Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle November 28, 2018
®
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Criminal Justice Reform Long Overdue for Black America
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
A
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
Jerry Foster
Advertising Manager
Christen McCurdy
News Editor
Patricia Irvin
Graphic Designer
Monica J. Foster
Seattle Office Coordinator
Susan Fried
Photographer
2017
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Opinion
s a member of the infa-
mous Wilmington Ten
case in North Caroli-
na from 1972 to 2012, I
witnessed firsthand why the
criminal justice system in
the United States needed to
be thoroughly reformed. We
had been unjustly sentenced
in 1972 to a combined total of
282 years in prison for stand-
ing up for equal quality edu-
cation for Black students in
the public school system in
Wilmington, NC in 1971.
For 40 long years, until
North Carolina Governor Bev-
erly Perdue signed “Pardons
of Innocence” documents for
each member of the Wilming-
ton Ten, the issues of unjust
and disproportionate mass
incarceration, bail reform,
racism in the judiciary, pros-
ecutorial misconduct, and
reentry challenges were not
matters of partisanship, but
were matters of fundamental
civil and human rights.
Thanks to the National
Newspaper Publishers As-
sociation (NNPA), Nation-
al Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People
(NAACP), the United Church
of Christ (UCC), the National
Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression (NAARP),
Amnesty International and
millions of people across
the U.S. and throughout the
world, we finally received a
modicum of justice with the
Pardons of Innocence being
Benjamin F.
Chavis, Jr.
NNPA
President
and CEO
issued on December 31, 2012.
In the wake of the recent
2018 Midterm Elections, there
now appears to be a more
bipartisan interest and com-
mitment in the achievement
of significant criminal justice
reform in America. Earlier
this year, the House of Repre-
“
There now
appears to be
a more bipar-
tisan interest
and commit-
ment in the
achievement
of significant
criminal jus-
tice reform
sentatives finally passed the
First Step Act with biparti-
san support. The legislation
establishes the initial steps
for criminal justice reform
at the federal level. Just last
week, even President Trump
announced his support of the
First Step Act. However, what
the U.S. Senate will do is still
an open question.
The U.S. Congress should ex-
pedite passing the First Step
Act as well as other criminal
justice reform legislation. For
Black America in particular,
this remains an urgent and
crucial public policy objec-
tive.
Of the current 2.2 million
people incarcerated in the
nation’s prisons and jails, a
disproportionate number are
African Americans and other
people of color. According to
a 2018 Pew Research Study,
in 2016 African Americans
represented 12 percent of the
U.S. adult population but 33
percent of the sentenced pris-
on population. The ACLU re-
ports that African American
men are six times more likely
to be incarcerated as White
men in the U.S.
According to the NAACP’s
Criminal Justice Fact Sheet,
African American women are
imprisoned at twice the rate
of White women. The Federal
Bureau of Prisons reported in
2018 that 38 percent of prison
inmates are African Ameri-
can.
But we need to do more than
merely stating the statistics
of criminal justice that bear
witness to the racial, social,
and economic inequities and
injustices. We need solutions.
We need more research about
the successful programs and
projects that can prevent
mass incarceration while we
emphasize the urgency for
criminal justice reform leg-
islation at both the federal
and state levels. We also need
more effective programs for
the hundreds of thousands of
incarcerated people prepar-
ing to reenter society without
the counterproductivity of
recidivism.
I have served on panel
discussions amicably with
Mark Holden, general coun-
sel of Koch Industries, who
also supports the First Step
Act, a bill grounded in evi-
dence-based and data-driven
practices that we know keep
communities safe and pro-
vide people with the second
chances they need to lead pro-
ductive lives. The bill specif-
ically provides programs to
help reduce the risk that pris-
oners will recidivate upon re-
lease from prison. Mark and
I are on the same page on the
issues of reentry and the need
to reduce systemic reincar-
ceration.
In fact, Koch Industries has
been funding criminal jus-
tice reform efforts for more
than a decade and was one of
the first major corporations
in the U.S. to “ban the box”
by removing questions about
criminal history on its em-
ployment applications. Other
corporate leaders should also
“ban the box.”
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
Can a Woman’s Coalition Survive Petulant White Women?
I
have had about enough of
some White women! First,
53 percent of them vote for
an odious genital-grabber.
Then, they organize a wom-
an’s march with momentum
from the #MeToo movement,
founded by Tarana Burke,
but co-opted by White wom-
en like the wannabe activist
Alyssa Milano who was a
mediocre actress back in the
day. Then, bunches of them
support Roy Moore, an Ala-
bama pedophile who would
be Senator. Then the majority
of them vote against progres-
sive candidates like Georgia’s
Stacey Abrams and Florida’s
Andrew Gillum. Meanwhile,
the four women who lead the
Women’s March – Bob Bland,
Tamika Mallory, Linda Sar-
sour, and Carmen Perez –
are organizing for a January
19 march, and the self-pro-
claimed “founder” is demand-
ing their resignation. Really?
Theresa Shook is the Hawaii
grandmother who put an idea
on Facebook in the wake of
the 2016 election. “We should
march,” she said. She did little
else, and activist Bob Bland
picked up the baton and ran
with it. She recruited other
women, seasoned activists in
their own right. Tamika Mal-
lory had led a march from
New York to DC to stop gun
violence. Carmen Perez has
worked on criminal justice
Julianne
Malveaux
NNPA
Columnist
reform and has worked on
Harry Belafonte’s Gathering
for Justice, now serving as
its Executive Director. Linda
Sarsour, a former executive
director of the Arab Ameri-
can Association of New York,
“
White peo-
ple’s hatred
for Minister
Farrakhan
is irrational
and, might I
say, racist
has worked with Black Lives
Matter and on police brutal-
ity issues. The four co-chairs
of the Women’s March are
the very picture of intersec-
tionality and multicultural
cooperation – White, Black,
Latina, and Palestinian, they
are the rainbow!
So where does Teresa Shook
get off asking these women
to step down from a move-
ment they built? She, along
with wannabe activist and
has-been actress Alyssa Mi-
lano have demanded that the
women’s march leaders “de-
nounce” National of Islam
Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Why? They object to his an-
ti-Semitic rhetoric. They ob-
ject to the fact that Tamika
Mallory attended his annual
Savior’s Day this year. They
say that anti-Semitism is hate-
ful and dangerous, and they
are right. But it wasn’t the
Nation of Islam that shot up
the Tree of Life Synagogue
in Pittsburgh! White people’s
hatred for Minister Farra-
khan is irrational and, might
I say, racist. He is the only
person, the only human being
that Congress has censured.
No David Duke, no Charlot-
tesville murderers, none of
the hatemongers that have
caused the racist tension in
our nation. Just Minister Far-
rakhan. But then our society
is consistent with its double
standards and its demands
that Black people bend over
backward to prove that we,
too, sing America.
With the fraught history be-
tween Black and White wom-
en, with their complicity in
our rapes, and in the lynching
of Black men, White wom-
en have no right to demand
anything of Black women, let
alone that leaders like Tamika
Mallory “denounce” Minister
Farrakhan. For the record,
the Minister, a man who has
the unique power to galva-
nize Black people, especial-
ly Black men, really doesn’t
care what people outside of
the Nation of Islam, think of
him. He understands this na-
tion so well that he would ac-
cept any “denouncement” and
keep it moving. But anyone
demanding a denouncement
of Farrakhan has no knowl-
edge of American history, of
African American history,
of context, or of the unequal
treatment that African Amer-
ican people experience that is
a constant in our nation. And
White women have consis-
tently had little empathy for
the way history has treated
Black women.
Shook and Milano remind
me of antebellum White
women, hoop skirts and all,
stomping their feet when they
don’t get their way. Milano
says she won’t speak if Tami-
ka Mallory doesn’t denounce
Farrakhan. So, stay home,
Alyssa. We won’t miss you.
Other White women say they
won’t march. Hundreds of
thousands of others will. And
Teresa Shook, the so-called
founder, says she is demand-
ing resignations. What is she
going to do if she doesn’t get
them?
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
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