Can he illegally try? Can he approximate police abolition or set New York on a path towards it? Can he attempt to approximate that? Can he even attempt to approximate not being a pro-cop Zionist?
He has exactly the same capability of abolishing the NYPD as you do. You are welcome to go and start “abolishing” individual NYPD members. But I don’t think you’ll have much success. What Mamdani can do, and I hope will do, is improve material conditions for enough new yorkers, that various city-council members will be replaced with workers that can actually start defunding the NYPD and reforming what policing is in NYC.
I mean he could say “we’re gonna fire the whole-ass NYPD on January 1st”. Because we both know he’s gonna get walked back from the most liberatory position, so you might as well start with the most liberatory position possible if you’re going into reformist politics, i.e. reformism benefits from the door-in-the-face technique.
What Mamdani can do, and I hope will do, is improve material conditions for enough new yorkers, that various city-council members will be replaced with workers that can actually start defunding the NYPD and reforming what policing is in NYC.
I mean if we replace “reforming what policing is in NYC” by “abolishing the NYPD and forming free community defense organizations in finite time” then yeah I’m with you. I always do hope that reformists like Mamdani get crumbs for the working class, but basically this always happens:
hey man. don’t let your reality get in the way of my delusional ideology where abolishing the police will solve all social problems and criminality doesn’t exist if there are no police to arrest you.
You’re arguing against a strawman. See the final chapter of Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams for more details on possible alternatives, including historical examples. And the whole book makes a compelling, intricately cited argument for police abolition.
The fact is, the police do provide an important community service—offering protection against crime. They do not do this job well, or fairly, and it is not their chief function, but they do it, and it brings them legitimacy.[1584] Even people who dislike and fear them often feel that they need the cops. Maybe we can do without omnipresent surveillance, racial profiling, and institutionalized violence, but most people have been willing to accept these features of policing, if somewhat grudgingly, because they have been packaged together with things we cannot do without—crime control, security, and public safety. It is not enough, then, to relate to police power only in terms of repression; we must also remember the promise of protection, since this legitimates the institution.
Because the state uses this protective function to justify its own violence, the replacement of the police institution is not only a goal of social change, but also a means of achieving it. The challenge is to create another system that can protect us from crime, and can do so better, more justly, with a respect for human rights, and with a minimum of bullying. What is needed, in short, is a shift in the responsibility for public safety—away from the state and toward the community.
It should be noted that Williams is working under a tweaked definition of “crime” in this context, a phenomenon that anarchists do not deny exists.
The point here is that the standards I want to appeal to in invoking the idea of crime are not the state’s standards, but the community’s—and, specifically, the community’s standards as they relate to justice, rights, personal safety, and perhaps especially the question of violence.
You: Calls me delusional
Me: provide evidence that I understand the situation as well as you do
You: Yeah well I never cared, I just wanted to be a douchebag without consequences
Then go read what I posted and show us which part of what I said is a delusion, or shut the fuck up.
Edit:
but you go ahead and abolish the NYPD yourself? Since mandani isn’t going to do it for you.
Actually that is the more realistic outcome IMO, i.e. the community in New York getting together and abolishing the NYPD from the bottom up, because a system designed to uphold capitalism, racism, and colonialism will never be used to truly abolish those forms of domination. Frankly, Mamdani “abolishing” the police with his pen would neither be sufficient nor necessary to practically abolish the NYPD, but it would be a nice symbolic gesture.
How about nobody? How about abolish the police? ACAB even when they’re controlled by social democrats.
He literally cannot do that.
Can he illegally try? Can he approximate police abolition or set New York on a path towards it? Can he attempt to approximate that? Can he even attempt to approximate not being a pro-cop Zionist?
He dropped defund the police from his platform back when he was campaigning. Did you miss that?
No I didn’t lol, I’ve been skeptical of him since day 1
He has exactly the same capability of abolishing the NYPD as you do. You are welcome to go and start “abolishing” individual NYPD members. But I don’t think you’ll have much success. What Mamdani can do, and I hope will do, is improve material conditions for enough new yorkers, that various city-council members will be replaced with workers that can actually start defunding the NYPD and reforming what policing is in NYC.
I mean he could say “we’re gonna fire the whole-ass NYPD on January 1st”. Because we both know he’s gonna get walked back from the most liberatory position, so you might as well start with the most liberatory position possible if you’re going into reformist politics, i.e. reformism benefits from the door-in-the-face technique.
I mean if we replace “reforming what policing is in NYC” by “abolishing the NYPD and forming free community defense organizations in finite time” then yeah I’m with you. I always do hope that reformists like Mamdani get crumbs for the working class, but basically this always happens:
hey man. don’t let your reality get in the way of my delusional ideology where abolishing the police will solve all social problems and criminality doesn’t exist if there are no police to arrest you.
You’re arguing against a strawman. See the final chapter of Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams for more details on possible alternatives, including historical examples. And the whole book makes a compelling, intricately cited argument for police abolition.
It should be noted that Williams is working under a tweaked definition of “crime” in this context, a phenomenon that anarchists do not deny exists.
All emphases mine.
i’m not arguing.
i’m making a sarcastic comment.
I see ya
delusional people tend to make up and cherry pick evidence to support their delusions, yes.
but you go ahead and abolish the NYPD yourself? Since mandani isn’t going to do it for you.
Then go read what I posted and show us which part of what I said is a delusion, or shut the fuck up.
Edit:
Actually that is the more realistic outcome IMO, i.e. the community in New York getting together and abolishing the NYPD from the bottom up, because a system designed to uphold capitalism, racism, and colonialism will never be used to truly abolish those forms of domination. Frankly, Mamdani “abolishing” the police with his pen would neither be sufficient nor necessary to practically abolish the NYPD, but it would be a nice symbolic gesture.
nah, i’d rather not be harassed into silence by some ideaolog who is objectively wrong.
but again, please go tell mandani to abolish the police. are you even a nyc resident? at least then he would have some obligation to listen to you.
i’m not a nyc resident, so my opinion on what mandani should do is utterly pointless to express, other than jerking myself off about it.