and called for whistleblower protection and incentives for those, especially for rank and file officers, who witness corruption, brutality, and lawlessness within NYS’s public institutions.

continued the call for accountability of Brooks’ death at the hands of NYS Correctional officers, supported the call for a statewide investigation to be headed by an inspector general or equivalent of “special prosecutor,”

and the ways in which this brutal form of ritualistic and racialized murder were consistently used to reaffirm white supremacist culture and white patriarchal power live in the present.

The lynching of Robert Brooks reflects how unresolved histories of ritualistic murder carried out by white vigilantes, the spectacle associated with lynching of the Black body,

Given that this action was seemingly rooted in an organized group called the “Beat Up Squad” strongly suggests what happened to Brooks was also a byproduct of a systemic problem.

That no one tried to stop the beating of Brooks, including at least one supervisor, a nurse, also white, harkens back to the Jim Crow era.

and the struggles Black people in Mississippi faced as they sought to educate themselves, vote, and be recognized and respected as human beings. Her question spoke to the limitations of democracy and liberty in 1964 when she asked the question, “Is this America?”

During the Democratic National Convention some 60 years ago, roughly the same time Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president in August, Fannie Lou Hamer raised another question when she told her story-

Tomorrow evening at Utica University, I will participate in an ad hoc panel to help our students, colleagues, and staff address what will likely be the same set of questions: How did this happen? and What implications did it hold on democracy and liberty?

The auditorium at SU was filled to capacity as students, faculty, and staff gathered to hear a variety of perspectives, present questions, and share their anxiety, anger, and fear.