Thread by @michaelharriot

If you're wondering how the "race-baiters" are going to make the SCOTUS ruling about racism, well...

Here's what the Trump decision has to do with the history of white supremacy, racial terrorism and even the death of George Floyd.

A thread.

It began with the passage of the 13th Amendment. If you don't go to school in Fla, you probably know about the birth of the KKK, White Leagues & other domestic terror cells responsible for racial violence during Reconstruction.

Well, it kinda didn't really happen that way.

The Klan was not really that popular until YEARS later. In fact, MOST of the racial terrorism during Reconstruction was committed by two groups:

1. Regular-degular, unaffilliated white people
2. Police officers.

Most pre-civil war cities & towns didn't have police forces

Boston didn't get one until 1838. NY got one in 1844; Philly got one SIX YEARS before the civil war. At best, a county had a sheriff who could raise a posse. The South relied on MANDATORY participation in slave patrols, which was also the miltia, which is also...

How the Confederacy raised an army so fast. (They basically turned the slave patrol/militia into an army.)

After the Confederate traitors got their asses whipped, the soldiers still had guns, uniforms and a belief in their supremacy. The racist terrorists WERE ALSO the police.

That's why Congress passed 3 laws that became known as Ku Klux Klan Acts

The 3rd KKK Act, passed in 1871, didn't even focus on the KKK; it was aimed at the slave patrollers-turned-cops who denied Black people their rights under the color of the law.

An updated version was eventually codified as 42 U.S.C. § 1983. That's why cvil suits against racist police officers & gov't officials were called "1983 cases."
But during the civil rights movement, racist cops started getting tired of that "constitutional rights" BS

On Sept. 13, 1961, a group of freedom riders – 12 white clergymen & 3 white preachers (I've literally never heard a Black person refer to themselves as "clergy" )– were arrested in Jackson, MS for "breaching the peace." The judge sent them to jail.

Mississippi's "Breaching the peace" law allowed the cops to arrest anyone who might cause a disturbance, even if their actions were legal. It was only used against Black activists, & a court would later rule the law was unconstitutional.

But the Freedom Rider's jury was like:

"How are innocent cops s'posed to know they were breaking the law?" But judges are supposed to know the law, right?

So the Reverends and the clergy filed a 1983 case against the judge & the cops. Not only did they have a slam dunk case, they had an ace in the hole.

See, one of the clergymen was Robert Pierson, who had recently married a woman named Ann Clark...

The daughter of Nelson Rockefeller.

What would the SCOTUS do? Would they protect the justice system's long tradition of white power or side with an ACTUAL powerful white man?

In Pierson v. Ray, the Supreme Court agreed that the judge was wrong. THey agreed that the law was unconstitutional. They didn't acknowledged that their Freedom Riders' rights were violated.

But Pearson &the preachers still lost bc the court essentially dismantled he KKK ACT

According to the SCOTUS, judges couldn't perform their duties if someone sued them every time they made a bad decision. And bc the KKK Act wasn't specific, they found that the judge was protected from civil suits while performing his official duties.

If that sounds crazy, they pulled an even bigger piece of BS out of their collective ass.

To excuse the cops, they created something that had never existed. The Court concluded that the cops acted in good faith bc they assumed the racist law would protect their racist actions

But, unlike the judge who had "absolute and unqualified immunity," the cops were only entitled to "qualified immunity."

And just like that, a whole new invention was applied whenever white people got in trouble. It was applied to cops and federal officials and even a president.

Aside from being used to dismiss TENS of THOUSANDS of. police brutality lawsuits, in the 1982 Nixon v. Fitzgerald lawsuit, the SCOTUS cited Pierson v. Ray to conclude that President Nixon was ABSOLUTELY immune from CIVIL suits, but not criminal acts.

A LOT of cops and public officials use qualified immunity to escape punishment by invoking another standard that the SCOTUS pulled out of thin air. To get convicted, an official must break a "clearly established" law that someone has broken before and KNOW they were wrong.

Today's Supreme Court decision actually cites Nixon v. Fitzgerald and argues that one reason Trump is immune is that there is no clearly established case to examine and that he didn't know he was wrong (BC the KKK Act is kinda vague)

Welll... Here is the thing:

On June 5, 2020, 10 days after George Floyd's murder, when Jan 6 was just a date & "Stop the Steal" was a movement to prevent white people from stealing tiktok dances, 18 legislators introduced a bill to end qualified immunity & fix the KKK Act.

How?

congress.gov/bill/116th-con…

Well, if all that stuff I just said sounds complex, Apparently, adding two sentences to USC 1983 is all that's required to hold police accountable

TWO SENTENCES

The ORIGINAL George Floyd Justice in Policing Act compromised by restricting the two sentences to law enforcement officers. But, certified liar Tim Scott sabotaged the bill & ALL police reform at the behest of a white supremacist movement

Here is where it comes full circle

For years, a conservative, pro-Confederate movement has claimed that sheriffs are the only true law enforcement officers. They believe the common laws that predate the Constitution gave them the right to enforce the law.

Yes, the SLAVECATCHER LAWS!

texastribune.org/2023/01/13/con…

The best known, most powerful of these men is a Trump supporter who's run SC's biggest and deadliest county jail for decades. He was president and is still a board member of the ONLY LEO group that opposed the George Floyd Act

Guess who did his bidding

theroot.com/in-loving-memo…

Tim Scott didn't just undermine police reform, he used a bait-and-switch to protect qualified immunity and a corrupt president and modern-day slavecatchers

That long, racist history is not WHY the SCOTUS granted Trump immunity. The court's decision has nothing to do with race

And that's the entire point

You don't need to be racist to protect a racist. You don't have to believe in white supremacy to protect a white supremacist.

Someone already created a system for it.