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      in US Politics

      After the Trump years, how will Biden help the 140 million Americans in poverty? | Mary O'Hara

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      After four punch-drunk years of Donald Trump, the weeks since the November presidential election have presented a chance, despite his machinations to overturn the result, to reflect on what might come next for the tens of millions of Americans struggling to get by. What lies around the corner after the departure of an administration that brought so much destruction matters to the lives of the least well-off and marginalised people?
      President-elect Joe Biden sought to reassure people that he was on the case when he announced his top economic team last week. “Our message to everybody struggling right now is this: help is on the way,” he said, offering a steady economic hand to a weary public rattled by the virus and an unprecedented economic crisis.
      Many people are simply so relieved that Biden and Harris won that they talk about “getting back to normal” after the chaos. That’s an understandable reaction given all that’s transpired. However, getting back to normal isn’t an option. Nor should it be the goal. When Trump took power, around 140 million Americans were either poor or on low incomes even without a pandemic – a staggering proportion.
      For decades the wages of those at the top soared while paychecks for those at the bottom flatlined. Gender and racial income and wealth disparities endure. Despite widespread support for boosting minimum earnings, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn’t been increased since 2009. Roughly 60% of wealth in the US is estimated to be inherited. And, as if this wasn’t enough to contend with, in 2020 billionaire wealth surged past $1tn since the start of the pandemic. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) calculates that the wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos alone leapt by almost $70bn to a colossal $188.3bn as the year draws to a close.
      Over the past four years I asked myself frequently what another term of the Trump wrecking ball would mean for the people at the sharp end of regressive policies and a reckless disregard for the most vulnerable in society. Thankfully, that is no longer the question. The question now is: after all the carnage, what next?
      So far, indications are that Biden and his team recognise that as well as confronting the gargantuan challenges unleashed by Covid-19, longstanding inequities cannot be left unchecked. The presidential campaign was calibrated to highlight this, including around racial injustices. Overtures have been made, for example, on areas championed by progressives such as forgiving loan debt for many students and expanding access to Medicare. Biden has also pledged to strengthen unions and, well before the pandemic during his first campaign speech, endorsed increasing the federal minimum wage to $15.
      Even in the face of unparalleled challenges – and while a lot rides on a Democratic win in the two Georgia Senate run-offs in January – Biden could and should “use all the tools” at a president’s disposal to shift the dial quickly, says Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the IPS. Examples include placing conditions on workers’ pay for companies bidding for federal contracts and leveraging the presidential “bully pulpit” to try to push proposals such as a minimum wage hike through the Senate.
      There is also a genuine opportunity for the new administration to spearhead a concerted focus on policies affecting more than 61 million Americans who are disabled – a group all too often ignored in presidential campaigns and sidelined in policy. Biden’s disability plan makes for a comprehensive read. Off the bat, if the new administration takes steps to overturn the “abject neglect of disability rights enforcement” under Trump in areas ranging from education to housing it would be off to a good start, argues Rebecca Cokley, director of the disability justice initiative at the Center for American Progress.
      The pandemic is the most pressing challenge facing the incoming administration. However, structural inequalities, the people lining up at food banks, the children going hungry or homeless, historic injustices and the out-of-control concentration of wealth, must also be priorities. Right now, the US at least has a chance to finally put some of this right. However in the UK, with the end of the Brexit transition period looming and the chancellor under pressure to fend off accusations that another dose of austerity isn’t on the way, it’s a whole different story. The lessons in both countries from past mistakes – ones that harm those most in need – must be learned.
      • Mary O’Hara is a journalist and author. Her latest book, The Shame Game: Overturning the toxic poverty narrative, is published by Policy Press. She was named best foreign columnist 2020 by the Southern California Journalism Awards More

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      in US Politics

      Has political consensus become a pipe dream? | Letters

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      Perhaps the liberal democratic managed capitalism desired by Martin Kettle did exist in the 1950s, including the new welfare state in the UK (The toxic polarisation of our politics can be reversed, but it will take humility, 26 November). It didn’t prove robust – the Conservatives moved to the right and embraced free-market capitalism; regulation exists but is weak and largely captured by “experts” from the relevant market sectors.It is difficult to see how the idealised consensus can be created today, especially within one state. Multinational companies moving activities to poorly regulated locations and tax havens means that regulation must be multinational. The EU is attempting to regulate and tax tech and online firms, cooperation with which the UK has abandoned. The replacement of Donald Trump by Joe Biden doesn’t mean that economic nationalism will go out of fashion.Kettle is right that respect for the truth is indispensable. The problem is that honest conservatism has gone and, internationally, the right has adopted untruth as a weapon. This approach will continue as it has proved successful. Trump has lost the election, but the size of his vote and support for his untruths demonstrate just how successful.Talking – and listening – to each other in a truthful and respectful way is a good thing, but it needs that approach from all parts of the political spectrum. Kettle implies that such consensus-seeking would inhibit the left from offering radical solutions to our problems, because that may destroy any consensus. Is that how democracy works?Doug SimpsonTodmorden, West Yorkshire• Martin Kettle rightly highlights polarisation and the growth of the “I” society since the 1960s. Surely it is no coincidence that this coincided with a digital revolution that changed all our lives? Last year, I revisited California 50 years after doing an MBA at Stanford University. The wealthiest state in the world has failed to solve homelessness in the streets or congestion on the roads. Black people have been displaced by escalating house prices.All the talking and listening in the world will be of little value unless governments get control of the land and finance needed to build a fairer society. We should be using technology to map inequalities and invest in bridging the gaps rather than consoling ourselves with webinars and games.Dr Nicholas FalkExecutive director, The Urbed Trust• It is possible to share Martin Kettle’s hope for a less divided America without romanticising the 1950s. One need only recall those who left for Europe when “cooperation” was not shown to their differing political beliefs. The 50s also saw the enlargement of the attorney general’s list of subversive organisations. A loyalty oath was required by anyone wishing to enter a graduate programme or benefit from a scholarship, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities destroyed careers. Dwight Eisenhower was no Donald Trump, but neither was he a hero to those not in the political mainstream.Susan ZagorLondon• On reading how Labour’s general secretary has banned local parties from discussing the loss of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn (Report, 27 November), I was reminded of how Joseph Stalin tried to make Leon Trotsky a non-person in Russia. It is marvellous where the party leadership takes its inspiration from.Terry WardWickford, Essex More

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      in Elections

      It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist

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      Unless you’ve been on a silent retreat for the past year, you will have almost certainly heard the rumours – that the pandemic is an elaborate hoax, or that the virus was created as a Chinese weapon, or that dangerous elites are trying to kill off the elderly and to establish a new world order, or that the symptoms are caused by 5G.It is troubling enough to see these ideas on social media. But when you are hearing them from your family, your friends, or a casual acquaintance, it is even harder to know how to respond. You are going to struggle to convince the most committed believers, of course, but what about people who are only flirting with the ideas?These difficult conversations are only set to increase now that a new vaccine is on the horizon. Certain niches of internet are already rife with the “plandemic” theory, which alleges that the spread of the virus has been designed to create big bucks for pharmaceutical companies and the philanthropist Bill Gates (whose charity is funding many of the efforts). The idea has been debunked numerous times, whereas there is good evidence that conspiracy theorists such as David Icke are themselves reaping huge profits from spreading misinformation. The danger, of course, is that their ideas will discourage people from taking the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to the actual disease. More

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      in US Politics

      The toxic polarisation of our politics can be reversed, but it will take humility | Martin Kettle

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      After Dwight Eisenhower had been sworn in as United States president on Capitol Hill in January 1953, he recited a prayer to the watching crowd that he had written himself that same morning. The words embodied how Eisenhower hoped to govern. “Especially we pray,” he told them, “that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race or calling. May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who … hold to differing political beliefs.”To a 2020s audience those words may now seem anodyne and pious, the usual politician’s guff that we barely listen to. Race, in particular, would remain an unhealed wound through Eisenhower’s eight years in the White House. Nevertheless, the prayer truthfully embodies an approach to politics that actually worked for much of 1950s America.Those years are widely seen – the unignorable exception of race apart – as marking, amid a certain mom-and-pop dullness, a high tide of shared national values, prosperity and political depolarisation. As Robert D Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett have put it in their recent book The Upswing, the 1950s are at the swelling summit in the middle of the “I-we-I” bell curve of American life between the economic free-for-all of the 1890s, the era of greater cooperation in the mid-20th century, and the turbocharged renewal of individualism, inequality and hyperpartisanship of the 2020s.Donald Trump and Eisenhower are both Republican presidents. Yet as leaders, and in the lives they have led, they could hardly be more different in every way. It is completely impossible to imagine Trump uttering the kind of words Eisenhower used in 1953. It is, though, possible to imagine Joe Biden speaking them. Indeed, it would be a surprise if Biden does not make a commitment to cooperation of this kind when he himself swears the oath, in less than two months’ time.Yet is there the slightest possibility that such an approach would have any effect today, or that it would endure? The question of whether governments in advanced capitalist democracies can bring entrenched and bitterly divided polities together is now the single most important issue facing our politics. America is by far the most urgent and important example of this. But it is true of countries beyond the US too – Britain undoubtedly included.The odds on Biden – or other consensual leaders in other countries – achieving this are long. Today we are not at the summit of The Upswing’s 130-year-long “I-we-I” curve of economic equality, political cooperation, social cohesion and public altruism, as Eisenhower was in the 1950s. We are instead heading rapidly down the curve to new depths of inequality, partisan intransigence, individualism and selfishness. We may even have passed a point of no return.Many therefore assert that those more unified and civil days are simply over. Some on all sides actually welcome this, thinking that the downward descent of the old, unified, liberal capitalist state in the early 21st century presents a cathartic opportunity to clear the debris and failures of the past and create a ground zero for a different kind of brave new future.My answer to those zealots is to be very careful indeed about what they wish for. Putnam’s book speaks for the many millions who don’t think the way the zealots do. It speaks for those who want the tide of the last decade to be slowed, stopped and turned – and who want to believe the restoration of a “we” society, based on liberal democratic managed capitalism, can happen, although in a less unequal and less rancorous way.One good reason for saying this is that something like it has happened before. The upward trajectory of the “I-we-I” curve in the early years of the 20th century did not descend from out of a clear blue sky, in the US or anywhere else. Instead, it was built on, among other things, economic innovation and greater equality (including for women), laws that broke up monopolies, political leadership that was not afraid of taxing the super-rich, the creation of effective nation state and private-sector institutions, high-quality education, a boom in charity and philanthropy and a media that people broadly trusted to tell them the truth.Another reason for confidence is that the destroyers have not yet triumphed. Much of what sustained the earlier, more cooperative era endures. What the EU might call the acquis of liberal democracy and internationalism – the body of principles, institutions and civic habits that the present day has inherited from the not-so-distant past – is actually more resilient than the shocks inflicted on it may suggest.The transition from Trump to Biden illustrates this. Trump’s assault on the electoral process and its credibility has been epochal and terrible, but in the end the transition seems to be happening. The electoral process was tested to the limits, but it proved robust and decisive. Its institutions and principles have survived. Something a little similar may now be happening in Britain over Brexit’s disregard of laws and treaties too.And yet the divides remain. How can these embittered certainties be eased and eventually bridged? Changing people’s minds may seem to be the answer, but changing a mind is a very long-term process. Opening one’s own mind is more important. And this needs to apply on all sides. Denunciation, lecturing, labelling, and obsessing over language all make things worse, not better.The key is to prioritise listening and then talking to others. Michael Sandel’s recent book The Tyranny of Merit argues that humility must be central to the reconstruction of the notion of the common good, without which no “we” society can prosper. People don’t need to be humiliated or denied a voice by being told they are bad, stupid, bigoted or unsuccessful. The aim should be to find things we can all agree about, perhaps including such things as fairness, patriotism, helping one another and trying to agree about facts.Respect for the truth is indispensable. Social media are the chief accelerator in this area of catastrophic decline. Much stronger control over online untruth will be a precondition for rebuilding the common good. This is as true of politics in general as of ensuring a full take-up of any Covid vaccine. But there is material to work with. Public trust has survived in many places. Ipsos Mori reported this week that more than 80% of us trust what nurses, doctors, engineers, teachers, judges, professors and scientists tell us. By contrast, around 80% mistrust journalists, government ministers, politicians generally and advertising executives. The problem lies with politics and media.Perhaps the Bidens of the world have it in them to change this. Let us hope so. But they need the help of thousands of local citizens if so, meeting at local level to rebuild confidence in the common good. Government matters very much indeed. But the way we treat each other matters just as much. We don’t just need to build up herd immunity to viruses. We need to build up herd immunity to untruth, and to glib easy answers too, and to all those who purvey them, in whatever form. More

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      in US Politics

      Minnijean Brown-Trickey: the teenager who needed an armed guard to go to school

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      When Minnijean Brown-Trickey looks back at old pictures of 4 September 1957, she remembers the day her courage kicked in. “I look at the photos of the nine of us, standing there, in contrast to those crazy people,” she says. “And what I say is that they threw away their dignity and it landed on us.”Brown-Trickey, now 79, was one of the Little Rock Nine, the first group of African American children to go to the city’s Central high school in September 1957 – and in doing so, desegregate it. On the teenagers’ first day at the Arkansas school, white residents were so furious they amassed in a 1,000-strong mob at the gates. In preparation, eight of the teenagers had been instructed by Daisy Bates, the leader of the Arkansas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to meet at her house, so they could travel to the school in a group. But one of the nine, Elizabeth Eckford, had no telephone and so was not told of the safety plan. Instead she was forced to run the gauntlet of the mob’s hatred alone. The pictures of the young girl encountering the baying crowd is the enduring image of that day for many. But to Brown-Trickey, despite its power, it cannot completely capture all nine children’s fear. “Still photos cannot show how we are shaking in our boots, sandwiched between the Arkansas National Guard and a mob of crazy white people,” she says.As they tried to walk into school, the children were subject to verbal abuse, spat on and denied admission. Three black journalists watching were also attacked. One, L Alex Wilson, was hit on the head with a brick, developed a nervous condition and died three years later aged only 51.It took a further three weeks for the students to actually step inside the building, thanks to fierce resistance from the Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who used the mob as a pretext for barring the nine, putting the state’s National Guard in their way. Brown-Trickey recalls how he warned of “blood in the streets” should the children be allowed to go to school. More

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      Trump bids to take credit for Moderna vaccine while Biden offers cautious optimism

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden offered sharply contrasting reactions on Monday to news of a coronavirus vaccine that proved nearly 95% effective in trials.
      In a press conference the president-elect called the vaccine news “really encouraging” but warned “more people may die” unless the Trump administration starts cooperating with the incoming Democratic administration. “We are going into a very dark winter. Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier,” he said.
      Rather than working to combat the virus, which is spreading faster than ever and on average killing more than 1,000 Americans a day, Trump has stayed focused on unsubstantiated claims that the presidential election was stolen.
      Pharmaceutical giant Moderna said on Monday its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective, based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial.
      “Another vaccine just announced,” Trump tweeted, seeking to claim credit. “This time by Moderna, 95% effective. For those great ‘historians’, please remember that these great discoveries, which will end the China Plague, all took place on my watch!”
      Critics say Trump has all but surrendered to the pandemic, which has killed more than 244,000 people in the US and is averaging more than 100,000 cases per day. Michael Osterholm, an adviser to Biden, told NBC on Sunday: “We are in a very dangerous period – the most dangerous public health period since 1918.”
      Yet Trump has not attended a taskforce meeting in “at least five months”, public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on Sunday, and seems to have bet everything on a vaccine. Trump appeared consumed instead by the election – and now by denying its outcome.
      Biden beat him by the same 306-232 margin in the electoral college Trump described as a “landslide” when he won in 2016. The Democrat is also ahead in the popular vote by 5.5m votes, or 3.6%, with ballots still being counted.
      The Trump administration has not recognised Biden as president-elect, preventing his team from gaining access to government office space and funding. Democrats and some Republicans have warned that refusal to give Biden access to intelligence poses a risk to national security and hampers the battle against the virus, including vaccine distribution planning.
      Biden said the delay was “more embarrassing than debilitating” and that he was continuing to put in place his team and plans to deal with the pandemic and its economic fallout.
      The pandemic is the most pressing crisis facing the incoming president. Ron Klain, who will be White House chief of staff, said Biden advisers would meet Pfizer and other drugmakers this week.
      White House officials and Republicans in Congress are outnumbered by world leaders in acknowledging Biden’s win. On Monday Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, noted that a transition would only take place “if the current lawsuits don’t work out for the president”.
      But speaking at the Global Security Forum, O’Brien acknowledged: “If there is a new administration, they deserve some time to come in and implement their policies.
      “We may have policy disagreements but look, if the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner – and obviously things look that way now – we’ll have a very professional transition from the National Security Council. There’s no question about it.”
      The president appeared on Sunday to publicly acknowledge that Biden had won the election, but then backtracked and reiterated his false claim the vote was rigged.
      Trump, who has put Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, in charge of his legal offensive, tweeted on Sunday that he would soon file “big cases” challenging election results. However, his campaign has already lost numerous court battles and dropped a major part of a suit seeking to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying its results, narrowing the case to a small number of ballots. Biden won the state by more than 68,000 votes.
      On Monday Trump tweeted: “The Radical Left Democrats, working with their partner, the Fake News Media, are trying to STEAL this Election. We won’t let them!”
      In a statement issued last week by the lead US cybersecurity agency, federal election security officials dismissed such “unfounded claims” and expressed “utmost confidence” in the integrity of the elections. Officials from both parties have said there is no evidence of major irregularities.
      Biden has called Trump’s refusal to concede “an embarrassment” and is pressing ahead with the transition. On Monday afternoon he and running mate Kamala Harris were due to speak “on the economic recovery and building back better in the long term”, in their first speech addressing the economic situation since their victory.
      Biden outlined a $7.3tn plan ahead of the election that among other goals would bolster crumbling infrastructure, build a clean energy economy and support domestic manufacturing with cash for research and development.
      His first aim is to pass a new stimulus plan. But it is unclear how likely he is to pass any deal while Republicans control the Senate, which will hinge on runoff elections in Georgia in January. Talks about a new stimulus package have been deadlocked for months.
      The economic situation has improved but remains on a knife edge. Unemployment has dropped dramatically since a high of 14.7% in April but worrying signs remain.
      By October the unemployment rate had fallen to 6.9% but the number of long-term unemployed – those jobless for 27 weeks or more – increased by 1.2 million to 3.6 million. Almost a third of the total number of people out of work are now long-term unemployed, black and latino Americans suffering far higher rates of unemployment than their white neighbors.
      Jobs growth has continued to slow and each week people are filing unemployment claims at a rate still more than three times as high as before the pandemic.
      Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economics Policy Institute, said: “If this drags on and the pace of jobs growth continues to slow, it will take years before we get back to a pre-pandemic economy. Americans can not afford the political games that are being played.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Dominic Cummings: voting to leave | Editorial

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      Boris Johnson should have asked his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, to resign months ago when he broke the first coronavirus lockdown and showed no regret afterwards. Perhaps Mr Johnson thought he could not do without the architect of his election victory and his ally in pursuing a hardline Brexit. But the damage was done. Public confidence in the government’s handling of coronavirus fell and has not stopping falling since.Mr Cummings walked out of Downing Street, in an act of theatrical defiance, on Friday. It is a mark of the tragicomic nature of Mr Johnson’s government that a week of infighting within No 10 dominates the news at a time of national emergency when hundreds are dying every day from a dangerous disease. Mr Cummings gets to walk away while Britain is stuck with the damage he has wrought.He won the Brexit referendum by spreading lies, unconcerned about damaging public trust. He has snubbed parliament, weaponised populist sentiment against state institutions and played fast and loose with the constitution. He may say that unconventional times needed unconventional ideas. But he seemed to enjoy his war too much. He picked, and lost, too many fights for his own good. A swirling cast of characters was drawn in. Even Carrie Symonds, Mr Johnson’s fiancee, got involved.Mr Cummings was edged out of power before he could flounce out. This tawdry episode demonstrates two things. One is Mr Johnson’s palpable lack of leadership in a crisis. He encouraged his chief adviser to embrace his inner Leninism — where the end justifies the means. Second is the government’s well-deserved reputation for incompetence. The prime minister over-centralised Downing Street and let Mr Cummings ride roughshod over a weak cabinet that he had hand-picked but which lacked the confidence or foresight to predict problems.Mr Cummings’ plans have gone awry thanks to the unpredictability of politics. After the US election his ideas for a hard Brexit were going nowhere. A Biden White House would have little time for the UK if it turned its back on Europe. Mr Cummings’ departure is a clear indication that the prime minister is ready to make the compromises needed to strike a deal with the EU.Coronavirus required bigger government. Fiscal conservatives like the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and many other Tory MPs worried that once voters understood that big spending would not bankrupt the economy they might get a taste for decent public services. Mr Sunak wanted to balance the books, Mr Cummings wanted to blow them up. He agitated for the un-Tory idea that state power could turbocharge the economy, making powerful enemies in No 11.Resentments have built like sediment on the river bed of Conservatism and threatened to choke the flow of government. Backbench MPs see Mr Cummings’ contempt for them as symptomatic of a high-handed Downing Street and have rebelled in such numbers that it threatens the stability of a government that, paradoxically, won a landslide largely thanks to Mr Cummings.Mr Johnson might think that, without his adviser, his ungovernable party becomes governable. But he might find that elections become unwinnable. Some of this is more about style than substance. Mr Johnson still has to make good on his promise to “level up” Britain, especially since north-south divisions have been dramatically exposed by coronavirus. The prime minister needs to up his game. Once gained, a reputation for incompetence is hard to shift. Too often with Mr Johnson the buck stops somewhere else and blame is dumped on someone else. With Mr Cummings out, there is no hiding place for Mr Johnson. More

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      in US Politics

      How will drug legalization affect America's communities of color?

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      From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South, drug legalization won big nationwide on election day in America.Under the first state law of its kind, people in Oregon soon won’t be arrested for possessing small amounts of drugs including heroin, meth and cocaine. In New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota and Montana, voters joined 11 other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing recreational marijuana. Washington DC passed an initiative to make mushrooms and other natural psychedelics the lowest possible enforcement priority. Even Mississippi legalized medical marijuana.After months of global protests over racism in policing, advocates behind many of these campaigns focused their messaging on racial disparities in drug-law enforcement. In New Jersey, a social media ad explaining how a marijuana arrest could ruin someone’s life centered images of young Black men and women. Activists in Oregon pointed to a statewide study that found drug convictions for Black and Native people would drop by nearly 95% under the state’s decriminalization law.Yet despite these electoral successes, it remains unclear what effect the new measures will have for communities of color, who have long been disproportionately targeted in the war on drugs. Even as many states move toward legalization, drug-related violations remain the most frequent cause for arrest in the US. Nearly 40% of those arrests are for marijuana possession alone, according to federal data from 2018. Black people make up 27% of drug arrests, but only 13% of the country.Even in states that have already enacted more lax drug laws, racial disparities in enforcement didn’t disappear. An April study from the ACLU found that “in every state that has legalized or decriminalized marijuana possession, Black people are still more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.” Being caught with large amounts of marijuana, selling it, using it in a school zone, or underage use is still illegal in states that have legalized. In states like Maine and Vermont, according to the ACLU, racial disparities in weed arrests worsened after legalization passed. Disparities improved in California and Nevada.Some opponents of legalization say this increase in arrests is the result of the continued criminalization of black markets that still exist outside of the heavily regulated legal market. And they believe the potential for more widespread drug abuse under legalization, in the form of crimes like DUIs, can lead to more interactions with police – especially for people of color.Kevin Sabet, a former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy adviser, thinks that if the goal is to end racial disparities, states should continue focusing on decriminalization. “It’s a false dichotomy to think that you either have to arrest someone and lock them up, or you need to be in bed with big tobacco and have edibles,” he said. “Oregon already had a decent system for referring drug users [from jail time].”But even if people aren’t serving long sentences for simple drug possession, the impact of an arrest or a criminal conviction can follow them for years, legalization supporters say. And for repeat offenders, a drug conviction can mean a longer sentence for any future offense.“They own you after that,” said Bobby Byrd, a volunteer with Yes on 110 in Oregon who struggled to find a place to live, get promoted, and get licensed to become a drug counselor because of his felony cocaine conviction. “People need help, not punishment. Punishment didn’t help me; it just slowed me down in my life and made me have to work 20 times harder.”In South Dakota, which legalized marijuana last week, weed arrests have increased significantly since 2007, and the racial disparities for Indigenous people are especially stark. Native Americans are 10% of the state population, but were nearly 20% of marijuana possession arrests in 2018. They are nearly a third of the state prison population.Campaign organizers for decriminalization say they’ll have to stay vigilant against the over-policing of communities of color. “The reality is that systems of oppression always find different ways of incarcerating Black and Brown folks,” said Kayse Jama, executive director of Unite Oregon, a social justice organization. “I think [the new law] is a good step forward; it’s one tool we want to remove from their toolbox. But we also understand that [law enforcement] will continue to target our community.”Jama also noted the importance of decriminalization for immigrants, who will be less likely to face deportation or other federal immigration consequences over state-level drug crimes. So far in fiscal year 2020, over 600 people have been deported from the US, whose most serious conviction was marijuana possession.There’s also the question of whether Black communities can profit from the cannabis industry in states legalizing for the first time. Many states prohibit people with felony convictions from working for or owning dispensaries – convictions that are disproportionately saddled on people of color.Crucial to undoing this dynamic is ensuring that people who have already been prosecuted for marijuana can be released from jail or expunge their record. While expungement was not part of the initial ballot proposal in South Dakota, Melissa Mentele, executive director of New Approach South Dakota, said her group would push for such a policy through the state legislature.“Expungement is everything,” Mentele said. “It’s not just passing a law – you have people’s lives in your hands.”Organizers in Oregon also said they planned on addressing expungement and sentencing reductions in the upcoming legislative session. At least 15 states have passed laws making it easier to wipe marijuana-related crimes from people’s records.Applying the new law retroactively could be especially significant in New Jersey, which has some of the highest arrest rates for marijiuana – locking up an average of more than 600 people every week in 2019 for pot sales and possession.But in a state where the economic impact of a new legal weed industry could be as high as $6bn, it has been a challenge to put racial justice at the center of the conversation when some supporters of legalization see it as either a new business opportunity or tax revenue generator.The American public seems very open to a total rethink on the drug war and economic justice“In 2014, we saw a version of a bill come through that didn’t even have the word expungement in it,” said Amol Sinha, the campaign chairman of NJ CAN 2020, which backed the new measure, and the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.After a 2019 bill failed to pass the New Jersey state senate, the question to amend the constitution and legalize weed was passed to the voters. The ACLU led the campaign for the ballot measure, spending more than $300,000. “It was a huge, strategic investment,” said Sinha. “We led with racial justice every step of the way … And that is what resonated with voters.”Now it’s up to legislators to write the law, and it remains to be seen how much of the racial equity message will be baked into the new legislation. But Assemblyman Jamel Holley of district 20, a Democrat who was instrumental in writing the old marijuana bill and is helping shepherd the new one, said he is committed to delivering upon the demands of the voters.“[We can’t] have big conglomerates take over this [marijuana] industry, but at the same time have individuals who look like me have a record and can’t get a job or housing,” said Holley, who is Black. “My sole focus is that we repair the harms of the past.”Before the ballot measure had even passed, Holley called for the state to immediately dismiss all marijuana-related court cases, suspend all marijuana arrests, and implement an expedited expungement process.These kinds of actions illustrate that politicians are catching up to voters in seeing legalization as a racial justice issue, not just a revenue question, said Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing and a sociology professor at Brooklyn College.“One thing we’ve seen from the measures that have passed and the exit polling data is that the electorate is more progressive than the candidates,” Vitale said. “The American public seems very open to a total rethink on the drug war and economic justice.”This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. 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