You Think What?

Happy New Year 2009 to the whole planet! We believe more than in spring the New Year is a time for renewal and restoration. (more…)

Make sure your thoughts are only the highest and the best thoughts as you travel this holiday season; especially when traveling via airports in Maryland.

Homeland Security has developed MALINTENT, an Orwellian system, coming to an airport near you, to recognize, define and measure seven of the primary emotions and emotional cues most often reflected in contractions of facial muscles. The system identifies these emotions, relays the information to a security screener in real time thus protecting you from would-be airline criminals. (more…)

‘THE NEGRO NATIONAL ANTHEM’
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land

For the latest info about the Jennifer Hudson family murders click here

In June we told you how we feel about the attempt to change the federal constitution in order to protect marriage. Fortunately, the measure has not been passed in either the House or the Senate.

Legislators in the great state of Flawda have managed to use their influence to have someone’s homophobic idea placed on the ballot for consideration by the electorate.  It’s a piece of legislation that is so anti-gay it goes into the areas that will affect even straight people. (more…)

Actress Jennifer Hudson and her family offer a $100,000 reward Sunday for the safe return of her 7-year-old nephew, who has been missing since the Friday shooting deaths of Hudson’s mother and brother at the family home on Chicago’s South Side.

The search continues for little seven year-old Julian King with Chicago police handing out fliers in the area as they look for the child (more…)

The trial date for the matter of Tonye Allen and Ann Brown has been set in Toronto Ontario Canada for Wednesday, November 21, 2007. (more…)

Another landmark historic event took place on Friday, November 16 2007. There’s a new U.S. Attorney General in D.C. His name is Michael Mukasey and though he was only sworn in a week ago with his ceremonial swearing-in taking place at the Department of Justice this week the National Action Network, Southern Leadership Conference along with radio talk show hosts Warren Ballentine, Tom Joyner, Michael Baisden, Al Sharpton, Steve Harvey and members of the Nation of Islam came to the nation’s capital to present to the new AG the expected agenda during the next few months of his short time in office. Thousands of marchers dissatisfied with the inequality of the American justice system arrived to demonstrate their outrage.

The purpose of the march is to remind the AG he is expected to be accountable to the people. He is expected to protect and defend against hate crimes. The march will also send the message the national black community will no longer stand for the obvious message of disrespect that is sent when nooses are hung for the purpose of intimidation.

Cases such as Genarlow Wilson’s and Mychal Bell and the Jena 6 are indicative of justice system that is determined to be excessively punitive, unreasonably and unequal.

Pay attention Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The people demand you be responsible for enforcing the laws and ensuring their is balance in our justice system.

Everyone is familiar with the statement, “America has become a very litigious society.” Not many people are acknowledging the fact we have become a very punitive society as well.

As a result of the quest for vengeance the courts with our citizen blessing seek to punish excessively anyone who breaks the law.

Daily we read of law enforcement officers, security guards gone wild, enforcing those who are caught committing the most trivial of infractions. Often those who are arrested and jailed are the people who have little or no access to proper legal representation at trial.

That is why it is our responsibility as citizens to become educated about the laws in our areas. That is why we must educate our children as to the consequences of their actions, youthful indiscretions included, so that we can save our youth.

Remember the children are our most precious resource. Without the children we have no future. We must do all we can to save our young people. We think it is in the best interest of our future as a nation to provide financial support for the work of organizations like the Baisden Foundation-Unequal Justice Fund to provide competent attorneys to represent those who are the recipients of American injustice. Enough is indeed enough!

In the last article we stated facts about prisons in America today and who makes up the population. Mostly the imprisoned person is uneducated, black and male.

Vesla Mae Weaver, a political scientist, has put forth her a logical deduction. In her recently completed dissertation Weaver examines policy history, public opinion and media. Weaver suggests understanding the role these entities have played and continue to play in the alteration of the American justice system will also make clear how race has been an important part of U.S. social policy. She postulates there is a strong connection between the movement for civil rights and the development of punitive criminal justice

This is the reason why we have changed over to being less forgiving toward those who violate any of “the rules”. Our current policy for imprisonment keeps alive the the longstanding racist American tradition of sublimating social meanings that have always been associated with being black. Race is one component in explaining why the U.S. numbers for persons confined to penal institutions is so exceptional among democratic industrial nations.

The turn toward being a more punitive society represents a political response to the success of the civil rights movement. Weaver calls the process “frontlash”. Those who are in opposition of the revolutionary changes brought about because of the civil rights movement have sought to regain and in many cases have succeeded in regaining the dominance by bringing to the public more frequently a new issue.

It makes sense that instead of poring energy and resources into fighting a battle that clearly had already been lost segregationists such as the late Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the former Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott, even President Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, chose to move attention to a asocial issue that concerns everyone irrespective of race. It’s an allegedly race neutral matter. The best example of the effectiveness of this new strategy is the presidential campaign of the late George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, staunch segregationist whose war on crime campaign gained support in the Midwest sectors of the U.S.. In fact crime has become a staple platform for presidential candidates ever since.

Though Weaver’s argument is speculative there is astrong correlation between the general public attitude on the subject of race and welfare. Both have in the past 30 years become linked. In the American mind race is associated with welfare as is race associated with crime.

Despite the fact drug use has declined along with other crime statistics antidrug campaigns with the attendant restrictive laws and arrests have increased with blacks more than 5 times as likely to be arrested and jailed.

Young whites use drugs more frequently than young blacks. But our society has elected to criminalize underclass teens to save middle-class teens from the so-called threat of a drug epidemic. The price of street drugs has declined as the number of arrests have increased.

Continued next post