Just declare the entire system corrupt:
As abolitionists, we approach situations of injustice with love and align ourselves with our community. Because we got us. So let’s be clear: we love everybody in our community. It’s not about a trial or a verdict decided in a white supremacist charade, it’s about how we treat our community when corrupt systems are working to devalue their lives. In an abolitionist society, this trial would not be taking place, and our communities would not have to fight and suffer to prove our worth. Instead, we find ourselves, once again, being forced to put our lives and our value in the hands of judges and juries operating in a system that is designed to oppress us, while continuing to face a corrupt and violent police department, which has proven time and again to have no respect for our lives.
In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom. While policing at-large is an irredeemable institution, CPD is notorious for its long and deep history of corruption, racism, and brutality. From the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, to the Burge tortures, to the murder of Laquan McDonald and subsequent cover-up, to the hundreds of others killed by Chicago police over the years and the thousands who survived abuse, Chicago police consistently demonstrate that they are among the worst of the worst. Police lie and Chicago police lie especially. – Dr. Melina Abdullah, Director of BLM Grassroots
And would this same statement have been issued if Mr. Smollett’s trial had not shown indications of ending in his conviction? That’s the key question, isn’t it – can the cryer apply the intellectual consistency of thrusting away a victory because of a distrust, a certainty that the system is corrupt?
I don’t know if Abdullah would have had the courage to disown a victory. But, if not, then Abdullah would be guilty of a painful hypocrisy, the dishonesty of desiring a system wherein it’s Tails you lose, heads I win.
And, if Abdullah was intellectually honest, then they are left with the problematic statement, In an abolitionist society, this trial would not be taking place … I say it’s problematic because it accepts, without question nor punishment for dishonesty, the statement of Mr. Smollett to the police, that he was assaulted by white supremacists. The assumption of the steadfastness of his claim and character, without investigation and testing, flies in the face of the entire history of humanity.
Without offering an alternative system of justice that has some odor of plausibility, the “abolitionists,” of police departments, I presume, seems less like weak tea and more like warm, bacteria-laden water. The defund the police movement, in the face of a tragic crime wave, did not do well in the latest elections, nor in public polls; it suggests that the very people who might be thought to benefit from the removal of police forces have little confidence in such an approach.
Police forces are, ideally, part of the broader search for truth about incidents which are thought to be injurious to justice and society. We all like to think that knowing what happened is simple, but we all should know that such is only rarely true.
So, for me, that statement isn’t so much a remark upon justice, but a bit of calculated propaganda, designed to retain position of those already emplaced on the ladder of power, and not an attempt to advance the cause of justice.
