Jim Crow Is Resurrected in Mississippi
Earlier this month, white representatives in the Mississippi House approved a bill to create a new district—that includes all of the majority-white neighborhoods in Jackson, a capital city that is 83 percent Black. This includes creating a criminal justice system for the district, overseen by an all-white power base.
Under House Bill 1020, the white conservative chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court would handpick the new district’s two supervising judges; its prosecutors and public defenders would be chosen by the state’s white Republican attorney general.
The zone would be policed by an expanded Capitol Police force, led by the current white police chief, and supervised by the state’s white Public Safety commissioner. Because all the district’s officials would be appointed instead of elected, Jackson’s majority-Black citizenry would have no voting rights on the matter—making it Mississippi’s only jurisdiction where, according to the ACLU, “unelected judges and prosecutors have jurisdiction over criminal and civil law matters”—although 12 percent of their sales taxes would be redirected to help pay for it all.
“It’s oppressive because it strips the right of Black folks to vote,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said, after the bill cleared the House. “It’s oppressive because it puts a military force over people that has no accountability to them. It’s oppressive because there will be judges who will determine sentences over people’s lives. It’s oppressive because it redirects their tax dollars to something they don’t endorse nor believe in.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jim-crow-is-resurrected-in-mississippi?ref=wrap
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