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Ritz-Carlton Reserve Reopening in Puerto Rico Caribbean Journal – Caribbean Journal

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Ritz-Carlton is reopening its Dorado Beach, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Puerto Rico next month, Caribbean Journal has learned.

The resort, the only Ritz-Carlton Reserve in the Caribbean, is relaunching on July 1.

The relaunch of what is Puerto Ricos leading luxury resort comes ahead of Puerto Ricos planned July 15 reopening for tourism.

It is the second Ritz-Carlton-branded property to reopen in the Caribbean, following the relaunch of the Ritz-Carlton, St Thomas, which began welcoming back visitors to the US Virgin Islands this week.

The 115-room-and-suite resort has reopened with parent company Marriott Internationals new cleanliness practices.

The resorts signature golf course has been open for several weeks already.

We are thrilled to once again welcome our beloved guests toDoradoBeach, said George Sotelo, General Manager. Our team of dedicated Ladies and Gentlemen have been hard at work preparing for our reopening and are excited to introduce guests to new handcrafted, memorable experiences while maintaining the sense of barefoot elegance and personalized service for which we are known.

In the age of COVID-19, the resort is emphasizing that each of the rooms and suites is accessible from the outdoors; many of the units have their own private plunge pools, and all of them have direct beach access, allowing ample space for physical distancing.

Puerto Rico officials say the destination is implementing major health and safety protocols island-wide ahead of the tourism reopening.

We mean it when we say we want to aim for a gold standard in health and safety. All tourism-related businesses must comply and practice the guidelines included in this comprehensive program, said Carla Campos, executive director of the Puert The PRTC will also inspect and certify over 350 hotels and operators over the next four months that must comply with these standards. We are certain that the assurances and security these measures provide, coupled with the experiences that makePuertoRicosuch an attractive destination, will play a vital role in the short-term recovery of the travel industry of the island.

For more, visit Dorado Beach, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve.

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Ritz-Carlton Reserve Reopening in Puerto Rico Caribbean Journal - Caribbean Journal

Tourism in the Caribbean will be different as they emerge from COVID-19 – South Florida Caribbean News

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

CTOSG, Neil Walters predicts significant integration of health and tourism

BRIDGETOWN,Barbados Tourism in the Caribbean and the rest of the world will be considerably different as countries begin to reopen their borders to international traffic following the forced closures occasioned by the onset of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), says the regions top tourism official.

Neil Walters, the acting secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), predicts closer alignment of tourism and health functions as destinations seek to reassure potential visitors that their health, safety and well-being are being taken seriously.

Walters says not only did the pause in tourism activity hurt Caribbean economies and disrupt lives, but it also allowed Caribbean countries to retrain workers across the sector and improve the product.

But one thing that has become critical is that the tourism that emerges from this pause will be different from the tourism that paused at the end of March. And the key way it will be different is that now tourism will be living and functioning with COVID-19. That means that there will be a significant integration of tourism and health functions across the world not just in the Caribbean and the Caribbean as arguably the most tourism-dependent region in the world has had to do the same thing: integrate tourism functions to ensure the safety and health of visitors and locals alike, he says in the final episode of theCTOpodcast,COVID-19: The Unwanted Visitor.

Although it has been economically impactful, that pause has actually given our destinations the chance to get that new process right, to work on getting it right, and to ensure that they reopen in a way that theres a level of comfort on all sides, he stresses.

The acting secretary general also emphasizes the level of collaboration among member countries, saying he hopes this will continue.

Ive been very heartened by the level of collaboration that Ive seen throughout this process. I hope that collaboration continues. That is the way this region and the brand Caribbean will become stronger. Even in the face of all the uncertainty we faced recently, that collaboration is key. I think that once we continue that collaboration, the spirit that it has been done in so far, the region which we live in will bounce back, he says.

This is the final episode in this series of podcasts, which covered a range of subjects, including coping with working from home during lock-down, consumer trust, the aviation and hospitality sectors and how the English-speaking Caribbean contained the virus.

The podcast is available on a number of platforms, including Anchor, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Tourism in the Caribbean will be different as they emerge from COVID-19 - South Florida Caribbean News

Latin America & the Caribbean countries need to spend more and better on health to be better able to face a major health emergency like COVID-19…

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

16/06/2020 Health spending in Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC) was about USD 1,000 per person in 2017, only of what was spent in OECD countries (adjusted for purchasing power). At the same time, health systems capacity is also considerably lower, including the ability to provide access to services of good quality to the most vulnerable groups. In addition, much is left to to be done to improve efficiency, effectiveness and targeting of health spending. While the LAC region is struggling to respond to the major challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, a serious reflection is needed not only on how to secure more funding but also on how to spend resources better, according to a new joint OECD World Bank report, the first Health at a Glance publication entirely dedicated to the LAC region.

Health at a Glance: Latin America & the Caribbean 2020 says that total health expenditure across LAC countries is 6.6% of GDP, lower than the 8.8% in OECD countries. Spending varied from 1.1% in Venezuela to up to 11.7% in Cuba and 9.2% in Uruguay in 2017.

Government spending and compulsory health insurance represent an average of 54.3% of total health spending in LAC, significantly lower than the 73.6% in the OECD. This shows that health systems in the LAC region are heavily dependent on out-of-pocket expenditures or supplemental private insurance from households. Honduras, Haiti and Guatemala have the highest proportions of private spending, while Cuba and Costa Rica have the lowest.

Health systems in LAC have fewer resources and less capacity than OECD countries to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. The LAC region has an average of two doctors per 1,000 population, and most countries stand well below the OECD average of 3.5, with only Cuba, Argentina and Uruguay having more. The average number of hospital beds in LAC is 2.1 per 1,000 population, that is less than half of the OECD average of 4.7. Barbados, Cuba and Argentina have more hospital beds than the OECD average, whereas the stock is below one hospital bed per 1,000 population in Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Moreover, according to data gathered just before the COVID-19 pandemic started, there were just 9.1 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) average beds per 100,000 population in 13 LAC countries, which is much lower than the 12 ICU average beds per 100,000 population found in OECD countries. Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina are above the LAC average, while the lowest ratios are observed in Costa Rica and El Salvador.

Health at a Glance: LAC 2020 highlights that poor allocation of health spending is slowing down, if not halting, progress towards universal health coverage in LAC. For example, weak health information systems are a major impediment. Across 22 LAC countries, an average of 10% of all deaths are never reported in public mortality databases. This means a reliable picture of population health is often missing. According to the Global Corruption Barometer, 42% of respondents across 12 LAC countries considered that there were corruption problems in the health sector. Most LAC countries have parallel health sub-systems with multiple and overlapping mechanisms of governance, financing and service provision, making it hard to steer resources to where they are most needed in an efficient way.

The report also highlights how quality of care in LAC is often poor. Twelve out of the 33 LAC countries fall short of attaining the minimum immunisation levels recommended by the WHO to prevent the spread of diphteria, tetanus and pertussis (90% of the target population) and 21 out of 33 fail to meet this target for measles (95% of the target population). This indicates the difficulties that countries are likely to have in making a future COVID-19 vaccine available for the whole population. Among six LAC countries with available data, women with early diagnosis for breast cancer had a 78% probability of surviving at least five years, while in adults with colon cancer it was 52% and for rectal cancer it was 46%, which are all much lower than the 85%, 62% and 61% survival rates observed in OECD countries.

Finally, the publication identifies key critical risk factors for poor health in LAC. Eight percent of children under the age of 5 and 28% of adolescents are overweight. This figure increases to over 53% among adult men and to more than 61% among adult women. Obesity increases the risk of chronic disease, and can also lead to complications and death in patients infected by COVID-19. Moreover, nearly one in four men and close to one in ten women aged 15 and above smoke daily. Smoking rates among children aged between 13 and 15 years old are 15% for boys and 12% for girls. Although average alcohol consumption in LAC is lower than in the OECD, it has increased by 3% between 2010 and 2016. Almost 35% and 22% of road traffic accidents among men and women, respectively, can be attributed to alcohol consumption.

Health at a Glance: Latin America & the Caribbean 2020 is available from June 16 at http://www.oecd.org/health/health-at-a-glance-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-2020-6089164f-en.htm.

World Bank Group Response to COVID-19 (coronavirus)

The World Bank Group, one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, is taking broad, fast action to help developing countries strengthen their pandemic response. We are increasing disease surveillance, improving public health interventions, and helping the private sector continue to operate and sustain jobs. Over the next 15 months, we will be deploying up to $160 billion in financial support to help countries protect the poor and vulnerable, support businesses, and bolster economic recovery, including $50 billion of new IDA resources in grants or highly concessional terms.

For further information, journalists should contact Carolina Ziehl, carolina.ziehl@oecd.org, and Shane Romig, sromig@worldbank.org.

Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

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Latin America & the Caribbean countries need to spend more and better on health to be better able to face a major health emergency like COVID-19...

Pressure on Caribbean tourism – Caribbean Life

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Wilting under the economic squeeze brought on by closed air and sea borders as a means of containing spread of COVID-19, a few of the tourism dependent Caribbean countries have cautiously re-opened their airports, while others are exploring the idea.

As of Wednesday Jamaica, St. Lucia, US virgin Iislands, St. Barts, and Antigua and Barbuda all opened their airports to visitors at varioous dates this month starting from June 01, with the Bahamas set to open its air gateway on July 01, and Aruba and Turks and Caicos to follow later in the month.

In Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Mottley began talks among what is termed the social partnership government, trade unions and the private sector seeking agreement on a a date for opening the island to non-national arrivals at its air and seaport.

Emphasizing the crucial importance for the islands economy to again be welcoming and hosting visitors since its lockdown some three months ago, Mottley said, in many respects, we die if we dont and we also die, if we do.

She explained that her current social partnership meetings are aimed at a consensus among all those who will be at risk of a COVID-19 resurgence, what is at stake is not just lives and livelihoods but indeed also the Barbadian way that reflects consultation. after consultation, the government reserves the right to decide and to act.

Antigua PM, Gaston Browne had similar sentiments.

Unless we open our borders and restore our economy, we face another powerful enemy economic collapse, high unemployment, overwhelming poverty, and no financial means to sustain ourselves, he said..

This is a time to face the inescapable truth frankly and boldly that we cannot take the unviable, risk-averse decision, to keep our countrys borders closed.

Unless the economy is reopened and every possible thing is done to rebuild it; the challenges we now confront will not be overcome any time soon. That is why we must not hesitate to act and to act now.

Caribbean territories with the exception of Haiti have been relatively successful in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic with Cuba reportedly leading with 84 deaths and Jamaica a distant second with 10 fatalities.

The need to urgently resume the Caribbean tourism trade is also felt by international air service providers including American Airlines, which the Antigua PM reportedly said is pressuring regional governments to set firm dates for re-opening of their airports.

I know for example that American Airlines would have read the riot act to a few Caribbean countries and would have said to them that if they do not give a specific timeline as to when they will reopen their airports, that they would not be part of their [AA] rotation between now and October.

So they may have to wait until about November before they can get flights. And I dont know any country within the Caribbean that is heavily dependent on tourism that would risk not opening before November because of the economic consequences, PM Browne said.

But this met with a stout denial form Barbados Tourism Minister, Kerrie Symmonds, who said, that is not applicable us, because we never closed our airport formally.

He told the Nation newspaper that AA had applied no pressure to Barbados and referred to the social partnership meetings through which the island will set its own date for re-opening, we are in discussions on protocols and other related specifics regarding the resumption of commercial traffic.

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Pressure on Caribbean tourism - Caribbean Life

Caribbean business leaders worried about second wave of COVID-19 – Jamaica Gleaner

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

NASSAU, Bahamas, Jun 20, CMC A new survey conducted by the audit, tax and advisory firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has found that the greatest concern for Caribbean businesses is a new wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The sixth COVID-19 CFO Pulse Survey, which was conducted between June 1-11, involved 989 chief financial officers (CFO) in 23 countries including over 40 CFOs in the Caribbean.

The majority of CFOs surveyed in the Caribbean expect COVID-19 to decrease revenue/profits by 10 per cent.

Most Caribbean CFOs (70 per cent as compared to 63 per cent globally) cite offering new or enhanced products or services as most important to rebuilding or enhancing their revenue streams. None are considering making cuts to digital transformation or cybersecurity.

As Bahamians begin to return to the workplace, organisation's need to consider how they will support employees to adapt to new working conditions and realities, which may range from adjusting to reconfigured office layouts to the adoption of new behaviours designed to promote safety, said Prince Rahming, PwC Bahamas territory leader.

Only about a third of Caribbean region CFOs say they are very confident about their companys ability to manage their employees well-being and morale, yet these are factors that may significantly affect productivity and possibly the pace of future economic recovery, he added.

PwC Bahamas advisory partner, Kevin Cambridge, said given the current economic landscape, organisations are seeing the need now more than ever to implement an effective digital strategy to leverage the benefits of technology.

Equally important is the need to ensure that robust human capital engagement remains aligned as the driving force to achieve desired corporate goals.

According to the survey, 77 per cent of Caribbean CFOs say they are implementing cost containment, while 50 are considering deferring or cancelling planned investments as a result of COVID-19.

However, 32 per cent say in the next month they expect a productivity loss due to lack of remote work capabilities, while 34 per cent say in the next month they expect a change in staffing due to low/slow demand .

Most are very confident that on return to the workplace, they can meet customers safety expectations, while 82 per cent are very confident they can provide clear response and shut-down protocols if COVID-19 cases in their area rose significantly or if there was a second wave of infections.

A significant number of Caribbean CFOs (77 per cent) say the current work flexibility will make the company better in the long run while 59 per cent say the current situation has resulted in better resiliency and agility which will make the company better in the long run.

Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us atonlinefeedback@gleanerjm.comoreditors@gleanerjm.com.

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Caribbean business leaders worried about second wave of COVID-19 - Jamaica Gleaner

This Year’s St John Celebration Is Going Virtual Caribbean Journal – Caribbean Journal

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

The 66th annual St. John Celebration is going virtual, with plans for a pop-up virtual festival, running from June 27 to July 4.

U.S. Virgin Islands Commissioner of Tourism Joseph Boschulte said that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on mass gatherings in the territory, which will likely extend through the summer, the Division of Festivals team made the decision to cancel this years physical celebration.

We will, however, build on the virtual activities our team rolled out for Carnival Virgin Islands on St. Thomas, and we will take our music, culture and pageantry into the homes of thousands of Virgin Islanders and potential visitors to our islands, said Boschulte, who added that the Department of Tourism received tremendous positive feedback from the online social activities, which included musical performances as well as replays of previous carnival activities.

Some of the activities planned for the celebration include a virtual Local Cuisine Showcase, featuring Chef Julius Jackson and local culture bearer Irene Scatliff; and a Cultural Do It Yourself segment on costuming and traditional games in partnership with Reichhold Center for the Arts.

Historian Kurt Marsh, Jr. will speak on the history of Emancipation Day and St. Johns cultural roots.

The popular Home Wuk online series will once again feature the USVIs DJ Avalanche who will serve up feel-good music from the Virgin Islands and the region.

People thoroughly enjoyed seeing and hearing the sights and sounds of an authentic USVI carnival experience, and our goal is to offer more festival vibes to help Virgin Islanders near and far as well as prospective visitors feel connected to one another during the pandemic, said Ian Turnbull, Director of the USVI Division of Festivals.

There will be a virtual kick-off event on Fathers Day, this Sunday, June 21 at 4 p.m., featuring Cool Session and DJ Kuntry.

Festival sponsors include Caneel Bay, Cruzan Rum, Kismet, Oriental Bank, Reichhold Center for the Arts, Sea Shore Allure, Virgin Islands Lottery, Virgin Islands Port Authority and Viya.

The St. John Celebration traditionally culminates on July 4, combining the excitement of carnival with both the Fourth of July and the spirit of Emancipation.

Slaves in the U.S. Virgin Islands were freed on July 3, 1848.

Following the virtual edition of Love Citys annual festivities, plans will begin for staging the annual Crucian Christmas Festival, which is slated for St. Croix between December 4, 2020 and January 6, 2021.

For more, visit USVI.

Why Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Stocks Just Got Torpedoed and Are Going Down – Motley Fool

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

What happened

America's cruise lines are extending their involuntary corona-cation -- but this time they're doing so voluntarily.

Just before 2 p.m. Friday, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the trade association representing Carnival Corporation (NYSE:CCL) (NYSE:CUK), Royal Caribbean (NYSE:RCL), and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NASDAQ:NCLH), among others, announced that "the association's ocean-going cruise line members will voluntarily extend the suspension of cruise operations from U.S. ports until 15 September 2020."

As of 2:25 p.m. EDT, shares of Carnival stock are down 5.1%, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is down 5.8%, and Royal Caribbean is suffering worst of all -- down 6.3%.

Image source: Getty Images.

If you recall, it was way back in April that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last extended its no-sail order forbidding cruise ships from sailing out of U.S. ports before July 24. To date, the CDC has not updated or extended that order.

Regardless, observing that "it is increasingly clear that more time will be needed to resolve barriers to resumption in the United States," CLIA members have agreed "to err on the side of caution" and "further extend our suspension of operations from U.S. ports until 15 September."

This "extension of suspension" will come at a cost. According to CLIA, each day the cruise industry remains shut down costs the U.S. economy about $110 million "in economic activity."

More pertinently to cruise line investors, though, Norwegian Cruise says it is burning through cash at the rate of $110 million to $150 million each month, and has probably fewer than 10 months of cash left to it. Royal Caribbean is burning $250 million to $275 million per month during its shutdown, and Carnival just revealed a $650 million-a-month burn rate. And now, according to CLIA, each of these cruise lines can expect to keep burning cash for nearly two months longer than the most optimistic scenario for their respective returns to service.

Long story short? We all probably suspected that the CDC would extend its no-sail order eventually, and that cruise lines would have to remain out of service for longer than that optimistic July 24 scenario.

Now, sadly, that out-of-service suspicion has been confirmed, even if it didn't actually come at the behest of the CDC.

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Why Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Stocks Just Got Torpedoed and Are Going Down - Motley Fool

Haitians join with Caribbean community to demand justice – Haitian Times

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

By Sam Bojarski

Caribbean flags of all colors filled the streets of Flatbush on the afternoon of June 14, as calls for racial justice were punctuated by the sounds of reggae music.

Marlyne Gaston was one of the protesters who marched up Flatbush Avenue, from Church Avenue to Grand Army Plaza, demanding justice for George Floyd and an end to racism and police brutality.

I was hesitant to come out earlier in the protests because of COVID, but last night another black man was killed in America, said Gaston, in reference to the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, which occurred late Friday night.

I was vocal from my house, but now, I see I had to come out here, added Gaston, a Haitian-American who lives in Flatbush.

Several hundred people, perhaps more than 1,000, attended the Caribbean Americans for Justice march, organized as a show of unity during Caribbean American Heritage Month. The Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy, Mount Zion Church of God, Byways & Hedges Youth for Christ Ministry, Ride Along Live and Haitian American community leader Rose Guerrier, of International Cultures United, were among the organizers of the event.

Speakers and marchers called for black unity and solidarity among immigrants, and attendees marched peacefully through the streets, chanting the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Call-and-response slogans like no justice, no peace, were regular features of the march.

Jeff Paul, a Haitian American who was in attendance, noted the significance of the event, given Brooklyns large Caribbean community.

I think its good for us to show unity with each other, were all from different islands and everything, but you know, when we all come together for a cause its a beautiful thing, said Paul, who lives in Flatbush.

Haitians, in particular, have been settling in the U.S. in large numbers since the 1960s. According to Paul, the generation of Haitians who were born in the U.S. have become more in tune with the challenges faced by other black Americans.

I think the generation that was born here, you know, we pretty much have been in black culture, and we know the different things in black society that affect us, he told the Haitian Times.

Gaston acknowledged that the past has not always been free of conflict between the different Caribbean communities in Brooklyn. But she said the march represented an opportunity for all people of African descent to come together as one.

When they said they (were) having a Caribbean protest, I was like, oh yeah, thats up my alley. African Americans, Caribbean Americans, were all one and the same, she said.

The crowd gradually began to swell at around noon, as march attendees, most of them dressed in black, gathered on all four corners of Church and Flatbush avenues. Rev. Terry Lee of Byways & Hedges kicked things off with an electrifying prayer and speech. After acknowledging his own background as a Jamaican immigrant, he called for solidarity among all immigrants during the march.

TO READ FULL STORY

Sam Bojarski has been covering Haiti and its diaspora for The Haitian Times since 2018. He is currently covering New York's Haitian community as a Report for America corps member.

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Haitians join with Caribbean community to demand justice - Haitian Times

Divi Is Reopening Its Resorts in Aruba Caribbean Journal – Caribbean Journal

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Divi Resorts is reopening its resorts in Aruba, Caribbean Journal has learned.

The regional resort company is planning to open its Divi DiviAruba Phoenix Beach Resort,DiviVillage Golf & Beach Resort, andDiviDutch Village Beach Resort on July 10, timed with the reopening of the island for United States travelers.

The company is implementing a new health and safety program called Clean Check to reflect the new realities of travel post COVID.

Divi has already reopened The Links at Divi Aruba, the Divi Village Golf and Beach Resorts nine-hole golf course, with new social distancing procedures in place.

All-inclusive guests at Divi Village Golf and Divi Dutch Village will now be able to play free golf all day, according to the company.

At Divi Resorts, cleanliness and safety standards have always been at the forefront of our policies. We sincerely care about the health and wellbeing of our guests and team members, and their safety remains a top priority as we reopen on Aruba, said Marco Galaverna, President and COO of Divi Resorts. We recently obtained our Aruba Health & Happiness Code seal from the Department of Public Health to show our commitment to providing healthy and safe hotel operations.

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Divi Is Reopening Its Resorts in Aruba Caribbean Journal - Caribbean Journal

THE VIEW FROM EUROPE: Britain’s culture war and the Caribbean – Barbados Advocate

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Last week a culture war erupted in Britain over its colonial history.

Ostensibly the debate revolved around how to respond to publicprotests against the memorialising in city streets, squares, andpublic spaces of those involved in slavery. More profoundly, however,what happened and was said illuminated the need for Britain find waysto rebalance the nations understanding of the role played byconquest, exploitation, and empire in creating its wealth.

The matter achieved prominence because of events on June 7 in Bristolin the West of England. There, protestors had taken to the streets tojoin the international condemnation of the death of George Floyd inMinneapolis, and to make clear that Black Lives Matter in Britain too.

In events eerily reminiscent of other turning points in history fromSouth Africa to Eastern Europe, a group of protestors pulled down astatue of Edward Colston, a seventeenth century slaver and citybenefactor, and threw him into the harbour. Captured on social media,the moment was significant in a yet to be fulfilled way, as itillustrated the need to change the trajectory of Britains history.

It was an act important for its symbolism, not least because many ofthose attending the protest there and in many other British citieswere not just young people of Caribbean and African descent, but alsonumerous others who were white. Their actions reflected a passion tohave their voices heard on racism, inequity, social injustice, andtheir common fears about employment and the future. Tellingly, thecountys police service decided not to intervene, accepted thatColston should fall, and that the greater public good in amulti-racial city was in not provoking a confrontation.

In contrast, a similar Black Lives Matter demonstration in London, sawa small minority indulge in violence and the mindless defacing of thenational war memorial and a statue of Churchill, who in Britainremains an understandable if unnuanced icon as the wartime leader ofan island that stood alone, and then with the US and Russia defeatedfascism in Europe.

The subsequent political and media reaction to events was predictable.The focus was on protecting property, achieving outcomes by democraticmeans, and calls for punitive jail sentences; only for such commentsto be followed by a backlash from menacing groups of ultra-right thugsmasquerading as protectors of statues and history.

Far more important, however, is the sense that the toppling ofColstons statue, marks the identifiable point at which significantparts of British society began to recognise that a more balancedfact-based understanding of the past is required if the country is tobecome more cohesive.

Colstons fall confronted the central un-spoken myth in much of UKsociety about the unremittingly positive nature of its history andmany of its citizens consequential and surprisingly commonplace senseof global superiority.

What happened in Bristol was in its own small way a revolutionary actchallenging the view that Britains future can continue to be based onan uncritical view of its past.

More generally, it highlighted the failure of the Britainseducational system to create an awareness that Britains wealth andeconomic development was built to a significant extent on thetransatlantic slave trade and the exploitation of other human beingson plantations in the Caribbean.

It pointed too, to the need for the teaching of economic and socialhistory rather political history; explaining the present-dayimplications of the acquisition of empire; where the funding forBritains early industrialisation came from and its subsequent socialconsequences; the more recent role played by the thousands from thethen colonies who fought and died for Britain; and how migrants afterthe second world war played a vital role in Britains economicrecovery.

Why none of this has yet happened requires holistic explanation, butthe simple answer could be because much of history shows that thewinners sit back, learning little from their victory, while thelosers learn from their defeat, manage to innovate, and eventuallyfind new ways to rise.

The reaction to Colstons toppling also indicated the absence of anyleading government politician with the courage to recognise how abetter national perspective on English history and a country atcultural peace with itself might channel honesty about the past intogreater global influence.

Shortly after Colstons statue came down, Prime Minister Johnsonannounced a new policy initiative to have a commission identify thedisparities in treatment experienced by minority ethnic groups andmake recommendations.

The problem was that this was not only behind the pay wall of anational newspaper in an article about Churchill, his hero, but itignored four recent and related national reports which have not beenacted on. Appearing to lack understanding, Prime Minister Johnsonsaid, What I really want to do as Prime Minister is change thenarrative, so we stop the sense of victimisation and discrimination.

In a hard-hitting public response, clear and to the point, DavidLammy, an opposition Member of Parliament of Guyanese parentage, whosegovernment-commissioned report is one of those not yet implemented,said that to distract from his inaction, Mr. Johnson was now seeking aculture war.

Britain of course continues to play an important role in the world,but to succeed post-Brexit, it will have to do much more than signtrade agreements and promote nostalgia. To retain its influence in theCaribbean and elsewhere, it will have to project soft power, enhanceits global standing, and cultivate a modern national image worthaspiring to.

Without genuinely addressing issues like racial inequality, injusticeand its history, Britain is likely to become more volatile, making itdifficult for its diplomats to explain its present and future place inthe world, let alone the relevance of Global Britain or the jingoismthat surrounds Brexit.

History cannot be changed, but it deserves to be better understood andexplained, not just in its original context, but in relation to todayand the future. The Caribbean has an important role to play in this.

It needs to remind Britain directly and through its Diaspora that itshistory is the regions history as well. It should find ways to warnabout the dangers inherent in provoking a culture war.

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THE VIEW FROM EUROPE: Britain's culture war and the Caribbean - Barbados Advocate

JetBlue Is Adding New Flights to St Thomas, Puerto Rico – Caribbean Journal

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

JetBlue is launching a Caribbean expansion beginning in August, with new routes to Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands.

Beginning Aug. 6, JetBlue will be operating a new route from Philadelphia to San Juan, Puerto Ricos Luis Muoz Marn International Airport up to once daily, the carrier said this week.

In October, JetBlue will be launching a new route from New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport to St Thomas, with up to two weekly flights to the islands Cyril E. King Airport.

Coronavirus has transformed airline route maps, and as we begin to see small signs of recovery, we continue to be flexible with our network plans to respond to demand trends and generate cash in support of our business, said Scott Laurence, head of revenue and planning at JetBlue. Weve selected routes where customers are showing some interest in travel again and where our low fares and award-winning experience will be noticed.

The carrier will be operating both routes on its Airbus A320 aircraft.

It should be noted that both of these are new routes, not relaunched routes.

JetBlue has also announced that it will relaunch service to a pair of airports in Puerto Rico beginning early next month, with relaunched flights both to Aguadillas Rafael Hernndez Airport and Ponces Mercedita International Airport.

Those relaunches come ahead of Puerto Ricos planned reopening for tourism on July 15.

JetBlue has not yet announced where else it will be relaunching flights in the Caribbean.

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JetBlue Is Adding New Flights to St Thomas, Puerto Rico - Caribbean Journal

Defunding police and prisons: a primer – The Lens

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

The recent call to defund police departments that has grown out of the current Black Lives Matter movement is something communities of color and criminologists have been talking about for a while. Calls to defund the police and/or prison abolition can sound scary to those just hearing about them. Understanding what these mean and how theyre justified may help people grapple with what might appear frightening and too radical at first.

Defunding police departments and prison abolition is part of a broader movement among criminologists and marginalized communities called Justice Reinvestment. This is the argument that cities, states and the federal government should reallocate some of the billions of taxpayers dollars currently invested in these institutions into services that better serve the needs of our fellow Americans.

This movement arose because there appears to be little relationship between the size of police force, the number of people incarcerated or the severity of punishment on actual crime. Police forces grew exponentially over the past few decades as part of the War on Drugs, the Get-Tough movement and the Broken Windows policing practices that followed. Many, many more people were arrested and sentenced to time in jail or prison, often for low-level crimes and those related to drugs, as police departments across the country were vested with the authority to clean up the streets. After decades of research, criminologists now agree that current practices do much more damage than good, and they impact communities of color far too harshly and in ways that are vastly incommensurate of their crime rates.

Communities of color have known this for a long, long time. Those arrested and incarcerated are highly traumatized while in prison (by both other prisoners and prison guards), have their bonds with family and friends ruined, are further marginalized from jobs, housing, licensing and many of the other necessities that would help them improve their lives upon release. And its not only them that suffer, their parents and children suffer as well, losing the connections with parents or supportive loved ones that are so essential for healthy human development. In fact, as renowned criminologist Todd Clear notes, incarceration is so concentrated and severe in urban communities of color that they destabilize entire neighborhoods, dissolving the informal controls that naturally allow people to maintain order themselves.

This would be a problem even if police (or incarceration, for that matter) actually prevented crime, if it reduced the crime rate. But they dont. In fact, criminologist Travis Pratt noted, while it may seem intuitive that mass incarceration is an effective way of controlling crime, the results of over 600 empirical studies reveal it is not. Few are willing to hear this, but its true and not very difficult to accept if we are willing to go beyond overly simplistic and wrongheaded thinking of people committing crimes as just evil-doers.

This movement arose because there appears to be little relationship between the size of police force, the number of people incarcerated or the severity of punishment on actual crime.

With the Get-Tough movement supported widely by both Republicans and Democrats across the nation, cities grew their police forces, equipped them with military gear and created special task forces focused on drugs and gangs (usually very loosely defined). This has had virtually no effect on crime rates and victimization rates, as the quality and quantity of drugs has skyrocketed, as have the number of guns and gangs on the streets, but it has resulted in more violent police departments.

The basic conclusions that we must draw are that policing not only does not work to reduce or prevent crime, but it makes things worse. This is especially the case for the nations black and brown populations. Not only does policing do little to address the underlying conditions that create crime in the first place, but makes them worse.

Can police departments be reformed? Many criminologists are increasingly skeptical. Few supported the popular call for body cameras in 2014 when the Black Lives Movement emerged, arguing that it is not the systemic change needed. Why the skepticism? It is mainly because we ask the police to do things they are neither equipped to do nor designed to do.

Police are tasked with responding to all kinds of problems, from mental health, drug addiction, domestic abuses, homelessness, and disputes among youth. Yet, its not an institution designed to deal with these social problems in any way other than arrests. However, we will never arrest our way out of these. They require other strategies, strategies that deal with deep, ingrained, structural inequalities. Many police know this and, as Dallas Police Chief David Brown recently expressed, grow frustrated at being the key agency asked to deal with these problems. Its damaging to them as well. Itd be helpful if they admitted it more publicly.

As institutions, police and mass incarceration are not designed to deal with these problems, nor are they designed to prevent or reduce crime, even if thats what we like to tell ourselves. They were designed, however, to control populations that may threaten the nations racial and class structure. Policing, as we know it today, emerged out of private security firms, the protection of private property for those who own it, attempts to control new waves of immigration and slave patrols. From the beginning, they were created and tasked with the responsibility to enforce and uphold a vast system of racial and class inequality. They may not address crime well but, as sociologist Noel Cazenave points out, they do protect wealthy elites and a system of white supremacy, even if many of us dont want to acknowledge it.

Of course, few police officers would agree with this or see themselves engaged in these actions. But it doesnt matter. We seldom see our individual lives as part of larger social and historical forces. That doesnt mean its not true. Further, some might argue that black and brown police do not engage in these acts, using it as a justification to diversify departments. Neither does this matter. If police do their jobs properly, they will inevitably be enforcing a system or long-standing, shapeshifting racial and class control, regardless of the racial, ethnic, or gender make-up of a department.

This is why critical scholars, activists and others involved in the present movement for black lives are calling to defund the police. The conclusion is that they dont work to control crime, theyre not designed to do so, they often make things worse, and they control populations of color hindering their ability to create the kinds of change necessary for real racial equity.

Many justice reinvestment advocates say they can accept a very small police force and prisons allocated for the most violent of offenders. But there are more effective ways of helping almost everyone else.

So, what can we do? Where should we put our resources? Justice reinvestment advocates have different ideas, but they generally agree that most of the money currently spent on policing should be spent in areas that better support productive, healthy and pro-social lives, families and communities, something many white people and the more privileged enjoy without even knowing it. In a review of research on violence across the globe, criminologist Elliott Currie notes the societies with high levels of violence and self-harm are characterized by severe inequality, too much marginal work and low-wage jobs, weak social supports, strained families, harsh justice systems and easy availability to firearms. Indeed, shifting much of the money we spend on police and prisons towards these areas would be welcomed and effective.

What might this look like? Shifting money towards social workers, affordable and safe housing, mental health services, conflict resolution for youth and adults, adequate, long-term, residential drug treatment services, family planning, free daycare, low or no interest loans for home buyers and businesses owned and controlled by people who live in communities of color and want to invest in them. These are the things that help people develop healthy lives, stable families and safe communities. This is the crime prevention strategy we should all want, and we need to think outside of police, prosecutors and prisons to get here.

Would police and jails disappear in such a scenario? Not entirely. Many justice reinvestment advocates say they can accept a very small police force and prisons allocated for the most violent of offenders. But there are more effective ways of helping almost everyone else. Virtually every advanced, industrial country in the world has figured this out, but not the U.S.

There are other calls that must be recognized if we are to properly deal with institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system. None of them require different or more training, a monitor, or similar ineffective strategies.

First, end the War on Drugs and release all prisoners sentenced on drug possession or distribution charges from prison. The War on Drugs has cost the US over $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives. Its a massively expensive investment to harm populations of color that already suffer from severe inequalities due to ongoing systemic racism. It needs to stop and those most affected by it should be given priority in any business endeavors that arise due to its decriminalization.

Second, we must have meaningful criminal punishment for police officers who violate the laws theyre sworn to uphold and prosecutors who lie, cheat and over-prosecute. Prosecutors ability to levy charges with prescribed sentences and their focus on winning cases distort civic ideals of how our courts should operate in the U.S. and they exacerbate the racism already at work with the War on Drugs and policing practices.

Finally, envision a society that reserves prisons for only the most violent people, like serial killers. Knowing that prisons do little to reduce crime and often make things worse and at great social and economic expense should motivate us to think about something different. One step towards this would be to prevent anyone from making money running and operating prisons. Nobody should have economic incentives that call for more prisons, prisoners and longer sentences. Instead, incentives should be structured to support successful reentry. Other steps were identified earlier: residential drug treatment, stable and safe housing, residential mental health services, youth and adult conflict resolution, etc. Our strategy should be to reduce inequalities, support families and communities, and decriminalize behaviors where involvement is voluntary. We must find ways to respond to crime that do not exacerbate these underlying conditions as we have done since the Civil Rights Movement and the beginning of Mass Incarceration.

Its not a matter of whether or not we can afford it. We have no choice. We have an obligation to right the wrongs of entrenched white supremacy and its operation through the criminal justice system. And we can afford it; we have the money. Whats missing is the imagination and political will to implement significant changes. Our priorities are wrong. Our money should be spent on helping to create safe and healthy societies, not on damaging them.

Thats why people are mad and protesting. Thats why people are calling to defund the police. Thats why people want to see real progress in decriminalization and decarcertion. These are institutions with long histories of upholding white supremacy and controlling populations of color, and they are counterproductive in preventing crime. Justice reinvestment provides some suggestions on how our political leaders and fellow citizens should respond in anti-racist ways and in ways that will make for a healthier, safer, equitable society.

Stephen F. Ostertag, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology Tulane University

The Opinion section is a community forum. Views expressed are not necessarily those of The Lens or its staff. To propose an idea for a column, contact Opinion Editor Tom Wright at twright@thelensnola.org.

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Defunding police and prisons: a primer - The Lens

True nature of the capitalist state revealed – Workers World

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

The Department of Justice has given the Drug Enforcement Agency the power to surveil the people participating in the nationwide uprising against police brutality. At first glance, this might be perplexing to some. Why would an agency that focuses on drug trafficking take action against those fighting for racial justice?

Fuck ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) protest, NYC.

In actuality, this move makes a good deal of sense. One need only consider the racist nature of the war on drugs. The DEA, as a tool of white supremacy, is working in concert with other state apparatuses of oppression and repression.

On the evening of June 1, law enforcement personnel brutally cleared Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., of peaceful protesters decrying the police murder of George Floyd, so that President Donald Trump could walk to a nearby church for a photo-op.

The next day, Attorney General William P. Barr stated in a Department of Justice press release: I am grateful to the many federal law enforcement agencies and personnel who helped protect the District [of Columbia], including the FBI, Secret Service, Park Police, ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives], DEA, Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, Capitol Police, Department of Homeland Securitys CBP [Customs and Border Protection] and Border Patrol units, and others.

The fact that the U.S. Border Patrol another federal agency that has long brutalized Black and Brown people is involved thousands of miles from any U.S. border gives credence to the argument that the institution of the state in this country is inherently white supremacist. Federal law enforcement agencies are first and foremost tools of repression, meant to maintain prevailing social relations and inequality.

Bhagat Singh, an Indian revolutionary, said on Feb. 2, 1931: The state, the government machinery is just a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to further and safeguard its interests. (tinyurl.com/y8yrwfrz)

In the case of U.S. capitalism, these interests are tightly bound to and indeed dependent on the racialized order that is maintained through violence against nonwhite and hyper-exploited populations.

The open collaboration of these law enforcement agencies also suggests that top state officials feel threatened enough to think it is necessary to lift the thin veil on the state in order to protect the fragile order of the countrys white ruling class. They have every right to be fearful for they know that what is at stake is their own position of dominance.

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True nature of the capitalist state revealed - Workers World

Ken Dixon: Class of 2020 left holding the bag – Middletown Press

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

OPINION ART -- TOP 10 . GRADUATION PIE CHART

Photo: Barrie Maguire / Newsart.com

OPINION ART -- TOP 10 . GRADUATION PIE CHART

Ken Dixon: Class of 2020 left holding the bag

Greetings graduates! You made it, sort of, kind of, technically. I mean, youve gotten the diploma ...

You cant say you wont remember this spring, when you look back with 2020 hindsight, after youve solved global climate change, poverty, misguided wars of imperialism, weaned us off Big Oil and brought a new era of racial understanding.

Did I mention the asteroid? Maybe later.

In fact, you 18-to-24 types had better get cracking before there is nothing else left to save, amid the tornadoes, flooding, rising sea levels Farewell Florida! Russian trolls, attacks on DACA, the Affordable Care Act, your freedom of speech and the right to assembly to redress your grievances.

Lets not forget the active assaults on clean water, bee-killing pesticides, the pimping-out of the national parks and generations of racial inequity and segregation.

Yep, the so-called adults in the country are on the verge of leaving you a dirty, hateful mess.

It seems that the battle might be engaged. I feel like the iconic comedian Oliver Hardy, who after another tragic, hilarious mishap, often his fault, would look at his partner Stan Laurel and, in full denial of the circumstances remark Well, heres another nice mess youve gotten me into.

In fact, my generation, which came of age protesting the Vietnam War and studying Laurel and Hardy, has left you 2020 grads holding the bag. We preached peace, love and freedom, then spent the next 40 years making money, paying very little attention to public policy and finally allowed a money-grubbing huckster and his corporate-backed enablers to invade and loot the White House, the Treasury and much of what America represented on the global stage.

The Boomers became the sleepers, and like Rip Van Winkle, were waking up to find that nothing has changed since 1970, except pop music has fewer guitars, and maybe its a lot easier to divide and conquer us. Oh, and the police have deadlier tactics, complete with surplus military equipment.

The dog whistles of a type of law-and-order politician who thrived over the last few decades as people stopped reading newspapers, gave police the license to abuse people of color. The cops got away with it for way too long even as the war on drugs failed massively and completely. Fortunately, the advent of personal video cameras has helped the cause of truth and justice.

Video of a knee to the neck of George Floyd in Minneapolis helped expose the homicide heard around the world. And despite the low esteem in which the White House is held, hundreds of thousands of people joined in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in places such as London and Paris, where only people in their 90s still remember the United States as the friendly do-anything liberators of 75 years ago in the war against murderous fascism.

This is an optimistic turn of events, and may be the last chance for the United States to live up to its name. It just took a worldwide pandemic, 120,000 deaths in the United States and one more Black man killed by a cop to set it off.

Marching and yelling, even shouting at cops and City Hall is just a start. Its probably the easy part because demonstrators make their own paths of least resistance. You want to stand in Interstate-95 and stop traffic? Fine and dandy. I mean, its a nice day and all ...

But if you want something that lasts, youve got to build within the existing public-policy infrastructure. That means running for office, so progressive people can have their voices and logic heard on local school boards, library boards, city and town councils and, the true laundries of local racial exclusion, which are planning and zoning commissions.

It means knocking on doors for support, talking with neighbors who often cant articulate what needs to be done, and convincing them that change starts with hope and educated advocates. And you with the fresh diplomas, are educated. The power elite are standing in your way.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, when my generation was your age, the graduation mantra was to go on to learn more, or get a job and start on the work of change from within.

So, you college graduates, welcome to real life. High schoolers, keep studying or if you cannot afford higher education, keep informed. Reading is the key to arguing truth to power.

Its everybody for themselves, or everybody for everybody. Good luck, try not to get hurt, and know weve been waiting for you to come help. Surprise! Nobodys in charge.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT

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Ken Dixon: Class of 2020 left holding the bag - Middletown Press

How the Drug War Broke Policing | Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

In the famous Norman Rockwell painting Runaway, seen on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1958, akindly police officer and apubescent boy sit at alunch counter, the boy clearly having packed some belongings in akerchief and run away. Its awholesome encounter and one wholly at odds with our modern image of police. Thats because its an image that came before the modern drug war.

During our national conversation on police and criminal justice, there will be many reforms proposed that will help increase police accountability and encourage better behavior. We should absolutely reform unions, abolish qualified immunity, and address how police are investigated after excessive force is used. But it is also important that we look to one of the root causes of why the police no longer have that wholesome, Norman Rockwell image. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that, every day, thousands of police suit up to go to war against their fellow citizens.

Drug crimes are qualitatively different from other types of crimes, i.e. real crimes. Real crimes have victims, and victims call the police to investigate and hopefully catch the perpetrator. The victim of arobbery calls the police, invites the police into his house, asks them to take evidence, and gives them all the information he has.

When crimes have no real victims, however, policing fundamentally changes. With drug use, the purported victim and the criminal are the same person, guilty of the grave crime of preferring adifferent intoxicant than the one available at the local bar. Victims no longer participate in catching the criminals, since they are the same person. Police must therefore adopt strategies to catch unwilling victims and to interdict the drugs at their source.

Catching unwilling victims is difficult. Anyone could be acriminal/victim, after all, hiding illicit drugs on their body, car, or property. What were once casual interactions with citizens become riddled with suspicion. Is this driver hiding something? Perhaps if Isearch that random person on the street, Ill find drugs, after all, he looks like adruggie.

Not to mention that finding drugs on someone can become apretense for abusive behavior. Perhaps acop wants to bust up some unruly teenagers to teach them alesson about loitering and disobeying his authority? Is that marijuana he smells? Who could possibly question him on that?

If drug users are out in the street, its relatively easy. But what if theyre in their homes, carrying out their crimes in private? Surveillance is the first priority. Helicopters can be flown over the house or, now, more likely drones. Heatsensitive cameras can test for grow rooms, and there are always informants who are more than willing to fess up for leniency or asmall cash payment. Theres adrug dealer in there, they tell the cops, and now police can go after the source.

But the criminals/victims still wont invite the police into the house, so it is time to suit up and go in with force. Thankfully for the police, the American military has been transferring surplus gear to local police departments for afew decades, primarily to fight the drug war. With all this gear laying around, why not use it?

A modern police officer can don the accoutrements of asoldier fighting in Fallujah and arrive at the scene of the crime in an armored personnel carrier designed for military use. They can also request permission from amagistrate judge (nearly always given) to carry out a noknock raidsuch as the raid that killed ayoung black woman named Breonna Taylorand go in with full force. The door is violently busted open, flash bang grenades are thrown in, and armed men come rushing in throwing the occupants to the ground threatening to shoot them, if not actually pulling the trigger.

What else could they do? After all, drugs were in there.

But there werent, unfortunately for the cops. The informant lied or was misinformed, or maybe the cop lied on the warrant, as has also been known to occur. While the occupants are picking up the pieces of their broken house and consoling each other over the trauma they endured, the police are miffed. They were hoping to find abig stash they could put on TV or some money they could take for themselves. Through the process of forfeiture, in which drugdealing assets and proceeds can be legally taken and kept by police, drug raids often look more attractive than hitting the streets with some oldfashioned shoe leather policing.

And for some police officers, drug raids are just more fun. With policing having changed so fundamentally from the batontwirling Officer Friendly, is it asurprise that some officers joined the force because they want to be the batonbashing Officer Shut the F*** Up?

This is the policing the drug war has given us. While the drug war is not the only reason police have become more violent and less accountable, its effect on policing, while difficult to fully quantify, is immense

When you imagine aworld without the drug war, the mind spins with possibilities, especially for policing. Imagine all those resources are poured into treatment and recovery. Imagine all those police officers who are reassigned to the homicide, burglary, and sex crimes divisions. The American murder clearance ratethe rate at which someone is arrested for amurdersits around 60 percent, which is among the lowest in the developed world. Other crimes with real victimsassault, rape, burglaryhave even lower clearance rates. Even if the drug war were ended, theres clearly alot of policing to be done.

Imagine aworld where SWAT raids are used when theyre needed rather than the 62 percent of the time theyre currently used to serve drug warrants. Imagine waking up in aworld where the police have dedicated almost all their resources to preventing actual crimes and catching actual criminals.

That world is possible. We can get Officer Friendly back, and Id gladly sit next to that guy at the lunch counter.

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How the Drug War Broke Policing | Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute

She’s Taking Her History Lessons From the Ivory Tower to the Community – OZY

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Because there has to be an intellectual engine of the movement.

Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. Malcolm X

Professor Elizabeth Hinton finds herself reenergized to achieve her goals each time she reads that quote. In 2017, Hinton, a professor at Yale, published From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, in which she examined the implementation of federal law enforcement programs beginning in the mid-1960s, formulating a system of mass incarceration of Black American citizens. Hinton says her book inspired her to transfer her education from the campusto the community to work directly with law enforcement, community groups and nonprofits.

Hinton, 36, grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, believing that she would be a lawyer, having been influenced by national debates on criminal justice surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial as well as the war on drugs. After working in politics for a summer, she soon realized that she couldnt quite commit to the darker side of politics. After attending New York University, she soon found that history offered a balance between the law and the personal stories she cared for, as she dives in on the persistence of poverty and racial inequality in 20th century U.S. history. The decision to research and teach is a kind of happy medium between my research interests, she says.

It wouldnt make any sense to study [mass incarceration] without also leading the change.

Elizabeth Hinton

Hinton views her work as a reciprocal process. After beginning her graduate degree in history, she realized that it wouldnt make any sense to study [mass incarceration] without also leading the change. She seeks to learn the most about peoples historical experiences and ideas in order to fuel true change within the criminal justice system. Since 2017, she has been working with the police department in Stockton, California, to host listening sessions and programming to improve the extreme poverty and crime rates within the city.

At this moment, however, she is mostly thinking about her legacy, as she has a 1-year-old daughter growing up in this tumultuous world. Hinton believes that in order to properly effect change in terms of racism and criminal justice reform, we must look at the mistakes in history and repair them through a restorative justice model. One that brings victims and perpetrators together to think about how both the harms and the harmed can come together after an injustice has been committed. Ultimately, she thinks that her work is more urgent than ever. COVID has unmasked the deep contours of racial inequality, and we need to begin to commit resources to building a different kind of world.

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She's Taking Her History Lessons From the Ivory Tower to the Community - OZY

‘We Should Be Committed to Decriminalizing if We Want to Help Communities of Color’ – FAIR

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Janine Jackson interviewed the Drug Policy Alliances Maritza Perez about the war on drugs and overpolicing for the June 12, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

MP3 Link

Janine Jackson: As Derek Chauvin crushed the life out of George Floyd, one of his colleagues said to appalled onlookers, Dont do drugs, kids. The police who broke into Breonna Taylors home and killed her say their no-knock warrant was related to drugs.

US law enforcement can be violent and racist even without the so-called war on drugs, but it often provides pretext for their actions, and reading that a victim of police brutality was on drugs can put an asterisk on the story for many. Understanding the use of the war on drugs should be part of our general understanding of law enforcements war on black and brown people.

Maritza Perez is director of the office of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance. She joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Maritza Perez.

MP: Hi, thanks for having me.

JJ: Lets get right into it. Drug Policy Alliance released a statement this week on the new piece of police reform legislation in Congress, the Justice in Policing Act. How much do you think the act, as is, would doin reality, on the groundand what wont it do thats still needed?

MP: So first, well start off by saying that the act does have some really good elements to it; the first time that we would have legislation around creating a national use-of-force standard, also around data collection; the first time we would have a national database keeping track of police misconduct, also use-of-force incidents. There are other things in there, like banning chokeholds, which is great. So there are things in the bill that are good, but the bill is still lacking in areas, specifically in areas that are related to the drug war, which is why we havent been able to fully support the bill.

On one hand, we definitely appreciate that Congress is taking a hard look at police reform. This is one of those areas in Congress that is always really, really hard to move on, for a number of reasons. So the fact that they even have a bill, a comprehensive bill at that, is a feat. But we also think that this moment and this opportunity requires something that is much bolder.

Breonna Taylor

So some things that we have specifically said that we need to change about the bill are around the war on drugs. For instance, the bill does provide a ban on no-knock warrants, which, as you said in the segment before this interview, thats what happened in Breonna Taylors case. She was shot while she was sleeping in her own bed. The officers who came to her home had a search warrant in the form of a no-knock warrant, which means that they didnt have to notify Breonna that they were on the premises, didnt have to notify folks about their intent before ramming into the home.

No-knock warrants are actually really prevalent. Thousands are issued every year. Its actually really easy to get sign-off from a judge on a no-knock warrant. Usually theyre used in the context of drugs, so the officers will just have to say that, We think that if we give notice, our lives will be in danger, or people will dispose of the evidence, or the drugs. So its very rare that a judge will not sign off on a no-knock warrant. And theyre often used in SWAT deployments, which just makes it even more deadly, and its certainly a deadly combination.

So the bill does prohibit no-knock warrants. However, it doesnt also prohibit quick-knock warrants, which are legally slightly different from the no-knock warrant, but in practice, its the same thing: Its the police officers barging into your home before you have any idea of whats happening, before you can respond, before you have time to react, and this is what leads to deadly incidents.

Because this practice is not just deadly for civilians, although it is definitely more deadly for civilians than police officers. But it also affects law enforcement, because officers have lost their lives using these types of warrants. Why? Because if somebody barges into your home, your first thought is going to be that its somebody trying to break in. So you might try to retaliate.

So we think its very important, especially in drug cases, that officers announce their presence, and give the occupants time to answer their door, to avoid death. So one thing that weve been pushing for with this bill is to include quick-knock warrants in the prohibition around no-knock warrants.

Militarized SWAT team at Ferguson protests (cc photo: Jamelle Bouie)

Something else that we think is missing from the bill is the fact that this bill attempts to reform the Department of Defenses 1033 program. The 1033 program is a program thats been around for approximately 30 years at this point. It allows the Department of Defense to transfer military-grade equipment to local and state police departments.

I think the public really became aware of this program around the time of the Michael Brown protests in Ferguson. I think people were really just astonished to see that local law enforcement had access to things like tanks, riot gear, the types of things that you think you would see in a war zone, not in a community or in a neighborhood.

But the reason that law enforcement has this is because over the years, this program has allowed billionsmore than $7 billion worth of equipmentto get transferred to local and state departments.

This program is also notorious for being mismanaged. In fact, a couple of years ago, the Government Accountability Office conducted a report and review of the program. And they actually created a fake law enforcement agency, and were able to get military-grade equipment from the program, pretending to be this nonexistent law enforcement agency. So that just kind of paints a picture of how little-managed and how little oversight there is of this program, which is scary because, again, its military equipment going into the hands of police officers, and who knows who else.

The bill does include reform around the program, but we dont think reform is enough. We think that the program needs to be abolished. One reason that law enforcement can make a case for getting this equipment is saying that they are conducting counter-narcotics investigations. The bill would take that piece out, but law enforcement would still be able to get the equipment through other ways, including saying that they are conducting counterterrorism investigations; that could be another way to get this equipment.

Our concern is that the equipment would still go to them, and it would still be used against people, and thats what we dont want. And I do want to point out that military equipment, and no-knock warrants, are super tied. I mentioned before that no-knock warrants are often used in conjunction with SWAT raids. The police will often use quick-knock, no-knock warrants during SWAT deployments, specifically during drug investigations, disproportionately against people of color in drug investigations. So we really think that reform wont save the program; the program needs to be done away with. We just need to put an end to militarized policing.

Maritza Perez: I think this bill really does fail to imagine what public safety could look like. Thats our biggest problem with it. Theyre not listening to people on the ground.

And then lastly, what we think the bill fails to do is just really reimagine what public safety can look like. Its still relying on federal funding to encourage police officers and law enforcement to do the right thing. Its still saying, Well, if you do these things, if you implement these policies, we wont take away your funding. But, ultimately, its still diverting resources to law enforcement. And, in fact, there are other areas within the bill that give law enforcement money to implement some of these rules. Its not just being used as a stick, saying, Well, well take your money if you dont do this. Its also like, Well give you money so you can do X, Y and Z.

And I think that Congress really needs to listen to people on the ground, who are saying now is the time where we need to divest from law enforcement and invest in our communities, invest in things that actually create public safety and create safe communities, things like quality education, things like jobs and living wages, things like safe and affordable housing, things like harm reduction.

If were talking about people who use drugs, I think a better investment would be in harm reduction services, and programs for people who really need them; that would save lives. That would reduce violence.

I think this bill really does fail to imagine what public safety could look like. Thats our biggest problem with it. Theyre not listening to people on the ground. And were trying to just help Congress think through what people are actually asking. Theyre not saying, Fund police right now. In fact, theyre saying the opposite. Theyre saying, Invest in our communities. This bill doesnt go far enough.

So unfortunately, as the bill currently is written, we cannot throw our support behind it. We hope that in the coming days, Congress gets the bill to a place where we could support it, because, like I said, there are a lot of good things in the bill. There are some good things in there, and Congress hasnt acted on police reform in quite some time. So this is a really great opportunity, but we think they should seize the moment and really push for something bold. The moment today requires bold action, and this bill is just not it.

JJ: Let me ask you, also: I think that some people think, Well, cannabis is legal now. Is the war on drugs really still happening? I think they imagine theres been a sea change in that. When youre answering how the war on drugs fits in the overall picture of police racism and of overpolicing, how do you explain it to people? Like that its still going on; just because you can go to the dispensary and get some pot doesnt mean that people are not still being policed and harmed by law enforcement under the guise of a war on drugs.

MP: I think thats one reason that we actually have, for a long time, been saying that we need to think beyond marijuana legalization, and we need to think about all drug decriminalization. Because as long as we criminalize things that are low-level, one, and then things that a lot of people turn to for survival, for example, drug selling or sex workthose are things that some people do just to survive. And as long as those things remain criminalized, its giving police cover to go after black and brown people for things that are crimes on the books, even though they may not be harming anybody, even though the crime may not be a threat to public safety.

The fact is that we would have criminal laws on the books, and a number of criminal laws will always disproportionately hurt minority communities, people of color, because we feel the brunt of police enforcement. So we need to chip away at all of those things; really, we need to ask ourselves, Is this actually something that needs to be criminalized, that will actually endanger public safety? And if the answer is that it wont, then we should take it off the books, because we need to make sure that they dont have excuses to continue to harass and target our communities, because its just going to continue to happen.

Marijuana dispensary, Eugene, Oregon (cc photo: Rick Obst)

I think what you said earlier about marijuana being legalized, you can go to a dispensaryI think, unfortunately, people just have different experiences in America based on your skin color. I think if youre white and you dont experience police harassment, you might think marijuana legalization did it, right? I can go get my weed from a store and things are fine, nobodys harassing me.

But data says something different. Even if you look at states that have legalized marijuana, the people who are still being disproportionately arrested for marijuana activity, the people who are still being cited, are black and brown people, the people who feel the brunt of all police enforcement.

So I think we should all just be committed to just decriminalizing things, getting things off the books, if we really want to help communities of color. But also, we just need to rethink law enforcement. I mean, do we really think its a good use of taxpayer resources to throw somebody in jail, or give somebody a life record, for smoking marijuana, something thats legal in most states at this point? So its a good question, and something that we should reconsider. I think policing is a good start, but I think we also just need to continue to chip away at criminal justice, and have a conversation about criminal justice reform.

JJ: Weve been speaking with Maritza Perez of the Drug Policy Alliance. You can follow their work online at DrugPolicy.org. Thank you so much, Maritza Perez, for joining us on CounterSpin.

MP: Thank you for having me.

Viewpoint: Policing can evolve toward protecting everyone – Times Union

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Frank Kyosho Fallon

June 16, 2020Updated: June 16, 2020 11:51p.m.

The death of black people in our country at the hands of police is a source of shame. Our law enforcement agencies are composed of good people who have been trained the wrong way.

I applaud Gov. Andrew Cuomo's leadership with the police accountability bills he just signed. I thank him for taking on institutionalized racism. Our impressionable public servants need training, not shaming. It should be about how to serve us all.

The war on drugs is another example of how the good intentions of ending the harm caused by drug abuse has resulted in a war on black people.

Commercial capitalism sets up the well-known relationship: The greater the risk, the greater the reward. The greater the success of the war on drugs, the higher the price for drug dealers to overcome those obstacles. It's obvious why the war on drugs accelerates the problem. It's built into our system.

Instead of continuing this self-perpetuating battle, I ask the governor to consider how best to convene agencies and responsibly change the war on drugs to remove the criminal incentive for example, by defining drug abuse as a medical problem, and by providing legal access in controlled clinical settings for addicts who aren't ready to stop. The state would call the shots, figuratively and literally.

This is one way to pull the plug on illegal drug commerce. No commerce, no crime, no enforcement, no prosecution, no imprisonment.

Problems can be solved, and it sure looks to me like Cuomo is a governor who has figured out how to do it.

I urge him to also take up the larger issue of shrinking our gigantic, budget-busting prison system. Our people need education and medical care, not SWAT teams on our local police forces.

We can have instead sensible law enforcement community policing with interagency support from social services that allows all citizens to call on our friends in blue in their hour of need.

Frank Kyosho Fallon lives in Shokan.

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Viewpoint: Policing can evolve toward protecting everyone - Times Union

Maria Ressa’s conviction, and the Philippines’ dire information climate – Columbia Journalism Review

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Evation. Yesterday, authorities in the Philippines used that typo to convict Maria Ressa, the crusading journalist who founded the independent news site Rappler, and her former colleague Reynaldo Santos of cyber-libel charges. The typo appeared in a May 2012 article in which Santos linked Wilfredo Keng, a Filipino businessman, to the human-trafficking and drug trades. The story was published four months before the Philippines introduced the law under which the cyber-libel charges would eventually be brought, placing the story beyond that laws scope. Then, in 2014, Rappler spotted and fixed the typo. Prosecutors argued that the fix amounted to republication of the article, which meant the cyber-libel law applied to it after all. That interpretation, like almost everything else about the case, was a stretchthis morning, Ressa decried it as legal acrobaticsbut that didnt stop a judge handing down a guilty verdict.

Ressa and Santos could now face up to six years in prison. They plan to appeal. Whatever the eventual sentence, the verdict is another sharp blow to press freedom in the Philippines, whose authoritarian president, Rodrigo Duterte, has waged a relentless campaign to silence critics, including Ressa, who have spoken out about atrocities including a war on drugs that has claimed at least twelve thousand Filipino lives to date, many at the hands of the state. The Philippines National Union of Journalists said the verdict against Ressa and Santos basically kills freedom of speech and of the press. Ressas voice cracked as, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, she said, To the Filipinos watching, this is not just about Rappler or about us. This is about you. Because freedom of the press is the foundation of every single right you have. This morning, Ressa vowed to fight on. She tweeted #HoldTheLinea slogan that has become a rallying cry among Dutertes critics.

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Yesterdays convictions marked an escalation of officials harassment of Ressa and Rappler. Pro-government accounts have repeatedly mobbed Rappler on social media; Duterte banned the sites reporters from the presidential palace and campaign events. In his state of the nation address in 2017, Duterte accused Rappler of being wholly owned by Americans, in violation of media-ownership provisions in the Philippine constitution; later the same year, he spread conspiracy theories about the site deriving funding from the CIA. While Rappler does have foreign backers, including Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire eBay founder whose media investments include The Intercept, it is wholly owned and operated by Filipinosbut that didnt stop the countrys Securities and Exchange Commission from moving, in 2018, to effectively revoke Rapplers license. Ressa and Rappler have subsequently faced charges of tax and securities fraud, which have yet to be resolved. In December 2018, Ressa narrowly avoided arrest on landing at an airport in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. In the first months of 2019, she was arrested on two separate occasions, and has repeatedly had to post bail to secure her freedom.

Last year, Ressa wrote about her arrests for CJR, as well as Dutertes broader campaign of disinformationpatriotic trollingto pound critics into silence. Duterte said around the time of his inauguration, in 2016, that just because youre a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination, if youre a son of a bitch. Since then, he has lobbed allegations of fraud at the owners of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the countrys biggest English-language title, and ABS-CBN, the countrys biggest broadcast network. The Inquirer was sold to a pro-Duterte businessman. The government threatened to force ABS-CBN off the air; last month, it followed through after ABS-CBNs license, which is granted by the countrys legislature, expired. Pro-Duterte lawmakers stalled efforts to extend the license, and the government refused ABS-CBN special dispensation to continue broadcasting while the issue was resolved.

Dutertes war on the press goes far beyond censorshiphes waged a brazen effort to exert almost total control over the Philippines information ecosystem. Almost all Filipinos with internet access use Facebook, which, thanks in part to subsidies that Facebook itself paid, is cheaper and easier to access than independent news sites; consequently, as Ressa wrote for CJR, Facebook is our internet. As Davey Alba explained in an exhaustive feature for BuzzFeed in 2018, allies of Duterte, who has admitted to deploying trolls during his election campaign, have flooded the platform with pro-government propaganda and crude smear campaignsincluding the weaponization of pornographytargeting critical journalists and politicians. There was no strong loyalty or support for news in the first place, Clarissa David, a professor at the University of the Philippines, told Alba. False news did not have to supplant the legacy brands. People went from no access to news to gaining access only through Facebooks algorithm-driven news feed.

Facebook has ramped up fact-checking programs and other measures in the country, but critics say its approach remains inadequate. Abuse is routine on the platformlast week, Regine Cabato reported, for the Washington Post, that trolls cloned accounts belonging to reporters, including student journalists, in order to harass or incriminate them. The fresh trolling campaign came in the context of draconian new anti-terror legislation the legislature passed last week, which will likely give the government yet another pretext to stifle dissent. Already this year, Duterte signed legislation ostensibly aimed at curbing misinformation around the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. A few days later, the law was used to charge two journalistsMario Batuigas and Amor Virata, who had reported on a local mayors social media posts about possible cases of the virus in Cavite City, south of Manilawith spreading false information.

Internationally, Ressaa former CNN bureau chief who is a dual US citizenis the most visible victim of Dutertes war on the press, but she is far from alone. From lone typos to major media conglomerates, Duterte and his allies are leading a totalizing war on dissent in the Philippines and, in the process, tipping the country back toward its days of dictatorship. Writing for CJR, Ressa recalled starting out as a journalist in the late eighties, covering Southeast Asias transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. Its bizarre now to think of the euphoria then.

Below, more on the Philippines and international press freedom:

What Teaching Policing and Race as a Former Police Officer Has Taught Me – JURIST

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Danzig

Jos Torres, of Louisiana State University, discusses his experience as a police officer and later as an academic...

The results of the Kerner Commission Report were published in the midst of racial unrest sweeping across the United States in the 1960s. The commission, established by President Lyndon Johnson and made up of bi-partisan officials, set out to investigate the cause of social unrest. It concluded that the unrest was largely triggered by police actions towards Black people but caused by pervasive institutional racism. If history repeats itself then scores of younger generations are getting a taste of the 1960s and we are confronting the Kerner Commissions famous line: We are moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal. These words may be easy to say as a race and policing scholar yet I say these words as a former community police officer who now teaches on the subject of race and policing. I emphasize the historytracing the relationship between race and policing from slave patrols through today. Through the intentional excavation of my own gaps in historical knowledge on this subject, I have been able to pull back from my individual experience as a police officer and place that experience into a larger historical context. This essay exposes a few of the lessons this excavation has taught me while calling attention to the value that historical pedagogy adds towards understanding race and policing.

Beginning in 2009 I worked nearly three years as a police officer for the city of Norfolk, Virginia, and spent most of that time policing all Black public housing neighborhoods as a community police officer. Those of us who were public housing community police officers were voted on by its members. We went through a trial period to see if they were up to the task and able to be trusted by the community. We practiced a style of community policing that called for us to be in the community as much as possible. I worked sixty-to-eighty hours a week, carried a work cell phone furnished by the housing authority that residents could call anytime, was accountable for one public housing neighborhood, patrolled by vehicle, foot, and bike, and used crime statistics to find patterns of concern. We answered calls only in public housing, and when we couldnt officers on routine patrol would report to us incidents they responded to in our absence. We would prioritize felony offenses and act as street detectivesgathering information from residents and passing information on to detectives or using already established working knowledge and giving that information to detectives. We used our discretion often with low-level offenses, knowing that the consequences of a minor arrest might harm trust and trigger collateral consequences for residents (i.e. loss of a job, eviction, etc.). The law enforcement side of our efforts was strengthened by enforcing housing authority trespass policy that allowed for the formal banishment of individuals from public housinga policy which I would later and continue to evaluate.

As a Puerto-Rican who grew up in the lower middle class I was an outsider to the Black residents of public housing. The joy of doing community policing was that it privileged knowing the residents of my public housing community and them getting to know me. We developed connections with community residents by knocking on doors, handing out business cards, following-up with crime victims, and the many routine informal contacts with residents we made while on patrol. We also endeavored to establish bonds with residents through various programs. Two of my partners started on their own, sports programming catered to youth residents. We worked regularly with housing authority staff and community leaders. Had I not done this style of policing I would not have been exposed to the many hard-working people working to make it out of poverty. Had I not done this style of policing I would not have been invited to family dinners and cookouts in the community. I may have easily drawn negative opinions of those living in poverty, and Black people, had I practiced a traditional style of policing that only asked me to respond to calls and enforce the law.

I left policing in pursuit of a doctorate with the idea that I could use my experience to advance knowledge about policing. My research began to concentrate on the policing of public housing through no-trespass policies, community policing, and stop-and-frisk which was supplemented through broader studies of race, and crime and deviance. After getting my doctorate at Virginia Tech in 2016 I joined the professoriate at Louisiana State University (LSU). The timing of this transition is noteworthy. Not long after I moved to Baton Rouge, where LSU is located, the city became engulfed in events that would thrust it into the national spotlight. First came the death of Alton Sterling at the hands of Baton Rouge police officers and then a mass shooting targeting local law enforcement. By the early fall semester, I received permission to deliver a seminar on race and policing for the spring.

To guide my pedagogy on race and policing, and as I live in these times, I continue to be brought back to a quote attached to Jos Rizal, a leader in the Filipino Nationalist movement and told to me by my professor Dr. Bernadette Holmes during a Race, Gender, and the Criminal Justice System seminar. The quote is: Know history, know self. No history, no self. This quote informs what I call a pedagogy of the self which intentionally seeks to address the gaps in my own historical knowledge about the subject of race and policing. By the time of my first seminar on race and policing much of my historical knowledge on the subject only covered chunks such as the convict leasing system in the South, policing during the Civil Rights movement and leading into the Kerner Commission Report, the War on Drugs, and contemporary events surrounding racial profiling such as stop-and-frisk in New York City. I set out to engage two broad questions to help fill in the pieces to the bigger picture. How did policing develop in the United States and what role did race play in its development? How did race and ethnicity and policing play out before and immediately after the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement? After scouring readings I developed a broader historical understanding of race and policing. Below I reflect on how this broader understanding has informed my thoughts on community policing, stop-and-frisk, and the academy in relation to race and policing.

The history of race and policing has forced me to have a reckoning about community policing and its association with slave patrols. Policing research suggests that community policing began as traditional modes of law enforcement failed to stem rising crime rates in the 70s alongside concerns over deteriorating police-citizen relations. The rise of community policing across the United States was made possible by a shifting federal stance towards crime. As historian Elizabeth Hinton (2016) documents in From the War on Poverty to The War on Crime, since the War on Poverty, the United States has attempted to institutionalize community policing through presidential and congressional involvement in dictating how federal dollars could be used to fund local crime-fighting strategies. Federal involvement in local policing reached ascendance with the Clinton administration who returned the largest crime bill in the history of the United States which provided a community policing arm of the Department of Justice, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. However, since reading Slave Patrols by historian Sally Haden I see community policing not as a novel construction but as a throwback to the philosophy guiding slave patrols in the South. In times of slavery controlling slaves and in turn, protecting economic interests was paramount and slave patrols became integral to preserving the status quo. Slave patrollers patrolled specific geographic areas so that patrollers could gain a working knowledge of the residents and slaves within it and knowing the geography became important for catching runaway slaves. Slave patrollers were pulled from the local community because local residents had a better understanding of the issues specific to the slaves they owned, providing an added buy-in for patrollers to serve. Slave patrollers, while oftentimes cruel in their actions, nonetheless helped preserve the economic interest of their local community by returning slaves to their masters and oftentimes not inflicting harm to slaves because that would jeopardize labor output. There was also much civilian oversight to hold slave patrollers accountable to the communitys interest. Todays calls for community policing are challenging police to serve the interests of Black communities in much the same way slave patrols served the interests of White communities.

The history of race and policing has also made me understand the legal systems role in providing broad powers to the police that have resulted in constitutional abuses against racial minorities. Vagrant Nation by historian Risa Golubuff shows us that before Terry v. Ohio, which established stop-and-frisk, vagrancy and loitering laws were written so vaguely that probable cause was too easily established and used heavily against racial minorities. This is clear in reading Slavery by Another Name by journalist Douglas A. Blackmon as vagrancy and loitering laws were weaponized to advance the convict leasing system in the South following the Civil War. Numerous legal challenges through the 1960s eventually culminated in the invalidation of such broadly written laws. At the same time, the ruling in Terry v. Ohio opened the doors for courts to extend police investigatory authority through stop-and-frisk. Indeed courts have expanded stop-and-frisk powers by validating the use of subjective identifiers such as suspicious bulge, fits the description, high crime area, and furtive movement among others as qualifiers for reasonable suspicion. The abuse of these subjective identifiers by police against racial and ethnic communities was made apparent in Floyd, et al. v. City of New York.

Finally, learning more about the history of race and policing has challenged my thoughts on the academy and use of data. Science has been historically central to reproducing racial inequalities through the criminal justice system and is well documented. The Condemnation of Blackness Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad showcases how newly emerging crime data collection efforts alongside pseudo-science at the turn of the 20th century was weaponized to advance an ideology of black criminality which would be used to justify exclusionary and discriminatory practices against Black people. Similarly, Race, Police and the Making of a Political Identity Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945 by historian Edward Escobar discusses how statistics were used to cast Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, particularly youth, as violent and thus to justify aggressive policing. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime talks about the prominent role sociologist Daniel Moynihan played in advising President Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, both of whom rejected addressing the structural impediments to social progress that address poverty and in turn crime. Thus, even by leaving law enforcement, I cannot escape the possibility I could continue to produce work that stands in the way of racial progress. Nonetheless, we must not neglect that education itself can provide tremendous benefits towards understanding racial issues. To understand todays climate surrounding race and policing we must first understand how we have arrived to todays climate surrounding race and policing. In other words Know history, know self. No history, no self.

Jos Torres, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in the Department of Sociology.

Suggested citation: Jos Torres, What Teaching Policing and Race as a Former Police Officer Has Taught Me, JURIST Academic Commentary, June 19, 2020, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/06/jos-torres-policing-and-race/.

This article was prepared for publication by Brianna Bell, a JURIST Staff Editor. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

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What Teaching Policing and Race as a Former Police Officer Has Taught Me - JURIST

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