Vice President Kamala Harris was warned by justice reform groups to “resist” calling former President Donal Trump a “criminal” as it could hurt her campaign.
The Democratic presidential nominee was addressed by more than 160 criminal justice advocacy groups who cautioned in an open letter that referring to Trump as a “felon” while touting herself as a “tough-on-crime” prosecutor could have a negative effect on her election race.
“As you ramp up your campaign for President, we ask that you meet this consequential political moment with particular care and attention as it relates to conversations and commitments around criminal justice reform,” read the letter by “leaders in the movement to reform our criminal justice system and remedy the harms of mass incarceration.”
https://t.co/2anuhBac6M pic.twitter.com/ggeIF7BjLh
— The Union of Black America (@BurnEr92976227) August 1, 2024
“There will be those that simplify a match-up between you and former President Trump as one between a ‘tough-on-crime’ prosecutor and a ‘criminal,'” the letter stated. “We hope you will resist this language and this framing. It is both harmful to us and harmful to your campaign.”
The group told Harris that words like “criminal” and “felon” only “paint with a broad brush that stains more than 70 million Americans with criminal records including the one-in-three Black men who have felony convictions.”
While the groups urged Harris to hold Trump accountable for his “conduct and for failing to demonstrate remorse,” they called on her to “resist this outdated fear-mongering.”
“This language dehumanizes us and opens the door to the ridicule and slander that has long plagued us since the Black Codes. Shouting ‘felon!’ without acknowledging the injustices taking place daily in courts, prisons, and jails depresses the tremendous electoral potential of engaging with the tens of millions of us who have criminal convictions and the even greater number of American voters who love us,” the letter continued.
“Too many of our loved ones should be home and are not,” wrote the leaders of groups like The Bail Project and Beauty after Bars. “We are as urgent as ever in our work to end mass incarceration and we expect our presidential candidates to be the same.”
Harris’s record on crime seems to be a hot-button issue, with Trump regularly hammering the VP for her failures.
“She’s a walking contradiction,” Corrin Rankin, vice chair of the California Republican Party, told Fox News Digital.
“She blows with the political wind, so whichever way the wind is shifting, that is the direction she’s going to follow, the direction that’s going to help her career. She doesn’t come across as a person with real values. I see her as a chameleon. Whatever wave it is that leads to her success, she’s riding it.”
Thousands of minorities were jailed for low-level marijuana offenses while Harris served as San Francisco’s district attorney. “Black, brown, and Polynesians were disproportionately impacted,” Rankin said.
“You can’t trust her,” she added. “I think the only commitment she’s going to make is to herself.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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