Biography
Rev. Edward Pinkney is the founder of Black Autonomy Network Community Organization and a leader in the struggle for social and economic justice for the residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, a town that is 90% Black. On December 15 2014, he was sentenced to serve 3 to 10 years in prison, on the basis of thin circumstantial evidence that a few dates had been altered on a recall petition against the city's mayor, James Hightower. The recall was prompted by the mayor's continued support for tax evasion by the Whirlpool Corporation, the Fortune 500 company and $19 billion global appliance manufacturer, headquartered in Benton Harbor.
There was absolutely no evidence to convict Pinkney, and, legally, the altering of a petition document should have been a misdemeanor offense. Instead, they charged him with felony forgery – though no signatures were forged and all signatories testified that they signed willingly on the correct day. Mary Alice Adams, a Benton Harbor commissioner stated, “Rev. Pinkney was accused of writing and changing my date on a petition when, in fact, I wrote my own date and changed it after realizing I had put the wrong date down.” The jury at Pinkney’s trial rejected Adams’ testimony.
Pinkney was also a leader in the fight against the ceding of a Benton Harbor public park to Whirlpool and a development firm which privatized the park and gentrified that prime real estate into a golf course and wealthy gated community on Lake Michigan - excluding the people that the property was deeded to serve. Pinkney led a protest against the PGA Senior golf tournament at the private new golf course, sponsored by Kitchen-Aid, a division of Whirlpool.
In May 2018, the Michigan Supreme Court unanimously reversed Pinkney’s conviction. By that time Rev. Pinkney had returned home after serving 30 months in prison.
Workers World reported that Pinkney received three to ten years on June 26, 2008, for a probation violation arising from his December 2007 People’s Tribune article quoting Scripture, which Judge Alfred Butzbaugh characterized as a threat. This was separate from his later 2014 prosecution. The article describes a March 2007 recall-election conviction, house arrest from May to December 2007, and a December order imposing one year in jail. It documents actual custody at Berrien County Jail and his transfer to Jackson Prison at 4:00 a.m. on July 3, 2008. Exact admission and release dates and actual total custody are not established by this source.
