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John,
With a last-minute poll out this morning, it’s official: Mike Bloomberg just qualified for the Democratic debate tomorrow night in Las Vegas.
Mike Bloomberg is the 9th richest person in the United States. He has already spent nearly half a BILLION dollars on this campaign.
And that spending has allowed him to run away from ANY serious scrutiny of his horrific record of cruelty and harm towards Black and Brown communities and working people while he was mayor of NYC.
This needs to end now. Tomorrow night, Mike Bloomberg will face his Democratic primary opponents for the first time in a nationally televised debate. He needs to answer our questions.
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Let's look at Mike Bloomberg's record as mayor of the city of New York.
Under Stop-and-Frisk, more than 685,000 primarily Black and Brown youth were targeted and searched, terrorizing an entire generation for simply walking outside and existing. Bloomberg defended that policy for years, claiming that “we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.”1
During Occupy Wall Street, his police force attacked and evicted folks from Zuccotti Park in the dead of night with pepper spray and police brutality defying a court order, and then arrested reporters who tried to report on it.2
Bloomberg’s police department instituted an unprecedented surveillance program of Muslims that targeted people based on their ancestry, as they cracked down on protests against the Iraq War, and as they arrested thousands of people violating their First Amendment rights.3
He praised prosecutors and the NYPD for their handling of the Central Park Five case and fought for years to deny them a settlement for being wrongfully imprisoned and charged with a heinous crime they did not commit.4
He attacked union members pensions and benefits, froze teacher pay, ransacked funds for special education to create more charter schools, failed to negotiate contracts with 152 city workers, and engaged in union busting tactics.5
And he endorsed George W. Bush at the Republican National Convention,6 spending millions to elect Republicans at every level of government, and changed the law to extend term limits for Mayor in New York City, just so he could stay in power.7
We need to make sure that voters know about Bloomberg’s horrific record. Not only how he targeted Black and Brown communities, but how he was an abject failure as a mayor who harmed working families, the consequences of which working people are still dealing with in NYC to this very day. And we need to make sure ALL of the candidates on stage tomorrow night are forced to answer tough questions about their records on racial justice and inequality.
If you agree, then please add your name to our petition right now and call on MSNBC’s debate moderators to make sure these questions get asked at tomorrow night’s debate.
Then share the petition far and wide on social media.
In solidarity,
Working Families Party
Sources:
1. "Bloomberg: We disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little' in stop-frisk checks," New York Post, June 28, 2013.
2. "Michael Bloomberg addresses his prior support for city's handling of Central Park Five case," CBS News, December 30, 2019.
3. "Bloomberg's disgraceful eviction of Occupy Wall Street," Washington Post, November 15, 2011.
4. "Bloomberg Apologized for Stop-and-Frisk. Why Won't He Say Sorry to Muslims for Spying on Them?," The Intercept, February 17, 2020.
5. "Mayor Pledges Tough Stance on Unions," Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2011.
6. “Bloomberg supports George W. Bush,” C-SPAN, January 28, 2020.
7. “Bloomberg Wins Battle To Extend Term Limits Law,” NBC New York, October 23, 2008.
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