I know OP is presenting this as a historical example of “Defund the Police” working and being reasonable & doable actually, but when I see this story juxtaposed with the modern left’s attempts to decouple social services from the police, what I’m seeing is some of the reasons the left was successful at doing this kind of thing in the past and why it is failing to do so now.
Even just on the level of messaging, compare “Freedom House Ambulance Service” vs “Defund the Police”. One sounds like it’s about freedom, it’s about providing, it’s a service. The other frames itself as defunding, taking away infrastructure that—whether you personally agree or not—people broadly view as a service. There is nothing about “Defund the Police” or “ACAB” etc. (whose underlying critiques I broadly agree with) that intuitively suggests to anyone hearing it for the first time that what we’re suggesting is reallocating funds to empower and provide a better, safer, demilitarized kind of infrastructure. It’s just “get rid of this thing that most people feel like they need”.
We find THE most dystopian, tear-it-all-down, shockjock asshole-sounding ways to express a point & then spend so much time defending that choice & explaining “no no actually it’s really sensible” (often with an air of superiority, as if to say “you’re so stupid for thinking the dystopian-sounding thing i said isn’t actually dystopian”) that we never seem to get around to do the damn thing. rather than notice that we’re alienating our allies & learn from this, we just dig our heels in & refuse to adjust.
Why can’t we just say what we mean? Demilitarize the Police. Fund Welfare. Reallocate City Funds. Provide Social Services. If you don’t want to sound like you’re trying to strip apart societal infrastructure you don’t have to! If you’re trying to communicate that you’re trying to provide a service… you can just say that up front. We don’t have to marry ourselves to the **ABOLISH** ** DESTROY** **SMASH** **DEFUND** framing.
But it’s not just PR or tone or whatever.
FHAS also didn’t wait for permission or demand to get rid of the police-run ambulance first; they saw where the police-run ambulance was lacking and they filled the gap themselves. they they provided a solution. the only reason they got the trust & funding from the city government in the first place was by proving they could do it better.
also, as much as this story may illustrate an example of fixing the system from outside it, it still required cooperation with & working alongside the pre-existing system. they used donated police vehicles. the police called them in to help. they didn’t say “fuck the system” wholesale, burn it to the ground, & make something better in the ashes. they sprang up from the community, ensured their quality of service was better, & offered their help.
We’d get a lot farther if we actually learned from & emulated our past successes instead of just using them as rhetorical defenses for our current failures.
andulkaphoto
2087
titsay
tangentwithtanner
