The Civil Liberties Task Force has been commissioned by our National President Joe E. Benton to continue the work of exploring policy issues affecting African communities.  In the past, the Task Force issued reports and findings relative to Civil Rights, Criminal and Juvenile Justice malpractices, the stand your ground laws in the State of Florida, racial profiling from a comprehensive perspective, leadership, and an in-depth analysis of the US Patriot Act and its potential for abuse.  A pipeline from the schools to the prison as a means to control, manipulate and maintain a perception that Africans in America are criminals.  The Civil Liberties and Social Justice Task Force will collaborate with other ABSW task forces to gather an analysis of the affects social injustices has upon one mental and physical health. 

The Civil Liberties Task Force will work to show the correlation between civil injustice and those elective to represent our communities. Civil Liberties Task Force will provide informative data to the membership that clearly demonstrates the influence social injustice has upon: poverty, education, housing, criminal justice system, employment, business and health.  What is the responsibility of those elected to save our people from the emotional and physical barriers established by a government that is not at all influenced by the needs of African people?  The cultures of racial and ethnic minorities influence many aspects of mental illness, including how persons from a given culture communicate and manifest their symptoms, their style of coping, their family and community supports, and their willingness to seek assistance. The laws as established by the government have not been amended for the inclusion of the African people and the other groups that make up the so called minorities in this country.  There is a clear racial divide that tends to perpetuate the violations of human rights of African and persons other than Europeans throughout the Diaspora.  The suffering of our people in the Congo where the raping of women is employed as a means of control has fallen on closed eyes by the United Nations and America.

The goal of the Civil Liberties Task Force is to stimulate the resourcefulness of our membership who will in turn educate our people within their communities. This task force will employ education as a means of affording our membership: operational definitions of the three types of racism, the importance of collaborating with (African) organizations with similar goals and teaching organizational skills which can be employed within their communities.  The Civil Liberties Task Force tends to feel that is a difficult request to ask of a government to reform form a culture of inhumane treatment of its disenfranchised people that has lead to the privileges that the so called majority population enjoy. This Task Force will work to design programs and strategies to provide services to African and disenfranchised persons affected by nature and manmade disaster.  We want to share with the membership the progress of our people who are still enduring concerns years following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti and the tornadoes which affected our people in Alabama. We will continue to advocate for: a collaboration of Africans, the need for programs design by us for us, the importance of voter’s registration, the accountability of elected officials and America’s continual support of the genocide of Africans nationally as well as internationally.

Submitted by:  Larry Hayes, LCSW and Arnett Avery-Brewer, LCSW