Truth Telling
This week the Rev, Edward Pinkney was vindicated by the Michigan Supreme Court. In 2014, the Benton Harbor activist was accused of election forgery and making false statements in a petition drive to recall Mayor James Hightower. Pinkney was accused of changing the dates on some signatures and allowing 6 people to sign the petition twice. He was found not guilty of making false statements, but he was convicted of changing dates and was sentenced to 30 to 120 months in prison.
On May 1, the Michigan Supreme Court, one of the most conservative in the country, ruled that Rev. Pinkney committed no crime. He was improperly convicted and sentenced to prison. Justice Viviano, writing for the court, said that the legal provisions under which Pinkney was charged do not exist and do not set a substantive offense. Pinkney’s conviction must be vacated and charges dismissed. Rev Pinkney was released last June after spending 30 months in prison, often in deplorable conditions.
This decision by the Michigan Supreme Court is welcome and the result of tireless work by the Sugar Law Center, the National Lawyers Guild, and the ACLU of Michigan. At the same time, this is yet another example of the distortions of justice that have become normal in Michigan.
In order to support a relentless drive toward expanding corporate control over public assets, state authorities are willing to do anything to advance the interests of corporate power over the protection of people and the places we love. They have made a mockery of the right of the people to petition. They have defied Constitutional provisions designed to protect our elders. They have openly gone against the majority votes of the citizens and disregarded the public will expressed in letters and comments required by law. They have ridiculed science and ignored citizens who plainly are suffering from poisoned water. They attack those who disagree with them and establish policies aimed at diminishing the ability of people to make decisions for ourselves on our own behalf. They are destroying what little democracy we have while advancing and concentrating wealth and power in smaller, whiter, and whiter enclaves, protected by larger and larger police forces.
Reverend Pinkney stood up against these forces. For more than a decade he has organized in his hometown of Benton Harbor. Across the river from the white enclave of St. Joseph, Benton Harbor has long been a target of aggressive corporate expansion and assaults on democracy. Rev Pinkney explains it is “the testing ground to see what they can get away with.”
Benton Harbor was the first predominantly Black Michigan city to be ruled by an Emergency Manager, appointed in 2010. Setting aside all democratic processes, one of the first acts of the EM was to turn over 22 acres of dunes in Jean Klock Park to a private golf course. The beloved community park became 3 holes for the Harbor Shores golf course, part of a larger lakefront luxury development. The community was given a park in exchange for a toxic dump. Rev Pinkney was a major force in resisting this undemocratic and outrageous effort. He insisted on public accountability, open government, and democratic processes.
The efforts the State went to silence Rev Pinkney show their weakness, not their strength. The corporate-state powers are so fearful of the truth that they make up laws, arrest preachers with SWAT teams, and deny and distort long-held processes and procedures. Rev Pinkney reminds all of us of the power of truth-telling as the foundation for justice.