By Dorothy Pinkney
“In March, our attorney submitted a motion to disqualify all Berrien County Judges. The motion is under consideration by the Chief Judge of the Berrien County Trial Courts, Judge Butzbaugh. Meanwhile, my husband continues to live under extremely difficult jail conditions pending his probation violation hearing. His probation is revoked pending a hearing on whether his invocations of biblical prophecies that God will punish those who practice injustice (printed in the People’s Tribune) was a threat against Judge Butzbaugh.
Last night, Berrien County Sheriff Bailey and TEN deputies/law enforcement employees raided my husband’s cell. They confiscated his notes criticizing the jail and the courts and his medications. We should question Sheriff Bailey running for re-election. Another incident occurred when my husband and another inmate were kidding around. One asked "Where is my brown bag?" (Every prisoner gets a brown bag nightly — chips, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.) Deputy Hooks locked everybody down for three days. She turned the television off for seven days (the TV is paid for by someone else and they don't get their money back) and gave my husband an extra three days of lock down. The concentration camp conditions in Berrien County Jail are out of control. Other inmates have observed that Rev. Pinkney is a target of harassment, and they support him and the truth and justice he stands for. We should start a campaign for the firing of Deputy Hooks. She's untrained, unprofessional and lacks knowledge about her job.
Whirlpool and the Courts don’t want Rev. Pinkney free because they consider him a threat to their plans to takeover Benton Harbor and turn it into a resort town for the rich. However, the movement in the community hasn’t died down like they wanted, despite that most of the ministers here are not supporting us. Most ministers are in Whirlpool’s hip pocket. Recently, a local church had a banquet with Whirlpool, Cornerstone Alliance, and some of the Governor’s people. It showed how they all work together. Most of the Benton Harbor ministers were there. At the event, they were giving each other awards.They gave the CEO of Whirlpool a humanitarian award – of all people! It’s a slap in our face. But, that’s OK. We have the truth on our side!”
New Style of Policing in America
A new “military-corporate” paramilitary style of policing has been introduced in American society. As automation eliminates jobs permanently, workers find themselves homeless, denied access to health care, and education and other necessities. The state is responding by reorganizing itself as an unrestrained apparatus of force to control the poor who are considered potentially explosive and must be held in check.
While most sharply and unjustly targeting minority communities, police state tactics are becoming common wherever the poor are found, particularly against homeless populations of all colors. As the jails and prisons become harsher hellholes of terror, and as indigent prisoners are routinely denied due process, conditions are in place for the sacrifice of democracy itself.
These conditions are being instituted by and for the corporations. Corporate interests are taking precedence over the interests of society as a whole. Any social program that interferes with the making of maximum profit is being eliminated. The state is being reorganized to annul the social contract, sacrifice democracy, and move toward a fascist solution. Fundamental human rights, denied first to those on the bottom, are being sacrificed for the whole of society to secure the economic and political interests of the capitalist class of billionaires. For untold millions, poverty is itself a prison.
American society, founded upon the battle cry for freedom, has gone full circle. A society that cannot house, clothe, feed, educate or otherwise provide for the basic needs of its people can no longer call itself free. And when the response of government is to lock up those whom it has already locked out, the battle cry of freedom today can only be for a new society.
~The People’s Tribune Editors
Corruption in Benton Harbor
“We are serious about what’s going on here. We realize Benton Harbor is going to be a model for what happens when people stand up and fight injustice. We want to turn this community inside out and expose all the corruption. They are above the law here. We got one of the corrupt City Commissioners recalled but they kicked the recall out. They came up with some kind of law we never heard of. They don’t like us to get them up out of those seats. Nor do they like the poor, homeless people. Our own ministers say ‘homeless people are ignorant and uneducated. They are the problem in our city.’ That’s how they feel about the human beings here. They want them all out of here. The court system is working in cahoots to take over the community. It’s all about money. God will expose them. They will not prevail.”
~Belinda Brown
Inmate speaks out for Justice
“I am writing because of the racism and provoking of inmates at the Berrien County Jail. It is carried out on a daily basis by deputies to African Americans. Rev. Pinkney is provoked daily by deputies because he is speaking out on what is right and the changes that need to be made in the community and in jail. Given his situation, he still finds time to pray for inmates and to be there when one of us needs help or guidance. We need to come together as a community to better our system and to be treated fairly and equally, the way Americans are to be treated.”
~Theron Perry,
aged 19, Berrien County Jail
