Commentary by David A. Love

Reggie Clemons is Troy Davis

2012-02-10T12:05:00.003-05:00

The case of Reggie Clemons represents everything that is wrong with the death penalty and the U.S. criminal justice system.

His case reminds us of Troy Davis, a black man who was executed by the state of Georgia in September, despite strong evidence of innocence, no physical evidence, another suspect and unreliable witnesses, not to mention worldwide protests.

In 1993, Clemons was sentenced to death in St. Louis, Missouri as an accomplice to the 1991 murder of Julie and Robin Kerry - two white women who plunged to their deaths off the Chain of Rocks Bridge into the Mississippi River. He was 19 at the time of the killings, with a clean record.

He was beaten by police, denied a lawyer, and coerced into making a false confession. As Amnesty International reported, there was no physical evidence linking Clemons to the murders. Even the prosecution admitted that Clemons did not murder the victims, nor did he plan the crime.

Two other young black men, Marlin Gray and Antonio Richardson, were sentenced to death along with Clemons. Gray was executed, and Richardson had his sentence reduced to life. Two sketchy eyewitnesses were essential to Clemons’ death conviction. Daniel Winfrey, a white co-defendant, pled guilty to a lesser offense in exchange for his testimony against the black defendants. Winfrey allegedly told a cellmate he would “say anything” to get a plea bargain, and “no one is going to believe a bunch of niggers.” He is now a free man on parole.

Meanwhile, Thomas Cummins, the victims’ cousin, originally confessed to killing the women, which he told police stemmed from an argument after he tried to have sex with Julie. Cummins also claimed he fell 90 feet off the bridge and swam to safety, which was unlikely given that he was dry and unscathed. Despite the inconsistencies in his statements, the charges against Cummins were dropped after he identified Clemons and the other suspects. Cummins received a $150,000 settlement in a police brutality suit.

Meanwhile, Clemons and Gray both claimed police brutality and coercion but were ignored. Clemons - who had been beaten by police and was ordered hospitalized by the judge at his arraignment - was coerced into confessing to rape. He did not confess to murder. And the audiotaped forced confession was admitted as evidence of his guilt.

This is where the problems for Reggie Clemons were only just beginning. To sum it up, he just couldn’t win, and the system seemed to conspire against him. His defense attorneys were unprepared for trial and neglectful, and the deck was stacked against him, as was the jury. The prosecutor, Assistant Circuit Attorney Nels Moss, who was disciplined by the court and had a pattern of misconduct, disproportionately excluded black prospective jurors, leaving a mostly white pro-death penalty jury in this heavily black city.

And then there was the rape kit and lab reports from one of the victims, buried in police headquarters for years, and never revealed at trial. One could reasonably assume that if that evidence had been helpful to his case, Moss would not have hidden it.

Police torture and false testimony, crooked prosecutors and a stacked jury, incompetent defense counsel and missing evidence. Let’s not forget raw racism. These are the key ingredients of a horrid dish called American justice.

And sadly, this is why Reggie Clemons is facing execution. This is a prime example of what happens when criminal behavior in the police station and the courtroom sends an innocent man to his death. But unlike Troy Davis in Georgia, Cameron Todd Willingham, Ruben Cantu or Carlos DeLuna in Georgia, or Larry Griffin in Missouri, Reggie Clemons is still alive. There is still time to save him. We can fix this.

On the other hand, we cannot fix our system of capital punishment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, 140 innocent men and womenhave been freed from death row in 26 states, each spending an average of nearly 10 years in prison awaiting execution.

I'm Really Trying to Understand Black Conservatives

2012-02-02T09:05:00.003-05:00

Only a few weeks into the new year, and it seems that black conservatives made their way out of the gate on the wrong foot.

That’s not to say that they ever were on point, in my estimation. But these days, they seem particularly off their game, out of place, out of step and isolated. When the Republicans were a center-right party with a semblance of a big tent, black conservatives were useful tools – pawns who were willingly exploited to put a black face on regressive social and economic policy. And I’m sure they did it all for a chicken wing and a bowl of grits. Now, at a time when the GOP is tea party-owned and steeped in 100 percent pure corporatism, greed, intolerance and white supremacy, they are simply useful idiots.

Case in point: the lieutenant governor of Florida, Jennifer Carroll, said that she couldn’t think of anyone who epitomizes the values and vision of Martin Luther King more than Gov. Rick Scott. That would be Rick Scott, the anti-union, voter disenfranchising corporate fraudster, and perhaps the worst governor in the country, which is no easy feat.

Ward Connerly, the former California regent and anti-civil rights crusader, is accused of financial impropriety and is being investigated by the IRS. He earns around $1.5 million a year at the American Civil Rights Institute, accounting for half of the nonprofit’s budget. The person leading the charge against him is none other than Jennifer Gratz, the white plaintiff in the University of Michigan affirmative action case that struck down programs of inclusion in that institution. Gratz later worked for Connerly, but no longer does. And Connerly is portraying her as disgruntled former employee. So, a man widely regarded in the black community as a race-based con man who pimps colorblindness and quotas for personal profit is now being accused by his own supporters of being just that – a race-based con man who pimps colorblindness and quotas for personal profit.

And in an apparent case of buyer’s remorse, Juan Williams, Fox News’ resident black apologist, received a proper verbal beat down from Newt Gingrich at a recent GOP presidential debate in South Carolina. Williams appropriately exposed Gingrich for his comments on food stamps and the poor – including his remark that “black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps” – saying the words were “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities.”Black tea party spectacle Jesse Lee Peterson said he agrees with Newt Gingrich that blacks lack a work ethic. Peterson’s solution is to send blacks back to the plantation, literally, not figuratively. Doubling down on Newt’s racial rhetoric, Peterson said “one of the things that I would do is take all black people back to the South and put them on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working. I’m going to put them all on the plantation. They need a good hard education on what it is to work.”

Don’t get me wrong, Juan was right to attempt to put Gingrich in his place. But that was not the job for which Fox – and by extension the Republicans - pay Juan so generously. They pay him to be different from the rest of us, to engage in self-loathing and attacks on black people, poor and working people, liberal thought and progressive values. So for a moment, Juan forgot where he was, and that’s why the crowd booed him. I don’t know what caused Mr. Williams to lose his way, but if this is a sign he has found it, we should embrace him. But he must realize that a GOP debate is the wrong venue to address Republican racism and scapegoating of the poor. The base wants to hear about doing away with child labor laws, about forcing black and Latino kids to clean the toilets in their school for pennies, and about calling Obama a food stamp president.

As for the black conservatives who are embracing this ignorance in the era of the 99 percent, they are really just a sideshow oddity. It is likely the loneliest job in the nation as a person of color, to sell your soul to a nearly exclusively white-extremist-fringe movement, one that truly hates everyone who looks like you, and works hard to scapegoat you for political gain. It’s as if they’re turning their back on the mama who raised them.

Meanwhile, J.C. Watts - who has returned from obscurity after apparently not suffering enough abuse in the party – says that Republican candidates need black strategists at the table to help them win over black voters and avoid controversial remarks. “Somebody that looks like us needs to be at the strategists’ table to say ‘I know what you’re trying to say, but I wouldn’t say it like that,” Watts said at an even hosted by black tea party darling, Rep. Allen West (R-Florida). West said that blacks have conservative views but don’t vote Republican.

Watts and West are missing the point. Having a black face at the Republican race-card table never changed the game, and they are proof of it. They are the only ones who don’t realize that they are the punch line to this offensive joke, and the joke’s on them.

Dr. King's Stance Against the Death Penalty

2012-01-17T09:35:00.003-05:00

As the U.S. observes the eighty-third birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this is a perfect time to reflect on the slain civil rights leader, Nobel laureate and death penalty opponent.

Much is known of the Montgomery bus boycott that he led in the 1950s. He fought for economic justice and the plight of the poor, and supported Memphis sanitation workers before he was assassinated. And he opposed the war in Vietnam. But rarely do we hear about his position against capital punishment.

"I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included," King said. "Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God."

King's words are just as relevant now in the twenty-first century, over four decades after his death.

America has reached a turning point in its application of capital punishment. Last year, Illinois abolished the death penalty over concerns of wrongful convictions and executing the innocent. This came following historic decisions to end the practice in New Mexico and New Jersey. Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber recently placed a moratorium on all executions, stating that the death penalty fails "basic standards of justice."

In addition, the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate voted to review the death penalty, in light of questions of racial, ethnic and gender bias, high costs, and a lack of a deterrent effect. And a ballot initiative in California this year will allow voters to give an up or down vote to state-sponsored killing.

Across the nation, the death penalty is an emerging civil rights issue. The execution of Troy Davis last September--an African-American man who was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a white police officer in Savannah, Georgia-- has awoken many to the inherent injustices of capital punishment. That the state could execute a man despite strong evidence of his innocence, including seven of the nine trial witnesses recanting or changing their testimony, was an indication that the death penalty has little to do with guilt or innocence.

Rather, executions in the U.S. are part of a racially-coded system of retribution. Poor people and members of racial minorities are more likely to receive a death sentence, as are those who are charged with murdering a white victim.

In North Carolina, where defendants in cases with white victims are 3.5 times more likely to receive a death sentence, the state legislature voted to repeal the state's Racial Justice Act, which Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law in 2009. The Act allows people facing a death sentence to present statistics and other evidence of racial bias in court. Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed the repeal legislation supported by prosecutors and Republican lawmakers. Civil rights groups such as the NAACP and People of Faith Against the Death Penalty fought the repeal.

State-sponsored executions are part of an American culture of violence. Perhaps it is no accident that the former Confederate states, with their history of dehumanization through slavery and segregation, and the meting out of mob justice through lynching, are among the more enthusiastic practitioners of death.

And the late Coretta Scott King--whose husband and mother-in-law both were assassinated--spoke out against the practice. "An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation," Dr. King's widow proclaimed. "Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder".

Further, the death penalty is an international human rights issue as well. The European Union, which forbids the practice among its member nations, has imposed new restrictions on the importation of anesthetics used to execute people in the U.S.

Sadly, some would dilute Dr. King's human rights message, including his "radical revolution of values," in which he urged America to begin the necessary shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. Meanwhile, the "drum major for justice, peace and righteousness" as the inscription reads on his memorial--stands on the National Mall as a reminder of his dedication to human rights, including opposition to the death penalty.

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy," King said. "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

If America truly wants to follow the teachings of Martin Luther King, we should end all executions now.

It's the Old South vs. the New South

2012-01-12T12:48:00.000-05:00

The American South can't seem to shake off the Civil War. Or Jim Crow. And yet, that region of the U.S. is undergoing some dramatic changes. How the South responds to these changes will determine how easily it will enter the modern world and usher out the racial demons of its past.

Latinos are on the rise in the new South, with the nation's fastest growing Hispanic populations in the states of the former Confederacy. Georgia and North Carolina are now among the ten largest Latino communities in the nation.

Further, African Americans are coming back home to the region, reflecting the nation's largest demographic shift. The South now has its highest share of black folks in half a century. As northern states and California have witnessed a loss in their black populations, Atlanta has gained half a million black people in a decade. The largest black city after New York is no longer Chicago, it is Atlanta.

The migration of Latinos and the reverse migration of blacks mean that people of color are poised to become a majority in some areas of the South, as is the case in Texas. Add to that the influx of white professionals and high-tech workers in states such as North Carolina -- a red state that Obama turned blue in 2008 -- and you have the makings of noticeable change.

Then again, you have Alabama. After the state enacted the harshest anti-immigration law in the land, Latinos are leaving Alabama. Now, farmers are hoping to replace migrant workers with prisoners to work the fields because, after all, we know how forced agricultural labor worked out the first time around.

Alabama, as an aside, has a majority black prison population. African-Americans are 27 percent of the population and 63 percent of the prisoners.   The state is 23rd in the nation in population, but was second in the number of executions in 2011. And over the past decade, nearly two dozen death penalty cases were overturned because prosecutors illegally struck black jurors.

Last year, like Alabama, South Carolina also passed its own bad anti-immigration law -- modeled after Arizona's SB 1070 -- key parts of which were thrown out by a federal judge in Charleston. And the U.S. Department of Justice blocked the state's new voter ID law, which would require voters to present a photo idea at the polls, and discriminate against racial minorities in the process. Under the Voting Rights Act, states such as South Carolina and Texas, because of their history of racial discrimination, require federal approval of any changes to their election laws.

The old South meets the new, as South Carolina's Governor Nikki Haley signed both of these cruel, atrocious pieces of legislation into law, and vows to fight in court to have them upheld. Governor Haley is the children of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India. The Sikh-American community has endured its share of discrimination in the post-911 era, branded as terrorists and persecuted for the traditional turban and beard worn by Sikh men.

And so, a woman of South Asian ancestry, a person of color and darling of the Tea Party, has chosen to channel the angry white segregationist governors that came before her. Some names that come to mind are George Wallace of Alabama, who stood in the schoolhouse door to block black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama; Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi, who kept blacks from voting, and Ross Barnett, who denied James Meredith, an African-American, admission to the University of Mississippi.

Haley's policies, not unlike those of her predecessors, are the unjust laws that Martin Luther King discussed in Letter from Birmingham Jail. As King said, "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. ... An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal."

Even today, such laws are designed to keep communities of color isolated, scared and disempowered, down and out of the process. That the dominant party in the South has changed its affiliation from Democratic to Republican since the Civil Rights era really is beside the point. The old mentality remains. We're talking old South vs. new South, a steadfast resistance to civil rights, and clinging to a segregationist mindset, even well into the twenty-first century.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, a black man named Troy Davis was executed last year under the rules of the old South -- a justice system of mob rule, in which racial vengeance and scapegoating take precedence over guilt or innocence. In the end, what mattered was not the evidence pointing to Davis's innocence, or the seven out of nine witnesses who recanted or changed their testimony, but rather that the victim was a white police officer and Davis was a black man.

Although I was born and raised in New York and now live in Philadelphia, I always regarded the South as a second home, if not something of an ancestral homeland. My mother was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and my late father was from Augusta, Georgia. I have lots of family there, not to mention fond childhood memories of visiting cousins. Many good people in the South, to be sure, but there's a great deal of ugly in the South.

The problem arises when some people can't pick a century to live in and stick with it.

In the Guardian: The racial bias of the US death penalty

2012-01-03T20:39:00.000-05:00

Check me out in my first commentary for The Guardian. It deals with the problems of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty. Click here for more.

China and the U.S.: World Leaders in Executions

2012-01-02T21:27:00.000-05:00

They say you're judged by the company you keep. And the countries that execute the most people are members of quite a club.

According to Amnesty International, two-thirds of the nations of the world have abolished the death penalty, including 30 countries over the past decade. Only 21 of the 192 UN member nations carried out executions last year. China was the world leader with likely thousands of executions a year.

Following China were Iran, North Korea, and Yemen, with the U.S. in fifth place. Trailing the U.S. were Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria.

As the world trends toward abolition of the death penalty, so too is the U.S. losing some of its appetite for executions. As the Death Penalty Information Center announced in its year-end report, 2011 was the first year since 1976 -- when capital punishment was reinstated in the U.S. -- that fewer than 100 death sentences were produced in one year.

But let's not be mistaken. The death penalty, though on the decline, is still widely practiced in America, and it still is the law in 34 states.

State-sponsored executions represent the ultimate violation of human rights, and it is shameful that the U.S. is one of the world's most willing and enthusiastic executioners. China, which makes no pretenses regarding human rights, executes thousands of people a year because life is cheap in that authoritarian, hyper-capitalist state. Mass forced evictions and demolitions are commonplace for the sake of urban development, whether to make way for the Olympics, the Asian Games, a shoddy high-speed rail project, or Disneyland.

When Wang Yue, a two-year-old girl was left to die by two hit-and-run van drivers and 18 passers-by, people in China blamed a Nanjing judge for creating a climate of apathy. In 2006, the judge forced a Good Samaritan -- a young man who helped an elderly woman who had fallen in the street -- to pay her hospital expenses. The judge's rationale was that "common sense" dictated that the young man took the woman to the hospital because he was guilty.

In China, with the world's most voracious appetite for executions, 55 crimes (down from 68) are capital offenses, including nonviolent crimes such as government corruption for a relative few unlucky scapegoats, and drug smuggling. It is an arbitrary system in which political maneuvering, the absence of an independent judiciary and perhaps even public pressure play a role in who is executed.

But at least the U.S. isn't China, right? Maybe not.

In the land of the free, capital punishment remains the tip of the iceberg in a society that often disregards human dignity and human rights. Nearly one in two Americans is poor or low income, and America has the highest level of economic inequality of the advanced nations. We stand alone in our lack of a national healthcare system. Our lawmakers, legally bribed by corporations, deny climate change for the sake of profit, and squeeze working people as they reward the rich.

Executions are merely the most violent manifestation of this inequity and injustice in the land, a failure to come to terms with bad habits and the demons of an American past that continue to torment us today. In 2011, three-quarters of the executions in the U.S. took place in the South. The lion's share of executions have taken place in the former Confederacy, with its long history of racial violence and segregation, and dehumanization born out of a legacy of slavery.

The U.S. death penalty discriminates against the poor and uneducated, racial minorities and those who cannot afford adequate legal representation. And a small number of counties are responsible for seeking most of the country's death penalty prosecutions and convictions.

Meanwhile, as America touts its human rights record, it is hard to preach to others, especially China, as it continues to execute its citizens. The death penalty remains America's moral blind spot. It will take a movement, not to mention Europe cutting off America's supply of lethal injection drugs, to turn things around.

Bull Connor 2.0: The Police Response To #OccupyWallStreet

2011-12-15T16:26:00.002-05:00

Looking at the police response to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Bull Connor would be proud.

What went barely reported recently was that the United Nations has taken an interest in how the United States has dealt with the Occupy folks. Specifically, Frank LaRue, the UN special rapporteur for the protection of free expression, believes that the law enforcement crackdowns against Occupy protesters are a violation of their constitutional and human rights.

Meanwhile, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, noting the assault by police and arrest of journalists in some cities, urged authorities to protect journalists at these protests.

Why are the local authorities breaking up these peaceful protests -- in which people are exercising their right to free speech -- often through the use of violence, mass arrests, tear gas, smoke grenades, pepper spray, bean-bag rounds and brute force? And why are they beating and detaining reporters, or judges and city council members for that matter?

It all reminds me of Bull Connor, that infamous bull horn-toting, civil rights-era Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, also known as "Bombingham," Alabama. Summoned from central casting, the dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist drew attention to himself when he sprayed water hoses and sicked dogs on peaceful public demonstrators, including children. Those water hoses tore the bark off trees.

And the press caught all of it on tape.

Connor made a fool of himself, and his actions and those of his henchmen were broadcasted before a national and international audience. It put the U.S. to shame, and placed the spotlight on the Jim Crow South in particular. The moral bankruptcy of segregation was evident in the heavy handed tactics employed by the Bull Connors of America.

Then there was the riot by the Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic Convention. And on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard killed four and injured nine unarmed protesters at Kent State University who opposed Nixon's invasion of Cambodia.

This nation, the land of the free, has always known what to do to keep people in line, especially in order to protect capital. Armed thugs, whether dressed in blue uniforms or not, were used by people in power for union busting and strike breaking. The 1 percent never could have succeeded without the complicity and active participation of some members of the 99 percent, including the cops who provide the muscle. Those working class police officers, who certainly will never become rich, should side with the very popular movements that would improve their own condition. After all, as is the case with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, union busting includes police unions, too.

The NYPD brass who walked around pepper spraying Occupy protesters, and the UC Davis police who summarily sprayed peaceful student demonstrators, behaved in the time-tested, repugnant tradition of Bull Connor. These days, the key issue is not Jim Crow segregation or the war in Vietnam. Rather, as Naomi Wolf poignantly noted in the Guardian, the Occupy agenda is getting money out of politics, reforming the banks, and stopping politicians from passing legislation affecting Delaware corporations in which they are investors. In other words, they want to cut American capitalism at the knees, eliminate the fraud on Wall Street, and drain the swamp of legalized corruption and bribery that is Washington. They want to get rid of the fundamental inequities of a system to which Americans have become far too accustomed. This is the best tradition of Martin Luther King's "radical revolution of values," what he envisioned as "the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society."

Needless to say, there are those who will do what they must to prevent this from happening.

Cities throughout the nation appear to be acting in concert with an anti-Occupy Wall Street strategy. It is no coincidence that simultaneously, police forces throughout the country are violently disbanding Occupy tent cities. The Department of Homeland Security held conference calls with numerous city governments on how to crack down on the protesters. The writing is on the wall.

The police response to the Occupy Movement flies in the face of the reputed tenets of American constitutional democracy, and contravenes the precepts of international human rights law. But hey, this is America. And in America, capitalism trumps democracy. And we can't allow capitalism to become a dirty word, now can we?

The Death Penalty and #OccupyWallStreet

2011-11-13T15:19:00.000-05:00

Recently I attended the 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty in Austin, Texas. Participants included death penalty abolitionists, and members of Witness to Innocence -- over two dozen freed death row prisoners who spent years in prison, and once faced certain execution for crimes they did not commit. The day's events included a walk past the governor's mansion, and a rally on the Capitol steps.

One thing that struck me about the event in Austin was the presence of Occupy Austin protestors who were present to speak and lend their support. Clearly, they get it. They understand the link between the struggle for economic justice and the fight to end the death penalty in America. Perhaps you don't. Allow me to explain.

Both movements seek to reform an unjust, rigged system that stacks the deck against poor and working people. The Occupy movement rails against greed and corruption on Wall Street, and unprecedented wealth inequality brought about by policies of theft that transfer resources from the have nots -- the 99 percent -- to the have alls -- the top 1 percent.

They're angry that they must subsidize the lifestyles of the big bankers who caused our misery, as nearly 46 million are on food stamps, and almost 50 million (16 percent) are mired in poverty. And a lost generation of college graduates saddled with mortgage-sized student debt is jobless and living at home with their parents.

Meanwhile, the anti-death penalty forces would end a practice that discriminates against people of color and poor whites, those who lack high-priced lawyers and often cannot afford to buy justice.

Capital punishment operates under a pretense of justice, when in reality it represents pure vengeance and mob retribution, favoring expediency and finality over finding the real killer. Those who administer the death penalty seem to care little about evidence and actual guilt or innocence. We all witnessed this with Troy Davis in Georgia, and with other problematic capital cases, including Cameron Todd Willingham and possibly now Hank Skinner in Texas.

Innocent men and women have been executed in the face of police coercion and jailhouse snitches, evidence tampering, incompetent court-appointed defense counsel, prosecutorial misconduct and racism sanctioned from the bench.

And 139 innocent people have been exonerated since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. We will never fully comprehend what these people experienced in their personal Hell -- as they suffered for years behind bars while the state planned their murder. Many of them have told me their stories. The exoneration of these innocent victims provides no proof that the system works. Rather, many of the wrongfully convicted were freed with outside help, including dedicated lawyers, activists and journalism students, despite the best efforts of certain judges and prosecutors to block crucial exculpatory evidence and put them to death. It is a scathing indictment of the U.S. justice system.

As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is 'actually' innocent."

America's economic and justice systems thrive on winners and losers, and someone is made to pay in the end. America's government has been sold to the highest bidder in the form of concentrated and unchecked corporate power. In the eyes of many, the political system is working for the few and against the vast majority of everyday people. Unlimited campaign finance is a scourge upon the land, operating as a legalized bribery scheme for the rich and famous. And the death penalty is part of a kangaroo court system in which poor and working class people become scapegoats for society's ills. These scapegoats are utilized to help deflect attention from the nation's problems, as we are all promised that their imprisonment and/or execution will make our problems disappear.

For years, the public had been sold on broken institutions that breed inequality, insensitivity and injustice. But there is ample proof that the people are no longer buying it. And the death machine -- not unlike American-style capitalism with its socialized risk and privatized gain -- is so inherently flawed that tweaking around the edges simply will not do. Fundamentally broken, it must be scrapped and replaced. What is needed is what Dr. King called a radical revolution of values, so that this nation emphasizes human rights over property rights, and upholds people over money.

Now that is why the death penalty abolition movement has so much in common with the Occupy Wall Street folks. Both know the fix is in.

David A. Love is the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, a national nonprofit organization that empowers exonerated death row prisoners and their family members to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty.

Draconian laws could disenfranchise 5 million voters

2011-10-14T09:45:00.001-04:00

Voting is supposed to be a right in this country, but many states are sabotaging that right.

According to a new report released by the Brennan Center for Justice, a number of states have passed new laws that block people from registering to vote. Some of these states have gone to ludicrous lengths to deny the franchise to their citizens.

Read more of my article at the Sacramento Bee

Why Conservatives Need to Support the #OccupyWallStreet Movement

2011-10-14T09:35:00.000-04:00

Alright, it is clear that conservatives don't like the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Virginia) characterized the protestors as a mob. One Fox News host even called the protestors dirty and useless. Glenn Beck said they are only interested in destruction, while his compatriot Ann Coulter compared them to Nazis and the beginnings of totalitarianism.

And presidential candidate and former pizza guy Herman CaIn called them un-American and against Wall Street. "They're the ones creating the jobs," Cain said of Wall Street bankers and brokers, adding that those who are not rich or are unemployed should blame themselves.

Now, for those in the media and in politics who make a career out of bashing poor and working folks -- and are paid handsomely to look out for the interests of the Koch Brothers and others who belong in that select group of 1 percenters -- there's no surprise here. But what of ordinary, hardworking and struggling people who call themselves conservatives? How should they feel about the goals of this nascent movement that appears to be gaining steam? And why do some of them vote against their economic interests?

One should note that recent polls find huge majorities -- Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, even the wealthy -- supporting tax increases for the richest among us. This would suggest there is a broad consensus demanding fairness in the American economic system.

And really, that is all the Occupy Wall Street people are asking for. Their website says "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." The message is simple and makes a lot of sense.

Wages have stagnated or fallen for working people, and poverty is on the increase. And yet, those with the most are accumulating even more everyday -- not necessarily because they are deserving, hardworking and ingenious, though some may be. Rather, the haves became the have-mores because the have-nots have less. This is called upward wealth redistribution, and it is a matter of public policy, including regressive tax policy that favors corporations and the rich on purpose.

The wealthiest 1 percent now owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth, whereas they only claimed 33 percent 25 years ago. Meanwhile, the top 20 percent own 85 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 80 percent is left with 7 percent -- effectively zero. U.S. inequality is greater than at any time since the Great Depression, and greater than most OECD nations. America is a banana republic.

If F.D.R. saved capitalism from itself years ago, he also saved America from capitalism. What is needed today is what Martin Luther King called a "radical revolution of values," as "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

A few people control the wealth in this country, and those people control the system of governance. American politics is a scheme operating on legalized bribery. Money has corrupted the Democrats and the Republicans alike, especially Republicans. But even President Obama, who rode on a wave of populism and a demand for reform has appeared beholden to that Goldman Sachs money. Just look at the Wall Street lackeys doubling as his team of economic advisors these first three years, not to mention ill-advised policies, or lack thereof, on jobs and the financial system.

And the masses are angry because they are struggling, as they see the banks rewarded, by government, for their greed and failure. The banks wrecked the economy and now the working stiffs are paying the price. The TARP was in the hundreds of billions of dollars, while the Fed gave a total of $16 trillion in financial assistance to U.S. and foreign financial institutions from 2007 to 2010 -- more than the nation's 2010 GDP of $14.5 trillion.

The Tea Party was right to oppose the TARP bailout, but something went wrong along the way.
Actually, they were hijacked by billionaires, if not a creation of them to begin with. And while they have every right to be angry, as many of us are these days, their anger is misplaced and misdirected. Their enemy is misidentified.

Conservatives proclaim that they believe in freedom and the free market. But freedom never meant the right of a handful of to steal most of the nation's wealth, run roughshod over the rest of us and wreck the country for a buck. Further, ours is not a free market capitalist system. Rather, it is a system of subsidized corporatism where only the people are forced to sink or swim. And increasingly America is looking like feudalism, and most of us are serfs or sharecroppers spinning our wheels and going nowhere. Perhaps some people think that is a good thing.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party -- which is a 100 percent certified water carrier for Wall Street -- is adept at making its voter base believe its interests are aligned with that of the party's funders. When it comes to the American Dream, these are the true Kool-Aid drinkers.

Part of the GOP's success is its skill at sidetracking its base with contrived cultural issues. So, rank-and-file conservatives are kept busy hating undocumented Mexican immigrants, with promises to ban sharia law, gay marriage, abortion and voter fraud, and other issues that have no positive impact on their economic well-being.

Yet, in this crisis of U.S.-style democracy and capitalism, conservatives are hurting like everyone else. Who knows what conservatives are conserving these days, but it is hard to conserve when there's nothing left. That's why even they need to support Occupy Wall Street.

The Death Penalty as Ritualized Mob Violence

2011-10-02T12:32:00.001-04:00

The execution of Troy Davis by the state of Georgia has outraged many, placing the gruesome and barbaric practice of capital punishment under the microscope.

A black man who at the least was apparently innocent— and at most definitely innocent— was executed despite serious questions about his case. Most of all, there was ample evidence that Davis was not the man who killed Mark MacPhail, a white off-duty police officer in 1989.

When a white conservative audience cheered presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry over his execution record at a recent debate, it underscored what is wrong with the death penalty.

Even as 138 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973, surely many innocent souls were executed. But Perry asserted that he does not lose sleep over the notion that someone among the then-234 prisoners he put to death was innocent.

“No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that’s required,” said Perry.

The governor added, “But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed.”

The shock value of Perry’s assurances that his death machine is thoughtful–the U.S. Supreme Court just stayed two Texas executions—was matched only by the bloodlust of the lynch mob that applauded him. I say lynch mob because the death penalty, like the motives of a bloodthirsty mob seeking vengeance, was never about guilt or innocence.

Capital punishment is ritual mob violence, plain and simple.

No one claims that the death penalty deters crime, because it doesn’t, and there is no need to go there in any case. There is no need for a cost-benefit analysis with a form of punishment so purely ritualized— up to the serving of the last meal to the condemned person, symbolizing that which he or she does not deserve.

And diehard supporters of capital punishment will focus on the need for justice and finality for the victims’ families. Yet they will not entertain the role that race-, class- and politics-driven biases, not to mention outright incompetence and malfeasance, play in the administration of state-sponsored death.

Ancient peoples used the scapegoat as the personification of their hatred, fears and frustrations. They sacrificed the scapegoat to transfer their sins and cleanse society. In modern times, scapegoats have served a more rational role of preserving the status quo.

As the social psychologist Eliot Aronson has theorized, people in adverse situations may be inclined to lash out at the source of their problems, but may find it hard to retaliate against the direct cause of their frustrations. So they lash out against those who are hated, visible and powerless.

Scapegoaters unite to eliminate the perceived cause of their problems, even the randomly selected perpetrator, as social thinker René Girard posits. Even if there was an actual crime, the mob would not seek the actual perpetrator. The actual perpetrator is probably a member of the community, and his elimination would bring retaliation. Rather, a random scapegoat is targeted. Yet, the community will believe that the scapegoat is guilty, that she is actually responsible for the community’s problems.

And the ritual killing either will bring relief to the mob, or further fuel their anger.

Scapegoats are victims of a highly psychological process, but economics and politics are involved as well. In America, blacks have served historically as the consummate racial scapegoat—blamed for failed policies, accused of committing crimes real or imagined, targeted for violence and their economically exploited. Stereotypes justified the violence visited upon black people, and a regime of slavery and Jim Crow normalized the dehumanization of people of color.

It is no accident that prisoners of color, particularly blacks and Latinos, are disproportionately represented on death row, or that a vast majority of executions take place in a small number of Southern states where lynching and racial violence were commonplace. And lynchings were public spectacles where tickets were sold, the spectators had picnics, and members of the crowd kept body parts of the victim as souvenirs.

In the early twentieth century, Southern states, fearing the passing of an anti-lynching statute by Congress, brought lynching into the justice system. The courts assured the mob that black defendants would receive a quick guilty verdict, provided the mob allowed the system to do its part.

Indeed, the courts served as an effective venue for racial violence. Between 1924 and 1972, when the Supreme Court found capital punishment unconstitutional, Georgia executed 337 blacks and only 75 whites.

One of those 337 was Lena Baker, the only woman to die in Georgia’s electric chair, known as “Old Sparky.”. A black maid, her crime was being in an abusive and exploitative relationship with her employer Ernest B. Knight, a white man, who kept her as a slave, threatened her life, and locked her up for days at a time. One day Baker fought back in an act of self- defense. The two “tussled” over a pistol, which fired, killing Knight. She was found guilty of murder by an all-white-male jury, in a trial that lasted less than a full day. The jury came back after less than a half hour of deliberation. Baker was pardoned posthumously in 2005, 60 years after her execution.

So the Troy Davis execution, like so many before him, was a lynching. Remember that with ritualized killings, guilt or innocent is beside the point. Someone must die, and anyone will do.

We Could Use A Little Class Warfare Right Now

2011-10-02T12:29:00.003-04:00

Recently, the jobs crisis in America prompted New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to predict that riots will come if jobs are not created soon.

“We have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”

“The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years,” he added.

As for a nation with multimedia diversions—not to mention a stubborn, widespread belief that the American Dream of upward mobility still will come to all who want it— I have maintained that it will take a great deal for riots to come to this country once again. I certainly would not want to see violence fall upon anyone in any community.

At the same time, as a student of history I understand that things do happen. In the 1960s, communities of color reached a tipping point. Call them riots, civil disturbances or urban rebellions, they often arose from acts of police brutality. But ultimately, they came to reflect frustration over poverty and inequality, a lack of economic opportunity, no jobs, bad schools and a shortage of housing.

And it was also a time of heightened political awareness and political activism, with the civil rights, antiwar and Black Power movements in full force. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover and the police made their best effort to neutralize these protest movements, even if it meant assassinating their leaders.

Now, I’m sure that some commentators at the time dismissed the riots as acts of vandalism and mayhem on the part of “those” lawless people, meaning black folks, who just don’t know how to behave.

And yet, while blacks, Latinos and other historically marginalized groups have always known pain, whether back in the day or under the current recession, today we are witnessing something fundamentally different. Today, the thumbscrews are being applied to America’s poor, working class and middle class, as a collective. And you can’t help but believe that the torturers are engaged in a perverse experiment to see how much they can get away with.

If the U.S. has not reached a tipping point of sorts, you can’t help but think it will come soon. Some 6.9 million jobs have been lost since the trap door came aloose on the nation’s flawed economic system in 2007. Add to that the jobs needed to keep up with population growth and America has a jobs deficit of 11 million jobs.

A jobs crisis exists side-by-side with a staggering rate of poverty unmatched in over half a century. One in six Americans lives in poverty—46.2 million people, or 15.1 percent—a third of them children. The Latino poverty rate is 26 percent, with 27 percent for blacks. The U.S. is experiencing a lost decade, and beyond the numbers there exists a profound psychological toll that defies any degree of quantifying.

It is one thing to say that half of all Americans earn less than less than $26,000, and only 1 percent earn over $250,000. You can also point out that in the land of opportunity, the nation with the highest inequality in the industrialized world, 400 people have more wealth than half the entire country combined.

But it is an entirely different proposition to ask why, and how to stop it.

Simply put, America’s political governance system has been purchased by the nation’s top 1 percent, and they are getting their money’s worth. Corporate money has taken over the government, and the government is unable, no, unwilling to take care of the needs of its people, sans the 1 percent who possess their sales receipt in hand.

American politics is legalized bribery and corruption. With the social welfare system peeling away for austerity’s sake, American capitalism, unfettered, is reverting back to its natural state of exploitation—allowing a few winners, mostly losers, and a lot of cold-bloodedness and cold-heartedness to go around.

The party controlling Congress is a Koch Brothers-led sideshow of extremism, lunacy, instability and racial paranoia. And the party in the White House is led by a man who means well on his best days, but has placed far too much faith in Ivy League white dudes. He has sought friendship with those who plan his demise— and that of the nation’s economy for political gain— as he legitimizes and embraces their pathological ideas. Half-measures and Clintonian triangulation have appeared misplaced and wholly inadequate, falling far short of the bold promises of hope and change in the 2008 election.

Right now, the president is on the right track in his populist efforts at pushback against the GOP, including a proposal to end the Bush tax cuts and tax the wealthy more, or at least as much as the rest of us.

Ultimately, public pressure will turn all of this around, as it always does. What we learned is that elections are not enough, and politics is not a spectator sport. The people must demand what they want from their elected officials, and change the terms of the public debate. Mass protest, not President Obama, will do the job of saving us from American capitalism.

A movement called Occupy Wall Street has decided to take a cue from the Arab Spring, and engage in nonviolent mass occupation to fight the greed and corruption of the top 1 percent and restore democracy in America. The movement, which plans to camp out on Wall Street for a few months, is not getting as much attention as it should. Hopefully that will change. We could use a little class warfare right now. It is always good to know where things stand.

Should blacks be satisfied with Obama's jobs speech?

2011-09-10T17:36:00.001-04:00

This week in theGrio I provided an analysis of President Obama's speech on jobs:

In his speech, Obama unveiled his $447 billion American Jobs Act, which offers a mix of tax cuts, jobs and infrastructure funding. Digging deep into the details and analyzing both the policy implications and the rhetorical symbolism of his speech, the president addressed issues that directly impact the black community and the rest of the Democratic base, and speak to their concerns. In other words, it is a good start, if nothing else.

However, consisting of two-thirds tax cuts, to some degree the president's jobs plan resembles a conservative Republican proposal. Further, he did not specifically discuss the high rate of black joblessness -- a unique situation, to be sure -- and therefore failed to adequately allay the concerns of some of his prominent African-American critics.

For more, go to "The Heart of the Matter with David A. Love" at theGrio.

Rikers Island Prisoners Were Left Out Of New York’s Evacuation Plan

2011-09-10T17:21:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Irene is gone and the damage was done across the eastern coast of the U.S. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the shutdown of the city's transit system, and the evacuation of a quarter of a million people in low-lying areas. But the city had no plans to evacuate the 12,000 prisoners on Rikers Island. There was no plan because there is no plan, no plan in place to evacuate these incarcerated individuals in case of a disaster.

Really now?

I can't help but believe that if the island was occupied by investment bankers or other "important" people worthy of protection, perhaps like the Hamptons, maybe things would have been a little different. After all, prisoners are perhaps the least regarded segment of society. And while no harm was visited upon these prisoners this time around, what will happen the next time? Given the effects of global warming, more hurricanes and tornadoes surely will come--more frequently and more intense.

Disasters - whether environmental or financial, both of which include those created by human beings - impose a system of triage that negatively impacts the poor, neglected and politically powerless.

The U.S. saw that in action in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina six years ago. The impoverished black residents of the Lower Ninth Ward caught Hell, to be sure, and suffered the most damage as an indifferent federal government looked the other way. And the men, women and children who occupied Orleans Parish Prison at the time, the second-class citizens that they are, suffered some of the greatest injustices of the storm. Stray pets received better treatment. Guards left their posts unattended, with prisoners locked up without water, food or ventilation, and sometimes up to their chests in dirty water. As New Orleans was being evacuated, the sheriff declared "The prisoners will stay where they belong."

And that spirit of callous neglect is evident in today’s financial crisis, the product of an unsavory mix of greed on Wall Street, and greed and deregulation in Washington. Through their water carriers, plutocrats and oligarchs are using the recession as a pretext for austerity measures, a job-killing assault on poor, working and middle-class families. As a Koch Brothers-funded Congress and Tea Party-endorsed governors and state legislatures slash budgets and taxes for the rich in the name of deficit reduction, everyday folks are blamed for getting the country into the mess we’re in. And the everyday people are left to suffer in this bad economy.

But back to Rikers. It should not escape us that Rikers Island is about 95 percent black and Latino. The students in the New York City public school system, the largest district in the nation, are overwhelmingly of color--86 percent. Mayor Bloomberg controls both. And it is not such a stretch to suggest that the Big Apple's richest man and the thirteenth richest American may have interests that clash with New York's prisoners and public school students.

Black males in New York City have a 28 percent high school graduation rate and a 50 percent unemployment rate.

Moreover, the mayor's two previous schools chiefs demonstrate a tendency to view public education as a commodity to be exploited by business executives for profit. His immediate past chancellor, Cathie Black, is a magazine executive with no education experience who suggested birth control as a means to solve classroom overcrowding. The man who headed the schools before Black, Joel Klein, is Rupert Murdoch's right-hand man and consigliere, hired to investigate (perhaps clean up) a scandal-plagued News Corp., and head up the corporation's new for-profit education division. Murdoch's hacking scandal just cost Wireless Generation, his education technology business, a $27 million contract with the state of New York-- most likely because hacking into students' records is generally frowned upon. I can't think of any corporation more averse to the interests of people of color than News Corp., the parent company the New York Post and Fox News, the former employer of madman and hatemonger Glenn Beck.

And so, the inmates at the Rikers penal colony likely have few champions, an unpopular constituency lacking any highly-paid lobbyists to do their bidding. Surely some of these captives have committed some heinous crimes. Others are caught up in the criminal justice system through no fault of their own, or due to racial profiling, or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And let’s not forget, Rikers Island also holds people awaiting trial who couldn't afford their bail, some awaiting bail hearings and even those awaiting arraignment - all of whom are innocent under our justice system. Whatever the reason, the occupants of Rikers Island, Orleans Parish Prison and elsewhere are human beings entitled to basic human rights. One would think that these rights include the right to not be left to die during a hurricane.

Sadly, from the time that slaves were thrown overboard for the "safety" of a ship, whether ostensibly to fight the spread of contagion or to collect the insurance money, people of African descent have been no strangers to triage. The circumstances have changed since then, but have they really?

Blacks and Latinos Will Suffer When the Student Debt Bubble Bursts

2011-08-27T14:31:00.000-04:00

When the housing bubble burst, the resulting foreclosure crisis was a disaster for black and Latino families, who lost 53 percent and 66 percent of their median household wealth, respectively, between 2005 and 2009. As a result, the racial wealth gap is widening, with white households enjoying 18 times as much wealth as their Latino counterparts, and 20 times more than African-American households.

There is every indication that the bursting of the student debt bubble, like the housing bubble before it, is imminent. And when it happens, it will send shockwaves throughout the financial markets. People of color will be especially vulnerable.

Although education is widely viewed as a way up and a way out for poor, working-and middle-class students, the prohibitive cost of college tuition has created a virtual debtors' prison for many. Loan defaults and delinquencies are on the rise in America, and are only expected to worsen.

A recent report from Moody's Analytics says that tuition has doubled since 2000 -- that's a 10 percent increase every year -- causing student debt to accelerate during the recession. In contrast, other types of consumer debt such as mortgages, credit cards and auto loans have decreased sharply. Outstanding student loans have increased 25 percent since 2008. Student debt now exceeds total credit card debt, and is likely to reach $1 trillion this year, with the average debt for a bachelor's degree at $24,000.

To add to the problem, unemployment is high and there are no jobs for recent graduates. And in the lucrative for-profit college industry where students of color predominate at 54 percent, graduation rates are lower than traditional institutions of higher learning. So, students leave without the benefit of a degree, but with the debt burden just the same.

For blacks and Latinos -- who suffer from lower pay and double the unemployment, and must assume larger debt loads to pay for school -- the deck is stacked against them. According to a Georgetown University study, blacks and Latinos earn less than whites, even with advanced degrees. Moreover, members of these groups who have earned a master's degree earn less than whites with a bachelor's. It is no wonder that their default rates are higher. In a 2007 survey, black students had a default rate five times higher than whites and nine times higher than Asians, with the Latino rate double that of whites and quadruple that of Asians.

This talk of student default goes far beyond dollars and statistics. These are human beings who are thrown into hopeless life situations because the tuition is too damn high. Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing the new film Default: The Student Loan Documentary. I appreciate the film's clarity in spelling out the nature of this American crisis and its impact on ordinary people. Borrowers break down and cry in front of the camera as they reveal the amount of money they owe in student loans. Some were brought to financial ruin as the result of prohibitively high monthly loan payments, compounded by illness or some other setback. Others are unable to get married and start a family because their loan payments prohibit it. One has to take a step back and ask if this is really what America has become.

"The private loan industry, they don't care about people," said Carmen Berkley, who appeared in the film. Carmen, who is African-American, has $80,000 in student loan debt, in addition to $5,000 in credit card debt and thousands in medical debt due to an illness. "I told them, 'Look I don't make that much money. I make $34,000 a year. There's no way I can spend 600 or 900 dollars a month just for loans.' And they said, 'Well there's nothing we can do about it.'"

Default touches on far more than the inability of college graduates to afford to repay their loans, and the financial ruin they face as they must choose between paying their rent, eating or paying off their mortgage-sized school debt. Although that heart-wrenching part of the story by itself is enough to warrant a documentary, the problem is even deeper, as the movie points out.

Ultimately, the student debt crisis is a product of the union of greed and corruption -- the banking industry and the politicians they have purchased for the purpose of carrying their water. Colleges and universities do their part by hiking up tuition far in excess of inflation. Meanwhile, private lenders exploit financial realities where students can no longer work to pay their way through college, and federal loans no longer pay for most or all of a college education. Moreover, these lenders benefit from loan defaults, as the fees and penalties that rack up can double or triple the amount of the original loan.

Much of this new financial crisis really speaks to the power of the lenders, who receive their money's worth from their investment in Congress. There is a reason why student loans are the only type of debt that cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy. The banks paid for the laws that exempt such loans from fundamental consumer protections. Even gambling debts can be discharged in a bankruptcy, as is mentioned in Default.

And in the irony of all ironies, the banking institutions that were "too big to fail" enjoy their federal bailout funds. This, as they continue to extract additional profit from human suffering, whether by exploiting homeowners with predatory mortgages, or bilking students with predatory school loans. These bailout recipients are making everyday people suffer, yet where is the bailout for the students?

Rick Perry compares the civil rights movement to the GOP's fight for lower taxes for the rich

2011-08-25T13:23:00.001-04:00

During the week that the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial opens to the public on the National Mall in Washington, Texas Governor Rick Perry finds a way to insult the legacy civil rights movement, and by extension, black people. It's all in the timing.

The newly minted presidential candidate was on the campaign trail in Rock Hill, South Carolina. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the historic Rock Hill lunch counter sit-in, when studentsfrom Friendship Junior College vowed to engage in civil disobedience and go to jail in the process. A reporter mentioned to Perry, "This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Friendship Nine sit-in."

"Listen, America's gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have," the governor responded.

"We've gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights, I think we all can be proud of that. And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom," Perry added. "It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. And Americans, regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is, they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved."

For the rest of my take on Perry, follow the link at theGrio.

Mississippi: Why is the blackest state the reddest state?

2011-08-25T13:19:00.001-04:00

Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree made history when he won the Democratic Party's nomination for governor of Mississippi on Tuesday. This makes DuPree the first African-American in modern times to receive a major party nomination for the position in the Magnolia State.

Oddly, Mississippi, the blackest, poorest and most federally-dependent state in America is also the most conservative state. Check out the rest of my analysis at theGrio.

The 20th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots

2011-08-22T18:12:00.002-04:00

August 19 marks the twentieth anniversary of the infamous Crown Heights riots. In 1991, the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood was rocked by three days of unrest and racial discord that became a flashpoint in black-Jewish relations and altered New York City's political landscape.

Check out my full analysis at theGrio, where I get to "The Heart of the Matter."

Profiteering and Union-Busting Repackaged as School Reform

2011-08-03T11:59:00.004-04:00

This is one of those stories that shows how far some people will go in America to make a buck—even if it means profiting at the expense of children, or exploiting the legacy of the civil rights movement.

Stand for Children is an unassuming name for an organization. Just taken at face value, one would conclude that the Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit aspires to accomplish what the title suggests. Their website says SFC is “an innovative, grassroots child advocacy organization. Our mission is to use the power of grassroots action to help all children get the excellent public education and strong support they need to thrive. Our members believe we need to stand up for our children now - particularly for their education from pre-school through high school - to create a better future for America.”

Now, that all sounds good, until you dig deeper. The cofounder and CEO of SFC, Jonah Edelman, is the son of Marian Wright Edelman, the well-respected civil rights activist and head of the Children’s Defense Fund. Critics charge that Stand for Children started out on the right side of the issues, devoting itself to progressive issues such as class sizes, affordable children’s healthcare and adequate funding for schools. But then, things changed when they started taking the money, and lots of it— from wealthy interests who arguably care nothing about poor children of color in the inner cities, and care a great deal about a vision of privatization that extracts profit from the public schools.

In an infamous YouTube video that went viral, Edelman discussed his strategy in Illinois at a July 10 Aspen Institute event. That strategy was essentially to mislead the teachers unions, do a number on them, and pay off the state legislators to pass SB7, an extensive school reform bill. The original bill would have stripped teachers of their right to strike, eliminated seniority as a factor in layoffs, and denied teachers their due process rights that come with tenure. What this has to do with the interests of children is anybody’s guess. A weaker version of the bill that passed still undermined labor rights by restricting seniority and the right to strike.

Typically, when Edelman goes into a state, he sets up a PAC, raises a ton of money and hires the best lobbyists money can buy. He benefits from his mother’s rolodex and the cache her name and reputation bring to the table. SFC spreads money around in the community, in an attempt to soften up the black clergy and community leaders and get them on board as partners. And they bribe public officials to pass union-busting legislation.

In Illinois, SFC raised $3 million late last year and hired 11 lobbyists. They approached Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan—who failed to garner union support that year for passing pension reform— and donated $610,000 to nine state campaigns in both major parties.

And Edelman attended a community meeting of black Chicago clergy with what observers have called a “slick dog and pony show.” But the pastors didn’t take the bait. According to Rev. Robin Hood, executive director of Clergy Committed to Community, SFC wasn’t the least bit interested in the concerns of the black community.

“One of the schools I’m working in has serious problems. Their organizer wasn’t concerned about that, they were interested in getting people to see [the film] Waiting for Superman,” Rev. Hood said of SFC. “Waiting for Superman did not fly here in Chicago. It wasn’t a hit like they thought it was going to be. It was about taking away the rights of unions to organize. In the communities we live in we need living wage jobs,” he said. “Most of these parents have been arguing about how we don’t have books in school. Those are not the things Stand for Children were talking about. They were talking about taking power from teachers,” Hood added.

From the start, Rev. Hood found Edelman and his group disrespectful and arrogant, with dollar signs and union-bashing on their mind. “I found they were anti-union when we met with Stand for Children. It was all about money, it was nothing about children. That’s why they had to build a grassroots component. They did a switch up while they were working here,” he said.

Although SFC spread around a lot of money in Chicago communities, Rev. Hood emphasized that not one of the pastors in his group would take any of it. “How much money do you people have?” he asked rhetorically of Edelman. “First they said they are doing political advocacy, and using community organizations as their base. Six months later they said ‘we got our own base now.’ Then they gave $3 million to state legislators,” he noted.

“Instead of advocating they became lobbyists,” Rev. Hood concluded.

Rev. Hood also shared his thoughts on the recent fallout from Edelman’s comments at Aspen. “As much money as they put out, I didn’t think they would self-destruct,” Hood said. “On a personal level, it was interesting to see him self-destruct, and I knew they weren’t focused on changing things for the children. They were union busting and making money off the backs of our kids.” Moreover, Rev. Hood believed Edelman’s public disclosure of his machinations with Speaker Madigan was particularly damaging. “Speaker Mike Madigan is the most powerful man in the state. The Governor doesn’t have that power. To say what he [Edelman] did to him [Madigan] is what the Japanese call hari-kari.”

To put Jonah Edelman and his operations in perspective, just follow the money. Susan Barrett quit her volunteer leadership position at SFC in Portland because wealthy investors are now driving the organization. “I want to make sure that people pay close attention to who is on the SFC board, where their money is coming from, and think critically about whether or not the agendas they are promoting will bring the results parents and community members hope for in public education,” Barrett recently wrote.

SFC’s Illinois PAC amassed the state’s largest war chest, just days before new caps on state campaign contributions went into effect. Those new restrictions limit individual contributions to $10,000, with $20,000 from corporations. All of the contributions to SFC were five- and six-figure amounts, including $250,000 from the billionaire Pritzker family, and $500,000 from Ken Griffin, CEO of the Citadel Group and bankroller of GOP state candidates. Sam Zell, owner of Tribune Co., contributed $100,000. Meanwhile, of the $610,000 that Edelman gave to legislative candidates, his PAC handed over $175,000—a record for Illinois— to Republican state House candidate Ryan Higgins, who lost his contest.

Stand for Children’s donor list is quite impressive, and equally revealing. For example, last year SFC received a $3.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation, its largest donor. The Walton Family Foundation—of Walmart anti-union fame—chipped in $1.4 million. And New Profit Inc., with ties to a firm running Muammar Gaddafi’s PR campaign, has donated nearly $1.5 million in recent years.

Meanwhile, the SFC board of directors consists of venture philanthropists and private equity investors, including the extremely wealthy and powerful. One would think that a “grassroots child advocacy organization” would have at least a token of community representation on its board, including educators and child advocates of color. Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, is a board member, as is Emma Bloomberg, daughter of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mayor Bloomberg, who is pro-charter school and seems to claim personal ownership of New York’s public schools, has a history of placing ill-prepared corporate types in charge of the nation’s largest—and mostly black and brown— school system. Bloomberg’s most immediate past schools chancellor, a magazine executive named Cathleen Black, had no experience in education whatsoever. During her brief and painful stint as chancellor, Black offended many with her jaw-dropping remarks, which included addressing shortages in classroom space by asking “Could we just have some birth control for a while? It could really help us all out a lot.”

Black’s predecessor, Joel Klein, now Rupert Murdoch’s deputy at News Corp., is overseeing an investigation into the company’s infamous phone hacking scandal. Klein is the head of Murdoch’s new education technology business, which Murdoch plans to spend $1 billion to build.

But the larger picture here is that corporate education reform is big business. And the rightwing, plutocratic agenda— of school privatization, government austerity measures and deunionization— clashes with the needs of poor, working class, and disproportionately black and brown public school students.

“What I can say personally is their true colors came out. He won’t get a base in my community.” Rev. Hood said defiantly of Edelman. “We need to educate our kids, not get rich folks richer. These are the same people that don’t want you to have a living wage and adequate housing.”

Meanwhile, the education reformers, armed with a pocketful of billionaire money, rip off communities of color. And as they buy off legislatures, they come off looking like the saviors of the black and brown children they just pimped.

“I wish I could be wrong, but I think they’ll be back for vouchers,” Rev. Hood offered on a cautionary note. “They’ll be back with a sad sack of legislators to write a bill for vouchers.”

Murdoch's Unraveling Empire and the Need for Civic Engagement

2011-07-25T09:43:00.001-04:00

The only thing more remarkable than the news of the Rupert Murdoch hacking-bribery scandal itself is the rate of its unraveling—and Murdoch’s unraveling. For this international kingmaker and media mogul— who built an empire on yellow journalism and destroying the lives of others— it seems rather fitting that his fall from grace would take place under such sensationalism and salaciousness.

Allegations that the now-defunct News of the World, Murdoch’s largest tabloid, maintained a massive phone hacking operation targeting 4,000 people—including politicians, celebrities and murder victims—has led to 10 arrests in the UK. One of those arrested was Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch’s deputy at News International until she recently resigned. And the top two officials at Scotland Yard quit their posts amid allegations that the corporation bribed the police.

And now Rupert, his son James and the ousted Brooks come before the British Parliament, humbled and hat in hand, to apologize and express their shock that this sort of wrongdoing even took place.

U.S. lawmakers have hinted that the phone hacking scandal is about to spill over into the States, as the FBI announced an investigation into alleged hacking of 9-11 victims and their families. Meanwhile, Murdoch’s News Corp. has lost billions in just days, and rightly so, as he was forced to drop his bid to buy British company BSkyB. The deal would have garnered him 40 percent of the UK broadcasting market. And oddly, in a case of peculiar timing, the whistleblower, a News of the World reporter, mysteriously died. And certainly there’s more to come. After all, it is already known that Murdoch has paid about $655 million to erase charges of corporate espionage in the U.S.

Given the questionable ways in which the billionaire has conducted business over the years, the revelations should not come as a complete surprise. As he destroyed unions, competitors and political enemies, Rupert Murdoch was allowed to make his own set of the shady rules while everyone watched. And some were paid to look the other way. When one person is allowed to amass such power and influence, graft and corruption are often a part of the process. In Britain, the Murdoch family purportedly used criminals to do dirty jobs. And like any proper organized crime boss, he owned politicians, carrying them in his pocket “like so many nickels and dimes.”

In America, Murdoch’s New York Post and Fox News, masquerading as champions of working-class populism, offend our sensibilities as they endorse the most regressive rightwing policies. The Post’s cartoon depiction of President Obama as an ape shot to death by two white police officers reflects a long history of racially offensive images and words promulgated by that newspaper. Moreover, Murdoch’s “fair and balanced” Fox News Channel has operated as a media arm of the Republican Party, and an official network of the Tea Party movement. Fox News has carved out its niche by offering race-baiting as standard fare, and offering a soapbox to personalities with ties to hate groups, including Glenn Beck. Despite this, lawmakers have willingly appeared on the network. And one must wonder if Murdoch bought his U.S. citizenship, which he needed as a prerequisite for owning American television stations.

With the mogul’s downfall and removal from the company he built now a plausible scenario, Rupert Murdoch provides a cautionary tale. Journalism at its best acts as a disinfectant. But through the use of race baiting and outright lying in the reporting of the so-called “news,” Murdoch has polluted the public discourse and has helped to defile and degrade our politics. And while journalists at their best are supposed to act as a check on official power, News Corp. has reveled in its ability to accumulate power by any means and serve the interests of the greedy, a media version of the Koch brothers. No scruples, no code of ethics, no social responsibility, just cozying up to the powerful and providing them cover. Last year, News Corp. contributed $1 million each to the Republican Governors Association and the Chamber of Commerce on the grounds that it was “in the interest of the country and of all the shareholders ... that there be a fair amount of change in Washington.”

The Murdochs still control a great deal of U.S. media real estate, most of which includes TV and movie studios, and they will undoubtedly scramble to protect it. But things now must change. For all of the harm News Corp. has caused, something good must come out of it. For one, society must prevent the circumstances that allow a future News Corp. to weld such power, unregulated and unaccountable, and unduly influence the affairs of government.

Democracy is stifled when a single player controls too much of the airwaves for its own good, and dresses up partisan hackery, unsubstantiated opinions and outright fabrications as the truth. However, a disinterested, uninformed public—disengaged from public life, perhaps due to the bad economy and daily stressors and hardships, among other reasons—facilitates democratic rot as well.

The American Psychological Association defines civic engagement as “Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern.” The New York Times defines civic engagement as “working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.”

Morally and civically responsible people see themselves as part of a larger social fabric. They take ownership of society’s problems, and may even take action when necessary. One organization that hopes to foster civic engagement and leadership in local communities is the Philadelphia-based Media Mobilizing Project. In partnership with several other community organizations— Philadelphia Student Union, SEIU Healthcare PA, Casa Monarca, Unified Taxi Workers Alliance, and Logan CDC— MMP just opened five Public Computer Centers throughout the city to train people in computer skills and community journalism. The centers were made possible with $18.2 million in federal stimulus funds.

MMP is a member of the Freedom Rings Partnership, which is led by the City of Philadelphia Division of Technology and the Urban Affairs Coalition, and is designed to provide computers, computer training and internet access to low-income communities. A total of 77 centers in community centers and social service organizations throughout the city will train 15,000 people in digital literacy. “MMP and the groups we are partnering with have led the way in improving education, working conditions, healthcare and quality of life for Philadelphians,” said Desi Burnette, Strategic Coordinator with Media Mobilizing Project. “This program will strengthen our ability to build community-driven solutions to the current economic crisis.” And as Bryan Mercer, MMP Program Organizer noted, they will use twenty-first century technology to bring low-income communities together to solve their problems. “In a time of budget cuts and unemployment, these Public Computer Centers offer a way to connect people – not just to the Internet, but to each other,” he said.

So, at a time when the policies of large corporations, disconnected from the community, are tearing the fabric of those very communities, it is good to see efforts to build them up. And when media empires crumble, we must prepare others to fill the void.

Dr. King Is Needed In China, Though His Work Isn't Done in America

2011-07-17T14:40:00.000-04:00

At first glance, Martin Luther King and China don't appear to belong together in the same sentence. For myself -- as a student of Asia, civil rights and international human rights -- the combination makes perfect sense. And if you look more closely, it should become obvious to you as well.

As America awaits the August 28 opening of the King National Memorial in Washington, D.C., this is a perfect time to reflect on the leader's accomplishments, legacy, and commitment to justice, equality and nonviolent social change. And lest we continue to run the risk of turning the man into a two-dimensional cutout stereotype, it is important to remember that the "dreamer" was far more -- a staunch antiwar activist who called for a radical revolution of American values.

A new documentary from award-winning journalist and filmmaker Kevin McKiernan takes a look an effort to bring Dr. King's message to China. The film, Bringing King to China, examines efforts by his daughter, Cáitrín -- who studied and taught in Beijing under a Fulbright after attending Stanford -- to introduce a play about Dr. King to a Chinese audience. The play, called Passages of Martin Luther King, was written by Clayborne Carson, a leading King scholar and Cáitrín's teacher at Stanford. Carson based his play on King's speeches and letters, even love letters from King to his wife.

From the beginning, the film almost begs us to ask the question: What can a twenty-something white woman teach the Chinese about the preeminent African-American civil rights leader? The answer is, apparently a great deal. China, now an emerging superpower and the world's second largest economy after the U.S., was already open to Dr. King's words. Video footage of lynchings and the police brutality of the Jim Crow South showed China what black people were up against. And following King's assassination, Mao Tse Tung gave a speech in Tiananmen Square praising the fallen leader. Some Chinese have tried to compare the two men, however problematic, given Mao's support of violence, and the ruthlessness of the Cultural Revolution.

Today, the communist-turned-hyper-capitalist nation is beating the U.S. at its own game of making money, and may someday eclipse its trading partner and debtor. And yet, while the official line in China is that racism doesn't exist there, the persecution of Muslim Uighurs, Tibetans and other minority groups tells a different story. And the popularity of Darlie or "Black Man Toothpaste," formerly known as Darkie, suggests a little education about black folks wouldn't hurt. Then there's the issue of freedom of speech and political repression in China.

Surprisingly, the play, which was performed by the National Theater Company of China, emerged unscathed from the Chinese government's censors. But that doesn't mean that the participants in the play did not self-censor, or at least second guess themselves and question whether their production would succeed and pass muster. The production marked the first time that a Chinese and African-American cast performed together in China. A Chinese man even played the role of King. And the theater company traveled to the U.S. to visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and learn more about the man and the movement they would so ambitiously undertake to portray.

Bringing King to China is really several stories in one. Aside from chronicling the process of adapting Carson's work for a Chinese audience, the documentary is about bridging cultures. Americans and Chinese need to talk, figure things out and understand each other, much the way that the U.S. and Japan began a similar dialogue decades earlier. As the film pointed out, each culture has its own interpretation of reality. For example, while Americans might have viewed the 1989 image of a Chinese protestor walking in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square as the ultimate form of protest, a Chinese interpretation of that scene may have been one of government self-restraint. The film is also about the complexity of the civil rights movement, and the presence alongside King of important figures such as Stokely Carmichael, who preferred a more militant "black power" approach as an alternative to nonviolent civil disobedience.

But the documentary also tells the story of a father-daughter relationship, as well as the horrors of war. Kevin McKiernan was on assignment in war-torn Iraq in 2006 when Cáitrín mistakenly received news that her father had been killed by a suicide bomber in Northern Iraq. This happened at a time when China began to question America's presence in the Arab nation. The film's focus on Cáitrín's traumatic wartime experience is appropriate for a documentary about Martin Luther King, a pacifist who spoke out against the deadly and atrocious U.S. war in Vietnam.

Four years in the making, Bringing King to China does a laudable job of shedding a new light on the man by introducing him to a new audience. And in the process, it reveals glimmers of hope for the future, even as it exposes the shortcomings of China and the U.S., and the progress that has yet to be made in both countries.

A Chinese crew member in the film suggested that King is needed back in the America. I thought that was a profound statement, perhaps the most poignant throughout the documentary for its truth and clarity. Without question, King's work is undone in the States, and for proof of that one need only look at the protracted nature of King's three evils of racism, militarism and economic exploitation. This country's lingering wars, its coldhearted Tea Party austerity policies, its economic inequality and entrenched corporate power mean that the U.S. has not fully learned the lessons left by the man we will soon memorialize on the National Mall -- with a statue designed by a Chinese sculptor, no less. At the same time, King is needed in China, in Palestine and Israel, and in other places around the world.

Harmful Policies Are Giving All Americans a Black Experience

2011-07-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

Whenever you take a look at a bad law that is on the books, or a policy that the government has put into place, you can bet that someone paid for that. And in this most horrid of political seasons, you'd better believe that attached to each deplorable piece of legislation is a sales receipt.

Case in point: the proliferation of guns in our urban centers. It is an irresponsible policy, to be sure. Garry McCarthy, Chicago's new police superintendent, told some truth-telling that you rarely hear from a public official in his position these days. "So here's what I want to tell you. See, let's see if we can make a connection here. Slavery. Segregation. Black codes. Jim Crow. What did they all have in common? Anybody getting' scared? Government sponsored racism. I told you I wasn't afraid [of race]. I told you I wasn't afraid," said Chicago's top cop. He added: "Now I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of the African American history in this country, and tell me if I'm crazy: Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children."

McCarthy received the predictable criticism from Andrew Breitbart, the gun lobby and others, but that doesn't change the fact that he spoke the truth. In fact, their response validated the truthfulness of that which he spoke. There is no reason for the sale, distribution and trafficking of these weapons of mass destruction, other than to kill people. Corporate greed on the part of arms manufacturers has turned an obscure and anachronistic amendment dealing with militias into a license to kill, literally, on a massive scale. The result is a gun for every American, with no system of licensing, registration and background checks.

And there is no valid or logical purpose for these guns, which injure nearly 100,000 Americans each year, killing a third of them and costing us $100 billion annually, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Of the large high-income nations, 80 percent of firearm deaths occur right here. Over a million have died since Martin Luther King's assassination, and they are disproportionately black and brown. In 2007, African Americans accounted for 13 percent of the population, but 49 of all homicide victims. Black juveniles are five times more likely than their white peers to die from firearms. And we export our violence to other countries. The U.S. arms race fuels the Mexico drug war by supplying 70 percent of the weapons used by the drug traffickers in the carnage to our South.

The U.S. war on drugs has been an abysmal failure--primarily a war on poor people and black and brown people who fill the prisons and are separated from their families. A color-coded law enforcement policy hunts for drug activity not in the affluent suburbs, but in the inner cities, where such activity is more conspicuous, out in the open. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the global drug war, which was declared 40 years ago. During that time, Carter noted, worldwide consumption of opiates has jumped 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and marijuana 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Our drug policies have created a burgeoning prison population, busting at the seams. With 743 people in prison for every 100,000, America boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world. Government spending on incarceration has skyrocketed. And I don't see anyone challenging us for bragging rights. Over three percent of the U.S. adult population finds itself under the supervision of the criminal justice system, either in prison, on probation or on parole.

Meanwhile, America's attempts to craft positive alternatives to incarceration are thwarted by private prison profiteers, who lobby lawmakers, network and contribute handily to political campaigns, according to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute. Private prison companies work hard to put more people behind bars, and their efforts have paid off, for them that is. Last year, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, generated over $2.9 billion in revenue. The three major corporations have given $835,514 to candidates for federal office, over $6 million to state races, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying. In case you believe that the Arizona immigration debate was really about the interests of ordinary Americans and safe and secure borders, keep in mind that 30 of the 36 Arizona lawmakers who sponsored that state's atrocious anti-immigrant, anti-Latino law received contributions from the private prison lobby. Apparently, in the land of opportunity, if a profit can be made from the suffering of others, that extra buck has been tagged and will be claimed by someone.

And someone seeks to profit from the nation's failing public schools, which funnel poor, black and brown children into a school-to-prison pipeline. Groups such as the Koch Brothers--financiers to the Tea Party--and the Amway and Blackwater-affiliated DeVos family are pouring resources into radical rightwing schemes to privatize public funds, kill the public schools and pocket the money. When Tea Party types such as the Koch Brothers peddle vouchers and "school choice," feigning concern about poor children and children of color, it is time to walk the other way.

African-Americans and Latinos are the disproportionate victims of the deregulation craze, which led to predatory lending, the Great Recession, and a foreclosure crisis that decimated homeowners of color and eviscerated billions in private wealth. And at 16 percent, black unemployment has reached Depression-era levels, double that for whites. For black men, it is 17.5 percent, and for black teens, 41 percent. In New York City, 34 percent of black men between 19 and 24 are out of work and out of luck.

But really, Americans as a whole are out of luck-- the victims of deceptive policies created in the backrooms and boardrooms, by corporate lobbyists and rightwing think-tanks, and paid for by the fortunate few under a legalized system of bribery called campaign finance. Bad policies gutted Main Street, and facilitated a concept known as the jobless recovery. The wealthy--getting richer by the day and paying less in taxes-- are sitting on their money. They only need the rest of us to the extent that they can squeeze more money out of us. Yet, there are no new jobs, and the poor have nothing to spend.

Some of those who are elected to serve the people are really on the take, water carriers for the plutocracy. They are paid by wealthy interests to bring ordinary people down, to strip them down to the bone. Dressed up as shared sacrifice, a regressive regime of trickle-down economics and union-busting has hollowed out working people. Corporate socialism and welfare for the banks has meant austerity and crippling budget cuts for the common folk. The hallmark of such policies is America's upward income redistribution and rising inequality, the shame of the industrial world. The richest 400 Americans own $1.37 trillion, which is more than bottom 50 percent of all U.S. households combined.

And to that extent, everyone is having a black experience now. Get used to it, or do something about it. In boom times and bust, Black folks in America are used to being poor, of living without, and making do with very little or nothing. They always made it through with the help of the church, the blues, and each other. But somewhere in there, there was a movement, too, hint hint.

Dealing With Double Layers of Grief and Joy on Father's Day

2011-06-17T18:10:00.001-04:00

I thought I would reflect on Father’s Day, not with my standard fare of global social and political analysis, but on a personal note for a change.

Father’s Day has a special significance to me, in a month filled with life’s milestones. After all, my birthday is in June, as is my father’s birthday, my parents’ anniversary, and the anniversary of my father’s death. My father, Al, died two years ago this month. And my older son, Ezra Malik, died nine months before my father, born sleeping after 34 weeks in his mother’s belly, taken away from us by a placental abruption. The placenta tore from the uterus, cutting off Ezra’s oxygen supply in utero. Never in my most hopeless and helpless state did I ever envision mourning the death of my father and my son - much less months apart from each other.

As for my father, he lived a long life of 82 years. In many ways we were different. I was born and raised in New York, and lived around the country and the world before settling in Philadelphia. Albert Love was born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, in a segregated South. His mother was black and his father was Irish, as he reminded us. He fought in the Korean War and came back with medals. He was a union man who worked a printing press in Manhattan so that I could attend Harvard. And he was active in his church and with the local VFW post. He didn’t fully understand my world and the opportunities available to me - and I can only imagine the difficulties he must have faced in his life - but I came to appreciate him. And I regret that he spent his final days in a nearby veteran’s nursing home, dying suddenly a few weeks after complications from surgery, and away from home, rather than with his family beside him.

While my father lived a full life, my son Ezra never had a chance to live life. I met Ezra in the hospital, where fathers typically meet their newborns. The big difference was that my son was born the day after he died, and only a few weeks short of his due date. I helped my wife as she went into induced labor at the hospital, knowing our son was already lifeless, no heartbeat, as that final ultrasound ultimately had told us. To make matters worse, during our living nightmare spent in the maternity ward, a new father in the elevator asked me if I was a new father as well.

Meeting my son for the first time, holding him and kissing him, with his full head of hair and flat feet, was unlike any experience before or since. I was overjoyed to see Ezra, but overcome with a debilitating and painful grief, the kind of pain you can feel in your bones, in your soul. Reality is suspended, yet you are compelled to experience a reality like no other, the loss of a child.

His mother and I read him a bedtime story before we buried him. Ezra Malik was wrapped in shrouds over his alligator pajamas, covered in his blanket to keep him warm, and buried in a Jewish cemetery in the ways of his mother’s people. Ezra is Hebrew for helper. Malik means King in Arabic (Melech in the Hebrew). His name reflected his parents’ commitment to social justice. To think of all of the hopes and dreams that would never be. I can’t help but believe that somewhere in that spirit world, Ezra’s grandfather, Al, is taking care of the boy, in between all those extended trash-talking sessions, and even an occasional moment of wisdom, from the old black folks from down South and the old Jewish folks from the old country.

Late the following year, just a day before New Year’s Eve, Ezra’s younger brother, Micah Amir, was born. Micah was named in remembrance of his brother (M for Malik) and his grandfather (A for Albert). Micah means “resembling God” in Hebrew, and Amir means “prince” in Arabic and Hebrew. This prince has given me nothing but unspeakable joy from the moment I first met him, and I am proud to be his father. But sometimes, I dream of having both of my sons with me, playing with them at the same time. Other times, I imagine Micah sitting on my father’s lap, the two of them belly laughing as only they can. The boy reminds me so much of the grandfather he never got a chance to meet, with his sense of humor and warmth towards others, and the obvious physical resemblances.

My sense of grief two years ago was quite different from now. At that time, the pain was overwhelming much of the time, as if I had been hit by a train, or had run into a brick wall. Tears and crying came without notice, or triggered by a song on the radio. And I dreaded Father’s Day like the plague. These days, grief tends to hide in the background, from a distance, and visits on occasion. And when grief returns, it reminds me of my humanity, of the things and people in my life that are important to me.

Father’s Day will always be a bittersweet day of reflection for me. And every June, I imagine I will find myself engaged in this delicate balancing act, this cruel negotiation between the joy of being a father today, and the sense of loss over what used to be and what could have been.

This Jobs Crisis Is Obama's Kryptonite

2011-06-10T17:55:00.000-04:00

Many commentators and observers, including this writer, argued for a far more aggressive and comprehensive strategy from the White House for getting America out of its economic morass. Obama's team chose a half-hearted, half-assed stimulus package, and the result is what we see today. Don't get me wrong, the stimulus helped. But it is running out, and you can see the effects that the empty well is having on state and local governments as they proceed to cut education and essential social services and programs.

Unemployment is high, twice as high for blacks, and the jobs aren't coming. 80 percent of recent college graduates are moving back home. And there is talk of a double-dip recession on the way, as housing prices are falling, with a faltering real estate market threatening to pull us back down in the hole. The President's abysmal failure of a foreclosure relief plan is blamed, in part, for the economic woes.

A new Washington Post-ABC poll reveals that President Obama has lost his post-Bin Laden bump in popularity. And more importantly, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans believe the country is seriously on the wrong track. Nine in 10 rate the economy negatively, and six in 10 say the economy is not on the road to recovery. About six in 10 give Obama negative marks on the economy and the deficit. This comes on the heels of the departure of Austan Goolsbee -- one of Obama's progressive-leaning economic advisors -- who was frustrated that the President abandoned more stimulus investment to spur the economy, opting instead to pursue the folly of attacking deficits.

Polls at this early stage in the game don't mean a whole lot, but it is worth noting that Obama leads 5 of 6 Republican contenders, and is in a dead heat with Mitt Romney. I believe that Obama could handily beat any empty suit the GOP throws his way. Given the proclivities of the Republican primary electorate, I'll bet that Romney's status as frontrunner will be short lived. I will bet on Sarah Palin or someone of her ilk. Howard Dean said himself that Sarah Palin could defeat Obama in the general election, particularly with unemployment as it is.

Now, do I really think that Palin is presidential material? Not for a moment. Her latest gaffe -- actually a botchery of the historical account of Paul Revere's ride, in which she claimed Revere warned the British -- shows how ignorant and flighty the woman truly is. That is precisely why she could win. I don't trust the American electorate, especially when times are tough. Too many Americans drink the stupid juice when the economy is in the tank, and pull the lever against their own economic interests. Or, demoralized and disenchanted, they just stay home and don't vote at all. The results of the 2010 midterm elections provide all the evidence you need of that proposition. Voters cast their ballots for some of the most regressive governors, state legislators and members of Congress one can imagine.

The country is hurting, but instead we get voter ID legislation, decimation of labor rights, criminalization of abortion, Vouchercare, and laws banning sagging pants. We knew they would do something like this, even though they didn't explicitly say they would. The Republican track record on overreach speaks for itself. And the lackluster Democrats did their best to bring a GOP victory last year, eager as they are to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Although Palin and the other Republican hopefuls hardly seem viable candidates at first glance, consider Ronald Reagan. People laughed at the prospect of an actor becoming president. His opponent, the incumbent, was smart and capable, and didn't drag the country into war. But Jimmy Carter was done in by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis, not to mention an intra-party challenge from Ted Kennedy, and two opponents in the general election.

If the economy continues to suffer enough, as it appears it will, Obama should take heed. Americans will elect the factually challenged, knowledge deficient and intellectually starved if given half a chance, which is why Obama needs to get serious about jobs, jobs, jobs. Regardless of how much he can accomplish on that front between now and Election Day 2012, he needs to get started yesterday. And it is time for him to ignore the Republicans. They have two goals in mind: First, to wreck the economy for 2012, and second, to establish a nation fully owned and operated by religious fanatics, the greedy and the unstable. They are making good on both of these promises.

That's the short term situation. Obama must find some jobs or he'll be out of one. Now, here's the long term problem, which leads us back to the short term: America is a feudal capitalist state with the highest inequality in the industrialized world. The inequality has widened over three decades, and is now at chronic proportions -- the highest since the Great Depression. The elites have decided to ride this one out, not through economic growth, because all they have to do, they've decided, is to squeeze as much as they can from the rest of us sharecroppers. And they're doing a superb job of it. Favorable tax policies and deregulation ensure that they get more and more, and the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowed them to buy the political system outright. So, a bribery-based political system -- concerned only with the next election cycle -- serves the interests of a crony capitalist system that cares only about the next quarterly profit statement.

Say what you will about China, but at least they never pretended to operate under any pretense of democracy. However, China does look one hundred years into the future, when America can barely look past the latest episode of Celebrity Apprentice. And as China silently colonizes Africa and wrests the leadership in renewable energy, the U.S. has no industrial policy other than military contractors. We can't even build a national high-speed rail system because the superstitious among us brand it as socialist big government welfare spending.

These are the problems that President Obama must face, because hell, world leaders are paid to do that. He can solve this whole thing tomorrow is he just calls for a new New Deal program already. But will he have the courage? Time will tell, but the President, like this sad nation, is short on time.

18 Years Later, Will Justice Come for Stephen Lawrence?

2011-06-02T09:57:00.000-04:00

A reader recently asked me if I think justice will finally come to Stephen Lawrence. This came after news that two men, David Norris and Gary Dobson, will face trial for his 1993 murder.

Who is Stephen Lawrence, you ask? If you're from the U.S., chances are that you've never heard of him, although there was a PBS docudrama about the case some years ago. He was a black teenager from south-east London, an honors student and an aspiring architect who was studying physics. On the evening of April 22, 1993, Lawrence and his friend Duwayne Brooks were waiting at a bus stop when a racist white mob descended upon them. One of the attackers yelled "what, what n****r?" The group of five or six men quickly crossed the road and stabbed Lawrence twice in his upper torso to a depth of five inches, severing two auxiliary arteries. In this horrific incident that lasted no more than 15-20 seconds, Lawrence fled 130 yards and then bled to death.

According to the pathologist's report, "It is surprising that he managed to get 130 yards with all the injuries he had, but also the fact that the deep penetrating wound of the right side caused the upper lobe to partially collapse his lung. It is therefore a testimony to Stephen's physical fitness that he was able to run the distance he did before collapsing". Due to the heavy layers of clothing he was wearing, Laurence was drenched in blood.

Stephen's body was flown to Jamaica, where he was buried. Dobson was tried for the murder but was acquitted.

A damning inquiry conducted by Sir William Macpherson blamed "professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership" for the blunders in the investigation of Stephen Lawrence's murder. The 1999 report also concluded that from the very top of the ranks, London's Metropolitan Police Service was riddled by "pernicious and institutional racism" in the investigation of this crime, the racial disparity in "stop and search figures," the underreporting of racial crimes, and the failure of police training in racial sensitivity.

Duwayne Brooks, who was also a victim, was treated by the police as a witness. "We are driven to the conclusion that Mr. Brooks was stereotyped as a young black man exhibiting unpleasant hostility and agitation, who could not be expected to help, and whose condition and status simply did not need further examination or understanding," according to the Macpherson report. "We believe that Mr. Brooks' colour and such stereotyping played their part in the collective failure of those involved to treat him properly and according to his needs."

Macpherson made 70 recommendations in the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, including reforms of the police force, the justice system, the schools and the civil service, making the use of racial language in private a criminal offense, and the aggressive recruitment of black and Asian police officers. Perhaps one of the most significant recommendations, now the law, is the abolition of the centuries-old double jeopardy rule, which prevented a person from being tried twice for the same crime.

And now, after years of allegations of official corruption and the withholding of evidence, David Norris and Gary Dobson -- whose 1996 acquittal was quashed by an appeals court -- now stand trial for an 18-year-old murder.

I first heard about the Lawrence case in 1998, when I was in London working with Amnesty International. Subsequently, I produced some news segments on the killing and its aftermath as a producer for Democracy Now! in New York. For Britons, the Stephen Lawrence case was a watershed moment in race relations in that country, and a turning point on the problems of hate crimes and racial violence, and the issue of police corruption and misconduct. In that regard, the significance of this incident was not unlike that of the 1960s riots throughout America's urban centers, the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, the police torture of Abner Louima, or the fatal police shooting of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell in New York.

And still today, some black observers, including Stephen's mother Doreen Lawrence, say that little has changed in the way black Britons are treated by the police. Five years after the Macpherson report, an investigation into diversity and the policies, procedures and employment practices in the Metropolitan police called for change. Meanwhile, today the London police still maintain a white male culture. Hate crimes against minority groups continue. Parliament could pass legislation that would dismantle the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the regulatory body established after Lawrence's death that brought transparency and structure to the handling of complaints against the police. And a British prison system eager to emulate the U.S. -- that is, the "land of the free" with its pernicious war on terror and its prison-industrial-complex -- incarcerates black, Asian and increasingly Muslim men at a disproportionate rate.

So, will the family of Stephen Lawrence finally find justice in a London courtroom? I don't have the answer, but we can only hope. In any case, there's much work to do, in Britain and here in America.