Voter suppression is not something made up by paranoid African Americans

African Americans are constantly told that voter suppression is some made up pipe-dream by-election stealing African American voters.

We are told we are "stupid" and there is no such thing as voter suppression.

Except clearly there is.  The Washington Post Aaron Blake writes this:

Black voters played a huge role in delivering Barack Obama to the White House in 2008 and 2012. And in 2014, they will play a huge role in determining whether the president's party can stop Republicans from taking the Senate.

So I guess we are supposed to believe it's a coincidence the first things red, republican controlled state legislatures did when they became the majority is enacted strict Voter ID laws under the guise of combating almost nonexistent "voter fraud." ?

Despite the GOP’s avowal to reach out to new constituencies following the 2012 election, Republican state legislators have continued to support new voting restrictions in 2013. According to a report by Project Vote, fifty-five new voting restrictions have been introduced in thirty states so far this year. “The 2013 legislative season has once again brought an onslaught of bills to restrict access to the ballot, including proposals to undercut important election laws that have recently opened the electorate to more voters,” writes Erin Ferns Lee. These measures include “strict photo ID policies…voter registration restrictions; voter purges; [felon] disenfranchisement; and policies to cut back or revoke voting laws that have made voting more convenient.” By my count, 235 new voting restrictions have been introduced in forty-four states over the past three years.

And where does the majority of the outcry of voter fraud come from?  It comes from republicans and sore losers who don't think African-Americans should have the right (pun intended) to vote unless they are voting for republicans of course.

So here we are, 3 months before a primary and we will have the usual jokers out moaning that Voter ID laws will suppress turnout in the black community. From the President Barack Obama tore into state voter ID laws Friday when speaking to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, accusing Republicans of trying to block minorities, women and seniors from voting and calling the laws a fraud.
But the reality is much better than this, it will suppress illegal turnout in the black community.

Just so you know Radio Boy, there is no illegal turnout in the black community.  The right to vote is scared to the black community.  It is steeped in blood, sweat, tears, courage, and sacrifice.  It is the only weapon we have to protect the very freedoms you hate us for having.

That's why we don't think Voter Suppression with the State Seal of Approval is funny. It's why we shake our heads at the tough Voter ID Laws enacted by red republican state legislatures. It's why we get weep silently when real voter fraud/suppression gets a slap on the wrist, and the imagined voter fraud is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It's like  1965 all over again.

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Why Obama and the Left Are Hated

Orange is the New Black

“You spend a lot of time thinking about how awful the prison is rather than envisioning your future.” ― Piper Kernan, author of "Orange is the New Black"

Yesterday, I wrote about the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences and the difference that including arts and music in a school's curriculum makes in better attendance and academic performance. I wonder if that young boy who added yet another picture to his overcrowded, beautiful but tragic wall as he "does his time" in juvy hall would be there if he had arts and music opportunities before he was incarcerated. Obviously, his artwork engages him.

One area of action that President Obama's privately funded, $200 million dollar initiative, My Brother's Keeper, is focusing on is K-12 students. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report clearly shows a great need for improvement.

Kara Kerwin, President of the Center for Education Reform, lamented in a statement on the most recent NAEP report: "It’s a disgrace and truly incomprehensible that after decades of mediocrity, we celebrate the fact that only 34 percent of our nation’s 8th graders can read at grade level and only 34 percent are proficient in math....It’s rare to find a policy issue that 86 percent of the country agrees with, but in education, accountability does just that."

The human toll is evident, if we wish to see it. "Trying to stop a 13-year-old boy from acting out in school will not be as effective if the boy is acting out because he is behind grade level, three or four grade levels...He’s bored, he’s not engaged and he has a sense of hopelessness because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to catch up." observed Johnny C. Taylor, of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Doesn't it make you wonder if that describes the young man incarcerated in juvy hall?

Academic under-performance is clearly linked to the incarceration epidemic, so hopefully arts and music opportunities to K-12 students will be in the My Brother's Keeper initiative.

And the exploding American prison population is an epidemic, one rooted in our national shame. "In 2011 there were more African-Americans in prison or “under the watch” of the justice system than were enslaved in the United States in 1850" wrote Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow. She explained, "Our nation's prison population has more than quintupled. And this is due largely to the war on drugs and the 'get tough'’ movement. The drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color even though studies have consistently shown now for decades that contrary to popular belief, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but by waging this drug war almost exclusively in poor communities of color, we’ve now created a vast new racial under-caste."

Among the 15 Executive Actions the Obama administration can take to secure justice, the Brennan Center for Justice calls for the creation of a Presidential Commission on Mass Incarceration in its recent report.

With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has 25 percent of its prisoners. More than 2 million Americans are behind bars. A quarter of the nation’s adult population has a criminal record. The prison population has increased sevenfold since 1970. The country spends a quarter of a trillion dollars a year on criminal justice, but true costs are wider: Economic and social impacts on families and children can continue for generations. The explosion in our correctional population extends far beyond prison: pre-trial detention, parole and probation supervision, and those with arrest records. Public safety does not compel incarceration of this scope. More than half of prisoners are serving time for drug or nonviolent crimes. One in four new prison admissions are for violations of parole. One in five people behind bars are simply awaiting trial.

Incarceration under the guise of "public safety" is as much a profit center for the corrections industry, as well as a very cheap source of manufacturing labor, as for any real attempt at prisoner rehabilitation to re-enter society. It's no surprise then that majority of today's prisoners are black and minority: "Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of 'hiring out prisoners' was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else's land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery – which were almost never proven – and were then 'hired out' for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of 'hired-out' miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972."

We are now at the point where the costs of incarceration are decreasing the amount of money available for education, at an average annual cost of $30,000 per prisoner to imprison. "Our penchant for punishment has come at a cost. We spend almost $70 billion annually to place adults in prison and jails, to confine youth in detention centers, and to supervise 7.3 million individuals on probation and parole....States still spend more of their general-fund dollars on education than on incarceration, but the percentage of dollars being used for incarceration is increasing, while the percentage for education is decreasing. In 33 of 50 states, corrections-related costs made up a larger proportion of the general fund than in the previous fiscal year, while spending on K-12 and higher education decreased."

How will the future of that young man in juvy hall be best served?

I thought "front page privileges at Left in Alabama come with a somewhat higher responsibility"?

Tutwiler Prison for Women

Evidently Resident Righty, and Left in Alabama Legal Issues Blogger Old Prosecutor is not required to fact check information before reporting it like mooncat admonished me to do, shortly before my front page privileges were suspended for supposedly posting factually incorrect information on the front pages and refusing to correct it. 

 I'm not accusing you of lying (0.00 / 0)

But I do say that too often you don't check your facts before you post, with the result that inaccurate information sometimes ends up on our front page under your byline. That is A Problem. When the inaccuracy is noted, you don't always correct it. Another Problem. This goes directly to your credibility and that of this blog, which is my Problem. Kathy is trying to do you the favor of pointing out that you aren't the least bit consistent in your statements. My read is that you're about a hairsbreadth from calling her a racist which would be not only inaccurate, but a damned lie.You are absolutely entitled to your opinion and to include your opinion in any diary. But front page privileges come with a somewhat higher responsibility -- to make an attempt to check information before you report it, because you are reporting to a rather wide audience here. Expressing opinion is fair game, and so is passing on interesting information from other sources, but I remind you that you do have a responsibility to our readers to make a good faith attempt to insure information is accurate before you pass it on.  We aren't a gossip sheet, nor do we want to be one.  I say this publicly because all our readers need to know that the facts matter to us here. Our readers may prefer to fact check for themselves -- good for them -- but I hope they don't catch us in errors very often. Facts matter, that's job one for me, and an important guideline for our front pagers. 

Old Prosecutor  either intentionally omitted some information, or, posted factually incorrect information on the front page of Left in Alabama. regarding Alabama's prison population.

The basic problem is that Alabama prisons are at appx 180% capacity and the Stae, especially the Legislature, is afraid that a lawsuit may result either (1) a Federal Court ordering mass releases (see California) or (2) a Federal takeover with huge financial mandates.

Alabama prisons are at maximum capacity, but the fear of  mass releases or a federal takeover with huge financial mandates is speculation at worst, and opinion at best.

Many suggest that the problem is that Alabama is imprisoning huge numbers of non violent criminals, Yet the numbers show 75% of all inmates are there for violent crimes.

According to the Montgomery Advertiser a survey response from the state of Alabama for a 2012 report by the Southern Legislative Conference show 75% of all inmates are there for violent crimes, and according to Old Prosecutor it just ain't so large numbers of people are in prison for marijuana possession,  but these figures tell  a different story.

After years of representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality, and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement, and trying to help people who were released from prison face one barrier, one legal roadblock after another to get a job, getting access to housing, getting even food stamps–you know, I had an awakening that our criminal justice system now functions more like a system of racial and social control, than a system of crime prevention or control,” Alexander said on PoliticsNation Monday.
“Our nation’s prison population has more than quintupled,” she said. “And this is due largely to the war on drugs and the ‘get tough’ movement. The drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color even though studies have consistently shown now for decades that contrary to popular belief, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but by waging this drug war almost exclusively in poor communities of color, we’ve now created a vast new racial under-caste.”
Since 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, there has been a 700% increase in the U.S. prison population. Today, African-Americans are also more likely to spend time in prison for drug related offenses than their white counterparts. According to the Sentencing Project, African-Americans make up 12% of the nation’s drug users, but represent 34% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 45% of those in state prison for such offense as of 2005.

Now I'm not saying there is a double standard when it comes to posting factually incorrect information on the front page of Left in Alabama, but there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy at best, which goes to the creditability of Left in Alabama.

There can be no unity if there is no justice.  Know justice, know peace.  No Justice, no peace.