Comments

1

Cops & donuts.

2

0 of 4 protester demands met.
Covered badge policy only changed when forced on them.
Tear gas only banned when forced on them.
No publicized leaves or firings of problem cops.
No arrests for well-documented lawbreaking cops.
No announcements of zero tolerance policies for police brutality.

Did the Seattle PD do ANYTHING that could be construed as a good faith effort at reform?

3

Good thing the 43rd 36th and 32nd District Democrats haven’t passed resolutions demanding the Defunding of the SPD ...

Oh.

4

I'm thrilled at this turn of events.

6

Sawant hinted at it with her statement about needing something other than capitalism to facilitate a solution. But she has to be political. NPR interviewed a socialist BLM activist a few days ago (No name, sorry. I only caught a few minutes of the radio conversation.) Unions have to go, according to her. Socialism will speak for and defend the working class. And balance their needs against those of society.

Of course this would make public employees' lives hell, having your interests represented by the same managers for whom they work. Of course, under socialism, we would all be public employees.

7

Good. I doubt that alone will directly impact what SPD does but at least it sends a message. We have to keep at it. The power structure is so entrenched it’s going to take a while. Things like qualified immunity, reinstatement of problem officers and the blue wall of silence are going to be much more difficult to break.

9

This had to be done-and as a retiree from the Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific, Alaska Region, I'm disgusted that my union's representative on the MLK council made it clear, by opposing the expulsion, that they don't care about fighting institutional racism.

SPOG, like every other police guild in the country, refuses to accept that violent structural racism exists in the SPD. Like all other police guilds, it refuses to call on its members to break with the "thin blue line" code of silence on racist police violence.

And, like all other police guilds, SPOG has been historically opposed to much of the rest of the labor movement-just ask the union members SPOG members arrested and beat to a pulp during the WTO rising.

Until SPOG accepts reality, until it admits that racist police violence is a real thing, until it stops taking the side of the bosses against the workers in most other labor disputes, it will not have any valid place in the MLK Labor Council.

"An Injury to one...Is an Injury to ALL!"

10

Every labor struggle that I have been involved in the police took the side of the bosses and threw everything they could at us to end the strikes. They are for the very wealthy against the rest of us. They are there to keep us under control for the 1% and to silence us.

With more people in prison than any other country in the world this is beyond reform.

“An injury to one is an injury to all!”

12

@6: You're leaving out the fact that, under the model of socialism Sawant supports, the worker would elect the managers in their workplaces and could recall and remove them as managers at any time.

At some point, you're going to have to accept that Sawant is not a Stalinist, if for no other reason than that it's not possible to be a Stalinist AND a Trotskyite at the same time.


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