HungryBlues

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 [email protected]
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.