Our contributions may take many forms and they make up the numberless diverse acts of courage.
Statistics and experience show that the judicial system in the United States, like almost everything else, is not blind, but actually favors the white man. Our racial history is not a good history. African Americans were only counted 3/5 of a person and were enslaved. When the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed, for many African Americans, little changed. Who could attend school, vote, own property and testify ? Not the African American. Segregation insured unequal opportunity. African American men were separated from their wives and humiliated.
They were kept from educational opportunities which resulted in unequal pay. (It was and still remains significantly less than the white man.) More African Americans attend inferior schools with fewer resources than white children. Ten times as much money is spent on the public education of affluent white children than black children. Children who are not white are fifty percent more likely to have teachers who did not major in the subject they teach. About as many African Americans have earned a four year degree as are in prison. African Americans are 50 percent less likely to be insured than the white person. Another consequence of the discrimination in education is that unemployment is much higher, as a percentage, for African Americans than white men. As many foreign students earned a graduate degree in the US as African Americans.
The effect of discrimination upon African Americans is seen in health as well. African Americans live, on average, ten years less than the white man. African Americans are 50 percent more likely to be uninsured compared to their white counterparts.
Political injustice against African Americans both in the present and past have taken many forms. Attempts to keep African Americans from voting in the past included poll taxes and literacy tests.
Even president until 2008 was a white man. Only a handful of African Americans have served as US Senators. Voter suppression continues to be used by the right today through more and more strict voter identification laws not because white people are afraid of illegal votes being cast, but rather to limit how many African Americans who are legally eligible to vote do cast a ballot. The white republicans do this to win elections.
Women have and still do experience discrimination; they continue to experience gender discrimination and misogyny. While women did not receive the right to vote until the twenties, white women have chosen to support white men more than women of color. They voted for Moore and Trump. They have privilege, sometimes a derived privilege, but still a greater privilege than the African American man. In the United States, we have only had a handful of African Americans serve in the US Senate. White people look at the outcomes of the discrimination and think those outcomes justify the discrimination which inevitably produced those outcomes.
We have a problem with how unfairly justice is meted out to African Americans. Kamala Harris wants to address the sentencing aspect of racial injustice by attacking the longer sentences automatically given for minor drug infractions. In the relatively recent past, a number of Republicans have come board with smart justice. African Americans are much more likely to get stronger sentences for the same crime including the death penalty as white men. More African Americans are pulled over while driving than white men. More African Americans have been stopped and frisked than white men. More African Americans as a percentage are serving longer terms for nonviolent drug possession than white men.
When a member of a minority group is able to walk through a door of opportunity, too often they shut the door behind them instead of keeping it open for others. They escape much of the justice and enjoy a much better standard of living than their brothers and sisters and they leave them behind.
However, I want to share with you a man who has come through that adverse and unfair system and earned that better life, but is using his experience within that system to advocate for his brothers and sisters who are suffering under it now. He is fighting to reduce that injustice, even for those not yet born. This man turned his life around. Many of you may already know about Lewis Conway Jr. However, some may not have heard about him.
www.texasobserver.org/…
He has been a community organizer, is a Democratic Socialist, and advocates for things that will improve the lives of those who are facing an unfair playing field and are being hurt by that playing field which is not level. He is running for a seat on the Austin City Council.
While trying to retrieve money and drugs stolen from him to avoid negative consequences for himself, when the person he confronted who had taken these things started to draw a weapon, Lewis in self-defense stabbed him. The man died. Lewis did not run like many including myself would have been tempted to do. He was not unaware of the injustice he would likely face. Yet, he found the courage and the integrity to call the police immediately and led them to the crime scene. He ended up pleading guilty to felony voluntary manslaughter, served 8 years in prison, and 12 years on probation. He bettered himself through education and walked the straight and narrow path in prison.
Upon his release, he began working as a community organizer and became an activist. He is running in an historically black district, the same one in which the incident occurred. Among other policies, he advocates for greater fairness for those who like him have served their sentence.
He is now trying to overcome a law which may or may not make convicted felons unable to run as candidates. He believes in democracy and thinks that the more we trust voters and allow them more choices, the more democratic the system. He should be allowed to run and I think virtually all of us here at Daily Kos can agree with that. I want him to win the seat on the city council. However, even his potential opponent believes he should be allowed to compete for the office because in her words, "he served his time!"
He is now a published author who is making a difference in his community, a father, a husband, and a grandfather. Please help advocate for him to be allowed to run for the office even if you support his opponent and if you like me want to help him win, support him in social media. He has an attorney who is working to contest one interpretation of a very unclear law so that he can be an official candidate. Until that battle is won, he is an unofficial candidate and so financial support may be impossible at this time. However, supporting him through social media and advocacy for him would be greatly appreciated.
theintercept.com/…
The point of running, he says in a video posted to his campaign’s Facebook page, “is to give people who have been historically marginalized, historically penalized and criminalized an opportunity to become active participants in a participatory democracy.”
www.facebook.com/…
That is his facebook page which a friend provided for me. :-)
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