Action on Sean Bell if you are in NYC

NYC COUNCILMEMBER LETITIA JAMES,
THE FORT GREENE ASSOCIATION, 
APRIL SILVER (of AKILA WORKSONGS, Inc.)
and KEVIN POWELL
present

A TIME TO HEAL AND ACT!
A Town Hall Meeting on 
the Sean Bell Verdict
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 
Doors Open at 6:30 PM

Brown Memorial Baptist Church484 Washington AvenueBrooklyn, NY 11238(at Gates Avenue; “C” train to Clinton-Washington)

All in the Community are Invited.There Will Be Dialogue That Will MoveBeyond Words to Positive Actions.for more info, email kevin@kevinpowell.netor call 718.756.8501

Melissa and Marc Discuss the Sean Bell Tragedy on TheRoot.com

The Sean Bell Tragedy: What Do We Do? [Call]

Marc Lamont Hill 

Melissa,

As you know, the three officers involved in the murder of Sean Bell were acquitted of all charges on Friday. When I first heard the news, I was so angry that I was unable to think of anything but retaliation. Where should we riot? What can we destroy? Who can we hurt?

Like many people, I craved the sense of power, however ephemeral, that is produced by making our enemies hurt the way they’ve hurt us. Even now, as I make an unequivocal call for peace, a huge part of me wants to see somebody pay for this egregious miscarriage of justice. 

The problem, however, is that reactionary violence doesn’t help. All the rioting and looting in the world will not return Sean Bell to his wife, child, parents, and friends. Destroying police cars will do nothing to stop the next detectives from seeing unarmed black bodies as a threat that warrants lethal force. Inflicting bodily harm on the three officer-assassins will not prevent the next judge from ignoring the evidence and ruling in favor of an arrogant, white supremacist, proto-fascist police state. Although I understand what we shouldn’t do, I am at a loss about what we should do. This brings me to my questions for you,

Melissa: How do heal from this latest tragedy? How do we achieve justice for Sean Bell and his family? How do we prevent the next senseless murder from happening? How do we fight back?

 Posted Monday, April 28, 2008 12:30 AM

Sean Bell Tragedy: What do we do? [Response]

melissa harrislacewell

 Marc,

I am with you my friend. 

Did this ever happen to you in childhood? You are upset about something small and your father says to you, “hush up or I will give you something to cry about.”That is how I felt this week. I was in the corner licking my wounds about Barack’s loss in PA and the ridiculous media coverage about the working-class, white, male vote that followed when suddenly the Bell verdict really gave me something to cry about.

My anger and pain did not make me want to riot; it made me want to withdraw. I called my friend who teaches at a University in Toronto and asked about life north of the border. 

How much more must black communities endure? How many more times must we be told by our political system that our votes don’t count or told by our criminal justice system that our lives are irrelevant? The murder of an innocent, unarmed father by representatives of the State is an act so low and disgusting that any decent nation would punish it swiftly and surely. Now we are reminded that we live in a nation that is often indecent and unjust. 

Marc, I am not sure what we do. We follow the example of Sean Bell’s family who have shown dignity, resolve, hope and love at every moment of this tragedy.  We write to every elected official under whose jurisdiction we fall: mayors, state representatives, congressional representatives, senators and our Presidential candidates. We write them and tell them to publicly condemn this ruling and the violence that preceded it.  We hold informational sessions in our neighborhoods and demand that our police and their leadership show up and answer the community’s questions.  We seek out people running for office at the local and national level and demand to know what they think about the Bell verdict and then hold them accountable on election day.  

We march, we write, we cry, we rage, and then we have to love. We have to love our own black selves because it looks like no one else is going to do it.  We have to love ourselves because each of us is Sean Bell.

Noble prize winning author Toni Morrison gives us this great lesson in her exquisite novel, Beloved,  through the character of Baby Suggs, holy. When faced with the brutality of life in America she tells her people to love themselves.

“She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glory-bound pure…She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it…’Here,’ she said, ‘in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick ‘em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty.

Love your hands! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And, no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it.

This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver - love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than the eyes or feet. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”

Marc, we got to love ourselves.

Melissa  

Who’s that with Rev. Wright?

HRC is no populist

BIO

Sam Stein

The Huffington Post

Hillary Clinton On Southern Working Class Whites In 1995: “Screw ‘Em”

April 16, 2008 02:21 PM

Read More: Bill Clinton Regan Democrats, Clinton 1995, Clinton Attacks Obama, Clinton Regan Democrats,Clinton Screw Em, Clinton Small Towns, Clinton Working Class, Obama Small Towns, Breaking Politics News

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About Sam Stein

Sam Stein is a Political Reporter at the Huffington Post, based in Washington, D.C. Previously he has worked for Newsweek magazine, the New York Daily News and the investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity. He has a masters from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a graduate of Dartmouth College. Sam can be reached at stein@huffingtonpost.com.

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During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a working class populist, the politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

But a telling anecdote from her husband’s administration shows Hillary Clinton’s attitudes about the “lunch-bucket Democrats” are not exactly pristine.

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

“Screw ‘em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”

The statement — which author Benjamin Barberwitnessed and wrote about in his book, “The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House” — was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching “Reagan Democrats.” It stands in stark contrast to the attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail, in which she has presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class needs.

“I don’t think [Obama] really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you,” she said this week.

But those who were at the event say the 1995 episode fits into her larger viewpoint. As Harry Boyte, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship who was at the retreat, told The Huffington Post: “[Hillary Clinton] sees herself as the champion of the oppressed, but there is always a kind of good guy versus bad guy mentality. The comment before that was that ‘the Reagan Democrats are our enemies and they weren’t on our side,’ and she was agreeing with that comment. She said we should write them off: screw them.”

A spokesperson for Clinton said the quote was taken out of context and did not reflect her true political philosophy. “This quote differs from the recollection of others who were in the room at the time this comment was allegedly made,” said Jay Carson. “To be clear, that’s not how she felt then and it’s not how she feels now, and the proof is in how she has lived her life, the work she has done and the policies she has pushed and pursued over the last 35 years.”

Asked to produce a witness who would say that Clinton had been misquoted, Carson wrote: “So, you’ve got two guys we’ve barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?… Sounds totally and completely reliable.”

(Carson eventually put me in touch with a source who claimed to not have heard the quote — see below). Barber’s book was published in 2001.

Perhaps even more telling than Hillary Clinton’s proclamation, however, were the words from her husband that followed. As reported by Barber, Clinton “stepped in, calm and judicious, not irritated, as if rehearsing an old but honorable debate he had been having with his wife for decades.”

I know how you feel. I understand Hillary’s sense of outrage. It makes me mad too. Sure, we lost our base in the South; our boys voted for Gingrich. But let me tell you something. I know these boys. I grew up with them. Hardworking, poor, white boys, who feel left out, feel that our reforms always come at their expense. Think about it, every progressive advance our country has made since the Civil War has been on their backs. They’re the ones asked to pay the price of progress. Now, we are the party of progress, but let me tell you, until we find a way to include these boys in our programs, until we stop making them pay the whole price of liberty for others, we are never going to unite our party, never really going to have change that sticks.

If the tone and tenor of the above sounds familiar, it’s because the message, Boyte says, is remarkably similar to what Obama was trying to convey in his now controversial remarks about small town America.

“Well, yeah, absolutely,” said Boyte, when asked if Obama and Bill Clinton were expressing the same political viewpoint (Boyte said he and his organization are neutral in the presidential race). “I think Obama’s better-or-worse versions of this have always been that people are complicated. It comes from an organizing perspective. You don’t write off people, everyone is complicated. It just depends on the issue. And that’s what Bill Clinton was saying. He was a sentimental populist.”

Not to be lost in all this, as Boyte notes, is that Hillary Clinton has consistently been a “champion for the people who were helpless and powerless.” But there is a political component to the mindset.

“Hillary Clinton has a very strong customer view: the citizen is the customer and the government the vendor,” said Boyte. “You can see it in Mark Penn’s frame. In fact, last Christmas she had an ad of herself writing checks to different groups.”

Update: Jake Tapper, over at ABC, had highlighted the “screw em” quote back in October. His article was in reference to comments Sen. Clinton had made about Mississippi. Considering events this past week, the issue has taken on increased relevance.

Late Update: The Clinton campaign put me in touch with Don Baer, President Clinton’s speech writer at the time, who had attended the same meeting. He says: “I don’t remember anything along those lines, at all. And I certainly don’t remember Senator Clinton saying anything like that… they have their recollections of that, that is their business. The conversation, from my perspective, was moderated in tone.”

He did not, it should be noted, directly challenge the interpretations of Barber and Boyte.

Baer’s comments came at roughly the same moment that The New Republic published a blog post by Alan Wolfe, a professor of political science at Boston College, who was also at the retreat and says he too heard the quote. Noting Carson’s remark — “So, you’ve got two guys we’ve barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?… Sounds totally and completely reliable” — Wolfe writes: “Make that three. I was there. I hope people have heard of me. And Barber and Boyte have it right.”

Will history repeat itself?

Well before a political party’s convention, an experienced and  well-known NY Senator appears the favorite for the presidential nomination, but is challenged by an astute Illinois politician. 

The Illinois politician has limited national experience, and his speeches are felt to give little indication of what he will do when he is in office. 

In the end, though, his political skills bring him victory over William Seward, and Abraham Lincoln wins the Rpublican nomination in 1860.

Will history repeat itself?

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Rape and Race: We Have to Talk About It

April 10, 2008 — Remixing the racial rule of silence.

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell

TheRoot.com

Updated: 12:29 PM ET Apr 9, 2008

I witnessed something truly astonishing on Monday night: a public discussion of black women’s experiences of sexual violence at the hands of black men.  It was an intergenerational group of black men and women, gay and straight, survivors and perpetrators, all grappling with the legacy of rape and race. 

The experience was unusual because black people rarely talk about sisters being raped. We talk about all kinds of things: trivial, critical, humorous, serious, political, painful and frivolous. But as we observe Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April, I am reminded that there are things we don’t talk about.

We are silent about black women as victims and survivors of sexual assault by black men.

In African American communities rape narratives are not women’s stories.  They are men’s stories.  Rape is tied to the historical legacy of white terror.  Strange fruit hanging from Southern trees has led to a legacy of disbelieving women who report sexual violence and intimidation.

Black women raped by black male perpetrators often remain silent because they are alone. They don’t want to confirm white racial stereotypes; their own families and communities tell them to shut up; they have little reason to think that authorities will take their cases seriously; they fear the devastating ramifications of a manhunt in black communities if they are believed; and in the history of lynching, white women have been adversaries, not allies, on the question of rape. 

Recovering from rape is burden enough without having to shoulder this vicious legacy.

I do not want to diminish or deny the pain, agony, recovery and triumph of survivors who are not black women.  I do not want to claim that all black women survivors have parallel experiences or that all black women experience the same traumas in the aftermath of rape. I only want to claim there is often a different dynamic that operates for black women who have been violated by black men.As a sexual assault survivor and advocate I know the debilitating effects of silence. 

That is why I was so moved by Monday night’s gathering in Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY.  Together we watched Aishah Shahidah Simmons’ NO! The Rape Documentary.  Then Simmons, who is herself a rape and incest survivor, talked with us and answered questions to help us process the grief, anger and confusion that her exquisite film provoked.

But here was the most surprising part of all: the gathering was organized by a community group called Black and Male in America. Under the leadership of writer, activist and Congressional candidate Kevin Powell, this group of men arranged a screening of Simmons’ powerful film.  Let me say this again.  A group of black men arranged for an honest, difficult, intense, public discussion of intra-racial rape.

Filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons revealed that it has been difficult to find wide distribution for her film because so few people want to grapple with black women’s sexual victimization.  Simmons was joined on the panel by Kevin Powell and Quentin Walcott from ConnectNYC.  Sitting next to these men, Simmons acknowledged that brothers from the hip-hop generation, a generation that has been critiqued as universally commercial and misogynist, have been among her strongest supporters.

Simmons said, “It’s also very important for me to note that this and many other community-based screenings that have been organized by Black men are men from the hip-hop generation. I share this because there are many justifiable critiques of hip-hop. However, hands down, the overwhelming majority of the men who have supported NO! and spread the word about NO! are from the hip-hop generation.”

Organizer Kevin Powell is certainly a central figure of the hip-hop generation.  As a first seasonReal World cast member, Powell helped usher in the age of reality TV. As a writer and poet he has reflected on and critiqued hip-hop. Powell also has his own difficult past as a perpetrator of domestic violence.  But rather than being silent and demanding silence from others, Powell has written movingly about his own awakening from violence.  On Monday night he and other men of this Brooklyn organization helped provide space for sexual assault survivors to speak and be heard.We are right to focus on and criticize the elements of hip-hop that are complicit in the violence, abuse and degradation of black women.  But we are also compelled to acknowledge the possibility that some men of the hip-hop generation just might have something to teach their elders about passing the mic and being quiet while sisters share their stories. Maybe, just maybe, this generation of men will create a different path.

Reflecting on what this new path might look like Powell said,

“What we’ve found in our work with black males is that many of us brothers are completely clueless about what manhood should be. So we swallow whole what society, our communities, our families, our fathers, and, yes, our mothers, tell us it is, even if that definition leads us to hurt or destroy black females or other black males. Or ourselves. There is a growing recognition, now, among many hip-hop generation black women thinkers, leaders, and artists, and a growing number of us black male counterparts, that if we do not deal with the multiple insanities we as a community have internalized, then we are doomed as a community. It is really that serious.

“Monday night’s event helped us to remember that rape is complicated by race.  For many black women there is a sense of betrayal that exists alongside the personal humiliation, pain and fear. Intra-racial rape can feel like a rift between a woman and her people. The survivor is cast into silence not so much a by a desire to protect those men who perpetrated, but to protect the black men in her life who she loves, respects and trusts. As Simmons’ NO! reminds us, survivors often feel that by fingering the attacker we might somehow accuse our own fathers, husbands, friends and sons of possessing this same capacity for violence. 

So it makes a huge difference for black men to stand with us and encourage us to tell.  The Brooklyn gathering was a model of how black men can help create safe spaces for us.  It was a reminder that men can exert power and reclaim manhood by standing with black women, bearing witness to our stories and holding one another accountable. It was a testament to the reality that men can stop rape by saying NO!

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University.

URL: http://www.theroot.com/id/45744

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don’t) by Jan Hartman:

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don’t) by Jan Hartman:

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.¹

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”²

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.³

4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”⁴

5. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.⁵

6. He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.⁶

7. Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”⁷

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.⁸

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”⁹

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.¹⁰

Sources:
1. “The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day,” ABC News, April 3, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/the-complicated.html

“McCain Facts,” ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008
http://colorofchange.org/mccain_facts/

2. “McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq,” Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF28rSCtk0ZM&refer=us

“Buchanan: John McCain ‘Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,’” ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/

3. “McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill,” ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-torture-veto/

4. “McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned,” MSNBC, February 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/

5. “2007 Children’s Defense Fund Action Council^® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard,” February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007

“McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion,” CNN, October 3, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/mccain.interview/

6. “Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady,” Associated Press, April 3, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-S1sWHm0tchtdMP5LcLywg5ZtMgD8VQ86M80

“McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,’” Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMiDVYaXZFM&refer=home

7. “Will McCain’s Temper Be a Liability?,” Associated Press, February 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4301022

“Famed McCain temper is tamed,” Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/27/famed_mccain_temper_is_tamed/

8. “Black Claims McCain’s Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: ‘I Don’t Know What The Criticism Is,’” ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/02/mccain-black-lobbyist/

“McCain’s Lobbyist Friends Rally ‘Round Their Man,” ABC News, January 29, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4210251

9. “McCain’s Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam,” Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html

“Will McCain Specifically ‘Repudiate’ Hagee’s Anti-Gay Comments?,” ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/mccain-hagee-anti-gay/

“McCain ‘Very Honored’ By Support Of Pastor Preaching ‘End-Time Confrontation With Iran,’” ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/

10. “John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record,” Sierra Club, February 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/environment/77913/

Marc and Melissa on Child Support

The Child Support Debate Continues [Call] FROM MARC LAMONT HILL

Melissa,

On Friday, I read an interesting and provocative blog post by our Root colleague Jimi Izrael. In his post, Izrael argues that the current child support laws are disproportionately stacked against the interests of men.

I agree with Izrael that we need to reform current child support laws. In the current moment, as William Julius Wilson notes, child support laws serve as a “labor tax” that dissuade Black men from working traditional jobs. This is particularly true for previously incarcerated men, whose wages can be garnished up to 66 percent in order to repay outstanding support. Unfortunately, the popular notion of the “deadbeat dad”, like the welfare queen of the 1980s, obscures the more fundamental problem: structural barriers to gainful employment. For this reason, we need to develop more realistic and humane approaches to child support for economically disadvantaged people.

On the other hand, I disagree with Izrael’s argument that men should never be placed in jail for not paying support. Take, for example, Sean Levert, who died tragically while serving a 22-month prison sentence for felony non-payment of $85,000 in child support. While Izrael says that he shouldn’t have been in jail in the first place, I can’t imagine any alternative for someone who so wantonly ignores his responsibility.

Perhaps I’m biased because I pay child support every month while many of the brothers I know go to extravagant lengths to avoid taking care of their kids. Are some of these men experiencing financial trouble? No doubt. This is why I support government subsidies and debt forgiveness for people who truly need it. But many of the men I know, even those who earn solid middle class wages, are simply unwilling to make basic sacrifices in order to ensure that their child has food, clothing, and shelter. Would they let their children live on the streets? Probably not. But anything short of that means that it’s the mother’s responsibility.

What do you think Melissa? Is Jimi Izrael right that the law is too tough? Am I having a Bill Cosby moment over here in the way I’m critiquing men? Also, Jimi Izrael concludes by asking “Shouldn’t we also hold women accountable for their irresponsible behavior? What does that look like?” How would you answer that question?

The Child Support Debate [the response] FROM MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL

Marc,

I am having a little trouble responding to your call because fire is shooting out of my fingers and smoke out of my ears after reading Jimi’s blog.

I am not even a little bit objective and detached on this issue. I am a divorced mother and my solidly middle class, ex-husband has consistently paid half of his court ordered support for years. I don’t want to lock him up, but I wouldn’t mind kicking him in the leg with my best stilettos.

From where I stand irresponsibility is not the only possible explanation for single parenting. I did everything “right.” I dated my ex-husband for five years, finished my degree, got married, bought a house and then got pregnant and had my daughter. Still, I find myself living as a single parent. Life is complicated, none of us is fully autonomous and even good choices can lead to tough circumstances.

The law is not about punishing a parent for irresponsibility. The law is meant to protect the best interests of children. I am firmly convinced that in the vast majority of circumstances children’s best interests are served by ensuring that the non-custodial parent provides substantial financial support.

Paying this support will require discomfort and sacrifice. I assure you that being the custodial parent requires discomfort and sacrifice of all kinds.

I am no Bill Cosby and I don’t think we can behave our way to racial equality. On the other hand I know that the reason black folks in America have anything at all is because our mothers, fathers, aunties, grandpas and nanas did their very best even within the tremendously difficult circumstances they encountered. For our children we must do the same thing.

I believe that the interests of children are best served by establishing loving bonds with both parents. Assuming there is no abuse, our kids do best when they are allowed to love both parents unconditionally, no matter the failures and weaknesses of those parents. These bonds are nurtured through time, visits, phone calls, letters and even emails. It is the absent parent’s responsibility to initiate these encounters. It is the custodial parent’s responsibility to facilitate them.

We also foster these bonds by controlling the selfish impulse to speak negatively about the other parent. My mouth sometimes bleeds from biting my tongue in my daughter’s presence, but I believe that loving her dad and feeling loved by him are critically important to her sense of self.

That said, I think the courts are a terrible place for conducting the work of parenting. Jimi is absolutely wrong that courts are universally biased against fathers. The stories are too long, ugly and painful to tell, but I have seen the courts allow angry, vengeful parents to use children as tools of harassment rather than as subjects of loving concern. Fathers do this as much as mothers.

Courts care little for the complicated, personal, nuanced circumstances of our lives. Hear this: paying your support makes a hell of al lot more sense that paying a lawyer to get you out of paying your support. The support goes to enrich the life of your child, the court fees just make the lawyers rich.

Many matters of government policy affect the quality of lives for our children. Most of our kids are relegated to shockingly unequal public schools. Many must live in unsafe neighborhoods marked by crime, environmental hazards and daily reminders of hopelessness. Even our privileged kids are constantly navigating landmines of racial difference and anxiety that tears at the fabric of their self-esteem. As parents, let’s stop trying to punish each other and get focused on sacrificing for our kids so that we buffer them from these assaults.

Melissa

You can find many more conversations between Marc and Melissa at http://blogs.theroot.com/blogs/downfromthetower/

Gender and King’s Assassination

Behind Coretta’s Veil: Black Women and the Burdens of Loss

BY MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL | TheRoot.com

Gender is as critical as race in marking the trauma of King’s death.

AP

TYPE SIZE

April 2, 2008–The women weep. 

Forty years later there are two particularly poignant and enduring images associated with Dr. King’s assassination. The first is the circle of men surrounding Martin’s body on that Memphis balcony as they point in the direction of the shooter.  The second is Coretta Scott King’s mournful and resolute face beneath her widow’s black veil. 

Both images capture the radicalizing power of Dr. King’s murder.  Together they reveal how responses to racial terrorism are often gendered. Many black men are like TheRoot.com contributor Professor Michael Dawson, who found his authentic political voiceemerging from the ashes of his beloved, burning city in the aftermath of King’s death. Like the men on the balcony, they became the vocal and visible leaders of the continuing movements against injustice.

Many black women swallow their pain, gird their loins and persist against impossible odds when the men they love are destroyed. They are like Medgar’s Myrlie, Malcolm’s Betty, and Martin’s Coretta. Much less visible and vocal, these women become the symbols of strength and endurance in the aftermath of men’s murders.

This does not mean that all brothers or all sisters responded in the same way to Dr. King’s death, only that gender is as critical as race in marking the experience. King’s assassination was one incident in a long campaign of domestic, racial terrorism aimed in specific ways at black men. Race riots, land theft, agricultural peonage, castration, mutilation, postcards of human sacrifice, and lynching pierced by the smell of burning flesh constitute the terrorism that black communities have known throughout the twentieth century.

Even today, black men die young.  They perish from violence and from poor health. They vanish from communities due to joblessness and incarceration. Their absence means that black women are often left alone to raise children, to sustain neighborhoods and to battle for rights.

In their solitude, black women face enormous obstacles. Women heads of households are twice as likely to live in inadequate housing. They earn less than their male counterparts. Fewer than half of black women have bachelor’s degrees and the unemployment rate for black women is more than double that for white women. More than 1 in 4 black women live in poverty.

Babies born to black women in the U.S. today are two-and-a-half times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies. Black women have higher rates of hypertension and diabetes and are more likely to die of breast cancer than are white women.  On the whole, black women face lack of education, underemployment, poverty, racism, disease and isolation. Survival itself seems miraculous.  It is no wonder that we praise black women by calling them strong.

Despite the significant challenges faced by women, black cultural vocabulary and collective memory have often understood black men as uniquely vulnerable to the violence of American racism.  Dr. King’s assassination is part of that story.  Today, we often speak of endangered black men, point to the challenges facing black boys in public schools and rail against the prison industrial complex as a modern system of slavery.

While we must mobilize around the continued attacks against black men and boys, I worry that this particular formulation leaves little place for black women’s brokenness and it can encourage us to silence black women’s concerns. The assumption is that the “endangered black man” needs the “strong black woman” to protect the community in his absence. But what are the costs to black women?

The strong black woman must confront all the challenges, persevere against the impossible, provide unlimited encouragement and always be prepared to do what needs to be done for her family and her people.  She must be sacrificial and suppress her own emotional needs while anticipating those of others. She must have an irrepressible spirit unbroken by a legacy of oppression, poverty and rejection.

My point is not that black women actually are stronger than any other group of women, but that the idea that black women are strong and that they need to be and should be is an imperative.  Strength is a kind of racial rule for black women. To be a real black woman, you have to be a strong black woman.

I have spent the last several years studying how the strong black woman ideal has real and measurable consequences for the mental and physical health of individual black women. 

The imperative of the strong black woman icon generates a set of expectations that black women aspire to achieve. When the material realities of black women’s lives militate against the mythical of unwavering strength, the resulting sense of failure and disillusionment has real effects on their emotional and physical well being. 

There are political consequences too. Seeking to sustain their position as backbones of communities and pillars of strength, African-American women too rarely demand the resources to meet their  needs.  Areas where black women have the most personal and critical needs are often the places where black politics is silent

We rarely discuss black women’s incarceration and its effects on families. We don’t know what to do about black women’s accelerating deaths from HIV-AIDS. We are completely silent about the sexual victimization that so many black girls and women endure.

As sisters pick up the broken pieces left behind when black men are ripped from communities, they find themselves struggling at the intersection of many forms of marginalization.

So it is hard.  When I look into Coretta’s face in that photo I am proud of her.  I know that she will take on the burdens of family and of movement with everything in her. 

But I am also so sad for her. I know that black women’s political labor often leaves them less mentally and physically well.  I know that there are few places where a black woman can weep and be comforted; few places where she can be broken and find help; few places where her voice maters much to others. 

I believe the challenge is to create a new political legacy that acknowledges black men’s vulnerability without ignoring black women’s needs. We must give voice to the attack on brothers without silencing sisters.  We must not be seduced into believing that patriarchy will save us. 

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University.

http://www.theroot.com/id/45615/ 

Race, Rape and the Limits of Black Politics

This Story is from the Palm Beach Post

Women not tolerating Sharpton’s rape rant

By Frank Cerabino
Palm Beach Post Staff WriterSunday, March 30, 2008

Al Sharpton and the local chapter of the NAACP have gotten themselves into
trouble with black women for trying to turn the Dunbar Village rape case into a
showpiece of racial injustice.

During the past three weeks, a network of about 30 black women bloggers have
been blistering Sharpton and the local NAACP for coddling the black teenagers
accused taking a neighborhood woman at gunpoint into her West Palm Beach
home, raping her and forcing her to have sex with her own pre-teen son.

Earlier this month, Sharpton stood in front of the Palm Beach County State
Attorney’s Office with local NAACP officials and relatives of the accused Dunbar
Village rapists to complain that these teenage boys are victims of racial
discrimination.

“Sharpton bills himself as a spokesman for the voiceless,” wrote Tonyaa
Weathersbee in BlackAmericaWeb.com “Too bad this time he decided to lend his
voice to the ones who needed it the least - and guarantee that more raped
black women will continue to suffer in silence.”

Weathersbee and other politically active black women bloggers say Sharpton has
ignored the indisputable victims in the Dunbar case - a 35-year-old black
woman and her 12-year-old son.

Maude Ford Lee, the president of the West Palm Beach NAACP chapter, spoke
alongside Sharpton while the assembled media were handed a flier showing the
photos of three of the accused Dunbar Village rapists with the words, “Voiceless,
Vulnerable, Victims!!” next to them.

“These children are being unjustly persecuted because of corrupt politics,
racism and economics,” the flier said. “The State Attorney’s Office has grossly
overcharged these children.”

Sharpton had the victims wrong

The gist of the racial discrimination complaint was that the Dunbar teenagers
were being held without bond while a group of white teenagers from suburban
Boca Raton charged with rape earlier this year were free on bond.

In the suburban Boca Raton case, the teens were accused of getting two
neighborhood friends drunk and then raping them while they were too drunk to
resist.

“Am I the only one that sees some GLARING DISTINCTIONS in these two cases
that have absolutely nothing to do with the race of the defendants or am I
missing something?” wrote blogger Arlene Fenton.

Fenton organized a letter-writing campaign against the local NAACP, Sharpton
and his National Action Network for using the west Boca case to make victims of
the Dunbar Village teenagers.

“It is breathtaking that the National Action Network brain trust can’t seem to
comprehend the difference between a home invasion by masked gunmen who
torture, rape, sodomize, cut, burn, and beat their victims for THREE HOURS and
culminate the event with crime against nature committed against a 12-year-old
child … and a case involving NONE of those facts,” Fenton wrote.

Bloggers see victory

The outrage of black women like Fenton has made its mark.

Lee, in a letter this week to the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, left out
any mention of the Dunbar Village attack suspects as voiceless victims who
should be given the same bond as the suburban Boca Raton teenagers.

She recast her involvement to say it was only to “call for fair and just treatment
in all phases of the criminal justice system” for the Dunbar Village defendants.

Sharpton, who spoke with Fenton and Weathersbee on his radio show this week,
now claims he never wanted the Dunbar rape suspects to be free pending trial.

The women bloggers take all this backpedaling as a victory.

“Let this be the alarm for any man, woman or organization that decides to align
itself with those who harm Black women and children - today is a new day,”
blogged Tanisha Mathis. “Today is the day you realize we are an omnipresent
force to be reckoned with and respected.”