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2006
When
was the last time a Mexican cut your pension or health benefits?
Whenever a new crisis develops in
an election year and it's not nature's or the stock market's
fault, the odds are pretty good that it's not a crisis.
Witness the sudden discovery of immigrants, a much more comfortable
topic for some than Iraq, global warming, globalization, or runaway
corporate greed.
The debate, however, has its bizarre aspects. For example, the
Texas Rangers, who should know, list their last serious concerns
with Mexican terrorists as occurring nearly 100 years ago when
"when authorities in McAllen, Texas, arrest Basilio Ramos,
Jr. Ramos is carrying a copy of the Plan of San Diego, a revolutionary
manifesto supposedly written and signed at the South Texas town
of San Diego. It calls for the formation of a 'Liberating Army
of Races and Peoples,' of Mexican Americans, African Americans,
and Japanese, to 'free' the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, and Colorado from United States. Versions of the
plan call for the murder of all white citizens over 16 years
of age. The goal is an independent republic, which might later
seek annexation to Mexico.' Since then things have been pretty
quiet, although some guerillas from another continent did considerable
damage in 2001 by using the border crossing technique known as
"buying airline tickets."
But it's not really about terrorism. It's about finding a scapegoat
for America's increasing problems. What America's white elite
is doing is just what its southern branch did under segregation:
teach non-elite whites to blame their problems on a minority.
It worked well then and it seems to be working now.
But those wishing to test the extent of the immigrant problem
might want to conduct this quick test:
1. Has a Mexican ever fired or laid you off?
2. Was the plant you worked for until it was sent overseas been
bought by Mexicans or is it still owned by the same people you
used to work for?
3. Has a Mexican ever cut your pension or health benefits? Outsourced
your job to India?
4. How much does Latin America contribute to global warming and
its results - such as bigger hurricanes and more tornados - compared
with the United States?
5. Was Enron run by Mexicans?
6. Are Mexicans responsible for NSA's spying you?
7. Do you think Mexicans or the pharmaceutical corporations are
more responsible for high drug costs?
8. How much of the corruption in Washington has been instigated
by the Mexicans?
9. Did the Mexicans' make us invade Iraq?
10. Are the Mexicans responsible for George bush being so dumb?
Chances are most your answers will be in the negative which is
a clue to stop spending so much time worrying about immigration
and turn your attention to something else.
MAY 2006
The road grows
shorter
It is not easy to recognize
fascism if you haven't been there before. Our eyesight is blurred
by everything from cultural optimism to psychic denial. But news
of the NSA's mass spying on American's phone records - in number
of victims, at least, perhaps the most broadly illegal and unconstitutional
act in our history - makes it all simpler. There is not an ounce
of hyperbole in calling the NSA's action those of a fascist regime
and not of a democratic state. NSA has not only violated the
law, it even refuses to allow the Justice Department to investigate
its violation. This is the behavior of a dictatorship, not of
a democracy.
Sadly, even more telling
that NSA's action - in determining how far down the road to fascism
we have traveled, is the response to it by the public, the press
and the law. In a real democracy, citizens, media and their attorneys
stand up against such abuse; in this case there is a truly frightening
ambivalence and apathy.
According to the Washington
Post, nearly two thirds of Americans support the NSA in its actions
- 44% strongly. This may not be so surprising when one considers
how little time and space the media has permitted for arguments
that paranoia is a poor way to protect oneself or that a regime
that will trash its laws and constitution rather than adopt a
more reasonable foreign policy is not to be trusted to be either
fair or safe. On a regular basis the press reinforces the idea
that "national security" is inherently at odds with
democracy and decency, repeatedly nudging the citizen towards
the former even if it is, as it so often is, a phantom refuge.
Further, many lawyers -
and the commentators who quote them - foster such trends by the
mythology that justice is best served by following precedents
or case law. This bias is based on the cheerful presumption that
progress in the law as elsewhere is inevitable. On a number of
occasions, however, I have asked extremely intelligent lawyers
what does one do in a society where the legal precedents are
becoming worse - as they are in a country dismantling two centuries
of ideals? Not one has given a coherent answer.
One can not tell how much
longer America has before it gives up on democracy completely.
What we can say, however, is that the road has just gotten much
shorter.
Senatorial
inquiry
1. The Ten Commandments
outlaw killing and adultery but that doesn't seem to bother your
colleagues as much as gay marriage. Why do you think the Ten
Commandments are less important to them than gay marriage?
2. Would you accept a compromise
in which we outlawed not only gay marriages but support of deadly
wars or cheating on your wife? If not, why not?
3. The Ten Commandants
say "You can work during the six weekdays and do all your
tasks. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God your Lord. Do
not do anything that constitutes work. [This includes] you, your
son, your daughter, your slave, your maid, your animal, and the
foreigner in your gates." You have not yet formalized this
into a constitutional amendment and so your maids, slaves, animals
and proximate foreigners are running around hog wild on Sundays.
Isn't this more dangerous than a few gays getting married and
shouldn't you tackle it first?
4. Exodus tells us to kill
those who work on Sunday. This seems to conflict with the federal
code, not to mention the Ten Commandments. Shouldn't we worry
more about Seventh Day slaughter than about gay marriage?
4. Since religions differ
sharply on this issue, if this amendment passes it will directly
conflict with the First Amendment which says, "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Which constitutional
amendment should we then follow?
5. Since Republicans believe
so firmly in the sanctity of marriage, how do you explain the
following from the New York Daily News in August 2004: "With
thousands of Republicans set to invade the city this summer,
high-priced escorts and strippers are preparing for one grand
old party. Agencies are flying in extra call girls from around
the globe to meet the expected demand during the Aug. 30-Sept.
2 gathering at Madison Square Garden."
6. Explain the moral difference
between a Republican politician opposing gay marriage and one
participating in gay sex which, according to police and news
reports, happens from time to time. Do we need an amendment preserving
the sanctity of gay sex outside of marriage?
7. If this were 1956 instead
of 2006, would you have supported a ban on inter-racial marriages,
which most states had? How does the current amendment differ
in spirit - rather than merely the target - from the one proposed
in 1911: "Intermarriage between negroes or persons of color
and Caucasians . . . within the United States . . . is forever
prohibited."
8. Have you ever had contact
with a woman during her period of menstrual uncleanliness, something
outlawed by the Bible? Should we have a constitutional amendment
to prevent this sort of thing from happening again?
9. How would you deal with
the issue raised by Professor Emeritus James Kaufman of the University
of Virginia: "Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess
slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from
neighboring nations." Do you think this biblical right should
be also codified in a constitutional amendment? How will this
affect our plans for construction of a border wall?
10. Leviticus reminds us
of other sins far more prevalent than gay marriage. For example,
"These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever
hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers,
them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the
seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and
of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an
abomination unto you. . . ye shall not eat of their flesh, but
ye shall have their carcasses in abomination." Do we need
a constitutional amendment to ban the eating of shrimp, crab,
lobster, clams and mussels?
11. Homosexuality has been
found by scientists in 450 other species. Isn't it a bit late
to be trying to suppress it in ours?
12. While gay marriages
produce some gay children, why do heterosexual marriages do the
same?
13. Since we're going back
to first principles, would you mind adding a section that makes
wives the husband's property?
14. Which of these other
steps - all Biblically endorsed - should be taken to preserve
the sanctity of marriage: allowing men to take on concubines
in addition to their wives, stoning to death any new wife found
not to be a virgin, requiring women to marry the man who raped
them, banning interfaith marriages, and banning divorce?
15. Given the foregoing,
is it fair to describe those pushing the marriage amendment as
heretical, hypocritical and blasphemous Christians? History shows
that such people are far more dangerous, on average, than gays.
Shouldn't we do something about them before we worry about those
gay weddings?
Glen Echo
A HOWARD
STUDENT CONFRONTS GUARD AT GLEN ECHO
THANKS TO energetic
National Park Service Ranger, Sam Swersky, the 45th anniversary
of the civil rights protest at Glen Echo Park was celebrated.
Glen Echo was once an amusement park near Washington DC and from
its inception in 1911 until 1961 it was off-limits to African-American
citizens.
In the summer of
1960, a local movement formed to end the policy of segregation
at Glen Echo Amusement Park. Howard University students, members
of the Bannockburn community, the local NAACP, Cedar Lane Unitarian
Church and the Wheaton-Kensington Democratic Club, all picketed
the park on a daily basis, as well as petitioned the Montgomery
County Council, (because public school buses were bringing white
kids to Glen Echo to swim and taking black Montgomery County
kids to the D.C.'s Francis Pool for swimming lessons.) There
was a legal battle as well, which went all the way to the Supreme
Court.
Your editor was
a reporter for WWDC and Deadline Washington News Service at the
time. In August 1960 I wrote in a letter:
"Have been
covering some of the anti-segregation demonstrations around the
Washington area. The results here have been hopeful. Good police
work has kept violence to a minimum although the presence of
neo-Nazi Lincoln Rockwell and his "troopers" doesn't
make the situation any simpler. Quite a few lunch counters have
been desegregated. Glen Echo Amusement Park is resisting despite
a month of picketing and a Bethesda theater is also refusing
to back down."
 In
February 1960, four black college students had sat down at a
white-only Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. Within
two weeks, there were sit-ins in fifteen cities in five southern
states and within two months they had spread to fifty four cities
in nine states. In April the leaders of these protests had come
together, heard a moving sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. and
formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
The summer I had
first worked for WWDC I had covered the passage of the first
civil rights legislation in Congress since 1875. Now it was getting
serious. By the end of June, I was covering the desegregation
of lunch counters in Northern Virginia after sit-ins by groups
led a Howard Divinity School student, Lawrence Harvey. Harvey
then took his troops to Glen Echo.
Although I saved
few recordings from that period -- tape was expensive and usually
recycled -- I still have the raw sounds I made that day. On it
a guard and Harvey confront each other:
Are you white or
colored?
Am I white or colored?
That's correct.
That's what I want to know. Can I ask your race?
My race. I belong
to the human race.
All right. This
park is segregated.
I don't understand
what you mean.
It's strictly for
white people
It's strictly for
white persons?
Uh-hum. It has been
for years. . .
You're telling me
that because my skin is black I can not come into your park?
Not because your
skin is black. I asked you what your race was.
I would like to
know why I can not come into your park.
Because the park
is segregated. It is private property.
Just what class
of people do you allow to come in here.
White people
So you're saying
you exclude the American Negro.
That's right.
Who is a citizen
of the United States.
That's right.
I see.
As a biracial group
marched outside with picket signs, Harvey led a group inside
to sit-in at the restaurant and mount the carousel horses. The
case ended up in court and less than a year later, the park opened
for all.
RECORDING
OF CONFRONTATION
2005
Letter
to a spook
I don't know for sure
that you're out there at all, but from what I read and hear there's
a pretty good chance, so I thought I would pass this along.
You may be tapping my
phone, scanning my e-mails and collating my other electronic
ephemera, but you don't know me.
Any writer can tell you
this: you don't reveal character or describe an individual by
just dumpster diving for data. Your efforts are not only intrusive,
they're ineffective as well.
An individual is a product
of experiences, some of which - though influential - may have
been lost to memory, some of which - though searing - may never
be mentioned again, and some of which - though exhilarating -
may lack the words to describe them.
You are eavesdropping
only on my front to the world. If I am down, I try not to bring
my friends down with me. If I am mad about some public act, I
try not to bore my friends too much about it. If I am mad about
some private act, I try for the calm and restraint I do not feel.
If I am really happy, I often lack the words to express it well.
And if I have been given something, I try for gratitude even
though I have no idea what to do with the damn thing.
You do not know my dreams,
my fears, my stupid excesses of doubt, or how I alternately rebel
against, resent or am resigned to the entropy of aging. You do
not know how sad I am about the world that the people you work
for will leave my children and their children. You do not know
that I do not like vinegar, have never read Joyce's "Ulysses,"
sometimes fall asleep while waiting my turn in a board game,
never watch football, or that two of my uncles were killed in
wartime service to our country and another never smiled from
the day of his return from the front to the day he committed
suicide. You do not know that my utopia would have, above all,
no need for dentists as well as using "This Land is My Land"
as our national anthem.
If you were to really
know me, you would need to hear hundreds of stories, visit hundreds
of places and meet hundreds of people. Only a few of them are
listed on my credit cards.
But you are not only misinformed.
You are also a thief. You are stealing my privacy, my civil liberties,
my peace of mind and the incalculable pleasure of not having
to worry about what someone else is doing to you. You are also
a vandal. You are throwing rocks at the Constitution, scrawling
graffiti on our national conscience, wrecking our reputation
and scratching the face of America.
And still you do not know
me.
I don't know you either
but I suspect you are earnest and were attracted to your dubious
trade by its romantic and macho aura, recruited by the excitement
of being a spy. Deceived by your employers, however, you have
ended up just another technician in the dismantling of the First
American Republic.
I believe you sincerely
believe the contrary but I wonder about some things. For example,
how many courses in American history did you take before embarking
on this task? Did you ever read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography?
Do you know who Thomas Paine was? What do you think Patrick Henry
meant when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death?"
Would you have tapped his phone, too?
And what about those who
rebelled against the law to win rights for slaves, for women,
for workers? Many of them broke the law. Were they bad Americans
because they sought to become full Americans?
Do you know what the Palmer
raids were? Do know why good Americans stood up to Joseph McCarthy?
What did Woodrow Wilson mean when he told a group of new citizens
"You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United
States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless
it be God. Certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily
represent this great government. You have taken an oath of allegiance
to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope
of the human race." What are some of those principles? Did
Wilson know what he was talking about or should he have been
under surveillance, too?
If you have a hard time
with these questions, maybe you're in the wrong business. You're
judging people without knowing the rules of the game. You're
determining who is a good American without knowing what that
means. You're mistaking loyalty to the ambitions of a particular
set of politicians at a particular moment as loyalty to a country,
its land and its people.
But even though you are
a thief and a vandal, and even though I suspect you don't know
enough about America to judge me fairly, I'll make a deal with
you.
You come out of your hole
long enough to meet me someplace over a drink or over dinner.
I'll tell you my stories and you tell me yours. No interrogation,
no tape recorder, no probing into each other's private business.
Just two Americans sitting and talking about what it means to
them to be an American.
If you don't take this
deal, I'll think of you not only as thief and vandal but as a
coward as well.
If you do take this deal,
you'll probably discover that we're both pretty good Americans,
but that you've been wasting your time, and that you may even
want to find a new job. [2005]
A tale of two chiefs
What has happened to Washington
DC in recent years could be found in two Washington Post stories
just a few days apart. In the first, after the shootings in Mt.
Pleasant, Chief Ramsey - whose harsh chutzpah looms over his
competence like Arnold Schwarzenegger standing next to Gary Colman
- described the gang members of the neighborhood this way: "You
can save some of them; others you got to lock up. They're beyond
redemption, at least the way I see it. Maybe the clergy can save
them. I can't."
Three days later the Post ran a
profile of former police Chief Ike Fulwood and his efforts to
organize African-American men as mentors for the city's young
men. Speaking of the youths he advises, Fulwood - a graduate
of Eastern High who has been mentoring since 1971 - said, "I'm
fascinated by them. . . Kids need a mentor for guidance, so they
can have hope for the future."
According to the Post, eighty-two
men have signed up to mentor, and 24 have been paired with a
child. About 45 men have completed training and are waiting to
be matched.
One chief has given up on everything
but force; another - older, wiser, and far more deeply rooted
in the city - has never stop trying.
The difference is a metaphor for
what has happened to DC. Even in some of its worst moments -
such as after the riots - compassion, concern and constructive
effort was both far more valued and far more apparent than in
this increasingly narcissistic city.
You see it in little things. When
the trouble broke in Mt. Pleasant, I recalled a meeting of the
NAACP task force on police and justice sometime back at which
a former cop turned community activist described one of Ramsey's
men threatening a group of latino kids in Mt. Pleasant, informing
them that "I own this street." Then there was the middle
aged white man at Frager's hardware on the Hill, pointing out
a 'line starts here' sign to a black man he thought was cutting
in. In fact, the presumed offender was just standing there waiting
for someone, and responded to the contrary implication with a
burst of ethnic invective. Meanwhile, in Cleveland Park a white
woman at a forum talked about how she likes serving on juries
because she gets to meet with those from an otherwise unknown
part of the city.
You don't need disturbances or killings
to know something is wrong. All you have to do is listen. Listen
to a city becoming divided by class and ethnicity, one part speaking
of a renaissance, the other mostly silent in despair and anger
but sometimes popping like a firecracker in the otherwise quiet
night of our complacency.
Washington has always run the gamut
from glitter to misery, but for much of its recent history it
handled this bifurcation better than many places. There was a
jail uprising but no Attica. There were riots but no guerrilla
warfare because Mayor Washington had the courage to tell the
feds he would not let them shoot to kill. And for all of Marion
Barry's faults, he helped create a Chocolate City where whites
felt comfortable as well. Always high on his agenda were summer
jobs for kids.
One hopeful sign was that at a time
when cities throughout America were being defaced by graffiti
- that bellwether of urban collapse - DC remained remarkably
clean. Was it the summer jobs program? The number of concerned
and committed blacks in high places? Whites who stayed in Washington
for the social rather than the economic ecology? Police officials
like Ike Fulwood? Roving leaders working with gangs? A more decent
budget for recreation? A greater concern for public education?
Lump them all together and there
was one thread too often missing today: people who cared, people
who took responsibility, and people who gave of themselves to
the larger city. And when something went wrong, they took some
of the blame themselves and tried to make things better. Instead
of zero tolerance there was a plenitude of commitment. It might
just work again.
2002
When police
riot
What happened during
the recent Washington demonstrations - just as a couple of years
earlier in DC, Philadelphia and Seattle - can properly be classified
as a police riot. In all four cases, the major crimes were committed
not by the protesters but by law enforcement.
Most recently, approximately
650 peaceful protesters were arrested in Washington on one day,
the third largest mass arrest in the city's history and the second
greatest on a single day. The offenses with which they were charged
were almost all minor misdemeanors that in a civilized society
would have been handled with a ticket or a summons. Instead the
protesters were manhandled, assaulted, dragged, handcuffed and
then incarcerated under conditions that constituted deliberate
mistreatment in some cases bordering on - as in the case of those
left cuffed long hours from hand to foot - a form of torture.
Many, if not most,
of the protesters had committed no offense at all. They had simply
been at the wrong place at the wrong time when the DC police
decided to coral anyone within a certain area and take them off
to jail.
In doing so, the
police committed a number of serious criminal offenses including
false arrest - seizing those who had been given no lawful order
to disperse and, worse, physically preventing them from leaving
the scene. The police also engaged in assaults on protesters.
These were not just
"violations of civil liberties" but actual criminal
attacks that within another context - with the offending party
out of uniform - would have been easily seen as a felony. In
uniform or not, however, those engaging in such offenses should
be confronted not just with civil actions but with criminal complaints.
Further, the fact that the offenders were in uniform aggravated
the assaults on at least three counts:
- The offenses were
not only against the victims but against the laws and the Constitution
the officers had sworn to uphold.
- The offenses damaged
the reputation of those law enforcement officers who try to enforce
the law fairly.
- Worst, the offenses
intimidate those who wish to express their constitutional rights,
clearly discouraging them from doing so.
The media has made
sure, however, that most people don't understand this. Through
endless TV police shows and the blasé manner in which
the press covers police brutality and misconduct, the media has
encouraged the public to accept criminal excesses by the police
and has encouraged the cops to engage in them. In the Washington
example, the Washington Post prior to the demonstrations beat
the drums for a police crackdown and afterwards, the so-called
alternative weekly, City Paper ridiculed the protesters and had
no substantive criticism of the police.
We could find only
one mainstream journalist - Adrienne Washington of the Washington
Times - who spoke up for the First amendment and one local law
professor who wrote an op ed piece criticizing the police.
In such ways has
the media deeply enabled the sociopathy of contemporary law enforcement,
the end of constitutional government, and the growing and completely
rational fear of law-abiding citizens that speaking up for one's
rights has become too dangerous to attempt.
One of the best
descriptions of the proper role of a law enforcement officer
was that delivered by Alexander Hamilton to the first group of
officers of the Revenue Marine, later the US Coast Guard. Said
Hamilton:
"While I recommend
in the strongest terms to the respective officers, activity,
vigilance and firmness, I feel no less solicitude that their
deportment may be marked with prudence, moderation and good temper.
. . They will bear in mind that their countrymen are freemen,
and as such are impatient of everything that bears the least
mark of domineering spirit. They will, therefore refrain, with
the most guarded circumspection, from whatever has the semblance
of hautiness, rudeness or insult. If obstacles occur, they will
remember that they are under the particular protection of the
laws and they can meet with nothing disagreeable in the execution
of their duty which these will not severely reprehend. . . This
reflection, and regard to the good of the service, will prevent
at all times a spirit of irritation or resentment. They will
endeavor to overcome difficulties, if any are experienced, by
a cool and temperate perseverance in their duty -- by address
and moderation rather than by vehemence and violence."
Little so well measures
how far this country has fallen than the archaic sound of these
wise words. |