writerkit | The Thing About Systemic Violence is It's Systemic (Reply)

Someone has finally articulated the problem I've been having with the "all cops are bastards" rhetoric I've been seeing passed around: https://fierceawakening.tumblr.com/post/621384732687679489/marcusseldon-im-not-a-fan-of-the-all-cops-are

For systemic problems, you change the system. Which absolutely can and should include going after individuals who were so corrupted by the system that they're committing crimes, but if you cast it as "every single cop is personally evil" and not as "this system is extremely broken and corrupting people", that actually leads you *away* from real systemic change. Certainly the proposed fix of replacing cops with social workers ignores that while social workers can't outright kill you, there's plenty of abuse of power in their ranks too. A starting question to examine where the power trip sensibility comes from might be to ask what cops and social workers have in common, and then if we find something that's a plausible cause among those commonalities, how we might remove it.

(Today, in our continuing series of "Kit reads Politics Tumblr so YOU don't have to!")