Maile Hampton was trying to help a fellow protester.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: The Sacramento Police Department has sparked widespread outrage after it was revealed that 20-year-old Maile Hampton, an African American, was arrested for “lynching” after trying to pull a fellow protester away from police during a January rally against law enforcement brutality in Sacramento.
No one was killed or even hurt in the demonstration, according to the Associated Press, yet the 20-year-old woman was booked under a 1933 section of the California penal code that applies the word “lynching” to the crime of attempting to seize someone from police custody.
“To come full circle 2015 and have a woman of color charged with that crime — the irony was not lost on me,” said state Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles, the black legislator who introduced the bill. She said that although the code was originally designed to protect African Americans in police custody, the word “lynching” should no longer be attached to the law.
Sacramento’s mayor, Kevin Johnson, likened the usage of the terminology to the flying of the Confederate flag, a practice that has come under scrutiny following race motivated murders in the U.S.
“When I first heard that word, I immediately start thinking about someone hanging from a tree with a rope around his neck,” Johnson, himself black, stated. “Is that really what this law is supposed to mean? That’s just a really painful context.”
According to The Guardian, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson asked state legislators to take the term out of the penal code shortly after Hampton’s arrest, saying via Twitter on February 25 that the “word ‘lynching’ has a long and painful history in our nation. It’s time to remove its use in CA Law.”
Hampton, believes she and her half-brother, Sale, were being targeted by police because they were “very active in the Black Lives Matter movement”.
“It’s clear [law enforcement] are trying to target two of the most powerful Answer activists,” she told The Guardian, referring to the Act Now To Stop War and Racism Coalition, a group that has grown in prominence nationally as an organizing body for the Black Lives Matter movement and other issues.
“Based on how law enforcement has interacted with us and tried to get information, we know that they know that we are very intersectional in our activism and we are two young educated people of color,” said Hampton, who according to The Guardian also has participated in rallies for pro-Palestine causes, raising the minimum wage (she works a low-wage job as a car detailer), organizing fast food workers and a recent event for Cesar Chavez day, among others.
“And they see that as a threat,” added Sale.