Tag Archives: race and ethnicity

Meet the St. Louis Alderman Who’s Keeping an Eye on Ferguson’s Cops

by AlannahVKGC Posted on August 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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If you watched some truly jaw-dropping Vines of tear-gassing and smoke-bomb-throwing from Ferguson this week, chances are they came from Antonio French, the social-media-loving St. Louis alderman who’s been spending lots of time with the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, since the shooting of Michael Brown. He also spent a night in jail after Ferguson police arrested him late Wednesday, initially without giving a reason and later saying it was for “unlawful assembly.” (He captured the moment of his arrest in a Vine, naturally.) French still hasn’t been given any documents related to his arrest, but he’s back to keeping his Twitter followers—there are now nearly 80,000 of them—up to speed on what’s happening on the ground.

We asked him about his arrest, what happens next in Ferguson, and his secret to keeping his phone charged while documenting the protests.

What’s the No. 1 question you want answered right now?

Right now the thing that we still don’t know is the physical evidence in the case. Specifically, autopsy results will be able to answer a lot of questions. At least two witnesses have come forward to date, and both have described almost an execution style murder on the streets. Location of gun wounds, number of gun wounds—any of those would really give some more info about exactly what happened.

The fact that police in Ferguson arrested an elected local official is pretty stunning. Has anyone at any level of law enforcement there reached out to you to talk about why this happened?

Oh, absolutely not. When I was released from jail, I was still outside as I bailed out some of my staff who were also arrested. While I was waiting, the chief of police just walked past me.

Are you expecting anyone to reach out to you?

Expecting anyone from Ferguson? No.

How did you think the press conference by the Ferguson Police chief this morning went?

Let me be very clear about this: they need to take the microphone away from that Ferguson police chief. All he does is make things worse. The captain from the Missouri Highway Patrol made clear after the press conference that he was not consulted about it, and in no way we would he have released negative or insinuating information about Michael Brown at the same time as you’re releasing the name of this police officer. The mishandling of this whole situation continues. The governor was right to take the security out of the hands of the local authorities and now somebody needs to shut the mics off and let the adults handle it.

The press conference ends, and the crowd has a negative, angry mood again when we should be there celebrating what was a peaceful night. The first hour from the Ferguson police chief now has everybody pissed off again!

What were you doing right before you were arrested?

I was in my vehicle, as the officers there had thrown smoke bombs, flashbang bombs, and they tear gassed. When the tear gas started, I rolled up my windows. Because I went through this a couple days ago, I know that the best way to be was inside your car with the windows up and closing the vents. So that’s what I did. My car was surrounded by officers in riot gear and assault rifles. One opened my door and asked me to step out. Before he arrests me, I was actually recording all the way up to that moment, then my phone died and I wasn’t able to post or even view the video until the next day when I was released. and when I viewed it, the Vine was incredible, it recorded exactly that moment as the officers were in my car and pulled me out. If you ever shoot Vine videos, you know how difficult it is to get like, the moment within that six seconds! It was pure luck.

What are you up to today?

Man, I’m very thankful of the new guy in charge Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. He gets it. He’s doing a great job. What a difference 24 hours makes. It went from horrific to beautiful in 24 hours. And so now that peace is restored I’m gonna be out there with the youth as they continue to demonstrate again.

I think one of my roles now is to kind of articulate to the greater community and even to white America what it is they’re seeing. Explain the young people’s point of view. This is really a youth-led movement. I’m not old—I’m 36, so not necessarily young anymore—so my role is to be out there and to lead when necessary, intervene if things get out of control one way or another, and really just to be there to support. And at times, to protect these young people from more well-off people who are very aggressive and do not love these young people like we do.

If there was one thing you hope people outside of Ferguson take away from this…

For me, this is a very personal situation, a very local situation. These are issues that I’ve been talking about with great frustration myself for as long as I’ve been an elected official and even before that when I was just an activist-journalist. And it has just been so frustrating here in St. Louis. We talk about these issues and they are clear to those of us that are in the community, and they go completely unheard outside of our community. It’s almost like you have two St. Louises here, and getting the one to care about the other has been so frustrating. I hope that this invisible St. Louis is now visible, and that it starts the conversations between the two that have to happen if we’re ever going to become one St. Louis.

Where can these conversations happen?

There’s kind of two levels. You have the top level, which is that in media outlets, your roundtable discussions, even conversations on the local radio about the future of our city, very often these are all the same demographics: these are a table of white St. Louisans, young or old but all white, talking about the future of our city, which is majority black. Those conversations have to become more diverse. And then, on a more personal one-on-one level, people have to start being around each other. We’re such a segregated city that it is possible for people to go from the time they wake to the time they go to sleep and not interact with anyone, on any significant level, of another race.

In my life I’ve been blessed in that because of what I do, I bounce between so many different worlds. It’s very comfortable for me to be sitting at a table with a millionaire for lunch, and then out on the street with gangbangers at midnight. But that’s not typical. I get to see firsthand how these folks don’t know anything about each other. Zilch. It’s troubling.

A news outlet took the angle of going to interview white people in St. Louis County who live within five or six miles of ground zero of this protest movement, to hear what they have to say about it. It broke my heart. They just have a very negative feeling about it. Dismissed it as “thuggery.” I think a great percentage of white St. Louisans right now are still not getting it.

The first part was to stop the violence. And we have: we had our first peaceful night yesterday, and it was beautiful. So the next phase now is to initiate the difficult conversations. Part of my media schedule this week is going on some outlets that aren’t really friendly territory for me to talk to that audience. KMLX, the biggest talk radio station in town, has probably a 90 percent white audience. Going on Fox News with Sean Hannity later tonight. You gotta talk directly to those folks, and explain what’s happening here.

What do you say to folks asking “where is the black leadership” right now?

I would say that’s a good and fair question. What this thing has brought out is not only a division between black community and white community, or even between young people and the people who police the neighborhood, but also between black youth and their elected leaders. There’s a disconnect. I by no means went out there to be directly involved or to be a voice for this thing. I went down there to observe, and I was expecting local leaders to be taking the lead. That didn’t happen. I personally called an old friend of mine who is a state senator, Maria Chapelle Nadal, and told her she needs to get her butt over there. To her credit, she’s been there ever since.

That first night, when it got very violent and the riots happened and the looting happened, I was out there and that was the first time I put my camera down and got involved. That was when the young guys were first starting to come up to that line of police in riot gear. I was trying to calm them down, pushing them back. There were a couple young men who were angry and I had to physically constrain and try to talk to them and they weren’t trying to hear it. And later, they may have been involved in the violence. But fast forward 48 hours and these same men, the same exact boys, were leading the youth non-violent protests. And then last night they were out there and I hugged one of them and I said “Man, I am very proud of you.” And he said he was proud of me too. What’s happening is we’re having rapid maturity right now. We gotta put these guys on the fast track to becoming the leaders I know they can be.

What else can the young people in Ferguson be doing now?

One of these guys that’s been very involved down here who I’m also very proud of is a local rapper by the name of Tef Poe. He has a unique opportunity through music. He brings people of a lot of different races together. He’s been tweeting about this constantly, and he’s been down on the ground. It’s brought a lot of young white people down. Last night was one of the most diverse groups we’ve ever seen here. I posted a picture last night on Twitter, there’s a beautiful blonde white woman walking through the crowd holding a sign that says, “I support the black youth of St. Louis.” That’s what it takes. By reaching her, she can then convey the message to her community when she goes back.

What do you say to police who claim that if Eric Garner and some of the other black men who’ve been killed by police recently hadn’t allegedly resisted arrest, they would be alive today?

I think the statistics show that American police kill black people too often. The use of deadly force should be avoided by all means, and only used when absolutely necessary. If a police officer is in fear of being hit, that is not in fear of your life. If you think somebody’s gonna hit you that does not give you the right to take their life. That trigger is pulled a little bit too often. There’s a scale. If a child walks up to a police officer and hits him, he’s not gonna pull gun out and shoot him. If a white woman slaps a police officer in the face, she’s probably not gonna be shot. But if a black man rubs up against a police officer in the wrong way, he is in fear for his life.

African-American men are taught this at a very early age. You have be on guard, be careful around police. So if that’s what you’re taught to survive, then you’re not being taught that these are the good guys, these are the people who will protect you and serve you. You’re being taught that this is somebody who will probably kill you under certain circumstances. We have to change that relationship.

The first thing police always say is, “well, community doesn’t cooperate, they don’t tell us.” Well, they don’t trust you! When there is a crime, I make it a point as an elected official to go to the crime scene. I’ve seen too many crime scenes. I’ve seen dozens of young men’s bodies on the street. I go because people in the community will talk to me before they’ll talk to the police. If we wanna catch the person who killed somebody, it’s important for someone to be there who they trust.

Do you have some kind of secret industrial grade battery pack on your phone? How were you able to take so many Vines!?

My secret is that I park my car kind of strategically and keep coming back during breaks charging a little bit and charging a little bit. But I’ll tell you I have not seen 100 percent on my iPhone in like 5 days (laughs). I’m constantly living with 25 percent. I’m gonna recharge it fully today and I’m gonna post a picture of the 100 percent.

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Meet the St. Louis Alderman Who’s Keeping an Eye on Ferguson’s Cops

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Wondering What #NMOS14 Is?

by SaraHxbrbywtm Posted on August 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Starting tonight at 7pm Eastern time, a National Moment of Silence event will be playing out in gatherings big and small across the country. It’s headed up by a New York-based activist and social worker who writes online as Feminista Jones and talked to USA Today about the event:

After an activist posted on Twitter that there would be a vigil in downtown Manhattan for Brown, Feminista Jones reached out.

“I wonder why they always have vigils so far removed from the people who are most likely to be affected by police brutality,” she wrote back to the poster. “I just know that people in the Bronx and Brooklyn will struggle getting there on Sunday trains.” (The correspondence is documented in a Storify.)

Plans for the peaceful assemblies began through that platform, then moved to Facebook. It’s an update to activism Jones compares to “phone banking and letter writing — just reaching 90,000 people.”

“We’re having a national moment of silence — one chord, one silent voice — to honor not only Mike Brown, not only Eric Garner, but all victims of police brutality, especially those who have lost their lives,” she said.

The Root, the online black culture and politics mag, is using the #NMOS14 tag to post heartbreaking photos of unarmed black men shot by police over the years, from Amadou Diallo to Kimani Gray to Oscar Grant to far too many others.

To find an #NMOS14 event near you, check out the Twitter hashtag #NMOS14 and this Facebook listing of local groups.

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Wondering What #NMOS14 Is?

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The Ferguson Shooting and the Science of Race and Guns

by AliciaRibush Posted on August 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri gunned down unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Eyewitnesses say Brown was killed while trying to run away or surrender, but Ferguson police claim that Brown reached for the officer’s gun. It will be a long time before all the facts are sorted out, but research suggests that such claims may be rooted in something deeper than the need to explain actions after the fact: Race may literally make people see things that are not there, whether it’s a gun or a reach for a gun.

In a 2001 study, participants were shown a picture of a white face or a black face followed immediately by a picture of a weapon or a tool. They were asked to identify the object as quickly as possible. Study participants more often identified weapons correctly after they saw a black face, and more accurately identified tools after seeing an image of a white face. What’s more, “they falsely claimed to see a gun more often when the face was black than when it was white,” the report’s author wrote. He goes on:

Race stereotypes can lead people to claim to see a weapon where there is none. Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people’s ability to control responses. Such a bias could have important consequences for decision making by police officers and other authorities interacting with racial minorities. The bias requires no intentional racial animus, occurring even for those who are actively trying to avoid it.

This study has been repeated by several different groups of scientists with the same results. (When participants are primed with female as opposed to male African-American faces, however, they are less likely to assume the object is a gun.)

A 2005 study by University of Colorado neuroscientists bolsters these findings. The scientists measured threat perception and response in the brains of 40 students to targets in a video game, some of whom were carrying pistols while others carried wallets or cellphones. The study authors predicted that because there is a cultural perception that African-Americans are “more threatening,” participants’ “shoot response” would come more naturally. Indeed that’s how it panned out. The study found that the students shot black targets with guns more quickly than white targets with guns, and took longer to decide not to shoot unarmed blacks than unarmed whites.

We may never know what was going on in the head of the officer who shot Brown—or, for that matter, in the heads of George Zimmerman or Michael Dunn, or many other killers of unarmed African-Americans in disputed situations. But studies like the above suggest that the underlying problems run deep.

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The Ferguson Shooting and the Science of Race and Guns

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Watch President Obama Deliver Remarks About the Violence In Ferguson, Missouri

by GeorgiannaChewi Posted on August 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama just delivered remarks on the deteriorating situation in Ferguson, Missouri, where Wednesday night St. Louis law enforcement officials fired tear gas on peaceful demonstrators protesting the killing of Michael Brown.

Here are his remarks, transcript courtesy of the Washington Post:

I want to address something that’s been in the news over the last couple of days, and that’s the last situation in Ferguson, Missouri. I know that many Americans have been deeply disturbed by the images we’ve seen in the heartland of our country as police have clashed with people protesting, today I’d like us all to take a step back and think about how we’re going to be moving forward.

This morning, I received a thorough update on the situation from Attorney General Eric Holder, who’s been following and been in communication with his team. I’ve already tasked the Department of Justice and the FBI to independently investigate the death of Michael Brown, along with local officials on the ground. The Department of Justice is also consulting with local authorities about ways that they can maintain public safety without restricting the right of peaceful protest and while avoiding unnecessary escalation. I made clear to the attorney general that we should do what is necessary to help determine exactly what happened and to see that justice is done.

I also just spoke with Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri. I expressed my concern over the violent turn that events have taken on the ground, and underscored that now’s the time for all of us to reflect on what’s happened and to find a way to come together going forward. He is going to be traveling to Ferguson. He is a good man and a fine governor, and I’m confident that working together, he’s going to be able to communicate his desire to make sure that justice is done and his desire to make sure that public safety is maintained in an appropriate way.

Of course, it’s important to remember how this started. We lost a young man, Michael Brown, in heartbreaking and tragic circumstances. He was 18 years old, and his family will never hold Michael in their arms again. And when something like this happens, the local authorities, including the police, have a responsibility to be open and transparent about how they are investigating that death and how they are protecting the people in their communities. There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. There’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights. And here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs and report to the American people on what they see on the ground.

Put simply, we all need to hold ourselves to a high standard, particularly those of us in positions of authority. I know that emotions are raw right now in Ferguson and there are certainly passionate differences about what has happened. There are going to be different accounts of how this tragedy occurred. There are going to be differences in terms of what needs to happen going forward. That’s part of our democracy. But let’s remember that we’re all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order and the right to peaceful public protest, a reverence for the dignity of every single man, woman and child among us, and the need for accountability when it comes to our government.

So now is the time for healing. Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson. Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done. And I’ve asked that the attorney general and the U.S. attorney on the scene continue to work with local officials to move that process forward. They will be reporting to me in the coming days about what’s being done to make sure that happens.

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Watch President Obama Deliver Remarks About the Violence In Ferguson, Missouri

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Anonymous Posts St. Louis Police Dispatch Tapes From Day of Ferguson Shooting

by Celia34Vuvukbw Posted on August 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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This was just posted by @theanonmessage, a twitter account affiliated with Anonymous’ Operation Ferguson, a member of which I interviewed last night. According to @theanonmessage, this recording contains audio excerpts from St. Louis County police dispatch over several hours on August 9, 2014, the day Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer. The dispatcher starts talking about the Brown shooting around the 10-minute mark, while intermittently handling other calls. We are still listening to the recordings and working to corroborate their authenticity; see below the recording for an updating list of interesting moments, with time stamps included.

If you want to try to decipher the dispatch codes, here’s a dictionary for that.

9:35: “Ferguson is asking for assistance with crowd control . . .”

10:58: “Now they have a large group gathering there, she doesn’t know any further. . .”

11:20: “We just got another call stating it was an officer-involved shooting . . .”

11:30: “Be advised, this information came from the news . . .”

11:55: “We’re just getting information from the news and we just called Ferguson back again and they don’t know anything about it . . .”

20:00: “. . .destruction of property . . .”

21:55: “They are requesting more cars. Do you want me to send more of your cars?”

43:55: “Attention all cars, be advised that in reference to the call 2947 Canfield Drive, we are switching over to the riot channel at this time . . .”

Update, 4:40 p.m. ET: I tried to verify the dispatch recordings with St. Louis County Police but their media contact, Brian Shelman, did not answer the phone and his voicemail was full.

Update 2, 5:05 p.m. ET: Mashable is confirming that the St. Louis County Police Department is “aware of this and currently investigating.”

Update 3, 6:05 p.m. ET: A twitter follower of mine points out that the dispatch recording probably comes from Broadcastify, a database of public safety radio audio streams that’s available to anyone who pays for a subscription. It’s “far from a hack,” he says.

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Anonymous Posts St. Louis Police Dispatch Tapes From Day of Ferguson Shooting

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Anonymous’ "Op Ferguson" Says It Will ID the Officer Who Killed Michael Brown

by Jaqueline2060 Posted on August 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Update (4:12 p.m. ET): Anonymous has obtained and posted St. Louis police dispatch tapes from the day of the shooting.

The police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, says he is withholding the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, out of concern for the safety of the officer and his family. But that might be easier said than done. Just a few hours later, the hacktivist group Anonymous announced on Twitter that it was now “making a final confirmation on the name of Mike Brown’s murderer,” adding: “It will be released the moment we receive it.”

I traded emails last night with one of the half-dozen core Anonymous members working on Operation Ferguson, as the group’s effort to pressure and shame the local police department is known. They were still working to verify the identity of the shooter. “I can only tell you that our source is very close personally to the officer who killed Mike Brown, and that this person is terrified to be our source,” said the anon, whom I will call Fawkes. He added that the source “reached out to us, we did not seek out this person.”

The claim to have outed the Ferguson shooter comes only two days after Anonymous announced the launch of Operation Ferguson in this video:

The computer-generated voice, graphics, and hacking threats are trademark Anonymous, but one aspect is unusual: a demand for federal legislation “that will set strict national standards for police misconduct and misbehavior.” Though Anonymous has a strong anarchist strain that disdains politics, Fawkes told me that the idea wasn’t controversial within the group. “We have done a few of these ‘justice ops’ and it seems there needs to be a larger solution to the problem on a nationwide level,” he told me. “There was no debate—everyone on the team embraced the idea.”

Ferguson is 60 percent black. Virtually all its cops are white. Read more stats ››

It has been a busy few days for Operation Ferguson. The hackers shut down the city’s website for a few hours on Sunday night and Tuesday morning, posted the home address and number of St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar, and dropped an email bomb that crammed city and police inboxes with junk messages. The goal was “to get journalists like you to do interviews with us, and incidentally maybe talk about the issue at hand in the process,” Fawkes told me. “Looks like it worked.”

In previous “justice ops,” Anonymous hackers have targeted the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system to protest the Charles Hill and Oscar Grant shootings and the transit system’s attempt to dampen protests by shutting down cellphone signals. Other Anonymous ops have uncovered criminal evidence or the names of suspects. “It’s actually back to the classics,” said McGill University cultural anthropologist Gabriella Coleman, author of the forthcoming book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, whom I met last night in a chatroom where hackers were plotting their next moves. She added that “a lot of old-school folks came back for this,” though they’ve been careful to avoid the attention of law enforcement and other anons by using fresh pseudonyms.

But the veterans’ participation hasn’t stopped Op Ferguson from seeming unhinged at times. On Tuesday afternoon, one Anonymous Twitter account threatened to release information about the police chief’s daughter unless he disclosed the name of the officer who’d killed Brown. (The threat was later withdrawn.) And the op’s Twitter account repeated a bogus internet rumor attributing a screenshot of a racist Facebook tirade to Belmar’s wife—the tweet has since been deleted.

“We are not exactly known for being ‘responsible,’ nor for worrying overly much about the safety of cops,” Fawkes told me. “After all, they have vests and assault weapons. I think they can look after themselves. This is psychological and information warfare, not a love fest.”

Half outlaw, half idealist, Anonymous has always operated at the margins of legitimacy, its tactics ranging from gumshoe detective work to illegal hacking and shameless PR stunts. It’s hard to know whether its current claim to have ID’d Brown’s killer will be borne out. “I don’t think they have it,” Coleman told me. But, she added: “I would not be surprised if they do soon.”

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Anonymous’ "Op Ferguson" Says It Will ID the Officer Who Killed Michael Brown

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Are the Kids Showing Up at the Border Really Refugees?

by PBIJannieaz Posted on July 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ever since unaccompanied child migrants became a national news story six weeks ago, many people have started asking: Is this an immigration crisis, or is it a refugee crisis? In response, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said last week it hopes to designate many of the Central Americans fleeing regional violence and gang extortion as refugees.

The announcement comes amid mounting evidence of the horrific conditions causing so many people to flee Honduras, El Salvador, and parts of Guatemala: kids escaping rape, gang recruitment, and murder all around them, as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sonia Nazario detailed in a chilling op-ed in last Sunday’s New York Times. With this new designation, the UNHCR hopes to pressure the United States to give more immigrants, including many of the 70,000-plus unaccompanied minors likely to arrive at the US border this year, political asylum.


70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?


What’s Next for the Children We Deport?


Map: These Are the Places Central American Child Migrants Are Fleeing


Why Our Immigration Courts Can’t Handle the Child Migrant Crisis


GOP Congressman Who Warned About Unvaccinated Migrants Opposed Vaccination

See MoJo‘s full coverage of the surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America.

But if the UNHCR were to make such a move, it still would have no legal significance for the United States. So is it really that important? Yes and no, says Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission. Brané and I talked about what a “refugee” designation could mean, and other ways the US can help ease the pain for immigrants—particularly those who’ve experienced targeted violence. Here are nine key takeaways from our conversation:

1. Casting this as a “refugee situation” isn’t necessarily the important part.
“This population contains within it many children and mothers and parents bringing their children who qualify for refugee protection or for protection under international law. Whether you formally call it a ‘refugee situation’—that to me is less relevant than acknowledging that this is a population that is being driven out of their country. And their government is not willing or able to protect them.”

2. It’s not just general violence and unrest that’s causing people to flee Central America and Mexico.
“It’s true that general conditions of war or of danger are not sufficient to qualify for asylum. But the UN agency of refugees, in interviewing 400 of these children, for over an hour each, they found that 58 percent expressed a targeted fear. Not just, ‘I was scared because my neighborhood was dangerous.’ Fifty-eight percent of the kids said, ‘I received a death threat.’ Or, ‘I had a body cut up in a plastic bag left on my doorstep as a warning.’ One hundred percent come from a dangerous place. That we know. But 58 percent were targeted. That’s the piece that people are not getting.”

3. Using gang violence as grounds for international protection is not a novel idea.
“The UN committee for refugees has recognized for many years now that gang violence absolutely qualifies, depending on the circumstances, as persecution and as qualifying for status under the refugee commission. And the US has granted many claims. People talk about this being difficult to do. It is difficult, especially if you don’t have an attorney. But children with attorneys requesting asylum are winning those cases. It’s absolutely a grounds that has been accepted in the US. It’s not something revolutionary.”

4. Yes, this is a crisis—but we shouldn’t throw our hands up.
“The numbers are small if you compare them to refugee situations worldwide. Like look at Syria. There’s over a million Syrian refugees in Turkey. There’s over 2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan. Those countries are tiny compared to the US, and the numbers are much bigger. It’s absolutely our responsibility as the United States to manage this and handle it in a way that does not roll back protections. We have been the ones to stand up there and say to Turkey:’ You’ve got to take these refugees’. For us to say, because of this small number, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll reconsider,’ is crazy. It’s absolutely manageable.”

5. Very few migrants are faking persecution in order to get to stay in the United States.
“The US has excellent asylum screening procedures. The problem is, you need to beef up the system in order to accommodate these numbers. But that’s something we need to do anyway. I know there’s been a lot of allegations and concern that it’s a system that can easily be gamed, and you can fake it—but it actually it’s quite a rigorous process. There’s several screening hurdles you have to get over, and then you have to go in front of a judge, and then there’s security clearance.”

6. And many of them migrate for multiple reasons.
“When people say they have family here, yes, that’s true. But that’s not what made them come entirely. Why are they coming now? A smuggler offered them passage to the US. Is the smuggler the reason you left? Part of it. But really, the reason you were looking for a way to come, again, goes back to the violence. Poverty, also. The majority of the kids coming also are experiencing poverty in their home country. Is that the main reason? Maybe, maybe not. It’s combined.

“One interesting Vanderbilt study found that people who’d been victim of a crime were more likely to migrate than those who had not. It also found that people who feel their government is not responsive to their needs were much more likely to migrate than someone who’s government didn’t protect them. When you combine those two factors—both been a victim of a crime and felt their government couldn’t protect them—they’re exponentially more likely to migrate. It’s always a combination of factors.”

7. Requiring international protection, or refugee designation, for more migrants is the right start—but the US can’t solve this crisis alone.
“Mexico also has to acknowledge that many of these children need protection. Mexico also has very good asylum laws on the books. What they don’t have is the resources and the infrastructure to support implementing those policies. Frankly, I think one of the things the US should be doing, and could do if they talk about this in the context of a refugee crisis, is to provide support regionally, not just to Mexico but also to Belize, to Costa Rica, to Panama, all of the countries that are also seeing influxes of these children. Provide them with the support to implement their protection policies consistent with international law. And not all of these kids have to come to the US, right? The burden can sort of be shared in the region.”

8. We don’t have to wait to act until migrants get to our borders—we could process them before they leave their country.
“We’ve done that before: with the Vietnamese in the past, with Haitians, and with Cubans. The first thing that needs to happen is you have to set up what the criteria are going to be; who qualifies to be sort of preprocessed. You could limit it to kids with strong family connection to the US, who have been targeted and pass some sort of criteria. It can be done administratively. You do not need legislation to do that. And in doing it you basically cut out the smugglers. If you process the kids internally, they can get on a plane for $300 and fly over here—they don’t have to pay $3,000 to a criminal organization. It really undercuts the smugglers and trafficking operation in a huge way.

“If children see there’s a legal way that’s safer to come—without taking this horrible journey—maybe they’ll wait a little bit. And at the same time, you’re building up the child welfare system and funding safehouses and anti-corruption campaigns. Maybe they’ll see things get a little bit better; I can wait, I don’t have to leave today. You slow the flow at that end. Not just by deporting people summarily, without a hearing. If you do that, and that’s all you do, they’re going to turn right around and come back.”

9. Even if Obama’s request for emergency supplemental funding to deal with this crisis isn’t perfect, it’s better than nothing.
“While we may not agree with all the details of where some of the money is going to—it’s sort of heavy on enforcement, in my view—there’s no question that they desperately need this money in order to be able manage the situation and get a handle on it. Frankly, it needs to go through. Blocking it will make the situation worse. They won’t have any place to hold these kids while they process them, they won’t have money to process them and deport them, and they won’t have money to put them on planes and send them back. So it’s crazy that there’s discussion about blocking it.”

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Are the Kids Showing Up at the Border Really Refugees?

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Most Americans Think Racial Discrimination Doesn’t Matter Much Anymore

by CarlotaShirk Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday Pew released its latest “typology report,” which breaks down Americans into seven different groups. I’m a little skeptical of these kinds of clustering exercises, but I suppose they have their place. And one result in particular has gotten a lot of play: the finding that more than 80 percent of conservatives believe that blacks who can’t get ahead are responsible for their own condition.

But I think that misstates the real finding of Pew’s survey: everyone thinks blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition. With the single exception of solid liberals, majorities in every other group believe this by a 2:1 margin or more. That’s the takeaway here.

The other takeaway is that the news was a little different on the other questions Pew asked about race. The country is split about evenly on whether further racial progress is necessary, and large majorities in nearly every group continue to support affirmative action on college campuses. A sizeable majority of Americans may not believe that discrimination is the main reason blacks can’t get ahead, but apparently they still believe it’s enough of a problem to justify continuing efforts to help out.

Overall, though, this is not good news. It’s obvious that most Americans don’t really think discrimination is a continuing problem, and even their support for affirmative action is only on college campuses, where it doesn’t really affect them. If that question were about affirmative action in their own workplaces, I suspect support would plummet.

I don’t have any keen insights to offer about this. But like it or not, it’s the base on which we all have to work. Further racial progress is going to be very slow and very hard unless and until these attitudes soften up.

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Most Americans Think Racial Discrimination Doesn’t Matter Much Anymore

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Race and Republicans in Mississippi’s Senate Primary

by LaneGanttl Posted on June 25, 2014

Mother Jones

In yesterday’s primary election in Mississippi, incumbent Thad Cochran appealed to black voters in his race against Chris McDaniel. This is from a New York Times companion piece to their main reporting on the election:

The former mayor of Belzoni, an early focal point of the civil rights movement was not surprised by African-Americans’ enthusiasm for Mr. Cochran. The returns showed that Humphreys County, a predominantly African-American area, went for the senator, 811 to 214. “Cochran has been very responsive to the community, to the constituency and the state regardless of race,” he said.

….Race relations have improved over the last 45 years, and African-Americans made a coordinated effort to keep Mr. Cochran in office out of concern that his challenger, Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite, would be less inclusive.

McDaniels is crying foul because he thinks Cochran won with the help of liberal Democratic voters—as he’s allowed to do in Mississippi’s open primary system. Ed Kilgore is unimpressed:

The kvetching from the Right last night sounded an awful lot like southern seggies during the civil rights era complaning about “The Bloc Vote”….For all the talk last night of “liberal Democrats” being allowed to determine a Republican primary, there’s actually no way to know the partisan or ideological identity of voters in a state with no party registration (as David Nir pointedly asked this morning, why hasn’t Chris McDaniel sponsored a bill to change that in his years in the state legislature?). So what these birds are really complaining about is black participation in a “white primary.” This is certainly not an argument consistent with broadening the appeal of the GOP or the conservative movement.

I don’t doubt for a second that race played a role here, but I think this is a mite unfair. In 2012, Mississippi blacks voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 96-4 percent. In 2008, they voted for Democrat Ronnie Musgrove over Republican Roger Wicker 92-8 percent and for Democrat Erik Fleming over Thad Cochran 94-6 percent. (Mississippi had two senate races that year.)

Cochran did nothing wrong in yesterday’s election, and if blacks showed up to support him because they disliked McDaniels’ racially-charged past, that’s democracy for you. Still, I think it’s pretty clear that most of these voters really were Democrats. Race may be an underlying motivation for the complaints from McDaniels’ supporters, but conservative dislike of Democrats voting in a Republican primary is also a motivation. (And, in my view, a legitimate one. I’m not a fan of open primaries.)

That said, if tea party types want to avoid accusations of racism, they should steer clear of things like loudly announcing an Election Day program to send teams of “poll watchers” to majority black precincts. Especially in a state with a history like Mississippi’s, it’s pretty hard to interpret that as anything other than a deliberate racial provocation.

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Race and Republicans in Mississippi’s Senate Primary

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Meet the Native American Woman Who Took on the Washington Football Team

by LucianaCurrie Posted on June 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office terminated six federal trademark registrations held by Washington’s pro football team. The PTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled that the team’s name cannot be protected, because it disparages Native Americans and federal law bans the trademarking of offensive language.

The decision is a victory for Amanda Blackhorse, a 32-year-old member of the Navajo Nation who became the face of the legal fight to revoke Washington’s trademarks starting in 2006. She was leading protests of the name when the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath asked her to become the lead of five petitioners in its case against the Washington football team.

Blackhorse spoke to Mother Jones Wednesday about the ruling, the other professional sports teams in her crosshairs, and her own run-ins with racist Washington football fans.

Mother Jones: So you must be pretty excited today, right?

Amanda Blackhorse: We started this campaign eight years ago. So yes, today, it’s pretty overwhelming, but in a good way. When you’re part of a case that takes years and years and years, you wait all this time, and now it’s finally here, it’s just a tremendous victory. Not just for the five of us who were the petitioners but for the native country as a whole.

I hear the owners are going to file an appeal. I was hoping that maybe they would listen to us, and the majority of Native American people who have spoken out on this, and said, “We’re done fighting this thing.” But apparently they want to continue to stand their ground with this. And we’re the same way. We know we’re living in a time when calling someone the R-word is absolutely offensive.

MJ: Why did you get involved with protests of the name in the first place?

AB: Someone once told me—and then I thought about it differently—that mascots are meant to be ridiculed. Mascots are meant to be toyed with. They’re meant to be pushed around and disrespected. To have stuff thrown at them. That’s what I feel like happens at these games. There’s a lot of ridicule of Native American people. You have people walking around in face paint, fake war paint on their cheekbones, feathers in their hair.

Your team name may be the Braves—which is another stereotype, that we’re warlike and stoic—but the point is, no matter what your intentions are, when you make a Native American person your mascot, you have no control over what happens at that stadium. And Native Americans lose control over what our image is.

MJ: I heard that one of your first protests, at a Washington-Chiefs game in Kansas City, was a pretty nasty experience.

AB: Oh, yes. People yelled, “Go back to your reservation!” “We won, you lost, get over it!” “Go get drunk!” And so many different slurs. People threw beers. That, to me, was shocking. I’ve experienced racism in my lifetime, but to see it outwardly, in the open, and nobody did anything? It was shocking.

That was the game where there was a port-a-potty in the shape of a teepee.

MJ: Has anyone ever called you the R-word, or have you heard it used against another Native American?

AB: No, and I’ve never heard a Native person call another Native person a redskin. I’ve been called a “stupid Indian.” I’ve been called a “savage” and a “squaw.” Not too long ago, there was a person who wrote a letter to the editor in our local newspaper, the Navajo Times, and this guy wrote in there that he’s “tired of the drunken redskins.” So people do continue to use that slur to this day. I couldn’t believe that was even printed.

MJ: How has it felt seeing so many lawmakers and news outlets side with you and condemn Washington’s team name in recent years?

AB: It’s tremendous. It’s great. I’m hoping that more of the NFL community would speak out, but it’s so great to see after all these years how this movement has grown. But Native Americans still need to demand respect for ourselves. That’s the point here. We need to stand up for ourselves in the general population and not allow people to push us around and stereotype us.

MJ: Would you like to see other teams change their names? Take the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, for example. It’s not a slur, but…

AB: Yes—it’s not a slur but it’s an appropriation of our culture. Any team name that references Native Americans, I think should go. No matter which way you swing it, you as a team owner and we Native Americans have no control over the type of imagery fans are going to seize on at your games.

I think that the Cleveland Indians logo is one of the most disrespectful representations of a Native American man out there. It’s awful. It’s cartoonish.

MJ: What would you say to Dan Snyder, who owns the Washington football team?

AB: I feel like no matter what we say to him, they’re not going to budge. The change will come from the political process. And some of it has to come from his fan base. From people in the area. I’m way out here in the middle of the Navajo Nation.

We knew early on that there was a lot of money at stake for the team. That this was all about money. And money talks. Snyder acts like he’s invincible. No matter what we say, I don’t think he’s going to change the name unless he’s forced to.

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Meet the Native American Woman Who Took on the Washington Football Team

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