Can someone really be progressive and still want prisons, police, and Thanksgiving?

I think the framing is wrong.


Nobody is seriously talking about just shutting down prisons, firing all the police etc. Although a holiday to genocide is cringe no matter what.

The thing with police is we know objectively that the number of cops has nothing to do with crime or public safety.

Case in point. NYC and the GTA in Canada have around the same population and similar density.

Greater Toronto has had lower crime with a total number of about 5000 police officers.

NYPD has roughly 35000 officers and a worse crime rate.


Taking approaches to prevent crime from happening in the first place just objectively makes sense. And the less crime you have you can cut back on the number of police. Really simple match.


Same thing with prisons. If the US prison system was about rehabilitation and not punishment and profiting off of recidivism you would see similar results. In some European countries that take rehabilitation seriously they are closing prisons because they are literally running out of inmates.

And if you absolutely have to have a holiday it would be simple to change it to something not completely tone deaf.

I would argue that you are not a progressive if you operate from a framing of policy set out by the right wing.

Speaking of a hand and a glove. They're sayin ICE is gonna spend 20 million on electric shock gloves.