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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 28, 2018)
Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle November 28, 2018 ® Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Criminal Justice Reform Long Overdue for Black America Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher A Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2017 MERIT AWARD WINNER The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com 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. ©2018 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS n F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n d ay ! • L i ke u s o ac it Updated daily. to y • Opinion s a member of the infa- mous Wilmington Ten case in North Caroli- na from 1972 to 2012, I witnessed firsthand why the criminal justice system in the United States needed to be thoroughly reformed. We had been unjustly sentenced in 1972 to a combined total of 282 years in prison for stand- ing up for equal quality edu- cation for Black students in the public school system in Wilmington, NC in 1971. For 40 long years, until North Carolina Governor Bev- erly Perdue signed “Pardons of Innocence” documents for each member of the Wilming- ton Ten, the issues of unjust and disproportionate mass incarceration, bail reform, racism in the judiciary, pros- ecutorial misconduct, and reentry challenges were not matters of partisanship, but were matters of fundamental civil and human rights. Thanks to the National Newspaper Publishers As- sociation (NNPA), Nation- al Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People (NAACP), the United Church of Christ (UCC), the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARP), Amnesty International and millions of people across the U.S. and throughout the world, we finally received a modicum of justice with the Pardons of Innocence being Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. NNPA President and CEO issued on December 31, 2012. In the wake of the recent 2018 Midterm Elections, there now appears to be a more bipartisan interest and com- mitment in the achievement of significant criminal justice reform in America. Earlier this year, the House of Repre- “ There now appears to be a more bipar- tisan interest and commit- ment in the achievement of significant criminal jus- tice reform sentatives finally passed the First Step Act with biparti- san support. The legislation establishes the initial steps for criminal justice reform at the federal level. Just last week, even President Trump announced his support of the First Step Act. However, what the U.S. Senate will do is still an open question. The U.S. Congress should ex- pedite passing the First Step Act as well as other criminal justice reform legislation. For Black America in particular, this remains an urgent and crucial public policy objec- tive. Of the current 2.2 million people incarcerated in the nation’s prisons and jails, a disproportionate number are African Americans and other people of color. According to a 2018 Pew Research Study, in 2016 African Americans represented 12 percent of the U.S. adult population but 33 percent of the sentenced pris- on population. The ACLU re- ports that African American men are six times more likely to be incarcerated as White men in the U.S. According to the NAACP’s Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, African American women are imprisoned at twice the rate of White women. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported in 2018 that 38 percent of prison inmates are African Ameri- can. But we need to do more than merely stating the statistics of criminal justice that bear witness to the racial, social, and economic inequities and injustices. We need solutions. We need more research about the successful programs and projects that can prevent mass incarceration while we emphasize the urgency for criminal justice reform leg- islation at both the federal and state levels. We also need more effective programs for the hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people prepar- ing to reenter society without the counterproductivity of recidivism. I have served on panel discussions amicably with Mark Holden, general coun- sel of Koch Industries, who also supports the First Step Act, a bill grounded in evi- dence-based and data-driven practices that we know keep communities safe and pro- vide people with the second chances they need to lead pro- ductive lives. The bill specif- ically provides programs to help reduce the risk that pris- oners will recidivate upon re- lease from prison. Mark and I are on the same page on the issues of reentry and the need to reduce systemic reincar- ceration. In fact, Koch Industries has been funding criminal jus- tice reform efforts for more than a decade and was one of the first major corporations in the U.S. to “ban the box” by removing questions about criminal history on its em- ployment applications. Other corporate leaders should also “ban the box.” Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com Can a Woman’s Coalition Survive Petulant White Women? I have had about enough of some White women! First, 53 percent of them vote for an odious genital-grabber. Then, they organize a wom- an’s march with momentum from the #MeToo movement, founded by Tarana Burke, but co-opted by White wom- en like the wannabe activist Alyssa Milano who was a mediocre actress back in the day. Then, bunches of them support Roy Moore, an Ala- bama pedophile who would be Senator. Then the majority of them vote against progres- sive candidates like Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and Florida’s Andrew Gillum. Meanwhile, the four women who lead the Women’s March – Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sar- sour, and Carmen Perez – are organizing for a January 19 march, and the self-pro- claimed “founder” is demand- ing their resignation. Really? Theresa Shook is the Hawaii grandmother who put an idea on Facebook in the wake of the 2016 election. “We should march,” she said. She did little else, and activist Bob Bland picked up the baton and ran with it. She recruited other women, seasoned activists in their own right. Tamika Mal- lory had led a march from New York to DC to stop gun violence. Carmen Perez has worked on criminal justice Julianne Malveaux NNPA Columnist reform and has worked on Harry Belafonte’s Gathering for Justice, now serving as its Executive Director. Linda Sarsour, a former executive director of the Arab Ameri- can Association of New York, “ White peo- ple’s hatred for Minister Farrakhan is irrational and, might I say, racist has worked with Black Lives Matter and on police brutal- ity issues. The four co-chairs of the Women’s March are the very picture of intersec- tionality and multicultural cooperation – White, Black, Latina, and Palestinian, they are the rainbow! So where does Teresa Shook get off asking these women to step down from a move- ment they built? She, along with wannabe activist and has-been actress Alyssa Mi- lano have demanded that the women’s march leaders “de- nounce” National of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan. Why? They object to his an- ti-Semitic rhetoric. They ob- ject to the fact that Tamika Mallory attended his annual Savior’s Day this year. They say that anti-Semitism is hate- ful and dangerous, and they are right. But it wasn’t the Nation of Islam that shot up the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh! White people’s hatred for Minister Farra- khan is irrational and, might I say, racist. He is the only person, the only human being that Congress has censured. No David Duke, no Charlot- tesville murderers, none of the hatemongers that have caused the racist tension in our nation. Just Minister Far- rakhan. But then our society is consistent with its double standards and its demands that Black people bend over backward to prove that we, too, sing America. With the fraught history be- tween Black and White wom- en, with their complicity in our rapes, and in the lynching of Black men, White wom- en have no right to demand anything of Black women, let alone that leaders like Tamika Mallory “denounce” Minister Farrakhan. For the record, the Minister, a man who has the unique power to galva- nize Black people, especial- ly Black men, really doesn’t care what people outside of the Nation of Islam, think of him. He understands this na- tion so well that he would ac- cept any “denouncement” and keep it moving. But anyone demanding a denouncement of Farrakhan has no knowl- edge of American history, of African American history, of context, or of the unequal treatment that African Amer- ican people experience that is a constant in our nation. And White women have consis- tently had little empathy for the way history has treated Black women. Shook and Milano remind me of antebellum White women, hoop skirts and all, stomping their feet when they don’t get their way. Milano says she won’t speak if Tami- ka Mallory doesn’t denounce Farrakhan. So, stay home, Alyssa. We won’t miss you. Other White women say they won’t march. Hundreds of thousands of others will. And Teresa Shook, the so-called founder, says she is demand- ing resignations. What is she going to do if she doesn’t get them? Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
