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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
National
Plan of Action to Stop Mass Incarceration
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News Update
75 Years of Racial
Control Happy Birthday Marijuana Prohibition—Amanda
Reiman—28 September/2012—As we approach the 75th
anniversary of marijuana prohibition in the United
States on October 1, it is important to remember why
marijuana was deemed illicit in the first place, and why
we as Americans must open our eyes to the insidious
strategy behind 75 years of failed policy and ruined
lives. Marijuana laws were designed not to control
marijuana, but to control the Mexican immigrants who had
brought this native plant with them to the U.S. Fears
over loss of jobs and of the Mexicans themselves led
cities to look for ways to keep a close eye on the
newcomers. In 1914, El Paso Texas became the
first jurisdiction in the U.S. to ban the sale and
possession of marijuana. This ban gave police the right
to search, detain and question Mexican immigrants
without reason, except the suspicion that they were in
possession of marijuana. Folklore started to erupt about
the effect that marijuana had on those who used it. As
Harry Anslinger stated, "Reefer makes darkies think
they're as good as white
men."— huffingtonpost
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Obama's America and the New
Jim Crow
By Michelle Alexander
There are
more African Americans under
correctional control
today--in prison or jail, on
probation or parole—than
were enslaved in 1850, a
decade before the Civil War
began. If you take into
account prisoners, a large
majority of African American
men in some urban areas,
like Chicago, have been
labeled felons for life.
These men are part of a
growing undercaste, not
class, caste—a group of
people who are permanently
relegated, by law, to an
inferior second-class
status. They can be denied
the right to vote,
automatically excluded from
juries, and legally
discriminated against in
employment, housing, access
to education and public
benefits—much
as their grandparents and
great-grandparents once were
during the Jim Crow era.—Michelle
Alexander, The New Jim Crow /
Michelle_Alexander Part
II Democracy Now
(Video) / Michelle Alexander Speaks At
Riverside Church / part
2 / part 3 /
part 4
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A Watcher of the Police Says He Is Now a
Target
If you are
unfamiliar with Jazz Hayden's tireless efforts to expose the NYPD's
discriminatory and abusive stop and frisk tactics in NYC, read this
article published in today's
New York Times.
The article does not do justice to Jazz, and wrongly brings up his
past criminal record—which is utterly irrelevant and ancient
history. But the article does make some important points, including
the phony reason given by the police for stopping and searching him
(supposedly they pulled him over for a burned out tail light—the oldest
excuse in the book, especially since his tail light was working
fine). The article also highlights the ridiculousness of the DA's
decision to send the case to a grand jury— on felony charges—for
possession of dangerous weapons (a broken pocket knife and a small,
commemorative baseball bat). It is critical that we support Jazz,
not just because he has been a steadfast advocate for the Harlem
community—(although that would be reason enough!)—but also because
we must send a message to the NYPD that they can't get away with
targeting and retaliating against those who dare to expose the truth
about what they're really doing on the streets. |
Ultimately this isn't just about Jazz; it's about the
tactics that are used to silence those who challenge this system
of mass incarceration.
—Michelle Alexander,
nytimes
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Louisiana is the world's prison
capital—Cindy Chang—13 May 2012—Louisiana
is the world's prison capital. The state
imprisons more of its people, per head, than
any of its U.S. counterparts. First among
Americans means first in the world.
Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly
triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10
times Germany's. . . . Do all of Louisiana's
40,000 inmates need to be incarcerated for
the interests of punishment and public
safety to be served? Gov. Bobby Jindal, a
conservative Republican with presidential
ambitions, says the answer is no. Despite
locking up more people for longer periods
than any other state, Louisiana has one of
the highest rates of both violent and
property crimes. Yet the state shows no
signs of weaning itself off its prison
dependence. . . . In the early 1990s, when
the incarceration rate was half what it is
now, Louisiana was at a crossroads. Under a
federal court order to reduce overcrowding,
the state had two choices: Lock up fewer
people or build more prisons.
It
achieved the latter, not with new state
prisons—there was no money for that—but by
encouraging sheriffs to foot the
construction bills in return for future
profits. The financial incentives were so
sweet, and the corrections jobs so sought
after, that new prisons sprouted up all over
rural Louisiana. . . . Louisiana specializes
in incarceration on the cheap, allocating by
far the least money per inmate of any state.
The $24.39 per diem is several times lower
than what Angola and other state-run prisons
spend—even before the sheriff takes his
share. All local wardens can offer is GED
classes and perhaps an inmate-led support
group such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Their
facilities are cramped and airless compared
with the spacious grounds of state prisons,
where inmates walk along outdoor breezeways
and stay busy with jobs or classes. . . .
One in three Louisiana prisoners reads below
a fifth-grade level. The vast majority did
not complete high school. The easy fix of
selling drugs or stealing is all too
tempting when the alternative is a low-wage,
dead-end job.
More
money spent on locking up an ever-growing
number of prisoners means less money for the
very institutions that could help young
people stay out of trouble, giving rise to a
vicious cycle. Louisiana spends about $663
million a year to feed, house, secure and
provide medical care to 40,000 inmates.
Nearly a third of that money—$182 million—
goes to for-profit prisons, whether run by
sheriffs or private companies. . . . About
5,000 black men from New Orleans are doing
state prison time, compared with 400 white
men from the city. Because police
concentrate resources on high-crime areas,
minor lawbreakers there are more likely to
be stopped and frisked or caught up in a
drug sweep than, say, an Uptown college
student with a sideline marijuana business.
. . . An inmate at Angola costs the state an
average of $23,000 a year. A young lifer
will rack up more than $1 million in
taxpayer-funded expenses if he reaches the
Louisiana male life expectancy of 72. . . .
. The state spends about $24 million
a year caring for between 300 and 400 infirm
inmates.—nola
/
Plantations, Prisons and Profits (Blow) |
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Racism: A
History, the 2007 BBC 3-part documentary explores
the impact of racism on a global scale. It was part of
the season of programs on the BBC marking the 200th
anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire. It's divided into 3 parts.
The first, The Colour of Money .
. .
Racism: A History [2007]—1/3
Begins the series
by assessing the implications of the relationship
between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th
century. It considers how racist ideas and practices
developed in key religious and secular institutions, and
how they showed up in writings by European philosophers
Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
The second, Fatal Impact . . .
Racism: A History [2007] - 2/3
Examines the idea
of scientific racism, an ideology invented during the
19th century that drew on now discredited practices such
as phrenology and provided an ideological justification
for racism and slavery. The episode shows how these
theories ultimately led to eugenics and Nazi racial
policies of the master race.
And the 3rd, A Savage Legacy . .
.
Racism: A History [2007] - 3/3
Examines the impact
of racism in the 20th century. By 1900 European colonial
expansion had reached deep into the heart of Africa.
Under the rule of King Leopold II, the Belgian Congo was
turned into a vast rubber plantation. Men, women and
children who failed to gather their latex quotas would
have their limbs dismembered. The country became the
scene of one of the century's greatest racial genocides,
as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under
colonial rule.
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Tough on Crime Tough on Justice—Leonard Pitts Jr.—20 May 2012—We got tough on Jerry Dewayne Williams, a small-time criminal who stole a slice of pizza from a group of children. He got 25 years. We got tough on Duane Silva, a guy with an IQ of 71 who stole a VCR and a coin collection. He got 30 to life. We got tough on Dixie Shanahan, who shot and killed the husband who had beaten her for three days straight, punching her in the face, pounding her in the stomach, dragging her by the hair, because she refused to have an abortion. She got 50 years. We got tough on Jeff Berryhill, who got drunk one night, kicked in an apartment door and punched a guy who was inside with Berryhill's girlfriend. He got 25 years. Now, we have gotten tough on Marissa Alexander. . . .Like Ms. Shanahan before her, Ms. Alexander was offered a plea bargain. Like Ms. Shanahan, she declined, reasoning that no one would convict her under the circumstances. Like Ms. Shanahan, she was wrong. |
Earlier this month, Ms. Alexander got 20 years for aggravated assault. . . . not because the judge had a heart like Simon Legree's, but because he was constrained by so-called "mandatory-minimum" sentencing guidelines that tie judges' hands, allow them no leeway for consideration, compassion, context or common sense. In other words, they prohibit judges from judging.—baltimoresun
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Facing America’s Criminal Racial Past
Bill Moyers Interviews Khalil
Muhammad
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Bloomberg Backs Plan to Limit Arrests for Marijuana
If you haven't heard already, NY Governor Cuomo, as well as NYC Mayor Bloomberg, and the Chief of the NYPD have all come out in support of decriminalizing the possession of marijuana for personal use—reducing the penalty from a misdemeanor to a violation simply payable by a fine, like a traffic ticket. . . . even when the marijuana is in public view, so long as it is not being smoked. This is a ...major victory for advocates who have been protesting the tens of thousands of arrests that are made every year in NYC -- overwhelmingly of people of color -- for simple marijuana possession due to discriminatory stop-and-frisk tactics. This does not solve the problem of discriminatory stop and frisks, but it proves that change is not only possible, but inevitable, when we get organized, speak our truth, and don't take no for an answer.—Michelle Alexander / The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open possession of small amounts of marijuana, giving an unexpected lift to an effort by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cut down on the number of people arrested as a result of police stops. |
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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose Police Department made about 50,000 arrests last year for low-level marijuana possession, said the governor’s proposal “strikes the right balance” in part because it would still allow the police to arrest people who smoke marijuana in public.—nytimes
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Rudy, I have done
little work in Meridian, Mississippi, but Derrick
Johnson, Director of Mississippi NAACP has been working
in Meridian for the past two years around the current
issue of the pipeline created to ship students from
school to jail. While Meridian’s population is majority
black (sixty-two percent), the political leadership is
still majority white. And in many small Mississippi
towns the change to have the political leadership mirror
the population is always slow and painful because most
of the African Americans who desire to engage in
political leadership also work directly for the very
whites who control the government. So, the issues of
intimidation and fear are very real aspects of this
struggle for power. It is very easy to call someone a
coward, but most of those calling someone a coward don’t
have to remain in the town.
This struggle with
Meridian’s schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline has been
brewing for five years with the NAACP helping parents to
organize, contact the Department of Justice, and to file
a lawsuit. After the filing of the lawsuit, the former
mayor, John Robert Smith, due to the pressure of
organized parents and the investigation of the DOJ,
appointed a mostly African American school board, which,
in turn, hired the first African American School Board
Supervisor whose last name is Kent. Kent, by all
accounts, was working with parents and the DOJ to change
many o f
the policies of the past. Unfortunately, Mayor Smith
retried, and the African American who ran for mayor was
defeated by two hundred votes by current white female
Mayor Cheri Bailey who appointed a new school board,
which, in turn, fired Mr. Kent and hired Dr. Alvin
Taylor, who is an African American. Dr. Taylor has not
reinstituted the policies that created the schoolhouse
to jailhouse pipeline, but the new mayor and some of the
school board members appointed by the mayor have
attempted to slow the change or reinstitute the old
policies, but the pressure from the DOJ, the NAACP, and
the parents have held the fort, so to speak. That’s
about all the information I have. For more information
on this, you can contact Derrick Johnson at
derrickjohnson@hotmail.com.
Take care and thank you for continuing to be an
independent critical thinker, providing a venue for our
people.
C.
Liegh McInnis
www.psychedelicliterature.com
9 September 2012
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Feds: Authorities in Meridian, Miss. Violated Rights of Black Children—10 August 2012—The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has released investigative findings determining that children in predominantly black Meridian, Miss. have had their constitutional rights violated by the Lauderdale County Youth Court, the Meridian Police Department, and the Mississippi Division of Youth Services in what civil rights investigators allege is a school to prison pipeline with even dress code violations resulting in incarceration. . . . Also in the findings letter the Civil Rights Division alleges that “Lauderdale County and the Youth Court Judges violate the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to provide children procedural due process in the youth court. Lauderdale County, the Youth Court judges, and the Mississippi Division of Youth Services violate the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to provide children procedural due process rights in the probationary process.” . . . |
“The system established by the City of Meridian,
Lauderdale County, and DYS to incarcerate children for school suspensions ‘shocks the conscience,’ resulting in the incarceration of children for alleged ‘offenses’ such as dress code violations, flatulence, profanity, and disrespect.” The Justice Department findings letter noted.—abcnews
/ photo left Mayor Cheri Barry
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Jerry Sandusky on Suicide Watch, Undergoing Evaluations—Colleen Curry—Bellefonte, Pa., June 23, 2012—Jerry Sandusky is on suicide watch at the local jail after being convicted on 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys, the former Penn State coach's defense attorney said today. Sandusky was led away in handcuffs to the Centre County jail Friday night after a jury of seven women and five men found him guilty of nearly all of the most serious allegations of child rape and sex abuse leveled against him, but Sandusky has not reached the end of his road yet. He will still face civil suits, potentially more criminal charges against him, and years of treatment while in prison. After the jury foreman read 45 "guilty" verdicts aloud to an emotionless Sandusky Friday night, Judge John Cleland revoked bail and sent Sandusky to county jail to be evaluated by the Sexual Offenders Assessment Board for a pre-sentencing report, taking into account his psychological and physical health.
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Defense attorney Karl Rominger told CNN today that Sandusky is being held on suicide watch in protective custody, away from other inmates. The jail would not comment on Sandusky's condition to ABC News. Sandusky will be held at the county jail for approximately 90 days, until he is sentenced by Cleland to what will likely amount to life in prison.
—abcnews
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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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Ohio Mom Kelley Williams Bolar Jailed for Sending Kids to Better School District—26 January 2011—An Ohio mother's attempt to provide her daughters with a better education has landed her behind bars. Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district. . . . Williams-Bolar decided four years ago to send her daughters to a highly ranked school in neighboring Copley-Fairlawn School District. But it wasn't her Akron district of residence, so her children were ineligible to attend school there, even though her father lived within the district's boundaries. "Those dollars need to stay home with our students," school district officials said. . . . The district hired a private investigator, who shot video showing Williams-Bolar driving her children into the district. The school officials asked her to pay $30,000 in back tuition. Williams-Bolar refused and was indicted and convicted of falsifying her residency records. She was sentenced last week to 10 days in county jail and put on three years of probation. |
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She will also be required to perform community service,
the Beacon Journal reported. . . .
Presiding Judge Patricia Cosgrove acknowledged as much.
"I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for
other individuals who might think to defraud the various
school.—abcnews
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Homeless mother who sent son to better
school in the wrong town jailed for five
years— A mother who pleaded guilty to
fraudulently enrolling her six-year-old son
in the wrong school district has been
sentenced to five years in prison. Tonya
McDowell sent her son to an elementary
school in Norwalk, Connecticut, instead of
her home city of Bridgeport. The
34-year-old, who was homeless when she was
charged with felony larceny last year, said
she wanted the best education possible for
the boy. . . . Police said McDowell stole
$15,686 worth of ‘free’ educational services
from Norwalk. She also pleaded guilty to
four counts of sale of narcotics, which will
be included in her prison sentence. . . . .
Mr Crosland said: ‘You shouldn’t be arrested
for stealing a free education. It’s just
wrong.’ McDowell was sentenced to 12 years
in jail, suspended after she serves five
years, and five years probation.—
CopCop /
Homeless woman's arrest for sending son to
Norwalk school |
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Marissa Alexander gets 20 years for firing warning shot after Stand Your Ground defense fails—Gil Aegerter—11 May 2012—Marissa Alexander, whose case brought allegations that Florida's Stand Your Ground law is being unfairly applied, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday after being convicted of three counts of aggravated assault after firing a warning shot during a dispute with her husband. . . . The 20-year sentence was a mandatory minimum under Florida's "10-20-Life law," which mandates sentences for crimes involving a firearm, the Grio.com reported. . . . At issue in the case were Alexander's actions leading up to the firing of the shot. Alexander has said that 36-year-old Rico Gray had physically abused her in a dispute on Aug. 1, 2010. She testified that she fled into a garage and got a gun, but was unable to leave the home because the garage door was stuck. She testified that she went back into the house, where Gray was with his two sons, and fired the shot.—MSNBC |
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Three Years Ain't Mercy, Twenty Years Ain't Justice
/
Melissa Harris-Perry investigates
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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. . . .
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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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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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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. |
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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
|
 |
*
* * * *
 |
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
*
* * * *
|
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 |
 |
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
*
* * * *
*
* * * *
*
* * * *
|
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 |
 |
*
* * * *
|
|
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 |
* * *
* *
 |
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
*
* * * *
 |
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
* * * *
*
|
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 |
 |
* * * *
*
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
*
* * * *
 |
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.
|
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
*
* * * *
|
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. |
* *
* * *
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 * * * *
*
|
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 |
 |
* * * *
*
|
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
|
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
* * * *
*
|
|
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
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*
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
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* *
Stand Up Against Police Brutality--In the city of Philadelphia and the
state of Pennsylvania from May 2008
until April 2009 there have been 36
unarmed African American men killed
by the Philadelphia Police
Department.
The racist Fraternal Order of Police
has also gone after a strong and
courageous African American judge,
Judge Craig Washington. The reason
for this vicious attack is because
he refuses to turn his courtroom
into a tool of propaganda for the
Philadelphia Police Department. Bro. Robert - African
American Freedom and Reconstruction
League; Sister Debbie Moore and Bro.
Harold Fisher, Attorney Leon A.
Williams -- more information
215-474-3677 215-732-0180
* * *
* *
 |
Slavery by Another Name
The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
By Douglas A. Blackmun
Wall Street Journal bureau chief Blackmon gives a groundbreaking and disturbing account of a sordid chapter in American history—the lease (essentially the sale) of convicts to commercial interests between the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. Usually, the criminal offense was loosely defined vagrancy or even changing employers without permission. The initial sentence was brutal enough; the actual penalty, reserved almost exclusively for black men, was a form of slavery in one of hundreds of forced labor camps operated by state and county governments, large corporations, small time entrepreneurs and provincial farmers. Into this history, Blackmon weaves the story of Green Cottenham, who was charged with riding a freight train without a ticket, in 1908 and was sentenced to three months of hard labor for Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. |
Cottenham's sentence was extended an additional three months and six days because he was unable to pay fines then leveraged on criminals. Blackmon's book reveals in devastating detail the legal and commercial forces that created this neoslavery along with deeply moving and totally appalling personal testimonies of survivors
* *
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|
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
* *
* * *
 |
In the Matter of Color
Race and the American Legal Process:
The Colonial Period
By A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.
Chronicles in
unrelenting detail the role of the law
in the enslavement and subjugation of
black Americans during the colonial
period. No attempt to summarize the
colonial experience could convey the
rich and comprehensive detail which is
the major strength of Judge
Higginbotham's work.—Harvard
Law Review
A definitive study
of racism, slavery, and the law in early
America.—American
Historical Review
Founded on
comprehensive research, thoroughly
documented, and well-written, In the
Matter of Color is a contribution of the
first importance to the study of racial
issues in America, invaluable alike to
students of American history, law, or
society.—History
|
* * * *
*
|
The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America
By Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marc Lamont Hill
Add this book to your "must read" list for 2012! It's a deeply insightful, thought-provoking dialogue between Marc Lamont Hill and Mumia about what it means to be black in America today—including why some black men and women behind bars today are actually more "free" spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally, than those on the outside who seem to have "made it." This book is a refreshing, startlingly honest dialogue between two black intellectuals—one who is a prominent professor at Columbia University, and another who is locked in a literal cage.—Michelle Alexander / This collection of conversations between celebrity intellectual Marc Lamont Hill and famed political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is a shining example of African American men speaking for themselves about the many forces impacting their lives. —Publisher |
 |
* * * * *
 |
Panther Baby
A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention
By Jamal Joseph
In the 1960s he exhorted students at Columbia University to burn their college to the ground. Today he’s chair of their School of the Arts film division. Jamal Joseph’s personal odyssey—from the streets of Harlem to Riker’s Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbia—is as gripping as it is inspiring. Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college. But this was the late 1960s in Bronx’s black ghetto, and fifteen-year-old Eddie was introduced to the tenets of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national foothold. By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison on the infamous Rikers Island—charged with conspiracy as one of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the sixties. When exonerated, Eddie—now called Jamal—became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthers’ New York chapter. He joined the “revolutionary underground,” later landing back in prison. |
Sentenced to more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned
three degrees there and found a new calling. He is now chair of
Columbia University’s School of the Arts film division—the very
school he exhorted students to burn down during one of his most
famous speeches as a Panther. In raw, powerful prose, Jamal
Joseph helps us understand what it meant to be a soldier inside
the militant Black Panther movement.
* * * * *
|
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
* *
* * *
 |
Punishing the Poor
The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity
By Loïc Wacquant
The punitive turn of penal policy in the United States after the acme of the Civil Rights movement responds not to rising criminal insecurity but to the social insecurity spawned by the fragmentation of wage labor and the shakeup of the ethnoracial hierarchy. It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation and to impose precarious employment on the postindustrial proletariat. It also erects a garish theater of civic morality on whose stage political elites can orchestrate the public vituperation of deviant figures—the teenage “welfare mother,” the ghetto “street thug,” and the roaming “sex predator”—and close the legitimacy deficit they suffer when they discard the established government mission of social and economic protection. . . .
|
Punishing the Poor
shows that the prison is not a mere technical implement for law enforcement but a core political institution.
* * * *
*
|
The Condemnation of Blackness
Race,
Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban
America
By
Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Lynch
mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of
black southern criminals that defined the
Jim Crow South are well known. We know less
about the role of the urban North in shaping
views of race and crime in American society.
Following the 1890 census, the first to
measure the generation of African Americans
born after slavery, crime statistics, new
migration and immigration trends, and
symbolic references to America as the
promised land of opportunity were woven into
a cautionary tale about the exceptional
threat black people posed to modern urban
society. Excessive arrest rates and
overrepresentation in northern prisons were
seen by many whites—liberals and
conservatives, northerners and
southerners—as indisputable proof of blacks’
inferiority. In the heyday of “separate but
equal,” what else but pathology could
explain black failure in the “land of
opportunity”? |
 |
The idea of black
criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban
America, as were African Americans’ own ideas about race
and crime. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded
notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals
by explicit contrast to working-class whites and
European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the
influence such ideas have had on urban development and
social policies.
* * * *
*
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
* * * * *
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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
* *
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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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