April 23
GUEST: Shannon Wong, activist and director of the Lower Hudson Valley Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, talks about the role of racism in the attempts to sabotage recent bail reform legislation.Is Bail Reform a Bust?
Shannon is a tenacious fighter. She takes little steps, but is always moving forward. We quickly got into the specifics of bail reform, what was being repealed, and why the issue is so important to all of us.
It comes down to a racist system, with prosecutors and the police often tipping the scales when it comes to a fair trial. The bail reform movement doesn't really get into why a racist system is allowed to function in a free society. Just like the early Civil Rights champions wanted the courts to back up Black students' rights to attend schools and colleges. Jim Crow was attacked piecemeal, one decision at a time.
It was left to visionaries like Malcom X and MLK to present the whole. Black people are second class citizens in a country that they had a good part in building. Their ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and enslaved for the wealth of white owners. After the Civil War supposedly "emancipated" African Americans, they were faced with another century or more of vicious Jim Crow persecution.
Can we stick to bail reform? Or are we misleading our fellow citizens about what the true issue is? Shannon is working on bail reform because changes there will affect many Black prisoners right now. But she doesn't pretend that the battle will be won on one issue. A society based on racism and militarism must come to terms with how to change. We must understand what in our history created this racist relationship, and we must come together to overthrow those in government who use hatred for political power.
