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Death of the Dream

November 10, 2024

   “A republic.  If you can keep it.”  Ever since Tuesday, I have been unable to get Benjamin Franklin’s quote out of my head.  Now that 70 million Americans have made clear that they would rather have a racist criminal lead this country than an intelligent and honest Black and Asian woman, I suppose we know the answer.

     I am shell shocked and grieving, as if a loved one has died.  In a manner of speaking it has.  To me, and to many Black women, what died on Tuesday was a dream of what America could be.

     We are not naive.  We know that we have always loved this country more than it has loved us.  We have always known the real America, not the whitewashed version peddled in Chevy truck ads and NFL games.  We love it anyway, because America is our home, one that we built.  A country whose blood soaked soil gave birth to our spirituals and our blues, which blossomed into our jazz, rock & roll, R&B, and hip hop.

    We believed in ourselves.  Against mountains of evidence to the contrary, we believed that we could forge a life in this country, our country, even as white people kept defining American to mean everyone but us. 

     After the Civil War, we built our own communities with the first public schools in the South open to Black and white children. White people, lost without us to look down on, burned our communities to the ground and passed laws to push us out of the schools we founded.

    Through it all, Black people remained undaunted.  We kept pushing, kept creating, kept trying to force this country to live up to the “better angels of [its] nature.”  Brilliant Black people used every available strategy-  marches, boycotts, lawsuits.  We put our literal bodies on the line for freedom and democracy.  If Americans are being honest,  they know that any measure of freedom afforded to all other marginalized groups rests on the foundation of Black freedom struggles.

     America responded to Black people’s efforts to perfect the union by assassinating our leaders and infiltrating and sabotaging our organizations. After a mere decade of hard won progress, backlash was swift. America elected Nixon who started the war on drugs to engineer the mass incarceration of Black people.  When Nixon resigned in disgrace, Black people enjoyed a brief respite from governmental persecution under President Carter, only to have the country elect a B movie actor who launched his campaign in the Mississippi town where voting rights activists, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered.

    The pendulum has swung back and forth ever since.  White Americans vote for Republicans for their promise to enact policies that maintain a strict racial hierarchy.  When those policies begin to hurt them too, white people elect Democrats.  Although people mistakenly believed that the 2008 election of Barack Obama meant that we had broken that cycle, Trump’s victory in 2016 proved just how wrong we were.

     His cruel and chaotic presidency created a permission structure for an avalanche of naked racism, misogyny and antisemitism.  We can excuse voters in 2016 for not knowing the full extent of Trump’s venality, but watching white commentators twist themselves in knots to avoid calling out the obvious misogynoir behind Kamala Harris’s defeat is enraging.

     Trump represents the absolute worst aspects of the American character.  In addition to being a hate-addled, narcissistic meat sack who spews an incomprehensible word salad of petty grievances and 70’s cultural references, Trump is a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter.  The idea that people voted for him because the most pro-union administration in decades didn’t address the concerns of the working class is patently absurd.

     Let’s be real. People voted for Trump because he is a protection racket for anti-Black male mediocrity. The national abortion ban is designed to kneecap American women who have been outstripping men educationally and economically for years.  Trump’s unapologetically white nationalist agenda— outlawing DEI and the teaching of Black history is designed to eliminate competition from Black people and cement a belief in Black inferiority.

     The incoming Trump administration won’t merely be sexist and racist.  It will be hostile to labor, to regulations and to sane fiscal policy.  Other than the wealthy, Americans can expect to be sicker and poorer.  Black women have tried to save this country for the last time.  Too many of you clearly decided that what DuBois called the “psychological wages of whiteness” was more important than democracy.  Black women have two words— Good Luck.

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A Man Was Lynched Yesterday

September 25, 2024

     Marcellus Williams was lynched yesterday, (“Missouri executes Marcellus Williams, despite prosecutor’s objections,” by Kim Bellware, The Washington Post, 9/25/24).  Just because there are no grisly photos of a charred body hanging by a rope in the woods doesn’t mean that the murder of Marcellus Williams by the state of Missouri was not a lynching. Just because we don’t have photos of white families gathered around his corpse grinning and taking fingers as souvenirs doesn’t mean that those responsible for his death are any less gleeful.

     It is clear that Missouri Governor Mike Parson, state Attorney General, Andrew Bailey and U.S. Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Alito, Coney Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas are no less racist and indifferent to Constitutional guarantees of due process than Justice Roger Taney who wrote in the Dred Scott decision that Black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Clearly, all that matters to these people is the power to indulge the bloodlust for Black lives.

      They are no different than Trump and J.D. Vance, whose relentless assaults on the innocent, lawful Haitian residents of  Springfield, Ohio, have destabilized the entire city and left Haitian residents fearing for their lives. These people want Black people dead and they will abandon facts and spread vile, dehumanizing lies to accomplish that goal.

     Sadly, these sentiments are hardly contained to Republican officials, as evidenced by the case of the white student at Gettysburg College who carved the word, “n—ger” into the chest of his lone Black teammate on the school’s swim team, (“A student has left Gettysburg College after a racial slur was etched onto a student’s chest, officials say,” by Lauren Mascarenhas and Paradise Afshar, CNN.com).  Or consider that, in a race for the presidency between an obviously impaired, racist criminal who lacks intellect or impulse control, or the Black and South Asian Vice President who has dedicated her life to public service, 52% of white voters choose the racist (Source:  Poll:  Newly popular Harris builds momentum, challenging Trump for the mantle of change,” NBCNews.com).

     Even though the theme of Kamala Harris’s campaign is “freedom,” for Trump, Vance, and the 52% of white Americans who support them, the definition of freedom is not the ability to control your own body, choose who you love, or pursue life, liberty and happiness.  For them, freedom means the ability to murder, maim, and humiliate Black people with impunity. They will welcome fascism with open arms to keep it.  41 days.

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Happy Independence Day

July 4, 2024

    No group of people have been more aware of the chasm between this country’s professed ideals and its ugly reality than Black Americans.  We know that many Americans define “freedom” as the freedom to exploit and harm others without consequence in pursuit of their selfish goals.  We know that American prosperity was built on the backs of our ancestors’ forced labor on land stolen from indigenous Americans. Yet we held out hope that we could use the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence as a cudgel to prod this country into recognizing that all people are “created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights … Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

     It was far from an inevitable march towards greater freedom and equality.  At every turn, progress by Black Americans was met with violent backlash, requiring us to gain, lose and regain the same rights that white Americans take for granted-  the right to vote, the right to a public education, the right to a job and the equal right to buy or rent a home and not to be blocked by the color of our skin.

     History is replete with examples of the viciousness that meets Black achievement, but rather than reckon with that history, those in power seek to erase it.  We have long warned those moderates who sit on the sidelines, unwilling to disturb the status quo, for fear of losing some unearned advantage, that the forces coming for us are greedy and won’t be satisfied with cementing Black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy.  These forces won’t stop until they have rolled back all of the gains of the last century, relegating all nonwhite people, all women and all LGBTQ people to powerless, disfavored status and leaving everyone without obscene wealth to lead “miserable lives of quiet desperation.”  

       As we know, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Just as Reconstruction begat Jim Crow, the backlash to eight years of a Barack Obama presidency was swift and brutal.  In 2016, Americans elected Barack Obama’s polar opposite— an incurious, insecure and corrupt vulgarian.  It was as if America plucked its lottery-winning racist grandpa from the American Legion bingo hall and installed him in the Oval Office.

     The results were as awful as many of us predicted.  From the child separation policy to his disastrous Covid response, Trump’s presidency caused real suffering and death.  Yet his most harmful legacy was his installation of three Supreme Court justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, creating a right wing wrecking ball empowered to eviscerate every law or policy that tried to level the playing field and create a more perfect union.

      Not satisfied with stripping bodily autonomy from all women two years ago in Dobbs, or cutting off ladders of opportunity for Black, Brown and indigenous students in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, this term the rogue right wing majority arrogated more power for itself than at any point since it decided Marbury v. Madison in 1803.

     First, in Loper Bright v, Raimondo, the Supreme Court struck down the 40 year old precedent of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, kneecapping federal agencies by eliminating the requirement that “if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute,” courts were required to “uphold the agency’s interpretation of a statute, as long as it as reasonable,” (Source: “ Supreme Court strikes down Chevron, curtailing power of federal agencies,” by Amy Howe, SCOTUSblog.com, 6/28/24).  After Loper Bright, six unelected zealots will be the ultimate arbiter of highly technical decisions that require specialized knowledge, despite not knowing the difference between nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, and nitrogen oxide, a pollutant regulated by the EPA.

     The worst and most consequential decision of the Term was handed down on Monday.  A mere three days ago, on the eve of the day the nation celebrates its independence from the British monarchy, the Court issued an opinion granting Trump 

partial immunity in the January 6th cases, holding that former presidents “can never be prosecuted for actions related to the core powers of their office,” and that they enjoy presumptive “immunity for their official acts,” (Source:  

“Justices rule Trump has some immunity from prosecution,” by Amy Howe, SCOTUSblog.com, 7/1/24).  As Justice Sotomayor pointed out in her scathing dissent, “no matter how you look at it, the majority’s official-acts immunity is utterly  indefensible.”  This decision exposes the right’s long vaunted veneration of originalism as nothing more than a convenient way to deny rights to anyone who was outside of the scope of the law’s protection in 1776.

        The decision is even more frightening when combined with the Heritage Foundation’s 900 page blueprint for the next Presidential administration. Project 2025 calls for the replacement of career civil servants with MAGA loyalists, the elimination of reproductive freedom for women, rights for LGBTQ people and any mention of diversity, equity and inclusion, (Source:  “Project 2025:  The Trump presidency wish list explained,” by Mike Wendling, BBC.com, 7/3/24). Make no mistake, the goal of Republicans is to make this country a “post-Constitutionalist” Christofascist hellscape for anyone who is not a straight, white, Christian man.

     Today, let us declare our independence from the thinking that women’s rights don’t affect men, that  LGBTQ rights don’t matter to straight  people, that stripping civil rights from Black people doesn’t affect white people.  The last eight years has shown us that they won’t stop.  Neither should we.  We need to mobilize, organize and vote like our lives depend on it—- because they do. Happy Independence Day! 

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Supreme Corruption

June 22, 2024

    Our country has become a sinkhole of corruption, full of people chasing the fever dream of white supremacy.  Our Congress is paralyzed by a small cadre of attention-seeking arsonists sent to Washington from gerrymandered districts stuffed with bitter voters whose minds are curdled by hate.

     The most prominent example, though, is the Supreme Court. The only thing that outstrips the craven corruption of JusticesThomas and Alito is the aggressive mediocrity of their intellect.  The two are in a cynical contest to see who can fetch the highest price for their fealty, while Justice Roberts is like a dejected ringmaster who has lost control of the circus.  It is the entirely predictable result of allowing dark money into politics through its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) and supercharging the disenfranchisement of Black and Brown voters in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013).

     How else can we explain last week’s decision written by Thomas for the 6-3 majority in Garland v. Cargill?  The decision overturned a Trump-era rule banning bump stocks,a device that renders semi-automatic weapons capable of firing 400 or 500 shots at a time without having to re-engage the trigger.  The 19 page majority opinion used “six diagrams” of the internal firing mechanism of guns with bump stock devices, to substitute a tortured argument centered on the “function of the trigger,” to achieve their desired result— to legalize bump stocks, (Source:  Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. ___, dissent of Sotomayor, J. at 7).

     Justice Sotomayor’s dissent argued for a humane and common sense interpretation of the BATF regulation, stating that by “focusing on the internal mechanisms that initiate fire…the majority eviscerates Congress’s regulation of machine guns and enables gun users and manufacturers to circumvent federal law,” (Cargill, 602 U.S. ___, dissent of Sotomayor, J.at 7).  As Justice Sotomayor pointed out, the majority’s approach “flies in the face of this Court’s standard tools of statutory interpretation,” (ibid).  

     The decision in Garland v, Cargill, which will inexorably lead to deadlier mass shootings, is in line with the conservative supermajority’s effort to jettison reliance on legal precedent and substitute 19th century “history and tradition.”  This doctrinal shift seeks to erase modernity and hamstring the law by limiting protections to those in place well before anyone other than straight, Christian, white men had rights that “the law was bound to respect.”   Thomas doubled down on this hidebound judicial philosophy in his lone dissent in the 8-1 decision in United States v. Rahimi, which upheld the constitutionality of a law which strips guns from domestic abusers.

     It is no surprise that this approach is led by Alito and Thomas, the two most corrupt and least intellectually serious justices on the Court.  Neither man makes any secret of their extreme right wing views and Alito, in particular, seems to relish flaunting them.  After Alito was exposed for having two insurrectionist flags flying on his property (one for each home), he was caught on tape enthusiastically agreeing with journalist Lauren Windsor’s statement that “people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting…to return our country to a place of godliness,” (Source: “Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle For America ‘Can’t Be Compromised’,” by Tessa Stuart, Tim Dickinson, Rollingstone.com, 6/10/24).  Yet despite these shocking disclosures, Alito has rebuffed all calls that he recuse himself from the January 6th case.

     Clarence Thomas seems determined to beat Alito in the race to the bottom.  We have known for more than two years that Thomas’s wife Ginni played a key role in the January 6th insurrection, pleading with Mark Meadows via text to keep Trump from conceding the election and lobbying legislators in Wisconsin to install a slate of fake electors (Source:  “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory,” by Emma Brown, The Washington Post, 9/1/22).  In addition, thanks to ProPublica, we know that for twenty years billionaire Harlan Crow has showered Thomas with lavish vacations and private jet trips, as well as paying private school tuition for Thomas’s nephew and even buying Thomas’s mother’s house! (Source:  “Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition,” by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica.com, 5/14/23).

     The combination of blatant corruption and naked extremism is shocking to those of us who grew up shaped by the legacy of the Warren Court.  The Warren Court, which lasted from 1953-1969, is rightly revered for harnessing the law to eradicate segregation (Brown v. Board of Education, (1954)),  to enshrine fairness and due process for criminal defendants, (Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), and Miranda v. Arizona, (1966)), and to establish the marital and personal right of privacy in Griswold v.Connecticut, (1965) that was the foundation for the right to birth control, abortion and overturning the sodomy laws that criminalized sex for LGBTQ people.

    Yet we would do well to remember that the Warren Court was an anomaly. From Dred Scott  to Plessy v. Ferguson to the 1935 “Black Monday” cases invalidating important New Deal policies, for most of its 234 year history the Supreme Court has protected the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the working or  marginalized person.  The corruption is new, but the alignment of interest is not.  Now is a critical time for us to realize, neither the cavalry, nor the Supreme Court, is going to save us.  We are the only ones who can do that.

#VOTE

#ORGANIZE

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Justice for Tyre

January 29, 2023

    Like Groundhog Day in Hell, we braced Friday night for the release of another snuff film of a young Black man being brutally murdered by the police.  Tyre Nichols— a gifted photographer, a skilled skateboarder, a father, a son— died needlessly  at the hands of five sadistic Memphis officers.  The fact that the officers were Black doesn’t matter, because as cops say themselves, the only color that matters is blue.

     We have reasoned, pleaded and protested, to no avail.  George Floyd’s murder in 2020 was supposed to have produced a “reckoning.”  That was supposed to be the moment when the scales were lifted from America’s eyes, when they finally saw what Black Americans had been trying to tell them, literally for decades. The video was irrefutable, the anguish too palpable.  That was supposed to be the moment when we collectively cried, “Enough!”

    But then, the pandemic receded and people were able to go outside for something other than protests… and then the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act failed to pass in Congress…and then the murder rate increased and Democratic officials not only retreated from police reform, but called for more funding for the police.  The appeals for a radical new approach to public safety disappeared.

     The results were predictable. In 2021, the number of people killed by the police barely budged, and in 2022, police killed 1176 people, more than in any other year on record, (Source:  “‘What Are We Doing Wrong?’:  US Police Killed Record Number of People in 2022,” by Julia Conley, CommonDreams.org, 1/6/23).  Of those, only 31% involved an alleged violent crime and 11% did not involve any offense at all (ibid).

      By all accounts, Tyre Nichols was a “gentle soul,” who never had so much as a “parking ticket,” (Source: “Tyre Nichols remembered as a wonderful son who loved skating and sunsets,” by Victoria Bisset, Hadley Green and Robert Klemko, The Washington Post, 1/28/23).  Yet, even if he had a record and was engaged in criminal activity, we tell ourselves that the police are not supposed to serve as judge, jury and executioner, in the span of minutes!

      The truth though, is far darker.  As Jill Lepore details here, American policing began as slave patrols.  In the early 20th century, American policing was organized and deployed to conduct “a war against the enemies of society,” who were defined as “[m]obsters, bootleggers, socialist agitators, strikers, union organizers, immigrants and Black people,” (Source:  “The Invention of the Police,” by Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 7/13/20).

   Is it any wonder that such a system dehumanizes and kills unarmed Black people at alarming rates?   Is it any surprise that Black and Brown officers who become part of that system often display the same brutality towards Black and Brown citizens?  We should understand by now that it is not the color of the police, but the color of those policed, that dictates the outcome.

    So when we call for justice for Tyre Nichols, we need to understand what that means.  It doesn’t just mean prosecuting the officers who killed Tyre.  That is accountability, which is a prerequisite, but not a substitute, for justice. It doesn’t just mean disbanding the SCORPION program in Memphis, or even every program like it around the country, which treats Black and Brown communities like war zones and positions the police as a hostile occupying force with unchecked power to violently control, rather than protect, residents.  Justice for Tyre Nichols will be impossible until we face the fact many Americans define “safety” as the absence of Black people from their neighborhoods, their classrooms, their places of leisure and labor, and consider our deaths an acceptable price to pay.

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Reflections on “Origin”

March 25, 2024

     A week ago, courtesy of the activist group Until Freedom, I attended a screening of Origin, Ava DuVernay’s brilliant adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s groundbreaking book, Caste.  The film could not have arrived at a better time than now, as we confront regimes around the world determined to uphold or install rigid caste systems that arbitrarily cement a marginalized group to permanent lower class status. 

      Both the film and the book powerfully make the point that societies that ruthlessly dehumanize one segment of their society in order to mark them for subjugation or extermination have more similarities than differences.  They draw parallels between the United States and Nazi Germany, who modeled their Nuremberg Laws after the Jim Crow laws of the American South. Origin and Caste also do a deep dive into the original caste system in India, exploring the harsh persecution of the Dalit people.

     Origin does not argue that the caste systems of the United States, Nazi Germany and India are identical, but that they share common structural features, giving us a framework for understanding how such systems persist or re-emerge, so that we can recognize the danger signs.

      We are at such a moment in the United States right now, and the lights are blinking red. The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether we hurtle backwards 100 years, or continue our fitful journey towards embracing multiracial democracy. The signs are not good.  Although many Black people, LGBTQ people and women of all races have been shouting from the rooftops that Trump and this version of the Republican Party pose an existential threat to democracy, a disturbingly large number of people seem oddly complacent.

     Even though several of Trump’s former staffers say he is unfit for office and his own Vice President refuses to endorse him, one of our major broadcast networks, NBC, responded by hiring former RNC chair and election denier, Ronna McDaniel, as a political analyst.  When Trump promised a bloodbath if he loses and called migrants “animals” at a rally, the initial defense by Republican apologists  was to ask us to put Trump’s remarks “in context.”  As Mehdi Hassan said, the context is that these were statements made by a man who fomented an insurrection in which people were killed, (Source:  “Trump, a ‘Bloodbath’ and ‘The Banality of Crazy,’” by Mehdi Hassan, Zeteo.com, 3/18/24).

     Trump’s full-throated embrace of the most vile stereotypes and his efforts during his first presidency to enact policies to persecute everyone from Black people, to Muslims, to asylum seekers to Trans people created a permission structure for everybody else.  Americans are no longer shy about saying the quiet part out loud and an entire movement funded by billionaires has been supercharged to ban Black history and queer lives and to reduce every woman to a breeding vessel with no control over her own body.  This movement seeks nothing less than to torch every program or initiative that tries to level the playing field for Black people and other marginalized groups of Americans and remedy past discrimination.  They want to return to the jurisprudence of the Dred Scott decision, where Black people had “no rights the white man was bound to respect.”

      As Nikole Hannah Jones detailed in her essay in The New York Times, just as the right had a 50 year game plan for overturning Roe v. Wade, from the moment that Barry Goldwater lost in 1964, the right made a plan to reverse the gains of the civil rights movement, (Source:  “The ‘Colorblindness’ Trap. How A Civil Rights Idea Got Hijacked,” by Nikole Hannah Jones, The New York Times, 3/13/24).  Conservative Justices redefined  affirmative action to mean the pursuit of “diversity” for its own sake, rather than the redress of the continuing harm suffered by Black Americans as a result of slavery and the ensuing 100 year Jim Crow regime of segregation and terror. Recasting the goal of affirmative action as “cosmetic,” rather than rooted in justice, made it much easier to attack and dismantle.

     This is how we find ourselves in the present moment, where tech bros embrace debunked and discredited “scientific racism” and bankroll the quacks who peddle it, (Source:  “Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires,” by Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times, 8/12/23).  Dope-addled Klan Wizard Elon Musk platforms the most vile antisemitism and racism, retweeting “great replacement theory” posts and blaming Boeing’s faulty door plugs on Black pilots.    The continuing decision by major media outlets to platform these people and sanitize their truly hateful and anti-democratic ideas is evidence either that our media is so warped by greed they don’t care about the content, as long as it gets views or that they’re silently hoping to re-establish a rigid white, patriarchal, supremacist caste system, with Black people permanently at the bottom, queer people back in the closet and women the virtual property of men.  As Sinclair Lewis warned us nearly a century ago, don’t think it can’t happen here.

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The Illusion of safety

February 17, 2024

    We are drowning in a tidal wave of violence.  Across the country and around the globe, we are surrounded by people who believe that murderous violence is the path to victory in every sphere— from petty arguments to geopolitical dominance.  On Valentine’s Day, the Kansas City celebration for the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory was marred by a mass shooting that killed one person and injured 21 others.  The shooting was apparently the reckless consequence of a disagreement among children so young that their names were not released, (Source:  “2 juveniles charged in mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade,” by Nick Ingram, Scott McFetridge and Jim Salter, Associated Press (ap.com), 2/16/24).

     Those of us who are sentient beings can see the clear link between the ubiquity of guns and the tragedy in Kansas City, a Democratic city in a Republican ruled state.  For Republicans, the suggestion that guns be regulated in any way is an anathema.  Missouri has “some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation,” and there is no age limit on how young you can be to own a gun, (Source:  “When is a gun illegal in Kansas City?  These are the remaining gun restrictions in Missouri,” by Glenn E. Rice, The Kansas City Star, 2/16/24).  800 police officers were on hand in Kansas City on Wednesday, but that did not keep those 22 people safe.

      In 2024, there have been more mass shootings than days, (Source:  gunviolencearchive.org), but the bloodlust of the Republicans never abates.  It is futile to appeal to their conscience, because they have none. If we are wondering what their end game could be, we need look no further than the death on Friday of Alexei Navalny in a Russian gulag above the Arctic Circle, (Source:  “Death of Alexei Navalny is confirmed, family calls for immediate return of his body,” by Leila Sackur, NBCnews.com, 2/17/24).  Navalny had already survived an assasination attempt in August 2020, when FSB agents tried to poison him with Novichok, a military grade chemical weapon, by escaping to a German hospital,(Source: “The Death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent,” by Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 2/16/24).

     Despite knowing that his return to Russia would mean certain imprisonment and death, Navalny returned to continue his crusade against Putin’s corruption.  His 2021 film about Putin’s $1.3 billion palace which boasts an underground hockey rink and a vineyard, was viewed by 20 million people within one day of its release, (Source:  “Alexei Navalny: millions watched jailed critic’s ’Putin’s Palace’ film,” BBC.com, 1/20/21).  Navalny’s film made the link between Putin and his pals’ obscene wealth and the impoverished standard of living of ordinary Russians.  Putin’s response to criticism was to lock Navalny in a cell in the remote Polar Wolf prison. Putin caused Navalny’s death as surely as if he personally pulled the trigger.  We know that because Putin’s response to any opposition is to jail it or kill it.

    Yet, this is the man that one of our two major political parties has gone all in to support.  Republican House members have consistently refused to vote for military aid to Ukraine.  Puritanical automaton Mike Johnson’s determination that the House would not be “rushed” to pass a $95 billion dollar aid package in all likelihood contributed to Russia’s victory Saturday morning in Avdiivka, a “military stronghold [for Ukraine] for the better part of a decade,” (Source:  “Avdiivka, Longtime Stronghold for Ukraine, Falls to Russians,” by Carlotta Gall, Marc Santora and Constant Meheut, The New York Times, 2/17/24).

      Tucker Carlson, the most prominent right wing pundit, platformed Putin with a softball “interview,” allowing Putin to ramble, unchallenged for two hours.  And of course, we can’t forget Putin’s BFF, demented carnival barker and Republican presidential front runner, Donald Trump, who said last week that he would not protect NATO allies if Russia invaded if they did not “pay [their] bills” and would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want,” (Source:  “Trump says he would encourage Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough,” by Kate Sullivan, CNN.com, 2/11/24).

    We need to understand that Republicans see Putin and Russia not as geopolitical rivals, but as role models.  They admire and empower him because he does what they would like to—silence dissent, murder opponents and use state funds to line his own pockets.  I can only imagine that those in the press trying to shoehorn this presidential contest into the tired horse race narrative  imagine they’ll be safe from the ire of a vengeful Trump.  They just need to remember, Alexei Navalny was a straight, white man.

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MLK’s Legacy

January 15, 2024

     Today marks the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday.  In the years since his assasination, his words have been twisted by cynical opportunists to mean the opposite of what he believed.  His legacy has been flattened such that the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who exists in the public imagination bears little resemblance to the real man, who decried racism, capitalism and militarism as the three evils at the root of what sickened the American soul.

     Fifty-six years after Dr. King’s murder, the legal framework that the United States was pressured into passing thanks to the work of Dr. King and other civil rights activists from Bayard Rustin to Ella Baker to Fannie Lou Hamer is under attack. The gains of that movement are being dismantled piece by piece by piece by a mob of mediocre white men, aided by their accomplices in the mainstream media who either secretly believe the propaganda that Black people are intellectually inferior or are so focused on chasing a dollar that they will welcome fascism with open arms if it boosts their stock price.

     The people seeking to destroy Dr. King’s legacy are not subtle.  The fate of the first Black President of Harvard University is a case in point.  Christoper Rufo announced his game plan to take down Dr. Claudine Gay on X and the media cluelessly played along, with The New York Times publishing an astonishing number of articles on the firestorm surrounding Dr. Gay, replicating the dispiriting pattern where the qualifications of Black people are always in doubt, (Source:  “The Persecution of Harvard’s Claudine Gay,” by Charles Blow, The New York Times, 1/3/24).  There was no way that Dr. Gay could survive the barrage of racist and misogynistic attacks.  On January 2nd, she resigned from Harvard’s presidency.

       Congressional backbencher Elise Stefanik and Harvard Extension School grad, Christopher Rufo wasted no time in taking a victory lap.(Source:  “‘Victory’:  Claudine Gay’s Resignation From the Harvard Presidency Comes as a Win for Her Critics,” by Madelyn A. Hung and Joyce E. Kim., The Harvard Crimson, 1/3/24).

      Flush with victory, Rufo announced that he plans to stop at nothing less than dismantling DEI in every facet of American life.  Let’s be clear, the opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion is homogeneity, inequality and exclusion.  That is the America that Rufo, Stefanik and their financier Bill Ackman seek to re-establish.

       Their playbook is gallingly transparent:  1) Dismantle all ladders to erasing inequality by attacking diversity measures as “reverse discrimination,” (Source: “DEI backlash has companies quietly changing their programs to avoid wave of lawsuits alleging discrimination,” by Alexandra Olson, Haleluya Hadero, Anne D’Innocenzio and The Associated Press, Fortune.com, 1/15/24); 2) Ban the teaching of accurate American History that details the myriad obstacles to advancement placed in the  paths of Black, Indigenous and other people of color and ban books about the achievements of Black people or anyone from a marginalized group, (Source:  “Blocking Black History is an attempt to counter Black Power,” by Kate Aguilar, The Washington Post,2/1/23); and 3) Erect legal barriers to political participation by BIPOC Americans and their progressive allies, robbing them of a voice in who holds power in this country, (Source:  “Redistricting fights across South put the Voting 

Rights Act in the spotlight once again,” by Fredreka Schouten, CNN.com, 12/21/23).

This hydra-headed legal and political attack on civil rights has been aided by the ever present threat of political violence, as evidenced by the recent swatting attacks on Judges Tanya Chutkan and Arthur Engoron. If we don’t want these fascistic forces to run the table in 2024, we will need to overcome our fear and exhaustion and resist the urge to turn away from conflict and chaos because we want “peace.” Remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” Let’s really honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and get to work!

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The Third Time’s The Charm

 August 14, 2023

    On August 1st, after the initial feint of a superseding indictment in the Mar-a-lago classified documents case, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith dropped a second federal indictment on Donald Trump, charging him in Washington, D.C. on four felony counts:  1) Conspiracy to Defraud the United States 18 U.S.C.§371; 2) Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, 18 U.S.C. 1512(k); 3) Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, 18 U.S.C. 1512 (c ) (2) and 2; and 4)  the Reconstruction era statute designed to protect Black citizens, Conspiracy Against Rights, 18 U.S.C. 241. (Source:  United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, (Case No. 1:23-cr-00257-TSC, D.D.C.).

     The 45 page indictment meticulously lays out the myriad ways in which Trump and six unindicted (for now) co-conspirators worked feverishly to overturn the results of a free and fair election, spread lies to sow distrust among the American people and hold on to power.  Although countless journalists have summarized the indictment, it is well worth reading for yourself.  Again and again, the indictment provides evidence that Trump was repeatedly told by Republicans that he had lost the election.  It presents evidence that Trump knew that the wackadoodle theories advanced by his loon squad of “attorneys” like Giuliani and Sydney Powell were completely false.

     Trump and his confederates repeatedly pushed everyone from V.P. Pence to Governors and Secretaries of State to throw out election results where Trump was defeated. The conspirators “organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin),” (U.S.v Trump Indictment at par. 10(b)).

      Although Trump’s fake electors scheme covered seven states, he and his co-conspirators singled out the majority Black cities of Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia for the bulk of their opprobrium.  Co-Conspirator #1, Rudy Giuliani accused mother/daughter election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of passing a thumb drive of fraudulent votes “like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.”  In reality Ruby was simply handing her daughter a mint.  As a result of Giuliani’s vile slander, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were doxxed and threatened and had to leave their homes, (Source:  “Rudy Giuliani concedes he made false statements against Georgia election workers,” by Jaclyn Diaz, npr.org,7/26/23).  In Philadelphia, after Trump maligned a City Commissioner for stating that there was no evidence of voter fraud, the Commissioner and his family received death threats, (U.S. v. Trump Indictment at par. 42).  In Detroit, Trump supporters stormed the facility where votes were being counted after Trump made the baseless allegation that 149,772 fraudulent votes had been dumped in the overwhelmingly Black city, (U.S. v. Trump Indictment at par.41).

     Trump is many things, but subtle is not one of them.  Invalidating the votes of Black and Brown voters was the centerpiece of his scheme.  Trump has stoked white grievance and resentment by demonizing Black elected officials, Black prosecutors and rank and file Black election workers.  His central thesis is that any claim to, or exercise of, power by Black people is per se illegitimate.  For all of the hand wringing about the unique threat that Trump poses to American democracy, his position is not novel and he is far from alone in his belief.

     Trump has inspired or unleashed an army of copycats who believe that their path to power lies in the ostentatious persecution of people of color.  From Texas Governor Greg Abbott installing torture traps in the Rio Grande that maim and kill asylum seekers, to charisma-free fascist Ron DeSantis’ wholesale book bans and removal of democratically elected prosecutors for the crime of refusing to enforce draconian abortion bans or throw kids in jail, there is no shortage of elected officials eager to abandon democracy.

     The ugly truth is that for most of our country’s history, “democracy” has been a privilege reserved for white, straight, Christian men.  Any effort to expand the definition to include Black people has met with fierce backlash, from 1877 to today.  As Henry Louis Gates said in 2016, Trump’s election signaled the end of the second Reconstruction.  While Trump should certainly be held accountable for his attempted coup if convicted, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that jailing Trump will extinguish the threat to democracy.  The people who empower Trump and his pale imitations show no sign of relenting.  We need to take a page out of the book of the people of Ohio and the people of Montgomery, Alabama and face them armed with our vote… and a folding chair.

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July 4th, 2023*

     On this 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, nothing comes to mind so much as Frederick Douglass’ famous 1852 speech, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?”  After this last dispiriting week of decisions from the Supreme Court, in 2023, Black people find ourselves asking the same question— what does the Fourth of July mean to us?

     From the time we were first dragged here against our will in 1619, Black people have been fighting a two-front war—famously shedding the first blood in the American Revolution and fighting our white countrymen for the right to be recognized and treated as human beings “endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

     Of course, the Declaration was a lie from the start.  Inalienable literally means unable to be bought and sold, yet the venerable Founders who wrote and co-signed those words blithely owned, bought and sold Black human beings.  

     Despite the glaring contradiction, we have collectively bought into this blinkered myth, in a country that refuses to compensate Black people for the unpaid physical labor that built this country or the unpaid intellectual labor that forced this country to live up, grudgingly and in fits and starts, to the flowery sentiments in its founding documents.

    If we are being honest, Black freedom movements are the foundation on which the rights of other marginalized Americans are built— often by Black people with intersectional identities—like Marsha P. Johnson and Pauli Murray.    The misguided individual Asian American plaintiffs who allowed themselves to be used by the forces of white supremacy in the case of Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard didn’t just betray Black people. They betrayed the decades of coalitions between Asian American and Black activists who understood that we rise and fall together.  They betrayed the 70% of Asian Americans who support affirmative action and they dishonored freedom fighters like Grace Lee Boggs and Yuri Kochiyama.  Like the protagonist of James Weldon Johnson’s “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” they have “sold their soul for a mess of pottage.  “Happy” Independence Day to us all.

* Originally posted on Facebook on July 4, 2023

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Juneteenth

     Today marks the federal holiday of Juneteenth, which commemorates the date in 1865 that General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Although Lincoln issued the Proclamation with an effective date of January 1, 1863, the Southern whites who took up arms to defend their “right” to own and exploit other human beings certainly did not honor the Proclamation during the Civil War.  Even after Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 19, 1865, white planters thought that they could simply continue slavery if they were beyond the reach of federal troops.

    The conventional wisdom is that enslaved Black Texans first learned of their freedom with General Granger’s arrival, but the truth is that Black people knew that they had been freed, but needed the power of the Union Army to compel white Texans to respect it.  Throughout the Civil War, Southern plantation owners moved westward to Texas in order to continue profiting from violently extracted free labor. “Within weeks,” Granger’s proclamation was followed  by “fifty thousand troops who flooded the state in a late arriving occupation,” (Source:  “The Hidden History of Juneteenth,” by Gregory P. Downs, TalkingPointsMemo.com, 6/18/15).

      Even after Juneteenth, white enslavers continued their violent recalcitrance. As late as October 1865, there were reports of white planters who continued to “claim and control slaves as property…and systematically murdered rebellious African-Americans to try to frighten the rest into submission,” (ibid).  Enslaved Black Texans were not passively waiting to be told they were free, but were actively engaged in the fight for their own emancipation.  The truth is that they needed not only the letter of the law, but the power of the Union army to enforce that law. 

   The same pattern has recurred throughout the last 158 years — violent white resistance to Black freedom which can only be overcome by a combination of Black organizing and federal legislation that is actually enforced, with federal troops if necessary.  After all, the continued recalcitrance of white Southerners gave birth to the 14th and 15th Amendments, which became hollow guarantees after the withdrawal of federal troops in 1877.

      Although it was Reconstruction era integrated state legislatures that established universal free public education and enshrined the right to a basic education in Southern state constitutions, Jim Crow legislatures segregated public schools and starved Black schools of resources.  They then used the lack of education that they had engineered to disenfranchise Black people by imposing literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting rights (Source:  “The Constitutional Moment:  Reconstruction and Black Education in the South,”  by David Tyack and Robert Lowe, American Journal of Education, Vol. 94, No.2, pp. 236-256, (February 1986).

It took, not only one hundred years of Black people’s unceasing activism and strategic litigation, but our steely resolve to remain undeterred despite the ceaseless campaign of terror and murder waged by white supremacists, in order to regain the freedom supposedly guaranteed to us by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Just as in the 1960s and the 1860s, there are an alarming number of people in this country today who would stop at nothing to keep Black people from being free. The lesson of the true history of Juneteenth is that freedom is never given, it is fought for and won.