Van Jones explains connection between mass incarceration and Trump win
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Van Jones didn’t pull any punches when he put his finger on just what it was that got Donald Trump the presidency: mass incarceration and the voter disenfranchisement that goes with it.
For example, Jones pointed to Florida, where he claimed that “hundreds of thousands of African-Americans [are] permanently barred from voting because they’re convicted felons.”
–Van Jones powerfully explains why a Trump presidency is really terrifying–
He went on to say that if former inmates were allowed to vote, Florida “would be a blue state every time.”
“Voter suppression is: you’re 19 years old and you get caught with marijuana, and you’re forced to plead to a felony,” Jones said. “Then you can never vote again, whereas a white kid getting caught with marijuana is gonna be admonished and sent home to their parents. That’s voter suppression … mass incarceration is a strategy not just to criminalize a generation, or now generations of African-Americans, but also to politically marginalize the black community. Mass incarceration is not just taking our freedom, it’s taking our vote. It’s taking our power.”
Jones then went on to plead with the progressive left to make mass incarceration a top priority:
If you’re in the Sierra Club, or if you’re in Planned Parenthood, your No. 1 problem is that your core vote can’t vote. Nobody thinks about it that way. Planned Parenthood’s core vote is not white women, it’s the black community. The Sierra Club’s core vote is not white, Prius-driving, NPR-listening environmentalists. It’s the black vote, because black people elect Democrats and Democrats enact all of these policies. When you stand back and you let the black community be incarcerated at six times the rate of white people and say it’s ‘not your issue,’ but then you want to cry about the outcome in Florida, it doesn’t make sense. If people had stood up against mass incarceration and stood up for people having the right to vote when they get out of prison, you’d never have a Donald Trump.
