Likely 2020 presidential contender Pete Buttigieg explains why he once said 'all lives matter'
- Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor running for president, said he supports abolishing the death penalty in a speech on Thursday morning laying out his agenda for the African-American community.
- The speech touched heavily on criminal justice reform.
- "Capital punishment as seen in America has always been a discriminatory practice and we would be a fairer and safer country when we join the ranks of modern nations who have abolished the death penalty," Buttigieg told the National Action Network Convention in New York City.
- The mayor also clarified his past use of the phrase "all lives matter" in a 2015 speech.
- "It should enhance, not diminish, the value of a good police department when we assert what should go without saying but in these times must be said clearly and again and again - that black lives matter," he said.
Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor running for president, said he supports abolishing the death penalty in a speech on Thursday morning laying out his agenda for black Americans.
"It is time to face the simple fact that capital punishment as seen in America has always been a discriminatory practice and we would be a fairer and safer country when we join the ranks of modern nations who have abolished the death penalty," Buttigieg told the crowd at the National Action Network Convention in New York City.
Addressing a majority African-American audience, Buttigieg laid out his agenda for the black community. He said it involves addressing five major issues: homeownership, entrepreneurship, education, health, and justice.
"We insist that being pro-minority and being pro-racial justice not only can but must be compatible with being pro-rule of law and respectful of law enforcement doing the right thing," he said.
Buttigieg made sure to say that "black lives matter" after it was recently reported that he said "all lives matter" in a 2015 State of the City speech.
"It should enhance, not diminish, the value of a good police department when we assert what should go without saying but in these times must be said clearly and again and again - that black lives matter," he said.
The mayor later told reporters that he hadn't understood at the time that the phrase was being used as an attack on the Black Lives Matter movement.
"At that time, I was talking about a lot of issues around racial reconciliation in our community. What I did not understand at that time, was that phrase, just early into mid-2015, was coming to be viewed as a sort of counter slogan to Black Lives Matter," Buttigieg said. "And so, this statement, that seems very anodyne and something that nobody could be against, actually wound up being used to devalue what the Black Lives Matter movement was telling us."
Several other 2020 candidates have similarly called to end the death penalty.
"The death penalty is immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and proven to be unequally applied," Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted last month after her home state of California announced it would end executions.
Sens. Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, both also running for president, supported ending capital punishment, although that policy decision is left up to individual states.
But one potential 2020 frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, has long supported the death penalty and its unclear if he's moved on the issue.
Buttigieg also aligns with other 2020 candidates on several other key issues that disproportionately affect black Americans, including enfranchising ex-felons, rolling back the private prison industry, ending mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenses, and curtailing the use of solitary confinement.