Black Lives Matter
After 12 days of worldwide protests that show no signs of subsiding, some notes on what should be the defining moment of the 21st century. Plus, a reflection on the Michael Sorkin case.
This platform isn’t anything huge—it’s certainly a lot bigger than I ever thought it would be when I hit publish on the first post here in February, but certainly in the scheme of things it’s pretty small. But I want to be clear: I believe Black Lives Matter. When I post about stuff on here, I want people to know that I am biased—I believe that racism exists in a systemic form in sports, in politics, in media, in higher education, in the judicial system, basically everything that I write about here, I’m writing about it through the lens of accepting that systemic racism exists and has to be fought back against.
I don’t view that as an issue of objectivity. Racism is a truth—it’s humanity’s greatest fault and I’m beginning to think the legacy of the last 500 years tells us it’s our defining trait.
I’m pretty numb to stuff at this point—reading detailed sexual assault complaints and charges leveled against alleged child pornographers really seems to have dulled what bothers me enough to say something publicly about it rather than just cursing about it to myself from the safety of my apartment—and I assume everyone else in numb to stuff at this point too (see: Pandemic, constant violations of civil rights, various war atrocities, or angry people on the internet), but you know what really gets me, what actually makes me angry?
Watching police officers beat the s—t out of people. Watching police officers kill black people. Watching families, instead of breaking down or lashing out like I would, go protest, speak out, ask for justice.
Black Lives Matter. That undeniable truth is never more evident to me than when Black people stand up and speak to their pain, speak about why they have to argue to leaders and fellow citizens that that’s true.
Yet countries still let Black people down, the same way they systematically let down women, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, and pretty much anyone who isn’t a gazillionaire at this point.
Perhaps change is coming. Minneapolis is going to try to disband its police force and start over—Camden, New Jersey’s efforts will probably serve as the model. House Democrats have introduced police reform legislation. Some police forces are seeing their budgets cut (in pretty small percentages). Defunding or abolishing the police isn’t the same taboo subject it was a month ago.
Then again, people are beginning to argue about what should come next. There’s research about what’s going on and what can be done, but people are beginning to argue about it at the online activist level and the mainstream political level (shoutout to Senator Joe Manchin for, in that last article, trying to push back against my claim that defunding or abolishing the police isn’t a taboo subject anymore, thank you for reminding me that opening any sort of discussion over solutions that isn’t universally isn’t immediately agreeable is “stupid,” Joe, you’re going to give me an aneurysm but hey, f—k me right).
So here’s what I’m going to do: where all eight of the #8Can’tWait initiatives aren’t in place, I’m going to support the implementation of those initiatives. Where it’s possible to do more than that, like redefining what a police force can and should be, I’ll support those efforts too, since widespread, multi-level reform is the only long term answer to battling systemic racism in police departments—the people behind 8 Can’t Wait have said that the most effective way of reforming departments in the long run is redefinition (it’s in the link on the word research in the last paragraph, but here’s that link again).
I try only to cover things in this newsletter I think I have a good handle on—if I write about something I don’t get as a news article or an opinion article, I’ve spread misinformation and made myself look like an idiot simultaneously. I cannot put a good-faith argument together that could convince you that I have a good handle on what’s required to eradicate systemic racism or police brutality, but I am still going to cover this stuff moving forward. It’ll be done in a similar way to how I’ve handled COVID-19 stuff: lots of links to other articles, lots of links to research, and I hope you read those because maybe if we all are reading more about this and learning together, we’ll be able to come up with more answers more quickly that actually puts America on a road toward ending racism that is more meaningful than claiming you’re not racist or that you stand with oppressed people—as nice as those sentiments are, just standing or just existing in a world where people are satisfied with ending conversations about race at “I’m not a part of the problem” isn’t enough. Being anti-racist should be the only option, and I’ll be trying to push for that on here whenever this topic gets covered on here.
But there is one story that I think I know better than anyone else, so let’s talk about that before I toss the subscribe button on here and tell you to go home. If you’re not into reading about people being racist and writing racist epithets, I’d recommend you not read further. Thanks for reading to this point, distraction edition of the newsletter out tomorrow morning.
The Michael Sorkin Case
For previous coverage of the case, click the headline above, it’s a link to the Sorkin coverage in The Heights. Most of the stories are linked to below at one point or another, though.
While I was working for The Heights, I spent...a surprising amount of time in courtrooms—there’s only one time that a judge asked me to stand and speak for the record, though, and it was the first thing that happened to me after I officially left the newspaper.
For the record: I’m going to use allegedly a lot in the next few sentences because I genuinely don’t know if I’m allowed not to.
In December 2018, then-Boston College student Michael Sorkin allegedly wrote “N—R,” “F—K N—S,” and “N—S ARE THE PLAGUE” on various surfaces in a BC residence hall and destroyed property in both that hall and another one. A few weeks later, details emerged showing Sorkin also expressed anti-Semitic sentiments, identifying himself as a “Jew hater,” and saying he “don’t not like Jews [sic].”
In February of 2019, I reported that Sorkin is also alleged to have asked a Boston College Police Department officer if he had “‘ever killed a Blackman [sic]’ while making popping noises.” The public records I reviewed noted Sorkin allegedly also wrote “KILL N—S,” “I HATE N—S,” and “I F—KING HATE N—S,” in addition to the other racist epithets and statements he previously was reported to have allegedly written. I also reported that Sorkin had officially been charged with a “Civil Rights Violation”—that’s legal-speak in Massachusetts for a hate crime.
For various reasons, any sort of ruling or discussion of what Sorkin was legally facing did not take place in a courtroom until October 7, 2019. I’d already been told that Sorkin was “no longer a BC student” by BC administrators by then—the nature of how or why he was no longer a BC student was legally protected information.
And on October 7, Sorkin took a plea deal. He was put on probation for 18 months, admitted that if the case had gone to trial on the charges that he faced that weren’t hate crime related, he would’ve been found guilty, but via a workaround was not considered guilty in the eyes of the law (it’s called a continuance without finding). If he breaks his probation, he’ll be found guilty for assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, and tagging property.
The plea deal dismissed his hate crime charge. When that hearing happened, he was enrolled at UNLV. I have no idea what the status of his situation is now. This is the article that was written on the hearing.
But I was the only person in the courtroom who observed what happened, and it was a lot more complicated than just a plea deal.
I’d filed my last Heights article in late September, I think I “left” on the same day it was published (I’d already resigned my old editor position, so leaving was really just saying I wouldn’t write for the paper anymore in the less official capacity I had between April and September of 2019). I went to Sorkin’s hearing purely to see what happened, I wasn’t there to cover it—it’s weird to go to court on your own time, but I had put a lot of work into covering what he allegedly did in my old life and I wanted to see what was going to happen.
There was no indication before October 7 that a plea deal was coming—Sorkin hadn’t physically appeared in court since the spring for various reasons and multiple hearings had occurred, none of which indicated the case was quite suddenly going to come to a close in October. I thought I was going to a procedural hearing, I definitely didn’t think I was showing up to a hearing where a judge was going to lambast the Middlesex District Attorney’s office for how they were prosecuting Sorkin.
Judge Jennifer Queally, who according to my notes from that day looked “noticeably distressed by what was written,” began the hearing by telling Sorkin’s lawyer that she had a big job ahead of her. The facts of the case were laid out, and Sorkin’s representative indicated that when the alleged actions took place, Sorkin was in a period of “deep and dark crisis.” Since that day, he had received counseling and treatment.
Queally soundly rejected the idea that Sorkin’s being under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident played a factor in Sorkin’s alleged actions, actually arguing from the bench, without the Middlesex District Attorneys present weighing in, that no mental health issue or alcohol-related clouding of judgement could lead a person to write “one of the most derogatory racial epithets that you can put in print anywhere in our society.”
Sorkin’s representative said that she hadn’t brought up Sorkin’s mental struggles and alcohol use to justify his actions, but as evidence Sorkin was in crisis at the time and an explanation for why Sorkin did not remember many details of the night in question. She urged for a sentencing based on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Queally’s response was to apologize to the courtroom for forcing them to continue to work, but said she may not be able to accept the recommendation of the Middlesex District Attorney’s office and required further consideration of how to handle Sorkin’s probation. Originally, the Middlesex DA recommended an 18 month probation sentence while Sorkin asked for 12 months, as well as other smaller details regarding the other charges.
Queally said she would not consider Sorkin’s plea for 12 months probation and that she wasn’t convinced 18 months for another charge (underage possession of alcohol) and a letter of apology to the BC community was enough of a punishment for his actions. Essentially, she said that she wanted a harsher sentence for Sorkin than the prosecution had even offered as an option as part of the plea agreement—I’ve never heard of anything like that occurring, though I’m no court encyclopedia and it’s possible this happens more often than I think it does.
Queally called a recess and asked Sorkin and his lawyer to come up with what actions Sorkin could take to remedy the situation beyond just going on probation.
When court entered back into session, the first thing that happened was...she asked me to rise and state who I was—it’s the only time a judge has ever even noticed I was in a courtroom, but she was curious because there was nobody else there. No local reporters, no BC administrators, no other BC students (I didn’t tell her I had originally come out of curiosity rather than out of obligation to a job I didn’t really have anymore, it was court not therapy). If I wasn’t there, nobody ever would’ve seen that this hearing was anything other than a plea deal, the terms of which were ruled on in the prosecutor’s favor instead of the defendant’s. I thought I was seeing something sort of incredible.
But when normal proceedings kicked back into gear, Sorkin’s lawyer offered that in addition to the letter of apology—which as far as I can tell has never been made public even though it was supposed to be addressed to the entire BC community—Sorkin would take a class on civil rights. Queally added that the probation would need to be supervised and that probation would have final approval over what class Sorkin would take, and that Sorkin would need to take two classes (over two consecutive semesters).
But that was it.
Eighteen months of probation, some classes, and paying back BC for the property damage.
Queally had threatened to ask the DA’s office to basically draw up a new deal, but didn’t. She closed with a statement to Sorkin, saying that though she knew Sorkin targeted one race with what he wrote (she didn’t say allegedly), “those kinds of words are really an attack on our community.”
Then she said he hoped he was going to get his life together over the next 18 months and sent everyone home.
If I had to describe the looks on the faces of the lawyers in the courtroom, on both sides, it would be “cowed.” Slightly disbelieving, perhaps. The probation guy looked like he wanted to set the courtroom on fire because he’d have to do more work.
It was bizarre. It felt like something significant had happened, that she’d ripped into Sorkin, his attorney, and the prosecutors for an hour, but ultimately she’d just asked him to take some classes, it was genuinely difficult for me to process the cognitive dissonance—I was there, it felt like something bad had happened, but my notes ended with Sorkin basically just getting probation for drinking, on the hook for some cash, and needing to go to school.
It definitely didn’t feel like some sort of justice was done, it felt more like a guy got criticized and sent to his bedroom for timeout.
But as I think about it now, and it’s been on my mind plenty the last couple of weeks, what Sorkin did wasn’t any different from what plays out online every day. Maybe that’s why I felt like Sorkin was actually being seriously punished in the courtroom—usually when people drop the n-word in some white supremacist forum online or, in this city, toward various sports figures, there’s no punishment at all. I guess within that context, putting someone on probation and sending them to college classes on civil rights seems serious compared to someone getting to just log off his computer and drink to the confederate flag hung up over his bed or whatever it is racists do after they’ve finished off a long, hard day of abusing and oppressing minorities online.
America’s racism problems are more deep-seated and more complicated and more multifaceted than police brutality against Black citizens. I mean, just consider this one case and how many questions it begs: What would’ve happened if Sorkin was 25 and writing racist epithets on someone’s house or public property instead of a college dorm? What’s the appropriate punishment for what he is alleged to have done? And how do you convince people that punishment is necessary if they don’t even think what Sorkin did was wrong because they somehow have found a way to ignore every instance proving the existence of systemic racism?
What if Sorkin wasn’t caught?
This was just a guy with a sharpie. There’s blocs of the U.S. population with a real audience that believe in the s—t that got written, that got said on BC’s campus a year and a half ago—the president is a part of that world.
So silence isn’t going to cut it anymore. I wish I’d been working for The Heights when I went to that hearing, but I don’t think I could’ve written something like this while I was there—rambling pseudo-opinion pieces without much of a takeaway beyond “What the f—k are we doing?” aren’t really for newspapers as far as I can tell.
So this is me, one guy, speaking up in his newsletter, asking anyone who reads this to pay attention. Vote in local elections, then vote in national elections, post on your dumb Instagram account because maybe if enough people do, somebody with the power to do something will make a move. Listen to other people when they tell you something is wrong. Imagine what you’d do if any of what happens to Black people happened to you, or your family, or your children, or your friends, or your community.
I think it’s safe to assume you wouldn’t ask for half measures, so maybe don’t dismiss other people as “stupid” when they speak up.
Jack Goldman is the publisher and editor of this newsletter, as well as an independent reporter who has previously worked for The Heights and The Dorchester Reporter. In his spare time, he’s a student at Boston College.