Re-posted from the social media account of Ashon Crawley (above), Professor of Religious Studies and African-American Studies at the University of Virginia

i am an abolitionist. i think naming harm is important so that you can repair. in this political climate, it can feel like the democratic candidate said at an event a couple weeks ago—”i told you so”—but, honestly truly, that’s not what the moment requires. the moment requires clarity and honesty. it is easy to misremember the past especially in times of political and economic tumult but that misremembering don’t change what things happened.

so a reminder:

people were being arrested and fucked up for saying free palestine. artists were losing installations, gallery representation and exhibits for watermelon in bios. professors and folks in other industries were losing jobs for even a suggestion that there should be a ceasefire. college presidents were giving hella milquetoast responses, being hella islamophobic, and still losing their jobs because it was determined they were not serious about antisemitism. people protested at mother emanual the violence palesinians were experiencing to the then-sitting president that was bypassing congress to provide that place with more weapons, and in the church shushed them, said it was shameful, and in the church cheered on biden and “four more years!” and said he and kamala were working “endlessly on a ceasefire agreement,” and this they said as that administration continued to bypass congress to provide weapons and money. my students were brutalized by police. and so many of my friends’ and colleagues’ students were too on campuses across the united states. no pro-palestinian voice was allowed to speak at the dnc, and as they protested by offering names and ages of those that were dying, they were literally laughed at and mocked. there was no general rebuke for this laughing and mocking. if mentioned at all, it was explained away.

and but also just yesterday, april 29, 2025, The Times of Israel periodical published the following: “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period… We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted,” stated by former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog.

that administration lied. explicitly. and continually. and they tried to suppress any organizing that third party folks were doing. the attempt to embarrass jill stein on the breakfast club, and then the advertisement to discredit her, both happened with these particular lies as the pretext for criticizing her and any third party folks in general. call it voter suppression. but no, the current conditions isn’t the fault of third party voters and leftists.