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Ben Crump: ‘Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People’

by Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire

Famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump has written a new book that examines the troubling history of environmental racism in America.

“Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People,” the 272-page book that’s already the top seller on Amazon.com in the category of Civil Rights Law, tackles how environmental racism pertains to the water crisis in Flint, Mich. and Newark, NJ.

Open Season by Ben Crump

In the book, Crump summarizes the state of civil and environmental rights in the U.S. and explores how marginalized communities largely are overlooked by the institutions charged with protecting them. He talked with NNPA as he planned a return to Flint, where he is set to hold rallies over two days to keep attention on the continued water crisis.

The Flint visit comes nearly four years after he and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons went house-to-house delivering water to families throughout the city.

“We found out that not only was there a water crisis, but Flint was a food desert,” Crump said. “So, we have to focus on this because it’s important. We have children who have problems with brain development because they were poisoned by the government wantonly.”

While Crump’s new book digs deeper into the Flint crisis, it also explores racism across the country. In one section of “Open Season,” Crump talks about one of the incidents that inspired him to continue his work as a civil rights attorney.

“When we were in Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed in broad daylight, there were these young Black Lives Matter activists who refused to let them sweep Michael Brown’s life under the rug,” Crump said.

“The government called in the National Guard. …And you have these young people without fear. And this one brother specifically walked right up to the National Guard, who has their rifle trained on him. … He said, with the rifle in his face, ‘go ahead and shoot me with all these cameras here, because you’re going to shoot us anyway when they go away, so shoot and kill me now so the people can see how you kill us.’”

It was riveting and he was right, Crump said.

“It is important that people see how they’re killing us. But not just with bullets in the police shooting cases, but more poignant, how they kill us every day in every city, in every state, in every courtroom in America legally with these trumped-up felony convictions.”

With the book, Crump said he seeks to hold a mirror to the face of all Americans and force them to acknowledge the hypocrisy.

“You have to at least acknowledge the racism and discrimination in the institutions of governance. If you don’t ever admit it, we can never solve the problem,” he said.

Crump took about three years to write “Open Season,” which he called one of the most challenging tasks he’s undertaken.

“You sit there and remember all those things that have happened to black and brown people in this country, and it just breaks your heart,” he said.

“Over and over again, no matter what the situation is, for people of color, we get the most injustice. … You can give me any situation, and they will find a way to make sure that marginalized people of color don’t get equal justice. That’s what we have to fight against. That’s what we’re fighting against in Flint, Newark, Baltimore, Washington, and other communities.”

If the water crisis in Flint would have happened in a white community, it would be a national catastrophe, Crump said.

“Lightning would strike and thunder would boom. I mean people would go to jail. But, because it’s a majority-minority community, it’s almost as if Americans don’t know it happened. They say, ‘it doesn’t affect me, just those black and brown people, so it doesn’t matter.’”

(“Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People” is available at Amazon.com and other outlets.)

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