Vol. 81/No. 47 December 18, 2017
Capitalist ‘justice’ system exposed in Philadelphia
On Nov. 6, Mill, a 30-year-old African-American, was sentenced to two to four years in prison for violating his parole, stemming from a 2008 conviction after Philadelphia cops stopped him on the way to the store. They beat him up and charged him with possession of drugs and a weapon. He served eight months in prison and was put on probation for five years.
Since then he has been arrested and repeatedly dragged into court on charges of violating his parole. Driving to the airport to go to a concert appearance in Atlanta in 2012, he was stopped by cops who said they smelled marijuana coming from his car. The charges were dropped the next day, but he had missed a $40,000 payday.
He was taken to court in 2014, charged with violating his parole by leaving Philadelphia to perform without getting permission from the court. This began a series of hearings and rulings by Judge Genece Brinkley. She sent him back to prison, sentenced to serve three to six months. When he got out he was put back on parole and ordered to attend etiquette classes.
Brinkley got him back in court in 2016, again charging him with traveling without her permission. She sentenced him to wear an ankle monitor and serve 90 days of house arrest, do community service and prohibited him from performing or traveling outside of Philadelphia.
In March, Mill got involved in a dispute when he refused to have his picture taken with someone at the St. Louis airport. He was charged with misdemeanor assault, a charge that was later dropped.
When he went to New York in August to promote his latest album on the Jimmy Fallon show, a bystander videoed him doing wheelies on a motorbike in Inwood. After the video was posted on social media, New York cops filed charges of reckless endangerment and driving. The charges were expunged after he signed a plea deal.
These two nonconvictions led Brinkley to pull Mill back into court. Against the recommendation of both the city prosecutor and Mill’s parole officer, the judge sentenced him to two to four years in state prison, ordering him to be taken to jail straight from the courtroom.
The judge’s latest sentence has met with protests from civil libertarians and celebrities alike.
“If you can do this to a successful artist like Meek Mill, you can do this to many around this country,” Rev. Al Sharpton, National Action Network president, said after visiting Mill in prison. Sharpton emphasized that what is happening to Mill in the courts, prisons and parole system happens to working people every day.
Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who is de facto banned from playing for refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest of police brutality, has talked with Mill over the phone offering his support. Jay Z, Kevin Hart and many other performers have spoken out against his imprisonment. Rallies have been held at City Hall demanding: “Free Meek Mill!” Driving around the city, you see signs in storefront windows, on newsstands, even on the sides of buses. People wear T-shirts saying, “Stand with Meek Mill.”
On Dec. 1, Judge Brinkley denied Mill’s motion for bail while his attorneys appeal the prison sentence. The attorneys appealed her denial and filed a motion that Brinkley recuse herself from the case.
“For about a decade, he’s been stalked by a system that considers the slightest infraction a justification of locking him back inside,” Jay Z wrote in a Nov. 17 New York Times op-ed. “What’s happening to Meek Mill is just one example of how the criminal justice system entraps and harasses hundreds of thousands of Black people every day. Probation ends up being a land mine, with a random misstep bringing consequences greater than the crime.”
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate worldwide, at 22 percent of the world’s prison population. Seven million people, overwhelmingly workers and disproportionately African-American, are in federal or state prisons, local jails, or on parole or probation today.
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