June 1, 2015

Has Justice Ever Been Blind?
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When racist attitudes, either conscious or subconscious, are combined with the discretionary powers that law enforcement officers have, the result is a differential outcome, with African-Americans more likely to be the targets of “blind justice”. Regardless of this, too many politicians are rewarded when they say they are “tough on crime”. Actually they are exploiting subconscious racism, and pandering to explicit racial fears.

Soledad O’Brien documented some of these attitudes in her most recent Black In America series. In one of the interviews a young Black man was stopped more than 100 times as he stood outside his college. Of course, he’d done nothing wrong, but police officers, “doing their duty”, felt free to harass him.

In a more telling segment two young men, one Black and one White, were charged with “stealing” a bike to show how members of the public responded to watching the apparent theft. The young men were dressed similarly – tee shirts, casual pants, caps. People walked by as the White guy did everything he could to break the lock on the bike, even as he used a chain cutter. One even offered to help him take “his” bike, even though he acknowledged it was not his.

Within moments of the Black man approaching the bike, White people, one or two of whom called 911 surrounded him. As opposed to the benign response the White guy got, the Black guy was simply assumed to be a criminal.

How does this play out on the streets and with “officers of the law”? Police officers use their discretion selectively. A Black man (Eric Garner) selling loose cigarettes is manhandled, arrested, and dies when he is choked and cannot breathe. Most have seen the video by now, and wonder why Daniel Pantaleo was not charged with any crime, even though he used an illegal chokehold on Garner. Pantaleo could have told Garner to move on, or he would risk arrest. Instead Pantaleo and his posse of lawless cowboys chose to kill the man. Would a White man be similarly treated, or did unconscious racism play into the callous way Eric Garner was treated?

During the late 1990s, Giuliani’s “stop and frisk” policies mean that African American men were stopped more than five times as frequently as Caucasians, even though these frisks led to nothing more than the humiliation of Black men, some simply coming off the subway or walking down the street. Hispanic men were stopped about three times as likely as Caucasians. White men were stopped and frisked less frequently than others. Unconscious racism? Discretion? The law sanctions both.

Stop and frisk incidents increased dramatically with no concomitant increase in crime. However, since New York Mayor Bill Blasio took office, the number of stop and frisk incidents has dropped by almost three quarters, again with no increase in crime. It appears that whether stop and frisk occurrences are aggressive or gentler; the incidence of crime does not increase.

There are many occurrences where police can make discretionary decisions. First, they can decide whom to stop. Then when they stop they don’t have to arrest or frisk. A simple conversation that explains the reason for the stop will yield a more favorable outcome than wrestling someone to the ground, knee in his or her back, or handcuffing someone without explaining why. Police resistance to the use of body cameras suggests these officers know that they are out of order in dealing with the public. Once someone is arrested, the police have the right to charge him or her with a minor crime or let them go. Finally, prosecutors can decline to bring charges. All of these decesions can be minimized or maximized, based on discretion.

Julianne Malveaux is author and economist. She can be reached at www.juliannemalveaux.com.

June 1, 2015

South African Voters 'In a Bad Mood' Over Unemployment and Corruption

Democratic Alliance Leader Mmusi Maimane

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Unemployment in South Africa is higher than at any time in the past 11 years – reaching 26.4 percent and almost double that for young people under 25 years of age.

Joblessness, combined with lurid reports of corruption, have left voters discouraged and dismayed, according to an internal ANC election strategy document. The party will be facing elections next year with key cities now in play – Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay.

Voters “think we are performing badly” in combating crime and corruption and in creating jobs, the internal document said, adding: “Dysfunctional state services and corrupt leaders and lack of contact lose us hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Voters are in a bad mood and are fed up with corruption and incompetence, the report announced.

A copy of the report was obtained by the Mail & Guardian newspaper and shared with its readers.

In addition to the failure to create jobs, government has failed to get a grip on crime with its spike in murders, house robberies and hijackings.

Sharing these concerns was Public Works minister and ANC executive committee member Thulas Nxesi who predicted a looming political disaster if the ruling ANC does not revisit the strategy it once employed when waging war against apartheid.

ANC affiliated student organizations, he noted, are being voted out in various campuses which were once the heart of the anti-apartheid movement. The University of Limpopo and Fort Hare University - mainly for the disadvantaged, black and African – have been taken over by the Economic Freedom Fighters and the  Democratic Alliance Student Organisation respectively, moves he called “embarrassing.”

Meanwhile, riotous shouts were heard at a budgetary meeting in Parliament where union members demanded the release of a still-secret government report on the killing of workers at the Marikana mines.

Mmusi Maimane, the new Black leader of the Democratic Alliance, entered the fray fighting.  Is the President “telling us that the lives of black workers are cheap?” by withholding the report, he asked. Or is he stalling to protect “members of his inner circle” who might be implicated by the findings of the Marikana Commission.

“Honorable President,” he declared. “I believe that black lives, like all lives, matter.”

Finally, attacks on foreigners including a new government “anti-crime” strategy called Operation Fiela (Sweep the Dirt) are drawing new criticism from a coalition of nongovernmental organisations, including Lawyers for Human Rights, Doctors Without Borders, the Southern Africa Litigation Center, Sonke Gender Justice, Africa Diaspora Forum and Awethu.

They say the campaign is unfairly targeting foreign nationals, over a thousand of whom have been  arrested and mistakenly equates the presence of undocumented foreigners in South Africa with crime.

The round-up was defended by Acting Cabinet spokesperson Phumla Williams, who said the operation, which has resulted in the arrest of more than 800 undocumented migrants, was not specifically targeted at foreigners.

“Operation Fiela is targeted in certain areas, which were areas pointed out to government by the communities as drug infested. These areas that the operation focuses on might have a lot of foreign nationals but there are also South Africans who are living in those areas,” she said.

Critics of the foreign national crackdown responded: “Current state-led raids which disproportionately target African foreign nationals and paint them as criminals, are simply an attempt to divert attention from the ongoing socio-economic problems that have not been caused by immigrants, and will certainly continue whether or not foreign migrants live in South Africa.”

The operation was launched after xenophobic violence swept through KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng last month.  

June 1, 2015

Voting Rights Act Aimed to Fix an ‘American Problem’
As Presidential Election Nears, Civil Rights Groups Vow Continued Fight Against Unfair Voting Laws

By Mason Harrison

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Louisiana Weekly

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nearly 50 years after the 1965 signing of the Voting Rights Act, civil rights groups began marking the event with a presentation May 19 at the headquarters of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans. President Lyndon Johnson called racial strife over voting not a “Negro problem,” a “southern problem,” or “northern problem,” but an “American problem” as he delivered a speech the year he enacted the new law on Aug. 6, 1965.

The bill transformed voting in America in states where Black residents, in particular, were discouraged or outright barred from voting through arbitrary literacy tests, poll taxes or even voter intimidation. The bill passed over the objections of southern Democrats with large support from GOP lawmakers.

“In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that the state’s poll tax of $1.50 was unconstitutional,” said Dale Ho, director of the voting rights project for the American Civil Liberties Union. The case ended monetary barriers to voting in the five states with poll taxes still on the books. But Ho said modern efforts to beef up voting requirements are back door poll taxes.

“The right to vote is the most fundamental right in our democracy,” said Ho, who spoke at the Urban League event. “We have seen laws passed around the country that limit voting rights,” he said, referring to the spate of voter identification laws cropping up across the country in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which shelved the Justice Department’s ability to sign off on any changes to voter laws in parts of the country with a history of voter discrimination.

Ellen Buchman, vice president of field operations for the Washington, DC-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the new laws are creating “the most unfair, confusing and discriminatory election landscape in 50 years.” Buchman, who also spoke at last week’s voting rights event, added that the new laws are “a disgrace…to our citizens, to our nation, and to our standing in the world as a beacon of democracy.”

Proponents of the laws, however, cite the need to prevent voter fraud, with white Americans supporting voter restrictions by wide margins and a slight majority of Black voters supporting the laws as well. Residents agree that efforts to prevent unregistered voters from casting ballots are worth setting greater barriers. A majority of voters surveyed also believe the laws do not discriminate based on race or age.

“We don’t object to securing the integrity of our election process,” said Ho, “but these laws don’t do that.” Ho said it’s actually quite difficult to misrepresent yourself at the polls. “You’d have to obtain someone’s ID; look like them; and then be able to match their signature. Much of the way voter fraud can occur is through machine tampering or other methods and these laws don’t address any of that.”

Traveling to locations to obtain state identification is also cited by opponents as a burden on would-be voters. “In Texas, for example, you’d have to travel as far as 200 miles to get to a location to obtain ID, everything’s bigger in Texas. That’s a problem if you’re elderly, don’t have a car or can’t afford one,” said Ho. “You also need to bring a birth certificate to obtain ID and that can cost anywhere from 20 to 40 dollars. Now, for many of us that might not seem like a lot, but for some folks that is a lot of money.”

Ho said the ACLU will continue to do away with voter restrictions as the 2016 presidential election nears. “We’ll continue to work with state legislatures to curb voter ID laws and to bring back early voting and same-day registration,” he said. “But in those cases where we can’t, then we intend to litigate.”