lynk bella hues - There's a Double Standard: While an Activist is Arrested Unlawfully, a Law Enforcement Agent Goes Unarrested for Worse Actions
- 6 years ago
The Freeholders should vote no on items 12, 23 and 24 which provide public money for privatized healthcare for the incarcerated and new technologies for the Essex County Sheriff's Department. That money is better used to build a caring community to meet the needs of immigrants who ought be freed from ICE and Essex County's detention center toward ending the entire mass incarceration system.
There was a protest on Sunday, July 8 to end the ICE contract with Essex County. A correctional facility officer named Manzo came storming out of the building enraged because activists demanded change the officer personally disagreed with. When Manzo saw an activist of brown skin color, he said to that activist, "It's taxpayers who pay for your people who are locked up inside." The activist of color responded, "Are you an American?" After gazing sinisterly at the activist, during a conversation with a fellow officer, Manzo practiced a second act of explicit racism by calling the activist of color a "Mexican motherfucker." If Manzo treats protestors in this manner, what are we to assume about his treatment of detainees?
Casting negative racial meanings on the body of an activist of color in relation to detained immigrants, Manzo assumed the activist may not be a full or "fit" citizen like the immigrants imprisoned in the detention center, both acts of explicit anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant racism by an officer and state practicing police management. The disorderly, racist, and uncivil actions of Manzo, far worse than the actions of one activist arrested for a disorderly persons offense on June 29 who practiced no arrestable action, demonstrates a double standard of enforcing law where a police officer can break civil and criminal codes without fear of arrest while an activist protesting the racism of immigrant detention can be arrested because police domination says so regardless of the activist's actual actions and the requirement of police to enforce the law equally.
Individual freeholders who have connections to immigrant histories post-slavery are recreating the anti-immigrant racism their modern ancestors experienced in upholding the ICE contract in Essex County.
There was a protest on Sunday, July 8 to end the ICE contract with Essex County. A correctional facility officer named Manzo came storming out of the building enraged because activists demanded change the officer personally disagreed with. When Manzo saw an activist of brown skin color, he said to that activist, "It's taxpayers who pay for your people who are locked up inside." The activist of color responded, "Are you an American?" After gazing sinisterly at the activist, during a conversation with a fellow officer, Manzo practiced a second act of explicit racism by calling the activist of color a "Mexican motherfucker." If Manzo treats protestors in this manner, what are we to assume about his treatment of detainees?
Casting negative racial meanings on the body of an activist of color in relation to detained immigrants, Manzo assumed the activist may not be a full or "fit" citizen like the immigrants imprisoned in the detention center, both acts of explicit anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant racism by an officer and state practicing police management. The disorderly, racist, and uncivil actions of Manzo, far worse than the actions of one activist arrested for a disorderly persons offense on June 29 who practiced no arrestable action, demonstrates a double standard of enforcing law where a police officer can break civil and criminal codes without fear of arrest while an activist protesting the racism of immigrant detention can be arrested because police domination says so regardless of the activist's actual actions and the requirement of police to enforce the law equally.
Individual freeholders who have connections to immigrant histories post-slavery are recreating the anti-immigrant racism their modern ancestors experienced in upholding the ICE contract in Essex County.