Most politicians just tweet about their support for the Black community during Black History Month. Take my opponent, Rep. Brad Sherman, as an example. On February 1, he tweeted this, with a graphic curated for him by the Democratic Party.
Paying lip service by tweeting about Black History Month doesn’t make you an ally for Black liberation and justice. Policy is what guarantees equity or perpetuates injustice. Action is what demonstrates commitment. Brad Sherman’s actions - from his donors to the bills he supports - speak far louder than his words about his commitment to the Black community.
Across his tenure, Brad Sherman has taken close to $5 million from Wall Street banks, big investment firms, and real estate companies.
Not once has he spoken about how the quantity of banks in majority-Black neighborhoods has declined almost 15% since the Great Recession, while declining only 0.2% nationally, leaving countless Black communities without access to basic banking services.
Not once has Brad talked about the 30-point gap in homeownership rates between Black and white Americans - a higher margin than in 1968 when Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act.
Brad has also taken over $250,000 from defense companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, and every single year has voted to increase spending on militarized police and the Pentagon.
Programs like 1033 have transferred billions of dollars worth of military equipment - from tanks to assault rifles to combat gear - from the Pentagon to local law enforcement agencies, leading to even more brutality, oppression, incarceration, and killings of Black and brown Americans.
Brad has consistently had an 80% or higher scorecard from the National Association of Police Organizations across multiple congressional terms.
Brad doesn’t even care about how mass incarceration denies voting rights to millions of Black Americans.
He voted no on an amendment from Reps Cori Bush and Mondaire Jones to extend voting rights to the incarcerated, despite the fact that Blacks are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of Whites.
On the other hand, John, our criminal justice platform is based on the Movement for Black lives BREATHE Act. This package of bills would transform our current criminal in-justice system by:
Banning private prisons
Legalizing cannabis and expunging prior criminal records
Enacting reparations
Repealing racist 3-strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and the death penalty
I am also the ONLY candidate in the race that refuses money from law enforcement, in addition to refusing money from all corporate PACs and trade associations. Black Lives Matter is not a slogan to me - it’s a moral commitment to championing structural policy reforms that uplift and empower our Black communities and dismantle white supremacy.
Shervin Aazami is running to be the first progressive Iranian to serve in the House of Representatives. This is more than a political campaign – this is a people-powered, progressive movement. With your help, we can take this movement to Washington to
bring real change to CA-32.
Sent via ActionNetwork.org.
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