Sen. Rand Paul’s Time op-ed on Ferguson Tuesday blamed politicians for creating “a culture of violence” through the War on Drugs, and urged Ferguson protesters to “channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change.”
“In the search for culpability for the tragedy in Ferguson, I mostly blame politicians,” Paul wrote. “The War on Drugs has created a culture of violence and put police in a nearly impossible situation.”
Although Paul acknowledged that drugs were not directly involved in Michael Brown’s shooting, he argued that tension from racially disproportionate drug arrests ends up escalating into an “undercurrent of unease” that leads to tragedy. “One need only witness the baby in Georgia, who had a concussive grenade explode in her face during a late-night, no-knock drug raid (in which no drugs were found) to understand the feelings of many minorities — the feeling that they are being unfairly targeted.”
“Three out of four people in jail for drugs are people of color. In the African American community, folks rightly ask why are our sons disproportionately incarcerated, killed, and maimed?” Paul continued.
But ultimately, Paul said, criminal justice reform and drug sentencing reform alone will not suffice to save people trapped in the cycle of poverty. While vowing to continue proposing reforms to the criminal justice system, Paul said that “a charismatic leader, not a politician,” must “preach a gospel of hope and prosperity” and reinvigorate lost moral codes.
Paul wrote another Ferguson-related op-ed in Time over the Summer, criticizing police militarization.
The senator also met with black leaders in Missouri last month, saying that failing to reach out to the black community has been the GOP’s “ biggest mistake…in the last several decades.”
After having breakfast with Al Sharpton last week, Sharpton told reporters that Paul’s outreach to blacks could prove “dangerous” to the Democratic party in 2016.
“In this era of Ferguson and chokehold and the fact that we have the first black president leaving the White House, you can’t just go by record,” Sharpton said. “You gotta go by, as Janet Jackson used to say, ‘What have you done for me lately?’”
