My brother’s keeper: Akeem Browder on Kalief’s legacy and shutting down Rikers

Long before Kalief Browder’s name became a clarion call for criminal justice reform, before his short life and tragic death shone a light on the movement to shut down Rikers Island, he was just Peanut. That’s what his older brother, Akeem affectionately dubbed him when they were growing up in the Bronx.

“He didn’t have any of those problems before they took him,” says Akeem, now 34 years old. “He didn’t have suicidal thoughts or paranoid visions. He was a kid. He did kid things. Kalief wasn’t seeing things before he went to Rikers.”

Ahead of the airing of the final episode of Time: The Kalief Browder Story on Spike TV, the elder Browder spoke with MASS APPEAL about the line of demarcation for his family: all that came before Kalief’s being wrongly accused of stealing a backpack in May of 2010, and all that came after. The baby of the family, Kalief was just 16 at the time. He would endure three unthinkable years on Rikers Island without ever being convicted of a crime. His case never went to trail; the charges against him were ultimately dropped.

Then, after more than 1,100 days on the Island—an estimated 800 of which were spent in solitary—Kalief was, finally, set free. He returned to “normal life” wholly determined to share his harrowing experience with the outside world.

But, in a certain sense, Kalief never truly returned home. Rikers Island’s culture of torture, neglect and violence replaced his goofy ease with a growing sense of paranoia and depression. “I lost my childhood,” he mourned in an interview after his release. “I lost my happiness.”

Then, at 22 years of age, Kalief took his own life.

“What the city did with Kalief,” says Akeem, now an advocate and founder of Campaign To Shut Down Rikers Island, “they said [to my mother], Venida Browder: here’s your son back. You deal with it. Meanwhile, they are the ones that caused the damage. He needed a way out of what happened to his mind.”

“Jay Z [the executive producer on the six-part documentary series] met my brother, got to know my brother. He took on his story on a huge scale,” explains Browder. “But, it’s not going to end with Jay Z. He’s been touched by it, yes, but he’s not doing the petitioning. It’s not done by him. That’s done by us, by the people, by organizations likeExodus Transitional Community, by The Fortune Society. It’s done by the people in the community.”

“By us bringing a light to Kalief’s story with this show, it’s like saying ‘If you haven’t heard that this is going on in your own backyard, here it is.’”

With the major announcement last Friday from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to pledge support for a plan to close Rikers Island, the ultimate episode of Time: The Kalief Browder Story was re-edited to reflect the historic turn of events (and a political about-face). Kalief’s name is frequently invoked—by legislators and activists alike—in the demand to shut down the island long synonymous with violence and corruption. Over the next decade, the proposed plan calls for the complex’s population to be cut nearly in half, then for all nine facilities to be phased out and shuttered, with new, smaller jails being built within each of the five boroughs. (Though putting one in Staten Island is apparently unlikely, according to de Blasio.)

While many advocates in the fight to re-imagine criminal justice in NYC and beyond applaud the City’s announcement, Akeem and Campaign to Shut Down Rikers remain more than skeptical. They demand more robust reform in Kalief’s name and for the hundreds of thousands of young men and women who face systemic disenfranchisement every day in this country. “It’s not close Rikers while we allow lawmakers to make policy that continues to criminalize brown and black people,” the organization recently wrote on Twitter.

“The fact that they are saying that they are going to shut down Rikers is a victory for the people that have tirelessly advocated for the shut down of the jail,” says Akeem. “It is a victory on one end. You have the mayor finally saying it. I would never want the victory to be taken away from the people who have fought so hard for it. Those people being the activists and the organizations that supported Kalief, his story, and me fighting for it. They deserve this victory.”

“However,” he goes on, “they deserve it the way that they wanted it. In the way that the people asked for. We asked for an immediate shut down of Rikers. We also had more than just immediate demands. Remember, this is election season. [The mayor] wants the people’s support, but they are using the people wrong. It’s messed up. In reality, it will be the next mayor and possibly the one after that who will have to actually keep this [plan] up. If that new mayor decides ‘I don’t want this, it’s not feasible’, then our victory is smashed.”

Another significant initiative currently in the hands of New York legislators, one that would have affected Kalief’s case, is “Raise The Age”. Akeem Browder—along with a vast network of legal and social advocacy organizations—has steadfastly lobbied for a comprehensive approach to raise the age of criminal responsibility in New York State to 18 years old. New York and North Carolina are the only two states in the country that still automatically try 16- and 17-year olds as adults, with sentences served at adult facilities. The legislation, attached to the state’s annual fiscal budget—which was past due as of April 1st, is now on a deadline extension—has been a major point of contention between Republicans and Democrats. The proposed change would mean that all 16- and 17-year olds would be tried in family court, where judges have more options to rehabilitate the accused.

Never one to mince words, Akeem has zero threshold for state Republican holdouts. “Republicans know that once we arrest kids, they will forever be in the system. Recidivism rates are real. We disenfranchise them, dehumanize them. No longer call them kids or teenagers or people or citizens. We call them felons. And once they’re in the system, Republicans get guaranteed money. That’s what they are afraid of losing [if we raise the age]. They value profit over people.”

It is still unknown when exactly we will hear concrete news as to the fate of the “Raise the Age” legislation—or whether or not a watered-down version of the bill that still might give broad discretion to DAs—will instead become law. As of Wednesday night, budget negotiations had again collapsed, and lawmakers were heading home for Passover and Easter Break.

Akeem knows its an uphill fight on all fronts. On the one hand, more voices are demanding a stop to the criminalization and warehousing of the poor, people of color, LGBTQ and those suffering from addiction and mental illness. But while the conversation surrounding criminal justice in New York is experiencing an unprecedented groundswell much significant work still lies ahead.

“We have to shine a light on it. So, Kalief doesn’t die in vain.” Akeem Browder utters the words as if mantra, his commitment unwavering. “He’s started a rallying cry, but it will end with us.”

Source: Mass Appeal