HungryBlues

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Hunger Strike Calling for Blanco to Provide a Fair Election – Call to Join/Support evacuees

Tens of thousands of voters will be disenfranchised in the April 22nd
election in New Orleans, most of them Black. State officials know it, and
they know how to prevent it - by providing satellite voting for displaced
New Orleanians outside the state of Louisiana.  But despite large grassroots
efforts demanding satellite voting, the state has refused to take the
necessary measures for ensuring a valid election process and setting up
satellite voting. The only thing preventing this important election from
becoming a fair election is one signature by one person: Gov. Kathleen
Blanco.

Hillary Charlot and two other displaced survivors are set up below the steps
of the State Capitol.  They are taking part in a hunger strike to pressure
Governor K. Blanco to sign an executive order to postpone the election until
satellite voting can be put in place.  They will stay until Governor Blanco
takes appropriate action to ensure a fair election, or until the day of the
election.

Please Join Us

For the evacuees' voice to be effective, they need as much support as they
can get.  If you can, please join them in Baton Rouge today through the
scheduled 4/22 election date, either to participate in the hunger strike or
to stand in solidarity with them and the cause for a just election.

Contact James Rucker (415.505.9048 or james@colorofchange.org) if you have
questions or are able to provide help in any way.

Forward this to anyone you know who might be interested in participating in
or supporting the effort.

(Via Jordan Flaherty.)

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. 

Ground Zero of Someone Else's Future

The March/April special Katrina issue of Dolars & Sense magazine will be in print any day now. In the meantime, a few of the articles are available online. One of the articles we've posted is my interview with historian and activist Derrick Evans. Derrick lives in Turkey Creek, MS, a post-emancipation African American settlement, incorporated as part of Gulfport, MS a little over ten years ago. He is the founder and director of an innovative community development corporation, Turkey Creek Community Initiatives.

Here's an excerpt from the interview:

DE: Even though I grew up here, I didn't know even a fragment of a fraction of what there is to know about the ecological identity of the place here, and it has turned out to be very important information that then translates into good urban planning.

There's a cultural landscape, there's a sociological landscape, there's the class and race distribution, and there's also the ecological profile. And what you'll find is that the unresolved problems pertaining to any one of those issues can be overlain on a map: that the lowest-lying land is typically where black folks, generations ago, would have acquired their land; where they would have settled and developed their communities, which would have been the least disturbed by 20th-century infrastructure; and that now, in the wake of a "Mississippi miracle," the economic revitalization of the coast, for example, the advent of dockside casinos, would be the most ripe or prime for redevelopment. Not at all unlike Roxbury in Massachusetts. Roxbury lies smack in the middle of the only direction for the city of Boston to revitalize, regardless of what the priorities are, whether it's to build more skyscrapers or provide more housing for middle- and higher-income folk. Likewise, we here are sitting in the same boat as Harlem, or neighborhoods in San Francisco and elsewhere, sitting in ground zero of somebody else's future.

So I've formed partnerships with some pretty nontraditional "civil rights activists"--like ladies from the Audubon Society, who now stand with us to protect the creek. Now that it's publicly utilized for birding and for kids to go canoeing and learn about native habitat, that helps ward off sprawl. The church here, Mount Pleasant, got involved and created an environmental ministry because of this trans-formation of looking at ourselves and the ecological context around us.

This is really important because this is a low-lying area, a very small watershed. We get 70 to 80 inches of rainfall per year that falls into a 17,000-acre bowl. A lot of water, small area--not a good place for a whole lot of what we call "impervious surfaces" like rooftops, parking lots and roadways without some provision being made to re-create the natural function of the watershed so that low-income communities like Turkey Creek, North Gulfport, Forest Heights, or even more affluent areas like Long Beach to our west, don't flood, which historically they didn't.

There are people here who'll tell you that developers and local politicians have just been trying to flood us out of existence, because with each piece of land, they haul in a bunch of red clay, which is basically impervious, dump it in the wetlands to build up land on which to put a slab or a parking lot, and then on the slab they put a building, a big 'ole Wal-Mart or something.

During Katrina, my mother was rescued from a house--the water reached her chest. She was with her 95-year-old husband, who never had and never would evacuate before any storm out here, because there was never a need. We have traditionally had woods behind us for thousands of feet as a windbreak, and hundreds of acres of wetlands to handle the runoff. But nobody had even done a comprehensive assessment of the total loss of wetlands to make it clear that houses three and a half miles north of the beach would be flooded to the degree that they were.

(Whole thing.)

If you don't already have a subscription, you'll be able to pick up the March/April issue at one of these newsstands. (If you made a donation for my travel to MS, you'll be receiving a copy with your thank-you.)

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.)

From Sea To Shining Sea

From Baltimore to San Francisco, with Chicago and most other places in between . . .

I received this letter from Mary Ratcliff via the SF Bay View email list. In her email to the list, Ms. Ratcliff added that "Phone calls to the mayor's office, (415) 554-6141, and/or the mayor's press office, (415) 554-6131, would be helpful."

Francisco Castillo
Deputy Director of Communications
Office of Mayor Gavin Newsom
City Hall
San Francisco, California

Dear Francisco,

Please bring this matter to the attention of the mayor right away.

Bayview precinct officers visited the home of Bay View managing editor and staff writer Ebony Colbert again this morning – at 7 a.m. We cannot imagine any other reason for the visit than a resumption of the intimidation campaign that began after we published an editorial by Ebony on Oct. 19 (http://www.sfbayview.com/101905/wakeup101905.shtml). Ebony’s latest story about the SFPD, this time prompted by the video scandal, was posted to our website yesterday (http://www.sfbayview.com/120705/truecolors.shtml).

The officers’ visits began a few days after the Oct. 19 editorial came out, the same day Mayor Newsom called Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff asking him to retract Ebony’s editorial. They continued several times daily for several weeks (http://www.sfbayview.com/110205/sfpdstung110205.shtml) with gradually decreasing frequency until about a week ago. This morning they resumed.

The excuse for every visit is “a 911 hang-up call.” But Ebony’s home phone stopped working the day the visits started. It’s unplugged and stored in a closet. She uses her cell phone instead. No one in her household – consisting of mom and dad and two little ones, a 2-year-old daughter and 11-month-old son – is calling 911.

Last night, Ebony was up until 3:30 a.m. with a teething baby. Getting awakened by the police at 7 a.m. didn’t set well. She was born and raised in Bayview Hunters Point and lives here now. She is very familiar with the behavior of officers from the Bayview station; one of them is her relative. A brilliant and caring young woman, she wants and works hard to uplift her community.

She simply wants the SFPD to do their job, to protect and serve, not occupy and terrorize her neighborhood. If those words sound strong, consider the terrorism of Sept. 9, when several officers chasing 18-year-old Tyrelle Taylor on foot shot him repeatedly in the back, then, when he had fallen on a neighbor’s floor face down, threw themselves on him and viciously beat him in what could be nothing less than an attempted murder.

She also wants an end to the economic lockout of the people of Bayview Hunters Point, especially from City-funded construction jobs, like those on the Third Street Light Rail project. Please remind the mayor that the $125 million maintenance barn for that project is yet to be built, and ensuring that BVHP builds it – that most of the contracts and jobs, including on-the-job training, go to our people – would greatly uplift this community and win the mayor some good will.

Ebony and her peers know that once, when 10,000 of the jobs at the Hunters Point Shipyard were held by people living in Hunters Point, peace and prosperity characterized this community. They also remember that in September of 1966, when those jobs were being phased out and people’s frustration and fury at joblessness (nearly all other jobs then, as now, were off limits to Black people) and police brutality (shooting 16-year-old Matthew Johnson in the back and killing him, see page 15-16 in http://www.bvhp-pac.org/ConceptPlan.doc and many other sources) exploded into an uprising, the young people did not destroy their community.

They let SFPD know that they were not needed in Hunters Point by blocking police from entering any of the streets leading east from Third Street. Instead of commending the youngsters for a largely peaceful protest, tanks rumbled up and down Third Street and SFPD sharpshooters lined up three rows deep on Third Street and shot into the Bayview Opera House, where youngsters had fled for sanctuary, hitting several of them.

Francisco, please tell the mayor that, for the same reasons as in 1966, Bayview Hunters Point is once again close to the boiling point. The video scandal and the looming specter of an execution at San Quentin on Tuesday – which we pray the governor will reject – could lead to another uprising.

Frustration and fury over joblessness and police brutality and disrespect is now a challenge squarely facing Mayor Gavin Newsom. Current feeble attempts at job training and policing won’t cut it. Blatant attempts to intimidate a young writer with the courage to speak truth to power merely intensify community outrage.

I am available by phone 24/7 and look forward to discussing these issues with you.

Mary Ratcliff, executive editor
San Francisco Bay View
www.sfbayview.com

Hear Peter Wagner Speak About Prison Policy

I received the following announcement from Peter Wagner's Prisoners of the Census email list:

Tomorrow, Saturday Dec. 3 in Providence RI, I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the "U.S. Prison System: Community and Political Impacts" conference. My lecture will be at 1pm in Starr Auditorium, MacMillian 117
at Brown University. This conference is organized by Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Education Department, Africana Studies, Brown Green Party, Brown Democrats, Democracy Matters, American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Informed Democracy, and Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance.

Next Saturday, Dec. 10, I'm going to be in New York City as the guest speaker at the Community Service Society of New York Roundtable Discussion on Prisoner Re-entry Issues. The discussion is from noon to 3pm in Conference Room 4A at 105 East 22nd Street.

More info about Peter Wagner:

Peter Wagner, JD, Executive Director. Peter Wagner teaches, lectures, and writes about the negative impact of mass incarceration in the United States. His current focus is on working to demonstrate - through graphics, legal research, and state-by-state analyses - the distortion of the democratic process that results from the U.S. Census Bureau's practice of counting the nation's mostly urban prisoners as residents of the often remote communities in which they are incarcerated. The New York Times editorial board has twice supported his efforts to change the way prisoners are counted, and the Boston Globe identified him as the "leading public critic" of the prisoner miscount. He has presented his research at national and international conferences and meetings, including a Census Bureau Symposium, a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, and a keynote address to a conference at Harvard University. Mr. Wagner's publications include Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York (2002); The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry (2003); and, with Eric Lotke, Prisoners of the Census: Electoral and Financial Consequences of Counting Prisoners Where They Go, Not Where They Come From, [PDF] 24 Pace L. Rev. 587 (2004).

Also see the Prisoners of the Census and Prison Policy Initiative websites.

Equality in Education - Day of Action

[If you are in the Boston area and are free tomorrow afternoon, come support this action. --BG]

Join us as we gather 400 supporters to represent the number of Massachusetts high school graduates every year who are denied access to higher education.
Let's show the legislature that the everyone deserves the right to an education.

The event will run from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM and be held at the Grand Staircase.

Get more information

To RSVP, please contact Carlos Saavedra at csaavedra AT miracoalition DOT org

(From the information link, above:)

The Issue
Each year around 400 hundred high achieving students, who have lived in Massachusetts for most of their lives, are unable to pursue higher education because of their immigration status. Currently, students without permanent legal status must pay out of state tuition to attend state and city universities and colleges. Out of state tuition is three to five times the cost of in state tuition. As most of these students cannot afford to pay out of state tuition, they are forced to forego college and work in low-paying, low-skilled jobs.

The In-State Tuition Bill S. 764/ H. 1230
The bill allows students to pay the same in-state tuition rates as their peers at public colleges and universities provided they have attended a Massachusetts high school for three years and have graduated or received the equivalent of a diploma. If the student is not a legal permanent resident, they must sign an affidavit stating that they have filed an application to become a legal permanent resident, or will file an application as soon as they are eligible to do so.

Current Status
New Mexico, Texas, Utah, California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Kansas and Oklahoma have already passed similar bills. Governor Romney vetoed the bill in Massachusetts in June 2004. This session the bill was reported favorably out of the House Ways and Means Committee and is currently awaiting a full vote on the House floor. Governor Romney is expected to once again veto the bill, therefore we need a 2/3rds majority in the House to move forward. We are currently counting votes and urging House leadership to bring the bill up for a full floor vote.

Also see this, which explains that nationally "approximately 65,000 undocumented students . . . graduate from high school every year without the opportunity to go to college."

FEMA Does Vote Suppression

One of Spencer Overton's colleagues, Professor Nate Persily, has first hand info on how FEMA is refusing to give Louisiana the names and current addresses of the evacuees—info the state needs in order to make sure they receive absentee ballots (via Professor Kim).

Professor Persily writes:

"A lawyer working with the Louisiana Governor's office has asked me what remedy the state may have against FEMA for their refusal to release the names and new temporary addresses of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. In particular, the Governor wants to make sure they receive absentee ballots for the February elections. FEMA has cited privacy concerns to justify their refusal to release the names and addresses. For some reason, it also appears that FEMA is unwilling to mail or forward the absentee ballot request forms or ballots itself (thereby not having to release the names) and the post office does not have forwarding addresses for most evacuees, so the state cannot simply mail the forms to the old addresses and have them forwarded. Assume that a FOIA request will prove unsuccessful and that individual evacuees on their own initiative could request and receive absentee ballots.

However, the question is: Are there other constitutional or federal statutory claims that the state could make to compel the release of such a list?"

(Whole thing.)

Rights? What Rights?

On Thursday night, I volunteered in a project to identify prisoners who had been in Orleans Parish Prison before Hurricane Katrina and were then evacuated to a federal penitentiary in Coleman, Florida. Angela Wessels, an attorney in Boston, who works for the Southern Center for Human Rights (based in Atlanta), is doing an amazing job overseeing the process of gathering volunteers—mostly local law students and her friends—to slog through the roughly 8,500 names on the "Hurricane Katrina Master Listing" and create a database of the inmates who were evacuated to Coleman.

OPP is the facility that includes Templeman III, the unit that was abandoned by prison guards with prisoners locked inside, while flood waters rose to chest level. For four days prisoners were trapped inside without food or drinking water. Orleans Parish Prison is both a jail where arrestees are kept pre-trial and a prison where sentenced convicts reside.*

Phyllis Mann explains:

There are lawyers all over the state, criminal defense lawyers, who are going to all of these facilities. There are 35 facilities that we are aware of all over the State of Louisiana, where over 8,500 people from Orleans jails were evacuated. And we're literally having to go in and meet with these people one by one to figure out when they got arrested, why they were in jail, whether they have been convicted or whether they were waiting for trial, whether it was a misdemeanor or a felony.

I understand that the computers from the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office were retrieved from Orleans on Friday, and their information technology people have been working to try to get as much information off of those computers as possible. And eventually what will happen is they're going to start matching the information they can recover from those computers to the information that we have been getting by going in and interviewing these people one by one, so that we can figure out where they're supposed to be. I would say a good half of them are not supposed to be in jail at all. They have served whatever sentence they had received and should be released. But until we can figure that out, they're sitting there. (Emphasis added.)

While there is small number of local New Orleans attorneys doing the herculean work of identifying and visiting individually every OPP prisoner evacuated to other facilities in Louisiana, there hasn't been adequate information for anyone to address the situations of the prisoners who were evacuated out of state.

Of the approximately 8,500 prisoners who were in OPP, about 900 were sent to Coleman Penitentiary. Working with the Master Listing and a very recently obtained list of the names of prisoners who had been evacuated to Coleman, volunteers have been identifying the inmates in Coleman who should have an arraignment, bond hearing, access to a lawyer, be in rehab or work-release programs, or have past or imminent release dates. Last Wednesday and Thursday nights, rooms full of volunteers entered the data on these inmates into spreadsheets to create a database of the prisoners in Coleman whom attorneys could help in an immediate way. This was the work that I was doing on Thursday. Once this new database is complete, attorneys who can go to Coleman Penitentiary will have the information they need about who is there and whom they can help.

At one point, while I was going through my hunk of pages from the Katrina Master Listing, there was something odd. I noticed that for one of the prisoners I was entering into the spreadsheet the booking date was later than his sentencing date, which didn't make sense to me. I asked Angela about it. She explained the funny dates mean the inmate had completed a sentence at another prison and was transported to Orleans Parish Prison just prior to his release. Now instead of being on queue to re-enter civilian life, this person has been shipped to a federal penitentiary in Florida, without access to an attorney or the ability to communicate with anyone to tell them where he is or even just to let family members know he is alive. And that's just one story out of roughly 900 that there are to be told about the Orleans Parish Prisoners who were evacuated to Coleman Penitentiary in Florida.

~
*Previously I confessed some confusion about whether OPP only functioned as a jail or if it functioned both as a jail and as a prison. Based on my work Thursday night, it is evident that the latter is indeed the case.

UPDATE, 10/24: Now that I have her permission to include it, I've added Angela Wessel's name. Adding her name to the sentence in the first paragraph forced me to remove the mention of my having met Angela through the Prison Policy Initiative.

Also see: More On The Coleman 900

Prison Policy Initiative

Yesterday evening I was one of the co-hosts of a reception for the Prison Policy Initiative. It was a great event with Executive Director Peter Wagner speaking alongside Joseph "Jazz" Hayden and Mark Dubnoff.

Wagner spoke about his innovative work on census policy and felony disenfranchisement. Hayden spoke about his 15 years of work to overturn felony disenfranchisement laws. Dubnoff spoke about being pro bono counsel in Simmons v. Galvin—the case challenging the constitutional amendment adopted by Massachusetts in 2000 to deprive convicted felons of their right to vote.

For the last two years, PPI was sustained by Executive Director Peter Wagner's Soros Fellowship. When the fellowship ran out last spring, Wagner just kept working on his projects, unpaid, but also set himself the task of finding a fiscal sponsor that could accept donations for PPI once it incorporated as a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

Both Hayden and Dubnoff testified to the fact that a wide range of people who work on prisoners' issues have come to rely on the work that PPI does. Hayden traveled from New York City in order to support the cause.

PPI is now a 501c3, and Wagner has found a fiscal sponsor, so you can support the cause, too, by making a tax-deductible donation here.

(Image via Prison Policy Initiative.)

Professor Kim Live Blogging From Buffalo

This year's annual convention for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History is being held in Buffalo to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Niagara Movement.

Professor Kim is there and she is live blogging with audio posts.

Particularly interesting was the interview with Dr. Gwendolyn Webb-Johnson concerning her work on something she calls "instructional racism," the racism that causes teachers to have low expectations for African American students and to funnel them through the special education system, in which they are grossly over represented.

National Urban League Calls for a 'Katrina Victims Bill of Rights'

National Urban League Calls for a 'Katrina Victims Bill of Rights'
9/8/2005 4:41:00 PM
To: National Desk, Business Reporter
Contact: Ricky Clemons of National Urban League, 212-558-5371 or rclemons@nul.org
NEW YORK, Sept. 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League called on Congress to immediately pass and fully fund comprehensive disaster assistance legislation that protects the rights of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"While I applaud Congress for providing much-needed funding for FEMA and other government agencies to continue their relief efforts, this is only a small part of what is needed in the short and long term," said Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans. "Hurricane Katrina is a national tragedy of epic and unprecedented proportions. In responding to this crisis, Congress' number one priority must be to help protect and restore the lives of the hundreds of thousands of citizens whose lives have been disrupted and destroyed."
Morial called on Congress to take the following steps immediately:
Create a Victims Compensation Fund - Congress must immediately pass legislation creating a Victims Compensation Fund for the hundreds of thousands of citizens injured, killed and displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
"Within days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed and the president signed legislation authorizing a 9/11 victims compensation fund, which eventually provided more than $7 billion in compensation for the victims of 9/11," Morial said. "As it did then, Congress must take immediate and decisive action to begin compensating American citizens whose lives have been disrupted by this major national tragedy."
Provide Disaster Unemployment Assistance - Congress must provide for federal disaster unemployment assistance to every worker left jobless by this tragedy and provide a meaningful benefit that meets the needs of unemployed workers and their families.
"Half a million hardworking Americans, through no fault of their own, have been thrown out of work and, in many cases, have seen their jobs disappear altogether," Morial noted. "We owe it to these workers to help them get back on their feet."
Protect Voting Rights -- America must ensure that the hundreds of thousands of citizens displaced by Hurricane Katrina continue to have full voting rights in their home states.
"If we can see to it that Iraqi citizens living on our shores are able to vote in a war-torn land halfway across the world, we can certainly guarantee that displaced citizens of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi continue to have full voting rights in their home states and districts," Morial said. "Our displaced citizens want and deserve a voice in the rebuilding of their communities. We must not compound the tragedy visited upon our citizens by disenfranchising them at a time when the most fundamental tool of citizenship -- their right to vote -- is more important than ever.
Morial stated that these are only the first, but critical steps that Congress must take in the coming days and weeks.
"We have a long and difficult road ahead," Morial said. "By taking these actions now, Congress will send an important message that the hurricane victims will not be left behind and lay the groundwork for the arduous collective task before us."
"We are in this together and together, we will regroup and rebuild."

John Conyers And His Impeccable Timing

Just last night John Conyers posted a reminder on his blog that the House and Senate are on the verge of reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act. He also linked to an article he wrote for PDA about misuses of the Act by the Justice Department.

Losing the War Against Terror
July 29th, 2005

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member, House Judiciary Committee

Nearly four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 tragedy, many of us warned that we should not let our anger over an attack against our nation be used as an excuse to undermine our fundamental liberties. Unfortunately, today, as the USA PATRIOT Act comes up for renewal, it seems increasingly clear that we have failed in the task of balancing our nation’s need for security and our citizen’s freedoms.

While the PATRIOT Act may not deserve all or even most of the ridicule that is heaped against it, there is little doubt that the legislation has been repeatedly and seriously misused by the Justice Department. Consider the following:

* Its been used more than 150 times to secretly search an individual’s home, with nearly 90% of those cases having had nothing to do with terrorism.

* It was used against Brandon Mayfield, an innocent Muslim American, to tap his phones, seize his property, copy his computer, spy on his children, and take his DNA, all without his knowledge.

* Its been used to deny, on account of his political beliefs, the admission to the United States of a Swiss citizen and prominent Muslim Scholar to teach at Notre Dame University.

* Its been used to unconstitutionally coerce an Internet Service Provider to divulge information about email activity and web surfing on its system, and than to gag that Provider from even disclosing the abuse to the public.

* Because of gag restrictions, we will never know how many times its been used to obtain reading records from library and book stores, but we do know that libraries have been solicited by the Department of Justice - voluntarily or under threat of the PATRIOT Act - for reader information on more than 200 occasions since September 11.

* Its been used to charge, detain and prosecute a Muslim student in Idaho for posting Internet website links to objectionable materials, even though the same links were available on the U.S. government’s web site.

Even worse than the PATRIOT Act has been the unilateral abuse of power by the Administration. Since September 11, our government has detained and verbally and physically abused thousands of immigrants without time limit, for unknown and unspecified reasons, and targeted tens of thousands of Arab-Americans for intensive interrogations and immigration screenings. All this serves to accomplish is to alienate Muslim and Arab Americans - the key groups to fighting terrorism in our own county - who see a Justice Department that has institutionalized racial and ethnic profiling, without the benefit of a single terrorism conviction.

(Whole thing.)

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

Headline is from Bob Fertig at Democrats.com. He writes:

In order to trash Cindy, [FOX's John] Gibson called on Ira Stoll, editor of the rightwing New York Sun and author of "Cindy Sheehan's Crowd." Stoll attacked Cindy for working with "extreme groups and individuals":

Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all have representatives on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war umbrella group. They share that distinction with the Communist Party USA.

Though red-baiting her is no worse than any of the other vile attempts to smear Cindy Sheehan, this particular tactic enrages me in a special way. I've been working on another post that relates to red baiting, not in connection to Cindy Sheehan, but I'm going to talk a little about it now.

In the late 50s the FBI's New York Field Office decided that my father should be investigated for possible inclusion on the Security Index. What was the Security Index? That was the 1950s and 60s version of the Custodial Detention Program (CDP), whose purpose was

to enable the government to make individual decisions as to the dangerousness of enemy aliens and citizens who might be arrested in the event of war.

( Book III of the Final Report of the US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities, 1976)

The Security Index was the new name given the CDP after Attorney General Francis Biddle issued a directive to abolish the program in 1943 because

The evidence used for the purpose of making the classifications was inadequate; the standards applied to the evidence for the purpose of making the classifications were defective; and finally, the notion that it is possible to make a valid determination as to how dangerous a person is in the abstract and without reference to time, environment, and other relevant circumstances, is impractical, unwise, and dangerous. (Ibid.)

The primary basis of the investigation of my father for inclusion in the Security Index was his membership on the executive committee of the Socialist Unity Forum and his attendance at meetings of the Young Socialist Alliance. He had committed no crimes, but he associated with socialists.

What did the investigation entail? Here's a partial list, gleaned from my father's FBI file, released to my family under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts:

• Trips by FBI agents to the NYC Marriage License Bureau and to the NYC Board of Elections to gather data on residences, employment and family
• Reports from a neighbor in my parents' apartment building who was spying for the FBI
• Bogus phone call to my mother from an FBI agent claiming to be a NY County Clerk's Office Representative. In the guise of being interested in empanelling my father for a jury, the agent grilled my mother about my father's place of employment.
• Bogus phone call from an FBI agent to my father's place of employment. Pretending to be an insurance company representative, the agent verified my mother's information about my father's employment.
• Agents who attended political meetings and made leading statements to provoke others in attendance to go on record with views that could make them eligible for further investigation or otherwise "incriminate" them.
• A surprise visit from two Special Agents who started asking questions first and identified themselves second: "After the SAS identified themselves GREENBERG remarked 'No, I have nothing to say to you!' He refused any further approaches to conversation including possibilities for a later appointment."

A significant basis for conducting these invasive and harassing procedures was information about my father's affiliations and activities provided by civilian informants whose information was not necessarily reliable and whose intent was discernibly vindictive.

When we talk about invasions of privacy associated with the Patriot Act it is important to remember what the stated purpose of such practices were in the past: to create "a suspect list of individuals whose arrest might be considered necessary in the event the United States becomes involved in war" ( Book III of the Final Report of the US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities, 1976).

If one qualified for the Security Index, one's name was placed on a special Security Index card. If the FBI found that a subject did not qualify for the Security Index and his or her card should be canceled,

[t]he cancelled Security Index cards on individuals taken off the Index after 1955 were retained in the field offices. This was done because they remained "potential threats and in case of an all-out emergency, their identities should be readily accessible to permit restudy of their cases." These cards would he destroyed only if the subject agreed to become an FBI source or informant or "otherwise indicates complete defection from subversive groups."(Ibid., emphasis added)

The practice of red baiting has had terrible ramifications in the lives of thousands of innocent Americans whose only crime was holding views or having political associations that challenged the status quo. In many cases the only evidence of their crime was unsubstantiated allegations that they held views or had political associations that challenged the status quo.

Please read the rest of Bob Fertig's post and join him in telling Fox to stop smearing Cindy Sheehan and her allies.

I Found This Article Unbelievably Overwhelming, But Then I Realized That If They Take Some Responsibility For Their Weight Things Will Improve

Well the part about the article is true, anyway. This morning I noticed a hit to HungryBlues off of a comment on Alas, A Blog, in a discussion of the new public health obsession with obesity:

You have probably said this already somewhere on your blog, Amp, so let me be the second to say: why is this our #1 public health agenda? Why aren’t our federal public health officials working on the issue of infant mortality, for example? We have one of the highest rates of infant mortality of any industrialized country. Why does fat come first? How about the lower life expectancy rates for African Americans, something that Bush has publically acknowledged? You know, it’s not like we don’t know why that is, we know very well that African Americans do not get fair medical treatment. Take a look at this article, Equality in the 1990s would have saved 900 000 black Americans. I think this all fits in with the Republican idoelogy of making all social problems the responsibility of individuals. That way, if you are sick, we can blame you for it. Gross.

I am in total agreement with the comment. But I just came across an article via The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog that presents some related statistics that are utterly chilling. The two quotes of note:

There are nearly two million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the real imbalance is even greater -- a gap of 2.8 million, according to U.S. Census data for 2002. On average, then, there are 26 percent more black women than black men; among whites, women outnumber men by just 8 percent.

And:

"If white men were falling off the grid as rapidly as black men, it would be considered a national crisis," says Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore and author of "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Black Boys."

"It would be leading all the network news shows," says Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange and formerly a writer and producer with NBC News in New York. "It would be full-court, around-the- clock coverage on 'the gap' and all its ramifications."

WAKE UP AMERICA!

More excerpts (emphasis added):

Where have all the black men gone?
The Star Ledger
Sunday, May 08, 2005
BY JONATHAN TILOVE

Darryl Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange, calls his city "the most densely populated community of color in the United States." The Essex County city covers less than four square miles, but it is home to more than 70,000 people. Mostly black. Some Hispanics. A few whites.

But the most salient statistic about East Orange is the number of black men who are not there. Under the age of 18, there are more black boys than girls. Among the adult population, however, there are 37 percent more women than men.

Where are these missing men? Most are dead. Many others are locked up. Some are in the military.

Worse yet, the gender imbalance in East Orange is not some grotesque anomaly. It's a vivid snapshot of a very troubling reality in black America.

There are nearly two million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. With nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the real imbalance is even greater -- a gap of 2.8 million, according to U.S. Census data for 2002. On average, then, there are 26 percent more black women than black men; among whites, women outnumber men by just 8 percent.

Perhaps no single statistic so precisely measures the fateful, often fatal, price of being a black man in America, or so powerfully conveys how beset black communities are by the violence and disease that leaves them bereft of brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, and leaves whole communities reeling.

"It just distorts the fabric of African-American life," says Roland Anglin, executive director of the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, whose mission is research to improve the quality of life in communities of color. "It's scandalous for us as a society."

In the March/April issue of Health Affairs, Dr. David Satcher, surgeon general under former President Bill Clinton and now the interim president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, exposes the core of the problem: Between 1960 and 2000, the disparity between mortality rates for black and white women narrowed while the disparity between the rates for black and white men grew wider.

Exponentially higher homicide and AIDS rates play their part, especially among younger black men. Even more deadly through middle age and beyond are higher rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"The degree of loss and death that people in those communities are experiencing at a young age is just unfathomable," says Arline T. Geronimus of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. A few years ago Geronimus led a team of researchers who calculated that in Harlem and Chicago's South Side, two- thirds of black boys and one-third of black girls who reach their 15th birthday would not make 65. . . .

STARTLING STATISTICS
The imbalance between the numbers of black men and women does not exist everywhere. There is no gap to speak of in places with relatively small black populations like Minneapolis, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and San Diego. And Seattle actually has more black men than women.

But it is the rule in communities with large concentrated black populations. There are, for instance, more than 30 percent more black women than men in Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago and Cleveland, and in smaller cities like Harrisburg, Pa. There are 36 percent more black women than men in New York City, and 37 percent more in Saginaw, Mich., and Philadelphia. In Newark, the figure is 26 percent.

In East Orange, there were more black males under 18 than females in 2000. And yet, there were 29 percent more black women than men in their 20s.

WHAT LIES BENEATH
Still, there are glimmers of hope. The gender gap is in part a reflection of the improved lot of black women, as a consequence of a long-term national commitment to maternal and women's health and a Medicaid program that provided access to care for poor women and children -- access still denied to many poor men. And despite today's bleak realities, mortality rates for black men were actually worse in 1990, at the height of the crack-and-homicide epidemic in America's cities.

The enormous growth of the prison population, meanwhile, is largely the result of recent mandatory sentencing laws -- laws that could be reformed or reversed. And communities like East Orange seem astir with mentorship programs and a new conviction that self-destructive behavior will not be tolerated.

What's missing, many observers believe, is a national will to confront the problem in all its difficult dimensions.

"If white men were falling off the grid as rapidly as black men, it would be considered a national crisis," says Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore and author of "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Black Boys."

"It would be leading all the network news shows," says Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange and formerly a writer and producer with NBC News in New York. "It would be full-court, around-the- clock coverage on 'the gap' and all its ramifications."

(READ THE WHOLE THING.)

On A Related Note: Ethics of Research on States' "Wards"

While I'm touching upon issues relating to children in foster care, I should mention Yvette's recent post at Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Yvette is a doctoral student in Family Social Science, who researches adoptive parenting. In her post, Yvette analyzes the ethical issues surrounding the testing of AIDS drugs on foster children, recently in the news. The children who have been subjects for the drug tests are disproportionately African American.

There has been a lot written recently about the role of race in decision making and actions regarding the remocal of children from their homes and termination of these children's parents' parental rights. One voice in this discussion has been that of Dorothy Roberts, for example in this essay in response to a Frontline program about the child welface system:

White children are the least likely of any group to be supervised by child protective services. Black children make up more than two-fifths of the foster care population, though they represent less than one-fifth of the nation's children. Latino and Native American children are also in the system in disproportionate numbers. The system's racial imbalance is most apparent in big cities where there are sizeable minority and foster care populations.

However, according to Roberts this disparity is likely not just about poverty:

Even though black children are more likely to be poor than white children, racial differences in child poverty rates don't fully explain why black children are placed in foster care at higher rates. Race also influences child welfare decision-making through powerful, deeply embedded stereotypes about black family dysfunction. Black families diverge the most from the parenting ideal embodied in the white, middle-class model composed of married parents and their children. Black mothers are assumed to be irresponsible and difficult to rehabilitate. A number of studies demonstrate that caseworkers, judges, and doctors are more suspicious of non-white parents.

I know of a case of a small pediatric group practice headed by two African American physicians serving a largely Black and low-income client population. These two experienced doctors had become so fed up with emergency room personnel automatically calling social services on their patients that they requested that one of them be called before any hospital staff takes such action in order to provide input, context--even advocacy.

What an unenviable position to find yourself in as a physician: treating your patients by, in part, protecting them from the actions of other physicians.

Read the whole thing.

And So Should This Comment From Sam Friedman

I sent one of my posts on Ja'eisha Scott to the Civil Rights Movement veterans list-serve that I'm on, and Sam Friedman wrote back with the following:

I think that it might be useful to tell a story here from my life. Shortly after I began kindergarden in 1947 in school-segregated Washington, DC, as a white boy in a middle class school, something upset me and I became hysterical and stayed hysterical.

I was more than the teacher could deal with, so after some minutes they called a policeman to deal with me. It was pretty impressive to confront a cop as a 5 year old. BUT, instead of handcuffs, police cars, and all that, he soothed me and spoke to me in a very friendly fashion. Within a few minutes, I was back in control and back in the class room.

The contrast to this case is obvious. It is also worth realizing that, even though I was treated wonderfully by the policeman, I STILL REMEMBER THE INCIDENT almost 60 years later.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like, and will continue to be like, for the many Black kids who get handcuffed, put in cop cars, and the like.

Sam Friedman was a civil rights activist starting with his attendance at the Second Youth March for Integrated Schools in early 1959. He also was active in the Woolworth protests in 1960 in Washington DC, and in the Glen Echo protests and sit-in in Montgomery County Maryland in the summer of 1960. Thereafter, he was very involved in the movement for years.

Now, he is an AIDS researcher who is an author on over 300 publications in many journals (including Nature, Science, New England J of Medicine, etc.).

Stop The Schoolhouse To Jailhouse Track

Between 1992 and 2002, nationwide violent crimes at schools against students aged 12 to18 dropped by 50%.

Between 1994 and 2002, the youth arrest rate for violent crimes has declined 47% nationally.

From 1974 to 2000, the number of students suspended out-of-school increased from 1.7 million to 3.1 million. Research conducted over the past five years has detailed the growing use of suspensions for trivial conduct, much of which is subjectively labeled “disrespect,” “disobedience,” and “disruption.”

While national data is not available, data from various districts indicate the growing trend toward using arrests to address school disciplinary matters. For example, the number of arrests in Philadelphia County schools has increased from 1,632 during the 1999–2000 school year to 2,194 in 2002–2003.

In 2002, of the 4,002 arrests of youths by Houston Independent School District Police, 660, or almost 17%, were for disruption (disruptive activities, disruption of classes, and disruption of transportation). Another 1,041 arrests, or 26%, were for disorderly conduct.

From Stop The Schoolhouse To Jailhouse Track, a website to support the recent Advancement Project report, Schools On Lockdown(PDF).

A Couple Of Good Articles On The Criminalization Of Ja'eisha Scott

Even 5-Year-Olds Have Civil Rights
By Lester Kenyatta Spence*, AOL BlackVoices columnist

I still don’t see how someone can agree with what happened in Florida just because teachers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. But people all over the country are agreeing, and many of them are black people.

Black people who believe in this claptrap are being hoodwinked into believing that our rights are based on something close to black perfection. It isn’t the first time.the civil rights movement would have looked a lot different if Rosa Parks was a single mother with a drinking problem.

Here is a lesson in American Citizenship 101: You do not have to act “right” to be treated like a citizen. You do not have to act “right” to be guaranteed an education. Wake up (emphasis added).

Granted, you can’t break the law, but we’re not talking about law breaking here.

We’re talking about a 5-year-old kid who had a couple of bad days at school. She wasn’t packing. She didn’t threaten to blow up the school. She didn’t get caught with weed in her locker. She wasn’t caught having sex in one of the bathrooms.

She.

Had.

A

Temper.

Tantrum.

That’s IT.

Racism in America has sunk to an all-time low
Baltimore Editorial Staff, The Afro American Newspapers

There must have been a better way to handle that situation.

First, the principal, rather than waiting for the student's mother to come to the school, invited the police to come in and inflame the situation. And the police, rather than reassessing the situation when they saw how quiet the child had become, shackled and "perp walked" the kindergartner, no doubt terrifying the child.

There must have been a better way.

A St. Louis principal was suspended, according to CNN, in a similar situation. The police spokesman in that case said handcuffing 5-year-olds "is not the practice of the department."

"Handcuffing indicates an arrest is being made," said Roxanne Evans of the D.C. Public Schools Office of Communications and Public Information. "In DCPS, a 5-year-old has not yet reached the age of reason to be charged with a crime. Therefore, there would be no reason for a 5-year-old to be handcuffed."

According to Baltimore City Public School System spokeswoman Vanessa Pyatt, the local policy is the use of passive restraint. The policy's description is disseminated annually to families in the "Information Guide for Parents and Students." She said a student would never be handcuffed without having been charged with a crime and being formally under arrest, which has never happened in our system to a 5-year-old.

School police would be called in because policy demands they be notified when situations erupt, but the goal is always that they be handled internally.

Florida apparently has no such policy.

The police procedures used to take that child into custody are reserved for people under arrest, who are violent, dangerous and might pull out a weapon and injure the arresting officer. None of those elements existed; therefore, there must have been another motive for such rash, demonstrative and dramatic action (emphasis added)

"Children need to have hope that they can succeed, and they need family stability and adults they can trust. They also need counseling when trauma affects them," said Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, in reference to a similar case. "At critical points in their development, however, from birth through adulthood, a disproportionate number of poor children of color lack access to these important keys to healthy development and struggle to compete on an unequal playing field. Many fall inexorably behind. The pipeline to prison robs children of their God-given birthrights to opportunity, fulfillment and self-actualization, making it far more likely that they will end up behind bars" (emphasis added).

*Lester K. Spence is also a blogger over at Vision Circle.

A Little Comparative Analysis From Blackwell Raines

Blackwell Raines left another good comment on Monday, relating the Ja'eisha Scott story to the Jennifer Wilbanks story.

[T]he great charters--Constitution, Bill of Rights--of U.S. democracy can't just be real and consequential for some, and mere half-remembered school history for others. A basic premise in all the talk of government is the dignity of personhood. And yes, this principle extends to the very young, especially to a 5-year old, who cannot speak for themselves, or process through the events of an heavily-handcuffed arrest by three uniformed adults.

This doctrine comes with the expectation that every citizen is to be treated and accorded the equality of respect that comes with being a human being and citizen. It regards each person as an equal unit of importance because that person exist, not because given members of an institution chooses to disqualify certain persons based upon ethnic and socioeconomic grounds. . . .

A state away, over the weekend, a middle class white female was reported to have petpetuated a hoax: runaway bride: "bride-to-be gets cold feet," decides to disappear. Kidnapping was suspected, and later with the surfacing of the would-be bride, an alleged fabricated story was told to authorities. The search for the missing bride had involved 100 people on various government levels. Yet, upon learning of the fabrication, and seeing the bride-to-be arrive safely back in her hometown, there has been little criticism. In a carefully crafted statement, the police, called the experience most stressing--that is, for the bride-to-be. No charges have been filed the 32-year-old.

Institutions have long memories, and carry out their own aims and goals. The 5-year-old, acting up in kindergarten, is quickly claimed as disposable. The 32-year-old is deemed valued, and even criticism of her actions is muted, despite learning her disappearance a hoax. Accordingly, we're told the 32-year-old needs to have private time with her family, given the stress of it all. (Part of her disappearance was to Vegas.)

Two headline-grabbing examples, with the dignity of personhood being honored in one case, and summarily dismissed in the other, despite one being a very young child. But both are female.

In both instances, the institutions made judgment calls--they expressed harsh, severe reaction based upon the perceived social value of one person, while with the other, expressions of leniency, sympathetic support and even empathy, applying a different social value.

Interesting to note, there exist another disparity between the stories, on a different level: the 32-year-old received no heavy negative commentary of having been spoiled, of being overly privileged, or simply, of being too selfish, although much had been spent and scheduled for her Saturday wedding, and equally, much expense given in searching for her. . . .

Criticisms leveled against the mother of the 5-year-old are also anecdotal, and worst. They are too ready, too often, to cavalierly dismiss the brutalization of a 5-year-old as of no real consequence, a necessary function of order. They provide the strawperson argument that protests against criminalization and brutalization of minorites by institutions is, in reality, no more than an attempt to manufacture cover for wrongdoing. Even an excuse for malcontents.

It should be note that brutalization and criminalization is rarely defined by the administering of physical blows. This is why adults can win litigation efforts after citing "mental anguish" and "emotional abuse."

And Then There's That Special Genre Of Purposeful Abuse By Educators

The latest one I've heard about was in Queens, NY (via Laurence at Blogging While Black):

Haitian Children Forced to Eat Like Animals

It's the kind of spat that flares thousands of times a day in schools all over the country.

But at Public School 34 in Queens Village, Assistant Principal Nancy Miller's ghastly way of handling a minor scuffle between two Haitian fourth-graders has sparked fury.

According to parents and students, Miller, who is white, chose to punish all 13 Haitian pupils in the school's only fourth-grade bilingual class - even though just two were involved in the March 16 incident.

She ordered all 13 to sit on the cafeteria floor, then made them use their fingers to eat their lunch of chicken and rice, while all the other students watched.

"In Haiti, they treat you like animals, and I will treat you the same way here," several students recalled Miller saying.

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/queensoutrage.html
http://lefthook.org/Politics/JG041305.html

This one is a close cousin of the one about the abusive treatment of African American siblings at Tyrone Elementary School, in Pinellas County, FL.

So, Yes, It's Not Only Florida

Florida has a particularly abysmal record when it comes to criminalizing small children, but the problem is actually a national epidemic. In the last couple of years, there have been a number of other stories about children under twelve being handcuffed. This list is just what I culled quickly from Zero Intelligence, a group blog "dedicated to keeping an eye on, and pointing out the excesses of, bad school policies and actions . . . [with] a particular focus on zero tolerance policies." I'm sure a serious Google session would yield more . . .

• Williamsburg, VA: Police Arrest 8-Year-Old After Alleged Outburst in Williamsburg Elementary School

The four-foot pupil was led away from Williamsburg's Rawls Byrd Elementary School in handcuffs Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery.

• Ocala, FL: Boys arrested for stick figure drawings

Two Florida students, one 9 years old and the other 10 years old, were arrested and taken out of school in handcuffs. They are being charged with "making a written threat to kill or harm another person", a felony.

One drawing showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and "holding knives pointed through" his body, according to a police report. The figures were identified by written names or initials.

• Tuscaloosa, AL: County officials defend handcuffing

Deputy Antonio Bostic handcuffed a 9-year-old fourth-grader at Holt Elementary School (in the Tuscaloosa County School System). This action followed a non-violent verbal argument between the student and her gym teacher and was apparently done to "teach the girl a lesson". Toniko L. Alexander, the girls mother, sued and the County is busy defending the officer's actions.

Another teacher overheard the argument from across the gymnasium and ordered the student to come speak with her, according to the complaint.

While the girl was walking to the teacher, Bostic intervened and ordered her to come speak with him, insisting that he handle the situation when the other teacher said she could take care of it.

According to the complaint, Bostic stood the girl in a doorway, placed handcuffs on her and told her: “This is what happens to people when they break the law," and “This is how it feels to be in jail."

The girl remained handcuffed for 10 minutes while her classmates looked on. Since this happened she has a fear of law enforcement officials in general and Bostic in particular. The complaint also claims that she suffered "internal bleeding, bruising, severe personal embarrassment, public humiliation and continuing mental anguish, including nightmares and crying spells".

• Houston, TX: 11 year-old girl arrested at school for shoving match that happened a week previous

It started as a shoving incident, and then one of the two girls was suspended for two days. But then parents of the girl who wasn't suspended simply were not satisfied with Cy-Fair's punishment so they filed a complaint and had the other student arrested.
...
The 11-year-old girl was arrested, handcuffed, photographed and fingerprinted after she was picked up from Walker Elementary. She and her mom say there had been a shoving incident last week. She says the other girl wound up with a bloody nose, that she was suspended for two days and thought it would end there.

The increases in these kinds of cases occurs at the same time that violent crime in schools has dropped dramatically in the last decade. Here's Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund:

Increased criminalization of children is occurring despite a recent federal report that shows violent crime in schools fell 50 percent between 1992 and 2002. The growing reliance on police and courts to manage children with mental health, behavioral, learning and other issues merits the attention of parents, educators, faith leaders, and lawmakers. We must prevent the juvenile justice system from continuing as a dumping ground for poor and minority children with serious emotional and behavioral problems. Minority youth make up 34 percent of the adolescent population but 62 percent of youth in detention. (Emphasis added.)

They Kept Ja'eisha Cuffed In Their Cruiser For Hours After Her Mom Arrived

The weird thing is the details have only just come out in the course of a new story about a 10 year-old boy who was handcuffed in Allentown, PA for getting into a fight on a school bus. At a couple points in the article, Monica Lewis, of BlackAmericaWeb.com, gets commentary from Ja'eisha Scott' and Inga Akins' lawyer, C.K. Hoffler. Here's what comes out:

According to Hoffler, Ja’eisha was not only handcuffed, but had shackles placed on her feet and left in the backseat of a police vehicle for hours, even though she was calm at the time of her arrest. Her mother, Inga Akins, had also arrived at the scene after the arrest, but police would not immediately release Ja’eisha. They sought to press assault charges, which the Florida state attorney denied, Hoffler said, adding that St. Petersburg police requested that Ja’eisha be committed to a mental ward and asked that she be taken from her mother’s custody when the institutionalization request went nowhere.

“You’ve got to emphasize that this is a five-year-old kindergartener,” Hoffler said. “It’s just horrific.” (Emphasis added.)

What's Race Got To Do With It?

The central problem with ALL of the news reports on the Ja'eisha Scott case and with almost all of the commentary is that the case gets viewed as an isolated incident. The reports and discussion turn over the various bits of available information about what happened to opine on the behavior of Ja'eisha Scott, the parenting of Inga Akins, the conduct of teachers Christina Ottersbach and Patti Tsaousis and Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto, the necessity or lack thereof of police in this particular case, and the right or wrong of handcuffing the girl.

Respected groups, like the local chapters of the NAACP and the SCLC, are "cautious on the subject of race, which has crept into the debate over the girl's treatment because she is black."

Black leaders noted that Mark Williams - the veteran police officer heard on the video confronting the girl and directing the handcuffing - is black. So is the school's principal and the police sergeant who arrived on the scene later and put an end to talk that the girl be prosecuted.

Rouson described Williams as a respected member of the community and noted the girl had previous problems at school.

This sort of discussion of racism is about the motivations of individuals. But analyzing a situation for racism is not just about deciding if an individual is behaving in a racist way. It's also about analyzing institutionalized inequalities.

The only public statement I've read that touches upon the institutionalized dimensions of racism is from the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, which is based in St. Petersburg.

"We believe that this act is a symptom of a system with longstanding hostility toward African children," said Uhuru leader Chimurenga Waller, reading from a prepared statement. "Furthermore this hosti