Green Up!

Also, my "orphan fruit tree" program is moving right along. Rather than plant an orchard and wait the five or six years for the trees to bear fruit, I want to "adopt" the fully-grown abandoned fruit trees that sit in vacant lots and behind houses. If these trees are pruned and cared for they will produce edible fruit this fall, and once the fruit is picked I'd like to dig the trees up and move them all to one site to create an "instant orchard." If there are enough trees located, we could establish orchards on numerous sites. Any of you readers who know of -- or have -- a fruit tree that has not been cared for, let me know about it via email: mansfieldf@gmail.com. Our team would like to see if we can put it back into production. Thanks.

White Snitches

African-Americans, who, for decades have wrestled with the indignity of being pulled over because of the color of our skin ... the crime: "driving while black" ... are flabbergasted by the disingenuousness comments of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's spokesman Paul Senseman in regards to the recently passed legislation that targets Hispanics.

The Arizona Legislature went back and narrowed the scope and reaches of a recently-enacted controversial immigration law -- due to protests the measure, as originally written, legalized racial profiling -- speaks volumes about the nature of said lawmakers' true intents and purposes. The softening of the language only came about after one white Phoenix police officer sued, contending the initial law would have forced him to determine the immigration status of everyone he encountered on the streets, even a schoolchild simply asking for directions.

Senseman said the action by the Legislature "... absolutely clarifies what the intent was, it's undeniable now that this bill will not lead to racial profiling." However, overwhelming evidence developed by analyzing tons of data relating to whom indeed is pulled over by police officers, led to the concrete and irrefutable conclusion police officers nationwide routinely engage in racial profiling ... and, additionally, not all of the officers so engaged in the illegal behavior were white. Sadly, in Arizona, police officers with Hispanic surnames will be gleefully pulling over other Hispanics.

Now the language states the police can only scrutinize people (in terms of their residency status) that they legitimately stop, detain or arrest for another reason. Additionally, a section of the bill, which barred officers from "solely" using race as grounds for suspecting someone is in the country illegally, was removed because opponents of the measure had argued its inclusion would allow race to be used as a factor.

The problem conservative (some would even call them racist) whites have is ... other whites (yes, even some police officers) are snitching them out. The pejorative and racially loaded comments reactionaries make in tight circles where they feel everyone agrees with them have, for years, been filtering back to the ears of minorities. Racists are sometimes so comfortable in their bigotry they casually make the mistake of thinking everyone in earshot is in agreement with their prejudices. However, the truth is, everyone is not.

Bigots mistakenly take silence as comradeship, and a lack of challenge to their racist notions as consent as they spew forth their prejudiced positions. And such conversations are engaged in on the floors and back rooms of State Houses and Legislatures all across America.

Many of these progressive white snitches find themselves in situations where their stomachs are turned by the vitriolic level of racial enmity and rhetorical cant given voice in private conversations, but they remain mute for fear of being ostracized; for fear that if they raise an objection to the derogatory comments they will be called by the dreaded phrase, which for centuries has caused them to remain mute: "nigger-lover." In the current case, substitute the term "wetback lover."

Nonetheless, these whites come back and tell us persons of color the tone, tenor and fact of the racist remarks they are hearing ... as if by doing so they achieve some kind of unburdening, some confession that's tantamount to a washing away of the sins of racism their ears have been privy and subjected to.

While many other whites might call it racial snitching, these closeted white progressives simply want some form of absolution, some cleansing, some relief from the guilt of being in possession of the knowledge that the half-truths and racial code words used to hide and justify bigoted behavior are what they are: Bigotry. Their pricked consciences make them give voice to the fact racial discrimination is still very much alive and well in America.

For lawmakers in Arizona (and other states) to audaciously maintain, in the face of decades old evidence to the contrary, that racial profiling by mainly white police officers is a thing of the ugly past in America -- and that it won't happen in this case, under this new legislation -- only adds additional insult to racist injury.

Attorney Ken Lumpkin, an African-American and former elected official, said the notion that fairness in the stops made by police officers can be legislated, and racial profiling will be prevented by the cosmetic changes to the recently passed Arizona bill is ridiculous. "No matter what laws were enacted or tinkered with, no matter how they were framed, persons of color will continue to be racially profiled by using selective enforcement and this Arizona bill gives the patina of legality and fairness to what is patently onerous behavior. Hispanics will be targeted. The fact the majority of Germans stood silently by while millions were killed under the Nazi regime should have put to rest years ago the notion public support for a policy makes it right. The good white citizens and legislators of Arizona are totally wrong."


Gangs and Guns

For a few years now I've concurred with the "get tough" policy of locking away dangerous predators that would do harm to us ... not only for our own protection, but for theirs as well: Young males who have dropped out and have adopted thug life are twice as safe in prison as they are on the mean streets of Cleveland. If they run afoul of the law they should be incarcerated until they acquire a marketable skill and demonstrate a mindset which indicates they are no longer a threat to society.

However, with that said, just how draconian are sentences going to be under the new gang initiative that a multi-jurisdictional law enforcement task force is about to embark upon in the City of Cleveland? Sending young men -- yes even gang-bangers -- away for sentences averaging 18 years under the Hobbes Act goes far beyond what is necessary to control the problem, and, in all likelihood will be selectively enforced.

When overly tough laws are passed police and prosecutors always find clever ways to insure they are not applied evenly across the board ... certain folks are somehow always given immunity from feeling the full brunt of such draconian laws.

We have a penchant in America to overreact: We feel that if sentencing someone to three years for a gun specification will make us safe, sentencing the same person to 18 years for the exact same crime will make six times as safe ... but that's just not so. All it does in prove how cleverly law enforcement can be in fashioning unjust sentences and getting a frightened public to go along with them in the name of "public safety." Never mind the fact we are breaking budgets by keeping people behind bars for far too long ... indeed, much longer than any other country on the face of the earth.

Recently the family of a young man that was involved in a killing in a parking lot in downtown Cleveland posted a $1 million bail for his release. Just watch this case and see how Lady Justice peeks out from under her blindfold to ogle the size of the bankroll of the person in the docket and their race. If this young white man is eventually convicted, the lightness of the sentence in his case is going to be astonishing, but ultimately not surprising, because it will simply match the lightness of his complexion.

Money talks and Justice certainly has a price in America, and when young and poor persons of color are the primary focus of law enforcement, the resulting outcomes historically amounts to overkill. Justice is supposed to be dispensed with a fine scalpel, but in virtually all instances when the focus is on young minorities, a machete is used instead. Again, I'm all for locking dangerous young men up, but for how long, and how much rehabilitation will they receive while they are behind bars? They all do eventually come back. Warehousing them is not the answer, nor is it fair or just -- unless the real goal is to keep them incarcerated during their peek procreating years.