people'. That is a flat out lie. Her credibility is gone.
How the Media Is Getting Mayor Pete’s Gentrification Story Wrong
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/04/21/how-the-media-is-getting-mayor-petes-south-bend-gentrification-story-wrong/
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, now a Democratic presidential candidate, launched an initiative in February 2013 he called “1,000 Homes, 1,000 Days.” The goal: identify 1,000 vacant or abandoned homes (about a third of the total) and either demolish or repair them. By November 2015, 427 homes “were repaired, 569 were demolished, 10 were deconstructed, 6 were set aside for repair by community development corporations, and 110 were under contract for demolition,” according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provided a block grant supporting the initiative. If Buttigieg’s reelection with 75 percent of the vote is anything to go by, South Bend’s citizens have signaled their approval. The city’s population has steadily increased since 2013.
Buttigieg has made the initiative’s success a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, so it should be no surprise that journalists have looked into it. But two remarkably similar stories published last week—in Buzzfeed and on CNN.com—said the initiative “smacked of gentrification.” That this odd phrase appeared verbatim in both stories is perhaps interesting. (Buzzfeed’s Henry Gomez, who published his piece first, should wonder where CNN’s Dan Merica and Vanessa Yurkevich got their inspiration.) What’s puzzling, however, is the decision to frame the demolition and rehabilitation of vacant and abandoned homes as akin to displacing minority communities. Judging from 2011 and 2019 population estimates, no displacement appears to have occurred.
What’s more, it’s hard to displace people from homes where no one was living.
The two major challenges Buttigieg’s initiative faced were the town’s lackadaisical enforcement of building code violations and absentee owners of the targeted homes. One of the initiative’s biggest obstacles was determining if the blighted properties’ owners were both sufficiently willing and able to improve them. Both the Buzzfeed and CNN stories lean heavily on two sources: Stacey Odom and Regina Williams-Preston, two African American women who had purchased blighted properties. Odom purchased one, which she hoped to fix up and make her own home, without knowing that the initiative had already slated it for demolition. Williams-Preston had purchased three vacant homes “with plans to refurbish them and either sell them for a profit or create a business, like a day care for local kids,” CNN reported. Sadly, her husband fell seriously ill and money that would’ve gone toward their investment went toward health care instead.
Both stories strike a decidedly oppositional tone. Buzzfeed seemed particularly intent on framing the story as a conflict between a robotic, white, impersonal politician and a black community. (The word “data,” and the mayor’s abiding interest in it, somehow became grounds for opprobrium.)
snip
Regina Wiliams-Preston was almost always used in many of the early hit pieces on Pete, but most failed to mention that she had motivation to go after him, as she had a huge amount of fines build up and lost a suit with the city, plus she was running for mayor (she was crushed in the primary) against a candidate that had his support (they won).
Second, the entire Boykins thing is not being told in its totality. Boykins was not directly sacked (and he was, for almost a year, before Buttigieg was even mayor, illegally wiretapping other cops without their knowledge and was under FBI investigation). Buttigieg, when he found out about the FBI investigation, did ask Boykins to resign, which he did, but then, within hours, the next morning, rescinded it, and was simply demoted.
Boykins stayed on and retired last year with full pension, and the cops he was illegally wiretapping (NOT saying they were good guys at all) ended up getting a far larger settlement from the city (over half a million dollars) than Boykins did (around 75K).
Could Buttigieg have handled it better? Sure, ABSOLUTELY, but another huge myth that has built up around this is that Pete knew the tapes had some racists stuff on it and 'fired' the chief anyway. That is also not true. No one but Boykins and the communications director (also fired and not re-instated) who helped aid the illegal wire-tapping (it has been ruled illegal by every courts so far, including a federal one) were the ONLY people who have heard the tapes. Buttigieg has not, no one else had. Buttigieg was advised that he would be committing a felony by releasing the tapes without a courst order to do so, and that is where it remains for the last seven years (the case got kicked back to state level, and is now overseen by a RW Pence appointed judge, so who knows how that plays out).
Also, Buttigieg won re-election, years after the Boykins incident, with the vast majority of the black vote and over 80% in total (South Bend is 45% minority), so he was far from hated as mayor by most blacks, which you would never have thought based on most of the hit pieces coming out for months.
Lastly, it was a gross mischaracterisation of his 'I am not asking for your vote'. He didn't just flippantly toss that out. He was saying it in the context of his not being there as a POTUS candidate, and just putting in a show for the media. He was saying he was there to try to help the city to heal and to fix the the police department.
he has also gotten support from some the A-A, it has not been all pure rage at Pete:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/mayor-pete-buttigieg-protesters-heckled-south-bend-police
However, other residents have defended Buttigieg's leadership, acknowledging his efforts to pause his presidential campaigning to return home.
Rev. Michael Patton, the president of the South Bend NAACP, said on CNN that the mayor "has taken steps to draw our community together. ... He's brought community leaders together, our chief of police, as well others to the table to bring some calm to the storm. ... He’s done a phenomenal job.”
Videos and photos from Friday's rally show Buttigieg in the center of the protest, listening to demonstrators, answering their questions, and addressing their demands.
In one exchange, an attendee handed the leader a petition for him to sign, calling on the Justice Department to investigate Logan's death. The presidential candidate studied it, but then told the activist that he couldn't sign it because certain language would prejudice the internal investigation.
"But I will sign a petition if it's clean ... if it just calls for an outside investigation," Buttigieg explained, prompting the demonstrator to tell the crowd that they need to retool the petition so it excludes specific details about the case, and, that way, Buttigieg could sign it. The group then erupted in applause.
I have been realistic in many of the recent threads on Pete, and I am quite pessimistic he can draw enough of my fellow PoC to vote for him to be viable. I am an honest broker, and I try to call things fairly, even if it means I have to be a critical thinker and admit there are issues.
That all said, I will be damned it I stand by and let knife-in-back dodgy, shaded and in this case (The View), partially outright lying slam jobs pass by me without me putting in my two cents in.
Congratulations to our presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden!
If I were to vote in a presidential
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