Rev. Pinkney - and God - Versus Racism in Michigan
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
To obtain a downloadable MP3 copy of this Black Agenda Radio visit the BA Radio archive page.
"A preacher has been
imprisoned for predicting what God might do."
The ACLU has agreed to become the lawyers for Rev. Edward
Pinkney, the activist minister from Benton Harbor, Michigan, who was imprisoned
for three to ten years for invoking God in accusing the presiding judge with
corruption. "To our knowledge," said
a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union, "this case marks the
first time in modern history that a preacher has been imprisoned for predicting
what God might do."
The same judge had previously sentenced Pinkney to probation
on charges of having stolen votes in a local election. He revoked probation
after Rev. Pinkney made his prediction about God's plan for the judge.
Rev. Pinkney is the acknowledged leader of Black protest in
Benton Harbor, a 92 percent African American enclave surrounded by a mostly
white county. The real power in the city of a little over 10,000, says Pinkney,
is the Whirlpool corporation, which is behind a development project that many
Blacks say is against the community's interests. County Judge Paul Maloney
changed the sentence from probation to hard prison time, after Rev. Pinkney
wrote that Maloney was "racist" and "dumb," and would answer to God for the
injustices he had inflicted. Those punishments, wrote Pinkney, would include "curses, fever and extreme burning,"
unless the judge "hearken[ed] unto the voice of the
Lord thy God to observe [and] to do all that is right."
"The
Whirlpool Corporation is accustomed to getting its way in Benton Harbor."
According the Judge Maloney's version of the Constitution,
that was enough to send Rev. Pinkney to an Upper Michigan correctional
facility. Pinkney says he's being punished for exercising his freedom of
speech, and contends the original charge of vote stealing was a frameup by the
white establishment that answers to the Whirlpool Corporation, which is
accustomed to getting its way in Benton Harbor.
"We
knew they were corrupt," said Pinkney, "but the point was, nobody had ever
stood up to them before until I came along." He charges people were paid to
testify that he was "in possession of an absentee ballot" - the basis for his
conviction.
Whirlpool, which is so intent on pushing through its pet
project in Benton Harbor, announced that it plans to lay off 5,000 workers,
many in Michigan. But, despite the billion-dollar corporation's financial
troubles, its will is the equivalent of law in Whirlpools headquarters town.
The bars of Rev. Pinkney's cell testify to that.
America will never be the land of democracy and equal
justice as long as the power of money places corporations above the law, or, in
Rev. Pinkney's case, allows the corporate class to cause the incarceration of a
civil rights leader.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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This article first appeared in The Guardian.
