Each of the Democratic campaigns posts a racial justice agenda on their campaign website. Both address policing and incarceration issues and the War on Drugs. Both say Black Lives Matter. But these platforms differ significantly when we start to drill down to the particulars.
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Difference No. 2 — Over-incarceration. Hillary wants to tinker with the problem. “Hillary believes we should move away from contracting out this core responsibility of the federal government to private corporations, and from creating private industry incentives that may contribute—or have the appearance of contributing—to over-incarceration.” Bernie wants to end the problem. “We need to ban prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain in order to keep prison beds full.” Bernie is concerned with all the private prisons, not just the handful contracted with the Department of Justice that Hillary wants to “move away” from. He wants to move against private prisons, not away from them.
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Difference No. 3 — Marijuana. Hillary recognizes that, “significant racial disparities exist in marijuana enforcement, with black men significantly more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than their white counterparts, even though usage rates are similar.” So, she want’s to tinker with the problem. She will allow states to govern themselves with regard to marijuana, so long as they meet her, federal standards. She will also remove marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II, where it remains illegal but can be used for research. Bernie wants to end the problem. “We need to turn back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminate mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people. We need to take marijuana off the federal government’s list of outlawed drugs.
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Difference No. 4 — Policing. Hillary believes in constitutional and just policing. She says, “Effective policing and constitutional policing go hand-in-hand—we can and must do both. Hillary will work to promote effective, accountable, constitutional policing . . . “ So, she wants to tinker with the problem. She will strengthen the Justice Department to investigate practices that disproportionately effect minorities even if not intended to to so, so-called pattern and practice cases. She will improve federal support for police training. She will “support” legislation to end racial profiling. She’ll work to broaden use of police body cameras. Bernie takes on this problem much more directly and comprehensively.
- We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.
- We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.
- We must create a police culture that allows for good officers to report the actions of bad officers without fear of retaliation and allows for a department to follow through on such reports.
- We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities, including in the training academies and leadership.
- At the federal level, we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from civil rights organizations we will reinvent how we police America.
- We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.
- We need to require police departments and states to collect data on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody and make that data public.
- We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.
- States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.
- We need to make sure federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.
There are probably other significant differences that I leave others to ferret out of the two websites. I encourage anyone to refer directly to the them at the top of the page. Every italicized word in my story is a direct quote from one of those pages and (with but a wee bit of editorializing) everything else, about the candidates’ positions is intended as a fair inference from additional information in those links.
These candidate differences are real. Everyone will draw their own conclusion regarding their meaning. People are finally beginning to question Hillary Clinton’s right or ability to rely upon the unquestioning support of communities of color. She had best hope that people of color don’t compare her ambitions, ideas and intentions for racial justice on her website to those on Bernie’s website.