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End felony disenfranchisement.
As the conversation about Black Lives Matter and racial inequity for Black Americans, particularly concerning police brutality and mass incarceration, was brought to the forefront, I decided it was a good time to re-read “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. The book details mass incarceration in the United States and its intentions to disenfranchise Black Americans. The United States’ makes up 5 percent of the world’s population yet holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners (ACLU). This is attributed to the war on drugs, which began in the 1970s. Nixon’s public policies led to stricter federal sentencing laws, militarized enforcement in Black and Brown neighborhoods. Incarceration has grown by ten times since then (Drug Policy Alliance). We know that the United States quickly rushes Black and Brown people into the prison system. But what happens after?
Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the newsletter. 5.2 million people were unable to vote in the presidential election due to felony disenfranchisement, an issue that disproportionately impacts the Black community. Today, Olivia outlines the breadth of felony disenfranchisement, including and beyond participating in politics.
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Get involved with grassroots organizations like the Right To Vote Initiative to be involved in voting rights restoration year-round.
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By Olivia Harden (she/her)
As the conversation about Black Lives Matter and racial inequity for Black Americans, particularly concerning police brutality and mass incarceration, was brought to the forefront, I decided it was a good time to re-read “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. The book details mass incarceration in the United States and its intentions to disenfranchise Black Americans. The United States’ makes up 5 percent of the world’s population yet holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners (ACLU). This is attributed to the war on drugs, which began in the 1970s. Nixon’s public policies led to stricter federal sentencing laws, militarized enforcement in Black and Brown neighborhoods. Incarceration has grown by ten times since then (Drug Policy Alliance). We know that the United States quickly rushes Black and Brown people into the prison system. But what happens after?
A felony conviction for any American will change their life forever. And because of racial injustice in the American criminal and judicial system, one out of every three Black men have felony convictions (Sentencing Project). But something important to know, most felony convictions are not the result of a fair trial. 94% of convictions at the state level, and 97% at the federal level, are a result of plea deals (The Atlantic). There is also a subset of the population with felony convictions that never saw any jail time at all but took a plea bargain that offered parole (The New Jim Crow). Alexander believes people convicted of felons become “second class citizens” in American society. Once the felon label is attached to your record, it’s an outcasting scarlet letter that can never be taken back.
A major roadblock for someone with a convicted felony is employment. A 2010 survey found that up to 92% of employers conduct criminal background checks (EOCC). But organizers have rallied to “Ban The Box,” an initiative that seeks to remove a particular question from application paperwork, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Ban The Box’s goal is to push background checks to a later point in the hiring process so that employers consider a candidate’s qualifications first without the stigma of a past criminal conviction. Thirty states now have adopted progressive laws along these lines. Still, only a handful of states have entirely removed conviction history across federal, state, and private hiring processes (Workplace Fairness).
When employment is a stipulation of someone’s parole, and employment is difficult to obtain,, they are now at risk of being incarcerated. We know crime is linked to poverty, and without a legal stream of income, a convicted person might resort to illegal work as a means of survival. Felony convictions can also disqualify a person’s ability to get SNAP benefits (food stamps) or Section 8 Housing (NPR). All of this creates more and more paths to being reentered into the system.
Make no mistake. The easy path to incarceration for Black people was designed that way. In 1901 president of the late Constitutional Convention of Alabama, John B. Knox, and the delegates aimed “to establish white supremacy… by law — not by force or fraud.” The Jim Crow laws were meant to get around the federal laws granting Black people the right to vote. The state constitution declared persons “convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude” could not vote without having their rights restored. Other states that were formerly a part of the confederacy soon followed (The Marshall Project).
Perhaps the most important rights that must be restored to former felons is their right to vote and their right to participate in our legal system. Election season has passed, but 5.2 million Americans were forbidden to vote because of voter-law restrictions (The Sentencing Project). Voting rights differ in every state, and we saw in this year’s election in Florida that modern-day poll taxes and other felony disenfranchisement campaigns took place (Anti-Racism Daily). In contrast, California passed Prop. 17 this year, which lets parolees vote in elections. Three out of four men leaving California prisons are Black, Latino, or Asian American. (LA Times). Restoring their voting rights is a step in the right direction for marginalized communities.
But it’s also critical to restore their rights to serve on a jury. It was only this year that California, which is considered one of the most progressive states in the country, allowed former felons to sit on a jury (NBC News). If one-third of Black men are convicted of a felony in their life, that means one-third of Black men might not have the opportunity to play a part in trials, depending on where they live (Sentencing Project). By not having a voice in that part of the legal process, other people on trial may not be judged by a group that genuinely reflects a group of their peers.
Once you’re convicted, other rights can be rescinded, including the right to bear arms, parental rights, even traveling abroad (The Cochran Firm). The United States perpetuates a myth that the criminal justice system is supposed to be rehabilitating. Instead, many people who go through the system have even more problems than before. We must organize to dismantle mass incarceration. And as we do, we must simultaneously offer support and resources for those who have already been impacted.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A felony conviction follows someone forever, affecting the ability of a person to work and receive benefits.
The racial disparities in the criminal justice system force Black and Brown people into a form of second-class citizenship.
Dismantling felony disenfranchisement means supporting initiatives like Ban The Box to fight discrimination against anyone with a criminal record.
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Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
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Respect the Black Panther Party.
I went to a predominantly white high school, and one thing I’ve noticed is that Black history is typically represented in the background. The Civil Rights Movement was condensed into one chapter in my American history textbook, only including the names of “peaceful” leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. In fact, in 2015, statistics showed that “1 to 2 lessons or 8–9 percent of total class time is devoted to Black history in U.S. history classrooms” (SocialStudies.org). But these narratives tend to leave out important parts of history like the Black Panther Party.
Happy Sunday! As I've watched conversations on the Michigan domestic terrorism plot, and the armed groups showing up at protests, I'm reminded of how different the narrative of the Black Panther Party was in the 1960s. Olivia joins us today to share her perspective on how race influences how our country responds to movements for liberation, and its impact on the perception of the BPP.
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TAKE ACTION
Watch the PBS documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution for a more robust picture.
Write letters to incarcerated Black Panthers and donate directly to them. Find ways to support Black Panther Party members still serving time in prison.
Demand diversity in the curriculum for history courses with a more comprehensive look at Black history.
GET EDUCATED
By Olivia Harden (she/her)
I went to a predominantly white high school, and one thing I’ve noticed is that Black history is typically represented in the background. The Civil Rights Movement was condensed into one chapter in my American history textbook, only including the names of “peaceful” leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. In fact, in 2015, statistics showed that “1 to 2 lessons or 8–9 percent of total class time is devoted to Black history in U.S. history classrooms” (SocialStudies.org). But these narratives tend to leave out important parts of history like the Black Panther Party (BPP).
The BPP, no doubt, has a complicated and violent history. The story of its growth includes shootouts with police officers, political imprisonment, and insidious government surveillance (San Francisco Chronicle). But the United States government vilified the organization from its conception, informing the narrative that we have today. As our world attunes itself to addressing police brutality and murders, the history of the organization’s ideology and its legacy can inform current cries for change and revolution.
In 1966, Matthew Johnson, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot down by a police officer – sparking outrage in the same way George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s killings have this year (History). That October, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, CA (History). They used the advantage of the Second Amendment and the open-carry law in California at the time to patrol the police, watching from a safe distance while carrying rifles to intimidate officers into following the law. In response to this, Ronald Regan and the statehouse passed the Mulford Act in 1967, prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms (History).
This image tends to define the BPP – Black militants with huge afros, black leather jackets, and berets carrying huge rifles and other guns openly in the street. But what more people need to know is that the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was created to be an organization in service to the Black community. They made a Ten-Point Program to stop racism and protect and liberate Black Americans (BLM Syllabus). The Ten-Point Program denounces capitalism and demands things like guaranteed employment, housing, expansive education, healthcare, and the end of police brutality. Many of these asks are the same calls-to-action that activists are fighting for today.
The Black Panther Party also created many of its own social programs. A big hit was the free breakfast program for Black children (History). Studies have shown that kids who eat breakfast are generally healthier and do better in schools (No Kid Hungry). The Panthers would feed children before school for free. At its peak, it reached thousands of children daily. Other programs included free clinics, sickle cell anemia research, and free ambulance services (Insider).
Parallels exist between the present-day Black Lives Matter movement and the Black Panther movement’s goal of liberation. The treatment of the Black Lives Matter movement in the media and by the government is tightly intertwined too. At the time, J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI's COINTELPRO to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize using tactics like tapping party members phones and infiltration" (fbi.gov). Present-day, police forces track activists’ movements, both online (CNN) and by using facial recognition technology (The Verge). Ninety-three percent of protests were peaceful this summer, but violent ones received more media attention (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project). A question that continues to pop up for me – should the state have a monopoly on violence? I challenge you to ask yourself, are buildings more important than Black lives?
Race often informs the way the United States responds to an issue. For example, the NRA supported the Mulford Act decision in 1967 (History). But today, the organization is adamant for loose restrictions related to gun ownership, despite the rise of school shootings and gun-related violence across the U.S. (Forbes). The organization’s actions indicate how society views which citizens are allowed to wield power and protest in modern-day times.
Point 5 of the BPP’s Ten-Point Plan is as follows:
“WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”
Education about Black people in American history is not just for Black people. It’s crucial for all of us. A comprehensive approach is key to moving forward towards a just future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Black Panther Party does have a violent past, but its goals laid out a plan to support and uplift Black people.
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense’s complex past can inform our future.
The U.S. must be held accountable for its racist past.
RELATED ISSUES
9/11/2020 | Protect Black women.
7/26/2020 | Pay attention to the Portland protests.
10/1/2020 | Vote Trump out of office.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza