U.S. Senate candidate Gary Chambers clearly wants all the smoke. After a campaign ad went viral featuring Chambers smoking a blunt to oppose marijuana criminalization, the Louisiana Democrat is lighting up the timelines again with an ad of him burning the Confederate flag.
The new ad, titled ‘Scars and Bars,’ shows Chambers simultaneously dropping knowledge about the country’s racial inequalities.
“The system isn’t broken,” he says in a voiceover, “it’s designed to do exactly what it’s doing, which is producing measurable inequity.”
From there, he lays out some stats: that one in 13 Black Americans are deprived of the right to vote, one in 9 don’t have health insurance, and one in three Black children live in poverty.
Chambers went viral last month with a similarly compelling ad, the first of his campaign, eschewing the usual branding of political hopefuls. He wasted no time making his point clear.
“Every 37 seconds someone is arrested for possession of marijuana,” Chambers began immediately in the 37-second spot, driving home his argument for marijuana legalization. “Since 2010, state and local police have arrested an estimated 7.2 mil Americans for violating marijauna laws.”
Accompanying his first campaign ad, Chambers wrote on twitter “I hope this ad works to not only destigmatize the use of marijuana, but also forces a new conversation that creates the pathway to legalize this beneficial drug, and forgive those who were arrested due to outdated ideology.”
Louisiana in particular is a conservative, Trump-friendly state that hasn’t seen a Black candidate win statewide office since Reconstruction, Chambers notes. Despite that apparent challenge— and instead of playing it safe by catering to moderates or conservatives in the state— Chambers is running an unapologetic campaign to change the state’s history.