Ken Burch
1 min readJul 5, 2023

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There are two things to respond to in that: We need to have a national/international conversation about what "public order" does and does not mean- in Britain, for example, the government is in the process of abolishing the right to carry out any effective form of public protest- and as to fleeing- at this point I'd say that, in any majority white country, young people of color, especially young MALE people of color have no reason to assume they will survive any encounter with law enforcement/police, let alone receive anything remotely like fair treatment. Therefore, until something changes radically in that dynamic, they have no reason to take the chances by hanging around to engage with the police, even if- and this is the case in the vast majority of such situations- those young people have done nothing whatsoever wrong.

Somebody ELSE needs to make sure the police are "doing it properly"- and ultimately, we need to not simply abolish the police, but replace them with a public protection/public safety institution free of both the belief in racial profiling and the "us against them/urban warrior" mindset.

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Ken Burch
Ken Burch

Written by Ken Burch

Retired Alaska ferryboat steward, grandparent, sometime poet. Radical yet independent of dogma. Likes nice days, playing banjo and not as yet dying of Covid.

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