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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 2011)
opinion does the NAACP Remain Relevant? “Challenging People to Shape a better future now” b ernie f OSTer Founder/Publisher b Obbie D Ore f OSTer executive editor T eD b ankS advertising Manager J errY f OSTer account executive L iSa L Oving news editor b rian S TimSOn reporter D aviD k iDD graphic Designer m OniCa J. f OSTer Seattle office Coordinator J uLie k eefe S uSan f rieD Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publica- tion, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site: http://www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 the Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub - lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of the Skanner. We are not re - spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2011 the Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. knowing What’s important Can Change Your Life! Subscribe to The Skanner – don’t miss an issue! Please sign me up for: q 1 year $74 q 2 year $140 q New Subscription q Renewal ________________________ name _________________ address _________________ City _________________ State ______ ZiP ________ Phone Mail with check or money order to: The Skanner P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 C an you imagine Black Life in America if there was no NAACP? It seems that over time the group served a vital purpose for African Americans; but these days and across cultures, the NAACP is about as significant as “Members Only” jackets. At the NAACP’s 101st conven- tion, the head of the Kansas City branch got the organization’s members to pass a meaningless resolution urging people to “oppose the tea party.” Sadly, the resolution was deceitful and over- ly political. With the “Tea Party declaration” and other such tom- foolery abound, isn’t it time to address “the NAACP problem”? Black Americans have good rea- sons to be upset with the NAACP. But, in our considerations we should not be too critical of NAACP missteps. Let’s first admit that Blacks are often more com- fortable criticizing the NAACP than affirming the work they do. First, what role does the NAACP play in your life? With the declaration against the Tea Party, cries bellowed across America that the NAACP was “out of touch.” Not only was the “out of touch” narrative among White Conservatives, it resounded among masses of Blacks also. Not only is the NAACP in danger of losing its relevancy, attention is on the NAACP’s President and CEO Ben Jealous, and as to whether he has lost his way. Since taking the helm, in his efforts to highlight the NAACP, Jealous has just plain drawn the wrong kind of attention. In addition to the “exposing b uSineSS e XCHange William Reed racism in the Tea Party” gambit, Jealous & Company showed awful decision-making awarding Colin Powell its highest Image Award; the annual image awards. Jealous said: “This year’s NAACP Image Awards show was a great success. However, the advertising circulars that were supposed to appear in both the mainstream press and Black community newspapers only appeared in the mainstream (White) press.” The advertising debacle sparked a firestorm of criticism from the Black Press. Ironically, Jealous is a former employee of the Black Press - former association execu- tive director and editor of The Several strategic blunders have made people question the organization’s leadership but it is an issue of an economic injustice to Black Newspapers that has caused the most concern over Jackson Advocate. Jealous, like so many Blacks today, either forgot, or distains, where he came from. ... it’s being suggested that Whites are the ‘true victims’ of contemporary racism. This could not be any further from the truth Jealous and his racial pride and consciousness. Advertising rev- enue maintains Black Newspapers and Jealous admits that “a grave mistake was made” when advertis- ing inserts were placed only in White newspapers on the eve of New York Beacon’s Publisher Walter Smith wrote in an editorial, “We credit leaders of the NAACP with good sound judgment and common sense at least. What were they thinking when this decision was made?” We all make mistakes, so even if Jealous and his NAACP cohorts were wrong on the resolution, Powell Award and acts that look like “Whites’ ice is colder”; we must also be careful to not be equally wrong in our rebukes of them. We each need to assess as to which side of the ledger do we fall regarding whether the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and United Negro College Fund: 1) promote racism or 2) take care of their own? Many of us are at a juncture as to whether we are race-con- scious or “colorblind.” We are in moment where the national dia- logue around race hinges around the fear of Whites being taken advantage of by people of color. Whether the discussion is Affirmative Action or immigra- tion, it’s being suggested that Whites are the “true victims” of contemporary racism. This could not be any further from the truth. Black people remain dispropor- tionately poor, locked out of qual- ity neighborhoods and schools, and suffer from individual, struc- tural, and institutional racism. While the election of Obama marked a watershed moment in coalition political participation, it neither erased nor filled-in the fault line of racial inequality. Black Americans need to give more positive attention and rever- ence to the NAACP. Do you know (or care) who runs your local NAACP? For more of us to grow, we all should acknowledge and support the work the NAACP does. drug war: A Money Tree for Special interests P er BBC News, “[p]rotests in more than 20 Mexican cities against drug-related vio- lence have been interrupted by news of the discovery of 59 bod- ies.” Since President Felipe Calderon called on the military to combat drug cartels in 2006, an estimated 35,000 Mexicans have been killed, “a sign” — according to the Mexican and U.S. govern- ments — “of success in the fight against drugs.” Though Mexicans live in constant panic, daily kid- nappings, mass graves and shootouts in the streets are, in Drug War Newspeak, the best indicators of progress. However one personally regards personal use of illegal drugs like cocaine or marijuana, the prosecu- tion of the Drug War perhaps ide- ally illustrates statism’s ruling class intrigues. The structural predicates for its continued exis- tence are interwoven with some of the most powerful fixtures of the corporate economy, all milking it to line their pockets on the misery of ordinary people. Just as violent crime mush- roomed under alcohol prohibition, with Al Capone and his ilk proving an ideal counterpart for the organ- ized crime of the state, so too has drug prohibition begotten interna- tional bloodbath. Even if we regard the rationales advanced by the Empire as genuine reasons for its Drug War, the results are strik- ingly disconnected from that pur- Page 4 The Portland Skanner april 13, 2011 C4SS David D’Amato ported reasoning. Ever increasing police spending, foreign interven- tion and domestic authoritarianism have been coupled not with any marked decrease in crime or the prevalence of drugs themselves, but in a murderous struggle, unremitting and constantly to see some measurable “progress” toward the state’s goals. And the truth is that the state’s goals are being met through the Drug War, which — like the War on Terror — is devoid of any clear, defining lines or enemy. Those goals, though, don’t match the intentions we’re meant to glean from “Just Say No” ads and the D.A.R.E. cops roaming the halls of the state’s K-12 education pens. From private prisons to security, prohibitionists depend on drug dealers swelling to new proportions. For the state, serving the ends of the political class, what it is that the war is against is far less impor- tant than the fact that there is a In the same way that traditional warfare means bankable profits for defense-related contractors in the fabled “military-industrial complex,” the Drug War is a reli- he Drug War is a reliable source of income for the ruling class war, something out there that enjoins the consumption of huge piles of resources. Given both the levels of spending on the Drug War and its putative justifications, we could expect, even assuming the utmost waste and inefficiency, able source of income for the rul- ing class. Everyone has skin in the game, from Wall Street banks and huge prison companies like Corrections Corp. of America and Geo Group to drug companies like Pfizer, and the green they care about isn’t marijuana. From top to bottom the Drug War is shaped perfectly for big government and for corporate interests, enabling the clandestine “security” apparatuses of the Empire to scout new outposts for neoliberal colonialism. As Dan Russell argues in Drug War, “[T]he structural effect of the artificial value [of illegal drugs] has been to create, over the decades, an unbreakable symbio- sis between drug-dealing and covert military intelligence. Each is the greatest strategic ally of the other.” The network of important interests surrounding the Drug War is, for market anarchists, an expected and characteristic instance of the kinds of relation- ships the state creates. Institutionalized coercion around drugs — rather than the drugs in themselves — creates the extreme violence and crime we see in place like Mexico today. Only by subjecting these commodities to the mutual rewards of free exchange, away from the reach of the state, will the real criminals of the Drug War be overcome. C4SS news analyst David D’amato is a market anarchist lawyer currently completing an ll.M. in commercial law at Suffolk university law School.
