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March 29, 2005

CA: Nearly Half of Blacks, Latinos Drop Out, School Study Shows

By Duke Helfand
LA Times Staff Writer, March 24, 2005

Nearly half of the Latino and African American students who should have graduated from California high schools in 2002 failed to complete their education, according to a Harvard University report released Wednesday.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the situation was even worse, with just 39% of Latinos and 47% of African Americans graduating, compared with 67% of whites and 77% of Asians.

The report concluded that the public remains largely unaware of the true extent of the problem because the state uses "misleading and inaccurate" methods to report dropout and graduation rates.

The California Department of Education reported that 87% of students graduated in 2002, but researchers pegged the rate at just 71%. Nationally, about 68% of students graduate on time, according to the analysis.

The troubling graduation rates are most alarming in minority communities, where students are more likely to attend what researchers call "dropout factories."

The exodus of tens of thousands of students before 12th grade is exacting significant social and economic costs through higher unemployment, increased crime and billions of dollars in lost revenue, according to the report by researchers from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, among others.

"A diploma is a passport to economic success. If our high schools can't get students the education they need, that will be . an economic and social problem moving forward into the next generation," said researcher Christopher Swanson of the nonprofit Urban Institute in Washington, which produced data for the report released by Harvard's Civil Rights Project.

Statewide, just 57% of African Americans and 60% of Latinos graduated in 2002, compared with 78% of whites and 84% of Asians, the report said.

Using enrollment data, researchers produced what they believe are the most definitive graduation rates for California and its largest school systems.

They cast aside the state's method, which even California Education Department officials acknowledge is flawed. The state officials say they are forced by the federal government to use a formula that relies on undependable dropout data from schools.

The Harvard report found that African Americans and Latinos in the state were far less likely to graduate than their white and Asian peers, reflecting an achievement gap that first appears in elementary schools.

UCLA researchers noticed one troubling pattern in Los Angeles Unified: Most students who leave high school do so between ninth and 10th grades.

In several Los Angeles high schools, UCLA researcher Julie Mendoza found that less than one-third of ninth-graders graduated on time.

Principals at two of those high schools - Jefferson and Manual Arts - said students leave for a number of reasons but that their schools are taking steps to boost graduation rates.

Jefferson High School Principal Norm Morrow attributed his school's graduation rate - pegged by UCLA at 31% - partly to a transient student population and overcrowding that leave little opportunity for personal attention.

"If you don't connect with [students], they are going to drop out," said Morrow, who disputed the UCLA graduation figure and put the rate at about 45% last year.

He said that gangs, drugs and students working to support their families also figured into high dropout numbers. Jefferson serves large numbers of students from immigrant Latino families.

To retain more students at the South Los Angeles campus, Morrow said, he has been working on dividing the school of 3,800 students into smaller learning centers.

Manual Arts High School Principal Edward Robillard called the more personalized approach "one of the most powerful tools for inner-city schools to increase graduation."

Administrators created some smaller programs at Manual Arts three years ago. Next year, Robillard said, the 4,200-student school will be broken up into nine academies with about 450 students each.

Los Angeles Unified Schools Supt. Roy Romer said the district is aggressively tackling the graduation problem by dividing large schools into smaller units and by better preparing elementary school students with new reading and math programs.

"We've got to raise performance beginning in elementary school," Romer said. "The problem is severe. It's something we have to cure."

Inaction, researchers said, could prove costly.

UC Santa Barbara education professor Russell Rumberger estimated that the 66,657 dropouts reported by California in 2002-03 could cost the state $14 billion in lost wages over the students' lifetimes, and add 1,225 inmates to state prisons. The real costs could be far higher, he noted, because of the state's underreporting of dropout data.

"There are huge social costs" associated with high dropout rates, including "lower wages, higher unemployment, poorer health, lower tax revenues, increased crime," Rumberger said. "If we are going to make a dent in these problems, we need to start with kids [when they] are little."

Rumberger and the other researchers will present their findings today during a conference at Cal State Los Angeles.

The Harvard report said that current education policies - including those that require annual standardized testing of students - may exacerbate the dropout crisis by creating "unintended incentives for school officials to push out low-achieving students."

The federal No Child Left Behind education law requires annual testing in most grade levels and also calls for schools to report their high school graduation rates annually.

Under the law, schools must raise their test scores and graduation rates or face possible sanctions.

In California, high schools can meet their graduation targets each year by showing any increase over the preceding year.

The Harvard researchers accused the state of failing to demand more from its high schools. State officials said they did not want to place demands on campuses based on data they believe are unreliable.

Any true gauge of graduation rates, they said, would depend on developing a system for tracking individual students as they move from school to school. Such a system has been in the planning stages for years but could begin tracking data next year.

"We know this is a serious issue, and that's why we have focused on high school reform," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, who has urged districts to increase graduation requirements.

Sponsors of the Harvard report urged the state to reexamine its approach to producing dropout and graduation data, and called for schools to redouble their efforts to retain students.

"Whether or not students graduate is the most important thing that happens to them in school," said Gary Orfield, director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project. "If students don't make it through high school, they really have no chance in our economy."

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Graduation rates

A study found that less than three-quarters of California's high school students graduated with their class in 2002.

Statewide: 71.3%

Asians: 83.5

Whites: 77.8

Latinos: 60.3

Blacks: 56.6

For chart of school districts go to URL http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me graduate24mar24,0,6137422.story?
coll=la-home-headlines

Times staff writer Erica Williams contributed to this report.

Posted by lois at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

RISE UP Act launched HR 1184

The Daily Campus - News, Univ. of Connecticut
Issue: 3/28/05

Defending the drug offenders
By Rashid Grier

According to press secretary Jennifer Gore, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is submerging into the trenches of the nation's drug war. Frank and 55 other Congress members launched bill H.R. 1184, also known as the Removing Impediments to Student's Education (RISE) Act March 9. The act is designed to repeal a 1998 drug provision of the Higher Education Act (HEA).

If the bill were to pass, students denied financial aid due to previous drug misdemeanors, felonies and state or federal drug offenses would receive financial aid instead of losing it. Presently, an amendment to the Higher Education Act proposed by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) withholds financial aid from students under those circumstances.

Over 100 student government organizations, 180 community organizations and 56 co-sponsors, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Faces and Voices of Recovery, are championing the bill before the 160,500 students denied financial aid since year 2000 increases.

"Students who have drug convictions but don't come from families that need financial aid are not affected by this law," Frank said, through information provided by Gore. "I don't condone drug use and believe that someone who commits a violent offense or is a major drug trafficker should be denied financial aid. But preventing students with minor convictions from being able to pursue an education is counterproductive and excessive."

There have been no hearings on the RISE Act as of yet and the primary committee dealing with the act, the Education and Workforce Committee, hasn't scheduled any either, Gore said.

Similar attempts for legislation to repeal the 1998 drug provision are simultaneously occurring. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is introducing the S371, a higher education bill similar to the RISE act. In another similar attempt, the Arizona General Assembly came to a bipartisan resolution and introduced the "concurrent memorial" on Feb. 3.

A significant flaw with the 1998 drug provision is that it targets minorities, primarily young African American males, according to the NAACP and Students for Sensible Drug Policy's web site (SFSDP). African Americans make up 13 percent of the population and 13 percent of the drug users, but account for 55 percent of the drug convictions, according to the Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform (CHEAR). Further information shows 36 percent of blacks are arrested in drug violations, 42 percent are sentenced to federal prison and 57 percent are sentenced to state prison, according to figures from the Justice Department.

According to CHEAR, there are various issues besides discrimination, such as the harm it causes lower income families, punishing students twice for a crime and steering students from returning to college. Thirty-six percent of students that left four-year colleges before the beginning of their second year did not return within five years, according to the Department of Education.

A situation similar to Marisa Garcia's, a junior at California State University-Fullerton convicted of possession of drug paraphernalia, defers students from returning, according to CHEAR representative Chris Mulligan.

"The HEA drug provision created an immense burden on me and my family, but I had a support structure to help get me through this - many others are not so fortunate," Garcia said, according to raiseyourvoice.com. "This law is fundamentally flawed."

The 1998 drug provision possesses three ironies according to CHEAR. The first irony is that the drug provision fails to hinder students convicted of rape or other violent offenses. Second, it does not target the country's primary drug problem, alcohol abuse. Third, the HEA already withholds financial aid from students earning lower than a "C" average, causing the drug provision to target students doing well.

"I have a hard time finding the justification and rational for this provision," said Tom Angell, a member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, according to blackamericaweb.com. "Souder's first instinct was to strip students with drug offenses without even thinking about other offenses such as rape or arson."

The intent of the provision was to provide a deterrent to keep students from committing drug offenses while enrolled in higher education, according to information provided by Souder through the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrator's website. Supporting students that use drugs contradicts the government's war on drugs, according to an SFSDP video.

"Students have to realize that their choices have consequences, and if they break the law, then they should have to pay their own way through college," said Lori Waters, a participant in an SFSDP video.

Students do not have to attend college - there are other alternatives, such as working their way through community college, Waters said in an SFSDP video. Federal money is not a necessity, especially when we should think about awarding illegal behavior, according to Waters in an SFSDP video.

The HEA was enacted in 1965 under then President Lyndon B. Johnson for the purpose of extending the opportunity of secondary education to minorities and low-income families. The 1998 drug provision proposed by Souder denies financial aid based on set periods of time for students with drug convictions.

Students that marked anything but "no" on question 35 for their FAFSA form are required to fill out an extra worksheet that determines their when they may begin to receive aid again. Ineligibility lasts for one year for first time possession, two years for a first dealing offense and is indefinite for repeat offenders.

In 1998, the drug provision slipped into funding for the HEA and Congress would have to vote against completely funding the HEA or allow the drug provision to stay and keep the HEA, too, according to Gore. Since the drug provision went into effect, congressmen have persistently reintroduced the RISE Act to repeal the provision. Presently, The RISE Act is still pending, Gore said.

Posted by lois at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2005

Gang of Our Own Making

March 28, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Gang of Our Own Making
By LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ

San Fernando, Calif. — IN 1996, I was present at a meeting of gang members and community leaders in San Salvador. Heavily tattooed young men, one with a hand mangled from a hand grenade blast, told of the horrifying violence and gang warfare that had succeeded the battles of the 12-year civil war on El Salvador's streets. Aside from their tattoos, what was striking about these gang members is that they had grown up not in El Salvador, but in the United States, and that the gangs they were in - Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street - were started in Los Angeles.

That gathering was startling evidence of the globalization of United States-based gangs. Just how much Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, has grown since then was evident this month when the Department of Homeland Security announced the arrests of 103 gang members in New York State, Miami, Washington, the Baltimore area and Los Angeles.

Mara Salvatrucha is now reported to operate in 31 states and five countries, with 100,000 members across Canada, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. The government says MS-13 is the fastest-growing and most violent gang in the country. It describes MS-13 as having "cells" that smuggle people, guns and contraband across international lines, and some federal officials have mentioned possible ties between MS-13 and Al Qaeda.

While there's no proof that MS-13 has any connection to Al Qaeda, it has something in common with it: American policy played a role in the creation of both groups.

MS-13 is a result of our policy in Central America, specifically the policy that fueled the civil wars that sent more than two million refugees to the United States in the 1980's. Some of their children confronted well-entrenched Mexican-American gangs in the barrios where they landed. For their protection, they created their own groups, emulating the style of older Chicano gangs like 18th Street. MS-13, for instance, was born in the crowded, crack-ridden Mexican and Central-American community of Pico-Union, just west of the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles.

After the Los Angeles riots of 1992, government officials declared the main culprits to be young African-American and Latino gang members. In the mid-90's as many as 40,000 youths accused of being members of MS-13, 18th Street and other gangs were deported every year to Mexico and Central America. Sophisticated, tattooed, English-speaking young men raised and acculturated in the United States were sent to countries with no resources, no jobs and no history with these types of gangs.

Soon the deported members of MS-13 and 18th Street began recruiting among homeless and glue-sniffing youth who had never been to the United States. In a few years, these new members were making their way to the United States, ending up in far-flung corners of the country and recruiting a new generation. When the Department of Homeland Security deports the men it arrested last week, the cycle will start again.

When I was growing up in East L.A. in the 1960's, I was a member of a Chicano street gang. I was shot at a half-dozen times and arrested on several occasions. I understand why a teenager finds joining a gang necessary. But thanks to a few teachers, youth workers and community leaders, I eventually left the gang life.

What would have happened to me if I had been deported to a homeland I barely knew? The gang members at the 1996 meeting I attended were trying to find alternatives to violence and drugs. They wanted to be incorporated into the country, to be allowed to rebuild, to learn skills, to make decisions about bettering their communities and to stop being harassed or beaten by the police and attacked by death squads.

While the meeting ended on a high note, with people applauding and promising changes, in the end little happened. A group of former MS-13 and 18th Street gang youth formed a peace and justice organization called Homies Unidos, but their efforts over the years to obtain jobs, training, tattoo removal and counseling were largely ignored.

Instead, El Salvador instituted a "mano dura," or "firm hand," policy. It became illegal to be a member of a gang, whether a crime was committed or not. Jails became filled with gang youth from Los Angeles. The same policy was instituted in Honduras. According to news reports, these governments were getting advice from American law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department.

Today we're confronted with the same choice: we can continue the repression, arrests and firm-hand policies that only guarantee more violence and more lost youth. Or we can bring gang youth to the table and work to create jobs and training, providing real options for meaningful work and healthy families. In other words, we can help sow the seeds of transformation, eliminating the reasons young people join gangs in the first place.

We have the means to do both. Both have great costs. But one choice will worsen the violence and terror; the other will help bring peace, both in the streets of the United States and in the barrios of America's neighbors.

Luis J. Rodriguez is the author of "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." and the forthcoming "Music of the Mill," a novel.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

Bob Herbert- NY Times: Is No One Accountable?"

NY Times: March 28, 2005
By BOB HERBERT

The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging. But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused.

These atrocities have been carried out in an atmosphere in which administration officials have routinely behaved as though they were above the law, and thus accountable to no one. People have been rounded up, stripped, shackled, beaten, incarcerated and in some cases killed, without being offered even the semblance of due process. No charges. No lawyers. No appeals.

Arkan Mohammed Ali is a 26-year-old Iraqi who was detained by the U.S. military for nearly a year at various locations, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. According to a lawsuit filed against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Ali was at times beaten into unconsciousness during interrogations. He was stabbed, shocked with an electrical device, urinated on and kept locked - hooded and naked - in a wooden, coffinlike box. He said he was told by his captors that soldiers could kill detainees with impunity.

(This was not a boast from the blue. On Saturday, for example, The Times reported that the Army would not prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Mr. Ali's story is depressingly similar to other accounts pouring in from detainees, human rights groups, intelligence sources and U.S. government investigators. If you pay close attention to what is already known about the sadistic and barbaric treatment of prisoners by the U.S., you can begin to wonder how far we've come from the Middle Ages. The alleged heretics hauled before the Inquisition were not permitted to face their accusers or mount a defense. Innocence was irrelevant. Torture was the preferred method of obtaining confessions.

No charges were ever filed against Mr. Ali, and he was eventually released. But what should be of paramount concern to Americans is this country's precipitous and frightening descent into the hellish zone of lawlessness that the Bush administration, on the one hand, is trying to conceal and, on the other, is defending as absolutely essential to its fight against terror.

The lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, a New York-based group, on behalf of Mr. Ali and seven other former detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan who claim to have been tortured by U.S. personnel.

The suit charges that Mr. Rumsfeld personally authorized unlawful interrogation techniques and abdicated his responsibility to stop the torture and other abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody. It contends that the abuse of detainees was widespread and that Mr. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were well aware of it.

According to the suit, it is unreasonable to believe that Mr. Rumsfeld could have remained in the dark about the rampant mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. It cites a wealth of evidence readily available to the secretary, including the scandalous eruptions at Abu Ghraib prison, the reports of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, myriad newspaper and magazine articles, internal U.S. government reports, and concerns expressed by such reputable groups as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

(The committee has noted, among other things, that military intelligence estimates suggest that 70 percent to 90 percent of the people detained in Iraq had been seized by mistake.)

Whether this suit will ultimately be successful in holding Mr. Rumsfeld personally accountable is questionable. But if it is thoroughly argued in the courts, it will raise yet another curtain on the stomach-turning practices that have shamed the United States in the eyes of the world.

The primary aim of the lawsuit is quite simply to re-establish the rule of law. "It's that fundamental idea that nobody is above the law," said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First. "The violations here were created by policies that deliberately undermined the rule of law. That needs to be challenged."

Lawlessness should never be an option for the United States. Once the rule of law has been extinguished, you're left with an environment in which moral degeneracy can flourish and a great nation can lose its soul.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Posted by lois at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2005

Wal-Mart ---Race to the Bottom

..."As Jesse Jackson and other black leaders have pointed out in response to this boast, the slave plantation was once a "leading employer" of African-Americans as well."

by LIZA FEATHERSTONE
The Nation: March 28, 2005

"Wal-Mart is working for everyone," read the newspaper ad, which ran in January in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. "Some of our critics are working only for themselves." The same day, the company launched walmartfacts.com , a website to counter criticism of the kind you may have read in this magazine. Along with some misleading information intended to make Wal-Mart's wages and benefits sound much better than they are, the new campaign materials feature many smiling African-American faces; the website explains, accurately, that Wal-Mart is a "leading employer" of Hispanics and African-Americans.

As Jesse Jackson and other black leaders have pointed out in response to this boast, the slave plantation was once a "leading employer" of African-Americans as well. But this ad campaign was only the latest salvo in Wal-Mart's fervent battle for the goodwill of black America, inspired by the difficulties the company is having as it tries to move into urban areas.

Wal-Mart spent more than $1 million on a PR campaign backing a voter referendum to build a Supercenter in Inglewood, California, where the majority of voters are people of color, and was decisively defeated last year. The company faces continued resistance in Chicago as well, where it has been trying to open stores in black neighborhoods. A Wal-Mart on that city's West Side is scheduled to open by next February--to the frustration of those who opposed it--while plans for a South Side store have been scuttled. Controversy continues to rage about a Wal-Mart project in New Orleans, and in late February plans for a New York City Wal-Mart were scrapped in the wake of protests by labor, small business and neighborhood groups. Much of the opposition to the retailer has been led by activists of color. And, of course, since many people of color are poor, Wal-Mart depends on them as shoppers and as workers. It's no surprise, then, that the company would be eager to appeal to racial minorities.

If you own a TV, you've probably seen what many of Wal-Mart's critics call its "happy black people" ad, which has been airing since 2003, when the Inglewood fight heated up. Filmed at a Wal-Mart store in Crenshaw, a Los Angeles neighborhood, the ad features smiling African-Americans giving glowing testimony to what Wal-Mart has done for the "community." ("Community" in Wal-Mart World often seems to mean "black"--on the website, for instance, the word is illustrated not by a group of people, as it's commonly understood to mean, but by one exuberant, young woman of color, a beneficiary of a Wal-Mart scholarship.) In another TV spot, a black woman who works for Wal-Mart raves about the "opportunities" she's found working with the company. As the writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson has observed, the fact that black women are absent from most advertising imagery potentially makes Wal-Mart's campaign that much more powerful. The company also takes out ads in black newspapers, especially in cities where it faces political opposition, and radio spots during Sunday- morning gospel hour. And Wal-Mart celebrates Black History Month, distributing free booklets to consumers with inspirational sayings from accomplished African-Americans.

Much like that of the Bush Administration, Wal-Mart's image-making strategy includes not only advertising but paying for positive media coverage from black journalists. This year the company will begin awarding scholarships to minority journalism students at Howard, Columbia and elsewhere--a worthy use of Wal-Mart's funds, given that people of color are underrepresented in this profession, but a rather transparent move to buy off potential critics. (In an unusual twist, the recipients will attend Wal-Mart's annual shareholders' meeting, a massive pep rally whose primary purpose is to immerse attendees in the company culture.) The company knows what favors its money can buy: Wal-Mart underwrites Tavis Smiley's popular television talk show in Los Angeles, and Smiley returned the favor last year when, during the heated battle in Inglewood, he invited Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott on the air for a fawning interview, taking no calls.

Wal-Mart even gives money to civil rights organizations fighting racism--groups like La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, the Urban League, the United Negro College Fund and the NAACP. As with the journalism scholarships, this isn't all bad: far better that Wal-Mart's money be used to fight for racial equality than to elect Republicans or simply further enrich its own CEO, who at nearly $23 million a year makes well over 1,000 times as much as the average Wal-Mart worker. Unfortunately, however, taking money from Wal-Mart may sometimes compromise organizations politically. In Chicago, the NAACP chapter supported Wal-Mart in the political battle over the South Side store; likewise, in a recent battle over Wal-Mart in suburban Atlanta, Wal-Mart found the NAACP on its side.

Indeed, the company has become a skillful grassroots player. In both Inglewood and Chicago, Wal-Mart gave money to black churches, community groups and politicians. Wal-Mart courted Emma Mitts, an African-American alderwoman representing Chicago's West Side, and found her easily seduced. Mitts became a strident advocate for the retailer. Like many other organizations and individuals, she wasn't much of an expense; according to campaign disclosure documents filed with the State of Illinois, Wal-Mart rewarded her efforts last November with $5,000. (Mitts did not return calls for this article.)

Many black community activists were appalled that black leaders were so easily bought off. "I was ashamed to be black!" says Elce Redmond of the South Austin Coalition, a Chicago neighborhood organization, describing how the clergy and elites rolled over. "A lot of people have no principles. They will wear the dashiki, but always take the green money from a multinational corporation." Wal-Mart was deliberate, Redmond observes: "In almost twenty years of organizing, I have never seen anything so divisive. If you're going to take their money, take it, but don't pretend Wal-Mart is good for the community." He's not posturing: Redmond's South Austin Coalition received a check from Wal-Mart for a youth center, cashed it and continued to work politically to oppose the retailer.

But the organizing Wal-Mart representatives did, and the arguments they made, may have been just as important as any cash they doled out. They talked to ministers and community groups about the jobs the company was going to bring, and the low prices. "It was just smart," says Renaye Manley, the national field representative in the AFL-CIO's Midwest office, which is based in Chicago. "And it made our job that much harder." Manley, who is black and from Chicago's South Side, thinks Wal-Mart's outreach was more important than its money and that most community leaders were not bought off but genuinely convinced: "People just wanted to see jobs. These folks have a vision for their communities." James Thindwa, a Zimbabwean who heads Chicago's Jobs With Justice, says, "A lot of good, decent people bought the argument that any job is better than none." Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, writing for The Black Commentator , had a harsher take on this "slavish" acceptance of anything corporate America has on offer, chastising Chicago's black politicians for failing "to address Black community development as an issue of democracy."

Most destructively, Thindwa says--and other Chicago activists agree--"Wal-Mart played the race card." The company told the city's black leaders that the unions fighting the retailer were racist, effectively exploiting existing racial tensions in the city. As elsewhere, the building trades unions in Chicago have historically discriminated against blacks. But it is service unions like the Service Employees International that are speaking out the most against Wal-Mart, and in cities, their membership is mostly people of color. "[Wal-Mart] knew what buttons to push," Redmond acknowledges, but he's outraged that so many black leaders bought the simplistic line that all unions are racist. "I've never seen so much ignorance. They had no sense at all of the history of African-Americans in unions. A. Philip Randolph, ever heard of him? So they're going to side with the corporate enslaver, like, 'Wal-Mart will save us Negroes!'"

Thindwa says, "Wal-Mart was able to paint this as white unions protecting their turf, instead of as a broad-based community issue." Worse, activists now agree, the anti-Wal-Mart coalition failed to respond effectively to the company's race-baiting. Dorian Warren, an African-American community activist and member of the Chicago Workers' Rights Board, says, "The media framed it as 'white labor versus the black community.' We were not able to change the frame."

There are clearly profound racial tensions in the labor movement, and as Wal-Mart continues to move into cities it is likely to continue to exploit these tensions. Warren, a public policy scholar at the University of Chicago, says, "I've been at a loss to figure out why the labor movement can't have an honest conversation about race." Contributing to the problem, black-led labor activism has declined in recent decades, and many mainstream unions aren't training black leaders (which is closely related to their failure to develop leaders from the rank and file of any race). There's a sense--in these battles over Wal-Mart, as in many other situations--that labor uses communities of color when it's convenient but drops them when a particular campaign is over. That's easily exploited since, as Warren puts it, "there's just enough truth to it."

Of course, there's still plenty of skepticism among African-Americans about Wal-Mart.

Indeed, some black clergy were leaders in the fight against Wal-Mart in Chicago. Community opposition probably did contribute to the retailer's defeat on the South Side and may help the coalition's attempts to pass an ordinance requiring Wal-Mart to pay a living wage to workers on the West Side. In Inglewood, the fight against Wal-Mart was led by black and Latino church and community activists, and very few leaders were bought off. Blacks there did not buy the line that Wal-Mart was antiracist and the unions--therefore, all of Wal-Mart's opponents--were racist. That's partly because in Inglewood relations between the United Food and Commercial Workers and the community groups were much better. Whereas in Chicago the union often insisted on having its white and male leadership speak at public events, in Inglewood black women who lived in the town and worked in supermarkets were prominent faces in Wal-Mart's public opposition; they knocked on doors and talked to their fellow citizens about why their unionized grocery job was so important to them and their families, and why Wal-Mart was such a threat.

Madeline Janis-Aparicio of the Coalition for a Better Inglewood says about her campaign's success: "We were also lucky--Wal-Mart did something really stupid." In trying to pass an ordinance exempting itself from the town's laws, the company violated the largely black community's most basic
requirement: respect. "We used that," says Janis-Aparicio, who credits that theme with winning over the church leadership and many Inglewood voters. After one large, mainstream black church joined the anti-Wal-Mart fight, the rest followed, not just lending passive endorsement but enthusiastically rallying their forces. Another helpful issue was crime--Wal-Mart is the nation's leading purveyor of guns. To rural white communities, that's often a political asset, but to urban black voters it's a harsh liability. In the last few days of the Inglewood campaign, the anti-Wal-Mart coalition hung a flier in the shape of an M-16 rifle on everybody's door. "Some on our side felt it was a scare tactic," Janis-Aparicio admits, but, she adds with justified pride, "it had a powerful impact."

Even in Chicago, Wal-Mart's own actions may end up helping its opponents. Elce Redmond says, "A lot of people who supported Wal-Mart at first are now saying, 'Elce, you were right.' Wal-Mart made a lot of promises, and hasn't delivered." Politicians and community leaders are now finding that since Wal-Mart secured permission to open the West Side store, its officials aren't returning their calls too readily. Rather than agreeing to pay workers decently, the company sent 300 holiday turkeys for the community's needy. That struck many people as a shallow response to concerns about the store's economic impact. "People are beginning to ask questions," says Redmond. "Why can't Wal-Mart pay a living wage? Why can't its workers have a union if they want one? Why not?"

This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=featherstone

Posted by lois at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

As Farmers Dwindle, Towns Make Best of What's Left

New Crop
In Bid to Hang On, Miner County, S.D., Downsizes Dreams
As Farmers Dwindle, Towns Make Best of What's Left; Big Grant Helps Fight Odds
Windmills and Organic Beef

By JONATHAN EIG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 25, 2005; Page A1

HOWARD, S.D. -- With farm jobs disappearing at a rapid clip, almost every small town on the American prairie dreams of getting bigger.

Some wait for Wal-Marts. Others push for new factories and jobs. Still others lobby for new roads, new highway exit ramps or new airports.

This town has a different plan, evident to anyone driving the two-lane blacktop that cuts east to west through Miner County. At the eastern edge of Howard, an old slaughterhouse that had been vacant for 30 years is up and running again, this time in the production of organic beef. Just south of the town's busiest intersection, where cattle once grazed, a new housing development is under construction, bringing seven low-cost homes. Two wind turbines tower over the western end of town. At their feet sits a small turbine-repair shop staffed by former farmers and tractor repairmen.

Howard and the surrounding Miner County are at the center of an unusual campaign to rescue farm towns from extinction. Backed by $6 million in foundation grant money, residents here have adapted a survival strategy that is both radical and modest. They plan to let some of the dying pieces of the economy die and focus instead on niches in which small businesses can compete -- like organic beef and wind-turbine repair.

The key, residents say, is that they're willing to accept the county's dramatic population losses -- down to about 3,000 residents from a peak of 8,500 -- as long as they can come up with enough high-quality jobs to prevent further declines.

"We don't need to be a Watertown or a Madison," says Randy Parry, a former basketball coach and high-school teacher who leads the revitalization effort, referring to towns with populations of 20,000 and 6,500, respectively. "We don't need to be big."

Some economists think Howard's approach might be the last best chance for towns that have seen family farms vanish and their economic bases crumble.

"In these communities, you don't really need much," says Stephan Weiler, an economist at the Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Many of those communities still have a relatively strong supply of skilled workers, Mr. Weiler says. The challenge is keeping them. "People need to ask, 'What do we have and what can we do that the market will value?' "

Miner County is fighting against a strong tide. The population is still falling and some of the county's experiments have failed to take root. In building an economy without a strong business base and heavily dependent on a handful of small ventures, the county is plotting a risky strategy. If consumers lose interest in wind energy or organic beef, or if Miner County businesses can't keep up with competitors in those industries, the economic revitalization will have to start all over again.

"We're the guinea pigs," says Mr. Parry, director of Miner County Community Revitalization. "Rural America is slipping by the wayside. If we don't do something about it in time, it will be too late."

Miner County sits about 65 miles northwest of Sioux Falls, a city of some 125,000 that's been growing about as quickly as many of its rural neighbors have been shrinking. For decades, the county was a thriving chunk of middle-American heartland, with hundreds of small farms raising corn and soybeans, and railroad cars crisscrossing the flat earth. At its peak in the 1920s and 1930s, even the county's smaller towns each supported a bank, a diner, a gas station, a grocery, a schoolhouse, and a bar or two.

As the smallest towns vanished, Howard, the county seat, became the life raft, with displaced residents clinging to its relative prosperity. But even Howard has been losing a dozen or so residents every year, and its population is now down to about 1,000.

One idea for turning things around came from the younger generation. In 1995, students at Howard High School surveyed Miner County's 1,000 registered voters and found that about half of all respondents were shopping in larger towns outside the county. The students calculated that if residents spent 10% more of their disposable income at local businesses, they would add more than $7 million to the local economy, assuming the money continued to circulate in the community at the normal rate. In the year after the survey, discussed widely in town, taxable sales in Miner County increased 40%.

Advising the students was Mr. Parry, 56 years old. Besides coaching basketball, he worked as the school's business teacher and ran a popular ice-cream shop called Coach's Corner. The student project gave him ideas.

He says he began to think of the community as he thought of some of his basketball squads. Once a team started winning, Mr. Parry observed, players seemed to practice and play harder. Crowds got bigger and cheered more loudly. As a coach, he called it momentum.

Though sales-tax revenue continued increasing for several years after the student survey, the economy was not so easily transformed. In 1996, the community's biggest manufacturer, Wrapit, which made wrappers for baseball cards, laid off 75 of its 210 workers. Soon after, Mr. Parry used a $20,000 grant presented to the high school to form the Rural Resource Center, which brought together students and adults to discuss ideas for improving the community.

They developed focus groups on housing, employment, health care and education. Instead of looking to outsiders for growth, they focused on how to lure back former residents who had moved away and keep the next generation from doing the same.

Meanwhile, a Minnesota-based nonprofit called the Northwest Area Foundation was looking for an innovative way to help a rural community. In 1997, it decided to offer a small town millions of dollars and other support over a span of 10 years. The community would determine how the money should be spent.

In November 1998, foundation officials arrived in Miner County the day after an enormous snowstorm. Small roads were almost impassable. Farmers were busy corralling animals that had climbed over snow banks and strayed from their land. Still, 80 of Mr. Parry's 82 committee members showed up to meet the out-of-towners.

Impressed, the foundation gave Miner County $500,000 in seed money to help it map a long-term strategy.

Mr. Parry quit his job at the school and devoted himself to the community-building work. The more he talked to residents, the more evident it became that no one wanted Miner County to get a lot bigger, or to change in a dramatic way. In other words, says Mr. Parry, they wanted the town "to feel like it used to be."

Local committees began organizing projects to build community spirit and demonstrate to the foundation that Miner County residents were ready to go to work. Residents pulled hundreds of tree stumps from downtown Fedora. They cleaned and painted old homes in Howard. Farmers attended seminars on how to make money on organic beef or alternative livestock such as elk and deer.

"It was grass-roots," Mr. Parry says. "It was grind work."

County leaders gave the foundation a 35-page plan that promised among other things to create affordable housing, build a child-care center, update land-use plans, help farmers explore niche markets and set up a business-assistance program. The key was getting the entire community involved and making better use of the assets already on hand.

In February 2001, the Northwest Area Foundation awarded Miner County about $3.8 million and the South Dakota Community Foundation, a nonprofit, kicked in $2 million more.

Not long after that, the first wind turbine went up in Howard. It was the work of a former Howard High School student, Joe Kolbach, who decided to open a repair shop for the machines in his old home town. He said he knew that many people who fixed tractor engines could learn to fix turbines.

"A small town with low overhead is what a young company needs," says Mr. Kolbach, president of Energy Maintenance Services of Gary, S.D.

The two turbines -- one purchased by the town of Howard, the other by Mr. Parry's group -- earned the town energy credits from one of the local power companies, reducing bills for everyone. They also served as a sign that things were changing. "To be honest," Mr. Parry says, "I still get goose bumps every time I drive by."

Mr. Parry's group created a revolving loan fund to help businesses start or expand. It helped establish a day-care center with preschool and Head Start classes in downtown Howard. The group pushed to get cellular phone service for the area. It helped convert a vacant school in Canova to a wellness center, with exercise equipment and a miniature-golf course.

When Robin Hattervig, the county's only dentist, began thinking about moving elsewhere, Mr. Parry's organization helped him apply for a federal grant that would pay him to see more Medicaid patients. Now, low-income patients drive from across the state to Dr. Hattervig's clinic, and he has hired another dentist.

Scott Lively, whose wife grew up in a small town in South Dakota, said he wanted to set up an organic-beef business in a community that needed jobs, even though he probably could have improved his profit margins by locating closer to a major highway. When he heard about an old slaughterhouse for sale in Howard, Mr. Parry's group offered to help him negotiate the purchase. "These guys were relentless," says Mr. Lively, 33, who lives in Martha's Vineyard with his family but has been spending much of his time lately in Howard.

Now, Mr. Lively's Dakota Beef is one of the more promising ventures in town. One local farmer already feeds cattle for Dakota Beef, and two more farmers have expressed interest in having their farms certified organic, Mr. Lively says. Dakota Beef employs 20 full-time workers and expects to triple that number by the end of the year, he says.

Still, Mr. Parry's group faces long odds in its fight to keep Miner County from slipping away. From 2000 to 2003, the county's population dropped a further 5.8%, according to Census Bureau estimates. From 2000 to 2001, 5.5% of all nonfarm businesses disappeared. Even some businesses launched with the revitalization group's help discovered there wasn't enough money to be made. A café, a cheese-making plant and a fish farm all came and went.

Only about one in four Howard High graduates who went to college in the late 1990s has returned, according to a recent survey. "The more highly skilled they get, the less likely they are to come back," says Larry Holland, who teaches at the high school and also serves as its guidance counselor, athletic director and part-time bus driver. "How would we employ an engineer in Howard? Those kinds of jobs aren't there."

The local high school and elementary school have suffered. As people leave Miner County for jobs elsewhere, they take their children and property-tax contributions, leaving the schools short of bodies and cash. Those left behind have voted to accept property-tax increases, but educators say the money coming in still isn't enough.

Howard High has been forced to lay off teachers and cut back on available classes. Even Mr. Parry's old business class that got the community revitalization started a decade ago wasn't spared.

Many students say they're encouraged by the recent burst of economic activity, but staying in Howard "would be the failure of my life," says Brianna Hanson, a 17-year-old junior, whose father works as a veterinarian for the state and whose mother is a nurse at a local nursing home. "When you see your parents struggling, it really peels a lot of your hope away."

As he drove through town one day in his pickup truck, down Main Street, out to Route 34, and over to the town's new industrial park, home of the turbine-repair shop and other small businesses, Mr. Parry acknowledged that economic forces will continue to wipe away many small towns.

"I read somewhere that someone said it wouldn't matter if everything between Sioux Falls and Rapid City were covered in ash," he says. He thinks at least a few of those small towns can be saved. For now, he says, one will do.

Write to Jonathan Eig at jonathan.eig@wsj.com

Posted by lois at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

Jail Expansion Opponents Push Alternatives

Sunday, March 27, 2005 Copyright C 2004 Mid-Hudson News Network

A small crowd gathered in Poughkeepsie to hear activists argue a multi-million dollar expansion of the Dutchess County Jail will not solve any problems and that the focus should be on alternatives to incarceration.

In fact, Dana Kaplan, a consultant with the National Resource Center on Prisons and Communities, sees little connection between the number of prison beds and the commonly touted reasons for building prisons.

"Prison and jail populations are not determined by the level of criminal behavior, and they are not determined by questions of community safety", Kaplan said. "Prison and jail population are determined by the politics of the time period and of the political will of those with the power to make those decisions."

Another speaker was Democrat County Legislator Barbara Jeter-Jackson. "Not saying that it may not turn out to be the fact that we have to build, but right now, all the questions that I need answered haven't been answered."

Asked if she thought more focus is needed on developing alternatives to incarceration, Jeter-Jackson replied "Absolutely".

Republican Legislator Patrick Nesbitt was there simply to listen to what they were saying. Nesbitt said there are reasonable questions that need to be asked about where the county needs to go with this, but he watching the work of the Criminal Justice Council, which is looking at a smaller addition than what was considered earlier this year, only to have the design funding vetoed by the County Executive.

"I've got a lot of confidence in them", Nesbitt said. "They have people form both sides of aisle. They have people from all areas of occupation, all kinds of expertise on that. I'm putting a lot of faith in their guidance."

The forum, at the Family Partnership Center, was organized by Dutchess Justice. Members describe themselves as a "community-based group", formed recently in response to the closing of some community programs including the Youth Resource Development Corporation.

Shortcut to: http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/DC_jail_forum-27Mar05.htm

Posted by lois at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2005

WA: Gregoire Agrees to Let Private Investors to Build Prison

DAVID AMMONS, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
http://www.theolympian.com/home/specialsections/Legislature/20050323/111403.shtml

Gov. Christine Gregoire is proposing a $2.8 billion construction boom and endorses her predecessor's proposal to let private investors build a new state prison. The governor also is proposing a supplemental state budget of $219 million to tide the state over until the new fiscal year begins July 1. And she sent lawmakers a no-new-taxes $4.6 billion transportation budget, although she is on record as supporting a still-developing revenue package.

The construction, supplemental and transportation proposals were part of a thick stack of budget documents the Democratic governor sent to the Democratic-controlled Legislature on Monday.

Gregoire's main operating budget proposal calls for spending $25.8 billion during the next two years, financed in part with a $203 million tax increase on cigarettes and a new state tax on estates of more than $2 million.

The separate construction budget, meanwhile, would provide money for public school and college projects, prisons, parks, wildlife habitat and recreation, drought preparedness and several local projects.

About $1.5 billion of that amount would come from the sale of state bonds. The state operating budget pays the debt service -- $1.25 billion in the upcoming budget to pay for the interest on previous bond sales.

Gregoire said the construction budget would generate nearly 20,000 direct and spinoff jobs.

House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, House Capital Budget Chairman Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, and Senate construction subcommittee Chairwoman Karen Fraser, D-Olympia, said Tuesday that Gregoire's plan was well received by legislative Democrats.

Highlights

- Schools: Gregoire proposes $436 million for state matching funds for local voter-approved school construction. She said this level would fully erase a backlog of projects.

- Higher education: The governor requests $323 million at the four-year universities and $383 million for 64 community college projects.

The University of Washington would get $46 million for assorted projects and its new Tacoma campus would receive $13 million. Washington State University is in line for $48 million for its main campus, including a new biotechnology-life sciences building. The WSU Tri-Cities campus would get $13 million, Eastern Washington University $1.7 million, Evergreen $22 million, Central $2.2 million, and Western $51 million.

Among the community college projects are ones at Green River, Bates, Walla Walla, Everett, South Puget Sound, Yakima Valley, Columbia Basin and Grays Harbor.

- Prisons: The biggest plan is for a 2,000-inmate prison at Coyote Ridge in Connell, Franklin County, to be built by a private investor for an estimated $267 million. The state would lease back the facility and operate it with state employees.

Gregoire provides $21 million to complete the final phase of the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island to house and treat dangerous sex offenders.

The Shelton prison would get $11 million and $4 million is provided for completion of the state crime lab in Vancouver.

- Natural resources: Gregoire provides money for fish and wildlife habitat, cleanup of Hood Canal, water storage projects water-supply projects, parks and drought preparedness.

- Housing: The plan includes $82 million for housing and farmworker housing.

- Community grants: Gregoire provides $119 million for a variety of projects, including Olympia's Heritage Park, the West Barracks project in Vancouver, planning for redevelopment of the Port of Bellingham, Seattle's McCaw Hall, Spokane's Fox Theatre renovation, Yakima redevelopment, an Asian counseling center in Seattle and an upgrade of TVW, the state's version of C-SPAN public television.

Online Extras

Gov. Gregoire's budget proposal for the 2005-2007 biennium

Trancript of Gov. Gregoire's Capitol Chat and her answers for readers' questions

Numbers from the latest revenue review (.pdf)

Posted by lois at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)

WA: Prison Not the Best Way to Deal with Drug Use

By ROGER LAUEN AND DANIEL R. MERKLE, GUEST COLUMNISTS
Thursday, March 24, 2005 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/217264_prison24.html

The state has built several new prisons -- adding more than 10,000
prison beds -- since 1988. The huge state deficit doesn't appear to
deter prison promoters; they want to build another prison for almost
$200 million, even though responsible alternatives exist. During this
period, the state population grew 32 percent while the state's prison
population grew a staggering 172 percent.

What's behind all this demand for more prisons despite the fact that
crime has declined 21 percent between 1989 and 1999 and police arrests per crime are reported 13 percent down during the same period?

First, the failed "war on drugs" has filled jails and prisons with
non-violent offenders who often have substance abuse and mental health problems.

Second, prosecutors' filings per arrest are up 40 percent and, as
counties experience tremendous budgetary shortfalls, it is time the
public demands that prosecutors focus on crimes against people and
property.

Third, an overwhelming majority of the drug war defendants are poor and a disproportionate number are African American males. We must find a better way to deal with drug use, since we know it takes place in all racial and income groups.

Fourth, perhaps the most important group of decision-makers is state
legislators. Although the '80s and '90s were periods where "tough on
crime" was a favorite campaign slogan, genuine political leaders now
realize they have to focus on being "smart on crime" and must develop
sound and responsible alternatives to incarceration. The goal is to make our communities safer, not blindly punish people because they make mistakes.

Washington state and some local communities have made some good
decisions over the past few years as we have begun downsizing the war on drugs. These suggestions will reduce prison-bed demand without risking public safety:

*Tell legislators to support alternatives to incarceration and shorter sentences and reinvest the savings in treatment, job training, transitional housing and education. Let's give the new Department of Corrections director, Harold Clarke, an opportunity to work with others in further developing these alternatives as he has in other states.

*Amend laws that mandate fixed and unreasonably lengthy prison
sentences -- particularly for non-violent offenders and older inmates
where studies show the possibility of re-offending is much lower and
their health care costs are much greater.

*Stop making charge, plea bargain, sentencing and prison release
decisions based on crime type and give judges and corrections officials more discretion to evaluate the circumstances of the offense and the particular treatment and supervision needs of the offender.

One-third of the inmates released from the state's prison return for
either technical rule violations or a new crime. This is an unacceptably high rate of recidivism and we believe Washington state can do better.

To increase the success of returning inmates, we need to bolster the
community treatment services (substance abuse treatment, employment
services, affordable housing) and reduce structural barriers (12 percent interest rates on court-ordered fees; prohibiting licensure of select trades). If those community programs are better funded and more widely available to offenders, police and prosecutors will be more inclined to divert low-risk property and drug offenders to those programs in lieu of a prison sentence.

Washington state needs money for colleges, universities and human
services, which all have higher demand than the existing supply
provides. Let's start putting money into something we can be proud of
and invest in our intellectual and economic future and the health and
safety of our communities.

Roger Lauen, Ph.D., is a retired criminologist who lives on Bainbridge Island. Daniel R. Merkle, J.D., is the executive director of the Center for Social Justice in Seattle.

Posted by lois at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

Bruce McM. Wright: Judge Whose Bail Rulings Caused an Uproar

March 26, 2005
Bruce McM. Wright, Erudite Judge Whose Bail Rulings Caused an Uproar, Dies at 86
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Bruce McM. Wright, a retired black judge in Manhattan who denounced what he called racism in the criminal justice system and created a furor in the 1970's by setting low bail for many poor and minority suspects, died in his sleep on Thursday at his home in Old Saybrook, Conn. He was 86.

His death was announced by his wife, Elizabeth Davidson-Wright. Justice Wright, who retired at the end of 1994 from State Supreme Court, suffered a heart attack in March 2000.

Justice Wright spent 25 years on the bench in both criminal and civil cases, gaining a reputation as a scholarly and provocative jurist who sprinkled his opinions with literary quotations.

But it was in Criminal Court early in his judicial career that he found himself at the center of a storm over his out-of-court remarks and bail policies, which had the effect of releasing many suspects, some of them charged with vicious attacks on police officers.

"Turn 'Em Loose Bruce" was the sobriquet supplied by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which called him "the best friend criminals ever had." At various times, Mayor John V. Lindsay, who appointed him to the bench in 1970, as well as Mayors Abraham D. Beame and Edward I. Koch and many other politicians, joined the chorus of denunciations.

But civil libertarians, Legal Aid lawyers and others defended Judge Wright's use of bail as appropriate in the context of its statutory and traditional purpose: to assure the presence at trial of a defendant, who is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

In setting bail, judges typically weigh a defendant's character, employment, finances and community roots. Also considered are any criminal record, possible danger to the community, the seriousness of the charges and the probable sentence that a conviction would carry, which, if severe enough, might raise the possibility of flight to avoid prosecution.

While no records were kept on the bail practices of judges, Judge Wright's were not very different from those of his colleagues, lawyers familiar with the courts at the time said, but his decisions were monitored more closely by the police and reporters.

Judge Wright insisted that bail should not be used punitively, to detain people for the sake of crime prevention or to coerce guilty pleas. He said his aim was to uphold the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which says "excessive bail shall not be required." For some poor people, he contended, $50 could be excessive.

Judge Wright also drew angry responses with out-of-court speeches asserting that white judges often did not treat black defendants fairly and that the acquittal of white officers by white juries had given the police "a license to hunt down blacks and kill them with impunity."

While opponents called those remarks intemperate for a judge, many black and Hispanic New Yorkers regarded him as a compassionate counterweight to an overwhelmingly white justice system. In the mid-1970's, only 2 to 3 percent of America's judges were black. The City Bar Association, meanwhile, called his performance on the bench "decidedly better than average."

Judge Wright's perceptions were shaped by his own experiences with racism. He had been a distinguished student, but was turned away from Princeton; he had been a decorated soldier in World War II, but had to serve in segregated units; he had worked for a major New York law firm, but said he was told that he could not hope to become a partner.

A tall, trim man with angular features and an athlete's confident bearing, he was an amateur painter, an avid reader and the author of three published volumes of poetry. He also wrote "Black Robes, White Justice" (Lyle Stuart, 1987), about race and the judiciary.

Bruce McMarion Wright was born on Dec. 19, 1918, in Princeton, N.J. His father was a baker. He was an excellent student and applied to Princeton, but was dissuaded by an admissions official, who wrote him saying that the school did not discriminate but had "no colored students" and advised him that "a member of your race might feel very much alone."

Sixty-five years later, the Princeton graduating class of 2001 made Judge Wright an honorary member.

In 1936, the young man enrolled at Virginia State, a black college, but was expelled for a prank: changing a headline in a student newspaper from "Religion Week" to "Religion Weak." He attended Lincoln University, a predominantly black school in Pennsylvania, and after graduation in 1942 entered the Army.

He served in a segregated medical unit and was in the third wave of the Normandy invasion in 1944. He won two Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars.

In 1946, he enrolled at New York Law School, taking classes at night while working at odd jobs. In his last year, he was a clerk with the prominent firm of Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn. After passing the bar exam in 1950, he asked about his prospects. As he recalled it years later, he was told that there could be no future for him there. A senior partner later voiced doubt that any member would make such a statement.

Over the next 17 years, Judge Wright practiced law in New York with a number of black firms. In 1967, he was named counsel to the city's Human Resources Administration, and three years later was named to the Criminal Court bench by Mayor Lindsay.

The judge's bail policies soon became controversial. There was an uproar in 1972, when he twice released on $500 bail a man accused of killing a police officer. Another judge raised the bail to $25,000. The suspect was later convicted of assault and robbery but acquitted of murder. In 1974, Judge Wright released a man accused of kidnapping, rape and the attempted murder of a police officer.

After repeated protests by the police union, Judge Wright was transferred to Civil Court in 1974 by the city's administrative judge, who denied that the move had anything to do with his bail policies. Judge Wright sued in federal court, seeking reinstatement to Criminal Court. In 1978, as hearings were about to begin, he was transferred back to Criminal Court.

The bail controversy resumed, and the protests rose to a peak in April 1979, when Judge Wright released without bail a black man charged with slashing the throat of a white decoy officer, Robert Bilodeau.

Judge Wright noted that the suspect, Jerome Singleton, had no criminal record and had a family and other community ties. He also said prosecutors had offered no compelling reason to ban Mr. Singleton's release. In two trials, Mr. Singleton was found not guilty of attempted murder but was convicted of second-degree assault.

With little hope that Mayor Koch, a harsh critic, would reappoint him when his 10-year term expired, Judge Wright ran successfully for Civil Court judge in 1979, and was elected a justice of the State Supreme Court in 1982. He served in the court's civil branch for 12 relatively quiet years, until his retirement on Dec. 31, 1994.

But his opinions, especially about race, remained provocative.

"I have never changed my mind about the Eighth Amendment," he said a few days before retiring. "To say that I would've done things differently means to me I would have been a good boy, kept my mouth shut and availed myself of the benefits of the system. I don't think I can do that. I don't think I could ever do that."

Besides his wife, Judge Wright's survivors include a brother, Robert, of Willingboro, N.J.; five sons from previous marriages: Geoffrey, a civil court judge in Manhattan, Keith L., a Democratic state assemblyman from Harlem, Alexis, of Chicago, Bruce, of Washington, and Patrick, of Connecticut; a daughter, Tiffany, of Brooklyn; and two grandsons.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |

Posted by lois at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2005

"Education Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track"

Rocky Mountain News

Study claims unfair discipline at DPS
Padres Unidos findings say minorities targeted more often than Anglos

By Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News
March 24, 2005

Denver Public Schools disciplines too many students for nonviolent offenses and targets minorities more than their Anglo peers, a study to be released today says.

The study, called Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track, found that minority students were 70 percent more likely to be suspended, expelled or ticketed by police than Anglo students in the past four years.

The study is also critical of DPS' zero tolerance approach on discipline, saying it goes too far.

"I think there's a tendency to criminalize students of color," said Pam Martinez, co-director of Padres Unidos, a group that advocates for Hispanic rights in Denver. "We need to take clear, decisive action to address that and turn it around."

Padres Unidos authored the study in partnership with the Advancement Project, a national racial justice organization.

School district officials don't dispute the statistics, but do take issue with their interpretation.

"We don't on a whim - because a kid was pushing or shoving - expel," said Bob Anderson, the district's director of prevention and intervention initiatives. "Our real focus is to keep our learning environment safe."

The study found that the number of students expelled rose to 146 in 2003-2004 from 116 in 2000-2001. And that 53 percent of the expulsions in 2003-2004 were for "non-violent" acts rather than more serious transgressions such as weapons or drugs.

Over the past four years, the number of suspensions has increased to 13,423 in 2003-2004 from 9,846 in 2000-2001.

"They make it sound like we round 'em up and get 'em out of there," district spokesman Mark Stevens said. "This is safety-net city."

Officials at DPS said 90 percent of students expelled end up in the district's many alternative schools and programs.

Stevens did acknowledge a racial gap in how students are disciplined.

"Even when the (school) staff is well-represented by minorities, we still see some of these patterns," Stevens said. "It bears ongoing work and investigation."

Anderson said the district has seen more expulsions in recent years because of more serious offenses.

"The situation with drugs is up noticeably," Anderson said. "We're seeing an increased amount of kids not only in possession but using on campus."

Bullying and gang activity are increasing, and there are more reports of sexual harassment in fourth through eighth grades and sex assaults in middle schools, Anderson said.

Martinez said youths often are kicked out of school for nonviolent "subjective" offenses, such as verbal fights, obscenities, inappropriate clothing or bullying.

"Why can we not find ways to deal with these minor offenses in school and not miss class time . . . and not end up with the start of a record in the juvenile criminal justice system?" Martinez asked.

The study found that the number of DPS students ticketed or arrested by police has climbed to 1,401 in 2003-2004 from 818 in 2000-2001. Yet 68 percent of the cases heard in Denver County Court were dismissed in 2004. Data for the study were culled from East, West, North and South high schools and Lake and Rishel middle schools.

Anderson said the district is already creating some alternative discipline programs suggested in the study such as peer mediation and conflict resolution.

Stevens pointed out that three years ago the district came under intense pressure for not reporting all potential crimes to police after a 14-year-old girl was threatened with expulsion if she reported a sex assault and there was no conviction.

"There was sleeplessness around this district about what we were and weren't doing," Stevens said. "The simple message was: When in doubt, report."

Nohely Escalera, 14, a West High School student, said she was suspended for three days for wearing a low-cut top. Timothy Romero, 17, said a friend was suspended for walking the hallway at the wrong time.

"They worry more about how we dress than our education," said Escalera's cousin and West senior Nancy Figueroa, 18.

But West student Deisy Flores, 16, said students who fight should get suspended. "If you don't do anything to people who fight, they're more likely to do it again," Flores said.

Jane Grady, assistant director at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, said DPS is "doing the right things."

"It's possible there is some overreaction from time to time," Grady said. "But in the case of incidents in Minnesota and Columbine, wouldn't we all have liked somebody to overreact at some point?"

Report's findings

A study prepared in part by Padres and Jovenes Unidos of Denver takes aim at the rising number of Denver Public Schools students who face discipline.

Number of students ticketed or arrested by police:

• 2000-01......818

• 2001-02......1,359

• 2002-03......1,390

• 2003-04......1,401

The study says:

Prevention and intervention programs are the most effective methods for addressing school violence and creating a productive learning environment.

Some solutions:

• School districts should limit suspensions, expulsions and arrests to conduct that poses a serious threat to safety.

• Schools should adopt clear and concise discipline guidelines that provide students and parents with notice of potential disciplinary actions for specific offenses.

• School districts should establish discipline oversight committees to handle complaints about school discipline practices and review discipline and arrest statistics to ensure that discipline is meted out in a fair, nondiscriminatory manner.Source: Education On Lockdown: The Schoolhouse To Jailhouse Track

Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
To print this page, select File then Print from your browser
URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DRMN_957_3646418,00.html

Posted by lois at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

Iowa: $70 million on another jail

"The facility would be not merely the largest county jail in Iowa but also the largest single penal institution in Iowa - nearly three times the capacity of the State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. It would house a combination of state and federal criminal convicts and individuals awaiting hearings or trial."

Des Moines Register
Editorials
Polk County needs new jail, unfortunately
On Tuesday, voters should approve bonds.
By REGISTER EDITORIAL BOARD
March 23, 2005

Given all its needs, it is regrettable that Polk County is proposing to spend nearly $70 million on another jail. County officials have little choice, however. They deserve voters' support in next Tuesday's special election to authorize issuing the bonds. If voters give their blessing, the county will build a new jail in northeast Polk County with capacity for 1,500 prisoners. The facility would be not merely the largest county jail in Iowa but also the largest single penal institution in Iowa - nearly three times the capacity of the State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. It would house a combination of state and federal criminal convicts and individuals awaiting hearings or trial.

The county has come a long way in the jail business. Between 1907 and 1978 the county had one jail holding 150 prisoners. Thirty beds were added in 1979. That was replaced with a new 180-bed jail built in 1984. Then the floodgates opened: Polk County today has jammed prisoners in every nook and cranny of the '84 jail and a "temporary" jail annex with capacity for 300. Still, with more than 800 prisoners on the average day, the county houses about 300 prisoners a day in other counties and a facility in Missouri.

Several reasons are cited. Illegal drugs - meth, especially - are blamed. The Iowa Legislature has steadily toughened penalties and enacted mandatory-minimum sentences. And Polk County criminal prosecutors feel duty-bound to put criminals away. That said, Polk County does a commendable job of diverting offenders from jail. It offers everything from ankle bracelets to drug courts to programs that give youthful offenders a second chance. Still, the numbers are expected to climb an average of 6 percent a year, which is reason for the state to tackle a long-overdue study of alternatives to incarceration. Meanwhile, Polk County officials have no choice but to house the prisoners who show up on the jail's doorstep each day from 33 federal, state and local law-enforcement jurisdictions.

Polk County Sheriff Dennis Anderson has put together a good plan: All county prisoners - including those now in the '84 jail, the interim facility, other county jails and the Missouri facility - would be consolidated in the new jail. That would save the county more than enough on transportation and housing charges by other jails to offset the annual principle and interest payments on the bonds. Housing an expected 200 federal prisoners would bring in additional revenue.

The new facility would be far more efficient to operate. It would have three courtrooms, to reduce commuting to the courthouse downtown. It would triple (to 194 beds) capacity for drug treatment, which the sheriff has shown to be effective in reducing recidivism. And the site has room for expansion. Besides making financial sense, housing all prisoners in Polk County would be more humane. It is wrong to send jail prisoners halfway across Iowa or to neighboring states, where they are removed from family, friends, support groups and legal aid.

For all those reasons, the county's jail plan deserves a "yes" vote on Tuesday. In the meantime, all Iowans ought to ask state and local leaders a pressing question: Why is devoting growing amounts of resources on jails and prisons better than alternatives that would help offenders straighten out their lives and become productive citizens?
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050323/OPINION03/5
03230305/1035/OPINION>

Posted by lois at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

FedCURE Summary: Federal Parole/Fed Good Time Allowance

FedCURE Summary: Federal Parole/Federal Good Time Allowances
(March 2005)
I
SUMMARY
REVIVE THE SYSTEM OF PAROLE FOR FEDERAL
PRISONERS AND INCREASE GOOD TIME
ALLOWANCES FOR FEDERAL OFFENDERS
Parole of federal offenders began after enactment of legislation on
June 25, 1910. Under the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the
United States Parole Commission retained jurisdiction over defendants whocommitted their offenses prior to November 1, 1987.

At the same time, the Act provided for the abolition of the Parole Commission on November 1,1992. The phase out of the Commission has been extended by statuteseveral times. The status of the Commission beyond November 1, 2005remains unresolved despite the Commission having taken over supervisionof all DC offenders in addition to the remaining 4,000 Old Law offenders.Presently, the Commission has over 100 employees and a budget of over $10 million. When the U. S. Sentencing Guidelines were imposed for federaldefendants whose criminal activities took place subsequent to November 1,1987, parole was eliminated. Early release was limited to approximately 47days of good time each year and the sentences themselves were increasedappreciably. The majority of federal inmates are non-violent low-level drug
offenders with very long sentences. Moreover, the majority of this segmentof the federal inmate population is being incarcerated for the first time.

Thousands of people in prison are serving life sentences for non-violentoffenses without the possibility of parole. The vast majority of these peopleare also first time offenders.Ninety-seven per cent (97%) of all federal inmates are eventuallyreleased. 45,000 federal inmates were released last year in the United States.
Presently, there are 181,000 federal detainees. The cost to house these inmates increases exponentially as they age. Total cost to U. S. taxpayersfor federal incarceration is upwards of $7.25 billion yearly. Re-entry of mostly indigent elderly inmates is significantly affecting state budgets. After many years of incarceration, inmates tend to lose all support. Theirwives and children abandon them. They lose their ability to find and keep ajob because they are banned from most jobs requiring a license and havereceived no alternative training in prison. There is no money allotted to the
federal prison system for rehabilitation programs.

Reinstitution of the old parole and good time laws would reduce the
inmate population considerably. Those statues, with minor changes, would reward those inmates who have shown positive institutional behavior with earlier release. Although early release would not be guaranteed, it would allow a second chance to those that prove they deserve that chance. Supervision of all offenders would revert once again to an existing agency with the expertise to determine the appropriate time for return to the community without endangering the public safety. It has been determined that this plan of parole and increased good time will save U. S. taxpayers upwards of $2 billion per year by taking mainly non-violent first-offenders out of the prison system earlier and enabling them to become part of the productive mainstream of American
life.
FedCURE
P.O. Box 15667
Plantation, Florida 33318-5667
URL: http://www.FedCURE.org
FAX: 408.549.8935
www.FedCURE.org
©2005 All Rights Reserved

Posted by lois at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

Ruth Gilmore Interview in Your Black Eye

For the extended interview go to:
http://www.yourblackeye.org/YBE_Interview_Gilmore_1Q05.html

YBE: What is the number one myth about prisons and prisoners in America today? How does this myth contribute to or
sustain the problems you have addressed in your answer to the previous question?

RWG: Two myths vie for first place: (a)There are so many people in prison because private corporations exploit their labor,
which they can do because of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and (b) there are so many new prisons because private
corporations team up with small-town folks hostile to prisoners (generally because they’re presumed to be racists) to create jobs
and profits. On the labor question: very few private corporations use prisoner labor because it isn’t cheap to set up a satellite
production platform in a prison. Most prisoners who work do so for a public entity (e.g., the Prison Industries Authority in
California). But many prisoners are idle, having no work, no school, no training, nothing. As for the second point: it is rare that
prison hosting towns have benefited economically from the prison, for reasons that have to do with the dynamic economic
geography of rural places – especially places where the topography is easy and the climate is mild. In addition, 95% of all prisons
and jails in the United States are publicly owned and operated. That was true 10 years ago and I suspect it will be true 10 years
from now.

These myths channel the energy of well-meaning folks into pointless projects and campaigns. Certainly, the enormous amount of
money that circulates because of prisons goes into somebody’s pocket. Closer understanding of public finance and the public
sector in general would do activists a lot of good, and save people from rushing down blind alleys. Of course, this presumes that
activists who decry over incarceration don’t simply mean they think it is bad only IF a big corporation or a few folks from a rural
community get money from the system. Making U.S. prisons 100% public, or putting them in communities where prisoners come
from, would not undo any of the generation-destroying consequences of keeping modestly educated women and men in cages for
part or all of their lives.

Posted by lois at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2005

Des Moines: Drug Penalties to Cover Religious Sites

Published March 22, 2005
A House bill would allow an extra five years in prison for offenses near places of worship.

By PERRY BEEMAN- REGISTER STAFF WRITER

People caught in illegal drug activity near churches and other religious institutions could face an extra five years in prison under legislation approved Monday by the Iowa House.

Backers said House File 254, which passed 87-11, is part of a one-two punch of anti-drug legislation that also includes a measure approved last week making it harder to buy ingredients to make methamphetamine.

The new bill applies to all illegal drugs. It would give judges the discretion to add five years in prison to other penalties if someone makes, distributes or possesses with intent to distribute illegal drugs within 1,000 feet of "religious institutions," which would join parks and other public places such as pools, schools and recreation centers, and marked school buses, in zones affected by the law.

The few critics, led by Rep. Ed Fallon, a Des Moines Democrat, said the effort to broaden the penalties is misguided and expensive. A cost analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Service Agency said the new law would lead to 1,200 new inmates a year by 2010. The agency predicted a new prison would be required by the 2008 budget year, at a construction cost of $45 million and annual operating cost of $28 million.

"Do you really support the bill?" Fallon asked Republican Rep. Dwayne Alons of Hull, who led debate. "If this is what you want, how will you pay?"

Alons said the cost analysis was flawed because other legislation, including the anti-meth bill to be signed into law today, would make it harder to make drugs here. He added: "How many of our vulnerable children would you like to leave unprotected?"

Fallon said setting a 1,000-foot buffer around "religious institutions" would cover much of the state. He asked Alons how much of Iowa the new zones would cover. Alons couldn't answer.

Fallon accused Republicans of pushing a bill that is unlikely to pass and added that the state drug-policy office opposed the new measure. Officials from that agency weren't available, and Matt Paul, spokesman for Gov. Tom Vilsack, also a Democrat, said he was unaware of the bill and declined to comment.

The bill defines religious institutions as having an active congregation. Records show there are 4,450 congregations in the state.

Copyright C 2004, The Des Moines Register.

Posted by lois at 09:21 AM | Comments (0)

Race Matters: Report Finds Predatory Lenders Set-up Shop in African American Neighborhoods

DURHAM, N.C., March 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Payday lenders who trappeople in triple digit-interest loans locate their stores in African-Americanneighborhoods in higher concentrations, according to a report by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL).

African-American neighborhoods in North Carolina have three times as manypayday lenders per capita as white neighborhoods, even after controlling for variables associated with the industry's purported customer base such asincome and homeownership.

"This study shows in the starkest terms that African-American
neighborhoods bear the brunt of predatory payday loans -- loans that are not even legal in North Carolina," said Mark Pearce, CRL president. "This onfirms that the abusive loans made by payday lenders are not just an issueof fair and responsible lending, but are a civil rights issue as well."
Payday lending is illegal in North Carolina, but large national chainssuch as Advance America, Check 'n Go and Check Into Cash continue to operateopenly by affiliating with out-of-state banks which contend they are exemptfrom state law. Nearly 400 stores operate in North Carolina, even thoughstate law hasn't permitted them since 2001. Currently, the North CarolinaCommissioner of Banks and Attorney General are investigating payday lendingactivity.

Because CRL looked at stores owned by the national chains, the CRL reporthas implications far beyond North Carolina's borders. Twelve states, in addition to North Carolina, are subject to rent-a-bank arrangements because payday lending is not authorized by their state legislatures (Michigan,Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Arkansas, Massachusetts, West Virginia, NewYork, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maryland). In fact, over 3,000payday loans stores in the country are operating outside of the laws of their
state.

At a typical payday shop, a person short on money before payday borrows,$255 by writing a postdated check for $300. After two weeks the borroweroften can't repay the principal and writes yet another postdated check.Ninety-nine percent of payday loans are made to repeat borrowers, despiteindustry claims that the loans are for one-time, emergency use only. AdvanceAmerica has reported that their average number of loans per borrower was 9 per year in 2003.

CRL has previously estimated that predatory payday lending costs Americanfamilies $3.4 billion annually, a cost that is increasing rapidly as the sizeof the market explodes.

The CRL report, "Race Matters: The Concentration of Payday Lenders in
African-American Neighborhoods in North Carolina," along with charts and mapsof all metropolitan statistical areas -- illustrating the clustering patternin African-American neighborhoods -- is available from CRL athttp://www.responsiblelending.org.

ABOUT CRL -- The Center for Responsible Lending
(http://www.responsiblelending.org) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research andpolicy organization dedicated to protecting homeownership and family wealth byworking to eliminate abusive financial practices. CRL is affiliated withSelf-Help, one of the nation's largest community development financial
institutions.

SOURCE Center for Responsible Lending, Durham, NC
Web Site: http://www.responsiblelending.org

Posted by lois at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

CO: House Panel OKs Medicaid for Drug Treatment

Rocky Mountain News

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News
March 22, 2005

Treating drug addicts, rather than just putting them in prison, will save Colorado money and give addicts a chance to rebuild their lives, a House panel decided Monday.

On a 10-1 vote, the House Health and Human Services Committee approved HB 1015, convinced that the measure would pay for itself by 2008.

The bill, sponsored by House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, would add substance-abuse treatment to the benefits under Medicaid, the health plan for Colorado's poor.

Romanoff noted that Colorado ranks high in substance abuse and in the bottom two among states in the per-capita dollars spent on treatment.

"There's a connection," Romanoff said. "Let's try treatment for a change. If the experience of 47 other states and every study on treatment versus incarceration is wrong, this bill will repeal itself."

If the bill is approved in the House and the Senate and becomes law, about 4,500 Medicaid recipients probably will get outpatient treatment each year.

About 4,000 of Colorado's 20,000 inmates are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. Thousands of users are in county jails or on parole, getting no treatment.

The bill would provide $1,500 in substance-abuse treatment for each of the 4,500 people.

The $7 million yearly cost would be recouped by 2008 in medical savings alone, according to an analysis by the legislature's staff.

Romanoff said that doesn't include the savings to the state from housing fewer people in prison at $30,000 per year, or savings from putting fewer children in foster care, for example. It costs up to $1,500 a month to put a child of addicted parents in foster care.

A dozen people spoke in favor of the bill and none against.

Gilpin County Commissioner Jeannie Nicholson said none of the counties has enough money for treatment, and "we're paying the price in the long run."

The county foots the bill for those in greatest need and usually doesn't get reimbursed from the state or from the client. "One person paid in zucchini - that's all he had and he wanted to express his gratitude."

The clients who aren't helped often show up on sheriff's blotters for child abuse or neglect, Nicholson said.

Seventy percent of the people in Colorado's county jails have a substance abuse problem, said former Boulder County Sheriff George Epp, now executive director of County Sheriffs of Colorado.

People sentenced to jail or probation without treatment get caught in a revolving door of incarceration, he said.

Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/legislature/article/0,1299,DRMN_37_3640352,00.html

Posted by lois at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2005

Lisa Fittko: Who Helped Rescue Many Who Fled the Nazis, Dies at 95

Lisa Fittko, who achieved fame, particularly in Germany, by leading Jews and members of the anti-Hitler resistance from Nazi-occupied France to Spain, died on March 12 in Chicago. She was 95.

March 21, 2005
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Correction Appended

The cause was pneumonia, said Evelyn Marsh, her niece.

Ms. Fittko emerged from a leftist, artistic family to become active in the resistance to Hitler in the early months of his rule, then fled to continue the fight in other European countries for seven years. For seven tense months in 1940 and 1941, she escorted refugees on a tortuous path over the Pyrenees mountains so they could go on to Spanish and Portuguese ports to seek passage to safe havens.

Many of the people she helped were intellectuals, artists and anti-Nazi organizers. The first refugee she helped was Walter Benjamin, a Marxist literary critic and philosopher whose work has drawn new interest in recent years because of his provocative insights on subjects from consumerism to surrealism.

But that initial mission was thwarted when the Spanish authorities ordered the group to return to France because they lacked proper exit visas, a requirement that had not been enforced in the past and was ignored in the future. Mr. Benjamin died at the age of 48 in Room No. 4 on the second floor of the Hotel de Francia, a cheap pension in Port-Bou, Spain, on Sept. 27, 1940, having apparently committed suicide.

Ms. Fittko had earlier helped the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who had been her friend in Paris, get out of a prison in France.

Ms. Fittko and her husband, Hans, became part of the rescue mission of Varian Fry, an American who is credited with saving about 2,000 people, many of them artists and intellectuals, including André Breton, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst.

Miriam Hansen, a professor of English and cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago, said Ms. Fittko became well known in postwar Germany because Germans liked to find and honor people who resisted Hitler. She said Ms. Fittko's death was announced on German radio and television, and obituaries appeared in the major national newspapers. In 1986, the president of West Germany awarded her the Distinguished Medal of Merit, First Class.

In the United States, Ms. Fittko's story was eventually documented in several novels and films, including the 1998 documentary "Lisa Fittko: But We Said We Will Not Surrender."

She wrote two books about her experiences. One, "Escape Through the Pyrenees," which was first published in West Germany in 1985, won that country's award for the political book of the year. It was translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, and, in 1991, into English by Northwestern University Press. The same press in 1993 published her "Solidarity and Treason: Resistance and Exile, 1933-1940."

Lisa Ekstein was born in 1909 in Uzhgorod in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; it later became part of Czechoslovakia, then part of the Soviet Union and today is part of Ukraine. Most of her childhood was spent in Budapest and Vienna; she was evacuated and sent to the Netherlands with other children for a year during World War I. After the war, her family moved to Berlin.

Through her father, a writer and a publicist for avant-garde artists there, she met many members of the Weimar intelligentsia.

While still in high school, she joined what Ms. Hansen characterized as a Communist organization. She wrote and distributed leaflets protesting torture in Nazi prisons.

At 24 she was working as a secretary and went to a rally to see Hitler. She was reprimanded for not raising her arm in salute. She told an interviewer from The Vancouver Sun in 1999 that her failure to do so was hardly intentional.

"I was stupid, but not that stupid," she said.

She was soon pursued by the Gestapo, and in 1933, she fled to Prague, where she met Hans Fittko, a fellow exile and an even more committed leftist whom the Nazis sought to kill. They married on their odyssey through, among other places, Basel and Amsterdam, ending up in Paris in 1938. There, they continued helping refugees.

After Germany invaded France, Ms. Fittko was detained for a few months in a concentration camp for women at Gurs, France, along with others who had lived in Germany. It was there she aided her friend and fellow prisoner Hannah Arendt by helping to supply her with a stolen release document.

After the Fittkos found each other again, they made their way to Marseille, dodging the French authorities who were collaborating with the Germans. They planned to escape through Spain but separated because the Spanish had begun arresting men who they feared might make their way to Britain to fight Hitler.

Mr. Fittko tried to find sea passage from Marseille to Casablanca. His wife, as originally planned, had gone to the border to find a way to escape by land. In September 1940, Walter Benjamin knocked on the door of her room in Port-Vendres, saying Mr. Fittko had told him to ask her for help.

With the assistance of a local socialist mayor, who gave her an old map, she led Mr. Benjamin and two other refugees across the mountains to Port-Bou, a Spanish border town. Mr. Benjamin died there after swallowing some of the 50 morphine tablets he had earlier split with his friend Arthur Koestler.

Mr. Benjamin had been carrying a heavy, bulging briefcase that he told Ms. Fittko contained "the only copy of his latest writing." She wrote that he said it was "more important than I am, more important than myself."

The briefcase was lost after his death and its contents remain unknown.

For years people suspected that it might have been his lost work on the Parisian arcades, iron-and-glass-roofed shopping corridors, which provoked penetrating philosophical insights on the part of Mr. Benjamin. But those papers were discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where Mr. Benjamin's friend the essayist Georges Bataille had hidden them from the Nazis. They were published in West Germany in 1982.

Howard Eiland, who translated them as "The Arcades Project," published in 1999 by Harvard University Press, said the contents of the lost briefcase remained a mystery. He said, "This sounds like it was something completely different that no one knows about."

Ms. Fittko was soon joined on the French side of the border by her husband, who had not been able to find sea passage. They delayed their own escape when Mr. Fry asked them to help take refugees into Spain. They pretended to be vineyard workers and took people across the mountains on what was called the F route (for Fittko) two or three times a week for seven months. The number of those they helped is sometimes estimated in the hundreds; not one was caught, they said.

The Fittkos eventually escaped to Cuba, then went on to Chicago, where Ms. Fittko's brother lived. Mr. Fittko died in 1960, and Ms. Fittko left no immediate survivors.

She returned to Spain several times to look for Mr. Benjamin's lost briefcase, but never found it.
Correction: March 22, 2005, Tuesday

An obituary yesterday about Lisa Fittko, the anti-Hitler activist, misspelled the surname of the French essayist who helped hide the writings of Walter Benjamin, the German literary critic and philosopher. He was Georges Bataille, not Batailles.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |

Posted by lois at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

VT: DOC says they are getting better health care with PHS

Keeping Contracts Under Control in Corrections

By Meghan Mandeville, News Research Reporter
March 21, 2005 http://www.corrections.com/news/program/index.aspx

Providing quality healthcare and lowering costs are challenges that
drive many corrections agencies towards private companies. But once the contract is signed and the deal is done, departments can't turn a blind eye to what's going on in their facilities; they need to manage those contracts with private service providers to ensure that they are getting what they bargained for.

Vermont learned this lesson the hard way when seven inmate deaths in a year's time prompted the DOC and the State Auditor's Office to take a closer look at healthcare, among other things, at the state's
correctional facilities.  Both the Auditor's Report and the report
ordered by the Vermont Agency of Human Services found that the DOC
needed to step up its contract oversight.

Chief among those contracts that required better monitoring was the
department's arrangement with Correctional Medical Services (CMS), the state's inmate healthcare provider.  According to the Auditor's Report, the state suffered financially from ineffective monitoring of the CMS contract and had no real way to evaluate the quality of the services the company was providing to inmates.

"We didn't belly up to the bar to monitor them," said Andrew Pallito,
Management Executive for the DOC.  "[But] I think we have made some
improvements."

Since the reports were released last year, the Vermont DOC has committed to improving the way it does business with private contractors.  The agency believes it took a step in the right direction in early 2005 when it entered into a contractual agreement with a new healthcare provider, Prison Health Services (PHS). 

"We learned a lot from the Auditor's Report and our own investigation
into the contracts," said John Perry, Director of Planning for the DOC.  "One of the results was that we rebid [the healthcare contract] and now have a new provider."

Perry said that, with PHS, the agency is getting a higher quality of
healthcare at a better price.  The new contract is also far more
restrictive towards the provider, with controls built into it to help
the DOC keep a better handle on the medical services being provided to it inmates, he said.

According to Michael LaFaive, Director of Fiscal Policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, it is essential for agencies that are working with private companies to design contracts that detail exactly what is expected from those providers.

"I must caution that privatization should be done right or not at all," said LaFaive.  "It requires an open bidding process and careful review of the duties to be performed by both parties and, in instances where human health is involved, careful monitoring of the contract to ensure that each party is living up to its responsibilities, not only to each other, but to the patients in their care."

LaFaive said that there should be a system of checks and balances set up so that the public corrections agency is able to keep close watch over the private entity that is providing its healthcare services.  He recommended that one person in the state agency be responsible for
monitoring the contract, rather than spreading that job over the entire operation.

In Vermont, the DOC has taken that approach and is in the process of
hiring a contract monitor, who will be dedicated to overseeing the
department's largest contracts: its medical and mental health services.

According to Pallito, that is just one of the changes the DOC is making to ensure that it works more in unison with PHS than it did with CMS.  The department also added a full-time medical director, who is an MD and is responsible for overseeing the medical and mental health contracts and the delivery of those services from an administrative and clinical point-of-view, he said. 

Additionally, Perry explained, the DOC and the state Health Department have joined forces.  While the details of the agreement between the agencies are still being worked out, the goal is for a quality assurance team from the health department to monitor the quality of healthcare services inmates are receiving in Vermont's prisons, he said.

"[The medical director's] team and the team from the health department will provide external and internal oversight over the whole health and mental health contract process," Perry said.

Pallito added that the healthcare team will likely be charged with
reviewing patient charts and waiting lists, determining if care is
timely and appropriate and assessing whether or not patients' conditions are improving over time.

"The team's job is to really focus on the offender's health from the
offender's point-of-view," he said.

While some positions are being added to ensure that the contract with
PHS is being monitored appropriately, new procedures are also being put into place to ensure that the DOC does not have the same issues it did with CMS.

According to the Auditor's Report, one problem the DOC ran into with CMS was when the company billed the state for full healthcare staff coverage when the staffing was not always sufficient at all correctional facilities.  To avoid this from happening with PHS, Pallito said that the DOC has implemented a dual identification system to determine when healthcare employees are actually at work inside correctional facilities.

According to Pallito, staff members must sign in when they enter a
facility and PHS has also installed an electronic record system, which requires that employees also swipe an ID card when they walk in.

The goal of all of these new mechanisms is to ensure that the PHS is
lives up to its contractual obligations and that the inmates are getting the care they need.

"The importance of monitoring this contract and all of our contracts is to make sure that the offenders are getting the services that we are purchasing," said Pallito.  "Paramount in this whole thing is offender health."

Posted by lois at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)

10,000 "ghost detainees"

For the entire story go to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1440836,00.html

'One huge US jail'

Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace.

Excerpts:

What has been glimpsed in Afghanistan is a radical plan to replace Guantánamo Bay. When that detention centre was set up in January 2002, it was essentially an offshore gulag - beyond the reach of the US constitution and even the Geneva conventions. That all changed in July 2004. The US supreme court ruled that the federal court in Washington had jurisdiction to hear a case that would decide if the Cuban detentions were in violation of the US constitution, its laws or treaties. The military commissions, which had been intended to dispense justice to the prisoners, were in disarray, too. No prosecution cases had been prepared and no defence cases would be readily offered as the US National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers had described the commissions as unethical, a decision backed by a federal judge who ruled in January that they were "illegal". Guantánamo was suddenly bogged down in domestic lawsuits. It had lost its practicality. So a global prison network built up over the previous three years, beyond the reach of American and European judicial process, immediately began to pick up the slack. The process became explicit last week when the Pentagon announced that half of the 540 or so inmates at Guantánamo are to be transferred to prisons in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

The floating population of "ghost detainees", according to US and UK military officials, now exceeds 10,000.

The roots of the prison network can be traced to the legal wrangles that began as soon as the first terror suspects were rounded up just weeks after the September 11 attacks. As CIA agents and US forces began to capture suspected al-Qaida fighters in the war in Afghanistan, Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel, looked for ways to "dispense justice swiftly, close to where our forces may be fighting, without years of pre-trial proceedings or post-trial appeals".

Posted by lois at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

Income---but at a Cost

Published: Mar 22, 2005

By BARRY SAUNDERS, Staff Writer

Step right up, folks, and take a swig of Dr. Buzzard's magical elixir. C'mon
-- it tastes dandy and is guaranteed to cure whatever ails you, from poverty to bad water, maybe even ring around the collar. The potion being peddled, in this instance to residents of Tabor City, is a new prison that proponents claim will increase tax revenues and income, expand water service and improve electrical service to the city's 2,500 residents.

Because nearly 25 percent of Tabor City's residents -- almost double the national average -- live in poverty, it's hard to imagine the Columbus County town turning down any legal means of boosting its economy.

But a prison?

The 2000 census shows that the average income for Tabor City residents is $13,000 a year. The national average is $22,000. It could just be a coincidence, but I doubt it, that an Associated Press story noted that only 63 percent of the town's residents have a high school education.

Here's something to ponder: If a prison can do all that is being expected of this one, just imagine what a school could do.

Alas, there is more political capital to be earned from building a prison, which enables politicians to pimp criminals, than there is in championing schools and education.

It's easy to pooh-pooh a city's trafficking in human misery when neither your town nor you face the economic devastation afflicting Tabor City.

Phil Freelon, a friend of mine and founder of the Freelon Group architectural firm in Durham, faced hard economic times 15 years ago -- as does anyone who starts a new business -- but he refused then, and refuses now, to design prisons.

Even if, I asked, he was broke and the future of his company depended upon prisons as a source of lucre?

"Fortunately, we never got to that point," Freelon said. "We've been blessed to the point where we never had to make a choice of doing a prison or putting food on the table."

Besides feeling that "our talents can be better used upstream, building schools," he said a reason for his rejection of prison design is the "disproportionate number of African-American men" in prison.

Right on.

There are, to be sure, practical benefits to having 1,000 prison inmates as neighbors. For one thing, guards earn higher wages -- they start at about $25,000 -- than the average suds buster or ditch digger.

For another, no matter how bad your day at work, when you drive home you can gaze over at the prison and know that somebody -- possibly everybody -- in there is having a worse day than you are.

Unless, that is, Sweet Thang is on the warpath because you didn't take out the trash or forgot her birthday.

Since the prison is a done deal and is scheduled to open in 2007, let me offer the people of Tabor City a piece of advice: Don't make the same mistake as Durham, which made its jail the best-looking, or at least most dominating, structure in town. Tuck that sucker back up in the woods where nobody can see it.

Tabor City residents have to eat, so it's unfair to begrudge them welcoming a steady revenue source to their town.

But man, there's got to be a better way than that.

Call Barry at 836-2811 or send him e-mail at barrys@newsobserver.com.

Shortcut to: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/saunders/story/2241357p-8621787c.html

Posted by lois at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)

Don't Go Directly to Jail

http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2005/commentary05032103.htm

Don't Go Directly to Jail

By Lawrence Meyers
March 21, 2005

Prisons are a strange concept when you think about it. They're groups of buildings designed expressly to hold people whom society would prefer not to have around for a while. The idea of shipping off undesirables is nothing new, of course. The British sent their naughty children halfway around the planet to an island called Australia. No fuss, no muss, no state bonds to pay for it all.

In America, for better or worse, somebody will always find a way to make money off just about anything. So it stands to reason that prisons would be yet another way. See, prisons are just another money pit for state and federal governments, another thing they would rather not have to deal with. If something bad happens in a privately run facility -- say, for example, a prison break or some claim of prisoner abuse -- the state isn't on the hook. The private operator's insurance picks it up. It's a good cost-saving measure.

Warring wardens
Four major public companies currently deal in this unseemly business: Cornell Corrections (NYSE: CRN), Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW), Correctional Services (Nasdaq: CSCQ), and The Geo Group (NYSE: GGI). It's worth looking at these companies for one very unfortunate reason: There will always be crime. Just as there will always be car accidents. Just as people will always need food. Each of these businesses is different, of course, so before we incarcerate ourselves in a prison of our own making, we'd better check out the facilities first.

One of the problems with the prison industry is how revenues are generated. Generally, a company signs short-term contracts with state and federal agencies to run their prisons for them. Fees typically get paid to the company on a per-inmate basis, with certain price floors. The problem with this setup is that once a prison hits full capacity -- and many have done so
-- the company has maxed out its revenue opportunities at that prison, unless it can negotiate higher fees upon renewal. That means prison companies must constantly be trying to secure new contracts, expand current prisons, or buy up and possibly have to renovate other prisons. That makes for a lot of cash flow drain.

The other issue is costs. Prisons are expensive to run, and the need to carry expensive liability insurance is a big part of that cost. There's a lot of overhead, too. Remember, prisons have to provide everything from linens and clothes to food and guards. In some ways, prison costs aren't too different from the costs a hotel must bear. Of course, hotels have higher profit margins and don't need people to patrol the grounds for escapees.

With the overhead and revenue concerns, it helps to be a big player. Corrections Corporation owns 50% of the beds in the industry, and in a business like this, reputation really does make a difference. When it comes to safeguarding the community, the state and federal folks like to stick with established prison operators that have not had problems, so Corrections is a good place for many governments to go to first. With almost 14,000 employees, an enterprise value of $2.4 billion, and a decent profit margin of 5.46%, Corrections looks good at first glance. Factoring in analysts' expected 16% earnings growth from this year to next pretties up the picture even more.

But, alas, the story doesn't end there. Although the stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 24 -- a reasonable premium for the big player in the biz -- there's a problem on the balance sheet. Remember when I said this business is cash flow intensive? Corrections' free cash flow was negative $15 million over the trailing 12 months, although, to be fair, I should mention that those cash flows include considerable expansion capital expenditures. (Some analysts don't subtract expansion capital expenditures, which are optional expenditures, from operating cash flow when arriving at
FCF.) With a billion dollars in debt and only $60 million in total cash on the balance sheet, this is not a company looking poised to pay off much debt anytime soon. I have reason enough to pass.

The Geo Group, the second-largest player with an EV of $437 million, has some slightly better metrics than Corrections Corporation. For one, the debt load is not as bad. It has $85 million in cash and $241 million in debt. Its trailing-12-month FCF is a very impressive $47 million. Earnings are set to grow 20% over the next year, according to analyst estimates, from $1.49 to $1.80. But with a stock price of $29.50, Geo sports a YPEG (year-ahead P/E and growth ratio) of 1.50. Too pricey for me.

What also caught my suspicion is a thin profit margin just north of 2% and a whopping $160 million in capital expenditures in 2002 ($6 million to $10 million might be a more normal figure based on the company's habits). But a good portion of that amount was due to a business transaction in which the company essentially bought out a partner in the business. (You may remember Geo Group as once being called Wackenhut.) All in all, I would keep my eye on Geo Group. I'd like to see what the next year brings to its expansion plans and contract renewals. It services international customers as well, and that opens up another whole arena to expansion.

Of some interest is Cornell Corrections, but not for reasons investors might like. The Securities and Exchange Commission just recently cleared the company of any wrongdoing regarding a restatement of its 2001 and 2002 earnings. Hedge fund Pirate Capital scooped up a 13% stake in the company and was a major factor in forcing out the CEO. According to the Nov. 22, 2004, issue of New York Metro, Pirate wants the company sold and thinks it can fetch as much as $20 a share. (It currently trades around $13.50.) Six other hedge funds are, according to the article, also circling the company.

Finally, we have teeny Correctional Services, which is so small ($25 million market cap) that no analysts cover it. It's showing just a small profit and a negative FCF from the trailing 12 months, so it doesn't appear terribly enticing, at least based on a cursory look.

The final lockdown?
If I had to choose one of these companies as my cellmate, well, I'd probably first ask to be moved to solitary. Corrections Corporation looks overpriced. Geo Group is worth watching. Cornell Corrections is perfect for the purely speculative investor. And for most investors, Correctional Services won't be worth watching for a while.

Despite the lack of compelling values in the prison industry, businesses arising from government outsourcing can be good things to keep tabs on. If you can find a business that takes advantage of government's generally deep pockets and weak fiscal restraint, it's worth your time to investigate it further.

Fool contributor Lawrence Meyers writes about prisons and once visited Alcatraz. He owns no stocks mentioned in this article. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Posted by lois at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

More..ACLU Report: US Drug Laws Harm Women

March 17, 2005
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- America's war on drugs is inflicting deep and disproportionate harm on women -- most of them mothers -- who are filling prisons in ever-rising numbers despite their typically minor roles in drug rings, the American Civil Liberties