cop." You get a call to respond to a homeless woman passed out in the street with a needle in her arm

You have:
1) handcuffs
2) a taser
3) a baton
4) pepper spray
5) a Glock 40 and Mossberg shotgun
6) deep understanding of the criminal code

Which do you use?

As a cop, why are you even getting this call?

What if I told you that for $100 million a year, we could provide safe public restrooms, combat homelessness, and fund drug rehab and treatment programs that work.

Would you take that deal?

Where do we find that $100MM though? We Defund the police. We move money, and scope, to organizations specialized in dealing with these issues.

Call 2 for our good cop: You get a domestic violence call. Woman A says that her wife, woman B, threatened her again, and she's scared.

You only have the same 6 tools. Your understanding of the criminal code, tells you that you don't have much capacity to help until woman B actually does something.

But as a Human Being, you feel that woman A should move out, and go to a safe place. You tell her about a shelter.

She tells you that she knows about the shelter, but it's full. She also shares that she is diabetic and unemployed, and woman B buys her insulin. Woman A has no other living family, and suffers from anxiety.

Why is a man with 2 guns, a taser, and handcuffs, at this call?

What if I told you that for another $100 million, we could provide *meaningful* support and care for people *before* they become victims of crime? Would you take that deal?

How to pay for it...

Defund the Police.

The interesting question is not "Is 'Defund' the right word?"

The interesting question is "How far can we go with this common sense de-scoping of police, and funding of programs that work? What remains of policing?"

AOC gave one answer: https://twitter.com/ashley_quan/status/1271179469382979584

Another answer is: To the end. Take Defunding to its conclusion.

Once we understand Defunding, most people are somewhere along the spectrum of belief between "Defund a little! Like the suburbs!" and "Defund it all! End all policing."

A minority of people say, "Nah, Fund more!"