NAACP President Cornell William Brooks talks about one of the more disgraceful nominations of the Trump administration, that of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/5/after_arrest_naacp_pres_calls_for
From the site:
CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS: Our objections are, fundamentally, Senator Sessions represents a kind of dim and dystopian view of American civil liberties and civil rights. And so our objections are at least threefold, first of which is that he has demonstrated an unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of voter suppression that we have seen from one end of the country to the other, as attested to in the Fourth Circuit decision that found voter suppression in North Carolina, the Fifth Circuit decision which found voter suppression in Texas. He has not acknowledged the reality of that, and certainly not the reality of voter suppression in his own state. Instead, he has mouthed a faith in voter ID laws, premised on voter fraud. And so, not only has he not stood against voter suppression in his own state, not acknowledged the reality of voter suppression as recognized by federal courts, the one instance where he has appeared in court in terms of voting rights, it was to prosecute three civil rights activists, which it took a jury less than three hours to find innocent. And a Congress, in which he served, later provided them or honored them with Congressional Gold Medals for their civil rights activism. And one of those activists actually marched beside Dr. King. And so, in terms of voting rights, we take strong exception, and we oppose him in terms of that.
In terms of immigration rights, he is one—among one of the most conservative, ultraconservative, extremist senators in terms of his opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. In addition to that, he has voiced an openness to a immigration ban on a global religion, namely Islam, which cannot be squared in any way, shape, fashion or form with the U.S. Constitution.
Number three, his views on criminal justice reform stand in stark contrast to both red state and blue state governors. In other words, he stands for law and order in Nixonian and draconian terms, at a moment in which we have over 2 million Americans behind bars, 65 million Americans with criminal records, 1 million fathers behind bars, and we have folks on both the left and the right, Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the aisle, looking to dismantle this prison-industrial complex and bring this era of mass incarceration to an end. He, on the other hand, wants to overpopulate or continue to overpopulate the prisons and jails, while depopulating our families and communities.
So, for these reasons, coupled with his record as a prosecutor, his record as attorney general, his record as a United States senator, backed—I should say, which attest to statements that he made in the 1980s demonstrating incredible racial insensitivity. And so, the point being here is, the remarks that we found racially offensive in the '90s—I should say, in the 1980s, have been demonstrated, attested to, verified by the record which extends from that point until now. So we stand in strong opposition. And we stand in opposition with over a thousand law professors, with Governor Deval Patrick, with organizations not only on the progressive left, but I might also note there are any number of conservatives who take strong exception to the fact that Senator Sessions is—stands against whistleblowers. He stands against civil liberties. And so, folks on the left and the right, conservatives and progressives, know that Jeff Sessions represents a very dangerous turn for this country. Because we need to be clear, Amy. We need to be very clear. We, as a country, face a stark choice, not between liberalism and conservatism, but rather between democracy and authoritarianism. And an Attorney General Jeff Sessions, under a President Donald J. Trump, would take us in the wrong direction—that is to say, backward in a headlong and a full-speed fashion. And we simply can't do that.
So the NAACP is unapologetically opposed to Senator Sessions. The board of directors of the NAACP voted to oppose this nomination. And we’re doing so not only as a matter of policy, but we’re doing so bodily, spiritually, morally, by encouraging civil disobedience—that is to say, standing in the tradition of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, standing in that tradition by sitting down. And so, we understand that the odds may be difficult, but we, as the NAACP, don’t gauge our principled opposition to a nominee based upon odds and probabilities, but rather the rightness of the cause.
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