Why I’m voting for Biden: Black lives matter

August 26, 2020

I’m voting for Joe Biden this fall because Black lives matter, and I believe that Joe Biden will help us be better and do better as a nation as we try to become more just.

This morning, I watched the video of a 17-year-old Trump supporter with an assault rifle shoot and kill innocent protesters in Kenosha. The toxic culture of the right created this killer. The inflammatory rhetoric of the right created this killer. Right wing media outlets and social media silos that amplify hate and divisiveness created this killer. America’s obsession with guns created this killer. Memes that joke about driving or plowing through protesters and the people who spread them on social media created this killer.

And all we hear from Republicans speakers at the convention are scare tactics about how the Democrats want to defund the police –– eleven different Republic speakers in the first two days of the convention made this claim, including the President’s son’s girlfriend in her cage match with the microphone.

Let’s address this elephant in the room. Wanting justice and police reform are not the same as wanting the police defunded. But that’s how Republican rhetoric works –– everything is either/or. If you question police tactics that led to an unarmed Black man being shot in the back seven times while his children are in the car, you’re anti-police. The Republicans take the most extreme position of their opposition and pretend that it’s what all Democrats want. The phrase “defund the police” plays well to their base, so lacking any real ideas or courage or leadership, they simply repeat it ad nauseam.