Defund the police....hell yes!

I've been helping my daughter's friend liquidate the contents of a home she recently purchased. There's been an older white man customer who has come back frequently over the week-long sale to buy things.

Every time he's been here, we've talked about different political issues. Probably my choice of t-shirts has helped to drive these conversations. Today I have the "disarm" shirt on and he wants to support that but is very uncomfortable, I can tell, as he starts listing what he believes is wrong with police: he doesn't support them killing Black men (I add or womyn - he nods); and he knows there are double standards of treating white and Black people.

He kind of shuffles his feet, breaks eye contact, and says he used to think {Black Lives Matter understood} wanted to defund the police but now he knows it's not about that.

I don't let him continue cause I say it's sure as hell that for me.

He now gives me a startled look, like I've wiped out the past few days of commraderie, but at least he's looking into my eyes.

I ask him if he knows how the police force started in this country and as he shakes his head 'no', I refresh his memory. We've talked unions previous and he is a union man.

"Remember the Pinkertons?" I ask. It dawns on him but I spell it out - the private police force hired by the wealthy business owners to suppress the laborers.

After that bit of history sinks in, I say those white people called "slave catchers" who were paid to track down and re-enslave Black people? I see I don't have to go further into this history as he has seen this on the big screen.

I explain when slavery became legal only in prisons in this country after the Civil War, those were the men who became the police force in this country.

"So," I ask, "you're not interested in defunding an institution that sprung up on the backs of enslaving Black people and controlling the worker?"

He's thinking, letting me know he was unaware of this beginning and I see the but.... coming so I jump in with "The police force should be replaced by post-menopausal womyn. Then we'd know peace and justice. And love.