Former United States president Barack Obama has warned activists against using the ‘Defund the Police’ slogan.
The slogan entered the public consciousness after the killing of George Floyd this year, with radical activists in the US calling for police funding to be cut and channeled into other services. Some radicals even called for the police to be abolished entirely.
Obama’s warning came in a discussion with young activists from the Democratic Party on Snapchat, an app. He was quoted as saying: ‘If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan, like Defund the Police, but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it. If you instead say, “Hey, you know what, let’s reform the police department so that everybody’s being treated fairly”, suddenly a whole bunch of folks who might not otherwise listen to you are listening to you.’
He was subsequently criticised by members of the left-wing of the Democratic Party, including Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar.
A number of cities around the US have already cut police budgets and have seen a corresponding rise in violent and other crime.
Obama has previously spoken out against ‘wokeness’ and the tendency by young people and activists to see the world in stark binary terms.
[Picture: Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash]