More and more Americans agree that policing needs rethinkingbig time.

As new as the demand to rethink policing may be to some, America has heard this call before. In 1965, President Johnson created a Presidents Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice for that very purpose. His mandate to the commission was broad, and it took its mission to heart. The commission revisited the criminal justice system as a whole and, in the process, refocused the roles of police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and probation and parole officers to better control crime. Johnson welcomed the final report, with its emphasis on enforcement, as the most comprehensive evaluation to date in the Nations efforts to control crime. It was also the first step in Americas war on crime.

This switch from preventing crime to combating crime readily found support in police departments and police officers. It gave them all a clarity of purpose. Their job was to root out and stop the bad guy, which, by definition, made them the good guy. It also made performance measures simple. If crime rates decreased, the department got an A and the police chief, a much enhanced public profile. An officer with a track record of arrests became promotion material. Moreover, a war against crime conveyed an easily understandable mission, especially to the newly recruited who were coming home from Vietnam and brought with them a combat mentality as they changed into police uniforms and began patrolling Americas streets.

The mission to combat crime also gave police departments new sources of support. As the Vietnam War wound down, the military-industrial complex quickly expanded its focus to include policing. Defense-industry companies found avid champions of their products in their new police department customers. Helicopters and other military hardware became common police equipment. The firepower of police weapons increased. Police departments created SWAT teams.

This came with some downsides, though. As no one wore an I am a bad guy t-shirt, to some officers, everyone to whom they could not relate was suspect. Relations between the police and the community, and particularly with people in the inner city, became increasingly fraught. To many observers, the war on crime was a war on people of color.

But the view among policymakers of police as, first and foremost, crime combatants prevailed. It was that bipartisan. In 1971, President Nixon followed Johnsons war on crime with a war of his ownthe war on drugs. Arrests of black men skyrocketed, transforming imprisonment into an all-too-common experience for many men of color.

To counteract this militarization of the policeand to remind police that they were not a looming force but a community servicein 1970, the Ford Foundation created the Police Foundation. Through its sponsoring of carefully constructed experiments, the foundation revisited the premises on which traditional routine patrol was based. It reexamined the assumption that only men could patrol and studied whether women could serve as beat patrol officers, too. It focused on diversity. It even developed new approaches to police use of force. Some progress was made.

But that was then, and this is now. Today, after years of seemingly unending war, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, the United States is again suffering from the militarization of policing. In response, policymakers are doing the same analysis and taking the same steps yet again. The Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing, issued in 2015, is being dusted off, as policymakers search for guidance and ideas. Some of the reports 59 recommendations, such as diversifying police forces and collecting data on police use of force, bear an uncanny resemblance to the recommendations of Johnsons commission. The fact that the country is still struggling with many of the same issues half a century later, and the all-too-frequent instances of police-involved citizen deaths, makes clear that society needs to do more. The two of us posit that, unless citizens build, at the local level, a lasting consensus on the role of the police and develop operational systems to reinforce that role, the country will have the same results: an increased semblance of peace and peacekeeping in the short termuntil thats no longer the case.

So, if not national-level task forces and not unilateral legislative action, what will help ensure successful policing?

Former Speaker of the House Tip ONeill used to say, All politics is local. We suggest the same axiom applies to meaningful police change. What exactly does the community want its neighborhood police officers to do? It is the question today, and it has to be debated precinct-by-precinct and resolved department-by-department. It is not an issue to be determined by citizens alone. Police need to speak up. They have knowledge that all of society needs to learn. Nor is this a question where the goal should be reaching 100 percent agreement both on the analysis and on the answers. Calling for agreement is a bridge too far. Rather, it is an issue that requires mutual understanding. It is comity we are calling for, not unanimity. It is action we seek based on that shared understanding.

Where can local authorities begin? We suggest that policymakers, with the help of both police officers and citizens, should look first at what police behaviors get rewarded.

Most police officers do a fine job. They do it every day and, if they do it very well, no one notices, sometimes not even their supervisors. Their presence and actions are seamless with citizen needs. They are not a problem. But, if society doesnt acknowledge good policing, in time there may not be good policing. Police are human. Even the best officers give up if they feel there is no way to please the public.

As important, negotiation research makes clear that building consensus comes more easily if one starts the conversation with what is held in common and not in discordance. Focusing first on police misconduct ignores that research. Yes, some officers are running amok, but, as challenging as it can be to overcome deep-seated anger, there are more productive starting places for the conversation. Division serves to immobilize, as it increases both anger and hurt of all involved, citizens and police officers alike.

As angry as people are about the untoward deaths of people of color, numerous studies make clear that positive reinforcement of good behaviors has a more powerful effect in shaping improved performance than do negative reinforcement and criticism. Community leaders have to start somewhere to bring about sustained change. Lets start with what communities want to praise, what they want to reward.

Will it be easy to decide what to reward police for? No. Police are expected to clean up all the messes of society, from preventing crime, handling domestic disputes, protecting the homeless, managing traffic, and controlling drugs to fighting computer fraud, stopping human trafficking, and ending school violence. Part of the breadth of their mandate stems from the fact that they are the only people with local law enforcement powers on duty 24/7, 365 days a year. Part of the breadth of their mandate reflects the fact that it seems easier to build on an existing agency than to create new bureaucracies every time a new need arises, especially when an existing agency can cross-train its personnel.

But is the existing system of assigning all tough responsibilities to the police wise? Is it cost effective? Is it responsive to citizen needs? Would communities be better off reassigning police responsibilities to those who already have job-related training they can bring to the effort? For example, would it be better to have social workers handling family violence calls than beat officers? Perhaps not. Family calls are dangerous. Perhaps, though, social workers could review police files and then offer to help the family. This post cant answer that question. It poses it, though, because society must. It is part of the heavy lifting communities need to do in order to bring about lasting institutional change.

Its time to reconsider what police and the public praise officers for. Heres an easy place to start: Does your jurisdiction award points for officer arrests on the logic that the more active the officer, the better? Should it do so even if the prosecutor dismisses the case at intake for lack of probable cause or if the judge throws out the case on defense counsels motion because it violated the defendants constitutional rights?

The answer is easy to jump at, but not easy to arrive at when you take in interests of all. Some police officials have pushed back when questioned about the value of arrests as a performance measure. They explain that police arent responsible for prosecutorial or judicial decisions, so no officer should be penalized for what gets decided after an arrest. Given the current situation, would the citizenry agree with that perspective now?

Are there additional measures, even alternative measures? What if police officers were empowered to hand out referral tickets to somebody needing help so that they would be taken seriously by other government agencies. In this revamped and expanded incentive structure, the police officer would be rewarded on the number of tickets handed out that end in the citizen seeking help. Are referral tickets an idea that should be tried out? Regardless, it is time for the community and the police to work together to create mechanisms that assess community satisfaction with police service on an ongoing basis.

Police departments, their officers, and the citizens they serve need performance measurement systems that reflect todays values, reward citizen service as well as crime management, and imbue honesty in policing, while shunning gamesmanship. To be judged worthy by all involved, these measurement systems must promote officers and behaviors that benefit the community and penalize officers and behaviors that hurt it.

And thats not all. Built into the system must be mechanisms for transparency as much as for accountability. The public needs proof that the data is worthy of trust. Officers need to arrive at work knowing what is expected of them.

To do this, public officials, the police and the community they serve need to focus anew on defining and measuring police-performance, both good and bad, and see where it takes everyonetogether.

Let every police department, supported by a professional facilitator, become a safe venue for people to speak upwith both officers and the community each having their say. It is challenging to do, but all stakeholders need to respect all equally as they listen so that all can learn the fear each has of the other, the anger each has for the other, and the pain and psychological damage that police use of force, whether justifiable or not, causes everyonepolice and citizens alike. In this way, the community will be in a better position to let go of the past and move forward to a safer, freer future. In this way, it will be possible to reach consensus on a police-performance measurement system that rewards what society wants to measure and measures what society wants to reward.

The simple fact is that measurement affects performance, as it signals to the rank and file what the system values. Hence, what gets measured gets improved. What doesnt get measured, doesnt count. We allcitizens and police alikeneed to understand that. Respect that. And then, together, choose new performance measures that reflect todays needs and aspirations. With that, when police fail, the public will know it is of the police officers own doing and not because of a corruptible performance measurement system. And when the police succeed, the entire community can feel a part of it.

What might those measures be? If community values are to inform the answer, states and localities need the conversation they have long avoided. They need to confront issues, not attack each other. To help them come first to understanding and later to consensus on key issues, we suggest each community start with these questions:

Readers might detect sympathy here not only for people of color but also for the police. The officers job is perilous and challenging, not least because the United States is not a European country with deep gun control. The U.S. is a country with deep frontier values. Each day officers go out into society with a gun and directions not to use it unless they fear that their life, or someone elses, is in imminent danger. Each day anyone who wants to buy a gun has the opportunity to do so under the Constitution if they pass certain low-level criteria. Gunsthe elephant in the room. U.S. society treats the dangers of automobiles with more respect. Elected officials have made no progress in addressing the issue of guns. Nor have the courts. Yet, society expects each officer faced with a life-saving, and possibly life-taking, dilemma to have the wisdom of the cognitive brain when only the limbic brain is functioning.

Police need better direction. Citizens, administrators, managers and policymakers owe them that. In so doing, stakeholders need to share one clear understanding: Until the police performance-measurement system changes, the officer on the beat wont.

Excerpt from:

Measurement Matters: The Key to Police Reform - Lawfare

In his speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, presidential candidate Joe BidenJoe BidenThe Memo: Trump uses convention to target key states Pence condemns Kenosha violence, backs police in convention speech Biden praises Milwaukee Bucks response to Jacob Blake shooting MORE said, Character is on the ballot, castigating the Trump administration for its failure to tell the truth simply. In a bland, uninspiring speech brimful with empty platitudes (Light is more powerful than dark, for example), Biden promised a return to decency.

Biden has long cultivated a down-to-earth, authentic persona, and it is only a persona. This is because inauthenticity, lack of any real moral courage, and any real conviction beyond base power lust, is Joe Bidens defining quality. Despite his please for racial justice, Biden has been a deeply regressive (rather than progressive) figure for decades.

If Bidens politics are toxic, then it may be because he never really had politics, merely adopting Washington orthodoxy, without thought or conscience.

And that, in practice, has meant embracing a Washington consensus of endless war, a post-9/11 national security state that unconstitutionally spies on and tramples the rights of Americans, and a War on Drugs that has militarized the nations police departments and incarcerations millions, including so many innocents, disproportionately harming Black Americans.

Bidens instincts always seem to lead him in the wrong direction the easy direction conveniently euphemized as dealmaking and consensus-building. After 9/11, Biden praised George W. Bush as charting a course of moderation and deliberation. Where Senate candidate Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaBiden praises Milwaukee Bucks response to Jacob Blake shooting Obama offers support for Bucks over response to Jacob Blake shooting Bad law and failed order MORE ran in 2003 on principled criticism of the Patriot Act, Joe Biden has gone around bragging that he wrote it.

A reliable war hawk, its hard to find a U.S. military intervention Joe Biden didnt like, and he has been a consistent enemy of civil liberties, both in his positions on terrorism and domestic crime.

Bidens crime bill, perhaps his signature legislative accomplishment, was the accursed product of the police lobbying group the National Association of Police Organizations and with Biden, everything they wanted, they got. Bidens tough-on-crime speeches at the time in the early 90s were filled with thinly-veiled racist stereotypes and callous, vengeful attitudes about criminal justice.

It only stands to reason, then, that Bidens choice for VP would be a person who has boasted of being Californias top cop, of wanting to see more police officers on the street, and of, for example, treating truancy as a crime and block[ing] the release of nonviolent second-strike offenders, even as her states prisons overflowed. Like Bidens, Harriss career as a public servant stands ignobly on the ruins of American lives, particularly Black American lives, shes destroyed with the outmoded policies of the War on Drugs. As she runs for vice president, she seems to be without guilt or compunction, even as she shamelessly positions herself in favor of bold police reform nationwide.

How can anyone who is even somewhat familiar with Harriss record take this seriously? How can they take it as anything more than the practice of electoral politics at its most cynical and opportunistic? Like her running mate, Harris is hypocritical and inauthentic, happy to say, or do another to keep climbing the power ladder.

Of all the disastrous pairings that couldve come out of the Democratic primary season, Biden and Harris may well be the least progressive, the most concerning for a growing movement of Americans seeking meaningful reform on policing, criminal justice, and prison issues. Biden and Harris embody everything people rightly hate about politics, the inauthenticity, the smiling duplicitousness, the lack of moral courage.

They share a willingness to take any position to get to the top, their ugly, pitiless ambition overriding any principles they may hold.

As it happens, the Democrats tried something rather like this in 2016, nominating the safe-bet establishmentarian, a war-loving Washington mainstay with no conscience, whose fingerprints were all over so many of the worst policy mistakes of recent history.

The Democratic Party, which has no shortage of young, progressive up-and-comers to choose from, instead tapped Harris, an utterly unscrupulous cop, during a year when Americans around the country are out in the streets protesting exactly the injustices Biden and Harris represent. Bidens positions, like his career itself, are old, stale, and well past their expiration date.

DavidS.D'Amatois an attorney, an expert policy advisor at both theFuture of Freedom Foundationand theHeartland Institute.

Originally posted here:

Biden-Harris is the most regressive possible ticket - The Hill

Its no secret that the bulk of hard drugs that makes its way to Fall River, New Bedford and the Cape emanate from Providence.

NEW BEDFORD "Its no secret that the bulk of hard drugs that makes its way to Fall River, New Bedford and the Cape emanate from Providence," says the acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

And so a new district office of the DEA, initially located in Providence, will soon be announced, Timothy Shea said during a recent interview in the DEAs New Bedford regional office.

The new office, he said, will focus exclusively on drug trafficking extending from Providence to Cape Cod.

Shea, 60, said the local highway system affords people working for drug gangs and traffickers an easy means of delivery.

In addition to the human toll on people using and becoming addicted to narcotics, Shea noted that the illegal drug trade ultimately impedes economic development in U.S. cities and towns.

"Its disheartening," he said.

Shea, born and raised in Fall River, was appointed to his current role last May. He says the federal crime-fighting agencys mission is to disrupt, dismantle and destroy -- to take down drug gangs that peddle narcotics.

"Violent crime is fueled in part by drug trafficking (and) the violence is something we cant forget about," he said.

Shea said that earlier in the day, after extending an invitation to local police departments, he held an in-person meeting with police chiefs from Fall River, Fairhaven, New Bedford and Attleboro, to discuss the issue of drug trafficking in the states southeastern region.

Traffickers in the boroughs of New York City, Shea said, typically send their illegal wares to New England via Interstate 95.

But he said smugglers in Mexico continue to call the shots when it comes to the supply line into the United States.

"You have some Dominican gangs, but ultimately its Mexico that controls it," he said.

Shea said the coronavirus pandemic has created a unique situation at the border, which extends from Texas to California.

Just over a week ago the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement that it was once again extending measures first implemented in late March with the cooperation of the governments of Mexico and Canada to limit all non-essential travel across the borders.

The latest extension lasts until Sept. 21.

The Homeland Security statement also notes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as part of the agreement, has since March 23 suspended the practice of "detaining illegal immigrants in our (U.S.) holding facilities."

They instead are being sent back to their country of origin, according to the press release.

Shea says limiting cross-border travel to control the spread of the pandemic has created a unique dynamic wherein Mexican cartels have stockpiled drugs on one side of the border, while traffickers on the U.S. side are "awash with money" waiting for travel restrictions to be eased.

"Were expecting a flood of drugs into the U.S.," he said, once the restrictions are lifted.

Shea, however, said that DEA agents, with the assistance of other law enforcement agencies, in the interim have "seized tens of millions of dollars on the U.S. side" from traffickers.

Mexican drug cartels have long been known for exporting heroin and cocaine.

But Shea said hes particularly concerned about the growing influx of illegally produced fentanyl and methamphetamine being manufactured in Mexican cartel drug labs.

He identified the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, also known as CJNG, as the two major players in the Mexican drug trade.

The CJNG in recent years has gained international attention after police say it engaged in hanging headless corpses from highway bridges as a warning to other Mexican drug gangs.

It also has taken credit for murdering a judge and his wife and attempting to assassinate the police chief of Mexico City.

Shea was named Acting Administrator of the DEA by U.S. Attorney William Barr on behalf of President Donald Trump.

He previously worked as a senior counselor to Barr and also as interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He at one time also worked as a corporate lawyer for two Boston law firms.

Barr and Shea first met in 1991 when Shea was associate deputy attorney for Barr in the administration of George H.W. Bush.

Shea said hes well aware of arrests made during the past couple of years of members belonging to the New Bedford chapter of the Latin Kings street gang, some of whom were hit with federal, felony charges.

He said the DEA along with state and local police continue to monitor the situation, and are keeping an eye on other gangs that have been trying to establish a foothold in the Whaling City.

Shea said that although most news stories in recent years about the notoriously violent and often sadistic MS-13 gang have focused on brutal homicides on Long Island and in other states such as Virginia, the DEA is tracking the gangs activities throughout the country.

"Theyre here," he said, referring to New England, where MS-13 members in East Boston and Chelsea have in recent years been arrested and indicted.

U.S. Attorney Barr in July announced the indictment of eight MS-13 members in connection to the murder of six people on Long Island as part of the stated policy of President Trump, who in 2017 directed the Department of Justice "to go to war against MS-13."

MS-13 members have been known for using machetes and bats to commit murders. Victims have often included teenagers, some of them pregnant girls.

Shea said the pandemic slowed the progress of Operation Relentless Pursuit, an initiative that was launched in 2019 to combat violent crime in seven American cities.

But on July 8 a new initiative called Operation LeGend was launched targeting violent crime in Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Memphis, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City.

It was named in memory of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro of Kansas City, who died after being shot while asleep in his bed.

The new acting administrator said hes been visiting various DEA offices around the country: "Its good for me to get out and see how the troops are doing," he said.

Shea grew up in the Highlands section of Fall River and still makes visits to a sibling and other relatives living in the area.

He graduated from Bishop Connolly High School, attended Boston College and earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

Shea comes from a long line of Fall River firefighters dating back to a great grandfather and his late father Louis, who became the departments chief.

He said he also has a brother who is now a district fire chief, a cousin who is a fire department private and a nephew in Fall River who is attending the police training academy.

"I come from a long history of first responders. As a lawyer I guess Im the black sheep of the family," he joked.

See original here:

New DEA office in Providence to focus on drug trafficking between R.I. and Cape Cod - The Providence Journal

Every problem that confronts the US today can be traced back to racist ideology. Businesses cannot survive on just the small percentage of the very wealthy buying goods. Mass incarceration, poverty, healthcare disparities all of these issues affect your bottom lineand profits.

The following is taken from the keynote address delivered by Dolita Cathcart,Associate Professor of History atWheaton CollegeinMassachusetts, at our JustBrands virtual event on August 18, 2020.

Institutional racism permeates every aspect of our culture. The United Stateswas founded on political principles of freedom and equality, but not for all not for women, Native Americans, enslaved or free Africans and AfricanAmericans, or for anyone one else who was not an Anglo Saxon. Politics andeconomics shaped the US from the very beginning, and they remain intertwinedtoday. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution rest on theunderstanding that the only free Americans were wealthy, white males. Oureconomy is based on a slave economy and continues to be based on racialcapitalism a capitalism that was shaped by slavery and after emancipation,continued to be influenced by the tenets of slavery regardless of skin color.The following is a brief history of institutional racism, the systemicdiscrimination of marginalized groups, and how white Americans suffer collateraldamage from these principles of discrimination.

We are facing three major crises today: ongoing racism anddiscrimination,a pandemic, and aneconomic apocalypse. Racism and its intersectional -isms sexism, heterosexism,anti-Semitism, and classism affect all of these crises. In other words, whitemale Americans suffer collateral damage from past and current racist policies inAmerica. But before we get to that, let us first dive into a brief history ofracism in the United States.

The first Africans sold into slavery in the British colonies happened inVirginia in 1619. Slavery in those early days resembled indenturedservitude. Enslaved Africans were not necessarily enslaved for life, werereferred to as servants, intermarried with white indentured servants and NativeAmericans, and frequently rebelled together against slave-owning whites in theSouth. The result of these rebellions was a stiffening of what were called BlackCodes, the ending of white indentured servitude, and the killing or removal ofNative Americans. By the mid 1700s, slavery as we know it today was in place.Black Codes were used to separate white workers from blacks and Native Americansto prevent a permanent coalition of the poor from forming. White Southernpoliticians even changed the long tradition of having a child follow thefathers condition to following the mothers condition, because the former meantthat when a white man raped a black woman, their child would be free. This madeit possible for slave-owning whites to naturally increase their enslavedpopulation through rape, because their brown children would now be chattel theslaves of their white fathers.

During slavery, the Slave Patrol were the police. They arrested and kidnappedAfrican Americans throughout the nation and re-enslaved them in the South. Theuse of police forces to control Black and brown people begins during slavery andcontinues to this day. The police do not make the laws or policies, but theycarry out the preferences of the white political elite who make the laws.

The enslavement of Africans and African Americans was a boon to those wealthyenough to own people, and a psychological boost to those too poor to buy aperson. The growing economic inequities among different economic classes ofwhites required giving something to poor whites, and that something waswhiteness. Servant, serf or peasant none of that mattered in this newnation; because though these Americans might be poor, their white skin colorimmediately elevated them above those of a darker hue. In other words, at leastin the US, poor whites would not be at the bottom of the political, social andeconomic ladder. This psychological boost was important because poor whites didnot get much more. Prior to slavery being abolished in the Northern states, forexample, only those white males who owned significant property could vote. Inorder to keep the majority of white America in line after slavery was abolishedin the North, the franchise was opened to poor white males; and the idea ofwhiteness, of white superiority, was spread among those who had little else. Andit was from this group that our nascent police forces would be formed. They maynot have had much, but they could take out their frustrations on the bodies ofBlack people.

By the early to mid 1800s, some middle class white women began to agitate forthe end of slavery. Free blacks in the North and the South had been agitatingfor the end of slavery for at least a century by then, but the interesting thingabout these white women activists was that as they fought to end slavery, theyrealized they were not free like their brothers they were essentially owned bytheir fathers and husbands. This moment of realization created the firstintersection between race or skin color and gender, but not class. So, poorpeople of all skin colors remained marginalized.

The end of the Civil War, unfortunately, tore apart the coalition of whiteand Black abolitionists because women were not granted the franchise like blackmen. So, 19th-century feminists turned to Southern white women, thus cuttingtheir ties with black women and dissolving their united front.

Three Amendments were ratified after the Civil War the 13th, the 14th andthe 15th Amendments. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, except inprisons. Prisoners remain legal slaves under the Constitution. The14thAmendmentaddresses citizenship rights and equal protection of thelaws. And the15th Amendment granted black men the franchise. Fifty yearslater, women won the franchise with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Prior to the ratification of the 13th Amendment, the reconstruction of the Southwas left to former slave holders who were looking for ways to regain theirproperty and power. So, for the first two years after slavery, the Southreinstated a type of slavery an apprenticeship where the apprentice could bean apprentice for life. To make matters worse, the 13th Amendment also gavethese former slave owners a way to regain their property, through the prisonsystem. As a result, new Black Codes were passed that essentially made itillegal to be Black. African Americans who did not yet have jobs, homes, andin some cases, even clothing (because many former slave owners took back theclothing slaves wore) could be arrested and forced into the convict leasesystem, aspects of which still exists today. Conditions were worse than slavery.They could be killed with impunity, or starved and beaten or just disappeared.The prison industrial complex became the new plantation, and poor whites werealso abused in this system. If more workers were needed, then more black maleswere arrested. In 1898, for example, 78 percent of Alabamas state revenue wasderived from convict leasing. So, there was little impetus to focus on othermethods of accumulating state funds.

Throughout the rest of the 19th century, former slave holders and their sonscontrolled the south politically, socially and economically; and continued tocontrol national politics in Washington, as well. Black Codes became Jim Crowlaws thatsegregated the South and constrained voting by Blacks and poor whites. Poorwhites still had white skin privilege, but that privilege did not add much moneyto their pockets. At every moment of the day, African Americans were treatedlike second-class citizens, and that was on good days! African Americans foughtthis discrimination through the courts and frequently won, but the laws were notenforced. Organized Blacks protested and sued throughout the 1920s through the1950s; and this action protesting lynching, segregation and entrencheddiscrimination would galvanize action leading to the civil rights movement ofthe 1960s. Change, though, was slow and incremental more dramatic perhaps inthe South but it made little to no difference in the lives of Black Americanseverywhere else in the nation. So, the cities erupted, white support began towane, protests against the Viet Nam war were ramped up; and President RichardNixon promised Law and Order, and used his Southern strategy of stoking racismto appeal to a new market of voters to the Republican party, working-class whitemales or lunch-pail Republicans, whose racial resentment became a tool of theRepublican party.

White men had to compete with women and men of color for jobsfor the first time in American history because of programs created to mitigatesexism and racism. Their identity was further threatened as more women began tojoin the womens liberation movement, and as more people of color were able toattend college and enter the job market. What good is masculinity and white skinif it no longer afforded an advantage over women and people of color?Republicans continue to use this Southern strategy to link racists andmisogynists to the party to this day. The Republican party has become the partyof the rich and of poor whites, white nationalists, the Klan and their friends,religious Christian extremists, and gun rights advocates. These are notnecessarily bad people, but they are often people whose focus on their singularissue of white male straight Christian supremacy prevents them from recognizingthat they are pawns in a rich mans game of divide and conquer.

Nixons War on Drugs became part of an ongoing war on African American libertyand freedom, and fed the mass incarceration of Black America and privatizedprisons for profit. In an interview with Dan Baum for Harpers Magazine in1994, John Ehrlichman Nixons White House Counsel, Chief Domestic Advisorand creator of the Watergate Plumbers with H.R. Haldeman stated:

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had twoenemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? Weknew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but bygetting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks withheroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, andvilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lyingabout the drugs? Of course, we did.

The mass incarceration of African Americans began in earnest under PresidentRonald Reagan. In 1980, .2 percent of the population, about 500,000 people,were incarcerated; by 2008, .8 percent of the population, 2.3 million people,were in prison. Reagan, like Nixon, also used the Southern strategy to linkdrugs and poverty to black Americans. According to the FBI, 75 percent ofall drug users are white. According to the US Census Bureau, of the 46.2million people living in poverty in 2017 (the latest figures available), 31.7million are white and white children make up the largest percentage of Americaspoor.

Imagine the uproar if white suburban kids were treated like Black urban kids forthe same crimes. Drug addiction would have been treated differently decades ago.Money would have gone to education, mental health care, job training, or housinginstead of over-policing Black and brown communities. As a result, the policebecome untrained de facto social workers, which is not fair to them or tocivilians in trouble. They receive negligible training on issues of race andde-escalation techniques, leaving residents of color to deal with theunconscious and conscious biases of many of these officers. But it gets worse.According to a 2006 FBIreport,white supremacists have been infiltrating police departments across the country.These are the issues that the Defund the Police movement is trying to address.

Though Africans Americans and other marginalized folks are the target ofover-policing, poverty-inducing government policies, and poor healthcaredelivery; white America suffers collateral damage from these policies, a slownational apocalypse that is the result of blowback from racial discriminationand industrial automation.

In the 1990s, a new and cheaper form of heroin was introduced to whites in theSouthern and Western US. The dealers did not sell to Blacks because they weretaught to fear them. So, this was a case where being Black and discriminatedagainst ended up being a net positive for Black America. At the same time,Purdue Pharma introduced and pushed OxyContin falsely claiming it wasnot habit forming. OxyContin mostly affected middle class and wealthier whiteAmerica because of the disparities in healthcare delivery in the US. Again,racial discrimination favored Blacks. Medical students are still being taughtthat Black people have tougher and thicker skins and a higher tolerance forpain, among other myths. The result of these biases and stereotypes is thatwhite Americans are three times more likely to be treated for pain with anopioid than Black Americans. Again, this proved to be another net positive forBlack Americans regarding getting hooked on opioids, though they are still threetimes less likely to be treated for their actual pain. More recently, whiteshooked on OxyContin have turned to heroin because it is cheaper, and that heroinis cut with fentanyl and carfentanyl. The result, according to the CDC, isthat since 1999, 750,000 Americans have died from overdosing on drugs;two-thirds of those deaths were from heroin, and the majority are male andwhite. But now the nation is beginning to recognize that addiction is a medicaldisorder, and not a race-based moral failing. Meanwhile, that slow apocalypse isspeeding up.

We are witnessing a repeat of this racial affect with the coronavirus; that moreessential workers are dying who happen to be Black and brown Americans harkensback to how HIV/AIDS was tied solely to gay men in the 1980s and thus ignored bythe Reagan administration until Reagans Hollywood friend and actor, RockHudson, died of AIDS. Conservative policies favor the wealthy, with a littleleft over to fight the culture wars to keep aggrieved poor and middle classwhites happy. But racism and classism are directed at constraining theaspirations of Black Americans while maintaining generational poverty among poorwhites who are taught to blame Blacks for all of their troubles, thus preventingboth from recognizing they need one another to make real positive change.

The primary victims of racial capitalism are folks of color, but economicpolicies designed under an ethos of racial capitalism affect everyone asCOVID-19 is showing us.

All of this might seem to have nothing to do with race and the businesscommunity, but these are some of the issues that have sustained systemic racism which is why it is so hard to address. We have been taught these lessons forhundreds of years, without even knowing it was happening. It is a slowapocalypse. We are like the frogs in a pot of water slowly heating to theboiling point. The frogs dont register the temperature change until it is toolate and they die. Our slow apocalypse is happening now, and we are nearly tothe boiling point.

What do your Boardrooms look like? A representation of the nation today, or morelike a plantation? How many people of color and women do you have in executivepositions that do not include Human Resources? Are your workers paid equally, ordo white men make significantly more? What kind of mentorship programs do youhave that focus on those employees on the social/political/economic margins? Doyou have internship programs that focus on welcoming people of color? Do youhave any program that connects with marginalized communities in the communitieswhere you are based? Where do you recruit employees? Do you lobby Washington todo some good or just to get tax breaks?

The business community has muscle in this game. If we double the current povertynumbers from 46.2 million to 90-100 million, what happens to your companies?

Every problem that confronts this nation today can be traced back to racistideology. Every single one. The US is a consumer-based economy. Businessescannot survive on just the small percentage of the very wealthy buying goods.Mass incarceration, poverty, healthcare disparities all of these issues affectyour bottom line and profits.

Published Aug 26, 2020 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST

Dolita Cathcart is an Associate Professor of History at Wheaton College. Professor Cathcart is a noted historian of African American history. She grew up in NYC, graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Boston College. She is one of the earlier mentors for the Posse Foundation based in NYC that encourages leadership and diversity in top colleges and universities throughout the country. She was featured in the documentary, Birth of a Movement, currently available on Amazon Prime.

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The Role of Business in the Racial Equity and Justice Movement - Sustainable Brands

The outbreak of COVID-19 initially looked like a gift to autocrats around the world. What better pretext for a state of emergency than a pandemic?

It was a golden opportunity to close borders, suppress civil society, and issue decrees left and right (mostly right). Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbn in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and others took advantage of the crisis to advance their me-first agendas and consolidate power. Best of all, they could count on the fear of infection to keep protestors off the streets.

However, as the global death toll approaches a million and autocrats face heightened criticism of their COVID responses, the pandemic is looking less and less like a gift.

The news from Mali, Belarus, and the Philippines should put the fear of regime change in the hearts of autocrats from Washington to Moscow. Despite all therecent signsthat democracy is on the wane, people are voting with their feet by massing on the streets to make their voices heard, particularly in places where voting with their hands has not been honored.

The pandemic is not the only factor behind growing public disaffection for these strongmen. But for men whose chief selling point is strong leadership, the failure to contain a microscopic virus is pretty damning.

Yet, as the case of Belarus demonstrates, dictators do not give up power easily. And even when they do, as in Mali, its often military power, not people power, that fills the vacuum.

Meanwhile, all eyes are fixed on what will happen in the United States. Will American citizens take inspiration from the people of Belarus and Mali to remove their own elected autocrat?

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK) won the presidential election in Mali in 2013 in a landslide with 78 percent of the vote.

One of his chief selling points was a promise ofzero tolerancefor corruption. Easier said than done. The country was notoriously corrupt, and IBK had been in the thick of it during his tenure as prime minister in the 1990s. His return to power was also marked by corruption a $40 million presidential jet, overpriced military imports, a son with expensive tastes none of which goes over well in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Mali is not only poor, its conflict-prone. It has been subject to military coups at roughly 20-year intervals (1968, 1991, 2012). Several Islamist groups and a group of Tuareg separatists have battled the central government and occasionally each other over control of the country. French forces intervened at one point to suppress the Islamists, and France has been one of the strongest backers of IBK.

Mali held parliamentary elections in the spring, the first since 2013 after numerous delays. The turnoutwas low, due to coronavirus fears and sporadic violence as well as the sheer number of people displaced by conflict. Radical Islamists kidnapped the main opposition leader, Soumaila Cisse, three days before the first round. After the second round, IBKs party, Rally for Mali, claimed a parliamentary majority, but only thanks to the Constitutional Court, whichoverturned the resultsfor 31 seats and shifted the advantage to the ruling party.

This court decision sparked the initial protests. The main protest group, Movement of June 5 Rally of Patriotic Force, eventually called for IBKs resignation, the dissolution of parliament, and new elections. In July, government security forces tried to suppress the growing protests, killing more than a dozen people. International mediators were unable to resolve the stand-off. When IBK tried to pack the Constitutional Court with a new set of friends, protestors returned to the street.

On August 18, the military detained IBK and that night he stepped down. The coup was led by Assimi Goita, whodworked closelywith the U.S. military on counterinsurgency campaigns. Instead of acceding to demands for early elections, however, the new ruling junta says that Malians wont go to the pollsbefore 2023.

The people of Mali showed tremendous courage to stand up to their autocrat. Unfortunately, given the history of coups and various insurgencies, the military has gotten used to playing a dominant role in the country. The United States and France are also partly to blame for lavishing money, arms, and training on the army on behalf of their war on terrorism rather than rebuilding Malis economy and strengthening its political infrastructure.

Mali is a potent reminder that one alternative to autocrats is a military junta with little interest in democracy.

Alexander Lukashenko is the longest serving leader in Europe. Hes been the president of Belarus since 1994, having risen to power like IBK on an anti-corruption platform. Hes never before faced much of a political challenge in the countrys tightly controlled elections.

Until these last elections.

In the August 9 elections, Lukashenko was seeking his sixth term in office. He expected smooth sailing since, after all, hed jailed the countrys most prominent dissidents, he presided over loyal security forces, and he controlled the media.

But he didnt control Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The wife of jailed oppositionist Sergei Tikhanovsky managed to unite the opposition prior to the election and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets for campaign rallies.

Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in the election with 80 percent of the vote (even though he enjoyed, depending on which poll you consult, either a 33 percent or a3 percent approval rating). Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania. And that seemed to be that.

Except that the citizens of Belarus are not accepting the results of the election.

As many as 200,000 people rallied in Minsk this Sunday to demand that Lukashenko step down. In U.S. terms, that would be as if 6 million Americans gathered in Washington to demand Trumps resignation. So far, Lukashenko is ignoring the crowds demand. He has tried to send a signal of defiance byarriving at the presidential palacein a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon. More recently, he hasresortedto quiet detentions and vague promises of reform.

Just like the Republicans who appeared as speakers at the Democratic convention, key people are abandoning Lukashenkos side. The workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory are onan anti-Lukashenko strike, and many other workers at state-controlled enterprises havewalked off the job. Policeare quitting. The ambassador to Slovakiaresigned. The state theaters haveturned againstthe autocrat for the first time in 26 years.

Despite COVID-19, Belarus doesnt have any prohibitions against mass gathering. Thats because Lukashenko has been a prominent COVID-19 denialist, refusing to shut down the country or adopt any significant medical precautions. His recommendations:take a sauna and drink vodka. Like Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro, Lukashenko subsequently contracted the disease, though he claims that he was asymptomatic. The country has around 70,000 infections and about 650 deaths, but the numbers have started to rise again in recent days.

There are plenty of oppositionists ready to usher in democratic elections once Lukashenko is out of the way. A new coordinating councillaunchedthis month includes former culture minister Pavel Latushko as well as prominent dissidents like Olga Kovalkova and Maria Kolesnikova.

Evenstrong backingfrom Russia wont help Lukashenko if the whole country turns against him. But beware the autocrat who can still count on support from a state apparatus and a militant minority.

Nothing Rodrigo Duterte could do seemed to diminish his popularity in the Philippines. He insulted people left and right. He launched a war on drugs that left 27,000 alleged drug dealers dead from extrajudicial murders. Another250 human rights defendershave also been killed.

Still, his approval ratings remained high,near 70 percentas recently as May.

But Dutertes failure to deal with the coronavirus and the resulting economic dislocation may finally unseat him, if not from office then at least from the political imagination of Filipinos.

The Philippines now has around 200,000 infections and 3,000 deaths. Compared to the United States or Brazil, that might not sound like much. But surrounding the Philippines are countries that have dealt much more successfully with the pandemic: Thailand (58 deaths), Vietnam (27 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths). Meanwhile, because of a strict lockdown that didnt effectively contain the virus, the economy has crashed, and the country hasentered its first recession in 29 years.

Like Trump, Duterte has blamed everyone but himself for the countrys failings, even unleashing a recent tiradeagainst medical professionals. But Dutertes insult politics is no longer working. As sociologist and former member of the Philippines parliament Walden BelloobservesatForeign Policy In Focus, The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last 4 years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder.

In the Philippines, presidents serve one six-year term, and Duterte is four years into his. He may well attempt to hold on for two more years. He might even pull a Putin and change the constitution so that he can run again. A group of Duterte supportersrecently helda press conference to call for a revolutionary government and a new constitution. Another possibility, in the wake of recent bombings in southern Philippines, might be adeclaration of martial lawto fight Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to the Islamic State.

But the combination of the pandemic, the economic crash, and a pro-China foreign policy may turn the population against Duterte so dramatically that he might view resignation as the only way out.

Plenty of autocrats still look pretty comfortable in their positions. Vladimir Putin or forces loyal to him just engineered the poisoning of one of his chief rivals, Alexei Navalny. Xi Jinping has just about turned Chinese politics into a one-man show. Viktor Orbn has consolidated his grip on power in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoan has suppressed or co-opted the opposition parties in Turkey, and Bashar al-Assad has seemingly weathered the civil war in Syria.

Even Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, despite an atrocious record on both the pandemic and the economy, has somehow managed to regain some popularity, with his approval ratingnudging abovehis disapproval rating recently for the first time since April.

The U.S. presidential elections might tip the balance one way or the other. Although America still represents a democratic ideal for some around the world, thats not the reason why the November elections matter. Donald Trump has so undermined democratic norms and institutions that democrats around the world are aghast that he hasnt had to pay a political price. He escaped impeachment. His party still stands behind him. Plenty of his associates have gone to jail, but he has not (yet) been taken down by the courts.

That leaves the court of public opinion. If voters return Trump to office for a second term, it sends a strong signal that there are no penalties for ruining a democracy. Trump operates according to his own Pottery Barn rule: he broke a democracy and he believes that he now owns it. If voters agree, it will gladden the hearts of ruling autocrats and authoritarians-to-be all over the world.

Voting out Trump may not simply resuscitate American democracy. It may send a hopeful message to all those who oppose the Trump-like leaders in their lands.

Those leaders may have broken democracy, but we the people still own it.

FALL FUNDRAISER

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COVID-19 and the end of autocrats - NationofChange