I don’t feel the same energy with the trial involving the death of Arbery that I felt with the George Floyd situation. It feels we are falling back from fighting from reform when we should be leaning toward it. What do you think of that?
JWG: In my experiences and over the summer, what I learned is that we lawyers cannot do it alone. We need the entire community. We need the activist civil rights organizations, the ministers, the faith-based organizations. We need every special interest community involved in what we’re dealing with.
In this trial, the Black pastors showed up in numbers. What should our agenda be and do pastors play a role?
JWG: Man, the pastors are very necessary to the cause for civil rights. They’ve always been, it was a beautiful thing to see all of those pastors congregate in Brunswick, Georgia, to take a stand against these racist comments that were made by this attorney who lacked racial sensitivity. When they did, the whole world got to see the magic of the African American community coming together and what happens when we do come together.
RJ: It was critical when the Black pastors stepped to the plate. Where were the celebrities? Where was the social media interest? I think a lot of the wind from 2020 has come out of the sails now that we’re toward the end of 2021 with new issues.
