How about a political movement to oppose police brutality?

[nancylebov]

I was thinking about Ferguson, and about how none of the usual things that people do such as journalism (much as I respect it) or going through the legal system, which sometimes gets victims and their families large cash awards (which is much better than nothing but which doesn't change policy) are not working. Armed insurrection is not a good idea.

What remains is politics. I have a notion that if police commit murder, there are politicians who should not be re-elected. I was assuming it would be mayors, but dcseain told me that local political structure varies a lot, and where he lives, it would be a board of county commissioners. Correction It's Board of County Supervisors. There's a reason I don't do practical politics-- I have a lot of trouble focusing on that stuff. I asked him twice, wrote it down, and still got it wrong.

I believe this would take voter drives. It would probably take work on getting IDs*. And I think it would take convincing people to be one issue voters.

I'm not sure to what extent it would take getting the federal government to control local governments.

The thing is, I don't know much about practical politics**. Calls to action aren't my strong point, either.

On the other hand, I haven't seen discussions of political solutions to police brutality, let alone an actual movement, so I thought I would bring up the subject and see whether people who know more about such things think the idea makes sense. If you do think so (or that some related project makes sense) please pass the word. The police are getting worse.

I believe there will be opposition, but I'm inclined to think the difficulty is in the same range as marriage equality, and a lot of progress has been made on that in a moderate number of years.

Terry Karney has a good essay on the problem, including details of seriousness of the situation, the lack of effect of current policies for controlling bad police, and that the police are better armed than he was as a soldier in a war zone.

*I would like to see a campaign to make ID more available. Lack of ID limits people's lives in many ways, not just voting.

**Practical politics is the specifics of getting things to happen. I came up with the term when I noticed there were people who focused on details that I wasn't interested in because I like theory better.

Comments

[mishalak]

I wish there were a political movement that would actually push for achievable goals. Follow the state by state model of gay rights and now marijuana... but no, we need Obama to do it because he can so do things without the approval of a Republican congress.