I’m 100% sure the people who lived through Apartheid would beg to differ.
Via Capitol Confidential:
Calling the state’s criminal justice system and its lingering effects on convicted criminals “very reminiscent of apartheid South Africa,” social justice advocates on Tuesday morning delivered some 10,000 petition signatures urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo to establish commission to help right those wrongs.
“We’re here because a crisis exists in New York state that few people are recognizing,” Alice Green, executive director of Albany’s Center for Law & Justice, said on the steps of the Capitol.
Citing housing and job discrimination that she said results from four decades of “misguided drug and mass incarceration policies,” Green urged the governor to create a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission that would allow ex-cons to tell policy makers how the system has left them unable to find jobs or housing even after they have paid their debts.
The commission would be modeled after the one used in South Africa after the collapse of its apartheid segregation policies, the effects of which were similar to those of state’s justice system, Green said.
“Large segments of our communities, which are composed primarily of African Americans and Latinos, they remain voiceless and invisible to most of us,” she said. “They suffer from poverty, poor health, legal discrimination and are denied so many things, like employment, public housing, job training, social services, the right to vote and human dignity. They live under conditions that are very reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.”
Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins, who attended the rally, said he would establish the commission on his first day in office — and that Cuomo would be wise to embrace it, too, if he truly wants win back progressives.