Will America's Leftward Political Shift Continue

With more and more instances of police brutality caught on video and nationwide protests drawing attention to long standing problems, some believe America is shifting leftward politically.  Likely aiding in the current shift is Donald Trump's and the Republican Party's inept and tone deaf response to both the covid-19 pandemic and the increasingly obvious concentration of white supremacy in the Republican Party now largely defined by Trump.  Wile polls show a noted shift leftward, especially on racial relations, the question becomes whether or not the shift is permanent or whether the public - like the news media that has the attention span of a gnat - will lose interest over time and slide back to indifference.  Opinions are all over the map and ultimately only time will tell - some believe more of the older generations need to die off before change can become permanent. A long column in the New York Times looks at the shifting views and potential pitfalls for Democrats.  Here are column highlights:

America is at a racial and political crossroads. Protests over the past two weeks in response to an interrelated set of issues and events — the killing of George Floyd, police brutality, the Covid pandemic, a nation in lockdown, joblessness, a devastated economy and a presidential election — give rise to a key question. Will the Democratic coalition of minorities and liberal whites emerge empowered?

Current polling reveals a shift to the left in the public’s position on key race-related issues. But there are also some potential warning signs for Democrats.

Let’s look at some of the contradictory narratives in American race relations, starting with Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland: As white supremacy concentrates its power in the G.O.P., it fosters an alliance of those that oppose it in the Democratic Party. The U.S. has never seen this kind of coalition. But it is showing its power now. This is one cause for hope — that we may be at the beginning of an overdue national reckoning with our legacy of white supremacy.

Mason posted a seven-part Twitter thread in which she makes a strong case that the United States is in the midst of a major transformation: For decades we have been worried about the terrible power of an entire political party dedicated to maintaining the historical racial (and gender) hierarchy that has oppressed and denied justice to so many Americans.

While attention has focused on Trump and the Republican Party, Mason continued, What we haven’t focused on as much is the potential power of the other political party that has been amassing a coalition of those who would like to upend that social hierarchy.

Now, she writes, the other party, the Democrats, has begun to flex its muscles: “This is one cause for hope — that we may be at the beginning of an overdue national reckoning with our legacy of white supremacy.

Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, is among those envisioning a new era of racial reconciliation. In comments accompanying the release of the June 2 poll, Murray declared: It seems we have reached a turning point in public opinion where white Americans are realizing that black Americans face risks when dealing with police that they do not. They may not agree with the violence of recent protests, but many whites say they understand where that anger is coming from.

In what Monmouth described as “a marked change in public opinion from prior polls,” its May 28-June 1 survey found that for the first time “a majority of Americans (57 percent) say that police officers facing a difficult or dangerous situation are more likely to use excessive force if the culprit is black.”

The trends to date provide a basis for Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, to point out that 1) There has emerged a much stronger awareness of racism and discrimination especially around policing and the chance to get ahead. 2) The pattern of killings and the video have had a cumulative effect of creating a real turning point. 3) Trump’s response had been so out of touch with what people were feeling and the pain, healing, and change they want. 4) It’s a different America than Trump understands especially with young voters so diverse and white women so upset at his style of governing. 5) And then there are unexpected and vivid validators, the generals and police themselves.

Some analysts are cautiously optimistic that the country is finally becoming more liberal on matters of race.

Antoine Banks, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, argued that the killing of George Floyd has brought racial injustice up to the surface for many Americans, and the video footage makes it hard for many to deny the intent behind his death.

But, Banks continued, there are questions as to whether the leftward shift seen in the polls “is short-term or reflects a long-term trend.” Whites’ racial attitudes, Banks wrote: are fairly stable. Once their attitudes are crystallized, they tend not to change. It would take a shifting of racial norms to change the country’s (e.g. whites’) views about policing and the black community.” He added that “much more would need to be done from both political parties and activists to cause a major change in the politics of race.

Trump, and the strategists running his campaign, are desperately looking for an opportunity to force current events back onto turf favorable to the right.

On June 7, the Trump campaign sent out an email with the all-caps headline “DEMOCRATS WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE” that went on to warn: While ANTIFA THUGS are destroying our communities and burning down our churches, the Radical Left is shouting “Defund the Police.”

Trump is gambling that the language some protesters have adopted, combined with the commitment of big-city mayors like Bill de Blasio and Eric Garcetti, to cut or divert police spending, along with the pledge of a majority of the Minneapolis City Council to dismantle the city’s police department, will keep moderate voters who supported Trump in 2016 in the Republican fold.

A May 29-30 YouGov poll found that when voters were asked whether they support calls to “cut funding for police departments,” both Democrats (62-16) and Republicans (75-15) were solidly opposed.

Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said that for liberals, this moment is a delicate balancing act. Trump’s clumsy handling of the demonstrators and his misuse of the military to clear the way for a photo op — on top of his inept response to the pandemic — have damaged his credibility. He is vulnerable.

But, Inglehart continued, the white working class has a deep-rooted — and well-founded — sense that the system is failing them. A facile lurch to the “left” that doesn’t take into account their concerns — which once were the dominant concerns of the left — would be costly.

In order to make progress in race relations, Inglehart argues, We need to move there with a balanced approach, not a one-sided lurch — especially since today’s context of economic and physical insecurity makes people increasingly vulnerable to xenophobic appeals.

Trump’s handling of the protests has been disastrous, in the view of Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, who wrote in an email: Playing the race card so transparently, misusing the military as a political prop and disrupting peaceful protests have so far proved to be bad tactics, and Trump is paying for it.

Particularly worrisome for Democrats, according to Cain, “is the growing popularity of defunding the police.” He noted that terms like defunding the police or abolition are ready made for Republican 30 second ads. The Republicans are just much better at coming up with slogans that are harder to attack.

Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African-American Republican in the Senate, struck a prescient note in an interview with Tim Alberta of Politico Magazine. In a story published June 8, Scott said that historically “the response from so many well-intended people was to overlook the brutality brought to African-Americans at the hands of the police.”

Now, Scott continued, I look at the public’s response to this situation and it feels like the first time in my lifetime that I’ve heard law enforcement agencies coming out with strong rebukes and condemnation of the officers in Minneapolis.

When Scott looked out his window in Washington at an overwhelmingly young crowd, he said he saw “10 protesters. Seven of them are white, and three of them are black.” Without question, Scott declared, “This is different. It feels different. It sounds different. The protesters are different.”

One can only hope that the trend continues to the detriment of Trump and the GOP.

Trump’s Racism Betrays America's Victims

For many it is far easier to bloviate about American exceptionalism and to ignore the racism that Donald Trump both embodies and seeks to fan for perceived political advantage. But doing so betrays the many victims of America's often ugly past, especially the evils of slavery and the Jim Crow era. Slavery and racial sins are often close to mind living in Hampton, Virginia, the site where the first African slaves were brought into the British colonies that became the original states of the United States of America.  Where I sit at this very moment a mere few miles down the coast of Hampton Roads harbor from that site where the evil of slavery arrived 400 years ago this year.  Four hundred years of mistreatment and often outright horrors have been perpetrated all because some whites continue to be obsessed with being the supposed supreme or superior race. Trump intentionally continues this cancer that still haunts America. Ignoring his conduct and racism betrays the many victims of America's ugly and brutal past. While we cannot change the past, we can learn from it and vow to never ever let such hate and violence occur again.  A column in the Washington Post reminds us of just how hideous some of America's past is in fact and why we must not betray its victims.  Here are column highlights (warning, some of it is disturbing):

I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.

But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was “stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.”

God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.

During more than 300 years of routine horrors — the slave ships, the brandings, the separation of families, the beatings, the lynchings, the constant flood of humiliation, the racist ads for soap and toothpaste, the anti-black riots, the segregation of buses and pools and schools and suburbs, the sundown towns, the kangaroo courts, the police dogs and water cannons, the church bombings, the cruel and petty tyranny of whites, reinforced by the most prominent politicians in the country — during all of this, none of the descendants of Europe were able to stamp this evil out. As James Baldwin said in 1963, “The only people in the country at the moment who believe either in Christianity or in the country are the most despised minority in it.”

Racism is the fire that left our country horribly disfigured. It is the beast we try to keep locked in the basement. When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.

I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.

Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us.

The fact that evangelicals continue to overwhelmingly support Trump is an indictment of them and proof that they are morally bankrupt and have zero moral authority to lecture others.  The fact that many of my Republican "friends" conveniently look the other way is likewise an indictment of them. Anyone with a shred of moral decency in them needs to condemn and shun Trump. It is far past time when a desire for lower taxes justifies enabling outright evil. 

When Does “Morality and Decency Kick In” for Trump Voters?

This post follows up on the theme of my post yesterday entitled The Trump Voter Paradox. If one listens to the bloviating of many, if not the majority, on the political right, the talk ad nausea about "Christian values" and "family values" as they support a Republican Party war long formulated by the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell against families, the sick, the poor, and sexual and racial minorities.  Now, Der Trumpenführer is taking the bigotry and hatred to new heights both through his manufactured hysteria about minority NFL players exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression to his, in my view, deliberate delay in expediting life saving aid to Puerto Rico. And despite all of this, his supporters - like true modern Day Pharisees - cheer him on. People are literally dying, yet Trump supporters are still whining about standing for the national anthem.  For the record, I support the players' refusal to stand.  Anyone not afford the Constitution's promise of equal protection under the law (which includes the LGBT community) has every reason to protest.  A piece in Salon looks at what I believe to be the moral bankruptcy and blatant racism of Trump supporters.  Here are excerpts:

On Monday, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich articulated his support of the ongoing national-anthem protests taking place across the sports world. In declaring his support of any players who should decide to participate, he — as he has before — drew a sharp line under the racial issues surrounding the remarks by Trump and the way people of color are treated in this country.

“Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it's not going to get better. . . . 'Oh, that again. They pulled the race card again. Why do we have to talk about that?' Well, because it's uncomfortable,” he said "They have our full support and no matter what they might want to do or not do is important to them, respected by us," Popovich said in support of protesters. "And there’s no recrimination no matter what might take place, unless it’s ridiculous egregious."

Popovich also commented on the response by the president more specifically and asked when Trump supporters would wake up. “I wonder what the people think about who voted for him, where their line is, how much they can take, where does the morality and decency kick in?”

Popovich is not the only one to take aim at Trump's remarks; in fact, the floodgates have opened for pro sports teams to take a stand (or knee) against him. Tony Dungy, former NFL player and coach, commented on the protests on "The Today Show" Sunday, specifically about the backlash and the shift in the tides.

“Up until yesterday, the players would want people to know, this was not about the flag, this was not about patriotism. In their opinion, it was about social change,” Dungy said. “But yesterday this was a group of our family got attacked and called names and said they were unpatriotic and should be fired for, what we feel, is demonstrating our first amendment right. We’re gonna [ . . . ] band together as a family and they reacted."

Sportscaster Dale Hansen used his position as a Vietnam Veteran to defend the protests, in opposition to those against the protests who claim that the action is disrespectful to veterans.“The young, black athletes are not disrespecting America or the military by taking a knee during the anthem,” Hanson said. “They are respecting the best thing about America. It’s a dog whistle to the racists among us to say otherwise." He condemned those who don’t believe in white privilege as well. “They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country. And if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.”

Perhaps the most scathing rebuke was from former tight end Shannon Sharpe on Undisputed, where he commented on the solidarity of the NFL and the hypocrisy of the people in power in the league. “This wasn’t a protest. This was unity. So, what are we showing solidarity against?” He continued. “We’re showing solidarity because President Trump challenged the very men. Wealthy, wealthy men, billionaires, and he told them, what you should do if someone protests, you should fire them. They don’t like being told what to do.”

 These self-styled "godly Christians" care more about a piece of cloth than travesties done to living, breathing  - at least until they are gunned down by police - individuals.  Indeed, these people are the antithesis of Christ's message.

Another Police Murder - This Time South Carolina

I am not anti-police per se, but the reality is that America has far too many police officers who have no business wearing a badge and carrying a gun.  Far too many are bigots hiding behind a badge and too many internal affairs departments are focused solely on protecting police officers and the department's reputation.  (As I have noted before in prior posts, I got to see the anti-gay bigotry of some Norfolk, Virginia, police officers when Wayne Besen I were headed to a local gay bar).  Now,in the wake of incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, New, York, yet another police murder in North Charleston, South Carolina, is filling the media airwaves with the shooting of an unarmed black man caught on video.  Once again, we hear that residents "are not surprised."  One take away is that it should be mandatory that police officers wear body cams.  A column in the New York Times looks at this latest police atrocity.  Here are excerpts:

I am truly weary, deep in my bones, of writing these columns about the killings of unarmed people of color by the police. Indeed, you may be weary of reading them. Still, our weariness is but a dim shadow that falls near the darkness of despair that a family is thrust into when a child or parent or sibling is lost, and that family must wonder if the use of deadly force was appropriate and whether justice will be served.

And so, we can’t stop focusing on these cases until there are no more cases on which to focus.

Which brings me to the latest case, a truly chilling one: A video shows an apparently unarmed 50-year-old black man, Walter L. Scott, running away from an officer after an incident during a traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, fires his weapon eight times, striking Scott in the back, upper buttocks and ear.

The Times continues:

“Something — it is not clear whether it is the stun gun — is either tossed or knocked to the ground behind the two men, and Officer Slager draws his gun, the video shows. When the officer fires, Mr. Scott appears to be 15 to 20 feet away and fleeing. He falls after the last of eight shots.

“The officer then runs back toward where the initial scuffle occurred and picks something up off the ground. Moments later, he drops an object near Mr. Scott’s body, the video shows.”

In fact, the video appears to dispute much of what the police reports claim.  Scott, of course, dies of his injuries. 

After the video surfaces, the officer is charged with murder and fired from the police force.

A life has been taken. And, if the video shows what it appears to show, there may have been some attempts by the officer to “misrepresent the truth,” a phrase that one could also argue may diminish the severity of what is alleged to have happened.

This case is yet another in a horrifyingly familiar succession of cases that have elevated the issue of use of force, particularly deadly force, by officers against people of color and inflamed the conversation that surrounds it.

And it further erodes an already tenuous trust by people of color in the police as an institution.

This case has also refocused attention on the power of video evidence and is likely to redouble calls for the universal implementation of police body cameras (the video in this case came from a witness). What would have happened if video of this incident had not surfaced? Would the officer’s version of events have stood? How many such cases must there be where there is no video?

But I would argue that the issue we are facing in these cases is not one of equipment, or even policy, but culture.

There's more, so read the entire column.  The take away is that some lives - those of blacks, immigrants, gays and transgendered -  simply do not matter as much as white heterosexual lives.  Yes, body cams on all officers is a step in the right direction.  The real answer is a change in mindsets where ALL citizens are viewed as worthy and with inalienable rights.  That mindset, of course, is diametrically opposed to the agenda of today's GOP.

Today's GOP and the History of Lynchings in the South

With many Alabama courts once again refusing to comply with federal court orders, lunatics of the far right claiming that "Christians have never killed in the name of God," and the Republican Party increasingly welcoming white supremacists into its ranks, it is perhaps timely that the New York Times is carrying a piece that looks at the history of lynchings in the South.  What we see in today's actions is largely being done by the descendants of these lynch mobs and it is far past time that groups like The Family Foundation here in Virginia be tied to their historical antecedents.  And yes, besides hanging likely innocent blacks, the "godly Christians" resorted to burning blacks alive much like ISIS has done to terrorize the populace.  Here are article highlights:

A block from the tourist-swarmed headquarters of the former Texas School Book Depository sits the old county courthouse, now a museum. In 1910, a group of men rushed into the courthouse, threw a rope around the neck of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old white girl, and threw the other end of the rope out a window. A mob outside yanked the man, Allen Brooks, to the ground and strung him up at a ceremonial arch a few blocks down Main Street.

South of the city, past the Trinity River bottoms, a black man named W. R. Taylor was hanged by a mob in 1889. Farther south still is the community of Streetman, where 25-year-old George Gay was hanged from a tree and shot hundreds of times in 1922.

And just beyond that is Kirkin, where three black men, two of them almost certainly innocent, were accused of killing a white woman and, under the gaze of hundreds of soda-drinking spectators, were castrated, stabbed, beaten, tied to a plow and set afire in the spring of 1922.

[T]he Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., released a report on the history of lynchings in the United States, the result of five years of research and 160 visits to sites around the South. The authors of the report compiled an inventory of 3,959 victims of “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.

Professor Beck, who teaches at the University of Georgia, has not reviewed the new list. But he pointed out that, with racial violence so extensive and carried out in so many different ways, compilers of lists may differ on what constitutes a lynching; the new list, as opposed to some previous ones, includes one-time massacres of large numbers of African-Americans, such as occurred in Arkansas in 1919 and in Louisiana in 1887.

“If you’re trying to make a point that the amount of racial violence is underestimated, well then, there’s no doubt about it,” Professor Beck said. “What people don’t realize here is just how many there were, and how close. Places they drive by every day.”

“Many of these lynchings were not executing people for crimes but executing people for violating the racial hierarchy,” he said, meaning offenses such as bumping up against a white woman or wearing an Army uniform.

But, he continued, even when a major crime was alleged, the refusal to grant a black man a trial — despite the justice system’s near certain outcome — and the public extravagance of a lynching were clearly intended as a message to other African-Americans.

The bloody history of Paris, Tex., about 100 miles northeast of Dallas, is well known if rarely brought up, said Thelma Dangerfield, the treasurer of the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter. Thousands of people came in 1893 to see Henry Smith, a black teenager accused of murder, carried around town on a float, then tortured and burned to death on a scaffold.

Until recently, some longtime residents still remembered when the two Arthur brothers were tied to a flagpole and set on fire at the city fairgrounds in 1920.

This is the mindset and the type of people the GOP has welcomed into its ranks.  It's also the mindset of many who run so-called "family values" Christian groups - e.g., Tony Perkins of Family Research Council who has documented KKK ties. It's disgusting and it needs to be made widely known. 

Stopping Police Abuse of Black Men

Eric L. Adams, Brooklyn borough president and a retired New York Police Department captain, has an op-ed in the New York Times that is a must read.  It looks at the ongoing problem of police brutality against black males, many of whom lack the resources to take effective action against abusive police, assuming they survive the encounter.  Just as the police (all of whom were white, by the way) I encountered in Norfolk 10 years ago thought harassing a gay was fine - good sport even - too many police see blacks as targets they can abuse with impunity.  They see them - and in some cases, gays - as "other" and less than human and deserving of abuse.  Some of the comments made by Darren Wilson about Michael Brown exemplify the problem.  What's equally disturbing is the fact that police internal affairs departments seek first and foremost to protect the police officers and care nothing for the rights of the abused citizens.  I learned this truth first hand. Here are op-ed highlights:

I CAN recall it as if it were yesterday: looking into the toilet and seeing blood instead of urine. That was the aftermath of my first police encounter.

As a 15-year-old, living in South Jamaica, Queens, I was arrested on a criminal trespass charge after unlawfully entering and remaining in the home of an acquaintance. Officers took me to the 103rd Precinct — the same precinct where an unarmed Sean Bell was later shot and killed by the police — and brought me into a room in the basement. They kicked me in the groin repeatedly.

For seven days after that, I stared into the toilet bowl in my house at the blood I was urinating. I kept telling myself that if it didn’t clear up by the next day, I would share this shame and embarrassment with my mother, although I could never bring myself to start that conversation.

As I attempted to put that shame and attack on my manhood away, new horror stories kept compelling me to relive those memories: the nightmare experiences of Randolph Evans, Patrick Dorismond, Abner Louima and countless other young men have reminded me of my own secret. Think of all the secrets that young men of color are hiding. How many are concealing some dark truth of the abuse they endured, and what is that darkness doing to them?

In order to finally bring this darkness into the light of day, our nation must address the foundation of this crisis. That starts with acknowledging that the training taught in police academies across the country is not being applied in communities of color. After six months in the police academy, that instruction is effectively wiped out by six days of being taught by veteran cops on the streets.

They started their shift on the defensive, thinking about protecting themselves, as opposed to the communities they served, regardless of the complexion of those communities. One of my white fellow officers once told me that if he saw a white individual with a gun, he took extra care for himself and the individual. When he saw a black individual with a gun, he took care only for himself.

These are the lessons to which I was exposed, and the reality of what policing communities of color has been, not just in New York City but across America. There is a legacy of inequity that did not just appear overnight, but was carved into the culture of law enforcement over decades.

There is reluctance on the part of police leadership, which has long believed in the nightstick and quick-trigger-finger justice, to effectively deal with officers who have documented and substantiated records of abuse. These individuals need to be removed from the force. That is an essential component of the larger response we must have to address this history of abuse.

We cannot continue to approach policing in an antiquated fashion, and that certainly includes technology. Technology has been used as a crime-fighting tactic, but not as a tool to determine what happens during a police action. New York City has taken the right step in putting body cameras on police officers, but what about cameras on guns themselves?

Equally important, especially in the wake of what has taken place after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, is reform to our grand jury system. Grand juries were established in England in the 12th and 13th centuries, a vestige of a time when people needed to be protected from unfair prosecution from the king and others. There was a necessary element of secrecy — one that need not apply in cases involving police misconduct.

Open, preliminary hearings in court can and should determine if a case should be stepped up to a trial. Additionally, the handling of police shootings should be wholly separated from local grand juries. These bodies cannot handle cases involving local police officers on whom they rely every day.

Special grand juries should be convened for police-related incidents, and independent agencies must gather evidence even before they convene, at the time of police encounters where a death has occurred  . . .

All of these ideas need to be moved forward under the leadership of our president, our governors, the mayors of our major cities and our law enforcement leadership. If we fail to take advantage of this moment that history has laid on our doorstep, we are doomed to more abuse, more division and more chaos.

When my son was 15, he was stopped by the police in a movie theater for no apparent reason. He showed his ID and explained that his father was a retired police captain and a state senator. The response was “So what?” It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter who he is. He shouldn’t have had that experience at all. And until that changes, for all men of color, real reform will never come.

I have a good friend who is black and in local law enforcement and even he has said that when he is out of uniform he worries about what could happen to him because of his skin color should he encounter the wrong police officers, especially late at night.  That is very frightening. 

Another Dead Black Man and No Indictment

After the evens in Ferguson and the blatant manipulation of the grand jury process to basically insure that no indictment would be handed down, it's stunning to see the same apparent result happen in New York City where police who basically strangled to death Eric Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic, will faces no charges whatsoever - not even involuntary manslaughter.  No charges at all.  It's sadly part of a long trend where police avoid the charges that would be handed against the rest of us.  And for many blacks, it is yet further proof that their lives mean nothing in America's justice system.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this latest grand jury fiasco.  Here are highlights:

After a New York grand jury failed to indict a police officer in the death of a Staten Island man, protesters hit the streets of Manhattan and at least seven other U.S. cities. There were no reports by early morning Thursday of significant violence, in contrast to the looting and arson that broke out Nov. 24 in Ferguson, Mo., after a grand jury there declined to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who fatally shot unarmed teen Michael Brown on Aug. 9.

A wave of protests erupted from Manhattan to Oakland, Calif. Thousands in New York marched in support of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic who died after being put in a chokehold by officer Daniel Pantaleo on July 17.

They shut down the Lincoln Tunnel. They shut down the West Side Highway. They shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, where officers threatened them with arrest if they did not move as a helicopter hovered above.

And they chanted the slogan heard around the country after Brown was killed by Wilson in Ferguson — “Hands up, don’t shoot” — as well as what may have been Garner’s last words: “I can’t breathe.”
“The lives of black young men, black children, they matter,” protester Florence Johnson told CBS at Times Square.

Garner, a father of six and grandfather of two, died July 17 after Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in what appeared to be a chokehold during an arrest that was recorded on videos that have been widely seen and have contributed to the public anger.

The grand jury decision that prompted Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to announce the opening of a federal civil rights investigation.

President Obama, speaking earlier at an event in Washington, declined to comment specifically about the Staten Island case, referring instead to his plans to promote better relations between police and those they serve.
“I came down here because I’m disgusted about what happened,” said Edward Collins, a 19-year-old protester, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s beyond a race thing to me. No matter what race you are, no one has the right to murder you.”

“Black lives do not matter in this system,” Dean Steed, one of the organizers of about 150 protesters in Atlanta, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And we’re out here for black lives.”

We are certainly providing America's enemies with plenty of propaganda to throw back when America tries to criticize human rights abuses in other countries.  I suspect that Vladimir Putin has a huge smile on his face right now. 

Quote of the Day - The Tragedy Of Trayvon

Yes, the picture is graphic, but this is what murder looks like

Among all of our friends that we socialized with today, not a one was pleased with the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.  Many hoped that Zimmerman would be hit with a successful civil lawsuit and some expected that no one outside of Teabagistan would ever hire him and expose their business to adverse consequences.  But to me, the message is clear: the South has changed far less than many would like to believe, especially on issues of race.  Bigotry is rampant - here in Virginia, white Republicans are pushing for voter ID laws to disenfranchise blacks and other non-whites, and favor "stand your ground" laws.  Andrew Sullivan summed things up well:

I found the way in which many elements on the right brandished their relish at seeing Zimmerman vindicated was more repellent than the identity politics faction that politicized the case. A young black man was dead, after he was clearly racially profiled, followed and challenged. Those facts alone should, in my view, lead to nothing but sadness, not a gleeful turn on the racial merry-go-round.

I didn’t follow the trial that closely largely because of that. There’s no way any of us can know precisely what happened in that violent interaction, except that Zimmerman clearly made a decision that led directly to it. But when an all-white jury in America finds a “white” man innocent of killing an unarmed black man, the resonances are simply undeniable.

The “stand-your-ground” law – when it interacts with race – can come perilously close to a return to the right to lynch black men in America- for being be in the wrong place at the wrong time, for doing nothing wrong, except wearing a hoodie and carrying some Skittles. Perhaps the best way to react now is to raise awareness about these laws that all but sanction murder because in a one-on-one conflict, in which there are no reliable witnesses and in which one of the individuals is dead, reasonable doubt is a very hard hurdle to overcome. This verdict may give some racist vigilantes encouragement to single out and murder black men with a sense of impunity. That is simply unacceptable, to put it mildly. It is a terrifying reminder of how the past can become present again.

Today is not a day that I am proud to be an American or a Southerner.  Some say we need to respect the verdict of the jury.  I'm not one of them.  Having practiced law for over 35 years, miscarriages of justice are the norm in our legal system - especially if one is a minority of any form.