The DISH

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Vol. 13 No. 43…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…October 25, 2010

Ode to Returning US Heroes

John Burl Smith

What a difference a war makes! United States' soldiers returning from Vietnam faced an entirely different reception than those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Vietnam vets were not viewed as heroes. Vilified in the press, castigated by politicians and blacklisted by business leaders, Vietnam vets were viewed by the general public as drug addicts, misfits, psychos and the like. Even though compared to present warfare Vietnam battles were fiercer, death totals higher and human cost more devastating, those veterans were held in such low esteem that their service carried a stigma of ill-repute.

Conversely, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are viewed as heroes simply because they are in the military. They are lauded with praise in odes by politicians, businessmen and the general public as though the uniform somehow deifies them. Listening to the constant exaltations heaped upon today's soldiers it seems there is no greater calling than to go off to war in defense of US economic interest.

While both wars remain controversial, there is almost unanimous support for soldiers fighting them. However, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, as Vietnam vets, must come home. Unfortunately, once discharged, former soldiers learn that the US is a very different place; the image painted does not match the reality portrayed. Unaware of the human toll life in the war zone extracts, while unable to quickly adjust to the demands of their return to civilian life, these disposable soldiers are unprepared when the fragile heroic facade is shattered.

After the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of veterans came home to a hostile culture that offered little gratitude for their sacrifices, while VA services failed to address the stress of war. Drug addiction was an immediate problem for many, but it was years before tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans hit bottom as a wave of homelessness drowned those most vulnerable. During the intervening years after Vietnam, thousands of veterans flooded VA services in the 1970s seeking help; more than 250 nonprofit veterans' service organizations were created, institutionalizing servicing homelessness among America's war heroes.

The VA estimated that in 2004 over 500,000 veterans were homeless but had resources to care for only 100,000. Some veteran service organizations believe that although the number of veterans needing services has more than tripled, the VA's servicing capability has not kept pace, due to veterans of wars in the Middle East -- Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. It was 10 to 12 years after the Vietnam conflict before large numbers of veterans began showing up exhibiting a cluster of symptoms related to the trauma they experienced during combat; the critical trigger was homelessness. Today doctors refer to the cluster of symptoms they exhibited as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Today, the US landscape is littered with victims of PTSD. Whether single, married, husbands, fathers, wives or mothers, these heroes find themselves out on the streets, some within weeks of returning to the US from the war zone. If they are not accepted in a shelter, they sleep in cars, on friends' couches, park benches, in doorways, under overpasses or back alleys.

Beyond the fact that housing cost has skyrocketed, often putting rental prices out of reach, while simultaneously real wages remained low, many veterans face an income void. An ode of woe, they are trapped in a netherworld search for nonexistent jobs, hoping to find one before their last unemployment check arrives, waiting for months, sometimes years, for their veteran benefits to begin.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found 15 to 17% of Iraq vets meet "the screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety, or PTSD." Of those, only 23 to 40% are seeking help - in part because of the stigma associated with mental disorders. The tragedy is that many of these heroes had jobs, intact families and prospects of a stable future before their national guard or reserve units were called up. Residual factors of the current wars that have contributed to unstable behaviors causing homelessness include rotating in and out of the war zone, stop-lost, substance abuse related to doctors trying to keep soldiers in the field, PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

Against the odes of praise for soldiers is the backdrop of homelessness. Is this treatment a reward for heroes? If so, the dead ones are the luckiest. They do not have to face the pain, humiliation and loss that their time away from families and loved ones yield. Embittered upon their return, with the war still raging in their heads, today's veterans watch helplessly as the good life they had slips through their fingers, like the sand of Iraq and Afghanistan they fought to hold.

The current draw down of troops in Iraq and soon in Afghanistan will provide a spike in veterans' needs, which service groups anticipate will not be a wave but a "tsunami." More importantly, this class of veterans has a different character than any previous collection and its greatest divergence begins with more women serving in combat zones. The current wars have resulted in more women veterans than ever, which is producing more homeless women with a whole series of new and different problems that were not on the VA's radar following Vietnam.

First and foremost, many are mothers and in the vast majority of cases children remain with their mothers or end up with grandparents. These children should be an added responsibility of the VA not child welfare exclusively. The other startling statistic is that hundreds of female veterans, roughly 40%, say they were sexually assaulted by other American soldiers (male and female) while in the military.

Pete Dougherty, the VA's director of homeless programs said, "Sexual abuse is a risk factor for homelessness." While the VA recognizes that sexual abuse is a risk factor for female soldiers, the US military still treats claims of sexual abuse with a great deal of skepticism, especially in the war zone. Consequently, the military does not consider itself responsible for the psychological trauma female soldiers suffer and does not feel obligated to consider such abuse in claims of disability. Hail the returning heroes!!! (Sources: www.nj.com, www.csmonitor.com, www.nytimes.com and www.boston.com)

Venue for an Artist

African Phoenix

By Bashir Goth

Out of the ashes of a phoenix

A new African phoenix is born

As black and as famished as ever

Carrying the same loads of thorn

The same batches of infamy

Of disease, of wars, of hunger

The same scars in the horn

As politicians to each others whisper

Sweet lies; with no conscience to scorn

As they exhale and praises inhale over dinner

And more ranks to their siblings adorn

Africa stands aloof as distant as ever

As unique as an alien unicorn

Writhing in mounts of litter

Burdened, broken and outworn

O'Africa;

You bleeding mammoth of mother

You vale of tears; of forlorn

Your love is ebbless and silent as a river

Your smile as homely as spring as morn

You cry for us when we in far lands shiver

You sing for us when we are buried and born

You grieve for us when we in your arms suffer

You pamper us when we are tired and torn

O'Africa;

You carcass for every alien scavenger
You open wound to every Jabir and John

How oblivious you are to your Saracean slaver

What a merciful saint you are; what a pawn

To every megalomaniac and messianic vulture

Wasn't it Nkrumah who first saw the throne?

They banished him; I can vividly remember

They betrayed him for few sacks of corn

And after forty years of wines and winter

After lifeless, loveless, long nights of lorn

After decades of the eternal death's encounter

Do I see or do I dream of the first signs of dawn

Oh! No; don't you wake me up brother

No; not to the same howls and horn

Not to the same wolves' prayer

As the new century's lonely lovelorn.

About Me: This poem was written July 11, 2002 in response to the much touted birth of the African Union. Bashir Goth is a veteran journalist, freelance writer, the first Somali blogger and editor of a leading news website. He is also a regular contributor to major Middle Eastern and African newspapers and online journals.

Bit of History

The Lynchings at Moore's Ford

By Charles Montaldo

On July 25, 1946, a group of armed men pulled two black couples out of a farmer's car, tied them to trees and shot them in three volleys of bullets so many times their bodies were barely recognizable. President Harry Truman sent the FBI to the area to investigate, but the agents were met with a wall of silence.

The events leading to the Moore's Ford incident unfolded 11 days earlier when Roger Malcom was placed in jail for stabbing a white farmer, Barnette Hester. Witnesses told the FBI that Malcom suspected Hester of having sex with his wife, Dorothy, who was seven months pregnant. Malcom was drinking at the time he stabbed Hester in the chest.

Dorothy Malcom and her brother, George Dorsey, asked a farmer Loy Harrison, for whom Roger Malcom sometimes worked, to bail him out of jail. At first, Harrison flatly refused to help.

Then Harrison, who was reportedly a member of the Klu Klux Klan and a known bootlegger, suddenly changed his mind. He picked up Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and his wife Mae Murray Dorsey and took them to the Walton County jail.

He paid $600 to bail out Roger Malcom. He later told authorities that he wanted them to work on his 1,000-acre farm. It was rumored at the time that George Dorsey, a World War II veteran, was secretly having an affair with a white woman.

Harrison then drove the two black couples toward his farm across the Moore's Ford Bridge, a direction investigators noted was not the most direct route to his farm. At the bridge, Harrison's car was blocked by another vehicle and a group of men -- described in various accounts as "at least a dozen" and "from 20 to 25" or "up to 30" armed men.

The men dragged the Malcoms and the Dorseys from the car then beat and shot the two men. Realizing that the two women could identify some of them, they then shot and killed the two women, according to previous investigations. One of the lynching mob pulled out a knife and cut the unborn child from Dorothy Malcom's body.

Harrison told investigators that he did not recognize anyone in the group of men who stopped his car. For years, no one in Walton County would talk with authorities about the case. When a 1946 grand jury failed to identify any suspects, the FBI pulled out of the active investigation.

In 1991, more details of the crime came to light when Clinton Adams, a white man who was a 10-year-old boy hiding in the bushes near Moore's Ford during the lynching, told investigators he was a secret witness to the events that unfolded on June 25, 1946. His account is examined in Laura's Wexler's book, Fire In A Canebreak.

The FBI developed a list of 55 possible suspects during their 1946 investigation, including Barnette Hester's brother George Hester, but no one has ever been arrested or charged in the crime. As of 2001, when former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes reopened the case, some of those 55 suspects were still alive.

The FBI investigation even touched on the possible involvement of then Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge, who was in a hotly-contested race for his fourth term at the time. The FBI agent in charge of the investigation told FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that Talmadge met with George Hester a day after his brother's stabbing and offered immunity to anyone "taking care" of Roger Malcom.

The statement was overheard by a local police officer, assistant police chief Ed Williamson, on the courthouse steps of the Walton County Courthouse in Monroe, Georgia, according to records uncovered by The Associated Press in a Freedom of Information request for all the FBI files associated with the case.

The lynchings at Moore's Ford happened eight days after Talmadge was re-elected, but the mention of his possible involvement never made it into the official FBI report. Talmadge's family denies his involvement. (Source: http://crime.about.com/od/unsolved/a/moores_ford.htm)

Intuit's Vibe

The Search for Answers

It has been more than sixty-four (64) years since the lynching of Roger Malcom, 24; Dorothy Malcom, 20; Mae Murray Dorsey, 23; and George Dorsey, 28, on July 25, 1946. Yet, the search for answers continue as students and experts from Kennesaw State University's archeology department and Bauder College's criminal justice program canvass Moore's Ford, the site of the gruesome murders, with metal detectors.

This search for answers is spearheaded by the Cold Case Investigative Institute, a criminal justice student group that investigates old, unsolved murders. Already, the group has found dozens of projectiles; many are shotgun shells. According to ballistic expert Chris Robbins, who has volunteered to help identify evidence found at the site, "This type of bullet was extremely common in 1946."

The murders have been called the last mass lynching in the United States. Police investigated the murders at the time, but none of the perpetrators were identified or prosecuted. Walton County Resident Robert Howard knows the gruesome details of the Moore's Ford Lynching. A civil rights activist, Howard, who grew up near the former site of the Moore's Ford Bridge in Monroe County, where the two black American couples were shot hundreds of times, has led several efforts to uncover the truth.

According to Howard, "What the leader of the Ku Klux Klan did was made sure everybody shot into those bodies. Understanding what it was like here in 1946, you can better understand how people did things like this and walked away and nothing was done about it."

In 1991, Clinton Adams, a witness to the murders, told his story to the FBI. Only ten years old at the time, Adams had been on the run for 45 years fearing for his life because of what he saw.

In 2007, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reopened the case. After digging behind a house a few miles from the lynching site, FBI and GBI investigators excavated undisclosed items they said were related to the case in 2008. However, the FBI has announced no breakthroughs in the case.

Even if the cold-case students and researchers find bullets used in the murders, there are no guarantees the evidence will allow them to connect a bullet to a specific gun or its owner, said Sheryl McCollum, director of the Bauder College Cold Case Investigative Research Institute. However, the group hopes to find the exact spot where the couples were murdered. Finding an area with a concentrated number of bullets or cartridges would indicate that those casings and cartridges were from the murder and might lead investigators to a particular weapon.

The recently discovered casing and shells have been turned over to forensics experts so that they can determine age and any other identifying qualities. In the meantime, the search for answers continues. (Sources: http://onlineathens.com/stories/101510/new_720810588.shtml and www.cbsatlanta.com/news/25341606/detail.html)

Hood Notes

Still No Justice for Civil Rights-Era Rapes

By Errin Haines

Years before Rosa Parks fought for justice from her seat on a Montgomery bus, she fought for Recy Taylor. Parks was an NAACP activist crisscrossing Alabama in 1944 when she came across the case of Taylor, a 24-year-old wife and mother who was brutally gang raped and dumped on the side of a rural road. Taylor survived only to watch two all-white, all-male grand juries decline to indict the six white men who admitted to authorities that they assaulted her.

Taylor was one of many black women attacked by white men during an era in which sexual assault was used to informally enforce Jim Crow segregation. Their pain galvanized an anti-rape crusade that ultimately took a back seat to the push to dismantle officially sanctioned separation of the races, and slowly faded from the headlines.

Many of these rape victims never got justice and the desire for closure is still there, more than 60 years later - leaving some to wonder what, if anything, can be done to address the wrongs done to them.

For 20 years after she was raped, Taylor and her family lived in the same Abbeville, Ala., community as the families of her attackers. She spent many years living in fear, and says local whites continued to treat her badly, even after her assailants left town.

Evelyn Lowery, an activist whose husband, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, worked with Martin Luther King Jr., suggested that an apology from the government could be a start to the healing. "I certainly think it would be in order," Evelyn Lowery said. "For many years, they tried to say that women were the cause of this, that (black) women wanted sexual activity. ... It hasn't been true, but the courts used that to justify not taking action on behalf of the women. It was very demoralizing to all of us."

Taylor is not inclined to pursue a civil case. She believes most, if not all, of her attackers are dead. But she does find the idea of an official apology appealing.

Danielle McGuire, a history professor at Wayne State University who has documented the women's advocacy and Taylor's story in a new book, cites numerous instances of black women enduring unwanted sexual encounters from white men in cities in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Arkansas. Adding to the indignity, McGuire said, was the knowledge that black men - many of them innocent - were accused of and severely punished for the same or lesser crimes against white women. In some cases, they paid with their lives.

"It tells us that there's more to the movement than we think we know," McGuire said. "When we listen to the voices of these women, we get a whole new perspective."

For Taylor's brother, Robert Corbitt, a small measure of justice came courtesy of McGuire's book, "At The Dark End of the Street," which he said finally provided an accurate account of what happened to his sister, who helped raise him after his mother died.

When he retired in 2001 and moved from New York back to Abbeville, Corbitt tried to get court documents about his sister's case. He said he was stonewalled by officials at the local courthouse. "They made it seem it was impossible to go back and pull them up," Corbitt said. "It made me feel terrible that she was still being railroaded."

It's unclear what closure may be available today for black women who were raped in the segregated South. In some states, like Alabama, there is no statute of limitations on rape. McGuire figures "you could make a case for reopening something" if there are living assailants and evidence that can be gathered. "An enterprising attorney could find a way to use that at least in a civil case," McGuire said.

The Justice Department is not looking into civil rights-era sexual assault cases and lacks jurisdiction to do so, said spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa. She notes that the Emmett Till Act, which created an office to investigate unsolved civil rights-era crimes, is specifically limited to race-motivated killings only.

Parks came to Abbeville in 1944 to investigate Taylor's case. She went back to Montgomery, recruited other activists and by the spring of 1945 had organized the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. Local blacks rallied around Taylor even though they knew convictions of her attackers were unlikely, Corbitt said.

Other blacks, typically women, wrote letters to their governors and other lawmakers demanding justice for these victims. They also expanded their advocacy to take aim at segregated public accommodations.

By the time Parks made history in 1955, hundreds of black women had begun organizing their resistance to the name-calling and inappropriate sexual advances to which they were subjected daily aboard Montgomery's city buses. A high school student, Claudette Colvin, had refused to yield a bus seat before Parks did, but did not become a cause celebre partly because she lacked Parks' pristine image and community standing.

Though the public face of the movement became a coalition of black ministers led by King, black women worked behind the scenes organizing and driving carpools, filling church pews and raising funds to keep the 13-month boycott going, McGuire wrote.

Andrew Young, a King lieutenant, said there were no simple answers to determining why the anti-rape cause didn't become a larger aim of the movement. "We never focused on that," Young said. "We were focusing on the specific subjects of education, jobs, voting. ... I can think of a thousand things we did not do that I would have liked to have done." (Source: www2.wsls.com/news/2010/oct/16/still-no-justice-for-civil-rights-era-rapes-ar-565806/)

Politics Y2K10

Congo Rapes

On Thursday, October 14, 2010, United Nations (UN) envoy Margot Wallstrom, who is responsible for U.N. efforts to combat sexual violence in conflict, told the Security Council that UN peacekeepers have received reports of rapes, killings and looting by Congolese government soldiers in the same area of eastern Congo where militias carried out mass rapes over two months ago.

Following the mass rapes that ended in early August, Congo President Joseph Kabila ordered a moratorium on mining in the mineral-rich area and sent in thousands of army troops to reassert government control. However, according to Wallstrom, while the Congolese government should be commended for some policies adopted to combat sexual violence," so far `zero tolerance' has been underpinned largely by `zero consequences' for such crimes."

Wallstrom urged the government to investigate the allegations and deploy national police to the area to protect civilians and investigators. She has also asked UN peacekeepers to monitor and report daily on rapes and other sexual violence and called for UN sanctions against a Rwandan Hutu rebel commander over the alleged mass rapes of more than 300 people in eastern Congo. Sanctions could include an asset freeze and travel ban.

The UN said 303 civilians -- 235 women, 13 men, 52 girls and 3 boys -- were raped in 13 villages in the Walikale area. Even in eastern Congo, where rape has become a daily hazard and some women have been sexually assaulted repeatedly over the years, such numbers are shocking.

According to Wallstrom, the mass rapes in Walikale demonstrate the link between the illegal exploitation of natural resources by armed groups and sexual violence. She urged that these rapes be investigated "from the angle of the competition over mining interests as one of the root causes of conflict and sexual violence."

A recent report by the UN claimed that all the parties involved in the local civil war have been involved in the mining and sale of the metallic ore coltan, short for columbite-tantalite, a vital component in the manufacture of cell phone circuit boards. The ore is found mainly in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In addition to the neighboring Rwandan army, the military forces of Uganda and Burundi have been implicated in smuggling coltan out of Congo for resale in Belgium.

A report to the UN security council has called for a moratorium on the purchase and importation of resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo, due to the ongoing civil war that has dragged in the surrounding countries.

Wallstrom also urged that perpetrators of rape and sexual violence be barred from any amnesty provisions, from any benefits of disarming and returning to civilian life, and from any role in politics or government. She encouraged European countries and others to enact laws requiring companies to disclose whether their products contain minerals from the Congo. (Source: www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/10/14/un_envoy_says_govt_troops_continue_congo_rapes/)

DISHing It Up Hot!

Shot by Cops!

By Dot

On Saturday, October 16, 2010, Danroy Henry, Jr. of Easton, Massachusetts, a popular student, athlete and junior at Pace University, played in the school's homecoming game against Stonehill. Among the estimated 500 people in attendance were his parents, Danroy Sr. and Angela, who shared a meal with their son following the game. As fate would have it, the meal turned out to be the last one the couple would share with their beloved son.

According to police, 20-year-old Danroy Henry, Jr. was fatally wounded following a disturbance at a bar in the New York suburb of Thornwood that had spilled into the parking lot. Henry was the designated driver for the evening's after homecoming celebration; his car was parked in the fire lane outside Finnegan's Grill when a police officer knocked on his car window.

Police said Henry responded by accelerating his Nissan, injuring two officers. One officer ended up on the hood of Henry's car, which then struck a third policeman. The one on the hood and the other officer opened fire. Henry died at the scene. A passenger in the car suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound. Neither of the police officers was seriously hurt; they were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

The police officers that discharged their weapons have been identified as Aaron Hess and Ronald Beckley. Hess, who ended up on the hood of the car, works for the Pleasantville Police Department; Beckley is with the Mount Pleasant town force. With multiple shots fired, it is unclear at present which officer fired the fatal bullet.

Mount Pleasant Police Chief Louis Alagno, who originally called the shooting "horrendous," has refused to discuss his department's policy on shooting at civilian vehicles, referring media to a Freedom of Information Act request to learn what constitutes its policy on discharging weapons at civilian vehicles. According to Alagno, the police shooting is being investigated by the major case unit of the state police and Westchester County crime scene experts.

With conflicting accounts from police and eyewitnesses, the incident is far from an open and shut case of justifiable homicide by police. Predictably, the police union supports the officers; the police department has issued a timeline showing they responded quickly in treating Henry's wounds, contradicting his teammates, who say police tended to the cops' minor injuries first and refused to allow them to administer CPR to the dying young man.

Understandably, Henry's parents, friends and relatives find the death of this young man, who by all accounts was an "exemplary student" with no criminal record, difficult to digest. The family has hired legal assistance in an effort to uncover the truth.

Henry's parents appeared on ABC's Good Morning America this week and asked everyone that may have information to come forward, so that they can make sense of this senseless killing. In the interview, they made it clear that they do not want their son's death to be about race; they have family members and friends serving on local police forces.

Even as this family comes to terms with this tragic death, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate what happened to Henry from the larger context of American society. It is an undeniable fact of life that there is a huge disparity in the treatment accorded black and white people by those sworn to serve and protect. White people are simply not shot by cops as often and in weird situations like black people. Far too frequent, a black face is enough for cops to feel threatened, making the use of lethal force justified in America.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email http://news.yahoo.com...Rwandan arrested over Congo rapes... French authorities have arrested a Rwandan accused of leading a rebel group that carried out mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor said on Monday. Callixte Mbarushimana, 47, described as a leader of the group FDLR, was held after a sealed arrest warrant was issued on September 28 alleging the rebel group was involved in more than 300 rapes in DRC's North Kivu province. ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the arrest was a "crucial step in efforts to prosecute the massive sexual crimes committed in the DRC," adding that more than 15,000 cases of sexual violence were reported in the country in 2009. The prosecutor said Mbarushimana, who was arrested on October 11, has denied any allegation against his movement. Mbarushimana is charged with 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes including killings, rape, persecution based on gender and extensive destruction of property. The prosecutor alleges the FDLR committed these during most of 2009. Mbarushimana has been the FDLR's executive secretary since July 2007, making him one of the group's highest-ranking members, the prosecutor said. He is the fifth suspect in the custody of the ICC, which is investigating five 'situations' in Africa but has no police force of its own and has had difficulties enforcing arrest warrants. The arrest is the result of almost two years of inquiries conducted by France, Germany, the DRC, Rwanda and the ICC.

Email www.ajc.com Georgia man sentenced to 6 months in soldier's beating...A white man accused of beating a black Army Reservist in front of her daughter and yelling racial slurs has been sentenced to six months in prison after negotiating a plea deal. Troy Dale West could have faced more than 44 years in prison if convicted on three felony charges in the beating of Tasha Hill. The charges were reduced to misdemeanors Friday as part of the deal struck during West's trial. West testified that he was provoked by Hill when she spit on him September 2009 outside a metro Atlanta Cracker Barrel. Hill has denied spitting on West.