This is true, but also incomplete.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm a socialist activist in Oakland (home of the original Black Panters!), and I gotta tell you, this is where the rubber really meets the road.

First, Oakland knows what's up. This is a very politically aware town, with some moderate but genuine leftists in government. We do a lot of community uplift here.

Second, Oakland has very few police. We didn't "defund the police" so much as "mismanage our budget", but we have very few cops relative to the size of our city.

Third: our poorest neighborhoods are suffering TERRIBLY from violent crime and property crime. The city is still nice, but the same areas in which a lot of poor, non-white folks can tell you stories about bad interactions with cops will be the first to tell you that alleviating poverty is important, but they need help NOW. They need someone to call when bullets start flying.

Frankly, I think OP -- and the Panthers! -- have it dead fucking right! We DO need folks on the street ready to step up. We need services, we need parks, we need gun control... we need a lot of alternatives to policing. But we also need direct timely response teams to problems happening NOW. And my fellow lefties should start chewing on that idea, especially as the fascist state begins sending the secret police to bag-and-tag your fuckin' neighbor!

I don't like it. But that's where we're at.