This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

The body of John Lewis will be laid to rest this week, but the legacy of his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement will live on. In his role as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was the youngest person to speak at the March on Washington in August 1963. While his words that day are not as well remembered as those of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who spoke after him that day with his “I Have a Dream” speech, the message of John Lewis is as relevant today as it was then. He exhibited a style of frank speaking that day that became famous over the decades of his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement when he told the crowd:

“We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of people being locked up in jail over and over again. And then you holler ‘be patient.’ How long can we be patient? We want our freedom, and we want it now!”

He must have had some sense of satisfaction when last month with District of Columbia Mayor Muriel E. Bowser he visited the Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House and stood where the Black Lives Matter message was painted in the street. That day was in sharp contrast to the day in 1965 when he marched with others in the Civil Rights Movement across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, and suffered a skull fracture from being hit in the head with a police baton in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

John Lewis was the last of the great civil rights leaders of the 1960s. He lived long enough I believe to realize that his message was being more widely heard than ever before in this country. Should John Lewis be beginning his career today rather than ending it, I have no doubt he would be at the forefront of Black Lives Matter. While Lewis experienced the police batons, dogs and fire hoses, others today have felt the knee of white authority pressing on their necks or bullets hitting them in the back. The words “I cannot breathe” have come to be more than the last words of individuals whose lives were being snuffed out but are the words of generations living under a society of oppression because of the color of their skin. I cannot breathe means to many that they cannot live freely in an unjust and discriminatory society.

John Lewis never gave up through many challenges that are now being chronicled by other writers. In recent years I have appreciated his efforts to get the Congress to take action to end gun violence that affects communities of color disproportionally. What would John Lewis have us do? He offered this advice: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just: say something, do something. Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.” We can participate in making a more just society when we follow John Lewis in getting into necessary trouble!

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

Readers of this column are certainly aware that on more than one occasion I have praised the work of the 2020 General Assembly session as being historic and transformative.

I believe historians will agree with my assessment of the work of the legislature in the early months of 2020 to rid the state of discrimination of all kinds, but I wonder how they will explain the subsequent phase within several months of its adjournment. Within just a few months, the legislature was faced with the need to take even more historic steps to transform the state and to do so with a sense of urgency.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is an historic event that overlays what was happening in the social and political structure, it played a minor role. If anything, the pandemic demonstrated that the federal government under the current office holders is incapable of taking responsible actions regarding the coronavirus or the social and political unrest that abounds in this country. The pandemic has shown that state governments must step up in leadership related to the health crisis and to the stark inequalities in our society.

The pleas of George Floyd that he could not breathe were echoed by Black persons in Virginia and throughout the country that they could no longer live under the suppression of a knee on their necks that they have endured for centuries and has kept them from realizing equality under the law and in society. That is why the Virginia legislature cannot rest on the important steps it took in the opening months of this year towards a more just society but rather now must take significant next steps in the closing months of this year.

The House Courts of Justice Committee and the Public Safety Committee on which I serve will be identifying the next steps that must be taken beginning in a special session of the legislature in the next month or two. The Legislative Black Caucus has outlined next steps, with which I concur.

These steps include declaring that racism is a public health crisis in the state, reinstituting parole, creating a civilian review board of police actions with subpoena power, defining the use of excessive force including banning the use of chokeholds and ending no-knock warrants.

The Caucus also proposes the important step of investing more in community and less in law enforcement, funding mental health professionals to respond to those who may be having mental health crises, replacing resource officers in schools who are often police personnel with mental health professionals, restricting the use of militarization tactics and weapons against citizens and expanding the use of body cameras.

In issuing its agenda, the Legislative Black Caucus said in a printed release, “And on a larger scale, this moment is calling on leaders to combat institutional racism and societal discrimination that exists in the criminal justice system, economic structures, housing, education, in healthcare, mental health, in environmental policy and many other areas.”

Your suggestions on next steps are welcome, [email protected].

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

Back in March, a couple of weeks after the 2020 General Assembly session had adjourned, I wrote in my weekly column that while the annual meeting of the state legislature had been “historic, transformative, and consequential” there was also as I entitled the column “More Work Left to be Done.” At the time it was expected that many of the issues that had not been addressed would be taken up in future legislative sessions. There was no way to know the explosive nature of subsequent events that now make it clear that we must get back to work without delay.

The indelible photo of a policeman choking the life out of a black man without provocation or cause made it clear to me and others that there are injustices in our society that cannot wait to be addressed. The Black Lives Matter movement has made the need crystal clear. The stories of black persons who have come forth to tell what it is like to grow up black in this country make my heart weep. Fellow delegate Don Scott made the case clearly in an opinion piece he wrote last week: “The daily indignities of being black can be burdensome. If we respond to it all, we would have riots daily. Black people, for the most part, have always been tolerant. Even with all of our progress, President Barack Obama and all, we are reminded that George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery could have been any of us. That is why we are outraged and, truth be told, very afraid.” We cannot have a just society when so many of our citizens live in very real fear.

I am pleased that leadership of the House of Delegates and Senate have announced that the special session of the General Assembly, expected to be held in late August to deal with budgetary adjustments that must be addressed with the current economic depression, will be expanded to include proposed legislation to address injustices in our criminal justice system and in our policing. The Legislative Black Caucus of the General Assembly has proposed an extensive agenda that includes declaring racism a public health crisis, creating a civilian review board of policing action with subpoena power, ending qualified immunity for police officers, expanding the use of body cameras, defining and restricting excessive use of force including banning the use of chokeholds and restricting the use of tear gas and militarization tactics and weapons against civilians, passing “Breonna’s Law” to end no-knock warrants, reducing police presence in schools and replacing them with mental health professionals, reinstituting parole, passing cash bail reform, and more.

At the beginning of the session earlier this year the Speaker of the House of Delegates changed the name and mission of the Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee to be the Public Safety Committee. I am pleased to have been named a member of that committee. With the Courts of Justice Committee we will be having three virtual public hearings on a schedule to be announced. In the meantime, your suggestions on getting this work done would be appreciated.

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

Words have meanings defined in the dictionary that can take on other meaning within the context in which they are being used. Never has it been more important that we understand the meaning and use of words than in present day politics.

Last week I wrote about “Black lives matter” and the importance that we hear the message that is being conveyed with that sentence. It is a group of words whose meaning has been ignored for too long. The current demonstrations literally around the world are intended to place an exclamation point at the end to emphasize that they must finally be heard and understood. I believe with each demonstration of thousands of people and with each statue that comes down the message that black lives matter is finally coming through. We need to get on with the changes that are needed in society and in our laws that show that we understand that black lives do matter. There is no turning back now.

When the grossly disproportionate number of black persons killed by white policemen that videos have made totally clear, the need for major and immediate changes to our policing system have become obvious. We need to make sure that the words we use to bring out those changes are not used against us. The societal needs for which our current police forces have been given responsibility in recent years are too broad and need to be reimagined and redefined. We cannot allow those who view societal challenges in law and order terms to use the term “defund the police” against those who understand that policing policies need to change. While some people mean a total defunding of police departments when they use the slogan, “defund the police,” many of us believe police departments will continue to need to exist but be demilitarized and not be the sole responders to community incidents. We need to define a role for public safety and community personnel who can keep our communities safe without confrontation and expand the availability of mental health workers in our communities. You can be sure that there will be a war of words over public safety and policing in the next several elections, and we must work hard to get our message clear.

In 1993 the first woman attorney general of Virginia was up by 20 points in a race to be the first woman governor of Virginia by defeating the Republican candidate, George Allen Jr. An incident of a person committing a crime while on parole from a Virginia prison during the political campaign led to Allen adopting an “end parole” theme to keep Virginians safe that led to his upset victory. The resulting end parole policy led to filling the jails and prisons, a massive prison building program, and lengthy prison terms for persons who were no longer a threat to society. We have only recently begun to undo the damage done by that simple bumper-strip term “end parole” that led to many lives–disproportionately black–being destroyed by a terrible public policy.

Words do have meaning, but we need to be clear what those words truly mean as they impact public policy.

 

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

Black lives matter. Period. No further explanation or expansion of the phrase is needed. Do not try to switch the subject by wanting to suggest that all lives matter. For more than four centuries the lives of black people have been degraded. There have been numerous instances during that time when events would have suggested that there might finally be a recognition that black lives do matter. With the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence proclaiming that all men are created equal one might have concluded that black Americans might finally achieve some semblance of equality, but they did not. With a constitution for the new country, blacks were counted as worth only three-fifths of a person. Virginia and the Southern states seceded from the Union and fought a civil war to be able to keep black people in bondage. After more than 250 years of slavery black people were given a hollow promise with the Emancipation Proclamation. Jim Crow laws replaced slave codes. Many ingenious ways were contrived to keep black people from voting. Lynching was among the ways used to instill fear in black people to keep them “in their place.” Police too often became less public safety protectors and more keepers of a divided society where black lives have less value than that of others.

With all this history and more is there any wonder why leaders who are willing to take a stand are insistent that we keep the message clear: Black Lives Do Matter! Too much has happened to turn our backs on much-needed changes in so many aspects of our society and our governance. When a cop feels that he can grind his knee in the back of the neck of a black man until he dies while three other cops look on, we know that the time has arrived for change. No excuses. Enough is enough.

The General Assembly will take up significant reforms to our policing and criminal justice system when it meets in August. I look forward to cosponsoring and voting for meaningful bills that will redefine policing, shift resources from policing to community and social services, and reform our criminal justice system. The needs are so extensive that one legislative session will not be adequate to deal with all the needed reforms, but there can be no delay in taking the first very big step forward.

Make no mistake thinking that all that is talked about will be popular. Some will think that if black lives matter their lives and their security will somehow be lessened. Politicians will jump on the divisions that exist in our society and suggest that everyone will somehow be less safe if changes are made. They will twist the meaning of the movement to reform policing, referred to as “defund police” by some, as leaving communities unsafe. The white supremacists among us, and they are more numerous than we might like to realize, will be marching and protesting any changes.

Black lives matter. We are on the verge of making the statement a reality. We cannot falter in our resolve to make it true!

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

Finding the words to describe the period of history in which Virginia finds itself is challenging. Readers of this column know that over the past several months I have been using adjectives indicating increasing significance of events that started with the historic (I have used this adjective many times) outcomes of the elections of 2019 to the transformative (future events will prove that this is the correct adjective) legislative session of 2020. Events of the past week add another descriptor of the changes that are taking place in the Old Dominion: monumental. Yes, the word applies to the monuments of which Virginia is home to many, but it applies also to what is happening to these monuments.

Governor Ralph Northam announced last week that the 60-foot high equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue is coming down right away! The Mayor and City Council of Richmond agree that the remaining five other grandiose Confederacy-related statues come down as well. The grand boulevard that was named in 2007 as being one of the “10 Great Streets in America” and was in the early 1900’s a significant part of the Lost Cause movement to glorify and justify the South’s position in the Civil War will be left with one statue–that of Arthur Ashe, the Black Richmond native who was an international tennis star. A bill is being introduced to remove the statue of former governor and U.S. senator Harry Byrd from Capitol Grounds. Byrd is notable as the head of a political machine that maintained its power by keeping Black citizens from voting. He also led the “massive resistance” movement that delayed school desegregation in Virginia by a decade. There will be other monuments coming down in other locations as has already happened in Alexandria City.

Monumental but not relating to the statues is the work done by the General Assembly in its 2020 session to remove from the Code “explicitly racist language and segregationist policies.” While no longer in effect, these parts of the Code nonetheless stood as a reminder of the racist history of the Commonwealth. The changes came from recommendations made by a commission appointed by Governor Ralph Northam to remove laws that “were intended to or could have the effect of promoting or enabling racial discrimination or inequity.”

The “Act to Preserve Racial Integrity” that banned interracial marriage was repealed as was the Code provision “no child shall be required to enroll in or attend any school wherein both white and colored children are enrolled.” Other state laws to require segregation of the races in transportation and health care facilities were no longer in effect but remained on the books.

While removing statues of people from the past and repealing laws that were previously replaced by other laws or over-ruled by court decisions may be called symbolism by some, the symbols they represent are important. Virginia leaders along with its citizens must make it clear that the divisions of people of the past are over. We need through our words and actions to demonstrate a monument to openness and acceptance of all people.

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

The image of a man in a uniform pressing his knee down on the neck of a hand-cuffed black man while being protected by three other uniformed individuals is so revolting and repulsive that I cannot get it out of my mind. The picture joins those in my mind of black persons being shot in the back by uniformed individuals without just cause, photos of black persons hanging by ropes around their necks while white persons hidden by white sheets and masks cheered, photos of the backs of black slaves scarred by whip lashes to keep them in their places, and others.

How loud does a black man have to cry out for his already dead momma or for his being able to breathe before the message of racial justice is heard? How many black parents must bury their children before we say that enough is enough? How long can a civilized society be tolerant of such blatant injustices?

Is there any wonder that when these basic questions cannot be answered that people take to the streets with demonstrations to have their voices heard? While some few seek to turn demonstrations into opportunities to loot and burn, we cannot lose sight of the basic message that is being conveyed by the persons in the streets–that it is way past time for change in America.

For those who have been involved in the civil rights movement throughout our lifetime, the incidents of brutality by persons who are supposed to protect us and the hate actions and speech of those who see themselves in some kind of superior position to others are deeply distressing. We can continue to strengthen our laws that protect minorities even as the laws have clear limitations to deter violence. We can support educational programs since so many of the offensive actions come about because of ignorance. We can continue our work to ensure that our laws reflect the kind of justice and fairness that we expect of others. We can speak out in public places to make it clear to all that we stand for justice and fairness for all and that we reject racial superiority. We can join demonstrators who stand for these principles.

Before the brutality in Minneapolis occurred, the pandemic had already pulled off a scab on American society showing economic and racial injustice. The economic injustices that exist in our society have become more obvious, and the inequities of our economic system are becoming more severe. We clearly want the threat to our health from the COVID-19 crisis to pass, but we need to think twice before we seek a return to the unfair system that has developed in our country. We can learn a lot from the observations of our society during a quarantine to seek to improve it as we leave our period of isolation.

With destructive leadership at the national level, we must all step up to fill the breach. We need to work together to stamp out racial injustice in our country.

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This is an opinion column by Del. Ken Plum (D), who represents Reston in Virginia’s House of Delegates. It does not reflect the opinion of Reston Now.

The outpouring of generosity in our community during the COVID-19 pandemic has been incredible. I continue to learn of people who have responded in remarkable ways to the needs that have been brought on by the quarantine or that have been recognized as a result of our having to stay home. The lack of face masks resulted in dozens of persons working alone or as part of groups to sew face masks and make them available to first responders, medical staff and others. Access to food has been a major concern, and numerous food pantries and distribution centers have been expanded or established to make food available to those in need. Food donations have come pouring in. For a list of places where you can respond to the food crisis, my website, kenplum.com, includes a Food Resources Directory. I am so pleased and honored to live in such a caring community.

Just as I am celebrating the goodness of our community, some misguided individual or individuals show up and for whatever their motivation decide to spray paint hate symbols on the sidewalks and buildings in one of our shopping centers. For whatever has happened in their lives to fill them with the hate they express, they are unable to exist in an open society that so many worked hard to establish. Graffiti with the worst of the hate words and symbols is bad enough, but in our state and throughout the country there are too many acts of bullying and violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks more than a thousand hate groups with 36 of them located in Virginia. That is why in the last session of the legislature I introduced a bill that the Governor has signed into law to strengthen our hate crime penalties.

I thank Rabbi Michael G. Holzman of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation for his “Call for Courage” after the recent hate event in Reston for providing me a meaningful perspective: “The solution is to call these symbols what they are, marks of cowardice. While they claim to communicate hate and fear, they really belie the underlying weakness and loneliness of the perpetrator. We are all afraid, and courage is the ability to face a fear and carry on despite it. Cowards allow fear to drive their decisions and actions, undermining one’s duties and purpose.” (Full statement is at www.nvhcreston.org.)

I concur with Rabbi Holzman’s recommendation as to what we should do: “The moment calls for courage. We invite everyone to drown these cowardly messages with the message “Hate has No Home Here.” Write this on sidewalks, take photos, use the hashtag, and post it online. Let us show Reston, Herndon, Vienna, Northern Virginia, the Commonwealth and the Country that we go forward together.” And I would add, let us continue to show through our acts of generosity and support for our neighbors and those in need in this time of a pandemic that we are a caring and compassionate community. Hate has no place here! (Hate Has No Home Here yard signs available for purchase at hatehasnohome.org)

 

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My mom and dad were married in 1928 just before the Great Depression that lasted from 1929 to 1939. They grew up less than three miles apart, and Mom’s father who was a carpenter helped them build a house almost exactly halfway between the homes in which they had grown up. My dad worked for his father on the family farm in rural Page County, Virginia, growing grains and converting some of them into a liquid product (moonshine)!

The Great Depression was the greatest economic disaster the world had ever experienced to that time, and its impact was exacerbated by a drought. Mom and Dad never forgot the hardships they endured during that first decade of married life together, and those early experiences affected their entire lives. They developed skills of self-reliance and frugality that stayed with them even as economic times got easier for them later in their lives.

My dad farmed about an acre of vegetables that fed us throughout the summer and for the rest of the year as my mom canned or later when they had electricity and a freezer froze food for future consumption. We always grew enough potatoes to fill a garner in the cellar (essentially a basement with a dirt floor) to last us all year. In the earliest years of their marriage, more than a decade before I came along as the youngest of their three sons, they had a cow for milk and raised a hog for butchering.

To supplement the meager income Dad had from farming with my grandfather, they would pick huckleberries in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that are now part of the Shenandoah National Park. They picked wild strawberries and blackberries for home consumption of jams and jellies Mom would make. Their most profitable side-line was selling the meat of black walnuts that they had gathered from the area. Cracking a black walnut takes a lot of force and know-how. They were extremely frugal as they had to be. Well after the Great Depression ended and I was a young person we used our wax paper and tin (aluminum) foil more than once by simply wiping it off after each use.

Dad and Mom never lost their love and appreciation for President Franklin Roosevelt whom they credited with saving the country. They responded to his fireside chats that assured them that they had “nothing to fear but fear itself.” When the Great Depression finally ended and Dad went to work “in the public” meaning that he no longer worked for his father, their economic situation improved with his being in a unionized job and as the entire country improved with the New Deal.

In many of the same ways that my parents experienced the first Great Depression, future generations will have been impacted by the next Great Depression coming on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic we are now experiencing. With hard work, strong faith, frugality, honest leadership, and perseverance they will be able to share the things they are now having to do to survive.

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