Building a World Beyond Brutality by Attorney Benjamin L. Crump President of the National Civil Rights Trial Lawyers Association, President and Founder of Ben Crump Law
America, like so much of the world, continues to grapple with the vestiges of slavery and colonialism that are reflected in systemically racist practices in every facet of modern society. Slavery in America created wholesale devaluation of Black life in education, healthcare, employment, housing, voting rights, and the law—hence, the title of my book, Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People. I have focused much of my career on the most visible manifestation of racism in America: police brutality or the state-sponsored extrajudicial killing of innocent Black men, Black women, and Black children without recourse. Although this is the most obvious form of racism in America, the methodologies through which Black people are oppressed and denied their fundamental human rights are as varied as the devious minds that create them. Racism evolves through time with the advent of new technologies, new legal systems, new healthcare systems, new educational institutions. Put simply, human rights practitioners must be freedom innovators and work diligently to create new ways to outpace modern-day oppressors or “Jim Crow Jr.” These United States of America have an established history of lethal police violence applied disproportionately against persons of African descent. In innumerable instances, local, state, and federal governments have failed to hold accountable police officers who commit human rights violations. In 2014, unarmed 18-year-old African American Michael Brown was accused of stealing from a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri, and was shot six times while he had his hands up. No police officer was criminally charged. In 2014, police accused unarmed Eric Garner of unlawfully selling cigarettes in New York City and killed him with a chokehold. None of the officers involved were convicted of any wrongdoing. In 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26year-old African American woman, was shot and killed in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, by police officers executing a “no-knock” warrant; she was unarmed and not accused of committing any crime. No officer was charged with her death. 208
