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Showing posts with label school to prison pipeline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school to prison pipeline. Show all posts

Saturday, May 10, 2014

State Senator Hank Sanders said republicans wanted to return to the days of slavery and Jim Crow, guess what, he was right (no pun)




Remember  Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders (D. Selma) mad as hell robo call to democratic voters that apparently made it on some of the wrong answering machines?
Hello this is Hank Sanders, Alabama state Senator, and I’m still mad as hell. I say hell no! I ain’t going back to the cotton fields of Jim Crow days. I’m going forward with Ron Sparks, Jim Folsom and others who would do right by all of us. I hope you are mad as hell and will not go back, and you have the power to choose. I will stand until hell freezes over for Ron Sparks for Governor and Jim Folsom for Lt. Governor on November the 2nd.
Paid for by Alabama New South.

Remember when CNN correspondent CooperAnderson asked Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders what evidence he had that the Republican opponents would take Alabama back to Jim Crow days after Sanders  Mad as Hell robo call to democratic voters during the 2010 election?

 Well, here is your evidence Mr. Anderson Cooper and Company.

Inmates at an Alabama prison plan to stage a work stoppage this weekend and hope to spur an escalating strike wave, a leader of the effort told Salon in a Thursday phone call from his jail cell.
“We decided that the only weapon or strategy … that we have is our labor, because that’s the only reason that we’re here,” said Melvin Ray, an inmate at the St. Clair correctional facility and founder of the prison-based group Free Alabama Movement. “They’re incarcerating people for the free labor.” Spokespeople for Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and his Department of Corrections did not respond to midday inquiries Thursday. Jobs done by inmates include kitchen and laundry work, chemical and license plate production, and furniture-making. In 2011, Alabama’s Department of Agriculture reportedly discussed using inmates to replace immigrants for agricultural work; in 2012, the state Senate passed a bill to let private businesses employ prison labor.
 Can you hear him now?
 In Alabama prisons, orange may be the new green. Now here's a compliant labor force that isn't likely to ask for raises, sue for discrimination, or try to join a union: convicts.  It could be the perfect solution for private businesses looking for cheap labor, so of course, Alabama is looking into it.
 Hell no I ain't fergittin!

Thursday, May 30, 2013

No Time for Excuses

 
This is a photo of the class of 2013 at Morehouse College braving the pouring rain listening to the Father in Chief  standing high and dry under a covered podium telling them there is no time for excuses. 
 
 Excuse me? First of all,  President Obama is not their Father, and will never be their Father, so he has no moral authority to lecture any body's sons or daughters. 

These young men are the norm, not the stereotype,  They have done everything right, and on their way to contributing to society in a positive way.  And what to they get....rained on and preached too.  It's the story of our lives.
Indeed, if we objectively look at Obama’s presidency, African-Americans are in a worse position than they were before he became president. At the end of January 2009, unemployment for African-Americans was 12.7 percent. Four years later, the situation is worse, and unemployment is higher at 13.8 percent.
 
It's no excuse for Morehouse College not to have the foresight, money (?), or  common decency to implement a rain plan. 

 If there is no time for the graduates of Morehouse to make excuses.... there is no time time for the President of Morehouse to make excuses.

If the graduates of Morehouse can't use racism as an excuse..... then President Obama can't use racism by the republicans as  an excuse either.
But here’s the issue.  Telling black Americans to stop using racism as an excuse allows President Obama to create a set of excuses for his own significant, even embarrassing, lack of action to help alleviate the clearly documented, undeniable, legislatively-enforced poison of racial inequality that continues to impact our society.   As he tells the Morehouse men to take more responsibility for their own lives, the mirror of personal responsibility should also be turned on the most powerful black man in the history of the world to use his massive platform to help confront systematic racism that affects us all.  I also wonder if the president is going to follow this speech with one telling gay men that they can’t use homophobia as an excuse to complain, or that women shouldn’t be speaking out about s****l assault.   The double standard is actually borderline frightening:  The president’s skin color creates a human shield protecting the White House from being attacked for saying things that would lead to riots were Obama 100% white instead of just 50%.
I'm just saying.....