Martin Luther King Jr.
2022 Special Edition
Page 2
January 12, 2022
‘We have progressed, but so has racism’
Vancouver
NAACP
president
advances fight
for justice
By Beverly Corbell
The Portland Observer
One year in as president of the
Vancouver NAACP, Jasmine Tol-
bert, has taken the battle to elimi-
nate racial injustice to new heights.
When the local civil rights
group joined the American Civil
Liberties Union of Washington in
November to file a lawsuit urg-
ing the U.S. Department of Jus-
tice to open investigations into
“excessive force and discrimi-
natory policing” in the Vancou-
ver Police Department, the Clark
County Sheriff’s Office and a joint
city-county drug task force, Tol-
bert was front and center.
“The problem is that systemic
racism is alive and well in Vancou-
ver and Clark County, Tolbert said.
In an interview with the Port-
land Observer for its annual Dr.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holi-
day special edition, she described
In her first year as president of the Vancouver NAACP, Jasmine
Tolbert has taken the fight against racial injustice to a new level.
The civil rights group recently joined in a lawsuit to reign in
excessive force and discriminatory policing in Vancouver and Clark
County.
the current need for reparative ac-
tions to advance racial equality.
“I think that as we have pro-
gressed, so has racism,” Tolbert
said, “I think the tactics, the same
way overt racists laid the ground-
work for the systemic racism tak-
ing place now, allowed racism
to continue evolving, and while
we’ve made progress, so have
those systemic policies.”
Tolbert grew up in Clark Coun-
ty and clearly remembers reading
books on King and civil rights
leaders Malcolm X and Harriett
Tubman that were in her home
growing up. She also recalls les-
sons about civil rights and racism
she received from her mother.
“I remember those books ex-
plicitly, Dr. King’s message and
my mom’s home history lessons,
things you didn’t get in school,”
she said.
But Dr. King’s message has been
watered down, she said, including
what’s being taught in schools.
“I wish it was a more holistic
picture being painted of the work
he did rather than for certain mem-
bers of society to dictate the way
our actions should look,” she said.
In the lawsuit targeting local
law enforcement, the NAACP and
ACLU point to four officer-in-
volved deaths in Clark County
and Vancouver in recent years
that included a 16-year-old Pacif-
ic Islander high school student; a
28-year-old Pacific Islander man;
three white homeless men, one in
a mental health crisis; and three
Black men, 43-year-old Carlos
Hunter, Kevin Peterson, 21, and
Jenoah D. Donald, 30.
The civil rights organizations
say Hunter, falsely accused of
being part of the drug trade, was
pulled over and shot 16 times
while still fastened in his seatbelt.
Peterson was caught in a drug
sting and ran away in fright when
two unmarked law enforcement
cars boxed him in. He was shot, in
the back, 34 times. Donald, who
was unarmed, was stopped for a
broken taillight, punched in the
face and shot twice at close range.
Tolbert said the deaths are ex-
amples of how Vancouver and
Clark County law enforcement
has engaged in discriminatory
policing for years against people
of color, residents experiencing
homelessness, and those with a
mental health disability, while
showing favor to known white su-
premacist extremist groups.
“This disparate policing caus-
es lasting harm for residents and
undermines public safety for the
community at large,” she said.
Calling out highly publicized
police actions that erode the al-
ready strained relationships be-
tween the community and local
law enforcement, Tolbert said all
residents of Vancouver and Clark
County deserve equal and profes-
sional treatment by police officers.
“When someone is stopped by
the police it should not have to end
with them dying. No matter what
the person’s background is, no
matter what the reason is for the
stop. There should be and there
Continued on Page 6
A Time of Reflection
As we put another year behind us, it’s only natural
to take some time to reflect on the months just past.
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