CNN: Why Erica Garner's support for Sanders makes a difference

[mhatrw]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/opinions/erica-garner-support-for-bernie-sanders-martinez/index.html

Editor's note: Cid Martinez is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of San Diego and author of the forthcoming book "The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles." His work focuses on criminology, policing, religion, urban politics, immigration and race relations. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) Last week, Bernie Sanders' campaign released a four-minute video ad featuring an endorsement from the daughter of Eric Garner, the New York man who was choked to death by New York City police officers. In the course of the ad, Erica Garner talked about her father's death as unjust and its effect on her and her young daughter. She is also campaigning this week on behalf of Sanders in the South Carolina primary.

Garner's support comes at a key time in the election, as Sanders and Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, seek to rally support among African-American and Latino voters in the upcoming primaries. The video raises the urgent issue of the broken criminal justice system and its effects on American society, a topic few liberals want to address through activism. How do we know it's broken? According to Harvard sociologist Bruce Western in his book "Punishment and Inequality in America," the United States is the world's leader in incarceration, with more than 2.2 million people behind bars. Western notes that in the past 30 years, incarceration has increased sevenfold. ...

The ad makes it clear that our broken criminal justice system should be at the center of civil rights discussions. It shows how Garner's daughter has been transformed into a civil rights activist since her father's death. Among critical scholars of criminology, the link between criminal justice and civil rights has long been acknowledged. The Black Lives Matter movement has received national attention in pushing for criminal justice reform, but candidates still are not discussing solutions comprehensively. Until recently, any discussion of the criminal justice system was viewed as being peripheral to progressive agendas.

...

This brings us to one of the ad's most powerful messages: It is only through civic and political activism that a more just society for African-Americans, Latinos and American society in general can be achieved. History suggests that Sanders is on to something. In "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," Harvard legal scholar William Stuntz argues that urban American society went through two periods of mass migration: one by white European immigrants in the first third of the 20th century, and the other by African-Americans during the Great Migration, which roughly occurred in the last two-thirds of the 20th century.

[mhatrw]

1. If you haven't seen the ad yet, please see it and spread it far and wide!

[enigmatic]

2. Another incredible, moving ad

Thanks for this.

[beam me up scottie]

3. K & R

A very moving ad, powerful, haunting and in her own words.