Part 1 -Young Mr. Droopy Drawers
I stopped by the neighborhood grocery store where the riff-raffs hang out. Standing in the doorway was a hood rat, notoriously known for his low sagging pants. No one in Fort Worth sagged more than Young Mr. Droopy Drawers.
But this morning he was clean, new pants and new hooded coat covering his lowers, just in time for the cooler fall temperatures. There were also older men hanging around the store, drinking coffee, and shooting the bull.
“Good morning,” I announced as I came in.
The ones just milling around seemed to recognize the goodness of the morning. They answered, "Good morning". But the kid never said a word.
OMG! I noticed. He had taken a bath. Indeed, it was a good morning, not having to smell his body odor or look at the backside of his underwear.
Since he was oblivious to my entrance, I made certain to speak again on my way out.
“Excuse me,” I said, louder than before. “I thought I said good morning to everybody when I came in.”
The old men chimed in again, “Good morning.” And, the kid smiled and returned my greeting.
“You look nice this morning,” I told him. “You’re going somewhere in life. You really look nice. You're not sagging today.”
There was a chuckle or two from the elders, but the young man thanked me. However, he retorted, “I don’t sag that much.”
I knew otherwise, but said nothing and made my exit.
REFLECTIONS: I had seen this kid grow up on the streets, since his teens. If other ‘hood rats sagged their pants, he sagged even more, down to his thighs.
To these kids, I'm nothing but the old, invisible, gray head, outside the limelight, and not worth much attention. And likewise, whenever I see them on the streets or standing outside the store, I treated them as if I were blind and deaf.
This morning, however, when seeing him for the first time, I recognized his being and respected his presence. The feeling, I could tell, was mutual.
From now on, I'll probably think of this kid as being one of my little adopted 'hood rats. Not out of disrespect to 'hood rats and riff-raffs, this is just what I call "my kids" that grow up in "my neighbor-hood".
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Legacy of The Fox: Gary Trapnell
Dear Jennifer Savage:
My name is Eddie Griffin, author of “Breaking Men’s Minds”. I knew your father Garrett Trapnell. In fact, I knew him from prison, during the time he was writing “The Fox Is Crazy Too”. He was the man in the cell next door to me inside Marion Federal Prison.
Trap, as we called him, gave me the opportunity to read his manuscript. I declined, because I was not into a man’s glorification of his crime life. But it only goes to show that an outlaw is worth more dead, than alive.
While in prison, he laughed all the time. There was always a smile upon his face. Life was just a joke to him, and he kept me in stitches.
Gary was a con artist. He pulled some of the most daring and idiotic stunts in criminal history, some of which captured national headlines. His book, “The Fox Is Crazy Too”, whould have been a story about these exciting exploits. But the one that got me the most was his airliner hijacking in New York.
It was a time of mass exodus and air piracy, as leftist revolutionaries were fleeing the United States from the persecution by J. Edgar Hoover COINTELPRO, and seeking asylum in socialist countries like Cuba. Aircraft hijackings were very common at the time. And, those radicals who were not in exile or in prison were underground fugitives, hiding from the FBI.
I believe we were all incensed at Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and J. Edgar Hoover for hounding UCLA professor Angela Davis, author of "Soledad Brothers" at the time. She became, to us, our Sun Goddess when they put her picture on the FBI Most Wanted poster, and plastered it in every Post Office in the country. To see, the woman with the black halo Afro, a man could only fall in love with the Mother of the Revolution. So did Gary.
Garrett Trapnell, of all people, a white boy, hijacked an airliner, demanded $300,000 and the release of Angela Davis. He was shot in the arm, captured, and sent to prison.
[This should not have been the last chapter of his book, because half of the story of Gary Trapnell was never told.]
I remember asking him what he had planned to do with $300,000 and this vivacious Amazon Queen of our cause.
"Go to a paradise isle and live happily ever after," he replied, before busting out with a big laugh.
After he wrote the book, and got it published, he attempted a daring escape from Marion Federal Prison.
Here is what I personally witnessed:
While sitting on the prison yard with Charles Beasley, he looked up in the air and nudged me.
"We better get out of here," he said. "Looks like there is going to be some shooting."
Sure enough, unfolding before my eyes, just above the horizon beyond the guard tower and the razor wire fence perimeter, came a helicopter like a dive bomber. The craft was listing erratically back and forth, headed straight for the tower.
My first thought: I got to see this. It was the most exciting thing of the day. That was what I told Beasley.
Then I saw Gary and another inmate strike out running toward the fence, wearing yellow windbreakers blowing in the wind. Gary had a hitch in his giddy-up.
In the meantime, the helicopter banked left, avoiding the tower, almost flipping.
According to latter news accounts: A woman, whom Trapnell had befriended through correspondence, hijacked a rental helicopter and took the pilot hostage, forcing him to fly to the prison in Marion, where she had planned to pluck the two inmates off the yard.
But the plan, however, never worked out like that. Instead, the pilot struggled with the woman over the gun, while fighting to keep from losing control of the aircraft. While steering with one hand, he wrest control of the gun.
Like a woman in total oblivious delirium, she casually announces, “Oh, that’s okay. I got another one in my purse.”
With that said, the pilot blows her brains out the back window.
The helicopter came short of the fence by only a few feet. The pilot got out and charged toward the tower wildly waving his arm. When the guard took notice, his first impulse was to grab his gun and take aim. The pilot made a beeline u-turn.
By then, the alarm sounded and we were herded back into the cell blocks.
The last we saw of Gary and his buddy, they were sprawled on the ground, surrounded by guards.
But this was not the end of Gary Trapnell. A few months later, a 17-year old high school honor student hijacked an airliner and had it flown to Marion. She was the daughter of the deceased woman, and she demanded the release of Trapnell.
After her capture, the court took mercy on the young lady. But Gary was confined to dungeon, and put on No Human Contact status, meaning that he would never see the light of day again.
Since 1909, there have been four successive Boogey Men in the federal prison system, the first being Robert Stroud, otherwise known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, who spent over 50 years in solitary confinement, until his death on November 21, 1963.
The second Boogey Man was Hiller “Red” Hayes, an experiential drug subject who was released from prison in the late 1950s and suffered a white-out, where he went on a kidnapping rampage in 1960. Because he kidnapped a cop and took a squad car, he was designated never to see the light of day again. He died in solitary confinement in August 1977, around the same time Gary Trapnell was taking his place.
I remember reading where Gary died in solitary confinement of emphysema. That would mean the new Boogey Man would be Thomas Silverstein, who killed three men during his incarceration, one of whom was a prison guard at Marion.
-End
Eddie Griffin
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/
My name is Eddie Griffin, author of “Breaking Men’s Minds”. I knew your father Garrett Trapnell. In fact, I knew him from prison, during the time he was writing “The Fox Is Crazy Too”. He was the man in the cell next door to me inside Marion Federal Prison.
Trap, as we called him, gave me the opportunity to read his manuscript. I declined, because I was not into a man’s glorification of his crime life. But it only goes to show that an outlaw is worth more dead, than alive.
While in prison, he laughed all the time. There was always a smile upon his face. Life was just a joke to him, and he kept me in stitches.
Gary was a con artist. He pulled some of the most daring and idiotic stunts in criminal history, some of which captured national headlines. His book, “The Fox Is Crazy Too”, whould have been a story about these exciting exploits. But the one that got me the most was his airliner hijacking in New York.
It was a time of mass exodus and air piracy, as leftist revolutionaries were fleeing the United States from the persecution by J. Edgar Hoover COINTELPRO, and seeking asylum in socialist countries like Cuba. Aircraft hijackings were very common at the time. And, those radicals who were not in exile or in prison were underground fugitives, hiding from the FBI.
I believe we were all incensed at Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and J. Edgar Hoover for hounding UCLA professor Angela Davis, author of "Soledad Brothers" at the time. She became, to us, our Sun Goddess when they put her picture on the FBI Most Wanted poster, and plastered it in every Post Office in the country. To see, the woman with the black halo Afro, a man could only fall in love with the Mother of the Revolution. So did Gary.
Garrett Trapnell, of all people, a white boy, hijacked an airliner, demanded $300,000 and the release of Angela Davis. He was shot in the arm, captured, and sent to prison.
[This should not have been the last chapter of his book, because half of the story of Gary Trapnell was never told.]
I remember asking him what he had planned to do with $300,000 and this vivacious Amazon Queen of our cause.
"Go to a paradise isle and live happily ever after," he replied, before busting out with a big laugh.
After he wrote the book, and got it published, he attempted a daring escape from Marion Federal Prison.
Here is what I personally witnessed:
While sitting on the prison yard with Charles Beasley, he looked up in the air and nudged me.
"We better get out of here," he said. "Looks like there is going to be some shooting."
Sure enough, unfolding before my eyes, just above the horizon beyond the guard tower and the razor wire fence perimeter, came a helicopter like a dive bomber. The craft was listing erratically back and forth, headed straight for the tower.
My first thought: I got to see this. It was the most exciting thing of the day. That was what I told Beasley.
Then I saw Gary and another inmate strike out running toward the fence, wearing yellow windbreakers blowing in the wind. Gary had a hitch in his giddy-up.
In the meantime, the helicopter banked left, avoiding the tower, almost flipping.
According to latter news accounts: A woman, whom Trapnell had befriended through correspondence, hijacked a rental helicopter and took the pilot hostage, forcing him to fly to the prison in Marion, where she had planned to pluck the two inmates off the yard.
But the plan, however, never worked out like that. Instead, the pilot struggled with the woman over the gun, while fighting to keep from losing control of the aircraft. While steering with one hand, he wrest control of the gun.
Like a woman in total oblivious delirium, she casually announces, “Oh, that’s okay. I got another one in my purse.”
With that said, the pilot blows her brains out the back window.
The helicopter came short of the fence by only a few feet. The pilot got out and charged toward the tower wildly waving his arm. When the guard took notice, his first impulse was to grab his gun and take aim. The pilot made a beeline u-turn.
By then, the alarm sounded and we were herded back into the cell blocks.
The last we saw of Gary and his buddy, they were sprawled on the ground, surrounded by guards.
But this was not the end of Gary Trapnell. A few months later, a 17-year old high school honor student hijacked an airliner and had it flown to Marion. She was the daughter of the deceased woman, and she demanded the release of Trapnell.
After her capture, the court took mercy on the young lady. But Gary was confined to dungeon, and put on No Human Contact status, meaning that he would never see the light of day again.
Since 1909, there have been four successive Boogey Men in the federal prison system, the first being Robert Stroud, otherwise known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, who spent over 50 years in solitary confinement, until his death on November 21, 1963.
The second Boogey Man was Hiller “Red” Hayes, an experiential drug subject who was released from prison in the late 1950s and suffered a white-out, where he went on a kidnapping rampage in 1960. Because he kidnapped a cop and took a squad car, he was designated never to see the light of day again. He died in solitary confinement in August 1977, around the same time Gary Trapnell was taking his place.
I remember reading where Gary died in solitary confinement of emphysema. That would mean the new Boogey Man would be Thomas Silverstein, who killed three men during his incarceration, one of whom was a prison guard at Marion.
-End
Eddie Griffin
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Thief on the Left: Thief on the Right
Part 1 – Ship on a Frozen Sea
By Eddie Griffin
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Luke 23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
Mark 15:27 And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. 28 And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, “And he was numbered with the transgressors.”
Luke 23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.” 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” 42 And he said unto Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” 43 And Jesus said unto him, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
THIEF ON THE LEFT
Since I was the loudest and angriest inmate among the prisoners, and since so much of my prison writings attracted outside attention, they decided to put me somewhere where I could not be seen nor heard. They put me in a refrigerated strip cell, in nothing but my civvies, and the temperature was sub-freezing.
The prison guards had taken everything I had, all of my books, letters, and writing materials. They held me incommunicado and spread the rumor among other prisoners on the compound that I was dead. And, indeed, I was.
Leftist revolutionary thief and bank robber confined inside a prison within a prison, the end of the line of the end of the line. Here they do not quibble about the legality of a man’s dead. Being frozen to death was just another means of getting their message across, that they did not give a damn about my body or my soul.
For good measures, they threw a little red bible into the cell. It was the only reading material I had left of a 140-book library. They laughed at me when I demanded my law books. The warden was most happy to remind me that I was not in a position to demand anything.
The northern gushing through the narrow slit windows brought snowflakes. It was one of the coldest winters in southern Illinois history, and I was wholly exposed.
They had taken the mattress, but left the plastic mattress cover. With it, I wrapped my body, and the heat from my pores kept me somewhat warm. The clear plastic turned yellow over time, and slowly it turned oily black.
They gave me running water for only 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening, along with three meals per day. But the constant cold killed my appetite. Whatever the guard slid into my tray slot, returned with him to the dumpster. I barely cast a glance his way, day in, day out. I just sat there, frozen to the icy steel bunk, staring into space and reading the little red bible. I had to keep blinking my eyes to prevent ice crystals from glazing over my pupils.
Then I saw a mirage: A ship frozen at sea. It was like the Titanic in paradise.
By Eddie Griffin
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Luke 23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
Mark 15:27 And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. 28 And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, “And he was numbered with the transgressors.”
Luke 23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.” 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” 42 And he said unto Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” 43 And Jesus said unto him, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
THIEF ON THE LEFT
Since I was the loudest and angriest inmate among the prisoners, and since so much of my prison writings attracted outside attention, they decided to put me somewhere where I could not be seen nor heard. They put me in a refrigerated strip cell, in nothing but my civvies, and the temperature was sub-freezing.
The prison guards had taken everything I had, all of my books, letters, and writing materials. They held me incommunicado and spread the rumor among other prisoners on the compound that I was dead. And, indeed, I was.
Leftist revolutionary thief and bank robber confined inside a prison within a prison, the end of the line of the end of the line. Here they do not quibble about the legality of a man’s dead. Being frozen to death was just another means of getting their message across, that they did not give a damn about my body or my soul.
For good measures, they threw a little red bible into the cell. It was the only reading material I had left of a 140-book library. They laughed at me when I demanded my law books. The warden was most happy to remind me that I was not in a position to demand anything.
The northern gushing through the narrow slit windows brought snowflakes. It was one of the coldest winters in southern Illinois history, and I was wholly exposed.
They had taken the mattress, but left the plastic mattress cover. With it, I wrapped my body, and the heat from my pores kept me somewhat warm. The clear plastic turned yellow over time, and slowly it turned oily black.
They gave me running water for only 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening, along with three meals per day. But the constant cold killed my appetite. Whatever the guard slid into my tray slot, returned with him to the dumpster. I barely cast a glance his way, day in, day out. I just sat there, frozen to the icy steel bunk, staring into space and reading the little red bible. I had to keep blinking my eyes to prevent ice crystals from glazing over my pupils.
Then I saw a mirage: A ship frozen at sea. It was like the Titanic in paradise.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
IMMIGRATION REFORM:
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
I admit that I hate to look, because every time I look at the proposed Immigration Reform Bill, it goes from worse to worse the closer it comes to a compromise in the Senate.
I received the WHITE HOUSE Fact Sheet: Fair and Secure Immigration Reform
The concept of “fairness” is relative. What may be fair to you could be unfair to me? Let’s not turn this illusion of “fairness” into a fact. Let’s look at the Whitehouse facts, and let’s judge if it’s fair or not.
In the life of a people, there is always a migration toward survival and human betterment. This is how I see the migration from poverty south of the border. It is a law of nature to migrate to higher ground, greener pastors, and fresher water. So, they migrate to the Land of Plenty- where there is plenty of work, plenty of food, and enough to spare.
President George said, “I cannot tell a lie”- that was George the First, this is George the Last. Guess what he said:
America is a welcoming nation, and the hard work and strength of our immigrants have made our Nation prosperous. Many immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants have joined the military to help safeguard the liberty of America. Illegal immigration, however, creates an underclass of workers, afraid and vulnerable to exploitation. Current immigration law can also hinder companies from finding willing workers. The visas now available do not allow employers to fill jobs in many key sectors of our economy. Workers risk their lives in dangerous and illegal border crossings and are consigned to live their lives in the shadows. Without harming the economic security of Americans, reform of our Nation's immigration laws will create a system that is fairer, more consistent, and more compassionate.
“America is a welcoming nation” is an unqualified statement, especially in President Bush home state of Texas, where recently the city of Farmers Branch voted overwhelmingly to deny residency to undocumented Hispanic and Latinos. No, America is not a welcoming nation if we look at Farmers Branch, Texas. Unwelcoming is an understatement. Obstinate in accommodating their neighbors is a more accurate discription. Of course, what else can you expect from Texas where the governor declared people should be allowed to carry their guns everywhere, even to church. [O Ye of little faith]
The Whitehouse statement announced:
Today, President Bush proposed a new temporary worker program to match willing foreign workers with willing U.S. employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs. The program would be open to new foreign workers, and to the undocumented men and women currently employed in the U.S. This new program would allow workers who currently hold jobs to come out of hiding and participate legally in America's economy while not encouraging further illegal behavior.
President Bush also asked Congress to work with him to achieve significant immigration reform that protects the homeland by controlling the borders; serves America's economy by matching a willing worker with a willing employer; promotes compassion for unprotected workers; provides incentives for temporary workers to return to their home countries and families; protects the rights of legal immigrants while not unfairly rewarding those who came here unlawfully or hope to do so. This legislation must also meet the Nation's economic needs and live up to the promise and values of America.
The statement goes on to say:
President Bush does not support amnesty because individuals who violate America's laws should not be rewarded for illegal behavior and because amnesty perpetuates illegal immigration. The President proposes that the Federal Government offer temporary worker status to undocumented men and women now employed in the United States and to those in foreign countries who have been offered employment here. The workers under temporary status must pay a one-time fee to register in the program, abide by the rules, and return home after their period of work expires. There would be an opportunity for renewal. In the future, only people outside the U.S. may join the temporary worker program, and there will be an orderly system in place to address the needs of workers and companies.
Promotes compassion for unprotected workers? What is compassion- come out of hiding, pay a hefty fine, go back home, pay a hefty application fee to return to the States (at the whims of the government), and fight and kill each other at the border over few jobs and drug trade?
Come on, Mr. President.
Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin (BASG)
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
I admit that I hate to look, because every time I look at the proposed Immigration Reform Bill, it goes from worse to worse the closer it comes to a compromise in the Senate.
I received the WHITE HOUSE Fact Sheet: Fair and Secure Immigration Reform
The concept of “fairness” is relative. What may be fair to you could be unfair to me? Let’s not turn this illusion of “fairness” into a fact. Let’s look at the Whitehouse facts, and let’s judge if it’s fair or not.
In the life of a people, there is always a migration toward survival and human betterment. This is how I see the migration from poverty south of the border. It is a law of nature to migrate to higher ground, greener pastors, and fresher water. So, they migrate to the Land of Plenty- where there is plenty of work, plenty of food, and enough to spare.
President George said, “I cannot tell a lie”- that was George the First, this is George the Last. Guess what he said:
America is a welcoming nation, and the hard work and strength of our immigrants have made our Nation prosperous. Many immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants have joined the military to help safeguard the liberty of America. Illegal immigration, however, creates an underclass of workers, afraid and vulnerable to exploitation. Current immigration law can also hinder companies from finding willing workers. The visas now available do not allow employers to fill jobs in many key sectors of our economy. Workers risk their lives in dangerous and illegal border crossings and are consigned to live their lives in the shadows. Without harming the economic security of Americans, reform of our Nation's immigration laws will create a system that is fairer, more consistent, and more compassionate.
“America is a welcoming nation” is an unqualified statement, especially in President Bush home state of Texas, where recently the city of Farmers Branch voted overwhelmingly to deny residency to undocumented Hispanic and Latinos. No, America is not a welcoming nation if we look at Farmers Branch, Texas. Unwelcoming is an understatement. Obstinate in accommodating their neighbors is a more accurate discription. Of course, what else can you expect from Texas where the governor declared people should be allowed to carry their guns everywhere, even to church. [O Ye of little faith]
The Whitehouse statement announced:
Today, President Bush proposed a new temporary worker program to match willing foreign workers with willing U.S. employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs. The program would be open to new foreign workers, and to the undocumented men and women currently employed in the U.S. This new program would allow workers who currently hold jobs to come out of hiding and participate legally in America's economy while not encouraging further illegal behavior.
President Bush also asked Congress to work with him to achieve significant immigration reform that protects the homeland by controlling the borders; serves America's economy by matching a willing worker with a willing employer; promotes compassion for unprotected workers; provides incentives for temporary workers to return to their home countries and families; protects the rights of legal immigrants while not unfairly rewarding those who came here unlawfully or hope to do so. This legislation must also meet the Nation's economic needs and live up to the promise and values of America.
The statement goes on to say:
President Bush does not support amnesty because individuals who violate America's laws should not be rewarded for illegal behavior and because amnesty perpetuates illegal immigration. The President proposes that the Federal Government offer temporary worker status to undocumented men and women now employed in the United States and to those in foreign countries who have been offered employment here. The workers under temporary status must pay a one-time fee to register in the program, abide by the rules, and return home after their period of work expires. There would be an opportunity for renewal. In the future, only people outside the U.S. may join the temporary worker program, and there will be an orderly system in place to address the needs of workers and companies.
Promotes compassion for unprotected workers? What is compassion- come out of hiding, pay a hefty fine, go back home, pay a hefty application fee to return to the States (at the whims of the government), and fight and kill each other at the border over few jobs and drug trade?
Come on, Mr. President.
Sincerely,
Eddie Griffin (BASG)
Race Card Trumps Issue
By Eddie Griffin
Monday, November 27, 2006
I saw the term “race card” mentioned repeatedly some letters to the editor purportedly as a backlash to an article written by Bob Ray Sanders , entitled “Small-minded laws for a small Texas city ”. [See, “The law in Farmers Branch ”, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11/25/2006]. This is a phrase “race card” I first heard from the lips of a North Richland Hills mayor pro tem city official, who obviously assumed I understood its nebulous meaning. Because of its current popular usage in some cultural circles, it is not so well understood in others.
The concept of race, I understand, but “race card” seems to suggest usage in the context of a game, as in the game of Spades. Trumps, I assume, is the blackest card in the deck. In seeing the phrase repeated in print, something dawned on me.
Words and phrases created by spin-doctors can change public perception of reality. The most recent example of such contrived concoction is the phrase “food insecurity”, as subversive of fact that there is hunger in America . Therefore, poor people are no longer hungry but they have little “food security”. It does not change the reality of people starving, but rather it makes reality a farce.
The concept of “Race Card” is new to our hearing in the African-American community. Obviously, it did not originate out of sky blue and hit everybody over the head at the same time. When I see it repeated in daily language like a secret code phrase, it reminds me of something in George Orwell about mass indoctrination. In this case, some people have been made to believe that allegations of racism are phony ploys used by a minority groups to get their way. The spin for the ploy is called “playing the race card” as if it were trumps___ which is one of the reasons such complaints of racism today are ignored without second thought or given serious consideration by some. Change “the thing” by changing “the word” that delineates it. There is no racism, in fact or reality, if it can be dismissed away by coining it as a “race card” ploy.
So, they accused Bob Ray Sanders of using the “race card” in his critique of Farmers Branch ’s anti-immigration ordinances. Sanders “plays the race card every time he gets a chance”, writes Dan Roe ( Fort Worth ). “He labels those who disagree with him as bigots. It makes me wonder who the bigot is”.
In another letter, Alexander Wolf ( Fort Worth ) writes: “Sanders has to be the ultimate racist. Any criticism leveled at someone with darker skin prompts him to toss out the race card.”
Note, from an African-American perspective, it looks like the letter-writers turn the table on the columnist by dismissing his legitimate criticism as a “race card” ploy. Note also, that most allegations of racism in recent times have been met with the same counter-charge: “Race Card”.
Note the writer Alexander Wolf mentions that the race card is used whenever “criticism (is) leveled at someone with darker skin”. As a thin-skinned 60 year-old black man, I am very sensitive to “criticism”, especially when I am asked to apologize for my honesty. I remember how Mike Wallace turned the tables on Malcolm X and radically changed public perception about the meaning of racism. Wallace also accused Malcolm X of being the “ultimate racist”, just as Wolf turns the tables on Bob Ray. Surely, everyone remembers this classic 60 Minute television interview showdown between the black militant revolutionary and the news media icon back during in the mid-1960s.
When Wallace accused Malcolm of being the “ultimate racist”, in the middle of the interview, Malcolm responded with this analogy:
“Calling a black man a racist would be like calling a Jew an anti-Semitic. It is a contradiction to call the victim the victimizer. No! Racism is uniquely white because it is predicated upon the ideology of white supremacy. It is the building of institutions and using legal, political, economic, and police powers to protect and perpetuate this supremacy.”
The legislation of Jim Crow ordinances was classic racism. The enforcement of Jim Crow laws was also racist, though it was the law of the land in the South, enacted by people who vehemently opposed to being characterized as prejudice. No, they were not bigots, but honest citizens creating laws to preserve the order of nature as God ordained. So also are the misguided sentiments of honest citizens in Farmers Branch with their anti-immigration sanctions. But these new ordinances do not pass the taste, feel, and touch test to be racist, according to small town standards in Texas .
But it is possible to have institutional racism without one self-proclaimed bigot. The institution, not necessarily the people, can be racist and the people immune by involuntary indoctrination (not inoculation). Laws and ordinances can be racist, as we have seen with Jim Crow laws. And, policies, procedures, customs, and practices that enforce these laws are also racist.
As for the people and the issue of bigotry___ to every man according to the purpose and intent of his own hearts, I would only add these observations, according to the words and thoughts of the letter-writers.
“And frankly, I’m sick and tired having someone like Sanders make accusations of ‘bigotry’, ‘mean-spiritedness’ or ‘racism’ every time someone suggests enforcing our nation’s immigration laws”, writes John Luckie (Weatherford).
“My proposal”, writes John Schleeter (Euless), “is to ensure that no illegal immigrants are employed anywhere…” in an all-inclusive list of industries, he suggests, “construction records of the luxury houses that many of these executives [of the listed industries] live in should be checked to ensure that no builder used illegal immigrant labor in their construction. If it was built by illegals, these structures should be torn down to prevent profiteering from illegal action.”
Tearing down the constructive labor a neighbor because of his national origin seems mean-spirited to me. We, in the African-American community, welcome immigrant guest workers as good, industrious, and productive neighbors, while recognizing they are only here by our invitation, allurements, enticements, incentives, and our support. Many in our community appreciate them for their good works and neighborly kindness, which is appears to be absent in the City of Farmers Branch .
“I suggest a 100 percent compliance audit to check for illegal immigrants at IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Dallas Semiconductor, Geico, Cingular, TD Industries and large employers that have facilities within the city limits”, suggests Schleeter, who had also suggested tearing down the mansions of these corporate executives if the hands of illegal immigrants built it. Now he would institute Gestapo-style audit checks and mass sweeps through factories of these companies.
Where are we headed? The new ordinance in Farmers Branch makes it illegal to hire undocumented workers. Now every Hispanic in the city will have to carry some form of identification, documentation, and other papers to prove citizenship. It reminds me of the fabled Tremont County , as described by my friend, The River John, where Negroes had to carry a “good nigger pass” to walk freely and conduct business in the community. Even more, some approving white person must have punched the pass; otherwise, upon request, any white had to authority to detain and lash Negroes labeled as “vagabonds”.
Farmer Branch anti-immigration laws are similar to unconstitutional vagabond laws and are subject to abuse the rights of any brown-skin Hispanic-American who is caught without ID. Whites, on the other hand, are not required to carry ID at all times as proof of citizenship. Only the select population must fear apprehension and detention, even if a legal citizen accidentally leaves his wallet at home. He is assumed “illegal” because of skin-color and absences of approved documents.
The new ordinance forbids landlords from renting to undocumented workers. This will hit the Hispanic real estate community hard. It denies an abode for migrant guest workers, meaning they cannot live within the city limits. Excluding guest residency within the city limits, because of their national origin, is discriminatory and racist also, inasmuch, as it undermines the economic base of the legal Hispanic and African-American communities.
These are our guests, here at our behest. Whites do not hold a monopoly on extending invitations to foreign friends, foreign business people, foreign dignitaries, and foreign workers. Our guest workers are a vital part of our economy. If entry into the country were as fair for those on the south of the border as those from the north or from Europe , there would be no immigration problem.
All that most undocumented workers want is to work and go home when the work season is over. Seasonal wages in America can sustain a Latin American family all winter. Those who stay in America are the ones who intend to become citizens. But the Farmers Branch ordinance provides no means for legitimate immigration, because it excludes access to application for persons of Latin American national origin. There is no access to legitimate citizenship without risk of apprehension and incarceration for Hispanics.
“ Farmers Branch residents have every right to pass these ordinances, and if Sanders doesn’t like them, who cares?” writes Della Coffman (Weatherford). “Sanders should be ashamed of what he wrote, and he owes an apology to the council”.
The bottom line attitude to racist bigotry is “who cares”. Who cares what others think in the outside world. Big City , America is not Small Town , Texas . Apologize for criticizing small town people for their lack of a more cosmopolitan and global worldview. Small town small-mindedness is not their fault, but the product of conditioning and a steady stream of ideology. As Malcolm X said, “It would be like the slave apologizing to the slave master for the sin of slavery.” But Coffman would shame the journalist Sanders to eat his words with humble pie.
“What nerve!” wrote Coffman in reaction to the journalist’s scathing criticism. The audacity to speak his mind! In the past, Negroes were repressed from speaking their peace by intimidation, which constituted suppression in Freedom of Speech. Now that we can freely express our opinion, the reaction is outrage, which is why African-Americans are still tactful when they speak. Some people cannot handle the truth.
“Bob Ray… You’re lucky that you were born in the United States ”, wrote Wolf, “and that you found a newspaper to print the rubbish you write”. As a black citizen who totally agrees with Sanders and who enjoys reading his “rubbish”, that makes me neither stupid, nor illiterate, nor “lucky” to be born in America. How presumptuous to think that I am!
I remember being told once that “if you hated Jim Crow so much, why didn’t you go to another country. Love it or leave it”, they said. Of those who did not go into political exile to Cuba or Africa, we decided to stay in the US , home of our birth, and change the system from within.
But Jill Bramblett (Grapevine) would patronize us with her assessment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. legacy with this: “By the way, the people who King defended were citizens. Fortunately, all of his preaching paid off for our African-Americans.”
Did Bramblett say, “Our African-Americans”? How possessive! The audacity to speak for African-Americans! No, “We African-Americans” are still looking for the payoff. It may have paid off for some who use the martyrdom Martin Luther King to put the race issue behind them. But a change in attitude is a long time in coming.
It is racist to bring false allegations upon a people because of the color of their skin, or because of their national origin. Where is the true witness for this account?
The letter-writer Luckie, who professes to be sick and tired of people like Sanders, also wrote: “ Farmers Branch has done the only effective thing that can be done about this problem, given that our country’s leaders do nothing to stem the flood of illegals who sneak over and trash our southern borders.”
Trash? In the 1950s, I remember hearing the same thing about Negroes moving into all-white communities during the era of housing desegregation. Negroes would “trash” the neighborhood, they said. But the notion was based on a common belief that all poor people are trashy by nature. Personally, however, I have found most undocumented residents to be nice, clean, courteous, industrious, and not trashy. But proof is not required when the purpose of allegation is incitement.
It is racist to incite people to anger and hostilities by perpetuating rumors, myths, and lies against another people because of their skin color, culture, or national origin. The word “trash” has often been used as a racist code word to denigrate another race or their economic status. Remember “poor white trash”? False allegations that incite can lead to vigilante justice.
And lastly, there is this lordship of “worthiness” coming from the writer Olthoff: “Unless you geniuses have changed the laws overnight, you must apply for admission into the United States , prove your worthiness to obtain citizenship and do as the law says you must.”
But proving “worthiness” can be a slippery subjective slope when they keep moving the goalpost. As descendants of “second class” citizens, we could never meet the high standards of “worthiness” because of the color of our skin. The code word “Second Class Citizen” was stamped on my father’s military records. Worthiness is in the jaundice eye of the beholder, which is why it is easier to gain citizenship in the United States for white-skinned Europeans and Canadians.
It is racist to set arbitrary standards of acceptance in immigration and keep changing conditions of entrance based on skin color, national origin, and political climate. To write and re-write laws that exclude, discriminate, and criminalize by ex post facto is a racist ploy in an attempt to perpetuate white supremacy, whether by conscious intent of the citizenry or an inadvertency in law-making. The Right of Passage in America is not a bequest by white only, a presumption Farmers Branch people may have forgotten. Soon-to-be-written federal laws may be more lenient and favorable to guest workers from Third World countries.
Racism is not a contrived conjured up word like “race card”. When Mike Wallace equated race hatred and bigotry with “Racism”, he attempted to camouflage its underlying ideology of white supremacy. After the confrontation with Malcolm X, African-Americans took their case to the international body of the United Nations, the only place where issue of racism could be openly and honestly discussed at the time. The US mass media was bias, manipulated, and subverted by planted stories and propaganda designed to undermine the civil rights movement. In 1964, a formal definition of the concept of Racism was penned into historic record, in order to stand the test of time. It will forever be “a system of political, social, legal, and economic powers designed and written into laws, codes, and ordinances to support and perpetuate the ideology of white supremacy.
Turning the table against the truth seer, most people are hoodwinked into thinking racism and bigotry as synonymous in meaning.
The Farmers Branch ordinance, denying housing and employment to undocumented workers, is not racist, in and of itself. After all, the rich discriminates against the poor by denying access to privileges that only wealth can afford. But the ordinances above also provide for police training to round up illegal immigrants. This sets the stage for dragnets and massive sweeps at job sites, breaking down doors and dragging illegals from their homes, humiliating them before the public, disgracing their children in school, blocking the doors to hospital emergency rooms, keeping them living on the edge of fear, detaining them at will, and deporting them back into abject poverty. This is already happening in the Arab communities, where olive-skin is reasonable cause for detention and incarceration, with governmental impunity and without any legal recourse or judicial safeguards and review___ all in the name of “terrorism”.
It frightens me to think about the words of Bramblett who wrote: “I hope that many other cities follow suit in tending to this massive problem”.
Massive, indeed, when I try to imagine what do they plan to do with 12 million illegals? The ultimate race card is genocide.
Monday, November 27, 2006
I saw the term “race card” mentioned repeatedly some letters to the editor purportedly as a backlash to an article written by Bob Ray Sanders , entitled “Small-minded laws for a small Texas city ”. [See, “The law in Farmers Branch ”, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11/25/2006]. This is a phrase “race card” I first heard from the lips of a North Richland Hills mayor pro tem city official, who obviously assumed I understood its nebulous meaning. Because of its current popular usage in some cultural circles, it is not so well understood in others.
The concept of race, I understand, but “race card” seems to suggest usage in the context of a game, as in the game of Spades. Trumps, I assume, is the blackest card in the deck. In seeing the phrase repeated in print, something dawned on me.
Words and phrases created by spin-doctors can change public perception of reality. The most recent example of such contrived concoction is the phrase “food insecurity”, as subversive of fact that there is hunger in America . Therefore, poor people are no longer hungry but they have little “food security”. It does not change the reality of people starving, but rather it makes reality a farce.
The concept of “Race Card” is new to our hearing in the African-American community. Obviously, it did not originate out of sky blue and hit everybody over the head at the same time. When I see it repeated in daily language like a secret code phrase, it reminds me of something in George Orwell about mass indoctrination. In this case, some people have been made to believe that allegations of racism are phony ploys used by a minority groups to get their way. The spin for the ploy is called “playing the race card” as if it were trumps___ which is one of the reasons such complaints of racism today are ignored without second thought or given serious consideration by some. Change “the thing” by changing “the word” that delineates it. There is no racism, in fact or reality, if it can be dismissed away by coining it as a “race card” ploy.
So, they accused Bob Ray Sanders of using the “race card” in his critique of Farmers Branch ’s anti-immigration ordinances. Sanders “plays the race card every time he gets a chance”, writes Dan Roe ( Fort Worth ). “He labels those who disagree with him as bigots. It makes me wonder who the bigot is”.
In another letter, Alexander Wolf ( Fort Worth ) writes: “Sanders has to be the ultimate racist. Any criticism leveled at someone with darker skin prompts him to toss out the race card.”
Note, from an African-American perspective, it looks like the letter-writers turn the table on the columnist by dismissing his legitimate criticism as a “race card” ploy. Note also, that most allegations of racism in recent times have been met with the same counter-charge: “Race Card”.
Note the writer Alexander Wolf mentions that the race card is used whenever “criticism (is) leveled at someone with darker skin”. As a thin-skinned 60 year-old black man, I am very sensitive to “criticism”, especially when I am asked to apologize for my honesty. I remember how Mike Wallace turned the tables on Malcolm X and radically changed public perception about the meaning of racism. Wallace also accused Malcolm X of being the “ultimate racist”, just as Wolf turns the tables on Bob Ray. Surely, everyone remembers this classic 60 Minute television interview showdown between the black militant revolutionary and the news media icon back during in the mid-1960s.
When Wallace accused Malcolm of being the “ultimate racist”, in the middle of the interview, Malcolm responded with this analogy:
“Calling a black man a racist would be like calling a Jew an anti-Semitic. It is a contradiction to call the victim the victimizer. No! Racism is uniquely white because it is predicated upon the ideology of white supremacy. It is the building of institutions and using legal, political, economic, and police powers to protect and perpetuate this supremacy.”
The legislation of Jim Crow ordinances was classic racism. The enforcement of Jim Crow laws was also racist, though it was the law of the land in the South, enacted by people who vehemently opposed to being characterized as prejudice. No, they were not bigots, but honest citizens creating laws to preserve the order of nature as God ordained. So also are the misguided sentiments of honest citizens in Farmers Branch with their anti-immigration sanctions. But these new ordinances do not pass the taste, feel, and touch test to be racist, according to small town standards in Texas .
But it is possible to have institutional racism without one self-proclaimed bigot. The institution, not necessarily the people, can be racist and the people immune by involuntary indoctrination (not inoculation). Laws and ordinances can be racist, as we have seen with Jim Crow laws. And, policies, procedures, customs, and practices that enforce these laws are also racist.
As for the people and the issue of bigotry___ to every man according to the purpose and intent of his own hearts, I would only add these observations, according to the words and thoughts of the letter-writers.
“And frankly, I’m sick and tired having someone like Sanders make accusations of ‘bigotry’, ‘mean-spiritedness’ or ‘racism’ every time someone suggests enforcing our nation’s immigration laws”, writes John Luckie (Weatherford).
“My proposal”, writes John Schleeter (Euless), “is to ensure that no illegal immigrants are employed anywhere…” in an all-inclusive list of industries, he suggests, “construction records of the luxury houses that many of these executives [of the listed industries] live in should be checked to ensure that no builder used illegal immigrant labor in their construction. If it was built by illegals, these structures should be torn down to prevent profiteering from illegal action.”
Tearing down the constructive labor a neighbor because of his national origin seems mean-spirited to me. We, in the African-American community, welcome immigrant guest workers as good, industrious, and productive neighbors, while recognizing they are only here by our invitation, allurements, enticements, incentives, and our support. Many in our community appreciate them for their good works and neighborly kindness, which is appears to be absent in the City of Farmers Branch .
“I suggest a 100 percent compliance audit to check for illegal immigrants at IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Dallas Semiconductor, Geico, Cingular, TD Industries and large employers that have facilities within the city limits”, suggests Schleeter, who had also suggested tearing down the mansions of these corporate executives if the hands of illegal immigrants built it. Now he would institute Gestapo-style audit checks and mass sweeps through factories of these companies.
Where are we headed? The new ordinance in Farmers Branch makes it illegal to hire undocumented workers. Now every Hispanic in the city will have to carry some form of identification, documentation, and other papers to prove citizenship. It reminds me of the fabled Tremont County , as described by my friend, The River John, where Negroes had to carry a “good nigger pass” to walk freely and conduct business in the community. Even more, some approving white person must have punched the pass; otherwise, upon request, any white had to authority to detain and lash Negroes labeled as “vagabonds”.
Farmer Branch anti-immigration laws are similar to unconstitutional vagabond laws and are subject to abuse the rights of any brown-skin Hispanic-American who is caught without ID. Whites, on the other hand, are not required to carry ID at all times as proof of citizenship. Only the select population must fear apprehension and detention, even if a legal citizen accidentally leaves his wallet at home. He is assumed “illegal” because of skin-color and absences of approved documents.
The new ordinance forbids landlords from renting to undocumented workers. This will hit the Hispanic real estate community hard. It denies an abode for migrant guest workers, meaning they cannot live within the city limits. Excluding guest residency within the city limits, because of their national origin, is discriminatory and racist also, inasmuch, as it undermines the economic base of the legal Hispanic and African-American communities.
These are our guests, here at our behest. Whites do not hold a monopoly on extending invitations to foreign friends, foreign business people, foreign dignitaries, and foreign workers. Our guest workers are a vital part of our economy. If entry into the country were as fair for those on the south of the border as those from the north or from Europe , there would be no immigration problem.
All that most undocumented workers want is to work and go home when the work season is over. Seasonal wages in America can sustain a Latin American family all winter. Those who stay in America are the ones who intend to become citizens. But the Farmers Branch ordinance provides no means for legitimate immigration, because it excludes access to application for persons of Latin American national origin. There is no access to legitimate citizenship without risk of apprehension and incarceration for Hispanics.
“ Farmers Branch residents have every right to pass these ordinances, and if Sanders doesn’t like them, who cares?” writes Della Coffman (Weatherford). “Sanders should be ashamed of what he wrote, and he owes an apology to the council”.
The bottom line attitude to racist bigotry is “who cares”. Who cares what others think in the outside world. Big City , America is not Small Town , Texas . Apologize for criticizing small town people for their lack of a more cosmopolitan and global worldview. Small town small-mindedness is not their fault, but the product of conditioning and a steady stream of ideology. As Malcolm X said, “It would be like the slave apologizing to the slave master for the sin of slavery.” But Coffman would shame the journalist Sanders to eat his words with humble pie.
“What nerve!” wrote Coffman in reaction to the journalist’s scathing criticism. The audacity to speak his mind! In the past, Negroes were repressed from speaking their peace by intimidation, which constituted suppression in Freedom of Speech. Now that we can freely express our opinion, the reaction is outrage, which is why African-Americans are still tactful when they speak. Some people cannot handle the truth.
“Bob Ray… You’re lucky that you were born in the United States ”, wrote Wolf, “and that you found a newspaper to print the rubbish you write”. As a black citizen who totally agrees with Sanders and who enjoys reading his “rubbish”, that makes me neither stupid, nor illiterate, nor “lucky” to be born in America. How presumptuous to think that I am!
I remember being told once that “if you hated Jim Crow so much, why didn’t you go to another country. Love it or leave it”, they said. Of those who did not go into political exile to Cuba or Africa, we decided to stay in the US , home of our birth, and change the system from within.
But Jill Bramblett (Grapevine) would patronize us with her assessment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. legacy with this: “By the way, the people who King defended were citizens. Fortunately, all of his preaching paid off for our African-Americans.”
Did Bramblett say, “Our African-Americans”? How possessive! The audacity to speak for African-Americans! No, “We African-Americans” are still looking for the payoff. It may have paid off for some who use the martyrdom Martin Luther King to put the race issue behind them. But a change in attitude is a long time in coming.
It is racist to bring false allegations upon a people because of the color of their skin, or because of their national origin. Where is the true witness for this account?
The letter-writer Luckie, who professes to be sick and tired of people like Sanders, also wrote: “ Farmers Branch has done the only effective thing that can be done about this problem, given that our country’s leaders do nothing to stem the flood of illegals who sneak over and trash our southern borders.”
Trash? In the 1950s, I remember hearing the same thing about Negroes moving into all-white communities during the era of housing desegregation. Negroes would “trash” the neighborhood, they said. But the notion was based on a common belief that all poor people are trashy by nature. Personally, however, I have found most undocumented residents to be nice, clean, courteous, industrious, and not trashy. But proof is not required when the purpose of allegation is incitement.
It is racist to incite people to anger and hostilities by perpetuating rumors, myths, and lies against another people because of their skin color, culture, or national origin. The word “trash” has often been used as a racist code word to denigrate another race or their economic status. Remember “poor white trash”? False allegations that incite can lead to vigilante justice.
And lastly, there is this lordship of “worthiness” coming from the writer Olthoff: “Unless you geniuses have changed the laws overnight, you must apply for admission into the United States , prove your worthiness to obtain citizenship and do as the law says you must.”
But proving “worthiness” can be a slippery subjective slope when they keep moving the goalpost. As descendants of “second class” citizens, we could never meet the high standards of “worthiness” because of the color of our skin. The code word “Second Class Citizen” was stamped on my father’s military records. Worthiness is in the jaundice eye of the beholder, which is why it is easier to gain citizenship in the United States for white-skinned Europeans and Canadians.
It is racist to set arbitrary standards of acceptance in immigration and keep changing conditions of entrance based on skin color, national origin, and political climate. To write and re-write laws that exclude, discriminate, and criminalize by ex post facto is a racist ploy in an attempt to perpetuate white supremacy, whether by conscious intent of the citizenry or an inadvertency in law-making. The Right of Passage in America is not a bequest by white only, a presumption Farmers Branch people may have forgotten. Soon-to-be-written federal laws may be more lenient and favorable to guest workers from Third World countries.
Racism is not a contrived conjured up word like “race card”. When Mike Wallace equated race hatred and bigotry with “Racism”, he attempted to camouflage its underlying ideology of white supremacy. After the confrontation with Malcolm X, African-Americans took their case to the international body of the United Nations, the only place where issue of racism could be openly and honestly discussed at the time. The US mass media was bias, manipulated, and subverted by planted stories and propaganda designed to undermine the civil rights movement. In 1964, a formal definition of the concept of Racism was penned into historic record, in order to stand the test of time. It will forever be “a system of political, social, legal, and economic powers designed and written into laws, codes, and ordinances to support and perpetuate the ideology of white supremacy.
Turning the table against the truth seer, most people are hoodwinked into thinking racism and bigotry as synonymous in meaning.
The Farmers Branch ordinance, denying housing and employment to undocumented workers, is not racist, in and of itself. After all, the rich discriminates against the poor by denying access to privileges that only wealth can afford. But the ordinances above also provide for police training to round up illegal immigrants. This sets the stage for dragnets and massive sweeps at job sites, breaking down doors and dragging illegals from their homes, humiliating them before the public, disgracing their children in school, blocking the doors to hospital emergency rooms, keeping them living on the edge of fear, detaining them at will, and deporting them back into abject poverty. This is already happening in the Arab communities, where olive-skin is reasonable cause for detention and incarceration, with governmental impunity and without any legal recourse or judicial safeguards and review___ all in the name of “terrorism”.
It frightens me to think about the words of Bramblett who wrote: “I hope that many other cities follow suit in tending to this massive problem”.
Massive, indeed, when I try to imagine what do they plan to do with 12 million illegals? The ultimate race card is genocide.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Most Dangerous Thing about Torture, Its Acceptance
By Eddie Griffin
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Black Panthers in prison protested the condition of their confinement during the Revolution. They complained to the courts that their condition of confinement amounted to Cruel and Unusual Punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
The courts did not always see it as we saw it, and our access to the courts was limited. Having exhausted our avenues of justice in the states, we took our case to the world bodies, namely the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, World Peace Council, and Amnesty International.
We claimed that the government’s mind control experiments conducted on us by the CIA amounted to torture.
So began the big international debate about human rights and torture. The American public had been made to believe that the Communist Russians and Chinese used torture techniques. But that we, in the United States, were more humane. The Panthers, in turn, showed that the U.S. government adopted the same techniques and applied them on political dissents in the state, like the Panthers, Muslims, and Puerto Ricans Nationalists. The designed intent, we proved, was to “break men’s minds”.
Hence I wrote, “Breaking Men’s Minds”, as a dissertation of the U.S. government torture techniques, disguised as therapeutic behavior modification. The Russians were the first to see it as a propaganda opportunity. Having been condemned in the international community for human rights violation, during the 1970s, two Soviet dissidents won international acclaim. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for his prison writings: “The Gulag Archipelago” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. Another Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov won 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.
President Jimmy Carter had made a big issue about the Soviets violations of Human Rights. The Soviets retaliated with the story of political dissidents, like the Black Panthers, in U.S. prison.
We, thus, became part of the debate in the United Nations over the definition of Torture. It is a word that describes a practice that is impossible to measure. Torture meant more than the inflicted of pain as a means of punishment. The level of pain inflicted upon a subject was determined by the level of public acceptance. Specifically, Torture was literally defined as an act that outraged public consciousness.
Our problem was public awareness. How could the public know if we were being tortured, if the Nixon administration kept all the information secret and hidden? And besides, the public had always given the government the benefit of the doubt, believing that the American ideals were so high that we could not possibly torture anyone, let alone our fellow Americans. But the 1976 Church Commission revealed dirty secrets about the Nixion administration of govenmental powers.
We had to establish that Sleep Deprivation was torture. It was the intentional act of depriving a prisoner of his sleep, until he was broken or driven insane. Prison guards would bang on the bars and tap a man’s foot, in order to wake him up, every hour on the hour.
We protested the use of deprivation chambers where men were encased in a concrete and steel mausoleum, cut off from sensory input and the electro-magnetic field of the earth.
We complained about experimental drugs being secreted into our food and water supply, valium, librium, and potassium nitrate otherwise known as "saltpetre". For our own good, they claimed, but without our permission.
During this period of time, I did a lot of prison interviews with the outside media. My first editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and I was later featured on the cover of the Sun Times quoted as say, “I will not compromise my views.” I was in the Control Unit at that time when a Soviet reporter by the name of Ilong Andronov from Literaturnaya Gazeta came to interview me.
What was Literaturnaya Gazeta? I asked. It was the Soviet Union’s equivalent of Time magazine.
Because of my isolation, I only caught a whiff of the international torture debate. But I remember waiting for an opinion from the international community. Were we the victims of U.S. torture? Were we “political prisoners”?
As I have researched past records, I see traces of the debate being reincarnated by Dick Cheney. What astonishes me most is the same argument made by the Nixon administration: If we say it is not torture, it is not torture; therefore, it is legal.
POST NOTE:
The U.S government fought against using the term "political prisoners" with the name of the Black Panthers, although Andrew Young admitted to the United Nations that the United States had political prisoners locked up.
The Carter administration did consent to the use of "Prisoner of Conscious". In 1977, the World Peace Council convened at the University of Helsinki in Finland and listed about 125 names of prisoners of conscious worldwide.
On the list was the name of Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Rafael Cancel Miranda (Puerto Rican Nationalist), Lorenzo Koemboa Irvin (Black Panther Party), Leonard Peltier (American Indian Movement), Wilmington 10, and others, including Eddie Griffin.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Black Panthers in prison protested the condition of their confinement during the Revolution. They complained to the courts that their condition of confinement amounted to Cruel and Unusual Punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
The courts did not always see it as we saw it, and our access to the courts was limited. Having exhausted our avenues of justice in the states, we took our case to the world bodies, namely the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, World Peace Council, and Amnesty International.
We claimed that the government’s mind control experiments conducted on us by the CIA amounted to torture.
So began the big international debate about human rights and torture. The American public had been made to believe that the Communist Russians and Chinese used torture techniques. But that we, in the United States, were more humane. The Panthers, in turn, showed that the U.S. government adopted the same techniques and applied them on political dissents in the state, like the Panthers, Muslims, and Puerto Ricans Nationalists. The designed intent, we proved, was to “break men’s minds”.
Hence I wrote, “Breaking Men’s Minds”, as a dissertation of the U.S. government torture techniques, disguised as therapeutic behavior modification. The Russians were the first to see it as a propaganda opportunity. Having been condemned in the international community for human rights violation, during the 1970s, two Soviet dissidents won international acclaim. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for his prison writings: “The Gulag Archipelago” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. Another Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov won 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.
President Jimmy Carter had made a big issue about the Soviets violations of Human Rights. The Soviets retaliated with the story of political dissidents, like the Black Panthers, in U.S. prison.
We, thus, became part of the debate in the United Nations over the definition of Torture. It is a word that describes a practice that is impossible to measure. Torture meant more than the inflicted of pain as a means of punishment. The level of pain inflicted upon a subject was determined by the level of public acceptance. Specifically, Torture was literally defined as an act that outraged public consciousness.
Our problem was public awareness. How could the public know if we were being tortured, if the Nixon administration kept all the information secret and hidden? And besides, the public had always given the government the benefit of the doubt, believing that the American ideals were so high that we could not possibly torture anyone, let alone our fellow Americans. But the 1976 Church Commission revealed dirty secrets about the Nixion administration of govenmental powers.
We had to establish that Sleep Deprivation was torture. It was the intentional act of depriving a prisoner of his sleep, until he was broken or driven insane. Prison guards would bang on the bars and tap a man’s foot, in order to wake him up, every hour on the hour.
We protested the use of deprivation chambers where men were encased in a concrete and steel mausoleum, cut off from sensory input and the electro-magnetic field of the earth.
We complained about experimental drugs being secreted into our food and water supply, valium, librium, and potassium nitrate otherwise known as "saltpetre". For our own good, they claimed, but without our permission.
During this period of time, I did a lot of prison interviews with the outside media. My first editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and I was later featured on the cover of the Sun Times quoted as say, “I will not compromise my views.” I was in the Control Unit at that time when a Soviet reporter by the name of Ilong Andronov from Literaturnaya Gazeta came to interview me.
What was Literaturnaya Gazeta? I asked. It was the Soviet Union’s equivalent of Time magazine.
Because of my isolation, I only caught a whiff of the international torture debate. But I remember waiting for an opinion from the international community. Were we the victims of U.S. torture? Were we “political prisoners”?
As I have researched past records, I see traces of the debate being reincarnated by Dick Cheney. What astonishes me most is the same argument made by the Nixon administration: If we say it is not torture, it is not torture; therefore, it is legal.
POST NOTE:
The U.S government fought against using the term "political prisoners" with the name of the Black Panthers, although Andrew Young admitted to the United Nations that the United States had political prisoners locked up.
The Carter administration did consent to the use of "Prisoner of Conscious". In 1977, the World Peace Council convened at the University of Helsinki in Finland and listed about 125 names of prisoners of conscious worldwide.
On the list was the name of Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Rafael Cancel Miranda (Puerto Rican Nationalist), Lorenzo Koemboa Irvin (Black Panther Party), Leonard Peltier (American Indian Movement), Wilmington 10, and others, including Eddie Griffin.
Friday, May 1, 2009
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