This centrist Democratic strategy fits into a larger, longer-term, bipartisan alliance that views protesters as the enemy, and their tactics as a threat to the fundamental interests of our militarized, fossil-fuel-dependent society.
The repressive bipartisan playbook is partly rooted in the 2001 Patriot Act, rushed through and passed overwhelmingly on the wave of fear following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The law led to increased racial profiling, sweeps of millions of private phone records, and a vast expansion of the government’s ability to spy on ordinary citizens. Simultaneously, decommissioned military hardware from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan flowed to local police and sheriff’s departments, allowing them to deploy bayonets, riot shields, grenade launchers, sound cannons, sniper scopes, detonator robots, and tank-like Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected trucks known as MRAPs. (Some of this equipment was restricted under President Obama, then allowed again under Trump.) Hence local police and sheriff’s offices, moving in military-like formation in places like Ferguson (after the police killing of Michael Brown), Minneapolis (after the murder of George Floyd), and the Standing Rock Sioux reservation during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, confronted unarmed citizens as if they were Middle East insurgents. In other words, like the enemy.
Centrism
“Moderate” has become a key word in San Francisco politics as a movement funded by wealthy tech interests campaigns to undermine progressive power at City Hall. But there’s a big problem with words like "moderate" and "centrist": They mean different things to different people. As such, they lack any real definition or meaning.
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San Francisco has serious challenges, but regressive Republican policies are not the answer. Neither are they moderate in any sense of the word. To do something “in moderation” is to avoid extremes on either side. But it’s quite extreme to push failed right-wing policies designed to treat poverty and illness with more pain.
In 2024, we should reject meaningless frames like centrist and moderate. Instead, examine the moral views underlying each candidate and proposal.
Are they rooted in a morality of Republican strictness or Democratic empathy?
Does the evidence suggest their policy approaches are effective or ineffective?
What are the moral politics of the people funding the campaign? Are they progressive or regressive?
Then vote your values.