AUGUST 2020 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 15
RACIAL JUSTICE IN OUR TIME
BY FREDERICK K. BREWINGTON
Civil rights attorney
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a
single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
These words echo in my heart as I
observe waves of Americans standing
together, calling for change that has
been too long in the offing. When the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned
these words, as a prisoner in a Birmingham
jail cell, he understood what was
swirling around him in 1963.
Those injustices that come with racism
are no less impactful than they were
57 years ago. In fact, the impact is more
widespread, given that those who
continue to fan the flames of hatred
cannot deny what millions of people
saw all over the world as they watched
once again a Black man, George Floyd,
being murdered, as his life was choked
from him by a white police officer who
showed no compassion.
History teaches us that it was police
officers and their deputized brethren,
many of whom were members and
sympathizers of the Ku Klux Klan, who
beat protestors with sticks, unleashed
attack dogs, trampled men, women and
children with horses, and targeted the
same with skin-ripping fire hoses in the
1960s. In countless cases, those actions
were taken against peaceful protestors,
who had been trained in nonviolence.
Police were hell-bent on using force
and brutality to deter and punish Black
Americans for demanding equity.
Disproportionate incidents of violent
and deadly force used by police against
Black people have proven to be the
malady now facing us. The reform of
policing in America is undoubtedly
necessary. But to stop with alterations
of how police engage is little more than
placing a Band-Aid on a spouting artery.
The entanglement of discrimination and
race-based animus necessitates immediate,
broad changes as we strip away those
infections that serve to prevent equity
in a world of plenty. It is not a question
of ability, it is now a question of willingness
to place the value of Black lives over
power and profits.
The time for doing the hard and painful
work is now. There is inequity, there is
racism, and there is injustice. It is a fact
that we are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality. Now is the time to
decide if justice will prevail in our time.
POINT OF VIEW
“Time to decide if justice will prevail."
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