As our nations disenfranchised grapple with how to disrupt the status quo and shine a beacon on injustice in our law enforcement and court systems, some groups have been peacefully protesting for decades. They hand out flyers related to jurors rights and obligations on courthouse steps as their civil disobedience. They have witnessed far too many convictions and imprisonments of people of color for nonviolent crimes to stay silent one more day. This has led to an explosion of decades of crippled families across the country with the loss of invaluable fathers and sons. Tens of thousands of women and children in the US have suffered financial hardship from this scourge over the past century.
Many non-people of color (NON-POC) are disheartened and confused as they get WOKE, to the decades if not centuries, of suffering by the loss of freedom and the economic plight endured by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). But others in the United States have worked to shine a light on these injustices for years. Unjust laws that seem antiquated considering what we know intellectually about how to heal communities and foster trust in government have come into question by the populace of our country. We have been horrified by scores of police stop and frisk and outright murder videos that have surfaced in the media over the years.
Watching a uniformed man kneel on another’s neck and basically choke the life out of him makes most people sick to their stomachs. It makes many rethink statewide and federal voting practices on police funding. Is the ever pressing need to use public funds to build more jails on ballots year after year, far too common across this nation?
Understanding the way white privilege exists and has benefited one segment of the populace and systematically impeded another, can help us recognize the devastating effects of systemic poverty. There is a lack of access to good healthcare in poor or in BIPOC communities. Where do people living in poverty without access to good medical care go when they find themselves homeless due to loss of income or suffering a mental health crisis? Are there safe landing zones anywhere in this country for impoverished victims of violent crimes like rape or drug addiction or mental health crises?
Some individuals have been asking these questions for decades. They are moved by frustration and civic duty to print and hand out flyers clearly defining jurors rights and duties on them. Some of these NON-POC, stand on the steps of court houses to encourage individuals on juries to know their rights. Most law abiding citizens who have never been summoned or selected and sat on a jury before, know very little about the privacy afforded their vote to acquit or convict their fellow citizens. (Listen to podcast “Null and Void” from WNYC on National Public Radio (NPR)below.)
The problem arises when judges are informed that these peaceful protesters have “instructed” jurors of their rights on the flyers. Some judges are so incensed that they demand their bailiff have the protestors brought into the courtroom before them or else be arrested on the spot, only to place them under arrest once inside the courtroom for jury tampering. Ironically it is unusual for these cases to go to court or lead to convictions because such behavior is protected under free speech laws in most states. When do you become a juror, when you receive the summons or when you actually get picked to serve on a trial?
From my own experience, individual jurors are encouraged to vote as a block and reach consensus. It is frowned upon if one or two jurors refuse to “go along” and can not in good conscience agree with the others. What is said in deliberation in a jury room is protected but when some individuals have spoken out to acquit people they believe to be innocent because of bad laws, they have suffered legal ramifications.
When I was a juror over ten years ago, I was very cognizant of the fact that some of my fellow jurors had pressing health issues or wanted to get “done” by dinner time. One juror was a diabetic and wasn’t prepared with water, snacks or meds to deliberate for hours on end. These precipitating factors, probably not uncommon to many juries, may cause a type of “group think” and thereby, feeling of obligation to fellow jurors to reach consensus even if individuals do not agree with the larger group. The fact is, that the notion of a hung jury is deemed inferior to those working in the justice system but, state and federal statutes, protect a jurors privacy of their vote to decent from the consensus.
Unfortunately, the prodding or even coaching by attorneys, judges or other jurors, that all but implies it is your civic duty to reach consensus on juries has caused irreparable harm to an entire portion of our nations population. In actuality, by following an individual decision to do the right thing, even if it means not reaching consensus, jurors uphold age old protections afforded each one of us in the constitution.
Ironically, Jurors send 40% more BIPOC to prison for drug offenses and violent crimes than NON-POC. Dr. Abram X. Kenti, of Boston University, calls into question the excess of rape cases on college campuses all over the country by fraternity members and the preponderance of an acquittal for these individuals so the conviction doesn’t ruin their lives, but a black teen committing a violent crime is much more likely to be convicted by a jury and go to prison.
Some folks deem drug addiction as a personal choice and don’t think folks should go to prison for anything less than murder and rape. This belief that in America you have the right to engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviors as long as you don’t harm others is abhorrent to some. But, like it or not, individuals do have the right to harm themselves in myriad ways not the least of all, committing suicide. Mental health causes aside, we have to grapple with the reality of so many Americans checking out of life either from drug use or suicide. We are living among fractured and impoverished individuals of all body and makeup and it needs to be addressed in other civic minded ways than through the courts.
There also must be a national discussion on reparations to BIPOC for centuriess of racist practices by police, state legal systems, and federal housing and lending institutions. Historically, individuals who could afford to buy houses could earn equity in them and later borrow against their homes to send their children to college and thereby improve their children’s lifelong earning potential. Inheritance is also a substantial way wealth has been handed down through generations. Now, we fully understand that BIPOC have systematically been denied access to personal credit or home loans by a discriminatory practice coined “redlining” by sociologist, John McKnight, in the 1960’s which kept people from poorer inner city neighborhoods from accessing credit of any kind and thereby eliminating homeownership.
In my early 20’s I was a sales rep for a jewelry company in San Francisco. My sales territory included much of the West. I used to drive through many Native American Indian Reservations and wonder why there were so many shinny new pickup trucks parked alongside dilapidated mobile homes. Thirty years later I was listening to a piece on (NPR) and learned that the federal government actually restricted loans for building permanent structures on such lands thereby trapping Indigenous People in a similar “redlining” racist practice.
We now know about generational poverty being the product of unjust laws and practices not the fault of individuals. It was lack of equity in governmental protections that caused so much pain and suffering to our nations populace not their “laziness” or lack of drive to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Ask yourself how you got your first few jobs or paid for college? Did you ask for help from your family or friends for either? Did you have inside connections from anyone as you climbed the ladder employment wise? Did you turn around and pull up and along folks like you? Were any of them BIPOC? These questions help us understand generational poverty or wealth in a personal way.
We must ask ourselves what kind of a world we want to inherit and pass on to our children. We must eliminate these unfair practices if we want a more just society. Generations have been crushed by these oppressive practices and it has caused many to give up or check out and now rise up and fight back.
So many of our conservative fellow citizens fail to understand the importance of this movement and want the civil unrest to stop and the engine to just keep chugging along. There is a new status quo emerging though and it includes demands for more equality and reparations for past injustices. The $12 million dollar settlement awarded from the City of Louisville, Kentucky to the young essential emergency medical worker, Breonna Taylor’s family, for unlawful death from serving a no-knock warrant to her home for her ex-boyfriend and inadvertently killing her as she slept in her own bed, was one of the highest ever awarded a black woman victim of police violence.
The judicial system was originally conceived to be a checks and balance on the law enforcement system but all too often justice is hijacked and women and BIPOC pay the price. This revolution of sorts playing out in cities around the country is a force to be reckoned with. I want to live in a society where you are free to express your opinion in a jury box and that freedom is protected. A true overhaul of law enforcement and the justice system is desperately needed to balance the scales and reparations are essential to correct 500 years of oppression of BIPOC on this continent. (See my blog on BIPOC LIVES MATTER and listen to this podcast)
New York City Radio Lab’s Podcast Null and Void:
