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Understand that the call to abolish police is also a call to allocate adequate funds and resources to mental health services, livable wages, food security and all other societal factors which facilitate the ‘crimes’ you believe we need police protection from.

It should also be pointed out, that abolishing the police does not mean leaving a void in the public safety realm.

It means the modern institution of policing will be abolished and replaced with a more progressive system of public safety and law enforcement.

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miklatmiklat
Anonymous asked:

Nah dude, some police are genuinely trying to make the world a better place. They go through a lot of shit so that they can try and help people. I hate most of the shit police do. I don't like being told what to do either. But people are fucking killing cops. That's people killin people and it's fucked. You're the death of your own cause if you condone violence and murder ya dumb fuck. Black lives matter, let's protect them by not murdering good people and giving nazis any sort of argument.

Gonna break down this response as clearly as possible. 

The origins of the police are evil. 

It has been shown repeatedly that the police were formed to oppress the working class and (1, 2) and enforce white supremacy (1, 2, 3). In fact, the early U.S. police grew directly out of slavery.

The police aren’t the people you think they are.

The police don’t care about you – they don’t even have a constitutional duty to protect you. They’re allowed to take your property without your consent (the NYPD seizes so much property they can’t even log it in their computers). In fact, cops are more likely to steal your property than burglars are. They commit hundreds of crimes and human rights violations against people like you & me and get away with it because they cover for each other.

Cops tend to be unusually aggressive, authoritarian, and secretive (Greene & Heilbrun, 2011). They are more than twice as likely to commit domestic violence than the rest of the population, and (once again) they cover for each other when doing so. The police are on the side of neo-Nazis (1, 2). In fact, many times the police themselves are the neo-Nazis/klansmen (1, 2, 3). And even besides all this, cops do all kinds of other shady shit – for instance, undercover police are used to instigate fights during protests and rallies.

The police terrorize those of us who are marginalized.

The police disproportionately arrest Black people for drugs even though white people use drugs more often. They disproportionately pull Black people over for traffic stops. The police terrorize people with disabilities.They are viciously anti-indigenous – and always have been. Police terrorize sex workers. There are countless examples of police brutalizing homeless people (1, 2, 3). The police have a lengthy history of brutality against the LGBT community (1, 2). They terrorize women of color and get away with it (1, 2, 3). They kill massive numbers of people each year – and a disproportionate number of their victims are Black and native. On top of that, recent data suggests cops may kill up to twice as many people as we even thought they did. And while police love to defend themselves by saying they have the most dangerous job, that’s not even close to being true.

The police’s best kept secret: We don’t need them! 

A world without the police is completely possible (1, 2, 3, 4). We have resources for resolving violence as communities without the need for state intervention (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – as some examples). We as communities are better capable of resolving violence than the police are, because we don’t have the vested interest in the status quo that they have. Even if a few cops are well-intentioned here or there, it doesn’t change that the role of the police is to work against the vast majority of us in the interests of the (white) elite few. 

Why are you so invested in the police when they are complicit in your dehumanization?

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mentalhealth

don’t ever let anyone make you feel ashamed for not going down a conventional path (e.g. not finishing college or starting college later in life, doing an internship in your late 20s, not having a "career” by a certain age). all of this is arbitrary. do not create a life that aims to satisfy everyone but yourself. you worked hard as fuck to get to where you are. don’t you dare let others including yourself diminish those efforts. you do not deserve that. especially if you did it all while battling mental illness. 

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