Indian Man [Ameya Pawar] Running for Illinois Governor says He’ll Commute All Low-Level Drug Sentences

From [HERE] Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar, one of several Democrats vying for his party’s nomination to run for Illinois governor against incumbent Republican Bruce Rauner, doesn’t think the drug war was a failure.

“The war on drugs was a success,” he said in a speech on criminal justice reform given last month. “Because the war on drugs was never actually on drugs. It was against black people.”

Pawar used that address to explain the true history of the modern drug war, which former President Richard Nixon utilized to crack down on the anti-war left and African-Americans.

As part of his campaign, he’s vowing to end Illinois’s participation in that drug war through a battery of policies: making minor possession of controlled substances no longer a felony, legalizing and taxing marijuana, expanding addiction treatment, establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to air police-community grievances, and, most radically, using his commutation powers as governor to simply commute the sentences of nonviolent low-level drug offenders.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Intercept, Pawar put his views on politics into a larger context. His campaign targeting the drug war is part of a larger philosophy of fighting what he says is a divide-and-conquer approach by the nation’s elite to turn people of different races and classes against each other.

Pawar, who is the son of Indian immigrants who were active in the now-opposition Congress Party, was spurred to run partly by Gov. Rauner’s 2015 decision to pause the acceptance of Syrian refugees to the state.

“My background is in the connection between disaster and poverty policy; my wife used to run a refugee resettlement program, my first graduate internship in social work school was working with refugees,” he explained. “The idea that you would ban a group of people who literally walked across continents, who are fleeing persecution … is un-American. This is consistent with what Rauner has been doing in Illinois over the last years, which is pitting communities against one another, using the economic anxieties that exist in communities as sort of a catalyst to pit them against one another.”

He cited the example of Rauner going to poor, white communities in Illinois and complaining about the level of school funding in Chicago, a sort of racial dog whistle. “He’s done a very good job of dividing and ruling,” Pawar cited. “When I give my stump speech, I talk about how that is the same tactic the British used in India. You know, the British pit Hindus and Muslims against one another. Pit people against one another based on class and geography, caste … this is no different. Chicago versus downstate. Downstate versus Chicago. Black, white, brown against one another. All poor people fighting over scraps. So that’s why I jumped into the race. I’m going to call this stuff out.”

Pawar’s convictions about ending the divide-and-conquer strategy inform his views on the drug war. He pointed to the very different public policy response to the crack-cocaine epidemic, which was concentrated among African-Americans, and today’s opiate epidemic, which is concentrated among white Americans (black and brown people have also seen soaring rates of overdoses, though on a smaller scale).

“The opiate crisis means we need to provide treatment. Today we’re calling it a public health issue, but it was a public health issue 40 years ago,” he said.

He explained to The Intercept why he is willing to take the step of using commutations to get Illinois’s low-level, nonviolent drug offenders out of prison.

“If you were jailed for low-level drug offenses, nonviolent drug offenses, the basis for commutation is, well we are talking about preventative treatment, so why are we letting people whither away in jail for the same issues we are wiling to provide treatment for today?” he asked. “The drugs are different, but the underlying circumstances that led people to addiction, or created the addiction issue, is the same. So you can create a rubric and say, ‘Look, low-level drug offense, nonviolent, commute the sentences; create an automatic expungement program.’ You pair that with workforce development or social supports. That is still cheaper than 35 or 40 grand a year of jailing that person.”