[col. writ. 5/15/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As America limps toward the November elections, fatigued by the exertions of war, numb to the lofty promises of politicians, in dread of the economic dragons growling on the horizon, the role of Congress could not be more irrelevant.
That's one of the reasons that GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (R. Ariz.) has called for a change in congressional tradition, to one which allows the President to answer questions before the body.
It reminded me of the March 25, 2008 vote in the British House of Commons, where members of Parliament debated whether to open an official inquiry into the reasons for starting the war. Not surprisingly, the vote lost, largely along Party lines, as the ruling Labour members voted to protect their party, which sponsored and spearheaded the Iraq War, and avoided a formal inquiry.
Most, but not all.
A dozen Labour backbenchers bolted party ranks to express their support for an inquiry, in terms rarely heard on this side of the Atlantic.
And even though the inquiry vote failed by some 50 votes, it marked a period of questioning of the sort that should actually precede wars, not follow them. Robert Marshall-Andrews, a Labour member of parliament (MP) from Medway, brought up the infamous Downing Street memo, which told uncomfortable truths about the then coming war. Marshall-Andrews announced:"
The first is what was revealed in the Downing street memo of July 2002, reported by The Sunday (London)Times in an unusual contribution to the debate. It was recorded that at that meeting in Downing street in July 2002 Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of secret intelligence or 'C', as he was known, had reported from America to the War Cabinet,....that:
'There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. Butthe intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'"
According to the then Foreign Secretary, "Bush has made up his mind to take military action....But the case was thin."
Ultimately, of course, it didn't matter. Who needs evidence, when you can make it up?
M.P. Marshall-Andrews then spoke words that will never be heard in the U.S. Congress:
"The real point of the debate, and of any inquiry that may be held, is not to learn lessons so that we do not make mistakes again. That is one reason, but I want an inquiry to be held into the Iraq war because I want those responsible to be brought to the book and to justice. If necessary, they should be brought to international justice, but I want us to be the ones who bring them to it."
At this point, Conservative Party member, Humphrey Malins, of Woking, joined in:
"I support the honorable and learned gentleman's argument with all the strength that I can muster, but may I remind him gently that some Opposition Members at the time took the view that he is expressing? I was one of those who resigned as a shadow Minister because of the illegal war. Does he agree that, when we look back at our parliamentary lives, we may well regard the decision to go to war with Iraq as the worst and most horrible decision that this Parliament has made?"
Labourite Marshall-Andrews would heartily agree, and he would add:
"Indeed, beside that decision, all our other achievements and deficiencies -- and there have been many of both--pale into insignificance. The circumstances and repercussions of what we did then have swept well past Iraq. As Tacitus noted, one victory can create a thousand enemies, and that is precisely what happened."
These are some of just a few voices in the Parliament of the junior partner in the Iraq debacle.
When should we expect such voices in the U.S. Congress? 2025?
--(c) '08 maj
{Source: Labour & Trade Union Review, (No. 187: May 2008), pp.4-5. [http://www.ltireview.com/].]
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Politics of Ignorance & Fear
[col. writ. 5/17/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As the presidential race inches toward November, it brings with it all
kinds of detritus, flushed from the hidden psyche of millions.
Politicians are used to representing the hopes of others: they're just as
used to dashing those hopes against the hard walls of reality.
For millions of women, the first real chance of a female president has
excited their hopes, some pending for generations. For millions of Black men
and women, the first real chance of a Black president had excited their
hopes, some deeply held for nearly a century.
For most people, however, politics is the art of unrequited hope, for
politicians promise the moon, and deliver star dust.
There is, after all, a reason why millions of Americans are so cynical
about politics, for they've learned that cynicism from the bitter well of
experience.
But consider these voices drawn from those we call the white working
class; middle-aged Al and Evelyn Landsberg; he, a lifelong Republican who
recently switched political parties, and was quoted as telling a Washington Post
reporter recently that Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D.-N.Y.) would get his vote,
although she wasn't great. Clinton was, however, a good deal better than her
opponent, "you know, uh Embowa. He'd take this country right down the tubes."
His wife, Evelyn, cited data she gleaned from emails, saying, "From what
I can tell, if he (Embowa?} becomes president he will refuse to stand for the
Pledge of Allegiance and we will leave Iraq unprepared." She added, "I'm
not going to sit at home and let that happen."*
It's amazing to think that, several generations ago, millions of Blacks
were denied the right to vote through bogus literacy tests, while millions of
ignorant whites voted unhindered, by virtue of birthright.
Politics is often seen and interpreted as, well, 'the will of the
people.' It is often described in lofty judicial decisions and thick political
science texts as democracy in action--the People choosing their Government, and
ultimately, the American 'way of life.'
Yet, how much is simply unbridled ignorance? How much is simply blind
racial hatred? How much is just plain silliness?
And how much has this been force fed by the corporate media, which can
almost beat a dead horse back to life?
If the role of the media is merely to reinforce and buttress our
collective ignorance, what can democracy mean?
When ratings become the end-all, be-all of the corporate media, how can
it be anything but a mad dash to a mass echo chamber, where ignorance is
multiplied into mega ignorance, and wars become inevitable through rumor?
--(c) '08 maj
[*Source: Saslow, Eli, "Not Just Talking About Change: The Democrats have
registered more than a million new voters in the last seven primary states,
"Wash. Post, May 5-11, 2008 [Nat'l Wkly. Ed.], p.16]
As the presidential race inches toward November, it brings with it all
kinds of detritus, flushed from the hidden psyche of millions.
Politicians are used to representing the hopes of others: they're just as
used to dashing those hopes against the hard walls of reality.
For millions of women, the first real chance of a female president has
excited their hopes, some pending for generations. For millions of Black men
and women, the first real chance of a Black president had excited their
hopes, some deeply held for nearly a century.
For most people, however, politics is the art of unrequited hope, for
politicians promise the moon, and deliver star dust.
There is, after all, a reason why millions of Americans are so cynical
about politics, for they've learned that cynicism from the bitter well of
experience.
But consider these voices drawn from those we call the white working
class; middle-aged Al and Evelyn Landsberg; he, a lifelong Republican who
recently switched political parties, and was quoted as telling a Washington Post
reporter recently that Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D.-N.Y.) would get his vote,
although she wasn't great. Clinton was, however, a good deal better than her
opponent, "you know, uh Embowa. He'd take this country right down the tubes."
His wife, Evelyn, cited data she gleaned from emails, saying, "From what
I can tell, if he (Embowa?} becomes president he will refuse to stand for the
Pledge of Allegiance and we will leave Iraq unprepared." She added, "I'm
not going to sit at home and let that happen."*
It's amazing to think that, several generations ago, millions of Blacks
were denied the right to vote through bogus literacy tests, while millions of
ignorant whites voted unhindered, by virtue of birthright.
Politics is often seen and interpreted as, well, 'the will of the
people.' It is often described in lofty judicial decisions and thick political
science texts as democracy in action--the People choosing their Government, and
ultimately, the American 'way of life.'
Yet, how much is simply unbridled ignorance? How much is simply blind
racial hatred? How much is just plain silliness?
And how much has this been force fed by the corporate media, which can
almost beat a dead horse back to life?
If the role of the media is merely to reinforce and buttress our
collective ignorance, what can democracy mean?
When ratings become the end-all, be-all of the corporate media, how can
it be anything but a mad dash to a mass echo chamber, where ignorance is
multiplied into mega ignorance, and wars become inevitable through rumor?
--(c) '08 maj
[*Source: Saslow, Eli, "Not Just Talking About Change: The Democrats have
registered more than a million new voters in the last seven primary states,
"Wash. Post, May 5-11, 2008 [Nat'l Wkly. Ed.], p.16]
Justice is overdue for Mumia
By SIDDIQUE ABDULLAH HASAN
SocialistWorker.org
http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/16/justice-overdue-for-mumia
May 16, 2008
Siddique Abdullah Hasan is one of the Lucasville Five, a group of men
railroaded onto death row in Ohio after a 1993 prison rebellion in which
inmates at the Lucasville prison rose up against the abuses and arbitrary
rules of prison guards and officials. Here, he looks at the recent court
ruling rejecting Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal for a new trial.
IN LIGHT of the adverse ruling by a three-judge panel for the 3rd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in denying Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trial and an
evidentiary hearing, many of his supporters are outraged and weighing the
pros and cons of what must be done to create the circumstances for his
speedy release from captivity.
At a press conference outside the Federal Court building in Philadelphia,
Sister Pam Africa of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia
Abu-Jamal hit the nail on the head when she so forcefully said, "The power
of the people has to be unleashed, because what the court did was wrong!"
Being an activist and a revolutionary thinker, I'm totally convinced that
what she was conveying to the people--actually to the world--is that the
gloves must come off and the people must be turned loose to fight fire with
fire via the principle of "by any means necessary."
While there are many ways to unleash the power of the people, I think one
way it should be unleashed is by calling for an international economic
boycott against Hershey's and other major businesses in the state of
Pennsylvania. In order to make this boycott successful, the help of the
European Union and other countries interested in the quality of justice
should be sought.
When other countries or governments are guilty of civil, constitutional and
human rights violations against their citizens, the United States government
either selectively speaks out against these types of violations or
selectively imposes economic sanctions against the perpetrators. As the
leader of the "free world," when the United States does this, it sends a
clear and powerful message to the world that the United States will not sit
idle and allow these violations to go unchecked.
It's time for the world to stand up to the state of Pennsylvania--that is,
to Gov. Ed Rendell, to Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, to the
Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police and to the appellate courts--and say
with a unified voice: "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now! We want justice for him,
and we won't sit idle and allow you to execute this innocent man!"
Such a stand and economic boycott will serve as a supplement to the work
Mumia's lawyers and supporters are vigorously engaged in to save his life.
In a capitalistic society that prides itself on its superpower status,
economic power and military might are the only languages this imperialistic
government seems to respect and understand. Therefore, the heat must be
turned up if we are ever going to acquire justice for Mumia. Justice demands
that he be granted a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing to gather
and present enough evidence to prove he did not murder Philadelphia Police
Officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981.
The appellate courts have never heard the newly discovered evidence of his
actual innocence. They have always found some flimsy excuse to repress it.
In a case of actual innocence, the courts are under obligation to hear newly
discovered evidence--but such has never happened in Mumia's case. In the
absence of hearing it, the state's theory that Mumia murdered Officer
Faulkner seems very convincing to someone who doesn't know the particulars
of his case or the circumstances surrounding why the government framed Mumia
and wants him dead.
Be that as it may, justice in Mumia's case is long, long overdue. How long?
Too long! It's been 26 years, and it's now time for the world to become
morally courageous by stepping up to the plate and demanding justice for our
elder, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
SocialistWorker.org
http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/16/justice-overdue-for-mumia
May 16, 2008
Siddique Abdullah Hasan is one of the Lucasville Five, a group of men
railroaded onto death row in Ohio after a 1993 prison rebellion in which
inmates at the Lucasville prison rose up against the abuses and arbitrary
rules of prison guards and officials. Here, he looks at the recent court
ruling rejecting Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal for a new trial.
IN LIGHT of the adverse ruling by a three-judge panel for the 3rd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in denying Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trial and an
evidentiary hearing, many of his supporters are outraged and weighing the
pros and cons of what must be done to create the circumstances for his
speedy release from captivity.
At a press conference outside the Federal Court building in Philadelphia,
Sister Pam Africa of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia
Abu-Jamal hit the nail on the head when she so forcefully said, "The power
of the people has to be unleashed, because what the court did was wrong!"
Being an activist and a revolutionary thinker, I'm totally convinced that
what she was conveying to the people--actually to the world--is that the
gloves must come off and the people must be turned loose to fight fire with
fire via the principle of "by any means necessary."
While there are many ways to unleash the power of the people, I think one
way it should be unleashed is by calling for an international economic
boycott against Hershey's and other major businesses in the state of
Pennsylvania. In order to make this boycott successful, the help of the
European Union and other countries interested in the quality of justice
should be sought.
When other countries or governments are guilty of civil, constitutional and
human rights violations against their citizens, the United States government
either selectively speaks out against these types of violations or
selectively imposes economic sanctions against the perpetrators. As the
leader of the "free world," when the United States does this, it sends a
clear and powerful message to the world that the United States will not sit
idle and allow these violations to go unchecked.
It's time for the world to stand up to the state of Pennsylvania--that is,
to Gov. Ed Rendell, to Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, to the
Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police and to the appellate courts--and say
with a unified voice: "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now! We want justice for him,
and we won't sit idle and allow you to execute this innocent man!"
Such a stand and economic boycott will serve as a supplement to the work
Mumia's lawyers and supporters are vigorously engaged in to save his life.
In a capitalistic society that prides itself on its superpower status,
economic power and military might are the only languages this imperialistic
government seems to respect and understand. Therefore, the heat must be
turned up if we are ever going to acquire justice for Mumia. Justice demands
that he be granted a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing to gather
and present enough evidence to prove he did not murder Philadelphia Police
Officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981.
The appellate courts have never heard the newly discovered evidence of his
actual innocence. They have always found some flimsy excuse to repress it.
In a case of actual innocence, the courts are under obligation to hear newly
discovered evidence--but such has never happened in Mumia's case. In the
absence of hearing it, the state's theory that Mumia murdered Officer
Faulkner seems very convincing to someone who doesn't know the particulars
of his case or the circumstances surrounding why the government framed Mumia
and wants him dead.
Be that as it may, justice in Mumia's case is long, long overdue. How long?
Too long! It's been 26 years, and it's now time for the world to become
morally courageous by stepping up to the plate and demanding justice for our
elder, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Expanded DNA testing could nab innocent people
By Charlene Muhammad
Staff Writer
Updated May 20, 2008, 10:16 pm
(FinalCall.com) - Civil liberties groups say plans to expand DNA collection through changes to federal and California state laws violate constitutional protections and criminalize innocent people.
Under the proposals, close relatives of arrestees in California could be asked to provide DNA evidence and under federal law any federal arrestees, either for felonies or misdemeanors, will be required to provide DNA samples.
Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey published a proposal to amend the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 in April. The change directs U.S. agencies that arrest or detain individuals, or that supervise individuals facing charges, including non-U.S. citizens, to collect DNA samples.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation will analyze and enter the samples into a federal database known as the Combined DNA Index System.
In California, the DNA of anyone closely related to a suspect that has been arrested would also be stored through the expanded testing. California Atty. Gen. Edmund Brown, Jr. announced the plan April 25, saying it will help law enforcement solve crimes committed by killers and sex offenders.
“One of our concerns about this is that if you look at the criminal justice system, obviously it’s full of racial disparities against people of color,” said Atty. Michael Risher of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Currently state laboratories alert law enforcement when all 26 genetic markers of a suspect match. The change would result in alerts when just 15 markers match, which could mean investigations of innocent people who are simply related to suspects.
“Combining the expansion to the familial searches means that those persons, primarily males, will be logged in this database and their families, and we all know where this is not going to happen. This gives enormous discretion to police, who already have a lot of discretion whether or not to arrest someone,” Atty. Risher told The Final Call. The information stored in the databases would include private identification about one’s family, ancestry, diseases, predispositions to drug abuse, and other private information. If arrests don’t end with convictions, certified court records are required to remove the DNA data.
The ACLU worries America’s current mood, particularly after 911, seems to approve curbing of rights for the appearance of a bit more public safety or crime fighting.
Politicians are willing to sacrifice civil liberties and tax dollars in hopes of fighting crime, but look past the negative ramifications of their decisions, the ACLU said.
In 2004, California voters overwhelmingly passed the DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act DNA, so they cannot entirely blame politicians. Unfortunately, advocates say, the law is growing beyond the scope voters desired. Anyone, not just criminals, can get caught up, they warn.
“I don’t think this will deter any crimes, but I think there is a place for DNA in solving crimes. It’s quite successful when applied to serious crime, but as it expands and you get more people, it becomes less useful,” Atty. Risher said.
The California plan to gather DNA in felony arrests is effective Jan. 1, 2009, but the familial or “partial match” policy took effect on May 6 during the grand opening of the Jan Bashinkski DNA Laboratory in Richmond.
According to reports, the state’s database holds more than one million DNA profiles, and more than two million samples are expected to be collected over the next five years.
At the opening ceremony, state Atty. Gen. Brown, Jr. said California’s DNA database has completed a $10 million expansion to accommodate the increased samples expected over the next 5 years as a result of changes to the law.
The public comment period for the federal rule change ends May 19, and comments may be logged via internet at www.regulations.gov.
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.
Staff Writer
Updated May 20, 2008, 10:16 pm
(FinalCall.com) - Civil liberties groups say plans to expand DNA collection through changes to federal and California state laws violate constitutional protections and criminalize innocent people.
Under the proposals, close relatives of arrestees in California could be asked to provide DNA evidence and under federal law any federal arrestees, either for felonies or misdemeanors, will be required to provide DNA samples.
Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey published a proposal to amend the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 in April. The change directs U.S. agencies that arrest or detain individuals, or that supervise individuals facing charges, including non-U.S. citizens, to collect DNA samples.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation will analyze and enter the samples into a federal database known as the Combined DNA Index System.
In California, the DNA of anyone closely related to a suspect that has been arrested would also be stored through the expanded testing. California Atty. Gen. Edmund Brown, Jr. announced the plan April 25, saying it will help law enforcement solve crimes committed by killers and sex offenders.
“One of our concerns about this is that if you look at the criminal justice system, obviously it’s full of racial disparities against people of color,” said Atty. Michael Risher of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Currently state laboratories alert law enforcement when all 26 genetic markers of a suspect match. The change would result in alerts when just 15 markers match, which could mean investigations of innocent people who are simply related to suspects.
“Combining the expansion to the familial searches means that those persons, primarily males, will be logged in this database and their families, and we all know where this is not going to happen. This gives enormous discretion to police, who already have a lot of discretion whether or not to arrest someone,” Atty. Risher told The Final Call. The information stored in the databases would include private identification about one’s family, ancestry, diseases, predispositions to drug abuse, and other private information. If arrests don’t end with convictions, certified court records are required to remove the DNA data.
The ACLU worries America’s current mood, particularly after 911, seems to approve curbing of rights for the appearance of a bit more public safety or crime fighting.
Politicians are willing to sacrifice civil liberties and tax dollars in hopes of fighting crime, but look past the negative ramifications of their decisions, the ACLU said.
In 2004, California voters overwhelmingly passed the DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act DNA, so they cannot entirely blame politicians. Unfortunately, advocates say, the law is growing beyond the scope voters desired. Anyone, not just criminals, can get caught up, they warn.
“I don’t think this will deter any crimes, but I think there is a place for DNA in solving crimes. It’s quite successful when applied to serious crime, but as it expands and you get more people, it becomes less useful,” Atty. Risher said.
The California plan to gather DNA in felony arrests is effective Jan. 1, 2009, but the familial or “partial match” policy took effect on May 6 during the grand opening of the Jan Bashinkski DNA Laboratory in Richmond.
According to reports, the state’s database holds more than one million DNA profiles, and more than two million samples are expected to be collected over the next five years.
At the opening ceremony, state Atty. Gen. Brown, Jr. said California’s DNA database has completed a $10 million expansion to accommodate the increased samples expected over the next 5 years as a result of changes to the law.
The public comment period for the federal rule change ends May 19, and comments may be logged via internet at www.regulations.gov.
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.
Urban Terrorists in America?
By Ashahed M. Muhammad and Saeed Shabazz
Updated May 20, 2008, 10:57 pm
Neighborhoods under siege? Many fear militarization of police is a sign of problems to come
Philly Cops Caught on Video (Video Clip)
SWAT teams and helicopter patrols in Chicago (FCN, 05-06-2008)
(FinalCall.com) - State Representative Ronald G. Waters of Philadelphia was disturbed by vivid video images captured by the city Fox television news affiliate. A swarming pack of White officers descended upon three Black men, yanked them from a vehicle, and kicked and beat them with fists and nightsticks for minutes without any apparent resistance from the suspects.
A review of an enhanced aerial video of the beating enabled investigators to initially identify 13 Philadelphia police officers that were involved. All of the officers have been removed from street duty while the case is investigated.
“I don’t want to see the streets of Philadelphia turn into a war zone,” said State Rep. Waters. “I (also) don’t think that arming the police officers with (high powered weapons) is necessary for them to go after the criminals,” he told The Final Call. Mr. Waters presides over a predominately Black district that has few jobs, failing education and areas of high crime and violence.
The videotaped beating that captured the Black lawmaker’s and the nation’s attention again raised questions of excessive force and brutality. Another concern was the growing militarization of police departments.
Police brutality, neighborhood crackdowns
On May 9, Mayor Michael Nutter appeared on CNN and spoke regarding the controversy that has erupted since video of the beating began airing on May 6.
“The conduct was unacceptable,” Mayor Nutter told CNN. “It did not live up to the standards we have set for the Police Department.”
The scene was reminiscent of the infamous 1991 videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King, who after being pursued by members of the LAPD in a high speed chase was mercilessly pounded with the nightsticks of several members of the LAPD for several minutes.
This image made from television and released by WTXF-TV Fox Philadelphia shows police officers kicking and beating suspects pulled from a car during a traffic stop on May 5, in Philadelphia. A TV helicopter taped the confrontation. Photo: AP Photo/WTXF-TV Fox PhiladelphiaRev. Al Sharpton on his May 8 radio show “Keeping It Real” said, “I’ve not seen anything like that since Rodney King, and it’s worse than Rodney King.”
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said he did not believe the incident was racial. However, he admitted “emotions are running high” as a result of 12-year veteran Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski being shot and killed May 3 attempting to apprehend suspected bank robbers. The commissioner cautioned against “making accusations from afar” that could exacerbate tensions.
“There is a history in this city of police brutality,” said student minister Rodney Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 12 in Philadelphia. Mr. Muhammad said the department has been out in force and officers are “infuriated” because suspects in the bank robbery were repeat offenders with a history of violent crimes.
“My mind went back to the Minister’s press conference in Washington, D.C. in 1989,” said Mr. Muhammad. “The war that they were planning was against him, the Nation of Islam and Black people in general using Black youth as the invitation to come into the community in a war-like way,” said Mr. Muhammad, who is the host of a radio show and deeply involved with the members of Muhammad Mosque No. 12 who are trying to prevent crime and violence.
Some young Black men in Philadelphia are wearing body armor similar to what soldiers wear in war zones, Mr. Muhammad noted. Psychologically they are prepared to exchange gunfire with someone, a competitor, or perhaps even law enforcement officials, he said. A “war-like” culture has been created, fed in part through movies and music, and has become a path to self-destruction, Mr. Muhammad said.
“The streets and the jails have merged and they are one and the same in the mindset of many of these young guys. So you can’t threaten them with death because they never thought they were going to get older anyway, and you can’t threaten them with jail because that is celebrated,” he said.
“The whole thing about transforming the mind of these young people—it’s only going to come through a word that can resurrect that mind,” Mr. Muhammad said.
Getting to the root causes of violence
“The violence that politicians and law enforcement are reacting to is not about guns, as such, but about attitudes and values,” according to Conrad Worrill, of the National Black United Front. “What we are looking at, in the larger context, appears to me to be the final showdown in the criminalization of a people.”
From Washington state to Florida and in cities small and large, a growing chorus is warning Black America to stem levels of fratricidal violence, especially with summer approaching and police preparing to crackdown.
“Ninety-two percent of gun violence in our communities across the nation comes from our youth; and it is tearing our communities apart,” said student minister Don Muhammad, of Muhammad Mosque No. 11 in Boston.
The Boston Police Department, seemingly at wits end, has been trying to deploy a program that allows searching homes for guns without warrants. “The community must take ownership of this issue, not just the police, parents know when there is a gun in their home,” Don Muhammad said.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley recently pressed parents to take responsibility for their children, but also ordered heavily armed SWAT teams and helicopter patrols into Black neighborhoods. In a three-week span, over 50 people in the city were shot. Fifteen people died.
But while many people want relief, city residents may get something much different than what they expect. Dr. Peter Kraska, a University of Eastern Kentucky professor of police studies, wrote in a study titled “Militarilizing American Police: The Rise of Normalization of Paramilitary Units,” “residents will get accustomed to cops armed to the teeth like Marines in Baghdad, which sends a message to the civilian population; you now live in an authoritarian police state.”
Dr. Joseph McNamara, a former police chief and a lecturer for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, recently wrote “it is dangerous when you are telling cops they’re soldiers and there is an enemy out there.”
Civil liberties advocates and community groups say opening the floodgates to tighter law enforcement likely will bring more charges of brutality, more violations of rights and more stringent laws.
Art McKoy, founder of the Cleveland organization, Black on Black Crime, said law enforcement has already turned Cleveland into a police state. “Our young men have limited opportunities; and all they see is drugs and guns,” he said. “As our communities deteriorate, the politicians throw up their hands and call for martial law, as represented by these SWAT teams.”
When asked about gang prevention funding, Mr. McKoy said, Cleveland received millions of dollars in 2007 for prevention and only “one percent” flowed into the community, while “99 percent went to law enforcement.”
A coalition of community organizations in Seattle, Wash., launched a campaign in the end of March to stop Gov. Christine Gregoire from signing a bill they said encouraged racial profiling. Gov. Gregoire put her signature to HR 2712 and it became law in April.
According to a bipartisan group of legislators, the bill was in response to public concerns about gang violence.
James Bible, president of the Seattle branch of the NAACP, said the law gives police an excuse for stopping and searching young people of color. “The bill’s constitutionality is questionable,” Mr. Bible told The Final Call.
In Florida, legislators are working on an anti-gang bill that requires gang members to register and has local police work closely with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to use and maintain a gang database.
“We are very concerned about this database,” said Florida’s statewide NAACP president, Adora Obi Nweize. She believes the database is another way of pushing Black children into the criminal justice pipeline.
“We were able to stop the state legislature’s efforts to make it unlawful for our youth to wear baggy pants, but we don’t have a good feeling concerning our efforts to stop the anti-gang bill,” she said.
The New York Civil Liberties Union May 7 filed a “Walking While Black” lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, charging the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy is illegal. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a companion class-action suit against the same NYPD practice. The suits say there is a systemic pattern of discrimination in the stops: Data shows half of those targeted were Black, while census figures show Blacks are just 25 percent of the city’s population. Blacks and Latinos were involved in 90 percent of the police stops.
The city of Springfield in Massachusetts recently announced its Street Crime Unit will return to black military-style uniforms, as part of a strategy to deal with youth violence.
“All the SWAT teams in the world are not going to solve the problem of street violence,” said Abdul Muhammad, founder of Newark, New Jersey’s Street Warriors. “The peace in the streets has been violated because of the large disconnect our youth feel, which for us has become a cultural issue,” the activist told The Final Call. “We have to teach the community how to defend itself against violence. We have lost our value system,” he said.
“The other problem? We are not dealing with this as a mental health problem,” Abdul Muhammad added.
“Why are the children so angry, is any one asking that question?” asked Dr. Joseph Strickland, Ph.D, a researcher on “Advocacy Issues that Affect Black Males” at the University of Chicago. The mayor deploys police to deal with street violence because it is seen as a youth issue, not a community issue, he said.
“Two years ago we found that we had in Chicago a 50 percent (high school) drop out rate. Students were turned off by the system—and then they were told they couldn’t make it without an education—they became angry,” said Dr. Strickland, who is also founder of MAGIC, a non-profit youth development and advocacy group.
Dr. Carl Bell, who runs a community mental health clinic on Chicago’s southside, agreed with Abdul Muhammad’s assessment. “SWAT use doesn’t make much sense to me. Being connected to the community in a positive way is the answer. That cancels out the need for violence.” Dr. Bell said.
(Fred Muhammad contributed to this article from Philadelphia.)
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.
Updated May 20, 2008, 10:57 pm
Neighborhoods under siege? Many fear militarization of police is a sign of problems to come
Philly Cops Caught on Video (Video Clip)
SWAT teams and helicopter patrols in Chicago (FCN, 05-06-2008)
(FinalCall.com) - State Representative Ronald G. Waters of Philadelphia was disturbed by vivid video images captured by the city Fox television news affiliate. A swarming pack of White officers descended upon three Black men, yanked them from a vehicle, and kicked and beat them with fists and nightsticks for minutes without any apparent resistance from the suspects.
A review of an enhanced aerial video of the beating enabled investigators to initially identify 13 Philadelphia police officers that were involved. All of the officers have been removed from street duty while the case is investigated.
“I don’t want to see the streets of Philadelphia turn into a war zone,” said State Rep. Waters. “I (also) don’t think that arming the police officers with (high powered weapons) is necessary for them to go after the criminals,” he told The Final Call. Mr. Waters presides over a predominately Black district that has few jobs, failing education and areas of high crime and violence.
The videotaped beating that captured the Black lawmaker’s and the nation’s attention again raised questions of excessive force and brutality. Another concern was the growing militarization of police departments.
Police brutality, neighborhood crackdowns
On May 9, Mayor Michael Nutter appeared on CNN and spoke regarding the controversy that has erupted since video of the beating began airing on May 6.
“The conduct was unacceptable,” Mayor Nutter told CNN. “It did not live up to the standards we have set for the Police Department.”
The scene was reminiscent of the infamous 1991 videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King, who after being pursued by members of the LAPD in a high speed chase was mercilessly pounded with the nightsticks of several members of the LAPD for several minutes.
This image made from television and released by WTXF-TV Fox Philadelphia shows police officers kicking and beating suspects pulled from a car during a traffic stop on May 5, in Philadelphia. A TV helicopter taped the confrontation. Photo: AP Photo/WTXF-TV Fox PhiladelphiaRev. Al Sharpton on his May 8 radio show “Keeping It Real” said, “I’ve not seen anything like that since Rodney King, and it’s worse than Rodney King.”
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said he did not believe the incident was racial. However, he admitted “emotions are running high” as a result of 12-year veteran Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski being shot and killed May 3 attempting to apprehend suspected bank robbers. The commissioner cautioned against “making accusations from afar” that could exacerbate tensions.
“There is a history in this city of police brutality,” said student minister Rodney Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 12 in Philadelphia. Mr. Muhammad said the department has been out in force and officers are “infuriated” because suspects in the bank robbery were repeat offenders with a history of violent crimes.
“My mind went back to the Minister’s press conference in Washington, D.C. in 1989,” said Mr. Muhammad. “The war that they were planning was against him, the Nation of Islam and Black people in general using Black youth as the invitation to come into the community in a war-like way,” said Mr. Muhammad, who is the host of a radio show and deeply involved with the members of Muhammad Mosque No. 12 who are trying to prevent crime and violence.
Some young Black men in Philadelphia are wearing body armor similar to what soldiers wear in war zones, Mr. Muhammad noted. Psychologically they are prepared to exchange gunfire with someone, a competitor, or perhaps even law enforcement officials, he said. A “war-like” culture has been created, fed in part through movies and music, and has become a path to self-destruction, Mr. Muhammad said.
“The streets and the jails have merged and they are one and the same in the mindset of many of these young guys. So you can’t threaten them with death because they never thought they were going to get older anyway, and you can’t threaten them with jail because that is celebrated,” he said.
“The whole thing about transforming the mind of these young people—it’s only going to come through a word that can resurrect that mind,” Mr. Muhammad said.
Getting to the root causes of violence
“The violence that politicians and law enforcement are reacting to is not about guns, as such, but about attitudes and values,” according to Conrad Worrill, of the National Black United Front. “What we are looking at, in the larger context, appears to me to be the final showdown in the criminalization of a people.”
From Washington state to Florida and in cities small and large, a growing chorus is warning Black America to stem levels of fratricidal violence, especially with summer approaching and police preparing to crackdown.
“Ninety-two percent of gun violence in our communities across the nation comes from our youth; and it is tearing our communities apart,” said student minister Don Muhammad, of Muhammad Mosque No. 11 in Boston.
The Boston Police Department, seemingly at wits end, has been trying to deploy a program that allows searching homes for guns without warrants. “The community must take ownership of this issue, not just the police, parents know when there is a gun in their home,” Don Muhammad said.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley recently pressed parents to take responsibility for their children, but also ordered heavily armed SWAT teams and helicopter patrols into Black neighborhoods. In a three-week span, over 50 people in the city were shot. Fifteen people died.
But while many people want relief, city residents may get something much different than what they expect. Dr. Peter Kraska, a University of Eastern Kentucky professor of police studies, wrote in a study titled “Militarilizing American Police: The Rise of Normalization of Paramilitary Units,” “residents will get accustomed to cops armed to the teeth like Marines in Baghdad, which sends a message to the civilian population; you now live in an authoritarian police state.”
Dr. Joseph McNamara, a former police chief and a lecturer for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, recently wrote “it is dangerous when you are telling cops they’re soldiers and there is an enemy out there.”
Civil liberties advocates and community groups say opening the floodgates to tighter law enforcement likely will bring more charges of brutality, more violations of rights and more stringent laws.
Art McKoy, founder of the Cleveland organization, Black on Black Crime, said law enforcement has already turned Cleveland into a police state. “Our young men have limited opportunities; and all they see is drugs and guns,” he said. “As our communities deteriorate, the politicians throw up their hands and call for martial law, as represented by these SWAT teams.”
When asked about gang prevention funding, Mr. McKoy said, Cleveland received millions of dollars in 2007 for prevention and only “one percent” flowed into the community, while “99 percent went to law enforcement.”
A coalition of community organizations in Seattle, Wash., launched a campaign in the end of March to stop Gov. Christine Gregoire from signing a bill they said encouraged racial profiling. Gov. Gregoire put her signature to HR 2712 and it became law in April.
According to a bipartisan group of legislators, the bill was in response to public concerns about gang violence.
James Bible, president of the Seattle branch of the NAACP, said the law gives police an excuse for stopping and searching young people of color. “The bill’s constitutionality is questionable,” Mr. Bible told The Final Call.
In Florida, legislators are working on an anti-gang bill that requires gang members to register and has local police work closely with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to use and maintain a gang database.
“We are very concerned about this database,” said Florida’s statewide NAACP president, Adora Obi Nweize. She believes the database is another way of pushing Black children into the criminal justice pipeline.
“We were able to stop the state legislature’s efforts to make it unlawful for our youth to wear baggy pants, but we don’t have a good feeling concerning our efforts to stop the anti-gang bill,” she said.
The New York Civil Liberties Union May 7 filed a “Walking While Black” lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, charging the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy is illegal. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a companion class-action suit against the same NYPD practice. The suits say there is a systemic pattern of discrimination in the stops: Data shows half of those targeted were Black, while census figures show Blacks are just 25 percent of the city’s population. Blacks and Latinos were involved in 90 percent of the police stops.
The city of Springfield in Massachusetts recently announced its Street Crime Unit will return to black military-style uniforms, as part of a strategy to deal with youth violence.
“All the SWAT teams in the world are not going to solve the problem of street violence,” said Abdul Muhammad, founder of Newark, New Jersey’s Street Warriors. “The peace in the streets has been violated because of the large disconnect our youth feel, which for us has become a cultural issue,” the activist told The Final Call. “We have to teach the community how to defend itself against violence. We have lost our value system,” he said.
“The other problem? We are not dealing with this as a mental health problem,” Abdul Muhammad added.
“Why are the children so angry, is any one asking that question?” asked Dr. Joseph Strickland, Ph.D, a researcher on “Advocacy Issues that Affect Black Males” at the University of Chicago. The mayor deploys police to deal with street violence because it is seen as a youth issue, not a community issue, he said.
“Two years ago we found that we had in Chicago a 50 percent (high school) drop out rate. Students were turned off by the system—and then they were told they couldn’t make it without an education—they became angry,” said Dr. Strickland, who is also founder of MAGIC, a non-profit youth development and advocacy group.
Dr. Carl Bell, who runs a community mental health clinic on Chicago’s southside, agreed with Abdul Muhammad’s assessment. “SWAT use doesn’t make much sense to me. Being connected to the community in a positive way is the answer. That cancels out the need for violence.” Dr. Bell said.
(Fred Muhammad contributed to this article from Philadelphia.)
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.
Bigoted Anti-Obama Attacks Divert Attention From Pervasive Institutional Racism
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
Do the reactions to racist attacks on Barack Obama prove that we as a nation are on the way to "transcending race"? Do racist attacks on Barack Obama, news of which are constantly recirculated in the black community, actually help solidify and validate his black support?
Do the eruptions of bigots also provide fodder for self-congratulation among Obama's white supporters, at the same time they divert attention from the real and myriad manifestations of institutional racism in American Life.
The mainstream corporate news media, upon whom we can always count to help us know what's really important and why, have recently discovered that campaign workers for Barack Obama are sometimes greeted with anything from snide racist asides to full-blown hateful screeds. When a Republican governor makes jokes about Obama ducking a bullet, and a Georgia restaurant owner sells T-shirts depicting Obama as a monkey, these occurrences dominate the news cycle for more than a week.
Corporate media's breathless focus on manifestations of individual racism feed a narrative long popular in white America, a narrative central to the Obama campaign. This narrative holds that racism is nothing more nor less than an anti-social habit practiced by backward individuals, like bad table manners or public flatulence. This narrative is of course, false and misleading.
In the real world, American racism diminishes the quality of millions of lives every day, not through up close, personal slights and bigotry, but via the impersonal everyday functioning of society's core institutions. Black mothers and babies in the US sicken and die at third world rates not because of racist insults, but as an outcome of the “normal” way that insurance and health care markets function. Black children still get inferior educations in large part due to the dependence of public education funding on local property taxes, and No Child Left Behind, both of which are race-neutral. From employment and underemployment to credit and housing markets to policing and sentencing practices, to the siting of toxic waste dumps, our nation's ostensibly color-blind laws and institutions consistently bring forth racially stratified results.
The real racism which degrades millions of nonwhite American lives, including many who seldom encounter a white person bigoted or otherwise is institutional racism, as it was first named by Charles Hamilton and Kwame Toure more than 40 years ago. Institutional racism is something quite apart from the individual words and acts of bigots. But drawing attention to, let alone ending institutional racism has seldom been on the agenda of corporate media. Likewise the Obama campaign's strategy on race toward whites is to carefully avoid telling white people anything other than what they imagine they already know. With frank discussions of race, power and privilege off the table, talk on the subject is limited to the terrain of racism as bad manners.
The toxic eruptions of bigots have also been extremely useful to the Obama campaign in rallying support among African Americans. Constantly recirculated in the black community, these racist attacks convey to Obama's candidacy a kind of black “authenticity” on the cheap, without the bother of his having to do, say or promise to do anything that might challenge pervasive institutional racism. The racist attacks then, enable black and brown voters to hunker down in solidarity around a substance-free black candidate, while they allow Obama's white supporters to wag their fingers disapprovingly at ignorant white bigots, and congratulate themselves, celebrate the evidence that their nation --- most of it anyway – has risen above and transcended race.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon.
Do the reactions to racist attacks on Barack Obama prove that we as a nation are on the way to "transcending race"? Do racist attacks on Barack Obama, news of which are constantly recirculated in the black community, actually help solidify and validate his black support?
Do the eruptions of bigots also provide fodder for self-congratulation among Obama's white supporters, at the same time they divert attention from the real and myriad manifestations of institutional racism in American Life.
The mainstream corporate news media, upon whom we can always count to help us know what's really important and why, have recently discovered that campaign workers for Barack Obama are sometimes greeted with anything from snide racist asides to full-blown hateful screeds. When a Republican governor makes jokes about Obama ducking a bullet, and a Georgia restaurant owner sells T-shirts depicting Obama as a monkey, these occurrences dominate the news cycle for more than a week.
Corporate media's breathless focus on manifestations of individual racism feed a narrative long popular in white America, a narrative central to the Obama campaign. This narrative holds that racism is nothing more nor less than an anti-social habit practiced by backward individuals, like bad table manners or public flatulence. This narrative is of course, false and misleading.
In the real world, American racism diminishes the quality of millions of lives every day, not through up close, personal slights and bigotry, but via the impersonal everyday functioning of society's core institutions. Black mothers and babies in the US sicken and die at third world rates not because of racist insults, but as an outcome of the “normal” way that insurance and health care markets function. Black children still get inferior educations in large part due to the dependence of public education funding on local property taxes, and No Child Left Behind, both of which are race-neutral. From employment and underemployment to credit and housing markets to policing and sentencing practices, to the siting of toxic waste dumps, our nation's ostensibly color-blind laws and institutions consistently bring forth racially stratified results.
The real racism which degrades millions of nonwhite American lives, including many who seldom encounter a white person bigoted or otherwise is institutional racism, as it was first named by Charles Hamilton and Kwame Toure more than 40 years ago. Institutional racism is something quite apart from the individual words and acts of bigots. But drawing attention to, let alone ending institutional racism has seldom been on the agenda of corporate media. Likewise the Obama campaign's strategy on race toward whites is to carefully avoid telling white people anything other than what they imagine they already know. With frank discussions of race, power and privilege off the table, talk on the subject is limited to the terrain of racism as bad manners.
The toxic eruptions of bigots have also been extremely useful to the Obama campaign in rallying support among African Americans. Constantly recirculated in the black community, these racist attacks convey to Obama's candidacy a kind of black “authenticity” on the cheap, without the bother of his having to do, say or promise to do anything that might challenge pervasive institutional racism. The racist attacks then, enable black and brown voters to hunker down in solidarity around a substance-free black candidate, while they allow Obama's white supporters to wag their fingers disapprovingly at ignorant white bigots, and congratulate themselves, celebrate the evidence that their nation --- most of it anyway – has risen above and transcended race.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon.
The U.N. Investigates American Racism
By Margaret Kimberley
The United Nations is sending a special observer to investigate the role that racism plays in the ordinary life of the United States. With only three weeks, the special rapporteur will have a lot of ground to cover. And the visit comes at a time when America's ordinary denial on issues of racial injustice and inequality are intensified by the presidential campaign. After all, we are the nation which is about to "transcend" race.
Doudou Diene, United Nations Special Rapporteur on racism, will visit the United States for three weeks in order to “. . . gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Diene is a Senegalese attorney and his role is mandated by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. His United States visit is just one of many that he has made all over the world and will result in a report to be released to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009.
Mr. Diene has his work cut out for him. Three weeks isn’t enough time to examine the depths of racism in this country. Diene can investigate police brutality and the deaths of people like New Yorker Sean Bell. He can investigate the increased numbers of deportations that have torn families apart. He can look into the policies that have made America the nation with the greatest percentage of its population behind bars. He can investigate why half of those incarcerated persons are black. The theft of what little wealth black people had before the subprime mortgage crisis is another subject he might want to investigate. So much injustice, and only three weeks to find it all.
It is inevitable that Diene’s visit will bring howls of protest, and not just from the usual suspects on the right wing. It is now passe to acknowledge racism or its pernicious effects. In the irony of ironies, the possible election of a black person to the presidency is partially responsible for this selective, deliberate amnesia.
America’s crimes against its own citizens must be exposed to the entire world and there is no group in this country with both the power and the willingness to take on that task. The legacy of manifest destiny and the belief in American superiority and exceptionalism have created a citizenry that is largely incapable of hearing any information about their country that is less than positive and glowing. The absence of true journalism and a compromised political system combine to promote the telling of bald faced lies. Truth tellers are marginalized and consigned to oblivion so as not to disrupt the national discourse.
Only outsiders can tell us the truth, that the United States is a rogue nation by all standards of international law and acceptable moral norms. Yes, we are becoming more and more like the countries we have traditionally thought of as being inferior. Many Americans will be angry that an African representing the United Nations has the nerve to observe anything in this country and worse, has the gall to issue a report on what he sees. It is all to the good that Diene is coming to reveal the ugly but true underside of American life.
Diene’s timing is quite auspicious. Barack Obama’s political rise has worsened the climate for frank discussions about racism. The strategy of Obama supporters, be quiet and let him win, eliminates much needed acknowledgement of the sad state of black America. The unemployment rates, incarceration rates, and high school drop out rates have already been taken off the table in an effort to give one man his dream job and fulfill the well intended but dangerous dreams of millions of others.
Black candidates who campaign in need of support from white voters have always been forced to make those voters feel comfortable. The result of that mollification is denial of the rightful demands for justice. There will be a very high price to pay if the elevation of certain individuals continues to be the sole focus of black political action.
The year of Obama’s political ascendancy is therefore a perfect time for Diene’s visit. His campaign has proven that individual political success often comes at the expense of the larger community. If Barack Obama ends up on the capitol steps with his hand on the bible, it will be precisely because he praised Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy and falsely claimed that black people are “90% of the way towards equality.”
If Diene does even a mediocre job of reporting on racism in America he will prove that the 90% number is nothing more than politically inspired fantasy. So welcome to America Mr. Diene. Tell the truth, and don’t spare tender American sensibilities. There is plenty of “racism, xenophobia and related intolerance” and you won’t have to look very hard to find it.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.
The United Nations is sending a special observer to investigate the role that racism plays in the ordinary life of the United States. With only three weeks, the special rapporteur will have a lot of ground to cover. And the visit comes at a time when America's ordinary denial on issues of racial injustice and inequality are intensified by the presidential campaign. After all, we are the nation which is about to "transcend" race.
Doudou Diene, United Nations Special Rapporteur on racism, will visit the United States for three weeks in order to “. . . gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Diene is a Senegalese attorney and his role is mandated by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. His United States visit is just one of many that he has made all over the world and will result in a report to be released to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009.
Mr. Diene has his work cut out for him. Three weeks isn’t enough time to examine the depths of racism in this country. Diene can investigate police brutality and the deaths of people like New Yorker Sean Bell. He can investigate the increased numbers of deportations that have torn families apart. He can look into the policies that have made America the nation with the greatest percentage of its population behind bars. He can investigate why half of those incarcerated persons are black. The theft of what little wealth black people had before the subprime mortgage crisis is another subject he might want to investigate. So much injustice, and only three weeks to find it all.
It is inevitable that Diene’s visit will bring howls of protest, and not just from the usual suspects on the right wing. It is now passe to acknowledge racism or its pernicious effects. In the irony of ironies, the possible election of a black person to the presidency is partially responsible for this selective, deliberate amnesia.
America’s crimes against its own citizens must be exposed to the entire world and there is no group in this country with both the power and the willingness to take on that task. The legacy of manifest destiny and the belief in American superiority and exceptionalism have created a citizenry that is largely incapable of hearing any information about their country that is less than positive and glowing. The absence of true journalism and a compromised political system combine to promote the telling of bald faced lies. Truth tellers are marginalized and consigned to oblivion so as not to disrupt the national discourse.
Only outsiders can tell us the truth, that the United States is a rogue nation by all standards of international law and acceptable moral norms. Yes, we are becoming more and more like the countries we have traditionally thought of as being inferior. Many Americans will be angry that an African representing the United Nations has the nerve to observe anything in this country and worse, has the gall to issue a report on what he sees. It is all to the good that Diene is coming to reveal the ugly but true underside of American life.
Diene’s timing is quite auspicious. Barack Obama’s political rise has worsened the climate for frank discussions about racism. The strategy of Obama supporters, be quiet and let him win, eliminates much needed acknowledgement of the sad state of black America. The unemployment rates, incarceration rates, and high school drop out rates have already been taken off the table in an effort to give one man his dream job and fulfill the well intended but dangerous dreams of millions of others.
Black candidates who campaign in need of support from white voters have always been forced to make those voters feel comfortable. The result of that mollification is denial of the rightful demands for justice. There will be a very high price to pay if the elevation of certain individuals continues to be the sole focus of black political action.
The year of Obama’s political ascendancy is therefore a perfect time for Diene’s visit. His campaign has proven that individual political success often comes at the expense of the larger community. If Barack Obama ends up on the capitol steps with his hand on the bible, it will be precisely because he praised Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy and falsely claimed that black people are “90% of the way towards equality.”
If Diene does even a mediocre job of reporting on racism in America he will prove that the 90% number is nothing more than politically inspired fantasy. So welcome to America Mr. Diene. Tell the truth, and don’t spare tender American sensibilities. There is plenty of “racism, xenophobia and related intolerance” and you won’t have to look very hard to find it.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
American Injustice Continues - Final Call Article
This editorial from The Final Call is right on point. Read it for yourselves and you'll see. Police in America are totally out of control. I find it amazing when you see a suspect beating the hell out of cops on camera how damning the evidence is. However, on the otherhand, when the cops are the perpetrators of terrorism and brutality, all of sudden we hear the same old bullshit of "we can't have any rushes to judgment and we're investigating." Until we, Black people start to value one another's lives, how in hell can we expect anyone in the world to do so for us. We must put an end to the killing in our community, even if it means that we have to the purging. Once we've cleaned up our house, we step to this caucasian devil and tell them that if they don't put a stop to the police terrorism and murder, then we will. Black people have the right to retaliate against the police or any mob of white people who desires and does harm to us. It is our God-given right to defend ourselves and it's about time that we start excercising that right. When the police hit us, we hit them back then negotiate a peace contract. Black people fear whitey more than God (Allah) Himself. We are nation in a nation and it's time that Black America clean up it's own house, then separate from white people and form a nation of our own. The time is now! All this marching and begging the white man to treat us as equals has gotten so tired. Enjoy the reading the article below.
America’s mindset and questions of justice
By FinalCall.com News
Updated May 6, 2008, 02:33 pm
(FinalCall.com) - The recent verdict in the Sean Bell shooting case in New York would be shocking, if American history wasn’t drenched in the blood of murdered innocents and legal verdicts that sanctioned such killings.
A young man is dead, killed in a hail of 50 bullets on the day he was to marry. Left behind are a grieving fiancée and children, heartbroken parents and loved ones and two friends who survived the incident, but bare the scars of bullet wounds.
Once again, it appears that there is no justice in America for the Black man. Justice Arthur J. Cooperman ruled the three detectives, two Black and one White, were not guilty of any crimes when 50 shots were fired. The lone White detective, Michael Oliver, fired 31 shots and had to reload during an incident in which no one returned fire on men dressed in plainclothes, outside a New York club in the wee hours of the morning.
“The trial provided some answers on why the police officers fired: They mistakenly believed there was a gun in Mr. Bell’s car. But the case did not explain how anyone could have expected him to know that he was being approached by a police officer at 4 a.m., and indeed, the judge, Arthur F. Cooperman, said that did not matter under the law. ‘It was necessary to consider the mindset of each defendant at the time and place of occurrence,’ the judge said, ‘and not the mindset of the victims,’ ” noted a New York Times report.
Did the judge acquire the ability to read minds? Did he ask the right questions, like how can it be possible that deadly force can be exerted on suspicion that someone might have a weapon? Isn’t deadly force to be used in those cases where there is a clear and present danger of loss of life or serious harm, which necessitates the taking one life to preserve another?
What has the mindset of America been when it comes to the Black man and Black people? The Black man, in particular, has always been seen as a problem, from the time shackles were placed around his neck and feet and he was dragged abroad a slave ship. He has been seen as a menace to society. Time after time, incident after incident, lost life after lost life, an unarmed Black man ends up dead. An officer cries, “I feared for my life.” A judge upholds that claim and another mother buries another son.
Police officers break into a home and shoot a grandmother to death in Atlanta, an elderly woman is shot to death on the street in New York and it doesn’t matter if we live in the New South or up North, Black lives simply don’t count for very much.
The plea is to always look at this from the officer’s point of view. Police officers have dangerous jobs and must make quick decision to save lives, consider their point of view, the system says. But how often are Whites the victims of fatal shootings or encounters during routine traffic stops? How often do we find White perpetrators mown down in a hail of bullets?
Randy Weaver, a White separatist, had a run-in with U.S. authorities in 1992. The government wanted to prosecute him for a gun crime and eventually federal agents moved into the area near his home in Ruby Ridge, Iowa. There was a clash with the agents, Mr. Weaver and his family. It resulted in the death of an agent and the deaths of Mr. Weaver’s son and wife. There was a massive investigation and huge outcry about the heavy handedness of government.
“Weaver was charged with multiple crimes relating to the Ruby Ridge incident, including the original firearms charges and murder. Attorney Gerry Spence handled Weaver’s defense, and argued successfully that Weaver’s actions were justifiable as self-defense. The jury acquitted Weaver of all charges except that of failure to appear, for which Weaver was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was credited with time served plus an additional three months, and was then released. Subsequently, the government paid $308,000 to Kevin Harris (who was acquitted of all criminal charges), $100,000 to Randall Weaver, and $1 million to each of the surviving Weaver children to settle their lawsuits against the government,” according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
The lives of Whites, even when they express anti-government views, mean something. Someone must pay a price whenever the lives of Whites are taken.
“Since we have been in America, we have been under the domination of a power that during slavery did not have to justify the murder of our fathers. They didn’t have any group of people to look at the facts. The slave master had the power of life and death on every Black person outside of the principle of justice, with no regard for the life of the Black male or female that was being put to death,” said the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, speaking last November from Mosque Maryam. His message was titled, “Justifiable Homicide, Black Youth in Peril, Part 1.”
“Therefore, every killing of a Black man or woman; every lynching of a Black man or woman was excusable. No matter what was done by White people to set Black people at naught was excusable, because anything that was done to us to maintain White supremacy was in fact an unwritten law. The killing of every Black human being during the 300 years of chattel slavery and even now, 150 years up from slavery, at the hands of White people is generally considered ‘excusable,’” Min. Farrakhan noted.
If Black life has always been expendable and there has never been any consequence for the taking of Black life, what is the mindset of police officers, judges and prosecutors? Do they see the lives of Blacks as equal with the lives of Whites? America’s history shows obviously Black lives are not equal—in the sight of Whites. If Black lives are not equal to Whites, then the American mindset can never give justice.
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.
America’s mindset and questions of justice
By FinalCall.com News
Updated May 6, 2008, 02:33 pm
(FinalCall.com) - The recent verdict in the Sean Bell shooting case in New York would be shocking, if American history wasn’t drenched in the blood of murdered innocents and legal verdicts that sanctioned such killings.
A young man is dead, killed in a hail of 50 bullets on the day he was to marry. Left behind are a grieving fiancée and children, heartbroken parents and loved ones and two friends who survived the incident, but bare the scars of bullet wounds.
Once again, it appears that there is no justice in America for the Black man. Justice Arthur J. Cooperman ruled the three detectives, two Black and one White, were not guilty of any crimes when 50 shots were fired. The lone White detective, Michael Oliver, fired 31 shots and had to reload during an incident in which no one returned fire on men dressed in plainclothes, outside a New York club in the wee hours of the morning.
“The trial provided some answers on why the police officers fired: They mistakenly believed there was a gun in Mr. Bell’s car. But the case did not explain how anyone could have expected him to know that he was being approached by a police officer at 4 a.m., and indeed, the judge, Arthur F. Cooperman, said that did not matter under the law. ‘It was necessary to consider the mindset of each defendant at the time and place of occurrence,’ the judge said, ‘and not the mindset of the victims,’ ” noted a New York Times report.
Did the judge acquire the ability to read minds? Did he ask the right questions, like how can it be possible that deadly force can be exerted on suspicion that someone might have a weapon? Isn’t deadly force to be used in those cases where there is a clear and present danger of loss of life or serious harm, which necessitates the taking one life to preserve another?
What has the mindset of America been when it comes to the Black man and Black people? The Black man, in particular, has always been seen as a problem, from the time shackles were placed around his neck and feet and he was dragged abroad a slave ship. He has been seen as a menace to society. Time after time, incident after incident, lost life after lost life, an unarmed Black man ends up dead. An officer cries, “I feared for my life.” A judge upholds that claim and another mother buries another son.
Police officers break into a home and shoot a grandmother to death in Atlanta, an elderly woman is shot to death on the street in New York and it doesn’t matter if we live in the New South or up North, Black lives simply don’t count for very much.
The plea is to always look at this from the officer’s point of view. Police officers have dangerous jobs and must make quick decision to save lives, consider their point of view, the system says. But how often are Whites the victims of fatal shootings or encounters during routine traffic stops? How often do we find White perpetrators mown down in a hail of bullets?
Randy Weaver, a White separatist, had a run-in with U.S. authorities in 1992. The government wanted to prosecute him for a gun crime and eventually federal agents moved into the area near his home in Ruby Ridge, Iowa. There was a clash with the agents, Mr. Weaver and his family. It resulted in the death of an agent and the deaths of Mr. Weaver’s son and wife. There was a massive investigation and huge outcry about the heavy handedness of government.
“Weaver was charged with multiple crimes relating to the Ruby Ridge incident, including the original firearms charges and murder. Attorney Gerry Spence handled Weaver’s defense, and argued successfully that Weaver’s actions were justifiable as self-defense. The jury acquitted Weaver of all charges except that of failure to appear, for which Weaver was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was credited with time served plus an additional three months, and was then released. Subsequently, the government paid $308,000 to Kevin Harris (who was acquitted of all criminal charges), $100,000 to Randall Weaver, and $1 million to each of the surviving Weaver children to settle their lawsuits against the government,” according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
The lives of Whites, even when they express anti-government views, mean something. Someone must pay a price whenever the lives of Whites are taken.
“Since we have been in America, we have been under the domination of a power that during slavery did not have to justify the murder of our fathers. They didn’t have any group of people to look at the facts. The slave master had the power of life and death on every Black person outside of the principle of justice, with no regard for the life of the Black male or female that was being put to death,” said the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, speaking last November from Mosque Maryam. His message was titled, “Justifiable Homicide, Black Youth in Peril, Part 1.”
“Therefore, every killing of a Black man or woman; every lynching of a Black man or woman was excusable. No matter what was done by White people to set Black people at naught was excusable, because anything that was done to us to maintain White supremacy was in fact an unwritten law. The killing of every Black human being during the 300 years of chattel slavery and even now, 150 years up from slavery, at the hands of White people is generally considered ‘excusable,’” Min. Farrakhan noted.
If Black life has always been expendable and there has never been any consequence for the taking of Black life, what is the mindset of police officers, judges and prosecutors? Do they see the lives of Blacks as equal with the lives of Whites? America’s history shows obviously Black lives are not equal—in the sight of Whites. If Black lives are not equal to Whites, then the American mindset can never give justice.
FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright © 2008 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.
Police Terror and Lawless Order
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
by Dr. Floyd W. Hayes, III
"I see a growing prison-garrison state in which urban residents will become the targets of mounting police murder and incarceration." The author's grim assessment is based on the "absolute disregard for the sanctity of Black life" that marks each era of American history, from chattel slavery to the 50-bullet New York City police barrage that killed Sean Bell. Urban police practices constitute a kind or organized terror that remains essentially unchanged even after police ranks have become integrated. "Big city police forces are infected with a culture of racism and violence that historically has sanctioned the savage and brutal treatment of Black people, other people of color, and the poor.
When three Jamaica, Queens, detectives murdered Sean Bell on November 25, 2006, they engaged in a rising tide of police-state terrorism in growing numbers of urban communities throughout the United States of America. Shooting some 50 bullets at Bell, these cops not only cut short his life, but they also precluded his wedding that day to his fiancée, Nicole Paultre. Exactly five months later, a judge declared the police perpetrators not guilty of any criminal behavior, causing shock, grief, and resentment among family and community members. I am outraged by the seemingly common and wanton practice of police violence and murder in this nation's urban communities, as well as by a judicial system that exonerates killer cops. These actions represent the absolute disregard for the sanctity of Black life. Hence, I find myself mentally rehearsing why I have come to resent cops and the (il)legal order of urban community terrorism they enforce.
Growing to manhood in Los Angeles during the 1950s, I learned to fear and hate the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). This resulted from a combination of experiences, most notably the constant stories that my father, a Los Angeles County probation officer, told me about how LA cops savagely and brutally beat Black men brought into custody on charges of violating the law. Since he worked in adult investigations, my father saw first hand the results of police assaults, as he interviewed their victims in his capacity as probation officer. He heard countless stories of racialized and excessive police violence.
One reason my father recounted these events was to keep me from loitering on Los Angeles streets and corners with my friends late at night after the curfew. Another reason was his sense of outrage and resentment that city officials tolerated, and indeed encouraged, such local-state violence against Black men. So it was that I, like so many other Black and Latino Angelinos, developed a longstanding antagonism toward the LAPD. At a relatively early age, I learned that the police, although sworn to uphold the criminal law, were often men full of lawless impulses.
Black and Latino communities in big cities across America have long complained about police brutality and repression. The 1965 Watts uprising, as well as many other urban revolts during the turbulent 1960s, resulted from the abuse of police coercive power. Yet, wealthy and middle-class white Americans ignored these charges of racialized police terrorism and tyranny until the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King by LA's "gang in blue" revealed to the world how racial injustice actually is practiced in the "City of Angels." The American practice of cultural domination gives currency mainly to white perspectives of social reality while largely silencing Black points of view. However, the American culture of white supremacy, notwithstanding, there is no essential relationship between whiteness and rightness.
The order of police violence, terrorism, and murder directed at Black Americans today takes place with a systematic viciousness and savagery comparable to the dehumanizing sadism of white slave-owners, lynchers, and anti-Black rioters during the periods of chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation. This is because the criminalized image of the Black man as violent and threatening (along with that of his Latino brothers) is so fixed in the white American imagination - the Black man is always already guilty of something - that the most degrading and unwarranted police violence on the Black man's body is accepted as justifiable. This accounts for the unrestrained murder of Black men by "gangs in blue" across this nation.
To be sure, elite white media and policy managers also demonize Black females (and their Latina sisters), framing them as prostitutes or morally reprehensible single mothers, undeserving of any societal concern. Historically, whites have used negative representations of Blacks to rationalize the most heinous crimes against Black humanity. In his book, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920 UCLA urban historian Eric Monkkonen demonstrates that as American cities emerged and as chattel slavery declined in the nineteenth century, Blacks made the transition from chattel slaves to being characterized by white elites as members of the "dangerous classes," who were subjected to the coercive power of a developing white urban police force. Since an anti-Black society places little or no value on the Black body, cries of racialized injustice largely go unheard. Therefore, in the face of societal indifference, incidents of police brutality and murder of Black men and women occur with increasing frequency.
Some years ago, the videotaped incidents of excessive police violence in Inglewood, California, Oklahoma City, and New York City demonstrated the growing regularity of anti-Black police murder and terrorism in contemporary American society. Because of Inglewood's close proximity to Los Angeles, the legal battle surrounding the police assault on sixteen year-old Donovan Jackson captured national attention for a moment. The incident reminded people of the Rodney King case a decade earlier. Additionally, what made the Inglewood situation significant was the demographic shift from the 1970s through the 1990, as South Central Los Angeles' Black population moved further west. Hence, formerly middle and working class white areas, like Westchester and Inglewood, now contain predominantly middle and working class Black populations. As with Los Angeles during the years of Mayor Thomas Bradley's regime, Inglewood's political managers are Black, but the police force remains largely white. Similar to inner city residents throughout America, large numbers of Blacks in Los Angeles and Inglewood regard cops as a violent and repressive occupying force. This reality is reminiscent of James Baldwin's comments about the New York Police Department's structure of domination in Nobody Knows My Name:
"The only way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive....They represent the force of the white world, and that world's criminal profit and ease, to keep the Black man corralled up here, in his place. The badge, the gun in the holster, and the swinging club make vivid what will happen should his rebellion become overt....He moves through Harlem, therefore, like an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile country, which is precisely what, and where he is, and is the reason he walks in twos and threes."
Alternatively, when police savagely attack or murder Black people - for example, the well-known 1997 torture of Abner Louima and 1999 murder of Amadou Diallo by the NYPD - cops and their defenders immediately deny any racist motivation and cynically characterize each event as an "isolated incident." When Black cops are involved, as in the Inglewood assault and the murder of Sean Bell, the denial of racism's existence is even louder, as if these cops, as adherents of the police code, could not also view the Black body as possessing little value. Public officials (judges, politicians, and police) then legitimize or rationalize police misconduct. In the face of public resentment and outrage, former LAPD chief Daryl Gates - whose regime largely, but unofficially, encouraged lawless and racist police behavior - often sought to rationalize unrestrained police violence in Black communities as the actions of a few bad cops. According to him, such conduct was an aberration. This has become the common response of city officials. But how should we really view the dramatically increasing numbers of savage attacks on urban Black residents and the cops who perpetrate them - as isolated incidents or as systemic repression?
The effort to construct big city police violence against Blacks as an aberration or as the behavior of rogue cops masks the culture of racism and tyranny that historically has characterized the policing of Black and poor communities in America. Los Angeles is a prime example. Under a political regime established by LA's good government reform movement at the turn of the twentieth century, the mayor does not appoint the police chief. Rather, a mayor-appointed police commission selects the chief of police. Over the years, the police chief appropriated mounting managerial, political, and coercive power, which came to rival the mayor's authority. In the 1980s, this often conflicting dynamic became visible during the leadership of Thomas Bradley, LA's first Black mayor and a former cop himself, when police czar Daryl Gates sought to challenge his authority.
Police power and its concomitant order of violence reached their zenith under one of Daryl Gates' predecessors, Bill Parker, who in the 1960s established LA's system of police terrorism that became the model for urban police departments throughout America. As Joe Domanick reveals in his book, To Protect and Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams, it was the iron-fisted police chief Bill Parker who built the LAPD into a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant apparatus of organized male chauvinism that, in judgment-call situations, had a license to kill. Significantly, the introduction of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams in 1966 set in motion the increasing militarization of the LA police force, as Christian Parenti details in Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis.
Taking over as police commissar in 1978, Gates continued and expanded the essential Parker philosophy and practice of policing Los Angeles: Give no slack and take no shit from anyone. Confront and command. Control the streets at all times. Always be aggressive. Stop crimes before they happen. Seek them out. Shake them down. Make that arrest. Never admit that the department has done anything wrong.
As LA's cultural, racial, and class transformation occurred after the 1960s, the LAPD's code of (mis)conduct took on an increasingly militaristic, racist, and repressive character.
It is against this background that we need to view mounting incidents of police brutality and murder of urban Black residents throughout America. Significantly, the order of police violence is neither an aberration nor limited to rogue cops. As numerous videotapes have demonstrated over the years, cops do not operate alone and in isolation. Rather, they work in a largely autonomous institution that sanctions, and even encourages, racialized injustice and terrorism. Many cops in large urban centers across America are representative of the kind of decadence that often characterizes vicious police behavior; cops literally hate and fear the Blacks and Latinos inhabiting the communities they seek to control. As the videotaped incidents of vicious police assaults on Blacks have shown, cops are willing to do anything in their twisted conception of power to dehumanize Blacks and other people of color, and to deny them the equal protection of the law.
William Muir observes in Police: Streetcorner Politicians that the use of coercive power often corrupts urban cops. Big city police forces are infected with a culture of racism and violence that historically has sanctioned the savage and brutal treatment of Black people, other people of color, and the poor. In short, the increasing incidents of wanton police brutality and murder of Blacks are by no stretch of the imagination "isolated incidents." Rather, in contemporary urban America, excessive cop violence and terrorism take place with increasing regularity!
A colonial mentality, rooted in chattel slavery and imperialism, has structured the entire history of policing in urban America. That kind of thinking and practice needs to be overturned. An assortment of policy ideas has been advanced in order to reform police (mis)behavior, including community-based policing, racially balanced police forces, and more educated cops. In my judgment, these reforms, even if implemented, are pipe dreams. For a number of reasons, I am not optimistic about positive alternatives to an increasing order of police terrorism in urban America. Rather, I see a growing prison-garrison state in which urban residents will become the targets of mounting police murder and incarceration.
First, the so-called war on drugs during the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the incarceration of massive numbers of young Black and Latino men and woman. Of course, largely denied was the US government's involvement in the urban drug epidemic in the first place, as Gary Webb exposed in his important book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Second, the 9/11 attack forced the American polity to realize its vulnerability to international assault, leading governmental elites to set in motion the militarization of American society. Third, the public exposure of corporate elite greed, corruption, and fraud is resulting in a crisis of confidence in America's managerial capitalist political economy. Finally, under increasing media scrutiny for past corporate corruption, failing imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and arrogant and incompetent leadership, the George W. Bush regime is being plagued by a deepening public crisis of credibility. Clearly, these dynamics do not constitute a political framework necessary for overturning the structure and practice of urban police violence and terrorism.
Therefore, how might American people respond to these developments? In the face of political and corporate decadence, nihilism and social anarchy continue to mount among the exploited and disenfranchised Americans. Fed up with increasing rates of police brutality, murder, and terrorism, angry and outraged urban residents may have no alternative but to undertake new strategies of political protest and popular resistance.
Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D., is senior lecturer a the Department of Political Science and coordinator of programs and undergraduate studies at the Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. He can be contacted at fwhayes3@jhu.edu.
by Dr. Floyd W. Hayes, III
"I see a growing prison-garrison state in which urban residents will become the targets of mounting police murder and incarceration." The author's grim assessment is based on the "absolute disregard for the sanctity of Black life" that marks each era of American history, from chattel slavery to the 50-bullet New York City police barrage that killed Sean Bell. Urban police practices constitute a kind or organized terror that remains essentially unchanged even after police ranks have become integrated. "Big city police forces are infected with a culture of racism and violence that historically has sanctioned the savage and brutal treatment of Black people, other people of color, and the poor.
When three Jamaica, Queens, detectives murdered Sean Bell on November 25, 2006, they engaged in a rising tide of police-state terrorism in growing numbers of urban communities throughout the United States of America. Shooting some 50 bullets at Bell, these cops not only cut short his life, but they also precluded his wedding that day to his fiancée, Nicole Paultre. Exactly five months later, a judge declared the police perpetrators not guilty of any criminal behavior, causing shock, grief, and resentment among family and community members. I am outraged by the seemingly common and wanton practice of police violence and murder in this nation's urban communities, as well as by a judicial system that exonerates killer cops. These actions represent the absolute disregard for the sanctity of Black life. Hence, I find myself mentally rehearsing why I have come to resent cops and the (il)legal order of urban community terrorism they enforce.
Growing to manhood in Los Angeles during the 1950s, I learned to fear and hate the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). This resulted from a combination of experiences, most notably the constant stories that my father, a Los Angeles County probation officer, told me about how LA cops savagely and brutally beat Black men brought into custody on charges of violating the law. Since he worked in adult investigations, my father saw first hand the results of police assaults, as he interviewed their victims in his capacity as probation officer. He heard countless stories of racialized and excessive police violence.
One reason my father recounted these events was to keep me from loitering on Los Angeles streets and corners with my friends late at night after the curfew. Another reason was his sense of outrage and resentment that city officials tolerated, and indeed encouraged, such local-state violence against Black men. So it was that I, like so many other Black and Latino Angelinos, developed a longstanding antagonism toward the LAPD. At a relatively early age, I learned that the police, although sworn to uphold the criminal law, were often men full of lawless impulses.
Black and Latino communities in big cities across America have long complained about police brutality and repression. The 1965 Watts uprising, as well as many other urban revolts during the turbulent 1960s, resulted from the abuse of police coercive power. Yet, wealthy and middle-class white Americans ignored these charges of racialized police terrorism and tyranny until the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King by LA's "gang in blue" revealed to the world how racial injustice actually is practiced in the "City of Angels." The American practice of cultural domination gives currency mainly to white perspectives of social reality while largely silencing Black points of view. However, the American culture of white supremacy, notwithstanding, there is no essential relationship between whiteness and rightness.
The order of police violence, terrorism, and murder directed at Black Americans today takes place with a systematic viciousness and savagery comparable to the dehumanizing sadism of white slave-owners, lynchers, and anti-Black rioters during the periods of chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation. This is because the criminalized image of the Black man as violent and threatening (along with that of his Latino brothers) is so fixed in the white American imagination - the Black man is always already guilty of something - that the most degrading and unwarranted police violence on the Black man's body is accepted as justifiable. This accounts for the unrestrained murder of Black men by "gangs in blue" across this nation.
To be sure, elite white media and policy managers also demonize Black females (and their Latina sisters), framing them as prostitutes or morally reprehensible single mothers, undeserving of any societal concern. Historically, whites have used negative representations of Blacks to rationalize the most heinous crimes against Black humanity. In his book, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920 UCLA urban historian Eric Monkkonen demonstrates that as American cities emerged and as chattel slavery declined in the nineteenth century, Blacks made the transition from chattel slaves to being characterized by white elites as members of the "dangerous classes," who were subjected to the coercive power of a developing white urban police force. Since an anti-Black society places little or no value on the Black body, cries of racialized injustice largely go unheard. Therefore, in the face of societal indifference, incidents of police brutality and murder of Black men and women occur with increasing frequency.
Some years ago, the videotaped incidents of excessive police violence in Inglewood, California, Oklahoma City, and New York City demonstrated the growing regularity of anti-Black police murder and terrorism in contemporary American society. Because of Inglewood's close proximity to Los Angeles, the legal battle surrounding the police assault on sixteen year-old Donovan Jackson captured national attention for a moment. The incident reminded people of the Rodney King case a decade earlier. Additionally, what made the Inglewood situation significant was the demographic shift from the 1970s through the 1990, as South Central Los Angeles' Black population moved further west. Hence, formerly middle and working class white areas, like Westchester and Inglewood, now contain predominantly middle and working class Black populations. As with Los Angeles during the years of Mayor Thomas Bradley's regime, Inglewood's political managers are Black, but the police force remains largely white. Similar to inner city residents throughout America, large numbers of Blacks in Los Angeles and Inglewood regard cops as a violent and repressive occupying force. This reality is reminiscent of James Baldwin's comments about the New York Police Department's structure of domination in Nobody Knows My Name:
"The only way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive....They represent the force of the white world, and that world's criminal profit and ease, to keep the Black man corralled up here, in his place. The badge, the gun in the holster, and the swinging club make vivid what will happen should his rebellion become overt....He moves through Harlem, therefore, like an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile country, which is precisely what, and where he is, and is the reason he walks in twos and threes."
Alternatively, when police savagely attack or murder Black people - for example, the well-known 1997 torture of Abner Louima and 1999 murder of Amadou Diallo by the NYPD - cops and their defenders immediately deny any racist motivation and cynically characterize each event as an "isolated incident." When Black cops are involved, as in the Inglewood assault and the murder of Sean Bell, the denial of racism's existence is even louder, as if these cops, as adherents of the police code, could not also view the Black body as possessing little value. Public officials (judges, politicians, and police) then legitimize or rationalize police misconduct. In the face of public resentment and outrage, former LAPD chief Daryl Gates - whose regime largely, but unofficially, encouraged lawless and racist police behavior - often sought to rationalize unrestrained police violence in Black communities as the actions of a few bad cops. According to him, such conduct was an aberration. This has become the common response of city officials. But how should we really view the dramatically increasing numbers of savage attacks on urban Black residents and the cops who perpetrate them - as isolated incidents or as systemic repression?
The effort to construct big city police violence against Blacks as an aberration or as the behavior of rogue cops masks the culture of racism and tyranny that historically has characterized the policing of Black and poor communities in America. Los Angeles is a prime example. Under a political regime established by LA's good government reform movement at the turn of the twentieth century, the mayor does not appoint the police chief. Rather, a mayor-appointed police commission selects the chief of police. Over the years, the police chief appropriated mounting managerial, political, and coercive power, which came to rival the mayor's authority. In the 1980s, this often conflicting dynamic became visible during the leadership of Thomas Bradley, LA's first Black mayor and a former cop himself, when police czar Daryl Gates sought to challenge his authority.
Police power and its concomitant order of violence reached their zenith under one of Daryl Gates' predecessors, Bill Parker, who in the 1960s established LA's system of police terrorism that became the model for urban police departments throughout America. As Joe Domanick reveals in his book, To Protect and Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams, it was the iron-fisted police chief Bill Parker who built the LAPD into a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant apparatus of organized male chauvinism that, in judgment-call situations, had a license to kill. Significantly, the introduction of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams in 1966 set in motion the increasing militarization of the LA police force, as Christian Parenti details in Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis.
Taking over as police commissar in 1978, Gates continued and expanded the essential Parker philosophy and practice of policing Los Angeles: Give no slack and take no shit from anyone. Confront and command. Control the streets at all times. Always be aggressive. Stop crimes before they happen. Seek them out. Shake them down. Make that arrest. Never admit that the department has done anything wrong.
As LA's cultural, racial, and class transformation occurred after the 1960s, the LAPD's code of (mis)conduct took on an increasingly militaristic, racist, and repressive character.
It is against this background that we need to view mounting incidents of police brutality and murder of urban Black residents throughout America. Significantly, the order of police violence is neither an aberration nor limited to rogue cops. As numerous videotapes have demonstrated over the years, cops do not operate alone and in isolation. Rather, they work in a largely autonomous institution that sanctions, and even encourages, racialized injustice and terrorism. Many cops in large urban centers across America are representative of the kind of decadence that often characterizes vicious police behavior; cops literally hate and fear the Blacks and Latinos inhabiting the communities they seek to control. As the videotaped incidents of vicious police assaults on Blacks have shown, cops are willing to do anything in their twisted conception of power to dehumanize Blacks and other people of color, and to deny them the equal protection of the law.
William Muir observes in Police: Streetcorner Politicians that the use of coercive power often corrupts urban cops. Big city police forces are infected with a culture of racism and violence that historically has sanctioned the savage and brutal treatment of Black people, other people of color, and the poor. In short, the increasing incidents of wanton police brutality and murder of Blacks are by no stretch of the imagination "isolated incidents." Rather, in contemporary urban America, excessive cop violence and terrorism take place with increasing regularity!
A colonial mentality, rooted in chattel slavery and imperialism, has structured the entire history of policing in urban America. That kind of thinking and practice needs to be overturned. An assortment of policy ideas has been advanced in order to reform police (mis)behavior, including community-based policing, racially balanced police forces, and more educated cops. In my judgment, these reforms, even if implemented, are pipe dreams. For a number of reasons, I am not optimistic about positive alternatives to an increasing order of police terrorism in urban America. Rather, I see a growing prison-garrison state in which urban residents will become the targets of mounting police murder and incarceration.
First, the so-called war on drugs during the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the incarceration of massive numbers of young Black and Latino men and woman. Of course, largely denied was the US government's involvement in the urban drug epidemic in the first place, as Gary Webb exposed in his important book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Second, the 9/11 attack forced the American polity to realize its vulnerability to international assault, leading governmental elites to set in motion the militarization of American society. Third, the public exposure of corporate elite greed, corruption, and fraud is resulting in a crisis of confidence in America's managerial capitalist political economy. Finally, under increasing media scrutiny for past corporate corruption, failing imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and arrogant and incompetent leadership, the George W. Bush regime is being plagued by a deepening public crisis of credibility. Clearly, these dynamics do not constitute a political framework necessary for overturning the structure and practice of urban police violence and terrorism.
Therefore, how might American people respond to these developments? In the face of political and corporate decadence, nihilism and social anarchy continue to mount among the exploited and disenfranchised Americans. Fed up with increasing rates of police brutality, murder, and terrorism, angry and outraged urban residents may have no alternative but to undertake new strategies of political protest and popular resistance.
Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D., is senior lecturer a the Department of Political Science and coordinator of programs and undergraduate studies at the Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. He can be contacted at fwhayes3@jhu.edu.
House Slaves, Field Slaves and the Obama Predicament
by Mark P. Fancher
How does a present day House Negro behave? Would such people recognize themselves as successors to the House Slaves of old? Could one become president of the United States? What about the political heirs to the Field Slaves? And where would one find the Big House in the modern era? "Barack Obama's efforts to enter the biggest of big houses in American politics," writes the author, "has allowed us to see in the clearest way possible that the price of access is doing whatever it takes to make white people like you." Huge numbers of African Americans agree with "every word Rev. Jeremiah Wright has uttered," while at the same time Black support for Obama is near-unanimous. Where does "house" end and "field" begin?
In his book, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400 - 1800, author John Thornton confirms the long-held anecdotal presumption that enslaved Africans who worked in the plantation "big house" had a better quality of life than those who worked in the fields.
Thornton states:
"The contrast between the life of a domestic servant, residing in the owner's house, perhaps well dressed and not necessarily overworked, and that of the plantation slaves and field hands is well illustrated by the case of two Brazilian domestics, Ines and Juliana. These two pampered slaves, raised among the Europeans and sharing in their lives, testified against their master, Paulo Affonso, to the Inquisition of Bahia in 1613-14, and in reprisal, their master ordered them transferred as field hands to his sugar estate at Itapianga. There, a short time later they were both dead, victims of ‘many whippings and bad life and labor.'"
It is likely that as a consequence of these and comparable incidents, many enslaved Africans who toiled and suffered in the fields recognized their limited life options, and set their sights on a place on the master's domestic staff. If the fate of Sisters Ines and Juliana is any indication, disloyalty, insolence and recalcitrance were not qualities that were tolerated in a house slave, and a slave could win a coveted position in the big house only if he or she could assure the master that there would be no efforts to slip poison into the slave owner's food, or kill him as he slept.
However, masters had no guarantee of docility. In his book Runaway Slaves, distinguished historian John Hope Franklin observed:
"Even slaves who were thought to be mild mannered and obedient sometimes reached a breaking point. Having never reacted violently, the house servant of a Louisiana woman ‘returned the blow' as she was being physically chastised by her owner, threw her mistress to the ground, and ‘beat her unmercifully, on the head and face.' The white woman's face swelled up and turned black. ‘I could not have known her, by seeing her,' a visitor at the plantation said a few weeks later, ‘poor little woman is confined to bed yet' and remains ‘dangerously ill.'"
Thus, a house slave - or an African who aspired to become a house slave - was faced with the choice of either pleasing the master at all costs in order to preserve a relatively privileged position, or, resolve that even if there were benefits to living under the master's roof, they were not worth losing the little bit of dignity and self-respect that even a slave might have if he or she was willing to fight for them.
Africans may have ultimately moved off of the plantation, but many continue to seek their place in the big house. Modern big houses may be executive positions in major corporations - or even entry level jobs. A big house might be tenure on a university faculty, or a partnership in a major law firm. The shared characteristic of all of these "big houses" is that in some way, shape or form, the aspirant must gain favor with gatekeepers. To accomplish this, Africans must frequently suppress or conceal much about themselves that connects them to their culture. Speech patterns and slang used at home give way to "corporation speak." Otherwise natural hair is relaxed. Jokes told in the board room that aren't funny to most Africans are laughed at anyway. A brother who might normally prefer to spend Saturday afternoon shooting hoops will grudgingly find himself on the golf course with his white co-workers.
Barack Obama's efforts to enter the biggest of big houses in American politics has allowed us to see in the clearest way possible that the price of access is doing whatever it takes to make white people like you. Thus, Obama has found himself in the pathetic position, of essentially trudging through rural America with hat in hand, trying to convince white people - many of them bigots - that he is "safe," and not at all like those "other blacks." Reverend Jeremiah Wright's rhetoric has been blamed for having a destructive impact on the Obama campaign. But the truth is, if the pastor had never spoken a word, in the minds of white America, Wright's mere presence would still have proclaimed: "Obama is just like all of those other Negroes!" What's more, it has been interesting to observe how so many Africans who have come to identify strongly with the Obama campaign react when Reverend Wright or anyone else actually says things that threaten to shatter the illusion of the "black man who isn't black." In one form or another, we have heard a loud chorus of: "Hush now! Don't let them white folks hear you!"
Has it really come to this? Have our people forgotten that Malcolm X, the Panthers, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Kwame Ture and countless others stood up so that we would never again have to kneel meekly before "The Man"? What happened? Have our people on a mass level adopted a house slave mentality? Not likely. After all, the Detroit Branch of the NAACP and 11,000 Africans who attended its Freedom Fund Dinner, displayed the spirit of the field slave when they welcomed Reverend Wright into their presence as an act of defiance. Not only that, there are no doubt millions of other Africans who agree with every word Reverend Wright has uttered.
No, the irony is that in many cases, the near fanatic support for Obama (notwithstanding the candidate's obsession with calming white fears) is in many cases fueled by field slave impulses. In general, those impulses drive the field slave to take that which is forbidden, to walk through doors that have been locked, and to (whenever possible) rub success in the face of the oppressor. As the field slaves watch Obama march steadily toward a position that a black man is not supposed to have until the passage of at least another generation, they can't help but get caught up.
Only time will tell whether the unrelenting beating that Obama has taken in recent weeks for no reason other than he happens to be African will be the cold slap in the face that reminds the slaves out in the field that merely becoming a resident of the big house does not transform the new occupant into the master. Although many see value - even if only sentimental or symbolic- in electing a black president, it should become increasingly apparent that if the quest for a position in the big house compels a slave to abandon his pastor, ignore his community, commit to a corporate and Zionist agenda, and pander to bigots, then it is likely that once he moves in, he will have to stay with that program if he wants to keep his job.
On the plantation, it is likely that many of the field slaves who managed to talk their way into the big house entered fully conscious of the likelihood that the humiliation they would suffer there would reach intolerable limits. Those contemporary field slaves who live vicariously through would-be President Obama, will be well advised to, like their ancestors, continue their journey toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with open eyes, and a frank realization that the presidency is not a political panacea - and possibly not even a palliative pill for the ills of America's African population. If we are to achieve genuine liberation, all political options, including revolution must not only remain open, but be pursued as though the world had never heard of Barack Obama.
Mark P. Fancher is a human rights lawyer, writer and activist. He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net.
How does a present day House Negro behave? Would such people recognize themselves as successors to the House Slaves of old? Could one become president of the United States? What about the political heirs to the Field Slaves? And where would one find the Big House in the modern era? "Barack Obama's efforts to enter the biggest of big houses in American politics," writes the author, "has allowed us to see in the clearest way possible that the price of access is doing whatever it takes to make white people like you." Huge numbers of African Americans agree with "every word Rev. Jeremiah Wright has uttered," while at the same time Black support for Obama is near-unanimous. Where does "house" end and "field" begin?
In his book, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400 - 1800, author John Thornton confirms the long-held anecdotal presumption that enslaved Africans who worked in the plantation "big house" had a better quality of life than those who worked in the fields.
Thornton states:
"The contrast between the life of a domestic servant, residing in the owner's house, perhaps well dressed and not necessarily overworked, and that of the plantation slaves and field hands is well illustrated by the case of two Brazilian domestics, Ines and Juliana. These two pampered slaves, raised among the Europeans and sharing in their lives, testified against their master, Paulo Affonso, to the Inquisition of Bahia in 1613-14, and in reprisal, their master ordered them transferred as field hands to his sugar estate at Itapianga. There, a short time later they were both dead, victims of ‘many whippings and bad life and labor.'"
It is likely that as a consequence of these and comparable incidents, many enslaved Africans who toiled and suffered in the fields recognized their limited life options, and set their sights on a place on the master's domestic staff. If the fate of Sisters Ines and Juliana is any indication, disloyalty, insolence and recalcitrance were not qualities that were tolerated in a house slave, and a slave could win a coveted position in the big house only if he or she could assure the master that there would be no efforts to slip poison into the slave owner's food, or kill him as he slept.
However, masters had no guarantee of docility. In his book Runaway Slaves, distinguished historian John Hope Franklin observed:
"Even slaves who were thought to be mild mannered and obedient sometimes reached a breaking point. Having never reacted violently, the house servant of a Louisiana woman ‘returned the blow' as she was being physically chastised by her owner, threw her mistress to the ground, and ‘beat her unmercifully, on the head and face.' The white woman's face swelled up and turned black. ‘I could not have known her, by seeing her,' a visitor at the plantation said a few weeks later, ‘poor little woman is confined to bed yet' and remains ‘dangerously ill.'"
Thus, a house slave - or an African who aspired to become a house slave - was faced with the choice of either pleasing the master at all costs in order to preserve a relatively privileged position, or, resolve that even if there were benefits to living under the master's roof, they were not worth losing the little bit of dignity and self-respect that even a slave might have if he or she was willing to fight for them.
Africans may have ultimately moved off of the plantation, but many continue to seek their place in the big house. Modern big houses may be executive positions in major corporations - or even entry level jobs. A big house might be tenure on a university faculty, or a partnership in a major law firm. The shared characteristic of all of these "big houses" is that in some way, shape or form, the aspirant must gain favor with gatekeepers. To accomplish this, Africans must frequently suppress or conceal much about themselves that connects them to their culture. Speech patterns and slang used at home give way to "corporation speak." Otherwise natural hair is relaxed. Jokes told in the board room that aren't funny to most Africans are laughed at anyway. A brother who might normally prefer to spend Saturday afternoon shooting hoops will grudgingly find himself on the golf course with his white co-workers.
Barack Obama's efforts to enter the biggest of big houses in American politics has allowed us to see in the clearest way possible that the price of access is doing whatever it takes to make white people like you. Thus, Obama has found himself in the pathetic position, of essentially trudging through rural America with hat in hand, trying to convince white people - many of them bigots - that he is "safe," and not at all like those "other blacks." Reverend Jeremiah Wright's rhetoric has been blamed for having a destructive impact on the Obama campaign. But the truth is, if the pastor had never spoken a word, in the minds of white America, Wright's mere presence would still have proclaimed: "Obama is just like all of those other Negroes!" What's more, it has been interesting to observe how so many Africans who have come to identify strongly with the Obama campaign react when Reverend Wright or anyone else actually says things that threaten to shatter the illusion of the "black man who isn't black." In one form or another, we have heard a loud chorus of: "Hush now! Don't let them white folks hear you!"
Has it really come to this? Have our people forgotten that Malcolm X, the Panthers, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Kwame Ture and countless others stood up so that we would never again have to kneel meekly before "The Man"? What happened? Have our people on a mass level adopted a house slave mentality? Not likely. After all, the Detroit Branch of the NAACP and 11,000 Africans who attended its Freedom Fund Dinner, displayed the spirit of the field slave when they welcomed Reverend Wright into their presence as an act of defiance. Not only that, there are no doubt millions of other Africans who agree with every word Reverend Wright has uttered.
No, the irony is that in many cases, the near fanatic support for Obama (notwithstanding the candidate's obsession with calming white fears) is in many cases fueled by field slave impulses. In general, those impulses drive the field slave to take that which is forbidden, to walk through doors that have been locked, and to (whenever possible) rub success in the face of the oppressor. As the field slaves watch Obama march steadily toward a position that a black man is not supposed to have until the passage of at least another generation, they can't help but get caught up.
Only time will tell whether the unrelenting beating that Obama has taken in recent weeks for no reason other than he happens to be African will be the cold slap in the face that reminds the slaves out in the field that merely becoming a resident of the big house does not transform the new occupant into the master. Although many see value - even if only sentimental or symbolic- in electing a black president, it should become increasingly apparent that if the quest for a position in the big house compels a slave to abandon his pastor, ignore his community, commit to a corporate and Zionist agenda, and pander to bigots, then it is likely that once he moves in, he will have to stay with that program if he wants to keep his job.
On the plantation, it is likely that many of the field slaves who managed to talk their way into the big house entered fully conscious of the likelihood that the humiliation they would suffer there would reach intolerable limits. Those contemporary field slaves who live vicariously through would-be President Obama, will be well advised to, like their ancestors, continue their journey toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with open eyes, and a frank realization that the presidency is not a political panacea - and possibly not even a palliative pill for the ills of America's African population. If we are to achieve genuine liberation, all political options, including revolution must not only remain open, but be pursued as though the world had never heard of Barack Obama.
Mark P. Fancher is a human rights lawyer, writer and activist. He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net.
Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright: Sabotage, Division, or Sedition
by Brother Bede Vincent
After his sermon at the National Press Club in April, there was renewed uproar in my parish about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, based on the belief, asserted no doubt in many other circles, that Rev. Wright was now egotistically upstaging his former parishioner. Rev. Wright was accused of selfishly chasing the media so as to effectively sabotage Senator Obama's candidacy. There was Obama working like the sorcerer's apprentice to get the Democratic nomination - remember Mickey Mouse in the Disney version - and his Christian broom had taken on a life of its own. Much to the chagrin of Obama and his supporters that attempt to counter the Muslim associations of his name by actively embracing his Christian church has now turned into a media challenge to put down that very Christian pastor who according to Obama actually drew him into the Church.
The attack on Obama, using Wright's outspokenness, did not originate with his statements to Bill Moyers or the National Press Club. For decades US Americans have been conditioned to believe that one third - and in some parts of the US one half - of the population constitute a "special interest" because of their skin color. This has perverted the country's political culture - just like the 19th century Supreme Court decision granting corporations more civil rights than ex-slaves. Rev. Wright probably would not have drawn much attention in the first place had the Right not thought his old sermons would be good ammunition against Senator Obama. He was thrust into the limelight by the campaign - not the other way around. Reverend Wright was correct to see and say that the attack on him - and, indirectly, the challenge to Obama - was not even an ad hominem but an attack on the Black Church and on African-American culture itself. In short it was an attack on the validity of the prophetic voice of the African-American religious experience in a country which itself has no political culture divorced from the Church. In a secular society like some in Europe this would be relatively unimportant. However in a country whose entire socio-political culture is church driven, to attack the validity of the Black Church (by no means a monolith) is even viler than to attack the polling stations. No white candidate would have been forced to distance himself from the obnoxious pronouncements of New York's John Cardinal O'Connor in order to establish his right to candidacy. Even when the US elected its first Catholic president, there was no serious talk of Kennedy renouncing Cardinal Cushing.
With all respect to Obama's Philadelphia speech in March - truly an excellent piece of oratory - the senator from Illinois is responsible for at least two serious weaknesses which had nothing to do with Wright: his soft-jingoism in aligning himself with Israel and disregarding the truly catastrophic consequences of US policy both for Palestine and for Muslims everywhere, and his failure to address the fact that the majority of people who are going to war for the US are the poor, a substantial number of whom are Black Americans. The same was true of the military in Reverend Wright's days, forty years ago, when US soldiers were being recruited to kill "gooks" instead of "rag-heads." These poor are being made even poorer by the wars the US has been fighting for decades against what used to be the Third World (and is now merely the lower half of an increasingly polarized economic system).
You just have to look at the current on-line recruiting material of the US Army today to see that the US armed forces still fill most of the enlisted ranks with people who are simply glad the military gave them a job or an education - an indication of just how difficult it still is to get either in civilian life if one is not deemed white and/ or rich. It ought to be a disgrace when a man or woman has to become a trained killer in order to enjoy a monthly salary and a college education. A presidential candidate who cannot or will not make the connection between the suffering in Iraq (or elsewhere) and the portion of the population who only have the military as an employment option, is irresponsible. If he cannot say that because his campaign strategy prohibits it, then he should have the courage to leave those who do not run for president to say what needs to be said.
Now even black nationalism has been resurrected as a straw man to blame Wright's vocal and independent criticism of, yes, the rich, white male rulers of the US for being "racially closed-ended and culturally closed-ended." Wright's polemic must be like a nightmare for those who currently run the US government since nearly all the top jobs of the Bush regime have been held by people who were starting their careers when King and Malcolm were assassinated. Their attempts to discredit Obama using Wright rely on pervasive media-maintained amnesia. In Philadelphia, Obama tried to cast another spell which would return his "broom" to an inert state by associating Wright's preaching with the experience of some prior angry generation: as if a disproportionate share of prison "chain gangs" today were not comprised of African-Americans, like in those bad old days. Was Obama saying that Black Americans today do not have a right to be angry? By accusing Wright of sowing division, he was calling for a return not to the spirit of Martin Luther King but to the Booker T. Washington tradition.
It is not black liberation theology or Black Nationalism that causes division in the US, but rich, white minority and corporate rule. Even Martin Luther King found that just before he was murdered there was a point at which Christian faith required speaking the truth and not only talking about justice but naming the sources of injustice. People cannot fight "injustice," they have to fight those whose actions cause or maintain it - not mythical terrorists or Saddam Hussein, but the upper ten percent of the US that controls most of the country's wealth. King was shredded for his Riverside Church sermon, especially by his middle-class supporters. Soon after that he was dead. Reverend Wright preached the sermon that should have reminded Americans of Oscar Romero, the Catholic archbishop of Salvador murdered in 1980 by people supported by the US government, of US religious workers throughout Latin America also murdered with the tacit consent of the US government in the name of their "peculiar institutions." Reverend Wright's sermons should have reminded even Senator Obama that god did not anoint the US as the divine wielders of lethal nuclear force.
However to talk today requires a different and perhaps deeper courage when confronted with so many mirages of equality. It is tempting to be confused by these oases of opportunity and forget the desert of inequality through which most people are still struggling.
For nearly thirty years now the US has had open season on Black Americans in the media - whether talk radio (most of it Right wing) or the decisions of courts and legislatures throughout the country, not to mention the executive. There was no righteous indignation and still is none when whites malign the other half of the Mayflower and Jamestown heritage. If the blood count for "negroes" had the same validity as the pedigree of the Mayflower and DAR descendants, then most African Americans would be colonial bluebloods in the US. But instead whites were imported with greater intensity after the US civil war to neutralize the impact of slavery's abolition. (Apartheid South Africa was less successful with this strategy.) These immigrants from Europe were given "letters patent" while African-Americans were still being lynched.
In a year which may make the difference between potential peace or another decade of war, a candidate who does not have the knowledge of US history to campaign for justice in your country or the courage to withstand strong opinions, will have no chance - even if elected - in suppressing the demonic forces by which the military-industrial-financial complex dominates the US.
There is nothing flattering to say about the history of the US. On the other hand, that unpleasant odor when the US sits at the table of the United Nations can only be ignored with the strongest perfume or the greatest mendacity. It strains the imagination to believe that a presidential candidate can spend a year campaigning for hope and at the same time not have the courage to speak with a passion for justice. Justice cannot come from ignorance. It behooves a polite and respectful host to ask his disagreeable guest to wash before dining with the rest of us. Or to put it another way, true humility before god means washing one's feet before prayer. That means that a presidential candidate for justice has to educate or if he cannot, then he should allow and encourage others who can.
There is no "Southern Strategy" for Obama to win over the whites who are not already on his side. He has to hope for a fair election (and after two fraudulent presidential elections that will take a lot of hope). Obama has to deliver not only an end to the trillion dollar war but a way of putting that trillion back into the living conditions of over half of the US population from which it has been robbed and which is getting poorer every day.
This is a dangerous road to follow. King and Malcolm were run off that road. But the lesson is not that somehow public speech has to be toned to flatter rich whites and their corporations. People will have to start shouting very loud to be heard over the din of lies that appear in all the mass media every day. Not only are Black Americans still getting poorer, there is going to be a steady stream of Black Americans coming back in uniform psychologically damaged if not destroyed who will find that just like King said they will have killed for a "freedom" abroad that eludes them at home.
If Obama is the great hope, then the African-American clergy and for that matter any other true patriots should be urging Obama to speak for justice and not only for hope. If people like Wright do not use their exposure to push the agenda of justice and Obama cannot, then who will? The demand for justice is divisive and culturally closed: it divides those who seek justice from the unjust. It rejects a culture that promotes individual or corporate profit at any cost.
Until white Americans have a practical, lived notion of justice, based on recognition of their country's history of systemic injustice maintained to this day by those who rule the US, how will they ever get beyond the empty phrases of that pledge each school child is supposed to take? This means naming names. It is not so long ago in the history of the US that cars could be found with bumper stickers saying, "Kill an Indian, save a walleye." Sins are not committed in the abstract and crimes are not theoretical. Jesus may have asked God to forgive his crucifiers because "they know not what they do." However, "not knowing what they do" is no excuse for the rest.
The problem with Reverend Jeremiah Wright is that there are too few like him who are speaking for justice and truth first, instead of branding the truth sedition. Only when there has been truth and justice can there be reconciliation. Too many people want to take the short cut. They want African-Americans to reconcile themselves to a government which does not represent them, actively disenfranchises them, destroys their homes (and whole cities if need be), imprisons their children and ships the rest off to war, and never ask why or who is responsible. This is the reconciliation "on the cheap" - cheap for white and corporate America, that is. Reverend Wright offers Obama an opportunity, it is a shame he has declared himself unwilling to take it. That is not Wright's problem. That is America's problem. It is America that is the embarrassment, not Wright, who merely points out what the country still has not deigned to admit, let alone correct.
Bede is a lay brother and former teacher, educated in the US, UK and Germany. He is associated with the Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies (www.maisonneuvepress.com) and can be contacted through the Institute or at dr-wilkinson-ccll@online.de.
After his sermon at the National Press Club in April, there was renewed uproar in my parish about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, based on the belief, asserted no doubt in many other circles, that Rev. Wright was now egotistically upstaging his former parishioner. Rev. Wright was accused of selfishly chasing the media so as to effectively sabotage Senator Obama's candidacy. There was Obama working like the sorcerer's apprentice to get the Democratic nomination - remember Mickey Mouse in the Disney version - and his Christian broom had taken on a life of its own. Much to the chagrin of Obama and his supporters that attempt to counter the Muslim associations of his name by actively embracing his Christian church has now turned into a media challenge to put down that very Christian pastor who according to Obama actually drew him into the Church.
The attack on Obama, using Wright's outspokenness, did not originate with his statements to Bill Moyers or the National Press Club. For decades US Americans have been conditioned to believe that one third - and in some parts of the US one half - of the population constitute a "special interest" because of their skin color. This has perverted the country's political culture - just like the 19th century Supreme Court decision granting corporations more civil rights than ex-slaves. Rev. Wright probably would not have drawn much attention in the first place had the Right not thought his old sermons would be good ammunition against Senator Obama. He was thrust into the limelight by the campaign - not the other way around. Reverend Wright was correct to see and say that the attack on him - and, indirectly, the challenge to Obama - was not even an ad hominem but an attack on the Black Church and on African-American culture itself. In short it was an attack on the validity of the prophetic voice of the African-American religious experience in a country which itself has no political culture divorced from the Church. In a secular society like some in Europe this would be relatively unimportant. However in a country whose entire socio-political culture is church driven, to attack the validity of the Black Church (by no means a monolith) is even viler than to attack the polling stations. No white candidate would have been forced to distance himself from the obnoxious pronouncements of New York's John Cardinal O'Connor in order to establish his right to candidacy. Even when the US elected its first Catholic president, there was no serious talk of Kennedy renouncing Cardinal Cushing.
With all respect to Obama's Philadelphia speech in March - truly an excellent piece of oratory - the senator from Illinois is responsible for at least two serious weaknesses which had nothing to do with Wright: his soft-jingoism in aligning himself with Israel and disregarding the truly catastrophic consequences of US policy both for Palestine and for Muslims everywhere, and his failure to address the fact that the majority of people who are going to war for the US are the poor, a substantial number of whom are Black Americans. The same was true of the military in Reverend Wright's days, forty years ago, when US soldiers were being recruited to kill "gooks" instead of "rag-heads." These poor are being made even poorer by the wars the US has been fighting for decades against what used to be the Third World (and is now merely the lower half of an increasingly polarized economic system).
You just have to look at the current on-line recruiting material of the US Army today to see that the US armed forces still fill most of the enlisted ranks with people who are simply glad the military gave them a job or an education - an indication of just how difficult it still is to get either in civilian life if one is not deemed white and/ or rich. It ought to be a disgrace when a man or woman has to become a trained killer in order to enjoy a monthly salary and a college education. A presidential candidate who cannot or will not make the connection between the suffering in Iraq (or elsewhere) and the portion of the population who only have the military as an employment option, is irresponsible. If he cannot say that because his campaign strategy prohibits it, then he should have the courage to leave those who do not run for president to say what needs to be said.
Now even black nationalism has been resurrected as a straw man to blame Wright's vocal and independent criticism of, yes, the rich, white male rulers of the US for being "racially closed-ended and culturally closed-ended." Wright's polemic must be like a nightmare for those who currently run the US government since nearly all the top jobs of the Bush regime have been held by people who were starting their careers when King and Malcolm were assassinated. Their attempts to discredit Obama using Wright rely on pervasive media-maintained amnesia. In Philadelphia, Obama tried to cast another spell which would return his "broom" to an inert state by associating Wright's preaching with the experience of some prior angry generation: as if a disproportionate share of prison "chain gangs" today were not comprised of African-Americans, like in those bad old days. Was Obama saying that Black Americans today do not have a right to be angry? By accusing Wright of sowing division, he was calling for a return not to the spirit of Martin Luther King but to the Booker T. Washington tradition.
It is not black liberation theology or Black Nationalism that causes division in the US, but rich, white minority and corporate rule. Even Martin Luther King found that just before he was murdered there was a point at which Christian faith required speaking the truth and not only talking about justice but naming the sources of injustice. People cannot fight "injustice," they have to fight those whose actions cause or maintain it - not mythical terrorists or Saddam Hussein, but the upper ten percent of the US that controls most of the country's wealth. King was shredded for his Riverside Church sermon, especially by his middle-class supporters. Soon after that he was dead. Reverend Wright preached the sermon that should have reminded Americans of Oscar Romero, the Catholic archbishop of Salvador murdered in 1980 by people supported by the US government, of US religious workers throughout Latin America also murdered with the tacit consent of the US government in the name of their "peculiar institutions." Reverend Wright's sermons should have reminded even Senator Obama that god did not anoint the US as the divine wielders of lethal nuclear force.
However to talk today requires a different and perhaps deeper courage when confronted with so many mirages of equality. It is tempting to be confused by these oases of opportunity and forget the desert of inequality through which most people are still struggling.
For nearly thirty years now the US has had open season on Black Americans in the media - whether talk radio (most of it Right wing) or the decisions of courts and legislatures throughout the country, not to mention the executive. There was no righteous indignation and still is none when whites malign the other half of the Mayflower and Jamestown heritage. If the blood count for "negroes" had the same validity as the pedigree of the Mayflower and DAR descendants, then most African Americans would be colonial bluebloods in the US. But instead whites were imported with greater intensity after the US civil war to neutralize the impact of slavery's abolition. (Apartheid South Africa was less successful with this strategy.) These immigrants from Europe were given "letters patent" while African-Americans were still being lynched.
In a year which may make the difference between potential peace or another decade of war, a candidate who does not have the knowledge of US history to campaign for justice in your country or the courage to withstand strong opinions, will have no chance - even if elected - in suppressing the demonic forces by which the military-industrial-financial complex dominates the US.
There is nothing flattering to say about the history of the US. On the other hand, that unpleasant odor when the US sits at the table of the United Nations can only be ignored with the strongest perfume or the greatest mendacity. It strains the imagination to believe that a presidential candidate can spend a year campaigning for hope and at the same time not have the courage to speak with a passion for justice. Justice cannot come from ignorance. It behooves a polite and respectful host to ask his disagreeable guest to wash before dining with the rest of us. Or to put it another way, true humility before god means washing one's feet before prayer. That means that a presidential candidate for justice has to educate or if he cannot, then he should allow and encourage others who can.
There is no "Southern Strategy" for Obama to win over the whites who are not already on his side. He has to hope for a fair election (and after two fraudulent presidential elections that will take a lot of hope). Obama has to deliver not only an end to the trillion dollar war but a way of putting that trillion back into the living conditions of over half of the US population from which it has been robbed and which is getting poorer every day.
This is a dangerous road to follow. King and Malcolm were run off that road. But the lesson is not that somehow public speech has to be toned to flatter rich whites and their corporations. People will have to start shouting very loud to be heard over the din of lies that appear in all the mass media every day. Not only are Black Americans still getting poorer, there is going to be a steady stream of Black Americans coming back in uniform psychologically damaged if not destroyed who will find that just like King said they will have killed for a "freedom" abroad that eludes them at home.
If Obama is the great hope, then the African-American clergy and for that matter any other true patriots should be urging Obama to speak for justice and not only for hope. If people like Wright do not use their exposure to push the agenda of justice and Obama cannot, then who will? The demand for justice is divisive and culturally closed: it divides those who seek justice from the unjust. It rejects a culture that promotes individual or corporate profit at any cost.
Until white Americans have a practical, lived notion of justice, based on recognition of their country's history of systemic injustice maintained to this day by those who rule the US, how will they ever get beyond the empty phrases of that pledge each school child is supposed to take? This means naming names. It is not so long ago in the history of the US that cars could be found with bumper stickers saying, "Kill an Indian, save a walleye." Sins are not committed in the abstract and crimes are not theoretical. Jesus may have asked God to forgive his crucifiers because "they know not what they do." However, "not knowing what they do" is no excuse for the rest.
The problem with Reverend Jeremiah Wright is that there are too few like him who are speaking for justice and truth first, instead of branding the truth sedition. Only when there has been truth and justice can there be reconciliation. Too many people want to take the short cut. They want African-Americans to reconcile themselves to a government which does not represent them, actively disenfranchises them, destroys their homes (and whole cities if need be), imprisons their children and ships the rest off to war, and never ask why or who is responsible. This is the reconciliation "on the cheap" - cheap for white and corporate America, that is. Reverend Wright offers Obama an opportunity, it is a shame he has declared himself unwilling to take it. That is not Wright's problem. That is America's problem. It is America that is the embarrassment, not Wright, who merely points out what the country still has not deigned to admit, let alone correct.
Bede is a lay brother and former teacher, educated in the US, UK and Germany. He is associated with the Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies (www.maisonneuvepress.com) and can be contacted through the Institute or at dr-wilkinson-ccll@online.de.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Racism alarms Obama backers
Candidate's foot soldiers encounter name-calling, vandalism, bomb threats
By Kevin Merida
The Washington Post
updated 3:04 a.m. ET, Tues., May. 13, 2008
WASHINGTON - Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."
For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Meeting cruel reaction
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."
Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.
Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."
Vandalism, bomb threats
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright."
Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. "I thought, this is a big deal." But he was told Obama campaign officials didn't want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.
"The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming," he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.
Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don't fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.
"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "
Skilled at bridging divides
Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama's skill at bridging divides.
Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.
For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. "We've grown up in a different world," says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions -- state director, regional field director, field organizer -- that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.
Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.
In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.
"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."
Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.
Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"
Racial attitudes difficult to measure
Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."
The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.
Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.
Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn't on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."
People with funny feelings
The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.
At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. "Something new," Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.
Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."
"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.
He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. "It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."
Like him?
"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.
Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.
As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."
But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.
Staff writer Peter Slevin and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24588813/
By Kevin Merida
The Washington Post
updated 3:04 a.m. ET, Tues., May. 13, 2008
WASHINGTON - Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."
For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Meeting cruel reaction
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."
Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.
Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."
Vandalism, bomb threats
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright."
Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. "I thought, this is a big deal." But he was told Obama campaign officials didn't want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.
"The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming," he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.
Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don't fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.
"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "
Skilled at bridging divides
Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama's skill at bridging divides.
Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.
For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. "We've grown up in a different world," says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions -- state director, regional field director, field organizer -- that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.
Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.
In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.
"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."
Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.
Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"
Racial attitudes difficult to measure
Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."
The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.
Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.
Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn't on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."
People with funny feelings
The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.
At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. "Something new," Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.
Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."
"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.
He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. "It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."
Like him?
"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.
Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.
As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."
But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.
Staff writer Peter Slevin and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24588813/
Monday, May 12, 2008
Deadly mob beating in Cleveland neighborhood
This story is absolutely heartbreaking. Black people are in one hell of a condition. We got cops killing Blacks, we got whites killing Blacks and we got niggers killing Blacks. A fellow Muslim brother and former Captain of the mosque once said that if the gangs won't stop the killing, then we have to start killing the gangs. It's bad enough that we have lawlessness from the police, but it's even worse when we have to suffer that same killing and lawlessness from our own people. It's time to start cleaning our house, our community and give our children a future. Something like the beating death of this man must be punished and should never happen again. It's time we give the gangs a final ultimatum: either stop the killing or we kill you and we have to back that up. We already see that we cannot rely on the white man to do that because they will not make the distinction as to who among us is law abiding and who is a law breaking criminal. In the minds of these caucasian devils, any ole nigger will do!
Deadly mob beating unnerves Cleveland neighborhood
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN,
Associated Press Writer 38 minutes ago
Even by tough, urban-crime standards it was a grisly attack: Up to 15 people chased a man, then kicked and beat him to death on the street. Before police arrived, one attacker urinated on the victim's head.
When the crime-hardened neighborhood awoke later that morning, two people reported a man lying on the pavement, his clothes being dragged off by his assailants.
"You got a male being assaulted by 15 other guys. He's laying on the street," one 911 caller said.
The April 27 attack on Charles Gooden Jr. happened in the most murder-ridden neighborhood in one of the nation's poorest cities. But it was also within a 10-minute drive of the city's skyscrapers, sports venues and tourist attractions.
Three suspects have been charged with aggravated murder. Police have not mentioned a motive, but they expect more arrests.
It wasn't always dangerous along East 117th Street, where the tulips bloom late because of the cool winds blowing off Lake Erie just a mile to the north.
"It used to be so quiet, and we were so blessed to live on 117th Street," said Irene Bennett, 78, who has lived there for 40 years. She is so used to gunfire and loud outbursts at night that she slept through the commotion of Gooden's slaying.
In retirement, she and her husband had hoped to enjoy simple pleasures: watching people pass by and planting flowers around their neatly kept home. But the violence in the neighborhood makes that impossible.
"You pay for your home. You work hard. You retire, and you want to enjoy, just come out on your porch and ... wait for the summertime to come," she said, shaking her head.
The attackers sent word that anyone helping police could face retribution, according to City Councilman Kevin Conwell. He described the assailants as gang members.
Conwell said the motive was based on an argument involving a woman and a threat by her cousin against Gooden, 41.
"He went to defend his malehood honor. He hit the cousin in the mouth. When that happened, the other gang members jumped on him," said Conwell, relying on information from police and neighbors.
Charged in the slaying were Latangia Anderson, 23, Johnny Brown, 20, and Paris Moore, 19, all of Cleveland. They were each jailed on $1 million bond.
None of the three defendants was able to afford an attorney. The lawyers appointed to represent them all said they could not comment on the case.
After the attack, a memorial of stuffed animals took shape outside the Bennett house because the slaying scene doesn't have a tree to anchor the display.
The display has dwindled but still has a stuffed dog with the label "Puppy love" and another with Gooden's nickname, Bud, written on it, according to Bennett, who knew Gooden when he was a youngster visiting an uncle down the street.
The uncle's house is now boarded up, along with many other neighborhood homes left dilapidated by poverty and drugs. There are a few newly renovated homes and two newer ones, one with barred windows. But in the once-lively commercial district around the corner, most stores are closed, except for a few barbershops or storefront churches.
The neighborhood is Cleveland's murder capital, according to police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho, and outsiders driving the streets risk getting pegged as people looking to buy crack cocaine.
Still, Gooden's death unnerved people here, including the 911 callers.
"They're stomping somebody and ripping their clothes off. You need to come," another caller said. "Like 15 of them beating the hell out of him."
The emergency dispatcher asked if an ambulance should be sent. "You better bring a stretcher, too," the caller replied. "Please hurry."
___
Associated Press writer M.R. Kropko contributed to this story.
Deadly mob beating unnerves Cleveland neighborhood
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN,
Associated Press Writer 38 minutes ago
Even by tough, urban-crime standards it was a grisly attack: Up to 15 people chased a man, then kicked and beat him to death on the street. Before police arrived, one attacker urinated on the victim's head.
When the crime-hardened neighborhood awoke later that morning, two people reported a man lying on the pavement, his clothes being dragged off by his assailants.
"You got a male being assaulted by 15 other guys. He's laying on the street," one 911 caller said.
The April 27 attack on Charles Gooden Jr. happened in the most murder-ridden neighborhood in one of the nation's poorest cities. But it was also within a 10-minute drive of the city's skyscrapers, sports venues and tourist attractions.
Three suspects have been charged with aggravated murder. Police have not mentioned a motive, but they expect more arrests.
It wasn't always dangerous along East 117th Street, where the tulips bloom late because of the cool winds blowing off Lake Erie just a mile to the north.
"It used to be so quiet, and we were so blessed to live on 117th Street," said Irene Bennett, 78, who has lived there for 40 years. She is so used to gunfire and loud outbursts at night that she slept through the commotion of Gooden's slaying.
In retirement, she and her husband had hoped to enjoy simple pleasures: watching people pass by and planting flowers around their neatly kept home. But the violence in the neighborhood makes that impossible.
"You pay for your home. You work hard. You retire, and you want to enjoy, just come out on your porch and ... wait for the summertime to come," she said, shaking her head.
The attackers sent word that anyone helping police could face retribution, according to City Councilman Kevin Conwell. He described the assailants as gang members.
Conwell said the motive was based on an argument involving a woman and a threat by her cousin against Gooden, 41.
"He went to defend his malehood honor. He hit the cousin in the mouth. When that happened, the other gang members jumped on him," said Conwell, relying on information from police and neighbors.
Charged in the slaying were Latangia Anderson, 23, Johnny Brown, 20, and Paris Moore, 19, all of Cleveland. They were each jailed on $1 million bond.
None of the three defendants was able to afford an attorney. The lawyers appointed to represent them all said they could not comment on the case.
After the attack, a memorial of stuffed animals took shape outside the Bennett house because the slaying scene doesn't have a tree to anchor the display.
The display has dwindled but still has a stuffed dog with the label "Puppy love" and another with Gooden's nickname, Bud, written on it, according to Bennett, who knew Gooden when he was a youngster visiting an uncle down the street.
The uncle's house is now boarded up, along with many other neighborhood homes left dilapidated by poverty and drugs. There are a few newly renovated homes and two newer ones, one with barred windows. But in the once-lively commercial district around the corner, most stores are closed, except for a few barbershops or storefront churches.
The neighborhood is Cleveland's murder capital, according to police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho, and outsiders driving the streets risk getting pegged as people looking to buy crack cocaine.
Still, Gooden's death unnerved people here, including the 911 callers.
"They're stomping somebody and ripping their clothes off. You need to come," another caller said. "Like 15 of them beating the hell out of him."
The emergency dispatcher asked if an ambulance should be sent. "You better bring a stretcher, too," the caller replied. "Please hurry."
___
Associated Press writer M.R. Kropko contributed to this story.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)