Second Chance for Michael Vick and Other Ex-Felons

Much has been said about Michael Vick’s return to the NFL after serving 18 months in a federal prison for dog fighting.  And I don’t have too much more to add to the discussion.  As a pet owner, I cringe at the thought of someone torturing puppies.  At the same time, there are many people in this world that are not treated as well as dogs.  And not so long ago, this country used dogs as a weapon to torture other people.

I’d imagine that Vick has had more than ample time to ponder over his poor life choices, and the stupidity and cruelty that cost him a $130 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons.  The Philadelphia Eagles are giving him a second chance, and I guess that’s their decision.

But there are thousands, no, millions, of everyday people who have served their time and paid their debt to society, yet they can’t get a minimum wage job flipping burgers.  They need a second chance just to survive. 

This army of lost men and women is unable to support their families and become productive members of society because society will not let them.  They wear a scarlet “F” for felon on their shirt.  And they are punished not only for the crimes they committed.  They receive extra punishment above and beyond their sentence, in the form of life, career and educational opportunities from which they are forever barred.  A person with a criminal record cannot work in certain occupations, is ineligible for certain college tuition loans, and may not qualify for public housing and other public welfare benefits.  That is the sign of a society built on vengeance and retribution, rather than rehabilitation.  It is what some observers call a public banishment or civil death.  Society has cast out the individual in a sense— unable to fully participate in a free society after regaining freedom, remaining a virtual prisoner even after the bars are removed.

And what has all of this punishment for punishment’s sake actually done for America?  The tough on crime approach has helped the careers of some politicians, but surely it hasn’t made us any safer.  I suppose there are some crimes that merit prison time, and people must be held accountable for the harm they do.  But there are few creative, constructive forms of alternative punishment that make the community whole and make the prisoner a better individual. 

At the same time, the U.S. has an overdependence on incarceration, if not an addiction to it.  The nation uses prison bars as its primary method of social control, and as a way to earn profits, too.  The so-called “land of the free” has the most prisoners— in absolute numbers and per capita—in the world.  One in four of the world’s prisoners are locked up in a nation with only 5% of the world’s population.  Brutal dictatorships and repressive communist regimes don’t even come close. 

Broken schools, poor healthcare and early childhood development, and the disappearance of jobs prepare many poor children for little else than a cradle-to-prison pipeline.  Prison walls do not create nurturing environments, but more proficient criminals, who during their lives walk through a revolving prison door.  Many are imprisoned for nonviolent, drug-related offenses for longer and longer periods of time.  Three-strikes laws and other draconian sentencing schemes are way out of proportion to the crimes committed.

The consequences of over-punishment are seen across the country, as states in need of cash cannot afford their ballooning prison budgets.  In California, a federal court has ordered the state to reduce its overcrowded prison population by 40,000 inmates.  If so many inmates are to be released, it makes you realize that many of them probably shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.

America’s reliance on punishment only serves to break up families and communities, rarely helping to rebuild them or those who have served their time.  Many would be surprised to know that the right to vote, a cherished right of citizenship, is denied to 5.3 million Americans with felony convictions.  These felony disenfranchisement laws are a holdover from the Jim Crow era, a time filled with all sorts of bad intentions.  This madness must stop, and Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI) have introduced legislation to restore voting rights in federal elections to millions of disenfranchised people.  How do you expect ex-felons to become productive citizens when they can’t find a job, can’t afford to better themselves through education, and can’t even vote?       

Some are behind bars for the crimes they have committed.  Others are there for crimes they did not commit.  Either way, when they return to the street, the punishment continues.  Punishment on top of punishment does not work, and we have to build up the formerly incarcerated so they do not fall down again.  We have to ensure that they have the opportunity to contribute as full-fledged members of society.

Militia movement again on the rise

 

(The Progressive and McClatchy)

We need to beware of the right-wing militia movement in America. It poses a danger to our democracy. And shamefully, it is fueled by a few mainstream politicians and media personalities.

After a decade out of the spotlight, the militant rightwing “Patriot” movement — which was responsible for such murderous terrorist acts as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that claimed 168 lives and injured 500 — is on the rise.

And according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, this violent coalition of groups is united in their hatred of the government, and of the first black president.

The newly minted report, “The Second Wave: Return of the Militias,” warns that authorities are worried about the acceleration in violent acts by radical right groups.

“Militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and a range of other activists of the radical right are cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing,” says the report. “This is the most significant growth we’ve seen in 10 to 12 years,” according to one source in the report. “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

As many as 50 new militia training groups have formed in two years. Shockingly, one of the groups, the Oath Keepers, consists of current and ex-soldiers and police officers. Its members are concerned about a coming dictatorship, concentration camps and a “New World Order.” And they regard President Obama as “an enemy of the state.”

Meanwhile, sales of guns and ammunition have increased over fears of gun control laws.

The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that in recent months, men with pro-militia, racist, anti-government or anti-Semitic sentiments have committed acts of murder — including the murder of six police officers since April. And a majority of the killers and conspirators were at least partially motivated by the election of Obama.

It’s astonishing that mainstream politicians and media outlets have stoked the fires of militia extremism. This is both irresponsible and dangerous, and will only lead to acts of violence. They have legitimized the hateful and racist propaganda of the Patriot groups, including the outrageous claim that the president is not a U.S. citizen, and that he presides over a fascist-socialist government.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called Obama a Marxist and a racist who hates white people. And he has linked the Obama administration with fascism. CNN’s Lou Dobbs has opened the door for questioning Obama’s citizenship, and has legitimized the conspiracy theories about Latinos wanting to conquer the Southwest.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., suggested that the president was planning reeducation camps for young people. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., channeling Joe McCarthy, warned that there are 17 “socialists” in Congress. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry echoed militia talk when he suggested Texas secede from the Union.

These militia sentiments were on full display at the anti-tax tea party protests, and they have continued at the health care town hall meetings, along with death threats against members of Congress. Some protestors have come to presidential events strapped with pistols and armed with semiautomatic assault rifles, creating conditions that are ripe for violence.

We can’t ignore the threat of homegrown domestic terrorism. The far right militia groups are profoundly undemocratic. We underestimate them at our peril.

Time For Obama To Get Tough On Healthcare (Us Too)

If the ruckus over healthcare reform has taught us one thing, it is that bipartisanship is a dream that never will be fulfilled. And so what if it isn’t?

We must admit, President Obama gave it his best. He went to Washington with an olive branch, with a desire to find common ground with people of different political persuasions, to include everyone in the process. But what he has learned, hopefully, is that bipartisanship is but a means to an end. And in the end, you cannot broker or negotiate with people who have no intent to negotiate, and who really aim to bring you down and destroy you.

Such is the case with healthcare reform, the jewel in the crown for the Obama administration. The president made this the centerpiece of his agenda of change and bold leadership. If done the right way, the nation would succeed in putting the health insurance companies in check, cut the cost of healthcare dramatically, and make healthcare a universal right, like all of those “socialist” countries (the rest of the industrialized world, that is). If the American system of healthcare delivery is so great, why do we have 47 million uninsured people? Why does the U.S. have a higher rate of infant mortality than 28 other countries? Why did 1,500 people recently wait in long lines in Los Angeles for free dental care, eye exams and medical exams?

Of course, the best way of achieving insurance reform is a single-payer system, which would eliminate the intermediary insurance companies entirely. This measure would save the country around $400 billion per year in administrative costs, in other words, all the money they’ve been stealing from us. If you don’t do that right away, the next best thing is a public option, which would allow for a cheaper government-run health plan that people could choose instead of costly private insurance.

Now, when you propose to stop the thieves from stealing your money, the thieves will do whatever they can to maintain their ability to steal. This is natural and expected. The Republican Party and the health insurance industry (with the help of right-wing media) have utilized the militias, the Patriots, the Birthers and the other Obama-haters in order to stop the train of reform. These are the people who have disrupted healthcare town hall meetings—and in some cases brought pistols and semiautomatic assault rifles to presidential events—because they hate government and they want their country back (translated: no more Black presidents).

The response from the Obama administration has been all-too gentlemanly at best, naïve at worst, as if we’re all just playing a friendly game of dominoes at the family cookout. Obama was far too willing to compromise too early, to sell the house to try to gain a few Republican votes that never would materialize. The GOP and their allies have no interest in bipartisanship. Their only goal is to bring down any healthcare reform legislation, and bring down the Obama presidency with it. Of course, it doesn’t help any when you have moderate and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats standing in the way, their only distinction being that they took more of the insurance lobbyist money than other Democrats.

With Democratic control of the House, the Senate and the White House, exactly when would we achieve universal healthcare, if not now? This moment is important not only because of the immediate matter at hand, but because it will define the rest of this administration, and its ability to get anything done. You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don’t bring pork chops to a knife fight.

Obama must succeed. If he loses this battle, we all lose. He is poised to become one of the great presidents, and already has achieved more than many of them. But if he cannot succeed on his cornerstone issue of national healthcare—or at best ends up with a phony reform package with no teeth— he will be unable to achieve much else. He will do what average presidents do, such as give medals to boy scouts or something, host Easter egg hunts on the White House lawn, and receive foreign heads of state for photo ops. And that is not what millions of people voted for in November 2008.

At the same time, if we’ve learned anything else, it is that politics is not a spectator sport. Government requires active participation from the public, and vocal demands that certain things get done. The election should have provided more than enough evidence that people want change. But in a nation that is used to pimping whatever it can to make a buck, change is hard to get. It looks like it is time to take to the streets. Obama must get tough, but supporters of a progressive agenda must do so as well.

Lou Dobbs, Lobbyists, and Lynchmobs United Against Obama

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. But inciting a riot with corporate underwriting and support of the mainstream media is a completely different thing. Add to that the endorsement of a major political party, and what you have is a danger to our democracy.

That is what comes to mind when I look at this crazy Birther movement, those people who refuse to believe that President Obama is a U.S. citizen, and demand that he produce his “real” birth certificate that shows he is Kenyan, or Arab, or Martian, or whatever. At the same time, there is the unwashed, thuggish opposition to healthcare reform- the angry people who are disrupting town hall meetings throughout the nation, hanging lawmakers in effigy and threatening the safety and lives of members of Congress.

These two groups are cut from the same cloth-a white sheet, that is. They are among the right-wing hate groups that were the subject of a report by the Department of Homeland Security called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The report warned that the current recession and the election of a Black president have provided recruitment opportunities for White supremacist and radical right-wing groups. The current environment could lead to confrontations between these extremists and government authorities, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and other examples of domestic terrorism in the 1990s.

These right-wing, anti-government groups are united by their hatred of immigration and Latinos, their hostility towards gun control legislation, and their racial resentment towards President Obama. Those sentiments were on full display at the McCain-Palin campaign rallies in 2008, in which crowd participants called Obama a terrorist and a traitor, carried around Obama monkey dolls and called for his death. And the sentiments were on display at the tea parties, with their abundance of racist, anti-Obama signs. It is no accident that hate crimes and hate groups have increased in recent times, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. James Von Brunn, the White supremacist who opened fire and killed a security officer at the National Holocaust Museum was part of the Birther movement, which itself has racist and anti-Semitic roots. And the President receives 30 death threats a day, posing a challenge to the Secret Service charged with protecting him.

The tea parties were an example of “astroturfing”: top-down, corporate-sponsored activities disguised as a grassroots movement. Two of the lobbying organizations that orchestrated the tea parties include FreedomWorks (a conservative action group led by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey), and the free-market group Americans For Prosperity. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, these two entities are also involved in the orchestrated fringe opposition to healthcare. They provide the loud protestors who disrupt healthcare town hall meetings for the sole purpose of shutting off debate. Americans For Prosperity, for example, operates under the front group Patients United Now. And another anti-healthcare reform group, Conservatives For Patients’ Rights (CPR), has claimed responsibility for recruiting Tea Party activists and other third parties to disrupt the town hall meetings. CPR operates in conjunction with the people who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign. CPR is operated by George W. Bush business partner and private healthcare executive Rick Scott, who was forced to pay an unprecedented $1.7 billion settlement for defrauding taxpayers.

These activities should be denounced, but instead have earned the blessings of the Republican Party. Consorting with Birthers, tea-baggers, fringe hate groups and angry mobs is the way of the new GOP. And the new GOP is actually the old GOP on steroids. A party that thrived for years on the Southern Strategy-appealing to White racism for votes-the Republicans have little else but a Southern Strategy left. Divested of any real ideas and lacking broad-based support, the GOP lost a presidential election, holds a minority in both houses of Congress, and is facing long-term minority party status. They appeal to their shrinking Neanderthal base by displaying their disdain for Latinos and Latino judges, in the face of rapidly shifting demographics. Their base cannot undo the election that placed Obama in office, and they cannot keep back the winds of change that have swept through Washington and the country. Their only alternative is to hate the man for what he is, to question his American-ness, and to stop his administration and its agenda of universal healthcare.

Trying to fight progress, the GOP base is now reduced to playing the role of Bubba, that character from 1950s central casting who was always on hand to beat up a civil rights worker at the segregated lunch counter.

And mainstream media court jesters-cable TV entertainers such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck of Fox News- use the airwaves to legitimize the hate groups, with the apparent support of their respective corporate networks. Dobbs expressed his support for the Birther movement, and Beck charged that Obama hates White people. We would expect nothing else from Fox. But CNN-which touts its journalistic professionalism-cannot claim to be the network of “Black In America”, “Latino In America” or “Generation Islam” while also harboring and enabling an extremist sympathizer such as Dobbs. The Southern Poverty Law Center called on CNN to oust Dobbs for his racism and questioning of Obama’s citizenship, but he remains on the network.

Protest and dissent have played an invaluable role in American history. However, so too has the extralegal presence of the lynchmob. What is passing as the current public “discourse” regarding healthcare reform has only served to elevate the lynchmob. Fortunately, the Democrats have caught on. Hopefully it is not too late.

Blacks and Latinos Hit Harder In Hard Times

I don’t have to tell you that it’s tough out there. I’m talking about the recession, of course. In the end, the bursting of America’s economic bubble is the worst financial news since the Great Depression. And ultimately, it is clear that the deleterious effects of U.S. capitalism know no race, ethnicity or class. Titans of industry are reduced to pauper status, working families are out of work, food, healthcare and a home, and people of all backgrounds are watching their life’s work eviscerate before their very eyes. We are all bit players in the casino, and with a few exceptions such as the lucky bailout winners, most of us have crapped out, the way the casino operators intended it to work.

But at the same time, it’s a little more complicated than that. While "official" unemployment nationwide is high at around 10 percent (far more when you factor in all of those people who are underemployed or have given up all hope of finding a job), unemployment is and always has been much higher in Black and Latino communities. But the gap has widened during this recession. In fact, Black unemployment is nearly double that of Whites, while Latinos are unemployed at a rate one-third higher than their White counterparts. The situation is particularly chronic in New York City, where there are 80,000 more unemployed Blacks than Whites, even though there are about 1.5 million more Whites than Blacks in that city.

One explanation is that people of color are the folks last hired and first fired, or that their communities have a lower level of entrepreneurship. Some people will be quick to attribute the difference in employment levels to differences in education levels. Their argument is that people of color are lazy and not so smart, and don’t apply themselves. But among those with a college education, as the Economic Policy Institute reported, Black unemployment in recent months has doubled that of Whites.

Perhaps institutional racism can explain some of the difference in unemployment levels. As James Koch, an economics professor at Old Dominion University noted, "When the economy is at or near full employment, employers don't have any choice. They have to hire the people that are available. Right now, employers can be fairly choosy. They may well choose not to hire African Americans."

This notion is worth exploring, at a time when civil rights foes have pushed back against the age of Obama. In the name of "reverse discrimination", they have declared that affirmative action and other diversity programs are a thing of the past. The unqualified minorities are taking all of the good jobs from the ever-qualified and ever-capable White men, they say. Blacks have the White House, after all, so what more do they want?

These malcontents yearn for the day when people of color were relegated to captive labor, or migrant labor, out of sight and out of mind, and nothing more. They point to the Supreme Court ruling in Ricci v. Stefano. In Ricci, the court found in favor of 17 aggrieved White New Haven firefighters (and one Latino) who claimed they were discriminated against in promotions after they passed a promotional exam. When no Black firefighters passed that exam, in a city where people of color are 60% of the population, the city discarded the results.

Little is said, however, of the recent ruling by a federal judge that New York City discriminates against people of color in the hiring of its firefighters. Specifically, New York City, which is over 60% of color, has a fire department which is over 90% White (and nearly all male), a statistic that stands in marked contrast to other major cities. Blacks and Latinos disproportionately failed the recruitment exams, and those who did pass were placed further down the list than White candidates. The judge determined that "the city did not take sufficient measures to ensure that better performers on its examinations would actually be better firefighters." He added that "when an employment test is not adequately related to the job for which it tests – and when the test adversely affects minority groups – we may not fall back on the notion that better test takers make better employees."

In a majority-minority city such as New York, African Americans and Latinos are seldom found as firefighters, and some professions apparently are the functional equivalent of a family business. It seems more than mere coincidence that unemployment among people of color has skyrocketed.

Some people will always point to the scores, but the truth is that intelligence, achievement and merit cannot be reduced to a single score. But gatekeepers in education and the professions have long used standardized testing as a tool to keep racial, ethnic, class and gender diversity from entering the gate. The tests and the racism always went hand in hand. As anthropologist Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban points out in Race and Racism: An Introduction, standardized intelligence testing was born of the eugenics movement and the IQ tests. These pseudo-scientific tests were first used to prove that immigrant groups, "certain undesirable non-Anglo-Saxons - especially Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Russians, and Italians - ‘were mentally defective.’" What worked as a tool of class and ethnic discrimination against European immigrants was then utilized to prove the racial inferiority of "Negro, Mexican and Spanish-Indian children." And according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, "IQ tests are nothing more than a type of achievement test which primarily measures knowledge of standard English and exposure to the cultural experiences of middle class whites." Yet, society still relies on these exams, commonly known today as the SAT, ACT, GRE, MCAT, GMAT, LSAT, and bar exam, among others.

Society’s gatekeepers have a lot of power. They decide who gets the job and why. They determine who is a team player, who is a good fit, who is fit to lead and who is not. They decide who is too much of this or not enough of that, who is qualified, underqualified, or overqualified. They decide if an applicant’s name sounds too "Black" or "Latino", whatever that means. They determine whose hair looks too Black. Gatekeepers create the reality, however subjective, flawed or biased the methodology. They choose the images in Hollywood and on TV, and which people will portray criminals or upstanding citizens, or nothing at all. Gatekeepers make the policies that create a mostly Black and Brown prison population, and a mostly White legal profession. They decide to fill the special education classes and foster care systems with children of color, who will, in turn, fill the prisons. Gatekeepers decide to have a panel discussion on a cable news program, and the topic is the nation’s first Latina Supreme Court justice, yet none of the panelists are Latinas.

And gatekeepers lack diversity, in a nation that is becoming more and more diverse by the day. Often, their goal is to maintain a system where everyone looks the same, like the good ol’ days. That is why steps are needed to ensure that the game is not rigged, as it has been for so long, so that we do not revert to the nation’s default settings of power and privilege.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates - who had a less than positive experience with the Cambridge police department of late - said it best in his commencement address to Berea College in 2008:

For me, no matter how intelligent I may or may not be, for me to have been one of those six black boys who graduated from Yale in 1966, affirmative action was a class escalator. As far as I’m concerned, ladies and gentlemen, no one in the American academy has benefited more from affirmative action than I have. And that’s why I will go to my grave as an ardent and passionate defender of affirmative action. For me to become so successful in America, and for me to become a gatekeeper of American society and stand at the gate and protest affirmative action to keep out women or people of color would make me a hypocrite as big as Justice Clarence Thomas, and I’m not that kind of person. We need more affirmative action in this country, not less affirmative action. I don’t care what the White House says, and I don’t care what the minority on the Supreme Court says, and that’s the subject of my address this afternoon.

(From BlackCommentator.com.)