99 Problems — Criminal Justice Reform Ain’t 1
Trump’s Super Bowl Ad Featuring Alice Marie Johnson
Yesterday, like 84 million other Americans, I kicked back to watch Super Bowl LIV (that’s 54 for you non-Roman numeral readers). My mom had all the game-related trappings ready — wings, chips, tacos, and ginger ale (cause she knows I love me some Canada Dry).
Then, in between an “I love you” #GirlDad text to my 21-year-old, checking Facebook notifications, and wiping off barbeque sauce from the wings that I dripped on my white t-shirt, a familiar voice redirected my attention to the TV.
It was the voice of my good friend and surrogate “auntie” Alice Marie Johnson. She was featured in a 30 second, 10 million dollar Trump re-election ad that ignited trending indignation on Twitter.
Pause.
For background, in 2018, President Trump granted Alice Marie Johnson clemency after her case was brought to attention by the Buried Alive Project, Mic.com, lobbied by #cut50, and (more notably) Kim Kardashian. Alice, like tens-of-thousands of people in the federal prison system, was excessively prosecuted and disproportionately sentenced to a term of imprisonment for low-level drug trafficking.
Trump’s ad ignited criticism with people pointing out his dismal record on racial justice (à la Charlottesville) and family reunification (à la US-Mexico border). In fact, The Center for American Progress just published a scathing fact-sheet on twenty-five things his Administration has done that are questionable to the reform movement. It’s obvious people — Black folks in particular — are up in arms because Trump is pandering for Black votes. In one critique from Former Rep. Bakari Sellers (D-SC) on Twitter, said, “That ad was offensive AF,” adding, “The “I freed a Negro” ad.”
However, as a person who served nearly 14 years in federal prison, led advocacy for the #FirstStepAct (the federal prison reform bill Trump signed into law that freed, to date, close to 8,000 people), I know countless people released under the #FirstStepAct and whose freedom is yet to be secured. I have never heard a solitary person incarcerated say:
I want to be released, home with my family, enjoy the liberties of freedom, and redeposit back into communities I bankrupted —
However!
I only want [this] political party to release me!
Alice Marie Johnson didn’t care who released her, she just wanted freedom. Tanesha Bannister, released from a life sentence, didn’t care who released her; she just wanted freedom. Lonnie and Lyle Jones, Jr., both of who served 20 years on life sentences for drug convictions didn’t care who released them, they just wanted freedom. Matthew Charles, Dennis Broadnax, Damon Walker, Kenneth Richardson, Clover Perez, Robert Wood, Charles and Felix De Jesus, and the thousands of others who benefited from freedom as a result of Donald Trump’s pen power could care less about partisanship. They just wanted freedom.
People incarcerated don’t care about who’s in the White House, so long as they can get out of the prison house to get home to their momma’s house!
Trump didn’t “hurt” the advancement of criminal justice reform in that ad, as Twitterverse declares. I think he actually helped it. His “political stunt” actually elevated the conversation (inadvertently as it may) to the ears and eyes of people who, otherwise, wouldn’t have given Alice Marie Johnson a second thought.
The Black electorate has more sophistication than the naiveté political pundits infer. They think we are going to vote for Trump in droves because we overwhelmingly benefited from legislation that was all the way wrong, to begin with?
(In the PG version of Richard Pryor’s comedic profundity: Negro puh-leeze!)
The issue of reforming our criminal justice system isn’t one that Trump and the Republican Party can claim victory to resolve. There are more than 2.2 million people in our jails and prisons. While the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population, it has nearly 25 percent of its people incarcerated.
Pelosi and the Democratic Party can’t break out the champagne in celebrating an “end” to an over-representation of poor folks in our judicial system who are manipulated into guilty pleas; there are (still) approximately 6 million people under supervision in our country.
Republicans at their best believe in LIBERTY.
Democrats at their best believe in JUSTICE.
Americans at their best believe in LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL.
Trump’s commercial, showing a grandmother released from incarceration, demonstrated that second chances should be made possible in the land of the “so-called” free. There were $10 million other ways that ad could have been used: a Steven King-like sequel of Willie Horton: William R. Horton, Jr.; a 2.0 introduction of the 1994 Clinton-crime bill, and/or the Obama-era reform progress former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was trying to unravel.
If Trump is pandering, so what?! This isn’t about politics for me nor any of the families I know disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system — this is about people!
I don’t support Trump’s candidacy, nor do I even remotely like the context he presented Auntie Alice’s release. However, considering the alternative? I will accept it to protect the movement of criminal justice reform and, especially, celebrate a Black woman reuniting with her family. And, on any given Sunday, I will take outCOMES over outRAGE.
