Category: Race

Freedom Riders stand up for the Scott Sisters

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By Alan Bean

Thirty-eight freedom riders who rode buses to Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 to set up a tug-of-war between Jim Crow and new federal law have signed a petition on behalf of Gladys and Jamie Scott.  The Scott sisters were sentenced to double life sentences for a robbery that allegedly netted $11.  They have always maintained their innocence.  But, guilty or innocent, a growing number of Americans, the freedom riders included, consider the sentences an outrage.  The article from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger is pasted below. 

Just one word of editorial comment: It would be great if more civil rights veterans would step up and condemn the New Jim Crow known as the war on drugs.  Just a thought. (more…)

Democrats and the Drug War

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By Alan Bean

New York Times columnist Charles Blow asks why Democrats have shown such loyal support for a drug war that targets one of its core constituencies.  Here’s the salient quote:

“It is, in part, callous political calculus. It’s an easy and relatively cheap way for them to buy a tough-on-crime badge while simultaneously pleasing police unions. The fact that they are ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic men and, by extension, the communities they belong to barely seems to register.”

Exhibit A is the Obama administration’s staunch support for the Byrne Grant program.  The Tulia drug sting (which created Friends of Justice) was funded with Byrne money.  This partly explains why George Bush made drastic cuts to the program–it had embarrassed the Lone Star State.  Barack Obama knows that most Byrne funding is channelled into statistic-generating narcotics programs that (a) lock up disproportionate numbers of poor black men and (b) do absolutely nothing to address the harms associated with drug abuse. 

Tragically, support for the drug war has always been a cheap way for democrats to play the tough-on-crime card.  (more…)

Was Juan Williams sacrificed for our sins?

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You have probably heard that Juan Williams has been sacked by National Public Radio.  I have mixed feelings. 

Like Bill Cosby, Juan Williams panders to white America (and a large portion of prosperous black America) by wailing on the black under-caste.  For instance, Williams recently penned a screed lamenting the sorry state of black America: “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It”.

Williams is an authority on the civil rights movement and has been involved with some excellent work in this connection, most notably PBS’s “Eyes on the Prize” series.  But, like far too many civil rights aficionados, he is inordinately fond of comparing the courage, intelligence and resilience of the civil rights generation with the irresponsible, dependent and self-destructive tendencies on display in poor black neighborhoods.  (more…)

Journey Back to Parchman, Hank Thomas

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Hank Thomas in 1961

Fifty years ago, Hank Thomas entered Parchman prison as a Freedom Rider.  I highlighted this distressing chapter of the Mississippi civil rights struggle in a post designed to establish historical context for the Curtis Flowers case.  Recently, I shared a personal encounter with Parchman when I unsuccessfully attempted to visit Curtis Flowers.  Last week, Hank Thomas was greeted with smiles and handshakes; in 1961 he was welcomed to Parchman by sneering guards.  

Reilly Morse, a senior attorney and a founding staff member in the Biloxi office of the Mississippi Center for Justice, has shared his reflections on Hank Thomas’s return to the notorious plantation prison.  Hank’s personal account is pasted below.  Both articles appear in the most recent edition of Facing South, a publication of the Institute for Southern Studies. (more…)

Mississippi parole board takes up the Scott Sisters case

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Supporters of Jamie and Gladys Scott are beginning to believe that this legal travesty will soon be rectified. 

An October 12th column by Bob Herbert of the New York Times appears to have ruffled feathers in the Magnolia State.   Herbert suggested that double life sentences for a robbery netting $11 might sound ludicrous but “This is Mississippi we’re talking about, a place that in many ways has not advanced much beyond the Middle Ages.”

Will Herbert’s comments make the Mississippi Parole Board more or less likely to do the right thing?  According to an even-handed article in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the attorneys and activists calling for justice in the Scott sisters case take a more hopeful view.

Is Mississippi captive to a medieval mentality? (more…)

Mark Osler: Four Hard Truths about the Drug War

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The policies of the drug war failed, but ignoring the problem certainly won’t make it go away. Here are four steps we need to take:

By MARK OSLER

October 11, 2010

Mark Osler

Though it is out of the spotlight in a bad economy, the United States still has a drug problem, and it may be getting worse. The use of methamphetamine, a particularly pernicious narcotic, is increasing again. Few things can harm a family or community like meth.

It shouldn’t be surprising that drug use is on the rise. The federal government, in particular, has turned its attention to something else: immigration. Just 14 years ago, about 40 percent of federal defendants who received a sentence were charged with drug crimes, while just 12 percent were up on immigration charges. For the 2009 fiscal year, 32 percent of federal defendants faced immigration charges, while only 30 percent were narcotics violators.

In highlighting this shift, I am not arguing that we go back to what we did at the height of the drug war. Those policies largely failed. If we choose to take drug interdiction seriously, we must try new approaches and take real-world facts into account, including four hard truths: (more…)

Pimping the Culture War

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Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter says that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim; he’s an atheist. 

How does she know that?  Because Obama is a liberal, and all liberals are atheists.

Glenn Beck says Jim Wallis of Sojourners is a Marxist.  How does he know that?  Because Wallis believes in economic justice, liberation theologians talk about economic justice, and liberation theologians have been influenced by Marxist thought. 

Beck’s real target isn’t Jim Wallis, it’s Barack Obama.  Jim Wallis is Jeremiah Wright and Jeremiah Wright is Barack Obama, hence, the president is a Marxist.

Are Beck and Coulter serious?  Do they believe their own rhetoric?

Yes and no.  Yes, because their most bizarre statements “feel” right.  No, because Beck and Coulter are so concerned about getting the fans on the red side of the stadium cheering and the fans in the blue seats leaping in alarm that they don’t really care about the rightness or wrongness of their statements.  Or, to put it another way, a remark that gets the fans up and hollering is a good statement, and if the fans are sitting on their hands the message needs to be tweaked.

According to the New York Times, Ann Coulter recently shifted in a more gay-friendly direction (conservatives love gays; we just don’t like gay marriage) because she couldn’t compete with conservatives who are even more extreme than she is.  

The culture war is a marketing gimmick designed to keep the contributions rolling in.  It’s like one of those funny mirrors on the circus midway; what you see shouldn’t be mistaken for reality. (more…)

Blackburn: Stop using ‘junk science’ in the courtroom

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Jeff Blackburn

 

This opinion piece was published in the Houston Chronicle under the names of several authors, but the Amarillo Globe-News version simply mentions Jeff Blackburn, so I am assuming he is the author.   “Stop presenting ‘junk science’ in capital trials” Blackburn says.  You can find the heart of his argument pasted at the end of my remarks. 

The focus here is on Texas, but the problem is nationwide.  In the most recent Curtis Flowers trial, one ballistics expert testified that he could say with 100% certainty that the gun stolen from Doyle Simpson’s car was the murder weapon.  A second expert restricted himself to the obvious: the evidence didn’t lend itself to 100% certainty about anything.  All any competent ballistics expert could say for sure was that the evidence found at the crime scene was consistent with the .380 pistol allegedly stolen from Mr. Simpson’s car, but the shell casings could also have come from a similar weapon. 

Blackburn concentrates on expert witnesses who don’t know what they are talking about; but a lot of expert testimony is biased in favor of the prosecution because that’s where the money is.  Indigent defendants rarely have the money to hire their own experts and most capital defendants are indigent.  

In Blackburn’s opinion, the Cameron Todd Willingham case isn’t primarily about the execution of an innocent man; it’s about junk science. 

Do we really have to choose here? (more…)