Look at the kind of wanton, reckless abuse
and violence that the police are instigating,
and attacking people who are trying to protest.
I feel like what we’ve seen over the weekend
is a national police riot.
And, you know, it’s no wonder.
They feel emboldened by the white nationalism
of the president of the United States and,
really, the lawlessness of the Republican
Party writ large.
And so, it feels like we’re bearing the
consequences of that.
But I think that there is a bigger issue about
the cops that is also worth talking about,
which is, why these police are never arrested,
prosecuted, punished, really, even beyond
just arresting and prosecuting people, but
just punishing them as public servants for
their kind of racist, abusive and violent
behavior.
And I think that, you know, regardless of
what these elected officials have to say,
I think that we’re actually going to see
a lot more of this, which is why the conflicts
will continue.
And the reason why I say that is because it
has been a strategy of cities across this
country that have committed themselves to
not investing in the civic and public sector
infrastructure — so, public schools, public
hospitals, public libraries — all of the
things that make a city function.
Those have been systematically defunded, increasingly
privatized.
And the way that cities manage the inevitable
crises that arise from that, when combined
with unemployment, when combined with poverty,
when combined with evictions and all of the
insecurities that we see wracking cities across
this country, the police are used to manage
that crisis.
And that is why, in city after city, as other
public institutions take financial hits, as
other public institutions are defunded, it’s
the police that always get to maintain their budgets.
And we look around now, where, because of
the COVID crisis, every city is talking about
massive budget cuts, but not to the police.
The police almost never have to incur layoffs.
They never have to incur budget cuts, because
they are seen as the public policy of last resort.
And so, this is — when we talk about defunding
the police, it is that the police should not
be absorbing a third of the budget, as they
do in cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, Los
Angeles, New York, while we’re closing public
schools, while public hospitals don’t have
the proper personal protective equipment.
Look at the way that police are — the gear
and the equipment that they have, compared
to hospital workers dressing themselves in
garbage bags, being forced to use the same
N95 masks for weeks at a time.
Look at the contrast between that, and then
you understand what the actual priorities
of the governing politicians and bodies are.
Which is why — and this is the last thing
I’ll say — the hypocrisy of someone like
Andrew Cuomo or Bill de Blasio or any of these
politicians coming on television, on their
press conference, wringing their hands about
the police, talking about these issues as
if they are passive bystanders or just concerned
citizens, and not elected officials who have
power, who have authority, who have the ability
to punish the police, who have the ability
to make budgetary priorities, who have the
ability to shift resources in one direction
or another, but they sit back and act as if
they are just watching the train wreck in
slow motion, and not that they are actually
in control of the gears.
And this is part of the hypocrisy that is
making people so angry, is that we have these
people, elected officials, getting on television,
talking about how terrible this is, Andrew
Cuomo saying, “Say her name.”
Andrew Cuomo, do your job.
And I think that this is part of what is forcing
people to feel that they have no other choice,
no other response, than to rebel, because
the levers and mechanisms of government that
are supposed to attend to these issues have
shown themselves to be completely broken.
