Sunday Sermon [Apartheid]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I recently posted a summary of a pair of peer-reviewed studies finding that at the core of political conservatism is resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include: Fear and aggression; Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; Uncertainty avoidance; Need for cognitive closure; Terror management.
Never the party to disappoint our worst expectations, the ultra-conservative Arizona GOP-dominated legislature unleashed a law so reprehensible, so anti-American in nature, that it could justifiably be compared to the pogroms of Nazi Germany and South African apartheid. It prompted an online participant to joke that a new sign has appeared when you cross the border into Arizona reading, “Welcome to Arizona where being a prejudiced, racist imbecile isn't just a way of life. It's the law!”

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-=[ Arizona Apartheid ]=-

E. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, WITHOUT A WARRANT, MAY ARREST A PERSON
IF THE OFFICER HAS PROBABLE CAUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THE PERSON HAS COMMITTED ANY PUBLIC OFFENSE THAT MAKES THE PERSON REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES.
-- Provision in Arizona Immigration Law, SB 1070

I have heard all kinds of justifications for this law, all coming mostly from whites who just don’t give a fuck because they don’t see how this will affect their rights. Most supporters of the law, in fact, are basing their justifications on immigration myths. The usual, knee-jerk (bigoted), justifications range from the mild (“immigrants don’t bother to learn the language”). To the disgusting (“immigrants are raping babies”). More insidiously, these defenders of racism frame immigration in terms of “illegal,” “drug cartels,” and “gangs.” Set aside the facts that immigrants learn the language, work hard under often deplorable conditions, commit crime at lesser rates than native borns (even whites), and actually contribute positively to the U.S. economy. The rednecks in Arizona spat on the facts and snuggled comfortably with what is the worst of our shared American tradition: bigotry.

The law’s intended consequences (to target people based on the color of their skin or assumed ethnicity) are easy enough to predict, but the new law will also have unintended detrimental effects on Arizona’s economy.

First, the law essentially legalizes racial profiling, an enforcement policy that has been shown to be ineffective. It specifically targets communities of color by requiring state and local government workers to determine if a person is illegally in the United States based on a “reasonable suspicion.”

Arizona governor Brewer’s “sartorial profiling” remarks notwithstanding (in which she suggested identifying illegal immigrants by their shoes -- I am not making this up), the law will result in racial profiling, as it does not prohibit police officers from relying on race or ethnicity in deciding who to investigate. Of course, not all Latino/as look alike. I am of Puerto Rican descent and I have light skin and blue eyes. Similarly, Mexico’s population has the full range of human phenotypic expression. If you don’t believe me, just watch Telemundo for a hot fuckin second. Moreover, what if I am in Arizona and I’m dating a white woman (as I have been known to do)?

What these goobers fail to understand is that the law undermines the Constitution and empowers local police with federal authority. This isn’t an immigrant issue, you blockheads -- it is a civil rights issue! Your civil rights. The measure does not require the local police to have a search warrant or even suspect that some illegal action has occurred.

What really takes the cake is that these bigots don’t even understand they’re shooting themselves in the foot. One of the unintended consequences of the law is that it will devastate state and local economies. The National Employment Law Project, for example, pointed out that smaller-scale anti-immigrant laws have cost individual localities millions of dollars. The Texas-based Perryman Group calculated that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. The Immigration Policy Center noted that, “with Arizona facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion, the new law will “further imperil the state’s economic future.”

Observed Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski, “We’re the laughing stock of the country because of these crazy laws.” Duh... You think?

Ironically, the law hasn’t been well received by the law enforcement community. The costs of arresting, detaining, processing, and transporting undocumented human beings out of Arizona will drain local government treasuries, prompting the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police to oppose the law. There were an estimated 460,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona as of January 2009, making up 4 percent of the state’s population. If the federal government were to handle the entire undocumented population, the cost would be approximately $23,482 per person, based on a recent study by the Center for American Progress.

But let’s be sure here: this law isn't about reason or good social policy. Many of the defenders of this law and those reporting on it note that immigration is an "emotional" issue. Let's stop and reflect on these emotions for a moment, the heart of this law: pure, naked, fear and hatred. Fear of an America whose face is changing and race/ ethnicity-based hatred.

Love,

Eddie

By Any Other Name...

¡Hola! Everybody...
Sometimes I look around and I’m stunned at what 30 years of neoconservativism has done to our society... Someone suggested I might need a vacation. LOL You can find my response to that at the end of this post.

This one is hard to articulate and I have to be somewhere...

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-=[ From the Plantation to the Rock ]=-

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As a nation we imprison more people than any other in the world. China, Russia, and oppressive regimes all over the world pale in comparison. The vast majority of those languishing in prisons are young men of color. One of the consequences of this historically unprecedented mass incarceration movement is that millions of people of color have become disenfranchised -- they have lost forever their right to vote. An added consequence of this over-reliance on incarceration has been that we have created a class of individuals that are, for all intents, three-fifths human...

Our national response to education, poverty, addiction, inequality, and other social ills can be summed up in one word: incarceration. I will pass a Brooklyn block later today. On that block stands an elementary school in disrepair filled with demoralized educators and bright, hopeful children of color. The state of New York spends upwards of a million dollars to incarcerate young men and women who come from that block -- sent to upstate exclusively white communities where the sole employer is often the state department of corrections.

One one level, incarceration in New York is a demented jobs creation program for rural whites.

The city of New York, loathe to spend money on education in the inner city, will spend about $70,000 annually to incarcerate a minor child. About 90% of these children are children of color.

In fact, the vast majority of those incarcerated are young people of color. A conservative response, often offered by bigots and their black and brown enablers, is that black and brown people are more criminally inclined.

Of course, this sentiment has no relationship to reality, but it doesn’t stop the onslaught. The fact of the matter is that studies show race is the determining factor in who goes to prison. Everything else being equal -- criminal history and nature of crime -- a black person is five times more likely to be sentenced than his white peer. Additionally, enforcement is applied differently to different communities. The neighborhoods of the middle to upper class, where there is more drug usage, are not subjected to the same policing strategies as in poorer sections. I doubt we would lead the world in incarceration if the majority of those incarcerated were the white children of well-to-do and politically influential parents.

The fastest growing segment of the prison population has been women. Again, the majority of those being incarcerated are women of color. Accompanying this rise are new more puntive laws meant to take away the parental rights of women. So, along with a new generation of imprisoned women, there are the children of these women, who become wards of the state -- little more than a de facto prison for kids. Children -- mostly children of color.

Some of you know I was involved in a women’s prison on Rikers Island -- the Rock, or the Island, as it is called by those who live there. Rikers Island is the largest penal colony in the world. It is also the largest mental health facility in the world. Well, officially it’s not meant to be a mental facility, but that’s where we send those afflicted with mental illness.

My relationship with Rikers Island involved bringing a cognitive/ behavioral life-skills workshop into the women’s facility. That’s where I first heard of the practice of shackling incarcerated women while in labor. I first heard about this (oddly enough) from a female corrections officer. Several of the women at Rikers mentioned it on the grounds I wouldn’t disclose their identities. At first I couldn’t believe this was possible. A part of me refused to believe we have stooped so low. It was reprehensible to me. I couldn’t even entertain the image of a caged black woman giving birth to a child while shackled to a bed.

But it was and is true. This form of torture is allowed in these United States and there are some reading this that gladly endorse this behavior. I met a young lady who claimed she had been shackled while giving birth. She was a beautiful African American girl maybe 19-20 years-old, but she looked like 16. She became pregnant while incarcerated. As she recounted her story, of having to give birth to a beautiful Black child while shackled to a bed, I became so angry, tears welled in my eyes. She made me promise I wouldn’t say anything because she was scared...

Can you imagine this? Can you begin to imagine the psychological trauma? Or perhaps you think this child deserves whatever she has coming to her... Is this the society you want?

If so, then we have become animals.

Today, I’m joining with a coalition of many different groups to bring light to this issue and to pressure our governor to sign an anti-shackling bill recently past by both house of the state.

Evil doesn’t rest...

Eddie

The Shame of a Nation

¡Hola! Everybody...
This morning, as I was waking up, making coffee, I was overhearing an interview with former education “Czar,” William Bennett. This was the guy who wrote several books on virtue (for children, no less) and was later found to be an inveterate gambler. Now, I’m not one to judge, but if I’m going to get on a bully pulpit, I’d better have my own shit together. Imagine setting myself up as an addiction "expert" and all the while doing drugs. My question is so: why are conservatives like Bennett still considered relevant? Why is he on TV giving “expert” testimony on Obama’s presidency? Why aren’t the media asking Bennett about his own indiscretions?

I want to thank the people who were nice enough to subscribe to my blog and respond: thanks Sabi, Saynt, Dana, Rippa, Will, Kenny and Ellen!

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-=[ A Savage Disgrace ]=-

Not too long ago, I attended a conference in which one of the panelists related a story that to me is more horrifying than any slasher movie. A child in kindergarten class was asked to draw a picture showing how he saw himself in the future. It’s an innocent enough exercise, one given in kindergarten classes across the nation. The child drew an elaborate diagram. In it he drew his school. From his school, he drew a tunnel that wound its way through a rather sophisticated landscape. That tunnel led to a prison.

Now, the teacher was horrified. She called in her superiors, who called the parents, and so on. When asked why he would draw such a picture, he responded in the typical honesty only children can muster. He said he drew it because it was true.

And he’s right...

After watching that blustering fool, William Bennett, CNN gave some lip service to a report on the US prison population. We incarcerate more people than any other nation in the world. We have 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population. There are currently 2.3 million men and women behind bars in the USA right now. Add to that the 5 million on probation and parole and you have an epidemic.

The vast majority of those in prison are young people of color. You might say that this is so because people of color are more prone to crime, but you would be wrong. The Sentencing Project has shown that all other factors controlled a black youth is five times more likely to be sentenced to prison than his white peer -- even when the crime and criminal histories are the same.

You might say that, hey, prison is fucked up, but we need to lock up criminals in order to stem the tidal wave of crime. Again, you would be wrong. There is no correlation between incarceration and crime rates. In fact, New York City’s record crime drops occurred during a decade in which the prison population was decreasing.

You might say that the collateral damage done to these individuals is justified if it keeps dangerous criminals off the street and again, you would be wrong. The majority of those currently incarcerated are non-violent, first time offenders -- often low level drug dealers who are addicted. Our criminal justice system is full overburdened, that if everyone currently fighting a case would choose to go to trail, the system would implode. As a result, plea-bargaining -- giving up the right to a fair trial in exchange for a more lenient sentence is the norm rather than the exception.

In other words, the vast majority or people in prison didn’t even have the benefit of a fair trail.

Finally, you might not give a fuck because you think this doesn’t affect you, but, again -- you would be wrong. Where do you think our government gets the money to build and maintain these prisons...?

They get if from money that would’ve other wise gone to education, health care, and community revitalization projects that, in the long run, do more to prevent crime than anything else we could think of. The money comes from your child’s school, from your community, from your pockets. In other words, we have transformed ourselves from a nation that envisioned a Great Society, to a prison nation. Our responses to addiction, poverty, lack of access to opportunities all rolled into one: incarceration.

And for what? For an expensive way to destroy a life? Here in NYC, we would rather spend over $70, 000 a year to lock up a black youth, than to spend a fraction of that to send him to a decent school.

So, considering the above, how wrong was that child? We call it the school-to-prison pipeline. In the coming days, I’m going to tie all this together and putting to rest, once and for all, the notion that we live in a post-racial anything. It’s all connected, folks...

Love,

Eddie