… a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members announced their commitment to disbanding the city’s embattled police department
This doesn’t mean “no police” it means get rid of the current bunch, and create a new police department. This was done by Camden, New Jersey, for example…
By the department’s account, reports of excessive force complaints in Camden have dropped 95 percent since 2014.
There’s some stuff about how they did it that I don’t like, but the point that it can be done matters.
More important is something which wasn’t going to happen, disbanding Minneapolis’s police department, is now probably going to happen. Without riots, it wouldn’t have.
Riots are, actually, one of the most effective ways to create change. Politely worded letters don’t work. Completely non-violent protest only works if it shuts things down. Voting doesn’t work if the political system is entrenched, because entrenched political systems know how to co-opt or marginalize actual radicals.
If you want something from powerful people, you have to show you have power of your own. If you don’t have enough power to at least scare them, to show them the limits of their power, why should they give you anything?
Americans are showing the rich and powerful the limits of their power; of what their violent lackeys can do, and the powerful are making concessions. (And they are just that–concessions. They wouldn’t have done these things without the riots. They didn’t want to do them.)
This is also a result of the weakness the US’s current elites; in-touch, wise elites would have given much more to the poor and middle class during the Covid-19 bailouts, instead of letting tens of millions lose their jobs and worry about their rent.
Elites thought Americans were completely whipped. They had reason to believe that, admittedly, but they overplayed their hand.
Always boil the frog slowly, smart evil elites know that.
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