Heavy-handed justice

18th June 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

How many years of your life are a pair of $100 sneakers worth? One? Two or three? A judge recently decided to hand out a five-year sentence to a Black kid who stole a pair of $100 sneakers.

That’s extreme, even in a nation with such a long history of vilifying and criminalizing Black boys and men.

We know that Southern trees bear strange fruit and that the U. S. Criminal Justice system has never gotten around to treating people of African descent like they have constitutional rights, but it is important that we stand up and speak out against these inequities whenever we see them.

Children make mistakes. All children make mistakes – it’s what they do. Black, Brown and poor children should be granted the same second chances to turn things around as their white counterparts who make mistakes. Those of us in the community must demand fairness and equality from the criminal justice system and do whatever we can to ensure that young people have everything to go out and risk their futures to get it. It is our responsibility to teach them to avoid the snares and pitfalls of the criminal justice system.

That’s my word.

Anyway, I got some questions for y’all. Here we go:

• Do you think U. S. Sen. John Kennedy and State Attorney General Jeff Landry will join the La. GOP in supporting the unanimous verdict proposition that La residents will vote on this fall?

• Why does the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office think that it doesn’t need body cameras and dashboard cams?

• Why is the City of New Orleans allowing state troopers to get away with subjecting its residents to unconstitutional policing?

• Why is so little being said about the NOPD’s decreasing ability to solve murders this year?

• What specific steps are being taken to expand economic opportunities for minority contractors?

• If Louisiana can’t find money to house prison inmates, pay for food stamp assistance or pay for TOPS, how is it going to find money to renovate the Mercedes-Benz Superdome again?

• When was the last time you patronized a Black restaurant?

• What does Juneteenth mean to you?

• What are you doing to enrich the lives of the children in your neighborhood this summer?

• When was you last visit to the Amistad Research Center?

• How would you grade elected officials’ handling of the Harrah’s Casino contract and Entergy New Orleans’ power plant proposal?

• With direct flights to and from London and expanding economic opportunities in Central and South America, how much will Black businesses in Southeast La. Benefit?

• What are you doing to celebrate Black Music Month?

• What kind of an impact will the influx of high-tech companies have on Black New Orleans?

• How many white businesses in New Orleans today got their start in Saint Dominique before the Haitian Revolution?

• With the 300th Anniversary upon us, has the City of New Orleans formally acknowledged or apologized for the slaughter and dismemberment of the Africans it captured and jailed at the Cabildo?

This article originally published in the June 18, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.