Something special is happening around law enforcement right now. It’s hard to see it sometimes, because the world is so fucked, but you can see it if you look hard enough. City Councils and Mayors all across the country are talking about meaningful changes to not just law enforcement, but to their budget as well. Change is coming. In New York City they cut $1 billion dollars from their police budget. In LA they cut $150 million. Minneapolis voted to abolish their police department. These are just a few of many examples. However, all I continue to hear is “they should have done that a long time ago” or “it’s too late!” Well, I hate to break it to you, but everything always happens too late.
Societies are huge complicated things, that involve millions of people, and hundreds of years of shared history. They do not change over night. No matter how dramatically something happens. Donald Trump got elected as president and things didn’t even change over night. It took a while for him to set in, and for it to get bad, because everything in a society takes time. Honestly, I’m a little surprised that he fucked shit up so badly in as short a period of time as he did.
Any meaningful reform that comes to police is going to come “too late”. Every elected official that comes over to “our” side and decides to jump on board with defunding the police, or changing police brutality charters, setting up independent committees to investigate use of force, firing any officer that shoots anyone that was unarmed, whether or not they thought they had a gun, ending stop and frisk, all of this stuff is happening “too late”. If any of this was on time then it would have been signed in to law the day we became a nation, along with the abolition of slavery.
We live in a society that addresses problems, not one that works on preventing them. Even when we had presidents that prepared for future events (basically all of them except for our current one) we still couldn’t properly prepare for the changes that were coming down the road. Why is everything always too late?
America is a centrist society. Most Americans political beliefs actually fall somewhere in the middle. Many people that think they are liberal aren’t, many people that think they are libertarian are not as well. Many people don’t like sweeping change. They are okay with their lives, and they just want to continue on getting by. But we live in a society that is more polarized by the day. While we have as much as 70% of our population complacently in the center, the far right and the far left are becoming increasingly polarizing. In many cases the “far_____” is off putting to the people in the center.
Another uphill battle the left faces is branding and messaging. The far right has an easy package for what they believe, that doesn’t even sound bad on the surface. They basically want everybody to be “good Christians” and to pay less in taxes. The left wants the abolition of police, money completely gone from politics, to raise taxes across the board, introduce universal basic income, give everyone health care, solve homelessness, end voter suppression……. the list goes on and on. That is a lot to swallow for someone that is comfortably chilling as a centrist in American life.
But, and this is a big BUT, because of this pandemic America has been exposed. Many people that have been chillin in the middle, middle class, centrist politics, the floor as fallen out from underneath them. They very tangibly can see what the problem is with not having universal health care. The problems with not having social safety nets. It’s frankly embarrassing that the richest most powerful country in the world is flailing its arms in the water while it drowns.
Another thing that is new to the people comfortably in the middle, millions of white Americans have now been victims of police brutality. Millions that 2 months ago probably still wondered in the back of their heads if “it was really that bad” have now been tear gassed, tackled, beaten, shot, and tased by the police. Not only have they experienced it, they have been demonized by their president for standing up for what they believe in. Police brutality and being demonized for being themselves?? Hmmm, that never happens to people that aren’t criminals in America right?
We have a real opportunity to make real change right now, but we all have to understand that real change, meaningful change society wide happens incrementally, and it’s ALWAYS going to be too late. When you think about it though, the “right” thing happening, no matter how long it takes, is still the “right” thing happening. 3 months ago barely anyone nation wide would have entertained the idea of dramatically cutting police budgets in almost every city, it took way too long, but I think change is finally coming, and it’s about god damn time.
I’m an optimist, as an optimist, it’s never “too late” every day is the chance for things to get better. There are people it is too late for though, and it’s never too late to stop that list from growing. Here are just a few of them, it’s never too late to stop adding more.
Say their names:
George Floyd
Stephan Clark
Breonna Taylor
Michael Brown
Sandra Bland
Tamir Rice
Trayvon Martin
Eric Garner
Charleena Lyles
Botham Jean
Rayshard Brooks
Elijah McClain
…