President Biden’s pick for the No. 3 spot at the Justice Department has repeatedly praised the work of Black Lives Matter in the United States, including urging Congress to follow the group’s calls to decrease police budgets and crediting the movement with helping change the way the commander in chief himself talks about racism.
Vanita Gupta, the CEO of the left-of-center Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division during the final couple years of the Obama administration, is Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general. She has emerged as a lightning rod for criticism among Republican senators taking issue with her left-wing views and past comments in support of decreasing police funding.
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Gupta testified that she does not support defunding the police, although much of her rhetoric over the years about institutional reforms is rooted in the demands of BLM and its leaders, and she has name-dropped the group several times in promoting its activism.
Black Lives Matter underwent a resurgence in 2020, a year filled with protests against racial inequality and police brutality, some marred by violence and rioting, which were spurred by the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, following a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest.
Gupta testified before the judiciary panel in the summer of 2020, not only belying her insistence this week that she does not support defunding the police but also making clear that she aligned with the views of Black Lives Matter in its calls for sweeping law enforcement reform.
“While front-end systems changes are important, it is also critical for state and local leaders to heed calls from Black Lives Matter and Movement for Black Lives activists to decrease police budgets and the scope, role, and responsibility of police in our lives,” Gupta told lawmakers on June 16.
Ten days before that hearing, Gupta tweeted about attending a BLM rally in Washington, D.C. She shared pictures of the crowd in the streets of the nation’s capital amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Glad to be here with my son. Needed this energy right now. Powerful, righteous, multiracial, focused. #BlackLivesMatter,” she said.
Gupta talked about the rally during a Knight Foundation “Vision” discussion on June 9.
“Understanding the nationwide protests after Ferguson, what feels different to me right now is that these killings happened amidst a time when there was another pandemic of COVID-19 … I think of it as a confluence of two pandemics,” Gupta said. “I was out there on Saturday in the middle of Washington, D.C., with just this incredible energy, multiracial — it is a little weird to see the mainstreaming of Black Lives Matter, but 16th Street being renamed and just the level of energy … I think people are demanding a lot more in this time.”
Gupta added, “I got into the Justice Department actually two months after Michael Brown had been killed, but the Justice Department was investigating the Ferguson Police Department … I mean, the kind of post-Ferguson movement, that was the birthing of Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives, and I think that the activism from those movements has been really what has changed the tenor of where we find ourselves today.”
Black Lives Matter was created in 2013 in response to Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman being acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, underpinned by the argument he acted in self-defense under Florida’s “stand your ground” statute.
It was founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. Cullors said she and Garza are “trained Marxists,” while Garza says convicted cop killer Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, is one of her inspirations. Cullors, who still leads BLM’s national organization, considers Angela Davis, former vice presidential candidate for Communist Party USA, a “mentor.” The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation claimed in February to have raised over $90 million in 2020.
“A year later, we set out together on the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride to Ferguson, in search of justice for Mike Brown and all of those who have been torn apart by state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism,” BLM’s website declared.
The “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” chants at BLM protests appear to be based on myth. The slogan stems from the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed, black 18-year-old, by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer. Witnesses said Brown punched Wilson in his car and struggled for control of the officer’s gun. A brief chase ensued that ended with Brown charging at Wilson, who shot Brown. An Obama Justice Department investigation did not support claims Brown was trying to surrender when killed.
Gupta tweeted about the Justice in Policing Act on June 8 and credited BLM. “Because of national outrage over the police killing of Black people and activism from Black Lives Matter & the Movement for Black Lives across the nation, Congress is acting,” she said. During House Judiciary Committee testimony two days later, Gupta said, “It is imperative that we get this right and that Congress’s response in this moment appropriately reflects and acknowledges the important work of Black Lives Matter.”
During his speech selecting Gupta the day after the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol, Biden claimed, “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday that they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob that stormed the Capitol … It is totally unacceptable.” Months earlier, Gupta credited Biden’s tone to BLM.
“I hear him talking about systemic racism and structural racism in a way that sounds differently than before,” Gupta told the Wall Street Journal in September. “I just think that the nation is in a different place today than we were post-Ferguson, in large part because of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
She told Glamour in August that “my team has been amazing and is exhausted, but there’s also a sense of how lucky we are to uplift the Movement for Black Lives and people who’ve been working on the Black Lives Matter movement for years.”
Gupta spoke approvingly of BLM while at the Justice Department too. During a University of Chicago talk in June 2015, she said the deaths of “unarmed African American men and women in encounters with police officers have provoked widespread responses across the country and have fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.”
