The NAACP is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the United States. (NAACP sponsored Children's March for Public Education in Philadelphia, PA - April 26, 2011 - Photo by Rick Smith)
Authorities Look for Motive Behind NAACP Bombing in Colorado
By Keith Coffman Colorado and federal authorities were trying to find the motive on Thursday for a homemade bomb planted behind NAACP offices in Colorado Springs, saying that they had not yet determined if it was a hate crime or an act of domestic terrorism.
The Colorado Springs chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reopened on Thursday, two days after the improvised explosive device detonated outside the building it shares with a hair salon.
"If someone did this to scare us or hurt us, they did neither,” said Carol Chippey-Rhanes, an assistant to the chapter’s president and a retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant. “We’re back to business as usual, helping all people, not just black people.”
The explosive device was set off on Tuesday against an exterior wall of the building. A gasoline canister placed next to the bomb did not detonate, and no one was injured in the blast.
Amy Sanders, spokeswoman for the FBI’s field office in Denver, said in a statement that the agency “takes crimes of this nature very seriously” and is conducting a wide-ranging investigation.
How did the NAACP wrap up its national conference this weekend without saying a mumbling word about the genocidal bombing of Gaza? Why did Moral Monday's Rev. Barber appear on HBO's Real Time with notorious Islamaphobe Bill Maher and not speak to the morality of apartheid in Israel? Why are the black political class and the black church, invisible on the invasion of Gaza and the fact of Israeli ethnocracy in general?
By Bruce A. Dixon, BAR
Sometimes a silence can be the loudest sound in the room. The silence of our numerous and powerful US black political class, not just on the current massacres of civilians in Gaza but on the incontrovertible fact that Israel has become a full fledged racist ethnocracy is deafening.
As Israeli troops massed around Gaza this weekend, the NAACP wrapped up its 2014 annual convention in Las Vegas this weekend without a mumbling word of solidarity with bleeding Palestinians. Moral Monday's Rev. Barber was a guest on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Sunday night as well, but could not spare a single breath to discuss the morality of occupation, house demolitions, or Israeli apartheid to his notoriously Islamaphobic host. Al Sharpton is on MSNBC nightly, and can't find time to cover the murderous assault on Gaza in any meaningful way. You don't hear so much as a peep from the Congressional Black Caucus or the National Urban League, the National Action Network, Rainbow PUSH, big time black pastors and business people or the rest of that crowd.
Our black political class of preachers, politicians, big time academics, pundits and aspirants have not been silenced by threats or fears of economic retailiation. Maybe you can say that about entertainers and athletes, but not our so-called leaders. People like black members of Congress, Al Sharpton and Rev. Barber are where they are because they don't need to be told what their masters require. What they fear is something deeper, something that threatens the very foundations of their careers and legitimacy.
Their legitimacy depends on the hollow pretense that their black faces in high places somehow constitute the continuation of the struggle of our people against racism, Jim Crow and injustice in general. We've all heard it summed up with phrases like “Rosa Parks sat and Dr. King walked, so Barack Obama could run...” The name for hollow pretenses like this, when selling the pretense is a serious project, is branding. Their problem is the frank, vicious racism of Israeli apartheid which the black political class feels obliged to support, at least as long as a black president does so as well, is a threat to the black political class's brand as tribunes of the oppressed.
For the most part, our black political class are not abject fools. They absolutely know that the Israeli state has become a full fledged ethnocracy, the 21st century's premiere apartheid state complete with Jewish-only roads and towns, frequent lynch mobs for Africans and Arabs, laws against recognizing mixed marriages, and completely different judicial systems, housing regulations, voting and property rights, depending on whether, as Max Blumenthal puts it, you've got J-positive blood. They know that for this and the last two Gaza invasions, Israeli civilians and grandmothers gathered on hillsides to eat ice cream, watch the fireworks of white phosphorus and shellfire, and cheer on the death of defenseless Palestinian civilians. They know the internet makes it trivially easy to find the words of prominent Israeli politicians in the Knesset and in government openly declaring that Palestinians ought to be moved or massacred, or justifying hundreds of atrocities from house demolitions and torture to acts of dispossession, mob and state terror. They know that more and more of their own constituents are learning these things every day.
Our black political class knows that Israel is, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, America's landlocked aircraft carrier, weapons research test bed and nuclear armed military base in the middle of a couple hundred million brown people and a good fraction of the world's most easily accessible oil. They know that unwavering support for whatever Israel does is part of the bipartisan zombie consensus, something that ruling Republicans and Democrats agree on, like privatizations, charter schools and bailing out the banksters. And by now, black leadership is deep in the slavish habit not just of agreeing with whatever the White House says, but of not speaking at all on policy matters till after the will of the Great Man and his administration have been made clear.
If Bush and Cheney were still in the White House, some of the bravest among them might speak out just a little to remind us that Palestinians are human too. They might even say that occupation and dispossession are the real crimes. But a member of their own class, a black politician is in the Oval Office, a president who openly insulted and humiliated Muslim Americans at a White House Iftar dinner only last week. They don't need to be silenced, they silence themselves, not out of fear but out of craven opportunism.
Still, daily occurrences like the shelling of 10 and 11 year old boys on a beach kicking a soccer ball make open support of Israel difficult more difficult for them than it used to be. So they do nothing, and they say nothing. Nothing on Al Sharpton's show. Nothing in their Moral Monday communiques and marches. Nothing from the Urban League, nothing from the black church, which is pretty much an appendage of the black political class these days. Apart from Cornel West, the sole recognizable black figure to a national TV audience, not a black face in a prominent face, not one, has stood up for the humanity of Palestinians and denounced the crimes of dispossession, occupation and invasion. To a man and a woman, it seems the rest of our glittering black leaders hope the stench of white phosphorus and genocide won't stick to them and tarnish their precious brand, even as they support it with their silence.
There was a time, to hear them tell it at least, when our black political class opposed apartheid. That was here, and in South Africa. As US Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah, the editor at Electrnic Intifada reminds us
“...Throughout the 1970s and 80s, when black Americans were leading the struggle against apartheid in this country, when they were the conscience of this country in terms of putting apartheid South Africa on the American political agenda, Israel was one of the key supporters of apartheid South Africa. Israel is the country that systematically violated the international arms embargo on South Africa. The weapons used to beat and kill black demonstrators and freedom fighters in South African townships were made in Israel, right down to the water cannon used in the townships... the fighter jets, the gunboats, all the heavy armament of the South African military used were in large part supplied by Israel.
It's less well known, there is less hard evidence about it, although some information is in the public domain regarding Israeili-South African cooperation in their nuclear weapons programs.”
Evidently apartheid and ethnocracy in back-in-the-day South Africa were bad things, but in today's Israel not so much. Our black political class has long forgotten a couple things called international solidarity and empathy, without which we are, well, a lot less human.
When our people were struggling against Jim Crow and US apartheid fifty years ago, those suffering under colonialism in Asia and Africa looked to us for their inspiration. African governments, Cuba, and China too welcomed, educated and sheltered Malcolm X, Kwame Toure, and many others when they toured the African continent and the world.
When the Vietnamese were under savage attack they used to call to US black soldiers in the night to ask and remind them, "Black man why are you here? Your fight is at home." It was their official policy until 66 or 67 to spare black soldiers they could have killed in close encounters when possible. Those brothers came back to inform youngsters like me who would have been drafted the next year so we could help organize in our black communities against the imperial war.
When a nuclear armed South Africa invaded Angola repeatedly in the 70s and 80s, Cuba sent 60,000 troops, the majority of them of African descent and its entire air force to fight across the Atlantic to fight, and turned the South Africans around.
In the global struggles against colonialism, capitalism, and injustice we are all inextricably connected. We're all obligated to carry a bit of each other's burden, to stand up for each other when required. It's a tradition. It's international solidarity. That's how this thing works.
But our black misleadership class are not players. They are being played and playing themselves.
____________________ Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a member of the state committee of the GA Green Party. Contact him via this site's contact page, or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.
By Peter Hart
Here's how NBC's David Gregory announced his panel on Sunday's Meet the Press (4/27/14):
We're back with our political roundtable: Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic magazine and columnist for Bloomberg View. Neera Tanden is president of the Center for American Progress, and former policy director for Hillary Clinton. Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.
And new to the roundtable, happy to have Mallory Factor, professor of
international politics and American government at the Citadel military
college in South Carolina. He is also the editor of the bestselling book
Big Tent: The Story of the Conservative Revolution.
One thing jumps out right away: We've got three white, male, conservative-leaning pundits and Democratic/liberal pundit Neera Tanden, a woman of South Asian descent. Not exactly the most diverse set of views one might imagine.
This was especially notable because one of the topics the panel discussed was affirmative action, specifically the Supreme Court's 6-2 ruling affirming the state of Michigan's ban as it applies to public universities. Not a huge surprise that two of the conservatives–Lowry and Factor–spoke out pretty forceful against affirmative action. But one has to wonder about the NBC producers who thought that a show hosted by a white male should invite three other white men, and one Asian woman, to discuss diversity.
But that's not all. The show kicked off with a discussion of the odious racist rants of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling that had surfaced days earlier. For that segment, the show assembled a panel of all African-Americans: HBO's Bryant Gumbel, MSNBC host Al Sharpton and interim NAACP president Lorraine Miller.
So in that case, someone was obviously sensitive to the need to bring non-white viewpoints on the show. There's something telling about this; an example of obvious, blatant racism is treated as an opportunity for diversity, but when it comes time to discuss law and policy–well, that's the domain of white male pundits.
Surely no one at NBC would agree that this was their intent. But it is nonetheless what they put on the air–an inadvertent illustration of how little diversity exists in elite punditry, and, indeed, of the value of affirmative action in guest selection.
Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.
President of LA chapter of NAACP, Leon Jenkins. (Screen capture from YouTube video)
By Fred Barbash The head of the NAACP in Los Angeles has resigned following criticism of the chapter’s warm relationship with Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling despite his history of racial remarks.
The resignation of chapter President Leon Jenkins was announced Thursday night by the CEO of the Baltimore-based NAACP, Lorraine C. Miller. The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, founded in 1909, and was deeply embarrassed.
In his letter of resignation, Jenkins said that the “legacy, history and reputation of the NAACP is more important to me than the presidency. In order to separate the Los Angeles NAACP and the NAACP from the negative exposure I have caused the NAACP, I respectfully resign.”
Click to see full size. (Press Ctrl and + keys to see even larger image)
Dr. Ossian Sweet (left) and his legendary attorney, Clarence Darrow.
Dr. Ossian Sweet moved into a house in an all-white area on September 8,
1925. Soon after, Sweet and his friends had to defend his house from a
mob of racist whites. Two of the whites were shot and one of them died.
Sweet and friends were put on trial for murder and were defended by
lawyers from the NAACP and Clarence Darrow.
HOME INVASION
There were dangerous occurrences happening to friends and acquaintances
of Ossian in buying homes in white neighborhoods and then being
attacked. Also, the idea that an African American could afford what most
were struggling to keep was insulting to many of the working class
whites that lived in the neighborhood.
Fearing an attack, Ossian had nine other men at his house on the night
of the attack to help defend his family and property should any violence
arise. As the mob grew restless, people began to throw stones at the
house, which eventually broke an upstairs window. There were several of
Dr. Sweet’s friends waiting upstairs, armed with weapons that Sweet had
purchased prior to moving in. A volley of shots rang out from the
upstairs, and in an instant, two attackers were down. One member of the
mob, Eric Houghberg, was shot and suffered a minor injury. The other man
who was hit, Leon Breiner, was killed from the shot.
TRIAL
The Sweets and their friends were tried for murder. There was little
hope of receiving a fair trial at this point, but Ossian Sweet and his
friends remained hopeful. When word of this incident reached the desk of
James Weldon Johnson, general secretary of the NAACP, Johnson knew
right away that this case would be a major force in the acquisition of
civil rights for African Americans.
With the help of the NAACP, Sweet and his friends gained the money and
support that they needed. Johnson invited Clarence Darrow, who was for a
period of time the most brilliant defense attorney in the country, to
join the Sweets' defense team. Darrow previously had been an attorney in
the Scopes Trial. Publicity was what Johnson was looking for from
Darrow.
The jury deadlocked and Judge Murphy dismissed the deadlocked jury and
declared the court case a mistrial. Dr. Sweet and Gladys had
expectations to head back to court within a few weeks, but there were
delays.
During the long delay between the first and second trial, Darrow did not
devote much time to the Sweets' case. Eventually, almost three weeks
after it was planned, the trial began on Monday, April 19, 1926. This
shorter trial led to an acquittal of Henry Sweet. The prosecuting
attorney then elected to dismiss the charges against the remaining
defendants.
A look at those states where Republicans are using the Supreme Court's recent decision on the Voting Rights Acts to turn back the clock on voting rights.
by Kara Brandeisky and Mike Tigas ProPublica, Nov. 1, 2013.
Last year, we wrote extensively about photo ID laws and the Supreme Court's decision to strike a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the debt ceiling and healthcare debates already shaping the 2014 midterms, we're revisiting voting policies to see which states have enacted tougher restrictions since the Supreme Court ruling in June.
President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act in 1965, surrounded by elected
officials and Civil Rights leaders. Almost 50 years later, minorities, the
poor, and the elderly are still fighting to maintain full voting rights.
Remind me – what is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?
Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called "preclearance." As of June 2013, nine states, mostly in the South – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – needed to get any new voting laws pre-approved. Some counties and townships in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota and Michigan were also subject to preclearance. Section 5 first applied to states that imposed literacy tests or other unfair devices, and had low voter registration or turnout. Congress later expanded the law to add jurisdictions with sizable minority populations and English-only election materials. States and localities could "bailout," or get off the preclearance list, after 10 years of elections without any problems. Several smaller jurisdictions bailed out over the years, including parts of Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Colorado. Of course, some of the biggest voting law battles of the 2012 election were in states not covered by Section 5 at all, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
What did the Supreme Court strike down in Shelby County v. Holder?
The Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that the preclearance formula was unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment, which gives states the power to regulate elections. The Court ruled that the coverage formula was "based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day."
From the decision:
One important technical point: the Supreme Court actually left Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the part of the law that describes how preclearance works – intact. Instead, the Court struck down Section 4, which explains which states and localities are subject to preclearance. If Congress amends Section 4, the Justice Department can start enforcing Section 5 again.
Why does this matter?
While literacy tests are a thing of the past, voting rights advocates say that statutes that limit early voting and registration, require voters to show photo ID, and purge voter rolls still disproportionately affect poor and minority voters. The Supreme Court's June 2013 decision also effectively shifted the burden from states to citizens. Before, a state subject to preclearance had to demonstrate that a new voting law was not discriminatory and let voting law experts in the Justice Department evaluate it before it could be implemented. Now it is up to voters to challenge voting laws by filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination. But most court cases involving Section 2 have been limited to redistricting, not other controversial voting measures, says Yale University law professor Heather Gerken.
Four leaders of the Civil Rights Movement: From left: Bayard Rustin,
Andrew Young, (N.Y. Cong.William Ryan), James Farmer, and John Lewis
in 1965. John Lewis is now a member of the House Representative
representing Georgia's 5th District, now forced to continue voting rights
fight — thanks to the Supreme Court and the Republican Party.
"With redistricting, there's always one very wealthy political party or another who can hire some very good lawyers and go into court and challenge it," Gerken said. "But a lot of the types of things that were challenged under Section 5 were smaller questions, like, ‘Can you change a polling place? Can you shut down early voting hours in ways that might affect the black community?' There are things smaller than redistricting that can fall through the cracks."
What have preclearance states done since the Supreme Court ruling? NORTH CAROLINA: Two months after the Supreme Court decision, North Carolina passed a number of measures, including strict new photo ID requirements. The law also eliminates same-day voter registration, shortens the early voting period by seven days, and specifies that ballots cast at the wrong polling station will be thrown out. Some changes will be phased in starting in 2014, and the photo ID provision goes into effect in 2016.
The North Carolina NAACP and a civil rights group called the Advancement Project have filed a lawsuit challenging the changes. The Justice Department also filed a suit of its own. But the suits venture into some new legal territory.
"What North Carolina did was definitely at the extreme of practices in this country," Gerken said. "So if anything is vulnerable to a suit, it's likely to be the North Carolina law. But again, the case law was built around redistricting cases. It wasn't built around this kind of work."
TEXAS: Last year, a federal court rejected Texas' voter ID law, calling it "the most stringent in the country." The panel also rejected the state's redistricting maps, finding that they protected white incumbents while altering districts with minority incumbents. But on the very day of the Supreme Court ruling, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would "immediately" enact both measures.
The photo ID law requires voters to present an approved form of photo identification, where before they could present mail, utility bills or other proof of voter registration. The Justice Department had refused to approve the law based on the state's findings that Hispanic registered voters were far less likely to have the approved photo IDs. The new law also requires the photo ID presented on voting day to match the state's voter rolls — complicating voting for some married women and others with name changes.
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the newly enacted photo ID requirements and joined an ongoing lawsuit against the disputed redistricting maps.
FLORIDA: After the Supreme Court ruling, Florida resumed its plans to remove non-citizens from its voter rolls using the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database. The Department of Homeland Security database helps government agencies check the immigration statuses of people applying for government benefits like drivers' licenses, housing assistance, or Medicaid. But opponents of Florida's measure say that SAVE data is faulty and not meant for elections, and that using the database to verify voter rolls will disenfranchise eligible voters. (Colorado legislators rejected a bill to purge rolls based on SAVE data for this very reason, but that didn't stop Secretary of State Scott Gessler from moving ahead with the plan.) The Miami Herald found that Florida voters flagged for verification were disproportionately Hispanic, and most turned out to be citizens. The Department of Justice has also said that SAVE is not meant to be "a comprehensive and definitive listing of U.S. citizens," especially since it doesn't include data about people born in the United States.
A nonprofit group has challenged the law, but a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after the Supreme Court ruled that Florida was no longer subject to preclearance. Another group has appealed a similar case to the 11th Circuit.
VIRGINIA: Virginia passed a number of voting laws this spring that seem likely to go into effect in wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Virginia legislature passed a photo ID law last year (which the Justice Department approved), but the more recent measure goes further to limit what kinds of voter identification are acceptable. Voters can no longer show utility bills, bank statements, government checks or paychecks before they vote, but they can get an ID for freeif they don't already have one.
Voters wait in long lines in Virginia, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2013.
The new laws also require the Virginia State Board of Elections to remove ineligible voters by comparing state voter rolls with the SAVE database and other states.The Democratic Party of Virginia has sued the state over the interstate crosschecks, contending that the database has erroneous information and the law will disenfranchise poor, elderly and minority voters, but a federal judge rejected the suit for lack of evidence. As of Oct. 17, the Board of Elections had already purged more than 38,000 voters.
SOUTH CAROLINA: In October 2012, a federal court blocked the implementation of South Carolina's photo ID law until 2013. The court found that although the law was not discriminatory, there was not enough time to implement changes before the 2012 election. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the Supreme Court ruling now allows states to "implement reasonable election reforms, such as voter ID laws similar to South Carolina's."
MISSISSIPI: Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said Mississippi will enact a strict photo ID law by 2014. The state says it will provide free transportation to government offices where voters will be able to obtain free photo IDs.
ALABAMA: Secretary of State Beth Chapman said Alabama would also enact changes to its photo ID law by 2014. Like Virginia, Alabama used to accept other kinds of non-photo identification, such as utility bills and Social Security cards. But the new law requires voters to present photo IDs (the state will also provide free voter IDs to those who don't have them). Legislators passed the measure in 2011, but Alabama stalled in submitting the law for preclearance.
ARIZONA: The Supreme Court issued another significant ruling on voting laws this summer: In Arizona et al. v Intertribal Council of Arizona, Inc. et al., the Court ruled that Arizona, formerly a preclearance state, could not unilaterally require voters to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote in a federal election. But the Court said Arizona could sue the Election Assistance Commission to get the federal voter registration form amended to require proof of citizenship. Now, both Arizona and Kansas have sued the commission.
In case their legal challenges are unsuccessful, the states are setting up two-tiered systems of voter registration, requiring proof of citizenship for state and local races but not federal ones. So far, Kansas has suspended registration for about 17,500 voters until those they submit proof of citizenship.
SOUTH DAKOTA: Four Directions Inc., a Native American voting rights group, has asked the Justice Department to investigate why Secretary of State Jason Grant has so far refused to use federal money to fund satellite voting centers for registration and early voting on some Native American reservations.
What about non-preclearance states?
The 35 states that were not subject to any kind of preclearance were unaffected by the Supreme Court decision. But several of those states have also moved to tighten voting rules this year.
ARKANSAS: This spring, Republican legislators overrode the governor's veto to pass a law requiring voters to show photo IDs. If voters don't have them, they can cast provisional ballots and return with IDs by the Monday after the election. The state will also provide free IDs to people who do not already have them.
IOWA: In late March, Iowa implemented an administrative rule allowing Secretary of State Matt Schultz to begin a voter roll purge using the SAVE database. Activists have sued Schultz in an attempt to stop the purge.
INDIANA: In May, Indiana enacted a law requiring officials to check voter rolls for individuals registered to vote in other states. The advocacy group Project Vote worries that the measure could lead to voter purges.
TENNESSEE: This spring, Tennessee passed a bill restricting the kinds of IDs that can be used to vote. Previously, voters could show student IDs, out-of-state IDs, library cards, or any other IDs issued by counties or municipalities. Now only photo IDs issued by the state of Tennessee or the federal government are acceptable. The Green Party of Tennessee has sued the state over the law.
So, where does all of this leave the Voting Rights Act?
The Supreme Court left it up to Congress to write new preclearance criteria. In a July hearing, House Republicans showed little interest in rewriting Section 4. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., says there's actually quiet Republican support for the issue. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., made headlines when he publicly supported restoring the law.
"There is at least one Republican, and you'll find out in the future a lot more, that is committing to putting life in this most important civil rights act that got a stab in the back from the Supreme Court," Sensenbrenner said.
Gerken, the law professor, isn't optimistic that Congress will come up with a new Section 4 formula. But she said there are other actions Congress could take. For example, she has advocated that Congress adopt an "opt-in" approach and allow civil rights groups to file simple complaints for the Justice Department to investigate. Then the agency could halt the implementation of discriminatory laws as necessary.
Yale law professor Travis Crum has also suggested a "bail-in" measure, by which Congress could instead strengthen Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, letting courts put states under preclearance if their voting laws violate the 14th or 15th amendments.
As part of the Justice Department's lawsuits against Texas and North Carolina, the federal agency has asked the courts to put those states back under preclearance.
This post will be kept up-to-date. Has your state or local government restricted voting rights since June 2013? Tweet at me, email me at kara.brandeisky@propublica.orgor leave a comment below.
