Source: Patrick McMullan/ Jon Kopaloff / Getty
If you were like me this weekend, you watched
Ava DuVernay’s stunning and
emotional Netflix mini-series “When They See Us.” And if you’re also like me, you spent the weekend in tears.
Tears for these five innocent boys (now men)
dubbed the “Central Park Five” who were sent to prison for 6-13 years for a horrible rape they did not commit. Tears watching these naive babies screamed at, threatened and coerced into confessing to this heinous crime after being interrogated for hours without their parents present.
Tears for the trauma and abuse these boys endured not only by the media but by
Donald Trump and the prison industrial complex that beat away at these boys’ bodies and spirits.
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But sadness wasn’t the only emotion I experienced.The more I watched, the more I became filled with blinding rage.
Rage that a police department so hell-bent on teaching these “thugs” a lesson, that they didn’t care if there was no physical evidence or matching DNA or if all of the testimonies contradicted each other. They were out for blood.
And when I mean they, I specifically mean former prosecutor
Linda Fairstein, who led the sex crimes division in Manhattan from 1976-2002.
Played by (another criminal) Felicity Huffman, Fairstein led this witch hunt, playing a huge part in forcing the boys to falsely confess and getting them convicted.
As we all know, she was dead wrong.
In 2002,
Matias Reyes, who was already in prison for rape and murder, came forward and confessed to the crime with DNA confirming he was telling the truth. Yes, the men’s convictions were vacated, but nothing happened to Fairstein, other than her career and bank account prospered. After she left the prosecutor’s office, she went on to write a successful series of bland crime books based on her past work for the city.
She was even recently brought to be a guest on a CBS News podcast:
Despite the Central Park Five getting a $40 million dollar settlement from New York City in 2014, she still maintained in 2018 that she did nothing wrong and that these men were guilty of the crime.
This is the face of pure evil and white supremacy.
Yet, it’s good to know, I am not alone in this overwhelming rage. As soon as
#WhenTheySeeUs began trending on Twitter over the weekend, so did
#CancelLindaFairstein.
It became crystal clear that Black Twitter not only wants for Amazon and others to stop selling her horrible books, but they also want her to suffer the way she made these boys suffer. I’m with them: “Lock her up!”
