#TDRSplus Let Freedom Ring and Stop Criminalizing Black Folks!

Can freedom really ring in a country that demonizes people of color and constantly criminalizes Black folks? 

Civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong joined #TDRS to help us lift up a very important conversation around the criminalization of Black people. 

From biases, to stereotypes and flawed policies that target us . . . what does dismantling the system look like? 

Now you'll have to go back to the episode and listen to some of the strategies that we discuss to find out how. Dismantling however also looks like economic and political power, ownership and protection. 

It also starts with our work to change the stereotypes about Black people. We have to gain control of the narrative and if we can't dismantle, then we need to build our own communication systems and will the power of the economic dollar we bring to these billion dollar companies. 

Industries that are thriving off the very souls of Black folks. 

But this has been occurring in America since before Reconstruction. It's been happening more frequently in America and Black people are suffering in the workforce, hospitals, prisons and even schools. 

Dr. King envisioned the Beloved community to free Black people and other people of color from the negative stigmas that have been used to criminalize us. But America still killed King, symbolizing that hope, liberty and justice for all only come at the hands of blood. 

I leave you with these words Glaude features in Begin Again from James Baldwin. . . 

"In his reflections on Dr. King, Baldwin wrote that we were witnessing the death of segregation as we knew it, and the question was how long and how expensive the funeral would be. If only he knew.

We are still in that funeral procession. 

To be sure, a world is dying, but we have been slow walking to put it in the grave, and the costs are mounting. 

How many of our children are languishing in failing schools? 

How many of our loved ones are rotting in the prisons and jails? 

How many are breaking their backs trying to make ends meet only to fall deeper and deeper into holes full of economic quicksand?

How many have we put in the ground?

And how many souls have been darkened because of the corrosive effects of America's original sin? 

Something has died. But the ghosts will not leave us alone. 

True freedom, for all Americans, requires that we confront them directly."

Black people are allowed to be criminalized by these things, and we won't stop addressing it until the criminalization stops. 

Tune in Monday, March 15th for our next #TDRS episode featuring Norman Propst, Alliance of Black Lives and the leaders of the Julius Jones Foundation, 12:15 PM CT and then at 6PM EST EdLanta will host Norman and the Illinois Innocence Project discussing prison reform and how the criminalization of Black people is driven by the prison industry.