Reflections on Chauvin, Defund, and Abolitionists

I haven’t posted anything in a while because I wanted to provide a measured take on what’s happening in the country right now, especially concerning policing and various strains of abolitionist activism. This is my perspective from the ground in Northwest Indiana.

First, I’m happy jurors in Minnesota convicted Derek Chauvin. That’s a good thing. The flawed and unjust system worked. Chauvin was clearly guilty. The camera footage and eyewitness testimony proved that. However, I wouldn’t want juries and judges convicting and sentencing anyone based on what a political movement demands (even if I agree with that political movement). That’s a slippery slope. Jurors and judges should make decisions based on the evidence provided in the courtroom, not what people in the streets want. I don’t see how this is at all controversial and I worry about those promoting the opposite.

Second, no one is abolishing the police until the social and economic conditions that produce the desire for more police are abolished. For instance, in many black neighborhoods and communities, people actually want more police. If you don’t think that’s true, I’ll take you for a ride through Michigan City, Gary, Benton Harbor, East Chicago, Hammond, and the South and West Sides of Chicago. Abolitionist activists would know that if they actually lived and worked in poor and working-class communities. Most do not. Those who do are socially and culturally isolated, which is why their organizations and chapters remain very small, disorganized, and often incoherent. They operate in an activist bubble, and it shows.

Much like the BLM protesters who took down Confederate statues last summer (first, you win the war, then you take down the statues), abolitionist activists have it backward: providing more economic security, social programs, and developing more communal bonds, trust, and organization is where we must start. Basically, Bernie’s programs but improved. That’s where most Americans are at. Anything less is totally inadequate, and anything more would require massive organizing efforts and a social base to carry them out. Right now, neither exist. Perhaps one day we’ll live in a society without police (that’s the ideological/utopian goal), but we’re nowhere near that point. And the overwhelming majority of Americans agree; just look at the polls. The police abolition movement remains a fringe movement.

That said, most Americans support a wide range of policy reforms. According to a Gallup poll of 36,000 Americans (the most extensive survey conducted that I could find), here’s a list of police reforms majorities of Americans actually support: requiring officers to have good relations with the community (96% in favor); changing management practices so officer abuses are punished (76%); promoting community-based alternatives such as violence intervention (86%); ending ‘Stop and Frisk’ (74%). Proposals such as “eliminating officer enforcement of nonviolent crimes” enjoy 50% support. 47% of Americans support shifting funds from police departments to social programs (a topic I’ll return to below). Only 15% of Americans support “abolishing the police,” including only 20% of Latinos and 22% of blacks. A recent USA TODAY/Ipsos poll found that only 18% of Americans support “defunding the police.” Other polls show support for “defunding” or “abolishing” steadily declining since last summer. As crimes, both petty and violent, increase in cities and towns across the country, I expect those numbers to further decrease with time.

As far as “defunding” is concerned, most municipalities don’t have funds to redistribute to social programs. That’s especially true in rust belt cities, small towns, and deindustrialized areas where city coffers were empty before the pandemic. Now, they’re totally strapped for cash. In other words, the demand to “defund the police” means absolutely nothing where I live. Plus, murder rates and shootings are rising, meaning people will ask for more cops if current trends persist, a trend already picking up steam in Michigan City. Even in large cities, the demand is flawed. The 2020 police budget in Chicago was $1.6 billion. That may sound like a lot of money, but it amounts to a measly $600 per city resident. And that’s assuming every dollar was defunded from the CPD. You can’t do many social programs with $600 per resident. The demand to defund the police is limited in scope and not very strategic (and that’s assuming one agrees with the demand — many do not, including me).

The problem for groups like BLM is that it doesn’t have a straightforward political platform. Some BLM activists are libertarians. Some are anarchists. Some are radical liberal-identitarians. Some are socialists. I’ve heard BLM activists rail on and on about statism (a right-wing trope). And I have yet to hear BLM articulate a political vision beyond its relation to the police. That’s true at both the national and local levels. Hell, I’m not even sure if BLM is an organization, a group of loosely affiliated activists who primarily interact online, or a social movement, or some combination of the three. I have no clue. And I don’t think anyone else does, and that’s the problem.

Ample opportunities were missed when BLM first started. Making the issue of policing about black people instead of working-class people, with black, Latino, and indigenous people disproportionately impacted, was a significant mistake. Again, various studies show that class, not race, is the most important determining factor in who the police shoot and arrest. The majority of people killed by the cops are white. 60% of the country is white. The idea that BLM can win major reforms without reaching out to most of this country is entirely absurd.

For me, it’s not at all surprising that the protests following the killing of Daunte Wright were relatively small in scale. Last summer, people hit the streets for many reasons. Police violence was the trigger, not the source of their anger. Anyone who took the time to watch the Unicorn Riot videos (the only on-the-ground reporting at the time) from the original uprising in Minneapolis could quickly determine that from listening to interviews with rioters. People were pissed about the pandemic, the economy, the political situation, and yes, police violence. You won’t see uprisings at that level this time around, no matter how many people the police kill. There are several reasons for that: first, the overwhelming majority of people you saw in the streets last summer were disorganized. They weren’t members of political parties, organizations, unions, or churches. They came to the streets as individuals and left as individuals. Due to the pandemic and poor organizing practices, most of those people remain individuals. Mobilizations without organization dwindle. So far, there’s little evidence to suggest the abolitionists are organizing. They’re mobilizing. And mobilizing without organizing is inherently limited.

Last but not least, all of this, in my thinking, is reminiscent of 2014, when uprisings broke out in Ferguson following the police killing of Michael Brown: activists overestimated Americans’ support for the BLM movement, and Trump and the GOP were right there to remind them in 2016. I could see something very similar happening again in 2022 or 2024 if BLM doesn’t expand its base and demands, vision, and strategy. The way my left-wing activist friends talk about this issue is so far removed from the conversations I have with people at the barbershop or tattoo parlor that it’s tough to jive the two. My left-wing friends seem to think we’re on the verge of some significant political changes or reforms, whereas my non-political friends (most of the country) want nothing to do with either side. They agree with police reforms and generally don’t like cops, but they want nothing to do with BLM (they find them annoying and silly) or the Blue Lives Matter crowd. I don’t blame them.

I would guess that the right will benefit from these trends more than the left, especially over the short/medium term. We’ve been organizing in Michigan City for the past four years and have virtually no connection to only two BLM chapters in Northern Indiana. That’s because there’s minimal overlap in our politics and methods. BLM is a fringe group based on identity and performative politics. They don’t have a political vision beyond defunding and abolition. Their politics, in many ways, are directly opposed to socialism and turn off working-class people. In my experience, many BLM activists are not interested in building coalitions or serious, long-lasting political organizations capable of changing the political economy.

Abolitionist activists seem interested in retributive justice, symbolic victories, and cultural wokeness, which is why major corporations support their cause— it poses no threat to the status quo. Compare the way the media, elites, and corporations in this country reacted to Bernie Sanders’ campaign compared to BLM, and that will tell you everything you need to know about what sort of politics actually pose a threat to the system and what type of politics can be easily absorbed by the system.