An E for Effort and I for Idealism to Prof. James T. Branch
RE: The church must rise up to stem the violence
By Eddie Griffin
Monday, November 08, 2010
If we lived in an ideal world, ideal solutions would work perfectly, as Prof. James Branch advocates in his article “The church must rise up to stem the violence”. Considering the church was the first victim of violence, the course of peace has always been the charted path of the Christian. But everybody does not handle violence, or the threat of violence, in the same manner.
Mr. Branch is presumptuous to even suggest setting a pastor’s agenda over his flock. Intervention into youth culture may not be a part of their gospel. His desire for his daughters to grow up and marry “good men” is idealistic and personal. Being in the good-daughter raising business puts him also in the “good men” raising business. Good sons (sons-in-law) are groomed out of a flock of good sheep, and the father is the shepherd.
When men were men, they trained up good young men. If a man wants a good son-in-law, train him up during courtship, lest he get out of control later on.
Branch also writes: “… some adults are intimidated by or have given up on too many of our young boys. We must continue to help them understand that sagging, a fashion originating in the penal system is not needed on the outside.”
Here, I get the image of a young man with sagging pants, exposing his underwear, and clutching his crouch, as if he is proud of something. This overly rebellious image intimidates some people. They avoid the potential for hostility and keep their mouths closed. Bullying follows in the making, not far behind the rebellious trait.
NIP IT IN THE BUD
Whenever I approach a young man with sagging pants, he either voluntarily pulls them up or he gets a word of encouragement from me to pull ‘em up. If not, I have an alternative that has worked more than once.
In one example, there was a young man at an event wearing sagging pants, and one of the elder women asked me: “What’s with the sagging pants?”
I eased into a seat next to the young man and whispered: “Jack ‘em up, or I’ll drag them down to your knees. Don’t mess with me, boy! I’ll snatch the pants right from under you, grab me a hand full of nuts, and squeeze and pull till you holler mama. I’ll make a eunuch out of you, boy; or a paraplegic for life.”
Other people may feel intimidated, but sagging pants is a tactical disadvantage to a street gladiator. This is why I always give this warning to young men coming under my purview, wearing sagging pants, including my own nephews.
Bullies assume that nobody will snatch their pants down, snatch their feet from under them, and grab their testicles. Nevertheless, this is the tactical advantage that I would give to my children and grandchildren, if they must defend themselves against bullying.
Not that I am a violent man or advocate violence or blow-for-blow retaliation, but iron sharps iron. Good strong men build good strong young men, not by verbiages, but by trials of fire. I am a true believer in : Make him or break him, because “As the twig is bent, so the tree inclines”.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Lazy Tendencies: Oversleeping
Written for and Dedicated to Ex-Offender Re-Entry
By Eddie Griffin
Thursday, September 16, 2010
When a man is not prepared to meet the morning, he has a tendency to oversleep. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands together to take a nap, so shall a man’s poverty come upon him like an armed robbery.
Lazy people are generally poor. But poor people are not generally lazy. Most poor people do not have the luxury of rest and sweet dreams. They cannot afford to slumber, lest they sleep the sleep of death. But the slothful is always looking for a spot to rest, fold his hand, nod off into slumber land, and sleep the sweet sleep of ease. His wake-up is a surprise, as sudden and as shocking as an “armed robber”.
Speaking from experience, nobody likes to be roused out of their sleep by an armed robber or murderer.
One morning in my prison cell, I was paid a visit by Casper, the Unfriendly Ghost. They called him Casper, because he had killed 10 men in Atlanta Federal Prison. Nobody ever saw him. He left no evidence, other than the slit throat of his victims. Over a period of years, during the 1970s, the FBI never caught him. That is how he got the nickname Casper, the Unfriendly Ghost.
Doing time in a super-maximum security prison can be draining. There was always tension in the air and threats of violence all around. And every night, when I returned to my cell, I was totally fatigue and exhausted. My only reprieve was sleep, an escape for the mind, into a painless abyss. But even in the twilight world, there is the dragon.
Out of another world, I was called out of my sleep at the touch of a sharp object at my throat, and immediately I tumbled out of bed clutching the arm of a hand with eagle claws. It was the hand of a man who had sharpened his fingernails into hardened talons like that of an eagle or a falcon.
The dawn had not yet broken. It was chow time. All the cell doors were open. And, I had overslept. Now I was wrestling for my life against a man with a claw for a hand, a convicted murderer.
To make a long story short, we wrestled to an exhausted standoff. He warned me to never oversleep again. And, that was when he told me the story of Casper. He was the infamous killer of 10 inmates who all overslept, and was attacked early in the morning before men emerged from their cells for breakfast.
Strange that we would become friends and he would become one of my trainers. Every morning thereafter, before day, he appeared at my cell door, checking to see if I was awake and alert. From there, we would drink honey, run 10 miles around the track, barefooted on jagged rocks, lift weights, and punch the punching bag until our knuckles bled. And, after all this, he would come at me in fury, and say, “Stop me from killing you.”
He had a killer’s instinct and he thirst for it. And, there was little doubt in my mind that he would kill me, if I slacked off one bit, if I slumbered just a little, got too comfortable, or folded my arms to get some rest. He would kill me at the drop of a hat pin.
So, this is how I learned not to oversleep.
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall poverty come upon you like an armed man. (Proverbs 24:33)
By Eddie Griffin
Thursday, September 16, 2010
When a man is not prepared to meet the morning, he has a tendency to oversleep. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands together to take a nap, so shall a man’s poverty come upon him like an armed robbery.
Lazy people are generally poor. But poor people are not generally lazy. Most poor people do not have the luxury of rest and sweet dreams. They cannot afford to slumber, lest they sleep the sleep of death. But the slothful is always looking for a spot to rest, fold his hand, nod off into slumber land, and sleep the sweet sleep of ease. His wake-up is a surprise, as sudden and as shocking as an “armed robber”.
Speaking from experience, nobody likes to be roused out of their sleep by an armed robber or murderer.
One morning in my prison cell, I was paid a visit by Casper, the Unfriendly Ghost. They called him Casper, because he had killed 10 men in Atlanta Federal Prison. Nobody ever saw him. He left no evidence, other than the slit throat of his victims. Over a period of years, during the 1970s, the FBI never caught him. That is how he got the nickname Casper, the Unfriendly Ghost.
Doing time in a super-maximum security prison can be draining. There was always tension in the air and threats of violence all around. And every night, when I returned to my cell, I was totally fatigue and exhausted. My only reprieve was sleep, an escape for the mind, into a painless abyss. But even in the twilight world, there is the dragon.
Out of another world, I was called out of my sleep at the touch of a sharp object at my throat, and immediately I tumbled out of bed clutching the arm of a hand with eagle claws. It was the hand of a man who had sharpened his fingernails into hardened talons like that of an eagle or a falcon.
The dawn had not yet broken. It was chow time. All the cell doors were open. And, I had overslept. Now I was wrestling for my life against a man with a claw for a hand, a convicted murderer.
To make a long story short, we wrestled to an exhausted standoff. He warned me to never oversleep again. And, that was when he told me the story of Casper. He was the infamous killer of 10 inmates who all overslept, and was attacked early in the morning before men emerged from their cells for breakfast.
Strange that we would become friends and he would become one of my trainers. Every morning thereafter, before day, he appeared at my cell door, checking to see if I was awake and alert. From there, we would drink honey, run 10 miles around the track, barefooted on jagged rocks, lift weights, and punch the punching bag until our knuckles bled. And, after all this, he would come at me in fury, and say, “Stop me from killing you.”
He had a killer’s instinct and he thirst for it. And, there was little doubt in my mind that he would kill me, if I slacked off one bit, if I slumbered just a little, got too comfortable, or folded my arms to get some rest. He would kill me at the drop of a hat pin.
So, this is how I learned not to oversleep.
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall poverty come upon you like an armed man. (Proverbs 24:33)
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Man on a Chain Gang
By Eddie Griffin
That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang, sang Sam Cooke. The year was 1960. As listen to this oldie, and watch the video, there is a point in the song that hits close to home and I shed tears.
Can’t you hear them saying, “I’m going home. One of these days, I’m going home. See my woman whom I love so dear. But in the meanwhile I got to work right here.” That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang.
Chained together, by iron shackles, feet to feet, ankle to ankle, hip to hip, wrist to wrist, and yoked together at the neck. From the slave ships to the cotton fields of Texas, some never came home again.
I weep for them, because the spirit of their memories haunts me, day and night. I can still hear the cries of Brother Herman, a prisoner, set to be released within days, stabbed to death by his best friend and running buddy, who could not bear to see him go free. Jealousy is a brutal killer.
Give me water, I’m thirsty. My, my, my, my work is so hard.
Shoot me, Boss. I just can’t do this kind of work no more. Cursed was the ground before I was introduced to the aggie. And, cursed it will be when I return to the dust thereof. So, shoot me now, Boss, before I recover my senses and want to live.
I wasn’t cut out for the ole plantation fields of Texas, with prison guards on horseback riding shotgun over me. I never saw a cloud in the sky, nor a shade tree, and the water wagon only came at the turn-row. And, fields stretched miles and miles, forever, and there was no end in sight, except death.
How many times the thought entertained my mind?
“Griffin, you’re chopping the Captain’s corn,” the man on horseback shouted. “Don’t you know the difference between corn and Johnson grass?”
Really, to tell the truth, I couldn’t tell the difference, even unto the very day.
Somewhere out there is a cemetery for all the nameless inmates that never saw the light of day again. Nobody knows their number. Nobody cares to inquire. Neither the end, nor the means, concerns the public. Death is death, whether by execute or a thousand cuts.
Except for a little red bible, I would have been out there with them, among the dead and forgotten. My end was beyond pain. I had endured entombment in solitary cages, behind steel doors, in refrigerated strip cells, and padded psyche ward cells. And, at last, in the twelfth year of my captivity, I baste to death in the Texas 110-degree heat.
I was beyond pain. I begged for death. I pleaded for death. But first I needed to set things right between me and my Maker. I had to finish reading the little red bible. It was a friend to me, having survived, from solitary cell to solitary cell, throughout all my dilemmas and rebellions. After this, I would take my stand: Shoot me, Boss. Take me out of my misery.
From the beginning of my captivity, I never expected to survive a 50-year sentence. I was unreasonable to even hope. And, I didn’t want to build my hopes up too high.
Every man pays for his sins, and there is an exactor that comes due. With a total of 50-, 20-, and 10-year sentences, I felt the burden of my sins. If I were to survive, I would have to walk through hell on earth. Only about seven men have gone into the dungeon of the abyss, and survived to reemerge. I am one, favored and bless.
I guess Sam Cooke conveys the spirit of my feelings in his soulful rendition of Stand By Me. The song tells of how the Lord delivered Daniel out of the lion’s den. “Do me like you did Daniel,” the singer sings, “Stand by me, Lord.”
[To be continued]
That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang, sang Sam Cooke. The year was 1960. As listen to this oldie, and watch the video, there is a point in the song that hits close to home and I shed tears.
Can’t you hear them saying, “I’m going home. One of these days, I’m going home. See my woman whom I love so dear. But in the meanwhile I got to work right here.” That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang.
Chained together, by iron shackles, feet to feet, ankle to ankle, hip to hip, wrist to wrist, and yoked together at the neck. From the slave ships to the cotton fields of Texas, some never came home again.
I weep for them, because the spirit of their memories haunts me, day and night. I can still hear the cries of Brother Herman, a prisoner, set to be released within days, stabbed to death by his best friend and running buddy, who could not bear to see him go free. Jealousy is a brutal killer.
Give me water, I’m thirsty. My, my, my, my work is so hard.
Shoot me, Boss. I just can’t do this kind of work no more. Cursed was the ground before I was introduced to the aggie. And, cursed it will be when I return to the dust thereof. So, shoot me now, Boss, before I recover my senses and want to live.
I wasn’t cut out for the ole plantation fields of Texas, with prison guards on horseback riding shotgun over me. I never saw a cloud in the sky, nor a shade tree, and the water wagon only came at the turn-row. And, fields stretched miles and miles, forever, and there was no end in sight, except death.
How many times the thought entertained my mind?
“Griffin, you’re chopping the Captain’s corn,” the man on horseback shouted. “Don’t you know the difference between corn and Johnson grass?”
Really, to tell the truth, I couldn’t tell the difference, even unto the very day.
Somewhere out there is a cemetery for all the nameless inmates that never saw the light of day again. Nobody knows their number. Nobody cares to inquire. Neither the end, nor the means, concerns the public. Death is death, whether by execute or a thousand cuts.
Except for a little red bible, I would have been out there with them, among the dead and forgotten. My end was beyond pain. I had endured entombment in solitary cages, behind steel doors, in refrigerated strip cells, and padded psyche ward cells. And, at last, in the twelfth year of my captivity, I baste to death in the Texas 110-degree heat.
I was beyond pain. I begged for death. I pleaded for death. But first I needed to set things right between me and my Maker. I had to finish reading the little red bible. It was a friend to me, having survived, from solitary cell to solitary cell, throughout all my dilemmas and rebellions. After this, I would take my stand: Shoot me, Boss. Take me out of my misery.
From the beginning of my captivity, I never expected to survive a 50-year sentence. I was unreasonable to even hope. And, I didn’t want to build my hopes up too high.
Every man pays for his sins, and there is an exactor that comes due. With a total of 50-, 20-, and 10-year sentences, I felt the burden of my sins. If I were to survive, I would have to walk through hell on earth. Only about seven men have gone into the dungeon of the abyss, and survived to reemerge. I am one, favored and bless.
I guess Sam Cooke conveys the spirit of my feelings in his soulful rendition of Stand By Me. The song tells of how the Lord delivered Daniel out of the lion’s den. “Do me like you did Daniel,” the singer sings, “Stand by me, Lord.”
[To be continued]
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Dr. Schlessinger: Free Speech or Racist Psychology
Why must we learn the same lesson over and over again? I thought radio talk show hosts had learned from the Don Imus affair. There are some things radio personalities should not broadcast over the airways. People are sensitive in the area of bruised nerves, and racial sensitivities are on edge as it is.
Don Imus’ blurt about “nappy-headed whores” set off a flurry of outrage and allegations of racism across the nation, forcing him briefly off the air. Where was talk show host and psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger at the time? Didn’t she know that racial epithets were taboo over the airways? Nevertheless, her racial tirade in repeatedly using the N-word to a call-in listener was an unwanted and unwelcome attempted to force acceptance of a loathed word we have all since rejected.
As in the case of Don Imus, Dr. Schlessinger claimed impunity because she heard black hip-hop artists use the N-word on the airways all the time. And after being rebuked, she plans to end her radio program and become a martyr for free speech.
Schlessinger can have her free speech, but she must realize that speech brings with it a consequence. That is to say, can she accept the consequences provoked by her chosen words, seeing that nobody forced her to say what she said?
The U.S. Supreme Court also recognizes a person’s free speech right to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre. But the Court also holds that person responsible for whatever harm caused if someone is trampled in a stampede to the exit.
But the real question is this: Does Schlessinger have the right to free speech, considering the that she is a professional psychologist, and her on-the-air responses to callers actually constitutes psychological advice?
The caller in this case was an African-American woman, grappling with an interracial marriage problem. Dr. Schlessinger’s response was like the drill sergeant therapist on the GEICO television commercial who calls his patient a “Jack-wagon” and suggests that maybe he ought to chug on down to “Namby Pamby Land” where we can find some self-confidence.
The commercial commentator asks: Does a former drilling sergeant make a terrible therapist? Maybe the same should be asked of Dr. Schlessinger who suggests to her on-air patient that if she is so “hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor” then she should not marry out of her race.”
What’s love got to do it?
When the caller attempts to explain or clarify, but Schlessinger rudely cuts her off and chides the woman not to “NAACP” her. [I wonder what NAACP means as a verb. I wonder where “out of your race” is. What race, if not the human race?]
I do not have a problem with Schlessinger’s freedom of speech. I have a problem with the psychology that she studied in school. We have always contended that psychology, as a pseudo-science, was never created with African-Americans in mind.
Also, we contend that racial categories are artificial, and identification by skin color is more a psychosis than a fact.
If Schlessinger wants to be a martyr, it would not be for free speech, but for a faulty psychology for which we are all enslaved. If she wants to be Joan of Arc, then go ahead and light her butt up.
Don Imus’ blurt about “nappy-headed whores” set off a flurry of outrage and allegations of racism across the nation, forcing him briefly off the air. Where was talk show host and psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger at the time? Didn’t she know that racial epithets were taboo over the airways? Nevertheless, her racial tirade in repeatedly using the N-word to a call-in listener was an unwanted and unwelcome attempted to force acceptance of a loathed word we have all since rejected.
As in the case of Don Imus, Dr. Schlessinger claimed impunity because she heard black hip-hop artists use the N-word on the airways all the time. And after being rebuked, she plans to end her radio program and become a martyr for free speech.
Schlessinger can have her free speech, but she must realize that speech brings with it a consequence. That is to say, can she accept the consequences provoked by her chosen words, seeing that nobody forced her to say what she said?
The U.S. Supreme Court also recognizes a person’s free speech right to yell “fire” in a crowded theatre. But the Court also holds that person responsible for whatever harm caused if someone is trampled in a stampede to the exit.
But the real question is this: Does Schlessinger have the right to free speech, considering the that she is a professional psychologist, and her on-the-air responses to callers actually constitutes psychological advice?
The caller in this case was an African-American woman, grappling with an interracial marriage problem. Dr. Schlessinger’s response was like the drill sergeant therapist on the GEICO television commercial who calls his patient a “Jack-wagon” and suggests that maybe he ought to chug on down to “Namby Pamby Land” where we can find some self-confidence.
The commercial commentator asks: Does a former drilling sergeant make a terrible therapist? Maybe the same should be asked of Dr. Schlessinger who suggests to her on-air patient that if she is so “hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor” then she should not marry out of her race.”
What’s love got to do it?
When the caller attempts to explain or clarify, but Schlessinger rudely cuts her off and chides the woman not to “NAACP” her. [I wonder what NAACP means as a verb. I wonder where “out of your race” is. What race, if not the human race?]
I do not have a problem with Schlessinger’s freedom of speech. I have a problem with the psychology that she studied in school. We have always contended that psychology, as a pseudo-science, was never created with African-Americans in mind.
Also, we contend that racial categories are artificial, and identification by skin color is more a psychosis than a fact.
If Schlessinger wants to be a martyr, it would not be for free speech, but for a faulty psychology for which we are all enslaved. If she wants to be Joan of Arc, then go ahead and light her butt up.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Turning My 10-Year Old Grandson into a Man
By Eddie Griffin
Monday, August 16, 2010
As I sit on a park bench, hedged about, I am unperturbed by the bees and wasps that came to gather nectar among the bushes. I meditate, remembering Sunday with my 10-year old grandson. He has recently attempted suicide, on several occasions. It makes me pondered why a child is so miserable that he would attempt to take his own life at such a tender age.
Maybe I already know.
He, and his two sisters, were taken away from their mother by the courts and given to their father, my son, who already has three kids, two of which are stepsons, ages 7 and 9. The baby girl is one. Altogether, there are now eight of them living in a two-bedroom apartment, and it is hard to find larger accommodations on a single low-income budget. Grandpa’s fixed income covers some of the gaps, but not the whole.
I sense that there is something void in his life.
This Sunday, he just wanted to hang out with Grandpa all day. He wanted to get out of the crowded apartment. He wanted some individual attention, which was hard to do when he was the oldest among the six kids in the house. But hanging out with Grandpa was not all fun and games, as he would discover.
But where would I take a troubled child after church, on a hot Sunday afternoon in August? There is one place.
We first visited the Huguley Nursing Home, where he heard Grandpa delivered a sermon to a group of elderly seniors, who suffer various ailments of aging. They are usually heavily medicated and deeply depressed. And when I did not see Glenn, our resident centenarian, I was concerned, as always, whenever a regular church attendant in the nursing home suddenly disappears. But one by one, they trickled in, including Glenn, peddling his wheelchair with his feet.
My grandson had been here before, singing Christmas carols and passing out gifts. But this was a different mission. This was about a spiritual transformation.
As I preached, the audience faces came to light and a gleam returned to their eyes. But my grandson had dosed off and slumped over in his seat. All the more, I felt unworthy as a preacher, not being able to keep my own child awake. And, here I was an overworked teacher and mentor, stretched between the extremes of this generation, with a 10-year old on one hand and a 100-year old centenarian on the other.
Afterwards, we visited the Michael Jacobs Jr. National Memorial, named in honor of a mentally challenged young man who was tasered to death by a Fort Worth police officer. I was compelled to be here because here were some of the young men whom I had mentored over the years: men like SCLC President Kyev Tatum and Success Movement motivational speaker and author Junichi Lockett.
My hopes would be to someday entrust my male children and grandchildren into the hands of honorable men like these.
At the same time, we fellowshipped with members of the Nation of Islam, New Black Panther Party, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, LULAC, Rainbow P.U.S.H. Coalition, and other community groups who came together to form a coalition and fight to save the Michael Jacobs, Jr. Memorial. These, too, I could rest assured would have my grandson’s wellbeing at heart, for the simply fact that he was a young black man, imperiled by a cruel and dangerous society.
In the end, my grandson took pictures of the Memorial field with its erected 465 crosses, each representing a taser death victim. Then, it was time to go back to church for evening service. At last, he was tired, sleepy, and totally exhausted from the 100-degree heat.
It reminded me of the days I shared with my own grandfather, a preacher in the dusty backwoods of East Texas in the 1950s.
Back to the old man’s morning bench with the bees and the wasps swarming about, I feel like a beekeeper with the ability to summon the bees upon my fingers and hold them in my hand. It is a paradox that a man can be so at peace with nature and yet so at war with the world?
Monday, August 16, 2010
As I sit on a park bench, hedged about, I am unperturbed by the bees and wasps that came to gather nectar among the bushes. I meditate, remembering Sunday with my 10-year old grandson. He has recently attempted suicide, on several occasions. It makes me pondered why a child is so miserable that he would attempt to take his own life at such a tender age.
Maybe I already know.
He, and his two sisters, were taken away from their mother by the courts and given to their father, my son, who already has three kids, two of which are stepsons, ages 7 and 9. The baby girl is one. Altogether, there are now eight of them living in a two-bedroom apartment, and it is hard to find larger accommodations on a single low-income budget. Grandpa’s fixed income covers some of the gaps, but not the whole.
I sense that there is something void in his life.
This Sunday, he just wanted to hang out with Grandpa all day. He wanted to get out of the crowded apartment. He wanted some individual attention, which was hard to do when he was the oldest among the six kids in the house. But hanging out with Grandpa was not all fun and games, as he would discover.
But where would I take a troubled child after church, on a hot Sunday afternoon in August? There is one place.
We first visited the Huguley Nursing Home, where he heard Grandpa delivered a sermon to a group of elderly seniors, who suffer various ailments of aging. They are usually heavily medicated and deeply depressed. And when I did not see Glenn, our resident centenarian, I was concerned, as always, whenever a regular church attendant in the nursing home suddenly disappears. But one by one, they trickled in, including Glenn, peddling his wheelchair with his feet.
My grandson had been here before, singing Christmas carols and passing out gifts. But this was a different mission. This was about a spiritual transformation.
As I preached, the audience faces came to light and a gleam returned to their eyes. But my grandson had dosed off and slumped over in his seat. All the more, I felt unworthy as a preacher, not being able to keep my own child awake. And, here I was an overworked teacher and mentor, stretched between the extremes of this generation, with a 10-year old on one hand and a 100-year old centenarian on the other.
Afterwards, we visited the Michael Jacobs Jr. National Memorial, named in honor of a mentally challenged young man who was tasered to death by a Fort Worth police officer. I was compelled to be here because here were some of the young men whom I had mentored over the years: men like SCLC President Kyev Tatum and Success Movement motivational speaker and author Junichi Lockett.
My hopes would be to someday entrust my male children and grandchildren into the hands of honorable men like these.
At the same time, we fellowshipped with members of the Nation of Islam, New Black Panther Party, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, LULAC, Rainbow P.U.S.H. Coalition, and other community groups who came together to form a coalition and fight to save the Michael Jacobs, Jr. Memorial. These, too, I could rest assured would have my grandson’s wellbeing at heart, for the simply fact that he was a young black man, imperiled by a cruel and dangerous society.
In the end, my grandson took pictures of the Memorial field with its erected 465 crosses, each representing a taser death victim. Then, it was time to go back to church for evening service. At last, he was tired, sleepy, and totally exhausted from the 100-degree heat.
It reminded me of the days I shared with my own grandfather, a preacher in the dusty backwoods of East Texas in the 1950s.
Back to the old man’s morning bench with the bees and the wasps swarming about, I feel like a beekeeper with the ability to summon the bees upon my fingers and hold them in my hand. It is a paradox that a man can be so at peace with nature and yet so at war with the world?
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Glenn Beck Calls for Shirley Sherrod’s Job Back
Glenn Beck Calls for Shirley Sherrod’s Reinstatement
Can you believe it? FOX commentator Glenn Beck is calling for Shirley Sherrod, former USD administrator, dismissed for comments taken out of context by a conservative blogger.
It seems that FOX News and Commentators speak with forked tongues. Only yesterday, it seems, that FOX commentator Bill O’Reilly was calling for her crucifixion.
All content taken from The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Each weeknight by 6 PM EST a preview of that evening's show will be posted and then updated with additional information the following weekday by noon EST.
Another Obama official forced out
"As we told you last night, Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod admitted that years ago she held back some government assistance to a white farmer because of the color of his skin. After hearing that I said 'Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately,' and that's exactly what happened. But if you were watching the network news last night you would know nothing about the story. Once again, an embarrassing moment for the Obama administration was not covered. In the big picture this is a small story; every administration has had employees do dumb things. But why the news blackout when things become unpleasant for the Obama administration? The answer has to be bias - the establishment press tilts left and is reluctant to do damage to a very liberal president. There's no other reason to spike stories that bring millions of viewers to Fox News. You would think the other TV news operations, all of whom are not doing well, would want to attract that large audience. Apparently they don't."
Source: http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=2649
Didn’t this same FOX News Report issue this story as BREAKING NEWS?
Sure! Breaking News: An innocent black woman is lynched by crafty racist deception: FOX News.
Beck calls for Shirley Sherrod to be reinstated.
Too late, Shirley is a martyr like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose character was assassinated long before he died.
If I were Shirley, I would not go back until America hangs her head in shame, for this mass rush to judgment. In the meantime, she should sue the Agriculture Department for wrongful termination.
There is someone out there retrieving old black video tapes, doctoring them, and create hysteric fears and racial animosities, INTENTIONALLY (Willfully), for purposes other than what is publically known, subversive, spread throughout the television network airways of FOX.
[Isn’t this an FCC issue?]
So much for truth in journalism: THE SPIN STOPS HERE
Can you believe it? FOX commentator Glenn Beck is calling for Shirley Sherrod, former USD administrator, dismissed for comments taken out of context by a conservative blogger.
It seems that FOX News and Commentators speak with forked tongues. Only yesterday, it seems, that FOX commentator Bill O’Reilly was calling for her crucifixion.
All content taken from The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Each weeknight by 6 PM EST a preview of that evening's show will be posted and then updated with additional information the following weekday by noon EST.
Another Obama official forced out
"As we told you last night, Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod admitted that years ago she held back some government assistance to a white farmer because of the color of his skin. After hearing that I said 'Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately,' and that's exactly what happened. But if you were watching the network news last night you would know nothing about the story. Once again, an embarrassing moment for the Obama administration was not covered. In the big picture this is a small story; every administration has had employees do dumb things. But why the news blackout when things become unpleasant for the Obama administration? The answer has to be bias - the establishment press tilts left and is reluctant to do damage to a very liberal president. There's no other reason to spike stories that bring millions of viewers to Fox News. You would think the other TV news operations, all of whom are not doing well, would want to attract that large audience. Apparently they don't."
Source: http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=2649
Didn’t this same FOX News Report issue this story as BREAKING NEWS?
Sure! Breaking News: An innocent black woman is lynched by crafty racist deception: FOX News.
Beck calls for Shirley Sherrod to be reinstated.
Too late, Shirley is a martyr like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose character was assassinated long before he died.
If I were Shirley, I would not go back until America hangs her head in shame, for this mass rush to judgment. In the meantime, she should sue the Agriculture Department for wrongful termination.
There is someone out there retrieving old black video tapes, doctoring them, and create hysteric fears and racial animosities, INTENTIONALLY (Willfully), for purposes other than what is publically known, subversive, spread throughout the television network airways of FOX.
[Isn’t this an FCC issue?]
So much for truth in journalism: THE SPIN STOPS HERE
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Tea Party Invitation to NAACP for Summit
As an ambassador of good will and advocate of human rights, I always welcome the opportunity for peace and understanding between people, races, and nations. Therefore, I welcome the olive branch extended by David Webb, co-founder of TeaParty365, who appeared on CBS “Face the Nation” on Sunday. He proposes a Tea Summit on Race Relation, in response to the NAACP resolution against racism within the Tea Party movement.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, according to the Wall Street Journal report, was “open to the idea”. He wishes, however, that such a forum should address issues other than race.
Even so, I would welcome the idea of holding a joint town hall meeting, as proposed by Webb, on any terms, for the sake of putting animosities behind us.
NOTE: David Webb is African-American, the same as Benjamin Jealous. And, it appears that only the African-American members of the Tea Party are willing to step forward to deal with racism within the organization. The rests seems more inclined to find a fault with the NAACP and spin cases or instances of “black racism”, to counter the damage done to the party's image.
Nevertheless, there has been progress since the release of the resolution. The North Iowa Tea Party billboard in Mason City, depicting President Barack Obama as Hitler, has been taken down and replaced with a public service announcement. Tea Party Express activist Mark Williams has been expelled from the Tea Party Federation for a demeaning racial satire posted on his website.
These corrections in organizational behavior clears the way for people of good will to move forward toward racial reconciliation, and yet with freedom to air our legitimate political differences.
“There is no debate about racism,” says Jealous. I agree.
Some people would go tit-for-tat on instances of racial bigotry, both white bigotry and black bigotry. And, some African-Americans would fend that they have been more assailed with white racism since the founding of this nation, and point out slavery and lynching and violent oppression and white terrorism, as proof.
These arguments rub raw the wrong way. To get caught up in tit-for-tat acrimony would be fruitless. However, beware that it is the only term with which some can discuss the issue.
Therefore, my advice to the NAACP would be to accept the Tea Party’s invitation to a summit with grace and dignity. Take the high road and not condescend to tit-for-tat on bigotry. Remember: Racial bigotry is only the outward expression of a subjective idea. In this case, when we speak of racism, we speak of the ideology of white supremacy and the discriminatory and prejudicial practices that grow out of it, and how the state apparatus becomes an institution of oppression by it. Everything else is a diversion.
Give all due respect to your adversary, remembering that the bigot is not the enemy, but a victim of a misguided idea. The enemy is the foundation of ideas that lead to hateful and prejudicial behavior. Study from whence these ideas of white supremacy come and how they innocuously and subtly interject into today’s political arena.
FOR EXAMPLE: Tea Party Express activist Mark Williams, in his satire, insinuated that black people were lazy, shiftless, and irresponsible. Needless to say, this is a popular idea within the movement, and forms the basis of why some people think that the government is taking their hard earned wealth and giving to an unworthy group of people.
It is also a popular idea that providing poor and unemployed people with welfare (or "extended unemployment") creates a disincentive to work, and such assistance, such as free food stamps encourages "welfare mothers" to reproduces.
These are very old ideas, dating back to the debate on English Poor Laws in 1536. In 1834, when another round of Poor Laws was introduced, Thomas Malthus, the father of birth control and family planning, opposed the new laws for the very same reasons listed above: that it would encourage the poor to become lazy, irresponsible, reproduce like rabbits, and eventually become a burden on the state.
Today, we have code words like “welfare state”, “entitlement programs”, “socialized medicine”, all with the same underlying meaning that hard working Americans are being robbed by the government to support lazy and irresponsible welfare recipients. Unfortunately, the modern day stereotype is not the British poor, but poor minorities, the faces of which are mostly black.
Thomas Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principal of Population” (1798-1826) was a series on political economy based upon population growth of the “unworthy” people, who would overpopulate the world and consume more food than the earth could produce. The solution was to cut off support for the lazy poor, keep wages at subsistence level, and put malaria in the water of African natives. In short, let the “unworthy” population die off, by natural attrition and haste.
The current debate over government spending is primarily aimed at the programs that helped the poor, unemployed, and aged. The arguments are the same now, as in 1834. Technically, this is not racism, until combined with the goals and aspirations of white supremacy.
In rebuking the NAACP for its resolution, a FOX commentator questioned if the black community did not have enough problems for its organization, such as poverty, unemployment, teen pregnancy, crime, etc.
Somehow, we assumed that these were common problems to America as a whole, not just an isolated group or race of people. To say that these are black problems, instead of America’s problems, puts the onerous African-Americans to build bricks without straw (as in, no government help or assistance). The above arguments stymatizes helping the poor and undeserving. Instead of a theme of Saving America, we see slogans like Save White America in the Tea Party movement.
This is what divides us: that we are not One Nation, but a nation of competing interests along the color line. There must be reconciliation beyond the color of a person’s skin, and one community's problem must be looked upon as a problem for the nation, as a whole.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, according to the Wall Street Journal report, was “open to the idea”. He wishes, however, that such a forum should address issues other than race.
Even so, I would welcome the idea of holding a joint town hall meeting, as proposed by Webb, on any terms, for the sake of putting animosities behind us.
NOTE: David Webb is African-American, the same as Benjamin Jealous. And, it appears that only the African-American members of the Tea Party are willing to step forward to deal with racism within the organization. The rests seems more inclined to find a fault with the NAACP and spin cases or instances of “black racism”, to counter the damage done to the party's image.
Nevertheless, there has been progress since the release of the resolution. The North Iowa Tea Party billboard in Mason City, depicting President Barack Obama as Hitler, has been taken down and replaced with a public service announcement. Tea Party Express activist Mark Williams has been expelled from the Tea Party Federation for a demeaning racial satire posted on his website.
These corrections in organizational behavior clears the way for people of good will to move forward toward racial reconciliation, and yet with freedom to air our legitimate political differences.
“There is no debate about racism,” says Jealous. I agree.
Some people would go tit-for-tat on instances of racial bigotry, both white bigotry and black bigotry. And, some African-Americans would fend that they have been more assailed with white racism since the founding of this nation, and point out slavery and lynching and violent oppression and white terrorism, as proof.
These arguments rub raw the wrong way. To get caught up in tit-for-tat acrimony would be fruitless. However, beware that it is the only term with which some can discuss the issue.
Therefore, my advice to the NAACP would be to accept the Tea Party’s invitation to a summit with grace and dignity. Take the high road and not condescend to tit-for-tat on bigotry. Remember: Racial bigotry is only the outward expression of a subjective idea. In this case, when we speak of racism, we speak of the ideology of white supremacy and the discriminatory and prejudicial practices that grow out of it, and how the state apparatus becomes an institution of oppression by it. Everything else is a diversion.
Give all due respect to your adversary, remembering that the bigot is not the enemy, but a victim of a misguided idea. The enemy is the foundation of ideas that lead to hateful and prejudicial behavior. Study from whence these ideas of white supremacy come and how they innocuously and subtly interject into today’s political arena.
FOR EXAMPLE: Tea Party Express activist Mark Williams, in his satire, insinuated that black people were lazy, shiftless, and irresponsible. Needless to say, this is a popular idea within the movement, and forms the basis of why some people think that the government is taking their hard earned wealth and giving to an unworthy group of people.
It is also a popular idea that providing poor and unemployed people with welfare (or "extended unemployment") creates a disincentive to work, and such assistance, such as free food stamps encourages "welfare mothers" to reproduces.
These are very old ideas, dating back to the debate on English Poor Laws in 1536. In 1834, when another round of Poor Laws was introduced, Thomas Malthus, the father of birth control and family planning, opposed the new laws for the very same reasons listed above: that it would encourage the poor to become lazy, irresponsible, reproduce like rabbits, and eventually become a burden on the state.
Today, we have code words like “welfare state”, “entitlement programs”, “socialized medicine”, all with the same underlying meaning that hard working Americans are being robbed by the government to support lazy and irresponsible welfare recipients. Unfortunately, the modern day stereotype is not the British poor, but poor minorities, the faces of which are mostly black.
Thomas Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principal of Population” (1798-1826) was a series on political economy based upon population growth of the “unworthy” people, who would overpopulate the world and consume more food than the earth could produce. The solution was to cut off support for the lazy poor, keep wages at subsistence level, and put malaria in the water of African natives. In short, let the “unworthy” population die off, by natural attrition and haste.
The current debate over government spending is primarily aimed at the programs that helped the poor, unemployed, and aged. The arguments are the same now, as in 1834. Technically, this is not racism, until combined with the goals and aspirations of white supremacy.
In rebuking the NAACP for its resolution, a FOX commentator questioned if the black community did not have enough problems for its organization, such as poverty, unemployment, teen pregnancy, crime, etc.
Somehow, we assumed that these were common problems to America as a whole, not just an isolated group or race of people. To say that these are black problems, instead of America’s problems, puts the onerous African-Americans to build bricks without straw (as in, no government help or assistance). The above arguments stymatizes helping the poor and undeserving. Instead of a theme of Saving America, we see slogans like Save White America in the Tea Party movement.
This is what divides us: that we are not One Nation, but a nation of competing interests along the color line. There must be reconciliation beyond the color of a person’s skin, and one community's problem must be looked upon as a problem for the nation, as a whole.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Mason City Billboard Controversy:
Last Word
By Eddie Griffin
Monday, July 19, 2010
I must desist in this insane deliberation over character assassination of the president as whether by slander or racism.
What I want to know is why so many people believe that black people are lazy, living off government welfare and handouts, and why so many middle class African-Americans believe the same.
After all, the call for reduction in federal spending is, in fact, aimed at federal social welfare programs, which some believe is the preferred domain of poor black people. They forget federal assistance programs like food stamps actually subsidize rural farmers and agribusiness, stabilize food prices, and give U.S. farmers a guaranteed market. This is why farm goods outside of the country cannot compete. [NOTE: Unfortunately, the government did not buy black farm products; hence, black farmers starved, while their counterparts thrived on the Agriculture Department purchases].
All things being fair and equal
Recently, I heard people in Louisiana, in the aftermath of the BP disaster, talking about not wanting a government “handout”, and a lady boohooing her eyes out because this was her first time receiving food stamps.
Why does such humiliation and shame come from receiving handouts and food stamps?
Federal assistance programs are a stigma of poverty, laziness, depravity, low life style, and no motivation to do better. The stigma applies to both the “poor white trash” and “laziness Negro”. In order for a person to receive handout, food stamps, and welfare, they could only be one or the other. When it happens to middle-America, they differentiate themselves from the former.
That is why some Louisiana shrimpers refuse to take a “handout”. They take pride in being hard workers, and it is not right for people willing to work to receive government handouts like the undeserving who are not willing to work.
Here is the clincher: Somebody is selling the notion that President Barack Obama is taking their hard earned wealth and giving over to these undeserving lazy Negroes, simply because he favors black over white.
They call this a transfer of wealth by socialism.
Stupid is what stupid believes.
There is only one economy, neither black, nor white. It was the Department of Agriculture that first gave white U.S. farmers subsidies to grow and subsidies to forebear, in order to support the rural agrarian economy, and stabilize farm prices. But the Food Stamp Act of 1964, under President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, appeared to benefit the lazily class of people.
This microcosmic chain: From rural farmland, to the government, to welfare recipients, is skewed to make it appear that blacks are the chief reliant upon this system.
They are Unemployed by Choice.
The government disperses it money through contracts, for example in the defense industries. Most of the jobs in these industries are skilled and primarily white labor, from machine to floor supervisor on up, the chain of hierarchy is like nepotism along racial lines. High unemployment among minorities does not signify lack of motivation but bias preference in hiring. In Texas, for example, in the defense industry, African-Americans are only hired to fulfill a federally required quota; otherwise, there would be no blacks working at all, as it had in the past, except sweep floors and taking out the trash. [Who gets the hot dirty jobs of scooping up the tar balls on the gulf beaches?]
There is an argument employers should have the right to hire whomsoever they will. But they forgot from whence come their federal contracts, and all federal monies come from a mixture of all segments and races in the country. When government spending is concentrated on a favored population, the rest is disfavored is the wealth distribution chain.
For centuries, they took black tax dollars and applied these dollars to the white economy, in the form of jobs and neighborhood development, such as streets and sidewalks. Negro neighborhoods did not receive equity for their tax dollars until they gained the vote and exercised political power en masse.
Nevertheless, once having taking all the choicest jobs, monopolized the training, skills, certifications, and licenses, at the exclusion of the Negro, it guaranteed another generation of ignorance and poverty.
Reducing Taxation does not mean a reduction in spending in those vital industries like the defense industry. Nor, does it mean reduction of federal spending in research, at predominately white colleges and universities. Nor, does it mean reduction federal spending in engineering and construction.
Reduction in taxes means to “take back” what is being given to the “undeserving” like welfare cheats and ACORN. It does not mean taking back subsidies to the railroad industries. [Notice the contrast in the color of the workforce on each end, and which labor force is productive and which a siphon].
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act is a federal law that does not necessarily change the sentiments of men’s hearts and their preferences in certain geographic regions. In the Deep South, a contractor or employer can say that they can find no “qualified applicant” in order to be exempt from the law.
This too is racist.
By Eddie Griffin
Monday, July 19, 2010
I must desist in this insane deliberation over character assassination of the president as whether by slander or racism.
What I want to know is why so many people believe that black people are lazy, living off government welfare and handouts, and why so many middle class African-Americans believe the same.
After all, the call for reduction in federal spending is, in fact, aimed at federal social welfare programs, which some believe is the preferred domain of poor black people. They forget federal assistance programs like food stamps actually subsidize rural farmers and agribusiness, stabilize food prices, and give U.S. farmers a guaranteed market. This is why farm goods outside of the country cannot compete. [NOTE: Unfortunately, the government did not buy black farm products; hence, black farmers starved, while their counterparts thrived on the Agriculture Department purchases].
All things being fair and equal
Recently, I heard people in Louisiana, in the aftermath of the BP disaster, talking about not wanting a government “handout”, and a lady boohooing her eyes out because this was her first time receiving food stamps.
Why does such humiliation and shame come from receiving handouts and food stamps?
Federal assistance programs are a stigma of poverty, laziness, depravity, low life style, and no motivation to do better. The stigma applies to both the “poor white trash” and “laziness Negro”. In order for a person to receive handout, food stamps, and welfare, they could only be one or the other. When it happens to middle-America, they differentiate themselves from the former.
That is why some Louisiana shrimpers refuse to take a “handout”. They take pride in being hard workers, and it is not right for people willing to work to receive government handouts like the undeserving who are not willing to work.
Here is the clincher: Somebody is selling the notion that President Barack Obama is taking their hard earned wealth and giving over to these undeserving lazy Negroes, simply because he favors black over white.
They call this a transfer of wealth by socialism.
Stupid is what stupid believes.
There is only one economy, neither black, nor white. It was the Department of Agriculture that first gave white U.S. farmers subsidies to grow and subsidies to forebear, in order to support the rural agrarian economy, and stabilize farm prices. But the Food Stamp Act of 1964, under President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, appeared to benefit the lazily class of people.
This microcosmic chain: From rural farmland, to the government, to welfare recipients, is skewed to make it appear that blacks are the chief reliant upon this system.
They are Unemployed by Choice.
The government disperses it money through contracts, for example in the defense industries. Most of the jobs in these industries are skilled and primarily white labor, from machine to floor supervisor on up, the chain of hierarchy is like nepotism along racial lines. High unemployment among minorities does not signify lack of motivation but bias preference in hiring. In Texas, for example, in the defense industry, African-Americans are only hired to fulfill a federally required quota; otherwise, there would be no blacks working at all, as it had in the past, except sweep floors and taking out the trash. [Who gets the hot dirty jobs of scooping up the tar balls on the gulf beaches?]
There is an argument employers should have the right to hire whomsoever they will. But they forgot from whence come their federal contracts, and all federal monies come from a mixture of all segments and races in the country. When government spending is concentrated on a favored population, the rest is disfavored is the wealth distribution chain.
For centuries, they took black tax dollars and applied these dollars to the white economy, in the form of jobs and neighborhood development, such as streets and sidewalks. Negro neighborhoods did not receive equity for their tax dollars until they gained the vote and exercised political power en masse.
Nevertheless, once having taking all the choicest jobs, monopolized the training, skills, certifications, and licenses, at the exclusion of the Negro, it guaranteed another generation of ignorance and poverty.
Reducing Taxation does not mean a reduction in spending in those vital industries like the defense industry. Nor, does it mean reduction of federal spending in research, at predominately white colleges and universities. Nor, does it mean reduction federal spending in engineering and construction.
Reduction in taxes means to “take back” what is being given to the “undeserving” like welfare cheats and ACORN. It does not mean taking back subsidies to the railroad industries. [Notice the contrast in the color of the workforce on each end, and which labor force is productive and which a siphon].
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act is a federal law that does not necessarily change the sentiments of men’s hearts and their preferences in certain geographic regions. In the Deep South, a contractor or employer can say that they can find no “qualified applicant” in order to be exempt from the law.
This too is racist.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Where is the Racism in the Tea Party?
By Eddie Griffin
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Some people are questioning the resolution of the NAACP about racism in the Tea Party- a resolution, mind you, that still has to be finalized. But when NAACP President Benjamin Jealous spoke about the resolution, there were clearly despicable pictures in the background as proof of what he meant.
NO, not everybody in the Tea Party is racist, and I doubt if many really understand what racism truly means outside of bigotry. This is why I stopped using the term “racism” to describe “white supremacy”- the ideology of “white rule”, either by natural divine right or intellectual superiority. Most bigots fall on the low end of the IQ pool, easily aroused, dumped, and hoodwinked, by their more intelligent counterparts.
In an article in the Fort Worth Weekly, I forewarned that “unhealthy rhetoric” coming from the ranks of the Tea Party was comparable to the racist rhetoric hurled at African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. (See “Unhealthy Rhetoric” by Eddie Griffin, Fort Worth Weekly, March 31, 2010). Instead of toning down the hostilities, some readers unleashed their anger upon me as the writer and demanded proof.
I presented a montage of pictures to the editor Gayle Reeves, which was later included in an editorial, “Tea Parties, Racism and Eddie Griffin”. As I asserted in the original article: “Plausible denial is a racist’s chief defense. That nobody saw him, nobody heard him, and nobody can prove what is in his heart is all the cover he needs.”
The YouTube link to Gayle’s editorial has been disconnected (for obvious or unobvious reasons), but the montage is picture proof is here, and here is why these depictions are racially offensive:
(1:34-1:43) A poster read: Save White America
What is “White America”? How is it different from “Other America”? Why the implied dichotomy between White and Black America? Why must I accept the unscientific codification of Race based on skin color? And, why does “White America” feel imperiled and the rest of us do not? There are no white people, per se, only people who are spoofed into believing genetic and pigmentation means something.
Politics is colorless, but not odorless.
(1:17-1:34) A poster read: Slave Owner Taxpayer - Niggar
By civil convention, I thought the N-word was antiquated due its vile nature and hateful conjuring. But here is a man, in patriotic red, white, and blue, with this sign.
(2:06-2:14) A poster read: Obama is the Antichrist – Oust Obama
(4:00-4:09) A poster read: The Antichrist is living in the White House
When people use religion to vilify the president in a demonic way, he or she intentionally corrupts the scriptures, as if there is no respect for the true and living God in heaven, or the leader elected by the majority of the people.
What does this say of those of us who voted for Obama? That we are satanic?
(2:39-2:47) A poster with an image of Barack Obama half-dressed in savage garb with a bone in his nose.
The image is reminiscent of pictures I remember as a child during 1940s and 1950s when we realized our African roots. We were brainwashed into shame about our heritage by these very same pictures. But there were Negro actors willing to portray such roles on stage and in movies.
We were taught that Africans were always uncivilized and dressed like this, not the fact that Africa was colonized, raped and pillaged, carved up like a pork chop, and the people thrown back into the stone ages by European encroachment. In time we discover Timbuktu and the cradle of civilization, and that Africa gave the Greeks their education, and Moors gave the world the Arabic number system.
It took a life time to overcome this shame, and now it returns in this form.
(2:47-2:55) A poster with a cartoon monkey with the inscription: Obama Nomics – Monkey see, monkey spend.
Telling Negroes that they evolved from monkeys and look like monkeys goes back as far as I can remember. It was part of the ongoing daily humiliation we had to endure. Not that this vile expression has ever gone away, it is an old rehash out of the same closet as great-great-great-grandpa’s Confederate uniform.
EDDIE GRIFFIN ADVICE TO THE NAACP-The pictures identified above are indeed proof of racism. The organization should neither be shamed nor intimidation in revealing an undeniable social reality. Pass the Resolution and move on to the next work, and never look behind. It is now incumbent upon the Tea Party Movement to keep these vile images out of its ranks and away from its rallies. The rest we can devote to an open and honest political debate, if we can keep honest alive.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Some people are questioning the resolution of the NAACP about racism in the Tea Party- a resolution, mind you, that still has to be finalized. But when NAACP President Benjamin Jealous spoke about the resolution, there were clearly despicable pictures in the background as proof of what he meant.
NO, not everybody in the Tea Party is racist, and I doubt if many really understand what racism truly means outside of bigotry. This is why I stopped using the term “racism” to describe “white supremacy”- the ideology of “white rule”, either by natural divine right or intellectual superiority. Most bigots fall on the low end of the IQ pool, easily aroused, dumped, and hoodwinked, by their more intelligent counterparts.
In an article in the Fort Worth Weekly, I forewarned that “unhealthy rhetoric” coming from the ranks of the Tea Party was comparable to the racist rhetoric hurled at African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. (See “Unhealthy Rhetoric” by Eddie Griffin, Fort Worth Weekly, March 31, 2010). Instead of toning down the hostilities, some readers unleashed their anger upon me as the writer and demanded proof.
I presented a montage of pictures to the editor Gayle Reeves, which was later included in an editorial, “Tea Parties, Racism and Eddie Griffin”. As I asserted in the original article: “Plausible denial is a racist’s chief defense. That nobody saw him, nobody heard him, and nobody can prove what is in his heart is all the cover he needs.”
The YouTube link to Gayle’s editorial has been disconnected (for obvious or unobvious reasons), but the montage is picture proof is here, and here is why these depictions are racially offensive:
(1:34-1:43) A poster read: Save White America
What is “White America”? How is it different from “Other America”? Why the implied dichotomy between White and Black America? Why must I accept the unscientific codification of Race based on skin color? And, why does “White America” feel imperiled and the rest of us do not? There are no white people, per se, only people who are spoofed into believing genetic and pigmentation means something.
Politics is colorless, but not odorless.
(1:17-1:34) A poster read: Slave Owner Taxpayer - Niggar
By civil convention, I thought the N-word was antiquated due its vile nature and hateful conjuring. But here is a man, in patriotic red, white, and blue, with this sign.
(2:06-2:14) A poster read: Obama is the Antichrist – Oust Obama
(4:00-4:09) A poster read: The Antichrist is living in the White House
When people use religion to vilify the president in a demonic way, he or she intentionally corrupts the scriptures, as if there is no respect for the true and living God in heaven, or the leader elected by the majority of the people.
What does this say of those of us who voted for Obama? That we are satanic?
(2:39-2:47) A poster with an image of Barack Obama half-dressed in savage garb with a bone in his nose.
The image is reminiscent of pictures I remember as a child during 1940s and 1950s when we realized our African roots. We were brainwashed into shame about our heritage by these very same pictures. But there were Negro actors willing to portray such roles on stage and in movies.
We were taught that Africans were always uncivilized and dressed like this, not the fact that Africa was colonized, raped and pillaged, carved up like a pork chop, and the people thrown back into the stone ages by European encroachment. In time we discover Timbuktu and the cradle of civilization, and that Africa gave the Greeks their education, and Moors gave the world the Arabic number system.
It took a life time to overcome this shame, and now it returns in this form.
(2:47-2:55) A poster with a cartoon monkey with the inscription: Obama Nomics – Monkey see, monkey spend.
Telling Negroes that they evolved from monkeys and look like monkeys goes back as far as I can remember. It was part of the ongoing daily humiliation we had to endure. Not that this vile expression has ever gone away, it is an old rehash out of the same closet as great-great-great-grandpa’s Confederate uniform.
EDDIE GRIFFIN ADVICE TO THE NAACP-The pictures identified above are indeed proof of racism. The organization should neither be shamed nor intimidation in revealing an undeniable social reality. Pass the Resolution and move on to the next work, and never look behind. It is now incumbent upon the Tea Party Movement to keep these vile images out of its ranks and away from its rallies. The rest we can devote to an open and honest political debate, if we can keep honest alive.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Ineffective Prosecution in Oscar Grant Murder Case
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
To mar the day of Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as the first African-American President of the United States, Oscar Grant was shot in the back by BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California.
Officers had been called in to quell a disturbance on the train, in which several youth were engaged in a fight, after a night of New Year’s revelry. Tensions escalated after the officers arrived and tried to take control of the situation. When Grant attempted to act as peacemaker, Officer Tony Pirone shouted racial slurs and ordered the young man arrested. Grant was wrest to the ground, face down, and restrained, when Officer Mehserle rose, drew his gun, and nonchalantly fired, pointblank, into the back of Grant. The young man died a couple of hours later at a local hospital, January 1, 2009.
The entire incident was video recorded by several bystanders, from several different angles. It is obvious to us that the unarmed Oscar Grant was murdered in cold blood. After public outrage, Johannes Mehserle resigned, fled to Nevada, and was later arrested, charged, and tried.
However, if the wheel of Justice grinds every so slowly, then in the case of Oscar Grant, it ground to a halt, because on Thursday, July 8, 2010, a Los Angeles jury found Mehserles guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and not guilty of second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.
Sentencing is scheduled for August 6 and could range from probation to 5-14 years in prison. In the meantime, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is looking into the case.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Bringing Mehserles to justice took almost an act of congress, because there appeared no desire to pursue an internal investigation the incident, though 5 or 6 officers were present on the scene at the time. It was not until video of the shooting began to circulate to the outside world that the blue wall of silence and cover-up was breached. Another innocent black man was dead, one of several, in the post election of Barack Obama.
On January 8, 2010, after failing to get BART to investigate the incident, Eddie Griffin (BASG) sent the following letter to the Board of Directors.
BART Board of Directors
P.O. Box 12688
Oakland , CA 94604-2688
(510) 464-6095
BoardofDirectors@bart.gov
c/o Kenneth A. Duron
District Secretary
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District
300 Lakeside Drive, 23rd Floor, Oakland, California 94612
510.464.6080, fax: 510.464.6011
“Kduron” Kduron@bart.gov
To Directors: Carole Ward Allen, Bob Franklin, Joel Keller, Gail Murray, John McPartland, Thomas Blalock, Lynette Sweet, James Fang, Tom Radulovich
[Excerpted] We contacted your office on yesterday about the unprovoked shooting of 22-year old Oscar Grant in Fruitvale, Lake Merritt & 12th Street Station in Oakland... There is prima facie evidence, by these videos, that shows Officer Johannes Mehserle shot a defenseless man in the back while he was constrained… There is a compelling probable cause that the officer murdered the victim. As you know this video was offered to the police department investigators. Instead of immediately arresting the officer, BART put him in hiding… We are not seeking lynch mob justice before due process run its course… If you can watch this video also and come away feeling that your department acted appropriately, do realize there is a strong possibility the unrest will continue, and more arrests is not the solution. The city has brought this curse upon itself… Sincerely, Eddie Griffin
Acknowledgement & Response from BART
From: Kduron@bart.gov
Subject: Re: Unprovoked Shooting of Oscar Grant
To: eddiegriffin_basg@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 4:28 PM
Mr. Griffin,
Thank you for your email. Your message will be shared with the Board of Directors as requested.
The following is a link to the District's webpage with news releases/video regarding the officer involved shooting on January 1, 2009.
http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009.aspx
Thank you for taking the time to advise us of your concerns.
Kenneth A. Duron
District Secretary
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District
300 Lakeside Drive, 23rd Floor, Oakland, California 94612
510.464.6080, fax: 510.464.6011, email: kduron@bart.gov
A Petition for Redress of Grievance
There were riots in the Bay area in the aftermath of Grant’s murder. There were riots following the Mehserle jury verdict, despite the many calls for peace and calm. As we said before, we were not looking for “lynch mob justice”, but due process and justice mete for the crime.
Our reliance upon the courts is very disappointing, because it is justice by contrast: White officer versus Black suspect. The benefit of doubt goes to the officer instead of the victim. Had African-Americans been included on the jury, the verdict might have been different. But it reverts back to the fact that the district attorney had no heart for the case to begin with.
A recent article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram alludes to an old practice in Texas courtrooms called “stacking the jury”. The jury selection process (voir dire) is not always fair and honest, and verdicts are not always what justice requires.
Precedence
Although everybody in Mississippi and the rest of the world knew Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam tortured and murdered an innocent 14-year old named Emmitt Till in Money, Mississippi, on August 8, 1955, though the all-white jury was presented with firsthand eyewitness testimony, they still found the two Not Guilty.
If there were any benefit of doubt, then surely it was removed when the two gave an interview to Look Magazine in January 1956, providing the harrowing details of the torture and murder. By the law of Double Jeopardy, they could not be tried again at the time, which led to the Justice Department to include Murder as a violation of Civil Rights, especially when murder is carried out Under the Color of Law, by a law enforcement official.
[Oscar Grant was only one of several black men shot and killed immediately following the election of Barack Obama, reminiscent of the night that Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship of the world.]
To mar the day of Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as the first African-American President of the United States, Oscar Grant was shot in the back by BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California.
Officers had been called in to quell a disturbance on the train, in which several youth were engaged in a fight, after a night of New Year’s revelry. Tensions escalated after the officers arrived and tried to take control of the situation. When Grant attempted to act as peacemaker, Officer Tony Pirone shouted racial slurs and ordered the young man arrested. Grant was wrest to the ground, face down, and restrained, when Officer Mehserle rose, drew his gun, and nonchalantly fired, pointblank, into the back of Grant. The young man died a couple of hours later at a local hospital, January 1, 2009.
The entire incident was video recorded by several bystanders, from several different angles. It is obvious to us that the unarmed Oscar Grant was murdered in cold blood. After public outrage, Johannes Mehserle resigned, fled to Nevada, and was later arrested, charged, and tried.
However, if the wheel of Justice grinds every so slowly, then in the case of Oscar Grant, it ground to a halt, because on Thursday, July 8, 2010, a Los Angeles jury found Mehserles guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and not guilty of second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.
Sentencing is scheduled for August 6 and could range from probation to 5-14 years in prison. In the meantime, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is looking into the case.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Bringing Mehserles to justice took almost an act of congress, because there appeared no desire to pursue an internal investigation the incident, though 5 or 6 officers were present on the scene at the time. It was not until video of the shooting began to circulate to the outside world that the blue wall of silence and cover-up was breached. Another innocent black man was dead, one of several, in the post election of Barack Obama.
On January 8, 2010, after failing to get BART to investigate the incident, Eddie Griffin (BASG) sent the following letter to the Board of Directors.
BART Board of Directors
P.O. Box 12688
Oakland , CA 94604-2688
(510) 464-6095
BoardofDirectors@bart.gov
c/o Kenneth A. Duron
District Secretary
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District
300 Lakeside Drive, 23rd Floor, Oakland, California 94612
510.464.6080, fax: 510.464.6011
“Kduron” Kduron@bart.gov
To Directors: Carole Ward Allen, Bob Franklin, Joel Keller, Gail Murray, John McPartland, Thomas Blalock, Lynette Sweet, James Fang, Tom Radulovich
[Excerpted] We contacted your office on yesterday about the unprovoked shooting of 22-year old Oscar Grant in Fruitvale, Lake Merritt & 12th Street Station in Oakland... There is prima facie evidence, by these videos, that shows Officer Johannes Mehserle shot a defenseless man in the back while he was constrained… There is a compelling probable cause that the officer murdered the victim. As you know this video was offered to the police department investigators. Instead of immediately arresting the officer, BART put him in hiding… We are not seeking lynch mob justice before due process run its course… If you can watch this video also and come away feeling that your department acted appropriately, do realize there is a strong possibility the unrest will continue, and more arrests is not the solution. The city has brought this curse upon itself… Sincerely, Eddie Griffin
Acknowledgement & Response from BART
From: Kduron@bart.gov
Subject: Re: Unprovoked Shooting of Oscar Grant
To: eddiegriffin_basg@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 4:28 PM
Mr. Griffin,
Thank you for your email. Your message will be shared with the Board of Directors as requested.
The following is a link to the District's webpage with news releases/video regarding the officer involved shooting on January 1, 2009.
http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009.aspx
Thank you for taking the time to advise us of your concerns.
Kenneth A. Duron
District Secretary
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District
300 Lakeside Drive, 23rd Floor, Oakland, California 94612
510.464.6080, fax: 510.464.6011, email: kduron@bart.gov
A Petition for Redress of Grievance
There were riots in the Bay area in the aftermath of Grant’s murder. There were riots following the Mehserle jury verdict, despite the many calls for peace and calm. As we said before, we were not looking for “lynch mob justice”, but due process and justice mete for the crime.
Our reliance upon the courts is very disappointing, because it is justice by contrast: White officer versus Black suspect. The benefit of doubt goes to the officer instead of the victim. Had African-Americans been included on the jury, the verdict might have been different. But it reverts back to the fact that the district attorney had no heart for the case to begin with.
A recent article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram alludes to an old practice in Texas courtrooms called “stacking the jury”. The jury selection process (voir dire) is not always fair and honest, and verdicts are not always what justice requires.
Precedence
Although everybody in Mississippi and the rest of the world knew Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam tortured and murdered an innocent 14-year old named Emmitt Till in Money, Mississippi, on August 8, 1955, though the all-white jury was presented with firsthand eyewitness testimony, they still found the two Not Guilty.
If there were any benefit of doubt, then surely it was removed when the two gave an interview to Look Magazine in January 1956, providing the harrowing details of the torture and murder. By the law of Double Jeopardy, they could not be tried again at the time, which led to the Justice Department to include Murder as a violation of Civil Rights, especially when murder is carried out Under the Color of Law, by a law enforcement official.
[Oscar Grant was only one of several black men shot and killed immediately following the election of Barack Obama, reminiscent of the night that Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship of the world.]
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Uncle Tom Shock Legal World with Gun Right Ruling
By Eddie Griffin
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Never would I have thought that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas standing up for a black man's right to bear arms for self-defense purposes. To stand requires a spine.
What Thomas has created, however, is a legal defense of the Second Amendment so thoroughly original and starkly race-based that none of the white justices would even acknowledge it, as if it were some blank sheet crafted by an invisible man… Washington Post
In the Gun Rights case of McDonald v. Chicago, Justice Thomas sided with the court's conservative majority in a 5 to 4 vote to give petitioner, Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old black man from Chicago, the right to buy a handgun. McDonald said he needed a gun to protect himself from young black "gangbangers" who were terrorizing his suburban Chicago neighborhood.
The case was joined by the NRA, with thirty-three amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs, filed by U.S. senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R, TX) and John Tester (D, MT) and U.S. representatives Mark Souder (R, IN) and Mike Ross (D, AR) asking the Supreme Court to find in favor of the petitioners and rule that the Second Amendment does apply to the states. The brief was signed by 58 senators and 251 representatives, more members of Congress than any amicus curiae brief in history.
Thomas agreed with McDonald, concluding that owning a gun is a fundamental part of a package of hard-won rights guaranteed to black people under the 14th Amendment. And just because some hooligans in Chicago or D.C. misuse firearms is no reason to give it up.
By the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, Thomas opens can of worms. The Right to Citizenship did not include the Right that Blacks could Bear Arms. There had been too many Supreme Court cases in history where seizure of arms from Blacks was condoned and deemed legal. What did Clarence Thomas have to say about this?
Referring to the disarming of blacks during the post-Reconstruction era, Thomas wrote: "It was the 'duty' of white citizen 'patrols to search negro houses and other suspected places for firearms.' If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black 'to the nearest justice of the peace' whereupon he would be 'severely punished.'" Never again, Thomas says.
NEVER AGAIN?
Thomas goes on to say, “Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the '76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence."
From Frederick Douglass, Thomas writes: “The black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms, and that, until he does, the work of the Abolitionists was not finished.”
Courtland Milloy writes:
This was no muttering from an Uncle Tom, as many black people have accused him of being. His advocacy for black self-defense is straight from the heart of Malcolm X. He even cites the slave revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner -- implying that white America has long wanted to take guns away from black people out of fear that they would seek revenge for centuries of racial oppression.
Of course, Thomas's references to historic threats posed by white militias might have been dismissed if not for a resurgence of such groups in the year after Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president.
And if their behavior turns as violent as their racist rhetoric often threatens, then Thomas will almost certainly go down in history as the nation's foremost black radical legal scholar.
POST COMMENTARY by Eddie Griffin
From the Supreme Court bench, Clarence Thomas can see clearly the history of African-Americans and their gun rights in the courtroom. However, as an African-American jurist, he is as alienated from history as he is today’s reality.
He has created a spoof, that as a result of this ruling, blacks will go out and arm themselves against white militia. It is not the arm, but its usage, whether legal or illegal. The problem is proving intent, and most of the time a black man using a weapon, whether in defense or self-defense, he will be criminalized or terribly inconvenienced for exercising that right.
A recent case, in Forrest Hill, TX, a black man shoots a thug breaking into the house. He dies, and the man was indicted. After all the stresses of exercising his right to bear arms, he was found no guilty.
Why do we have to go through this, when other people can carry their weapons in the open, and use them when they please? Carrying an unconcealed weapon in Texas is legal. But for a black man, it would lead to an arrest. That’s not law. That’s life.
Gun Right is not a right worth risky all a man's other freedoms.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Never would I have thought that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas standing up for a black man's right to bear arms for self-defense purposes. To stand requires a spine.
What Thomas has created, however, is a legal defense of the Second Amendment so thoroughly original and starkly race-based that none of the white justices would even acknowledge it, as if it were some blank sheet crafted by an invisible man… Washington Post
In the Gun Rights case of McDonald v. Chicago, Justice Thomas sided with the court's conservative majority in a 5 to 4 vote to give petitioner, Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old black man from Chicago, the right to buy a handgun. McDonald said he needed a gun to protect himself from young black "gangbangers" who were terrorizing his suburban Chicago neighborhood.
The case was joined by the NRA, with thirty-three amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs, filed by U.S. senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R, TX) and John Tester (D, MT) and U.S. representatives Mark Souder (R, IN) and Mike Ross (D, AR) asking the Supreme Court to find in favor of the petitioners and rule that the Second Amendment does apply to the states. The brief was signed by 58 senators and 251 representatives, more members of Congress than any amicus curiae brief in history.
Thomas agreed with McDonald, concluding that owning a gun is a fundamental part of a package of hard-won rights guaranteed to black people under the 14th Amendment. And just because some hooligans in Chicago or D.C. misuse firearms is no reason to give it up.
By the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, Thomas opens can of worms. The Right to Citizenship did not include the Right that Blacks could Bear Arms. There had been too many Supreme Court cases in history where seizure of arms from Blacks was condoned and deemed legal. What did Clarence Thomas have to say about this?
Referring to the disarming of blacks during the post-Reconstruction era, Thomas wrote: "It was the 'duty' of white citizen 'patrols to search negro houses and other suspected places for firearms.' If they found any firearms, the patrols were to take the offending slave or free black 'to the nearest justice of the peace' whereupon he would be 'severely punished.'" Never again, Thomas says.
NEVER AGAIN?
Thomas goes on to say, “Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the '76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence."
From Frederick Douglass, Thomas writes: “The black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms, and that, until he does, the work of the Abolitionists was not finished.”
Courtland Milloy writes:
This was no muttering from an Uncle Tom, as many black people have accused him of being. His advocacy for black self-defense is straight from the heart of Malcolm X. He even cites the slave revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner -- implying that white America has long wanted to take guns away from black people out of fear that they would seek revenge for centuries of racial oppression.
Of course, Thomas's references to historic threats posed by white militias might have been dismissed if not for a resurgence of such groups in the year after Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president.
And if their behavior turns as violent as their racist rhetoric often threatens, then Thomas will almost certainly go down in history as the nation's foremost black radical legal scholar.
POST COMMENTARY by Eddie Griffin
From the Supreme Court bench, Clarence Thomas can see clearly the history of African-Americans and their gun rights in the courtroom. However, as an African-American jurist, he is as alienated from history as he is today’s reality.
He has created a spoof, that as a result of this ruling, blacks will go out and arm themselves against white militia. It is not the arm, but its usage, whether legal or illegal. The problem is proving intent, and most of the time a black man using a weapon, whether in defense or self-defense, he will be criminalized or terribly inconvenienced for exercising that right.
A recent case, in Forrest Hill, TX, a black man shoots a thug breaking into the house. He dies, and the man was indicted. After all the stresses of exercising his right to bear arms, he was found no guilty.
Why do we have to go through this, when other people can carry their weapons in the open, and use them when they please? Carrying an unconcealed weapon in Texas is legal. But for a black man, it would lead to an arrest. That’s not law. That’s life.
Gun Right is not a right worth risky all a man's other freedoms.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Day of Prayer: June 27th
Gulf State Governors Call for Prayer- not Repentance:
The waters are troubled and not yet healed
By Eddie Griffin
Friday, June 25, 2010
From the Plano Examiner: “UPDATE! More Governor’s Proclaim Call For Prayer This Sunday”
67 days into the Gulf oil spill crisis, four affected State Governors have now issued proclamations declaring this Sunday, June 27th as A Day Of Prayer.
Texas Governor Rick Perry stated-" It seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join with their fellow Gulf Coast residents and others across the country and around the world to thank God, seek his wisdom for ourselves and our leaders, and ask him for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis."
Alabama Governor Bob Riley said-"Throughout our history, Alabamians have humbly turned to God to ask for His blessings and to hold us steady during times of struggle. This is certainly one of those times."
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour wrote-" Prayer allows us the opportunity to reflect and seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God and citizens of Mississippi are urged to pray....."
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared-"June 27th as a Statewide Day of Prayer for perseverance."
COMMENTARY by Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)
As surely as I write, I knew the day would come when they, collectively, would call upon the God of Heaven to heal their waters. So, I ask: “Who shall pray, non-believers?” They are all non-believers, because they say one thing and mean another.
Only yesterday, it seems, Governor Rick Perry was calling the BP disaster an Act of God, now he request prayer: to wit, “thank God, seek his wisdom, ask for his merciful intervention, and healing.” Yet he rejects wisdom and denies mercy. Why didn’t he pardon Timothy Cole before his life expired in prison? Oh, but he is so sad that the State of Texas allowed an innocent, college student, and veteran die in prison like a dog. And, the blood of Jamie Scott is now upon the head of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.
Let me admonish the governors that the oil is here, and it is here to stay for a long while. It is not an inevitable. It is a fact. Leaders accept facts. Prayer, in this case, is an act of desperation, in lieu of the facts. They want a miracle for nothing, without even having to pay the price of their sins.
Merciful Intervention and Healing: What the Governor of Texas ask, is this not what we poured out our tears over? Is this not why we begged and pleaded with Governor Haley Barbour for mercy and compassion upon humanity, for the release Jamie and Gladys Scott from prison? For an $11 robbery in which no one was hurt, these two young mothers, with no prior criminal records and had no direct part in the crime, were sent to prison in the State of Mississippi, sentenced to double life… seventeen years ago. [See Newsweek story]
Now both women who went to prison at ages 19 and 22 years old are grandmothers, and Jamie is dying from kidney failure. Both have consistently maintained their innocence. And, there is no evidence or proof that either took direct part in the robbery, nor heretofore, either had prior criminal record. Why then is the Governor of Mississippi so hard-hearted in this case.
How can they have the audacity to pray for mercy, when they are so unwilling to show mercy? And anyway, June 27th is already reserved as a Day of Blogging for Justice by ROOTS of HUMANITY, and some of us will be blogging for Justice on behalf of the Scott Sisters.
References from the Previous Communications of Eddie Griffin
September 21, 2005
[In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina]
“Message in the Wind”
Almost everyone who witnessed the events of the Katrina flood and the three-week aftermath speak of these happenings in spiritual terms. They say God sent us a message. But we all did not receive the same message. According to a letter-to-the-editor in the Fort Worth Weekly, some people see poverty as proof of God’s wrath and the flood as his damnation upon the poor. It is quiet a different spiritual perception than those who see the survival of hundreds of thousands as a miracle, a proof of God’s grace and mercy upon the poor.
If the survivors of Katrina have been so blessed to cross over to Texas, the flood may have washed them, but they are not all clean. With the flood and the wave of refugees came the dregs of the criminal elements, along with corrupt behavior. Some would say that the wrath of God was upon these elements, but somehow a few escaped the destruction and doom.
But the winds and flood did not separate the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, the righteous from the wicked. This was not Noah’s flood, in the spiritual sense. It was more like the city of Sodom.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Long overdue Justice may be coming to Mississippi… in the form of oil upon the pristine Gulf casino beaches
And, when they cry to Heaven and utter many prayers, then I, also, would hope and pray for Mercy, first for the Scott Sisters, and then for the State of Mississippi- and not in the reverse.
I need no approval or authority or consent of men. This is personal.
The waters are troubled and not yet healed
By Eddie Griffin
Friday, June 25, 2010
From the Plano Examiner: “UPDATE! More Governor’s Proclaim Call For Prayer This Sunday”
67 days into the Gulf oil spill crisis, four affected State Governors have now issued proclamations declaring this Sunday, June 27th as A Day Of Prayer.
Texas Governor Rick Perry stated-" It seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join with their fellow Gulf Coast residents and others across the country and around the world to thank God, seek his wisdom for ourselves and our leaders, and ask him for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis."
Alabama Governor Bob Riley said-"Throughout our history, Alabamians have humbly turned to God to ask for His blessings and to hold us steady during times of struggle. This is certainly one of those times."
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour wrote-" Prayer allows us the opportunity to reflect and seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God and citizens of Mississippi are urged to pray....."
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared-"June 27th as a Statewide Day of Prayer for perseverance."
COMMENTARY by Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)
As surely as I write, I knew the day would come when they, collectively, would call upon the God of Heaven to heal their waters. So, I ask: “Who shall pray, non-believers?” They are all non-believers, because they say one thing and mean another.
Only yesterday, it seems, Governor Rick Perry was calling the BP disaster an Act of God, now he request prayer: to wit, “thank God, seek his wisdom, ask for his merciful intervention, and healing.” Yet he rejects wisdom and denies mercy. Why didn’t he pardon Timothy Cole before his life expired in prison? Oh, but he is so sad that the State of Texas allowed an innocent, college student, and veteran die in prison like a dog. And, the blood of Jamie Scott is now upon the head of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.
Let me admonish the governors that the oil is here, and it is here to stay for a long while. It is not an inevitable. It is a fact. Leaders accept facts. Prayer, in this case, is an act of desperation, in lieu of the facts. They want a miracle for nothing, without even having to pay the price of their sins.
Merciful Intervention and Healing: What the Governor of Texas ask, is this not what we poured out our tears over? Is this not why we begged and pleaded with Governor Haley Barbour for mercy and compassion upon humanity, for the release Jamie and Gladys Scott from prison? For an $11 robbery in which no one was hurt, these two young mothers, with no prior criminal records and had no direct part in the crime, were sent to prison in the State of Mississippi, sentenced to double life… seventeen years ago. [See Newsweek story]
Now both women who went to prison at ages 19 and 22 years old are grandmothers, and Jamie is dying from kidney failure. Both have consistently maintained their innocence. And, there is no evidence or proof that either took direct part in the robbery, nor heretofore, either had prior criminal record. Why then is the Governor of Mississippi so hard-hearted in this case.
How can they have the audacity to pray for mercy, when they are so unwilling to show mercy? And anyway, June 27th is already reserved as a Day of Blogging for Justice by ROOTS of HUMANITY, and some of us will be blogging for Justice on behalf of the Scott Sisters.
References from the Previous Communications of Eddie Griffin
September 21, 2005
[In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina]
“Message in the Wind”
Almost everyone who witnessed the events of the Katrina flood and the three-week aftermath speak of these happenings in spiritual terms. They say God sent us a message. But we all did not receive the same message. According to a letter-to-the-editor in the Fort Worth Weekly, some people see poverty as proof of God’s wrath and the flood as his damnation upon the poor. It is quiet a different spiritual perception than those who see the survival of hundreds of thousands as a miracle, a proof of God’s grace and mercy upon the poor.
If the survivors of Katrina have been so blessed to cross over to Texas, the flood may have washed them, but they are not all clean. With the flood and the wave of refugees came the dregs of the criminal elements, along with corrupt behavior. Some would say that the wrath of God was upon these elements, but somehow a few escaped the destruction and doom.
But the winds and flood did not separate the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, the righteous from the wicked. This was not Noah’s flood, in the spiritual sense. It was more like the city of Sodom.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Long overdue Justice may be coming to Mississippi… in the form of oil upon the pristine Gulf casino beaches
And, when they cry to Heaven and utter many prayers, then I, also, would hope and pray for Mercy, first for the Scott Sisters, and then for the State of Mississippi- and not in the reverse.
I need no approval or authority or consent of men. This is personal.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
What is the Confederacy doing on This Side of the Potomac?
Glenn Beck’s Use of Mass Psychology
By Eddie Griffin
Thursday, June 24, 2010
What is this folly dreamed up by FOX Network and its puppeteers? Glenn Beck will do a Tea Party rendition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963 March on Washington, D.C.? Will Beck launch into MLK’s “I Have a Dream” on its memorial, August 28, 2010?
Not far removed from the minds of men is vanity, dreamed up by dementia and hysteric as Chicken Little, the world is made into a stage. YEAH, Right. The sky is falling.
Beck has a dream like Pinocchio, the puppet that wanted to be. To take back America, are you sure? From whom, and for whom, is the question. What was taken from Big Banks and Big Insurance and Big Oil, that would he give back, meaning restore America to corporate control?
Take back America for the puppet master, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a man so rich and powerful he cannot be touched neither by gods or men, who buys up every communications network in the world and presents us with the Glenn Beck and the Extremism of Demagoguery.
Not that Murdoch is an egalitarian, hardly would a multibillionaire buy up all the newspapers, television, and other mass media networks, except to control a larger part of what people see and hear on the news and in commentaries.
It is Murdoch and corporate heads that are trying to TAKE BACK AMERICA.
Demagoguery is “an ancient Greek strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears and expectation of the public- typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda…” (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogy)
WARNING: The ditto heads are trying to incite us to look like fools. After all, they control a very large segment of the mass media. They can video us at our most embarrassing moments, or elevate the lesser fools to be king of the masses in public perception. REMEMBER: A FOX is a fox.
There was once a man so powerful that he wanted to rule the world. In order to do so, he would have to control all the information that is ingested into the people’s mind. By controlling the mass media, he could determine what people hear and what people think, due to controlling what information they received. His name was Adolf Hitler.
By Eddie Griffin
Thursday, June 24, 2010
What is this folly dreamed up by FOX Network and its puppeteers? Glenn Beck will do a Tea Party rendition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963 March on Washington, D.C.? Will Beck launch into MLK’s “I Have a Dream” on its memorial, August 28, 2010?
Not far removed from the minds of men is vanity, dreamed up by dementia and hysteric as Chicken Little, the world is made into a stage. YEAH, Right. The sky is falling.
Beck has a dream like Pinocchio, the puppet that wanted to be. To take back America, are you sure? From whom, and for whom, is the question. What was taken from Big Banks and Big Insurance and Big Oil, that would he give back, meaning restore America to corporate control?
Take back America for the puppet master, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a man so rich and powerful he cannot be touched neither by gods or men, who buys up every communications network in the world and presents us with the Glenn Beck and the Extremism of Demagoguery.
Not that Murdoch is an egalitarian, hardly would a multibillionaire buy up all the newspapers, television, and other mass media networks, except to control a larger part of what people see and hear on the news and in commentaries.
It is Murdoch and corporate heads that are trying to TAKE BACK AMERICA.
Demagoguery is “an ancient Greek strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears and expectation of the public- typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda…” (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogy)
WARNING: The ditto heads are trying to incite us to look like fools. After all, they control a very large segment of the mass media. They can video us at our most embarrassing moments, or elevate the lesser fools to be king of the masses in public perception. REMEMBER: A FOX is a fox.
There was once a man so powerful that he wanted to rule the world. In order to do so, he would have to control all the information that is ingested into the people’s mind. By controlling the mass media, he could determine what people hear and what people think, due to controlling what information they received. His name was Adolf Hitler.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
And the Oil Stayed
In my daily reading from Genesis to Revelation, I came across this phrase in today’s reading: “And the Oil Stayed”. And, I remembered that a preacher used this phrase from 2 Kings 4:6.
It seemed so paradoxical, with what was going on in the Gulf of Mexico, and today’s (Wednesday, June 23, 2010) text [2 Kings 4-6]
The creditor would take her two sons as bondmen for the debt of their deceased father. The prophet Elisha asked what she possessed. “Nothing,” she replied, “except a little pot of oil”.
As she was instructed, she gathered many vessels and poured oil into them, and sold the oil, and paid the debt, and eventually saved her sons from bondage.
IN A PARALLEL DEMENTION
If BP defaults on its liability to the people of the Gulf, the people have the rights to seize property, explore deep oil at its own risk, and collect the profits for themselves. All oil skimmed from the surface of the ocean and somehow recovered should immediately become the property-in-possession of the people of the Gulf.
For as long as the Oil Stays, the people should be enriched from its proceeds.
[To be continued]
It seemed so paradoxical, with what was going on in the Gulf of Mexico, and today’s (Wednesday, June 23, 2010) text [2 Kings 4-6]
The creditor would take her two sons as bondmen for the debt of their deceased father. The prophet Elisha asked what she possessed. “Nothing,” she replied, “except a little pot of oil”.
As she was instructed, she gathered many vessels and poured oil into them, and sold the oil, and paid the debt, and eventually saved her sons from bondage.
IN A PARALLEL DEMENTION
If BP defaults on its liability to the people of the Gulf, the people have the rights to seize property, explore deep oil at its own risk, and collect the profits for themselves. All oil skimmed from the surface of the ocean and somehow recovered should immediately become the property-in-possession of the people of the Gulf.
For as long as the Oil Stays, the people should be enriched from its proceeds.
[To be continued]
Monday, June 21, 2010
Maybe I Eat Tomorrow
By Eddie Griffin
Monday, June 21, 2010
Long overdue Justice may be coming to Mississippi… in the form of oil upon the pristine Gulf casino beaches
There comes a time when a man becomes so angry and frustrated that there is only one place to appeal: And, that is Heaven.
I DECLARE:
I, Eddie Griffin, will not eat or sleep until there is Justice for the Scott Sisters who are in prison, in the State of Mississippi. I may eat tomorrow because Justice may be on its way, in the form of oil upon the pristine Gulf casino beaches where the sin of sins thrives: Injustice.
In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced Jamie and Gladys Scott to consecutive double-life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit. They did not have prior criminal records, vigorously maintained their innocence, approximately $11 was said to have been netted, no one was harmed or injured and no weapon was ever recovered. Witnesses testified that they were coerced and threatened to lie on the Scott Sisters and their unbelievable convictions rest entirely on a combination of contradictory, coerced, and potentially perjured testimony by the victims and two other people charged with the crime who were offered lighter sentences for their cooperation.
For me, it is not an issue of guilt or innocence. It is the magnitude of Crime and Punishment, where punishment is so excessive that it can be called OPPRESSION.
Eddie Griffin (BASG) quietly and discretely petitioned government officials in the State of Mississippi to recognize the legitimate grievances in disparities of justice being practiced inside the courtrooms. Mississippi is not the only southern state that still practices Race Justice.
Our words have had little consolation. But there is some comfort to know that Mississippi will cry to Heaven when the oil hit the coast.
And, when they cry to Heaven and utter many prayers, then I, also, would hope and pray for Mercy, first for the Scott Sisters, and then to the State of Mississippi- and not in the reverse.
I need no approval or authority or consent of men. This is personal.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Truth about The Gulf Oil Spill
Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, “See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits:” (Isaiah 30:8-10)
They want to hear “smooth things”, easy on the ear, and soft upon the conscious. They are eternally optimistic, unruffled by fact, and obstinate against truth. They are on a paradoxical search for an answer that is pleasing to their hearing. Woe to those who say otherwise.
“Do you want answers?” replied a defiant Col. Nathan Jessep, in a Few Good Men.
Having push the old arrogant colonel over the edge on the witness stand, Lt. Daniel Kaffee lit into him, “I think I’m entitled to them.”
“You want answers?” shouted the colonel.
“I want the truth,” the lieutenant replied.
“You can’t handle the truth,” Jessep lashed out in the courtroom.
It was one of the most memorable scenes in the movie, the duo between Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, with Nicholson portraying the colonel. Although he was guilty of issuing the fatal Code Red, the colonel uttered a secret truth about most Americans. People do not care to hear the horrors of the truth.
I find a similar attitude with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Every day, we sit glued to our television sets, waiting for good news, expecting the best of the worst situation imaginable. We almost insist upon good news. We demand it.
Day 50 is past and no good news yet. The Gulf is turned into a red oily mess, now covering hundreds of square mile. And, the worst is not yet told.
Someone said that we needed to tone down our expectations. Political pundits, operatives, and politicians are trying to gain partisan traction over the handling of the situation, as if to better position themselves in the polls when the crisis is finally over. And, some are taking a swipe at the media for too much coverage, as if to say, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
But the most unbelievable reaction come from those who insist on continuing to drill for oil out in the deep blue, even as they watch the water turn to blood. Have they not learned anything of humility? It is almost like God has not yet forgiven their former sin, and here they are talking about drilling some more.
It reminds me of our biblical theme for 2010:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
The ocean and the coastal lands are far from being healed. And, the people are far from repentance.
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
RE: The Gulf Coast
Eddie --
Yesterday, I visited Caminada Bay in Grand Isle, Louisiana -- one of the first places to feel the devastation wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While I was here, at Camerdelle's Live Bait shop, I met with a group of local residents and small business owners.
Folks like Floyd Lasseigne, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman. This is the time of year when he ordinarily earns a lot of his income. But his oyster bed has likely been destroyed by the spill.
Terry Vegas had a similar story. He quit the 8th grade to become a shrimper with his grandfather. Ever since, he's earned his living during shrimping season -- working long, grueling days so that he could earn enough money to support himself year-round. But today, the waters where he has worked are closed. And every day, as the spill worsens, he loses hope that he will be able to return to the life he built.
Here, this spill has not just damaged livelihoods. It has upended whole communities. And the fury people feel is not just about the money they have lost. It is about the wrenching recognition that this time their lives may never be the same.
These people work hard. They meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe -- one that is not their fault and beyond their control -- their lives have been thrown into turmoil. It is brutally unfair. And what I told these men and women is that I will stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are again made whole.
That is why, from the beginning, we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis. Today, there are more than 20,000 people working around the clock to contain and clean up this spill. I have authorized 17,500 National Guard troops to participate in the response. More than 1,900 vessels are aiding in the containment and cleanup effort. We have convened hundreds of top scientists and engineers from around the world. This is the largest response to an environmental disaster of this kind in the history of our country.
We have also ordered BP to pay economic injury claims, and this week, the federal government sent BP a preliminary bill for $69 million to pay back American taxpayers for some of the costs of the response so far. In addition, after an emergency safety review, we are putting in place aggressive new operating standards for offshore drilling. And I have appointed a bipartisan commission to look into the causes of this spill. If laws are inadequate, they will be changed. If oversight was lacking, it will be strengthened. And if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice.
These are hard times in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast, an area that has already seen more than its fair share of troubles. The people of this region have met this terrible catastrophe with seemingly boundless strength and character in defense of their way of life. What we owe them is a commitment by our nation to match the resilience they have shown. That is our mission. And it is one we will fulfill.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
They want to hear “smooth things”, easy on the ear, and soft upon the conscious. They are eternally optimistic, unruffled by fact, and obstinate against truth. They are on a paradoxical search for an answer that is pleasing to their hearing. Woe to those who say otherwise.
“Do you want answers?” replied a defiant Col. Nathan Jessep, in a Few Good Men.
Having push the old arrogant colonel over the edge on the witness stand, Lt. Daniel Kaffee lit into him, “I think I’m entitled to them.”
“You want answers?” shouted the colonel.
“I want the truth,” the lieutenant replied.
“You can’t handle the truth,” Jessep lashed out in the courtroom.
It was one of the most memorable scenes in the movie, the duo between Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, with Nicholson portraying the colonel. Although he was guilty of issuing the fatal Code Red, the colonel uttered a secret truth about most Americans. People do not care to hear the horrors of the truth.
I find a similar attitude with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Every day, we sit glued to our television sets, waiting for good news, expecting the best of the worst situation imaginable. We almost insist upon good news. We demand it.
Day 50 is past and no good news yet. The Gulf is turned into a red oily mess, now covering hundreds of square mile. And, the worst is not yet told.
Someone said that we needed to tone down our expectations. Political pundits, operatives, and politicians are trying to gain partisan traction over the handling of the situation, as if to better position themselves in the polls when the crisis is finally over. And, some are taking a swipe at the media for too much coverage, as if to say, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
But the most unbelievable reaction come from those who insist on continuing to drill for oil out in the deep blue, even as they watch the water turn to blood. Have they not learned anything of humility? It is almost like God has not yet forgiven their former sin, and here they are talking about drilling some more.
It reminds me of our biblical theme for 2010:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
The ocean and the coastal lands are far from being healed. And, the people are far from repentance.
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
RE: The Gulf Coast
Eddie --
Yesterday, I visited Caminada Bay in Grand Isle, Louisiana -- one of the first places to feel the devastation wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While I was here, at Camerdelle's Live Bait shop, I met with a group of local residents and small business owners.
Folks like Floyd Lasseigne, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman. This is the time of year when he ordinarily earns a lot of his income. But his oyster bed has likely been destroyed by the spill.
Terry Vegas had a similar story. He quit the 8th grade to become a shrimper with his grandfather. Ever since, he's earned his living during shrimping season -- working long, grueling days so that he could earn enough money to support himself year-round. But today, the waters where he has worked are closed. And every day, as the spill worsens, he loses hope that he will be able to return to the life he built.
Here, this spill has not just damaged livelihoods. It has upended whole communities. And the fury people feel is not just about the money they have lost. It is about the wrenching recognition that this time their lives may never be the same.
These people work hard. They meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe -- one that is not their fault and beyond their control -- their lives have been thrown into turmoil. It is brutally unfair. And what I told these men and women is that I will stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are again made whole.
That is why, from the beginning, we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis. Today, there are more than 20,000 people working around the clock to contain and clean up this spill. I have authorized 17,500 National Guard troops to participate in the response. More than 1,900 vessels are aiding in the containment and cleanup effort. We have convened hundreds of top scientists and engineers from around the world. This is the largest response to an environmental disaster of this kind in the history of our country.
We have also ordered BP to pay economic injury claims, and this week, the federal government sent BP a preliminary bill for $69 million to pay back American taxpayers for some of the costs of the response so far. In addition, after an emergency safety review, we are putting in place aggressive new operating standards for offshore drilling. And I have appointed a bipartisan commission to look into the causes of this spill. If laws are inadequate, they will be changed. If oversight was lacking, it will be strengthened. And if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice.
These are hard times in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast, an area that has already seen more than its fair share of troubles. The people of this region have met this terrible catastrophe with seemingly boundless strength and character in defense of their way of life. What we owe them is a commitment by our nation to match the resilience they have shown. That is our mission. And it is one we will fulfill.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Friday, May 21, 2010
A Fast for Justice set for June 21st:
The Oppression of the Scott Sisters
By Eddie Griffin
Friday, May 21, 2010
Jamie Scott is dying in prison of kidney failure. She and her sister, Gladys, were convicted of an $11 robbery in 1994 and sentenced to consecutive double-life sentences by the state of Mississippi. That the sisters did not actually commit the robbery and the fact that no one was hurt, and despite neither had a prior criminal record, they have been incarcerated since.
Previously, we appealed to Mississippi state officials to show compassion and release the two grandmothers who watched their children grow up from behind bars. We questioned the validity of the coerced confessions of the teenagers who actually carried out the robbery. Lastly, we questioned the harshness of the sentence, whether it was cruel and unusual to sentence a person to double-life for an $11 robbery, in which no one was hurt.
Our voices have been ignored. There is no compassion in the State of Mississippi, nor has it ever been, in the rural backwoods counties and Delta.
Therefore, Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) joins in with all of the family, friends, and supporters of the Scott Sisters, in a Fast for Justice, June 21, 2010, in conjunction with a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C.
[Read Press Release below]
P r e s s R e l e a s e
Contacts:
B.J. Janice Peak-Graham / Marpessa Kupendua
1- 866-968-1188, Ext. 2
ghwitnesses@gmail.com
http://www.grayhairedwitnesses.blogspot.com/
Gray-Haired Witnesses to Hold Fast
Issues Challenge to America’s Conscience
WASHINGTON, May 20 /Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice News -- The Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice will undertake a fast and appear at the Department of Justice and the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2010, calling upon the nation to exercise an authentic system of justice in the case of Gladys and Jamie Scott and all other women who have been incarcerated wrongly and egregiously over-sentenced, punishing and destroying our families and children. Among their demands is freedom for the Scott Sisters and that an Inspection and Observation Team enter the Pearl, MS prison where Jamie Scott is being held.
This event was prompted by the serious illness of Jamie Scott and abysmal lack of competent medical care she has received in prison since both of her kidneys shut down this past January. Jamie has suffered so much maltreatment that she has quickly declined to stage 5 (end stage) kidney disease and has now effectively been sentenced to death. The Gray-Haired Witnesses are calling on all people of good will to fast in solidarity with them and to contact the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and Dept. of Justice across the nation on that day.
The group issued the following statement about the fast in protest of continuing inhumane treatment and injustice in Americas courts and prisons:
"Over the last 20 years, the women’s population in US prisons has more than tripled. Most women are in prison as a result of drug selling, addiction, domestic violence and criminal acts mostly related to men. We also recognize the systemic racism that leads the police to even arrest the Black woman in the first place, the racism during sentencing, during incarceration, in dealing with social services, education, health discrimination, and beyond. We want to raise the political consciousness of the nation while standing as the moral soul of the nation. Many of us lived through segregation and worked to dismantle it through various movements for human dignity, equal rights and justice. We now see a coalition of corporate, cultural and political wars fully embracing a White supremacist culture of domination and terrorism. As part of this campaign they slander and dehumanize the entire Black community in the media and other public spaces.
This is perfectly illustrated by the case of the Mississippi Scott Sisters, Jamie and Gladys, whose almost 16 yrs of unjust incarceration is a shocking revelation of the pure nothingness with which our lives are deemed in the eyes of this society and world. In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced Jamie and Gladys Scott to consecutive double-life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit. They did not have prior criminal records, vigorously maintained their innocence, approximately $11 was said to have been netted, no one was harmed or injured and no weapon was ever recovered. Witnesses testified that they were coerced and threatened to lie on the Scott Sisters and their unbelievable convictions rest entirely on a combination of contradictory, coerced, and potentially perjured testimony by the victims and two other people charged with the crime who were offered lighter sentences for their cooperation. Even if the Scott Sisters were guilty of this crime, the sentence is absolutely unheard of and draconian, at best, and is cruel and unusual punishment without a doubt!
We come from a long line of women who refused to bend under the lash of chattel slavery from the time we were first dragged upon these shores until the 21st century slavery of today's prison industrial complex! We are the elder women, the daughters of the American slave system, Jim Crow oppression and the American Freedom Movement. We who are three strikes removed from the center of the power structure of this country. Our lives have prepared us to come to this place, at this time.”
The day-long event commences at the Department of Justice in a 10:00 a.m formal appeal to Eric Holder, rejoins at the White House at Noon in a formal appeal to President Obama, and then continues at Lafayette Square Park from Noon until 9PM for the duration of the fast with speakers, live performances and artists. All attendees are asked to bring non-perishable food items in honor of the fasting elders to be distributed to the Washington, DC community at the conclusion of the day.
Day-Long Fast which will take place in Washington, DC on June 21, 2010
This is perfectly illustrated by the case of the Mississippi Scott Sisters, Jamie and Gladys, whose almost 16 yrs of unjust incarceration is a shocking revelation of the pure nothingness with which our lives are deemed in the eyes of this society and world. In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced Jamie and Gladys Scott to consecutive double-life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit. They did not have prior criminal records, vigorously maintained their innocence, approximately $11 was said to have been netted, no one was harmed or injured and no weapon was ever recovered. Witnesses testified that they were coerced and threatened to lie on the Scott Sisters and their unbelievable convictions rest entirely on a combination of contradictory, coerced, and potentially perjured testimony by the victims and two other people charged with the crime who were offered lighter sentences for their cooperation. Even if the Scott Sisters were guilty of this crime, the sentence is absolutely unheard of and draconian, at best, and is cruel and unusual punishment without a doubt!
By Eddie Griffin
Friday, May 21, 2010
Jamie Scott is dying in prison of kidney failure. She and her sister, Gladys, were convicted of an $11 robbery in 1994 and sentenced to consecutive double-life sentences by the state of Mississippi. That the sisters did not actually commit the robbery and the fact that no one was hurt, and despite neither had a prior criminal record, they have been incarcerated since.
Previously, we appealed to Mississippi state officials to show compassion and release the two grandmothers who watched their children grow up from behind bars. We questioned the validity of the coerced confessions of the teenagers who actually carried out the robbery. Lastly, we questioned the harshness of the sentence, whether it was cruel and unusual to sentence a person to double-life for an $11 robbery, in which no one was hurt.
Our voices have been ignored. There is no compassion in the State of Mississippi, nor has it ever been, in the rural backwoods counties and Delta.
Therefore, Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) joins in with all of the family, friends, and supporters of the Scott Sisters, in a Fast for Justice, June 21, 2010, in conjunction with a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C.
[Read Press Release below]
P r e s s R e l e a s e
Contacts:
B.J. Janice Peak-Graham / Marpessa Kupendua
1- 866-968-1188, Ext. 2
ghwitnesses@gmail.com
http://www.grayhairedwitnesses.blogspot.com/
Gray-Haired Witnesses to Hold Fast
Issues Challenge to America’s Conscience
WASHINGTON, May 20 /Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice News -- The Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice will undertake a fast and appear at the Department of Justice and the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2010, calling upon the nation to exercise an authentic system of justice in the case of Gladys and Jamie Scott and all other women who have been incarcerated wrongly and egregiously over-sentenced, punishing and destroying our families and children. Among their demands is freedom for the Scott Sisters and that an Inspection and Observation Team enter the Pearl, MS prison where Jamie Scott is being held.
This event was prompted by the serious illness of Jamie Scott and abysmal lack of competent medical care she has received in prison since both of her kidneys shut down this past January. Jamie has suffered so much maltreatment that she has quickly declined to stage 5 (end stage) kidney disease and has now effectively been sentenced to death. The Gray-Haired Witnesses are calling on all people of good will to fast in solidarity with them and to contact the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and Dept. of Justice across the nation on that day.
The group issued the following statement about the fast in protest of continuing inhumane treatment and injustice in Americas courts and prisons:
"Over the last 20 years, the women’s population in US prisons has more than tripled. Most women are in prison as a result of drug selling, addiction, domestic violence and criminal acts mostly related to men. We also recognize the systemic racism that leads the police to even arrest the Black woman in the first place, the racism during sentencing, during incarceration, in dealing with social services, education, health discrimination, and beyond. We want to raise the political consciousness of the nation while standing as the moral soul of the nation. Many of us lived through segregation and worked to dismantle it through various movements for human dignity, equal rights and justice. We now see a coalition of corporate, cultural and political wars fully embracing a White supremacist culture of domination and terrorism. As part of this campaign they slander and dehumanize the entire Black community in the media and other public spaces.
This is perfectly illustrated by the case of the Mississippi Scott Sisters, Jamie and Gladys, whose almost 16 yrs of unjust incarceration is a shocking revelation of the pure nothingness with which our lives are deemed in the eyes of this society and world. In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced Jamie and Gladys Scott to consecutive double-life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit. They did not have prior criminal records, vigorously maintained their innocence, approximately $11 was said to have been netted, no one was harmed or injured and no weapon was ever recovered. Witnesses testified that they were coerced and threatened to lie on the Scott Sisters and their unbelievable convictions rest entirely on a combination of contradictory, coerced, and potentially perjured testimony by the victims and two other people charged with the crime who were offered lighter sentences for their cooperation. Even if the Scott Sisters were guilty of this crime, the sentence is absolutely unheard of and draconian, at best, and is cruel and unusual punishment without a doubt!
We come from a long line of women who refused to bend under the lash of chattel slavery from the time we were first dragged upon these shores until the 21st century slavery of today's prison industrial complex! We are the elder women, the daughters of the American slave system, Jim Crow oppression and the American Freedom Movement. We who are three strikes removed from the center of the power structure of this country. Our lives have prepared us to come to this place, at this time.”
The day-long event commences at the Department of Justice in a 10:00 a.m formal appeal to Eric Holder, rejoins at the White House at Noon in a formal appeal to President Obama, and then continues at Lafayette Square Park from Noon until 9PM for the duration of the fast with speakers, live performances and artists. All attendees are asked to bring non-perishable food items in honor of the fasting elders to be distributed to the Washington, DC community at the conclusion of the day.
Day-Long Fast which will take place in Washington, DC on June 21, 2010
This is perfectly illustrated by the case of the Mississippi Scott Sisters, Jamie and Gladys, whose almost 16 yrs of unjust incarceration is a shocking revelation of the pure nothingness with which our lives are deemed in the eyes of this society and world. In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced Jamie and Gladys Scott to consecutive double-life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit. They did not have prior criminal records, vigorously maintained their innocence, approximately $11 was said to have been netted, no one was harmed or injured and no weapon was ever recovered. Witnesses testified that they were coerced and threatened to lie on the Scott Sisters and their unbelievable convictions rest entirely on a combination of contradictory, coerced, and potentially perjured testimony by the victims and two other people charged with the crime who were offered lighter sentences for their cooperation. Even if the Scott Sisters were guilty of this crime, the sentence is absolutely unheard of and draconian, at best, and is cruel and unusual punishment without a doubt!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
LETTER TO FORT WORTH MAYOR
RE: Reconciliation in aftermath of Settlement with Michael Jacobs Jr. Estate
City Hall
1000 Throckmorton St.
Fort Worth, Texas 76102
Attn.: Mayor Mike Moncrief
E-mail: mike.moncrief@fortworthgov.org
Dear Mayor Moncrief:
It was good to see you on Tuesday at City Council and have the opportunity to greet you and your wife Rosie, and to receive a warm embrace from councilwoman Kathleen Hicks. We appreciate your devotion and diligence, particularly in laying to rest the grievance of the Michael Jacobs family.
In the aftermath of the settlement, there was a pledge among religious and civil rights leaders to work for reconciliation and healing. Pastor Kyev Tatum extended the hand of fellowship to FW Police Chief Jeff Halstead to work for better policing in the community, and I am happy to say I received a call from the pastor confirming that he meet with Chief Halstead at the Minority Leaders & Citizens Council.
I was unable to attend, and the Jacobs family is still in mourning and not comfortable making public appearances. However, I too propose to work towards peace and good will in the City and between neighbors. I realize there are times we will disagree over issues such as the usage of tasers.
AS A FINAL NOTE: We will not digress from our opposition to tasers. Even more, we insist on not letting any taser incident go unnoticed and nor an aggrieved party goes without a course for redress against the city and responsible parties.
Let me point out to you some unaddressed grievances, here and around the country: (1) Pregnant women being tasered- How will 50,000 volts of electricity affect the innocent unborn? (2) Underage children- The potential for neurological and permanent psychological damages are yet assess- the weapon is still unproven in long term effects. (3) Taser use against senior citizens, wheelchair-bound, psychologically impaired, and those unable to make sound judgment (whether under the influence of drugs or alcohol).
This is an example of the types of cases the city will see in the future, if the department insists on continued usage of tasers as control devices, short of fatality: A victim hit with a taser falls headlong on the ground, pavement, or concrete, face first, unable to break their fall, because of incapacitation- a very common occurrence that has led courts to rule in injury cases, such usage is excessive, cruel, and unusual.
These are actual documented cases now working their way through the courts. Victims are no longer suing the manufacturer, TASER International, with its team of expert lawyers and sales people. They are suing police departments and municipalities. And police departments, in hindsight, are claiming that TASER International never told them of the dangers.
We have brought about many changes in department policies, and changes in TASER product safety warranties. The weapon can no longer be used against pregnant women, which means the officer in the field must make a determination if a woman is pregnant or not. Tasers are not to be used on senior citizens. But again, it is at the officer’s discretion to make the determination, not only on the elderly, but also the infirm, mentally ill, and those at risk for a heart attack.
TASER International has also lowered its target range. Officers are told to not shoot in the chest area, as if they can control where two wildly flying electrical darts will strike.
As for the threshold of torture, the United Nations has determined that tasers can be torture. Moreover, we contend that any weapon that employs “conducted energy” (electricity) is an implement of torture, and has historically been so.
And finally, it should be noted that the federal government is now soliciting “Alternatives to Conducted Energy Less-Lethal Devices”, that is to say an alternatives to tasers. (See http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/sl000915.pdf).
In essence, there is no future for tasers. They will become too much of a costly and cumbersome burden; and, in time, unserviceable. The death count can only rise beyond the now 481 dead. And, TASER International will continue avoid the words “electricity” and “electrocution”, and instead use psychobabble like “excited delirium” to explain cause of death.
Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin (BASG), a member of AfroSpear
BASG is devoted to teaching community problem-solving skills to leaders of tomorrow.
City Hall
1000 Throckmorton St.
Fort Worth, Texas 76102
Attn.: Mayor Mike Moncrief
E-mail: mike.moncrief@fortworthgov.org
Dear Mayor Moncrief:
It was good to see you on Tuesday at City Council and have the opportunity to greet you and your wife Rosie, and to receive a warm embrace from councilwoman Kathleen Hicks. We appreciate your devotion and diligence, particularly in laying to rest the grievance of the Michael Jacobs family.
In the aftermath of the settlement, there was a pledge among religious and civil rights leaders to work for reconciliation and healing. Pastor Kyev Tatum extended the hand of fellowship to FW Police Chief Jeff Halstead to work for better policing in the community, and I am happy to say I received a call from the pastor confirming that he meet with Chief Halstead at the Minority Leaders & Citizens Council.
I was unable to attend, and the Jacobs family is still in mourning and not comfortable making public appearances. However, I too propose to work towards peace and good will in the City and between neighbors. I realize there are times we will disagree over issues such as the usage of tasers.
AS A FINAL NOTE: We will not digress from our opposition to tasers. Even more, we insist on not letting any taser incident go unnoticed and nor an aggrieved party goes without a course for redress against the city and responsible parties.
Let me point out to you some unaddressed grievances, here and around the country: (1) Pregnant women being tasered- How will 50,000 volts of electricity affect the innocent unborn? (2) Underage children- The potential for neurological and permanent psychological damages are yet assess- the weapon is still unproven in long term effects. (3) Taser use against senior citizens, wheelchair-bound, psychologically impaired, and those unable to make sound judgment (whether under the influence of drugs or alcohol).
This is an example of the types of cases the city will see in the future, if the department insists on continued usage of tasers as control devices, short of fatality: A victim hit with a taser falls headlong on the ground, pavement, or concrete, face first, unable to break their fall, because of incapacitation- a very common occurrence that has led courts to rule in injury cases, such usage is excessive, cruel, and unusual.
These are actual documented cases now working their way through the courts. Victims are no longer suing the manufacturer, TASER International, with its team of expert lawyers and sales people. They are suing police departments and municipalities. And police departments, in hindsight, are claiming that TASER International never told them of the dangers.
We have brought about many changes in department policies, and changes in TASER product safety warranties. The weapon can no longer be used against pregnant women, which means the officer in the field must make a determination if a woman is pregnant or not. Tasers are not to be used on senior citizens. But again, it is at the officer’s discretion to make the determination, not only on the elderly, but also the infirm, mentally ill, and those at risk for a heart attack.
TASER International has also lowered its target range. Officers are told to not shoot in the chest area, as if they can control where two wildly flying electrical darts will strike.
As for the threshold of torture, the United Nations has determined that tasers can be torture. Moreover, we contend that any weapon that employs “conducted energy” (electricity) is an implement of torture, and has historically been so.
And finally, it should be noted that the federal government is now soliciting “Alternatives to Conducted Energy Less-Lethal Devices”, that is to say an alternatives to tasers. (See http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/sl000915.pdf).
In essence, there is no future for tasers. They will become too much of a costly and cumbersome burden; and, in time, unserviceable. The death count can only rise beyond the now 481 dead. And, TASER International will continue avoid the words “electricity” and “electrocution”, and instead use psychobabble like “excited delirium” to explain cause of death.
Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin (BASG), a member of AfroSpear
BASG is devoted to teaching community problem-solving skills to leaders of tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Another Nail in the Coffin of TASER
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
When the Fort Worth City Council voted on Tuesday to accept a $2 million settlement in the Taser related death of Michael Jacobs Jr., they cast down their eyes and droop their heads in painful sorrow of this salt in the wound. They wanted to say as little as possible to stir the winds. She was a City eager to heal and move on.
Yet the City would not concede liability into the young man’s death. Maybe, to do so, would expose her to more similar lawsuits. After all, there have been five taser related deaths in the past five years. For to be culpable in one, infers guilt in the other.
Fort Worth Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks spoke for the City and for the community, declaring now to be the time to begin the healing process.
An exhausted pastor, Kyev Tatum, who has led the mass public awareness campaign which gained national and international attention, sighed with some relief that this part of the battle against tasers was over. Tomorrow, he would take up the matter of the Arlington Police Department and its plan to purchase 300 more stun guns. By no means, for him, was the war over.
Pastor Tatum was drawn into the taser controversy when the Jacobs family called out for help. The Fort Worth Police Department had electrocuted the son of Charlotte and Michael Sr., with a 50,000-volt taser, and nobody was saying anything, not even a word of regret or sympathy. There was no explanation from the police department as to why the officer engaged the weapon for a full 54 seconds upon a young man with mental problems. And, no city leader was willing to condemn the officer without all the facts.
The City was silent and complacent and its populous impervious. Michael Jacobs, Jr. was on his way to becoming just another silent statistic in a string of taser related deaths.
Tatum organized a local chapter of the Southern Leadership Conference (SCLC) and pulled together coalition of other civil rights organizations, including NAACP, LULAC, ACLU, and community activists. The community coalition called for an investigation, and to make the results public.
The medical examiner, upon finding no contributory causes such as drugs or alcohol in Jacobs’ system, declared his death a homicide. But the police department refused to dismiss the officer, and the grand jury refused to indict. There was no recourse except to seek redress by civil suit; otherwise, no one would be accountable for the death of an innocent, mentally challenged young man.
The $2 million settlement is a small penance to pay for a human life, though the largest in city history, but it may pave the way for reconciliation. The Fort Worth Police Department plans to meet with Pastor Tatum and other ministers to “begin the healing process”, and discuss strategies for better policing in the community. There will continue to be disagreement, however, on the usefulness of tasers and their lethality.
There is an axiom here: As the death count rises, the cost of using tasers will go up.
Although the manufacturer of the weapon, TASER International, has been sued over 100 times, it remains largely unscathed. They sell the instruments based upon its claim of non-lethality, and leave municipalities to pay the cost of wrongful deaths.
“Tasers are not only deadly”, Tatum declares. “They are torture.”
Officer Stephanie Phillips did not know that when she continuously engaged the trigger of her taser that 50,000 volts of electricity continued to course through the body of Michael Jacobs Jr., and that she was inadvertently frying him alive, from the inside out. No one ever told her the weapon was lethal. She was never trained to “disengage” the electrodes before electrocuting the subject. Maybe this is why the Tarrant County grand jury declined to indict her. And, she did not violate department policies by using her own discretion to deploy.
Hindsight is 20/20, and many people wish that certain events could be undone. Had the officer known the deadliness of the weapon, she would have ceased engagement. This being the premise, a Star-Telegram editorial emphasized “better training” as a resolution to taser death.
Not so. Teaching an officer how to use discretion in the field, when deploying the weapon, is no guarantee against abuse, nor does it mitigate the fact that the taser itself is an implement of torture. But proving torture, on the other hand, is much harder than proving the cause of death. By its very definition, a torturous act must be one that horrifies the social consciousness of humanity. And yet we, as a nation, have been conditioned into accepting the Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) as non-lethal and harmless.
We discount the fact that they have been used on pregnant women such as Valreca Redden and claimed the life of the 6-month unborn child of Hannah Rogers-Grippi, that they have been used on senior citizens in their 70s and 80s, against the wheel-chair bound and mentally ill, and that the death count in the U.S.A. and Canada now stands at 481.
What is more, there is now mounting evidence that tasers cause serious and permanent injuries. A young victim is tasered over a minor incident, falls flat on his face, unable to catch himself, and breaks out his front teeth. He sues and wins. And, it has been reported, that those who have been tasered and survived, have “never been the same” since, having suffered neurological brain damages.
These are the risks, and no one is without fair warning.
[Post Note- The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice is soliciting "Alternatives to Conducted Energy Less-Lethal Devices", to wit Tasers (R)]
The handwriting is on the wall: The days of tasers are coming to an end.
When the Fort Worth City Council voted on Tuesday to accept a $2 million settlement in the Taser related death of Michael Jacobs Jr., they cast down their eyes and droop their heads in painful sorrow of this salt in the wound. They wanted to say as little as possible to stir the winds. She was a City eager to heal and move on.
Yet the City would not concede liability into the young man’s death. Maybe, to do so, would expose her to more similar lawsuits. After all, there have been five taser related deaths in the past five years. For to be culpable in one, infers guilt in the other.
Fort Worth Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks spoke for the City and for the community, declaring now to be the time to begin the healing process.
An exhausted pastor, Kyev Tatum, who has led the mass public awareness campaign which gained national and international attention, sighed with some relief that this part of the battle against tasers was over. Tomorrow, he would take up the matter of the Arlington Police Department and its plan to purchase 300 more stun guns. By no means, for him, was the war over.
Pastor Tatum was drawn into the taser controversy when the Jacobs family called out for help. The Fort Worth Police Department had electrocuted the son of Charlotte and Michael Sr., with a 50,000-volt taser, and nobody was saying anything, not even a word of regret or sympathy. There was no explanation from the police department as to why the officer engaged the weapon for a full 54 seconds upon a young man with mental problems. And, no city leader was willing to condemn the officer without all the facts.
The City was silent and complacent and its populous impervious. Michael Jacobs, Jr. was on his way to becoming just another silent statistic in a string of taser related deaths.
Tatum organized a local chapter of the Southern Leadership Conference (SCLC) and pulled together coalition of other civil rights organizations, including NAACP, LULAC, ACLU, and community activists. The community coalition called for an investigation, and to make the results public.
The medical examiner, upon finding no contributory causes such as drugs or alcohol in Jacobs’ system, declared his death a homicide. But the police department refused to dismiss the officer, and the grand jury refused to indict. There was no recourse except to seek redress by civil suit; otherwise, no one would be accountable for the death of an innocent, mentally challenged young man.
The $2 million settlement is a small penance to pay for a human life, though the largest in city history, but it may pave the way for reconciliation. The Fort Worth Police Department plans to meet with Pastor Tatum and other ministers to “begin the healing process”, and discuss strategies for better policing in the community. There will continue to be disagreement, however, on the usefulness of tasers and their lethality.
There is an axiom here: As the death count rises, the cost of using tasers will go up.
Although the manufacturer of the weapon, TASER International, has been sued over 100 times, it remains largely unscathed. They sell the instruments based upon its claim of non-lethality, and leave municipalities to pay the cost of wrongful deaths.
“Tasers are not only deadly”, Tatum declares. “They are torture.”
Officer Stephanie Phillips did not know that when she continuously engaged the trigger of her taser that 50,000 volts of electricity continued to course through the body of Michael Jacobs Jr., and that she was inadvertently frying him alive, from the inside out. No one ever told her the weapon was lethal. She was never trained to “disengage” the electrodes before electrocuting the subject. Maybe this is why the Tarrant County grand jury declined to indict her. And, she did not violate department policies by using her own discretion to deploy.
Hindsight is 20/20, and many people wish that certain events could be undone. Had the officer known the deadliness of the weapon, she would have ceased engagement. This being the premise, a Star-Telegram editorial emphasized “better training” as a resolution to taser death.
Not so. Teaching an officer how to use discretion in the field, when deploying the weapon, is no guarantee against abuse, nor does it mitigate the fact that the taser itself is an implement of torture. But proving torture, on the other hand, is much harder than proving the cause of death. By its very definition, a torturous act must be one that horrifies the social consciousness of humanity. And yet we, as a nation, have been conditioned into accepting the Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) as non-lethal and harmless.
We discount the fact that they have been used on pregnant women such as Valreca Redden and claimed the life of the 6-month unborn child of Hannah Rogers-Grippi, that they have been used on senior citizens in their 70s and 80s, against the wheel-chair bound and mentally ill, and that the death count in the U.S.A. and Canada now stands at 481.
What is more, there is now mounting evidence that tasers cause serious and permanent injuries. A young victim is tasered over a minor incident, falls flat on his face, unable to catch himself, and breaks out his front teeth. He sues and wins. And, it has been reported, that those who have been tasered and survived, have “never been the same” since, having suffered neurological brain damages.
These are the risks, and no one is without fair warning.
[Post Note- The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice is soliciting "Alternatives to Conducted Energy Less-Lethal Devices", to wit Tasers (R)]
The handwriting is on the wall: The days of tasers are coming to an end.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Fort Worth Settle for $2 Million in Taser Death Suit:
Another Nail in A TASER Coffin
By Eddie Griffin
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Today, when the Fort Worth City Council voted to accept a $2 million settlement in the Taser related death of Michael Jacobs Jr., it brought some closure and little consolation to one of the saddest and most tragic events in city history. I wonder about all the other municipalities who have had to shell out millions of dollars in a taser death lawsuits.
In a post-decision interview, NBC5 reporter asked: “Were you surprised at the size of the settlement”?
Too some it seems large, the largest settlement in such cases in city history, it is reported. But compared to settlements reached by other cities, wrongful death by taser are running $2 million here and $3 million in Houston in 2009. Injuries associated with being tasered averages in the hundreds of thousands to just over $1 million in a lawsuit where the victim feel face-first and knocked out his front teeth. We have not yet calculated the long term damages to those who survived, but damaged for life.
No, the settlement was not large, and infinitely smaller than the worth of a young man’s life.
[Historic settlement in lawsuit over taser death]
[Excerpt from “Towards Closure and Resolution in Taser Death of Michael Jacobs Jr,” by Eddie Griffin. Saturday, August 29, 2009]
We now have closure in the Fort Worth Police Department’s taser death case of a 24-year old man, who had been diagnosed with mental illnesses. We have closure insofar as the Tarrant County Medical Examiner ruled the death of Michael Jacobs Jr. as a “homicide caused by the officer’s use of the Taser”. We have closure insofar as the officer admits administering two jolts of 50,000 volts to Jacobs’ body longer than the 5-second limitation. A 49-second jolt, followed by a 5-second jolt, caused a “sudden death during neuromuscular incapacitation due to application of a conducted energy device”, i.e. Taser.
Tarrant County ME Dr. Nizam Peerwani also ruled: “Repeat postmortem toxicology studies were negative for all drugs including psychomotor stimulant drugs and ethanol.” In other words, here was an innocent 24-year old African-American man with no drugs in his system at all. He was clean as a baby and healthy. And yet, in less than a minute, he is dead after being shocked with a taser.
UPDATE:
The Fort Worth Police is willing to meet with community representatives, in order to initiate the healing process. Meanwhile, the planned purchase of 300 more tasers by the City of Arlington, next door to Fort Worth has leaders disturbed, especially in light of the Fort Worth tragedy. But the Police Chief of Arlington chooses rather to make a show of force for the upcoming 2011 Super Bowl in the City of Arlington.
By Eddie Griffin
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Today, when the Fort Worth City Council voted to accept a $2 million settlement in the Taser related death of Michael Jacobs Jr., it brought some closure and little consolation to one of the saddest and most tragic events in city history. I wonder about all the other municipalities who have had to shell out millions of dollars in a taser death lawsuits.
In a post-decision interview, NBC5 reporter asked: “Were you surprised at the size of the settlement”?
Too some it seems large, the largest settlement in such cases in city history, it is reported. But compared to settlements reached by other cities, wrongful death by taser are running $2 million here and $3 million in Houston in 2009. Injuries associated with being tasered averages in the hundreds of thousands to just over $1 million in a lawsuit where the victim feel face-first and knocked out his front teeth. We have not yet calculated the long term damages to those who survived, but damaged for life.
No, the settlement was not large, and infinitely smaller than the worth of a young man’s life.
[Historic settlement in lawsuit over taser death]
[Excerpt from “Towards Closure and Resolution in Taser Death of Michael Jacobs Jr,” by Eddie Griffin. Saturday, August 29, 2009]
We now have closure in the Fort Worth Police Department’s taser death case of a 24-year old man, who had been diagnosed with mental illnesses. We have closure insofar as the Tarrant County Medical Examiner ruled the death of Michael Jacobs Jr. as a “homicide caused by the officer’s use of the Taser”. We have closure insofar as the officer admits administering two jolts of 50,000 volts to Jacobs’ body longer than the 5-second limitation. A 49-second jolt, followed by a 5-second jolt, caused a “sudden death during neuromuscular incapacitation due to application of a conducted energy device”, i.e. Taser.
Tarrant County ME Dr. Nizam Peerwani also ruled: “Repeat postmortem toxicology studies were negative for all drugs including psychomotor stimulant drugs and ethanol.” In other words, here was an innocent 24-year old African-American man with no drugs in his system at all. He was clean as a baby and healthy. And yet, in less than a minute, he is dead after being shocked with a taser.
UPDATE:
The Fort Worth Police is willing to meet with community representatives, in order to initiate the healing process. Meanwhile, the planned purchase of 300 more tasers by the City of Arlington, next door to Fort Worth has leaders disturbed, especially in light of the Fort Worth tragedy. But the Police Chief of Arlington chooses rather to make a show of force for the upcoming 2011 Super Bowl in the City of Arlington.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Fort Worth to Settle for $2 Million in Taser Death Suit
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, May 17, 2010
Local SCLC leader, Kyev Tatum, is calling upon the coalition of Michael Jacobs family supporters and the community to attend the Fort Worth City Council meeting on Tuesday, May 18, 2010, where another chapter in the Michael Jacobs, Jr. case will bring more closure to this tragedy. Council begins at 10:00 a.m., City Hall, 1000 Throckmorton St.
HAT TIP to Pastor Kyev Tatum and the local SCLC, NAACP, and LULAC, for their leadership in the investigation and settlement of the Michael Jacobs Jr. taser relate death by the Fort Worth Police Department.
HAT TIP to Pastor Tom Franklin for consecreting land for a memorial of Michael Jacobs Jr. and for the ceaseless work of Marcus Hardin, and Civil Rights attorney Brian Eberstein.
[For the current 480 listings of taser related deaths in Canada and U.S., see Truth Not Tasers]
Eddie Griffin delivered This Resolution on April 25, 2010 to the Family of Michael Jacobs Jr. on behalf of the Blogging Community Worldwide, AfroSpear and Afrosphere Action Coalition.
As a child rights advocate, Eddie Griffin became interested in the useage of tasers when a distraught pregnant mother, Valreca Redden, was tasered by a Trotwood police officer. [Story here] I wondered about the effects of 50,000 volts of electricity on the unborn child. On December 15, 2001, Hannah Rogers Grippi was tasered and lost a 6-month old fetus. [Taser Victim # 7]
“Taser Torture & Death Cases in Fort Worth, Texas, USA”, submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), by Eddie Griffin (BASG), 2009 May 6
A Fort Worth coalition of Civil Rights advocates sent a Letter to President Barack Obama [See below]
To: President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC, USA 20500
Subject: 21st Century Electronic Lynching
Mr. President,
This letter was written to express the protests of concerned Individuals, Civil Rights Organizations and activists who complain that our civil rights have been so eroded that it is now acceptable Police policy to use cruel and unusual punishment on a Citizen without due process of law. We the undersigned Citizens, Citizen Groups and Civil Rights Organizations, protest that the 4th, 8th, and 14th amendments of the constitution are being systematically violated by Police Officers using electronic torture devices on Citizens and non-Citizens.
Representatives of the company that manufacturers electronic torture devices lied to Police Officials when they told them that the devices had been tested and were found to be non-lethal.They bragged instead about the excruciating agony and terror caused by their use. It is impossible for the manufacturer to have tested these electronic torture devices with electrodes shot at different depths under a victims skin, and in all possible places on the human body, and for the extended times experienced in the field, also they could not have tested the devices on victims with various medical, physical and mental conditions. Had this happened there would have been many deaths of the test subjects. Instead, the company in effect used Police Officers as lab assistants and the public as lab rats for their tests, then they harvest Para-Medic and Medical Examiners Reports all for free. They scammed an all too willing law enforcement community with half truths and outright lies. The best estimate that we can find to date indicates that thousands of victims have suffered cruel and unusual punishment and 476 victims were tortured and died after being electrocuted with an electronic torture device in the US and Canada. Medical records prove many victims suffer neurological damages after being electrocuted with an electronic torture device by a Police Officer.
Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr., a bipolar 24-year-old black youth, who needed medical attention was tortured for 54 seconds with 50,000 volt electrodes shot into his neck and chest. He was not a criminal. His 21st Century Electronic Lynching was declared a homicide by the Tarrant County, Tx. Medical Examiner. After his taser torture death the taser manufacturer sent bulletins to all Police departments to direct Officers not to shoot a victim in the chest area to avoid causing cardiac arrest. This was after 12 years of vehemently denying that tasers could be lethal and after 424 prior taser related torture deaths. The inaccuracy of the devices gives Police Officers little control over where they will be shot into the flesh of a victim so each use is playing Russian Roulette with a victims life.
Mr. President,
There is no more cruel and unusual punishment than being slowly electrocuted with 50,000 volts of electricity delivered under the skin. Please take the time to count down 54 seconds to understand just how long Michael Jacobs and thousands of others have suffered the agony of electrocution. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that the 4 seconds of agony suffered by a convicted felon, before death occurred in the electric chair, was cruel and unusual punishment, and unconstitutional. Electrocution has been abandoned as a means of execution. Michael Jacobs who was convicted of nothing, cruelly and senselessly suffered the agony of being electrocuted with over 20 times the voltage (and pain) used in the electric chair, with a 50,000 volt barb shot into his neck and chest, for 13.5 times longer than a convicted criminal had to suffer in the chair before death happened. He suffered 54 seconds of agony before his young healthy heart was caused to fail. He is survived by two Fatherless Children and a grieving Mother and Father who blame themselves for calling for help to medicate their son and got him tased, tortured to death instead. Michael Patrick Jacobs Sr. wishes the Police had shot his son in the leg instead of torturing to him death. He said "at least he would still be alive." Google his name for the full story.
The complete Michael Patrick Jacobs Junior test is readily available to anyone who doubts that being tased for 54 seconds is cruel and unusual punishment and torture. Ft Worth, Texas has a Police Officer that is expert in administering it.
The 9th District Court made the ruling this past September that a taser could only be used when an Officer's life or the life of someone else was in danger .Police Officers train and by instinct do not use a taser in a life threatening situation, they use a lethal weapon just as they trained for and always have. This is backed by FBI records and we agree that a Police Officer is justified in using lethal force in defense of his life or to prevent harm of an innocent life. That said, any time a Government Official intentionally takes a citizen's life that act must be investigated and evaluated as to it's constitutional validity. In the 9th District Court ruling, the Judge declared that the use of electronic torture devices (tasers) causes severe pain and terror. By the very definition, severe pain and terror constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The United Nations declared that the use of a taser against a victim is "a potentially lethal form of torture".
After the famous case of the Polish immigrant who was tortured to death in a Vancouver, British Columbia airport for failing to comply with police orders, the Canadian government made the ruling that tasers could only be used in life threatening situations. Again Police Officers do not use tasers in life threatening situations. On the news this evening a Police Officer shot a Pit Bull that was attacking him. He didn't use his taser.
The use of water boarding on terrorists was condemned by you, and high ranking members of The Democratic Party, as torture while it was being done on George Bush's watch and water-boarding produces no physical pain and is mild compared to electrocution with 50,000 volts of electricity under the skin. Our troops are sacrificing their lives every day for the avowed purpose of eliminating the use of torture and terror by our enemies while torture and terror is being inflicted on our own Citizens daily by Police Officers, without due process of law. No one is fighting for these tortured, terrorized Citizens.. 41 percent of the torture deaths resulting from taser use in 2009 were black men and boys.
Mr. President, an 84 year old Grandmother and 10 year old children have been tortured with a taser by Police. One little 10 year old child was taser tortured in her home by an Arkansas Police officer because she refused to take a shower before bed time. Tear down this wall and end this terrible atrocity. 84 year old Grandmothers should not be made to live in fear and cringe each time they see a Police Officer. Be the President that is remembered in history as the President that ended barbaric torture and terror in the USA . Set the standard for all the world.and issue an executive order outlawing the use of torture of any kind and especially electrical torture. Outlaw the possession, manufacture, sale, and/or use of electrical torture devices in the USA by anyone, including Police Officers, our Military and the CIA here and abroad. Return the dignity and respect to this Nation that we once had.
Signed--SCLC
Kyev Tatum SCLC President
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Texas.
sclctarrantcounty@yahoo.com
kyevtatum@yahoo.com
Signed
Hector Carrillo LULAC District Director
League of United Latin American Citizens
hcarrillo29@hotmail.com
Signed
Deryl Muhammad--Representative
Nation of Islam
derylmuhammad@yahoo.com
Signed
Drew X
Chairman New Black Panther Party
drewx2003@yahoo.com
Signed
Tom Franklin
Pastor New Mt. Calvary Baptist Church
The Taser-Torture-Death Memorial Site
frenklinart@aol.com
Signed
Marcus Hardin SCLC Texas
Strategist, Researcher, Historian
mhardin104@aol.com
http://truthnottasers.blogspot.com/
Signed
Friendship Rock Missionary Baptist
A. Scott Harper
asharper35@yahoo.com
Signed
Eddie Griffin (BASG)
eddiegriffin_basg@yahoo.com
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/
Signed
Julie Walker
Prevent Dangerous Harm Inc.
jwalker@preventdangerousharm.com
www.preventdangerousharm.com
Monday, May 17, 2010
Local SCLC leader, Kyev Tatum, is calling upon the coalition of Michael Jacobs family supporters and the community to attend the Fort Worth City Council meeting on Tuesday, May 18, 2010, where another chapter in the Michael Jacobs, Jr. case will bring more closure to this tragedy. Council begins at 10:00 a.m., City Hall, 1000 Throckmorton St.
HAT TIP to Pastor Kyev Tatum and the local SCLC, NAACP, and LULAC, for their leadership in the investigation and settlement of the Michael Jacobs Jr. taser relate death by the Fort Worth Police Department.
HAT TIP to Pastor Tom Franklin for consecreting land for a memorial of Michael Jacobs Jr. and for the ceaseless work of Marcus Hardin, and Civil Rights attorney Brian Eberstein.
[For the current 480 listings of taser related deaths in Canada and U.S., see Truth Not Tasers]
Eddie Griffin delivered This Resolution on April 25, 2010 to the Family of Michael Jacobs Jr. on behalf of the Blogging Community Worldwide, AfroSpear and Afrosphere Action Coalition.
As a child rights advocate, Eddie Griffin became interested in the useage of tasers when a distraught pregnant mother, Valreca Redden, was tasered by a Trotwood police officer. [Story here] I wondered about the effects of 50,000 volts of electricity on the unborn child. On December 15, 2001, Hannah Rogers Grippi was tasered and lost a 6-month old fetus. [Taser Victim # 7]
“Taser Torture & Death Cases in Fort Worth, Texas, USA”, submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), by Eddie Griffin (BASG), 2009 May 6
A Fort Worth coalition of Civil Rights advocates sent a Letter to President Barack Obama [See below]
To: President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC, USA 20500
Subject: 21st Century Electronic Lynching
Mr. President,
This letter was written to express the protests of concerned Individuals, Civil Rights Organizations and activists who complain that our civil rights have been so eroded that it is now acceptable Police policy to use cruel and unusual punishment on a Citizen without due process of law. We the undersigned Citizens, Citizen Groups and Civil Rights Organizations, protest that the 4th, 8th, and 14th amendments of the constitution are being systematically violated by Police Officers using electronic torture devices on Citizens and non-Citizens.
Representatives of the company that manufacturers electronic torture devices lied to Police Officials when they told them that the devices had been tested and were found to be non-lethal.They bragged instead about the excruciating agony and terror caused by their use. It is impossible for the manufacturer to have tested these electronic torture devices with electrodes shot at different depths under a victims skin, and in all possible places on the human body, and for the extended times experienced in the field, also they could not have tested the devices on victims with various medical, physical and mental conditions. Had this happened there would have been many deaths of the test subjects. Instead, the company in effect used Police Officers as lab assistants and the public as lab rats for their tests, then they harvest Para-Medic and Medical Examiners Reports all for free. They scammed an all too willing law enforcement community with half truths and outright lies. The best estimate that we can find to date indicates that thousands of victims have suffered cruel and unusual punishment and 476 victims were tortured and died after being electrocuted with an electronic torture device in the US and Canada. Medical records prove many victims suffer neurological damages after being electrocuted with an electronic torture device by a Police Officer.
Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr., a bipolar 24-year-old black youth, who needed medical attention was tortured for 54 seconds with 50,000 volt electrodes shot into his neck and chest. He was not a criminal. His 21st Century Electronic Lynching was declared a homicide by the Tarrant County, Tx. Medical Examiner. After his taser torture death the taser manufacturer sent bulletins to all Police departments to direct Officers not to shoot a victim in the chest area to avoid causing cardiac arrest. This was after 12 years of vehemently denying that tasers could be lethal and after 424 prior taser related torture deaths. The inaccuracy of the devices gives Police Officers little control over where they will be shot into the flesh of a victim so each use is playing Russian Roulette with a victims life.
Mr. President,
There is no more cruel and unusual punishment than being slowly electrocuted with 50,000 volts of electricity delivered under the skin. Please take the time to count down 54 seconds to understand just how long Michael Jacobs and thousands of others have suffered the agony of electrocution. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that the 4 seconds of agony suffered by a convicted felon, before death occurred in the electric chair, was cruel and unusual punishment, and unconstitutional. Electrocution has been abandoned as a means of execution. Michael Jacobs who was convicted of nothing, cruelly and senselessly suffered the agony of being electrocuted with over 20 times the voltage (and pain) used in the electric chair, with a 50,000 volt barb shot into his neck and chest, for 13.5 times longer than a convicted criminal had to suffer in the chair before death happened. He suffered 54 seconds of agony before his young healthy heart was caused to fail. He is survived by two Fatherless Children and a grieving Mother and Father who blame themselves for calling for help to medicate their son and got him tased, tortured to death instead. Michael Patrick Jacobs Sr. wishes the Police had shot his son in the leg instead of torturing to him death. He said "at least he would still be alive." Google his name for the full story.
The complete Michael Patrick Jacobs Junior test is readily available to anyone who doubts that being tased for 54 seconds is cruel and unusual punishment and torture. Ft Worth, Texas has a Police Officer that is expert in administering it.
The 9th District Court made the ruling this past September that a taser could only be used when an Officer's life or the life of someone else was in danger .Police Officers train and by instinct do not use a taser in a life threatening situation, they use a lethal weapon just as they trained for and always have. This is backed by FBI records and we agree that a Police Officer is justified in using lethal force in defense of his life or to prevent harm of an innocent life. That said, any time a Government Official intentionally takes a citizen's life that act must be investigated and evaluated as to it's constitutional validity. In the 9th District Court ruling, the Judge declared that the use of electronic torture devices (tasers) causes severe pain and terror. By the very definition, severe pain and terror constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The United Nations declared that the use of a taser against a victim is "a potentially lethal form of torture".
After the famous case of the Polish immigrant who was tortured to death in a Vancouver, British Columbia airport for failing to comply with police orders, the Canadian government made the ruling that tasers could only be used in life threatening situations. Again Police Officers do not use tasers in life threatening situations. On the news this evening a Police Officer shot a Pit Bull that was attacking him. He didn't use his taser.
The use of water boarding on terrorists was condemned by you, and high ranking members of The Democratic Party, as torture while it was being done on George Bush's watch and water-boarding produces no physical pain and is mild compared to electrocution with 50,000 volts of electricity under the skin. Our troops are sacrificing their lives every day for the avowed purpose of eliminating the use of torture and terror by our enemies while torture and terror is being inflicted on our own Citizens daily by Police Officers, without due process of law. No one is fighting for these tortured, terrorized Citizens.. 41 percent of the torture deaths resulting from taser use in 2009 were black men and boys.
Mr. President, an 84 year old Grandmother and 10 year old children have been tortured with a taser by Police. One little 10 year old child was taser tortured in her home by an Arkansas Police officer because she refused to take a shower before bed time. Tear down this wall and end this terrible atrocity. 84 year old Grandmothers should not be made to live in fear and cringe each time they see a Police Officer. Be the President that is remembered in history as the President that ended barbaric torture and terror in the USA . Set the standard for all the world.and issue an executive order outlawing the use of torture of any kind and especially electrical torture. Outlaw the possession, manufacture, sale, and/or use of electrical torture devices in the USA by anyone, including Police Officers, our Military and the CIA here and abroad. Return the dignity and respect to this Nation that we once had.
Signed--SCLC
Kyev Tatum SCLC President
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Texas.
sclctarrantcounty@yahoo.com
kyevtatum@yahoo.com
Signed
Hector Carrillo LULAC District Director
League of United Latin American Citizens
hcarrillo29@hotmail.com
Signed
Deryl Muhammad--Representative
Nation of Islam
derylmuhammad@yahoo.com
Signed
Drew X
Chairman New Black Panther Party
drewx2003@yahoo.com
Signed
Tom Franklin
Pastor New Mt. Calvary Baptist Church
The Taser-Torture-Death Memorial Site
frenklinart@aol.com
Signed
Marcus Hardin SCLC Texas
Strategist, Researcher, Historian
mhardin104@aol.com
http://truthnottasers.blogspot.com/
Signed
Friendship Rock Missionary Baptist
A. Scott Harper
asharper35@yahoo.com
Signed
Eddie Griffin (BASG)
eddiegriffin_basg@yahoo.com
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/
Signed
Julie Walker
Prevent Dangerous Harm Inc.
jwalker@preventdangerousharm.com
www.preventdangerousharm.com
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