Justice
How #BlackLivesMatter Is Changing the Philadelphia Mayor's Race
One Democratic candidate has switched up his rhetoric on criminal justice reform entirely, but voters don’t appear to be buying it.
Jim Kenney entered Philadelphia's mayoral race as the clear standard bearer for criminal justice reform. He declared his candidacy not long after celebrating the city's decriminalization of marijuana, a cause for which he had long been a lonely and passionate advocate on the City Council.
He framed decriminalization as a civil rights issue, calling it an "opportunity to keep young people in our city, many of them African Americans, out of the criminal justice system." He added that "in some ways it’s been decriminalized for quite some time for a certain race of people [if] you go to a Willie Nelson concert, or Phish concert or an Eagles game."