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A Hip-Hop Crew’s Take on Old Detroit vs. the So-Called New Detroit

by LouellaNewcomer Posted on January 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last March, the developers of a restored downtown Detroit apartment building, the Albert, released a promotional video showcasing the swanky amenities that awaited hip millenials if they would just sign a lease and say yes to a city many of their parents and grandparents had left behind. “Detroit is MY generation’s city,” a chirpy twentysomething exclaims as the promo fades to black and the Albert’s sleek graphic reemerges.

If the video was meant to give a behind-the-scenes tour of a building with 127 rental units, it also revealed the mindset of some of the architects of Detroit’s revitalization efforts, who are trying to rebrand the city. The implication of the “my generation” slogan was that the old guard would need to step aside. Indeed, the low-income senior tenants living in the Albert had been informed the previous April that they would need to make other housing arrangements. “There’s all this hubbub about a ‘new Detroit,'” one pushed-out tenant, 58-year-old Recardo Berrien, told Deadline Detroit. “I was born and raised in Detroit. For us not to be part of this ‘new Detroit’ is absurd. We don’t see ‘us’ in none of this. No elderly and poor. We are nowhere in the plans of anyone down here.”

As city leaders—and billionaires—structure Detroit’s future, there has been an emphasis on words like “new,” “revitalization,” “renaissance” and “regrowth,” but very little talk about the systemic issues that led to the city’s decline. The Detroit Future City Strategic Framework, the current blueprint for the revitalization effort, is a 761-page tome that mentions poverty just once and racism not at all. A section of the plan, which Mayor Mike Duggan’s development chief call his “Bible,” calls for a slowdown of city services in high-vacancy areas.

These contradictions are the subject of “H.O.M.E.S.,” the latest song by 30-year-old Detroit hip-hop artist Mic Write, in collaboration with DOSS the Artist, another local rapper. It’s an anthem of city pride that challenges the notion of their town’s corporate revitalization. “My city, my block, my street. Why pity my stock I eat. I read, I learn, I care. I think your data is obsolete. Look, Nigga this that miss me with your savior complex,” he raps in the first verse.

“I used to live in Midtown,” Mic Write told me. “And I was down in Midtown when it was not as bustling as it is now. I was able to see firsthand some of the renewal efforts.” He’s talking about a neighborhood within the 7.2 square miles targeted for redevelopment. “So you kind of learn the terms for it: gentrification, urban renewal. Sometimes you don’t have the terms, you just have a feeling and it goes from, ‘Oh wow, look at all these cool places that I can go to!’ to hearing stories that feel a little bit darker, like about people getting evicted, either formally or just priced out because it was becoming that type of place.”

Mic Write, a 2013 Kresge Foundation Literary Arts fellow and member of a rap collective called Cold Men Young (a play on Coleman Young, Detroit’s first black mayor), explains that he heard stories of friends displaced for the sake of renewal and felt compelled to create something that gets to the heart of the matter. “I don’t mind new things coming in and new lifeblood coming in,” he says. “But I think it’s an issue when there are certain exclusions that come along with it. So I wanted to write an anthem that said, ‘You can come in, but you can’t take what I’m not going to give.'”

So, while the song doesn’t dis the new, it does pay deference to the old. In the accompanying video, the two rappers walk through rich and poor neighborhoods, letting homes of all conditions take the spotlight. “One of the most defining things about Detroit is its homes, or lack thereof,” says DOSS the Artist. “You have this vacant space, this abandoned space. Living here or just spending time touring these different areas of the city, you begin to think, “What is the history? What does it mean for our community for there to be this vacant space where there used to be a life? Where have those people gone? What is left for them?”

Such questions are all too often ignored when civic discussions revolve around blight and the “urban wasteland” instead of the city’s past and the problems that brought about the neglect. Detroit’s history is like a thumbprint; you can ignore the evidence but can’t erase it. The 1967 12th Street Riots, white flight, scandal-ridden city politics, the fading of the Big Three, the subprime fiasco, and the city’s recent bankruptcy all are partly responsible for Detroit’s current state. And while the city is now out of bankruptcy and there’s been a renewed interest from investors in Detroit’s future, “H.O.M.E.S” is a reminder of the people who gave the city its vitality before everyone was obsessed with its re-vitality.

In January, New York magazine ran an article profiling nine Detroit artists and why they chose to live in the city. Pegged to the fact that Brooklyn-based art gallery Galapagos is moving to a warehouse there, the piece argued that Motown was finally having a hip moment, like SoHo in the 1970s. But then, we all know what SoHo’s like now: commercial and sanitized. The issue for Detroit readers was the lack of any connection to the city’s past. And although Detroit’s population is 83 percent black, the article feature exclusively white artists—many of them newcomers.

“H.O.M.E.S was really speaking a lot about the state of Detroit,” DOSS the Artist told me. “Which kind of mimics a lot of the rhetoric around all lives matter and black lives matter right now. This is a space that looks abandoned but it is entirely occupied by people everyday, just performing basic human needs.”

Master photo by Iain Maitland, www.iainmaitland.com

Video shot by Ben Friedman, www.benjamin.strikingly.com

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A Hip-Hop Crew’s Take on Old Detroit vs. the So-Called New Detroit

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What We Know About the Anti-Terror Raids Across Europe

by ChauSopervwxed Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Following the Paris attacks that left 17 dead and amidst warnings that there may be as many as 20 jihadist sleeper cells throughout the European Union, at least four European nations have launched anti-terror operations. From Belgium, where suspected Islamic radicals skirmished with police, to Ireland, where an alleged radical was arrested as he tried to enter the country, some 24 suspects have been arrested across Europe. Here’s what we know about the raids and arrests that have played out over the past couple days.

Belgium: Early Thursday evening, Belgian police shot and killed two men, and arrested a third, during an intense ten-minute gun battle in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers. Belgian police and prosecutors claim that these men, Belgian citizens, had recently returned from Syria, were heavily armed, and had imminent plans to attack police officers and police stations in Belgium. Their identities have not been released, but witnesses claim they were dressed all in black and were carrying black bags. Officers seized police uniforms, heaps of money, explosives, guns, and munitions from the suspects. No police officers were wounded in the shoot-out. “The operation was meant to dismantle a terrorist cell…but also the logistics network behind it,” Eric Van Der Seypt, a Belgian prosecutor, told reporters.

Following the stand-off, police in Belgium arrested 13 additional suspects throughout the country. According to Van Der Sypt, the investigation that led to the arrests was initiated before the Paris massacre occurred. The Belgian authorities are investigating any ties the Belgian suspects might have had with the Paris attackers—especially to Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four hostages before he was gunned down by police at a kosher market north of Paris. Police are investigating whether Coulibaly may have purchased weapons from a Belgian arms dealer, after confirming that he sold the dealer a car belonging to his partner Hayat Boumeddienne, who remains at large. Right now, there are no direct connections.

France: In neighboring France, police reportedly arrested around 12 additional suspects in Paris in connection to the Charlie Hebdo shootings. These suspects allegedly have ties to the Kouachi brothers, who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices, held up a gas station, and holed up at a print shop before police killed them. NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports that the suspects were members of the Paris attackers’ “entourage” and may have helped plan or finance the attacks.

Germany: In Germany, where tensions over massive anti-Islam, anti-immigration protests have grown over the past week, Berlin police reportedly arrested two men suspected of having ties to the Islamic State, or ISIS. The two men are believed to have been recruiting, raising money, and obtaining supplies for ISIS. Around 250 police officers stormed Berlin streets, searching 11 homes, in what police described as part of a months-long investigation into a small terrorist cell in Germany. However, police claimed they did not have reason to believe the group posed an imminent threat.

Ireland: The terrorism crackdown extended as far as Ireland, where a French-Algerian national, a suspected jihadist, attempted to enter Dublin at the airport. He is currently being held by the police and questioned about fake documentation, after the police were tipped off by international agencies monitoring the man.

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What We Know About the Anti-Terror Raids Across Europe

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The Group That Kidnapped 200 Nigerian Girls Started Out Peaceful. Here’s What Changed.

by AdrianneFkb Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week, the radical Islamist militant group Boko Haram massacred as many as 2,000 people in the towns of Baga and Doron Baga in northeast Nigeria—the latest bloody event in their terror spree that began in the region around 2009. Responsible for around 600 attacks and more than 3,000 dead since 2011, according to the Department of Justice (other groups have made higher estimates), the group has made international headlines for kidnapping hundreds of school girls in 2014 and bombing the United Nations’ headquarters in the Nigerian capital of Abuja in 2011. But Boko Haram has not always been known for its ruthless brutality.

Around 13 years ago, according to the United States Institute of Peace, the sect that became known as Boko Haram was a small, isolated, peaceful community dedicated to practicing strict Islamic Shariah law. In 2002, a group of extremist Muslim youths who worshipped at the Alhaji Muhammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri, or the capital of Borno state in northeast Nigeria, decided to depart from Nigerian society and the corruption they saw there and embark on a religious pilgrimage modeled after the Prophet Muhammad’s journey from Mecca to Medina. They traveled to Kanama, near the border with Niger, to create their separatist commune. Mohammed Ali was their leader, and he called upon the group to follow “true” Islamic law.

Even after Nigerian security forces in 2003 killed the majority of Boko Haram’s members over fishing rights in a local pond, the group didn’t follow up with any violent reprisals. Police killed most of its 70 members—including Mohammed Ali—in the 2003 episode, but the group managed to reconstruct itself.

The few survivors returned to Maiduguri. They were led by a young cleric named Mohammed Yusuf, who established a mosque for the group. The community offered shelter to refugees from neighboring wars in Chad, opportunities for young jobless Nigerians, and food and resources for anyone who wanted to live there. Authorities left them alone and the group operated its own governing cabinet, large farm, and police force, which upheld the community’s strict religious law.

“Although from the outset, the sect’s mission was to impose the Shari’a on Nigeria, the leadership went about its preaching peacefully,” Simeon H.O. Aloziuwa wrote in the Costa Rica-based University for Peace’s Peace and Conflict Review in 2012. A report produced by the European Parliament also described Boko Haram as “originally a peaceful Islamist movement.”

Peaceful Democracy Ambassadors, a Nigerian group committed to human rights and peace, describe Mohammed Yusuf as “a charismatic young cleric” who founded Boko Haram “as part of his push for a pure Islamic state in Nigeria.” Though it’s not certain where the group received its money during its first few years, some experts believe that Yusuf received donations from Salafist contacts in Saudi Arabia or wealthy northern Nigerians. One Boko Haram donor who spoke with the United States Institute of Peace claimed it was part of his responsibility as a good Muslim to give money to charity—in this case, Boko Haram.

There is some disagreement about when exactly the group’s turn toward violence began. Many experts believe that in 2007, Mohammed Yusuf may have ordered the death of a prominent cleric who had criticized the group.

When the group again made headlines in 2009, it was for clashes with the police after an argument about traffic regulations. Then Boko Haram threats escalated; Yusuf released viral videos speaking out against the police, which attracted a large audience in Nigeria. The government and police both tried to crack down even more aggressively on the group, arresting hundreds. Boko Haram attacked multiple police stations. When the authorities regained control of Maiduguri, they reportedly began executing hundreds of Boko Haram members.

A local journalist told a researcher at the United States Institute of Peace that police likely “disappeared” and executed over a hundred local imams and rulers, or suspected sympathizers with Boko Haram. Yusuf, the Boko Haram leader, was allegedly arrested by the army on the street and handed over to police—where he was executed within hours, according the United States Institute of Peace. The police claim he was killed while trying to run away after being interrogated. Regardless, Yusuf’s death marked another transition. The remaining members of Boko Haram fled, their locations potentially including radical camps from Algeria to Mali, only to return in 2010 more violent than ever before.

Shehu Sani, the president of the Civil Rights Congress in Nigeria, spoke with PBS’s Frontline about his assessment of Boko Haram’s turning point, which differs slightly from other research:

The 2009 killing of Mohammed Yusuf was a result of a security traffic incident. And as a result, the subsequent killing of hundreds of members of the group after a simple traffic conflict between the group and the police became the ignition that spiraled into the violence and bloodshed that we have been suffering the last three to four years. So we had a movement that was peaceful and that was crushed by the Nigerian army, Nigerian police, and later they went underground and became more monstrous.

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The Group That Kidnapped 200 Nigerian Girls Started Out Peaceful. Here’s What Changed.

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GOP to Give Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Protection Agency the Darrell Issa Treatment

by Shayna9349 Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ever since Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helped get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau off the ground in 2010, Republicans have been trying to shut it down. GOPers drafted legislation to weaken the fledgling agency, which was designed to prevent mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other financial institutions from screwing average Americans. The measures died. Republicans turned to the courts to gut the bureau. That effort failed. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, they have another weapon at their disposal: new subpoena powers they can deploy to blitz the CFPB with document requests.

The goal is obvious: dig out material the GOPers can use to embarrass the agency. And if nothing untoward is discovered, Republican legislators can at least pin down the bureau with onerous paperwork demands. Democrats fear Republicans’ new information-gathering abilities will make it easier for the agency’s foes to launch witch-hunt style investigations of the CFPB similar to those former House oversight committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) launched regarding Benghazi and the IRS.

All committees in both the House and the Senate have the right to subpoena federal agencies for information. But until recently, either the most senior committee member from the minority party had to sign off on a subpoena or the entire committee had to vote on the request. In the last Congress, six House committees okayed a rule change giving the committee chair unilateral subpoena power. On Tuesday, the House financial services committee—which has jurisdiction over the CFPB—voted along party lines to grant the same privilege to its Republican chairman, Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

Republicans already have a track record of looking for information that could tarnish the CFPB’s reputation, and Democrats fully expect Hensarling to continue down the same path. And now Hensarling, a fierce CFPB critic, will be able to more easily mount politically motivated investigations of the agency.

Without the rule change, GOPers could still push through the subpoenas. As the majority, Republicans on the committee could vote to approve an information request. But with its new subpoena superpowers, the committee can demand records without a vote—and, thus, can keep the process from the public eye, a spokesman for the committee Democrats says. No longer will there be a public hearing where lawmakers can debate the subpoenas and Democrats can make a case if they think Hensarling and the Republicans are abusing the privilege. Last year, for example, ranking Democratic member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) used the public forum to convince Hensarling to back down on a Treasury Department subpoena.

Now, if Democrats want to keep GOPers from going on a fishing expedition aimed at tarnishing the CFPB, they won’t have as much of an opportunity to create a ruckus. At a committee hearing Tuesday, Waters, the senior Democrat on the panel, called the rules change “anti-democratic” and “insulting.” (Under the new rule, Waters will be given 48 hours notice before Hensarling issues a subpoena, so that she can alert the press if she wants.)

“We think it’s ridiculous that the Republican leadership is exporting the Issa model to the rest of the House,” a Democratic staffer told Politico. Several other House committees are expected to approve similar powers for their chairs this month.

Last year the GOP-dominated financial services committee voted to subpoena three CFPB officials to require them to testify in an ongoing investigation of alleged discrimination against minorities and women at the bureau. Democrats claimed the move was politically motivated.

Hensarling has not yet indicated how he might use the new subpoena powers. Some Republicans are unhappy with the CFPB’s plan to crack down on shady payday lenders, so Hensarling could potentially subpoena the data the agency is collecting in an attempt to prove the effort is overly invasive. Hensarling denies the new rule is undemocratic.

The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment.

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GOP to Give Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Protection Agency the Darrell Issa Treatment

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5 Flaws in Obama’s New Cybersecurity Plan

by NicolasRoller Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Following a string of high-profile corporate hacks at companies such as Target, Home Depot, and Sony, President Obama is now urging Congress to improve how companies respond to data breaches. He wants to require them to disclose consumer data breaches within 30 days of discovering them, make it easier for companies to share information about hacking threats with one another and the federal government, and criminalize the sale of botnets, programs used to coordinate attacks.

But while those may sound like good ideas, they’re not winning universal support from top digital rights groups. “President Obama’s cybersecurity legislative proposal recycles some old ideas that should remain where they’ve been since May 2011: on the shelf,” writes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Here are the top five concerns with Obama’s proposals:

1. They may allow companies to share your personal data with the NSA: Companies would receive legal immunity in connection with sharing information about threats with a cybersecurity center headed by the Department of Homeland Security, which could immediately pass it along to the National Security Agency and other federal agencies. The proposed disclosure law, which would trump other state or federal data-privacy laws, would require companies to take unspecified “reasonable” steps to strip information that could identify a specific person before sharing it, but only for individuals “reasonably believed to be unrelated to the cyber threat.”

2. Private companies and the government already share information about security threats: The sharing happens through the nonprofit Information Sharing and Analysis Centers and Homeland’s Enhanced Cybersecurity Services. “The question is what gap this bill is trying to fill when we already have a robust information sharing machine,” says EFF legislative analyst Mark Jaycox.

3. The reforms would increase penalties under the draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: The notoriously broad and stringent CFAA is best known as the tool used by the feds to prosecute digital rights activist Aaron Swartz, who killed himself in 2013 while facing 35 years in jail and $1 million in fines in connection with downloading copyrighted scientific articles. “We’ve repeatedly seen government prosecutions that use the CFAA’s tough penalties to bully people,” says Jaycox. In a press release, the White House says it wants to ensure the act isn’t used to target “insignificant conduct.” But a close reading of its proposed reforms appears to tell a different story: One provision increases the penalty for stealing data from any “protected computer” from one year to three, even if it wasn’t done for commercial gain.

4. They supersede state laws: The White House’s consumer data breach law would supersede at least 38 state data-breach laws, some of which are more stringent than the proposed federal standard. The law proposed by the White House would apply only to businesses that store information on more than 10,000 individuals, but California, Florida and some other states have disclosure laws that apply to any company that experiences a data breach affecting more than 500 people. “Any such proposal should not become a back door for weakening transparency or state power,” the EFF said in a statement, “including the power of state attorneys general and other nonfederal authorities to enforce breach notification laws.”

5. They could limit online civil disobedience: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to curtail the sale of botnets, but they’ve also been used by activists to carry out distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against repressive governments and corporate ne’er-do-wells. Last year, the hactivist collective Anonymous posted a petition on Whitehouse.gov asking that DDOS attacks be recognized as a legal form of protest similar to the Occupy protests. Under the CFAA, carrying out a DDOS attack can already land you in jail for many years, but now the White House wants to further clamp down on the practice by specifically allowing the Attorney General to go after botnets that help enable them.

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5 Flaws in Obama’s New Cybersecurity Plan

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Lawmaker Endorsed by NRA Aims to Make Schoolkids Study NRA Curriculum

by CarinEWPBavsc Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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In August of last year, a 16-year-old high-schooler in Summerville, South Carolina, turned in a creative writing assignment about shooting his neighbor’s pet dinosaur. The school’s “zero tolerance” policy for guns prompted a search of the student’s belongings that turned up no weapons. Nonetheless, he was arrested and suspended for what he said was a joke, if one in questionable taste.

South Carolina state Rep. Alan Clemmons hopes to use that incident to force public schools to dedicate three weeks each year to teaching a gun-focused curriculum developed or recommended by the National Rifle Association. Traditionally, zero tolerance policies have applied to students bringing weapons to school or simulating their use with toys or hand gestures—not to academic discussion of guns. Still, in the bill Clemmons filed in the state legislature last month he states that these NRA-approved lessons are needed to combat an “intolerance for any discussion of guns or depiction of guns in writing or in assignments in public schools, which is an affront to First Amendment rights and harshly inhibits creative expression and academic freedom.”

“If anything comes up in a school setting that has to do with firearms, then it’s a suspendable offense and criminal charges could ensue,” Clemmons told WMBF News. “The second amendment should be freely debated in schools and instead the second amendment is being squelched in our schools.”

If passed, the Second Amendment Education Act would require that three consecutive weeks of each year in elementary, middle, and high school be spent studying the second amendment. As Ian Millhiser at Think Progress points out, that’s an enormous chunk of the school year, especially given that some South Carolina schools devote just two weeks to slavery and a week and a half to World War II.

The law would also require that every December 15—the day after the anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook school in Newtown—be designated “Second Amendment Awareness Day.” To celebrate the occasion, schools will be required to hold mandatory poster or essay contests at every grade level, with the theme “The Right To Bear Arms; One American Right Protecting All Others.” The South Carolina Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus will be in charge of choosing first, second, and third place winners in both contests.

Both chambers of South Carolina’s legislature are Republican-controlled, and Gov. Nikki Halley has an A+ rating from the NRA. Still, this bill may be too extreme to pass:

“Even amongst a conservative constituency in South Carolina, I think they can rate that they have more abiding problems than this,” says Dr. Dave Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University who’s long served as a political consultant to Republican candidates in South Carolina.

“Most people are more concerned with math and science, and the fact that historically, South Carolina’s rankings in education have been abysmal. Nobody, I think, would say ‘The best way to improve education is to have a three-week segment on the Second Amendment. Boy, that’ll move us up in the national rankings!'” says Woodard.

The bill includes a list of gun-related topics that must be worked into the curriculum. Several—including the individual right to bear arms—are straight out of the revisionist interpretation of the Second Amendment that the NRA and its supporters have helped popularize since the 1970s.

The curriculum would require students from first grade and up to get into the weeds of constitutional scholarship on the Second Amendment. Students will be asked to study Supreme Court cases “including the United States v. Cruikshank, the United States v. Miller, the District of Columbia v. Heller, and McDonald v. Chicago.” (The majority arguments in Heller and McDonald grew out of the push by pro-gun researchers to redefine the Second Amendment.) The bill also mandates that students learn about “the constitutionality of gun control laws,” the causes of mass shootings, and “the impact of legislative reactions to gun violence on Constitutional rights and the impact on reducing gun violence, if any.”

Clemmons identifies as a Second Amendment advocate. He has repeatedly received an A rating from the NRA, and has taken part in events with the group in his state. In 2013, he was featured on the NRA’s website after taking a trip to Connecticut to convince gun manufacturers, put off by tightening gun control legislation in the state post-Newtown, to move their operations to South Carolina.

It’s unclear if Rep. Clemmons or his cosponsors have hashed out the logistics of the NRA’s involvement in developing or approving a curriculum: Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the NRA, tells Mother Jones that the NRA has not made any recommendations on the syllabus envisioned by the bill, nor have South Carolina legislators made plans with the NRA about the group’s future role. Attempts by Mother Jones to contact Rep. Clemmons have not been answered, but we will update this story if we receive a response.

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Lawmaker Endorsed by NRA Aims to Make Schoolkids Study NRA Curriculum

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Kentucky Makes It Almost Impossible for Felons to Vote. Rand Paul Wants to Change That.

by StefanieMercado Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Rand Paul began the new year by lobbying for one of his favorite causes: criminal-justice reform. Last week, Paul issued a press release urging the Kentucky Legislature to act on a bill that would let state voters decide whether or not to create a path back to voting rights for nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences. “Restoring voting rights for those who have repaid their debt to society is simply the right thing to do,” Paul said in the release.

In 2014, the Democratic-controlled Kentucky House approved a bill that would put a constitutional amendment on ballots in the fall—if voters approved the measure, it would have automatically restored the voting rights of nonviolent felons who have served their time. But the Republican-controlled Senate passed a substitute that proposed several tough restrictions, including a mandatory five-year waiting period after prison before felons could reapply to vote. The two chambers couldn’t agree, and the issue has stalled. Paul, who favors the less-restrictive House bill, is trying to give the issue CPR. (His office declined to comment for this article.)

Kentucky has some of the harshest restrictions on felon voting rights in the country: Felons who wish to get their voting rights back—regardless of offense—must submit a request directly to the governor, who has the sole authority to approve or deny them. Most states offer some type of path to reenfranchisement. For example, in Washington state, all felons who have completed their sentences, probation, and/or parole are allowed to reregister to vote.

According Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a political, social, and economic advocacy group, only three states—Florida, Iowa, and Virginia—have paths to reenfranchisement that are as difficult as Kentucky’s. In a state with roughly 3.1 million registered voters, more than 180,000 Kentucky ex-felons do not have the right to vote, and they come overwhelmingly from low-income and minority communities. Not surprisingly, studies have found that felony disenfranchisement disproportionately benefits Republicans.

This isn’t the first time that Paul has pushed to ease restrictions on felons’ voting rights. In 2013, speaking to a predominantly minority audience in Kentucky, Paul said, “I am in favor of letting felons get their rights back, the right to vote…Second Amendment rights, all your rights to come back.” This was not an especially popular stance within the GOP back then. A year earlier, Rick Santorum attacked Mitt Romney over his opposition to felon enfranchisement.

Stephen Voss, a state politics expert at the University of Kentucky, says he doesn’t think Paul holds enough sway in Kentucky to move reform through the statehouse. But with this issue, Paul has the chance to bolster his unorthodox approach to criminal-justice policy ahead of the 2016 primaries. “Paul is very interested in expanding the Republican coalition to include voters that have been difficult to reach in the past, but he clearly wants to do it within the bounds of small government ideology,” Voss says. “This issue of treatment of people who have served out sentences is a prime opportunity.”

Enfranchising felons may not be good for GOP electoral prospects, but Paul might not be alone among Republican 2016 contenders in the reform camp. Jeb Bush restored voting rights for over 150,000 ex-felons while governor of Florida, and Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill in 2008 making it easier for Louisiana felons to earn their voting rights back. “If Paul gets in trouble with Republicans, I doubt it’ll be on this issue,” Voss says. He suggests other Republicans might join Paul in what he calls a viable way of improving the GOP’s perception among minorities. “It’s not a small number of Republicans that appreciate the benefit of expanding their constituency.”

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Kentucky Makes It Almost Impossible for Felons to Vote. Rand Paul Wants to Change That.

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This Is What Happens When We Lock Children in Solitary Confinement

by FelicitClutterb Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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“They left me in that little room with nothing,” Kenny said. Maddie McGarvey

One night in March 2013, a 17-year-old named Kenny was walking with a friend through farm country in Reilly Township, Ohio. The boys had been drinking and were checking car doors in the hope of finding a little money when they came across a pickup with keys in the ignition. They decided to take it for a spin.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, Kenny wasn’t exactly thinking straight. He was just three weeks out of court-ordered rehab for marijuana possession and public intoxication, and his dad had just caught him stealing his anxiety medication. The pair drove a few miles to the home of Kenny’s girlfriend, whose mother saw the purloined truck and called the cops. The boys bolted, spent the night in a shed, and the next night were arrested while partying at a frat house. A judge found Kenny guilty of receiving stolen property worth less than $7,500, a low-level felony. He deemed Kenny, who had some pot on him when he was caught, a “delinquent child,” and sentenced him to six months at the juvenile correctional facility in Circleville.

But Kenny’s sentence wound up being rougher than the judge had perhaps intended. While the Circleville facility’s website boasts rehabilitative programs such as music, worship, woodworking, and education, he didn’t have much of a chance to take advantage of them. Shortly after arriving, Kenny landed in solitary confinement for fighting. Over the next six months he spent nearly 82 days in the hole—locked in his own room or an isolation cell—once for 19 days at a stretch, according to court documents.

I learned about Kenny’s case from legal filings in a lawsuit brought by the Obama administration against the state of Ohio. They make for some chilling reading. For years, the Department of Justice has pressured Ohio and other states to fix widespread problems in their juvenile prisons. In the fall of 2013, the department learned that some facilities were punishing kids like Kenny with long stretches of solitary. It investigated and filed suit the following March, asking a judge to immediately intervene because children would continue suffering “irreparable harm” if the practice wasn’t stopped. Kenny’s case was cited as a key example of the damage solitary could do.

While in isolation, Kenny—who was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder prior to the sixth grade—wrote to his mother, Melissa Bucher, begging her to make the two-hour drive to visit him. “I don’t feel like I’m going to make it anymore,” he wrote. “I’m in seclusion so I can’t call and I’m prolly going to be in here for a while. My mind is just getting to me in here.”

Bucher, a warm, lively woman who at first glance could be mistaken for Kenny’s big sister, insists that forced isolation turned her teen from a social kid with some mental-health issues into a depressed young man who shies away from others and experiences panic attacks at night. “Other inmates would call me a lot and tell me he was not doing good and hearing voices,” she said. When she visited Kenny, she noticed “he had scratch marks all over his arms. He was just digging into them.” Alphonse Gerhardstein, an attorney representing Kenny and others in a separate lawsuit that was eventually consolidated with the Justice Department’s case, noted in an email to the state attorney general’s office that the boy “bangs his head frequently” and “had fresh injuries.”

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This Is What Happens When We Lock Children in Solitary Confinement

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I Have Some Advice for Mitt Romney

by MonaPenington Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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The political media world has been in a tizzy these past few days due to the news that Mitt Romney is serious about taking a third stab at a presidential run. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Romney had told a group of Republican fat-cat funders—who else?—that he was pondering a 2016 bid. On Monday, the Washington Post revealed that Romney was trying to get the band back together, calling former aides and donors and informing them he was almost ready to jump in. With Jeb Bush, another GOP prince with a business career open to political attacks, plotting his own 2016 moves, Romney’s actions raised the possibility of a dynasty-versus-dynasty clash that would cause awkward conversations in country clubs and corporate boardrooms across the land, with the two tussling to win the hearts, minds, and mega-dollars of the GOP establishment. Given that the voting base of the Republican Party will likely be motivated by tea party passions, not centrism or concerns about electability, a Romney-Bush primary battle might be akin to a contest to make the best salad at a cannibals’ convention. Nevertheless, it promises to be a bitter and bare-knuckled brawl, as each camp has already begun shooting spitballs at the other.

For Romney, the key question is this: What would he do differently than last time? In 2012, he did manage to win the GOP nomination, but he achieved that within a profoundly weak Republican field. Rick Perry opposed his way into inconsequence. And Romney only had to vanquish Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, and Michele Bachmann—none of them serious contenders. In the general election, he was widely panned—even by Republicans and conservatives—as a less-than-stellar campaigner who could not fully exploit the external factors (a still-sluggish economy, low approval numbers for President Barack Obama) that afforded the Republicans a good chance of seizing the White House. And, of course, there was that 47 percent moment—for which Romney has been offering contradictory and factually-challenged explanations ever since.

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I Have Some Advice for Mitt Romney

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Germany’s Anti-Islam Protests Play Into Extremists’ Hands

by HildaYcrekr Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

For two Mondays in a row, Dresden was the scene of massive protests against the growing number of Muslims living in Germany. The first, attracting about 18,000 supporters, happened two days before the attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, and the second was this week. The anti-immigration protesters, who call themselves PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West), were claiming they had gathered to promote nationalism and call for the protection of German culture.

But waving German flags and brandishing posters that demanded “Homeland Protection Not Islamization,” the demonstrators in Dresden slammed asylum-seekers from Muslim regions for abusing Germany’s welcoming policies toward refugees and for tainting the culture of Germany. Dresden is home to a small percentage of foreigners, but after France, Germany hosts the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe—as many as 4.3 million, according to a 2009 estimate published in Germany’s Federal Republic.

Thousands of counterprotesters have appeared at the demonstrations staged by PEGIDA across Germany in recent months and have advocated tolerance and support for Muslim immigrants. But, prior to this week, PEGIDA supporters have easily outnumbered them; since its founding in October 2014 by Lutz Bachmann, a former petty criminal who now runs a public relations firm, the group has quickly grown in force and number. These anti-immigrant rallies have caused much debate and concern in Germany, but PEGIDA supporters may not realize that their protests have unintended consequences: Radical Islamist groups see their case against the West bolstered and legitimized by PEGIDA and other anti-Muslim protesters. PEGIDA’s actions allow radical Islamists to claim the West is hostile to Muslims—the argument used by radical groups such as ISIS to recruit disenfranchised, angry youths in search of a cause.

National security and terrorism experts point out that even though PEGIDA’s anti-Muslim events may not directly boost the recruitment efforts of ISIS and other jihadist groups, it has fueled a dynamic that undermines the fight against terrorism. “This is truly a vicious cycle,” explains Brian Forst, a professor of justice, law, and criminology at American University. “Anti-immigration sentiments aimed primarily against Muslims in the West breed alienation among Muslims, and alienation breeds extremism and acts of terror, which only aggravate anti-Muslim sentiments and behaviors…Terrorism succeeds when the victim reacts badly.”

National security experts note that PEGIDA’s public demonstrations add to a climate that can be exploited by jihadists seeking recruits. “These protests create a further sense of disenfranchisement on the part of Muslim youth,” says Arie Kruglanski, a University of Maryland psychologist and terrorism expert. “So the result is further polarization of European societies and further rift…a clash of civilizations.”

In a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Marc Pierini, an expert on the Middle East and Europe, described the recruitment of Europeans by ISIS: “Of the Islamic State’s European followers, many are born Muslims, while some are converts…Problems of social exclusion, religious tensions, and political frustrations provide fertile ground for recruiting of young people.” Protests like PEGIDA’s only serve to deepen the social divide, providing ISIS and other radical groups vivid images to support their causes.

A 2005 Congressional Research Service report focusing on England, France, Germany, and Spain noted that “social deprivation, discrimination, and a sense of cultural alienation may make some European Muslims—especially those of the second or third generation—more vulnerable to extremist ideologies.”

A spokesman from Germany’s embassy in Washington dismisses these concerns, however, and says PEGIDA is merely a “local phenomenon” and incapable of affecting recruitment efforts for ISIS. “Whoever is ready to join ISIS will join ISIS without a PEGIDA,” he says.

A local gang of protesters can nonetheless have international impact, observes Michael O’Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution. “Anger and a sense of rejection can contribute to joining ISIS,” he says. “Heaven knows there have already been lots of European jihadists who have gone to Syria, tragically.”

Following the massacre of 17 people around Paris last week, PEGIDA predicted record numbers would show up Monday night to support its cause. “The Islamists, against whom PEGIDA has been warning over the last 12 weeks, showed in France today that they are not capable of (practicing) democracy but instead see violence and death as the solution,” PEGIDA declared on its Facebook page. Analysts agreed with these predictions, suggesting that the numbers of anti-Islam protesters would swell by the thousands.

The attacks do appear to have bolstered the already strong opposition to PEGIDA, as Germans refuse to let PEGIDA take advantage of the Paris tragedy to point to radicalism in all Muslim communities. According to spectators in Germany on Twitter on Saturday, including journalists and bystanders, more than 30,000 people took to the streets across Germany, from Dresden to Liepzig, to protest PEGIDA. Here are a few tweets from people who say they witnessed the actions.

Nonetheless, Monday’s PEGIDA rallies drew a record number of about 25,000 anti-Islam protesters, who took to the streets in defiance of German politicians asking them to stay home in light of the Paris massacre.

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Germany’s Anti-Islam Protests Play Into Extremists’ Hands

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