When I joined the NFB back in 1969, I truly believed that if enough
blind people got together, we could change public attitudes. When I
began working in the Orientation and Training Center, I believed that
if I were diligent and persuasive I could change people's attitudes
about blindness. Today, after 50 years as a blind man, 46 years in
blind organizations, 40 years in the field of work for the blind, the
greatest change in attitudes has been between my own two ears. Oh
sure, things have improved slightly for blind and disabled people.
But after 25 years of ADA working to "educate" the public, statistics
show an actual decrease in employment among the disabled population.
I'll say that again. With all it's efforts to change public attitudes
toward disabled people, ADA has not been effective in changing
employers attitudes toward hiring disabled workers.
Our training program at the Department of Services for the Blind is a
residential program. When I was director, we worked with students
from 8:00 A.M. until 4:00 P.M., five days per week with many evening
events and weekend outings. Students entered the program and lived in
the Dorm for 6 to 9 months. We had a staff of 8, including myself,
and 4 dorm coordinators. That came to 12 folks working with the
students. Add to that 1 secretary and we had 13 total employees and a
student body of 17. 6 to 9 months and at the end of this concentrated
training I very often turned to my staff and said about a graduating
student, "I wish they were just now coming into the program". We
presented a trophy, a statue, upon graduation. Each student entered
the program when an opening occurred, and left, or graduated, when
staff and their VRC felt they had gained all they could from the
training. So we held a celebratory luncheons in the honor of each new
graduate and presented the little statue. On it was engraved their
name and the dates of their stay in the program. Below were the
words; Skills Attitudes Motivation.
We called it the SAM Award, or the Sammy. Some members of my staff
felt I should not present the Sammy to any student who had not
attained a certain level of competency in all of the skills areas we
taught. They felt that those students who really did achieve high
levels, would feel the award was meaningless. I came to believe
differently. I put together a short sermon in which I challenged the
graduating student to put their Sammy in a prominent spot in their
home and look at it every day. "When you think of the words on your
Sammy, Skills, Attitudes, and Motivation, you need to remind yourself
that you did not graduate from this program, you graduated into the
rest of your life. Finally, remember this, if you are not constantly
developing your Skills, improving your Attitudes and Motivating
yourself, it's a pretty good sign that you're dead".
And so Sam represented a beginning. But I never convinced some of my
staff, and I watched as many of our graduates went forth into the
world and applied for Care-Givers and all of the free services
available. If one of the program's goals was to reduce costs to the
taxpayers and promote self reliance, we were a standout failure. We
tweaked the program, adding new elements, changing our approach,
involving successful former students, on and on, without any
significant difference. And yet, years later I meet former students,
never having worked, living in subsidized housing, needing care
givers, and stuck on SSI, students who completed the OTC program, and
they grab me and thank me for all I did for them. I think I have an
idea of what went through Barak Obama's mind when he was told he'd
been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
And yet, some students did grow during their stay in the program. And
they, and a few others, did and do continue to grow. But our Sighted
Culture is against them. Against all of us disabled folks.
The Establishment will say, "We open our arms to these poor disabled
folks, and do what we can for them". They are totally unable to see
their prejudice toward the, "Less Fortunate".
While I did manage to pull myself away from my original belief that I
was the Super Savior of the Blind, I was never successful in changing
some of my staff's, "Rescuer Complex".
Society tends to dismiss the impact of subtle under currents. But the
ones being discriminated against are very well tuned into them. I go
crazy when I'm in a conversation with someone who feels they must
announce, "I haven't a prejudiced bone in my body". I used to say, "I
envy you. I fight my prejudices every single day".
I finally gave up on that approach. I feel sometimes like the fellow
pushing the boulder up the steep hill, only to have it slip past him
and roll back to the bottom. Perhaps the majority likes things the
way they are. They have their little Ruling Class to tell them when
to jump, and how high, and they have those folks, like the Colored and
the Disabled, to pick on, and to "help". Maybe that's all we can hope
for. I mean, hope for from our sighted all white society. Most days
I figure I just let them do their thing and I do mine.
Carl Jarvis
And everyone is talking about this stuf and writing about it as if this
is
new! My God, do these young reporters actually know why the Black
Panthers
formed and what they were talking about? If only we had them today. They
began in California where it was legal to openly carry guns and that's
what
they did. They patrolled black neighborhoods with guns in order to defend
residents from police brutality. They are not the radicals who threw
bombs
and tried to destroy buildings. That was mostly young white radicals who
were deluded into thinking that they could stop the war by bombing the
pentagon. The Black Panthers wanted only to defend their people within
their
communities. Well, I started reading a very long academic history of the
group, and now I've been sidetracked by 2 other books. But the leadership
was killed by cops and the FBI. Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed
while
he slept. And today, Black Lives matter does peaceful noisey protests
and
they're being spied upon by our security state and arrested for
demonstrating. And, in the same way the blind organizations keep saying
that
they will educate the sighted world someday, black people say that they
will
overcome the system of institutional racism some day.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2015 3:30 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Macho Cop not fit to wear the uniform
No doubt about it. Sandra Bland was victimized by a cop not fit to wear
the
uniform.
I have done something I've avoided doing 99% of the time. I listened to
the
recording, several times, of Sandra Bland being cornered in a cat and
mouse
game where she was the prey.
As I say, I avoid these reports as much as I can because I become so
outrageously angry. And there's nothing I can do after the fact.
Furthermore, all I need to do is to wander around my own area and talk to
White folks about discrimination, to get the message that prejudice still
rules.
"I'm not prejudiced," an elderly White client told us. "But I don't know
why them Coloreds have to push in where they're not wanted."
Thank goodness he's not prejudiced.
"They say they're as good as the rest of us," a waitress in our favorite
eatery told us. "So why are so many of them selling and using drugs and
getting into fights and getting themselves arrested?"
She went on to exclaim that we don't have that sort of violence and drug
crime in Sequim. Ah yes, Sequim. A retirement town of about 9,000
almost
all White residents. Mostly older. Cathy and I serve a great number of
these people, in their apartments and homes. Sequim does not have any
area
one might consider to be slums. No Colored Ghetto. No hookers walking
up
and down in front of the Penny Arcades.
No Arcades. No pimps jockeying with one another for the choice street
corners for their Ladies. No drugs...oops! Wait a second. A couple of
years back some 32 "users" were rounded up and booked in Jefferson County
court. They were "captured" in the small, almost all White community of
Quilcene, about 25 miles East of Sequim. . Little Quilcene, closest
town
to my home, boasts a population of 2,500. I swear they're counting the
local cows and horses. But 32 arrests out of some 2,500 people, cows and
horses? That's a huge percentage to ignore when bragging about our
"clean"
county.
A client of ours told us that he never went to the doctor. "I keep a
positive frame of mind and that keeps me healthy", he bragged. He died
at
73 of a diabetic coma. Is America killing itself by denying our
prejudices?
We sure can't have them removed until we admit that we have them.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/25/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
black.
Taibbi writes: "The Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian
Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and
threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's 'courtesy
policy.'"
Sandra Bland died at the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, on
July 17.
(photo: Jay Janner/AP)
ALSO SEE: Jail Where Sandra Bland Died Has History of State Rules
Violations Sandra Bland Was Murdered By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
25 July 15
Suicide or not, police are responsible for Sandra Bland's death
So news broke yesterday that authorities in Waller County, Texas, have
"full faith" that Sandra Bland committed suicide. They said there was
"no evidence of a struggle" on the body of the 28-year-old
African-American woman who was ludicrously jailed last week after an
alleged lane change violation.
In related news, the Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian
Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and
threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's "courtesy
policy." The state said there was "no evidence" yet of criminal
behavior on Encina's part.
So barring something unexpected, we know now how this is going to play
out in the media.
Many news outlets are going to engage in an indirect version of the
usual blame-the-victim game by emphasizing the autopsy finding of
suicide, questioning Bland's mental health history, and by
highlighting the reports of marijuana found in her system.
Beyond that, we can expect a slew of chin-scratching "legal analyses"
concluding that while there may have been some minor impropriety on
officer Encina's part, the law governing police-motorist encounters is
too "complicated" to make this anything more than a tragic accident.
Media scandals are like criminal trials. They're about assigning blame.
Because Bland may have technically taken her own life, the blame is
now mostly going to fall on a woman with a history of depression and
drugs, instead of on a criminal justice system that morally, if not
legally, surely murdered Sandra Bland.
Backing up: It's been interesting following conservative news outlets
after the Bland case. They've been conspicuously quiet this week,
holstering the usual gloating backlash of the "He'd be alive today, if
he'd just obeyed the law" variety.
After the Garner, Brown and Freddie Gray cases, of course,
law-and-order commentators flocked to the blogosphere to explain the
secret to preventing police brutality.
It was simple, they explained. There's no police corruption problem.
The real issue is that there are too many people who don't know how to
behave during a car stop. Don't want to get murdered by police? Be
polite!
A writer named John Hawkins took on the subject for TownHall.com in a
piece last year carrying the not at all joking headline "How to not
get shot by police." After revealing that his only real experience in
this area involved speeding tickets, Hawkins lectured readers that
"the first key to not getting shot" is to not think of the police as a
threat:
"They're really not going to randomly beat you, arrest you or shoot
you for no reason whatsoever. It's like a bee. Don't start swatting at
it and chances are, it's not going to sting you.
"In fact, when a cop pulls you over, you should have your license and
registration ready, you put your hands on the steering wheel so he can
see them when he arrives, and you say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.'"
It's hard to wrap one's head around the absurdity of someone like
Hawkins imagining to himself that black America has not already tried
using the word "sir" as a strategy to avoid beatings and killings. But
over and over again, we heard stuff like this from the Fox/Real Clear
crowd, which as time passed flailed around with increasing desperation
in search of a non-racial explanation for all of these violent
episodes.
After Eric Garner was killed, for instance, a New York Post columnist
named Bob McManus argued that we should only blame - the word "only"
was actually used - the "man who tragically decided to resist."
Michigan's even dumber Ann Coulter wannabe, Debbie Schlussel,
countered that Garner would still be alive if his parents had raised
him better, and if he wasn't a "morbidly obese asthmatic."
After Ferguson, it was the same thing. Editorials insisted that the
solution to the brutality problem lay in "less criminality within the
black community." The officer who shot Michael Brown, Darren Wilson -
the same guy who called Brown a "demon" - insisted that Brown would
still be alive "if he'd just followed orders."
But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive
today, if only she'd used her blinker. That's a bridge too far even
for TownHall.com types.
Suddenly even hardcore law-and-order enthusiasts are realizing the
criminal code is so broad and littered with so many tiny technical
prohibitions that a determined enough police officer can stop and/or
arrest pretty much anybody at any time.
Bland was on her way to a new job at Prairie A&M university when she
was pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes, something
roughly 100 percent of American drivers do on a regular basis.
Irritated at being stopped, she was curt with Encina when he wrote her
up. He didn't like her attitude and decided to flex his muscles a
little, asking her to put out her cigarette.
She balked, and that's when things went sideways. Encina demanded that
she get out of the car, reached for his Taser, said, "I'll light you
up," and eventually threw her in jail.
Many editorialists following this narrative case suddenly noticed, as
if for the first time, how much mischief can arise from the fact that
a person may be arrested at any time for "failing to obey a lawful
order," which in the heat of the moment can mean just about anything.
But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern community policing
in big cities all over America for decades now. Under Broken Windows
and other "zero tolerance"-type enforcement strategies, police move
into (typically
nonwhite) neighborhoods in big numbers, tell people to move off
corners, and then circle back and arrest them for "loitering" or
"failing to obey a lawful order" if they don't.
Some cities have tried to put a fig leaf of legal justification on
such practices by creating "drug-free" or "anti-loitering" zones,
which give police automatic justification for arrest even if a person
is guilty of nothing more than standing on the street. Failing to
produce ID - even in the halls of your own building, in some cases -
or being seen in or around a "known drug location" can similarly be
grounds for search or detention.
A related phenomenon is the policy governing "consent searches."
Police stop people on the highways, in airports, on buses, really
anywhere at all, and ask for their consent to search their property or
their persons. Sometimes they do the asking with a drug-sniffing dog
standing beside them.
Studies have consistently shown that black and Hispanic people are
pulled over at a far higher rate than white people, usually more than
double, even though white people are statistically more likely to have
illegal drugs on them.
Add to this the whole galaxy of stop-and-frisk type behaviors, also
known as "Terry stops," in which any police officer with an
"articulable suspicion"
that a crime of violence might be committed can pat down and question
any person.
The end of New York's infamous program notwithstanding, there are
millions of such stops every year. In Chicago, for instance, recent
data showed a rate of about a million stops per year, with roughly 72
percent involving black people - and this in a city that's only 32
percent
You add all this up, and we're talking about millions upon millions ofobeying it is no magic bullet.
stops, searches and misdemeanor arrests and summonses that clearly
target black people at a far higher rate than the rest of the
population.
And if you're continually handcuffing people, sitting on them, putting
knees in their backs and dragging them to jail in cases when you could
have just handed over a summons, a certain percentage of these
encounters are going to end in fights, struggles, medical accidents
and other disasters. Like the Bland case.
We'd call it murder if a kidnapping victim died of fright during the
job.
Of
course it's not legally the same thing, but a woman dying of
depression during an illegal detention should be the same kind of
crime. It's especially true given our long and sordid history of
overpolicing misdemeanors.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander described how white America
re-seized control after slavery by instituting a series of repressive
"vagrancy laws," under which nonwhite Americans could be arrested for
such absurdities as "mischief" and "insulting gestures."
In an eerie precursor to the modern loitering laws, many states even
had stringent rules against "idleness." There were even states where
any black male over 18 could be thrown in jail for not carrying around
written proof that he had a job.
What exactly is the difference between being arrested for "idleness"
and being arrested for "loitering in a designated drug-free zone"?
What's the difference between an arrest for "mischief" and an arrest
for "disorderly conduct" or "refusing to obey a lawful order"? If it's
anything more than a semantic distinction, it's not much more of one.
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it can
avoid getting killed by "respecting authority" and treating arresting
cops like dangerous dogs or bees.
But while playing things cool might prevent killings in some
instances, it won't stop police from stopping people without reason,
putting their hands on suspects or jailing people like Bland for
infractions that at most would earn a white guy in a suit a desk
ticket. That's not just happening in a few well-publicized cases a
year, but routinely, in hundreds of thousands or even millions of
incidents we never hear of.
That's why the issue isn't how Sandra Bland died, but why she was
stopped and detained in the first place. It's profiling, sure, but
it's even worse than that. It's a systematic campaign to harass
people, using misdemeanors and violations as battering ram - a
campaign that's been going on forever, and against which there's
little defense. When the law can be stretched to mean almost anything,
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference notblack.
valid.
Sandra Bland died at the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, on
July 17.
(photo: Jay Janner/AP)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sandra-bland-was-murdered-20
150724
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sandra-bland-was-murdered-20
150724 ALSO SEE: Jail Where Sandra Bland Died Has History of State
Rules Violations Sandra Bland Was Murdered By Matt Taibbi, Rolling
Stone
25 July 15
Suicide or not, police are responsible for Sandra Bland's death o
news broke yesterday that authorities in Waller County, Texas, have
"full faith" that Sandra Bland committed suicide. They said there was
"no evidence of a struggle" on the body of the 28-year-old
African-American woman who was ludicrously jailed last week after an
alleged lane change violation.
In related news, the Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian
Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and
threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's "courtesy
policy." The state said there was "no evidence" yet of criminal
behavior on Encina's part.
So barring something unexpected, we know now how this is going to play
out in the media.
Many news outlets are going to engage in an indirect version of the
usual blame-the-victim game by emphasizing the autopsy finding of
suicide, questioning Bland's mental health history, and by
highlighting the reports of marijuana found in her system.
Beyond that, we can expect a slew of chin-scratching "legal analyses"
concluding that while there may have been some minor impropriety on
officer Encina's part, the law governing police-motorist encounters is
too "complicated" to make this anything more than a tragic accident.
Media scandals are like criminal trials. They're about assigning blame.
Because Bland may have technically taken her own life, the blame is
now mostly going to fall on a woman with a history of depression and
drugs, instead of on a criminal justice system that morally, if not
legally, surely murdered Sandra Bland.
Backing up: It's been interesting following conservative news outlets
after the Bland case. They've been conspicuously quiet this week,
holstering the usual gloating backlash of the "He'd be alive today, if
he'd just obeyed the law" variety.
After the Garner, Brown and Freddie Gray cases, of course,
law-and-order commentators flocked to the blogosphere to explain the
secret to preventing police brutality.
It was simple, they explained. There's no police corruption problem.
The real issue is that there are too many people who don't know how to
behave during a car stop. Don't want to get murdered by police? Be
polite!
A writer named John Hawkins took on the subject for TownHall.com in a
piece last year carrying the not at all joking headline "How to not
get shot by police." After revealing that his only real experience in
this area involved speeding tickets, Hawkins lectured readers that
"the first key to not getting shot" is to not think of the police as a
threat:
"They're really not going to randomly beat you, arrest you or shoot
you for no reason whatsoever. It's like a bee. Don't start swatting at
it and chances are, it's not going to sting you.
"In fact, when a cop pulls you over, you should have your license and
registration ready, you put your hands on the steering wheel so he can
see them when he arrives, and you say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.'"
It's hard to wrap one's head around the absurdity of someone like
Hawkins imagining to himself that black America has not already tried
using the word "sir" as a strategy to avoid beatings and killings. But
over and over again, we heard stuff like this from the Fox/Real Clear
crowd, which as time passed flailed around with increasing desperation
in search of a non-racial explanation for all of these violent
episodes.
After Eric Garner was killed, for instance, a New York Post columnist
named Bob McManus argued that we should only blame - the word "only"
was actually used - the "man who tragically decided to resist."
Michigan's even dumber Ann Coulter wannabe, Debbie Schlussel,
countered that Garner would still be alive if his parents had raised
him better, and if he wasn't a "morbidly obese asthmatic."
After Ferguson, it was the same thing. Editorials insisted that the
solution to the brutality problem lay in "less criminality within the
black community." The officer who shot Michael Brown, Darren Wilson -
the same guy who called Brown a "demon" - insisted that Brown would
still be alive "if he'd just followed orders."
But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive
today, if only she'd used her blinker. That's a bridge too far even
for TownHall.com types.
Suddenly even hardcore law-and-order enthusiasts are realizing the
criminal code is so broad and littered with so many tiny technical
prohibitions that a determined enough police officer can stop and/or
arrest pretty much anybody at any time.
Bland was on her way to a new job at Prairie A&M university when she
was pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes, something
roughly 100 percent of American drivers do on a regular basis.
Irritated at being stopped, she was curt with Encina when he wrote her
up. He didn't like her attitude and decided to flex his muscles a
little, asking her to put out her cigarette.
She balked, and that's when things went sideways. Encina demanded that
she get out of the car, reached for his Taser, said, "I'll light you
up," and eventually threw her in jail.
Many editorialists following this narrative case suddenly noticed, as
if for the first time, how much mischief can arise from the fact that
a person may be arrested at any time for "failing to obey a lawful
order," which in the heat of the moment can mean just about anything.
But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern community policing
in big cities all over America for decades now. Under Broken Windows
and other "zero tolerance"-type enforcement strategies, police move
into (typically
nonwhite) neighborhoods in big numbers, tell people to move off
corners, and then circle back and arrest them for "loitering" or
"failing to obey a lawful order" if they don't.
Some cities have tried to put a fig leaf of legal justification on
such practices by creating "drug-free" or "anti-loitering" zones,
which give police automatic justification for arrest even if a person
is guilty of nothing more than standing on the street. Failing to
produce ID - even in the halls of your own building, in some cases -
or being seen in or around a "known drug location" can similarly be
grounds for search or detention.
A related phenomenon is the policy governing "consent searches."
Police stop people on the highways, in airports, on buses, really
anywhere at all, and ask for their consent to search their property or
their persons. Sometimes they do the asking with a drug-sniffing dog
standing beside them.
Studies have consistently shown that black and Hispanic people are
pulled over at a far higher rate than white people, usually more than
double, even though white people are statistically more likely to have
illegal drugs on them.
Add to this the whole galaxy of stop-and-frisk type behaviors, also
known as "Terry stops," in which any police officer with an
"articulable suspicion"
that a crime of violence might be committed can pat down and question
any person.
The end of New York's infamous program notwithstanding, there are
millions of such stops every year. In Chicago, for instance, recent
data showed a rate of about a million stops per year, with roughly 72
percent involving black people - and this in a city that's only 32
percent
You add all this up, and we're talking about millions upon millions ofobeying it is no magic bullet.
stops, searches and misdemeanor arrests and summonses that clearly
target black people at a far higher rate than the rest of the
population.
And if you're continually handcuffing people, sitting on them, putting
knees in their backs and dragging them to jail in cases when you could
have just handed over a summons, a certain percentage of these
encounters are going to end in fights, struggles, medical accidents
and other disasters. Like the Bland case.
We'd call it murder if a kidnapping victim died of fright during the
job.
Of
course it's not legally the same thing, but a woman dying of
depression during an illegal detention should be the same kind of
crime. It's especially true given our long and sordid history of
overpolicing misdemeanors.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander described how white America
re-seized control after slavery by instituting a series of repressive
"vagrancy laws," under which nonwhite Americans could be arrested for
such absurdities as "mischief" and "insulting gestures."
In an eerie precursor to the modern loitering laws, many states even
had stringent rules against "idleness." There were even states where
any black male over 18 could be thrown in jail for not carrying around
written proof that he had a job.
What exactly is the difference between being arrested for "idleness"
and being arrested for "loitering in a designated drug-free zone"?
What's the difference between an arrest for "mischief" and an arrest
for "disorderly conduct" or "refusing to obey a lawful order"? If it's
anything more than a semantic distinction, it's not much more of one.
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it can
avoid getting killed by "respecting authority" and treating arresting
cops like dangerous dogs or bees.
But while playing things cool might prevent killings in some
instances, it won't stop police from stopping people without reason,
putting their hands on suspects or jailing people like Bland for
infractions that at most would earn a white guy in a suit a desk
ticket. That's not just happening in a few well-publicized cases a
year, but routinely, in hundreds of thousands or even millions of
incidents we never hear of.
That's why the issue isn't how Sandra Bland died, but why she was
stopped and detained in the first place. It's profiling, sure, but
it's even worse than that. It's a systematic campaign to harass
people, using misdemeanors and violations as battering ram - a
campaign that's been going on forever, and against which there's
little defense. When the law can be stretched to mean almost anything,
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
