Southern Cop
By Sterling Brown

Let us forgive Ty Kendricks.
The place was Darktown. He was young.
His nerves were jittery. The day was hot.
The Negro ran out of the alley.
And so Ty shot.

Let us understand Ty Kendricks.
The Negro must have been dangerous.
Because he ran;
And here was a rookie with a chance
To prove himself a man.

Let us condone Ty Kendricks
If we cannot decorate.
When he found what the Negro was running for,
It was too late;
And all we can say for the Negro is
It was unfortunate.

Let us pity Ty Kendricks.
He has been through enough,
Standing there, his big gun smoking,
Rabbit-scared, alone,
Having to hear the wenches wail
And the dying Negro moan.

These are some thoughts… They were written fast & are therefore incomplete and subject to revision.

Yesterday evening, a friend emailed to share a press release by Hollaback!. In it, the anti-street harassment group was announcing its launch of a “NEW APP FOR REAL-TIME REPORTING OF STREET HARASSMENT AND VIOLENCE TO CITY OFFICIALS.”

From their press release:

“Emily May, Executive Director of Hollaback! was joined by Speaker Christine Quinn, her wife Kim Catullo, and Council Member Diana Reyna today to unveil a new, targeted system to report sexual harassment to New York City Councilmembers via iPhone and Droid app. Speaker Quinn also released a plan for assessing the safety of neighborhoods across the city, block by block, using community-led safety audits. By gathering information in a coordinated way, the city will be able to better direct resources and more effectively combat harassment.”

My first reaction after reading this was “Why would Hollaback! partner with a staunch defender of ‘stop and frisk’ policies in New York City to launch an anti-violence initiative?” This is inherently contradictory to me. Surely, Hollaback! is aware that stop & frisk is itself a form of street harassment. Relying on a defender of such a practice to promote any new initiative would seem to undercut their anti-street harassment efforts.

Christine Quinn is quoted in the press release as stating:

“People who violate women either by their actions or words won’t be able to hide any longer. We will know who they are, what they do, where they do it – and we will put it to an end. By coupling valuable information with targeted resources we will arm ourselves with the tools we need to put an end to street violence and harassment. Public spaces belong to all New Yorkers, and street harassment is not a price women and LGBT New Yorkers have to pay for walking around New York City’s neighborhoods.”

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by Nicolas Lampert

—Number of federal prison inmates: 219,000 (about 14% of the total prison/jail population)

—Number of inmates in federal prisons for drug offenses, 1980: 4,700

—Number of inmates in federal prisons for drug offenses, 2010: 97,500

—Number of federal convictions for drug offenses each year: 25,000

—Number of federal drug convictions each year for lower-level drug offenses such as street dealing or delivering: 11,250

—Percentage of federal inmates convicted of drug offenses who are African-American: 30 percent

—Percentage of federal inmates convicted of drug offenses who are Hispanic: 40 percent

– The single largest driver in the increase in the federal prison population since 1998 is longer sentences for drug offenders.

– The average inmate in minimum-security federal prison costs $21,000 each year. The average inmate in maximum-security federal prisons costs $33,000 each year.

– Federal prison costs are expected to rise to 30 percent of the Department of Justice’s budget by 2020 .

Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, The Sentencing Project, and Wonkblog

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Real Life Superhero by Alice Kim — (cross-posted at Dancing the Dialectic soon)

I’m a sucker for super heroes and the endless stream of movie remakes that Hollywood supplies that offer me a thrilling escape where justice is always served. But this weekend — as torture survivor Mark Clements celebrated his four year homecoming anniversary, as Whittier parents stood their ground as the City of Chicago demolished the school’s field house turned community center, as the people of Egypt continued to face violence and repression to defend the democratic aims of the revolution they made — I was starkly reminded of our real life superheroes, the freedom fighters who struggle every day for a better world.

I believe it’s important to remember the moments that honor endurance and resilience. This day is one such moment. On this day, four years ago Mark Clements won his freedom from twenty-years of wrongful conviction. As a sixteen year old, he was tortured by Chicago police, forced into confessing to a crime he did not commit, and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Behind bars, he worked relentlessly for his freedom. His superhero power was his sheer determination alongside his uncanny ability to maintain hope against hope. And his special weapon was the stacks of paper that he was known for carrying around on the inside – papers that might convince “someone to listen.”

Last week, I sat down with Mark and Bernardine Dohrn, a long-time freedom fighter who met Mark in her efforts to abolish juvenile LWOP. I’ve known Mark and Bernardine for years – I’m proud to call them my good friends – and they have an amazing story that I wanted to capture in their own words. Here’s a glimpse of our conversation – my questions merely act as a catalyst to illuminate the forging of a beautiful friendship and a shared commitment against the criminalization of Black and Brown youth.

AK: Who were you at sixteen years old?

MARK: When I was sixteen years old, I was an uneducated kid. I wouldn’t say misguided – but without education. I was a paperboy. I was just a kid. I was the skinniest kid you could ever imagine. My mother used drugs then, and I would go find her. My brother would be like, she’ll come home. But I’d go find her and bring her home. I would say that this put choices and responsibilities on us that should not have been on us as young children. But neither one of us made any irrational decisions that should have amounted to a prison sentences.

I didn’t see the violence of this world. I didn’t see the racism of this world. Even though I knew that racism existed, I always had a habit of treating people the way that I would want to be treated. Despite the fact that maybe their views may not be on my same level.

Do you think that people are born racist or want to be racist? No. So I always looked at that fact that perhaps it was their father or mother or their generation that kind of like caused them to be this way. But I personally never knew anything about Jon Burge or anything about torture upon African Americans until it happened to me. I haven’t made it a secret – but without Bernardine, I’d still be in prison.

BERNARDINE: I don’t think that’s true. My piece is such a small piece. I’ve never met anybody – and I’ve had a long life of knowing people who are prisoners and done a little bit of jail time myself – who worked as hard and as relentlessly at their own freedom and to prove their own innocence. He deserves 100% of the credit for his freedom. He wrote people relentlessly who would work for his freedom.

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I have watched for years now as Chicago bleeds black people and displaces the poor. This trend predates the current mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure. What the election of Emanuel has done is to super-charge a process of gentrification and urban removal that has been happening for years.

La Casita in 2011 (photo by Brett Jelinek)

The latest betrayal of the brown and the poor came on Friday evening when parents and children were interrupted during an Atzec dance class by police officers and demolition trucks.

photo by Vivi Arrieta (8/16/13)

La Casita, a library and community center adjacent to Whittier elementary school, has been a contested site for years. In 2010, parents and community members staged a 43-day sit-in to save it from demolition. This protest predates the Occupy movement. Chicago Public School (CPS) officials wanted to replace La Casita with a soccer field that would serve Cristo Rey, a nearby private school.

The parents won their fight. CPS promised to keep the center open and leased the building to the parents for $1 a year. Alderman Danny Solis committed to securing funds to renovate the space. You can learn more about the 2010 struggle to save La Casita here.

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I really appreciated this comic by Matt Bors.

by Matt Bors

If you look closely at this rare photograph, you can see Frederick Douglass. If you are interested in the history of the “Great Cazenovia Fugitive Slave Law Convention,” click here to learn more:

On August 21 and 22, 1850, in the orchard of Grace Wilson’s School, located on Sullivan Street in the village of Cazenovia, was held one of the largest and most important of the many abolition meetings.  It was estimated that between 2000 and 3000 people came to the Cazenovia Convention, including “a considerable number of escaped slaves,” including famed orator Frederick Douglass and the Edmonson sisters.  Leading abolitionists and rights activists of the time took the podium and spread their word calling for abolition of slavery.

In the crowd was Cazenovia’s daguerrean artist Ezra Greenleaf Weld, brother of Theodore Weld, one of the leading abolitionists.  An image of the Cazenovia Convention, in the collections of the Madison County Historical Society, and captured by E.G. Weld,  is among the most important images of early photography (a contemporary copy of the Weld image is in the Getty Museum.)

The roots of today’s carceral state can be found in part in laws like the Fugitive Slave act.

Ezra Greenleaf Weld, daguerreotypist (American, 1801 – 1874)
Fugitive Slave Law Convention, Cazenovia, New York, August 22, 1850, Daguerreotype
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

“Thousands of Youth: One Voice”

On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, youth leaders from Youth Service Project’s summer Arts and Leadership program invite you to a for-youth-by-youth summit focused on fighting for education as a basic human right. Youth will connect the structural violence of educational injustice with on the ground violence prevention efforts on the streets of Chicago.

Youth will lead popular education workshops and panel discussions about youth-led community organizing, restorative justice, community-led resistance to police brutality, and arts as resistance.

There will be a community block party with hip hop and spoken word performances, live graffiti and mural art, breakdancing, and a bar-b-que feast.

Saturday, August 24th

10am-4pm
Youth Summit
w/workshops & roundtables

4-6pm
Community Block Party
w/hip hop, spoken word, graffiti, & breakdancing
FREE FOOD

McCormick YMCA – 1834 N Lawndale

For more information, email [email protected]

If you would like to register for free childcare, please complete the following information.

Appreciation to my friend Amanda Klonsky for posting an article on her Facebook wall a couple of days ago. It turns out that a new poem by Carl Sandburg was recently discovered; it’s title is “Revolver.”

Here is a revolver.

It has an amazing language all its own.

It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.

It is the last word.

A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.

Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.

It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.

It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.

It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.

It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.

When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of execution in and interfere with the original purpose.

And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the most revolvers.

A study (PDF) by the Urban Institute examined the growth of the Federal prison population.

The report found that the number of Federal prisoners has quadrupled since 1980 to over 219,000. Over 30% of the expansion is due to longer sentences for people convicted of drug offenses. The chart below illustrates this:

On related note, Kristen Gwynne wrote a good article addressing four myths about crack. She points out that these myths have their roots in endemic racism. Read the article.