Despite winning three high-profile trials in my lifetime, involving death threats from extremists and/or supremacists and law enforcement violence, I do not believe in the US judicial system.
I acknowledge that my beliefs may stem from the fact that none of the defendants were ever sent to prison. Either they were promoted, or in the case of the white supremacist, was slapped on the wrists with probation.
While speaking at the invitation by a teacher at Hollenbeck Junior High School in Los Angeles, soon after I had won a historic police brutality lawsuit trial in 1986, some administrator told me that I was giving the students the wrong message; she reasoned that the fact that I won those trials meant that “the system works.”
I disagreed then and even now. That the defendants never faced their own criminal trial for almost killing me is what I disagreed with. That is ancient news, though the repercussions live with me to this day in that I have never been seated on a jury, precisely because I won my trials. If I cannot serve on a jury, then can I actually be considered a full US citizen? I jump at the possibility of serving on juries because the US penal system is the largest in the world and in effect, functions as a warehouse for people of color and the poor. I would love to serve so I can contribute to the shrinking, if not abolishing, the US penal system. But for one reason or another, I am always summarily dismissed. That is minor considering that ex-convicts are usually unable to vote, subjected to voter suppression, and often, unable to serve on juries.
Worse, the rise of police abuse, has risen exponentially since those days, becoming even more widespread and deadlier (more than 6,000 deaths) these past five years since 2014, when Michael Brown was killed. Virtually all with complete impunity,
Also, in the communities I come from, millions of my undocumented neighbors virtually have no rights whatsoever, except for what they have fought for and won, such as the right to an education. Any way you slice it, I come from communities that are intentionally profiled not just by law enforcement, but by every sector of society. As a professor, I have witnessed what this translates to in the classroom. There isn’t a semester in which one of my students is not fighting in court to prevent deportation of a family member. Also, every semester, I take my students to Operation Streamline, a fast-track deportation machine in Tucson’s federal courthouse. Every day, between 60-70 defendants are frog-marched before a judge, shackled to the ankles, waist and wrists; their crime; entering the country without documents.
Last time I took students there, they timed it. Each defendant was given 50 seconds before the judge. On the same day of their show trials, they are permitted to consult with “their” attorneys for a few minutes before the proceedings. After they are charged and convicted, they are sent to a for-profit detention center. By comparison, my own trial in 1986 lasted 34 days. What is there to believe in here? This is but a microcosm of what occurs daily, either for profit, criminalization, or simply to keep us “in our place.” And these are the lucky ones; the ones who did not perish in the desert.
That’s why I don’t believe in the fairness of the US judicial or law enforcement systems, and especially, not in the fairness or integrity of the US political system or the mainstream media.
During the last presidential election, the current White House occupant received three million votes less than his opponent, rendering the Electoral College as the antithesis of democracy, ensuring and maintaining a political, and increasingly, a racial apartheid system. It has been estimated that for 2020, he can receive five million fewer votes and still win the Electoral College; one-person, one-vote, it is not.
For the longest time, I believed there was no difference between the parties, until I walked into his Tucson 2015 rally inside the Convention Center. What I witnessed had a profound effect on me; a virtual three-hour anti-Mexican political pogrom, in which the attendees were driven into a hate frenzy by then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio and now ex-Gov. Jan Brewer. And then the madman. But as ugly as the words form these three were, it was their “fans” that were Nazi-esque, viciously haranguing the several dozen mostly brown dissenters inside their rally. It was as if we had been transported into another country and another century. So yes, while I have never believed in this system, and never endorsed any candidate, I am optimistic that this deranged would-be dictator has to be given the boot this November. That I do believe.
Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez is an associate professor at the University of Arizona and is the author of several books including “Our Sacred Maiz is Our Mother” (2014) and “Yolqui: A Warrior Summoned from the Spirit World” (2019). Email XColumn@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2020
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