A Letter to the Brookline Select Board
Dear Brookline Select Board,
I watched your meeting on June 16, 2020. I watched you pat yourselves on the back as you spoke glowingly of the upcoming Juneteenth holiday and the new “Black Lives Matter” banner at Town Hall. And then I watched as you showed that, for all but one of you, it was all just a smug facade of tolerance that you think fulfills your obligation to justice. Dr. Fernandez proved he is the sole Select Board member who genuinely cares about black lives. The rest of you turned your backs on the oppressed. You ought to be ashamed.
When faced with a clear and straightforward plan from Dr. Fernandez to take a relatively small percentage of the police budget and reallocate it, the rest of you pettifogged with complaints about the details of his proposal. If you were actually concerned with the specifics of how the reallocated money was to be distributed as some of you claimed, you would’ve presented an alternative proposal. Dr. Fernandez seemed perfectly willing to divvy up the funds differently.
The fact is, if your instinct in this moment is to protect America’s police instead of the black and brown people whom those police are oppressing and killing, you value defending the racist status quo more than you care about fighting injustice. Mr. VanScoyoc revealed this to be true of himself when he began the session by complaining that townspeople had expressed opposition to a planned rally in support of the police. Why, Mr. VanScoyoc, do you think the police are the ones who need defending right now? Others later expressed concerns that cutting the police budget substantially might necessitate laying off police officers. Well, I have news for you: It doesn’t matter if the police have to cut costs by laying off officers. The whole point of this movement, of these protests, is that the police aren’t doing a good job. They’re a force of oppression and racism in America. If your sympathies lie with the police officers who might lose their jobs rather than the people who fear for their lives every time they see blue and white, you care more about preserving an unjust society than you do about black lives.
Worst of all was Ms. Hamilton, whose only counterargument to Dr. Fernandez’s proposal was an utterly nonsensical concern that cutting the police budget would leave Brookline shorthanded in the face of a potential COVID-19 resurgence. What, Ms. Hamilton, do you expect the cops to do? Do you really think having a slightly smaller police force would cripple our ability to fight the virus? If you were really concerned about the pandemic, you might’ve suggested taking some of Dr. Fernandez’s proposed reallocated police funds and using them to fund services that might actually help Brookline deal with the virus. Of course, you didn’t do that, and you went even farther by voting against even Mr. VanScoyoc’s minuscule budget cut counter-proposal. Your actions in that meeting were especially despicable.
Perhaps you think that police racism is an “elsewhere problem,” and that the Brookline police are doing a great job. That might be why some of you only supported decreasing their budget a paltry, “symbolic” amount. Brookline is 3.4% black and 5% Latinx. According to WBUR, “In 2018, 50% of people subject to field interrogations were black or Latino, while 39% were white” (https://tinyurl.com/ycyo6sk5). That same year, Brookline settled in a racial discrimination case against the police department. This month, a new racism lawsuit has been filed against the department. If you believe that the Brookline police force is exempt from the rising outcry against racism in law enforcement, you’re beyond deluded.
You did a lot of talking about symbolism having substance. That’s utter nonsense. Barely reducing the Brookline Police’s overtime budget just to be able to say you did something is not substantive, and it’s an insult that you would pretend it is. You should be embarrassed that in the face of a national outcry for justice long overdue your instinct was to do the absolute bare minimum to avoid criticism while making no impact whatsoever.
I recognize that this letter’s tone is accusatory and undiplomatic, which is not in character for me; I’m generally a catch-more-flies-with-sugar sort of person. But watching your abomination of a Select Board meeting has caused the sadness and anger I’ve been feeling — not just over the last few weeks, but ever since I was old enough to understand that we live in a country that remains deeply racist — to bubble over. And it’s because I was seeing the true problem at its heart, looking into the faces of a small group of men and women as they denied the possibility that we might change our society into a more just and equitable one while believing themselves to be on the right side of justice. So, I’m done being polite. It doesn’t work. You don’t listen. You cling to niceness and decorum, but it’s just a veneer you put on to convince yourselves and the world that you’re a good person. Good people are good because they stand up for what’s right. You had a chance to do that, and instead you stood in the way.
Every one of you not named Dr. Fernandez should be embarrassed, because I can say now in no uncertain terms: You are on the wrong side of history. If you want to change that — if you want to be on the side of justice instead of oppression — I beg you to support Dr. Fernandez’s more aggressive fund-reallocation plan. If you wish to propose an alternate use of that money, by all means do so. But by advocating for decreasing the funding reallocation to a “symbolic” amount, as some of you did, or voting against any police defunding whatsoever, as Ms. Hamilton did, you revealed yourselves as callous oppressors.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man so deified yet so misunderstood by today’s milquetoast liberals:
First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Please read it, and then reread it, and understand that you are the people he’s talking about.
Sincerely,
Josh McCorkle
