Kamala Harris Selecting Tim Walz Is A Big Win, But It Doesn’t Mean Black People Can Take Our Eyes Off The Prize

After a heated few days of intra-party wrangling over whom Kamala Harris should select as her running mate, the Democratic Nominee for president announced to many people’s cheers this morning that Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, was her choice. There’s even more excitement now around her candidacy, but as good as a Walz is, Black people cannot relax when it comes to advancing our community’s priorities. No presidential ticket has ever allowed us to do that.

Please don’t misread me. Choosing Walz is a major victory for those who value human rights and democracy. More, it’s a testament to the growing power of a new generation of progressive advocates in and associated with the Democratic Party like the Movement Voter Project. Co-founded and led by Billy Wimsatt, they rallied hard for Gov. Walz, pushing Ms. Harris to demonstrate that she was truly about a full-scale shift in American policy, which in the last several years has been and continues to be guided by authoritarians and liars who have proudly defined themselves by the politics of exclusion and anti-humanism.

In a letter shared by Wimsatt with The New York Times last week, he hailed Gov. Walz as “…the perfect Harris VP unicorn for this moment…”

And while Black Voters Matter (BVM), an organization that encourages Black voter participation and builds Black electoral power, did not officially endorse any of the vice presidential prospects, its executive director and co-founder, Cliff Albright, said during a private call last night that he’s personally been very open about wanting Walz to be the choice.

Who is Gov. Walz and Why Did So Many People Push for Him?

Walz, 60, the chair of the National Democratic Governors Association, and the married father of two, was born in Nebraska, but moved to Minnesota, the state he represented Congress for some 12 years before moving into the governor’s mansion.

His supporters have leaned into his rural and working-class beginnings–a direct challenge to Trump’s VP pick being the singular voice for the Rust Belt. Because while Minnesota is solidly blue, Walz carries sway over states that are in play, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin–as well as independents and working class voters.

More, Walz, has bonafides amongst vets, another important voting bloc: a former National Guardsman who has been deployed domestically and abroad–and left Congress as the highest serving non-commissioned officer–has supported some deeply meaningful legislation in his state. He expanded voting rights in Minnesota to include 55,000 formerly incarcerated people, advocated for and won the universal free public school breakfast and lunch program for students; enshrined abortion rights into Minnesota’s state law and protected gender-affirming healthcare.

During a recent CNN interview Walz gave a tongue-in-cheek response to right-wing critics complaining about his food initiatives:

“What a monster [I am]! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions.”

He’s also the guy that made Republicans are weird, go viral–much to their dismay.

@dailymail

Tim Walz laid into Republicans and JD Vance in particular, calling them ‘creepy’ and ‘weird as hell.’ #kamalaharris #kamalaharris2024 #kamala #kamala2024 #vicepresident #harris2024 #democrats #politics #democrat #trump #vote2024 #harris2024 #walz #timwalz #jdvance

♬ original sound – Daily Mail

The 2020 Murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis

In the wake of former Minneapolis cop, now convicted murderer, Derek Chauvin, publicly choking unarmed George Floyd for over nine minutes, killing him, the country went up in protests. What began in Minneapolis-St. Paul, expanding to all 50 states. It was the largest and most sustained in protesting in modern history.

There may have been little love lost between Black protestors and Minneapolis’ political leads, including the Governor’s–especially after the National Guard was deployed using the lies that protestors were violent. But it was soon enough  acknowledged, including by Walz, that those who participated in violent acts during the protest were not part of the Movement for Black Lives–led peaceful actions. They may have even been undercover law enforcement agents or others invested in having the protesters brutally attacked and stopped.

Walz was reelected as governor two years later with Black community support; the loudest criticism he faced was from state and other Republicans who wanted him to be far harsher with protestors—something perhaps more akin to what America saw done to their students post Oct. 7th.

What About the Other White Dudes for Kamala?

Walz beat out the other closest contender: Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania whom Wimsatt, echoing the sentiments of Arab Americans, young Americans of all races and others said would risk ” …significantly depressing enthusiasm for the Harris ticket among key constituencies of young voters, Arab and Muslim voters, and to some degree labor.”

The nod to labor likely was the opposition another top contender, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, faced. Not considered a friend of workers–as Walz is–Kelly did not have the support of the UAW. Their leader openly lobbied against the Arizona senator being chosen for VP.

But no criticism has come harder and faster than those against Shapiro.

Here’s why:

While Shapiro has disavowed the leadership of internationally accused–and sought–war criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his failure to challenge the years-long assaults on Palestinians and the ways in which American businesses are held hostage to either support Israel or be unable to operate, earned him the moniker #GenocideJosh in recent months. Of late, some have said using the term was antisemitic because Shapiro is Jewish. But it’s hard to make that make sense given that Catholic Joe Biden is for whom the moniker was originally created.

Moreover, Shapiro’s encouragement and approval of law enforcement’s attacks on UPenn students who were peacefully protesting the genocide against Palestinians, have been criticized by many including faculty, not only it violated the First Amendment and because acts of violence did not come from the protesters, but also because of the underlying reason for those protests.

Boston University’s School of Law reported in June that since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has:

Killed more than 34,000 mostly non-combatant Palestinians, including over 14,000 children;
Grievously injured close to 100,000 Palestinians;
Forcibly displaced fully 75 percent of Gaza’s citizenry alone and in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions;
Deliberately withheld food, water, fuel and other basic needs
Destroyed every single university and 70 percent of all housing in Gaza, as well as houses of worship and critical cultural places and statues, and
Intentionally bombed hospitals and opened fired and killed in cold blood Palestinians who complied with the Israeli command to walk to designated shelters, while choosing to deliberately murdered aid workers trying to feed and provide medical care to Palestinians.

Any appearance of support for these acts and the ones committed against Palestinians since October 7th (and going back before the Nakba in 1948) may not ever be forgiven by a wide swath of national voters–including the GenZers who saw the atrocities in real time on every screen they had access to.

But even if the forgiveness of some voters comes one day, the forgiveness by history surely won’t.

The Need to Also Remain Focused on Legislatively Supported Killing of Black People in America

The outcomes of nearly a century of work by Black people post-slavery that culminated in the wins of the Civil Rights Movement under Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King 60 years ago, have largely been eviscerated--evermore quickly in recent years, at the hands of white supremacists of differing races and on both the right and left.

The laws that provided some protections for Black people, and laws which Black people worked and died to have enacted (and other communities benefitted from as well) were designed to repair the generational harms borne of at least three centuries of slavery, torture, murder, theft, social exclusion and domestic terrorism. Reclaiming the landscape on these fronts must be priority if there is to be anything that even resembles an equitable democracy.

Consider this additional data on police violence:

According to the Washington Post, which has kept a running database on police killings since unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot down in the street by Ferguson cop, Darren Wilson, 10 years ago this Friday, not only are unarmed Black people still significantly more likely to be killed by police than white people, we still only know about one-third of all police departments fatal shootings; local police departments are still not required to report their killings to the FBI.

Terrifyingly, AI, increasingly relied on by police departments, cannot distinguish one Black face from another, leading to false arrests, reported Scientific American.

And despite the gains made under the Obama administration on criminal justice reform–and the powerful push for prison abolition given attention in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the U.S. continues to be the leader among all industrialized nations in the incarceration of its people. At least some of its people.

The Prison Policy Initiative reported earlier this summer the following finding, which is both somehow unsurprising and yet surprisingly astonishing:

“….every state [in the U.S.] locks up Black people at a rate at least double that of white people — and, on average, at six times the rate of white residents.”

Every. Single. One.

Who Needs a Conspiracy Theory When You Have Actual American Policy?

That question–brilliantly succinct and rhetorical–was posed 10 years ago by a friend, Kenyon Farrow, the award-winning author, writer and political strategist. He was right to ask it. Take, for one matter, Black poverty. Along with Native American poverty, it’s the highest in the nation–and it’s legislatively driven and reinforced.

It was the subprime loans. And the mass incarceration that stripped targeted Black communities of income, votes and voices. It was the further redistricting, isolating and assaults on the Black vote making it increasingly difficult to ensure representatives who cared about its basic needs were being protected: food, clothing, shelter and education.

It was the over 50 years of attacks on affirmative action/DEI that began in 1978 with the Bakke case in California. A white male student sued the UC system, accusing it of “reverse discrimination.” The Supreme Court, in a bizarre ruling, ruled in favor of affirmative action but against “racial quotas.” Yet, there was still more law or protected actions by white power-brokers and their local surrogates, in play.

There were the decades of unfair loan and venture capital investments denials to Black businesses. The National Urban League recently reported that only half of 1% of venture capital investments went to undergird Black businesses. In the wake of the pandemic, some 41% of un-and-under-supported Black businesses shuttered, the leader of the U.S. Black Chambers (USBC) President Ron Busby told the world, following a finding from Bloomberg News in June of 2020. It was just three months after the lockdown went into effect.

Perhaps most devastating to know is that the lack of investment was most assuredly due to racism and greed, not lack of innovation from the community that not only has made some of the most incredible leaps forward in medicine, but virtually defines music worldwide, creates fashion, style and beauty trends that are followed worldwide–and created or ensured the media platforms to amplify them!  And as we know from 2016’s award-winning film, Hidden Figures, Black women were central to even the journey into space.

 

The listing of legislated poverty after slavery—the deadly theft of Black wealth’s origin story–seems unbounded. All that post-bellum stealing of labor through the legally supported convict leasing system and sharecropping for example, along with even the hope of home ownership for Black people vis a vis  denied mortgages, or impossibly high interest rates and the outright taking of all that Black land, mostly using white-developed and enforced law going back to the 1940s. All the reparations still denied.

The history of generational Black poverty is the history of America, just as the history of healthcare in the U.S. is the history of the nation’s commitment to racism. That there is no universal healthcare in America is all about blocking Black access.

It’s worked.

It’s kept Black people from being able to access any or quality insurance, or even when the best insurance is acquired, medical care remains tethered to racism.  Black patients are still not treated the same dedicated care that white patients are. And it was and is white domestic terrorism that’s contributed so painfully and in too many cases, tragically irreversibly, to poor mental health outcomes amongst Black people. Perhaps most painfully, of all children, Black children are most in the line of sight for emotional pain and despair.

NewsOne reported earlier this year that Black babies as young as five are twice as likely to die by suicide than their white peers; and that racism and misogynoir–a term that integrate racism with sexism that coined by scholar and Northwestern University Professor, Dr. Moya Bailey,is a driving factor of death by suicide

More from NewsOne’s Report:

“…death by suicide has long been considered a White phenomenon— specifically a White male phenomenon. And while the actual losses by number are indeed greater in White male populations given their majority presentation in America, what’s also true is that the rising rate of deaths by suicide is most certainly and singularly Black phenomenon.

Between 2018 and 2021 young Black people, 10 to 24 experienced the single largest  rate of increase in deaths by suicide, 36%. In the last two years, that rate of increase has continued to climb: the rate of Black boys dying by suicide has leapt a breath-stealing 47% and 59% for our girls. 

More incomprehensibly, when tracked for the 16 years between 2001 and 2017, the National Institutes of Health found that the rate of Black girls dying by suicide was up an 182%, making what we believe about suicide actually a horrific gaslighting. Suicide prevention methods were developed, consciously or not, to support White men in particular, but the most at-risk population is actually the very opposite: Black girls and women. Indeed, the rate of suicide for every demographic except Black children, is declining…”

But as Susan L. Taylor, the publishing icon and Essence magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Emerita, who now leads the National CARES Mentoring Movement, has said, there still is no federal plan in place to end Black child suicide. With affiliates in 58 cities, CARES’ healing-trauma and culturally anchored programming, engages young Black people across the country who who are struggling for air in hell and high waters of deep poverty and social isolation and marginalization foisted upon them.

Their programming, however, like most Black-envisioned and led organizations that directly serve poor Black children, is limited by the financial whims of philanthropy, where the focus has been guided for years and years now by short-term wins rather than steadfastly and fiercely nurturing the work to mitigate the harms of, and finally end, the white supremacy that created and maintains the discarding of so many African Americans. That’s true even when organizations are armed with a successful blueprint for recovery. No young people in CARES’ programming have thankfully died by suicide in the over decade they’ve been up and running.

Which is why it is and will always come down to Black people collectively choosing to be our own liberators.

But for now, a moment to exhale and hold abiding hope that there are some allies waiting in the wings…

SEE ALSO: 

Policing, Mental Health Top Issues For Black Voters In Milwaukee: Barbershop Owners Speak Out Amid RNC

How Kamala Harris’ Candidacy Is Inspiring Young Black Voters In Texas

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, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is a favorite of progressives, but Black people must keep our eyes focused on the prize.
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