DEMONIZING THE PERSON AND IGNORING CRITICAL ISSUES

The Department of Children and Families plus Connecticut Juvenile Training School is besieged with problems of employee racism, bias and dysfunctional leadership. Yet for several years both agencies chose to ignore these volatile and ugly issues, while focusing on activists trying to achieve justice. One person in particular seemed to be the focal point of DCF / CJTS ill will- former CJTS employee Cornell Lewis. After working at CJTS for six years Lewis was terminated July 17, 2013 on charges that can only be described as something out of the Twilight Zone. White management charged Lewis with Neglect of Duty, kept him employed for one month then placed him on paid administrative leave for one year. After all that maneuvering, then the stage was set for white management to fire him.

However before DCF / CJTS terminated Lewis they demonized aspects of his character in order to give cover to their nefarious plans. Lewis was described as trouble maker for having the nerve to point out bias or discrimination. There were several investigations launched against him that culminated in no disciplinary actions. When Lewis walked around CJTS property conducting job duties white management observed him closely: disinformation was put out about Lewis’s community activities in Greater Hartford. All of these things were done in order to lay ground work for white management to try and convince people Lewis should not be working with incarcerated CJTS males and this is why he needed to be terminated. Historically character assassination is a favorite trick of oppressors trying to stay in power: demonizing the person and ignoring critical issues confuses people and allows those in power to legitimize their claims on legal or moral grounds. In order to make such demonizing imagery authentic the white management team even brought in Negro female / male state employees to sit in at Lewis’s legal hearings ( more on this subject in another story). These smiling Negroes are well paid by their masters and do white management’s bidding without hesitation.

After spending almost two years of trying to place the onus of any disciplinary actions on Cornell Lewis an arbitrator ruled July 11, 2014 that DCF /CJTS did not have sufficient evidence to terminate Lewis, and ordered him back to work. Now other workers on the DCF Plantation are rising up to protest injustice or bias. Will management seek also to sully these employees character?