Category Archives: Labor and Work

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: WHY OBAMA SHOULDN’T NEGOTIATE WITH REPUBLICAN HOSTAGE-TAKERS

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GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: WHY OBAMA SHOULDN’T NEGOTIATE WITH REPUBLICAN HOSTAGE-TAKERS

BY DR WILMER J. Leon

OCTOBER 09,2013

President Obama must stand firm 

[The View From Washington]

 The Obama Administration Let Republicans Control Narrative

Since the Republican led House of Representatives shut down the government, polls show a continued shift in public sentiment away from Republicans and in favor of the President.

According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll  Americans disapproval of the way Congressional Republicans are “handling negotiations over the federal budget” has jumped to 70% with a mere 24% approving of Congressional Republicans.

The disapproval rate of President Obama’s performance on the budget negotiations has narrowed, 51% to 45%. That’s a small improvement from the previous week’s 50% to 41% disapproval ratio.

The issue is not with the poll numbers.  If you are a member of the administration the numbers are trending in the right direction.

Their concern should be with the construct of the narrative by the corporate media. Programs such as Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and This Week are following the narrative articulated by Speaker Boehner and other Republicans: “Why won’t President Obama negotiate?”

Savannah Guthrie from Meet the Press asked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, “Is the president ready to watch this country go into default rather than negotiate with Republicans?”

Later she tells Representative Fudge (D-OH), “As this goes on and on, the president’s stance is, ‘I won’t negotiate.’ And even if there’s a host of reasons why that is a responsible position, as a bumper sticker, it’s not the greatest, is it?”  Supporters of the administration’s position are allowing themselves to be brought into a debate based upon a false premise. The nature of Guthrie’s questions presumes that the Republican’s position has merit.

It does not.

George Stephanopoulos from This Week opened his round-table discussion by allowing his guest Paul Gigot to say, the President is playing with fire by failing to negotiate; as though the Republicans position is intellectually honest. Gigot went on to recount how many continuing resolutions (CR’s) have been negotiated by previous presidents; as though that history is relevant to the current circumstance.

It is not.

This time Republicans are holding the country hostage to reargue established law; the Affordable Care Act. Even Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has said, “We fought as hard as we could in a fair and honest manner and we lost…”

The hosts of these news programs and others may consider themselves to be unbiased journalists by allowing the Republican spokespeople and pundits to go unchallenged but they are really doing the public a great disservice.  Facts matter. The truth is important and should always be paramount.

The shutdown of the government is being led by a small band of elected officials who are more focused on their narrow political ideology than operating in the best interest of the American people.  According to The New York Times, “Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy.”

The result was the “blueprint to defunding Obamacare.” According to the Times “It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

This of course comes on the heels of the infamous January 20, 2009 dinner where according to Robert Draper’s book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives” Republican leadership “met and plotted to sabotage, undermine and destroy America’s Economy.” The senior GOP members plotted to bring Congress to a standstill regardless how much it would hurt the American Economy by pledging to obstruct and block President Obama on all legislation.

Contrary to how John Boehner, Eric Cantor, et al, try to position the current shutdown we are exactly where they wanted us to be. It is not a noble gesture that the Republicans are championing on behalf of “the American people”.  This is, according to the Times, “the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups (such as the Koch Brothers) with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.”

It is also the Republican Party playing to a bigoted ideologically driven element of their party, the White Southern Republican base.  According to The Nation “Many factors play into the shutdown, but a leading cause is the fact that the Republican Party is whiter, more Southern and more conservative than ever before.”  As a result of the 2012 census and restricting, “while the country continues to grow more racially diverse, the average Republican district continues to get even whiter.”

Contrary to Boehner’s mantra, Republicans are not listening to “the American people,” they are playing to the narrow structural base of the Republican party.

For mainstream American journalists to allow Republican representatives to justify their “negotiating” position as though it is valid perpetuates the lie.  For Democrats to participate in television and radio programs where the questions they are being asked are based upon faulty premises and they trying to answer the questions without highlighting their flaws is a formula for disaster.

It is also interesting how journalists, Democratic strategists, and Democratic members of Congress have adopted the Republican created pejorative term “ObamaCare.”  When you allow your enemy to define your position you’ve already lost the argument.

Not once have I heard Representative Fudge (D-OH) or other’s say, “no, it’s not ObamaCare; it’s the Affordable Care Act. (ACA)” Polls have shown many Americans oppose “ObamaCare” but support the ACA, demonstrating how effective Republican marketing has been and how the administration has failed to explain its flagship legislation.  He who defines reality controls others perception of reality.

Even though the polls are showing Americans disapprove of the way congressional Republicans are “handling negotiations over the federal budget” I believe the administration has lost control of the narrative, again. They can’t seem to construct a consistent and cohesive message. The ACA is not a takeover of health-care; it’s a change to health insurance which provides greater access to care for the previously uninsured.

In terms of corporate “mainstream” media, the administration has failed to get program hosts to focus on why Republicans are opposed to expanding healthcare to more Americans and are willing to shut down the government in order to prevent it.  Also, why should the President negotiate issues (ACA) that are unrelated to a clean CR?

By failing to force the narrative to address these issues, as the day’s pass and the country again get’s closer to the fiscal cliff, the winds of public sentiment may shift; forcing the administration to concede defeat when the battle, if properly fought, was already won.

Dr. Wilmer Leon, an OUR COMMON GROUND Voice is the Producer/ Host of the Sirius/XM Satellite radio channel 110 call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon” Go to  www.wilmerleon.com or email: wjl3us@yahoo.com.  www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com  © 2013 InfoWave Communications, LLC 

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– See more at: http://www.blackstarnews.com/us-politics/us-politics/government-shutdown-why-obama-shouldnt-negotiate-with-republican-hostage#sthash.x77CNbJM.dpuf

EPA Victims Ask: Who Will Protect Us From Our Protectors?

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EPA Victims Ask: Who Will Protect Us From Our Protectors?

 09/17/2013 – 17:19

 from OUR COMMON GROUND Voice, Dr. Marsha Coleman


by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

The public need protection from the Environmental Protection Agency, a “rogue” department of government that ruthlessly suppresses the truth about its actual activities. “The EPA’s Office of General Counsel, Office of Civil Rights and the Office of the Administrator have all been complicit in crimes against the people and environment they are charged with protecting.”

EPA Victims Ask: Who Will Protect Us From Our Protectors?

by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

“It is imperative to those with the power for the whistleblower to be destroyed.”

The EPA is in the news again. Not for taking credit for a substantive decline in the neurotoxic levels of lead in the brains of young African-American children or imposing major pesticide rules against chemical companies that are poisoning our food and water but for its vicious and malicious retaliation against a courageous EPA employee who blew the whistle on Agency lies and corruption with its purposeful misleading of the public on health risk of dust at the World Trade Center cleanup after 9/11.

The EPA’s dismal record of discrimination and intolerance gives the Agency the odious distinction of having had its retaliatory and intimidating policies cited in the first whistleblower protective legislation of the 21st century when Congress and the Executive in 2002 took the first tentative steps toward reigning in this rogue agency that has come to symbolize institutionalized governmental coercion and systematic fear tactics applied by criminal elements within the upper ranks of government against lower level, conscientious workers.

The EPA is an Agency that has historically neglected economically-disadvantaged communities and allowed poor children to disproportionately suffer from asthma and other chronic upper-respiratory diseases, sometimes leading to death. The bulk of these children are Black, Hispanic and others who have nowhere else to go, but remain in toxic dumping grounds throughout the United States. The present controversy represents just the latest example of an Agency still out of control. Because sunlight is a disinfectant, Democratic and Republican presidents have dared not select an administrator from outside the EPA’s cloaked walls. The last three EPA Administrators have been insiders who have learned the ropes from the very same culprits the No FEAR Act sought to restrain.

“She sounded the alarm about the health risks for them and residents near the WTC buildings, resulting in her being thrown into the abyss of EPA retaliation.”

The latest target of their corruption is Dr. Cate Jenkins, a senior chemist who ran into the same “green” stonewall that all EPA employees hit when they make the decision to warn the public about environmental dangers the Agency has a hidden agenda about. Dr. Jenkins raised concerns about the health risks and dangers to the 911 emergency first responders after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.

Former New Jersey Governor and EPA administrator Christine Whitman said the air quality immediately following the 911 explosions was “safe to breathe,” leaving firefighters, police and citizens comforted by her statement but actually exposed to life and quality of life threatening toxins. Dr. Jenkins, a seasoned scientist with an impressive resume, professionally disagreed with the “official” line of the EPA and other political leaders. Concerned for the lives of the responders, she sounded the alarm about the health risks for them and residents near the WTC buildings, resulting in her being thrown into the abyss of EPA retaliation.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Dr. Jenkins “received a proposed removal more than a year after a federal civil service court ordered her returned to work…EPA re-filed the same charges from 2010 which had been thrown out for violations of her constitutional due process rights.”Further, she had “publicly charged that due to falsified EPA standards, First Responders waded into dust so corrosive that it caused chemical burns deep within their respiratory systems. After raising the issue to the EPA Inspector General, Congress and the FBI, Dr. Jenkins was isolated, harassed and ultimately removed from her position on December 30, 2010 by EPA, based upon an un-witnessed and contested claim that the soft-spoken, petite childhood polio survivor threatened her 6-foot male supervisor.” While the EPA allegations seem laughable, Dr. Jenkin’s EPA career has been destroyed. She follows hundreds of other EPA employees of conscience who have raised “green flags” about EPA corruption continuing unabated.

“First Responders waded into dust so corrosive that it caused chemical burns deep within their respiratory systems.”

Susan Morris, an Assistant Director in the Office of Civil Rights, blew the whistle on the violations of civil rights, dishonesty, and misuse of federal resources that were ignored by the Administrators, the EPA Inspector General and the legal office. After a lengthy investigation, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the agency responsible for these violations, found that EPA had retaliated against Morris for whistle blowing and said she should be reinstated with full benefits. Instead, in line with their continued abuse and retaliation of employees, administrator Lisa Jackson ignored the OSC, forcing Ms. Morris to file a complaint that will be heard by a jury in Federal District Court.

In discussing Dr. Jenkin’s situation with Ms. Morris, she said, “I am not surprised by anything that EPA does to its employees. I worked at four major Departments and industry for over 30 years and never encountered a more despicable environment in which to work. I understand the woman, another lawyer, that they just put in the Acting position was detailed over 30 times and is now in charge of civil rights. They don’t want civil rights to work in the EPA because it would mean they would have to be timely in processing complaints from employees and poorer communities that are being polluted by industry. It’s a disgrace.” The case of Dr. Jenkins, Morris continued, “just adds to the fear of discrimination and retaliation that permeates the agency with over 1,000 attorneys supporting the corruption.”

On May 4, 2012, the MSPB (the Merit Systems Protection Board), responsible for protecting employees from agency management abuses unanimously rejected EPA’s claims against Dr. Jenkins and ordered the rogue agency to “fully restore” her back to her position and provide back pay with interest, just as OSC did with respect to Susan Morris. It should be noted that the MSPB routinely finds in favor of federal agencies and rarely in favor of federal employees. In this instance, the evidence was clearly so overwhelming that the MSPB was unable to rubber stamp the illegal behavior of the Agency. Ignoring the MSPB decision, the EPA placed Dr. Jenkins on paid administrative leave for over one year (at taxpayers’ expense) and re-filed termination charges against her on August 27, 2013—the same exact charges as those previously dismissed.

“They don’t want civil rights to work in the EPA because it would mean they would have to be timely in processing complaints from employees and poorer communities that are being polluted by industry.”

Is this an isolated case? By no means. The Washington Post recently reported that John C. Beale, a subordinate of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, (in her previous position as head of the Air and Radiation office) has pleaded guilty to defrauding the EPA of $900,000. However, the same rules do not apply to all offenders. Mr. Beale obviously belonged to what many refer to as the EPA’s “good ole boy club” having basked in the perks of special privilege afforded the high and mighty. Once his crime was discovered he did not face the same level of acrimony suffered by Dr. Cate Jenkins or Susan Morris. In Beale’s case, he was allowed to quietly retire from his position until he was criminally charged. The length to which the Agency will go to provide cover and protection to one of its “own” would shame any government that values fairness andjustice.

For an agency whose stated mission is “to protect human health and the environment,” it is more than a little embarrassing when one of their scientists outs the Agency’s willfully dishonest and misleading statements. Questioning the moral, legal and socially responsible ethics of what would in any reasonable context be seen as criminal misconduct cannot be allowed. It is imperative to those with the power for the whistleblower to be destroyed.

Dr. Jenkins’ is just the latest in the succession of cases that the EPA chooses to ignore direct instructions from its judicial overseers. This flagrant and arrogant disregard for the law comes as no surprise to those familiar with EPA whistleblowers. Despite public outcry and congressional inquiries, the same attorneys in the EPA Office of General Counsel, including David Guerrero and Nancy Dunham, routinely have their names affixed to agency adverse removal actions.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as many as 65,000 people have been ill as a result of exposure to the 9/11 dust. This was exactly what Dr. Jenkins was trying to avoid. A Mount Sinai Medical Center study announced the grim statistics that 9/11 first responders are now experiencing a 15% higher cancer rate than their cohorts who were not exposed to the toxic air.

EPA allowed these people to be exposed when it was unnecessary and could have been averted through using proper protective recovery gear. As of August 2013, approximately 1,140 emergency responders and people who lived or worked near ground zero have been certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to have a WTC-related cancer and these numbers are expected to rise. The question is how many more will die?

Where is the accountability for those who were in a position to know what Dr. Cate Jenkins knew and made up feel-good announcements that condemned all of these people to suffering and death? The EPA’s Office of General Counsel, Office of Civil Rights and the Office of the Administrator have all been complicit in crimes against the people and environment they are charged with protecting. The corruption at EPA is found at every level. Lisa Jackson, the former EPA Administrator who leveraged her EPA gig into the position of Vice President for Environmental Affairs at Apple (a business that she used to regulate) is under Congressional scrutiny for using the alias, ‘Richard Windsor’ to skirt Congressional oversight and to avoid having to release information to the public mandated under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA.) A Congressional hearing was held last week to continue the investigation into this matter.

“9/11 first responders are now experiencing a 15% higher cancer rate than their cohorts who were not exposed to the toxic air.”

In Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner, in which I prevailed in federal court, a jury of my peers established that EPA as an agency tolerated racism, sexism and a hostile work environment. However, as in the case of Dr. Jenkins, even after I won and the first civil rights and whistleblower protection law of the 21st century, No FEAR, was ratified the agency continued its ham-fisted retaliation until I was fired.

The legal attack team that is prosecuting the cases against Dr. Jenkins and Susan Morris are the same lawyers who have been relentless against me. People who trusted the assurances of the Agency tasked to protect human health and the environment are suffering by the tens of thousands and dying.

Who is going to protect us from the ones who systematically destroy the whistleblowers who are trying to protect us?

It is essential that we continue to fight for the survival of this planet that is placed in peril when we choose corporate collusion over sustainable environmental protection. For more information about corruption at the EPA please see: www.occupyEPA.com.

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA is available through amazon.com. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered vanadium mine workers in South Africa. Marsha’s successful lawsuit lead to the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet.

Reference documents:

Read the PEER protest to the new proposed removal

Click to access 9_11_13_Jenkins_Removal_PEER_Protest.pdf

View legal victory that restored Dr. Jenkins

View legal victory that restored Dr. Jenkins after her Monsanto Agent Orange dioxin study disclosures

Read an interview of Dr. Jenkins in the scientific journal Nature

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OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham l “The State of Black America: A Tale of Two Countries” l Guest: Dr. Wilmer Leon l April 6, 2013

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OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham

April 6, 2013       10 pm ET  LIVE

“The State of Black America: A Tale of Two Countries”

Tonight’s Guest: Dr. Wilmer Leon

 

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“The State of Black America: A Tale of Two Countries”

Tonight’s Guest: Dr. Wilmer Leon

Dr. Leon comes to OCG once again to weigh in on the issues which face Black America, the politics of our problems and the light of solutions available.

Wilmer J. Leon III, Ph.D. is a Political Scientist whose primary areas of expertise are Black Politics, American Government, and Public Policy. He is a Teaching Associate in the Political Science Department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., a nationally syndicated broadcast radio talk show host, columnist, commentator, political consultant, TV host, lecturer, and much sought after motivational speaker.

Dr. Leon earned a BS degree in Political Science from Hampton Institute, a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from Howard University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Howard University.

A serious void exists in the public discourse relating to the issues that directly and/or disproportionately impact the global village in which we live. Dr. Leon’s lectures and writings focus on issues such as the media’s coverage of national and international issues, the criminal industrial complex, environmental racism, school vouchers, health care, crime policy, economic globalization, American domestic and foreign policy from as much of a non- biased and academically accurate perspective as possible. Dr. Leon’s perspective and lectures are grounded in the history of the African American community and the tradition of African American scholarship.

Dr. Leon is host/producer of the nationally broadcast call in talk radio program Inside The Issues With Dr. Wilmer Leon on XM/Sirius satellite radio channel 169 “Urban View” and the host of Epilogue, a political book discussion program on Press TV. He hosts discussion on Facebook as Dr. Leon Prescriptions.

Dr. Leon was a regular guest on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and is a contributing columnist to The Grio.com, The Black Agenda Report, The Maynard Institute.com, TruthOut.org, PoliticsInColor.com and Black Star News.

OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham

“Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves”

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LISTEN LIVE 

Join the discussion in our Open Chat during the broadcast.

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4 Amazing Black Women They Don’t Tell You About in School l AlterNet

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4 Amazing Black Women They Don’t Tell You About in School

It’s doubtful that the names Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, Callie House, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin or Johnnie Tillmon even draw a glint of recognition but they should.
March 17, 2013 |

As with Black History Month, the focus on already well-known figures has been an ongoing criticism of Woman’s History Month. When it comes to black women, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells and Rosa Parks are on repeat. What makes these much-needed theme months thrive, however, is the spirit of discovery. It’s doubtful that the names Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, Callie House, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin or Johnnie Tillmon even draw a glint of recognition but they should. In their own ways, each of these women made important contributions to the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice.

Even as a slave, Elizabeth Freeman, known as Mum Bett most of her life, had the audacity to sue for her freedom. Born into slavery in Claverack, New York around 1742, Freeman, at a reported six months old, was sold, along with her sister, to John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, a judge in the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas. Enslaved to Ashley until she was almost 40, Freeman was spurred to action when the mistress of the house Hannah Ashley tried to hit her sister with a heated kitchen shovel. Freeman intervened and was hit instead, leaving the house, vowing to never come back.

Aware of the 1780 Massachusetts state constitution and its declaration of all men being free and equal from Sheffield’s many conversations, Freeman sought the services of Theodore Sedgwick, an attorney with anti-slavery sentiments. In 1781, a Massachusetts court awarded Freeman and another of Ashley’s slaves named Brom their freedom in Brom and Bett v. J. Ashley, Esq., even requiring Ashley to pay damages.

This set a major civil rights precedent. W.E.B. DuBois even claimed Freeman, who adopted the name after her legal victory, as his maternal great-grandmother – even though this connection was by marriage – as she was such an important figure to him. Freeman passed away in 1829.

Born into privilege in Boston in 1842, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin used her education and background to uplift black women. Married at age sixteen to George Lewis Ruffin (who would later become Harvard Law School’s first black male graduate, the first African-American elected to the Massachusetts state legislature and to the Boston City Council, and the first African-American municipal judge in Boston), Ruffin, a suffragist, helped Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone form the American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston in 1869. After her husband’s death in 1884, Ruffin, also a journalist and early member of the New England Women’s Press Association, became even more active, launching Women’s Era, believed to be the nation’s first newspaper published by and for black women, serving as editor and publisher from 1890 to 1897.

With her daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley, and Boston principal, Maria Baldwin, she launched the New Era Club for black women in either 1893 or 1894 depending on the source. In 1895, Ruffin helped organize the National Federation of Afro-American Women, convening its first national conference in Boston attended by 100 women representing 20 clubs in 10 states. A year later, in 1896, the organization merged with the Colored Women’s League to form the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

Although a member of several white women’s clubs, Ruffin advocated for black women as a suffragist. She rejected recognition as a delegate at a major conference in 1900, for example, because organizers only sought to confer the role due to her membership in several prominent white women’s clubs. Instead, Ruffin chose to stand up for the validity of black women’s clubs like her own New Era.

Active in other areas, Ruffin was also a founding member of the Boston branch of the NAACP. She passed away in 1924 at age 81.

Callie House, born Callie Guy in slaveholding Rutherford County, Tennessee in 1861, is still relatively unknown, despite the book about her lifeMy Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations by Mary Frances Berry. But House, a laundress operating out of Nashville in the 1890s, is an important figure in the reparations movement.

In 1894, House, along with Isaiah Dickerson, who had worked with white political activist William Vaughn around reparations in Omaha, Nebraska, organized the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association. Open to all, the Ex-Slave Pension Association, working nationally and locally, filled the void of the Freedmen’s Bureau, providing burial services as well as care for the sick and disabled to its membership in addition to advocating for legislation for ex-slave pensions.

Because of her success, House became a target. In 1899, the U.S. Post Office, emboldened by theComstock Act of 1873, issued a fraud order against House and the Ex-Slave Pension Association. Continued federal intimidation forced House to step down as assistant secretary of the Ex-Slave Pension Association in 1902 but did not stop her from organizing more local chapters throughout the South. The wind left her sail, however, when Alabama Congressman Edmund Petus’s reparations legislation failed in 1903.

Pressing on, however, House worked with attorney Cornelius Jones and sued the Treasury Department for just over $68 million in cotton taxes tied to slave labor in Texas, but the case they filed in 1915 was ultimately dismissed. In 1916, House and other Ex-Slave Pension Association officers were indicted for allegedly using the postal service to defraud ex-slaves by promising that pensions and reparations were forthcoming. Convicted by an all-white, all-male jury, House was sentenced to a year and one day which she served in a Missouri penitentiary from November 1917 to August 1918, obtaining an early release for good behavior. Returning to Nashville as a laundress, House died ten years later, but her pioneering and early contributions to the reparations movement should not be forgotten.

Born the daughter of an Arkansas sharecropper in 1926, Johnnie Tillmon never let lack stop her. Leaving her first husband in Arkansas for California, with her children in tow, Tillmon, who did not have a high school education, found herself on welfare where she learned first-hand of indignities — such as welfare inspectors rummaging through refrigerators and showing up at midnight to catch male company — that women suffered. Through anonymous letters, Tillmon organized more than 300 of her Watts housing project neighbors in protest in 1963, leading to the formation of the Aid to Needy Children-Mothers Anonymous shortly thereafter, which later inspired the creation of the National Welfare Rights Organization—an organization that one-time boasted over 25,000 members, mostly black women. Tillmon Blackston served as Executive Director starting in 1972 until the organization’s demise in 1974.

Tillmon injected the particular rights and concerns of poor black women into the national feminist and civil rights dialogue. In the pivotal essay “Welfare is a Women’s Issue,” published in Ms. magazine in 1972, Tillmon argued that because 99 percent of families on Aid to Families with Dependent Children were headed by women, welfare was indeed a women’s issue. In addition, she brought attention to issues of birth control and the sterilization of poor black women, as well as the economic exploitation of poorly educated women. She even called then-California Governor Ronald Reagan out for referring to welfare recipients as “lazy parasites.”

In a time when it was posh to bash the so-called black welfare queen, Tillmon, who passed away in 1995 at age 69, pushed back, dedicating her life in various capacities to bringing much-needed awareness to the struggles of poor black women.

Tillmon’s contributions, as well as those of Elizabeth Freeman, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Callie House, may be unsung today — but there is no denying that each of these women played more than their part in uplifting their race and their gender, as well as in elevating the moral standard by which all human beings cooperating in a humane society should be measured.

Poison Pill Politics l Charles Blow NYT

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OP-ED COLUMNIST

Poison Pill Politics

The deadline has passed. The sequester is in effect. And Congress is not in session.

By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: March 1, 2013

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Charles M. Blow

We now know that our political system is broken beyond anything even remotely resembling a functional government.

The ridiculous bill was designed as a poison pill, but Republicans popped it like a Pez. Now the body politic — weak with battle fatigue, jerked from crisis to crisis and struggling to recover from a recession — has to wait to see how severe the damage will be.

(The director of the Congressional Budget Office estimatesthat the sequester could cost 750,000 jobs in 2013 alone.)

This is all because Republicans have refused to even consider new revenue as part of a deal. That includes revenue from closing tax loopholes, a move they supposedly support.

As Speaker John Boehner said after his Congressional leaders met with President Obama on Friday:

“Let’s make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1. This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.”

Boehner’s intransigence during the talks drew “cheers,” according to a report in The New York Times, from his chronically intransigent colleagues. But their position is a twist of the truth that is coming dangerously close to becoming accepted wisdom by sheer volume of repetition. It must be battled back every time it is uttered.

Let’s make this clear: it is wrong to characterize the American Taxpayer Relief Act as a “tax hike.” In reality, much of what it did was allow 18 percent of the Bush tax cuts — mostly those affecting the wealthiest Americans — to expire while permanently locking in a whopping 82 percent of them.

But of course, that misrepresentation fit with the tired trope of Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals. It also completely ignores that it was Bush-era spending that dug the ditch we’re in.

Republicans have defined their position, regardless of how reckless: austerity or bust. However, as economists have warned, austerity generally precedes — and, in fact, can cause — bust. Just look at Europe.

But Republicans are so dizzy over the deficits and delighted to lick the boots of billionaires that they cannot — or will not — see it. They are still trying to sell cut-to-grow snake oil: cut spending and cut taxes, and the economy will grow because rich people will be happy, and when rich people are happy they hire poor people, and then everyone’s happy.

This is the vacuous talk of politicians trying to placate people with vacation homes, not a sensible solution for people trying to purchase, or simply retain, their first homes.

Now the president is trying to make the best of a bad situation and bring expectations in line with what is likely to happen.

When Gallup this week asked Americans to use one word to describe the sequester, negative words outnumbered good words four to one. The top three negative words or phrases were “bad,” “disaster” and “God help us.”

At a news conference after Friday’s meeting with Congressional leaders, the president tried to tamp down some of the most dire predictions about the sequester’s impact. He said:

“What’s important to understand is that not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away. The pain, though, will be real.”

The president knows well that if the sequester’s effects are so diffused that the public — whose attention span is as narrow as a cat’s hair — doesn’t connect them to their source, people might think the administration cried wolf.

That’s why he said, and will most likely continue to say for months, “So every time that we get a piece of economic news over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester’s in place we’ll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act.”

He must yoke this pain to the people who invited it. It’s not as though most Americans don’t already think poorly of Republicans anyway.

A Pew Research Center report released this week found that most Americans think the Republican Party, unlike the Democratic Party, is out of touch with the American people and too extreme. And most Americans did not see Republicans as open to change or looking out for the country’s future as much as Democrats.

The president said Friday that “there is a caucus of common sense up on Capitol Hill” that includes Congressional Republicans who “privately at least” were willing to close loopholes to prevent the sequester.

Those privately reasonable Republicans might want to be more public before their party goes over another cliff and takes the country with them.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me atchblow@nytimes.com.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on March 2, 2013, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Poison Pill Politics.
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How the media tried to assassinate Chris Dorner Claims of ‘mental illness’ are in the mind of the beholder l Thandisizwe Chimurenga

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How the media tried to assassinate Chris Dorner Claims of ‘mental illness’ are in the mind of the beholder

Published on Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:55

 Thandisizwe Chimurenga

LAWatts Time  Contributing Writer

 

 

Christopher Jordan Dorner is dead but his words and actions will continue to impact the Los Angeles area and beyond for quite some time. The former U.S. Navy lieutenant and Los Angeles police officer who is alleged to have shot and killed four people earlier this month was the subject of the largest manhunt in Southern California history.  Authorities say that manhunt ended on Feb. 12 with Dorner, surrounded by law enforcement in a cabin in the Big Bear area of San Bernadino, committing suicide as highly flammable tear gas canisters ignited the cabin and burned it to the ground.

Dorner’s ‘manifesto’, in which he declared war on the Los Angeles Police Department and his subsequent actions were horrifying to many.  In an effort to understand the reason behind his rage and actions, many mainstream media outlets posited that Dorner must have suffered from some sort of mental illness.

Appearing on “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Feb. 7 Dr. Xavier Amador, a regular commentator for CNN, said there was “absolutely no basis in reality for [Dorner’s] complaints that he was mistreated, that there was any kind of police corruption,” that Dorner had “clear signs of mental illness,” and that his ‘manifesto’ was “delusional.”

Amador’s analysis was based on a review of Dorner’s LAPD case file, he said.

According to Neon Tommy the online news site of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared that “Whatever problem [Dorner] has is mental,” while speaking at a press conference on proposed gun safety legislation. Villaraigosa’s comments were part of a Feb. 7 news article entitled “Christopher Dorner’s Navy Service Record And Mental Health Scrutinized.”

On Feb. 9, The Associated Press ran a news brief on Dorner’s unsuccessful attempt to obtain a restraining order in 2006 against his then-girlfriend Ariana Williams.  The story quotes court documents filed in the case that called Dorner “severely emotionally and mentally disturbed.”  The court documents also link Williams to a post about Dorner on a website that was signed anonymously, calling Dorner “twisted” and “super paranoid.”

Also on Feb. 9, The Christian Science Monitor, in “Christopher Dorner: Experts look for clues to alleged cop killer’s mental state,” quotes a retired FBI profiler who said Dorner’s actions were “completely over the top.” Dorner, who claimed in his manifesto that he simply wanted to “clear his name,” had a “personality disorder” according to Mary Ellen O’Toole.

While it can be considered normal to search for answers in a case such as this, attempting to make a mental health diagnosis of Christopher Dorner without ever having physically examined him is not.

“It is difficult to make a diagnostic conclusion given how little any of us know about Dorner’s mental health history, having no audio transcripts to review, no testing and assessment instruments to analyze, and no clinical interview data, said Thomas Parham, PhD.  Parham is past president of the national Association of Black Psychologists and a co-author of “Psychology of Blacks: Centering Our Perspectives in the African Consciousness.”

“All we have is a so-called “manifesto” (that I have not read) that is selectively presented in the media.  So, for the press and media to be making a statement in absence of that kind of information is just interesting, if not useless chatter,” he said.

Clive D. Kennedy, a clinical forensic psychologist and president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists, echoes Parham’s comments on evaluating Dorner’s mental state.  “I believe no professional has indicated he or she is aware of Mr. Dorner’s mental health status and therefore, we are unlikely to ever know, including those in the media who have been so forthcoming of his psychiatric condition,” he said.

Dorner claimed in his manifesto clearly and explicitly that not only was he a victim of racism but that his attempts to “blow the whistle” on the racism of the LAPD against him and other officers are why he believes he was fired.  According to Dorner retaliation against “snitching” on other police officers was one of several corrupt practices within the, department.  Despite this, much of the media coverage of Dorner’s mental state has conveniently left this fact out.

Are Charges of Racism Enough to Push One Over The Edge?

In her Feb. 9 Los Angeles Times op-ed, civil rights attorney Connie Rice recalls a conversation she had with former Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Jesse Brewer. Describing him as “wise and classy,” Rice states that Brewer, the first African American president of the Los Angeles Police Commission that oversees the LAPD, “came to my law office in 1990. He described to me his own ordeals on the force, in which white officers illegally blocked his entrance to the Police Academy, tried to plant false evidence on him, blocked all of his promotions and set him up for ambush in the field. He also described how viciously the department retaliated against him and other officers who tried to stand up for fellow officers or civilians who suffered abuse from cops. The LAPD never did allow whistle-blowers of any kind to survive, no matter how righteous they were,” wrote Rice.

Chillingly, Rice goes on to write that Brewer told her that Black LAPD officers had to resort to accepting abuse from white police officers and  “outsmarting” them because, “If you let them get to you, you’ll become homicidal.”

In her 1995 work “Killing Rage, Ending Racism,” noted political and cultural critic bell hooks wrote: “the conditions of racism can ‘drive one mad.’

Referring to an outbreak of violence in New York City in which a Black man opened fire randomly on a subway train, hooks states that “ … most Black folks can recognize that it is ethically and morally wrong to kill folks even as we can also sympathize with mental illness that is either engendered or exacerbated by life in [the United States].”

Psychologist Thomas Parham echoed that sentiment.  “We must extend our prayers for those who lost their lives in this rampage (both victims and perpetrator) and for the families who are left to grieve. There is never a justification for the taking of innocent lives, no matter what the level of unfairness one believes has impacted their own life.  There is nothing more sacred in the African tradition than life, so to be so callous in the taking of innocent lives would seem to be the most fundamental violation of an African centered worldview.”

Parham continued, “Clearly, the actions Dorner engaged in are very “out of the ordinary,” and beyond the realm of most standards of normalcy and decency that society embraces. Yet, like all of us, he is a product of a social system that makes an implicit contract with its citizens that says if you work hard and play by the rules, including doing the right thing on your job, then success should be the reward for one’s hard work, dedication, and commitment … I suspect that if he embraced this implicit social contract with the rigidity of a very concrete thinker, and then believes that his life was ruined by some unfair and discriminatory treatment when he called himself trying to do the right thing and report abuse by a fellow officer, then the violation and betrayal he feels might evoke that type of anger, rage, and desire for retribution that we all witnessed…”

Paul Harris, a San Francisco-based attorney and author, says that “ … even in cases where the perpetrator of the crime is mentally ill, one must look at the concrete experiences of racism (and other environmental hardships) to understand the resulting behavior.”  Harris is the author of “Black Rage Confronts the Law,” a 1971 book based on a case in which Harris was successful in defending a young Black man accused of bank robbery.  “Too many people cry racism in explaining these crimes without combining the underlying mental problems, with the specific life experience with racism the person has suffered,” said Harris.

Joy DeGruy, author of “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” uttered similar  comments as Harris.  “I would think that any serious response would include consideration of the obvious and blatant differential treatment of African Americans by a dysfunctional justice system and the structural inequalities inherent in that system.”  DeGruy holds degrees in social work and clinical psychology and is an assistant professor at Portland State University.

More than 1,000 sightings of Christopher Dorner were reported to police during the manhunt to apprehend him.  The overwhelming majority of those tips were based on faulty identifications of Black men whose appearance was similar to Dorner.  What we do not know for sure is how many of those tips were from individuals that were simply Good Samaritans interested in assisting law enforcement, and how many were from individuals who were genuinely frightened that Dorner might attack them.

As we continue to ponder Dorner’s mental state we might also take into account the words of bell hooks:  “White supremacy is frightening.  It promotes mental illness and various dysfunctional behaviors on the part of whites and non-whites.  It is the real and present danger – not black rage.”

Read the LAWT Here

 

“The Ashes of A Manifesto: The LAPD and the Deaths of Christopher Dorner and His Victims” l February 16, 2013 l 10 pm ET

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OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham

dornergun“The Ashes of A Manifesto: The LAPD and the Deaths of Christopher Dorner and His Victims”

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February 16, 2013 10pm ET

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“His self-definition could not survive separation from the institution that became his personal nemesis. In the end, he was as lonely as Rambo in First Blood, and just as politically lost.

A public death belongs to the public. Dorner’s fans, his African American public, whom he did not serve but who would inevitably embrace his weeklong death-throe defection from the LAPD, imbue him with qualities they wish were reliably available to the struggle: a Nat Turner, a Spook Who Sat by the Door. The Bronx, New York dope dealer, Larry Davis, who in1986 succeeded in shooting six of seven cops who came to his sister’s apartment to arrest or assassinate him, achieved similar fame. Davis eluded capture for 17 days, negotiated a surrender at his public housing hideout as residents chanted “Lar-ry! Lar-ry!” – and beat the charges of attempted murder of cops. (William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart were his lawyers.) His fans forgave Davis’s dope dealing ways, just as Dorner’s fans forgave his previous service to the Los Angeles Occupation Army.

The enduring lesson of Dorner’s saga is that the transformation of the LAPD into a majority-minority police force does not change its nature as an army of occupation whose mission is racist to the core, regardless of its ethnic composition. That fact finally dawned on Christopher Dorner – and it killed him.”
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