I'm Really Trying to Understand Black Conservatives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.