Feb. 14, 2016

Blackonomics

Black Constitutional Patriotism
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “…we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”  He went on to say, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”

It is said we should carefully choose the words we use, because we may have to eat them one day.  That is the case with words written by this nation’s founders.  Only problem is, even though several have brought attention to those words, little or nothing has been done to change or enforce their intent when it comes to Black people.  The words to which I refer are found in the documents written by a cadre of men held in highest esteem who supposedly had the best intentions for “all” other men in this country.

David Walker’s Appeal, in 1829, turned the words of the Declaration of Independence back on those who celebrated the victory of throwing off the tyranny of King George. In reference to the Declaration, Walker stated, “Do you understand your own language?  Compare your own language ... extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us -- men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation!”

Walker continued, particularly referring to the abuses of the King and the right and obligation of the colonies to throw off such government.  “Hear your language further ... I ask you candidly, [were] your sufferings under Great Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have rendered ours under you?”

Later, Frederick Douglass cited the words of the Declaration and Constitution in his famous speech in 1852, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

Douglass said the Fourth of July was a day of celebration for White Americans but a day of mourning for slaves and former slaves like him, because they were reminded of the unfulfilled promise of equal liberty for all in the Declaration of Independence.  “This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.  To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”

The words written and spoken by the founders of these United States were important, and I trust sincere, but sometimes in order to have accountability for the words people say, especially politicians’ words, they must be recanted and rewritten by those to whom those words apply.  That is why the One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors will insist on verbal and written support of its political planks by any political candidate seeking our votes.

When put together just right way, words can have serious consequential effects on people.  When Thomas Jefferson used words that attacked slavery in his draft of the Declaration of Independence he initiated the most intense debate among the delegates gathered at Philadelphia in the spring and early summer of 1776.  Jefferson's passage on slavery was the most important section removed from the final document.  It was replaced with a more ambiguous passage about King George's incitement of “domestic insurrections among us.”  Part of Jefferson's original passage on slavery appears below.

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce…”

Had those words not been stricken from the Declaration just imagine the effect they would have had—then and now.  So what lessons can Black people take from “Black Constitutional Patriots” like Walker, Douglass, MLK, and others who recited the very words that are “the bond of the Union”?  Black leaders of old made the Founders eat their sacrosanct words, and it is shameful that we have not continued to keep today’s politicians on a steady diet of those same words.

David Walker believed the nation belonged to all who helped build it. He went even further, stating, “America is more our country than it is the whites -- we have enriched it with our blood and tears.”  Are we MEN!!--I ask you, O my brethren! Are we MEN?

Feb. 9, 2016

Black Unemployment Increases Overall, but Black Men See a Drop

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - January’s unemployment rate climbed overall for African-American workers, but dropped for Black men 20 years and older.  Unemployment rose for Black women in the same age group, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

The jobless rate for African Americans was 8.8 percent compared with 8.3 percent in December, BLS reported.

For Black men 20 years old and older, the unemployment dropped to 8.4 percent in January compared with 8.7 percent the month before.

The jobless rate for Black women 20 years old and older, however, rose significantly to 7.9 percent, up from 6.9 percent last month.

On the other hand, the jobless rate for Whites still remains dramatically low at 4.3 percent in January compared with 4.5 percent in December. The unemployment rate for Hispanics also dropped. It was 5.9 percent in January, down from 6.3 percent in December. The jobless rate for Asians was 3.7 percent, down from 4.0 percent in December.

Generally, the unemployment rate fell below 5 percent for the first time in eight years as the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record continued, The White House reported. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 151,000 last month and the overall national employment rate was 4.9 percent.

Job gains occurred in the retail trade, food services, drinking places, health care and manufacturing. But unemployment increased in educational services, transportation, warehousing and mining.

Feb. 14, 2016

Addict or Junkie?
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nick Cocchi would like to be the Sheriff of Hampden County, an Eastern Massachusetts county of half a million people.  Springfield, Mass., a city that is about 22 percent African-American, is the county seat.  Eastern Massachusetts (and indeed, much of New England) is experiencing the devastating fallout from the heroin and opioid abuse epidemic.  The centers for Disease Control say that deaths from heroin overdoses have quadrupled in the past decade, and that heroin use has doubled among whites.  Thus, it is entirely appropriate that Mr. Cocchi’s candidate website includes a page that talks about opioid abuse in Hampden County.

Far less appropriate, and indeed, repugnant, was a statement that Cocchi made when he testified at a November hearing before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse.  According to Victoria Kim, a writer for The Fix, a newspaper that reports on addiction and recovery issues, Cocchi said as part of his testimony, “What was once the heroin junkie in the dark inner-city back alley has now become brother, sister, mom, dad, son and daughter. Its hit suburbia USA.”

Should the issue of addiction be treated more compassionately and humanely now that it has “hit suburbia USA”?  Wasn’t that “heroin junkie in the dark inner-city back alley” somebody’s brother, sister, mother, dad, son or daughter?  This is why it is so important to lift up the Black Lives Matter movement.  Cocchi has, implicitly, said that he values the person in suburbia USA more than the person in the inner city.  And his characterization of the inner-city drug abuser as someone in a back alley reeks of his biases.

Bishop Talbert Swan II, the President of the Springfield NAACP and pastor of Spirit of Hope Church of God in Christ, strongly objects to the racially coded language that Cocchi used to talk about the problem of addiction.  He is not the only person who has noticed the increasingly humane way addiction is being managed as the epidemic devastates the white community, in contrast to the way addiction has been managed in the past (consider the language around the crack epidemic) or even now, when African Americans are addicts.  Even Cocchi’s use of is term “junkie” lacks humanity.  To call someone a “junkie” is far less humane than calling them an addict.

Before votes support Cocchi in his quest for Sheriff, they might push him to get some sensitivity training.  They might also ask if he would treat the inner city addict differently than he would treat one from a Hampden suburb.  The larger question, though, is why there is such sudden empathy for addicts, an empathy that was utterly lacking when the crack addiction increase devastated the African American community, and when zero tolerance policies and mandatory drug sentencing placed people who were seriously ill behind bars for decades.  Addiction, after all, is more an illness than a crime.

In Gloucester, a city about 40 miles north from Boston, heroin and opioid addicts who voluntarily turn themselves in at the police station are provided with treatment services, and not charged with any crime.  The program has gotten national attention.  Some addicts from outside Massachusetts have come to Gloucester because they can’t find affordable drug treatment where they live.  Imagine that there were such a program for crack addicts when the inhumane “war on drugs” was little more than a war on black people.  Even as I applaud the new empathy toward addicts, I mourn the years that so many have spent behind bars, denied of the kinds of “innovative” treatment options available in Gloucester.

Julianne Malveaux is an author, economist and Founder of Economic Education. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” is available to order at www.juliannemalveaux.com

Feb. 7, 2016

Montgomery Woman Recounts Devastating Debtors’ Prison Experience to Congressional Staffers

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Southern Poverty Law Center

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - An Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) client who served time in a modern-day debtors’ prison in Alabama when she couldn’t pay fines for minor traffic tickets told her story to congressional staffers on Capitol Hill and called for action to prevent others from going to jail simply for being poor.

Harriet Cleveland spoke at a briefing that examined the practice of cities and counties hiring for-profit private “probation” companies to collect minor fines and fees. The grandmother from Montgomery was joined by Sam Brooke, SPLC deputy legal director, to highlight how these companies, which operate across the country, often use the justice system to extort payments from the poor – including fees for their own profit – under the threat of jail.

It’s apparent to Cleveland that Congress must act. “It has to be addressed nationwide so [people] don’t have to worry about going to jail because they can’t afford to pay,” she said after speaking to 50 staff members gathered in a packed meeting room in the Rayburn House Office Building. The briefing was held last month, the same week that U.S. Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., introduced legislation – the “End of Debtors’ Prison Act of 2016” – that would cut federal funds from municipalities that hire for-profit private probation companies.

“This is not a problem that is unique to Alabama,” Brooke said. “These same companies are working in many different states, particularly in the Southeast.”

When Cleveland couldn’t immediately pay her traffic tickets in the city of Montgomery, she was placed on pay-only probation. She made her payments to Judicial Corrections Services (JCS), a private probation company that collected fines for the city. She paid a $140 monthly payment – $40 of which went to the company.She was desperate to come up with the money for JCS.

“I lost my car to a title loan in order to come up with the amount they told me I had to come up with to keep from going to jail again, so I had to do that,” Cleveland said as she wiped away tears during the briefing. When she could no longer make the payments, a police officer arrested her in 2013 at her home while she was babysitting her grandson. A judge sentenced her to 31 days in jail even though debtors’ prisons were abolished in the United States almost 200 years ago. She spent two weeks in jail before SPLC lawyers secured her release.

An SPLC lawsuit ended after a settlement was reached to change the city’s practices. JCS left Alabama last year after the SPLC filed a separate lawsuit against the company for violating federal racketeering laws with its business practices. JCS once had contracts with more than 100 local governments in the state.Despite this victory, people across the country are finding themselves in Cleveland’s situation. Governments hoping to generate more revenue are turning to these companies which typically don’t charge them for their services but rely on fees they charge probationers.

Hundreds of thousands of people fined in more than 1,000 courts are paying such fees. Private probation companies in Georgia collected almost $40 million in fees in 2012 alone, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

“Plain and simple, it’s a racketeering scheme where people are being extorted,” Brooke said. “The company is using the threat of jail. They are telling people if you don’t pay, you are going to go to jail. It’s clearly extortion because you can’t jail someone for not being able to pay.”

He also noted that private probation companies create a two-tiered justice system – one where people of means pay and go and one where low-income people ultimately pay more. The “End of Debtors’ Prison Act of 2016” would withhold Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants from governments contracting with these companies. The SPLC endorses the legislation.