Category Archives: The War on Drugs

African American Leaders Deliver Agenda For Obama’s Second Term

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African American Leaders Deliver Agenda For Obama’s Second Term

December 4, 2012 | Filed under: Headlines | Posted by: Editorial_Staff

African America leaders de

liver “black agenda”

Following a four-hour closed door meeting Monday, the leaders of four African American advocacy groups emerged looking pleased to announce a collective wish list they plan to deliver to President Barack Obama for his second term.

The “black agenda,” as the groups have called their wish list on Twitter, starts with ensuring the fiscal cliff doesn’t disproportionately hurt African Americans. That’s something Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, has worried about before. But Morial also listed five new priorities that came out of what he called Monday’s “historic gathering.” Those include: working for parity for Blacks in education, health care and the economy; reforming the criminal justice system; and protecting and defending voting rights.

The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment about whether the president would make these priorities a focus during his second term.

But according to Morial, the voting rights priority is key. “When our community was challenged by voter suppression…they reacted with power, with dignity and with force,” he said.

via African American Leaders Deliver Agenda For Obama’s Second Term.

Local and National Leaders Endorse Major Neill Franklin for Baltimore City Police Commissioner | KineticsLive.com

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OUR COMMON GROUND Voice Neill Franklin

 Neill Franklin does not offer business as usual; he offers integrity, honesty, and a promising path to safe, thriving, caring communities.” – Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

 

Tyrone Powers, Ph.D.

“At this point in Baltimore City we need a Commissioner that completely understands the city and its residents – the human terrain; We need a Police Commissioner that understands the physical terrain; We need a police Commissioner with vast experience from working the streets, highways and byways, the nooks and crannies – the nuances – and has vast experience as an administrator.

via Local and National Leaders Endorse Major Neill Franklin for Baltimore City Police Commissioner | KineticsLive.com.

Facing Rates Of $17 For 15 Minutes, FCC Takes Up Regulation Of Prison Phone Industry | ThinkProgress

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Facing Rates Of $17 For 15 Minutes, FCC Takes Up Regulation Of Prison Phone Industry

By Nicole Flatow on Nov 19, 2012 at 10:30 am

Phone calls between prisoners and their families can cost as much as $17 for a 15-minute call, reaping generous profits in many states for both the phone companies that provide the service and the states, which receive what amount to legalized kickbacks. Recognizing the drastic obstacle these costs impose on children staying in touch with their parents, a bipartisan coalition launched a campaign this past Mother’s Day calling for regulation of this industry. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission entertained these calls, announcing at a rally that it would seek public comment on prison phone rules and rates. In a scathing September report, the Prison Policy Initiative’s Drew Kukorowski explains why the industry needs regulating:

via Facing Rates Of $17 For 15 Minutes, FCC Takes Up Regulation Of Prison Phone Industry | ThinkProgress.

Ho< Ghetto Politics Has Outlived the Ghetto, and Still Holds All Of Us Back | Black Agenda Report

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How Ghetto Politics Has Outlived the Ghetto, and Still Holds All Of Us Back

Wed, 10/17/2012 – 12:20 — Bruce A. Dixon

Black Misleadership Class | mass incarceration

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by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The class of cultural, business and political hacks who pass themselves off as “black leaders” never tire of celebrating the sixties. But they have nothing to say about the seventies, eighties or nineties when the prison state and drug war engulfed the black lower classes and the gains of the New Deal and Great Society rolled back, all during their watch. They’re ghetto politicians, and ghetto politics have failed.

How Ghetto Politics Outlived the Ghetto, And Still Holds Us Back

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Remembering the sixties, forgetting the seventies, eighties and nineties.

Our black class of political and cultural misleaders never tire of evoking, recalling and celebrating the sixties Freedom Movement. It was after all, the era of unified and successful black opposition to Jim Crow which catapulted them into their current prominence. It opened the doors of legislatures, city halls, corporate boardrooms, elite universities and the entertainment industry to thousands of black faces in high places.

But why do our leaders have shockingly little to say about black progress during the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and the new century, excepting the ascension of Barack Obama. One would almost believe nothing important happened in those decades of their actual leadership. One would be wrong. Plenty happened in that time, but almost none of it reflects well on the current crop of leaders and the outdated, self-serving version of black politics they have foisted upon us.

Black politics as we know it originated in the mid-twentieth century urban ghettoes of places like Chicago, Detroit, Harlem and Atlanta. The first World War cut off the supply of white immigrant labor at the same time it created demands for greatly increased production. The solution was to attract black labor to mostly northern cities. Blacks who came north, and to places like Atlanta and Birmingham as well, found they were still discriminated against, confined to certain areas of the city regardless of class. They developed their own institutions, their own consumer market and their own social relations which to some extent sheltered and protected inhabitants from interactions with hostile whites.

via How Ghetto Politics Has Outlived the Ghetto, and Still Holds All Of Us Back | Black Agenda Report.