Equal justice, even for Trump

Yusef Salaam, whom you may remember as one of the exonerated Central Park Five, had only one word to tweet to those who wanted to know his feelings about the indictment of Donald Trump: “Karma,” he offered.

Karma? I’ve heard about it.

Drawn from concepts of re birth in Indian religions, I’ve been advised to think of kar ma as a form of cosmic justice: Good deeds and intent lead to good karma and happier re births while bad karma may lead to times that are not so jolly.

Mr. Salaam was one of five Black and Hispanic teenagers wrongfully imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a white woman in New York’s Central Park, a case that later was explored in a 2019 Netflix series “When They See Us” and a PBS documentary “The Central Park Five.”

In 1989, before any of the five teens had been tried, Mr. Trump, then a major Manhattan real estate developer with a bottomless appetite for selfpromotion, took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York.

Adding kerosene to public anger at the time, the ads were reported to have played a major role in securing a conviction. So did false confessions, it turned out, since no DNA linked them to the crime scene and their descriptions of the victim didn’t match.

Mr. Salaam served nearly seven years in prison before he and the other wrongfully accused teens—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise—were exonerated in 2002. Serial rapist Matias Reyes, already in prison, confessed to the assault and DNA confirmed his admission.

Ah, how the mighty have fallen. The presumption of innocence until proved guilty seemed almost nowhere to be seen in Mr. Trump’s world when the Central Park Five case raged across the headlines and boiled over into a national media frenzy.

Yet, as Mr. Salaam mentions in his tweet, Mr. Trump—for whom “apologetic” is not part of his brand—never has apologized. Still, he seeks the presumption of innocence he has denied to others. So be it. Let’s see how well his innocence claims hold up.

For now, Mr. Trump’s chants of “Lock her up” in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton come to mind. Now that it is he who faces what has been reported to be more than 30 counts related to business fraud in a sealed indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, I wonder: Can chants of “Lock HIM up” be far behind?

Still, the stress test to which the former president has put our criminal justice system offers a valuable opportunity to view fairness in our system with new eyes.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the ultraconservative Republican from Georgia, suddenly has become a major advocate for inmates of the District of Columbia jail, now that their ranks were joined by detainees from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Interesting, I said to myself. Since the alleged insurrectionists are mostly white and the D.C. jail’s traditional population is overwhelmingly Black, maybe now they can see how the other half lives.

Unsurprisingly, they were shocked. The jail’s conditions, were so bad that 34 of them suggested in a letter to federal court last fall that they would rather be moved to Guantanamo Bay.

Detainees, through their lawyers, raised concerns that included threats from guards, standing sewage, and skimpy food and water. A federal judge held top jail officials in contempt after they delayed prompt medical care for a Capitol defendant in their custody.

Things have gotten better, spurred partly by Rep. Greene

Why are we ignoring our chidren?

The recent massacre of three students and three adults in Nashville, Tenn., is alarming.

How and why did a former student invade the school locked and loaded with an automatic weapon and ruthlessly kill innocent students and their caretakers?

While it is useless to speculate on the thought process that leads someone to kill people, perhaps to make a statement, it is clear that the multiple school shootings that have taken place in the last several months have encouraged many to continue the trend by executing shootings of their own. In the wake of the March 27 Nashville shooting, we were treated to the usual rhetoric of “thoughts and prayers” and even calls for stronger gun legislation.

But the gun lobby is so strong and gun-toting zealots so politically powerful that attempts to limit the availability of automatic weapons get caught in the political crossfire. Anyone can offer thoughts and prayers. Who is willing to change policy to protect our students?

While I am wondering how students are reacting to the ever-present school shootings, the American Association of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency in children’s mental health two years ago, citing the severe toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on top of existing challenges.

While their report does not explicitly reference school shootings as part of the problem, Lee Savio Beers, AAP President, said, “Young people have en- dured so much throughout this pandemic, and while much of the attention is often placed on its physical health consequences, we cannot overlook the escalating mental health crisis facing our patients.” The mental health crisis shows up through increasing incidences of child suicide, the second leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24 in 2018.

The number has likely increased since we have experienced much disruption since the COVID epidemic that shifted life paradigms between 2019 and 2021. If adults have problems handling this disruption, how do we think our children and young adults are faring? “We are caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness and suicidality that will have lasting impacts on them, their families, their communities, and all of our futures,” said AACAP President Gabrielle A. Carlson, M.D. “This is a national emergency, and the time for swift and deliberate action is now.”

The 2021 report noted that young people in communities of color had been impacted by the pandemic more than others and how the ongoing struggle for racial justice is inextricably tied to the worsening mental health crisis. When young people witness the heinous killings of Black motorists or people simply “walking while Black,” how does it affect their mental health? While our attention is focused on young people who are students, we have often ignored the children who, as young as 12 or 13, are working in unsafe environments. There are federal child labor laws that restrict the hours that those under age 16 can work, especially during school hours. Too many employers ignore the rules and are rarely held accountable.

The National Child Labor Coalition has documented the reckless use of children in manufacturing plants, especially automobile manufacturing plants in Alabama (Kia and Hyundai are especially egregious violators).

Nearly half of all employed children work in agriculture, where they are exposed to, among other things, life-threatening pesticides. While laws prevent child labor, enforcement is lax when regulatory agencies are understaffed.

Can we expect the young people we have ignored to protect our Medicare or Social Security? Why should they care for us when we have not cared for them?

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author, and Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at Cal State LA.

The Free Press welcomes letters and other congressional visitors. But the irony of how it took 40 or so Capitol rioters to get more attention and action than the jail’s roughly 1,400 total inmates is not lost, especially on the inmates of color. aprilcoleman@richmondfreepress.com Staff Writers

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Rep. Greene, seldom known for understatement, visited the jail and likened the rioters inside to “prisoners of war,” implying that they were being punished for their politics.

Actually they’re being held for a lot more than that. Don’t forget the physical assaults on Capitol Police with pepper spray, bear spray and riot shields, just for starters.

Equal justice for all is a cherished ideal in the American system, a system they tried to disrupt. We must do all that we can to preserve that ideal, even for those who try to destroy it.

The writer is a syndicated columnist and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

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