By Sikivu Hutchinson
In 1900, human rights activist
Ida B. Wells said, “Our nation’s national crime is lynching.” Wells fought her entire life to stop the
atrocity of lynching and bring white supremacist terrorism into public
consciousness. For this, she was
maligned and marginalized, not only by the Jim Crow political establishment but
by conservative African Americans leaders who initially weren’t convinced
lynching was worthy of national mobilization and challenged Wells’ fierce
leadership.
On June 1, Black Lives Matter
(BLM) organizer Jasmine Abdullah Richards was convicted of attempted “felony
lynching” for trying to prevent a Black woman from being detained by the police
during a BLM peace march in Pasadena, California. Jasmine is set to be sentenced for her “crime”
on June 7th by Judge Elaine Lu.
Like the persecution of Wells, Jasmine’s conviction brutally exemplifies
how state violence is used to preserve the imperial immunity of law
enforcement.
As Color of Change notes, this conviction is “a
perverse misapplication of a 1933 California law intended to stop lynch mobs
from forcibly removing detainees from police custody and engaging in public
murders of Black people.” Under California penal code,
“lynching” is defined as “the taking by means of a riot of any person from the
lawful custody of any peace officer” and can carry a prison sentence of up to
four years. Enacted in 1933, after the lynching of two white men in San Jose, the law was viewed as
a “consolation” for the federal government’s persistent refusal to enact a national
lynching law to protect black lives.
Under California law, a person
who is involved in a group altercation in which they are taken into, and then removed
from police custody, can even be charged with “lynching” themselves. Over the
past decade, the law has consistently been used to suppress radical-progressive
protestors, immigration activists and black
liberation organizers. In February 2015, activist Maile Hampton was arrested and charged with felony
lynching after a confrontation with a police officer. The charges against
Hampton were subsequently dropped.
Charging activists of color with
felony lynching is a gross miscarriage of justice that effectively stifles peaceful
public assembly and protest among the disenfranchised communities of color the
law was designed to protect. As Jasmine’s
attorney Nana Gyamfi contends, the law is intended to “stop people from
organizing and challenging the system.
There’s a political message that’s being sent by both the prosecutor and
the police and the jury.”
That said, it’s not shocking that
such outrageous ironies—to paraphrase Black Lives Matter L.A. activist and organizer
Dr. Melina Abdullah, Jasmine’s
mentor—are legally enshrined in a state and county whose top prosecutors—notably
Kamala Harris and Jackie Lacey, the first African American women to hold the
attorney general and L.A. district attorney positions respectively—refuse to go
after killer cops.
People of
conscience who oppose the racist criminalization and victimization of activists
like Richards should press the California State Legislature to repeal this
draconian application of California penal code and stand in solidarity with Jasmine
in her court sentencing
today in Pasadena.
