| Number 151 | March 29, 2002 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, As the endless War Against Terror (the WAT?!) grinds on, the outrages come so quickly that there is barely time to focus on a specific case before the next one rears its ugly head. I suspect that this will mean a slightly increasing frequency of the semi-regular feature "A Stroll Through the News With Nygaard," as well as the need to do the occasional themed issue focusing specifically on The WAT?! Stay tuned. Apparently I haven't made it clear enough that, in addition to the electronic version, Nygaard Notes is available in a paper format as well. The only problem is that I have to charge money for the paper edition, as each one costs about 60 cents to print and mail. So, if you are interested in receiving your subscription through the U.S. Postal Service, be my guest. I usually say that $25 will get you a full Nygaard Notes "year" of 44 issues. But if you want to get a longer or shorter subscription, just send in more or less money, and I'll do the arithmetic. I have two specific research projects in mind that I need help with (or else they won't happen until I win the lottery). If any readers are interested in a Nygaard Notes Research Internship, let me know. Neither of them are very large, maybe 10 to 20 hours, depending. I would direct and supervise your work so, although you wouldn't get any money, you would learn some of what I know, not to mention getting all kinds of prestige and status in the community! Any takers? See ya next week, Nygaard |
-- Bumper sticker seen recently in South Minneapolis. That could be the Nygaard Notes motto, wouldn't you say? |
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Nygaard Notes is full of words, words, and more words. I think the words are interesting and important but, as any good organizer knows, we need more than words if we want to effect real changes in the political culture in which we are all immersed. How about art? One organization which has been doing great work in the area of art and social change for years and years (23 years, in fact) is a local joint called the Northland Poster Collective. Many local people here in the Twin Cities may have seen the red, white, and blue anti-war poster that says "Unity Against Racism, Justice Through Peace" that started appearing around town as the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan. That came from NPC. You've probably seen other striking and effective images from them and didn't even know it. They do prints, posters, T-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and other stuff, and they have been sent or taken all around the country. I have known about NPC for many years, and even worked in their office (on a different project) for some time about 10 years ago. Now they have a website and a free email newsletter, so the rest of the world can know about them, too. The website is great, because how can you really explain what an image is without seeing it? You'll see lots of images on the website (the images aren't as big as I would like, but they say they are working on that), and you can order stuff from the site, too, if you're into that sort of thing. If you are, it's a good place to buy stuff like this, as everything to do with NPC is produced by unionized workers. None of this "Made in El Salvador" sweatshop stuff! They just started an email newsletter (which they promise only goes out to people who have asked for it) that contains historical movement anniversaries and artwork relating to them, updates on the creative uses of art in organizing and movement building, and new artwork that tells the stories of people in resistance. I haven't actually seen it yet, but I've signed up for it. Check out the website at www.northlandposter.com. Once you're there you'll have an opportunity to sign up for their mailing list. Art for hope, art for change. Check it out! |
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All of the following quotations are from either the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") or the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!). Noted as "NYT" or "ST" All dates 2002. The Sunny Headline The headline read: "U.S. Infant Mortality Rate Fell 20 Percent in the Last Decade." Those who bothered to read the article itself, however, found out that "The U.S. infant mortality rate is still higher than that of many other developed countries, such as Sweden, where the rate is about three deaths for every 1,000 live births." That's even understating the case a bit, since the rate in the U.S. is higher than any European country, in fact higher than any other wealthy country in the world. Unnamed "health officials" want to see the U.S. figure down from its current seven per 1,000 to 4.5 per 1,000 by the year 2010, the article said. (ST, February 1) The Free Market and Health Care I: "More than 90 percent of U.S. nursing homes have too few workers to take proper care of patients." and "The report, ordered by Congress and prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services, concludes that ‘it is not currently feasible' for the federal government to require that homes achieve a minimum ratio of nursing staff to patients—as many experts have recommended—largely because of cost." The Bush administration hopes "that the problem will be resolved through market forces." (ST, February 18) The Free Market and Health Care II: "Elderly and disabled members of Medicare HMOs used nearly 50 percent more of their own money on average for medical care in 2001 than they did three years ago, health care researchers said yesterday. The increase was even steeper for those in poor health..." "‘No one is looking at HMOs any longer as a way of saving money for Medicare,' said John Rother, legislative and policy director of AARP. ‘The reality is, fixing these problems is going to cost some money.'" (NYT, February 14) The Rich Get Richer... "The number of Americans with million-dollar incomes more than doubled from 1995 through 1999, as their salaries and their profits from stocks soared," with the result that "Wealth in America is more highly concentrated today than at any time since 1929." "The percentage of their income that went to federal income taxes, however, fell by 11 percent." The article didn't do the arithmetic, but the resulting loss in tax revenue amounts to about $60 billion per year. (NYT February 7) ...And the Poor Get Audited "I.R.S. Audits of Working Poor Increase; Level of Scrutiny for the Affluent and Big Companies is Lower," read the headline. This is true despite the fact that, "The roughly 5 percent of taxpayers who make more than $100,000 pay more than half of all income taxes. Such taxpayers also have the greatest opportunities to shortchange the government because they receive most of the non-wage income." Nonetheless, "audits for the working poor rose 48.6 percent," while audits of the over-$100,000 crowd "fell to a record low" in 2001. (NYT March 1) |
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As local people follow the unfolding of the murder of Abu Kassim Jeilani, or as non-Minnesotans observe police behavior in other communities at other times, you will hear various official justifications for the use of lethal force. Perhaps you'll hear that "the police were acting in self-defense," or that they were acting to "protect innocent bystanders." If true (check to see if civilian eyewitnesses agree with police accounts) these are both legitimate reasons to act to incapacitate an individual. That is not to say, however, that it is justification for killing that individual. If you hear this sort of thing, you should make sure that your local officials are familiar with a group called The Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies, housed at Penn State University (http://www.nldt.org/resource/crowd_control/crowd_control.html). As this group makes clear, there are a "multitude of [non-lethal] devices that provide the means for the military and law enforcement agencies to control the escalation of violence by incapacitating individuals and crowds." While Minneapolis officials have made much of the failure of the twice-deployed stun-gun, they didn't seem to have access to such other devices as chemical sprays, non-lethal nets, water cannons, sticky foam, or any number of other means available which the Institute points out "are effective against individually selected targets or subjects who are not in possession of a firearm and who demonstrate violence or aggression." This week it was announced that all Minneapolis precincts would now have available to them some non-lethal "beanbag" shotguns. That's a start. Not a Technical Problem It's important to point out to your public officials the available non-lethal technologies. But it's even more important to remember that the problem of police abusing their power is not a "technical" problem, as the following anecdotes will illustrate. When I called the Minneapolis mayor's office to offer my opinion on the killing of Abu Kassim Jeilani, the first words I heard were that "It seemed like everything went wrong in that confrontation." That response is worrisome, as sounds suspiciously like the all-too-common response of "white" people to the abuse of people of color. I'll call it the "Unlucky Citizen" response. This takes many forms, but the basic version is that the overall environment for people of color is a good one—the civil rights movement took care of things, remember?—but this particular case, sadly, was not so good. Maybe these were "rogue" cops, you'll hear, or maybe the man said the wrong thing, or maybe some other version of "wrong-place/wrong-time." Maybe this, maybe that. If this interpretation were to be taken by our new mayor it would be an absolute outrage. I'm hopeful that it won't be, but time will tell. Here's an anecdote from a recent personal experience. I was standing on a street corner last fall in South Minneapolis, talking with a friend. Down the block we saw an African-American woman leap from a moving vehicle, fall down, and come running up the street toward us, clearly terrified of something. We attempted to offer assistance, but she would have none of it and kept running. Also on the corner were two other people, strangers to me. The four of us—a Native woman, an African-American man, a "white" lesbian, and a straight "white" guy—conferred briefly about whether or not we should call the police. It was unanimous among the four of us that this was not a good idea, as it might make the situation worse. (Not to worry; my friend and I got in my car and were able to find and help the woman, so it all turned out OK.) Most of the people I know who live in the "inner city" relate that they, too, have come to the conclusion that they have to think two or three times before calling the police, as they have to decide if this is a case where they would be helpful or actually make the situation worse. I wasn't sure, when I called the mayor's office, if they could really hear my message: It's bad out here. Too Many Cop Shows In the week after Jeilani was shot I was talking to a friend who has done a number of trainings of police departments to help them improve their dealings with populations of mentally ill people in their communities. He said that he noticed that Minneapolis was unique among the forces with which he came in contact in that they seemed to have a "philosophy," as he put it, of using lethal force with little provocation. Then he related a story. He was speaking with a 30-year veteran of the Minneapolis police force who said that he thought the younger cops coming into the force "have been watching too many cop shows." He said that, in a previous era of policing in the city, veteran cops considered it evidence of good policing if they could defuse a dangerous situation without ever drawing their weapon, let alone shooting it. Now, he said, the young cops seem to think that they are not really "part of the force" until they have shot someone. Whether or not this officer's recollection of the "old days" is rosy or not, his take on the current reality within the police department seems to partially justify the growing distrust and fear of the police that many of us see on the street corners of Minneapolis. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, the Minneapolis cops have a reputation of being unusually brutal in their confrontations with members of vulnerable populations, or those perceived as "other." But it should be noted that Minneapolis is not unique. It's clearly a national issue. As the group Human Rights Watch stated in a 1997 report (is there any reason to think its different now?):
That last sentence explains the presence at last week's anti-police brutality rally of some signs saying simply "Prosecute the police." All of us want a police force that will live up to its pledge to "protect and serve" the community. But if police can kill innocent people—and Jeilani is just one of many around the nation—and suffer no consequences for their rash behavior, many will continue to believe that our leaders are more interested in protecting themselves than in protecting our citizens. And that makes all of us—citizens and non-citizens, black and white, healthy and ill—less secure. |