Race activists aren’t interested in hearing what Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is going to do about crime in the city.
The mayor gave a speech this morning to announce she’s putting more police in some of the worst areas of the nation’s capital.
Agitators from “Black Lives Matter” didn’t want anything to do with it.
They shouted “Jobs, not jails!” and “More police is not the answer!” the Associated Press reports. Video captured her trying to explain the proposal while activists shouted “No justice, no peace” over her remarks.
“I will not be shouted down or scared away when it comes to the safety of the District of Columbia,” Bowser says.
“I don’t come across any citizen of this city, any Washingtonian, that says it’s OK to commit murder,” she says. “I don’t come across anybody that says repeat violent offenders should have access to guns.”
Bowser countered the agitators’ chants, saying she wants to make “‘Black Lives Matter’ more than just a hashtag.”
The mayor’s actions come after the city has been hit by 103 killings so far this year, a 43% increase over the same point last year. But the activists attacked her motives and sincerity.
“I think she doesn’t really care. From the beginning, the mayor has been completely aloof from the broader conversation that the Black Lives Matter movement is driving,” according to protest organizer Eugene Puryear. “At the end of the day, tougher penalties and more cops, which have only been proven to have a negative effect, are something that she’s going to continue to support.”
Bowser announced the initiative at a shuttered public school which will be “temporarily” converted into a community center. It’s also the site were an 18-year-old was killed earlier this month.
Robin McKinney, a family friend of the slain teen who attended the announcement, believes the protesters were “rude.”
“None of them came to support her when her son died,” McKinney says, referring to her friend. “None of that ‘Black Lives Matter’ came and supported her.”
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