Black Lives Matter, I Can't Breathe: A (Short) Letter to My Quaker Community

Before Michael Brown and Ferguson. Before Eric Garner. Before the Hashtag #ICantBreathe. I represented John Hill who was slammed to the ground by a Durham Police officer who crushed his face into asphault as John Hill struggled and yelled “I Can’t Breathe.”

 

 

We collected the testimony from court, the video, the police reports and made a short documentary to persuade the City Council to require written forms to show consent to search at traffic stops. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QunwfEE-MmE )

We have represented people who have been unlawfully targeted because of their race. They have been unlawfully stopped, searched, TASERed, beaten, and even killed by Durham Police. Their stories are compelling. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPpw0B5DNiA )

For fifteen years I have been on the front line on the failed “War on Drugs.” I am drenched in complicity.  I have represented more than 40 people charged with murder. I have made my living on the conveyor built of the assembly line of mass incarceration.  I have seen black lives and communities of color crushed and fragmented by a highly militarized strategic attack on drug use and drug sales. These are public health problems we have treated with War.

Many, if not most of our Quaker Meeting, benefit from the privilege. My experience of privilege is blindness to the suffering inequality of people of color and other vulnerable communities. Privilege is the experience of opportunities, unavailable to others. My sense of safety and belonging are privileged.

The “Black Lives Matter” movement is an opportunity for us to continue our work, learning what it means to be a privileged ally to people of color. This moment in our community offers us the opportunity to deepen our understanding about how to be a good ally, individually and as a community.  Each of us works in our own way toward reconciliation. We may be called in this moment to learn and work together, with members of Durham, toward greater racial transformation.

The first thing we can do is to try to really understand what our friends of color mean when they make the plea that “black and brown lives matter.” What does it mean for a mother to talk to her son about how to survive an encounter with police?  My friends who have been organizing around these issues for many years have some suggestions for us. They include:

·         Read and Study “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander in February. We are trying to organize a city wide effort to read and study this book about racialized mass  incarceration and the war on drugs. Pendle Hill has organized a conference to be led by Michelle Alexander: http://www.pendlehill.org/learn/pendle-hill-conferences/pendle-hill-conference/#.VJr11sBTABh  What can you do to help organize Durham to read this book and raise consciousness during “Black History Month?”

·         Racial Equity Training. It is important for us to work on our own racial lens to see more clearly how to be helpful. This requires some difficult and uncomfortable learning and conversations. http://rei.racialequityinstitute.org/   This training helps us see that “Black Lives Matter” is an important plea that goes beyond law enforcement practices, police, and courts. The inequalities deeply embedded in our community extend to education, housing, health care, and all other important areas of life. There are members of Meeting who have already received this training, and some who have provided similar training to others. What are you doing to dismantle your racial lens? In every moment, are you asking how your actions could unintentionally wound or harm vulnerable communities of color?

·         Support Spirit House. My friends at Spirit House are organizing around these issues locally. They could use our financial and moral support.  Spirit House is organizing around a transformative concept called “the harm free zone.” They have offered to come to our Meeting and conduct workshops on dismantling racism.   (http://www.spirithouse-nc.org/) Are you working with people of color as friends in close collaboration to change or community?

·         Restorative Justice. Restorative Justice offers one of the alternatives to our adversarial court system that is so infected with racial inequality. From investigation, through sentencing, and re-entry from prison, restorative practices offer healing practices which disrupt the prison pipeline and build community.  I am working with Spirit House to conduct a fifteen week training beginning in January to teach restorative justice facilitation techniques to community members. Once trained, these RJ facilitators will take referrals from schools, courts, housing developments, and other community organizations to resolve conflicts without police and courts.  Restorative Justice practices are very similar to our Quaker circle and clearness process.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnEvtbgTR-U )

 I imagine that with our skills throwing pot-lucks, and our sensitive ability to facilitate circle process, we could offer our community safe spaces for racial reconciliation and healing in Peace Circles.  For those interested in exploring this communal work, I recommend Peacemaking Circles: from crime to community, Kay Pranis,  Barry Stuart, Mark Wedge.  What skills do we have uniquely as Quakers that could help with racial truth and reconciliation?

 

I have some specific ideas about things we could do in Durham to continue these conversations in our political institutions.

• Political Organizing: Racial Equity Impact Statement:  I hope our City Council will adopt a "racial equity impact statement" requirement for each new policy adopted. We should have a deeper awareness how our policies significantly impact vulnerable communities of color. With each new resolution, ordinance, or decision, we should research and study the ways these decisions impact vulnerable communities of color. "Black Lives Matter" not only in the court system, but also in housing, education, and health care. People of color are systematically denied the same opportunities at these basic life necessities. Our local policies should recognize the disparity, and work to end it with each policy decision. 

• Avoid Arrest, Keep Nonviolent offenders out of Jail:   Our police have the authority to arrest people for crimes, even if those crimes don't carry jail time as a penalty. The arrest situations are the situations that lead to unnecessary violence. We should ask our City Council and City Police to enact a General Order giving priority and preference to issuing citations instead of making arrests. A person recently spent 4 days in the Durham County Jail on the charge of not having an operator's license. They could not afford $50 to make bond. We should not arrest people for non-violent misdemeanors that carry no possibility of jail time. We should change the presumptive bonds for these non-violent misdemeanors to allow release before trial without payment of money. These "unsecured" bonds for non-violent misdemeanors would mean less disruption for the lives of poor folks who can't afford money to get out of jail on minor offenses prior to trial. 

• De-Prioritize Drug Enforcement: Our police budget, training, and effort focuses too much energy and resource of the investigation of drug crimes.  This is also an area where people of color are targeted at a much higher rate than people of privilege.  For example, the number of NCCU students targeted for arrest and prosecution for less than half an ounce of marijuana exceeds the number of Duke students targeted for investigation and arrest for the same offense.  Durham Police set up "buy-bust" operations at a higher rate in poor communities of communities with wealth - even though studies show drug use is the same across races. Homicide detectives should be paid more than narcotics officers. Our City Police budget should reflect a higher concentration of resources in violent crimes than narcotics. 

• Reduce the Use of Force against people of Color. The City Police could make public the use of force reports. These are special reports which document each time an officer has to use force. These reports would show that the Durham Police arrest and use force against people of color at a higher rate than white people. The City Police have also classified the use of a TASER as a more safe kind of force than a punch with a fist, even though TASERs are deadly weapons.  The City Police should reconsider their TASER policy and allow the use of TASERs only in situations where they face the imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.  Durham Police have used TASERs in situations where there was no threat to officer safety, in order to 'enforce compliance' with officer orders.  And they have used TASERs against a child. We need to have a real community discussion on the use of force by our police.

• Video recording of incidents. At a time when most police departments are moving toward greater transparency and considering the purchase of body video cameras, the Durham City Police have continued policies which prevent the recording of incidents of officer force.  In a recent case when Durham Police used a TASER against a child and his father, we expected to get a copy of the TASER video to document the incident. One of the witnesses and victims was a retired police officer who said the force was unjustified and excessive. We believed the TASER video would corroborate her version of events.  We later learned that Chief Lopez had instructed officers to disable the video cameras on the TASERs. He needs to reverse that policy as an important step toward transparency and trust building with the community he serves. We need to move quicly to body cameras which reduce claims of excessive force and reduce the cost of investigating and litigating such claims. Cameras also build trust with the community. http://www.thedurhamnews.com/2014/09/23/4174041_durham-police-took-cameras-off.html?rh=1 

 These are just a few thoughts about a difficult topic. I look forward seeing how we, as a Meeting, can respond with love to this time of racial conflict.

 

We have members of our Meeting who were arrested with Dr. King at Selma, people who work tirelessly in the professional and personal lives toward racial equity. They are an inspiration for our way forward. Sometimes it is easy to rest in the comfort of our history. Quakers have been ahead of their times: working for the abolition of slavery, for the reform of prisons, for civil rights. This is another moment in time that requires our loving, non-violent, presence.