December 11, 2014
By Julianne Malveaux
NNPA Columnist
“I can’t breathe,” gasped Eric Garner, again and again and again. “I can’t breathe,” he said as several police officers were on top of him, choking him, pushing his head onto the concrete sidewalk. The man was not resisting arrest; he simply had the temerity to ask a police officer not to touch him. And because he was allegedly selling loose cigarettes, the life was choked out of him.
No one tried to help him or stop the vicious assault (ruled a homicide by the coroner). Emergency medical respondents offered no assistance. Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” ought to motivate all Americans, not just African Americans, but Americans of conscience to breathe life and energy into a movement for justice.
Breathing ought to be a simple thing. Air in, air out. It’s not so simple when one’s neck is being choked. Not so simple when one’s spirit is being choked. The image of Eric Garner’s neck in a chokehold, the image of at least four White police officers on top of him, is galling. All the more galling is the invisible choking of spirit that comes when people cannot breathe, cannot speak, and cannot respond to injustice.
In historical contexts, how many were as free to speak as Ida B. Wells was when she fought against lynching. Even in her freedom, Wells was threatened and run out of Tennessee, but many feared to speak about lynching fearing the fact that they might be lynched themselves. Can’t breathe. Think of the many African Americans who have served in our armed forces, treated unfairly, serving nonetheless, often silently.
How can any of us breathe in an atmosphere of compounded injustice? How can we breathe in an atmosphere of hypocrisy, when justice has never been blind? We live in a nation where a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, is shot because he has a toy pellet gun, not pointed at police. Hard to breathe when video makes it absolutely clear that it was not necessary for Daniel Panaleo to place Eric Garner in a chokehold. Hard to breathe when a grand jury comes to an incomprehensible decision, one that defies common sense.
Difficult to breathe when an elected official, Congressman Peter King (R-NY), chooses to blame Eric Garner’s death on his health. “If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this,” King told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. King fails to note that use of the chokehold was banned by New York Police Department rules in 1993. Instead, there is no shame, no condolence in his insensitivity and ignorance.
Can’t breathe. Whether he is svelte or obese, carrying a briefcase or a bag of skittles, wearing a Hermes suit or a hoodie, behaving respectfully or rudely, a Black man’s safety cannot be guaranteed, especially when a White police officer is involved. The mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and wives of these men hold their breath, cannot breathe, except to pray for the safety of their loved ones. Would the system be fairer if a White man walking down Park Avenue had the same fears? Would the protests look different if those who were massacred looked different?
Can’t breathe. A metaphor for the African American condition, juggling the space between hopes and despair, between progress and regress. Who would have thought police violence against African American men would so visibly escalate at a time when our nation’s leader is an African American man. Can President Obama breathe, or is he in a figurative chokehold when he parses words about the murders of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and little Tamir Rice? Our president faced protest when he criticized James Crowley, the police officer who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on his own front steps in 2009. Now, he offers measured words in response to the outrageousness of grand jury failure to indict.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder has been somewhat less measured in his comments. The day after the Staten Island grand jury exonerated Daniel Panaleo for his murder of Eric Garner, Attorney General Holder announced Department of Justice findings of excessive force by the Cleveland police. Perhaps the Cleveland consent decree will be a first step toward cleaning up excessive police action around the country.
Eric Garner did not have to die. He did not have to stop breathing. Did his last breath bring life to a movement, or did he gasp that last breath in vain?
Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based in Washington, D.C.
December 04, 2014
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
NNPA Columnist
President Obama was right on the money in announcing his executive order on immigration. Contrary to the assertion of Republican demagogues, this is not a blanket amnesty, but does release more than 4 million non-criminals from the ever-present threat of deportation. As Obama noted, if Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had brought the Senate’s immigration bill to the floor of the House of Representatives, executive action would not be necessary.
It is significant that President Obama told Speaker Boehner that he would hold off signing an executive order if the speaker promised to bring the legislation to the floor, but Boehner refused to make such a promise. That settles the matter as far as any thinking person should be concerned. Clearly, this was another example of the Republicans doing all that they can to embarrass and undermine the president for no other reason than that the president exists.
President Obama also got it right in continuing negotiations with the government of Iran over the nuclear issue. The multi-national discussion underway is a reasonable and necessary measure to pull various countries back from the brink of war. Iran insists that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has the right to develop peaceful usages of nuclear power. Irrespective of whether you happen to like the idea of nuclear power, they have that right.
Israel, which is not a signatory and has more than 100 hundred nuclear warheads (though will not acknowledge it), has been pressing for military action against Iran as a means of stopping them from getting close to developing nuclear power. Such a step would be the equivalent of throwing gasoline on an already intense fire in the region. It would be callous and irresponsible. President Obama, despite the prodding on the part of many Republicans and Democrats, has continued negotiations and this should be supported. To a great extent this is about trust building between nations.
Before you get too excited, here is where Obama got it wrong, and I mean really wrong. In addition to an unfocused military campaign against ISIL/ISIS and a refusal to insist that the Iraqi Shiite-dominated regime clean up its act and embrace the Sunni minority, it was revealed that Obama is permitting continued U.S. military action in Afghanistan, despite a pledge to the contrary. There is no end in sight to the war in Afghanistan. It should be more than clear that the regime in Kabul is quite corrupt and not serving as a force to unify the country. Therefore, the question is what is to be gained by continued U.S. involvement? Why one more year? Should it not be obvious that a dramatically different approach needs to be undertaken in order to bring about a resolution to the conflict?
When it comes to the Middle East and Central Asia, President Obama seems to be of two minds. On the one hand, he recognizes that war with Iran would be disastrous. He also remembers that he was elected to get the U.S. out of Iraq, and, for that matter Afghanistan. Yet he has been either unable or unwilling to articulate a foreign policy theory or narrative that ties the different pieces together. As a result, he slowly but surely submits to the pressure of the war hawks who seem to care little that the U.S. remains the greatest purveyor of violence on this planet.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English. He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
December 04, 2014
By Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
NNPA Columnist
Ferguson is too important to be treated on the margins. It is too important to lead the news one day, and disappear the next. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police response to the demonstrations that followed, the horror of a clearly biased prosecutor driving a grand jury to fail to make an indictment – all this isn’t simply about Ferguson. There is a Ferguson in every metropolitan area of America.
At times, a single incident throws a powerful light on a reality. Ferguson is one of those times. And to insure that this reality is not simply discussed in passing, but dealt with, elevated to the top of the national agenda, President Obama should come to Ferguson.
In 1965, one week after the police riot that greeted peaceful demonstrators trying to cross Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling on them to pass the Voting Rights Act, and making the electric promise that “we shall overcome.” Johnson knew that the Selma horrors exposed a reality that could no longer be ignored. It was time to act. He committed his presence and his presidency for force that action.
In 1967, after riots broke out in cities across the country, Johnson convened a commission headed by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner with a mandate to probe the causes of the riots and recommend actions so that these tragedies would not be repeated.
The Kerner Commission’s conclusion – that we were moving toward “ two societies, one white and one black, separate and unequal” – captured the nation’s attention. The commission concluded that African Americans saw the police as an occupying force, dispatched to protect the privileges of Whites, and insensitive to the protection of the minority community’s lives or rights. It found that disparate underlying conditions providing the kindling that could be sparked by incidents at any time, and that these conditions were present across the country, including racially segregated communities, scarred by inferior schools, high unemployment, inadequate public services from public transport to parks to hospitals.
The Commission called for action, and demanded that it be accompanied by a budget sufficient to make the changes necessary. The growing war in Vietnam squelched those hopes.
Twenty-four years later, after Los Angeles riots that followed acquittal of the four white policemen in the beating of Rodney King ended in 60 deaths and a billion dollars of damages the Christopher Commission was created to probe the causes, finding that not much had changed.
The country cannot afford neglect for another quarter century. It is time to act. President Obama should come to Ferguson. He should lay out the structural realities that lie exposed in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown – and that are common to cities across the country. He should demand action on an agenda for reviving these communities, and rebuilding trust and hope.
A high level commission, chaired by distinguished bipartisan leadership, could probe the conditions that produce that shooting and others like it across the country. Its focus should be less on the behavior of police and more on the conditions of the community. It should assess the system of criminal injustice, but go beyond to the structural realities that create Fergusons. Its report should be clear and pointed; its reform agenda comprehensive, with a budget attached. The president should include that in his next budget, and call on the Congress and the country to act.
Ferguson, like Selma, exposes injustice that has been building for years. The president’s engagement can make Ferguson, like Selma, a spur for long overdue reform. The risks of failure are great. The first African American president has understandable reluctance to challenge the country on civil rights or on the rights of Black communities. His cautious speech after the prosecutor’s announcement of the grand jury decision reflected that.
But the risks were great when Eisenhower dispatched the troops to Little Rock to enforce school desegregation. They were great when Johnson promised to overcome in his speech on Voting Rights after Selma. Leadership involves taking risks. And the costs of acting, even if the Congress refuses act, are far less that the costs of moving on from Ferguson until the next child is shot and the next impoverished and isolated community erupts.
Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. is founder and president of the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition. You can keep up with his work at www.rainbowpush.org.
November 27, 2014
By Julianne Malveaux
NNPA Columnist
Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander will likely become chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Though he has yet to be elected by his Republican peers, he has given several interviews that indicate how he would change the way educational services are delivered in our country. For all his bluster, though, his approach is essentially to privatize and push states rights.
For example, while President Obama has proposed spending $75 billion for universal and mandated preschool education, Senator Alexander would take the $22 billion of federal funds for preschool education and send it back to the states. While the president’s proposal would include guidelines on teacher qualification, class size, and other matters, Alexander would have the states make those decisions. Alexander suggests that his approach is “innovative,” but this is more of the same old stuff.
There has been some controversy about “Common Core” requirements that would somewhat standardized high school education, indicating what students should know when they graduate from high school. Alexander says the states, not the federal government, should make these decisions, but the unwillingness to look at national educational standards is a step backward, not a step forward.
In the several interviews Alexander has given since the Republicans won the Senate in the midterm elections, he has not mentioned the term “achievement gap,” though African Americans and Latinos trail Whites in both mathematics and English proficiency. While Alexander’s silence on this issue is disturbing, equally disturbing is the fact that Democrats have not put enough effort in addressing the achievement gap. Thus, while President Obama says he wants the United States to lead the world in college graduation rates, little has been done to make sure this can happen, especially for African Americans and Latinos.
There seems to be a collective decision to ignore the achievement gap, and a lack of passion about closing it. To be sure, many African American educational leaders have focused on the achievement gap, especially among Black boys (Black girls need attention, too). But their work usually does not result in headlines.
While neither Democrats nor Republicans are blameless in this matter, it is Republicans who continually talk about reaching out to the African American community. Senator Lamar Alexander could have made some progress with African Americans, especially educators, if he had spent just a few seconds of his media rounds talking about race and the achievement gap.
Education ought to be one of our nation’s highest priorities. It ought to have been so for the past several decades. President Obama came into office saying that education is a high priority, but the economy and international issues have moved education issues from a high priority to an afterthought.
What does it take to make education a higher priority? What does it take to close the race gap in achievement? Given our nation’s shifting demographics, there should be some passion about reforming our education system so that more young people (and those not so young) are able to achieve their highest and best aspirations.The best-educated workforce is the more productive, so failing to focus on education means failing to focus on the future of our nation’s economy.
We ignore these education challenges at our own peril. Senator Lamar Alexander can make a difference if he gets off his privatization, state’s rights hobbyhorse and talk about embracing ways our entire nation can improve educational attainment. The states rights’ approach leads to a real unevenness in educational quality – some states will choose to prioritize education and others will not. Yet, our entire nation will shoulder the impact of uneven education, and our entire nation will pay.
The only saving grace in the fact that Senator Alexander will chair the Senate Education Committee is that he may have only have two years to wreak havoc. If Democrats are astute and provide more focus on education, then perhaps Republican dominance will fade. Still, this is not about Democrats or Republicans; it is about the future of our nation. Julianne Malveaux is an authorand economist based in Washington, D.C..
Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C.-based economist and writer. She is President Emerita of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C.