Are Police Unions Hurting the Labor Movement?

I’ve been infuriated and disgusted by the reaction of police unions to the ‪#‎blacklivesmatter‬ movement for awhile now (first the NYPD union, now the Portland Police Association, almost certainly others). But it hadn’t even occurred to me until a few hours ago how much harm that reaction does to the labor movement as a whole — in particular public labor, who’ve been under such intense attack in recent years.

When conservatives, corporatists, et. al attack unions, they tend to paint the movement as thugs who care more about protecting tiny fractions of their membership than promoting the public interest. Having worked with many labor unions in a wide variety of capacities, I’ve never found that to be true. Quite the opposite. Unions tend to care about working people as a whole — going so far as to spend their hard-earned dues to support causes they gain nothing from (justice for immigrants, legal protections for low-wage workers, etc). Labor unions & leaders are some of the most giving, empathetic, and selfless people I know. Except for police unions.

Police unions have long kicked up childish shitstorms over minor reforms to how they do their job, even when those reforms will effect a TINY minority of officers while *literally saving lives*. This new round of craven, hysterical statements belongs to a long history of such behavior. But only now does it coincide with a full-frontal assault on public labor and collective bargaining, from coast to coast.

Police are protected by the same hard-fought legal standards that safeguard many workers. But only police unions flaunt those protections with adolescent abandon.

Can you imagine ANY other union denouncing the types of activism on the part of oppressed people that *created* these protections? ONLY police unions criticize low-income activists and organizers of color. ONLY police unions describe organizing for change as murderous.

Social-justice-minded people are some of the only true allies the labor movement has left. The behavior of people like Patrick Lynch and Daryl Turner threaten to dissolve all of that goodwill.

Given how little care police unions seem to have for their effect on their brothers and sisters in other labor unions, I’m a little surprised their isn’t more outrage from the ranks of my beloved friends and family in labor.