babywasu critique on clementinemorrigan

Image 1:
instagram story repost of @clementinemorrigan post, in text highlighted in blue on a pink background it reads: FUCK THE POLICE MEANS WE DON’T ACT LIKE COPS TO EACH OTHER

Commentary by @babywasu as follows: in actuality, “acting like cops” is about silence, not callouts. the entire foundation of police culture is the blue line of SILENCE, not the blue line of messy public communications: it is about REFUSING to be accountable. that’s why we say it’s no such thing as a “bad apple”: the entirety of policing apparatus (the barrel) is ruined by the one rotten apple, the mandate of policing, as well as every single individual who maintains it.

Image 2:
instagram story repost of @clementinemorrigan post, white text on black background, which reads: Part of what makes cancel culture abusive is that it is inescapable. Cancel campaigns work to infiltrate all aspects of a persons’ life. The harassment is incessant and unending.

Commentary by @babywasu: i would simply like us to transcend this political reality in which white people are allowed to be experts on policing and/or accountability, and weirdly - and almost always self-servingly - malign people’s often messy attempts at public accountability with harassment in pithy digital polemics. 65k followers and a text graphic is no substitute for reading some actually politically engaged books about transformative justice and recognizing that white people have almost nothing useful to teach us about anti-fascist socialites.


Image 3:
two images. one of a group of police saluting with text reading: The Blue Code of Silence is an unwritten rule among police officers in the United States not to report on another colleague’s errors, misconducts, or crimes.
second of a black police badge silhouette containing text: THE BLUE CODE OF SILENCE also known as [1] The Blue Shield or [2] the Blue Wall is the idea of an unwritten rule that exists among police officers not to report on a colleague’s errors, misconducts, or crimes. If questioned about an incident of misconduct involving another officer (e.g. during the course of an official inquiry), while following the code, the officer being questioned would claim ignorance of another officer’s wrongdoing.

commentary by @babywasu: subcultures and communities and organizing spaces where certain groups + individuals - particular people who’ve amassed social capital, are monied, etc. - are able to behave with impunity…The “Blue Code of Silence.” That’s not… …that is actually, LITERALLY, how the police operate. that complicit silence that permits ongoing harm and refuses to hold people to (too often, unfortunately, punitive) account for their behavior is being a cop (though police are empowered by and mandated to protect the state, rather than individuals).

Image 4:
insta story repost of @clementinemorrigan white text on black reading: White people are not and have never been the only ones opposing cancel culture.

commentary by @babywasu: one last thing, this is weird and racist. just make your point/critique and go. most of the non-white critiques i’ve seen of what’s described as cancel culture has been how “cancellations” disproportionately affect non-white, trans, poor, dark skinned, fat, sex worker, and other people who generally lack the kind of proximity to power to cultivate social protections. it’s the difference between, for example, kanye west vs. azealia banks - which of the two was really cleared out the public eye?
they’re critiques of DISPOSABILITY.