The Congressional Black Caucus voted to preserve police militarization

The Congressional Black Caucus voted to preserve police militarization
(Image credit: Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

In June of this year, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) introduced an amendment to halt the Pentagon's 1033 program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of military-grade weapons and equipment to local police annually. The amendment overwhelmingly failed, and just seven out of 41 voting members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) supported it.

That vote has drawn controversy in the wake of this summer's protests and grotesquely militarized police response in Ferguson, Missouri. Ferguson's own congressman is Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.); he is a member of the CBC, and he voted against demilitarizing police.

Now, The New York Times reports that the CBC is campaigning on what happened in Ferguson to turn out African-American voters for 2014, an effort which would presumably be more difficult were the CBC's record on police militarization more widely known.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.