National

Black Leaders Push for Nationwide Police Reform

Published

11 years ago

May 19, 2015

Oakland Post

Barbara Arnwine

By Freddie Allen
NNPA Senior Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – In the wake of the tragic death of Freddie Gray and the protests that followed in Baltimore, Black civic leaders continue to call for wholesale changes in policing and an end to police brutality in urban and predominately Black communities across the nation.

Barbara Arnwine, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan group that works to end racial discrimination and inequality, said that when the Civil Rights Coalition on Police Reform was formed, American society was long overdue for a concerted push to restructure policing in America and to prevent the killing of unarmed African Americans.

“We have been reactive, but we have also been proactively advancing a platform of policy reforms and recommendations for change,” said Arnwine.

Those recommendations include the passage of the “End Racial Profiling Act,” the mandatory use of police body cameras, better accountability of the use and distribution of federal military weapons and equipment to local law enforcement and reform to grand jury process.

Cornell Brooks, the president and CEO of the NAACP, said that the conversations happening around police killings in Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo. and beyond are painful reminders of how this whole issue hits home.

The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore and Thurgood Marshall, “one of our greatest heroes,” lived in the Sandtown-Winchester community where Gray was arrested, said Brooks.

“We know that when an African American man is 21 times more likely to lose his life at the hands of police than his White counterpart, this is a reason to be fearful and a reason to think about running, but it is certainly not a crime,” said Brooks. “Freddie Gray is not just one victim. He stands in a long tragic line of victims that stretches across the length and the breadth of this country.”

Brooks expressed confidence in Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore state’s attorney who filed formal charges against six police officers who were involved in Gray’s arrest and transport to Baltimore’s Western District police station.

“She did not punt this to a grand jury, which she could have done, but she chose instead as the prosecutor to take responsibility in bringing these charges which prosecutors in jurisdictions all over this country are quite able to do, but too often are unwilling to do,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a legal group that fights for racial justice and raises awareness of disparities. “This is a beginning, this is not a conviction.”

Ifill said that the Freddie Gray case allows community stakeholders, civic leaders and law enforcement officials to have a deeper and richer conversation about this issue that has roiled the country since last year.

“This year the tide has shifted,” said Ifill. “Why has it shifted? It has shifted, because cell phone videos have shown the entire the country the kind of brutality that many residents of this country live with in terms of their relationship with the police.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has made it harder for police to suppress the record of that brutality by offering a free software application for smartphones that allows users to save video files remotely, so that even if the file is deleted or their phone is destroyed, a record of the encounter still exists.

The Missouri branch of the nonprofit group that defends constitutional rights of individuals and organizations in the U.S. released the iPhone app that enables users to record “exchanges between police officers and themselves or other community members in audio and video files that are automatically sent to the ACLU of Missouri,” according to a press release about the software.

The software, called “Mobile Justice,” also lets users send out alerts to notify others users nearby so that they can come to the scene and record the interaction.

The “Mobile Justice” app is available through the iPhone app store and for the Android platform through the Google Play store.

Pamela Meanes, the president, National Bar Association, a network of predominately Black lawyers and judges,called for changing the laws associated with policing at the state, local and federal levels.

Brooks said that a fundamental shift in the culture and modality of policing in this country is needed.

“It has been said that it’s hard to do or that this can’t be done or that this is something that might be done at some distant point in the future,” said Brooks. “The fact of the matter is there are police departments across the country that have brought down crime increased trust with the community made their police officers safer, prosecutions easier and made it more likely that witnesses will come forward by effectively deploying community policing.”

Pamela Meanes said that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department must be appropriately funded to be able to do the type of patterns and practices investigation that they did following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. That investigation uncovered deep-rooted racial discrimination in law enforcement and the courts that led to resignation of the city manager, court officials and eventually the police chief in the small North St. Louis County town.

On May 8, Attorney General Loretta Lynch opened a civil pattern or practice investigation into Baltimore Police Department (BPD) at the request of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

“Our goal is to work with the community, public officials, and law enforcement alike to create a stronger, better Baltimore,” said Lynch. “The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has conducted dozens of these pattern or practice investigations, and we have seen from our work in jurisdictions across the country that communities that have gone through this process are experiencing improved policing practices and increased trust between the police and the community.

Lynch continued: “In fact, I encourage other cities to study our past recommendations and see whether they can be applied in their own communities. Ultimately, this process is meant to ensure that officers are being provided with the tools they need – including training, policy guidance and equipment – to be more effective, to partner with civilians, and to strengthen public safety.”

Arnwine said that, since the beginning, the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore was rife with injustice.

“We have been saying to the Department of Justice that the reason that a patterns and practice case needs to be opened against the police department in Baltimore. This case of Freddie Gray is systematic of deep and abiding culture within that department that has to be investigated fully and reversed,” said Arnwine. “This is just one step. Every officer needs to be held accountable and the racism that has infected our policing must be stopped.”

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Listening as a Lifeline: A Doula’s Witness to Black Maternal Health

OAKLAND POST — Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

Published

23 hours ago

October 4, 2026

Post News Group

By Antoinette Stewart-Eneh, Special to California Black Media Partners

Word Count: 1058

Note: Client A, B & C, names are withheld for privacy; these accounts reflect my recollections as their Doula.

Client A rocked her hips on a birthing ball, surrounded by pale wood and warm textiles in a softly lit Scandinavian-style office. I was her doula through a Southern California maternal health company combining nurse-led care, technology, and wraparound support.

She was a healthy Black woman in her thirties. Her baby girl was doing well; her partner took notes as we discussed labor and advocacy.

Then we turned to their chosen hospital. I knew it well—and remembered a phrase from another client’s experience: “Policy of Sovereignty.”

Client B had been told she needed a repeat cesarean as a precaution, though the reasoning was unclear. Her obstetrician, who performed her first cesarean two years earlier, had assured her throughout pregnancy that she was healthy, healed, and ready for a vaginal birth. We asked staff to review her chart, consult her obstetrician, and reconsider immediate surgery. Instead, they invoked the “Policy of Sovereignty.”

The physician on duty, we were told, had final authority, regardless of her established care plan. I asked whether an ultrasound or reassessing the baby’s position could offer clarity. Cesareans can be lifesaving. But were Client B’s history, informed consent, and circumstances guiding this decision—or was routine overriding individualized care? We kept asking for her obstetrician. Beneath every request was a deeper question: Was she being heard?

The Numbers Behind the Stories

Statistics arrive in clean columns. The experiences behind them do not.

Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

In California, Black birthing people experienced 56.5 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births during 2020–2022—3.8 times the White rate and four times the Asian rate.

As a doula serving Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, I see faces behind those numbers. I remember concerns raised softly, then firmly, then desperately. I am tired of watching Black families enter spaces meant to protect them, only to discover they must defend themselves while laboring, bleeding, trembling, or recovering.

Returning to Client A

Client A’s labor stretched nearly 48 hours. As her condition worsened, she, her partner, and I asked whether a cesarean should happen sooner. A provider questioned my place as a doula, then said she was next.

Six more hours passed.

She entered surgery visibly ill with a serious uterine infection, her baby malpositioned and stuck. Her partner later recalled the provider saying, “This baby would never have made it through the birth canal.”

Those words landed like a blow. Our urgency had been treated as ignorance. With Client B, we questioned why surgery was inevitable. With Client A, why it was delayed. Doula advocacy is not about one kind of birth. It is about informed consent, individualized care, and timely action. Hospital routine should never outweigh the person carrying the risk.

Survival Cannot Be the Standard

The Black maternal health crisis includes unequal care, untreated conditions, racial bias, delayed referrals, poor communication, and inadequate postpartum support. It is about birth plans respected only until a hospital becomes less busy and postpartum care that asks whether a mother survived, not whether she has what she needs to recover.

Survival cannot be the standard. Technology can support care, but it cannot replace human connection. An algorithm cannot detect fear in a patient’s eyes, and a mission statement alone cannot ensure adequate staffing or culturally responsive care.

The Story of Client C

Before I arrived, I heard the chaos through Client C’s phone. Staff struggled to locate her baby’s heartbeat on an external monitor as her fear and blood pressure rose. I pleaded for an internal electrode before surgery.

“There’s not enough time,” a nurse said.

“I would like to wait for my doula,” Client C called out.

But she was medicated, hurried through consent, and wheeled away while I listened.

In the operating room, after a shift change, another nurse placed an internal electrode and said, “The previous monitor wasn’t working.”

No one responded.

According to her father, the obstetrician avoided eye contact: “We need to move forward.”

Surgery may still have been necessary; that was not mine to determine. But if faulty equipment helped create the emergency, the family deserved acknowledgment and explanation—not silence. No family should have to wonder whether major surgery followed an unavoidable crisis or a machine failure no one recognized in time.

From Prevention to Accountability

After supporting nearly 100 families, I have learned that danger often begins before admission. I have urged clients to seek care—and heard why they feared returning: dismissed pain, harsh words, shame for asking questions.

Care cannot be holistic where Black families do not feel safe enough to speak or return. Representation matters, but providers of color cannot repair inequity alone. They need adequate staffing, mentorship, culturally responsive training, reliable equipment, and colleagues that are reflective of all the aforementioned. It’s not the Black providers job to care for just the Black patients, everyone should have the same goal.

The Momnibus Act, California’s Medi-Cal doula benefit, the Transforming Maternal Health Model and the Perinatal Equity Initiative require more than promises; they need sustained funding, reliable reimbursement and accountable implementation.

Birth should be sacred. Yet too many Black birthing people arrive carrying the burden of proving their pain is real. A doula can listen, educate, comfort, and advocate—but cannot repair a system that refuses to listen. The true measure of progress is what happens when a Black birthing person says, “Something is wrong.”

Are they believed? When equipment fails, is that failure acknowledged? Do families leave not merely alive, but safe, respected, supported, and whole?

Until those answers are consistently yes, California’s maternal health success story remains unfinished.

About the Author

Antoinette Stewart-Eneh is a mother of two, holistic maternal wellness advocate, and birth and postpartum doula who has supported families since 2019. She serves as program operations coordinator for Frontline Doulas, a volunteer client coordinator with the Joy in Birthing Foundation and a childbirth educator in South Los Angeles. She is studying to become a midwife and lactation educator.

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‘We Don’t Talk Trash — We Pick Up Trash!’

OAKLAND POST — Following the cleanup, Jones talked with Richard Johnson, CEO of Formerly Incarcerated Giving Back (FIGB). Johnson said he wanted to bring formerly incarcerated nonprofits together not only to help clean up the city, but also to bring youth with them to mentor the next generation.

Published

23 hours ago

October 4, 2026

Post News Group

High Street Coalition volunteers pick up trash on Sept. 26. Left to right are: Jo Ann, Ruben, JoJo, Jess, Jonathan ‘Fitness’ Jones and Linda in front. Photo courtesy of Linda.

By Dr. Maritony Jones, Special to The Post

When community activist Jonathan “Fitness” Jones heard concerns from senior residents in East Oakland about illegal dumping, recurring trash issues and the health hazards they created, he decided that watching the problem was not enough.

Jones, a member of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG) and an Oakland Private Industry Council board member, learned that seniors were frustrated by the recurrence of illegal dumping even when trash has been cleared. Recurring trash can contribute to unsanitary conditions, attract rodents and leave residents feeling that their neighborhoods are being overlooked.

On Saturday, Sept. 26, Mr. Jones joined High Street Coalition volunteers at Dick’s Donuts near High Street and Quigley Street, spending the morning picking up trash and helping beautify the surrounding neighborhood.

High Street Coalition volunteers organize community cleanups on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month.

Following the cleanup, Jones talked with Richard Johnson, CEO of Formerly Incarcerated Giving Back (FIGB). Johnson said he wanted to bring formerly incarcerated nonprofits together not only to help clean up the city, but also to bring youth with them to mentor the next generation.

Jones and Johnson discussed developing a community model that brings formerly incarcerated individuals, Oakland youth and nonprofit organizations together to clean and beautify the city.

The vision is to create opportunities for formerly incarcerated adults to take leadership roles while mentoring young people through hands-on community service. The program could also provide youth with opportunities to develop leadership skills, learn teamwork and responsibility, and potentially gain employment experience.

The goal is bigger than removing trash from the streets. It is about restoring neighborhoods while building relationships between generations and creating opportunities for people with lived experience to give back to their communities.

Jones believes the message is simple:

“We don’t talk trash, we pick up trash.”

The proposed collaboration seeks to bring Oakland nonprofits, formerly incarcerated leaders, youth, residents, businesses and community organizations together around a shared purpose — cleaning the town, beautifying Oakland and building a stronger community together.