Commentary

Opinion: The Signs Say Black Lives Matter. Yet the Very People Who Are Supposed to Protect Us too Often, in too Many Places, Don’t Seem to Agree.

[George] Floyd’s murder sparked peaceful demonstrations in cities across the country, demonstrations that, in Minneapolis and a few other places, turned toward riots. Chauvin and his co-conspirators weren’t immediately arrested for the murder. Had Floyd, an African American, done this to a white person, he likely would have been jailed immediately, with a bond too high to reach.

Published

6 years ago

June 11, 2020

Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

May 29, Oakland. Photo by Saskia Hatvany.

The murder of George Floyd was a lynching in broad daylight.

Three police officers stood and watched as a fourth, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd’s neck. They watched for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, with Floyd unresponsive for 2 minutes and 53 seconds of that, according to the criminal complaint against Chauvin. They did nothing to stop the murder.

Their silence was as much an act of violence as Chauvin’s knee. And if there were no video recording of the murder, they likely would have upheld the Code Blue loyalty, and lied about what happened.

Floyd’s murder sparked peaceful demonstrations in cities across the country, demonstrations that, in Minneapolis and a few other places, turned toward riots. Chauvin and his co-conspirators weren’t immediately arrested for the murder. Had Floyd, an African American, done this to a white person, he likely would have been jailed immediately, with a bond too high to reach.

For too long, for too often, African Americans have been brutalized without consequence. Floyd’s plea for mercy — “I can’t breathe” — was an echo of Eric Garner’s last words. Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, too often the killers walk free. The signs say Black Lives Matter. Yet the very people who are supposed to protect us too often, in too many places, don’t seem to agree.

Instead of accountability, police have been given impunity. There were 17 complaints filed against Chauvin in his 19 years on the force. Only one resulted in even a reprimand.

Too few of the police live in the communities they patrol. Too many see themselves as enforcers, not protectors. There are only a few bad apples, we are told. But the Code Blue wall of silence protects the abusers, and too often rots the entire barrel. Young officers learn that if they want to advance, if they want better assignments, better pay, more security, they have to fit in. And the rot keeps spreading.

The demonstrations are necessary. The rioting understandable but regrettable. Already, the damage done to property, the exchanges with the police becomes the subject, not the agenda that is necessary to focus on the outbreaks of rage that are inevitable.

“In the final analysis, the riot is the language of the unheard,” Dr. King taught us, “What is it that America has failed to hear?”

In the last years of the Obama administration, peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations occurred in cities across the country. In a stunning display of discipline and self-control, demonstrators protested police brutality and murders peacefully, shutting down major thoroughfares.

The Obama administration began an effort to encourage police reform. The sentence disparities between crack and cocaine — the “black” drug and the “white drug” — were reduced. Transfers of military weaponry to police forces were restricted. The Obama Justice Department entered into a series of consent decrees with more than a dozen police departments to encourage them to change their practices — to become more a guardian than an occupier. The consent decrees couldn’t root out racism, or dismiss the sadistic or the disturbed, but they could encourage a change in tactics, and perhaps in attitudes.

When Trump was elected, he immediately torpedoed the reforms, and terminated the consent decrees. He reopened the spigot on military weaponry and encouraged the police directly to get tough with offenders.

Last October, Bob Kroll, the president of the Minneapolis Police Union, appeared at a Trump rally to celebrate the president for freeing the police from the mild reforms of the Obama years. “The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” he told the crowd. “The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around, letting the cops do their job, put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of us.”

Those trumpeting law and order offer African Americans neither.

Those peaceful protests were met with harsh reaction. The voices were not heard. And now, Minneapolis is in flames and the streets of America’s cities are filled with protesters.

What America has failed to hear — decade after decade — is the demand for equal justice under the law, the demand for equal opportunity, the call for basic rights — not only for African Americans but for all — the rights to a livable wage, decent housing, health care, a safe environment, a protective, not a dangerous police force. The suffering is real; the gap documented over and over, most recently as poverty, hunger and illness makes African Americans disproportionately the victims of the coronavirus.

This isn’t complicated. The solutions are known. From the Kerner Commission in 1968 on, the analyses have been done; the needed reforms detailed — and shelved. There is money enough for top-end tax cuts, for bailing out banks and CEOs, for waging endless wars across the world. There is never enough money to fund the gap.

And so the anger and frustration build, kindling ready to ignite. And time after time, an act of outrageous police brutality sets the kindling aflame.

The demonstrators are showing courage. We’ve also seen, in a few cities, police leaders show real leadership and wisdom. I pray that all also show caution. We demonstrate not only against the threat of Code Blue, but in the time of COVID-19. Masks, social distancing, care for one another are vital so the demonstrations for life don’t end up sacrificing lives to the virus.

In the midst of a pandemic, some march in the hope that America will listen. Some march without hope but because silence is no longer acceptable. Yes, Minneapolis needs to charge, try and convict the murderer and his accomplices. Yes, the Minneapolis police force needs to cleanse itself, inside and out. America too needs to listen and to change. We will come together, or we will surely come apart.

Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

Posts by Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

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Black History

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

24 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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Commentary

‘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

24 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.