Civic Cipher 100320 Janelle Wood and Erma Johnson

traumas and are in the process of healing. And another or the other guests that I have today is a mother herself who has endured what I can only guess is the worst pain imaginable and is very much healing. My guests today are Janelle Wood from The Black Mother's Lam and Irma Johnson, the mother of Dion Johnson. Now, for those of you who don't know, or otherwise have not been out on the streets, or maybe you've been

living under a rock, who knows. Dion Johnson is a young man whose life was taken from him at the hands of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which in and of itself is sort of an oxymoron. But he was found sleeping in his car on the side of the freeway and was subsequently killed. Obviously, I'm gonna let the right folks tell the story, but that resulted in tremendous outcry from the streets. I myself took to the streets. Thousands of people took to the streets and demanded justice,

demanded an explanation. I saw people weep because that pain was not just felt by Irma Johnson and her family. That pain is a reminder of the trauma that lots of black and brown folks feel on a regular basis. And that trauma and that narrative that we keep getting sold is very harmful and very dangerous if we don't talk about it and deal with it. But in any event, folks took to the streets. I saw his name written everywhere.

There's been murals, etc. Et cetera tremendous show of support from the community with this young man who lost his life, And of course there's a demand for justice, and I think it's important and the reason why this show exists is to give women like this a stage to share what is happening in their lives and what has happened in the past, and what direction we're gonna move forward. So first, I'm gonna welcome Irma Johnson to the show.

Oh hey, so the I guess the first question is what is it like to have so much support from the people.

one of those people, as I mentioned earlier. I believe I was. I know, I know I was the last person to put flowers on his cascade before he was lowered into the or where he was finally buried. I went with my son just to go the funeral. So what comes after that is, you know, healing and moving forward. And I recognize that that's got to be very difficult to do when there are so many unanswered questions and

so many people who are unwilling to cooperate. What was your reaction when you found out that there was no body cam footage, no dash cam footage, and that the DPS was not willing to release the video outside of the edited version of the video that didn't show the alleged altercation. How did that make you feel?

as strongly as you do. But I think that by sharing it helps all of us heal and we can heal with you, so that that does mean a lot. But I do want you to know that that was sort of heartbreaking, that it looked so inhuman and it was it was just very hurtful to see. I think that that is a picture perfect incident of why the call Black Lives Matter exists. But I also want to introduce Janelle Would. Janelle is from or founded an organization called the Black Mother's Form. It was started in twenty

sixteen and formalized in twenty seventeen. If I'm not correct, So I want you to talk a little bit about the Black Mother's Forum. Where did come from, why, why does it exist?

a daughter to police brutality. Me as mothers came together in that day on August seventh, twenty sixteen, to address the police brutality that we had seen repeatedly on national TV here in our state, and oftentimes mothers their voices have been silenced and we've been over talked by some of our brothers. They don't mean to do it. At

times they do our community leaders. And I don't believe a man can effectively articulate the pain that a mother feels when her son or her daughter has been ripped from her brutally, because only a mother can understand the

pain from the womb. The womb is a pain so deep that no one else can articulate that the way a mother can, and what we came to do is we came to help our mothers better articulate their pain, better articulate our concerns, and what we want to see happen to stop these types of atrocities and these types of systems that continue to get permission for those who are in positions to protect and serve us, to kill us without any consequences, without any remorse, and without any

humanity behind their decision to do so, knowing that they will not be held accountable. And so we came together and said, enough is enough. We will no longer remain silent or quiet. We will no longer stand by and allow people to abuse our children, to disrespect our children, to neglect our children, to kill our children, to terrorize our children, to humiliate our children, to harm our children, to talk down to our children. We said, enough is

enough of that. With your policies, your practices, your systems, your curriculums, whatever touches our children, you will stop doing it to cause them harm. We're here for our children to live, and we're not going to play the game anymore. We've had enough of that. And we believe that once Mama starts to speak, and when George Floyd called out for his mama. The same day Dion was taken from us, the same day they took away George Floyd, and the world got to see that, and he called out for mama.

So he evoked every black mama on the face of this earth, those mothers all over the world protesting the brutality against our children, especially our sons and daughters.

to I'm going somewhere with this. I think it's important to look at the whole entire criminal justice system, not just the policing, because there are many people who they can live through an incident with the police. You know, there's people who are brutalized and they live, but now they are into the criminal justice system which historically has never treated black and brown folks fairly. In fact, it's

quite the obsolete. It's extremely unfair comparatively speaking. And I think that when you mentioned curriculum, it brings to mind what's known as the school to prison pipeline. And I want you to talk about what the school to prison pipeline is and what the Black Mother's Forum has done to address the school to prison pipeline.

get something called a consequence. It's a disciplinary practice. This discipline is for something minor, but the actual consequence itself is very punitive, oftentimes resulting in our children being suspended, which interrupts their instruction time. So now we're in school. Now we're going to put you out of school. We're gonna suspend you for several days. You're now going to be labeled as a troublemaker. You're going to be labeled as someone who can't keep up with school because you've

missed two weeks of school. You come back, you're behind, you're failing. Now they start to label you. You start to act out because now because you've missed so much time, you're no longer you're no longer engaged. Because you're behind, you feel embarrassed, and so we start the process and then they start to put you out again because you're

not engaged. You're going to be disconnected and you're most likely be in class not paying attention because you don't know where you're at in class, and that starts you back down the hall, back to the principal. So we have this route right. And the more the child sits out of school, the more the child gets behind, the more their instruction time is interrupted, the more their educational

endeavors have been deterred. They will find themselves in a position where they are interacting now more with law enforcement than they've ever done before because there's nothing else to do. They're out on the streets parents have to work, and they now find themselves with the wrong types of company. They're drawn to that, and so here we are, and then that starts that child down a path. That's one way.

The other way the scooter prison pipeline works is that by third grade, if you can't read at a certain level. Now they start to say, well, this child, this child here, and this child, this child's going to go somewhere. This child is not. This child has some potential because they're an athlete, we'll go ahead and move them over here. And so now they start this sorting game. And then our children that don't they feel that are not going to make it. They become the target of harassment by

the schools and the teachers. They are bullied by the schools and teachers, and then they start finding themselves on the other side of an expulsion or a suspension can expel our children for up to a year. What is a child to do for a year? We missed school time, and that means they can't go to school anywhere else. When you have an expulsion, you cannot go to school anywhere else for a year. So that child has missed a year of their education. When they come back there behind.

They're embarrassed, and they're definitely discouraged, and they are truly not interested. And so what will they do. They'll find themselves in a situation where they will be and they will be moving towards having those negative interactions with law enforcement because they gotta find something to do with their time. And trust me, there's elements out there that will give them something to do. And so this is the prison pipeline, and then we get in. So then that's the school,

the pipeline school. Now we're going to the pipeline. The pipeline again is these suspensions lead me into negative interactions with the police. Now I start to get a record. Now it can be a juvenile record because I've had fifth graders going to juvenile court. Wow, juvenile court. Yes, yes, we worked with them. Little girls, my little black daughters, being harassed on the school bus by a little white boy's thumping her in the head and playing with her

hair and calling her names. She goes to the school bus driver and says, hey, he keeps hitting me and calling me the N word. He's bullying her. The bus driver says, stop being overly sensitive, go sit down. Little boy picks on her again. She can only take so much, and what she does and she turns around and she finishes this whole conversation. Since she finishes it, Guess who gets taken to the nurse. The white boy who's older than her. Guess who was met by some by the principal,

escorted to the office and then to the police. A ten year old. This happens all the time. Now she's in the pipeline, she's going to court. Her mother's terrified. They ask us for help. We give the attorneys, you know, attorneys that help us with this, and we advocate. We'll go with them to court with them for helping to read through policy with them, help them understand. We've also acted as community service. Where the kids need to do community service, they can do it through us, so they

can get those hours and not have a record. This is terrifying for parents. But now this child has a record. They so they start as early. I had a five year old, five year old kindergarten boy who a principal got on the phone and told me the boy threatened her. She was scared for her life. He had no gun, he's only five. He was a threat to the school and they expelled him for a whole year. That means he couldn't go to school for the whole year of his five year old. Now, what are we gonna have.

What's gonna be the problem with him moving forward? We're gonna have some problems there, so we're gonna put them in the pipeline, and then at some point we're going to prison, because you're gonna have all these stack ups of different offenses until one day they're gonna get you're gonna go to prison. And this is how it begins, just one little thing after the other, Just like with school, they stack on the referrals. The parent doesn't even know

the referrals are happening. They don't have to tell the parent that they're sending their child to the office. The parent thinks the child is sitting in class all day. Child's sitting in the office, and they got one referral to the other until they finally suspend them, and the parent says, well, what happened We've been having problems with your child? How come I'm just now finding out about it. Well, we've been handling it. No you haven't. Clearly you haven't

handled it, and had you let me know. We would have dealt with this earlier on, but they won't let you know because they have to put the build up the record against them. And now they have a discipline file about this thick and by the time the parent finds out and we've gotten involved a change that we disrupt that. And what we do is we go in and look at the policy, We look at the practice, We question why it went down this way and if

we can get in it. And some parents don't even know about us until the until us after the fact, but those who find out abous while they're in the middle of it. We've gotten involved where we've gone in, challenged the decision and been able to get it reversed, got the child back in school, got the child tutoring to get them caught up after school, and the teacher that put him out, that's the teacher is going to tutor them and get them caught up very good. We're

not playing the games like this is enough. You you're the one that caused this. You're gonna make sure they get caught up, and you're gonna spend your extra time after school and make sure it happen. So these are some of the things that we've done, We've changed policy, We've done Office of Civil Rights complaints. So Office the Civil Rights they're the federal arm of the Department of Education and Department of Justice. And so what we do is we help parents build their case, make sure they

document document, document, We go through the proper channels. We go to the principle they say, no, we're not going to change our decision. Oh okay. Then we go to superintendent. No, we're not going to change our decision. Okay. We go to the governing board, No, we agree with the decision. Oh okay. Then we go to the Office of Civil Rights.

Now we have gotten all the paperwork, Officer Civil Rights will take it because we'll say this child was bullied, they were threatened due to their race based on these things had occurred. No other child that was white we did the same thing, would have gotten this type of punishment for this long and put we boomed data. So we get the data, we show them. Officer Civil Rights takes it. This is when we get an opportunity to do a mediation. It's called a mediation. Went that mediation.

What we've done is we've been able to rewrite policies and practices as a result of the agreement and the settlement, parents have also received damages because I make sure they're documenting the damage that it's caused their child through going to mental health counseling, getting services for that child. And now we have a bill and we're like, here's the bill, here's what's happened, and we get damages for the parent

because the parent has been through something, get them. And so the parent gets paid for their trauma, what it's done to their family, alice has impacted their siblings. We get it all for them, but we also get policy changes and practices, and this is how we've started to interrupt and disrupt some of this foolishness at the school school level.

raising a black child in this country. And I do want to talk more about that, but it brings the thought, you know, Miss Johnson, for those of us who didn't grow up with dionn for those of us who might be maybe they're not even black, maybe they're just an ally to black people and they know the name, you know,

or they've been on the streets or whatever. I think it's important for us to you know, I can't tell you what it means to honor someone's legacy, but I think it, you know, in my heart of hearts, I think it's good to honor his legacy by telling the full story about the man. And for those of us who have championed this cry, for those of us who drive by his murals and will remember that name for the rest of our lives, would you please tell us a little bit about what Dionne was like, you know,

growing up, what he was like to be around. You know, that's your baby, So I'd like to hear it from his mother.

He loved children, He loved to help the elderly, he loved to help women. He would help anybody.

paints a much better picture. I can't, for the life of me, imagine someone hearing you say what you just said about your child and then snuffing his life out. But I think that a lot of prejudices exists, is just a personal and you know, I think a lot of prejudices exist. A lot of fear based on the fear mongering in place exists in these institutions and these systems. And then you know, a lot of times, you know, folks talk about systemic racism, systemic problems and historically racist

institutions that treat black folks unfairly. Anyone that hears Okay, there's a young man who might have had some problems, but otherwise was a good man, pointed in the right direction, you know, et cetera. You know, that's the sort of person that, in my in my thinking, deserves help, not

a death sentence, you know. And if we had the right systems in the place to help people or to offset the cultural traumas and the generational traumas that black folks have endured, I think that we begin to start having the conversations that we really need to have. And so, as opposed to being overly policed, let's think about it in terms of like perhaps a health problem as opposed to a criminal problem. So I I want to know,

you know, because obviously you know DM. What was your reaction when you found out that they weren't going to be pressing any sort of criminal charges against officer Servantes? I believe his name is someone who had, from my understanding, previous complaints of racial profiling of incidents. You know, as a police officer, what was your thinking when you found that they weren't going to be filing.

very clean person. He's not gonna ride around with empty cans all over the car.

taking that out. And I think it's very important for people to know that sometimes the police play with the optics because they have an incentive in maintaining a certain narrative so that they can continue to operate with immunity and continue to exist. Just like any other entity that's bent on its own survival, the police are no different. Now, I'm not here to make head or tails of what the police do, but that's something that has been historically documented,

especially as it pertains to black and brown people. So I wanted to make sure that you understand that that this is the space for that conversation and for the folks listening. If you don't know that now, you know now what I'm hoping is that that's not the end of the story that they won't file criminal charges, that you might pursue civil charges.

he was still talking. He gave them their name, he knew who he was, so at that time, I don't know what happened after that after he got to the hospital.

the complaints, he continues to get off. And so the message that's been sent to officer Savants in the past is that we will give you an administrative leave, get yourself together, and we're going to bring you back. He has had repeated aggressive offenses against women, against animals, internally and externally. He's had complaints, and so he is a danger. He's an imminent threat to our communities of color, and we do not wish to have him on the streets

or on the force. And so we are pushing even though the attorney, the county attorney, that believe that there should be criminal charges because the way he framed the story. Again he's the only one telling the story. Let's see the way he framed it. He still has to deal with human resources for the state and there's a personnel issue. You violated your policies again. This is the fourteenth time that we know of that's on the books. Very good

that he's violated the policy. So I don't know how many employees can violate policies of their employer that many times and continue to have a job. And so this is ridiculous. And so we're like, no, no, we still want him off the force. He does not need to be on the force. So that's I know Mss Johnson is pushing for that, for sure. We're pushing for that. We're working, We've I've been talking to Colonel Silbert, I've talked to his office. We're going to continue to push

for him to no longer have a job. And it would be sad for him if he does stay on the force, because that won't be well for him, that won't go too well for him to be out there on the street. I just believe he would want to come off the streets and not be a part of this anymore. Just because of what happened. He has escalated, his behavior has escalated. They need to cut him. He needs to come off the forest. That's the other thing.

And I know that we're looking I know she's looking at you know, the notice of claiming the suit and all of those things. So those things are coming, I know, good and we'll be very much a part of helping her. The family push for that. We will advocate for those things for sure.

those changes. How does that look? How do you create cheerleaders? How do you empower these women to make those changes?

be six hours in person on a Saturday. Now virtually we're doing it for three hours a virtual training. And so what that training does is it walks you through the particular laws, walks you through constitutional rights that each person has that we don't realize we have. It walks you through the policies that are in place that would definitely impact the decisions and direction of what would happen with your child, either in school. We're working on one

for the police. I'm working on that right now. We're working on anti racism training for our white accomplices to get them up to speed because they want to help and they don't know how to enter in to this. And that's my new focus is to help them enter in. I've been called repeatedly and they're like, we need training on how to best enter in, to use our privilege, How do we best use our privilege, How do we best use our platforms to infect these changes in the policies.

So we do a lot of training. We work with the school districts to deal with their equity issues. But now I'm calling forth for the schools to denounce racism in all its form, because we believe diversity and equity and inclusion, just as not quite getting it. The issue is anti blackness. There's an anti blackness, uh our with the conditioning that has gone on for decades with respect to black people, and the systems have done everything they can to limit the movement of our black bodies one

way or the other. And if they can't limit those movies, which is what she just expressed, that officer felt he couldn't limit Dion's movements because Dion was is strong. Therefore he had to destroy it, destroy that black body. He shot him. Well, this is what's happening in the schools too. If I can't make this black child do what I want it to do, this hum or her to do, then because they see us, they don't see us really as humans most of the time, because of how the

false narratives have played out. Sure, so that's why I said it. I said that on purpose, So that's how they think. But when they cannot limit our movements, they can't limit how we talk, if we talk back, if we ask a question in class, if we put the teacher on the spot cause you didn't know what they're talking about, then they say, well, then they must destroy this child, and that way I don't have to deal with them. So I'm gonna kick 'em out. I wanna

put it through all these changes. I'm going to let them be bullied. I'm gonna let them be called the N word all day long. I'm going to let them get to the point where they fight. Then I'm gonna let them get in trouble for fighting because they're responding. So this is what happens. And so we're dealing with racism.

It's an anti blackness. So we've decided I've been starting to call schools on that and say, I need you to issue a statement saying that you will denounce every form of racism, black and anti blackness in your school systems, within your practices, your policies, uh, your curriculum. Because the curriculum, how they approach history, how they do not have any marketing materials that even reflect them black children even go to their schools. These are things that I've looked at.

I look at that, and the schools have called me in to be a part of these conversations. Those schools that really want to do this work good.

on the use of force policy for the police. I'm pulling that thing apart because my goal is to make sure that I put me developed the curriculum of training for our parents, our black parents, and our youth to understand what use of force is, what it should look like, and to get them to develop the proper questions to start to question the use of these things because we don't know what we don't know, but we gonna know

because I'm working on it now. I actually have some young people actually reading it over for me, because I want to get our young people involved in reviewing policies. We can be in the streets all day protesting, that's great, but if you don't know what these policies says say, and what these laws say, and what these protocols and procedures and operation, man, you'll say and you can't get anything done or change. So that's what we're doing now.

a lot of people. I saw thousands of thousands of people's heart that go out to you, you know, and uh, if if this could culminate in something positive or at least something with a silver lining, I guess my question is, what are some of the changes you would like to see on the other side of burying your child.

a black man, or what have you. Even these young stairs is out here driving whatever I don't want I don't want them to be afraid to have to come in contact with officers when you know they're behind them, or cut the lights on them, and they don't know what they're gonna shoot them, if they're gonna you know, if they're gonna harass them, or just search their cars or and stuff like that. I just want everybody to know their rights, know what they can and cannot do.

But overall, I just I don't know, I just it's so hard. I just don't want to I just don't want, you know, us to be happened to be in fear of being stopped by a cop.

the police. And you know, I think that, you know, the same people that show up to get the actual bad guys are the same people that show up to make sure that you know you're driving along in mind in your business, okay, And those same people with the same traumas that we mentioned that Officer Servantes was drawing from when he was worried that Dianne was going to do something. You know, all those people, they know violence, they know aggression, that's the sort of the world they

come from. And then what I'm staring at as a person with a murder weapon and his hand on it asking me to get out of my car on the side of a road in Mississippi somewhere. And so it doesn't matter how right you are or how wrong you are for that matter, if someone wants to take your life and they can do it with impunity, I think that that is an exceptionally unfair power dynamic to have over another human being endowed with consciousness from whatever you

believe our same creator to be. It is the same creator. And for one human being to have that power over another as though they get away with it, that's yeah, so so well said. But you know, before we start to wind down here, I do want to talk about.

groups in history of the Census. There's a reason why because historically, when the Census came out in seventeen ninety where were we as black people? We were enslaved.

want that whole person. But that means money. That means dollars, and so if you can't count a whole person, then you don't get the dollars, right, And so they renewed it where they said, if a person who's enslaved lives to be one hundred years old, they will be counted as one whole person. If they managed to live do enslavement years, they get a reward. Their reward will be they'll be counted as one whole person and their name will be placed in the census record. Okay, So that's

how we were oriented to the census. So now we fast forward when we do become persons and now we're being invited to participate. When we are invited to participate in the census, there's a couple of questions on there. They're called citizenship question. Another problem, they want to know if we're a fugitive. Now are you a fugitive? Are you a free now? Who would say they're a fugitive.

So they're hiding out, so that means if I put this down, that means you're gonna find me, take me back to enslavement, so I'm not going to get counted. It's like what we're seeing today with our brown brothers and sisters who want to undocumented, the threats of there being a citizenship question on there that was to stop them from getting counted. Now, wise county is so important because resources that means funding is tied to every person

that gets counted. And here in the state of Arizona, three thousand dollars is allotted per person for every year for ten years, So one person for ten years can generate thirty thousand dollars that will come into their community.

I think think that if I'm on Section eight or housing, that if I let you know who's all here, that it's going to be a number problem because I may have more people living here than I should. And so what we try to do is help people understand. According to Title thirteen. Turning the Title thirteen the US Code, it says, we as the census coming along with the census, but the Census cannot release your information to any entity, any department.

to its representation. How many representatives can we get as a state. We had eight hundred thousand new people move into Arizona from twenty ten to twenty twenty approximately. That gives us another seat in Congress. That means we have an opportunity to get another voice at the table for Arizona. In twenty ten, we gained a seat. We gained the nice seat where Congressman Greg Stanton sits in that seat. Now we stand to gain another seat after twenty twenty

if we all get counted. The other thing it's tied too is redistricting. This is very important because school district lines get redrawn every ten years. If I don't show a certain demographic is in a certain area when they are very well, those lines could be redrawn and it could hurt that particular community because now they'll have a representation that really doesn't represent them. But I didn't know you were here. The only people that got counted here

was this group. So those three things are tied to the census. But the three thousand dollars is really important because we've lost out on millions of dollars. Do you know there was a million zero to five year old children that were not counted in twenty ten, a million of that melting. They said eighty percent of them were Black children zero to five years old. So yes, So.