DOCUMENTARY: WHITE LIKE ME

Post by Maple Heights African American Gazette.

ATLANTA BLACKSTAR: 10 QUOTES THAT EXPLAIN RACISM TO PEOPLE WHO CLAIM THEY'RE COLORBLIND

Post by Maple Heights African American Gazette.

PRESIDENT OBAMA, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER AND THE WAR ON DRUGS

It's about time President Obama.  

President Obama is about to grant clemency for a large number of prisoners who are serving time for simple drug offenses.   


Liz Goodwin tells the story of a woman named Barbara Scrivner who has languished in prison for 20 years serving a 30 year sentence for selling a few ounces of methamphetamine.

Liz Goodwin says it plain and simple: "Thousands and thousands of people like Scrivner are serving punishingly long sentences in federal prison based on draconian policies that were a relic of the "tough on crime" anti-drug laws of the '80s and '90s. Thirty years after skyrocketing urban violence and drug use sparked politicians to impose longer and longer sentences for drug crimes, America now incarcerates a higher rate of its population than any other country in the world. This dubious record has finally provoked a bipartisan backlash against such stiff penalties. The old laws are slowly being repealed."   More

Attorney General Eric Holder's speech last year highlighted the horrible injustices that have been done to far too many people because of the "The War on Drugs"; and Michelle Alexander has been talking to audiences and writing about "The War on Drugs" for years now.


So again I say, ... It's about time President Obama!!!



RELATED:

Obama plans clemency for hundreds of drug offenders, by Liz Goodwin, April 21, 2014

Debating Clemency Eligibility for Drug Offenders, April 21, 2014

2013: The Year the Prison System Changed?

2013: The Year the Prison System Changed?

 2013: The Year the Prison System Changed? December 3, 2013

Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow 

4 Industries Getting Rich Off the Drug War

 32 Reasons Why We Need To End The War On Drugs,  by Matthew Boesler, and Ashley Lutz, July 12, 2012

 

BLACK EXPRESSIONS AFRICAN AMERICAN BOOK CLUB

BLACK EXPRESSIONS AFRICAN AMERICAN BOOK CLUB

SATURDAYS: 12NOON TO 1PM

CUYAHOGA COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS BRANCH
4415 NORTHFIELD RD
216.464.5280

 
**MEET NIKKI GIOVANNI TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29TH

SEPT 21ST .. "SILVER SPARROW" BY TAYARI JONES / OCTOBER 19TH ... "BICYCLES: LOVE POEMS" BY NIKKI GIOVANNI / NOVEMBER 16TH ... "THE NEW JIM CROW" BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER

FIGHTING INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

The pen is a powerful thing; however, it will take more than the pen to break the back of Institutional (systemic) Racism in this country.   It will take political, economic, and legal empowerment of minorities to break its back.

 

 

At every level of government, but expecially at the local and state levels across this country, minorities are facing Institutional/Systemic Racism.

 

 

Michelle Alexander talks about it, Shirley Sherrod talked about it; and it's the reason why there is an NAACP, an Urban League, and advocacy groups.

 

 

We are seeing enormous push back to maintain the status quo (a lack of diversity). There are mayors and governors who resist ethnic diversity and fairness. There are legal  (justice) departments (city, state, federal),  that resist racial/ethnic diversity and fairness and will do everything they can to prevent minorities access to political, economic and legal empowerment. 

 

 

From time to time  we're going to focus on Institutional Racism, it's history,  ... and solutions in overcoming that kind of racism; and we're especially  going to talk about organizations that resist racial/ethnic diversity and are the most heinous and dangerous, and  therefore have made it  extremely difficult to root out systemic racism.

 

 

 

Update:

Wealth Gap Among Races Has Widened Since Recession, April 28, 2013


Related:

Institutional/Systemic Racism


Institutional Racism


Civil and Political Rights
 

Ethnic Diversity

Racial Diversity in U.S. Congregations


Racial Diversity Increases, But Segregation Persists Says Geography Professor


Racial diversity in United States schools


Racial Segregation


The New Jim Crow


The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander


Slavery



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

POST FROM MANSFIELD (COOL CLEVELAND) ON BILL MASON, THE CUYAHOGA COUNTY CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND MORE

FROM COOL CLEVELAND.COM
       An excerpt from: "Mansfield: The End of an Era? Perhaps."




By Mansfield Frazier



Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore.
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark to see
I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.
-Bob Dylan

"When Stephanie Tubbs Jones out-maneuvered and out-politicked all opponents to win the coveted prosecutor’s job back in 1991, the Westside Irish political machine vowed to never again allow what they viewed as an “outsider” — someone not handpicked by them — to hold so powerful a position in Cuyahoga County. With Bill Mason (who, by the way, is not of Irish descent) at the helm, indeed the machine has — with few exceptions — been a controlling factor in every county election since then… especially those for judgeships.

 

 

And county reform did nothing to curb the machine’s power — after all, reforming government is totally different from reforming politics, which is a far more difficult task to accomplish and takes decades rather than one election cycle. As some have wryly noted (and took exception to), the same insider political mechanism (and machinations) that’s always been in place were again used to transfer power to Mason’s successor, Tim McGinty. Mason steps down a few months early so Democratic Party insiders can handpick his successor. “I thought we went through county reform to put an end to that kind of machine party manipulations?” one observer recently queried, in an exasperated fashion. “Fat chance of that,” I replied.

 

 

Mason’s career, however, has a touch of Greek tragedy swirling around it as the end nears. A bright, gifted lawyer, he early on in his career rightfully could have been dubbed the “James Brown of Cuyahoga County”… since he was far and away the hardest working man in local politics. But, alas, he also was — in a sense — a victim of the times he rose to power in.

 

 

He came into office 14 years ago with high hopes of moving up the political ladder to become a U.S. senator, or perhaps governor. But this was a time of Strum und Drang in American criminal justice — the height of the dark period when our nation was about the business of building what would eventually become the largest carceral system the world has ever known. And it was up to local county prosecutors nationwide to feed the beast that was being created if it were to survive… and Mason complied and did his part with alacrity — better yet, even gusto.

 

 

While the U.S. population has increased approximately 2.8 times since the 1920s, the country’s prison population has increased 20 times, with the bulk of that increase coming after 1980. And when governors like Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm proposed commonsense changes to reduce prison overcrowding, the state’s prison guard’s union picketed her residence, complaining such reforms would cause job loss.

 

 

Not satisfied with simply locking up dangerous people who commit violent crimes (something even fools and Pollyannas agree with doing), in the mid-1980s — as the country took a hard swing to the right — we began locking up non-violent people we were simply mad at, along with addicts of every ilk and stripe (except for wealthy ones) and those with mental disabilities. And those targeted to be subjected to the brutality of a justice system run amok were selected by police with a surgical-like precision: young black males were (and often still are) being sent to prison for the same petty drug crimes young white males are sent to bed with no supper for committing. To wit: Blacks, whites and Hispanics all buy sell and use drugs at the exact same rate — 11 percent of each group’s population, yet blacks are seven times as likely to wind up in prison for drugs as whites, and Hispanics are five times as likely. Yet no prosecutor locally or nationally cares to look at this glaring disparity and ask why. I’ll give you a hint: selective enforcement, the dirty little secret of police departments nationwide."

 

Read the rest HERE (at CoolCleveland.com)

 

 

"From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com."