Defund—and Disarm—the Police

Defund—and Disarm—the Police

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, D.D. Guttenplan, and Zoë Carpenter.

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Defunding the police and reimagining public safety—in Los Angeles—starts with the LAPD, but includes the sheriffs, the school police, and the UCLA police force. Kelly Lytle Hernandez comments—she’s a professor of history at UCLA; author of City of Inmates, a history of the LA jails; and the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant.

Also: it’s time to disarm the police. They didn’t always carry guns, and there are other big cities in the world where most cops are not armed—like London. D.D. Guttenplan, editor of The Nation, explains.

Also: Black Lives Matter protests are everywhere, even the most unlikely places: for example, Laramie, Wyoming; Florence, Alabama; and even Vidor, Texas—it’s a former Ku Klux Klan haven that Texas Monthly described as the state’s “most hate-filled town.” Nation contributing writer Zoë Carpenter reports.

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Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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