A Day of Peace

in concert with the international Blog Day for Peace
November 4, 2011



Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 2:14)

Today, we give glory to God for the creation of the Day. We pray that the blessings of Peace reside upon you and grace to all men. We wish you well.

Although some may be troubled by the current affairs of this world, there is still peace to be found, and it is the kind of peace that surpasses all understanding.

The passage in Psalm 34:14 says “Seek peace, and pursue it.”

But how can we pursue the illusive? Why does peace evade us so? Lest we forget, the psalmist said first, “Depart from evil, and do good.”

The greatest enemy of peace lies within. As the apostle James said: What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? (James 4:1 NIV)

It is hard to keep peace with others in the world, when we cannot find peace within ourselves. The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace (James 3:18). Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the Children of God (Matthew 5:9).

We must make peace in order to gain peace, first making peace with ourselves.

The quest for peace, on the other hand, does not leave us defenseless. We are not blinded by the stars of idealism as to believe that all is good and well among men. For we have seen man at his worst. But we are not troubled by the battles of life. We have One who fights our battle, and He is the Prince of Peace.

Beyond the veil of blue, the Conquer went forth riding on a White Horse. (Revelation 6:2) Victory is assured to those in his army who ride with him. They are arrayed in white.

The Lord fights our battle for us. He takes vengeance out of our hands and reserved it for Himself. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. (Psalm 24:8)

Who is the Prince of Peace?

Lest we forget the Star of the East, lest we forget that Bright and Morning Star, let us be reminded this season: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

Though men may search the whole world over for peace, they cannot find this illusive state outside the Prince of Peace who gives us the peace beyond human understanding.

The Trouble Signs of Mass Incarceration

By Eddie Griffin

An October 26, 2011 Star-Telegram editorial reads: “Signs of trouble were apparent at a Hood County juvenile detention facility before the death of a 14-year-old detainee this month.”

The story of what happened to young Jordan Adams, a middle school student who died in his cell at the Granbury Regional Juvenile Justice Center, is symptomatic of the problems with for-profit private detention facilitates for underage offenders.

The editorial speculates “perhaps because too many local and state officials see the for-profit juvenile centers in Texas as a positive economic alternative to government-run institutions for troubled youths.” Notwithstanding, the article points out the repugnancy of transferring juvenile detainees from the State, by adjudication in a court of law, into the hands of private for-profit contractors, and how easily then that the State abdicates its legal obligations and responsibilities to house, feed, and care for these young offenders who were committed to their oversight. Privateers not so bound by law to the same standard of care.

That the trouble signs at the Granbury facilities should have been apparent is an understatement compared to all the previous complaints of youth-on-youth assaults, supervisory neglect and physical and sexual abuse, and which came on the heels of a 2007 investigation that revealed widespread corruption, brutal practices, and sexual exploitation of young inmates throughout Texas Youth Commission (TYC) facilities.

After extensive investigations, resignation of the entire TYC board, and prosecution of several officials, the public was then assured by members of the Texas legislature that these abuses and neglect would not happen again. At the same time, we began a long and arduous task of trying to keep our children out of these facilities, and free those who deserved to be free, setting up a reentry support system to help reintegrate former offenders back into society.

Nonetheless, our social objective runs counter to the profit motives of the Prison Industrial Complex, which relies on bed occupancy in detention facilities. Corporations like the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) promote prison-building, enter into facility management contracts with state and national government, and supply detention staff by locals. The illusion is job-creation and community enrichment.

A former CCA officer wrote: "I work as a correctional officer at the Corrections Corporation of America in Winnfield, Louisiana and I have an interview with GEO Group Inc for a correctional officer in Jena Louisiana. I was wondering what prison do you think is better to work for? Corrections Corporation is low tech understaffed and pays a dollar above minimum wage and GEO pays $11.27 hr."

Correctional officers for private corporations are underpaid and overworked. Even more, to further squeeze profits out of their contracts, they skimp on the cost and care. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Granbury facility has recorded some 250 complaints and 133 cases of juvenile suicide attempts.

In an earlier Star-Telegram report, Hood County juvenile center, originally designed as a public-private partnership that would not cost taxpayers any money, had problems from the start. A coalition that included the county and a detention management corporation built the $6.5 million facility through the sale of tax-exempt certificates of participation (bonds). In a convoluted scheme, the management group was to lease the facility back to the county, then rent the place to operate a juvenile detention center that would pay off the bonds… The private corporation floundered almost immediately when the daily census was far less than the 78 juveniles it needed to be "profitable." The county took over the operation for a while and then closed the facility because it was too costly, resulting in a downgrade of the county's bond rating by Standard & Poor's.

Such is the fate of communities who bank on prison populations and corporations that depend on filling prison bed space. Many Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) facilities are scrambling for detainees in order to make their operations solvent. The negligence found at Granbury is repeated all over again at other for-profit detention facilities.

These problems cannot be fixed so long as profits are squeezed out of facility operations. The promise of jobs and commercial traffic into little prison towns are tenuous, because there are no guarantees in prison population growth projection, and mass incarceration is not a societal aim. Therefore, prisons must decline with deceasing headcount and bed occupancy. There simply is no profit in it.

Realizing that prison-building is a bad investment in our quest toward a healthy, law-abiding society, we see this trend as a losing proposition, whereupon the State must bit the bullet assigned to it by law, to assume the cost, responsibilities, and liabilities for neglect, abuse, and death of inmates placed in its care.

Kids For Cash Juvenile Judge Sentence to 28 Years

Mass Incarceration: Naïve Juveniles go into Court looking for Justice and Mercy, while Judge looks for Kickbacks for sending them to prison

Former Luzerne County Juvenile Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. was sentence to 28 years in prison for his part in the “Kids For Cash” kickback scandal. A second juvenile judge, Michael Conahan, pleaded guilty last year and awaits sentencing. The two were accused of taking more than $2.8 million in bribes from the builder of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers and extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities' co-owner.

According to accusations, Ciavarella “filled the beds of the private lockups with children as young as 10, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other minor crimes.”

“The defendant argues he didn’t sell juveniles retail. We agree with that. He was selling them wholesale,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod, maintaining that the jury found Ciavarella guilty of a racketeering conspiracy for being part of a scheme to extract cash from the construction and operation of the two for-profit centers.

As a result of the corruption case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.

Fellow former Judges Conahan and Michael T. Toole both pleaded guilty to criminal charges last year as investigators untangled a web of corruption. A number of other public officials were caught in the probe as well, including the county's court administrator, the clerk of courts and a member of the juvenile probation services office.

While The Legal had previously reported that sources had tied Conahan to mobsters, following Ciavarella's trial Zubrod said that the investigation into Conahan and Ciavarella's activities "sprang from" a probe of reputed mobster William "Billy" D'Elia.

The case of the juvenile court judge accused of trading kids for cash has garnered national and international press coverage, spawned an ongoing corruption probe that has led to more than 30 arrests and spurred the state Supreme Court to dismiss thousands of Ciavarella's court rulings.

COMMENTARY by Eddie Griffin

Some people may see this case as an aberration and isolated, one-of-a-kind, corruption case that could only happen in Pennsylvania. What people overlook is who is the real beneficiary in the scheme, the ones receiving the bribes and kickbacks, or the one paying them?

The Prison Industrial Complex feeds on incarceration. The more prison beds occupied the more profits for the corporations that build and manage facilities.

Where paying bribes and kickbacks to juvenile justice officials may not be the normal way of doing business, they are instrumental in “get tough” policies, “zero tolerance” and longer prison sentence advocacy.

The irony in the above case is that it began with an investigation into mobster activities. There is an ominous sense of danger for those involved. Once graft is accepted from mobsters, the next bribe cannot be rejected. And so, the corrupt scheme builds upon itself, until there is a steady stream of juveniles going into prison, for little or no offense, as some investigations revealed.

Child Rights advocates cannot stop the pipeline other than warn juveniles to stay out of the juvenile justice system. Any other intervention, such as revealing the truth behind the corruption, can lead to terminal consequences.

So for now, all we can say is: Keep You Hand Out of the Lion’s Mouth.

District Map Attempts to Cuts Us Out

The Star-Telegram editorial, “Seeing flaws in Texas Senate remap is not the same as proving them”, recognizes that the proposed redistricting map for Senate District 10 is “just plain wrong”. Carving out a chunk of minority communities in southeast Fort Worth, Forest Hill, and Everman, and then merging them into a predominately Anglo voting district some 80 miles south of the county is a terrible usurpation of our voting power. Over 80,000 votes would be diluted, and we would essentially be disenfranchised.

And, if that is not “shameless” enough, as Senator Wendy Davis calls it, the plan would also strip out the Hispanic north side neighborhood in Fort Worth and give it to Anglo-dominated SD 12, now occupied by a Republican based in Flower Mound.

The S-T article goes on to say: “Anyone who watched the 2003 redistricting drama directed by then-U.S. House Majority Leader and now convicted felon Tom DeLay knows the people who do this sort of thing are both smart and crafty.”

That it violates the Voting Rights Act, Texas has done it before and gotten away with it. They simply say prove it if you can. According to them: “Davis will have to show that minority groups in her district are large and geographically compact, that they are politically cohesive and vote as a bloc, and that Anglos vote in a bloc in numbers high enough that they usually defeat minorities… Having only been elected in District 10 once, a narrow victory amid heavy turnout for Democrat Barack Obama's presidential bid, she has no history there to fall back on.”

The article further states that “Her case will have to analyze Fort Worth elections over an extended period of time, examining any racially polarized voting. It will hurt if minority voter turnout is low, which it is. It will be a problem for her if any differences between minority and Anglo voting patterns can be explained away by party affiliation, because that doesn't represent racial or ethnic discrimination.”

Bob Ray Sanders, in his own S-T editorial “Senate redistricting plan demands Justice Department review”, sees the effort as not-so-subtle Jim Crow gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering? No such thing. To let Congressman Michael C. Burgess tell how he inherited his narrow, dumbbell-shaped strip an our historical black community, and stretching it from the Oklahoma border to Waco: "It is the miracle of redistricting”... not to mention a convenient way to silence the black political voice.

So goes Texas. But not without scrutiny from the Justice Department, seeing that Texas is still one of those southern states that must receive preclearance from the Department. It depends on whose at the helms of Justice, and whether the state of Texas can skate through again.

It gets ridiculously redundant, like bad behavior that can find no remorse. No doubt, they will nitpick the law for subtle technicalities and loopholes, such as those above which put the burden of proof upon the shoulders of Senator Davis.

What they willfully ignore is the “totality of circumstances”.

Totality of Circumstances

No one will mention that the current senator district puts all our Fort Worth schools under one representative. The proposed plan would scatter our schools among three different state senators.

No one will mention that as soon as the U.S. Census projects us to become a minority-majority political bloc, they cut us up into slivers and drag our voting boundaries across many counties until we are completely diluted. Silver by sliver, tract by tract, they take away what we rightfully gain in population growth.

According to 2010 U.S. Census, SD 10 has a total of 52.4% minorities, making it a minority-majority district. But based on voter age population (VAP), for Civil Rights purposes, we are only 47.3% majority. Not that the trend shows where we are headed, they want to nip us in the gonads before our young reaches voting age.

Can they continue to cut us up, sliver by sliver, every time we show some growth towards becoming a minority-majority voting bloc? How can we have a future when Pharaoh kill the babies before a Moses arises and deliver them from oppression?

Mission Accomplished: Osama bin Laden Dead

By Eddie Griffin

As military missions go, there was none more important than bringing down the mastermind of the 9/11 attack upon the United States. Osama bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One around the world: Wanted Dead or Alive.

Early Sunday morning, the search ended in a hail of bullets from Navy SEAL commandoes. Bin Laden was dead.

So ends the nightmare image with which the American people have lived since September 11, 2001. So ends a dark chapter in the lives of peace-loving people across the free world. But the rein of terror does not end here, at least not for the near term. We can expect jihadists who support al Qaeda to continue their destructive rant against the world. However, in due time, the name of Osama bin Laden will be forgotten. Just as President Barack Obama made the announcement Sunday night, “Justice has been done.”

This is the single most important development in the war against terrorism, because it brings us another step closer to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, the focus of the Middle Eastern wars, from the very outset in 2003, was “to smoke out Osama bin Laden” and bring him to justice, according to the words of President George Bush.

As the war dragged on, many feared that the goal would never be accomplished, that bin Laden would die an old man in hiding and continue to live on as a mythical hero for enemies of the US. In fact, the families of victims of the 9/11 attack had all but given up hope of justice; and Americans, in general, were beginning to despair of the wars that had cost nearly 50,000 troops’ their lives, and countless others among our allies.

Al Qaeda had orchestrated this bloody chapter of the 21st century, but the mastermind and financier was Osama bin Laden. And, though there will be anger and backlash among radical supporters, the finances for terrorist operations will dry up, arms shipments to militant radicals will decline, mastermind strategies will lose the sharpness of their focus, and recruitment to their cause will wane.

Bin Laden himself will go down into the trash bin of history, along with the likes of Adolf Hitler. And, in due time, after our troops come home from war, we as a nation will began to heal.

Clearly Innocent: Wrongfully Tasered

By Eddie Griffin (BASG)

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

After watching the news footage on the tasering of Jonathan Pierce by the Arlington Police Department over the weekend, it is clear to me that this was an innocent man, guilty of nothing but trying to get out of the way of danger while police officers pursued a suspect after a high-speed chase and crash.

So, how did one police officer mistake this black Navy veteran with a young white male suspect? According to news reports, the two men were both wearing basketball jerseys, but of different teams. An eyewitness describes seeing a car race onto the parking lot, slam into a minivan, and the driver exiting and taking off on foot.

Pierce, who had been using an ATM machine inside a club at the time, exited just as people were screaming and scrabbling for cover. “So my natural reaction,” he said, was to go back inside “for safety”. It all happened so fast, he says, that the next thing he knew he heard “a loud pop” and felt a “sharp pain in my side”, and an officer on top of him.

“I didn't even see it coming,” he said. “I'm still feeling shaky about the whole situation. It all happened so fast.”

Jonathan Pierce has a reason to feel shaky after being electrocuted with 50,000 volts of electricity. He could have been the 535th taser related death in North America. Instead, that dubious honor went to Jerry Perea, age 38, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was tasered and died on March 21, 2011.

Michael Jacobs, Jr. of Fort Worth, Texas, as many may recall, died April 18, 2009. He was victim number 424.

It was only a matter of time before Arlington police would try out their new toys, despite the many warnings. But the police chief was so determined, with Super Bowl XLV coming to the city, 300 new tasers was like a late Christmas present. Discretion is not built into the weapon, and lack of use only itch the trigger finger.

Like many taser victims before him, Jonathan Pierce has retained a lawyer and plans to sue. In times past, such law suits were like throwing stones at the Titan. But as of late, almost every taser victim is winning, because TASER International, the maker of the device, does not inform its client police department that tasers are lethal.

Taser International settles with Butler for ~$3M

Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr., Fort Worth TX, $2.0M

Stanley Harlan, Moberly MO, $2.4M

Taser $6.2M initial judgment for Failure to Warn

What is little known, to victim or lawyer, is the long term effect of taser electrocutions.

We have observed, over time, the same “shaky feelings” that Jonathan Pierce is experiencing now are the same “twitches” that taser survivors still experience, and maybe for the rest of their live.

How then can the true damage be calculated?

The Comeback Kid Falls Again

By Eddie Griffin

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Nate Bailey was arrested, along with two other men, for attempting to rob an armored truck in broad daylight on the streets of Washington, D.C. According to news report, Bailey was captured with an AK-47 in the getaway car, a green Ford Taurus SE Station Wagon registered in his name.

Nate Bailey-el was 57 years old, too old to pull a caper like this, especially considering the fact that he had been released from prison less than two years prior after serving 22 years. According to a mutual friend Glenn Simmons, Nate barely knew how to drive, let alone drive a getaway car.

We knew that getting back into society was not going to be easy for him. People kept reminding Bailey that this is 2011. But somehow, he never bridged the time gap nor healed from the mental scares of his prior incarceration.

He was only a 20-year old youth when he first went into federal prison in 1974, sentenced to six years under the Youth Corrections Act. Along the way, he picked up more time in prison, and the “zip 6” turned into 11 years. In an email to me, dated May 12, 2010, he chronicles his journey through the federal prison system, from Petersburg, to El Reno, to Lompoc, to Lewisburg, to Terri Haute, to Marion, to Leavenworth, and finally back to Marion’s Super-max 6 Control Unit. This was where he witnessed two white supremacist inmates kill Raymond “Cadillac” Smith, the leader of the Moors.

Bailey was released on December 15, 1985, after which he describes his reentry back into society like this: “With mental scares created by the behavior modification program at Marion, I did not make it in society for more than 6 months. Longing to get back to the war and my Brothers, I was sentenced by D.C. with a 15-Life sentence on May, 1987 and did not secure my release until September, 2009, 22 years later.”

Now, after only 17-months of freedom, Nate Bailey-el may be on his way back to prison for the rest of his life. His friend and mentor, Glenn, feels that he could have done more to help Nate. I feel even worse, because I was supposed to be his guide and help him recover from the mental scares that he suffered in the Control Unit. The behavior modification program at Marion, which he describes above, was the subject of “Breaking Men’s Minds” written by me in 1977.

Nate remembered my work as a Marion Brother. In his email, he wrote:

It is truly an Honor to be among the ranks of the forgotten few who really earned the degree of MARION BROTHER...For the only few who endured actually know the true meaning of the "SOUTHERN TIP". Those who been and made it out never healed or never was the same, the behavior program laid down there touched the core of the human factor in a man... Brother, the system was a battlefield at which you can attest, we all was in the mist of the fight on a national level. I have a host of rich authentic information which lead up to the Brother’s (Cadillac) passing because I was there. The Brother (Glenn) told me you will be contacting me and I welcome it because I am still finding it hard for those who never been there… (who) fail to understand in our attempt to communicate what it was like for the designed system to suck the LIFE out of a man when he was still breathing...Yes, I do remember you...A MARION BROTHER


Footnote:

A movie production company contacted me in 2008 about doing a documentary on the Aryan Brotherhood, based upon two AB white supremacists, Thomas Silverstein and Clay Fountain, stabbing Raymond “Cadillac” Smith-el to death inside Marion’s notorious Control Unit in 1982. But there were no eyewitnesses for the producer to interview. All were either dead or still in prison. It was not until the release of Nate Bailey in September 2009 that a first hand account could be given. But by then, M2 Pictures had made its documentary, which aired on the Discovery Channel in November 2009. The assassination of Cadillac did not make the cut.

So, it was a project that Nate Bailey and Glenn Simmons were going to complete: The story about Cadillac, one of the toughest prison gladiators that I ever encountered. His death set off the one of bloodiest prison race wars recorded in FBI history. His legacy has been told over and over again.

His assassin, Thomas Silverstein, has been dubbed as the “most dangerous man in prison” by the BBC. Silverstein has been convicted of killing three inmates and a prison guard, though one of the inmate killings has since been overturned. In his own defense of killing Cadillac, Silverstein cites passages of “Breaking Men’s Minds”, claiming that prison officials had pitted him, man against man, against Cadillac, that prison officials wanted them to kill each other.

Nate Bailey is one of the few survivors who saw it. He was supposedly in the process of writing a book about it. But now, here I am, writing about him, in my untold memoirs.