Today’s issue of the Standard Times featured an article about a New Bedford man, respected in his community, who has been accused of rape and kidnapping.

The Bristol County District Attorney immediately asked for a dangerousness hearing when the defendant was arraigned on Wednesday. Judge Jeffrey Clifford granted the request and ordered the man held without bail.

The defendant’s lawyer is quoted as saying, “After speaking with him, I honestly believe he is innocent. There is evidence that will exonerate him.”

Nevertheless, the man will likely be held in pre-trial detention for at least four months in Sheriff Tom Hodgson’s dismal hellhole of a jail — presumed guilty, unable to freely consult with his lawyer, and having never had his day in court.

Just last week Randy Gioia, deputy chief counsel of the Committee for the Public Counsel Service’s Public Defender Division, wrote a letter in the Standard Times decrying the practice of using dangerousness hearings to routinely deny bail to defendants in Bristol County. “During fiscal years 2017 and 2018, Quinn’s office had 368 dangerousness hearings in New Bedford alone. That’s more than Boston and all of Norfolk County, combined, during that same period of time.”

It is not a coincidence that Bristol County also has the highest rate of pre-trial detention deaths and the highest rate of jail suicides. Bristol County is a blood red stain on the entire state.

If this were not bad enough, DA Quinn has been lobbying for even more draconian dangerousness provisions in a bill Republican Governor Charlie Baker sponsored, H.66, “An Act to protect the Commonwealth from dangerous persons.” Quinn apparently wants even more blood on his hands.

Gioia was critical of New Bedford mayor and former prosecutor Jon Mitchell’s attacks on the judicial practice of granting bail as it was intended under the constitution. Mitchell, speaking more as prosecutor than mayor, told the Standard Times that the practice has “compromised the safety of our city, negated the hard work of our police officers, and undermined the public’s respect for the state judicial system.”

Baloney.

I’m not worried about judges who follow the Eighth Amendment — but I am extremely concerned about those who act as rubber stamps for prosecutors. When judges and prosecutors are too friendly, as they are in Bristol County, injustice and death is the result.

I don’t know enough about the facts of this specific case, neither does Jon Mitchell and — more importantly — neither does a jury of the man’s peers. Until the man is sentenced we are supposed to regard him as innocent. Let’s do that — and not deny him his Eighth Amendment rights.

If Bristol County keeps on denying civil rights to defendants, just itching to play vigilante, and rewarding abusive sheriffs and prosecutors, we just might have to rename the SouthCoast “the Deep South Coast.”

The U.S. Senate consists of 100 senators, 67 of whom must vote to convict Donald Trump in order to remove him from office. Of these, 53 are Republicans, 45 are Democrats, and 2 are independents. One may think that the greatest obstacle to fair proceedings in the Senate is political affiliation.

But like most things in America, it’s going to be about race.

While Republicans have a majority in the Senate, it’s thanks to a Constitution which gives a state like Wyoming with half a million people the same number of senators as California with almost 40 million.

Our nation’s founders not only feared black demographics but modeled the Senate after the British House of Lords. It wasn’t until the 20th Century that a citizen even got to vote for his senator, Until the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, senators were appointed by the governor of each state and often the position was inherited. It wasn’t until 1920 until women could vote at all.

By design, then, the U.S. Senate has always been the Yankee version of the House of Lords. By design it was and remains undemocratic, and by design its purpose is to thwart the will of the people’s House of Representatives. It does this a little too well, and thus undermines democracy.

Also by design, the Senate remains an almost exclusively white club. Of the nation’s 100 senators, 91 are white — a statistical anomaly in a country where 76% of the people are white and the percentage has been in steady decline since 1950. There are four Hispanic senators, three Asian senators, and three Black senators. Kamala Harris is of Indian-Jamaican heritage, checking off two boxes.

All of which is to say — this is the lily white jury that’s going to consider Trump’s Articles of Impeachment.

Donald Trump once boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and wouldn’t lose a vote. A Department of Justice memorandum gives him a get-out-of-jail-free card for federal offenses. And the composition of the Senate makes it virtually certain that Trump’s impeachable offenses will result in acquittal.

But American deference to white billionaires is bipartisan.

Even the House’s Articles of Impeachment are watered-down charges consisting only of the president’s most recent attempts to extort Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 presidential election. So far, the charges don’t include anything from the Mueller report, Trump’s numerous emoluments clause violations, lying about illegal payments to porn stars and mistresses, or any of his many obstructions of justice.

As if all this kid glove treatment were not bad enough, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell intends to fast-track the Senate trial down to two weeks — three times shorter than Nixon’s. And for the sake of comparison, in 2016, when South Korea impeached president Park Geun-hye for corruption and influence-peddling, prosecutors charged her with 13 counts remarkably similar to Trump’s, and her trial in South Korea’s Constitutional Court lasted 10 weeks. Gun-hye’s refusal to appear before the court was never an impediment to her conviction.

No, the travesty of justice we are about to witness from an all-white jury in the U.S. Senate is one America has seen many times before:

• In 1955, when Emmett Till was murdered and his body thrown into the Tallahatchie River, his killers were acquitted by an all-white jury after one hour of deliberation.
• In 1963, after Medgar Evers was gunned down in Mississippi, two all-white juries acquitted his killers in separate trials.
• In 1998, when 13 white supremacists were charged with attempting to murder a federal judge and FBI agent, they were acquitted by an all-white jury.
• In 2013, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin by a jury with only one juror of color.
• In 2016, a group of armed sovereign citizens who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were acquitted by an all-white jury — while on the same day unarmed Native Americans protesting a pipeline on their own land were maced and beaten by police.
• It’s not even possible to list the thousands of times that white police officers have murdered unarmed black men and been acquitted or simply not charged.

As Trump’s impeachment unfolds, Democrats may rightly fume about a partisan Senate subverting justice by speeding through a sham trial with the clear intention of acquitting the white guy president.

But it’s a travesty of justice that’s hardly unique — and it’s nothing new.

Many Americans have become increasingly alarmed by Donald Trump’s white supremacy, his contempt for democratic institutions of courts and Congress, efforts to redefine and disconnect human rights from international norms, and his administration’s recent participation in a conference on white nationalism. While few would go so far as to say that history is repeating itself, the Trump administration sure seems to be hitting a lot of Nazi notes, if not some Lieder. Understanding how and how rapidly things devolved in Germany in 1933 is an important exercise — especially if we want to make sure that “Never Again” means precisely that.

Ethnonationalism had a dark and dismal history in Germany long before precursors of the Hitlerjugend and the SS arose — long before Hitler. As a political movement Nazism had slow and steady growth after the First World War, but it wasn’t until 1932 when the Nazi party won 37.4% of the vote that Hitler came to power. A year later, in 1933, Hitler became Kanzler. That same year Dachau was constructed and was used mainly for political prisoners. Germans of the day might have felt a bit uneasy about concentration camps, but for the moment they were mainly being used on Communists.

Richard E. Frankel, Associate Professor of Modern German History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, notes that, just as Trump did recently, Hitler pardoned war criminals. “In August of 1932, in the town of Potempa, nine Nazi Stormtroopers murdered a supporter of the German Communist Party, kicking him to death in his own apartment as his family watched in horror. Six were convicted with five receiving the death penalty. After the verdict, Hitler sent them a telegram in which he declared to them his ‘boundless loyalty.’ Shortly after he came to power in 1933, he pardoned the killers.” This was just the beginning of many such pardons. Hitler’s telegram should have been a signal to Germans of Hitler’s contempt of democratic norms, just as pardoning Joe Arpaio should have warned Americans about what Trump would do later.

1933 was a particularly ominous year in Germany. As Kanzler, Hitler declared that German foreign policy demanded the expansion of its territory. Germany First. The staged Reichstag fire and the Ermächtigungsgesetz (“Enabling Act”) consolidated Hitler’s power and Congress — I’m sorry, I meant the Reichstag— soon ceased to have any real political power. The Kanzler was now a Führer and his party had transformed into a cult of personality in which the leader’s wishes superseded any law. Political parties other than the Nazi party were soon illegal, trade unions were banned, and the first book burnings took place that year. Echoing themes we see today, Nazi Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. Germany was above international norms. To make Germany great again, it literally had to beüber Alles.

Within short order there were more mass-pardons, and the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (“Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service”) purged the civil service of Jews. It was called a “restoration” for reasons MAGA America would love — the Civil Service had to be made great, and completely Christian, again. The military was also strengthened, universal conscription ordered, and by 1935 the first Race Laws were enacted. The Trump administration’s threats to override the Fourteenth Amendment — by decree — would confer citizenship by race and not birthplace.

In 1938 mobs organized by the Nazis carried out Kristallnacht — a night of terrorization of German Jews — and the victims were actually charged with the offense. The pretext for Kristallnacht was the assassination of Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a 17-year-old German Jew in Paris who had been expelled from the country. German Jews were then collectively punished with a Judenvermögensabgabe, a fine of one billion Reichsmarks for vom Rath’s killing. In today’s dollars this was $5.5 billion, to be satisfied by the expropriation of 20% of all Jewish property in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. The Nazis were just getting warmed up.

Despite the human rights abuses that had been occurring for over a decade (1929-1939), it was only when Germany invaded Poland that Britain and France declared war. In 1940 Denmark and Norway were occupied by Nazi Germany, followed by the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Germany developed plans for blitz-bombing Britain. In 1941 Yugoslavia and Greece were occupied. Germany advanced on Stalingrad. In 1941 Nazi Einsatzgruppen were already coordinating the wholesale slaughter of Jews in European towns and cities where no concentration camps existed. Finally, after Pearl Harbor, in 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States. In 1942 the Wannsee Conference approved plans for the mass extermination of Jews, but the slaughter had been going on for years.

Germany was regarded by many Americans as a model of power and technological superiority. And a number of American industrialists supported Nazism. Fred Koch, the grandfather of today’s Koch Brothers, and his company, Winkler-Koch Engineering, provided the Nazis with oil refining technology. George Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush did business with the Third Reich until 1942, when some of his assets were seized under the 1942 Trading with the Enemy Act. Ford, Coca-Cola, Kodak, GE, IBM, Standard Oil, and even Random House all did business with Hitler. In 1939 there was a massive pro-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden which demonstrated that many Americans regarded Nazi values as American values.

Today, while we are not necessarily on the same path to Nazism as Germany was in 1933, there are many lessons we should learn from the history.

Owing to Germany’s massive militarization, it presented an almost unstoppable threat to the rest of the world. By making adulation of the Führer an explicit operating principle, democracy was easily subverted by spineless politicians who prized power over democracy. By explicitly demonizing a minority, and through the codification of racist laws, democracy was further poisoned. A nation that relied on propaganda, repression and brutality was overwhelmed in every other aspect of civilization except for industrial production — which, like ours, included slave labor. Under Nazism Germany had a Constitution and ostensibly operated under rule of law. But the entire system was cruel and immoral. Today Germans admire dissidents like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The current Kanzler just celebrated the 75th anniversary of an attempt to assassinate Hitler. It is said that history is written by the victors. Apparently so is morality.

Finally, one cannot underestimate the psychology and manipulations of a leader on a receptive public, especially when properly conditioned by state propaganda. Hitler was a man who admired other dictators, notably Benito Mussolini who preceded him in authoritarian rule by more than a decade. Besides Hitler’s popular rallies, one of which was immortalized by Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will, Hitler had enthusiastic help from a xenophobic mass media. Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmerwas the FOX News and Sinclair Media of the day.

Though there had been warning signs for years, in an eight year period from 1933 to 1941 one of the most “civilized” nations on earth completely lost its collective mind, becoming a nation of war criminals and mass murderers. Today, in MAGA America, the haters are not singing precisely the same Nazi Lieder — but they sure are hitting a lot of the same notes.

For White America, the accounting of history is all assets and no liabilities. Iowa’s Steve King never stops saying that the profits on America’s balance sheet all belong to white people because, over hundreds of years, it was white people who tamed a brown continent and brought “civilization” to it. Ask White America about Confederate history and you will hear that the Lost Cause is a crucial part of American history and American identity. To take down rebel monuments is to strike assets off White America’s ledgers.

The Western Canon, still taught in some universities, is a sort of Western/white supremacist version of world history and culture. It originally consisted of almost exclusively Greek, Roman, and Christian sources. Ask a white Evangelical Christian, who now only grudgingly acknowledges the “Judeo” part of our newly-reformulated “Judeo-Christian” culture, and you’ll hear that the biblical kingdoms of “Samaria” and “Judea” should be reserved for overwhelmingly European settlers under Israel’s Law of Return, and that Palestinians should remain under perpetual occupation. There’s a thick thread of racism running through all of Western history and culture.

But when it comes to reparations for slavery, White America has a completely different accounting scheme — a scheme in which all debts are automatically cancelled. In this scheme, since all contributions by non-whites are negligible, and their presence so unwanted, their claims on American history are nothing but petty annoyances. If someone wronged you, your parents, your grandparents — even every generation of your ancestors — well, too bad, it’s not our fault. Get over it. No debts were incurred. And no debts need be paid after such a long time.

For a people who don’t believe in a free lunch — not even for poor children — it is curious that White Americans so resolutely refuse to pay their debts. And as a nation we have some pretty big ones — colonialism, genocide, territorial expropriation, slavery, and centuries of racism. In the history of American Capitalism, it was slavery that set the Confederate economy in motion. And it was slavery that underpinned the cotton trade upon which the Northern textile industries were based. Thus, even New England cities — under Northern Capitalism — became rich from slavery. Today White America, South and North, wring their hands over the complexity of the accounting. But regardless of the unwillingness of the debtor to pay the debt, the interest on our Original Sin just keeps accruing.

In the orthodox [White] re-telling of American history, Our good fortune simply fell off a truck. We were lucky enough, and smart enough, to simply scoop it up for ourselves. The triumphalist says: I got mine; the hell with the rest of you. Yet, whether by lying to ourselves about our history or by the sociopathic glorification of it, White America knows full well what it has stolen. And for those who recognize the stolen merchandise as theirs, they know what crimes were committed and that payment is due. That payment must consist of not only a monetary value but a moral accounting.

As much as Republicans and Centrist Democrats would like race to simply go away, a national discussion about reparations — like racism itself — is long overdue. It is not surprising that we are hearing about reparations in the 2020 presidential campaign from both candidates of color and several white Democrats. Ta-Nihisi Coates recently penned a long “Case for Reparations” in the Atlantic, and in it he makes the case, mentioning H.R.40, a bill sponsored in the last legislative session by Michigan Democrat John Conyers, Jr., “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.”

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Like a Truth and Reconciliation process, a reparations commission would require White America to come to grips with our real history. The questions are complex, the solutions even more so. How do we make amends for crimes committed by past generations that are repeated and still resonate today? Who would all the recipients of reparations be, and what forms would reparations consist of? Following the implementation of reparations, how could we determine if they were lifting up those who needed them the most?

But Coates sums up a reparations commission’s greatest good: “No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as — if not more than — the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.”

Our fragile democracy cannot survive the shameful present reality of the two Americas the Kerner Commission predicted over fifty years ago. Apologies are due, and debts must be acknowledged and paid. Those who have suffered the most must be lifted up and made whole.

This nation must be made whole.

Today is not a day for tanks and flyovers and a would-be Caesar’s notion of American greatness. A nation in crisis cannot honestly celebrate its hollow promises of democracy when they actually pertain to so few, and when more of them disappear with every passing day. Rather than the hollow rhetoric of the nation’s founders, today is a day to listen to the words of someone who actually fought for independence but never fully received it.

On the day after Independence Day 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered the following speech in Rochester, New York. It is a fiery reproach of American independence — “your 4th of July” not “ours” — demanding that White America keep its unfulfilled promises. A century and a half later Douglass’s words still resonate, but White America’s only answer to them, so far, is tanks in the streets and concentration camps.

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gauge I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you.

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would certainly prove nothing as to what part I might have taken had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.

Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated, by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.

As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.

The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers.

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.

These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.

Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.

On the 2nd of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day, whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it.

“Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, there fore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history-the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.

The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too-great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final”; not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them! Fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep, the corner-stone of the national super-structure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.

Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest-nation’s jubilee.

Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, un folded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national po etry and eloquence.

I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait-perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands.

I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine!

My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and His cause is the ever-living now.

Trust no future, however pleasant, Let the dead past bury its dead; Act, act in the living present, Heart within, and God overhead.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout-“We have Washington to our father.”-Alas! that it should be so; yet it is.

The evil, that men do, lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.-The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fa thers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They ac knowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may con sent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.-There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the Jaws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish them selves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass with out condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers, armed with pistol, whip, and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-curdling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul The crack you heard was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shock ing gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed cash for Negroes. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number has been collected here, a ship is chartered for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead, heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

Is this the land your Fathers loved, The freedom which they toiled to win? Is this the earth whereon they moved? Are these the graves they slumber in?

But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there is neither law nor justice, humanity nor religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world that in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America the seats of justice are filled with judges who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!

In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenceless, and in diabolical intent this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were nor stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise, and cummin”-abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!-And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to so licit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox to the beautiful, but treacherous, Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country (with fractional exceptions) does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, im plies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love, and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and with out hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation-a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea’ when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”

The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in its connection with its ability to abolish slavery.

The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday School, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery, and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds, and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared-men honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of the Hebrews, and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.

My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn; Samuel J. May, of Syracuse; and my esteemed friend (Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that, upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in Eng land towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and re stored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Burchells, and the Knibbs were alike famous for their piety and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable instead of a hostile position towards that movement.

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen, and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against the oppressor; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a three-penny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare before the world, and are understood by the world to declare that you “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain in alienable rights; and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad: it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. it fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that, the right to hold, and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic.

Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped

To palter with us in a double sense: And keep the word of promise to the ear, But break it to the heart.

And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest impostors that ever practised on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length; nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq. by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerrit Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gate way? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slaveholding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can any where be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a tract of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, commonsense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality, or unconstitutionality of slavery, is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.

“The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated.-Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee The wide world o’er! When from their galling chains set free, Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny Like brutes no more. That year will come, and freedom’s reign. To man his plundered rights again Restore.

God speed the day when human blood Shall cease to flow! In every clime be understood, The claims of human brotherhood, And each return for evil, good, Not blow for blow;

That day will come all feuds to end, And change into a faithful friend Each foe.

With conditions for ICE prisoners deteriorating by the minute, Conservatives lost their minds when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called ICE’s facilities for caging children as young as 4 months of age by their proper name — concentration camps. “I don’t use those words lightly. I don’t use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is,” she said. “A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very difficult to say that.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks followed an announcement that ICE now has plans to use Fort Sill, a former Japanese “internment” camp in Oklahoma, to “detain” migrant children. ICE operates 168 camps in 23 states for migrant children alone. According to the Densho Encyclopedia which documents this shameful chapter of American history, Fort Sill housed Japanese-American prisoners who “sometimes lived in 100-degree weather with no escape from the hot temperatures. Guard towers “were equipped with 30-caliber machine guns, shotguns, and searchlights. […] On May 13, 1942, a mentally ill internee was shot dead by guards who claimed that he was trying to escape.” Even if it now has air-conditioning Fort Sill will still be a concentration camp, not an “internment” or “detention center” for a new batch of non-white prisoners.

Liz Cheney, daughter of war criminal Dick Cheney, tweeted: “Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.”

Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Josh Gottheimer, piled on as well. In a press statement, Gottheimer said, “the comparison is cruel and disrespectful to the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, including members of my own family. Concentration camps were places where Jews and others were enslaved, tortured, and then sent to gas chambers to be murdered.”

But not so fast. Sure, Republicans and their weak-kneed Democratic allies get a bit peeved when critics of immigration policy point to how many of Trump’s policies had precedents in the Third Reich. A convenient dismissal is that it “disrespects” Holocaust survivors. But the critics have a point — particularly when a neo-fascist, advised and adored by white supremacists, could so easily and quickly convert detention camps into death camps. It’s happened before.

The Jewish Virtual Library notes that the Nazis operated as many as 15,000 collection, labor, and transit camps, collection points, and ghettos. Of these only a fraction were extermination (or death) camps. Even Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank died, was not technically an extermination camp — the Nazis called it a “displaced persons camp” — although its prisoners were housed in unspeakable conditions which led to tens of thousands of deaths. And Theresienstadt — where Nazi propagandists portrayed prisoners as practically on vacation — this too was a concentration camp.

Consider, too, the definition found in the Encyclopedia Brittanica: “concentration camp: internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order.” This definition fits precisely the hundreds of thousands of prisoners Trump, by “executive decree,” has placed in American concentration camps — just as the definition applies to the 1.5 million Uighurs in Chinese concentration camps or an unknown number of gay men in Chechen concentration camps.

A world in which facts are disputed and words no longer have any meaning is a dangerous, Orwellian nightmare. Language is important. If the use of “concentration camp” induces a collective meltdown from Trump defenders, then the use of euphemisms like “intern” and “detention” should as well. Guatemalan and Honduran child “interns” are not writing Python code for Google or collecting business contacts at hedge funds. No mentally competent person would say they have been “detained,” as in bad traffic or by a last-minute telephone call.

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. These children are prisoners in a rapidly-expanding network of cruelly-administered American concentration camps.

Last week Margaret Kimberley, writing in Black Agenda Report, called out colonialism, the American police and carceral state, and militarism for what it all has in common — a license to kill people of color. Kimberley also sat down with KPFA to discuss her piece. I was taken with the scope and brevity of Kimberley’s piece, reprinted with her kind permission.

by Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report

Zionism, manifest destiny, wars on terror, humanitarian interventions, and the Monroe and other doctrines always boil down to a license to kill.

Discussions about white supremacy should amount to more than kumbaya moments of interpersonal harmony or hand wringing when lone gunmen go on the periodic racist rampage. Self-identified white people have always posed dangers to every other group. Most of them living today haven’t carried out murder with their own hands but that does not mean that they or their countrymen and women can’t be held to account.

Donald Trump’s presidency complicates this discussion. The threats presented by his appeals to racists cannot be overstated. There is no dispute about his impact. Shortly after he was inaugurated a white supremacist shot and killed six people at a Montreal, Quebec mosque. The killer of 50 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand referred to Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

But Trump isn’t the only white supremacist leader. White supremacy is the guiding force behind many atrocities committed around the world. Zionism is an example of white supremacy in action. But many of those who expressed shock after the New Zealand killings don’t question Israel’s apartheid system that could not be carried out absent the support of the United States and its allies.

White supremacy explains the willingness of many Americans to support the bipartisan project to carry out regime change in Venezuela and other nations. It is expressed as as positive, a humanitarian gesture meant to save the colored peoples of the world from themselves. The notion of a white man’s burden still exists in the 21st century.

The individuals who carry out these acts usually elicit greater scorn than the presidents and prime ministers who do the same thing. A televised speech claiming that a war is “humanitarian” gets support from the corporate media, conservatives, and liberals too. The unanimity of opinion is based on all the precepts that say white makes right. Zionism, manifest destiny, wars on terror, humanitarian interventions, and the Monroe and other doctrines always boil down to a license to kill. The victims are usually people from the global south and there is little objection when the perpetrator is the state itself.

The Australian killer who flashed the white power gang sign even as he appeared in court should not be seen as the only face of racism. Pointing fingers at him and others of his ilk lets too many people off the hook of responsibility.

His homeland of Australia is the embodiment of the ethno-nationalism that the shooter referred to in his manifesto. Europeans invaded Australia and nearly eradicated the aboriginal inhabitants. The entire indigenous population of Tasmania was wiped out by the settler population. The bigger shock is that there aren’t more mass killers from Australia and other nations that owe their existence to genocide.

The mosque killer regards the non-white immigrant as an invader when he is the one descended from the invading people. Candle light vigils may expiate guilt and bring momentary relief but they are a poor substitute for telling the truth about genocides carried out by European descended people around the world.

That is the white supremacy which must be always be discussed. That evil decimated the Iroquois and Lakota and Maori and Tasmanians and maintained a 300-year long slave trade. In a perverse twist the descendants of the genocidaires see themselves as the victims. Whenever a tipping point of color is surpassed the racists react with segregation, gentrification and outright murder.

This point may be the hardest to discuss. Trump is president precisely because he expressed the belief that this colonial settler state is for white people and they should do all they can to keep others out or under their control.

It is easy to express dismay when racist killers attack churches in Charleston, South Carolina or mosques in Quebec or New Zealand. It is harder for self-identified whites who think themselves enlightened to ponder difficult questions about wars and mass incarceration that are carried out in their names.

The maniac killers who use their own firearms are a symptom of a much bigger problem. White supremacy is normalized so much that is becomes like background music. It is ever present and subliminal.

The British tabloid newspaper Daily Mirror had a front page photo of the New Zealand killer as a toddler. The headline read, “Angelic boy who grew into evil, far right mass killer.” Angelic is an apt description for most small children. Every terrorist was once an angelic tot. But only the white ones are given humanity even after they kill. There should be no surprise when racism pushes the unhinged over the edge. They are given legitimacy long before they pick up a gun.

— Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report

Note from David —

After the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, Liberal talking heads and mainstream editorial pages pushed a message that violent White Supremacy and Christian Identity were aberrations set in motion by America’s racist president. Liberals walked back a previous characterization of American Main Street racists as “Deplorables,” casting them instead as innocents struggling with economic anxieties — nothing like the Lone Wolves who carry out mass murders. White Liberals could breathe a sigh of relief — we ourselves could not possibly be culpable.

But when a Muslim Congresswoman had the temerity to express criticism of Israel’s Apartheid-flavored “democracy”– one that killed more unarmed Palestinian demonstrators again this week — and questioned the role of AIPAC and the duplicity of politicians doing a better of job of representing Israel than their own country — the GOP and centrist Democrats attacked her. Yet the very first piece of legislation considered by the Senate, Bill S.1, includes what is in essence a loyalty oath to Israel and violates the First Amendment rights of Americans to boycott. After much waffling, House and Senate Democrats only half-heartedly defended fellow Democrat Ilhan Omar. Apparently crushing bipartisan economic sanctions on Venezuela and Iran are acceptable, while a consumer boycott of Israel must be regarded as nothing but anti-Semitism.

The current war on Venezuela is likewise part of the American imperial enterprise — one that began long ago, and was codified in the Monroe Doctrine. If you believe American aggression happens only under GOP administrations, review the history.

Finally, long before Trump was elected I noticed that mainstream Conservative publications are, in theme and message, virtually indistinguishable from those which directly call for genocide, race war, and ethnic cleansing. The spelling in mainstream Conservative publications may be better and the violent rhetoric may have been replaced with coded messaging, but the message is still the same. Since FOX is the #1 news channel in America, this is apparently what White American likes to hear, what it believes.

It ought to be pretty clear that all this is a white people problem — a problem created by the demographic that wrote our laws and is determined to preserve its political and economic advantages at all cost. And this is a mess we white people are responsible for cleaning up. It is nothing but hypocrisy to claim we support human and civil rights while actually supporting colonial invasions, occupations and repressive “law and order” measures that include police killings and mass incarceration.

Last August Democratic District Attorney Thomas Quinn penned an editorial in the Boston Globe supporting “get tough” bail revocation. It was part of a coordinated effort with Republican Governor Charles Baker to modify the Commonwealth’s Section 58A “Dangerousness” statutes. On September 10, 2018 the governor introduced legislation to keep people not yet convicted of any crime behind bars for up to a year without trial if deemed “dangerous” by police or District Attorneys. And this year, again, Baker’s bill H.66 currently awaits a vote in the legislature.

The governor’s legislation follows several high-profile cases of people out on bail committing serious crimes. In one case, a Weymouth police officer was allegedly killed by a man with a history of run-ins with local police who was out on $500 bail for a pending drug charge. In another case, a Fall River man who was charged in 2015 but never convicted of armed robbery reportedly killed two people, including a veteran and new father, after losing control of his vehicle in a high-speed police chase. The press has been generous with photo-ops of DAs, the governor, and police captains all calling for “Blue Lives Matter” policies. The Sun-Chronicle showed its bias running with “Bristol County DA pleads for bail reform to keep criminals off streets” while NECN cast the legislation as an effort to “Keep Dangerous Criminals Behind Bars.” Forgotten is the fact that you’re only a criminal if you’ve actually been convicted of a crime.

Last Summer the Massachusetts legislature passed an omnibus criminal law reform bill which was signed by the governor and includes bail reform. As Senator Will Brownsberger explained, the reform bill codified the State Judicial Court’s Brangan decision, which ruled that “in setting the amount of bail, whether under G.L. c.276, §57 or §58, a judge must consider a defendant’s financial resources, but is not required to set bail in an amount the defendant can afford if other relevant considerations weigh more heavily than the defendant’s ability to provide the necessary security for his appearance at trial.” The SCJ ruling balanced public safety with concern for America’s habit of criminalizing poverty.

Habitually hostile to civil liberties, Massachusetts district attorneys have destroyed lives, in many cases defending tainted convictions with tainted evidence, and nine out of eleven Massachusetts DAs staunchly opposed the recent criminal justice reform legislation. Nationwide, district attorneys have discovered that running on a “law and order” platform — going after the weakest and most vulnerable in society by labeling them “superpredators” — is always a winning election strategy. So it’s no surprise that both Republican and Democratic DA’s are joining in an assault on Brangan.

Jahmal Brangan, for whom the ruling is named, had been sitting in a Massachusetts jail for three and a half years simply because he couldn’t meet bail. After Brangan’s case was finally heard, now-retired Supreme Judicial Court Judge Geraldine S. Hines wrote, “A bail that is set without any regard to whether a defendant is a pauper or a plutocrat runs the risk of being excessive and unfair.”Hines also added: “A $250 cash bail will have little impact on the well-to-do, for whom it is less than the cost of a night’s stay in a downtown Boston hotel, but it will probably result in detention for a homeless person whose entire earthly belongings can be carried in a cart.”

There is an old truism: “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Indeed, Brangan’s case was just one of almost a million nationwide. On any given day in 2015 roughly 700,000 people were locked up in local jails. The ACLU notes that the bail system disproportionately affects poorer Americans and people of color. Lost in the hysteria over isolated tragedies involving policemen and veterans, the victimization of poor and brown and black people merits barely a statistical footnote.

If you don’t think there’s a racial double-standard in setting bail and letting people participate effectively in their own defense, consider the case of Paul Manafort. When he was first charged with the mountain of offenses Robert Mueller threw at him, Manafort was able to post $10 million bond, allowing him to live, as the Intercept described it, “with a monitoring device around his ankle, in various luxury residences he owns in northern Virginia; Palm Beach, Florida; and the Hamptons, a tony New York beach area.” Even after Manafort’s flight risk became troubling and he was sent to jail, it was nothing like Jahmal Brangan’s experience. New York Magazine reported: “Manafort has everything he needs to prepare for the trial, including his own phone and computer. He is allowed to write emails and make an unlimited number of 15-minute calls to his lawyers. He’s even got his own ‘private, self-contained living unit, which is larger than other inmates’ units,’ the filing says. The unit includes a work space and a private shower. Manafort doesn’t even have to wear a prison jumpsuit.”

District Attorney Quinn, doing the governor’s heavy lifting by misrepresenting the Brangan decision, wrote that “the decision emphasized that judges must consider a defendant’s financial resources when setting cash bail and reiterated that dangerousness was not a reason for setting high cash bail.” Quinn’s (or was it Baker’s) solution is “to hold dangerous criminals without bail after a hearing, REGARDLESS OF THEIR FINANCIAL MEANS. Whether rich or poor, defendants should be held without bail if they are determined to be a danger to the community. The cash bail system can be reserved for defendants who are not dangerous, but still pose a default risk based on their criminal history.”

Denying bail and locking people up for a year completely violates “the principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.” Commonwealth v. Healy, 15 Mass. App. Ct. 134, 136-137 (1983) citing Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 453 (1895); In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 363 (1970); Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 503 (1976); Commonwealth v. Drayton, 386 Mass. 39, 46 (1982).

In 1996, when the Supreme Judicial Court considered whether 58A was constitutional, and whether the government could constitutionally lock someone up without access to bail before they have been found guilty at a trial, one of the prime reasons that the Court allowed this practice was the time limits on 58A, and “that detention under § 58A is temporary and provisional.” Mendonza v. Com., 423 Mass. 771, 790 (1996).

Now DA Quinn wants to remove that protection. His goal appears to be to simply lock up people without having to prove them guilty at trial.

Quinn admits that prosecutors’ “traditional approach to bail on serious cases was to ask the court to set a high cash bail that most defendants could not make.” In other words, “the imposition of very high bail, which cannot be explained simply by the need to assure the accused’s presence at trial and his noninterference with the pretrial process,” was used by prosecutors to lock up poor people accused of serious crimes. Mendonza v. Com., 423 Mass. 771, 781 (1996). Rather than following the law and requesting bail to ensure the defendant’s appearance in court, prosecutors asked for bail to keep people locked up. Now that they can no longer perpetrate that fraud, they need another mechanism to accomplish the same goal.

Replacing high bails with pretrial detention per 58A is just a more modern method of locking up people without ever having to prove them guilty at trial.

Prosecutors know that convincing a jury of a person’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is much more difficult than convincing a judge that the person is “dangerous” by clear and convincing evidence. So if they can convince a judge to lock someone up as a “danger,” they can incarcerate people without having to go before a jury.

Prosecutors also know that when people are locked up they are more likely to plead guilty. A recent study in American Economic Review found that people who are locked up are 24.5 more likely to plead guilty. See The Effects of Pre Trial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges by Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal Yang. American Economic Review 2018, 108(2): 201–240 (https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161503).

Moreover, Quinn’s call to lock up “dangerous” people indefinitely is especially appalling in Bristol County, where his political ally, Sheriff Hodgson, runs two brutal jails where people are denied medical care, subjected to solitary confinement more than any other county jails in Massachusetts, and which account for more than 25 percent of county jail suicides in Massachusetts — despite only having 13 percent of county inmates. This combination of prosecutorial zeal and carceral sadism leads to a high rate of people desperate — virtually compelled — to accept unfavorable plea deals.

Quinn also seems to be unperturbed that the lack of a speedy trial combined with the presumption of guilt until trial results in unconstitutional jail sentences for those never convicted of a crime. Quinn writes, “the time frame must be increased to one year in both the district and superior courts. Yet any rational attorney would agree that cases in superior court, where the most dangerous defendants are prosecuted, cannot be tried within six months. Unless this unrealistic time limit is expanded beyond the current 180 days in superior court and 120 days in district court, we will continue to see dangerous defendants released back into our communities.”

Several of Quinn’s claims can only be made if he is truly ignorant of what happens in Massachusetts courts or cynically misrepresents judicial reality. Time limits of 120 and 180 days for pretrial detention under dangerousness statutes are illusory. Those time limits are extended based on events such as the defendant filing pretrial motions. Any rational attorney would agree that motions to dismiss or suppress must be litigated in the types of cases where pretrial detention is sought — firearms cases, drug trafficking, and sexual assault. Yet the time that elapses between the filing of those motions and their resolution extends the 120/180 limit. If that takes 60 days (good luck getting such quick turnaround), the defendant is held for an additional 60 days.

And the right of the Commonwealth to seek pretrial detention renews after indictment. If a prosecutor seeks detention in District Court and the person is held, that person may wait 30-90 days to be indicted and arraigned in Superior Court. Once there, the prosecutor may seek a new order of pretrial detention. If granted, the 180 limit starts all over again. Virtually every public defender in Massachusetts knows that imprisonment without trial under dangerousness statutes is considerably worse than Quinn describes.

Hearings required before someone can be detained before trial provide practically no due process protections. Hearsay is almost always permitted, which means that a defendant is deprived of their right to question witnesses. Evidence is often admitted without determining authenticity. Offenses that a defendant has never been convicted of, such as dismissals, are used against them. These are the proceedings that Quinn wants to use to hold defendants indefinitely.

At any given time between 60 to 70% of all prisoners are unconvicted and in pretrial detention. In the February 2018 issue of the American Economic Review cited above, Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang demonstrated that “pretrial detention significantly increases the probability of conviction, primarily through an increase in guilty pleas. Pretrial detention has no net effect on future crime, but decreases formal sector employment and the receipt of employment- and tax-related government benefits. These results are consistent with (i) pretrial detention weakening defendants’ bargaining positions during plea negotiations and (ii) a criminal conviction lowering defendants’ prospects in the formal labor market.”

In other words, pretrial detention is not just unfair and unjust — it’s extremely costly to society.

The same research also shows that reducing pretrial detention actually reduces crime. “Pretrial release may decrease future crime following case disposition through two main channels. First, pretrial release may decrease crime if pretrial detention is criminogenic because of harsh prison conditions and negative peer effects. Second, pretrial release can reduce future crime through an increased likelihood of employment, which subsequently discourages further criminal activity.”

The study estimated the economic cost of needless incarceration to be between $50,000 and $100,000 per detainee: “While a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis is beyond the scope of this paper, we consider a partial back-of-the-envelope calculation that takes into account the administrative costs of jail, the costs of apprehending individuals who fail to appear, the costs of future criminality, and the economic impact on defendants. […] Based on these tentative calculations, we estimate that the total net benefit of pretrial release for the marginal defendant is anywhere between $55,143 and $99,124. Intuitively, pretrial release on the margin increases social welfare because of the significant long-term costs associated with having a criminal conviction, the criminogenic effect of detention which offsets the incapacitation benefit, and the relatively low costs associated with apprehending defendants who miss court appearances.”

* * *

Tom Quinn bears considerable responsibility for the miserable overcrowding in the county jails he has filled, whose inmates are subjected to abusive conditions by the sheriff. Just like Hodgson, Quinn was first appointed by the governor after his predecessor’s resignation and then ran unopposed in primary and general elections in 2016. DA Quinn ran unopposed in 2018 and is already promoting a Republican Governor’s bill to claw back gains made in reforming abuses in our “Criminal Justice” system. But Quinn is typical of many DA’s and the public had better start paying attention.

Americans love invasions. Trump and his Republicans are on the warpath this week against Venezuela. We’ve heard precious little criticism from either party of Donald Trump’s recognition of “self-declared” president Juan Guaido. Democrats generally remained silent in 2009 when Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, supported a coup in Honduras. And today the “liberal” press still loves US interventions. The New York Times is all but calling for a US coup in Venezuela (“That Mr. Maduro must go has been obvious for some time.”) and the Washington Post ran an editorial by Guaido calling Maduro a “usurper.”

So it was really only a minor, and extremely temporary, aberration in 2013 when Secretary of State John Kerry told the Organization of American States (OAS) that “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.” As the UPI reported: “Kerry’s declaration of the end of the Monroe Doctrine era was greeted with hesitant applause among the OAS delegates.”

The OAS had every reason to be suspicious.

It may be useful to recall what the Monroe Doctrine really was — just a few sentences in President James Monroe’s 1823 message to Congress:

“We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

Students are taught that the Monroe Doctrine declared that American interests in the Western Hemisphere consisted mainly of the benevolent protection of smaller countries from aggression by the world’s colonial superpowers — France, England, and Spain. Monroe’s assertion that “we have not interfered and shall not interfere” was as quickly abandoned as it was declared. Scarcely twenty years later the United States invaded Mexico. Monroe’s Doctrine, seen in historical light, was actually a declaration that the US fully intended to get into the superpower business itself.

Since then the Doctrine has been interpreted to mean that the US has every right to interfere in its neighbor’s affairs — and the protection of neighbors has nothing to do with it. As the list below shows, there hasn’t been a decade in which the United States didn’t interfere by invasion or imposition of dictatorships.

And we wonder why we have so many refugees at our southern border.

Still not convinced the US is a malevolent imperialist nation? Stephen Kinzer’s book The True Flag is an account of the moment the United States fully embraced Imperialism and never looked back.

One scholar has documented exactly how we have lived up to Monroe’s promise that “we have not interfered and shall not interfere.” I’ll bet you didn’t learn this in Social Studies class:

Period	Location	Intervention	Comments on U.S. Role
1823			Monroe Doctrine – “shall not interfere”
1846	Mexico	War	Mexican-American War – US takes a third of Mexico
1890	Argentina	Troops	Buenos Aires interests protected
1891	Chile	Troops	Marines clash with nationalist rebels
1891	Haiti	Troops	Black workers revolt on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island defeated
1894	Nicaragua	Troops	Month-long occupation of Bluefields
1895	Panama	Naval, troops	Marines land in Colombian province
1896	Nicaragua	Troops	Marines land in port of Corinto
1898	Cuba	Naval, troops	Seized from Spain, U.S. still holds Navy base at Guantanamo
1898	Puerto Rico	Naval, troops	Seized from Spain, occupation continues
1898	Nicaragua	Troops	Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur
1899	Nicaragua	Troops	Marines land at port of Bluefields
1903	Honduras	Troops	Marines intervene in revolution
1903	Dominican Republic	Troops	U.S. interests protected in Revolution
1906	Cuba	Troops	Marines land in democratic election
1907	Nicaragua	Troops	“Dollar Diplomacy” protectorate set up
1907	Honduras	Troops	Marines land during war with Nicaragua
1908	Panama	Troops	Marines intervene in election contest
1910	Nicaragua	Troops	Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto
1911	Honduras	Troops	U.S. interests protected in civil war
1912	Cuba	Troops	U.S. interests protected in Havana
1912	Panama	Troops	Marines land during heated election
1912	Honduras	Troops	Marines protect U.S. economic interests
1912	Nicaragua	Troops, bombing	20-year occupation, fought guerrillas
1913	Mexico	Naval	Americans evacuated during revolution
1914	Dominican Republic	Naval	Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo
1914	Mexico	Naval, troops	Series of interventions against nationalists
1914	Haiti	Troops, bombing	19-year occupation after revolts
1916	Dominican Republic	Troops	8-year Marine occupation
1917	Cuba	Troops	Military occupation, economic protectorate
1918	Panama	Troops	“Police duty” during unrest after elections
1919	Honduras	Troops	Marines land during election campaign
1920	Guatemala	Troops	2-week intervention against unionists
1921	Costa Rica	Troops
1921	Panama	Troops
1924	Honduras	Troops	Landed twice during election strife
1925	Panama	Troops	Marines suppress general strike
1932	El Salvador	Naval	Warships sent during Faribundo Marti revolt
1947	Uruguay	Nuclear threat	Bombers deployed as show of strength
1950	Puerto Rico	Command operation	Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce
1954	Guatemala	Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat	CIA directs exile invasion and coup d’etat after newly elected government nationalizes unused U.S.’s United Fruit Company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua; long-term result: 200,000 murdered
1958	Panama	Troops	Flag protests erupt into confrontation
1961	Cuba	Command operation	CIA-directed exile invasion fails
1962	Cuba	Nuclear threat, naval	Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with Soviet Union
1964	Panama	Troops	Panamanians shot for urging canal’s return
1965	Dominican Republic	Troops, bombing	Marines land during election campaign
1966	Guatemala	Command operation	Green Berets intervene against rebels
1973	Chile	Command operation	CIA-backed coup ousts democratically elected Marxist president
1981	El Salvador	Command operation, troops	Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash; long-term result: 75,000 murdered and destruction of popular movement
1981	Nicaragua	Command operation, naval	CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution; result: 50,000 murdered
1982	Honduras	Troops	Maneuvers help build bases near borders
1983	Grenada	Troops, bombing	Invasion four years after revolution
1987	Bolivia	Troops	Army assists raids on cocaine region
1989	Panama	Troops, bombing	Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed
1994	Haiti	Troops, naval	Blockade against military government; troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup
2002	Venezuela	Command operation	Failed coup attempt to remove left-populist president Hugo Chavez
2004	Haiti	Troops	Removal of democratically elected President Aristide; troops occupy country
2009	Honduras	Command operation	Support for coup that removed president Manuel Zelaya
2019	Venezuela	Unfolding	Support for coup

A border wall may be a stupid idea (“show me a fifty foot wall and I’ll show you a fifty-one foot ladder”), but that doesn’t matter to a monomaniacal constituency holding the nation hostage to its white supremacist agenda.

Trump and his FOX News cheerleaders claim that America is being invaded. Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks compared the “invasion” of asylum seekers to 9/11: “Let’s look at 9/11 by way of example. We lost 3,000 people more or lesson 9/11. That justified going to war in Iraq, Afghanistan and our troops are still there to varying degrees.”

But the desperation of Central American refugees is a problem decades of American “interventions” caused. And when desperate people show up at your door it’s not a home invasion but the result of economic and political instability we created in places like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

The Libertarian CATO Institute disputes Trump’s claim that the situation on the border is any worse than in previous years. During both Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, Border Patrol agents actually turned away more immigrants than today. It’s also clear that Trump’s wall-inspired shutdown has nothing to do with national security. If it were, “non-essential” TSA employees, air traffic controllers, and the Coast Guard would all be drawing paychecks. Besides the insane wall, Trump’s immigration policies include deportation of people who never committed a crime (DACA and TPS recipients), increased de-naturalization of citizens, and political attacks on the U.S. Constitution’s conferral of citizenship to anyone born here.

It’s clearly not about safety. It’s about keeping America as White as possible for as long as possible.

Republicans never liked Presidential orders when a Black president was writing them. But now, with a white supremacist in the Oval Office, they sure have changed their tune. For the last two years Donald Trump has displayed his signature on many an order — and that’s just fine with the GOP.

With the longest-ever national shutdown still in progress, Trump has decided to take autocracy to a new level — threatening to declare a National Emergency if he can’t get his wall through political negotiations. This move is one more milestone in the erosion of American democracy but it is also troubling that the president’s base would support such a declaration without any credible evidence of a real emergency. They don’t want a president. They want a caudillo.

But Republicans should really ask themselves if they want to go down this road of government by decree. If so — and with Trump’s precedent — the next Democratic president will be able to use the same new powers to declare national emergencies to solve a long list of serious, neglected crises:

• grant permanent residency to DACA and TPS recipients;
• re-open abortion clinics across the country;
• stop the epidemic of gun deaths in the United States;
• fix poisoned water systems in Flint, Newark, and elsewhere;
• end poverty and homelessness by expanding the social safety net;
• raise minimum and set maximum wages;
• order the implementation of Medicare for All;
• establish a comprehensive jobs program to provide 100% employment;
• end voter suppression;
• relieve Puerto Rico of its crushing debt;
• take immediate steps to reduce CO2 emissions; and
• declare invalid the DOJ memorandum sparing sitting presidents from prosecution.

“We are a nation of laws.”

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, and it may even ring true if you were born white — in which case you can also get presidential pardons or concierge service in the courts. But this is a lie we tell ourselves. And by “we” I mean white people.

But if you were born poor, brown, black, or without American citizenship, the “nation of laws” claim often rings as hollow as a November pumpkin.

Just ask Cyntoia Brown, who was enslaved into sex work and had to shoot her rapist to escape. Brown was sentenced to 51 years in prison for the killing and, despite wide support for clemency, was not on Tennessee governor Bill Haslam’s list of 11 people granted clemency on Thursday.

On the flip slide, Jeffrey Epstein — a friend of Donald Trump’s — received a relatively light sentence of 13 months in jail for raping dozens of underaged girls. One of his victims was even recruited at Trump’s Mar Lago resort. Epstein’s prosecutor, Alexander Acosta — also a friend of Trump’s — worked out the gentlemanly plea deal entre blancs and went on to become Trump’s Secretary of Labor.

If you think Epstein, Trump, and Brett Kavanaugh are exceptions to how society winks at white sexual predators, consider this case from last week. In Louisiana a white Baylor University frat boy convicted of rape got a $400 fine and probation — and that was it. Jacob Walter Anderson walked away after paying a fine, his life and freedom intact. No jump suit, no 51 year sentence.

“These people need to get in line for citizenship.”

When it comes to refugee status, asylum, work visas, and citizenship, we white people cloak ourselves in the same sorts of lies.

From the beginnings of the nation until 1924, only white people were allowed to legally immigrate. The Chinese Exclusion Act was based on claims that Chinese were immoral, criminal, brought smallpox, opium, and could not be culturally absorbed — virtually every lie that today’s FOX News commentators repeat about Central American refugees.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1922 that a Japanese businessman named Takao Ozawa was not a Caucasian and therefore did not qualify for citizenship. A case three months later involving an Indian, Bhagat Singh Thind, ruled that Indians were not Caucausians and Thind actually had his citizenship stripped. If you’ve been paying attention to Trump’s immigration policies, renewed threats of denaturalization and the movement to abolish the 14th Amendment are revived assaults on people of color in a long, continuous, racist history.

So let’s be clear. For almost all of our history there was no immigration line for anyone except white people. And a story from this week’s news illustrates a related fact — that, besides demonizing people of color, the “system” has continuously provided legal advantages for white immigrants — even to this day.

Outgoing “moderate” House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has persistently blocked help for DACA recipients and reforms which would benefit Latinos and other brown people, submitted bill H.R. 7164, written to let Irish nationals use some of the 10,500 annual Australian visas — thus ensuring that white people are directed to the head of the immigration line.

Sláinte!

Meet E. Michael Janson, New Bedford’s perrennial mayoral candidate.

Janson is 69 years old, a graduate of New Bedford High and, according to his Ballotpedia profile, has worked at some 50-odd jobs and run for mayor nine times.

In 2011 Janson ran for mayor of New Bedford, largely on an anti-immigration platform. In 2013 he ran for New Bedford School Board. In his candidate questionnaire he offered to sacrifice his winters in Florida for the greater good of the citizenry, proposed tracking students, eliminating student “distractions” in classrooms, and fining the parents of students who skipped school.

Janson came in dead last in a pack of seven candidates.

In 2015 Janson ran for an At-Large City Council seat. In a campaign video demonstrating his talent for free-association, Janson objects that New Bedford is a sanctuary city where “illegals” take thousands of jobs away from graduating high school seniors, which in turn causes a dreaded psychological condition: “I call it SSI. Shitty Self Image.” This in turn, he goes on, leads to heroin, and heroin can only be fought by letting the police hire dozens of informants. Again blaming “ousiders,” Janson slams Section 8 housing because it’s filled with “undesirables” who “come into our city, they become lousy tenants, and they’re not preparing their kids for an education, so consequently our schools are suffering because these — they’re not doing a good job of preparing their kids. And it’s not the teacher’s job to do that. My mother used to work with me with flashcards. I doubt anyone here in New Bedford is working with their kids with flashcards.” In 2017 Janson lost another bid for the At-Large City Council seat. Again.

Since about 2007 Janson has had a running battle with the Standard-Times, which infuriated him by calling him a “perennial mayoral candidate” — which (to be fair) his Ballotpedia profile proves that he is. A piece by Jack Spillane in the Standard Times pointed out that Janson was running for his “at-large” seat from an address which was actually a New Bedford garage on Rockdale Avenue without running water. Listing a series of lies and half-truths Janson spouted in the 2007 mayoral race, the Standard Times concluded: “Mike Janson, you’re full of baloney.”

For a long time Janson repaired to the one sanctuary where all whackadoodles go to lick their wounds — talk radio. I won’t mention any names or call numbers, but this New Bedford station (like the White House) is where people full of baloney go to be treated like royalty and inflict their ignorance on the rest of us. Here Janson has found his peeps. A man without any public policy skills, little education, and who could never teach in a public school himself, Janson nevertheless has a talk-radio opinion on everything — immigration, austerity, schools, economic priorities, public housing, foreign trade zones, taxes.

But it’s 2018. Janson may still be full of baloney but it’s time for another campaign. This time he’s challenging Tony Cabral for the Massachusetts House 13th Bristol District. Cabral should have nothing to worry about, but in today’s political climate, no one should ever be complacent.

Rep. Tony Cabral is putting out a call for volunteers to help #TeamCabral on his re-election campaign.

Team Cabral is hosting a Volunteer Organizational Meeting this coming Monday, September 24th, at 6pm, at the GSM Labor Council, 560 Pleasant Street, New Bedford. They will have coffee and doughnuts and will be talking about all the different ways people can get involved.

If you can’t make it to the meeting, but would like to help, please reach out to Team Cabral at reptonycabral@gmail.com and they will figure out how to plug you in!

Take nothing for granted. Elections always matter.

Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here — written in 1935 when America had seen the likes of Father Coughlin and Huey Long, and when Lewis could see the Third Reich barreling down on Europe — features a protagonist who was “vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected… He was an actor of genius.”

Spoiler alert: fascism comes to America. The back cover says it all.

A recent set of Gorsuch-weighted Supreme Court rulings have finally given Republicans something to crow about. The court’s approval of Trump’s Muslim Ban seemed like a blast from the German Vergangenheit but recent labor and reproductive rights rulings have been equally disturbing. Mitch McConnell and Neil Gorsuch met for a photo-op to troll Democrats. Their meeting demonstrated just how badly “checks and balances” work in this country and how shattered American democracy really is.

But while the extreme right exults in the belief that their Crusaders have finally pulled off a Reconquista, let’s remember the Dred Scott decision. Then, as now, the case reflected a Supreme Court that had totally lost its way — and the irreconcilable differences between Americans’ views of what sort of nation we want to be.

Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his and his family’s freedom in a state where slavery was illegal. In 1846 Scott filed suit from St. Louis, Missouri, where since 1824 there had been legal precedent for recognizing the freedom of escaped slaves: “Once free, always free.” Scott’s wife Harriet was friendly with Abolitionists who championed the family’s legal case. Scott lost the suit, re-filed and appealed, and lost again. In 1857 his case was again heard by the United States Supreme Court.

On March 6th, 1857 the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 against Scott. Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered the majority opinion, which was that Africans, free or not, could not be citizens of the United States. “The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.” Furthermore, African-Americans had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Consequently, freedom and citizenship could not be conferred upon non-whites and, since by the court’s criteria Scott was not a citizen, Scott had lacked “standing” to bring the suit in the first place.

The South did a victory lap. The Richmond Enquirer wrote, “A prize, for which the athletes of the nation have often wrestled in the halls of Congress, has been awarded at last, by the proper umpire, to those who have justly won it. The nation has achieved a triumph, sectionalism has been rebuked, and abolitionism has been staggered and stunned.”

But the Charleston, South Carolina Mercury speculated that this was just the beginning of a greater conflict between North and South: “In the final conflict between Slavery and Abolitionism, which this very decision will precipitate rather than retard, the principles of the judgment in the Dred Scott case may be of some avail to the South in giving an appearance of justice and moderation to its position.”

The Supreme Court had ruled in favor of White Supremacy and slavery but now it was the law. Abolitionists mocked the reckless, immoral ruling and doubled their efforts to end slavery. Ultimately Dred Scott, just as the Mercury had predicted, ignited a national conflagration that overturned slavery and destroyed the South.

Modern-day slavers and reconquistadores want to return us to 1857. America is as deeply divided now as it was then, and the prospects of a Trump Court for decades is deeply unsettling. But the fight for America’s soul is far from over. The arc of justice is frustratingly long but it will arrive. Whether in 2018, 2022, or later — Congress will pass into younger, browner, more progressive hands. Laws will be written to make legally explicit our liberties, protecting them from capricious, partisan rulings. The Trump Court will shuffle around in their robes, dreaming of Dred Scott.

This my last appeal for citizens to advocate for protections for immigrant families in the 2019 budget. Originally proposed as Budget Amendment #1147 by Senator James Eldridge, these protections have been incorporated into Senate Bill S.2530 and are now in conference with the House. Call your State House Representative to ask them to support immigrant family protections. What’s happening in Washington should terrify and motivate state House Democrats to support such protections. This should be our answer to hate.

Here’s why the protections are so important

The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of Trump’s Muslim Ban. An ACLU petition asks Congress to pass legislation to block racist exclusions like this. While a ban is not the same thing as a registry, we don’t yet know how Trump’s Muslim Ban will affect citizens of the Muslim-majority countries who live in Massachusetts, whether CPB, ICE, or DHS will ask the Commonwealth to help track these Muslim neighbors — or if the occasional law enforcement official might have personal motivations to share data with ICE without authorization.

• Protections for immigrant families in the 2019 budget bar the Commonwealth from cooperating with such registries.

Trump’s deportation machine is abusing families and children in shockingly cruel ways. Elizabeth Warren has a lengthy report on her visit to a McAllen, Texas Border Patrol facility where she was horrified by the treatment of incarcerated children. A report issued recently describes racially-motivated abuses of detainees in ICE facilities, including the Bristol County House of Correction. Last week it was reported that the Boston Public Schools took it upon themselves to share data with ICE, and on the Cape high school students were reported to ICE by guidance counselors for supposed gang affiliations simply because they spoke Spanish. This insanity must end. Let police deal with real criminals and end vigilantism.

• Protections for immigrant families in the 2019 budget prevent state officials from being used as federal agents. Only the Massachusetts Department of Corrections will be able to fulfill some of these federal immigration functions.

Customs and Border Patrol is stopping vehicles on parts of I-93 and demanding that passengers produce proof of citizenship. Warrantless stops with requests for “papers!” is creepy and totalitarian enough without state and local police being enlisted in violations of the Fourth Amendment. Even with the 100-mile border “loophole,” many of these stops are unconstitutional. Let’s affirm that, at least in Massachusetts, a “nation of laws” requires warrants and probable cause to stop people.

• Protections for immigrant families in the 2019 budget define strict rules under which police officers can ask about immigration status and require training on the law for all officers.

Read about these provisions yourself. Despite malicious misinformation, these provisions do not prevent police from arresting real criminals. They do make Massachusetts a lot safer for everyone and strengthen Constitutional protections many of us can still remember once having.

Call your State House Representative to ask them to support protections for immigrant families in the 2019 budget.

Book Review: Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild. ISBN: 9781620972250

This is a frustrating, disappointing book. It is a book that will make no one happy. Carlos Lozada’s review in the Washington Post, for example, accuses Hochschild of condescension and preconceived notions about the Tea Party. The former is partly true. I don’t think the author successfully manages to disprove the view many have of the Southern Far Right — that they’ll believe any stupid damned thing and will stubbornly vote against their own self-interest. But some Tea Partiers actually liked her book. Ralph Benko, writing in Forbes, called it a “delight” — which might be going a bit overboard.

I found myself wondering where Hochschild was headed in her “exploratory” and “hypothesis generating” study. It took over a hundred pages to lay out her thesis, finally described in Chapter 9, “The Deep Story.” From time to time Hochschild acknowledges the racism of the South, but there is really only one page (146-147 in the hardcover edition) devoted to it. Instead, environmental protection is the lens through which she timidly chooses to look at values of Louisianans. In Chapter 14 (“the Fires of History”) Hochschild discusses the shocks to poor whites following the Civil War that might account for so many today still holding racist views and repressed class antagonisms (think Faulkner’s “Abner Snopes”). But, again, it’s only mentioned in passing.

Ultimately, Hochshild’s book is a fool’s errand. It’s impossible to bridge the empathy gap with people who themselves have no empathy for anyone but White Christians. And, though her efforts to empathize with people who reject science, fact, and blame all their problems on others, may be praiseworthy, I just can’t bring myself to do it. These are seriously delusional people who have given up on remediating their fracked bayous because they think the Rapture is the proper solution for environmental problems.

There is some truth in right-wing critiques of the book, like Lozada’s, that the book paints cartoon characters. In order to explain her subjects’ irrational, dangerous, delusional, anti-social, and self-destructive views and behaviors, Hochschild concocts several two-dimensional archetypes — the Team Player, the Worshipper, and the Cowboy. A better analysis would have looked at the effects of generational racism coupled with the toxic effects of propaganda from FOX News and right-wing pastors. And it would have included a critique of Capitalism, a topic Hochschild won’t touch any more than her subjects. But Hochschild’s goal was to befriend them, not to truly explain the pathology.

I’m sorry, but it’s hard to feel sorry for people who home-school their children or indoctrinate them in Christian madrassas, vote to bring cancer-producing industries into their communities, to kill themselves and their children — and then pay the petrochemical companies for the privilege. It’s hard to feel much pity for people who believe every stupid lie they hear on FOX News or from the pulpit and uncritically support the most rapacious version of Capitalism — while blaming every brown face in the world for the failures of their verkakte worldview.

Rather than bridging the compassion gap, Hochschild’s book convinced me that we need to let these people go. Let them secede and form their own Kingdom of Gilead, where they can spend their money on guns, church tithes, and petrochemicals. Let them live with self-inflicted poor health, poverty, superstition, and ignorance until the Rapture vacuums them up.

There are huge and irreconcilable differences between the two Americas. Half of us believe in democracy, the other half in Adam and Eve romping with Ayn Rand around a Deepwater Horizon platform.

Let’s get the divorce over with.

It turns out that Hillary Clinton was right about one thing — Trump’s supporters are Deplorables.

It was a fleeting, and uncharacteristically harsh, judgment from a party now running its own right-to-lifers, gun-toters, and militarists, lip-syncing the GOP’s lyrics that White America was somehow “left behind.” Taking a cue from the GOP, the Clintons’ DNC and DCCC is now downplaying racial injustice in order to court Deplorables with their Better Deal – which Dems announced last Summer from the Heart of Dixie. But their midterm strategy – sending people of color to the back of the bus if not throwing them under it – neglects the stinking rot at the root of our so-called American “democracy.”

A new study by Diana Mutz from the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, debunks the theory that White America voted for Trump because they were afraid of losing their jobs. They were simply afraid of losing their privilege.

Mutz’s abstract:

“This study evaluates evidence pertaining to popular narratives explaining the American public’s support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential election. First, using unique representative probability samples of the American public, tracking the same individuals from 2012 to 2016, I examine the “left behind” thesis (that is, the theory that those who lost jobs or experienced stagnant wages due to the loss of manufacturing jobs punished the incumbent party for their economic misfortunes). Second, I consider the possibility that status threat felt by the dwindling proportion of traditionally high-status Americans (i.e., whites, Christians, and men) as well as by those who perceive America’s global dominance as threatened combined to increase support for the candidate who emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past. Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people’s own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.”

Another study by Steven V. Miller at Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis at Texas A&M confirms Mutz’s “loss of privilege” theory, and also refutes the notion that democratic traditions inoculate Americans from fascist leanings. In “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy,” Miller and Davis write:

“Democracy has been durable in the United States – so durable, in fact, that serious inquiry into Americans’ attitudes toward it has been uncommon. No more.”

Working from World Values Survey data from 1995 to 2011, Miller and Davis discovered that:

“White Americans who would not want an immigrant/foreign worker, someone who spoke a different language, or someone from a different race as a neighbor are more likely to support strongman rule in the United States, rule of the U.S. government by the army, and are more likely to outright reject having a democracy for the United States. These findings are robust across multiple model specifications we analyze and report in the appendix as well.”

Their study documents the strong correlation between White America’s bigotry and proto-fascist leanings. Once White America perceives that the benefits of democracy are being extended to “others” their commitment to democracy is quickly abandoned. Like a child playing a board game, if they can’t win, they won’t play.

But this hardly comes as a surprise to the rest of America:

“[White] American citizens have not historically exhibited the sort of lofty, normative commitments to things like equality and tolerance that we might expect from one of the richest and longest-running continuous electoral democracies in the world. As Sullivan and Transue (1999) note, most citizens were willing to apply double standards that afforded one set of rights to popular groups while denying rights to more extreme or less popular groups.”

Tinkering with Capitalism may sound like a plan, but Democrats need to do a better of job of defending democracy. The surest way to do this is by defending the rights of all citizens and opposing every institution of an authoritarian, surveillance, and police state America. Once Democrats are back in power – unless they roll back the Patriot Act, stop the endless wars, pare back the military budget, dismantle FISA courts and institute sweeping reforms of the criminal justice system and ensure police accountability – they will have done nothing to rescue what’s left of our shredded democracy.

Scaremongers are busy trying to convince House legislators that one of the FY2019 budget amendments will end life as we know it and plunge the Commonwealth into lawlessness and anarchy. So I have an idea — let’s actually read it ourselves. But first, some context.

The Massachusetts Senate just approved its version of the FY2019 budget, adding several key provisions of the Safe Communities Act as Amendment #1147. These provisions prevent officers of the Commonwealth from being used as federal immigration agents. Police cooperation with federal agencies, including tracking residents in a federal “Muslim” (or other) registry, will be regulated and standardized. Police officers can’t simply go rogue and become junior G-men on the state’s dime. They, like the rest of us, will be subject to Massachusetts law.

Almost one half of Amendment #1147 concerns the establishment of registries. The heart of the budget amendment is the same heart found in the Bill of Rights — everyone, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to know the charges against them, see them in writing, and have a lawyer present during interrogation. Equally important, there is nothing in this legislation barring police from investigating or detaining anyone associated with a crime.

But Charlie Baker has threatened to veto the amendments. Anti-immigrant groups and the extreme right misrepresent them as a threat to public safety. Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson — like Trump, never one to worry about truth — goes so far as to accuse the Senate super-majority which passed the budget amendments of siding with criminals: “This is a case of the lawmakers protecting lawbreakers at the expense of people whose safety they were sworn to uphold.”

In the language of Hodgson’s own immigrant father — this is pure bollocks. Hodgson especially dislikes one of the provisions because it’s going to negatively impact his career as a mouthpiece for FAIR, a white supremacist anti-immigrant organization. He just might have to get back to addressing his own prison suicides, recidivism rates among the highest in the state, the Securus kickback scandal, and five current lawsuits for mal- and misfeasance.

But I digress. So, without further ado, let’s read the budget amendment.

Budget Amendment ID: FY2019-S4-1147

EPS 1147

Definitions

Messrs. Eldridge and Lewis, Ms. L’Italien, Mr. Brownsberger, Ms. Friedman, Ms. Jehlen, Messrs. Hinds and Barrett, Ms. Chang-Diaz, Mr. Crighton, Ms. Creem, Messrs. DiDomenico, Boncore, Welch, Cyr and Lesser, Ms. O’Connor Ives and Mr. Collins moved that the proposed new text be amended by adding the following:

SECTION XX. Chapter 147 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following section:-

Section 63. (a) As used in this section, the following words shall have the following meanings, unless the context clearly requires otherwise:

“Civil immigration detainer request”, any request by a federal immigration officer authorized under 8 C.F.R. section 287.7 or by any other authorized party, including any request made using federal form I-247A, I-247D or I-247N, asking a non-federal law enforcement agency, officer or employee to maintain custody of a person once that person is released from local custody or to notify the United States Department of Homeland Security of the person’s release.

“Law enforcement agency”, any state, municipal, college or university police department, sheriff’s department, correctional facility, prosecutorial office, court, or program of one or more of the foregoing entities, or any other non-federal entity in the commonwealth charged with the enforcement of laws or the custody of detained persons.

“United States Department of Homeland Security”, the United States Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs and Border Protection, and any other federal agency charged with the enforcement of immigration laws.

Police only inquire about immigration status when the law requires it

2. No officer or employee of a law enforcement agency, while acting under color of law, shall inquire about the immigration status of an individual unless such inquiry is required by federal or state law; provided that a judge or magistrate may make such inquiries as are necessary to adjudicate matters within their jurisdiction.

Police will be trained on the requirements of this law

3. All law enforcement agencies in the commonwealth shall, within 12 months of passage of this act, incorporate information regarding lawful and unlawful inquiries about immigration status into their regular introductory and in-service training programs. If a law enforcement agency receives a complaint or report that an officer or employee has inquired about an individual’s immigration status when such inquiry is not required by law, the agency shall investigate and take appropriate disciplinary or other action.

A detained person must be provided a copy of his detainer

4. If a law enforcement agency has in its custody a person who is the subject of a civil immigration detainer request or a non-judicial warrant, the agency shall promptly provide the person, and his or her attorney if the person is represented by an attorney, with a copy of such detainer request or non-judicial warrant, and any other documentation the agency possesses pertaining to the person’s immigration case.

DHS interviews require consent and preserve the right to an attorney

5. An interview between a United States Department of Homeland Security agent and a person in the custody of a law enforcement agency conducted for immigration enforcement purposes shall take place only if the person in custody has given consent to the interview by signing a consent form that explains the purpose of the interview, that the interview is voluntary, and that the person may decline to be interviewed or may choose to be interviewed only with an attorney present. The consent form shall be prepared by the office of the attorney general and made available to law enforcement agencies in English and other languages commonly spoken in Massachusetts. The office of the attorney general may work with interested not-for-profit organizations to prepare translations of the written consent form. The law enforcement agency shall make best efforts to provide a consent form that is in a language that the person understands, and to provide interpretation if needed, to obtain the person’s informed consent.

6. If the person in custody indicates that he or she wishes to have an attorney present for the interview, the law enforcement agency shall allow him or her to contact such attorney, and in the case that no attorney can be present, the interview shall not take place; provided, however, that the law enforcement agency shall not be responsible for the payment of the person’s attorney’s fees and expenses.

State employees may not be used as federal immigration officers

SECTION XX. Chapter 126 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following section:-

Section 40. Agreements to Enforce Federal Law.

No officer or employee of any agency, executive office, department, board, commission, bureau, division or authority of the commonwealth or any political subdivision thereof, with the exception of the department of correction, shall perform the functions of an immigration officer, whether pursuant to 8 U.S.C. section 1357(g) or any other law, regulation, or policy, whether formal or informal. Any agreements inconsistent with this section are null and void.

No cooperation with a federal “Muslim” or other registry

SECTION XX. Chapter 30 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following section:-

Section 66. (a) Under no circumstances shall the commonwealth, any political subdivision thereof, or any employee or agent of the commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions, establish any operation or program that requires, or has the effect of causing, persons to register or check in based in whole or in part on their religion, national origin, nationality, citizenship, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, or maintain any records system, government file or database for the purpose of registering persons based in whole or in part on those categories.

2. In the event that any federal government operation or program requires, or has the effect of causing, persons to register or check in based in whole or in part on their religion, national origin, nationality, citizenship, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, including but not limited to any such operation or program created pursuant to 8 United States Code, sections 1302(a) and 1303(a):

1. no resources of the commonwealth or any political subdivision thereof shall be expended in the enforcement or implementation of such registry or check-in program;

2. no employee or agent of the commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions shall access, or seek to access, any information maintained pursuant to such registry or check-in program; and

3. no employee or agent of the commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions shall provide or disclose or offer to provide or disclose information to, or respond to a request for information from, such registry or check-in program.

3. This section shall not apply to any government operation or program that: (1) merely collects and compiles data about nationals of a foreign country entering or exiting the United States; or (2) issues visas, grants United States citizenship, confers an immigration benefit, or temporarily or permanently protects noncitizens from removal.

4. Nothing in this section shall prohibit or restrain the commonwealth, any political subdivision thereof, or any employee or agent of the commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions, from sending to, or receiving from, any local, state, or federal agency, information regarding citizenship or immigration status, consistent with Section 1373 of Title 8 of the United States Code.

As promised, I’m sending you the Action Alert I promised last week.

With hope fading for protections for our immigrant neighbors, sitting around doing nothing is not an option. There are several key pieces of Safe Communities legislation that can still make it into the 2019 state budget as amendments. These provisions have broad public support and give critical protections to all immigrants, regardless of status.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, sponsor of the Safe Communities Act, has filed an amendment advancing four key protections from the bill. His amendment has a good chance of succeeding but we need to get as many Senators as possible to endorse it — and be ready to fight for it.

The “ask” from Senators is simple — take a stand for immigrant families in the Commonwealth by co-sponsoring Senator Eldridge’s amendment #1147. We also want Senators to oppose Senator Fattman’s amendment #1136, which would allow police to detain people for federal immigration authorities.

We are also asking for support for Senator Eldridge’s amendment #176, to boost funding for adult basic education and English classes from $31 million to $34.5 million, and Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr’s amendment #658, to boost funding for the Citizenship for New Americans (CNAP) program from $400,000 to $500,000. Not only should we encourage eligible immigrants to become U.S. citizens — we should provide adequate program funding.

Call your Senator:

First, find your Massachusetts state Senator.

Hello, my name is __________ and I live in [city or town]. I am calling to urge Senator [name] to take a stand for immigrant families by co-sponsoring Senator Eldridge’s amendment #1147. I urge the Senator to advocate with Senate leadership, and vote for the amendment when it comes to the floor. I also support amendment #176 to boost funding for ESL programs, and amendment #658 to boost funding for the CNAP program. In addition, the Senator should OPPOSE Sen. Fattman’s amendment #1136, which would end protections gained under the Lunn decision. Massachusetts should be taking the lead in protecting immigrant families. Anything less in the Trump era is unacceptable. Thank you for taking my call!

Call the Senate Leadership:

You can reach Senate President Harriette Chandler at 617-722-1500 and Senate Ways & Means Chairwoman Karen Spilka at 617-722-1640. The message for them:

Hello, my name is __________ and I live in [city or town]. I am calling to urge President Chandler / Chairwoman Spilka to take a stand for immigrant families by supporting Senator Eldridge’s amendment #1147 and OPPOSING Sen. Fattman’s amendment #1136, which would end the protections we won under the Lunn decision. I also urge support for amendment #176 to boost funding for ESL programs, and amendment #658 to boost funding for the CNAP program. Massachusetts should be taking the lead in protecting immigrant families. Anything less in the Trump era is unacceptable. Thank you for taking my call!

Want to make things really easy? Use MIRA’s Phone2Action tool, which automatically connects you — no need to look up names or phone numbers! Keep your call short and sweet. Call volume matters: we want to demonstrate overwhelming support for Senator Eldridge’s amendment. If you get a voicemail, make sure to leave your name, address and phone number!

What else can I do?

Call your Senator and Senate leaders today! Then forward this message to everyone you know. And for the greatest impact, sign up to phone bank with the ACLU on May 17, 22 and/or 23!

American democracy begins with the word “we.” We the People. It’s a tiny word with a Napoleon complex: a third person pronoun appropriate to any group to which the speaker belongs. It seems so obvious yet the meaning of “we” has always been a bit dishonest, and the groups to which “we” belong equally so.

David Swanson’s book Curing Exceptionalism makes this point. In an interview discussing the book Swanson says that, if there is any hope of ending American Exceptionalism, citizens need to be very clear about what is meant when the word is invoked. “‘We just bombed Syria.’ — I didn’t bomb Syria. Did you?” he asks. “At least part of the time, try to see if you can make ‘we’ mean a smaller or larger group than a nation.”

When a white supremacist says “we are a nation of laws” while advocating for the deportation of brown people, what he really means is that current laws apply to brown people, not the colonists who took the land from them. That’s a whole different “we.”

Or when a liberal repudiates torture because “this is not who we are,” he’s speaking only for himself and not about the torture long practiced by police, the military, or foreign despots trained at American institutions like the School of the Americas. Torturers are most certainly who we are.

Sometimes the problem is that state propaganda uses “we” when referring to government policies it wants citizens to rally around. Dissidents, such as young Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation, say “not in my name” to make it clear that their views differ from what are assumed to be mainstream Jewish views about Israel.

Sometimes the problem is that “we” are ignorant of belonging to a group or even knowing much about that group. Most White Americans, for example, don’t really think of ourselves as a separate racial category. We don’t recognize white privilege and we don’t question its generational benefits. After all, we’re the “default.” Everyone else is a category — at least until you start trying to see through another man’s eyes.

And this brings us back to American Exceptionalism, nationalism, and overt racism. All are founded on the notion that “we” have some God-given right to privileged status — whether it be a white man in the boardroom or the American ambassador at the UN Security Council. It matters little that White America spans different European (and non-European) cultures, languages, socioeconomic and educational levels. Like an AMEX card, membership has its privileges. When an individual chooses membership in a “we” based on a ridiculous proposition — that skin color, religion or nationality say more about us than common struggles and interests — that choice is clearly all about the privilege.

The more you ponder the word, the less “we’ makes much sense. Though long banished from polite conversation, Americans having an honest reckoning with race and class would do the most to transform a scatter of unhappy, divided individuals into a truer version of the word”we.”

And only after we have sorted out our common domestic identity will we be able to sit down at the UN as just one nation among many others.

Donald Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” has little to do with greatness — and his supporters damn well know it. In word and deed the GOP has become the party of white racism and xenophobia. You’d think Democrats would want to do a better job of standing up for multiculturalism and human decency.

That’s what you’d think.

So it’s difficult to understand why, nationally, so little has been done to help DACA recipients as they twist in the wind. Or why Massachusetts House Speaker Bob DeLeo has done everything he can to shelve the Safe Communities Act (SCA) — not to mention most progressive pieces of legislation. Even a compromise SCA bill, which gave assurances to law enforcement, has gone nowhere.

With hope fading for protections for our immigrant neighbors, sitting around doing nothing is not an option. There are several key pieces of Safe Communities legislation that can still make it into the state budget as amendments. These provisions have broad public support and give critical protections to all immigrants, regardless of status.

Stay tuned. Next week the Massachusetts Safe Communities Coalition will be calling upon everyone to take to the phone banks and call up state legislators to approve these amendments. I will be forwarding details.

Say yes to multiculturalism. Say yes to human decency.

On April 4th both houses of the Massachusetts legislature passed long-overdue criminal justice reforms. A huge omnibus bill now awaits Charlie Baker’s signature and Democrats will soon learn how moderate a Republican the governor really is. If the bill is signed and reforms make it into law, then next steps in fixing abuses of the criminal justice system should include police accountability and prison reform.

American courts are filled with brown and black and poor people guilty of relatively minor economic and drug offenses. Offenders are processed by zealous DA’s and the courts move them efficiently along a carceral assembly line greased by plea deals. Following often long and severe jail time devoid of any rehabilitation, a prisoner’s remaining rights and dignity are stolen. Former inmates can’t vote, they can’t find jobs, and they frequently have nowhere to live. The Pell Center described this irrational and costly mean-spiritedness:

“Americans are imprisoned for crimes that may not lead to prison sentences in other countries such as passing bad checks, minor drug offenses, and other non-violent crimes. Also, prisoners in the United States are often incarcerated for a lot longer than in other countries. For instance, burglars in the United States serve an average of 16 months in prison compared with 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England. [And] with an emphasis on punishment rather than rehabilitation, U.S. prisoners are often released with no better skills to cope in society and are offered little support after their release, increasing the chances of re- offending.”

On April 3rd WGBH’s Greater Boston ran a segment on one prison reform measure that could return a little rationality to the American criminal justice system. Investigator Cristina Quinn looked at Middlesex Sheriff Peter Koutoujian’s program for youthful offenders focused on rehabilitation, based on German practices recommended by the Vera Institute, and first pioneered at Connecticut’s Cheshire Correctional Institution.

According to Quinn, German prison reforms are based on a post-Holocaust Constitution which affirms human dignity. In addition, Germany’s 1976 Prison Act specifically defines prison as rehabilitation and tries to make the experience useful for both prisoner and society. The Prison Act’s first principles state:

• By serving his prison sentence the prisoner shall be enabled in future to lead a life in social responsibility without committing criminal offences (objective of treatment).
• Life in penal institutions should be approximated as far as possible to general living conditions.
• Any detrimental effects of imprisonment shall be counteracted.
• Imprisonment shall be so designed as to help the prisoner to reintegrate himself into life at liberty.

Cruel and pointless punishments are expressly prohibited.

Even municipal laws in Germany protect prisoners. In 2008 Berlin passed a Juvenile Detention Act which gives special protection to young offenders. Berlin’s 2010 Remand Centre Act protects those in detention who have not [yet] been convicted of a crime. A 2011 Berlin ordinance governs how prisoner data can be used. A 2013 Preventive Detention Act rules that inmates kept in preventive detention beyond their sentences (such as sex or violent offenders with psychiatric problems) have the right to extra housing and treatment options.

The incarceration rate in the USA is 8-9 times higher than in Western Europe. At present ours is 666 per 100,000 citizens. In contrast, Canada’s is 114; Germany’s 77. Berlin, with a population of 3.5 million, has 2,800 inmates in its 8 prisons (a rate of 80 / 100,000). In Bristol County, with a population of 561,000, the county jail has 1,400 prisoners in 3 facilities — an incarceration rate of 250 / 100,000. Bristol County has a recidivism rate of 34% in a state with an average recidivism rate of 32% over 3 years.

A 2005 study conducted by the Justice Department tracked 400,000 offenders throughout 30 states and calculated a national recidivism rate of 76% over 5 years. A 2005 U.S. Sentencing Commission study found that almost half of all federal offenders were re-arrested within 8 years. One way to look at it is that 2.5 million incarcerated Americans form a small nation of hopeless savages. Or so the law-and-order types tell us.

But a contrarian view held by William Rhodes argues that the reverse is true — that, nationally, two-thirds of all offenders never return to prison and only 11% return to prison more than once. The problem with the Justice Department statistics, Rhodes writes, is that “offenders who repeatedly return to prison are like frequent mall visitors — they are overrepresented in samples used to estimate the rate at which offenders return to prison.”

“Locking up the same people over and over points to failures in the American penal system,” as one study noted. But whatever the precise percentage of recidivists, the fact remains — American prisons don’t spend much effort on rehabilitation. Norway, with an incarceration rate of 75 per 100,000, invests in rehabilitation and socialization and does not torment its offenders for life. As a result Norway has one of the world’s lowest recidivism rates — 20% compared with 52% in the United States. It is not surprising to discover that one of Norway’s maximum security prisons, Bastoy, with a recidivism rate of 16%, is run by a clinical psychologist and its guards receive three years of training.

Even in more traditional European prison settings one does not find the deprivation, starvation, isolation, and brutality of American institutions. An English-language brochure from Berlin’s Department for Justice and Consumer Protection describes their focus on helping inmates: “Taken as a whole, the Berlin prison system views it­self as a system of enforcing therapy and treatment designed to address both the deficits of prisoners and their competences.”

Since 1980 a massive prison services industry has developed in the U.S. and segments of it serve even states without private prisons. Inmates are gouged at prison stores or for usurious telephone and video conferencing schemes. Outsourced medical, drug, and psychological services of questionable quality may be provided or denied at whim. Food throughout U.S. prisons is often substandard or insufficient. Abusive corrections officers, arbitrary solitary confinement, and overcrowded facilities are all too common hallmarks of American prisons. In some institutions prisoners are denied family visits.

In a German Justizvollzugsanstalt (prison), or JVA, cells are open during the day, inmates cook for themselves, and the law guarantees family visits. Inmates wear their own clothes, live in dorm-like clusters with other inmates, may receive gifts from their families, and obtain outside psychological and drug treatment services. Of course, prisoners are still locked up — but they don’t forget, or they learn, the importance of getting along in society.

Programs like this — and corresponding legal protections for the incarcerated — are necessary so long as we deprive shocking numbers of our fellow citizens of their liberty.

In The House of the Dead Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” If Dostoevsky was right, then the jailers — and not our incarcerated neighbors — may be the true nation of savages.

The suitcase under the bed

What would you do if immigration agents came for you and separated you from your children? Breaking apart families was never a central mission of previous Republican and Democratic administrations, but with Trump many parents are now faced with having to plan for unimaginable cruelties of a racist deportation machine. It may not be 1935 but, if you are someone sleeping with a packed suitcase under the bed, it sure feels like it.

On Thursday Helena daSilva Hughes of the Immigrants Assistance Center and Corinn Williams of the Community Economic Development Center, both in New Bedford, hosted a workshop given by the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s (MLRI) Emily Leung. Roughly 40 attendees represented a spectrum of local social service, academic, health care, and legal organizations and they had come to learn about legal tools immigrants can use to protect the welfare of their children if they face deportation.

Leung discussed the Trump administration’s “shift in enforcement,” which was a diplomatic way of describing ICE’s shift from deporting dangerous individuals to going after the easiest people to round up. The MLRI attorney discussed adaptations to, and the function of, the Caregiver Authorization Affidavit and Temporary Agent Appointment documents, both already in use within the Commonwealth. Neither of these legal documents grants guardianship of a child to another adult — a last resort if a child is young and the deportation is irreversible — but they permit a caregiver to make important decisions for a parent who can no longer advocate for her own children.

It was a lively meeting with many questions asked and answered. Leung dispensed practical advice on storing and collecting identity and travel documents — and ending by stressing the importance of committting important phone numbers to memory. By the time you need to make that phone call you’re already in ICE custody — and they’ve got your phone.

For more information go to the MLRI website or to Mass Legal Help. You can find workshop resources in English and Spanish — and more translations would be welcomed.

Attorney General Maura Healey’s office has published a similar Emergency Planning Guide for Families in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.

* * *

The Immigrants Assistance Center (IAC) and the Community Economic Development Center (CEDC) both perform important work of helping immigrant families — whatever their status.

Check out the Benefit Concert for the IAC at the Greasy Luck Brewpub, 791 Purchase St., New Bedford, MA 02740, on Saturday, February 24th, from 5-8pm. Buy your tickets here.

And please support the work of the CEDC by making a donation.

Last week social networks were buzzing with reports that UMASS Dartmouth had rescinded the 2017 acceptance of a black student who had been honest about prior gang affiliations. Right after Martin Luther King day, and right in the middle of Black History month, a young black man had new options snatched away by nervous administrators at a campus in a lily-white community. At a campus meeting on Monday angry students voiced concerns about racism and fairness.

The university for its part shed absolutely no light on the issue. According to a campus spokesman, “We’re just not going to be engaged in a conversation about an admissions case about an individual student.” Whatever the actual facts, the university’s ham-handed refusal to discuss circumstances or safety concerns — or to engage in a “conversation” with students or the wider community — will with good reason be interpreted as a coverup of some good-old-fashioned racism, and less as the well-intentioned effort to keep students safe. The university might as well have invoked “national security.”

UMASS Dartmouth is a public university. Many of us studied there. Many of us know students, employees, faculty, ex-faculty, and regularly attend campus events. Before it joined the UMASS system it was very much a local university, and it still is. In every way it is our university. And the public is entitled to some answers. The administration must open up about the circumstances and reasoning behind changing its mind about this student. And it must publicly and transparently deal with concerns that this was racism again rearing its ugly head in the age of Trump.

Universities are full of people with all sorts of baggage. The UMASS university system was once run by Whitey Bulger’s brother. Despite suspicions he knew where his fugitive brother was hiding, it never seemed to keep William Bulger off a campus or prevent him from becoming president of the Massachusetts Senate. Plenty of white students have had offenses expunged from their records. But this particular student never had the same courtesy extended to him. Despite his best efforts to take a different path in life, this young black man has now been barred from the university for a past that men like him are never permitted to escape.

On January 20, a conference entitled “Mass Incarceration as a New Jim Crow” was held at All Souls Church of Braintree, Massachusetts, on a topic that concerns everyone — mass incarceration and its implications. Well organized and attended, the conference featured a panel of five guests.

The conference began with an historical overview of the “Old Jim Crow” presented by Dr. Elizabeth Herbin-Triant from UMass Lowell, dealing primarily with the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction. Dr. Jon Huibregtse from Framingham University followed Dr. Herbin-Triant with an overview of historical changes and context through the post World War II period.

The speakers focused on the idea that the implementation of Jim Crow laws and lynchings served a larger purpose of maintaining a powerless work force, preventing growth of an independent economy beyond control by the white ruling class, and suppressing dissent. At the same time, the widespread popularity of spectacle lynchings and retribution indicates the depth of a culture of racism that goes beyond the upper classes.

With the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed for “separate but equal” institutions, systemic racism was fully established. Lynchings and extra-judicial executions continued, but grew less as other institutions assumed these functions, most notably an explosion in incarceration and legalized racism, combined with political disenfranchisement. One of the most shocking statistics was that of registered black men in Louisiana, which declined from 130,000 in 1896 to 1,232 in 1904!

Following the historical overview, the panel spoke and took questions from the audience. Franklin Baxley from the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition spoke to the human toll and incredible inequities of the current system. Rahsaan Hall, Director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program, spoke eloquently of the economic and social mechanisms by which systemic racism enables the “pipeline” from schools to prison. Susan Tordella, of E.M.I.T. (End Mass Incarceration Today) spoke of the need to include incarcerated people as participants in the discussion.

Several members of the audience then jumped into the discussion, asking questions about the economics and politics of mass incarceration, the possibilities of change, and methods of organizing. This led directly to the discussion after the break as to what the situation is today in Massachusetts and what is to be done. Several organizations were mentioned in addition to the speakers’ own groups.

Susan Tordella discussed the status of the CJ Omnibus Bill, which, though far from perfect, contains some positive pieces of legislation. The Massachusetts Bail Fund was mentioned as a very effective way of helping people post bail who would otherwise be thrown into the penal system before they are even convicted.

One key aspect in the discussion was raised by Rahsaan Hall, who pointed to the incredibly important roles played by District Attorneys in determining whom to charge and what charges to bring. He also pointed to a lack of accountability for these same DA’s, suggesting that bringing political pressure on them is a powerful way of changing the way the system operates. He asserted that accountability of District Attorneys (and county sheriffs in Massachusetts as well) to external oversight and control of any kind is nearly non-existent.

The conference ended with a plea to everyone to become more involved in shining a light on these dark areas of accountability, working with incarcerated people, and demanding more structures of accountability.

Most of those we spoke with agreed that it was a worthwhile conference, and though much of the material was familiar, it was presented in a context that really helped clarify issues. Strategies on what can be done were a little less fully explored since panel participants were already involved in their projects. Some of the audience wanted to learn about concrete steps they could take, and the panel was helpful in that regard. For BCCJ, the comment on District Attorneys by Rahsaan Hall made it clear that Correctional Justice issues in Bristol County must also address the roles of the District Attorneys and their accountability.