Americans Are Not Safe Anywhere From Police

Americans Are Not Safe Anywhere From Police is actually a header taken from a 2007 article by Paul Craig Roberts. But as we witness more and more police forces that are totally out of control, I don't think there is any danger of such a header becoming redundant any time soon.

As the video progresses, it's quite hard, in spite of hearing similar stuff like this before, to actually get your head round it.

Killed at Home: White Plains, NY Police Called Out on Medical Alert Shoot Dead Black Veteran, 68

As the Trayvon Martin case draws national attention, we look at another fatal shooting of an African-American male that has received far less scrutiny. Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., a 68-year-old African-American Marine veteran, was fatally shot in November by White Plains, NY, police who responded to a false alarm from his medical alert pendant. The officers broke down Chamberlain’s door, tasered him, and then shot him dead. Audio of the entire incident was recorded by the medical alert device in Chamberlain’s apartment. We’re joined by family attorneys and Chamberlain’s son, Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr., who struggles through tears to recount his father’s final moments, including the way police officers mocked his father’s past as a marine. "For them to look at my father that way, (with) no regard for his life, every morning I think about it," he says. Transcript.

Democracy Now On The Eve of MLK Day

Interesting fellow. The first clip runs into the second, which, among other things, highlights the disenfranchisement that any person, black or white, experiences when convicted of a felony drug crime.

Included in this exclusion, is the denial of food stamps for felons. Given that fifty percent of young black males are in, or have been through the justice system, it doesn't take much imagination to visualize the social impact of that situation.

I wonder if white America will ever wake up to the fact that disproportionate targeting of African Americans, not only destroys the black community, but inevitably destroys their own. Society isn't us and them, society is all encompassing, it is a whole. A society that is fragmented, ceases to be a society, it becomes a jungle.

Given that tomorrow is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday, you may wish to listen to the man give his, A Time to Break Silence speech. You can find it here in seven chunks.

I don't listen to preacher men, but I had no problem listening to Dr King on that occasion. It's powerful stuff.

"Memory is the Active Agent of Collective Social Progress": Randall Robinson on His New Novel Makeda

"Makeda," the new novel by TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, is set at the dawn of the civil rights era. The book follows a young man coming of age in segregated Richmond, Virginia, who discovers his roots in Africa through his blind grandmother. "Sometimes when we think of slavery, we calculate the economic consequence of it," Robinson says. "But we have not calculated the psychosocial consequence of it, unless we factor in the loss of memory, which was occasioned by a deliberate and systematic program imposed by those who controlled us." Transcript

On Eve of MLK Day, Michelle Alexander & Randall Robinson on the Mass Incarceration of Black America

On this eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, we host a wide-ranging discussion with TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson and author Michelle Alexander about the mass incarceration of African Americans that has rolled back many achievements of the civil rights movement. Today there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. And more African-American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870. Alexander, whose book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" is newly released in paperback, argues that "[n]othing less than a major social movement has any hope of ending mass incarceration in America or inspiring a recommitment to [Martin Luther] King's dream... My view is that this has got to be a human rights movement. It’s got to be a movement for education, not incarceration; for jobs, not jails; a movement that acknowledges the basic humanity and dignity of all people, no matter who you are or what you have done." Transcript

In a Move to "promote greater unity" Don't Bring Your Black Ass Into This Church

When's the lynching?

Interracial Couple Banned From Kentucky Church
Dec 1st 2011

In a move to "promote greater unity" among its body and the Pike County community it serves, a small Kentucky church voted to ban interracial couples from membership and from participating in certain worship activities, Kentucky.com reports.

Though reminiscent of some Jim Crow-era mandate, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church actually made the decision earlier this month, following a visit from 24-year-old Stella Harville, daughter of the church's secretary and clerk, and her 29-year-old fiance, Ticha Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe.

According to Harville's father, Dean Harville, Stella brought Chikuni to the church in June where they performed a song for the congregation.

Following the visit, former pastor Melvin Thompson told Harville that his daughter and her fiance could not sing at the church again. Thompson later proposed that the church go on record saying that while all people were welcome to attend public worship services there, the church did not condone interracial marriage.

His proposal, which was accepted by a 9-6 vote last week, also suggested that married interracial couples be prohibited from becoming members and used in worship activities, except for funerals.

"It's not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form," said Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, according to Kentucky.com.

While Pike County and the surrounding community come to grips with the church's decision, researchers at Ohio State University and Cornell University say black-white marriages in the United States are soaring, increasing threefold, from 3 percent in 1980 to 10.7 percent in 2008. Huffpo

Pike church takes stand against interracial couples
By Bill Estep

A small Pike County church has voted not to accept interracial couples as members or let them take part in some worship activities.

The decision has caused sharp reaction and disapproval in the Eastern Kentucky county.

"It's not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form," Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, said of the vote.

The issue came up at the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church, said Dean Harville, a longtime member who serves as church secretary and clerk.

Attendance is usually around 40 people for a Sunday service at the church in the Johns Creek area, Harville said.

Harville said his daughter Stella Harville, who is pursuing a master's degree in optical engineering at a school in Indiana, brought her fiancé, Ticha Chikuni, to church in June and played the piano as he sang.

The couple performed I Surrender All, said Stella Harville, who is 24.

Chikuni, 29, who works at Georgetown College, is black. He is a native of Zimbabwe.

Stella Harville grew up in the church and was baptized there, but she is not a member, Dean Harville said.

Dean Harville said Melvin Thompson, who had been pastor for many years, told him in August that his daughter and her fiancé couldn't sing at the church again.

Thompson stepped down as pastor in August, citing health issues, but he refused Harville's requests to drop the issue, Harville said.

The new pastor, Stacy Stepp, said the couple could sing at the church if they wanted, Harville said.

In early November, Thompson proposed the church go on record saying that while all people were welcome to attend public worship services there, the church did not condone interracial marriage, according to a copy of the recommendation supplied by the Harvilles.

The proposal also said "parties of such marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services" or other church functions, with the exception of funerals.

The recommendation "is not intended to judge the salvation of anyone, but is intended to promote greater unity among the church body and the community we serve," the copy supplied to the Herald-Leader read.

Members at a business meeting decided to put the matter before the whole church. Last Sunday, nine people voted for the proposal and six voted against it, Harville said.

There were more people in attendance, but some didn't want to take a stand, he said.

Harville said the resolution was motivated by racism and has given the church, the community, the county and even God a black eye.

"It sure ain't Christian. It ain't nothing but the old devil working," Harville said.

Thompson, who owns a hardware store, told the Herald-Leader on Tuesday that the proposal has been taken out of context, but declined further comment.

Stella Harville said it has been hurtful that some members of her church family made such a decision.

"They're the people who are supposed to comfort me in times like these," she said.

East Kentucky Broadcasting, which owns several radio stations, first reported the story about the vote on Monday.

Hundreds of people have since posted comments disagreeing with the decision, said reporter Shannon Deskins.

Johnson, with the local ministerial association, said the reactions have included heartbreak and disbelief.

"Most of us thought that we'd moved well beyond that," he said.

Harville said he plans to ask the conference of churches to which Gulnare Freewill Baptist belongs to overturn the vote.

Even if that happens, however, "I don't think I'll be able to go back there," his daughter said. Kentucky.com

Speaking of North Carolina, God's Own Little Bit of Country

Speak of North Carolina we may, (below) but not of my memory please.

I know for a fact, that somewhere on one of my blogs there is a reference to what is writ below. Quite possibly, and in light that no amount searches would bring the thing up, quite possibly then it is in the form of an extended comment somewhere. But where, I haven't a clue.

Not for the first time then, when I couldn't find something, I went and Googled a few key words, and viola! there it was. But not on any of my blogs I'm embarrassed to say. And that's the scary bit, I don't have the faintest recollection of ever writing this piece during my time as a guest writer at the blog, Vidiotspeak.

I don't think I want to travel further down that particular road, so I will just post the original article word for word. The only difference between then and now, I can now embed the video in question.

Yours truly
Leslie Welch!

Greensboro boy! Why Greensboro North Carolina Is God's Own Little Bit Of Country
posted by oscar wilde
March 25, 2007

It has lurked there for many a year, tucked away in the back of the mind, but still there none the less.
Not unsurprisingly then that it should be brought to the fore after my recent re-hash of "Dildos in South Carolina" article. I know the true heading should be "sex toys," if one were to be pedantic about things, but somehow the word dildo by far better captures the essence of the story, never more so than associating it with Davenport the sponsor of the sex toys bill.

A bill incidentally that would exact far greater penalties for selling a dildo (5 years + $10,000) than would be received for transgressing most of South Carolina's firearms laws,(section 16-23-20) scant few that they are. (That is some wicked amount of jail time.)
In fact one only has to have a brief scan as to how few controls are in place for gun purchase, that the very thought of it is enough to give us Europeans the heeby jeebies.

That said, given the amount of guns that are in circulation, the murder rate, the violent nature of American society and the disproportionate number of nutters that abound there, I too would want weapon, in fact I would want one for every day of the week and two for Sunday's, definitely two for Sundays, one should always make adequate provision for running foul of those suffering from extreme delusions.

I don't write as an anti-gun activist, after all the damage is done, the guns are out there already, little point then in trying to take away the legal ones, can't have a situation where it's just the black hats running around shooting up Dodge, old Hopalong wouldn't have lasted long under those kind of circumstances.

No not anti-gun at all, I couldn't be, not after being a keen skeet shooter myself, so keen in fact I look back and think about the amount of money I smoked down the end of a barrel and think small countries were run on a lesser budget. If that was the case with my skeet shooting, when I took up trap shooting as an added discipline, well, let's not go there shall we.

But there were reasonable controls in place for gun ownership, and after an incident with a nutter of our own controls went from reasonable to strict. Steel gun cabinets bolted to the wall became mandatory for shotguns, pistol clubs disappeared, in fact I don't think Joe public can own a handgun under any circumstances these days.

It was some time after this I had a wee brush with the law, getting pulled for a DUI, subsequently resulting in a riot act letter from the head honcho in blue. The usual yada yada as to my suitability to own a shotgun , the whole nine yards in fact. He sounded a biteen upset, I can't help but wonder how he would have sounded if he knew I had the gun in the trunk at the time of arrest.

You will have to forgive my little digressions, I quite enjoy going off on little tangents, it keeps my interest if not yours.

The late seventies saw me, my wife, and two small daughters living in Canada but tiring of the place somewhat and before our planned return to England a year later fancied a change of scenery, stateside seemed to fit the bill.
Securing a job wasn't a problem at all at all, held in high esteem are we toolmaking Brits, and soon narrowed it down between a choice of two, just let me at this juncture mention pay rates, for no other reason than to highlight how dismally low the minimum wage is at present.
I was making eight dollars an hour in Canada, one of the job choices was in Covina California, a place that was looking the favourite of the two, that rascal paid, albeit for fifty hours per week, twenty eight thousand a year, handy enough money by anybodies stretch.

Still sitting on the fence as to which job to accept I read a bit of something in the paper, not whilst sat on the fence of course. Some poor lass not too far from Covina had run afoul of a crazy who took it upon himself to cut the arms off this lass at the elbows, and really didn't have a reason other than he was an evil bastard, well as the parents of two pre-teen girls you can imagine how quickly the lustre of California tarnished. So there we were, mind made up for us.

I'd be thinking, I better check out just what kind of gaff the other place was. So I duly phone yer man down there and basically ask him if it's safe for my wife and kids to walk the the streets, you already know the reply:
Greensboro boy! Why Greensboro North Carolina is God's own little bit of country.

Not two days later the wife and I were watching the evening news and low and behold, an item of news from God's own little bit of country. Vid now below.

Never did get to the States.

Original post here.





And if you think that's bit of an eye-opener, Google 'Greensboro Massacre' and see how it played out. You gotta love that justice, in God's own little corner of the world.

Judge Rules East Dublin GA Shooting Justified: Well He Would Wouldn't He?

This is an update of a previous story I ran, the same story that can be accessed by following the dashboard video of the shooting link in the main body of this report.

Just another niggrah and just another example of Gawjah Justice I guess!

Judge Rules East Dublin Shooting Justified
Sep 8, 2011

A Laurens County magistrate judge ruled Thursday afternoon that a July 2010 fatal shooting by a police officer was justified.

Judge Donald Gillis declined to issue a warrant against East Dublin police office Jeffery Deal for killing Melvin Williams.

Gillis cited police-cruiser dashboard video that seemed to show Williams as the aggressor before he was shot and killed.

Earlier Thursday, he heard recorded statements from two witnesses to the shooting, who said they saw Williams attack the officer and try to take his gun.

He said Deal's lack of arrest powers was not a factor in his decision.

Gillis ruled around 6:45 p.m., after a hearing that lasted for more than five hours in the Laurens County courthouse.

Williams' family stood and left the courtroom while Gillis was still announcing his ruling. District Attorney Craig Fraser and East Dublin police chief William Leutke also left without comment.

Deal shot and killed Williams in July 2010, but GBI records show that the officer lacked arrest powers. Williams family argues that he had no authority to stop and shoot Williams, calling that "false imprisonment."

Then, a lawyer for the Williams family questioned Leutke -- who, according to the GBI, also lacked arrest powers, because he failed to get the required training.

He was asked when he realized that almost his entire department lacked arrest powers, and he said, "At this time, it was brought to my attention," but he did not explain.

Williams' family also argues that the dashboard video of the shooting contradicts Deal's account of the arrest, that the traffic stop was not warranted, and that East Dublin's department lacked any training or policy on the use of deadly force.

Leutke said he did not investigate the shooting, which was turned over immediately to the GBI.

He says he comforted Deal at the shooting scene because he was "upset."

Later, Judge Donald Gillis heard from GBI investigator Jerry Jones, who discussed the shooting investigation. In answer to a question from the Williams family's lawyer, he said a crack pipe was found on the passenger seat of the cruiser that Deal was driving.

He said Deal didn't know where the crack pipe came from and said it wasn't his normal cruiser. (Whatever you say officer)

Later, the judge heard recorded statements from two witnesses to the shooting, who said they saw Williams attack the officer and try to take his gun.

Lawyers in both sides completed closing arguments after 6 p.m. Source and photo.

Georgia! Georgia USA, trailer trash capital of the fucking world. Try a Google image search for East Dublin GA and see what you get.

Time has moved on since I first posted this, but I think we can rest assured the situation hasn't.

Kind of reminds me of the tale of Billy Bob Bodean, who moved from Bumfuck Alabama to Scrotumville Georgia and the average IQ of both towns went up.

First posted here, George Wallace "The Little Judge" and All Round Good Ol' Boy. Quite an amazing bit of redneck, racist, social and political history.

Good ol' boy George Wallace
"segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Troy Davis Execution: An Angry Black Man Speaks

Gawjah Justice: Haul That Gurney in Here and Let's Kill Us a Niggrah!
by thegrowlingwolf
September 22, 2011

The White Man Teaching the Black Man a Lesson

All over the State of Gawjah today Whites are celebrating the death of Troy Davis. Davis's last words were still defending his "innocence" and wishing peace on the MEN who killed him. As most White folks know, all criminals claim they're innocent. Especially those on the many Death Rows around this great Land of the FREE and Home of the Brave! That is they claim they are innocent unless they are mentally retarded and don't even have the cognizance to even realize where they are and what they've done and what's going to happen to them.

The son and brother of Officer McPhail, the off-duty White cop the White Gawjuh justice system ruled Troy Davis killed, was present at this killing. Sitting right there up front, front row center on the killing floor--thrilled in their souls that they were getting closure--I imagine them sitting there delighting in watching this Black man die. Sentiment: "Hell, yes, that god-damn nigger killed a good White man, an officer of the law, and he definitely, guilty or not, deserved to die. We the good White people of Gawjah feel sure in our White hearts, Office McPhail is celebrating this secular victory up in Heaven at the righthand of the Savior and his Big Daddy Father, that triumvirate toasting with goblets of Heavenly firmament the good White Christians of Gawjah's elimination of this Black murderer. Why this savage doesn't even deserve to be called Black, nope, he's a niggrah pure and simple, a murdering niggrah, his black definitely the color of evil, and black is the color of all savage demons. Praise the vengeful Lord. Praising the vengeful and chastising Lord God of the blessed White race and raising shouts of hallelujah as we watch this god-damn nigger's soul being shoveled into the furnaces of Holy Hell!"

We the People of the USA live in a divided state. Union versus Confederacy. Yankees versus Rebels. States Rights (including the right to own slaves) versus Constitutional Rights.

The Republicans represent the Confederacy. The Republicans represent the Plantation system of Fascist governing. The Democrats do not any longer know what the hell they represent. It seems to the general public they also represent the Confederacy. They also represent slavery (cheap labor). They also represent the Fascist form of Corporate/Military rule.

As I'm sitting here typing this, someone here in New York City gets shot and killed every 18 hours. When you project that statistic worldwide--DEATH never takes a holiday.

Governor Rick Perry, if you believe the Death Penalty ritual of killing mostly Blacks and Latinos and poor retarded people of all races, and even women is good for the morale of vengeful Whites, is your candidate for President..... conclusion

Troy Davis: What is it About Americans and Punishment?

In a line taken from the article text that I have used for the header, I omitted the ''us'' for I am in no doubt the question at hand is asked far more frequently around the world than it ever might be in the one nation under God.

In metaphorical speak, it seems a lifetime ago that I first started to blog about Troy Davis' impending execution, but that was only four short years ago, short years for me, but I fear not such short years for Davis.

I have been keeping track of this story as Davis faces yet another date set for his execution, or state sponsored murder, dependant on your point of view. Keeping track, but holding off on reporting until Davis received a further stay or suffered the ultimate and final indignity and was put to death by the state of Georgia. A state I must add, whose backwardness is only equal to its intransigence in righting the wrongs of its viscous and flawed justice system. (See Genarlow Wilson in the sidebar.)

Holding off that is, until this article came along, an article that gives a few home truths and questions the questionable ethics of this jaundiced country and its equally jaundiced people. If indeed not shameless, callous and pitiless people as we all witnessed recently, the abhorrent spectacle regarding Rick Perry's unenviable record of putting to death by the state of Texas, an equally unenviable number of people.

Film noir: Troy Davis and the American Way
By Pubali Ray Chaudhuri
September 19, 2011

In another few days yet one more miserable insect—pardon me, where are my manners? One more black man will be put to death by the greatest country with the greatest justice system in the world, the U.S. of A.

And here I am, yet another writer, meditating—for what else can one do?—on this very commonplace event in the history of the U.S. justice system, the impending execution of a black man, Troy Davis, and on what his approaching fate says about us as a people.

What is it about us Americans and punishment? Certainly we continue overwhelmingly to support the death penalty, even though the days are past when men and women, in their thousands, thronged to watch an end be put to the life of a fellow human being. Then is ours now a secret vice, like onanism? Perhaps we derive a secret pleasure from the very idea of punishment, even though modern standards of civilization, a plague upon them, forbid us to gloat openly as of yore, have picnics and parties as we used to do, you know, a nice day out with the wife and kiddies? Teach the little ones first-hand about how the wheels of justice turn and how to enjoy the spectacle of strange fruit suspended, quivering, from a gibbet?

But I overlook our Puritan ancestors and their legacy that taught us how both our vices and pleasures must be decently straitjacketed, garbed decorously in the raiment of necessity and virtue. While the hand beneath tugs urgently at blood-engorged genitalia and tiny beads of perspiration gather on the brow in anticipation of the approaching climax, the eyes remain grave, the lips continue to utter pieties, the upper body remains decorously and even pompously still. So it is with the pleasures of many of us in this greatest of nations; so it is, too, with our secret vices. For what are vices but pleasures that we are fain to hide? And what a pleasure it is, isn’t it, to punish another—how our scalps tighten, how the blood surges to our vitals, how our very nerves twitch and tingle at the prospect of approaching punishment as at the prospect of approaching orgasm. There isn’t, one would think, that much of a gulf between enjoyment and sin, is there? No wonder so many of us are so suspicious of pleasure. Our Puritan ancestors taught us well; they knew what they were talking about.

It might surprise us, were we to dwell on the connection, how much of what we love and honour flows directly from the suffering of others. As Americans, we honour soldiers as “heroes,” even though these men and women set out to invade the lands of those who never did us any harm, and to whom the words “911” mean exactly nothing at all. Yet the more innocent people we kill and maim and incinerate, the higher rises our respect, nay, our adoration, of our beloved troops, and the more overblown and grotesque our pride in ourselves as a “great nation” “the leader of the free world” “a beacon of democracy” and any amount of similarly clichéd balderdash one cares to trump up.

Yet in this great bastion nation beacon shining light of liberty and justice and freedom for all, we’ve maintained one of our time-honoured American traditions—the punishment, by execution or imprisonment—of the poor, especially of the non-white poor, and most especially of the African-American poor. We don’t feel quite American, if you know what I mean, our red blood corpuscles don’t thump and pulse with quite as much vigour, unless we can sacrifice at frequent intervals a poor and/or black man at the altar of our criminal justice system.

Criminal justice system? Now there’s a Freudian slip for you. Never mind that grave doubts continue to exist about Troy Davis’ guilt. Never mind that appeals for the commutation of his sentence have poured in from as far away as Europe and South Africa, from individuals as distinguished as Nobel Peace Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, Ravi Shankar and Sister Helen Prejean, and legal experts such as William Sessions. The NAACP points to “overwhelming evidence that calls into question his guilt, and repeated attempts at justice.” Amnesty International “believes that this is one in a long line of cases in the USA that should give even ardent supporters of the death penalty pause for thought. For it provides further evidence of the danger, inherent in the death penalty, of irrevocable error.” Never mind all of that; we are still the country that values freedom and justice above all else, especially when we are about exercise that freedom to execute a black and economically underprivileged man.

No poor black man in this country can take the life of a white individual, even if in self-defence, and expect to live free. But we have progressed further. A poor black man who comes under suspicion of having killed a white man can expect the great ponderous machinery of the law to begin rolling inexorably against him until his life or his spirit or both have been crushed under its weight. Troy Davis is only one black man who is finding this out the hard way. There have been many before him; no doubt there will be many after.

But let us see if we can turn off our seemingly endless fount of pious cant for a moment and make room for a few ugly truths. Truths indeed so hideous in their festering, gibbering, pus-filled forms that veil them and explain them away as we might, their loathsome stink yet creeps forth abroad. *This is a country built on racism and genocide, on the most massive land grab in history and on the trafficking of human souls and bodies for profit as though they were so many pounds of potatoes. A nation built on two of the most horrendous crimes in history cannot escape that legacy unless it first faces up to it. And that we have never done; that we shall never do. We will never admit that a country that prides itself on freedom was founded on that same freedom being denied to others. We will not admit that we have kept the original owners of this land, the Native people, as prisoners and forced them to beg for the barest of rights on their own soil.* We do not speak of the silent, unacknowledged apartheid that rests upon the reluctance of so many millions of white people to interact with black people, to befriend them, to live side-by-side with them, to accord them the respect and honour due to equal human beings.

Let us face for once what so much of white America truly feels in its innermost heart but cannot admit because such an admission is no longer socially acceptable. But just because a thing is no longer spoken of aloud does not mean it has ceased to exist in the hearts of men and women. White America (or a significant part of it) distrusts, despises and dislikes black America, thinking of the latter as a horde of freeloaders, drug-pushers, and hustlers, as cutthroats waiting to relieve you of your wallet or your life on a dark night or on a lonely street—in short, as a dark, amorphous, undifferentiated mass in which no trace of humanity is any longer distinguishable and which can therefore evoke no spark of reciprocal human sympathy to lighten its formlessness. Once we understand this prevailing attitude of one race towards another, it becomes a lot easier to grasp why so many black men are imprisoned for long periods for minor offenses and why so many are put to death in spite of their guilt being less than certain.

There you have a very real, and very seldom acknowledged reason, why Troy Davis, an African-American, has been held in prison for over 20 years and now may suffer the ultimate brutality of having his life snuffed out for a crime he may well never have committed. There you have the reason why this man, for whom no physical evidence exists linking him to the crime, and in whose case key witnesses have since recanted, is still to die. And why Johannes Mehserle, a white police officer who shot an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, in broad daylight as the victim lay face down, surrounded by law enforcement, in the presence of numerous witnesses, walked free in a few months. This is the American reality four decades after the Civil Rights Movement.

It is necessary that a few black men die every so often for our pleasure, so that we can continue to beat our collective ego-chests and congratulate ourselves on justice being done, even as we perpetuate our long tradition of paradoxes that seem to define us as a people: the “greatest” country in the world is nothing but its greatest terror and bully; freedom is predicated (literally) on the legacy of slavery and domination, what we view as justice is too often its horrific miscarriage.

Troy Davis must die so that our illusions about ourselves may live.

Let me make a humble suggestion. If we are so proud of what we are doing to Davis, why not let this noble deed be performed in the open, as in the good old days? If justice is all that’s being done, then the more people to witness it the better, right? Don’t we want to bask in the admiration of the international community, whose leaders we proudly claim to be? Surely they can learn from our example. Once exposed to the awesome and solemn spectacle—the might of American justice, they may well feel inspired to rush off and adopt our ways themselves. At the very least, such a spectacle would be educational. Besides, as I have said earlier, we just like vengeance, or, as we like to call it, justice, in this country. Yes, sir, we’re great sticklers for doing the right thing here. A public execution might even improve tourism, and it would certainly be a fun show, and we could all look as solemn as we liked at the regrettable necessity that compels us to perform and/or witness this very sad deed.

How about it, then? Take this show on the road, but stop calling it justice. Call it what it is; a party—a lynching party.

Bring the kids.

Pubali Ray Chaudhuri is an Associate Editor of Intrepid Report. ICH

In view of the last paragraph you may think I composed this for the post, but it was in fact for something or other previous.

* My highlight: I had occasion to discuss these points with an American, who was no fool by the way, I was a guest writer on his blog for a while. And I wasn't ''having a go'' at him, mentioning rather matter of factly, that the Yanks were the new Brits, the new warrior race, and whereas we Brits had built an empire on genocide and dispossession, likewise had Americans built a country on the same principals. Which I have to say, didn't seem to go down awfully well with the chap, I must have touched a nerve. He preferring to use the term colonisation or some such excuse of a word.

Previous: A road to Damascus moment

Michele Bachmann and The Rise of Neo Nazi Candidates

Don't be confused by the header, there are in fact, two separate articles, but many, myself included, would argue that they belong on the same page.

This was something I stumbled upon at Alternet while preparing the previous post, a little cream to go with the peaches, as it were.

Yes, She's Serious: While You're Laughing, Michele Bachmann Is Gearing Up To Fight

There's no such thing as bad publicity for the GOP's most unpredictable candidate.

Michele Bachmann, the Republican presidential candidate, is having a very good week. What's that, you say?

You mean even after she mistook serial killer John Wayne Gacy for right-wing culture hero John Wayne?

Even after her laughable attempt to claim a 9-year-old John Quincy Adams as one of the founding fathers, in a vain effort to justify her earlier claim that that august patriarchal body "worked tirelessly to end slavery"?

Even after her supporters apparently tried to edit Wikipedia's entry on JQA to support her claim? (Many chuckles to be had by progressively following all the links related to this Wiki entry. Only in Ameriki folks. only in Ameriki.)

You mean even -- even -- after ThinkProgress revealed that her husband had declared, on a radio broadcast, that gay people are "barbarians" who need "to be disciplined"? (Have a wander around the blog of gay girl, Pam Spaulding, I'm sure you will find bits of interest on Bachmanns both. Pam's House Blend)

(Update: Between composing this post and its publishing, a new article has appeared at Pam's House Blend. The subject? Marcus Bachmann's 'ex-gay' practice.

Yes indeed. With all eyes upon her, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., chair of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, had an excellent week. Because she doesn't care what you think. She doesn't need you. And that's why you must take her seriously.

In our bizarre presidential primary system, it's the early states that really matter -- states whose populations do not mirror the diversity of the nation at large. Eager for a story, the national media begins to assemble on the ground the better part of a year ahead these early contests, which consequently serve as the nation's introduction to the candidates. And it just so happens that the three most important early states have populations that, among those who vote in a Republican primary, skew far to the right on the GOP stage. So Bachmann will enjoy an advantage -- at least in Iowa and South Carolina, if not New Hampshire -- among the battalions of evangelical Christians who will vote in those primaries. In addition to her religious cred, Bachmann's got the hearts of Tea Party enthusiasts, whose movement has significant overlap with the religious right.

Many are the progressives and liberals, all too inclined to look to the next election as the means of political salvation, who may actually cheer the ascendance of Bachmann as an obvious display of the crazy that underlies today's Republican Party, thinking that reasonable people will never vote for her in a general election. And they may be right in that assumption. But each time a politician as far to the right as Bachmann is accrues power in the GOP, the worse it is for all of us. The long-term process, you see, pushes the party ever further to the right, but sooner or later, voters tire of the Democrats and vote in the Republicans in an anybody-but-you-guys tantrum. And if, at that time, the GOP is ruled by the David Koch wing of the party, we're all pretty well screwed.

The Victim Card

One of the things right-wing leaders have done so brilliantly is to convince their constituents that the mainstream media are hopelessly biased in favor of liberals and liberal policies -- so much so, that virtually nothing reported by mainstream outlets is believed to be reported as simple matters of fact. Whether it's the science of climate change or the gaffes of Michele Bachmann, right-wingers reject every iota of the mainstream media narrative, turning their gaze and their ears instead to the spin of the right-wing media machine. It's a perfectly closed system, impenetrable by any who dwell outside the tribe.

Each mainstream media report of Bachmann's mangled version of history, and every question she gets from a journalist, such as [PDF] CBS News' Bob Schieffer (who is hardly a liberal, by the way), about her revisions to the nation's story, are regarded as attacks born of bias. Add in the long history of sexist treatment of women candidates (which is likely to continue for the foreseeable future), and Bachmann's defenders can earnestly exclaim to her base that she is treated differently from her fellow candidates, all men, by the sexists of the allegedly liberal mainstream media. And Bachmann will, no doubt, be subjected to sexist punditry at some point during the race -- and it will likely play to her favor. Go to page two.

Before moving on to the rise of the Neo-Nazis, let us take a humorous look at the ''gay cure.''

Easy you might think, to dismiss Richard Cohen as just another harmless religious whackjob, until that is, they become politicly active. Let's hear what gay girl Rachel Maddow has to say to Cohen.



What really pisses me off about this lot is, there are, as we speak, people around the world, children even, being stoned to death and hung from cranes for their sexuality, and at the same time, sanctimonious Bible clutching twats with an unhealthy preoccupation with the sexuality of others, have the fucking arrogance to say homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.

- - -

And this is happening all over the US, not just the flat earth states.

White Supremacist Stampede

A startling number of white-power candidates are seeking public office. Eve Conant reports on their under-the-radar strategy and David Duke’s White House flirtation.
July 4, 2011

Add to the growing list of candidates considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 America’s most famous white-power advocate: David Duke.

A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Republican executive-committee chairman in his district until 2000, Duke has a significant following online. His videos go viral. This month, he’s launching a tour of 25 states to explore how much support he can garner for a potential presidential bid. He hasn’t considered running for serious office since the early '90s, when he won nearly 40 percent of the vote in his bid for Louisiana governor. But like many “white civil rights advocates,” as he describes himself to The Daily Beast, 2012 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year.

Former (and current) Neo Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Confederates, and other representatives of the many wings of the “white nationalist” movement are starting to file paperwork and print campaign literature for offices large and small, pointing to rising unemployment, four years with an African-American president, and rampant illegal immigration as part of a growing mound of evidence that white people need to take a stand.

Most aren’t winning—not yet. But they’re drawing levels of support that surprise and alarm groups that keep tabs on the white-power movement (members prefer the terms “racial realist” or “white nationalist”). In May, the National Socialist Movement’s Jeff Hall hit national headlines in a bizarre tragedy: his murder, allegedly at the hands of his 10-year-old son. But before his death, he had campaigned for a low-level water board position in Riverside, California. The swastika-wearing plumber who patrolled the U.S. border paramilitary-style walked away with almost 30 percent of his community’s vote. “That’s a sizable amount of the vote for a person running openly as a Neo Nazi,” says Marilyn Mayo, co-director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. While Hall’s political future—and life—has been cut short, Mayo points out that we should expect more white supremacist hopefuls next year.

Mayo and others date the current spike to 2008, and the election of the country’s first African-American president (an historic marker accompanied by a surge in the percentage of U.S. children born to minorities in 2008—48 percent, compared to 37 percent in 1990). “The immediate reaction after Obama was elected was of rage. They feel if a black man can get elected to office, why can’t someone who represents white interests?” Just a few weeks after Obama’s election, Duke gathered followers in Memphis to expressly strategize what to do next. The solution? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Disappointed with Ron and Rand Paul and other leaders who they feel are close, but not close enough, to their views—the A3P has fielded candidates like Harry Bertram, who ran for the West Virginia board of education last fall, pulling down 14 percent of the vote. He’s now angling for governor. “My platform is conservative like the Tea Party but more racialist inclined,” Bertram says. Another A3P candidate won 11 percent of the vote in a recent run for a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Those numbers are small, but hardly laughable, especially for a new group explicitly running on a white-interest ticket. “We’re just beginning,” says board member Jamie Kelso, who says the group’s platform includes a complete moratorium on immigration. “But we’re filling a void.”

Some candidates for 2012 are already filling paperwork. “White people need to wake up to the fact that we’re becoming a minority in our country,” says John Abarr, a 41-year-old former organizer for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has filed to begin raising money for Montana’s lone U.S. House seat. He’s not worried that the Republican Party isn’t backing him: “I don’t think public opinion is all that much against us. Montanans are independent thinkers.” His key platform? Abolish the Fed, raise the military age to 21 to stop what he calls the “barbaric” practice of sending teenagers to war, end the death penalty, legalize marijuana (he doesn’t smoke or drink himself), establish a 5 percent flat tax, and help whites by fighting entitlements (like affirmative action and immigration) that he says favor minorities. He describes the Klan as a Christian, white civil-rights organization, and glosses over the brutality that has earned the group its bad name. “I can’t agree with lynching anybody for any reason, but that was a different time in our history.” He adds: “We already have a black president, and I’m not sure when we’ll have a white president elected again.” more

Georgia: Can We Have Our Wets Back Please?

Because we're fucked without them.

And if Georgia, like all the other southern states that have recently passed draconian anti-immigration laws, if you think illegals are what ails America, then I seriously have to question your judgement. Or your politics. Or your sincerity.

Georgia immigrant crackdown backfires
By Reid J Epstein
June 22 2011

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s program to replace fleeing migrant farmworkers with probationers backfired when some of the convicted criminals started walking off their jobs because field work was too strenuous, it was reported Wednesday.

And the state’s farms could lose up to $1 billion if crops continue to go unpicked and rot, the president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council warned.

In a story datelined Leslie, in rural south Georgia, The Associated Press writes of convicts calling it quits at 3:25 p.m. — more than 2½ hours before the crew of Mexicans and Guatemalans they replaced.

“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, `Bonk this. I ain’t with this. I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer working at a farm in Leslie. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”

Georgia, which passed an Arizona-style immigration bill in April that is due to take effect next month, has seen thousands of undocumented immigrants flee the state. A state survey released last week found 11,080 vacant positions on state farms that needed to be filled to avoid losing crops.

At the same time as the survey’s release, Deal, a first-term Republican, announced a program to link the state’s 100,000 probationers with farmers looking to fill positions, the vast majority of which pay less than $15 per hour.

The AP reported the first group of probationers began working last week at an Americus farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association.

Minor’s farm was the second-largest recipient of federal farm subsidies in Georgia, receiving $11.4 million between 2000 and 2009, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The executive director of the fruit and vegetable growers group, Charles Hall, said the Minor farm is one of two participating in a pilot program to see if Deal’s proposal is operable.

Hall told POLITICO that as many as two-thirds of probationers who have tried working on the two farms in the last week have either walked off the job or not come back for a second day. more Politico

Bad enough huh? maybe they should consider bringing slavery back?

What's that you say! they already have?

But it seems slavery isn't without a few problems of its own. It's certainly not without its abuses; as ever it was.

Martori Farms: Abusive Conditions at a Key Wal-Mart Supplier
by Victoria Law,
24 June 2011

In 1954, an 18-year-old black woman named Eleanor Rush was incarcerated at the state women's prison. She was placed in solitary confinement for six days.
On the seventh day, Rush was not fed for over 16 hours. After 16 hours, she began yelling that she was hungry and wanted food. In response, the guards bound and gagged her, dislocating her neck in the process.
Half an hour later, Rush was dead.

The next morning, when the other women in the prison gathered in the yard, another woman in the solitary confinement unit yelled the news about Rush's death from her window. The women in the yard surrounded the staff members supervising their activities and demanded answers about Rush's death. When they didn't get them, the women - both the black and the white women - rioted.
The riot lasted three and a half hours, not stopping until Raleigh, North Carolina, police and guards from the men's Central Prison arrived.
The women's riot brought outside attention to Rush's death. As a result:
The State Bureau of Investigation ordered a probe into Rush's death rather than believing the prison's explanation that Rush had dislocated her own neck and committed suicide.

Until that point, nothing in the prison rules explicitly prohibited the use of improvised gags. After the riot and probe, the State Prisons director explicitly banned the use of gags and iron claws (metal handcuffs that can squeeze tightly).

The prison administration was required to pay $3,000 to Rush's mother. At that time, $3,000 was more than half the yearly salary of the prison warden.

The prison warden, who had allowed Rush to be bound and gagged, was replaced by Elizabeth McCubbin, the executive director of the Family and Children's Service Agency. Her hiring indicated a shift from a punitive model toward a more social service/social work orientation.

The women themselves testified that they had rioted to ensure that Rush's death was not dismissed and that the circumstances would not be repeated.

Fifty-five years after Rush was killed in solitary confinement, Marcia Powell, a mentally ill 48-year-old woman incarcerated at the Perryville Unit in Arizona, died. The Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) has more than 600 of these outdoor cages where prisoners are placed to confine or restrict their movement or to hold them while awaiting medical appointments, work, education, or treatment programs. On May 20, 2009, the temperature was 107 degrees. Powell was placed in an unshaded cage in the prison yard. Although prison policy states that "water shall be continuously available" to caged prisoners and that they should be in the cage for "no more than two consecutive hours," guards continually denied her water and kept her in the cage for four hours. Powell collapsed of heat stroke, was sent to West Valley Hospital where ADC Director Charles Ryan took her off life support hours later.

The ensuing media attention over Powell's death caused the ADC to temporarily suspend using these cages. Once the media attention faded, the ADC lifted the suspension.(1)

Abuses at Perryville have continued. The ADC has sent its prisoners to work for private agricultural businesses for almost 20 years.(2) The farm pays its imprisoned laborers two dollars per hour, not including the travel time to and from the farm. Women on the Perryville Unit are assigned to Martori Farms, an Arizona farm corporation that supplies fresh fruits and vegetables to vendors across the United States (Martori is the exclusive supplier to Wal-Mart's 2,470 Supercenter and Neighborhood Market stores).(3)

According to one woman who worked on the farm crews:

They wake us up between 2:30 and three AM and KICK US OUT of our housing unit by 3:30AM. We get fed at four AM. Our work supervisors show up between 5AM and 8AM. Then it's an hour to a one and a half hour drive to the job site. Then we work eight hours regardless of conditions .... We work in the fields hoeing weeds and thinning plants ... Currently we are forced to work in the blazing sun for eight hours. We run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don't check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! If we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break we get a MAJOR ticket which takes away our "good time"!!! more Prison Watch for Imprisoned Women

But then what is the South if not a bunch of rednecks that never got over loosing the Confederacy?

Has the South won the Civil War nearly 150 years after its conclusion?

BuzzFlash doesn't ask that question in a technical sense. Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union forces at the Appomattox Court House in 1865.

But culturally and politically, in 2011, the Union of the United States more and more is reflecting the values of the Confederacy, minus the institution of slavery, of course.

Increasingly, states' rights are superseding the federal government, and many of the states are tilting toward the oligarchs (corporations and the rich). But, of course, even the federal government is siding with supporting the plutocracy and enacting policies that result in low-wage labor. Just replace the lack of accountability of corporations and Wall Street with the free hand of plantation owners.

Not that the South believed much in a centralized government that provided a safety net. The poor were poor; the sick were sick; and the wealthy were wealthy; that was the natural order of things.

The South wasn't just built on slavery, as BuzzFlash has pointed out before. Most whites were poor and worked as sharecroppers, indentured servants or plantation hands. Much of their belief in white supremacy came from the feeling that, although the majority of whites were economically poor, they were "superior" to black slaves. But the economy, overall, was built on cheap labor as compared to economic ingenuity and innovation.

Baptist Christianity was central to the South, a deeply religious section of the country. The authoritarian paternalistic hierarchy of the Confederacy was considered sanctioned by divine decree. Plantation owners and their extended "work forces" would be right at home with "creationism," because things didn't evolve in the South. The ultimate value was on preserving "the Southern way of life," not evolving. Progress was, thus, a threat.

If you see some common themes to the modern Republican Party and the conventional wisdom found in the corporate press, it began most recently with the development of the Nixon "Southern strategy" - and the merging of Southern "values" with a corporatist agenda, perfected in the Reagan presidency.

How would one expect the Southern agenda to value labor, when in the South labor was cheap or, in the form of slavery, literally free (except for the initial "cost" to buy a slave)?

So, in 2011, we find ourselves at a point when the Confederacy has risen from the ashes to dominate public policy and economic inertia. Buzzflash

Or for the real thing, try this.

Source of Missing Jobs in America Found: Forced Laborers
21 June 2011

With unemployment at a near historic high in the United States, could you imagine any American company bringing in foreign workers to work for them below the minimum wage and with no benefits? Most people would say no. But can you imagine those same Americans forcing foreign workers to stay here, with no pay, and constant abuse? That is actually happening in this country today.

Forced labor is a real phenomenon in the United States agriculture business. Without awareness and investigation into where our supplies come from and who businesses are hiring, the American people become unwitting complicit supporters of labor trafficking. more

Slave Labour Bringing New Meaning To The American Gulag

The Pentagon & slave labor in U.S. prisons
By Sara Flounders
Jun 6, 2011

Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com)

The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a way to increase profits for giant military corporations is a frontal attack on the rights of all workers.

Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder. Prisoners recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles.

Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.

The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit. For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon.

Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces

However, the Pentagon is not the only buyer. U.S. corporations are the world’s largest arms dealers, while weapons and aircraft are the largest U.S. export. The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and diplomats pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the world into multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further corporate profits, often leaving many countries mired in enormous debt.

But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to drastically undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher profits to military corporations — whose weapons wreak such havoc around the world — is an ominous development.

According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid “aerospace workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years. Like many other industries, the defense sector has been quietly outsourcing production (and jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.” (Feb. 24) It seems that with prison labor, these jobs are also being outsourced domestically.

Meanwhile, dividends and options to a handful of top stockholders and CEO compensation packages at top military corporations exceed the total payment of wages to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who produce UNICOR parts.

The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat and coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals.

A federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family members at FCI Marianna, a minimum security women’s prison in Florida, cited that toxic dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic poisoned those who worked at UNICOR’s computer and electronic recycling factory.

Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective gear, air filtration or masks. The suit explained that the toxic dust caused severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems, lung damage, bone disease, kidney failure, blood clots, cancers, anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory lapses, skin lesions, and circulatory and respiratory problems. This is one of eight federal prison recycling facilities — employing 1,200 prisoners — run by UNICOR.

After years of complaints the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Occupational Health Service concurred in October 2008 that UNICOR has jeopardized the lives and safety of untold numbers of prisoners and staff. (Prison Legal News, Feb. 17, 2009)

Racism & U.S. prisons

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. imprisons more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world.

There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local prisons in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and parole. Many tens of thousands of other prisoners include undocumented immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and youthful offenders in categories considered reform or detention.

The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society — from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity — is most brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system.

More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California — which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions — are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington, “Incarceration Nation”)

The U.S. prison population is not only the largest in the world — it is relentlessly growing. The U.S. prison population is more than five times what it was 30 years ago.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, there were 400,000 prisoners in the U.S. Today the number exceeds 2.3 million. In California the prison population soared from 23,264 in 1980 to 170,000 in 2010. The Pennsylvania prison population climbed from 8,243 to 51,487 in those same years. There are now more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began, according to Law Professor Michelle Alexander in the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Today a staggering 1-in-100 adults in the U.S. are living behind bars. But this crime, which breaks families and destroys lives, is not evenly distributed. In major urban areas one-half of Black men have criminal records. This means life-long, legalized discrimination in student loans, financial assistance, access to public housing, mortgages, the right to vote and, of course, the possibility of being hired for a job. Workers World

50th Anniversary of the First Freedom Ride

50th Anniversary of the First Freedom Ride: New Documentary Recounts Historic 1961 Effort to Challenge Segregated Bus System in the Deep South

AMY GOODMAN: It was 50 years ago today, May 4th, 1961, when mixed groups of black and white students took two public buses from Washington, D.C., and intended to arrive in New Orleans two weeks later. They were risking their lives to challenge segregation. They called themselves the Freedom Riders.

President Obama has issued a proclamation honoring May 2011 as the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides and called on Americans to celebrate their struggle for equal rights during the civil rights movement.

Well, in December of 1960, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional segregation in public transportation and interstate bus and rail stations. But despite the ruling, Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South. Six months later, a dozen black and white students decided to challenge the local laws of the Deep South and test the commitment of the Kennedy administration to civil rights.

A new documentary by the award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson tells the story of what happened to these brave students over the next few days and weeks and how they inspired hundreds of others to join the Freedom Rides and eventually succeed in desegregating public transportation. The documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010. The documentary, called The Freedom Riders, will air on PBS’s American Experience on May 16th.

We turn right now to Stanley Nelson, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, to talk about his film.

STANLEY NELSON: In 1961, 12 people, both black and white, decided that they would test the segregation laws of the South by simply getting on buses, Greyhound buses and Trailways buses, and going down south. And the white and black people would sit together at the front of the bus. They would eat together in the restaurants in the bus stations. The white people would use the colored-only restrooms, and the black people would use the white-only restrooms. And they would just see what would happen to them. And they had no police protection, no army protection, very little press when they started out, and they had no idea that it would really turn into this mass movement.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, there were—talk about the different Rides that went down and what happened to each.

STANLEY NELSON: Well, the first twelve people were beaten so badly in Anniston and Birmingham that they had to stop, they had to quit.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to a clip of Freedom Riders. more and 30 min video

Justice Thomas He's a Louisiana Man

Clarence Thomas apart, prosecutors who pull stunts like this should be charged, not with malicious prosecution, but with attempted murder, because it's nothing short of it.

And what would we charge Clarence Thomas with, being a disgrace? Seeing as the scene is Louisiana, perhaps "a crime against nature" would be more fitting, because he certainly fucked this fellow in the ass.

What Does Clarence Thomas Have Against Black People?
Tonyaa Weathersbee, New America Media
8 April 2011

Maybe John Thompson reminded Clarence Thomas of a childhood nemesis.

Maybe Thompson, who spent 14 years on Louisiana's Death Row when prosecutors deliberately withheld evidence that would have proved his innocence, reminded the Supreme Court justice of one of the bullies who taunted him about his coal-black skin.

Or maybe, at least in Thomas' eyes, Thompson quickly morphed into a black man who was looking for a handout instead of justice.

Or maybe it's all of the above. It has to be. Because there's no way that any fair-minded jurist would turn the sort of legal cartwheels

that Thomas and his four other conservative colleagues on the high court recently turned to side with the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office in tossing out a $14 million verdict in Thompson’s favor.

Here's what happened. In 1985, Thompson, then 22, was convicted of murder and armed robbery in Louisiana. He was sentenced to death on the murder conviction and came within weeks of being executed in 1999 when his investigators learned that prosecutors failed to turn over evidence that would have freed him.

Among that evidence was the fact that the main informant had received a reward from the victim’s family and that the eyewitness identification didn't match. Most of all, prosecutors deliberately concealed blood evidence and a lab report that would have cleared Thompson.

This they hid for 20 years.

Thompson's convictions were overturned, and he sued Harry Connick Sr., the district attorney for Orleans Parish, for not schooling his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over such evidence to the defense. That obligation was laid out in a 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, in which the Supreme Court said that to withhold such evidence is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights.

Connick, in fact, even conceded that he didn't completely understand what Brady encompassed. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million.

But it seems that Thomas – who wrote the majority opinion in tossing out the verdict – was more than willing to join his white conservative cohorts in trampling the Constitution to give the powerful more ammunition to keep the powerless in their place.

Incredibly, in writing for the 5-4 majority, Thomas said that Thompson didn't deserve any money because he couldn't prove that there was a pattern of similar violations in previous cases, or that prosecutors deliberately set out to violate the Constitution.

He and his buddy, Antonin Scalia, basically said it was unfair for the entire prosecutor's office to be held responsible for one bad act. As if it wasn’t unfair for Thompson, who is now 40, to have spent 18 years of his life – 14 of those on Death Row – locked up for a crime he didn't commit.

That's a heartless, wrongheaded decision – and one that flies in the face of what Thomas is supposed to be about.

Thomas is, after all, a man who is supposed to be a champion of individual responsibility for black people.

So then, why doesn't he extend that expectation of responsibility to powerful institutions, such as district attorney's offices, to make sure that prosecutors don't almost cause an innocent person to be put to death because they withheld evidence that could free them?

Why is it that Thomas, a black man who grew up in Georgia during a time of lynchings and other injustices against black men, is so willing to contort the Constitution and human decency to make a decision that will invariably give prosecutors more leeway to get innocent black people like Thompson killed?

I have to believe it's either a need for revenge against his childhood tormentors or all those blacks who cheered on his adult nemesis Anita Hill. Or maybe it's a just a need to be different.

Many times, for black people, being different means having no history. It means being willing to sidestep the truth and fairness to show how colorblind they are and how they are not like all those other black people.

And, in the end, it's a sad place to be. newamericamedia

Related: Clarence Thomas, the Anti-Black

Remember Nifong, one day in jail?

Clarence Thomas, the Anti-Black

Clarence Thomas, the Anti-Black

Thomas is often described as a "complicated" personality, but that's just a euphemism for being a self-loathing ally of the worst sections of the white ruling class.
October 13, 2007

Clarence Thomas is a deeply troubled man -- a grotesquely twisted, "Down Home"-grown Black personality at war with the demons of his dark-skinned, dirt poor youth. Although Thomas has accumulated many "enemies" -- earned and imagined -- since his entrance to the white world in the 10th grade in Savannah, Georgia, his core pathology is Black-directed -- a trait so obvious it was immediately perceived by a succession of white Republican racists who rocketed him to the U.S. Supreme Court with obscene haste to become a hit-man against his own people.

Thomas is a perverse right-wing joke played on Blacks and, being of above average intelligence despite his mental illness, he knows it. But it is a knowledge he cannot endure, a burden that has made him a pathological liar, who blurts out contradictions so antithetical to each other that they cannot possibly coexist in the same brain without a constant roiling and crashing that puts him at flight from himself and all those who remind him of his now hopelessly entangled torments and tormentors.




If African Americans had our own insane asylum, Thomas would be welcomed in and cared for, with proper compassion for the sorely afflicted. But there are no such facilities available to treat a man who forgives whites for Jim Crow and every other aspect of past and present discrimination -- indeed, embraces the most racist among them -- but can never forgive Blacks for the way they treated him in Savannah, Georgia and the outlying shanty town of Pin Point.

Thomas, the affirmative action kid, should have gone to Yale, where he proved to be as adept at navigating the curriculum as at least half the rest of the class. He should not have ascended anywhere near the U.S. Supreme Court, or to any government agency that affects the fate of the people he despises, and has since childhood felt despised by: African Americans, the only group that could make his young psyche scream by calling him "ABC" -- "America's Blackest Child."

Thomas titled his first and only book My Grandfather's Son, in honor of grandfather Myers Anderson, who physically rescued him from the abject poverty of Pin Point at age seven, at his destitute mother's request, but never let young Clarence forget that he was born in the mud of deepest, lowest class, Gullah-speaking (Geetchie) Blackdom. "Whenever he'd get angry at Clarence," a childhood friend of Thomas told Washington Post reporter Juan Williams, in 1987, "he'd say, 'Oh, you from Pin Point.' " Grandfather Anderson, a self-made, semi-literate businessman, alternately wielded "Pin Point" as the most cutting insult to the boy's value as a human being, and as the low-life nightmare to which Clarence must return if he did not show himself worthy of elevation above the mud.

Grandfather Anderson was a committed member of the NAACP, a regular contributor of money to the cause. He coerced Clarence to read his good grades aloud in front of NAACP meetings, an experience the shy child found painfully intrusive. When Clarence gained entrance to an almost lily-white Catholic seminary, with vague ideas about becoming a priest, old man Anderson warned, "don't you shame me and don't you shame your race.'"

Too much pressure for the emotionally fragile kid, who had been ceaselessly reminded that his Pin Point background was a shame on its face, and that he must begin his climb up from a deep hole to rise to the standards of the upscale-dominated Savannah NAACP -- a tall order for "America's Blackest Child." In a 2002 interview with Washington Post Reporters Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher, Thomas said he "can't think of any" good the NAACP ever did. Civil rights leaders, in general, just "bitch, bitch, bitch, moan and moan, whine and whine."

The overbearing, unrelenting Granddaddy Anderson pinned his hopes on Clarence graduating from the Catholic seminary and using his credentials and education to assist other Blacks. However, Clarence quit in 1968, and Anderson put him out of the house. Thomas' lying memory begins to dominate the narrative at this point in his 19-year-old life, with estrangement from his Black anchor and hate-love object, Granddaddy Anderson. The old man and the NAACP expected great things from young Clarence, based on their standards, schedule and mission. Thomas claims he quit the seminary when, on news of the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he overheard a white student say "Well, that's good. I hope the SOB dies" -- evidence that the Catholic Church had failed him.

Note that Thomas does not punch the white kid out, for which he might have been expelled. He just quit, and in so doing quit his grandfather and the NAACP, as well. Although the alleged remark is totally plausible, given the blatant, unabashed racism that prevailed in Sixties white Georgia campuses, parochial and public, it is equally implausible that Thomas had not heard, and been personally subjected to, many verbal racial assaults during his time at the seminary -- and never reacted. It is much more likely that Thomas, having already charted his exit from Black Savannah and a path to the Ivy league, later invented or used the incident to cast himself as a "radical" -- the pose he (possibly after-the-fact) adopted during his scholarship-assisted and affirmative action-arranged stay at Yale, his next stop.

Thomas was sick and tired of Savannah Black society and the loathsome burden of his Pin Point origins, and the skin-curse of being "ABC." He would exit the former and use the latter as a swinging broadsword to flail his Black "tormentors" and garner the assistance of racist whites in search of an African American who harbored animosities against Blacks as intense as their own. more alternet

Related: Justice Thomas He's a Louisiana Man

I Don't Know What Justice Looks Like But I'm Sure It Doesn't Look Like This: Waterproof Louisiana

Race and Politics in a Rural Louisiana Town Attract National Attention
by: Jordan Flaherty
24 March 2011

A legal dispute in the rural Louisiana town of Waterproof has attracted the attention of national civil rights organizations and activists. Color Of Change, an online activist group that helped garner national attention for the Jena Six Case,* recently rallied their members in support of Waterproof mayor Bobby Higginbotham, who has been held without bail since May of 2010. Advocates say the town’s mayor and police chief, both African American, were targeted by an entrenched white power structure, including a Parish Sheriff and District Attorney, who were threatened by newly empowered Black political power in the town and are seeking to use the court system to undo an election.

While the mayor and police chief were both found guilty last year, their defenders say the trials have not resolved the conflict. Rachel Conner, a lawyer representing Higginbotham in his appeal, says she has never seen a case with so many flaws. “Essentially, every single thing that you can do to violate someone’s constitutional rights from beginning to end happened in his case,” she says.




The charges and counter charges are difficult to untangle. At the center of the case is a state audit of Waterproof that found irregularities in the town’s record keeping. The Parish District Attorney says the audit shows mayoral corruption. The mayor says the problems pre-date his term, and he had taken steps to correct the issues. The mayor’s opponents claim he stole from the town by illegally increasing his salary. His supporters say he received a raise that was voted on by the town aldermen. The mayor initially faced 44 charges; all but two were dropped before the trial began. Those charges – malfeasance in office and felony theft – were related to the disputed raise and use of the town’s credit card. Miles Jenkins, the police chief, faced charges related to his enforcement of traffic tickets.

The mayor was quickly convicted of both charges but lawyers have raised challenges to the convictions, bringing a number of legal complaints. For example: in a town that is 60% African-American, Mayor Higginbotham had only one Black juror. Higginbotham’s counsel was disqualified by the DA, and the public defender had a conflict of interest, leaving the mayor with no lawyer. Two days before trial began, the DA gave Higginbotham 10 boxes of files related to his case. Higginbotham’s request for an extension to get an attorney and to examine the files was denied.




There’s more: during jury selection, when Higginbotham – forced to act as his own lawyer – tried to strike one juror who had relationships with several of the witnesses, he was told he could not, even though he had challenges remaining. There was also a problem with a sound recorder that the court reporter was using, and as a result there is no transcript at all for at least two witness’ testimony. Finally, during deliberation, the judge gave the jury polling slips that had “guilty” pre-selected, and then later hid the slips.

When Higginbotham was convicted, the judge refused to set bail in any amount. Although a possible sentence for the crime was probation, and despite former mayor’s obvious ties to the community, Higginbotham has spent the last ten months in jail while his lawyers have worked on his appeal. “He’s not a flight risk,” says Conner. “He’s tied to Waterproof and he’s got a vested interest in clearing his name.” more

*Jena Six, now tagged.

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