sigh
Cop unions are not unions
i mean they are unions, they're just reactionary unions and tools of the bourgeoisie. Rather than pretending they're not unions at all we should just recognize that not all unions are good. Eugene Debs gave a very famous speech about "craft consciousness" and how some unions hold back the proletariat by protecting their narrows craft interests rather than the broader class interests of the workers. This line to me seems more logical than trying to deny that cop unions are unions, which just makes us sound like we're contradicting ourselves.
Not every association to support a group is a union. Yours is one way, but we could also say that unions in the sense of labour union / Gewerkschaft means something different. Both ways and likely others are possible.
they are but cops aren't workers
they are workers, but are class antagonists of the proletariat
The UnionBuster Union does not count as a Union
Union of the United Capitalists and Landowners.
Well sure airplanes are necessary to cross an ocean in a reasonable amount of time but they're also responsible for 9/11. When are we going to address that?
Libs stop undermining leftism challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Even reddit liberals think cop unions are bad lol.
you say unions are good and yet the Torture Nexus Technicians Union is bad, checkmate tankiePermanently Deleted
The "We" in this post are liberals and they won't address it because they also depend on cops to be abusive to people. Us, on the other hand, will readily address the cop unions.
The power of police unions proves that other unions are simply not armed enough
"when are we going to address how I'm a radlib without class consciousness" lol
Which unions tho?
Cops: *go on strike*
Nothing: *changes*
Bourgeois: "Give them everything they ask for or society will collapse!"
Yeah, police are the enforcement tools of the owner class, designated extra privileges to give them the impression that they're somehow distinct from the proletariat. They'd have too much power even without unions. Listen to politicians who urge corrupt cops to stay on payroll because of literally getting the "rotten apple" metaphor backwards. I'm not really sure how you can judge some unions good or bad, when ACAB is a fact. Just, get rid of the police and leave this hypothetical to historians.
Solidarity amongst the oppressed is good
Solidarity amongst the oppressors is bad
I already told you I support unions, you don't have to sell it to me.
How do liberals deal with the cognitive dissonance of "There is no owning class that conspires for their class interests" and "The only union the politicians support is the police union"?
The politicians and their benefactors don't support unions for service workers. They don't support them for the manufacturers or the laborers that operate critical infrastructure. But they do support the cop unions. How can they dance around class warfare as the answer to this conundrum? They must just avoid thinking about it too hard.
Maybe it's just a Vancouver and not a Canada thing, but I never thought our police were that bad.
That might be true in relative terms, it is also likely showing that you are in a somewhat privileged position, does ignore their structural impact (i.e. forced evictions actions against houseless and soon to be unhoused comrades, immigrants etc.), but also ignores historic context, their support and enforcement of colonial actions, against single mothers, against neurodivergent people, against LGBTQ comrades and them guarding their fellow cops.
It might also be unaware of how the Canadian riot cops act at demonstrations.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/g20-protesters-clash-with-vancouver-police-1.906581 As example. Some of our queer and alike allies do not want police at their protests: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/no-more-police-at-vancouver-pride-as-organizers-join-call-to-defund-vpd-1.5607249
CW
So it might be interesting to write in a spoiler tag (if it gets long as to not de-rail this thread), why you have that sentiment and try to seek out some voices contradicting your point of view. For example in my city the police regularly jails people for not having tickets in public transport. Multiple hundreds, often people without the means or abilities to deal with the fines are effectively put into a debt tower. Would you find the police is "that bad" then, or when they use force to deport a person, by entering their house at night, restricting them violently and then putting them on a plane with a for them uncertain destination?
These issues are an extension of the government position though, right?
As a cop in a police union, your job is to enforce the law level-handedly, not to decide what the law should be. As a worker, that is both your right and your expectation. To blame the police unions for following the spirit and letter of the law essentially undermines the role of law enforcement.
The primary criticisms I have against police (in the US, in Toronto, etc.) Is that their enforcement of the law is clearly biased for or against certain demographics and that abuse is covered by the police union. From what I can tell, that isn't really the case in Vancouver because of the extremely large immigrant minority population in the city and the relatively robust system of police oversight in the OPCC.
I'll admit it's not perfect (in particular, that the likelihood of criminal consequences for police malfeasance is still way too low) and I'll admit that my interactions with police have been from a rather privileged background, but I do think police unions should be evaluated from their role of protecting workers' rights and maintaining worker integrity rather than as an extension of criticism to government policy.
