Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Time to start getting tough on all of Romney's lies. Eugene Robinson had a wonderful post this morning that I wanted to share.

It is up to all of us who share progressive values and believe in the truth to hold Mittens accountable for his out and out lies.

Photo: LA Times
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Trayvon Martin Case: As Simple as ABC and Z





The heated and contentious debate concerning questions about the guilt or innocence of Zimmerman along with all the attendant acrimony related to the flawed Stand Your Ground laws in Florida and more than two dozen other states is completely unnecessary. The fact of the matter is that Zimmerman is guilty of shooting and killing Trayvon Martin—a wholly unlawful act for which he should be legally punished.

Reaching that conclusion in this case is as simple as it is clear.

On the day he was slain Martin, 17, was unarmed and talking on his cellphone as he walked back from a convenience store to the home of his father's fiancée—innocent and completely lawful acts. At some point during his walk home Zimmerman spots Martin, calls police, and against the advice of a dispatcher follows and subsequently confronts and accosts Martin. Shortly after Zimmerman confronts Martin the teenager is shot and killed.

It is clear from these undisputed FACTS that it was Zimmerman who initiated the encounter. Unlike in other Stand Your Ground cases where claims of self defense were made, Zimmerman wasn’t approached and then threatened by Martin, he didn’t come upon Martin in the act of committing a crime nor did he intervene to protect another from being harmed by Martin. It was Zimmerman who was the aggressor--plain and simple.

Again the facts are: young Mr. Martin was talking on the phone to his girlfriend and trying to get home out of the rain—Minding His Own Business—when he was waylaid by Zimmerman.

Clearly, it was Zimmerman who set this ball in motion. He was the one, against the advice of a police dispatcher, who initiated the encounter that lead to the shooting death of a teenager who was simply Minding His Own Business.

In a desperate and despicable act of self-preservation Zimmerman has attempted to hide behind Florida’s Stand Your Ground law and has claimed the right of self-defense. Of course such a claim is ludicrous particularly in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Beard v. U.S. (1895). In that case the Court ruled that a man who was "on his own ground (premises)" when he came under attack and "…did not provoke the assault, and had at the time reasonable grounds to believe, and in good faith believed, that the deceased intended to take his life, or do him great bodily harm…was not obliged to retreat, nor to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground."

Even in light of case law that has incorrectly expanded the definition of one’s “premises” to include public spaces or the self-serving claim by Zimmerman that Martin beat him, bloodying his nose and cutting the back of his head, there is no getting around the fact that Zimmerman "provoked the assault" that left Martin dead.

Zimmerman’s actions and his actions alone precipitated this senseless tragedy. Only later would the inaction of Sanford law enforcement officials transform this tragedy into an outrage.


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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Junk Science Puts Hundreds if Not Thousands Behind Bars

A recent Frontline PBS episode pulled back the covers on an all too common courtroom practice of using flawed forensic evidence to convict defendants. The eye-opening report highlights the disturbing fact there is often no legitimate science underlying the methodology producing the forensic findings.

The Frontline report--The Real CSI--featured a telling interview with Harry T. Edwards a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and an authority on forensic science. He was one of the authors of a landmark 2009 report commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences that highlighted serious shortcomings with forensic evidence and questioned the validity and reliability of so-called "forensic science."

In a telling quote, Edwards says:
"I think I, and many of my colleagues, assumed that the forensic disciplines were based on solid scientific methodology, were valid and reliable. I don’t think that we assumed that there was anything seriously amiss.

We assumed there might be mistakes, but I don’t think that we had been forewarned in any way that there were the serious problems that the committee uncovered. …"
Despite the report done by Judge Edwards and his colleagues very little is being done to correct this glaring miscarriage of justice. People are being convicted and sent to prison (and in some cases death row) everyday based on expert forensic testimony that might as well have been made from whole cloth.

Similarly, the Washington Post headlined a story about a FBI report that also calls into questions--let's just call it what it is--the JUNK SCIENCE of forensics. An interactive in the WP story looking at the accuracy of certain forensic evidence was sobering.

What really blew my mind was the damning rebuke that "bite-mark" evidence received in the Frontline story. As a reporter I've covered a number of murder trials (the case of Doug Prade, a police captain convicted of killing his wife, is the most infamous) that turned almost exclusively on bite-mark evidence. As it turns out, more than 60 percent of the time bite-mark evidence, when used to match teeth marks left on a victim to a specific suspect, are simply wrong. Of course the prosecutors won't tell you that and more importantly, won't let that fact be known to a jury.



 
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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Stories by Carl Chancellor

  • Fight Against Poverty Going in the Wrong Direction, Says Crusading Priest
    by Carl Chancellor · October 12, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICE
    The truth that you can't ignore when you bike across America, as Father Matthew Ruhl has just done, is this: poverty impacts every community.
    "There is no place in the country devoid of poverty," says Father Matt, who was one of 12 cyclists to complete a 100-day, 5,052-mile ride last month from Cape Flattery, Washington to Key West, Florida. The pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church in Kansas City, Missouri says he undertook his nationwide pedaling spree to raise awareness about poverty and poverty-related issues.
    We previously wrote about Father Matt when the Jesuit priest was in the midst of his epic bike ride, which he completed on Sept. 5. I gave him a couple of weeks to recover before speaking to him recently by phone.
    "[Fighting poverty] is my personal calling. As a Catholic priest I have an obligation to uphold the standards of the Gospel," says Ruhl. He says it is his sacred duty, and the duty of all Christians, to "love our neighbors" and do all we can to bring them "out of poverty" and need.
    It was clear during our conversation that Ruhl is upset that "people aren't paying enough attention to the issue of poverty" even though it is a constant that surrounds us. He says Americans are too easily "diverted" and are failing to "open their eyes" to focus on an issue that is steadily growing.
    "When we started planning for this ride [last year] the poverty rate stood at around 38 million. When we embarked on the ride [on Memorial Day] it was about 40 million. When we finished there were 43.6 million people living in poverty ... We are definitely going the wrong way," he observed, referring to the once solidly middle- and working-class families who have fallen into poverty thanks to the stubbornly enduring Great Recession.
    Read More »
  • Stop Kicking Black Students to the Curb
    by Carl Chancellor · September 19, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTS
    Why are we still throwing black kids out of school like there’s no tomorrow?
    A recent study conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of more than 9,000 middle schools found that African-American boys are three times more likely to be suspended than their white male classmates, while African-American girls are suspended at four times the rate of white girls.
    Further, the study -- Suspended Education: Urban Middle School Crisis -- revealed that in 175 middle schools an unbelievable one-third -- that's right, 1 in 3 -- of black male students were suspended at least once during a school year.
    The study noted that there is "no evidence that racial disparities in school discipline are the results of higher rates of disruption among black students."
    It's obvious that there is significant racial bias going into school suspension decisions.
    Of course the disproportionate suspension rate among African-American students is nothing new. There is a long documented history of disparate punishment of black students in our schools.  However this latest study points to a dramatic rise in the suspension of black children. According to the study, the gap between suspension rates for blacks and whites has tripled, from about three percentage points in 1970 to over 10 percentage points today.
    Being physically removed from school carries with it many risks for both students and society.  When students are suspended from school and are at home unsupervised, they are more likely to become involved in harmful "high risk behaviors." It should come as no surprise that left to their own devices, kids are more prone to use drugs and alcohol, engage in sexual intercourse and get caught up  in an array of potentially self-destructive behaviors, including criminal activity. Critics blame suspensions for pushing students into what they term the "school-to-prison pipeline."
    The SPLC  suspension study specifically focused on middle schools because of the demonstrated link between middle school success and future success in and outside of school. The study suggests that "suspension at the middle school level may have long-term repercussions," which I take to mean, middle school is where a student's trajectory is set for good or bad.
    Unfortunately, suspension rates aren't often addressed in discussions about improving our schools and the education of our children. That's a glaring oversight.
    Why are suspension rates for black students skyrocketing?
    One reason is the move by nearly all school districts to a "zero tolerance" discipline policy in the wake of the Columbine school shootings. Often the most minor of  infractions can lead to a suspension -- more than 3.3 million annually, which are disproportionally meted out to black students. Unruly acts like using profanity, being disruptive in class, talking back,  pushing and shoving -- behavior  that used to warrant a trip to the principal's office or detention, now result in automatic suspension.  It's ironic that the tragedy at Columbine, a predominantly all-white school, has had such a negative impact on African-American kids.
    Another major factor to consider, as highlighted by the SPLC study, is that on average 20 percent of the teachers represent nearly 80 percent of a school's suspension rate.
    What is going on with this handful of teachers? That's obviously the question school administrators should be asking. It needs to be determined if these teachers are unduly stressed by large class sizes; have trouble relating to African-American students; or are dealing with some personal demons that's causing them to possible act out inappropriately toward their students.  Clearly, when a small population of teachers is generating such a large number of suspensions, the fault isn't exclusively with the student.
    It's time for schools to scrap outdated and unproven "zero tolerance policies" that have shown no evidence of making schools safer. It's time for school administrators to follow in the steps of school districts like Baltimore, which have revamped the discipline code and instituted peer mediation, in-school monitoring and intervention programs that have seen suspension rates drop by 39 percent.
    The plain fact is, kids can’t learn if they aren’t in school. If the main goal of schools is to educate kids, punishing them by excluding them from school is counterproductive.
    Photo credit: Steelight
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  • Partying Like Its 1859
    by Carl Chancellor · September 18, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTS
    Way down south in the land of cotton it's clear that  "old times there ain't forgotten," particularly if you're  State  Sen. Glenn McConnell,  leader of the South Carolina GOP.
    A  picture of McConnell in a Confederate general's uniform with two blacks in historically accurate antebellum attire, taken at a party hosted by the South Carolina Federation of Republican Women,  has ignited rumblings across the blogosphere louder than the cannon barrage on Fort Sumpter that sparked the Civil War.
    According to Fitsnews, which first broke the story and shared the "gotcha" photos, neither McConnell nor the GOP ladies feel remorse or embarrassment over the incident.  As a matter of fact the GOP women who put on the "Southern Experience" shindig proudly said the event allowed party goers to "get a taste" of the beauty, heritage and culture of South Carolina.
    Read More »
  • Don't Get It Twisted, Glenn Beck Is No MLK
    by Carl Chancellor · September 03, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTS
    I still haven't quite figured out what to make of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, which is why it has taken me so long to post my thoughts about the event.
    Initially, my plan was to immediately vent my outrage over Beckfest, since I was sure I would have plenty of easy and very nasty targets to pillory.
    However, from the television snippets of the rally I watched on the day of the event and the news reports I read subsequently,  Beckstock wasn't the over the top,  in your face,  race-baiting,  Obama-hating,  don't tread on me, right-wing political orgy I and many others had expected.
    Still, I'm at a loss to accurately describe the Beck rally, or explain exactly what it was attempting to accomplish.  The nearest I can come is to call it a Holy Ghost tent revival meeting on steroids, spreading a "take our country back" gospel bankrolled by the ultra-right wing, billionaire Koch brothers.
    While I don't know exactly what Beck's mass gathering was, I do know what it wasn't, which is to say -- it fell far short of being the second coming of the 1963 March on Washington as touted by Beck and others.
    Sure Beck, he of the uber-ego and the nutty socialism, communism, Kenyan revenge theories,  would have you believe his rally in Washington at the end of August mirrored in intent and purpose that  iconic march of 47 years earlier. He even went so far as to suggest that he and his supporters were  taking up where Martin Luther King Jr. left off and were  laying claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement.  But I'm here to tell you people: Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
    Glenn Beck has a dream alright and it has nothing to do with brotherhood, equality or compassion for your fellow man.
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  • Poverty Makes Motherhood a Depressing Experience
    by Carl Chancellor · August 31, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICE
    Putting a new and sobering twist on baby mama drama, a recently-released study indicates that more than half of poor babies have mothers who are suffering from depression.
    While that's disturbing news for babies, since having a depressed mom can interfere with parenting and negatively impact a child's development, it's not necessarily surprising.
    It doesn't take a Ph.D to understand that child-rearing is tough under any circumstances and therefore raising a kid, particularly a totally dependent infant, on an extremely limited income has to be stressful. When you are a mother living in poverty and have no idea how you are going to feed, clothe and shelter yourself, let alone your baby, the stress you're under can quickly slip over into serious depression.
    Still, I doesn't hurt to quantify anecdotal observations.
    According to the study, conducted by the Urban Institute, 55 percent of infants living at or below the poverty level are being raised by moms showing signs of mild to severe depression. "A mom who is too sad to get up in the morning won't be able to take care of all of her child's practical needs," said the Institute's Olivia Golden in the Washington Post.
    In addition, the study, which followed 14,000 infants and their mothers, finds that at least one in nine infants born in poverty are being raised by mothers suffering from symptoms of severe depression.
    Golden and her research team note that a severely depressed mother who is "not able to take joy in her child" is unlikely to talk to or play with her child. That sort of mother and infant interaction is key to a baby's successful development.
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  • Run for Your Life — It's the Terror Babies
    by Carl Chancellor · August 17, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTS
    Don’t let those chubby cheeks or that toothless angelic grin fool you. While you're naively cooing goo goo ga ga, that cuddly, cherubic infant before you could be plotting America’s demise.
    After all, do you really know what that baby is hiding in his or her Pamper?
    Hey, I’m just saying. I mean, we already had the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. So why not a diaper of mass destruction?
    I see that you’re still skeptical. That's because your thinking is stuck in the past. You see, we’re not talking about  the babies you and I grew up with — the angelic Gerber Baby, or the wholesome Ivory Snow Baby. No, what we are dealing with today, in 2000 freaking 10 — is an entirely new breed of baby, a sinister and nefarious type of newborn beyond comprehension.  I’m talking about a crawling assassin, a demon in diapers, a pacifier-sucking saboteur.  I’m talking about..."anchor babies" (shrieks, screams, scary music).
    Don’t take my word for it. Some of the most influential, but not necessarily rational, voices in the country, folks like U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and his fellow Texas Republican, State Rep. Debbie Riddle, are sounding the "anchor baby" alarm as well.
    Here's the gist of  their argument, what I like to refer to as the Binnie (Laden) Babies Conspiracy. According to Gohmert, at this very moment, pregnant (Muslim) women are traveling to the U.S. on tourist visas for the sole purpose of giving birth on American soil. The Congressman claims these foreign mothers are using the Constitution — specifically, the 14th Amendment, which makes all persons born in this country U.S. citizens — to build a diabolical plot.
    Gohmert, who is a member of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress,  says these visiting Muslim moms, with newly minted American babies in tow, are returning to their homes in the Middle East where these "anchor babies" are being instructed in radical Islam. After training these babies for 20 years or more to become terrorists, they'll return to the U.S. to carry out acts of violence and dastardly deeds against America and Americans. Simple, right?
    Read More »
  • Affordable Housing Nears Extinction in D.C.
    by Carl Chancellor · August 10, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICE
    The makeshift shelter — a hurriedly constructed A-frame of 2x4s covered by a heavy plastic tarp — is a far cry from the glistening glass and brick eight-story apartment and retail complex that was supposed to be sitting on this Washington D.C. corner. Ron Harris couldn't be happier.
    "They weren't giving us what was promised," says Harris of the proposed apartment complex that was to be an answer to the city's affordable housing problem. In July, Harris, a community activist  joined with a dozen others to occupy a rock-strewn patch of dirt at the corner of 7th and Rhode Island Avenue N.W. known as Parcel 42. Harris and a handful of other protesters, who are now living in a tent city erected on the parcel, are determined to compel the city to make good on its commitment to build affordable housing in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C. (End Homelessness blogger Eric Sheptock is one of the tent city's founders. Also be sure to check out his posts from inside the tent city.)
    As angry clouds threatening a downpour periodically spit heavy drops of rain that thud loudly on the tarp above our heads, Harris tells me that ground was to have been broken last year on a 100-unit subsidized apartment complex that would offer housing for families making between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. However, since the Parcel 42 plan was first announced in 2007, the scope and direction of the project has gone through a number of changes, none of them acceptable to Harris or to community groups like ONE DC (Organizing Neighborhood Equity), Take Back the Land or the People's Property Campaign of Empower DC.
    Sitting at a conference table of sorts, which is an old wooden door with brass knob still place, turned up on four cinder blocks, Harris says the project has been significantly scaled back. Instead of providing 100 units of housing, the new plan is for 94 units, but most egregious is that there will no longer be tiered rents for households making 20 percent and 30 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI).
    "Now, the developers only want people making at least 50 percent of the AMI, which is around $53,000 a year. That's not low-income to me," Harris says.
    Read More »
  • Why We Should Eliminate the R-Word
    by Carl Chancellor · July 28, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTS
    Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
    It was a Steve Urkel moment of monumental proportions for the President, his administration, the USDA and the NAACP.
    I'm speaking, of course, of the ham-fisted apologies offered to Shirley Sherrod — the recently fired USDA director — by the aforementioned after they each took turns throwing her under the bus.
    In giving their separate expressions of regret, they each should have been accompanied by a video clip of nerdy, suspender-wearing Urkel uttering his trademark line — "Did I do that?"
    The answer, sadly, is: "Yes, they did."
    Why was the administration so willing to rush headlong to condemn and punish Sherrod before  knowing the entire story? Why was there an unquestioning willingness to believe the worst about Sherrod, particularly given the background of those accusing her of being racist? Knowing the unethical history of right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart and the unabashed political agenda of Fox News, you'd think even a half-rational person would pause to consider the source.
    But as we already know, that didn't happen, and in the process, a good woman was nearly destroyed.
    That's because once the word "racist" gets tossed around, reasonably intelligent people lose their minds and go off half-cocked. Calling someone a racist is akin to lobbing a live grenade into a crowded room — it sends everyone in the vicinity scurrying in a panic toward the nearest exit in a frantic attempt to distance themselves from such an accusation, and damn anyone who gets in the way.
    Read More »
  • GOP Attacks Thurgood Marshall: Can't A Brotha Catch A Break?
    by Carl Chancellor · July 06, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTS
    Okay, I guess I’m a slow learner, but I finally get it: the GOP ain’t feeling black folk — nor brown, gay, or unemployed people for that matter.
    However, for the purposes of this post, let’s limit the conversation to Congressional Republicans’ obvious disregard (bordering on callousness) for people of the African-American persuasion — an attitude that was on full display during Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings.
    The target of the GOP’s ire this time (drum roll) — the esteemed Supreme Court Justice and legal giant Thurgood Marshall, who is just the sort of easy target they would attack, since he’s been dead for 20 years and isn’t around to defend himself.
    Clearly, the goal was to tarnish Kagan’s image, a la Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, by playing up her connection — "guilt by association" — with the late Justice. I have to give to Kagan — she didn’t mumble when she  proclaimed that she was proud to have clerked for Marshall in the late 1980s, and considered him one of her "legal heroes."
    I also have to give it to the Republicans, because I never saw this one coming.
    According to several media accounts, GOP senators invoked the name of Marshall 35 times during the first day of Kagan's hearings. Every chance they had, they painted Marshall as an "activist jurist." Fumed about him being a raving "liberal." And accused him of dissing the Founding Fathers — you know, the guys who took time out from walking on water and multiplying loaves of bread and fish to found the country and pen the Constitution.
    Read More »
  • For Poor Students, Role Models Are Key to College Success
    by Carl Chancellor · June 29, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICE
    Seeing is believing. That old bromide it at the heart of a plan by a University of Mississippi professor to lift folks out of poverty through college education.
    Eric Weber, an assistant professor of public policy at Ole Miss, says students coming from impoverished backgrounds can succeed in college if they see examples of people from similar circumstances who have done well, or are doing well in college.
    The problem, says Weber, who is working on a film that focuses on how poverty impedes educational achievement, is that too many poor students are being discouraged from attending college.
    It is Weber's contention that students in his state of Mississippi are not attending college in larger numbers in part because they are being told by friends, relatives, and in some cases school officials, that they are not college material.
    Read More »
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Carl Chancellor
Akron, OH
Carl is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has a passion for social justice issues. For more than 20 years he was a reporter and columnist for the Knight-Ridder news service and its flagship paper, the Akron Beacon Journal. At the moment he is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C.-area with the bulk of his writing focused on the health care and financial reform debates on Capitol Hill. He is always working on works of fiction and had a collection of short stories published in 2000.
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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Mississippi Does The Right Thing

Over the weekend we reported about Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's refusal to denounce a proposal to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan infamous for leading his rebels in a massacre of black Union soldiers, with an official Mississippi license plate.

After more than a week of side stepping the issue and telling the state NAACP and others that he would not denounce the notion of recognizing the racist confederate general, the governor, who has presidential aspirations, seems to have felt the political heat and yesterday stated for the first-time that he would veto any measure that seeks to honor General Forrest.

Yes!

The brouhaha began when the Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans proposed a series of state-issued plates to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Several plates are being issued as part of that commemoration, one of which was a plate honoring Forrest which would be issued in 2014.
The idea met with immediate opposition.

More than 8,500 Change.org members answered our call to pressure the governor, and there has been extensive media coverage of his refusal to denounce the motion. That led to an about face yesterday:
"The bureaucracy denied it, the legislature won't pass it and if the legislature passes it, it won't become law because I won't sign it,” Barbour told the Associated Press in an interview.

Up until yesterday's statement, Barbour had steadfastly declined to take a definitive position against the proposed measure, saying he doesn't believe in "denouncing" people.

Folks weren't necessarily urging Barbour to "denounce" Forrest, although he is certainly worthy of condemnation. What those in opposition wanted was for the governor to denounce the idea of honoring Forrest with an official state license plate.

It took him awhile, but the good news is that Barbour finally seems to realize that a Gen. Forrest state vehicle tag is just a very bad idea.

Thanks to everyone who took action.
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Honoring Founder of KKK is Bad Idea


Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a traitor, a racist, and some say, a murderer--basically the trifecta of despicability.

Yet, despite this man's heinous history and outrageous character flaws,  Mississippi is seriously considering issuing an official state license plate in his honor.

Hell, while they're at it, Mississippi officials might as well crank out  state license tags honoring Osama bin Laden or Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
The plates, including the one for Forrest, could be marketed as the state's homage to terrorists.

For those who have never heard of Gen. Forrest. Well, let me school you.

Forrest, a native of Tennessee,  was an infamous Confederate general who is notorious for leading his rebels in a massacre of black Union soldiers.  Upwards of 270 black federal troops were killed at Fort Pillow in the spring of 1864, most of them bayoneted, put to the sword, or shot after surrendering.  Following the South's defeat in the Civil War,  Forrest continued to add to his ugly legacy by serving as a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. As a matter of fact he is credited as being a founder of that terrorist organization.

Despite Forrest's sordid past, the Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans nonetheless feel the general deserved special recognition. It was the Sons who approached the state with the idea of sponsoring a series of state-issued plates to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. The license plate being issued this year by Mississippi features the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The vehicle tag featuring Forrest would be issued in 2014. That is of course, if someone doesn't step in to stop such an outrage from occurring.

The Mississippi NAACP and a Facebook group opposed to the Forrest tag are doing exactly that and have asked Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to condemn attempts to honor Forrest with a license plate.  Thus far, they have been unable to prevail on Barbour to denounce the idea.
Frankly, for a man who has aspirations of running for the presidency of the United States, his reluctance is baffling.

Maybe Gov. Barbour will listen to you. Sign the petition below and urge the governor to condemn in no uncertain terms any attempt by the state of Mississippi to honor the memory of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Tell Gov. Barbour to ban Forrest from Mississippi license plates.
Winning this and similar campaigns depends on our ability to quickly call on thousand of supportive folks like you. After signing the petition below, please click here to follow us on Facebook - just click 'Like' at the top of the page.

Photo Credit: JamesKidArts

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Saturday, January 22, 2011


If you're black or Latino and you're planning on traveling in New York City, I suggest you fill your pockets with lots of subway and bus tokens because you're going to find hailing a cab next to impossible.
The fact that it is frustratingly hard to get a NYC cab to stop for you if you are a person of color comes as no surprise. But this already next-to-impossible task just got that much more difficult thanks to Fernando Mateo, head of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers.

Mateo has taken to every microphone he can find to urge NYC hacks to "racial profile" a potential fare before deciding to pick-up a passenger: "You know, sometimes it is good we are racially profiled, because the God's honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics," said Mateo, who himself is of Hispanic and African-American heritage.

Mateo, a New York gadfly who seems to insert himself regularly in controversial situations, made his statement shortly after the shooting of a Queen's taxi driver. Soon after making his comments, Mateo (also the president of Hispanics Across America which like his Taxi Federation has a disconnected phone number) was quickly rebuked by civic leaders and city officials, including NYC's Taxi and Limousine commissioner David Yassky: "Choosing which passengers to serve on the basis of race is illegal, downright wrong and simply unacceptable," said Yassky.

Comments like Mateo's only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes, which we all know will leave blacks and Hispanics standing forlornly on the curb, hands outstretched, as cabs zoom by.
We can express our anger over Mateo's outrageous comments by flooding him with e-mails, if he had a working e-mail address  (the e-mails I have sent the man have all bounced back), but what real good will that do? He'll love the publicity.

What I think would be more effective is to get involved in NYC's Taxi of Tomorrow campaign. On its website and Facebook page, the campaign is seeking suggestions to improve its new fleet of cabs, which are scheduled to hit the city streets in 2014.  Specifically, there is a survey that wants to know "some of the things you're looking for in your Taxi of Tomorrow."  Personally, as an African American, topping my "taxi of tomorrow" wishlist would be a cab that would actually stop and pick me up!

In a city with 13, 237 licensed taxicabs, wouldn't it be great if one or two of those cabs would pick up passengers of color?

I urge each of you to answer Question #6 on the Taxi of Tomorrow survey. In the comment space provided suggest something along the lines of: A sign should be posted inside every taxi that clearly states that 
discriminating against people because of their race, color, ethnicity, disability, gender or sexual preference is against the law.

Please also sign the petition below urging TLC Commissioner Yassky to put the brakes on racial profiling by New York City cabbies.
---
. Photo Credit: Roger Schultz

Related Petition

Tell NYC Taxi Commissioner to Put The Brakes On Racial Profiling

Sign Petition


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