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Someone at the New London Day really wanted me to wake up today and choose violence. So let's go... (1/16)
2. Let's start here, since I'm part of the "cadre of political activists" (I prefer "duly elected representative of the people," but whatever) who want to defund the police (no need for scare quotes)...
3. First of all, Hartford had 25 murders last year - two more than the preceding year. That is bad! But if we're putting it in the context of police funding and numbers, let's recall that we had 58 murders in 1994, when we had about 75 more cops.
4. And if you say, "Ah, but the 90s were just a period of higher crime," well, you've put your finger on it: crime rises and falls across the country mostly without regard to local policy. The same thing happened last year. The uptick in violent crime, which started in SPRING...
5. was not caused by the modest police budget reduction approved in JULY. Just like the police budget reduction in Hartford isn't what caused shootings to rise in Camden, Chicago, and scores of other cities that didn't cut police budgets.
6. Second, let's give @MayorBronin some credit: he was not bullied by a minority of City Council to do anything. He and I disagree often, but I don't think he is easily bullied on anything. He leads a disciplined Democratic majority on Council and makes astute decisions about...
7. where to stand firm and where to concede. When 1,000 BLM protesters were at his actual doorstep, he came out and argued his position against reducing the size of the police without backing down. He continues to say that we need more cops.
8. In the end, the modest reduction in the HPD budget that the Council approved - 3.5% - was a far cry from the 21% that we political activists called for. No police positions were eliminated. This year's proposed budget calls for a 7% increase in funding...
9. and has a medium-term goal of giving Hartford the highest number of police per capita in New England.
Now let's dig into this gem:
Now let's dig into this gem:
10. Hartford's downtown is the wasteland of parking & big office buildings we know today principally because of white flight and a concerted abandonment of the remaining Black and Latinx residents by policymakers. This is where Powell starts to tip his hand on questions of race.
11. Firstly, there are multiple working class neighborhoods within walking distance of downtown. They just don't have the kind of working class residents that Chris likes. Why do I say that?
12. Pointing to single-parent families as the cause of poor people's woes, rather than a symptom, is a neat way to say, "Ignore mass incarceration, segregation, and dramatic, generations-long imbalances in the provision of public services; these people are just built different."
13. And this? Well, this is bananas. Have you seen poverty? Have you seen what welfare pays and the housing available on Section 8 and the basic stuff you can't buy with food stamps? You think THAT suite of paltry benefits is making people CHOOSE perpetual underclass status?
14. PS, study after study has shown that the most effective way to lift people out of poverty is just to give them money, and that UBI doesn't discourage employment.
15. What's frustrating is that folks like Chris Powell craft arguments like this without any real interest in the people of Hartford. His thesis is, "Ignore how the fundamentally racist abandonment of the city has caused its woes; blame the people's inherent flaws; repeat."
16. He is writing a script for the suburban towns that benefit economically from an internal colony to host their low-wage workers, necessary-but-noisy institutions, and vice. It is the barely examined mantra they recite to justify an oppressive structure that benefits them.
