Green Party Of Brooklyn

In May 2007, 32 students in Bushwick were processing to a funeral for their friend, Donnell McFarland. NYPD officers deemed the walk an “unlawful assembly” and arrested the group, even confiscating t-shirts made in honor of McFarland. This mass arrest not only violated the students’ 1st Amendment rights to peaceful assembly, but was taken by the community as a patent case of racial profiling. In January, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office finally dropped charges against 22 of the youths, admitting insufficient evidence.

That’s a good thing for the almost two dozen young people who’ve been put through the system, but the Student Coalition Against Racial Profiling (SCARP) and Make The Road New York will not rest until the remaining 10 are vindicated. The “Bushwick 32″ mass arrest has galvanized the community against racial profiling and the criminalizing of young people in New York City schools and neighborhoods. In fact, Kumar Singh, one of the remaining 10, believes his case is still on precisely because he’s spoken out against District Attorney Chris Hynes and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Of course, Commissioner Kelly is a familiar name to activists all over the city who’ve been rounded up in his trademark mass arrests. In this case, the Make the Road and SCARP coalition will continue demonstrating and pressuring the DA’s office until they drop the rest of the charges. As we’ve seen in Jena, Louisiana, DAs have to be held accountable for how they prosecute young people, particularly young people of color, or inequalities in the justice system will be even more exacerbated.

Earlier this week, the new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a move rarely seen in global politics: he apologized. To which the Australian Green Party said, “At last.“

For centuries, the aboriginal people of Australia have suffered under genocidal attempts to wipe them from the face of the planet. At the end of the 19th-century, the white Australian government forcibly removed thousands of aboriginal children from their homes in a “re-education” process meant to alienate them from their birth language and culture. These “Stolen Generations” were who Prime Minister Rudd explicitly referenced in his apology:

“For the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

What is so significant about this? After all, there’s nothing binding, no laws are being passed, no reparations paid. This is, after all, mostly a ceremonial declaration.

We should take special note of just how hard it is to apologize. Especially here in the U.S. In 1998, then-President Clinton eluded to an apology without actually uttering the words. President Bush has done nearly the same. Why is it so hard for leaders of the United States — a country whose foundations are built by the blood and sweat of an enslaved people — to say, “We are sorry?”

Through his apology, Prime Minister Rudd has elevated Australia. Acknowledging wrong is a sure sign of maturity. It opens the doors of dialog and allows for the possibility of healing. Without the ability to be humble and the willingness to admit when wrong is done, a person — or a nation — allows the suffering, no matter how far in the past, to continue. And it does; everyday, the residual consequences of slavery — institutionalized racism in all its many forms, from housing inequity to pervasive stereotypes in the media — continue to be felt across the social, economic and political spectrum. This pain is real.

The day must come when America finally comes to honest, true, sincere terms with the long-lasting and horrible consequences of that “peculiar institution.” Until then, we will collectively continue to suffer the consequences of our mistakes over and over, as only children can.