American history turned upside down — and that’s the point

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It turns out Nikki Haley stumbling over the cause of the Civil War was not a one-off.

The topsy-turvy twisting of American history, as it applies to Black Americans — their resilience and contributions despite injustice — is a tactic, a well-planned cynical one. And recent perpetrators don’t even have the decency to make a half-hearted attempt at backtracking, as Haley eventually and reluctantly managed to do after being called out on her amnesia about slavery.

Now politicians are standing proudly as they try to co-opt the language and history of the Civil Rights movement, which fought for equal rights for all and forced America to take a step toward living up to its ideals.

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Jun132024 TAGS: , , , , ,

Women’s voices on justice for Black men

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“We Refuse to Be Silent: Women’s Voices on Justice for Black Men” is a just-released collection of essays. Unfortunately, the need for such voices has been consistent and essential throughout America’s history. Thirty-five journalists, authors, scholars, ministers, psychologists, counselors and others raise their voices — now, and until solutions are in place.

Angela P. Dodson, the collection’s editor and the author of “Remember the Ladies: Celebrating Those Who Fought for Freedom at the Ballot Box,” is the guest on this episode of Equal Time; she is joined by New Orleans-based journalist Lottie Joiner, one of the book’s contributors. (Full disclosure: I’m also a contributor to the collection.)

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Jun102024 TAGS: , ,

Trump’s mini-mes in uniform are waging war on American institutions

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The scene would be funny if it weren’t so sad and dangerous: a lineup of grown men and women, the men dressed in matching dark suits and red ties, praising their leader and trashing the United States justice system when most should have been in Washington, D.C., doing their jobs.

Members of the Republican Party who say they believe in “law and order” should just stop using that phrase in their messaging, since they seem to believe the law only applies to other people and disorder is justifiable if it’s used to grab on to and maintain power.

In this land of “rugged individualism,” when standing up for truth and character is uplifted, even if it means standing alone, we instead saw men in the uniform of their leader Donald Trump. Some of them — former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida — were probably auditioning for the role of vice president on the Republican ticket. Others were there to get in front of the cameras and on the right side of the base.

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Jun102024 TAGS: , ,

Blocking voters you don’t like is a shameful American tradition

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After the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution — abolishing enslavement, awarding citizenship to Black Americans and guaranteeing their right to vote (Black men, anyway) — it was a time of progress and celebration.

African Americans were elevated to positions in cities, states and at the federal level, including American heroes such as Robert Smalls of South Carolina, first elected in 1874, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was well known by then, though. His sailing skills were crucial in a dramatic escape from enslavement that saw him hijack a Confederate ship he would turn over to the U.S. Navy.

But not everyone viewed the success of Smalls and so many like him as triumphs, proof of the “all men are created equal” doctrine in the Declaration of Independence. For some whites, steeped in the tangled myth of white supremacy and superiority and shocked by the rise of those they considered beneath them, the only answer was repression and violence, often meted out at polling places and the ballot box.

It didn’t matter that these newly elected legislators, when given power, promoted policies that benefited everyone, such as universal public schooling.

In incidents throughout the South, the White League and the Klan killed Black men who had the audacity to exercise their right to vote, intimidating and silencing those who considered doing the same. In the Colfax Massacre in April 1873, an armed group set fire to the Colfax, La., courthouse, where Republicans and freed people had gathered; between 70 and 150 African Americans were killed by gunfire or in the flames. In Wilmington, N.C., white vigilantes intimidated Black voters at the polls, and in 1898, in a bloody coup, overthrew the duly elected, biracial “Fusion” government.

Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” couching a return to white domination in the pious language of religion, not the first or last time God was used so shamelessly as cover.

The perpetrators then were Democrats, allied against Lincoln’s Republican Party.

Today, it’s most often Republicans — afraid they can’t convince a majority with ideas alone — who engage in tactics to shrink the electorate to one more amenable to a “Make America Great Again” promise, one that harks back to a time that was not so great for everyone.

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May092024 TAGS: , , , , ,

Playing by the rules? What a concept

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“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” All right, maybe people who said this or taught the saying to their kids as a sign of noble character never truly meant it. But they at least pretended to.

Are those times long gone? Well, a lot of folks who know better have been charged with trying to rig, not a game, but democracy. And, in some cases, their defiance of norms and laws is being rewarded and celebrated.

That certainly seems to have happened in Arizona.

Being indicted for involvement in a “fake electors” scheme to keep Donald Trump in the White House after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden did not hurt state Sen. Jake Hoffman at the Arizona GOP Convention over the weekend. Indeed, he was chosen as a Republican National Committee member.

“I’m humbled and honored to have been elected as the next RNC National Committeeman for Arizona!” Hoffman wrote on social media. “For the next 4 years I will work tirelessly to ensure that the RNC makes Arizona its #1 priority not only in 2024, but every year.”

When you consider what he is charged with doing in the 2020 election, Hoffman’s pledge, along with the fact that the term “fake electors” doesn’t need an explanation, presents a scary vision of the future. Being unhappy with the results of an election is understandable; subverting the will of your state’s voters to change the final score is not.

Hoffman will have his day in court, but he doesn’t seem one bit admonished by the charge as he carries that partisan energy into November. He was in good — or bad — company with others indicted not only in Arizona but also in Georgia for similar shenanigans, including former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Another defendant in the Arizona case, lawyer Christina Bobb, has found strong support in her party in her role as senior counsel to the Republican National Committee’s election integrity team.

That is not a joke.

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May022024 TAGS: , , , ,

Can a courtroom bring Trump’s larger-than-life personality down to size?

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“The Incredible Shrinking Man” is once again in the public eye. No, not the 1957 film that played on America’s fear of a radioactive unknown, as a hazy cloud turned its unwitting protagonist into a science experiment. Instead, the star of the 2024 show is a man many still fear — how else to explain his sometimes-hostile takeover of a major political party — who is becoming smaller and smaller as he sits behind a defendant’s table in a Manhattan courtroom.

Unlike the star of that unsettling 1950s warning, what landed Donald Trump in his predicament is no mystery. The case is somewhat complex, since it’s not about the what, a supposed payoff to an adult film star, but rather the why, to keep voters from punishing the man with visions of the presidency, and the how, by falsifying business records.

The players who will have their chance in the spotlight — the former fixer Michael Cohen, former staffer Hope Hicks, former tabloid guru David Pecker and the adult film actress herself, Stormy Daniels, to name a few — are all familiar parts of the world Trump created. So, it should be no surprise that this past is coming back to haunt him.

But what is a bit surprising is how quickly the man known for his bold, brash persona has been shrinking when faced with the harsh reality of a dreary courtroom and the rituals of a criminal trial.

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Apr242024 TAGS: ,

A reality check on crime and justice

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If it’s an election year, expect crime to be an issue. Candidates and parties draw conclusions with every headline, and exchange rhetoric that sheds more heat than light. But the history and reality of America’s criminal justice system is more complicated than a “tough on crime” slogan would indicate.

The just published “Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration” offers essays by scholars, advocates, people who have experienced incarceration and former law enforcement who make the case that public safety, justice and fairness are not only compatible as goals, but they can and must be achieved together. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the book’s editor, is the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where she leads the organization’s work to reduce America’s reliance on incarceration, and is the author of “Inside Private Prisons” (Columbia University Press, 2017) and a former prosecutor. She joins Equal Time to talk about why the book is especially timely in the present political climate.

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Apr192024 TAGS: , ,

A reality check on crime and justice

Featured at Roll Call

If it’s an election year, expect crime to be an issue. Candidates and parties draw conclusions with every headline, and exchange rhetoric that sheds more heat than light. But the history and reality of America’s criminal justice system is more complicated than a “tough on crime” slogan would indicate.

The just published “Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration” offers essays by scholars, advocates, people who have experienced incarceration and former law enforcement who make the case that public safety, justice and fairness are not only compatible as goals, but they can and must be achieved together. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the book’s editor, is the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where she leads the organization’s work to reduce America’s reliance on incarceration, and is the author of “Inside Private Prisons” (Columbia University Press, 2017) and a former prosecutor. She joins Equal Time to talk about why the book is especially timely in the present political climate.

Read the rest atRoll Call
Apr152024 TAGS: , , ,

Abortion is on the ballot. But so is loyalty to Trump: Will voters connect the dots between policy and party in 2024?

Featured at Roll Call

A long-promised Donald Trump statement on abortion has finally been released. As expected, it was vague and pleased few. The former president both bragged about his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and stopped short of endorsing a national abortion ban, instead pledging to leave the decision up to the states.

While it may anger the faction of his party endorsing a national ban, the statement proves the almost certain Republican Party presidential nominee, as transactional and self-serving as ever, can read the polls and the political winds.

Remember, this is the man with a history of declaring himself “pro-choice,” “pro-life” and in favor of punishing women who seek abortions. I’m not sure what he truly believes, but it’s clear from his dancing around the issue that he knows he could pay a price for the GOP’s anti-abortion rights stance in November.

But maybe dealing in contradictions won’t hurt him and his party as much as Trump believes and Democrats hope.

It may not make perfect sense, but a certain voting pattern has been happening lately. Citizens in red states surprise observers when they lean blue on the issue of reproductive and abortion rights, yet continue to reelect the politicians who support those bans.

Ohio has proven that two things could be true at once: Democrat Tim Ryan, Ohioan through and through, could experience defeat in a 2022 Senate race at the hands of Donald Trump-endorsed Republican J.D. Vance, who just a few years ago was tagged as an elitist leaving behind background and family with his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy.” This was after calling Trump an “idiot” in 2016.

And those same voters could troop to the ballot box in November 2023 to make sure a right to abortion is enshrined in the state’s constitution — after earlier rejecting a state GOP attempt to make it more difficult to win that right.

Vance was shaken by that result last year, writing “we need to understand why we lost this battle so we can win the war.”

But in spite of the surprise Ohio voters handed Republicans, incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is still facing a tough reelection race in the fall. That’s despite his working-class credibility across the state, a record of accomplishments that have benefited Ohio and endorsements from groups such as the 100,000-member Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council. Brown criticizes free-trade agreements, even those coming from his own party, when he says they hurt his constituents.

His GOP opponent, wealthy businessman Bernie Moreno, may have no experience and a background many voters are still filling in, but he has something much more important — a Donald Trump endorsement.

In a state that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 by a comfortable margin, that may be more than enough. The fact that Ohio voters have proven to be on board with a Democrat’s record and his party’s stand on the issue of reproductive rights is fighting a growing partisan divide that sees a lot less ticket-splitting.

Inside Elections rates both Brown’s race and that of established Montana Sen. Jon Tester, another Democratic incumbent in a red state, as Toss-ups.

Democrats see abortion rights giving them a fighting chance in states they’ve recently seen as lost causes. It wasn’t that long ago (2008 and 2012, in fact) that the party won both Ohio and even, yes, Florida. With an abortion rights initiative on the Sunshine State’s ballot in November, Democrats have even been dreaming of a resurgence in the land of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

It will take more than dreams in a time when party is also identity.

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Apr112024 TAGS: , , , ,

A two-tiered justice system is nothing new — and certainly not what Trump says it is

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It may come as a surprise to hear that I actually agree with Donald Trump on something: America does have a two-tiered system of justice. In fact, you could say I beat him to it since I reached that conclusion long before the former president adopted it as his mantra.

I was not even in grade school when my older brother was arrested. While I didn’t know much about the world, I always thought that you had to do something terrible for law enforcement to haul you away. I also knew my brother Tony. And, though he teased me in the annoying way big brothers do, I valued him not only as a brother and friend, but as a pretty cool dude. So, I knew he couldn’t be the bad guy.

I still remember that night.

My mom and dad, fresh off the joy of a church dance, were confronted with the crisis when they hit the front door, and they scrambled to find the deed to the house in case they needed it to bail their son out (because if my father had anything to say about it, Tony was not going to spend a night in jail).

I was more confused when I discovered his “crime,” sitting down in a diner and ordering a burger.

That was it?

It really was the “system,” I realized, not my brother. Maryland law, at a time not that long ago, allowed business owners to bar Black people from their establishments. What the state did was technically legal — but wrong. I was sure of it.

An unjust law allowed the police whose salary my parents paid with their taxes to handcuff, fingerprint and jail my big brother because people who looked like my family were not included in an oath to “protect and serve.”

It was definitely a two-tiered system of justice, one that folks like my three eldest siblings and civil rights lawyer Juanita Jackson Mitchell — whose expertise brought my brother home — worked to correct with activism and courage, an adjective that definitely does not apply to Trump’s Jan. 6 army of lawbreakers.

That the activists’ job is not done is clear when poor folks and minorities, often represented by overworked public defenders, languish in jails when they haven’t been tried or convicted of anything.

It’s why my solidarity with Trump ends when you dive into the actual details.

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Mar212024 TAGS: , ,
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