[DEFUND LATER!] The Time is Never Here-Now with “Hope” & Politicians. Yesterday on Democracy Now Amy Goodman interviewed Minn council member Jeremiah Ellison about their reported announcement to defund the police department. Said announcement was “fabricated truth” within the meaning of FUNKTIONARY as it was an incomplete and inaccurate description of reality. The council plans to take ‘about one year to have conversations about defunding the police - but no official timeline or date to vote on it has been considered - they’ll take it up perhaps “at some point” in the future Ellison stated. See video above, transcript in relevant part below on the page.

The announcement was intended as a device to calm & appease protestors without really giving them anything material. A placebo to create hope and maintain obedience. While there are positive meanings of the word “hope,” in this context as Dr. Blynd explains, it is ‘hope to keep you focused on the illusory future (the disease of “tomorrow”) and this persistent focus perpetuates your denial of the Now (present moment) resulting in unhappiness. It is a subtle way of postponing life (the herenow).’ Osho explained,

“Discontent becomes hope; this is the disguise. Because here and now you are in so much discontent, in so much misery, that you need some hope in the future. That hope will help you to move. You can somehow tolerate the present; through hoping, you can tolerate the present... hope is anesthesia. The present is miserable, painful; hope is alcoholic, it is a drug, it makes you unconscious enough so you can tolerate the present.

Hope means here and now there is discontent. But have you ever looked at the whole phenomenon? Why are you discontented here and now in the first place? Why? – because you hoped in the past, that’s why here and now you are in discontent. This today was tomorrow yesterday. Yesterday you hoped for today, because it was tomorrow then. Now that hope is not fulfilled, so you are in misery, frustrated. And to hide this misery, to somehow pass today, you are again hoping for the tomorrow.

You are in a rut, and in such a rut that it will be very difficult to come out of it. Tomorrow the same will happen: you will be frustrated, because mind can promise but can never fulfill.“ [MORE]

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain exactly what this would mean. You made the announcement. You haven’t had a vote in the City Council. So what happens today?

JEREMIAH ELLISON: Right. So, per the commitment that we made yesterday, we’re going to take the next year to engage the people of Minneapolis. You know, obviously, council members have ideas, but I think that if the nine of us sat in a room for a couple days and cooked up a plan without any public engagement, I think that the community would reject that. And so, I think we’re going to commit to a year’s worth of conversations. I think in some ways it’s going to require every single resident in Minneapolis to give their input. But the groundwork is there. Some of the groundwork has been laid for what we can do to keep communities safe, other than have a police force.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, what exactly do you mean, though, you’re going to wait a year? So there will not be a vote taken in the City Council?

JEREMIAH ELLISON: No, we’re not going to wait a — sorry — we’re not going to wait a year. We’re going to engage the community for a year to develop a new system of public safety. You’ve got to understand, the police department has been around for 150 years. At least the Minneapolis — sorry — the Minneapolis Police Department has been around for over 150 years. And police departments all around the country have been around a lot longer than that. I think that we owe it to the city of Minneapolis, to our residents, to develop a plan that moves forward intelligently, that moves forward in a way that works. You know, we’re not going to hit the eject button on the police department today, for instance, because we do not have that new system in place. But we have to start the conversation somewhere. Yesterday was the start of that conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, will there be a vote? And what will that vote be on in the City Council now?

JEREMIAH ELLISON: At some point there will have to be a vote about what our new system of public safety looks like. You know, just to give you an example, one of the most effective programs that we’ve been able to fund, really on a shoestring budget, is our group violence prevention program. It’s a program that helps young men get out of gang activity and remove themselves from gang life. It’s a program that’s been more successful in getting gang members to choose a different path forward for themselves than sending them to jail or anything else that we’ve tried in the past. That’s just one program, for example, that I think that we need to actually put our investment in to get fully operational so that we can keep our city safe.

You know, we’re going to have to figure out how to address things like active shooter situations. And we’re aware of the fact that some situations are extremely difficult to deescalate. But most of what police do — you know, we did a study last year of 911 calls, and we realized that one of the top calls that police make are for what we call emotionally disturbed persons or mental health calls. Do we need use of force — someone with a use-of-force background to answer that call? Do we need a gun present at a call like that? Do we need a gun present at a call for a forged $20 bill? I think that the answer to that is no. And we’ve got to — but we’ve never, as a country, leaned into figuring out how do we address issues like this without force. And I think that my colleagues and I are committed to figuring that out.

EVER HEARD OF SECURITY GUARDS? The reality is that statist politicians can never really conceive of being without authority and police. Notice councilman Ellison simply cannot answer any question about how having no cops would actually work. Ever heard of security guards? Trained persons hired and fired by the community or citizens are called “private security.” Such persons have the right to defend people and a contractual duty to come to their aid. However, they would have no additional or superhuman right to rule over anybody (authority) or to initiate unprovoked violence against other people. That is, they would have the same rights that we do. Undeceiver Larken Rose discusses “non-authoritarian” security:

Defense Without “Authority”

Those who insist that “government” is necessary often raise the issue of defense and protection, claiming that society without “government” would mean that anyone could do anything, there would be no standards of behavior, no rules, no consequences for those who choose to commit theft or murder, and that society would therefore collapse into

constant violence and mayhem. Such concerns, however, are based on a profound misunderstanding of human nature, and of what “government” is, and what it is not.

Defending against aggressors requires no special “authority,” no “legislation,” no “law,” and no “law enforcers.” Defensive force is inherently justified, regardless of who does it, and regardless of what any “law” says. And having a formal, organized means of providing such defensive force for a community also does not require “government” or “law.” Each individual has the right to defend himself, or defend someone else. He may choose to hire someone else to provide defense services, either because he is physically unable to defend himself, or just because he would rather pay someone else to do it. And if a number of people choose to pay to have an organization of trained fighters, with the weapons, vehicles, buildings, and other resources they need to defend an entire town, the people have that right, as well.

At this point, most believers in “government” will protest, saying, “That’s all government is.” But that is not the case. And this is where the difference becomes apparent. What an individual does not have the right to do-what no group of people, no matter how large, has any right to do-is to hire someone else (individual or group) to do something which any average individual does not have the right to do. They cannot rightfully hire someone to commit robbery, even if they call it “taxation,” because the average individual has no right to steal. They cannot rightfully hire someone to spy on and forcibly control the choices and behaviors of their neighbors, even if they call it “regulation.” Those in a stateless society would feel justified in hiring someone to use force only in the very limited ways, and in the very limited situations, in which every individual has the right to use force: to defend against aggressors. In contrast, most of what the so-called “protectors” in “government” do is commit acts of aggression, not defend against them.

Some of what is now classified as “police work”-in fact, all of what the “police” do that is actually legitimate, noble, righteous, and helpful to society-would exist without the “authority” myth. Investigating wrongdoing and apprehending actual criminals-meaning people who harm others, not merely people who disobey politicians-would continue without the “authority” myth, as something that almost everyone would want, and would be willing to pay for. This is demonstrated by the fact that there are already private detectives and private security companies, in addition to the “protection” services of “government” that everyone is forced to fund.

There would be only one difference, though it is a major difference: those doing the job of investigating and protecting, in the absence of the “authority” superstition, would always be viewed as having exactly the same rights as everyone else. While presumably they would be better equipped and better qualified to do their jobs than the average citizen, their actions would be judged by the same standards that the actions of anyone else would be judged, which is not at all the case with so-called “law enforcers.” Private protection providers would also judge their own actions, not by whether some “authority” had told them to do something, or whether their actions were deemed “legal” by “government,” but by whether those actions, in their own personal view, were inherently justified. Not only would an excuse of “just following orders” not convince the general public, but the agents themselves could not, even in their own minds, use such an excuse to evade responsibility for their actions, because no one would be claiming to be an “authority” over them.

Non-authoritarian “police”-if they would even be called that-would be viewed very differently than “government” agents are now. They would not be seen to have the right to do anything that any other person did not have the right to do. They could only go places, question people, use force, or do anything else, in situations where anyone else would be justified in doing the same thing. As a result, the average person would have no reason to feel any nervousness or self-consciousness in their presence, as most people now do when in the presence of “law enforcers.” People would feel no more obligation to submit to questioning, or searches, or anything else requested by private protectors, than they would if some stranger on the street made such requests. And if a private protector became abusive, or even violent, his victim would have the right to respond the same way he would if anyone else was behaving that way. More importantly, the individual who resisted aggression from a private protector would have the support of his neighbors if he did so, because his neighbors would not be imagining any obligation to bow to someone because of any badge or any “law.”

The best check against a defense organization becoming corrupt or “out of control” is the ability of customers to simply stop paying. Obviously, no one wants to pay for some gang to oppress him, but most people also do not want to pay a gang to oppress someone else either. As much as the average person wants to see thieves and murderers caught and stopped, he also wants to see to it that the innocent are not harmed. If the customers of some private protection company discovered that their “protectors” were harassing and assaulting innocent people-the type of behavior they were hired to prevent-the customer base would instantly disappear, and the thugs would be out of business. And if, in the absence of any claimed “authority,” the thugs decided to try to force their former customers to keep paying, the backlash from the people would be swift and severe, as no one would feel any “legal” obligation to allow themselves to be oppressed. [MORE]