A quote from the Biden Trump debate. Which candidate said this, Trump or Biden?
"I put more – we put more police on the street than any administration has. He wants to cut the cops."
As a reminder, Biden is the candidate that needs more Black men to vote for him, or he is likely to lose the election.
As a reminder, Biden is the one that pushed for and passed the 80s crime bill.
As a reminder, Biden is the one that instructed cities to transfer ~$1B of Covid relief funds to police budgets.
Y'all are betting the future of the free world on Biden being able to say and do stuff like this, and then still get 95% of the votes of Black men? Seriously? That's the strategy?
Man, lemme go ahead and prepare for this next Trump term then, because that strategy is awful.
How did y'all ever think that would work?
I really hate this talking point.
I've posted on here many many times, that the one thing that Black people want the police to be able to do, and the one thing that they are awful at doing, is solving murders. Solving murders doesn't require *any* increase in police budget, and in fact, decreasing police budget helps. 🙂🙃
Because you can't solve murders in a community that (wisely) doesn't trust you, because you brutalize it without consequence.
Black folk want murders solved.
Imagine if your family member was murdered. I ask you, "Do you want the cops to come and investigate?" Of course you say yes.
So I have 5 cops show up and punch your wife in the mouth, knocking out her front teeth. You ask me, "what are you doing?!" I say, "Do you want the cops or not?" And then we leave.
The next week, the same murderer I didn't catch, kills again. Twice.
Now I ask you if you want more cops to help solve the murders.
If you say yes I hire 5 more teeth punchers
There are only 15 homicide detectives in Dallas, on a police force of 500. 15!
Most of the rest of those cops make the 15 homicide detectives' jobs almost impossible, because most of what they do by time and arrests, is abuse and over-police poor Black people. This makes very few Black people want to talk to the police.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109824317074546161
If you ask a person in Dallas if they want more help solving murders, they say yes.
They want more homicide detectives' and zero abuse.
Dallas PD has a budget of ~$500 MM, and has 3,000 officers and around 500 civilian workers. They only have ~15 homicide detectives. The other 2,985 officers do a lot of policing of "high crime" neighborhoods. Arresting lots of poor Black folk for drugs and other minor crimes.
I accurately predicted that Dallas's homicide rate would start to go down. Because they hired San Jose's police chief (Eddie Garcia) who understands more than most that cops can't police a community that doesn't trust it, and a community can't trust an adversarial police force that brutalizes it and preys on it for ticket and court fee revenue. The two things are fundamentally at odds.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/110152507573506129
This is where weirdos get confused and think that I'm pro-cop. I'm not.
Years ago I called that the Dallas violent crime rate would start to reduce. And it did.🔮🧙🏿♂️ I'm calling it now that violent crime in Chicago is also going to come down*. Just like I called that violent crime in Chicago would increase under the last mayoral administration (a Black mayor, I might add). Here's just one factor that resulted in *increasing* Chicago crime, and will now result in it *going down*. https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109785330115485502 Understand that the racism and the harm are *systemic*.
But it doesn't work.
Phrasing disingenuous survey questions doesn't change the fact that when a Black voter sees that we redirected Covid relief funds towards "tough on crime" SCORPION units that beat unarmed Black men to death, it makes them not want to vote for Biden.
It's fair for you to say that *you* don't know what makes people want to vote for someone.
But I do.
Which is why my election predictions are so often so accurate. 🔮🧙🏿♂️
It's not inscrutable. It's quite simple. Especially in this case.
The math does not work for Biden to win with under 80% of Black men voting for him, and with low turnout among Black voters. And Biden's actions are suppressing his own Black voter turnout, and destroying his chances with Black men voters.
If folks read carefully, I haven't said how I'm voting, or if I'm voting at all.
All I've done is what I always do every election: give highly unpopular (with white folk!), but highly accurate, info about how voters are going to behave.
With some cohorts I give *excruciatingly detailed* supporting info about why they feel the way they feel.
With others I don't give the why, because I don't know. But I give the outcome. Eg "More white women will vote for Trump than Biden."
@mekkaokereke I mean... sorta?
The challenge for anyone running for president as a Democrat (as you've laid out repeatedly) is that a lot of people in this country want a government & police force that abuses black/brown people.
Biden's got to thread the needle so that white suburban women are mollified without deterring many black voters.
Voters are going to do whatever they're going to do. No one can say for sure what the secret is to winning this election.
A lot of *white* people like a police force that brutalizes Black people. A lot of white Dem voters expect Black folk to vote for a candidate that does this to them.🤷🏿♂️
And you know what? They're right! Most Black people will go along with this, and vote for the Dem candidate! About 90% - 95% of Black women, and around 80% to 85% of Black men.
But that last 20% of Black men isn't going for it. They expect those white suburban dem women to do better, and be better informed about policing.
I don't tell people who they *must* vote for. That defeats the purpose of democracy.
In this election, I'm not even telling people who they *should* vote for. Do what you feel is right.
I'm telling y'all *why* so many Black people aren't voting for Biden, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Trump. Y'all can use this information to good advantage to win the election, or y'all can debate me about who I, personally, should vote for, or scold me for saying "listen to Black voters"
@ToweroftheArchmage @tillshadeisgone I love how centrists mock any solution that isn’t “vote harder”
“wHatS YoUr soLuTiOn tHeN?”
We’ve been saying the solutions for years. You don’t get to condescend now lol just because your voting echo chamber blocked us out
🤔Why do people keep saying that Black folk don't have a plan of action when it comes to police reform? It takes willful ignorance to act like you don't know what Black folk are saying about police reform.
If you pick any random post that I've made on Mastodon, there's like a one in five chance that you will land on a post about a successful criminal justice reform initiative, for detailed explanation of why war on drugs fails, stop and frisk fails, and broken windows fails
It's not complicated to say that Biden shouldn't make "More cops!" part of his platform if he hopes to get more than 80% of Black men voters. He shouldn't use the debate stage to brag about undermining the largest civil rights protest in US history.
It's not complicated to say that white Dem voters should say, "Telling cities to transfer Covid relief funds to police budgets was a trash move. Now we have more cops and still have ineffective HVAC in our schools."
pacquah
mekka okereke 
Escarpment
Tom Bellin 
Robert Burgholzer
ToweroftheArchmage Antifascist
the people's eva
sean, with words
Simulated Chollas 🍉 🥭 🌵