We Can Welcome Alice Johnson Home AND Not Normalize Trump’s Megalomania
This is how imagine the Kim Kardashian West and Donald Trump meeting went.
Kim Kardashian West: Mr. President, from one reality star to another, please commute the sentence of Alice Johnson. Her incarceration is an atrocity, and I will do whatever it takes to get her free. Plus, both of our twitters will blow up, and we will get all the good press. My husband will look like a sage, and —
Trump: — and I will get the Blacks to believe that I am the best president for them ever! Plus, if I get this done, and soon, the fake news will have a hard time proving that I’m pardoning my co-defendants…uhm, colleagues because of our collusion — I meant the allegations of collusion. You’d like that too because you Russians are getting a bad rap.
Mrs. West: I am Armenian, not Russian.
Trump: Same thing, right?
Mrs. West: No, but whatever. Hit me on twitter.
Trump: You’d like that. Let’s get this pic for the gram before you leave.
(picture is taken by official White House photographer)
Mrs. West: Have a good day, Mr. President (exits the room in confused disgust with his last comment).
One week later, Alice Johnson is justly released from prison. Originally sentenced to a life in prison for a first-time non-violent drug offense, Ms. Johnson had her sentence commuted on June 6th after serving 21 years in prison. As a formerly incarcerated person who was also released earlier than expected, I can feel the joy that Ms. Johnson and her family are experiencing.
But, can we be happy that Alice Johnson is free, and be unhappy that Trump used her and Mrs. Kardashian West as a proxy to distract from his allegations of political corruption; and the bragging rights to say, “See, I care about the Blacks.”
Yes, we can.
On June 3rd, four days after Kardashian-West met with Trump at the White House, Rudy Giuliani (formerly America’s Mayor), now Trump’s attorney, provoked that Trump could pardon himself. On June 4th, one day later, The President underscores Giuliani with the tweet, “I have the absolute right to pardon myself.” On June 6th, he pardons Ms. Johnson. Who knew that justice could move so quickly?
Also during this one week period, Trump refueled his megalomaniac attacks on Black NFL players by uninviting the Super Bowl Champ Philadelphia Eagles, tacitly supported Roseanne Barr’s racist comments, and reignited his attack on AG Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia collusion investigation.
If Trump can support racism, dismiss the civil protests against police violence towards people of color, publicly interfere with a federal investigation against him and his associates, assert that he is above the law, and weaponize the mercy of the pardon clause as his own get out of jail free card, all in one week, then I — we should separate an act of justice from a habit of injustices.
The community of advocates who have an earnest interest in dismantling the unjust machinations of America’s criminal legal system should be applauded for their courage. They convinced a system to release a comrade.
But, Ms. Johnson’s freedom must be separated from the insidious normalization of an overt white supremacist sympathizing regime that runs shop like the mafia fish markets that Giuliani once prosecuted.
Let us not forget that Richard Nixon, while courting the support of Dr. King, James Brown, Jackie Robinson, also supported COINTELPRO and created the policy of a War on Drugs to target Black people and anti-war activists. FYI, Nixon was also under federal investigation, and we all know what eventually happened to him.
Showing token sympathy to issues that directly impact people of color while massaging a knife in our backs is not a new political technique. In fact, Nixon proved that 50 years ago. White supremacy could not flourish for so many generations without occasional acts of mercy. It understands that it requires buy-in from those it cares to dominate.
The question remains: when will we learn this lesson?
Until then…
Welcome home, Alice Johnson. Let’s connect on twitter. There’s more people to free and a bigger system to dismantle.