Growing Movement to End Racial Injustice & Police Brutality Sweeping the Nation
by Efrén Paredes, Jr.
"So I just put my hands up. Then they put me in handcuffs. They're just scared 'cause they don't understand us. Try to beat us down when we try to stand up."
--"American Funeral" by Alex Da Kid & Joseph Angel--
It's been a tumultuous four weeks of dramatic protests exploding in cities and towns across America demanding social change as the nation has expressed its fury and frustration in response to the horrific murder of a 46-year-old Black man named George Floyd by police which was captured on a cellphone camera.
May 25, 2020, Floyd's body laid helplessly pinned to the ground by three police officers on the corner of 38th and Chicago Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as a white police officer pressed his knee into his throat for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, choking him to death.
In recent months there have been a number of extrajudicial killings of Black people by police. March 13, 2020 a 26-year-old EMT named Breonna Taylor was shot eight times and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky. Police shot her as she slept during the execution of a no-knock warrant on her home searching for a person who had already been arrested at another location earlier.
Most recently 27-year-old Rayshard Jackson was fatally shot twice in the back on June 12, 2020 while running away from police in a Wendy's parking lot in Atlanta. A policeman kicked his body after the shooting while he laid on the ground dying. Jackson was killed on his daughter's eighth birthday as she was home waiting for him to arrive at her party in her birthday dress.
In his book "On the Other Side of Freedom: Race and Justice in a Divided America" author and activist DeRay Mckesson writes, "Police kill 1,200 people each year in America, meaning one in every three people killed by a stranger in this country is killed by a police officer. An additional 50,000 people are hospitalized each year after being injured by police."
Campaign ZERO, an organization working to end police brutality, reports that part of the problem is that police recruits receive 58 hours of training on how to use a gun contrasted with only 8 hours of how to deescalate situations. In other words, police officers are trained seven times more how to engage in violence than how to prevent it.
Floyd's death triggered a movement of massive historic demonstrations comprised of courageous activists and protesters filling the streets of America to cast a global spotlight on the issues of police brutality and systemic racism.
Citizen recorded videos showing peaceful protesters being attacked by police have also been going viral. In Atlanta two college students were tased by police while sitting in their car, a woman was slammed to the ground by police breaking her collarbone, and a Dallas protester lost his eye when shot in the face by police with a rubber bullet.
One recurring theme not making headlines, however, has been police filing false reports about the events to justify their abuse of power. It reveals a deeply entrenched problem with the culture in police departments.
Absent video evidence as proof of misconduct the public would have been provided an uncontested narrative that citizens were at fault, not the police. It is prompting many citizens to also wonder about the scores of police assaults on citizen incidents that aren't caught on tape.
Reporting on the frequency of police officers arrested for committing crimes, one study found that "During 2005-2012, 10,787 individual non-federal sworn law enforcement officers with general powers of arrest faced criminal charges." (Philip M. Stinson, Associate Professor, Bowling Green St. Univ., Presentation at the 2017 Urban Elected Prosecutors Summit: "Police Shootings Data: What We Know and What We Don't Know" 12 (Apr. 20, 2017))
The problem of racism in police departments has also been documented. Since 2009 an alarming number of police officers have been identified as members of white supremacist groups.
Professor Vida B. Johnson, Georgetown Law School, writes, "In that same period, there have been scandals in over 100 different police departments, in 49 different states where individuals have sent overtly racist emails, texts, or made racist comments via social media."
She adds, "[S]ome of these shocking occurrences have involved high-ranking members of their respective police forces." ("KKK in the PD: White Supremacist Police and What To Do About It," 23 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 205, 210 (2019))
Sadly, what the public witnessed with the killing of George Floyd was a portrait of the gateway to the criminal justice system. It is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to abuses of power millions of citizens experience in U.S. jails, courtrooms, and prisons.
For years the cries of women and men entangled in the criminal justice system have gone ignored. Their credibility has been diminished and viewed as questionable at best, while police and prosecutors have been given a free pass to control the narrative. This has only served to embolden the culture of abuse.
Overpolicing and extreme sentencing have occurred under the rubric of "law and order," which have disproportionately filled jails and prisons with black and brown bodies. Decades of this have lead to mass incarceration and the U.S. shamefully becoming the global leader as the nation that cages the highest number of its citizens.
People in positions of power at the front end of the criminal justice system (i.e., police and prosecutors) begin objectifying people of color at a young age and perpetuating the school-to-prison pipeline. And, wherever objectification of human beings occurs dehumanization follows.
A study found that Black boys are found to be "more likely to be seen as older and responsible for their actions relative to [w]hite boys." The study concluded that Black boys are also viewed as more culpable for their actions than their peers of other races. (Phillip Goff, et al., "The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children," 106 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 526, 539-40 (2014)).
This leads to people of color being disproportionately incarcerated at a higher rate than their white counterparts. It also leads to them being subjected to mental, emotional, and physical abuse in jails and prisons, according to what I have personally experienced, observed, and anecdotal evidence gathered from thousands of incarcerated people I have come into contact with during the past three decades.
In recent months incarcerated people have also been rendered powerless to extricate or protect themselves from contracting deadly infectious diseases like COVID-19 because they are housed in overcrowded living conditions which prevent them from social distancing.
In addition to using their platform to combat police brutality and the scourge of systemic racism, activists and protesters nationwide must also use it to transformatively change a constellation of interlocking systems of oppression. We can't allow all the hard work, sacrifices, and energies devoted to this moment to yield small gains. We have to generate big ideas and solutions and relentlessy pursue them.
Some of these reforms include criminal justice and prison reform, creating jobs in underserved communities, raising wages, as well as ending disparities in education and demanding health care equity that, in the words of Bishop William Barber, Co-Chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign, "ties health care to bodies rather than jobs."
The current movement should also fiercely advocate for voter engagement and end voter suppression. Interfering with people exercising their First Amendment right to vote through gerrymandering, objecting to mail in voting, and voter intimidation are old tactics used by the power structure to weaken the voting power of people in underserved communities.
Corporations and companies have a moral obligation to leverage their brands, reputation, and money to combat racial injustice. They have to change board rooms, hiring practices, and engage with the people who have been exploited and helped them become rich for so long, but received little or nothing in return.
Lawmakers at the federal, state, and local levels must also pass legislation that addresses reforms for racial equity and justice that is supported by Black and Brown civil rights groups and grassroots organizations. The country needs policy changes, solutions, and action -- not empty words that evaporate after the protests end and the cameras go away.
In less than five months many legislative seats will be on the ballot when people enter the voting booth. Lawmakers who do not support these reforms and an end to systemic racism are unfit to serve in public office and must be defeated on election day.
The movement for Black Lives "has succeeded in bringing the malcontent of outsider communities into mainstream discourse." (Amna Akbar, "Movement Visions for a Renewed Left Politics," LAW & POLITICAL ECON. (Mar. 4, 2019)).
This moment is different than ones of years past, however. For too long people of color have been divided and competing against each other for scraps that fall off the table of opportunity. We have also been kept marginalized and treated as subordinates.
These distractions have kept us operating in silos in a disjointed way and striving to make meager progress, rather than pooling our human capital, resources, and energies to maximize collective gains. And, for centuries our fractured relationships have kept us slaves to systemic and structural racism.
"Revolutionary transformation comes out of active resistance. It comes from what people in the movement learn about themselves, about their condition, and about their power to change that condition." (Charles R. Lawrence III, "The Fire This Time: Black Lives Matter, Abolitionist Pedagogy and the Law," 65 J. Legal Educ. 381, 387 (2016))
Not only are we now seeing Black, Latinx, First Nations, and Asian people uniting, many white people are also becoming important allies and lending their voice and privilege to support the current movement for change. The complexion of the coalition comprising this unprecedented movement is rattling the core of the most powerful nation on Earth.
During the past few weeks of social unrest in the nation the Mayor of Washington, D.C., had the words "Black Lives Matter" emblazoned on the street that leads to the White House in giant yellow letters and transformed it into Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Mayors and city councils around the country are supporting the removal of markers and memorials that revere a racist chapter in the nation's history that celebrate the traitorous Confederacy, police departments have banned chokeholds in many precincts, and there are proposals at the highest levels of government to make Juneteenth -- which celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. -- a national holiday.
Recent polls are also providing snapshots of the progress being made.
* An April 2-5, 2020 CNN poll revealed that the majority of the country -- 84% -- support the protests taking place in 2,000 cities and towns across the country;
* A June 4-10, 2020 Pew Research poll shows 67% of Americans support Black Lives Matter and 85% disapprove of Donald Trump's dangerously divisive and incendiary rhetoric about racial justice protests occurring; and
* A June 14-16, 2020 FOX News poll shows that 56% of registered voters disagree with how Donald Trump has handled George Floyd's death compared with 31% who agree.
Mass mobilization is needed to "change the severely disproportionate allocations of power that create and reinforce the systems of oppression that produce unjust laws and policies." (Alexi Nunn Freeman & Jim Freeman, "It's About Power, Not Policy: Movement Lawyering for Large-Scale Social Change, 23 Clinical L. Rev. 147, 150 (2016))
Civic engagement and collaboration are the lifeblood of democracy. Every major change in this country has occurred because the people collaborated to speak truth to power. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Votings Right Act of 1965 were passed because, like today, the streets were teeming with people demanding social change.
Activists and protesters have an enormous opportunity to seize this moment and build a Civil Rights 2020 Movement that will transform the nation into the promise of what it should be. Remaining silent in the face of racial injustice should never feel safe or acceptable again.
The nation needs to begin having frequent courageous -- and sometimes uncomfortable -- conversations that help us move the world forward and reimagine a new future that recognizes the same rights for all its citizens regardless of race, gender, or class.
It isn't that people of color have been voiceless all these years. Our voices just haven't been heard in a meaningful way -- until now. And, this time we won't be gaslighted, muted with lullabies of false promises, or be convinced to go away until we realize true transformative change.
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(Efrén Paredes, Jr. is a blogger, thought leader, and social justice changemaker who has been incarcerated in Michigan 31 years. You can find links to his writings, TV news/radio/podcast interviews, and activism by visiting http://fb.com/Free.Efren
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