Think you’re supporting the LGBTQ community by supporting Mayor Pete? You’re not.
Part II: A close look at racial justice & criminal punishment
No one is free until we are all free!
Pete Buttigieg will not set us free.
By Reed Miller and Dominique Morgan, with Harper Bishop, Bennett Collins,and Taams Tidwell of Queers Not Here for Mayor Pete
Add your name to the list of LGBTQ people against President Pete.
It is no secret that queer and trans people of color face additional layers of oppression compared to white folks. We also know that the liberation of any member of our LGBTQ community is bound up in the liberation of our entire community.
White LGBTQ folks, including presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, need to act in solidarity with movements led by Black, brown, immigrant, refugee, and indigenous communities. Buttigieg’s track record indicates he will not, and for that reason among others, he is not the best candidate to uplift our diverse LGBTQ community.
In order to lead America into the future, a presidential candidate must be able to tackle white supremacy head-on and ambitiously implement racial justice initiatives. If you have only recently begun to follow Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, then you may have missed several key moments this past year which demonstrated that his capacity to do so is severely lacking. Some of them are uncomfortable campaign missteps, while others indicate severe policy failures. We’ve summarized many of them here to make it abundantly clear.
We’re certainly not the first to raise these points, but they deserve repeating. For example, Rich Benjamin laid out how he, as a Black gay man, “fell for Pete Buttigieg at first. But he keeps screwing things up with black voters”. George Johnson argues that “Homophobia Isn’t the Reason Black Voters Don’t Like Pete Buttigieg”. Gabrielle Gurley made a compelling case that “African Americans Already Know Pete Buttigieg Very Well: He’s shown that he doesn’t understand the daily realities of being black in America.” Laura Barrón-López and Elena Schneider describe why “Buttigieg has a serious Latino problem, too” due to limited engaged with the Latino community, including gay leaders.
Some of the Pete for America campaign’s racial justice missteps
Does Buttigieg understand the Black lived experience because he has faced oppression as a white gay man?
Jonathan Capehart, a Black gay man, defended Buttigieg’s statement that:
“While I do not have the experience of ever having been discriminated against because of the color of my skin, I do have the experience of sometimes feeling like a stranger in my own country, turning on the news and seeing my own rights come up for debate.”
But Aisha Moodie-Mills made a tweet related to her appearance on CNN that:
And Max S. Gordon wrote in a deeply personal essay for Level by Medium that:
“Being gay doesn’t automatically translate for these men into a deeper understanding of racism or sexism. And it doesn’t automatically diminish their allegiance to Whiteness.”
The Pete for America campaign has had a consistent problem recruiting support from Black voters.
Politico observed in May 2019 that Buttigieg awkwardly asked his “overwhelmingly white” audience in a multi-racial South Carolina city to discuss the campaign with “people who perhaps do not look like you”. Recent polls have confirmed he is still at “literally zero support” among Black voters in that state. This month, Huff Post reported a similar problem gaining delegates in Illinois.
A controversy arose as to whether his sexuality as an out gay man was the cause of low support among Black southerners. In October 2019, Out described the controversy around a series of focus groups with Black voters hosted by the campaign, and the implication in a report that his sexuality may have been a barrier. Soon after, George Johnson powerfully stated in the Advocate:
“The attempts to even quantify homophobia in Black versus white communities push this narrative of Blacks being generally homophobic and transphobic. In fact, research has shown that resistance to LGBTQ rights from the Black community has decreased.
But even so, does the Black community deal with major issues around homophobia and transphobia? Yes. Does every other community deal with these same issues, possibly even more so, around homophobia and transphobia? Yes!
However, is it for white folks to call out said homophobia in the Black community as a guise to ignore the anti-Blackness of the Mayor Pete campaign? Hell no. Because Black queer folx do a damn good job handling the conversation without the need of white queer people to punch down on our community while not holding their own communities accountable.”
Racial justice policy merely political strategy.
Further, Buttigieg’s statement to NPR in July 2019 reinforces that his discourse around racial justice is rooted in political strategy, not authentic passion for change. Without that core value system as a guide, his racial justice policies could shift with the political preferences of the moment.
“If you’re a white candidate, it is twice as important for you to be talking about racial inequity and not just describing the problem — which is fashionable in politics — but actually talking about what we’re going to do about it and describing the outcomes we’re trying to solve for.”
Police and prisons are LGBTQ issues. Buttigieg won’t solve them.
The horrors of the American criminal punishment system, which includes everything from policing and courts to detention and mass incarceration, cause innumerable harms across marginalized communities. For instance, a recent study on the 25 largest police departments showed dismal performance around respecting trans and non-binary people.
LGBTQ people of color especially continue to suffer under excessive, targeted police and prison violence all around the country. 4% of LGBT people of color had been physically assaulted and 5% had been sexually assaulted by police they’d interacted with in the past five years, according to Lamda Legal. Rates of assault by police against transgender women of color specifically are even higher, as found in the U.S. Transgender Survey. This group of women also experience higher rates of incarceration (see figure above). While incarcerated, they suffer endless harassment and abuse, according to a survey by Black and Pink. The future president must make drastic changes.
Black and Pink is the largest organization in solidarity with LGBTQIA2S+ people/people living with HIV/AIDS affected by the criminal punishment system. Headquartered in Omaha, which is across the border from Iowa where presidential candidates are camped out, Executive Director Dominique Morgan (an author of this esssay) reported that Buttigieg’s campaign is the only democratic primary campaign which did not reach out.
Buttigieg’s weak record on the criminal punishment system
Many admirers of Buttigieg’s campaign compliment his articulate manner of speaking. Statistics, however, uncover that in South Bend, his administration is not always walking the articulate talk. For instance, The Intercept reported that at a campaign event in July 2019, he shared statistics showing the racism inherent in disproportionate marijuana arrests of Black people. However, they found that:
“A black South Bend resident, under the Buttigieg administration, was 4.3 times more likely to be arrested for possessing marijuana between 2012 and 2018 than a white resident, according to data collected by the federal government”, which is higher than the Indiana and national average!
The Pete for America Issues page lists under Racial Justice “Redress inequality in our criminal justice system” and “Dismantle the prison-industrial complex to end the crisis of mass incarceration”. Based on his track record which we will explain below, these lofty talking points seem far above what he is capable of, or committed to, achieving.
Early in his presidential campaign, Buttigieg struggled to explain his “All Lives Matter” statement from mid-2015. Its use demonstrated that he was (at best) out of touch with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many right-wing people say “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” to signal support for ‘trigger-happy’ police officers over Black peoples’ humanity. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” was trending since the acquittal of George Zimmerman for Trayvon Martin’s murder in mid-2013, and grew during the riots in response to Michael Brown’s murder in mid-2014.
During an April 2019 CNN town hall, Buttigieg was the only candidate to firmly reject the proposal that incarcerated people be allowed to vote, as they are in Vermont and Maine. He told Anderson Cooper that:
“Part of the punishment when you are convicted of a crime and you’re incarcerated is you lose certain rights. You lose your freedom. And I think during that period it does not make sense to have an exception for the right to vote.”
Considering that people of color are disproportionately incarcerated, such a stance means that the roughly 800,000 Black and Latino people in prisons would continue to lose their political voice.
On June 16th 2019, Eric Logan, a Black man, was shot and killed by a white police officer in South Bend. Logan’s family’s actual worst nightmare was described by the Washington Post as a campaign nightmare for Buttigieg:
“How’s he handling it?” said Oliver Davis, the longest-serving Black member of the South Bend Common Council. “Well, he talked to the media before the family. He skipped the family vigil, full of Black residents. And then he then gave a speech to the police. So, how do you think that went over?”
Buttigieg did have have a call with the national Black Lives Matter organizers in July, but CNBC reported that it went poorly:
“He seemed to have already taken a side. It did seem that he was prioritizing who he thought was important, and it didn’t seem to be Black people,” said Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter who participated in a July call between the mayor and activists.”
Logan’s murder was preventable, and as CBS News demonstrates, is only the most recent in a series of policy brutality incidents under Buttigieg’s leadership. Oliver Davis told Politico:
“Buttigieg was missing in action during his failed 2010 run for state treasurer, when Davis and other local leaders were fighting for LGBT rights. And Davis said he has tried to give Buttigieg advice — to no avail — on issues ranging from body cameras for the police department to improving minority contracting to not holding an event on a Sunday at noon because many residents, particularly African Americans, are still in church at that time.”
The local chapter of Black Lives Matter called for Buttigieg to step down as mayor in August 2019.
The Desperate-for-Black-Voters Douglass Plan
Buttigieg announced a proposed Douglass Plan in June 2019 in an Op-Ed for a Charleston, SC publication (likely because numerous outlets have observed that he is not attracting any Black voters in SC, which is a key primary state). Named after storied abolitionist orator and former slave Frederick Douglass, it was initially a meager attempt to address the massive racial wealth gap through access to credit for Black-owned businesses and slightly more federal contracts for minority-owned businesses.
The current Douglass Plan has since expanded and become more comprehensive as Buttigieg began to slowly develop policy proposals over the year. But it doesn’t help that three prominent Black leaders in South Carolina listed as supporters of his Douglass Plan did not consent to being listed! Rev. Ivory Thigpen told the Intercept: said “he thought rolling out the big list of supporters was intended to show broad support in the black community, despite the reality.” Johnnie Cordero, chair of the state party’s Black Caucus, was careful not to “go after” Buttigieg, but said of the Douglass Plan:
“It’s presumptuous to think you can come up with a plan for Black America without hearing from Black folk. There’s nothing in there that said Black folk had anything to do with the drafting of that plan.”
Wishy-Washy on Reparations
A United Nations-affiliated group has concluded that the United States owes African Americans reparations for centuries of ‘racial terrorism’. After the Civil War, “forty acres and a mule” was pledged to each emancipated slave as reparations for slavery, but President Andrew Johnson returned the land to plantation owners. Slave owners were compensated $300 per freed slave.
The value of those resources promised to freed slaves would be worth over $6.4 trillion today.
The Movement for Black Lives, which includes the southern LGBTQ organization SONG and the Black Lives Matter Network, elaborates a five-part plan for reparations: full and free access the education, guaranteed livable income, corporate and government reparations, mandated school curriculums, and federal and state legislation to recognize and address the lasting impacts of slavery including the passage of H.R. 40 to create a commission develop reparations proposals. On Juneteenth 2019, the House of Representatives held a historic hearing on reparations, giving H.R. 40 momentum.
While Buttigieg’s Issues page lists formation of a commission among “Other Critical Policy Areas” in his racial justice platform, his overall stance on reparations is weak. In an interview with Esquire, he said of reparations:
“I’ve never seen a specific, workable proposal. But what I do think is convincing is the idea that we have to be intentional about addressing or reversing harms and inequities that didn’t just happen on their own. The cleanest way I can think of to do it are through policies..I’ve just not seen a cash transfer mechanism that’s been laid out that you can envision working that most people would think is fair.”
We cannot go back in time. The era of enslavement and decades of racial terror afterwards cannot be undone. Slavery was never “fair”, even though “most people” at the time thought it was. Now, “fair” is at a bare minimum paying what is owed, with interest. What Buttigieg doesn’t seem to understand is that “most people” don’t get to decide what is fair in this case.
Buttigieg is a Harvard-educated, Rhodes Scholar who has benefited immensely from a system built on stolen land and labor! (Cecil Rhodes, who founded the scholarship, was a prominent white supremacist, and there is a global movement to remove his statues.) If we as LGBTQ folks and allies come together and push against his campaign for presidency, neither will someone like him.
Fellow LGBTQ folks, add your name.
We are calling on our fellow LGBTQ folks to add your name to a growing list of people who do not think that Mayor Pete is the best candidate to support the LGBTQ community into the future.
Add your name to the list here.
View the list of signers here.
Upcoming Articles in our 5-Part Series
In the new year, we will be releasing a series of essays going in depth on four key issues we’ve identified. Performance and vision on each of these demonstrate that Mayor Pete is not capable of being the leader we need him to be. Follow us to read the next piece, which will be linked below!
Ideas? Questions? Media? Contact: queersnothereformayorpete@gmail.com
Part 1: Introduction (12/19/2019)
The foreparents of LGBTQ liberation set the bar high and a Buttigieg presidency doesn’t even come close.
Part 3: Weak healthcare policies
What is “Medicare For All Who Want It”, besides a policy framed by a caveat?
Buttigieg envisions a marketplace of private insurers disrupted by a government sponsored public option. He argues that the competition between private insurance and the public option will be so fierce that not only will overall health care costs decline but it will all usher in Medicare For All. But can we trust the candidate with the most funding from the health care sector to deliver and actually let the private sector collapse? What will stop private insurance from “cherry picking” from the healthiest pools of subscribers at the expense of the tax-payer sponsored public option? Our disabled, unemployed, chronically ill, trans, poor, HIV positive LGBTQ family cannot wait for market solutions to win out. We need change now. Health care is a right.
Part 4: Commodifying housing & exacerbating inequality
Housing is a human right, not a commodity for corporations to cash in on. The mass demolition of houses in Black and Latinx neighborhoods in South Bend, Indiana under Pete Buttigieg’s leadership, has continued to exacerbate inequality and reinforce systems of oppression. Given Mayor Pete’s blind faith in American capitalism as “one of the most productive forces known to man”, it comes as no surprise that his market-based approach to housing will continue to benefit those in the real estate industry and those at the top, including himself, and not everyday people.
Part 5: Another hawkish American exceptionalist
Mayor Pete claims to be a foreign policy guru but at the end of the day, he’s just another American exceptionalist with an increasingly hawkish foreign policy. In the legacy of American diplomacy, it’s nothing special and as history tells us, global inequity would only get worse under a Buttigieg Doctrine. Mayor Pete is already looking to up the defense budget when the US already spends hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain a global military presence. He has already begun framing climate change through the lens of a need for increased security when we need to think how nationalism and militarism are failing in the response to the global crisis. What’s more, climate change is one of the foremost drivers of global inequalities, and yet Mayor Pete has yet to show how his foreign policy will address the devastation being unleashed on lower emitting and consuming communities and countries. For Mayor Pete, as per usual in the legacy of American foreign policy, capitalist interests come first.
