Celebrating 60 More Years Of School Segregation?

As first published in DelawareLiberal by Progressive Populist on 5/16/2014
 

Much is being written and broadcast this week about the U.S.A. celebrating 60 years of school desegregation by way of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.  This was the year I graduated from my mostly segregated high school.

I say mostly because I was one of a busload of army brats transported daily to a nearby civilian high school.  The only reason there were a few black kids in my school was I guess the local school board couldn't find a way to prohibit my fellow army brat kids who were black from attending their otherwise all white school.

But to my point.  No, we no longer have de jure school segregation.  But Americans have found a way to maintain this stupid practice by simply boycotting and fleeing inner city public schools mostly populated by low income black and hispanic kids.  Result?  De facto segregation and very much separate and unequal educations.

Further, while the separate but equal doctrine is no longer applies legally, it applies in practical application in the way many if not most public schools are funded to provide middle and upper class public schools with enrichment tools the affluent parents fork out extra money to get for their kids while less affluent parents are powerless to provide such things as gyms, computer labs,  ball fields, art and music classes, band uniforms and instruments and great field trips.
So, 60 years later, little or no change?  Not much really to celebrate.  Post racial America?  that's a cruel joke.

With my own eyes and ears I saw stonewalling up close and personal in a Texas city.  By 1970, 16 years post Brown v. Board, our huge urban school district was totally segregated, save a few scattered middle class black kids populating suburban schools.  So, a highly motivated group of white liberal, black and hispanic urban residing parents banded together, got organized and in a year tossed out most of a segregationist white school school board and integrated our school district.

But, concerned about white flight, our group, of which I was privileged to be involved with my wife and kids, our board and new superintendent created the first magnet school program outside of NYC, including our own High School For Performing and Visual Arts (yes, we even put that on a very long bumpersticker !).  And our integration program mostly left neighborhood elementary schools alone and concentrated the magnets in middle schools and high schools, to limit the busing of the little ones.

In a few short years, all these programs,  designed to ease the angst of white families and create imaginative new opportunities for all kids, utterly failed to stem white flight.  White "christian academies" sprung up, suburban Catholic schools flourished and new suburban school districts sprouted up all over the region, all touting their educational excellence. People knew what those code words meant.  White.  in a decade or two the integrated urban district went from 60 % anglo to 91% black and hispanic.

Ok, this was so called conservative Texas.  But what of Blue and liberal areas?  Well, my home of origin, marvelous Marin County in northern California doesn't look a whole lot better, known to be a liberal elite bastion.  Nor does the very Blue Delaware in which I am now residing.  And from what I read, most of the liberal Blue areas, north, south, east and west look pretty much the same,  school segregation wise.

Yes, I know, this is economic segregation where  the people across the tracks so to speak just have to work harder to break out, the conservatives tell us.  Apparently all good things just take time in America.  60 years was simply not  enough time to change attitudes about "those people".

I'm waiting.  Not much time left in my opinion.

Incarceration Nation

This blog first appeared on May 5, 2014 in DelawareLiberal by ProgressivePopulist.

 
Much is being written recently about the appalling status of incarceration rates in the U.S.A.  Not much is being done.  All sorts of causal factors are cited: the War on Drugs, poverty, moral breakdown, the economy, mental illness, demise of the social contract.....the list is endless.

Solutions don't seem to be endless. International comparisons are shocking.  We're number one in rate of incarceration world-wide.

Something in excess of 2 million of our citizens languish in federal and state prisons and local jails.  One telling piece of data suggests that 2 of 3 prisoners will be jailed again in three years post-release.   State prison numbers tell us about 53% of convictions are for violent acts, 18.3 % property issues, 16.8% drug convictions and 10.6% public order issues such as illegal weapons.  Obviously many crimes involve several of these categories together.

Little Delaware figures prominently in position # 6 for violent crime and # 13 for property charges.  Most shocking to me was 86.8 % of Delaware drug convictions involve African Americans.  The numbers indicate locally and nationally that drug use rates are comparable between African Americans and Anglo Americans.   What's up here?  I'll  leave the assessment up to you, dear readers.

Overall, though accounting for 13% of the U.S. population,  African Americans comprise about 39% of the prison population; the ratio is similar in Delaware, so no slack is cut here locally.
These numbers are causing a much needed national conversation and criminal justice reform activism is heating up, but way too slowly by my observation.  Reforms are all over the lot; some focus on our absurd commercial bail bond system; other on pre-trial detention, the small number of convictions via jury and bench trials vs. plea bargains,  better representation for the poor population with public defenders, sentencing guidelines.  The most explosive growth in the past 30 years ties to drug convictions. So drug policy is being revisited.

We as a nation seem not to have resolved our philosophy regarding incarceration; ie: rehabilitation vs. punishment.  That debate rages on.  Endlessly.

I find it ironic that much of the reform movement in the criminal justice system lately to reduce the prison population comes from the right.  They are focused on the cost issues.   The right is also taking the initiative regarding the stunning statistic that something in the area of 25% of the prison population suffer severe mental illness.  Further, some of that population is  getting in-prison treatment and the imprisoned mentally ill outnumber the hospitalized mentally ill.

I would have expected that Democrats have seen the error of their ways in defensively reacting to charges of being "soft on crime" back in the 70's and 80's and tolerant of drug use by putting the hammer down on offenders.  But I do not see and hear from my fellow Democrats a major embrace of criminal justice reform.  We appear to me to be the advocates of the status quo in the criminal justice world, though much of our coalition is severely impacted by injustice in our criminal justice system.

Solutions, anyone?

Vladimir, Stop It. Just Friggin' Stop It !

This blog first appeared in DelawareLiberal on April 26, by ProgressivePopulist

Ok, Vladimir.  Enough of the belligerence.  Crimea was an outrage and eastern Ukraine doubly so.  So was Georgia.  Speaking for myself and possibly millions of my fellow Americans, we don't want a renewal of one of our worst mutual eras, the Cold War.
Many of us admire and envy your history and culture.  In particular, your nation's demonstrated willingness to change and try to improve.  Take your 20th century revolution, for example.  You set aside many centuries of brutal oppression by your Tsars, turned them out and tried a grand experiment.
Ok, so communism didn't serve its intended purpose and became oppressive in its own right.  But one of my hero's, Mikhail Gorbachev, had the courage to admit it wasn't working and instituted in the same century a second major reform, Glasnost and Perestroika.  We're still waiting here for needed reforms to the failures of our economic system, capitalism.  The world and many American's hailed his guts and balls.  And many members of your Union appreciated the autonomy Mikhail and his team gave them, though it has been a rough transition for many.  You can be admired like that too.  Through fear?  Not so much.
Yes, a few mistakes were made along that path, including bringing over American's best and brightest consultants  from such institutions as Wharton and Harvard to result in privatization moves that created a Russian oligarchy of insiders that has become the envy of our own oligarchs.
But now, your mimicry of our own history of imperialistic overreach stuns the imagination.  For that matter, the mimicry of your own overreach in the closing days of our grand partnership in WWII in eastern Europe causes one to wonder about why we both fail to learn the lessons of history which have so much to teach us both.  That imperialism doesn't work for anybody.
Let's not do this.  We shouldn't make your feel hemmed in and caught in a vise with our NATO alliance.  You shouldn't begin recreating your Union in response to that vise.  Let's get together and loosen the vise and work out mutually autonomous partnerships in that region and grow the economic pie for everyone's benefit.
Look, there's alot of admiration over here for your huge contributions to humanity and culture.  Your ballet and classical music has made the world a better place.  As have  your brilliant contributions to science, architecture and art.  And your willingness to end our nuclear campaigns of mutual terror.
We should have learned from your admission that Afghanistan was unfixable.  And many of us here are grateful for your strategic brokerage in Syria to retire their chemical stockpile without blasting an already ruined populace off the face of the earth.
Vladimir, cut Pussy Riot and the gay community there some slack.  There's much creative energy for  building your democracy pent up with these folks, just waiting to be unleashed for good.  Just as I, as an atheist admire your country's willingness to allow the Orthodox Church to surface from the underground and serve some of your people who seem to need them,  Russia will not be harmed by political dissidents and those with lifestyles which you might not understand.  You're better than that.  Hopefully, we are too.
Finally, I have an idea.  Let's put all this crap aside and form a partnership to address the imminent catastrophe of climate change.  Let's together lead a new  Union of enlightened countries possessing passionate survival instincts and use our scientific resources to redirect our huge energy interests toward limiting  carbon dependence and assure our planet of clean air and water.

Procrastination Nation

This blog appeared in DelawareLiberal on 4/12/2014 by ProgressivePopulist
 

Residing in my "twilight years", I've been reflecting on the many unresolved issues facing my country and revisiting the ebb and flow of progress/regression in the search for solutions  I've witnessed and worked for as an activist over about 45 years of my more than seven decades of life.
This is the bucket list I've pondered.   Yes some progress here and there, some local, some at the state level and a smattering of successes federally.  My observation is that the neglect of many and failure of other reform efforts to a great extent is attributed to an unengaged citizenry as well as their elected representatives at all levels of government.  Maybe we're mostly just too damned busy trying to endure our lives, but we talk a good game about making life better for future generations.
Certainly, those generations have more gadgets to improve daily life;  gadgets and stuff seem to be what American's do very well, perhaps better than most on the planet. But, improving the social order, in my opinion, certainly better than much of the third world, but compared to other "advanced" nations, not so much.
So, here's my bucket list, listed vertically to allow readers to ponder the size of the list and reflect on each issue.  My goal, maybe unmet, is not to depress you.  Rather, to cause some reflection.  In no particular order:
Climate change- largely ignored
Environmental degradation- still tolerated
Immigration reform- again and again
Tax reform-more complex and unfair
Guns-a national obsession
Wars-most ill or dishonestly conceived
Mental health-more art than science
Gerrymandering-misused by the powerful
Campaign finance-way worse, not better
Joblessness-mostly blaming the victim
Healthcare for all-a distance dream still
Trade deficits-not favoring our citizens
Women's rights-moving in the wrong direction
Civil rights-racism very alive and kicking
National debt-a blight on the future
Public education-the under served still awaiting results
Student debt-nibbled on but unresolved
Voting rights-regression, not improvement
Corporate lobby-citizens massively losing  influence
Financial crime-goes unpunished vs. citizen petty crime
Corporate boards-still in control of the plutocrats
Right to organize-labor rights nearly non-existent
Mass incarceration-worst in the world and privatized
Drug war-lost but still hugely harming the citizenry
Sexual exploitation-sex slavery and male intimidation winning
Surveillance state-all downhill since 9-11
Judicial reform-money wins, poverty loses
Voter participation-regressive policies impeding
Equal  economic opportunity-promised but not delivered
Pretty grim results.  But an abundance of people of good will can still turn us around together with peaceful uprising and persistence to inspire the uninspired.  My own belief, as a populist,  is that we can make the most progress short term with local, municipal and state progressive leadership, ultimately shaming and outflanking the federal plutocrats.  Optimism can prevail and shake the moribund populace to engagement to better their condition.

It's The Trade, Stupid !

  First Published in DelawareLiberal Blog by ProgressivePopulist on March 25, 2014
 

One of my favorite investigative reporters, David Cay Johnston observes that our foreign trade deals in the last couple of decades figure in a big way in  the systemic weakness of our domestic economy.  Particularly hard hit by really bad trade deals are the non-college educated in the workforce.
Here's how that seems to work.  While the economy overall is somewhat positively impacted by our trade agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO, the evidence in the manufacturing and family farm sectors we all know is quite the contrary.  The loss and exporting of manufacturing jobs has impacted 100 million U.S. workers and 170,000 family farms,  which are by and large non-college educated and include a significant share of minority persons.
These are people who were at the heart of our middle class, the drivers of the consumer economy in the U.S.A.  If they are not among the 5 million left unemployed with the manufacturing jobs eliminated  or exported via NAFTA and the WTO by 2010, they are suffering from the wage gap and income inequality we are experiencing today.  Half of those jobs went to China.
And speaking of income inequality, the immigration debate raging today would be much less a factor in the national conversation if it were not for the impact of NAFTA on our neighbor to the south, Mexico.  In 1992, just before NAFTA, we had 3.9 million undocumented within our borders, mostly from Mexico.  By 2011 they numbered 11.1 million.  It is impossible to not correlate the impact of NAFTA on this increase, starting in 1994.  The NAFTA agreement  in Mexico resulted in 2.5 million small/tenant farmers being dislocated by corporate farming (Monsanto?) and either driven to the tar paper shanty towns outside of Mexico City or across our border  through 2005.
I was heartened by Bill Clinton's observation at the African conference he keynoted in Wilmington a few days back.  Remember, he was a huge cheerleader for the NAFTA agreement.  He said that it is important when we are dealing with African nations that any deal we set up with them take into account that the farming populace there not be dislocated from their source of family income from the land.  I've always admired his intellect and am very happy that he learned from our mistakes and unintended consequences on the citizens whose governments make trade deals.
Then of course we also have to account for the impact of these agreements on our trade deficits, which were mostly surpluses before these pacts with counties such as Canada, China, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.  By 2013 the trade deficit accounted for 3% of our GDP, at around $500 million.
The recent, much applauded decline in the trade deficit increases is accounted for almost entirely by the petroleum industry.  Examples of bad trad deals?  How many  U.S. cars were purchased last year in South Korea?  Around 15,000.   And S. Korean cars sold in the U.S.A.?  1.3 million !  Clearly this new trade deal isn't working to our benefit.
It is time to ask, why do  smart Americans make such stupid  trade deals?   Unintended consequences?  Maybe.  Or maybe the corporate and multinational lobby is so damned persuasive (Think $$$$$ persuasive) compared to fair trade, labor such brilliant analysts as Public Citizen that the deck is stacked against us non-corporate citizens.  With new trade agreements pending such as TPP, It is time to learn from past mistakes and make damned sure our congressional representatives robustly research and debate the contents of old trade deals and new trade proposals alike and vote to rebuild our manufacturing base and middle class.  These are the job creators, not the 1%.

This Annexation Is An Outrage: Let's Go To War

Reprinted with permission from DelawareLiberal by ProgressivePopulist on 3/20/2014


     
Oh, wait.  They're talking about Crimea, not Texas.  Nor Hawaii, or Midway, American Samoa, Wake Island and half dozen other pacific islands we annexed, from what I can see, without money changing hands.  And there are a dozen other annexations the good old U.S. of A. pulled off where we actually paid the owner while we held a gun to their head.  Such as Puerto Rico and Guam, not to mention the Panama Canal zone.
The neo-cons, some holding positions within this administration's State Department are rattling their sabres.  Or should I say, the sabres held by the great unwashed's sons and daughters they're eager to send off to blast and be blasted.  And John McCain just can't wait to mix it up with Russia.
As usual, many in America suffer historical amnesia about our own empire building and are eager to hold us up as the model of rectitude in the realm of nation-building. Fortunately, our President once again is the voice of rationality in the Crimean crisis, advocating diplomacy over a display of shock and awe.  He's opposed by a bunch who argue that we need to act tough, not necessarily act smart and calmly. And he does not seem eager to restart the cold war.
I lived through the cold war, beginning, middle and end.  And paranoia is not a happy place to be.  I remember the drills teaching us to crouch under our little school desks with the storage tops, as if that would shield us from radiation.  And the storage of survival items and canned goods in our basements, as if that would protect us from the Soviet invaders.  And the crude propaganda films about the superiority of capitalism over communism.  And the televised  McCarthy hearings that even my Republican father thought were an outrage.
I don't want to go there again, nor do I want that for my grand and great grandchildren.  I don't want this major distraction intended to make us forget about our own economic crisis for most in this economy or the pathetic dysfunction of our body politic.
Maybe it is time to let go of the behavior of competing nations trying to mimic our big stick diplomacy and concentrate on cleaning up our own act, unless our safety as a people is actually threatened.