Why Erica Garner's support for Sanders makes a difference

[Uncle Joe]

The video raises the urgent issue of the broken criminal justice system and its effects on American society, a topic few liberals want to address through activism. How do we know it's broken? According to Harvard sociologist Bruce Western in his book "Punishment and Inequality in America," the United States is the world's leader in incarceration, with more than 2.2 million people behind bars. Western notes that in the past 30 years, incarceration has increased sevenfold.

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The ad makes it clear that our broken criminal justice system should be at the center of civil rights discussions. It shows how Garner's daughter has been transformed into a civil rights activist since her father's death. Among critical scholars of criminology, the link between criminal justice and civil rights has long been acknowledged. The Black Lives Matter movement has received national attention in pushing for criminal justice reform, but candidates still are not discussing solutions comprehensively. Until recently, any discussion of the criminal justice system was viewed as being peripheral to progressive agendas.

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The ad shows something else not noted by most Americans and political analysts: The criminal justice system affects not only those arrested and brutalized, but also their extended families. Sanders' video illustrates how Garner's daughter and granddaughter were deeply affected.

The negative effects of the criminal justice system damage future generations. This point is confirmed by Rutgers criminologist Todd Clear in his book "Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse." His research shows that mass incarceration undermines communities, splitting apart families when fathers and mothers are locked up. Eventually, incarceration destroys communities.

This brings us to one of the ad's most powerful messages: It is only through civic and political activism that a more just society for African-Americans, Latinos and American society in general can be achieved. History suggests that Sanders is on to something. In "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," Harvard legal scholar William Stuntz argues that urban American society went through two periods of mass migration: one by white European immigrants in the first third of the 20th century, and the other by African-Americans during the Great Migration, which roughly occurred in the last two-thirds of the 20th century.

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/opinions/erica-garner-support-for-bernie-sanders-martinez/