Ron Bell, founder of the civic engagement organization Dunk the Vote, shows off the new “know your rights” handbook his organization has begun distributing in Boston’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. PHOTO: GBH News
For Richard Claytor, watching migrants being surrounded by law enforcement and dragged from their cars, all over social media and TV in recent months, seems too familiar.
Black people in Boston, he says, have been treated this way for long swaths of history.
“I lived through a couple of decades where there was sort of the stop-and-frisk concept,” said Claytor, program director of the Boston-based Family Nurturing Center. “It’s just something that has come back again in a cycle with a different group of people as the focus.”
With that history in mind, Claytor is helping distribute “know your rights” guides in communities of color around the state. Titled “The Black Book,” the passport-sized pamphlets are meant to help people prepare themselves for random police stops. They include details on the right to vote and basic immigrant rights as well as how to document police brutality or being racially profiled.