Rev. Pinkney’s supporters mobilize for sentencing

The Rev. Edward Pinkney won’t be alone in Benton Harbor, Mich., when he faces the racist power structure that is trying to silence him and his organization, BANCO (Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizations). On March 21, the Rev. Edward Pinkney was convicted by an all-white jury on charges that supporters explain were highly motivated by political struggles taking place in Berrien County, Mich.

Detroit supporters are already organizing bus transportation to fill the courtroom when he is sentenced on May 14.

Rev. Pinkney was accused of five counts of election improprieties during the successful 2005 recall election of Glen Yarbrough, Benton Harbor city commissioner and supporter of the Harbor Shores Development.

In the first trial, a jury with two African-American participants could not reach agreement. Charges included merely having another person’s absentee ballot in his possession. Pinkney admitted giving stamps and labels to people who could not afford to buy stamps to send in their absentee ballots.

A well-known community leader, Rev. Pinkney relentlessly exposes the racist court and economic system oppressing the mostly African-American people of Benton Harbor. The details of his trial and the jury selection prove once again what he has said all along about the unjust and racist treatment of the Benton Harbor people, especially the exclusion of Black jurors.

Wayne Bentley, a Kent County jury commissioner from Grand Rapids, reviewed three years of jury questionnaires from Berrien County where Rev. Pinkney’s trial took place. He found five ways that poor people—who in this racist society are disproportionately people of color—are currently being systematically under-represented on juries in that county.

But what about that Harbor Shores Development?

Harbor Shores is planned to be an upscale housing, retail development, a Jack Nicklaus golf course and more, on land currently owned by the initiator of the $500 million project—the transnational Whirlpool Corporation—and public land on the Lake Michigan shoreline owned by the city of Benton Harbor.

While the project, undoubtedly a big tax write off for Whirlpool, is portrayed as an “anti-poverty program” for the people of Benton Harbor, the city would only receive $1 million for the land and the people of Benton Harbor would receive “training” while being used as the excuse to get tax moneys from the state of Michigan to clean up former industrial sites for the developers.

In much the same way that U.S. “foreign aid” never really helps people in oppressed countries, capitalist “developments” don’t do much for poor communities here, especially Black and Latin@ communities.

Rev. Pinkney told the truth and tried to stop the capitalist bonanza called Harbor Shores. Could his truth about this racist enterprise have been his “crime”?

Support Rev. Pinkney on May 14. For transportation information, call: 313-680-5508 or go to www.mecawi.org.