Author: Alan Bean

Why declaring war on the undocumented is a really bad idea

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By Alan Bean

A federal judge has upheld key portions of an Alabama immigration law that will likely drive thousands of Latino students out of the public school system.  Under the new law, public schools can now determine the immigration status of students.  Police can also question residents suspected of being undocumented and hold them without bond.

The Alabama law, as originally passed, was designed to make it impossible for undocumented residents to live in Alabama.  Judge Sharon Blackburn has temporarily blocked provisions that would:

_ Make it a crime for an undocumented immigrant to solicit work.

_ Make it a crime to transport or harbor an undocumented immigrant.

_ Allow discrimination lawsuits against companies that dismiss legal workers while hiring undocumented immigrants.

_ Forbid businesses from taking tax deductions for wages paid to workers who are in the country illegally.

_ Bar undocumented immigrants from attending public colleges.

_ Bar drivers from stopping along a road to hire temporary workers.

_ Make federal verification the only way in court to determine if someone is here legally.

Since the Hispanic population of Alabama is 3.9 percent, one wonders why state politicians are suddenly so exercised about immigration.  It’s simple.  Conservative politicians got elected by promising to clamp down on illegal immigration.  (more…)

Don’t know much about (civil rights) history

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By Alan Bean

Most American students know nothing of substance about the civil rights movement.  When Julian Bond talked to school kids twenty years ago, no one could even tell him who George Wallace was (see article below).  For much the same reason, younger readers may not realize that my title was inspired by an old Sam Cooke song.  George Wallace was Governor of Alabama in the early 60s.  Sam Cooke released his famous song in the late 50s.  But I bet students know much more about the evolution of pop music than they know about civil rights history.

How can Americans have a conversation about race relations when most of us know next to nothing about Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, the evolution of the urban ghetto or any other matter germane to the subject?

Although Black Americans probably know a bit more about the civil rights era than white Americans, ignorance abounds on every square of the American crazy quilt.  We won’t get anywhere until these depressing trends change, but first we must ask how much we want to learn about an era that makes white America look really, really bad?

Southern states, a new study by the Southern Poverty Law Center finds, actually do a better job of teaching civil rights history than their northern and western counterparts.  In Mississippi, for instance, the trauma of the civil rights era was far too intense to be forgotten.  The movie The Help is a step in the right direction, but if any person, white or black, had tried to publish a book about black domestics and their white employers in the real Mississippi of 1962, the White Citizens Councils and the State Sovereignty Commission would have kept the book from appearing on book shelves.  A book that incendiary would have been delivered in a plain brown wrapper, in the dead of night.  There were things that simply could not be discussed back then; how much has changed?

Mississippi has mandated a K-12 civil rights curriculum.  If you don’t know about Jim Crow and the civil rights struggle, you can’t possibly understand present conditions in the Magnolia State.  The subject could be ignored for a while, but not forever.  In Colorado, it seems, the issue is far less pressing.

Students’ Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated, Study Finds

By
Published: September 28, 2011

When Julian Bond, the former Georgia lawmaker and civil rights activist, turned to teaching two decades ago, he often quizzed his college students to gauge their awareness of the civil rights movement. He did not want to underestimate their grasp of the topic or talk down to them, he said. (more…)

Most Americans think crime is on the rise

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Although crime rates have been falling for decades, most Americans think crime is getting worse.  We have always felt this way regardless of whether crime rates are rising or falling.  The Gallup poll featured below offers a few explanations.  AGB

Americans Still Perceive Crime as on the Rise

Two-thirds say crime increasing in U.S., 49% in their local area

November 18, 2010
by Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, NJ — Two-thirds of Americans say there is more crime in the United States than there was a year ago, reflecting Americans’ general tendency to perceive crime as increasing. Still, the percentage perceiving an increase in crime is below what Gallup measured in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but is higher than the levels from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

1989-2010 Trend: Is There More Crime in the U.S. Than There Was a Year Ago, or Less?

Americans are somewhat more positive about the trend in crime in their local area, but still are more likely to see it going up than going down.

1972-2010 Trend: Is There More Crime in Your Area Than There Was a Year Ago, or Less?

These trends, based on Gallup’s annual Crime survey, come at a time when both the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported drops in property and violent crime from 2008 to 2009 in separate studies, as well as documenting longer-term declines in both types of crime. Though the latest Gallup estimates, from an Oct. 7-10, 2010, survey, would reflect a more up-to-date assessment of the crime situation than those reports do, Americans were also likely to perceive crime as increasing both locally and nationally in the 2009 Gallup Crime survey.

The apparent contradiction in assessments of the crime situation stems from Americans’ general tendency to view crime as increasing. That said, the percentage holding this view appears to be higher when crime actually is increasing, as in the late 1980s and early 1990s, than when it is not.

Americans’ perceptions of crime may also be influenced by their general assessments of how things are going in the country. Americans generally believe the crime situation to be better when their satisfaction with national conditions is high, as in the late 1990s, when the economy was strong, and in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, when patriotism and support for political leaders surged. Thus, the current estimates of increasing crime may to some degree be inflated due to widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the U.S. today.

Apart from whether the crime rate is increasing, 60% of Americans believe the crime problem in the U.S. is “extremely” or “very serious,” up from 55% in 2009 and tied for the highest Gallup has measured since 2000. A majority of Americans have typically rated the U.S. crime problem as extremely or very serious in the 11-year history of this question.

As is usually the case, Americans are much less concerned about the crime problem in their local area, as 13% say the crime problem is extremely or very serious where they live.

2000-2010 Trend: Overall, How Would You Describe the Problem of Crime in the United States/in the Area Where You Live?

Americans who have been victimized by crime in the past 12 months are about twice as likely as those who have not been victimized to describe the crime problem in their local area as very serious (18% to 10%). Crime victims are also substantially more likely to perceive crime as increasing in their local area (62% to 43%). However, being a victim of crime bears little relationship to the way one perceives the crime situation in the U.S.

Survey MethodsResults for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 7-10, 2010, with a random sample of 1,025 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only). Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, education, region, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2009 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in continental U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Balko: Why Americans still support the death penalty

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By Radley Balko

It has long been the conventional wisdom on both sides of the death penalty debate that if a state or the federal government were ever shown to have executed an innocent person, we’d see a dramatic drop in support for state executions. In the 2006 case Kansas v. Marsh, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a death penalty supporter, called the search for a wrongly executed person the “Holy Grail” of death penalty opponents.

But a little less than two years after David Grann made a convincing argument in The New Yorker that the state of Texas had done just that, public support for capital punishment hasn’t wavered. In October 2009, Grann wrote about Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for setting the fire that killed his three young children. Willingham was convicted because of forensic testimony from fire officials that arson experts call junk science. (more…)

Baptised in water, spirit and fire

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By Alan Bean

This post was written in anticipation of a Mustard Seed Conspiracy study dealing with the baptism and temptation of Jesus.

Water baptism is a sacrament, “an outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” In some Christian communions, children are baptized in anticipation of Spirit baptism.

But however we conceive it, baptism in the Holy Spirit is a glorious thing. As Jesus emerges from the Jordan, he sees the heavens ripped apart and the Holy Spirit, dove-like, descending to his shoulder.

Whether anyone else witnessed this event is hard to say. Matthew gives us the impression that the voice from heaven “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” is addressed to the crowd; Mark and Matthew’s wording applies only to Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

But whether this Holy Ghost baptism was a personal or a communal experience, it was powerful and profound. The hand of God was on Jesus in a mighty way. Great things were coming, probably just around the next bend.

But in the Bible, as in life, glory merges into agony. For Christian disciples, the two are integrally connected. We are baptized in water, spirit and fire: a package deal.

It’s in the wilderness that we face the fire. (more…)

Officials won’t let prisoner read book on prisons and slavery

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By Alan Bean

An Alabama inmate is suing for the right to read a Pulitzer prize-winning book, “Slavery By Another Name.”  The book chronicles the use of prisons and harsh treatment to maintain control over black citizens in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th. 

The folks who run the Kirby Correctional Facility think the book constitutes a security risk.

When I read this story I was reminded of the Never Again rally Friends of Justice sponsored on the second anniversary of the infamous Tulia drug sting.  For reasons that have always eluded me, prisons within a 100-mile radius of Tulia (a small town in the Texas panhandle) were placed on full lockdown the day of the rally.  That means prisoners were confined to their cells and fed PB&J sandwiches while the incendiary sermons, comedy routines, musical presentations and speeches unfolded in front of 400 people in a Tulia park. 

The presence of Friends of Justice at the June 2010 trial of Curtis Flowers in Winona, MS prompted a similar kind of over-reaction.  An African-American intern who drove to Winona to assist defense counsel was pulled over by an officer who forced her to explain her reasons for being in town.

The authorities don’t always react this way.  The officers who handled the September 2007 march on Jena, Louisiana were uniformly cordial and professional, even though a crowd of at least 30,000 people was marching through a community of 3,000. (more…)

Why Al Mohler rejects the non-violence of Jesus

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Albert Mohler

By Alan Bean

I was driving home to Arlington from Cleveland, MS when I noticed that the Associated Baptist Press had used my theological reflections on the execution of Troy Davis as a modest counter weight to Albert Mohler, an evangelical theologian who claims that capital punishment is pro-life. 

They called him “The Boy King” when he first ascended to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, but that was back in 1989.   Now Time Magazine is calling Dr. Mohler the  “reigning intellectual in the evangelical movement”.  So, whatever complaints his doubters may have had back in the day when The Boy King was ripping the scepter from the hands of an irenic Roy Lee Honeycutt, Mohler has made a name for himself in the decades since. (more…)

Capital Punishment and the Character of God

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By Alan Bean

Troy Davis wasn’t the only man executed yesterday in America.  Lawrence Russell Brewer, the man convicted in the infamous dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas met his maker via lethal injection.  So far as I know, there were few protesters camped out in Huntsville Texas when Brewer died.  Georgia may have killed an innocent man (in which case, execution morphs into murder–the state has no mandate to kill the innocent); Texas executed a poster child for the death penalty.
 
If anyone deserved to die by lethal injection it was Larry Brewer.  A white supremacist with a sadistic streak, Brewer may be the least sympathetic victim of capital punishment on record.  Judged by purely pragmatic standards, the world is a better place without this guy.
 
But Larry Brewer was created in the image of God.  He didn’t invent racism, he took it in with his mother’s milk.  Brewer became a white supremacist in a Texas prison.  Some people find God in prison; others find Satan.  Larry was one of those.
 
Larry is our boy, a product of a world he didn’t create.  Is he responsible for his actions?  Certainly.  There were thousands of white ignorant white supremacists in southeast Texas the day James Byrd died, only one of them decided to litter the road with the body parts of a randomly selected black man.
 
I don’t know why Brewer did what he did.  We’re a clever bunch, but the mystery of human iniquity eludes us.  Crimes of passion we understand because we are passionate beings and many of our passions are irrational.  Monstrous cruelty eludes our understanding. 
 
We don’t understand Larry Brewer, but God does.
 
When the state takes a human life it defines that life as disposable.  On who’s authority?  The Roman Catholic Church respectfully disagrees.  I’m not a Roman Catholic, but I can’t argue with their stance on the death penalty.  I don’t just agree with it; I am convinced by the moral logic undergirding it.
 
Capital punishment isn’t just wrong when the facts are ambiguous; it is simply wrong.
 
True, the “eye for an eye” morality appears in the Bible, but Jesus explicitly rejects this ancient lex talionis.  To quote the Gideon’s  King James Bible I just removed from a drawer in my motel room, Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  But I say unto you that you resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also . . . Ye have that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.  But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”
 
Is Jesus the human face of God?  I believe he is.  Can Jesus unravel the mystery of iniquity?  I believe he can.  And on the basis of that belief I reject the death penalty.  Forced to choose between Jesus and Rick (236 and counting) Perry, I go with Jesus.
 
It has been argued, of course, that the Sermon on the Mount only relates to personal morality and cannot be applied to the actions of the state.  Thus we are to be merciful in our personal dealings while  we enthusaistically embrace the punitive brutality of the state.
 
Jesus calls us to be children of God but we have chosen another father.
 
The merciful God and father of Jesus will welcome Larry just as he has welcomed Troy.  God will have mercy on our souls (and ours) because that’s who God is.
 
Capital punishment is about the character of God. 

White supremacist gang member executed in Texas for dragging death of black man 13 years ago

By Associated Press, Published: September 21

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.

Byrd, 49, was chained to the back of a pickup truck and pulled whip-like to his death along a bumpy asphalt road in one of the most grisly hate crime murders in recent Texas history.

Brewer, 44, was asked if he had any final words, to which he replied: “No. I have no final statement.”

He glanced at his parents watching through a nearby window, took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. A single tear hung on the edge of his right eye as he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., 10 minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing into his arms, both covered with intricate black tattoos.

Byrd’s sisters also were among the witnesses in an adjacent room.

“Hopefully, today’s execution of Brewer can remind all of us that racial hatred and prejudice leads to terrible consequence for the victim, the victim’s family, for the perpetrator and for the perpetrator’s family,” Clara Taylor, one of Byrd’s sisters, said.

She called the punishment “a step in the right direction.”

“We’re making progress,” Taylor said. “I know he was guilty so I have no qualms about the death penalty.”

Appeals to the courts for Brewer were exhausted and no last-day attempts to save his life were filed.

Besides Brewer, John William King, now 36, also was convicted of capital murder and sent to death row for Byrd’s death, which shocked the nation for its brutality. King’s conviction and death sentence remain under appeal. A third man, Shawn Berry, 36, received a life prison term.

“One down and one to go,” Billy Rowles, the retired Jasper County sheriff who first investigated the horrific scene, said. “That’s kind of cruel but that’s reality.”

It was about 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday, June 7, 1998, when witnesses saw Byrd walking on a road not far from his home in Jasper, a town of more than 7,000 about 125 miles northeast of Houston. Many folks knew he lived off disability checks, couldn’t afford his own car and walked where he needed to go. Another witness then saw him riding in the bed of a dark pickup.

Six hours later and some 10 miles away on Huff Creek Road, the bloody mess found after daybreak was thought at first to be animal road kill. Rowles, a former Texas state trooper who had taken office as sheriff the previous year, believed it was a hit-and-run fatality but evidence didn’t match up with someone caught beneath a vehicle. Body parts were scattered and the blood trail began with footprints at what appeared to be the scene of a scuffle.

“I didn’t go down that road too far before I knew this was going to be a bad deal,” he said at Brewer’s trial.

Fingerprints taken from the headless torso identified the victim as Byrd.

Testimony showed the three men and Byrd drove out into the county about 10 miles and stopped along an isolated logging road. A fight broke out and the outnumbered Byrd was tied to the truck bumper with a 24½-foot logging chain. Three miles later, what was left of his shredded remains was dumped between a black church and cemetery where the pavement ended on the remote road.

Brewer, King and Berry were in custody by the end of the next day.

The crime put Jasper under a national spotlight and lured the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers, among others, to try to exploit the notoriety of the case which continues — many say unfairly — to brand Jasper more than a decade later.

King was tried first, in Jasper. Brewer’s trial was moved 150 miles away to Bryan. Berry was tried back in Jasper. DNA showed Byrd’s blood on all three of them.

Brewer was from Sulphur Springs, about 180 miles to the northwest, and had been convicted of cocaine possession. He met King, a convicted burglar from Jasper, in a Texas prison where they got involved in a KKK splinter group known as the Confederate Knights of America and adorned themselves with racist tattoos. Evidence showed Brewer had violated parole and was involved in a number of burglaries and thefts in the Jasper area.

King had become friends with Berry and moved into Berry’s place. Evidence showed Brewer came to Jasper to stay with them.

Death comes for Troy Davis: Father forgive us, for we know exactly what we are doing

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By Alan Bean

The State of Georgia has murdered Troy Davis.  I don’t use the m-word casually or for rhetorical effect.  But when it is no longer possible to distinguish guilt from innocence, when the state’s case lies in tatters and everybody knows it, there is no civil justification for taking a life.  State-sanctioned killing is never morally justified, but even those who support capital punishment in the abstract should have grave concerns about what happened tonight in Jackson, Georgia.

What happens when all legal remedies have been exhausted and the guilt-innocence question has not been resolved?  Do you carry out the sentence imposed in the good old days when the state appeared to have credible evidence, or do you commute the sentence to life without parole?

Georgia just answered that question.

I was sitting in the Airport Grocery in Cleveland MS listening to Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers when the dreadful news from Laura Moye appeared on my cell phone.  I had been having a good time.  Suddenly I was sickened.  I generally eschew emotive language, but this is an honest to goodness outrage.

Please read Laura’s heart-felt message and follow the instructions at the bottom of her message.

Georgia Kills Troy Davis

Death Penalty, Prisoners and People at Risk, USA | Posted by: , September 21, 2011 at 11:16 PM
 
After a tense delay of more than 4 hours, the state of Georgia has just killed Troy Anthony Davis.

My heart is heavy. I am sad and angry. Georgia’s criminal justice system behaved with the viciousness of a defective machine, relentlessly pursuing his death while ignoring the doubts about his guilt that were obvious to the rest of the world.

Tonight we witnessed an abuse of power that exposed a justice system devoid of humanity, a dysfunctional destructive force in denial about its own deeply embedded flaws.

We could not ultimately stop Georgia’s machinery of death in this case, but the groundswell of activism Troy Davis has generated proves that people are hungry for a better system of justice. This will be his legacy. We will fight for a system of justice with more humanity, that accepts the possibility of mistakes, errors, and doubts. A system of justice that believes that innocence matters. A system of justice with more justice.

Let’s take a moment to honor the life of Troy Davis and Mark MacPhail. Then, let’s take all of our difficult feelings and re-double our commitment to the abolition of the death penalty.

not in my namePlease take this Pledge, and commit to working for abolition in your community, in your state, in your country, and in the world.

Tonight we mourn … tomorrow we organize!

Troy Davis and the tragedy of American Leadership

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By Alan Bean

The decision to release poison into the veins of Troy Davis was ultimately political.  The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole was bombarded with appeals from left and right.  They couldn’t act without enraging significant patches of the crazy quilt we call America.  Ultimately, they chose to satisfy the folks in their social and political world, the political and judicial establishment in Georgia.

So why are the power people in Georgia (and across America) so desperate to see Troy Davis die even though the evidence once used to ‘prove’ his guilt has long since evaporated?

This was a choice between a problem and a precedent.  Execute Troy Davis and you create a martyr whose name will feature prominently in anti-death penalty arguments for decades.  Commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole and you question the system’s reliance on eye-witness testimony; further, you raise profound questions about the system itself.  Everyone knows that Troy Davis is merely the tip of the iceberg, an egregious case of business as usual.  Grant him relief, and you open the floodgates.

The Georgia Board would rather create a problem than establish a precedent.   They defended the integrity, indeed the sanctity of the American judicial system. 

American politics is like American entertainment; we give the people what they want even if what they want is a perverse blend of violence and pornography.  When western democracies like Canada and the UK dispensed with capital punishment popular support for the vile practice was stout.  But leading public officials decided they didn’t want their country associated with the myth of redemptive violence, so they pulled the plug.

In America, politicians decided to exploit the blood lust of the populace.  If support for the death penalty yields applause from the Tea Party, Rick Perry and his ilk are behind it.   

It isn’t that America is more democratic than other countries (although that may be true); we simply have a predatory political culture that makes the most of popular perversity.  That’s why we were slow to abolish slavery and why it took a cultural revolution to end Jim Crow.  When Jim Crow died, the Republican Party exploited white backlash.  Leading Republicans secretly despised the racist southerners crowding under their umbrella, but they were willing to take their votes and alter the party’s political platform accordingly.

Hence we have seen the Mississippification of American politics.

We need a nation where leaders lead.  What are the chances that Barack Obama lifts a finger to help Troy Davis?  To ask the question is to answer it.  It’s hard to exercise moral leadership and get re-elected.

In executing Mr. Davis, the American elite avoided a troubling precedent, but they have created a big long-term problem.  Barring a miracle (and I’m still praying) Troy Davis will die today; but he will not die in vain.