Bastille Day Speech

July 14th, at a 12 noon press conference on the South Plymouth Avenue bridge over Route 490, Chris Maj and Harry Davis will announce their submission of sufficient signatures to earn a spot on the September Democratic primary ballot. Maj is a candidate for Mayor of Rochester, and Davis is a candidate for an At-Large seat on the Rochester City Council.

Good afternoon.  Thank you all for coming.  Harry Davis, thank you for speaking.

 

My name is Chris Maj, and I'm going to be the next mayor of sunny
Rochester, New York.  I have better ideas to move the city forward because I am asking better questions.  I think I can provide the right message to our children. 

 

Today, July 14th, we stand outside the last skyscraper built in this city in a generation.  It's a prison.  And this comes at a time when we are closing schools.  My question: by building new jails and shutting down schools, are we sending the wrong message to our children ?

 

Today is also a day of celebration in a country considered our closest friend during the birth of this great nation.  Bastille Day is the day when the people of
France stormed their downtown prison.  Of course we won't be doing that today.  But if elected mayor, I will do everything I can to shut down prisons and build new schools.  I have concrete ideas and plans how to do it that send the right message to our children.

 

First, I believe that we need to stop arresting non-violent drug offenders.  The problems we suffer from drug prohibition are the same as the problems from alcohol prohibition in the 1920s: Al Capone, the mafia, gang warfare.  It's the same thing with the drugs.

 

People are going to pick their poison.  We need to find a way to reduce the harm caused by their decisions.  I believe the best way to reduce the violence associated with the drug trade is by taxing and regulating drugs.  With the profit gone, the business as we know it will stop.

 

Nobody is getting shot anymore for selling moonshine or a six pack of beer in the wrong part of town.  But that's what happened when we tried making alcohol illegal in this country.  People were fighting over turf on which to distribute their booze because they were in it for the money.  And it's the same thing right now with the drugs.  I have to ask: by allowing drug dealers to make a lot of money, are we sending the wrong message to our children ?

 

Let me get this clear: kids should not do drugs.  The problem is that drug prohibition actually makes it easier for kids to do drugs.  When a gas station sells cigarettes to a minor, the employee can lose their job and pay a fine, and the store can't sell cigarettes for months.  When a bar serves alcohol to a minor, they can lose their liquor license and might have to close shop.  When a kid buys marijuana, the dealer doesn't ask for identification.  They just take the money.  My question: by making drugs more available to young people, are we sending the wrong message to our children ?

 

What's worst about our drug laws is that they are blatantly racist.  They were created for racist reasons, and they are enforced in racist ways.  The fact is that while the vast majority of drug users are white and live in the suburbs, almost 95% of the people in prison for drug offenses in
New York State are black or Hispanic.  Out of 11 million black men in this country, roughly 1.5 million are disenfranchised as the result of a felony conviction.  Young black men in
Rochester have a much better chance of going to the jail behind me than the colleges up the river.

 

I think that taking fathers out of their families by incarceration hurts more often than it helps.  When a father is locked up in jail, and a child misbehaves at school, the father is not there to set that kid straight.  So we get more misbehaving, truancy, and dropouts.  These become the norm, and buying and selling drugs become better economic opportunities given the educational level of our young people.  By not connecting the dots between prison and families and schools, are we sending the wrong message to our children ?

 

In order to break out of this pattern, we need fresh ideas.  The current mayoral debate about building more police stations in different order is caught in a web of complacency.  We cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem.  There's already way too many people in prison, and it costs a lot of money to put them there.  These people would much rather pay taxes than risk getting arrested.  We could actually make money for the community thru taxation and regulation of a legalized drug market.  The tax revenue could provide more drug treatment to those with addictions, and there would be plenty left over to keep schools open, hire more teachers, and make the city financially stable.

 

There are a couple of routes to a regulated drug market.

 

First, as mayor, I would appoint a police chief who instructs officers to simply no longer enforce the drug laws currently on the state law books.  This would free police to tackle violent crime directly with even more resources.  Turf wars and other violence would decrease as de-facto legalization is adopted because dealers would be allowed to operate their businesses from public store fronts.  The open air drug market would move indoors, in a way, just like the suburbs.  Public advertisement would be required to show  the same taste as topless night clubs already popular throughout the area.  Businesses not paying their taxes on drug sales or checking for identification from minors would be handled in the same manner as liquor stores and smoke shops.

 

The second major step is arguably more controversial, although it's roots are in the best American tradition.  I advocate a more self-sufficient city that doesn't beg for money from Albany and
Washington.  We shouldn't expect a handout, and this implies that they shouldn't expect a tribute from us.  This is what our founding fathers argued for – freedom from taxation without representation.  Enforcing state and federal drug laws is destroying
Rochester, but the fat cats in charge at far off and very foreign capitals are lining their pockets.  We can stop this by aggressively prosecuting officials who violate our local laws and local sovereignty.

 

After the city stops footing the bill for making all these drug arrests, after we refuse to play in this deadly game of drug prohibition, then I think we can turn this prison behind me into a garden.

 

That's right.  A vertical garden.  Instead of locking people up, we can grow our own food using hydroponic gardens inside our abandoned skyscrapers.

 

 

more coming soon............