Founder of Friends of Justice to speak at SMWC - Sept. 14 & 15
Posted on: 09/11
Why do different levels of justice exist? Socioeconomic status should not be a factor in justice, but it is. That’s why Alan and Nancy Bean founded Friends for Justice, and on Monday, Sept. 14, and Tuesday, Sept. 15, Bean will visit Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College to talk about his experiences.
Bean will speak at SMWC at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 14, in Le Fer Hall’s Sullivan Parlor. He will also give a talk at noon, Tuesday, Sept. 15, at Providence Center.
It was a 1999 drug bust in their Texas town of 5,000 that woke Alan and Nancy Bean into action. Forty six people – 39 of them African American – were indicted on the testimony of a single narcotics agent, who delighted in the media attention he received because of the bust.
The Beans asked at the time, how does a town of 5,000 have so many drug dealers? And with that question, they were on their way of asking many more questions that led them to the reality that the celebrated War on Drugs is an effective way of imprisoning young black men.
Even though drug task forces such as the one in their Texas town have been disbanded, the Beans still see much work to be done to fight the problem of how poor and nonwhite people are treated by the justice system.
“As you descend the socioeconomic ladder, the presumption of innocence turns into a presumption of guilt,” Alan Bean said in an interview with a reporter for the Harvard News Office. “There are different levels of justice. You basically get what you pay for.”
Friends of Justice has achieved large-scale impact because of its strategy of Narrative-based campaigns. They organize media scandals about cases where vulnerable people are denied due process because of abusive prosecution and corrupt policing. They conduct investigations of these cases as they unfold, craft a clear summary of the facts, and persuade the media to do hard-hitting reporting on the breakdown of due process. They organize affected communities like the Bean’s town of Tulia, Texas, and Jena, Louisiana, to tell their stories, connecting them to international media and to powerful national allies. Their strategy shifts the prevailing media and community narratives about criminal justice, flooding the public square with narratives about the need to hold public officials to a higher standard and defend due process for all Americans.
To learn more about Friends for Justice, go to http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/. For more information about Bean’s talk at SMWC, contact Elaine Yaw, adviser to SMWC’s Education for Peace and Justice Group, at eyaw@smwc.edu or 812-535-5179.
