The hypocrisy of Berrien County, Michigan has no limits. I am an invisible man, like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard distorting glass. When the evil and wicked approach me, they only see my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact.
In Berrien County I have been treated and the blacks are treated as if they are a thing instead of a person. Above all things, they have denied me a fair trial. We have got to show the world we are determined to have a fair and just trial not only in Berrien County, but also around the whole country.
I was convicted by an all white jury that was motivated by something other than the truth. A rogue jury that ignored the law and evidence in reaching a capricious verdict. The rogue juries include those that base their verdicts on unrevealed, deeply held prejudices. This rogue jury verdict was not based on a desire to achieve a just, fair, or moral outcome for me, but I am saying to you my friends that often the path to freedom will carry you through prison.
I was entitled to a Direct Verdict based on the evidence presented in the prosecutor's Mike Septor Case in Chief. Pinkney made a motion for a direct verdict at the close of the prosecution Case in Chief. Whether the prosecutor met its burden of proof must be evaluated only in reference to evidence admitted at this point. Assessing a motion for a directed Verdict of acquittal a trial must consider the evidence presented by the prosecution to the time the motion is made. The evidence presented during the defense phase of the trial has no bearing on whether Pinkney was entitled to a directed Verdict at the close of the prosecution's case, just because the prosecutor questioned the validity of the claims regarding Venita Campbell made by Rev. Pinkney and the defense witnesses, this was not affirmative proof that could support the Prosecution. The prosecutor had to say, this to save his case, evidence's do not lie, but judges, and all white juries do.
The all white jury was led by Gail Freehlong of Three Oaks, a known racist who openly practiced racism, but if we are going to have fair trials, we have got to shed ourselves of fear, we have got to say to those who oppose us: you can't stop us by shooting us; you can't stop us by killing us; you can't stop us by brutalizing us, because we are gonna keep on keeping on until we receive justice, Justice For All!
Marquette Branch Prison: Hostility Inside the Wall
If you fail to pay a traffic ticket or court fine or child support for an offense, all too often you can end up in prison. If you do end up in prison, those costs will keep you there, forever trapping you in a downward spiral of prison and more debt.
However, if you are a wealthy corporate executive, like the heads of Volkswagon or General Motors, you can get away with killing people as long as it's on behalf of increasing profits. At most you may have to pay fines amounting to a slap on the wrist.
I am sitting in Siberia, over 500 miles from my family, friends, and community. In a place called Marquette Branch Prison, better known as the Concentration Camp of America. Even Adolf Hitler would be proud at the way Warden Roberts Napel is operating the concentration camp. The torture begins when you wake up, the agony of the mind and body, extreme pain is inflicted by the Warden Robert Napel and his staff.
The very first thing Marquette Branch Prison does to the prisoner, they attempt to silence you by removing all contact with the outside world. The MDOC, attacked my communication by stealing my telephone communication. First they lied and said I was making a three way call, which was impossible. It was a conference call. The MDOC and the untrained, unskilled, unprofessional, and uneducated Correctional Officer misspelled my name or put the wrong name on the Misconduct Ticket and was founded not guilty, but the Warden Robert Napel had my telephone pin shut off before the misconduct was given and after I was found not guilty he became upset and he decided my telephone service would be removed for 180 days which is illegal and against the Michigan Department of Correctional Rules and Procedures. The MDOC do not follow their own rules.
Then the Michigan Department of Corrections attempted to remove all the visits by charging me with smuggling knowing I had not smuggled anything in or out of the prison. They claimed one of my visitors, David Sole, was trying to smuggle notes out of the prison which once again was untrue and found not guilty.
The problem is the taxpayers are paying for the unchecked discretion. The taxpayers must stop watching television and start paying attention to this 2 billion dollar budget the MDOC has. The MDOC is pimping the public. We must start understanding the real problem and be able to handle the truth.
The time is right. The Michigan Department of Corrections has slated me to die in the Concentration Camp. They have done everything they could to hurt me and destroy me. I have what my captors will never have: spiritual strength, dignity, integrity, honest, love for the people. A commitment to revolution and the ability to read the writing on the wall.
Now I know, now I believe I know, how the Jews felt in Nazi Germany Concentration Camps, better known as the Death Camp. The warden sent his boys after me. Correctional Officer Schetter, Correctional Officer Lukkala, Correctional Officer Basal, and Correctional Officer Sare and several others.
I have been told by other Correctional Officers that the Warden is gunning for me. I have been placed in areas that was full of Black Mold and I am never to be moved, it is even written in the MDOC logbook.
Then the threatening, harassing, and intimidating behavior continued every single day. They used speech, action, gesture, and movement that caused physical and mental intimidation along with humiliation. They also use abusive, threatening, and profane language and action which degrade and belittle black people. The policy is clear: an employee shall not discriminate against others by word or action on the basis of race, color. An employee must report an incident of harassment to the designated harassment counselor or the appropriate supervisor. This will never happen because there is unbridled discretion. The exercise of to much discretion by too many people has made the Marquette Branch Prison the concentration camp of America who believe they the MDOC is above all laws, rules, and prejudices. We must stop them!
I have a psychological theory. Guilt has a constructive angle, maybe a way to mend the evil, wickedness, and hatred of Black by the administration and the Correctional Officers. The evil and wickedness, plus the hatred by some of our white brothers, here not Marquette Branch Prison, better known as the Concentration Camp of America. I am resisting with love, love will conquer all.
Selma an America Landmark
When the doors of the Sixteenth Baptist Church opened shortly after one o' clock on Thursday May 2, a line of fifty negro teenagers emerged two abreast, singing. The waiting police detail hauled them into jail wagons, as usual, and only the youth of the demonstrators distinguished the day until a second line emerged, then a third and many more. Children as young as six years old held their ground until arrested. Amid mounting confusion, police commanders called in school buses for jail transport and sent reinforcements to intercept story lives that slipped past them toward the downtown business distrct. On the first day nearly a thousand marching children converted First Negro Adults. Not a few of the onlookers in Kelly Ingram Park were dismayed to see their own disobedient offspring in the live and the conflicting emotions of the centuries payed out on their faces until some finally game way. One elderly woman ran alongside the arrest live shouting 'Sing Children Sing'!
With the jails swamped by Nightfall, Bull Connor ordered a massed phalanx of officers to disperse rather than arrest any demonstrators King might send the next day, intimidate them, shoot them away. When more than a thousand new children turned out in high spirited, nonviolent discipline give no ground, frustration and hatred erupted under Connor's command. Police dogs tore into March lives and high powered fire hoses knocked children along the pavement like tumbleweeds.
News photographs of the Violence seized millions of distant eyes, shattering inner defenses in Birmingham, the Negro principal of Parker High School desperately locked the gates from the outside to preserve a semblance of order, but students trampled the chain-link fence to join the demonstration.
King preaching at night to a serial mass meeting that spilled from on packed church to another urged crowds to remember the feel of history among them. He cast aside his innate caution along with criticism and worry over the children in jail, shouting, "Now yesterday was D-Day and tomorrow will be cried out in playful hyperbole that they would finish off Birmingham before Tuesday by placing every negro young and old in jail so that he could be back in Mississippi chopping cotton." Bevel did not make his deadline, but nonviolent Negros did overflow the jails and flood the forbidden downtown streets within a week. By Monday maybe the sudden conversion gushed from child to adult until no fewer than 2,500 demonstrators swamped the Birmingham jail and King welcomed in awe the tangible sensation of history spilling over at Frenied Mass Meeting of four times that number.
Less than two years later, Malcolm X would speak from a Selma pulpit alongside James Bevel and Fred Shuttleworth with Martin Luther King in jail, in a voting movement that made Selma an American landmark.
Marquette Branch Prison: Rev. Pinkney Speaks from Prison
My fellow comrades, friends, and companions we have come to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the spring of racial poison.
The United States police department in every state, in every city are killing people with war crimes ammunition. Virtually every person shot to death by police handguns in the U.S. in the last 20 years has been killed with a bullet that international law has declared to be a war crime.
The number of people killed by police so far this year topped 800 as the nation wide epidemic of police violence continued with cops killing 25 people over the last seven days of the year.
The U.S. media largely has ignored the 800 victims milestone all year with headlines dominated by the attempt to whip up law and order hysteria around things like the massive manhunt to recapture two inmates who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in New York.
The 500th fatality of the year according to one database of police killing occurred when members of the SWAT team gunned down a 69 year old Richard Warolf, a suicidal man, during a courtesy call requested by his family in Sun City, a suburb of Phoenix.
The following night a police officer in Des Moines Iowa shot and killed unarmed 28 year old Ryan Bollinger through the window of her squad car after a two minute low speed chase.
The nine other people killed by police since Monday include Matthew Wayne McDaniel, a 35 year old from Florida; Rene Garcia, a 30 year old California man killed during a traffic stop; Mario Ocasio, a 51 year old from New York City killed by taser; Jeremy John Linhart, 30 year old from Ohio, also killed during a traffic stop; Ross Anthony, 25, from Dallas, killed by a taser; an unknown suicidal 45 year old male from Houston area; Quan Davier Hicks, 22 year old, from Cincinnati; Isaiah Hampton, 19 year old from New York City; an unknown homeless man from Miami shot 5 times by an officer and Charles Allen Ziegler, 40 years old from Pompano Beach Florida.
Despite releasing repeated damning reports of systematic violence and corruption in city after city from Cleveland to Ferguson to Baltimore to New York, the Obama Administration has steadfastly refused to demand that any of the officers and officials responsible for a pattern and practice of brutality be held criminally accountable. We are living in a time where the public, the people, must hold the government accountable for their actions. We must stand up to our government and fight back.
We Want Our Due and We Want It Now!
An economic system that doesn't feed, clothe, and house its people must be and will be overturned and replaced with a system that meets the needs of the people.
The labor-replacing electronic technology is permanently eliminating jobs and destroying the foundation of the Capitalist System. The people's needs can only be met by building a Cooperative Society where the socially necessary means of production are owned by society, not by the corporations.
As the economic crisis continues to grip America and threatens to get deeper, people in working class communities across the country are beginning to stand up and demand that the government serve the people's interest, not those of the corporations. The people have come under fire from the corporations and the government. This is especially true in the city of Benton Harbor, Michigan.
The struggle that has taken place in recent years in Benton Harbor is a case in point and one that holds a number of lessons for the American people. The fight in Benton Harbor is a war over whether Americans will have prosperity and democracy, or live in poverty under the heel of open corporate rule.
Former president Bill Clinton hustled the street dealer, sold crack, dreams that turned to dust. Their strategy of talk labor while pleasing capital was even seen in the destructive NAFTA pact which decimated manufacturing jobs in the U.S. by the millions.
Now Clinton returns posing as savior of the working class when their treasured NAFTA ripped away tens of thousands of jobs annually, undermined unions, and transferred vast wealth to Wall Street.
When Texas businessman and 1992-1996 presidential candidate H. Ross Perot predicted NAFTA would produce a "giant sucking sound" of lost jobs the media pundits laughed at him, making him sound like a fool. But history proves his words were true.
The vicious, cowardly attack on democracy in Benton Harbor that Whirlpool Corporation and the corporate power structure is determined to crush anyone who stands in its way. It is part of a process underway across America in various forms. After the once stable working class community of Benton Harbor was devastated by automation, globalization, and NAFTA. The community began resisting. Let's confront the corporations that are destroying the country. Let's stop the NAFTA. Let's confront the NAFTA.
Rev. Pinkney
