Cartoon: Reconciliation
By Anthony | January 22nd, 2006 | 12:12 am
Mitch Johnson, the Greensboro Police Officer’s Association, and other officials seem to have their side of the story, and Wray certainly has his side of it. And if the conversations in the local blogosphere and in the News and Record’s Letters to the Editor are any indication, everyone else is taking up sides too. Here’s hoping for some truth and some reconciliation in the not-too-distant future.
January 22nd, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Nice work as always, Stew.
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Thanks Chewie!
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:02 am
Another classic destined to get a raw nerve or two downtown– I love it!
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:04 am
Stew – Love your talent, but let me ask you a question: is this really a job for the GTRC? To me, these events confirm the shortcomings of the T&R process. First off, I’ve been waiting for someone to state the obvious: we did go through the T&R process and it failed to uncover an alleged pattern of racism so significant it has already brought down the police chief and threatens to do much more. This scandal confirms to me the inadequacy of the process. We don’t have a job for the GTRC. We have a job for law enforcement and the court system. We have a job that requires subpoena power, trial, and sentencing. We have a job that requires real consequences be visited upon real people. The lesson from Nov. 3 is not that we didn’t talk enough about the situation. The lesson is that we (all the actors in that event) didn’t do enough before and after the event to prevent and punish. You are a serious person with a leaning towards the law. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this: doesn’t this scandal confirm the inadequacy of a T&R process to deliver either T or R.
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Mr. Sun – Just a quick clarification followed by a longer rant. The TRC process is not completed yet. We are currently working hard to finish our research and write a final report, to be released this spring. Subpoena power certainly would make our job easier, but I’m not convinced that a court process has the ability by itself to adequately deal with a community-wide situation like November 3 or the current issues in the police department. A court trial and a TRC process have two different purposes. Although both are working towards some sense of justice, a court trial is about determining an individual’s (or group’s) guilt or innocence with regard to a particular alleged crime. A TRC process is about looking at the broader issues surrounding an incident or incidents of injustice. Both have their limitations; you’ve articulated clearly many of the limitations inherent in a TRC process on several occasions and I’ve appreciated that level of reflection on the topic. There are no perfect answers that I’ve heard for how a community can best deal with these situations, but it does seem like Greensboro has been given at least a couple of opportunities to be at the forefront of a nation-wide movement to figure out a better model (or combination of models) than what we’ve used in the past.
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Jill — We can disagree about the value of the T&R process, but there can be no disagreement about the hard work that you and the Commissioners have put into the process. Thanks all around. Having said that, I am strongly opposed to the T&R process in any cases other than large, seismic shifts such as occured in South Africa. The idea of a consensus reachable through discussion on broad issues such as race and class is a myth — just read the recent N&R surveys and the listen to the tenor of the debate on the N&R blogs and you can see this is true. That’s okay with me — let people of goodwill talk, punish the criminals and hope that the middle can tell the two apart. I am absolutely certain in my own mind that the most significant development in the fight against racism in this city in the last 25 years was the headline, “FBI Opens Probe Into Greensboro Police.” Looking back, the most powerful impressions I take from the published accounts of the GTRC process are deep regret that the CWP members did not fully cooperate with prosecutors enough to have a real chance at criminal convictions. Let’s figure out who was guilty of murderer, negligence, and federal discrimination — show them to our neighbors and put them in jail. Concurrently, let’s continue with initiatives such as the Mosaic Project to open up dialogue among disparate community groups. I don’t think there is a better model, certainly not the T&R process. I’m sorry to say that to someone who has worked so hard on it, but not sorry enough to forego saying it.
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Mr. Sun – Thanks for your kind words about the difficulty of the work being done by the T&R staff and Commissioners. And thanks, too, for continuing to be willing to express your concerns with the process. I think that there are numerous ways to address these larger societal problems and, while they share a common long term goal of justice, they have different short term ways of getting there. The Mosaic Project, as you said, seeks to open up dialogue among disparate community groups, which is a noble and essential goal. The criminal justice system, also necessary, seeks to figure out who was guilty of criminal offenses and to punish them if necessary. But sometimes, regardless of the legal culpability of individuals (who can end up scapegoated in the traditional justice system), there is a larger culture that permits or even encourages injustices to occur. Punishing an individual for a crime may prevent a repeat offense, but it isn’t going to change the culture that allowed the crime to occur. I’m not convinced that either the justice system or a Mosaic Project is designed to raise awareness about these larger cultural problems or to encourage a community to recognize the ways in which it may be accountable for past injustices. The T&R process is not a perfect strategy for addressing these larger cultural issues, but I’ve not found a better model for that particular goal.
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Welcome Jill, and thanks for the comments!
Mr. Sun (thanks to you too, of course):
“is this really a job for the GTRC?”
No, I don’t think it’s really a job for the GTRC specifically. However, I do think that we need to accomplish what they were aiming for in the broad sense. We need the truth to come out, and it needs to come out sooner, rather than later, before the spin from both sides turns into common wisdom, and the situation becomes even more polarized. Johnson and some on the City Council have said that there is more to the story that the general population doesn’t yet know. We need to know it. I think that’s the only way to keep this from festering and becoming even more of an issue. If it’s nipped in the bud now by taking a good hard look at the facts and getting everything out in the open (which it seems to me was what the GTRC was trying to do with Nov 3) we may be able to avoid a situation where years down the line people feel that we need another GTRC-style group to set things right.
In short, get everything out in the open now, rather than later. Our justice system can help with that, as you suggested, but I’m not sure I want the city leadership to sit back and wait for that process to take its long and winding course. Johnson was off to a good start in the first coupe of days after Wray’s resignation, but I think he needs to try hard to head off the rumors and speculation in any way he can (assuming of course that there really is a case against Wray as he and some council members suggest).
Regarding the efficacy of the GTRC in general, I feel a little out of my depth in comparison to you and Jill, as far as knowledge of the details and the broader effects go. That being said, it does seem to me that what they’re doing is potentially very helpful in many respects. As you said, “we (all the actors in that event) didn’t do enough before and after the event to prevent and punish” … it’s too late to address that now by prevention or punishment, but we can certainly look back at it and try to learn from it. I’ve never understood why some people seem to be so opposed to attempting that.
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Thanks for what is to me your new blog PotatoStew!! I have always liked Potato Soup!
Mr. Sun, do I understand from your comments above and similar comments from previous blog discussions that a fairly narrow event like Nov. 3rd does not rise to the occasion for a T&R process. I think that insight, that I understand to be your point, may have more merit than I previously understood. It may be part of an important discussion as other communities struggle with their past and how to properly discuss that past.
In South Africa everyone in the community was engaged, affected or partially involved in the T&R process. To a real extent the T&R process was needed in South Africa to help bring some type of “justice” and prevent ongoing cycles of nation wide violence.
In Greensboro most people have simply not been involved with the T&R process. It appears that most people in the community remain unconcerned while others refused the analysis of the GTCRP that all three trials were shams, especially the first state criminal trial and the second federal trial. After the T&R public hearings, that broader community view of the trials may have more merit than before the public hearings started. One thing we are all more keenly aware of is that when we talk about Nov. 3rd we also need to ask “whose justice” and “whose rationality?” We may all better understand in viewing the information on Nov. 3rd that an objective, complete history is probably impossible. All of us view the facts through different eyes and with different ideologies — that my be our lesson.
It could be that part of the final report from the hard working Commission may find that the three trials were not as unjust as some have suggested. The three defense attorneys, who represented the Klan and Nazis, also stated at the T&R public hearings that they would have loved to have had the CWP survivors on the witness stand for cross examination. The first trial had virtually no participation from the CWP survivors but part of their refusal to get involved was also tied to their commitment to not allow testimony from key folks in the CWP hierarchy in New York like CWP General Secretary, Jerry Tung. It was Tung who liked what he saw of the direct militant, violent confrontation in China Grove and then insisted to local members of the CWP that Nov. 3rd in Greensboro should be another militant, anti-Klan confrontation.
The report of the Commission should be helpful in properly framing as much of the entire story of Nov. 3rd as possible (including the seriously flawed Police Operational Plan) but we will not know how successful they have been until the report is made public. Again we will probably find that the glasses we wear (including race and class) and the ideologies we hold (our world view) still will greatly influence the reading of the report. Just as with the Wray, black book saga — how will the community reach its conclusions?
January 24th, 2006 at 6:36 am
John — Yes, my point goes entirely to the appropriateness of the process. There’s a slew of scholarship on that topic, and all of it boils down to a few bullet point conditions precedent for T&R commissions — few of which Greensboro meets. Jill says, “hey let’s be at the forefront of applying this process in new, positive ways” and I appreciate her work and admire her spirit, but ultimately reject her offer. I think it’s important, too — I think the issue of extending the use of the T&R process should be considered and rejected outright — not snuck in the backdoor with “Oh, c’mon — how can you be against talking about a difficult time in in our past.”
January 24th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Mr. Sun, is any of the scholarship you mention available online?
January 24th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Yes, I provided dozens of links over at EdCone.com in the past, and I’m just too lazy to organize them. For a good overview, start here.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:16 am
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