| Number 67 | April 21, 2000 |
|
This Week:
|
|
Greetings, Regular readers know how bad I am at predicting the length and timing of my promised articles. This series on crime and punishment is a good example. I had originally intended to complete it in one piece. Well, this week is Part II, and there will be at least one more next week. What can I say? Before I produced a paper version of Nygaard Notes, I would just cheat and make any given issue as long as I felt like. But paper doesn’t expand like cyberspace does, so now I have to stop when I get to 2200 words, and that’s just the way it is. Unless I decide to add pages to the paper version, and that may or may not happen. All that by way of alerting you that this is not the end of the talk about the legal system. And once again this week I am leaving out the “Website of the Week.” What I am going to do is simply list, all at one time, probably next week, several of the excellent websites concerning crime that are out there. A reader asked me last week for sources on the facts I published about prisons. Anyone should write and ask if you want my sources. When I can figure out how to make the time, I plan to post sources and footnotes on the Nygaard Notes website. By the way, I am starting to post some of your letters (with your permission) and my responses on the message board at the website. Welcome to this week’s new Nygaardians. (My name for readers of Nygaard Notes?) ‘Til next week, Nygaard |
Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, speaking on Minnesota Public Radio about how the predominantly white-run Minnesota justice system treats people of color, April 17, 2000 |
|
I haven’t criticized the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) for quite a while. It’s not for a lack of opportunities, simply a lack of time. But just this past Wednesday I was dismayed to read an article by Leo Rennert, the Strib’s Washington correspondent, entitled “Washington protesters’ target is too narrow.” A reflection on the just-concluded protests in D.C. against the IMF and World Bank, this article well illustrates a common misunderstanding that merits response. The article began by saying that the demonstrators who came to the nation’s capital this past week “think all economic injustices can be traced to corporate and financial boardrooms.” Due to this “narrow” thinking, according to Mr. Rennert, anti-World Bank protesters “ignore self-inflicted damage caused by poor governance in many ‘have not’ countries.” In other words, stop blaming the banks, because you are “overlooking” the fact that these poor countries are run by stupid and bigoted ingrates who don’t even know how to spend the money we loan them. (Read the article yourself.) I don’t know where Mr. Rennert got his ideas about what the protesters think, but he doesn’t seem to understand that what one hopes for and what one chooses to act on may be two separate things. The protesters that I know hardly “overlook” the lack of democracy in countries such as Indonesia, China, or any number of others. Surely Mr. Rennert is aware of the numerous cases since WW II where the United States has sent in the Marines and/or the CIA to overthrow democratically elected governments in order to replace them with autocrats - or worse - who were more friendly to the U.S.-dominated global economy. Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iran, and others come to mind. On a personal moral level, every protester I know condemns anti-democratic government wherever it occurs. But they also realize that, in order to have any actual impact on improving the situation, we have to use strategic thinking to decide where we can take the most effective action. By focusing on U.S.-dominated financial institutions rather than government officials in Indonesia, for example, political activists are making a distinction between abstract morality and practical moral action. Far from being naive and reactive, protesters are highly aware of the growing role of international finance as the new colonial enforcer around the world. A great recent example is the Native- led uprising in Ecuador a couple of months ago, which forced the resignation of the nation’s president and his replacement by a group of peasant leaders and dissident military officers. The new government - which came to power explicitly in opposition to the former president’s plan to more formally link that nation’s economy with that of the United States - was in place for less than one day. They “voluntarily” turned the government back over to the vice- president after “discussions with U.S. officials, who warned that failure to restore power to [the U.S.-backed government] would provoke a freeze in aid and an investment boycott, like that imposed on Cuba.” No need for the Marines when you control the investment decisions. The global financial institutions have always put conditions on the countries receiving their loans. Lately they have begun demanding that the recipients spend the money on specific projects to “improve education, health care, and other social needs.” Mr. Rennert sees this as evidence that the banks are now a force for democracy. In fact, the opposite is true, since this idea takes off from the premise that international finance has the right and the ability to impose “democracy” on countries around the world. This absurdity - indeed, this contradiction in terms - is still another thing that leads protesters to say “50 Years is Enough,” and chain themselves to the doors of the banks to make their point. Mr. Rennert and his editors (who ran an editorial the previous day entitled “World Bank Protests: What, exactly, is the point?”) are unable and perhaps unwilling to listen closely enough to the protesters to really understand what they are saying. The messy, bloody, and noisy business in the streets is based on a sophisticated analysis and a strategic choice about where to focus the moral energy of the day. This apparently escapes most reporters for the mainstream media, but the protesters have a chant that says it clearly: “This is what democracy sounds like.” [For some of the best coverage of what actually happened in Washington the last couple of weeks, and why, check out the Independent Media Center page at www.indymedia.org.] |
|
The issue of “racial profiling,” or the practice of stopping and arresting people purely on the basis of race, is all over the news in Minnesota lately. The police departments of Minneapolis and St. Paul are going to start recording the race of motorists that they stop. According to the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) officials say they “want evidence to convince the public that racial profiling isn’t happening.” Good luck. Other cities have discovered that, when police have to record the race of the people they stop “it deters them from stopping motorists because of the color of their skin.” So this study shouldn’t “convince” anybody of anything, except that people try to act better when they know somebody’s looking. But racial profiling is just where the door opens. Once through that door, the effects of racism are seen at every step along the way. Most of my references here are for African-Americans, but that’s only because those statistics are much more plentiful. Native people, Latinos, and Asian-Americans all suffer from racism in the “justice” system as well. And, although their numbers are fewer, women are similarly dehumanized by the presence of sexism in the “justice” system, but that subject will have to wait for a future issue of Nygaard Notes. For now I will limit my comments to the subject of... Race Elliot Currie, author of “Crime and Punishment in America,” succinctly puts it as follows: “An explosion in minority incarceration and a massive expansion in the prison system - which is what America has instead of effective anti-poverty, public housing, drug treatment, and mental health programs - are crippling the chances for a stable and successful future for millions of minority people.” I’ll give you some numbers; you can add them up yourself.
Drugs The American response to drug addiction has been to declare a “War on Drugs,” with the result being that we now have the largest proportion of our population in prison of any nation in the world. Billions of dollars are diverted from treatment and rehabilitation into the building and maintaining of jails and prisons. Those of us who were active in the anti-Vietnam War movement or the Civil Rights movement are aware that the state will use any laws it can to harass, imprison, or even kill those whom it considers enemies. Untold numbers of activists were sent away on drug charges in the 60s and 70s. Drug laws today are much more severe and punitive, and the number of people prosecuted and imprisoned under these laws has skyrocketed since what I used to think of as “the bad old days.” Here are a few numbers on drugs and crime:
Race and Drugs From our early opium laws, which were in part inspired by fear of Chinese immigrants, to today’s absurd penalties for crack cocaine use, American drug laws have always been rooted in racism. Here are some facts that have sprouted from those roots:
Last week I gave some idea of the overall scope of the massive prison-industrial complex in the United States. This week we have seen how the prison population is largely composed of non-violent drug offenders who are mostly people of color, many of whom are poorly educated or just plain poor. But we’re not done yet. The politics of race, drugs, and imprisonment plays out in a unique way in Minnesota, and it is not “Nice.” Next week I’ll take a look at my own state and, if there’s room, I’ll also point out some positive, anti-racist alternatives that have been shown to reduce crime and drug addiction while lessening the need for more prisons. If there’s not enough room next week, then the week after. |