Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti faced criticism from Black Lives Matter agitators on Tuesday after news broke that he was being considered for a cabinet post in a potential Joe Biden administration. Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah accused the mayor of continuing to “uphold liberal white supremacy at a hastily planned rally outside the mayor’s home on Tuesday.
The protest may have been sparked by the news that General Services Administration (GSA) head Emily Murphy informed the Biden camp that she was ready to begin the formal transition process to a new Biden administration — a move that many in the media believed was the first acknowledgment by President Trump that Joe Biden may have won the November 3 election.
The Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter put out a call to meet up at Garcetti’s home, the Getty House, just before 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time “to protest the proposed appointment of one of the worst mayors in the country to Biden cabinet.”
As this video shows, speakers at the event were adamant that Garcetti not receive a cabinet post in a potential Biden administration.
“We’re here because the Biden administration is considering appointing Mayor Garcetti to a cabinet position,” said a megaphone wielding agitator outside of Garcetti’s residence. That pronouncement prompted a chant of “Hell, no!” from the crowd of a couple dozen protesters. Participants took then turns ravaging Garcetti’s record for more than an hour.
Speakers were mainly concerned with rumors that Garcetti, a national co-chair of the Biden campaign, was being considered for the chief position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or the Transportation Department. Speakers were doubtful that Garcetti had the tools to manage either organization.
“They say they’re considering him for the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, when LA has the highest houseless population in the country,” the first speaker said.
“They’re considering him for the Secretary of Transportation, when LA has some of the worst traffic and some of the worst infrastructure in the country,” the first speaker pointed out.
The BLM agitators aren’t wrong about Garcetti’s record. Always a center of homelessness with its Skid Row area, homelessness has surged nearly 60 percent in Los Angeles since Garcetti, with nearly 60,000 homeless estimated in L.A. County, and over 36,000 in LA alone. And those estimates are probably low.
Los Angeles’ problem with transportation pre-dates Garcetti, of course, but traffic congestion and mass transit concerns have only grown since he took office in 2013.
The mob didn’t have kind words for the prospective president either with Abdullah claiming that Biden was capitalizing on the Black Lives Matter movement. She claimed a Garcetti appointment would be “doubling down on liberal white supremacy.”
“We have to remember that there are a lot of liberal white supremacists,” Abdullah said. “Just because you plaster on a smile, just because you have a few sell-out Negros that want a seat at your dinner table, just because you speak a little Spanish … that does not make you not a white supremacist.”
Abdullah accused Garcetti of supporting policies and systems that keep Black people oppressed such as the city’s police department. She further accused the mayor of “criminalizing” the homeless and pilfering Black Lives Matter talking points such as “reimagining public safety” in Garcetti’s push to reform the city’s police department in the wake of this year’s riots.
The protest was loud but peaceful with demonstrators disbursing after a little more than an hour of shouting and trashing the Los Angeles mayor. Police blocked off traffic on the street and were able to disburse the crowd without incident.
As for Joe Biden and his potential administration, the BLM activists had a simple message for the possible new president. Ignore us and our demands at your own peril.
“We want to be very clear as we happily usher out the Trump regime, we will not accept liberal white supremacy in the White House in the form of Joe Biden,” Abdullah warned. “It doesn’t matter to me if Kamala Harris is your vice-president if you’re using her Black woman body to usher in oppressive systems and oppressive people like Eric Garcetti.”
