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Top-level
@Lana And how unions *can* go bad. It's also telling that just one key union can make the idea of unionization turn sour in the public's mind. No for real, it's white dudes and their attachment to their automatic weapons, and that they want, so, so bad, to think they're smart. 36 comments
  @RnDanger @dalias @bmalsuj Some do, but they're not *supposed* to. If we get it in our craw that they are supposed to be working for us, and taking the steps to make that so, they may eventually get it in their scared little heads that defense of wealth, a.k.a. their paychecks/benefits, isn't the service they need to believe they were hired to do. We are their context. We can use that. @janisf @dalias @bmalsuj @RnDanger @dalias @bmalsuj Depends on which way you flip it. From180Β°, it's sliding a new foundation underneath, taking on the load of fundamental change. Although I totally agree, big-picture thinking is one step away from throwing a penny in a wishing well. I think we know we want policing to change, but we need to be realistic, it's not going away. The question is what to do next. @janisf @RnDanger @dalias @bmalsuj right, AND $$ flowing from the MIC to keep this kind of policing intact is substantial, and often invisible to the public. SCIENCE has shown for DECADES that community based policing works much better than adversarial policing, AND it also doesn't need near as many guns, riot gear, tanks, or kevlar vests. But arms dealers profiting from *surveillance tech and weapons* truly see their cash cows drying up if there's a switch to community based policing. @dalias @bmalsuj It's an interesting take, and while I get the accuracy of it, I'm not sure it's pure entirely because it depends on how "crime" is defined. Threre are very separate, and likely more than a couple, definitions. I've long purported that belief drives action. It's a function of the patriarchy, IMO, that tells cops and their policy makers they can do no wrong in uniform. Plus, we know how good men who love fancy guns are at introspection. @dalias @bmalsuj @janisf I must disagree. Police unions are awful because, by and large, police are awful, but nevertheless they are still unions and nevertheless policing is labor. Unions are made up of people, and people can be awful (the more traditional labor unions have their fair share of despotic leaderships and cozy relationships with people in power) but I strongly disagree with the idea that moral tests should decide whether something counts as labor or is a union. @Orc @bmalsuj @janisf A union represents the interests of workers against their bosses/owners of the business. In the US (the context I'm assuming) that is absolutely NOT what police "unions" do. They do not stand up for police who are treated badly or forced to do unethical things by the bosses. Rather, they represent the interests of police to commit violence with impunity against the interests of the public and civilian government. @dalias @Orc @bmalsuj I don't know. I've never been to one of their meetings. I'm also not sure that intent always matches results. What we lack in that arena is citizen involvement, or even press coverage. I'm loving https://minnesotareformer.com/news/ and am dismayed that it's such an outlier. Why don't other states have news orgs like this? @Orc @bmalsuj @janisf If you want a less loaded analogy than "crime family" for police 'unions', and ignoring the monopoly-on-violence aspect, the closest thing would probably be a "trade association" between corporations in a common area of business. The association's purpose is not to benefit the workers vs the bosses, but to obtain favorable regulatory outcomes, pricing, high barrier-to-entry, etc. for existing players in the industry, at the expense of the public. @dalias @Orc @bmalsuj There's a non-existent line between doing business and corruption. From Chicago Mayor to the guys who help families across the southern border, precous few practices of anything are pure if it has to be a funded gig. We need eyeballs in this space. We need a decision mechanism that cuts a space for reflections. there's a reason these guys think they're doing all of it right. They have no perspective. @Orc @dalias @bmalsuj @janisf the other way of looking at it is that "the public and civilian government" are not actually the "bosses" of the police in any meaningful sense. The historical context of unions is the asymmetry in authority between bosses and workers. Bosses have power individually, workers only have it collectively, if they have any at all. Does that accurately describe the actual professional relationship that exists between city councillors and cops, in your view? @darcher @Orc @dalias @bmalsuj No? But I'm not on my city council, while I also understand that every local arrangement is different. I'll be putting my thought energy to better use of I focus on my area of expertise. Right now, my local police are doing pretty well, and I'm happy with recent efforts toward reform. @janisf ouch. But that is up to you. Part of what I'm getting at is that the systemic problem is systemic so "solving it locally" rarely works, and then tends to be short-lived. If the city were the boss of the cops, solving it locally, at least temporarily, would happen all the time. There's like 1m people within city limits here, but in a lot of ways it's more small-town than cities of comparable size. So we happen coincidentally not to have as many cop problems. @darcher @Orc @dalias @bmalsuj I think we both know the patterns that end up coagulating around gun-toting (e.g.) Kentucky politicians who say they are also concurrently some sort of mechanic *and* engineer. Neither one of us has the magic pill that's going alleviate the anxiety that drives the insecurity around these guys never being able to control the world enough to please the imaginary women in their heads. It's these guys that drive *me* to crazy rambling rants. Guns down, boys. @janisf sadly, I agree. No magic pill, just a festering multi-generational cultural dysfunction. Even if the political will and the political coalitions were already in place, it would still take many years to repair. @janisf yeah, it's wild how that works. I didn't have any real exposure to Christianity until my early teens, and then it was all people who took "WWJD" very seriously indeed - Unitarians and Liberation Catholics and whatnot. So I *still* struggle sometimes with the way a lot of Christian churches are openly hostile to Christian scripture and teachings. @darcher @dalias @bmalsuj @janisf Yes, of course it does. Why would you think differently? It's not a single rotten apple, it's an entire barrel of them and they've successfully laid the government over that stinking mess. Unions are not a paragon of moral purity, they're a way for workers to represent themselves. And police are, as a general rules, armed bastards so their way of representing themselves involves forcing their bosses to accept rape & robbery. @Orc @dalias I think if you can threaten your boss with violence, and not get fired, your boss is not your "boss" in the sense I was describing. What I want is to discourage using the word "union" for situations like that. But I'm happy to concede that we're just quibbling over a definition. And i want to discourage it *even though* other unions are full of assholes and bastards in the same way that police unions are. @orman San Francisco right now, I would argue. IIRC there's a solid analysis of SF in particular somewhere but I didn't bookmark it. Minneapolis, New York, and various other metros come to mind too. @Orc @bmalsuj @janisf Nope. Public and civilian government absolutely do not play a role of bosses over cops. Cops have a monopoly on violence and will use it against anyone who tries to challenge their power with raids, arrest, ousting from office using propaganda and threats against other parties who can be used to oust them, etc.  @mansr @Lana It may be the people themselves are bad, but I've found it utterly counterproductive to buy into that. It renders change impossible just by believing it. There are some rally shitty patriarchal ideas that I think *can* change, and can infiltrate the US policing culture if the right folks recognize the need and act on it. Not bad, just crazy in a bad way. I'm banking on mental health initiatives, that encourage cognitive self-questioning AND humane treatment of citizens. @mansr @Lana It definitely is Circular accountabilty is a hard thing to set up, and equally hard to maintain. I'm convinced, though, that's what democracy is supposed to be about. We'lll never get there, though, if no one's willing to work collaboratively toward that goal, and we've got a "no, you go first" belligerence that pervades not just cop culture. IMO, real science-based mental health and self-reflection contain the tiny steps that will get us there. |
Gregory's Server
@janisf
Police unions are the one kind of union, historically, not busted by the cops.