What Three Days in Jail Taught Me About Race, Class, and The Justice System

Incarceration is not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy. A sobering lesson in humility, jail gives room for us to be grateful for things we normally take for granted. For someone like me who values freedom, personal space, and intellectual stimuli, it can literally be mind numbing. Being told what to eat, when to eat, when to shower, and the humiliation of using the restroom in front of complete strangers are all consequences of committing any crime, be it big or small. If you break the law then you are treated as a criminal, and all criminals are created equal, or so they say.

This was my third time being arrested and subsequently put in jail. The first incident, a result of immature carelessness and reckless abandon resulted in my license being suspended for 6 months. I kept driving my car, for the simple belief that a piece of plastic with a hole in it has no real merit on my capability to drive. In other words, I said f&*k the law. The first lesson I learned about the criminal justice system is that once you are in it, it is very difficult to get out. You will have to jump through an unsurmountable number of hoops. The unorganized, those who procrastinate, and most importantly the poor, will suffer the greatest consequences of this system.

In theory, justice is blind, and it functions within the confines of the law. Crimes are defined based on the laws that are in place and the agreed punishment is set by precedents or previous cases involving the same crime. In that capacity the justice system works, it serves its purpose in preventing and punishing crime. What is not considered when discussing the fairness of the justice system is the origins of the institution and how such origins define the standard criminal. This is where we see the justice system being overwhelmingly lopsided in how it treats People of Color versus White individuals. Without going into an in-depth history of the justice system, people of color, particularly Black people have been, and seem to still be the standard identity associated with criminals. Which breeds all types of ignorance in and outside of our community about how we should interact with law enforcement.

In most major cities the number of brown and black people in jail, greatly outnumber those of white people, but in Seattle and its surrounding areas we see a more diverse mix. In my experiences I have been housed with far more White women than Black women. As well as a myriad of Asian, Pacific Island, Islamic, African, and Latina women. In fact, the entire Pacific Northwest (Idaho, Oregon, and Washington) report only having a 3% population of African, Black, and African American people.  This lack of diversity in the area results in a more diverse arrest pattern and more diverse criminal cases. Experiencing the justice system here reveals, what I think, is an accurate depiction of the flaws of our justice system. Racial bias still exist in this city. Even with our low populations the court system still punishes POCs (people of color) more severely than our White counterparts. What I was able to open my eyes to, after this last run in with the law, is the fact that classism is just as pronounced in our justice system as racism.

Those who can’t afford a quality legal representative will be assigned a public defender, a state appointed attorney. These attorneys are often bogged down with hundreds of cases a week. There is no real connection or understanding of the client and therefore no invested reason to provide quality legal services. While I don’t doubt that many individuals come out of Law School with the best intentions, this case load can be mentally and emotionally draining.  Those who can afford to be represented fairly in the court of law, often times walk out of court without so much as a slap on the wrist, whether the case is menial or severe. 

An excellent case that highlights the class bias in the justice system, is the case involving Ethan Couch. The 16 year old Texan caused a car crash that killed 4 people. His top notch defense team plead that he was a victim of “Affluenza”, siting that he never learned right from wrong because his parents never set boundaries for him and gave him everything he ever wanted. The end result? The judge handed down a sentence of 10 years of probation. Ethan never served any jail time. So in a sense “Affluenza” aided him yet again.

                While classism is the main issue all Americans face in the U.S., the secondary reason, in my opinion, is that it’s almost impossible to trust people to do the job of judging others unbiasedly. While the law is setup in such a way that supports justice, the people who are hired to enforce the law are flawed human individuals. Like us all, they have prejudices and bias, molded by their own personal experiences. It is unfair to those in the system to be judged by those who do not look like them, come from the same economic background as them, or have empathy to understand what has brought them to be in front of them in the first place.

Majority of the women I’ve met in jail are drug addicts, who need a different kind of treatment than being in the prison system. Most of the impoverished young men and women are in need of counseling and rehabilitation. While teens like Ethan Couch commit manslaughter and never spend a day in jail. There are serious flaws in our system, and while race plays a major factor, classism is just as prominent. The two issues are so interconnected we have to battle these issues from both sides with equal tenacity. As for my cases pray I get through unscathed and without having to pay another visit to the county jail.

Why We Still Need Protest in 2016

“At the tender age of 6 she was arrested in a sit-in, and with that in my blood I was born to be different.” - Kanye West

Active protest is not for the faint of heart. Active protest is organized and disruptive but never encouraged. From sit ins to boycotts, active protest has been apart of Black culture since we first dreamed of freedom. For those of us brave enough to be at the front lines when yet another Black man, woman, or child is shot down at the hands of public servants, you find a different brand of solidarity. There is peace amongst the chaos, joy amongst the sadness, and strength in moments where many of us feel helpless. Protest is therapeutic.

I have attended marches before. It wasn’t many years ago when my family participated in the annual day of service and the march that marks the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in my home city.  Honestly, attending these marches always bored me to death. It was a long day of adults retelling the non violent praise of MLK and his Civil Rights victory. The route was always the same and uneventful. These yearly marches are a standing highlighted paragraph that we all re-read every January. The sea of Black, Brown, and White bodies is a welcomed distraction from our work week, a holiday that get’s us away from our desk (sometimes) and out of school. After my experience last week, I’ve made up my mind that, this was never protest, only tolerance.

Last week mainstream media was flooded with newly captured video of the shooting deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Both dying on wrong end of a tax funded, state issued pistol.  Police brutality is nothing new, as a country we have seemed to relive the horror of watching Black men gunned down on video time and time again. It has become asAmerican as apple pie and baseball. The death of Castile and Sterling stirred a sentiment in me that seemed to collectively spread across the country, even internationally, “Enough is enough” for most of us with limited resources and time we are left feeling helpless.

Sitting at my desk scrolling my collective timelines, as endless tears streamed down my face, feeling my blood boiling, I decided I refused to feel helpless any longer. When the Alton Sterling vigil in my city popped up in my notifications on FB I leaped at the chance to do more than cry and complain. The vigil was something out of a movie. Being held at one of the busiest intersections in Downtown Seattle, it was pouring down raining and even with the aid of a megaphone I could barely hear the speakers. A chill ran down my spine when one of the speakers welcomed a man and his family who presented them as the first cousin of Alton Sterling.

In this moment I realized how connected each of us really are, how small this world is and how even with an approximate population of 12 million every Black American is truly brother and sister. The tears began falling again. As the program moved forward another age-old dynamic presented itself. Older generation versus younger, strategic protest versus, radical protest. The organizer for this vigil was preaching a message of “All lives” coming together to end police brutality, an honorable idea but not approved by a young Black woman. From her position in the crowd she shouted  that this form of politically correct protest would never work. She was silenced by those on stage. So she did what any radical would do, found her own megaphone. 

After delivering a passionate speech about how the process that our activist forefathers used no longer work, that trying to pass a law worded to protect us from police brutality would only be ignored or circumvented. She moved a peaceful stationary protest to the streets and organized an impromptu march in the matter of months. As older generations looked on and shook their heads, they believed this move would hurt the collective effort of the seasoned group of organizers. I signed the petition, I spoke with the organizers, offered my information as someone willing to help and joined the growing marchers of over 1,000 people.

We chanted together, clapped together, and cheered together. We held hands and shed tears together. One thousand strangers came together for 2 men none of us knew and would never meet. Our demonstration was peaceful and warm.

This was the first time I felt peace in months, in the midst of this chaos there was stillness. There was comfort in the hundreds that surrounded me, a cheerfulness in the cars honking enthusiastically to show their support, and victory in the disruption we were causing to the congested streets. You will listen and you will acknowledge that something is wrong. That Black Lives do indeed Matter. In a sea of diversity, there was solidarity, there was love, but most of all there was understanding.

Some may not believe that protest is an effective part of bringing on change but it is at the very least an opportunity for the community to grieve as a collective.  It is a chance to begin to heal wounds that are constantly re-opened. Protest is taking immediate action, instead of being overwhelmed by helplessness.  There is still room for protest in modern activism, because there are still wounds to be healed and voices to be heard.

Jesse Williams & The Protection of Black American Culture

“Just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real” - Jessie Williams

Jesse Williams delivered an awe inspiring speech on Sunday night at this year’s BET Awards. He touched on a variety of issues that plague the Black community from White supremacy to patriarchy, to appropriation. He captured eloquently and passionately how this country has mined both our intellectual and cultural experiences for profit simultaneously failing to protect us. While I deeply appreciated the shout out to Black women, I wanted to praise Jesse for highlighting that Black American culture is indeed a tangible thing.

With the emergence of social media we have seen the Black Lives Matter movement expand globally. Born after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. While BLM is not the only organization bringing awareness to the global phenomenon of anti-Blackness, it is a phrase that has proven to be controversial for many reasons.  “Black Lives Matter” became a political statement, the idea of calling oneself Black became political also, but for Black Americans, or traditionally called African Americans, Black is far from political, and it represents a cultural connectedness the descendant of North American African slaves can only experience.

 Descendants of chattel slavery in the U.S. are unique because of the sheer brutality and terror that was inflicted on its victims. Black Americans were stripped of all cultural connections to their native lands and given a new religion and customs. Since our forced transport here, we have managed to take virtually nothing and create something new, inventive, and life changing. When we were left with scraps of pork and produce we created Soul Food that is still time honored in our families today. From the coded Negro spirituals that aided our ancestors in sending messages via song, proved to be origins of Gospel, Blues, Jazz, Rock & Roll, R&B, Disco, and Hip Hop.

The breath taking creativity of the Harlem Renaissance gave birth to the beatnik style of the 50s and 60s which later gave way to Hippie culture which is present day hipster culture. Jesse Williams articulated the frustration of serving as the cultural bread and butter in a land that attempts to erase us at every front. The Civil Rights movement set the foundational blueprint for many groups to find their own liberation. Yet we as a people are still being brutalized, victimized, and marginalized every day.

Today, the United States has become a melting pot of cultural identities. The immigration has muddled the fine line between slave descendant and American born Africans. Stating that Black is a strictly political construct erases the numerous scientific, cultural, and economic contributions that Black Americans have made through the decades. African Americans (1st or 2nd generation African immigrants born here in the states) have their individual tribal or national traditions to fall back on, West Indians and Caribbeans have a similarly prideful traditions to illustrate, Black Americans are left with decades of attempts to shame us for being Black.

In 2016 we see the mainstream emergence of nail art, colorful hair, colored contacts, and plastic surgery that grow non-Black women’s lips and butts, long standing identifiers to what we previously called ghetto, is now trendy and fresh.

“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo. And we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment, like oil, black gold. Ghettoizing and demeaning our creations, then stealing them, gentrifying our genius, and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.” -Jesse Williams

They told us we were Niggers, then they called us Negroes, to later call us colored, we decided that we were Black. That you could strip us of everything that makes us whole and complete but we will prevail with something of our own creation. Hip Hop is global, it touches every corner of the world and it started right here in the United States among Black Americans trying to articulate the pain of being a creative genius in a country that refuses to recognize your collective greatness unless your skin is devoid of color.

Do not tell us Black is for everybody, when I can see through my family history, and the collective history of our ancestors that Black was all we had. Black was never political, it was proclamation of a people telling the world, you don’t get to tell us who we are, we get to tell you who we became. Thank you Jesse for articulating these thoughts so beautifully. Someone needed to say it. 

How The Police Stole Christmas

   Fall is the time for holidays. The time for cheer, joy, hope, and peace on Earth. It’s the story we’ve been told as children and naively believe as adults. This year is different for the general public. This year media coverage isn’t filled with images of tree lighting ceremonies, Christmas caroling kids, and great holiday deals. This year the media is being forced to face the dark dirty secret of America . . . institutionalized racism.

               I previously wrote about how the murder of Mike Brown brought birth to the movement #BlackLivesMatter, a movement that has shined a long needed light back on racial discrimination in this country. Mike Brown’s death wasn’t that different from the numerous accounts of Black men and women being killed by the police, but it was special in the sense that it seemed to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

      Another high profile, racially fueled case, is the Death of Eric Garner. On July 17, 2014 Eric Garner was placed in an illegal chokehold by New York Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo forced to the ground and held down by several officers where he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe.” Garner suffered from asthma and the lack of air caused him to go into cardiac arrest which resulted in his death. Unlike the case of Michael Brown, the entire incident was caught on tape.  Although the coroner’s office ruled Garner’s death a homicide, on December 3, 2014 the grand jury decided not to indict Pantaleo on any of the numerous charges that were deliberated on. Garner’s case once again highlights the police brutality those in the Black community have faced for centuries. Wave after wave of protest have been happening across the nation in protest of the grand jury’s decision.

     On November 22, 2014 12-year old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland Police Officers when responding to reports of Rice pointing and playing with a toy gun. The caller who called it in even stated that the gun is “Probably fake”, but this did not stop the officers from firing on Rice within seconds of arriving on the scene. As the nation shows its outrage for the numerous acts of Police brutality those who usually turn a blind eye to it all, now have no choice but to pay attention.

    Following Michael Brown’s death many protesters took to the malls where they staged “die ins” in protest of the grand jury decision in Missouri on Black Friday, subsequently sales fell 11%. Eric Garner protest interrupted the beloved Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.  The issue of race and social justice has taken the main stage during a time of year that is often reserved for gifts, holiday specials, and festive decorations. For once our nation has to deal with the issues that have been festering like an untreated infection for decades. While many may blame the protestors for this disruption in regularly scheduled programming, we should instead look to the police.

     The consistent, malicious, unjustified, and well documented treatment of Black citizens with both deadly and excessive force has resulted in the disruption of the cherished holiday season. You will not turn on the news and hear stories of holiday cheer. Instead you will seem the surmounted pain, sadness, and anger of a people who have been victimized since their inception into this country. While the racial tension across the country is thick enough to cut with a knife, I have to rejoice because for once as a Black American I feel our cries have been heard. Maybe, just maybe these can be the first steps toward real change. 

-Jacqueline Hamilton

Thank You Mike Brown

August 9th 2014 an unarmed Michael Brown Jr. was shot 6 times by police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri. He was 18 years old, and he was set to start his first day of college. He died on the scene and his body was left in the street uncovered in the blazing sun for four and half hours. He was not the first and he will not be the last Black body to be dehumanized before it even hits the pavement.

Over the past decade Black Americans have mourned the lives of Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, and Renisha McBride, just to name a few, whose lives were cut short by the police or self elected vigilantes. Individuals who were not only White in complexion but diseased by the mentality that dark skin is and always will be threatening. The case of Michael Brown was not different in circumstance but something fortunate did come from his tragedy. 

Our community was dealt a huge blow when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the case of Trayvon Martin. There were protest, but the general feeling seemed to be that of defeat. That what has been happening for decades now is just a norm of being Black in America. The environment surrounding the Mike Brown case was much different, protesters took to the street immediately and protested for over 90 days as they awaited the grand jury decision. During these protest the state of Missouri treated these mostly peaceful protest in similar fashion to the reaction soldiers have to terrorist. Military personnel were deployed to Ferguson where they shot tear gas into crowds, while the media looked on. 

While mainstream outlets didn't document the events in Ferguson with an accurate lens many social media outlets provided coverage from activist that were in the heart of the conflict. This use of social media to distribute an honest narrative did something miraculous, it removed the veil. Not since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's has the world been concerned with what is happening to Black people in the United States. We had a platform, we created a movement. Finally our pain was witnessed and felt across the globe and protest were happening all over the world. 

What the death of Mike Brown did, that others couldn't do was show this country, and the world alike that oppression is not singular to one group of people. that one parties oppression should not be compared to another, for we are all being denied basic human rights for one reason or another. Be it skin tone, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or gender bias. Mike Brown shined a very bright light on America's brand of oppression.

Young unarmed Black men are still dying at the hands of police officers, there have been nearly a dozen cases that have received some media coverage since Mike Brown was murdered. Following an investigation filled with misconduct and inconsistencies the grand jury chose not to indict Darren Wilson, pain turned to riots, and the people of Ferguson continue to fight. Things have not changed in America since August 9th, but at least now the world is paying attention. 

Jacqueline Hamilton