Make no mistake, Payton Gendron would not have done what he did had it not been for Donald J. Trump.
The disgraced former president opened the door for white supremacists to throw off their cloak of anonymity and come out of the closet. These murderous haters can now openly avow their racist ideologies, knowing that the Republican Party has their back. They can find each other on the Internet and sing the glories of whiteness while also praising Trump as their fuehrer. Egged on by Fox News and other far-right media outlets, they live in their hate-fueled fantasies of vengeance, ethnic cleansing and religious intolerance. They can, of course, buy military-style assault weapons because Republicans refuse to enact gun control laws. The result is entirely predictable: Black people are being murdered for the crime of Existing While Black.
There are very bad people on the left wing, anti-cop side, and we at the Coalition for a Better Oakland constantly call them out. Maybe we don’t do a good enough job calling out the other side: the right wing, white supremacist terrorists who believe in “the great replacement.” These paranoid conspiracy Trumpers must and will be stopped.
The Coalition for a Better Oakland condemns what Gendron did in the strongest possible terms. We in Oakland know something of the pain that Buffalo is going through. We send Buffalo our sincerest love.
Steve Heimoff