• averyminya@beehaw.org
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    5 months ago

    I grew up in Oakland, as DA she would put people in prison for weed. These same people were in prison after legalization, and their crimes were not black market dealers or anything like that. Just regular dudes who wanted to smoke up.

    It’s unfortunate. She has not been particularly great at doing what her constituents wanted.

    https://www.npr.org/2020/10/13/923369723/lets-talk-about-kamala-harris

    This article does a pretty good job conveying how her policies were inherently conflicts of interest, but in short, The “Back on Track” program for non-violent first time offenders was primarily for people with weed convictions. The idea is that they would admit to the crime, become a felon, have their record expunged.

    Now, how exactly does non-violent weed crime exists during a time where California has it legalized? And she took a long time to come around on legalization itself. The answer? It doesn’t, she has gotten the nickname “top cop” as a prosecutor and has law enforcement as her main supporters as she lost support from progressive Democrats for her actions.

    Now, I don’t dismiss her entirely, but I’m not entirely trusting of her either. She doesn’t have the history to indicate she would suddenly flip and be super progressive. That said, when she has a conviction, she does stick to it. Early in her career as district attorney she vehemently opposed and fought against the death penalty - to which Diane Feinsteinn criticized and said she wouldn’t have supported her had she known this.

    All this to say - she has accomplished a great deal, but it has been because of how many she has thrown under the bus. That makes it difficult to trust that we wouldn’t just be thrown under the bus again.

    Edit: Wrote all this before learning Biden dropped out. Wow!