One of the main pillars of middle school principal Jamaal Bowman's congressional campaign is his call for "restorative justice" — sinking money into communities, rather than turning to incarceration.
Bowman, a Justice Democrat, has called to repeal the 1994 Crime Bill, a piece of legislation backed by his opponent, 16-term Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel, because he says the 25-year-old bill has unfairly discriminated against people of color, resulting in the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. For Bowman, there are better methods to clean up his community.
In explaining restorative justice, he told Cheddar Monday "If someone does harm against a community, it's not about torturing them and throwing them in a cage. It's about understanding why that harm was committed in the first place and giving them the opportunity to right the wrong of the harm."
In the 2020 presidential race, controversy surrounding the Crime Bill has been a point of contention for the former Vice President Joe Biden. While Biden was a frontrunner out of the gate, he spent the early days of his campaign answering questions as to why he signed on to the "tough on crime" law that has been criticized for the minimum mandatory sentences that led to more black men being locked up.
In the months since, several candidates have called for its repeal, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who wrote a Medium post outlining her criminal justice policy: "It's not equal justice when a kid with an ounce of pot can get thrown in jail, while a bank executive who launders money for a drug cartel can get a bonus. It's long past time for us to reform our system."
Criminal justice reform has been identified as a key issue among black voters in recent years. Pollster Celinda Lake wrote in a piece for The Marshall Project, "by a two-to-one margin, voters believed that our country relies too much on incarcerating people (63 percent to 31 percent who disagreed), including majorities of every subgroup in the data who share this belief."
Now Bowman is championing criminal justice reform as one of his fundamental policies in the race for New York's 16th Congressional District: "If we provided people with the resources and opportunities within their neighborhoods, within their communities, within the district, they wouldn't commit crime in the first place."
"It's easy to give trillion dollar tax cuts to Wall Street. It's easy to invest trillions in the Pentagon," Bowman added. "When are we going to start investing trillions in our children, in community centers, in museums, and in opportunities for them to thrive?"
Although Bowman clarified that he is not calling for the all-out disarmament of all police officers, he did call for a re-alignment of gun control, adding: "We need to have independent investigators, and we need to grow our non-emergency police force so when we respond to someone with a mental health challenge, or a domestic challenge, we respond in a nonviolent way."
Bowman has won the backing of prominent political leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a Justice Democrat-backed candidate herself.
In an early poll conducted by progressive think tank Data for Progress in September, 29 percent of Democrats in the district said they would vote for Engel, whereas Bowman grasped the support of 10 percent. However, a whopping 60 percent still said they were not sure.
The school shooting in Texas that left 19 children and 2 teachers dead has reignited the debate over gun control.
The tragedy in Uvalde is the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade and marks the latest in a string of mass shootings in the country. Jared Moskowitz, Broward County Commissioner and candidate for Congress in FL-23, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss why gun control measures are stalled in the Senate, and where legislation can move forward from here.
Police and detectives are still investigating the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two adults. Cheddar News was joined by Kirk Burkhalter, professor at New York Law School and former NYPD detective to gain some insight on what investigators are looking for and what comes next.
Texas authorities say the gunman who massacred 21 people at an elementary school was in the building for over an hour before he was killed by law enforcement officers.
Join Cheddar News as we break down the top headlines for Thursday, May 26 including updates on the Texas school shooting, President Joe Biden's executive order on police reform, and a recount in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary.
Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia rebuked words from the FDA commissioner that could have been construed as blaming parents for stockpiling baby formula exacerbating the shortage.
Cheddar News reporter Megan Pratz brings the latest from the scene of yesterday's horrific school shooting at a Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Now the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with 19 children and two adults killed, Pratz goes into comments by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, details about the deceased shooter, and reactions from members of the community.
The Robb Elementary School mass shooting killing 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas pm Tuesday was the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, and came just 10 days after the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, New York. Nelson Vergara, the founder and CEO of 360 Protective Solutions, joined Cheddar’s Opening Bell to discuss. "Right now what law enforcement is concentrating on is trying to trace his steps as to what motivated the gunman to act the way he did. What it boils down to just trying to figure out what led to his motivation to do such a horrific act.”
An recently conducted AP-NORC poll found that majorities of the Black and Hispanic populations in the U.S. still find themselves either somewhat worried or extremely worried over the pandemic, while more than half of white Americans responded with either being not too worried or not worried at all. Dr. Chris Pernell, the chief strategic integration and health equity officer at University Hospital, joined Cheddar News to talk about how perceptions of COVID-19 differ between groups of Americans. "We’re still seeing people get infected, and because of the toll of the disproportionate impact, we have concerns among the Black and brown community about whether or not they have an increased risk of exposure because of where they work, because of the use of public transportation, because they live in homes that they may not be able to safely quarantine and or isolate in, and because they have at baseline chronic health conditions that may make coronavirus more severe in those persons," she said.
Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the EPA and the president of Beyond Plastics, joined Cheddar News to talk about the role of plastics in the climate crisis and California's investigation of ExxonMobil and other oil companies for misleading the public on the ability to recycle plastics. "The reason why petrochemical companies like Exxon have gotten away with selling more and more plastic is that they've lied to the public and told us don't worry about all those negative upstream impacts and downstream impacts of plastics. Just be sure to recycle it. Well, guess what? Plastics largely are not recycled," Enck said.
