Voice of Revolution

State Racism, Incarceration and Apologies

The Senate recently made an empty apology about its criminal record in supporting and defending the widespread lynching used to kill and terrorize African Americans and all those who fought for rights. The apology was empty of any meaning, as it took no action to rectify the government crimes of the present or the past, such as through paying reparations and bringing criminal charges against the government and police officials responsible.

In particular, the Senate resolution said nothing about the continuing genocide of African Americans. One way this genocide is expressed is in the unequal and racist imprisonment of African Americans, including the disproportionate number given the death penalty. African American men in jail make up 1 in every eight prisoners on the planet. That in itself is a condemnation of the government and the conditions of life imposed on African Americans.

Indeed, the whole history of using the law against African Americans combined with impunity for the lawlessness of government, especially at the federal level, needs to be targeted for government to even begin to hold itself accountable. Far from doing this, the House recently passed legislation targeting youth, especially African Americans. A gathering of three youth on an “informal” basis will now be considered "gang" activity. Mandatory sentences, beginning with 10 years, are also being applied, including for juveniles.

The House “gang” law is yet another example of state organized racism and terrorism. The mandatory sentencing can be considered a modern-day form of lynching, as it targets youth and imposes sentences of 10, 20 and thirty years for actions that are not criminal. Yet the Senate will likely pass the bill. This reality only further shows that state-organized racism and terrorism are integral to the existing political system and no apology can hide that.

The “gang” law is clearly designed to stop any resistance and organizing among the youth for their rights. African Americans are particularly being targeted because today, as in the past, they are in the front ranks of the struggles for rights. Today, as in the past, it is this resistance that will triumph.

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Senate Resolution on Lynching

End Government Impunity for Its Crimes

On Monday, June 13, 2005, in the evening, with only voice vote and few senators present, the Senate passed a resolution concerning the crime of lynching in the United States. The Senate is notorious for being the government instrument used to block demands from the people to have lynching recognized as a crime of terrorism and outlawed by the federal government. As the resolution itself brings out, almost 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress in the first half of the century. Only three bills were passed by the House between 1920 and 1940. The Senate blocked all of them. Repeated opposition was organized to any passage, including filibusters by Southern Democrats, such as Senator Richard B. Russell Jr., from Georgia. He was one of the most adamant voices in the Senate in opposing anti-lynching bills in 1935 and again in 1938. The Senate office building is named for him.

The resolution says lynching deprived its victims of their constitutional rights. It also recognizes lynching as a crime occurring through out the U.S., with the exception of four New England states. It says 4,742 people were lynched from 1882-1968, with 99 per cent of those organizing these crimes never prosecuted. It is known that these are only the recorded lynchings, gathered on the basis of work by African Americans to document this crime. The actual number of these brutal killings is thought to be at least twice as high. Few have forgotten, for example, that when the streams and ponds in Mississippi were dredged in 1964 in the search for the civil rights workers killed, two of them white, literally dozens of slain bodies of African American were found.

The Senate resolution thus recognizes the criminal and widespread character of lynching and the refusal of the government to stop it and hold those responsible accountable for their crimes.

The resolution also says, “Only by coming to terms with history can the United States effectively champion human rights abroad.” This then is perhaps the reason for the resolution, to give the appearance of concern for human rights.

However, the resolution then takes no action to come to terms by righting the wrongs of the massive and brutal crime of lynching. There are no reparations. There is no tribunal orgaized to take testimony and provide a legal and binding mechanism for determining restitution and charges. There is no prosecution of any kind. There are no plans to enact laws today outlawing the terrorism and genocide that continues against African Americans, including the massive inceration of Black youth at hugely disproportioate rates, often for petty violations or "concocted crimes." Just as inn the days of lynching African Americans were jailed for long periods for "vagrancy," today African American youth are to be jailed for being members of a "gang," defined simply as three youth gathered together (see article below). If such a "gang" engages in what police decide are "violent acts," like resisting arrest or defeding rights, they can face a mandatory ten year sentence. These are the deeds of the government.

In a further insult to all Americans, the Senate will not even act to remove the name of a notorious backer of lynching, Richard B. Russell from the Senate office building. The Senate simply “apologizes to the victims of lynching for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation,” and “expresses the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets to the descendents of the victims of lynching.” It ends by saying the Senate “remembers the history of lynching, to ensure that these tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated.”

The reality that the apology is empty words can also be seen in the fact that the Senate leadership required the resolution could only come to come to the floor in the evening and without the usual roll call vote, where each Seantor is called on to give their vote and it is recorded and made public. The rest of the Seante supported these means of minimizing the resolution, which itself is not binding and carries no legal weight. So while 100 relatives of lynching victims traveled great distances to be in the Senate and present their experience and concerns, only a few Senators were actually on the floor for the voice vote.

Perhaps most significantly, in this time of the “war on terrorism,” it is certainly fitting to recognize lynching as terrorism directed at African Americans and done primarily to prevent and crush resistance to their inhuman oppression and segregation. Lynchings were commonly used against those who fought back, who organized resistance or simply stood up against racism and the injustices of the sharecropping system which dominated the south up until the 1960s and enslaved the vast majority of African Americans. It was also used to prevent any unity among all the workers and farmers, with even the slightest signs of simply common social relations met with lynchings.

Like the Ku Klux Klan terrorism, lynching was largely goverment organized, frequently carried out by sheriffs and other law enforcement officials, with the full backing of the government at the local, state and federal levels. The refusal of the federal government to pass anti-lynching laws is a reflection of this.

An atmosphere of terrorism was created and perpetuated. Lynching, like KKK raids, often increased during periods of upsurge. And while the large majority, 4 of 5, were carried out against African Americans, 1 in 5 was done against immigrants, especially Chinese and Mexicans, as well as Italians and other poor white farmers. People who worked to unite people in defense of their rights were also targeted, as was readily apparent in the 1960s during the civil rights movement.

It can readily be seen that taking a stand against lynching today necessarily means opposing the continued genocide against African Americans today, providing reparations and holding the government responsible for its racism and crimes of the present and past.

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“Gang Deterrence and Community Protection Act”

Government Steps Up Police State Measures to Criminalize and Repress the Youth

The House of Representatives recently passed by a vote of 279 to 144 H.R. 1279, the “Gang Deterrence and Community Protection Act” of 2005. The bill, sponsored by Virginia Republican Randy Forbes, and signed by 15 other U.S. Representatives, has yet to pass the Senate and become law.

The so-called “Gangbusters Bill” is part of numerous -gov ernment arrangements being finalized to criminalize and repress all those fighting to advance their interests and rights, particularly minority youth. To carry out this repression, H.R. 1279 authorizes $387.5 million over the next five years.

Among other things, H.R. 1279 defines a “gang” and “gang offenses” in a very broad and arbitrary manner, making almost any gathering of three youth a potential “gang.” It makes the new “gang” crimes federal offenses. It also increases the penalties for the crimes and imposes new mandatory minimum sentencing.

The bill authorizes prosecutors to try and incarcerate 16 and 17-year-olds as adults. A sentence of at least 10 years would be required for an “act of violence.” As many youth are already aware, resisting arrest and defending against police attacks are often branded as acts of violence by police. So too are organized acts of civil disobedience and other direct actions by youth at demonstrations. The mandatory sentencing also requires at least 20 years for “serious assaults” and at least 30 years for kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse or maiming. There is mandatory life imprisonment or the death penalty for any crime police say resulted in death, including acts committed by teenage youth.

Stiffer mandatory-minimum sentences are aimed primarily at minority youth. Thus, should the bill pass the Senate and become law, many more minority youth will soon be receiving 30 to life while many others will be sent to death row. The decision whether to try a juvenile as an adult is to be made solely by the prosecutor and cannot be changed or even reviewed by a judge.

One of the main ways the act attempts to justify greater attacks on the people is by its broad and arbitrary definition of a “criminal street gang.” This is said to be “a formal or informal group or association of 3 or more individuals, who commit 2 or more gang crimes.” This definition is so broad and vague that three youth with the same fraternity tattoos could be classified as a street gang if they were involved in an incident that included, for example, use of marijuana and a fist fight. Similarly, youth wearing masks and engaged in dissent against militarization of their city, for example, such as at the inauguration of President George W. Bush, could be branded as engaging in acts of violence and deemed guilty of these “street gang” crimes. Given the broad atmosphere of impunity already in existence, almost any group of three or more youth could be targeted.

In a May 9, 2005 letter to the U.S. House of Representatives opposing H.R. 1279, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that, “a person could receive the death penalty for the illegal participation in what would be considered a ‘criminal street gang’ while having no idea or intention of being a part of a so-called ‘gang’. H.R.1279 revises the already broad definition of ‘criminal street gang’ to an even more ambiguous standard of a formal or informal group or association of three (3) or more people who commit two (2) or more ‘gang’ crimes. The number of people required to form a gang decreases from five (5) people in an ongoing group under current law to three (3) people who could just be associates or casual acquaintances under this proposed legislation.” The broader and vaguer definition of “gang crime” would also result in people being convicted of “gang” crimes that are neither ongoing in nature nor connected to each other, and could occur years apart.

The law is reminiscent of the racist Black Codes of the post-Civil War South under which three or more African Americans congregating in the same place constituted an illegal gathering. It is worthwhile noting that the terrorist crime of lynching was not made a federal offense is the U.S., while youth defending rights are now to be branded gang members and jailed for 10 years or more. It is also the case that attacks on the youth are being justified by labeling gangs as “domestic terrorists,” and branding protesters as “terrorists” and no doubt now “gang members.”

H.R. 1279 also authorizes the Attorney General to “designate specific areas that are located within one or more States as high intensity interstate gang activity areas.” Given conditions today and the already widespread collective punishment and attacks on rights in the name of “terrorism,” these “interstate” areas will no doubt be zones where everyone is suspect, where the constitution is non-existent and where local police officials have no say.

H.R. 1279 does not authorize any additional funds for local law enforcement or recreation or prevention programs. It does reiterate an earlier appropriations bill authored by Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, which passed the Senate in December 2004. That bill authorized $10 million to the FBI for the purpose of creating a “National Gang Intelligence Center” and database of “street gang members.”

The broad and growing opposition to H.R. 1279 includes numerous rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International USA, Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, Death Penalty Focus, Equal Justice USA/Quixote Center, Human Rights Watch, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, NAACP Washington Bureau, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Penal Reform International, Legal Action Center, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Children’s Defense Fund, Alliance of Concerned Men, Criminal Justice Washington Letter, National Council of La Raza, Marijuana Policy Project, Urban League, Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, National CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants), NuLeadership Policy Group, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and StandDown Texas Project.

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Continuing Genocide Against African Americans

Incarceration Rates in the U.S.

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Levels of repression in a society are an important indicator of the conditions of life for the majority of people and the degree to which their rights are being met.

In the U.S. the prison population has quadrupled since 1980 and by June 30, 2004, the system held over 2.1 million people, an increase of 2.3% over one year. That number represents one in every 138 U.S. residents. The year before it was one in every 140, both exceptionally high rates. In addition, jail authorities were supervising 70,548 more men and women in work release programs, weekend reporting, electronic monitoring, and other programs.

Recent government reports show that between mid-2003 and mid-2004, the U.S. prison population grew by 48,452 inmates—900 inmates per week—even though the U.S. crime rate has fallen over the past decade. At year-end 2003, prison systems were estimated to be at capacity to 16 percent above capacity. The number of people imprisoned is outpacing the number of inmates released. It is estimated that if current trends persist, by 2010, the number of American residents in prison or with prison experience is expected to jump to 7.7 million, or 3.4 percent of all adults.

Two-thirds of inmates are in federal and state prisons, and the other third are in local jails. As an indication of the growing role of repression by the federal government, federal prisons are growing almost five times faster than state prison populations.

Incarceration Rates of National Minorities

One of the most salient features of state-organized racism in the U.S. is the high rate of incarceration for national minorities. From day one the government has systematically imposed mechanisms of mass repression, especially against Africans Americans, commonly using petty charges and rigged sentencing. This occurred following the Civil War, for example, using vagrancy and similar charges to jail African Americans and force them into what were essentially slave-labor camps for the plantation owners. Today, petty drug charges combined with mandatory sentencing are used.

The majority of people imprisoned are not serious or violent offenders, but rather those charged with petty drug infractions and minor offenses. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, in 1999, 39 percent of those receiving mandatory minimum sentences were Latino, 38 percent were African American and 23 percent were white. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group.

A black male in the U.S. has about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Latino male, it’s 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17. In 2004, 61 percent of prison and jail inmates were national minorities. These rates of jailing for minorities are far out of proportion to their population size and an indicator of state-organized racism. African Americans, for example, are about 13 percent of the population.

The facts also show that the rates of imprisonment and racist targeting of minorities is increasing. Mid-2003 U.S. incarceration rates by race were as follows: whites: 376 per 100,000; Latinos: 997 per 100,000; and African Americans: 2,526 per 100,000. By mid-2004 the rates were: white males: 717 per 100,000; Latino males: 1,717 per 100,000; and African American males: 4,919 per 100,000. The brutal attack on minority youth show their levels of imprisonment are more than twice as high. For males 25-29, incarceration rates by mid-2004 were: whites: 1,666 per 100,000; Latinos: 3,606 per 100,000; and African Americans: 12,603 per 100,000.

African Americans, as a force long known for its militant resistance to repression, are constantly under surveillance, are arrested far more often, are charged with more serious offenses, are prosecuted more vigorously, and given harsher sentences. As well, the impact of incarceration does not end with the sentence. Moreover, ex-felons are prohibited from voting in many states. Currently, more than 4 million prisoners or former prisoners—mostly minorities—are denied a right to vote; in 12 states, that ban is for life. Former inmates can also be excluded from receiving public assistance, living in public housing, or receiving financial aid for college. And with the increased use of background checks — especially since 9/11— they may be permanently locked out of jobs in many professions, including education, child care, driving a bus, or working in a nursing home.

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Torture Inc., Americas Brutal Prisons

- Deborah Davies, BBC -

Savaged by dogs, electrocuted with cattle prods, burned by toxic chemicals. Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq? They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4. It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realize that you are not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. ‘Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.’

If a prisoner does not drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There’s a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.

Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can not crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.

Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking.

Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards. The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year. And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers. But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas. They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system…Our findings were not based on rumor or suspicion. They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S. The Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996, when Bush was state Governor.

Frank Carlson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims. I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards.

‘I thought: “What hypocrisy,” Carlson told me. ‘Because they know we do it here every day.’ All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson’s belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time. […]

For every ‘historical’ tape we collected, we also found a more recent story. What you see on the tape is still happening daily. It is terrible to watch some of the videos and realize that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a ‘restraint chair’. His hands and feet are shackled, there’s a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He’s not. Not yet.

The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.

The tape comes from Utah — but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who have died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair. […]

[Editor’s note: After providing numerous examples of torture and killing of prisoners in states across the country, the report provides examples of the violent use of pepper spray against prisoners. The prisoners are not only being tortured but no doubt used as guinea pigs for use of pepper spray against protesters and others defending their rights.]

A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison ordered an end to the videoing of ‘use of force operations.’ So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.

But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.

‘They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,’ lawyer Christopher Jones explained. ‘We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies.’ ‘The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it’s really air-tight.’

And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes — autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair — he didn’t expect to be beaten to death.

Valdes started writing to local Florida newspapers to expose the corruption and brutality of prison officers. So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die.

Several of the guards were later charged with murder, but the trial was held in their own small hometown where almost everyone works for, or has connection with, the five prisons which ring the town. The foreman of the jury was former prison officer. The guards were all acquitted.

Meanwhile, the warden who was in charge of the prison at the time of the killing — the same man who changed the policy on videoing — has been promoted. He is now the man in charge of all the Florida prisons. […]

Since we finished filming for the -program in January, I have stayed in contact with various prisoners’ rights groups and the families of many of the victims. Every single day come more e-mails full of fresh horror stories. In the past weeks, two more prisoners have died, in Alabama and Ohio. One man was pepper sprayed, the other tasered.

Then, three weeks ago, reports emerged of 20 hours of video material from Guantánamo Bay showing prisoners being stripped, beaten and pepper sprayed. One of those affected is Omar Deghayes, one of the seven British residents still being held there.

His lawyer says Deghayes is now permanently blind in one eye. American military investigators have reviewed the tapes and apparently found ‘no evidence of systematic abuse.’ […]

Deborah Davies is a reporter for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.)

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Castro Strikes a Nerve

- Jill Soffiyah Elijah, AlterNet -

By aiming the spotlight on the criminal justice system in the U.S., which incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation, President Castro exposed a tender nerve for Washington.

In April 2005 the international community began to take a closer look at the United States justice system as its government attempted to explain and or deny the presence of admitted terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles. As news stories sprouted from even mainstream media calling for the extradition of Posada to Venezuela, a country with which the U.S. has had a longstanding extradition treaty, Washington went into a frenzy.

After some false starts concerning what it was going to do about Posada, Washington "defended" its position by hurling barbs at Cuban President Fidel Castro about the political asylum granted to Assata Shakur by the Cuban government. President Castro retorted that Ms. Shakur had not received justice in the United States and that she, like many other political prisoners, had been persecuted and denied a fair trial.

By aiming the spotlight on the criminal justice system in the United States, President Castro exposed a tender nerve for Washington. My more than 20 years as a criminal defense lawyer and professor of criminal defense advocacy confirm the widely known assessment that every aspect of the criminal justice system is ripe for criticism and laden with hypocrisy.

The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation on earth. The population of the United States comprises 5% of the world's population but its incarcerated population is equal to more than 25% of the world's prisoners.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter state or federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males. In other words, one third of black men can expect to be incarcerated during their life times if they live in the United States.

Incarceration in the U.S. is a growing industry. In 2001, an estimated 2.7% of adults in the U.S. had served time in prison, up from 1.8% in 1991 and 1.3% in 1974. The BJS reports that as of December 31, 2001, there were an estimated 5.6 million adults who had ever served time in state or federal prison, including 4.3 million former prisoners and 1.3 million adults in prison.

At every stage of the criminal justice system in the U.S., blacks, Latinos, Chicanos and other people of color and the poor are disproportionately impacted. Decisions by law enforcement personnel concerning who to stop, who to arrest and how to charge, are all infused with racial bias. Decisions regarding indictments, plea offers and requests for enhanced sentences and the death penalty, are similarly guided by considerations of race and class.

Sentencing decisions regarding probation and incarceration reflect the same racial overtones as the earlier stages of the system. The racist practices of prosecutors was so prevalent that in 1986 the United States Supreme Court finally outlawed the practice of routinely removing blacks from the jury in Batson v. Kentucky (476 U.S. 79). Prior to 1986, the courts routinely ignored the practice. Following Batson, prosecutors simply offered pre-textual reasons for their racist challenges to potential jurors and the courts turned a blind eye.

Prisoners in the U.S. are systematically incarcerated hundreds, and in many instances thousands, of miles away from their families and loved ones. Family contact is discouraged and thwarted. Frequently family members travel hundreds of miles to visit their loved one and they are denied entry on minor technicalities.

U.S. prison officials regularly create obstacles when attorneys seek to visit their clients. Memos authorizing the visit mysteriously disappear on the day the attorney arrives for the visit. Use of private attorney-client conference rooms is denied. Visits are inexplicably cut short and routinely monitored by video camera and roaming guards.

Similar tactics are often employed against political defendants during pretrial proceedings. The cases of both Assata Shakur and the Cuban 5 are reflective of the unconstitutional obstacles created to interfere in trial preparation. Shakur's lawyer, Evelyn Williams, had to obtain a court order to get access to her client. Lawyers for the Cuban 5 were limited to brief designated time periods when they were allowed to meet with their clients prior to trial.

Such interferences compromise the ability of the defendants and their counsel to develop trial strategy, prepare testimony and make crucial decisions about witnesses and evidence. In the case of the Cuban 5, independent polls showed that it would be impossible for them to get a fair trial in Miami. Despite this objective evidence, the judge denied the defendants' motion for a change of venue, even to Fort Lauderdale, just 30 miles away.

Assata Shakur's requests for a change of venue were initially denied and then finally granted with a move to Morris County, one of the richest and most conservative overwhelmingly white counties in the state of New Jersey. Further, the hysterical pretrial publicity assisted in creating an atmosphere that guaranteed the defendants would not get a fair trial.

Last month President Fidel Castro delivered a calculated series of public addresses that have been heard around the world, including in the United States. The arduous campaign to obtain justice for the Cuban 5 and to expose the hypocrisy of the criminal justice system has been the backdrop to these presentations.

President Castro's expose of the system rings so very true to the millions of Americans who have been incarcerated in the United States and the more than 100 political prisoners who are currently held in its prisons. The millions who have had their lives interrupted by the criminal "justice" system know that fairness is usually an illusion discussed widely in classrooms but not mentioned in courtrooms. They know it's unjust. Castro's pronouncements bear witness to the fact that "justice" in the United States, isn't justice at all.

Jill Soffiyah Elijah, Esq. is deputy director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School.

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The Meaningless Apology on Lynching

- Black Commentator, June 16, 2005 -

Why are some Black folks so happy to hear an apology from people who don’t mean it?

There are nearly a million African Americans in prison — one out of eight inmates on the planet — a gulag of monstrous proportions, clearly designed to perpetuate the social relations that began with slavery. We demand an end to those relations, not an insincere, risk-free “apology” that sets not one prisoner free.

It is appropriate that the great anti-lynching leader, Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), who documented the murder of nearly 5,000 Blacks at the hands of white mobs in the terror-filled years that followed the death of Reconstruction, be verbally honored by Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu and Virginia Republican Senator George Allen. Yet both Senators supported laws that will impose draconian equivalents of post-Civil War “Black Codes” on inner city youth, who will now be designated as criminal conspirators if they congregate in groups of three or more.

No thank you, Senators Landrieu and Allen — the crime you committed against us in May vastly outweighs your weak apology in June. You have guaranteed that hundreds of thousands more young Black people will be interned in your gulag — a crime against humanity. And both of you are determined to commit more crimes. Should we ask for an apology in advance?

There can be no absolution for those who continue to profit from past crimes, and plot new ones. Lynch law was the effective law of the South — and, truth be told, the rest of the United States — and the “lawful” authorities sanctioned it by refusing to pass 200 anti-lynching bills. The terror of lynching created the social relationships that resulted in white households accumulating ten to twenty times as much wealth as Black households — our collective national inheritance. An apology will not do.

Is that what our movement has been about all of these generations — to get an apology from people who became rich on our backs? There is a method to this racist madness, an assumption that African Americans can be bought by a simple nod from a few white people. Some of these racists will not even give us a nod — the twelve or sixteen senators who did not join in the anti-lynching vote, all but one of them Republicans. The Republican Senate Leader made sure that no member would have to go on record against lynching. However, are we supposed to be grateful for a non-binding resolution that admits thousands of murders were committed with the complicity of the United States government, but that does not redress the wrongs in any way.

Where is the sense of justice in this apology? What do the descendants of the terrorized class expect? That wrongs be righted, or that those who have profited gain absolution?

Lynching was Genocide

The United States Senate did not ratify the Convention on Genocide until 1988, 40 years after African Americans circulated the petition, “We Charge Genocide,” in an effort to make international law applicable to the U.S. By this time, most of the former Dixiecrats had become Republicans, and felt safe in blaming their former party for their own crimes.

The United States, controlled by a Republican majority and feckless minority of white Democrats whose greatest fear is their Black constituents, is now engaged in a grand venture to export the ideology of white terror, planet-wide. They have not learned a thing. Having never practiced democracy on their own shores, they claim a copyright to the concept. The fact that nobody believes their claims does not faze them, because they are marching to the tune of Manifest Destiny — the white man’s right to rule. It is that belief that drew tens of thousands of whites to the lynching fields of Georgia and Indiana, for the sport of Negro-killing. Now they are in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming moral authority.

The march of civilization goes on, leaving the United States behind. The bubble of news communication fools only those inside. The rest of the globe sees its own interests, and recognizes white arrogance, intuitively.

This intuitive knowledge, born of gruesome experience, also informs Black Americans. Although surrounded by the same bubble of misinformation as the rest of Americans, Blacks smell the lie. The vast bulk of us see the “apology” for what it is — a scam, with no substantial benefits, and less good faith. But there is a class that is paid to say, “Yes sir,” on command. Most of us pay them no attention.

Lynch law was no law at all. It was pure white power — the right to declare oneself a higher form of being, and reduce the “other” to charcoal. The current rulers of the United States are spreading lynch law to the far reaches of the planet. They claim the right to “pre-emptive” warfare, and reject all other people’s rights to live under collectively accepted rules. They wage war against the concept of international law, just as they violated every law that did not enshrine white privilege.

Nothing has changed, except the world. We will not tolerate such criminality, anymore. In fact, we have collectively called the behavior that white folks in the United States routinely engaged in, criminal. It’s far too late for the U.S. Senate to pass a non-binding resolution announcing some vague objection to lynching, when they pass legislation that makes it a crime to be Black and a youth, vote billions to fund a military machine that seeks to enslave the planet, and rejects the authority of the World Criminal Court. In doing so, they have made themselves outlaws.

We will not forgive, or accept an apology that does not come with a change in power relationships. And we will reject any so-called Black leadership that makes its own deal.