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Overview
Why are 1 in 9 young Black men in prison
The so-called "war
on drugs" has created a national disaster: 1 in 9 young
Black men in America are now behind bars.1
It's not because they commit more crime but largely
because of unfair sentencing rules that treat 5 grams of
crack cocaine, the kind found in poor Black communities,
the same as 500 grams of powder cocaine2, the
kind found in White and wealthier communities.
These sentencing
laws are destroying communities across the country and
have done almost nothing to reduce the level of drug use
and crime.
Senator Joe Biden
is one of the original creators of these laws and is now
trying to fix the problem.3 But some of his
colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee are
standing in the way. Join us in telling them to stand
with Joe Biden and undo this disaster once and for all:
http://colorofchange.org/crackpowder/
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Strange Fruit Video
/ Oakland,
Toward Radical Spirituality
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News Update
Black Americans
Given Longer Sentences than White Americans for Same
Crimes—
David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff—4 February 2012—A
new academic study of 58,000 federal criminal cases has
found significant disparities in sentencing for blacks
and whites arrested for the same crimes. The research
led to the conclusion that African-Americans’ jail time
was almost 60% longer than white sentences. According to
M. Marit Rehavi of the University of British Columbia
and Sonja B. Starr, who teaches criminal law at the
University of Michigan Law School, the racial
disparities can be explained “in a single prosecutorial
decision: whether to file a charge carrying a mandatory
minimum sentence….Black men were on average more than
twice as likely to face a mandatory minimum charge as
white men were, holding arrest offense as well as age
and location constant.” Prosecutors are about twice as
likely to impose mandatory minimums on black defendants
as on white defendants. In federal cases, black
defendants faced average sentences of 60 months, while
the average for white defendants was only 38 months. The
report concludes that sentence disparities “can be
almost completely explained by three factors: the
original arrest offense, the defendant’s criminal
history, and the prosecutor’s initial choice of
charges.”— allgov
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Glock: The Rise of America's Gun
By
Paul M. Barrett
Based on fifteen years
of research, Glock is the riveting story of
the weapon that has become known as
American’s gun. Today the Glock pistol has
been embraced by two-thirds of all U.S.
police departments, glamorized in countless
Hollywood movies, and featured as a
ubiquitous presence on prime-time TV. It has
been rhapsodized by hip-hop artists, and
coveted by cops and crooks alike.
Created in 1982 by Gaston Glock, an obscure
Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer, and
swiftly adopted by the Austrian army, the
Glock pistol, with its lightweight plastic
frame and large-capacity spring-action
magazine, arrived in America at a fortuitous
time. Law enforcement agencies had
concluded that their agents and officers,
armed with standard six-round revolvers,
were getting "outgunned" by drug dealers
with semi-automatic pistols. They needed a
new gun. When Karl Water, a firearm salesman
based in the U.S. first saw a Glock in 1984,
his reaction was, “Jeez, that’s ugly.” But
the advantages of the pistol soon became
apparent. The standard semi-automatic Glock
could fire as many as 17 bullets from its
magazine without reloading (one equipped
with an extended thirty-three cartridge
magazine was used in Tucson to shoot
Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others). It was
built with only 36 parts that were
interchangeable with those of other models.
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You could drop it underwater, toss it from a helicopter,
or leave it out in the snow, and it would still fire. It
was reliable, accurate, lightweight, and cheaper to
produce than Smith and Wesson’s revolver. Made in part
of hardened plastic, it was even rumored (incorrectly)
to be invisible to airport security screening. Filled
with corporate intrigue, political maneuvering,
Hollywood glitz, bloody shoot-outs—and an attempt on
Gaston Glock’s life by a former lieutenant—Glock is at
once the inside account of how Glock the company went
about marketing its pistol to police agencies and later
the public, as well as a compelling chronicle of the
evolution of gun culture in America.
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Oscar Grant’s
killer on trial again for police brutality—23
November, 2011—Former San Francisco BART police officer
Johannes Mehserle is on trial this week, and if his name
and affiliation rings a bell, there is good reason:
Mehserle was found guilty of killing Oscar Grant, an
unarmed transit rider, during a 2009 incident. As luck
would have it, that wasn’t the first time that Mehserle
went a little overboard. Less than two months before he
executed Grant at pointblank range in an Oakland,
California train station, the ex-officer allegedly used
excessive force and violated the constitutional rights
of Kenneth Carrethers at a separate Bay Area Rapid
Transit hub.
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Carrethers’ attorneys say that on November
15 2008, their client was angry over the
BART cops’ lack of help in a case of
vandalism that targeted his car. Carrethers
says that he called the police force
“useless,” and from there Mehserle and a
handful of other offices became irate.
According to court filings, Mehserle used a
leg sweep to take Carrethers to the ground,
then punched and kicked him while he was on
the pavement.
The
complaint continues that cops tied up
Carrethers’ arms and legs before hauling him
away. "Well, have you learned not to
mess with police officers?" Mehserle
allegedly asked him. Carrethers was
initially charged with resisting arrest, but
six weeks later a cell phone camera filmed
Mehserle executing Oscar Grant while the
unarmed black man man laid face down in a
BART station. A civil case was filed by
Carrethers a month later, but was put on
hold while Merhselrs waited behind bars
during his trial for the Grant incident. |
A jury went on to
find the ex-officer only guilty of involuntary
manslaughter and mobs rioted the streets of Oakland,
California. Johannes Mehserle only served 11 months for
killing Grant. To RT, a family member of Grant said that
the sentence demonstrated "just how racist this criminal
justice system is." Mehserle, a white man, is once again
being charged with using excessive force on an unarmed
black man. Five officers in all are on trial for the
beating of Carrethers, 43, as well as attacking him for
exercising his freedom of speech. Mehserle is expected
to testify on his own behalf.—rt.com
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Staggering number of Caribbean Immigrants Sexually Abused in Detention Centers
The ACLU said documents obtained from the federal government reveal that immigrants reported being sexually abused at the centers nearly 200 times since 2007. . . . 56 of the 185 allegations were made in Texas, more than in any other state. . . . The guard, Donald Dunn, pleaded guilty to official oppression and unlawful restraint in the assaults of five women while working at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center. . . . The suit also names Dunn’s supervisor, three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, the Texas county of Williamson and the Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company that manages the facility. . . .
Shapiro said that the documents the ACLU recovered may just be the “tip of the iceberg.” “I shudder to think how many are not reported,” he said. Earlier this week, ICE Director John Morton said his agency deported nearly 400,000 immigrants during the fiscal year that ended in September, the largest number of removals in the agency’s history.—RepeatingIslands. |
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Message
from Troy Anthony Davis
I am
in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but
because of my
faith
in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for
some time and
no
matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end
the death
penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails
to protect the innocent must be
accelerated.
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Police officer convicted in California
subway shooting— Johannes Mehserle
was found guilty of involuntary
manslaughter. He shot Oscar Grant in the
back in Oakland, California, on 1
January 2009, while attempting to subdue
him following a fight.
Mehserle told the Los Angeles court that
he had mistaken the pistol for an
electric Taser weapon on his belt. . . .
The trial was moved to Los Angeles
because of the tensions in Oakland.
Speaking after the jury's finding,
California Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger called on state residents
"to remain calm in light of the verdict
and not to resort to violence". Mehserle,
28, faces years in prison.. . . .
Mehserle fled to Nevada following the
shooting and was arrested about two
weeks later.
BBC
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The right verdict in
Mehserle case—Involuntary manslaughter might seem an
unsatisfying outcome for the killing of the unarmed Oscar Grant
on Jan. 1, 2009, but it was consistent with the evidence that
could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt against former BART
police Officer Johannes Mehserle. Anything less would have been
an injustice. Anything more would have required conclusions
about Mehserle's state of mind that were not sufficiently
supported in trial. .
. . Mehserle, 28, claimed it was an accident, that he
thought he was firing a Taser instead of a handgun at the
detainee. The explanation stretched the bounds of plausibility,
given the difference in weight, feel - and position on his
holster - between the nonlethal weapon intended to immobilize
and the Sig Sauer P226 pistol that is used to kill. He clearly
was negligent. It was a crime, not an accident.
The other two conviction options
available to the jury - second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter -
would have required the jury to find that Mehserle meant to kill Grant. The
evidence indicated the officer's state of mind was contradictory at best.
His reaction immediately after the shooting suggested disbelief at what he
had done. Yet his explanation of having mistaken his gun for a Taser did not
emerge for several days. In other words, there was reasonable
doubt about his intent, which was the standard the jury needed to overcome,
even if that will not fly in the court of public opinion.
SFGate |
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World Shocked by U.S. Execution
of Troy Davis—by Peter Wilkinson— September 22,
2011—The execution sparked angry reactions and protests
in European capitals -- as well as outrage on social
media. "We strongly deplore that the numerous appeals
for clemency were not heeded," the French foreign
ministry said.
"There are still
serious doubts about his guilt," said Germany's junior
minister for human rights Markus Loening. "An execution
is irreversible—a judicial error can never be repaired."
The European Union expressed "deep regret" over the
execution and repeated its call for a universal
moratorium on capital punishment. EU foreign policy
chief Catherine Ashton said the bloc had learnt "with
deep regret that Mr Troy Davis was executed," her
spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told Agence-France Presse.
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'"The
EU opposes the use of capital punishment in
all circumstances and calls for a universal
moratorium," she said. "The abolition of
that penalty is essential to protect human
dignity."
Amnesty
International condemned the execution in a
statement. "The U.S. justice system was
shaken to its core as Georgia executed a
person who may well be innocent. Killing a
man under this enormous cloud of doubt is
horrific and amounts to a catastrophic
failure of the justice system," Amnesty
said. In Britain's Guardian newspaper, Ed
Jackson, reporting from Jackson, Georgia,
before the execution took place, gave 10
reasons why he believed the death sentence
for "a man who is very possibly innocent"
should be commuted.—CommonDreams
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The
Prosecution Rests, but I Can’t—By John
Thompson—9 April 2011—I spent 18 years
in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them
on death row. I’ve been free since 2003,
exonerated after evidence covered up by
prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my
execution date. Those prosecutors were never
punished. Last month, the
Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a
case I’d won against them and the district
attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that
they were not liable for the failure to turn
over that evidence—which included proof that
blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine.
Because of that, prosecutors are free to do
the same thing to someone else today.
I was
arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I
remember the police coming to my
grandmother’s house—we all knew it was the
cops because of how hard they banged on the
door before kicking it in. |
My grandmother and my mom were there, along
with my little brother and sister, my two
sons— John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6—my
girlfriend and me.The officers had guns
drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought
they were coming for a murderer. All the
children were scared and crying. I was 22. .
. .—NYTimes
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Repeal, Restrict and Repress—By Charles M.
Blow—11 February 2011—According
to The News and Observer in North
Carolina, Republicans are considering
severely narrowing or repealing the state’s
recently enacted Racial Justice Act, which
allows death-row inmates to use statistics
to appeal their cases on the basis of racial
discrimination.
Two
studies
of the death penalty in the state
have found that someone who kills a
white person is about three times as likely
to be sentenced to death as someone who
kills a minority. And in Wisconsin,
Republicans are pushing a bill that would
repeal a 2009 law that requires police to
record the race of people they pull over at
traffic stops so the data could be used to
study racial-profiling.—NYTimes |
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Scott Sisters Released From
Prison
Jan 08, 2011 Gladys and Jamie Scott were released from
prison Friday morning after serving 16 years behind
bars. They have maintained their innocence but it was a
grassroots movement that helped them gain their freedom.
Jailed sisters say they're not
bitter
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Settlement Reached in Civil Suit
Charging Franklin County, MS Role in
1964 KKK Murders—On Monday, June 21,
Franklin County, Mississippi agreed to a
settlement in an historic civil suit
with the families of Charles Moore
and Henry Dee, two 19-year-old Black men
who were kidnapped, tortured and
murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan
on May 2, 1964.
“This is the first time, to my
knowledge, that any civil lawsuit
against public officials for
collaborating with the KKK has reached
the point of settlement,” said
Margaret Burnham, lead attorney for
the family members who brought the suit
against Franklin County. Klansman James
Ford Seale went
to prison in 2007 for his role in the
murders; this landmark civil suit
addressed the roles of Mississippi
government officials in the double
murder and subsequent cover-up of what
had occurred.Cold
Cases
photo:
Henry Dee |
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Lynchsong
By Lorraine Hansberry
I can hear Rosalee
See the eyes of Willie McGee
My mother told me about
Lynchings
My mother told me about
The dark nights
And dirt roads
And torch lights
And lynch robes
The
faces of men
Laughing white
Faces of men
Dead in the night
sorrow night
and a
sorrow night
1951
Source:
AmericanLynching |
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Writer Lorraine Hansberry's
sober eulogy of the death of Willie McGee weighed heavy on the
hearts and minds of the American Left. On May 8, 1951, a crowd of
five hundred lingered outside the courthouse of Laurel, Mississippi,
to witness the execution of yet another black man convicted for
allegedly raping a white woman. His 1945 lightning trial resulted in
a guilty conviction delivered in less than two and a half minutes by
an all-white, male jury, setting off a heated five-year legal
struggle that drew national headlines. Despite an aggressive appeals
defense team who attempted every legal maneuver in the book, the US
Supreme Court ultimately chose not to intervene. With the legal
lynching of the Martinsville Seven in February, Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg's conviction in March, followed by the execution of McGee
in May, 1951 was a bad year for Left-leaning lawyers (Parrish 1979;
Rise 1995). Most discouraging, national news sources like the New
York Times and Life magazine red-baited the "Save Willie
McGee" campaign and—as Life reported—its "imported" lawyers (Popham
1951a; Life 1951). Few felt McGee's passing with as heavy a heart as
his chief counsel, thirty-one-year-old Bella Abzug. |
Before Abzug became a representative in
Congress and a leader in the peace and women's movements, she confronted the
Southern political and legal system at the height of the early Cold War.
Retained in 1948 by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC)—a New York-headquartered
Popular Front legal defense organization—the novice labor lawyer honed her civil
rights . . .
Source:
https://Litigation-Essentials.LexisNexis
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Demonstrator Eden Jequinto covers his face
during a demonstration after the sentencing
in Oakland, Calif., Friday, of former BART
police officer Johannes Mehserle. Mehserle
was convicted of involuntary manslaughter
for the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant at a
BART station on Jan. 1, 2009. Los Angeles
Superior Court Judge Robert Perry sentenced
Mehserle to two years in prison.
Mehserle had been called to the Fruitvale
station of the BART system in the early
hours of New Years Day last year with four
other officers to look into reports of a
fight on a train. Mehserle tried to arrest
Grant but reported that Grant was not
cooperating. Grant was on his stomach when
Mehserle shot him in the back. The
shooting was caught on video by another
BART passenger and quickly went viral on
Youtube.—CSMonitor
(5 November 2010) |
CSMonitor /
Strange Fruit Video
/
Oscar Grant Family attorney reacts to sentencing
Mayor
Dellums, Chief Batts react to sentencing
/
Oscar Grant's uncle reacts to sentencing
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George Stinney, Youngest Executed—On
June 16th, 1944, the state of South Carolina
executed George Stinney, Jr. He was fourteen
years, six months, and five days old—the
youngest person ever executed in the United
States in the 20th Century. Stinney, who was
black, was convicted of murdering two white
girls, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and
Mary Emma Thames, age 8, with a railroad
spike. The trial lasted three hours, and the
all-white jury deliberated for 10 minutes
before sentencing George Stinney to death in
the electric chair. At Stinney's execution
six weeks later, the guards had difficulty
strapping him to the electric chair (he was
5' 1" and weighed just over 90 pounds).
During the electrocution, the jolt shook the
adult-sized mask from his head. On the
sixtieth anniversary of his electrocution,
one of the last surviving members of George
Stinney's family as well as the only living
sibling of Betty June Binnicker recall the
event.
SoundPortraits |
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Cameras make
Chicago most closely watched US city—New York has
plenty of cameras, but about half of the 4,300 installed
along the city's subways don't work. Other cities
haven't been able to link networks like Chicago.
Baltimore, for example, doesn't integrate school cameras
with its emergency system and it can't immediately send
911 dispatchers video from the camera nearest to a call
like Chicago can. Even London — widely considered the
world's most closely watched city with an estimated
500,000 cameras — doesn't incorporate private cameras in
its system as Chicago does. While critics decry the
network as the biggest of Big Brother invasions of
privacy, most Chicago residents accept them as a fact of
life in a city that has always had a powerful local
government and police force.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
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Pride and Glory (2008)
Edward Norton (Actor), Colin Farrell
(Actor), Gavin O'Connor (Director)
Like a forgotten, one-and-only season of
a 1980s television show about an
Irish-American family of cops, Pride
and Glory is full of ambition but
lacks the storytelling instinct to
realize the goal. Edward Norton stars as
Ray Tierney, a New York City police
detective whose father, Francis Sr. (Jon
Voight), boss of all Manhattan
detectives, pressures him into
investigating the murder of four
officers. Ray's efforts uncover a
corruption scandal centered around his
brother-in-law, Jimmy (Colin Farrell), a
beat cop whose commander happens to be,
of course, Ray's brother, Francis Jr.
(Noah Emmerich).
As Ray pushes forward, Jimmy's
self-protective instinct goes savage,
and the rest of the Tierney males shift
to cover-up mode. Co-writers Joe
Carnahan (Narc) and Gavin O'Connor
(Miracle), who also directs this film,
make a fatal mistake by forcing every
element in a long story to further a
prefabricated narrative shape, leading
to the conclusion they want.
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But they can't
pull it off without awkward transitions and bridges,
including the perfunctory inclusion of an intrepid
reporter who conveniently breezes in and out of the
movie long enough to explain Ray's back story aloud.
A monstrous scene involving Farrell holding a
steaming iron (prop or not) over a baby's face is
inexcusable.—Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Edward Norton,
Colin Farrell, Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich star in
a gritty, tension-packed tale of a multigenerational
family of cops facing hard realities and tough
choices. Set and filmed in Manhattan's Washington
Heights, Pride and Glory draws you into a grippingly
raw real world...and into a house divided.—New
Line Home Video
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Grant took picture of Mehserle,
prosecutor says—A
historic trial over a police shooting
captured on video is set to begin here
this morning after a prosecutor revealed
a final piece of evidence - a photograph
he said the victim snapped of the
officer who would shoot him just minutes
later. The picture shows then-BART
police Officer Johannes Mehserle, 28,
pointing his Taser at 22-year-old Oscar
Grant on the Fruitvale Station platform
in Oakland on Jan. 1, 2009, said Alameda
County prosecutor David Stein.
Grant—like many fellow BART riders that
morning— had a cell-phone camera. What
happened next is the focus of the trial,
which was moved to downtown Los Angeles
to find a jury that had not been
inundated by publicity about the case in
the Bay Area. First up, in a trial
expected to last two to four weeks, are
opening statements. Mehserle is the
first Bay Area police officer and one of
just a few nationwide to be charged with
murder for an on-duty action.
Prosecutors say he acted with malice
when he shot the unarmed Grant once in
the back while arresting him. The former
officer has yet to give an honest
account of the shooting, prosecutors
say. |
 |
|
10 June 2010
Sophina Mesa, Grant's girlfriend,
says Grant told her he was being
beaten for no reason. |
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Glenn Loury: A Nation of Jailers—"Today,
fifteen years after crime peaked, the American prison system
has become a leviathan unmatched in human history," he said.
"Never has a supposedly 'free country' denied basic liberty
to so many of its citizens."
The impact on communities of
color has been enormous. According to U.S. Department of
Justice figures, a black man has a 32 percent chance of
entering state or federal prison during his lifetime. If
current incarceration rates continue, one of every three
black male babies born today will see the inside of a prison
cell, a rate more than five times higher than that of white
male babies. In many inner-city neighborhoods, a stint in
prison is as much a rite of passage as graduation from high
school. The effects of these incarcerations are not confined
to the prison walls.
More than half of state and
federal inmates are parents of minor children; according to
DOJ, black children are nearly nine times more likely than
white children to have a parent in prison.
Finding work for any person
with a criminal conviction is already a challenge; for an
African-American, that challenge can be almost
insurmountable.
Prisoner statistics, Loury said
in his Tanner lectures, tell only part of the story:
[N]o
cost-benefit analysis of our world-historic prison build-up
over the past thirty-five years is possible without
specifying how one should reckon in the calculation the pain
being imposed on the persons imprisoned, their families and
their communities.
How to
value this aspect of policy is, to my mind, a salient
ethical issue. BrownAlumniMagazine * * * *
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The
National Criminal Justice Commission Act of
2009,
introduced by Senator Jim Webb on
March 26, 2009, will create a blue-ribbon
commission charged with undertaking an
18-month, top-to-bottom review of our entire
criminal justice system. Its task will be to
propose concrete, wide-ranging reforms
designed to responsibly reduce the overall
incarceration rate; improve federal and
local responses to international and
domestic gang violence; restructure our
approach to drug policy; improve the
treatment of mental illness; improve prison
administration; and establish a system for
reintegrating ex-offenders. "We
need to fix the system. Doing so will
require a major nationwide recalculation of
who goes to prison and for how long and of
how we address the long-term consequences of
incarceration."
WebbSenate.gov
TalkingPointsMemo |
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Supreme Court
Cuts Back Officers’ Searches of
Vehicles—The decision, Arizona v.
Gant, No. 07-542 . . . The Supreme Court
on Tuesday significantly cut back the
ability of the police to search the cars
of people they arrest. . . . In a
dissent, four justices said the majority
had effectively overruled an important
and straightforward Fourth Amendment
precedent established by the court in a
1981 decision,
New York v. Belton. . . . Justice
Stevens, joined by the unusual alliance
of Justices
Antonin Scalia,
David H. Souter,
Clarence Thomas and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the court
had agreed to hear the case because the
conventional view of the Belton decision
had been widely criticized. . . .
Searches of vehicles are permissible,
Justice Stevens said, “when it is
reasonable to believe evidence relevant
to the crime of arrest might be found in
the vehicle.” As a practical matter,
that means many arrests for traffic
offenses will not by themselves allow
police officers to search vehicles.
Arrests for other kinds of crimes,
though, may well supply a basis for a
search.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/22scotus.html?hpw
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Ralph Ellison
on the Redeemed
Criminal
Sure, they’re
treated as though serving time has endowed them with
a mysterious, god-granted knowledge. And, especially
if they say that they’ve been to the depths of hell
and have been reborn into a new vision. Well, I’ve
known a few guys who spent time in prison and none
of them underwent any such mystical transformation.
Nevertheless, for Americans—and especially
Christians—the confession of sin and the assertion
of rebirth and redemption has tremendous appeal.
This is especially true of our own people, who
understandably are hungry for heroes and redeemers.
I used to
collect the handbills distributed by fly-by-night
faith-healers in Harlem, and most of them stated
that after being up to their eyeballs in crime,
they’d had the scales struck from their eyes while
in prison, and this had prepared them to lead their
people. During the Sixties, this myth of the
redeemed criminal had a tremendous influence on our
young people, when criminals guilty of every crime
from con games, to rape, to murder exploited it by
declaring themselves political activists and Black
leaders. As a result, many sincere, dedicated
leaders of an older generation were swept aside. I’m
speaking now of courageous individuals who made
sacrifices in order to master the disciplines of
leadership and who created a continuity between
themselves and earlier leaders of our struggle. The
kids treated such people as if they were Uncle Toms,
and I found it outrageous. Because not only did it
distort the concrete historical differences between
one period of struggle and another, it made heroes
out of thugs and self-servers out of dedicated
leaders.
Worse, it gave
many kids the notion that here was no point in
developing their minds; that all they had to do was
to strike a militant stance, assert their unity with
the group and stress their “Blackness.” If you
didn’t accept their slogans, you were dismissed as a
“Neegro” Uncle Tom. Years ago, DuBois stressed a
leadership based upon an elite of the intellect.
During the Sixties, it appeared that for many
Afro-Americans all that was required for such a role
was a history of criminality (the sleazier the
better), a capacity for irresponsible rhetoric, and
the passionate assertion of the mystique of
“Blackness.” At least, that’s how it appeared to me.
Source: The Essential Ellison (Interview)—Ishmael
Reed, Quincy Troupe, Steve Cannon. Ishmael Reed’s
and Al Young’s Y’Bird • Copyright © 1977, 1978
Y’Bird Magazine
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Man dies after cop hits him with Taser 9
times—A police officer shocked a
handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine
times with a Taser after arresting him
on a cocaine charge. He stopped
twitching after seven, according to a
coroner's report. Soon afterward, Pikes
was dead. Now the officer, since fired,
could end up facing criminal charges in
Pikes' January death after medical
examiners ruled it a homicide.Dr.
Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish
coroner, told CNN the 21-year-old
sawmill worker was jolted so many times
by the 50,000-volt Taser that he might
have been dead before the last two
shocks were delivered. Williams ruled
Pikes' death a homicide in June after
extensive study.
CNN
How Scores of Black Men Were Tortured
Into Giving False Confessions by Chicago
Police—By 1999, it was
"common knowledge," according to U.S. District Judge
Milton Shadur, "that in the early to mid-1980s, (Jon
Burge) and many officers working under him regularly
engaged in the physical abuse and torture of
prisoners to extract confessions. Both internal
police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals
brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate
that those beatings and other means of torture
occurred as an established practice, not just on an
isolated basis."
Alternet |
The massive scandal began to unravel in 1989, when
convicted cop killer Andrew Wilson launched a very
public federal civil rights suit against the Chicago
Police Department. Seven years before, Wilson had
been beaten, shocked in the testicles and burned on
the face, chest and thigh by Area 2 detectives
working under Burge. What caught the eye of Chief
Medical Examiner of Cermak Medical Services John
Raba, however, were the small markings on his ears
that he couldn't explain away. Wilson told him the
markings were from alligator clips used to
electrocute him, and Raba believed him. He notified
then-Superintendent of Police Richard Brzeczek, who
wrote a letter to then-State's Attorney Richard M.
Daley, "seeking direction" on how to proceed. Daley,
who is now Chicago's mayor, never responded.
Alternet
* * * *
*
1 in 100 U.S.
Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says—Incarceration
rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36
Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice
Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is,
too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20
and 34. The report, from the Pew Center on the States,
also found that only one in 355 white women between the
ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100
black women are. . . . In 2007, according to the
National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states
spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is
up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once
adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the
federal government included, total state spending on
corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the
report said, states are on track to spend an additional
$25 billion. It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to
imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which
data were available. But state spending varies widely,
from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in
Louisiana. The cost of medical care is growing by 10
percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate
as the prison population ages. About one in nine state
government employees works in corrections, and some
states are finding it hard to fill those jobs.
California spent more than $500 million on overtime
alone in 2006. . . .The Pew report recommended diverting
nonviolent offenders away from prison and using
punishments short of reincarceration for minor or
technical violations of probation or parole. It also
urged states to consider earlier release of some
prisoners.
NYTimes
* * * *
*
1 percent of
U.S. adults behind bars—The report, released
Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the
50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections
last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years
earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was
six times greater than for higher education
spending, the report said. Using updated
state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258
adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the
start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and
more than any other country in the world. The
steadily growing inmate population "is saddling
cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill
afford and failing to have a clear impact either on
recidivism or overall crime," the report said. Susan
Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the
States, said budget woes are prompting officials in
many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections
policies that might have been shunned in the recent
past for fear of appearing soft in crime."We're
seeing more and more states being creative because
of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They
want to be tough on crime, they want to be a
law-and-order state -- but they also want to save
money, and they want to be effective." The report
cited Kansas and Texas as states which have acted
decisively to slow the growth of their inmate
population. Their actions include greater use of
community supervision for low-risk offenders and
employing sanctions other than reimprisonment for
ex-offenders who commit technical violations of
parole and probation rules.
CNN
* * * *
*
BIDEN Calls for an End to
Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity—Our
intentions were good, but much of our information
was bad. Each of the myths upon which we based the
sentencing disparity has since been dispelled or
altered. We now know:
-
Crack and powder cocaine are
pharmacologically identical. They
are simply two forms of the same
drug.
-
Crack and powder cocaine cause
identicalphysiological and
psychological effects once they
reach the brain.
-
Both forms of cocaine are
potentially addictive.
-
The two drugs’ effects on a fetus
are identical. The “generation of
crack babies” many predicted has not
come to pass. In fact, some research
shows that the prenatal effects of
alcohol exposure are “significantly
more devastating to the developing
fetus than cocaine.”
-
Crack simply does not incite the
type of violence that we
feared. Gangs that deal in other
types of drugs are every bit as
violent as the crack gangs.
|
“After 21 years of study and review,
these facts have convinced me that the 100-to-1
disparity cannot be supported and that the penalties
for crack and powder cocaine trafficking merit
similar treatment under the law.Biden.Senate
Press Statement
* *
* * *
Race and the
Drug War—Once arrested, people of color are
treated more harshly by the
criminal justice system than whites. The
best-known example of the inequality in sentencing
is the disparity between crack cocaine and powder
cocaine sentences. Crack and powder cocaine have the
same active ingredient, but crack is marketed in
less expensive quantities and in lower income
communities of color. A five gram sale of crack
cocaine receives a five-year federal mandatory
minimum sentence, while an offender must sell 500
grams of powder cocaine to get the same sentence. In
1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory
minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the
average federal drug sentence for African Americans
was 11 percent higher than for whites. Four years
later, the average federal drug sentence for African
Americans was 49 percent higher.
Drug Policy
* * * *
*
|
A Statement of Racism & Racial
Oppression: "The virtuous aspirations of our
children must be continually checked by the
knowledge that no matter how upright their conduct,
they will be looked upon as less worthy than the
lowest wretch who wears a white skin.
Daily Star
(Alabama) 21 May 1867
[James S. Allen,
Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy (1937),
pp. 237-238] |
* * * *
*
* * * * *
 |
The Corner (YouTube video)
The Corner is a
2000 HBO television miniseries based on
the book
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an
Inner-City Neighborhood by David
Simon and Ed Burns and adapted for
television by Simon and David Mills. The
Corner chronicles the life of a family
living in poverty amid the open-air drug
markets of West Baltimore.
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an
Inner-City Neighborhood
This is a powerful
book, a window on aspects of America
most people would rather ignore. To
their great credit, the authors--David
Simon wrote
Homicide, the basis for the popular
television show; Edward Burns is a
former Baltimore police officer, now a
public school teacher--refuse to
sensationalize their subject or make its
people into stereotypes. |
For a year the two hung out in a
West Baltimore neighborhood that was a center of the
drug trade. At the center of the narrative is the
McCullough family—DeAndre, age 15, and his
drug-addicted parents, Gary and Fran. While reading
The Corner, there are times when we
pity them, times when they make us angry. The book's
strength, though, is that we always understand them.
This portrayal of a year in
drug-crazed West Baltimore will satisfy neither
readers looking for a perceptive witness to the
urban crisis nor those in search of social analysis.
Simon (Homicide,
LJ 6/1/91), a crime reporter, and Burns, a Baltimore
police veteran and public school teacher, mask their
presence in the scene with an omniscient style that
strains credibility, and the chronological framework
blunts the impact of their most compelling themes.
The authors salute the courageous but futile efforts
of individual parents, educators, and police
officers but deny the possibility of a social
solution to the devastation they acknowledge is
rooted in social policy. A more compelling account
is
Our America: Life and Death (LJ 6/1/97) on
the South Side of Chicago, based on interviews
conducted by 13-year-old public housing residents
LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman in 1993. For larger
public libraries.—Library Journal
* * * * *
|
Poem at Central Booking
By DeAndre McCullough
Silent screams and broken dreams
Addicts, junkies, pushers and fiends
Crowded spaces and sad faces
Never look back as the police chase us
Consumed slowly by chaos, a victim of the
streets,
Hungry for knowledge, but afraid to eat.
A life of destruction, it seems no one
cares,
A manchild alone with burdens to bear.
Trapped in a life of crime and hate,
It seems the ghetto will be my fate.
If I had just one wish it would surely be,
That God would send angels to set me free
Free from the madness, of a city running
wild,
Freed from the life of a ghetto child.
Source:
The Corner
(1997) by
David Simon and Edward Burns |
* * * * *
The Corner—DeAndre and Prop Joe /
* * * * *
The Corner—The Real Fran, DeAndre, Tyreeka and Blue!
The last ten
minutes from the HBO series
The Corner, where Charles S. Dutton, the
director talks to the real life characters, the
story was based on.
* *
* * *
 |
Justice
Department aims to help overhaul New Orleans
police force—By Sandhya Somashekhar—August 1,
2010—In the five years since the storm, the
department's standing has worsened. Eager for a
turnaround, the newly elected mayor did
something nearly unthinkable for someone in his
position: He called in the feds. . . . "
I have
inherited a police force that has been described
by many as one of the worst police departments
in the country," Mayor Mitch Landrieu wrote in a
letter to Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr. earlier this year. "The
police force, the community, our citizens are
desperate for positive change." . . . |
At least a dozen
Justice experts have been dispatched to New Orleans to
assist with a top-to-bottom overhaul aimed at
strengthening the department's ability to police itself,
Perez said. They have applauded some of the changes
instituted by the new chief, who was installed by
Landrieu and has hired a civilian to head the
internal affairs office and adopted a no-tolerance
policy toward officers caught lying. . . . At the same
time, the city's homicide rate has risen to the highest
in the nation.
WashingtonPost
* * * *
*
How the mass
incarceration of black men hurts black women—Between
the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind
bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is
about one in 150. For obvious reasons, convicts are
excluded from the dating pool. And many women also steer
clear of ex-cons, which makes a big difference when one
young black man in three can expect to be locked up at
some point. Removing so many men from the marriage
market has profound consequences. As incarceration rates
exploded between 1970 and 2007, the proportion of
US-born black women aged 30-44 who were married plunged
from 62% to 33%. Why this happened is complex and
furiously debated. The era of mass imprisonment began as
traditional mores were already crumbling, following the
sexual revolution of the 1960s and the invention of the
contraceptive pill. It also coincided with greater
opportunities for women in the workplace. These factors
must surely have had something to do with the decline of
marriage.
Economist
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
Race, Incarceration, and American Values
By Glenn C. Loury
In this pithy discussion, renowned scholars debate the American penal system through the lens—and as a legacy—of an ugly and violent racial past. Economist Loury argues that incarceration rises even as crime rates fall because we have become increasingly punitive. According to Loury, the disproportionately black and brown prison populations are the victims of civil rights opponents who successfully moved the country's race dialogue to a seemingly race-neutral concern over crime. Loury's claims are well-supported with genuinely shocking statistics, and his argument is compelling that even if the racial argument about causes is inconclusive, the racial consequences are clear.
Three shorter essays respond: Stanford law professor Karlan examines prisoners as an inert ballast in redistricting and voting practices; French sociologist Wacquant argues that the focus on race has ignored the fact that inmates are first and foremost poor people; and Harvard philosophy professor Shelby urges citizens to break with Washington's political outlook on race. The group's respectful sparring results in an insightful look at the conflicting theories of race and incarceration, and the slim volume keeps up the pace of the argument without being overwhelming.—Publishers Weekly / Economist Glenn Loury |
 |
* *
* * *
|
|
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * *
*
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
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posted 27 March 2008
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