By BRIAN CRAWFORD
Kamala Harris is officially the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. For the next couple of months, a flurry of rationalizations will be used to convince voters to support her. The seasonal “lesser evilism” will be paired with the threat of the Heritage Foundation’s right-wing “Project 2025” program. The party will assert that all that stands between democracy and Trump as an American Mussolini are Kamala Harris and the Democrats. Many succumb to such arguments because they believe they have no choice.
But any illusions regarding the Democratic Party go up in smoke when examining the history. In 2020 tens of millions marched for an entire summer after viewing the video of a Minneapolis police officer murdering George Floyd. Floyd’s death was the catalyst for a movement primarily focused on police brutality and criminal justice but also, at its roots, an attempt to address the material conditions of African Americans. Floyd’s death is one in a continuing story of Black people’s deadly encounters with law enforcement. Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner are three among a multitude of victims; their tales reflect back throughout the history of the United States.
The momentum of that summer was not sustained. It was consumed by electioneering and the illusions in a progressive turn by the Democrats. Disappointment soon followed. Many within the movement supported Biden. This was a defensive vote, however, cast with the specter of another four years of Trump as the alternative.
Biden in his essence is a conservative Democrat who needed to appeal to the progressive base of the party for his last chance at the presidency. Both the president and current vice president are committed to investment in the ever-increasing militarization of law enforcement.
For Harris the first step up the political ladder was as San Francisco district attorney, defeating the more progressive Terrence Hallinan by shifting slightly to the political right of her opponent. After assuming office, Harris announced she would not pursue the death penalty. This was consistent with her image as a “progressive prosecutor,” but there was little political risk involved. Even the head of the police union understood that the political climate in San Francisco would not support the death penalty.
The “progressive prosecutor” is a contradiction in terms. The prerogatives of the state are the primary concern for a prosecutor no matter how “progressive” they might be portrayed. Harris was as aggressive as any in defending the system and funneling more people into overcrowded jails and prisons. As California’s attorney general, she fought a U.S. Supreme Court order to address overcrowding in the state’s prisons by releasing some low-risk and non-violent prisoners. At one point the system was packed to 200% of capacity.
Harris and Biden’s hard positions on criminal justice are emblematic of the Democratic Party of the last 40 years. Democrats strategically shifted rightward after defeats to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. As a result, the working class, and especially Black people, became appendages to the party—only to be acknowledged during campaign season. The new target constituency became the white suburbanites who had fled the cities as the African American population increased.
Crime prevention and longer sentences were part of a reactionary legislative trend. Bill Clinton, the “New Democrat,” preached law and order to appeal to this new constituency, and “personal responsibility” replaced the “New Deal,” “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Clinton promised 100,000 more police and increased the number of capital crimes. His now infamous crime bill was supported by then Senator Joe Biden.
During the 1990s, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to ship surplus military hardware to local law enforcement. Under the 1033 program, police departments around the country have access to the same weapons used by U.S. forces in combat zones. The Black liberation movement has demanded the end of the 1033 program, but the arms flow continues under Biden, while police budgets still increase.
Moreover, cities around the country are developing “public safety training facilities” (“Cop Cities”), whose purpose is social control and engagement in urban warfare. These training centers are erected in or near neighborhoods that are historically deprived, disinvested, and left to decay. These facilities and their forces stand ready when the communities rebel against their conditions.
The Democratic Party platform of 2020 included references to police brutality, criminal justice reform, and funding communities. It also called for an end to mass incarceration and the end of the death penalty. Now four years have passed and the Democrats no longer feel obliged to address these demands. They want to reclaim the mantle of the party of law and order. The 2024 platform places emphasis on policing.
The Democrats and their party’s nominee state clearly: “We need to fund the police, not defund the police.” References to police brutality and ending mass incarceration are absent. The United States has nearly two and half million people in prison, many of whom languish on death row. While the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and the practice is considered inhumane and inconsistent with a civilized society, the United States has not abolished capital punishment. The absence of the death penalty issue from the Democratic Party platform for the first time in 20 years indicates it is not a priority in this election year.
If the Democratic Party is the “party of the people,” then the people are in a crisis. Leap years bring us presidential elections, and each time, the Democrats ask the electorate to take a leap of faith to punch a ballot for them and receive little in return. Democrats hope that fear of the GOP will be a compelling reason to overlook their deceit and betrayals.
In 1964 the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party attempted to be seated in that state’s delegation to the Democratic Party convention. Rather than seating the Black members of MFDP, Democrats sought a compromise with the segregationist Mississippi delegation and offered two at-large seats. MFDP activists, including Fannie Lou Hamer, left the convention and the party. For the Black liberation struggle to succeed, it must emulate this historical example. It would be a first step in political independence.
