Episode 82: Defund (& Disarm) The Police

Across the Margin: The Podcast

In this latest episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast, host Michael Shields addresses the current conversation pulsating throughout the United States regarding defunding the police. Defunding the police means different things to different people, but this episode attempts to get to the heart of the matter while also, through an interview with writer and editor D.D. Guttenplan, exploring what a police department would like in an America disarmed. Guttenplan is Editor of The Nation, previously covering the 2016 U.S. presidential election as the magazine’s editor at large and, for two decades before that, was part of its London bureau. His most recent book, The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority (Seven Stories Press), which has just come out in paperback, is an extraordinarily intense and wide-ranging account of the recent fall and incipient rise of democracy in America. Recently, Guttenplan penned an article for The Nation entitled “It’s Time To Disarm The Police,” which becomes the focal point of the episode, wherein he condemns the use of unnecessary lethal force on unarmed civilians while probing the lengthy history between armed police and racism. Guttenplan, in his article and throughout this episode, lays out examples where unarmed policing controls crime and minimizes loss of life. Ultimately, this episode envisions a world where the resources and government officials of the people work for the people, and where countless lives are saved from reinventing the way in which society, and in this case, policing, works.

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