R
esponse to the NAACP: Calling out Performative Civil Rights
June 25, 2025
The following response is not frustration but a genuine desire to set the record straight and to alert anyone who knows me directly [or indirectly] that my family is under siege in Pennsylvania. There is a conspiracy at the highest level to harm me personally and to harm my wife and three children. I have no recourse but to speak up and to make this matter public.
While we appreciate your response, it is important to point out that we contacted your office for the record. This is one of the most important civil rights cases [both in Education and in race relations in the United States] in recent years. This is a well-documented case with serious political implications and ramifications, considering the individuals involved. Every roadblock, like this email from the NAACP, reveals the true nature of the situation, especially when it comes to performative stances for justice and equity in America.
Justice should not be discriminatory. Everyone is entitled to justice, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and so is my family.
The facts of this case are undisputed, as they are backed by irrefutable evidence, including undeniable federal law violations. Yet, due to Penn State’s influence, we CANNOT find a single legal representation in the country. Our recent Attorney was actively working to protect the university at our expense. Organizations like the PHRC, OCR, ACLU, NAACP, and FIRE, among others, have seemingly been captured by political interests to protect the university and its allies to the detriment of the student in her family. Despite a well-documented case, everyone is acting as if we have no case. You should be ashamed to call yourselves civil rights organizations.
I, Dr. Benjamin Wood Johnson (formerly known as Woodler Bienaime), as the sole advocate of my family, am under constant threats, including legal threats and physical threats (death threats), for asserting my rights and for asserting my family’s rights under the law in the United States. Ironically, we are left to fend for ourselves alone in a State where powerful institutions and political entrails have already declared their intent to harm me personally and my family (July 15, 2024 and January 9, 2025). We must fight back.
FOR THE RECORD: I intend to defend myself any way I can. I intend to defend my family with or without your help and with my LIFE on the line. I will not allow my family and myself, for that matter, to be lynched in Pennsylvania with the complicity of the so-called civil rights organizations like the NAACP. Therefore, I refute, unequivocally, your rationale for not helping my family in our darkest hours on this land.
You could have easily sent a letter to the interested parties and ask them to follow the law and to treat my family with respect and dignity. Instead, you sent us an email designed to encourage us to lick our wounds and to move on. Well…No. We will not do that, as this fight is not for money, fame, or glory. This is a fight for human decency and the rule of law. Your failure, as a nationally recognized civil rights organization to see that, is to your own demise, not ours.
The federal violations alone and the local, state, federal obstructions that my family has faced since 2023 are grounds for legal support in this instance. If what is happening to us happened anywhere else in the world, the United States government would have raised concerns; the family would have been welcomed here to live their lives in peace. Yet, we are denied the same opportunity. Instead, the very entities that are supposed to uphold the law are ignoring the law to protect our oppressors in this instance.
We are an immigrant family from Haiti. We face a powerful university, which is backed by powerful political forces. We do not know what they want from us, as my family has been persecuted in Pennsylvania since 2005. But we cannot afford to find out.
Certainly, this is not a fair fight, as we are no match for the Commonwealth and its allies. But what are we to do: Let them lynch us for asserting our rights after they violated and admitted to violating said rights? No. I cannot do that; we cannot do that.
I WILL RESPOND IN KIND TO ANY ATTACK AGAINST MYSELF AND MY FAMILY. YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA HOW RESOLUTE I AM TO DEFEND MYSELF AT THIS POINT.
Please, keep this correspondence for the record, as my family and I did the right thing. We followed the rules by reaching out to civil rights organizations and other state agencies for redress. If the rules only apply TO US and NOT FOR US on this land, then we have no choice but to defend ourselves AGAINST THE RULE ENFORCERS and anyone else acting on their behalf. I have no choice but to defend myself any way I can. I am prepared to do just that. Penn State and its allies will not have the last word in this case.
We will not be victimized once more. For more than two years now, we have been cornered. We live in fear of retaliation every day. We have barricaded ourselves and only go outside when necessary. This is not a living. We do not know who to trust and who to ask for help. But enough is enough. If need be, we will seek refuge elsewhere, as we will not allow anyone to take our freedom and/or our lives because we asserted our rights on this land.
Cordially,
Ben Wood Johnson, Ph.D.
