Green Party U.S. Senate candidate, Matthew Hoh, and his campaign team, extend their deepest sympathies to all the families and loved ones of 10 slain victims of white supremacist murderer, Payton Gendron on May 14th in Buffalo, New York.

But it's not enough to extend our sympathies unless we also confront the systemic racism that led to these horrific murders.

Matthew Hoh for Senate
www.matthewhohforsenate.org

For Immediate Release
May 23, 2022

Contact:
Rose Roby, Campaign Manager, [email protected]

Hoh says "The killings in Buffalo, New York are genocidal and part of a line of U.S. history hundreds of years old. This violence is part of a clear movement of racism and white supremacy that must not only be confronted but eradicated."

The Republican Party is explicitly racist and xenophobic in its messaging, while the Democratic Party will pay lip service to anti-racism but when it comes to action, do little to confront the economic and social disparities that create the conditions for these acts of violence to occur. This can be seen in President Joe Biden's political history of promoting policies that have directly harmed the Black community.

In 1989, then Senator Biden attacked President George Bush's "tough on crime" policing plans from his right, asserting that "…the president's plan does not include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, enough prosecutors to convict them, enough judges to sentence them, or enough prison cells to put them away for a long time." Making good on his promise, Biden helped push through the draconian crime bill of 1994 that has vastly increased the school to prison pipeline and its devastating impact on Black lives.

The covert racism of the Democratic Party's policies can also be seen in its role in gentrification. C. Sandy Przybylak, Secretary of the Erie County New York Green Party and NY Green Party Executive Member At-Large who lives within 5 miles of the Tops Supermarket where the killings took place says "Buffalo is a city divided by class and race. Its politicians talk about investing in the crumbling East Side, but very little action is ever taken. The owner of the football team - a billionaire - is showered with millions. Waterfront developers receive tax breaks and subsidies. When the minority community here demanded more - when India Walton beat Byron Brown in the primary promising to address some of these issues - the Democratic and Republican parties banded together with business owners to help re-elect Byron Brown instead."

As U.S. Senator, Matthew Hoh will demand affordable housing, an end to the destructive war on drugs that's fed the prison industrial complex thousands upon thousands of Black lives, and work on implementing plan for real reparations to the Black community that Hoh says goes further than a check: "We need the whole of government commitment that ensures the centuries of continuous evolving injustice, oppression and exploitation of Black people finally comes to an end. This means more than what is the common white community's understanding of reparations as a one-time payout. Rather it must be a concerted focus and continuous effort to ensure current and future generations of Black families are no longer subject to political, economic, criminal, educational and cultural systems that define, delineate and determine a racial caste hierarchy in the US."

Only through confronting systemic racism can we eradicate the plague of violent white supremacy that claimed 10 more precious lives last week.

Hoh added: "This is why I'm proud to be running as a Green Party candidate. The Green Party is the only party in the United States that has reparations in its platform and is committed to its Key Value of Social Justice and Equal Opportunity."