It did not take long for defunding the police to become a rallying cry on the left.
But this new rallying cry immediately blew up in the Democrats’ faces.
And that’s because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted one awful reality about defunding the police.
Few were surprised when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took up the cause of defunding the police.
It was Ocasio-Cortez that injected defunding ICE into the Democrat Party mainstream in 2018.
In a lengthy thread on social media, Ocasio-Cortez tried to explain why Democrats should support defunding the police.
“’Defund’ means that Black & Brown communities are asking for the same budget priorities that White communities have already created for themselves: schooling > police,etc. People asked in other ways, but were always told “No, how do you pay for it?” So they found the line item,” Ocasio-Cortez began.
Ocasio-Cortez reacted to pundits and other Democrats slamming the idea of defunding the police after polls showed just 16 percent of Americans supported disbanding their police force.
The New York Congresswoman explained that it was not the job of activists to educate the public on the merits of the policy they supported.
Instead, Ocasio-Cortez stated it was the job of activists to mobilize supporters to pressure politicians to adopt their preferred solutions.
“Lots of DC insiders are criticizing frontline activists over political feasibility and saying they need a new slogan. But poll-tested slogans and electoral feasibility is not the activists’ job. Their job is to organize support and transform public opinion, which they are doing,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
“Our job as policymakers is to take the public’s mandate and find + create pockets to advance as much progress as possible. Progress takes a team of different roles. You don’t criticize a pitcher for not being a catcher. We can respond in ways that don’t undercut impt work,” the New York Congresswoman exclaimed.
But then Ocasio-Cortez flew off the rails.
And like so many of her controversies, this one involved race.
Ocasio-Cortez closed her Twitter rant about defunding the police by claiming activists did “repackage” their proposal to appeal to rich white people.
“And by the way, the fact that ppl are scrambling to repackage this whole conversation to make it palatable for largely affluent, white suburban ‘swing’ voters again points to how much more electoral & structural power these communities have relative to others,” Ocasio-Cortez ranted.
But 65 percent of Americans oppose defunding the police.
That includes significant numbers of black Americans and other racial minorities.
This result should not be surprising.
Black business owners were the biggest victims of the wave of anti-police riots, which looted and burned down black-owned businesses.
These black business owners understand that law enforcement is necessary to keep order.
One reason Bernie Sanders did not win the Democrat Party nomination for president is because black voters rejected his brand of socialism as unelectable.
Minority voters are often the most conservative faction of the Democrat Party.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s racist and ignorant screed about defunding the police proves she missed this lesson.
Black Eye Politics will keep you up to date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
