Ma$$ Incarceration in the American Gulag: Ugly Truths in Caddo Parish

Caddo Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff Steve Prator

The news story that surfaced last week about Caddo Parish, Louisiana Sheriff Steve Prator's comments about incarcerated prisoners performing manual labor was a troubling reminder of one of the most insidious aspects of mass incarceration in America.

Namely the profit motive that channels people into the justice system on the front end, then moves them through an overburdened municipal, state and federal prison pipeline that extracts financial gain in a variety of ways.

Profit realized not from rehabilitating those found guilty in courts of law, but from keeping those individuals incarcerated for as long as possible, irrespective of flawed sentencing laws, overt bias on the part of some members of local law enforcement, or sometimes even a suspect's guilt or innocence - as in the tragic case of Glenn Ford.

As Jonah Engel Bromwich reported in a New York Times article last Thursday, it was almost three weeks ago back on Thursday October 5th that the sheriff of Caddo Parish Louisiana, Steve Prator, held a lengthy press conference in which he railed against a series of substantive prison and sentencing reforms passed with overwhelming bipartisan support by both Democratic and Republican members of the Louisiana state legislature.

Whether Sheriff Prator harbors personal political ambitions isn't really clear.

But his alarming suggestion that the 1,400 low-level offenders convicted of non-violent offenses scheduled to be released from various Louisiana prisons (under the terms of the bipartisan prison reform bills) would have negative economic consequences because they perform a variety of manual labor services for the state's prison system, seemed close to justifying slave labor.

Incarcerated Americans sewing military fatigues

Consider a Prison Policy Initiative report by Wendy Sawyer last April that noted that there's been a decline in the average of the already-meager prison wage nationwide - which can be as low as 50 cents an hour in some states.

In some southern states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and (Surprise!) Texas, do not pay inmates for regular work in prison at all.

My sense is that part of the reason Sheriff Prator's comments drew such widespread criticism was that he shed an unsettling light on some of the numerous ways that prison labor is used in the Caddo Parish jail - including cooking and washing and performing mechanical work on cars and vehicles.

But more troubling was that he was arguing that low-level offenders jailed for non-violent offenses should STAY in prison because local state municipalities need the revenue - that's frightening.

And to many it seemed to reek of the undisguised authoritarian stench of Trumpian policy; undermine the free press, label anyone who disagrees with him an "enemy of the people", encourage law enforcement to use excessive force against suspects, lie at will, support for-profit prisons and back off of prison reforms that would keep more people out of the mass incarceration pipeline.

As Bromwich noted the story really didn't blow up nationally until journalist and criminal justice activist Shaun King posted a link to Sheriff Prator's comments on his Twitter feed early last Thursday morning.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards

In the wake of the utter devastation wreaked upon the state of Louisiana's economy after the disastrous economic policies of former Republican Governor-turned failed 2016 presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, one of the core campaign promises of current Democratic Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards was to reform the state's notoriously broken prison system.

A system that, like in other states, costs taxpayers hundreds of millions a year to operate.

Back in June, as Rebekah Allen reported for the Advocate, when Edwards signed the ten separate bills into law with a large group of Republican and Democratic supporters looking on (Republicans drafted seven of the bills), the scope and depth of the reforms was hailed as an "historic achievement" - click the link above and read some of the details outlines of the bills that were passed.

It's literally a progressive roadmap-template for sensible national criminal justice reforms, and as Bel Edwards successfully argued, those reforms would save the state of Louisiana over $260 million a year by keeping non-violent low-level offenders out of prison and out of the justice system.

For men like Sheriff Prator to argue against that kind of common sense change reflects the deep systematic challenges to meaningful prison reform in America.

For years, writers, historians, advocates of prison reform and criminal justice reform have presented data and made the case that mass incarceration in America and other countries is used as a means to warehouse a massive pool of readily cheap labor.

Not just for states and local municipalities either - we're not just talking about some guys hoeing fields or cutting grass.

A small sample of companies that use American prison
labor in some capacity

Prisoners do everything from logging, to road resurfacing to working in call centers for major retailers - yes, some of those people you speak to in customer service when you call to place an order, book an airline ticket or return an item are prisoners.

There's a long list of companies like Walmart, McDonald's and Victoria's Secret that benefit from prison labor.

When you consider the immense lobbying power that these companies wield on Capitol Hill, and the influence they wield on Congressman, Senators and Governors (and Fake President), the pushback against prison reform, which has bipartisan support in the Senate, starts to become more clear.

Sheriff Prator isn't alone in his opposition to releasing non-violent offenders because it will make labor costs rise, many U.S. corporations feel the same way.

Of course you'll never see THAT in a television commercial for McDonald's or AT&T, but they do.

Remember the efforts to untangle the prison phone rate scam a couple years ago?

If you recall, the Democratic-majority Federal Communications Commission, in conjunction with wider prison reform efforts by the Obama administration, passed a rule capping the outrageous rates that major phone companies charge prison inmates.

Trump's FCC head Ajit Pai

But a federal court shot that down earlier this summer, and the conservative right-wing puppet that Fake President tapped to head the FCC, Ajit Pai, refused to pursue the fight.

Ajit Pai basically sided with the large telecommunications carriers that lobbied Republicans to be able to freely charge wildly excessive phone rates to incarcerated inmates - making it even more difficult for them to maintain some kind of emotional bond with family and friends on the outside.

Think about that.

But it's not surprising, like a young Dinesh D'Souza, Pai is one of those Ivy League-educated sons of hard working Indian immigrants who seem to revel in prostrating themselves before the alter of right-wing conservative American ideology - gleefully pushing all the buttons that make the corporate establishment squirm and giggle with pleasure.

If there's any issue on which the FCC could rule to stick it to consumers and make it easier for large telecommunications and internet companies to consolidate their power and rack up profits, you can be sure Ajit Pai will be on the front line making it happen - after using his law degree to work for the Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division, he took a job as Verizon's Associate General Counsel where he (surprise!) specialized in among other things, regulatory issues.

Now he does the bidding of a president who holds dark-skinned people in total contempt - MAGA!

Sadly, all this corporate ass-holery is not new in America as illustrated in disturbing detail in Douglas A. Blackmon's Pulitzer-Prize wining book, "Slavery by Another Name", which explores the disturbing truth that slavery in this country continued up into the 20th century in the form of forced human bondage based on arcane local laws, corrupt local courts and greedy businessmen who conspired to target, imprison and torture thousands of African-Americans in flagrant violation of the Constitution to quench a thirst for free labor that grew exponentially after the end of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865.

African-American prisoners laboring on a railway
in the late 19th or early 20th century 

These weren't just farmers using wrongly-incarcerated prison labor to clear fields or harvest crops; in some cases corporations like U.S. Steel and Standard Oil dipped into that ill-gotten labor pool too.

Slavery By Another Name is also a brilliant PBS documentary if you've never seen it; albeit a disturbing one that will alter one's perspective on the U.S. justice system and corporate America.


Michelle Alexander's 2010 nonfiction book "The New Jim Crow" is also an essential tool to understand the dynamics of mass incarceration in America and it's relation to a justice system warped by bias and internal dysfunction.

If there were some kind of a litmus test to measure the federal government's response to the urgent need for prison reform in the U.S., where would the score be on the spectrum?

The rigidly conservative, yet remarkably uncurious Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an ideologue whose quasi-religious adherence to his narrow concept of the "rule of law" could be seen as conditional and uneven with regards to the role the Department of Justice should play in such efforts.

While he's stated publicly that he would prosecute members of law enforcement who cross the line, there's little indication that he will - especially considering that he's already gone on record as saying that the Department of Justice under his leadership will steer clear of efforts to monitor local police departments who engage in systematic biased policing based on race.

Sessions also steered the DOJ back to approving the use of for-profit prison companies to manage some federal institutions - despite those companies having a sketchy track record in such areas as safety and cost-effectiveness.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions 

Part of what's troubling about the hands-off approach to bipartisan criminal justice reform under Sessions' DOJ is the simple stubborn refusal to recognize the dehumanizing and alienating effects that flawed sentencing laws and biased court systems have on the men, women and children who populate America's prisons.

It's like his adherence to an ideology blinds him to virtually anything else.

Nothing else exists - reality, facts and common sense are secondary to his entrenched belief system.

The narrow-minded, simplistic ideological rhetoric of men like Sessions, Fake President and Sheriff Prator often obscures the simple fact that prisons house real human beings - sure some have committed violent crimes and deserve to be in jail for their crimes, but they're still people.

Did you see the New York Times article last week that quoted the Texas Criminal Department of Justice as saying that some 6,663 inmates housed in correctional facilities across the state of Texas collectively donated some $53,863 to Hurricane Harvey relief charities?

This despite the fact that most only keep on average about $5 in their prison commissary accounts; much of which goes to telecom companies so they can make phone calls.

Prisoner fire fighters in California 

Recently the news has been full of the devastation and loss of life and property in parts of California in some of the worst fires seen in years - but as MotherJones reported recently, a remarkable 30% of California's forest firefighters are made up of state prisoners.

When you consider that California's forest fire fighting budget in 2014 was about $209 million, 30% of the thousands of forest fire fighters coming from prison labor is not small change.

Despite that devastation Trump has called for a $300 million dollar cut in the US Forest Service's wild fire prevention budget for fiscal 2018 (again, ideology uber alles), who knows, maybe he plans to plug those gaps with even more prisoner labor?

So in retrospect, Sheriff Steve Prator's griping about loosing a few inmates from the Caddo Parish prison cafeteria staff and motor pool seems like chump change in comparison with the wider use of prison labor in America by both the military, private corporations and state governments.

Given all that, it's interesting how much time Trump spends talking about how immigrants are taking away American jobs in this country.

Why read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's massive three-volume work on the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system when we've got an American Gulag going on right here at home?

Sessions Goes After Science

AG Jeff Sessions' next target? Science! 

Mondays are tough enough without the release of gloomy announcements heralding Department of Justice initiatives that reflect the disturbing dystopian worldview of attorney general Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III.

Last Monday a DOJ memorandum announced a "review" of the consent decrees signed between the DOJ and various police departments accused of racially-biased policing practices and systematic excessive use of force.

Yesterday (in addition to reviving Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" mantra) he announced he's going after the science behind DNA testing used to exonerate people wrongly accused or prosecuted for crimes they didn't actually commit.

A move with unmistakable racial and socio-economic undertones.

As Spencer Hsu reported in a Washington Post article on Monday, Sessions announced that the DOJ will not renew an independent advisory panel comprised of attorneys, judges, lab technicians and scientists known as the National Commission on Forensic Science.

Not only will Session's actions terminate a partnership with the NCFS, a community of experts dedicated to raising the standards of DNA use in criminal cases, it will also halt a review of FBI testimony on various types of scientific evidence

Effectively terminating a legal reform effort begun under the Obama administration in 2013 to ensure that DNA evidence is being used fairly and accurately in criminal convictions.

Innocence Project co-founders Barry Scheck
and Peter S. Neufeld

As one of the two co-founders (including Barry Scheck) of the Innocence Project, Peter S. Neufeld has been involved with efforts to use DNA evidence and science to help free and exonerate over 343 different people from wrongful convictions.

An astounding 20 of those people were on death row facing execution - take a minute to click the link above and read about some of those people.

As he observed in Hsu's WaPo article, the results of Sessions' decision are a mockery of the lofty ideals of the American justice system:

"the (DOJ) has literally decided to suspend the search for the truth. As a consequence innocent people will languish in prison or, God forbid, could be executed."

Session's reprehensible efforts to undermine the use of science to exonerate the innocent and free them from the bowels of America's prison industrial complex aren't necessarily all that surprising given the Trump administration's hostility towards journalists and facts, or the draconian cuts to the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency.

But part of what's particularly troubling is that the Innocence Project, and widespread efforts to introduce DNA evidence in criminal prosecutions, were based
(according to Wikipedia), on a groundbreaking cooperative study conducted by the Department of Justice, the U.S. Senate and the Cardozo School of Law "which found that incorrect identification by eyewitnesses was a factor in over 70% of wrongful convictions."

In his book "Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong", author Brandon L. Garrett's in-depth study of the cases of the first 250 people to be exonerated by DNA evidence after being wrongly convicted, he found that a stunning 76% of those cases hinged on eyewitness identifications that were later proved to be false.

Darryl Hunt reacts after being exonerated in 2004
after serving 19.5 years for rape and murder  

So what would compel Jeff Sessions to terminate an independent advisory panel whose goal is to raise the standards of the science used to find and prosecute criminals?

Is he really willing to use his authority to try and quash science in order to reshape the Department of Justice to reflect the rigid ideology of the Trump administration and the modern Republican Party?

Is ideology more important than ensuring a justice system based on the pursuit of truth for this chaotic administration?

Even in the midst of the most politically divisive moments of the Obama presidency, when Republicans were unified in doing everything possible within their power to torpedo virtually every part of his legislative agenda, there was still an issue that had bipartisan support:

Meaningful reform of the American justice system.

In the wake of landmark works like "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In the Age of Colorblindness, a cross-section of conservative, libertarian, centrist, progressive and liberal lawmakers alike from around the nation joined legal experts, scholars, clergy, activists and concerned citizens of all races and from all socioeconomic backgrounds to support efforts to address the warehousing of men, women and children on a massive scale in the prison industrial complex.

Are there blocks of hardcore conservatives determined to ensure that mass incarceration continues?

Sure there are, including Donald Trump.

As CNN Money reported back on February 24th, stocks in the major private prison corporations are up over 100% since Trump took office, fueled in part by his fiery "law and order" rhetoric and efforts to ramp up the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants - efforts from which he'll profit personally from his own stock holdings.

The prison industrial complex, which includes private prison companies, prison guard unions, food suppliers, gun manufacturers and local municipal governments, is an imposing lobby in Washington with a vested interest in maintaining the pipeline that funnels non-violent people into U.S. prisons and jails.

And in Attorney General Jeff Sessions, they've certainly got a friend who's willing to undermine science to keep that human pipeline flowing.

It begs the question, just whose attorney general is this anyway?

Scalia's Death & Republican's Contempt for Obama's Authority

Justice Antonin Scalia 1936 - 2016

If the ideological engine that drives American politics was already revved up with the pending changes of the 2016 presidential elections, the unexpected passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday at the remote Cibolo Creek Ranch in the Chinati Mountains in Texas just pushed it into overdrive.

As someone who graduated from Penn State with a degree in Political Science with an emphasis on Constitutional Law, I can certainly appreciate Scalia's contributions to the Court.


My former professor and informal advisor at Penn State, Dr. Bruce Allen Murphy, wrote an Op-Ed published in The New York Times earlier today that offers perspective and insight into Scalia's legacy on the bench.

Given my centrist-progressive leanings I don't agree with all of his opinions but I respect them.

By the same measure we can't forget the sometimes bizarre, hyper-conservative ideology that Scalia, a long-time opponent of affirmative action, brought to his legal opinions either - he frequently courted controversy over the course of his 30 years as a SCOTUS justice.

When for example, as John Amato observed in an article posted on CrooksandLiars.com, in his comments during oral arguments last January during a case dealing with affirmative actions in college admissions, Scalia suggested that "most of the black scientists in this country do not come from the most advanced schools." and that subsequently a "slower track" is more beneficial to them.

During the same oral arguments, Scalia went on to dismiss the intellectual capacity of black American students admitted into colleges under affirmative action guidelines when he fretted that, "They're being pushed into schools that are too advanced for them."

Affirmative action - do as I say, not as I did

It is of interest to note that if Scalia had his way, his fellow conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas might not have been sitting near Scalia on the same bench nodding in agreement when Scalia said those words last year.

Thomas, a gifted student, was admitted to Yale University with the help of financial assistance based on an affirmative action policy designed to attract qualified minority students to the prestigious Yale Law School.

Yet he joined Scalia in vehement opposition to the value and merit of affirmative action policies - how typically conservative.

It's like watching Republican firebrands like Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose parents all immigrated to this country, pontificate against the evils of immigration to exploit the xenophobia that lights the fire of so many conservative voters.

Voters who seem to have conveniently forgotten that every single American who's not Native American is an immigrant.

In the latest example of the vicious undisguised contempt the Republican party harbors for President Obama, G.O.P Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell skipped right over any sentimental condolences for the passing of the 79-year-old conservative legal icon and promptly announced that the president should not fulfill his Constitutionally-mandated task and appoint a new Supreme Court justice, and instead, should wait until January and let the newly elected President make the appointment.

Obama and McConnell - ready to face off?

The President, who was out in California for some private Democratic fund raisers and a couple rounds of golf in Rancho Mirage when Scalia's death was announced yesterday, wasted no time in paying tribute to Scalia's career before announcing that he fully intended to move forward with the lengthy, complex and politically-charged process of appointing a new justice.

Setting up what is sure to be a titanic election-year confrontation between the White House and an obstructionist majority Republican Senate that's spent the past two years blocking any presidential initiatives since it regained the 54-44  majority in the 2014 elections.  

As Elizabeth Williamson observed in the editorial blog of The New York Times this morning, the six remaining Republican presidential candidates used the opening minutes of last night's G.O.P to echo McConnell's wish that the president allow the SCOTUS appointment to pass to the next President.

When Donald Trump was asked if he would fill the appointment if he was in Obama's shoes, he responded that "If I were President I would certainly try to nominate a justice." before insisting that Senator McConnell and the Republican Senate should do everything to "delay, delay, delay" President Obama's doing the exact same thing - again, how typically conservative.

Let's be frank here.

Republican bigot Rep Joe Wilson

The Republicans suggesting that President Obama does not have the right to nominate a qualified candidate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court is reflective of how some G.O.P members of Congress have openly treated him as if he's some sort of presumptuous "uppity Negro" instead of the leader of the free world.

Their unprecedented disrespect for Obama, rooted in the toxic contempt for black Americans which is now an open part of Republican party values, has been expressed in private and in public almost since the day he took office.

Remember when Republican South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson interrupted Obama's address to a joint session of Congress back in 2009 by shouting out "You lie!" in the middle of the speech like some kind of inebriated redneck?

The Republican's aggressive politicization of the newly-created (and unexpected) vacancy on the Supreme Court is just the latest example.

It stems not just from their having become accustomed to having the Robert's Court handing down decisions that pander to and promote the ideology of the political right, like undermining the foundations and principles of Democracy by gutting key provisions of the Voter Rights Act, or allowing unlimited anonymous campaign contributions to flow into the coffers of political candidates.

To me, the Republican Senate's move to try and seize control of the Supreme Court nomination process  is also clear example of how institutional racism remains entrenched in America with the cooperation of some of those elected to govern on behalf of the people.

Journalist - writer Ta-Nehisi Coates 

In recent years writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, who penned a searing indictment of 250 years of systematic racism in America for The Atlantic in June of 2014, "The Case For Reparations", and Michelle Alexander, a nationally-recognized civil rights attorney, activist and prisoner rights advocate who authored the groundbreaking "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In the Age of Colorblindness" in 2010, have used a combination of facts and eloquent words to illustrate how deeply embedded racism is in this nation.

The announcement yesterday by Republicans of their intent to circumvent the Constitutionally-mandated authority of the President to appoint a Supreme Court Justice reflects their willingness use the skin color of the President to expand the reach and influence of what has been an activist hyper-conservative court unafraid to use legal decisions to promote a conservative ideology.

The power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court is expressly granted to the President by Article II of the Constitution which states (in part):

"he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law..."

That's the law.

Regardless of the personal views certain members of the U.S. Senate hold of the President's race.

Conservatives Can't Change the Subject Anymore

Activist Ryan Toney in front of the Supreme Court in 2013

Every now and then in this country, if you're lucky, you might just be fortunate enough to bear witness to the kind of fundamental change that shifts foundations, alters perceptions, changes the course of our history and reminds us of the kind of nation America can be when it gets it's act together.

Today was just such a day thanks to a landmark Supreme Court decision resulting from years of legal challenges, social activism and lobbying for marriage equality and LGBT rights.

Today was a good day for all Americans.

Yesterday was such a day too, lest we forget that the Affordable Care Act withstood a second major legal challenge and is now one step further towards being firmly cemented as one of those bedrock Roosevelt-ian federal programs that "promote the general welfare" like Social Security or Medicare.

It's not simple to put a finger on it but something has clearly shifted in the collective American
consciousness.

A terrifying chain of events seared into the American mindset; a teenage girl in Texas being physically assaulted by an out of control police officer trying to break up a disturbance at a pool party.

A racist killer brainwashed by right-wing hate propaganda using a legally purchased handgun to murder nine innocent people in a church during a bible study in Charleston, South Carolina.

These events are directly linked to the high-profile police killings that took place in Baltimore, Ferguson, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Cleveland, South Carolina and elsewhere.

After the deaths of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others, there was no more dismissing the killing of unarmed and innocent people of color as isolated incidents or accidents.

In this technology-driven age of social media, cell-phone video & photos, CCTV cameras and eyewitness accounts have made it clear for those who weren't aware of it before (or denied it) that the state-sponsored brutalization of people (many but not all people of color) by some members of law enforcement is not just systematic.

The scale and frequency of it (the federal government doesn't even keep comprehensive stats on police killings) has branded it as a large-scale human rights violation being committed by the very judicial system tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the public.

The scope of this issue is examined in the June 4th issue of Rolling Stone in Matt Taibbi's searing expose of systematic police violence against communities of color and the origins of "Broken Windows policing" entitled "Why Baltimore Blew Up".  You have to read it if you haven't already.

As Taibbi writes in the opening paragraphs, "Go to any predominantly minority neighborhood in any major American city and you'll hear the same stories: decades of being sworn at, thrown against walls, kicked, searched without cause, stripped naked on busy city streets, threatened with visits from child protective services, chased by dogs, and arrested and jailed not merely on false pretenses, but for reasons that often don't even rise to the level of being stupid."
 
The stark truth of these massive inequities in the justice system are coupled with the issue of the mass incarceration of African-American men, which is so absurd in scope that even in this highly politically-polarized atmosphere, it's now brought together people like Hillary Clinton, the Koch brothers, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and George Soros on the same side. Think about that.

It's creating a groundswell in America, a tidal wave of awareness that is now extending beyond the justice system; I think it's the momentum of that same groundswell that swayed the slim 5 - 4 majority on the Supreme Court to vote in favor of marriage equality.

Though I did study Constitutional law in college, and the SCOTUS majority did rule based in part on an expansive interpretation of the 14th Amendment in granting same-sex couples the right to marry, I think the court's opinion can be traced back to the simple fact those justices are just like us.

They saw what happened to Freddie Gray in Baltimore after he was taken into police custody for a reason that's still not clear.

They watched a South Carolina police officer shoot a black motorist in the back who fled a traffic stop then watched him die before picking up his taser and placing it near the man's body to try and justify his murdering an unarmed man who was running away.

They watched in horror as the reports unfolded of Dylann Roof shooting innocent churchgoers in cold blood based on his twisted interpretation of racist manifestos he'd read online.

We've all watched those things unfold, they may be members of the Supreme Court but in that they are no different than us.

I don't think there's any question that those things impacted their decision to both affirm the Affordable Care Act and to grant marriage equality; not because it's a health issue, or a gay issue, or a black issue, or a white issue, or a religious issue.

It's a human issue. It's a question of what kind of nation we want to be in the 21st century.

This groundswell I spoke of, this tide is going to affect even more change; it's already shifted the tone of the 2016 presidential race as GOP contenders have been forced to confront nationwide calls to remove the Confederate flag from license plates and from the grounds of statehouses in South Carolina, Alabama and elsewhere.

Walmart, Sears, even NASCAR have already called for the removal of the Confederate flag.

Students at the University of Texas are petitioning for the removal of a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis from campus. 

That tide is affecting not just race, and sexual orientation but gender too.

As Eriq Gardner reported in the June 5th issue of The Hollywood Reporter, the ACLU targeted the film and television industry with a petition on May 21st calling on Hollywood to request the government (specifically the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to begin an investigation into why female directors are still so underrepresented in television and film.

It's impacting the conversation on immigration as well.

In the wake of Donald Trump's abhorrent and offensive remarks about Mexicans during his recent presidential announcement, Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language broadcaster has severed ties with the Miss Universe pageant because of Trump's involvement as a co-producer of the event.

These are all human issues and Americans are not just paying attention; they are calling for changes.

As Matt Taibbi wrote in the opening of his June 4th  Rolling Stone article on systematic police abuse: "When Baltimore exploded in protests a few weeks ago following the unexplained paddy-wagon death of a young African-American man named Freddie Gray, America responded the way it usually does in a race crisis: It changed the subject."

Conservatives in this nation have been changing the subject for decades.

They've tried to convince people the Civil War was about the abstract concept of "States Rights" rather than whether states should decide whether black Americans could be owned as property and held in perpetuity in a state of forced labor and human bondage.

They've tried to frame the right of same-sex American couples to marry in the context of a "States Rights" issue or a "Freedom of religion" issue.

They've tried to frame their desire to suppress the rights of blacks, Hispanics, the elderly, college students, legal immigrants and the poor to exercise their Constitutional right to vote as a "Voter Integrity Issue".

But unfortunately for conservatives in this country, especially the right-wing extremists who now control the Republican party, something has shifted in the collective American consciousness.

A new awareness has taken root and is now growing, and conservatives can't just change the subject anymore - they must now confront the human issue before us all.

Accountability 101

Lawyer Jane Bishkin issues an apology for Eric Casebolt

My efforts to articulate my feelings about corporal David Eric Casebolt's treatment of a 15 year-old girl, his pointing a loaded gun at two unarmed teenage boys, and the two female bystanders seen on video assaulting 19 year-old party host Tatyana Rhodes prompted quite a spike in Web traffic. 

In response to the blog I posted on Tuesday June 9th, titled 'Deep in the Heart of Texas', one concerned reader commented that my criticisms had overlooked the principal of 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'.

So how do we as a society weigh the innocence or guilt of a police officer who slams an unarmed girl's face to the ground, versus the innocence or guilt of a scared bikini-clad teen running around outside a pool party?

Should Casebolt's actions be examined through the lens of our assuming him to be innocent until he's actually proven guilty?

Casebolt himself has already essentially admitted his own guilt and resigned, but the reader-in-question makes a valid point.

But the harsh reality is that police officers in America rarely see the inside of a courtroom for assaulting or killing someone with dark skin; even when the victim is innocent and unarmed.

Eric Casebolt

Given the high profile nature of this case, it's certainly quite possible that Casebolt (pictured left) will face charges, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

An article in the Dallas Morning News quotes Hannah Stroud, the attorney representing Dajerria Becton (the 15 year-old girl Casebolt slammed to the ground in the video) as saying "Becton attended a pool party Friday to which she was invited and was not trespassing. When she was told to leave by police, she asked for her bag so she could call her aunt. That’s when she was pushed to the ground, grabbed by the hair and had her face shoved into the ground,"

So perhaps the-reader-in-question needs to examine why a police officer would slam a teenage girl to the ground for asking the officer if she could retrieve her bag to get her cell phone so she could call her aunt (with whom she lives) and comply with the officer's request to leave the area.

It goes without saying that a police veteran with 10 years of law enforcement experience like Casebolt bears more responsibility for upholding that principle of American law in a situation like the one that took place last week; even if he did have a rough day before he showed up there.

While subsequent witness interviews suggests the teenagers at the pool party in McKinney, Texas were indeed, not just numerous but extremely rowdy, that doesn't justify Casebolt's behavior at the scene and I don't think I'm the only one who feels that no one was more out of control than Casebolt himself.

That assertion was not only backed up by an analysis of the videotape of the incident by former assistant FBI director Tom Fuentes, but also Casebolt's commanding officer Chief Greg Conley who said in a news conference, "He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows was out of control during the incident." 

In the wake of his resignation, Casebolt admitted in a statement read by Dallas County Police Officer's Association attorney Jane Bishkin (pictured above) that "he allowed his emotions to get the better of him" and that "he apologizes to all who were offended."

It's interesting to consider the concept of innocent until proven guilty given that overwhelming evidence suggests that some members of law enforcement actually believe the total opposite when it comes to encounters with members of racial and ethnic minorities.

As the reader-in-questions suggests, let's look closer at the concept of 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'.

Consider the case of Amilcar Perez-Lopez, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, who is one of 26 Latinos killed by police in 2015.

Amilcar Perez-Lopez's autopsy conflicts with SFPD report

The San Francisco Police Department alleges that Perez-Lopez, described as a hard working family man by those who knew him, had a knife raised and was lunging for two plain clothes SFPD officers back on February 26th when he was shot and killed.

But according to disturbing details revealed in  an investigation by The Guardian, an autopsy report commissioned by the 20 year-old victim's family clearly shows that Perez-Lopez was shot six times in the back; four in the back, once in the head and once in the right arm (pictured above). 

Look closely at the trajectory of the bullets in the autopsy diagram above - the bullets entered Perez-Lopez's body and head from the back - so how could he have been lunging at the undercover SFPD officers when they shot and killed him?

What's clear is that the two SFPD officers saw Perez-Lopez's ethnicity, decided he was guilty and then executed him on the street before he'd been charged with any crime, entered a plea or appeared in court.

The broader growing awareness of the systematic bias inherent in America's judicial system is reflected in the revision of state laws that incarcerate individuals for low-level non-violent offenses, growing demands to ensure that juveniles are not treated as adults and housed in adult correctional facilities - and of course, a growing demand that police officers be held accountable for the unchecked use of excessive physical force - which is overwhelmingly used against racial and ethnic minorities.

Kalief Browder

Speaking of 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty', we should also consider the tragic case of New York resident Kalief Browder (pictured left) who recently took his own life after struggling with effects of three years of incarceration in New York City's Rikers Island correctional facility.

As you may have heard or read, the case against him was dismissed and he was released but only after enduring three years of beatings at the hands of Rikers Island prison guards and other inmates and the psychological torture of solitary confinement.

After Jennifer Gonnerman's story about Browder's experience appeared in The New Yorker there's been a lot of discussion about the dysfunctional nature of New York City's judicial system in which poor defendants who cannot afford bail are often held in jail for years awaiting a trial.

As summarized on the RT.com Website "Kalief Browder was initially arrested on his way home on May 14, 2010, after an unknown individual identified the teenager, then 16 years-old, as the person who robbed him a few weeks prior. Browder was charged with second-degree robbery and, unable to post the $10,000 bail at the time of his arrest, was transferred to Rikers Island. The case never went to trial however, and Browder languished at Rikers Island until the charges were dropped without explanation in June 2013. His stay at the prison included around two years of solitary confinement."

He missed the last two years of high school while languishing in the limbo of a dysfunctional legal system where he was effectively punished from the age of 16 until he was 19 before a court of law actually established his guilt or innocence.

As Browder told WABC-TV in an interview back in November of 2013, "No apology, no nothing. They just said, 'Oh case dismissed. Don't worry about nothing.'What do you mean 'don't worry about nothing? You just took over three years of my life."

And it's important to note that he had a chance to take a plea deal and admit to two lesser misdeameanor charges that would have enabled him to be released, but he was adamant about his innocence and was determined to prove it.

The court system never gave him that chance.

Not unlike the police officers who took the lives of Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Amilcar Perez-Lopez or Eric Garner. Or the cop who showed up and slammed a young girl to the ground - the idea of innocence just never entered their minds.

I respect the reader who questioned whether or not I had considered 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty', I certainly wish police in the United States would do that more often when they encounter people of color.

But I'm not sure the massive backlash against Eric Casebolt or any other officer who assaults or kills an innocent person is really about an abstract legal concept that doesn't apply equally in this nation - I think it's more about Accountability 101.

Remember, Remember the Elections of November

Earlier this evening I wrapped up at work and headed over to the polls at 5:40pm to cast my vote in New Jersey's District 54.

My polling site was in the library of a senior center just around the corner from where I live and work.

A cagey old WWII veteran sat between the two polling booths and kept a sharp eye on things as he guided voters into the booths and pressed the button once people had cast their votes.

He grumbled good-naturedly about having to be there for 16 hours. I asked him if he was getting overtime for being there so long and he said no, he wasn't.

The older ladies seated a few feet away at the check-in table were very polite and efficient. My name was listed in the voter rolls and I walked into the booth, checked off my candidates on the electronic key board and cast my vote in about 90 seconds; no ID required.

But just before I was called to the table to check in, an older man of color with what sounded like a deep Caribbean or possibly Spanish accent was confused because his name wasn't listed in the voter rolls - and he lives IN the same senior complex where the polling site was set up.

One of the ladies behind the table asked if he had entered a change of address form recently, when he said he hadn't she tried to assure him that it had happened earlier to another woman too.

It was a bit of an awkward moment.

The couple in line before me were African-American and there was a young college-aged white couple nearby too; all their names were in the voter rolls and they were able to cast their votes under the watchful eye of the cagey old WWII vet.

But the uncomfortable reality of the nation-wide campaign of voter suppression by the GOP kind of hung in the air; we all silencdtly wondered if we were witnessing that.

The woman behind the desk was very nice and told him he would need to fill out a provisional ballot at another table. She asked him if he needed some help and he said he did; so she got up and guided him over to a table a few feet away and sat down to help him fill out his provisional ballot.

NJ Senator Corey Booker won by a wide margin, but I'm still thinking about the older man with the accent who lived at the same address of the polling site but wasn't listed in the voter rolls. Will his provisional ballot be counted?

I wonder how many times that happened across the nation today.

It's 11:42pm and it appears Republicans will take control of the US Senate.

Even though the idea of the 'Party of No' controlling of both houses of Congress is personally repugnant to me, I'm trying to remember that today millions of Americans headed to the polls to celebrate the privilege of being able to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

At least those citizens whose voting rights haven't been suppressed by flagrantly illegal "Voter ID" laws enacted by Republican state legislatures.

The Supreme Court having gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act last summer - enabling states like North Carolina, Texas and Georgia to intentionally make the voting process less accessible to racial minorities, students and elderly citizens - is certain to impact various races around the country, but there's not enough data to show to what extent.

The absurdity of North Carolina's arcane "Voter ID" laws are glaring. Laws that shorten the time to cast a vote by a week? Or won't accept valid student ID's from college students so they can vote? Or even local municipal government employees ID's as valid voter ID at the polls?

What's happened is the Roberts Court has acquiesced to the far right's open philandering of people's right to vote and embraced a "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" approach to judicial oversight of the nation's voting laws.

Even as the GOP begin their election night celebrations, voter rights groups are challenging the Interstate Crosscheck Program, a voter ID fraud database (created by Republicans) that may purge the names of some 27 million people from the voter rolls.

The IC program compiles names suspected of voter fraud based simply on first, last and middle names; as an Al-Jazeera investigation reports, the system ends up capturing the names of mostly black, Latino and Asian-Americans voters who often share common last names.

So what happens to someone in say Georgia, whose name gets placed on the Republican's voter purge list illegally? What happens to their vote?

Just as Republicans won a decisive majority in the House of Representatives back in the 2010 mid-term elections even though Democratic candidates won more numerical votes, the GOP may win the Senate.

But it's not a victory for the spirit of Democracy; it's a victory for Jim Crow.