Category: Uncategorized

Why is Rick Perry dabbling in weird religion?

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Perrys Prayer RallyBy Alan Bean

“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever, amen.”

Rick Perry used the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer to conclude his own prayer at yesterday’s The Response gathering in Houston.  But after 2,000 years, the venerable old prayer is easily misconstrued.  In the Roman empire, as many first century inscriptions make clear, Caesar was King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  To declare that God, not Caesar, holds the keys to the kingdom was a subversive act.

When you see a would-be Caesar paying metaphysical compliments to God while 30,000 worshippers cheer lustily, there are two possibilities: (a) the Kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, or (b) a politician is using a currently popular version of God-talk to advance his political aspirations.

I’m going with (b). (more…)

The Savior of Angola

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Aerial view of Angola prison, January 10, 1998.: USGSBy Alan Bean

You don’t work in the criminal justice reform world very long without running up against Burl Cain.  The man is larger than life and, like the hero of the old Kris Kristofferson song, “he’s a walking contradiction; partly truth, partly fiction.”

According to legend, Burl Cain tamed the most corrupt and violent prison in the world with the love of Jesus.  But as James Ridgeway argues in this compelling piece for Mother Jones, the story has been greatly enhanced in the telling.

Many of those who have embraced Cain’s religious regime really have turned their lives around; but what of those who maintain their independence?  That’s the story you never hear, and Ridgeway is here to tell it.

This story is personal for me.  Friends of Justice is working, individually or as part of larger coalitions, on behalf of at least six Angola prisoners who we believe to be innocent.  Burl Cain knows a lot of the folks in his prison didn’t do the crime.  He also knows the death penalty (which he personally administers) is in serious tension with Christian non-violence.  But all of that pales to insignificance compared to his primary task of claiming souls for eternity.

James Ridgeway came to Angola to talk to warden Cain, but spent his time in the company of PR whiz, Cathy Fontenot.  Cain, he learned at the end, was in Atlanta that day.  The warden was wise to decline an interview.

I have pasted a few choice highlights below, just to whet your appetite, but I encourage you to read the entire article. (more…)

Confederate license plates in Texas?

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By Alan Bean

Please check out the Progress Texas website and consider signing the petition which is explained below:

The Sons of Confederate Veterans want to display the Confederate flag on Texas license plates. You can do something to stop that right now.

This conservative group proposed a Texas specialty license plate  featuring the controversial and offensive image of the Confederate flag.  They want to harken back to the days of conflict, civil war and racism  that plagued America and the south.  We need your help to stop this  symbol of oppression from being put on cars across Texas.

The application to put this racist relic out for public consumption went before the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles board and stalled  with a tied vote of 4 to 4 – the 9th board member Ramsay Gillman  unexpectedly passed away before the vote.  Rick Perry must now appoint a 9th member to the board who will be the deciding vote on this  controversial issue.  With all eyes on Perry’s political future, your  voice makes a difference. (more…)

Balko: Why ‘Caylee’s Law’ Is a Bad Idea

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According to Radley Balko (now of the Huffington Post) 700,000 have signed a Change.org petition calling for a law that would require parents to immediately inform the authorities when a child dies.  Balko thinks this is a really bad idea, and I agree.   This introductory paragraph is particularly on-point:

High-profile trials are anomalies. They’re about as far from the day-to-day goings on in police precincts, courtrooms, and prisons as your typical TV crime drama (the other place Americans get most of their (bad) information about the criminal justice system). Despite what much of the public seems to have taken away from these sorts of trials in recent years, the average person wrongly accused of a crime isn’t a wealthy college lacrosse player with top-notch legal representation. Prosecutors who wrongly charge people aren’t usually stripped of their law license or criminally sanctioned. (In fact, they’re rarely sanctioned at all.) Black men accused of murder aren’t typically represented by “dream teams” of the country’s best defense attorneys. And, believe it or not, if there’s a problem in the criminal justice system when it comes to children, it’s that parents and caretakers are too often overcharged in accidental deaths or as a result of bogus allegations, not that they regularly get away with murder.

Federal law scales back crack sentences

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By Victoria Frayre

It’s official. Well . . .  almost. With the passing of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which ultimately admitted how big of a FAIL the “War onDrugs” has been, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has decided to retroactively apply the law to inmates convicted of federal crack related crimes prior to 2010. Unless Congress intervenes by October, retroactively applying the law could potentially reduce sentences for some 12 thousand federal inmates, 85% ofwhom are African-American.

The average reduced sentence will cut off approximately 3 years of jail time for most inmates, although a judge and lawyer, most of whom are public defenders, will bear the brunt of pushing paperwork through thecourts for prisoners seeking reductions. And what about violent crack relatedoffenders? How will releasing convicts back into society effect the safety ofthe general public? What about recidivism rates of freshly released prisoners? Will most released prisoners end up back in jail? (more…)

Do you know your rights? Let’s take a little quiz

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Emily Good

By Chaka Holley

Do you know your rights? Let’s take a little quiz.

1. Is it legal to video record your interaction with a police officer?

2. Is it legal to video record a police officer interacting with someone
else?

3. In your state is it legal to privately record an interaction with
someone ?

Keep reading, you might be surprised by the answers. (more…)

Race and wrestling in Santa Monica

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By Alec Goodwin

Members of the Santa Monica High School wrestling team in California may find themselves facing hate crime charges after an event that led to a noose being hung around a dummy and a black student tied up with a belt.

Although the event occurred on May 4th, the victim’s mother was not informed until several weeks later and only through other parents. To add insult to injury, the school had apparently known about the incident for a long time but had simply refused to tell the mother. (more…)

A place like Mississippi

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Magnolia blossom at the Leflore County Courthouse

By Alan Bean

Ever since Friends of Justice was asked to look into the case of Curtis Flowers, we have been intrigued with Mississippi.  The most intense confrontations between civil rights and states rights took place in the Magnolia state.  Most educated Americans are vaguely aware that hundreds of freedom riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961.  The Emmett Till story, for very good reason, has received a lot of attention. The Freedom Summer of 1964, culminating in the murder of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, has entered the American historical lexicon.

But so much has been forgotten.  Who today remembers the voter registration struggles in places like Greenwood, Cleveland and Grenada?  How many are aware of the intimate link between the Emmett Till case and the Montgomery bus boycott?  How many educated Americans are familiar with the heroic work of Sam Block, Diane Nash, Amzie Moore and Aaron Henry (to name just a few)?

Amazing stories have been forgotten because in Mississippi nobody won.  The civil rights people won a few battles, but the states rights people won the war.  Jim Crow may be dead, but civil rights backlash has controlled American politics for decades.

The Friends of Justice civil rights tour devoted nine intense days to these stories.  “To understand the world,” William Faulkner said, “you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”  Over the next few days I will be writing a series of posts dedicated to a parallel proposition: To understand America in 2011 you must first understand the Mississippi Delta in 1963.  Some of these stories will be familiar, some will not.  But this series of posts isn’t driven by an antquarian interest in days long past; in June of 2011, Friends of Justice went to Mississippi in search of America.

Awash in Mississippi history

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Linda White, Chelsea Zamora, Alec Goodwin, Margaret Block, Victoria Frayre and Chaka Holley

By Alan Bean

The Friends of Justice Mississippi civil rights tour is almost at an end.  We won’t have time for a full report until we are back in Texas, but I wanted to give you a quick highlight reel from the first day or two.

Margaret Block recites poem to young men

After driving from Arlington to Cleveland, MS, we picked up civil rights veteran Margaret Block and headed for the 47th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Memorial in Meridian and Philadelphia.  On the way down we stopped at the Boys and Girls Club in Kosciusko.  Most Boys and Girls Clubs struggle with inadequate funding, but Oprah Winfrey has seen to it that the club in her home town is state of the art.  It makes a difference.

When we visited, 250 children were dancing, working on computers, dancing, playing ping pong and dancing.  Every activity seemed to involve intense physical activity and the children were loving it.  Several groups put on impromptu dance performances for our group.  Margaret Block responded in kind by reciting one of her trenchant poems to a group of teenage boys.

Little Mississippi towns like Kosciusko are changing, but at a glacial pace.  The community is 53% white, but all but two of the children at the town’s beautiful and fully equipped Boys and Girls Club were black.  “This is the kind of facility most little towns can only dream of,” Margaret Block explained, “but the white parents still won’t allow their kids to attend.”

I don’t have time to tell you about the tense exchange between civil rights activist Diane Nash and the mayor of Meridian, MS, our troubling encounter with white supremacy in Carrellton, MS, my heart warming (and rending) visit with Curtis Flowers in Parchman, MS or the amazing woman we met in Doddsville, MS.  I’ll tell these stories (and many others) when we are safely back in Texas and I have a little time on my hands.  Today we’re visiting the all black town of Mound Bayou, Aaron Henry’s drug store in Clarksdale, the site where Emmett Till’s murderers were acquitted in Sumner, and Parchman prison where hundreds of freedom riders were incarcerated in 1961.

Tina Dupuy: We Get the Media we Want

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Tina Dupuy

By Alan Bean

Tina Dupuy is a Los Angeles-based comedian and freelance writer.  She thinks we get the kind of media we want.

“If we wanted a somber and serious Edward R. Murrow to deliver the important news of the day – we’d all tune in and the ratings would be gangbusters. But we don’t. Most media criticism comes from the assumption that we want Murrow but we get TMZ – instead of the empirical (and slightly embarrassing) fact: We want TMZ.”

The rest of her column is pasted below. (more…)