If your slogan requires a long “Well, actually, what we said isn’t true, this is what we really want” explanation, maybe your slogan, though easy to chant, is misleading and therefore worthless to your cause.

Maybe that should be a consideration.

No, because…that’s not what a slogan is. A slogan is SUPPOSED to short and just cover a basic point. If we just took police budgets and cut them in half, we are still “Defunding the Police”; what we do after doesn’t need to be included. A long slogan is a shitty slogan. BUT, if you want to be weirdly, obtusely literal, the full hashtag slogan was #defundthepolice #investincommunities

Except that’s not what everyone says the meaning of “Defund the Police” is, is it? Some, like the city counsel of Minneapolis, defined it as eliminating the police department all together. CNN ran stories about towns who had “defunded” and dismantled their police departments, reconstituting them under a different name. Some, like AOC, talked about reinvesting in communities. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone demands specifically state the police department will be dissolved and their pensions rescinded. All of these ideas are being presented at the same time with the same “defunded” verbage, so it’s really not as cut and dry as you make it sound. If it were, there wouldn’t be so many politicians and media outlets having to go behind and explain. And honestly, yes, a movement should want to gather people to its side, and the best way to do that is to thoroughly explain your plan and what will happen after, so being able to explain what defining the police and nee services will specifically look like would be important towards that end.

A slogan should be short and cover a specific point, but if the point isn’t made clearly, it isn’t a good slogan. The Twitter hashtag is longer, but the greater majority of the country isn’t on Twitter, so a movement aiming for broader support has to aim for braoder appeal. If all people hear is the chant, then there will be confusion and room for interpretation, as it has happened. We agree to disagree if you like. I hope we would agree that the police are too militarized, with too much money spent on equipment that should not be necessary, so cuts to that end combined with serious reforms like descalation training, intervention alternatives to police/jail (especially for youth offenderss, mental health crises and drug addiction),and laws like the one being proposed to outlaw no-knock raids are necessary.

Reform the Police
Police the Police

There.

So… 

Who Watches the Watchmen?

It’s notable that the majority of Western media presents Internal Affairs as being bad guys, especially in light of how Western media habitually depicts cops (all of whom are varying degrees of corrupt) as being in the right unlesss explictly stated otherwise.