Semantics Matter: Thoughts on Hashtags and Slogans

Defund the Police.
Black Lives Matter.
Anti-Cop Movement.
Antifa.
Needless Laws.

Street chalk art of George Floyd in Queens, NY.

These are all powerful choices of words and can be misinterpreted--sometimes deliberately. In the age of Twitter Hashtags, pithy statements can lead to misunderstanding, oversimplification and confusion. The slogan Defund the Police began appearing last week after the international protests against police brutality erupted in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands, or knees, of Minneapolis police officers. I'd never heard if before. It means taking money from police budgets and distributing it to communities and social program to prevent the conditions which cry out for police action. It also addresses the fact that police are often called into situations they aren't trained for such as domestic disputes, drug addiction, and homelessness. When I first heard it I thought it literally meant take all the money from the police and eliminate them altogether. And some advocates do take that extreme position (we saw a discussion on this topic on the NewsHour earlier this week.) The Minneapolis city council has voted to dismantle its police department. What does that mean exactly? Camden, New Jersey, passed a similar resolution in 2012, dissolving its corrupt police dept. and replacing it with a new one, instituting reforms and emphasizing its role as a part of the community rather than as an occupying army. Crime has dropped by close to half (Source: This city disbanded its police force seven years ago. Here's what happened next CNN, June 9, 2020)


In response to Defund the Police debate, I wrote on Facebook:
To many people, the slogan "Defund the Police" might sound like "Let's get rid of the police

altogether" as opposed to rethink budgets with more emphasis on addressing social ills. Trump will interpret the message as "No more police, let chaos reign, criminals go free" (Like on that episode of the animated 1970s Batman series where the Joker is elected mayor and he makes the Penguin and Riddler city officials and opens all the jails.) Trump will say, "These crazy liberals want to get rid of the police. Vote for me and I'll keep you safe." What's scary is many people on the fence will listen and vote for him. Biden has had to say he does not support defunding the police, but rather reforming them.

Just as Defund the Police is being misinterpreted, Black Lives Matter has also been twisted. When it

was first coined, many white people thought it meant White Lives and Blue Lives (Police) did not matter and responded by saying "All Lives Matter." The premise of the slogan is that under our current system (still), black lives don't matter because they are treated differently than white lives. After the graphic video of Floyd's death and the massive public protests, it seems Black Lives Matter is being accepted more and more by whites.

On the other side of the coin, inexact slogans affects the police's stance as well. Here's an example. A few days ago I got a call from a policeman's organization to support them financially. The caller's prepared script (it was a person, not a robot) ask for money to stop "the anti-cop movement and needless laws which endanger officers' lives." So I asked, "What does that mean, needless laws? What laws are you referring to?" The guy could not answer me. He didn't know. He was just reading a script. He offered to have his supervisor speak to me. Sure, why not. The supervisor couldn't give me a specific example of "needless laws" either. "Do you mean banning choke holds? Because I don't think that's a needless law. How would banning chokeholds endanger officers' lives? And what do you mean by an anti-cop movement? If people want police reform that doesn't make them anti-cop." He said he didn't want to offer an opinion. He was perfectly civil and polite. I said these conversations are important to have. I told him I thought most police were fine people, but there was systemic racism in the institution. It can't be right to have someone's knee on an unarmed black man's neck for almost nine minutes, for things like this to be happening over and over, and for the President to cluelessly say there's no problem, it's just a couple of bad apples. I thanked him for listening and the call ended.