OLYMPIA, Wash. – When President Richard Nixon announced a new federal War on Drugs, it launched a new era of mass incarceration of Black and Hispanic Americans. Washington State is responding to the damaging impact of the War on Drugs with a new Community Reinvestment Project.
Nixon White House Counsel John Ehrlichman explained the reasoning for the new enforcement push in an interview with Harper’s Magazine.
“The Nixon White House…had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people…We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against [Vietnam] or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said.
The impact of the War on Drugs had the effect desired by the Nixon Administration. Though the United States is home to under 5% of the global population, it houses about a quarter of all prisoners according to the World Prison Brief. There were more Black men incarcerated or in government custody in 2014 than there were enslaved men in the United States in 1850 according to Politifact.
The Washington Legislature responded to this reality with the creation of a Community Reinvestment Account to address racial and economic disparities across the Evergreen State in 2022.
$9.8 million in financial coaching and mentorship for disenfranchised communities was announced by the Washington State Department of Commerce on Tuesday.
“Funding will prioritize, but is not limited to, programs serving Black, Latine, and tribal communities in seeking a stable financial future…Programs will include homebuyer education, business coaching, construction loans, debt remediation, and more,” the department said.
Several grants will distribute funding in eastern Washington, including grants to Canopy Credit Union, the Health and Justice Recovery Alliance, Latinos En Spokane and the Multi Ethnic Business Association in Spokane County. A full list of the awardees can be found on the department’s website.
The grants will total from $200,000 to $375,000 and will be distributed over a 15 month window. Whether the project is successful in reducing racial disparities across Washington will not be clear until after the window has elapsed and the organizations utilizing the funding can assess the impact of their projects.
