This week, Patricia Timmons-Goodson, the Democratic nominee in North Carolina’s Eight Congressional District race inked a column for ESSENCE Magazine’s ‘In Her We Trust’ column series on her approach to reimagining the justice system in the wake national civil unrest over police violence against Black Americans.
Timmons-Goodson, a former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice and Obama appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, is calling on Americans to seize the moment to rethink public safety. Timmons-Goodson wrote:
We must chart a vision for public safety strategies that, yes, includes fair and constitutional policing, but also include strategies for responding to mental health incidents, managing homelessness and making investments in our public schools and after-school programs that can create pathways to sturdy communities.
Timmons-Goodson acknowledged the deep pain Black Americans feel about the slow work of progress:
What makes the burden on our communities heavier is not that this nation has been without solutions but without the will to act. The civil unrest witnessed in the past few weeks proves our country is ready to confront the inequities that plague our criminal justice system.
Read Patricia Timmons-Goodson’s column for ESSENCE Magazine here. ESSENCE Magazine is the nation’s largest and most influential Black women’s magazine, celebrating fifty years in publication this year.