THREAD:

Where does one begin when Black electeds erase Black-led movements? The same place we begin when we challenge State violence because it wears many shades, and it always has, and clearly always will. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/nyregion/defund-police-nyc-council.html

2. This is why I neither call myself liberal or progressive, but a Black leftist-- just the fact that this article is framed in ways that suggest misunderstanding of terms. Liberal does not mean left. It means liberal in an attempt to maintain the status quo w/o challenging

3. the structures and framework of our society: the dependence on a institutions and practices that have been produced by a society hell-bent on capitalism-- which is to be hellbent on mitigating the harms of its racist nature.

4. @cmlauriecumbo, @Vanessalgibson, @rasjbaraka: It has always been a White-led movement, like #BlueLivesMatter to provide context and justification for police that maim, rape, lie on, and kill Black people-- THAT'S the bourgeois liberalism.

5. As @cmenchaca noted, defunding the police, abolishing the institution and those that require them, is about so much more than just getting rid of them-- but ensuring people are taken care of, and you'd be shocked to learn that it does not include guns, batons, chains, cuffs.

6. Further, to @Vanessalgibson's point that "constituents" want more police with better behavior, i'd argue, that's because they know no other mode of generating and maintaining safety, due in part to what @DrJoyDeGruy calls 'Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome.'

7. Fear produced through unimaginable violence has always been the way that the elite control not only the actions of Black people, but also the thoughts and therefore, our imagination. It's literally in our blood. And that's all of us, constituents, advocates, and electeds.

8. We have to heal from these phenomena. We have to contend with the world as is, and accept what's not working for us. This article reads like a patient chart noting the collective trauma of Black and Brown people in NYC, focused on those that are in crisis.

9. I also think that the act of erasing Black leadership from communities across this city is uniquely insidious (if not overtly) because we are genuinely fighting for our people ( the nativism argument is really dangerous bytw) so just 'disagree' don't plant the seed that we

10. are somehow "brainwashed uncle toms," as I was referred to in another article penned by @JeffCMays on challenging establishment Black leaders, as you are simply advancing the narratives of White, monied elites that are committed to the disunity and destruction of Black ppl.

11. We have to help the masses understand our collective interests, and the threats we face as a collective, and the police have always been at the center of the material, immediate, and psychological terror we have faced, and they will be as long as they exist. #DefundThePolice