Akai Gurley’s Death Shines Harsh Light On Vertical Patrols In Public Housing

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NEW YORK — The stairways inside many of New York City’s public housing projects are dark when police patrol them, the lights in disrepair like so much else in the buildings. “Those stairways are scary places,” Greg Donaldson, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Huffington Post. Donaldson has regularly accompanied police on what are called “vertical patrols,” in which two officers will go to the roof of a public housing building and then descend slowly through the stairs. “You’re turning from one landing to the next,” he said. “There aren’t long sightlines….

NEW YORK — The stairways inside many of New York City’s public housing projects are dark when police patrol them, the lights in disrepair like so much else in the buildings.

“Those stairways are scary places,” Greg Donaldson, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Huffington Post. Donaldson has regularly accompanied police on what are called “vertical patrols,” in which two officers will go to the roof of a public housing building and then descend slowly through the stairs.

“You’re turning from one landing to the next,” he said. “There aren’t long sightlines.”

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A new light illuminates the stairwell where Akai Gurley was shot. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Police say that vertical patrols help prevent crime in the places where it so often lurks, while critics blame the tactic for unconstitutional police stops and arrests. Either way, vertical patrols have sometimes spelled tragedy for innocent residents — most of whom were black — and for police officers themselves.

About three weeks ago, 26-year-old Akai Gurley and his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, left Butler’s seventh-floor apartment inside the Louis Pink Houses in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. The elevator wasn’t working, so the couple entered the dark stairwell.

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Akai Gurley died on Nov. 20, 2014, from a police officer’s bullet.

At the same time, two rookie police officers on a vertical patrol entered the stairwell from the eighth floor. Officer Peter Liang had his gun drawn.

In what Commissioner William Bratton of the New York City Police Department later characterized as an “accidental discharge,” Liang fired one shot down the stairs, hitting Gurley in the torso.

Gurley, who was unarmed and whom Bratton called a “total innocent,” ran down to the fifth floor and collapsed. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

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A mourner places a candle at a Gurley memorial in the Pink Houses. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Gurley’s death came just days before a grand jury in Missouri decided not to indict Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown and less than two weeks before a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for putting Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold. Like Gurley, both Brown and Garner were unarmed black men.

At widespread protests this week in the wake of those grand jury decisions, demonstrators remembered Gurley, too. Last Friday, his mother, Sylvia Palmer, said that her son had been “murdered.” That same day, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson announced that he’ll present the Gurley case to a grand jury sometime this month.

For many in New York City, Gurley’s death immediately invoked memories of Timothy Stansbury, the 19-year-old killed by an officer doing a vertical patrol in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in 2004, and Nicholas Heyward Jr., the 13-year-old killed by an officer doing a vertical patrol in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Both teenagers were unarmed, and both were black.

For police officers, Gurley’s death was a reminder of how difficult vertical patrols can be, how fraught with danger. In 1988, Officer Anthony McLean was shot and killed by a crack dealer while patrolling the Tilden Houses in Brownsville, Brooklyn. In 2012, Officer Brian Groves was shot while patrolling housing projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He survived thanks to a bulletproof vest.

The day after Gurley’s death, Bratton said that vertical patrols are an “essential part of policing” the city’s 334 public housing complexes, where over 400,000 New Yorkers reside — a population greater than that of Pittsburgh or St. Louis.

“People in those developments want us there,” Bratton said, pointing to a recent spate of crime in the Louis Pink Houses. “We respond to crimes, significant crimes unfortunately, that do occur in those hallways and on those roofs.”

Over the last year, according to NYPD statistics, there have been two murders in the Pink Houses alone, as well as four shootings.

The NYPD did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. A spokesperson for the New York City Housing Authority said the agency “will be testifying before the City Council regarding safety, security and lighting on Dec 16.” At that hearing, the spokesperson said, the issue of vertical patrols and the death of Akai Gurley will be discussed.

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Several high-rises run by the New York City Housing Authority.

“I think people want vertical patrols,” Council Member Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), usually one of the New York City Council’s more outspoken critics of the NYPD, told HuffPost. “But I think there need to be some big changes to vertical patrols.”

Tina Luongo of New York’s Legal Aid Society argued for a new “conversation” about vertical patrols to ensure they are conducted constitutionally. In 2010, the Legal Aid Society, along with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, filed a federal class-action lawsuit charging that the NYPD was using the patrols to stop and frisk residents without just cause and to wrongfully arrest people for trespassing in the buildings, and that the majority of those stopped or arrested were minorities.

“We’re still seeing trespass arrests in [New York City Housing Authority] housing,” Luongo said, noting that many of those arrested are guests visiting family members or friends.

According to The Wall Street Journal, officers had conducted 94,000 vertical patrols in New York City Housing Authority developments as of June 8 this year, compared to 109,000 for the same period in 2013. That’s a 14 percent decrease. But the number of arrests for trespassing jumped 8.8 percent for the same time period, from 2,085 in 2013 to 2,269 in 2014.

Council Member Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), chair of the council’s Committee on Public Housing, told HuffPost that it’s unclear whether so many vertical patrols are needed. Gurley’s death, he said, “demonstrates that our priorities are in the wrong place.”

“If we were as aggressive in policing the housing conditions as we are in policing the residents” of those buildings, said Torres, then maybe tragedies like Gurley’s death wouldn’t happen. “The shooting of Akai Gurley demonstrates that disinvestment can be deadly,” he said, noting how the broken elevator and broken lights helped precipitate the young man’s death.

The New York City Housing Authority is about $18 billion short of the federal, state and city funding it needs to make repairs in all its buildings.

The idea that broken infrastructure begets disorder is the basis of what’s called the “broken windows” theory of crime. “Consider a building with a few broken windows,” James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling wrote in a landmark Atlantic article in 1982. “If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.”

Over the years, Torres said, the city has spent too much time targeting the vandals — with preventive policing measures like stop-and-frisk and vertical patrols — instead of literally fixing the city’s broken windows.

“That’s the version of broken windows I support,” Torres said. “If you’re concerned about physical manifestations of disorder, improve the conditions of public housing,” he added.

Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) seemed to acknowledge that point earlier this summer when he designated over $100 million to repair conditions inside 15 high-crime public housing projects.

Torres also said he was concerned about police protocol during vertical patrols. “A dimly lit stairwell is no excuse for a drawn gun,” he said. “What happens if the officer suddenly startles?”

It’s currently left to the officer’s discretion whether to draw a gun during a vertical patrol. Donaldson, the John Jay College professor, said cops will often unholster their weapon as a precautionary measure because the memory of McLean’s 1988 death still looms large in their minds.

But Donaldson suggested that vertical patrols are probably much safer today than police officers perceive them to be. Crime, he pointed out, has dropped dramatically across the city over the last 20 years, yet vertical patrol protocols remain the same.

“You have to be very careful about the characterization of those buildings as hellholes and the people that live there as criminogenic, because there are thousands of people who live there who are honest and hardworking,” he said.

Donaldson argued that Bratton needs to determine how dangerous the stairwells inside public housing projects really are. If statistics show that the stairwells aren’t as dangerous as cops think, he said, then the protocol should be changed to permit the drawing of a weapon only when there’s an immediate threat.

Bratton hasn’t signaled whether he’s open to a different protocol.

The most significant change the commissioner has announced is that rookie cops will be paired with veterans for vertical patrols. It was a change that he’d planned before Gurley’s death, but that was delayed due to staffing problems. Both Officer Liang, who fired the fatal shot, and his partner had been on the force less than 18 months.

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Akai Gurley’s Death Shines Harsh Light On Vertical Patrols In Public Housing

Kobe Bryant, Lakers Teammates Wear ‘I Can’t Breathe’ T-Shirts

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Kobe Bryant, Lakers Teammates Wear ‘I Can’t Breathe’ T-Shirts

Kobe Bryant and several of his Los Angeles Lakers teammates became the latest athletes to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the words “I Can’t Breathe” in solidarity with those protesting the police killing of Eric Garner. The Lakers players wore the shirts during pre-game warmups before their game against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night in Los Angeles. The official Twitter account of the Lakers shared a photograph and video of Bryant and his teammates wearing the T-shirts during warm-ups. Tipping off in moments. #GoLakers pic.twitter.com/YTE9LSqWty December 10, 2014 Warm ups. https://t.co/EeoScltnt9 December 10, 2014 Before…

Kobe Bryant and several of his Los Angeles Lakers teammates became the latest athletes to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the words “I Can’t Breathe” in solidarity with those protesting the police killing of Eric Garner.

The Lakers players wore the shirts during pre-game warmups before their game against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night in Los Angeles.

The official Twitter account of the Lakers shared a photograph and video of Bryant and his teammates wearing the T-shirts during warm-ups.

Before the team took the floor at the Staples Center, Lakers forward Carlos Boozer shared a photo of one of the T-shirts draped over his chair in the team’s locker room. He posted the image on Instagram with the message: #icantbreathe #saysitall.

#icantbreathe #saysitall

A photo posted by Carlos Boozer (@mrcbooz) on

The participating Lakers players joined a growing number of professional athletes, including NBA stars LeBron James and Derrick Rose, who have worn similar shirts since a grand jury declined to indict a New York City police officer in Garner’s death.

“I Can’t Breathe” were Garner’s last words as captured in a bystander’s video. He died on July 17 in Staten Island after the officer put him in a chokehold during an arrest for selling loose cigarettes.

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Kobe Bryant, Lakers Teammates Wear ‘I Can’t Breathe’ T-Shirts

Reflections on Race, Power, and Science

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Reflections on Race, Power, and Science

With the current news cycle highlighting police brutality against African Americans, it is hard not to contemplate the continuing role of race in American life. Despite our progress as a nation and more broadly as a human race, we still struggle with seemingly antiquated modes of thinking that lead to unnecessary frictions between people. It is as if the impressive advances in social psychology and neuroscience have not sunk into the consciousness of the broader population. We now have a much deeper understanding of the countless fallacies of thought, biases, and group dynamics to which all humans are prone. We now understand that socioeconomic status…

With the current news cycle highlighting police brutality against African Americans, it is hard not to contemplate the continuing role of race in American life. Despite our progress as a nation and more broadly as a human race, we still struggle with seemingly antiquated modes of thinking that lead to unnecessary frictions between people. It is as if the impressive advances in social psychology and neuroscience have not sunk into the consciousness of the broader population.

We now have a much deeper understanding of the countless fallacies of thought, biases, and group dynamics to which all humans are prone. We now understand that socioeconomic status, culture, education, language, environment, personal experience, and differential treatment are among the most important causal factors behind the varying behavioral outcomes of different social groups. Our differences have absolutely nothing to do with skin color. Sensible people always understood this, but science has now proven it.

So why we do we continue to behave as if different gradations of pigment and varying facial structures matter? Why do we still look at each other as if we are anything other than fellow humans? Sadly, it is because race does still matter. It is those very fallacies of thought, biases, and group dynamics that, when combined with differential treatment and social power, create meaningful divisions within human society out of otherwise meaningless differences.

It is human nature to notice differences in skin tone and react to them. Studies of how young children react to race provide evidence of this. But the way in which we react is not foreordained. Different people may naturally react with curiosity, pity, fear, hatred, admiration, and so on. Our new understanding of neuroplasticity makes it clear that we can train our minds. We now have concrete evidence that our brains are malleable and can be conditioned to a certain degree throughout our lives. This means we can teach ourselves and each other not to react negatively to race. On a biological level, different skin tones can tell us about our relative abilities to absorb or repel the Sun’s rays. They may also tell us something about proclivity to specific diseases or ability to process certain types of food, but even these are unclear and vary on an individual level.

The peril of race comes when we imbue it with greater meaning than it actually has, when we use it as a tool to categorize people and then assume certain characteristics based on those categories. Of course, we know scientifically that these categories are, quite frankly, stupid. They simply don’t withstand any kind of meaningful analysis, and those who use them as a proxy for actually getting to know different people are guilty of intellectual laziness at best, and intolerance and bigotry at worst.

Tragically, racial groupings in America and much of the world are still given importance — which is often referred to as the social construction of race. When this imagined meaning is paired with intolerance and asymmetrical social power between different racial groups, it leads to all of the differences that we observe between the races. But they are not caused by race. They are caused by ignorance, hatred, and differential treatment. They are caused by marginalization and abuse of power. This is why one racial group or another may exhibit higher rates of poverty, violence, or drug abuse. In the United States, African Americans as a group still lag behind the American average in many indicators because they have suffered historical injustices, tend to be treated unfairly by police, are often viewed with a higher degree of suspicion and fear by their fellow citizens, are not afforded the same opportunities, and so on.

In short, American society has been mistreating African Americans for centuries. Despite the civil-rights movement and all the advances in our scientific understanding of human behavior, we still mistreat them. Of course, they are not the only ones who are mistreated. But of any social grouping in America, they have probably suffered the greatest. And yet we still continue to treat them differently even knowing that skin color is meaningless.

It has to stop. Like right now. It makes no sense. It is the product of antiquated thinking that is not only unjust, wasteful, and damaging to society but based on deeply flawed reasoning or a complete lack of reason. Continuing to think about race as a causal factor of behavior is as foolish today as it was to believe that the Sun revolved around the Earth in late 17th-century Italy. It is a now disproven mode of thought that is slowing human progress. As soon as the differential treatment of races stops, the social frictions of race will start to disappear.

Of course, we all have unconscious biases and are susceptible to lazy thinking, so we have to catch ourselves. We have to practice empathy and recognize the biases and mental shortcuts that we use throughout the day that aren’t based on actual facts or knowledge. Observing differences in skin tone is natural simply, because our vision registers shades and colors, but believing that this tells us anything substantive about the person we are looking at is entirely in our own minds. Armed with this knowledge, we can all train ourselves to be better people. As a society, we should teach empathy and the basics of social psychology in our public schools; we should retrain our police to understand the tricks that our minds play on us; and we should foster social inclusion of all of our citizens. Doing so will help erase the scars of race that still plague America and will make us stronger in every way. It’s not just a question of justice — it’s science.

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Reflections on Race, Power, and Science

We Are All to Blame for Michael Brown and Eric Garner Not Getting Justice

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We Are All to Blame for Michael Brown and Eric Garner Not Getting Justice

Quick story. It was like a game. I come from a family that doesn’t easily go along with government stuff. We hate taxes. We hate surveillance. We’re suspicious. We’re smart. Here’s one example: My dad served in Vietnam, and he was like, “Hell naw! You’re never going in the military!” Since I’m a member of the Blackfeet Nation and our nation transcends the Canadian border, my dad’s plan was that I’d go live with my Canadian Native family if ever there was talk of a draft. Likewise, I didn’t register to vote for a long time. Voting simply is not a value in my family; our allegiance is to the…

Quick story.

It was like a game.

I come from a family that doesn’t easily go along with government stuff. We hate taxes. We hate surveillance. We’re suspicious. We’re smart. Here’s one example: My dad served in Vietnam, and he was like, “Hell naw! You’re never going in the military!” Since I’m a member of the Blackfeet Nation and our nation transcends the Canadian border, my dad’s plan was that I’d go live with my Canadian Native family if ever there was talk of a draft.

Likewise, I didn’t register to vote for a long time. Voting simply is not a value in my family; our allegiance is to the Blackfeet Nation and the Suquamish Nation. (“These are white people’s elections. That’s not our stuff.”) Finally, a college convinced me to give voting a try. (“You might make a difference!”) But as soon as I registered, I got my first summons for jury duty. “This could be fun,” I thought. My friends and I began scheming up the most ridiculous excuses we could think up. We were laughing and scheming while watching Beavis and Butt-Head. “I’m not going along with this! I’m a radical! Radicals don’t do jury duty!” First plan: Tell them, “I’m a racist.” That is, no matter who the defendant was, I was going to hate whoever the defendant was and say that I couldn’t give him or her a fair shake. Second plan: Tell them honestly that my first allegiance was to the Blackfeet Nation and the Suquamish Nation and I didn’t know if I could be trusted to uphold the United States’ laws.

Predictably, I was quickly eliminated from the jury pool. In victory, I rubbed my hands together, mastermind-style. “I just beat the man!” I knew I was a smart guy. Heck, I’d just outsmarted justice.

Why am I telling you this?

The first time I argued a jury trial, I saw a lot of the same behavior: smug smiles and dishonest replies that indicated that they wouldn’t be a good juror. Of course, by this time I wanted good folks on the jury; how else would I win? But all the people who I thought would make fair-minded and good jurors wanted nothing to do with it. I could tell. Their body language said so. Their mouth language said so. It wasn’t a huge, highly publicized case, but all court cases are social-justice issues, because rich people get a fairer shake than poor people, irrespective of color. So I wanted some folks in the jury box who might be able to reflect some of the values of my client. That’s fair; that’s why it’s called a “jury of one’s peers.” But my client’s peers wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible!

They beat the man. They didn’t have to participate in these games. They outsmarted me and the justice system. As a result, someone didn’t get as fair a shot as they otherwise might have.

Look, America has always been sick with the disease of racism. That’s not new. As Martin Luther King Jr. eloquently stated, “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society.”

This shit is not new. Ask Emmett Till. Ask James Byrd Jr. Ask Dred Scott. Ask the Natives massacred at Sand Creek.

But we’re still in the same place we’ve been in for the past 50 years: merely diagnosing the problem. As we used to say in the ’80s, “No shit, Sherlock.” We’re pointing at the racism, pointing at all these agencies and municipalities that we cannot do anything about. The one place where we’re not pointing? We’re not pointing at ourselves. We let this happen. Black folks. White liberals. Pigeon-toed Natives. Conservatives. All of us. We’re all complicit.

Let me explain.

See, the grand jury that was convened to decide whether the police officer(s) who killed Eric Garner should be indicted concluded that there was no probable cause to seek an indictment. The grand jury that was convened to decide whether the police officer who killed Michael Brown should be indicted concluded that there was no probable cause to seek an indictment.

Yet one can only serve on a grand jury if one is a registered voter. Moreover, that registered voter can only serve on a grand jury if he or she sticks around long enough to serve on that jury and doesn’t try to outsmart justice by giving silly-ass excuses to get off that jury — like I did.

I didn’t use the tools that were there. I let the Eric Garners and Michael Browns down.

Moreover, county prosecutors — like Bob McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County who essentially decided whether the St. Louis County grand jury would indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown — are usually elected officials. They get voted in and out of office on the strength of the people who vote. In the 2014 primary for St. Louis County prosecutor, a black woman ran against McCulloch. Her name is Leslie Broadnax. Most importantly (to me!), she is a former public defender who may have come into contact with some of these police-brutality cases during her time as a defender. But she got far less than half the votes that McCulloch received: around 33,000 votes. Only 30 percent of the county turned out for that primary.

We’re simply not using the tools that are there.

Racism is real, and black men get killed in tragically disparate numbers. Absolutely. It’s been that way since the first interloper landed on this continent, and now many of us brown- and black-skinned people have even been infected with that racism disease against each other. That’s deep. So it’s going to take some time to remove that racism sickness out of America’s DNA. That’s long-term. In the short term we’ve got a responsibility to use the tools that exist right now. I admit that I have no clue whether the system will actually work; it might be as much of a joke as I was raised to believe it is. But I also cannot honestly say that these tools don’t work until we actually try to try them. Failing to register to vote is not playing the game. Thirty-percent voter turnout is not playing the game. Finding creative ways to get out of serving on juries is not playing the game. You don’t want to participate in the American justice system? I get it. Yet non-participation has consequences. I mean, there’s absolutely a place for marching, sounding off on social media and being outraged and indignant. We should be; that’s all positive stuff. Yet we have to use the tools that we have currently; otherwise we’ll keep “outsmarting” justice.

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Gyasi Ross is a father, author and attorney from the Blackfeet and Suquamish Indian Reservations. He is the author of two books — How to Say I Love You in Indian and Don’t Know Much About Indians (But I Wrote a Book About Us Anyways) — both available at cutbankcreekpress.com. He has a column in Indian Country Today Media Network called “The Thing About Skins.”

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We Are All to Blame for Michael Brown and Eric Garner Not Getting Justice

Robert Wayne Holsey Executed In Georgia For 1995 Killing Of Sheriff’s Deputy After Store Robbery

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Robert Wayne Holsey Executed In Georgia For 1995 Killing Of Sheriff’s Deputy After Store Robbery

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — Authorities say a Georgia man has been executed for the 1995 killing of a sheriff’s deputy, who was slain minutes after a convenience store robbery. Authorities said 49-year-old Robert Wayne Holsey was declared dead at 10:51 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson. Holsey received the death sentence for the Dec. 17, 1995, killing of sheriff’s deputy Will Robinson. A jury convicted Holsey in 1997. Prosecutors said Holsey robbed a Milledgeville convenience store and the clerk immediately called police, describing the suspect and his car. According to court documents, Robinson pulled Holsey over minutes later and Holsey fired on the deputy as he approached the car. Robinson died of a fatal head wound.

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — Authorities say a Georgia man has been executed for the 1995 killing of a sheriff’s deputy, who was slain minutes after a convenience store robbery.

Authorities said 49-year-old Robert Wayne Holsey was declared dead at 10:51 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson.

Holsey received the death sentence for the Dec. 17, 1995, killing of sheriff’s deputy Will Robinson. A jury convicted Holsey in 1997. Prosecutors said Holsey robbed a Milledgeville convenience store and the clerk immediately called police, describing the suspect and his car.

According to court documents, Robinson pulled Holsey over minutes later and Holsey fired on the deputy as he approached the car. Robinson died of a fatal head wound.

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Robert Wayne Holsey Executed In Georgia For 1995 Killing Of Sheriff’s Deputy After Store Robbery

How the White South Became the White South Again

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How the White South Became the White South Again

Lyndon B. Johnson made history in two ways with his trouncing of GOP rival Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. The first is that he won a greater percent of the popular vote than any other presidential winner in more than a century. He scored nearly 500 electoral votes and carried every state except six. But therein lies the second history-making aspect of his victory: It was the states that he didn’t carry that reveal much about how the South became the white South again. Five of the six states Johnson lost were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Johnson himself explained why in his now-famous quip that in ramming through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Democrats had “lost the South for …

Lyndon B. Johnson made history in two ways with his trouncing of GOP rival Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. The first is that he won a greater percent of the popular vote than any other presidential winner in more than a century. He scored nearly 500 electoral votes and carried every state except six. But therein lies the second history-making aspect of his victory: It was the states that he didn’t carry that reveal much about how the South became the white South again. Five of the six states Johnson lost were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Johnson himself explained why in his now-famous quip that in ramming through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Democrats had “lost the South for a generation.” Johnson’s prescient remark wasn’t totally accurate, though: It has been more like two, almost three, generations since white Democrats lost their stranglehold on the South.

The ousting of three-term U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) from her seat in the U.S. Senate by U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) put the capper on the white Southern flip-flop from Democrat to Republican. Cassidy even found the words to punctuate that fact when he declared that his victory put “the exclamation point” on the GOP’s total dominance in the South. The South has no more white Democratic senators or governors, and the GOP controls nearly every Southern — and nearly every border-state — legislature.

The stock explanation for the white South’s political cartwheel is race. Whites, nearly all of whom were staunch Democrats before 1964, were so angry with Johnson and the Democrats for championing civil rights and voting rights that they were ripe for the GOP pickings. An astute Richard Nixon quickly picked up on this in 1968 with his “Southern strategy,” which meant, “Say little, and do less, about civil rights in the South.”

An even more astute Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was a stone’s throw from where three civil-rights workers were murdered in 1964. Reagan nakedly pandered to whites’ not-so-latent racial hostility when he told a virtually lily-white, wildly enthusiastic throng at the fair, “I believe in states’ rights.” In the 1980s GOP political guru Lee Atwater kicked race baiting into even higher gear, dangling a generous blend of vicious anti-black stereotypes, code words and phrases and outright naked racial pitches that played on white racial fears. The GOP strategy firmly locked down the majority of the popular and electoral vote in the 11 old Confederate states and the border states. Together these states hold more than one third of the electoral votes needed to bag the White House.

But apart from race, there’s another explanation for the GOP’s lock on Southern whites that’s every bit as compelling. Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan never once uttered the word “race” in their campaign pitches to Southern whites. They took another tack. In his Mississippi speech Reagan punched all the familiar coded attack themes: big government, liberals, welfare, and law and order. The template was set for reshaping the white Southern political dynamic.

Fast-forward three decades. In 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan picked their joint campaign starting point and their audience just as deliberately as Reagan did. This time it was a battleship draped in red, white, and blue, docked in Norfolk, Virginia. The virtually lily-white audience cheered as Romney and Ryan punched the same familiar coded themes: out-of-control spending and bloated government. They punctuated it with the hard vow to take back America.

Romney and Ryan didn’t openly champion states’ rights as Reagan did. Instead they updated the coded themes by lambasting Democrats, wasteful big government, and runaway deficit spending on entitlement programs, launching a full-blown assault on the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and labor unions. The majority of the recipients of these programs have always been white seniors, retirees, women and children, and white workers. But these programs have been artfully sold to many Americans as handouts to lazy, undeserving blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

The final tallies in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections gave ample warning of the potency of the GOP’s conservative white constituency. Obama made a major breakthrough by winning a significant percentage of votes from white independents and young white voters. Among white male voters in the South and the American heartland, though, Obama made almost no impact.

Among white voters in South Carolina and other Deep South states, the vote was even more lopsided against Obama. The only thing that even made Obama’s showing respectable in those states was the record turnout of black voters and the record percentage of the black vote that he got.

Landrieu, like every other white Democrat in the South, lost her Senate reelection bid in part because of race and in part also because Obama, like every other Democratic presidential candidate since Nixon’s win in 1968, has been sold to white Southerners as the epitome of evil, big government. This is what made the white South the white South again, and the brutal reality is that it’s going to stay that way for a long time.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of Keepin’ It Real With Al Sharpton, Rev. Sharpton’s radio show. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the host of the Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour, heard weekly on the nationally broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.

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How the White South Became the White South Again

Watch The University Of Oregon’s Powerful ‘Ducks Do Something’ Video

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Watch The University Of Oregon’s Powerful ‘Ducks Do Something’ Video

“Sexual assault, suicide, alcohol abuse, racism” are real issues, and they happen on the University of Oregon’s campus. That’s something a group of student leaders is making clear in a recent video promoting bystander intervention and a culture of respect among Oregon Ducks. The video was published this semester as part of the university’s effort to join the White House’s “It’s On Us” campaign to stop sexual violence. “We tell that guy she’s clearly not interested,” one fraternity brother says, referring to bystander intervention, the practice of intervening in potentially dangerous situations including a potential sexual assault. However, UO’s version extends beyond sexual assault. It’s an effort to stop racist and homophobic…

“Sexual assault, suicide, alcohol abuse, racism” are real issues, and they happen on the University of Oregon’s campus. That’s something a group of student leaders is making clear in a recent video promoting bystander intervention and a culture of respect among Oregon Ducks.

The video was published this semester as part of the university’s effort to join the White House’s “It’s On Us” campaign to stop sexual violence.

“We tell that guy she’s clearly not interested,” one fraternity brother says, referring to bystander intervention, the practice of intervening in potentially dangerous situations including a potential sexual assault.

However, UO’s version extends beyond sexual assault. It’s an effort to stop racist and homophobic jokes, to stop students from binging on alcohol, or to get them to offer help for a friend who “seems suddenly distant and withdrawn.”

“We say something, we do something,” the students declare.

To be a Duck, the students say, is to treat women, yourself and everyone with respect. And considering the viral video about how to treat intoxicated women with respect from UO students in 2013, that statement should be no surprise.

Watch the entire video above.

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Watch The University Of Oregon’s Powerful ‘Ducks Do Something’ Video

‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’… and Then There Was Ferguson… and Staten Island

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Fannie Lou Hamer said, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Her words capture what I am feeling after last week’s decision by a Staten Island grand jury not to indict a police officer who used a departmentally prohibited chokehold on Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, with fatal results. This injustice comes on the heels of watching recent events unfold in Ferguson, Missouri. It is impossible not to extrapolate the connection between the two incidents and others. For many, and in so many ways, it was Americana exemplified. In both cases, what we saw was akin to “theater of …

Fannie Lou Hamer said, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Her words capture what I am feeling after last week’s decision by a Staten Island grand jury not to indict a police officer who used a departmentally prohibited chokehold on Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, with fatal results. This injustice comes on the heels of watching recent events unfold in Ferguson, Missouri. It is impossible not to extrapolate the connection between the two incidents and others.

For many, and in so many ways, it was Americana exemplified. In both cases, what we saw was akin to “theater of the absurd,” exhibited for the world to see, not unlike one of those numerous tawdry and banal Real Housewives-type shows that people watch to see who will do what stupid thing next, and then who will attack whom. The sad fact about Ferguson and New York City is that the incidents were real and played out on national and international news outlets and were blasted across social media.

Many people watching both occurrences did not and continue not to understand that these were not verdicts of innocence or guilt per se but decisions by the grand juries not to indict the officers in question, which then precluded the cases from moving forward to trials in open court.

We really need to be clear about that.

A verdict would indicate that there had been a trial, and there was no trial, nor, according to the decision, was there ever to be one.

Missing, for many, was the fact that the obligation of both grand juries was to be representative of the victim. The victims in these cases were Michael Brown and Eric Garner, not the police officers. As someone who believes in the rule of law and as a human being, witnessing the abdication of this process was most disturbing.

However, I think that if we look at this more carefully, what we are really seeing is yet another example that is occurring with far too frequent regularity in this country, an instance where an unarmed African-American male is dehumanized, tried for a “crime,” found guilty and summarily executed — all by the individual(s) charged with protecting the general public and Mike Brown’s rights to due process and a fair trial.

Without question, people of color, particularly African Americans, have never been “safe” in our society; the legal system has been used to enforce legalized discrimination. That discrimination that is documented by Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness did not end with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or the modern civil rights movement or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or, for that matter, the election and reelection of President Barack Obama.

To this day, the “justice” system is used to redistrict people of color out of electoral power and to limit voting rights; to over-police communities of color; to sentence people of color disproportionately for crimes in which Whites would receive a lighter sentence; to incarcerate at the highest levels of any country in the world; to use the death penalty in a discriminatory manner; and if a prisoner is lucky enough to be released eventually, to ensure that “ex-cons” cannot participate meaningfully at the ballot box or get jobs.

In the case of Ferguson, the United States’ history of racism, slavery, the state-sanctioned and legalized apartheid of Jim Crow laws, violence, and Missouri’s inordinately complex relationship with race have served as a the backdrop for many of the events that have occurred in this country since August 2014. Now what is currently happening in Ferguson and in protests in more than 137 cities to date and on numerous college campuses across the nation has to be looked at through the aforementioned lens, if we have any hope of understanding what is occurring and why.

The rioting that followed the Ferguson announcement was particularly excruciating and depressing to watch. Besides being destructive and really not helpful, it also played into the hands of the waiting media and “the powers that be” who were camped out for a moment such as that, and served only to validate, for those watching from the comfort of their homes, that indeed these were individuals without any real humanity, reinforcing their belief that these were people unable to “control” themselves and follow the rule of law. For me, there is no question that what ensued was counterproductive, but so was what led up to the fallout.

The rioting that occurred in Ferguson, both this past summer and after the announcement of the grand jury’s decision, can best be described as an episode of “Black rage,” a term first coined by the Harvard-trained African-American psychiatrist Dr. Chester M. Pierce in the 1970s. Equally important to be addressed is what Emory University’s Dr. Carol Anderson refers to as “White rage.” Anderson, in an August Washington Post op-ed stated that “White rage” has been historically cloaked in the niceties of “law and order,” but it is rage nonetheless. It is rage that happens in the voting booth. It is rage that goes unnoticed for the most part and is accepted for the most part because White rage does not have to take to the streets or, with great regularity, face the onslaught of rubber bullets. White rage carries with it an aura of respectability. It has access to the courts and to our police. In fact, the perpetrators are often the police, or other agents of the state, such as legislators and governors. Often, their efforts are being seen as being just and noble. White rage is central to American history.

As an American, I could argue that the genesis of this nation was caused by an act of civil disobedience — a riot — now known as the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Act was experienced as the “final straw” in a series of unpopular policies and taxes imposed by Britain upon her colonies. In May 1773 demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea overboard into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea and destroying an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773; the British government — the greatest military and global police force of its time — responded harshly, and the episode escalated into what we now call the American Revolution.

What is at the core of each of these incidents, as was also the case in Ferguson, Missouri, and, though without the explosive aftermath, New York City, is the fact that the ultimate eruption was cumulative in nature, and not necessarily related to the more easily identified “spark” or immediate incident — in this case the death of Mike Brown, which ignited the enormity of the blowback by individuals. Riots historically have been the language used by individuals and communities who have been beaten down and oppressed by those charged with their protection and who have more often than not abused and misused their power.

It is not necessary to vilify the police. I have numbers of friends who are police officers, and I myself have worked with trained police officers across this country, many of whom are just and serve ably. I have a great deal of respect for the police and the work that they do, and an appreciation for the circumstances under which they do their work. However, that does not mean there isn’t a need for improved and ongoing training, and a need for increased accountability.

As a social worker I am continually working with people who have been historically disenfranchised; I go into communities where people are afraid, where people are depressed or unhappy; where children are not attending school if they are not sufficiently challenged and inspired. I talk to young people and adults of all ages about the reality of their lives. We as a society need to talk with people with whom we don’t always agree and where the answers are not always easy or glib. We need to speak to each other across our differences, and we have to lead by example. The world, literally, is watching… and time is not necessarily on our side

For us to move forward as a society, I believe we must adopt a more social-justice- and social-action-oriented perspective and way of existing with one another.

So instead of arguing about whether Trayvon Martin looked threatening in his hoodie and was in a neighborhood where he “shouldn’t” have been, or whether Michael Brown had or had not actually stolen cigarillos and wasn’t an “innocent” victim of police overreaction, or whether Eric Garner should have allowed himself to be arrested when surrounded by officers, we should adopt the language of “Black lives matter — all of them.” We all have a stake in creating a better system. But for that to happen, we have to be in this together.

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‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’… and Then There Was Ferguson… and Staten Island

America Needs to Rewrite the 3 R’s

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Fifty years ago, I was in the second grade. It was the time of the historic March on Washington, as well as the beginning of what we now call the “Women’s Liberation Movement.” But more than that, there was a memory that will stay with me forever. Many Northern African-Americans who had their roots in the South would send their children “South” for the summer, so we could reconnect with our grandparents, they could work a second summer job and we would reach back to our heritage. Trailways and Greyhound buses would whisk us to the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and other homelands. Dr. Martin Luther King was an iconic figure. Lyndon…

Fifty years ago, I was in the second grade. It was the time of the historic March on Washington, as well as the beginning of what we now call the “Women’s Liberation Movement.” But more than that, there was a memory that will stay with me forever.

Many Northern African-Americans who had their roots in the South would send their children “South” for the summer, so we could reconnect with our grandparents, they could work a second summer job and we would reach back to our heritage.

Trailways and Greyhound buses would whisk us to the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and other homelands. Dr. Martin Luther King was an iconic figure. Lyndon Baynes Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act, and we, the children in the North, began to integrate public schools. Life, as we knew it, was going to be swell.

We thought Jim Crow was over. But then my grandmother took me to Belk’s Department store for a grilled cheese sandwich. I asked to sit down at their lunch counter. My grandmother said we had to take the grilled cheese sandwich out and eat it later. Why? I asked. I’m hungry NOW. It was later that I realized laws don’t change things. People do. When people’s hearts change, we can get somewhere.

The South was still segregated; Jim Crow was still alive. In fact, a more sophisticated, JAMES CROW, ESQUIRE, was moving into place. Every time my brother and I would drive into the South and arrive after dark, we were stopped to demand an account of where we were going. We had been taught that the three R’s were what we needed to exceed in America “Reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.”

I contend, 50 years later, that what America needs to function in this world today are three new R’s: Race, Religion and Respect for women. From Trayvon Martin to Eric Garner to Michael Brown and ISIS, a new movement needs to be created.

Most have already forgotten about a Senator calling POTUS a liar at his very first State of the Union Address, Donald Sterling,and Glenn Beck and others who have denigrated Black Americans.

Let’s face it: We’re in trouble. The world is on fire. Three Rabbis were killed at their holy site, a Christian pastor Abedini was imprisoned for his beliefs in Iran; mothers have to bury their sons far too early and sports stars abuse women. In the words of Marvin Gaye, “What’s going on?” I’ll tell you what’s going on. We’re race-phobic, religion-phobic and respect-phobic.

President Clinton had me as his faith advisor, trying to put race on the table in a real way, and open the eyes of America and the world to the fact that life, as we all knew it, is over. We are no longer just black, white and three Abrahamic tradition’s world. We are a multiethnic world, where we must learn from and be tolerant and respectful of others whose traditions, languages and skin colors may be different. This is what builds a peaceful world.

This lack of respect for race was confirmed as I was having my last cup of coffee with a foreign service officer about a week before I ended my tenure at the State Department. She said, “Everyone knows the State Department isn’t welcoming of African-Americans.” Even SHE had seen the blatant institutional racism exhibited almost daily. She admitted about knowing the walls and road blocks put up and before me and before the President of the United States.
It’s a new day, and we’d better get with the program. No one can or should do it alone. It’s time America learns the three new R’s: Race, Religion and Respect.

Ambassador Suzan Johnson Cook served as United States Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, is the Founder, CEO and President of the ProVoiceMovement for women, to unify, fortify and multiply the voices of Black, Latina and Native American women. You may reach her at: ProVoiceMovement.com

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America Needs to Rewrite the 3 R’s

Cuba Gooding Jr. To Play O.J. Simpson In Ryan Murphy’s ‘American Crime Story’

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Cuba Gooding Jr. To Play O.J. Simpson In Ryan Murphy’s ‘American Crime Story’

Ryan Murphy announced his new non-fiction anthology crime series, about the infamous O.J. Simpson murder case, back in October. Now, the series finally has its main cast. According to Entertainment Weekly, Cuba Gooding Jr. will portray Simpson in “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.” The series, which is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” will chronicle the real-life 1995 murder trial of the football star. The 10-episode first season will also co-star Murphy favorite Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, the head prosecutor in the Simpson murder case. Little else is known about the series at this time. It was previously reported that “American Crime Story: The …

Ryan Murphy announced his new non-fiction anthology crime series, about the infamous O.J. Simpson murder case, back in October. Now, the series finally has its main cast.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Cuba Gooding Jr. will portray Simpson in “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.” The series, which is based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” will chronicle the real-life 1995 murder trial of the football star. The 10-episode first season will also co-star Murphy favorite Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, the head prosecutor in the Simpson murder case.

Little else is known about the series at this time. It was previously reported that “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson” will tell the story from the lawyer’s perspective, while and also giving an account of the the LAPD’s history with the African-American community in Los Angeles at the time. Murphy will executive produce the FX series and will direct the first episode.

For more, head to EW.com.

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Cuba Gooding Jr. To Play O.J. Simpson In Ryan Murphy’s ‘American Crime Story’

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