Continue readingAfter forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws that stratify society based on race and class and continues to ignore Dr. King’s lessons on justice, compassion and love.
My favorite quote from Dr. King speaks to the heart of the problem with America’s criminal justice system. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
America’s criminal justice system is reckless and discriminate. America has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Blacks are incarcerated at four to five times the rate of whites for drug crimes, even though the majority of those who use and sell drugs are white. The majority of those incarcerated are people who have a history with mental health and substance abuse.
Not only does incarceration impact individuals but it undermines families,
Tag Archives: History
NAACP paradigm shift
Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote for the Miami Herald 30 July 2011, NAACP’s paradigm shift on ending the Drug War
Conservative as in:Here’s why this matters. Or, more to the point, why it matters more than if such a statement came from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. The NAACP is not just the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. It is also its most conservative.
…denoting a propensity toward caution and a distrust of the bold, the risky, the new. And that’s the NAACP all over.How monumental? Continue reading
…there has always been something determinedly middle class and cautious about the NAACP. This is the group whose then-leader, Roy Wilkins, famously detested Martin Luther King for his street theatrics.
For that group, then, to demand an end to the Drug War represents a monumental sea change.
“about as fruitful as trying to squeeze information out of the Kremlin”
No, not that city council! No, not that county commission! Not even the state board of corrections. (Although some of them might want to try that bureaucratic shoe on to see if it fits.) Here’s who: Continue readingSchuster told the directors that he thought [that organization] was supplying “vague” information and he directed that henceforth the sides meet monthly in his office for updates on the liquidation process. In short, Schuster is learning first hand — just like members, the media and the public at large have learned — that prying information out of [that organization] is usually about as fruitful as trying to squeeze information out of the Kremlin.
Quitman 10, Rally & News Media Whiteout! Nearly 200 Citizens Ignored! —George Boston Rhynes

Video by George Boston Rhynes for
K.V.C.I. Keeping Valdosta Citizen Informed
George has written up most of this in K.V.C.I. with pictures and YouTube videos.
Also, I appreciate the shoutout, George, and I’m sure the other people involved with LAKE and this blog do, as well.
-jsq
School consolidation report: can cause irreversible damage
Craig Howley, Jerry Johnson, Jennifer Petrie wrote 1 February 2011,
Consolidation of Schools and Districts: What the Research Says and What it Means:
…the review of research evidence detailed in this brief suggests that a century of consolidation has already produced most of the efficiencies obtainable. Research also suggests that impoverished regions in particular often benefit from smaller schools and districts, and they can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.Isn’t such irreversible damage what Rev. Floyd Rose got Mrs. Ruth Council to admit?
They are referring to black schools before desegregation in the 1960s.Rev. Rose: “…we were told about the world, where we came from, how we got here.”
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Mrs. Council: “I think we did receive a better education.”
Rev. Floyd Rose is president of the local SCLC, and here is a statement by Leigh Touchton, president of the local NAACP: Continue reading
Private prisons spend millions lobbying to lock people up —Justice Policy Institute
We already knew that, but JPI has quantified it: Continue readingYesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report’s authors note that while the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, correspondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since 1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — made over $2.9 billion in revenue.
JPI claims the private industry hasn’t merely responded to the nation’s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the market conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.
Bright flight visualized
Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg wrote in USA Today 3 June 2011, Census reveals plummeting U.S. birthrates
Because families with children tend to live near each other,So that makes Lanier County one of only 49 Continue readingthe result is an increasingly patchy landscape of communities teeming with kids, and others with very few.
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Even in counties where the percentage of children grew, only 49 gained more than 1 percentage point — many of them suburbs on the outer edge of metropolitan areas such as Forsyth, Whitfield and Newton outside Atlanta and Cabarrus and Union outside Charlotte.
AT&T DSL outage until 8AM Sunday 5 June
So I happened to wake up and wanted to check something online.
No DSL service. (Yes, I rebooted the DSL modem.)
Determined the modem was working and the problem was beyond it in
AT&T’s network.
Thought maybe there’s a tree down on the line.
Called AT&T. Message said “high speed” Internet technical support hours are 6AM to 11PM, so please call back then for best service. Excuse me? The Internet is supposed to shut down overnight?
Stayed on, outwaited the robot, got a tech in the Philippines, Continue reading
Who will pick Vidalia onions now that immigrants are scared away?
AP wrote May 20, 2011, Immigration crackdown worries Vidalia onion county:
Signs point to an exodus in Vidalia onion country. Fliers on a Mexican storefront advertise free transportation for workers willing to pick jalapenos and banana peppers in Florida and blueberries in the Carolinas. Buying an outbound bus ticket now requires reservations.
While most states rejected immigration crackdowns this year, conservative Georgia and Utah are the only states where comprehensive bills have passed. With the ink barely dry on Georgia’s law, among the toughest in the country, the divisions between suburban voters and those in the countryside are once again laid bare when it comes to immigration, even among people who line up on many other issues.
Guess who wanted this crackdown even though rural south Georgians didn’t:
The crackdown proved popular in suburban Atlanta, where Spanish-only signs proliferate and the Latino population has risen dramatically over the past few decades. Residents complain that illegal immigrants take their jobs and strain public resources.That’s right: Atlanta, not content with lusting after our water, now scares off our workers.
Do immigrants really take jobs from locals?
Such claims never seem to have data to back them up.
I tend to agree with
Carlos Santana:
“This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job,” Santana said of the law. “No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”In south Georgia local people won’t pick Vidalia onions for the wages immigrants will, and the wages locals want the farmers can’t afford.
Remember who profits from this crackdown, at the expense of Georgia
farmers and taxpayers:
private prison companies and their investors.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County. Spend those tax dollars on education instead.
-jsq
PS: Vidalia onion story owed to Jane Osborn.
Wake-up and break off the spell of the Leviathan —George Boston Rhynes
Continue readingI was at the last LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS MEETING when Chairman Ashley Paulk shared information about the Biomass Project extension being denied and the alleged secrecy surrounding keeping the general public ignorant.
“Because certain people won’t share with you and I think it’s unfair. We were approached about three weeks ago, Mr. (Joe) Pritchard (County Manager) was, by the Industrial Authority, and we were tentatively asked to make a move to ask that they not extend the contract.” (Chairman Paulk!)Chairman Paulk words prove that there is an apparent pattern and practice