Co-directed by Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat and Israeli activist Guy Davidi, the images in 5 Broken Cameras are beautiful, haunting, and bring about dozens of other questions about the history of the occupation and the tactics around love and resistance. Thanks to their fabulous publicist Eseel, I got to interview Guy and Emad and ask them about their lives, their work, and what they think the future holds for Israel and Palestine.

Emad: It has been a sometimes good experience, a sometimes bad experience. In 2005, when I started to resist with my village, I decided to film to protect myself and to protect the other protests and to show the footage for other people, and to use the footage sometime to prove what is going on. Over the last seven years, [I documented] how what happened in the village affected me, my family, my children, and my friends, week by week. After many years of documenting, I thought that there was a huge story that I have to tell to other people. We decided to construct a documentary from my personal life and personal story. [5 Broken Cameras] is not a political film or just a film about conflict – it’s a film about life, and how the people can survive and how people live, and how kids grow up. For my kids, everyone loves those boys, and I wanted to make for them a good life, I wanted to take care of them, and protect them. I can’t tie them in the house every day, keep them 24 hours in one room. This is our life, like this. I tried to build for them a good life and a good situation. And I wanted to put my life and my experience in the village in one documentary.

Maybe [other people, in other parts of the world] see footage on the news, but they don’t know the reality and they don’t know the life of these people. I hope that this film does make some change, so we can change the life for everyone – in Palestine and Israel.

Guy: I came to Bil’in in early 2005, one of the first Israeli peace activists that came. I was already interested in what was happening in this movement, I wanted be a part of it. My first main motivation is a bit selfish, it wasn’t just to help the movement – it was also for me. Israel is like a ghetto – it is closed, like a bubble, not sensitive to the others. You’re not allowed to go here, not allowed to go there – so I wanted to break that. I wanted to live in a free way. If we live in a free way, we have to confront the shadows – and what happens in the shadow is in Palestine and the settlements.

So I met Emad. He was a very known character from the start, because he was the only cameraman who was basically staying in the village all the time. He became what we say in the film, “the village’s eye.” So we met many times while filming. We didn’t work together until 2009, when Emad approached me to make the film, so we decided to make it as a personal narrative. When I thought in the beginning to make a film on Bil’in, there were many that were similar. We had to have a new and refreshing take and I was happy to find out in the material that we could tell the story in this very intimate and personal way. You could see in the world both the context of the movement and the occupation, and you can have a really intimate family moments.

Guy: First we have to know that there are many kinds of settlements and many kinds of settlers. It is the Israeli machine that is making it move. These are not necessarily ideological settlers going because they want to conquer the land or wipe out Palestinians. They just want to improve their lives. The government is subsidizing the apartments in the West Bank, and using [the people's] financial circumstances to move an agenda forward. Some settlers don’t know what is going on – the way Israel is designed, you can travel through parts and not really know where you are. Some settlers do know what’s going on and don’t care. And then you have a very small minority, a violent minority, the fundamentalist Jews that are creating terror in Palestine. They are small, but noisy and strong. If Israel would like to change its ways, they will have to find a way to root out the fundamentalists, to pull the weeds.

Emad: I think that from the beginning in ’67, the settlements were the Israeli government’s plan to place them on Palestinian territory to confiscate land and bring people from outside to [stabilize] the settlement. If the government wanted to remove it, they could. But I don’t know what’s their problem. The settlers have power – the government helps them, the developers help them, and sometimes they do bad things to their Palestinian neighbors. They are not connected to this land or this area. When you are connected to something you love it, you want to protect it – you wouldn’t cut down the olive trees if you loved the land. Sometimes, settlers come because of the economy, but sometimes it is ideology.

Emad: I think that in our lives are about experiences. Sometimes I lived a quiet life and sometimes I lived in a bad situation. We have to continue our lives, like normal, even if we live under the occupation and bad conditions sometimes. As a father, I have to give my children some hope for the future – we have to live our life in the bad and the good. When we want to go to the sea, we go to the sea, when we have to resist, we have to resist. I wanted to share and show this experience to people who aren’t living this life. So maybe we can touch and reach their minds and their hearts, and create a good life for everyone.

Guy:I don’t want this to sound cold or unfeeling, but I think that suffering has always been with us. It was in the past and it will be in the future. Sometimes you are the victim, some times you are the oppressor. Most of the time you are both in some ways – I may be an oppressor by paying my taxes to Israeli government, and I’m a victim of these systems at the same time. And every one of us is like that. Of course it is important for us to try to change our reality out of responsibility – not blame or pity. What is important is how we carry suffering, and how we deal with it in life. Maybe [Emad] will never see peace and justice and freedom in his life. Maybe his sons will see it, maybe not. But what gives us a kind of liberty and freedom is what we do in our lives. That can bring joy and a sense of power. That’s the challenge we all face in life. I cannot say what we do will or won’t change reality – I can be pessimistic or optimistic, but in the end what’s really important is what everyone is doing in this situation. If everyone will focus on that, change will come faster.

Emad: I think there is something wrong in the system, not just where I live. There are many places in the world where something wrong has happened. You find people who live in peace and people who suffer all over the world. My message for the world and the people who have power, is to just to feel with people who have nothing – give them feeling, create something good for them, try to say something in their life.

Emad halts the interview for a moment to pray.

Guy: That’s complicated. It was a big debate in the village, and definitely with the Israeli peace activists, whether to use the Israeli system at all. Israel thinks it is a democratic country and they have a good law that balances between civil rights and justice and security needs. This is how they see themselves. But on the ground, we see that this system is so far from just plain common sense – we don’t need international courts to know that what is going on is completely unjust. We are not seeing a system that works with justice. It corresponds with political needs. So the activists and the villages are using that system to try to get some [leverage.] But no one is under the illusion that this is justice. Getting back the land isn’t a good result – we may make things better for some people, but this is not a victory, this is not a change. The aim of this movement is some kind of hint for out strength, the idea that we can do much more.

Emad: I think that with the Israeli court, no one in the village believed they would remove the court and the fence from Bil’in land. But after the demonstration and the march, the Army kept saying “why don’t you go to the courts?” The Army told us all the time they have to come here and protect the fence and the security – it is not their decision, they need to change things in court. The Army wanted us to go to court – they wanted to make a political decision, not just to give the people feeling that the protest led to the removal of the wall, they wanted to make it more beautiful – “the Israeli court chose to remove the wall.” At the same time, they use this decision to take another illegal decision for the settlement. That settlement was illegal – so they wanted to make the decision both remove the wall and legalized the settlement.

Guy: So the court is a political instrument. If you have time, you can see The Law in These Parts, about military law and how the law works in occupied territory, with a focus on Israel.

Emad: By the way, the decision to build wall was the decision by the Israeli court. They can’t just make a government decision, the court has to sign off. It’s a huge subject, we could talk about it all day.

Guy: I don’t need to speak about the future of Israel because it is already very bad. The future we have now was put into motion 10 years ago – and what we have now is horrible. We are living in an oppressive, violent society. Our rights are being taken day by day, there are new laws and new legislation targeting human rights organizations and freedom of speech. What is happening right now is worse than before. And what’s stupid about it is that Israel is in one of the best positions to create a wonderful new thing. With Palestine, all the conditions are there. In 10 years, we won’t talk about suicide bombers, because there is a period now where we can change that. But these are opportunities we don’t use and we are building the conditions for more violence. It’s hard to be Israeli in these times, I think because many people that I know, even people who are not politically engaged or didn’t care much for Palestinian issues, they feel that there is something going that is destructive in our society. And because we are so indifferent and numb in an emotional position as Israelis, we are paying for that and we are going to keep paying for that. That’s why I can be optimistic – we’re really at a bottom in our culture.

I cannot estimate how unknown forces and undercurrents will create change. We have a very strong social movement in Israel, last summer, a lot like the Arab Spring. But we don’t know how that will develop.

We’re always speaking about peace and about justice. If we’re speaking about justice we’re already good. In order to have peace, Palestinians have to live with a sense of justice, which is hard, because some things are unfixable. But for Israelis we don’t just need to confront how to create justice in theory, they have to want to heal themselves as a society. I think Israelis and Jews took a moment in their lives to wallow in their past and wallow in fears that are both justified and unjustified. We have to find a way to heal from our fears and from our past. We have to find a way to remove these destructive forces from the inside. That’s why I find the film & Emad an inspiration – he’s a victim of the occupation, but he still makes a beautiful thing out of it. Israelis, with our past and with our history, we couldn’t create a beautiful thing. And that’s very sad.

Emad: The Palestinian people decided to struggle against the occupation to get freedom – so it’s a long time for the Palestinian people and a long time for resistance – 60 years of resistance and struggle against the occupation. The people, they still have hope and think this is the only way they can get freedom – it is through resistance. It is about the future for their boys. I think for everyone who wants to create a new future for his boys, we believe and we have hope that we can do this. The only thing I can say for sure about the Palestinian is future is that no one knows what will happen. We always have hope for the situation and good luck, so we make things like films, so maybe we can affect or do something good for the future. And all of this is part of the resistance. It’s not just to make films, or play games – it’s not easy to make something like in a risky situation. This is what we are doing to create and make a good life in the future, we can do this and succeed. But nobody knows when and nobody knows what is coming up, good or bad. But I think that the Israeli government, they react like this because they didn’t care about creating good situations and a good life or future for Israeli residents. I think they have fear, they think something big will happen, so all they want to do is buy more time. This is not the right way to create a good life for the people. They don’t want to give Palestinians rights or a state, because they think it is an issue of security – if we give them power, in the future they will attack us. So they are always scared.

Guy: These are hard questions. I can say what I wish for Palestine, while thinking that the occupation will stay, and what wishes I have for Palestinians. Unfortunately, I don’t see the occupation retreating. I don’t have any evidence of reversing that process being a possibility – it would be wishful thinking to say otherwise. So what I wish for Palestinians in that situation is to provide inspirational ways to handle this situation, to find ways to get out of their despair and of their misery and their sense of dependence, and their sense of helplessness, and that feeling of helplessness, because I don’t think they are helpless and they don;t have to be victims. The Israelis and the Israeli government are putting them in the role of victims, but they don’t have to play that role in life. When I look at Emad and Bil’in, they chose not to be victims. And to do that in their lives, knowing there may not be change.

I wish that more people would find faith to do that.

I can’t stress enough that the following article only represents my opinions as an individual, and are not to be affiliated with any other person, organization or community.

December 15, 2011

Tonight was the march and vigil for Private Danny Chen, who was killed in the army on October 3, 2011. We don’t know how he died. The army is withholding all evidence, which it owes to the family, that could answer this question. What we do know is that he did not die in combat. We know he was constantly harassed and discriminated against by his fellow soldiers for being Chinese. We know some really twisted, violent hazing was committed against him by his superiors, right before he was found dead. We decided to hold a march and vigil because the army is currently carrying out an investigation, and we have to show them that the public is watching and that they cannot get away with another cover-up.

Just yesterday, board members of OCA-NY along with Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez and Council Member Margaret Chin went to the Pentagon to meet with high-ranking army officials, where they made demands that may fundamentally transform the way that hazing and bias crimes are dealt with in the military. We need them to know that the public and the media are watching, and that if they do not meet our demands, we will redirect our campaign to focus on our young men and women who are thinking of enlisting. These young people need to know before they enlist, the Army will not protect them from harm by fellow soldiers.

Before the vigil, we reached out to many organizations to support, and 36 signed onto our cause. We also reached out to Occupy Wall Street because justice and government transparency are in its mission, and we thought we could use the numbers and networks in OWS to bring out more support for our vigil, and we also wanted to show our solidarity with OWS.

So imagine my surprise when protesters from OWS showed up with OWS signs, not to stand with others lining up for the march to Columbus Park in support, but to stand in front of everyone, trying to direct them. These people, who had not, until that very moment, put in one bit of effort into organizing this action, who had no idea what the plan was, who had no idea who we were or who the family was, decided that they were going to make this an OWS event.

Conflict erupted when one of the OWS-affiliated protesters came with a giant Communist Party of China flag. This white man decided that he was entitled to represent us, at this protest for an American soldier, with a flag that has been used by this country to vilify the Chinese American community. When people began asking him not to demonstrate that flag because it was not the purpose of the event and we were in no way representing China or political parties, he began screaming at us about how we were ANTI-COMMUNIST and trying to take away his first amendment rights. We told him that Danny Chen was an American soldier and we wanted to respect the family and their wishes, but he continued screaming violent accusations at us at the top of his lungs and disrupting the event, until one of Danny Chen’s family members, on the verge of tears, finally convinced him to leave.

Then I overheard another OWS protester, who had earlier been trying to direct the protesters, give a video interview, and heard him saying, ever so solemnly, “They don’t want me here.” My question is: who are we and who are you? How do you expect to be welcomed as one of “us” when you have, from the beginning, made every effort to set yourself apart? Why do you think that you as an individual should be primary in this march for Private Danny Chen and his family? Why are you here giving video interviews?

Another white OWS protester began trying to use the human mic to direct the protest, and told me that I shouldn’t be using the blowhorn because the cops were going to take it away. I told her that, no, we had a parade permit and sound permit, which was why the police were there clearing the streets for our march. She looked confused and stopped yelling.

OWS protesters often make it seem like they are the birth of social justice activism, that they are here to teach us how to protest because none of us know what the fuck we are doing and need their wealth of experience to help us out. I was not at all surprised when that woman so naturally assumed that she, as a white woman, knew better than me – she thought that I had found a blowhorn somewhere and decided to play around with it. It didn’t occur to her that we had been planning this for weeks and thinking critically about every step, that it was led by a civil rights organization that has been at work for decades, that we had applied for 4 different kinds of permits so that our event could safely and effectively achieve its purpose.

The actions of these OWS protesters showed that they were at the march and vigil, not to show their support for Danny Chen’s family or the ongoing work on their case, but to provoke and garner attention for themselves and their brand, and then try to turn our strategic work and planning into a nonsensical, self-righteous tantrum. They acted like tourists on vacation in the social justice world, and our efforts and long-term goals were expendable in light of their self-interested pursuit of an interesting experience.

This is the problem I’ve always had with OWS—that it was a movement that came to earth as Christ himself, here to save us, to make the history of struggle, and the ongoing social justice work in this country by marginalized communities, irrelevant, and then to take the moral high ground and act as if we were the face of THEIR oppression when we took issue with their tactics.

I understand many people who came to the vigil from OWS were there with the right intentions, and it was great to have their support and solidarity. But these incidents of ignorance from OWS have been way too frequent and predictable to be isolated events. These incidents show that the OWS movement, while creating new opportunities to change the unjust world we live in, is, in many ways, the beloved child of our racist, sexist, intolerant capitalist society.

As marginalized people in this country rise, new forms of oppression are at work – those who have not experienced systemic oppression are claiming it anyway, turning social justice on its head and diluting the messages and movements that have been our hearts and souls. I think this quote from the New Jim Crow sheds a lot of light on why OWS emerged the way that it did: “Following the collapse of each system of control, there has been a period of confusion—transition—in which those who are most committed to racial hierarchy search for new means to achieve their goals within the rules of the game as currently defined. It is during this period of uncertainty that the backlash intensifies and a new form of racialized social control begins to take hold.”

I tried to love the movement. Since I wrote about OWS last, I’ve been attending OWS meetings and marches. I reached out to OWS about this action. I tried so hard to understand the movement, to check my own biases and question any negative feelings I had towards it, to engage with it as much as time would allow. I had so many conversations with people in OWS spaces, which usually just left me feeling perplexed, as the basic factors involved in social and economic inequity always seemed to be news to the people I was speaking to or a curious piece of trivia to be quickly passed over, and people would instead start talking to me about things like herbal medicine as if I had any fucking clue, or would say really ignorant things that would leave me feeling attacked.

I deal with ignorant bigots every day and am willing to do so as part of my own commitment to my work, but when bigots come posing as allies and then very dramatically play the martyr when we call out their bullshit, it really derails our ability to do our work.

I now realize that my time cannot be wasted trying to work in spaces that are paralyzed by ignorance. I will continue to engage in my activism using my experiences and empathy to guide the way I choose to live and work. But I’ll choose to do it in spaces where bigotry, drama, and ignorance do not masquerade as the thing I love. And I’ll choose to work with people who join community actions to respect and support those communities, not to objectify and use them as ornaments for their movement bereft of genuine compassion and understanding.

Besides the oppression brought by some OWS protesters, the march and vigil were beautiful. Over 400 people came out, and the interactions were passionate and heartfelt. I am proud to be an Asian American and glad to be involved in the struggle for a military and a world that does not ruthlessly exclude and exterminate those who are different in any way. I feel blessed to have a fierce mentor who, during the meeting with the Pentagon, told the Assistant Secretary of the Army to sit back down when he tried to leave their meeting early, and he actually listened. I think that our capacity for resistance is growing and we are finally feeling empowered and entitled in this country. We have taken far too much shit, and we are unapologetically asking to be seen as fully human. I am excited for the future of our communities and look forward to growing with each other and our true allies, and despite the importance of building relationships with the more enfranchised, we should never have to tolerate that kind of oppression, least of all in the spaces where we are trying to fight it.

Photos courtesy of Kwong Eng

Click here for coverage about the march and vigil.

Editor’s Note: Shortly after this one, Esther wrote a second piece. She wanted to center Danny Chen and the struggle for justice and not OWS. Also, in the time between the articles, eight soliders were charged in the death of Danny Chen, meaning that some progress was made. Click here to read “Private Danny Chen and threats to justice everywhere.” Next time the Chen case surfaces up in the news cycle, we’ll post the full piece here. – LDP

Starting off 2012 with action, Decolonize PDX released a statement on New Year’s Day by framing January 1st as a day of rememberance for those lost to state violence. And who is this collective?

Decolonize PDX is a collective of people of color.

We decolonize because we know this land is already occupied.

We decolonize because communities of color have been on the front lines of the 99 percent here and globally for centuries.

We decolonize because the system is not broken; it is working exactly the way it was intended.

We decolonize because any movement that doesn’t acknowledge this replicates oppression.

Check the full statement here.

Compiled by Arturo R. García

Barring a last-minute change, Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST for the murder of a Savannah police officer, despite reports that another person had confessed to the shooting, and seven of the nine witnesses in the original case recanting their testimony.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, prison officials denied a request Wednesday morning by Davis’ attorneys to allow him to take a polygraph test. An appeal has also been filed in Butts County, Ga., where the state’s death row is located, seeking a stay of execution, saying new evidence “exposes key elements of the state’s case against Mr. Davis at trial to be egregiously false and misleading.”

Davis’ case has attracted support from around the world, with #TroyDavis and #TooMuchDoubt hashtags becoming trending topics in various U.S. cities, and protests planned not only in the U.S., but in Europe. Supporters are still being urged to contact Chatham County Judge Penny Freeseman, the only person who can stop Davis’ execution.

The struggle for justice doesn’t end with me. This struggle is for all the Troy Davises who came before me and all the ones who will come after me. I’m in good spirits and I’m prayerful and at peace. But I will not stop fighting until I’ve taken my last breath. Georgia is prepared to snuff out the life of an innocent man.
- Troy Davis, The Nation

This case has attracted worldwide attention, but it is, in essence, no different from other capital cases. Across the country, the legal process for the death penalty has shown itself to be discriminatory, unjust and incapable of being fixed. Just last week, the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Duane Buck, an African-American, hours before he was to die in Texas because a psychologist testified during his sentencing that Mr. Buck’s race increased the chances of future dangerousness. Case after case adds to the many reasons why the death penalty must be abolished.
- New York Times

Courtesy of Savannah Morning News

The recantation of nearly all the witnesses in the case should give even the most serious supporters of the death penalty reason to pause. Whether Davis is innocent or guilty almost takes a backseat to the question of whether the judicial system operated in a way that gave a jury any hope of possibly answering that question in the first place.

Death penalty critics have often pointed out that seeking the death of an individual, even one guilty of heinous crimes, is not justice, its vengeance. Yet even that answer fails to satisfy the questions surrounding the prosecution and planned execution of Troy Davis. Even the vengeful would be unsettled by the true perpetrator of a crime going free while they vent their wrath on the wrong target.

No, what the Davis case indicates is that the death penalty is not a public policy — it is a faith, a belief system, a creed holding that fallible humans have been infallible in discerning guilt from innocence. And like most other true-believers, those who practice the faith of capital punishment are immune to all evidence to the contrary.
- Loop21

The surviving relatives of the slain officer presented a decidedly different front. They resolutely told the news media they believe Davis is a killer who deserves to die for what he did.

“He’s guilty,” MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, said. “We need to go ahead and execute him.”

“What a travesty it would be if they don’t uphold the death sentence, MacPhail-Harris said on Monday after the meeting with the board. “It’s time for justice today. My family needs justice. He was taken from us too soon, too early.”

As for the case presented by Davis’ legal team that Davis was wrongly convicted, she said, “It’s been a lie.”

MacPhail-Harris was flanked by her 23-year-old daughter, Madison MacPhail, and 22-year-old son, Mark MacPhail Jr., who were a toddler and an infant when their father was killed.

“A future was taken from me,” saidMadison MacPhail, unable to hold back tears. “The death penalty is the correct form of justice. … Troy Davis murdered my father, no questions asked.”
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Where is Radiance Foundation co-founder Ryan Bomberger? His group recently erected billboards across Sacramento that say “Fatherhood begins in the womb” and show a black man kissing the stomach of a black woman who appears to be about eight and a half months pregnant. (Given that only 1.5 percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy and the overwhelming majority of late-term abortions are performed to save the life of the mother, this visual makes zero sense.) Bomberger blames the “abortion industry” and “liberal feminism” for the “nationwide family crisis” of fatherlessness. But is Roe vs. Wade, Planned Parenthood and feminism the problem? Or is it a reckless, racist prison industrial complex that makes the threat of imprisonment so palpable to black men and women that witnesses in cases like Davis’s are willing to “give police what they want” to get the hell out of the station house?

- Colorlines

The persistence of such rituals in 2011 is reason enough to question the death penalty. But the racism that underpins it—along with the 138 innocent people released from death row—is the hallmark of a system that Americans increasingly reject as intolerable. This year Illinois, where a Republican governor once commuted 167 death sentences citing doubts over “the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole,” became the fourth state in five years to abolish it. Last year a comprehensive study found that 61 percent of registered voters favored alternatives to executions—and in death penalty states a majority of voters said that an anti–death penalty stance would not deter them from voting for a candidate;
24 percent said such a candidate would be more likely to get their vote.

Such evolving standards of decency were nowhere on display at the Reagan Library when the Republican faithful cheered Governor Rick Perry’s unprecedented execution record—234 then, 235 now—thanks to the bloodlust of a rabid Republican base. But without a strong alternative—a full-throated condemnation of the death machinery that still operates across the country—can opponents really claim the moral high ground?

For years Democratic politicians, whose party once opposed the death penalty, have embraced it as a suitable punishment for the “worst of the worst.” President Bill Clinton, who famously attended the execution of a mentally disabled man while on the campaign trail in 1992, went on to sign the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which greased the wheels of this death machinery by curtailing prisoners’ rights to appeal their sentences. Former Georgia Republican Bob Barr, who helped write that law ostensibly to curb “abusive delays in capital cases,” has since decried its effect—specifically that it has prevented “claims of actual innocence like Troy Davis’s” from being heard in court.
- The Nation

Courtesy of MSNBC

I support the death penalty, and have for a long time. And I am not making a judgment as to whether Davis is guilty or innocent. But surely the citizens of Savannah and the state of Georgia want justice served on behalf of MacPhail, the police officer.

Imposing a death sentence on the skimpiest of evidence does not serve the interest of justice. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles did not honor the standards of justice on which all Americans depend by granting clemency. In doing so, it will allow a man to be executed when we cannot be assured of his guilt.

That was the final admirable principle standing between Davis and his scheduled death by lethal injection Wednesday. And the parole board did not uphold it.
- Former U.S. Congressman Bob Barr, on CNN.com

Troy Davis may be out of options in the justice system but he is not out of options in the realm of humanity and common decency. A life can still be spared and whatever standards or criteria are required by the justice system can be made more humane by way of an executive decision. Executive action is needed now, not an execution.

- Asian Pacific Americans of Conscience (via Angry Asian Man)

What is the tipping point for a revolution?

Normally, there are many different things brewing – a political climate, social unrest, gross inequality that all contribute to turn a nation inside out. Yet many reports want to trace a revolution back to a single, definitive event. Crispus Attucks is considered the first martyr of the American Revolution, Rosa Parks is widely considered the catalyst of the US civil rights movement, her actions sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Mohamed Bouaziz is the name behind the sudden surge in interest in self-immolation.

Bouaziz’s last protest made its way to cameras, which then spread the news that Tunisia was on the cusp of a revolt. Al Jazeera frames the story:

In a country where officials have little concern for the rights of citizens, there was nothing extraordinary about humiliating a young man trying to sell fruit and vegetables to support his family.

Yet when Mohamed Bouazizi poured inflammable liquid over his body and set himself alight outside the local municipal office, his act of protest cemented a revolt that would ultimately end President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-rule.

Local police officers had been picking on Bouazizi for years, ever since he was a child. For his family, there is some comfort that their personal loss has had such stunning political consequences.

“I don’t want Mohamed’s death to be wasted,” Menobia Bouazizi, his mother, said. “Mohamed was the key to this revolt.”

And yet later, it is revealed that Bouazizi was one of many who had started to sound the alarm – an alarm suppressed by government officials and widely ignored by media under governmental control:

Mohamed Bouazizi was not the first Tunisian to set himself alight in an act of public protest.

Abdesslem Trimech, to name one of many cases occurred without any significant media attention, set himself ablaze in the town of Monastir on March 3 after facing bureaucratic hindrance in his own work as a street vendor.

Neither was it evident that the protests that begin in Sidi Bouzid would spread to other towns. There had been similar clashes between police and protesters in the town of Ben Guerdane, near the border with Libya, in August.

The key difference in Sidi Bouzid was that locals fought to get news of what was happening out, and succeeded.

“We could protest for two years here, but without videos no one would take any notice of us,” Horchani said.

I often wonder what ignites a protest and what does not. I specifically think of Lee Kyoung Hae, who stabbed himself in protest of the World Trade Organization’s policies toward South Korean farmers and their agricultural policy at large. I was in high school when the Battle in Seattle occurred – I’ve been fascinated by the World Trade Organization ever since. But while Lee did not die in vain, his protest did not lead to the type of uprising that could topple the WTO. Why? Why do some protests galvanize into movements, and others fade into time?

There are no clear answers to these questions, and yet the world keeps moving. Egypt, hot on the heels of Tunisia, also underwent a revolution, one that garnered a bit more attention from media outlets here.

Reader Lara tipped us to this amazing piece by Sarah Ghabrial, which delivers some much needed context:

As much as Egyptians may have surprised themselves and their neighbours, no one seems more caught off guard by this recent turn of events than members of western mainstream media and political officials. The western media appear bewildered, their commentary halting and unsure. Perhaps this is because, for so long, news agencies have stacked their rolodexes with analysts on the Middle East whose area of expertise lay primarily in terrorism and religious fundamentalism. They now seem ill prepared to comprehend this past week’s events, which have been so free of religious rhetoric, much less offer any insight on what the world may expect to come next. More than one commentator has remarked on the possibility of an Islamist take-over in Egypt and elsewhere, as though for lack of anything else worthwhile to say. Some appeared at a loss as they reported that protesters were not shouting “Death to America.”

The response to civil unrest in Egypt has been strangely unlike the response to the Iranian would-be “Green Revolution” of 2009. Because Iranians were standing up to a long-hated Islamist regime, their struggle was immediately embraced in the west across the political spectrum.

By contrast, western observers in the cultural mainstream have been hesitant about the Days of Anger, as they lack a clear and ready-made approach for identifying and understanding Arab discontent. This is probably due in part to the ostensible “secularism” of these regimes, and because instability in the Middle East is seen as a breeding ground for terrorism. Ironically, most terrorists out of Egypt are largely a product of the Mubarak school of stability — imprisonment, repression, and torture. But apparently the alternative is more horrifying: a scenario in which Egyptians may choose their own government. One can picture the Egyptians who populate the imagination of policymakers and journalists: a pious and incorrigible bunch, impelled in the direction of fanaticism as though by gravity. (Read the rest…)

And Larbi Sadiki pinpoints the real catalyst - and why so many news outlets missed the signs:

Regimes in countries like Tunisia and Algeria have been arming and training security apparatuses to fight Osama bin Laden. But they were caught unawares by the ‘bin Laden within’: the terror of marginalisation for the millions of educated youth who make up a large portion of the region’s population.

The winds of uncertainty blowing in the Arab west – the Maghreb – threaten to blow eastwards towards the Levant as the marginalised issue the fatalistic scream of despair to be given freedom and bread or death. [...]

From Tunisia and Algeria in the Maghreb to Jordan and Egypt in the Arab east, the real terror that eats at self-worth, sabotages community and communal rites of passage, including marriage, is the terror of socio-economic marginalisation.

The armies of ‘khobzistes’ (the unemployed of the Maghreb) – now marching for bread in the streets and slums of Algiers and Kasserine and who tomorrow may be in Amman, Rabat, San’aa, Ramallah, Cairo and southern Beirut – are not fighting the terror of unemployment with ideology. They do not need one. Unemployment is their ideology. The periphery is their geography. And for now, spontaneous peaceful protest and self-harm is their weaponry. They are ‘les misérables’ of the modern world.

Already, discussion of a domino effect looms large – and while some pundits are wondering which country is next, the larger question is what will these changes symbolize in the world within the next decade?

Before we jump into a conversation on race-based dating, let’s start by showing how not to do it, with a short film called “Dragon of Love.”*

I’m a black woman who has always been attracted to Asian men. Perhaps it started with all those Hong Kong action movies that I used to watch with my mom as a teenager. After all, movie stars are often our first crushes – it made sense that it would make some impact on who I found attractive.  But growing up in a segregated city in the Midwest, there weren’t many Asians around. In four years of high school, there were only three Asian kids, including a cute Chinese boy that I was hot for in tenth grade, who transferred to another school just as we were becoming friends.

So, recently when a friend of mine invited me to an event he was hosting at his house for black women and Asian men, I was all for it. My friend (a Vietnamese man who likes black women) had been listening to my boyfriend drama for the last few months and he thought this would pull me out of my funk. Boy was he right!

I had actually had been wanting to meet more Asian guys anyway. As an adult, I’ve dated a few Asian guys, but in general, I haven’t met as many as say, black or Latino guys. At first I wondered if it was too contrived to specifically try to meet Asian guys, but then I thought, “Hey, if you want Mexican food, then you go to a Mexican restaurant,” so to speak. And at least at an event for black women and Asian men, I wouldn’t have to worry about the guys not liking black girls!

When I arrived, I was pleased to see that all the guys were pretty attractive. I was also relieved that there were equal numbers of females, so we wouldn’t have to fight over all the hotties! I was nervous at first, but no sooner than I had grabbed a beer, a nice Taiwanese man who happened to be standing near me began chatting with me. We talked about everything from old school Hip Hop to outdoor sports and as the night went on, I ended up meeting a banker, a DJ, and a filmmaker, among others, all of whom were equally cool and interesting. The women were cool too. They were all educated and eclectic and it was nice to have real conversations with no cattiness involved. In this intimate setting, we were free to be ourselves with no stares and judgments from outsiders, And no one, black or Asian, felt the need to fit any stereotypes.

Everyone was asked to bring something to the event and most people brought alcohol, so by the end of the night, we started becoming even friendlier with one another. People began to pair off and some couples started making out. At this point, I was quite tipsy and I started dancing and the next thing I knew, a cute Chinese guy that I had recently met, got behind me and started dancing with me.

More couples joined in and soon, my new dance partner and I found ourselves in a four-way grind on the dance floor! Grinding eventually led to making out and I spent the rest of the night kissing and talking with my new friend. He even ended up driving me home at the end of the night.

The event was definitely a success and even though we all came together to meet males/females of a certain race, at the end of the night, we were just guys and girls having fun and getting lucky. And the funny thing is that no one even spoke of race the whole night. Race was the hors d’ouvre, but it wasn’t the main course.

I am now certain that race-based dating is ok as long as race isn’t the thing bringing a couple together. There has to be more substance because focusing on race alone is nothing but a fetish. You also can’t expect a person of another race to fit some kind of stereotype. If a guy of another race expects me to be like some “around the way girl” that he saw in a music video, then that’s not me. But, if he wants a black girl who studies several languages, likes to write, and loves 80’s New Wave music, then he can come on over! I don’t expect Asian guys to be mild-mannered or mystical in any way. I just expect them to be honest and straight-forward like I would with any other guy.

Now, as far as looks are concerned, we all have some type of preference and it’s not a crime to find people of a certain race attractive. If a guy of another race finds my brown skin, curly hair, and the shape of my ass a turn on, that’s great, especially when it seems that not many people out there are breaking their necks to praise black women for their beauty. As long as I’m not some interchangeable black girl to him and he likes me for me on top of my looks, then it’s cool.

And yes, I’m attracted to the way Asian guys look, but I’m not going to date any random Asian dude just because he’s Asian. I also don’t want to date ONLY Asian guys because my lust is equal opportunity! I just want to keep my options open and I hope to find Mr. Right, no matter what race he may be.

Well, there was no more boyfriend drama after the event because I moved on. After a few months, I’m still going out with the guy who drove me home that night and if anyone asks how we met, I just say “I met him at a party” not, “I met him at a party for black women and Asian men”. When we are together, we are just us, a girl and a guy dating and having a good time, regardless of the way we got together.

–
*For those of you who can’t see the video, the short film is about an Asian American man who starts mentioning how he wants to hook up with a beautiful black woman at the bar. He meets one, and they start to hook up – only for him to realize that a race based fetish isn’t as fun as it seems – especially when your partner has one too.

By Thea Lim, cross-posted from Bitch Magazine

A lot of folks have been talking about Courtney Desiree Morris’ article in make/shift, “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements.” I read the whole thing over at the INCITE! blog. Starting from a discussion of Brandon Darby, an FBI informant who infiltrated groups protesting the Republican National Convention in 2009, Morris suggests that left wing movements are easy to infiltrate because they are uncritical of themselves. The uncriticalness that allows informants to infiltrate as long as they can appear devoted to the cause, is what also allows gender violence to go unchecked. Morris’ article provides definite food for thought, in terms of what we will put up with “in service of the movement” that we would never put up with elsewhere.

Morris says:

Maybe it isn’t that informants are difficult to spot but rather that we have collectively ignored the signs that give them away. To save our movements, we need to come to terms with the connections between gender violence, male privilege, and the strategies that informants (and people who just act like them) use to destabilize radical movements. Time and again heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence [1] as a threat to the survival of our struggles. We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. There are serious consequences for choosing ignorance. Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do).

The article is long and comprehensive, and I thoroughly recommend it. Some other interesting points: Morris cites examples from the memoirs of women activist heroes like Angela Davis, Assata Shakur and Elaine Brown who either refused to join leftist movements (in this case the Black Panther Party) because of the gender violence that went on within them, or experienced such violence. In addition, I appreciated Morris’ examination of how progressive movements unwillingness to genuinely self-analyze foster both gender violence and “isms” like racism:

Race further complicates the ways in which gender violence unfolds in our communities. In “Looking for Common Ground: Relief Work in Post-Katrina New Orleans as an American Parable of Race and Gender Violence,” Rachel Luft explores the disturbing pattern of sexual assault against white female volunteers by white male volunteers doing rebuilding work in the Upper Ninth Ward in 2006. She points out how Common Ground failed to address white men’s assaults on their co-organizers and instead shifted the blame to the surrounding Black community, warning white women activists that they needed to be careful because New Orleans was a dangerous place. Ultimately it proved easier to criminalize Black men from the neighborhood than to acknowledge that white women and transgender organizers were most likely to be assaulted by white men they worked with.

This article made a great deal of sense to me because of my own struggles and disappointments with all of the movements I’ve been a part of. For example, I found my way into radical politics via feminism, but I now totally struggle with feminism’s inability to deal with its “race problem”—let’s just say we have good days and bad days.

Many of us involved in leftist struggles sacrifice a great deal for the struggle. Things like: families of origin, a cushy life, an easy sleep. Or we come to radical politics because we were pushed out or alienated by our home cultures, and leftist politics are like an oasis of acceptance. All of this is to say, there are so many psychological (not political!) reasons for refusing to accept that the movements we build our lives and identities around are flawed. Think about how many times you have heard someone say “But we work so hard!” when they or their organisation is called on their shit. It is worth examining what personal/emotional baggage we are carrying around that stops us from seeing the flaws in our movement clearly, especially if we are contributing to the problem.

But while we’re on the subject of gender violence on the Left, let me recommend this book: The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Partner Abuse Within Activist Communities. From the jacket copy:

Based on the popular ‘zine that had reviewers and fans alike demanding more, The Revolution Starts at Home finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “open secret” of intimate violence—by and toward caretakers, in romantic partnerships, and in friendships—within social justice movements. This watershed collection compiles stories and strategies from survivors and their allies, documenting a decade of community accountability work and delving into the nitty-gritty of creating safety from abuse without relying on the prison industrial complex.Fearless, tough-minded, and ultimately loving, The Revolution Starts at Home offers life-saving alternatives for ensuring survivor safety while building a road toward a revolution where no one is left behind.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Two days ago in Seattle, a police officer trying to arrest a woman for jay walking found himself in a sticky situation:

Seattle police say the punch came after the young woman became verbally and physically abusive after a jaywalking stop. Seattle police say it all started after an officer observed four women jaywalking across Martin Luther King Junior Way South. When the officer attempted to stop them, voices and tensions escalated. The officer was attempting to handcuff a 19-year-old woman when her 17-year-old friend tried to intervene.

In the video, you can see the 17-year-old push the officer. That’s when the officer pulls back his arm and punches the teenager in the face.

Seattle police say the officer believed the girl “was attempting to physically affect the first girl’s escape” and when she came at the officer, he “punched her.” As a crowd of people gathered around the officer and suspects, one of the witnesses videotaped the incident.

Eventually the officer managed to handcuff the first suspect as well as the girl he punched. The 19-year-old woman was booked into King County Jail for obstructing an officer. The 17-year-old girl, who was punched, was taken to the Youth Service Center for investigation of assault on an officer. Both females were cited for jaywalking.

The video has touched off a firestorm of controversy surrounding the officer’s conduct and if the officer was justified. Monica Potts, over at Tapped, argues yes. But I’m not convinced.

The facts of the case are pretty clear. Kids were jaywalking. Officer comes over attempting to arrest kid. One kid, unwisely, decides it would be a good idea to shove the police officer. Officer punches kid.

Monica argues:

Most people are probably unfamiliar with police procedure manuals, but there’s a point at which the use of force is justified. And that point comes sooner than people think. According to most patrol guide rules and legal precedent, officers can use physical force to arrest someone who is physically resisting, and they can use force to subdue someone who has become violent with them. That means officers are allowed to punch people. They’re even allowed to punch women. Officers aren’t obligated to get pushed around or injured when lawfully arresting someone, even if it turns out those arrests don’t hold up in court. Should he have punched this particular woman in this particular instance? It’s really hard to know without having been there. But I think we should, in all fairness, acknowledge that at the moment an officer is faced with two people who are ready to fight, he might not be able to have a mental debate over the subtle gradations of force that would be merited to get the situation under control — he had to act quickly, and was trained to do so. [...]

We’ve decided, as a society, that officers are authorized to use force to keep the peace. We’ve also decided that they can issue tickets for jaywalking, and then if that situation is escalated for some reason then they can arrest the jaywalker. Arrests are violent things. Women sometimes get arrested. We can’t put them in a cocoon. Police departments are usually pretty bad about responding to allegations that they acted inappropriately, but they sometimes have a point in that many people don’t understand what an arrest really looks like. Many more don’t understand the procedural rules that dictate when and on whom police can use force.

But just because something is common procedure, does that make it right? I’m not feeling the justification here. Was that kid in the wrong? Hell yes. But there’s a power dynamic here that tilts the scale in favor of the police officer. He, as a trained member of the police force, has a lot more rights and avenues for recourse than the average citizen. He also has the discretion to do things like punch people in the face, arrest people, and carry a gun. It is often argued that with rights come responsibilities – and what’s happened in so many communities, particularly communities of color, is that the police take some extreme liberties with these additional rights, which leads to community distrust.

The Seattle Weekly starts shading in the background:

The incident comes a month after an officer was caught on tape threatening to “beat the fucking Mexican piss” out of a robbery suspect he then stomped on the face. King 5 says Seattle police have decided not to review tape of this latest arrest, but we’ll see what happens later once this thing circulates.

UPDATE: Deputy Chief Nick Metz told King 5 that police have concerns about the video.

“You obviously have to take into context everything that occurred from the point that the officer did make contact with the individuals until the situation ended. As I said before, we have some concerns about the tactics the officer used and employed at the time. Again, we did feel what occurred did deserve a review by the Office of Professional Accountability,” said Metz.

And there was a 2002 feature written by the Seattle Weekly, also documenting the efforts to decrease tensions between the police and the community.

Just because the officer has the discretion to do something, it doesn’t mean that’s the tactic that should be employed. If their own department “has concerns,” why are some of us so quick to justify the officer’s actions?

Police work relies on a lot of factors to be effective – community trust is one of them. And as a person who doesn’t have much, if any, police contact in her daily life, I am struck by all the narratives in my own community in DC. A situation happened last year (that Renina was there to observe with me) where I called in some friends for back up. We’re all educated and work in either advocacy or media – we all knew how badly things could go. I asked the first officer on the scene what was happening and he nastily replied he didn’t have to tell me anything, he owed me no explanation. The next officer on the scene came, apologized for the first officer’s conduct, and explained the situation. As we waited for a resolution, my friends talked about some of their experiences. How they expect to be fucked with, because that’s just how the police are. Another friend, a Latino male who works with youth, talked about the time where simply giving dap to one of his friends ended up with him being slammed against the wall and dick checked, with no further explanation or apology after no drugs were found around them. (“I was walking while Latino!” he said, still pissed three years after the fact. “Talking about me throwing shit into the bushes when my hands were full of books!”)

Police are supposed to work in service of the public, kind of like teachers. But if a teacher punches a kid that pushed them, we say the teacher was in the wrong – even though the kid was physically violent. It’s that power dynamic, again, the idea that someone with increased training and authority should work to de-escalate the situation, instead of retaliating. I don’t doubt that there are situations where teachers may be justified in decking someone. But they can’t do it without severe penalty. Yet, this idea that police are in service of the public doesn’t seem to factor into the justification of these types of actions, though the stakes are far higher. The worst of it is that this situation arose out of a desire to make residents safer. I’m waiting for a verifiable source on this, but apparently the officer was stationed near the school because motorists were concerned about the safety of the kids jaywalking after school. The idea was to ticket the kids so they would stay out of the streets and use the cross walk. Yet, somehow, this assignment started with the idea to keep kids safe and ended up with a seventeen year old being punched in the face, and both girls being arrested.

Community based work runs on trust. And the fact is, too many of us do not trust the police. I grew up in the suburbs outside of DC, where our police still wear regular uniforms with dress shoes and visit schools on a regular basis. I’m not saying that our police force is perfect and free of racial profiling – it isn’t. But when I started spending more time in DC, I was struck by how militarized the police are. They are walking around in the community, the same way the suburban cops do, but they have on riot gear, vests, and combat boots. By nature, it starts to change the dynamic of the engagement. Combine this with the observation that the police are all over the city, but are reluctant to respond to crime calls in certain precincts…it’s a recipe for mistrust. In order for the police to do the best work in our communities, the relationships cannot be adversarial. Harassing people over non-violent offenses (like the jaywalking charge that led to the punching situation) is a bad use of that discretion, and one that erodes community trust.

I’m sure we can defend this officer with the letter of the law – but at what ultimate cost?

Update:

This article at the Seattle P.I. adds another element to all of this. It’s about the ID issue (is someone required to produce ID at police request) but provides some interesting background info – actually, Seattle police have cameras in their squad cars and microphones on their uniform to record all of these incidents. So where are the tapes?

When the arresting officer was asked recently in an interview whether the ID issue was the only reason he took Rachner into custody, he said “no”. But he declined to address why his arrest reported cited ID as the only reason, and refused further comment.

Inconsistent memories are why every Seattle officer has a video camera in the squad car and a microphone on their uniform. Expanding in use nationally, they provide an unblinking witness and are automatically activated when the patrol car’s flashing lights are turned on. Cops are often more protected than citizens by these videos, but are the police willing to produce the recordings when they might be in the wrong?

Rachner repeatedly tested that question, asking for the video and audio recordings of that night’s arrest as part of pre-trial discovery and, separately, in requests under state public disclosure law. That part of the discovery request wasn’t fulfilled and the SPD denied the first disclosure request because the criminal charge was pending, records show.

On the day last May when the city attorney dropped the charges because of unexplained “proof” problems — nearly six months and more than $3,500 in defendant legal expenses after the incident — Rachner filed another disclosure request for the recordings.

The department responded: “These recordings are both past our retention period and can no longer be obtained. Please note that the majority of 911 calls and videos are retained for a period of ninety (90) days.”

“They just flat out said they didn’t have it,” said Rachner.

Police were wrong. The recordings weren’t destroyed and Rachner — just starting the next round in his fight — was the kind of person to discover that.

Commenters have pointed out some of their observations from living in Seattle and what the law actually states, which is worth a read.

Courtney wrote:

@Gregory A. Butler

According to the reports I have read, they were cited (ticketed) for jaywalking but arrested for “obstructing an officer” (the woman in the black shirt trying to get out of the cops grip) and “assaulting an officer” (the woman in the pink shirt who got punched.)

I lived in Seattle for several years, and it is very common to be cited for jaywalking (cited, not arrested.) It’s used as a decent-sized revenue stream for the city and the “don’t jaywalk” culture is strong enough that it’s common to see people standing at an intersection in the rain at 11 PM without a car on the road, waiting for the light to change.

I’m curious why this officer was there by himself at all. This intersection is known for having jaywalking problems that result in regular deadly pedestrian-auto accidents (which is why the pedestrian overpass was built.) It was reasonable to assume that any officer placed there would see multiple jaywalkers at any given time. Also, Seattle has a really bad track record when it comes to racist actions by police and the response from police and city leadership when complaints are filed or incidents are exposed by news media. The neighborhood where this occurred is predominantly populted by non-white people, and there is considerable (and justified) mistrust of the police among people of color.

Why was this officer alone, trying to ticket at least 5 offenders in two different groups for an offense that most people don’t take seriously? Was there no one who could predict that *someone* was going to try to walk away from the ticket–and that the person who tried it was likely to be a person of color? If the Seattle Police department really had the goal of reducing jaywalking at this intersection and also improving its relationship with this community, there should have been at least 2 officers at the intersection (one to direct offenders over and one writing up the tickets) and at least one of them should have been a person of color.

Elise wrote:

Actually, Washington State Law, RCW 46.61.021 (3) states that you need only give an officer your name and address when identification is requested. The officer did have probable cause to arrest her, but he did not have the right to demand identification.

Also, Monica Potts responded to my piece over at the Tapped blog.

On Memorial Day, twitter was abuzz with news about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and what happened.  Mainstream media, not so much.

Here’s a quick run down for those not familiar with the chain of events.

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla is a part of the Free Gaza movement.  The boat trips were designed as an act of international civil disobedience to challenge the State of Israel’s blockade which prevents ship travel into Gaza.  According to the Free Gaza’s “A Simple Idea” section:

The Free Gaza Movement began in the Fall of 2006 with a simple idea: Instead of waiting for the world to act, we would sail to Gaza ourselves, and directly challenge the Israeli siege ourselves. For almost two years, Free Gaza activists in Australia, Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Lebanon, Palestine, and the United States worked to raise money, locate ships and crew, and train and organize for our first attempt to break through Israel’s blockade. By August 2008 we were ready, and we sailed to Gaza in two, small, wooden fishing boats: the FREE GAZA and the LIBERTY.

Since then we have continued to sail to besieged Gaza, bringing in human rights workers and lawyers, journalists, academics, and parliamentarians, as well as several tons of desperately needed humanitarian aid. We are students and teachers, human rights observers and aid workers, lawyers, medics, activists – parents and grandparents. We are of all ages and backgrounds, from countries all across the world. We will go to Gaza again and again and again. We have not and will not ask for Israel’s permission. It is our intent to overcome this brutal siege through civil resistance and direct action.

We will continue to challenge Israel’s illegal closure of the Gaza Strip and collective punishment of its civilian population until the Israeli siege is forever broken and the people of Gaza have free access to the rest of the world.

The Guardian has posted a Q & A about the flotilla, which reads:

What was the aim of the Gaza Freedom flotilla?

The Free Gaza movement says it was intended to deliver aid to Gaza to get around the Israeli blockade and “to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation”. The movement is an international coalition of pro-Palestinian human rights organisations and activists. It has been endorsed by Desmond Tutu and Noam Chomsky and counts on the support of a number of Jewish groups that campaign for the rights of Palestinians.

Israel‘s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, said: “The armada of hate and violence in support of the Hamas terror organisation was a premeditated and outrageous provocation. The organisers are well-known for their ties to global Jihad, al-Qaida and Hamas. They have a history of arms smuggling and deadly terror. On board the ship we found weapons that were prepared in advance and used against our forces. The organisers’ intent was violent, their method was violent, and unfortunately, the results were violent.”

Israel has singled out the Turkish-based Insani Yardim Vakfi or IHH (“humanitarian relief fund”) as a radical Islamic organisation.

The boat was filled with both aid and an international group of activists, many of whom had protested directly on the ground in Gaza or had joined the 2008 flotillas.

On Sunday night, Israel made the decision to storm the vessel, with lethal results.The Guardian’s blog has a great running commentary of what is happening, with lots of videos.

Here, the Israel Navy issues a warning to the Mavi Marmara (the lead ship, and site of the siege) telling them that Israel supports the delivery of aid to Gaza, but only through sanctioned ports and land delivery. However, the aid is not getting to those affected in Gaza, which is one of the reasons why the ship was choosing to head there directly. (It should be noted that even when aid does go to Gaza, it is governed by politics first.)

There is some controversy about whether or not Israel had the right to storm the vessel. Some reports say that Israel followed the needed protocols before boardings, others say that the ship was not within the boundaries of Israeli waters and should not have been boarded at all. However, the government chose to act and the ship was boarded. As the soldiers began dropping onto the ship, the activists began to resist. Once again, reports vary as to what happened – this video, released by the Navy, depicts one solider being pitched overboard and others being attacked.

However, Al-Jeezera’s reporter, who was aboard the ship at the time of the siege, reports that the scene was calmer, and live fire by the soldiers continued even after the white flag for surrender was raised:

The reported civilian death count from the ship is “at least 10″ – some reports find as many as 19. I have not seen any released death counts for the soldiers involved, as of yet.

Onboard witnesses are starting to speak out, saying that the reports are distorted and that the activists were predominantly peaceful. However, the international community has already reacted condemning the excessive force used. The UN’s statement from the Security Council says:

“The Security Council deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting form the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza. The Council, in this context, condemns those acts which resulted in the loss of at least 10 civilians and many wounded, and expresses its condolences to their families.

“The Security Council requests the immediate release of the ships as well as the civilians held by Israel. The Council urges Israel to permit full consular access, to allow the countries concerned to retrieve their deceased and wounded immediately, and to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance from the convoy to its destination.

“The Security Council takes note of the statement of the United Nations Secretary-General on the need to have a full investigation into the matter and it calls for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.

“The Security Council stresses that the situation in Gaza is not sustainable. The Council re-emphasizes the importance of the full implementation of resolutions 1850 (2008) and 1860 (2009). In that context, they reiterate their grave concern at the humanitarian situation in Gaza and stress the need for sustained and regular flow of goods and people to Gaza, as well as unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza.

“The Security Council underscores that the only viable solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an agreement negotiated between the parties and re-emphasizes that only a two-State solution, with an independent and viable Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours, could bring peace to the region.

Meanwhile, the US appears to be siding with the Israeli government:

The United States remains deeply concerned by the suffering of civilians in Gaza. We will continue to engage the Israelis on a daily basis to expand the scope and type of goods allowed into Gaza to address the full range of the population’s humanitarian and recovery needs. We will continue to work closely with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, along with international NGOs and the UN, to provide adequate access for humanitarian goods, including reconstruction materials, through the border crossings, while bearing in mind the Government of Israel’s legitimate security concerns. However, Hamas’ interference with international assistance shipments and work of nongovernmental organizations, and its use and endorsement of violence, complicates efforts in Gaza. Mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by governments and groups that wish to do so. These mechanisms should be used for the benefit of all those in Gaza.

Meanwhile, half the world appears to be locked in protests, with the strongest coming from Turkey (four to six Turkish nationals have been reported among the deceased):

I’m taking a moment from my usual sexing-it-up posts because of the little girl pictured above.

For those who don’t know, her name is Aiyana Stanley Jones. And she’s dead. Her family just buried her this week.

She didn’t die from leukemia or in a drunk-driving accident or at the hands of an abusive or negligent parent or guardian.

She died for the sake of entertainment.

For those who haven’t heard the story: Detroit police raided her home on May 16 in what the department said their “executing a search warrant” of a murder suspect they eventually found in the home. According to the Detroit Free Press:

Police said that they threw an incendiary device known as a flash bang through a front window of the home to create a distraction.

After entering, a Detroit officer got into a tussle with Mertilla Jones, Aiyana’s grandmother, who was in the front room.

The police gun went off. Aiyana was killed.

According to family members, Aiyana was sleeping on the couch, which sat near a window that faces the street. The explosive device the police threw in landed on that couch and burned her, said her father, Charles Jones. He and others say the girl was burning when she was shot.
…

Aiyana’s dad, Charles Jones, said he rushed into the living room after hearing the explosive and gunshot. He says police made him lie face down on the ground, his face in shattered glass and the blood of his daughter.

The Detroit police department has offered an apology for Aiyana’s death and says they are conducting an investigation.

Meanwhile, understandably righteous outrage, several countercharges, and downright ridiculousness came out as the Stanley-Jones family and circle of supporters prepared to bury Aiyana: people utilized social media to voice sadness and upset over this senseless death; the alleged suspect who touched off this tragedy is a 34-year-old man who is accused of shooting a 17-year-old youth because he didn’t like the way the teenager “looked at him”; Aiyana’ grandmother, Mertilla Jones, said the police lied about the gun firing because she was trying to wrestle it away from the officer (new video evidence allegedly suggests the fatal shot coming from outside the home); Jones contends she was inside during the raid and tried to protect her grandchild but was too late; politicians did their usual grandstanding; celebrities took the cops and the community to task for Aiyana’s death and to stop further senseless killings, especially of young black children.

But, as I said, I also blame Aiyana’s death on the media complex: of the “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” infotainment ethos that seems to pass for news—especially local news—nowadays; the perpetuating of the meme that black people are always and inherently entertaining to watch, especially if there’s an element of criminality and punishment to it and it’s getting “handled”; of the physical erasure of women and girls as watchable; the deaths of women of color, cis and trans, as not worthy of discussion–let alone activism–outside of PoC communities.

Or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say that Aiyana’s death is really our collective fault, if we continue to accept these conditions as part of our pop-culture consumption. If we do, we do not bury her with whatever deities she and her family believe in. We sacrifice her, again and again and again.

With that said, what I want to do is simply cry for her…

Kiana Firouz is an LGBT activist and film director from Iran currently seeking asylum in the UK. In late 2009 the trailer for her film Cul de Sac created controversy. This is the NSFW trailer:

In a letter published on the blog LGBT Asylum News, Firouz writes:

I, Kiana Firouz, an Iranian Lesbian, born in 1983 in Tehran/Iran, have sought asylum in the U.K but my application was turned down by the Home Office, despite accepting the fact that I am a lesbian. I accordingly submitted my appeal which was dismissed incredibly by the adjudicator. According to my solicitor’s point of view there is a little chance to grant a permission to appeal against the adjudicator’s decision. It means that I will face with deportation soon.

Homosexuality in Iran is a sin and offence which is subject to harsh punishment. According to the Islamic law, repeatation of this offence will be punished by death. The punishment for lesbianism involving persons who are mature, of sound mind, and consenting, is 100 lashes. If the act is repeated three times and punishment is enforced each time, the death sentence will apply on the fourth occasion. (Articles 127, 129, 130 penal code) The ways of proving lesbianism in court are the same as for male homosexuality. (Article 128)

Jezebel writes:

Meredith Yayanos from Coilhouse says Firouz will “most likely be sentenced to torture and death after being found guilty of the ‘unspeakable sin of homosexuality.’” In Iran, the punishment for homosexuality consists of up to 100 lashes, which can be applied up to three times. After the fourth violation, a woman can be convicted of “unrepentant homosexuality” and executed by hanging.

Firouz filed for a court appeal after receiving the judge’s decision, but it was swiftly overruled. She can appeal the decision, but as of now, Firouz is facing deportation. The international human rights organization the EveryOne Group is asking concerned British citizens to send an email to the British Home Office asking them to reconsider Firouz’s case (public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk). There is also an online petition circulating, which could help save Firouz from corporal punishment in her home country.

The petition is here, and you can visit the Facebook page to save Firouz here.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence
Budget cutbacks but increased police presence
And even if you get out of prison still livin
join the other five million under state supervision
This is business, no faces just lines and statistics
from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits
The system break man child and women into figures
Two columns for who is, and who ain’t niggaz
Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings
but you push too hard, even numbers got limits
Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret:
the million other straws underneath it – it’s all mathematics

—”Mathematics,” Mos Def, Black on Both Sides

STATE VIOLENCE

Near the beginning of the episode, Davis is in lock up after being harassed by the National Guard. Still, he yelled “Go the fuck back to Fallujah!” and got put in lock up as Toni tries to calm him down. Her grim reminder that the police and the guard are on edge serves as foreshadowing for later events – it is worthwhile to note that Davis is still more or less in one piece after the altercation.

Later on, Antoine is not so fortunate. After singing on the street with Annie and Sonny after his gig at the strip club, he drunkenly stumbles into a police car. The police react swiftly and brutally, kicking Antoine’s horn and punching him in the face. Horrified, Annie and Sonny look on, but cannot protest much for fear of retribution. The SMO squad is especially effective in this portrayal: at this point in the series, a police car in the background of a shot provides a sense of fear and foreboding. None of the characters as of yet have had a positive interaction with the police, which mimics the dynamics in a lot of communities of color – instead of a welcome sight, police presence means something horrible is about to happen -not crime prevention.

The concept of state violence extends further throughout the episode – Ladonna’s struggle to locate her brother within the criminal justice system, and being stymied at every turn also demonstrates the pernicious nature of state control over incarcerated citizens. Law enforcement appears to be unconcerned with who they have in custody and why – only that a prisoner is accounted for.

It’s understood that the police are under pressure – but what about the other citizens?

ECONOMIC VIOLENCE

Lorenzo: “I hear they got plans for the lower nine. They gonna bulldoze all of it, give the land to developers.”
Albert: “That’s why you need to come back – they can’t bulldoze nothing if the homeowners don’t allow it.”
Lorenzo: “Who gonna stop ‘em?”
Albert: “…Those motherfuckers think people won’t fight. Most won’t. But some will.”

The Times Picayune sheds some light on the entire scene that played out with Lorenzo and Albert’s search:

Albert and Lorenzo go in search of Albert’s Wild Man in the Lower 9th Ward, where floodwaters knocked many homes off their foundations. The devastation made the Lower 9th Ward officially closed to habitation until January 2006. Homeowners were allowed daylight “look and leave” visits until that time. The horrific phenomenon of residents finding dead loved ones upon returning to their homes was not uncommon, even in homes that had presumably been searched.
It was a widely held belief that the most floodwater-damaged portion of the Lower 9th Ward would be sold to developers. A frequent suspect in the stories was Donald Trump, supposedly eying the Industrial Canal-adjacent neighborhood for a luxury golf resort. One of the benefits of Brad Pitt’s Make it Right project in the neighborhood was its demonstration that homes would be rebuilt in the neighborhood, not tees and greens for Trump resort patrons.

The house Albert and Lorenzo visit is marked with a spray-painted X. The markings in the four quadrants designate (on top) the search squad that visited the site, (left side) the date of the visit, (right side) notations for hazards such as gas and water leaks, downed wires or dead animals. The bottom quadrant, in this case inaccurately marked with a 0, denotes bodies found at the site. The markings were made on all homes in the flood zone, and are still visible on many homes today.

As Colorlines has discussed before, there are massive race and class issues with the New Orleans citizens who want to return home. Tram Nguyen has been covering the situation, and explained in 2009:

Four years after Katrina, the city of New Orleans can still break your heart. Not with the raw suffering of the hurricane and its aftermath, but with the stark exposure of an economic apartheid that keeps poor people of color locked out of the city’s political process, as well as its prospects for restored housing and renewed economic growth.

By some accounts, New Orleans’s recovery has made progress. The city’s population level reached 73.7 percent of its pre-Katrina number by the end of 2008, according to the January 2009 New Orleans Index released by the Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. (Updated figures will be available in August.) Because the region had already been literally “under water,” New Orleans pretty much bypassed the foreclosure crisis that is engulfing many parts of the country. And compared to the national unemployment rate, at 8.5 percent in March, New Orleans unemployment has hovered at about 5 percent since November 2008.

But this more prosperous picture may be the result of cropping out many of the city’s poor former residents—most of whom are Black—who have been blocked from returning.

And in Nguyen’s follow up article from this month, things are no better:

The city’s housing crisis also reflects the disastrous impact of public housing demolitions and redevelopment policies. In New Orleans, many former public housing residents say that on top of losing their homes, they were shut out of participating in the redevelopment process. For many, it was clear that there was just too much money at stake to let the residents get in the way. In the wake of Katrina, Louisiana became a bonanza of federal subsidies for firms ready to take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild. The developers, as a former staffer for one private company put it, stood to “make money hand over fist” through a number of unusually generous bond deals.

That all the homes in the Big Four are gone is a stark reality in New Orleans. So now, after decades of government policies that put housing needs into the hands of private developers, local activists are looking beyond simply fighting for better and more affordable housing. They are joining with housing advocates throughout the nation to emerge from the national crisis with nothing less than the assertion of housing as a human right.

Alongside the commentary on destruction and displacement, episode three provides a glimpse at the tensions surrounding gentrification and displacement. An altercation begins between Davis and his two gay neighbors, with Davis asserting that they were soulless gentrifiers taking over the city.

However, the conversation doesn’t play to type – while Davis’ neighbors talks about what they are doing as historical preservation and not gentrification, the scene illuminates some of the more complicated dynamics at play in some of NOLA. Davis’ neighbor is well aware of the history and legacy of Treme, saying defiantly: “I’m from Uptown, Mr. Mackery is from mid-City – we’re as New Orleans as you.”

And, playing into the earlier theme of state sanctioned violence, the neighbors react with horror when Davis accuses them of calling the police on the second line celebrations “We have never once called the cops!” he replies indignantly, again showing an insider, us-against-them outlook that Davis actively tries to deny.

However, it is the final scene that is the most heartbreaking. Albert and the other Mardi Gras Indians gather together to both mourn the passing of their Wild Man and to recommit to their community, singing a song called “Indian Red” with the lyrics “won’t bow/don’t know how.” The chant almost becomes a metaphysical experience, uniting those assembled in the bleak environment and transporting them to another place. It is at that moment a Katrina tour bus full of tourists snapping photos of the destruction pulls up, shattering the reverie and exposing how many of these tours exploit the suffering of those still in NOLA in order to bank a profit. While the driver decides to decently leave the scene at Alberts urging, the mystified looks of the Mardi Gras Indian crew as the bus rolls off down the road is a haunting ending to a gripping episode.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

This week’s “Treme Explained” column shed some more insight into link between gang affiliations and the Mardi Gras Indians:

In an essay about Mardi Gras Indian history and traditions, including the role-call roll of the anthem “Indian Red,” historian Kalamu Ya Salaam quotes Allison “Tootie” Montana on the hierarchy of various Indian gang officers and their functions on the street.

“Your Spy Boy is way out front, three blocks in front the chief,” Montana said. “The Flag Boy is one block in front so he can see the Spy Boy up ahead and he can wave his flag to let the chief know what is going on. … The Wild Man wearing the horns in there to keep the crowd open and to keep it clear. He’s between the Flag Boy and the Chief.”

The hierarchy of Indian gangs and various members’ roles is further explained in this David Kunian essay, for which he visited a practice session presided over by Monk Boudreaux, Big Chief of the Golden Eagles.

The off-handed comment made by Delmond about New Orleans wearing musicians down is most evident in Antoine and Sonny’s respective trajectories. Antoine is losing himself in various carnal pleasures trying to escape his life – women, weed, alcohol. This episode put this in stark focus where things did not pan out for him – after Antonie gets left in NOLA while other band members headed up to New York, his ill-fated late night song session illuminates how many of his dreams are broken. Sonny suffers from a similar affliction, drowning his insecurity in drink, drugs (at least when they are available) and sarcasm. While it is still unclear how much of his time on the boat is true, he clearly longs for a different type of reality – and watching Annie receive more acclaim for her awesome fiddle skills drives him deeper and deeper into despondency.

Ladonna’s venting about “that 7th ward creole shit” and her treatment by her husband’s family deserves its own post. “People like us, my mother, me, my brother? We just folks from around the way. We get shit done to us.” Stay tuned, I need to do a bit more research.

Albert gets more and more interesting as this show goes on. “Put your pants on – get your girl and go!” I think he is the character I am most curious about.

Creighton and his daughter discovering YouTube is hopefully a continuing plot point.

This post elaborates on the excerpt we ran last week about David Dow.

It is no secret that our country’s criminal justice system has consistently proven to be biased against minority communities of color. Statistics published by the NAACP show that even amongst those found guilty of crimes, African-Americans continue to be disproportionately sentenced to life in prison, face higher drug sentences, and are executed at higher rates when compared to people of other races. Michelle Alexander speaks of a “color-coded caste system” in The New Jim Crow that marginalized communities who encounter the criminal justice system.

Seasoned Texas attorney David R. Dow’s new book The Autobiography of an Execution provides an exploration of the death penalty, written through the eyes of a man who has spent 20 years defending over a hundred death-row inmates, most of whom died, and most of whom were guilty. As the head litigator for the Texas Defender Service, a non profit legal aid organization in the state that boasts the highest number of executions since 1976, Dow presents a powerful argument against the death penalty system. Candidly exploring how he balances such a trying job with being a good father and husband, Dow’s extremely personal book only works to strengthen the argument that the broken criminal justice system operates on a vicious cycle based on racial and economic disparity.

In his book, Dow opposes the unequal basis on which some criminals are sentenced to be executed while others aren’t, and deems the criminal justice system “racist, classist (and) unprincipled.” He opposes the death penalty as a flawed and unjust facet of the criminal justice system. Based on his experience, he notes that while he believes that a majority of the clients he represented were, in fact, guilty, there was very little separating those criminals from others who were guilty of the same crime, other than “the operation of what I consider to be insidious types of prejudice.” Most unsettling is his severe mistrust of members of the justice system – police officers, prosecutors and judges – whom he believes would “violate their oaths of office” and put men and women on death row who they think “deserve to be there”.

In Dow’s exploration of the politics behind the death penalty, perhaps the most tenacious argument against it is the blatant way that the intersections of race and class influence the outcome of a criminal case. Dow says,

…if you’re going to commit murder, you want to be white, and you want to be wealthy — so that you can hire a first-class lawyer — and you want to kill a black person. And if [you are], the odds of your being sentenced to death are basically zero…It’s one thing to say that rich people should be able to drive Ferraris and poor people should have to take the bus. It’s very different to say that rich people should get treated one way by the state’s criminal-justice system and poor people should get treated another way. But that is the system that we have.

Dow’s book reflects all that is wrong with a social system that perpetuates inequality based on race and income, and a criminal justice system that feeds off prejudice in its sentencing and prosecution methods. More than ever, a lot needs to be done to ensure that the criminal justice system functions on the principles of “fairness” that are implicit in its definition, and not those of difference and persecution.

Photo courtesy of chicagotribune.com

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2010/03/08/does-your-race-and-income-matter-if-you-face-the-death-penalty/feed/ 4 http://www.racialicious.com/2010/03/02/quoted-david-dow-on-race-class-and-the-death-penalty/ http://www.racialicious.com/2010/03/02/quoted-david-dow-on-race-class-and-the-death-penalty/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:36:50 +0000 Latoya Peterson http://www.racialicious.com/?p=6506

On a regular basis, I’m sitting face to face with murderers. When I imagine sitting face to face with somebody who might have injured somebody I love or care about, I can imagine wanting to injure that person myself. I used to support the death penalty. [But] once I started doing the work, I became aware of the inequalities.

…

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On a regular basis, I’m sitting face to face with murderers. When I imagine sitting face to face with somebody who might have injured somebody I love or care about, I can imagine wanting to injure that person myself. I used to support the death penalty. [But] once I started doing the work, I became aware of the inequalities. I tell people that if you’re going to commit murder, you want to be white, and you want to be wealthy — so that you can hire a first-class lawyer — and you want to kill a black person. And if [you are], the odds of your being sentenced to death are basically zero. It’s one thing to say that rich people should be able to drive Ferraris and poor people should have to take the bus. It’s very different to say that rich people should get treated one way by the state’s criminal-justice system and poor people should get treated another way. But that is the system that we have.

— Appellate lawyer David Dow, interviewed for “The Death Penalty: Racist, Classist and Unfair”, Time

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2010/03/02/quoted-david-dow-on-race-class-and-the-death-penalty/feed/ 13 http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/16/is-the-criminal-justice-system-the-new-jim-crow/ http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/16/is-the-criminal-justice-system-the-new-jim-crow/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:00:13 +0000 Guest Contributor http://www.racialicious.com/?p=6198 By Guest Contributor Ishita Srivastava, originally posted at Restore Fairness

Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because

…

]]> By Guest Contributor Ishita Srivastava, originally posted at Restore Fairness

Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole – From ‘The New Jim Crow’.

Placed within the context of the euphoria around the election of President Obama as the nation’s first black President, Michelle Alexander’s first book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” argues that while on the surface it seems like racial subordination is no longer entrenched in the law books, the truth is Jim Crow laws have simply been redesigned and appropriated by the criminal justice system.

Some shocking stats. One in every eight black men in their twenties are in prison or jail on any given day. There are more African Americans who are in jail, prison, probation or parole today, than were enslaved in 1850. Alexander reacts against the dominant narrative of racial justice which says that while there is still a way to go, America has come a long way from it’s history of racial discrimination, and instead explains the way that the system works to exercise a contemporary form of racial control, a process that continues long after the individuals are officially released out of the system. From Chapter 5 of the book-

The first stage is the roundup [when] vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by the police, who conduct drug operations primarily in poor communities of color… Once arrested, defendants are generally denied meaningful legal representation and pressured to plead guilty, whether they are or not. Once convicted… virtually every aspect of one’s life is regulated and monitored by the system. The final stage… often [has] a greater impact on one’s life course than the months or years one actually spends behind bars. [Parolees] will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives-denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality.

In Alexander’s opinion, far from living in a post-racial utopia, the last few decades have seen the United States move towards a “color-coded caste system” where minority groups are targeted, maligned and marginalized by the criminal justice system. She attributes this increase in the mass incarceration of African Americans over the past thirty years to draconian laws that have been constructed to wage “The War on Drugs”, a battle waged against low-income communities of color, even though research consistently counters the claim that any one racial community uses and sells illegal drugs more than any other.

It’s a moment to contemplate race and class in today’s America. To go beyond the illusion that all is well to a striking reminder that racial injustice is still deeply entrenched in the country. According to Alexander, nothing short of an informed and agitated movement will put an end to this perpetuation of racial inequality in the guise of enforcing justice.

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/16/is-the-criminal-justice-system-the-new-jim-crow/feed/ 16 http://www.racialicious.com/2009/11/13/when-systems-of-oppression-intersect-part-ii-transphobia-and-the-immigration-system/ http://www.racialicious.com/2009/11/13/when-systems-of-oppression-intersect-part-ii-transphobia-and-the-immigration-system/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:54:24 +0000 Thea Lim http://www.racialicious.com/?p=4193 By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

**TRIGGER WARNING**: The following post is about physical and sexual abuse in detention, and focuses on a trans woman who has chosen to speak out about the abuse she endured. Her choice is incredibly brave and her story is deeply distressing.

Restore Fairness has a post about Esmeralda, a trans woman from Mexico who came…

]]> By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

**TRIGGER WARNING**: The following post is about physical and sexual abuse in detention, and focuses on a trans woman who has chosen to speak out about the abuse she endured. Her choice is incredibly brave and her story is deeply distressing.

Restore Fairness has a post about Esmeralda, a trans woman from Mexico who came to the US to seek asylum, only to endure sexual abuse in an American immigration detention centre.  Her story, like many others, speaks to the way that the immigration system intersects with other forms of oppression, often in an unspeakably cruel and dehumanising way.

The Restore Fairness article states:

Transferred far away from their homes and families, stories are rife of how detainees are denied visitation, access to lawyers, medical care, and are subject to physical and verbal abuse. Many vulnerable people, including asylum seekers, pregnant women, children, lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens are among those detained.

Listen to Esmeralda’s voice of courage and take action now to fix a broken detention system.

The article also links to the website of Just Detention International, an organisation that works to end the sexual abuse of detainees in the US and internationally.  Esmeralda’s story is in included among their Portraits of Courage, a section of their website where people who have survived sexual and physical abuse in detention, are speaking out – often in spite of the threat of severe retalitation – to try and put a stop to the horrific abuses that go on in detention.  Not surprisingly, many of the people who took part in Portraits of Courage are queer people of colour.

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2009/11/13/when-systems-of-oppression-intersect-part-ii-transphobia-and-the-immigration-system/feed/ 9 http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/01/fong-lee-and-violence/ http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/01/fong-lee-and-violence/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:19:42 +0000 Guest Contributor http://www.racialicious.com/?p=3388 by Guest Contributor Bao Phi, originally published at Your Voices/The Star Tribune

UP IN ARMS: A Night of Hip Hop and Spoken Word to Honor Fong Lee and End Police Brutality

Saturday, October 3^rd, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30)
Kagin Commons at Macalester College
1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105

Featuring performances by Magnetic

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]]> by Guest Contributor Bao Phi, originally published at Your Voices/The Star Tribune

UP IN ARMS: A Night of Hip Hop and Spoken Word to Honor Fong Lee and End Police Brutality

Saturday, October 3^rd, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30)
Kagin Commons at Macalester College
1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105

Featuring performances by Magnetic North (NY), Nomi of Power Struggle (Bay Area), Michelle Myers of Yellow Rage (Philadelphia), Maria Isa, Blackbird Elements, Guante, Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria, e.g. bailey, Tou SaiKo Lee with PosNoSys, True Mutiny, Shá Cage, Kevin Xiong with Pada Lor, Tish Jones, Maipacher, Logan Moua, Bobby Wilson, Poetic Assassins, Hilltribe, and special guests. Tou Ger Xiong and Amy Hang will emcee and DJ Nak will be on the one’s and two’s.

$5-$10 suggested donation.  All proceeds go towards legal costs for the Family of Fong Lee.

As an artist and community member, I was asked to be a part of the organizing committee for this benefit concert for Fong Lee’s family.  And it made me consider how violence has always been a part of my life.  I was three months old when the Communists shelled the airport all night to hinder our escape from Vietnam.  My family came to Phillips in South Minneapolis, where we encountered different types of violence.  There were war vets who blamed us for the war, who would yell at us and threaten us in parking lots, on the street, who screamed that they fought for our people and that we owed them.  There were gangbangers and crack dealers – every neighborhood in the world has bullies, and they were ours, mercurial, lively with friendship and smack talk one second and livid with menace the next.  There were straight up racists who hated us for the color of our skin, who believed it was our fault that there were no jobs and no homes, or maybe they just hated anyone who didn’t look like them, eat like them, talk like them.  And then there was the police, whom I was taught to wave at as a child when they drove by, their cars slow in the tight streets, stand up straight, smile.

As I got older, I stopped waving to police cars and firemen.  No, I never rolled with a crew, but in the 90s during my very early teen years I did rock the Raiders clothes and caps, mostly because that’s what we did back then, and partly, I admit, because I wanted to be feared.  I never went looking to beat up anyone, bully anyone.  But too often, as a young man I found myself fighting or fleeing from all manners of people who wanted to do me harm for all different reasons.  You tire of it.  Some young men join gangs, some take up martial arts and boxing.  Me, I tried to perfect my swagger, practiced my stoic look, blew my paycheck from my minimum wage job on overpriced sports gear, walked like I belonged.  And if something did happen to me or my family or friends, we hesitated to call the police, because too often they threatened us rather than served and protected us.  Threatened us with violence, with false accusations, with deportation.  For us, if we were victimized by violence from a civilian, calling the police felt like an invitation for round two.  And they’d walk away to do it another day.  By most standards I was an easy child who didn’t get into much trouble despite the circumstances.  And still I feared the police – because they had an almost mythical power, especially if you were a person of color, to make you feel guilty even if you weren’t doing anything wrong.  Chris Rock once joked, “police officers scared me so bad, they made me think I stole my own car.”

When I heard that joke, I laughed hard, because I knew exactly what he was talking about.  Years before Chris Rock’s joke, I was repeatedly pulled over for no reason whatsoever, and on several occasions asked by police officers if I had stolen the car I was driving though they had no reason to ask me this other than my race.  Once, I was in a van full of Asian American college students coming back from a student conference and, confused by some construction and the haphazard traffic signs, made a minor driving mistake.  A police officer, who made the exact same mistake as we did, swung his car around, stopped us, and verbally berated my friend who was driving, asking in a derogatory fashion if she spoke English.  Of course her family had been in America for generations and English was the only language she knew.

At this point, those of you who are not people of color may say, that’s not fair.  It’s more about our own psychological issues, and anyway, it’s not about race, it’s about the law.  And maybe it’s not fair.  Maybe it’s not fair that I, as a young man of color from an economically poor urban environment, have an instinctual fear of police officers, some of whom are no doubt good people underpaid to do a very dangerous job, and whom honestly want to serve the community and should not be stereotyped because of a few bad apples.  Honestly, it’s not fair.

Let me tell you something else that is definitely not fair, and which is rarely ever considered: the oppressive fear of violence that every person of color faces, every day, in this country, and the proven record of failure of the criminal justice system to treat us and our families fairly.

We all have our fears.  Some of these fears are consciously and subconsciously taught to us by society, some of them may be reinforced by personal experience. And these fears are absolutely impacted by race, gender, class, sexual orientation.  Those of us who are people of color, women, from poor and GLBTT communities have the added fear that if we are victimized by violence, we will be harmed more than helped by law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

Take the case of Michael Cho, a 25 year-old artist who was shot 10 times and killed by two La Habra police who claimed he was unresponsive to their demands and was threatening them with a tire iron.  However, Michael Cho was physically disabled and found it difficult to walk quickly, let alone threaten two police officers.

Or Marlo and Romel Custodio, who were shot with tasers and beaten by 8 San Jose police officers for allegedly possessing less than half an once of marijuana, and who were cooperating with their arrest.  They managed to call their 50 year-old mother, Marilou Alvarado Custodio, who was violently restrained when she arrived on the scene, her head repeatedly banged into a squad car’s door.

And “The Quincy 4,” young Asian American activists who were brutalized by Boston police as they returned from an engagement party.  They were talking to a state trooper in the parking lot of a supermarket when a police squad car rolled up and without warning they were pepper-sprayed and attacked.  One of the victims, a young woman named Karen Chen who is just above 5 feet tall, was tackled and beaten by three male police officers, giving her a black eye and numerous bruises.  Not only were the police officers unpunished, they filed false charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, of which a Boston judge found them guilty and sent one of these young people, who had done no wrong, to prison.

Unfortunately, we don’t have to look far for incidents involving police brutality.  Two Native Americans were stuffed into the trunk of a police car in my old neighborhood, Phillips.  Tycel Nelson was a 17-year old African American boy shot in the back and killed by a Minneapolis police officer in North Minneapolis who was offered the Medal of Valor for his killing.  He claimed that Tycel had a gun, though evidence seems to contradict this claim.  This was in 1990.

On July 22, 2006, a 19 year-old Hmong American, Fong Lee, was shot 8 times and killed by Minneapolis Police Officer Jason Andersen, who received the Medal of Valor for his actions.  Andersen’s partner, Craig Benz, claimed that they were following Lee and his friends because he suspected they were dealing drugs, though no drugs were found on Fong Lee’s body.  The squad car struck the bicycle that Fong Lee was on and he ran away, and Andersen claims Lee had a gun.  However, a nationally recognized video forensics expert analyst stated that there was no gun in Fong Lee’s hand in the video from the schoolyard where Lee was shot.  Officer Andersen shot Fong Lee in the back and then as he fell to the ground, for a total of 8 times.  Police forensic scientists found no blood or DNA on the gun found on the scene that was allegedly Lee’s, which is perplexing if we are to believe that this gun was held by a young man who was shot 8 times.  There was also some suspicious inconsistencies regarding the paperwork and the history of this gun, which was reported as belonging to the Minneapolis police at the time of the incident – amongst community members and the family, it is believed that gun was in fact planted by Fong Lee’s body in order to justify the killing of the young man.

The surviving members of Fong Lee’s family recently brought the case to court.  The all-white jury of 8 men and 4 women found Officer Andersen not guilty of using excessive force in the shooting and killing of Fong Lee.

“We think that it was originally biased from the beginning starting with the judge [Paul Magnuson] and how he handled the case,” states Shoua Lee, Fong Lee’s sister.  “The police could not give solid answers regarding contradictory information about the gun, and so many mistakes were made in the handling of paperwork.”

Community members point out accusations about Fong Lee’s history and character, specifically allegations that he was in a gang, were allowed in court and written about in the press.   But Officer Andersen’s alleged dislike of Asians and history of derogatory remarks against Asians was neither allowed in court nor written about in the press.  “There were some things mentioned in the media about my brother’s past, but then why not write about the officer’s past also?” asks Lee.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know much about the ins-and-outs of the law.  But what I do know about is who we are taught to fear.  I do know that the criminal justice system does not work in the best interest of people of color, and despite the promise that we are treated equally by laws that are colorblind, we are looked upon as guilty until proven innocent.  You don’t have to be a lawyer to realize that, due to institutionalized racism and the perceived threat that people of color pose to society, it would not be difficult to convince an all-white jury of men and women that an officer of the law was justified in using deadly force against a young man of color in baggy clothes.

Those of us who are from communities of color understand this far too well.  “Every time something went wrong in the neighborhood, they came looking for kids of color and would drill us with questions,” remarks Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria, a local activist, artist, husband and father of two, and who will be performing at the benefit concert on Saturday.  “My wife was pulled over by police officers for no reason and accused of prostitution.”

“I always think it’s interesting when people – primarily Caucasians – talk about feeling safe and secure around the police,” states May Lee-Yang, a local writer and community worker. “I’ve always been taught to be wary, to put on a good front, to avoid any confrontations.”

Asian Americans often have to fight against the idea that we have no right to complain, that we should be thankful that we’re even allowed in this country and that we would have it even worse back where we came from.  “The tragedy is that when we get here, it’s like we exchanged one form of oppression for another, from poverty to prejudice to violence,” remarks Dr. Michelle Myers, a Philadelphia-based educator, activist, and member of the Asian American spoken word duo Yellow Rage, who will be traveling from Philadelphia and donating her performance to the cause on Saturday.  “Our people still suffer, and the injustice is that we’re told to ‘shut up and deal’ because we supposedly have it so good and because the perception is that we are perpetual foreigners who can never be fully American.”

Once, when I was very young, I was driving home late on a very cold Minnesota winter, near Minnehaha Avenue where it curves and cuts across 26^th.  There was no one around, so I did a rolling stop through a four-way stop sign.  Yes, I broke the law.  I was stopped by a police officer, who asked me to step out of the car and, as he frisked me, asked me if I had stolen the car, and if I had been drinking (I hadn’t done either of those things).  He flashed his lights in my eyes and asked me to do the nose-touching test, which I did.  It was so cold that I was shivering in my coat and I could see my breath as a jagged white fog spurting from my mouth as I answered his questions and did what he asked me.  I wasn’t wearing gloves, and instinctively, without thinking, I shoved my hands into my coat to warm up.  Immediately the cop snapped his hand down to his gun and told me to get my hands out of my pockets, which I did immediately, and he told me to keep my hands up.  He said that I could have a gun in my pocket, though he had just checked me a second ago, and when I tried to apologize and explain calmly that it was just cold out and that I had no gloves, he interrupted me and told me to be quiet.

I got a ticket, and was let go, and I was lucky.  I wonder, if that police officer was just a little more nervous that night, or he had a slightly worse day or if he had been just a bit more scared and on edge from working too many hours, or I had been just a bit more unlucky, or if I had tried to alleviate the tension by making a joke which he took the wrong way, or if some tiny interaction between us had been different, and he had pulled that gun, and he had fired shot after shot into my body, and killed me on that street so close to my house in the dead cold empty Minneapolis winter night, how that misunderstanding would be presented to the world.  What would have been said.  What I would have been accused of.  If a jury would have seen me, a young Asian American honors student on full scholarship to a private college who came from a poor neighborhood, as sufficiently threatening.  How my family would cope with the injustice, and the utter horrendousness and unfairness of it all.

Fong Lee was a young Hmong American man.  He was someone’s son, someone’s brother.  He could have been me, or any one of us, who are unfortunately all too familiar with the devastation of violence, racism, police brutality, and systematic injustice that rips apart our families and our communities.

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/01/fong-lee-and-violence/feed/ 16 http://www.racialicious.com/2009/09/24/minor-offenses-the-tragedy-of-youth-in-adult-prisons/ http://www.racialicious.com/2009/09/24/minor-offenses-the-tragedy-of-youth-in-adult-prisons/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:00:29 +0000 Guest Contributor http://www.racialicious.com/?p=3220 By Guest Contibutor Antonio Ramirez, originally published at WireTap Magazine

Interview: Campaign for Youth Justice’s Liz Ryan talks about the thousands of teenagers detained in adult jails and prisons.

When 16-year-old Bobby Nestor’s mother found a marijuana roach in his jacket pocket she called the police, hoping to scare him. She never intended for her teenage…

]]> By Guest Contibutor Antonio Ramirez, originally published at WireTap Magazine

Interview: Campaign for Youth Justice’s Liz Ryan talks about the thousands of teenagers detained in adult jails and prisons.

When 16-year-old Bobby Nestor’s mother found a marijuana roach in his jacket pocket she called the police, hoping to scare him. She never intended for her teenage son to be sentenced to an adult facility, or to be harassed and raped by older inmates. After four months, Bobby hung himself in his cell.

Bobby took his own life over three decades ago. According to a University of Texas report released last month, the years since Bobby’s suicide have seen hundreds of youth, many younger than 12, sentenced and incarcerated as adults.

The report stated that on any given day, over 10,000 youth under 18 are held in adult jails and prisons in the United States. These young people are more likely to be bullied, sexually assaulted and to kill themselves than youth held in juvenile facilities. They are also likely to be youth of color.

The Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) is a Washington D.C.-based organization dedicated to ending the practice of charging youth under 18 in the adult justice system.

I recently spoke with Liz Ryan, president and CEO of CFYJ, about the organization’s work and how she believes youth can play a role in changing the face of juvenile justice.

WireTap: Can you talk a little about CFYJ’s work and vision?

Liz Ryan: We are a national organization working to end the practice of trying, sentencing and incarcerating young people under the age of 18 in the adult criminal justice system.

In the late ’80s [and] early ’90s, there were predictions that there would be an increase in youth crime. That was based on some prominent researchers saying that there were these young people who were remorseless [and] violent who would go places and commit very serious crimes (PDF). As a response to that, a lot of states passed laws that made it easier to send kids to adult criminal court. As a result, thousands of young people are in adult criminal court every year.

What we’ve seen is over 7,000 young people are in adult jails on any given day. And, on any given day, around 2,000 young people are in adult prisons.

WT: What effect does spending time in adult prisons have on these youth?

LR: There have been a number of pieces of research. The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission recently found (PDF) that young people who are in adult facilities are the most vulnerable to sexual assault. They also found that young people are not accessing educational opportunities or other kinds of services that they would have if they had been in a juvenile detention or corrections facility.

WT: Adult prisoners are more likely to be people of color. Can the same be said for incarcerated youth?

LR: Young people of color, particularly African-American and Latino youth, are much more likely to be given a sentence of incarceration if they are prosecuted in adult court than white youth who were charged with similar offenses.

The deeper you go into the system, the more young people of color you find. And you see disparate treatment of young people of color when compared to their white counterparts.

WT: Are there situations in which sending a person under the age of 18 to an adult facility is the best option for that individual and the community?

LR: The research is very clear that you are increasing the likelihood that a young person will re-offend if you send them to adult court (PDF). So why would we want to do that? Whether you are conservative or liberal, if you take a smart-on-crime approach, you are not going to want to see young people in adult criminal court.

WT: Can you give me a specific example of a young person CFYJ has worked with who was sentenced to adult court?

LR: One example is a young person named Dwayne Betts. He was charged and sentenced with carjacking at age 16 in Virginia and was sentenced to 23 years with three different felonies. He ended up doing eight years in five different prisons. When he got out of prison he was able to get a job, go to community college and just graduated and has also written a book.

[Dwayne's story] shows the potential of people that we’re throwing away if we keep sending young people into the adult criminal justice system. Dwayne devotes an entire chapter of his book to all the young men that were left behind, who are still in the prison system.

WT: What is the organization’s strategy for changing the way youth are treated in the criminal justice system?

LR: The bottom-line strategy is building political will, because the research shows it doesn’t work, isn’t safe and isn’t fair.

WT: Why haven’t these laws been reversed wholesale?

Members of Congress and state legislators need to know that there are constituencies of people who believe that young people should get a second chance. The research alone isn’t enough; public opinion and polling isn’t enough. There really has to be a concerted, organized effort by the young people, parents and families who have been most affected by this to come together and demonstrate to their elected officials that these kinds of laws need to change.

WT: Can you give an example of a local community that organized and had a victory?

LR: On July 17, 2005 a young man named David Burgos, age 17, committed suicide in an adult prison in Connecticut. His death galvanized a community of people to organize and push for change.

Connecticut’s law has a particularly dramatic effect on 16- and 17-year-olds. It basically says that 16- and 17-year-olds are in the adult criminal court; they never even go to the juvenile justice system.

David was incarcerated over a probation violation; it was a very low-level offense. So people started to talk about the issue and organize a coalition. For two years, the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance launched its “Raise the Age” campaign and were successful in getting a law overturned. This legislative session [they] were able to get the resources appropriated to make the change.

So starting January 1, 2010, 16-year-olds will no longer automatically be in adult court in Connecticut. And within the next year, 17-year-olds will no longer automatically be placed in adult court.

Many of the mothers of children in the system came forward to organize. One was the mother of the child who committed suicide. During the legislative battle, she went and testified before the legislature and I’ll never forget what she said. She said, “Is my child not worth it? We need to make these changes because young peoples’ lives are at stake.”

WT: What role do you envision young people themselves playing in examining how youth are tried, sentenced and incarcerated?

LR: When I’ve seen young people testify before legislatures or elected officials, it has so much power. Young people, particularly those that have been in the justice system, are the most effective messengers on this issue. They are the experts. So part of what we’re trying to do in our campaign is bring [their] voice[s] forward, to have them tell their stories.

WT: What advice or resources can you provide for a young person who has been affected or is interested in this issue?

LR: They can certainly look at the campaign’s website. We also have a radio show on Blog Talk Radio every Thursday at 4:30 EST. We usually interview a young person, parent, researcher or somebody who is engaged in this issue around the country. We also have a Facebook page, so if they want to share a story or start getting involved they can join us.

We have also started a “Join the Movement” campaign, so if a young person wants to start a campaign in their community, they’ll get some tools and information on how to do that. But we really want to hear what they think about this issue and what they think we can be doing to help them organize a campaign in their community.

More information and resources are located at the Campaign for Youth Justice website.

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2009/09/24/minor-offenses-the-tragedy-of-youth-in-adult-prisons/feed/ 15 http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/27/on-swimming-pools-harvard-arrests-and-flash-point-racism/ http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/27/on-swimming-pools-harvard-arrests-and-flash-point-racism/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:00:27 +0000 Guest Contributor http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/27/on-swimming-pools-harvard-arrests-and-flash-point-racism/ By Guest Contributor dumi, originally published at Uptown Notes

For the past few weeks, my inbox has been inundated with references to Whites Only swimming pools in Philadelphia, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and things of the like. With each subsequent email, I’ve been reminded “this is post-racial America” 1, 2. The type of…

]]> By Guest Contributor dumi, originally published at Uptown Notes

For the past few weeks, my inbox has been inundated with references to Whites Only swimming pools in Philadelphia, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and things of the like. With each subsequent email, I’ve been reminded “this is post-racial America” 1, 2. The type of tongue-in-cheek commentary, I imagine, is meant to elucidate the continued significance of race in America. Unfortunately, I see three issues with this: 1) these emails and posts tend to go to the choir (this is not a new point so I won’t go into it), 2) these cases are extreme examples of racism and exclusion in contemporary United States, which makes them easy to dismiss for everyday people and 3) they don’t demonstrate the ways that race operates perniciously beneath the surface to include some and exclude many. I do think these cases need to be highlighted so pool owners, police, and everyday people can be aware certain behaviors will not be tolerated, but they’re also all to easy to disassociate from for the majority of Americans who identify with the idea of “postraciality.” They’re rationalized away as the actions of “a few bad apples” rather than be seen as symptoms of the national disease of racism. These incidents become flash points in the media and even talking points in our commentary on race and reality, but the issue with a flash point is that it is the lowest level at which our sensibilities around race will flare brightly, but then they quickly dim. Unfortunately, inequalities of race have not dimmed, nor should our fire to expose and fight them.

Now this is not going to be a “complain and blame” post, instead, I’d like to offer some humble suggestions (or as humble as one can be if they’re writing on a blog which is kinda an egotistical thing to start with, but ya’ll know what I’m saying). It is critical that we begin to talk about race in ways that expose the subtle fabric of inequality. While it’s easy to explain why Skip Gates’ harassment and subsequent arrest were wrong and wrongheaded, it’s more difficult to explain how policies leave many innocent men and women sitting in jail or on death row due to false accusations and procedural bureaucracy. It’s easy to point on the wrongness of exclusion from the Valley Swim club but it’s more difficult to explain why suburban schools are almost as and sometimes more unequal than urban schools, in part due to their exclusion of Blacks from equal educational resources. It’s easy to suggest that race matters when Sotomayor is berated in her confirmation hearings, but it is more difficult to explain the significance of critical race theory to understanding and interpreting the law. As scholars, as activists, and as citizens we’ve give up the project of relaying the complex conditions to the masses who need to be reminded not that race still matters, but the various ways that it still matters and what role all can play in racial justice.

I think it is wholly possible to take the flash point moments and deepen dialogue, but its rare that it happens. Instead, we recycle old dialogues on race and its significance when more complex racism(s) exist. The reality is that we’ve got to get equally complex in our discussions of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality (to name a few). If we are serious about “justice for all” we must update our discourse and activism. Because as Brother Malcolm said, “The White power structure is just as much interested in maintaining slavery as it was 100 years ago. Only now they use modern methods of doing so.” Let’s expose the modern methods as well as the old!

*footnote if you’ve never seen the dialogue between Malcolm X, Wyatt Tee Walker James Farmer, and Alan Morrison do yourself a favor and watch it!

**Shout out to Native Notes for being on the same page with that quote!

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/27/on-swimming-pools-harvard-arrests-and-flash-point-racism/feed/ 10 http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/24/when-the-outside-looks-like-the-inside/ http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/24/when-the-outside-looks-like-the-inside/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000 Guest Contributor http://www.racialicious.com/2009/07/24/when-the-outside-looks-like-the-inside/ by Guest Contributor G.D., originally published at Feministe and PostBourgie

A few years back, my co-blogger quadmoniker worked for New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is supposed to act as a watchdog group for the city’s police department. If a citizen wanted to file a complaint against a police officer, she would do…

]]> by Guest Contributor G.D., originally published at Feministe and PostBourgie

A few years back, my co-blogger quadmoniker worked for New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is supposed to act as a watchdog group for the city’s police department. If a citizen wanted to file a complaint against a police officer, she would do so with the CCRB, who would then dispatch an investigator (like quad) to interview the police officer and other people involved in the incident. Tracking down complainants, though, meant occasionally trekking to some woebegone corner of the city, where “probable cause” was broadly interpreted and which meant that cops stopped and patted down anyone they deemed to be suspicious. In some housing projects, there are police observation rooms, where officers monitor any activity in the complex via video camera. The cops can stop anyone and request I.D.; you can be arrested for being inside buildings where you’re not a resident. For most people, contact with law enforcement is rare, and antagonistic encounters with the police are even rarer. But for many of the people quad had to interview, it was an inescapable fact of everyday life.

I thought about that while reading William Finnegan’s profile of Joe Arpaio in the New Yorker last week. Arpaio is the longtime sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona and has received (and actively sought) a lot of national attention for his harsh approach toward illegal immigration. Among the most controversial are the sheriff’s high-profile “crime-suppression sweeps,” like the Finnegan one described in the article. Deputies in paddy wagons, on horseback and a helicopter descended upon a largely Latino town — with news crews in tow — and demanded I.D. from “basically every-dark skinned person they saw,” he writes. This exercise was carried out even though it was known that only a handful of people in the town weren’t born in the U.S., and despite protests from the town’s mayor. Arpaio says his department has investigated and detained over 30,000 undocumented aliens in the county, and in his zeal to arrest “illegals,” as he calls them, he has been unique in broadly interpreting a state law on human smuggling, so that not only are the smugglers charged, but the undocumented immigrants being smuggled are charged as “co-conspirators.” (This has exacerbated the overcrowding in the county’s jails, which Arpaio has addressed by building tent prisons in the scorching Arizona heat, and Arpaio brags that his inmates work on chain gangs and receive two cold, 30-cent meals a day.)

Arpaio wasn’t always an anti-immigration true-believer, but once he saw which way the conservative winds were blowing, he made the issue the tentpole of his public image. He is now the most popular politician in the state, so much so that Janet Napolitano needed an endorsement from him to edge out a close win in her gubernatorial race in 2002. (She is now President Obama’s homeland security secretary.) The same “tough on crime” calculation is true for New York, where Nelson Rockefeller, the state’s liberal Republican governor (back when such a thing existed), kept having his presidential ambitions thwarted by charges that he was too permissive on crime. His most consequential response to that was to create the harsh drug laws that bear his name, and that created mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life for the possession of four ounces of narcotics. Drug convictions went up. Crime didn’t budge. (Rockefeller only made it to the vice presidency.) Rudy Giuliani, an ex-prosecutor, won the mayoralty of NYC on the same law and order platform, installing a policing method based on the “broken windows” theory and received national recognition for taming New York City.* The implementation of so many of these tactics, like Arpaio’s “crime suppression” sweeps, was in large measure about mounting a show of force to allay the fears of white voters — who rarely lived in the places where the crackdowns were happening.

But once loosed, it has proven extremely difficult to stuff that genie back into its bottle. The effectiveness and necessity of these zero-tolerance tactics is questionable. In Finnegan’s piece, some of his deputies grudgingly admit that Arpaio’s methods haven’t done much to stem the flow of undocumented aliens coming through the county. An award-winning series in the Eastern Valley Tribune found that in Maricopa County, the sheriff’s monomaniacal focus on illegal immigration meant eschewing violent crime investigations or timely responses to emergency calls. The number of stop-and-frisks in New York City jumped from 97,296 in 2002 to 508,540 in 2006 even though crime in the city remained near record lows. But backing off or changing course would offer opponents a political opening. So the stated justifications for those measures become elastic and more extreme; “stop and frisk” is necessary to keep crime rates low, “illegals” are now allegedly bring swine flu into the States. And the tactics are stepped up accordingly, until everything is inbounds and justifiable in policing.

quad:

“[The officers] know that a reasonable fear of safety is necessary to justify force, and so they are ready to tell you their justification during their first statement. They also will tell you, if you sit them down in an interrogation room and compel them to answer your questions, that they work in dangerous neighborhoods where people hate them. That’s what some cops believe about the neighborhoods they police; that they are full of danger and anger that is directed toward them. If they believe that, every action can be considered furtive.”

The broader this thinking becomes, the easier it becomes to justify broader methods, because the people you’re policing seem to be less and less like you because you deal with them in increasingly circumscribed ways. And the slow, inexorable creep of institutionalization and dehumanization continues unabated.

*There’s plenty of debate about whether the precipitous drop here in crime here New York was because of anything Giuliani did, or because he ran the city as the crack era waned and during the economic boom of the late 90’s. New York City became safer at a time where crime fell dramatically everywhere else in the country, as well.

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