A number of the nation’s most outstanding Black mayors are celebrating main drops in crime of their cities — and grumbling that President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to comprehend the accomplishment.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that cities, significantly these run by Democrats, are overrun with violence, even if 2025 is on observe to have the fewest homicides ever recorded by the FBI. He deployed troops to Los Angeles and Washington and threatened to ship them elsewhere.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott stated that ignores the realities in cities like his, which recorded simply 5 homicides in April, its lowest on file.
“When we accomplish those things, then the goal post gets moved,” Scott stated Friday at a discussion board of mayors on the annual convention of the Congressional Black Caucus Basis. “People are like, ‘well, what about stolen cars?’”
Scott’s views had been echoed by different mayors on the occasion, together with Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, Oakland’s Barbara Lee and Washington’s Muriel Bowser — all targets of the president’s rhetoric about security in American cities.
Johnson, whose metropolis is experiencing a 30 p.c drop in crime and the fewest homicides it has seen in a decade, says the main target is not any accident.
“I just want to lift up the fact that the very places that are under attack are all spaces that are led by Black leaders,” he stated to a principally Black viewers. “We just got to name it. I know we know that, but I want to say it out loud that it’s very intentional, because there is an extremism in this country that has not accepted the results of the Civil War and they’re fully engaged in the rematch.”
Bowser stated Trump deployed the Nationwide Guard to Washington below a “fake emergency” that was cowl for immigration enforcement. The federal motion, she stated, has “been very menacing and has disrupted … the trust that our communities have with our own police.”
The federal legislation enforcement presence in Washington was initially set to final for 30 days ending earlier this month, however has since been prolonged.
Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Georgia, stated many Black mayors applaud and have taken notes from Bowser’s dealing with of the Nationwide Guard deployments and the way to withstand, however not forcefully agitate Trump within the course of — all whereas juggling the expectations of their residents.
“We live at the intersection of white fear and Black expectation,” stated Johnson, head of the African American Mayors Affiliation. “It’s a very, very unique intersection for us … [because the] white fear is that we’re doing too much, and Black expectation that we’re not doing enough. It is a very hard and very lonely place.”
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