Georgia not only has southern hospitality, but with gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, they have southern hypocrisy.
The Democratic candidate has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private security even though she continues to be connected with the Defund the Police movement, according to Fox News.
The campaign for Abrams paid $450,000 to an Atlanta-based security firm by the name of Executive Protection Agencies. They spent this amount between December 2021 and April 2022, based on the report.
And…Abrams has a seat on the board of The Marguerite Casey Foundation. This is a nonprofit she connected with in 2021 that supports abolishing and defunding the police force.
The president and CEO of The Marguerite Casey Foundation, Carmen Rojas, is known for saying “Defund the police.” The foundation directed thousands of dollars in grants in 2020 to liberal organizations that have tried to defund law enforcement, according to the group’s 2020 tax documents.
They gave $150,000 to the Black Organizing Project which helped to lead an initiative in 2021 to dismantle the police department for the Oakland, California school board.
When Stacey Abrams was asked in June of 2020 by CNN whether she supports defunding the police, she answered, “we have to reallocate resources, so yes. If there’s a moment where the resources are so tight that we have to choose between whether we murder black people or serve black people, then absolutely our choice must be service.”
Abrams’s challenger for the governor’s seat is Republican incumbent Brian Kemp. He is running for reelection. Kemp released an advertisement in June that criticized Abrams for her past comments on defunding the police. The ad also showed the ties Abrams has with The Marguerite Casey Foundation.
Abrams Claims She Hasn’t Supported to Defund Police
Despite the words Abrams has on record, she told the media two weeks ago that she “never supported defunding the police” and she said that Gov. Kemp was “cherry-picking information.”
She told Fox News that she intended to balance public safety with justice. She, then, argued that police should be paid more money.
But Stephen Lawson, a Georgia Republican strategist, wasn’t buying her new love for the police. He said, “Stacey Abrams wants to defund the police and open up the jails to let violent criminals roam free while you pay for her private security. If you could be arrested for hypocrisy, Stacey Abrams would be serving a life sentence.”
And 100 Georgia sheriffs agree with him. They condemned Abrams in June for her “complete disdain for law enforcement” and “ties to an anti-police organization which openly advocates for abolishing prisons and stripping local police departments of their funding.”
The Marguerite Casey Foundation granted $250,000 in 2020 to the Movement for Black Lives. It is a coalition of over 50 groups across the nation that believe prisons, police, and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people should be shut down and replaced by organizations that value and affirm the “flourishing of Black lives.”
The foundation also revealed a campaign in 2021 called “Answer the Uprising.” It has pledged more than $1.6 million to pay for programs and organizations that address racial injustice from police and the justice system.
Marguerite Casey Foundation website says, “Tens of millions of everyday people took extraordinary risks to say what they wanted in the clearest terms possible — transform, defund, abolish. They wanted an end to police violence and all forms of racist violence and injustice that are endemic within the criminal justice system.”
A state that is known for southern hospitality surely won’t vote in a governor who is full of southern hypocrisy, will they?