People Before Profit blog

South Carolinians facing tough times, but think politicians won’t help

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 12:20:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, S.C., Feb. 27 - In South Carolina, voters and non-voters alike see themselves and their neighbors facing hard times. But many of those we talked with feel that they are on their own; few looked to Saturday's primary election for a solution to their most pressing problems. A large number of voters who spoke to People's World, especially the young, say they haven't quite connected with the voting process.

Starting in the parking lot of a grocery store, we interviewed some people of voting age in this historic city on the Democratic primary election day, during the Saturday morning shopping rush. Either soda was on sale at the Bi Lo or Charlestonians had big party plans for the weekend, but for whatever reason shoppers in the parking lot of the former Piggly Wiggly seemed to all be loading up their trunks with cases of Coke and Sprite. We asked them about their voting plans in that day's Democratic primary.

Hayden, a white man in his thirties wearing a baseball cap, said he has never voted and doesn't intend to now. "I don't know about it so I shouldn't vote," he said. His wiry build reflects the business he says he is trying to build as a landscaper and welder. "I've got a lot going on." Hayden thinks getting a good job is the main concern for people like him. "I guess voting would impact jobs, " he concedes, then adds out of nowhere, "I think Trump is an asshole."

Juanita, who said she works for a housekeeping service, unbuckled the seatbelt of her seven-year-old son. She wants change in general, she said, in everything. She's concerned about education in general, although she's happy with Jason's school. Her big issue is immigration: Juanita thinks people who are here should be allowed to stay. She said she is not familiar with the "Fight for 15" campaign, but thinks the minimum wage should be raised. "How can you get everything you need if you're not getting paid enough when everything is so expensive?" She volunteers that she's leaning toward Bernie Sanders. She says she intends to vote, but doesn't appear to have made plans for it. She said she doesn't know her polling location or hours; when pressed, she said she might look it up on Google.

Luther Johnson methodically packed six bags of groceries in and around his moped. The African American disabled Vietnam veteran said he had already voted because, "I've got the right to." But Johnson expressed little confidence: "These people are going to do what they're going to do."

Bill, a middle aged white man, said his main concern is taxes. Pressed for more as he struggled to pop open the trunk of his small Hyundai, Bill said "payroll taxes. Need a cut for the poor." Asked whether he thought the taxes for the rich should be raised, Bill glanced to his right and left as he responded: "I don't have an opinion about that."

Brendan isn't a shopper, but a vendor, selling and supplying beer to the store. He described his main concern as "Medicaid" but he clarified that he was really referring to his costs under the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which he said are currently $250/week. In fact, this number equals the total of deductions and withholding from his pay, but he is focused on what the Obamacare individual mandate requires. "It should be your decision on health care," the African American contractor said. Brendan said he knew where to vote, but didn't know when the polls close and was working Saturday.

"Yes, I voted in the Republican primary last week," says Ann, a petite white woman. "I'd like to see some unity," she says. "I'd like to see us working together as a nation. Both sides need to swallow their pride and think about the country as a whole. " What challenges are facing the state? Education and the economy. She thinks things are ok in Charleston, but that a lot of small towns across the state "don't have the advantages we have here."

We spoke to an African American couple wearing small blue "I voted" stickers. The wife said there are two changes she hopes to see out of the election: one, for Hillary Clinton to win, and two, "middle-class family issues. The rich are getting richer, and the middle class is having money taken from it from both sides." A social worker, she added that "really poor people can't get help. We have to help the poor." If Hillary Clinton becomes president, one change she hopes to see is in the state's policy toward health care. "South Carolina didn't want to accept what Obama offered." But she said she's not sure what Clinton could do that Obama didn't to get the state on board with Obamacare.

Jessica, a thirty-ish African American woman, said she works in shipping in Hollywood, SC. "Education sucks currently," she said. She said she wants a president who "focuses on early childhood development, women's rights, stricter laws for sexual abuse and police brutality."

Tim, a middle-aged construction worker with riveting blue eyes, said he would be working Saturday and named taxes as his biggest issue. Pressed to elaborate on which taxes he sees as a problem, he said he would do away with property taxes. He had been leaning toward Trump, because he likes "the way he operates. He's a billionaire, so he must be smart and business-wise." However, Tim said he had recently begun reconsidering because Trump was "off the chain talking bad stuff about people." Anyway, he wouldn't be voting today: "I have no time to vote," he said.

At a strip mall featuring a Starbucks, a young white man named Cameron said he works as a legal assistant. He admits he didn't vote last time. But this year he's decided that it's important for people's voices to be heard. Public education needs better funding, he said, and adds South Carolina had a surplus last year that could help that. Cameron mentions the state's racial tensions as another issue, but said he is uncomfortable discussing it. "You know, the church shooting we had, but I don't like to talk about that." Cameron says he's supporting Bernie.

We talked with a few more people of voting age at a McDonald's at a highway rest stop. Although it was voting day, two middle-aged white construction workers didn't seem to be in a hurry to finish their lunch break. "We've already worked over 60 hours this week, and we're working tomorrow too," one said. "We don't have time to vote."

Jeff has worked at this location for 2 years. Older than the rest of the crew, his light brown hair is just beginning to turn gray and he answers from behind thick-framed glasses. He said he has heard of the "Fight for 15" campaign, but doesn't support it. He said he would like a raise in pay, but thinks that much might cost jobs if higher prices make people stop patronizing the fast food giant. He doesn't see a connection between his pay and the election. It doesn't manner anyway, Jeff added, because he isn't planning on voting since he'll be working all day.

At the Best Buy, we speak with Russell, who appears regretful that he won't be voting today. Somehow when he registered to vote at the DMV, it didn't take. But he thinks he may vote in November. "I've been thinking about Bernie [Sanders]," he said. "He has good ideas, but no power." He says South Carolina's problem used to be the lack of jobs, but now that Boeing has opened a new facility in North Charleston, he thinks people have other concerns.

Politicians like to say that elections have consequences; but here in South Carolina, the people we talked to say the voting process has little to do with the daily grind of working to survive. Their comments reveal just how much more work the candidates will need to do to connect their political agendas with the real, pressing needs of the electorate.

Photo: Customers at the Bi Lo in Charleston, S.C. were asked about their voting plans in the Democratic primary. | Brandon H./Yelp

African-American voters give Clinton a landslide win in South Carolina

Sun, 28 Feb 2016 20:12:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, S.C. - In the South Carolina Democratic Party presidential primary held here yesterday, voters chose Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders by a landslide. Clinton received 73.5 percent of the votes; Sanders got 26.

Sixty-two percent of the voters were African American. Eighty-four percent cast ballots for Clinton. Among white voters, Sanders lost by 53 to 47 percent.

In 2008, Clinton lost the South Carolina primary vote to Barack Obama 55 percent to 26 percent. Yesterday, 74 percent of all voters said they wanted a presidential candidate who would continue Obama's policies. Eight-one percent of those voters chose Clinton.

Sanders carried the 17 percent of voters who said they want the next president to be more liberal than Obama.

Including her win in South Carolina, Clinton now has a total of 544 delegates pledged to vote for her at the Democratic National Convention this coming July. Of that, 453 are "super delegates" who are free to change their minds at any time. Sanders has a total of 85 delegates, including 20 super delegates. It will take 2,383 delegates to win the presidential nomination.

Eight hundred sixty-five delegates will be up for grabs this coming Tuesday, March 1, when 16 states hold primaries.

Making Hillary "a better candidate."

Over the past several months both Clinton and Sanders crisscrossed South Carolina to meet with African-American ministers, political leaders and students.

Three years ago Sanders met with Donna DeWitt, then-president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO. She says "he wanted to better understand why so many low income white workers vote against their own self-interest."

Only 2.1 percent of all workers in South Carolina belong to unions, making it the state with the lowest percentage of organized workers.

Forty-nine percent of the voters in the Democratic primary said they are "moderate to conservative."

Jim Clyburn, South Carolina's only Democratic U.S. representative and a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus, endorsed Clinton. He wrote in a widely read op-ed that "Hillary ... [has] concrete plans" for dealing with problems faced by communities of color in South Carolina.

"Our state," he wrote, "is still scarred with too many pockets of poverty ... . In rural areas many poor and minority residents have been neglected for decades and are struggling against nearly impossible odds trying to pull themselves out of poverty."

Clyburn's endorsement concluded by stating that "Hillary Clinton is a fighter, and she'll keep fighting for what's right. With her in the White House, my spouse, daughters and granddaughters will have a reason to be proud, and so will yours."

The Clinton and Sanders South Carolina campaigns were noticeably free of negative attacks against each other.

In her victory speech, Clinton echoed many of the positions being taken by Sanders.

She pledged that if elected president she would take action against corporations that "rip off their employees" or "go oversees to avoid taxes." She blasted prescription drug companies that "out of greed ... triple their prices."

She also said that "no bank is too big to fail and no executive is too big to jail.

"Together," she said, "we can break down all the barriers holding our families and our country back."

TV commentator Bakari Sellers, a well-respected former member of South Carolina's House of Representatives, campaigned for Clinton, writing that "My vote goes to someone who supports President Obama and intends to wholly and ambitiously build on his legacy."

However, he also wrote that "Bernie Sanders means well, and his calls for income equality rightly resonate with Democratic voters."

Moreover, while reporting the results of the primary on CNN, Sellers said that "Sanders has made Clinton a much better candidate."

He added, "We will need every part of the Democratic Party to come out against hate" in the November general election.

Photo: Hillary Clinton. Pat Sullivan | AP

South Carolina voters want to reverse damage by GOP state government

Sat, 27 Feb 2016 21:15:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Up to the eve of the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, union representatives and leaders of the African-American community were redoubling their efforts to get out the vote, no matter if they supported Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.

The majority of South Carolinians who vote Democratic are African Americans. Many are impatient for a president who can work effectively to reverse policies imposed by the Republican-led state government.

The people of South Carolina desperately need better paying jobs, more accessible health care and better schools.

"White supremacy is still ruling and controlling our lives," Muhiyidin d'Baha, a Black Lives Matter leader, said in a recent television interview. "The way our schools are organized, the gentrification, is just a continuation of the dehumanization that's been going on for a long time."

D'Baha discussed the murder of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, by a police officer and the killing of nine African American worshippers in the Emmanuel AME church.

"The impact [on the black community] is the same," he said, "whether it's violence enforced by law or not. It's victimization."

The evening before the primary, Clinton and Sanders both held rallies at Historically Black Universities almost next door to each other in Orangeburg.

The racial wealth gap

"Dems should focus on the racial wealth gap," wrote Bernie Mazyck and Jeremie Greer in the Charleston Post and Courier. "The median net worth of white households [in South Carolina] is $133,683. The median net worth of black households is $14,413." Mazyck and Greer are CEOs of community and development organizations.

They explained that "One of the greatest contributors to the creation and expansion of this divide has been federal policy. For example, by allowing states to opt out of expanding Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act has created a health care gap that is disproportionately impacting individuals of color."

Cleveland Sellers, the president of Voorhees College in Bamberg County and a key SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) organizer in the 1960s, said that because South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley refused to accept federal Medicaid expansion funds, the county hospital had to shut down. The community was promised an emergency care clinic, but that quickly closed, too.

Over 60 percent of the county's population is African American.

"There is no OB-GYN in Bamberg County or surrounding counties," Sellers said. "You have to drive for over an hour to get to one. And if you need major care, they have to take you by helicopter to the nearest hospital." He has been a leader of the Clinton for President campaign across the state.

Speaking at a rally supporting Sanders, State Representative Justin Bamberg, said that his cousin was recently in a traffic accident in Bamberg County and died because he could not get the care he needed quickly enough.

Sellers said that 42 out of 83 school districts in South Carolina filed a court suit against the state demanding equal funding. The state constitution says that all South Carolina schools have to provide "minimally adequate" educational opportunities for students but districts suing the state were not even able to meet that low standard. The court has ordered the state to re-evaluate its educational standards.

Wasted surplus

Meanwhile, South Carolina has a surplus of some $400 million.

"Instead of spending this money on schools or healthcare," Sellers says, "Governor Haley is using the money for tax cuts for the wealthy."

Sellers believes that Hillary Clinton is the candidate best able to fight such policies.

Adam Brown, IBEW Local 776 apprentice instructor, says that South Carolina's anti-union, "right-to-work" policies contribute to making it difficult for working people to make ends meet.

In 2014, South Carolina was the state with the lowest percentage of union members in its work force, 2.1 percent.

To help build a stronger labor movement, Local 776 has assigned Office Administrator Erin McKee to act as a voter registrar. She has been very successful.

"I don't know if I'd say that people are voting because they're excited or terrified," she said.

"The thought of Republicans getting in and what they'll do to labor is what's terrifying."

Donna DeWitt, president emeritus of the South Carolina AFL-CIO and a leader of South Carolina Labor for Bernie, says that the main problem the State of South Carolina faces is "lack of class consciousness."

She says that too many poor and working people in the state vote against their own self-interest because they don't want to unite with workers of another race. "We all have to understand there are consequences when working people are collaborating."

One answer, she says, is to encourage "dialogues among workers about race."

DeWitt is supporting Bernie Sanders because she feels that he is helping working people see their real self interest and helping to create an atmosphere in which candid discussions about race can take place.

Jim Campbell, who has worked in the Civil Rights Movement since the 1950s says "Bernie is doing a great job educating people that America must go beyond having just democratic procedures .We must build a substantive democracy, which is democratic socialism.

"However," Campbell explains, "after education comes mobilization and then organization.

"We must patiently do all the work helping to build a grassroots, rank and file movement or we will never build a better society."

Campbell says that "Hillary Clinton will lay down the rich soil where the seeds of democratic socialism can grow strong."

Photo: South Carolina had problems with crumbling roads and bridges and old drinking water systems and dams, and historic 2015 floods. The state faces what will likely be hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of bills to fix washed out roads and bridges and destroyed dams. Chuck Burton | AP file photo

New study enumerates barriers to those with criminal records

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 12:58:00 +0000

SEATTLE - The Alliance for a Just Society, a nationwide network of social justice organizations, released a study Feb. 23 that enumerated many barriers those with criminal records have to navigate in order to "attain a measure of financial stability." The results shed light on how "tough" criminal justice policies can ruin a person's life long after they've paid their debt to society.

Criminal justice not withstanding, the 44-page report cites an earlier Alliance for a Just Society document that found that for every job that pays $15/hour there are seven job seekers. Add onto that the fact that the average state has approximately 123 restrictions for those with felonies and you have a recipe for poverty, not to mention "discretionary restrictions and restrictions for non-felony records."

The detrimental effect of a criminal record doesn't end with jobs. Food stamps and affordable housing restrictions also dog ex-convicts' ability to reintegrate into society.

Altogether, these restrictions have an outsized effect on people of color.

"Though people of color make up 39 percent of the total population, they make up two-thirds of all state and federal prisoners..... One in 87 white men are currently incarcerated, black men and Latinos have significantly higher rates of one in 12 and one in 36, respectively."

The study found that, "in total, there are over 6,000 mandatory employment restrictions for felonies," with each state having "at least 41 mandatory restrictions on record, and several states having more than two hundred."

Among the most commonly restricted occupations are categories like law enforcement, health care and legal services, all of which have an average wage above $15 an hour.

"These categories also include employment in the top 60 occupations with the most projected job openings, like licensed vocational nurses, police officers, and lawyers. Restrictions in these occupations can impose a significant burden and restrict higher-wage employment for those with conviction records."

The study goes on to break down the state-level restrictions of selected states. Among them, Hawaii, North Dakota and Utah which tie for state with the fewest restrictions, to Louisiana which "far exceeds the number of restrictions in any other state, with 389 mandatory restrictions."

Alliance for a Just Society ends its study with prescriptions for legislative action to ease the lives of those who have done their time. Among their suggestions is the elimination of lifetime legislative bans to employment, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and "banning the box."

"Banning the box" refers to ending the employment practice of asking for a potential employee's felony status on the job application. The movement that has risen up around this issue has succeeded in passing such ordinances in thirteen states, as well as at the company level at corporations such as Target.

"Expanding job opportunities for workers with prior records is fair for our society and smart for our economy," said Paul Heroux. "Making sure the path to employment is not blocked for people with records will restore dignity and hope to our communities. I should know. It made all the difference in the world to me." Paul Heroux is a semi-retired painter/handyman, a felon rights advocate, and a veteran of the prison system.

Main Street Alliance, a network of small-businesses for social justice, have been organizing around the issue of disenfranchisement from the employer's perspective.

"Having a criminal record doesn't mean you're a bad employee. In my experience, people with criminal records are often model employees. They are frequently the most dedicated and conscientious. A lot of doors are shut to them, so when someone gives them an opportunity, they make the most of it," said Jim Houser, owner of Hawthorne Auto Clinic in Portland, Oregon. He is a member of the Main Street Alliance National Executive Committee.

"As a small business owner, I know that when people have opportunities to succeed, the local community and economy thrives- and in turn, my company thrives."

Angela and Fania Davis on the radical work of healing

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:44:00 +0000

This interview is reprinted with permission from YES! magazine.

Angela Davis and her sister Fania Davis were working for social justice before many of today's activists were born. From their childhood in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, where their friends were victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, to their association with the Black Panther Party and the Communist Party, to their work countering the prison-industrial complex, their lives have centered on lifting up the rights of African Americans.

In 1969, Angela Davis was fired from her teaching position at UCLA because of her membership in the Communist Party. She was later accused of playing a supporting role in a courtroom kidnapping that resulted in four deaths. The international campaign to secure her release from prison was led by, among others, her sister Fania. Angela was eventually acquitted and continues to advocate for criminal justice reform.

Inspired by Angela's defense attorneys, Fania became a civil rights lawyer in the late 1970s and practiced into the mid-1990s, when she enrolled in an indigenous studies program at the California Institute of Integral Studies and studied with a Zulu healer in South Africa. Upon her return, she founded Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. Today, she is calling for a truth and reconciliation process focused on the historic racial trauma that continues to haunt the United States.

Sarah van Gelder: You were both activists from a very young age. I'm wondering how your activism grew out of your family life, and how you talked about it between the two of you.

Fania Davis: When I was still a toddler, our family moved into a neighborhood that had been all white. That neighborhood came to be known as Dynamite Hill because black families moving in were harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. Our home was never bombed, but homes around us were.

Angela Davis: Fania is probably too young to remember this, but I remember that strange sounds would be heard outside, and my father would go up to the bedroom and get his gun out of the drawer, and go outside and check to see whether the Ku Klux Klan had planted a bomb in the bushes. That was a part of our daily lives.

Many people assume that the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was a singular event, but actually there were bombings and burnings all the time. When I was 11 and Fania was 7, the church we attended, the First Congregational Church, was burned. I was a member of an interracial discussion group there, and the church was burned as a result of that group.

We grew up in an atmosphere of terror. And today, with all the discussion about terror, I think it's important to recognize that there were reigns of terror throughout the 20th century.

Sarah: So where were you when you heard the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing had happened?

Fania: I was attending high school in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. And I didn't take no stuff from nobody. I was always talking about James Baldwin or Malcolm X, and always bringing up issues of racial equity and justice.

I heard about the bombing when my mother told me that one of the girls' mother had called her up-because they were close friends-and said, "There's been a bombing at the church. Come and ride down with me so we can get Carole, because Carole's at church today." And they drive down there together, and she finds that there is no Carole, she's been ... there's no body even. I think it fueled this fire, the fire of anger and just made me determined to fight injustice with all of the energy and strength that I could muster.

Sarah: Can you say more about what everyday life was like for you growing up?

Angela: We went to segregated schools, libraries, churches. We went to segregated everything!

Fania: Of course, in some ways it was a good thing that we were very tight as a black community.

When we went outside of our homes and communities, the social messaging was that you're inferior: You don't deserve to go to this amusement park because of your color or to eat when you go downtown shopping. You must sit in the back of the bus.

At the same time, at home, our mother always told us, "Don't listen to what they say! Don't let anybody ever tell you that you're less than they are."

And so I found myself-even as a 10-year-old-just going into the white bathrooms and drinking out of the white water fountains, because from a very early age I had a fierce sense of right and wrong. My mother would be shopping somewhere else in the store, and before she knew it, the police were called.

Sarah: Let's skip ahead to when it became clear that you, Angela, were going to need a whole movement in your defense. And Fania, you ended up spending years defending her.

Fania: Yeah, about two years.

Angela: In 1969, I was fired from a position in the philosophy department at UCLA. That's when all the problems started, and I would get threats like every single day. I was under attack only because of my membership in the Communist Party.

Fania: Angela had been very involved with prison-rights activism at the time, leading demonstrations up and down the state. And then she was all over the news: "Communist Fired From Teaching at UCLA," you know, "Black Power Radical."

Angela: Then in August 1970, I was charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. And so I had to go underground. I found my way to Chicago, then to New York and Florida, and finally I was arrested in New York in October. It was during the time that I was underground that the campaign really began to develop.

Sarah: So, Fania, when did you turn your focus to supporting your sister's cause?

Fania: The night before I left Cuba, I found out that she had been captured. So instead of going home to California, I immediately went to where Angela was in the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village.

Angela: All of my friends and comrades began to build the campaign. Once I was arrested and extradited, they all moved up to the Bay Area.

We were active in the Communist Party, and, you know, whatever criticisms one might have of the Communist Party, we could go anywhere in the world and find people with whom we had some kinship, and people opened their homes.

It was the Party that was the core of the organizing for my release, and the movement was taken up by students on campus and church people.

This happened all over the world. Every time I visit a place for the first time, I always find myself having to thank people who come up to me and say, "We were involved in your case."

Sarah: Did you know that there was that kind of support happening?

Angela: I knew, and I didn't know. I knew abstractly, but Fania was the one who traveled and actually got to witness it.

Fania: Yeah, I was speaking to 60,000 people in France and 20,000 in Rome, London, and East and West Germany, all over the world, and seeing this massive movement to free her.

Angela: It was an exciting era because people really did believe that revolutionary change was possible. Countries were getting their independence, and the liberation movements were going on, and there was this hope all over the world that we would bring an end to capitalism. And I think that I was fortunate to have been singled out at a moment of conjuncture of a whole number of things.

Sarah: Your work since that time has centered on the criminal justice system. Are you both prison abolitionists?

Angela: Oh, absolutely. And it's exciting to see that the notion of abolition is being broadly embraced not only as a way to address overincarceration, but as a way to imagine a different society that no longer relies on repressive efforts of violence and incarceration.

Abolition has its origin in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and the idea that slavery itself was dismantled, but the means of addressing the consequences of that institution were never developed. In the late 1800s, there was a brief period of radical reconstruction that shows us the promise of what might have been. Black people were able to generate some economic power, start newspapers and all kinds of businesses. But all of this was destroyed with the reversal of Reconstruction and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1880s.

Fania: Yeah, we abolished the institution of slavery, but then it was replaced by sharecropping, Jim Crow, lynching, convict leasing. The essence of the racial violence and trauma that we saw in the institution of slavery and in those successive institutions continues today in the form of mass incarceration and deadly police practices.

Angela: We're taking up struggles that link us to the anti-slavery abolitionists, and the institution of the prison and the death penalty are the most obvious examples of the ways in which slavery has continued to haunt our society. So it's not only about getting rid of mass incarceration, although that's important. It's about transforming the entire society.

Sarah: How might restorative justice help with this transformation?

Fania: A lot of people think that restorative justice can only address interpersonal harm-and it's very successful in that. But the truth and reconciliation model is one that's supposed to address mass harm-to heal the wounds of structural violence. We've seen that at work in about 40 different nations; the most well-known is, of course, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In South Africa, the commission invited victims of apartheid to testify, and, for the first time ever, they told their stories publicly. It was on all the radio stations, in all the newspapers, it was all over the television, so people would come home and tune in and learn things about apartheid that they had never known before. There was an intense national discussion going on, and people who were harmed felt vindicated in some way.

That kind of thing can happen here, also, through a truth and reconciliation process. In addition to that sort of hearing commission structure, there could be circles happening on the local levels-circles between, say, persons who were victims of violence and the persons who caused them harm.

Angela: How does one imagine accountability for someone representing the state who has committed unspeakable acts of violence? If we simply rely on the old form of sending them to prison or the death penalty, I think we end up reproducing the very process that we're trying to challenge.

So maybe can we talk about restorative justice more broadly? Many of the campaigns initially called for the prosecution of the police officer, and it seems to me that we can learn from restorative justice and think about alternatives.

Sarah: Fania, you told me when we talked last year that your work on restorative justice actually came about after you went through a personal transition period in the mid-1990s, when you decided to shift gears.

Fania: I reached a point where I felt out of balance from all of the anger, the fighting, from a kind of hypermasculine way of being that I had to adopt to be a successful trial lawyer. And also from around 30 years of the hyperaggressive stance that I was compelled to take as an activist-from being against this and against that, and fighting this and fighting that.

Intuitively, I realized that I needed an infusion of more feminine and spiritual and creative and healing energies to come back into balance.

Sarah: How did that affect your relationship as sisters?

Fania: My sister and I had a period-right in the middle of that-when our relations were strained for about a year, due in part to this transformation. It was very painful. At the same time, I finally understood that it needed to happen because I was forging my own identity separate from her. I had always been a little sister who followed right in her footsteps.

Yeah, and so now we are close again. And she's becoming more spiritual.

Angela: I think our notions of what counts as radical have changed over time. Self-care and healing and attention to the body and the spiritual dimension-all of this is now a part of radical social justice struggles. That wasn't the case before.

And I think that now we're thinking deeply about the connection between interior life and what happens in the social world. Even those who are fighting against state violence often incorporate impulses that are based on state violence in their relations with other people.

Fania: When I learned about restorative justice, it was a real epiphany because it integrated for the first time the lawyer, the warrior, and the healer in me.

The question now is how we craft a process that brings the healing piece together with the social and racial justice piece-how we heal the racial traumas that keep re-enacting.

Angela: I think that restorative justice is a really important dimension of the process of living the way we want to live in the future. Embodying it.

We have to imagine the kind of society we want to inhabit. We can't simply assume that somehow, magically, we're going to create a new society in which there will be new human beings. No, we have to begin that process of creating the society we want to inhabit right now.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for Life After Oil, the Spring 2016 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah is co-founder of YES! Follow her on Twitter @sarahvangelder.

Photo: Fania Davis and Angela Davis. YES! Photo by Kristin Little.

The black community is key in South Carolina primary

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 09:42:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Pundits and pollsters across the nation have been examining opinions within the African American community and trying to predict whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will capture the bulk of the black vote.

Lee Fang, widely known for his insightful journalism, recently wrote in The Intercept that the endorsement of Clinton by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC-PAC) "is being widely interpreted as a sign of her deep support from the African-American community."

Saturday, observers will have an opportunity to judge the strength of the bond between CBC members supporting Clinton and African American voters in South Carolina. That's when the state's Democratic presidential primary is scheduled to take place.

The majority of Democratic voters in South Carolina are black.

It's probably accurate to surmise that the closer the outcome between Sanders and Clinton, the weaker the CBC's influence has become.

CBC-PAC's endorsement of Clinton was announced in a widely covered press conference a few weeks ago.

It immediately elicited dissension.

CBC member Keith Ellison, D-Minn., tweeted "Cong'l Black Caucus (CBC) has NOT endorsed in presidential. Separate CBCPAC endorsed withOUT input from CBC membership, including me." And then he had a follow-up tweet saying "The point [is] that endorsements should be the product of a fair open process. Didn't happen."

CBC-PAC Chair Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., responded that although 41 out of 46 members of the CBC have endorsed Clinton, "The Congressional Black Caucus does not ever endorse in any race at any time because it is a composite group that can include and does include Republicans as well as Democrats."

The CBC-PAC, on the other hand, is allowed by law to raise money and support candidates.

The decision to endorse Clinton was made by the 20-member CBC-PAC board, not the Congressional Black Caucus itself. There were two abstentions.

The board consists of seven elected officials, two CBC-PAC staffers and 11 lobbyists, including representatives of Purdue Pharma, Philip Morris, Lorillard Tobacco and Wal-mart.

Rep. Meeks said that "We in the Congressional Black Caucus have to raise money so we can elect folks. But if you look at how the Congressional Black Caucus votes, no one can say that they don't vote in a very progressive way."

He went on to explain that although Sanders has caucused with the Democrats and that it has been a "pleasure" to work with him, he has "not gone out to partner with us to elect Democrats."

Clinton-CBC partnership

On the other hand, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have a decades-long history of hitting campaign trails to elect CBC members.

Also, the Clintons have given millions of dollars to the Democratic National Committee.

The partnership between the Clintons and black legislators goes back to the mid-1980s. Calling themselves "New Democrats" or "The Third Way," both Bill and Hillary became leaders in the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which believed that the only way to save the Democratic Party in the South was to compromise with Republicans while at the same time creating more opportunities for African Americans to become leaders.

Reverend Jesse Jackson called the DLC "Democrats for the Leisure Class."

The DLC was firmly against what it called "economic populism," and also against the South sliding back toward segregation. When Bill Clinton took office as Arkansas's governor, he held a press conference at the desk once used by former Governor Orval Faubus, a virulent segregationist. Clinton vowed that never again would an Arkansas governor stand in the way of equality for all.

The Clintons rode The Third Way to the White House and President Clinton appointed African Americans to his cabinet.

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, recently wrote in The Nation that "the love affair between black folks and the Clintons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for President. He threw on some shades and played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. ... [He belted] out "Lift Every Voice and Sing" in black churches.

"Toni Morrison dubbed him our first black President."

Alexander points out that "Black voters have been remarkably loyal to the Clintons for more than 25 years. It's true that we eventually lined up behind Barack Obama in 2008, but it's a measure of the Clinton allure that Hillary led Obama among black voters until he started winning caucuses and primaries."

Sanders supporters

Alexander supports Bernie Sanders, as do a significant number of prominent African Americans such as Harry Belafonte, Rep. Ellison, the rapper Killer Mike, author and philosopher Cornell West, former NAACP President Ben Jealous, former SNCC Chair Chuck McDew and Hollywood stars Danny Glover and Spike Lee.

These supporters and others within the black community point to the fact that during the Clinton Administration both Hillary and Bill successfully promoted and passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which dismantled the social safety net for millions of poor people. Moreover, the Clintons championed the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which created longer mandatory sentences and reclassified less serious crimes as felonies.

Alexander writes, "Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history." The inmates then and now are disproportionately black.

Although as a U.S. Representative, Sanders argued vigorously against the crime bill, in the end he voted for it too.

Surveys show that if all voters of color were people under 45, Sanders would win the presidential nomination. Furthermore, his approval rating with voters of color of all ages climbed from 28 percent in July, 2015 to 51 percent this month, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

However, a high "approval" rating doesn't necessarily indicate a high number of votes.

"Race" and "economics"

"There is nothing about most of Sanders' major economic and educational proposals which sit at fundamental odds with the political priorities that we know black and Latino voters hold," writes Janell Ross, a reporter for The Fix who writes about race, gender, immigration and inequality.

Although Sanders talks about racial inequality, Ross writes, "What Sanders has really said and done most reliably since his campaign began in April is make the case for economic and education policies which he insists will narrow or eliminate economic inequality, thereby taking care of non-white America's 'real' problems."

However, Ross says, by and large people of color facing economic barriers attribute the barriers to the fact that they are people of color.

Furthermore, in her recent stump speeches, without mentioning Sanders, Clinton has been saying "Not everything is about an economic theory, right? ... If we broke up the big banks tomorrow would that end racism? ... Would that end sexism? ... Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?" After each question, Clinton elicits a "no!" from the audience.

Both Clinton and Sanders have recently asked Rev. Al Sharpton for his backing.

In a Politico podcast, Sharpton was asked if he felt either candidate "feels comfortable" talking about race.

Sharpton said that Sanders "has dealt with" his "argument ... that, if you close all the big banks and everything is brought down, that still doesn't make us equal, given the race gap in employment, given the race gap in wealth and property ownership. You've got to address race."

This is especially true, Sharpton said, when campaigning in South Carolina where African Americans are still reeling from the police murder of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, and from the attack on a black church that left nine people dead.

When the podcast commentator asked Sharpton whether Clinton "gets" race, he said, "I think she's familiar with it. She worked for Marian Wright Edelman as [Bill] marched for Dr. King, and I think that her husband and his Arkansas background and living more with blacks, they were more 'accultured.' But comfort and culture [are] two different things."

Now that the pundits, pollsters, commentators and politicians have had their say, this Saturday the people of South Carolina will have theirs.

Photo: Civil rights hero, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), is backing Hillary Clinton in her bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency. | John Amis/AP

Nothing rotten in Denmark: American exceptionalism hurts us

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:42:00 +0000

The mantra of the Democratic establishment and its allies lately is that Bernie Sanders' vision for America is simply a fantasy. His popularity, they say, redounds from his empty slogans and unrealistic promises. He pledges free health care, college education, and more, which, critics insist, can't be paid for.

David Brock, chairman and founder of Media Matters, for example, re-played this Rubio-esque robotic talking point recently, charging that even "left-liberal economists" say Sanders' policies on taxes, health care, and education are "fantasy" and "insane." Never mind that respected economists validate the integrity of his policy plans, that he has explained how he will fund them, or that Hillary Clinton plans to pay for her programs through increasing taxation on the wealthy and closing tax loopholes - exactly the same means Sanders has proposed.

The funny thing about Sanders' presumably rich political fantasy life is that the fantastic world critics believe exists only in his overactive political imagination does actually exist.

Many industrialized countries, for instance in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, actually have "free" college education and health care. Somehow, they've managed to realize the Sanders fantasy. (And of course it's not really "free"; people pay for it together through a system of taxation to which all contribute).

The United States, among the wealthiest of nations, is in fact one of the few yet to develop a human-centered culture that devotes resources to cultivating people's skills, talents, and overall well-being. Instead, we seem stuck in the belief that social resources are the rightful bounty of whoever can accumulate them, regardless of the social cost to others.

So why are the pundits so insistent on dismissing Sanders' vision as "unrealistic"? Why do they persist in characterizing it as utopian rather than the practical reality it is?

Responses during and after the first Democratic debate last October suggest that a persistent - and pernicious - attitude of American exceptionalism may be at work.

This attitude informs much of the abiding and stubborn blindness to the reality that other nations have indeed created societies that realize the ethos that health care and education are public goods - meaning they aren't just good for individuals within the society but make for a better world for all.

What do I mean by American exceptionalism?

American exceptionalism has a long history in our culture. As Harvard Professor Stephen Walt explains, typical manifestations of this belief "presume that America's values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration" and "imply that the United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage." They rest "on the belief that the United States is a uniquely virtuous nation, one that loves peace, nurtures liberty, respects human rights, and embraces the rule of law." "Americans," Walt says, "like to think their country behaves much better than other states do, and certainly better than other great powers."

This belief is so powerful that it distorts our national vision and, because it prevents us from truly assessing where we fall short, hinders our ability to address dimensions of our culture gravely in need of amelioration.

How often during the strident debates over "Obamacare" did we hear many leaders in Washington declare that the U.S. already had the greatest healthcare system in the world, even when studies hardly justify that claim? A June 2014 study by the Commonwealth Fund, for example, ranked the U.S. last among 11 industrialized nations "on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives."

In the realm of education, in a 2013 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the U.S. ranked 17th out of 40 countries in terms of educational performance.

Finland ranked first.

Yet, have we looked to Finland for answers to our educational woes? Do we ever look seriously to the models other countries offer for creating a humane society?

Well, no, not really. Such an approach tends to be shunned, as the reaction to Sanders illustrates. He was skewered after the first debate for remarking that "we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people." Willie Geist on Morning Joe characterized Sanders' presentation of Denmark as a model for America to aspire to as a political gaffe.

On Hardball the next day, Chris Matthews and his guest, "progressive" talk show host Ari Rabin-Havt, also found Sanders' comments off-putting and politically ineffective. Their argument was that Americans don't want to be Scandinavian; they want to be Americans.

I don't understand this definition of "Americanness." Is it not American to exercise our collective intellects to improve Americans' lives? Is it an "American" practice to dismiss ideas for improving our society because said ideas are not "American" enough?

I hope it's clear how ridiculous and anti-intellectual that position is. I'm guessing it's also not what many U.S. citizens would think of as defining "American."

For her part, Clinton did nothing to counteract the American exceptionalist assault on Sanders during and following that first debate. The position she articulated was basically that, "It can't happen here."

Somehow, for all of America's wealth and ingenuity, we just can't implement the humane social policies enacted in Scandinavia and across Europe - and we just aren't interested in their values.

The 29 million Americans without health insurance, and the millions more buried in student debt, might be more than a little horrified by this brand of Americanism. It expresses a lack of interest in our collective educational attainment, health, and economic well-being. It downplays the hefty creative, intellectual, and economic resources at our disposal that, if unleashed, could help to realize the world Sanders envisions.

To see the possibilities available to us as a nation, we need to look elsewhere and overcome our global ignorance - and arrogance - rooted in an exceptionalist attitude.

Clinton, even as the former Secretary of State, has not been above expressing such sentiments. During the first debate, when asked by Anderson Cooper if she shared Sanders' critique of U.S. capitalism, Clinton responded:

"When I think about capitalism, I think about all the businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families... We would be making a grave mistake to turn our backs on what built the greatest middle class in history."

Then, as if for effect, she stressed that, "We are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America."

Yet, even Forbes magazine in 2014 ranked Denmark as the most fertile and supportive national soil for entrepreneurship and small business development, while the U.S. slid in the rankings.

We don't want to emulate Denmark in this regard?

The question isn't whether Denmark has a capitalist or socialist economy. This debate, which has been taken up in spades, isn't really the issue. The issue is whether Denmark's social and economic policies provide any useful pointers for creating a more humane economy here in the U.S. The question is whether we can we create a society that serves human needs and enables our highest aspirations.

Sanders suggested we look to a place like Denmark not because it is socialist or capitalist, but because the people there enjoy a higher quality of life. You don't have to just take Bernie Sanders' word for it, though. How about listening to a bastion of socialist propaganda like Fortune magazine? They declared that Denmark does indeed have the best benefits for working class people, thus validating Sanders' vision.

If we overcome American exceptionalism and forget the tragedy of a melancholy Dane, we might see that really there is nothing rotten in the state of Denmark.

Photo: Fedor Selivanov/Shutterstock (Stock photo)

This week in history: First Black woman earns a medical degree

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 13:52:00 +0000

On February 24, 1864, Rebecca Davis Lee became the first African-American woman to become a physician in the United States when she graduated from Boston's New England Female Medical College in 1864 with a Doctor of Medicine degree.

Lee was born in Delaware on February 8, 1831, to Matilda Webber and Absolum Davis, and raised in Pennsylvania by an aunt who cared for infirm neighbors. In those years, medical care for poor blacks was almost non-existent. She moved to Charlestown, Mass., around the age of 20, and was employed as a nurse until she was accepted into the New England Female Medical College in 1860.It was rare then for women - or black men - to be admitted to medical schools.

After the Civil War ended in 1865 she married Dr. Arthur Crumpler and adopted his surname.

In A Book of Medical Discourses, which she published in 1883, one of the first written by an African American about medicine, Crumpler describes the progression of experiences that led her to study and practice medicine:

"It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under different doctors for a period of eight years (from 1852 to 1860); most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. From these doctors I received letters commending me to the faculty of the New England Female Medical College, whence, four years afterward, I received the degree of doctress of medicine."

Crumpler briefly practiced medicine in Boston, primarily serving poor women and children. Once the Civil War was over, she moved to Richmond, Va., believing it to be "a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children. During my stay there nearly every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The last quarter of the year 1866, I was enabled...to have access each day to a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored."

Crumpler worked for the Freedmen's Bureau to provide medical care to freed slaves, but she was subject to intense racism. Male doctors ignored her, druggists would not fill prescriptions that she ordered, and some joked that "M.D." after her name stood for "Mule Driver."

By the time she moved back to Boston, her neighborhood on Joy Street in Beacon Hill was a predominantly African-American community. She "entered into the work with renewed vigor, practicing outside, and receiving children in the house for treatment; regardless, in a measure, of remuneration."

By 1880, her husband moved to Hyde Park, Mass. There was not great demand for her service in that community. She was no longer practicing medicine by 1883 when she wrote A Book of Medical Discourses from the notes she kept over the course of her medical career. It was dedicated to nurses and mothers,and focused on the medical care of women and children.

Crumpler died on March 9, 1895, survived by her husband.

The Rebecca Lee Society, one of the first medical societies for African-American women, was named in her honor. Her home on Joy Street is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Unity vs. the right in Nevada, danger displayed in South Carolina

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 10:27:00 +0000

The Democratic Party caucuses held in Nevada Saturday showed a growing effort between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to protect the White House from falling into the hands of the far right.

This unity will be vitally needed in the November presidential election. The South Carolina Republican Party presidential primary held the same day as the Nevada caucuses demonstrated why: the Donald Trump, neo-fascist juggernaut won. Trump continues to gain power and is closer than ever to grabbing the Republican nomination.

Just as threatening to our democracy is the alternative that emerged as a result of the South Carolina vote: far right billionaires are uniting behind Senator Marco Rubio, R.-Fla., who claims that God demands "free enterprise and a small government."

Clinton won the vote in the Nevada caucuses by 5.5 percent. She began the campaign with a 37 percent lead.

In her victory speech, Clinton demonstrated she is beginning to feel the impact of Sanders' call for a "political revolution."

The New York Times wrote, "[Clinton] used plural pronouns like 'we' and 'us' more than usual, as opposed to leaning on 'I,' a clear attempt to make her campaign about voters as Mr. Sanders has done powerfully."

In her speech, Clinton said "We've heard a lot about Washington and Wall Street. We all want to get secret unaccountable money out of politics ... [We want to] protect the right of every citizen to vote, not every corporation to buy elections. ... The middle class needs a raise and we need more jobs."

She quoted Sanders directly, saying "No one can get this done alone, not even the President of the United States. It's got to be the mission of our entire nation."

Billionaires uniting

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Observers predict that the millions of dollars remaining in his super PAC, Right to Rise, will go to Rubio, as will millions more from Our Principles PAC, controlled by Ameritrade billionaires Joe and Marlene Ricketts. Rubio has already been getting billions from Norman Braman, a Miami billionaire.

Up until now, Rubio has been splitting with Senator Ted Cruz, R.-Texas, money from the oil-rich Koch Brothers, but observers now say that he will get their whole bundle, some $400 million.

Actually, the pundits might have it wrong.

Up until recently, Rubio and Cruz seemed to be joined at the hip - the right hip.

Together, they shut down the government three years ago rather than accepting a federal budget that included ObamaCare. Together, last year they tried to block a budget because it included funds for Planned Parenthood.

It's still possible that Cruz will be the candidate anointed by the billionaires. The betting is on Rubio because he's better looking and more personable. Cruz might be too much of a religious fanatic for even the Koches and their ilk. He has the reputation of being "the most hated man in the Senate," but that probably does not bother the Koches.

Who the Koches and the other billionaires absolutely do not want to be the Republican nominee is Donald Trump, who won the South Carolina primary with a total of 32.5 percent of the vote.

It's not that they don't like Trump's ideas; they do. And it's not that they object to Trump's pledge to solve all the problems of the American people through strongman tactics; they kinda like that.

It's just that the right wing billionaires would rather have someone as President who is beholden to them; not one of them. For one thing, they're all cutthroats and don't trust each other. Any given billionaire might try to tilt American policies and programs to favor his or her own industry to the detriment of the others.

Another thing: Trump is a loose cannon.

He shows no signs of being a right wing team player. Instead of making even a pretext of being part of a larger conservative movement, Trump makes clear that he is his own movement.

For example, when Trump wins a race, he is not gracious to the losers. Saturday, he continued to mock Bush even as he was limping off the field. What's more, Trump has threatened to sue both Rubio and Cruz, who shared second place in South Carolina.

Trump said running for President is "mean, it's vicious, it's beautiful."

The Democratic caucuses

Growing unity might have inadvertently contributed a bit to a drop in caucus participation Saturday.

Most Democratic voters said they would support whoever is the nominee, Clinton or Sanders, so voting may not have seemed as vital to some. (The leaders of all the major unions have said the same thing and unions are very influential in Nevada politics.)

The state's largest union and traditionally a big factor in turning out the vote, the Culinary workers, with some 60,000 members, had remained neutral. As a result, union leaders did very little until shortly before the caucuses to encourage members to vote.

Almost at the last minute, Senator Harry Reid, dean of Democratic politics in Nevada, urged the union to do a get out the vote campaign and to negotiate with casino owners for time off for their members to vote.

Some casino owners agreed; others insisted that workers take time out of their lunch break to vote. They said workers who were late getting back to their stations would be docked pay.

Caucusing is a very chaotic, time consuming process and many workers had to leave before casting their ballots.

The result? Eighty thousand people voted, down from 120,000 in 2008.

Entrance polls showed Latinos, who make up about 54 percent of the population, favoring Sanders, despite having voted for Clinton two-to-one when she ran in 2008.

However, the African American community, which makes up about eight percent of Nevada's population, played a decisive role in Clinton's victory. Only about 22 percent voted for Sanders.

Sanders won among people 45 and under of all racial and ethnic groups, but lost 64 percent to 32 percent among older voters, who accounted for nearly two-thirds of the turnout.

Moreover, Clinton bested Sanders 72 percent to 25 percent among caucus goers who said they want the next President to carry on Obama's legacy. They accounted for 49 percent of the turnout. Forty-one percent said they want a more liberal president.

The Republican primary: Trump wins racists

A survey released by Public Policy Polling found that 70 percent of those who probably voted for Trump in South Carolina believe that the Confederate flag should still be flying over the state capitol. The flag was removed last year after nine African Americans were murdered while attending church in Charleston. The murderer had photographed himself with the Confederate flag.

What's worse, a plurality of Trump's supporters in South Carolina wish that the South had won the Civil War.

Even though Trump's personal history shows him to be antithetical to just about everything Christian evangelicals preach, exit polling in South Carolina found that he narrowly beat Cruz among evangelical Christian voters.

"There is a shift in the establishment and thinking of Republicans in South Carolina from mainstream, center-right Republicans to angry, hard-right Republicans," Kaeton Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman, told the New York Times. "It's a monumental shift against the pillars of our society: our government and our elected officials."

Many of these "angry, hard-right Republicans" are working people who are being mislead into voting against their own interests. In the long run, reaching them is probably the most important challenge that must be faced by people who want to build an America where social justice prevails.

In the meantime, as Hillary Clinton said in her victory speech, "the fight goes on" to block those who are doing the misleading from capturing the White House.

Photo: Donald Trump. | AP

Trans-Pacific Partnership protests mount

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:36:00 +0000

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (PAI) - Workers and their allies took their protests against the jobs-destroying pro-corporate Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact to a meeting of Asian-Pacific leaders in Palm Springs, Calif., that President Obama hosted recently.

But while Obama and the other leaders vowed to continue pushing for the controversial treaty, a key "free trade" supporter, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., says the pact needs changes - but not in worker provisions-before Obama can send it to Capitol Hill. And the AFL-CIO released a comprehensive report on the huge holes in the TPP's labor provisions.

The TPP, which would set trade and other pro-business rules for 12 nations around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, was signed earlier this year. The earliest that legislation implementing it can come to Congress is April 3.

There, the TPP bill - not the pact itself - would be subject to one up-or-down vote in each house of Congress, and after limited debate and no amendments. Ryan says the TPP needs changes to get votes. Otherwise, he told Fox News on Feb. 14, it won't pass Congress.

The Palm Springs marchers, the AFL-CIO report and 2,600 comments workers filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission, which is analyzing the TPP at Congress' request, say it doesn't need changes. They say it must be scrapped and renegotiated.

"Governments should be seeking out ways to lift working standards and protect the environment, not how to pit working people against one another," T Santora of Communications Workers of America Local 9003 told the crowd in Palm Springs on Feb. 15.

"The TPP would force American employers into greater competition with companies exploiting workers paid less than 65 cents an hour in countries like Vietnam. A country could literally set its minimum wage at a dollar a day and still be in compliance with the TPP's abysmally weak labor standards. It's no wonder the TPP's opposition is so strong," he said.

The AFL-CIO report, issued Feb. 16, backed his point, in detail.

"A number of important labor recommendations were wholly ignored," the fed said. "Those proposals that were not wholly ignored were included in a weakened form that would undermine their effectiveness."

As examples, the report notes the trade pact's labor rights sections lack enforcement teeth or deadlines and treat complaints about labor rights far differently than the TPP treats corporate complaints about interference with potential profits. And that's for starters.

"The TPP contains different dispute settlement mechanisms for foreign investors and working people," it says. "Foreign investors can bring cases against TPP parties on their own, without having to petition their own government to do so. Working people must petition their governments, and then engage in years-long campaigns to attempt to move the cases through the arduous process." And secret trade courts handle the corporate complaints, it notes.

"TPP bargainers" - trade ministers - "create effective dispute settlement mechanisms when they want to. Thus, the failure to equalize the dispute settlement procedures available to workers was purposeful," the report says.

It also notes that while the TPP requires its 12 member nations to set minimum labor standards, it leaves the standards up to them, rather than requiring them to obey international criteria on such things as the minimum wage and the right to organize.

"The TPP explicitly provides these (labor) obligations will be satisfied 'as determined by' each country," the pact's 19^th article says. "As a result, a TPP country can set a minimum wage of a penny an hour, or allow shifts of 20 hours per day with no overtime pay, or require workers to provide their own safety gear-and yet be fully compliant with the TPP."

And the TPP is also vague on employment discrimination and does not address labor rights violations and repression in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brunei and Vietnam, as well as anti-worker practices elsewhere, such as misclassification of workers in New Zealand, for example.

"As it currently stands, the TPP fails workers," the report declares. "The AFL-CIO and global labor movement stand in opposition to the agreement. To be effective at creating shared prosperity and inclusive growth, the TPP must be renegotiated to include protections for workers, as well as the environment and other public interest issues, that are as strong as all other protections in the agreement-including those for investors.

"Other chapters must be renegotiated to include rules that promote rather than inhibit progressive economic policies that correct market failures, ensure adequate government investment in infrastructure and human development, and provide certainty for workers, not just global businesses," the report concludes.

Communications Workers members were blunter in letters to the trade commission.

"Americans can't get jobs if the jobs are being sent wholesale overseas. It is clear that for the American economy to thrive again, we have to bring jobs back home again and impose restrictions that put our working families ahead of international corporations that don't even pay taxes here. Instead, the Trans-Pacific Partnership represents a giant step in the wrong direction that will blow a hole in the American economy, which will have to struggle for decades to recover," said Louis Kershner of Bothell, Wash.
"This trade pact is a corporate grab for yet more power, which it will use to further deny American workers decent pay and benefits and protections. There is no justification that exists for this," added Seattle CWAer Charles Pierce.
"The U.S. will lose countless jobs by signing on and affirming the TPP," said Kristin Brody of Chicago. "It's the same model that resulted in the loss of 3.4 million jobs after NAFTA, which now makes it almost impossible for me to buy American-made goods to support our economy and our workers here at home...

"It's clearly all about businesses making money and ravaging the environment. Instead of going along with slave wages and ecological destruction in Asia, the U.S. should pave the way for others to be treated fairly, care well for God's beautiful creation all over the world, and protect workers and manufacturing here at home, which the TPP does not. No thank you!"

Photo: Twitter

Justice Department’s civil rights complaint against Ferguson could set model for reform

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:51:00 +0000

Last week, the United States Department of Justice filed a robust complaint against Ferguson, Missouri, charging the city with violations of federal civil rights statutes in maintaining a "pattern or practice" of unconstitutional deprivation of rights by law enforcement officials. The complaint is remarkable not only for its relative rarity and the nature of the allegations, but because it takes aim at an entire system of discrimination, fueled by cash and predicated on racial discrimination. By pursuing reform of an entire system, from street harassment by cops to prosecutorial misconduct, the case could result in a template for practical reforms.

The complaint is the result of a multi-year investigation into the law enforcement practices of the city. It is also refreshingly comprehensive, attacking the city's practices from stem to stern: the government alleges constitutional violations along the entire spectrum of law enforcement, from stops and searches, through excessive force, First Amendment protest activity, discriminatory fining and sentencing, and unconstitutional prosecutorial practices.

Setting the stage for reform

Such a comprehensive complaint sets the stage to fashion a reform plan just as comprehensive that can act as a blueprint for other communities. If the Ferguson action is indicative of a willingness by the DOJ to aggressively pursue civil rights actions against localities, it could set the baseline for other cities eager to avoid costly litigation and federal interference.

In essence, by pursuing Ferguson for its entire law enforcement regime, the federal government can move to standardize best practices for localities that operate outside of constitutional norms.

Pursuant to federal civil rights statutes, the government is seeking injunctions requiring the city to impose reforms to bring its conduct within the bounds of the Constitution, primarily the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments. Such injunctions, known as "structural injunctions," are "equitable," or non-monetary remedies that impose systemic reforms that must be carefully implemented and monitored over a period of time.

Monitoring typically continues until particular benchmarks are met, and can usually only be ended through a subsequent court order. Structural injunctions are rare in American courts, and disfavored by conservative jurists who see them as essentially usurping legislative and executive prerogative.

A history of uneven enforcement

The complaint was linked to two civil rights statutes: 42 USC 2000d under the Civil Rights Act that deals with deprivation of rights by federally-assisted agencies; and 42 USC 14141 which covers unlawful patterns and practices of rights deprivation by law enforcement agencies. These statutes were passed in 1964 and 1994 respectively, but they are somewhat rarely pursued by the Department of Justice.

A search showed only a handful of cases brought under these laws going back to 2002, with two of these being brought in the last few years as a result of local law enforcement agencies targeting Latinos for referral to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities, and one the result of "invited" scrutiny of the New Orleans Police Department.

Similar actions were undertaken against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, stomping ground of national xenophobia icon Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and against the Alamance (North Carolina) Sheriff's Office. Both of these suits, while important, were relatively narrow, focusing on the conduct of sheriffs' offices in their treatment of Latinos with respect to the involvement of ICE.

In 2010, within two days of taking office, New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder asking for his "support and partnership" in transforming the New Orleans Police Department "into one of the best police forces in the United States." This was necessary, Landrieu wrote, because "nothing short of a complete transformation is necessary and essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New Orleans." The result was a consent decree, essentially a bilateral agreement to impose particular reforms without the necessity of a trial or finding of liability. The New Orleans consent decree, while sweeping, was limited to police department operations.

The case against Alamance County failed after a bench trial and is on appeal in the Fourth Circuit; the suit against Maricopa County was settled in part, and the rest is awaiting appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

What's different about the Ferguson case

The complaint brought against Ferguson though, is broader than any case brought under civil rights statutes 2000d and 14141 in the last decade. Although Ferguson is a small community, the complaint targets the practices of not only the Police Department, but also the Municipal Court and the Prosecuting Attorney.

The facts in the complaint are revelatory and, at times, jaw-dropping. The DOJ puts into black and white facts that are no doubt understood in the bones of anybody who has lived in Ferguson or any of hundreds of similar communities. They show that the power of the state is wielded arbitrarily against the powerless - specifically, Black residents of Ferguson.

The complaint tells a story of a city government that ensares an individual arbitrarily for offenses such as "Manner of Walking," imposes fines arbitrarily "without regard for the individual's ability to pay," and then prosecutes them arbitrarily.

On this latter point, the DOJ spells out how the Municipal Court and Prosecuting Attorney would excuse tickets and fines for connected officials with little more than a request via email. At the same time, requests from defendants to have fines reduced or restructured based on their inability to pay were dismissed with little more than, "everyone says [they] can't pay."

It is a story of a city preying upon one class of citizens to raise revenue. The administration of justice in Ferguson completely collapsed in the face of the city's thirst for cash in an era of cratering tax revenue and capital disinvestment.

According to the DOJ, the city used its power to create infractions, harass individuals, pull them into the legal system and hound them - including through incarceration. This was all done not as a means to protect public safety and the general welfare, but as leverage to squeeze the maximum amount of cash from a vulnerable population.

Not only was the inability of individuals to pay not taken into account when punishing them for offenses like the aforementioned "Manner of Walking" or "High Grass or Weeds," it actually worked against them. Those not represented by counsel were often treated more harshly than others who could afford a lawyer.

A model for reform?

Whether Ferguson will litigate the case vigorously or seek to enter a consent decree remains to be seen. For the public, a contested case resulting in a structural injunction could have derivative value in that it would impose a model for reform.

Structural injunctions are generally opposed by conservative jurists, who see them as an attempt by elite judges to undertake what is essentially a legislative task. The most high-profile recent structural injunction case, Brown v. Plata, dealt with the overcrowding of California prisons and featured a harrumphing dissent from Justices Antonin Scalia and Thomas Alito.

Scalia argued that structural injunctions turn "judges into long-term administrators of complex social institutions such as schools, prisons, and police departments," and require them "to play a role essentially indistinguishable from the role ordinarily played by executive officials."

Despite Scalia's dissent, the majority upheld the structural injunction requiring de-crowding of the California prison system. Scalia's concern that the Court was expanding the structural injunction as a tool for reform may have been prescient if for the wrong reasons; the recent vacancy on the Court may bode well should Ferguson choose to vigorously contest the DOJ's suit for precisely this type of relief.

Ramsin Canon is an attorney at Canon Law Group, practicing in Illinois and California, and a co-founder of Aldertrack.com. His writings have been published by In These Times, Alternet, the Oxford Journals Community Development Journal, the Seventh Circuit Review, the Chicago-Kent Law Review, and the International In-House Counsel Journal. He lives and works in Chicago. You can follow him on twitter @ramsincanon.

Photo: AP

Sanders, Clinton neck and neck in Nevada

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 10:20:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS - The latest CNN poll indicates that the outcome of the Democratic Party caucuses, taking place across Nevada tomorrow, are still too close to call. Overall, 47 percent of likely caucus participants said they support Bernie Sanders; 48 percent favor Hillary Clinton.

Several months ago, Clinton was 37 points ahead.

Nevada was one of the states hardest hit by the 2008 financial crash and still has not fully recovered.

There have been so many housing foreclosures, political candidates have found it difficult to put together accurate lists of voter contact information. With foreclosed homes often switching from homeowner to bank and back to another homeowner, good address lists are hard to come by.

According to a Reuters story, about a fifth of the one million voters registered in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, are listed as "inactive," meaning that their mail has been returned to the county elections office as undeliverable.

A National Public Radio outlet in Las Vergas interviewed a number of people in their 20s who do not have college degrees. They said they are earning between $8 and $9.50 an hour. Several said they are single parents. All expressed fear and anxiety about the future.

Crisscrossing the state, Sanders, Clinton and their spokespersons have been debating whether or not the state of the economy is today's primary issue.

In a television spot supporting Sanders, Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state assemblywoman now campaigning for Congress, says, "This is a system that isn't working for the everyday person. It's one of the reasons why I decided to endorse Bernie Sanders. Nevadans are looking for people who are willing to think big, to be bold and to fight for everyday people."

On the other hand, in her stump speech, Clinton says "Not everything is about an economic theory, right?" She rhetorically asks the audience, "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow ... will that end racism? Will that end sexism? Will that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Will that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?"

Why Nevada?

Before 2008, Nevadans voted in a publicly-funded primary. The state then switched to caucuses funded by the political parties.

The parties then scheduled the Nevada vote so that it would be the first to be held in the West and the third to be held in the nation, after Iowa and New Hampshire.

The switch was made because both parties wanted early voting to take place in a state diverse enough to reflect the people of the U.S. and small enough so that potential presidential candidates could use it as a testing ground for their messages and organizations before tackling larger areas. Nevada has a population of about 2.9 million people.

Whereas Iowa and New Hampshire are both over 90 percent white, Nevada is about 40 percent non-white, 26.5 percent Hispanic and over 8 percent African American.

There was a widely publicized flap here last week when Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon attempted to downplay the importance of the Nevada vote by saying "it's still a state that is 80 percent white voters."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, called by many the godfather of Nevada Democratic politics, weighed in with a sharp criticism. He said "Well, it appears to me [the Clinton campaign has been] been reading one of the old yearbooks from my high school. They're way behind times."

Reid said he would remain neutral until after the caucuses.

Union actions

Like Reid, Culinary Workers Union Local 226 is remaining neutral. It is the largest local of UNITE HERE with some 60,000 members in Nevada.

Unions are influential in Nevada politics and many have chosen sides. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are both backing Clinton. In fact, Randi Weingarten, AFT president, has campaigned for her here.

However, National Nurses United (NNU) and other unions are backing Sanders.

Rose Ann DeMoro, NNU executive director, wrote "Bernie's movement is our movement. Sanders himself has said many times that this campaign is not just about him; it's about a political revolution of everyday people. It's about all Americans standing up, together, and saying no ... to establishment economics and establishment politics ... ."

In a media advisory, NNU spokesperson Charles Idelson announced "Some 200 RNs from around the U.S. will join the effort in which nurses will spread out around the Las Vegas area knocking on doors, reminding voters of how to caucus, and urging them to caucus for Sanders."

The NNU has also debuted its huge, bright red #BernieBus here in Las Vegas this week and will take it across country after the caucuses.

The Nevada caucuses

A website of the Nevada State Democratic Party (NSDP) explains "The Nevada Caucuses are gatherings of neighbors, organized by the NSPD, where Democrats join others in their precincts to begin the process of registering preferences for Democratic candidates running for President."

As in Iowa, caucuses can take place in schools, community centers, public buildings or private homes. Unlike Iowa, some Nevada caucuses are held on the floors of gambling casinos so that employees of the casinos can participate.

To join a caucus, you have to be a member of the political party holding it, but you can register immediately before participating.

In Iowa, if voting is tied, caucus members generally flip a coin to decide the winner. In Nevada, they cut cards. The highest card wins.

As in Iowa, the Nevada caucuses are the first of three steps by which Democrats choose who will represent them at the Democratic National Convention in July.

The caucuses elect delegates to conventions held by the 16 Nevada counties. From there, delegates are sent to the state convention, which in turn chooses 33 delegates to the national party convention which has a total of 4,763 delegates.

The number of delegates the state sends to the national convention is not very significant, but because of the diversity of its population, the Nevada caucuses can be effective weather vanes in telling which way the political winds are blowing.

Photo: Members of National Nurses United canvass for Bernie Sanders, the candidate supported by their union. There have been so many foreclosures of homes in Nevada that canvassers say they are having trouble finding voters listed at many addresses. | National Nurses United

Obama urges end to “poisonous political climate” in Illinois

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:57:00 +0000

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - President Barack Obama came home last week to a place that launched his political career - the Illinois state capitol - and addressed lawmakers on creating a "better kind of politics." Good thing the president could afford to bring his own motorcade, because the state has gone eight months without a budget. Gov. Bruce Rauner might have told the president he would have to take a cab to the statehouse because the state can't pay for security.

The president spoke Feb. 10 before the Illinois General Assembly about working to make a better political atmosphere in Illinois and the country. State Rep. Mary Flowers, a longtime progressive Democrat, called the speech a "civics lesson" that deserved to be studied. Obama outlined four areas that could improve American politics: restrict big money, stop gerrymandering, make voting easier, and demand a better political culture. But the main thrust of the speech focused on our "poisonous political climate" that "turns folks off" and "makes them cynical." Without full public participation, Obama said, the "more powerful and extreme voices" take over.

This might have been a dig at Rauner. Illinois is in the midst of a budget crisis brought on by Rauner, who seems hell-bent on remaking the state in the image of a billionaires' paradise, meaning no unions, tax subsidies for corporations and wealthy individuals, and austerity for the rest of us. Though it's hard to see how demanding better from Rauner would make a difference: His actions are calculated to damage lives.

State Senator Kwame Raoul said the speech encouraged compromise to a point: "I don't think his message was to compromise with extremism," Raoul told the media.

Raoul said he thought the president wanted to encourage cooperation on the state's budget impasse. "It's not going to be like a magic wand making things change overnight," he said, noting that Rauner started out with an "extremist agenda" which "entailed an agenda of attack against higher education."

"It's one thing to say that there may be excesses at one or two universities that need to be addressed, but to have the casualties of your agenda be these students ... that's a shame."

Obama sketched in broad outlines the history of rough and tumble politics, the difficult issues the country and its politicians had to tackle, and the basic sense of fairness he believes the great majority of the American people have. "As Harold Washington once said: 'Politics ain't beanbag.' It's tough. And that's okay," Obama said.

Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor, spent years building a coalition to help him face attacks on his leadership during his tenure by the remaining mainly white political "machine" built under the first Mayor Richard Daley.

Now, though, it's hard to imagine how a spirit of working together for the public good can be created, not just in Illinois but nationally. Two days before the president gave his speech, congressional Republicans refused to hear Obama's budget director present the president's budget plan, unilaterally ending the 41-year tradition. The day after his speech, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, having strung together every derogatory description possible of Muslims, Mexicans, refugees and women, added the vulgar word "pussy" to his chain of tirades. Two days after that Justice Antonin Scalia died, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insulted the president and American voters by saying Scalia's replacement should be chosen by the next president so the "American people‎ [can] have a voice in the selection" (as if Obama's 2012 re-election didn't speak loudly enough).

The extremism that has infected the body politic is like a virus from the Right. The president, like many of us, is rightly worried that it could easily turn into sepsis. But our political system reflects an economic and social system that has created extreme wealth inequality on top of inequalities based on race and gender. So long as these conditions persist, politics and voting may appear pointless to many Americans.

In Illinois, public universities are being forced to lay off faculty and staff, since they have received no funds since July 1. Some 125,000 low-income students have been denied Monetary Award Program grants (MAP), and schools have covered the costs up to now. Chicago State University, however, which has historically served African American students and scholars, and because of institutionalized racism has less financial resources, was forced to declare a financial emergency. The school is looking to salvage the spring semester but will have to make steep program and staff cuts. Other universities may make it through the spring, but the summer and fall semesters are not certain. The governor said he would veto a funding bill for MAP, which will force tens of thousands of students out of school.

In the face of such crises, it's understandable why students may be cynical toward the president's speech. A Chicago State student leader posted on his Facebook page, "Only good thing that came out of that speech was Obama calling out Ken Dunkin [an African American Democratic state representative who has sided with Rauner]. Other than that, we get 'Can we all get along?' and 'voter registration.' The same ol' show. It's near ballot time and people are only concerned with the vote. We gotta save ourselves."

While such attitudes are understandable, it is important to remember that politics is an arena of struggle, and building broad-based, flexible coalitions (even with groups and people you don't agree with on most things) is critical to defeating extremism. Recently, writers at two major Chicago publications signaled to Rauner that he must abandon his extremist push and sign a budget. Crain's columnist Greg Hinz called on Rauner to cut a deal and compromise with Democratic leaders in order to stem the damage he has already caused Illinois. A Chicago Sun-Times editorial put it more bluntly, saying the blame for the impasse lies squarely on Rauner's shoulders, and he needs to compromise.

It's that big-picture view - and deep abiding confidence in the majority of students, business people, union workers, farmers and farm workers, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike - that seems to motivate Obama to take the case for a better political discourse directly to the people. As tough as it will be, Obama's words point to the need for people to be directly involved in the political process.

Photo: AP

Minority voters must focus on what, not who

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 10:18:00 +0000

In South Carolina, African-Americans will constitute a majority of Democratic voters in the primary on February 27. On March 1, Super Tuesday, people of color - blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans - will constitute large portions of the voters. The press is focused on whom we want. But we would be far better off to be focused on what we want.

Democratic candidates - not just Sanders and Clinton, but contenders in Senate and gubernatorial races as well - have to listen and respond. They can no longer simply expect to inherit our votes or to ignore our concerns. Their prospects in both the primaries and the general election depend, in significant part, on giving us a reason to vote and to vote in large numbers.

We've already seen the impact of this new reality. Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the country have raised the demand for criminal justice reform - and Sanders and Clinton have responded. The Dreamers and the Latino uprising raised the commitment to comprehensive immigration reform.

So what do we want? We know the goal: a level playing field, equal opportunity and a fair start. Carolina lost the Super Bowl. Clemson lost in the college football championship game. But they accepted the result because of five fundamentals: the playing field was level; the rules were public; the goals were clear; the officials were fair; the score was transparent. If the game had started with one team 21 points down, the protests would have stopped the game. Instead, both teams had a fair start and an equal opportunity to win. That is what we want in our society as well as our sports.

But that is not what we have. We have entrenched and often concentrated poverty. Schools that are unequal. Criminal justice systems that are biased. Our neighborhoods are red-lined by banks. We get charged more when we finance purchase of a car. Fraudulent mortgage brokers have targeted blacks and Latinos for loans that they knew they could not repay. There are active efforts to suppress our right to vote. The field is not level, the start is not fair, the rules are skewed, and the officials are too often biased.

So we need targeted action to overcome targeted inequity. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina has called for a 10-20-30 plan: arguing that 10 percent of all social spending be targeted on the 474 counties where 20 percent or more of the population has lived in poverty for the last 30 years. These counties are white, black and Latino. They are represented by Republicans and by Democrats. They need targeted investment.

That's a good step, but not enough. We need a development bank to provide credit to communities that are written off by the big banks.

We need a fair start for every child: adequate nutrition, health care, affordable quality day care, and universal access to pre-K.

We need funding to insure our schools can provide the basics: safe buildings, modern learning materials, small classes in early grades, skilled teachers, after-school programs and more. We need advanced training and college to be tuition free, so all who qualify can pursue their dreams. We need a jobs corps, with the government serving as the employer of last resort for young people who cannot find a job.

We need a counteroffensive against the systematic efforts to make it harder for us to vote. Revival of the Voting Rights Act. A national constitutional right to vote. Universal same-day registration. A national floor on voting rights rules. Action to curb the role of big money and particularly dark money in our politics.

We need an agenda to empower workers. Lift the floor with a $15.00 minimum wage and a union. Guarantee paid family leave, paid sick days, paid vacation days. This isn't a radical idea: the U.S. is the only advanced country without these guarantees.

We need universal, affordable health care. In South Carolina, the governor has turned away billions in federal funds by refusing to expand Medicaid. In the resulting crisis, even Bamberg County Memorial Hospital, where she was born, has been forced to close.

Yes, we need police reform and sentencing reform. We need to give those who have served their time their full citizenship back, including the right to vote. And we need to challenge the private prison-industrial complex, in which prisoners serve as a kind of slave labor leased out to private companies as cut rate rates. And this of course is but a beginning.

We've learned that a rising tide doesn't raise all boats. Some boats are buoyant yachts, others small row boats and some are stuck at the bottom. People of color represent a rising force in American politics. Many of our communities - as well as many white communities - are in deep distress. We need assistance targeted to those in need. So before we decide whom we support, let us make certain they have heard what we support.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He was a leader in the civil rights movement alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was twice a candidate for President of the United States. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

Photo: Police reform is important to minority communities that are in deep distress. | AP

Chicago parents in 160 neighborhoods join teachers in demanding school resources

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0000

CHICAGO - "Getting my kids the proper resources they need," is what special education teacher Heidi Teach cares most about. Teach, whose name echoes her passion, was part of an animated band of kids, colleagues, moms and dads at Thorpe Elementary School in South Chicago this morning at the crack of dawn.

Today in 900 schools across the nation, educators and parents "walked in" to their own schools to show their neighborhoods and the world "a united front in the fight for public education and the schools all our children deserve," according to the action's national organizers, the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools. The Alliance is a coalition of school workers' unions - AFT, NEA and SEIU - with several national education advocacy groups.

In Chicago, the issue of getting the resources kids need, which includes teachers who get the support necessary to be effective in their jobs, became particularly urgent after the mayor's bargaining team reneged on a tentative contract agreement, unilaterally and pre-emptively cutting off payments into the teachers' pension fund.

The Chicago Teachers Union is barred by recent state legislation from negotiating on issues beyond employee compensation but the CTU's flyers nevertheless demanded smaller class sizes, less testing, racial equity across schools, and fully-funded Special Ed, libraries, school nurses, and art, music, and after-school programs. The Board's policies are pushing out high seniority teachers, the union says, threatening the loss of experienced educators, particularly African American teachers, from the school system.

"Walk-ins" in support of a fair contract for teachers took place at 160 Chicago schools this morning, according to the CTU. The mayor's negotiators say there is no money to pay the teachers pensions, but the union's suggestions of alternative revenue sources - a stock transaction tax, re-allocation of surpluses sitting in the mayor-controlled Tax Increment Financing Funds and suing bankers who were paid hundreds of millions for fraudulent deals - have been brushed aside.

Thorpe School, a stone's throw from the site of U.S. Steel's former South Works site, is an under-resourced school in an under-resourced neighborhood, but one resource in ample supply is teacher and parent determination. "Class size should be smaller," said Valerie Wright, who bundled up her 2^nd grader and loaded her preschooler into a little red wagon bright and early to "give teachers support."

Special ed teacher Teach has nine children in her classroom. Their challenges range from emotional disorders to learning disabilities to autism. With the assistance of a "fantastic" aide, she stretches her time to six additional special needs students who drop into her classroom during the school day. Her kids lack sufficient special books, designed for their needs, as well as manipulatives, essential teaching aids that help children learn in alternative ways. Teach noted that special needs kids can't meet their potential without appropriate resources, yet their needs don't get much attention when schools over all are under resourced.

Photo: Roberta Wood/PW

Activists of every stripe unite in ICE civil disobedience

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 14:16:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Activists blocked Congress Street in the financial district Tuesday morning Feb. 16, as rush hour traffic came to a halt. Community organizers from various coalitions gathered in an act of solidarity, locking arms in front of the Regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office downtown. They propped two stepladders in the middle of the street and used several boxes filled with garbage as weights to chain themselves down. Dozens of supporters and participants cheered on the sideline as cops showed up to the scene. Bystanders joined into anti-deportation chants, screaming out 'Dismantle ICE! Defund Police!"

The gathering, which activists originally promoted as a "Coffee and Struggles" discussion event on Facebook, was expanded to include an act of civil disobedience in order to bring attention to the ongoing immigration enforcement raid crisis. In the last several months Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted a nationwide campaign to deport undocumented citizens in the country, many of whom arrived fleeing the growing violence in Central America. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented women and children have made the journey across the southwest border in the last several years. While the Obama administration has been noted for its tough stance on deportations, it was not until November 2014 that ICE announced the enactment of the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). Under the PEP plan, ICE commenced a series of raids, consequently setting off a wave of fear amongst undocumented people and their family members. (story continues after video)

The anti-deportation event on Tuesday marked a significant moment in coalition-building for immigrants' rights in Chicago. Various activist communities came together to coordinate the demonstration. P articipants included members of: Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), Assata's Daughters, Black Youth Project (BYP) 100, Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY), Palestinian Youth in Action, Centro Autonomo, People's Response Team, the Chicago Religious Leadership Network (CRLN), and others. The participating organizations are all part of various social movements dedicated to the empowerment of vulnerable populations, many of which are primarily run by college students and younger community members.

Assata's Daughters, an intergenerational collective of Black women and girls named for the African American revolutionary Assata Shakur, released an official statement about the importance of remaining unified in the face of oppression, saying: "Undocumented people in Chicago and nationally are living in fear daily of being taken from their homes and away from their families. We, as Black American community organizers, can relate to that fear. Our communities experience that fear when Chicago Police Officers patrol our neighborhoods, stop and frisk us, occupy our schools, and arrest us in mass (sic)." The statement elaborated on the parallels of black and brown criminalization from law enforcement officials, citing it as an intersectional struggle for all people of color.

Acts of civil disobedience serve not only to interconnect various social movements, but can also highlight critical issues directly affecting marginalized communities of color. Many demonstrators have been working behind the scenes in order to address the frequent violation of civil and human rights that occur during raids, both on the street and in workplaces and homes. During the list of grievances read out loud at the protest, activist cited the frequent use of unnecessary force against unarmed immigrants by ICE officers.

Christian Zamarron, 26, is one of the coalition members who confronted ICE staff inside the headquarters during the demonstration. He has spent several years being involved in activism, and hoped that Tuesday's actions sent a clear message "Stop the raids. Stop deporting our families and harming members of our community." Zamarron noted that he himself is not undocumented but that he felt it was important to remain in solidarity with his fellow comrades, "I view those attacks as an attack on myself and my family."

Despite the several arrests that were made, all twelve protesters were officially released from the precinct on 18th and State by late Tuesday afternoon. The fight to end deportations, however, continues for them as they battle to protect disenfranchised communities, family members and allies. Nevertheless, Tuesday's event is reflective of an evolving tone in social movements as activists increasingly find greater strength in the power of unity. It was not immediately clear whether additional civil disobedience actions were in the works.

Photo: Michelle Zacarias/PW

Young black activists are in it for the long haul

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:45:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Sustained, vibrant organizing for police accountability in Chicago is making an impact, on this year's elections and beyond. Amid public outcry over her handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting case, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez is currently leading in the polls in her bid for re-election. A recent Chicago Tribune poll shows Alvarez with 34 percent of voter support. But Kim Foxx, who supports reparations for victims of police torture, among other police accountability policies, has 27 percent of voter support; and Donna More has 12 percent. What is more, 26 percent of the voters are still undecided. That 26 percent will prove to be the determining factor if Alvarez is to win a primary that hinges to a large degree on public perception of the way cases are handled in Cook County, specifically those involving the Chicago Police Department. Activists have long protested the city's handling of police involved shootings. In recent months, demonstrations across the city have highlighted the disparity between citizens protesting peacefully in the streets and police in military regalia pushing and shoving those citizens as they cry out for justice.

Across the country, people are protesting crimes by the police against black youth and the courts' frequent failure to prosecute the officers who commit those crimes. This new manifestation of the Civil Rights movement has quickly gained national and international visibility. Featuring a distributed network of young leaders, savvy use of technology, and a focus on system-wide change rather than ousting a few bad cops, the Movement for Black Lives represents a politically important moment in civil rights organizing in the U.S.

On a national level, people such as Alicia Garza, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, and Rashad Robinson of ColorofChange have galvanized this generation of youth. Locally, activists such as Damon Williams, director of the Let Us Breathe Collective, and Jeremey Johnson (a poet and coach who is active in the Chicago Movement for Black Lives) have done the same.

Much has been written about the Movement for Black Lives and the various youth movements around the country. Some may see this as another movement that will reach its apex within a couple of years and then die as quickly and as quietly as the Occupy Movement did. According to Johnson and Williams, those sentiments are erroneous and short sighted. "As long as racist systems like the criminal justice system are allowed to continue business as usual, the youth movement around police crimes will continue and grow," said Johnson.

Although Garza and Robinson are seen as leaders on a national level, Chicagoans seem less sure of who actually leads the movement here. Damon Williams said, "This movement has definite leaders in Chicago but most people are missing it. Americans are accustomed to leaders being individual white men who are either academics or religious. This current movement is lead by a diverse group of people, an inclusive group of people which includes women, various ethnicities and sexual identification. We want to expand the notion of civil rights. We want to change the notion of what constitutes a leader." Said Johnson, "There are strategic benefits in such a diversity. Voices that have gone unheard and unrecognized in previous years are now being heard and will no longer be ignored."

Both young men say they believe this leadership style not only gives voice to marginalized communities but also develops leadership from the bottom up. They admit this structure has its difficulties , especially in terms of accountability. Without a clear chain of command, things get left undone or are poorly done. Many loathe being in front and have to be pushed. Still, they say, this type of leadership helps those with undiscovered leadership abilities realize they can do more than they thought they could.

The catalyst for Johnson's activism was his own treatment at the hands of police-similar to that of other young black men. A student at Chicago's Columbia College, he was repeatedly stopped by police while skateboarding from building to building to get to class. The final indignity, he says, was being accosted on his front porch as he put his key in the front door. "Police... pulled over, got out [of] the car and yelled at me to stop what I was doing and raise my hands. I was fumbling with my keys and dropped them on the porch along with my backpack and skateboard. I was lucky I had a yellow key chain which could in no way be mistaken for a weapon. After raising my hands, the police searched me and found my wallet with my ID and saw that I was standing on my front porch. After giving me back my wallet, they left without so much as a word and certainly without an apology. From that moment on," he said, "I knew I had to get involved. Although I've attended other social justice demonstrations and walked several picket lines, participating in Black Lives Matter has shown me that one person can and does make a difference."

What is different about today's movement has been its spontaneity and sustained urgency. Activists Johnson and Williams attribute this to technology and the existence of social media. Although racist policies and police brutality have long been prevalent in the black community, in past decades people had to wait for mainstream media to make those issues known to the public. People heard of such atrocities at church, or by word of mouth. Often it would be weeks before police shootings made it to the newspapers or nightly news. But technology has changed the way news is delivered. Citizens with cell phones become journalists in a matter of seconds, recording police misconduct and then broadcasting those posts on social media and the internet. Protests can now be organized in a matter of hours. It also means that violent actions by police can be seen almost as soon as they happen, making it harder for city officials and the police department to hide them.

Because of the advances of technology, groups such as the Movement for Black Lives have garnered international attention in such a brief period of time. This group began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media in response to the Trayvon Martin murder and the subsequent trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman. Protests across the country gained in numbers and attention after the subsequent slayings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and Eric Garner in New York City. The protests, particularly in Ferguson, resulted in violent confrontations between the police and the protestors to such a degree that the governor eventually called in the National Guard.

Chicago has seen its share of these protests. After the grand jury failed to indict the police officer accused of choking Eric Garner to death, protestors took to the streets in 2014, marching through the Loop and briefly closing down Lake Shore Drive. Since that time, there have been a number of similar protests in Chicago's downtown area. Thousands marched on the Magnificent Mile disrupting businesses on the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, to protest the 2014 shooting death of the unarmed Laquan Macdonald by a Chicago Police officer and the apparent cover up by the city and the police department. Tapes made available to the public in December show the officer shooting Macdonald repeatedly after the teen is down on the ground. Public outcry from the video's release has already led to the resignation of Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy.

On December 27, 2015, a Chicago grandmother and a mentally disturbed young man were shot and killed in a single incident by the police who were answering a domestic violence call. Actions such as these have led protestors to call for the resignation of Emanuel and Alvarez. Williams, however, does not see the resignation of either Alvarez or Emanuel as the solution to the problem. He asserts that the problems are much deeper than any individual. He states that Black people have been the victims of oppression since slavery and that this recent spate of police brutality is nothing new. "Oppression has been prevalent for decades and pressure has been building for just as long. In the past 40 years, there has been an increase in the number of black men imprisoned. There has been a decrease in the number of jobs. Homes have been lost in record numbers within our communities. The education system has faltered. That pressure has been building and it was bound to be released at some point. Unfortunately releasing that frustration has been met with violence instead of solutions."

Williams said that BYP is focused on the two national agendas recently announced - the Agenda to Build Black Futures, a policy agenda focusing on economic Justice and the Agenda to Keep Us Safe, a public safety agenda focusing on implementing steps to decriminalize Black youth and increase community oversight of the police.

Proclaimed Johnson, "As long as there are racist systems, there will be a movement of youth visibly and vocally advocating for their civil rights. This is just the beginning."

Image: Black Lives Matter, Facebook.

The main political issue of the year stems from Scalia's death

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Usually in a civilized society, the death of a public servant warrants a time period of mourning and respect for the deceased's service to the nation before you jump all over the corpse and squabble over the next step.

None of that happened Saturday, Feb. 13, when Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep at age 79 at a vacation ranch in Texas after a day of quail hunting.

Within hours of the news, the Senate Republicans formed a blockade. They said they would wait more than ten months for the next president to replace Scalia no matter who President Obama sent their way: a clear warning shot.

Obama that evening offered thoughtful praise of a justice he frequently disagreed with and then made it clear that he would fulfill his constitutional obligation and put forward a replacement. But both the Senate majority leader and the GOP chair of the judiciary committee pledged not to "advise and consent" but reject any nominee out of hand.

Louis Butler Jr. well understands this level of GOP obstinacy. As a lawyer he argued before Scalia and the other eight justices. As Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, his robes were once borrowed by Scalia to officiate a wedding. But after right-wing hatred and money in 2008 ousted him from the state high court, Butler was recommended four times by Obama for the federal bench only to be blocked by Senate Republicans.(Since then, all Butler's attacked opinions have been vindicated.)

Based on past practices, Butler said in an interview, the president may have several options about how to proceed that the public is not aware of. He told me, "I agree with Sen. Elizabeth Warren that the president must proceed, as he says he will, by putting forward a nomination."

"I don't find it persuadable for the Senate leadership to prematurely announce they will oppose anyone the president nominates-he might as well not put anyone forward because they've said they won't listen," noted East Coast constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams, who has argued before the highest court many times. "There should be hearings and reasons for the public to consider."

Emailed one GOP wag, "If Obama nominated Jesus, we would claim it was Mohammad in disguise."

The Supreme Court has become Political Issue No. 1 in this presidential year. One death has moved the court's future to the front burner and put ahead of economics and ISIS the importance of picking a president whose recommendations will guide the U.S. for generations. The Supreme Court issue slapped cold water on the face of the electorate, as has the GOP's determination to block what the constitution requires.

Scalia's death was unexpected since he was rumored in fine health and typical jovial form. But the gridlock over his replacement - and the reality that he may only be the first of several - has led citizens who never paid attention to politics to realize their vote on the president could influence constitutional interpretation and what is legal and what is not for decades to come. At 79, Scalia may have been the longest serving justice - 30 years - but he was not even the oldest.

Some argue Scalia's death may galvanize conservatives into more fear of the future than their current slate of candidates has been generating, if that is possible. But the void created is realistically a boost for the Democrats. Both Sanders and Clinton are experienced politicians who seem far more reliable in SCOTUS nominations - not just more liberal, but more pragmatic and understanding of the importance of judicial insight in choosing serious candidates.

On the Republican side, Trump is particularly hurt since no one knows what to expect if he ran the process like a craps game. Nor did his mention of several names suggested by his staff help when in television interviews he clearly knew little about them. (They included Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes' ex-wife, Diane, who serves on the federal bench and has few major decisions to her credit.)

Cruz, on the other hand, has inserted so many litmus tests on his choices - must end Roe vs. Wade, must not negotiate on Affordable Care Act, must not welcome undocumented immigrants - that voters will realize that what looks macho in the Senate looks foolish on the Supreme Court. Resistance to compromise and nuanced thinking did not even fly with Scalia.

Meanwhile, legal experts such as Butler point to certain realities that the public has not yet grasped. While the court can function with eight justices and often has, decisions that would have broken 5-4 will probably not be decided until there is a new justice, which will not in the best case be for months and may not happen until next year, and then months longer for judicial contemplation. The chief justice has many options, Butler and other legal experts noted, but always hovering is this reality: "A decision is not final until it is released," Butler said.

Justices often change their minds not just in debate but even in writing decisions. SCOTUS has several options in postponing, moving ahead on cases previously argued or even in throwing out cases on technicalities, but the cases that loomed 5-4 may quickly revert to whatever was decided by a lower court. Some may be re-litigated, others may not.

Normally it takes five months for vetting and hearings. In the current political environment, we could be years away from conclusions in close cases even as SCOTUS creeps ahead on a busy slate of issues when it resumes sessions in late February. These include: abortion rules in Texas, affirmative action, the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, the Friedrichs union case, immigration and deportation. The GOP view that all these can simply wait struck the court experts I interviewed as sheer nonsense. Justice so delayed by senatorial stubbornness could really be justice denied.

Both political insiders and legal experts think Republicans may be missing their best bet to so universally renounce in advance any choice put forward by Obama. They think it's pie in the sky to think a Republican can win the White House or that the GOP can keep the Senate. "They will never have a better chance at a moderate nominee since Obama will be concerned about what he can get through," one Republican operative told me off the record.

Progressives see the Republican attitude as an opportunity. Imagine, as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow did, if Obama put forward someone recently vetted and approved 78-16 in a recent Senate vote for the new Secretary of Homeland Security. She was referring to Jeh Johnson, who also served as chief defense department counsel and in private practice was a respected trial lawyer for corporate concerns - someone hard to reject and even harder to manufacture delays around without looking foolish.

Linda Greenhouse, retired judicial reporter for The New York Times, pointed out gently that Scalia's reputation exceeds his actual number of winning decisions on the court.

She didn't mention in TV interviews what several legal insiders noted to me in phone interviews about his view of originalism - a study of what the original documents and Constitution meant and sticking with those words even to the point of checking dictionaries of the era. In Scalia's hands, originalism was something of a cover for his own brand of judicial activism. They cite his Second Amendment decision, which basically ignored as some sort of throat clearing the opening phrase, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," to focus on "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" (note the second comma).

Another Reagan appointed conservative judge who has served on the federal bench longer than Scalia, Richard Posner of the Seventh District Court of Appeals, dissected the farce of Scalia's originalism in a pointed New Republic article.

Yet despite such criticism from experts on both sides, Scalia through personality and presence has been magnified by the right into the ideal judge - to the point that GOP leadership seems quite willing to freeze the US Constitution and the high court system in a vain hope of finding an acceptable clone.

Photo: An American flag flies at half-staff in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, Feb. 14, after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Manuel Balce Ceneta | AP

This week in history: First black athlete wins Winter Olympics gold

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 13:48:00 +0000

Ten years ago this week, on February 18, 2006, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, African-American speed skater Shani Davis became the first black athlete to win a gold medal in an individual sport at the Olympic Winter Games, winning the speedskating 1000 meter event. Two days later he also won a silver medal in the 1500 meter event. He was 23 years old.

At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, he duplicated the feat, becoming the first man to successfully defend the 1000 meter gold medal, and repeating as 1500 meter silver medalist.

Davis was born on August 13, 1982, in Chicago. He started skating at the age of two, and credits his early success to the complete support of his mother. At 6'2", he is known for his consistency and technical proficiency. He attended Marquette Senior High School and Northern Michigan University.

Davis won the World Allround Championships in both 2005 and 2006, after winning the silver medal in 2004. In 2009 he won the World Sprint Championships in Moscow, the site of his first World Allround Championship victory. By winning he became the second male skater, after Eric Heiden, to have won both the Sprint and Allround. He has won six World Single Distance Championships titles, three at 1500 meters and three at 1000 meters, and he led the United States to its first and only World Championship gold medal in the Team Pursuit event in 2011.

He has won ten career Overall World Cup titles, six at 1000 meters and four at 1500 meters. Davis also earned the title of Grand World Cup Champion for the 2013-2014 season, earning the most points across all distances. His 58 career individual victories on the ISU Speed Skating World Cup circuit (through March 2014) place him second all-time among men.

Davis has set a total of eight world records, several of them still current. He also sits atop the world Adelskalender list after taking the lead from Sven Kramer in March 2009. The Adelskalender ranks the all-time fastest long track speed skaters by personal best times in the four World Allround Championship distances.

The champion skater continues to compete internationally, and trains at two U.S. Olympic training facilities, the Pettit National Ice Center in West Allis, Wis., and the Utah Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City.

"If I still have the motivation and energy to pursue being in an Olympics, I will," he told the Salt Lake Tribune, with a glance forward to the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, when he will be 36. "If not, it's been a great career."

Adapted from Wikipedia and the Shani Davis website.

Photo: Davis during the World Cup in Heerenveen in 2007. By Mingo Hagen - originally posted to Flickr as Shani Davis, CC BY-SA 2.0.

With Scalia’s death, 4-4 split means uncertain outcomes in major cases

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 14:26:00 +0000

The sudden injection of a Supreme Court nomination battle into the midst of the presidential primaries hugely raises the stakes for November and reinforces the need for maximum unity to defeat the right wing. With the GOP and its Tea Party extremists already vowing to block any Obama replacement of Justice Antonin Scalia, it becomes clear that progressives face a tough road ahead. Beyond the consequences for the election, however, Scalia's death also immediately transforms the dynamics surrounding a number of pending SCOTUS decisions.

Scalia was part of a 5-member conservative majority, so with his passing, many contentious cases that were expected to be decided by a close vote are now thrown into uncertainty by the 4-4 split. Any votes already cast by Scalia in cases where a decision has not yet been publicly announced will now be voided. In any case which SCOTUS now delivers a deadlocked vote, one of two things will happen: either the ruling of the lower courts will stand, or the SCOTUS will require the cases to be reargued once a new justice joins the court. The implications of either procedural reality are potentially huge.

The expected outcomes in a number of pending cases important to progressives - including the survival of public sector unions, the legal status of five million undocumented immigrants, and women's access to reproductive services - all now require a second look.

Friedrichs - Public sector unions live another day?

Probably the biggest SCOTUS decision that will be altered with Scalia's passing is the ruling that was expected in the landmark Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. After oral arguments were heard in January, many labor legal analysts concluded that the Court was certain to overturn a lower court ruling (as well as a 1977 SCOTUS ruling) allowing public sector unions to collect "fair share fees."

These are fees collected from non-union members in order to cover the costs for services performed for all the workers at a workplace. Opponents argued that if unions use any of the money from these fees for political action purposes, they are violating non-members' freedom of speech.

Perhaps surprisingly, given his long record as a right-wing justice, Scalia was originally predicted to be a potential ally to the unions in Friedrichs, as his comments in a similar case in 2014 had displayed skepticism about the legal argument against the collection of fair share fees. But when Scalia spoke during the Friedrichs arguments, it became clear that he was no ally to unions this time. This left many observers from the labor and legal community pessimistic about the future of public sector unions' funding and political organizing capacities.

Labor attorney Moshe Marvit warned of a negative outcome for unions in January, saying, "They could next argue that by collectively bargaining, [the] unions somehow violate workers' speech rights... I think the unions are going to keep getting attacked...I don't think it ends here."

Following the announcement of Scalia's death on Saturday night, Marvit tweeted, "Without Scalia, Friedrichs will probably go 4-4, which means that the 9^th Circuit ruling stands. Labor may have just gotten a huge reprieve."

If he is correct about the 4-4 split, or if a union-friendly Obama nominee is confirmed and the case is reargued, then a reprieve is exactly what it amounts to. If the Friedrichs case goes against the unions, they could be crippled. Without enforcing the payment of fair share fees by non-members, the resulting free-rider problem would be tantamount to declaring the whole public sector across the United States a "right-to-work" zone.

Obama immigration actions in limbo

Another decision thrown into uncertainty with Scalia's death is the upcoming case United States v. Texas, which is a legal challenge to President Obama's November 2014 executive actions on immigration. Under Obama's order, up to five million currently undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years would be allowed to apply for legal status. It also includes the DREAMers, younger immigrants brought to the U.S. as children by their parents.

When a federal district judge ordered a halt to the implementation of Obama's plan, the government appealed. A conservative panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the lower judge's order, thus leading the government to appeal the case up to the Supreme Court.

In defiance of his reputation as a reliable right-winger, Scalia may possibly have been a swing vote in deciding the case. The Department of Homeland Security's Jeh Johnson had cited Scalia in a memo defending Obama's plan back in November 2014. In the memo, Scalia's majority opinion from a 1999 decision involving the deportation of eight Palestinians is quoted, where he said that "the Executive has discretion to abandon the endeavor" of removing foreign nationals at any stage of the deportation process.

If Scalia stuck to the logic he followed in this earlier case, he might have cast a vote to allow Obama's immigration order to finally be implemented. If a 4-4 split now occurs, the ruling of the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel will stand, blocking the President's plan. Unlike Friedrichs, this time the deadlock would not break in favor of progress.

The case could become further complicated, however, if a different circuit court produces an order saying the executive actions are constitutional. When appeals courts issue competing orders, it is usually up to SCOTUS to break the legal logjam. With a divided court, no decision is possible, thus leaving the whole situation in limbo unless or until the case can be reargued once a justice is seated.

Reproductive rights cases

Another case out of Texas dealing with women's right to access abortion services is now also facing an unpredictable outcome due to the sudden vacancy on the bench. In an attack on reproductive rights disguised as a health regulation, the Texas legislature passed a law in 2013 that imposed admitting privileges on abortion doctors and required sham architectural provisions on clinics. This was done supposedly in the interest of public health. In essence, however, the law was meant to overturn Roe v. Wade in every practical way by setting standards virtually impossible for clinics to meet.

If five of the remaining eight justices vote to uphold the Texas law, states will be given broad authority to pass new laws further restricting access to abortion services. Even if a split occurs, the Texas legislation could still remain in place, and a woman's right to choose will depend on what state and federal appeals circuit she happens to live in-unless and until the case is reargued.

So unless five justices vote to overturn the lower ruling, the only path that remains for challenging the Texas restrictions would be if SCOTUS decides to reargue the case.

Zubik v. Burwell, a follow-up to the Hobby Lobby case which saw the arts and crafts giant refuse to provide its women employees contraception coverage under its health care plan, faces a similarly uncertain outcome. Conflicting decisions among federal appellate circuits also sent this case to the Supreme Court, but a split bench (or a 5-3 conservative vote with Kennedy switching sides) would also potentially result in uneven access to reproductive rights on a state-by-state basis.

Nominations and November

The GOP is digging in its heels to block Obama from nominating a replacement for Scalia, hoping that they can hold out for a President Trump, Rubio, or Cruz to make the pick. The White House has declared its intention to move ahead with the nominations process. No matter the outcome of this immediate battle though, the delicate balance of votes in the cases outlined above show how heavily progress depends on who chooses the members of the Court. This is even more true if the Court decides to re-hear arguments in all the close cases once a new justice is seated.

If anyone needed a reminder of just how important it is to keep the GOP out of the White House, Scalia's death should be enough to do the trick.

Do we even want to contemplate the kind of Supreme Court Justice that one of the current crop of GOP presidential candidates might nominate to the Supreme Court? Given how far the Republican Party has shifted to the right since Reagan appointed Scalia in 1986, it doesn't take much effort to imagine someone even more extreme being put forward today.

Obama might be able to get a nominee through the Senate to fill Scalia's seat, but it will take a mobilization of progressive forces to push the GOP during the confirmation process. Beyond that, we should not forget that the next president will almost certainly be filling a few more.

Let's make sure we don't get another Scalia - or worse.

Photo: Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announcing that his party will not, for the remainder of President Obama's term, meet its constitutional responsibility of approving a nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. | AP