BY W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Rev.
C.D. Witherspoon had second thoughts about traveling to Rhode Island to
participate in a panel dealing with police brutality, racial profiling and
injustice on Saturday at the Met School on the city’s South Side.
Witherspoon, who hails from
Baltimore and is part of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and Peoples
Power Assembly, had plenty on his plate at home. Last week, an officer on the
Baltimore Police Department used his Taser, otherwise known as an electronic
stun-gun, to zap a heavily medicated teenager who was at Good Samaritan
Hospital in Baltimore for a dental procedure.
The teenager, George V. King,
19, fought with staff and was Tasered five times. He later died after spending
a week in a coma.
Witherspoon has been leading
protests against the Baltimore police and felt maybe he should stay home to
continue the fight for justice.
But the clergyman, dressed in a
dark suit, white shirt and matching white fez, felt it was important to come to
Providence and spread the word. He quoted the late Martin Luther King Jr.: “An
injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
He said the fight in Baltimore
will continue when he returns home on Sunday night.
Witherspoon and Danette Chavez,
of New York City, an organizer against racism and brutality, rocked the crowd
of about 35 people with their dynamic presentations about the use of excessive
force by the police, wrongful convictions and the incarceration of black men
and other minorities for trumped up crimes.
Witherspoon spent Friday in
Providence with Suzette Cook, the organizer of the event. Last year, she said,
her son, Joshua Robinson, had allegedly been assaulted by members of the
Providence Police Department. He urged those in attendance to support Robinson
and show that the community is not pleased with what happened to him.
“You are going to have to put
yourselves in uncomfortable positions to fight the fight,” Witherspoon said. He
said the police “can no longer disproportionately target the poor. This is a
life and death matter.”
Cook and Robinson declined to
talk about the alleged police assault in Providence.
Witherspoon also said that the
powers-that-be in this country have misplaced priorities. Instead of building
more prisons and jails, he said, those dollars should be used to improve
schools and develop recreational programs for our youth. He alluded to Mayor
Angel Taveras’ decision last summer to keep the Davey Lopes pool closed on the
South Side.
Chavez said that officers in
the New York City Police Department killed her son in 2004. She led the crowd
through a rousing condemnation of the U.S. Justice Department, the banking
industry and other powerful politicians and executives who run this country.
“It’s legal in America to be
rich and wealthy and rob the poor,” she boomed. “It’s called the U.S.
Department of Justice, and we can’t get no justice.”
Chavez pointed out that too
many people are dutiful in paying their monthly mortgages for years, then
encounter tough times and the banks foreclose on the properties and sell them.
“They play games with the
people because we don’t understand the game,” she said.
She also was critical of the
nation’s prison system that promotes job training and rehabilitation for
convicted felons. For example, she said that prisoners make tires for pennies
while they are incarcerated and then the tire maker won’t hire them when they
are released.
“Why won’t you hire me?” Chavez
said.
The failure to get a job
results in the ex-convicts returning to a life of crime.
Chavez also chastised Attorney
General Eric Holder for sending representatives from the Justice Department to
Albuquerque, N.M., to investigate 39 police shootings since 2010 that has
resulted in 25 deaths. She said that the federal agency wants to reform the
police department, but they are not prosecuting any of the officers involved in
the fatal shootings.