Amazon.com<\/a> in the category of Civil Rights Law, tackles how environmental racism pertains to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the book, Crump explores how marginalized communities largely are overlooked by the institutions charged with protecting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crump also summarizes the state of civil and environmental rights in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As he prepared a return to Flint, Crump vowed to avoid distractions, including a recent $100 million lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman against the attorney and the parents of Trayvon Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe parents of Trayvon Martin and I don\u2019t want to give any attention to this frivolous and unfounded lawsuit at all. We believe attention is what he\u2019s seeking,\u201d Crump stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so asinine that the actions of the killer of their teenage son will continue to devastate them over and over again. Every year he comes up with something like the selling of the gun. It\u2019s just horrific what this individual does. We rather focus on something more important, like in Flint, and this guy is only a distraction,\u201d Crump noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crump\u2019s return to Flint, where he planned to hold rallies over two days to keep attention on the continued water crisis, comes nearly four years after he and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons went house-to-house delivering water to families throughout the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe found out that not only was there a water crisis, but Flint was a food desert,\u201d Crump stated. \u201cSo, we have to focus on this because it\u2019s important. We have children who have problems with brain development because they were poisoned by the government wantonly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Crump\u2019s new book digs deeper into the Flint crisis, it also explores racism across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In one section of \u201cOpen Season,\u201d Crump talks about one of the incidents that inspired him to continue his work as a civil rights attorney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we were in Ferguson, Missouri, in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed in broad daylight, there were these young Black Lives Matter activists who refused to let them sweep Michael Brown\u2019s life under the rug,\u201d Crump stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe government called in the National Guard. And I remember being there with the media and the crowds of people and the National Guard with militarized and an assault rifles,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crump continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you have these young people without fear. And this one brother specifically walked right up to the National Guard, who has their rifle trained on him. The man\u2019s face was practically touching the tip of the rifle, but he just had enough at that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe said, with the rifle in his face, \u2018go ahead and shoot me with all these cameras here, because you\u2019re going to shoot us anyway when they go away, so shoot and kill me now so the people can see how you kill us.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought that was riveting because I said he\u2019s right. It is important that people see how they\u2019re killing us. But not just with bullets in the police shooting cases, but more poignant, how they kill us every day in every city, in every state, in every courtroom in America legally with these trumped-up felony convictions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the book, Crump stated that he seeks to hold a mirror to the face of all Americans and force them to acknowledge the hypocrisy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have to at least acknowledge the racism and discrimination in the institutions of governance. If you don\u2019t ever admit it, we can never solve the problem,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took about three years for Crump to write \u201cOpen Season,\u201d and he called it one of the most challenging tasks he\u2019s undertaken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou sit there and remember all those things that have happened to black and brown people in this country, and it just breaks your heart,\u201d Crump stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOver and over again, no matter what the situation is, for people of color, we get the most injustice,\u201d Crump stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can give me any situation, and they will find a way to make sure that marginalized people of color don\u2019t get equal justice. \u201cThat\u2019s what we have to fight against. That\u2019s what we\u2019re fighting against in Flint, Newark, Baltimore, Washington, and other communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crump continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf this water crisis in Flint would have happened in a white community, it would be a national catastrophe. Lightning would strike and thunder would boom. I mean people would go to jail. \u201cBut, because it\u2019s a majority-minority community, it\u2019s almost as if Americans don\u2019t know it happened. They say, \u2018it doesn\u2019t affect me, just those black and brown people, so it doesn\u2019t matter.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOpen Season: <\/strong>Legalized Genocide of Colored People\u201d is available at Amazon.com<\/a> and other outlets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Famed Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump has written a new book that examines the troubling history of environmental racism in America. \u201cOpen Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People,\u201d the 272-page book that\u2019s already the top seller on Amazon.com in the category of Civil Rights Law, tackles how environmental racism pertains to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1351,1538,1539],"class_list":["post-2480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ben-crump","tag-civil-rights-law","tag-trayvon-martin","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions\/2481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}