@Background Pony #5A29
I understand the inclination to want to find a less divisive way of saying “burn the entire system to the ground and start from scratch” but the fact is that any softening of the language is just going to be used to coopt the current momentum into doing the bare minimum until the issue goes away. Reform, transform, reimagine, whatever word gets used to make the idea more palatable is also going to dilute the intent.
It’s also part of a pattern of incremental deflation of radicalism. Abolish is too radical for the mainstream, change it to defund. Defund is to radical for the mainstream, change it to transform. Repeat until you get to “make symbolic policy changes that won’t be enforced”. Defund is already a compromise and shouldn’t be ceded to centrist hacks who think that the problem is marketing, and not that scared reactionaries will oppose any meaningful change to the status quo regardless of what it is or what it’s called.
If you don’t want to defund and eventually abolish the police, just say so, but don’t pretend that you’re on the same side as abolitionists when really you want body cameras and chokehold bans.