Pubdate: Mon, 04 May 2015 Source: Trentonian, The (NJ) Column: Passing the Joint Copyright: 2015 The Trentonian Contact: http://www.trentonian.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006 Author: Edward Forchion, njweedman.com For The Trentonian LOVING TRENTON, HATING THE POLITICS OF RACISM I've been coming to Trenton-the state capital-for 20 years to protest and to utilize state services, but I never lived in Trenton. Hopefully that will be changing ASAP: I'm looking for a little spot to call home. I've been living at my mom's house for the last year and a half since returning from California. But this past year I've mingled, smoked, and schmoozed with hundreds of Trentonians. I don't know what it is about TRENTON, but I'm loving it to the point I'm attempting to live and open a business here. Last weekend I utilized one of the city's hidden jewels-the amphitheater at Mill Hill Park. What, you didn't know there was an amphitheater there? Neither did most people I talked to. When I say it's a jewel, I do it a disservice-it's a gem. It needs a little polishing, but wow. I used it for a peaceful 420 music festival on 4/25. A couple hundred mostly young people showed up and listened to an assortment of great musical acts. It was so successful, this week I petitioned the Trenton City department of parks and recreation to do a Sunday Summer Series of music, spoken word, and art in the park every Sunday throughout the summer. I'm a music and art lover, and I can see tempers are simmering all over the country ready to blow, events such as these need to be promoted to help people chill. Sitting around isn't an option this summer, or it's gonna be a long hot summer. Deja vue Baltimore = Black Ghettos nationwide. Here we go again. The police murder a young brother and the streets explode and some wonder why. We people of color know why-because we are the victims of institutionalized racist policies and economics. I can tell you where you can find the answers; it's in the republican "Law and Order" code words of the last 40 years, combined with euphemisms like "globalization" and "trickle-down economics" as the 1%ers, rich white guys like Mitt Romney, sent jobs and manufacturing overseas. Who felt that more than the Blackman, who was simultaneously left unemployed and targeted for imprisonment? When I say "Law and Order" I'm using the terms that Republicans like Richard Nixon used to demonize and target the poor, impoverished, and colored. "Law and Order" was a conservative talking point in the U.S.; the leading proponents in the late 1960s were Republicans Ronald Reagan (as governor of California) and Richard Nixon (as presidential candidate in 1968). They used it to attack liberals about perceived crime, chastise federal court decisions that favored minorities, and push back against substances like marijuana and the racial-equity organizations. These laws were designed to punish the civil rights rioters of the 1960s. They reorganized and resurrected Jim Crow-its new name became the "War on Drugs." Reagan took office in 1981 and started appointing conservative judges; Republicans used the drug laws as weapons against minorities. Mandatory minimum imprisonment laws were passed as Reagan ramped up the domestic racist "War on Drugs" and simultaneously brought massive amounts of drugs into the country to undermine the black community. It was very successful: The number of black prisoners tripled from 400,000 in 1980 to 1.2 million in 1994, destroying black families and the people's ability to get jobs. With the advent of computers persons with records couldn't get real jobs, which also fed the black market with job seekers (dealers). Conservatives at the state level built prisons and convicts served longer terms with less parole. The stated goal: that by the time they were released, they were much older and in the politicians' opinion, therefore much less violent. The broken windows theory of policing was adopted, stop-and-frisk targeted Blackmen-this is how the new-age concrete plantation system (prisons) were filled. One-sixth of all Blackmen have slaved on them, including me, because of the racist War on Drugs. Reagan programs like OPIC-Overseas Private Investment Corporation- destroyed the black working class in many cities like Philadelphia, Trenton, Camden, Baltimore, and more. OPIC was started in the early 1980s by these Republican 1%er types with the open acknowledgement that it was to help move American jobs and business to foreign countries. This was in direct contradiction to black empowerment. OPIC proudly boasted that it mobilized private capital to help solve the foreign development challenges of U.S. businesses, and in so doing, it claimed, this advanced U.S. foreign policy. Yes, it did, so the citizens of Singapore, Vietnam, China, and South Korea now have the jobs that used to belong to the middle class in this country, which included many blacks and people of color. As the middle class began to shrink, who was the first to go? Blacks. When you see millions of people of color out of work in this country as American goods are being produced in other countries, you must realize it was the direct economics that Reagan and his idiotic policies so enamored with THE RIGHT had caused. It made no difference to them that this country's greatness was created on the backs of the blacks, who provided "free labor" from 1619 1865; they gladly gave these jobs to foreigners. OPIC worked with the 1%ers, the owners of the U.S. private sector, to help U.S. businesses gain footholds in emerging foreign markets, thereby catalyzing revenues, jobs, and growth opportunities abroad. OPIC achieves its mission by providing investors with financing, guarantees, political risk insurance, and support for private equity investment funds-undermining Americans, and especially African-Americans. These are the policies that demonized black America No jobs and a "drug war on us" is what Black America knows; White America is indifferent and largely oblivious to our plight. For years they giggled in New Jersey when we complained about racial profiling or driving while black, until NJ State Police Colonel Carl Williams admitted to it in 1998 and was promptly fired. Even so the racial system recovered, creating devious pretext-stop laws to replace the overt profiling. The NJ State Assembly passed the laws, such as cell phone laws (N.J.S.A. 39:4-97.3) and seat belt laws (N.J.S.A. 39:3-76.2f), and guess who gets tickets for these now more than whites? Really! Nov. 2, 2007: New Jersey passed the hands-free cell phone law. This law makes it illegal, throughout N.J., to use a cell phone while operating a motor vehicle. Blacks now get more tickets for cell phones, and this statute is also used to search our vehicles. Driving while black: The Justice Department statistics, based on the Police-Public Contact Survey, show that "relatively more black drivers (12.8%) than white (9.8%) and Hispanic (10.4%) drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop during their most recent contact with police." Or, to frame it another way: A black driver is about 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than a white driver or about 23 percent more likely than a Hispanic driver. "Driving while black" is measurable. Black lives don't matter to police Black males are at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than white males-21 times greater, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings. The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 recorded by federal data show that blacks ages 15 to 19 were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police-185, more than one per week. The ProPublica report's conclusion that young black males are disproportionately killed by police certainly seems to support what has been known in the African-American community for decades. It's the racist "War on Drugs" and the deliberate economics of poverty that drive these numbers. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom