Dear Readers,
I would like to welcome everyone to our second issue of the Voices for Justice newsletter. Since our June publishing, a number of newsworthy topics and events have transpired within our nation. As I sit in the confines of my assigned prison cell gathering my thoughts for this month’s newsletter, the echoing sound of fireworks outside of my window overlooking the Hudson River fills the night sky with its illustrious bright lights in celebration of this nation’s Independence Day. Marveled by the colorful array of fireworks, I ask myself, “What significant meaning does this day represent in the lives of Black and Brown people in this country?”, and after giving it some serious thought, the answer I came up with is: Absolutely Nothing at All!
On Sunday June 19, 2022, many African-Americans across the nation commemorated the hundred-and-fifty-seventh Juneteenth celebration, marking the abolishment of slavery. Slavery has played a central role in the history of the United States, and even after emancipation, overcoming slavery’s legacy continues to remain to be a crucial issue in American history. Chattel slavery emerged as a system of forced labor designed to facilitate the production of staple crops. These crops included sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton. The blood, sweat, and tears of these slaves is the foundation of America. African-American slaves designed and built the White House, which sits in our nation’s capital. Many of the Founding Fathers were large-scale slave holders. It is duly noted that eight of the first twelve presidents of the United States were also slave owners. In 1857, the United States’ Supreme Court had affirmed the constitutionality of slavery in Dred Scott v. Sanford. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney crafted the decision, stating that neither free nor enslaved Blacks had constitutional rights that whites were bound to respect. In 1865, congress later approved the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation, signaling the government’s commitment to abolishing slavery in the United States. However, Section I of said amendment states that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In the years following the abolishment of slavery, prison has become the new slave plantation. The establishment of vagrancy laws and black codes were aggressively enforced against Blacks. A Virginia Supreme Court ruled in its landmark decision, Ruffin v. Commonwealth:
For a time, during his service, in the penitentiary, he is in a state of penile servitude to the state. He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law and its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being a slave of the state. He is civiliter mortus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man. (Ruffin v. Commonwealth, 1871).
In conclusion, as author Michelle Alexander points out in her New York Times bestseller The New Jim Crow, “the criminal justice system was strategically employed to force African-Americans back into a system of extreme repression and control, a tactic that will continue to prove successful for generations to come.” As a result, our nation’s prison population has–and continues to be–disproportionately Black. The judicial system is not searching to uphold morality, but rather to monopolize and disenfranchise members of Black and Brown communities, thus leading to mass incarceration and countless wrongful convictions.
So, I’ll leave you with the same question I initially asked myself: What significant meaning does our Independence Day represent in the lives of Black and Brown people across this country?
LOVE, PEACE, TRUTH, JUSTICE, FREEDOM!
“Justice delayed, is justice denied,”
Gary Benloss
(#03A6415)
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