Entries Tagged 'Social Justice' ↓

HCR 2065 amended to create domestic partnerships; opponents object
 
Phoenix, Ariz. – Equality Arizona lauded the decision of Arizona legislators today to add pro-equality language to a proposed amendment to constitutionally define marriage, effectively blocking final passage of the bill.  By a 28-27 vote, the Arizona House of Representatives amended HCR 2065 to include the creation of domestic partnerships, a concept that proponents of the marriage amendment oppose.
 
State Representative Kyrsten Sinema (D-15) championed the effort to amend the bill.  Four Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the Sinema amendment.
 
Equality Arizona Executive Director Barbara McCullough-Jones released the following statement:
 
‘Today’s vote is a win for Arizona families.  Thanks to the leadership of Representative Kyrsten Sinema, our friends and our allies, we are now able to focus on the issues that unite the people of Arizona.

‘Equality Arizona celebrates today’s decision with the thousands of people who called on the Legislature to stop this divisive measure.  We remain committed to promoting public policy that strengthens Arizona’s children and families.’

Detainee is cameraman for Al-Jazeera 17 Mar 2008 The United States has censored a gruesome drawing by a Guantanamo Bay prisoner [Sami al-Haj] depicting him as a skeleton being force-fed at the military prison, the man’s lawyers said Monday as they released a recreation of the sketch. (Original link here.)

I have been on the road this last week, thus I have not blogged much. There is much to talk about regarding my trip, the people I have met, the political landscape in the southwest and current plans in the Denounce Torture movement. However, I have been getting increasingly concerned about the comments I have been getting in my previous posts, as well as what I am seeing today on the news.

A few days ago we saw in the news a white college student being escorted out of a political event being eventually tasered. This man (Andrew Meyer) was simply asking questions to Senator John Kerry. He was escorted out. He (to some accounts) resisted and was subsequently tasered. For the sake of this blog post, let’s not get to into the details of this case. Free speech, resisting or not resisting, soap box speech versus a question during a Q & A session, abuse of force, etc. - there are many aspects of this case to discuss. But let’s just simply focus on one thing: the media’s response.

This was front page news in most papers. It was on full rotation on the 24 hour news media outlets. Everyone spoke about this story around the water cooler the next day. The reason many media pundits gave as to the media pick up of this case… was because it was caught on film. Well, as you are a SpidelBlog reader you know I posted a similar video the week prior. This one of Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. I don’t need to revisit this case, because I have blogged a lot about it. You all have commented about this several times. There have been extreme racists comments made in response to my post. There have been comments made to the effect that I am not covering Meyer’s case, and somehow I must be playing the “race card” with the case of Yearwood.

This event took place in the Halls of Congress and was documented with video as well. It was also an attack on a Reverend. Something tells me that this too (if we are using the Meyer story as a measure) should have been front page news. But it was not. A simple search and you can compare the hits of stories that mention Meyer’s incident versus Yearwood’s (1,700 vs. 39.) This comparison is not meant to negate one event over the other. Both are a serious issue and deserve the serious public scrutiny of having the media put it out there. The interesting thing I find is that it is more newsworthy that the white student got attacked, versus another black man. This is my issue, how American media response to two similar cases. Continue reading →

Cross post from Miami Herald. This might be the steps toward President Bush attempting to close Gitmo his way. We need to monitor this closely.

With plans scrapped for a massive war-crimes legal compound that might have cost $125 million, the Pentagon is now building a more modest tent city.

The Pentagon is building a $10 million military tent city on an abandoned air field at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold the first war-crimes trials since World War II, a senior military official said Wednesday.

The plan has been dramatically scaled back from an earlier blueprint that envisioned a huge legal compound at the remote Naval base in southeast Cuba — housing for 1,200, dining facilities for 800, a 100-car motor pool and conference center with projected costs of up to $125 million. That plan was abandoned amid controversy about the costs.

The new blueprints feature hurricane-resistant, air-conditioned tents that look like small aircraft hangars to accommodate service members and civilians working on the trials — including media and legal observers. Continue reading →

By Ezekiel Edwards
(Original post here)

The state of Georgia plans to execute Troy Davis on October 14, 2007. And he might be innocent.

If you doubt that an innocent man can end up on death row, bear in mind that 15 death row inmates have been exonerated through DNA testing, while another 71 were freed after the discovery of other new evidence of innocence.

Since his conviction sixteen years ago, the evidence against Mr. Davis has crumbled, rendering his claims of innocence increasingly plausible. And yet, last week, he came within 24 hours of his death before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles stayed his execution for 90 days in order to “evaluate and analyze” evidence that Mr. Davis may not be guilty.

Putting aside, for now, the larger issue of the death penalty, our system of justice should not, under any circumstance, permit an execution amid the serious questions of culpability that exist in Mr.
Davis’s case. Continue reading →

By Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., SpidelBlog Guest Contributor

The recent Supreme Court education ruling in Seattle happens to contain the two issues that have been central to all of American history: (a) who has the power, national or state and local governments; and (b) race.

On the first, an ideologically radical conservative Supreme Court ruled in contradiction to its principles: (a) of merely “interpreting” the Constitution, by engaging in “judicial activism”; (b) of violating its commitment to federalism, by undermining states’ rights, local control and volunteerism; and (c) by showing Chief Justice Roberts to have been less than truthful during his Senate confirmation hearings about his view of precedent, including the precedent of the 1954 Brown decision.

On the question of race, I believe history will demonstrate that this Court’s alleged “colorblind” approach will bring us full circle (Plessey-to-Brown-to-Seattle) back to Plessy v. Ferguson’s 1896 principle that “we can have separate but equal” schools that sustained the opposite result for 58 years.

Brown overturned Plessy on both philosophical and practical grounds. Philosophically, if schools are truly equal, why should they be separate? But practically, history has shown that if public schools are separate they will not be equal. Seattle will perpetuate and escalate - not alleviate - our current separate and unequal American educational system.

I’m not naive enough to believe the Court is colorblind any more than I believe it’s ideologically or politically neutral. Such blindness and neutrality is humanly impossible. But I do believe that how an issue is framed may help us achieve a more equal and just society.

The New York Times editorial reacted to Seattle by saying it “was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.” In substance I agree. I understand the difference between being racially sensitive for inclusion and being racially insensitive or hostile resulting in exclusion.

But in terms of framing the issue, is “racial equality” really the American goal? I understand why special interest groups - e.g., minority groups and women’s rights advocates - would frame the issue thusly, but does that approach have the broadest appeal and properly state the American goal? I think not!

Today’s conventional wisdom consistently appeals to racial and gender equality - i.e., affirmative action is necessary because of historic negative action - and that’s true, but isn’t the real goal equality for all citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, handicap or religion? Are we entitled to equality and a just society on the basis of color (or gender or handicap) or on the basis of our U.S. citizenship? If we are entitled to equal rights and protections under the law as citizens, then equality based on citizenship - not race, gender, handicap or class equality - is the real goal and the better way of framing the issue.

Both Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke of fighting for the rights of citizenship. Frederick Douglass argued at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1865 that the Negro “has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war and aliens in peace?”

Dr. King, in his most famous “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963, said that “there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.”

It is sometimes said that a text without a context is a pretext. The context of Brown 53 years ago was that African American students were being denied an equal educational opportunity because whites were in charge of the money and schools. As a result blacks were not receiving their fair share. The hope and strategy of Brown was that by desegregating the public schools - putting black and white students together in one school - whites in charge of education would be forced to treat black and white students alike in order to save public education for their white children.

Brown hasn’t worked that way as African American and Hispanic students are increasingly being re-segregated and the education they receive is pushing most of them further behind. They lack adequate and equitable funding based on a constitutional principle that would guarantee an equal high quality formula.

With both sides on the Court appealing to Brown, maybe we should try a new approach that supersedes Brown.

In Rodriguez (1971) the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not grant a citizenship right to an education.

But if we add an education amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees a citizenship right to a public education of equal high quality, obligates Congress to structure and fund such a system, and forces the courts to deal with this specific language, then we will no longer be arguing over the rights of black and brown children, but over the right of every American student as a citizen - with the force of our highest law behind them - to be guaranteed an equal high quality public educational opportunity.