Defeat Racist Republican Recall Campaigns

Cheers to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips for calling it like it is. The Republican efforts to recall progressive elected officials -- like SF District Attorney Chesa Boudin -- are part of a Jim Crow revival to disenfranchise Black voters. Funded by fat-cat hedge fund and Silicon Valley billionaires, these recall campaigns double down on their cynical racism by hiring African Americans to gather signatures for the recall initiatives. Despite their shameless racial window dressing, these Republican recall campaigns generally harm minority citizens. Boudin, for instance, has taken steps to reduce the city's nonviolent prison population, which is disproportionately nonwhite and poor, through alternative programs. America's teeming prison-industrial complex is another grotesque manifestation of the new Jim Crow era. As Van Jones declared years ago, we need more books and fewer iron bars.

If the big-money Republican effort to oust Chesa Boudin gets on the ballot this fall, voters should overwhelmingly defeat it -- just as Californians crushed the recall campaign against Gov. Gavin Newsom. As Phillips wrote, these recalls are racist attacks on our democracy by elite white interests. By contrast, Chesa Boudin is For the People.