Jena 6: A Question of Equal Protection

A comment from a reader prompted me to write the response below, which I then decided to reproduce as a blog post:

. . . [P]erhaps I am guilty of skimming over the details of the beating Justin Barker received at the hands of Mychal Bell and his friends. I’ll repeat again that I think the practice of a bunch of guys “jumping” one person is pretty despicable. It used to happen at my high school and I always hated it. But like many people in Jena and elsewhere, I think the charges, sentence, and incarceration of Mychal Bell were and are excessive.

Ultimately, the adults in this case have to bear the responsibility. If school and law enforcement officials in Jena were interested in teaching these students—Black as well as White—that taking the law into their own hands is wrong, they would have intervened when the nooses were hung, when the Black student was assaulted by White students at the party, and when the Black students had a gun pulled on them. I failed to mention in my blog that the boys reported the incident to the police after they disarmed their assailant but he was not even questioned. Instead, these Black boys were arrested and charged with assault and theft of a firearm after they did the right thing by going to the police.

The signal sent to these boys was that they could not look to school or law enforcement officials to protect them from overt racism—which is psychological violence—and physical violence. Violence is used to put and keep people in their place, and the nooses were supposed to remind Jena High School’s Black students of their place. When these students defied the racists by peacefully gathering under the “white tree” on which the nooses had been hung, District Attorney Reed Walters arrived at the school surrounded by armed police and threatened to end the students’ lives with a stroke of his pen. Is this not intimidation? Weren’t the nooses themselves symbolic of violence to the Black students? Clearly, they didn’t think it was just a prank. Yet school officials and the legal establishment continued to pooh-pooh the issue until it escalated into the violent confrontation with Justin Barker that resulted in his beating. Was it right or necessary? Of course not! Could it have been avoided? Certainly, if school and law enforment officials had taken the racism directed at the Black students more seriously and intervened sooner.

The whole incident reminds me of Simpsons character Chief Wiggum’s response to Marge when she said, as she was being arrested: ”I thought you said the law is powerless?” Wiggum replies, “Powerless to protect you, not to punish you.” Clearly, when it came to protecting Black Students, Jena’s law enforcement officials were asleep at the wheel. When it comes to punishing them, however, they’re operating in overdrive.

If that’s not racism, what is it?

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Jena 6 Redux: Free Mychal Bell!!!!!!!!!

A Louisiana appeals court has vacated the second conviction that sent Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, to jail. Earlier this month, a district judge threw out Bell’s conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree battery, agreeing with Bell’s supporters that the case should have been heard in juvenile court. On Friday, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Lake Charles vacated Bell’s battery conviction, but he remains in jail, where he has been since December, 2006.

This has been a classic case of discriminatory sentencing in which six Black teenagers are charged as adults and sentenced to long prison terms for a schoolyard fight. Certainly, it’s despicable that these six boys ganged up to beat up one student, and they should definitely have been punished for that. But they should have been treated as juvenile offenders and punished as juveniles.

There should also be equality in how the entire case is reported. The story starts back in September, 2006 after Justin Purvis, a Black student at Jena High School, got permission from his principal to sit under the “white tree” in the schoolyard. The tree got its name from the fact that it was a popular hangout for the school’s White students, a custom sufficiently entrenched to make a Black student feel the need to ask permission to sit under it. A day later, three nooses were hanging from the branches of the tree. Everyone who lives in the United States knows that nooses were used to lynch (publicly hang) Black men. Most often, the people who organized the lynchings were not even arrested. After the passage of civil and equal rights legislation, lynchings became rarer but the noose still remains—for Black people—a painful reminder of a very dark and violent time in US history. It has also become a symbol of hate that has been adopted by racist groups.

Jena High School’s Black students gathered under the tree to protest the nooses. Afterwards, District Attorney Reed Walters came to the school and told the demonstrating Black students that he “could end their lives with the stroke of a pen.” Three White students were suspended for hanging the nooses but the incident was generally written of as a prank. Tensions continued to escalate, eventually leading to a number of violent encounters. In one instance, a group of Black students was accosted outside a convenicence store by a White man who pulled a gun on them. The boys tussled with their assailant and eventually disarmed him before running away. The incident concluded with the Black boys being arrested and charged with the theft of a firearm. The White man who drew the gun on them was not prosecuted.

In another incident, a Black student was beaten up by White students at a party. Back at Jena High, a White student allegedly taunted this Black student with racial insults and references to the beating he had recieved at the party. This led a group of Black students, including the one who had been taunted, to gang up on the White student, who was punched, kicked, and stomped after he was knocked out. He was taken to hospital—for injuries sustained to his eyes, ears, and face. He was treated and discharged the same day. The Black students who beat him up were charged as adults and Mychal Bell—the only one incarcerated so far—was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy. He was a star football player who was looking at college scholarships and a possible professional football career, but his conviction left him facing the prospect of coming out of prison at the age of 40.

Popular outrage against the convictions and support from diverse groups—including most recently music legend David Bowie—led to the charges gradually being reduced from attempted second degree murder to simple assault and battery. Mychal Bell, however, remains behind bars despite all his convictions being vacated. Yesterday, a three-judge panel decided that Bell would not be released from jail pending his November trial.

Thankfully, it seems that people are waking up and calling a spade a spade and hopefully, Mychal Bell will be out of jail soon and back on track to rebuilding his life.

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Let the Spin Begin: ABC Downplays Torture of UF Student.

Now that everyone and their mother has seen how free speech is “protected” on college campuses, the mainstream media is lining up to mitigate, apologize, and justify.

Anyone watching ABC 7 (the local Washington, DC affiliate) this morning would have thought the anchors were commenting on a comedy sketch and not a video depicting a student’s free-speech and human rights being violated. I’m referring, of course, to the manhandling and eventual tasering of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who dared to take more than his allotted two minutes to ask Senator John Kerry some tough questions. Although the video ended with a handcuffed Meyer screaming each time he is shocked with the taser gun, the most fitting comment one of the female newscasters could come up with was something to the effect of, “One sure way to get yourself tasered is to use the word ‘bro.’” Ha ha ha, ABC 7, you kill me! I almost forgot that I was watching police brutality and the suppression of free speech.

I searched and searched the Web for the ABC 7 segment but I couldn’t find it. Instead, I found a segment from Good Morning America which also shows ABC’s attempts to mitigate. Thirty-four seconds into the video, the ABC commentator clearly feels the need to make us understand that Meyer brought it all upon himself for asking John Kerry ”obnoxious” questions. The rest of the video goes on to make it seem as if Meyer somehow deserved to be “forcibly dragged from the campus forum” and get “much more than he bargained for.” Much more than he bargained for? That’s right. Apparently that’s the newscaster’s euphemism for the totally unnecessary close-range tasering of Meyer after he had already been subdued (he was face-down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him). Lest we think this incident is the huge deal it actually is, ABC reminds us that this was not the first time campus police had used tasers on a student, referring to the tasering of a UCLA student who refused to show his identity card to campus security. Really? Silly me! It’s no big deal after all! This kind of thing happens all the time.

During his narration of the UCLA incident, however, the narrator rediscovers journalistic objectivity and decides to keep his opinions to himself, which is a pity otherwise we might have heard him use words like “excessive,” ”brutal,” or “uncalled-for.” Sadly, such adjectives are notably absent from his commentary. Instead, as the video nears its conclusion, he gloats that ”The taser may now be the least of Meyer’s worries,” since he has now been charged with resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. You can actually hear the humor in his voice as he shares this last tidbit! Finally, we discover that Meyer is famous for practical jokes and for posting short, funny videos of himself on the internet. Good Morning America ends the segment with the words “But his 15 minutes of fame are from a video that is no laughing matter.” I guess we are now supposed to think this was just a prank that backfired? I don’t think so!

ABC News Tasering Cops Put on Leave3.flv

Clearly, this ABC presenter and I live in opposite worlds. When I see the video of Andrew Meyer having his microphone cut, being surrounded and literally carried off by campus security, and finally being shocked with a taser, I don’t see anything trivial or humorous. I see a young American whose First Amendment rights to question a public servant—whatever happened to freedom of speech and the right to petition government?—are denied, who is then violently manhandled although he posed no physical threat to anyone, and finally tortured in plain view of fellow students and a United States senator, who by the way did nothing to intervene.

Accuse me of hyperbole if you will but what happened to Andrew Meyer is torture, pure and simple. Taser guns are designed for long-range use to electrically incapacitate an assailant from a safe distance. The guns shoot small darts that strike the target and deliver an electric shock through connected wires. The shock is usually enough to disrupt the target’s muscle control, rendering him/her temporarily paralyzed. Although taser use is controversial—elderly people and people with heart conditions have died after being tasered—and has been criticized by human rights and civil liberties groups, the argument could be made that they are an effective and non-lethal way to disable a violent or threatening person from a safe distance. Fair enough.

But in the case of Andrew Meyer, the taser was not used for self defense. Meyer was already under arrest and was already incapacitated. Sure, he was still mouthing off but he did not pose a physical threat to the security officers, who were armed and outnumbered him by a factor of about six to one. Even worse, the taser setting for close-range use—as pointed out by Machinist—does not deliver an electric shock powerful enough to incapacitate. Rather, it causes excruciating pain and is used to get the target to comply. In Meyer’s case, the taser was used not to incapacitate him for officers’ protection, but to get him to comply; in other words, to make him shut up and leave the auditorium.

Let’s revisit the scenario. A student asks a question, then he is arrested, cuffed, and tasered. The setting isn’t high enough to incapacitate him and in fact, he doesn’t need to be incapicated because he’s already handcuffed and face-down on the ground. This rules out self defense and leaves only compliance as a motive. Basically, campus security used an electrified weapon to cause excruciating pain to a student in order to get compliance from him. What do you call it when pain is used to make a human being do something? That’s right, torture.

So here we have a student tortured in front of fellow students and a senator who, in an extreme act of callousness and cowardice, continues to speak into the microphone as if nothing was going on. For its part, ABC also tries to spin this by reporting that Sen. Kerry later said he had no idea Meyer had been tasered until after he finished speaking. So what? He should have intervened, or at the very least spoken out, as soon as Meyer was approached by security. Some University of Florida students have redeemed themselves by speaking in defense of Andrew Meyer and free speech, and for organizing an anti-taser rally on their campus. All Sen. Kerry has done is plead ignorance. Shame on John Kerry for not speaking out against the violation of a student’s rights and shame on ABC for attempting to turn a clear case of undue force into a joke. We should all be very worried when newscasters try to use comedy to mitigate the suppression of free speech.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s only fitting that newscasters try their hand at comedy since comedians—like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and Al Franken—are doing a much better job of reporting and analyzing the news.

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Free the Jena 6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Question: When does a schoolyard fight result in an attempted second-degree murder charge?

Answer: When it takes place in Jena, Louisiana and involves Black students.

This story’s been making the rounds in lefty and indie media circles but it’s apparently still largely absent from the mainstream media.

Take a look at the video.

Then take some action.

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Ocean City Fetus Case Revisited.

So, I just found out that Christy Freeman, the Ocean City, Maryland, woman who is being charged with murder for what looks to me like a self-performed—or at the very least self-induced—abortion may, if convicted, be sentenced to death!

I know that in reality, the chances of Christy Freeman actually being executed are pretty slim but I think it’s outrageous that the judge would even tell her that she might be. I mean, all this woman did was abort a fetus, for crying out loud!! Have we gone so crazy that we would kill a living, adult woman who supports four children because she decided, 26 weeks into her pregnancy, that she didn’t need any more children? Have we really reached the point where we demonstrate that the potential life of an unborn fetus is more valuable than the actual life of the living human being in whose womb that fetus grows? This is madness!!!

What this case proves is that, regardless of societal or legal restrictions on abortion, the need will always remain. The fact that some people think women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions does not mean that every woman who gets impregnated will want to give birth. The law may take away the choice but it can never take away the need. But the whole point of choice is that women should choose whether, when, and under what conditions to have children.

When the anti-abortion wackos figure out a way to spontaneously generate children without the need for living women, they can dictate whether, when, and under what conditions children should be born. Until they can find a way to produce children without using women’s wombs, I maintain that the rights of the woman always supercede those of the fetus growing in her uterus.

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Ninety hours of sex work would have been more fitting.

A judge in Painesville, Ohio, has sentenced three men to 30 days of standing outside the courthouse in a chicken costume, holding a sign that says “No Chicken Ranch in Painesville.” The men were arrested after they solicited sex from an undercover police officer. “Chicken Ranch” is a reference to a brothel in Nevada, where commercial sex work is legal.

Judge Michael Cicconetti, famous for his unusual sentences, once ordered a man who called a policeman a pig to stand next to a live pig in a pen and hold a sign that read “This Is Not a Police Officer.” A couple who stole a baby Jesus statue from a manger were sentenced to dress as Mary and Joseph and walk with a donkey.

But wearing a chicken costume three hours a day for 30 days doesn’t seem stiff enough a penalty for taking advantage of women who—through no fault of their own—are forced to sell sex. For these men to really understand what it’s like for these women, three hours a day in a chicken suit just won’t do. They should have been ordered to dress in drag and stand on a street corner while sleezy men drove by and offered to pay them for sex.

In the meantime, wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a society where women wouldn’t have to choose this demeaning line of work?

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Jews for Jesus Leave No Stone Unturned in Search for Converts.

These days, it seems you can’t walk two blocks in DC without a member of Jews for Jesus handing you a flyer. While I’m generally very offended by any form of religious proselytizing, I have to confess I always accept the flyer and I always read it. I don’t do this because I think Jews for Jesus are on to something: quite the opposite, I think they’re full of—how can I put this diplomatically?—excrement.

But I have to give props where props are due and Jews for Jesus get props for being timely and innovative with their material. For example, in the middle of a DC heatwave, one of their flyers was entitled “Keeping Cool,” and it was all about how Jesus (Y’shua) is “the Son who refreshes . . . like rivers of living water.” Now from my reading of the Bible, I know that Jesus has been likened to a shepherd and even a sheep, but the river analogy is new to me. Kudos to Jews for Jesus for taking such an innovative approach to the Messiah. I mean, on a hot, sticky, humid summer day in DC, nothing sounds better than diving into a cool, refreshing body of water. And if Jesus is like that cool, refreshing body of water . . . well . . . I can understand how some people may be swayed. Not me. I’d rather see Jews for Jesus distribute a tract about the urgency of global warming and how to forestall and reverse its negative consequences. But that’s obviously not where they’re coming from.

So anyway, today’s flyer was not actually handed to me; one of my colleagues brought it in and placed it on the kitchen counter. Entitled “Paris Hilton: The Prison Life,” the flyer talks about how the law made Paris do the time for her crime, despite her parents’ hypothetical wish to pay someone else to serve out their daughter’s sentence. The punchline comes when the flyer informs me that, unlike Paris, I don’t have to serve out my sentence because Jesus has already sacrificed himself so I won’t have to. In other words, the sentence—the punishment for my sins—is eternal damnation, but Jesus could spare me this fate. The catch is, of course, I have to ask him to. Or rather, ask Jews for Jesus to pass on my request.

Which is where things get a little tricky for me. You see, I’m an old-fashioned guy who believes in accepting responsibility for my actions and facing whatever consequences may befall me. For that reason, I choose to live a life that conforms to my own personal ethics, doing unto others as I would have them do unto me, and all that good stuff. At the end of the day, if hell is where my immortal soul winds up, so be it. But I’m pretty sure I know where the only eternal parts of me—i.e., the individual atoms that make up my body—will end up. What’s left of me will end up right here on earth, making up the worms that eat the dirt into which I decomposed, and the birds that eat those worms, and the cats that eat those birds, and so on and so forth.

But that’s not what Christian proselytizers (let’s not kid ourselves, Jews for Jesus is a Christian evangelical group) want us to believe. They want us to believe that, as individuals, we are incapable of doing the right thing. In fact, they want to convince us that at the end of the day, our entire earthly existence is sinful and that we are doomed to an eternity in hell. But unlike the people Jews for Jesus hopes to convert, I’m fully prepared to deal with the consequences of my life choices and I don’t need anybody (the Messiah or anyone else) to take the heat for me. That’s how I roll.

But I have to add that, although I have little sympathy for Paris Hilton’s legal predicament, I can’t help but feel a little bad for her that Jews for Jesus is now using her story in an attempt to get people to read their tracts. That makes them almost as pathetic as Paris. I’m also annoyed because until today, I had successfully banished Paris Hilton from my consciousness, having fully convinced myself that she is a figment of our society’s twisted imagination. Now, thanks to Jews for Jesus, I can no longer deny the existence of Paris Hilton. Even worse, I’ve devoted half-an-hour and part of a blog to her.

Come to think of it, if there are no annoying proselytizers giving out flyers in hell, it might actually not be such a bad place.

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Lessons From Katrina

I decided to give the first post of the day over to someone with more hands-on experience. Read on . . .

 

How to Destroy an African American City in
Thirty Three Steps – Lessons from Katrina
 
By Bill Quigley

 

Step One.  Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps – just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars – 25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans – will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.

Step Three. When the disaster hits, make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response – have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.

Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.

Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated, effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.

Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.

Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men and young people helping the elderly, the sick and the trapped survive, but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns, not to attract attention and get help, but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that “those people” left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.

Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.

Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.

Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors and friends. Give them a little bit of money, but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation live together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.

Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane and bulldozer operators. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. These become, essentially, disposable workers – use them, then lose them.

Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African-American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them. This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.

Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African-American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.

Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess up the program for the homeowners so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.

Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families with children in the public school system, overwhelmingly African-Americans, from coming home.

Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union – the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.

Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government for extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way, the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families, who are still displaced, are kept segregated away from the “good” kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.

Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results: it will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.

Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African-American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law that makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear – do not think about returning to the suburbs.

Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.

Step Twenty-One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Instead, use the money to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive homeownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as less than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.

Step Twenty-Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market, as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build up other less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal – if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.

Step Twenty-Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.

Step Twenty-Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self-medication and drug and alcohol abuse and, of course, crime.

Step Twenty-Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.

Step Twenty-Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available, not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.

Step Twenty-Seven. Strip the local elected, predominately African American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can – housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions; that way, no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid; you know what is best for them much better than they do.

Step Twenty-Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them – the local African-American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans, since they do not control the rebuilding money.

Step Twenty-Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state, even though we do it for Americans in other countries and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say, “Well, they didn’t even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning.”

Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well-connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out, for a long time, exactly where the money went. There is no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts – at best they get modest subcontracts from the corporations that got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2,000 – that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip-offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims – as critics can say, “Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it, how much more can they expect from us?”

Step Thirty One. Keep people’s attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast . Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war – support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists – that always seems to work.

Step Thirty-Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on – accuse them of “playing the race card” or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who “just want to go back to the bad old days.” Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African American spokespersons where possible.

Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.

Note to readers: Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans, after Katrina.

Bill Quigley is a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. He has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977 and has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. He has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served as General Counsel for over 15 years.

This column was originally published on the Black Commentator.

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He did it again.

So, the President used his executive power to commute ‘Scooter’ Libby’s sentence because, in his opinion, the 30-month sentence handed down by the jury in Libby’s purgery case was “excessive.”

Big surprise!

I mean, did anyone really think this administration was going to obey the spirit—if not the letter—of the law and let one of their own go to jail? I certainly didn’t. This administration doesn’t exactly have a very good track record of . . . how shall I put this . . . adhering to the rules of transparency and accountability.

The Bush administration came into office under the cloud of controversy surrounding the 2000 election and the Florida vote recount, after it came to light that scores of Black voters had had their eligibility to vote challenged or outright denied. Then the Vice President held secret meetings with big energy companies and refused to release the proceedings of these meetings to the public. Then there was the 9/11 Commission interviews during which the President and Vice President refused to testify under oath.

What else? Illegal wire taps, sneak and peak, extraordinary rendition, reading Americans’ mail, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, firing federal prosecutors . . . the list of this adminstration’s transgressions seems endless.

But perhaps worst of all was the case for invading Iraq, which we now know—and some of us were saying back then—is based on lies. UNMOVIC just wrapped up operations in Iraq, stating that there are no weapons of mass destruction in that country, contrary to what our government told us. In order to bolster their case, the administration relied on flimsy information from the Blair government claiming that Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger in order to build a nuclear weapon. It was all a pack of lies.

Former Ambassador Wilson thought he was doing the right thing by trying to keep the country from embarking on a foolish military adventure in the Middle East. He traveled to Niger and proved that the uranium claim was false. For his troubles, the Bush Administration—in a stunning display of uprightness and moral fortitude—revealed that his wife was a CIA operative, thereby destroying her career.

Scooter Libby was intimately implicated in this plot to defraud the country and go to war on a false pretext. For his role in this scam, Scooter Libby was prosecuted for purgery and obstruction of justice but, thanks to the President, he will not be serving any time.

Which is just as well because, with a name like Scooter, I don’t think he would have fared very well in the big house.

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Prison Spending to Outpace Education Spending in California.

“Nothing predicts future success better than a good education, and nothing guarantees failure more than the lack of one.”

Despite the irrefutability of the above statement, the state of California is projected to increase spending on construction of new prisons and correctional facilities by nine percent annually over the next five years. In this same period, the state is projected to increase spending on higher education by only five percent annually.

When you think about how many kids drop out of school and how many of these kids (especially the poor White, Black, and Latino ones) end up in prison, it’s astounding that anybody would even contemplate spending less on schools than on prisons. I’d love to see a study counting the number of people in jails and prisons around the countries who hold high school diplomas versus Associates, Bachelors, and Masters degrees. I bet that as education increases, the likelihood of incarceration decreases and I bet there are many more high school dropouts in prison than M.A. or Ph.D. holders.

If our society were genuinely concerned about ensuring that people do well enough to not wind up in prison, we would spend a lot less on correctional facilities and more on education and educational programs that reduce dropout rates and make sure more and more kids can go to college.

But if we did that, who would do our dirty, dangerous and low-wage work? And who would fill our private prisons and line the pockets of the “entrepreneurs” who captain the prison industrial complex?

I got the link to this story from PEN Weekly NewsBlast.

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