Harris Co. Sheriff Misses The Point Of "Black Lives Matter"

The chart above is from The Washington Post, and so is the article below (written by Janelle Ross). I agree with every word she has written.

In Harris County, Tex., Sheriff Ron Hickman is in the midst of a difficult time. He's lost one of his deputies to a shooting at a suburban Houston gas station. And while the man arrested in connection with the shooting death of Deputy Darren H. Goforth has yet to provide law enforcement with a motive for his alleged actions, Hickman has provided one for him.

"Our assumption is that he [Goforth] was a target because he wore a uniform," Hickman told reporters at a news conference last week."We've heard 'Black Lives Matter,' 'All Lives Matter.' Well, Cops' lives matter, too."

The implication -- and it's not a new one -- is this: All this talk about the value of black lives and public questions about the way in which law enforcement officers do their work denigrate the merit of policing and fundamentally imperil or splinter public concern about officers' health and safety.

It's an idea that is not only inconsistent with the evidence that we can gather from American political culture, but one that essentially affirms one of the core ideas advanced by Black Lives Matter activists.

To Hickman and more than a few law enforcement union leaders and public spokesmen around the country, it seems that in a world in which Black Lives Matter, police lives accordingly do not. That sounds a lot like saying that effective policing and law enforcement where officers feel and remain safe cannot happen unless those same public officials are free to do their work without regard for the civil rights and liberties of people of color in the communities they police.

If we follow that logic, then public and prosecutorial questions about the conduct of police -- as well as the still-rare occasions when those inquiries lead to charges and, even more rarely, criminal convictions -- interfere with public and police safety. In Hickman's world, police lives cannot matter if the particular and disproportionate peril that black Americans face when they come in contact with police matters to the rest of us at all.

It is a kind of logic that says safety and civil rights sit at opposite poles or are part of a zero-sum equation -- if x matters, then y does not. That not only has never been an idea that Black Lives Matter activists have publicly espoused; it's pretty antithetical to the movement's general push for greater regard for the experiences, injuries and deaths suffered at the hands of police. Existing patterns, these activists argue, suggest that black lives do not matter at all. So they must be spoken for and spoken about with particular fervor.

Yes, Hickman used the controversial -- to some, dismissive -- phrase "all lives matter." It is a phrase that other elected officials, candidates and political activists of very different ideological veins have sometimes deployed as verbal irritant. The phrase can be aimed at those who would dare to speak publicly for and about these incidents, failed prosecutions and many, many decisions not to charge or indict the officers involved in questionable injuries and deaths. It is that very pattern that Black Lives Matter activists believe exemplifies the limited and particularly diminished value of black lives.

Sometimes, an "all lives matter" declaration is a conscious or unconscious attempt to avoid the ugly truth about the country's ongoing challenges around race and equality. The fact that this is an argument almost exclusively exercised by white Americans should, perhaps, give some of these people pause. For the parents of most children and teens of color, having a conversation about how to try to avoid injury or death when in contact with police feels as necessary as the chats other parents have about wearing one's seat belt and avoiding conversations with strangers.

And sometimes, "all lives matter" might come from a principled place that just does not include much regard for the statistics depicted in the police shooting graphic above. And that reality is: Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately killed by police. 

Certainly, Hickman might at this moment be in a deeply emotional state. But his is a comment closely connected with the sentiments of officers and in particular law enforcement union representatives in Baltimore and New York. At points this year, they engaged in informal work slowdowns and other types of unofficial work refusal on the grounds that attention to alleged police misconduct made it impossible to do their jobs.

Still, calling for equal and legal treatment for all Americans is not equivalent to sanctioning the ambush murder of police. Requiring officers to abide by the laws they help to enforce should not really be regarded as an extra and unnecessary layer of responsibility for public servants.

And perhaps most notably, there is little to no evidence that suggests that news coverage of alleged police misconduct is making police work more dangerous. In May, the FBI released preliminary data showing that 51 police officers were killed in the commission of felonies in 2014. That's a marked increase over the previous year, when just 27 officers died the same way. But police killings also hit a 35-year low in 2013.

In fact, between 1980 and 2014, an average of 64 officers were killed each year, making that 2014 increase in crimes that led to an officer's death no less sad or monumental for the officers and their families but well within the range of a sad normal in the United States that certainly predates the Black Lives Matter movement. You can look at the FBI data summary here and glean some of the details about the circumstances under which those 51 officers were killed last year.

One major takeaway from the preliminary 2014 data: Six officers were killed in premeditated situations where they were ambushed and two during unprovoked attacks that are similar to what officers say happened at that suburban Houston gas station. The previous year, five officers were ambushed and killed, according to the FBI.

These aren't the signs of some growing pattern or problem. They are almost singular and certainly terrible events.

What we do know is that those who are arrested in connection with officer injuries or deaths are often convicted, face lengthy sentences and even capital punishment when caught. In at least one state, New Hampshire, causing a police officer's death is specifically identified as a death-penalty-eligible crime.

The fact that the man who is allegedly responsible for Goforth's death was brought to court to face capital murder charges Monday morning, two days after Goforth's death, would also seem to affirm that officer killings not only matter, but remain a very big deal.

African-American Views Of The Presidential Candidates

In a post below, I remarked that Bernie Sanders has a problem with women and moderates -- but it turns out there is another group he is failing to reach. It is African-American voters. They view Hillary Clinton far more favorably than Sanders (80% to 23%) -- a gap of 57 points.

But Sanders is not the only candidate not viewed very favorably by African-Americans. No other candidate of either party tops Sanders' favorability rating.

These numbers are from a recent Gallup Poll.

Survey Method:

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted July 8-Aug. 8, 2015, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,684 black adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Each candidate was rated by a random subset of respondents during this time period, with the sample sizes rating each candidate ranging from 414 to 490. For results based on these samples, the margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

GP Says Racial Justice Requires New Economic Models

We have made some progress toward racial equality in the United States, but the last few years have made it clear that we still have a long way to go. What can be done? Can true racial equality even be accomplished in our current capitalist system (considering the ingrained racism in many of our businesses and other institutions)? The Green Party believes we must develop new economic models. Here is a post written by Green Party Shadow Cabinet member Kali Akuno on February 16th:

For many people, the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency lent credibility to the argument that the United States is moving inexorably, if slowly and in fits and starts, towards a post-racial, color-blind society that affords equal opportunity to all. However, current conditions expose a starkly different reality for the vast majority of people of African descent.

In the 1950s and 1960s through the battles for Civil Rights and Black Liberation, Black people were seen by many to embody the historic high point of American ethics and the struggle for justice. But the ensuing decades have witnessed the consistent characterization of the descendants of enslaved Africans as an unemployable burden on society and the enforcement of what author Michelle Alexander calls "the New Jim Crow," manifest in increasing criminalization, incarceration, expanding poverty, police brutality and denial of other human rights, including voting rights.

We have to ask, in the wake of the many promises and prospects following the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movement, why is this? What is the root cause of racism and national oppression in the U.S.? Why are these oppressive forces so persistent and virulent in U.S. society? What are the underlying reasons for the fact that Black people remain at the bottom of the U.S. economy? And what is the direction forward? How can the inequities created by racism be overcome? What are African-American organizations and communities doing to resist the persistence of institutional racism and structural inequality?

The story most frequently told is that African-Americans, with some exceptions, have failed to take advantage of the pathways to full economic and social inclusion: individual effort, education, perseverance and participation in electoral politics.

Reality tells a different story. For 400 years, the African people brought to the Americas as slaves and their descendants have been a necessary source of free or cheap labor, a mighty force that has been central to driving the economic development of the United States. On the slave plantations and through the semi-feudal sharecropping system of the South to labor in the mines and industries of the North, Black people have made immense, often decisive economic contributions to the development of the America. Not to mention pervasive and powerful cultural influences, many of which have also be commodified and exported throughout the world with minimal benefits for Black cultural workers and communities.

The violent enforcement of this dehumanization has been intensely fought against from slave rebellions, to urban rebellions, to prison rebellions, right down to the mass mobilizations we see today against state executions, police killings, vigilante murder, and white supremacist terrorism. For over 200 years, African Americans have fought tooth and nail to build independent institutions and organizations, and every step of the road these efforts have been met with legal and extra-legal sanction and violence.

The dominant narrative allows for some recognition of these brutal facts of history. It tends to note that despite all of this systemic repression, that Black people have attained some significant social victories over the past 200 years. Mississippi, where I reside, is an excellent case in point. Black people displayed tremendous courage and determination in this state in the 1950's and 60's to fight for their right to vote and break the power of a brutal apartheid state and social regime. But has the fact that "Mississippi now has more African-American elected officials than any other state in the country" changed the lives of the majority of Black people in Mississippi, or any other state, in any fundamental ways?

Electoral politics have repeatedly been used a pressure valve in the system, to let off social steam and allow the system to keep operating fundamentally unchanged. Electoral politics have facilitated the creation of Black middle class forces throughout the United States, but objectively has done little to improve the lives of the majority of Black people. In fact, the mass of over 5,000 African American elected officials currently holding office throughout the country have done little to stop or stem the tide of the rollback of the social gains won by African Americans in the 1950's and 60's.

Since the establishment of the United States, Black people have experienced cycles of social gains and retractions. The reforms of second reconstruction of the 1950's and 60's, removed the blatant hard edges of national oppression against African descendants in the U.S. but they did not change the structural divisions between "citizens and subjects" and the "haves and the have-nots" at the foundation of the American project. Given the tremendous economic and social changes produced by globalization and how they impact peoples historically and systematically relegated to serving as sources of cheap labor, who knows where the ongoing rollback of the equalizing measures won by Black people will lead.

This leads to the question, what can and must people of African descent do to take possession of our own lives and control our own destinies? What are we doing to combat advancing structural exclusion from the formal economy, which is intensifying our dehumanization making large sectors of our people disposable?

In Jackson, MS we are experimenting with a municipal project of social transformation that we hope can and will be a guide to other Black communities throughout the United States. Our project is based on exerting our self-determination in two primary ways:

1. Autonomous political initiatives, which are self-organized and self-executed social projects. Autonomous in this context means initiatives not supported or organized by the government (state) or some variant of transnational monopoly capital. These types of projects range from building worker cooperatives to forming people's self-defense networks. On a basic scale these projects function typically as "serve the people" or "survival programs" that help the people to sustain themselves or acquire a degree of self-reliance. On a larger scale these projects provide enough resources and social leverage (such as flexible time to organize) to allow the people to engage in essential fight back or offensive initiatives.
2. Human Rights campaigns to apply pressure on the government and the forces of economic exploitation in society. Pressure is exerted by organizing various types of campaigns against these forces, including mass action (protest) campaigns, direct action campaigns, boycotts, non-compliance campaigns, policy shift campaigns (either advocating for or against existing laws or proposed or pending legislation), and electoral campaigns (to put favorable people in an office or to remove adversarial forces from office).

To date, after years of strategic planning and base building, we have won a few significant victories that demonstrate that there are viable alternatives, and that these alternatives can transform our people's lives.

However, the core work of this initiative is directed at answering the question of what can and must we do to address the issue of economic exclusion and disposability.

Our answer: cooperative economics. Our cooperative development work is being anchored by Cooperation Jackson. Cooperation Jackson is an emerging vehicle for sustainable community development, economic democracy, community ownership, and a just transition to a new, non-extractive economy. The broad mission of the organization is to advance the development of economic democracy in Jackson, Mississippi by building a solidarity economy anchored by a network of cooperatives and other types of worker-owned and democratically self-managed enterprises engaging in sustainable practices of production and distribution. Our work is organizing the excluded and dispossessed, collectivizing our limited resources, and together building the institutions we need to provide us with the essential goods and services we need to live with dignity and justice. We are currently working to build a live-work, sustainable eco-village in West Jackson that will house our housing, urban farming, recycling and composting, and arts and culture cooperatives.

We have a long-road ahead of us on all levels. Solidarity economies, and economic democracy aren't built overnight. But, our work in Jackson is an example of what Black people can do with a few resources backed by a solid plan and a base to execute it. We hope that our work offers the outlines of a model of what we must do to meet the challenges of the time. It is up to us to make sure that we exert Black Control Over Black Lives and not be disposed of by a heartless, exploitative system.

We'll know black lives matter when the capitalist system that enslaved our ancestors and is intent on disposing of our future is replaced by a new socio-economic system, based on economic democracy and self-determination.

Green Party Calls For Better Policing Across The Nation

 The shooting of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri is not an isolated incident. Sadly, the shooting of unarmed young Black men in America is something that happens far too often. While the police usually try to justify these shootings by saying the young men were acting aggressively, the fact is that there is seldom, if ever, a justification for shooting an unarmed person (of any age, sex, or race). We have a policing problem in this country that needs to be fixed.

Here is an op-ed on the problem written by a couple of members of the Green Party Shadow Cabinet -- Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese (both pictured above).

In the past month, four unarmed black men, one as young as 18, who were murdered by police have made the headlines. On July 17, Eric Garner was killed by an illegal chokehold in New York. On August 5, John Crawford was shot in a store in Beavercreek, OH. A teenager, Mike Brown of Ferguson, MO, was shot multiple times for walking down the street close to his home on August 9 and most recently, Ezell Ford, a young man with known mental illness, was shot in Los Angeles. The whole nation is experiencing these tragedies as we read the stories of the murders and watch videos of the events and of the mourning of family, friends and communities. Tonight there will be a national moment of silence from coast to coast.

It is right that we mourn these deaths and those of the hundreds of young black men and women who are disproportionately targeted by police each year. According to a study which may underestimate the actual number, a black man is killed every 28 hours by either police, security guards or vigilantes. On top of that, Stop and Frisk policies target people of color and people of color are more likely to be incarcerated.

It is common in the cases of shootings by police for the officers to falsely claim that the victim was armed or aggressive and for the media to falsely portray the victim as a criminal. This is an attempt to justify the use of deadly force and extrajudicial murder. However, we have a justice system to decide if and when execution is the punishment. Although that system is itself flawed, it is preferable to officers trying, sentencing and executing a person in an extra-judicial approach to ‘justice.’

The murder of teenager Mike Brown, who would be starting technical college this week if he were alive, has stirred a deep response by the community. Although police initially stated that Brown was the aggressor, at least two eyewitnesses have come forward with identical accounts that Brown was the victim of assault by police and was gunned down while holding his hands in the air and saying, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting.”

Brown’s death seems to have been the last straw for the community given that people of color in Ferguson have been mistreated by the almost all white police force for a long time. Last year, the Missouri State Attorney General’s report on policing in Ferguson showed that although blacks make up 63% of the population, they make up 86% of police stops. Blacks are almost two times as likely to be searched and are arrested twice as often as whites although whites are more likely to possess contraband.

A healthy response by the local police and government agencies in Ferguson and St. Louis County would have been to immediately announce a full investigation of the shooting and a review of police policies and practices. Counselors should have been made available to community members to assist them in coping with the tragedy and the community’s right to peacefully protest the murder should have been respected and enabled. These initial steps would have aided healing and provided an opportunity to correct policing that inflicts harm rather than serving the public.

Instead, the response by police in Ferguson has been to inflict greater trauma and instigate anger. Police have responded to peaceful protests with a massive presence and officers in full military equipment with tanks taking over the streets. Residents, including members of the local government, have been confronted with assault rifles pointed at them, rubber bullets and tear gas. Last night, the police aggressively cleared the streets and shops and kettled residents, preventing them from getting to their cars. They arrested reporters and ordered the media to stop filming and photographing. The local alderman and his staff were pulled from their cars where they sought refuge and were arrested. Police also deployed sonic cannons known as Long Range Acoustical Devices to clear the streets.

This excessive response by police at a time when violent crime is falling is a symptom of the increasing militarization of police in the United States. Not only are police forces receiving military equipment for free from the Department of Defense, they are also being trained by military personnel in the United States and by the Israeli Defense Force abroad. Officers are trained to see residents of our communities as ‘the enemy’ and sheriffs have been quoted calling our streets a ‘War Zone.’ For police officers who are vets, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may play a factor in their behavior, especially when it is triggered by an atmosphere at home similar to what they experienced overseas. There is also concern about anabolic steroid abuse among police and the possibility of ‘steroid rage.’

The American Civil Liberties Union has been documenting this trend of militarization of local police and suggesting solutions. It is up to the people to demand greater transparency and accountability of our local policing policies and behaviors. We add to that a demilitarization of police and greater instruction in community relations. Counseling of officers who experience PTSD and testing and treatment for anabolic steroid abuse would also be helpful. It is time to de-escalate police behavior and create a police force that uses proven solutions to create a peaceful and safe environment for everyone.

Minority Population Distribution In The United States

I found these charts very interesting, and I thought you might also. They were made by Randy Olson, and featured in The Atlantic. They show the distribution of minority populations in the United States (on a county-by-county basis). The top chart shows African-Americans, the second chart shows Hispanics, the third chart shows Asians, and the fourth shows Native Americans. For each chart, the darker areas show the highest percentages of each minority group.

There is one more chart, and it is shown below. It has all the races put together, and shows just what a diverse nation we really are. The darker counties are the counties with the most diversity. I'm sure the teabagger Republicans would like to see all of these maps get a lot whiter, but that ain't gonna happen. The days of an overwhelmingly White America are gone -- and they are not going to come back. It's time for all of us to learn to live together, and to realize that being an American has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, or skin color.

Celebrate Black History In February

February is Black History Month. And it is a good time to remember the terrible price that was paid by many innocent Americans in the quest for equal rights. The plaque above commemorates the four innocent children killed in 1963 when racists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. These deaths were tragic, but they were just a small part of the many deaths that happened to make this country realize the injustice it was doing to African-American citizens. We must never forget any of these injustices -- for history forgotten is history that will be repeated.

------------------------------------------------------------

SEPTEMBER 15, 1963
by Brian McLaughlin

How many people
remembered these girls
their smiling faces
their hair filled with curls

Victims of hatred
because they were black
prejudice raised its head
and just couldn't sit back

In a Birmingham church
on a Sunday morning
a bomb killed four children
four innocent girls

That splinter group known as
the Cahaba River Bridge Boys
treated their beloved KKK
to its demonic joys

But once push came to shove
and the loss of life hit so hard
the Civil Rights Act was born
equalities next card

Unknowingly these girls
gave their all for our people
in their death they became heroes
from under that steeple

Their Names

Addie Mae Collins (age 14)

Denise McNair (age 11)

Carole Robertson (age 14)

Cynthia Wesley (age 14)

The Racist Myth Regarding African-American Fatherhood

For a while now, there has been an idea permeating our society. It is that a lot of African-American men aren't good fathers -- that they are absent, and are not involved in the raising of their own children. Fortunately a new study at the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has exposed that as a myth -- a racist lie.

The results of that study are in the chart above (compiled by the Los Angeles Times from the CDC study). Note that African-American fathers are no different from White or Hispanic fathers in performing the duties of fatherhood, and in some cases do an even better job.

Of course this brings up the question -- why is this mistaken belief so prevalent in our society? The obvious answer is that we are still a long way from solving our problem with race in this country. Some progress has been made. In the 1960's, a few tools used by racists against African-Americans were eliminated with the passing of the Civil Rights laws.

Unfortunately, those tools of racism were replaced by an expanded effort at propaganda. Since the racists didn't have their cherished tools to keep minorities down, they used lies to attempt to accomplish the same purpose -- and sadly, some of those lies (like the myth of the absent African-American father) came to be accepted by many (some of whom were not racist, but just gullible).

I applaud the CDC for this study, and websites like Think Progress who are actively trying to destroy the racist propaganda. The Los Angeles Times is also to be credited for their coverage. Hopefully, this becomes widely known very soon -- and we can put this racist myth behind us.

Why The GOP Suppresses Votes In Texas

It may seem rather silly to some that the Republicans are trying to suppress Democratic votes in Texas with either a Voter ID law or by striking voters from the registration rolls. After all, Texas is not a blue state or a swing state. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Romney will win Texas this November, and statewide Republicans will do very well (unlike a state like Pennsylvania, where the Voter ID law could suppress enough votes to flip the state). So why are the Republicans doing it?

It's not just because they can (although that seems to be the only reason for many things they do). The chart above gives us the reason. The demographics of Texas are changing -- and they are changing fast. Between 2000 and 2010, the state grew by 4.2 million people. About 66% of that growth was due to an increase in the Hispanic population -- and African-Americans made up another 23% of the growth. These two groups accounted for 89% of all the growth in population between 2000 and 2010. That's leaves only 11% of the growth to be accounted for by all other groups, including non-Hispanic Whites, Asians, Pacific Islanders, etc.

And future population growth in Texas is expected to follow the same pattern (and could even be more slanted toward minorities). That means with each passing year the number of Whites as a percentage of the total population will decrease, and at some point in the not-so-distant future, Whites will make up less than half of the population (and continue to decrease). It has already happened in Texas schools (K-12).

This scares the crap out of Republican leaders. It scares them because most minority groups, especially Hispanics and African-Americans, vote heavily Democratic. As the percentage of Whites drops, they will lose more and more electoral contests -- until the state becomes solidly blue. That's why the Republicans are trying so hard to suppress Democratic votes, because they want to prevent this as long as they can -- and if they don't start doing it now, they won't be able to do it pretty soon.

Now they didn't have to do this. They could have chosen to purge their party of the racists, and change their anti-immigrant and anti-minority policies in an effort to appeal to minorities and get their support -- but they didn't do that. They chose instead to try to suppress the minority votes. It was a stupid choice. It might delay the inevitable, but it cannot stop it.