Broken Immigration System Breaks Up A Jamerican Family

On July 7, 2009, Roxroy Salmon- a Jamaican immigrant, activist and Brooklyn, New York resident- appeared before an immigration judge to determine his future in this country. In a worst case scenario, Salmon, a longtime resident of the U.S. with deep roots here, was ordered deported.

What is his crime, you might ask? Two decades ago, he pleaded guilty to two minor drug charges, and served no time. But that doesn’t matter under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA), an unjust federal law which allows for the mandatory deportation of immigrants for past offenses, no matter how minor the offense, or how long ago it was committed.

The threat of deportation is bad enough for Salmon, 53, who came to the U.S. in 1977, undocumented, to better himself and get an education. He also has a family in America. This is a man who has lived the so-called American dream- he has worked hard and raised four girls with his wife, and also has a granddaughter, all of whom are U.S. citizens. And Roxroy’s mother, also a U.S. citizen, petitioned for U.S. citizenship for her son. But his minor drug charges from over a generation ago stood in his way. He applied for deferred action from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in the hopes that the government will not enforce his deportation and separate him from his family.

“I’m asking Congressman [Ed] Towns and Senator [Charles] Schumer to please save me and my family and other families that are in the same situation,” Mr. Salmon said as he left his hearing at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. ”Because we have children - here are my children - we need to stay together. Don’t put me in exile!”

Roxroy Salmon’s case is by no means unique. The group Families For Freedom notes that nearly 10% of American families are of mixed immigration status, that is, with at least one parent who is a non-citizen, and one child who is a citizen. And 3.1 million children who are U.S. citizens have at least one undocumented parent. In the end, 200,000 non-citizens are deportedevery year and separated from their families, even if the judge believes they should stay. As Human Rights Watch noted in a recent report, 72% of noncitizens who were deported had committed nonviolent offenses such as drug possession or traffic offenses. Of those legal noncitizens who were deported, 77 percent were thrown out for nonviolent offenses, meaning that only 23 percent had committed violent acts. As a result of this misguided policy of criminalizing immigration status, at least 1 million children and spouses have been separated from their family members.

Human Rights Watch concludes that U.S. deportation law fails to safeguard human rights, and “is far out of step with international human rights standards and the practices of other nations, particularly nations that it considers to be its peers”-the law lacks proportionality (after all, deportation is a severe penalty for petty infractions, including the charges to which Mr. Salmon pleaded guilty); disregards the importance of family unity (deprives one of the right to live with close family members, including minor children); fails to consider the individual’s ties to the U.S., and gives no consideration to the threat to the deportee’s life or freedom if he or she is deported to the country of origin. The report makes it plain:

Deportation, though not technically recognized under US law as a form of punishment, is a coercive exercise of state power that can cause a person to lose her ability to live with close family members in a country she may reasonably view as “home.” Most deportees are barred, either for decades or in many cases for the rest of their lives, from ever reentering the United States. A governmental decision to deprive a person of connection to the place she considers home raises serious human rights concerns. Human rights law at a minimum requires that the decision to deport be carefully considered, with all relevant impacts and potential rights violations weighed by an independent decision maker. Unfortunately, the US fails to do this on a daily basis.

Civil rights practitioners and immigrant rights advocates agree. “The United States’ immigration policies and practices that aggressively seek to deport individuals, especially based on convictions where the sentences have been long ago been served, are draconian and unjust,” says Su Ming Yeh, a staff attorney at the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, an organization that represents indigent prisoners and detainees whose rights have been violated. “Frequently, the ones who suffer the most are the family members and children left behind. Immigration judges should, at a minimum, be permitted discretion to consider the best interests of the children and the overall contributions of the immigrant.”

In a nation that claims to uphold family values, this legalized separation of families boggles the mind. And in a nation of immigrants- excluding indigenous peoples and descendants of kidnapped Africans, of course-immigrants have a history of being scapegoated, hated, discriminated against, and otherwise singled out and targeted for ridicule, abuse, humiliation and degradation. And very often, the law played a fundamental role in the oppression of immigrants.

At first, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, some European immigrant groups were viewed as inferior to Anglo-Saxons, and often competed with African Americans to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. In those days, it was not uncommon to see signs such as “Irish Need Not Apply” or “No Irish or Dogs Allowed” or “No Dogs, Negroes or Mexicans” for that matter. Jewish Americans faced discrimination, rigid quotas in college admissions, and in the case of Leo Frank, lynching. Then there were the laws, regulations and ordinances targeting Asian immigrants, especially Chinese and Japanese Americans. This was a manifestation of xenophobic and racist sentiment and a White fear of the “Yellow Peril”, which culminated in the internment of Japanese Americans on U.S. soil during World War II.

And today, many immigrants come from the so-called Third World, from the nations of the South, places with warm, tropical climates, and people with brown or black skin, very often Caribbean and Latin American people, and many Spanish-speaking people. The current anti-immigrant fervor- complete with anti-Latino violence and calls for building a giant fence on the U.S.-Mexico border-must be understood within the context of changing demographics and resistance to the browning of America. Throw in the color-coded war on drugs, and the implications of the war on terror, and you get the immigration mess in which we find ourselves today.

For those who are threatened with deportation, there is hope on the horizon. New York Congressman José Serrano has introduced the Child Citizen Protection Act (HR182), which would allow immigration judges to consider the best interests of U.S. citizen children in deportation cases. The law would essentially allow children to be heard before their parents are taken away from them. The New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City and Families for Freedom, members of Mr. Salmon’s defense committee, support the immediate passage of HR182 by Congress.

And as for Roxroy Salmon, his fate is in the hands of ICE Field Office Director Chris Shanahan, who can be reached at (212) 264-2413.

(Published in Black Commentator).

A Homegoing For My Father

My father, Albert C. Love, Jr., passed away on Sunday, June 28, 2009. This is a poem I wrote in his honor.

Welcome to my father’s homegoing!

 

He was a simple man with an extraordinary life,

A Georgia boy, born and raised in a wooden shack in Augusta, 

In the heart of Jim Crow,

With segregation all around,

And with lynchings always waiting just around the corner,

Born to a Black Mama,

And his old man was Irish, as he always told us.

 

Was sent to the Korean War and came back with medals, 

Then chose the printing trade, where Black men were mostly kept out,

He married my mother, the love of his life, and found a home in paradise, in Laurelton, Queens.

 

He was a simple man who had a lot to say,

About anything and everything you can imagine,

You might not have agreed with all he said, 

But what he said often made you laugh.

And he liked to tell jokes, even when the punchline was not apparent,

Except maybe in his own mind…

 

He had many loves, my father—

He loved his God and he loved his country,

He loved helping others, serving others,

With his church and with his fellow veterans.

He loved Monday night football,

And I dare you to find a bigger Knicks fan,

Actually, I dare you to find any other Knicks fan, anywhere.

And of course, he loved his family, 

And his two grandchildren Kris and Zora,

He bragged about them so much.

 

We grew up in completely different times,

And I know he didn’t always understand our world, my brother’s and mine,

Of Ivy League opportunities and overseas excursions.

But it didn’t mean he wasn’t proud,

Or that he wasn’t responsible for us being what we had become,

But in any case, he left us with a lot,

With memories of sitting on the back porch in the summertime,

And of the one-dollar matinee, and our shopping trips, 

And that ice cream shop,

And most importantly his work ethic.

 

I know my father would have preferred a different way to leave,

Maybe in his leather chair at home with a pipe in his hand,

Watching wrestling or listening to B.B. King and Bobby Blue Bland,

Maybe with a big plate of lima beans and rice.

 

But my biggest regret was that he never got to meet my son Ezra,

That baby boy who died last season, on the day before he was born.

But now I know that things have come full circle,

And the two of them have found each other in that spirit world,

That land where the ancestors dwell and conduct their business.

And now my son is sitting on my father’s knee,

Listening to my father’s colorful stories, his life experiences,

And all sorts of jokes of course.  

 

And all along, that was the way it was supposed to be,

With my son sitting on his grandfather’s knee,

And you can’t ask for a better homegoing than that.

The Revolution Will Be Twitterized

If I learned one thing from the recent rebellions in Iran, it is this: the Iranian people have a lot of heart. These are folks you would want with you when times get tough. Strong folks, to be sure, particularly the women. They have endured beatings from the Ayatollah’s paramilitary motorcycle gang, the Basij. And some took bullets for the cause for which they were fighting. The graphic videotaped killing of a young woman, 26-year old Neda Soltan, by sniper fire became a painful symbol of the struggle for democracy in that country.

The masses fighting against the military in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities knew what to do when their rights were at stake. It was an appropriate reaction by an outraged public to a stolen election, in which incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was fraudulently reselected by the religious rulers to another term of office. Despite the groundswell of support for reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, the regime informed the people that Ahmadinejad won in a landslide. But it is really about more than that now, as this is a part of a resistance movement which was years in the making. And in that regard the people’s democratic tendencies and thirst for human rights provide a spectacular model for all of us to follow.

Iran’s citizens exist in a regressive theocracy that has carved out a paltry window for democracy in the form of these sham elections. They decided they were tired of living in a repressive society, a nation-as-prison branded as an international pariah and a sponsor of terrorism. They decided they grew weary of living in a place in which people are disrespected and disregarded, where women are second or third class citizens who are beaten in the streets with sticks like dogs, and brownshirt thugs mete out street justice on behalf of the religious elite.

But in the U.S., a putative democracy, when elections are stolen, the people retreat into a world of escapism and multimedia diversions, of celebrity gossip and reality television, of mindless consumerism (at least before the recession hit), and become sidetracked by issues of little or no concern. In November 2008, however, they appeared to take back their democracy, although the jury is still out.

The Iranian theocratic establishment responded to their people’s cries with brutality through the barrel of the gun. Unprepared for the first ever revolution conducted through Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, through text messaging, cell phones and camera phones, the regime of Ayatollah Khameini cracked down on political dissidents. It imprisoned reform leaders and journalists, jammed the phone lines, and waged a media blackout on coverage of the protests. And demonstrators were threatened with the death penalty. But what we all soon learned was that the world is one big network. You cannot hide the truth in a technological world with a 24-hour news cycle. Independent citizen-journalists still got the word out to the greater global community.

Iran’s religious rulers have a problem: their moral bankruptcy, corruption and illegitimacy have been revealed for all the world to see. They are trapped in the 1979 revolution which unseated the Shah - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a puppet monarch installed by the Americans and the British - from power. And oddly, the current regime remains fixated with a revolutionary mindset in which the U.S. is the great Satan, and the U.S., Britain and the European nations are to blame for the current unrest.

Now granted, the U.S. and Britain have to shoulder much blame for what has happened in Iran over the years. In 1953, the CIA and British SIS staged a coup d'état, in which Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratically-elected prime minister of that country, was overthrown (Mossadeq was a nationalist who was committed to nationalizing the country’s British owned petroleum industry). Installed by his Western puppet masters, the Shah - with his personal opulence, autocratic rule, suppression of political dissent, and regime of violence - paved the way for the Islamic revolution that overthrew him and cast him into exile. The protests against the Shah in the streets in 1979 mirror the protests against the rule of the mullahs today in 2009. And as Malcolm X would say, chickens came home to roost.

But it would seem that blaming the U.S. and others can only go but so far. And those in the streets who want relations with America apparently are not buying that worn out message. The Iranian revolutionary government suffers from the same disease that infects many other revolutionary regimes, and it harkens back to a theme in George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm - revolutions can produce governments that are just as oppressive as, if not more malicious and loathsome than, the regimes they replaced. Throw off one yoke of oppression, and replace it with another, only under a different name or shape or color. Oddly, the Iranian constitution provides for a number of freedoms, including the protection of human dignity, equality before the law for men and women, freedom of belief, freedom of the press, of association and assembly, a ban against torture, and no arrests without due process. But you would not know this these days, as rhetoric and reality have parted ways, and staying in power is more important than following the will of the people, and even their own laws.

President Obama, whose Cairo speech surely provided a catalyst for the Iranian protests that followed, issued the following statement:

"The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness."

Applying Dr. King’s message of human rights to the streets of Tehran, Obama’s message is a cautionary one, yet a hopeful one. No one knows what will happen next, and this is for Iranians to decide. But surely, repressive regimes everywhere are observing the Twitter revolution taking place in Iran, where brutality and injustice can no longer take place in dark, secret, hidden dungeons like the old days. Those were the days when the law was the law because the angry and sadistic old crackpot at the top said it was so, and everyone else be damned.

But now, the people beg to differ.

(Published in BlackCommentator.com.)

To The Fathers Who Lost Their Child

I was hoping they would cancel Father’s Day this year, mostly because my son Ezra Malik died.

He was my baby boy, and he died the day before he was born, in a hospital in August of last year. He was a beautiful baby with a full head of hair and flat little feet, and I only got to hold him once. I cannot describe the intense feeling of joy over meeting and holding and kissing my son, and the excruciating pain over seeing him lifeless. His mother and I read him a bedtime story before we put him in the ground, to be with his ancestors. And now I am left lamenting over the birthdays, the graduations and other life events that will never happen, over the laughs and memories of bicycle rides, amusement parks, and ice cream - experiences of seeing him grow up which I will never see because it wasn’t meant to be.

Losing my child was the most traumatic experience of my life. Nothing else comes close. It was like crashing into a brick wall, or having my heart yanked out of my chest. To those who have not had the experience, I pray you will never know the feeling. What makes it particularly difficult is that parents are supposed to protect their children and keep them away from harm, and now we feel as if we’ve failed.

This membership organization is a secret society of sorts, whose members often suffer in silence because society doesn’t care to listen. To be sure, there are many parents in this secret society, many fathers such as myself, those who have that strong fatherhood feeling, who love their child without question. But we are not viewed as fathers in the regular sense because our child died. Maybe there should be a special Father’s Day just for us.

Think of the countless children in this world that die every year from one of any number of causes, whether disease or famine, or homicide or suicide or war, or causes unknown. For example, every year in the U.S., 5,000 children die from gun violence, and African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately affected. Homicide is the leading cause of death for African-American males between ages 15-34, the second leading cause of death for Blacks ages 10-14, and the third leading cause of death for the 5-9 age range, with guns accounting for 90%, 70% and 34% of these deaths, respectively. That’s a lot of children. That’s a lot of mourning parents, and an army of grieving fathers, often at war with their emotions, and shunned by a society that doesn’t support them through their painful journey.

This is a society where value is placed on looking good rather than feeling good. People ask “how are you feeling?” without really caring about your response. In a society that does not deal well with death, particularly the death of children - and wants people to just “get over it” and feel better, mistakenly believing that simply forgetting the loss will make the pain go away - parents of lost children have a rough time of it.

Mothers who grieve over a lost child tend to have a more supportive network than fathers to help them through their pain, not that they always receive the support that they need. Men are told to buck up, walk it off and “be a man”. After all, we are told, it is hardest on the mothers.

As a result, fathers of lost children are lost in the wilderness. We must grapple with the fact that our child has died, yet often we are ill-equipped to do so. Many men have been conditioned to hide and deny their emotions, their pain and their sorrow, with unhealthy consequences. Think of all of the people - especially men - who are behind bars because they could not deal with what was on their mind. Unable to manage their emotions, they cracked up, and perhaps even hurt those around them. Maybe they were unaware of the counseling and support services available to them (two online support groups for babylost parents are MISS Foundation and Glow In The Woods). Or they were reluctant to seek those services because of the social stigma of being labeled weak, unstable or crazy.

As for those of us who are coping with the loss of a child, the pain will never go away. It might get easier to live with, but that is not the point. The stages of grief don’t always progress in a straight line. Years after our child’s death, the bad days may still sneak up on us and assault us out of the blue. Hopefully, healing will come, and we can find ways to incorporate the loss into our daily lives. But the bar has been lowered on the highest level of joy that we are able to experience.

So, finally, to those fathers who can physically hold your child on Father’s Day, I tell you to hold them tight and don’t let go. Do not take your child for granted. To those fathers whose children remain with you in spirit, I say hold them tight in your heart, in your memories, and in your daily life, and don’t let go.

But if you are someone who knows a daddy of a lost child, don’t hesitate to go up to him and feel free to acknowledge his loss. Bringing up the tragedy won’t make him feel worse, because he is already living the hell that is the most traumatic experience of his life. But when others pretend that he is not a suffering father, that will almost certainly make him feel worse. We grieving fathers need to know we are not alone this Father’s Day.

Will Obama Save the Mideast from Itself?

By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com

With his speech at Cairo University, President Obama has laid the groundwork, potentially, for a new era of peace in the Mideast. Israeli officials are now realizing that they will have to accept a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Meanwhile, there is an indication that the President’s speech is paving the way for waning animosity towards America in the Muslim world, which would undercut the activities of extremist groups that benefit from continued violence, hostility and death in that region of the world.

Well, it is about time. The past administration, whose name I dare not utter for fear it will reappear, paid nothing but lip service to the Mideast. The former president gave a rubber stamp to the status quo, and endorsed Israeli incursions and military strong-arming in the name of the war on terror. That rightwing faux fundamentalist Christian occupant of the White House from 2001 until this past January—and his constituency for that matter—really cared very little about Jewish people. Little that is, except under the fundamentalist concept of the so-called rapture, or end times, in which Jesus returns and Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will supposedly perish, or so the mythology goes. And that is the nonsense that governed Mideast policy for a decade. But I digress…

The Obama speech was a game changer because he accomplished a number of things: he presented a humbler and more contrite America, one which comes to the Muslim world with respect. With that respect, however, came a stern message. Obama discussed the long history of persecution of the Jewish people. Centuries of anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust, including the network of death camps—including Buchenwald, which Obama recently visited—that murdered 6 million Jews. “Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve,” the President emphasized. 

Addressing Israel, Obama declared that the growth of the settlements in the West Bank must end. To the Palestinians, he acknowledged their “intolerable” suffering, but suggested that violence will not work. Borrowing from the African American and South African experience, he noted that things changed for Black people not through violence, but fighting for and demanding their rights:  

"Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

Now, Obama is what some folks would call a real mensch, which is Yiddish for a man of integrity and honor. He laid it out on the table, seemingly without attachments to the way things were done in the past. Surely, he realizes that U.S. policy towards the Mideast must change, and the country must exert some positive leadership. (Whether Obama decides to resist the urge for a Bush-lite policy with empire building in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains to be seen.)  

Palestinians cannot sustain any more of an occupation that crushes the spirit and any sense of civil society, and Israelis can no longer pretend that they will ever feel safe, secure and free as long as they subjugate another people with Bantustans, checkpoints and identity cards. The hardliners, the base of Netanyahu’s coalition government, want nothing less than to keep building the settlements. Will the parties come to their senses and come to the table? Time will tell. “Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed,” as Obama said. “All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear.”  

I decided to take a survey of some of the voices in the U.S. and the Mideast in response to Obama’s Cairo visit. There are many thoughtful voices out there, to be sure, and some not so much. For example, 130 protestors protested at the American consulate in Jerusalem, chanting “20 new 'settlements' by 2010 - Yes We Can!” A rightwing group plans to disseminate a poster around Israel depicting Obama wearing a kaffiyeh, with the caption reading “Barak (sic) Hussein Obama, Anti-Semitic Jew-Hater.” 

Meanwhile, progressive journalists Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana decided to go through the streets of Jerusalem and interview young Israelis and American Jews on their feelings about the President. They were met with racist invective and violently offensive language from these young people in their twenties, many of whom are Americans studying in Israel. Their statements, caught on video, drip with a sense of visceral hatred and entitlement. And Blumenthal is concerned that many American Jews harbor such troubling views about Israeli politics:

• “He’s an asshole and deserves to get shot,” said one young man.
• “White power, f*ck the n*ggers!” said another.  
• “Oh he’s a Muslim for sure! And who even knows if he was born in the United States?” said one young woman, a political science major, who admitted she did not know who Benjamin Netanyahu is. “We haven’t seen his birth certificate yet. Bullsh*t. He’s not from the U.S. He’s like a terrorist. Just what is he doing for this country so far?”  
• Another man put it bluntly: “I just want to smoke a blunt and eat some watermelon with Obama, he’s just another n*gger.”
  

But there have been far more constructive and thoughtful critiques of Obama’s speech, particularly from progressive voices who seek justice in the Mideast. There is a vibrant Israeli peace movement out there, and a network of Jewish American peace organizations that are fighting for change. But they receive little attention in the press, particularly the U.S. media, and they must compete for airtime with the rightwing, pro-war hardliners.  

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Chicago-based Jewish Alliance For Justice and Peace, has an online pledge to support Obama’s two-state solution. According to the organization,

"No previous U.S. administration has been so forthright. President Obama has been firm in his endeavor to facilitate negotiation towards a two state solution. He hopes to leave the Bush Administration's legacy of empty words and no action behind."

Debra DeLee, head of Americans For Peace Now, said 

"This bold speech demands bold action. The President is demonstrating determined, praiseworthy leadership on Mideast peacemaking. He is offering an historic opportunity for Israel and its neighbors. Israeli and Arab leaders must seize the moment. If they fail to so, they will be responsible for blood shed in the future in the region. For Americans who support Israel, this is also an important moment in which to stand squarely with a President who is doing his utmost to bring peace to Israel." 

On the issue of putting a stop to settlements, J Street, the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement, responded with the following:

"Amen. A freeze means a freeze. This is exactly the sort of leadership we need from the President and Secretary of State if we are going to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the only way to truly secure Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic homeland.

You can bet the Obama Administration is already hearing from hawkish voices on Israel - urging him to make exceptions, allow for more settlement growth, and to go slow. We've got to make sure the President knows pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans. support his strong line on settlements, for both Israel's and America's sake and security."

Uri Avnery of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom called the President’s speech revolutionary and historic: 

"This world needs a world law, a world order, a world democracy. That’s why this speech really was historic: Obama outlined the basic contours of a world constitution.

WHILE OBAMA proclaims the 21st century, the government of Israel is returning to the 19th.

That was the century when a narrow, egocentric, aggressive nationalism took root in many countries. A century that sanctified the belligerent nation which oppresses minorities and subdues neighbors." 

Tikkun magazine characterized Obama’s address as “an important step in a process of changing consciousness both in the Arab world, Israel and the U.S.” adding that 

"While expansion through natural growth is one of the issues, we recognize that even if Israel were to agree to no further settlements that the lives of Palestinians would not dramatically improve and their suffering would not be diminished by this alone. So there is legitimate concern if this becomes the only or major focus of the U.S. role in the conflict." 

Electronic Intifada provided some poignant commentary as usual, including co-founder Ali Abunimah, who fears that Obama may prove to be a “Bush in sheep’s clothing,” offering an elusive two-state solution that does not safeguard Palestinian rights:

"He lectured Palestinians that "resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed." He warned them that "It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Fair enough, but did Obama really imagine that such words would impress an Arab public that watched in horror as Israel slaughtered 1,400 people in Gaza last winter, including hundreds of sleeping, fleeing or terrified children, with American-supplied weapons? …Amnesty International recently confirmed what Palestinians long knew: Israel broke the negotiated ceasefire when it attacked Gaza last 4 November, prompting retaliatory rockets that killed no Israelis until after Israel launched its much bigger attack on Gaza. That he continues to remain silent about what happened in Gaza, and refuses to hold Israel accountable demonstrates anything but a commitment to full truth-telling."

And Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women of Peace, echoed Abunimah’s concern over the carnage in Gaza, urging Obama to visit the Palestinian territory:

"But the issue that is really at the crux of the tensions with the United States is the intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine, and what many perceive as a one-sided US policy in support of Israel.

The Obama administration has taken a positive stand on the Israeli settlements, calling for a complete freeze. "[Obama] wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told reporters.

But the administration has said almost nothing about the devastating Israeli invasion of Gaza that left more than 1,400 dead, including some 400 children. To many in the Middle East, this is an unfortunate continuation of past policies that condemn the loss of innocent Israeli lives, but refuse to speak out against the disproportionately greater loss of Palestinian lives at the hands of the Israeli military."

In a commentary two years ago, I discussed the importance of the Mideast peace movement— not tanks, helicopters or rifles from the U.S.—in helping to bring about change in that troubled holy land where love and even God often cannot be found. And such voices should be sought in playing an instrumental role in a new Palestine and a new Israel, one in which peace and human rights reign supreme.  

Obama made the call, but will they follow? Hopefully they will, because there is no other choice.

Sotomayor’s nomination is important

By David A. Love, The Progressive / McClatchy-Tribune News Service

President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court reminds us of the importance of diversity in the judiciary. In order to have a vibrant democracy and a fair justice system, our courts should reflect the richness and variety of America.

Throughout its history, the nation’s high court has not been a diverse place. Of the 110 justices who have served on the court, 106 have been white men. Only two have been women, and only two black. 

Sotomayor would add to the court not only her substantial legal experience as a former prosecutor and a federal judge, but also her unique perspective as a woman, a Latina, and someone who emerged from humble beginnings in the Bronx.

While some of her critics, such as Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and former Rep. Tom Tancredo have seized upon one statement she made in 2001 and called her a racist, Sotomayor’s comment was very similar to those of other Supreme Court justices who were influenced by their background and life experiences.

Sotomayor said, “I would hope a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

During his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Clarence Thomas said he believed “that I can make a contribution, that I can bring something different to the Court, that I can walk in the shoes of the people who are affected by what the Court does.”

Samuel Alito, an Italian-American, noted during his confirmation hearing that he did not come from an affluent or privileged family, and that he was shaped by his immigrant background: “When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”

As a former law clerk to two black federal judges, I witnessed in a very direct and meaningful way the benefits a diverse judiciary brings to society.

Both had an understanding of everyday people and their life situations. Their ties to the community and their real-world experiences informed their decisions on complex cases.

The law does not exist in a vacuum. It involves not only rules, but rather people and their daily lives, conflicts and struggles. 

A justice system cannot serve all people fairly when all of the judges look alike, have identical backgrounds, attended the same schools and took the same career path. And a system that elevates brilliant legal minds but no empathy in their hearts threatens to oppress us.

Sadly, the legal profession is one of the least diverse professions in the United States. More than 90 percent of the judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys are white. That has got to change.

Diversity matters on the court. And with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, Obama is signalling a renewed commitment to a diverse and capable bench. This can only increase the public’s confidence in the legal system, and make justice real for all Americans.

Plea Bargains In The Criminal McJustice System

By David A. Love, Daily Kos and Open Salon

In Philadelphia, it is time for a new district attorney. The current D.A. Lynne Abraham is retiring, and none too soon— after 18 years in the position, she has been called “America’s deadliest D.A.” for her exceptionally voracious appetite in seeking the death penalty. Without question, most of the people sentenced to death were African American.  

A report by the Death Penalty Information Center noted that Amnesty International characterized Pennsylvania’s death penalty as one the most racist in America. Philadelphia, with 14% of Pennsylvania’s population, has accounted for more than half of the state’s death sentences. Further, Blacks in Philadelphia were far more likely to get the death penalty than similarly situated defendants—3.9 times to be exact. The report also said the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania’s death row prisoners are Black, and 84% of death row inmates from Philadelphia are Black. 

Yet, despite the complaints about Abraham over the years, someone voted her back into office, election after election, didn’t they?

Seth Williams recently won the Democratic primary for the D.A.’s race, which means he stands a better than good chance of becoming Philadelphia’s next prosecutor in this heavily Democratic city. If he wins, he will have lots of power. But will he use those powers for good? His platform looks promising, including dealing with violent rather than nonviolent crime, employing preventative measures, and most of all, reducing the number of plea bargains.

A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case where the defendant pleads guilty to a crime—usually to a lesser crime than the original charge—and waives his or her right to a jury trial, and the right against self-incrimination. At its worst, I view plea bargaining as a shortcut to justice, sometimes an injustice in and of itself. A plea bargain is to justice what fast food is to gourmet cooking. Quicker doesn’t necessarily mean better, and 90% of criminal cases end up in plea bargains. It gives the impression that justice is a deal that can be bartered. Perhaps these plea bargains are the grease that helps to lubricate an often frustratingly slow and overburdened justice system. Or perhaps they are the grease that clogs up the arteries of the justice system, and makes that system hardened, calcified, inelastic and diseased— unable to allow justice to flow.

Perhaps some plea agreements serve a legitimate purpose. But what happens when the defendant didn’t commit a crime at all, and is pressured into taking the deal by his or her defense lawyer or coerced by the D.A.? What if the crime should not have been prosecuted at all, such as the case of marijuana possession, or a good kid with no prior offenses? A criminal record—in most cases secured as a result of a plea bargain, whether or not the defendant actually did the crime—can mean prison time, social stigma, and a bar to many educational and employment opportunities. Prosecutors have a lot of power, and they have a lot of discretion in deciding who gets prosecuted and for what offenses. They may choose not to prosecute a nonviolent, victimless crime, or choose not to seek punishment that serves no legitimate social purpose. And as they say, you can indict a ham sandwich.

The fact of the matter is that many prosecutors build their careers on the backs of the prosecuted. The number of convictions one racks up become notches in the belt of one’s political career, rungs in the ladder of success. And whether those people actually committed crimes is secondary in importance, if important at all. 

The American Bar Association (ABA) Rules of Professional Conduct, as well as the Pennsylvania rules, say the following about the role of a prosecutor:

Rule 3.8 Special Responsibilities Of A Prosecutor

The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:

(a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;

(b) make reasonable efforts to assure that the accused has been advised of the right to, and the procedure for obtaining, counsel and has been given reasonable opportunity to obtain counsel;

(c) not seek to obtain from an unrepresented accused a waiver of important pretrial rights, such as the right to a preliminary hearing;

(d) make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense, and, in connection with sentencing, disclose to the defense and to the tribunal all unprivileged mitigating information known to the prosecutor, except when the prosecutor is relieved of this responsibility by a protective order of the tribunal.

 
The realities of how some prosecutors behave fly in the face of these sensible rules— rules which assume that the ultimate goal is getting to the truth, rather than the personal aggrandizement of the lawyers and others who oversee the criminal justice system.  

Consider the town of Tenaha, Texas, where the D.A. and the police are being sued for, literally, highway robbery: A federal class-action lawsuit alleges that cops have been illegally stopping hundreds of mostly out-of-town, Black and Latino motorists, and giving them the choice of taking a felony charge, or handing over their money and valuables. A black grandmother from Akron, Ohio was forced to give up $4,000 after Tenaha police pulled her over. Meanwhile, an interracial couple from Houston surrendered over $6,000 to police, who had threatened to take their children and place them in foster care. Between 2006 and 2008, the town has seized around $3 million under this perverse use of Texas’ forfeiture law, which requires such seized money to be used for law enforcement purposes. But in Tenaha, proceeds from these illegal seizures went to a church and a little league baseball team, and one officer received a $10,000 check. “We try to enforce the law here,” George Bowers, the town’s mayor said. “We’re not doing this to raise money.”

And consider the town of Tulia, Texas (there seems to be a pattern with these Texas towns), where a racially-motivated drug sting led to the arrest of 46 people, nearly all African American, on bogus drug charges. No drugs, money or weapons were seized because no crimes had been committed. Yet, some of these people were sentenced to very hard time, 99 years in one case. Fourteen of the defendants took pleas and were sent to prison. Prosecutors relied on the testimony of a sketchy undercover narcotics agent with a checkered past. The regional, 26-county drug task force that masterminded the sting was allowed to play by its own rules. They received federal money, and were funded based on the number of arrests and convictions they helped win. Such disasters cannot occur without the participation of sheriff's departments, disreputable police officers and unscrupulous district attorney's offices that are looking to make that big score.  

And society participates in the madness by putting profit into imprisonment, and by endorsing public officials who thrive on a “tough on crime”, “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” stance.

Two judges in Luzerne County, PA were looking for that big score when they collected $2.6 million in kickbacks from private juvenile detention centers. In return, the judges helped the centers secure their contracts, and filled the centers with over 5,000 children, many first-time offenders who committed minor offenses. The judges denied many of these juveniles access to an attorney. Like the law enforcement agent or the prosecutor who racks up arrests or convictions for personal advancement, it is amazing what happens when dollars are at stake.

When justice is reduced to a hustle or a deal—not unlike the economic system that the justice system has undergirded for so long—we all become cheapened in the process. And all you have left is a fast food justice system, a McJustice system.  

When the Law is the Crime Being Committed

By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com

When a person commits a crime, everyone has an answer as to what punishment should or should not be meted out. But what do you do when a law is a crime unto itself, and society is committing the crime?

I asked myself that question when I recently saw the film The Lemon Tree. A fictional account based on real-life stories, it centers around Salma Zidane, Palestinian woman who owns a lemon grove on the West Bank-Israel border. Zidane’s neighbor, the new Israeli defense minister, builds an upscale home near the lemon trees and the secret service declares the grove a security threat. The military erects a watchtower, and bars her from entering her lemon grove and tending to it. As the minister and his family take some of the lemons for their own use, Zidane is met with physical force, at gunpoint, when she climbs the wire fence in an attempt to enter her own grove. The minister orders the trees uprooted pursuant to military law, and Zidane, who rejects the government’s offer to compensate her, fights the decision all the way up to the Israeli high court.

The Lemon Tree makes a statement about the dysfunctional state of affairs in the Mideast, and a struggle of people who are fighting for their rights. Central to the film, in my view, is the law which allowed for the destruction and confiscation of Palestinian property on the grounds of “military necessity” (translated: Palestinian terrorist threat).

People do not think much about laws, and they question not how and why they are promulgated. In a previous commentary, I argued that a law is that which is bought and paid for. I would like to add to that definition with a secondary definition: a law endorses and legitimizes the oppressive tendencies of a given society. In order to justify an injustice, simply write it into law and legalize it. Rubber stamp it. You don’t have to justify the abhorrent practice on its merits, you simply back into it. It is now the law, so it is lawful. And the nation’s legal apparatus will bring force to bear and uphold the law.

A law can also reveal a narrative, a story that a given society wants to tell about itself, its values, and the way it deals with certain conduct. So in The Lemon Tree, the law that Salma Zidane challenges provides us with a story about Israeli-Palestinian relations: In Israel, Palestinians are second-class citizens - better yet, non-citizens - who have no rights, including the right to own land in a country that is not their own, even though this is the only home they have known. They are bad people and considered dangerous, whether men, women or children, and should be viewed as potential if not actual terrorists. That is why they are subjected to a regime of ID cards, unreasonable checkpoints and curfews. These security precautions must be taken, the argument goes, to protect Israeli families and their homes from these terrorists (Palestinians).

In the United States, we have seen recent examples of unjust laws. A nation that has all but forsaken the notion of rehabilitation in its criminal justice system, America chooses to punish people - whether through incarceration, fine, sanction, etc. - not only for the crime for which they are convicted. Rather, there are laws that add collateral punishment to a prison sentence by denying a convicted felon access to student loans for college, or by barring that person employment and licensure in many professions, access to public assistance and public housing. Yet, that person is likely expected to find employment in order to pay restitution, as a term of his or her probation or parole. As a result, people with a criminal record are unable to provide for their families and become productive members of society. Such laws articulate the narrative of a country that has decided to write off certain members of society, to banish them from participation in daily life, and pronounce them dead in a civil sense.

Another example is the Bush administration’s endorsement of torture of terror suspects. The Bush cronies started with the blatantly false assumption that torture is acceptable - although domestic and international law clearly says the practice is illegal. Hack lawyers working for former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney provided the legal cover by engaging in professional misconduct - writing memos with faulty legal reasoning declaring that torture is legal. They essentially backed into the legalization of torture by declaring torture is legal because the memos say it is legal.

Wherever you find unjust laws and a legal system that serves as the commission of a crime on society, you will find lawyers and judges as willing participants in the injustice. In the Jim Crow South and apartheid South Africa, not only were racism, racial discrimination and oppression accepted, they were the law. And there were legal tacticians who were willing and able to prop up those systems of injustice. Segregation, disenfranchisement, miscegenation laws, curfews, capital punishment and prison farms were part of a legal framework to kill Black aspirations of empowerment and self-determination.

In a similar vein, the Nuremberg laws devised by Nazi Germany sanctioned the oppression and ultimately the annihilation of European Jews, with the enforcement of these laws by sham kangaroo courts. The Nazi legal regime received their cues from the American South, with racial integrity laws that defined a Jew in ways that echoed the “one-drop rule” for Blacks under Jim Crow. The discriminatory laws disenfranchised Jews; kept them segregated and contained in ghettos; stripped them of their German citizenship; prohibited them from engaging in a profession or working in a government job; barred Jews from intermarrying and having sexual relations with Germans; excluded them from receiving social welfare and attending public schools and universities, and prohibited them from holding driver’s licenses. Jews were banned from resorts, beaches and swimming pools, barred from sleeping and dining cars on trains, and made to register for forced labor. And they were forbidden to walk in certain places at certain times of the day. All of these measures were passed under German law, under penalty of hard labor (like Jim Crow), for the sake of maintaining the purity of German blood. Nazi law defined children as “persons who are not Jews.” Being Jewish, in essence, became illegal.

Dr. Martin Luther King had much to say about unjust laws. In his April 16, 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, he said that unjust laws are made to be broken:

"You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust…. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'…. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal."

In our daily lives, wherever we may find ourselves in the world, we must fight the temptation to endorse unjust laws. We should resist participating in the oppression of others through the use of the law. After all, when you have blood on your hands, it is very hard to wipe them clean.

Open Dialogue On Race Part IV

Check out my latest contribution to the Open Dialogue on Race, found on Open Salon:

http://open.salon.com/blog/david_a_love/2009/05/18/open_dialogue_on_race_part_iv

Alabama Senator Linked to White Supremacists

By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com

With the recent announcement that Justice David Souter will retire from the U.S. Supreme Court, President Obama must now find a replacement. And over the next four years - eight years if there is a second Obama term - the president has the opportunity to shape the federal courts to reflect 21st century realities. Much damage has been done in the judiciary under the Bush administration. In his attempts to create an enduring legacy of radical conservatism on the bench, the previous occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue stacked the federal courts with corporate shills, Christian Taliban and torture enablers.

With only one woman on the Supreme Court, seven White men, and a Black justice who is the functional equivalent of a conservative White man, the high court does not look like modern-day America. Now with the winds of change blowing, there is a fighting chance that diversity - of backgrounds and life experiences, of gender, of ethnicity, of opinion, of law schools, and the like - will be a factor in the shaping of the court. Times must change. As someone who clerked for two African-American judges in the federal courts, I can appreciate the value of diversity on the bench, of having more than the usual “suspects” wielding the gavel.

But it seems unlikely that the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions (R-Alabama), feels the same way. Sessions, it should be noted, was nominated by Reagan in 1985 to a federal judgeship, but was dinged by the Senate. Sessions was a critic of the Voting Rights Act. He had called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” groups that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” In addition, as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, he reportedly called a Black assistant U.S. attorney “boy”, and told him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” As a federal prosecutor, Sessions engaged in a voter-fraud witch-hunt against three Black civil rights workers, including a former aide to Dr. King. Moreover, during a 1981 KKK murder investigation, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.”

As a senator, Sessions voted against expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. Based on his voting record, he has a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign (he is anti-gay rights), a 7% rating from the NAACP (he is anti-affirmative action), and a 20% rating from the ACLU (he is anti-civil rights). And this is the person the Republicans have entrusted in a position of leadership in this important committee in the Senate. It speaks volumes about the GOP and the statement they are making here, particularly when one considers Sessions’ association with anti-immigration, White nationalist groups.

A lawmaker with a solid anti-immigration record, Sessions is criticized by immigrants’ rights groups for his anti-immigration rhetoric, and for his close associations with three organizations: the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has designated FAIR as a hate group, notes that all of these organizations “were founded and funded by John Tanton, a retired Michigan ophthalmologist who operates a racist publishing company and has written that to maintain American culture, ‘a European-American majority’ is required.” He has published writings by John Vinson, head of Tanton’s American Immigration Control Foundation, and a devout White supremacist. Vinson has called for the secession of the former Confederate states in order to racially and economically protect Whites.

Tanton has been a driving force in the White nationalist and anti-immigration movements for years. His organizations and associates have affiliations with skinheads, neo-Nazis, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the modern-day reincarnation of the White Citizens’ Councils, the “white-collar Klan” of the Jim Crow era. And with financial support from the pro-eugenics Pioneer Fund - also designated a hate group whose members believe that Black people have smaller brains and lower intelligence than Whites - Tanton has been able to infiltrate, and unfortunately shape, the mainstream dialogue on immigration reform. And sadly, the mainstream media have helped to legitimize his organizations.

Senator Sessions often quotes Tanton’s groups and their sham reports, appears at their press conferences, and has received recognition and campaign contributions from them. And this individual will be sitting in judgment of nominees to the federal bench, including African Americans, Latinos and other judges of color? In recent years, the Republican Party has been reduced to a regional extremist party - all-White, Christian fundamentalist, uneducated and racist. And apparently, on judicial and criminal justice matters, Sessions is their standard bearer, the end product of a thorough barrel-scraping process. This is not surprising, but one must wonder what’s really going on here.