People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by Robin D. Perry, president-elect of the Long Beach Bar Association, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

The Long Beach Bar Association condemns the killing of George Floyd. We deplore racism and bigotry in any form and will join others to root it out wherever it exists. The Long Beach Bar Association affirms the basic truth that Black Lives do Matter.

The legal community has a vital role to play in eradicating racial discrimination. Our Constitution is, more than anything, a legal document, and in it persons of African descent were declared only 3/5 human. Thirty-two of its framers were lawyers, including Alexander Hamilton, and many were slave owners. Indeed, it was not until 1863, 87-years after the country’s founding, when Abraham Lincoln, an attorney, delivered his Emancipation Proclamation. A year later, Congress passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

Yet, even after slavery was abolished, African Americans lived under Jim Crow laws that kept African Americans second class citizens. Regrettably, judges and lawyers promulgated those laws. For example, in Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court codified segregation through the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

While America’s legal system has been part of the problem, more recently it has been part of the solution. In 1954 the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education, which outlawed discrimination in public schools. In 1964 the country passed the Civil Rights Act which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race.

By then however, the damage to African Americans was enormous and largely unremedied. From 1776 to 1964, our country, through its laws, worked against equality for African Americans. To place it in temporal context, that is 192 years of the Nation’s 244-year existence or nearly 80% of its history. For nearly 2 centuries, African Americans were denied basic legal, political and economic rights afforded to other Americans. As a result, many in this community are disproportionately impoverished and incarcerated.

We recognize that a problem more than 300 years in the making will not be corrected overnight. While we have made strides, much of the work is ahead of us. The Long Beach Bar Association stands with thousands of lawyers who are doing that work every day.

What We Have Already Done

The Long Beach Bar Association has long provided scholarships to local high school students, including low-income students. Higher education completion is a significant factor in combating entrenched poverty.

The Long Beach Bar Association strongly supports reentry assistance to individuals who have been convicted of a crime. We are proud of our partnership with the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s Office where we have assisted in clearing the records of hundreds of area residents. We believe that once a person successfully completes probation, that person should not be unduly hampered in obtaining employment, housing or financial aid for college.

The Long Beach Bar Association supports providing legal assistance to the indigent through its Courthouse Clinic. Justice should be based upon the merits of the case and not on the ability of persons to afford an attorney.

In 1994, in response to local community needs, the Bar Association established the Long Beach Bar Foundation, which in turn started the Shortstop Youth Projects. Shortstop Youth Projects now encompasses several programs, including Shortstop Juvenile Crime Diversion, Juvenile Emotional Management and Individual and Family Counseling. Well over 10,000 at-risk youth and first-time offenders have been served since the Shortstop Youth Project’s inception. Classes are taught by volunteer instructors, who are mainly local attorneys, law enforcement personnel and educators. This is one of the ways we have strived to mitigate past and present inequities.

Moving Forward

The Long Beach Bar Association can and will do more. As it relates to police misconduct, we will form a committee to examine whether the judicially created doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields police officers from being personally liable for constitutional violations like excessive force, is prudent as a matter of policy. Upon approval of this body, we will make our findings available to you along with any next steps.

In the coming months, we will partner with the Moot Court Project, a Long Beach based summer academy designed to teach legal writing, oral argument and advocacy to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Additionally, we have created a new Equal Justice Committee to investigate what more we can do, how we can work toward structural change and further discussion of effective solutions from our members and our community.

Finally, we want to listen and hear your ideas. How can the Long Beach Bar Association be part of the solution? Email our Equal Justice Committee at [email protected]. While we may not be able to respond to all of your emails, we will read each of them as we try to be better and do better going forward.

Co-signatories to this article, written by Robin D. Perry, are Long Beach Bar Association President Rebecca Birmingham and Immediate Past President Linda Guthmann Krieger.