For Richard Claytor, watching migrants being surrounded by law enforcement and dragged from their cars, all over social media and TV in recent months, seems too familiar.
Black people in Boston, he says, have been treated this way for long swaths of history.
“I lived through a couple of decades where there was sort of the stop-and-frisk concept,” said Claytor, program director of the Boston-based Family Nurturing Center. “It’s just something that has come back again in a cycle with a different group of people as the focus.”
With that history in mind, Claytor is helping distribute “know your rights” guides in communities of color around the state. Titled “The Black Book,” the passport-sized pamphlets are meant to help people prepare themselves for random police stops. They include details on the right to vote and basic immigrant rights as well as how to document police brutality or being racially profiled.
Claytor says that although law enforcement agencies are currently focusing on immigrants, Black people will almost certainly be caught up in the churn.
“There’s not much difference between Black people and brown people in this particular circumstance,” he said. “There are dark-skinned folks who are immigrants, Haitians, and, quite frankly, folks from Africa, others that will be caught up in this.”
The Boston Police department did not respond to a request for comment for this story. But Attorney General Andrea Campbell said last week during an appearance on GBH’s Boston Public Radio that her office is planning to issue guidance to residents about how to interact with immigration enforcement officers. She also warned there is little local authorities can do to make sure federal agents are abiding by the rules.
“The thing we need to do now is put out information to the public on what they should expect or not expect when ICE is patrolling our communities,” Campbell said. “Good luck trying to hold them accountable.”
Fred Taylor, the head of the Worcester chapter of the NAACP, says he thinks the guide is a great idea. He said the Trump Administration’s current efforts to arrest immigrants echo what Black people have experienced for centuries.
“They’ve been coming for us for 400 years,” he said with a sad chuckle.
Taylor agrees there is a need to better prepare Black people for the next onslaught. He says he has a daughter who is mixed race who is sometimes confused with being a Latina immigrant. To prove her U.S. citizenship, she has begun carrying her passport. “This is what we have to deal with, right? This is how we have to live,” he said.
The guide largely echoes instructions from other organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union. Among recommendations:
- “You have the right to be free from police stops based on your race, ethnicity, or national origin.”
- When you feel this right has been violated: “Document the encounter … take photos or videos of the scene.”
- And, the book offers this reminder: “It is essential to remain calm and composed, even if you feel your rights are being violated.”
Claytor’s partner in the project is Ron Bell, founder of Dunk the Vote, a civic engagement organization that he says grew out of police harassment of Black men in Boston in the late 1980s.
Bell has been making regular trips to Nubian Square, Blue Hill Avenue, Mattapan and other places Black people congregate to hand out stacks of “The Black Book.”
“Civil rights get violated every day, and they get unreported,” Bell said. “This is important to bring this guide to folks so that they can know about their civil rights and what to do — and where to start — when they get their civil rights violated.”
On Wednesday, the Family Nurturing Center will host representatives of dozens of service organizations around the area for a briefing with Bell to introduce the booklet and encourage its circulation.
On a recent Saturday, Bell was handing out the pamphlets at the Silver Slipper, a Nubian Square diner. He ran into an old friend, James Thompson, Jr., who runs Second Chances Against the Odds, a motivational speaking program.
Thompson told GBH News that when Black men see TV footage of law enforcement surrounding and arresting immigrants, many will have a visceral response because of past confrontations with police.
“There’s a fear that perpetuates the air,” Thompson said. “You’re walking around with this fear, so it’s unresolved trauma too.”
Bell says violations of the rights of Black people “have become normalized.”
“When Black men are sitting in a crowd in front of a store and police come up, they just immediately say ‘Well we’re gonna get searched,’” he said. He wants those men to know: “That’s not normal. They have rights.”
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