Community Party Column
Political Roundup: Penn Act / City Budget / Pelto for Governor / Free Jane Doe
Last week Ken Barone and Bill Dyson of the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project and Glenn Cassis of the African-American Affairs Commission appeared on the WNPR Where We Live program with host John Dankosky to continue their campaign of misinformation regarding the racial profiling issue. http://wnpr.org/post/racial-profiling-connecticut I contacted Dankosky on Twitter and provided him with information on the CTRP3 campaign to protect the police by killing the Community Party's Alvin W. Penn Act enforcement language, especially our traffic stop receipt provision. I also sent him the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement report on the extrajudicial killing of Black people every 28 hours in the United States. http://www.operationghettostorm.org/ Dankosky said that he will review the info and get back to me. We'll have an update next week...
The corporate news media's job is to serve the ruling class by spreading misinformation to the people. The local Sunday political talk shows are a prime example. Fox CT The Real Story host Laurie Perez hosted an infomercial for Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra, who was given the opportunity to justify his city budget without being challenged. Councilman Larry Deutsch copied a Hartford Courant reporter on an email exchange he had with Segarra regarding the budget. http://courantblogs.com/cityline/segarra-for-all-those-watching-they-know-who-the-real-fool-is/ Perez did not have Deutsch on the show, nor did she mention the points Deutsch made in the emails about Segarra balancing his budget on the backs of the working class and the poor. Perez could have just taken the day off and let Segarra talk by himself.
Former assemblyman Jonathan Pelto appeared on Face the State to discuss his possible candidacy for governor. http://www.wfsb.com/story/25345652/democrat-may-challenge-malloy-saying-he-cant-win-re-election?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Pelto said he will decide within the next month if he will enter the race as a Working Families Party or independent candidate. Program host Dennis House and Fox CT Capitol Report panelists, who also discussed Pelto, both avoided any mention of racial economic and criminal justice disparity issues impacting Hartford and other urban areas.
It's telling that Patrick Scully, one of Gov. Dannel Malloy's media goons who recently wrote a hit piece on Pelto, is a privatizer. http://jonathanpelto.com/2014/04/23/another-malloy-mouthpiece-explains-must-support-malloy-else/ Scully referred to Pelto as a "union stooge." Isn't Malloy supposed to be the friend of organized labor? Unions provided Malloy with his narrow margin of victory over Republican Tom Foley in 2010. Right now, union delegates are trying to convince members to give Malloy a second term. Sounds like King Dannel is courting the right-leaning independents that he and likely challenger Foley will be fighting over. Team Malloy has launched Operation "Lonesome" Rhodes as a pre-emptive strike against Pelto, who has been a huge thorn in the guv's side and would be a viable candidate due to his name recognition as a former lawmaker and popular blogger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ5RZWttmoA It's too bad that public school teachers and their supporters have wasted so much time with their fixation on Capital Preparatory Magnet School Principal Steve Perry, instead of educating residents in communities of color about the racist agenda behind privatization. The public sector is the largest employer of Black people. If I was a candidate challenging Malloy from the left, I would want the urban community to know about that fact.
Last week my colleague Cornell Lewis, who has bravely struggled against structural racism at the Department of Children and Families, invited me to join a Facebook page supporting Jane Doe, a 16-year-old Black transgender teen who is being held at York Correctional Institution. Jane Doe does not face any type of criminal charge yet she is incarcerated at York, a high security adult prison. https://www.facebook.com/events/645209172199377/?source=29 There was scant mention on the Justice for Jane! page of the role that color plays in this issue. One activist said, "While there has been incredible mobilization for issues like, say, 'marriage equality,' when poor people, especially poor people of color, are literally fighting for their lives, the sound that is most often heard from the non-profit community is crickets. When there is a response, it's all too often purely rhetorical. This is not restricted to the LGBT non-profit community, as I can attest to from personal experience." Incredibly there have been no discussions on the Justice for Jane! page about Cornell's DCF Plantation blog, which includes data charts on structural racism at DCF using statistics obtained from DCF through Freedom of Information Act requests (see Resources).
The Jane Doe page administrator said, "(DCF Commissioner Joette) Katz's comments are the latest in a long, old, and sad line of commentary that paints queer and trans women of color as being uniquely violent and blames them for the violence they experience. http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-op-katz-transgender-girl-york-prision-0422-20140421,0,6980643.story See for example the discussion of the New Jersey Seven, as explained here: http://thepublicintellectual.org/.../the-case-of-the.../ and CeCe McDonald, here: http://www.salon.com/.../cece_mcdonald_released_from_prison/ and black women more generally - see e.g. Renisha McBride: http://www.newyorker.com/.../the-killing-of-renisha... ." Add Miriam Carey to that list. http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-aaron-alexis-miriam-carey-and-john-constantino Autopsy results on Miriam found that the 34-year-old mother was shot three times in the back and once in the back of the head by U.S. Capitol Police and Uniformed Secret Service after leading them on a pursuit last October. Miriam was unarmed and her 1-year-old daughter was in the back seat.
There was no mention on the Jane Doe page of the core issue, which is that her baseless incarceration is standard operating procedure in America. This country criminalizes Black youths through police containment of low income communities of color. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuU7bEqKcLk http://poormagazine.org/node/957 Every 28 hours Black people are the victims of street executions by police, security guards and vigilantes such as George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn. When I posted a status asking if the Free Jane Doe campaign would be part of a larger effort to address Black mass incarceration and police containment of Black neighborhoods, I heard the aforementioned crickets, with the exception of one activist who expressed interest in working with CP.
Prominent white activists who are championing the cause of Jane Doe have known about CP's Trayvon Martin Act amendments and done nothing to support the bill. https://www.facebook.com/notes/stop-racial-profiling-obey-the-law/community-party-trayvon-martin-act-bill-language/617004948349355 This is nothing new, of course. I've seen the same scenario repeat itself during the Trayvon Martin murder case ( https://www.facebook.com/notes/stop-racial-profiling-obey-the-law/trayvon-martin-political-football/333866783329841) and a previous protest targeting CT Juvenile Training School / DCF. https://www.facebook.com/notes/stop-racial-profiling-obey-the-law/racial-profiling-and-leftist-hypocrisy/318162334900286 Cornell addressed the issue of racism in the white left in a 2012 commentary for activist Joanna Iovino's Hart Monitor blog entitled, "Do White Liberals Really Want to Work with Blacks?" http://www.scribd.com/doc/85615537/The-Hart-Monitor-March-2012 Joanna wrote a scathing critique of Occupy Hartford, an overwhelmingly white group based in a mostly Black / Latino city. http://thehartmonitor.wordpress.com/?p=70&preview=true
Black Agenda Report commentator Jared Ball talked about how the white left used Troy Davis, who was executed in 2011 for the 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail despite overwhelming evidence which pointed to his innocence. http://blackagendareport.com/content/troy-anthony-davis-and-useless-leadership Christopher Hutchinson and Socialist Action CT exploited Troy's plight and then quickly moved on to help launch the Occupy Wall Street movement before Troy's body got cold. Hutchinson blew off an invitation from me to collaborate on a North Hartford event dedicated to Troy's memory. When I confronted him about this in an email exchange that included Joanna and others, Hutchinson quickly bailed out of the conversation. His final email included a rejection of my idea to include a voter education presentation as part of the event. Hutchinson said that "people in North Hartford aren't into voting." This was right after he ran for Congress; Hutchinson challenged Democrat John Larson, who represents the 1st congressional district (which is based in Hartford for those who are unfamiliar). I never heard from Hutchinson again after I quickly pointed out this bs contradiction.
The criticism I have heard from Blacks about white leftists that has stuck with me is how they talk about "solidarity" when they want Blacks to support their movements. I was recruited by Hutchinson to join SA and OH. That "solidarity" quickly evaporated when I asked Hutchinson to support CP initiatives. When I told off Kevin Lamkins, Dave Rozza and other members of the all-white, now defunct Hartford Independent Media Collective after they wrote a tone deaf column claiming that the Tea Party isn't racist, their solidarity was quickly replaced by indignation at being challenged by a Black person. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/07/14/107722/tea-party-racism/ Matt O'Connor of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) suddenly started screening posts on the Hartford Rising Facebook page after I posted recent columns that were critical of the white left, the Democrats and union "leaders." I went to O'Connor's personal page and posted a message requesting an explanation; his response was that people have been spamming the Hartford Rising page.
If white leftists want to truly "Free Jane Doe" they need to let go of their internalized superiority. These activists should support Blacks' struggle against the racist criminal justice and socioeconomic systems that empower whites like Katz to justify the despicable act of tossing a Black child into an adult jail, without any legal basis. Jane Doe is a Black youth, not a prop for the white left. As I said a couple of weeks ago, there are some whites who "get it" and are sincere about working together with Black people to achieve social justice. Connecticut native Harris Daniels, a member of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, is an example. http://www.uhurusolidarity.org/category/uhuru-movement/uhuru-solidarity-movement/ White leftists in this state who try to use Blacks are worse than the Ku Klux Klan or any other white supremacist organization. At least hate groups are honest.
Resources
Cornell Lewis' blog on structural racism at the Department of Children and Families (includes data charts):
http://dcfplantation.blogspot.com/
Cornell Lewis Legal Defense Fund:
http://dcfplantation.blogspot.com/2013/07/help-with-legal-fund.html
David Samuels
Founder
Community Party
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