Five ways the incumbent of District 7 of St. Petersburg has sold out the black community

Aside from the incumbent refusing to face the people by missing more than half of the community forums during the primary election, here’s five ways the incumbent has sold out the interests of the black community and working people in this city, in just four years.
 
5. Voted to raise your water bills: The incumbent voted to approve a plan earlier this year that increases the average St. Pete resident’s monthly utility bill by $11.02—an increase of 11.5 percent, to pay for repairs to the sewage system.
 
The people of St. Pete should not have to pay for crimes committed by a crooked city government!
 
It was the Kriseman administration who shut down a sewage plant in 2015 to make way for new condos and then dumped over a billion gallons of sewage onto the black community and Tampa Bay at large.
 
Kriseman and the developers should have to pay to fix the sewage pipes, not the people who suffered as a result of their corrupt behavior.
 
4. Demolished affordable housing: In February of this year, the incumbent voted in favor of demolishing an affordable housing complex near Mirror Lake, reducing people’s homes to rubble to make room for yet another high-rise condo.
 
She claims to be a champion for affordable housing, but her voting record, along with her failure to stop the eviction of black residents from Jordan Park in District 7, prove that she is nothing more than a pawn of the big developers.
 
3. Called for more police in the schools and on the streets: The incumbent’s first term was won by advocating strongly for intensified police containment of the black community.
 
Through the government initiated “Not my Son” campaign, she made it abundantly clear that she is pro-police and anti-black community, blaming the black community for conditions imposed by the city government, most times in the form of the police.
 
Despite knowing how the police function in the black community and the danger that police occupation poses on black people, including young black teens like Mike Brown, TyRon Lewis, Marquell McCullough and Javon Dawson, the incumbent joined Kriseman in demanding more money for cops to be put in the streets and on school campuses.
 
Our schools are not supposed to be mini-prisons. Our children should not fear going to school and feel the weight of police intimidation.
 
The incumbent is fighting to turn our schools and the entire black community into a war zone.
 
When faced with the demands by the people for reparations and economic development to the black community, genuine affordable housing, clean environment solutions, etc., these same politicians always say they don’t know where the money will come from to do these things, however, when it comes to funding more police to occupy the black community, there always seems to be enough cash-on-hand.
 
2. “Drug dealers and murderers”: In referencing the black community, this sounds like something Donald J. Trump would say; however, these are actually the words the incumbent used to describe the black community during a campaign presentation made before a local union: “We all have to keep our neighborhoods safe. We have to continue to work together, call in the tips, work with the police, because this is our community, this is our city. Not the drug dealers. Not the murderers.”
 
We know the police are used as a tool in the process of gentrifying the black community.
 
Black people are harassed, brutalized and even murdered on a daily basis by the police and the government continues to dump money into intensifying the police occupation of the black community.
 
This type of police presence isn’t seen in the white community, despite the fact that the vast majority of drug users and sellers are white.
 
The incumbent is clearly a police pawn, who slanders the black community with offensive remarks, similar to those of Hilary Clinton when referring to black men as “super-predators.”
 
1. Big Money Politics: During her campaign for re-election the incumbent accepted massive campaign contributions from shady real estate developers who are overrunning St. Pete with high-rises and gentrifying the black community.
 
She took money from Karl Nurse, former District 6 city councilman who engineered the plan to make the Southside white.
 
She got thousands from luxury condo real estate firms in Panama City and Orlando. She even accepted a $250 check from Charles Prather, a real estate developer in Tampa who rents office space to ICE—Trump’s thugs at the border who are separating Mexican children from their families.
 
Bill Edwards, the real estate kingpin who owns huge swaths of St. Pete real estate and backed right-wing Rick Baker’s mayoral campaign, also wrote her a big fat check.
 
The motorsports company that runs the Grand Prix hedged their bets on another four years of the incumbent. They gave $1,000.
 
The biggest indicator that the incumbent is just a talking head for big developers is found in her campaign finance reports. Follow the money!