As Defund the Police Loses Luster Activists Assess Joe Biden's Prospects for Police Reform
On 12/21/20 at 4:56 PM EST
The day after cable networks projected Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a staunch Biden ally, made sure to lay blame at the feet of the "defund the police" movement for Democratic losses in Congress.
He said he and the late John Lewis concluded, "it had the possibilities of doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what 'Burn, baby, burn' did to us back in 1960."
Biden, and even President Barack Obama, would follow suit in pointing to the potential of the movement that arose to national prominence after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, to divide rather than bring people under its banner.