Members of the Coalition to Pass the Community Safety Act (CSA) spoke out before Thursday night’s Providence City Council meeting about the importance of empowering local communities on policing.

“Providence needs the Community Safety Act because without it we feel unsafe,” said campaign coordinator Vanessa Flores-Maldonado in a statement. “The Coalition hopes that a public hearing will speak loudly to the need of an ordinance that seeks to hold police accountable when they harass and brutalize our community.

The Coalition, which is comprised of local community organizations and members, had previously submitted a petition on July 1 to have the city council hold a public hearing before going on their August break. However, the 90+ signatures submitted took 3 weeks to verify and no public hearing was scheduled within the 14 days required by the City Charter.

Malcus Mills of DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) introduced three speakers, Dan, representing PrYSM (Providence Youth Student Movement), Wayne Woods of DARE, and Justice, speaking for RI Jobs with Justice.

Dan spoke about the gang database used by the Providence Police Department. If a youth is placed on the gang database list, they have no ability to remove their name or even check to see if their name is on the list. This may result in loss of job and educational opportunities in the future.

Right now, said Dan, the police, “judge people by their appearance, their race, gender etc, and they will say you are guilty… because they think you are part of a gang.”

Wayne Woods spoke of being profiled and pulled over on the East Side of Providence. After being removed from his car, searched, and then waiting for 20 minutes as his car was searched by police, he and his friend, both black men, were sent on their way. The police told the men, “To go home and take it easy.”

If the CSA were passed, said Woods, the car could only have been pulled over for probable cause and the police would have to issue a receipt to people they detain, outlining the conditions of the probable cause.

“A big part of why the CSA needs to be passed is so that we can hold people accountable to what they’re doing,” said Justice, representing Jobs with Justice. “Civil servants and law enforcement should be accountable just like other working people, and we need to be able to protect the people of Providence, we need to be able to protect the youth of color in Providence.”

The Providence Community Safety Act is a city-wide proposed ordinance that aims to hold police accountable and make communities safer. Developed by community members and organizations who are frustrated with police harassment and lack of accountability, the CSA has 12 key points that outline how police officers should interact with community members. These points range from video recording to traffic stops to the gang database.

This 2003 Quoflection is still pertinent for reflecting on our politics and values:

Can we set aside our national, cultural and intraspecies biases? Let us imagine we are Glipsloks from the planet Urduz (though a bit hairy, we consider ourselves beautiful). Using instantaneous googolplex processing, we quickly decipher all communications on Earth.

Our mission today is to educate our galactic neighbors. Please share your thoughts regarding the following proposed communication.

Residents of Earth,

To gain understanding, we Glipsloks are observing your planet. Your ways are puzzling to us. We notice you have 800 million people on your planet who suffer from malnutrition. You allow 100,000 children to die every week from starvation. You say you value justice. But we perceive much selfishness and apathy.

Our survey indicates more than 30 nations are currently waging war. This infliction of misery is confusing. You say you value human life. Yet you are oblivious to the suffering you impose upon multitudes of your fellow humans.

Your linguistic logic is bewildering. Many of your governments declare they are seeking peace—even while conducting a war. We Glipsloks do not understand. Until we heard such reasoning, we had no concept of duplicity.

You have video and audio capabilities that could inform you of misfortune throughout your world. Yet you focus your vision and care upon those like you. We Glipsloks value compassion for all. We see no benefit in choosing ignorance or prejudice.

We observe the leaders of one wealthy nation using advanced weapons to invade and occupy an ancient civilization. They say their purpose is to eliminate the other government’s advanced weapons. Yet they are unable to locate such weapons—while they maintain vastly superior stockpiles of such weapons of mass destruction. This double standard is perplexing.

Some leaders proclaim their love of liberty while advocating laws which severely restrict the freedoms of their citizens. They use these laws to arrest and detain many innocent people. The irony is these injustices are initiated by those managing the Department of Justice.

These leaders also appeal to patriotism, asserting that those who disagree with them do not love their country. Yet their country was founded on the principle that people are free to disagree. We Glipsloks do not understand such treachery.

We are also mystified by religious prejudice. Some leaders reject theocracy—if established by another country—but approve of a “Christian nation.” These leaders say they are motivated by faith while the basis for their actions is fear. How can this be?

They also speak of the evil of the other nation’s president. We see that he has indeed committed numerous atrocities. But don’t those who initiate war realize they cannot conquer evil with more evil? This produces a cycle of evil. We Glipsloks understand that only goodness overcomes evil.

Many leaders trust weapons whose power is puny. True, these weapons can take control of another nation. However, perpetrating violence for short-term advantage creates more problems than it solves. Your saying is true: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” We Glipsloks understand that genuine power is the result of speaking the truth in love.

We must ask you earthlings: Do you not value Peace? Love? Faith? Do you not regard Wisdom? Compassion? Goodness? Do you not cherish Humanity? Justice? Truth? You claim to honor these values. Yet your actions do not reflect them.

Nevertheless, we Glipsloks have hope for your planet. We see a leader among you who taught and embodied these values. He was willing to die, not kill, so you might find life. His risen spirit will guide you—if you follow him.

*     *     *     *     *

My fellow Glipsloks: How would you encourage our neighbors to reflect upon the disparity between their values and their actions?

Predictably, this caused non-violent offenders to receive severely harsh prison sentences based on their race, education and even their neighborhood. Such a system groups and generalizes people based on class or race, rather than recognizing the individual for who they are and what truly brought them to the point of crime.

In the federal court system there have been sentences of 25 years, or even life, for distribution of cocaine. The big data system would often deem such sentences as fair because of the statistical probability of the person to re-offend. They receive these extreme sentences for a nonviolent crime because of the possibility of a crime they didn’t commit. That is not justice.

Being both a criminal and a white male from an upper-middle class family, I’ve not experienced this in any sentencing I’ve received. I’ve always been sentenced based on my crime and past criminal history. Not surprisingly, white privilege exists even for criminals. This system is racist in how it functions and is designed to keep the lower class right where they are. Taxpayers who aren’t racists should be livid that even one penny of their money goes to fund such a system.

The very idea that American judges were handing down sentences based on someone’s race and social demographics is frightening. The margin of error is incalculable.

With this program our judicial system seems to be saying that minorities or people from a less advantageous background don’t deserve a second chance as much as someone from a different background? Doesn’t that kind of thinking fly in the fact of the beliefs this nation was built upon? Justice is supposed to be blind.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston

“Any movement that seeks to establish community control of the police must begin by challenging the legitimacy of the police,” said Glen Ford, journalist and executive editor of the Black Agenda Report and former member of the Black Panthers, “With Ferguson we saw a burgeoning movement that challenged the legitimacy of the system itself.”

Ford was speaking at New Urban Arts in Providence as part of a panel sponsored by End Police Brutality PVD entitled The Struggle for Community Control Past and Present: From the Black Panther Party to Providence Today.  Also on the panel were Monay McNeil, a student at Rhode Island College, Steve Roberts and Servio G., protesters awaiting trial for allegedly blocking the highway during a Black Lives Matter protest last November, Suzette Cook, whose son was allegedly assaulted by members of the Providence Police Department in 2013, Justice, founder of the “Original Men” and Ashanti Alston, black anarchist and former Black Panther.

Over 100 community members were in attendance. My only quibble with the excellent discussion was that the number of panelists meant that some speakers were not afforded the time needed to fully expand upon their ideas. Still, this was a fascinating discussion in which the new movement is seeking to learn from civil rights movements of the past.

Moderator Andrea Sterling loosely set the parameters of the discussion as being about “Black Autonomy” and “Community Liberation.” The panel was concerned with the classic problem all nascent social movements must confront: “Where do we go from here?” The description of the event asserts that “activists must choose whether to challenge the foundations of the system that made Black lives immaterial in the first place, or be sucked into the morass of patchwork reforms that enfeeble the movement while failing to alter relationships of power.”

In other words, does the movement seek to reform or overthrow the system? Most of the panelists seemed to think that there was a need for system change, and that such change will not come easily.

“The system is a very racist system,” said Justice, who spent 10 years in prison, “We have to acknowledge that. The relationship between African Americans and establishment power in this country has always been based on violence.”

Suzette Cook, after outlining some of the circumstances in the beating of her son, agreed, “We are literally in a state of war in our own country.”

“I was a soldier in the Black Liberation Army,” said former Black Panther Ashanti Alston. Things in America are no different “than in Palestine. We’ve got to fight.” Then Alston grew philosophical, “The acceptance of death allows us to live for our highest ideals.”

Servio has been involved in radical movements for a few years, starting with Occupy, but quickly became disillusioned. “I found out that the Occupy movement didn’t care about anyone who wasn’t white.” Still, he is unwavering in his commitment to system change, observing that, “This is a system of power that uses the police to keep us in our place.”

Minor reforms won’t do, in Servio’s opinion, “The change has to be way more fundamental than that.”

Just over a week ago, the British and American governments announced the largest fine in history levied against Barclays PLC, just under half a billion dollars. The fine agreed to ignore criminal charges against Barclays itself, but current and past employees were not exempt. Well, after a letter from Democratic lawmakers (including Rhode Island’s Sen. Jack Reed) to the U.S. Justice Department and regulatory agencies urging criminal charges, that may well be in the works. According to The New York Times, Barclays traders may be among those slapped with criminal charges. Bloomberg reports that those charges could come as soon as September.

The City of Baltimore already filed a lawsuit back when this rate-rigging scandal broke. Now it comes to light that the attorney generals of New York and Connecticut are working together to investigate Wall Street banks over the scandal.

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman was considered the most high-profile crusader against Wall Street excess until he was co-opted by the pro-Wall Street administration of Barack Obama. That resulted in the $25 billion settlement with America’s largest loan servicers, who were utilizing automated robo-signing to fraudulently foreclose on American homes. Prior, Mr. Schneiderman led a group of dissenting attorney generals who refused to accept the Dept. of Justice’s settlement, believing the banks deserved greater punishment. When he folded, the virtually all of the attorney generals fell into line with the Justice Department (Rhode Island’s attorney general Peter Kilmartin was with the Justice Department from the get-go).

Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) is an average of the interest of borrowing for London’s banks. It is set by all of the banks submitting to their trade organization (the British Bankers’ Association) the rate they are borrowing at. These rates are then averaged and the average is declared. That is used to set interest on roughly $500 trillion in securities, and 45% of all U.S. mortgages. In the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Libor became a measure of banks’ health as other standard measures became suspect and unreliable. In this case, Barclays has admitted to artificially manipulating rates downward.

This means while the interest the average consumer paid on their mortgage was lower, a state or municipal treasury or a large charity that had savings linked to Libor also saw lower returns. As did lenders who sold mortgages bundled into “residential backed mortgage securities”. So while the average person on the street might feel slightly good about the banks’ malfeasance working out for them, states and lenders are certain to feel quite angry.

Is It Time for the White House to Fight the Banks?

The common impetus behind both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street appear to have been that Wall Street got away with collapsing the world economy and over a trillion dollars in taxpayer money. And they never faced a single criminal charge.

The Libor scandal seems to be changing that. The British government announced plans to make it the government with the toughest regulations out of any economic center; the City of London (separate from Greater London) is the epicenter of Western capitalism.

Americans already despise Wall Street for its part in the collapse (Wall Street remains the institution most blamed for the bad economy). Wall Street banks, who strongly backed President Barack Obama in 2008, have shifted their financial support almost entirely to Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Barack Obama has mostly played as the banks’ best friend, his bipartisan so-called JOBS Act passed earlier this year further deregulated Wall Street (Rhode Island’s Senators voted against the act, whereas our Representatives voted for it).

But the Libor scandal may be a chance to put right the wrongs done by the administration and the U.S. government in not punishing the banks following the Global Financial Crisis. One hopes that President Obama would do so because it is the right thing to do. However, since the moral calculus has not appealed to this president in the past, perhaps the political calculus will. This is a rare case of good politics and good policy aligning.

With the big banks having cut the President loose, he does not need to worry about angering potential donors; indeed, charging bankers for the very real crimes they have committed seems likely to energize those who have long feared the President is a stooge of Big Banks. Furthermore, the Libor scandal (and the money-laundering over at HSBC) has proven beyond a doubt that the financial system cannot be allowed to police itself. When given the choice between theft and honesty, banking culture is so toxic they will praise theft before they stoop to honesty.

Unfortunately, Republican obstructionism is undoubtedly assured to block any chance of enacting tough new rules through legislation. And conservative litigation as regulators write new rules is also likely to prevent any real strengthening of the oversight under the flawed Dodd-Frank reform. This means all the government can do is press charges. Indeed, this very public action may be preferable from a political stance; the sight of bankers in court is likely to please many of the hundreds of American families who have wound up in foreclosure proceedings at the hands of such reckless prophets of our financial system.