Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
I haven’t had many encounters with the police over the years. Most of those encounters involve getting fined for petty driving violations. This probably lines up with the experience of most readers.
But my most recent encounter – from a year or two ago – highlights a few things for me. It shows, I think, the dangers inherent in any contact with police officers on duty. Even when nothing outrageously bad results from it.
On my Dad’s 40th birthday, my Mom took out an ad in the newspaper poking fun at him. I got a laugh out of it – as did the rest of my family – but the whole notion of turning 40 seemed absurd to me. 40 was just a giant number I’d presumably never reach.
Hey, I was 14. 40 was old. Now I’m turning 40 myself.
Let’s talk about that.
As the 2023 DSA Convention approaches, let’s try to answer a strategic question. The question concerns a big picture issue, one that I think people tend to lose in the details of the various Resolutions on display.
So, let’s talk broad, national strategy. I have in mind DSA’s ‘decision’ – quotes because it’s perhaps more a starting point than a decision – to run priority campaigns around issues rather than people. DSA builds its recruitment model on attracting people to issues like Medicare for All rather than reaching out to members of target classes and building campaigns around their ideas. An org can do both, of course. But DSA probably doesn’t have the resources to do both well. And, at present, it only does the former.
I’ll argue in this post that DSA should run grassroots organizing campaigns built around classes first, rather than issues.
I wrote a few weeks ago about a debate in Iowa City over a police budget freeze. In that post, I framed the issues in terms of national debates over ‘defund the police’ and the failure of activist groups to build a majority coalition.
In this post, I’ll apply a local lens. We had a county debate a decade ago on funding for a jail expansion. Local politicians proposed that we build a ‘Justice Center’ to relieve jail overcrowding and other issues. But voters twice rejected the proposal. That old debate provides key insights into the current police budget debate.
A couple of nights ago, the city council in my city (Iowa City) voted against budget amendments to freeze the police budget and cancel unfilled positions in the police department. The vote took place in the broader context of the slogan ‘defund the police’ and activist movements since the summer of 2020.
I’ll say a word about all this. But, first, some recent remarks from Cedric Johnson provide us with a useful way to frame the discussion.
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