Amnesty International Members:Amnesty International Members:
My name is John Burl Smith, Director of Communication for the Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation. Dedicated to salvaging America's youth, the foundation represents their interest in all relevant forums. This communiqué seeks information regarding an up coming conference Amnesty International is coordinating on police brutality in America in Geneva. Only a small sound byte appeared in the American news media, which contained neither contact information nor dates or specific location. Consequently, we are making an open appeal to Amnesty International for the opportunity to send a delegation to your conference to speak on behalf of American youth in general and young black males in particular.
African Americans are the only people who have been enslaved and never paid one penny in reparation. Subsequently, we have been maintained in a state of semi-slavery. Descendants of African slaves, we have never been granted full rights of citizenship, i.e. justice, freedom, and equality. Therefore, the brutality we suffer today at the hands of the police serves the same purpose as lynching at the beginning of this century.
The Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation has attempted to dialogue with political leaders in the United States, but all requests have fallen on deaf ears. Official responses reflect the attitude of their forebears, justifying the same hypocrisy. America's judicial system is an instrument of brutality, repression, and genocide for young African American males. We have appealed to the United Nations, and the Organization of African Unity to partition the International Court of Justice at The Hague on our behalf. Granting this request will provide an opportunity to voice African Americans grievances, and rebut America's claim of freedom, justice, and equality for all.
Amnesty International's efforts to highlight police brutality in America are exemplary. We commend your organization for representing defenseless people the world over. Without the courage shown by groups such as yours, millions would suffer untold horrors in silence. The Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation's web site archives, The Genocide Chronicles, reveal the urgency we feel in soliciting your support. I will thank you in advance for your kind consideration, and we await your timely response.
Sincerely, John Burl Smith
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UNITED NATIONS UPDATE!!!!
To The Honorable Kofi Annan: Addendum to Dot's Smith's Study on the Economics of Poverty.
1998 State of the Chasm: Probing Hidden Ache
As the year closes, American economists and the President will offer assessments of America's economic health and ponder the potential for greater progress. Based on mainstream media accounts from news print to interviews broadcast across the American heartland, 1997 is being declared a real American economic success story. From this business-based assessment, some economists and even the President might presume to be in position to prognosticate about 1998. In light of the Asian contagion, domestic economic conditions, international conflict and turmoil, the gurus and political leaders might wish to include in the year-end review and forecast more than stock performance. Certainly, there is a place for capital markets in the economic welfare equation. No one can dispute that the outlook for labor and the market for human capital must be included. A thorough analysis of economic welfare entails the examination of numerous variables, most of which defy quantification. Nevertheless, any realistic analysis incorporates as many factors as possible in forecasting future conditions that resemble reality.
Tackling this awesome task entails looking at welfare variables conspicuously absent in the scripted Hollywood success story Americans are being sold. To say something useful about 1998, variables that scream obvious social pain and ache where mistakes were made and abuse runs rampant must find their way into the national welfare equation. The gurus and political leaders need a new broader perspective to grasp some of the more crucial variables. Because the vast majority of Americans view the economy from the bottom up, it is fitting to employ this perspective in assessing their collective economic health. And, in doing so, we highlight variables that factor reality in statements about the state and prognosis for the coming year. By identifying some of these, the 1998 State of the Chasm sheds light on the compelling variables of juvenile violence, campaign and government spending and foreign policy. These factors share a common thread that is woven into the country's social fabric.
In a country where the efficient employment of hypocrisy is handsomely rewarded, traditional American family values and crime make strange salacious bedfellows. En masse, American Christians embrace the death penalty. Their neighborhood churches seek protection against property crime behind burglar bars and high fences, while maximizing profits. America's most lucrative enterprise manufactures and markets weapons of destruction worldwide. On the domestic front, the industry supplies ample armament to carry out individual acts of violence and mass destruction in American homes, classrooms, on the streets and in factories. Religiously, American society inures its young to violence. Cloaked in family values and armed to the teeth, the carnage is broadcast live each week casting clean-faced teenagers terminating disputes with extreme prejudice. If not juveniles in institutions of learning, then frustrated adults are turning to deadly force to resolve workplace conflicts. "Going Postal" is contagious, spreading rapidly as more than just slang and the board game based on U.S. Postal Service employee-management relations. From domestic violence to hit-and-run road rage, America seems to be coming apart at its seam. Amazingly, televised reaction to the carnage is always the same. As if failing to grasp the most obvious connections is a good thing, Americans interviewed on CNN keep refraining from victim to witness: "This kind of thing just don't happen in Smallville, USA." Obviously, it does and with alarming frequency. America's leaders need to address these microeconomic explosions, and include in 1998's prognosis some remedy for the pent up hate festering in America's bosom waiting to erupt at a moment's notice.
When fourteen year-old Michael Carneal allegedly entered his Paducah, Kentucky high school armed with a small arsenal of five (5) weapons and two (2) sets of earplugs, the initial news report said the recent Lutheran convert believed the school's morning prayer group contained a bunch of hypocrites. True to mainstream news coverup, the alleged gunman's motive for mayhem went unexamined in a media frenzy to air trivial, i.e., interviews with the local district attorneys, police, supposed heroes, a bevy of victims, their families and any willing sidebar witnesses, ad nauseam. Later revelations reinforced the teen's initial comment. Michael Carneal, like so many, was picked on and bullied by others in his public high school. An educated guess would be -- those good Christian girls and boys praying before school every morning gave Michael hell during the school day. This pray and hateful play routine emulates their parents' practice of praying on Sunday and pragmatically laying aside Christian morals and ethics to maximize profits or something seamier the rest of the week. Those good Christians killed during Michael's reign of terror are representative of future American leaders. Starting young, they practice the elitism of superiority and privilege with the full support and backing of the school's faculty and the local community.
Were we to allow reality to intrude, chances are very good that the morning prayer group is not maintained by the teens, but adults behind the scenes. To believe otherwise is to accept the scenario that six (6) year old Jon Benet Ramsey killed herself, carried her dead body to the basement of her family's posh home, and wrote a ransom note. The Ramseys are rich. In America, rich people can coverup anything, and even get away with murder. Like the Ramseys, parents in Paducah are far from innocent. Psychologically, if not physically, Michael did not act alone; his community stood beside him as he repeatedly pulled the trigger. Sadly, truth will never enjoy the light of day; these good Christians will never accept their role in creating Michael Carneal. Paducah is everywhere America; its people pathetically practice denial. Good Christians prefer ignorance, rather than facing the truth and searching for solutions. In reality, young Carneal is as much a victim as the kids he killed and young Jon Benet; they are all victims of a society that preaches one thing and does something else entirely. Society pays for its contradictions. Perhaps, in light of this spate of violence, the most important thing for Americans to contemplate in promoting welfare in 1998 is the eradication of the hypocrisy Carneal sought to erase by terminating his classmates.
Rejecting Carneal's solution of wholesale killing, a great place to start eradicating hypocrisy is campaign financing. To stem the flow and quell the influence of large corporations and their CEO's on America's foreign and domestic politic, campaign finance reform is essential. The Corporate Accountability Project (CAP), Common Cause and Citizens Against Government Waste provide extensive corporate campaign finance information detailing how corporations and their powerful CEOs realize significant returns on their soft money investments. This information is readily available on the World Wide Web; it raises serious questions about the prudence of the Supreme Court tying spending dollars to exercising free speech. Representative democracy took a direct hit; it continues to receive a battering from the shortsightedness of wedding campaign spending to the First Amendment. In such an environment, rich people do ALL the talking. The rich purchase candidates outright that every day citizens can only cast a paper ballot for. Whose interests are served? Review the records of those whose interests are promoted by the U.S. Congress; examine the campaign contributors and connect the dots to beneficiaries of most favorable legislation and government spending in the private sector.
Without reform, the real danger in big money influence peddling is perhaps best expressed in statements attributed to a former American President.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
(U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (Letter to Col. William F. Elkins) Ref. "The Lincoln Encyclopedia", Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY). According to CAP, the Civil War President was dead on in fearing for the Republic's continued survival. CAP reported that " of the world's 100 largest economies, 51 are now global corporations, rather than countries."
Pervasive corporate influence over sovereign governments tends to erode meaningful political participation and systemically demeans representative democracy. Americans are justifiably becoming more cynical with each election and sordid revelation of corruption and abuse of power. Convinced all politicians do it, most Americans just shake their heads and become more apathetic. A recent CNN poll showed President Clinton's popularity among Americans remains high in spite of a concerted Republican effort to make it otherwise. Clinton remains popular because Americans are willing to overlook his "little" shortcomings. Cynically, given America's political quagmire, even soiled, Clinton remains far more attractive than the Conservative Republican alternative.
Because money talks, the U.S. is essentially controlled by the wealthy elite. At least in Clinton, the nation appears to have someone at its helm with a smidgen of conscience when giving tax money to rich people. Imagine if you will the American political landscape had a reconditioned Dole, inner Beltway pundit, resident and contender, become the next plastic President. Clinton's election and re-election were sheer provident. The man's a knight in shining armor, relatively speaking; he should be revered for saving America from itself under the circumstances. As President, in the heroic tradition of Lincoln, not because of his race initiative, but for saving the country from neo-conservatives. Had the private Dole controlled the public one, there would have been no end to the prescription of pain for the average American that august man would have recommended, while simultaneously advocating, approving and appropriating more corporate welfare for drug, tobacco, oil, automobile, healthcare and insurance companies. It would have been a travesty. As it is, Clinton is a relatively minor faux pas on the hallowed Presidency. In the dim light of history, he will rank highly among the great moral and ethical men who held the post before him, like the religious slave owners, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. So, the nation experiences some marginal disgrace by renting out Lincoln's bedroom and burying liars in Arlington National Cemetery. Who gives a sh__? Obviously, America has endured worse. However, Republicans seem bent on emphasizing and exposing every Presidential peccadillo and political indiscretion.
Like the sanctimonious hypocrites in the South following the Civil War, Republicans are plain sore losers needing to vent on Clinton for beating the big spenders at their own dirty game of using soft money to turn political campaign tricks. Only by employing standardized Republican practices was Clinton able to amass a "competitive" campaign warchest. The Republican opposition is sick with hating Clinton for winning and ruining their plan to milk more out of everything. Thanks to Clinton, fewer probes into inner- and outer-space to explore the efficacy of raping the unchartered dimensions of the universe will be launched at taxpayers' expense. Being persona non gratia with those Conservative Republicans endears Clinton to voters, and explains the whacked polls! Americans may be apathetic, but the faithful few still voting are not stupid. Keeping those profit hound conservatives out of the White House is a definite plus for everybody and everything in the universe from microscopic life forms to Bubba!
Even though America lucked out in the '96 Presidential election and acquired a leader with a modicum of conscience, the geyser of corporate welfare continues to spew. Unfortunately, Clinton is reluctant to use line item vetoes to plug the pork pipeline. Information on pork barrel spending grace the Web pages of Arizona's Senator John McCain, one of the few Congressmen advocating abolishing corporate welfare to decrease government spending. Americans can point proudly to McCain as one politician trying to end the federal budget drain. It is not enough! All Americans should examine McCain's pork pages and collectively repudiate those bellying up to the trough. This includes the amalgam of also rans and has beens from former Presidential contenders and other politicians to the virtual armies of corporate lawyers found most often lobbying Congress for dollars to increase the size of the federal budget devoted to corporate slop. More often than not, American Congressmen fork over more tax dollars, shamelessly along campaign contribution lines. In the 1996 Presidential campaign, Republicans received twice the contributions reported by Democrats from big business. The Republican controlled Congress proceeded to slop the hoggish contributors handsomely with legislation and/or direct payments. Common Cause's Report on 1996 Campaign Contributions reveals a moral and ethical vacuum when it comes to dialing for dollars. It is apropos the Speaker and occupants of the White House are the subjects of ethical violations.
Lincoln's scenario fits right in when obvious conflicts of interest are ignored, and politicians and big business are allowed to pursue profits at taxpayers' expense. This robbing the government scenario is played out and goes unfettered at every level of the United States' government. Political racketeering is an ideal compliment to unrestrained federal spending; it must be present to fill the trough for corporate porkers. While spoon feeding the greedy elite, American politicians espouse free markets and a less intrusive government for everyone else. Most Americans by now must be familiar with the Speaker's rhetoric in proposing deep welfare cuts in government spending, which translated into balancing the budget by cutting or eliminating government assistance to welfare mothers and other underprivileged Americans. To capture the real disparity in where cuts were made and abuse runs rampant, the corporate porkers get $104.3 billion to the $14.4 billion or 1% of the budget going to poor people. (Website: Who Gets Welfare? The Feminist Majority Foundation and New Media Publishing, Inc., 1996).
Speaker Gingrich is the King of Pork Sloppers. His record on Capitol Hill for doling out to the rich is in a word-- remarkable. A legendary slop artist, Gingrich continues to oink less government. A pragmatic man of firm moral conviction, eliminating corporate welfare does not factor into Gingrich's equation for reducing government. The Speaker epitomize those politicians who believe it is acceptable to treat the government budget like a market to be exploited for personal profit. His actions suggest it is acceptable for taxpayers' dollars to line his pockets and enrich CEOs of large corporations in the great American entrepreneurial spirit. Nothing is more ludicrous than the arguments advanced by hypocritical political Newties. Sold out to big business, they continue mouthing senseless jargon about competition, the old "invisible hand" trick and limited government. These for profit politicians do America a grave disservice. Promoting the welfare of America is not their raison d'etre; these elected crooks protect and promote a narrow vested interest. Asininely, propagating unrealistic economic voodoo glosses over the incestuous relationship existing between corporate welfare and government spending. Unburdening taxpayers by removing the yoke of corporate pork will improve America's 1998 economic outlook. In addition, American leaders can stop saying one thing and doing something else. Eradicating this hypocrisy is a must.
If the domestic economic politic can be appropriately characterized as dubious and downright duplicitous, as personified in House Speaker Newt Gingrich, then American foreign policy is the piece de resistance. America's pragmatic business community and its elite enjoy an absolute economic advantage. The many are marginalized to support their luxurious standard of living. On a global scale, America's domestic economic peculiarities are mirrored in it's foreign policy with a similar level of sheer hypocrisy. To allies, trading partners, and potential political conquests, the United States essentially says--"Do as I say, not as I do." America overtly advocates a market economy with little or no government interference, yet American businesses rely heavily on the government's coffer for an array of economic benefits from direct payments to opening and controlling foreign markets. In such an environment, market economy is an oxymoron our political leaders should stop using for fear the rest of the world will come to view Americans as suffering from mad cow disease, rather than merely being swine.
Chief among the free marketeers who need to be stopped from dishing out dastardly doses of advice to Americans and foreign nations is Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and money supply manipulator. Greenspan provides a sterling example of paid henchmen espousing voodoo economics while succumbing to the public tendency to place foot in the mouth trying to make sense of a phoney model. Greenspan is a highly sought after speaker at elite functions. Portions of his recent Economic Club of New York address appeared on CNN and in the Atlanta Journal/Constitution (12-7-97). According to the daily, "Greenspan was optimistic about recovery prospects in Asia, but not unless the leaders in those countries --especially political leaders--reform their systems and allow market, and not political, forces to guide their economies." In the same article, referring to shoddy financial deals, Greenspan believes, "In a market economy, these distortions get worked out as excessive production slows to a halt." In a market economy based on the theory, prices decline inducing producers to decrease production. America consumer prices do not decline to support the notion its economy is market driven, rather than government orchestrated. If his advice is to be believed, the U.S. government should not be bailing out businesses, yet it does. Based on market ideology, its current level of spending is not only obscene, but runs counter to Greenspan's advice for other economies. It is little wonder America's 1997 foreign policy record is best characterized as dangerous, narrow-minded, shortsighted and glaringly hypocritical.
If NAFTA is indicative, America's foreign policy does little to aid the average worker, and ofttimes worsen economic conditions for America's families and working poor. While the U.S. unemployment rate is historically low, the rate does not reflect the true state of economic welfare in America. Far more people crowd the ranks of the poor, homeless, hungry and unemployed than the rate reflects. Not incorporated in this statistic are the underemployed, institutionalized, and discouraged. An objective review of this situation effectively shoots in the foot the foolish notion of rising economic tides lifting all boats. The poor grew poorer, while profits on Wall Street exploded. Too many Americans got ground to dust by stampeding bulls to believe in a tide's boost. America's electorate is apathetic and powerless to effect meaningful political change because the rich do all the talking. Generations of Americans are marginalized to maintain a high standard of living for the elite, creating huge economic disparities. Some refer to the resulting economic gap as the Chasm of Inequality. (See Yohannes Sharriff Smith, T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution, Intuit Publishing Co., 1997).
America's welfare record in other countries is equally impressive. Masquerading as foreign policy, the same formula for economic success employed domestically is exported around the world. Marginalization is the most likely consequence of close encounters with liberal democracy ala American style. U.S. foreign policy aim is to marginalize other nation's natural resources to promote narrow vested interest. This is precisely why U.S. foreign policy lacks direction and cohesion. It is the world's avowed leader, yet it continually intervenes in the global arena to promote big businesses and wealthy folks. America's foreign policy in the Middle East, as personified in Madelyn Albright's failure to corral Israel into honoring its commitments to establishing a lasting peace in the region, just highlights the pitfalls of a fragmented foreign policy based on dollar diplomacy. Instead of shouldering its global responsibility by fostering a steadfast policy to promote international economic welfare, it plays the bully. When the U.S. Nimitz sailed to the Persian Gulf, ostensibly to protect Americans and the free world from weapons of mass destruction, America reiterated its commitment to armed intervention, if necessary, to harvest the regions' oil reserves for its elitist advantage. Employing threats of violence to shore up global confidence in the U.S. dollar is acceptable U.S. foreign policy. Because it has worked in the past, it is deemed a pragmatic approach to U.S. international relations.
Given domestic violent responses to such gross hypocrisy being played out in schools, on streets and in the American workplace, one is forced to question the security consequences of U.S. foreign policy. More important than potential foreign violence, given U.S. military prowess, American employees/consumers do not realize a net benefit from the government's duplicity. In viewing domestic and foreign policy from the bottom up, any benefits gained by America's actions are reaped by the minority elite. While America's electorate appear largely impotent, a growing number of are fighting back; a notable success is their defeat of Fast-track, a trade agreement privilege exercised by Presidents as far back as former President Jimmy Carter, who used his authority in such a way that a cogent case can be made against continuing the practice. From a Presidential perspective, Carter is an object lesson on government pork and fast-track authority. His claim to fame is firmly rooted in the groundnut and U.S. foreign policy in Africa.
Citizens Against Government Waste did a web site reality check on groundnut (peanuts) that is a must read. According to the site, the U.S. Agriculture Department began shelling out the peanut dole back during the Great Depression. The department's boss, Dan Glickman, is not only continuing the long standing subsidy, but is increasing it by 3%. Artificially inflating domestic peanut prices, this corporate welfare provides peanut farmers and landowners an advantage unexplained in the context of market competition. Peanut farmers rack up huge profits selling peanuts at substantially higher than global market prices. In fact, the price support means Americans pay 74.3 percent more than people in the rest of the world for peanuts, based on the $610 government-price subsidy versus the global price of $350 per ton. (Citizens Against Government Waste and Atlanta Journal/Constitution, 12-7-97). So, not only does government pork unfairly benefit wealthy farmers and large agri-businesses like Archer-Daniels Midland (ADM), it artificially inflates consumer prices. When the government pays farmers not to produce, it controls supply and guarantees prices, a market economy ceases to exist.
Former President Carter is perhaps best known as Mr. Peanut, and his visit to Africa during his Presidency. Nigeria, a leading exporter of agricultural products before the discovery of oil, became a net importer of groundnut, one of its chief agriculture exports under Carter. Fast-track negotiations derailed Nigeria's peanut production for years. Feathering the nest of a peanut farmer, America hamstrung Nigeria's agricultural sector under the guise of aiding its industrial development. Carter-style fast-track helped destroy the Nigerian economy, but his coffers grew, as did his global share of the peanut market. This is a prime example of the type of duplicity that enriches former Presidents and other politicians building financial dynasties on the backs of the many. Sabotaging Nigeria's agricultural sector did not lower American consumer peanut prices. Because no one in Congress is screaming about farmers and big agri-business, like former President Jimmy Carter and ADM, getting filthy rich at the public's expense, derailing fast-authority is a feather in the cap of consumers. One can only hope Carter is sated with his little rope a dope Ali maneuver against Nigeria and American peanut consumers. Maybe an expensive library to pay homage to his prowess and a Georgia-based dynasty makes honesty and integrity acceptable sacrifices for a place at the pork trough. On the other hand, maybe his zeal for building homes for the homeless and poor is a real guilty conscience penitence for raping so many. Carter is after all a Democrat; they do tend to show some humanity. However, despite Madelyn Albright's assurances from Clinton to the African nations she recently visited that America does not seek to marginalize Africa, history advises and provides ample evidence to the contrary. Africans would do well to be leery of Madelyn's duplicitous overtures of cooperation and offers of assistance.
Preservers of the status quo will be quick to dismiss its duplicity claiming the greater good of creating jobs for Americans justifies lying even to its own citizens. Its tradition of domestic and international rape does not translate into more jobs and an increase in American economic welfare. With business and government collusion, consumer prices rarely decline. Instead, payroll costs are reduced by laying off large numbers of workers, using temporary agencies, part-time employment, outsourcing and privatizing to prevent any squeeze on profits. Huge multinationals do not adhere to any competitive economic model. These industrial giants are monopolies wielding awesome economic and political power. Prices are not allowed to fall, businesses are not allowed to fail, instead people get laid off. Greenspan is recommending other nations, pursue a similar path by allowing these multinationals freer reign and influence over their economies, as a condition of IMF assistance. Translation: More pain for the average man around the globe.
Under Republican guidance and Democratic acquiescence, America reinvented government by reducing its workforce, using big business' play book for trimming payrolls. It "balanced" the budget by decreasing benefits to individuals. America's economy should now be efficient, pared to the bare bones to protect profits. Now, along comes the Asian economic flu. For Americans residing at the bottom of the Chasm, already outsourced and dismissed from America's economic welfare equation, even a flu shot will not prevent the body aches, chills and cold from the virus we are certain to contract. By ending welfare to business, America could balance the budget in one year with enough surplus to impact the federal deficit, and provide a modest tax cut to the working poor and middle class. If economic conditions continue to deteriorate, Clinton will need some stimulus package to prevent the economy from the brink of a depression. Any stimulus employed must include honesty and integrity among elected representatives. A moral high ground accompanied by appropriate actions should lead to less government intervention. Ending domestic and foreign policy hypocrisy is the best possible remedy for assuring America's socio-political and economic health. It could conceivably lead to reductions in the cost of practically everything American's consume --improving the overall standard of living. Even those making minimum wage at the bottom of America's Chasm of Inequality benefit from less government. With less of this type government spending in private sector, even the poor can afford to eat Carter's peanuts. And, by eradicating hypocrisy, America could arrest the growing tendency among its citizens to "Go Postal" to resolve conflicts. While this behavior is expected in a country pieced together with the moral and ethical baling wires of pragmatic Christian values and Wild West lawlessness, the country can not afford to revert to its glory days. The rest of the world is unwilling to play America native to rich folks' claim to a manifested destiny. After all, this is the dawn of a new millennium.
Consumer Fraud Alert Boycotted Places & Things:
TAP, Carey Paul Ford, Denny's, Winn-Dixie, Rich's, Eddie Bauer, Texaco, Nike, Wachovia, IRS, AVIS Rentacar, Walmart, Pharmaceutical companies, White Psychiatrists and other legal drug pushers like the Defense Department, ARC, Atlanta City Government, the Georgia State Flag, New York City, Wannabees and Jigaboos, hair salons, fast food restaurants, Santa Claus, Meat like Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas hams and hot dogs, fake Christmas trees, Contract with America, privatization, Fast-track, NAFTA, neo-slave masters like Norrell and other temporary agencies, automobile insurance companies, unscrupulous automobile mechanics, Precision Tune, churches with fences, government subsidies, Greenspan's addresses, paid Newties like the Speaker of the House, Mississippi Lotts, and other weapons of mass destruction.....DotBack || ICIM Home || THINC || DISH || Top of Page || Chronicles
Second Class Humans Worst Than Welfare!
The major problem with policy made in the heat of frenzy, like no parole, in no consideration is given to collateral damage or fallout. An excellent example is a state law going into effect 1-198 which fines inmates who break prison rules. Fines are assessed for minor offices as ALoose shirttails, stepping off a sidewalk, not keeping control of their tempers, little actions they take and things they say,@ according to Thomas County Sheriff Carlton Powell. He explained the logic behind the policy further; "it's a hardship to families that will make the family, because families are the people who are hurt.@ Feeling the pain of having a loved one incarcerated in Georgia=s prison, expressed her frustration this way. AThere=s a lot of people in there where their families cannot afford to send them money. Some whose husband is serving ten (10) tears for burglary at Telfair State Prison in Helena, who have to send money from part-time jobs.@
The way the system works is Money for inmates must come from families and friends, Because the Georgia Constitution prohibits paying prisoners to work. Inmates are allowed to set up accounts for the receipt of funds, they are not allowed to have cash on their person. These fund are for stamps, snacks, and personal hygiene items, and prisoners must pay $5 to per visit to the infirmary, as well as other charges.@ According to Teresa Nelson, AThe Civil liberties Union feels A these fines pose legal problems ( First Amendment rights base on being wards of the state) for Georgia, if the Corrections Department does not adopt more humane and objective policies for settling allegations of rule violations. When a prison is charged with breaking a rule, his case is heard by a prison guard, there is a chain of appeals, beginning with the warden.@
The bottom line is about 54,000 inmates were found guilty last year, amounting to 75 or 80 percent of those charged. Mrs. Moon=s assessment is ANobody=s found innocent down there. Nobody.@ Georgia=s prison system will collect approximately $216,000 in fines a year. Fines are deposited in the states treasury.@ This policy goes back to the retribution attitude Ronald Regan brought to government which expresses a vindictive and insensitive policy toward rehabilitation.
This attitude is reflected clearly in Georgia. AInmates must pay to replace any prison property damaged, medical expenses if they are hurt, and expenses associated with lawsuits they file. If an inmate does not have funds at the time of their fine, prison officials simply wait until they receive money from home, and then collect the fines. This reporter is flabbergasted at such a policy. This policy amounts to crucial and unusual punishment, not to mention holding families hostage to a neo-slavery system base on retribution. A question, which has gone unanswered in all of the interviews, is AWhat if an inmate does not have anyone on the outside, how are the fines handled at release. If such inmates can avoid paying their fines, this amounts to disparity treatment.
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January 13, 1999
Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton
First Lady of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D. C. 20500
Madam:
The present political climate seems to have produced a sense of urgency in planning and communicating the President's legislative agenda for 1999. On the face of it, one might think circumstances are against us, and desperate measures are required. To the contrary, a unique opportunity presents itself. The only possible drawback in the present environment is a lack of aggressiveness in pursuing ways to implement effective strategies, while Congressional Republicans are boiling in their own stew.
Advantages accrue when the opposition is caught without an exit strategy and cannot extract itself from a quagmire. It is agreed that Republicans are so bounded up with impeachment, they are unable to mount a formidable challenge to any initiative. Their lack of a relevant national agenda leaves them without a consensus on new programs. Therefore, they are without any focus on how to proceed. Finally, their intense partisanship has produced a very negative image in the minds of citizens, resulting in their diminished credibility.
Republicans are oblivious to dark clouds presenting ominous threats. Their current fascination diverts attention away from the crisis among our youth. Young people face a dire future when comparing society's understanding of what really goes on in their lives. Institutions have changed. They no longer respond to young people. The prevailing opinion is that young people must change to fit the institution. What society teaches youth is it does not have time for or patience with young people who make mistakes. Congress rejects these issues as indicators of a youth crisis, instead labeling many behaviors as criminal. America's young people deserve better.
Executive authority in the Constitution provides the President with the power to move the nation forward, even though he is saddled with the present Congress. By aggressively using Executive Orders (EO), the President can begin initiatives and implement pilot projects, which will gather support when funding is acquired from Congress. The idea is to develop an approach that prevents Republicans from nullifying the President's agenda through inaction. This strategy will make Republicans regret time spent bogged down with impeachment.
Below are three (3) areas, which are ideal for testing these strategies.
1) Issue an Executive Order establishing a commission to develop ways of improving participation in the democratic process. Trends reflecting participation levels for all groups are dismal. Even more disheartening are those for young Americans. Trust in political institutions has eroded precipitously during the nineteen hundreds. Belief in the system as an avenue for change is less than in the 1930s. Unchecked by 2010, a minority of American voters will be exercising all the political power; the remainder will be spectators. Such a national effort may help young citizens regain trust in the power of the vote, and increase confidence that participation in the democratic process will improve their future.
2) A commission to study the changing dynamics within the American family is desperately needed. All concepts relating to the family were passed down as functions in agrarian societies, or developed during the industrial revolution. Today, the structure, roles and character of the American family are undergoing tremendous change. The definition of what constitutes family is an unclear apparition of ghost generations. Conversely, society has not recognized the profound demand this reality place on the political or economic chic of America. Childcare, healthcare, education, retirement and work place issues affecting family cohesion are only a few concerns weighing heavily on young people who see the old model as an inadequate paradigm. Who will take the lead in working out these issues?
3) A council to study the impact of the current approach to juvenile justice on society. This question is inexorably bounded to the value a society places on it youth. Perceived difference based on a narrow religious constituency determines deviant behavior. Such subjective judgements play a major role in allocating resources to the young. Does rehabilitation play a role in society's demand for proper behavior, or should society simply give up on youth when it locks them away? Can we as a society afford to create a criminal class of young without fear for the adult criminals it produces? Does our society have any responsibility for the conditions young people face? Whose children will be safe, if we leave our grand children such a society?
Madam, I am convinced, looking at your work saving America's historic treasures, you would set a splendid example for the nation, if you chaired a commission. These issues are vital to the future of freedom in the world. Now, more so than ever before, you and your family know how easy it is to lose the protection of liberty. Historically, the President will be judged by what he does, not by what is said about him. Our task is to keep the dream alive!
Sincerely, John Burl Smith
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We Never Learn !!!
Aspiring politician Linda Schrenko, Georgia Board of Education Superintendent, bemoaned her predicament last week in an AJC article (2-12-99), State school chief seeks new allies in government. Feeling shut out of the new educational agenda, Schrenko fired off a letter to Governor Roy Barnes Wednesday. Although, she complained of excessive partisanship affecting education, her statement appeared to be an exist strategy out of her November 3rd declaration not to seek re-election after her 2002 term expires. Apparently, Schrenko noticed what everyone else has. Specifically, Republicans have lost credibility, and will be desperately seeking candidates without strong right wing religious conservative ties. Therefore, she wants to remain in play.
Elementary here is Georgia's children are suffering while professional politicians turn their future into a political football. Schrenko appears more concerned about her political career than our children performance level. Voluminous statistics reflecting the dismal performance of Georgia's students was discussed in A Chasm of Inequality @ (The DISH 2-12-99). Six hundred fifty-two schools failing state standards, and nationally, Georgia ranks at the bottom of performance standards. However, the superintendent offers only more discipline and a threat to run for a third term. Obviously, the majority of students affected by her disastrous tenure are black. Prompting the question, A Does Ms Schrenko reflect arcane southern attitudes about education in general, and educated blacks in particular?" Back in the day when whites exercised absolute power, segregationists viewed the function of government as rewarding whites, and punishing blacks.
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President Bill Clinton's African initiative, America's present effort to bring its foreign policy in line with its global grandiloquence, represents the potential to redefine human relations in America. Certainly, all who hope to begin this new millennium with world peace as the ultimate goal applaud Mr. Clinton's initiative. Humanity prays the brutality and carnage exhibited during previous millenniums will fade from human personality as time from our lives. However, with global peace as the objective, those viewing the African initiative process from the outside involuntary cannot help shuddering at the prospect of another top-down program of government solutions. Inclusion is essential to global peace, though by no means guaranteed in a trickled down process. To insure the President's initiative is an inclusive arrangement, African Americans require direct access to and impact on strategy and deployment efforts, beginning with the enabling phase of whatever eventuates. By committing to certain levels of participation and management for both sides of the Atlantic, Africa and African Americans are part of the resulting structure. At a minimum, this is required to ensure this initiative promotes world peace, and not suffer the fate of its predecessors.
Passing the laser scanner of history over negative aspects of America's foreign policy is not the intent of this report. However, it does present an historic perspective on the reasons African Americans and Africans do not enjoy the same type of relationship other ethnic groups enjoy with their homelands. In addition, it proposes an alternative to the status quo. Principally, this discourse reflects the difficulties encountered during the ill-fated African adventure of Dedrick "Teddy" Withers. Withers' lessons learned and earned the hard way are more than commentary. His attempts to establish relations with Africa began in 1974, shortly after his election to the Tennessee General Assembly. Posthumously recognizing Rep. Withers brings his African efforts full circle. For many southern African Americans, Rep. Withers' initiative maps the landscape for African trade; his experiences provide cogent reflections. Dedrick passed away in 1996. During his brief lifetime, he revered Pan-Africanism, viewing it as the only viable strategy for African American survival. African roots grow deeply in Rep. Withers' family. He is the son of Ernest C. Withers, Sr., one of the first eight (8) African Americans to integrate the Memphis, Tennessee police department in 1948. Teddy established a similar precedent when he was elected the youngest legislator in the history of Tennessee in 1974; his grassroots campaign was the first truly successful effort of its kind in Memphis.
Following his election, Rep. Withers= team of supporters developed a strategic plan to address poverty and depravation in the black community. His team included Richard L. Kirksey, Jr., founder of Big Brothers Jr. Achievers, Amy Evans, legislative coordinator, Dot M. Smith, welfare economist, Vincent Taylor and Michael A. Hitchings, youth representatives, and psychologist, John B. Smith. While the implementation and coordination of the plan remain questionable, its intellectual underpinnings are sound. Indeed, one can assess the current African initiative by employing the socioeconomic and political groundwork provided in the research and writings of Dot M. Smith. Among her treatises are: The Strategic Significance of the Southern African Region: The Thrust for Dominance, Recession and Unemployment: A Retrospective Analysis of the Economic Welfare Loss, and Automation and Technological Unemployment. The Withers= strategic plan contained two major objectives. First, it advanced a set of national goals for addressing problems prevalent in the African American community via reparations and the establishment of mutually beneficial trade relations with the African continent. Second, it identified short and long term strategies to support grassroots level implementation of those goals. The national agenda, AThe Minority Report,@ was prepared for the 1974 Democratic Party=s Mid-Term Convention in Kansas City. Rep. Withers presented it to several discussion groups. Attendees included then Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, now deceased Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, and the only African American Presidential candidate to be placed in nomination at a Democratic convention, the late Rep. Shirley Chisholm.
Rep. Withers proposed utilizing the United Nations as a springboard for reaching the continent through individual ambassadors. Dating back before Marcus Garvey, the State Department has adhered to a policy of resistance to African American efforts to establish independent relationships with Africa. This policy and the attitude fostering it exiled one of America=s greatest statesmen, Pan-Africanism protagonist, Dr. Paul Robeson. Roadblocks and a glaring lack of support from the federal government sabotaged Rep. Withers= initiative. The State=s antagonist tactics blocked access to virtually all trading arenas except one. Dominating African trade then, as it does today, Rep. Withers= efforts were reduced to dealing solely with agribusiness exports. This discriminatory system and the hostile business environment in which African Americans must operate lie at the heart of the Withers= initiative failure.
In spite of adamant State opposition, Rep. Withers= efforts provided a tiny portal to the outside world for Memphians desperate to connect with their roots. Rep. Withers= African trade experiences with white companies is a lesson in Africa Hustle 101. After a series of introductory meetings with different groups representing various interests, wining and dining, and a junket or two, it was time to do business. With no assistance from the State Department, Rep. Withers was a very little fish in a very big pond. One can always tell when sharks are in the water. Lots of pearly whites are exposed, while the entourage gets smaller and smaller. The finale for Rep. Withers= project came like musical chairs. Everyone originally assigned to the project were replaced; everything came crashing down. Withers= strategic plan fell victim to the same set of unwritten guidelines that have governed African Americans since their arrival on America=s shores as slaves. These were the first African exports imported to work in the southern agribusiness. The Withers= experience is vintage American; it is widely understood that any African American unwilling to play the face man is cut out entirely. This is African American Hustle 101.
ICIM does not oppose President Clinton=s effort on behalf of Sub-Saharan Africa. Everyone acknowledges this region=s dire needs. The objective is increasing the scope of what can be accomplished with the same economic effort, if conceptual adjustments are made. Presently, everyone is focusing on what is being done for Africa. All considerations are directed toward operations on the ground there. Lost in the shuffle are considerations for activities taking place on this side of the Atlantic. Realizing the huge profits from this deal requires American workers. Through this report, ICIM, Inc.=s Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation envisions a means of satisfying all interests in a less competitive win-win environment, while accomplishing the major objectives of increased trade and global peace.
As previously stated, had the federal government acted as an earnest broker for Rep. Withers and others, we would enjoy independent relations with Africa, hence eliminating the need for the present exercise. That not being the case, African Americans are in the same position as Africans, needing assistance. This major drawback, observed in previous projects, is evident in the current exercise. Like drought, the absence of venture capital locks African Americans into sharecropper arrangements. With no control over crucial capital resources, the seeds of these efforts fell on barren soil. In Withers= case, his inability to maintain close contact with key players spelled doom for his project. Because old contacts were continually replaced with new ones, he was forced into the untenable position of always starting over, going from one financier to another with similar results. Withers found himself going in circles, trapped in the catch 22 that has caged African Americans since the beginning of slavery.
If viewed from the proper perspective, the present African initiative can serve as a means of addressing claims of reparations or as a form of affirmative action, and would not affect any existing contracts or job status. America will never have a better opportunity to structure a situation where African Americans can form the foundation of what will be built. Most of what will become African trade has yet to be created. The infrastructure necessary has not gone to the architects. The necessary communication networks are not programmed. The essential dockside support systems, as well as, regional distribution channels are not even being discussed. If most African Americans were to take part in some business endeavor involving African trade, this would not satisfy half of the total demand of Africa. Undertaking the present initiative from this perspective will make President Clinton=s initiative the greatest achievement of an American President since the Civil War. Done properly, leaders today can leave future generations a legacy of true peace and prosperity.
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It=s Been a Long Time Coming, But I Know, Change Is Going to Come!
This article=s title is from a blues ballad by Sam Cook. Performed during the late 1950's, it is a heart wrenching confessional bemoaning the pains, trails and tribulations of life, while offering the elixir of hope, reeking of slavery=s legacy. As participants in the first National Summit on Africa held at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, Georgia, May 6-10,1998, America and the world experienced Sam=s prophecy in all it celestial splendor. Affectionately know as "Mr. Cool," during his life, Sam demonstrated that even if one does not possess great skills, one can make great efforts. If one is imaginative, innovative, and trusts his/her intuition, he/she can soar. Learning to bin notes, the southern "compare trouvere" created such melodious crescendos. He was proclaimed the pied piper of soul.
Unfortunately to some, what attendee received during the summit was nothing more than a song and dance. Given the harmony displayed by Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich crooning along, skeptics feel no good can come of this. However, this reporter was immensely gratified at the site of so many people gathered to discuss problems confronting the motherland. For Africa, Sam=s lyrics, AIt=s been too hard living but I=m afraid to die,@ is a true notation of Africa=s swan song since colonialism. Conversely, in the United States of America, the wins of change are blowing the summit=s African symphony in the right direction.
DISH will provide an overview of the summit and its implications in a subsequent issue. This article simply communicates basic ideas behind the current effort. First, the National Summit on Africa is working to create a public forum to debate issues, plan strategy, and implement initiatives which impact Africa positively. Memories and emotions reminiscent of the civil rights movement were triggered by the comradery. Contrary to those days of blood and degradation however, this was an international gathering of imminent personalities such as President Mwelimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania now retired, Minister Dr. Nathan Shamuyarira of Zimbabwe, the Honorable Jack Kemp, Dr. Della McMillian, University of Florida, The Executive Director of CFA, the irrepressible Mel P. Foote, U S Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater, and President Henri Konan Bedie, of Cote d=Ivoire among many others. The spiritual leader of the summit, Ambassador Andrew Young serves as one of the co-chairs, set the tone of the summit, AAfrica does matter.@
Ambassador Young granted DISH an interview during the summit. It was one of his renowned strolling talks between his many meetings during the five day summit. The Ambassador and this reporter faced some bitter truths during this brief conversation. Responding to a comment regarding a comparison of the civil rights movement and the significance of the summit, he waxed stoically. AYes it is true, African Americans have needed a spark since the death of Dr. King. His death knocked us off balance; it was like being stopped in mid stride. And yes, it was a devastating blow. We knew it could happen, but no one was prepared for the reality.@ As he spoke, he voiced a shared observation. AI made bad decisions, but we all did. No one could have fore seen what was about to happen and the impact it would have on everyone and everything.@ This reporter remembers the pain, turmoil, confusion, and recriminations. It was like Rome after Julius Caesar. The emperor=s crown lay in the gutter for whomever desired to pick it up. Ambassador Young sounded the refrain of hope for change beginning this article. AWith this summit all of us get a second chance to get it right. Hundred of the thousands of individuals around the world have mobilized to place Africa on the front burner of international concerns. When this process is completed, Africans and African Americans will never again struggle to tap into the consciousness of the world. At the close of this National Summit on Africa in November 1999, linkages established will allow African Americans and others of like minds to speak with one voice. That will truly be the fulfillment of Dr. King=s dream.@
Ambassador Young, like Sam Cook, is deeply rooted in the gospel which provided both with an abiding fate in the possibility of change not only in the individual, but in his circumstances. Although not a crooner, as either of these dynamic gentlemen, nevertheless, this reporter enthusiastically adds his voice to the growing chorus harmonizing mother Africa=s significance. Many take this need for granted, but it is as Ambassador Young says AAfrica does matters!@
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Children of Fear Watching Falling Stars With a Poet
by John B. Smith
On June 1-3, 1998, the Georgia Council on Child Abuse held its 14th annual Training Symposium at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta, Georgia to drive home AThe Power of Prevention.@ Jill Breland of GCCA spoke about the symposium=s purpose. AGCCA presents this conference each year as a training session for professional and lay persons working on behalf of children. Our goal is to provide information about trends, techniques, and state of the art developments in the area of child abuse.@ Gatherings, such as this, allow groups and individuals to present new, innovative and creative approaches to child abuse prevention. In addition to reporting on the symposium, The DISH=s editorial staff wanted to share with participants ICIM, Inc.=s commitment to youth, a series of programs developed through its research initiatives. These programs are conducted through the Richard L. Kirksey Memorial Foundation.
ICIM=s commitment to youth concept is centered around T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution. This article=s title appropriately comes from the book=s Lesson Three. In this lesson, author Yohannes Sharriff Smith, like most young people today, found himself trapped by life=s circumstances without any real choices. Overwhelmed by expectations, feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, life turned a murky ash gray. The thought AI will never get it right, and even if I do, it will not be good enough@ hovered like El Nino. Waylaid by the pressure cooker of immaturity, rational thoughts lost respect, and wacked-out schemes seemed lucid. Desperation became his constant companion. Suddenly, the once mild mannered young man enrolls in the cult of us versus them, or me versus the world.
How could a young person come to feel this way? What kind of trouble - meaning crime - did he get himself into in order to feel so desperate? T.H.I.N.C. answers these questions and shares Yohannes= lessons of living and learning. T.H.I.N.C. provides a lifeline for other young people; it is a beacon of hope for those struggling to find clarity, and wishing to reduce the space separating humans - maybe not enough to touch, but no longer like ships in the night.
It is clear from interviews at the symposium with Lindy Smith of Parent and Children Together from Decatur, Alabama, Jason Woods of Bibb County DFACS/CPS from Macon, Marcia Wilson of Richmond County DFACS from Augusta, and others, America=s dilemma is young people and adults see the problem fundamentally differently. Consequently, what adults propose as solutions, young people ignore or reject out right. Concerns young people feel and believe are theirs by right, adults trample at will. Adults feel the problems are not enough discipline and youth church attendance. Whereas, youth are convinced too much discipline is the problem. Furthermore, they feel one gets church everywhere, at school, on the radio and TV; it even knocks at the door.
Unscientific though it may be, this survey identifies the chasm dividing young and old in this society. The fraying of social cohesion is the El Corazon of this matter; it is a language everyone understands. Denying the facts will not change the reality of Springfield, Pearl, Paducah, Jonesboro, and others. In these wars, all sides lose. What will the survivors reap as spoils? Will they be harvested by some opportunistic dictator?
Children of Fear Watching Falling Stars with a Poet metaphorically represents the desperate battle human being=s fight trying to hold onto cherished beliefs in the face of totally disconfirming information. At some point, one must cease questioning reality and begin to examine one=s beliefs. America believes children are either inherently evil and cannot be saved, or that they are works in progress and can be improved. America is again at an important crossroads. It must reaffirm its commitment to justice, fairness, freedom of expression, and equality for all. The shame of slavery was not just in what it did to Africans, but what it did to the American psyche in order to justify slavery=s existence. Once a nation accepts discriminating against any of its members, the rights of all are in peril. "The wages of sin is death." If India can Pak-its-stan with an Armageddon road show, everyone can party until doomsday!
Cherokee County, Georgia is keeping a 13-year-old boy locked up until his trial for allegedly threatening classmates and teachers. Adults threaten others daily, and nothing is done. Salem=s witch-hunting is alive and well in Georgia. Where is the Civil Liberties Union?
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Cloud of Suspicion !!
The current Republican strategy is a thinly veiled make over of the southern plantation system during the antebellum south. Until the 1960s, the instrument of southern political power was segregation. As during slavery, segregationists used the cloud suspicion to isolate blacks. This pincer-wedge maneuver was designed to keep white women from viewing slaves sympathetically, while forcing them to support slavery, and accept domination by white men. Projected larger than life, efforts to impeach the President were hatched with this same strategy in mind. Southern conservative religious zealots must break the bond created by the civil rights movement between blacks and white women. These forces have always been an antithetical to any gains made by this group during the intervening years.
The wedge in the Republicans strategy is dividing women on the issue of sexual harassment, and reproductive freedom. Women would be pincered as a political voice, a cloud of suspicion grows as to what women concerns to support. Injecting the cloud of suspicion was developed to perfection during slavery, and was the reagent in maintaining the wedge between slaves and white women. The psychology underlying the cloud was, A All niggers lie, you know that. Name one you can trust.@ At that point, one could not persist without drawing suspicion upon one self. Trapped, white women went along, and accepted domination.
Women being divided and encircled is the bases of male dominance. Tragedies awaiting women are mirrored in the suffering of women in Walton County Georgia over fifty years ago. Women of Walton County were trapped in a system of domination so complete, they saw each other as the enemy. Gangs of white men terrorized, raped, and lynched black men who spoke up, represented the law. The most notorious event was the murder of two black couples at Moore=s Ford in 1948. As during slavery, white women accepted domination, and looked the other way while their husbands raped black women as a matter of policy. The cloud of suspicion makes one conscious of being a woman, black, gay, liberal, therefore you can become a target.
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Dialogue On Race: The Urban Crisis!!
Western Man views himself as the hand which turns the universal clock, rather than one of the many gears which help keep the hands moving. Unlike time, human beings are emotionally laden, ruled by individual passion. Pressed to the wall and forced to respond, inconsistency becomes our true nature. The hand of time rasps unemotionally man=s role in the universal cycle. That distillation titrates human events, reflect the true worth of ones life in history=s mirror.
Historians describe the 1960s and 70s as a crisis period for America=s cities. Accordingly, they were deemed expendable. Opposing segregation drenched the United States Constitution in the blood of black children, and flowed into a second Civil War. Segregationists prevent blacks from gaining political power and controlled their economic development. Racist southern Democrats, Dixiecrats as they were known, represented the party will. FDR=s ANew Deal@ entrenched Dixiecrats and silicified the South.
The Supreme Court=s decision in Brown v Board of Education and subsequent edict Aall deliberate speed,@ inflamed white passions. Whites were committed to segregation forever. Pursuant to that goal, whites elected demigods advocating interposition, nullification, states rights, even secession. A crisis mentality developed reflecting their double bind. Impaled on the crucifix of racism, and feeding their racist impulses, whites elected politicians espoused the most outrageous racist policies. Conversely, those elected were not motivated by civic concerns. Gratuitously, these hooded politicians served a plethora of economic interests.
For instance, Atlanta, Georgia, AThe Black Mecca,@ adopted the limited participation model. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.=s assassination prompted Mayor Ivan Allen to give blacks political control, but whites maintained the purse strings. He integrated some neighborhoods and schools. Allen conceded a few high profile jobs, and Atlanta became an equal opportunity employer. Considering the time and the meager experience blacks possessed, accepting this deal seemed a very enlighten approach.
Under the guise of AThe Urban Crisis,@ Dixiecrats organized white resistance using bank red lining, closing off home sells in white communities to blacks, establishing segregated schools in churches, and facilitating white flight. The idea was to destroy the urban tax base, and drain inner cities of resources. Whites overriding concerns were blocking civil rights advances, and controlling black economic development. Dixiecrat backroom deals created quasi-legislative bodies which subsumed all responsibility for economic development in areas where blacks gained political power. Dixiecrats maintained control through boards and commissions like the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. This legacy lives on today in the Atlanta Regional Commission, local Arts Councils, Atlanta Empowerment Zone Committee, The Atlanta Project, and Central Atlanta Project, etc. Capturing government funds ear marked for urban areas, or serving as gatekeepers and conduits through which request for funding must be submitted, these overarching boards and commissions occupy strategic positions. Funneling resources to benefit white inner-city enclaves, such commissions are catch basins, the embodiment of Ataxation without representation@ for blacks.
Although white politicians scrimmaged for control of local resources, everyone agreed on segregation, until Dr. King=s assassination. Changing public perceptions of segregation and those espousing it, forced accommodation. Dixiecrats acknowledged segregation=s wrongs, and adopted the Ivan Allen model, appeasing blacks.
Antithetically, Republicans were quick to recognize that racial hatred was stronger than party loyalty. Opportunistically, Republicans saw civil rights gains as the opening needed to crack the solid south. Desperate for power, Republican fiends fanned flames fueling fanatics fighting for financial favors from farmers. They opposed busing, open housing, full and fair employment, affirmative action, women, gays, and all remedy proposed to alleviate suffering and inequalities blacks endured. Groveling in the outhouse of deception like opossums, Republicans recruited well known Dixiecrats like Sen. John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, and Jesse Helm to lead the attack on civil rights. Simultaneously, the likes of Thad Cochran, Newt Gingrich, and Trent Lott were elevated, and the southern axis took control of the Republican Party.
A
The Urban Crisis,@ became the AContract With America,@ something on which whites could unite. Newt Gingrich and the Republicans dressed their wolf in sheep=s clothing, and took control of Congress in 1994. Today, the hand of time turns America=s face back to the looking class. Newt and his boys want to take America back to AReaganomics,@ and the social policies of the 1950s. Rapping themselves in the veil of Caesar=s wife, they hope to drive the President of The United States of America from office by branding him a liar. Not speaking candidly about sex is no worst hypocrisy than selling tax cuts, and AThe Contract With America.@as reform. This bogus document is a ATrojan horse@ designed to disguise the Christian Coalition=s rise to power. No matter what Newt and the Republicans claim time has revealed the truth, and anyone looking in the mirror recognize the Jackals they are!Back || ICIM Home || THINC || DISH || Top of Page || Chronicles
By John Burl Smith
It is amazing when one considers the amount of knowledge which can be assimilated in a relatively short time frame. However, an even more startling realization is that human beings are capable of retaining esoteric information in memory, and associating it unpredictably with seemingly unrelated situations in very generalized and speculative ways. The fruit of this consideration bears out claims, that some totally new dynamics were at work in last week=s midterm elections. Retrospectively, sometimes a portal to the future provides a reflection from the past which reveals its relevance to the present.
For instance, on April 4, 1968, the Invaders meet with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Loraine Motel to discuss tactical support for the sanitation workers striker, and their march. Dr. King laid out his strategy for Memphis, and implored us to join the APoor Peoples March@ to Washington D. C. later that summer. He envisioned the Invaders spearheading an effort to link black power groups across America into a support network. Black militant groups were needed to supply field workers to help organize and mobilize for the APoor Peoples Campaign.@
Years later, in 1977, while taking a political science course at Shelby State Community College in Memphis, taught by long time west Tennessee Democratic strategist John Spence, the significance of Dr. King=s APoor Peoples Campaign@ blossomed. Professor Spence=s lectures examined the dynamics of power relationships. Basically, the balance of power model developed during the cold war, as applied to a by-polar verses Multi-polar world framed the parameters. The antithetical balance of power paradigm dictated an American foreign and domestic policy status quo steeped in a by-polar world.
Multi-polar dynamics was the goal Dr. King envisioned for the APoor Peoples Campaign.@ His strategy was to build coalitions among blacks, poor whites, native Americans, Hispanics, women, labor, and other groups mired in poverty. He planned to galvanize them around welfare, political, and economic rights. Dr. King hoped to change the relationship between this class and the powers that be. He theorized, by bring large numbers of poor together in Washington D.C., these constituencies would not only offer a show of force, but engage one another face-to-face on an individual level. Dr. King believed, such dynamic interactions would debunk the balance of power theory which pitted these groups one against the other to maintain political and economic power in America.
That assassins= bullet not only cut down a mighty tree, it left the fruit rotting in the field. The Invaders commitment to Dr. King=s strategy of a multi-polar world required forging a totally new ideological and methodological approach. The Invaders needed a completely new philosophy to determine true needs, and a totally new psychology for satisfying those needs. Like a horticulturist worst nightmare, the seeds of today=s new political dynamics germinated in rock hard ground, however, the soil was fertile. As Dr. King=s strategy predicted, the symbiotic relationships developed during the APoor Peoples Campaign@ matured allowing issues such as welfare, political, and economic needs to be pursued as coalition goals. This shift mitigated other narrowly focused competing interest. Hence the new political dynamics.
A recent movie AThe Long Kiss Goodnight,@ presents a surreal relationship between Gena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. In caricature, their relationship reflects America=s political and economic dilemma, while pointing out the difficulty in changing cold war dynamics. Under such circumstances, as Dr. King saw it, alone one will never succeed. So, it is with these intrepid heros. The need to commit to one another fortified the demand to commit to something greater than themselves, if they hoped to foil their well funded and very powerful adversary. In very real terms, the last election proved it is possible for such a diverse coalition to commit to something greater than self-interest. The true test of consolidating political power is whether or not they can commit to each other, so that all groups share power equally?
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Juvenile Justice: A Myth
Although Correction Crop of America does not have a contract with the state of Georgia, it plans to build a $45 million facility in McRae. Set to open by February 2000, this prison will be within a few miles of two other prisons in Telfair County. The problem is that no one in state government has even signed off on the project. No need assessment has been conducted, or bid request solicited. This is purely private enterprise.
CCA=s VP Peggy Lawrence, after admitting her company has no contract to build the 1,500 bed facility, stated ACCA does not build speculative prisons. That is not our business. We don=t always do it with a signed document, but we do it with ... a good assurance that those beds will be used. Telfair County Commission Chairman Chester Swain while talking about negotiations that began two weeks ago said, AThis thing is moving so fast. I=ve told you everything I can tell you. We were needing something in the county for some employment. This supposedly will employ between 350 and 400 people.@ The DISH=s concern is that counties like Telfair are becoming more and more dependent on prisons to provide jobs. For instance, even though there are four state prisons in the counties surrounding Telfair, local officials want more. They reason A the jobs boost the local economy.@
State Corrections Commissioner Wayne Garner responded AWe have not had any negotiations with them, period, about these facilities.@ But Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry Coleman, who represents Telfair says AThe talks have progressed to the point where CCA has said it will charge the state the same $44.95 to $48.10 per inmate per diem that it charges at its other two prisons in Georgia. Governor Roy Barnes, who seems lukewarm on the project feels, AWe=ve used a mixture of public and private, and I think it=s an appropriate thing to use a mixture,@
Reporting on this story Rhonda Cook, AJC (12-9-98) revealed a CCA run prison in Ohio had five dangerous inmates escape. It was reported by the U. S. Department of Justice the medium-security prison was housing high security inmates from Washington in its Youngtown facility. Among other things CCA accepted inmates even though the Youngtown prison was not ready for occupancy. Furthermore, security was flawed and guards were not well-trained.
Although the Governor, who is from south Georgia, supports a mix, The DISH believes this whole concept needs to be reevaluated. When a state or county becomes dependent on incarcerating citizens as a means of reducing unemployment and boost its economy, citizens are at risk. Southerners have not forgotten the infamous chain gangs, and how counties used prisoners as a part of the local economy. The rights of black and poor whites were violated to feed this monstrous system. Housing prisoners is big business today. Wall Street is in the prison business, therefore justice takes a back seat.
What does America=s approach to incarcerating the young say about us as people? In our quest to turn a profit from the misery of those trapped at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, we now prey on children. State Governments will not provide rehabilitation for inmates. Private companies do not provide rehabilitation. Under present circumstances, prisoners have become a product. With the state and private industry competing for the same product, what is the incentive in giving probation or parole. Keeping people locked up has risen to the level of an economic asset. Shades of slavery!!!
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Genocide By Assumption!
For police and white communities, the assumption is while pursuing truth and justice, law enforcement protects people and serve communities. The converse is true in African American communities. Police operate with a threat mentality which assumes, ABlacks have done or will do something against the law.@ Therefore, whites are ready to respond to the black threat.
Aggressive pursuit policies make black Americans targets of law enforcement. A badge is a licence to kill. Consequently, African Americans are gunned down, as though they live in Dodge City one hundred years ago.
The genocidal aspect of law enforcement is rooted in racism, because the instution of justice functions to deny African Americans equal justice. Atlanta Journal Constitution (2-13-99) reported crime lab problems. GBI Director Milton Nix was forced to admit Aevidence reported by scientist could not be verified.@ Lab workers were, Amishandling or losing evidence, even filing false reports suggesting test were conducted when they were not.@ Coweta Judicial Circuit Prosecutor Pete Skandalakis, blamed it all on, Athe Lab is overworked, underfunded and undermanned. It=s not surprising that some of the scientists may have cut corners.@ However, since most drug evidence is tainted, and the vast majority of young black men in jail are there on drug charges, it seems police and prosecutors have simply made up drug charges lock black people up.
The clearest example of why law enforcement poses such a threat to black people is Amadou Diallo. Inexplicably, this 22-years old unarmed black man was shot to death in the doorway of his New York City apartment building. AI thought he had a gun.@ were the officers response. Give these four officers any test, and they would never respond in the same way, at the same time to the same incident. For African Americans the absurdity of in this tradegy is that whites feel sufficient justification to murder African Americans on snap judgements. American police have never killed a white person under such circumstances. Remember Tyisha Miller. America is guilty of genocide.
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Letter to Mississippi Governor
December 2, 1998
The Honorable Kirt Fordice
Governor, State of Mississippi
P O Box 139, Jackson, Mississippi
Sir:
Two Weeks ago, November 14, 1998 Yohannes Sharriff Smith, author of T.H.I.N.C.(Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution was in your state for a performance in Columbus. The Dismukes family was celebrating the return of their prodigal Robert. Tour manager for the ABrothers Unlimited Band, ACaptain Black brings his considerable experience to Yohannes= road show. This stop over gave Yohannes an opportunity to hang out and vibe with some extreme young brothers and sisters while rocking a righteous message of personal responsibility.
The downside of this visit slammed us like a wraith from the 1930s. Yohannes asked about performing for the kids at a local shelter for troubled youth and orphans: the Palmer Home. He was taken aback by a young sister=s jolting revelation, AThey want let you in that place. They do not admit black kids. They ain=t never let no black kids live there. I don=t believe they have any black employees.@ Inquiring further, several adults confirmed the astute young sister=s shocking statement. Currently, it is politically correct to speak of how far Mississippi has come in dealing with its racial problems, and how the state is apart of the new South. In reality, black people in Columbus have not experienced this change. Prime facile evidence indicates, there are certainly plenty of qualified young blacks to fill any vacancy at the Palmer Home as guest or clients.
For any vestige of segregation to remaining in 1998, only belies how committed the state is to the separate but equal philosophy blacks have endured since Reconstruction ended. Charity is the truest expression of love, and knows no color. In Luke 18:16 Jesus Christ said ASuffer little children come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.@ If Mississippi is still apart of the United States of America, how can your state care for white children and allow black children to live on the streets?
Republicans are touting the Bushsonian politics emerging in the South, as the road to the white house in 2000. This so called compassionate conservatism seems to be all show and no dough. On the stump, it is easy to proclaim a new frontier in race relations, but something else entirely to bring about real change. Republicans took over Governors= mansions using the same tact as Republicans in Congress. Even though Republicans governors have done little to change the everyday existence of black and poor people, the media is heralding junior as savior. An objective glance shows Texas as a state which house=s children in the same prisons as adults, and which showed absolutely no compassion for Carla Faye Tucker. Do Americans want a President willing to executed human beings, simply to make political points with conservatives by showing he is tough on crime? The question here is, can we trust his finger on the nuclear trigger?
It is true, governors are closer to the people, therefore they have a great impact on their daily lives. Consequently, a lack of gubernatorial vigilance has perpetuated institutionalized racism. The trap root of segregation drew its nourishment through the state being the enforcement agency. The State of Mississippi was an active participant in denying blacks constitutional rights, and in its fight to preserve segregation, it never dismantled its enforcement apparatus. It has not put the effort and resources into ending segregation, it put into enforcing it.
Today, the same denial continues. Justice demands all vestiges of defacto segregation be rooted out immediately, starting with the Palmer Home. Citizen action in Georgia brought about a federal investigation of its juvenile justice system. That investigation uncovered many of the same horror story parents and friends say inmates are experiencing in Mississippi. African Americans have paid taxes as white Mississippians, and demand the same benefits and protections. Whether the new Republican slogan rings hollow, or true, African Americans judge performance daily. The Bushsonains will have to ante up or follow Newt. I await your timely response regarding the resolution of this unfair and unequal situation.
Thank you. John Burl Smith
cc: Ronnie Musgrove, Lt. Governor
Trent Lott, Majority Leader
Charles L. Cabbage, Black Organizing Project
Rep. James Clyburn, Congressional Black Caucus
Linda Garmon, ABC News
Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General
Donna Shalala, Secretary Health and Human Services
Vincent E. Taylor, Platium Mortage
Brother Jibril LaGrant, Marcus Garvey Collaborative Institute
Rep. Bob Livingston, Speaker of the House of Representatives
Rep. Maxine Waters, Congressional Black Cascus
Lee Jasper, Jubilee 2000
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On Wednesday, December 9, 1998, Franklin Zimring announced the startling finding of their two-year study of juvenile crime statistics. As the author of the study, Prof. Zimring concluded that tougher laws aimed at youthful lawbreakers are based on Adeeply flawed analyses of juvenile violence statistics.@ Following up on that statement, Dr. Zimring explained AWe=re not any more violent than we were 10 to 20 years ago. We=re just paying more attention to the violence. What The MacArthur Foundation wants the American people to understand is that AA change in how police report juvenile crimes, particularly assault and aggravated assault, has resulted in an artificial crime wave. What you find out about aggravated assault and assault since the mid-1980s, quite independent of whether youth behavior has been changing, police behavior has been changing significantly.@ The inference is that Apolice have been reducing the threshold of what constitutes assault and aggravated assault, reflecting the apparent increase in crime.@
Zimring et al reported ASince 1980 arrest rates for ages 13-17 showed no significant trend for rape and robbery, and have actually gone down since about 1993. Homicide arrest rates for ages 13-17 showed a sharp increase during the interval from 1984 to 1992, then fell by a third by 1996. In 1997 the decrease was 16 percent.
To prepare for the imagined storm of juvenile violence, states like Georgia pasted laws lowering the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults. As of June 30, 1998, 2,300 youthful offenders have been subject to this law (Senate Bill 440). Young people have been pencil whipped into lower and stricter categories of criminality. Hence the need for more prisons.
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Dialogue on Race: Downbeating The Rails!!
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) offers an excellent example of how the Republican southern axis obscure their backroom deals on boards and commissions through control of local politics. Siphoning off funds previously mandated to eradicate poverty and develop inner-cities, these good-o-boys engineered white flight. Fueled by the elixir of local control, tax cuts moved the process even faster. Buttressed by their AContract With America,@ Republicans transferred wealth from the lowest 70% of the population to the richest 30%, taxation without representation.
The Christian Coalition soared to power demanding lesser and smaller government which citizens wanted off their backs. Republicans went hydrophobic over big government, and regulations they claimed intruded on free market capitalism.
Today, The Atlanta Regional Commission is composing a real show stopper. It hopes to swoon the public by building a rail line between Atlanta and Chattanooga. Its purpose is to relieve traffic associated with Hartsfield International Airport, and reduce air pollution. A real sour note for most, ARC=s new tune about trains, is a song and dance reminiscent of AShowboat.@
Listening to ARC=s sonata, one is convinced the urban crisis clamor was a round lullaby which put everyone to sleep. Members are harmonizing to developers= siren song of progress. Hi-tech words, but the same old rap and rhyme melody. No hip hopper, ARC Director Harry West Abeat boxed A his way to a very high note. @This $15 billion project will offset the surge in mileage driven by residents in the 10 counties region.@ ARC=s production claims not only to reduce sprawl, AIt will relieve traffic congestion, and address air quality problems.@
Universally, Republicans decry FDR=s ANew Deal@ as pork, big government run amok. Were FDR to return and observe Republicans reincarnated as Zigfield, he would claim them like a proud papa. In an interview with Kelly Simmons(AJC), the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich added lyrics to ARC=s beat, @In signing on to this project for a high speed rail system between Chattanooga and metro Atlanta, $ 7.5 to $10 million will be included in the Interstate Surface Transportation Efficiency Act funding this spring. This region needs some alternative transportation options. Under a long range plan a high-speed rail eventually extending to Charlotte and Tampa from Atlanta, and to Knoxville and Nashville from Chattanooga would do that.@
A public works program by any other name is still a public works program. Does the Speaker envision steam rolling a bigger majority to Washington on AThe Chattanooga Choo-Choo?@ Is engineer Gingrich laying tracks for the AGreat Locomotive Race@ to the White House? Looking at this project, are the valentines in Newt=s bulldawg eyes a clear signal his disdain for big government has turned to puppy love? FDR must be blushing. They used to tar and feather scalawags, and ride them out of town on a rail, today they ride rapid rails to the White House.
DISH conservatively estimates this project will cost upwards of $22 billion. The Speaker=s basso profundo bravado for this mastodonic public works project produced crescendos among developers, but not in the polls. For years, ARC shifted resources from urban to suburban areas in this region. Southwest and northwest Atlanta, as well as south DeKalb County have never realized the bright promises of civil rights. Like a James Brown refrain, fewer and fewer dollars trickle down. Continuing this trend, ARC proposed developments in Cobb, North Fulton, and counties north of Atlanta. Although not a member of the ARC, Atlanta=s Mayor, ignobly ham-boning in the wings, must crooned in with a heart throbbing $2.5 billion. But, Atlanta will not receive a single development over the life of the twenty year project.. With no black employees, all ARC=s board members except one are white. A true sleeper, he is comfortable at the back of the pack. No member represents the interests of blacks and minorities. No commissioner raises issues of ensuring access, openness, equity, and fairness for poor people.
The ARC crows like minstrels presenting its plan as if it is a pretty little pony everyone loves. But from this reporter=s perspective, twenty years on the tracks, this little pony will have grown into a humongous ATrojan horse.@ ARC=s foot-in-the-door technique aims to hoodwink the public into grub staking these high rolling supply siders in their backroom crap shoot. The trick in this off track schemes is to get the public in the hold before they recognize this pig as pork. Otherwise, presto perfecto, like a hedge fund, these Afast Eddies@ can put the ARC=s feed bag on their nag as often as they please.
Although paragons of little government and free market capitalism, it rings clear, Newt and his Christian coalition choir have gotten that old time religion and see the light, shades of David Stockman. It seems aboard Newt=s redeye special, high rolling supply siders will ride the rails back to the snake oil and revival days of voodoo economics. Hallelujah, Newt and the southern axis chorus embracing such old fashion liberal environmental concerns as clean air, suburban sprawl, and mass transit is a metamorphosis!!
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Roots Of Jonesboro
Wednesday, March 18, 1998,Woman In Film Atlanta along with TAPA presented a panel discussion entitled AThe State of The Georgia Film Industry@ Forum at the Center Stage Theater. The panel, a diverse upper middle group from the industry, took a A Where are we now, and where can we go from here?@ approach to Atlanta=s stagnant film and entertainment dilemma. Everyone seen to sleepwalked arriving at the realization, everyone=s brain is on hold in regards to what to do for AA Reversal of Fortunes.@ Such a story would be a great hit for Atlanta, if the story could find a great leading man to carry a nebulous plot, and weak cast, but a great location. What=s wrong with this picture is no producer. Those on the panel looked else where for answers , while some in the audience felt the answer lie closer to home.
One questioner posed this situation as typical, AAtlanta has a growing community of young, talented, creative, and industrious black performers who have build a vibrant poetry venue, and they are do some real outstanding stuff with nothing. If you want Atlanta to be great for out of town films, you have to make it great for in town performers. This town has anti-youth bent. Young people in Atlanta are presona non grata: check out Freaknik. Atlanta does not view its young people as having anything to offer. In Atlanta, they are expected to reflect only one image or they are shut out of community life. A city can not grow when it will not allow its children free expression. How are they to learn how to make good choices, if they are not allowed to make mistakes. Sexuality is driving this nation insane. I have my sexuality, I grant you the right to yours. Now, less get on with >the morning after.= Who knows if a child will express a gay lifestyle when they reach thirty-five, the age I was when I got married. What really matters is they will have had the opportunity to explore their reality.@
The panel was at a lost for a plan to improve the situation. Everyone wants to help children, but only if they are not on drugs, do not have a record, are not sexually active, no behavioral or emotional problems, and are not gay. Many of these children have no place to go and nothing to do. Some live on the street with no opportunities, and little or no access to community services. All youth are constantly subject to police harassment at every point. This society is at war with it children and the kids fighting back the only way they know how. Although this is a perspective on the film industry, what follows is a tragedy, it not movie.
The article in AWHAT=S TRUMP ?@ (Vol. # 4) entitled A All That Glitters Is Not A Gun!@ began, A Today, Sunday, November Ninth, Nineteen hundred ninety-seven, While millions of Americans gather to praise their creator and renew their commitment to manifest the life of Jesus Christ, I pray for world peace, justice, and compassion. Whites tucked snugly in hauberk suburbia, and blacks huddled chillingly in urban enclaves feel all is well with the world. Even I was settled cozily with coffee and a newspaper, when a thunderbolt of reality crashed through my glass ceiling existence devouring my comfortable darkness.@ I went on to explain that, AA 17 year old African American man was shot by a United States Marshal, while walking down a street in New York City. The US Marshal said he thought the candy the young man was eating was a gun, so he shot the kid.@ This is the same city where a few months earlier, law enforcement officers brutally assaulted an African American man with a plunger, basically because no one was watching they thought cared. Here is where America=s problem begins: In the mind. The fact that a law enforcement agent feels there are some people society accepts as outside of its protection is the problem. This attitude tells policeman that it is alright to express what is going on in their mind as though it is the reality, sets a society up to commit all kinds of inhumanity, not only to children.
I have spent the last thirty years of life working in the field of applied science, specifically urban psychology. The new generation author Yohannes Sharriff Smith in his philosophical treaties, T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution, explores the impact of hypocrisy implied in the stereotypes of contemporary society. His premise is, Aat the base of America=s hypocrisy lies slavery. When a nation builds into its legal system a concept that, base solely on race some people legally deserve more and others are legally less. By birth, such people are undeserving of human concern and compassion. That nation must creates within itself the means to enforce that sentiment. As this fact becomes more and more obvious, a society must make a clean break with its past, or build in systems to maintain the status quo.
Later in that same article I show America=s past has contemporary reflections, AAs iniquitous America plays Picasso, Lyndon Mosley and other black youth are trapped in their fresco reflected against a backdrop of heinous criminals. Broad strokes of light and shadow, paint a young black face as public enemy number one. Today, America is ringing its hands lamenting as Jeremiah over the tragedy in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I picked Cotton in this area, and it shares slavery=s legacy. As with slavery, America will do as Pontius Pilate, wash it hand of the problem by blaming the out of control youth. Another mind game, control is the illusion of power over other and the idea that all people are the same. Consequently, they all can be treated the same when it comes to discipline.
John Locke=s concept of Atabula rosa@ presumes that at birth children have blank personality at birth. Therefore their personality can be created for them. Die hard Freudians will point to studies on repression to show control is the problem. They feel the personality needs to be totally free. Then John Watson introduced behaviorism with his stimulus-response paradigm. His theory gave credence to those who believe slavery did have a lasting impact on the mental and physical development of African Americans. Jean Piaget, French developmentalist, speculated that development does not travel a straight line, suggesting the personality has already begin forming at birth, but humans express certain aspects at different periods. What is different is Psychologists proior to Piaget, dismissed mind as a viable aspect of the human psychi. I share the view that there is a critical period, beginning at birth when touching, caressing, holding, and closeness to other human being creates the initial bonds of love. If a child does not experience the humanity of a care-giver during this period, I believe only a prodigious effort on the part of some caring individual will have a hope of breaking through the wall, the children builds up to protect them from a world that does not care about their pain. Scientists do not understand this phenomenon. Most agree that these children are the ones most likely to have problem forming bonds with other individual and society=s institutions.
The one thing these children share with other children is the pressure to conform. The problem is that these children respond to such pressure as a provocation, and they are prong to over react to what most would consider relatively minor events. They expect rejection and the world accommodates them. These children are not America=s problem, they are just a symptom. The problem is that children are born and grow up, yet do not become attached to people or society. The tap root here is hypocrisy. It lies at the heart of a society where people fighting to save unborn children, demand the death penalty for fourteen year oldes, and bomb places where people who disagree with them gather.
There is an illness afoot in America which demands more control over children lives. Zero tolerance, curfews, dress codes, policies against hugging and touching, random searches, and driving restrictions all serve to rob our children of a sense of self. AWhy can=t we do like everyone else.@ America is demanding its child be as rational in their decision making and behavior as adults. Think for a moment, when you were eleven, if you had to think as clear as your parents, whom you believed were the smartest people you knew. How would you have handled that? How would you have avoided jail? Going back John Locke when children were looked upon as little grown-ups, people thought children should be seen and not heard. This is not unlike to day; they can be seen and heard , but it is felt, they just do not have anything worth listening to.
Baby boomers are the problem today. They are the most self indulgent and aggrandizing group of hypocrites to ever have inhaled Marijuana. These parents are the same people who made defying the establishment a rite of passage, and free love a matter of First Amendment protection. Nothing was too sacred that letting it all hangout was ill-reverent. The children today grew up observed their parent, and listening to them justify them doing everything they thought they felt like, under the heading of Aself expression.@ Now, they are all born again Christians, guilt ridden about all the funning and fornicating. Free love and getting high was only a couple of sins they enjoyed back when they were kids. They have become the inquisition for today=s youth. What adults do not seem to grasp is that young children are growing up convinced that this society does not care about them as individuals or as a group. The attitude of most on the Christian right is that, our way is the only way, and everyone else must live and believe as we do. Christian are using young people in the public schools to insinuate themselves and their believe on the other children in school. Those children are being used to browbeat other children into accepting their right to regulate their behavior. The children running these Christian group are rewarded and facilitated by school administrators. They are allowed to ride roughshod over the children who are unwilling to put on a public show about believing in God. Children today must put on a public demonstration of their commitment to church and the practices of church to share in activities in school. Those children who do not go along with Christian clubs or groups are pushed to the fringes of school society and ridiculed or bullied until they submit.
Michael Corneal confessed as much in his statement when he was first arrested, but no one would listen. Now he is crazy. The crisis in America=s schools is the same as the one in it cities. Hypocrisy about what is being done, and why it is being done drives the current madness. The attack on young children is aimed at poor children because these have very little if any protection. Children of the well to do are always given
