Author: mopress

Philosopher David E. McClean lives in New York, where he is an active member of the Society for the Study of Africana Philosophy.–gm

By David E. McClean
by permission of the author

In Parents Involved in Community Schools Inc. v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County (Ky.) Board of Education the Supreme Court erred. It erred because, notwithstanding all the intellectual horsepower at its disposal, it continues to fail to make the kinds of distinctions that a child can make in analyzing race-conscious policies designed to cure the effects of past injustices. It is stunning that Chief Justice Roberts is able to conclude that “You cannot use an individual’s race, and classify that person according to race, and then craft policies that take into account that person’s race” and “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.” This locks-up with the old conservative criticism, trumpeted by Ward Connerly and others, that all discrimination on the basis of race just is immoral racial discrimination, regardless of who is doing the “discriminating” or why. No, it isn’t. The equation does not hold.

Consciousness of such predicates as skin color, when setting public policy, is not necessarily immoral or necessarily a violation of important Liberal principles. To the contrary, both morality and logic require such consciousness under certain circumstances, which had been the Supreme Court’s position since the Brown decision. What is always immoral is invidious discrimination – discrimination designed to cause harm and strip rights – which is not the same thing as color-conscious or race-conscious policies designed to remedy invidious discrimination. Since this distinction is often lost on many conservatives, I started to search for a rather simple way to sketch it out so that it can be comprehended. So I thought of using the characters of Sesame Street. The following story, populated with Sesame Street characters, I call Mayor Bird Learns a Lesson.

Big Bird has become the mayor of the city where we find Sesame Street – likely somewhere in the liberal Northeast, since where else could you find such a motley crew living together on the same block? Then something terrible happens. Some of the other large but foul fowl of the city convince Mayor Bird that all the fuzzy and featherless creatures of the city are “bad” and should be treated harshly. Alas, Big Bird bows to the pressure of the foul fowl and passes various ordinances that restrict the movement and opportunities of fellow citizens like Cookie Monster and Elmo and even Ernie and Bert (because, you have to admit, they are both a little fuzzy and certainly have no feathers). This goes on for a long, long time, the result being that the fuzzy and featherless inhabitants (or “featherless fuzzies”) of the city, including those who live on Sesame Street, are moved from streets like Sesame Street, with their nice houses and happy workers, to what become various featherless fuzzy slums, because Mayor Bird denies them services, because they are, after all, “bad.” They don’t get to learn how to count by, well, The Count, or to sing, or skip rope, or read – not any more.

But one day, Mayor Bird is visited at his special office in City Hall, by none other than Aloysius Snuffleupagus (who got past the bird guards because, well, none of the bird guards actually saw him, but that’s another story). Anyway, Snuffleupagus greeted Mayor Bird with his old and familiar “Hey, Bird,” to which Mayor Bird responded, happily – “Snuffy!” (He had forgotten himself, not recalling that Aloysius Snuffleupagus is “bad,” too.) Snuffleupagus goes on with an important and simple message: “I have an important and simple message for you, Bird. What you’re doing to Cookie Monster and Elmo and Ernie and the rest of us is just wrong, Bird. Why, we don’t get to learn how to count, or sing, or skip rope, or read anymore. Why don’t you quit it, Bird?” Mayor Bird fell back onto his very large Aeron nest, and pondered Snuffy’s request, while Snuffy stood by and watched, and blinked. Why, Mayor Bird did remember the times, using that small brain of his, when he played with his old friends on Sesame Street! He did remember how he laughed and how The Count taught him to count, and how he learned to sing and skip rope and read, and when he saw Aloysius Snuffleupagus for the first time! After several ours, during which Snuffleupagus quietly watched him, and blinked, Mayor Bird shot to his feet and said, “You’re right, Snuffy! I’m gonna overturn all of these bad laws and make it clear that all of my featherless fuzzy friends must get to count, and sing and skip rope and read just like the birds, and I’m gonna make sure that they get all the things back that were taken away, and get to live in places like Sesame Street once again!” “Hurraaaay, Bird!” said Snuffy, who disappeared past the bird guards, who, never saw him come in to begin with.

So, Mayor Bird, after convincing his other feathered friends on the city council (only birds were on the council now since, after all, they were the only ones who weren’t “bad”) how wrong it had been to hurt all the featherless fuzzy citizens of the city, decreed that the featherless fuzzy citizens would be given what they were entitled to at last. And realizing that even the birds of the city were harmed by his actions (as well as the city itself, for how could anyone think that a city that treated featherless fuzzies the way Mayor Bird’s had is a good city?) he took the lead to establish policies and laws to see to it that the featherless fuzzy citizens and the birds would learn to play with and work with and count with and sing with each other once again. He would have to make it clear to all the birds who now believed that featherless fuzzies were “bad” that they were not “bad” and that calling them “bad” had been a big fat lie. But at the same time, he knew he would have to convince the other birds of the city to cooperate, given the big unfair thing that had happened to all the featherless fuzzy citizens. They would have to make some concessions for, after all, they had all benefited in ways that they should not have, and had been complicit in causing all sorts of harm to the featherless fuzzies, whom they shunned as “bad” for no good reason at all. Many, but not all, of the city agreed to help in any way they could, and to be patient while Mayor Bird’s new plan went into effect. But they would have to really try to stop treating the featherless fuzzies as “bad” if things were to work out.

Mayor Bird told all the citizens of the city, in a famous speech called the “All Together and All the Same” speech, that the featherless fuzzies would get help from the birds to find homes on nice streets like Sesame Street, where they once lived, and to find nice jobs, like the ones they once had but which now went only to the other birds, because they had feathers and the fuzzies didn’t (that’s why they were called featherless fuzzies, in case you weren’t keeping up). In his speech Mayor Bird announced passage of The Featherless Fuzzies Act, which made it very wrong to discriminate, invidiously, against featherless fuzzies (or fuzzy featherlesses – for they were not the same, but that, too, is another story – or big birds, or small birds, or any other citizens, regardless of what grew out of their skin, or didn’t) now and forever. (And yes, Mayor Bird knew that important word, “i-n-v-i-d-i-o-u-s” – and he also knew enough to use it, just in case someone would not understand what the big idea was in creating policies to help the featherless fuzzies get back on their feet by actually considering their featherless fuzziness, or lack thereof). And throughout the new Featherless Fuzzies Act, many references
were made to featherless fuzzies and featherless fuzziness and birds and big birds because, after all, those were the predicates – if you’ll excuse another big word that Mayor Bird knew (he did live on Sesame Street, after all!) – that were the bases for separating, invidiously, birds from featherless fuzzies.

One day, Oscar, who was himself a featherless fuzzy but didn’t much care about living in a slum, since, after all, he always had in a certain sense, saw Mayor Bird give the speech which, I neglected to mention, he gave on Sesame Street itself. Mayor Bird, seeing Oscar, said “Hey, Oscar! I’m really sorry for what I did to you and all the other featherless fuzzies. But I’ve now learned an important lesson, like we always do here on Sesame Street.” To which Oscar said, “Who cares about your stupid lesson, Bird? And didn’t I just hear you say in your speech that all of us here on Sesame Street should be treated according to who we are inside, by our ‘characters’ [Oscar said ‘characters’ in the mocking and sarcastic way that makes us all love him so] not by what grows on our skins?” Mayor Bird said: “Well, yes, Oscar. What grows on our skins is a dumb reason for treating each other badly. I learned my lesson!” Oscar, thinking he’d caught Mayor Bird in a contradiction, replied, “But you just passed another stupid law (Oscar loves to say “stupid”) that takes the stuff that grows on our skins into account in everything you want to fix, from where featherless fuzzies and big birds live, to how they should learn to sing and read and all that other stupid stuff you think is so important. That’s just more discrimination, you stupid Bird!” Big Bird replied, with a stunning display of what can be accomplished with just a fourth grade education in a good school system with adequate resources, “Oh, Oscar, taking into account the stuff that grows on our skins isn’t invidious like what I did before when my friends convinced me to pass laws to hurt featherless fuzzies. Why, how do you talk about helping featherless fuzzies without talking about, well, featherless fuzziness, and featheriness, and birdness and fuzziness? Don’t be silly, Oscar! See you soon, you silly, OK?” And Bird, went off down Sesame Street, with all his old friends, who forgave him, and they all read together, and sang together, and counted together, forever after.

Now, one can only hope that Chief Justice Roberts and all the other justices in the majority will stop and ask for directions of passers-by: “Can you tell us how to get – how to get to Sesame Street?” For on Sesame Street, as our story goes, such simple distinctions as that between invidious discrimination and what-grows-on-skin-conscious policies are understood with almost no effort at all. Why even a bird’s brain, albeit a Big Bird’s brain, can do it. And on Sesame Street, at least, Mayor Bird could count on the citizens of the city to rise to the occasion and do their part to put things right for those they had grievously harmed, and he expected them to.

The Supreme Court has sent a coarsening message to America’s parents and children alike that neither do they owe any personal sacrifices, nor should they shoulder even an inconvenience to help remedy, in their own time, the egregious wrongs of their country – wrongs that still haunt its soul to this day. This parallels a litany of cultural messages of retreat from the great ideals of our nation, which push us in the direction of ever more pronounced and shameless selfishness and individualism.

The article below appeared in a print-only publication. See also Tilda Sosaya’s essential expose of prison privateers at Prison Legal News–gm.

By Jane Chamberlain
Nokoa: The Observer
by permission of the author

More than four hundred demonstrators gathered on Saturday, June 23, for a vigil in front of T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor where refugee families with children are being incarcerated for the crime of seeking residence in the U.S. The children are treated like criminals incarcerated after convictions: wakened for breakfast at 5:30 a.m., deprived of privacy for personal care (open commodes in cells), and threatened with separation from their mothers if they misbehave or play too loudly.

Photo by Kenneth Koym

Saturday’s event was sponsored by Amnesty International and cosponsored by three Texas coalitions made up of diverse organizations including American Friends Service Committee, NAACP, Brown Berets of San Antonio, Cesar E. Chavez March for Justice, Council of American Islamic Relations, Fuerza Unida, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, MADRES, Muslim Legal Fund of America, PODER, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Southwest Workers Union, Texas Civil Rights Project, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, Texas Indigenous Council, Workers Defense Project / Proyecto Defensa Laboral, and others.

Crowded into the easement of a two-lane road between a railroad track on the north and the prison to the south, the demonstrators demanded that ICE/DHS close Hutto and adopt less repressive and less expensive ways to address these “crimes” that are often bureaucratic glitches caused by errors and lapses on the part of lawyers, courts, and the immigration hierarchy.

Hutto prison was nearly empty and threatened with shutdown in 2005, until Katrina sent New Orleans prison administrators in search of new housing for their inmates. Hutto served that purpose, then in May 2006, Homeland Security offered a contract to use Hutto as a detention center for undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation. The detainment center opened in May 2006. The contract promises over $15 million to Taylor annually, about 4 percent of the city’s tax base. But the annual return it brings Corrections Corporation of America, the company that contracts to run the prison, could run as high as $35 million with maximum occupancy. In 2006 the Forbes 400 ranking named CCA leader in “business services and supplies” with earnings up 130 percent over the previous year.

The inmate population has varied from around 280 upwards to 400, with a maximum capacity of 512. Though some are captured trying to enter the U.S. or taken in ICE raids of businesses nationwide, many are asylum-seeking, long-time legal residents whose paperwork has lapsed for various reasons. The ACLU and University of Texas have filed several lawsuits against Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security and six officials from I.C.E. on behalf of 17 detained children.

Speakers at the Saturday event included Rosa Rosales, national president of LULAC, Jay Johnson-Castro, the “Border Ambassador” of Del Rio who has spearheaded eight previous vigils at the prison, Elizabeth Kucinich, human rights activist and wife of presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, and two immigrants who were held in the Texas immigrant detention facilities. Elsa (last name withheld) spoke of her life at Hutto: “Just imagine being locked up for 24 hours a day and having your children tell you, “Mom, why can’t we get out of here?” Many times my three year old daughter would cry and say, “Where is God? Why doesn’t he take us out of here?” I would pray to God to break the walls down. . . . And at times my kids would say, “Why are we locked up? I thought only criminals, people who rob and steal got locked up.”

Jay Johnson-Castro introduced Rusten, Hamde, and Nebil Weber, children of Aziza Mohamed, who has been locked up in Hutto for the past six months. “This is not for national security,” he said. “The people in here are asylum seekers. It’s not a crime to seek asylum. What is going on when our government is dividing families? No child left behind?! These children aren’t with their mother. Why? What crime has she committed — perhaps seeking asylum, wanting to be an American?”

LULAC president Rosa Rosales insisted, “Children should not be imprisoned because their parents have no papers. No human being is illegal and no child should be behind bars.” Another LULAC representative, Rita Gonzales-Garza, talked about the “horrendous injustice our government is carrying out against innocent women and children here at Hutto.” She pointed out that the DHS/ICE policy of using private prisons is “making millionaires while imprisoning people who are in the U.S. seeking asylum and a better life. They are not criminals — they are our brothers and sisters.”

It was hard to hear the speakers at times as parades of demonstrators, some wearing T-shirts that read “No child left behind bars,” marched back and forth chanting, “Shut down Hutto” and “No justice, no peace.”

An editorial in the Daily Texan (6/26/07) points out, “Prisoners inside Hutto come from countries around the world that the United States has intervened in militarily, like Somalia, or economically, like Honduras. The U.S. government cannot feign ignorance about why emigrants attempt to escape repression from U.S.-friendly rulers or neoliberal trade policy in their home countries. This country’s incomparable wealth and purported juridical freedom inspire immigrants to enter by any possible means.” A wider knowledge of our country’s destructive actions abroad must be an important part of the continuing dialogue on immigration.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

Over the last two months, it has become apparent to me that Homeland Security and the groups under its umbrella are deliberately making their immigration policy more mean-spirited. This was evident in a Postville, Iowa immigration raid, where almost three hundred undocumented workers were taken to the local fairgrounds for a makeshift court, found guilty and sent to prison for five months, to be followed by deportation.

This same meanness is also evident in the way the Border Wall construction is beginning in July in the Rio Grande Valley, despite overwhelming opposition by the residents. And it is evident in Operation Streamline, a machine-like, street-level enforcement policy criminalizing the undocumented.

And yesterday I received even more evidence of Homeland Security’s intentionally mean and taunting stance.

A friend, Dr. Lee Basham, who teaches philosophy at South Texas College and is an independent filmmaker, sent me an email with some news that I knew had upset him quite a bit.

Basham and a history teacher colleague made a film, “Joined at the River,” last year; it dealt with a little community, Candelaria, Texas, which is on the Mexico border about 130 miles southeast of El Paso. In this village of Candelaria, there was a sturdy footbridge to Mexico which local people had used for decades.

This walkway facilitated a wonderful spirit of community between the two sides of the river, a spirit which Basham’s film attests to eloquently. But last week the Border Patrol sent in bulldozers, destroying the bridge.

Basham suggested I check a website reporting the incident: “Glenn’s Texas History Blog,” maintained by Glenn Justice. Justice reports that when he arrived, the bridge had just been torn down and the road was blocked by “heavily armed, but polite, Border Patrol” agents. They were loading the broken pieces of the bridge onto a flatbed truck.

“Across the river on the Mexican side, a few amazed locals waved back to us. It was a swift and efficient removal. Yesterday it was there, today it is gone.” Justice bitterly headlined his commentary, “Candelaria Bridge is Gone: Another Brick in the Wall.” I interviewed Basham about it.

Nick Braune: I checked the website you forwarded to me, and it was a shock to me too, because I have seen your documentary.

Lee Basham: I have two hours of footage of local people using the bridge to visit family and transport food.

The bridge was hand-built by local citizens and is the property of those who built it — the communities it joined. It’s a striking steel structure, partially welded out of car frames and steel cable, and it had been in place for 50 years. It joined the small town of Candelaria, with a population of maybe 50, to the slightly larger town of San Antonio Del Bravo, with a population of about 150. Both are farming communities, growing hay, onions, corn and similar crops, and pasturing herds of goats on the narrow valley floor that twists through the rugged canyon that the river cuts.

Braune: Could you tell us more about how the bridge was important?

Basham: Well, the Candelaria Bridge was used to procure gasoline (carried in 6 gallon gas-cans), milk, and medicine. And it allowed the daily visits of families and friends from both sides, as well as allowing the residents to travel to Presidio for work (some 60 miles away) and to get farming supplies. It was neither a reputed drug crossing nor a portal of illegal immigration. Its purpose and use was local traffic.

The bridge also allowed area residents to send their children to school, with the children spending their evenings or weekends at home in San Antonio Del Bravo. Finally, the bridge was the only way out for medical care in emergencies. Residents must now brave the muddy torrents, carrying their sick, crippled and injured through the river, risking drowning, if they are to get them to the care of a doctor or the services of a hospital.

Braune: Doesn’t the Border Patrol know about this healthcare issue?

Basham: Sure they do. It was this healthcare issue that a Border Patrol agent (Agent Salinas, originally of McAllen), once told me had compelled the BP to leave the bridge unmolested. “It’s a humanitarian duty”, Salinas remarked. “People could die if they didn’t have the bridge to use during high water.” These statements were made in an interview conducted by me two years ago.

So, apparently, that sacred duty–to save lives–no longer interests the US Border Patrol in the Marfa sector of West Texas. Let them die, or drown trying to live. This is the new policy in effect there. Local residents, Anglo and Hispanic, are horrified.

Under provisions of the Texas Public Information Act, please provide all records (including paper, emails, faxes, or any electronic files) that document:

(A) the Governor’s official pre-approval of a deployment schedule and mission goals for Operation Jump Start as mandated by the MOU of June 2 and referenced in the Governor’s press release of June 30.
In other words, if “Texas’ goal was to have 500 troops deployed by the end of June”; and if “missions will be pre-approved by DoD and the Governor”; then please produce all documents involved in the Governor’s pre-approval of mission goals that included “500 troops deployed by the end of June.”

(B) subsequent involvement by the Governor’s office or designees in deployment schedules, troop levels, or authorization of orders referenced in the Governor’s press release of June 30.

In other words, if “Texas has activated more than 700 Texas Army National Guard troops and more than 300 Texas Air Guard troops under Operation Jump Start orders”; and if “National Guard troops operating in Texas as part of Operation Jump Start will remain under Perry’s command”; then please provide the documents through which the Governor orders the activation of 1,000 Texas citizens to the border mission, apart from pre-approval.

July 3, 2006, 1:29pm