After Antwon Rose was murdered, the Mayor went into a late night twitter frenzy replying to people that “East Pittsburgh is not in Pittsburgh!” — prioritizing his own reputation over acknowledging the senseless tragedy that just took place

After a rogue protester burned a police car in late May, he spent the next 2 weeks saying “outside violent agitators are hijacking the message of the organizers” — defending the subsequent police crackdown, feeding the emerging anti-BLM narrative, & contributing to that erasure

On June 1, after police attacked peaceful protesters in East Liberty, he gave a press conference immediately taking the word of the police even as reporters’ & video accounts contradicted their account

And now, after condemning the police kidnappings that have been occurring in other cities, his immediate response to it happening here, to a nonviolent protest marshal, is “well, First Amendment rights are limited”.

I hope people are waking up to see a clear pattern here that always favors the FOP. Any chance of reform died when they successfully ousted Chief McLay. We don’t need more “listening committees”. We don’t need handouts from tech moguls like Jack Dorsey. We don’t need Amazon HQ2

We need new leadership in City & County government that doesn’t practice performative allyship to these movements — and is willing to take on the difficult and sometimes unpopular fights to end police violence, end Black displacement, & build equity from within the region