It's the "DCI Counterterrorist Center 'Terrorist Buster' Logo"
No joke. It's on cia.gov.
By Briley Richmond
Ocean Springs, MS
Sunday, October 21, 2007
The Mississippi Press
A 6-year-old child, Blake Pendergrass, was struck and killed by an automobile in Escatawpa the other day. Escatawpa is about 20 miles from my home in Ocean Springs. I didn't know him. I would imagine something like that happens somewhere in America every day -- at least every week. But this one hurt me. Hurt me bad. You see, the little boy lived in a FEMA trailer park -- a Katrina FEMA trailer park in Escatawpa. Escatawpa is -- well, if you were plotting out a Monopoly board, it ain't Boardwalk. It's more like one of the purples right past "Go" -- you know, the ones where the rent for landing on the space is $2.00.
I visited the scene where Blake was killed. The park in which he lived has no playground. Blake was killed while he was crossing the street attempting to get to his "playground." The trailers are stacked in compactly, like sardines in a can. There is no room for a playground, just trailers. And more trailers. All identical. That's how you identify a FEMA trailer park. The trailers have no amenities -- no "identities." Every one is just the same. Twenty-four feet long. Eight feet wide. White. Stacked right together. No thought is given to the children. No parks, no playgrounds, no sidewalks -- the park just screams, "You're just a bunch of poor kids and we don't care."
Immediately across the street from the trailer park sits an abandoned convenience store, complete with a parking lot -- unused. The children of the trailer park have adopted the parking lot as their unofficial playground. Only to get to it they have to cross the street. The "street" is a highway. So 6-year-old Blake Pendergrass was killed while crossing the highway to get from his FEMA trailer home to his abandoned parking lot playground. And on that same day our governor, Haley Barbour, was busy taking $600 million that the people of this nation gave to my community for housing for Katrina victims, people just like little Blake, and turning it over to the business interests at the port of Gulfport, about 30 miles away -- so Dole Pineapple and other multi-million dollar business entities could have that money instead of Blake. You think maybe the people of this nation expected the money given for housing following Katrina would be given to Blake, and not Dole Pineapple?
The people of this great nation gave the victims of that horrible storm $5 billion so we could provide housing for the children like Blake. But it hasn't happened that way. Five billion dollars is enough money to buy 60,000, $80,000 homes -- we lost 65,000 homes (and yes, one can still buy a home for $80,000 in Mississippi). I invite you to drive around my community and I ask you if you see anything that looks remotely like 60,000 homes. Or 30,000 homes. Or even 10,000 homes. Our governor has been so busy passing out money to his friends and cronies, he has managed to build not a single home to cover the needs of a child like Blake -- and there are thousands of children in just the same situation as Blake. The governor gave a lawyer friend of his in Moss Point $1 million. Northrup-Grumman, a major defense contractor was given $250 million. The Hancock Bank, our largest, got the benefit of hundreds of millions. The business entities at the port of Gulfport, $600 million. All diverted from the funds intended to provide housing for Katrina victims.
There are flowers on the side of the road marking the spot where little Blake was killed -- a tribute of sorts I guess. I started crying when I saw them. Oh the horror, the horror. I'm so sorry little fella. I've tried so hard. I've written letters to the editors of dozens of newspapers. I've called Congressmen, Senators. But I am an old man now -- I am tired -- and for the first time in my life I have to own up to it -- I am beaten -- I have failed. I am so sorry Blake. My governor went to Washington, D.C., and got $5 billion. But all he got for you was those damn flowers.
(Source)
The Prison Policy Initiative and State Senator Eric Schneiderman have brought together an in impressive coalition of organizations and legislators to call on the US Census Bureau to change its policy on counting prisoners---and to kick off a national advocacy campaign on the issue.
“Counting prisoners as residents of the prison districts where they do not vote or otherwise participate in those communities is simply bad policy,” said State Senator Eric Schneiderman. “Disenfranchised people become an undeserved source of political power for legislators who benefit from locking up more people for longer sentences.”
“The Census Bureau’s insistence on counting prisoners as residents of rural counties creates big problems when counties like St. Lawrence go to draw county legislative districts. Because our county districts are so small, a single prison can have a huge negative impact on equal voting power,” said letter co-author Tedra L. Cobb, vice-Chair of the St. Lawrence County Board of Legislators.
Yesterday, federal, state, and local legislators presented a letter signed by 32 elected officials from New York, Texas, and Illinois to Charles Kincannon, Director of the Census Bureau, requesting that the agency collect the home addresses of all incarcerated persons in the next national decennial census and count them at those addresses. According to these officials, counting prisoners at their pre-incarceration address is essential for compliance with the “One Person, One Vote” rulings of the Supreme Court, which require that legislative districts at every level of government contain equal numbers of residents in order to ensure fair and equal representation for all.
“The Census Bureau considers redistricting to be the second most important use of its data and it wants to hear from the elected officials who use that data.” said Prison Policy Initiative Executive Director Peter Wagner. “I call upon all supporters of democracy to ask their own elected officials to join New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman and St. Lawrence County Legislator Tedra Cobb in their appeal to the Census Bureau.”
In addition to the Prison Policy Initiative, the elected officials were joined by criminal justice and democracy advocacy groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, DEMOS, Citizens Against Recidivism, Coalition for Parole Restoration, Seven Neighborhoods Action Partnership, JusticeWorks Community, Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, Community Service Society, The Correctional Association of New York, Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment (FREE!), and the Drug Policy Alliance.
Currently, the Census Bureau includes everyone housed in federal, state, and local prisons in its count of the general population of the Census block that contains the prison. New York State law, however, defines residence as the place where one voluntarily lives. Many states, including New York, also have constitutional clauses or election law statutes that explicitly declare that incarceration does not change a residence.
Unfortunately, the current Census methodology disregards this, instead counting a significant proportion of our national population in the wrong place. According to advocates, crediting the population of prisoners to the Census block where they are temporarily and involuntarily held creates electoral inequities at all levels of government.
“Every decade, states use federal census data to update their legislative district boundaries,” continued Mr. Wagner. “The goal is to ensure that each district contains the same population, as required by the federal constitution’s “one-person, one-vote” rule. The Census Bureau counts people in prison where their bodies are located on census day, not where they come from and where they will return, on average, 34 months later. The Bureau’s current practice made sense before prison populations became large enough to distort democracy. However, more people now live in prison than our three least populous states combined, and African Americans are imprisoned at 7 times the rate of whites. Today, this Census practice undermines the rule of law,” Peter Wagner explained.
(Read the whole press release.)
Final Call: There were some news reports that you had a relationship with one of the defendants, Bobby Brewster. Is this accurate?
Megan Williams: We were just friends. It was nothing like that.
FC: No dating relationship between you and defendant Bobby Brewster?
MW: No. They kicked me in the head with steel toed boots, they hit me in the head with several objects, I remember seeing a knife, and they tried to cut my foot off. They told me that is what they did to Kunta Kinte when they cut his foot off so he couldn’t run and that is what they were going to do to me.
I've been stewing on this moment in the Megan Williams interview ever since I posted about it. Stewing on it because I'm feeling uncomfortable with how it seems she might not be telling the truth about her past with one of the six Logan County, W. VA whites who tortured, raped and stabbed her.
It is on the record that Bobby Brewster was charged and jailed for domestic battery and assault against Megan Williams in July.
That suspect, Bobby R. Brewster, one of six arrested in the torture case, had a previous relationship with the victim and was charged in July with domestic battery and assault after a dispute between them, Sheriff Eddie Hunter said.
Court documents show that on July 18, officers responded to a 911 call concerning a domestic disturbance at the mobile home, where Mr. Brewster, 24, lives with his mother in far southwestern West Virginia. The documents do not make clear who called the police, but when they arrived, the papers say, they asked Mr. Brewster about the young woman, and he said he had not seen her in several days.
Upon searching the premises, though, the officers found her behind the trailer, and she told them she was hiding from Mr. Brewster and his mother. The complaint says the police determined that he had “verbally threatened and physically hit” her.
I can only speculate that Williams' lawyers have advised her to downplay her past with Brewster. Why? Because when people start talking about a possible past relationship, Williams' "poor judgment" or the fact that she passed some bad checks, they also start questioning whether this was really a hate crime and whether the fullest repertoire of charges ought to be brought against the scum of the earth perpetrators. Ellle, PhD summed up the problem in her post about white liberals who are hesitant to support the Jena 6 (via Amp) because of the
unspoken implication that African Americans had to be more than human, had to prove themselves worthy of fair treatment, of justice.
Similarly, when it came out that Williams may have been captive at the Brewsters' for over five weeks, even one of the bloggers who has argued most forcefully for treating the incident as a hate crime started to second guess herself.
So it now appears that what these people did to Williams may have been retaliation for her turning Bobby Brewster in to police for committing domestic battery against her. At least, maybe that’s what instigated it. That’s what’s causing me to believe that this may not have been a hate crime.
The immediate answer to this thinking is that we are talking about gang violence by a group of six whites against a Black woman. Even if it started as a domestic dispute, it stopped being one when the other five perpertrators got involved.
Furthermore a prior relationship and a possible domestic dispute do not disqualify the whites from hate crime charges or make Williams any less deserving of the fullest measure of justice possible. If anything, these possibilities only add to the racial dimensions of the case.
Southern whites have for centuries assumed that that they can violate Black women with impunity. Furthermore, the domestic sphere has long been a point of access to Black women. Writing about the early twentieth century, historian Jacqueline Jones explains:
White men's persistent violation of black women ... served as a backdrop for periodic lynchings throughout the South... A woman or girl found herself in danger of being attacked whenever she walked down a country road---"The poorest type of white man feels at liberty to accost her and follow, and force her." But her employer's home remained the source of her greatest fears. (Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present, 150)
But we are talking about more than accosting and forcing. What made these whites go ape shit at Megan Williams? What made them behave with such sadistic brutality? What excited their blood lust?
Jones' history provides some possible answers. The deadly intimacy of whites with Black women is, in Jones' analysis, part of a broader system of political control.
The races remained largely segregated in public pursuits. Yet black women constantly worked in the presence of whites of both sexes and all ages. A black newspaper in Orangeburg, South Carolina, highlighted the irony in 1889. The blackest woman, it noted, can "cook the food for prejudiced throats" and hold "the whitest, cleanest baby," but the angry passions rise when a well-dressed, educated, refined negro pays his own fare and seats himself quietly in a public conveyance." In the end, de jure segregation was a move designed to limit the political power of blacks as a group, rather than to curtail personal contact between members of the two races. (150)
The offense to racist whites is not so much social proximity to Blacks as it is Black assertions of political power. Segregation was not born from aversion but as a means to a political end.
West Virginia's history illustrates the principle of segregation as a method of "limit[ing] political power of blacks as a group, rather than to curtail personal contact between members of the two races."
West Virginia's legal system enforced racial segregation until the start of the 1960s. Laws were passed to ban interracial marriage and the education of black children together with whites. There was even a law requiring birth, death and marriage records for blacks to be kept in separate registers.
But unlike some states, West Virginia's government took an active role in building an alternate society of black institutions. The first publicly funded black school below the Mason-Dixon line was founded in 1866 in West Virginia, and by the start of World War II, the state also had two public colleges, a hospital for the mentally ill, vocational training schools, an orphanage and a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients.
"To tell you the truth, black people were able to do things here they weren't always able to do in other places, particularly the deep South," said Cicero Fain, an assistant history professor at Marshall University.
"But blacks were always aware they were supposed to be second-class citizens," he said. "The state funded these institutions, assisted in establishing them, but never tried to integrate them into the prevailing white power structure."
The state funded institutions for Blacks were used by the state to set pre-defined limits on Black participation in society.
If Bobby Brewster was retaliating against Megan Williams because she filed domestic battery charges against him in July, that just supports Jones' analysis of segregationist attitudes. Part of what may have made the six Logan County whites go ape shit and act like a band of Klansmen was that Williams utilized the legal system to resist white dominance.
RELATED POSTS
P6 highlighted an important article in Slate, probing "why and when we will tolerate lawbreaking."
Tolerated lawbreaking is almost always a response to a political failure-the inability of our political institutions to adapt to social change or reach a rational compromise that reflects the interests of the nation and all concerned parties. That's why the American statutes are full of laws that no one wants to see fully enforced-or even enforced at all.... when politics fails, institutional tolerance of lawbreaking takes over.
P6 argues that this describes "the politics around racism, desegregation, integration, diversity or whatever term 'diversity' is scheduled to be superceded by" and that "[t]his is the sort of compromise that allows people in places like Jena, LA and Paris TX to honestly feel they have no race problem."
I think it might be useful to reframe the history of racial violence that I am so interested in as the history of tolerated lawbreaking.
White people get away with everything around here, and most of the blacks know it, but [don't] dare to speak up. This place is low down and dirty, the police stay riding in the black neighborhood but never in the white neighborhood. Whenever a white person does something, to them it’s just a misunderstanding, but when the person is black it’s different.
That's a resident of Franklin County, MS talking about the place where Henry Dee and Charles Moore were murdered by Klansmen in 1964. In June 2007, one of the Klansmen involved in killing the two 19 year old Black men was convicted for kidnapping and conspiracy to deprive them of their civil rights (but not murder). Afterwards a local newspaper declared triumph:
[T]he truth, which had been submerged for more than four decades, finally rose again.
Justice finally found its mark as James Ford Seale, a reputed Klansman, was convicted for his involvement with the crimes.
This case proves that justice never sleeps; justice never gives up; and justice can never come too late.
But the Franklin County resident I'm quoting was not talking about Franklin County in 1964. E. Anderson was commenting on a post I had written back in January about how people in Franklin County knew that reports of James Ford Seale's death were false but did not tell the investigators who were pursuing the case.
It's important that Seale got punished for murder kidnapping and conspiracy, but nobody wants to spend too much time talking about why he---and others who will never be prosecuted---got away with murder for 43 years. E. Anderson uses the tolerance for white lawbreaking in Franklin County as a measure of the racism that has not abated.
I have been living in Franklin County for the last 40 years, and this place is still highly racist, except now they do it through the sheriff department, and the circuit court office. Check the record of the Franklin county courts and see how many blacks are sent to prison for crimes, and then see how many whites are sent for the same crimes.... Mostly all the white people in Franklin county are still racist, from the sheriff office to the school system to the court system. All the older white people in the county knew James Seale was still living, they just didn’t care for it was black men that got murdered, and they know of other murders that have taken place also, but they do all they can to cover it up, the bottom line is Franklin County will never change, it will always be racist.
According to Anderson, the white lawlessness that people might associate with the Klan activity of yesterday is still the norm today.
There's a brand of racial reconciliation that's getting popular in Mississippi, where whites disavow their hatred for Blacks and make a show of getting along with them. It's nice, for example, to hear James Ford Seale's cousin is preaching tolerance and goes to an integrated church in Natchez. But until Franklin County directly addresses its historical and present day tolerance for white lawbreaking, the tolerance of individual whites for Blacks will not lessen the effects of racism on people living there.
This website will help you generate a letter to request your FBI file under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts.
Brought to you by the same folks who set up Get Grandpa's FBI File.
By Mario Marcel Salas
Editor's note: A couple of weeks ago I published information concerning the public body cavity search of Paschal Evans, a 27 year old Black man, by San Antonio police. Professor Salas provides some background to this and other human rights abuses by San Antonio police. ---BG
The San Antonio Police Officers Association is the real problem in the matter of police abuse. Why? Because the police association under the leadership of Teddy Stewart is starting to resemble that of convicted felon Harold Flammia. Harold Flammia was the head of the SAPOA and was convicted of crimes that he committed as a police officer and was sent to prison. Flammia was at the helm when the City of San Antonio was in a police abuse crisis. Under Flammia anyone saying anything "negative" about police officers, even if they were thug officers, then the association would engage in threats and intimidation against those that filed complaints. This created an atmosphere of fear and authoritarianism. This brings us to Teddy Stewart, the current political boss of the association. Stewart is running around the community calling people names because community organizations and individuals are refusing to roll over and sanction bad apple cops.
The head of the San Antonio Police Officers Association, Teddy Stewart, foolishly and with a flare for idiocy, called those who are taking a stand against police abuse "Cop Haters." This attack is also being bandied around by one of their henchmen, Dan Martinez, who is parroting the foolishness of the SAPOA president. Dan Martinez should be removed from CAAB as he has sent out emails to the press, and as a member of the CAAB has expressed this same foolishness as Teddy Stewart. Some are questioning if Martinez is violating the cities ethics ordinance by making biased remarks when he is supposed to be unbiased. In a letter to the press, Dan Martinez showed how foolish he can be when referring to citizens complaining about being subjected to brutality. He said, " they fuel mistrust and hatred toward the police in the community." The only thing fueling mistrust and hatred are rogue police officers that are beating and strip-searching innocent people on public streets. Maybe Mr. Martinez should be stripped searched naked on the hood of a police car and then let's see what he has to say. Incidentally, City Council woman Sheila McNeil emphatically stated to this writer that she had nothing to do with putting Dan Martinez on the CAAB. A person with biases and reckless comments like this should be removed from the board immediately.
Most police officers want to do a good job and go home to their family and love ones just like the rest of us. The civil rights community respects these officers, but we are not talking about the majority of officers who obey the law. The San Antonio Civil and Human Rights Coalition is referring to those bad apple cops that Teddy Stewart and the SAPOA want to protect. Unfortunately for Teddy Stewart, and those that think like him, this community cannot and will not respect police officers that abuse innocent people. This is why Teddy Stewart's remarks are in the least foolishness and at best a sophomoric attempt at propaganda. Teddy Stewart's remark can only further polarize the community, and is a mean spirited attempt to propagandize the public. The SAPOA should not be allowed to police itself on any board, or in the Internal Affairs Department. His remarks will not deter the community from seeking justice when bad apple cops break the law and abuse citizens.
Teddy Stewart should immediately apologize for spreading falsehoods that can only make the problem worse. The city has given the SAPOA too much power in protecting bad apples; this should not have happened. We do believe that Police Chief McManus is trying to address the problem, but he in an up hill battle to fix a broken system that the SAPOA wants to keep broken. The outside non-independent group that the Chief is recommending to review police policy may not solve the problem if nothing is done and people continue to be abused! If the City cannot fix the problem, then the Justice Department should come and mediate the problem. No matter what the outside group says it will still be a tainted report, because it will be the same old story of police policing themselves. I can't wait to hear their report! In the meantime, the Civil and Human Rights Coalition will continue to take complaints from people that cannot get justice from the CAAB or Internal Affairs. Call 614-6400 and ask for attorney Patrick Filyk if you have been abused.
In regards to attorney James Myart, it looks as if DA Susan Reed is angry with Myart. After all Myart has repeated the rumor that Susan Reed is an "alcoholic." It would seem that Reed might have a personal vendetta going on under these circumstances. This would make the community concerned about what sort of justice Susan Reed is dishing out. Not everyone thinks Myart is doing a bad job. According to former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, "James Myart has done incredible work on behalf of the people, exposing what's wrong in San Antonio. In fact, unfortunately, San Antonio is little different than too many other cities across this country where rogue police attacks on the poor and black and Latino men in particular have become an epidemic. I am working with lawyers in New York to make sure that the situation in San Antonio becomes known to authorities at the United Nations. In the meantime, James Myart has drawn attention to a problem of abuse and the authorities never appreciate when the truth is told on them." San Antonio may finally make it "big time," not for being a class act city, but for being a city that is cowed by the SAPOA that thinks its alright to abuse citizens.
~
Mario Marcel Salas was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1949 to an Afro-Mexican father and a mixed race mother. He graduated from Phyllis Wheatley High School, an African American segregated school. Soon after high school he joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and became a civil rights worker for over 30 years. He was the leader of the last SNCC-Black Panther chapter in the United States in 1976. Salas is now a full time professor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio teaching American and State government. Mr. Salas is a prolific writer as he writes for three African American Newspapers in Texas. He speaks across the country at various colleges and universities.
And it's good.
You can check it out on the player embedded below the fold (so the auto start doesn't kick in when you load my home page).
It's a project called The Harlem Experiment.
Megan Williams and her mother, Carmen Williams, have given an interview to the Nation of Islam's Final Call. Megan Williams claims that she did not willingly go to the trailer home where she was raped and stabbed and tortured by six whites. Rather, she was lured there by a supposed friend.
Megan Williams (MW): When I first went up there, a girl I knew named Christa, she took me up there, she said we were going to a party.
FC: When Christa took you there (the trailer home in Big Creek in Logan County) what did she do?
MW: She said she had to make a run and she would be right back. She didn't come back.
FC: Do you believe Christa was involved in arranging this?
MW: (Nodding.)
Carmen Williams (CW): Yes, it was a setup, she left her there. When Megan was in the hospital, Christa called and I answered the phone. Christa was asking, ‘how is my friend?' I told her that she wasn't a friend of Megan's because she left her. Christa then hung up the phone. We have not seen or heard from Christa since that time.
The police investigators say they are trying to locate her for an interview, but have not been able to find her.
Megan Williams also insists that she did not have a romantic relationship with Bobby Brewster, despite the many allusions to a "prior relationship" in news reports.
FC: There were some news reports that you had a relationship with one of the defendants, Bobby Brewster. Is this accurate?
MW: We were just friends. It was nothing like that.
FC: No dating relationship between you and defendant Bobby Brewster?
MW: No. They kicked me in the head with steel toed boots, they hit me in the head with several objects, I remember seeing a knife, and they tried to cut my foot off. They told me that is what they did to Kunta Kinte when they cut his foot off so he couldn't run and that is what they were going to do to me.
FC: When exactly was this?
MW: It was like in August. When she (Christa) dropped me off up there, that's when they started beating on me, and calling me names. When they were hitting me and stabbing me, they called me n----r, they said ‘this is what we do to n----rs up here' and they said they were going to kill me.
Throughout the interview, Megan Williams makes numerous references to the 6 whites' use of racial epithets that did not come out in her original statement to the police. She also describes a scene in which she it seems she was being treated purposely like a slave.
They made me pick green beans out of the garden, they made these switches into a braid and they were whipping me as I was picking the greens. They made me pick weeds out of the garden and they were calling me n----r and said they were going to take me out to a creek and cut my throat and throw me in a river. All I was saying is I wanted to get back to my mom, and they were like, ‘you ain't ever going to see your mom ever, ever again, never.' I wanted to get back home so bad.
Similarly, Ms. Williams says the 6 whites made her sleep in the shed outside the trailer home because she is Black.
They told me there were no n----rs allowed in the trailer.
And she describes the threats of hanging more vividly than before.
I just wanted to get away. I asked one of them if they could let me go, they said no because ‘ain't no n----rs allowed up here,' and they were going to kill me. One day, I was asleep in the room, one of them came in and was kicking me and said ‘hey n----r, we got a noose out there for you, want to come look at it? We're going to hang you, come on.' I got really scared. I just wanted to get out of there. I was fighting for my life.
Do we still think this wasn't a hate crime? The state government, and, if possible, the federal government must address the racial dimensions of this case.
RELATED POSTS
I've put the tumblelog into maintenance mode while I am making some changes to it. Among other things I'm messing around with Twitter integration. If you've subscribed to the RSS feed, you'll see my tests. Sorry about that.
UPDATE 10/8: Hungry Tumblin is back online. I'm still working out a few of the details (getting categories to display, customizing global navigation, etc.), but that will all be working soon. The main change is that I've changed themes to T1. It's got more content types than TumbleJack, the previous theme, and there is one in particular that I've been able to adapt for my tweets (what's a tweet?). I'm loving the stylish new look and am having fun with the randomly rotating header images.
Oh yeah: I'm on twitter as minorjive. (If you were following my private tweets previously, note that I've still got the old account going, too, but I've changed the username.)
The AP reports:
The FBI is examining the ties between Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson's department as a construction manager in New Orleans, three federal law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Jackson's friend got the job after the HUD secretary asked a staff member to pass along his name to the Housing Authority of New Orleans, a spokesman for Jackson said in a statement.
At the time, the housing authority was in desperate need of a construction manager because there was a severe shortage of reputable local contractors after Hurricane Katrina, the spokesman for Jackson said.
The inquiry was first reported by The National Journal, which identified the contractor as William Hairston of Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. The magazine's Web site said Hairston and Jackson are social friends and golfing buddies.
In desperate need of a construction manager? They weren't repairing anything, and they waited two years to start the demolitions of usable housing. What was William Hairston paid to do? Maybe he was the guy who went around putting locks and do not enter signs on the gates into the housing projects.
And what's with the comment about "reputable local contractors?" Sounds like a nasty insinuation, when local Black contractors have been complaining that they are routinely excluded from post-Katrina government contracts in New Orleans.
Megan Williams
- In the comments, Cherise asked "Does anyone know if there has been any funding put into place to help with her medical bills, or therapy needs she may have?" Universalwriter replied that Chase Bank has set up a trust fund for Megan Williams. Universalwriter has set up a website providing ongoing coverage of the Megan Williams case and has posted the info on how to donate:
A TRUST FUND has been set up by Chase Bank for Megan Williams
A spokeswoman for Chase Bank said that donations to the trust fund
for Megan can be made at any Chase Bank.The donations can also be mailed to:
Welana Megan Williams Trust Fund Donation Account
707 Virginia St. E.
Charleston, WV 25301.View source - Link to Charleston GazetteMail
- The Katrinacrat Blog asks, "Is it because she isn't white?"
Imagine, if you could even think of the horrific situation, where a 20 year old "pretty white woman" was abducted by six black men and women, raped, stabbed, made to eat rat droppings, drink from a toilet, threatened with death if she tried to escape and tortured for around a week.Imagine, not only what living hell that poor woman went through, but also the fact that she was still undergoing treatment for her injuries around a month later. Imagine the 24 hour outrage on the cable news, the papers, every caring human being, not to mention the outrage by the racist people who would be decrying this, "the culture that promotes animals like this", how this was a hate crime and the potential revenge for these horrific acts.
Imagine that the suspects all had prior arrests and records for prior crimes, including one who was arrested for murder of an 84 year old woman but pled to a lesser charge of manslaughter. We would hear about this for months, and we would all know her name, the suspects names, backgrounds and every little development in her treatment, the case and the potential blowback to the community....
When was the last time that a missing “non-white” woman was reported as missing for more than a few minute segment? What kind of coverage would a story like this get if Ms. Williams was a “pretty white woman”? And whose family has lots of money?
- The mainstream media doesn't cover disappearances of Black women, but Deidre does. She has started a blog devoted to the subject: Black and Missing But Not Forgotten.
Barnes & Noble
- In the comments to the Blaxploitation Endcap Sightings post, Ash-Lee shared the link to this YouTube video by George:
And yes, that appears to be the same George from All About George and the ever classy and much valued NEGROPhile. George found one of the displays in Oakland, CA.
- downloadsquad reports that Barnes & Noble has gone web 2.0 with its new website. I clicked over to the site and found that the titles promoted in the stores are not what come up when you look for African American Fiction on the website: there, the first titles that come up under African American Fiction & Literature are much more what you might expect.
There is a lot of understandable outrage over the decisions of the both the US Attorney and the state prosecutor to not bring hate crime charges against the 6 whites accused of kidnapping, torturing and raping Megan Williams in Logan County, West Virginia.
There seems to be a prevailing assumption that if there is racial bias involved, we are talking hate crime. But "hate crime" is a legal classification with specific criteria. Federal prosecution of hate crimes is under 18 U.S.C. § 245, which
makes it unlawful to willfully injure, intimidate or interfere with any person, or to attempt to do so, by force or threat of force, because of that other person's race, color, religion or national origin and because of his/her activity as one of the following:
- A student at or applicant for admission to a public school or public college
- A participant in a benefit, service, privilege, program, facility or activity provided or administered by a state or local government
- An applicant for private or state employment; a private or state employee; a member or applicant for membership in a labor organization or hiring hall; or an applicant for employment through an employment agency, labor organization or hiring hall
- A juror or prospective juror in state court
- A traveler or user of a facility of interstate commerce or common carrier
- A patron of a public accommodation or place of exhibition or entertainment, including hotels, motels, restaurants, lunchrooms, bars, gas stations, theaters, concert halls, sports arenas or stadiums.
Federal prosecution for hate crimes requires two key ingredients: bias as a motive and federally protected activities. In my book, the racial motive of the perpetrators is undeniable---but the crimes against Megan Williams do not involve any of the federally protected activities, so federal hate crimes prosecution is not possible.
But at the state level hate crime charges are a different matter. West Virginia's hate crime statute, W. Va. Code §61-6-21, has three criteria. Raging Red explains:
To decide whether or not to charge the six defendants under the hate crime statute, the prosecutor will look at the elements of the crime, which can be broken down as follows:
- willful use of force or threat of force
- that attempts to or does injure, intimidate, interfere with, oppress, or threaten a person’s free exercise or enjoyment of a secured right or privilege
- motivated by the person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, or sex
The first element is straightforward and is clearly present in the case of Megan Williams.
The second element requires that the force or threat of force was used in an attempt to prevent someone from exercising a right or privilege guaranteed to them by state law, federal law, the West Virginia Constitution, or the U.S. Constitution. This element is simple to meet, because the hate crime statute itself is a state law that guarantees people the right to be free from violence or threats of violence because of their race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, or sex.
The third element is the bias element. Nothing in the statute indicates that the crime must be solely motivated by bias or even primarily motivated by bias, just that the crime was committed against that person “because of” one of the listed characteristics. (Note that sexual orientation is not included in that list.)
Were the crimes against Megan Williams motivated at least in part by her race? In my opinion, there’s plenty of evidence from which a jury could conclude that yes, what those six people did to Williams was done at least in part because of her race.
So at the state level the prosecutor absolutely should charge the 6 alleged perpetrators with hate crimes. Raging Red tears down the common rationales for not charging the defendants with hate crimes.
[W]hat’s the point of having a hate crime statute if you’re not going to use it? The maximum penalty under WV’s hate crime law is ten years, so does that mean a prosecutor would never charge someone with a hate crime if they were already charged with a crime that carries a stiffer penalty? The purpose of charging someone with a hate crime isn’t just the penalty imposed — it has symbolic value.
In our criminal justice system, it’s very common for people to be charged with multiple crimes that carry sentences of varying lengths, even when one or more of those crimes already carries a life sentence. Courts sometimes impose consecutive life sentences, which is merely symbolic — a person can’t actually serve more than one life sentence. But courts do it because the community wants to impose a punishment for every act a person commits and every victim he harms. (There are practical reasons to do it too — if a conviction is overturned or a sentence is reduced on appeal, the other convictions and sentences are still in place.)
In the past couple of days, I have heard various reasons that hate crime charges may not be appropriate in this case:
- She apparently knew at least one of the six people before this crime occurred.
- She went of her own free will to the mobile home where she was held captive.
- The defendants already face life in prison.
I don’t find any of those reasons compelling. I’ve covered the third one already. As for the others, the fact that the victim knows the perpetrator does not negate the possibility that it’s a hate crime. I can see how it might be a factor that a prosecutor would consider in determining whether to file hate crime charges, but it alone doesn’t rule out the possibility. Whether she went to the mobile home of her own free will or not is irrelevant.
I'm with Raging Red: you have to call it what it is. The legal system can and should use the tools that it has to advance public understanding of race and gender in this case. The Megan Williams story, like the Jena story, exposes old-style racism that Americans like to pretend is a thing of the past. The two stories are not so much anomalies as they are evidence that the past is still very much with us---and is not even past.
In my next post on the Megan Williams case, I will discuss race and gender issues from cultural and historical perspectives that are unlikely to be addressed in court, even under the best of circumstances. I will also address some of the reservations that some people, including Raging Red, have been having hate crime charges since it came out that Williams was on the Brewster premises for over four weeks and may not have been there against her will---at first.
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Paschal Evans, a 27 year old Black man, was guilty only of riding in a car with three other Black men inside it. For this "crime" he was physically and sexually abused and humiliated by police in a public parking lot.
On or about March 9, 2007, around 12:30 AM, Plaintiff, with two other black males, was traveling as a guest in a friend's vehicle in the 2600 block of E. Commerce, located in East Bexar County, Texas, more commonly known as the "Eastside."
Plaintiff was picked up at his home by Mr. Kashiff Tibbs and two other friends to rehearse for a weekend concert performance. On the way to the rehearsal, while traveling down Rio Grand the four young black men came to a red light at Commerce and made a right turn onto Commerce towards downtown San Antonio.
On information and belief, police officer(s) in a marked SAPD police car was traveling on Commerce away from downtown. After looking at the four black males through Mr. Tibb's untinted car windows, the officer(s) made a u-turn and followed behind the car in which Plaintiff was a back seat guest. The officer(s) turned on his flashing lights and stopped Plaintiff and his three friends at a store parking lot at Commerce and Walters streets.
Plaintiff was seated in back seat behind the driver (Tibbs). The police officer, in full uniform and working with the gang detail, walked up to the car, opened the car door and told Plaintiff to get out while grabbing & pulling Plaintiff by the front of his shirt. The officer handcuffed Plaintiff, searched him by patting him down and reaching into his pockets. The officer didn't find anything.
A female officer pulled up and she took over handling Plaintiff from there. She patted Plaintiff down again and took his money and other property and put them on the hood of the police car-all property was later returned to Plaintiff. She put Plaintiff inside her police car; walked away and came back. She ran Plaintiff's name on her police computer; he was clear. She took Plaintiff out of her car.
Another officer asked for Plaintiff's status and the female officer said "he's all clear-no warrants." The officers started discussing what to do with Plaintiff.
Then the female officer told Plaintiff to take off his shoes & his socks. He complied-they found nothing. An officer stated "what do we do with him since he's clean." One of the officers said "go ahead and let him go."
Then another police officer [Garcia] said "let's check his Ass." Plaintiff became hysterical and said "you can take me to jail or I'll spread my cheeks myself but I don't want you touching me." The three male cops asked each other who wanted to do it and that same officer [Garcia] said "I'll do it."
Plaintiff, along with the other three African-American males, while handcuffed, were stripped searched and or cavity searched and his scrotums and penis fondled by Defendant Garcia on a public street. Garcia was in full uniform, with a badge and gun as were his fellow officers as they looked on in laughter making derogatory statements.
This outrageous story has gotten no play in the news, beyond some minimal local coverage. You can read the entire complaint against San Antonio City Manager Sheryl Sculley, Chief of Police William McManus, and slime bucket officers Pedro Garcia and Matthew Parkinson and others, below.
Selective involvement of federal government in local affairs at its finest.
HUD's Wrecking Ball
Tightening the Noose Around New OrleansBy BILL QUIGLEY
Odessa Lewis is 62 years old. When I saw her last week, she was crying because she is being evicted. A long-time resident of the Lafitte public housing apartments, since Katrina she has been locked out of her apartment and forced to live in a 240 square foot FEMA trailer. Ms. Lewis has asked repeatedly to be allowed to return to her apartment to clean and fix it up so she can move back in. She even offered to do all the work herself and with friends at no cost. The government continually refused to allow her to return. Now she is being evicted from her trailer and fears she will become homeless because there is no place for working people, especially African American working and poor people, to live in New Orleans. Ms. Lewis is a strong woman who has worked her whole life. But the stress of being locked out of her apartment, living in a FEMA trailer and the possibility of being homeless brought out the tears. Thousands of other mothers and grandmothers are in the same situation.
Renting is so hard in part because there is a noose closing around the housing opportunities of New Orleans African American renters displaced by Katrina. They have been openly and directly targeted by public and private actions designed to keep them away. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just added their weight to the attack by approving the demolition of 2966 apartments in New Orleans.
Despite telling a federal judge for the last year and a half that approvals of public housing demolition applications take about 100 working days to evaluate, HUD approved the plan to demolish nearly 3000 apartments one day after the complete application was filed. HUD says the 3000 apartments are scheduled to be replaced in a few years with up to 744 public housing eligible apartments and a few hundred subsidized apartments....
New Orleans had a severe affordable housing crisis before Katrina when HANO housed over 5000 families. There was a waiting list of 8000 families trying to get in. HUD and HANO together did such a poor job of administering the agency that there were about 2000 more empty apartments that had been scheduled for major repairs for years.
The continuing deceptions by HUD and HANO have been shameless. Since Katrina, HUD has continued to act out both sides of a charade that the local housing authority is making decisions and HUD is waiting on local actions. Yet, the decision to demolish was announced by the Secretary of HUD in DC over a year ago. But in the year since then, HUD has continued to tell a federal judge that any legal challenge to demolitions was premature because HANO had not even submitted an application to HUD for their careful 100 day evaluation. This is while a HUD employee runs the agency, commuting back and forth to DC each week. HANO even announced they would have 2000 apartments ready for people in August of 2006--a deadline not met even in September 2007. HANO later announced to the public that they had a list of 250 apartments ready for people to return only to admit in writing weeks later that no such list existed--nor were the phantom apartments ready.
The list of untruths goes on.
HUD would not agree to delay the demolition of the 3000 apartments until Congress finished reviewing legislation that would give residents the right to return and participate in the process of determining what kind of affordable housing should be in place in New Orleans.
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