It’s Day 8 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Any rational observer (which excludes conservatives, by definition) would conclude that the so-called “War on Drugs” is misleadingly named. Not the “war” part of the construct; that part’s accurate. From the extra-constitutional surveillance, “stop-&-frisk” policing, coercive consent searches and no-knock warrants to the military equipment provided to local law enforcement by the Department of Defense (including tanks… tanks!), the tactics and weapons deployed against U.S. citizens in the drug war are indistinguishable from those deployed by the U.S. on foreign battlefields in actual wars.

Likewise, our rational (non-conservative) observer would be dead-on accurate were he/she/they to rename the entire endeavor the “War on Black (and brown, and other, but mostly Black) People Who Use Drugs.”

That this is so cannot be disputed (in reality). For the facts of the matter, see the ACLU report A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform. In it, you will learn such facts as these:

Analysis conducted by the ACLU shows that due to racial profiling and bias in marijuana enforcement, Black people are 3.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite similar usage rates. This disparity has not improved over the last decade, and in fact, disparities have actually worsened in most states.

“3.6 times more likely” is a national average. On a state level, the Black/white racial disparities can get much worse: in Montana it’s 9.6 times more likely, Illinois 7.5, and in no state is it equal or less than even. Hell, it’s 1.5 times in Colorado, where weed has been legalized since 2012. At the county level, the disparities can get much, much worse. And this is before racialized sentencing disparities factor in.

Even so, a marijuana arrest is much more than an arrest. The ACLU report also addresses what it calls the “collateral damage” that often comes along with it, including:

  • Denial of public benefits based on use, arrests, or convictions for marijuana
  • Drug tests for benefit eligibility
  • Separation of families in the child welfare system
  • Loss of driver’s licenses
  • Deportation
  • Loss of federal financial aid
  • Bans on participation in the marijuana industry for those with drug arrests
  • Felony disenfranchisement [i.e. loss of voting rights]

Taken together, the “collateral damage” accrues to the individual, families and entire communities. And we’re not talking about violent traffickers and cartel kingpins here:

Nine out of 10 of marijuana arrests are for possession. While arrests for possession have decreased nationally since 2010, the rate of decline has stagnated and, in recent years, has even reversed upward despite popular reform movements.

For the whys, the hows and the history of the matter, see the The Last Prisoner Project’s extraordinarily comprehensive and beautifully written report Criminal Injustice: Cannabis & The Rise Of The Carceral State. It tracks the intertwined threads of politics, ideology and the perverse incentives that perpetuate the racist injustices of the weed war, and is worth a read for the highlighted quotations alone.

There are many who agree that the “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal failure by virtually every measure. (To hear the ACLU tell it, a majority of Americans agree.) The cost in blood and money lost in waging it is likely incalculable at this point, to say nothing of all that “collateral damage.”

But I disagree. By certain measures, the “War on Black (and brown, and other, but mostly Black) People Who Use Drugs” has been a spectacular success. It’s not exactly a secret that there are powerful factions in the country who are going to great lengths to disenfranchise Black voters. Take a look again at the ACLU’s list of “collateral damage,” and you’ll notice that for those same powerful factions, many of the harms listed are quite openly and enthusiastically touted as features, not bugs.

I’d say this war is working out very well indeed – for conservatives.

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It so happens that today, there’s something you can do about this, at least at the federal level. I received an email from RootsAction as I was writing this:

Here’s candidate Joe Biden: “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think everyone – anyone who has a record – should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.”

We couldn’t have said it any better. In fact, it was our public pressure that compelled him to say it.

Here’s what President Joe Biden has done: ______________. Nothing! He has not pardoned a single cannabis conviction.

Join a big coalition petition by signing your name here! Let’s make this happen.

Text of Petition:

While running for President, you committed to the American people that you would expunge marijuana convictions.

Yet more than one year into office, you have not taken a single action to provide relief to those still held back by a criminal conviction.

Millions of Americans have been subjected to a marijuana-related arrest and criminal conviction. Branding these individuals as lifelong criminals serves no legitimate society purpose and results in a litany of lost opportunities including the potential loss of employment, housing, voting rights, professional licensing, and student aid.

Further delay is completely unwarranted. The time for action is now.

In November of 2019, you said “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think everyone – anyone who has a record – should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.”

This action would be a meaningful step in moving our nation beyond the harms of the senseless and cruel policy of marijuana criminalization and prohibition. Furthermore, this would set a tremendous precedent for state and local leaders to follow in your footsteps and facilitate the expungement of millions of cannabis records that were assigned under state and local criminal codes.

Please, honor your promise and take action to pardon marijuana offenses now.

ADD YOUR NAME.

GRAPHIC: Sign here button

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

________

Please sign and share if you are able and inclined.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 of Black History Month 2022 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 of Black History Month 2022 (Emmett Till) is here.
Day 4 of Black History Month 2022 (A Tale of Two Citizens) is here.
Day 5 of Black History Month 2022 (Trayvon Martin) is here.
Day 6 of Black History Month 2022 (Franchesca Ramsey) is here.
Day 7 of Black History Month 2022 (National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and the Black Aids Institute) is here.

It’s Day 7 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

Like so many ills in our society, HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects marginalized people – the very people with the fewest resources and limited access to quality treatment and care.

The Black Aids Institute is an activist organization dedicated to nothing short of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Black community. How? By “engaging and mobilizing Black institutions and individuals to confront HIV.”

BAI was founded by a Black, gay man living with HIV, a Black, gay doctor, and a Black, lesbian doctor. They established BAI in 1999 to mobilize and educate Black Americans about HIV/AIDS treatment and care.

They envisioned an organization that directly challenged the systems of oppression that marginalize Black health and that also developed culturally specific programming to address the unique needs of Black people. With a foundation in advocacy and policy work, BAI works towards improving the health and wellness of Black people through research, community efforts, and clinical work.

BAI expressly defines its work as “Blackcentric”:

Recognizing that health justice is a racial and social justice issue, BAI is deeply committed to exposing the systems and roots of oppression that marginalize Black people and exacerbate our health burden. We are revolutionizing the HIV response by centering Black experiences and perspectives to ensure that Black people can live their fullest, healthiest lives with dignity, care, and respect.

Listen to Raniyah Copeland, BAI’s President and CEO, explain in the video below the key pillars of their work, and for a detailed look at BAI’s strategy and vision, read the We The People publication here (pdf).

Finally, if you are able and inclined to contribute financially to BAI’s ambitious and visionary initiative, you can donate here.

♥

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 of Black History Month 2022 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 of Black History Month 2022 (Emmett Till) is here.
Day 4 of Black History Month 2022 (A Tale of Two Citizens) is here.
Day 5 of Black History Month 2022 (Trayvon Martin) is here.
Day 6 of Black History Month 2022 (Franchesca Ramsey) is here.

It’s Day 3 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen. UPDATED.

[CONTENT NOTE: racially motivated kidnapping and lynching of a Black minor. No violent images appear in this post, however such image(s) can be found in at least one of the links contained herein. This post contains an image of the victim’s mother and others mourning at his funeral.]

Today we’re going to STFU and listen to a cousin of Emmett Till, a 14-year old boy who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered 66 years ago. A particular excerpt I wish to highlight is this:

The past has not passed. Lynchings like Ahmaud Arbery’s, Breonna Taylor’s, and George Floyd’s are very much reflective of what happened to our cousin Emmett. There is a clear connection between past injustices and the injustices that continue to this day. We won’t stop fighting. It is our duty to not allow the lives of those stolen by hate to be in vain.

Of all of the images I looked at in learning about Emmett Till, one struck me the most. It is a photo of griefstricken mourners at Emmett Till’s funeral, including his extraordinary mother Mamie Carthan Till-Mobley. I believe the reason it resonated so strongly with me is that I have seen that grief in the faces of friends and relatives of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many, many more.

The video for HELL YOU TALMBOUT by Janelle Monáe, Deep Cotton, St. Beauty, Jidenna, Roman GianArthur, and George 2.0 is over six years old, years before the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. It is at least as relevant today as it was then, and it mentions Emmett Till.

#sayhisname

The photo taken at Till’s funeral, the HELL YOU TALMBOUT video and the rest of the message from Deborah Watts, Emmett Till’s cousin and co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation below the cut.

[Read more…]

It’s Day 2 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today, we’re going to STFU and listen to Mallence Bart-Williams. She gave this TEDx talk in Berlin in 2015, and it has both haunted and inspired me since I first viewed it. In 2016 I made a transcript and posted it on my old blog; comments on that post have continued to trickle in over the years, many of them from Africans.

I said this yesterday, but it’s worth repeating. If this makes you uncomfortable (and it certainly seems to unsettle the overwhelmingly white audience in Berlin) then please sit with that discomfort, and learn everything you can from it.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 is here.

MLK Day 2022: A Different Voice.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, a federal holiday.

As longtime readers may recall, it has long been my tradition to post one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lesser-known speeches: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. He spoke these words at Manhattan’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated at the age of 39. If you are not familiar with it, you can read the speech here, along with some of my thoughts on why it is so important, and still very relevant today.

Go ahead. I’ll wait here…

Oh good! You’re back! (I love you people. ♥)

This year, I thought I’d do something different. I would like to post instead some of the words of Bernice Albertine King.

Bernice A. King, Chief Executive Officer of the King Center and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, in Austin, Texas on April 9, 2014. She is pictured reading a quote from her father, before remarks by former President Bill Clinton.Bernice A. King, lawyer, minister, CEO of The King Center in Atlanta and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
She is pictured here reading a quote from her father before remarks by former President Bill Clinton, in Austin, Texas on April 9, 2014.
(Photo: Eric Draper, via LBJ Foundation under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

Bernice King is the youngest child of the Reverend Doctor and Coretta Scott King. She was 5 years old when her father was killed. Her activism has followed in the footsteps of both of her formidable.

Bernice King is a Christian minister, like her father. Also like her father, she tethers the religious ideas in her speeches to secular ideas of justice, compassion and love. And as I’ve noted before, this practice functions to bolster arguments for the religious-minded, but it neither negates nor replaces secular ones.

Speaking as a die-hard atheist, I believe without a doubt that I have more in common with the values of Beatrice King than I do with many prominent atheists. (If you’re a regular reader on this network, as especially if you’re a longtime fan of PZ’s, you know likely know exactly who I’m talking about. And if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.) I also believe in the critical importance of boosting Black voices, particularly Black women’s voices.

See if you don’t agree that Bernice King’s voice speaks as powerfully to the Social Justice Warrior in you as it does to me.

[Read more…]

Mexico! 🎉

(via e-mail breaking news alert):

Mexico decriminalizes abortion, a dramatic step in the world’s second-biggest Catholic country

The [Mexican] Supreme Court’s decision makes Mexico the most populous country in Latin America to permit the procedure. The ruling comes as Texas, just across the border, tightens restrictions. The decision reflects activism by a powerful feminist movement, as well as concern about women dying or suffering harm from illegal abortions.

Read more [@ WaPo]

While this Republicans (politicians and citizens alike) become more like the Taliban every day, a “powerful feminist movement” in Mexico has succeeded in moving the needle in the opposite direction. And they did so by centering those who are dying and being maimed by illegal abortions – a terrible price to pay for the living to obtain the basic human right to bodily autonomy.

But it’s just not “civil” to discuss such ugliness in polite society! We simply must keep the discourse around abortion rights calm, reasoned and as removed from reality as possible, as we sit around discussing abstract concepts like “choice” over tea. Because that’s really been working so well for us! [/snark]

Wasn’t I just ranting about this very thing on Sunday? Why, yes! Yes I was!

And I said:

The only thing “civil” attempts at persuasion accomplish is allowing sadistic misogynists to continue pretending that picture [of Geraldine Santoro taken in 1964 by police who found her dead after a botched attempt at self-aborting] does not capture exactly what they are doing.

I wonder how many (more) unnecessary deaths and senseless maimings it will take for U.S. Republicans to reverse course? It seems we will also need a powerful feminist movement. More powerful, even, than the Catholic Church in Mexico.

Anybody got one of those lying around?

I write letters to the president.

You know, sometimes I get it in my head that it’s worth taking five minutes of my finite existence to do something utterly and pathetically futile, just because I will feel better having done so, and because I can (<–no small thing, that).

Dear Mr. President:

For what it costs in both tax dollars and lives, here and abroad, perhaps you might consider upending the entire U.S. military paradigm. Humanitarian aid, even to our “enemies” would be far cheaper, far less inhumane, and far more likely to settle conflicts with a WIN-WIN.

For just one example, why not provide Palestinians the same amount of aid we give to Israel without accountability, in the form of rebuilding and improving their destroyed infrastructure, including creating world-class healthcare facilities that all people in the region would have access to?

Think outside the box, because the box is making a darker world and suffocating all of us.

-Iris Vander Pluym

Hey, I never said they were good letters.

Have a go at it yourself: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/