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Hate Crimes Are Rising But Don’t Expect Them to be Prosecuted

by ShannanRosser3 Posted on November 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week, the FBI announced there were 5,850 hate crimes in 2015—a 7 percent increase over the year before. But that total, which is based on voluntary reports of hate crimes from local and state police departments, is likely far lower than the real number. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated about 260,000 hate crimes annually in a 2013 report looking at hate crimes between 2007 and 2011. The BJS’s estimate was based on anonymous responses to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which the bureau conducts every year.

But most of those crimes are never heard by a jury. Federal prosecutors pressed forward with just 13 percent of hate crime cases referred to them between January 2010 and August 2015, according to an analysis of DOJ data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, and only 11 percent of those referrals ended in conviction. Data on hate crime prosecutions at the state level are scarce, but, in its 2013 study, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that only 4 percent of these crimes even result in an arrest.

Given the apparent extent of the problem, why do so few hate crimes end up in court?

One reason is that these crimes never get reported to law enforcement. Approximately one-third of those that do, according to the FBI, are crimes such as vandalism or destruction of property that don’t involve physical contact between the alleged offender and the victim. “These people burn crosses and run away, so you don’t know who did it,” says Michael Lieberman, who serves as legal counsel to the Washington, DC, branch of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights organization that fights anti-Semitism. In fact, he notes, the FBI’s 2015 data reflects several hundred fewer known hate crime offenders than actual incidents because officials often don’t know who committed the crime. Even the 5,500 offenders counted as “known” by the FBI have not necessarily been identified by law enforcement officials. (The FBI counts offenders as “known” when it has a piece of information, such as race or gender, that can help them eventually identify the perpetrator.)

Then there is a problem of material evidence. Many hate crimes are committed with what are known as “weapons of opportunity”—bricks and bottles, for instance, or baseball bats, says Jack Levin, a hate crimes expert at Northeastern University in Boston. So even when the victim and offender actually cross paths and violence ensues, there’s often no evidence linking the suspect to the attack. If an offender had used a gun, its shell casing could be traced.

But a more fundamental dynamic often short-circuits hate crime prosecutions. The perpetrator of a crime must be motivated by bias and that’s difficult to prove. Bias is usually established by the use of a slur or epithet during the encounter, or offensive graffiti left at the scene, Levin notes. In other instances, the suspect might leave hate propaganda at the scene or investigators might find it in their car or home or on their computer or social media presence. Membership in a hate group is also solid evidence of bias. “Without that information, it becomes very difficult to prosecute the offender,” he says.

Federal prosecutors rejected nearly 90 percent of hate crime cases recommended to them for prosecution in the more than five years covered by TRAC’s analysis, and more than half were rejected because of insufficient evidence. Some police departments in cities such as Boston, New York City, and Phoenix have designated units that investigate hate crimes around the clock. But many smaller departments throughout the country lack the resources for that kind of specialization, Lieberman from the ADL says.

Even with some evidence, prosecutors are often reluctant to file hate crime charges, as was the case early last year in North Carolina. Prosecutors filed murder charges against Craig Hicks—who allegedly killed three members of a Muslim family by shooting them each in the head in their Chapel Hill apartment in February, 2015. Hicks’ attorney maintained that the shooting was motivated by a parking dispute between Hicks and his neighbors. But the victims’ relatives have said they believe Hicks killed them because they were Muslim.

Prosecutors did not include hate crime charges against Hicks, says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University in San Bernadino, because they probably felt there was not enough evidence to prove he was biased against Muslims.

“Hicks’ Facebook page really didn’t have a lot of anti-Muslim stuff on it. It was more anti-religion in general, and anti-Christian,” Brian Levin says. Hicks had regularly harassed the victims, and the father of two of them said one of his daughters had told him she believed it was because they were Muslim. But that might not be enough to convince a jury in the absence of direct evidence of bias from Hicks himself, Brian Levin said. While Levin’s center considers the shooting a potential hate crime, it did not include it in its data because law enforcement officials have not declared it one. Jack Levin from Northeastern University agrees: A parking dispute may have catalyzed the shooting, but “it’s hard to believe that these three Muslim students were not targeted because of their religious identity.”

On the other hand, Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white man who, in June 2015, killed nine black parishioners in a storied Charleston, South Carolina, church, “left a lot of evidence that he was a white supremacist,” Brian Levin says. Roof posted photos online that showed him posing with the Confederate flag and wearing a jacket embellished with a symbol of South African apartheid. He referred to black people using the N-word in his manifesto. And survivors of the shooting said that before he opened fire, Roof announced that he was there to “shoot black people,” according to law enforcement officials. The US Department of Justice has filed federal hate crime charges against Roof, but South Carolina is one of five states that doesn’t have a hate crime statute. State prosecutors brought murder charges against Roof.

Many incidents that are recorded as hate crimes by police are not ultimately prosecuted that way, Brian Levin says. Prosecuting hate crime charges sends a symbolic message, but the charges are added to another offense, and prosecutors sometimes have to make a careful calculation as to whether they are worth bringing up at all. “There may be instances where a prosecutor—using their discretion—may determine that the additional elements of a hate crime will be too difficult to prove and might risk confusing the jury, and possibly risk the whole case,” he says. Similarly, in situations where the punishment for the base offense is already severe—as with murder—a prosecutor might decide not to pursue additional charges when a conviction would have little to no impact on the final sentence. That could also explain why North Carolina prosecutors did not pursue hate crime charges against Hicks, who will likely already be convicted of a triple murder, Brian Levin says.

In the absence of state hate crime charges, only particularly heinous crimes—like Roof’s massacre—can be prosecuted federally under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crime Prevention Act, passed by Congress in 2009. Federal officials are also investigating Hicks’ shooting as a hate crime but have yet to make a decision about charges.

Brian Levin is concerned that federal enforcement of the hate crimes act could weaken during a Trump administration, with his nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general. “I think it remains a legitimate question as to how vigorous Mr. Sessions will be in prosecuting a statute that he was one of the chief opponents of,” Levin says.

Sessions’ nomination has already been contested by civil rights groups because of a series of racist comments he reportedly made early in his career. He was also a strong opponent of the federal hate crimes act. The law extended hate crime protections to members of the LGBT community and expanded the DOJ’s ability to direct federal resources to assist local and state police departments with hate crime investigations in their jurisdictions. It also mandated that the attorney general—or a designee—approve all criminal prosecutions brought under the act.

In 2015, there was a 7 percent increase in hate crimes nationwide and a sharp, 67 percent increase in crimes against Muslims. The Southern Poverty Law Center tallied more than 700 incidents of intimidation and harassment in the week after the election, many of them in schools, and at least two recent killings of black men—one outside of Richmond, California and another in Charleston, West Virginia—are being investigated as hate crimes. Law enforcement officials in several cities have vowed to crack down on hate crimes in their jurisdictions.

Jack Levin explained why it’s important to prosecute hate crimes with the full force of the law in an interview with Mother Jones: “The perpetrator is sending a message when he commits the hate crime,” Levin said, noting that hate crimes send ripples throughout the targeted community. “We need to send the message back that we as a society will not tolerate this kind of intolerance. That we do not encourage and support the perpetrator. That we are not hate-filled people.”

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Hate Crimes Are Rising But Don’t Expect Them to be Prosecuted

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Now you can use Google to organize your neighbors around solar.

by RRIAbraham Posted on November 4, 2016

Following an exceptionally dry winter in 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown mandated that cities cut back on water use by 25 percent. Californians responded by letting their grass turn brown, or replacing it with artificial turf and less thirsty plants.

Sod suppliers, landscapers, and conservation activists now say that lawns are coming back into fashion, the Guardian reports. California did away with mandatory water restrictions in June, which may have sent the wrong message to residents. In August, urban water consumption had risen nearly 10 percent from the previous year.

Before it dropped these restrictions, the state spent $350 million on rebates for those who tore out their water-sucking grass. Anti-lawn campaigns emerged, such as “Brown is the new green,” and the media drought shamed those who maintained lush, grassy expanses.

It seemed like these efforts were working: One major lawn supplier saw orders plunge from 500 per day to 80 during the height of drought shaming.

The orders have now crept into the hundreds — despite the severe drought conditions that persist. Another dusty winter would send California into its sixth straight year of drought.

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Now you can use Google to organize your neighbors around solar.

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The most dramatic climate fight of the election is in Washington state

by FlynnStahl Posted on October 31, 2016

Voters in a progressive Pacific Northwestern state could approve the nation’s first carbon tax next week, providing a much-sought victory to proponents of legislative climate action — and possibly a model for the rest of the country.

And yet the ballot measure is at equal risk of failing spectacularly. Not because of the usual oil and coal industry foes, or even because it includes the dreaded t-word. No, the biggest obstacle in its way: other environmentalists.

An unlikely array of local and national organizations have come out against — or declined to support — Washington state’s carbon tax initiative, which will appear on the ballot as I-732. Their concerns: That a revenue-neutral carbon tax wouldn’t raise money for investing in clean energy and communities, and that people of color didn’t get a fair say in crafting the policy.

Although the split became public last year, it’s only been in the last few months that a barrage of organizations have proclaimed their opposition. Washington Conservation Voters called the measure “flawed,” while Sierra Club Washington noted its members have “deep concerns.”

Infighting is not uncommon in the environmental movement, which actually represents a fairly large and loose coalition of diverse local, state, and national interests. But the carbon tax battle in Washington state appears to stem from a recent and fundamental shift: Following the lead of more community-minded activists, the nation’s most powerful environmental groups are attempting to change their emphasis from a largely white perspective to one that is more diverse and equitable. And that means a new approach to issues like climate legislation.

“We have to find a different climate movement going forward.” –Gregg Small, Climate Solutions executive director

Many of those groups have come to the realization in recent years that they can’t fight climate change without including a broader range of people in their solutions. Attempts to remake policy so it is equitable and impactful has resulted in two main visions for how to approach climate action.

The tension between a narrowly focused environmental campaign and a newer approach that involves more consensus around a broader progressive agenda has been simmering for a long time. With I-732, it’s broken out into the open.

False starts have plagued the climate movement for years. The failed 2009 Waxman-Markey bill, which would have capped carbon emissions and created a national market for trading credits (hence the name “cap and trade”), sent the movement into existential soul-searching.

Since then, Congress has only become more hostile to climate action, meaning any successes have largely come at the state level or inside the White House. As Republicans at the national level have been less and less involved in a serious fight against climate change, the solutions have evolved without them.

Progressive states including California, New York, and yes, Washington have recently made significant strides on climate policy. Part of the movement’s post-Waxman-Markey strategy was to broaden the base of support for climate policy beyond a very white core — not by appealing to increasingly intransigent conservatives, but by listening to the people representing low-income communities and communities of color, which are disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate change.

“It isn’t just about reducing emissions,” said Green for All’s Vien Truong, who works on climate justice policy initiatives in California and other states. “It is that, but we have to move forward.” This includes bringing people to the movement who “feel the pinch of climate change” most.

Gregg Small of the Washington-based Climate Solutions noted that the cap-and-trade bill’s failure was a teaching moment. “We have to find a different climate movement going forward,” he said. “The climate community can’t do it on their own.”

Despite the recognition by many environmentalists that a new, more inclusive approach was needed, it was a divided effort that helped set the stage for the current battle in Washington state.

Two years ago, a new-school coalition of social justice and environmental groups that became the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy began working on a climate action proposal, gathering extensive input from community organizations.

But a smaller, grassroots-based climate group, known as Carbon Washington, got its carbon tax proposal on the ballot first. I-732 would phase in next year, tax carbon emissions at $25 per metric ton in 2018, and gradually ramp up over 40 years to $100.

What’s troubling some opponents is where that money would go: cutting the state’s sales tax by 1 percent, cutting taxes for manufacturers, and providing tax rebates to more than 400,000 low-income households. That’s allowed I-732 proponents to try to appeal to conservatives by calling it revenue neutral, but it doesn’t sit well with the Alliance-affiliated enviros.

Their four-page alternative proposal is murky on the details, though: It calls for a carbon “fee” that would redirect the revenue collected toward clean energy efforts, water quality improvement, and helping disadvantaged communities. It doesn’t cut taxes, and unlike 732, it establishes an absolute, though unknown cap on carbon emitted. The actual tax on polluters starts at $15 per metric ton, but is unclear on how it would ramp up over time. It promises some “compliance flexibility” for polluters, yet doesn’t say what that entails.

Small, a chair of the Alliance, said his group was ready to put its proposal on the 2016 ballot, but pulled its plans when 732 gained the signatures needed. Two competing ballot measures would likely have meant success for neither.

Carbon Washington met with the Alliance to figure out a compromise, but moved ahead without the full blessing of the organizations that had fought hard to bridge justice and environmental concerns. In return, there are now a slew of environmental and social justice groups slamming I-732 for not doing enough to fight climate change, not managing to be revenue-neutral, and failing on equity.

The founder of Carbon Washington, Yoram Bauman, defends his group’s approach. “I think that underneath, there’s a philosophic difference in how to provide benefits to low-income communities and communities of color,” he said. “Their approach was to fund community-directed investment. They wanted a pot of money that could be controlled by local communities to reduce emissions, create jobs, and lower pollution in communities of color. Our approach was we wanted to put money back [into the pockets of low-income] households.”

Bauman says that if his group’s measure passes, small tweaks and improvements could be made by the state legislature. But opponents say that a flawed model is not a good place to start from.

“Perfect shouldn’t be the goal,” Bauman argues. “I think folks who care about climate change need to support action on climate change. We don’t have many opportunities to take a swing at the ball, and there are serious questions about how many more years we want to wait.”

I-732 does have its share of supporters. Actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, 28 environmental and energy-focused groups (including the Audubon Society’s state chapter), and dozens of Republican and Democratic lawmakers and economists have endorsed it. All this has lead to one very fractured environmental community.

The Seattle-based sustainability think tank Sightline Institute is neutral on 732, but still manages a good summary of the pro-side’s position in a lengthy analysis weighing the pros and cons: “Initiative 732 does exactly what the scientists and economists prescribe: it sets a science-based, steadily rising price on pollution,” Sightline writes. “The citizens’ initiative covers most of the state’s climate pollution, makes the tax code more progressive, and is administratively elegant.” Based on a Washington Office of Financial Management projection, the 732 carbon tax would raise $2 billion in fiscal year 2019 (4 percent of the state’s annual budget), which would go back to taxpayers in various forms.

Critics, however, remain convinced that 732 it doesn’t do enough to fight climate change, nor does it address justice concerns. They also felt shut out of the process.

“I think folks who care about climate change need to support action on climate change.” –Yoram Bauman, Carbon Washington founder

“We’ve got to get it done right the first time,” said Small, who was careful to make it clear that Climate Solutions is not opposed to I-732. “Effective carbon pricing needs to really do three things: It needs to put a meaningful price on carbon to drive down pollution; it needs to invest the money generated in clean energy solutions; and it should invest in those affected by climate change.”

A coalition of environmental justice organizations penned an open letter to the Sightline Institute, saying they took issue with the group’s analysis, arguing that it serves to “denigrate our perspective and profess to speak for the interests of our communities without our consultation or knowledge.”

“People who can actually begin to be part of the solution were hoping to be part of this clean energy future,” Green for All’s Truong said. “And this carbon tax essentially shut that effort down.”

Perhaps the most unexpected argument is that the tax won’t do the intended job of cutting emissions. Food and Water Watch issued a report claiming that the model for 732, a British Columbia carbon tax, “fails to demonstrate that it has reduced carbon emissions, fossil fuel consumption, or vehicle travel, as it purported to do.”

Technically, it would be possible to alter 732 in the legislature down the line if voters approve it in November, but it’s politically unfeasible. Some environmentalists would prefer to work with what they have if it passes, but in a few cases, the critics would rather see no tax at all. Seattle public radio station KUOW asked Alliance member and OneAmerica activist Ellicott Dandy if she would regret her position against I-732 if no other carbon tax ever passed.

Her answer: “No.”

The latest polling shows a close vote. In an early October poll, 21 percent of voters were undecided. In a late-October poll from KOMO News/Strategies 360, that number is even higher, with 28 percent unsure how they will cast their ballot. How the undecideds break makes all the difference for an initiative leading with just 40 percent of the electorate, and 32 percent opposed.

If 732 fails, the lessons for environmentalists will be clear: An approach designed to appeal to more conservative sensibilities — tax cuts, revenue neutral — isn’t going to help them bring in new voices on the left, who want to be heard and play a guiding role in the process.

“Carbon pricing is incredibly difficult and maybe impossible if people don’t come together,” Small said. “Other states will face similar types of dynamics here on the policy and strategy. I hope people learn from the painful lesson we have in Washington to, you know, work it out.”

Also read: Climate hawk vs. climate hawk: State carbon tax splits national climate hawks

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The most dramatic climate fight of the election is in Washington state

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We Can’t Stop Looking at These Unforgettable Images of the Black Panthers

by MiaOddo02554 Posted on October 15, 2016

Mother Jones

For the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, two exceptional new books take on the legacy and history of one of the most powerful and controversial community empowerment movements in America. One book offers a succinct but in-depth history of the party at its peak. The other scratches the itch that always surfaces around anniversaries like this, asking, “Where are they now?”

In 1968, as a student at the University of California-Berkeley, Stephen Shames befriended Bobby Seale, who became a mentor to Shames. Recognizing the importance of having someone document their revolution, Seale gave Shames unfettered access to himself and the Black Panther Party network to take pictures. It gave Shames an unparalleled, insider’s perspective on the party, from 1968 through Bobby Seale’s campaign for Oakland mayor in 1973. It’s a remarkable body of work, not just for its historical significance, but for the poignancy of the images.

Oakland, 1971. Black Panther children in a classroom at the Intercommunal Youth Institute, the Black Panther school. Stephen Shames from the book Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (Abrams). Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

Oakland, July 28, 1968. Kathleen Cleaver, communications secretary and the first female member of the Party’s decision-making Central Committee, talks with Los Angeles Panthers at the Free Huey rally in DeFremery Park (which the Panthers dubbed Bobby Hutton Park). Stephen Shames, courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, Shames’ new book with Seale, collects photos he shot through 1973 and pairs them with Black Panther Party ephemera and oral history. It’s an excellent introduction to a movement many people see only in a dramatically cinematic fashion. In popular culture, the Black Panthers are associated with tough dudes in cool leather jackets toting guns, fed up with racism and injustice. The truth, of course, is much more nuanced.

The book details how the Black Panthers took a proactive role in bettering poor communities that were ignored, if not outright shit on, by the powers that be. Their school breakfast program—famously reviled by J. Edgar Hoover—set a now-common standard for making sure school children don’t start the day hungry. The Black Panthers helped get old people to the grocery store and, in particularly tough neighborhoods, escorted them to cash their Social Security checks. They launched schools and newspapers, organized strikes, arranged health care for people. Such community “survival programs” were the backbone of the party. As Seale puts it, “The real heroes of the Black Panther Party were the thousands of sisters and brothers who made our survival programs work.”

Shame’s photos concentrate on the Black Panthers’ activities in Oakland and Berkeley, but he also got around, traveling across the United States in 1970 to document Panther activities in Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Toledo, Ohio, among other cities. This was at the height of tension between the FBI and the Black Panthers, when the group’s headquarters around the country were being raided and bombed and fortified in anticipation of shootouts. A time when Panthers like Fred Hampton were being killed. It was a heavy time.

Shames says his photos are “aspirational,” but the tension and disquiet come through. The photos don’t capture the more controversial aspects of the Panthers, which are instead bluntly dealt with in the text by Seale and others.

Oakland, 1971. Black Panther Gloria Abernethy sells papers at the Mayfair supermarket boycott, with Tamara Lacey in the rear. Abernethy now works for the state of California, and Tamara is a real estate agent. Stephen Shames, courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

Oakland, August 28, 1971. Party members carry George Jackson’s coffin into St. Augustine’s Church for funeral services. Jackson was killed in a San Quentin prison riot a week earlier, in which three corrections officers and two other inmates were also killed. Stephen Shames, courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

August, 1970, Berkeley. Minister of Defense and Black Panthers co-founder Huey Newton listens to a Bob Dylan album at home shortly after his release from prison. Stephen Shames, courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

Oakland, 1973. Black Panther Chairman Bobby Seale campaigns for mayor on a city bus. Seale came in second out of nine candidates that year, only to lose the runoff. But the party’s 1972 voter registration drive helped Lionel Wilson became Oakland’s first black mayor in 1977. Stephen Shames, courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery.

Power to the People wraps up with Shames and Seale reflecting on the current mood in America and the legacy of the Black Panther Party, featuring photos of recent Black Lives Matter protests.

And that brings us to Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams‘ book, The Black Panthers: Portraits From an Unfinished Revolution (Nation Books).

While no doubt rooted in the past, Portraits From an Unfinished Revolution focuses squarely on the present, with portraits and interviews with former members today. While the authors did an excellent job of tracking down higher-ups in the party, the book smartly turns its focus to the “real heroes,” the group’s rank-and-file members, giving us a fuller picture of life as a Black Panther, and the impact those years had on people’s lives. Some of the former members are now academics. Some are solidly working class. Some are in prison. And many remain active as organizers and activists.

Shih’s simple, powerful, Richard Avedon-esque black-and-white portraits are paired with short pieces on each person: who they were then, where the Black Panther Party took them, and where they are now. Interspersed among the interviews are essays on different aspects of the Black Panthers.

Ericka Huggins was a leader of the Black Panthers Los Angeles chapter along with her husband, John Huggins, who was later killed in a shootout on the UCLA campus. She later founded the party’s New Haven chapter. A longtime director of the party’s Oakland Community School, she helped create educational and social justice programs with an emphasis on spirituality. She is also a professor of sociology and women’s studies at several California colleges and universities. (See our recent chat with Huggins here.) Bryan Shih

Phyllis Jackson grew up in Tacoma, Washington, before joining the party at its national headquarters. She served as a communications secretary and ran a voter registration campaign. She is an associate professor of art history at Pomona College, teaching arts and cinema of Africa and the African diaspora. Bryan Shih

Abdullah Majid (formerly Anthony Laborde), born in Flushing, New York, was a founding member of the Queens Chapter of the party and a full-time party member from 1968 to 1971. At the time of his death this past April, he was incarcerated in Five Points Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, for his role in the shooting death of one NYPD officer and the wounding of another. Bryan Shih*

Mike Tagawa was born in 1944 at the Minidoka Relocation Camp in southern Idaho, one of the locations where Japanese were interned during World War II. He and his family moved to Seattle. He joined the Air Force and later the Black Panther Party in Seattle, where he now works as a bus driver. Bryan Shih

B. Kwaku Duren coordinated the Black Panthers’ reorganized Southern California chapter (January 1977 to March 1982). After his sister was shot and killed by the police, he helped establish the Coalition Against Police Abuse, which became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the LAPD. The lawsuit was settled for $1.8 million and led to the disbanding of the LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division. Duren worked as a paralegal and lawyer in the South Central office of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles from 1977 to 1990. Bryan Shih

Ronald “Elder” Freeman grew up in Detroit and in the early 1960s moved to California, where he became a founding member of the Southern California chapter of the party, along with his brother, Roland. He was a priest in the African Orthodox Church, was affiliated with the Marcus Garvey Universal Negro Improvement Association, and was a longtime prison reform advocate. Both brothers died of illness within a week of each other in October 2014, a few months after this interview was conducted. Bryan Shih

Elaine Brown chaired the Black Panther Party from 1974 to 1977, the only woman to serve in this top position. The author of two books, A Taste of Power and The Condemnation of Little B, Brown is now executive director of the Michael Lewis (“Little B”) Legal Defense Committee and CEO of Oakland and the World Enterprises, a nonprofit that helps former prisoners create businesses—including an urban farm in West Oakland, where the party was headquartered. Bryan Shih

Taken together, the books offer a well-rounded primer on the Black Panther Party, then and now, top to bottom. You can find books out there with a more detailed history and books that go deep in the political thinking and revolutionary tactics employed by the Black Panthers. Dozens, if not hundreds of academic books parsing the party have been written. If you want to go deep on biographies, they’re out there, too. But for a solid introduction or a quick refresher, you can’t do better than this.

Shames’ photos are on exhibit at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York City through October 29. Shames and Seales will be doing book signings in DC the last weekend of October, including one at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on October 30. Shih’s photos are part of the Oakland Museum of California’s impressive “All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50” exhibition, on display through February 12.

* Name corrected.

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We Can’t Stop Looking at These Unforgettable Images of the Black Panthers

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Senators Press Feds to Stop Locking Up Central American Families Who Have Fled for Their Lives

by LorenD35vd Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Roughly 30 Central American women and their children who are applying for asylum in the United States are being held outside Philadelphia in a federal immigration detention center called the Berks County Residential Center. Many have been there for more than a year, and in August, 22 mothers went on hunger strike to protest their prolonged detention. Now, a group of 17 Democratic senators, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and current vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, have called on Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to release the families and end the practice of family detention.

“Many of these mothers have asylum claims based on rape, severe domestic violence, and murder threats,” the senators wrote in a letter released on Tuesday. “It is unconscionable to keep these children locked up and goes against our most fundamental values.” The children at Berks, who make up about half the population of detainees, range in age from 2 to 16 years old. Many have been held for months and, in some cases, more than a year. The senators said family detention is “wrong” and “should be ended immediately,” pointing to research showing that prolonged confinement is harmful to children’s physical and mental health.

The Berks Center is one of three family detention centers in the country. The other two, located in Texas, were opened by the Obama administration in 2014 in response to the surge in unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Around that time, the centers came under scrutiny for poor medical care, lack of access to legal council, and alleged sexual abuse. (Earlier this year, one former guard at Berks was sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting a teenage detainee.)

Last summer, the administration announced a series of reforms to reduce the length of confinement. Shortly afterward, a district court in California ordered the government to release migrant children within three to five days of their initial confinement, or within 20 days under extreme circumstances. The administration says it has taken steps to come into compliance with that court decision. Secretary Johnson has said his agency is detaining families for an average of 20 days or less, but advocates say the experience of the Berks mothers tells another story.

The 17 senators urged Johnson to review their cases and release them unless they are a serious flight risk or threat to public safety. Hillary Clinton has taken a similar position as her running mate and called for an end to family detention.

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Here Is When You Should Get Your Flu Shot

by WilburnMcLarty Posted on October 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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As flu season draws nearer, you may have noticed ads in your local pharmacy urging you to get your annual flu shot. On Thursday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doubled down on that message, urging Americans to get their vaccine as soon as they can. But last week, Americans got some conflicting advice. Some vaccine experts have suggested that it may be better to wait to get your flu shot. So which is it: Get your shot now or wait until the end of the month?

The conundrum is rooted in evidence that the immunity you get from your flu shot may wane over time, especially if you’re over the age of 65. Two weeks after you get your shot, your body develops antibodies—like little soldiers in your bloodstream that protect you from an influenza infection. The CDC recommends that everyone over the age of six months get a flu shot, and the immunity boost is especially important for children and the elderly, who are more vulnerable to complications. But some studies show that those antibodies may start to decline before the end of the flu season.

That’s why Laura Haynes, an immunology expert at the University of Connecticut Center on Aging, told Kaiser Health News that the ideal time to get your flu shot is sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

“If you’re over 65, don’t get the flu vaccine in September. Or August,” she said. Last year, the flu season peaked in December.

According to Kaiser Health News, the push to get people to vaccinate early is partly driven by economics. As more and more pharmacies offer flu shots, it makes sense for them to offer their vaccines as soon as they’re available in order to bring in more customers—even if it’s well before the flu season has begun.

However, waiting to get your vaccine carries its own risks. First and foremost, some people who delay getting their flu shot may simply forget to get one. An early vaccine is better than no vaccine at all.

“The problem is that a vaccination deferred is often a vaccination forgotten,” warned Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. At the annual National Foundation for Infectious Diseases press conference on flu vaccines, Frieden noted that even a small uptick of 5 percent in vaccination coverage could prevent nearly 10,000 hospitalizations.

In fact, last year saw a slight decline in the number of people who got vaccinated. About 45 percent of people got their vaccination last year, down about 1.5 percentage points compared with the previous year. And the largest decrease was among folks over the age of 50. According to Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology expert at the University of California-Berkeley and a member of the CDC’s immunization advisory committee, last week’s push to get people vaccinated is partly about keeping those numbers up.

“Each year, we have the challenge of getting people out the door—to their providers, to their drug store, to their work site—to do this,” Reingold told me. “So I would imagine that this suggestion that people get their flu shot now is partly to try to ensure that we don’t see a further decline in how many people actually do that.”

It’s also not entirely clear when your flu vaccine starts to wear off. Some studies show that you may still carry protection from your vaccination the previous year if the flu strains didn’t change. And there’s another reason you might not want to delay too long: You never know when the flu will arrive in your neighborhood. According to the CDC, the flu season can begin as early as October.

Overall, Reingold says, waiting a couple of weeks probably won’t make that much of a difference.

“My advice would be to get the flu shot whenever it’s convenient and not worry so much about trying to time it perfectly,” he said.

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Here Is When You Should Get Your Flu Shot

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California Will Keep Housing Its Detained Immigrants in For-Profit Centers

by FinleyCorser Posted on September 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have prevented local governments from contracting with for-profit companies to detain immigrants. Seventy percent of the state’s immigrant detainees are held in for-profit facilities, according to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In his veto message, Brown said that he was “troubled” by recent reports revealing poor conditions in some private detention facilities. But he explained his veto by deferring to the Department of Homeland Security, which manages ICE and is currently examining its use of for-profit companies.

DHS’s choice to review its use of private detention centers came less than two weeks after the Department of Justice announced that it was ending its use of private prisons. A report from DHS’s advisory council is expected back by November 30. “These actions indicate that a more permanent solution to this issue may be at hand,” Brown wrote. “I urge the federal authorities to act swiftly.”

But last Thursday, in a statement interpreted as a bad sign for those pushing to eliminate these for-profit centers, ICE director Sarah Saldaña told the House Judiciary Committee that eliminating private detention centers would “pretty much turn our system upside down.” Around 73 percent of the immigration detainees are held in facilities currently operated by for-profit companies. If the for-profit companies were no longer housing detainees, ICE would have to build more detention centers and hire staff in order to meet its ongoing legal requirement to maintain at least 34,000 immigration detention beds.

The California bill, which passed 25-13 in the state Senate and 51-28 in the House last month, would have eventually closed three of California’s four private immigration detention centers. It also would have required all of California’s immigration detention facilities, public and private, to meet the most recent federal standards for things like medical care, and would have extended extra protections to LGBT inmates, prohibiting them from being forced into segregated housing on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Closing the three private detention centers would have affected approximately 40,000 immigrants held there every year, according to Christina Fialho, executive director at Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), a nonprofit that helped draft the California bill. With the three facilities closed, ICE would have been forced to send detainees elsewhere—either to publicly run local jails, out-of-state detention centers, other private facilities, or possibly community-based monitoring systems.

Among the facilities that the bill would have closed is Adelanto, a 1,960-bed center run by the for-profit corrections company GEO Group and the subject of a 2015 report from CIVIC. The report pointed to allegations of inhumane conditions and poor access to legal representation. At least one immigrant has died at Adelanto due to “egregious errors” by the center’s medical staff, who did not give him proper medical examinations or help him access timely off-site treatment, according to a letter signed by 29 members of Congress who sought an ICE investigation into health and safety concerns at the facility last summer.

Last November, a group of at least 400 detainees at Adelanto launched a hunger strike to protest what they saw as inhumane conditions. They asked for longer visiting hours with their families, better medical and dental care, cleaner and better-prepared food, daily access to an outdoor yard, and an ICE employee to handle their grievances rather than a GEO staff member. “We are detainees and not prisoners,” they wrote in a letter obtained by Think Progress. GEO Group typically makes $111.92 a day in revenue for each immigrant it incarcerates in Adelanto, according to ICE.

Here’s our coverage of the latest developments:

August 29, 2016: The Department of Homeland Security announces that it will be reexamining its use of private prison companies to hold immigration detainees.
August 18, 2016: The Justice Department declares that it will stop contracting with private prisons, which incarcerate 12 percent of federal inmates.
August 12, 2016: A blockbuster report from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General finds that private prisons are less safe and less secure than their publicly run counterparts, and that the Bureau of Prisons does not adequately supervise their operation.
June 23, 2016: Mother Jones publishes reporter Shane Bauer’s account of four months working at a private prison in Louisiana.

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California Will Keep Housing Its Detained Immigrants in For-Profit Centers

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Can This Charming New Host Convince Millennials to Love “A Prairie Home Companion”?

by Dolly2500yoc Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

On July 1, Garrison Keillor said goodbye on his final broadcast of the radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion. Fans bemoaned the loss of the avuncular host, who had for 42 years regaled them with characters like Guy Noir, cheery ads for powder-milk biscuits, and the imagined inhabitants of a fictional Midwestern town, “where all the women are strong, all the men good-looking, and all the children above-average.”

With Keillor’s retirement, Lake Wobegon may go the way of Atlantis, but that doesn’t mean the show is over. “It feels like something ends and something else is about to happen,” Keillor told his audience during his denouement. That something is 35-year-old Chris Thile, a multiple Grammy-winning mandolin prodigy and leader of the insanely talented Punch Brothers, whom Keillor has anointed as his successor.

Thile first made waves with Nickel Creek, the new-grass band he co-founded in his home-state of California at age 12. Since then, he has appeared dozens of times as a musical guest on Keillor’s program, collaborated with virtuosos such as Béla Fleck and Yo-Yo Ma, and in 2012 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (a.k.a “genius grant”).

In his new role as radio host, Thile aims to preserve the spoken-word humor, musical showmanship, and even the fake commercials that have garnered A Prairie Home Companion three million loyal fans in the US. But judging by the guests, Thile’s Companion already feels edgier than Keillor’s ever did—White Stripes guitarist Jack White, comics John Hodgman and Aparna Nancherla, soul group Lake Street Dive, and cellist Esperanza Spalding will appear on the first few episodes.

Here are a handful of reflections Thile shared with me as he prepares to step into Keillor’s shoes on October 15:

On his first Prairie Home Companion gig: “My life has always been intertwined with the show. Some of my very earliest memories are being in our living room, listening to the show is when I was two years old, and Garrison’s voice emanating from the radio in the corner. At that age it was kind of unclear to me whether that might actually be my dad’s voice just coming through the radio instead of from his body. Not that they sound similar—but just sort of this warm, authoritative, male voice.

Playing the show for the first time at 15, I was already aware of the enormity of the moment. Even for this little bug, it was a realization of a goal at a very young age—like, ‘Oh, this is something I’ve dreamed of happening.’ Garrison signed my program and wrote me a limerick.

There once was a fellow named Thile. Played mandolin wild and freely. He played for the town, while riding around, on a bicycle doing a wheelie!

On the fateful phone call from Keillor: “He called me out of the clear blue sky. I had his number in my phone, but it was always nerve-wracking when he would call and his name shows up on caller ID. You know, it’s a long, grand name accompanied by this incredibly grand voice. I was practicing, in the middle of a duet with the bassist Edgar Meyer. I let it go to voicemail because I thought to myself he probably wants me to play on next week’s show or something, and there’s no way I can do it. I listen to the voicemail and it says imitates Keillor‘s voice ‘Chris I have something that may be of some interest to you…’

“So I called him back and he outlined his exact plan. I was pacing as it started dawning on me what he was talking about. I had to leave the bus and just started like walking all over Ann Arbor trying to process all of this. As he came to the end of the pitch, I am struggling for words, because even then there was this air of inevitability about it. Almost like the forehead slap of, Of course this is what I’m going to do; of course I’m going to try this, as crazy and scary as it seemed at the time. He said, ‘You host a couple of shows, you know, early next year, and we’ll see where we are.’ And that’s what we did.”

On how Thile’s Prairie Home Companion will be different: “We’re going to have a spoken-word guest every show, who may often be a comedian, actor, a poet. I suspect you’ll still be hearing about powder milk biscuits, and you may still be encouraged to eat enough ketchup and potentially be soothed by a piece of rhubarb pie, because we just can’t help ourselves. But the world has changed a lot in the last 40 years. Garrison was keenly aware of that, but you could look out into the audience at a lot of these live shows and see a lot of 50-plus-year-old white folks.

“My dearest hope is that we can create the kind of environment that’s representative of everyone in this beautiful country of ours, especially now. These are hard times. The last couple nights, it’s like I haven’t been able to look directly at the TV—as if it’s the sun. I try and catch up over Twitter afterward, almost it’s like that board from elementary school with the little hole cut into it so you can check out the sun, like check out an eclipse, with those little rudimentary tools. It’s an oft-uttered statement but these are troubled times. I am all the more fervently seeking the beauty that human beings are capable of developing, and I want the show to be a place for those beautiful things. So that, quite frankly, is our great goal, our great challenge.”

On his favorite musical act of late: “I was with Béla Fleck and his wife Abigail Washburn, and they were spending time with this adopted daughter of someone they know. And this little girl, she was improvising a song and making up lyrics on the fly. She sang the words, “My heart breaks into song.” And I was dumbstruck. I mean I didn’t stop the song, but afterward I asked her, “Did you say, ‘My heart breaks into song?'” And she said, ‘Yeah.’ I would just love for this show to be an opportunity for everyone’s hearts to break into song—or to break into laughter, to break into thought, to break into imagination. Our hearts should be breaking right now. But to figure out a way to turn that into energy we can use to comfort each other.”

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Can This Charming New Host Convince Millennials to Love “A Prairie Home Companion”?

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Here’s Why Some Black Leaders Are Fighting the NAACP Over Charter Schools

by NellDooley Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

In late July, the NAACP called for a national moratorium on charter schools, claiming they target low-income and minority communities with practices mirroring the predatory subprime mortgage lending industry. Now a group of more than 160 black civic leaders is asking the civil rights group to reconsider, arguing that charters create opportunities for black families that could allow minority students to excel.

In a September 21 letter, a coalition of educators, current and former politicians, public officials, and black leaders claimed that a charter school moratorium would deny parents the opportunity to choose “what’s best for their children”—and restrict access to high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools.

“The proposed resolution cites a variety of cherry-picked and debunked claims about charter schools,” the letter reads. “The notion of dedicated charter school founders and educators acting like predatory subprime mortgage lenders—a comparison the resolution explicitly makes—is a far cry from the truth.”

The NAACP’s proposed resolution, which will be voted on at the national board meeting next month, said that charter schools contribute to racial and socioeconomic segregation and raised concerns over disproportionately “punitive and exclusionary” disciplinary practices, fiscal mismanagement, and lackluster oversight. A few weeks earlier, the Movement for Black Lives, a network of 50 organizations brought together by Black Lives Matter, released a policy agenda that included a similar call to curb the growth of charters.

While the charter school industry is littered with the occasional bad actor, and some charters have even been found to practice “skimming”—illegally screening out potentially challenging students, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation and a recent report by the ACLU and Public Advocates, a public interest law firm—the pro-charter letter highlighted research showing the positive academic benefits and opportunities for black students at charters. Here are three of its main arguments:

1. Black students stand to make short-term academic gains: The letter, citing a study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), argues that black students benefit from added exposure to charter schools. The 2015 study of 41 cities in 22 states found that students attending charter schools in those areas made slightly higher academic gains in both math and reading compared to students in traditional public schools. The gains were particularly pronounced for low-income, black, and Hispanic students, as well as English-language learners. Poor black students, for instance, received the equivalent of 59 additional days of math learning and 44 days of reading learning. For poor Hispanic students, the gains were 48 days of math instruction and 25 days of reading.

Andrew Maul, an assistant professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Graduate School of Education, questioned the CREDO report’s research methods, including that the sizes of the effects “are very small.” (In response, CREDO noted that the study looked at the change in student test scores from year-to-year as a sign of academic growth, rather than the test scores themselves.)

An earlier study commissioned by the US Department of Education in 2010 showed modest improvements for low-income and underachieving students who attended urban charter middle schools. They scored higher on math tests but fared the same on reading scores as their peers at traditional public schools. Students from higher-income backgrounds saw adverse outcomes in math and reading scores. Overall, on average, attending charter middle schools with lotteries had no “significant impacts” on student achievement.

2. There are long-term gains, too: As Kristina Rizga wrote in her latest magazine story, 35 percent of Philadelphia students attend charter schools. While the growth of charters has put a financial strain on the local school district—and contributed to school closures and the push out of black educators—many students have seen improvements in academic performance. Between 2006 and 2012, 61 percent of Philadelphia charters posted higher scores in math and reading than peers at traditional public schools, according to CREDO. In the long run, according to a study of outcomes for students in Chicago and Florida, students attending charter high schools were more likely to graduate, stay in college, and earn more money than students in traditional public schools, according to a 2014 report by Mathematica.

Still, the 2015 CREDO report notes that the effects vary by region. Students in urban areas such as Boston, Memphis, and Newark, for instance, saw positive gains in math and reading. But in the Southwest, Florida, and Texas, students saw adverse outcomes.

3. Black families view charter schools as “immensely popular”: The letter also notes that charters are a popular alternative to traditional public education—in fact, tens of thousands of students across the country are currently on charter school waitlists. A recent survey conducted by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools showed that at least 80 percent of black, Hispanic, and low-income parents supported the opening of charter schools in their area. And since 2000, the number of charters nearly quadrupled, from about 1.7 percent to 6.6 percent of public schools. The letter notes that the moratorium would affect 700,000 black families, as black students make up 27 percent of those enrolled in charter schools.

In Massachusetts, voters will decide this year on a ballot measure seeking to expand the state’s annual quota on charter schools to add 12 more to the current limit. A Brookings study in mid-September found that charter schools benefited students in the state’s urban areas, particularly for traditionally disadvantaged students. For students in rural and suburban areas, those benefits disappear.

“For many urban Black families, charter schools are making it possible to do what affluent families have long been able to do: rescue their children from failing schools,” the letter notes, adding: “Making charter schools the enemy in a fight for adequate education funding doesn’t serve the interest of all students. We cannot sacrifice another generation of students to the status quo.”

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Here’s Why Some Black Leaders Are Fighting the NAACP Over Charter Schools

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Republicans Just Found a New Way to Harass Scientists

by MickiDettmann Posted on September 21, 2016

Mother Jones

The congressional subcommittee investigating allegations of fetal tissue sale for profit recommended holding a company that procures tissue for medical research in contempt of Congress.

House Democrats staged a walkout to protest the vote for contempt proceedings after being overruled by Republican members of the Select Investigative Panel. “We refuse to sanction or endorse this exercise by continuing to participate,” said ranking member Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).

The small Northern California biotech firm, StemExpress, prepares human tissue and cells for biomedical researchers across the world. It specializes in isolating stem cells from donor tissue in order to expand a sample’s lifespan for research, which is important because otherwise, perfectly usable cells can be lost in transit to a lab.

Although StemExpress and CEO Cate Dyer have submitted information to comply the Select Investigative Panel, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in her opening remarks this morning that the submission was unsatisfactory because it did not include personnel information or detailed accounting records, only summaries. Blackburn said that Dyer’s attorney responded to additional requests for information in April by saying that if the panel wanted more detailed records, it would have to issue another subpoena.

“A subpoena is not a suggestion, it is a lawful order, and a subpoena is to be complied with,” Blackburn said.

Until a year ago, the company partnered with Planned Parenthood, which provided fetal tissue for research that comprises less than 1 percent of the company’s business. Following the release last year of surreptitiously recorded videos that purported to show the sale of fetal tissue for profit, StemExpress has been the target of hundreds of threats. StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer has received personal threats, including a $10,000 bounty on her head.

In the wake of the video’s release, a congressional subcommittee launched an investigation into whether Planned Parenthood and StemExpress violated a federal statue that bans the sale of fetal tissue for profit. In February, Blackburn sent two letters to the Obama administration that requested further investigation. Those letters were not properly redacted, and the identities of several researchers and Planned Parenthood staffers were made public in attachments that came with the letters and were posted on the Select Investigative Panel’s website.

Also in February, the committee issued a subpoena to StemExpress seeking accounting and personnel records. The next month, it issued a subpoena to StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer. Dyer’s attorney, Frank Radoslovich, told STAT that Dyer has complied with the subpoena and turned over more than 1,700 pages worth of the requested information, but she is also balancing a need to protect her staff’s anonymity in the wake of violent threats.

“We have a real, legitimate interest in protecting the privacy of our employees,” Radoslovich told STAT. “We have a panel of zealots that have already proven that they will disclose or mischaracterize documents, or just flat-out make up things and attribute it to us. We can’t be put in a position to further endanger employees.”

Top Democrats are condemning the actions of the Republicans on the committee. Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) wrote a letter to full committee chairman Fred Upton accusing the panel of abusing its power, claiming it does not have the authority to hold anyone in congressional contempt without the full support of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Ranking member Jan Schakowsky also decried the committee’s actions, calling it a sustained “witch hunt.”

“The McCarthyesque threat that StemExpress ‘name names’ of all employees or face congressional contempt is disgraceful,” she said in a statement. “We will fight this continued abuse of congressional authority every step of the way.”

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Republicans Just Found a New Way to Harass Scientists

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