Dick Wolf, AOC, and "Woke 1"
The copaganda machine, enmeshed in both the news and entertainment industries, has convinced us that a world without cops, prosecutors, and prisons is unattainable and foolish.
Last week, on an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) mocked calls to abolish the police and prisons, saying “Woke 1 was crazy.”
“Woke 1” apparently refers to the Black Lives Matter rebellion in the summer of 2020. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, protests against police violence swept across the world in response to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by Police Officer Derek Chauvin, a white man.
“Defund the Police” became a rallying cry of the movement, along with calls to work towards a society without prisons or police. Activists questioned the unproven assumption that police make us safe, and demanded that we drain bloated police budgets and invest in proven crime prevention strategies like ensuring people have housing, education, healthcare, and food.
I can’t presume to know why Ocasio-Cortez made the remark she did—any more than I can explain why she lied at the Democratic National Convention when she said presidential candidate Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly for a ceasefire.”
But I can say that the copaganda machine, enmeshed in both the news and entertainment industries, has convinced all of us that a world without cops, prosecutors, and prisons is unattainable and foolish.
Copaganda disguises itself as serious journalism, feel-good news stories, gritty dramas, light-hearted sitcoms, romantic comedies, or wholesome kids’ shows. As the editors of In These Times wrote in 2022:
We won’t begrudge anyone the enjoyment of solving puzzles while watching Mare of Easttown or listening to the hosts of My Favorite Murder—whatever floats your boat. But it’s important to consider the sum effect this genre has on our collective view of reality — namely, that it warps it almost unrecognizably, framing everyday people as potential threats and police as the only real remedy.
Copaganda depicts a demonstrably false version of the legal system where law enforcement—cops and prosecutors—is a benevolent and necessary institution that protects the most vulnerable members of society. This version is mostly free of police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, racism, misogyny, and anti-queer and anti-trans discrimination. The audience can either view this as an accurate or partially accurate depiction (although it is neither), or they can view it as aspirational.
However, even in shows that valorize the police, like Law and Order, The Wire, and The Closer, ugly realities like corruption, police brutality, coercive interrogation tactics, and prosecutorial misconduct, are often integrated into storylines. But rather than offered for critique, these shows lionize the perpetrators (law enforcement), defend or legitimize their actions, or mock the victims. (Sitcoms and kids’ shows offer their fair share of copaganda too. I’ll never forgive The New Girl and Arthur writers for making Winston and D.W. cops, respectively.)
I suppose it’s only a matter of time until Wolf gives us Law and Order: ICE. Because the same system that killed Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, George Floyd, and Sandra Bland is the same system that killed Parady La, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Geraldo Lunas Campos, and Heber Sánchez Domínguez.
Law and Order is the juggernaut of copaganda. Its creator, Dick Wolf, has made it clear that his show is not about exposing or condemning police and prosecutors. In a 2003 interview he boasted about his access to the NYPD, saying “our aim is very close to theirs” and that his shows “are probably the best recruiting poster that you could have for being a New York City cop.”
“We’re not there to do Abner Louima,” he continued, referring to the man who was tortured and raped by NYPD officers in 1997. “That’s not what our focus is, and our focus, not being that, means that we do have good relationships, and we should.”
I suppose it’s only a matter of time until Wolf gives us Law and Order: ICE. Because the same system that killed Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, George Floyd, and Sandra Bland is the same system that killed Parady La, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Geraldo Lunas Campos, and Heber Sánchez Domínguez.
Copaganda has and continues to provide the cultural framework necessary for the U.S. legal system to persist and thrive. It limits our ability, and our elected officials’ ability, to even imagine a system, as Angela Davis said, “where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor.
Copaganda tells us that the U.S. punishment system keeps us safe. It tells us it is necessary. It tells us another world is impossible.
But,
as we know all too well,
cops lie.