SolidarityEconomy.net » African-American

Danger: Pushing ‘Recovery’ with a ‘White’ Top and a Black Bottom

Editors — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:05:17 +0000

Economic Recovery for Everyone:

Racial Equity and Prosperity

by The Center for Social Inclusion

Published by POVERTY & RACE
RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL
March/April 2009
Volume 18: Number 2

States are poised to receive significant federal funding to stimulate the economy and put people back to work. Much of it targets “shovel ready” projects. Government has to be smart about how it uses our money. The stimulus package alone will not be enough to put everyone who needs a job back to work. And it will not support all the services our communities need. But if it is allocated wisely and fairly, it can be a powerful boost to the economy and improve the lives of many.

To do that, states must ensure that those in the most need benefit from the stimulus. While we have made much progress on race and gender equality in this country, we have not yet achieved full fairness, and these inequities limit prosperity for all of us.

Targeting stimulus funds to communities in need is not only the fair thing to do, it is the effective thing to do. Considerable research, by Univ. of So. Calif. Professor Manuel Pastor and others, shows that investing in equity builds the regional economy and helps everyone.

A Racial Equity Lesson

The nation’s financial crisis was jump-started by the mortgage crisis. There is an important lesson to be learned from looking at the origins of the crisis in the light of racial exclusion from fair lending opportunities.

• National research has shown that up to 35% of those with subprime loans could have qualified for normal, prime mortgages.
• Blacks and Latinos are much more likely to have subprime mortgages than their White counterparts even when they have the same income. In fact, at higher income levels, there is a larger subprime-prime gap between Blacks and Whites.
• Because of usurious loans, Black and Latino communities are much more unstable in the current crisis than White communities, facing higher foreclosure rates as well as the ripple effects of this crisis—higher unemployment rates, lower wages, fewer assets and greater healthcare-related stresses.

If we had paid attention to the most distressed communities, we would have identified some problems that needed correcting for all mortgage seekers and possibly averted the financial crisis we now face. The good news is we can learn from this mistake. With the economic stimulus package, we have the opportunity to adopt policies of inclusion and prosperity for all.

Five key principles can help achieve that goal:

1. Stimulus investments should ensure that those most in distress benefit meaningfully.

A primary strategy of the stimulus is to put people to work. Communities with high rates of poverty and unemployment should be targeted. Communities in which 40% or more of residents (20% in rural areas) live at or below the federal poverty level have the highest rates of unemployment, tend to live farthest from jobs, lack sufficient public transit, quality child care and education.
Discretionary funds in the stimulus package would be well-spent in ensuring excluded communities get the services they need.

• One particularly important lesson from New York City’s budget cuts of the mid-1970s has been the cost, both human and fiscal, to the city in the form of tuberculosis, HIV infections and homicides in communities of color. Drug treatment, health services and law enforcement all suffered from budget cuts, with a price tag of $10 billion in immediate savings and $50 billion in ultimate costs.
Low-income people cannot compete for jobs when transit is inadequate or too costly. It is critical that states use stimulus money to ensure that public transit remains affordable.
• The nation’s poorest families spend nearly 40% of their takehome pay on transportation. Between 1992 and 2000, households that earned less than $20,000 saw their transportation expenses increase by 36.5% or more, while for households with incomes of $70,000 and higher, transportation costs rose only 16.8%.
• A survey by the American Public Transportation Association of 115 of the association’s members found that 60% of the systems are considering fare increases, while 35% are experiencing service cuts. For the past five years, Cleveland, for example, has experienced an increase in ridership, while simultaneously suffering a 63% decrease in state funding, resulting in fare hikes.

2. Stimulus investments should support infrastructure projects that benefit distressed communities, not solidify inequities.

The term “shovel ready” conjures up images of highways and bridges, but investment in public transit options that help connect communities with high rates of unemployment to job centers will create more jobs and longer-term benefits to the economy than road repair alone. Public transit investments should go beyond urban centers to benefit rural poor communities and help urban communities reach suburban job centers.

A 2000 study by scholar Michael Stoll of the Univ. of California, Los Angeles found that no other group in the United States was more physically isolated from jobs than African Americans. Stoll’s research revealed that more than 50% of Blacks would have to relocate to achieve an even distribution of Blacks relative to jobs; comparable figures for Whites are at least 20 percentage points lower.

A study by the Brookings Institution shows that, nationally, over half of all Blacks live more than five miles from job centers, as do more than 40% of all Latinos and Asians, compared to a third of Whites. Blacks and Latinos are six times more likely to rely on public transit than Whites.

3. Stimulus investments should address access to credit in communities pulverized by the collapse of the mortgage market and the job market.

Investing in communities of color as “regional business partners” is a key to spurring the innovation necessary to diversify the economy and compete globally. And we know it works.

• In the midst of near-economic meltdowns in the 80s and 90s, Los Angeles and Houston revived their economies, thanks in large part to investment in immigrant and minority-owned businesses. New minority-run banks pumped new life into these economies.
• Dependent even more on energy than New York is on Wall Street, Houston’s economy disintegrated when energy prices plummeted. Houston re-invented itself by investing in the city’s entrepreneurial culture and substantial immigrant community.
• Los Angeles took a similar approach, investing in the growth of immigrant-run businesses that moved in when older firms moved out. By nurturing the entrepreneurial talent of their communities of color, both cities have seen much less severe job losses even in a bad economy and despite state budget crises.
Discretionary stimulus spending should also recognize that community- based organizations are employers, lenders, trainers, connectors and community-stabilizers. Stimulus money would be well-spent if it included provision for community based organizations to provide immediate financial relief in high-poverty communities.
The nonprofit sector in America employs a steadily increasing segment of the country’s working population.
• The average annual growth rate in employment for nonprofits (2.5%) was significantly higher than for business (1.8%) or government (1.6%). The number of Americans employed in the nonprofit sector has doubled in the last 25 years. Nonprofit employment represents 9.5% of total employment in the United States, with total employees numbering 12.5 million.

Two immediate ways in which community- based organizations can stem the free-fall of communities in trouble are: 1) a stipend program to put people in underserved communities to work on community problems; and 2) loan funds and other financing support services to help disadvantaged entrepreneurs get access to credit and other assistance for business success.

4. Stimulus investments should recognize differences in labor segmentation by race and gender to ensure an equitable distribution of the stimulus’ benefits.

According to research by Professor Darrick Hamilton of the New School for Social Research and others, people of color, particularly Black men, tend to be “crowded” into low-prestige jobs and paid lower wages than White male counterparts.

In the construction industry, which will benefit heavily from investment in “shovel ready” projects, men of color and women of all races are significantly under-represented.

• A study of 25 metropolitan areas that measured the difference between the proportion of Blacks in the workforce and in the construction trades found a gap as high as 18% in Atlanta.
• Overall, if Blacks were employed in construction proportionate to their representation in the overall workforce, 137,044 more Blacks would have had construction jobs.
• Latinos, on the other hand, are generally over-represented, but their jobs typically are less skilled, less unionized, pay less and are more dangerous. “Shovel ready” projects funded by the stimulus package can benefit unemployed people of color and women if specific incentives and enforcement tools are enacted to ensure fair access to these opportunities. All stimulus projects should require local resident hiring goals and create a link to community-based groups as the first line contact for construction jobs. Local hiring requirements are a proven approach to bring jobs to under-represented constituencies in construction trades. These requirements can be applied to permanent jobs as well.
• Oakland’s $1.2 billion ports modernization program requires local hiring for all construction work through an agreement reached in 2000 between the Port of Oakland, the general contractor and unions of the Building Trades Council.
• In Los Angeles, a 2004 Community Benefit Agreement requires local hiring as part of the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) modernization. The agreement covers a very wide range of jobs, including retail and food service employees, airline employees, service contractors and baggage handlers.

A study by the Partnership for Working Families indicates that the most effective hiring agreements for construction jobs require placement of apprentices who are residents of low-income neighborhoods. It is also important to establish pre-apprenticeship programs and create connections with community-based organizations that can recruit job-seekers. Some unions and contractors recognize the value of hiring local residents, but governments should enact incentives, including rewards and penalties, to convince others to do the same.

5. Data collection on the race, ethnicity and gender of those served by stimulus money is critical to evaluating the success of the stimulus package and to inform government officials, advocates and the public about what works and what does not. ?
________________________
For further information on the economic stimulus initiative see:
Applied Research Center, “Resources Page on the National Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” http://arc.org/pdf/stimulus_resources.pdf
PRRAC, “Compilation of advocacy resources on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” available at http://www.prrac.org/policy.php
PolicyLink and Green for All, “Bringing Home the Green Recovery: A User’s Guide to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” available at www.policylink.org
Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, “Delivering Metropolitan Stimulus,” available from metro@brookings.edu
Center for Law & Social Policy, “Beyond Stimulus: Shoring Up the Safety Net, Securing the American Dream,” http://www.clasp.org/publications/ claspbeyondstimulus.pdf
The Center for Law and Social Policy is offering a series of audio conferences aimed at providing information for state and local policymakers and advocates on the opportunities states will have with economic recovery funds. Inf. at 202/906-8000, www.clasp.org
For housing impacts, see the National Low Income Housing Coalition article: http://www.nlihc.org/detail/article.cfm?article_id=5817

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Anti-Immigrant in Black Face?

Bill Fletcher, Black Commentator — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:24:39 +0000

The picture in the ad immediately caught my attention. The photo was of a very dignified older African American man looking into the camera, very determined and equally pensive. Underneath his photo was a caption giving his nameâ€”T. Willard Fairâ€”and the fact that he was the veteran of 40 years of struggle in the Civil Rights Movement. This was certainly enough to pique my interest. Beneath the caption was a statement declaring that the alleged threat to African Americans comes from documented and undocumented immigrants. He went on to suggest that any notion of legalizing undocumented workers was a slap in the face of African Americans. The ad is associated with a group called the â€œCoalition for the Future American Worker.â€ Fairâ€™s attack is not surprising, although the virulence and historical nature of it is very unsettling, particularly because it is bound to strike a chord among many African Americans. Black America has been taking a prolonged economic hit since the mid 1970s. The economic reorganization which many people call de-industrialization has had a devastating impact on the Black worker, disproportionately so. The elimination and/or shrinkage of manufacturing jobs in urban centers has had the effect of hollowing out entire communities, destabilizing Black America economically, socially and politically. Rather than the flight of the so-called middle class, Black America has witnessed the disintegration of segments of its working class and professional/managerial class. This crisis began well before there was a significant influx of immigrants, and it is this crisis that has been haunting us. This crisis has been compounded by the right-wing political assault on the public sector, largely through anti-tax revolts and privatization, which has resulted in both a decline in services and a decline in employment (with the latter also having a disproportionate impact on the Black worker). Fair and his coalition mention nothing about this, which in and of itself is quite significant. Instead they focus on the competition from the immigrant worker. While competition exists, particularly in very low wage work, the problem does not lie with the immigrants but with the desire on the part of employers to find workers who will accept the lowest possible wages. This has been demonstrated in any number of industries, not the least of which was the janitorial industry during the 1980s that went from very African American to very Latino after the industry was reorganized. Fair makes it appear that immigrants are the ones closing steel mills and auto plants. They are not. Fair acts as if the immigrant workers are carrying out ethnic cleansing against African Americans. They are not. We are, however, being cleansed from entire industries because of the greed of employers who are always looking at the bottom line and who seek the cheapest possible workforce, and eventually, if possible, no human workforce at all, but just a line of robots. Instead of Fair and his grouping focusing on the policies that have been destroying African American employment, they instead pick the easy - and wrong - target of the immigrant. And, it is easy to pick the immigrant. For instance, in the construction industry, an industry that African Americans, along with non-immigrant Latinos (particularly Puerto Ricans and Chicanos) and Asians fought for years to get into, immigrant workers are increasing dramatically as a significant proportion of the workforce. What is noteworthy is that this is happening largely in the lower-paid, non-union construction workforce where, once again, the â€˜logicâ€™ of capitalism prevails in the search for a low-wage workforce. While the Black worker wants a construction job, s/he is not looking for low-wage construction work with no benefits. Consider the conditions into which Latino immigrant construction workers were placed when many were brought to New Orleans for the reconstruction of the city. Under non-union conditions, they were often housed in a prison-like environment, and frequently cheated out of pay. No, Mr. Fair and your cohorts, the problem is not the immigrant worker. The problem is the system. And, just as African American workers were used in certain industries as low-wage workers in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries, in order to undercut higher paid workers, this changed dramatically through a combination of unionization and the Black Freedom Movement. What lessons can we draw from this? 1.) As long as there is a vulnerable workforce, capitalists will seek them out to utilize against other workers. 2.) Low-wage workers will not be competitors if they cease being low-wage workers, i.e., if they are unionized and gain power in their workplaces or jobs. Part of changing the character of work can be found in the demands of a social movement that combines the fight for political and social justice, with economic justice. To a great extent, the crisis facing the Black worker today can be linked to the failure of the Black Freedom Movement to pursue the path suggested by Dr. King toward the end of his life, that united the fights for racial justice with economic justice along with what later came to be known as global justice. Without disrespecting the life and history of Mr. Fair, who I am sure made contributions to our struggle for justice, somewhere along the line he fell prey to the emotional and hallucinatory appeal of attacking immigrants as a means of saving the Black worker. Not only is this morally bankrupt, but it is also politically bankrupt. If we do not have an accurate analysis of the problem, we cannot possibly develop a good strategy to resolve it. Or, perhaps it was better and more succinctly put by the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland when he said, "if you donâ€™t know where you want to go, any road will get you there." BC Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a long-time labor and international activist and writer. [Originally appeared online in the Black Commentator, May 24, 2007]

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“These People Frighten Me”

Mike — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:08:31 +0000

by Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel is right to be scared of most of the Democratic field of presidential candidates. Except for Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the contenders jockey for the title of most-likely-to-attack-Iran. Impeachment "is the only way to discredit Republicans enough to insure a Democratic victory in 2008," but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hear none of that. Even if the Democrats somehow triumph, nothing much will change, because the frontrunners are all beholden to Big Money and enthralled with war. During the first Democratic presidential debate a little known candidate, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, ended up with one of the most memorable lines of the evening: "And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me - they frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices. "I got to tell you, I'm president of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral, and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy." Of the eight candidates on that stage in South Carolina, only Gravel and Congressman Dennis Kucinich will say that there is no reason for the American people to incinerate the Iranian people with nuclear weapons. When Senator Barack Obama repeated the lie that Iran is on the verge of attaining nuclear capability only Kucinich would call him out. He politely said that Obama's assertions were in dispute. Obama: I think it would be a profound mistake for us to initiate a war with Iran. But, have no doubt, Iran possessing nuclear weapons will be a major threat to us and to the region. Kucinich: (OFF-MIKE) Obama: I understand that, but they're in the process of developing it. And I don't think that's disputed by any expert. They are the largest state sponsor of terrorism... Kucinich: It is disputed by... Obama: ... Hezbollah and Hamas. Kucinich: It is disputed. Obama: And there is no contradiction, Dennis, between... Kucinich: It is disputed. Obama: Let me finish. Kucinich would have been correct if he had called Obama a liar. Gravel is right, most of the Democrats are very frightening indeed. This debate was a very sad foreshadowing of what is to come before Election Day in November 2008. The corporate media will play a dominant role in choosing the nominee, by sponsoring debates, and by framing the way candidates are seen by the public. The sponsor of this debate, MSNBC, is a subsidiary of General Electric, a defense contractor. Gravel said it best when he answered a ridiculous question about America's need to label other countries as enemies. "The military industrial complex not only controls our government, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture." They also control presidential debates. "Impeachment is the only way to prevent further wars of aggression and it is the only way to expose the lies and manipulations of the Bush administration." The candidates are not just scary, they are gutless. Moderator Brian Williams asked for comments on Rudy Giuliani's statement that only Republicans will keep the country safe. No one gave the most obvious answer. The terror attacks on 9/11 happened on the Republican's watch. George W. Bush presided over the killing of 3,000 Americans and never demanded resignations from his cabinet and prevented any meaningful investigation from taking place. Now his approval rating is a dismal 28% but you wouldn't know it from the frightening and frightened Democrats. None of the other candidates support Kucinich's effort to impeach Vice President Cheney. Impeachment is the only way to prevent further wars of aggression and it is the only way to expose the lies and manipulations of the Bush administration. Impeachment is the only way to stop further erosions of civil liberties. It is the only way to discredit Republicans enough to insure a Democratic victory in 2008. Kucinich has a hard row to hoe. There is ample evidence that there are grounds to impeach Cheney on the charges Kucinich has outlined in his articles of impeachment, namely that he manipulated the intelligence to make the case for invading Iraq. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that impeachment is "off the table." Her explanations for eschewing impeachment are nonsensical. "And frankly, for impeachment, George W. Bush is just not worth it. We have great work to do for the American people." Pelosi was not on the debate stage, but she represents everything that makes the rest of them so scary. "The candidates who are flush with campaign cash and press attention are the most likely to bring little or no change to American politics." Democratic fund raising success is a sign that the high and mighty have concluded that the party's time has come. Yet skepticism is always in order. If anyone can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it is the Democratic party. If the Democrats do win, what will they do with victory? Unless Dennis Kucinich becomes president we have no reason to believe that much change is in the offing. We may have universal health care, but it will subsidize health insurance companies. American troops will still be in Iraq and the Patriot Act will still be on the books. Bush will be gone but Bushism will still be with us. That is the truly frightening thing about the Democrats. The candidates who are flush with campaign cash and press attention are the most likely to bring little or no change to American politics. In November 2008, it seems that Democrats will lose, no matter what. Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley' maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.

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To some in Paris, sinister past is back

Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:00:34 +0000

[Note from SolidarityEconomy.net editors: We encourage readers to post this story far and wide, especially to those who think we live in a 'colorblind' society.] In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.' By Howard Witt, Tribune senior correspondent PARIS, Texas -- The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place. There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged. Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist, can see the fairgrounds from the front yard of her modest home, in the heart of the "black" side of this starkly segregated town of 26,000. And lately, Cherry says, she's begun to wonder whether the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself "the best small town in Texas." "Some of the things that happen here would not happen if we were in Dallas or Houston," Cherry said. "They happen because we are in this closed town. I compare it to 1930s." There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family. There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students. And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun. The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21. Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation. "All Shaquanda did was grab somebody and she will be in jail for 5 or 6 years?" said Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who is president of the state NAACP branch. "It's like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated." The Tribune generally does not identify criminal suspects younger than age 17, but is doing so in this case because the girl and her family have chosen to go public with their story. None of the officials involved in Shaquanda's case, including the local prosecutor, the judge and Paris school district administrators, would agree to speak about their handling of it, citing a court appeal under way. But the teen's defenders assert that long before the September 2005 shoving incident, Paris school officials targeted Shaquanda for scrutiny because her mother had frequently accused school officials of racism. Retaliation alleged "Shaquanda started getting written up a lot after her mother became involved in a protest march in front of a school," said Sharon Reynerson, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, who has represented Shaquanda during challenges to several of the disciplinary citations she received. "Some of the write-ups weren't fair to her or accurate, so we felt like we had to challenge each one to get the whole story." Among the write-ups Shaquanda received, according to Reynerson, were citations for wearing a skirt that was an inch too short, pouring too much paint into a cup during an art class and defacing a desk that school officials later conceded bore no signs of damage. Shaquanda's mother, Creola Cotton, does not dispute that her daughter can behave impulsively and was sometimes guilty of tardiness or speaking out of turn at school--behaviors that she said were manifestations of Shaquanda's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which the teen was taking prescription medication. Nor does Shaquanda herself deny that she pushed the hall monitor after the teacher's aide refused her permission to enter the school before the morning bell--although Shaquanda maintains that she was supposed to have been allowed to visit the school nurse to take her medication, and that the teacher's aide pushed her first. But Cherry alleges that Shaquanda's frequent disciplinary write-ups, and the insistence of school officials at her trial that she deserved prison rather than probation for the shoving incident, fits in a larger pattern of systemic discrimination against black students in the Paris Independent School District. In the past five years, black parents have filed at least a dozen discrimination complaints against the school district with the federal Education Department, asserting that their children, who constitute 40 percent of the district's nearly 4,000 students, were singled out for excessive discipline. An attorney for the school district, Dennis Eichelbaum, said the Education Department had determined all of the complaints to be unfounded. "The [department] has explained that the school district has not and does not discriminate, that the school district has been a leader and very progressive when it comes to race relations, and that there was no validity to the allegations made by the complainants," Eichelbaum said. Not so clear But the federal investigations of the school district are not so clear-cut, and they are not finished. In one 2004 finding, Education Department officials determined that black students at a Paris middle school were being written up for disciplinary infractions more than twice as often as white students--and eight times as often in one category, "class disruption." The Education Department asked the U.S. Justice Department to try to mediate disputes between black parents and the district, but school officials pulled out of the process last December before it was concluded. And in April 2006, the Education Department notified Paris school officials that it was opening a new, comprehensive review to determine "whether the district discriminated against African-American students on the basis of race" between 2004 and 2006. Federal officials say that investigation is still in progress. According to one veteran Paris teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, such discrimination is widespread. "There is a philosophy of giving white kids a break and coming down on black kids," said the teacher, who is white. Not everyone in Paris agrees, however, that blacks are treated unfairly by the city's institutions. "I've lived here all my life, and I don't see that," said Mary Ann Reed Fisher, one of two black members of the Paris City Council. "My kids went to Paris High School, and they never had one minute of a problem with the school system, the courts or the police." A peculiar inmate Meanwhile, Shaquanda, a first-time offender, remains something of an anomaly inside the Texas Youth Commission prison system, where officials say 95 percent of the 2,500 juveniles in their custody are chronic, serious offenders who already have exhausted county-level programs such as probation and local treatment or detention. "The Texas Youth Commission is reserved for those youth who are most violent or most habitual," said commission spokesman Tim Savoy. "The whole concept of commitment until your 21st birthday should be recognized as a severe penalty, and that's why it's typically the last resort of the juvenile system in Texas." Inside the youth prison in Brownwood where she has been incarcerated for the past 10 months--a prison currently at the center of a state scandal involving a guard who allegedly sexually abused teenage inmates--Shaquanda, who is now 15, says she has not been doing well. Three times she has tried to injure herself, first by scratching her face, then by cutting her arm. The last time, she said, she copied a method she saw another young inmate try, knotting a sweater around her neck and yanking it tight so she couldn't breathe. The guards noticed her sprawled inside her cell before it was too late. She tried to harm herself, Shaquanda said, out of depression, desperation and fear of the hardened young thieves, robbers, sex offenders and parole violators all around her whom she must try to avoid each day. "I get paranoid when I get around some of these girls," Shaquanda said. "Sometimes I feel like I just can't do this no more--that I can't survive this." ---------- hwitt@tribune.com Copyright Â© 2007, Chicago Tribune

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Putting Black Faces on Imperial Policies

Glen Ford — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 06:00:49 +0000

by Glen Ford "Barack Obama is our son and he deserves our support," declared Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., speaking to a gathering of Black Democrats at the party's winter meeting, in Washington, earlier this month. By Jones' logic, Condoleezza Rice deserves automatic African American support as "our daughter," and Colin Powell, her predecessor as George Bush's Secretary of State, was due fealty as "our brother." Jones' embrace of the entire African American family tree must also, therefore, extend to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the most reactionary, anti-Black member of the High Court; and to "our brother" J. Kenneth Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State whose consuming mission in 2004 was to deny the franchise to as many fellow Blacks as possible. Although the winter meetings are traditionally showcases for candidates to display their positions on the issues of the day, State Sen. Jones saw no need to present his appeal on Obama's behalf in any packaging other than race. In effect, Jones attempted to relieve Obama of any political obligation to Black people. Under Jones' formula, the relationship between the Black office-seeker and the African American public is reversed: it is the people that owe allegiance to the candidate, who is in turn set free to woo groups and promote interests that may be inimical to those of the Black public. Jones and the larger political current he represents would utterly gut Black politics of all substance, rendering the entire electoral process worthless to the Black masses. Perhaps the greatest irony of Jones' issue-less directive is that it masquerades as a Black empowerment strategy. In a transparent bid to shame Blacks in the Hillary Clinton camp - another political desert - Jones said African Americans don't "owe" anyone. Jones elaborated later, in a conversation with a Chicago Sun-Times reporter. "How long do we have to owe before we have an opportunity to support our son?" he said. In other words, Black people's "debt" to the Clintons - as if such ever existed - has been paid, and now it's time to herd Black voters behind Obama, like so many cattle. Jones' brand of politics holds that Black people don't have interests or political ideals, only obligations to one politician or the other. In Jones' world, African Americans are constantly indebted, but nobody owes them anything - certainly not Obama, "our son." The Emil Jones brand of Black politics is based on the assumption that African American aspirations are limited to a simple desire to see Black faces on display in high places, no matter the public policy content of that representation. It is as if emancipation of the slaves could be achieved by moving Ol' Massa out of the Big House, and installing the Black butler in his place, while the conditions of life and labor in the fields remain unchanged. After all, the butler is one of "ours." The slaves should be happy to experience a vicarious freedom, through their "son." Further, it would be downright unfamily-like to pester our own kin about the need for forty acres and a mule per household. Jones' remarks exemplify an extraordinary vulgarization of African American politics, the product of uncritical, Jim Crow-era reflexes that linger within the Black polity, combined with the growing influence of corporate money in the Black leadership-creation process. The advent of Barack Obama's stealth corporate presidential candidacy could create the conditions for a "perfect storm" that sweeps away what remains of issues-based coherence in Black electoral and institutional politics. Should that occur - and there is much evidence that the unraveling is already well advanced - the collapse of progressive American politics becomes inevitable, a high price to pay for a Black face in the Oval Office. Imperial Obama African Americans will pay a special, historical price if a corporate-molded Black politician becomes the titular leader of an unreconstructed U.S. imperial state - and, make no mistake about it, Barack Obama is an imperialist.Â No one but a deep-fried imperialist could describe U.S. behavior in Iraq as "coddling" the Iraqis, as Obama said to an establishment foreign policy gathering in Chicago, late last year. His Iraq War De-escalation Act, carefully calibrated to make him appear slightly less belligerent than Hillary Clinton, allows the U.S. to wage war until March 31, 2008, at the very least, and to maintain a military presence in the country thereafter. It is a sham measure, more helpful in buying time for Bush than in encouraging effective dissent. At his core, Obama is not opposed to U.S. violations of other nations' sovereignty; he simply opposes "dumb wars" - as he told a reporter for the Chicago Reader - meaning, aggressions executed by less-than-bright American Commanders-in-Chief. U.S.-designated "interests," not adherence to international law, are paramount - the fundamental tenet of imperialism. Of the declared Democratic candidates, only Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich can pass anti-imperialist muster; thus the near-certainty of another imperialist in the White House in 2009. Which brings us to the special price that African Americans will pay if the face of U.S. imperialism, is Black. The Face of Aggression There was a time not that long ago, when the historic struggles of Black Americans for racial equality, decolonization and peace were admired throughout the African Diaspora and beyond. Especially in what was called the Third World, African Americans were perceived as different than the arrogant, racist "ugly Americans" - the whites that strutted around other people's nations as if they owned them. In the early years of the Vietnam War, there were many reports of Viet Cong attempts to spare Black American soldiers' lives, if practical, as an acknowledgment of shared suffering under white rule. When Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, in 1979, African Americans were soon released, along with female staffers. It is difficult to imagine such differentiations being made on foreign shores, today. General Colin Powell emerged from Gulf War One as the personification of American military might - and threat. As George Bush's Secretary of State, Powell sacrificed his reputation - and an immeasurable portion of remaining African American planetary good will - in a lie-soaked justification of the impending invasion of Iraq before the United Nations. In her first act as the Black American female face of imperial aggression, in April, 2002, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice could not contain her disappointment at the failure of a U.S.-backed coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "We do hope that ChÃ¡vez recognizes that the whole world is watching," she sneered, "and that he takes advantage of this opportunity to right his own ship, which has been moving, frankly, in the wrong direction for quite a long time." As Secretary of State, Rice is the reigning imperial drum major. Despite a string of Chavez victories in fair elections and his overwhelming support among the poor and mostly non-white Venezuelan majority, Rice last week loosed another transparent threat against his government. "I believe there is an assault on democracy in Venezuela," she told a congressional committee. "I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically." What a spectacle: American imperialism in black-face, threatening a mixed-race president whose government has arguably adopted the most racially progressive and inclusive policies on the South American continent. "Condoleezza Rice is the Black, snarling symbol of U.S. lawlessness." When Rice claimed that the U.S. had been meeting with Venezuelan Catholic leaders who were "under fire" from Chavez's government, the vice-president of the Venezuelan Bishops' Conference - no friend of Chavez - called her a "liar." Contrast this with Barack Obama's exchange of pleasantries with Rice before voting to confirm her as chief diplomatic operative of the Bush endless war doctrine. From Beirut to Caracas, Condoleezza Rice is the Black, snarling symbol of U.S. lawlessness - a perception of our African American "daughter" that the NAACP must not have anticipated when it bestowed on her its Image Award, in early 2002. Back then, Rice told the civil rights group's gala affair: "As I travel with President Bush around the world and as we meet with leaders from around the world, I see America through other people's eyes." African Americans, who care so much for image - some, to the exclusion of all else - should contemplate what the ascension of a Black face to the Oval Office will mean to world perceptions of Black Americans as a group. Would Barack Obama be a worse international criminal than Hillary Clinton? My guess is, they'd function identically, as stewards of empire. But a Barack Obama presidency would leave an unindelible impression on the planet: The Blacks of the United States have arrived! They, too, are "ugly Americans." BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. Original article published on Black Agenda Report

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The Sit-in Movement was Not Spontaneous: It Took Brains, Sweat, Planning and Organization

Rhone Fraser — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 06:00:41 +0000

by Rhone Fraser

â€œThe sit-in movement was built upon deep layers of African American organizational experience stretching back generations.â€

The American civil rights narrative has too often been reduced to a tale of spontaneous invention, rather than the product of intense debate, meticulous planning and, often, tactical and strategic genius on the part of the organizers. Itâ€™s long past time to tell the truth about this watershed moment in the Black radical tradition. The sit-ins at public accommodations between 1957 and 1960 ushered in a critical period in U.S. history. In this form of social protest, people literally sat down at racially segregated facilities such as a lunch counters to force the public and politicians to confront the issue of desegregation. Sit-ins became the cornerstone of evolving civil rights activity. Occurring in clusters in the late 1950s, the early sit-ins culminated in a larger, more deliberate sit-in movement that seized national attention at a Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter on February 1, 1960. However, the full-blown, post-Greensboro wave of sit-ins could not have been so strikingly successful had it not been for organizational experience garnered during the protests of the late Fifties. Sociologist Aldon Morris writes that by1960: â€œ[S]tudents and seasoned activists were able to rapidly coordinate the sit-ins because both were anchored to the same organization. This vast internal organization consisted of local movement centers, experienced activists who had amassed organizing skills, direct-action organizations, communication systems between centers, pre-existing strategies for dealing with the opposition, workshops and training procedures, fund raising techniques, and community mobilization techniques.â€i This challenges previous scholarship about the sit-ins by Howard Zinn who wrote that in this period, â€œspontaneity and self-sufficiency were the hallmarks of the sit-ins; without adult advice or consent, the students planned and carried them through.â€ii However, the perception that sit-ins occurred without adult advice is simply not supported by the historical record, and needs correction.

â€œThe post-Greensboro wave of sit-ins could not have been so strikingly successful had it not been for organizational experience garnered during the protests of the late Fifties.â€

Aldon Morris says other viewpoints on the sit-in movement, from August Meier, Elliot Rudwick, Louis Lomax and others have â€œhave persistently portrayed pre-existing organization as an after-the-fact accretion on student spontaneity. The dominant view is that SCLC, CORE, NAACP, and community leaders rushed into a dynamic campus movement after it was well underway.â€iii Morris argues the opposite: that the pre-existing organizations of the late 1950s provided the sit-ins with the resources and communication networks needed for their emergence and development. Between February 1st and March 30th of 1960, major sit-in demonstrations and related activity had been conducted in at least sixty-nine Southern cities. The very rapid spread of sit-ins in 1960 was due to the pre-existing organizational structures of the late 1950s. Spontaneous decisions had very little to do with the growing phenomenon, which was in fact a carefully planned, systematic attack on racial segregation. The 1960 Greensboro sit-in marked the apex of the civil rights movement, after which time people who conducted sit-ins did so with a greater knowledge of mutual support than those before February 1st. An examination of two sit-in leaders whose activism was effective both before and after February 1st illustrates the influence of the pre-existing organizational support that eventually led to the toppling of Jim Crow. I chose to focus on Ronald Walters and James Lawson because of their unique work in making sit-ins so effective. Ronald Walters, now a Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, established the model of the lunch counter sit-in, while James Lawson, a civil rights icon who is now a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt University, perfected this model. Both menâ€™s goals were to ensure the full and complete integration of the segregated lunch counter. Both activists contribute significantly to the black radical tradition before and after the first of February, 1960 in ways that disprove the notion that student sit-ins were â€œspontaneous.â€

â€œThe very rapid spread of sit-ins was the result of a carefully planned, systematic attack on racial segregation.â€

In 1958, then twenty-year-old NAACP Youth Council member Ronald Walters began sit-ins at the F.W. Woolworthâ€™s drugstore in downtown Wichita, Kansas. Aldon Morris writes that Walters knew Clara Luper, an NAACP Youth Council leader in Oklahoma City, who organized her own sit-ins in less than a week after Waltersâ€™ sit-in in her town. Working through CORE and the local NAACP Youth Council, Clara Luperâ€™s personal friend, Mrs. Shirley Scaggins, organized another group of sit-ins in nearby Tulsa. The first sit-in cluster began in Oklahoma and then spread to cities within a hundred mile radius via established organizational and personal networks.iv Walters writes that the sit-ins in Oklahoma City were followed by protest demonstrations in the Midwest such as one in St. Louis that began on February 14th, 1959, initiated by the NAACP Youth group led by William Clay,v who went on to become a U.S. Congressman. Arguably, Ronald Walters started the chain of lunch counter sit-ins that spread from Wichita, Kansas, to Oklahoma City, to Tulsa, then to St. Louis within a few months. This chain of actions undoubtedly led to the pre-existing organization that triggered the huge wave of sit-ins after the Greensboro protest of February, 1960. In Nashville, Tennessee, in 1958 James Lawson and other Nashville clergy began conducting what were called â€œnonviolent workshopsâ€ â€“ classes in which Lawson taught local college students the philosophy and tactics of nonviolence protest.vi Many of the students in Lawsonâ€™s workshops would become future officers of the main organization at the vanguard of the sit-in movement: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Lawsonâ€™s mentoring of such future SNCC leaders as John Lewis (now a U.S. Congressman) and Diane Nash was an important part of his contribution to radical activism both before and after February 1st, 1960. Journalist David Halberstam writes that Nashville mayor Ben Westâ€™s decision to finally integrate the lunch counters came from a direct dialogue with one of Lawsonâ€™s students, Diane Nash: â€œNow standing on the top of the courthouse steps, facing the mayor, she [Nash] who had once been so afraid of confrontationâ€¦could look at Ben West and see how vulnerable he was. What she said next, she later noted, came to her like a divine inspiration. Or if not divine inspiration, at least a remembrance of what Jim Lawson had taught them, that they had to get peopleâ€¦to see one another as human beings instead of enemies. So she asked Ben West to use the prestige of his office to end racial segregation...â€™Yes,â€™ he found himself sayingâ€¦They had won, she was sure. The next dayâ€™s Tennessean banner headline said it all: INTEGRATE COUNTERS â€“ MAYOR.â€vii The February â€“ May, 1960 Nashville sit-ins and scores of others that year are often described as â€œinspiredâ€ by the Greensboro protests that also began in February. In fact, 1960 marked an escalation of a civil rights offensive that had begun carefully mapping its way in the Fifties. The sit-in movement was, in turn, built upon deep layers of African American organizational experience stretching back generations. â€œBlack folks did not simply clap and sway their way into winning strategies to defeat Jim Crow.â€ Thus, even this brief snapshot of the pre- and post-1960 sit-ins, and a few of the individuals involved, puts the lie to the common, essentially racist assumption that Black folks of the period acted on impulse rather than forethought; that they somehow clapped and swayed their way into the winning strategies that brought down the fortresses of Jim Crow. Nothing could be further from the truth. The two notables who are the focus of the study in which I am currently immersed â€“ Ronald Walters and James Lawson â€“ are important personages whose activism spans several distinct periods of the modern Black Freedom Struggle, and remain prodigiously active to this day. Their protÃ©gÃ©s, and those who were mentored and inspired by others, proceeded to change the world â€“ and were themselves transformed in the process. Spontaneity had very little to do with it. The author would like to dedicate this article to a devoted nonviolent minister in the true Christian sense, Christopher Staniel Simmons, 1979-2006. Rhone Fraser is an independent journalist who writes and produces for Pacifica WBAI radio's Arts Magazine Program. A graduate student, he is completing a study of the sit-in movement. Fraser recently wrote a documentary play on the life of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and can be reached at rhone2001@hotmail.com. i Morris, Aldon. â€œBlack Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organizationâ€ American Sociological Review. 46(6) (December 1981): 764. ii Zinn, Howard. SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Boston: Beacon, 1964: 29. iii Morris, Aldon. â€œBlack Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organizationâ€ American Sociological Review. 46(6) (December 1981):762. iv Ibid. p.750 v Walters, Ronald. â€œStanding Up in Americaâ€™s Heartlands: Sitting in Before Greensboro.â€ American Visions magazine. February/March 1993: 6. Also at: http://www.academy.umd.edu/aboutus/news/articles/2-1993.htm vi Morris, Aldon. â€œBlack Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organizationâ€ American Sociological Review. 46(6) (December 1981):762.p.749. vii Halberstam, David. The Children. New York: Random House, 1998: 233-234. [Article first published on Black Agenda Report]

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The Black-Latino Future

Glen Ford — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 05:05:09 +0000

Black Agenda Report:

Finding a Way to Solidarity By Glen Ford BAR Executive Editor When as many as two million immigrants and their supporters, most of them Latino, turned out for demonstrations against draconian undocumented worker legislation in cities across the nation this spring, everywhere the question was raised: Is this the new civil rights movement? By all appearances, some kind of great awakening had indeed occurred which, if sustained, would transform the participants and, eventually, the society at-large. However, Black opinion was decidedly mixed. Traditional and progressive African American organizations generally supported the explosion of Latino activism, and marveled at the coordination and sheer size of the rallies in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Houston, Seattle â€“ at least two dozen cities, nationwide. Luminaries such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP chairman Julian Bond, the SCLCâ€™s Rev. Joseph Lowrey, and numerous Black congresspersons were quick to make a positive connection to the struggles of the Sixties. 'Among some Black circles, the mass Latino political actions were met with a sullenness often deeply tinged with envy, and even outright hostility drenched in vicious vitriol and willful ignorance.' Yet among other Black circles, the mass Latino political actions were met with a sullenness often deeply tinged with envy, and even outright hostility drenched in vicious vitriol and willful ignorance. Black one-man bands like Claud Andersonâ€™s Washington-based Harvest Institute lashed out at mobilized Latinos, blurring the distinction between undocumented and legal immigrants (just as do white racist-led groups), and blaming the entirety of African American economic slippage over almost two generations on immigrant influx. Mary Mitchell, an incredibly shallow Black columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, expressed her "disgust" with undocumented Mexican immigrant Elvira Arellano, who along with her young U.S. citizen son sought sanctuary in a Chicago church. Arellano, said Mitchell, "is pimping the system" and should "return to Mexico," "brush up on black history" and then thank African Americans "for [their] sacrifices" over the centuries in North America. Andersonâ€™s and Mitchellâ€™s rants are deliberately insulting to their mainly Latino targets, and range from intellectual dishonesty (Anderson) to just plain stupid-mean (Mitchell). Unfortunately, these shrill and wrong-headed voices find echoes in the perceptions of a highly ambivalent African American citizenry whose sense of social space has been thrown into turmoil by the largest migration on U.S. soil since the "Great Migration" of Blacks to northern and western cities â€“ a trek that slowed and began to reverse itself about the same time as the Latino (non-Puerto Rican) migration began rolling in earnest, around 1970. This column, the first of many BAR articles that will address the extremely complex and history-shaping subject of African American-Latino relations, deals with the "meanness" factor in Black discourse around (mainly Latino) immigration â€“ the invective from the African American side of the argument that threatens to poison the prospects of unified action among Black and Latino progressives against white supremacy and corporate rule in the United States. Insults Born of Ignorance First, it must be said that African Americans have been conditioned to be much more "Anglo" in their perceptions of Latino political assertiveness than most of us are willing to admit. Having been raised under the same Black-White paradigm as Euro-Americans, we often share with most whites a profound ignorance, not only of global historical and social realities, but of the conditions that have shaped the societies of our Latin American neighbors. Despite constant lip service to racial solidarity, few African Americans grasp the social complexities of the African Diaspora in its Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking manifestations in the Caribbean and Central and South America. 'To describe Hispanics as â€˜non-Anglo Saxon Whites speaking Spanishâ€™ is to deny Latinos their racial and national legacies.' African Americans are confident that we know what "Black" is, here, but we know next to nothing about what "not white" is, "over there" â€“ places where there exist more flavors of racial admixture than Campbell had soups or Howard Johnson had ice creams, each with its own group label and all under the jackboot of "whites" (or near-whites) who proudly trace their lineage to Europe. Racism is a daily experience among darker mestizos in Mexico and the non-white majority of Venezuela, for example. To generally describe Hispanics as "non-Anglo Saxon Whites speaking Spanish," as does the book-promoting fog-blower Claud Anderson, is to deny Latinos their racial and national legacies. It is the ultimate insult, of the kind African Americans would never accept if we were referred to as simply darker-skinned, English-speaking white people. Such degradations of whole peoples and their distinct national, racial and cultural subgroups seem to flow freely from the mouths of African Americans like Anderson â€“ in putrid streams that mimic the rhetoric of the rightwing white sources he relies on to "document" his pseudo-academic diatribes. In his polemic "Immigration Harms Black America," Anderson declares, baldly, that "immigrant population increases in the last 30 years have made Blacks third-class citizens in America after they were second-class citizens for hundreds of years," and that "immigration has erased the 10% income gains that native Blacks made between 1956 and 1966, the years of the civil rights movement." So it is the immigrants who have done the foul deed â€“ not the native white American racists who created the paradigm that calls for Blacks to be perpetually on the bottom, and who continue to enforce that formula in the present; not the de-industrialization process that was coterminous with the immigrant influx, a deliberate corporate policy that resulted in Blacks suffering 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004; not the general white backlash that followed immediately upon the victories of the Black Freedom Movement of the Sixties, ushering in a national policy of mass Black incarceration that has devastated every aspect of African American society. No, the immigrants are the root of all things evil done to Black folk in the last 30 years. Anderson, who undoubtedly considers himself a "Race Man," has in fact crossed over to the White Right. He infers that Latinos are out to make a separate peace with white racism in return for (some future) favored status in the United States. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, rooted in an ignorance and protean fear that prevents many long-isolated and besieged African Americans from making common cause with "others." Ultimately, Anderson and other faux nationalists turn to the historical enemy â€“ white racists â€“ for theoretical verification and political support. Apparently, Anderson wants to make a deal with racists before the Hispanics do. He calls for a total shutdown of immigration to the U.S., to "close the nationâ€™s doors until policies are in place that redirect resources to native Blacks to correct the inequalities of slavery and Jim Crow semi-slavery." 'We sulk or rant in our longstanding impotence â€“ a function of the death of our own movement, a generation and a half ago.' Itâ€™s about 30-plus years too late for that, the "diversity" deal having been consummated by the remnants of the Civil Rights Movement and various "minority" and "womenâ€™s" organizations long ago, and written in stone by the U.S. Supreme Court in its affirmative action decision of 2003. Andersonâ€™s spiel may play well in Black barber shops and beauty parlors, but it ignores the reality outside: the Latinos are here; they outnumber African Americans and will grow larger; they are the majority in LAâ€™s Watts and countless other formerly "Black" communities; they are predicted to outnumber Blacks in Georgia by as early as 2010; and they are on the move, politically. Who is not on the move? African Americans. Instead, we sulk or rant in our longstanding impotence â€“ a function of the death of our own movement, a generation and a half ago â€“ while the worst of us importune white racists to rescue Blacks from the historical trap whites have created and fought desperately to preserve. What madness! Movement-Envy Ill-concealed envy is the saddest â€“ and ugliest â€“ aspect of some of what passes for Black political critique of the evolving Latino/immigrant movement. The Chicago Sun-Timesâ€™ Mary Mitchell, after getting her "mean on" by expressing "disgust" with sanctuary-seeking undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano for "pimping the system," demands that Latinos thank Blacks "for paving the way" before they dare mount a movement for social change. "The benefits that so many other groups â€“ women included â€“ now enjoy were purchased with black blood, sweat and tears," wrote Mitchell â€“ as if Arellano and her fellow Latino activists have not consistently cited the Black Freedom Movement as a cherished model. But Mitchell is caught in a contradiction, made worse by the green glaze of envy at Latino activism and her shocking misunderstanding of the same African American history that she demands immigrant learn before they get uppity on U.S. soil. In comments to reporters, Ms. Arellano paid homage to a civil rights icon. "I'm strong, I've learned from Rosa Parks â€“ I'm not going to the back of the bus. The law is wrong," she said. 'Mary Mitchell doesnâ€™t know much about politics or history, and her moral position is hopelessly contorted by meanness and jealous resentment against â€˜newcomersâ€™ who are building a movement.' Rather than accept the sincerity of Arellanoâ€™s remarks, Mitchell spewed abuse â€“ and displayed both cheeks of her own phenomenal ignorance. Arellano had no right to invoke the name of Rosa Parks. "I even doubt that Arellano has any idea who Parks really was," said Mitchell, who then proceeded to reveal that it is she who fails to comprehend the act of civil disobedience that put Parks in the history books. "Parks didn't refuse to go to the back of the bus. She refused to give up her seat to a white man who couldn't find a seat in the so-called "white section." As onerous as the Jim Crow laws were, Parks didn't break them. That's why she could calmly go to the police station and sit in jail until her husband came to bail her out. 'Because Parks wasn't a lawbreaker, the local NAACP decided to use her as a test case to challenge the Jim Crow laws. Her righteous cause drew widespread support and launched the civil rights movement in earnest.' Of course, Rosa Parks did break the law â€“ on purpose and according to a plan hatched in advance by the local NAACP, of which she was Secretary â€“ because the law was "wrong," just as Arellano maintains U.S. immigration laws are wrong. Alabama law specifically required Blacks to relinquish their seats to whites when the "white" section was full. Parks was convicted of failing to heed the directions of the bus driver, thus setting the stage for the Montgomery bus boycott and creating the "test case" sought by civil rights activists. Civil disobedience â€“ the breaking of unjust laws â€“ became the primary tactic deployed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a 26-year-old Montgomery minister at the time of Ms. Parksâ€™ arrest. To claim that "Parks wasn't a lawbreaker" is to strip her action of all political, moral and historical meaning. But Mary Mitchell doesnâ€™t know much about politics or history, and her moral position is hopelessly contorted by meanness and jealous resentment against "newcomers" who are building a movement while African Americans sit on the sidelines with no national movement worthy of the name. Katrina Told It All If there were any doubt, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina proved that the Black Freedom Movement is, indeed, dead and gone â€“ in need of resurrection, not mere resuscitation. Soon after the catastrophic exile of most Black New Orleanians, University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson declared: "Katrina could very well shape this generation of young people in the same way that the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King shaped our generation." Dawson is in his early fifties. According to Rev. Lennox Yearwood, the 36-year-old head of the Washington, DC-based Hip Hop Caucus, "New Orleans is our Gettysburg. If we lose there, we lose all the marbles." If Dr. Dawson is right, then the emerging African American generationâ€™s formative political experience â€“ Katrina â€“ has been one of defeat. And if Rev. Yearwood is correct in his belief that Katrina is the equivalent of the Battle of Gettysburg, then Black folks have suffered a monumental loss. 'Black America did not â€“ could not â€“ come together in a mighty cascade of demonstrations and confrontations with the powerful perpetrators who are attempting to erase a major Black city.' Yearwood says heâ€™s seeing young Fannie Lou Hamer types among a new crop of activists, and was heartened by the surge of student involvement in Katrina organizing and relief work. Indeed, the waves of volunteers journeying to New Orleans were reminiscent of the Mississippi Freedom summer of two generations ago. It is also true that many thousands of churches, big and small, responded to the Katrina disaster with a wide range of programs. Katrina has seared into the collective Black consciousness â€“ a kind of African American 9/11. There is no question but that Katrina has radicalized a new cohort of youth, and re-radicalized many of their elders. However, it is these very facts â€“ of radicalization, of universal Black horror and revulsion, of the thousands of localized responses to Katrina â€“ that so dramatically illuminate the strategic defeat of the Black polity in the Battle of Katrina. Black America did not â€“ could not â€“ come together in a mighty cascade of demonstrations and confrontations with the powerful perpetrators who are attempting to erase a major Black city. Katrina showed definitively that the Movement, as we once knew it, is dead. The failure of the Black polity to set millions of bodies in motion revealed the utter impotence and disarray of the national Black political infrastructure. (The October, 2005, "Millions More Rally" on Washingtonâ€™s Capitol Mall was coincidental to Katrina, having been scheduled long in advance by the Nation of Islam and other organizers. The rally produced a laundry list of wide-ranging demands, most unrelated to the catastrophe. There was nothing like a follow-up "Millions to the Front in the Battle for New Orleans" rally.) If the national Black political infrastructure, such as it is, could not set masses in motion after Katrina, when African Americans were as one in their concentrated anger and collective will to do something, then what currently passes for leadership will never effectively mobilize Black folks for anything. They have lost the tools and desire to fight, and cannot function as leaders even when the people cry out for common action. Had Black people been called out en masse, they would have come â€“ but the historical moment has slipped away, wasted. In a few years, a new generation of Black activists will deploy themselves in structures of radical resistance, their world views shaped by the multiple crimes of Katrina. But in the near term, it must be recognized that not only have African Americans been numerically overtaken by Hispanics, we have been eclipsed in mass organizing, as well. No Victory Without Latinos Mary Mitchellâ€™s Chicago has actually witnessed some of the most notable examples of Black-Latino solidarity â€“ not that she seems to have noticed. The late Harold Washington was elected Chicagoâ€™s first Black mayor in 1983 after forging strong alliances with the growing Hispanic community, which now amounts to 27 percent of the city (Blacks make up 36 percent of the population). After Washingtonâ€™s untimely death in 1987, the coalition fell apart, leading to the election of the current white mayor, Richard Daley, Jr. In the run-up to 1992 elections activists registered 130,000 new voters. Chicago Latino voters put Carolyn Moseley-Braun over the top in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate; she became the first Black woman to hold a seat in the upper chamber of the U.S. legislature. The lesson is: when Blacks and Hispanics fail to unite in Chicago, progressive Blacks lose in city-wide and state-wide races. 'The Chicago experience puts the lie to those who maintain that Latinos favor a sub-living wage structure.' However, there is another side to that coin: Black Chicago politicians as a body, having a longer history of collaboration with corrupt white machines, turn out to be demonstrably less progressive than their Latino counterparts. This political truth was brought home in the recent battle to impose living wage legislation on Wal-Mart and other "big box" retailers. After years of organizing, unions and community and church groups succeeded in assembling a veto-proof super-majority in the city council â€“ 35 of 50 members â€“ mandating that the big boxes pay at least $10 an hour and $3.00 in benefits for the privilege of doing business in Chicago. All ten Hispanic members of the council initially voted on the progressive side of the issue, compared to only half of the 18 Black aldermen. Under intense pressure from Mayor Daley, and in face of threats by Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot to withhold further investment from the city, four aldermen later switched their votes: two Latinos and two Blacks. But the Chicago experience puts the lie to those who maintain that Latinos favor a sub-living wage structure. At least in the Windy City, it is easily corruptible Black politicians who are the problem. These elements are joined by Black business groupings, that care more about a potential contract with Wal-Mart than whether workers earn a living wage (and who may have no intention of paying a living wage to their own employees â€“ a trait they share with employers of all ethnicities). Chicago, like many other urban centers, will continue to become more Latino â€“ unless gentrification reverses the process, which will also inevitably diminish the Black proportion of the population, as well. In Manhattan, both Black and Latino populations have declined under gentrifying assault. Black majorities are in danger of collapsing in numerous "chocolate cities" across the nation â€“ most because of gentrification rather than Latino influx. Claud Anderson may want to strike a deal to stabilize Black numbers in the cities, but Big Capital is not cooperating, and never will. Only a Black-Latino urban alliance can withstand the onslaught and preserve the political power of both groups. The Penalty for Arrogance Latino organizers donâ€™t need permission from African Americans to assert their demands; no human group is obligated to bow and scrape to another. Their primary duty is to turn out the numbers, in what they believe to be a just cause. African American insistence on Latino obeisance â€“ to the extent it exists â€“ is backhanded, hostile, mean-spirited, sulking, the product of bewilderment, jealousy and impotence. Certainly, Latinos should not dignify the wild ravings of Claud Anderson, who blames immigrants for every economic, political and social setback that Black folks have been unable to prevent since 1970. And Mary Mitchell, the people-insulting Chicago columnist, has nothing to say worth hearing by anyone of any ethnicity. Rather, it is Black folkâ€™s obligation â€“ the duty of future Black leaders at every level â€“ to give political direction based on analysis of the world as it actually exists. There is no room for gratuitous insult in the dialogue between Latinos and African Americans that must occur in earnest if both groups are to escape eviction from the cities by encroaching capital in the form of gentrification. 'Hispanics are second only to Blacks in eagerness to join a union.' There will be no living wage for anyone if corrupt African American politicians insist on making common cause with oppressive employers like Wal-Mart, all the while subscribing to the canard that Latino immigrants want to work for sub-standard wages. There is no solution to a two- or three-tier wage system, except a one-tier wage system â€“ which requires the closest collaboration among those who work or want to work, whatever their social background. Hispanics are second only to Blacks in eagerness to join a union. (The order of union-friendliness is Black women, first, followed by Black men, Hispanic women, Hispanic men, white women, with white men dead last.) Hispanics are overwhelmingly supportive of public schools and affordable health care. They oppose racial profiling, to which Latinos have been subjected by immigration authorities as well as police for generations. The police state, immigrant-hunt regime that would descend on the nation if Claud Anderson and his white supremacist allies get their way, combined with anti-terrorist hysteria, would inevitably erase every civil liberties gain of the past four decades, most severely impacting the state-criminalized Black ghetto poor, as usual. The Reality Quotient Blacks were as surprised as whites when more than half-a-million mostly Latino demonstrators rallied in Los Angeles in late March of this year. Where did the crowds come from? How did they pull off such a gargantuan gathering? African Americans had less excuse than white Anglos for not knowing what was up. After all, Watts is 62 percent Latino, Compton is three-fifths â€“ African Americans and Latinos live in proximity throughout much of the mega-city. But, as radio broadcaster and Hip Hop guru Davey D told me, "KKBT-FM [the top-rated Black-oriented radio station] completely ignored one million people in the streets." It was "similar to the Million Man March right on their doorstep," yet to KKBT and its listeners, the huge outpouring of humanity "didnâ€™t exist." The same applied for the rest of English-speaking commercial media. Spanish-language media, particularly radio, were key to the massive turnouts in Los Angeles, Chicago (another half-million) and more than a score other cities. Radio personalities talked up the demonstrations, creating the kind of community-wide consciousness that once surrounded major Black political actions, two generations ago. However, it would be wrong to credit the corporate (and often, non-Latino) owners of Spanish-language media with some special sensitivity to the political aspirations of their audiences. Rather, Spanish-language outlets were compelled to respond to what they recognized as a groundswell of community organizing for immigrant rights. In other words, Hispanic media got on the right side of the movement. 'Latinos have fielded the beginnings of a powerful movement, while a coherent national Black movement is just a memory â€“ for now.' No such movement exists in Black America, and therefore Black-oriented mass media see no need to diverge from their news-less menu of celebrity gossip and assorted nonsense. Had African American "leadership" infrastructures been willing and able to put out a credible call for massive Katrina-related turnouts, Black-oriented media would have responded as readily as their corporate Hispanic counterparts. They are the same bottom line-feeding animals. The difference lay in the levels of community organization â€“ Latinos had their act together, while African Americans languished in political paralysis. "Hispanic media collaborated on their march," said Davey D. "We could have had a million people in the streets about Katrina â€“ â€˜Where are the kids?â€™ But Black media were absent. All this contributes to the disintegration of political organization in our communities." It is senseless for African Americans to squabble over whether Latino mass activism represents the "new Civil Rights Movement" or not. The fact is, Latinos have fielded the beginnings of a powerful movement, while a coherent national Black movement is just a memory â€“ for now. The Black polity is the unique product of the strivings of a singular people, whose institutions and shared consciousness were forged in enforced intimacy over hundreds of years. It is not so fragile as to fade into permanent inconsequentiality simply because a bad crop of leadership was allowed to demobilize the Black Freedom Movement, over 30 years ago. Katrina has already awakened the organizers of the future. However, that future will be shared with Latinos. For the sake of our common interests, Black progressives are obligated to do everything possible to cleanse the African American dialogue of parochialism, insults against other ethnicities, useless nostalgia that keeps us fixed in a past time and â€“ most importantly â€“ the nativism inherited from our historical oppressors. We are a raise-up people, not a speak-down-to people. Letâ€™s act like it. [BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com To make a donation to BAR, go to http://tinyurl.com/y6z7vh ]

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