ACLU Report says Rhode Island's Racist Policies and Practices Lead to a lifetime of unequal treatment for Blacks

From [HERE] and [HERE] In a wide-ranging series of charges in a report [PDF], the American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday said the state's policies and practices discriminate against black Rhode Islanders from childhood to adulthood. [In photo, the Governor of Rhode Island, Gina Marie Raimondo, democrat (the nicer white party).]

The 17-page report, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Black and White,” says that blacks are disproportionately suspended from school, stopped and searched by police, arrested and incarcerated. 

The problem is “a persistent and far-reaching" one that contributes to a “school-to-prison pipeline” and “a systematic pattern of pushing students, especially minorities, out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system."

The ACLU report offers a brief but systematic examination of racial disparities in Rhode Island, and how those interconnected disparities can lead to a lifetime of unequal treatment. 

Data has long shown that black Rhode Islanders are disproportionally suspended from school, stopped and searched by police, arrested, and incarcerated. When this data is compiled, as it is in the report, it becomes clear that the disproportionate singling out, scrutinizing, and punishing of black Rhode Islanders is a persistent and far-reaching problem and one that contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline, a systematic pattern of pushing students, especially minorities, out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. [MORE]

The report follows similar charges by civil rights groups and protesters across the nation and in books like Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."

The local ACLU chapter is urging state and municipal leaders to examine state policies, practices and procedures that lead to discrimination. It supports legislation to end racial profiling and limit the use of out-of-school suspensions.

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Oscars TV ratings are a flop [anyway, who gives a f*** about some mindless Hollywood Shit that programs us for our own domination?]

All white, sister! Looks like when the Knowles sisters get together, they like to party.[MORE]

According to Fortune, television ratings for this year’s Oscars fell 16% from last year’s figures as the show hit a six-year low, according to preliminary Nielsen estimates. The program drew 36.6 million viewers — down from the 43.7 million people last year. Last night’s broadcast represented the lowest ratings since 2009’s show while seeing a particularly harsh drop-off from the 2014 Oscars, which were the most-watched since 2000.

 

All the chatter about the lack of "diversity" @ the Oscars is just flattery for racists. They love that we want some shit like that - desiring their recognition, acceptance, inclusion. It has no substance. Like Thich Nhat Hanh has said mindless TV and movie programming is toxic, poisonous mental consumption to ingest [MORE]- so go on a media fast if you dare! 

The knee jerk reaction to John Legend making a comment that there are more Black men incarcerated now than there were Black male slaves during slavery days is overblown. Reciting statistics without an explanation or theory is half the story. Racist suspects want as many Blacks locked up as possible. They don't see mass incarceration as a problem. Likewise many programmed Blacks are programmed to believe that locking up "bad" Blacks is a good thing. 

What was missing from Mr. Legend's comment was the commentary that Black men are being locked up in mass because of racism/white supremacy. Specifically, Black men are being locked up by racist white folks in a racist system that they have designed for that purpose. A racist system intended to keep Black people powerless. 

Last week, the ACLU issued a report which found that harsher jail sentences do not deter crime and longer jail sentences actually lead to increased recidivism. To a racist, that is the point - the greater confinement of non-whites. [MORE]  Racist white folks make sure that large numbers of Blacks are underemployed or unemployed and living (on their knees) under conditions that will cause them to do things that are deemed unlawful. Racist lawmakers, prosecutors, judges and jurists have criminalized being Black. Prosecutors and police use their discretionary power to arrest and prosecute Blacks for the most trivial, petty offenses imaginable. Go to an arraignment or preliminary hearings courtroom at your local court house and see for yourself. 

Mostly Black Homeless in DC - Cold & Outdoors while Black Android Mayor Stays Paid

Serving the Master. New salary data shows that top aides to Mayor Muriel Bowser are pulling in hefty salaries of over $200,000. City Administrator Rashad Young makes $295,000. Chief of staff for the puppetician, John Falcicchio and Snr. Advisor Beverly Perry both make $198,000. Droid Bowser makes $200,000. [MORE]  

From [HERE] D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser on Thursday took a step to begin undoing the city’s backlog of 4,000 homeless people filling city shelters and seven motels, saying she would hire four “housing navigators” to match needy singles and families with apartments. The City stopped adding people to the "waiting list" in August 2013. With at least 4000 in emergency care DC is easily on track to eclipse last year's record breaking numbers of sheltered homeless. The number has grown by more than 1,500 over the past four weeks and continues to expland daily, often with as many as 100 families or more seeking shelter when temperatures drop below freezing advocates say. [MORE

The homeless backlog has consequences beyond the fates of the families currently stuck in a holding pattern. Once hypothermia conditions set in, DHS is required by law to house all homeless people in need. For the past three years, with inadequate shelter space, the city has put some of these people up in hotels, at a cost of $100 a night. DHS estimates that the city will spend about $2.5 million on hotel rooms in the new fiscal year.

Just a Nigger Warehouse. Making sure there is a decisive borderline between the white gentrifiers and the criminalized Black poor, the D.C. Govt has created its very own white supremacy megaplex near the Stadium-Armory Metro station. All on a single litter-strewn campus sits a clinic for meth rehabilitation and sexually transmitted diseases, two jails (the CTF and the main jail), the former city morgue and the crumbling down D.C. General, an old hospital which now functions as the City's emergency homeless shelter. This architectural and spatial arrangement keeps the Black 'lost and found' out of sight and out of mind.[MORE] and [MORE]. (Nigger means victim of white supremacy. [MORE]) 

Worse than Living in an Alley? Whatever happened or did not happen at D.C. General is the result of white supremacists/racists as they control everything in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labour, law, politics, religion, sex and war) [MORE

CFSA Director Brenda Donald says it’s important to move families out of the hotels promptly, in part because housing them there is “ridiculously expensive.” A $100 per night room comes out to about $3,000 a month, Donald notes, making it a pretty uneconomical way to house homeless residents. “D.C. does have high rents,” she says, “but not that high.” [MORE]

“The "housing navigators"] will help identify units across the city,” Bowser (D[oin' what I'm told) said. She added that housing inspectors would fan out once units are identified “with the very specific task . . . of making sure housing units are suitable for our residents. . . . This is a very targeted approach that we intend to get started on immediately,” she said.

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One Third of All Homeless Live in these Cities [too many are Black - 42%]

From [HERE] and [HERE] Homelessness emerged as a national issue in the1870’s (Kusmer, 2002). At that time in American history, African-Americans made up less than 10% of the population and although there were no national figures documenting the demography of the homeless population, some sources suggest that African-Americans represented a very small segment of the homeless population. As a matter of fact, in the 1950s and 1960s, the typical person experiencing homelessness was white, male, and in his 50s (Kusmer, 2002).Since that time, however, the scope and demographic makeup of the problem have changed dramatically. Not only do families with children now comprise 41% of the homeless population (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2006), but 42% of the population is African American.  The composition of the average homeless family is a single parent household headed by an African-American female.

A cause of homelessness is racism/white supremacy

Racists Use Black Android Prosecutor to Challenge Pennsylvania Moratorium on "the Death Penalty" [State Approved Murder of Restrained, Helpless (mostly) Black & Brown people]

In support of White Domination and Revenge/Justice. From [HERE] Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams filed a legal challenge [petition; press release] on Wednesday against Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's decision to place a moratorium on the death penalty. The challenge, filed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, petitions the court to reject the reprieve as an unconstitutional intrusion of state executive power into the realm of the legislature and courts. In the press release, Williams stated, "[t]he people who are most grateful for this 'moratorium' on capital punishment are the guiltiest, cruelest, most vicious killers on death row." The challenge comes in response to Wolf's decision last Friday to stay all executions , calling the state justice system "error prone." In issuing temporary reprieves for all death-row prisoners, Wolf's decision has at least temporarily spared Terrance Williams from execution, a man whose case Seth Williams used in his challenge [AP report] as an explanation of the value of capital punishment. According to the DA's petition, Williams bound and beat Amos Norwood, killing the man in 1984, a crime for which he was sentenced to death. Williams was scheduled by former governor Tom Corbett to be put to death on March 4.

Use of the death penalty has been a controversial issue throughout the US and internationally. Earlier this week US Attorney General Eric Holder voiced his support for a moratorium on the death penalty pending a decision by the Supreme Court in Glossip v. Gross [SCOTUSblog backgrounder]. The court granted certiorari [order, PDF] in late January to determine the constitutionality of Oklahoma's three-drug execution protocol. Also in February the Utah House of Representatives narrowly approved House Bill 11 , which would allow for executions by firing squad. The goal of HB 11 is to provide an alternative execution method to lethal injection, as supplies of the traditional drugs have become scarce. Late last month a man with an IQ of 67 was executed [JURIST report] in Texas after the US Supreme Court denied two pleas for delay that same day. Earlier in January an Indiana senator proposed a bill to end the death penalty in the state, and the Washington state legislature proposed bills to eliminate the death penalty.

Obama ("a campaign in the ass") 'Yesss, yesss I will hug, touch and say anything'

The NY Dailty News informs; "Officially, President Obama came home to Chicago on Thursday to designate a new national monument. But you’d be forgiven for mistaking the visit for a campaign event for Mayor Rahm Emanuel."

Praising the notoriously blunt mayor for his "smarts", "toughness" and "judgment", Obama said he couldn’t be prouder of his former aide. He said Emanuel cares deeply about the city’s children and has been willing to make “really hard decisions” on Chicago’s behalf, an implicit rebuke of many Black & Latino residents unhappy with persistent violence and school closings since Emanuel took office. [MORE]

"The whole of politics depends on lies." 

The following is from "FUNKTIONARY, THE KEY HOLDERS ENPSYCHLOPEDIA" Copyright 2004 Chocolate City Press. Available [HERE

Resonated & Orchestrated by Dr. Blynd, Ph.F.

Puppetician - a politician (Ho-Rep) with all strings (and G-strings) attached. (See: Politians, VOTER and Ho-Reps). 

new report: [Racist White People] Using Jails to Warehouse Black & Brown People - Locking them up for the Most Petty Shit Imaginable

From [HERE] Jails across the country have become vast warehouses made up primarily of people too poor to post bail or too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves, according to a report issued Wednesday.

The study, “Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America,” found that the majority of those incarcerated in local and county jails are there for minor violations, including driving with suspended licenses, shoplifting or evading subway fares, and have been jailed for longer periods of time over the past 30 years because they are unable to pay court-imposed costs.

The report, by the Vera Institute of Justice, comes at a time of increased attention to mass incarceration policies that have swelled prison and jail populations around the country. This week in Missouri, where the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer stirred months of racial tension last year in the town of Ferguson, 15 people sued that city and another suburb, Jennings, alleging that the cities created an unconstitutional modern-day debtors’ prison, putting impoverished people behind bars in overcrowded, unlawful and unsanitary conditions.

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[White] Congressman Claims [lies] Immigrants [non-white] are Netting $24,000 Each From Obama’s Executive Action

From [HERE] During a town hall meeting in Payson, Arizona last week, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) stunned constituents when he claimed that undocumented immigrants could stand to receive $24,000 in retroactive compensation after they are approved for the president’s executive action on immigration relief.

GOSAR: It was learned the household income deferred tax credit applied retroactively for three years. So each illegal alien will get $24,000 in compensation.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What?

GOSAR: Yep, absolutely. When you start looking at the process where the GDP [gross domestic product] in Mexico, the second largest input to that, is our system of Social Security and benefits. And they’re going to make this go away.

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Pennsylvania’s governor suspends "the death penalty" [aka State Approved Revenge Murder of Restrained, Helpless mostly Black & Brown People]

From [HERE] Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced last Friday that he had suspended the death penalty until he reviews a report on capital punishment in the state.

“This moratorium is in no way an expression of sympathy for the guilty on death row, all of whom have been convicted of committing heinous crimes,” Wolf said in a statement. “This decision is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and expensive.”

This announcement comes as the death penalty’s use across the country has declined considerably in recent years, with executions and death sentences both dropping well below numbers seen in the last two decades.

Pennsylvania has not executed an inmate since 1999 and has carried out only three executions since 1976, making it one of the least-active states with the death penalty. Yet the state also has one of the largest populations of death-row inmates. There are 186 people currently on death row in the state, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said, trailing only California, Florida, Texas and Alabama.

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Black Man on death row for 2 Decades for Murder of White Man Released, for now: Vengeful White Prosecutors Plan Appeal of Decision to Toss Coerced Custodial Confession given while high on heroin & Not Advised of his Right to Remain Silent During 13 hour Interrogation

From [HERE] and [HERE] A Black man who spent more than two decades on Delaware's death row has been set free, for now, as white prosecutors appeal a judge's ruling that they cannot use a coerced confession he gave to police while high on heroin.

Jermaine Wright, 42, walked out of the maximum-security prison in Smyrna and into the arms of his mother, Delores, on Friday, 24 years to the day that he was taken into custody following the 1991 killing of a white liquor store clerk near Wilmington.

Prosecutors promptly moved to dismiss the charges against Wright last week in a procedural requirement that clears the way for an appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court of the suppression ruling by Superior Court Judge John A. Parkins Jr. If their appeal is successful, prosecutors will seek to refile the charges against Wright. In photo racist suspect, former Lt. Governor Matt Denn is now Delaware’s new Attorney General. He is a democrat and he replaced outgoing AG, Beau Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's son, who did not seek re-election. 

"The admissibility of Wright's confession was fully litigated before the Superior Court in 1992, and in the Delaware Supreme Court in 1993," said deputy attorney general Steve Wood. "Now, we will ask the Delaware Supreme Court to finally resolve the issue."

Before Parkins initially overturned Wright's conviction and death sentence in a 2012 ruling, which was subsequently reversed by the state Supreme Court, Wright had spent more time on death row than any other Delaware inmate currently facing execution.

Wright was sentenced to death for the murder of Phillip Seifert, 66, at the Hi-Way Inn liquor store and bar outside Wilmington on Jan. 14, 1991. 

In overturning Wright's conviction and death sentence, Parkins ruled in 2012 that a confession Wright gave to police during an interrogation lasting nearly 13 hours was defective because he had not been properly advised of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination and to have an attorney appointed for him. The confession was a linchpin for prosecutors at Wright's 1992 murder trial, and Wood has said it's unlikely that prosecutors would proceed with the case without the confession.

"The police extracted Mr. Wright's confession after 13 hours of interrogation in a windowless 13 x 10 room while handcuffed to a table," Mondros said in a written statement Friday. "Mr. Wright, who was 18 at the time, was under the influence of heroin and, as the Superior Court found, behaved bizarrely, a fact ignored by his interrogators.

"The result was a so-called confession that was factually inconsistent with the physical evidence and eyewitness accounts, and found wholly unreliable by the court."

Any Black Man will do. 'I want my revenge. That is the purpose of "our" justice system.' 

Parkins also ruled in 2012 that Wright's case was prejudiced by the failure of the chief investigating officer to advise prosecutors, and thereby defense attorneys, of an attempted robbery at Brandywine Village Liquors, less than two miles from the Hi-Way Inn, about half an hour before Seifert was killed. Wright's attorneys have argued that such evidence might have exonerated him.

"The evidence of this close in time and proximity robbery supports a reasonable inference that the (Brandywine) perpetrators were also the Hi-Way Inn perpetrators, and thus that Wright was not involved in either crime," Justice Henry duPont Ridgely wrote in a dissenting opinion when the state Supreme Court reinstated Wright's conviction in 2013.

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If you are a Non-White Immigrant You Could Get Dissapeared: So-Called Shadow Prisons Exist for You

Why Did White People Create Borders, Nations? From [HERE] The U.S. government has quietly created a second-class federal prison system specifically for immigrants. For years the Department of Homeland Security has been known as the agency that houses immigrants awaiting deportation. However, tens of thousands of additional immigrants, most serving sentences for immigration crimes, are held by the Bureau of Prisons each night before being sent back.

And it’s all part of a lucrative business model which has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into the private prison industry.

A Fusion investigation found that without a single vote in Congress, officials across three administrations: created a new classification of federal prisons only for immigrants; decided that private companies would run the facilities; and filled them by changing immigration enforcement practices.

"You build a prison, and then you've got to find someone to put in them,” said Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, who has seen five of the 13 Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons built in his state. “So they widen the net and find additional undocumented folks to fill them up"

Most of the roughly 23,000 immigrants held each night in CAR prisons have committed immigration infractions -- crimes that a decade ago would have resulted in little more than a bus trip back home. And now, some of the very same officials who oversaw agencies that created and fueled the system have gone on to work for the private prison companies that benefited most.

The low-security facilities are often squalid, rife with abuse, and use solitary confinement excessively, according to advocates.

Built in remote towns across the country, these prisons hold nearly twice the number of inmates in solitary confinement as other federal facilities, an American Civil Liberties Union report found. Inmates are allegedly placed in solitary confinement for complaining about food, medical care or filing grievances.

At one prison in Texas, officials placed a 32-year-old-man with epilepsy in solitary confinement to allegedly provide him with extra medical attention. However, the man died weeks later in solitary without enough medication in his system and without medical supervision, according to the man’s family who later sued the government and the company that ran the prison. [MORE]

Texas prisons [run by whites] overuse solitary confinement on [Blacks & Latinos], report says

Who Have White Folks Locked Up? According to Solitary Watch, in many states the harsh conditions of solitary confinement are disproportionately affecting prisoners of color.  Full details on sources, methodology, etc. are available in Margo Schlanger, Prison Segregation: Symposium Introduction and Preliminary Data on Racial Disparities, 118 Mich. J. Race & Law 241 (2013).

From [HERE] Texas prisons keep too many inmates in solitary confinement for too long — sometimes years — damaging their mental health and placing communities at risk when the prisoners are eventually released, a study by civil rights groups concluded.

Released Thursday, the report criticized Texas for keeping 4.4 percent of its inmates in solitary confinement — 6,564 in September 2014, or more than the combined prison population of 12 states.

“On average, prisoners remain in solitary confinement for almost four years; over 100 Texas prisoners have spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement,” said the report by the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project.

And although the practice can lead to mental damage, in 2013 the Texas Department of Criminal Justice released 1,243 inmates “directly from solitary confinement cells into Texas communities,” said the report, titled A Solitary Failure.

Texas prisons spokesman Jason Clark said solitary confinement is reserved for the [Black & Latino] most dangerous inmates, who are protected by a process that includes a hearing within seven days, an appeal through the offender grievance process and twice-annual reviews by prison administrators and monthly reviews by unit personnel.

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“Would the Jews build a casino to honor [Adolf] Hitler?” Coin Operated Native Americans Pay Tribute to Racist with New Yellow Brick Road Casino

From [HERE] The Native American tribe leading the movement to change the name of the Washington Redskins plans to open a $20 million casino that pays homage to the work of L. Frank Baum, who was born in this village outside Syracuse and later wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Just one problem with the Oneida Indian Nation’s Yellow Brick Road Casino: A decade before Baum wrote one of this country’s most celebrated children’s tales, he campaigned for a Native American genocide.

“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians,” he wrote in late 1890 for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in South Dakota. “Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; it’s better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are.”

Two weeks later, Baum, the newspaper’s publisher, reiterated his point in an editorial written after the slaughter of as many as 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee. He demanded that the U.S. government “wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”

So why would the Oneida — a small tribe that has condemned the Redskins for a name they consider patently racist — embrace the legacy of a writer whose own descendants have apologized for his patent racism?

That apology is the reason, said Oneida leader Ray Halbritter, calling the tribe’s future casino the product of reconciliation.

“I think that’s a wonderful message — that we’re able to overcome by repentance and by forgiveness,” Halbritter said. “It’s looking forward rather than backward.”

But some Native Americans have voiced astonishment over the tribute to Baum.

Ernestine Chasing Hawk, a descendant of the Wounded Knee victims, called the Oneida’s decision a betrayal.

“How can they be so ignorant of history and traitors to their own race?” she asked in an essay published in the Native American Times. “Would the Jews build a casino to honor [Adolf] Hitler?”

Halbritter insisted that the homage does not represent a “whitewashing of Baum’s writings,” but noted that his popular stories have noble themes and, obviously, immense commercial appeal. The tribe said no references to Baum will appear in the casino.

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If You Help Black People You may Get Disappeared: White SF Cops Lock Up Public Defender for Objecting to Questioning of Black Man who was not under arrest

From [HERE] and [HERE] A white San Francisco deputy public defender was handcuffed and arrested at the Hall of Justice after she objected to white city police officers questioning her Black client outside a courtroom, an incident that her office called outrageous and police officials defended as appropriate. The Black man was apparently not under arrest and had not committed any crime at the time. 

The Tuesday afternoon arrest of attorney Jami Tillotson as she denied police officers’ attempts to take photos of her client without explanation raised questions about police intimidation and harassment, Public Defender Jeff Adachi said at a Wednesday news conference.

A video of the incident shows the plainclothes policeman telling her, "If you continue with this, I will arrest you for resisting arrest." Of course, the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides her client, in fact all accused persons, with the right to counsel. Intimidating, and indeed arresting, any attorney for discharging their Constitutional duty to their client is incompatible with that right. And whether he had a right to counsel at the time of questioning is beside the point - he did have counsel and she was present - until she got disappeared by white cops. 

She was detained, and San Francisco police say they're now investigating her for a possible charge under a state law that includes resisting arrest, as well as obstructing justice.

Adachi said, “This is not Guantanamo Bay. You have an absolute right to have a lawyer with you when you’re questioned. Ms. Tillotson was simply doing her job.”

Tillotson’s client had just made an appearance in Department 17 on the second floor with a co-defendant for a misdemeanor theft charge when they left the courtroom and came under questioning by a plainclothes police officer at about 2 p.m., authorities said.

Other attorneys with the public defender’s office filmed the interaction, in which the plainclothes officer, Sgt. Brian Stansbury, told Tillotson, “I just want to take some pictures, OK, and he’ll be free to go.” When she declined his request, Stansbury said, “If you continue to do this, I will arrest you for resisting arrest.”

“Please do,” Tillotson responded.

“It was very clear to me that I hadn’t been doing anything illegal,” she said at the Wednesday news conference. “I was challenging him, telling him that you know that I know that I did not violate the law. He moved it forward.”

The video showed Stansbury continuing to take photos of the client and his co-defendant after Tillotson was handcuffed and led away, with Stansbury telling them, “Try not to move.”

Stansbury was one of three officers whose traffic stop of an off-duty black colleague in 2013 led the off-duty officer to file a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the city. Police officials have said the officers involved had not engaged in racial profiling.

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Georgia's Scheduled Murder of Unarmed, Restrained, Retarded Black Man for Revenge ["the death penalty"] is straight from the theater of the absurd

The Rule of a Barbarous Society From [HERE] The LA Times editorial board Friday weighs in on the absurdity of the state of Georgia’s efforts to execute convicted murderer Warren Lee Hill Jr., who faces lethal injection next week despite expert witnesses for both sides who now say he is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for capital punishment. 

An aspect of the case that went unexplored in the editorial is Georgia’s unreasonably high bar of proof for intellectual disability. According to Hill’s legal filings, all states that still have the death penalty have a “preponderance of the evidence” hurdle to proving intellectual disability. Under that standard, a condemned person is entitled to leniency if most of the experts agree that he or she is intellectually disabled.

But in Georgia, the standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That means if there is some disagreement among the experts as to whether the defendant is intellectually disabled, then the person doesn’t qualify for leniency and can be put to death. (In photo, racist suspect, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston who told WABE, "our death penalty laws, to my knowledge, have been upheld as constitutional to this point. I don't know that there needs to be a national sort of standard in these cases." [MORE]) 

So what’s the problem? The Supreme Court, in its Hall v. Florida decision last year, ruled that Florida had to look at other factors reflecting medical and professional standards in determining whether someone is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty under the 2002 Atkins v. Virginia decision. Part of the reasoning is that relying only on the narrower measure of an IQ of 70 or below (the accepted threshold) could lead to the unconstitutional execution of someone who is, indeed, intellectually disabled.

Hill’s lawyers have argued, so far unsuccessfully, that Georgia’s “reasonable doubt” standard similarly runs the risk of putting to death someone who has a constitutional protection against execution. And if Georgia’s standard was the same as the other death penalty states, Hill would be ineligible for execution. From Hill's petition:

“Indeed, but for Georgia’s uniquely high burden for proving that a capital defendant is not eligible for execution on the basis of intellectual disability, Mr. Hill would have been found intellectually disabled in state habeas proceedings and would not be facing execution today.

“In initial state habeas proceedings, the state habeas court judge found that Mr. Hill’s IQ was approximately 70 beyond a reasonable doubt but that Mr. Hill had not proven his intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt because, even though his 70 IQ demonstrated significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, Mr. Hill had not proven sufficient deficits in adaptive functioning beyond a reasonable doubt given his history.

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[Racial Dislocation (gentrification) is a part of White Supremacy] UN slams Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes

From [HERE] The United Nations has slammed Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal and unfair, after a series of demolitions this week left dozens of Palestinians—mostly children—homeless.

"In the past three days, 77 Palestinians, over half of them children, have been made homeless," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement issued late Friday. "Some of the demolished structures were provided by the international community to support vulnerable families."

"Demolitions that result in forced evictions and displacement run counter to Israel's obligations under international law and create unnecessary suffering and tension. They must stop immediately," said OCHA.

The demolitions occurred in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Jericho and Hebron, as well as East Jerusalem.

Last year, Israel carried out a record number of home demolitions in parts of the West Bank designated as Area C, which are under full Israeli military control, according to OCHA. Other parts of the West Bank, Areas A and B, are occupied by Israel but under the civil administration of the Palestinian Authority.

"In 2014 ... Israeli authorities destroyed 590 Palestinian-owned structures in Area C and East Jerusalem, displacing 1,177 people — the highest level of displacement in the West Bank since OCHA began systematically monitoring the issue in 2008," the U.N. office said. [MORE]

Amos Wilson: The Criminalization of the Black Male

The following excerpt is from "Black on Black Violence. The Psychodynamics of Black Self-annihilation in Service of White Domination." By Amos Wilson. Available [HERE

Black American criminality whether in its individual or subgroup form, is a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic American system and beyond that, of the system of European global domination. The intrapsychic motivational orientation of the Black American individual or subgroup is driven and structured by the nature of his or its social-political, ecological encounters with European Americans and Europeans in general. These encounters are not ones between equals, nor are they ones characterized by mutual respect and reciprocity. These frontiers of disparate intergroup encounter are the nodal points at which both Black criminals and Black "law-abiding" citizens are produced. They are both Eurocentric creations as are the nature and quality of their social relations and functions. In this context, the Black American criminal is "law-abiding," obeying the laws of the Eurocentric criminalization process. Black criminality is not accidental, coincidental or aberrant, but speaks to an apparent need in the White American community to induce criminality in a significant proportion of the Black American community, as well as its need to perceive African Americans as innately criminal, just as it exhibits the related need to perceive the average African American as innately intellectually inferior.

The Criminalization of the Black Male

In light of the foregoing and of the forthcoming, we must recognize that within limits, alleged Black crime is socioeconomically functional for the White American status quo and is ultimately symptomatic of the societal "needs" of powerful segments of the American class structure and of its dysfunctionality. In this context, we must ask and answer the following questions: Why do White Americans need to criminalize significant segments of the African American population? What is the socio political function of alleged African American criminality and self-destructive behavior in American society? How does alleged Black American criminality sustain the American status quo? How is "criminal motivation" induced into the personalities and social relations of some African Americans and for what reasons? While the scope of this book will not allow us to adequately deal with these questions, they must be answered and the answers pragmatically utilized if the alleged criminality, self-destructive-ness, and victimization of African Americans are to be eradicated in the Black American communities.

The rates of Black-on-Black homicidal violence, assault and victimization, though biased and inaccurate, are alarming. The percentages cited in the prior chapter say something ominously significant, not only about the collective character of Black America, but all the more so about the collective character of White America., The percentages in the prior chapter have been used by a very significant and influential proportion of White America to stereotypically assassinate the character of the collective African personality in general, and to indict the Black American male as innately criminal in particular.

In the eyes of White America, an exaggeratedly large segment of Black America is criminally suspect. This is especially true relative to the Black American male. In the fevered mind of White America he is cosmically guilty. His guilt is existential. For him to be alive is to be suspected, to be stereotypically accused, convicted and condemned for criminal conspiracy and intent. On the streets, in the subways, elevators, parks, in the "wrong" neighborhood, from late childhood to late adulthood, he is feared, suspiciously scrutinized, cautiously approached or warily avoided.

To be a sensitive Black male, no matter how innocent, law-abiding, all-American, patriotic, altruistic, and loving, is to see the dilated pupils of fear in White women's and old men's eyes, to witness the defensive clutching at pocketbooks, to see yourself reflected in the mirrors of the other's eyes as a mugger, thief, and rapist. To be a perceptive Black male is to look out at an accusa­tive world and feel oneself the object of a suspicious ocular examination by trigger-happy policemen, to have your papers checked by security personnel while your White counterpart passes the checkpoint without question. To be a Black male is to have your integrity chronically under question, to always have to somehow verbally or nonverbally, communicate convincing reasons for being where you are if you are not in your "place." Only the carefully presented facade, the meticulous expression of nonaggressive, nonassertive body language, the representation of a carefully managed nonthreatening persona, or old age; only standardized, "non-Black" dress, standardized English, averted eyes intently focused on the leading newspaper, magazine, or book can alleviate to some tolerable degree the fears and suspicions / of others. But this diminution of fear and suspiciousness in others bought at the too-high price of self-annihilation, is always tentative, delicate, and is easily rent by the smallest misstep or the tiniest deviation.

Given the historical and contemporary virulence of White racism in America and the injustice toward Blacks that such racism engenders, the number of arrests, incarcerations, and in many instances, convictions of Black males should be viewed with a jaundiced eye. The willingness of White Americans to heavily tax themselves in order to finance accelerated and increased prison construction, rapidly expanding police forces and so-called criminal justice system personnel, burgeoning private police and security establishments; their willingness to finance the incarcera­tion of a Black male prisoner upwards of $30,000 to $40,000 per year, in sharp contrast to their unwillingness to tax themselves to provide for the appropriate funding of the education of Black children and to commit themselves to the ending of racist employment practices; to provide adequate housing medical care, food and clothing; clearly implies that alleged Black male criminality plays a very important role in defining the collective White American ego and personality. 

The typical White American response to the so-called criminal­ity of the Black male when closely examined, clearly indicates that it is more consistent with a conscious and unconscious need to instigate and sustain Black criminality as a highly visible and publicized component of American society, than with a yearning to reduce its destructive influence on both Black and White societies. White America needs an expressly "hyped" Black American criminality the way a neurotic patient needs his symptoms, despite his protests to the contrary. In other words, the existence of Black American criminality, alleged and actual, is a political-economic, social-psychological necessity for maintain­ing White American psychical and material equilibrium. Black American criminality apparently serves fundamental Eurocentric psychopolitical needs and is engendered and sustained for this reason. We will now examine some of these needs.

White American Paranoia

To look at the world or a segment of it with a rigid, hyper-alert, and all-consuming expectation — to search reality repetitively only for confirmation of one's suspicions while ignoring aspects of that reality which disconfirm those suspicions; to pay no attention to opposing rational arguments, cogent, well-founded evidence, except to find in them only those features that seem to confirm one's original views; to examine reality with extraordi­nary prejudice, rejecting facts, information and alternative possibilities while seizing on and exaggerating any scintilla of often irrelevant evidence that supports one's original expectations — denotes a driven need: a psychoneurotic, psychopathological need to defend an ego perilously in danger of disintegration and to defend it regardless of cost to oneself and others. Such a suspicious and paranoid orientation speaks to the need to rigidly construct and control reality so as to maintain self-control, to empower the ego and to gainfully exploit a relevant situation. This rigidity of attention, stereotypical viewing of the world; this chronic condition of hyper-alertness, hypersensitivity; this need to create the world according to one's own deluded images, to subject others to one's paranoid views, to exploitatively have them serve that need, bespeaks the greater need to gain ego satisfaction and enhancement, self-definition and material gain through manipulating the behavior and consciousness over others. Paradoxically, this greater need bespeaks a fundamental dependency on a world and others and simultaneously, of a protest against and denial of that dependency. It expresses an ego vulnerability which must remain defensively hidden, an ego weakness which must appear to itself and others as strength, an extremely tense, unstable ego whose tenuous equilibrium can only be maintained by projecting that tension and vulnerability into the world and others. Thus the keeper of law comes to need the outlaw. And needing him, creates him. The keeper of the disturbs the peace by projecting hallucinated hostile threats where they do not exist.

That the White American must see virtually every Black male as criminal or as a potential criminal regardless of facts to the contrary, bespeaks an intense psychic need of White America to perceive him as such.

What does White America have to gain from choosing to perceive Black males as stereotypically criminal? By socio-psychologically inducing Black males into criminality? Following the trend of thought set forth by Michael Lewis in his book, The Culture of Inequality, alleged Black male criminality is a comfort to White America despite its protestations to the contrary. Alleged Black criminality, while evoking White American fear and loathing, reassures them of their vaunted self-worth, their assumed innately superior moral standing, of their selfcongratulatory self-constraint in contrast with presumed Black American unworthiness, innate inferior moral standing, inherent criminality, lack of self-constraint and self-control. White America's self-appreciation is enhanced as it insatiably feeds on overblown reports about Black criminality while denying its own incomparable criminal record, and its own racist-imperialist incubation and giving birth to the very same criminal forces which now threaten to destroy it.

Black criminals function as a negative reference group vital to maintaining the White American self-image. The Black criminal is used to support the White American community's self-serving, self-justifying judgments of itself. White America's preoccupation with Black criminality betrays its own need for reassurance; betrays its own basic insecurity regarding its projected moral purity. Consequently, the higher the incidence of reported Black criminality, the more exceptionally righteous White America feels itself to be. The more righteous it feels itself to be the more intensely and guiltlessly it promulgates and justifies its domination and exploitation of African peoples at home and abroad. The alleged innate criminality of Black America, particularly of Black males, and their actual high level of self-destructive criminality remain incontrovertible psycho-political necessities if the White American-Eurocentric culture of inequality is to be self-justifiably continued without end. In the context of this collective necessity, more Blacks are arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to longer prison terms for allegedly committing the same type of crimes as Whites. Many are arrested, charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to long prison terms merely for committing the crime of being Black in America.

The White American community's need to stereotypically perceive Blacks as innately criminal, coupled with its socioeco­nomic power to control the availability of resources and their renumerative allocation, confers on it the power of creating or controlling circumstances conducive to the satisfaction of its hegemonic requirements. Under these circumstances, the need of the collective White ego to project an image of endemic Black criminality in order to maintain its power status quo, is tanta­mount to the creation of Black criminality, particularly of the self-destructive kind.

The Black Male as Potential Rebel

Whether as the result of acculturation or of innate biological propensities, when a community perceives itself to be the object of oppression or perceives its vital institutions and members to be at risk such that decisive actions must be taken, the males traditionally undertake leadership of the resistance. Males and the bonding between them in coalition with their female counter­parts, form the backbone of a viable society. Significant males are essential to a community's intra-dependence, structure, social coherence, continuity, viability, adaptability, self-defense and liberation from oppression and exploitation. Traditionally, the male component of an exploited community is seen by its exploiters, who themselves are usually males, as by temperament and biological/cultural endowment, the most likely to take up arms both psychosocially and/or materially against its oppressors. Consequently, oppressors typically target the male component of the oppressed community for relatively more intense repression, containment, imprisonment, humiliation, emasculation, socio­political-economic discrimination, personality assassination, and various forms of physical eradication. The neutralization of an oppressed community's males by the destruction of their charac­ter, authority and credibility, allows an oppressor to override that society's territorial and institutional imperatives and exposes it to unrestrained, rapacious domination and exploitation. 

Consequently, the institutional and organizational integrity of the oppressed community becomes dysfunctional or nonfunctional and the community is thereupon destructively exploited by aliens and/or is left to self-destruct. Emasculated males under such circumstances may become unwitting allies to, and vehicles of, the genocide and suicide of their community. These eviscerated, uprooted males may inadvertently become instruments of oppression by preying on their own community, thwarting its viable interests instead of defending them. Thus, the psychological disarmament of male resistance results in the destructive exploitation of the community against which that male resistance would ordinarily fight.

The psychopolitical need of White America to dominate Black America in a variety of ways requires that it neutralizes by any means necessary, any type of Black male empowerment, actual or potential, which may threaten its hegemony. Two of these means involve the criminalization of the Black male and of the Black community in general. The criminalization of the Black male by White America immensely enhances its psychocultural and material advantages. Criminalization of the Black male and the African American community in general by the White American community, psychopolitically benefits the latter community in a myriad of ways including the following:

Justification of the proscription of the liberties African peoples through continuing oppression, denial of civil and other human rights, and justification of racial discrimination and segregation.

Justification of the power status quo by utilizing the alleged criminality of the Black community to rationalize severe police repression, social and employment discrimination, restriction of African American political activity and empowerment, civil liberties, constitutional guarantees of individual and communal self-defense, and self-definition.

Facilitation of White American economic control of the African American community by frustrating and removing potential economic competition from the exploited African American community by denying it access to economic

resources, distorting and thwarting its economic develop­mental potentials. This economic control effectively neutral­izes the ability of the African American community to lead the worldwide African community in challenging worldwide Eurocentric politicoeeonomic hegemony.

    Provision of rationalizations for a collective White American preemptive strike against feared African economic, cultural, and more importantly, military parity — by aggressively attacking its potentiality on the ground through the self-serving manipulation, constriction, and undermining of the political, educational, economical, cultural institutions as well as experiences important for African American self-development and independence.

    Creation of interpersonal/intragroup fear, suspicion, mis­trust, violence, and lack of self-respect within the Black community, enabling destabilizing and destructive forces to vitiate its corporate identity, cohesive unity, and its ability to benefit from its own wealth and protect its autonomous liberty. This mission is most efficiently accomplished and sustained if the created fears, etc., appear to flow from factors culturally endemic to the African community and reflective of the supposed inferior personality propensities innately characteristic of African peoples.

• Creation of "social service" and "criminal justice" industries. The "criminal justice" system is best understood as a multi-billion dollar industry wherein the African American male is utilized as its basic raw material, the processing and the "refining" of which provides income for White families, vendors, construction firms, professionals, law and security enforcement agencies. Thus, alleged Black male criminality plays an important vital economic role in many White American communities. For this reason it is highly unlikely that these communities will seriously commit themselves to rectification of those social conditions which instigate and sustain alleged Black criminality and to the negation of those systematic injustices which underpin  a White-controlled penal/economic fiefdom.

    Justification for the atrocities it historically, currently, and in the future shall continue to perpetuate against the American African community. By ascribing an inherent criminality to African peoples just as it ascribes to these same peoples an alleged inherent intellectual inferiority, the White American community can, through ego-defensive projection and other ego defense mechanisms, deny its role in creating, maintaining, and benefitting from the negative condition of the African American community, and of African people in general.

    Provision of an underpinning for White communal self-definition, self-image, ego-support, self-aggrandizement and positive self-feeling by elevating itself while denigrating African peoples, vicariously enjoying their relative depriva­tion, alleged depravity, and visible subordination. The absence of perceived African inferiority in all its varieties would bring into question the illusory European superiority complex, destroy European self-confidence and related rationales for the hegemonic domination and exploitation of African peoples in America and abroad.

A perceived high level of Black criminal activity, especially if confined to the African American community, provides both primary and secondary gains for the White American collective ego complex. Therefore, any program which can effectively erase the criminal image of the Black male and reduce his self-destruc­tive criminality will most likely not be forthcoming from the White community despite its pretensions to the contrary. Moreover, any effective crime control programs instituted by the African American community (the place from which any effective program must issue or gain substantial support) will be by deliberate design, stealth, or neglect, targeted for neutralization by an apparently "well-meaning" White community.

The new Congress is 80 % white, 80 % male and 92 % Christian. ['Everywhere one finds Whites & Blacks in close proximity to each other, Corporate Elite Whites are in Control.']

"the paradox is that Black America while complaining of oppression and exploitation by White America has not consolidated its own considerable resources and reorganized its community so as to revolutionize its power relation­ship with White America and end its subordination to that commu­nity." Amos Wilson [MORE

From [HERE] As the 114th US Congress opens its session in Washington this month, it is once again time to take note of the stark difference between the people of the United States, and those who have been “democratically” elected to represent them. A Washington Post headline from January makes this divide plainly obvious: The new Congress is 80 percent white, 80 percent male and 92 percent Christian. Stop and think about those figures for just a moment. The notion that this government is actually representative of the people is utterly laughable.

According to the most recent US Census figures, the racial, gender/sex, and religious identities of members of the US Congress is not at all aligned with the demographic reality. Roughly 63 percent of the US population included in the census self-identifies as “White only” (meaning they do not identify as “white + another racial affiliation”), while 80 percent of Congress is white. This may seem a relatively reflective representation of racial demographics, but this is misleading. Not included in the census are the millions of non-white immigrants who, for a variety of reasons (e.g. seasonal work migration, fear of law enforcement, etc.) do not participate in such data gathering. So, taken conservatively, the racial makeup of Congress, while moderately over-representing whites, is not entirely unrepresentative of the population. Or so it would seem.

However, one must look more closely to see that the racial makeup of the Congress does little to affect its policies which cater to a mostly white corporate and financial elite, while to a large extent ignoring the economic and social problems that plague minority communities throughout the country. And so, you can see in the halls of Congress, a Congressional Black Caucus that almost without exception votes in a bloc with their white Democrat allies if, for no other reason, to preserve their own positions as they cater to mostly white donors. Perhaps the prime example of such behavior is President Obama himself who, despite being of African descent, has always eschewed race-related issues in favor of the typical vacuous American platitude of “togetherness” which, quite conveniently, seems to never offend or inconvenience the white power brokers who have made his career.

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Don't Hold Your Breath in a Racist System: FBI Completes Federal Probe of Ferguson Shooting

Justice and Racism Cannot Exist at the Same Time. From [HERE] The FBI has completed its investigation into the police shooting of an unarmed, black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

The Justice Department has not yet announced whether it will file a federal civil rights charge against former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. But officials and experts have said such a prosecution would be unlikely, in part because of the extraordinarily high legal standard federal prosecutors would need to meet.

The official was not authorized to discuss the case by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson declined to comment.

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[Do you really expect Racists to Eliminate the Educational Advantages that have Kept them in Power?] Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty

What is Racism/White Supremacy? From [HERE] For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in the 2012-2013 school year were eligible for the federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches. The lunch program is a rough proxy for poverty, but the explosion in the number of needy children in the nation’s public classrooms is a recent phenomenon that has been gaining attention among educators, public officials and researchers.

“We’ve all known this was the trend, that we would get to a majority, but it’s here sooner rather than later,” said Michael A. Rebell of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College at Columbia University, noting that the poverty rate has been increasing even as the economy has improved. “A lot of people at the top are doing much better, but the people at the bottom are not doing better at all. Those are the people who have the most children and send their children to public school.”

The shift to a majority-poor student population means that in public schools, a growing number of children start kindergarten already trailing their more privileged peers and rarely, if ever, catch up. They are less likely to have support at home, are less frequently exposed to enriching activities outside of school, and are more likely to drop out and never attend college.

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