OPINIONS/EDITORIALS
Guest Columnist
By Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.
Criminal Justice Reform Movement Emerging in America While social change for some may appear to be inevitable, it does not happen by osmosis, and it does not occur without a focused effort led by those who are not restrained by the fears of social transformation. An effective reform of the system of laws, courts, policies and institutions defined as the criminal justice system in the United States of America requires more than a principled public debate. What is needed today with a renewed sense of urgency, beyond the
all-too-frequent expressions of justifiable outrage and protest in response to videotaped incidents of police brutality, is a committed, bipartisan, well-resourced nationwide criminal justice reform movement. Black lives do matter. In fact, all lives matter. I am president and CEO of the nation’s oldest and largest trade association of African-American-owned newspapers, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which reaches over 20 million readers per week in aggregate circulation of 205 affiliated local and regional print and digital media companies. We hear the escalating cries of families and communities that
have been devastated by the criminal justice system. The issues of mass incarceration, overcriminalization, prosecutorial and police misconduct, equal justice, alternative sentencing, recidivism and judicial dysfunction are all serious problems that are having a severe negative impact, in particular, on the quality of life of African-Americans. What is required today, however, is a multiracial coalition to ensure that a successful reform movement is representative of the interests of all Americans. I know something about the movement-building process from my early days back in the 1960s as a youth co-
Guest Columnist
ordinator in my home state of North Carolina for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King said it best when he affirmed, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” King was a master movement builder. I learned firsthand from the experience of witnessing how King fused together a diverse coalition of intergenerational leaders to effect change at the local, state and federal levels toward equal justice for all. Fifty years later we need to rebuild and expand the movement for change with respect to criminal justice.
I also know profoundly what it is like to be unjustly sentenced and incarcerated in a prison system that dehumanizes both the imprisoned and those who attempt to be in charge of vastly deteriorating overcrowded penal institutions. As a member of the Wilmington Ten civil rights activists who were unjustly imprisoned for a combined sentenced of 282 years for standing up for the rights of equal education for African-American students in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the 1970s, I have experienced the systematic degradation and awful
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By Ben Jealous and Jotaka Eaddy
Why You Can’t Kill the Spirit of Mother Emanuel You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea. Similarly, you can massacre members of a congregation and assassinate the state senator who served as their pastor, but you cannot kill the mission and spirit of the church to which they belong. And the spirit of Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina is one worth preserving and celebrating in the wake of last Wednesday’s tragic
act of domestic terrorism that occurred there. Emanuel AME Church is the oldest African Methodist Church in the South and it has long served as a bulwark for organized defiance to white supremacy and discrimination. Founded by freed black slaves, it was affectionately known as “Mother Emanuel” and the institution’s history of challenge and resistance mirrors the movement toward racial progress that it fostered in the South. In 1816, Mother Emanuel
Church was investigated for its role in a planned slave rebellion organized by Denmark Vesey, one of its founders. Vesey was executed. Then, for 30 years beginning in 1834, its parishioners had to worship secretly because of a ban on black churches. Mother Emanuel was burned down only to be rebuilt, and shut down by the state only to continue operating as a symbol of resilience and devotion. Through it all, the congregation endured, and the church hosted dignitaries from Booker T. Washington
Askia-At-Large
to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the decades that followed the Civil War. Mother Emanuel’s pastor, who was slain in the violence last week was a man that we have both had the honor of knowing. The Reverend Clementa Pinckney truly represented the mission and movement of Mother Emanuel. Rev. Pinckney became a pastor at age 18, an elected official at age 23 and a South Carolina state senator at age 27. He was known for his kindness, his commitment to community and
his strong and passionate voice. He fought for police accountability and gun control in a state where both fights were uphill battles but in the spirit of his church he did not let that defeat him. There were eight other victims that day: Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lance, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons, Susie Jackson and DePayne Doctor. Three men and six women in
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By Askia Muhammad
The ‘Cause’ is Lost – Torch the Confederate Battle Flag It’s no secret that I abhor the Confederate battle flag, the treasonous traitors who fought under it, and all that it represents. I am quick to point out that Army of Virginia and Confederate Army Cmdr. Robert E. Lee — the brilliant general who ironically was asked (and refused) by President Abraham Lincoln to command the Union Army leading up to the Civil War — died stateless. His U.S. citizenship was
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not restored by an Act of Congress until 110 years after his death. Similarly, all the rest of his cohorts were also traitors for having risen up in arms against the United States of America. So, except in the Jim Crow South, where on Earth are vanquished traitors permitted to honor their fallen and disgraced ancestors? I’ll tell you. Nowhere else but the American Apartheid South do traitors get to erect statues, name boulevards and buildings after their so-called “heroes,” and get to fly their
treasonous flags above government buildings. That’s the mantra, of course, for all this Confederate nostalgia. White Southerners invoke the “valor” of their ancestors who fought for the Confederate side, not race hatred, not the preservation of America’s “peculiar institution,” as slavery was known, as the reason they remain so attached to those abominable symbols. Personally, I patently reject as bogus those untruths from race-haters masquerading as The Washington Informer
traditionalists, masquerading as patriots who are simply defending the hallowed principle of “states’ rights.” Have I made myself clear? Of course, race-haters who dominate Congress with the tea party slogans like “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and what-not and state, city and county legislatures and executive positions all over America don’t much care what I think about them. They think their opinions of me are more important than anything I could possibly think about them. Cool.
I get that. So I can fume on, and it doesn’t much matter how ugly I make this chat. Let me reinforce my outrage with the words of two white Southerners. According to information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, William T. Thompson is the creator of the Confederate Battle Flag — the infamous “Stars and Bars,” as we know it. In 1863 Thompson was unambiguous in discussing what his cause was all about.
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