North Carolina Lawmakers Are Misguided in Response to Iryna Zarutska’s Murder

 

Let me be clear from the start, I, like most humane, sane, and kind people, sorrowed over the killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte metro train. No one should experience such a tragic and horrible death. By all accounts, Iryna should be here today. She should be living her best life in a country that she fled to from her war-torn home of Ukraine. She should be enjoying the magic of being young, beautiful, and full of hope in a country that offers an abundance of opportunities to succeed and live out her dreams.

However, I can’t think of Iryna without also thinking sadly about 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., the person charged with her fatal stabbing. His story is also tragic, and his family also deserves public sympathy and our prayers. Many lawmakers including Governor Josh Stein, President Trump and VP Vance as well as members of the NC General Assembly are using this tragic case as a political battle ax and an opportunity to demonstrate a “tough on crime” posture. However, the fact of the matter is, rarely has vigilante justice cloaked as sensible public policy ever worked the way lawmakers think it will.

The reality is that Decarlos Brown’s case points more to colossal systems failures that are not uncommon; rarely do any of our public judicial, social services, and mental health systems act or respond to the needs of people in crisis quickly. The hard truth is that Decarlos Brown is a tragic case study for what happens when our mental health, legal, and social services systems fail people with serious mental illness.  Let me be clear, people with SMI are more likely to be victims of crime than they are to be perpetrators of violent crime. In fact, people with SMI are more likely to be a harm or danger to themselves than to others. Data from credible sources including the American Psychological Association report that persons with SMI account for about four percent of all violent crime in the US.

According to multiple reports, Decarlos’s family sought help for him and unfortunately, they faced what many families face—slow responses, closed doors, and woefully inadequate action. Governor Stein and the NCGA appear to be misguided about what is needed the most to mitigate and reduce the risk of another Iryna story from happening again. News flash, it is not stricter or draconian criminal laws or heavy-handed law enforcement responses. I think many sociologists and criminologists as well as mental health professionals would agree—what we need is more investments in building up our community mental health services including evidence-based critical time interventions; and more financial investments into a shamefully underfunded public mental health, substance use, and IDD services system.  (Ironically our public MHDDSUS system is at risk of failing more people as we face the very real threat of drastic and deep Medicaid cuts.) What we need are more investments into creating a stronger labor force to  meet the needs of people with serious mental health conditions including more trauma informed licensed clinicians; what we need is more funding to support housing and employment needs of persons in MH and substance use recovery.  What we DON’T need is continued criminalization of people with mental health and substance use conditions. What we DON’T need is a general assembly and Governor who is short-sighted, reactionary, and blind when it comes to meeting the social drivers of health outcome needs including healthcare coverage, safe and affordable housing supports, and food security. And what we definitely DON’T need is to begin militarizing our local police but instead endorsing and expanding the community policing model that encourages law enforcement to know the people they are assigned to protect and serve. 

The reality is, Iryana should be alive today and Decarlos should have gotten the help he needed long before this tragedy happened. And our lawmakers should be leading us through this valley to higher ground not simply enacting laws that essentially keep us in the same place and fail to address the root causes of crime and violence.

Americans Are in A Dangerous War Whether We Realize It or Not

 

I have been directly and tangentially  involved in politics for a long time now, at least 30 years and if you include the time I ran for class president at Chapel Hill High School back in the 80s, well then you do the math. Inspired in large part by the profiles of courage of fierce Black women in North Carolina including my grand and great grandmothers; Godmother, the late Senator Jeanne Lucas (the first Black woman to serve in the North Carolina Senate); and Congresswoman Eva Clayton (the first Black woman from NC to serve in Congress), I also ran in the May 2018 Democratic primary for Congress in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, challenging a 30-year incumbent.  I was the first Black, woman, and Chapel Hill High School graduate to run for a congressional seat in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District on the Democratic ticket. Needless to say, I fully understand that political campaigns are very much like a war: candidates representing two different parties go into battle against each other with one sole mission in mind—to take out the other candidate and win. And just like in a war, all kinds of weapons and ammunition are used to defeat the opponent and ensure victory. While most political campaigns are relatively amicable, at least in public, behind the scenes all kinds of chicanery and even malicious tactics are devised. Some of the tactics that campaigns employ in order to stack the odds of winning in their favor border on, if not cross the lines of, being menacing, unethical or even criminal, from stealing or removing campaign signs, attempting to besmirch the opponent’s character for example digging up dirt on the opponent uncovering shameful things they may have done in their adolescent or reckless young adult years to acts that spillover to harming others beyond the opponent including voter suppression.  The list of what can and has been done by political operatives to shore up a win is endless and there is no low to how far some will go to make sure a political candidate ends up the victor.

 In addition to the political war tactics, and just like in military battles, there are also the spoils of war. The things that the victor wins or gains. In military battles these spoils can include any and everything from land acquisition, territory occupation, economic gains, to even world domination and unbridled global power and influence. In United States, the past presidential election is a great case to make my point. I won’t go down the stolen-election conspiracy dark hole but I will highlight the extraordinary amounts of money that was poured into both former Vice President Kamala Harris and former  and now president Donald Trump’s campaigns in what is commonly referred to as a “war chest.” An estimated $1 Billion was raised by the Harris campaign compared to an estimated $3.8 Billion raised by the Trump campaign. Interestingly President Trump’s FEC filings are listed under a PAC titled, “Never Surrender, Inc.,” which supports the main point I wish to make. One of the primary objectives when embattled in war is exactly that--never surrender, and for some, that means by any means necessary—win by hook or crook as my grandmother would say. I will leave it up to the reader to decide if the winner of the 2024 general election—President Trump won by hook or crook. Either way you assess it, Donald Trump won and became the POTUS and by my assessment, the win was through tactical maneuvers that had no boundaries or rules of engagement. Political wars tend to be void of rules of engagement tantamount to  International Humanitarian Law or Geneva Treaty, which limits the harm done to people who are not directly participating in warfare including principles that distinguish between combatants and civilians, ensuring military actions are not excessive in relation to the military advantage gained—a term referred to as proportionality, or acts to prohibit inhumane treatment or unnecessary suffering.  

Aside from the spoils of the political war that Trump won including the outrageous amounts of wealth his family is amassing, what we are seeing a president who is not governing but whose mind is programmed to continue the war until all vestiges of our Democratic Republic are decimated.  He is driven by one guiding principle—never surrender, which is similar to the lesson taught to him by his once revered mentor Roy Cohn--never admit defeat and deny, deny, deny. Never surrender power, not even to the supposedly co-equal branches of government—the judicial and legislative branches. Never surrender control not even to the comrades who we will call the Republican party leadership. Never surrender or claim defeat of any kind even through legal sanctions or litigation. And once in power, never give it up.

We are in a perpetual war in the United States whether we believe it or not. It is a war not just against immigrants, people of color, the poor including in rural America which is the bastion of MAGA supporters—but it is also a war with an objective now to change the landscape and infrastructure of our Democratic Republic into one that he has made clear he prefers and aspires to rule—an oligarchy modeled after Russia.  My fear is that far too many people who many consider authorities on world affairs are underestimating the stronghold that Putin and Russia’s governing structure has on the mind of President of Trump. We have reduced the actions of the president to basic disdain of others who are not white, male, and uber wealthy. While that kind of ideology may be baked in, it is not what is driving his bulldozing and excavating of America’s longstanding cornerstone institutions. It is his insatiable fixation on becoming and modeling Putin’s regime. He truly does not intend on ever surrendering his power and supreme authority over America and as the late Dr. Maya Angelou said, when people SHOW you who they are, believe them the first time. My fear is despite what President Trump is showing us; there are far too many people who are refusing to believe what they are actually seeing an instead are getting distracted by flashing lights and bouncing balls that are merely a mirage.

The Heart of A Nation Is Being Revealed Through Donald Trump