Reverend Pinkney
Reverend Pinkney
Reverend Pinkney, leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), has for over five years organized tirelessly on behalf of the Black community of Benton Harbor. A month after the June 2003 Benton Harbor rebellion, Reverend Pinkney and BANCO organized a nonviolent civil rights march of over 200 to demand justice for the people of Benton Harbor. At the time, Benton Harbor police chief Samuel Harris threatened to prosecute Pinkney and other organizers of this nonviolent march after the Department of Transportation refused to grant a permit for the demonstration.
In February 2005 Reverend Pinkney led a ballot initiative to recall City Commissioner Glenn Yarbrough. Yarbrough, a powerful friend of the Whirlpool corporation and long-time supporter of police chief Harris, was removed from office by a vote of 297 to 246.
In the wake of the February 22 election, the local powers that be rallied to Yarbrough's side. On April 15, Chief Judge Paul Maloney voided the election results, returning Yarbrough to office. Three days later, Reverend Pinkney was arrested and charged with one misdemeanor count of offering cash to influence votes, and four felonies (three charges of improperly possessing absentee ballots and one of trying to influence absentee voters).
A Spring 2006 trial, which resulted in a hung jury, exposed a local government machine rife with corruption and deceit. Though the prosecution failed to present any convincing evidence against Reverend Pinkney, they vowed to retry the case. If convicted, Pinkney faces a possible prison sentence of 20 years.
What was your political background before BANCO?
I started, basically, in high school. We formed an organization, of which I was the president, to deal with issues affecting students. Whenever an issue came up, they would come to me, and I would deal with the principal or the board of education. That's how it really began in terms of being an activist.
What sort of issues did you deal with in the high school?
Well, basically, the lunch program, issues regarding certain policies the school had against, maybe, wearing certain clothes to school, or other things that may appear to be minor issues to most people but, at that time, were really tremendous to everyone. If a student got suspended for fighting or something like that, I would be there with him to make sure that what he received was fair and just. The school had about 4,000 students, and I became the president, or the overseer, of this organization, and whatever problem came up, I would have to be involved.
Between then and 1999, when you started BANCO, what else were you involved in?
In '96 or '97, there was an issue where a young man was knocked off a bike by a St. Joseph Police Department officer. Basically, he stuck his arm out while the guy was riding across the bridge, knocked him off his bike, knocked him out -- he was out for about an hour or so. He injured the man, and nobody wanted to do anything about it. So that's where I came into play. I got together with some of the ministers, and we came up with this idea -- basically it was my idea -- that we should make sure that this officer be disciplined for this assault on this young man. And, somehow, I got with the other ministers and it came to be apparent that we really weren't on the same page. They voted to allow the St. Joseph police to police themselves. They voted 12-3, because they were afraid. They had never stood up for anything in this community before, and until that point I really wasn't involved in what was happening here in the community on that level. But from that point on, people would approach me if they had an issue with their job or at city hall or at the courthouse, and they'd ask me to go and mediate for them. And that's how we started in 1999 when we actually got started with our organization, BANCO.
And what are BANCO's main activities?
One of the things that we deal with, we monitor the court system over here. We're usually at the courthouse from 8:30 to 11:30 in the morning, and then we come here, to the library, and we deal with the homeless here. They might need a ride, they might need some shoes or a coat, and we try to find clothing for them, and maybe a shelter for that night or two. And we're usually here from about 11:30 to about 1, then we go back to the courthouse from 1:30 to about 4:30. We stay at the courthouse and we continue to monitor the court system. We understand that, for years, the court system has really been our enemy. What they do has been unfair, unjust... The system is broken over there. And anytime you're dealing with a broken system, you produce a community just like this.
Everywhere you go, if you have a felony, they won't hire you. And I would say maybe 60-70 percent of the people who live here in Benton Harbor probably have a felony, and that's why they're unemployed. They keep saying that the unemployment rate here is under 70 percent, but I can't believe it. It's got to be at least 80 percent. And 90 percent of the people here live below the poverty level, so that's something we're working on. At one point we were in a position to bring jobs here, with a guy coming in from Minnesota. We were going to bring 300-1000 jobs here, but then Whirlpool, which does not want the African Americans to stay here, they want to continue to take over our community, and the way they're doing it, they're doing it systematically, starting with the court system. My idea is this: if you can neutralize the court system, you can neutralize a lot of problems that exist here in Benton Harbor, so that's where we start, and that's what we do. That's what BANCO is -- our job is to neutralize, and to be a force for the people, to help them in any way we can.
What was the significance of Glenn Yarbrough in your recall campaign?
Whirlpool was about to receive 535 acres of land, and it had to be voted on, and they had to have six votes. Glenn Yarbrough is the muscle, he's the one who kept these people under control, and he really instigated the votes for Whirlpool. So my idea was this: if we recall him, the head honcho, we could stop the whole process. And that's why it was so important to get him.
And Whirlpool was so sure, they were so positive, that with all their money, and all their resources, we would not be able to stop them. They were backing him up 100 percent, they had flooded their dollars into the community. Most campaigns, you know, somebody running for Governor might spend in the millions or something like that. Someone running for Attorney General might spend a half million. If you're running for a community commission seat, at the most you'd probably spend a thousand dollars. But Whirlpool pulled into this community about $50,000 or $100,000 to get this man elected. That's why it was so significant, the victory that we achieved through this, because they had no idea that they were about to lose the election.
We decided we were going to use the absentee ballot. The first thing we did, we went out and got all these signatures, for the recall, and it was very successful. We got these signatures so fast that it was almost incredible -- it was so remarkable that we were able to get so many signatures so quickly. Then, Whirlpool didn't really think anything of it, because we didn't have the resources, the money or anything like that. But we had the manpower, we had people, we were organized and committed to having him recalled.
So we got all the signatures, and what they did -- this is how they work -- they infiltrated. One of the guys who was going out getting signatures, Glenn Yarbrough and [Benton Harbor city manager] Pete Mitchell met with him, and when they met with him they asked him to try to sabotage the recall by getting phony signatures and stuff like that. And they paid him well to do it. So Yarbrough had completed his mission, and he thought that we didn't have enough signatures, but we had over 3000 signatures, and we only needed about 300 to have a new election. So he probably got about 500 or 600 signatures that were phony. I didn't kick him out of our organization, he came to me, confessed, and told me what Glenn Yarbrough and Pete Mitchell had told him to do, and that they were going to pay him well and they paid him well. So I said, OK, we won't worry about that, we'll submit our signatures, but we won't submit all these extra signatures that you brought in, and anyway we had enough to do it.
So now we had an election scheduled for February 22, 2005, and we decided we would get people to vote absentee. We went out to everyone who was over 60, everyone who was handicapped, everyone who planned on being out of town, we went out to people who weren't registered, but we got them registered in time to vote, so we made sure we had X amount of votes, and by February 1, we knew we had won the election. And they were out spending money, you know, having pizza parties, hot dog parties, trying to spend a lot of money. They spent a lot of money -- we didn't spend money, but we had manpower, and that was the difference. And by that date, by February 21, they knew something was funny, because we didn't go out and campaign. You didn't see any signs, you didn't see nothing. On February 21, we had a list of absentee ballots over there, well over 300, and we said, you're 300 behind, and when they figured that out they knew they had lost the election and there was no way they were going to catch up. So they got with Glenn Yarbrough, they got with Cornerstone Alliance, they got with Whirlpool and the city commissioners over here, they all met with the prosecutor. They had to figure out a way that they could have this election set aside. Because they already knew, the election hadn't even happened yet but they knew they were about to lose. They decided -- this is how bold they are -- they went to the prosecutor over here, they told him, we're about to lose this election and we need to do something. So he said, you need to find somebody, anybody, I don't care who they are, as long as they're voting, to say Reverend Pinkney paid you $5 to vote. And you can give them $10, you can give them $20. But he gave him only $10 to say this! He gave him $10, and the guy testified, he signed an affidavit, he went and told the mayor, he went and told some of the commissioners, that Glenn Yarbrough had paid him $10 to say I paid him 5, and he said the prosecutor over there had told him that he won't get in any trouble, assured him that he wouldn't get in trouble if he did.
So, that's the reason Glenn Yarbrough was so important, because he's a bully, he bullies the other commissioners, and he was the middle man between Pete Mitchell, city manager, and Cornerstone Alliance and Whirlpool. It was almost impossible not to get him. We knew that if we got him, we knew that they could not do anything else after that. He was the main person. So, that's why we had to recall him. And it was tremendous, because Whirlpool is a billion dollar corporation, and now it's all over the country that Whirlpool got a whooping from a group of citizens in Benton Harbor, Michigan. And, I mean, we gave them a whooping! And they're not going to take it lying down.
You know, if I was in their position I probably would have done the same thing -- if I was rotten and dirty, corrupt, you know, I would have done the same thing. It's nothing new, you know... And they try to deny it, but everybody who knows anything around here knows that Whirlpool controls everything. Basically they're a bunch of thieves who stole all the land here, all the lakefront land. You've got to have six votes to do it, and that's why Yarbrough was so important. If we eliminate him, none of this stuff could be happening; we wouldn't have to worry about a hostile takeover of our community. Whirlpool doesn't want any jobs here where people have to stay. They don't want it, they say, why? They're taking over all this; it's just a matter of time. He had to be the person we snatch, and we snatched him, and we're more than happy about it. In other words, we gave him a good spanking, that's what we did. We gave Whirlpool a spanking and we gave him a spanking.
Do you see any parallels between Katrina and New Orleans and what's going on here? It seems, from what you're saying, Whirlpool's plans to gentrify, evict the Black community basically, that there's a lot in common with what's going on now in New Orleans.
Basically it's the same thing. You see, what people don't quite understand... When I went down to New Orleans, I didn't know what I was really going into. I had no idea that the situation was like it is. And there's something even more important than Katrina itself that most people don't quite understand, that most people don't get. The army was patrolling the streets. You couldn't go in, you couldn't go out, unless you got permission from the army. Nobody hollered, nobody screamed about it, nobody even thought about it. The army was shooting at people, and nobody was hollering about it. So I put this thing together. I remember when the army... We had that uprising in 2003 here. It wasn't no real rising, it was basically nothing, but they made it something, you know -- the TV cameras came in, there were 13, 14 houses, these were mostly abandoned houses, a couple families lost their homes because they lived next door to abandoned houses. The army came in to Benton Harbor. They had tanks, machine guns... You're in a city, tanks rolling up and down your street. What are you going to shoot? A tank can knock a whole block off! And nobody complaining! The army patrolling, they had them stationed all over here, nobody complaining!
Katrina told me the story. If we don't submit to the hostile takeover of Whirlpool, they'll bring the army in. They'll have somebody create a riot or an uprising so they can come in, and the rest of the world will say, "Oh, you can go ahead and kill all of them, they're nothing but wild savages anyway, look what they've done, they've burned down their own neighborhood." You won't even have police officers, you know, you're going to have an army. The army is going to be patrolling this community. It's just a matter of time. Jobs, all the jobs are going to be outsourced; everything's going to be moving...
See, this is what I'd like the people to know and understand. It won't be long unless we start standing up and telling people. We've got to start telling people the truth. Things are happening in this country that people don't even know about. Every single day you're losing some of your rights, every day. It's just a matter of time. Every single day they're taking away your rights. They're giving you a taste of the army coming in, they're giving you a taste of this. I look at Katrina, when I was down there I saw something that really affected the way I was thinking. Because, I said, "Hmm, the army, they're not letting anybody leave." People could have left there, this is what people don't really know, people could have left, but you had to get past the army to leave. And the army wasn't letting you out of there. These people were expendable. They cared less about these people... I never heard one single newscaster talking about the army being there, patrolling the streets. It wasn't nothing like they said. Nothing. But then they try to make it easy on you.
Benton Harbor, March 11, 2006:
"Jail the real crooks!"
Last year BANCO ran some candidates for city council, right?
Yes, we ran a couple of people, and we were very, very successful. We had two people -- they're victories but they're not victories, because when you don't have the majority, you know, you really can't do a whole lot. It's always going to be six votes to three votes, and if they have six votes they can always do whatever they want. So, we did it, but there were not enough people running at the time, or there were not enough openings at the time to really make a difference.
But you got two people elected?
Yeah, we got two people elected. And this time we expect to get about four or five. We're going for it all this time. I think it's five seats that are going to be available, and I think we're going to win all five, and that's going to be a very... You see, that would give us a majority. If we win just three or four we'll have a majority.
Do you have any thoughts on the Green Party or independent politics?
I support [Green Party senatorial candidate] David Sole 100 percent. As a matter of fact I'm down here doing some things for him too, getting people out to vote for him. The issue that we're going to have, we've got people who don't know how to split their ballot. We're going to vote for Amos Williams for Attorney General, we're going to do that, but we're going to vote the Green Party after that. So, Campbell, definitely Campbell... We're not voting for [Michigan governor] Granholm, that's for sure, there's no way we could vote for somebody like her. She came down here and gave everybody a song and dance, and the people fell for it. And, you know, if it took my vote to give her a victory, I wouldn't vote for her, that's how serious it is. I wouldn't mess with her. And she has the nerve to put this guy Butzbaugh in office, made him a judge, and she knew he was a racist. And I don't really deal with racism; to me it's giving them an outlet. You've got the haves and you've got the have-nots. And if you put Black and white against each other, then the haves don't have to do no fighting, and that's how they've been doing for years, they've been having a free pass. And that's not because of them; that's because of us. We sit down and let them have a free pass when we know we should be standing up fighting against them, these corporations, this government that we have. We know we should -- no ifs, ands, or buts about it. That's important.
Let me talk about the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. They are the same identical party, they work underneath that same system, and people don't quite understand that. Once a Democrat gets into office he falls into a system, you see. The government is supposed to be run for the people, by the people, but not anymore. It's a system now. In other words, our government is broken. Our system is broken. And it affects each and everyone today. You can see, elections really right now, basically, mean almost nothing. They make the decision who they want in office, who they need, who they don't need. They really don't want the people to get out and vote anymore, it really doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference whether you vote or not. They decide who's going to be in office, who's not going to be in office, it's just that simple.
Tell me about some of the tactics used against you in your trial.
Before I talk about my trial let's talk about the recall trial when they set aside the election. They didn't have the votes to set aside the election, but the judge is Paul Maloney, and he's going to be with these federal courts now, Bush nominated him for federal court, not because of his work but because he's a personal friend of their family. He said the reason why he's setting aside this election is because Reverend Pinkney was involved in this election. And the Associated Press picked that up and published it, and when the Associated Press picks something up and publishes it, everybody reads it. That's one of the reasons why I'm known across the country. You cannot set an election aside because Reverend Pinkney was involved. There's no way they could have set aside the election, but this judge came up with the idea that if Reverend Pinkney was involved in this election, I'm going to set it aside. And they did. People didn't holler, people didn't scream about it, people did nothing. And that's why he was able to do it and get away with it. I hollered, not because they said it was me but because I knew it wasn't right, I knew that by law you cannot set the election aside unless the majority of the votes become the minority; the minority has to become the majority. There's no other way.
So now, let me get to my trial. After they set aside the election they put out a warrant for my arrest, had my bond set at $100,000. And it was a joke to me, because I knew there was no way they were going to convict me, no way possible. What they did, they went out and started paying people to come in and testify against me. They offered them all kinds of money. They did everything they could. They thought they were going to have an all-white jury, and when you have an all-white jury here, 99.9 percent of the time you're going to get convicted. They were so sure they were going to convict me they didn't care. They had this guy sit up there, he was so bold, they had him on tape telling this guy that if you go in and testify against Reverend Pinkney, we're going to buy you lunch and we're going to pay you. They played it in court, and this jury, they had to know that these people were being paid! It was rigged. So, we gave them a real live whooping, I mean they took a butt-spanking they'll never forget.
It was bad on every angle. Everybody who came and testified, they told them it's all right if you lie because you've got immunity, so you can say what you want, anything you want to say. But then, you can't say something at the recall trial, then say something different at the preliminary examination, then say something different at my trial. Each time their statements were different. It was so stupid, it was shameful and disgraceful. So now they're going to try and coordinate everything they say, but it ain't going to work. These are the same witnesses, it's going to be the same result.
It was bad, every time they put somebody on the stand they went out telling people that the prosecutor and the Sheriff's department was paying them to come in. They tell somebody else, then they come in and testify, yeah, she told me she was being paid to come in here in testify. Anytime they paid them any amount of money, they went out and told somebody that the sheriff's department gave you $500 to come in and lie on Reverend Pinkney. We're going to take this to a different level, we're taking this to federal court, too, where they don't have immunity, you know.
So, the jury came back and told the judge that they couldn't come to a decision. And this was a specially selected jury, see. We knocked off as many as we could knock off, we got their neighbors, their cousins, their aunts. One of their family members we couldn't get off. They had about three or four people from Whirlpool, and a guy from the Rotary Club, who was their personal friend too. They had seven folks before we got started, they had the seven votes, they figured all they had to do was persuade the other five. Of course, here's the incident that happened. They came back and said, "We can't come to a decision on this, you know, it's 6 to 6, there's no way that we can come to a decision and convict this man." So, the judge told them, "You're going to stay here until you come back with a conviction." And my attorney looked at him, and he said, "I mean, come back with a decision." He tried to change it. So everybody was looking like, hmm, that's weird. And right during that process, the bailiff, for reasons unknown, took the foreman of the jury down to the prosecutor's office. They were down there for about 30 minutes, and we caught them. And when we caught them, it was over for them. They got mad and angry because they got caught. But we know they do bad things over there, and that's what they were doing.
We finally got a mistrial. The trial was over, the new trial was scheduled for September 19. September 19 got changed to January 9 now, and we just put a motion in last week to have it delayed another 90 days. Then, in November, we're going to do a constitutional initiative, and this is going to be tremendous. This is so, so, important, because it's kind of like me against the government. It's me against them, but it becomes published, it goes in all the books that we filed this motion. It's going to be tremendous, you know. We're dealing with corruption on a level that you never saw before in your life. People would never believe there's this much corruption in one city. It's bad.
Here's another incident that I'm going to bring up real fast for you. After the trial was over, one of the guys from the jury, I don't know who he was, he must have followed me from my home to the post office. And he came up to me and told me, well, you know that that jury was rigged, don't you? I said "no" -- I knew it was, I just didn't say nothing, you know. But he said, "They had already decided, they didn't care what evidence they heard, they were going to convict you." He was like, "Man, you've got to watch these people, they're doing everything in their power trying to get you." I said, "I know that, that's their job. I tell them I'm more than a match for you, so take it from there."
Do you think their plan now is to keep retrying you until they get a conviction?
Oh, yeah, of course. This was a major victory. You know, this was tremendous, because, Berrien County, when they're after you, they get you! You know, all the corruption that's up there, that's from the top to the bottom. I mean, the lies, and they spend money, they pay people to come in. They'll pay you and dare you to say something about it. So, that's what it all adds up to. I know they're coming, but I've got to be prepared for them. And that's what it's all about.
Aside from coming to the Berrien County courthouse for the constitutional initiative in November, are there other things people can do to support you?
Oh, absolutely. We've just put together a documentary, which we're selling for $10. And those who want it mailed to them, they can contact me at (269)925-0001 or mail me a check, for $10 for the documentary and $2 for mailing. Mail it to: 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49002. That's very important because we're going to need a lot of resources in order to just deal with these individuals, because we know that they have a tremendous amount of resources. So, we do have a documentary of our first trial and some of the things that are going on in this community, and we would love for everybody to purchase one. It's only $10 for the DVD, and $2 for mailing.
Is there anything else you want to say?
I just want to say that people have to come together. We have to start mobilizing. We have to understand that, basically, government is a threat, and we need to do something immediately. We can't wait -- we can't wait another day. we need to start focusing on the future. And this is something we can do. And remember, the Republicans and Democrats are the same people under the same system. Let's do something about it.