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Cashing In On Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman

Now that a year has passed since Edgar Ray Killen was put behind bars for the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, Philadelphia, MS is ready to cash in.

In June, 2005, forty-one years after a band of racists murdered the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, MS, James E. Prince III said he was telling his fellow white townspeople that

if they can't be behind the call for justice because it's the right thing to do--and that's first and foremost--then they need to do it 'cause it's good for business.

Another year later, in July 2006, Prince, along with Stanley Dearman, Prince's predecessor as editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, and State Senator Gloria Williamson have launched a public relations campaign to bring a proposed civil rights museum to Philadelphia, MS.

Jeff Edwards, staff reporter for the Neshoba Democrat, writes:

In the coming months, members of the committee [charged with studying the possibility of a museum] will decide on a location and possible funding sources. . . .

"The Killen trial . .  . made more people aware that we needed such a museum. It had a great deal to do with attention on the civil rights era and I suspect Neshoba County will be a lead character at the museum," [Williamson said].

Stanley Dearman, who covered the civil rights murders and subsequent investigation, said a museum would be very important for the state and Neshoba County.

"It's important to preserve that history and have it in one place for scholars and school groups to see," Dearman said.

He hopes Philadelphia will be considered for the museum site, noting the importance it played in the civil rights movement.

"It would be an excellent choice for it," Dearman said. "Neshoba County is on the map as far as the civil rights movement is concerned. It was put on the map by what the Klan did in 1964."

Dearman thinks he can support both a Mississippi civil rights museum and a monument  to the Confederacy, but why does the Klan get to decide where the civil rights museum will go?

The way Prince tells it, Philadelphia has redeemed itself from its own history and is now a light unto the nations, for which a civil rights museum is its just reward:

After 40 years, business and civic leaders here called for justice because it was the right thing. Soon there was a statewide chorus that crossed racial, political and religious lines.

Mr. Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison last year for orchestrating the 1964 murders of James Earl Chaney, Michael H. Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, young men who had been organizing a black voter registration drive.

To the whole world Philadelphia was long a symbol of hatred, yet now has become a symbol of hope and reconciliation.

Though Philadelphia is largely a city of good, God-fearing souls, Prince cannot appeal to devout sentiment for very long without returning to crass promises of earthly rewards.

Such a museum could be another spoke in our tourism-driven economy while telling a story that much of the world wants - and needs - to hear.

The world doesn't want to hear that Mississippi in 2006 is protecting white, racist murderers. Let's tell the world that we're done with racism and make us some cash.

Prince got himself onto the subject of redemption in the first place by mentioning a recent article in the NY Times.

Even the normally critical New York Times observed about us recently that the June 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen was "a redemption for the small town of Philadelphia, Miss."

But this only half true. The full sentence in the NY Times reads:

Mr. Killen’s manslaughter conviction in June 2005 was hailed as a long-awaited victory for the civil rights movement and a redemption for the small town of Philadelphia, Miss., outside of which the killings occurred (emphasis added).

Was hailed as a redemption by whom? Perhaps by Prince but not by the NY Times.

As the saying goes, a half truth is simply a lie.

The NY Times article, which Prince quoted out of context, covered Judge Marcus Gordon's rejection of Edgar Ray Killen's latest request to be released from prison on appeal bond. Before Gordon's decision, when it looked like Killen might get to live the rest of his days as a free man, many of Prince's journalist colleagues thought it important to take a moral stand, decrying the possible outrage. Prince was silent.

My advice to Prince, if he wants to pull off his next PR stunt, is get a little more comfortable saying "Black" and "African American." He managed it once in the first 100 words of his editorial, when he mentioned that Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman "had been organizing a black voter registration drive."  But mentioning Blacks again, 100 words later was a little more than he could handle.

Successfully lobbying for the museum would benefit this entire region of the state as we embrace our rich cultural heritage, from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians to the Jewish influence in Meridian and beyond statewide.

Who were those civil rights for again?

James Prince: "This is a real opportunity for East Mississippi."

Whose culture and history are we remembering?

James Prince: "This is a real opportunity for East Mississippi."

Rumble at the APA Convention

There is one thing I should add to my previous post about the American Psychological Association's role in sanctioning, and perhaps even facilitating, US torture of detainees in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

While the APA under current president Gerald Koocher has been alarmingly complicit in cultivating the role of psychologists as SERE/BSCT* operators in interrogations, members have also protested. Mark Benjamin reports that when the APA came out with its "ethical" guidelines last year,

[s]everal civilians close to the APA task force criticized the final product for failing to make a clear statement about the excesses of the "war on terror" and failing to explicitly say what psychologists can and cannot do. "It is a bunch of platitudes without any situational reality to it," said Jean Maria Arrigo, a civilian psychologist who served on the APA task force and founder of the Intelligence Ethics Collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "This was not a politically adequate document. There are no specifics in it. We needed to at least say that we can't do waterboarding," Arrigo said. . . .

"Koocher was involved in appointing the task force, he strongly guided and monitored it and had taken the position of representing the document," she said. . . .

Task force member Michael Wessells, a psychology professor at Randolph-Macon College, resigned from the task force in protest early this year. According to his resignation letter, which he provided to Salon, "At the highest levels, the APA has not made a strong, concerted, comprehensive, public and internal response of the kind warranted by the severe human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay."

Within hours of the publication of Benjamin's article, longtime APA member Greg Korgeski responded:

[W]hen these "consultations" involve advising the military on things such as the best means to make use of a person's fears and vulnerabilities, on the use of methods such as sleep deprivation and the sexual assault of prisoners to break them down, there is no more honest word than "torture" to describe what they are engaged in. Essentially, the APA is endorsing its members committing war crimes. . . .

I will not be able to continue my membership in the APA unless its policy in support of torture is changed immediately. I know that many of my colleagues must feel the same.

This year's APA conference is just a couple of weeks away (in New Orleans, of all places). Physicians for Human Rights (my employer) is calling on the APA to use the event as an opportunity "to explicitly prohibit its members from designing, implementing, or assisting in interrogations."

The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have adopted guidelines prohibiting physicians from directly participating in interrogations. Military guidelines for health personnel, recently revised by Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs, William Winkenwerder, Jr., now express a preference for assigning psychologists, rather than physicians, to the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) in use at Guantanamo and other US detention facilities.

“Psychologists working in the national security setting need and deserve the same ethical protection provided to other health professionals,” stated Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR. “The leadership of the APA would do them a great service by bringing their ethical policies regarding interrogation in step with the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, and explicitly prohibit psychologists from participating in interrogations.”

Seems like the APA meeting could get kind of interesting this year. Here's hoping the APA can clean up its act. And yes, I know that could mean some of those SERE/BSCT operators will be out of a job. But, hey, if they all come down to New Orleans, maybe they can get some work at Guantanamo on the Mississippi.

~

* SERE refers to the Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape School, where instructors, including psychologists, teach US Special Forces to resist interrogation by subjecting them to torture techniques  they might face if captured. For more on SERE, and the inappropriate role of SERE Instructors in US interrogations, see Mark Benjamin's article from last month, Torture Teachers.

Torture Experts Write APA Policy on Interrogations

DSCN5412.jpg, originally uploaded by BenTG.

[If you are here from John Grohol's PsychCentral, you can find my rebuttal to his post here (at the new location for this blog). Also note that Grohol has refused to respond to my rebuttal. --BG]

And then shut down the American Psychological Association.

It turns out this little tangential ethical concern about medical participation in interrogations is at the very center of how the US has been carrying out its torture policies. It has begun to appear that the involvement of psychologists in interrogations is, in fact, the smoking gun that proves torture is an integral part of US policy in the so-called War on Terror.

Though the American Medical and American Psychiatric associations have both prohibited their members from participating in interrogations of detainees, the American Psychological Association has been taking a more permissive stance.

Salon.com's Mark Benjamin:

Last summer, the APA adopted new ethical principles drafted by a task force of 10 psychologists, who were selected by the organization's leadership. That controversial task-force report, which is now official APA policy, stated that psychologists participating in terror-related interrogations are fulfilling "a valuable and ethical role to assist in protecting our nation, other nations, and innocent civilians from harm."

Why is the APA's stance so different from that of the other two associations? Could it be because the APA's policy recommendations were made by military men?

Salon has learned that six of the 10 psychologists on the task force have close ties to the military. The names and backgrounds of the task force participants were not made public by the APA; Salon obtained them from congressional sources. Four of the psychologists who crafted the permissive policy were involved with the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or served with the military in Afghanistan -- all environments where serious cases of abuse have been documented. . . .

Task force member Col. Larry James was the chief psychologist for the intelligence group at Guantánamo in 2003. In 2004, James was at Abu Ghraib working as the director of the behavioral sciences group in the interrogation unit there. His biography said he was sent to Abu Ghraib "in response" to the abuse scandal. Requests to interview James were rebuffed; U.S. Army Medical Command spokeswoman Cynthia Vaughn referred Salon back to the APA.

And it gets even creepier.

Col. Morgan Banks spent four months during the winter of 2001 and 2002 "supporting combat operations" at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where serious abuses have been reported. Banks told Jane Mayer of the New Yorker last summer he had also "consulted generally" on Guantánamo interrogations, but could not recall any specific cases. Banks' biography lists him as one of the founders and the senior psychologist at the Army's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program at Fort Bragg, N.C., where the military trains elite soldiers to resist torture in case of capture. The techniques used to harden those soldiers against torture -- sleep deprivation, isolation, sexual humiliation, bags on the head, long exercise -- have been used on detainees in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. (Emphasis added.)

Remember Benjamin's Salon article from last month? There he reported that SERE "taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba." Now it seems that one of the torture teachers essentially wrote the book on torture techniques  and then helped write the policy that would allow his students to be involved in interrogations.

Other military psychologists on the APA ethics task force include another SERE school veteran and two others involved directly in military operations.

If you listen to APA president Gerald Koocher, who hand-picked the ethics task force, or APA director of ethics, Stephen Behnke, you might feel slightly reassured to hear that "[p]sychologists take advisory or consultative roles in relation to interrogations to help ensure interrogations are safe, legal, ethical, and effective."

However, in at least one case, the psychologists on hand were actually calling the shots on torture.

[T]he presence of a psychologist did not prevent the interrogation of so-called 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Khatani at Guantánamo from turning brutal. Khatani was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself, and exercised to exhaustion during interrogations that lasted 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days.

Part of the plan was to humiliate Khatani and submit him to extreme psychological stress. He became exhausted, disoriented and hopeless. He was called a homosexual, forced to wear a mask and dance, and leashed and made to perform dog tricks. Interrogators hung pictures of fitness models on his neck and had a female interrogator "invade his personal space," according to the unredacted interrogation log obtained by Salon.

To help break down Khatani's psyche, the interrogation team included a psychologist, Maj. John Leso, a member of the military's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, called BSCTs. The teams are a newly minted tool in the "war on terror." They include psychologists who are supposed to help interrogators break down resistance and pry loose useful information. Former Guantánamo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller called the teams "essential in developing interrogation strategies" in a September 2003 internal military report.

At various points during the questioning of Khatani, Leso's BSCT operators instructed interrogators to keep the prisoner awake, force him to stop staring at a wall, and advised on the effectiveness of techniques. "BSCT observed that detainee does not like it when the interrogator points out his nonverbal responses," reads an entry in the log from Dec. 29, 2002. (Emphasis added.)

If the BSCT operators were calling the shots just this once, that's one time too many.

There is reason to be concerned, however, that the Khatani interrogation was not an isolated incident. If BSCT operators are widely guiding interrogations, then Mark Benjamin may have just unraveled the torture scandal at the level of US policy decisions and how the APA stepped forward to enable them.

A Small Measure of Justice

Killen will stay in jail
By Jerry Mitchelll
Clarion Ledger

PHILADELPHIA — Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon concluded today that Edgar Ray Killen should remain in prison while he appeals his conviction for organizing the Klansmen who killed James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on June 21, 1964.

“I’m not sure I have the authority” to grant an appeal bond, Gordon said at a hearing here Friday on Killen’s request to get out of jail. He noted that the state Supreme Court had rejected on a technicality the appeal of his decision to rescind an earlier appeal bond and that Killen’s lawyers had not refiled an appeal.

But Gordon added, even if he had the authority, there is “no evidence presented today” that would compel him to release Killen.

It is a sad irony to have to keep advocating for the right thing to happen in just this very small corner of the vast map of injustices in Mississippi. Still I am glad Killen will continue to do a little more of the time he deserves. He will not live long enough to adequately suffer appropriate consequences for his actions.

Progress?

A year ago, on June 21, 2005, at the Neshoba County Courthouse, in Philadelphia, MS, former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

According to James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, the Killen conviction announced "a new dawn in Mississippi, one in which the chains of cynicism and racism have been broken and we are free, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

A year later, on July 1, 2006, a statue of a Confederate soldier, a monument to racism and slavery, was returned to the Neshoba County Courthouse lawn.

The monument was damaged in a storm in 1990, but the Neshoba County Monument Restoration Committee raised $13,500 necessary to restore  the monument, first placed on the courthouse lawn in 1912.

Last year, following the Killen conviction, Stanley Dearman, past editor of the Neshoba Democrat and current member of the Philadelphia Coalition, stated, "There's some sort of cosmic justice working somewhere."

This year, Dearman was listed as one of the members of the Neshoba County Monument Restoration Committee. Did he help raise the $13,500 to restore the Confederate soldier to its place in front of the courthouse where Killen was convicted of manslaughter (but not murder)?

Tomorrow, Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen's attorneys will argue yet again for an appeal bond, based on Killen's deteriorating health. If they are successful, Killen may be able to spend the rest of his days yet again a free man.

Today, in a column in Jackson, Mississippi's Clarion Ledger, Gary Pettus said that if Killen is released it will be "a final victory for Mississippi's dark side."

Yesterday, the Neshoba Democrat, which is based in Philadelphia, MS, published an an article by Debbie Burt Myers, mostly rehearsing the arguments of Killen's defense. The article does not quote anyone stating what would be wrong with releasing Killen. The Neshoba Democrat has not, to my knowledge, published any coluumn or editorial demanding justice regarding tomorrow's appeal by Killen's lawyers.

The Neshoba Democrat is prominently linked at the bottom of the Philadelphia Coalition's website. James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, is also co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition, a multi-racial organization, which states its mission is "to seek the truth, to insure justice for all, and to nurture reconciliation."

Yesterday's edition Neshoba Democrat also included an article by David Sanders putting "in context" Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign speech at the Neshoba County Fair, in which Reagan said,

I believe in states' rights. I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to the federal establishment.

Sanders' idea of context is to quote opinions that "Nothing about Ronald Reagan ever suggested — nothing in his policies, nothing in his background — that race was made an issue." Earl Ofari Hutchinson would beg to differ, as would I.

A year ago, the Philadelphia Coalition declared, "Others responsible for this crime must be brought to justice as well."

A year later, I received an email from the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center, asking:

What happened to the Philadelphia Coalition's commitment to bring others to justice in addition to Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen in the Neshoba murders case of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner?

Did a commitment to the pursuit of a full measure of truth and justice on the part of the Philadelphia Coalition ever exist?

In addition to Edgar Ray Killen, there was sufficient evidence to arrest and/or indict on federal charges related to the murders the following men in the 1960s, all still living:

Jimmy Arledge - presently living, Meridian, MS

Sam Bowers - presently living, Central MS Correctional Facility

Olen Burrage - presently living, Philadelphia, MS

James Thomas "Pete" Harris - presently living, Meridian, MS

Tommy Horne - presently living, Meridian, MS

Billy Wayne Posey - presently living, Meridian, MS

Jimmy Snowden - presently living, Hickory, MS

Jimmy Lee Townsend - presently living, Philadelphia, MS

Richard Willis - presently living, Noxapater, MS

Progress?

A year ago, on June 21, 2005, at the Neshoba County Courthouse, in Philadelphia, MS, former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

According to James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, the Killen conviction announced "a new dawn in Mississippi, one in which the chains of cynicism and racism have been broken and we are free, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

A year later, on July 1, 2006, a statue of a Confederate soldier, a monument to racism and slavery, was returned to the Neshoba County Courthouse lawn.

The monument was damaged in a storm in 1990, but the Neshoba County Monument Restoration Committee raised $13,500 necessary to restore  the monument, first placed on the courthouse lawn in 1912.

Last year, following the Killen conviction, Stanley Dearman, past editor of the Neshoba Democrat and current member of the Philadelphia Coalition, stated, "There's some sort of cosmic justice working somewhere."

This year, Dearman was listed as one of the members of the Neshoba County Monument Restoration Committee. Did he help raise the $13,500 to restore the Confederate soldier to its place in front of the courthouse where Killen was convicted of manslaughter (but not murder)?

Tomorrow, Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen's attorneys will argue yet again for an appeal bond, based on Killen's deteriorating health. If they are successful, Killen may be able to spend the rest of his days yet again a free man.

Today, in a column in Jackson, Mississippi's Clarion Ledger, Gary Pettus said that if Killen is released it will be "a final victory for Mississippi's dark side."

Yesterday, the Neshoba Democrat, which is based in Philadelphia, MS, published an an article by Debbie Burt Myers, mostly rehearsing the arguments of Killen's defense. The article does not quote anyone stating what would be wrong with releasing Killen. The Neshoba Democrat has not, to my knowledge, published any coluumn or editorial demanding justice regarding tomorrow's appeal by Killen's lawyers.

The Neshoba Democrat is prominently linked at the bottom of the Philadelphia Coalition's website. James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, is also co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition, a multi-racial organization, which states its mission is "to seek the truth, to insure justice for all, and to nurture reconciliation."

Yesterday's edition Neshoba Democrat also included an article by David Sanders putting "in context" Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign speech at the Neshoba County Fair, in which Reagan said,

I believe in states' rights. I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to the federal establishment.

Sanders' idea of context is to quote opinions that "Nothing about Ronald Reagan ever suggested — nothing in his policies, nothing in his background — that race was made an issue." Earl Ofari Hutchinson would beg to differ, as would I.

A year ago, the Philadelphia Coalition declared, "Others responsible for this crime must be brought to justice as well."

A year later, I received an email from the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center, asking:

What happened to the Philadelphia Coalition's commitment to bring others to justice in addition to Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen in the Neshoba murders case of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner?

Did a commitment to the pursuit of a full measure of truth and justice on the part of the Philadelphia Coalition ever exist?

In addition to Edgar Ray Killen, there was sufficient evidence to arrest and/or indict on federal charges related to the murders the following men in the 1960s, all still living:

Jimmy Arledge - presently living, Meridian, MS

Sam Bowers - presently living, Central MS Correctional Facility

Olen Burrage - presently living, Philadelphia, MS

James Thomas "Pete" Harris - presently living, Meridian, MS

Tommy Horne - presently living, Meridian, MS

Billy Wayne Posey - presently living, Meridian, MS

Jimmy Snowden - presently living, Hickory, MS

Jimmy Lee Townsend - presently living, Philadelphia, MS

Richard Willis - presently living, Noxapater, MS

Hung Out To Dry

Independence Day, originally uploaded by Acreepingmalaise.

Substantive challenges to Bush's rampant abuses of executive power have become so rare that it was truly a shock to learn the US Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay are illegal, under both military law and the Geneva Convention.

The same day the Supreme Court issued its ruling, another revelation hit the press with much less of a splash. On Thursday, Salon.com broke Mark Benjamin's story about an important document found among the thousands of pages of Defense Department pages obtained by the ACLU in a Freedom of Information Act request.

In his article "Torture Teachers," Benjamin explains the special function of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school at Fort Bragg, NC. Officially, the SERE school provides training to elite US troops in how to resist torture. Benjamin's evidence shows that SERE instructors have also been teaching students how to be effective torturers.

A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said instructors from SERE also taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba.

"When I arrived at GTMO," reads the statement, "my predecessor arranged for SERE instructors to teach their techniques to the interrogators at GTMO ... The instructors did give some briefings to the Joint Interrogation Group interrogators...."

There are striking similarities between the reported detainee abuse at both Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and the techniques used on soldiers going through SERE school, including forced nudity, stress positions, isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and exhaustion from exercise.

Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, said, "This is the missing link," proving that "that the SERE training was in fact used, for a time at least, as a basis for interrogations at Guantánamo." [Disclosure: I am an employee of Physicians for Human Rights.]

This missing link--this evidence that US torture practices were cultivated in an elite military training program at Fort Bragg, NC--ought to make it clear the extent to which the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are the function of concerted US policies in the US War on Terror.

The missing link should also be occasion to counter again what Naomi Klein has called "Our Amnesiac Torture Debate," the glossing over by liberals and conservatives, alike, of the long history of the use of torture by the US. Klein cites, as one example,  the evidence, gathered by Alfred McCoy, of how

monstrous CIA-funded experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture," based on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix program and then imported to Latin America and Asia under the guise of police training programs.

The significance of the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is therefore not that the judicial branch is finally beating back the executive excesses the Bush administration (though the legal victory is important for those reasons).

When torture is covertly practiced but officially and legally repudiated, there is still the hope that if atrocities are exposed, justice could prevail.

Klein's point is, essentially, that the rule of law provides seekers of justice with a vehicle for demanding that our governments live up to objective standards of behavior. The Hamdan ruling provides some hope for the rule of law in the US.

I'd like to find the spot behind the White House, where they've got the flag hung out to dry. I'll wave it this Fourth of July the same as I always do: in celebration of the patriots who believe enough in this country--in its people--to demand, often at great risk to themselves, that the US live up to its stated values. A country that produces such seekers of justice--that's something to wave a flag for.

~
NOTES:

• The almost lost version of the song, above, can be found on this.
• Photo is by Eddy.
• This post was partly inspired by Rachel's question.

VOICES FROM THE GULF COAST - Special Issue of Dollars & Sense Magazine

March 29, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Chris Sturr
or Amy Gluckman
617-447-2177

VOICES FROM THE GULF COAST

THE STORIES YOU HAVEN’T HEARD
ABOUT
HURRICANE KATRINA & GULF COAST RECONSTRUCTION

When Hurricane Katrina struck six months ago, the mainstream media was shocked to discover the scope of poverty in New Orleans. And that’s about as deep as the coverage has gone.

Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice has just released its 56-page special issue (March/April 2006) on Katrina. In it, you’ll discover how Katrina exposed—and has intensified—a whole range of unjust systems of racial and economic domination.

Did you know:

• When Katrina struck, the New Orleans jail housed about 6,800 prisoners, including violent felons but also plenty of people awaiting arraignment or trial, like a guy arrested for reading Tarot cards without a permit and homeless people arrested for begging or sleeping on the street. Prisoners were locked in first-floor cells as the water rose; some spent days standing in sewage-filled cells with little food or water. Meanwhile, the facility’s scant two-page evacuation plan was on “this guy’s computer” that got flooded.

But the story goes back much farther. The jail’s population has increased eightfold since the mid-1970s—while the city’s population has dropped. Why? Because the parish sheriff makes money for each prisoner he houses. As one sheriff commented, “fewer inmates translates into less revenue for the jail.” Locking up fewer New Orleanians would mean shrinking the sheriff’s fat patronage-based fiefdom.

• When Katrina struck, it devastated nearly the entire Mississippi coast, in some places for miles inland. Thousands lost their homes. But state and federal relief and reconstruction plans are doing little to help people rebuild their homes or find other housing. In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour decided to spend the state’s entire $5.3 billion federal Katrina relief grant on retroactive flood insurance for otherwise insured homeowners—not a penny for renters, uninsured homeowners, or to repair public housing.

But the story goes back much farther. For years, redevelopment plans in coastal cities like Biloxi and Gulfport have been endangering low-income and black neighborhoods. “There are people here who’ll tell you that developers and local politicians have been trying to flood us out of existence, because with each piece of land, they haul in a bunch of red clay, which is semi-impervious, dump it in the wetlands to build up land on which to put a slab or a parking lot, then on the slab they put a building, a big ‘ole Wal-Mart or something,” says Mississippi historian and community organizer Derrick Evans.

• When Katrina struck, the flooding in New Orleans left behind a layer of toxic sediment—contaminants include arsenic and diesel-fuel substances—in neighborhoods throughout the city. The EPA has not begun any cleanup of the sediment. Government agencies are recommending that returnees wear protective gear like Tyvek suits when they work on their homes but, as environmental justice activist Monique Harden notes, “not one government agency provides this protective gear to people returning to the area.”

But the story goes back much farther. For years, low-income and black communities in Louisiana have faced the massive legal(!) dumping of toxic pollutants. In fact, the historic African-American community of Mossville, La., is the focus of the first-ever environmental human-rights lawsuit brought against the U.S. government, now pending before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

These are just some of the in-depth stories you’ll read in this special issue of Dollars & Sense. The issue includes:

• Repopulating New Orleans – How did San Francisco do what a top economist says New Orleans cannot?

• Gone to Mississippi – A journey along the state’s devastated coast

• Activist Perspectives on Katrina: Three Interviews

Mississippi historian and activist Derrick Evans – “Ground Zero of Someone Else’s Future”
East Biloxi community activist Jearlean Osborne – “The Storm of Life after Katrina”
Environmental justice activist Monique Harden – Katrina Hits Cancer Alley

• Down by Law – Orleans Parish Prison before and after Katrina

• Bringing Them All Back Home – Housing in New Orleans, six months later

• SPECIAL PULLOUT CENTERFOLD – Rogues’ Gallery of Katrina Profiteers / Map of the Katrina Diaspora / Roster of progressive Gulf Coast organizations

• And more!!!

Authors and editors available for interviews – contact Chris Sturr or Amy Gluckman at (617) 447-2177.


Founded in 1974, Dollars & Sense explains the workings of the U.S. and international economies and provides left perspectives on current economic affairs. It is edited and produced by a collective of economists, journalists, and activists who are committed to social justice and economic democracy. 

Vague And Overbroad Powers

The Black Commentator's Margaret Kimberly notes that Halliburton has won yet another multi-million dollar government contract—this one to build "temporary detention facilities" in case of an "immigration emergency."

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts.

Kimberly quotes the passage, above, from Halliburton's press release and then comments:

Anyone paying a little bit of attention will ask, "What immigration emergency?" If there is an immigration emergency looming on the horizon it is a big secret. Of course immigrants will be the first ensnared in the net that big brother Bush has in mind, but the net won't stop with them.

What sort of national emergency requires detention centers? America has plenty of prisons. More of our population is behind bars than in any country on earth. There are detention centers for immigration in existence already. As for helping in case of a natural disaster, hurricane Katrina proved that saving American lives is not on the Bush agenda.

When the word detention comes up, hairs should rise on the back of every neck. Thanks to the Patriot Act and the creation of "enemy combatants" these detention centers can be used to lock up anyone for any reason for any length of time that Uncle Sam wishes.

Kimberly hopes for the "best case scenario" in which "this contract may be just the latest hand out to the welfare queen of corporate America," but she also entertains the more likely possibility that "our government is planning to create more [Jose] Padillas." I say "more likely" because history suggests this development is nothing less than a revival of J. Edgar Hoover's Emergency Detention Program, detailed in a 1976 Congressional report:

The development of plans during this period for emergency detention of dangerous persons and for intelligence about such persons took place entirely within the executive branch. In contrast to the employee security program, these plans were not only withheld from the public and Congress but were framed in terms which disregarded the legislation enacted by Congress. Director Hoover's decision to ignore Attorney General Biddle's 1943 directive abolishing the wartime Custodial Detention List had been an example of the inability of the Attorney General to control domestic intelligence operations. In the 1950s the FBI and the Justice Department collaborated in a decision to disregard the attempt by Congress to provide statutory direction for the Emergency Detention Program. This is not to say that the Justice Department itself was fully aware of the FBI's activities in this area. The FBI kept secret from the Department its most sweeping list of potentially dangerous persons, first called the "Communist Index" and later renamed the "Reserve Index," as well as its targeting programs for intensive investigation of "key figures" and "top functionaries" and its own detention priorities labeled "Detcom" and "Comsab"(emphasis added).

Director Hoover advised Attorney General Clark in March 1946 of the existence of its Security Index, although he did not say that it had existed since Attorney General Biddle's 1943 directive. The Index listed persons "who would be dangerous or potentially dangerous in the event of . . . serious crisis, involving the United States and the U.S.S.R." The Justice Department then prepared a memorandum concluding that the available options for action in an emergency were a declaration of martial law or suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. The FBI Director recommended going to Congress to secure "statutory backing for detention" (emphasis added).

After a conference between Department and FBI officials, the FBI submitted a lengthy analysis of its standards for classifying potentially dangerous persons. The memorandum gave specific examples of "Communists and Communist sympathizers whose names appear in the Bureau's Security Index." However, the FBI did not provide any specific examples in the category "Espionage Suspects and Government Employees in Communist Underground." Assistant Director Ladd advised Director Hoover of the reason for excluding any such examples:

The Bureau has identified over 100 persons who are logically suspected of being in the Government Communist Underground; however, at the present time, the Bureau does not have evidence, whether admissible or otherwise, reflecting actual membership in the Communist Party. It is believed that for security reasons, examples of these logical suspects should not be set forth at this time. (emphasis added)

The Director noted, "I most certainly agree. There are too many leaks."

This past week there was a related revelation about a central repository of alleged terrorism suspects (via Julius Speaks):

The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of alleged international terrorism suspects or people who aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, according to counterterrorism officials.

The list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center - created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency - contains a far greater number of international terrorist suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed.

The keeping of large lists of "suspects" is also part of the Hoover heritage. The Custodial Detention List was established in the early 1940s, abolished by Attorney General Francis Biddle in 1943, and immediately re-invented by Hoover as the Security Index, which was maintained through the early 1970s, when it was re-named as the Administrative Index. At each stage in the game, there were subsidiary indices—such as the Communist Index, the Reserve Index and the Agitator Index—less well-known to the Attorney General and Congressional oversight committees. The 1976 Congressional report states that

By early 1951, the total had increased to 13,901 names [on the Security Index] as the result of an FBI decision after the outbreak of the Korean War to broaden "the basis for inclusion in the Security Index to include alI active members of the Communist Party." The size of the Communist Index, as contrasted with the Security Index, was indicated by the figures from the New York field office which had 2,897 names on the Security Index and 42,000 names on the Communist Index. Since the Communist Index was based on "allegations of Communist activity," it was "a measure of investigations performed." If this proportion applied "throughout the field," as the FBI memorandum suggested, then the Communist Indexes in the field offices contained over 200,000 names.

The Bush administration says we should take some comfort in knowing that US citizens comprise "only a very, very small fraction" of the 325,00 names in the National Counterterrorism Center's central repository. "The vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.," a Bush administration official said.

The comments of ACLU legislative counsel for privacy rights, Timothy Sparapani, are more to the point:

We have lists that are having baby lists at this point, they're spawning faster than rabbits.... If we have over 300,000 known terrorists who want to do this country harm, we've got a much bigger problem than deciding which names go on which list. But I highly doubt that is the case.

The existence of these over-swollen lists is evidence of what the new, Halliburton-built detention centers are intended for. The development of an infrastructure for mass detentions does not come out of the blue. It has long been a desired power of the federal law enforcement. Even in 1974, after many of these earlier programs came to light and the Attorney General demanded more precise "guidelines" for how security lists would be maintained, the 1976 Congressional report concluded that "the broad claims of power in the hands of the Executive branch could readily permit a return to the vague and overbroad domestic intelligence policies of the past."

And readily permit a return they have.

FURTHER READING
FOX Unleashes Vile McCarthyite Smear Campaign Against Cindy and the Peace Movement

More Interview Excerpts At Dollars & Sense Blog

  DSCN1117 
  Originally uploaded by BenTG.

Last week, I posted two excerpts from my interview with Shone, about her experiences surviving Katrina in Biloxi, MS.

Shone weathered the storm with her six children and others, at her mother's home, in the neighborhood called The Point, which was among the hardest hit in Biloxi. Almost every building was destroyed or very seriously damaged.

The house Shone and her family were in filled with about five feet of water and was carried off of its foundation into a neighboring yard.

Part I: "The wind was blowin' so hard, we thought those kids was gonna get blowed out the attic."

Part II: "He was like, no, I can't see it, I don't have time."

MS Blogging At Dollars & Sense Blog

I got back from Mississippi on Monday evening and have been blogging over at the dollars & sense blog. Here are some of the recent posts:

Resources

Railroad Tracks

Gayle Tart: "you wanna say no, I can't do it, I just can't, not anything else, not another problem, not another person."

Nothing like this has ever happened in America

Alice T: "I was left there for a reason, to help out."

Miss TT

You can also go over to my flickr page to check out some of my photos from the trip.

Before Katrina: Modern Day Debtors' Prison In Gulfport, MS

Gulfport, MS was in the news over the weekend with a jaw-dropping story. Saturday's US News & World Report told of a class action suit against the city, concerning what amounted to a debtors' prison before Hurricane Katrina:

Last July, a homeless man named Hubert Lindsey was stopped by police officers in Gulfport, Miss., for riding his bicycle without a light. The police soon discovered that Lindsey was a wanted man. Gulfport records showed he owed $4,780 in old fines. So, off to jail he went. Legal activists now suing the city in federal court say it was pretty obvious that Lindsey couldn't pay the fines. According to their complaint, he lived in a tent, was unemployed, and appeared permanently disabled by an unseeing eye and a mangled arm. But without a lawyer to plead his case, the question of whether Lindsey was a scofflaw or just plain poor never came up. Nor did the question of whether the fines were really owed, or if it was constitutional to jail him for debts he couldn't pay. Nobody, the activists say, even bothered to mention alternatives like community service. The judge ordered Lindsey to "sit out" the fine in jail. That took nearly two months.

[U]p until Hurricane Katrina hit, [Gulfport police were] beating the pavement looking for those who owed fines for things like public profanity--at $222 a pop. The result of Gulfport's fine-reclamation project was that while it collected modest sums of money, it also packed the county jail with hundreds of people who couldn't pay. The Southern Center for Human Rights filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Gulfport last July. Attorney Sarah Geraghty says that before bringing the case against the city, she witnessed hundreds of court adjudications involving Gulfport's poor in which no defense attorney was present or even offered. Many defendants, Geraghty said, were obviously indigent, mentally ill, or physically disabled, like Hubert Lindsey; some had been jailed for fines they had already paid. One mentally ill woman attempted suicide by jumping from an elevated cell in the county jail after she was picked up for having failed to pay several city fines; the lawsuit alleges that police then grabbed her again on the same charge a few months later, causing her to miss the surgery scheduled to fix the broken bones in her feet.

As we attempt to understand the observable disparities in who gets relief and what gets rebuilt, it is important to keep in mind the city's demonstrated attitude towards its poor. It is also important to keep in mind what strips of pavement the city was beating and whom it tended to be looking for. The Amended Complaint from the lawsuit, which attorney Sarah Geraghty has sent me, describes

a special force of police officers charged with patrolling the streets of Gulfport to arrest citizens who have failed to pay fines assessed by the Gulfport Municipal Court. These officers conduct periodic sweeps, during which they search the streets for people who look as though they might the City old fines. During these sweeps, the officers go into predominantly African-American neighborhoods and stop people in the streets without any independent reason or suspicion, but for the sole purpose of checking to see if they owe the City old fines. Those who owe fines are taken to jail.

The state of Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black Americans in the country [PDF]. Second is Louisiana. Mississippi and Louisiana are pretty much tied for the highest poverty rates in the US, both hovering just below 20% statewide. We cannot discuss the effects of Katrina and the issues around reconstruction without serious, ongoing considerations of race and poverty.

Further Reading
• Sun Herald, "A lawsuit alleges that practices in Gulfport's Municipal Court are creating a DEBTORS PRISON"
• Southern Center for Human Rights Indigent Defense Cases In The News

(Cross posted on the d&s blog.)

Gulf Coast Trip - January 22-29, 2006

This town has stood up in the face of things
Lots worse than a ninety mile wind
It's not bad storms I'm afraid of today
But the greed that our leaders walk in.

I'll walk along the Boardwalk rail
And feel and hear this ninety mile gale
I can hear the ocean mourn and groan
And I wonder about ships lost out in this storm.

So come on wind and blow out your brains
Blow like a Cyclone across the flat plains
This is just an echo of our world wide storm
That's ripping away our balls and our chains.

--Woody Guthrie, "Ninety Mile Wind" (1944)

This summer, I joined the Editorial Collective of Dollars & Sense, a national popular economics magazine, which has presented progressive analysis of current economic issues and trends for over thirty years. Since September I have been guest editing the March/April issue of the magazine, which we are devoting to economic issues in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

While New Orleans caught one edge of Hurricane Katrina, the storm hit the Gulf Coast of Mississippi head on, causing unfathomable destruction. Nonetheless news coverage of New Orleans has overshadowed, Mississippi. When the mainstream news media does report on Mississippi, we may hear about places like Waveland, Pass Christian, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, and Biloxi, but we don't hear about the African Americans who live there. There are few images of Black Mississippians from the Gulf Coast and no discussion of their communities. Except for Waveland, all of these cities have African American populations that are larger than the national average of 12.3%. As of Census 2000, Pass Christian is 28.2% African American. Gulfport is 33.5% African American. In Bay St. Louis and Biloxi, the numbers are 16.6% and 19%, respectively.

As I have pursued writers who are local activists and survivors from the Gulf Coast region, I have been moved by the experiences of African American activists in Gulfport and Biloxi, whom I have had the opportunity to talk to. In Mississippi, as in New Orleans, the slow responses of FEMA and the Red Cross have harmed storm victims of many ethnicities and economic backgrounds. In both places, however, government inaction has especially harmed African Americans. At this writing, as recovery gets underway, white neighborhoods in Biloxi have been substantially cleaned up; on the other side of town, the African American neighborhood still looks like a bombed out war zone.

One of our writers for the March/April issue is an African American attorney, named Gayle. Gayle is in Gulfport, doing legal advocacy for Katrina survivors facing unfair, opportunistic evictions and other housing problems. She is also a hurricane survivor whose brother and two-year-old nephew died in the storm. Speaking with her on the phone has been overwhelming. In a number of our conversations, Gayle has connected me with other survivors who have lost loved ones or property or both and have first-hand experience of the unavailability of government disaster relief. They tell of FEMA trailers sitting unused in storage lots while survivors live in tents in winter weather; the outsourcing of jobs to corporate contractors; and price gouging on building materials.

The first time we spoke, Gayle expressed considerable gratitude that I cared enough to seek her out. There just hadn't been outside attention to the plights of people in her community, though it had been months since the storm hit. She was eager to write an article for Dollars & Sense, but she also said, urgently, "you have to come here... you just can't understand unless you see it... please come." When they heard about my conversations with Gayle and others from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, the Dollars & Sense Collective agreed that in addition to publishing Gayle, we need to respond to her request.

Dollars & Sense is sending me to Gulfport and Biloxi, and to New Orleans, for eight days, from January 22 - 29. I will document my trip with still images, audio recordings, and video clips. While I am on the Gulf Coast, I will be posting to the Dollars & Sense blog, which we have just added to the Dollars & Sense website. To the extent that time and internet connections allow, I will provide regular updates and photos from my trip. In addition to the photos that you will find in Dollars & Sense blog posts, I will post a larger selection of my photos on my flckr account.

After I return from the South, I will write a report of what I saw there for the March/April issue of Dollars & Sense, and possibly for other publications. I will also get the word out about survivors' experiences in the Gulf by presenting my audio, photographs and video through the Dollars & Sense website and live presentations. As with the March/April issue as a whole, we hope the information I gather on this trip will be useful for activists. The communities I visit will be allowed full access to the audio recordings, photos, and video that I make of them. I will also make a list of the local organizations we have been working with, and of others I may learn about on my trip, that directly address the needs of Katrina survivors; Dollars & Sense will publish the list in the March/April issue and on our website, and I will distribute it at presentations about my trip.

Dollars & Sense is a small non-profit organization on a shoe string budget. This may be the first time that Dollars & Sense has sent someone to do investigative work. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation to help us pay for the trip, you can make donations in $25 increments through our website, or send a check for any amount, with "Katrina Project" in the memo line, to Dollars & Sense, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108.

(Cross posted on the Dollars & Sense blog.)

Coalition Blast Fighter Jets At San Antonio Martin Luther King March

Jeanne D'arc posted on the Martin Luther King Day march in San Antonio, TX, slated to have military jets fly over the marchers. She juxtaposed the news with an appropriate quote from MLK, calling out the insanity of trying to connect the war effort with King's legacy. Below is a press release from the local activists, opposing the military fly over of the march.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT
Tommy Calvert, Jr.
Cell (617) 480-8385

Coalition Blast Fighter Jets At San Antonio Martin Luther King March
Group Thwarted From Rescinding Vote for Jets which Coalition Calls Inappropriate


(SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS) The highly criticized move to include fighter jets in the nation's largest Martin Luther King March has awakened a broad coalition consisting of the original creators of the San Antonio Martin Luther King March, civil and human rights groups, labor unions, peace organizations, neighborhood associations, media leaders, environmental groups, religious leaders, historians, teachers, elected officials and business leaders. The coalition has organized plans to protest the inclusion of a fighter jet by displaying signs with quotes from Dr. King against militarization and war, wearing black and gold arm bands, and releasing doves after the fighter jets pass over.

On Saturday afternoon, 150 community leaders met at Martin Luther King Academy to organize plans at the march and participate in a lecture with Joanne Bland of Selma, Alabama who marched with Dr. King for the Voting Rights Act. The group voted unanimously to provide the new Chair of the MLK Commission, the March committee chair, and Councilwoman Shelia McNeil a book about the essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. because of their roles in allowing the flyover to occur and their inability to provide evidence that Dr. King, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, would support the militarization of a celebration in his honor.

In addition to misquoting and speaking with half-truths about Rev. King's principles, the new group of MLK Commission leaders have used a red-herring to justify their inclusion of the fighter jets; claiming that they wanted the march to be inclusive of the armed forces.

"Members of the military have always been welcome to the march, in fact, that's part of the brotherhood that people feel as participants" exclaimed Tommy Calvert, Jr. whose father was one of the 50 original marchers from 1978 and who has participated in the march since 1981. "However, Dr. King believed that violence and its tools were futile, useless, and called on people to lay down their arms before they came to the table of brotherhood. A fighter jet is an arm, not a soldier, and its inclusion is as ludicrous in the march as a pacifist being invited by the Army to sit before a tank at a military parade."

Kathy Clay-Little, publisher of African-American Reflections newspaper said "We are entrusted with telling the truth about our history and anytime it is misrepresented, twisted to fit an ulterior agenda, or manipulated we cannot remain silent."

The colors of the black and gold arm bands of protestors bear significance. Black represents mourning the fact that the MLK Commission is killing Dr. King's legacy. The yellow portion of the band represents hope for the return to the world and MLK Commission of King's message against violence and militarization and for his work to promote peace, love, and justice.

Esperanza Peace & Justice center director, Graciela Sanchez, affirmed the desire of the group to reclaim the original integrity and history of the march. "It's clear some people live life like King and others are new to his philosophy. And if the day is about honoring his legacy and doing the work he did, then we have to hold our own communities accountable to that legacy and do things consistent with his life."
####

"Diggin' coals so the world can run / And operators can have their fun"

I started to post Pete Seeger's rendition of Malvina Reynolds' "Mrs. Clara Sullivan's Letter," as a tribute to the twelve miners who died after the explosion that trapped them in the Sago Mine on Monday. But I stopped myself because I thought that it might be a stretch to apply the words of the song to this particular situation. This disaster was in West Viriginia; the Reynolds song is about Perry County, KY. This disaster is about safety violations and bad oversight; the Reynolds song is about other labor problems, like "goons on the picket line" who intimidate striking workers.

Turns out there was no reason to hesitate. In one of yesterday's Portside mailings, Jack Radey wrote:

If you really like Dramamine, the NPR reporting on the Sago Disaster was truly charming. They prattled on and on about how the news media got the story wrong, how did this happen? How were the wrong headlines printed?How were people put on this emotional roller coaster?

Then they interviewed a local pastor about the importance of accepting all this and not getting angry. They, like the rest of the media, mentioned in passing that a fight broke out where the families were waiting when the news of the dead was announced. But why were people fighting? There was even mention in one broadcast that the local SWAT team was deployed around the corner from where the families waited, in case disorder broke out. Oh, mine safety violations? Why would that be news? No doubt the families were so angry at the misleading news. Maybe about the fact that 12 of their men were killed in a mine with triple the normal (bad enough) rate of safety violations?

That the local goon squad is there to protect the mine owner and his property from the wrath of the families of the men murdered for his greed?

Oh come now, would anyone suggest that would be news? Remember why our flag (not the one on the courthouse, where no doubt those $25 fine were handed out), our flag, is the color it is?

And then it turns out the Sago Mine is owned by an Ashland, Kentucky company, known as Horizon Natural Resources (HNR). HNR had been facing bankruptcy since 2002 and was bought out in 2004 by the International Coal Group (ICG), led by New York billionaire Wilbur Ross. Ross' m.o. isn't pretty:

After the sale, six union operations previously owned by Horizon were shut down. The nonunion mines remained open.

Under the bankruptcy and reorganization plan, U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Judge William Howard in August agreed that Horizon should not be responsible for $800 million in health insurance contractual obligations to more than 3,000 active and retired United Mine Workers of America union members.

The judge threw out the contract and voided the collective bargaining agreement to make the sale of the mines more appealing to Ross and his partners.

As John Bennett, whose father James was killed in the Sago Mine, said to Matt Lauer on the Today Show (via American Rights At Work):

It’s not just the men that go down there every day that know the mines is [sic] unsafe…we have no protection for our workers. We need to get the United Mine Workers back in these coal mines, to protect [against] these safety violations, to protect these workers.

It's the same old story:

Lauer then asked Bennett “You feel as if the miners speak out they are at risk of losing their jobs?” “Yeah” Bennett answered.

Lest we forget where the rest of the responsibility for these deaths resides, David Corn explained the big picture three and a half years ago (via Jodan Barab), after another mine disaster, in Green Tree, Pa., which, fortunately, was not fatal:

That spirit, though, was not present earlier this year when the Bush administration proposed cutting the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) by $7 million. The administration defended the 6-percent reduction by noting the number of coal mines has been decreasing. Yet coal mining fatalities have gone up for three years in a row. There were 42 mining fatalities in 2001, 29 in 1998. In March, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, maintained the funding cut would cause a 25 percent reduction in the government's mine-safety inspection workforce. As of March, 612 federal mine inspectors were responsible for enforcing safety regulations in 25 states, and there were signs the system has not been functioning well.

Thus Jordan Barab concludes:

And finally, let's take one more step back and take a look at the even bigger picture. This administration has been obsessed with one thing since it took office: tax cuts and favor for its friends. What that translates into is "Shrinking government..." -- at least the part that provides protections for workers -- "to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" as Bush Administration ideolouge Grover Norquist says.

Well "government" isn't some abstract thing. Shrinking government means that agencies like OSHA and MSHA have less power to enforce the law and maintain safe working conditions. So, while drowning government in a bathtub, we're also asphyxiating workers in a coal mine.

So, then, here's Pete, in memory of the twelve men and in solidarity with the one survivor and with all of the affected families and friends. You can read the lyrics here.

Torture Begins At Home (II)

This article should clarify further why to worry about the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 policies and practices. As I will elaborate soon, with another source, the FBI has always had as one of its root purposes the surveillance and suppression of Black radicalism.

Former Black Panthers considered terrorists under Patriot Act
Afro America News
Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Group wants torture used against American citizens to cease

Undaunted by what they call "unconstitutional" methods used under the guise of the Patriot Act, three former Black Panthers are touring the country to bring awareness to their recent interrogation by anti-terrorist law enforcement.

Former Black Panthers members John Bowman, Hank Jones and Ray Boudreaux held a forum, Dec. 8, at the Washington, D.C. office of Trans-Africa. They have in common the suffering they endured in 1971 under interrogation concerning a police shooting in San Francisco.

They were indicted by a grand jury, but the court rendered a decision stating the methods used to obtain information were unlawful and the Panthers members were freed from jail.

Thirty-four years later Bowman, Jones and Boudreaux along with many Black Panthers members once again faced their interrogators from the '70s who are now serving as agents with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, a special division formed under the Homeland Security agency to apprehend suspected terrorists.

"I was quite surprised when I opened the door to see the same two detectives involved in beating me [34 years earlier] standing there. It brought back memories that I will never forget," said Bowman, the former Panther organizer. "This is very difficult for me to discuss in public."

According to Bowman, in 1973 he was stripped naked and beaten with blunt objects, wrapped with blankets soaked in boiling hot water, shocked with electric probes in his "anus and other private parts," punched, kicked and slammed into walls by investigators. The process lasted until investigators got the murder confessions they wanted....

The detectives, Frank McCoy and Edward Erdelatz, retired members of the San Francisco Police Department, now special agents with the Federal Prosecutor's Office, Anti-Terrorist Task Force have repeatedly interrupted the lives of many former Panthers to gain notoriety with the Bush administration by targeting individuals labeled as "terrorists" who were never convicted of wrongdoing.

"Once upon a time, they called me a terrorist, too," explained Boudreaux. "To expedite something in the system, they put a 'terror' tag on it and it gets done. Terror means money. These people [government] have a budget and they are working it."...

Trans Africa President Bill Fletcher expressed the forum's concerned about the erosion of civil rights. "It is ironic that instead of having a press conference in which apologies are being offered to the individuals who were tortured and the many other victims of COINTELPRO, instead we are to call attention to the prosecution of people who were freedom fighters and continue to be."...

"We condemn the persecution transpiring against these individuals. We wish to bring it to light when the word "terrorism" is in the air," said Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. ... Daniels adds that "Before former Attorney General Ashcroft left, he issued a broad ranging edict that all the cases that involved any incident where a police officer had been killed and the case had been closed be re-opened...And if these men and women can be indicted or harassed, it sends a chilling effect," said, Daniels.

Read the rest for more background and to learn more about the event, which was held to promote awareness of these dimensions of COINTELPRO the Patriot Act.

(Part I is here.)

UPDATE: The SF Bay View has an article about the grand jury investigation of Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Hank Jones, and Harold Taylor and an article by John Bowman, "How the US destroyed the Black Panther Party and continues to persecute its veterans."

Holidays Shmolidays (Merry Christmas)

This is good stuff for non-Jews (as well as Jews) to read. Aron states precisely why I, too, would much rather people just come out and say "Merry Christmas," instead of the supposedly ecumenical "Happy Holidays." The so-called war on Christmas is an utterly stupid concept, except for what it reveals about the right wingers' imagination of Jews. Feh to O'Reilly and a Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends.

Personally, I too am annoyed by the PCness of the "happy holidays" greeting. Growing up as an Orthodox Jewish kid with Eastern European parents and grandparents, Christmas had a rather ominous feel to it. That was a result of the memories passed down to me of Christmas as one of the Polish pogrom seasons, where my grandparents had to live in fear of rape and murder. Despite New York's reputation, rape and murder by rampaging goyim is not a real concern for the Jews of this great city. But the site of Christmas trees nonetheless evoked a quesy feeling in me when I was a child.

That feeling along with a sense of inferiority as a minority, induced American Jews to pump up the rather minor holiday of Hanukka into something far more important than it is. A Holy Day in the Jewish calendar - a hag - is a pilgrimage specifically to the site of the Temple in Jerusalem (in an ecumenical spirit, I remind my readers that the Muslim haj is really the same word, except the pilgramage is to Mecca). Hanukka is not a pilgrimage holiday ordained in the Bible but a holiday instituted by the Hasmonean kings, whom the Rabbis despised.

Hannuka barely gets mentioned at all in the Talmud. The source of our knowledge about the holiday is the Book of the Maccabees. Unlike the Book of Esther and its associated holiday of Purim, Maccabees was left out of the official Biblical canon - the Rabbis of the Talmud no doubt would have preferred it never got written in the first place. The Rabbis' antagonism was rooted in the fact that the descendants of Judah the Maccabee, the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Israel until the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion in 70 CE, were in fact blood thirsty tyrants of the worst sort, who, ironically, advocated close ties to Rome and were intimately associated with the wealthy elite Sadducee establishment.

Side note: Rabbinical Judaism in its roots was an anti-establishment working class movement. Jesus probably was a leader of one of the more radical fringe groups within the overall revolutionary rabbinical movement. It was the wealthy Sadducee toadies who betrayed Jesus to their Roman masters.

Fast forward to modern day US of A, where assimilationist toadies emulating their Sadducee forbears in wanting to please their capitalist masters, had to find an equivalent Jewish shopping holiday to Christmas. Hannuka is the perfect fit in more ways than one. And they even one-upped the goyish capitalists by instituting eight days of gifts.

Considering the abysmal record of the Hasmoneans and the Sadducees, it is even more ironic that Hannuka and the Maccabees were seen as models by Zionists as a fore-runner to modern day Jewish nationalism. Hannuka is hardly as important in Israel as it is in the US, but it still is accorded far more importance than it should be....

So if you wish me a happy holiday it would take me a few minutes to even know what you are talking. The main Jewish holiday season is not December but September and October. We Jews have plenty (probably too many) holidays of our own and I for one am quite happy to concede this time of year exclusively to my Christian friends. So to all of you, Merry Christmas.

P.S. ... right-wing politics in America has long been associated with xenophobia and hatred of Jews. Intellectuals, liberals, gays, New Yorkers, Hollywood and the like, all of whom the right-wing hate so much, are used by them as code words for Jews. The neo-cons, Likudnicks and other Jews, who ally themselves with these right-wing creeps, are like their Sadducee counter-parts, stupidly aligning themselves with their true enemy. As for Bill O'Reilly, no happy holiday greetings from me to him. My fervent holiday wish for Mr. O'Reilly is that he get trapped in a store playing Christmas jingles non-stop for a full year. The horror, the horror!

I was reading Aron's blog before I even got into blogs and blogging. I rarely write about Israel/Palestine stuff here, but if you want to know where I'm at with those issues, I usually agree with Aron.

Rokhl Is Live Blogging Klezkamp

If Rokhl (or even I) piqued your interest about secular Jewish American culture, you may want to check out her blogging from Klezkamp, which is this week from Dec. 25-30. Her freylikhe Klezkamp blog is called Mit der kapelye- I'm with the Band; usually you can find her here. If Klezkamp sounds like klezmer to you, that's because klezmer classes and performances and jam sessions are a big part of what will be going on there. Interested yet? Go check it out...

(Readers who have been around for a while may remember this post, where I mention the influence of Klezcamp on my family, via my mother.)

Keeping Up With The Neo-Confederates

Edward Sebesta has a new blog, Anti-Neo-Confederate. Who are the Neo-Confederates and why should you care? Back in August, Max Blumenthal had an article in the Nation about powerful lobbyists in Washington, who