But you understand, I hope, that some people are anti-Police. I've been supportive of Black Lives Matter (the general movement, not the organization) through the many protests and riots. I can do so because of the understanding that the people protesting brutality are not the same group as the criminals who looted all the major cities who are not the same group as the people who want to abolish the police. I think nearly everyone in this country is supportive of the first part if allowed to exist in a vacuum, but the entanglement with the other two prevents that, which demands a good, hard look at the people conflating them. I understand there are Republicans who do so, who take the opportunity to associate left-leaning activists with violence. But also everyone else did that too: tv was full of talking heads defending looters, and I really don't think anything could be more damaging to the BLM movement than that. Like why? Why would they do that? Why would anyone in support of the protests ever say "yeah, of course the looting is part of the protest"?
I had a conversation with a friend around the time that "defund the police" became the new cool thing to say. She's very left leaning. I tried to tell her nearly exactly what you're saying here: black people want to be able to call the police when there's a problem like everyone else. And she disputed it. Because she spends her time in left-wing echo chambers with people who genuinely are anti-police. I have a cousin who was posting all sorts of materials about police reform that would help prevent abuse, punish abusers, and avoid violent confrontation when possible... and then it became "defund the police" and she went back and scrubbed the reform suggestions off of her Facebook. Why? Because people argued that suggestions to reform policing were akin to suggesting we reform slavery instead of abolish it.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I agree with everything in your post, but we are flanked from both sides here.
