SouthernWorldwide.com – Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed advocated for the mass release of incarcerated individuals during a webinar focused on prison abolition in September 2020.
El-Sayed participated in a webinar hosted by the University of Michigan’s Carceral State Project. During the event, he spoke alongside a convicted murderer and a registered sex offender. He argued that the incarceration of criminals indicated a societal failure to address underlying issues, suggesting that releasing these individuals was a necessary step.
A significant part of El-Sayed’s argument was rooted in the public health risks posed by overcrowded prisons, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he also expressed support for continuing to release individuals from correctional facilities even after the pandemic subsided. These remarks coincided with the height of the “defund the police” movement, a period marked by an increase in violent crime and a trend among Democratic-led cities to reduce their police force budgets.
El-Sayed, who has publicly aligned himself with independent Senator Bernie Sanders, is currently a prominent candidate in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. On his campaign platform, he has committed to a critical stance on Israel and has pledged to expand welfare programs should he be elected.
During the webinar, El-Sayed stated, “There are so many ways that society has failed to deal with real problems and has used policing and jails as a stopgap for all of these failures.” He further elaborated, “We’ve got policies… which basically force people into jail because they’re poor… we’ve got to think about all of them systematically but any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in particularly right now… this doesn’t end when the pandemic’s over.”
The American Friends Service Committee, a co-host of the webinar, promoted the event as an opportunity to discuss “the road to decarceration and abolition with Abdul El-Sayed.” The organization utilized hashtags such as #FreeThemAll and #AbolishPrison to publicize the event.
The Washington Free Beacon was the first to report on these resurfaced comments. According to their report, El-Sayed shared the virtual stage with an individual convicted of second-degree murder and a registered sex offender.
A representative, Vargas, stated that he was “almost certain” El-Sayed was unaware of the pasts of the other webinar participants when he agreed to join.
El-Sayed is currently engaged in a competitive Democratic primary race. The winner will secure the Democratic nomination to contend for Michigan’s open Senate seat in the November elections. He is widely recognized as the most progressive among the three main candidates, a position that has raised concerns about his electability among some party leaders, as reported by NOTUS.
In line with the concerns raised by the Democratic strategist, El-Sayed has deleted social media posts from the COVID-19 era. These posts reportedly endorsed defunding the police, a concept that was once popular among Democrats but has since become a more contentious issue.
Towards the conclusion of the webinar, El-Sayed remarked, “The last thing we have to remember is that jails and policing in America are like the ‘duct tape’ that people bring out to fix all the other broken systems. If we’re serious about fixing policing and, or rethinking policing, and fixing the mass incarceration system then we’ve got to fix all the broken problems that lead to them, right, where we’re then applying the ‘duct tape’ that is so corrosive to the lives of so many people.”
