Earl Ofari Hutchinson's Posts - The Hutchinson Report News

Colin Kaepernick Civil Rights Award Announced

2017-08-10T21:53:11.000Z

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson will announce the presentation to Colin Kaepernick of an award for outstanding achievement in sports and civil rights activism on Saturday, August 12 at the studios of KPFK Radio, 3729 Cahuenga Bl., North Hollywood, 91604, at 8:45 AM. The Colin Kaepernick Civil Rights Achievement Award has been endorsed by all major civil rights organizations in Los Angeles.

Civil rights leaders have declared August 12 a Day of Recognition in Los Angeles for Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick’s personal, dignified, non-violent protest for civil rights, equality and against racial injustice is squarely in the spirit of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The award is fitting recognition for this achievement.

“Kaepernick has received many awards for his achievement on the athletic field, but his courageous stance on civil rights is an even more profound and far reaching achievement,” says Hutchinson, “The courage he has shown in speaking out against racial inequality has done much to advance the national dialogue on sports and civil rights activism in America. It’s fitting he receive the award on the day that civil rights leaders have declared a day of recognition for him.”

In a Damning Indictment of the NFL Author Tells the Real Reason Kaepernick is Unemployed

2017-08-09T15:39:12.000Z

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074NZ8L94

Free Amazon Kindle Read Friday August 11 and Saturday August 12

“Colin Kaepernick’s stance against racial injustice has sparked a much-needed national dialogue over the role of sports and racial relations in America as well as within the NFL and professional sports. It has also stirred mass calls for protests, demonstrations and petitions that has further energized tens of thousands nationally, “says author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

In his riveting new eBook, Kaepernick, Hutchinson opens with the brief drama in Baltimore where for one week in late July 2017, the buzz was that former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick might, just might, soon become a Baltimore Ravens. It didn’t happen Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti was very pointed. Kaepernick he said, “would upset some people.” He went further and noted that he wasn’t thrilled at the now well-hashed knee he took during the playing of the national anthem in protest over police violence against blacks.

Bisciotti’s revealing remarks about Kaepernick was more than just the airing of the feeling of one of the NFL’s 32 owners about his protest and possible signing. It provided a huge, open air window into the wealth, power, and near autocratic dominance of NFL owners, the conservative views of those owners, and how they make, shape, and tightly control the sport world’s wealthiest, most influential and powerful sports organization.

Hutchinson observes that Kaepernick is unemployed not simply because the NFL is inherently racist. Or, it’s simply so apoplectic at the thought of one guy taking a knee and somehow desecrating American patriotic values. Or, that Kaepernick’s action was so threatening that it and he had to be banned in Boston in perpetuity. Or, even that the NFL just had to send a message to the other black players. The answer why he remained NFL unemployed lay deep in the structure, organization, and mindset of NFL owners. It required an understanding of their obsessive pursuit of cash at all costs and their absolute determination to maintain total, iron-clad owner control over their league.

Hutchinson maintains that Kaepernick is just a victim, a pawn, then in the highest of high stakes of sports control games. In Kaepernick, Hutchinson examines the NFL’s ownership, structure, and quest for wealth and power and what that means for sport, the fight against racial abuse and injustice both on and off the playing field in America.

Kaerpenick presents a revealing look at the profound impact the NFL’s insatiable hunt for wealth, power and dominance has had on sports and society. In the process, that hunt, says Hutchinson, has made victims of Kaepernick and countless others.

L.A. Civil Rights Leaders Call for A Day of Recognition in L.A. for Kaepernick

2017-08-09T01:09:42.000Z

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders on Friday, December 2 called on Mayor Eric Garcetti and the L.A. City Council to declare Saturday, August 12 a Day of Recognition in Los Angeles for Colin Kaepernick. August 12 is the pre-season opening game for the L.A. Rams. Kaepernick’s personal, dignified, non-violent protest for civil rights, equality and against racial injustice is squarely in the spirit of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In taking his courageous non-violent stance, he risked millions of dollars in professional endorsements and opportunities. Even more he risked his NFL career, for which he is currently unemployed.

Kaepernick’s stance against racial injustice has sparked a much-needed national dialogue over the role of sports and racial relations in America as well as within the NFL and professional sports. It has also stirred mass calls for protests, demonstrations and petitions that has further energized tens of thousands nationally. There are even planned demonstrations at the L.A. Rams preseason opener and other NFL games in L.A.

“Kaepernick is the current symbol of the fight against injustice,” says Hutchinson, “He provides the perfect opportunity for the Mayor and the L.A. city council to add their voice to the impassioned call made by millions to support the cause of and fight for racial justice. Kaepernick is the lightening rod in that fight deserves no less than recognition by the city of L.A. for that.”

The Hutchinson Report Asks Will You Boycott the NFL Over Kap, If So, How?

2017-08-04T02:30:00.000Z

The Major NFL Sponsors Will Be Listed and Named

If Colin Kaepernick Isn't Signed

Will Ask

Will You Boycott the NFL Over Kap, If So, How?

Tune In The Hutchinson Report Townhall of the Air

Saturday August 5 9:00 AM PST Noon EST

KPFK 90.7 FM Streamed at kpfk.org

Facebook Livestreamed

Listener Call In 818-985-5735

Read Free The Trump Challenge to Black America Friday August 4 on Amazon

2017-08-02T15:40:20.000Z

https://www.amazon.com/TheTrump-Challenge-Black-America-Hutchinson/dp/1881032000/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

“Look how much African-American communities are suffering under Democratic control. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump? “You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump issued this big, bold brash challenge to African-Americans at a campaign rally weeks before the November presidential election. That challenge, says author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, was more than a challenge. It struck hard at the dire peril a Trump presidency poses to African-Americans. In The Trump Challenge to Black America, Hutchinson, makes a deep, balanced, and wide-ranging probe into the programs, policies and initiatives of Trump and how they impact on African-Americans and what can be done to fightback.

In the three-year period from 2015 to 2017, Hutchinson covered and analyzed every aspect of the speeches, utterances, and positions Trump posited during his presidential campaign on health care, civil rights, voting rights, criminal justice and police abuse, education, and President Obama in his featured columns in the Huffington Post. His special emphasis was on the issues that most affected African-Americans that a Trump candidacy and presidency would impact. Those issues are health, education jobs, the criminal justice system, and race relations. The Trump Challenge to Black America is based on those columns. Hutchinson has expanded those columns with added material, fresh assessments, and a detailed look at the direction Trump has taken the country in since his election.

Hutchinson examines the infatuation that so many blacks had with Trump and the confusion and divisions that this has sowed. He notes, “The parade of black preachers, businesspersons, professionals, athletes and entertainers that either trooped to Trump Tower, or met with him in highly staged and orchestrated venues, was nothing short of breath taking. It was breath taking because he ran the most vicious, unabashed, race baiting, Muslim, and immigrant baiting campaign since state’s rights presidential candidate Alabama governor George Wallace in 1964.”

Hutchinson assesses in detail how a Trump at the White House helm can affect policy, “As loathsome as Trump was to most blacks, he would be at the federal helm for at least four years. This was a lot of time to wreak irreparable program and institutional damage to those programs.”

Trump, says Hutchinson, “Has stuffed his administration with the greatest array of generals, military men, and billionaires of any administration in American history. His picks to head the Education Department, Labor Department, Housing and Urban Development, Health, Education and Welfare, the Small Business Administration, and especially the Justice Department, had a long history of warfare against the very programs that these departments administer. Those programs provide the vast array of resources, support, and protections for poor, working class blacks. “

Hutchinson concludes that Trump poses the greatest challenge and peril of any president in modern times to black Americans. The Trump Challenge to Black America works through for the reader not only his positions on the issues and how they imperil African-Americans but, equally important, what can be done to combat the peril.

Here’s Really Why Kaepernick Can’t Get a Job in the NFL

2017-08-01T19:44:40.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Forget all the little teases about this NFL team or that team signing Colin Kaepernick before the start of the season. Forget all the supposed informed talk about some team somewhere signing Kap out of desperation or because they’ve run out of Arena league QBs to go to. And most importantly, forget any notion that the NFL is so image conscious that it can be shamed into prodding some team to give Kap a shot.

It ain’t going to happen. It’s not because the NFL is inherently racist. Or, it’s simply so apoplectic at the thought of one guy taking a knee and somehow desecrating American patriotic values. Or, that Kap’s action was so threatening that it and he had to be banned in Boston in perpetuity. Or, even that the NFL just had to send a message to the other black players, don’t think about opening your yap to back Kap or heaven forbid speak out on those little prickly issues such as police abuse or racial discrimination.

The start and really end point to make sense out of why a guy who’s got relatively good stats, played on a championship team, and by all counts is a quiet, unassuming, consummate team player, is not just unemployed, but seemingly unemployable in the NFL is the NFL. Or, rather the structure of the NFL and who runs it.

The NFL is not, and never has been a democracy. It’s a quasi-militaristic, top down organization. It’s run by an entrenched elite core of billionaire owners who set the tone and determine policy for the league. They are called “key owners.” Some of them can trace their NFL family pedigree almost back to the founding of the NFL nearly a century ago. The names are familiar:

Art Rooney II of Pittsburgh (Daniel’s son), John K. Mara of the New York Giants and Clark Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs. Their ranks have been beefed up in the past couple of decades by big dollar owners, namely Robert McNair in Houston, Jerry Richardson in Carolina, Jerry Jones in Dallas and Robert K. Kraft in New England. They are not young guys. They are not liberal or even moderate Democrats.

They are mostly conservative Republicans, some very outspoken Republicans. NY Jets owner, Woody Johnson, has been an unabashed bankroller and enabler for GOP presidential candidates. He served as national finance chairman for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. If they are GOP boosters, they are conservative; some like Johnson with his GOP presidential campaigning, an outspoken conservative. McNair is another example. He kicked in several thousand dollars to the campaign to repeal a ballot initiative in Houston that protected gays and lesbians from forms of discrimination. And Jones could demand that Cowboy players must stand, presumably at rapt attention, during the playing of the national anthem. So, it’s no surprise that 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney could brag that some of his tight pals are NFL owners.

In a real sense, Kap is being held captive not to the racism or petty whims of NFL owners, although a healthy dose of that is likely there too. But to the NFL’s rigid, unbending and unyielding arrogance of power, insular structure and mindset that is virtually immune from any outside influence. This was evident in every challenge to the NFL elite, be it the threat of player strikes, contract negotiations, the dust up over CTE trauma and dangers, the criticism it gets for shaking down cities and states to put taxpayers on the hook for everything from luxury boxes to new stadiums. Then there’s Washington Redskin owner, Dan Snyder’s nose thumb at anyone who tells him he has to drop the offensive “Redskins” moniker.

The NFL has the muscle to keep their books hush hush, demand the players play two more games, thus radically increasing the hazard, knock down every chance it gets tm slash the player’s revenue take, and not guarantee any long-term health benefits to the players.

While the NFL doesn’t have the anti-trust exemption that MLB has, it hasn’t needed it to beat back the challenges. It has something even better. It has the deepest of deep pockets, the political shield of its GOP bent, and a massive fan base that’s second to none.

The fan base is no small point when it comes to trying to figure out why Kap is a pariah. The NFL’s fan loyalists don’t want him. They made that clear in everything from informal polls to loud protests and boos when he appeared in their town during last season. Those loyalists are not for the most part African-American, or Hispanic, they are blue collar, and conservative middle class, white football junkies who year in and year out, pack stadiums, and plop down tens of millions for tickets, and assorted NFL paraphernalia.

The NFL power brokers have the supreme dominance to enforce their take it leave it imperium on the players, fans, and politicians. And that’s exactly why Kap doesn’t have an NFL job.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book, The Trump Challenge to Black America (Middle Passage Press) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

I Mourn Justine Damond Just Like I Mourned Michael Brown

2017-07-23T19:28:21.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

I have heard all the arguments about why the slaying of Justine Damond is not the same as the slaying of Michael Brown and police slayings of countless other unarmed blacks. They all come down to race. She is a middle-class white female from Australia. She worked in the trendy profession of meditation and yoga. Her slaying drew international attention. Minneapolis City officials and Minnesota state officials instantly and very publicly criticized the shooting. A police chief was speedily edged out of her job. The press painted a glowing, heart wrenching story about her and her family. The cop who killed her, Mohamed Noor, was quickly identified and branded in some headlines, “killer cop.” There are demands that he be charged.

The stark contrast with the way police, officials, and the press treated the Damond killing versus the virtual demonization of Brown and the other black victims of police violence stirred outrage and screams of racial double-standard. Some critics went further and angrily professed no sympathy for Damond.

This is wrong-headed and reprehensible. The brutal reality is that Damond was an unarmed civilian who committed no crime and was shot without any provocation or justification. Her slaying was much more than just a human tragedy. It pointed to something that has flown way under the public radar when it comes to police killings of unarmed persons. That is that the police kill a lot of whites too. In some cases, they were white women.

Their deaths get little to no media attention and generally little public outcry. The circumstances in which many die are just as dubious and outrageous as the killings of many of the blacks. In almost all cases, no charges are brought against the officers.

Damond was just the latest in the long line of white victims of police overuse of deadly force. The officers that kill are wrapped tightly in the same legal shield of immunity from prosecution as if their victims were black. The Damond slaying is a near textbook example of this. Strip away the uproar, official condemnation, and media kid glove treatment of her, the cop that gunned down Damond is being handled no differently than if Damond had been black. He was put on administrative leave with pay. That’s standard. Other than mention of a complaint filed against him his professional conduct and personal life was not put under intense scrutiny. Though his body cam and the dash cam in his police car were turned off in violation of department procedure, there was no indication what, if any discipline, he’d receive for that. Prosecutors also gave no indication that they were considering any criminal charges against him. There was no information given on how the investigation would be conducted and a timetable for its completion. This may change if any damaging facts about the shooting surface that show conclusively there was criminal negligence by the officer. But for the time being he is still very much a police officer.

To say that Damond’s death is different than Brown’s badly begs another question. By minimizing or even dismissing the killing of Damond because she’s white perversely stands the killing of Brown and other blacks on their head. It makes their killings even more important than Damond’s simply by virtue of them being black; and because their deaths did not get the same public sympathy and official reaction as hers This is tantamount to creating a victim hierarchy on those slain by police.

This is a slippery and dangerous slope to go down. This feeds the notion that blacks only care when the victims are other blacks and will only protest their deaths. This ignores the fact that thousands of whites marched, rallied, protested, and disrupted meetings when Brown and other blacks were slain by police. They were outraged at the seemingly wanton killings. They regarded them as innocent victims of police violence, and charged that the officers who killed were getting away with the violence with no penalty for their acts. It was only a short step then from the killing of unarmed blacks without punishment to the killing of anyone, no matter their race or gender.

The ultimate proof is Damond. When Noor fired at Damond he did not know what her gender or race was. She was just a suspect. H used a variation of the get out of prosecution card that police who overuse deadly force routinely use. That’s that he feared for his safety. It’s a defense that works. It matters little whether the victim is male or female, black or white.

Damond being white, female, and garnering sympathy and the cop that killed her being black is irrelevant. Her killing by any measure was senseless. And, as with any other innocent victim of police violence, her death must be mourned.

Why O.J. Should Be Freed—And Why It Matters

2017-07-19T15:44:46.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

O.J. Simpson won’t go away. I posed the question on my Facebook page “Should O.J. be paroled? It drew an avalanche of responses. Even while respondents hotly protested they didn’t care, they still debated, raged, and fumed on the page about him. He still touches a sore nerve.

There is, and never will be, any proof that Simpson is really serving a 9 to 33- year sentence, not for robbery, kidnapping, and weapons charges, but for murdering Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. But whenever the subject of Simpson and his Nevada conviction and sentencing comes up more than a few adamantly believe that’s why he’s really in prison. He’s not. Simpson is there because the charges were serious.

Was he overcharged by a DA with a sneaky eye on Simpson’s walk in the murder case? Maybe, but the sentence slapped on him fit within the legal parameters of punishment for the three serious offenses he was convicted of.

This should be history, and the decision whether to grant him parole or not, should not be based on that history, The Nevada pardon and parole laws are clear on this. It considers these factors: a reasonable probability that the prisoner will not commit further crimes, the release is compatible with the welfare of society, the seriousness of the offense, and the history of criminal conduct of the prisoner. Simpson has been a model prisoner and therefore meets and exceeds the criteria for release. Even Clark County DA Steve Wolfson who prosecuted Simpson says he deserves to get out. It would be the wildest stretch to think that Simpson at age 70 would embark on a crime spree when released.

So, Simpson should be released because he deserves it. It would do much to allay the notion that the law is excessively harsh, and vindictive toward Simpson because of his murder acquittal. It would show that parole boards can be fair, impartial, and uphold their own rules for release of a prisoner.

Simpson’s release matters for another reason. His acquittal on double murder charges more than two decades ago still sticks in the craw of much of America. The needle of bloggers and legal pundits who still furiously debate whether Simpson deserves parole is stuck hard on that point. They reflect the feeling of many. If Simpson served every day of a lengthy sentence with even the faint possibility of walking free that would not be good enough for them.

From the day that he beat the double murder rap and walked out of a Los Angeles court, his ill gained notoriety and perverse celebrity virtually guaranteed that the legal hammer would drop especially hard on him at the first whiff of criminal wrongdoing. There was no chance that given the savage public mood toward him that he would get the benefit of the doubt on any future charges against him. He, of all people, should’ve known that.

Even many of Simpson’s one time black supporters who passionately screamed that he was the victim of a biased criminal justice system in the L.A. murder trial cut and run after the Las Vegas verdict. There was only a bare peep from them that the Nevada conviction had any racial taint to it. Simpson and his attorney’s complaint that prosecutors massaged and twisted jury selection to insure a non-black jury drew barely a yawn in the press and legal circles.
Simpson didn't invent or originate the oft-times ugly divide in public opinion about celebrity guilt. It has always lurked just beneath the surface. But his case propelled it to the front of public debate and anger. The horde of Simpson media commentators, legal experts and politicians who branded the legal system corrupt and compromised also fueled public belief that justice is for sale. Simpson's acquittal seemed to confirm that the rich, famous and powerful have the deep pockets to hire a small army of high priced, high profile attorneys, expert witnesses, experts, and investigators who routinely mangle the legal system to stall, delay, and drag out their cases, and eventually allow their well-heeled clients to weasel out of punishment.

Even when prosecutors manage to win convictions of, or guilty pleas from celebrities, their money, fame, power, and legal twisting often guarantee that they will get a hand slap jail sentence, if that.
Whether Las Vegas prosecutors did indeed grossly overcharge him, it didn’t stop the chatter that a killer was finally getting at least some of his due. Few others rushed to his defense and blamed the steep charges on a callous and unforgiving criminal justice system. Despite what one thinks of Simpson, he’s served his time and paid at least that part of his debt to the justice system. If justice is to be served then he should be free. That’s the way system is supposed to work and it, as Simpson was, will be on trial in the Nevada parole room. Yes, Simpson still matters.

Trump’s Ugly Mid-Year Report on Civil Rights

2017-07-02T19:03:25.000Z

"The White House judges nominees on the merits of their character and not on the clients they once represented as counsel.” This was the terse statement that #45 Trump issued in defense of the instant and loud criticism of his pick, Eric Dreiband to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The division has been described as the gold standard for civil rights enforcement and direction in the nation. It’s an appropriate designation considering that for much of the last half century the CRD has set the tone and the tempo for forcing, monitoring and implementing federal civil rights initiatives.

The criticism of Dreiband is more than well-deserved. He made his reputation not as a civil rights attorney, law professor specializing in civil rights, or working with a state or federal agency tasked with civil rights legislation and enforcement. He made his reputation doing just the opposite, as a corporate attorney who specialized in trying to beat back age, gender and racial discrimination lawsuits against corporations. This makes him Trump’s perfect choice to not strengthen, but gut the federal government’s flagship civil rights agency.

His nomination comes at the mid-point of Trump’s first year in the Oval Office. This makes it the perfect time to take a hard look at just what Trump has done to wreak even more damage on civil rights. His unrelenting vow to get a Muslim travel ban has got much of the ink and attention in his war on civil rights and liberties. But he has wasted no time in quietly inflicting as much damage as he can in other areas of civil rights enforcement and compliance. Just hours after he set foot in the White House he deleted the White House webpage on civil rights. The Obama administration had proudly cited and filled the White House website with loads of information about his administration’s initiatives on civil rights. Trump’s quick deletion of the page was more than symbolism.

Skip

His first nomination out the box was Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to head the Justice Department, the umbrella agency that the Civil Rights Division is under. The message was clear, a total remake of the department was a top priority for Trump. Sessions hit the ground running. He demanded the delay, if not the end, of federal consent decrees on police misconduct, a new war on low level drug offenders, silence on criminal justice reforms, and a full-throated endorsement of private prisons. Given Sessions intense dislike of the Voting Rights Act, enforcement of the law is even more imperiled.

For decades, the heart of the EPA, Education, and Housing, and Labor departments, has been their civil rights compliance units. They have monitored, overseen, and most importantly enforced, compliance by corporations on fair labor practices, to eliminate racial disparities in school districts, to reduce toxic hazards in inner city neighborhoods, and to end housing discrimination. Trump’s proposed funding cutbacks and his unstated policy of benign neglect of the compliance units sends the strong message that civil rights enforcement in federal agencies is a thing of the past.

Civil rights organizations no longer can automatically look to the Supreme Court, or other federal courts, for the redress of inequities. Trump made good on his long-standing promise to appoint judges who are the spitting legal image of Antonin Scalia to the high court with his pick of Neil Gorsuch. In the short space of time he’s been on the high court, he’s been a civil rights opponent’s dream come true. He has joined his ideological twin, Clarence Thomas in conservative rulings on same sex, gun-owners’ rights, and the right of religious institutions to government funding. The issues directly impact on civil rights law.

The SCOTUS is only the start of Trump’s civil rights remake of the courts. With little fanfare, he named nearly a dozen judges to fill vacancies on lower courts in several judicial districts. His picks read like a Whos Who from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. They are conservative, with deep ties to the GOP, and corporations. They have shown no evidence of any legal sympathy to civil rights law and labor protections. There are hundreds more vacancies on the federal judiciary that Trump will try and fill in the months to come. The picks aren’t likely to vary one bit from the template of judges that he deems his ideal; judges that are conservative, pro-corporate, and hostile to labor and civil rights. They will speedily be confirmed and will have a deep influence on law, public policy and, especially, the criminal justice system for decades to come.

This is only the start. In the coming months, there will be renewed challenges to the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, Housing discrimination, public-school funding, corporate abuses, environmental, and consumer regulatory issues. The challenges will come in the courts and within federal agencies. Trump’s ugly mid-year record on civil rights tells exactly what the horrific outcome could be. It won’t get any prettier.

What’s Really Behind Trump’s Clinical Fixation with Obama

2017-06-28T16:58:02.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The clinicians would have a field day with #45 Trump’s Obama fixation. He hasn’t missed a chance to hector, accuse, bait, and hack up former President Obama at every turn. There were times during the 2016 presidential campaign that Trump seemed to be running against Obama, rather than Clinton. He never missed a chance on the campaign trail to denigrate him.

By then Trump had perfected his beat down of Obama to a perfected art. The beat down made him a near household name, and got his name out there as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2012, when he went on a public rampage against Obama’s alleged alien birth. He didn’t run that year. However, Obama was never far from his mind. Every chance he got he’d bring up the phony, fraudulent birther claim, his alleged excessive vacations, and incessantly nit-pick at one or another of Obama’s policy initiatives.

On the 2016, presidential campaign trail, Obama was constantly on his lips. At a GOP presidential candidate’s forum in early 2015, then presidential candidate Trump, without a blink said, “I don’t know if he loves America.” The “he” Trump referred to was, of course, Obama. Even after he won the White House, he couldn’t shake his clinical fixation with Obama. He tossed out the ridiculous, and outrageous charge that Obama wiretapped him during the campaign, and demanded that Congress investigate him.

It is tempting to chalk Trump’s Obama fixation up to yet another Trump scheme to deflect attention from his miserable tenure in the White House. In part, it is. However, there is method to the madness about Trump’s persistent use of Obama as his foil. It isn’t just to slander his presidency. It’s to slander him. It isn’t just political, it is personal. The two can’t be separated. Trump repeatedly made clear during the early stages of his campaign that if he got in the White House he’d sign any and every executive order he could to try and halt, gut, or obliterate every initiative that Obama had ever put in place.

Trump’s verbal assault on all of Obama’s initiatives normally would have been the end of it. Presidents from an opposing party, to varying degrees, quickly sign executive orders to roll back some of their predecessor’s initiatives and actions when they take office. However, Trump’s obsessive attacks on Obama had another aim beyond mere personal vindictiveness and deflecting attention from his disastrous administration. It sent the strong signal to his base that he would try and demolish everything that they loathed about Obama; not just his policies, but what he personally stood for.

Obama was an eight-year embarrassment to the chronic Obama haters. He was liberal. He was a Democratic. And most odious to them, he was black. Tea Party demonstrators greeted Obama at many stops during his first two years in office with placards, signs and pictures that depicted him in the most-lewd, grotesque and often animal-like characterizations. This went way beyond the bounds of normal political attacks and criticism of a president. It was blatantly personal, and showed the depth of the personal distaste many had for Obama and they were not shy about showing it. Trump at points during his campaign made no effort to correct or reprimand anyone at his townhalls and rallies who got up and vilified Obama in personal terms. This reinforced the point that Trump would make again and again that Obama was not fit from a political or personal standpoint to occupy the White House.

Even Trump’s very belated acknowledgement in the latter stage of his campaign that Obama was an American citizen was said matter of fact. There was absolutely no elaboration, let alone showing any sign of contrition for waging his ruthless and prolonged campaign to slur him as an alien.

Now that Obama is out of office, Trump’s frontal attack on his executive orders is much more than an angry and indignant party going after executive orders it doesn’t like, or to restore what it considers its proper congressional lawmaking authority. It is revenge, pure and simple, against a former president’s legacy. Much of that legacy is intertwined with his willingness to use the power of his office whenever and wherever he thought he could to frontally challenge the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, denial, and obstructionism to anything that had the White House stamp on it.

This is anathema to Trump and the GOP. Trump is determined to wipe the slate completely clean of the acts of a former president who, in part remains popular. However, in greater part it is because Obama is still seen by many Americans as what an accomplished, thoughtful, policy driven president should be. This is what Trump cannot abide. He will stop at nothing to try and destroy Obama’s programs, legacy, and ultimately place in history. This is a fixation for which there is no cure.

The Opioid Crisis in Black and White

2017-06-21T15:45:26.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On March 29, 2017, the mood at the White House was somber when #45 Trump signed an executive order establishing a commission charged with making recommendations on dealing with the Opioid crisis. At the signing, all the talk by Trump and other administration officials was about a big ramp up in treatment, counseling, addiction recovery programs, and health services to alleviate the crisis. They, and the media, coined the term, “epidemic.” This suggested that it’s an illness, a sickness, a condition, but not a criminal offense. There was not one word from Trump or White House officials at the signing about more arrests, tougher sentencing and incarceration for offenders.

Trump appointed his close political backer, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to head up the commission that would come back with the recommendations on dealing with the crisis. Christie made plain what the focus would be on, “What we need to come to grips with is addiction is a disease and no life is disposable. We can help people by giving them appropriate treatment.”

The compassion, sympathy, and official search to find ways to help white Opioid addicts that oozed out the White House that day was in sharp contrast to the memo Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a few weeks later. Sessions ordered U.S. attorneys around the country to get tough on drug crimes by demanding more convictions and jail time. Sessions wasn’t talking about white addicts, the ones whom the Opioid crisis affected the most.

There were three reasons for that. One is politics. The Opioid crisis slams suburban and rural areas, big swatches of which are Trump voter friendly. The second is that it has become a serious health issue with reports that there were more than a million hospitalizations last year from Opioid addiction. The third is race. Countless studies have shown that blacks use drugs about the same as whites, some drugs such as marijuana, and powdered cocaine even less. Yet, for three decades they have been the ones slapped with massive arrests, mandatory minimum sentences, and lengthy prison terms. They are the ones who pack America’s jails and prisons for drug crimes. They are the ones who will again be prime targets when Sessions reignites the drug war.

Whether it is cocaine, marijuana, or the heroin surge in the rural areas and the suburbs, the relatively few times that whites are popped for drug use, the pipeline for them is never to the courts and jails, but to counseling and treatment, therapy, and prayers. Their drug abuse is chalked up to escape, frustration, or restless youthful experimenting. They got heart wringing indulgent sympathy, compassion, and a never-ending soul search for rational explanations, or should I say justification, for their acts that are deemed crimes when the offenders are black.

The brutal racial double standard rests squarely on the pantheon of stereotypes and negative typecasting of young black males that continue to have deadly consequences in the assaults on and the gunning down of unarmed young black males under questionable circumstances. The hope was that President Obama’s election buried once and for all negative racial typecasting and the perennial threat racial stereotypes posed to the safety and well-being of black males. It did no such thing. Immediately after Obama’s election teams of researchers from several major universities found that many of the old stereotypes about poverty and crime and blacks remained just as frozen in time. The study found that much of the public still perceived those most likely to commit crimes are poor, jobless and black. The study did more than affirm that race and poverty and crime are firmly rammed together in the public mind. It also showed that once the stereotype is planted, it’s virtually impossible to root out. That’s hardly new either.

Black drug users also lack something else that white rural and suburban drug users don’t. That is political clout. The instant heroin became a “crisis” among whites, and now Opioid an “epidemic,” arch GOP conservative congresspersons in whose districts the “crisis” and “epidemic” hit leaped over themselves to declare the problem a health problem. They proposed a litany of new initiatives to treat the problem as a health problem. Police officials quickly followed suit. Dozens of police departments have publicly invited heroin users who wanted help to stop in their local police headquarters even in many cases with drugs and needles in or on their person. They would not be arrested, but shuttled promptly to a treatment program; no questions asked.

There’s one final great cruelty in the glaring racial double standard on drugs. The reports and stats on Opioid and heroin addition, the wrath of news stories and features, on it, and the calls for legislative action to deal with the problem, have not changed one whit the deeply embedded perception that drugs in America invariably comes with a young, black face. Trump’s call for compassion and treatment for Opioid addicts won’t change that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book, The Trump Challenge to Black America (Middle Passage Press) will be released in August. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

Cosby is not O.J.

2017-06-04T23:06:27.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

It is tempting to compare the Bill Cosby trial to the O.J. Simpson trial. And more than a few have. Cosby is a mega celebrity. He’s been practically a household name for decades. He’s got a lot of money. And before his fall and disgrace, he was much admired, and lauded, by millions as a man who embodied the best in fatherhood and family. This is where the similarity with Simpson ends, in and out of court. There was allure and glamor to Simpson’s film and celebrated football career. But he didn’t come close to attaining the wealth and universal fame and admiration the public had for Cosby.

It was really the heavy-duty charges and their sensationalism that gripped the media and much of the public in the Simpson case for months on end. He was charged with double murder; and, one of the victims was his estranged wife; his white estranged wife. It was this clash of race and gender that insured that the case would be the subject of endless debate and chatter. It was the first time that a major celebrity figure had faced a double murder charge, a capital crime. This further raised both the legal and the media stakes in the case. The TV cameras in the court captured the legal wrangling and drama in the case. This gave millions their first real glimpse into the often arcane, and inner workings of the court system.

Simpson’s attorneys, most notably, Johnnie Cochran, had already made names for themselves in other high-profile cases before the Simpson trial. But the trial now transformed Cochran, and the other principal legal combatants, into major media celebrities almost overnight. It also turned the slow drift of much of the mainstream media toward tabloid sleaze sensationalism into a headlong rush. Staid mainstream publications that in times past would have back-paged a murder case, even a celebrity criminal case, morphed into the National Enquirer, Star and the legion of other tabloids. A gaggle of daytime gossipy talk shows has since successfully parlayed innuendo, rumor, half-truths and outright lies into hugely profitable empires and ratings bonanzas.

Cochran also understood that attorney star power had colossal value in giving him the ability to spin, massage, and message the defense’s case to give the defense an edge. His seemingly impromptu press conferences outside of court were masterpieces in media spin.

The Simpson case drug on so long that it spun off yet another growth industry. An array of legal and media pundits became familiar faces on nightly TV, dissecting, debating, and endlessly speculating on every racial and legal tidbit of the case.

Then there was the racial divide. The Simpson case institutionalized that term. It became the requisite standard that packs of pollsters, commentators, and researchers would use to quantify and analyze everything from trials to political campaigns in which a racial angle could be gleaned.

The Simpson case didn’t die after his acquittal. The mere mention of his trial two decades later still generates fierce debate over his guilt or innocence. A 2017 academy award winning documentary stirred just as much debate over Simpson’s guilt or innocence, and the racial passions that the case ignited, as if it was yesterday.

The Cosby case won’t come close to matching that. He is charged with sexual assault. This is not a minor charge, and he has drawn the righteous wrath and condemnation of women’s groups, and sexual abuse victims. But it’s not double murder, with one of the victims, a white woman. Thus, the case has not stirred anywhere near the level of public fascination and rage as in the Simpson case.

Cosby was not jailed for months before the trial as Simpson was. His pockets were deep enough to string the start of his trial out for more than a year. During that time, he stayed virtually invisible from the media and the public eye. His legal team is a crack team. But they do not have the celebrity, and name recognition cachet that Simpson’s attorneys had. His trial venue is in Pittsburgh, which is in Allegheny County. The location does not have the star struck, mediagenic allure of Los Angeles.

The O.J. case was the complete social, racial, celebrity, gender, and tabloid package. The murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman allegedly by O.J. heightened racial tensions, as well as public awareness about domestic violence. It stirred fury against the double standard of wealth and celebrity privilege in the legal system. It elevated celebrity murder cases to media tabloid sensationalism. And, it sparks furious debate about these issues, and Simpson’s guilt or innocence, decades later.

The Cosby trial will do none of those things. It will come and go and the public will quickly move on. Cosby is not O.J.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is author of Cosby: The Clash of Race, Sex and Celebrity (Amazon Kindle). He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

Can Even Cosby Make a Case He’s Being Racially Targeted?

2017-06-01T18:14:29.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Disgraced entertainer Bill Cosby did the predictable when he screamed there was racial bias in the jury selection in his scheduled trial. This wasn’t the first time Cosby screamed racial foul play. He did it when he claimed there was a racial motive behind the dozens of women who claimed he drugged, raped and sexually abused them for years. Then there is the report that Cosby was peeved that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson won’t publicly defend him. This may or may not be true. But Cosby is friends with both the civil rights leaders.

Cosby is hardly the only one screaming that the case against him is take your pick: the white man, white establishment, or a sensationalism driven media establishment trying to bring down a wealthy, prominent black man. Thousands of other blacks, and many Cosby fans, shouted the same thing virtually from the moment the accusations of sexual rapacity started flying against him. They endlessly cite prominent, wealthy celebs, from Woody Allen to Charlie Sheen to Bill O’Reilly, to bolster their contention that there is a vicious malignant, racial double standard in hammering Cosby while letting the other big-name white sexual miscreants skip away relatively untouched.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Cosby is on trial for sexual assault. The jury that he got given the relatively sparse number of blacks in the county he’ll be tried in is about as racially balanced and fair as he’ll get. Also, he has the deep pockets to get the best legal team money can buy. They made sure they got the best jury he could get. He will be found innocent or guilty based on the evidence, not because he’s black. Given the sheer number of alleged victims, the hideousness of their accusations, and that many of them were white women, Cosby got the biggest pass one could imagine, in not being hauled into a court before now by a prosecutor. He could thank his fame, name and money for that. Something few blacks could ever dream of.

But can even Cosby make a case he’s being racially targeted? Yes and no. In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, former President Obama ticked off a standard checklist of slights and abuses that he had routinely faced; security guards tailing him as he shopped in department stores, white couples who toss him their car keys as he stands outside a restaurant waiting for the valet, police cars pulling him over for no apparent reason.

Obama noted that he was subjected to these slights and insults during his college days and even after he launched his professional career. The racial attacks, and vilification and slanders certainly didn’t stop when he set foot in the Oval Office.

Obama happened to be the most glaring, and to some, surprising examples of a prominent black subject to abuse. But legions of prominent blacks have had the same or worse experiences. They tell harrowing tales about being embarrassed, harassed, and assailed by police, private security guards, storeowners, and clerks. Their names read like a who’s who of the wealthiest and biggest names among blacks. This is especially the case with big name celebrities who wind up in a court docket. Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, and of course, O.J. Simpson, loudly hinted that race had much to do with their legal woes.

Cosby, didn’t say it directly, but many others note that black celebrities, professionals, business leaders, are hauled or slammed to the curb and arrested at any time no matter their status or appearance. Supposedly, it’s their very prominence that stirs resentment, jealousy, and harassment. It’s the old uppity Negro syndrome spruced up in modern day resentments over the wealth and success of prominent blacks. Many Cosby defenders were quick to claim that he became a marked man when he floated the idea of buying NBC in 1992. The very notion of a black man owning a mega media outlet was supposedly considered racial heresy.

There’s no proof of any racist conspiracy to nail Cosby because of this, or because of his fame. The Cosby-NBC rumored deal came almost a quarter century before his indictment in Pennsylvania. During those years, Cosby was lauded, feted, and praised as the nation’s number one dad. He was given every platform imaginable to chastise other blacks for their alleged laggard, immoral failings. Even after the accusations against him mounted up of sexual misdeeds, and he confessed to giving drugs to one woman and getting drugs for other women he wanted to have sex in an affidavit he swore to in 2005, legions of legal experts either defended him or claimed there were no legal grounds to prosecute him because the statute of limitations had long since run out on most of the claims. Cosby acknowledged that officials in Allegheny County bent over backward to make things “very very smooth” for him.

That may be. But the bitter reality is that Cosby’s legal pass finally ran out in a Pennsylvania courtroom. And like so many prominent black men, so did his racial pass.

Collins Slaying Again Casts Ugly Glare on Gaping Double Standard in Race Crimes

2017-05-25T14:26:23.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The hideous slaying of second lieutenant Richard W. Collins III on the University of Maryland campus did more than evoke heartfelt grief and sorrow over the snuffing out of a young, hopeful, and high achieving young man’s life. It also again cast an ugly glare on the gaping double standard in how black lives matter versus those of white lives. Let’s go through the agonizing, but by now all too familiar, checklist of things that are terribly wrong with how his death has been treated. First, there’s the alleged assailant, Sean Urbanski, a young white man. The tributes to Collins had barely poured out at Bowie State University, where he was days from graduating, when Urbanski’s attorney not only pled innocence for his client, but implored the court to release him on own recognizance, provide alcohol and drug testing counseling, and monitor him during his release by GPS.

The request was denied. Then there are the charges. He is charged with first degree murder. So far so good. However, the irrefutable fact is that Collins was African-American, and Urbanski is white. He has a documented connection with an Alt Reich- Nation FB group, and there is absolutely no evidence of any provocation on the part of Collins to precipitate the murder. Now there’s the Alt-Reich group that he belonged to. Even this has been sloughed off as just a light hearted, silly, fun and games, attempt by some college guys to draw attention to the group. The founder of the group was given tons of ink to make the case that spewing racism and white nationalism as the furthest thing from the minds of those associated with the group, and presumably that includes Urbanski,

Then there is Urbanski. The predictable happened. He was immediately depicted by friends and associates as a quiet, assuming, even good natured fellow, who couldn’t hurt a fly. All expressed shock and surprise that this seemingly good natured, all-American, clean cut good guy could commit such a dastardly crime.

That’s not a small point. The image massage of the group as harmless fun loving, and satirical outing on social media by some thrill-seeking college students, not to mention the glowing depiction of Urbanski, almost takes off the table the charge that he murdered Collins out of racial malice. In other words, that the murder is a hate crime and he should be charged under state or federal law as a hate crime perpetrator. The Prince George’s County Attorney expressed doubt and hesitancy about the motive. The Justice Department has been stone silent on whether it will consider a separate hate crime prosecution of Urbanski. The argument is always why bring a hate crime charge in these cases, even if there is a racial intent? The assailant is already being charged with and will be tried on a first-degree murder count.

This badly begs the question. A hate crime enhancement in racial assaults and murders is on the books as a deterrent and punishment to racially motivated assaults and murder. The failure to bring hate crimes charges sends the dangerous message that hate crimes, especially hate murders, will not be punished as racially driven hate crimes, but won’t even be called that even when there is compelling evidence they are. And the incidences of hate crimes have shown no sign of diminishing. Year in and year out, the FBI’s annual reports on hate crime violence in America report thousands of them. There are probably thousands more that aren’t reported. A murder charge and a conviction in racially motivated hate attacks and murders alone is hardly a disincentive stern to curb hate crimes.

There is also evidence that white nationalist, white supremacist groups and the social media ravings of kooky unhinged hate mongers hold a perverse fascination for many white students on college campuses. Since Trump’s election, a CBS report found nearly 150 incidences of racist posters and fliers on college campuses in nearly three dozen states.

But even before Trump’s election ushered in a new era of hate and intolerance, bigotry, hardly a week went by without a report somewhere of hanging nooses, white hoods, racist graffiti, racial slurs and taunts aimed at minority students. The colleges that have been called on the carpet for the racist acts read like a who’s who of American higher education. Clemson University, Auburn, Lehigh, Tarleton State, Texas A&M, University of Texas, Austin, University of Connecticut, Johns Hopkins, Whitman College, the University of Oklahoma, U.C.L.A., U.C. San Diego, and the University of Maryland, to name only a very handful. The Harvard University Voices of Diversity project found campuses rife with subtle and not-so-subtle “microaggressions“ against minority and women students.

The final insult. The Collins slaying quickly disappeared from the headlines.

Urbanski may or may not be charged with a hate crime. But the hesitation, doubt and apparent reluctance of officials to call racial hate racial hate even when it’s murder, tells much about the glaring double standard in how hate crimes are dealt with.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His Latest Ebook, How the Democrats Can Win Again in the Trump Era (Amazon Kindle). He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

An Answer to a Supporter of Cornyn and DeVos Speaking at Black Colleges

2017-05-14T20:30:00.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A conservative critic of the decision by the Texas Southern University President to disinvite GOP Conservative Texas Senator John Cornyn to give the commencement address at the university challenged me that this was a dangerous example of banning speakers students disagree with and compared it to the free speech movement of the 1960's when radicals routinely disrupted or prevented conservatives from speaking on campuses.

There's no comparison. First and foremost, I applaud the students AND administration at TSU for disinviting Cornyn and roundly condemn the President at Bethune Cookman for shamefully and gracefully inviting Uneducation Secretary Betsy DeVos to speak.

1. This was not a campus forum or lecture series where an arguable case can be made for free speech in inviting an unpopular speaker. This was a commencement ceremony. The established tradition is that speakers at commencements MUST reflect the spirit, values, outlook, and identification with the mission of the University, if not why else invite them. Cornyn and especially DeVos by their words, deeds, lobbying, legislative action and philosophy are AVOWED enemies of African-American interests. Could you imagine inviting a Neo Nazi to address a commencement at American Jewish University under the dubious guise of free speech???

2. The graduating seniors at HBCU's have paid a lot of money for their degrees in tuition, private donations, and endowment funding. THEY have a right to have a say in who will address them. 150,000 students, faculty, and alumni assn. members of BC said a resounding NO to DeVos.

3. The invitation of DeVos and initially of Cornyn to TSU was a nakedly pandering political choice to curry favor with Trump and the GOP conservatives. That is NOT why or at least it shouldn't be why speakers are chosen for commencement addresses.

NO, This is not a legitimate free speech issue or an issue of students heavy handedly banning speakers they disagree with. It's the diametric opposite. Graduating seniors who worked hard to earn a degree want and expect and deserve to hear a speaker in tune with their hard work, efforts, and, yes, view of the world inspire, encourage and reinforce them as they go forward in life. Not someone who is working overtime to destroy their vision and goals in life.

Guess Who Sessions’ War on Drugs Will Target

2017-05-12T16:40:37.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it official. The federal government will now reboot its war on drugs. The official word came down in the form of memos from Sessions that ordered federal prosecutors to cease and desist on the soft approach former Attorney General Eric Holder took toward prosecuting petty drug offenders. Now prosecutors must demand the harshest sentence, must use the threat to harshly pile on sentence enhancements to browbeat drug offenders into copping a guilty plea, and they must itemize the drugs an offender uses to insure they are slapped with the minimum mandatory sentence.

Sessions isn’t just talking about cracking down on the use of the hard stuff. He has a near paranoid obsession with pot. He has railed against its use, thinks it’s one of the worst drug evils, and is convinced it is undermining the nation’s morals. Sessions has long chomped at the bit to cop the title as America’s number one drug warrior. He took giddy delight as a federal prosecutor and a U.S. Attorney in putting the hammer to drug offenders whenever he could. Sessions would likely scoff at the frank admission by disgraced Nixon White House advisor John Ehrlichman, in an interview in Harpers in 1994, that the war on drugs was not about law enforcement getting a handle on drug sales and use, but another weapon to lock up as many blacks as possible.

From its inception in the 1970s, the war on drugs has been a ruthless, relentless and naked war on minorities, especially African-Americans. Former President Obama and Holder got that. And they made it clear that it was time to rethink how the war was being fought and who its prime casualties have been. They pushed hard to get Congress to wipe out a good deal of the blatantly racially skewed harsh drug sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine possession and to eliminate minimum mandatory sentencing. Congress didn’t finish the job and as long as Sessions is in the driver’s seat at the Justice Department it won’t. The Obama and Holder reforms in low level drug prosecutions did produce positive, and dramatic results. The number of minimum mandatory sentences imposed plunged, and there was much more reliance on drug counseling and diversion programs for petty offenders.

You can kiss that good-by with Sessions. Even though countless surveys have found that whites and blacks use drugs in about the same rate, more than 70 percent of those prosecuted in federal courts for drug possession and sale (mostly small amounts of crack cocaine) and given stiff mandatory sentences are blacks. Most those who deal and use crack cocaine aren’t violent prone gang members, but poor, and increasingly female, young blacks. They clearly need treatment not long prison stretches. Obama and Holder understood that.

The fed war on drugs before Obama and Holder, and now reignited under Sessions, targeted blacks for a good reason. The top-heavy drug use by young whites — and the crime and violence that go with it — has never stirred any public outcry for mass arrests, prosecutions, and tough prison sentences for white drug dealers, many of whom deal drugs that are directly linked to serious crime and violence. Whites unlucky enough to get popped for drug possession are treated with compassion, prayer sessions, expensive psychiatric counseling, treatment and rehab programs, and drug diversion programs.

A frank admission that the laws are biased and unfair, and have not done much to combat the drug plague, would be an admission of failure. It could ignite a real soul-searching over whether all the billions of dollars that have been squandered in the failed and flawed drug war — the lives ruined by it, and the families torn apart by the rigid and unequal enforcement of the laws — has really accomplished anything.

This might call into question why people use and abuse drugs in the first place — and if it is really the government’s business to turn the legal screws on some drug users while turning a blind eye to others?

The greatest fallout from the nation’s failed drug policy is that it has further embedded the widespread notion that the drug problem is exclusively a black problem. This makes it easy for on-the-make politicians to grab votes, garner press attention, and balloon state prison budgets to jail more black offenders, while continuing to feed the illusion that we are winning the drug war.

This means little to Sessions. In his fundamentalist, self-righteous, puritanical world, drug users are the scourge of the nation. They must be swiftly and mercilessly removed from the streets, workplaces, schools, and any other place that their presence subverts the good upstanding morals of the nation. Sessions said as much in a memo when he claimed that his tough drug crackdown will “advance public safety, and promote respect for our legal system.” It will do neither. It will balloon prison building, the hiring and maintaining of waves of corrections officers, and further bloat state budgets. But worst of all it will again do what it was always intended to do and that’s be a war on minorities and especially blacks.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

DeVos Richly Deserved Every Boo She Got

2017-05-11T17:39:50.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Last February, #45 Trump had a prized photo-op session in the Oval Office with a pleasantly smiling contingent of presidents and administrators of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Trump gave the clear impression from the photo-op that he’d go out of his way to boost funding and support for HBCU’s. It didn’t take long to shatter that delusion. Trump signed an executive order moving the Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from the Department of Education into the executive office of the White House. In other words, into his hands. HBCUs would in effect be at his mercy.

If he liked a particular HBCU, and its president, and that meant towing the Trump line on education and racial matters, then the college prez would likely find that his campus would be among the favored few in Trump’s politicized world. In case anyone didn’t get the message of where Trump might go with his HBCU plaything, when he signed the stop gap trillion-dollar budget measure, he made a veiled threat to take a hard look at the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program. Trump seemed to think that singling out Black Colleges for special funding might be a race based measure that he and conservatives have waged a two decade long ruthless war to wipe all vestiges of off the landscape.

The howl from civil rights leaders and House Democrats was swift. They rightly noted that Trump ignorantly misunderstood or deliberately distorted what the funding measure for HBCU’s entailed. HBCUs designation as black colleges have nothing to do with a racial designation. It rests solely on their status as colleges and universities, their mission and their accreditation status. Trump quickly walked his crude threat back. He claimed that he had “unwavering” support for black colleges. But, it didn’t change the fact that his shift of oversight over HBCU programs gives him a say so over the affairs of black colleges. And, despite his flowery words about making HBCU’s his “priority,” he didn’t make them priority enough to add any more dollars to their funding.

Now we come to Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. It’s her mission to sell the Trump line and agenda on education which, put simply, is to swing the wrecking ball even harder and faster on public education. This means shoving every federal dollar he can to fulfill the conservative’s happy dream of dumping public schools for vouchers and school choice.

He found the perfect choice to make that happen in DeVos. Her long running war on public schools is well known. This includes bankrolling and chairing school choice lobbying groups, dumping millions into a national propaganda effort to sell school choice, plopping a failed referendum on the ballot in Michigan to siphon massive amounts of public school dollars to private and religious schools, and greasing the skids for her rich cronies to open charter schools on the taxpayer dime. DeVos has tried mightily to make nice with some of the HBCU heads who she and Trump believe will play along with their scheme to totally gut public education. The return to the Black College head that plays along with it is to have a sliver more of access to Trump, and dump a few more dollars in their school’s coffers.

DeVos’s invitation to give the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University fit perfectly into the scheme. What didn’t fit was the reaction of the students. When they refused to act like cheerful, plastic marionettes and clap and cheer for DeVos on cue, the visibly flustered Bethune-Cookman President saber rattled the students by threatening to mail their degrees to them. This was not just a university president who was piqued at the supposed bad behavior of the students toward an invited guest speaker. The embarrassment of having Trump’s education emissary roundly booed potentially could have bad consequence for the university, namely the danger of Bethune-Cookman, and its president, falling off Trump’s most pliable black college list.

The students for their part should be applauded. They did what colleges repeatedly pay lip service to, and that’s that they want their students to think critically, be active and engaged in their community, and to be the committed leaders of tomorrow. They more than fulfilled that admonition when they made it clear that DeVos richly deserved their boos.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

Another Cop Trial, But Will There Be a Conviction this Time?

2017-05-07T14:27:51.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

These are the known facts in the slaying of fifteen-year old Jordan Edwards by former Balch Springs, Texas police officer, Roy Oliver. He had no criminal record. He was unarmed. He posed no threat to the officer. The facts were straightforward enough that Dallas County District Attorney, Faith Johnson, wasted no time in filing murder charges against Oliver. But, as always, in the rare times that a DA charges a cop in the killing of an unarmed civilian, a charge is just the start of what has often been a long train of frustration, muddle, and, more often than not, bitter disappointment in the prosecution of cops who wantonly kill civilians.

The two starting points are the defense attorneys hired to defend the officers charged. Police unions quickly step in and retain top gun defense attorneys with lots of experience defending police officers accused of misconduct. Police unions bankroll their defense and spare no expense. Cops rarely serve any pre-trial jail time, and are released on ridiculously low bail. That was the case with Oliver. He posted bail and was almost immediately released.

Their attorneys then play for time, time, time. They know that it’s on their side. To buy time, they employ an endless storehouse of legal tact’s, ploys, and dodges to delay the start of a trial.

The time factor is crucial because memories dim, passions cool, and anger dissipates in police killings. Put simply, other than the victim’s families, the public moves on. The slayings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Terence Crutcher are near textbook examples of how cases are dragged out. The men were slain months ago. The officers involved in the Castile and Crutcher slayings were charged. In the Sterling slaying, there have been no state charges yet. The Justice Department declined to prosecute. These cases virtually disappeared from the public radar scope, with the passage of time. But defense attorneys do more than toss out motion after motion to get the charges against the officers dismissed, get a change of venue, or get a bench trial. They also massage and craft the public image of the officers as dedicated, hard-working public servants unjustly victimized by vindictive prosecutors. Johnson had barely filed the murder charge against Oliver when it started. He was an Iraq veteran. He served honorably. He suffered from PTSD. Conveniently omitted from the sympathy narrative was the obvious question, if he had a known disorder that could impair judgement why was he on the police force in the first place.?

This is just one part of the public and media charm campaign. The other is to dredge up any arrest or criminal record they can find on the victim, smear him in the media, and bank that it taps hard into the old, and reliable crime and violent prone stereotype and negative typecast of young black males. The message is loud and clear. The victims aren’t altar boys, but bad guys who must bear culpability for their deaths.

The negative perceptions of blacks, especially black males, by much of the public are not the only problem in effecting effective legal measures against police violence. There is no ironclad standard of what is or isn’t an acceptable use of force in police misconduct cases. It often comes down to a judgment call by the officer. In the Rodney King beating case in 1992 in which four LAPD officers stood trial, defense attorneys painted King as the aggressor and claimed that the level of force used against him was justified.

This pattern has been evident in many celebrated cases since then. It’s made even easier to sell the notion that somehow the victims bare culpability for their deaths by dragging in their past. Police then claim that they feared for their lives in confronting them and they use deadly force solely in self-defense. If brought to trial, judges and juries routinely buy this line and acquit.

If the cops are tried by a jury, police defense attorneys seek to get as many middle-class people, whites, and even blacks and Latinos, on the jury as possible. The presumption is that they are much more likely to believe the testimony of police and prosecution witnesses than black witnesses, defendants, or even the victims.

The code of silence is another powerful obstacle to convicting bad cops. Officers hide behind it and refuse to testify against other officers, or tailor their testimony to put the officer’s action in the best possible light.

Then there are the judges. Studies on judicial bias, both overt and implicit, have found the bench anything but impartial. Judges make decisions on bail, pretrial motions, evidentiary issues, witness credibility, and jury selection, and instructions to the jury.

In the case of police officers who appear in court, they face judges who in many cases they have faced often as police officers testifying in criminal cases, they are known quantities. They also have a phalanx of family members and police supporters standing solidly with them in court. They are anything but the average run of the mill common criminal, and judges are well aware of that.

Johnson will have a tough, uphill fight on her hands to convict Oliver, no matter how seemingly compelling the evidence. And that’s exactly why cops repeatedly walk free. Will Oliver be any different?

Hillary Did Not Lose Because She Was a Lousy Candidate

2017-05-05T16:30:00.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director James Comey defended going public with his letter on the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server flap at the 11^th hour of the presidential election. The question, the answer, and the implication that hung heavy was that Comey’s release of the letter tipped the election to Trump. Clinton has flatly blamed his perfectly timed election eve release of the letter for her loss. Not a whole lot of people agree with her on that. The near universal consensus among pundits, a new book, Shattered, by two Politico writers, that dissects the Clinton campaign’s foibles and missteps, and many on the street, is that Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate.

They endlessly claim that she didn’t message right, snubbed the white working class, was too arrogant, aloof, and know it all, and smugly believed she had the election in the bag. If she lost it wasn’t because anything Comey did, but because of Clinton.

Let’s be clear. Comey’s letter did wreak colossal damage on Clinton. In the hours before the release, polls showed Clinton with almost a 6-point bulge over Trump. The letter swiftly changed that. Her poll lead plunged to under 3 points. Even factoring in polling margins of error, volatility, bias, and voter deception, that’s still too big a swing in such a short period of time to shrug off as irrelevant. Clinton’s numbers dropped after the Comey letter for two other good reasons. It hardened the belief among big swatches of the public that Clinton was untrustworthy at best, and a serial liar at worse, who might wind up in a court docket. It also endlessly fed the avaricious media search and play up any Clinton scandal in the waning moments before the election’s end.

In this case, timing was everything. Despite his long and loud protestations, Comey had to know that. If not, why then did he keep his mouth shut about the FBI’s probe of Trump’s Russia connection which was ongoing at the same time?

Then there is Trump. There was always a path for a Trump White House win no matter what Clinton said or did. Much was made that there weren’t enough less educated, blue-collar white men in the electorate to push Trump over the top. But that was always misleading. Trump got a lot of votes from middle-class whites, both male and female, college educated, business, and professionals. They had one thing in common and that one thing wasn’t borderline bigotry, loathing of Obama, or dislike and rejection of a Democrat. They still wanted what powered Obama’s 2008 win—change.

Clinton simply was not that change. To them, she was the consummate beltway established, corporate influenced, deal making politician. The Clinton name was the embodiment of that image and dislike. There were two huge tip-offs that Trump was their perfect antidote to that. The first was he held no political office and burnished that fact as a point of pride and as his credential of why he would be different. The other was his muscle aside against seemingly all odds of a dozen rock solid establishment Republican presidential contenders from the race.

Elections are almost always won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. In Trump’s case, white males, older voters, middle-income, college educated voters vote consistently and faithfully. And they vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks, and especially young voters. The only exception was 2008. Obama’s run turned the campaign into a crusade to make racial history. There was absolutely no way that Clinton could ever have recaptured that enthusiasm, passion, energy, and sense of making history that was there for Obama.

Also, Trump was loathed by many from the start, but the Trump haters weren’t going to vote for him anyway. But Clinton was loathed too, and that absolutely nothing to do with anything she said or did on the campaign trail. It had everything to do with a two decade long artful, masterful and relentless smear campaign by the GOP against her. A year before she declared her 2016 candidacy the Republican National Committee was in full torpedo Hillary mode. It was busily churning out anti-Hillary videos, releases, and paid books by party hacks lambasting Clinton on everything from her and Bill’s foundation’s alleged shady dealings to Benghazi.

The notion that Trump was so repugnant and repulsive, and that Clinton would make mincemeat of him in the campaign was also dangerous. It lowered the bar so low in the dirt for Trump that all he had to do was show up on the campaign trail sober and reasonably coherent to score points. The bar for Clinton was stratospheric. She was a woman, a Clinton, and perennially tainted by the GOP’s endless, phony and manufactured scandals against her. It would have taken a miracle to overcome that. There would be none in 2016. And that had nothing to do with anything Clinton did, or didn’t do.

What Sanders and Warren Got Right and Wrong About Obama’s Speaking Fees

2017-05-02T15:40:54.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Before I get to what Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders got right and wrong about former President Obama’s big Wall Street speech paydays, here’s a personal note. I have headed a non-profit public advocacy and education foundation for more than a decade, and in that time, every penny that I have received from speaking fees, appearances, and other public activities, have been turned over to the foundation to boost our donor program. Not one penny has been taken for personal use or profit.

The instant word leaked that Obama would nab a big payday from Cantor-Fitzgerald for a speech in September and another $400,000 for speaking to advertisers at an A&E function, the loud screams were that Obama was shamelessly and even hypocritically profiteering off his name, reputation, and former position to enrich himself. There was little said that he’d put much, if not all, of the heavy-duty cash he received back into the public education and leadership training foundation he has set up. Former presidents and other big name public figures and celebrities often do exactly that with foundations they establish. But that’s a detail that’s almost never mentioned in the rush to tag them as greed merchants selling their name for big bucks.

Now Warren and Sanders didn’t use those words to blast Obama for taking Wall Street and big corporate cash, they took the high road and merely said that it set a terrible example by pandering to Wall Street and big corporate donors. The very people and element that Obama from time to time lambasted and sparred and jostled with in trying to somewhat tighten regulations and toughen oversight over Wall Street.

They have an arguable case on this point. Obama did often preach about the evils of a financial industry that makes its own rules, skirts, ignores and openly subverts the minimal regulations imposed on it, and rakes in billions in profit with a storehouse of taxpayer backed goodies. Wall Street banks and investments houses are both the symbol and reality of the worst of the worst of financial and corporate abuses. Yet, here is their one time White House antagonist taking their money. It just didn’t look and feel right and the way to make it look and feel right was for Obama to do what other former White Houses occupants didn’t do, namely the Clintons, and that’s just say no to the hefty corporate dollars dangled in front of him. Obama could have done that, but it would not have registered the slightest tick on Wall Street’s dollar scales. It would not make Wall Street pause for a nano-second in its relentless, and never ending war against the Dodd-Frank and other financial regulations.

Obama is now a private citizen and he has absolutely no power to influence any of the doings in Congress, let alone the White House. But Warren and Sanders, as populist senators, are the ones who can parry the assault by the financial industry on the regulations, relentlessly publicly expose and excoriate Wall Street for its financial conniving and manipulation, and rally Democrats to stand tough against Trump and the GOP’s plan to scrap Dodd-Frank regulations. This is where their fight is and will continue to be, not with Obama for being paid a sum that amounts to pocket change for a major Wall Street firm.

It’s also assumed that a public figure who speaks before a Wall Street or corporate audience just by their appearance puts their stamp of approval on the dealings of the financial industry. But that’s not why a financial group will pay a stiff fee for a noted public figure to speak to them. They are there because they are as a media and public draw, and to enhance the name and prestige of the company shelling out the fee. It is not expecting scripted and saccharine praise but to discuss the very tough issues and criticisms that businesses have become accustomed to hearing from Warren and Sanders. The likelihood is that Cantor-Fitzgerald will hear those same criticisms from Obama in his speech.

To their credit, Sanders and Warren did not say that Obama should not accept the $400,000 from Cantor-Fitzgerald, or any other amount of money offered from any other Wall Street outfit. That would be presumptuous at best, and meddling at worst. Obama will be a hot ticket commodity on the speaking circuit for a long time to come. There will undoubtedly be more high fee offerings to speak before a variety of public and even financial groups. And there will also be requests for him to speak before groups that can’t pay him a nickel, but are groups that he believes in their cause. Of course, these freebie Obama speeches won’t be mentioned, since there’s no chance to manufacture a controversy at his expense with them. Obama’s taking money from Wall Street won’t change Wall Street, that’s Warren and Sanders’s fight.

The Worst Presidential 100 Days Ever

2017-04-25T16:16:58.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

#45 Trump got one thing right about the media hyped first 100 days measuring stick of a new president. It’s a silly measure. In fact, presidents from John F. Kennedy to Obama have derided the 100-day fetish and correctly noted that the far better to gauge how effective or bumbling an incoming president is the first 1000 days. A quick look at the presidency of Clinton and Bush is enough to prove that. Clinton bombed badly in pushing Congress for a $16 billion stimulus package; he bungled the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military, and got the first flack on his health care reform plan. Yet, the Clinton presidency is regarded as one of the most successful, popular and enduring in modern times.

Then there’s the Bush presidency. He got off to a fast start. At the 100-day mark in April 2001, his approval ratings matched Obama’s. He was widely applauded for his trillion-dollar tax cutting program, his “Faith-Based” and disabled Americans Initiatives, and for talking up education, health care reform and slashing the national debt. But aside from the momentary adulation he got after the 9/11 terror attack his presidency is rated as one of the worst in modern times.

But while Trump, like Kennedy and Obama, got it right in ridiculing the 100-day time span as being way too short to call a new presidential administration a success or failure, it’s not too short a period to call his White House stint the worst 100 days ever. It’s not his consistent bottom wallowing popularity rating that tags his administration the worst first time start ever. It’s not even his record of non-accomplishment which amounts to a slew of inconsequential executive orders that mostly attempt to torpedo some of Obama’s executive orders, and his disastrous, court derailed Muslim immigrant ban. It’s the utter lack of any hint that things will get any better during his next 100, or even 1000 days in the White House.

The tip offs of his future cluelessness are everywhere. He’s the least politically equipped winning presidential candidate to ever sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. Now that was the great asset that got him elected since so many Americans were supposedly so fed up with the insular, corrupt, deal making, corporate dominated, politics of Beltway Washington. Trump was supposedly the remedy for that. This delusion should have been shattered with the parade of Goldman Sachs tied, Pentagon connected generals, and Trump corporate cronies that he plopped into his cabinet and top staff positions. This could only mean one thing, the corporate and political regulars that Trump pretended to sneer at would do what they always do and that’s run the government show for him, as they have for other GOP presidents.

The flop on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the polarizing vote on his Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch did two seemingly impossible things. It turned off legions of hard right GOP House conservatives and moderate Senate Democrats who had made some soundings about trying to work out an accommodation with Trump on some legislative and policy issues. The future here is going to be one of never-ending, time consuming, get nothing done rancor and in-fighting between Trump and Congress.

The Russia election meddling scandal, Trump’s refusal to disclose his taxes, and his dubious conflict of interest business dealings insure that the screams for congressional investigations will only get louder in the days and months to come. This will continue to keep the tens of millions who want Trump bounced from office revved up. They’ll continue to turn up at GOP and Democratic congresspersons town halls and shout them down on any defense they try to make of Trump’s policies and actions.

Trump’s weak defense against prolonged and guaranteed failure is to toss a few missiles or drop a bomb every now and then or saber rattle the usual suspect villains, ISIS, Assad, the Taliban, and the North Koreans. The media will run with this for a time, and some commentators who should know better will even call his acts forceful and presidential. This will wipe his political and legislative flops off the front page for a day or so, and give him a point or two bump up in the polls. But even here, he can only go to the well so often with the military tough guy act before this starts to wear thin, and some begin to catch on to his wag the dog game.

The 1000-day mark that Obama, Kennedy and other presidents cited as the more realistic time frame is not an arbitrary number. That marks the near end of a president’s first White House term. The honeymoon is over, and the president has fought major battles over his policies, initiatives, executive orders, court appointments and programs with Congress, the courts, interest groups and the media. Battles that by then have been won or lost, or fought to a draw, and there’s enough time to gauge their impact and the president’s effectiveness. In Trump’s case, it won’t matter. His first1000 days will be like his first 100, the worst presidency ever.

Twenty-Five Years After the Flames: Why Are There Still Empty Lots?

2017-04-24T15:30:00.000Z

Watch The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestream, Saturday, April 29, 9:00 AM PST Noon EST from the Corner of Florence and Normandie, Los Angeles in a Look Back and Forward on the 25th Anniversary of the L.A. Riots.

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

It has become a ritual with me. On the 10^th, 20^th, and now 25^th anniversary of the L.A. riots, I do a press tour of several of the same burned out empty lots in South L.A. I preface the tour with a finger point at the empty lots, and ask, no challenge, with the question: “Why years after the riots are these empty lots where thriving businesses once stood still empty today.” I quickly point out that in the years, no decades, since many parts of Los Angeles from the westside to downtown have been virtually remade. Billions have been poured into the construction of glitzy, pricey, showy, and functional office buildings, retail stores, boutiques, restaurants, hi-tech centers, and lite industry and manufacturing enterprises.

The building bonanza has resulted in thousands of new construction, and entry level and professional jobs. In the process, it’s enriched the tax coffers of the city and surrounding cities. The lame excuse that there’s no economic incentive to build in South L.A won’t fly. Residents spend millions on consumer goods and services, tens of thousands are well-to-do business and professional and trades persons, and they repeatedly clamor for quality retail, restaurant and service business in South L.A. But the lots remain empty.

While speaking with the press at the burned-out lots, my mind continually goes back to those two fateful days at the end of April and the first day of May 1992, I ducked around police cordons and barricades, and cringed in fear and anxiety at the cackle of police gunfire and the non-stop roar of police fire engines and siren all around my house in South L.A. I choked, and gagged on and was blinded by the thick, acrid smoke that at times blotted out the sun and gave an eerie surreal Dante’s Hell feel to Los Angeles. I watched many Los Angeles Police Department officers stand by virtually helpless and disoriented as looters gleefully made mad dashes into countless stores. Their arms bulged with everything from clothes to furniture items. I watched an armada of police from every district throughout California and the nation, National Guard units and federal troops drive past my house with stony, even scared looks on their faces, but their guns at ready.

I watched buildings, stores and malls that I shopped at and frequented instantly disappear from the landscape in a wall of flames. Several friends that lived outside L.A. and were concerned about my safety implored me to leave my home in the middle of the riot area and stay with them until things blew over. I thanked them but I decided to stay put. As a journalist, I felt bound to observe and report first-hand the mass orgy of death and destruction that engulfed my South Los Angeles neighborhood during the two fateful days of the most destructive riot in U.S. history.

The warning signs that L.A. was a powder keg were there long before the Simi Valley jury with no blacks acquitted the four LAPD cops that beat Rodney King. There was the crushingly high poverty rate in South L.A., a spiraling crime and drug epidemic, neighborhoods that were among the most racially balkanized in the nation, anger over the hand slap sentence for a Korean grocer that murdered a black teenage girl, Latasha Harlins, in an altercation, and black-Korean tensions that had reached a boiling point. And above all, there was the bitter feeling toward an LAPD widely branded as the nation’s perennial poster police agency for brutality and racism.

This year, on the 25th anniversary of the King verdict and the L.A. riots, many still ask the incessant question: Can it happen again? The prophets, astrologers and psychics couldn’t answer a question like that with absolute certainty. But there are two hints that give both a “yes” and no answer to the question. The yes is the repeated questionable killings of young unarmed African Americans by police, such as Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile, nationally and in L.A. County. This continues to toss the ugly glare on the always fragile, tenuous, and at times openly hostile relations between African Americans and the police. The other cause for wariness is conditions in South L.A. and other urban communities.

On the fortieth anniversary in 2005 of the other L.A. riot that ripped the nation, namely the Watts riots in 1965, the L.A. chapter of the National Urban League and the United Way issued an unprecedented report on the State of Black L.A. The report called the conditions in South L.A. dismal, stating that Blacks still had higher school drop-out rates, greater homelessness, died younger and in greater numbers, were more likely to be jailed and serve longer sentences, and were far and away more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than any other group in L.A. County. The most cursory drive through the old riot areas still shows that for many residents little has changed.

The L.A. riots are no longer the national and world symbol of American urban racial destruction, neglect and despair. But it’s is still a cautionary tale; a warning that in the Trump era, the poverty, violence and neglect that made the L.A. riots symbolic may not have totally evaporated twenty-five years after the flames. This will stay the case as long as the lots, and what they symbolize, remain empty.

The Hutchinson Report Declares Show the Colin Kaepernick Hour

2017-04-21T23:00:00.000Z

On Friday, April 27, the NFL Draft 2017 Begins. Yet, despite a Super Bowl appearance, marketable quarterback skills, a dearth of NFL ready college QBs, and a legion of mediocre NFL QBs, former SF 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick still has not been signed by any NFL team.

The Hutchinson Report Pacifica Radio Townhall of the Air on Saturday, April 22, 9:00 AM PST Noon EST on KPFK Radio-Los Angeles 90.7 FM, streamed at kpfk.org will declare his Saturday April 22 show The Colin Kaepernick Hour.

The Hutchinson Report Host, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, will ask why Kaepernick remains without a team on the eve of the draft?

The Report will challenge NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to pose that Question to the 32 NFL team owners and managers.

http://www.ninersnation.com/2017/4/20/15370136/colin-kaepernick-time-100-most-influential-people-jim-harbaugh

http://www.espn.com/nfl/feature/index/_/page/nfldraft17

O’Reilly Got the Boot for Being a Sexual Reprobate, But Not for Being Anti-Black

2017-04-20T17:46:51.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The ousted and disgraced Bill O’Reilly’s blatant anti-black cracks, digs, slurs and putdowns didn’t start last year, two years ago, or even a decade ago. They started almost from the day that he took the helm of the “Factor” the last century. O’Reilly kicked things off with this zinger in early 1999, “Will African-Americans break away from the pack thinking and reject immorality–because that’s the reason the family’s breaking apart–alcohol, drugs, infidelity. You have to reject that, and it doesn’t seem–and I’m broadly speaking here, but a lot of African-Americans won’t reject it.”

With this quip, he tapped all the vile, ancient set stereotypes about blacks, crime, drugs, immorality, and rotten families that supposedly explain why blacks are stuck in crumbling ghettoes and wallow in poverty. O’Reilly repeatedly came back to variations on this theme time and again in the years to come.

On black athletes, “Look, you know as well as I do most of these kids come out and they can’t speak English.”

On black high achievers, “Does anyone know where the Best Men are? I hope they’re not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps.”

On mocking black leaders, ‘Oh, I can’t get a job. Whitey won’t let me,’ or ‘I can’t get educated. The teachers are bad, so I’m going to go out and get high and sell drugs. That’s the only way we can make money here.’ You know what I mean? And it’s a vicious cycle”

On Trump’s pledge to create more jobs for blacks, “Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it — but it’s true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to give jobs to people who aren’t qualified for jobs?”

On black girls and pregnancy, “Young girls are getting pregnant in the African American community.” “Now it’s about 70 percent out of wedlock. She knows and doesn’t seem to care.”

On black children, “Now, the race hustlers who apparently have not walked the streets of poor neighborhoods lately, immediately accused me of racism. And that is why the acute problem of cultural deprivation among under-classed children of all colors is never addressed.”

On black crime, “There is a violent subculture in the African-American community that should be exposed and confronted.”

On Freddy Grey’s slaying, “Freddie Gray's lifestyle for many years, led him to this terrible thing which is not only impacted him and his family but all the police officers and that lifestyle should be condemned.”

On the black condition, “Don't abandon your children,” “Don't get pregnant at 14. Don't allow your neighborhoods to deteriorate into free-fire zones. That's what the African-American community should have on their T-shirts.”

On Africa, “I’ve been to Africa three times. All right? You can’t bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can’t bring it into fundamental Islam.”

O’Reilly made more, many more, observations and statements that passed as the fount of learning and wisdom about blacks. And with each racist putdown, O’Reilly’s ratings soared to the sky, major corporations flocked to the show in droves and plopped tens of millions into advertising, and policy makers of all stripes begged to be on his show. O’Reilly was Fox’s cash cow. The more O’Reilly insulted blacks, the more he was hailed as the one guy on the airwaves who was not afraid to defy the so-called ‘race hustlers” and apologists, i.e. civil rights leaders and liberal Democrats, and tell it like it supposedly is about blacks. As long as that was the case, O’Reilly was virtually sanctified and was TV’s equivalent of the “made man” who was untouchable.

All the while, Fox boss, Rupert Murdoch, Fox management, and legions of women in and about Fox knew that O’Reilly was a sexist scumbag and sexual predator who cost the network millions in hush money to cover for his groping, predatory lust. But, it was not just the money shelled out, corporations fleeing the scene, and the passage of time that would undue this sexual vulture. It was also the instant fury and force of women’s groups that rattled the Fox empire. This was not something that could be winked and nodded at, and laughed away. Blatant sexism and its manifestation in sexual philandering, simply will not be tolerated. It will always bring an instant white hot reaction, as it should.

But routine racist slurs before millions of viewers also should be instant cause for an O’Reilly to be jerked from the air. This wasn’t the case, and it reinforces the age-old line that a rich, white guy, can say whatever he wants about blacks in public space and at worst will get a hand slap reprimand, make a phony apology, and then skip away to racially slur another day.

O’Reilly’s getting the boot for being a sexual reprobate isn’t likely to change that.

Why the Cleveland Facebook Killer Fascinates Us

2017-04-18T15:30:00.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A year before Steve Stephens posted his grotesque alleged murder of 74-year old Robert Goodwin, Sr. on Facebook, another murderer posted this quip, “Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.” The poster in that case was Chris Harper Mercer, accused of a multiple murder at an Oregon community college in 2015. At the time, Oregon police investigators, and many of the relatives and friends of the murder victims not only refused to mention his name, but were livid at local papers for printing his name. The anger over giving non-stop, free publicity to media seeking, deranged killers has sparked campaigns by some victim rights groups not to give any media play to mass killers.

The great pity is that it won’t work. The instant Stephens posted his murderous video, he assured himself notoriety beyond his wildest dreams. It was horrific recognition of what studies show, and that’s that mass killers know exactly what they’re doing, and bank heavily on turning their killing spree into warped and perverse mass theater and spectacle. In that sense, Smith punched all the right public and media buttons. It was rank sensationalism. It was a murder. It was on Facebook. It was offbeat, bizarre, and quirky. He was black. This automatically conferred an inverted status, prestige and an almost anti-hero celebrity aura to the act and the killer.

Smith got an added boost for his warped notoriety when the relatives of Goodwin went on national TV and in a heart-felt and dramatic moment bestowed forgiveness on Stephens. This fed on itself and ignited a fierce debate over why a wanton killer deserved forgiveness, and a lot of head scratching about why African-Americans are the ones who always seem compelled to beg for forgiveness for those who commit the most hideous crimes against them.

But none of this would happen if Smith hadn’t grabbed the public and media spotlight. It’s an established axiom that body counts, with all their gory images, will always get a rush from the cameras. They make good copy, and that makes good ratings, and that makes good print sales. The wave of mass killings at malls schools some months back was endlessly looped on the networks. They were just as endlessly hashed over by shrinks, pro-gun and anti-gun control groups, and police officials. The public gleefully joined in the chatter about what could or couldn’t be done about the carnage and the killers. The cycle of murder promotion, revulsion, and fascination with it feeds on itself.

Stephens adds the final element to assure the murder gets top news billing. He’s black. This further sets his killing apart since he doesn’t fit the typical profile of a media savvy, murderer. That’s usually a quirky, young white male loner who invariably comes from a middle-class staid home. Stephens in turn is a roustabout from a Cleveland ghetto.

This raises a cringe among some blacks who fear that the relentless media attention that Stephens draws will again reinforce the deep and pervasive image of black males as inherently violent and crime prone. The scowling, fierce looking pictures of Stephens that are plastered over the screen play to the basest and darkest fears of the monster image of black males held by many.

Whether Stephen’s name was mentioned or his mug ever shown wouldn’t change a glaring and disturbing fact. That is the aiding and abetting of the killers in their calculated last gasp effort to get the world to see, hear and recognize the importance and significance they attach to their always convoluted, disjointed, and heinous acts. Stephens by going public on Facebook understood that. He got what he wanted, his fifteen minutes in the public eye, lots of media ink, while managing to stir a few racial stereotypes along the way. He’ll complete his staged act when he’s tracked down, or better still, for dramatic sake, gunned down.

And since he was found dead that capped it. But did it?

Unfortunately, that won’t end the Stephen’s fascination. There’ll always be another waiting in the wings, now armed with the knowledge if he could do it, why can’t I? That’s the hideous fascination of it all.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

Impeaching Trump is Not an Option--Yet

2017-04-17T21:59:34.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Few subjects have been more hotly debated, scrutinized, and endlessly rehashed, then whether Number 45 Trump can or will be impeached. A deluge of petitions has been circulated on line and tens of thousands of signatures have been gathered for his removal. The issue of a Trump impeachment roared back on the public and media plate at a recent anti-Trump tax disclosure rally in Washington D.C. where speaker after speaker called for his head by way of impeachment.

The article in the Constitution, the so-called “impeachment clause”, on the surface seems clear enough. A president can be impeached for committing treason, bribery, or the vague, hazy and thoroughly ambiguous, “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The House would initiate the action and then the Senate would have to convict him. That’s never happened.

At this point, there’s little chance that can happen with Trump either. The biggest knock against him is that he has grotesquely violated the Foreign Emolument Clause by refusing to fully divest himself of his business holdings. This supposedly puts him squarely in conflict of interest and, even more damaging, leaves him wide open to the charge that he is selling political favors to enrich his businesses.

Trump took that allegation off the table when he supposedly plopped his business interests in a hands-off trust administered by family members and a board. Trump as usual was being disingenuous. He can still draw income from the trust with the approval of the board. And what are the odds of the board, in this case, his family saying no to him? The problem, though in trying to nail Trump for mixing and mingling his business affairs with his government office is proving that he fattened his account by selling favors. There must be proof that Trump got a gift, donation, bribe from, or turned a business deal with a foreign government and, in return, that government got a clearly defined, tangible benefit from the deal with Trump. There’s the huge cry that foreign leaders and governments are spending cash to stay at Trump hotels or rent space in his various other real estate holdings. But that doesn’t mean that Trump has promised them favors, let alone that they have received any political favors from their presence there and the money they spent there. It would take iron-clad evidence that Government X spent say $100,000 on a hotel suite at a Trump hotel or golf resort and then Trump facilitated an exclusive contract from say the Department of Energy to purchase oil, or gas supply equipment from Government X. There would have to be a paper trail to tie Trump to such a deal.

Trump’s team is well-versed on the rules about what public officials can do when it comes to business and government here. They know that eyes are carefully watching him to catch him in any dirty dealing. So, him doing something that crudely illegal is almost unimaginable. Another possible charge bandied about is that with the lawsuits he’s been hit with, his tax disclosure dodges, and accusations of borderline shady deals, that a case can be made that he perjured himself in his disclosures or, more likely, non-disclosure of his financial dealings.

Trump avoided that potential trap in one big lawsuit, the Trump University scam. He settled before the case moved to trial. Thus, he avoided subjecting himself to having to answer questions in lengthy and potentially damaging depositions. Trump has a phalanx of top gun attorneys around him who know all the ins and outs of depositions and interrogatories and carefully advise him on what is legally permissible to say and what to keep quiet on.

The charge that has drawn the most scrutiny and poses a potential impeachment charge is Trump’s Russia connection. One focus of this is whether Trump colluded with the Russians in their open meddling in the U.S. presidential election to tip the vote to him in three key states. Another is whether his entangled business dealings with the Russians rises to the level of blatant favoritism. Something. of course, could turn up in a deep probe congressional investigation of his supposed tie with the Russians.

The two problems with this is that the likelihood of a GOP congressional committee taking on such a probe is slim to none. The election tampering angle is near impossible to prove. It would take smoking gun proof that Trump directed Putin and his cronies to cook the election books for him.

So, for now we’re back to square one. Lots of talk, speculation and hope that #45 can be tripped up enough to bring a strong case for his removal. But to make that case it’s going to take solid evidence of wrongdoing that meets the high Constitutional bar to oust a president. That’s never happened in the nation’s history. But, there’s four years for something to happen to reach that bar with Trump.

Twenty Five Years After the Flames: Why Are There Still Empty Lots?

2017-04-11T21:22:49.000Z

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

It has become a ritual with me. On the 10^th, 20^th, and now 25^th anniversary of the L.A. riots, I do a press tour of several of the same burned out empty lots in South L.A. I preface the tour with a finger point at the empty lots, and ask, no challenge, with the question: “Why years after the riots these empty lots where thriving businesses once stood are still empty today.” I quickly point out that in those years, no decades, many parts of Los Angeles from the westside to downtown have been virtually remade. Billions have been poured into the construction of glitzy, pricey, showy, and functional office buildings, retail stores, boutiques, restaurants, and hi-tech centers, and lite industry and manufacturing enterprises.

The building bonanza has resulted in thousands of new construction, entry level and professional jobs. In the process, it’s enriched the tax coffers of the city and surrounding cities. The lame excuse that there’s no economic incentive to build in South L.A won’t fly, residents spend millions on consumer goods and services, tens of thousands are well-to-do business and professional and trades persons, and repeatedly clamor for quality retail, restaurant and service business in South L.A. But the lots still remain empty.

While speaking with the press at the burned out lots, my mind continually goes back to those two fateful days at the end of April and the first day of May 1992, I ducked around police cordons and barricades, and cringed in fear and anxiety at the cackle of police gunfire and the non-stop roar of police fire engines and siren all around my house in South L.A.

. I choked, and gagged on and was blinded by the thick, acrid smoke that at times blotted out the sun and gave an eerie surreal Dante’s Hell feel to Los Angeles. I watched many Los Angeles Police Department officers stand by virtually helpless and disoriented as looters gleefully made mad dashes into countless stores. Their arms bulged with everything from clothes to furniture items. I watched an armada of police from every district throughout California and the nation, National Guard units and federal troops drive past my house with stony, even scared looks on their faces, but their guns at ready.

The warning signs that L.A. was a powder keg were there long before the Simi Valley jury with no blacks acquitted the four LAPD cops that beat Rodney King. There was the crushingly high poverty rate in South L.A., a spiraling crime and drug epidemic, neighborhoods that were among the most racially balkanized in the nation, anger over the hand slap sentence for a Korean grocer that murdered a black teenage girl, LaTasha Harlins, in an altercation, and black-Korean tensions that had reached a boiling point. And above all, there was the bitter feeling toward an LAPD widely branded as the nation’s perennial poster police agency for brutality and racism.

This year, on the 25th anniversary of the King verdict and the L.A. riots, many still ask the incessant question: Can it happen again? The prophets, astrologers and psychics couldn’t answer a question like that with absolute certainty. But there are two hints that give both a “yes” and no answer to the question. The yes is the repeated questionable killings of young unarmed African Americans by police and quasi-authority figures, such as Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, MINNESOTA GUY, nationally and in L.A. County. This continues to toss the ugly glare on the always fragile, tenuous, and at times openly hostile relations between African Americans and the police.

The other cause for wariness is conditions in South L.A. and other urban communities.On the fortieth anniversary in 2005 of the other L.A. riot that ripped the nation, namely the Watts riots in 1965, the L.A. chapter of the National Urban League and the United Way issued an unprecedented report on the State of Black L.A. The report called the conditions in South L.A. dismal, stating that Blacks still had higher school drop-out rates, greater homelessness, died younger and in greater numbers, were more likely to be jailed and serve longer sentences, and were far and away more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than any other group in L.A. County.

The report has not been updated, but even the most cursory drive through the old riot areas still shows that for many residents little has changed.The L.A. riots are no longer the national and world symbol of American urban racial destruction, neglect and despair. But it’s is still a cautionary tale; a warning that in the Trump era, the poverty, violence and neglect that made the L.A. riots symbolic may not have totally evaporated twenty years after the flames. That will stay the case as long as the lots remain empty.

Twenty Years After the Flames: Vigilance Is Still the Watchword With the LAPD - Part 2

New Book Takes an Unsparing Look at How the Democrats Can Win Again

2017-04-09T18:00:00.000Z

Hutchinson Report Ebooks

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y4B7J7Y

In his new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in the Trump Era (Amazon Kindle), political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson takes a detailed look at what went wrong for the Democrats in 2016. And what they will have to do to take back Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020. Hutchinson notes: “That the Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars on high priced ads, consultants, glossy literature, and organizing campaigns. Yet, they are still on a disastrous losing cycle of epic proportions. “

Here’s how bad things are with the Democrats according to Hutchinson: “By 2016, the GOP had controlled the majority of the nation's statehouses and governorships, both houses of Congress, and now the White House.” The brutal reality, Hutchinson, says, is that every turn both locally and now nationally the GOP has out resourced, out strategized, and out organized the Democrats. The Trump win was not the shock that most pundits and observers said it was. It came about precisely because of the GOP’s resource and organizing skill.

Hutchinson relates: “Incoming Democratic National Chair, Perez knows that he and the Democrats have to make some changes, and make them fast. The sense of urgency to get fresh faces in key positions at the DNC is one key to reversing the Democrat’s fortunes in 2018 and 2020.”

Hutchinson notes that the DNC and the Democratic Party is bucking up against the notion that the party is much to beholden to corporate, big money interests and the party's beltway establishment. That it has totally lost touch with how to wage a real in the trenches campaign on issues that touched the nerve of many blue-collar workers, minorities and youth.

In How the Democrats Can Win in the Trump Era, Hutchinson meticulously examines the criticisms, obstacles and the issues that have divided the Democrats. He takes a laser look at the fallings of the 2016 presidential campaign and shatters many of the assumptions and myths about it.

With the 2018 mid-terms looming, and another presidential election in 2020, the Democrats gargantuan task is to quickly find a way to reverse the Party’s ill fortunes and notch local and national wins. The daunting task before it is to find a way for the Democrats to win in the Trump era.

How the Democrats Can Win in the Trump Era presents an unsparing dissect of the obstacles the Democrats face to regain their local and national political competitiveness and what exactly they can and must do to overcome those obstacles and be a winning party again.

Amazon Kindle Release Thursday, April 13

Hutchinson Report Ebooks
5517 Secrest Dr.

Los Angeles, Ca, 90043
323-296-6331

Hutchinsonreport@aol.

Gorsuch, Like Thomas, Will Get His Big Payback

2017-04-06T19:00:49.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Even worse than the GOP’s ramming Neil Gorsuch on the high court, is what Gorsuch is now poised potentially to do on the SCOTUS. He can comfortably over the coming years do exactly what his Constitutional Originalist Siamese Twin Clarence Thomas vowed that he would do and has been as good as his word. That’s take revenge in his dissents, opinions, writings, and most importantly, rulings on the most crucial cases of the era against his opponents.

The pattern with Gorsuch is almost identical as it was with Thomas, sans Anita Hill. He was reviled, lambasted and picked at by liberal and moderate Democrats and every liberal and progressive political advocacy group in the country. His appellate court rulings, dissents and writings were ripped apart. He suffered the ultimate indignity of having his nomination delayed as long as possible, and then filibustered, by virtually every Senate Democrat.

Even Thomas didn’t suffer this indignity. He was hotly opposed by a sizeable number of Democrats, but there was no filibuster. In fact, you’d have to go back more than a half century to cite the only other time a Presidential pick to the high court has been filibustered. That was Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Abe Fortas to SCOTUS in 1965. His nomination was subsequently pulled.

Thomas warned early just what he would do on the high court. When asked how long he’d stay on the court, he reportedly said that he’d stay there for the next 43 years of his life. He was 43 at the time he made that prediction. In a more revealing aside, he supposedly quipped to friends that it would take him that long to get even. Whether that was hyperbole or an apocryphal tale, it didn’t take him 43 years to wreak his revenge.

He’s done everything humanly and legally possible to get his revenge for being picked at. The death penalty, voting rights, gay rights, women’s rights, school prayer, campaign financial reform, corporate financial abuses, in fact, any issue that even remotely touches on any protective rights for minorities, labor, women and gays, you can mail Thomas’s to the letter vote or dissent against it in. Thomas has been so hard line and predictable on these issues that he’s often been the only judge to say no to a case such as death penalty racial disparity redress.

His decisions make sense because they have less to do with his warped interpretation of law than with his publicly expressed warped and frozen view of the Constitution, and his private vow to get revenge.

Gorsuch isn’t likely to be as obvious in his vow to wreak revenge on his detractors or make any outrageous public statement as his other judicial hero, Antonin Scalia, would do from time to time about a legal or public policy issue facing the court. That’s not his style. He will do his judicial dirty work quietly, scholarly, and always with an impeccable tone of judicial and public civility. However, the result will be the same on every case that lands before the court from voting rights to protecting corporate interests.

Unlike Thomas, who had the scantest judicial track record before he was confirmed, Gorsuch’s anti-labor, pro-business, blind eye toward discrimination rulings, dissents, opinions and writings were well-honed, and well-documented. In the overwhelming majority of 14 cases involving discrimination, he shot down all union and employee litigant arguments charging discrimination in back pay, hiring, and termination cases.

Gorsuch could even be more dangerous than Thomas in two ways. He’s a thoughtful jurist who is careful in how he frames his opinions on cases. And unlike Thomas, he’ll do what Scalia occasionally did, and that’s stray from the strict constructionist Constitutional read, and side with the court’s moderates and liberals on a decision. This will bolster his legal cachet just enough to mark him as a judge who’s not a rigid ideologue. However, when the big-ticket cases such as an almost certain challenge to what’s left of the Voting Rights Act that ultra-conservatives want undone, his vote will be just as predictable as Thomas’s.

There’s more. If he plays his court cards right, he could take-over the role that Scalia had. That’s was prodding, pushing, and hectoring other court justices to see, if not agree, with his view of how a case should be decided.

Gorsuch’s role of the court enforcer could be even more impactful without another Trump pick to the court which as he has promised would again be in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. It will insure that the narrow five to four majority that conservatives have had in the past with Scalia to decide cases their way will remain firmly intact.

Thomas hasn’t given a hoot about the insults, derision, and abuse that’s been heaped on him for

his nutty dissents. It’s just been his continuing payback. Now Gorsuch in his way will have his turn.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the forthcoming ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

The Day I Interviewed Cesar Chavez

2017-03-31T18:47:50.000Z

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The staff at the Los Angeles Free Press was excited in October 1972 when they got word that United Farmworkers of America’s founder and President Cesar Chavez would be stopping by our offices. I was a bit on edge because I was assigned to interview him. My edginess stemmed in part from fear, and in part awe of him.

Chavez had focused public attention on the exploitation and desperate plight of the men and women who picked the nation’s fruits and vegetables in blazing heat and biting cold in the fields. They worked for near slave wages, were subject to threats, intimidation, abuse, and even violence. The overwhelming majority of them in the Western states were undocumented workers from Mexico. The growers shuffled around at will from field to field and when the crop was harvested often dumped them back across the Mexican border.

Chavez, like Dr. King, was not just the head of an organization dedicated to fighting for fair wages and better working conditions for the farmworkers. He was a pivotal and inspirational figure in the civil rights and labor reform movement. What made the interview even more exciting was that Chavez was coming to the Free Press offices. In anticipation of that and to make sure I had my facts straight, I read numerous news accounts, and stories about Chavez and the United Farmworkers. I was deeply conscious that I would be sitting in the same room with a true movement giant.

My first surprise came when Chavez arrived at the offices. He had no entourage, companions, or bodyguards. It was just him and a young aide. He greeted me with a broad smile and warm embrace as if we were old friends who had known each other for years. There was absolutely no air, pretense or assumed importance about him. He was the paragon of modesty and humility. He spoke softly, and in deliberate tones, and he chose his words very carefully.

During the roughly one hour that we talked, Chavez ranged over many of the issues that were crucial to the farmworkers and their drive to unionize; the low wages, the back breaking labor, the often harsh treatment they were subjected to, the lack of sanitary facilities. Chavez always set this against the guns and clubs that he and union organizers routinely faced from grower sponsored assailants. They were determined to beat back the farmworkers in their long and bitter fight for better wages and working conditions.

Chavez eagerly praised Dr. King. He made it plain that King was his hero and that he patterned himself and his activist, aggressive emphasis on non-violence after King’s actions. Chavez beamed every time he mentioned King. He mentioned him often. He had a near devout gaze as he recalled to me the telegram that he had received from him in September 1966, in which King wrote, ”You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people.” Chavez made clear that he had regarded King as his teacher and they shared much in common in the tactics and goals they employed.

It was a great moment for me listening to Chavez pay tribute testament to King. He rose slowly at the end of the interview and walked slowly to the outer office. He paused for a moment, quietly thanked me, and shook my hand warmly. As I watched him leave the full impact of being in his presence hit me. The reality that I had sat a few feet from this humble, but powerful figure, gave me an intense feeling of pride. It was the same feeling that I got six years earlier when I stood just a few feet from Dr. King at a rally of religious leaders for civil rights at the L.A. Coliseum.

King and Chavez! I had seen and heard both, up close. Now I knew why these two giants in the fight for justice and equality had a symbiotic bond and kinship. Their names were linked together and I was sure the relationship of the two men, their ideals, and their fight, would stand the test of time. It was indeed a true mark and testament to their work that both would be honored with holidays in their name. The national holiday for King comes the third week of January. Chavez is honored with a state holiday in California on March 31, and an optional holiday in states such as Colorado and Texas. Celebrations for him are held in many other parts of the nation.

I saw and heard Chavez several times over the next few years. Nothing had changed from the day he sat across from me in the small office at the newspaper for the interview. I was always moved by the warmth, humility and soft spoken measured manner in which he spoke. The burning passion and conviction and absolute iron determination he had to win justice and equal treatment for the farmworkers.

Following his death in April, 1993, his widow donated his black nylon union jacket to the National Museum of American History which is a branch of the Smithsonian. He was 66. This was the same jacket that Chavez had with him when he came to the Free Press offices for our interview two decades earlier. The jacket symbolized his and the farmworker’s quest to advance the cause of social justice in America. Now it belonged to the nation.