Well, sadly, we’ve been here many times before…
In the latest edition of “protection for me, not for thee,” soft-on-crime Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has spent more than $450,000 on private security through her campaign this year alone, according to a report from Fox News; nine payments from the Abrams campaign to EPA Security ranged from $39,335 to $56,760.
Last year The Fair Fight PAC, a committee in a network launched by Abrams, spent $1.2 million on private security —so she’s no stranger to hypocrisy.
Abrams is also on the board of the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation —a foundation known for calling for the defunding and abolishing of police.
“I do not, and have never said, and have never supported defunding the police,” Abrams told Axios, leaving one to wonder why she’s on the board in the first place.
And while Abrams may not have ever specifically cried “defund,” the devil goes by many names.
“We have to have a transformation of how we view the role of law enforcement, how we view the construct of public safety, and how we invest not only in the work that we need them to do to protect us but the work that we need to do to protect and build our communities,” Abrams said in June 2020, During the George Floyd riots. “And that’s the conversation we’re having: We’ll use different language to describe it, but fundamentally we must have reformation and transformation.”
Reformation and transformation. Okay.
When asked if she supported police budget cuts back in 2020, Abrams said, “We have to reallocate resources, so, yes. If there is a moment where resources are so tight that we have to choose between whether we murder Black people or serve Black people, then absolutely: Our choice must be service.”
Sounds like defunding to us. What else?
According to Fox News, “Shortly after, Abrams advocated for the ‘redistributive allocation of dollars’ from police budgets so ‘we are not simply investing in public safety, but we’re building a safer public through education, through health care, through food security, through affordable housing, and that we not see these things as being in conflict, but they have to be part of a holistic vision of what America should look like, what law enforcement and what society should look like in the 21st century.’”
Redistribution and allocation of dollars.
Defund by any other name, Ms. Abrams, is still defund —and you’re a hypocrite for cutting our protection while beefing up your own.
