Got Questions? Ask a Smart Black Guy

MLK/Malcolm X photo © Associated Press

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator

September 27, 2007

With fascination, I've noted the recent popularity of these television commercials featuring the smart Black guy. You know what I mean, the intelligent, "articulate" and "clean" man of color, someone you wouldn't mind inviting to your home for dinner. In the commercial, he is invariably called upon to provide technical expertise on some complex matter, whether it involves the specifications of the latest model computer, information on selecting an insurance policy, or giving crucial investment advice.

I suppose I should be satisfied that we have improved in the media depictions of people of color, somewhat, that Black men are finally portrayed as something other than criminals, buffoons, the hired help, etc. To be sure, these ads, creations of Madison Avenue, rightly suggest that there are many Black men out there from which society could learn a great deal. However, in the real world in which most of us live, Black men are rarely heard. Most of society has very little to say to Black men, and believes there is very little, if nothing, that they can learn from them.

To be sure, there have been many who were willing and eager to give advice, but society has refused to heed their message. For example, in the 1960s, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers and others had much to say to America, and much advice to give. But their message was unwelcome, and the messengers were assassinated. And a number of whites at that time who openly asserted that society must listen to what Black people have to say, were murdered, maimed or otherwise discredited.

African American men are the nation's universal scapegoat. They are the most likely to die, the most likely to be undereducated and the most likely to be unemployed. Many whites fled the cities to get away from them, so that their children would not go to school with them, or even worse, date them.

Through unjust laws, Black men, along with their Latino counterparts, are the majority of the nation's prisoners. And they comprise the most incarcerated demographic in the world, America's attempt to lock up its race problem — out of sight and out of mind — and throw away the key. In a country where each of the 50 states bans dog fighting, and rightly so, men of color are chained up and put down like dogs, and men and women of color often are not even respected as much as dogs.

Black men in particular are stressed over the badge of criminality they must bear. The nation's tough-on-crime, law and order apparatus is mobilized primarily against them. When they are born, there is a presumption of their guilt. Society places an insurmountable burden on Black men to prove that they are not a criminal element, which is why they are likely to receive longer sentences for the same crime than white men.

Even the clothes associated with young Black men of the hip hop generation - saggy jeans - have been prohibited by law in some parts of the U.S .

A white man with a criminal record has an easier time finding a job than a Black man who has had no brushes with the law. And as anti-racism activist and writer, Tim Wise notes, a Black man with a college degree makes nearly $20,000 less, or nearly half his white counterpart, while a white with a masters degree earns 10 percent more, and a white with a professional degree earns $30,000 more.

Based on the longstanding assumption that two or more Black males gathering together in public constitutes a criminal conspiracy, the Black Codes were enacted during Jim Crow in order to control Black men's daily affairs. Studies have been funded to prove that Black men possess an innate wolfpack mentality and penchant for violence. America is the department store within which African American men must navigate, constantly monitored, followed and scrutinized, and always presumed to be up to no good.

And today, we can see the intergenerational nature of this criminalization process. As six Black teens were arrested and indicted in Jena, Louisiana, facing hard time for fighting against raw racism under the "white" tree, eight former Black Panthers were arrested and indicted, based on illegal evidence, old, unsettled scores and trumped up charges, four decades in the making.

In this election season, it is plausible that almost none of the interchangeable empty suits that are the Republican presidential candidates will have any contact with Black men, much less acknowledge their existence. That is why many of them have run away from the presidential debates on Black and Latino issues. It is doubtful that a number of Democratic candidates have a clue as well.

Certainly, an individual such as Mitt Romney, marketed as the whitest man with the whitest family in the land, has no need to concern himself with what Black men are thinking. And surely Rudy "9-11" Giuliani had no concern for the many Black and Latino men who were killed by the police under his watch as mayor of New York. For this crowd — which, curiously, seems to believe it can win by playing to the base and ignoring this nation's ascending majority — policy towards people of color is of a punitive nature, whether it is war against Arabs and Muslims at home and abroad (and apparent Arabs and Muslims), deportation for Latinos, elimination of civil rights, voting rights and affirmative action for people of color in general, and more imprisonment for all of the above.

(Of course, our white brothers and sisters of meager means do not fare any better under a hypothetical G.O.P. administration. However, the regressive conservatives throw a bone to that segment of the electorate in the form of the race card, naked homophobia and criminalization of women's rights, the war on terror, the war on crime, creationism, guns, and other divisive distractions.)

The Black guy in the commercial seems to serve a role for a society that is in denial. He soothes the collective guilty conscience by reminding America of the progress we've made, and providing proof that racism and racial inequity are a thing of the past. "This smart Black guy is managing my stock portfolio and building me a computer, he's doing well, so why does he need affirmative action?" the argument goes. "The civil rights movement was a long time ago, and we live in a colorblind society, so why should this guy get any breaks over my kid?"

There is a racial disconnect in America, and it is enormous. A recent study by Ohio State University of white people's understanding of the black experience suggests that many whites are clueless. When given a hypothetical involving an oppressed minority group in a fictional country that mirrors the Black experience, whites estimated that the group deserved, on average, $1 million in compensation. But when posed the same question with regard to African Americans, the estimate dropped to $10,000.

And according to a survey by the Associated Press and MTV, 72 percent of whites between ages 13-24 say they are generally happy with life, as opposed to 56 percent of Blacks and 51 percent of Latinos. Among participants of color in the survey, the most important key to happiness was lack of money woes, while whites said that a good family was the most important factor. Further, 28 percent of people of color believe race will hurt them in their search for a better life, while 20 percent of whites feel their race will help them get ahead.

So, the next time you see a smart Black guy in a TV commercial, ask yourself a question: how much better would this country be if we actually listened to what the real-life Black people have to say?

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

The Unbridled Free Market Suffocates Democracy

Industrial Workers of the World, 1911

By David A. Love
Published in The Black Commentator

September 20, 2007

The recent decision by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee to hold an investigation into the collapse of a Utah coal mine, amid allegations that six miners were buried alive due to a desire by the mining company to maximize profits, not to mention lax federal regulators and an administration that was rewarded handsomely by the mining industry, is further proof that corporate greed is hurting the country. The pursuit of profit above all else, including the interests of people, unbridled, unchecked and unregulated, is an internal threat to democracy. Corporations have a stranglehold on America. They are sucking all the air out of democracy, or what is left of it, making it difficult for the rest of us to breathe freely.

The evidence of this crisis abounds:

• Foreclosures are on the rise, as unscrupulous, predatory lenders, who took advantage of average citizens of meager means, seek a bailout, now that the subprime mortgage market has bottomed out.

• Hard-earned pensions are eviscerated.



• College students cannot afford an education, and amass prohibitive amounts of debt, as tuition rises far above the inflation rate.



• The $85 billion student loan industry makes inside deals with college officials.

The U.S. is the only nation in the developed world without free universal health coverage. Nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2005. And the Bush administration plans to cut the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a popular federally-funded initiative that provides coverage to six million children.

One of the main points of Michael Moore's film, Sicko, is that the collusion between politicians and the healthcare industry is a barrier to having a free and universal health system. Moore's exposé on the crisis of health insurance in America is an indictment of the healthcare corporations that deny medical treatment to the ill, and allow people to die, all for the sake of profits.

Meanwhile, the world's most advanced nation has a crumbling infrastructure. The deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis, and the breaking of the levees in New Orleans two years earlier, occurred in the midst of a war in Iraq that could cost the taxpayers as much as $1.5 trillion.

That unpopular war has been promulgated by an administration with more than tenuous ties to the oil and defense industries, and war profiteers such as Halliburton. The president, an oil man in tune with the financial interests of that business, repudiated the Kyoto Protocol and the scientific realities of global warming, and allowed the clock to tick on climate change.

Overcrowded prisons are bursting at the seams and prison spending exceeds funding for education in state budgets throughout the country. Encouraging economic development through the captivity of others is an unseemly activity. The for-profit prison industry trades on Wall Street, as did, years earlier, businesses involved in the slave trade. With factory jobs exported overseas, spanking new prisons built in predominantly white communities — filled disproportionately with men of color from the inner cities — are the new company town.

During the Jim Crow era, a collusion of lawmakers, law enforcement and industry resulted in the convict lease system. Unjust and arbitrary laws resulted in incarceration and forced labor for poor former slaves, and profits for industry. Similarly, today's special interests favor draconian get-tough-on-crime drug policies that target and warehouse African Americans and Latinos. These policies fail to address rehabilitation and the root causes of society's ills, but fuel the burgeoning $60 billion a year prison engine.

Meanwhile, Bush's pro-business Supreme Court has made it more difficult for employees to sue for discrimination, has overturned a century-old antitrust precedent that barred price-fixing collusion between manufacturers and retailers, and tossed out damages awarded to the widow of a smoker, against Philip Morris. Globalization has meant a downward shift in wages, outsourcing, poisonous food imports and lead toys from China.

Something is wrong in the self-described land of opportunity. Although Americans are the hardest working people on the planet, the American Dream, it appears, is elusive. As the Pew Charitable Trusts recently reported, there is far less economic mobility in the United States than was previously thought. In fact, America is less economically mobile than many other nations, including Canada, France, the Scandinavian countries, and Germany. As the United States is experiencing the most dramatic shift in wealth in the nation's history, exacerbated and hastened by Bush's regressive policies, never have so few owned so much. And never has an administration manipulated the apparatus of government to such an extent for its own financial and political gain.

Median household income has declined over the past three decades, and the present generation is worse off than the generation that preceded it. Between 1972 and 2001, the income of people in the top 1 percent grew by 87 percent. For people at the very top - the 99.99th percentile - the income gain was 181 percent. By contrast, the bottom 20 percent grew by only 3 percent.
The top 1 percent of households owns almost twice as much of the nation's corporate wealth as they did 15 years ago. Between 1978 and 2005, CEO pay increased from 35 times an average worker's pay to 262 times, making more in an hour than a worker makes in a month. Meanwhile, in 2004, 23 million people used food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 17 million in 2000.

Perhaps the most troubling and most significant chapter of the G.O.P. legacy has been the attempt to erase all traces of the New Deal and the Civil Rights era. Denigrated and dismissed by conservatives as archaic and part of the bloated welfare state, the New Deal provided the nation with Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, relief for the poor and unemployed, and public works and jobs programs. This represented government intervention that served to balance the power relationship among business, labor and agriculture. The New Deal provided relief, recovery and reform for an economic system run amok. It saved Americans from capitalism and the effects of an unfettered and unregulated free market, and saved capitalism from itself.

But nowadays, who will save the people, and democracy, from capitalism? For all of its lofty democratic rhetoric, the U.S. is turning into an oligarchy, and the concerns of people are taking a back seat to the needs of corporations. Surely, there are higher values than profit for profit's sake, in a nation that has profited from just about everything, including human bondage, war and misery. Morality dictates a higher standard.

On April 4, 1967, at a meeting at Riverside Church in New York, Dr. Martin Luther King said, "we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." Although America has failed to heed Dr. King's words 40 years later, perhaps it is not too late.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

Human-rights abuses at home

Malcolm X (1964 interview)

(FROM THE ARCHIVES)

By David A. Love
Published by Progressive Media Project and Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
October, 1998

IN THE NEXT few months I will travel throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland on behalf of Amnesty International. I will not be investigating human-rights violations there. I will be discussing the human-rights violations that are occurring right here in the United States.

At the 12 universities where I will be giving presentations, I will draw attention to police brutality, prison cruelty, and capital punishment in the United States. My part is but a small role in Amnesty's unprecedented focus on the United States. For the first time in its 37-year history, the London-based organization has launched a major campaign in a Western nation.

As a kickoff to the year-long effort, Amnesty recently released a report called "United States of America: Rights for All." The 153-page report highlights a "persistent and widespread pattern of human-rights violations." The overwhelming majority of the victims are racial and ethnic
minorities.

Police brutality is a longstanding problem throughout the United States. Some police departments are guilty of a pattern of abuse and misconduct. During traffic stops, searches, arrests, and investigations, police officers shoot, beat, choke, and hog-tie unresisting suspects. Civilians make thousands of complaints every year, and cities pay millions of dollars to settle police-abuse lawsuits. Nevertheless, few offending officers face severe punishment for their
actions.

Women and children are subjected to abuse in American prisons. As of June, at least 3,500 juveniles convicted as adults were placed in the same facilities as hardened adult criminals, exposing the teens to a high risk of sexual and physical violence. Female prisoners have been beaten, raped, and prostituted by prison guards. Many pregnant inmates are reportedly
shackled, some while in labor.

Prison officials in the United States also use electro-shock devices on inmates. These devices are banned in Canada and most of Europe. According to Amnesty International Secretary General Pierre Sane, "law-enforcement officials in the U.S.A. -- from police to prison staff-- have a huge array of equipment at their disposal, which at times is contributing to human-rights violations."

The most disturbing of these devices is the remote-control stun belt. At the push of a button, it shocks prisoners with 50,000 volts for eight seconds. According to the manufacturer, the belt can cause people involuntarily to defecate or urinate. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the U.S.
Marshal's Service, and more than 100 counties and 16 states, including Florida, use the stun belt.

Chain gangs are in use in several states, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin. Although chains and leg irons are forbidden by international law, U.S. law does not prohibit their use.

With more than 3,300 inmates awaiting execution, the United States has the largest Death Row population in the world -- many of them sentenced without adequate legal representation. The death penalty is applied in a racially biased manner in the United States.

Amnesty reports that since 1977, 82 percent of people executed were convicted of murdering whites, although blacks and whites are victimized by violent crime in nearly the same numbers. Further, the execution of mentally retarded and juvenile offenders in the United States violates
international standards.

The United States claims to be the protector of human rights around the world. In light of the Amnesty report, we have a lot of work to do right here at home.

Copyright © 1998 by David A. Love

State Should Take Leadership Role In Prison Reform

Jackie Lee Thompson after his 1969 arrest at age 15, and in 2004 at age 49 (Elmira Star-Gazette)

By David A. Love

Published in the Legal Intelligencer

Monday, March 26, 2007

Pennsylvania is a leader in prisons, ranking second nationally in per capita growth in prison spending. Prisons cost Pennsylvania taxpayers more each year, but with little to show for it. Now is the time to seek alternatives to this drain on the state’s resources.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the number of inmates incarcerated in Pennsylvania's prisons will increase 17 percent— from 42,345 in 2005 to 51,596 by 2011. Meanwhile, the commonwealth spends $33,814 per prisoner per year, far more than the national average of $23,876.

Prisons are the third largest expenditure in the state budget, behind education and welfare. If current trends continue, it will surpass education spending.

Mandatory minimum sentences and harsh sentences for nonviolent drug offenders have created prison overcrowding. Recently, prisoners represented by the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project (PILP) and David Rudovsky successfully sued the City of Philadelphia in federal court over the deplorable, unconstitutional conditions in the city's jails, including unsanitary facilities, a lack of personal hygiene items and detainees forced to sleep on concrete floors.

The state’s prison boom breeds inequities. An Associated Press investigation in 2000 revealed that blacks in Pennsylvania are more likely to receive prison sentences, or longer ones, than white defendants accused of the same crimes. Further, the black incarceration rate is 14 times that of whites, the greatest racial disparity in the nation. African Americans, 10 percent of Pennsylvania's population, are 56 percent of the inmates. This is shameful.

And as the female prison population steadily grows, the abuse and rape of female prisoners by male corrections officers with unsupervised access is an ongoing problem.

Pennsylvania's capricious parole system impedes efforts to incorporate rehabilitated prisoners into society. Parole is an illusion for most prisoners, particularly those serving a life sentence. The 1997 amendments to the Pennsylvania Constitution require that a recommendation for a pardon or commutation by the board of pardons be unanimous before it may be considered by the governor. The law serves no penological interest, and only keeps more rehabilitated people behind bars, separated from their families and communities. A coalition of organizations, including PILP under executive director Angus Love, the Pennsylvania Prison Society and others, are challenging the law in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The dysfunction of Pennsylvania's parole system came to light when Governor Rendell recently commuted the life sentence of Michael Howard Anderson, 53, who has served 36 years for the 1971 stabbing death of William Edwards. On the day of the murder, Anderson found a butcher knife on the ground as he boarded a bus headed for a concert at the Spectrum. When a fight broke out during the bus ride, Raynard Gregory grabbed the knife from a fallen Anderson and stabbed Edwards. Meanwhile, Gregory spent only seven years behind bars.

Other deserving prisoners seek a commutation. Keith Smith, 52, has spent 32 years in prison. He has had much time to reflect on his role as accomplice to a 1974 robbery that resulted in a shooting death— he was the lookout, never entered the store and did not pull the trigger. One of his co-defendants was retried and released in 1978, while the other committed suicide in prison in 1980.

Smith is a perfect example of the promise of rehabilitation in a society that often turns its back on the concept. Smith formed an anti-violence program for youth, produced an educational video, raises money for charities, and provides Thanksgiving turkeys for needy families. Society does not benefit from his continued incarceration. Indeed, violence-torn, poverty-stricken Philadelphia needs the help of reformed men such as Keith Smith to tackle the city's troubles.

Jackie Lee Thompson, 51, was convicted on first degree murder at age 15. He was a foster child in rural Tioga County whose mother died when he was 10. On the advice of his court-appointed counsel, Thompson confessed to his role in the shooting and drowning death of a 15-year old girl. The judge told him that with good behavior and a trade, he could be paroled in a few years. Of the two other teens involved, one was tried as a juvenile, while the other was released and never tried.

Thompson has been a model prisoner. He received his G.E.D. and an associate's degree in business management, and teaches advanced computer classes. Among the most staunch proponents of Thompson's release are the family members of the victim, who testified before the Board of Pardons on his behalf.

While Anderson had received the required unanimous recommendation by the board, Thompson and Smith received the approval of only four of the five board members.

As unfair and arbitrary laws at the state level stand in the way of prison reform, draconian federal statutes limit prisoners' access to the federal courts to seek redress.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 (PLRA), enacted ostensibly to stem a tide of frivolous prison lawsuits— such as an inmate who sued over receiving chunky-style rather than creamy peanut butter—has crippled inmates' ability to protect their constitutional rights. The PLRA restricts the federal courts' authority to provide equitable relief when prisons violate the law; imposes a severe cap on attorneys' fees; penalizes indigent prisoners; requires exhaustion of administrative remedies, and requires that prisoners suffer a physical injury in order to recover for mental or emotional injuries.

Consequently, the PLRA blocks valid federal claims of prisoner mistreatment and abuse. The ABA recently urged Congress to repeal or amend its provisions. In light of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison—the ringleader once abused inmates as a guard at SCI-Greene –prisoners' rights should concern everyone. Pennsylvania must seek bold, effective alternatives to its prison machine. The prison boom separates families and destroys communities, diverts crucial resources, and does not alleviate crime. According to the Sentencing Project, at least 22 states have enacted reforms to their sentencing, probation and parole policies, focusing on alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders, expanded drug treatment, and reducing recidivism. Pennsylvania must lead the way in prison reform before it is too late.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

Jim Crow lives on in Jena, and in America

Bettmann/Corbis

By David A. Love
Published by Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service
August 2007

Racism and Jim Crow are alive and well in America. The recent conviction of a black teenager, and the indictment of five others in Jena proves that.

It all started when a black student sought permission from school administrators to sit under the "white tree," a tree at the high school where white students normally gathered. School officials told him to sit where he liked. So, on Aug. 31, 2006, some black students decided to sit under it.

The next day, three white students hung three nooses from the tree, prompting a protest under the tree by the school's black students. Later that day, LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, accompanied by police, told the black students they were making too much of the "prank."

"I can be your best friend or your worst enemy," Walters reportedly told the students. "I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."

The school principal had recommended expulsion for the white students who hung the nooses, but the superintendent of schools overruled his decision and gave the white students only three-day suspensions.

Racial tensions heated up, and one of the black students, Robert Bailey Jr., was beaten by a white teen for attending an all-white off-campus party that Bailey reportedly was invited to.

The next day, according to news reports, a young white man pulled a shotgun on Bailey and his two friends at a convenience store.

Two days later, a group of white students, including those who hung the nooses, taunted Bailey and others, and called them n------. Intimidation and name-calling by white students allegedly continued at the school.

Later that day, on Dec. 4, 2006, a white male reportedly brought a gun on school property, and when students wrestled it away and held him for police, the students were charged and the gunman was merely fined.

In June, after deliberating for less than three hours, an all-white, six-person jury found one of the black students, Mychal Bell, 17, guilty of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery for the Dec. 4 incident. He faces up to 22 years in prison when he is sentenced on Sept. 20.

Five other black students still await trial with more serious charges. The six boys, who were expelled from school, originally faced attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit attempted second-degree murder. Their bail ranged from $70,000 to $138,000, sums that their families could not afford. The real crime the Jena Six committed, however, was challenging racial segregation in their town, and having the audacity to sit under a tree reserved for white students at Jena High School.

The tree was recently cut down, but the racial wounds in Jena — and the nation — still fester.

Today, we still have a separate and unequal justice system. Blacks face disproportionately high prosecution rates and prison sentences.

Sadly, white America is in denial about the persistence of racial intolerance.

The plight of the Jena Six should awaken us all to the racism that still infects this country.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

Shell Oil disregards human rights in Nigeria

(FROM THE ARCHIVES)

By David A. Love

Published by Progressive Media Project and Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

June 25, 1998

The recent death of Nigeria's brutal and corrupt military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, has brought new hopes for democracy in that country. But the Abacha regime did not rule alone. It worked hand in glove with oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. It's time for Shell to come clean about its misdeeds in Nigeria and assist in the democratic process.

International human-rights groups have accused Shell of actively supporting Nigeria's military government, and participating in the regime's human-rights excesses.

Activist-playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists were hung for campaigning against Shell Oil's practices in the Ogoni region. Saro-Wiwa pushed for a greater share of oil revenues to the Ogoni people and a cleanup of Shell's hundreds of oil spills across the region. Human-rights organizations criticized Shell for failing to intervene on behalf of the activists, who were convicted on trumped up murder charges and executed in November 1995.

Shell produces more than half of Nigeria's oil. Formerly known as the breadbasket of Nigeria, this once fertile land in the Niger River delta is reportedly devastated by pollution. According to the British newspaper the Independent, the area emits 12 million tons of methane and 35 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, making it the world's greatest contributor to global warming.

The ecological damage in Ogoni -- caused by years of oil-drilling and flaring gas -- has resulted in health problems. Dr. Owens Wiwa, brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa, says there is a high incidence of asthma, cancer and bronchitis among people who live in the area. Wiwa also makes note of "some bizarre skin diseases and a high level of miscarriages, which is quite different from other areas in Nigeria that are not producing oil.''

Shell denies the charge.

"We have not caused environmental devastation in the Ogoniland,'' Shell International spokesman Eric Nickson recently told the Baltimore Sun. "In fact, we are trying to work with the community and improve life there.'' Nickson blamed the oil spills on sabotage by Ogoni activists.

Shell also must answer to charges that it participated in Abacha's human-rights abuses. According to internal government communications and other confidential sources, Shell asked for armed assistance against local protestors. A Nigerian military official wrote a memorandum stating: "Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence.'' Shell admits it asked for help and bought handguns for the police guarding its facilities but denies paying the military.

A lawsuit filed in the Southern District Court of New York on behalf of the Wiwa family and the other activists alleges that the executions by Nigeria's military junta were conducted with "the knowledge, consent, and/or support'' of Shell Oil. The suit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which calls for federal jurisdiction for civil wrongs committed by foreigners who break international law or a U.S. treaty. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights is the lead counsel in the case.

Shell has responded by asserting that it does not have legal responsibility over its Nigerian operations. The corporation claims it is a mere holding company, a conglomerate of independent subsidiaries and diversified investments. Opponents accuse the company of playing a "shell game,'' claiming that Shell is a tightly knit "super-corporation.''

Before being sentenced to death, Ken Saro-Wiwa addressed the military tribunal: "I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial. ... The company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come. ... The crime of the company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.'' Shell must clean up its act. If Shell does not take responsibility for its actions in Nigeria, it will be hard for consumers to pump their gas with a clear conscience.

Copyright © 1998 by David A. Love

Nothing Good Comes Out of Texas

bushorchimp.com

By David A. Love
Published in BlackCommentator.com
September 13, 2007

Eddie Murphy once said, "My friends always told me: 'You better not go to Texas! They'll f*** you up!'" For African Americans in particular, that state has a troubling legacy of racism and violence.

In recent years, there was the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, and the mass arrests of the Black population of Tulia, Texas on bogus drug charges.

These days, it seems that the individuals and ideas that are doing the most damage to America come out of Texas. Is it something in the water? The air, perhaps? Sadly, the people of Texas are determined to scrape the bottom of their state barrel, collect whatever it is they have scraped up, and present it to the rest of the country as a cruel and tasteless gift.

Of course there was Karl Rove, the "dirty-tricks" Nixon protégé who masterminded the criminal enterprise that is the current White House.

There was attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, crony extraordinaire who placed loyalty to the president above all else, including the Constitution. There was Tom Delay, exterminator and former G.O.P. congressman who gerrymandered the Texas electoral map into a Republican majority, and was indicted for money laundering and conspiracy to violate election laws.

There was No Child Left Behind, a sham program based on smoke and mirrors, a Texas model for high-stakes, corporate-style accountability in the schools that cooked the books, Enron-style, and covered up the high dropout rates of Black and Latino students.

Most of all, there is the Decider himself, the commander-in-chief who arguably was elected to the presidency twice through theft, and appealed to some people, at least initially, because he was the type of person with whom you wanted to have a beer. Of course, and not surprisingly, history already has been written on the worst presidency in American history, before the repudiated Bush presidency has even ended.

As governor of Texas, Bush presided over a killing machine that is the state's death penalty system. Recently, Texas executed its 400th person since reinstating capital punishment in 1982. And the state, while only 10 percent of the U.S. population, has been responsible for one third of the executions. We will never know how many innocent people have been sent to their deaths under the hick town justice of the Lone Star state.

A direct descendant of the extrajudicial lynchings so popular in the Jim Crow-era South, the death penalty in Texas is a product of frontier justice: racist, expedient, and arbitrary. And it is particularly popular among conservative evangelical Christians. It is no accident that 41 percent of death row inmates in Texas are Black, or that 79 percent of Texas executions involve a white victim. And a public defender system is a new concept in Texas. Remember, this is the state where a court once upheld the conviction of a man whose lawyer slept during trial. And they had no trouble executing juveniles and the mentally retarded until prevented from doing so by the Supreme Court.

The case of inmate Kenneth Foster is a good example of all that is bad about the death penalty, and the way in which Texas metes out its curiously arbitrary, sketchy and racially-tinged form of punishment. Foster was sent to death row under a questionable Texas law known as the law of parties. Under that law, the death penalty is imposed on anyone involved in a crime where a murder took place. This means that you don't actually have to kill anyone in order to receive a death sentence. As for Foster, who is Black, he was driving a car with three passengers, one of whom left the car, got into an altercation and shot a man to death in 1996.

Apparently, the law of parties was too problematic even for the current manager of the Texas killing machine, Gov. Rick Perry. Foster's state-sponsored murder was scheduled for August 30, 2007, amid statewide protests and calls from the European Union that Texas enact a moratorium on the death penalty. Perry responded to these outside agitators: "230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas."

Then, days later, despite his tough talk, the governor stopped Foster's execution, the first such intervention of his seven-year tenure. This happened following a 6-to-1 vote by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, recommending a commutation of his sentence to life. An unusual occurrence, to be sure, but it shows that even a backward state such as Texas is susceptible to public pressure and international outrage.

Sparing Foster's life is a step in the right direction, but it can't stop there. Texans must resist the stranglehold that its regressive forces have on their state. The Texas Republican Party runs Texas. The state party's platform, which can be viewed as a blueprint for Bush's policies, proclaims that "the United States of America is a Christian Nation," and that "Our party pledges to exert its influence to...dispel the 'myth' of the separation of church and state." It also states that "We reject the establishment of any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns."

Further, "[t]he Party supports the termination of bilingual education programs" and "urges Congress to repeal government-sponsored programs that deal with early childhood development, and phase them out as soon as possible." The Texas GOP platform also prohibits reproductive health care services in high schools, opposes the Endangered Species Act, and hopes to rescind U.S. membership in the United Nations.

To be sure, there is a long tradition of great Texans who have dared to speak truth to power and fight to make things right. The late Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland and Molly Ivins, as well as Bill Moyers and Jim Hightower are but a handful of people who come to mind. However, it seems that the generous spirit these people represent is being forsaken. The good people in Texas need to have their voices heard, and must refuse to allow the state's bottom feeders to speak for them. Come on Texans, prove me wrong.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

U.S. needs to pay reparations for slavery

(FROM THE ARCHIVES)

By David A. Love
Published by Progressive Media Project and Knight-Ridder Tribune News Service
March, 2000

Reprinted in A Reader For College Writers, 6E (Santi V. Buscemi ed., McGraw-Hill, 2004).


In December, officials from Germany, Eastern Europe and the United States signed a historic agreement to pay $5 billion in reparations to Nazi slave laborers and their families. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the deal the first serious attempt to compensate "those whose labor was stolen or coerced during a time of outrage and shame. It is critical to completing the unfinished business of the old century before entering the new."

Unwittingly, Albright was making the perfect case for reparations to the descendants of African slaves in America. Since the United States has pressured the German and Swiss governments to own up to the sins of their past, shouldn't our country own up to the sins of its past?

Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica and author of the new book, "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks" (Dutton, 2000), believes that the nation's racial problems cannot be solved unless the United States compensates blacks for the massive crime of slavery, the "grievous wrong that has been committed against African Americans, and takes steps to redress that wrong."

Robinson notes that the U.S. government requested 100 slaves to construct the Capitol in Washington, a potent symbol of freedom and democracy. Masters who agreed to lend their slaves to the government received $5 per month per slave. Subsequently, forced labor helped clear the land for the rest of the District of Columbia.

Advocates for reparations point not only to the past injustices of slavery, but to the present racial inequalities that are a manifestation of slavery's legacy. In 1996, 39.5 percent of black children lived in poverty, as compared to 15.5 percent of white children, according to "The Social Health of the Nation" (Oxford University Press, 1999). The infant-mortality rate for African Americans in 1996 was more than twice as high as for whites, a proportional gap larger than in 1970.

Social injustice is accompanied by inequalities in the criminal-justice system. According to Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project, African Americans make up 13 percent to 15 percent of all drug users, yet account for 36 percent of all arrests for drug possession. In 1996, the incarceration rate for black men was eight times that of white men.

In 1865, following the end of the Civil War, Congress passed a bill that called for the seizure of Confederate property and the allocation of 40 acres of land and a mule to each of the former enslaved blacks. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill.

In every legislative session since 1989, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has introduced bill H.R. 40 -- for "40 acres and a mule" -- legislation that would establish a commission to examine slavery and its lingering effects on African Americans and the country as a whole. The commission would then make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies.

"What we're trying to do is start a discussion," says Conyers. "This is the most averted subject matter in the congressional agenda."

Others suggest that the road to reparations is possible through legal action. The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, based in Washington, D.C., plans to sue the U.S. government on this issue.

"Our team is convinced that a solidly crafted lawsuit will help us achieve our reparations," says the group's attorney, Adjoa Aiyetoro. "Much like our ancestors who fought for 250 years to end chattel slavery, we cannot refuse to demand reparations in every forum because it appears that the government is unlikely to give it to us or that we do not have agreement as to what form it will take."

America, your silence on reparations smacks of hypocrisy.

Copyright © 2000 by David A. Love

Black Men are Dying in Philly

By David A. Love
Published in BlackCommentator.com
September 6, 2007

Black men in Philadelphia are an endangered species, murdered at an alarming rate by gun violence.

The city's murder rate is the highest of America's ten largest urban centers. Although Philadelphia has only one-sixth the population of New York City, it has more murders. In 2006, 406 people were murdered in Philadelphia, a trend that shows no sign of relenting through 2007. So far, as of September 4, there have been 279 murders this year.

In fact, the situation is so alarming that Philadelphia City Council members Darrel Clarke and Donna Reed Miller have sued the Pennsylvania legislature, accusing it of placing a stranglehold on the city's ability to enact tougher gun laws.

Unlike New York City, Philadelphia cannot pass its own gun laws. The City Council would like to pass legislation limiting gun purchases to one a month, and strikes at purchasers who buy multiple guns for those who cannot do so because of a criminal record. But the Pennsylvania legislature will not give any municipality that authority. With no waiting period to purchase a gun other than a background check, and police unable to restrict who can carry a concealed weapon, Pennsylvania has one of the country's most lax gun laws. In fact, the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence gave the state a D+ on laws shielding families from gun violence.

Many would suggest that the Philadelphia murder crisis is being ignored for the same reason that the U.S. and the West ignored the cries for help in Rwanda, and continue to do so today, amidst the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The people who are dying are black.

"I stand here today as an outraged black man," said Michael Nutter, who is poised to become the city's next mayor. "And I'm outraged that more people of more races are not outraged." Nutter noted that of the 406 people murdered in Philadelphia last year, 296 were black adult men.

Miami Police Chief John Timoney seems to agree. "There's also some inherent racism. I can guarantee you ... that if 85 percent of the people in big cities getting killed were white, there'd be a different approach to this whole thing. ... They'd be screaming for more federal legislation. They'd be demanding it, and to hell with the NRA," he recently told CBS News.

The NRA is one of the nation's most powerful lobbyists, and its grip on Pennsylvania is apparent. It seems to have more clout than the families in North and Southwest Philly who are being strangled by gun violence. "This legislature, for too long, has been in the control of the NRA," Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said, noting that criminal penalties for receiving a stolen television are harsher than for a stolen gun. "This legislature, for too long, has done things favored by lobbyists, not things favored by people."

The NRA and the power it wields have little to do with freedom, liberty, or constitutional rights, and everything to do with profiting on a myth about the Second Amendment. The amendment says "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Somehow, the gun lobby has ignored the first part of the amendment, and uses the second part of the amendment as a justification for a limitless gun supply. Common sense should dictate that the proliferation of such weapons — now numbering about one for every American — is incompatible with a stable democracy.

In 1991, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called the Second Amendment "the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime...[the NRA] ha(s) misled the American people and they, I regret to say, they have had far too much influence on the Congress of the United States than as a citizen I would like to see - and I am a gun man." Burger also noted, "The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon...[S]urely the Second Amendment does not remotely guarantee every person the constitutional right to have a 'Saturday Night Special' or a machine gun without any regulation whatever. There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase of such firearms..."

The only gun control law to be struck down on Second Amendment grounds was that of the District of Columbia, which was overturned this year by a federal appeals court. One can only hope that this misguided decision, which D.C. will appeal in the Supreme Court, is only an aberration.

And the U.S. must come to terms with the historical role of gun violence in American society. Whether it was the massacre of native populations, the maintenance of slavery, the reign of terror during Jim Crow segregation, or the suppression of free speech and labor unions, the gun was there. It has been a bloody history, not one to be romanticized. And even today, the use of state-sponsored gun violence in a senseless war in Iraq has cost thousands of lives, and only worsened America's reputation in the international community.

At the same time, for Philly and other urban centers, guns are not the only problem, although they are part of a vicious cycle. Philadelphia is mired in poverty — about 30 percent — in spite of the conspicuous signs of prosperity downtown. Many poor, uneducated and unemployed men with lots of spare time and little or no hope make a perfect recipe for disaster. And communities of color often refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, and understandably so, because of a long history of police brutality and shooting first and asking questions later.

Great cities such as Philadelphia cannot fight this battle alone, blocked every step of the way by suburban and rural legislators whose constituents love their guns. Gun violence touches every part of society, big city and small town alike. And suburbanites, who believe their responsibility to the cities ended with the onset of white flight, must realize that we will rise or fall based on our cities. For example, if Philadelphia is consumed by gun violence and unable to attract new residents and business, the entire region will suffer.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature recently passed a bill that would compel police departments to trace illegal guns confiscated from minors and report them to a state police registry, and expand the definition of firearms to include rifles and shotguns. Gun control advocates say the legislation, which was backed by the NRA, is not enough.

Ultimately, Philadelphia must be freed from the grip of the state legislature and the gun lobby so that it is can develop solutions to stop this bloodletting. The lives of these black men and their families must take priority over the profiteering of arms manufacturers and high-priced lobbyists in Harrisburg.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love