Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Former New York City mayor and
stop-and-frisk enthusiast Rudy Giuliani is having a near meltdown about Black Lives Matter. In an age-old-trick, Giuliani is trying to spread fears about the racial justice group to his conservative base. However, Black Twitter won’t allow it. Everyone from
Ava DuVernay to
Desus Nice couldn’t help but make fun of him.
Giuliana began his campaign of terror-spreading at the beginning of the week when he conflated Antifa, the
Black Lives Matter Global Network and “the communists.” He told
Laura Ingraham on Fox News, “They want to destroy our government.”
He continued by saying four or five years ago “They wrote then they want to do away with the police, they want to empty out the prisons, they want to internationalize our government, they want to do away with our systems of courts, and they want to take your property away and give it to other people.”
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In a Tuesday tweet, Giuliani further wrote, “WAKE UP! Black Lives Matter wants to destroy law enforcement, end bail, empty the prisons (including drug dealers as well as users), provide themselves with reparations, AND a full-time government income without the necessity of work.”
The funny part about Giuliani’s comments is that he isn’t completely wrong.
Over the years, the Black Lives Matter Global Network has organized around racial justice campaigns that center around divesting from police and prisons and investing in community resources like healthcare, jobs and
transformative justice models.
Many activists connected with the group have even advocated for police and prison abolition. One of the co-founders for Black Lives Matter,
Patrisse Cullors, has consistently advocated for abolition through her community organizing work.
“We call it non-reformist reforms. The reforms that are going to get us closer to [prison] abolition — those are the reforms that I’m most interested in,” she told
Teen Vogue back in 2019. “A reform to stop a jail and to build a hospital is a huge reform. We’re not going to just be able to get rid of prisons in one day, overnight. This is going to be a process.”
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter network have also collaborated with other activists and organizations to form the Movement 4 Black Lives, which clearly states on their
site:
“We are Abolitionist: We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished and replaced by institutions that value and affirm the flourishing of Black lives.”
M4BL has worked towards abolition via
divestment campaigns such as #DefundPolice or in other words, divesting funds from police departments and distributing them to social programs such as
violence intervention programs and mental health resources. Major celebrities have already
signed onto this campaign, including
John Legend, Yara Shahidi and
The Weeknd.
Similar to Giuliani’s point, BLM and M4BL also advocate
reparations for Black people, a
universal basic income, and an
end to cash bail.
It’s not clear where Giuliani got the “they want to take your property away and give it to other people.”
But either way, his paranoia was quite entertaining for Black Twitter.
https://twitter.com/ava/status/1275588590475436032
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