Monroe Anderson

Throw Back Thursday--Candidate Obama in New Hampshire

January 2008

    I shot this photograph while I was covering the New Hampshire primary election as a freelance journalist working for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. I was on the Obama press bus when we made an impromptu stop at Jack's Coffee Shop in New London, New Hampshire. There were more reporters and photogs than Jack's could hold. And, there was a pecking order as to who was positioned where. TV cameras and their reporters were up front. Still photographers were stationed behind them. Bringing up the back of the shop were print reporters like me.

    As we waited for Sen. Barack Obama to get off his campaign bus for the photo op, I exited through a rear door to the coffee shop, which was on a strip mall, to check out Vessels & Jewels, a quaint gift shop adjoining Jack's. When the candidate appeared, rather than heading straight for the coffee shop and the awaiting journalists, he came into the gift store and began shopping for gifts for Michelle, Natasha and Malia. Candidate Obama and I exchanged greetings as he looked at jewelry in the store.

    I was the only journalist in the shop so I pulled out my camera, popping off a few shots that became my exclusive photos. Obama paid for his purchase then left Jack's to enter the front of the coffee shop and the rest of the media from his two press buses. As I stood outside watching him head for the coffee shop, Michelle and her security got off the bus. She waved at me, then walked over and gave me a hug. I've known her since I spoke to Public Allies, a civic group she headed up back in 1993. She then joined her husband and I returned to my position with the press corps at the back of the coffee shop. Obama shook hands with the customers in the show, ordered a cup of tea and answered a few questions before we all got back on our respective buses and headed on to the next campaign stop.

Cops victim of Trigger Finger-itis epidemic

  

 

 

    A Black man who had suffered a stroke was shot with a Taser and pepper spray because he was unable to get out of his car as a Virginia cop ordered. A Cleveland cop was found not guilty in the 137 bullets trial. From coast to coast police are too quick to pull the trigger. Here's my Chicago Defender column on the situation. 

 

Lethal or nonlethal, same shoot, different day

By Monroe Anderson

 

 

When it comes to white cops shooting unarmed Blacks, the hits just keep on coming. So do the misses.

              A viral video-surfaced last week that featured David Washington’s turn at taking the hit. The 34-year-old Black man was shot by a Taser then hit by a stream of pepper spray for failing to get out of his car on demand.

Washington was both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because Fredericksburg Police Officer Shaun Jergens shot him with the Taser and pepper sprayed him, leaving him short of breath and with his eyelids swollen closed, instead of aiming a couple of lead slugs at his head. Not that he didn’t threaten to.

“Get out the car,” Jergens yelled after assaulting Washington,“ or I’m going to f--king smoke you.”

Washington was unlucky because he had just suffered a stroke and was in need of medical care not an instant application of tough policing for sitting in a car while Black.

             As for the miss, this time it was in Cleveland. In the hometown of Tamir Rice, who would have turned 13 years old next month if he hadn’t been shot to death by Officer Timothy Loehmann while playing cops and robbers in a city playground, justice was on the lam.

            Apparently, like Agent 007, America’s police have a license to kill. Michael Brelo, a Cleveland cop, was acquitted Saturday of charges of voluntary manslaughter in the “137 bullets” case for the shooting deaths Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30.

            Why is it that cops tasked with serving and protecting routinely see Blacks as the usual suspects before rendering us the usual victims? Why are some police so prone to shoot first, before coming up with answers later? Is innocent until proven guilty a whites only right?

Both Officers Brelo and Jergens suffered from that epidemic that has stricken too many men in blue across the nation: Trigger Finger-itis.

             Jergens shot Washington with his Taser as the incapacitated driver sat in his car facing the wrong way on the street because he assumed the Black man was the perpetrator in a hit-and-run accident. The sick man mattered so little to Cleveland police that after he was assaulted by Jergens, he was thrown, handcuffed on the hot pavement while they allowed a police car to roll over one of his feet.

Of course, white cops abusing Black men is nothing new. But the Taser has become Officer-Not-So-Friendly’s high-tech billy club. Back in the day, many a cop’s knee-jerk reaction was to beat a Black man bloody before taking him to the station. In this modern age, rather than crack open their heads, the practice is to hit them with a 50,000 volts of electricity instead.    

In 2012, an American Heart Association report linked stun gun use to heart attacks and deaths. There are real-life tragedies to underscore those findings. Last year, 60 Americans died from Tasers. Since they’ve become the “nonlethal” weapon of choice for police worldwide more than 600 people have died from them in the past 14 years.

While Tasers may or may not amount to deadly force, bullets certainly do.

Both unarmed, Russell and Williams were killed on November 29, 2012 after officers mistook the sound of his 1979 Chevy Malibu backfiring as gunshots. Since dead men or women tell no tales, we will never know what led to the 62- police vehicle high speed chase across Cleveland. It is known that 137 bullets struck the Malibu that the two occupants were in. Forty-nine of those shots came from Officer Brelo’s Glock 17. He squeezed off 15 of the rounds as he stood on the car, both it and its passengers motionless, as if he was making his day in a sequel to Dirty Harry.

Ohio Judge John O'Donnell ruled Saturday that Officer Brelo acted within his constitutional rights. In his ruling, the judge explained that since 12 other Cleveland police--eleven white, one Hispanic--had fired shots as well, there was no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that any of the 23 bullets in Russell’s body was the one fired by Brelo that took the Black man’s life.

So Officer Brelo will not see a day behind bars for the deaths of an unarmed Black man and woman although he remains on leave without pay. No charges have been filed against Jergens for his abuse. But he was forced to resign from the force.

             Who knows? Someday, maybe we’ll read about some cop actually doing the time for doing the crime.

Cops not ready for prime crime

 

    At some point, policemen everywhere are going to realize that there are cameras everywhere. That what they do in public will stay in public...forever. So far, there are too many cops who haven't gotten the point. They continue to perform as cops did back in the good old days when cameras were an inconvenience to carry around. The following is my Chicago Defender column on the subject.

 

Shoot, cops caught on candid camera

By Monroe Anderson

                 Michael Slager is the latest cop to get caught on camera starring in America’s most alarming reality TV series ever: Trigger happy cops playing judge and jury, publicly executing unarmed Black males.

                  Officer Slager was too arrogant, too cold-blooded or too stupid to realize that we now live in the Era of the Candid Camera. You virtually can’t do anything, in public or private, with absolute certainty that it won’t be recorded and that it won’t go public.

    There are porn sites dedicated to videos of ex-girlfriends performing some of the most intimate sexual acts imaginable posted by rejected men seeking revenge. There are spy cameras atop streetlight poles, speed cameras hanging out with overhead stop lights at street intersections and surveillance cameras in shops and stores, all aimed to capture and record anyone breaking the law. And there are heroes, like bystander Feidin Santana, who risk their safety to record cops, like Michael Slager, who choose to use living, breathing Black men, like Walter Scott, for target practice.

In the past few days, we’ve all seen what is nothing less than a snuff flick of Slager firing eight shots at a fleeing Scott, hitting him in the back five times, then handcuffing the 50-year-old man’s motionless body before retrieving and dropping, what is suspected to be, a Taser gun next to it.

The North Charleston cop wasn’t the only shooter featured this week in a viral video.

We also saw a 44-year-old Black man shot to death by a 73-year-old white man in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Robert Bates, an insurance executive, who volunteers as a reserve Tulsa County deputy sheriff, claims he mistakenly shot Eric Harris with his handgun, when he meant to shoot him with his Taser gun.

As Harris is tackled, lying face-down on the ground with a deputy’s knee pinning his head, a gunshot rings out and Bates says: "Oh, I shot him. I'm sorry."

Harris screams: "He shot me. Oh, my God," and a deputy replies: "You f---ing ran. Shut the f--- up."

When Harris says he's losing his breath, another deputy replies, "F--- your breath."

Harris was pronounced dead an hour later in a Tulsa hospital.

             A sunglass camera worn by one of the deputies recorded the video of Harris’ April 2nd arrest. Against the wishes of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s department, prosecutors charged Bates, a pay-to-play cop, with second-degree manslaughter. Slager has been charged with first-degree murder.

            The Zion cop who shot and killed 17-year-old Justus Howell Easter weekend is on paid administrative leave. No cameras recorded the circumstances that resulted in Howell being shot twice in the back, allowing Zion police to come up with one of the usual explanations: The teenager had a handgun.

Eyewitnesses say they saw no weapon. An investigation is underway. No video has surfaced so the Zion police have caught a lucky break. Two-thirds of all Americans have smartphones, which means all but a third of us are now armed with cameras and dangerous to cops who still believe they can do what they’ve done to Black men for generations without notice or record.

             On December 4, 1968, Fred Hampton, 21, was murdered by while asleep in his West Side apartment during a Chicago police raid. Mark Clark, 22, was also killed during the predawn raid where police fired 90-99 shots.

In 1972, never quite able to get over the killing of Hampton and Clark and incensed because Chicago police were harassing two friends and supporters, who were both dentists, Rep. Ralph Metcalfe broke away from Mayor Richard J. Daley, assembling a blue ribbon panel and issuing a congressional study the next year entitled “The Misuse of Police Authority in Chicago.”

Not much resulted from that report. Between 1972 and 1991, Detective Commander Jon Burge and his midnight crew, tortured 110 Black criminal suspects, forcing false confessions. Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced yesterday (Tuesday) that he backs a $5.5 million reparations package for Burge’s victims. And an ACLU report released last month found that last summer, when the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices were all the rage, the CPD made more than a quarter of a million stops that did not result in arrests--four times that of people stopped in New York.

The CPD continues to be suspect. Two days ago, federal authorities confirmed that the FBI is investing the death of Lequan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was shot down in a barrage of bullets. The Chicago teen allegedly was wielding a knife. A dashboard camera from a squad car recorded the action and the shooter has been reassigned to desk duty.

If I were to tell you that neither the Scott nor McDonald shooting would be a case if there weren’t moving pictures, would you take my word for it?

Well, here are a few more words for the wise: Justice is beautiful, but blindfolded. So always keep your smartphone charged in case you need to show her what is or is not happening.

Who arrested religion in Indiana?

 

    Indiana's Religious Freedom law has triggered a spirited debate throughout the nation and may be the next right wing attack on civil rights. Here's my Chicago Defender Column on the controversy.

 

What’s bad for the gays will be bad for the Blacks

 

Monroe Anderson

Defender Columnist

 

If you haven’t been paying attention to the firestorm over Indiana’s “freedom of religion” law, it’s time that you do. Our neighboring state’s new legislation reflects Black America’s past and could easily come to mirror our future.

The bill is rightly being described as a license to discriminate. It allows anyone with a business to not do business with anyone they choose by claiming they believe it violates their religious values.

We’ve seen this play before.

God and religion have been used as the guiding principle in overt discrimination against Blacks throughout virtually all of our nation’s history. The KKK burned crosses before lynching Black men.  Bigoted Christians cited the curse of Ham, the father of Canaan in Genesis, to justify slavery. “Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”

Ham is believed to have been a Black man.

Unequal public schools for Blacks were the will of the Almighty opined Georgia Gov. Allen Candler in 1901, “God made them negroes and we cannot by education make them white folks.”

Nor did God cotton to miscegenation.  Richard Loving, a white man, was sentenced to one year in prison for marrying Mildred Jeter, a Black woman. The couple had broken Virginia's law, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, by going to Washington, D.C. to get married then naively returning to home.

Apparently the Lovings had broken the Holy Father’s law as well. “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents,” wrote Judge Leon M. Bazile in his 1959 ruling. “The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act does not mention same-sex mixing but it’s arguably aimed at those with a certain sexual orientation. Last year, the same-sex marriage ban was overturned by a federal court. Some pouting proponents, who wanted the ban to stand, headed straight for the governor and the Indiana General Assembly to make sure there would be a freedom of religion law on guard to protect bigotry, as they knew it.

The state’s RFRA is yet another Republican head-fake where conservatives pretend that they’re not doing anything wrong while they’re definitely doing something wrong. Just like the GOP’s scheme to suppress Black participation at the ballot box through voter I.D. laws, the religious freedom law would allow business owners the right to use their faith as an excuse not to serve lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals, aka LGBTs--or hire or rent to them.

Black Americans know all too well how that game is played and if the new rules remain legalized then it won’t be long before it’s played on us. Again.

The legislation Gov. Pence signed last week prohibits state laws that “substantially burden” a religious institution, businesses and associations from following religious beliefs. The new law in effect serves as a legal shield for people, associations and businesses big and small from being sued for discrimination if they claim their religion made them do it.

    The uproar that followed caught Indiana’s governor off guard. He reflectively characterized it as a battle between religious freedom and gay rights, assuming he knew who’d win that fight.

Gov. Pence, and his overly weighted Republican General Assembly, quickly discovered that they were wrong. Besides the sign-carrying LGBT protesters, Indiana’s state lawmakers heard disapproval from other states, businesses, sports organizations, future conventioneers and social media.   

The CEOs from Eli Lilly and Co., Anthem and Indiana University Health were among nine of Indiana’s largest employers pointing out that discriminatory legislation was bad for business. Seattle’s mayor and Connecticut’s governor banned their employees from traveling to Indiana to do business. Indianapolis-based Angie’s List CEO announced that his company was going to halt plans for a $40 million expansion in the state’s capital. The president of NCAA, whose Final Four competition takes place in Indianapolis this weekend, said yesterday  that Indiana's new "religious freedom" law goes against what higher education and America is all about. And there is, of course, a social media response: On Twitter the hashtag is #boycottindiana.

All that outrage has focused Gov. Pence’s mind like a hanging. He was claiming that Indiana’s RFRA law was no different from the one in Illinois and the other 18 states that passed one. Pence left out the part about those other states having a separate law that specifically protected LGBTs from discrimination, while his state does not. You can be fired in Indiana for being gay.

Over the weekend, he was asserting that the law wouldn’t be changed. Yesterday he held a press conference to announce that maybe it would. He’s having his legislature revamp the onerous law.

“Clearly. Clearly, there’s been misunderstanding and confusion and mischaracterization of this law,” Gov. Pence said. “I abhor discrimination.”

Right. Don’t stop paying attention yet. Arkansas passed its own religious freedom law yesterday.

Post post-racial America

 

Half a century after the Selma March, race still matters in America as events in Selma, Alabama, Madison, Wisconsin and Norman, Oklahoma demonstrated. Here's my take in my Chicago Defender column

 

From Selma to Madison to Norman

Monroe Anderson

Defender Columnist

 

The march, a shooting and a song summed up this past weekend just how far this nation has gone and just how far it has yet to go.

 

The nation’s first African American president stood near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to mark the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” one of the most important feats of the Civil Rights Movement. Out of the epic confrontation between forces of peace and progress and the agents of brute force, Blacks won the right to vote in the South.

 

“We just need to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still cast it’s long shadow upon us,” President Barack Obama told the integrated crowd of thousands who had gathered to commemorate, along with him, the Selma to Montgomery March. “We know the march is not yet over. We know the race is not yet won.”

 

As if to underscore the president’s point, some 898 miles north from Selma, in Madison, Wisconsin, another white cop shot and killed another unarmed black teenager and some 783 miles northwest of Selma, in Norman, Oklahoma, a YouTube video went viral exposing tuxedo-clad white frat boys chanting a bus-trip song about racial exclusion and lynching.

 

The lyrics to the song were not exactly surprising, considering that Sigma Alpha Epsilon is 159 years old and is the only national fraternity founded in the Antebellum South. The fraternity boasts on its website that during the Civil War 92 percent of SAE members fought for the Confederate states.

 

In case you missed the video or didn’t catch the lyrics, here they are in all of their good ol’ boy, old-fashioned, garden-variety racist glory:

"There will never be a ni**** in SAE.

There will never be a ni**** in SAE.

You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me

There will never be a ni**** in SAE."

 

I find this alarming because this isn’t a bunch of curmudgeonly, bitter old white men hating on hope and change but young guys who are white America’s future. After these frat boys graduate from college, they’ll move on into the corporate pipeline where some day some of them will have the power to hire and fire with “there will never be a ni**** “ playing like the soundtrack to their lives in their heads.

 

The SAE chanters may represent a throwback to mid-century American racism, but times have changed. Rather than stonewall the Unheard, a group of Black student activists at OU who had learned of the video and posted it online, or buy time with a three-month investigation, David Boren, the university president, immediately shut the fraternity down.

 

The national headquarters of SAE, which prides itself in having a membership of “gentlemen and leaders.” followed Boren’s lead and immediately suspended the OU chapter.

 

With no blood thirsty state troopers or Selma police waiting to do battle, what was supposed to be a march was so well attended by so many movers and shakers that it turned into an extravaganza. Not only was America’s current president there but also former President George W. Bush, along with Capitol Hill lawmakers galore.

 

It was plainly easier to take photo-ops  than it has been to pass a new voter’s rights law that would repair the damage the five right wing activists on the Supreme Court did two years ago to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that southern states that had historically suppressed the Black vote no longer had to prove they were no longer suppressing the Black vote. Since then, southern states like Texas has come up with all sorts of creative, new-fangled ways to diminish the number of Blacks and Browns casting their votes at the ballot box.

 

We can vote now but we can’t stop the unjustifiable killings of black men and boys by frightened or ferocious cops.

 

Even with the “Black Lives Matter” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests becoming this generation’s civil rights movement, policemen across the nation continue to create more martyrs.

 

Friday night a Madison policeman shot Tony Robinson, an unarmed biracial teen, five times in the chest. The 19-year-old Robinson had a file on his with a conviction last year for armed robbery and a diagnosis that he suffered from attention-deficit disorder and anxiety and depression.

 

Officer Matt Kenny, a 12-year veteran, has been put on paid administrative leave while the Wisconsin Department of Justice investigates the Robinson’s death. Kenny was involved in another fatal shooting in 2007, that was found justified; a so-called suicide by cop case.

 

So while Selma was throwing a grand party, 2,000 protesters, mainly Wisconsin students, have been peacefully marching in Madison while chanting, “Black lives matter.”

 

Some students’ chants are far better than others.

 

African Americans are caught between a union and a Republican Place

 

Rauner’s union battle in black and white

By Monroe Anderson

DEFENDER COLUMNIST

   

If anything can that raise a Republican’s ire almost as much as a Black man in the White House, it’s labor unions.

 

So few should have been surprised when the new Republican governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, came up with an ingenious initiative to further weaken the state’s labor unions.

 

During last week’s State of the State address, Rauner said he would like to see “empowerment zones” in counties across the state where voters would decide whether unions could exist and workers should be obligated to pay associated dues. Given the governor’s party affiliation and the fact that he’s a one percenter, it’s easy to guess who he is zeroing in on empowering and who he’s zoning out.

 

Making the standard-issue, corporation-coddling Republican argument that the smaller the union presence, the greater the number of jobs, on Monday, Rauner signed Executive Order 15-13, which denies labor the right to deduct dues from state employees who benefit from union activities but don’t want to pay to support them.

 

As our newly constituted Congress is reaffirming, Republicans may be lousy at governing but they are masters of code wording, dog whistling and name-calling.

 

When the GOP set out to do some serious union busting by stripping organized labor of its funding, power and influence, for example, the words destruction and dismemberment were spoken mainly in quiet rooms while those southern states and Midwestern ones where Republicans ruled went about their dirty deeds. Instead, Republicans insisted these would be “right-to-work” states.

 

Rauner is just the latest of Republican governors, who after immediately taking office, has made it his mission to kneecap the unions. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder was not halfway through his first term when he signed a bill making Michigan the 24th right to work state in the nation. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has forged his anti-union alchemy into gold by cutting the collective bargaining rights of most of his state’s public unions and transforming himself into one of the current shiny objects among the potential 2016 Republican presidential nominee contenders.

 

Like Rauner, both Walker and Snyder asserted that their union body slams would mean more jobs for their states. So far, the reasons for Michigan’s modest job increases are debatable and Wisconsin’s job growth has been so slow that Walker grasped at one of the right wing’s threadbare straws blaming it on Obamacare.

 

Union jobs have always been considered “good jobs.” They have also been good for America. Whether it’s the 40-week, paid vacation, pensions, health insurance or higher wages, over the decades labor unions are directly and indirectly responsible for raising the standard of living for millions but cutting into the precious bottom lines of corporations as people and the people who over-reward themselves for running them. Labor unions also fail to endear themselves with Republicans by being important campaign contributors for the Democrats.

 

Unfortunately, for Black Americans, we find ourselves between the labor unions and a Republican place.  

 

One out of every five working Blacks are government employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, When the Republican’s national obsession with austerity was running at fever pitch six years ago, governors across America reduced their state’s payroll through mass layoffs of state employees. African Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democrat, took a disproportionate hit, becoming the most fired and at risk of being the least rehired.

 

From the beginning of the Great Migration until now, it’s been a continuous struggle for African Americans in Chicago to get either contractors or the labor unions to cut them in on the action. When black skilled craftsmen, who had come from generations of bricklayers from the south, moved north, by edit, union bosses blocked them from working on the best jobs.

 

History has stubbornly repeated itself. Lilly-white trade unions have been as much a part of the wink and nod society as the boardrooms they take on. Both have been almost exclusively populated with white men. Both have been perfectly satisfied with that chummy arrangement for far too long.

 

Even now, too often when you see construction companies at work on big projects throughout Chicago, you don’t see a crew that looks like the residents of the city. Even with the implementation of set-aside programs, you don’t see big black construction firms getting their fair share of the jobs.

 

Of course all unions are not alike but the battle between the governor and the unions may not be an easy one for Blacks in Illinois to join. It may simply be a case of going with the devil we knew or the devil we’re getting to know.

 

Is Obama's budget a GOP buster?

            

       

President Obama's Budget

 

By Monroe Anderson

DEFENDER COLUMNIST    

 

        So just when America’s richest of the rich was uncorking the champagne and gorging themselves on imported caviar, it looks like the Commander-in-Chief has declared that the Class War is on again.

The opening volley was fired 35 years ago with what George H.W. Bush accurately described as “voodoo economics.” Since then, this nation’s super wealthy have  been getting super wealthier, much of the middle class has been getting poor and the poor have been getting super poor.

A study in October by economists, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, reported that the share of the total income earned by America’s top one percent at the end of 2012 was 22 percent. Back in the late ‘70s, before Reaganomics and it’s trickle down theory, the share of earnings by top one percent was less than 10 percent.

Sticking to his “a rising tide lifts all boats” manner of governing, there was little in President Barack Obama’s proposed annual budget that would pointedly give financially strapped Blacks much hope.

There was no direct budgetary lifeline to the 11.4 percent of African Americans nationwide who are still unemployed and nothing straight up for the 25 percent of Black Chicagoans who are also in that same boat, either.

And, once again, there is no targeted help from the man who assiduously stays in character as all the people’s president--so much so, that some might accuse the nation’s first Black head of household at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with periodically doing back flips to assure those Americans who suffer from negrophobia that he is not practicing negrophilia.

But while there was not enough in the president’s $4 trillion budget proposal to trigger right-winger’s whining about preferential treatment for Blacks and other “takers,” there was more than enough fair share tax proposals aimed at the “makers” for Republicans to pronounce it DOA.

Without openly saying that he really wants to spread the wealth, the president said, “I want to work with Congress to replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America.”

             He also let Republicans know that he wanted to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and that he did not want to spend more on financing the military-industrial complex unless conservatives were willing to spend more on domestic programs that repair rungs on the economic ladder and expand the safety networks for those who have fallen on hard times.

President Obama is shooting for a national debate on whether we should be growing our middle class or allowing our fat cats to get fatter.

Monday’s budget was aimed at kick-starting the debate. Items on President Obama’s wish list included calls for laying a tax on the banks too big to fail, raising of the capital gains tax, limiting of corporate tax deductions, imposing  a new tax on inheritances and taxing of overseas profits held abroad.

Although it is ostensibly a budget for 2016, it is also a game plan for next year’s presidential and congressional elections, meant to serve as the playbook for a consistent message for all Democratic candidates. It’s a rerun of Bill Clinton’s successful message that “it’s the economy, stupid.”

As soon as the president released his blueprint, the conservative talking points flew into action fast and furious.

“We’re six years into the Obama economic policies, and he’s proposing more of the same, more tax increases that kill investment and jobs, and policies which are hardly aspirational,” said Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the GOP’s go-to guy on keeping it all for the Superrich.  “I think the President is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics. This top-down redistribution doesn’t work.”

“Like the president’s previous budgets, this plan never balances – ever,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “It contains no solutions to address the drivers of our debt, and no plan to fix our entire tax code to help foster growth and create jobs.”

             Echoed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:  “What we saw this morning was another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the Left and never balances — ever.”

             Never ever allowing an opportunity to blame it on Obama, Republicans didn’t miss a beat.

According to a Pew Research Center’s report released in 2012, the average Black household wealth fell by more than half, to $5,677, while white household wealth fell 16 percent to $113, 149 between 2005 and 2009. That was during the Bush years, right before the Obama administration.  

But the actual beginning the decline in Black household wealth meant nothing to Republican Donald Trump, who has not yet concluded that Obama was not born in Kenya.

“People are having a much lower income right now than when he took office. I mean, that to me is a really terrible statistic and if you happen to be African-American, it’s a total disaster. So what has President Obama done for African-Americans?” asked Trump.  “Nothing.”

             Well said by one of those one percenters.

A Black mayor for Chicago is not in the air

 

 

 

 

 

 This column on the Chicago mayor's race is my second of the weekly columns I'm writing for the Chicago Defender.

 

 

White, Brown or Black?

                By Monroe Anderson

                     Defender Columnist

 

 

When the last vote is counted after next month’s mayoral election, no one is going to be surprised that, once again, Chicago’s next occupant on City Hall’s fifth floor will not be black.

    President Barack Obama’s radio endorsement of incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday was one serious predictor. But the city’s history during the past quarter century is even better.

         For a few in-vain months, it looked like things might be different this year. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was an odds -on favorite to get in the mayoral game and return the throne to Chicago’s largest ethnic bloc. An Illinois Observer poll in March had Preckwinkle leading Mayor Emanuel, by eight percentage points, 40-32.  But just before hopes got too high, President Preckwinkle announced in July that she would stay put right where she was. Days after she dropped out, a Sun-Times poll had Karen Lewis, who was President of the Chicago Teacher’s Union and a queen-size thorn in Emanuel’s side, with a nine- percentage point lead over the mayor, 45 to 36. In October it was announced that Lewis had a cancerous brain tumor and she, too, would not be a candidate.

That leaves those who would like to see a third African American mayor in Chicago with two choices, perennial candidate William Dock Walls or self-made multimillionaire Willie Wilson. Neither of the two black men is The One.

William “Dock” Walls, whose false claim to fame is that he was Mayor Harold Washington’s closest confidant, has run and lost races for city clerk, mayor, Congress and governor for pretty much the same reasons--he has no money, no managerial experience and has never held a political office. Willie Wilson, who is a real pro in the business world, has run campaign ads and taken policy positions--such as pledging to reopen Meigs Field and to save city funds by forcing uniformed police to abandon their squad cars for public transportation when coming to work--that expose him as a pure political rookie.

    Right after Washington won the primary in 1982, the Rev. Jesse Jackson commandeered Harold’s microphone at the victory celebration to inform friend and foe that “now it’s our turn, it’s our turn, it’s our turn.”  

That was then. Now it’s clear that for black Chicago, our turn has come and gone.

History has been repeating itself since Aldermen Tim Evans, Dorothy Tillman and Bobby Rush constructed the mythology following Washington’s sudden death that Evans was the late mayor’s heir apparent. Since then, the list of black wanna-be mayors intent on succeeding Washington and Eugene Sawyer goes from the ridiculous to the sublime--Sheila Jones, a disciple of the political quack, Lyndon LaRouche; the late Joe E. Gardner, who was a commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District; Congressman Danny Davis; Roland Burris, who was then the former Illinois attorney general who ran as an independent candidate; Jesse Jackson Jr., who was the second congressional district representative, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun; and the late Appellate Court Judge R. Eugene Pincham.

Then, as now, any talk of having a black mayor is merely magical thinking. Unlike in the short-lived era of the Evans urban legend, there is no pretense of an heir apparent, not even a great black hope in the air.

It all went poof in the spring of 1988 when political allies of Evans, the Coalition to Let the People Decide in 1989, filed a lawsuit to force a special election. Wanting time to heal the schism in our base, Mayor Sawyer approached Evans calling for his support, promising that after two terms, he’d stepped down allowing the 4th Ward alderman to become a real heir apparent.

Evans’ refusal to play nice, and therefore assure that it would be our turn, turned out okay for him. He was awarded a judgeship and has gone on to become the first black judge of the Cook County Circuit Court. It didn’t quite work out as well for Chicago’s African Americans as an ethnic group.

We could have been like Atlanta.

Since Maynard Jackson was first elected in 1974, every one of the city’s succeeding mayors has been African American--Andrew Young, Jackson for a third term, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin and now Kasim Reed.

Rather than whining about not being respected and treated fairly while protesting about and begging for an equitable share of city contracts and jobs, we could have had men and women in the mayor’s seat that treated us like we should be treating us. Rather than being upset about our schools being closed and our teachers taking the biggest hit in layoffs, we could have been the masters of our own fate.

Instead, come February 24, we can only hope for a mayoral run-off. If Jesus “Chuy” Garcia wins in the run-off, we can hope that he’ll treat us like he’ll treat the city’s Hispanics. If Ald. Bob Fioretti wins, we can hope that he’ll treat us like he treats Chicago’s Italians. We can hope that either man, like Washington, will be fairer than fair.

And we can continue to recall the good ol’ days when Harold was mayor and it was our turn.

.

 

Cop shoots armed man: Sees reverse prosecution

I'm now writing a weekly column for the legendary Chicago Defender. This is my first one.

 

 

Justice Needs New Eyes

By Monroe Anderson

Chicago Defender

 

 

When it comes to black men in America, justice isn’t blind--it’s cockeyed.

 

For the latest evidence of this fundamental fact, take a look at what happened in suburban Park Forest. In July of 2013, the cops were called after an unruly old man at the suburb’s Victory Centre assisted living facility refused to voluntarily go to get checked out for a suspected urinary tract infection.

 

By the time the police arrived, the old man, possibly experiencing dementia, was leaning on his cane with one hand and yielding a 7-inch fillet knife with the other. He was ordered to drop the weapon. He refused as police rushed his room. One of the cops attempted to taze him but missed. The next cop fired, hitting the old man with four beanbag rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun. Hours later, the old man died.

 

We’ve seen this scenario in one sequence or another so many times before and since that it is nothing more than a cliche: The hapless perp goes to the morgue. The warrior-cop goes free.

 

No crime here, folks, now move along.

 

And for more than five months, it looked like it was going to be the same old story.

 

Then last April, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez did something virtually no other American prosecutor had done in the 461 deadly police confrontations that had happened in 2013. Rather than come up with the usual conclusion that it was “justifiable homicide,” Alvarez accused the trigger-pulling cop of  using “unjustified” and “unreasonable” force and charged him with reckless conduct.

 

And that’s when the cock-eyed Justice appears to have reared her ugly head. In this case, the cop squeezing off the rounds, Craig Taylor, was black. The man on the wrong end of the barrel, John Wrana, was white.

 

There were a few other wrinkles making the Park Forest case different from the standard-issue deadly force police encounter. Wrana was a 95-year-old World War II veteran. Married with five children, Taylor is an 11-year-veteran of the Park Forest Police Department with an exemplary record. He is also the only black cop on the force.

 

During last week’s trial, prosecutors argued that Park Forest police could have, should have waited Wrana out; that they had other options besides Tazing or bean-bagging a frail 95-year-old man.

 

In testifying in his own defense, Taylor trotted out the law officer’s old tried and blue. He said that he was ordered by his superior to fire on Wrana and that he was following police procedure. Taylor claimed that he feared for his life therefore his actions were justifiable. “When I saw John Wrana with the knife in his hand,” he said, “threatening to kill me and my fellow officers, I was afraid, in fear of my life, and felt I had to do something.”

 

Whether the law thinks Taylor did the right thing or not will be determined by February 5. His bench trial at the Markham Courthouse ended Friday and Cook County Circuit Court Judge Luciano Panici promised he would hand down a verdict by then.

 

Whatever the judgement, it is easy for a casual observer of American justice to find this case curious. How is it that an armed white man in Park Forest is accidentally killed by a police weapon that is intended to be non-lethal, and the one black cop involved in the incident goes to trial?--while the outcome has been totally different elsewhere?

 

In Missouri, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed black teen, Michael Brown, at least six times, twice to the head, in front of eye witnesses. Even though 16 out of the 18 eyewitnesses testified that Brown had his hands up, when he was shot to death, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch presented a case before the grand jury that was so incompetent or insincere, it that looked like he was the defense attorney for the white cop and the prosecutor to the black teen.

In New York, there was a now famous video showing police gang tackling Eric Garner for selling single cigarettes. We saw office Daniel Pantaleo ride the black father of five, grandfather of two to the hard pavement. We heard Garner say “I can’t breath.” Like McColloch, Staten Island District Attorney Daniel M. Donovan Jr. managed not to be competent or dedicate enough to get the grand jury to find probable cause.

In Ohio, we also saw another video. This time it was a 12-year-old black boy, Tamir Rice,  playing cops and robbers on a Cleveland playground with a toy gun all by himself,  when he was shot and killed by a white cop,Timothy Loehmann, two seconds after his squad pulled up to the child. The trigger happy cop has been canned but has not yet been brought before a grand jury.

 

Maybe Justice needs new eyes that see more clearly the injustices being perpetuated in our legal system day in and day out.

 

Obama Luck--a Three-Minute Fiction

 

    I've been planning to try my hand at NPR's Three-Minute Fiction since it first started. Each time, before I knew it, the deadline had come and gone. It almost got away from me this year. But on the day of the deadline, I sat down and in a little less than three hours of writing and rewriting produced this short story. I named it "Obama Luck."

 

Obama Luck

 

            Slipping off to sneak a smoke was the first of The Man’s secret habits. Only I knew about the second. 

            I learned of this compulsion on Day Two after I was summoned into the Double O.

            “Where can we go in this place if we want a little privacy?” The Man asked.

            I knew what he meant. I was one of the first agents assigned to Renegade’s detail, shortly after he became a candidate and the death threats started flooding in. I was one of the few agents who hadn’t kicked the habit so we’d sidle off, away from the prying press, to some secluded place.

“Flynt, I’ve got a top secret mission for you,” The Man said on Day Two.

            “Yes, Mr. President,” I answered, perplexed. Secret Service never gets any secret missions. The Langley spooks keep them all for themselves.”

“Whenever the Powerball tops 200 mil, I want you to buy 7 quick picks.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I want you to buy 7 Powerball quick picks whenever the lottery hits 200 million or more.  Privileged. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Now where can a couple of guys go for solace and a smoke?”

“I’ll scout around the Castle, sir.”

“Thanks. I’m still trying to find the privy.”

Last November, when I handed him his quick picks, The Man looked me straight in the eye. “Michelle doesn’t know I’m doing this.”           

I shrugged; surprised he’d share that with me.  Our relationship wasn’t close, really. I hadn’t told him that my wife had left me or that my house was underwater.

“If she knew, I’d never hear this end of it.”

I nodded.

“She’s funny that way. She believes there’s only so much luck to go around.  After I won the Senate seat she insisted I kick the lottery.”

“Sir?”

“She said I’d spent my share of luck. I shouldn’t tempt fate.”

“Yes sir.”

“In a superstitious sort of way, I went along, just in case she was right. That was until Roberts swore me in.”

“Sir?”

“The more I learned about what I’d inherited, the more I knew I wasn’t that lucky.”

So that was why I’d been running those errands for The Man for the past three years. No matter where we were, if we were in country, whenever the Power Ball went big, I’d drop by a different Seven Eleven, liquor or grocery store and make the pick up.

He smashed out the butt, and then sighed heavily.

“Flynt, I’ve got a major, major dilemma.”

“How major, sir?”

“Two-hundred and fifty major.”

“Sir?”

“That Powerball winner…the one who hasn’t stepped forward in the past three months to claim the winnings.

            I nodded. The ticket was purchased at the convenience store I’d bought his seven from. At first I thought it was coincidence but as time passed by, I’d begun to wonder.

“I’m the winner.”

“Wow!”

“Do you see my dilemma?”

“I see a lucky man.”

“If I come forward, Republicans will have a field day. I’ll be as rich as Romney. I’ll lose the votes of half the Americans who dreamed of winning with that ticket.”

“If you lose, Mr. Obama, you’ve got a quarter bil to fall back on. If you win, you can claim your $250,000,000 and happily…”

I was about to say, “retire,” but kept it to myself.

Obama nodded and I grinned before lighting his cigarette. I knew it would be our last smoke.  My luck had changed. I was about to cash in on my pension and a big paycheck. I had a secret to share.

Enquiring minds would want to know.

 

I admit this piece of fiction is whimical. I think of it as a bit of O'Henry meets Hemingway. The 9th Round winner, who was announced on NPR yesterday, was Marc Sheehan. His story, The Dauphin, was just as creeative but touched on a heart-breaking challenge for many Americans. I faced this heart break with my mother for years before she died five years ago.