After being wrongly convicted the first time, D’Juan Collins was branded a ‘criminal’ in the eyes of the law.
That label affects “everything,” says Collins, a legal officer and mass incarceration advocate at the New York social justice organization VOCAL-NY.
“That label really gives me a black eye, almost as if I am on the blacklist from certain opportunities that other citizens could get,” he says. The independent.
“And it puts me in poverty,” he says. “If I can’t get a job, if I can’t get adequate housing, how do you expect me to survive and thrive in a society where that is the case?”
But for former President Donald Trump — who can use his wealth, power and influence to sidestep the consequences of his white-collar crimes that threatened the 2016 election — that “thug” label helps him rake in millions of dollars.
For any other person with 34 felony convictions, being labeled a “felon” for life could jeopardize access to jobs, housing, health care, childcare, and the ability to vote, let alone the road to the presidency.
Trump even branded himself as a “convicted felon” through his fundraising campaign on June 1, two days after he was convicted in his hush-money trial in New York, and then again on June 7: “THEY MADE ME A POLITICAL PRISONER. A CONVICTED criminal!”
“How is that even possible?” says Collins. “Why isn’t a president given the same restrictions?”
In statements and press releases supporting President Joe Biden and other Democratic officials, the Democratic National Committee has called Trump a “convicted felon” and a “criminal” dozens of times since the verdict.
The DNC also purchased billboards in Phoenix, written in English and Spanish, that read “Trump has already attacked Arizona’s democracy once. Now he’s back as a convicted felon. He seeks revenge and retaliation. Trump: Unfit to Serve.”
Trump, meanwhile, commemorated his Georgia mugshot in T-shirts and Christmas wrapping paper, sweaters and souvenir credit cards, leaning on his convictions, indictments and a narrative that paints himself as a victim to raise millions of dollars for his legal defense.
His campaign reported raising nearly $53 million in 24 hours after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of falsifying corporate records related to a hush-money scheme involving an adult film star and a conspiracy to illegally illicit the 2016 presidential election. to influence.
On May 31, a day after the verdict, the Biden campaign released a statement calling him “convicted felon Donald Trump” for the first time.
“Look, folks, this campaign has entered uncharted territory. “Last week, for the first time in American history, a former president will be convicted – a convicted felon,” President Biden said at a campaign event in Connecticut on June 3.
Last year, two political action committees backing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee spent more than $55 million on his legal bills, with more than half of that money spent in the second half of the year.
“When you have a legal team like Donald Trump throwing millions and millions of dollars at his legal defense, it makes you wonder what the system is really about,” Collins said. “It’s all about greed, and if you have the money to build this greedy system, justice will be served to you.”
Republican strategists have also dubiously suggested that Trump’s felony convictions could even be used to win over Black voters frustrated with the criminal justice system, a message President Biden ridiculed as “indulging and propagating lies and stereotypes for your vote , so he can win for himself. not for you.”
Other Republican Party allies also hope the verdict can boost Trump’s support among Latino voters by linking the charges against him to Latin American regimes targeting political rivals.
Republican parties in at least two states — Vermont and Nevada — expressly prohibit promoting candidates with felony convictions. Vermont was the only state Trump did not win during the presidential primaries, but party officials now appear to be figuring out how to accommodate Trump after he formally receives the Republican nomination in July.
And GOP officials in Nevada went so far as to change their statutes so they could boost Trump.
“The Republican Party in Nevada shamefully admits that they knew all along that Trump would be convicted and have removed the ‘convicted felon’ clause from their platform to make an exception for him, leaving Nevada voters are shown that there is no end to their corruption,” DNC spokesperson Stephanie Justice said.
But for the nearly 20 million Americans with a felony conviction, being branded a criminal is a modern-day “scarlet letter,” said Ed Chung, vice president of initiatives at the Vera Institute of Justice and a former federal prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division. country. the US Department of Justice.
“People who don’t have power or aren’t as famous as Donald Trump – the effect of that can be life-changing, affecting everything from employment to housing to social relationships and so on,” he says. The independent.
Carroll Bogert, president of the nonprofit Marshall Project, wrote an op-ed The Washington Post entitled ‘Don’t call Trump a criminal’.
By labeling Trump a “criminal,” he is “trying to undermine Trump and label him as no better than a common criminal,” she wrote.
“And that’s the problem,” she added. “Most people in prisons and jails in America come from a life of poverty and discrimination. A label like ‘criminal’ or ‘prisoner’ contributes to keeping them on the margins of society.”
Trump’s conviction “serves as a powerful reminder that responsibility should have no status or privilege,” said David Ayala, executive director of the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted Peoples & Families Movement, which has also urged media and others to ban the use of ‘criminals’. as a noun.
This wording only serves to “dehumanize and generalize, perpetuating harmful narratives that distort the treatment and perception of individuals within our community,” Ayala said.
The former president is “clearly not a typical person in the criminal justice system,” Chung says The independent; he is a billionaire with a multi-million dollar legal campaign that spans several jurisdictions, keeping him out of prison and helping him get elected to the White House to protect himself from criminal charges.
But campaigns that spread the “thug” label perpetuate a “stigma that in many ways cannot be overcome,” he says.
“It’s something that applies regardless of who the individual defendant is, something that applies regardless of what political interest you have, and the repeated use of it, and to enshrine it in our lexicon, I think it’s something that we want to avoid,” says Chung. “Just the fact that it’s something people are talking about in relation to Donald Trump shows how important language is.”