The Trump Administration's War on Black and Poor People

The Trump Administration is"Making America Great Again" by trampling on black and poor people. Trump seeks to:

1.  Suppress black and Latino voters

The Nation reports that:

The (President's voter) commission was set up for one purpose—to spread false information about voter fraud, like Trump’s gigantic lie that millions of people voted illegally, in order to build support for policies that make it more difficult to vote. Kobach and his ilk have long advocated for suppressive policies like strict voter-ID laws, documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and voter purges, along with weakening landmark voting-rights laws like the Voting Rights Act and National Voter Registration Act.

2.  Escalate the War on Drugs thereby exacerbating the problem of mass incarceration

The Washington Post reports that:

Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and Cook (Stephen H. Cook) are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The two men are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war, an approach that had fallen out of favor in recent years as minority communities grappled with the effects of mass incarceration.

Crime is near historic lows in the United States, but Sessions says that the spike in homicides in several cities, including Chicago, is a harbinger of a “dangerous new trend” in America that requires a tough response.

3.  Reevaluate and reconsider police consent decrees

At a time when police have a license to kill black people with impunity, the Trump Administration is putting vital police reforms in jeopardy. If Trump has his way, there will be more Philando Castiles, Tamir Rices, Eric Garners, Terrence Crutchers, Michael Browns and Rekia Boyds. The New York Times reports that:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered a sweeping review of federal agreements with dozens of law enforcement agencies, an examination that reflects President Trump’s emphasis on law and order and could lead to a retreat on consent decrees with troubled police departments nationwide.

In a memorandum dated March 31 and made public Monday, the attorney general directed his staff to look at whether law enforcement programs adhere to principles put forth by the Trump administration, including one declaring that “the individual misdeeds of bad actors should not impugn” the work police officers perform “in keeping American communities safe.”

...The broad review announced Monday could threaten some of those decrees if the Justice Department seeks to change its past stance about systematic police abuses in the affected agencies. But the Justice Department would not be able to unilaterally unwind the agreements without court intervention.

This is not a surprise for a couple of reasons. Prior to his appointment, now U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressed his opposition to police consent decrees. Second, during the campaign, Donald Trump stated that he supports racial profiling and New York style unconstitutional stop and frisk programs.

4.  Drastically cut Section 8 and other housing programs

Truth-Out reports that:

The gutting of HUD would take money directly out of the hands of renters in need. The Post story notes, "Under the proposal, direct rental assistance payments -- including Section 8 Housing and housing vouchers for homeless veterans -- would be cut by at least $300 million, to $19.3 billion. Additionally, housing for the elderly -- known as the Section 202 program -- would be cut by $42 million, nearly 10 percent. Section 811 housing for people with disabilities would be cut by $29 million, nearly 20 percent. Money available for Native American housing block grants would fall by $150 million, more than 20 percent."

According to Rice's analysis of the Post report, if the cuts go through, "Housing Choice Vouchers that some 200,000 low-income households currently use to pay their rent would be eliminated in 2018." He explained, "Reducing the availability of this crucial support would increase and prolong homelessness for vulnerable people with disabilities, families with children and others."

These cut will adversely and disproportionately impact African Americans. As stated on Living Cities, "...there is another pernicious outcome of the lack of Section 8 resources for every eligible household. Lack of Section 8 fuels inequality and works a racial injustice. In 2014, one out of every 3.6 black households in metropolitan areas was extremely low income, a rate 2.2 times higher than white households. (Source: 2010-2014 ACS 5-Year Public Use Microdata Sample)"

5.  Substantially cut food assistance for the poor

As reported on Mother Jones,

The budget includes $193 billion in cuts over a decade to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps—25 percent of the program’s budget. About 44 million people benefit from food stamps in the United States, especially poorer states in the Southeast. For example, 1 out of every 5 people in Louisiana receive food stamps in a given month, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Trump’s proposed cuts to food stamps will by and large hit the states that voted for him the hardest. Louisiana voted overwhelmingly for Trump, as did its Southeast counterparts Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, and Georgia. Out of the 10 states with the highest food stamp use by population, seven voted Republican in last year’s presidential election. (See more details in the list below.)

Similar to Section 8 cuts, food stamps cuts will disproportionately impact African Americans. Although African Americans are 13.3% of the U.S. population, we are 25.7 percent of those are on food stamps / SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program).

6.  Eliminate health insurance for 22 million people, many of whom are African American
The Trump Administration health care bill would have caused 22 million to lose their health insurance. According to the New York Times, the Budget Office found:

that next year, 15 million more people would be uninsured compared with current law. Premiums and out-of-pocket expenses could shoot skyward for some low-income people and for people nearing retirement, it said.

Conclusion

The bottom line is this. The Trump Administration has declared war on black and poor people. We must fight back. We must resist. We must lobby Congress and fiercely oppose the Trump Administration's legislative agenda. We must vote out Trump's allies during the mid-term elections. We must do everything in our power to ensure that this is Trump's last term in office.

Clinton Helped Create the New Jim Crow

Yesterday, former U.S. President Bill Clinton addressed the NAACP National Convention. During his address, he acknowledged that he was wrong for increasing sentences for drug offenses.

In Michelle Alexander's brilliant masterpiece, The New Jim Crow, she fully explains how truly wrong Clinton was.  He paved the way for the New Jim Crow.  Ms. Alexander states that:

Despite the jaw-dropping impact of the "get tough" movement on the African American community, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans revealed any inclination to slow the pace of incarceration. To the contrary, in 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he...

Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal "three strikes and you're out" law...The $30 billion crime bill sent to President Clinton in August 1994 was hailed as a victory for the Democrats, who "were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own." The bill created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and expansion of state and local police forces. Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has observed, "the Clinton Administration's 'tough on crime' policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history." (page 55)

Ms. Alexander further asserts that Clinton "ended welfare as we know it" and established a "life-time ban on eligibility for welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense-including simple possession of marijuana."

Yet, this is the man that y'all adore. This is the man that y'all call the first black president. Smoking weed, playing the saxophone, being raised in a single parent household and being a womanizer don't make you black or "colored". Such a suggestion is racist.

While Clinton was locking up massive numbers of black people, his wife, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, stood by his side and supported those oppressive policies. We need much more than an acknowledgement of the obvious. We need clear answers to tough questions. We need reforms to correct the disaster that Bill Clinton helped create.

Marijuana Should Be Legalized

Happy New Year, folks. Colorado celebrated the New Year by blazing up some weed. The Huffington Post reports that:

For more than 70 years, the sale of marijuana for recreational use has been criminally prohibited in the United States. But that ban, as it has existed for decades, ended Wednesday in Colorado.

The historic first, legal sales of recreational marijuana to those 21-and-older began in the morning at select dispensaries in Colorado -- the first state in the nation, and the first government in the world, to control and regulate a legal recreational marijuana industry.

A couple of months ago, the Nation reported that:

Over the last fifteen years, police departments in the United States made 10 million arrests for marijuana possession—an average of almost 700,000 arrests a year. Police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites in every state and nearly every city and county—as FBI Uniform Crime Reports and state databases indisputably show. States with the largest racial disparities arrest blacks at six times the rate of whites. This list includes Alabama, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin.

Big city police departments are among the worst offenders. Police in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York have arrested blacks for marijuana possession at more than seven times the rate of whites. Since 1997, New York City alone has arrested and jailed more than 600,000 people for possessing marijuana; about 87 percent of the arrests are of blacks and Latinos. For years, police in New York and Chicago have arrested more young blacks and Latinos for simple marijuana possession than for any other criminal offense whatsoever.

Other large urban areas that make huge numbers of racially biased arrests include Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Dallas–Fort Worth, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Las Vegas, Memphis, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington, DC. And across the United States, one-third of marijuana arrestees are teenagers; 62 percent are age 24 or younger; and most of them are ordinary high school or college students and young workers.

I do not condone the use of marijuana. I never have and will never use it. However, in light of the discriminatory enforcement of drug laws in this country, I believe that marijuana should be legalized and regulated like any other controlled substances. Everyone knows that the War on Drugs has been a complete failure. It has not stopped anyone from using drugs. As documented in Michelle Alexander's masterpiece The New Jim Crow, it has only led to the mass incarceration of black people.

Our Fight is Far From Over!

The choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was clear and obvious. The idea of Romney being president was frightening and unthinkable. We are all relieved that Obama won.  The reelection of Barack Obama is a tremendous victory.  Obama's reelection confirms that America has made some progress as a nation. We now know that his election was not an anomaly. For hundreds of years, the White House was an office reserved for white men. With the election and reelection of Barack Obama, that racist notion has been shattered into millions of pieces.

Before we start popping bottles and dancing in the streets, we must realize that our work is far from done. The reelection of Barack Obama is a significant symbol of progress. However, it is just that, a symbol. Despite all of chatter about changing demographics and the new electorate, white supremacy is alive and well. Racial disparities continue to exist in every sphere of life, including education, wealth, health, criminal justice, etc.

The backlash against Obama's reelection is evidence that racism and hatred still thrive in America. The flood of racist tweets following Obama's reelection proves the racial hatred continues to exist. After the election, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, Southern right wing fanatics signed petitions seeking to secede from the nation. Again, more proof the racial hatred continues to exist.



Despite the changing demographics, the Right will find ways to preserve white supremacy. For example, the Right is attacking the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. Over a month ago, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas.

Moreover, as reported in the Washington Post, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Shelby County v. Holder.  In that case,  the court will consider whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Section 5 requires jurisdictions with a history of discriminating against African American voters to seek preclearance from the United States Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia before they can change their voting laws. Without such preclearance requirements, states such as Texas and South Carolina would have been able to pass strict voter ID laws. Such laws are designed to suppress the black vote.

On the day that the Supreme Court hears arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, thousands of black people and progressives should swarm the outside of the courthouse and demand that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act be upheld. Our turnout should mirror the massive pro-immigration demonstrations. If we do not act, the gains of hundreds of years of struggle may be erased with the stroke of the pen. 

Obama's reelection is not the end. It is just a means to an end. Voting is just one tool in our arsenal for reform and progress. Other vital tools are lobbying, protesting and litigation. While the Republicans do their soul searching, we must develop strategies to make the next four years better than the last four years.

Progressives cannot sit on our couches and wait for Obama to perform miracles. We cannot exchange the truth for access and notoriety. Obama is a politician, nothing more and nothing less. He is not a freedom fighter. We must never forget that. If real change is to happen, it will be because movements have put pressure on the President and the Congress.

Instead of being surrogates and apologists for Obama, progressives and African Americans must be prepared to stand up to the Republican Party and the White House. Our blogs should not be echo chambers for the White House and MSNBC. We must be bold and truly independent.

We must speak truth to the President and the Congress. We must demand that the government launch a major initiative targeted to address high employment and poverty in the black community. The "rising tide" definitely has not lifted all boats. As reported on RT, "while national unemployment decreased to 7.9 percent in Oct. 2012, the numbers are grim for African-Americans, whose unemployment rate jumped from 13.4 percent to 14.3 percent in just one month, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics." Instead of personally attacking Cornel West and Tavis Smiley for raising these issues, we should analyze the substance of their remarks. As Tavis Smiley wrote in the Huffington Post,

We celebrate this electoral victory today, but what about tomorrow? How tragic would it be at the end of eight years to be confronted by economic data which suggests (as the data does now) that in the Obama era Black folk lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category? I shudder at the very thought. So should you.

In addition to demanding economic justice, we must demand that the federal government address the problem of the mass incarceration of black people.  We must demand the total and complete end of sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. Even under the Fair Sentencing Act, there is still an 18 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. On another note, we should demand that the President use his pardon power to free all political prisoners such Mumia Abu Jamal and other victims of the Cointelpro era. 

We must demand that the President resist the terrorist tactics of the GOP.  The Republicans are essentially holding the American people hostage in order to preserve tax cuts for the rich.  Last time, Obama surrendered and agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. We cannot allow him to surrender this time.  We cannot allow him to cave to the GOP's austerity demands. We cannot let him wimp out and cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Along with domestic policy demands, we should make several demands with respect to foreign policy.  According to thecable.foreignpolicy.com, U.S. may remain in Afghanistan past 2014.  We must demand an immediate end to the senseless war in Afghanistan.   Furthermore, during his first Presidential campaign, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He said that it was inconsistent with America's values. We must hold the President to that promise. We must demand that the Obama Administration stop allowing U.S. drones to bomb innocent civilians. Moreover, as bombs drop on innocent women and children in Gaza, we cannot remain silent while the President continues to defend Israel.

If the President ignores our demands, we must be prepared to make telephone calls, sign petitions and yes, march on Washington. The election is over. There are no more excuses for inaction. It is now or never. Our fight is far from over.

This article is cross-posted on Jack and Jill Politics.