White Supremacy Just Had Its Worst Two Weeks In American History

     Everyone was disappointed by the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. However, as I stated yesterday, we need to use this anger to continue to pursue justice instead of growing pessimistic or otherwise negative. At the same time, we must also recognize that we scored some major victories in the fight to eradicate racism and white supremacy across the United States.

     On November 15th, the same day as the Rittenhouse verdict, noted white supremacist and conspiracy theorist who made a living as the host of Infowars (basically the predecessor to the modern mainstream conservative media) Alex Jones lost a fourth lawsuit related to his conspiracy theories claiming that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and that the victims and their families were crisis actors. This rhetoric led to violent harassment and stalking of the already-grieving families, and Jones' knowingly-false words will cost him after he failed to produce evidence and default judgments were entered in Texas as well as in Connecticut. Because these lawsuits represent 11 families and because the typical judgement for this case may be hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single family, it is likely that Jones, who is worth a few million dollars, will face bankruptcy.

     On November 20th, 2021, the family of Elijah McClain finalized a settlement with the city of Aurora, Colorado, for $15 million over the death of the young black violinist and animal shelter volunteer who was stopped while walking home from a convenience store, pushed to the ground, tased, and repeatedly injected with a sedative by six paramedics and police officers (who lied and hid evidence about the encounter) until he died of heart failure and an overdose of this chemical. All six were charged in September.

     On November 19th, Missouri officer Eric Develkanaere was convicted of armed criminal action and involuntary manslaughter after he shot a black man named Cameron Lamb to death after walking onto his property without probable cause in December 2019. The laws for manslaughter are tough in Missouri: he must serve the sentences for these two felonies consecutively, and, while a sentencing date has not yet been set, he faces a mandatory minimum of six years in prison and a maximum of 25 years in prison followed by supervised release. Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith needs to resign in the wake of this verdict: he lied, saying the left-handed victim with his right arm in a cast pulled out a gun from his right side while also taking a phone call and backing into the garage (all at once), said any of his officers would have done the same thing, called it "politics" "based on nothing and going nowhere" and actively obstructed justice in the case. The Lamb family can also expect to receive a hefty settlement for Cameron's heinous murder.

     Also in Missouri, Kevin Strickland was finally freed on November 23rd after being wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years on murder charges. Strickland, who is black, was 16 in 1978 when he was one of three people arrested on the charge. The other two suspects testified that Strickland was not there at the time while he also maintained his own innocence. The sole witness to the crime later recanted her testimony against Strickland and said she had been pressured by the police into fingering the teen. The prosecutor who got Strickland sentenced to life in prison became the chief legal advocate for his release decades later. Still, Governor Mike Parsons, the guy who pardoned the McCloskeys, refused to pardon a black person. Now, Kevin Strickland is finally free.

     Also free in a lesser sense is Pervis Payne, a black man with an intellectual disability who was given the death penalty for murder. His crime was atrocious but his verdict unfair because of his intellectual disability and the fact that victim impact statements were used to determine the sentence. His chance of getting the death penalty would be remarkably lower if he were white. On November 24th, 2021, his sentence was replaced with life imprisonment.

     Two days earlier, on November 22nd, the Groveland Four were pardoned by Judge Heidi Davis. Three young black men and a black minor were falsely accused of raping a teen and assaulting her boyfriend in 1949. One was shot 400 times by 1,000 white men as he slept under a tree, two were sentenced to death, and the minor was sentenced to life in prison. Of the two men sentenced to death, one was killed and another wounded by the sheriff who transported them; he claimed that they had tried to escape, but he was suspended after the FBI revealed he was lying. The Florida NAACP president, who convinced the governor to suspend the sheriff, was killed when his home was bombed; the bombers were never found. The sheriff, Willis V. McCall, would later be tried for killing another man in cold blood. The man who survived the gunshot was retried and sentenced to death by an all-white jury before his sentence was commuted to life in prison by the newly-elected governor. He was released after nearly 20 years behind bars and died just months later from complications related to the gunshot wound and his time in prison. The minor would be released in 1962 and live with his family until his death 50 years later. Now, these young men, who were victims and not criminals, have officially been pardoned. The fact that the victim who survived the ordeal died at 73 in 2012 should be proof enough that racism is still very much having an impact today.

     Another man who was killed because of racial prejudice, this time on camera in 2020, was Ahmaud Arbery. I would go through his case, but any American citizen who hasn't been living under a rock should know; it's even been covered here on several occasions. On November 24th, 2021, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William "Roddie" Bryan were all convicted of numerous felony homicide charges. With the death penalty taken off the table, all three men will almost certainly be sentenced to life in prison. 

     On November 23rd, 2021, a jury awarded $25 million in damages against 18 of the most prominent white supremacist/neo-Nazi/alt-right individuals and groups in the nation, including Richard Spencer, who coined the term "alt-right" and has gone so broke he had to move back in with his parents, and several branches of the KKK. All were involved in planning the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in which Heather Heyer was run over and killed by a Nazi sympathizer named James Alex Fields, Jr. The jury deadlocked on millions of dollars more in damages against seven remaining individuals and groups. What is most important about this verdict is not the money in this specific case, but the fact that a precedent has now been established that white supremacists can be successfully sued and shut up in civil court. 

     These developments are all first steps, but they make one thing clear: for the first time in America, if you are a white supremacist, you are more likely than not to be held accountable for your actions. This is huge, and I would like to thank President Biden for his work and words in the Charlottesville, Arbery, and Rittenhouse cases as well as the countless hundreds of individuals who fought to make these past two weeks possible.