Today’s focus: The court’s attack on Meek Mill. Yes, the courts have shown systemic racial bias that have affected Black Americans’ lives in many ways. Fathers have been taken from their families, children’s lives have been disrupted.

And now Meek Mill has been attacked by a system that really seems not to care in the least to have any semblance of an attempt to approach the idea of justice. Jay-Z spoke about it at a concert in Dallas last week:

“I gotta say something about a young man named Meek Mill. He caught a charge, he was about 19, he’s 30 now, he’s been on probation 11 years. Fucking 11 years,” Jay-Z told the audience. “Now he got to do two to four years [for a probation violation] because he got arrested being on a bike popping a fucking wheelie.”

Jay-Z went on to say “you can’t look at it as a black or white issue, you have to look at it as a human issue…”

But we also have to see this as a Black American issue. We can’t lose sight of the mountain of injustice being borne by millions of Black Americans, and the level of the urgency to fix this. Children’s lives are being disrupted. Grown men and women’s lives are being disrupted.

Ok. So how bad is it, and what do we do to fix it?

There was the New York Times article in December 2016 including a study showing that Black Americans were getting sentences 2 to 3 times longer than White Americans under the same circumstances in various parts of Florida.

There are analyses available from the Sentencing Project:

– The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration

– Sentencing policies, implicit racial bias, and socioeconomic inequity contribute to racial disparities at every level of the criminal justice system.

– Today, people of color make up 37% of the U.S. population but 67% of the prison population.

– Overall, African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested;

– once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted;

– and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences.

– Black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men

There’s the data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, showing the rise in incarceration that occurred with the War on Drugs, insanely throwing Black Americans in prison at rates that show deep-rooted indifference to their humanity. We need to be angry that injustice at this level is allowed to prosper, and has been for 30 years.

And What Do We Do About It?

Kudos to the Sentencing Project for their analysis and identifying positive responses that would be helpful across all phases of interaction with the law.

In the case of Meek Mills though, as Jay-Z noted, “The sentence handed down by the judge (was) against the recommendation of the assistant district attorney and probation officer ( in its heavy handedness )”.

We have 2 systemic problems at work here. 1) Meek Mills was on parole for over 10 years for his behavior as a teenager. 2) The judges can be, and often are fallible, and they have the power to do whatever the heck they want. The prosecutor be-damned, and in this case the governor be-damned as well.

The way to fix this is to channel our anger as a community into the political climate. We have to put the heat on, and keep the heat on our elected officials, and let the media soak it up. We have to keep the heat on in our individual conversations, which all help to heat up the climate in general. We have to call and write our city council members, out state representatives, our state senators, and our federal representatives and senators, our mayors, our governors, and our president.

We have to make sure that every damn body knows we are not going to sit and let our communities and families continue to be destroyed by people who don’t give a damn about either.

And yes, we will continue to foster love for our neighbors wherever we find neighbors. But we are going to recognize an enemy when we find one in our midst, and we’re going to determine to win those battles through endless and bottomless determination.

And as things improve, days like this will start to seem like distant realities. Unimaginable times… well, even more unimaginable than they are right now.

Google it. “Who is my state representative?”

Here’s the link for Pennsylvania: http://www.house.state.pa.us/

Google it. “Who is my state senator?”

For Pennsylvania it’s: http://www.pasen.gov/

Google it. Google it. Google it. And write them and let them know that this is unacceptable.

Share your letters with people who agree with you but maybe aren’t as comfortable writing from scratch.

Add your letters as comments here if you like. Anywhere. But don’t think for a minute there’s nothing we can do. The way to affect a judge or the the probation laws is through driving the political climate and affecting candidates as they plan for re-election.

Do it, for the children. For the Mothers, for the Fathers, for the community, and for those who have already suffered enough.

Do it. Today.

And thank you.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jay-z-blasts-meek-mill-sentence-court-system-at-dallas-show-w511288

http://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/

http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Reducing-Racial-Disparity-in-the-Criminal-Justice-System-A-Manual-for-Practitioners-and-Policymakers.pdf