THE TALK
12/16/13
Milk=price going up-asked CINTAS to get me some milk one day; within two days on the television I was watasching milk was a national issue with the price trippling before spring?; Channel 8[CHRISTAN TELEVISION] -went off the air? has statement that BLACK BOX is needed to get channel 8 back on air on the television that I am watching=harassment ;
Godwillst
Was watching talk show -"The Talk" where one of the topics was weather a girl wanted to be known as a good girl next door type or the bad girl; long story short the final conclusion of "The Talk" show panel was that the good girl character would win out in the "LONG RUN"; and the good girl would be somebody that the guy would want to take home to meet his mama,marry, etc., which lead to the fact that having observed African American females live right[like good girls,etc.] the result has been that they have not gotten a dam thing other than watching AFrican American female prostitutes working for white males being given the good African American men through forcing, intimidating, threatening the African American men to go to the African American female prostitutes working for white males or deal with the consequences of having the African American female who chose the good girl path attacked by white males; which the African American men give in and go to the African American female prostitute working for white males in order to protect the African American female that they[the African American male] really wants;
Took a long minute to figure out; but that is what happen concerning T. Jordan[tricked into marrying DEBRA Jordan [who was introduced to prostituting for white male through Darlene Anderson] who is an African American female prostitute working for white males at the Employment security commission in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and whose actions [that blocked me from employment in Winston-Salem, NC] is fully supported by the Employment Security Commission [filed a complaint with the state Employment Security Commission in Raleigh, N.C. of which never got a written response as requested];
Anyway in the final analysis, the females on the "THE TALK" show decided that in the long run the good girls win [they were talking about good girls after leaving high school and just starting to date, and move up and out in society] which is about the time that T. Jordan had asked me to marry him; and about the time white males used African American female prositute Darlene Anderson, who sent African American female prostitute Debra ? to T. Jordan to break up the engagement, in which segment on "The Doctors" brought up segment about the "KNOCKOUT" game and the fact that there are consequences; One of the guest on "The Doctors" stated the guys who are knocking people out are angry;then travis said, "You guys need to KNOW that there are CONSEQUENCES to running around knocking people out!"
Being that somebody needs to tell the truth; pray to God, I never encounter; BUT that is exactly why the guys are running around knocking people out: because there are consequences to constantly abusing people and nobody is ever held accountable for their actions;
a. AFrican American female prostitute Debra Jordan who works for white males who hindered my employment opportunities [has not been held accountable-by the Employment Security Commission][they did not fire her or punish her];
b. Take Obamacare; there have been billions of dollars wasted unneccessarily so [to good people] and not body is being held accountable;
c. Mia Angelo [who is an African American female prostitute working for white males who KNOWS that she is helping white males to rob from the African American female that white males sent Mia Angelo to meet at Baptist Hospital; the good African American female who was taught that by living and doing good-good girls win];has not suffered the consequences of robbery;[that same for African American female prostitute Oprah Winfrey who is working for white males-no consequences for helping white males to rob good African Americans of their wealth and heritage];
d. Along with the thousands of posts about the abuses, intimidations, harassments by the African American [male and female] prostitutes who work for white males[usually have a job] in which NONE of them have suffered any type of consequences but instead have been rewarded for abusing, intimidating, harassing and threatening good African American [female, girl, men, boys];
THUS the knockout game; along with the Pope being elected "man of the year";timing is everything; first the knockout game is a form of a release; people get tired of watching their family, friends, relatives, constantly harassed, intimidated, abused and threaten in front of camera and after following proper protocal; no body suffers any consequences; BUT recieve more harassment, intimidation, abuse, and threats.
"Knockout Game' Suspect Charged With Hate Crime"
Milk=price going up-asked CINTAS to get me some milk one day; within two days on the television I was watasching milk was a national issue with the price trippling before spring?; Channel 8[CHRISTAN TELEVISION] -went off the air? has statement that BLACK BOX is needed to get channel 8 back on air on the television that I am watching=harassment ;
Godwillst
Was watching talk show -"The Talk" where one of the topics was weather a girl wanted to be known as a good girl next door type or the bad girl; long story short the final conclusion of "The Talk" show panel was that the good girl character would win out in the "LONG RUN"; and the good girl would be somebody that the guy would want to take home to meet his mama,marry, etc., which lead to the fact that having observed African American females live right[like good girls,etc.] the result has been that they have not gotten a dam thing other than watching AFrican American female prostitutes working for white males being given the good African American men through forcing, intimidating, threatening the African American men to go to the African American female prostitutes working for white males or deal with the consequences of having the African American female who chose the good girl path attacked by white males; which the African American men give in and go to the African American female prostitute working for white males in order to protect the African American female that they[the African American male] really wants;
Took a long minute to figure out; but that is what happen concerning T. Jordan[tricked into marrying DEBRA Jordan [who was introduced to prostituting for white male through Darlene Anderson] who is an African American female prostitute working for white males at the Employment security commission in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and whose actions [that blocked me from employment in Winston-Salem, NC] is fully supported by the Employment Security Commission [filed a complaint with the state Employment Security Commission in Raleigh, N.C. of which never got a written response as requested];
Anyway in the final analysis, the females on the "THE TALK" show decided that in the long run the good girls win [they were talking about good girls after leaving high school and just starting to date, and move up and out in society] which is about the time that T. Jordan had asked me to marry him; and about the time white males used African American female prositute Darlene Anderson, who sent African American female prostitute Debra ? to T. Jordan to break up the engagement, in which segment on "The Doctors" brought up segment about the "KNOCKOUT" game and the fact that there are consequences; One of the guest on "The Doctors" stated the guys who are knocking people out are angry;then travis said, "You guys need to KNOW that there are CONSEQUENCES to running around knocking people out!"
Being that somebody needs to tell the truth; pray to God, I never encounter; BUT that is exactly why the guys are running around knocking people out: because there are consequences to constantly abusing people and nobody is ever held accountable for their actions;
a. AFrican American female prostitute Debra Jordan who works for white males who hindered my employment opportunities [has not been held accountable-by the Employment Security Commission][they did not fire her or punish her];
b. Take Obamacare; there have been billions of dollars wasted unneccessarily so [to good people] and not body is being held accountable;
c. Mia Angelo [who is an African American female prostitute working for white males who KNOWS that she is helping white males to rob from the African American female that white males sent Mia Angelo to meet at Baptist Hospital; the good African American female who was taught that by living and doing good-good girls win];has not suffered the consequences of robbery;[that same for African American female prostitute Oprah Winfrey who is working for white males-no consequences for helping white males to rob good African Americans of their wealth and heritage];
d. Along with the thousands of posts about the abuses, intimidations, harassments by the African American [male and female] prostitutes who work for white males[usually have a job] in which NONE of them have suffered any type of consequences but instead have been rewarded for abusing, intimidating, harassing and threatening good African American [female, girl, men, boys];
THUS the knockout game; along with the Pope being elected "man of the year";timing is everything; first the knockout game is a form of a release; people get tired of watching their family, friends, relatives, constantly harassed, intimidated, abused and threaten in front of camera and after following proper protocal; no body suffers any consequences; BUT recieve more harassment, intimidation, abuse, and threats.
"Knockout Game' Suspect Charged With Hate Crime"
Nov 24, 2013
By LIZ FIELDS and GILLIAN MOHNEY
NELSON MANDELA was an AFRICAN who stayed in jail for over/close to 30 years to have the right to exist as an AFRICAN; most people are unaware; but he never got it; he settled for existing as white males in AFRICA or around the world exist; but he was never allowed to exist and live and progress and prosper as an AFRICAN [his orginal heritage];he was however allowed to live as the white males original heritage;
CONFIRMATION:
Jim and Tammy Baker [original marriage][intentionally set upand marriage broken up];then Jim Baker is thrown in jail [like Nelson Mandela];Tammy is thrown in psychological turmoil ;
Nelson Manela went into jail; and even after his origianal wife spent her life to help free him from jail and help him fight white males; the first thing that took place was that Nelson Mandela divorced his original wife and was given his 2nd wife; The original wife is the one that white males do not control; the relationship is not based on what white males want to do; but based on love from the heart or other intentions; but whatever the intentions of the two people marrying white males do not control the relationship; which is why the marriages that white males do not control are constantly secretly attacked and such a high rate of divorce;
Anyone can look at Nelson Mandela services and SEE that Nelson Mandela was not allowed to live FREE as an AFRICAN; Nelson Manela submitted to white male domination; his dress, speech all eeked of submission; which was passed on to the African people through speech, dress, charateristics;
Interesting that the KNOCK OUT game got in the news yet none of the issues associated with the harassment, intimidation, abuse and threats of African American are in the news; only for a second was the fact that JAYZ was partnering with a store that was targeting African Americans for harassment, threats, and intimidation; it has been out of the news; WHY? -because it does not support the image that white males want society to have of African American males; and it emphasizes that maybe African American males may have a reason to have a KNOCK OUT game; meaning if African American males can be selected by white males and their African American [male and female prostititues] to be harassed, threaten, intimidated and abused [and they say mental abuse is worse than physical] because of the color of their skin or for no reason other than their race; then being that they don't have the money, organized systems to hide the abuse; they are just using what they have.
The lady on "THE TALK" show stated they are ANGRY youth; nobody picked up that topic; just kept going right over it; the question is why are they ANGRY?; being that white males control the media and the causes for the anger; the reason African American males are angry will never be discussed on media;
"Affluenza?' Judge says boy who killed 4 not liable"
Godwillst
*****************
Liz Fields via World News
[http://abcnews.go.com/US/knockout-game-suspect-charged-hate-crime/story?id=20992590] Notice the
WHITE VAN [which one of the main staples in the African American community][usually driven by white males who wear work uniforms associated with telephones, or repair work; but in actutality they are operating a secret system of abuse, intimidation, harassment, threats and usually given permission to do so];
WHITE VAN [which one of the main staples in the African American community][usually driven by white males who wear work uniforms associated with telephones, or repair work; but in actutality they are operating a secret system of abuse, intimidation, harassment, threats and usually given permission to do so];
African American male react to the injustice constantly observed in their community; especially when the African American male was trained to "do good" and they will recieve good; BUT all the African American male gets for doing good is bad and more bad; UNLESS he agrees to be in a relationship with an African American female prostitute working for white males; of which the good African American male has been taught stay away from prostitutes;
NELSON MANDELA was an AFRICAN who stayed in jail for over/close to 30 years to have the right to exist as an AFRICAN; most people are unaware; but he never got it; he settled for existing as white males in AFRICA or around the world exist; but he was never allowed to exist and live and progress and prosper as an AFRICAN [his orginal heritage];he was however allowed to live as the white males original heritage;
CONFIRMATION:
Jim and Tammy Baker [original marriage][intentionally set upand marriage broken up];then Jim Baker is thrown in jail [like Nelson Mandela];Tammy is thrown in psychological turmoil ;
[Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner];[http://christianity.about.com/od/christiancelebrities/p/ tammyfayebakker.htm]
[where man is sent to ease the stress][first have to divorce husbandJim;[attacks will stop];Tammy ends up with a medical condition[probably given][OBAMACARE [medical]big issue-where lot of people intentionally given diseases they don't have; made to believe they have]; Jim is then introduced to his 2nd wife [who looks, act, dresses like TAMMY BAKER] so that Jim psychologically views his new wife as TAMMY [which is where is heart still is and EVERYBODY KNOWS IT]; of which he took the white female prostitute working for white males to make it easier TAMMY; but as everone could see; that was a joke [which is what they usually do];
[Note: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner:Tammy Faye Bakker Messner is best known for her former years as a Christian televangelist and talk show host. She was married to Jim Bakker and co-hosted The 700 Club and the PTL Club for more than two decades (1966 - 1987). She is also well known for her trademark use of heavy eye makeup.Born: March 7, 1942.] ;
[Note: JIM BAKKER:In October of 1989 Jim Bakker was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy - his sentence was 45 years, unusually long for such a case. On appeal the sentence was reduced to 18 years in August 1991 and the following year he and Tammy Fae divorced; she then proceed to marry his best friend, Roe Messner. On July 1, 1994 Jim Bakker was moved to a halfway house and in January of 1995, he was released from prison.];
[where man is sent to ease the stress][first have to divorce husbandJim;[attacks will stop];Tammy ends up with a medical condition[probably given][OBAMACARE [medical]big issue-where lot of people intentionally given diseases they don't have; made to believe they have]; Jim is then introduced to his 2nd wife [who looks, act, dresses like TAMMY BAKER] so that Jim psychologically views his new wife as TAMMY [which is where is heart still is and EVERYBODY KNOWS IT]; of which he took the white female prostitute working for white males to make it easier TAMMY; but as everone could see; that was a joke [which is what they usually do];
[Note: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner:Tammy Faye Bakker Messner is best known for her former years as a Christian televangelist and talk show host. She was married to Jim Bakker and co-hosted The 700 Club and the PTL Club for more than two decades (1966 - 1987). She is also well known for her trademark use of heavy eye makeup.Born: March 7, 1942.] ;
[Note: JIM BAKKER:In October of 1989 Jim Bakker was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy - his sentence was 45 years, unusually long for such a case. On appeal the sentence was reduced to 18 years in August 1991 and the following year he and Tammy Fae divorced; she then proceed to marry his best friend, Roe Messner. On July 1, 1994 Jim Bakker was moved to a halfway house and in January of 1995, he was released from prison.];
Nelson Manela went into jail; and even after his origianal wife spent her life to help free him from jail and help him fight white males; the first thing that took place was that Nelson Mandela divorced his original wife and was given his 2nd wife; The original wife is the one that white males do not control; the relationship is not based on what white males want to do; but based on love from the heart or other intentions; but whatever the intentions of the two people marrying white males do not control the relationship; which is why the marriages that white males do not control are constantly secretly attacked and such a high rate of divorce;
Anyone can look at Nelson Mandela services and SEE that Nelson Mandela was not allowed to live FREE as an AFRICAN; Nelson Manela submitted to white male domination; his dress, speech all eeked of submission; which was passed on to the African people through speech, dress, charateristics;
Interesting that the KNOCK OUT game got in the news yet none of the issues associated with the harassment, intimidation, abuse and threats of African American are in the news; only for a second was the fact that JAYZ was partnering with a store that was targeting African Americans for harassment, threats, and intimidation; it has been out of the news; WHY? -because it does not support the image that white males want society to have of African American males; and it emphasizes that maybe African American males may have a reason to have a KNOCK OUT game; meaning if African American males can be selected by white males and their African American [male and female prostititues] to be harassed, threaten, intimidated and abused [and they say mental abuse is worse than physical] because of the color of their skin or for no reason other than their race; then being that they don't have the money, organized systems to hide the abuse; they are just using what they have.
The lady on "THE TALK" show stated they are ANGRY youth; nobody picked up that topic; just kept going right over it; the question is why are they ANGRY?; being that white males control the media and the causes for the anger; the reason African American males are angry will never be discussed on media;
Nor will the fact that a white male can kill five to eight people and be put in a plush spa as punishment because the white males parents did not teach him that there are consequences for doing wrong [being bad, not being GOOD];of which African American men are taught to be good];
The judge said that the boy is NOT LIABLE-which is the beginning of his lessons; laws and rules don't apply to you; you do not have to deal with the consequences of your actions;
"Affluenza?' Judge says boy who killed 4 not liable"
By Dr. Drew staff
updated 7:49 AM EST, Fri December 13, 2013
[http://www.hlntv.com/video/2013/12/12/ethan-couch-affluenza-rich-kid-drunk-driving-probation]
Yet African American males/females who are taught to live right, do good, that they will suffere the consequences of their actions always get punished because the good that they do is not control by white males for white males purposes; thus the constant punishment from/through those that work to uplift the white males agenda of destroying the African American heritage and culture;
IF the white boy who suffers from Affluenza [too much wealth] does not have to pay for his crimes [suffer the consequences]; then every African American mother who has ever had a son to go to jail for committing any type of crime should be in the streets protesting because their son had to suffer the consequences of doing wrong;because "lackaffluenzaa" is a condition in which a lot of African American parents do not teach their sons right; that they have to pay for the consequences of their actions; if it works one way then it ought to work the other way; If white boy don't have to suffer any consequences for his crime because he is so rich, then African Amerian boys should not have to suffer any consequences for their crimes[theory];
Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen from the state of Texas, is the exact reason why "The KNOCK OUT" game is being done by African American males/females who have constantly been singled out, abused, punished, intimidated, harassed and threaten by white males system[s] for doing good to people in general; but especially for doing good to/for African Americans [without white males permission]; Yet Ethan Couch, a white male boy with MONEY who killed four or more people; who is wealthy has to suffer by having to share a spa with other wealthy peers vs living in his wealthy home with a personalized swimming pool and spa;
The point: If white boy can kill and be taught/rewarded that he gets special privileges because he is a white male; that his worse punishment for the worse crime[killing another human being is that he has to suffer with a spa life; then surely African American[s] [male/female] should be able to send a message wrong is wrong; and right is right and if it is okay for a white male to abuse, intimidate, harass, rob, threaten and kill [in secret]African Americans; then surely it is okay for African Americans to let the world know that they are tired of the abuse, harassment, threats, and intimadation by making a PUBLIC example of their anger; just as they select innocent people; they are just as innocent when white male systems have targeted them to be abused, harassed, intimidated, threaten; think the official name has identified it as "school to prison" system;
White boys punishment for crime is to suffer in luxury system; white males crimes are rewarded [WALL STREET BAIL OUT]; that is the message being sent to "Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen from the state of Texas,"; don't worry about it whiteboy network got yo back.";
"Education Deform: School-to-Prison Pipeline";by Paul Haeder / December 11th, 2013
[http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/education-deform-school-to-prison-pipeline/];
Yet African American males/females who are taught to live right, do good, that they will suffere the consequences of their actions always get punished because the good that they do is not control by white males for white males purposes; thus the constant punishment from/through those that work to uplift the white males agenda of destroying the African American heritage and culture;
IF the white boy who suffers from Affluenza [too much wealth] does not have to pay for his crimes [suffer the consequences]; then every African American mother who has ever had a son to go to jail for committing any type of crime should be in the streets protesting because their son had to suffer the consequences of doing wrong;because "lackaffluenzaa" is a condition in which a lot of African American parents do not teach their sons right; that they have to pay for the consequences of their actions; if it works one way then it ought to work the other way; If white boy don't have to suffer any consequences for his crime because he is so rich, then African Amerian boys should not have to suffer any consequences for their crimes[theory];
Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen from the state of Texas, is the exact reason why "The KNOCK OUT" game is being done by African American males/females who have constantly been singled out, abused, punished, intimidated, harassed and threaten by white males system[s] for doing good to people in general; but especially for doing good to/for African Americans [without white males permission]; Yet Ethan Couch, a white male boy with MONEY who killed four or more people; who is wealthy has to suffer by having to share a spa with other wealthy peers vs living in his wealthy home with a personalized swimming pool and spa;
The point: If white boy can kill and be taught/rewarded that he gets special privileges because he is a white male; that his worse punishment for the worse crime[killing another human being is that he has to suffer with a spa life; then surely African American[s] [male/female] should be able to send a message wrong is wrong; and right is right and if it is okay for a white male to abuse, intimidate, harass, rob, threaten and kill [in secret]African Americans; then surely it is okay for African Americans to let the world know that they are tired of the abuse, harassment, threats, and intimadation by making a PUBLIC example of their anger; just as they select innocent people; they are just as innocent when white male systems have targeted them to be abused, harassed, intimidated, threaten; think the official name has identified it as "school to prison" system;
White boys punishment for crime is to suffer in luxury system; white males crimes are rewarded [WALL STREET BAIL OUT]; that is the message being sent to "Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen from the state of Texas,"; don't worry about it whiteboy network got yo back.";
"Education Deform: School-to-Prison Pipeline";by Paul Haeder / December 11th, 2013
[http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/education-deform-school-to-prison-pipeline/];
Godwillst
*****************
[http://abcnews.go.com/US/knockout-game-suspect-charged-hate-crime/story?id=20992590]
"Knockout Game' Suspect Charged With Hate Crime"
"Knockout Game' Suspect Charged With Hate Crime"
Nov 24, 2013
By LIZ FIELDS and GILLIAN MOHNEY
Liz Fields via World News
The Brooklyn, N.Y., man accused of assaulting an Orthodox Jew in what appears to be another case of the knockout game is being charged with a hate crime for the alleged attack.
Amrit Marajh, 28, was charged with harassment as a hate crime after he allegedly punched the 24-year-old Orthodox Jewish man Friday morning.
The unidentified victim believes he was attacked as part of the deadly "knockout" game, where an attacker aims to knock out the victim with a single sucker punch, police said.
The violent game has been linked to assault reports in at least six states, and three people have been killed in suspected knockout attacks.
The unidentified Brooklyn victim said he was walking home early Friday morning in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn when he was assaulted and heard his alleged attackers daring each other to punch him out minutes before one actually assaulted him, according to police.
He said there was no question that the game was the motive for the attack, New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
"He makes a statement that he was punched in the side of the face," Kelly said. "He also makes a statement that just prior to it they were talking about the 'Knockout Game'."
New York City police arrested four men Friday in connection with the alleged sucker-punching. Only Marajh was charged, however, and the other three were released.
Teens in Beating Case Tried as Adults
In response to at least eight attacks in the past few weeks, police have stepped up patrols in several Brooklyn neighborhoods where many Jewish people, the latest New York victim among them, have been the targeted.
Two weeks ago, a 78-year-old Jewish woman in Brooklyn was punched in the face by teens while walking down her street, prompting an investigation by the NYPD Hate Crimes Taskforce and leading a New York lawmaker to call for harsher penalties for so-called knockout game players.
The woman's daughter, who wanted to remain anonymous, told "Good Morning America" that she found the violence senseless.
"Someone wanted to inflict pain onto someone else," the woman said. "No other purpose."
Republican state Assemblyman Jim Tedisco has proposed a bill that would classify the knockout game attacks as gang assaults, and would require that youths who participate in such attacks be tried as adults, facing prison terms of up to 25 years.
"These twisted and cowardly thugs are preying on innocent bystanders and they don't care if the victims are young, old, a man or woman," Tedisco told The Associated Press when he announced the bill. "Life isn't a video game. These are real people whose lives are not only being put in jeopardy but in many cases destroyed."
In response to the latest attack in Brooklyn, New York City Councilman David Greenfield told ABC station WABC-TV in New York that officials should send a message of "zero tolerance."
"That's why I called on the NYPD and District Attorney's Office to literally throw the book at these individuals and to charge them with many crimes, including hate crimes and gang assault, because that's what it is," Greenfield said.
In spite of increased police crackdowns on the alleged perpetrators, the dangerous game appears to be spreading further throughout the country.
One unidentified Denver man told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver that he was sucker-punched when leaving a bar, which would make him one of the first people in that city to be a victim of the "knockout" game.
Amrit Marajh, 28, was charged with harassment as a hate crime after he allegedly punched the 24-year-old Orthodox Jewish man Friday morning.
The unidentified victim believes he was attacked as part of the deadly "knockout" game, where an attacker aims to knock out the victim with a single sucker punch, police said.
The violent game has been linked to assault reports in at least six states, and three people have been killed in suspected knockout attacks.
The unidentified Brooklyn victim said he was walking home early Friday morning in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn when he was assaulted and heard his alleged attackers daring each other to punch him out minutes before one actually assaulted him, according to police.
He said there was no question that the game was the motive for the attack, New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
"He makes a statement that he was punched in the side of the face," Kelly said. "He also makes a statement that just prior to it they were talking about the 'Knockout Game'."
New York City police arrested four men Friday in connection with the alleged sucker-punching. Only Marajh was charged, however, and the other three were released.
Teens in Beating Case Tried as Adults
In response to at least eight attacks in the past few weeks, police have stepped up patrols in several Brooklyn neighborhoods where many Jewish people, the latest New York victim among them, have been the targeted.
Two weeks ago, a 78-year-old Jewish woman in Brooklyn was punched in the face by teens while walking down her street, prompting an investigation by the NYPD Hate Crimes Taskforce and leading a New York lawmaker to call for harsher penalties for so-called knockout game players.
The woman's daughter, who wanted to remain anonymous, told "Good Morning America" that she found the violence senseless.
"Someone wanted to inflict pain onto someone else," the woman said. "No other purpose."
Republican state Assemblyman Jim Tedisco has proposed a bill that would classify the knockout game attacks as gang assaults, and would require that youths who participate in such attacks be tried as adults, facing prison terms of up to 25 years.
"These twisted and cowardly thugs are preying on innocent bystanders and they don't care if the victims are young, old, a man or woman," Tedisco told The Associated Press when he announced the bill. "Life isn't a video game. These are real people whose lives are not only being put in jeopardy but in many cases destroyed."
In response to the latest attack in Brooklyn, New York City Councilman David Greenfield told ABC station WABC-TV in New York that officials should send a message of "zero tolerance."
"That's why I called on the NYPD and District Attorney's Office to literally throw the book at these individuals and to charge them with many crimes, including hate crimes and gang assault, because that's what it is," Greenfield said.
In spite of increased police crackdowns on the alleged perpetrators, the dangerous game appears to be spreading further throughout the country.
One unidentified Denver man told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver that he was sucker-punched when leaving a bar, which would make him one of the first people in that city to be a victim of the "knockout" game.
****************
[http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2013/12/if_this_rich_kid_suffers_from_
affluenza_we_ve_all_got_negrobetes.html]
Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen from the state of Texas, was charged with vehicular manslaughter after he killed four people while he was driving drunk. He was found guilty, but Couch won't be serving any prison time because he suffers from an affliction called "affluenza."
Affluenza—a hybrid of the words "affluent" and "influenza"—his lawyer argued successfully, is the "disease" of being so rich that you have essentially never had to suffer the consequences of your actions.
Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner
http://christianity.about.com/od/christiancelebrities/p/tammyfayebakker.htm
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner is best known for her former years as a Christian televangelist and talk show host. She was married to Jim Bakker and co-hosted The 700 Club and the PTL Club for more than two decades (1966 - 1987). She is also well known for her trademark use of heavy eye makeup.
So what were Couch's consequences for stealing beer from a Wal-Mart with his friends, driving a pickup truck intoxicated at almost three times the legal limit for an adult and killing a woman whose car was broken down, two people who came to help her and a passerby? Probation, Time.com reports.
"He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way," said psychologist Gary Miller, who was assigned to evaluate Couch. "He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle."
My colleague Keren Johnson was outraged and messaged me shortly after reading the story. "Affluenza defense?" she wrote. "Why is being too rich a defense, but being too poor is not? Not that anyone should base illegal behavior on economic status, but don't people tend to find themselves engaging in illegal activity when there's not enough money, food, shelter, etc. ... not when there's an abundance?"
If Couch has such a problem with being wealthy, then he should try being poor. With the jobless rate for African Americans still twice that of whites, Johnson and I have coined a term that we believe can cover all of the social ills plaguing the African-American community: "Negrobetes".
****************
Negrobetes, a mashup of “Negro” and “diabetes,” is a disease that affects all African Americans. While it can be dormant in some and rampant in others, it runs in the blood, traced back to slavery, and cannot be transmitted from personal contact. Negrobetes is not airborne. While in very rare cases it can be deadly, it is a manageable progressive disease that, like its namesake, is categorized into two subclasses.
Type 1 sufferers of Negrobetes can manage their disease with a steady diet of highbrow literature and a solid education. In such cases, their exposure to the experiences of Type 2 Negrobetes sufferers (getting arrested at high-end department stores, random bouts of racial profiling, etc.) is rare and may be nonexistent.
For Type 2 sufferers, all cases are extremely debilitating and could result in severe injury or worse. They are usually negatively affected by a social justice system that doesn't care about their needs. They can be sensitive to a school system that is underfunded, and as a result they may have difficulties managing a working world that demands a proper education. Generally they are prescribed three to four shots of self-affirmation, positive belief and prayer. When left unmanaged, Negrobetes can be deadly.
"Education Deform: School-to-Prison Pipeline"
by Paul Haeder / December 11th, 2013
[[http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/education-deform-school-to-prison-pipeline/]
As a preface here, as I have done many times as my role as writer for DV, I have to default to the local, as in, where you see fault lines and bright lines in a local situation, you can pretty much make the larger microcosmic statement about many things for a state, region, country, culture, what have you.
I can hear the lawyers now: “This is a clear case of Type 2 Negrobetes, your honor.”
***************"Education Deform: School-to-Prison Pipeline"
by Paul Haeder / December 11th, 2013
[[http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/education-deform-school-to-prison-pipeline/]
As a preface here, as I have done many times as my role as writer for DV, I have to default to the local, as in, where you see fault lines and bright lines in a local situation, you can pretty much make the larger microcosmic statement about many things for a state, region, country, culture, what have you.
The School to Prison Pipeline has been written about many, many times, and my hat goes off to some of those writers:
The ACLU has it on its radar.
So does the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Hell, there is a School To Prison dot org.
Black Agenda Report covers this, too:
LA Schools Overrun by Cops
Below, I give you the story, found at the web site, for the next month and a half at Spokane Living Magazine, starting on page 40.
Luckily, as part of my work researching this story, I also connected with a woman whose daughters and other relatives and friends’ children have experienced another sort of pipeline — racism in the schools, which leads to Diaspora as in brain drain and people of color DRAIN. Leaving Spokane, leaving the state of Washington.
Check out Virla’s Change.org petition:
Well, Virla and I talked, and I hope to find her battle in the NEXT issue of the magazine I write for, around Smart Justice and no-new-jails. It’s so queer, no, how when you are a person “of color” who has backbone, the powers either try to shut you up or lock you out or literally lock you up. Is America racist? That’s a silly question!
As I have stated before, if we actually enlisted a Studs Terkel approach on all things around journalism, narrative, looking at people as the center of the story … or how about just reading Linh Dinh’s stuff and having him sent to a thousand classrooms, PK12 and higher ed collectively, well, this country would be IMPROVED. Check out his Postcard from the End of America series, here, at DV.
Smart Justice … where oh where have all the people of color gone …
By Paul K. Haeder
The Sheriff first started policing in Spirit, Wyoming, but he is thinking about staying the course in Spokane politics for another 8 years, hoping to get a graduate degree and one day teach youth, at a community college. He may be at the helm of some of the directives around the “big bad” Spokane County jail, but he continues touting his voluntary work reading to Head Start classes.
“Early education and reading, they are the best indicators of future crime, in my opinion,” the Sheriff says.
If You Deconstruct Safety Nets, Youth Will Flounder
One truism is solid when it comes to what many in so many professions – cops, judges, teachers, sociologists, elected officials, psychologists, and even economists – see as our biggest challenge: our youth are inheriting the dysfunction of an economy that is creating fewer opportunities for good work. Additionally, schools and schooling have become this giant experiment with so many non-experts chiming in on what needs to be done to the curriculum and how to privatize our bricks and mortar reality of PK12 and even college institutions.
“Schools are a microcosm of society,” says Rosey Thurman, lawyer for Team Child, a statewide organization dedicated to empowering youth to not get kicked out of the system. “I don’t envy the teachers, don’t get me wrong. Many of my clients are getting kicked out because they have mental health issues.”
Unfortunately for Thurman, who’s been at this job in Spokane for 17 years and has roots in Chicago, her clients are youth who come from homes that are wrecked, broken or bloodied by violent parents. They come to school with development disabilities and mental health issues. Others are living on the streets or couch surfing. Many youth do not have parents around, or those that do, they have them in name only – mothers and fathers who have checked out with booze, drugs and criminality.
“I’d say that if you were homeless, you’d expect to have a few mental health issues,” she says. Her client load is around 250 youth a year, and she has all sorts of cases, including emancipation requests and tribulations around getting schools to “take back” young people. She is not afraid to say that the school resource officers in some Spokane schools are “heavy handed, pushing youths in diversion programs for carrying a pocket knife at school or smoking a little pot.”
Thurman reiterated a case she was working on where the smart parent doubted the suspension of her high schooler on marijuana smoking. The mother had not one but three drug tests ordered on her son, all coming back clean for all drugs, including pot. The child was reinstated, but this is an example, Thurman points out, of a “highly-involved parent advocating for her son.” In most cases, the suspended child loses valuable classroom time, and even five days but certainly two weeks of suspension are enough to sink a child’s entire school year.
It’s easy to blame the schools, the teachers. In this day and age, teachers are pariahs for the misinformed public and deluded political class. The Los Angeles school district recently fired thousands of teachers and librarians in lieu of iPads. Even so, teachers got partial pay vouchers for 30 percent of their wages in sunny California.
We have to wonder what message this sends to our youth? It’s not unusual, as Thurman and the Team Child office experience here, or in Seattle or Yakima, to see teachers not following IEPs or IBPs – individual education or behavioral plans – for youth who have been diagnosed with behavioral disabilities.
For Todd Eklof, Spokane Unitarian Universalist minister and one of the many individuals representing over 30 groups around a program in Spokane that is being touted as Smart Justice, he knows the value of early intervention in young people’s lives.
“We were one of the first organizations to sign onto Smart Justice,” Eklof says. “As a church, the Unitarian Universalists are interested in justice as equality. We believe that justice has to be distributive, and has to take into account poverty and racial disproportionality.”
Pipelines – From Cradle to School to Jail
The Unitarian, the lawyer Thurman and others, including James Wilburn, new director of Spokane’s NAACP, and Pastor Happy Watkins, head of the New Hope Baptist Church, are clear when they speak to anyone, let alone a journalist, that Spokane is in fact not unlike other communities that have this “gateway to the school to prison pipeline.”
“Spokane has a built-in mechanism or system that over incarcerates young black youth,” says Wilburn, who is at Rogers High School as a retention specialist, a program he helped develop at Lewis and Clark high school, called achievement gap intervention. “It’s not the weather that keeps African Americans from settling or staying in Spokane, it’s the cultural aspect. Spokane is not welcoming to people of color.”
So, in one sense, there are two pipelines – the school-to-prison one that facilitates, as study after study has borne out, the juvenile and adult criminal justice “systems” meting out harsher penalties to black youth (males at the highest levels) and also providing fewer services to get those now in the system back on track, like those Sheriff Knezovich cites as vital: job skills, housing assistance, mental and drug/alcohol programs. The second pipeline is this Diaspora of both black and white youngsters our of River City, because there is no social life for youth, which Watkins says “is at an all-time low.”
In a city with four universities, a military presence, the number of African Americans leaving is alarming to both Wilburn and Pastor Watkins.
“There’s racial profiling going on in our schools,” Wilburn says. “African American youth are suspended from school at a rate three times higher than Caucasians. When the criminal justice system – police, what have you – locks young black males up for minor offenses and they spend more time in jail or juvenile detention than whites, what message does that send our community?”
The message is clear – there are only about 22 African American congregations in Spokane, ranging from 300 to 40 or fifty congregants. “These 22 churches are also in a survival mode,” Watkins says. “Any extra money in the beneficent fund for housing or clothing to help our congregation, well, we are strapped.”
He reiterated that just the previous Sunday before interviewed for this story, “… a young man came up to me after the service asking for some help with groceries.”
For Watkins, who’s famous for his “I Have a Dream” speech renditions, this is the groundwork of those two pipelines being laid down: “My hope is the criminal justice system becomes fair. That means the same sentence for a black person as a white or Asian person. Look, our kids don’t see a value in the education system. They don’t work as hard to make an effort to succeed. It’s really concerning to me that they don’t see productive citizens of color in Spokane – simple things like at the grocery stores, or selling cars, or in the office. Even in City Hall. There is little for them to see as models to illustrate the importance of striving for an education.”
For lawyers like Breean Beggs and Center for Justice attorney Julie Schaffer, this issue of mounting numbers of people in jail for non-violent offenses, for missing court dates or not paying old fines, well, it’s one reason they have dedicated themselves to work on a year-long campaign of Smart Justice.
The City With Nothing To Do for Youth Reaps What it Sows
Still, Watkins says that “it’s painful to see these young people having to pay attorney’s fees or the mounting cost of tickets.” The systems puts them behind the proverbial eight-ball, and many never recover.
The old adage about Spokane not having enough for young people to do or enough culture to keep them here is not just a teen’s perennial complaint.
I was at the Terrain Art Show, a one-day affair October 4, now in its sixth iteration. From 5 pm to 1 am people lined up to listen to bands, see art in both two dimensions and 3-D as well as partake in digital and film projects, live performances and food. Impressive, but many of the youth I talked to the day before and the day of the event hadn’t heard a thing about it. And Terrain is a youth-oriented show, limited to 35 years or younger as artists!
“There’s nothing to do around here if you are a teen or twenty-something …. It’s an old foggy town. Great if you are into soccer, but what about the rest of us? People running Spokane are suburbanites, totally lacking in youth cred. Cold, conservative, lots of churches and bars.”
I am not pushing causality, but the less there is for youth to do, well, even the CIA studies that – countries with the highest youth population (16-30), and they also look at the male demographic closely, the more chances of civil unrest. When you are young, out of work, and see older people’s decision-making processes in all levels of our society create barriers (poverty) as they accumulate wealth, there is immediate frustration … which can lead to violence.
Unfortunately, the economics of a struggling middle class and more people living in or near poverty levels play into many families’ collective mental dynamics.
One Person’s Panhandler Is Another Person’s Child
There are more and more homeless youth in Spokane, and more troubled youth in the school system and hanging on the streets. Schools have become intolerant and incapable of dealing with children whose troubles in fact lead directly back to those sometimes violent or missing parents. We are perceived to be a city that basically sees street youth as a few notches above al Qaeda as seen on Fox News.
Young people have to have cities that respond to their cultural and inspirational needs. Cities need economic development that addresses employment and service learning opportunities for young people. And, affordable housing.
I’ve studied this as both a police beat reporter in El Paso, Tucson, Southern Arizona, Mexico and as a journalist in Spokane and Seattle, and as a college teacher working at universities, community colleges, military bases, prisons, and alternative high schools. The wrong methods are clear: harassing youth, blaming them for bad parents, bad communities and bad opportunities. Then, we lock them up as delinquents and finally move juveniles into the Big House. This warehousing of “adults” for non-violent offenses is costing communities big time.
It costs entire families their futures. Plus, to use plain old arithmetic for Spokane’s taxpayer, as Beggs and Schaffer say in unison, “the criminal justice system – judges, courts, cops, probation officers, the jail, etc. – costs us seventy cents for every dollar of tax revenue.”
In an upcoming article, we’ll look at the Smart Justice platform, the no-new jail movement, and the positions law enforcement folk like Ozzie Knezovich and Lt. Sarber have compared to the ideas of criminal justice wonks like Doug Marlowe from the University of Pennsylvania. We’ll look at the three-judge Spokane County Criminal Justice Commission’s recent findings. We’ll even hear what TV star Judge Joe Brown has to say about the prison-to-school pipeline in his “spare the rod, spoil the child” sermons.
For now, Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane ends this story with the words of its director, Liz Moore, yet another person tied to the groups fighting for Smart Justice Spokane:
“We need to stop jailing people for driving with licenses suspended, unless it’s connected with driving under the influence. We need to stop jailing people for failure to pay court fines. We need to use common sense alternatives like electronic home monitoring for nonviolent offenders so that people can stay employed, stay housed, not have their kids enter the foster system.”
She’s on board with strong mental health courts and mental health treatment programs since about one-third of people in the county jail have some form of mental illness and/or are on psychotropic medications.
“These are just the low-hanging fruit, and these changes alone would do a great deal of good for our community,” Moore adds. “When these commonsense obvious changes are not in place, it makes sense to ask: What are other changes do we need to make that maybe are less obvious to people who aren’t feeling the impact? When we see that African American and Native American men are over-represented in our county jail, we have to say together that ending racial disproportionality in our criminal justice system is absolutely necessary.”
We’ll look at those policies and procedures that result in those disparities. The Sheriff and Pastor Watkins agree on one thing, though: “We need to work on the family, kitchen table and the home.”
The ACLU has it on its radar.
So does the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Hell, there is a School To Prison dot org.
Black Agenda Report covers this, too:
LA Schools Overrun by Cops
The Los Angeles Unified School District is among the most heavily policed in the nation, with Black students 29 times more likely than white students to be charged with disturbing the peace. “Are they trying to set students up for success and education, or are they trying to set them up to go to prison?” asked Ashley Franklin, an organizer with the Labor Community Strategy Center and one of the authors of a report titled “Black, Brown and Over-Policed in LA Schools.” Despite the heavy hand of the law, students have organized throughout the district. “Our youth have read their history and they’re fighting back,” said Franklin.What I have going is that I am revolutionary and way beyond progressive, and, yes, I’ve paid the price for that as a perennial part-time worker, teacher, writer, editor, journalist, tutor, and shall I list more? Part of that voice box is a small gig in Spokane for a slick magazine which I get to write for putting down some pretty heavy and decent columns that even national magazines would have a hard time contextualizing and publishing, since we are a nation of snippet journalists, snippet students, snippet public service workers, snippet artists, you name it, it’s gotta be on a small screen with corresponding five dozen apps for which to buy more snippet junk in which to invest our own snippet energy for exhausting our own snippet ideas and snippet ethics.
Below, I give you the story, found at the web site, for the next month and a half at Spokane Living Magazine, starting on page 40.
Luckily, as part of my work researching this story, I also connected with a woman whose daughters and other relatives and friends’ children have experienced another sort of pipeline — racism in the schools, which leads to Diaspora as in brain drain and people of color DRAIN. Leaving Spokane, leaving the state of Washington.
Check out Virla’s Change.org petition:
As a mother of two young African-American students at Rogers High School in Spokane, WA, I want the superintendent of schools in Spokane and the State superintendent of schools to be notified of the bullying and racism culture at the predominantly African-American school. This has reached a point in my two daughters’ lives at Rogers where they are being harassed by students and by the teachers and administrators. In Spokane, African-American students are expelled and suspended three times the rate for white kids. My daughters have been in school to do well and have excelled at their studies, but the suspension of one and the harassment of the other are both violations of bullying codes and a culture of racism and protection of students who are displaying both racists comments and actions. Rogers needs a special counselor NOW to work as an advocate of all students, including African American students and other minority students. That counselor should and must be a minority, preferably an African-American recruited to deal with this culture of racism and selective persecution of African-American students. This petition may sound like a parent overly concerned with her daughters’ well being, or even knee-jerk, but this high school is in dire need of fixing, like many in the state of WA. This petition is to address my specific concerns and the general concern around the well-being and equal treatment of minority students in this public school.Please note that Virla took this to the local daily, Spokesman Review, EIGHT years ago: “District Bans Two Parents from Schools for 1 Year.”
Well, Virla and I talked, and I hope to find her battle in the NEXT issue of the magazine I write for, around Smart Justice and no-new-jails. It’s so queer, no, how when you are a person “of color” who has backbone, the powers either try to shut you up or lock you out or literally lock you up. Is America racist? That’s a silly question!
As I have stated before, if we actually enlisted a Studs Terkel approach on all things around journalism, narrative, looking at people as the center of the story … or how about just reading Linh Dinh’s stuff and having him sent to a thousand classrooms, PK12 and higher ed collectively, well, this country would be IMPROVED. Check out his Postcard from the End of America series, here, at DV.
.What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you’re listening. Because you’re listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It’s for the person who reads it to have the feeling … In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. “Ordinary” is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176).What would Studs have to say about Obama, and his little microcosmic portion of his mealy mouth rhetoric painting the guy’s total being with little words spoken here, little ones spoken there? Here, from Socialist Worker:
― Studs Terkel, Touch and Go: A Memoir
It wasn’t a grand speech. Rather, it was a chummy discussion between the president of the United States and a gathering of business leaders at an event called the “Wall Street Journal CEO Council.” But when future historians search for a way to summarize the Obama years, they’d do well to ignore his more poetic speeches that have so little to do with the man’s actual actions, and focus instead on these words:What has this man, Obama, really done for the unemployed black youth? What has he done to help resurrect Detroit from the ashes of the devil financieers? What has Obama done to stand your ground against gutting education, gutting social and community welfare? Right. I bring you the school to prison pipeline, in Spokane, WA, emblematic of a pipeline erected throughout the land.
“When you go to other countries, the political divisions are so much more stark and wider. Here in America, the difference between Democrats and Republicans–we’re fighting inside the 40-yard lines…
People call me a socialist sometimes. But no, you’ve got to meet real socialists. (Laughter.) You’ll have a sense of what a socialist is. (Laughter.) I’m talking about lowering the corporate tax rate. My health care reform is based on the private marketplace. The stock market is looking pretty good last time I checked.”
It was a touching ruling class moment. At a time of bitter partisan warfare in Congress and frequent mudslinging by business executives, a bunch of CEOs were able to sit down with their president and realize that they really aren’t so different after all. Together, they shared a good laugh at the idea held by many ordinary people in both parties–that Obama and Corporate America are somehow on different sides.
Smart Justice … where oh where have all the people of color gone …
By Paul K. Haeder
With 40 percent of wealth going to the top 1 percent, public services are drying up from lack of revenue and more and more young people find themselves locked out of the dream of getting a decent education or a job while being robbed of any hope for the future. – Henry GirouxConnecting the dots and embracing the realities of causation can emancipate an entire community, the whole state, or our nation, for that matter. It takes more than just a village to raise our children. The reader might need some bullet points on what it really takes to develop all children?
- Early education programs that work, i.e. resources such as culturally-appropriate curriculum, healthy bodies, loving para-educators, resilient directors and involved families.
- Smaller classrooms and “reality education” tied to developing critical thinking, cracking the books covering the great subjects of our time and navigating a tough job market and economic climate.
- Better and connected junior and high school teachers who have been trained in multiculturalism and have multiple contexts from which to guide, mentor, teach. That means our teachers have to come from the very neighborhoods and ethnic and racial backgrounds of their students – a national student population that will be in 20 years 45 to 50 percent youth of color.
- More jobs skills and life coaching with strong safety nets around behavioral health and drug, alcohol and sex training that works, that’s real.
- Stronger cultural engagement tied to participatory arts and sports.
- Better families that aren’t broke (financially) or broken-down emotionally.
- Better and more involved businesses and leaders in the community that have vision and a communitarian spirit.
The Sheriff first started policing in Spirit, Wyoming, but he is thinking about staying the course in Spokane politics for another 8 years, hoping to get a graduate degree and one day teach youth, at a community college. He may be at the helm of some of the directives around the “big bad” Spokane County jail, but he continues touting his voluntary work reading to Head Start classes.
“Early education and reading, they are the best indicators of future crime, in my opinion,” the Sheriff says.
If You Deconstruct Safety Nets, Youth Will Flounder
One truism is solid when it comes to what many in so many professions – cops, judges, teachers, sociologists, elected officials, psychologists, and even economists – see as our biggest challenge: our youth are inheriting the dysfunction of an economy that is creating fewer opportunities for good work. Additionally, schools and schooling have become this giant experiment with so many non-experts chiming in on what needs to be done to the curriculum and how to privatize our bricks and mortar reality of PK12 and even college institutions.
“Schools are a microcosm of society,” says Rosey Thurman, lawyer for Team Child, a statewide organization dedicated to empowering youth to not get kicked out of the system. “I don’t envy the teachers, don’t get me wrong. Many of my clients are getting kicked out because they have mental health issues.”
Unfortunately for Thurman, who’s been at this job in Spokane for 17 years and has roots in Chicago, her clients are youth who come from homes that are wrecked, broken or bloodied by violent parents. They come to school with development disabilities and mental health issues. Others are living on the streets or couch surfing. Many youth do not have parents around, or those that do, they have them in name only – mothers and fathers who have checked out with booze, drugs and criminality.
“I’d say that if you were homeless, you’d expect to have a few mental health issues,” she says. Her client load is around 250 youth a year, and she has all sorts of cases, including emancipation requests and tribulations around getting schools to “take back” young people. She is not afraid to say that the school resource officers in some Spokane schools are “heavy handed, pushing youths in diversion programs for carrying a pocket knife at school or smoking a little pot.”
Thurman reiterated a case she was working on where the smart parent doubted the suspension of her high schooler on marijuana smoking. The mother had not one but three drug tests ordered on her son, all coming back clean for all drugs, including pot. The child was reinstated, but this is an example, Thurman points out, of a “highly-involved parent advocating for her son.” In most cases, the suspended child loses valuable classroom time, and even five days but certainly two weeks of suspension are enough to sink a child’s entire school year.
It’s easy to blame the schools, the teachers. In this day and age, teachers are pariahs for the misinformed public and deluded political class. The Los Angeles school district recently fired thousands of teachers and librarians in lieu of iPads. Even so, teachers got partial pay vouchers for 30 percent of their wages in sunny California.
We have to wonder what message this sends to our youth? It’s not unusual, as Thurman and the Team Child office experience here, or in Seattle or Yakima, to see teachers not following IEPs or IBPs – individual education or behavioral plans – for youth who have been diagnosed with behavioral disabilities.
For Todd Eklof, Spokane Unitarian Universalist minister and one of the many individuals representing over 30 groups around a program in Spokane that is being touted as Smart Justice, he knows the value of early intervention in young people’s lives.
“We were one of the first organizations to sign onto Smart Justice,” Eklof says. “As a church, the Unitarian Universalists are interested in justice as equality. We believe that justice has to be distributive, and has to take into account poverty and racial disproportionality.”
Pipelines – From Cradle to School to Jail
The Unitarian, the lawyer Thurman and others, including James Wilburn, new director of Spokane’s NAACP, and Pastor Happy Watkins, head of the New Hope Baptist Church, are clear when they speak to anyone, let alone a journalist, that Spokane is in fact not unlike other communities that have this “gateway to the school to prison pipeline.”
“Spokane has a built-in mechanism or system that over incarcerates young black youth,” says Wilburn, who is at Rogers High School as a retention specialist, a program he helped develop at Lewis and Clark high school, called achievement gap intervention. “It’s not the weather that keeps African Americans from settling or staying in Spokane, it’s the cultural aspect. Spokane is not welcoming to people of color.”
So, in one sense, there are two pipelines – the school-to-prison one that facilitates, as study after study has borne out, the juvenile and adult criminal justice “systems” meting out harsher penalties to black youth (males at the highest levels) and also providing fewer services to get those now in the system back on track, like those Sheriff Knezovich cites as vital: job skills, housing assistance, mental and drug/alcohol programs. The second pipeline is this Diaspora of both black and white youngsters our of River City, because there is no social life for youth, which Watkins says “is at an all-time low.”
In a city with four universities, a military presence, the number of African Americans leaving is alarming to both Wilburn and Pastor Watkins.
“There’s racial profiling going on in our schools,” Wilburn says. “African American youth are suspended from school at a rate three times higher than Caucasians. When the criminal justice system – police, what have you – locks young black males up for minor offenses and they spend more time in jail or juvenile detention than whites, what message does that send our community?”
The message is clear – there are only about 22 African American congregations in Spokane, ranging from 300 to 40 or fifty congregants. “These 22 churches are also in a survival mode,” Watkins says. “Any extra money in the beneficent fund for housing or clothing to help our congregation, well, we are strapped.”
He reiterated that just the previous Sunday before interviewed for this story, “… a young man came up to me after the service asking for some help with groceries.”
For Watkins, who’s famous for his “I Have a Dream” speech renditions, this is the groundwork of those two pipelines being laid down: “My hope is the criminal justice system becomes fair. That means the same sentence for a black person as a white or Asian person. Look, our kids don’t see a value in the education system. They don’t work as hard to make an effort to succeed. It’s really concerning to me that they don’t see productive citizens of color in Spokane – simple things like at the grocery stores, or selling cars, or in the office. Even in City Hall. There is little for them to see as models to illustrate the importance of striving for an education.”
For lawyers like Breean Beggs and Center for Justice attorney Julie Schaffer, this issue of mounting numbers of people in jail for non-violent offenses, for missing court dates or not paying old fines, well, it’s one reason they have dedicated themselves to work on a year-long campaign of Smart Justice.
The City With Nothing To Do for Youth Reaps What it Sows
Still, Watkins says that “it’s painful to see these young people having to pay attorney’s fees or the mounting cost of tickets.” The systems puts them behind the proverbial eight-ball, and many never recover.
The old adage about Spokane not having enough for young people to do or enough culture to keep them here is not just a teen’s perennial complaint.
I was at the Terrain Art Show, a one-day affair October 4, now in its sixth iteration. From 5 pm to 1 am people lined up to listen to bands, see art in both two dimensions and 3-D as well as partake in digital and film projects, live performances and food. Impressive, but many of the youth I talked to the day before and the day of the event hadn’t heard a thing about it. And Terrain is a youth-oriented show, limited to 35 years or younger as artists!
“There’s nothing to do around here if you are a teen or twenty-something …. It’s an old foggy town. Great if you are into soccer, but what about the rest of us? People running Spokane are suburbanites, totally lacking in youth cred. Cold, conservative, lots of churches and bars.”
I am not pushing causality, but the less there is for youth to do, well, even the CIA studies that – countries with the highest youth population (16-30), and they also look at the male demographic closely, the more chances of civil unrest. When you are young, out of work, and see older people’s decision-making processes in all levels of our society create barriers (poverty) as they accumulate wealth, there is immediate frustration … which can lead to violence.
Unfortunately, the economics of a struggling middle class and more people living in or near poverty levels play into many families’ collective mental dynamics.
One Person’s Panhandler Is Another Person’s Child
There are more and more homeless youth in Spokane, and more troubled youth in the school system and hanging on the streets. Schools have become intolerant and incapable of dealing with children whose troubles in fact lead directly back to those sometimes violent or missing parents. We are perceived to be a city that basically sees street youth as a few notches above al Qaeda as seen on Fox News.
Young people have to have cities that respond to their cultural and inspirational needs. Cities need economic development that addresses employment and service learning opportunities for young people. And, affordable housing.
I’ve studied this as both a police beat reporter in El Paso, Tucson, Southern Arizona, Mexico and as a journalist in Spokane and Seattle, and as a college teacher working at universities, community colleges, military bases, prisons, and alternative high schools. The wrong methods are clear: harassing youth, blaming them for bad parents, bad communities and bad opportunities. Then, we lock them up as delinquents and finally move juveniles into the Big House. This warehousing of “adults” for non-violent offenses is costing communities big time.
It costs entire families their futures. Plus, to use plain old arithmetic for Spokane’s taxpayer, as Beggs and Schaffer say in unison, “the criminal justice system – judges, courts, cops, probation officers, the jail, etc. – costs us seventy cents for every dollar of tax revenue.”
In an upcoming article, we’ll look at the Smart Justice platform, the no-new jail movement, and the positions law enforcement folk like Ozzie Knezovich and Lt. Sarber have compared to the ideas of criminal justice wonks like Doug Marlowe from the University of Pennsylvania. We’ll look at the three-judge Spokane County Criminal Justice Commission’s recent findings. We’ll even hear what TV star Judge Joe Brown has to say about the prison-to-school pipeline in his “spare the rod, spoil the child” sermons.
For now, Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane ends this story with the words of its director, Liz Moore, yet another person tied to the groups fighting for Smart Justice Spokane:
“We need to stop jailing people for driving with licenses suspended, unless it’s connected with driving under the influence. We need to stop jailing people for failure to pay court fines. We need to use common sense alternatives like electronic home monitoring for nonviolent offenders so that people can stay employed, stay housed, not have their kids enter the foster system.”
She’s on board with strong mental health courts and mental health treatment programs since about one-third of people in the county jail have some form of mental illness and/or are on psychotropic medications.
“These are just the low-hanging fruit, and these changes alone would do a great deal of good for our community,” Moore adds. “When these commonsense obvious changes are not in place, it makes sense to ask: What are other changes do we need to make that maybe are less obvious to people who aren’t feeling the impact? When we see that African American and Native American men are over-represented in our county jail, we have to say together that ending racial disproportionality in our criminal justice system is absolutely necessary.”
We’ll look at those policies and procedures that result in those disparities. The Sheriff and Pastor Watkins agree on one thing, though: “We need to work on the family, kitchen table and the home.”
Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner
http://christianity.about.com/od/christiancelebrities/p/tammyfayebakker.htm
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner is best known for her former years as a Christian televangelist and talk show host. She was married to Jim Bakker and co-hosted The 700 Club and the PTL Club for more than two decades (1966 - 1987). She is also well known for her trademark use of heavy eye makeup.
Born: March 7, 1942.
*********
Jim Bakker
[http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_bakkerjim.htm]
Biography:
Jim Bakker was originally born as James Orson Bakker in Muskegon, Michigan on January 2, 1940. By his own admission he lived a rather wild life as a youth but at some point he decided to turn things around and become a minister. In 1960, whild studying for the ministry, he attended a revival meeting conducted by Oral Roberts and there became aware of the relationship between selling religion and traditional show business.
Ordained in 1964, that same year Bakker began working with Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network with his wife, Tammy Fae. The two developed their own daily children's show, "Come On Over," which was an immediate success. Bakker seemed to have a natural instinct for appealing to an audience and it even seems to have been his idea to get Robertson to change his signature "700 Club" show from a nightly telethon to a talk/variety program.
This success and closeness to Robertson was good for Bakker's career, but it also fueled jealously among others at the Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1972 the Bakkers decided to try and make a career on their own; as a going away present some staffers at CBN decided to trash the Bakkers' sets and destroying the puppets used in the kids' shows. This seems to have left Jim with a permanent sense of impending persecution.
At first they formed Trinity Broadcasting and, with Paul Crouch, they created the daily talk show "Praise the Lord." This relationship didn't last quite a year and in the "divorce," Crouch would keep Trinity Broadcasting while the Bakkers kept the PTL initials - although they now stated that it meant "People That Love." His new PTL Club began on January 13, 1974 as a "Tonight Show" style program like he convinced Pat Robertson to use with his "700 Club" show.
Within just two years it was carried on 70 commercial stations and 20 cable services. At the height of their ministry, Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker were watched by about 13.5 millions viewers across the country. They also owned Heritage USA, a Christian-themed retreat and gospel park of 2,300 acres which grossed nearly $130 million dollars annually.
In 1980 Jim Bakker had a one-night stand in a motel room with Jessica Hahn, an event which would bring down his ministry when it came to light in 1987 (along with Tammy Fae's off-and-on dependency on drugs). On March 19, 1987 he resigned his post at PTL because of it and in May of that year he was defrocked by the Assemblies of God church.
On December 5, 1988 he was charged with having illegally diverted millions of dollars from the PTL ministry for his own personal use. It was revealed that the Bakkers owned a 10,226-square-foot condo in Florida (which he called a "parsonage" with $60,000 in gold fixtures, not to mention the his-and-hers Rolls Royces. As a result of what he did, the National Religious Broadcasters adopted a new code of ethics defining proper moral and financial standards.
In October of 1989 Jim Bakker was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy - his sentence was 45 years, unusually long for such a case. On appeal the sentence was reduced to 18 years in August 1991 and the following year he and Tammy Fae divorced; she then proceed to marry his best friend, Roe Messner. On July 1, 1994 Jim Bakker was moved to a halfway house and in January of 1995, he was released from prison.
Jim Bakker was originally born as James Orson Bakker in Muskegon, Michigan on January 2, 1940. By his own admission he lived a rather wild life as a youth but at some point he decided to turn things around and become a minister. In 1960, whild studying for the ministry, he attended a revival meeting conducted by Oral Roberts and there became aware of the relationship between selling religion and traditional show business.
Ordained in 1964, that same year Bakker began working with Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network with his wife, Tammy Fae. The two developed their own daily children's show, "Come On Over," which was an immediate success. Bakker seemed to have a natural instinct for appealing to an audience and it even seems to have been his idea to get Robertson to change his signature "700 Club" show from a nightly telethon to a talk/variety program.
This success and closeness to Robertson was good for Bakker's career, but it also fueled jealously among others at the Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1972 the Bakkers decided to try and make a career on their own; as a going away present some staffers at CBN decided to trash the Bakkers' sets and destroying the puppets used in the kids' shows. This seems to have left Jim with a permanent sense of impending persecution.
At first they formed Trinity Broadcasting and, with Paul Crouch, they created the daily talk show "Praise the Lord." This relationship didn't last quite a year and in the "divorce," Crouch would keep Trinity Broadcasting while the Bakkers kept the PTL initials - although they now stated that it meant "People That Love." His new PTL Club began on January 13, 1974 as a "Tonight Show" style program like he convinced Pat Robertson to use with his "700 Club" show.
Within just two years it was carried on 70 commercial stations and 20 cable services. At the height of their ministry, Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker were watched by about 13.5 millions viewers across the country. They also owned Heritage USA, a Christian-themed retreat and gospel park of 2,300 acres which grossed nearly $130 million dollars annually.
In 1980 Jim Bakker had a one-night stand in a motel room with Jessica Hahn, an event which would bring down his ministry when it came to light in 1987 (along with Tammy Fae's off-and-on dependency on drugs). On March 19, 1987 he resigned his post at PTL because of it and in May of that year he was defrocked by the Assemblies of God church.
On December 5, 1988 he was charged with having illegally diverted millions of dollars from the PTL ministry for his own personal use. It was revealed that the Bakkers owned a 10,226-square-foot condo in Florida (which he called a "parsonage" with $60,000 in gold fixtures, not to mention the his-and-hers Rolls Royces. As a result of what he did, the National Religious Broadcasters adopted a new code of ethics defining proper moral and financial standards.
In October of 1989 Jim Bakker was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy - his sentence was 45 years, unusually long for such a case. On appeal the sentence was reduced to 18 years in August 1991 and the following year he and Tammy Fae divorced; she then proceed to marry his best friend, Roe Messner. On July 1, 1994 Jim Bakker was moved to a halfway house and in January of 1995, he was released from prison.
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