The third round of the presidential debates were hosted by ABC News and Univision (with Spanish translation) at Texas Southern University, an HBCU in the deep south. This was the first of the debates that all of the qualified candidates fit onto one stage and that would be held on one night. The qualifications that candidates had to meet in order to participate were amassing 130,000 individual donors and receiving 2 percent support in at least four qualifying polls. The candidates that made the cut were former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend (IN), former housing secretary Julián Castro, Senator Kamala Harris of California, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang (NY). I was sad to see so many diverse voices like Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard go, but I was happy to save an extra night.
Addressing the Racial Divide
The first question that was asked of candidates was in honor of the audience, Black millennials attending the HBCU that wanted to hear candidates speak directly to their concerns, How would candidates address our nation’s racial divide? The question was asked as if racism wasn’t an ingrained ingredient of the American pie, but O’Rourke’s response was surprisingly perfect. “Racism in this country is foundational…I’m going to follow Sheila Jackson Lee’s lead and sign into law a reparations bill that will allow us to address this at its foundation”. Sheila Jackson Lee is a U.S. Representative for Texas’s 18th congressional district that has been serving in Congress since 1995 advocating for Black American’s reparations, but I didn’t expect O’Rourke to be a leading advocate for reparations on the debate stage. He confidently took that opportunity and filled the void that Marianne Williamson, a presidential candidate was included in the first two debates, left. O’Rourke was not alone in providing solutions to mend the unique pains suffered by African Americans.
Along with this, Buttigieg emphasized a need for a systemic approach to dismantling systemic racism saying, “Its not enough to take a racist policy and replace it with a neutral one and expect things to just get better on their own, harms compound.” he went on to add that, “We know that the generational theft of the descendants of slaves is part of why everything from housing to education to health to employment, basically puts us in two different countries”. Many politicians, lawmakers and elected officials have been focused on identifying racist laws to repeal, but after decades of racist policies being in place, a simple repeal or replacement with neutral policies would never address the harms that have compounded over generations. In response to this nationwide dilemma, Buttigieg has introduced the Douglass Plan: A Comprehensive Investment in the Empowerment of Black America, named after the honorable Frederik Douglass in order to deal with the plethora of harms suffered by our community including the over incarceration of Black Americans, healthcare inequities, deficient school systems and environmental injustice. Buttigieg’s plan aims to invest in HBCUS, primary schools in communities of color and minority entrepreneurs among other transformative changes. Knowing that the destructive politics aimed at African Americans were intentional and strategic, the solutions for mitigating such practices must be as well.
Building New Systems, or Simply Adjusting Old Ones
The systems that we’ve developed in this country have obviously worked to the detriment of African Americans since America’s founding. We have become casualties of America’s war against the world to maintain economic power. We’ve suffered at the hands of our own ‘protectors’, continually murdered by police and corrections officers under a banner of ‘safety and security’ that fails to cover all citizens equally. In response to the hundreds of police murders of innocent Black civilians, Julian Castro was the first candidate to introduce a police reform plan. He noted this while giving name to some of the many who’ve lost their lives to police force including Tamar Rice, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland.
While this type of reform plan is critical for as long as we have a police force flooding our streets, these types of policy changes aren’t going to give us the transformation that we’re desperate for. I admired Booker’s courage in calling out a need for the government to address systemic racism stating, “We have a criminal justice system that is so racially biased that we have more African Americans under criminal supervision today than all the slaves in 1850”. He urged officials to not only call out that systematic racism exists, but to also have a systematic plan to do something about it. Buttigieg and Booker are the only candidates with such a plan. Booker’s plan proposes establishing a new office in the White House to address hate crimes and systemic racism in the areas of criminal justice reform, healthcare and environmental justice.
Any candidate unwilling to compete with such proposals should not get the Black vote. Some candidates have been steering away from taking clear stances on such issues, perhaps thinking that the Black vote was already guaranteed. We must prove that our vote isn’t dependent on one’s skin color or charisma, so I couldn’t help but applaud when Senator Harris was asked directly, “When you had the power, why didn’t you try to effect change then?” To this she responded with a list of her pioneering efforts in criminal justice reform including requiring that officers wear body cameras full time, getting non-violent drug offenders in job placement programs and requiring racial bias trainings for police officers. None of these reforms were radical, but they did have an impact. She noted that the pillars of her proposal emphasize ending mass incarceration, decriminalizing marijuana, ending for-profit prisons, holding officers accountable, de-carcerating women & children and ending solitary confinement. All of these stances are shared by many of the other candidates with which she shared the stage.
Avoiding Exclusive Remedies to the War on Drugs
While there is a unified understanding that the War on Drugs was actually a war on African Americans that put far too many people behind bars, there is no consensus on how or when we will get those masses of incarcerated victims of this war from behind bars. I was surprised that Biden was called upon to propose solutions. With no one calling him out for his role in inflating this war, I’m starting to believe that candidates were coached not to bring up his efforts spearheading the 94 Crime Bill that is responsible for the policies that aided in the era of mass incarceration.
Rather than calling Biden out on his role in creating the problem he was given center stage to speak on how to resolve the issue. He stated that he’s proposed a plan to release non-violent drug offenders from prison This is a plan that Booker has called, not aggressive enough. Biden responded saying, “Nobody should be in jail for a non-violent crime…Nobody should be in jail for a drug problem. We should be building more rehabilitation centers, not prisons”. Hearing his words almost made me choke, while they’re true I would have never expected them to come from him.
Rather than anyone seeing Biden as some transformed savior, we should view his seemingly radical change in views as a success of the incredible work prisoners have been doing to change the narrative surrounding punitive punishment and over-sentencing. Biden went on to add that “We have to change the whole way that we look at this. When we put people in prison, we have to equip them to get out…when you finish your return from prison, you should not only be able to vote, you should have access to pell grants, access to get housing”. For decades incarcerated activists have been fighting for access to pell grants, restored voting rights and the protection of the basic human rights. Now that those conservatives who’ve worked so hard to impede those rights have changed their tune it’s time that we hold them accountable. We cannot forget the role that politicians like Biden played that decimated millions of lives, but we should take advantage of his voice making a positive contribution to the conversation against punitive punishment and over-sentencing.
Like Biden, Klobuchar is another conservative, formerly a prosecutor for 8 years, whose changed her views on sentencing and reform. Klobuchar was said by the ACLU of Minnesota to have no interest in racial justice. She refuted this statement, emphasizing that as president there will be a Second Step to follow the First Step Act on Sentencing and Criminal Justice Reform. The First Step Act led to thousands of releases of prisoners from federal prisons, but she noted that sentences should be reduced for the 90% of individuals sentenced in state and local jails. However, she raised her finger to clarify that sentencing should be reduced for non-violent offenders specifically, saying, “Let’s reduce those sentences for nonviolent offenders, let’s get the jobs and let them vote when they get out of prison”. We cannot allow officials to create a divide between violent and nonviolent prison populations. It’s essential that we push back against such rhetoric demanding just and equal reforms for violent and nonviolent offenders alike. All those in prison are capable of change, should have access to rehabilitation programs and equal access to resources that would contribute to their growth and development as citizens of our democracy regardless of the type of their offense.
Final Thoughts
While Booker has had me on an emotional roller coaster throughout this race, I was proud of his responses throughout the night, he is certainly my round 3 winner. While it’s not an official endorsement, I applaud his pushing candidates to commit to using their power of clemency to restore the lives of tens of thousands of over-sentenced incarcerated citizens. He was bold and aggressive saying “Our criminal justice system is so savagely broken..so much of this comes down to privilege” and he went on to challenge candidates, “If 87 members of the US senate has come together and said that these sentences are way too long and we changed it, but we didn’t make it retroactive, we could literally point to the people who are in jail unjustly right now. Everyone on this stage should say that we are going to give clemency to these 17,000 people, every day that we wait is too long”.
Booker’s numbers of those who are unjustly incarcerated reflect that of those who were released under the Fist Step Act that did not effect those serving time in state and local facilities. Presidents have the power to pardon these individuals, but this power is vastly underutilized and doing so would take a specific and targeted effort. While clemency is a powerful tool, it is not the only one a president has and there are no excuses as to why these candidates aren’t all talking about ways to address the harms of historically racist politics, ending mass incarceration, and leveling the economic and political playing field for underserved classes. The world is watching and we refuse to settle.
