The Rolling Stones recently had The War on Drugs remix "Scarlet" in celebration of the upcoming deluxe reissue of Goats Head Soup. (The original track, one of the rarities available for the first time as part of the reissue, features Jimmy Page on guitar.) Mick Jagger and War on Drugs' Adam Granduciel appeared today on Apple Music Radio to talk about the remix, the reissue and more.

"I thought that Adam might be interested in doing it," Mick told Apple Music Radio's Matt Wilkinson. "I thought he could do a good job, and make something slightly different. Because we got the original one, so I think that original classic version that we recorded with Jimmy and Keith and ... I mean, that sounds really great, but it's always good to have another take on it. So I thought Adam would do it, respecting the original, but doing something slightly different with it. And he did."

Mick then admits, "I never heard of Adam before (laughs) I never heard of War on Drugs. No, funny enough, I didn't hear the first War on Drugs album I realized. I realized that I heard the last one and the one before, I heard those two. And I always come to them a bit late with tracks like Red Eyes and Pain and things like that. So I was a bit late on it."

Adam, meanwhile, talked a little aboutnot wanting to mess the with drums too much on "Scarlett," as there was a rumor that Ginger Baker played on it. "I remember early, when the project came to me, there was talk that the original drummer was Ginger Baker from Cream. And so that was the myth for a minute. And I felt so bad that I had taken the groove and changed it. I was like, "I can't believe I messed with Ginger Baker.'" Mick called Jimmy Page, however, who told him Baker was not on the song. "He remembers everything. He says, 'No, it definitely wasn't Ginger.' And then we went to look and did some more research and we found out who it was, and he remembered everything. It was in Ronnie's basement. I said, 'Well, why wasn't Ronnie playing?' 'I don't know.' And it was at his house, but Ronnie wasn't playing. I mean, Ronnie's not the sort of person standing around not wanting to play.

The deluxe edition of Goat's Head Soup is out September 4 and there are more remixes to come -- this Friday, The Killers and Jacques Lu Cont will take a stab at "Scarlett" too. They also recently released an official video for "Scarlett" (the original version) featuring actor Paul Mescal who you may know fromhis Emmy-nominated role in terrificHulu drama Normal People. You can watch that below.

The interview also touched on what was next for The Rolling Stones, who released new song "Living in a Ghost Town" earlier this year. "The Stones were in the studio and we got some tracks that we hadn't finished. So I've been trying to finish those and do the vocals and some other parts," Mick said. "It's been a bit difficult because, I mean, we haven't really felt that we could really get together all in the same room since March.So we were supposed to get together and record, and now it's, I don't know about everyone else, but it seems still that we're in this kind of limbo, unknown situation where every week is a different thing that happens. So you just have to ... I mean, I'm just trying to work as hard as I can. I'm trying to do new songs and make good demos and things like that, and have fun and enjoy myself, and I speak to the rest of the band and stuff. But so I'm sure we'll get together as soon as we can."

You can listen to clips from the interview below.

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Mick Jagger and The War On Drugs talk 'Goats Head Soup' reissue & more - Brooklyn Vegan

To member and observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council

Re: UN Human Rights Council should urgently launch an independent international investigative mechanism on the human rights situation in the Philippines

Geneva, 27 August 2020

Your Excellency,

We, the undersigned civil society organizations, write to express our continued grave concern over ongoing extrajudicial executions and other serious human rights violations in the context of the war on drugs in the Philippines, which continues to be fueled by incitement to violence and discrimination by the highest levels of government with near-total impunity. We urge your delegation to ensure that the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) responds robustly to the recent report on the situation in the Philippines by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights when it convenes for its upcoming 45th session. Specifically, we urge you to actively work towards the adoption of a resolution establishing an independent international investigative mechanism on extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations committed in the Philippines since 2016, with a view to contributing to accountability. This would be in line with clear calls by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a group of Special Procedures, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, and national and international civil society.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report on the Philippines, published on June 4, 2020, emphasized the need for independent, impartial and effective investigations into the killings.[1] On June 25, mandate holders from 23 Special Procedures reiterated a previous call from 2019 for the HRC to establish an on-the-ground independent, impartial investigation into human rights violations in the Philippines.[2] The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, during the interactive dialogue on the Philippines at the 44th session of the HRC, called on the HRC to consider options for international accountability measures.[3] National, regional, and international civil society groups have also repeatedly called for an international investigation. The human rights situation in the Philippines meets the objective criteria or guiding principles supported by a large cross-regional group of States at the HRC to help the Council decide, in an objective and non-selective manner, when it should take action on the human rights situation in particular countries. The annex to this letter provides details of the status of the Philippines under each criterion.

Since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in June 2016, the human rights situation in the Philippines has undergone a dramatic decline. Extrajudicial executions committed in the context of the war on drugs continue to take place with total impunity. The High Commissioners report found, in line with previous findings from civil society, that the killings related to the anti-drug campaign were widespread and systematic, and that at least 8,663 people had been killed, with other estimates, including from the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, of more than triple that number.

Attacks against human rights defenders and critics of the government including activists, journalists, church leaders, trade union leaders, indigenous and peasant leaders and individuals who are members of groups affiliated with the political left are frequent and persistent. Human rights defenders who have spoken out in the HRC against the war on drugs and other human rights violations have faced reprisals from the government. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified the killings of 208 human rights defenders, journalists and trade unionists, including 30 women, between January 2015 and December 2019.[4] More recently on 17 August gunmen shot dead Zara Alvarez, a legal worker for the human rights group Karapatan, and on 10 August assailants brutally murdered Randall Echanis, a leader of the peasant group Anakpawis and longtime activist.

The OHCHR also found that civil society organizations and the media faced constant intimidation, police raids, arbitrary arrests, criminal charges and prosecutions, and shutdowns.[5] In June 2020, a Manila court convicted for libel journalists Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos Jr., both of the news website Rappler, which had been the subject of long-running harassment and threats from the Duterte government because of its reporting on the anti-drug campaign. Most recently, in early July, the Philippine Congress most of whose members are allied with President Duterte voted to deny the renewal of the broadcast franchise of ABS-CBN, the countrys largest TV and radio network, after years of explicit threats from President Duterte in part because of its critical reporting on the war on drugs. The recently passed Anti-Terrorism Law will institutionalize the governments abuse of power and will create an environment in which attacks on civil society and media will be perpetuated. In his 2020 State of the Nation Address, President Duterte once again reiterated his intention to reimpose the death penalty. Bills to reintroduce the punishment are currently being reconsidered before Congress.

To date, there has been virtually no accountability for unlawful killings committed by police and their associates or for the other above-mentioned violations. As noted in the High Commissioners report, persistent impunity for human rights violations is stark and the practical obstacles to accessing justice within the country are almost insurmountable.[6] Families of victims express total helplessness in describing their inability to obtain justice for their loved ones, citing the enormous obstacles to filing cases, the continued difficulty of obtaining police or autopsy reports, and the immense fear of retaliation they experience. The climate of total impunity leaves police and other unidentified gunmen, widely believed to be associated with law enforcement agencies, able to commit further extrajudicial executions without consequence.

President Dutertes administration has undermined institutions that have attempted to address impunity at the national and international level and thwarted independent investigations, including in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The governments withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, following the 2018 launch of a preliminary examination into crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Philippine government in the context of the war on drugs, shows yet another way in which the authorities have sought to evade accountability.

Not only has the government sought to evade accountability, but the President and other high-level officials have continued to encourage killings and given assurances to perpetrators that they would enjoy impunity for such killings.[7] The High Commissioners report found that rhetoric from the highest levels of the government has been pervasive and deeply damaging, and that some statements have risen to the level of incitement to violence.[8]

During the interactive dialogue at the 44th session of the HRC, the Philippine Justice Secretary announced the creation of a government panel to review more than 5,600 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings in the country.[9] Unfortunately, the Philippine government has failed to ensure this panel will be independent or impartial, notably because it will be led by the Department of Justice and will have among its members the very agencies including the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency accused of being behind these human rights violations and directly implicated in the war on drugs. Any review findings by the panel must also be evaluated and finalized by other government agencies involved in the anti-drug campaign. The well-documented fears of retaliation experienced by victims and their families in the Philippines will further undermine the credibility of government-led reviews. Accordingly, it is our organizations assessment that this panel is the latest attempt by the Duterte administration to evade international scrutiny for violations rather than a sincere attempt to put an end to these human rights violations and foster national accountability.

The HRC resolution A/HRC/41/2 on the Philippines adopted in July 2019 was an important first step to address the concerning human rights situation in the country, but a more robust response is necessary to deter further killings and other human rights violations and ensure a measure of accountability. In the absence of further Council action, the Philippine government will likely be emboldened to continue and escalate its violent anti-drug campaign and other serious rights violations, including reprisals against human rights defenders and civil society organizations, while the pervasive fear among victims and their families will only increase. Given the failure of the Philippine authorities to stop or effectively investigate crimes under international law and punish those responsible, we urge your delegation to work towards the adoption of a resolution to ensure that the Philippines remains on the agenda of the HRC and to create an independent, impartial, and effective investigation into extrajudicial executions in the context of the war on drugs and other human rights violations committed since 2016. The creation of such a mechanism is the only credible next step that the HRC can take to address the ongoing human rights crisis in the Philippines.

With assurances of our highest consideration,

[1] Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Philippines, UN Doc. A/HRC/44/22, 4 June 2020, paras 85 & 88.

[4] OHCHR Report, 4 June 2020, para 50.

[5] OHCHR Report, 4 June 2020, paras 49-59, and para 83.

[6] OHCHR report, 4 June 20020, para 83.

[7] In his 4th State of the Nation Address on 27 July 2020, President Duterte used human rights language to justify his war on drugs and violations seen under his administration. The President also threatened to kill suspected drug offenders, warning that he will be the enemy of criminals who harm the public, saying bodies will pile up if they return to their ways. In this context, the announcement that the Government will launch a domestic investigation at HRC44 lacks any kind of credibility.

[8] OHCHR Report, 4 June 2020, para 77.

Link:

Philippines: Letter to member and observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council - Human Rights Watch

Just over two years ago, I found myself upstairs of a seedy karaoke bar on the northeast outskirts of Manila. Sat opposite me was a man dressed all in black, with a black balaclava and a backpack with a bullet hanging off one of the zippers. Midway through our meeting he reached into his backpack, pulled out a handgun and laid it on the table. Keep that friggin barrel away from me, I thought.

This man was a hired killer, paid by a higher power to do their dirty work.

Yes, we have a lot of jobs in during Dutertes time, almost every day but not killing every day, sometimes I just drive up on a motorbike to verify the target, he said. No, I dont feel guilty because they are criminals. I have no problem killing them. Every time theres a job I get paid and treat my friends. We dont have any problems with any other group because no-one knows about us. Our boss is an army general, military, so we are protected.

Im an ex-convict-turned-writer, born in Russia but living in the UK. It occurred to me that growing up in Europe was an accident of birth: if I was brought up here, in the slums of Manila, it could have been me staring down the barrel of his gun. In 2013 I was convicted by Her Majestys court and served 2 years for pushing pot to my fellow students; in the Philippines, as of 2019 as many as 29,000 suspected users and dealers might have been slain in a bloody war on drugs.

It all started four years ago. Rodrigo Duterte, aka Duterte Harry or the Punisher, is a cartoon villain the leader of the Philippines who got voted into office in June 2016 on the tough-on-crime ticket. Duterte was a political outsider, claiming he stood for the common man while rubbing shoulders with the elites. He represented hope to a nation battered by typhoons, war, crime, corruption and poverty. Anyone unhappy with the status quo could vote for him. And they did.

To be sure, the Philippines had a crime problem. Many lived in extreme poverty, turning to drugs as an escape or to make a living. Kingpins controlled entire barangays (neighbourhoods) protected by police and politicians, who were often elbow-deep in the business themselves. Foreign crime syndicates, including Chinese triads and Mexican narcos, were involved.

Filipinos had had enough and were looking for someone to blame: those people were people who use drugs, which in the Philippines usually means either weed or crystal meth (shabu). These are the people, Duterte says, which cause all the trouble. His answer was to kill them all.

"Do the lives of 10 of these criminals really matter?" he said. "If I am the one facing all this grief, would 100 lives of these idiots mean anything to me?"

Ostensibly, the campaign against drugs began with Project Tokhang or knock and plead, where police went door-to-door like heavily-armed Jehovahs Witnesses and begged suspects to change their ways. What this meant in practise is if you got one of those house calls, and youre not lucky enough to be herded into an overpacked prison, it meant youre on a list and the authorities know where you are.

The first way to die is what they call a buy-bust operation: that is, an undercover agent or a stool pigeon comes up to you and tries to score. Next thing you know, youve had your brains redecorate the wall and the officers inevitably find a firearm or a sachet of meth to cover up whatever it is theyre doing.

More common are the mysterious, vigilante-style killings carried out by those like the man in the balaclava. Originally, death squads executed communist rebels in a ruthless, Latin American-style counterinsurgency during the Cold War. Now, the same tactics have been turned on people who use drugs. Hitmen on the polices payroll, or sometimes the police themselves, aim to reduce the number of Filipinos taking drugs admittedly, by reducing the number of Filipinos.

The anti-drug campaign encourages barangays to submit lists of drug users, and the profiles of a lot of those arrested are also submitted to the government, Jacqueline Ann De Guia, public affairs officer for the Commission on Human Rights, told me. Its not uncommon to hear those who died were originally part of the surrenderees or on lists from communities. Theres a lack of guarantee from the police and people can use it to get back at their enemies. Intelligence-gathering is a police not community function.

In other words, even if youve already handed yourself in and admitted using or selling, that wont save you. Youre much more likely to meet your maker if youre poor: Dutertes admitted the millionaires snorting white lines on their yachts arent his primary targets. Its shabu, the poor mans cocaine, thats the scourge of society.

"A year or more of shabu use would shrink the brain of a person and therefore he is no longer viable for rehabilitation," Duterte told his officers.

Walking around Manila, watching everyone crowding into jeepneys (redecorated army trucks from WWII) and tuk-tuks, going about their day, if you hadnt read the news you wouldnt even know there was anything going on. The murder of tens of thousands of men, women and even children is outrageously evil by any standards, but there might be something even more sinister happening here.

No-one wants to be known as that guy who tried to wipe out entire nations Hitler ruined that for everyone so they fall back on semantics as their last line of defence. Turkey prefers calling what it did to Armenians mass killings, as if that makes forced marches through the desert any less bad. So ideas on what exactly constitutes genocide vary. Drug users are not an ethnic, religious or sexual minority, but does that really matter? Mass murders by communist regimes such as the Khmer Rouge or far-right juntas in Argentina and Indonesia are often described as genocides, but most of their victims were picked for their supposed political beliefs.

You could say that unlike your race or sexuality, using prohibited pick-me-ups is a choice. But theres a few problems with that. First of all, its debatable how much choice someone seriously addicted actually has (as anyone whos tried quitting smoking will attest). Then theres a hint of the rape apologists mentality: so-and-so led an immoral lifestyle, and they had it coming. Its true of course that a small number of users (acting on chemical influence or desperation) harm themselves and others, but most do not I certainly didnt know many. When that is the case, if youre despised and treated like a criminal, is it really surprising when you succumb to the label? Meanwhile, the majority of drug-related homicides arent committed by methed-up lunatics on a rampage, but gangsters settling business. Most people just sit around getting high wasting time perhaps, but not causing trouble. The war on drugs is like a dictator putting down a revolt, massacring innocent villagers because a few of their neighbours were rebels.

Many genocides or mass killings, crimes against humanity, whatever you want to call them follow a similar pattern, which we can see not only in the Philippines but the war on drugs across the globe:

To be clear: what's happening in the Philippines is not even close to the butchery of Rwanda or the horrors of the Holocaust. But it also fits the pattern. Liketyrants across the world, Dutertes found himself a group no-one cares about on whom he could blame all of societys ills. His us vs them rhetoric has singled out drug users as vile lowlifes that must be exterminated.

If I become president, there would be no such thing as bloodless cleansing, he promised in a campaign speech. My God, I hate drugs. And I have to kill people because I hate drugs.

Drug users are an easy target because few of us make a distinction between casual use and addiction (though wed make that distinction between having a glass of wine in the evening and full-blown alcoholism), or ask why those suffering from addiction do they things they do. Its much easier to blame a sinister force - dope, cartoonishly evil pushers, or an individuals poor choices - than deal with the issues of poverty, hopelessness and social exclusion. A lot of those so-called addicts are compensating for serious mental illness or trauma, so accusing them of being lowlifes and freaks isnt helping.

But neither are they inherently weak individuals, implying their deaths are the result of well-deserved, Nazi-like social Darwinism. The peoples champ, Manny Pacquiao, has admitted trying every substance under the sun, but had he been doing that now he may not have lived long enough to be the hero we all know and love. What if it was your brother, your sister, your daughter thats next? Oh sure, I know they wouldn't do such a thing", but hey, I was top of my class and look where I ended up.

Most arent even criminals. None of my customers used to steal. Those that do, steal because they need money. You know who else steals because they need money? A lot of crime is rooted in inequality. Shall we go around blasting everyone under minimum wage? If you can't produce a bank statement POW, sucker! Drunkards cause a lot of trouble too, while the drink slowly destroys their bodies. hey you with the Coors Light! BANG!!!

In fact the serious crime rate in the Philippines, as in most of the world, had been dropping over the past few years, falling 26% in 2014 under President Aquino. By contrast under Duterte, the murder rate climbed ridiculously high, jumping to 3,760 in the first three months of his term compared to 2,359 that same time in 2015. The whole war on drugs was based on false pretences. And yet.

Hitler massacred three million [sic] Jews, Duterte once said at a press conference. Now, there are three million drug addicts. Id be happy to slaughter them.

This demi-Fhrer is in charge of a country of 100 million people.

But Filipinos dont seem to mind. In a survey last year, 82% said they were happy with the anti-drug bloodbath. Its not so much Dutertes whipped them up into a frenzy as on this poor, conservative, Catholic island; the idea of compassion to drug users, which took a long time to get going even in liberal countries, simply doesnt cross the public mind. That and the crime rate has fallen (again), which begs the question: how many summary executions does it take to stop getting your iPhone nicked?

Its the only way, sir, one of my fixers told me. Before, you couldnt walk down this street at night.

OK, Dutertes terrified the muggers into staying home. But its not muggers specifically that drew his ire its shabu users and sellers, one or two of whom incidentally may have been muggers but the rest of whom would have been innocent.

Colonel Romeo Caramat was a police chief north of Manila when 32 people were killed over a single bloody day in 2017.

Shock and awe definitely did not work, he told Reuters in an interview. Drug supply is still rampant.

Caramat estimates that hundreds died while he was chief at Bulacan and though many resisted arrest, they were all low-level dealers or users. While theres less crime overall than there was before, the dope supplys as consistent as ever. When 370 kilos of meth were found in a Chinese drug lords flat, it turned out that was just the leftovers he had tonnes stashed elsewhere. Seizures rarely count as successes for every five kilos intercepted, theres fifty kilos going another way. They make a good photo-op for the cops, though.

In November 2019, Duterte appointed his fierce political rival, Vice President Leni Robredo, as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee Against Illegal Drugs(ICAD), giving her access to classified reports and the power to change policy, after she said his strategy wasnt working. Prove it, he said. She produced a report, using the polices own data, that over the past three years only 1% of the nations shabu supply and the dirty cash from its sales had been taken out of circulation. Duterte fired her after three weeks.

In other words, theres been no quantifiable victory in the campaign, and a ruthless leader slaughtered 30k of his own people to win a popularity contest. Even in the era of coronavirus, the slaughter continues and Duterte is now under investigation for crimes against humanity. Guys, mass killings of vulnerable people who need help because a few might have broken the law will not be looked upon kindly in the history books. After the Holocaust the world said, Never again. But this time, the world doesnt seem to care.

* Niko Vorobyov is a government-certified (convicted) drug dealer turned writer and author of the book Dopeworld, about the international drug trade. You can follow him on Twitter @Lemmiwinks_III

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Is What's Happening in the Philippines a Genocide? - TalkingDrugs

Dispatch Editorial Board Published 12:06 p.m. ET Aug. 26, 2020

James MacWilliams prunes a marijuana plant that he is growing indoors in Portland, Maine. Photo By Robert F. Bukaty(Photo: Associated Press)

Marijuana legalization in the U.S. hasfor yearsbeenone economic downturn from widespread adoption.

Enter the coronavirus.

Gov. Tom Wolf's call Tuesday for the legalization of recreational pot certainly wasn't a shocker. Wolf's said that before and his lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, is an outright advocate for legalized weed.

Fetterman's lobbying effort is rightly focused on the egregiously disproportionate effect marijuana enforcement has had on Black and brown communities.

Seemingly every available data set only reinforces Fetterman's argument: The criminalization of marijuana justified decades ago throughracist tropes and fear mongering forces minorities, who don't use the drug more than white Americans,into the criminal justice system at rates that are neither acceptable nor reasonable.

More: A windfall or up in smoke?: Revenue picture hazy for states looking to legalize marijuana

More: 'End ... this ridiculous and racist war on cannabis': Closer Look

The War on Drugs, perhaps by design, targets Black communities.

But the strongest argument isn't always the most politically viable.

Wolf's claim Tuesday focusing solely on the potential tax boon should the economically battered state legalize recreational marijuana use tugs at Republicans' purse strings and, thereby, their supposed Reaganistic sensibilities.

What's yet to be seen is if Republicans, owners of the state Legislature, actually meant all the bluster about "financial responsibility" and "balanced budgets."

State revenues plunged following Wolf's mandated business shutdowns. The 2019-20 budget, a once promising financial cycle, closed in July with a$3.2 billion shortfall, reported Spotlight PA. And to say the piecemeal reopening has been sluggish would be an understatement.

Gov. Tom Wolf talks with a group during his press conference at PA CareerLink in York Tuesday, July 28, 2020. Wolf was highlighting the importance of job-finding resources in light of the unemployment cause by the COVID-19 outbreak in the state. Bill Kalina photo(Photo: Bill Kalina, The York Dispatch)

Wolf's Republican opponents in the Legislature have blasted his closure orders, and his use of executive power, largely because the damage done to business and industry.

At least, on this point, everyone can agree that the financial effects are widespread and could, much like the 2008 market crash, do lasting damage to Pennsylvania's budget.

Like a man on a carrot-loving mule, Wolf on Tuesday dangled an estimated $90 million in front of Republicans' collective noses. What's yet to be seen is just how stubborn lawmakers really are.

It's likely the responses from the legislative majority will be at one time predictable and tired. They'll talk about "the children," while moving to ax key social programs. They'll distort studies about traffic fatalities, which remain inconclusive, in Colorado and Washington state, where marijuana has for years been legal. They'll roll out leaders of police organizations who, for decades, have made a cottage industry out of"educating" children about drug use through fear and hyperbole instead of facts and reason.

And they'll score a point with the lack of available road-side sobrietytesting available to officers conducting traffic stops.

But, at he end of the day, Pennsylvania makes no bones about taxing its peoples' vices. Casinos, booze and cigarettes are obvious examples.

Relative to those three sins, marijuana seems tame.

That's not to say pot is without its downfalls. Smoking it is carcinogenic, researchers say. Its use could have long-lasting effects on young brains, studies suggest.

But anyone who believesmarijuana isn't already widely available and easily accessible should go bridge shopping in Brooklyn.

Society has given up on the failed drug war of the past 60 years. Most Americans realize that marijuana's pitfalls are minor next to the other vices society already accepts, and the costs of enforcement are too high.

And, frankly, the state needs the cash.

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EDITORIAL: Legal pot to the rescue? - York Dispatch

Britte McBride is stepping down from her seat on the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, saying that she feels it is the right time to assess her next steps.

I took this appointment to contribute to the establishment of a sound regulatory structure for the state and Im really proud of the work that weve done, but after a lot of thought it just feels like its the right time for me to step back and to assess what my next step is going to be, McBride told MassLive in an interview Thursday. You kind of step back occasionally and assess where you are and for me, its that moment in time.

McBride, who holds the public safety seat on the commission, which regulates Massachusetts marijuana industry, said shell now explore her options and does not have a specific opportunity lined up.

Im really passionate about public policy, I love being a problem solver and I get a lot of joy out of the challenge of building things, which is why this job really spoke to me and why this appointment, I think, really fit with who I am professionally, McBride said. It was something novel and challenging and there were certainly a lot of problems that needed to be solved and a lot of issues that needed to be addressed, so I dont know what the next thing is going to be but Im hoping Ill land on something that combines those elements.

An exact date for McBrides departure is not yet clear, but it could be in October. The commissioner said she is committed to staying on until the current regulatory process is complete and until the seat former commissioner Kay Doyle left earlier this year is filled.

McBride said she feels her biggest contribution to the commission has been in the creation of a regulatory framework.

At the earliest stages of drafting those regulations alongside Commissioner Doyle, that provided the foundation that we have only built upon, she said. That framework does things like prioritizing public safety, it does things like mitigating perceived risks, which I think lends credibility and trust in our legalized market.

The commissioner said she hopes her legacy in the role will be in taking a balanced approach to creating public policy.

Im hoping that I helped to ensure the safety of patients, consumers and employees, McBride said.

But, I also hope that moving forward, as people look at what were doing from a regulatory perspective, McBride continued, I just I really truly believe that by implementing a comprehensive regulatory structure, as weve done, that were promoting an industry thats responsible, its sustainable and durable, and thats really important because that industry in Massachusetts will be able to pivot with minimum pain when the day comes that federal legalization happens and I think that the day probably is coming when federal legalization will happen.

Before being appointed to the commission, McBride previously served as legal counsel to the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety within the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, deputy counsel to the Massachusetts Senate, and spent seven years as an assistant attorney general in the Attorney Generals office, where she also served as chief of the Policy and Government Division. Shes a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and Suffolk University Law School.

The office of Attorney General Maura Healey appointed McBride to the commission in 2017. Her term on the commission was slated to end next year.

Doyle, who left the commission in May, had a term slated to end days from now on Aug. 31. That is also the day Commissioner Shaleen Titles term ends.

Titles role on the commission is appointed by a majority vote of the governor, attorney general and treasurer and receiver. The appointing authorities recently had applications open for the governance and social justice seats on the commission, with a due date of Aug. 25. The Cannabis Control Commission on Thursday did not have further information about Titles seat.

Commissioner Jennifer Flanagans term expires Aug. 31, 2021, and Chairman Steven Hoffmans term runs through Aug. 31, 2022.

McBride said she hopes the public safety seat will be filled by someone with high ethical standards, who brings perspective to the role and is able to work collaboratively.

I hope that its somebody that picks up the mantle of making sure that public safety and public health is a priority and is reflected throughout our regulations and I clearly believe that the attorney general is going to put somebody into this seat who will carry forth that methodology and that philosophy, she said.

Looking ahead, there is more work to be done in terms of public safety and the marijuana industry broadly. McBride said she would like to see the creation of a state standards laboratory for testing, the development of specialized coursework at higher education institutions with scholarships and more incubator spaces.

McBride had been looking at the creation of a task force to address sales of marijuana in the traditional market and hopes it will remain a priority with creative thinking on how to address the issue.

When the commissioners were first appointed in 2017, they shared a borrowed office space and started to build the regulatory agency from the ground up. Today, the commission has a headquarters in Worcesters historic Union Station and is an agency of around 65 employees. The states legal marijuana industry has generated more than $122 million in tax revenue in its first two years.

McBride said she feels the commission has put into place one of the most comprehensive regulatory structures of any state with legal marijuana, working to address the illicit market by adopting policies like a marijuana delivery license. Applications for that license became available earlier this year and are currently limited to applicants who have been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.

While the contributions so far have been significant, McBride said she feels its time for new voices to be added to the conversations.

McBride said shes enjoyed meeting and talking with people through her role on the commission, as well as working closely with colleagues.

I would be remiss if I didnt call out the hard work and the fair-mindedness of the people that make up this commission and just the joy of working with them, she said. Its been a learning experience and I will always treasure it.

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Britte McBride stepping down from Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, hopes her legacy will be in crea - MassLive.com

When the Mexican legislature meets this fall, it is poised to pass a marijuana legalization bill. The legislation will legalize cannabis for all usesrecreational, medical, industrialand will create a Mexican Cannabis Institute to grant licenses for the cultivation, processing, sale, import, export, and research of marijuana. The country's president and ruling political party have both endorsed the initiative, and it has already been approved by three Senate committees.

The bill's backers hope it will curb the influence of Mexico's drug cartels. Marijuana accounts for upwards of half of the cartels' revenues, which are estimated to range between $20 and $50 billion dollars annually.

The past year has been the bloodiest yet in Mexico's war against the cartels. When security forces in the city of Culiacan tried to arrest the son of drug lord El Chapo Guzmn in October 2019, they found themselves outnumbered and outgunned by the Sinaloa Cartel. In June, gangsters ambushed Mexico City's police chief with 400 rounds of ammunition from semi-automatic rifles; in July, cartel gunmen massacred 26 residents of a drug rehab center in Guanajuato.

In the past decade, Mexico has suffered 250,000 homicides because of the drug war. Whole swaths of the country are now controlled by organized crime, including the states of Guerrero, Michoacan, Morelos, and Tamaulipas. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has killed more than 100 officials in the state of Jalisco alone, including federal, state, and local policemen, soldiers, mayors, and city council members. In June, it killed a federal judge and his wife. A U.S. Army Intelligence report estimates that over a six-year period, 150,000 of the Mexican army's 250,000 soldiers deserted, finding higher wages in the drug industry.

As Mexico's president from 2000 to 2006, Vicente Fox was a dutiful foot soldier in Washington's War on Drugs. But now Fox has been telling Time magazine that we should end prohibition "to take all the production chain out of the hands of criminals."

Drugs, Fox added, are "bad for your health, and you shouldn't take them. But, ultimately, this is the responsibility [of] citizens."

Fox has been for legalization for a while. "We should look at it as a strategy to strike at and break the economic structure that allows gangs to generate huge profits in their trade, which fuels corruption and increases their areas of power," he wrote from his ranch in 2010. A decade later, he hopes this marijuana bill will be the first step toward legalizing all drugs.

Mexico is the latest in a series of Latin American countries to reject the U.S.'s approach to drug policy. Uruguay sits on a transit route for marijuana and cocaine. When Jose Mujica was elected president there in 2009, he cast a wary eye on the drug cartels that had taken control of nearby Paraguay. He knew they could easily seize Uruguay as well.

One of Mujica's first initiatives was to legalize marijuana, anticipating that all drugs might eventually follow. Latin American presidents had held back from legalization out of fear of retaliation by the United States. But by this time, several states in the U.S. had liberalized their marijuana laws. That helped give Latin Americans cover to opt out of the drug war themselves.

In 2009, the Argentine Supreme Court declared in a landmark ruling that it was unconstitutional to prosecute citizens for possessing drugs for their personal use. And in 2012, Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, suggested that the legalization of all drugs might be in order. Two years later, his country eased its prohibitionist stance by ceasing aerial fumigation of the coca crop. Four years after that, Colombia's Constitutional Court legalized recreational cannabis.

The insurgencies that have terrorized Colombia for decades have all been fueled by the illegal drug trade, says Daniel Raisbeck, who ran for mayor of Bogot, Colombia, in 2015 and is a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this magazine). In 1979, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were militarily irrelevant, with a rag-tag army of around 800 troops. But in 1982, it made the strategic decision to take part in the drug trade. The FARC very quickly became very rich. By the end of the 1990s, it had around 20,000 troops.

Raisbeck himself lost a family member when the Medelln Cartel shot down a Boeing 727 passenger aircraft in 1989 in an attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate who was supposed to be on board. "This was but one of the many senseless, ruthless, and vicious acts of terror that I remember from my childhood," Raisbeck wrote in 2014.

Pedro Trujillo, a professor of international relations at Universidad Francisco Marroqun in Guatemala City, lost two brothers to heroin overdoses. Trujillo thinks they might have been alive to this day if there had been clinics where his brothers could take safe, legal doses of the drug while getting addiction counseling. Trujillo proposes "legalization in combination with education about the dangers of drug use."

Latin America's wave of support for legalization comes at a time when there is growing skepticism in the United States about the drug war's efficacy, even among conservative lawmakers. In 2019, 91 Republicans joined 229 Democrats to pass legislation that gave marijuana businesses full access to the American banking system.

The drug war's beneficiaries have been armed criminals, from the FARC to the Mexican cartels to the Taliban. When Prohibition ended in 1933, so did much of the criminal violence that haunted the United States during the Prohibition era. Latin Americans have good reason to think the same thing will happen in their countries if they end narco-prohibition.

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Breaking the Bloody Mexican Drug Cartels - Reason

By John W. Whitehead

They came again this morning at about 8:00 oclock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a police state I feel like I am in the middle of a war zone.Journal entry from a California resident describing the governments aerial searches for marijuana plants

Backyard gardeners, beware: tomato plants have become collateral damage in the governments war on drugs, especially marijuana.

In fact, merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, orshopping at a gardening storefor gardening suppliesincredibly enoughcould set you up for a drug raidsanctioned by the courts.

Its happened before.

After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store, a Kansas family found themselves subjected to a SWAT team raid as part of a multi-state, annual campaign dubbed Operation Constant Gardener, in whichpolice collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the gardening storeand then investigated them for possible marijuana possession.

By investigated, I mean that police searched through the familys trash. (You can thank the Supreme Court and their1978 ruling inCalifornia v. Greenwoodfor allowing police to invade your trash can.) Finding wet glob vegetation in the garbage, the cops somehow managed to convince themselvesand a judgethat it was marijuana.

In fact, it was loose-leaf tea, but those pesky details dont usually bother the cops when theyre conducting field tests.

Indeed, field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no drugs are present. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, its almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to.A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiards chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.

Theres a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs and get you subjected to a raid, because thats all it takesjust the barest whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal activityto start the ball rolling.

From there, these so-called investigations followthe usual script: judge issues a warrant for a SWAT raid based on botched data, cops raid the home and terrorize the family at gunpoint, cops find no drugs, family sues over a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and then the courts protect the cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity.

It happens all the time.

As Balko reports, Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, andheld innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (Its happened with all five.)

Surely, you might think, the government has enough on its hands right nowpolicing a novel coronavirus pandemic, instituting nationwide lockdowns, quelling civil unrests over police brutalitythat it doesnt need to waste time and resources ferreting out pot farmers.

Youd be wrong.

This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or employed.

In this case, however, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopterslikely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devicesonexploratory sorties every summeragain at taxpayer expensein order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations.

Often, however, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.

Just recently, in fact, eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers. Oftentimes thesejoint operations involve local police, state police and the Army National Guard.

One woman reported having her tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs, after a helicopter hovered over our house for 20 minutes this morning. Another man reported a similar experience from a few years ago when police showed up inunmarked SUVs with guns pulled. Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter because the heat signature in the copter didnt match what was growing.

Back in 2013, an aerial surveillance mission spotted what police thought might be marijuana plants. Two days later, dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment, including helicopters and unmanned flying drones, descended on The Garden of Eden, a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, for a10-hour raid in search of marijuanathat turned up nothing more than tomato, blackberry and okra plants.

These aerial and ground sweeps have become regular occurrences across the country, part of the governments multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program. Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as Eradication Day.

Started in 1979 as a way tofund local efforts to crack down on marijuana growersin California and Hawaii, the Eradication Programwent national in 1985, right around the time the Reagan Administrationenabled the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic war on drugs.

Writing forThe Washington Post, Radley Balko describes how these raids started off, with the National Guard, spy planes and helicopters:

The project was called the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, or CAMP In all, thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring Wagners Ride of the Valkyries as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes into the fields of California In CAMPs first year, the program conducted 524 raids, arrested 128 people, and seized about 65,000 marijuana plants. Operating costs ran at a little over $1.5 million. The next year, 24 more sheriffs signed up for the program, for a total of 37. CAMP conducted 398 raids, seized nearly 160,000 plants, and made 218 arrests at a cost to taxpayers of $2.3 million.

The areas larger growers had been put out of business (or, probably more accurately, had set up shop somewhere else), so by the start of the second campaign in 1984, CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller growers. By the end of that 1984 campaign, the helicopters had to fly at lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants. The noise, wind, and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows, kick up dust clouds, and scare livestock. The officials running the operation made no bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using.They considered the areas they were raiding to be war zones.In the interest of officer safety, they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint.

Right around the same time, in the mid-1980s, the federal government started handing out grants to local police departments to assist with their local boots-on-the-ground war on drugs. These grants (through the Byrne Grant program and COPS program, both of which started to be phased out under George W. Bush, only to be re-upped by Barack Obama) could be used to pay for additional police personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance and information systems. However, studies show that while these federal grantsdid not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence, they did incentivize SWAT team raids.

But how do you go from a war on drugs to SWAT-style raids on vegetable gardens?

Connect the dots, starting with the governments war on marijuana, the emergence of SWAT teams, the militarization of local police forces through the federal 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer vast amounts of military equipmentmachine guns and ammunition, helicopters, night-vision gear, armored carsto local police departments, and the transformation of American communities into battlefields: as always, it comes back to the make work principle, which starts with local police finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding.

Each year, thegovernment spends between $14 and $18 million funding helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal marijuana plants. These sweeps are even beingcarried out in states where its now legalto grow marijuana.

The sweeps work like this: Local police, working with multiple state agencies including the National Guard, carry out ground and air searches of different sectors.Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their findings to police on the ground, who then carry out a search-and-destroy mission.

Mark my words: the use of police drones will make these kinds of aerial missions even more common.

For the most part, aerial surveillance is legal. As Arthur Holland Michel writes forThe Atlantic: When it comes to law enforcement,police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood.

There have been a few notable exceptions.

In 2015, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled thatsurveillance from a low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state police and the national guard was illegalunder the U.S. Constitution. The court reasoned that when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the groundmost commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind, dust, broken objects, noise, and sheer panicthen at some point courts are cand require a warrant before law enforcement engages in such activity. The Fourth Amendment and its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures demands no less.

In Philip Cobbs case, helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the Virginia natives 39-acre family farm.

Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the blueberry bushes near his house. After watching the helicopter for several moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother. By the time he returned outside,several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property, and police (ten in all) in flak jackets, carrying semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehiclesand were moving toward him.

Of course, it was never about the two pot plants.

What the cops were really after wasan excuse to search Cobbs little greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants, cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks, which he planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home. The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers.

Nevertheless, police charged Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana for the two plants they claimed to have found. Eventually, the charges were dismissed but not beforeThe Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs case, which revealed that police hadnt even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs propertya raid that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $25,000, at the very leastpart of their routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations.

Two plants or two hundred or no plants at all: it doesnt matter.

A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $50 worth of pot on two different occasions.The Washington Postreports: The SWAT team broke down Bettons door with a battering ram, then fired at least 57 bullets at him, hitting him nine times. He lost portions of his gallbladder, colon, bowel and rectum, and is paralyzed from the waist down. He also suffered damage to his liver, lung, small intestine and pancreas. Two of his vertebrae were damaged, and another was partially destroyed. Another bullet shattered his leg. After security footage showed that most of what police said about the raid was a lie, the copssettled the case for $2.75 million.

Monetary awards like that are the exception, however.

Most of the time, the cops get away with murder and mayhem. Literally.

Bottom line: no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets (theres the profit motive) under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs.

SWAT teams carry outmore than 80,000 no-knock raids every year. The vast majority of these raids are to serveroutine drug warrants, many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana.

Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use and9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana, the governments profit-driven War on Drugswaged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear, armed to the hilt, and trained to act like soldiers on a battlefield, all thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)has not abated.

Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11, hundreds of billions of dollars in grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams, giving rise to a police industrial complex that routinely devastates communities, terrorizes families, and destroys innocent lives.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations,SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

Unfortunately, general incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces.

In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant. In others, they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building. In another subset of cases, police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides.

SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody. Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed.

All too often, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences for law enforcement, even when the raids are botched.

Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives, including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot are the family dogs.

SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or shortly before dawn. Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeownerespecially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addressesa raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion, with armed intruders crashing through their door.

Thats exactly what happened toJose Guerena, the young ex-Marine who was killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a drug raid and opened fire. According to news reports, Guerena, 26 years old and the father of two young children, grabbed a gun in response to the forced invasion but never fired. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. Police officers were not as restrained. The young Iraqi war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact that SWAT teams are granted no-knock warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.

This sorry state of affairs is made even worse by U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have essentiallydone away with the need for a no-knock warrant altogether, giving the police authority to disregard the protections afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment.

Clearly, as I make clear in my bookBattlefield America: The War on the American People,something must be done.

When the war on drugsa.k.a. the war on the American peoplebecomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, its time to revisit our drug policies and laws.

You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to havewhen they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate.They open that door, your life is on the line, concluded Bob Harte, whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family was seen shopping at a garden store, cops found loose tea in the familys trash and mistook it for marijuana.

Our family will never be the same, said Addie Harte, recalling the two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering ram and AR-15 rifles. AsThe Washington Postreports:

Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. Are there kids? the officers were yelling. Where are the kids? And Im laying there staring at this guys boots fearing for my kids lives, trying to tell them where my children are, Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9, 2015. They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my childrens house, bedroom, wake them out of bed.

It didnt matter that no drugs were foundnothing but a hydroponic tomato garden and loose tea leaves. The search and SWAT raid were reasonable, according to the courts.

Theres a lesson here for the rest of us. As Bob Harte concluded: If this can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid.

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Attack of the tomato killers: The Police State's war on weed and backyard gardens - Augusta Free Press

Set to take the stage at the Republican National Convention tonight is Alice Marie Johnson, the grandmother once incarcerated for life for her nonviolent participation in a drug trafficking scheme since freed from prison by President Trump. The reason the first time offender, who spent her 21 years in prison becoming an ordained minister and certified hospice worker, languished in prison presumably for life? The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was co-sponsored and partially authored by one Joe Biden.

The difference on display between Trump and Biden's legacies regarding the criminal justice system and the effect on their parties could not be more unprecedented or stark. Half a century after the GOP began to wage the war on drugs, Trump has effectively remade the Republican Party into that of criminal justice reform.

Trump may tweet poetic about law and order and, weirdly enough, claim that drug dealers should face the death sentence. And Biden may be the one beholden to a party that refuses to call the violent riots in Kenosha and Portland just that, violent riots. But as a matter of pure policy, Trump is significantly more reform-minded than his Democratic challenger. Sure, he and the rest of the GOP may believe in throwing the book at those violating basic existing laws against arson and theft, but the past four years have proven that it's the Republican Party that wants a legal code that provides fewer reasons to call the police.

Most notable is the First Step Act, spearheaded by Republicans and lobbied by Jared Kushner and prominent conservatives such as Jim DeMint and evangelical activists, which resulted in the first real prison sentencing reform in generations. The second most notable achievement ought to be the JUSTICE Act, the police reform bill authored by Tim Scott, which was killed by Democrats in the Senate even as millions of their constituents were taking to the streets to demand that they do something in the aftermath of the police killing of the unarmed George Floyd. And furthermore, slowly but surely, Republicans are generating significantly more momentum to decriminalize marijuana federally than Democrats, given that Biden's staunch anti-pot policy pretty much kills any hopes Democrats have of relaxing drug policy for at least the next four years.

All of this is aided by the fact that Trump's record indicates that he's been privately pro-pot for decades, and his prominent allies are right now. Although Trump has teased cracking down on drug deals, as far back as 30 years ago, Trump ardently slammed lawmakers for failing to legalize drugs. Now, he has two of the most pro-pot members of Congress, Cory Gardner and Matt Gaetz, lobbying him to embrace legalization.

And it's highly possible that he will, at least if he wins reelection. Trump is reportedly fearful that state drug decriminalization and legalization measures will boost Democratic turnout, but I wouldn't be so sure. After all, although Democrats support marijuana legalization by a greater margin than Republicans, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters support marijuana legalization, with their trendlines following Democrats. In fact, the divide is primarily bifurcated on generational lines, with two-thirds of the Silent Generation opposing legalization and at least two-thirds of every subsequent generation supporting it.

So what if Trump has said dumb stuff about criminal justice and punishing drug offenders? Based solely on his actions and his allies, he's the most pro-reform president in history, a divergence from Biden only highlighted by the former vice president's decision to tap Kamala Harris, who locked up nonviolent drug offenders while California attorney general, as his own running mate. It's no coincidence that top Trump associates such as Kellyanne Conway and Rudy Giuliani used her drug record as a battering ram against the Biden ticket Republican voters simply agree.

Trump's message on criminal justice ought to write itself: Joe and Kamala abused their political power to punish nonviolent drug offenders, but they're happy to let left-wing terrorists shoot up and burn down America's businesses and cities. By contrast, Trump will restore law and order to the streets and let you light up in peace.

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Under Trump, Republicans are now the party of prison reform - Washington Examiner

Joe Biden's long history of promoting draconian sentences, hard-line anti-drug policies, and proliferating death penalties is an easy target for any politician who is serious about criminal justice reform. But there is little evidence that description applies to President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly slammed Biden as "the chief architect ofmass incarceration and the War on Drugs" while presenting himself as an opponent of excessively punitive policiesa major theme of this week's Republican National Convention.

Trump's bona fides as a reformer consist of two accomplishments. First, he supported the FIRST STEP Act, a 2018 law that included some modest but significant drug sentence reductions. Second, he has issued 25 pardons and 11 commutations, some of which seem to reflect a sincere belief in rehabilitation and a genuine concern about unjust penalties. Most famously, Trump freed Alice Marie Johnson, a nonviolent, first-time offender who received a life sentence for her role in a Memphis-based cocaine distribution ring. Johnson, whom the president introduced during his State of the Union speech last year, was featured in a Trump campaign ad during this year's Super Bowl and is scheduled to speak at the Republican convention on Thursday night.

Although it did not go as far as many reformers would have liked, the FIRST STEP Act, which passed with overwhelming support in the House and Senate, was a clear improvement that freed thousands of drug war prisoners, and Trump deserves credit for backing it. The fact that he has used his clemency powers not only to help his cronies but to ameliorate some real injustices is also laudable. Barack Obama, who eventually commuted a record 1,715 sentences, approved just one petition during his first term. But when it comes to his plans for a second term, Trump has said little about criminal justice, and what he has said is inconsistent with the image he is trying to project.

The second-term agenda that Trump unveiled this week, like the "Law and Justice" section of his campaign website, does not mention criminal justice reform. But it does list five points under the heading "Defend the Police," a rejoinder to the "Defund the Police" movement. Trump's wish list does not inspire confidence in his commitment to reversing Biden's mistakes.

Trump wants to "fully fund and hire more police and law enforcement officers," which sounds an awful lot like a central element of the "1994 Biden Crime Bill" (as the former vice president proudly calls it). Yet Trump says that law epitomizes the Democratic nominees's role in promoting mass incarceration and should make African Americans think twice about voting for Biden. "Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected," Trump tweeted last year. "In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you. I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, & helped fix the bad 1994 Bill!"

Trump wants to "increase criminal penalties for assaults on law enforcement officers." He does not explain why current penalties are inadequate or how he would change the state laws that prescribe them. Perhaps Trump has in mind laws that treat assaults on police as hate crimes, which result in arbitrary sentence enhancements that are predictably deployed against members of the same minority group that Trump says has disproportionately suffered from the policies Biden championed. Here, too, Trump sounds like the Biden of the 1980s and '90s, who was keen to show that Democrats could be just as mindlessly "tough on crime" as Republicans.

Trump wants to "prosecute drive-by shootings as acts of domestic terrorism." That would be inconsistent with the current federal definition of terrorism as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." It does not make much sense to put violence between urban gangs in the same category as the ideologically motivated 9/11 attacks or 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But again, the point is emotional rather than logical, reflecting the same mentality that gave us the ever-escalating criminal penalties Trump faults Biden for supporting.

Trump wants to "bring violent extremist groups like ANTIFA to justice," which seems unobjectionable until you contemplate how members of that ad hoc, decentralized, and vaguely defined movement are to be identified. Punishing people for their alleged membership in a group rather than their individual actions is a recipe for indiscriminate penalties of the sort that Trump intermittently condemns.

Trump wants to "end cashless bail and keep dangerous criminals locked up until trial." That proposal is a direct swipe at a reform widely supported by critics of the criminal justice system, who say people should not be imprisoned prior to trial simply because they cannot afford bail, which punishes them without a conviction, impairs their ability to mount a defense, and pressures them into plea deals that otherwise would be less appealing. By describing defendants as "dangerous criminals," Trump erases the presumption of innocence and ignores all the defendants, including alleged drug offenders, who are "locked up until trial" even though they do not plausibly pose a threat to the general public.

Unlike Trump, whose campaign website does not address criminal justice reform in any substantive way, Biden has a lot to say on the subject. He has repudiated the mandatory minimums and death penalties he once supported, saying they should be abolished. He also wants to eliminate theirrational sentencing disparity between the smoked and snorted forms of cocaine, which was created by a 1986 law that Biden wrote and resulted in strikingly unequal treatment of black defendants. That gap was reduced by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, a law signed by Obama and supported by Biden that casts doubt on Trump's claim that only he can deliver "real criminal justice reform."

While continuing to resistthe repeal of federal marijuana prohibition, Biden now calls fordecriminalizing cannabis consumption and automatically expunging "all prior cannabis use convictions" (neither of which would have much of an impact at the federal level, since the Justice Department rarely prosecutes low-level marijuana cases). He also says states should be free to legalize marijuana, which is similar to the position Trump has implied he supports and has taken in practice.

One need not believe that Biden's conversion is completely sincere to recognize that the current climate of opinion within the Democratic Party would make reverting to his old drug-warrior instincts politically difficult. Trump, by contrast, is trying to have it both ways, assuring unreconstructed conservatives that he will be tougher on crime than Biden while telling moderates he understands that criminal penalties are frequently arbitrary and disproportionate. Reconciling those seemingly contradictory messages may not be possible, and it surely would require more thoughtfulness than Trump has demonstrated so far.

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The Shaky Foundation of Trump's Pose As a Criminal Justice Reformer - Reason

Place Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law together on a street corner in an impoverished neighborhood and theyll see examples of a new and expanded carceral system in every direction they look.

A man walks toward them and the journalists spot an ankle bracelet, monitoring his location electronically. Several members of a group across the street are on probation, and Schenwar and Law visualize numbers floating above the mens heads, counting down the years until theyre free from the ever-present threat of incarceration. Behind Schenwar and Law, inside an apartment building, a woman stares out the window, confined under house arrest.

Down at the other end of the street, a pair of beat cops whistle as they walk. They look friendly enough but, as Schenwar and Law explain in their new book, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (The New Press, 2020), the officers represent a violent expansion of policing that is widening US authorities net to control ever-greater numbers of people.

Other reforms that we talk about in the book, theyre less visible, Schenwar told Filter in a telephone interview. Theyre about hiding people away.

Were expanding the number of people under the physical control of the state.

These include mandated-treatment facilities that house people arrested for drug possession, for example, and psychiatric hospitals that hold people apprehended for mental health crises. All of these things that abolition activist Mariame Kaba calls, the Somewhere Else, Schenwar continued.

Were expanding the number of people under the physical control of the state, Law said in the same interview. Without the options of the Somewhere Else, They might have been given some kind of sentence that was looser and that maybe did not involve as many requirements, Law added. And so this [push for out-of-prison alternatives] is actually expanding the number of people who are caught.

Schenwar, the editor-in-chief of Truthout, and Law, a freelance journalist (who has written for Filter) and cofounder of NYC Books Through Bars, have written a spiritual successor to Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It includes a foreword by Alexander. Focusing less directly on racebut maintaining a required awareness of systemic racismPrison by Any Other Name loosely picks up at the prison walls where The New Jim Crow left off.

The book details an ever-creeping expansion of the prison-industrial complex, beyond barbed-wire fences, into peoples communities, schools and the very homes in which they live. It notes that the number of people in America under electronic monitoring increased from 53,000 in 2005 to 125,000 in 2015.

This would not be okay even if during the same period, the numbers of people in jails and prisons had decreased (they did not over the whole period, despite declines toward the end). The goal of reforms should be fewer people caught up in the system and indeed, its total transformation, not the same number transferred from one form of correctional control to another.

These varying manifestations of the criminal punishment system raise the question of what defines a prison, Schenwar and Law write in the book. There is unique gravity to an actual prison sentence, the violence of locking a human being in a cage. Yet the system is broader than the buildings called prisons. Manipulation, confinement, punishment, and deprivation can take many formsforms that may be less easily recognized as the violence they are.

Drug courts are trying, sentencing, and confining people who in many cases wouldnt otherwise be incarcerated.

Take the example of drug courts.

As the opioid-involved overdose crisis of the 2000s replaced the crack epidemic of the 1980s and early 90s, the impacted populations in the spotlight initially shifted from Black people to white. Thats resulted in a so-called kinder, gentler War on Drugs, and encouraged politicians, like Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, to embrace drug courts as a treatment-based alternative to prison. But the extent to which drug courts are less violent than incarceration is highly debatable, the book argues.

Instead of simply providing an alternative for people who would otherwise be sent to prison, drug courts are trying, sentencing, and confining people who in many cases wouldnt otherwise be incarcerated, it explains.

The existence of courts designed to handle minor drug-related charges has been shown to encourage police to make those types of arrestsa kind of if you build it, they will come phenomenon, the book continues. Police know these courts exist to handle an increase in small-time drug cases, and so they are more likely to make small-time drug arrests. As Denver district court judge Morris B. Hoffman stated, It is clear that the very presence of drug courts is causing police to make arrests in, and prosecutors to file, the kinds of ten- and twenty-dollar hand-to-hand drug cases that the system simply would not have bothered with before.

And then theres this: Approximately half of people sentenced to a program through drug court dont finishand the ones that dont often end up with harsher jail or prison sentences than if they hadnt gone the drug court route in the first place.

Schenwar and Law place this effectwidening the net, they call itat the center of everything wrong with the current trajectory of prison reform.

They [politicians] love the idea of diversion, Schenwar said. But you still arrest people for drug offences, you still criminalize drugs, you still criminalize all kinds of actions that may result from drug use or addiction. But instead [of prison], you funnel people into this alternate system because somehow it will help people by providing quote-unquote treatment.

And then when people violate the terms of their drug-court sentencewhich happens so often because those terms are very rigid and very strictthen often the penalty is incarceration, and often it is the maximum sentence, she continued.

Prison by Any Other Name was released against the urgent backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movements second wave. Both Schenwar and Law advocate for the abolition of the entire penal systemarguing that whats needed for the creation of a more just society is wider access to quality education, improved options for employment, a drastically better healthcare system that includes mental health services, and other holistic reforms.

When she died of an overdose, she was in an abstinence-based drug court program.

Lending authority, they both come to the books topics from personal experience.

Victoria, or Vikki as shes known to friends, was once on probation, the book reads. At sixteen, Vikki was arrested for several counts of armed robbery and gun possession, all of which are violent felony charges She was ultimately sentenced to five years of probation.

Schenwar told a different story. For me, this issue is very personal because my sister was in and out of jails and prisons for about 15 years and then in and out of all kinds of alternatives: electronic monitoring, drug-treatment centers and all kinds of things, she said.

She was in drug court in February when she died, Schenwar continued. When she died of an overdose, she was in an abstinence-based drug court program.

Schenwar explained that her sister was mandated to remain abstinent or risk jail time. She did remain off drugs, for a while. But then, when she eventually relapsed, her tolerance was lower than she realized. If her sister had been offered something better tailored to her as an individual, maybe the outcome would have been different, Schenwar said, anger audible in her voice.

Drug court played a role in her killing, she added. It was not her survival that counted in this system. It was whether she was following the law.

Photograph by Jrmy-Gnther-Heinz Jhnick via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

More:

Cages Dont Always Have Bars: How Reforms Swelled the Carceral State - Filter

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

Harry J. Anslingers pioneering work as head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics has largely been unsung, though experts see him as the founding father of Americas war on drugs.

In 2014, the Drug Enforcement Administration raised his profile with a symposium that focused on the decades he spent creating national drug policy, starting in the 1930s. Following that, in 2015, the agencys museum opened an exhibition: A Life of Service: Harry Jacob Anslinger, 1892-1975.

When that closed in 2017, the D.E.A. Museum & Visitors Center created a virtual version, which is displayed on its website.

But neither the live exhibition nor the virtual one mentioned that Mr. Anslinger has been criticized for making racist and denigrating remarks, accusations that have trailed him for years.

In 1934, for example, Mr. Anslinger used a racial slur to describe a Black informant in a letter to narcotics bureau district supervisors, as described in a biography of the drug war czar by John C. McWilliams, a former history professor at Pennsylvania State University.

Other researchers have cited Mr. Anslingers book from the early 1960s, The Murderers: The Shocking Story of the Narcotic Gangs, in which he ascribed Oriental ruthlessness to the Chinese involved in the drug trade.

In response to questions, D.E.A. officials said museum administrators did not focus on Mr. Anslingers speech when creating the exhibition, which was organized around a timeline of his career. In a statement, the museums director, Laurie Baty, said: D.E.A. has always acknowledged that the history of drug control policy and enforcement is complicated and ever-evolving.

In its online presentation, the D.E.A. museum does say Mr. Anslingers tenure was not without controversy, but it does not discuss the issue of racial remarks and attributes the harshest criticism of him to those opposed to laws governing marijuana.

The issue of Mr. Anslingers remarks did surface during the D.E.A. museums symposium. One speaker, Charles Lutz, a retired D.E.A. special agent, defended Mr. Anslinger, who has also been accused of making other racist remarks, the origins of which are unclear. Mr. Lutz, who has studied Mr. Anslingers life, said his research indicated that most of the statements attributed to him had actually been made by others.

Mr. Lutz also said he had interviewed a Black Narcotics Bureau agent who worked under Mr. Anslinger and who was in the audience that day. That agent, William B. Davis, would say there were racists in the Narcotics Bureau, Mr. Lutz told the audience, adding: But hell also tell you, as he told me, that Harry Anslinger was not one of them.

But Mr. McWilliams, who also spoke at the symposium and whose book, The Protectors: Harry J. Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930-1962, provides a balanced look at Mr. Anslingers life, wrote that he saw the 1934 internal letter with the racial slur while reviewing documents at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum.

Among those who objected to the slur at the time was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania, Joseph F. Guffey, who called for Anslingers resignation, according to the book.

In a telephone interview, Mr. McWilliams said Mr. Anslinger was respected by his peers as a narcotics expert and dedicated administrator but sometimes depended more on lurid accounts than sober analysis to generate support for his initiatives.

He was a product of his time, when that sort of language was not unusual, unfortunately, Mr. McWilliams said of the slur used in the letter. He also impressed members of Congress and the media because he did go after organized crime and Mafia types.

The full passage in Mr. Anslingers book, The Murderers, written with Will Oursler, says: The Chinese underworld of dope combined with gambling and prostitution had its own special Oriental ruthlessness, which fitted the aura of violence and brutality and killing that has always been the hallmark of the narcotics underworld.

Many museums and other cultural institutions are confronting issues of race as part of the broader discussion prompted by the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

The American Museum of Natural History, for instance, is removing a statue of Theodore Roosevelt that shows him astride a horse, towering above an African man and a Native American, in a tableau that critics saw as symbolizing colonialism and racial discrimination.

Officials said that when the D.E.A. Museum & Visitors Center reopens this fall after a renovation, there were no plans to exhibit items associated with Mr. Anslinger, though the agency said that decision was based on space constraints. D.E.A. officials said the museum, in Arlington, Va., would frame the story of drugs in America around three major themes: examining how laws and policies were created in response to epidemics; looking at how major categories of drugs have affected people physically and cycled in use over time; and exploring the science of various substances.

The idea to create an exhibition about Mr. Anslinger was initiated, agency officials said, after the symposium at which members of the Anslinger family donated some items that had belonged to him.

A family member, a great-nephew, Jefferson Anslinger, said in an interview that his great-uncle was an honest man and a patriot with whom he regularly visited.

I never heard him say anything disparaging about any race, he said. His whole life was dedicated to easing the suffering from drugs from around the world.

Two of the donated items a tan leather suitcase with brass fittings and a brown composite suitcase reinforced with wooden ribs and stenciled H.J. Anslinger American Legation The Hague, appeared in the exhibit, which depicted Mr. Anslinger as a crucial forefather to the D.E.A. Other artifacts on display included a Bureau of Narcotics badge, an invitation to a dinner held in honor of the 1945 inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a 1962 letter from the White House accepting Mr. Anslingers resignation.

Few officials had as much power and prestige as Mr. Anslinger did while leading the narcotics bureau during the administrations of five presidents. His admirers have long seen him as unfairly overshadowed by his better-known contemporary, J. Edgar Hoover.

Born in Altoona, Pa., he was appointed to the job of assistant commissioner of Prohibition at the Treasury Department in 1929. He then became the first commissioner of the Treasurys Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was founded in 1930.

While running the bureau Mr. Anslinger investigated the drugging of race horses with heroin, cocaine, caffeine and strychnine. In addition, he established ties with Interpol, arranged for international drug accords and offered some of the first evidence of the existence of a criminal network controlled by Sicilian-Americans.

Mr. Anslinger also championed measures that some drug experts today describe as draconian. He lobbied successfully for the passage of an anti-marijuana law in 1937, testifying during Congressional hearings that a single marijuana cigarette could induce a homicidal mania.

Johann Hari, a writer and critic of U.S. drug policy, described Mr. Anslinger in his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs as someone who depicted drugs as dangerous by associating them with racial minorities. He said in an email message that his research indicated that Mr. Anslinger had adopted a consistent framing that drugs are something nonwhite people disproportionately use.

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An Exhibition Tells the Story of a Drug War Leader, but Not All of It - The New York Times

When Filipino American documentary filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz saw reports of people being killed in the streets as part of newly elected Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs, she knew what she wanted her next project to focus on. But when she arrived in the country, she discovered so many journalists covering the story that she figured she needed a different focus. The work of former CNN reporter and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa caught her eye.

She was speaking out about Duterte and his disinformation campaign and how this was a bigger problem, Diaz says. Ressa was soon arrested, and Diaz latched on to the journalists fight for freedom of the press against a populist dictatorial leader. That movie, A Thousand Cuts, bows Aug. 7 on virtual cinema, a VOD platform that supports local art-house theaters.

To help fashion the story, Diaz called on editor Leah Marino, with whom she had collaborated on five other projects, including the acclaimed Motherland, a fly-on-the-wall look at the maternity ward in Manilas Fabella Hospital, believed to be the busiest in the world.

The wonderful thing about having a collaborator like Leah is I can data dump on her, Diaz explains. I can say, Ive met this character, and hell be interesting, and I know shell be processing ideas without having seen a single frame.

When the film was picked up for competition in Sundance, Diaz had shot more than 700 hours of footage. She feared she and Marino wouldnt be able to deliver a finished product in time. Usually, Leah and I work on the edit for nine months, Diaz says. We edited it in four.

While the focus is firmly on Ressa, other personalities in the doc emerge as supporting players. Blogger Mocha Uson, a key Duterte operative, posts disinformation that blurs time and events to weaken trust in the news. To Marino, Uson helps viewers understand what Duterte stands for. Still, the editors goal is not to vilify the 38-year-old singer, but rather to present her as a developed person. Ronald Bato Dela Rosa, a former police official and political ally of Duterte who has spearheaded a public execution campaign against drug addicts, was another magnetic personality. The doc devoted time to both without letting them hijack the direction of the movie.

We could have done separate films about those two, notes Diaz.

Marino says that she and Diaz use a shorthand to be able to quickly identify what footage to include, rather than working through a start-to-finish story. The two pick out what they call yummy scenes and let that inspire the structure. We break those down into gold and silver scenes, says the editor.

Some of the yummy scenes the collaborators highlight include Ressa with her two sisters as shes about to be honored as part of a group of journalists as Time Magazines Person of the Year for 2018. Those were key to showing who she is as a person, Diaz notes. For Marino, an important scene features Bato speaking to a group of prison inmates, which illuminates the type of people who are being targeted by Duterte.

Ressa granted Diazs crew unlimited access, including strategy meetings with the journalists legal team. She put her trust in the filmmaker to tell a story and not reveal strategies that could compromise her. That footage was left on the cutting room floor. One day, when [this is over], Diaz says, well release the full thing.

Marino had her work cut out for her when it came to deciphering Tagalog, the main language of the Philippines. Working with Diaz, she learned to identify bits of phrases. Theres some Spanish and some English, and you pick them out, Marino says. However, since the country is made up of 7,000 islands and different dialects abound, there are other instances in which, she allows, I dont understand one word. Her secret, she says, is in recognizing rhythms of speech, and breaking sentences to conform to them.

Its pretty incredible, says Diaz. She cuts, and I think, How did she know that was the point to cut?

Midway through the doc, the filmmakers focus on Ressa telling a crowd: If you dont use your rights, you lose them. Its a line she repeats, driving home the message to viewers in other nations who might also have long-held liberties at risk. Indeed, the film includes buzz phrases that have become familiar to American audiences. In one scene Duterte, portraying the press as an enemy of the people, talks of fake news outlets.

Even after its screening at Sundance, the doc has continued to evolve. Ressa was convicted of cyber libel on June 15. Neither Diaz nor Marino knows when the story will turn next, but as a filmmaker, Diaz knew she had to lock the picture for theatrical. Marino cut in Ressas conviction last month; the documentary was also trimmed from its two-hour run time at Sundance to just under 100 minutes.

By now, Diaz had hoped to be working on her dream to direct a narrative film, one in which she can control the ending. These days, endings elude her. That means Marino just might need to keep the editing bay at the ready.

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A Thousand Cuts Documentary: How a Story About the War on Drugs Became a Tale of Freedom of the Press - Variety

In recent weeks, documented cases of police brutality amid the pandemic have sparked a national conversation about criminal justice reform. Regardless of our diverse opinions regarding law enforcement and the Black Lives Matter movement, this is an opportunity to thoughtfully consider if there is room for systemic reform.

The fact of the matter is, there are flaws in our criminal justice system. One policy that has contributed to the glaring division for decades now, with little discernible benefit, is the war on drugs.

Data indicate that the war on drugs has been a policy failure. Drug laws were originally designed to keep individuals healthier and substance-free, but decades of research indicates that these laws are more a hindrance than help.

Self-reported drug use has increased since the 1970s. Today, 26.5 percent of high-school seniors say it is fairly easy or very easy to obtain cocaine. Since former President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse Public Enemy No. 1, signed the Controlled Substances Act and rejected the findings of the Shafer Commission in 1971, enforcing drug laws has cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 trillion.

The most recent data from 2019 reveal that drug overdoses are on the rise once again. Maine is in the top ten states for opioid-related deaths per person.

This opioid epidemic is primarily a public health issue, not one of criminality. The cost to society to arrest and incarcerate the drug-addicted instead of using substance abuse and mental health treatment options greatly outweighs the potential deterrent effects of criminalization.

Drug charges frequently have catastrophic effects on Mainers after they are released from jail or prison. Those with a criminal history involving drug charges have a harder time finding employment, thereby eroding their ability to function in a self-sufficient manner while also taking a toll on that individuals mental health.

Further complicating the issue, individuals who are incarcerated for drug possession are housed with others who have been charged for drug trafficking, which forces us to consider the possibility that incarceration actually assists users and dealers in building working relationships.

Incarceration for drug use also breaks up family units, which increases the likelihood of financial hardship and repeat offending. Society can do more to break this cycle.

Excessively stringent drug laws dont just harm individualsthey also negatively affect communities. The war on drugs has been linked to increases in violence because it has led to the development of drug cartels and gangs. Were seeing concrete examples of drug trafficking and violent activity in Maine, such as in Downeast Maine, where fishermen in particular are struggling with opioid abuse.

In an article published by CBS News, Charles Rudelitch, an economist from Maine, noted, We know that millions of dollars of income that otherwise should have been spent in our coastal communities is being lost to heroin and diverted to prescription drugs.

The loss of community cohesion should be significant enough to make us reconsider our drug enforcement laws. But the loss goes even furtherour drug policies have resulted in millions of Maine taxpayer dollars going to waste.

Its difficult to calculate the full cost, since various government entities are responsible for enforcing drug policies. But between 2017 and 2018 alonethe most recent data availableMaines Drug Enforcement Agency spent over $6.5 million to police non-violent drug crimes. Maine jails and prisons spend an average of $43,773 to house each inmate, 22 percent of whom are there for nonviolent drug crimes.

Keep in mind that the majority of Maines drug-related arrests are for possession, not manufacturing or sale.

Even those obligated to enforce drug laws are concerned that drug charges do more harm than good. Earlier this year, two police officers in Maine co-authored and published an article in the Portland Press Herald highlighting their ambivalence about the effectiveness of charging individuals for drug offenses.

These officers observed that we dont turn to the criminal justice system to address hunger or flu outbreaks. Yet for some reason, it is the approach we have chosen for addressing drug use, later adding, The fact is, a lot of people who are in jail for using or selling small amounts of drugs dont need to be there.

If the people responsible for enforcing drug regulation laws doubt these rules are useful, shouldnt we be skeptical too?

In some regards, the war on drugs can be viewed as a more wasteful and hazardous version of the prohibition. The government tries to enforce laws that will carefully guide the behavior of individuals, but the unintended consequences prove to be worse than the original issue.

As drug use becomes increasingly problematic in Maine, we must think critically about our response and admit that charging individuals for drug crimes is a misguided response.

We could re-classify small amounts of drug possession as a civil infraction (rather than labeling mere possession of certain drugs as a felony crime), reducing the majority of drug trafficking charges to misdemeanors, and mandate drug court (rather than incarceration) more broadly.

The status quo of our criminal justice system is not working. If we fail to address our flawed drug regulations, we will continue to see our communities suffer as a result of these policies.

Excerpt from:

The War on Drugs has caused more harm than good - The Maine Wire

The current state of and unacceptable practices within Americas prison system are two of the biggest social justice issues that come up when discussing the War on Drugs. The numbers regarding mass incarceration and the privatization of prisons are some of the most staggering statistics in the world, and the need for prison reform has never more apparent than it is now, with concerns stemming from the Covid-19 global pandemic as well as public outrage over systemic racial injustice that has culminated in protests and civil unrest all over the world.

Incarceration is a wasteful tool for reducing substance use disorder. The possession or use of drugs should not cause arrests to be dealt with by the nations criminal justice system, but rather be treated as a public health issue. 65% of prisoners1.5 million peoplesuffer from addiction, but just 11% receive any substance abuse treatment while behind bars. As a result, most resume abusing drugs upon their release. Incarceration costs nearly $32,000 per prisoner per year, which is not a cost-effective way to treat addiction. This is just one point to be made when considering the social injustices in Americas prison system and how it relates to the War on Drugs.

Many people may be aware that the United States beats out other, much larger countries (including India, China, and even Russia) as having the highest rate of incarceration in the world. A 2018 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reveals that nearly 2.2 million adults were held in Americas prisons and jails at the end of 2016.

There has been a 500% increase in incarceration over the last 40 years in the U.S., with changes in law and policy -not crime rates- to blame for most of this increase. This has resulted in overcrowding in prisons across the country, as well as fiscal burdens on states.With mounting evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety, Americans are calling for immediate prison reform.

While their rate of imprisonment has decreased the most in recent years, Black Americans remain far more likely than their Hispanic and white counterparts to be in prison. The Black imprisonment rate at the end of 2018 was nearly twice that of Hispanics (797 per 100,000) and more than five times the imprisonment rate of whites (268 per 100,000). Black men are especially likely to be imprisoned. There were 2,272 inmates per 100,000 Black men in 2018, with the rate even higher among Black men in certain age groups. Among those ages 35 to 39, for example, about 1 in 20 Black men were in state or federal prison in 2018.

Dasheeda Dawson is an industry educator, senior executive leader, and strategy expert for multiple cannabis businesses, municipalities, and other outlets across the country and most recently accepted a position with the City of Portland as the Cannabis Program Supervisor. Dawson explained, The key thing that has caused a lot of the disproportionate arrests for Black people and other POC is cannabis prohibition. It has absolutely been a tool for maintaining the systemic racism in our country.

Rani Soto is the Founder of R&S Publishing and is based in New Jersey. He added, Even with all the opportunity and resources I could possibly provide, my kids could be racially profiled and arrested and have their lives ruined. The prison pipeline is absolutely an issue that affects communities of color.

Mass incarceration is a term used to describe the fact that the U.S. incarcerates more people than any nation in the world, including China. The U.S. is also the leader in the prison population rate. Mass incarceration refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage. It is one of the biggest issues that is correlated with cannabis prohibition and the War on Drugs. With so many states now having legalized cannabis to some degree, there is a huge issue with so many people still being incarcerated for crimes related to this particular substance.

Mass incarceration is not just intertwined with the War on Drugs, its a direct root. 4/10 arrests are related to marijuana, so basically we are imprisoning the consumer population which we think we are going to capitalize off of [with the legalized cannabis industry]. The mass incarceration came from the prohibition of an agricultural product or plant. The reason why we can say that is mass is because it does represent the only lump sum chunk of that amount. -Dasheeda Dawson

Caroline Pineau is the owner of Stem Haverhill, an economic empowerment cannabis retail store in Massachusetts. She explained,

Ending cannabis prohibition and potentially the overall War on Drugs would be a productive first step for long-term criminal and social justice reform. The most important thing we see reversing is the trend of mass incarceration. A huge portion of the mass incarceration comes from disproportionate drug sentences that largely impact Black, brown, and Latinx populations.

The War on Drugs and harsher sentencing policies fueled a rapid expansion in the nations prison population beginning in the 1980s. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the modern emergence of for-profit private prisons in many states and at the federal level.

A private prison, or for-profit prison, is a place where people are imprisoned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. The main difference between private prisons and public prisons is money, as private prisons receive their funding from government contracts and many of these contracts are based on the total number of inmates and their average length of time served. This means that the more inmates (with longer sentences) that these prisons can hold, the more money they earn. When it comes to overall comparisons, privately run prisons are often less likely to report data on inmate population, staffing, or where the budget was spent.

Governments at the local, state, or federal level seek bids from private firms to operate a prison, jail, or detention center. Private firms then compete to submit a desirable bid but competition is limited, as the industry is dominated by two major firms. The firm with the winning bid then assumes full responsibility for managing the day-to-day operations of a prison facility, such as hiring staff, supplies, disciplining prisoners, and providing programs, etc. In return, the government pays the firm, typically on a per-inmate-day basis. In taking over operational responsibilities, the firm also assumes legal liability in the event of legal or constitutional disputes.

From 2000 to 2016 the number of people housed in private prisons increased five times faster than the total prison population. Over a similar timeframe, the proportion of people detained in private immigration facilities increased by 442 percent. According to The Sentencing Project, the United States has the worlds largest private prison population. Of the 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons in 2016, 8.5 percent, or 128,063, were incarcerated in private prisons. Another 26,249 people (and 73% of all people in immigration detention) were confined in privately-run facilities on a daily basis during the 2017 fiscal year.

A paper published by the University of Baltimore Law Review declared that this for-profit industry violates constitutional prohibitions of cruel and unusual punishment as well as guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law.

The unique circumstances involved with incarcerating people for profit implicates concerns that make a categorical challenge relying on modern conceptions of human dignity appropriate, the paper said. The papers authors wrote that the constitutional and moral concerns raised by for-profit prisons have grown more serious over the decades, and deserve new consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. The authors have concluded, Private prisons are abhorrent on moral grounds, including for the ways that for-profit incarceration wrecks access to justice and diminishes equality in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Prison labor is the forced labor done by the convicts in a prison. Prison labor is economically important due to it being a source of cheap labor, with pay being as low as $0.13 an hour at a prison camp in Nevada.

While the complex issue of prison labor has garnered much attention, the United States use of labor in prisons has quite a long history. Prison, or penal, labor is indisputably and deeply rooted in the history of slavery in the U.S., and the aftermath of the Civil War. In 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction -13th Amendment of the United States Constitution

There are a number of milestones that show the pushback against former slaves after the Civil War, and the profit-driven incentivization that led to the growth and development of the U.S. prison labor system as it exists today. Incarcerated persons are mostly assigned to in-house assignments, such as cleaning dishes, doing laundry, groundskeeping, or other maintenance and upkeep jobs. About 6% of the prison population are in correctional industries that offer prison programs that produce goods and services for the market.

Dasheeda Dawson discussed this in-depth, noting that we now have an industrial complex in private prisons that is literally fueling our countrys economy. Our biggest companies and biggest state annual revenue are capitalizing on this modern-day indentured servitude of low wage paid prison labor. We have a prison industrial complex that has been built through mass incarceration that consists of 80% Black and Hispanic people.

I think the governments stance and the propaganda related to both incarceration and cannabis prohibition and their connectivity is a smoke in mirrors situation. Once that gets pulled back as a curtain and science is the foundation, it becomes very clear to see how this is stacking and pointing in the direction of funding something we actually publicly condemn.

Recidivism is the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend. When looking at the American prison system and how it relates to the War on Drugs, this topic is essential to address, as it not only affects the incarcerated individual, but also his/her family and community. Recidivism is an important feature when considering the core criminal justice topics of incapacitation, specific deterrence and rehabilitation.

Among state prisoners released in 30 states in 2005:

Re-entry programs are key for reducing recidivism, and must be taken seriously.

In conclusion, we cannot reform and reconstruct our broken society without some massive attention being paid to the prison system and how it operates in the United States. It carries one of the greatest social injustices tied to the War on Drugs.

Dawson expressed, Weve had mass incarceration, mass devastation, and now we need mass education.

I couldnt agree more.

Read the rest here:

Understanding the Broken US Prison System: Mass Incarceration, Prison Overcrowding, and Prison Privatization - The Weed Blog

The videos of armed men in fatigues picking protesters off the streets and shoving them into unmarked vans are the stuff of nightmares. Thats how the federal government has responded to Black Lives Matter demonstrations that continue to advocate for racial justice and demand real solutions to community safety. Both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have deployed agents in an effort to protect federal property and crack down on crime, respectively. The Trump administration frames this as its response to violence borne of anti-police rhetoric. In the bigger picture, DHS and DOJ are institutions working to carry out the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, and their policing efforts are extensive across the United States, in the U.S. borderlands, and abroad. During this national conversation on policing and its abolition, we must push for the abolition of all the appendages of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, including DHS.

The War on Drugs began with President Nixon in the early 1970s. One of his former aides later claimed it was launched in response to the Black Power and pacifist movements. It criminalized Black and brown people and was used to justify mass incarceration. This war was later taken beyond U.S. borders and became part of a decades-long story of U.S. intervention in the political affairs of various Latin American countries. This international crackdown on drugs was still underway when George W. Bush's administration launched the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11. This new front served as a pretext to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and expand the security state. Outwardly, the War on Terror has cast Muslims as the primary terror threat, but in reality it identifies anyone who opposes the U.S. governments interests as a terror threat. For example, Black Lives Matters activists have been investigated by the FBI as Black identity extremists, while Trump has labeled antifascist protesters terrorists. Together, the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have given the government a blank check to maintain and expand a militarized U.S. presence not just around the world, but also along U.S. borders and within U.S. communities that are seen as threatening to the status quo. They are a central framework used to justify surveillance, intimidation, and the erosion of civil liberties.

DHS was first established after 9/11 and quickly grew to be an expansive and sophisticated security apparatus. Reports of tactical DHS agents in Portland, Oregon, clashing with Black Lives Matter protesters caused a national outcry: Some theorized the U.S. government was using Portland as a testing ground for how it would respond to BLM protests across the country; others were perturbed by the theatrics of it all, with the New York Times calling to leave the soldiering to soldiers. The reality is, the federal agent response in Portland is an extension of the kind of tactics they use at the border. What the ACLU has referred to as the kidnapping of BLM protesters is not so different from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers using coercive measures to pull immigrants from their homes late at night and detain them. After all, ICE is a sub-agency of DHS. In a show of grotesque force, weve seen DHS agents forcefully separate families at the border and place migrants in detention camps. These agencies traffic in fear and operate with near impunity. While scenes from Portland scared white America, they are nothing new for migrants, Black people, undocumented folks, and Muslims.

Its worth taking a moment to distinguish between the distinct operations the government has deployed in recent weeks. The DHS agents dispatched to Portland, through Operation Diligent Valor, were specifically tasked with protecting U.S. government buildings during protests, as Politico reported. Operation LeGend, a multiagency initiative, has recently expanded to cities including Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Detroit, which Attorney General Bill Barr said are experiencing upticks in violent crime. Both of these operations seem to be a response to protesters anti-police activism, as members of the administration have used recent riots and protests as the explanation for increased violence in cities. But there seems to be less alarm about the general crime-fighting focus of Operation LeGend. There are likely two reasons for this: one, the distinction between these operations is confusing; two, it is easier for many people to recognize the neat narrative of federal agents repressing protesters than it is to understand the systemic criminalization of Black and brown communities. It is systemic criminalization that the Black Lives Matter movement is asking us to oppose with calls to abolish the police and invest in life-affirming resources.

By taking to the streets and confronting local and federal forces, the Black Lives Matter uprising is making it painfully clear how policing on U.S. streets, at the U.S. border, and abroad is interconnected. In a time when people are calling for the abolition of police and prisons, it is no surprise that federal agencies and leaders would use this moment to build up its tough-on-crime rhetoric. Also unsurprisingly, they do so without addressing any of the likely root causes of crime, like rising unemployment, and job insecurity due to the failed government response to the pandemic. We cannot allow the U.S. security state to police and surveil as it does. Our vision for abolishing the police fundamentally includes the call to abolish ICE and DHS. We cant settle for anything less if we want a world without policing.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: 8 to Abolition Is Advocating to Abolish Police to Keep Us All Safe

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The Case for Abolishing the Department of Homeland Security - Teen Vogue