South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Presidential candidate, has not endeared himself to all community members. Robert Scheer, robert.scheer@indystar.com
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg continues to reach out to African American voters, rolling out more details Thursday morning of his Douglass Plan.
In a lengthy addition to his website and in an email Thursday morning to supporters, he laid out an approach to dismantle what he calls racist structures and systems. Buttigieg has for some time been referencing and laying out broad strokes of the plan, named after black abolitionist statesman Frederick Douglass, including in the June Democratic debate.
“We have lived in the shadow of systemic racism for too long,” Buttigieg said in a prepared statement. “We’ve seen a rise in white nationalism, an economic gap between Black and white workers that grows instead of shrinks, and worse health outcomes for Black Americans, particularly new mothers, that should make us all wonder how the richest country on earth can allow this to happen under our noses.”
Health care, education and business are big parts of Douglass Plan
Buttigieg calls for an investment in health care in marginalized communities, saying black Americans face higher rates of childbirth complications and infant mortality, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. He cites a study saying that ending such disparities would have cut $230 billion in medical expenditures and other health care costs by $1 trillion, from 2003-06.
He would seek to hire more black teachers and increase money for programs that incentivize education, including $25 billion in free public college tuition for low-income students, increased resources for historically black colleges and other minority-serving institutions. He would cancel student loan debt to what he calls predatory, for-profit colleges, as well.
He also would seek to promote the teaching of the history of slavery and civil rights, pointing to a study saying than only 8% of high school seniors understood slavery was a major cause of the Civil War.
“This is largely due to our nation’s failure to reconcile our history and reshape how it is taught to be more accurate, honest, and inclusive,” he writes.
Douglass Plan also targets the death penalty, incarceration rates
He would award 25 percent of all government contracts to minority-owned businesses, defer or forgive college loans for eligible students with successful businesses and ensure business owner have access to capital and credit.
He would propose eliminating the death penalty by constitutional amendment, reduce the rate of incarceration by 50 percent, largely by eliminating jail time for certain drug possession offenses, and abolish private federal prisons. He would incentivize states to address their own justice systems. He says incarceration, in some cases, leads to more crime.
He would create a public trust to purchase and fix up vacant and blighted properties for eligible residents and revitalize neighborhoods.
He would address pollution, tainted water and inadequate infrastructure in neighborhoods.
He would expand voter access, allow online and same-day registration and restore voting rights for people who have been released from prison.
Buttigieg has been struggling to reach African American voters. A recent CNN poll shows his support among African American voters, which after a dismal start had been ticking upward in some quarters, is back near 0 percent in the aftermath of the June 16 shooting of a black man by a white South Bend police officer.
His plan would seek to include African Americans in high-ranking executive branch positions and promote anti-bias training throughout the country’s institutions.
Buttigieg already had committed to creating a committee to examine reparations for slavery.
“You aren’t free if your zip code, name, and race determine your quality of life and health outcomes or employment opportunities,” he writes on the website. “You aren’t free if you’re disproportionately policed, surveilled, and locked up. You aren’t free if the schools you attend function as a pipeline to prison.”
Call IndyStar reporter Chris Sikich at 317-444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisSikich.
Read or Share this story: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/07/11/pete-buttigieg-plan-help-african-americans-primary-2020-douglass-plan/1701961001/