Racial gap in school suspensions widens

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A report released by the National Education Policy Center, sheds light on the growing racial gap in school discipline. The report indicates that black students are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school for minor infractions. As research suggests, students who are removed from school are much more likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system. In turn, kids who are locked up as juveniles are more likely to be incarcerated as adults. In essence, discipline policies and the disproportionality in school suspensions serve to effectively funnel kids of color through the school-to-prison pipeline. MW

Racial Gap in School Suspensions Widens

Black students are often removed from school for minor infractions, says a new report.

by Joshua R. Weaver

In Mississippi, Wanda Parker’s son was suspended from school after being caught with an iPod Touch, which, she says, administrators mistook for a cellphone. She unsuccessfully pleaded for weeks to get her son admitted back into school. But because of the school district’s zero-tolerance cellphone policy, Parker’s son, who is African American, missed seven weeks of normal instruction and spent 45 days at an alternative school.

School suspensions for nonwhite students in kindergarten through 12th grade have increased by more than 100 percent since 1970, according to a new report. Suspension rates for blacks outgrew those for whites during the same time period, increasing by more than 10 percentage points by 2006, a year in which about a quarter of black students were suspended at least once.

Parker was among a group of parents, administrators, policymakers, judges and academics who convened last week at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to discuss the report’s findings, its implications and the ongoing problem of school-discipline disparity.

“These zero-tolerance policies dehumanize schools and make them feel more like a prison than a second home,” Parker says. “My son was shamed and deprived of his education.” (more…)

Arizona holds record for some of the longest, harshest sentences in country

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In a recent article, Bob Ortega of the Tucsan Citizen discusses Arizona’s tough sentencing laws and the state’s over-reliance on incarceration. Arizona is known to have some of the longest, harshest sentences. With over $1 billion spent on prisons this year alone and a plan to create 6500 new prison beds over the next 5 years, there is no sign that Arizona plans to change its ways in the near future. Read about Arizona’s prison spending, tough sentencing, high crime rates, and more below. MW

Arizona prison sentences among toughest for many crimes

by Bob Ortega

Whether it’s putting a shoplifter behind bars for three years or a child-porn user away for 200 years, Arizona imposes among the longest, harshest sentences of any state in the country for a wide variety of crimes.

Politically, that has been popular, but the practice carries a hefty price tag. This year, the state will spend more than $1 billion to keep prisoners behind bars, and that figure will balloon if Arizona carries out plans to build or contract for as many as 6,500 new prison beds over the next five years.

Many other states, to cut costs as budget deficits have soared, have adopted sentencing alternatives over the past decade that have slashed their prison populations.

They diverted non-violent offenders into drug- or alcohol-treatment programs, increased tightly supervised probation, and took other steps that experts say save money while helping cut the likelihood that convicts will reoffend.

Nationally, crime rates have been falling for decades. Even with more convicted criminals on the street, many of these states have seen their crime rates fall as far or farther than in Arizona, where the prison population has climbed 50 percent over the past decade. (more…)

Michael Morton and the case for Texas criminal justice reforms

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Michael Morton

By Melanie Wilmoth

Michael Morton spent 25 years behind bars for the murder of his wife, Christine, before he was released based on DNA evidence that pointed to another suspect.

In Morton’s case, there was a wealth of evidence suggesting Morton was not the murderer, but prosecutors never pursued another suspect. Prosecutors were convinced, despite no clear evidence, that Morton was guilty.

It is a classic case of prosecutorial tunnel vision.

As Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis so aptly points out, “The role of the prosecutor is to discover the truth, but oftentimes there’s more interest in getting a conviction.”

Morton’s case is one of hundreds that highlights flaws within the Texas criminal justice system. However, the question remains: Will Texas actually see this case as a sign that serious criminal justice reforms are necessary to prevent prosecutorial misconduct and the continuance of wrongful convictions?

(Check out a related post over at Grits for Breakfast.)

Morton Case Sparks Calls for Texas Evidence Law Reform

by Brandi Grissom

Not long after his mother was murdered, 3-and-a-half-year-old Eric Morton began to tell his grandmother what he had seen that terrible day.

“Mommy’s crying. She’s — Stop it. Go away,” his grandmother said he told her. She asked why his mother was crying.

“’Cause the monster’s there,” Eric said.

Gingerly, she pressed for more details.

“He hit Mommy. He broke the bed,” her grandson said.

“Is Mommy still crying?”

“No, Mommy stopped.” (more…)

Girl Scouts, civil rights, and white racial resentment

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Below is an interesting article detailing a lawsuit filed against a Georgia Girl Scouts organization. The lawsuit, filed last week, was a result of the expulsion of two sisters from their Girl Scout troop after they gave a presentation on the civil rights movement. 

The audience and other troop leaders did not respond well to the civil rights presentation. According to the suit, “The only applause [the presenters] received was from the other two African American girls and one Indian girl in attendance.”

The response to the young girls’ presentation is not surprising coming from a largely white audience. In fact, this reaction is all too common. The civil rights movement does not reflect favorably on most Southern whites and, therefore, discussion of the movement is often met with resistance and resentment from white audiences. It will be interesting to watch the suit unfold and hear the response (if any) from the Girls Scouts of America . MW

Ga. mom sues Girl Scouts claiming daughters were expelled after civil rights presentation 

By Associated Press

ATLANTA — An Atlanta-area mother has filed a lawsuit against a Girl Scouts organization alleging that her twin daughters were expelled from their troop after they gave a presentation on their family’s involvement in the civil rights movement.Angela Johnson filed the suit last week in Gwinnett County State Court, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence. The suit says the troop leaders knew an expulsion would cause the girls harm and that the organization had a responsibility to repair the situation.

In a statement, the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta says the girls weren’t expelled and calls the incident a “disagreement between well-intentioned moms,” referring to Johnson and the troop leaders. (more…)

“A culture of cruelty:” Anti-immigrant sentiment and the war on immigration

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By Melanie Wilmoth

A recent report published by No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, documents in detail the abuses perpetrated by U.S. Border Patrol against immigrant detainees. No More Deaths is an Arizona-based organization that fights for immigrant rights and immigration reform. Through their research over the last 3 years, they have documented over 30,000 incidents of immigrant abuse.

Their report, “A Culture of Cruelty,” tells the stories of a sampling of the individuals who suffered from these abuses. The abuses documented include deprivation of food and water, failure to treat serious medical conditions, physical and psychological abuse, death threats, and inhumane conditions within detention centers.

During the course of their investigation, No More Deaths also uncovered thousands of instances in which due process was denied to immigrant detainees:

“We recorded 1,063 incidents of detainees not receiving due process. Common ways in which due process were violated were:

  • Forms not being provided in a language that the person can read
  • Failure to inform people of their rights to legal counsel and the Mexican Consulate
  • Failure to provide access to the Mexican Consulate when requested
  • Failure to follow protocol for detainees requesting asylum
  • Coercion into signing voluntary repatriation documents under threat of violence, criminal charges, or lengthy detention times
  • Forced fingerprinting on voluntary deportation documents”

As No More Deaths rightly suggests, the “culture of abuse” among U.S. Border Patrol did not arise in isolation. The documented abuses and maltreatment are a reflection of an increasing anti-immigrant sentiment and a punitive consensus that has resulted in the criminalization of immigration.

“In the first half of Fiscal Year 2011, illegal entry and reentry were the most common federal criminal charges prosecuted nationwide,” No More Deaths reports. In Alabama alone, the recent immigration laws have caused thousands of individuals to flee for fear of being detained.

In addition to the anti-immigrant policies that contribute to the war on immigration, there is also an economic aspect that cannot be ignored. Private prison industries, in particular, profit from the increasing numbers of immigrant detainees:

“In the last five years, the annual number of immigrants detained and the cost of detaining them have doubled: in 2009, 383,524 immigrants were detained, costing taxpayers $1.7 billion at an average of $122 a day per bed. Private industry, thus, has strong economic incentives to push for ever more extreme anti-immigrant policies, regardless of the cost to government or the human toll involved…The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, not only lobbied for but actually helped to draft Arizona’s SB 1070.”

The narratives of the immigrants that unfold throughout No More Deaths’ report are tragic and heart-wrenching, but their stories must be told if anything is to be done to change immigration policy and the current anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.

Three Years, 30,000 Incidents of Human Rights Abuse: Are Border Patrol Agents the Real Criminals?

by Valeria Fernandez

Allegations range from Border Patrol agents denying food and water to adults and children in detention for several days, to purposely separating families during deportation.

Those are the findings of a new report released by the Arizona humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths. (more…)

Dominionism sparks a nasty food fight

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Jim Wallis with his conservative friends

A war of words has erupted on the web featuring self-described “secular liberal” Mark Pinsky and progressive evangelical Jim Wallis, on one side, and the consortium of scholars and columnists who write for Talk to Action on the other. 

Pinsky believes that critics of Dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation have created the false impression that most evangelicals are dangerous theocrats. 

Next, Jim Wallis poured gasoline on the fire by claiming in a HuffPost piece, that “some liberal writers seem hell-bent on portraying religious people as intellectually-flawed right-wing crazies with dangerous plans for the country.”

Are Pinsky and Wallis making legitimate claims, or is something more sinister afoot?

Anyone familiar with the good folks at Talk to Action knows how carefully they distinguish Dominionism and mainstream evangelicalism.  Rachel Tabachnick, the most high-profile critic of the New Apostolic Reformation, grew up Southern Baptist and is well acquainted with the wild diversity within evangelicalism.  She is all about nuance.  She is saying that Dominionism has a long history (see my piece on the evolution and meaning of the movement), that it is a minority movement within evangelicalism that is growing rapidly and, most importantly, gaining the support of prominent politicians like Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry.

Pinsky and Wallis refuse to engage this argument, preferring to publicly cudgel a silly straw man into submission.

How do we explain this unseemly assault on the Talk to Action people? (more…)

Five women who matter most

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Female Afghan lawmaker, Malalai Joya, stands for justice in the face of death threats.

by Melanie Wilmoth

In a recent article published by truthdig.com, Helen Redmond lends a critical eye to Forbes’ 2011 list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.

Browsing through the Forbes’ list you will find some of the world’s wealthiest female politicians and celebrities. Although these women gain power through their tremendous social and political capital, are they really “the women who matter most” as Forbes claims? Redmond doesn’t think so:

“The women on the Forbes list are not the ones who matter most. They use their power in the pursuit of profit for themselves and for shareholders to sustain a global system of economic and social inequality.”

Instead, Redmond argues, Forbes (and the rest of the world for that matter) should be praising women who are using their power to fight for social justice and the greater good. As such, Redmond has compiled an alternative list of women who she feels, based on their advocacy efforts and devotion to fighting for equality, should “matter most.”

Redmond’s article offers a thoughtful critique of the value that mainstream America places on politicians and others with obscene amounts of money, and offers thoughts on who should really be considered praiseworthy.

Check out Redmond’s alternative list of powerful women and read the full article below.

Five Women Who Matter Most

By Helen Redmond

The Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women is an obscenely wealthy international sisterhood of politicians, celebrities and billionaires who crashed through the glass ceiling. Forbes describes them as “the women who matter most.”

How is it that Irene Rosenfeld, the CEO of Kraft, whom Forbes lauds for “announcing the divorce between the brands Oreos and Mac ’N Cheese,” matters most? Deciding the fate of cookies and carbs defines power? (more…)

In Memoriam: The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

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Fred Shuttlesworth

By Alan Bean

“He was the soul and heart of the Birmingham movement.  Fred Shuttlesworth had the vision, the determination never to give up, never to give in. He led an unbelievable children’s crusade. It was the children who faced dogs, fire hoses, police billy clubs that moved and shook the nation.”  John Lewis

Fred Shuttlesworth is dead at 89.  He never thought he would survive the civil rights struggle in Birmingham.   Far less protective of his personal safety than men like Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers, Shuttlesworth attributed his survival to the grace of God.  He couldn’t think of any other explanation.

Frankly, neither can I.

It was Shuttlesworth that convinced MLK to come to Birmingham in 1956, the year his home was fire-bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, and it was Shuttleworth’s courage that sustained the movement.  As the quote above suggests, the Birmingham preacher drafted children into the movement when most of the able-bodied adults were already in prison.  In 1961, when a mob of white segregationists surrounded his Birmingham church, it was Shuttlesworth who calmed the crowd. 

Shuttlesworth had been sparring with Police Chief Bull Conner for seven years before the Birmingham campaign reached its peak.  It was during these years of relative anonymity that Shuttlesworth was the most vulnerable.  Not nearly as erudite as the silver-tongued Martin Luther King, Shuttlesworth was an old-time “hooping” preacher.  While King struggled to win the support of progressive and moderate whites, Shuttlesworth inspired the foot soldiers.

When he came to preach at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in October of 1978, I had never heard of Fred Shuttlesworth.  The civil rights narrative trumpeted in the mainstream media had ony a few hero slots available, and Rev. Fred never made the cut.   Shuttlesworth had been invited to speak at Southern by Andrew Manis, then an M.Div student.  A decade later, Manis would write the acclaimed biography,  A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

Old School black preachers are often unnerved by predominantly white audiences.  There is a interactive cadence to black preaching that washes back and forth between the preacher and the congregation.  Preaching to an unresponsive audience, it’s hard to get your rhythm.  So it was for Shuttlesworth at Southern.  His voice was almost inaudible at first, and his delivery seemed forced. 

But something he said struck a chord with my wife, Nancy.  “Amen,” she shouted, as loudly as she dared.

“I’ll take that amen!” Shuttlesworth roared back, and suddenly, he was a man transformed.  When the sermon ended, we were all on our feet whooping and hollering.

You had to look hard to find a mention of Shuttlesworth’s death in America’s flagship newspapers.  The death of Steve Jobs and Sarah Palins’ political career grabbed the headlines.  But no one did more to kill Jim Crow than the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. (more…)

A whirlwind tour: Reflections on the Mississippi Delta

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Mississippi Delta

By Melanie Wilmoth

It has been a few weeks since Alan Bean and I returned from our whirlwind trip to Mississippi. Since we arrived back in Texas, I have spent quite a bit of time reflecting on the trip and all of our various adventures and encounters while we were there.

We planned the trip to Mississippi for several reasons. We are currently working on a few cases in the Delta and had some research to conduct. We also arranged to meet with other advocacy organizations doing similar work in Mississippi so that we could build relationships and collaborate with them on future endeavors. In addition, we planned to meet up for a civil rights tour with a professor and several students from the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. With all of this on our agenda, our days were filled to the brim. Needless to say, I was pretty exhausted and exponentially more enlightened as the trip came to an end.

When we arrived in Jackson, MS, we were welcomed by the wonderful staff of the John M. Perkins Foundation where we stayed that night. The next morning, we met with the Foundation’s Special Projects Coordinator and learned more about the Foundation’s history and its goal of bringing racial reconciliation to Mississippi. From there, we touched base with the Program Director for the ACLU of Mississippi. She informed us of the current ALCU initiatives around immigration, youth justice, and the school-to-prison pipeline and we shared with her about the work of Friends of Justice, discussing opportunities for future dialogue and collaboration.

After two successful meetings with advocacy organizations in Jackson, we made our way to Cleveland, MS. There, we met with Professor Paul Ortiz and several University of Florida history students. Dr. Ortiz and the students were incredibly friendly and interested in the work of Friends of Justice. After meeting them, I was even more excited about joining them on the civil rights tour. (more…)

Jesus ain’t your home boy

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By Alan Bean

If you can’t trust Jesus, who can you trust?

Unfortunately, you can’t trust Jesus.

Unless, that is, you are open to shocking new ideas about God, a counter-intuitive take on the created order, and a topsy-turvy understanding of the human condition.

When Jesus arrived in his hometown of Nazareth, everybody wanted to be impressed.  When a local boy makes good, small towns announce their association with the local-boy-made-good for the edification of passing motorists.  “We might look like just another hick town,”  the sign suggests, “but Bob Wills grew up here.”

Even if you’ve never heard of Bob Wills, you can’t help being a little bit impressed. 

Immediately after his wilderness encounter with the devil, Matthew tells us, Jesus took up residence in the little fishing village of Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, (or the Sea of Tiberias as Herod Antipas insisted on calling it).  From there, he moved into the surrounding communities, eventually arriving at his home town of Nazareth.

By this time, Jesus had acquired a reputation as a teacher with, it was widely rumored, the power to heal.  Nobody was thinking “Messiah” or “Son of God” at this point; but Rabbi was a distinct possibility.  Which explains why, when the hometown boy showed up for Sabbath worship, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and asked to read a passage of his choosing.

Turning to what we call the 61st Chapter (there were no chapters or verses in his day), Jesus intoned a startling message that, like the Lord’s Prayer, had been domesticated by frequent repetition. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 Then he handed the scroll back to the attendant and sat down.

Folks were impressed.  “He reads very well for a kid from Nazareth,” some thought.  “Good intonation, not too fast or too slow, and he fills the synagogue with his voice without appearing to shout.  Not bad for a rookie.” (more…)