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Comment by smus | Hacker News Reader

>This reminds me of "Defund the Police", wherein supporters would try to convince others that the slogan did not literally mean what it says.

What? It always meant lower police funding. If it meant abolish the police, the slogan would have been abolish the police

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I think if you asked 100 people what it meant at its heyday maybe 70-80 would say "abolish the police." Connotation of words and all that. Just for humor's sake, google dictionary definition of defund is "prevent from continuing to receive funds" thus kill/abolish.

And those same people would happily call for legislation to defund sanctuary cities, defund education, defund planned parenthood, defund medicaid, with the full understanding that the proposals aren't intended to wipe those things from the face of the earth.

I mean, do you want to build a winning coalition or do you want to keep sending out confusing political messages and complain amongst yourselves about how the game just isn't fair?

I disagree as the “defund planned parenthood” want to kill the whole org. I mean, that’s why it’s a dangerous proposal as planned parenthood performs many positive functions. So defunding them would harm more than just the part people dislike.

Maybe, but even these people have the basic sense to not make "defund education" their foremost slogan.

No, I don't think it actually did. It was created by prison abolitionists, who believe in abolishing prison as a whole, an end to punitive jailing and moving to restorative justice with a community problem-solving system, like that advocated by Danielle Sered.

The police abolition movement coined the slogan.

If it meant lower police funding it would have been "cut police funding." The initial movement in Minneapolis was outright defunding 100%.

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