Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, spoke at length about criminal justice reform at a campaign rally in Madison.
During a campaign rally outside the Wisconsin state Capitol, Jo Jorgensen sounded like she was speaking at a local Black Lives Matter protest. That is, until Adam Smith’s invisible hand made an appearance.
The Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee devoted the first eight minutes of her stump speech to the criminal justice system — pledging systematic change not supported by Democratic nominee Joe Biden or the GOP’s Donald Trump.
“We cannot claim to be the land of the free when we lead the world in incarcerations. We have 5 percent of the world's population but house 20 percent of its prisoners,” said Jorgensen at the Sept. 26 rally. “One of the biggest factors that led to a quadrupling of our prison population since 1980 is the racist and destructive war on drugs.”
Jorgensen is the only third-party presidential candidate on the Wisconsin ballot this year who can, mathematically, win the election. The Green Party’s Howard Hawkins is also eligible to secure the 270 electors needed for an electoral college victory, but, for the first time in two decades, Wisconsin voters won’t have the option to vote Green in the presidential race. On Sept. 14, the state Supreme Court denied the Green Party access to the ballot because of a complaint filed over nomination papers.
In 2016, Wisconsin was the tipping-point state for Trump securing victory in the electoral college. He won the state by just 22,748 votes. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received nearly 107,000 votes in Wisconsin and the Green Party’s Jill Stein pulled in more than 31,000 — together capturing about 4.5 percent of the state’s electorate. It was the best third-party showing in the state since Ross Perot’s run in 1996.
The latest Marquette Law School poll found 4 percent of likely voters are backing Jorgensen this time around.
By the time Jorgensen made her first presidential campaign visit to Madison on Sept. 26, the city, like others across the country, had been the scene of months of BLM protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha police officer.
As the Libertarian standard bearer addressed around 100 supporters on the Capitol grounds, local Black Lives Matters protesters were once again convening across the Square at State Street at what’s become an almost daily gathering spot. Jorgensen delivered a message that likely resonates with these activists in calling for defunding “federal involvement with policing,” including the provision of U.S. military assistance to local law enforcement.
“Unfortunately, long gone is a friendly local patrol officer who walks the beat and knows everyone in the neighborhood by name. Instead, nameless, faceless SWAT teams have been imported from the federal government to make Americans feel like enemy combatants in their own neighborhoods,” Jorgensen said. “In recent months, we have seen the Department of Homeland Security...patrolling our streets in military fatigues and armored cars, attacking even those who are peacefully protesting and attacking the media.”
Jorgensen vowed to end the federal “1033 program” that outfits local police departments with surplus military equipment — which Biden voted to create in 1997 while serving in the U.S Senate. She also promised to decriminalize all drugs at the federal level and issue presidential pardons to “anyone convicted at the federal level of victimless crimes.”
“Americans would never vote to spend $80 billion every year to keep families apart from their loved ones,” said Jorgensen. “But that's exactly what our government does with its prison system.”
Like many protesters in the streets of Madison, Jorgensen supports banning no-knock raids that “too often end up killing innocent bystanders like Breonna Taylor” and implementing new legal means to hold law enforcement accountable.
“When police do misbehave, it is nearly impossible to take legal action because of an arcane doctrine known as qualified immunity. When I'm president, I will end qualified immunity so that police are held to the same standard as everyone else,” pledged Jorgensen.
The United States military policing abroad would also end under a Libertarian administration.
“I'm going to turn America into one giant Switzerland: Armed and neutral.”
Jorgensen’s public support of protests this summer over police violence has caused some confusion and concern among her party’s faithful. After her speech, she took questions from the Madison crowd. One young man asked for clarification of her embrace of the Black Lives Movement, which he described as being affiliated with Marxists.
“This is probably the biggest typo in my campaign because I've had to explain it so many times. It was never supposed to be capitalized Black Lives Matter as in the Marxist group,” replied Jorgensen, referring to the organizers who started using the hashtags Black Lives Matters in 2013 after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida. “Of course Libertarians are literally the opposite of Marxists.
“We see very similar problems,” Jorgensen added. But, “[Black Lives Matter] think the answer is bigger government, at least the Marxist group. We know that the problem is already big government. We need smaller government.”
While Libertarians and Black Lives Matter activists see some common ground when it comes to policing issues, M. Adams of Freedom Inc. makes a couple of fundamental distinctions: “Black Lives Matter is a political issue, not a partisan one.” Also, capitalism is not the solution, but a problem.
“The movement uses and engages many strategies to get us closer to liberation. That said, we approach elections by asking not which candidate, but which conditions, will be better for Black folx,” says Adams. “We also know that however the election goes, our work is not done. We must still fight and push toward the world we want to build.”
Freedom Inc. has been organizing Black Lives Matter protests locally for years — notably calling for community control of the police, removing law enforcement officers from Madison schools, and opposing construction of a new Dane County jail facility.
Adams, unlike Jorgensen, sees capitalism as being “inextricably linked” to the oppression of Black people.
“This is evidenced by chattel slavery where we were property and modern-day prisons where Black people are held as property of the state and forced to labor for free,” says Adams. “Capitalism is a logic and an economic system that seeks to make profit by any means necessary. If you are Black, then you know your life is the means by which capitalism will do it.”
Adams agrees “the federal government has certainly played a major role in anti-Black oppression” but says Jorgensen's call for smaller government would erode progress on equal rights.
“We need strong rights at the federal level to ensure, as a necessary baseline, what is needed to transition from this society to a world that is just and equitable,” Adams says. “Weakening the rights and protections available and hard fought for by Black people at the federal level leads to more violence and harm of Black people. We need strong rights and strong communities on the local and national levels.”
Jorgensen tells Isthmus that if elected president, she wouldn’t get “involved in local or state issues.”
“Basically, you get the federal government involved and they find a way to mess things up,” says Jorgensen. “Let different states make their own decisions instead of having the federal government impose a one-size-fits-all solution.”
She rejects that our current economic system has contributed to the widening income inequality gap that often falls along racial lines in the United States.
“I would argue we haven’t had a free market system in almost 100 years. But even with the pseudo capitalism we have now, we should have a lot more social mobility here than in countries with dictators and countries with large governments,” says Jorgensen. “I would rather be a poor person in the United States and make $13,000 a year and have millionaires [in this country], than to live in China and be a poor person there and not have a cell phone or running water.”
Jorgensen says Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate four years ago, nearly met the polling threshold required to make it into the 2016 presidential debates. She contends that’s why she’s not even being listed as a candidate in some opinion polls for this election. Jorgensen thinks any candidate who can theoretically win the electoral college should be included in the debates. That would add her and the Green Party’s Hawkins.
“It doesn't surprise me that neither Democrats nor Republicans want me on that debate stage. Because they know that people might actually like our ideas,” says Jorgensen. “That's usually what happens when people get power. They don't like to give it up.”
During the Q&A with supporters after her speech in Madison, one man asked about a rumor he heard that the Boogaloo Boys — a loosely organized anti-government group that may have some white supremacy elements — were willing to escort Jorgensen onto the stage at the first presidential debate, by force if necessary.
“I was wondering if you were contemplating accepting their offer?” asked the supporter.
“It’s wrong, it's unjust, but it's still private property,” Jorgensen replied. “So I will respect that.”
