| Number 69 | May 5, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I know I said I was done with the crime subject for a while, but two of the articles this week are about crime. Sort of. The article about propaganda is really about propaganda; crime just happens to be the case study I chose to use. The one about women in prison is obviously about crime, but I really have to say a few words on this subject this week, since there is a big rally coming up on May 11th. Then I really do hope to shut up about the subject of crime for a while. Although I do it twice this week, I don’t often promote actions, rallies, and other activist stuff in the pages of Nygaard Notes, and there are two reasons for that. One reason is that an increasing number of Nygaard Notes readers are from other states or countries, and I don’t usually think it is a good idea to travel thousands of miles to go to a rally. The other reason is more important, and I tell why below. For all you new subscribers: I know it seems like all I talk about is crime, but really there’s a lot more to Nygaard Notes. I just go on these jags every once in a while. You’ll see. And for all you BRAND new subscribers, Welcome! You’ll see, too! In solidarity, Nygaard |
- From an Associated Press report on the third page of the Metro/State section of the April 21st Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) Sounds like front-page news to me. |
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The main reason that I don’t usually announce rallies in Nygaard Notes is that there is someone else who does a much better job of keeping tabs on activist things on the local level. His name is David Shove, and he puts out an E-mail publication called the “Progressive Calendar.” Not only should you contact him to let him know about any upcoming activities your group is having, but you should also get on his list to receive his E-mails. Whether it’s a reproductive health workshop, a Critical Mass bike ride, envelope- stuffing for the next rally, or a fundraiser for Leonard Peltier, you’ll hear about it if you subscribe to the Progressive Calendar. And it’s not just for the hard-core activist. Often he lists discussion groups, lectures, and interesting reprints from a variety of sources. Subscribe now! His address is: shove001@tc.umn.edu. |
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Women who are incarcerated in the United States face a whole set of issues that make their situation worthy of special attention. For example, 80% of women in prison have children, and half of them never - that’s right, never! - see their children during their incarceration. Nearly 2 million children have a parent who is incarcerated, and those children suffer an array of problems with truancy, early pregnancy, drug abuse and juvenile delinquency. Many women locked up for violent crimes were defending themselves from an abusive spouse or partner. As always, if you are black or Latina in addition to being female, you are treated worse yet. About three dozen local groups are sponsoring a rally called “Mothers In Prison, Children In Crisis” on May 11th, the Thursday before Mother’s Day. The rally will be held at the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm “to call attention to the plight of women in prison and the effect this crisis has on their children.” There will be similar rallies held in 20 cities across the country. You should come and add your voice to the call for a turnaround in our jail-happy approach to social problems facing women. This rally should be a good one. For more information, call Sister Rita at 612-729-4929. |
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I would be remiss if I didn’t remind people to contact your elected representatives to urge them to vote against the enormous U.S. aid package to Colombia that is scheduled to come to a vote in the very near future. I have written about the situation in that country and Clinton’s proposal to add an enormous amount of fuel to what is already a very large and dangerous fire. (See Nygaard Notes #54 and #55.) This aid is supposed to be about drugs, but it’s really about protecting U.S. interests in the hemisphere. Monroe Doctrine, anyone? There is a demonstration coming up here in Minneapolis on Tuesday, May 9th at 4:30 near the University of Minnesota. For information on this and other local activities, contact the Twin Cities CISPES Anti-war Committee by phone at 612/872-0944; or E-mail at tccispes@hotmail.com. |
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There is a pernicious rumor floating around that draconian police methods are bringing down the crime rate. As I pointed out in Nygaard Notes #66, there is no apparent relation between “tough” policing - or increased spending on cops - and decreases in the crime rate, which have been occurring all across the country for years, regardless of policing levels or style. Nonetheless, the rumor is repeated endlessly by cops and the elected officials who fund them, and parroted mindlessly by all sorts of media. I’ll just point out three recent examples from the local media. MPR In the Minnesota Public Radio report to which I referred last week, reporter Dan Olson talked about the Minneapolis “zero tolerance” policing strategy known as CODEFOR. Many Minneapolis residents see this policy as fundamentally racist, since it sends huge numbers of cops into poor, mostly black, neighborhoods to function essentially as an occupying army. Reporter Olson acknowledged this criticism of the program (not in the same words) and then said this: “Defenders, including police officials, say CODEFOR policing catches criminals and point to Minneapolis’s two-year double-digit drop in crime as proof.” Repeat: No relationship has been established between policing levels or policing style and crime rates. City Pages The Twin Cities’ “alternative” weekly City Pages reported in their April 19th edition on a CODEFOR-like Minneapolis police strategy known as STOP (Special Top Offender Program), which focuses on such “livability” crimes as loitering, disorderly conduct, and drinking in public. We could choose to see these behaviors as expressions of larger social problems (such as chemical dependency and lack of housing), or even ill-directed rebellions against the spiritual vacuum created by the corporate culture. Then we could transform these behaviors from “crimes” into public health problems and devote sufficient resources to helping and rehabilitating the victims. Instead, our city has decided to take the standard law enforcement approach: Throw cops at ‘em and put ‘em behind bars for as long as possible. “Brother, can you spare a dime?” now stands to get you 90 days in the slammer. According to City Pages, this STOP policy of arresting and prosecuting (mostly homeless) people for minor crimes is “one of several city initiatives targeted at ‘quality of life’ crimes - a concept that since the mid-1990s has become a focus of the city’s law- enforcement agenda.” To appease the Minnesota Nice response, the majority has to be convinced that this particular front in the War on the Poor is justified by making us all safer. Sure enough, check out paragraph 11: “Supporters credit police hyper-vigilance with dramatic reductions in crime, including a 21-year low in serious offenses, according to Minneapolis police statistics for 1999.” Repeat: Crime is down nationwide for a variety of reasons, with no apparent correlation between policing levels or style. Siren! Even the new bi-weekly Siren, which generally has higher standards (hey, they’ve even published my work!) has fallen into this trap. They ran a brief piece, entitled “Police Say Both Crime and Complaints Are Down” in their March 23rd edition. Also reporting on CODEFOR, Siren reported the statement by Minneapolis police chief Robert Olson that “complaints about ... CODEFOR ...continue to decline while the city’s crime rate also falls.” Correlation is not causation, Mr. Olson. (Activists say complaints are down because folks have learned that it doesn’t do any good to complain.) Reporter Eric Jansen concludes the piece by saying that “In community meetings this month, Chief Olson, Minneapolis mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, and precinct police tell how their efforts have brought down the commission of serious crimes like homicide, assault, and arson an average of 11 percent from 1998 to 1999.” While I’m sure that’s what the police press release said, it is irresponsible to report uncritically the official and unsupported rationale for the continuation of racist police tactics. Individually, these reports might be chalked up to carelessness or the pressures of a tight deadline. But collectively they amount to propaganda, the source of which (in this case) is the incarceration establishment which seeks to justify their ever-increasing consumption of public funds. And it’s dangerous propaganda at that, since the belief that repressive policing is “effective” - it doesn’t matter if it actually is or not - will be used to justify even more repressive policing. We do have a Bill of Rights in this country, but if you can get the majority (i.e. “white” people) to believe that we’re in a state of emergency (i.e. the “War on Drugs”) there’s no piece of paper that is going to protect people of color. Since I don’t appear to have room this week, I will plan to say more on the subject of fear - and the role it plays in shaping public policy - next week. |
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My article “Morals, Ethics, Values, and Thinking,” in Nygaard Notes #65, was stimulated in part by a reader who canceled her subscription after reading my comments on wealth in the United States. Her terse cancellation letter included the following comment: “While I find some of the information you preach about interesting, the rest is very biased.” I never thought of myself as a preacher before (!), but I guess I am about as biased as the next person. My dictionary says that a “bias” is something that “does not leave the mind neutral.” If that’s being biased, then I certainly plead guilty. How can you be neutral in a world like this? And who would want to be? For many years I have had hanging on my wall a quote from Paulo Freire which says, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” The fact that a few people have incalculable wealth while a quarter of the world’s people don’t have enough to feed their kids, for example, is an affront to each of my core values of democracy, solidarity, compassion, and justice. It would be a betrayal of those values to be neutral in the face of this fact, or any number of the other facts that I have reported and will report. So I accept the charge of being biased in that sense. However, I don’t think my writing on wealth was particularly biased. I thought I just reported some facts and gave my opinion on them. And let’s be clear on this: Having an opinion after you look at the facts is not bias. It’s only bias if your opinion interferes - beforehand - with your ability to see the facts. Perhaps the reader who canceled her subscription prefers her journalism to be of the so-called “objective” variety. I can’t help her there. I don’t believe there is such a thing as “objective” journalism, just like I don’t believe there is such a thing as “value- free” thinking. That’s what Nygaard Notes #65 was all about. |