Shawki writes: "Malcolm X died fifty-one years ago today, just as he was moving toward revolutionary ideas that challenged oppression in all its forms."
Malcolm X. (photo: Bettmann/Corbis)
The Legacy of Malcolm X
By Ahmed Shawki, Jacobin
22 February 16
Malcolm X died fifty-one years ago today, just as he was moving toward revolutionary ideas that challenged oppression in all its forms.
acial segregation was not the law in the postwar North, but it was the reality. In virtually all aspects of life, Northern blacks encountered racism and segregation. Blacks who left the South found themselves forced to live in huge urban ghettos and educate their children in inferior schools. Skilled or professional jobs were reserved for whites. Blacks were constantly subject to white authority, especially police harassment.
Almost a quarter of blacks said they had been mistreated by the police, and 40 percent said they had seen others abused. Any illusions held by Southern blacks about the liberal North were not held by those already living there. And while Northern blacks were inspired by the struggles in the South, their conditions made them receptive to a movement independent of — and quite different from — the one led by Martin Luther King Jr’s Southern Christian Leadership Council.
In the first years of the civil rights struggle, the most significant organizational expression of this new movement was the Nation of Islam. By the late 1950s, the group’s membership reached an estimated one hundred thousand, with Malcolm X as its most prominent member.
In formal terms, the ideas of the Nation of Islam were profoundly conservative. The organization combined elements of orthodox Islam with ideas of its own making, preaching a doctrine of hard work, thrift, obedience, and humility. Seeing economic independence from white society as crucial, the organization also encouraged its members to “buy black.” The Nation of Islam established dozens of businesses, owned farmland, and built mosques in most major Northern cities. The organization did not condemn capitalism, only whites. Indeed, many Black Muslims looked to emulate the success of white capitalists.
Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad called for establishing an independent black state — in the United States or elsewhere. But beyond pressing for demands or defending their interests, the organization was hostile to political involvement. That such an inward-looking religious sect was capable of substantial growth is a testimony to the widespread bitterness of large numbers of urban blacks. To hundreds of young recruits, the Nation of Islam represented self-respect, self-reliance, and pride.
The bold and articulate Malcolm X quickly became a pull for more militants to join the Nation of Islam, with appeals designed to highlight the hypocrisy of white elites. In response to the charge that the Nation was racist, Malcolm said, unapologetically, “If we react to white racism with a violent reaction, to me that’s not black racism. If you come to put a rope around my neck and I hang you for it, to me that’s not racism. Yours is racism, but my reaction has nothing to do with racism.”
Malcolm X rejected the view that integration into American society was either possible or desirable and viewed the federal government and the Democratic Party not as allies, but as part of the problem. And he was sharply critical of liberals who talked about racism in the South, but had nothing to say about conditions in the North, saying, “I will pull off that liberal’s halo that he spends such efforts cultivating!”
Malcolm X was also sharply critical of the civil rights movement’s leaders. Far from leading the struggle, he saw them as containing it.
He went on to attack the whole premise of nonviolence that underlay the Southern desegregation movement. Instead, he argued for black self-defense: “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts a hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion. In fact, that’s the old-time religion. . . . Preserve your life, it’s the best thing you’ve got. And if you’ve got to give it up, let it be even-steven.”
Technically, Malcolm X was only amplifying the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and indeed always prefaced any of his speeches with the phrase “Elijah Muhammad teaches . . .” But Malcolm X had turned these ideas into an indictment of the system, increasingly breaking out of the straitjacket of the Nation of Islam.
While Muhammad shunned politics, Malcolm was becoming more political. One Muslim complained, “It was Malcolm who injected the political concept of ‘black nationalism’ into the Black Muslim movement, which was essentially religious in nature.”
Aware that the growing politicization of the movement was having an effect on the Nation of Islam, including its leading spokesperson, Elijah Muhammad had taken measures to reassert his control.
A police attack in Los Angeles in 1962 drove home the bankruptcy of the Nation of Islam’s politics. In April 1962, a Black Muslim had been killed and several wounded by the Los Angeles police department. Malcolm X immediately flew out to Los Angeles to direct the organization’s response. The Nation of Islam preached self-defense, and the police murder seemingly called for retaliatory action. But Elijah Muhammad prevented his followers from organizing a sustained self-defense campaign.
Verbal radicalism, often extreme in its denunciations of whites, was acceptable in an earlier period when members of the Nation of Islam were establishing their reputation as opponents of the system. But the explosion of anger among blacks demanded more than words; it demanded action, and that was one thing Elijah Muhammad would not countenance.
Out of the Nation of Islam
Malcolm X’s break with the Nation of Islam finally came in December 1963. Responding to a question from the audience at a meeting in New York City, Malcolm attributed John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the hate and violence produced by a society that whites themselves had created.
Although the statement was consistent with the hostility Black Muslim ministers had expressed to the US administration in the past, Elijah Muhammad nevertheless informed Malcolm that he would be suspended for ninety days so that “Muslims everywhere can be disassociated from the blunder.” It soon became clear that the suspension was in fact an expulsion.
On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X formally announced his break with the Nation of Islam. The Black Muslim movement, he said, “had gone as far as it can because it was too sectarian and too inhibited.” He advocated greater engagement in the black struggles exploding around the country, warning that the Black Muslims could find themselves “one day suddenly separated from the Negroes’ frontline struggle.”
In order to become involved in the civil rights movement, Malcolm drew the conclusion that he needed to separate politics and religion, saying, “we don’t mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil activities — not any more . . . We become involved with anybody, anywhere, anytime and in any manner that’s designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic and social evils that are afflicting the people in our community.”
In the same speech, he described himself as an adherent of black nationalism.
A Budding Anti-Imperialism
Soon after, Malcolm was to take the first of two trips to Africa. These trips had an important impact on his ideas. He met with several important African heads of state — including Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt — and was influenced by the ideas of “third worldism.” In general terms, this was the view that the world was dominated by two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — and that the developing countries of the world represented an independent alternative.
When Malcolm X returned to New York, he announced the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), modeled after the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which brought together the different African heads of state. The OAAU was a black nationalist organization that sought to build community organizations, schools, black enterprises, and voter registration campaigns to ensure community control of black politicians.
After his visit to Africa, Malcolm began to argue that the black struggle in the United States was part of an international struggle, one that he connected to the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
He also began to argue in favor of socialism. Referring to the African states, he pointed out, “All of the countries that are emerging today from under the shackles of colonialism are turning towards socialism.”
He no longer defined the struggle for black liberation as a racial conflict. “We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era,” he said. “It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as purely an American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiters.”
Malcolm no longer believed all whites were the enemy, but he maintained the need for separate all-black organization: “Whites can help us, but they can’t join us. There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity. There can be no workers solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until we have first united ourselves.”
But Malcolm’s new conception of the struggle also led him to question his previous understanding of black nationalism. In January 1965, Malcolm admitted that this previous understanding of black nationalism “was alienating people who were true revolutionaries, dedicated to overthrowing the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.”
Lost Promise
During this period Malcolm’s political ideas were evolving rapidly — a development cut short by his death. By that time, Malcolm X had already become one of the most important radical black figures in the United States, and his influence was growing, especially among younger activists.
Malcolm X was gunned down just as he was beginning to “think for himself,” as he put it, and to express a radical program for black liberation. His premature death and the subsequent suppression and decline of the black movement have made it easier for second-rate reformists to claim Malcolm as theirs. But anyone who listens to Malcolm’s speeches or reads any of his writings can be in no doubt as to his trajectory, which is summarized well in his famous “Ballot or the Bullet” speech, given April 3, 1964, in Cleveland:
No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the twenty-two million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the twenty-two million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.
It is impossible to predict how Malcolm’s politics would have developed had he lived. He had embraced ideas that put him squarely on the left of the black nationalist movement. His hostility to the system and the twin capitalist parties, his commitment to end racism, and his identification with anti-imperialism, represented an enormous contribution to radical politics.
FOCUS: Black Progressives, It's Time to Unite Against Establishment Politics
Monday, 22 February 2016 12:42
Conwright writes: "The Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee has endorsed Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and by the way in which it did so has demonstrated its propensity to play establishment politics."
Anthony Conwright. (photo: unknown)
Black Progressives, It's Time to Unite Against Establishment Politics
By Anthony Conwright, Black and Wordy
22 February 16
he Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) has endorsed Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and by the way in which it did so has demonstrated its propensity to play establishment politics.
An endorsement in itself isn't a bad thing, but for the CBC PAC to endorse the Clinton campaign by misleading black voters about Bernie Sanders' record on issues important to black Americans, and neglecting to offer any critique on the impacts the Clinton policies have had on black Americans is not only insulting, it's dishonest.
According to South Carolina House Democratic Leader J. Todd Rutherford, Bernie Sanders has "only really started talking about issues concerning African Americans in the last 40 days." Rutherford has also criticized Bernie Sanders for his vote in favor of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and suggested that Bernie Sanders apologize for his vote on the bill.
A critique can be made about Sanders' vote in favor of the crime bill; however, that critique must be put into the context of his support for women who are victims of domestic violence, which is part of the reason he voted in favor of the crime bill: The Violence Against Women Act was attached to it.
Here is a video of Bernie Sanders addressing the crime bill, domestic violence, and The Violence Against Women Act.
Bernie Sanders strongly opposed the crime bill, and addressed congress in a two-minute speech in which he called the bill a "punishment bill," and went on to say he had a "problem with a president, and a congress" that wants to get "tough on crime" while millions of people go hungry and children sleep outside on the streets. He ended his opposition to the crime bill with the saying, "let's not keep putting poor people into jail and disproportionately punishing blacks" -- that was 8,880 days ago.
Here is a clip from C-Span of Bernie Sanders' remarks at the 1994 Congressional Black Caucus hearing on crime and guns in African-American communities. At the beginning of the clip, Bernie Sanders is introduced by the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus as "a colleague and associate member of the Congressional Black Caucus." In his remarks, Sanders would go on to say that addressing crime without addressing poverty and jobs is "absurd"--that was 8,066 days ago.
Here is a compilation of Bernie Sanders' consistency on his views on war, poverty, jobs, campaign financing, income inequality and crime. The video covers Bernie Sanders from 1985-2015, which covers a span of about 10,957 days.
When you compare Hillary Clinton's advocacy for the crime bill and Bernie Sander's reasons to vote in favor of the bill, the difference in their narratives is clear:
Bernie Sanders is addressing crime in relation to poverty and jobs, while Hillary Clinton's "tough on crime" narrative is dealing with the people who commit crimes and not the socioeconomic conditions that lead to crime, which is a narrative that must be scrutinized.
When politicians say they want to deal with the "real problems" of crime without addressing structural oppressions that lead to crimes, they are really saying they want to "deal with" (see incarcerate) "the people" (see black and brown youth) who commit crimes.
Hillary Clinton's acceptance of this narrative was exemplified when she called gang-related youth "superpredators," and compared "those people" to the mob, and suggested that America have a concentrated effort on gangs in the same way there was a concentrated effort on the mob. When she had an opportunity to address the reasons why youth turn to gangs or crime she said, "we can talk about how they got that way, but first we have to bring them to heel."
Her remark could have been improved if it were given in reverse order: Let's address the conditions that create gangs, before youth of color are indiscriminately thrown into jail.
Since the CBC PAC and Hillary Clinton have claimed money doesn't influence their politics, I am sure they will support a bill Bernie Sanders introduced into congress called Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015, which aims to eliminate federal, state and local contracts for privately run prisons.
The introduction of the Justice is Not For Sale Act of 2015 contradicts Hakeem Jefferies', a Democrat from New York, claims that Bernie Sanders has been "missing in action" on issues that are important to the African American community, and that "there's no credibility to the things that are being said at the twilight of Sanders' political career."
Sanders' actions regarding civil rights and issues important to the African American community has been documented thoroughly. Mother Jones has extensively covered Bernie Sanders' activism during the civil rights movement. In 1962, he protested police brutality, and he was arrested for protesting segregation in public schools in Chicago.
As a member of congress, Bernie Sanders' record on civil rights is clear. Sanders introduced The National Priorities Act of 2007 to congress, which addresses poverty and income inequality, and he has found success by amending legislation, which included an increase in accountability for corporate crime, expanding free health care, and gaining a $22 million increase in funds for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance program and the Weatherization Assistance program.
Bernie Sanders has also introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015, which could help legalize marijuana, and lower the rate in which black Americans are disproportionately arrested for marijuana possession.
Bernie Sanders also received a 97 percent rating by the NAACP in 2006 (an indication of his pro-affirmative-action stance).
Not too bad of a record for a man who has been accused of being "thin" when it comes to civil rights issues.
The problem with the CBC PAC endorsement is that it further continues the notion that because the Clinton name has black politicians, she will have us. This message in its nature is condescending because it assumes that any black politician who fought for civil rights has a monopoly on what's best or who's best for young, black voters.
The last time I checked "being a friend of the African American community" wasn't a viable campaign slogan, and for a member of a black caucus to use this language as way to get black Americans to cosign Hillary Clinton's campaign is insulting.
If Hillary Clinton is a "friend" of the African American community then she and the black politicians who endorse her must live up to criticism that a "friend" of the African American community and the endorsement of said friend ascribe for itself.
Unfortunately, this is criticism that has yet to be seen.
This does not mean that criticism of black members of state is a sign of ungratefulness for the work black politicians have done during the civil rights movement.
This is a call for us to unite against the establishment--both black and white--and demand that our representatives march to our anthems of progress, despite how radical they may seem and acknowledge that our vote for the Clinton Campaign is far from granted.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Monday, 22 February 2016 11:36
Weissman writes: "In significant sections of our political economy, the rule of law operates as it should, allowing people to know what the rules are and to see them fairly enforced. But, like the myth of free markets, paeans to the rule of law - sincere, self-serving, or ceremonial - too often mask the naked exercise of power."
Barack Obama and Antonin Scalia. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
From Scalia to Obama, What Rule of Law?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
22 February 16
or almost 30 years, Justice Antonin ‘Nino’ Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench – a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions,” declared President Barack Obama. “Justice Scalia dedicated his life to the cornerstone of our democracy: The rule of law.”
High praise indeed – and completely bogus, especially from a commander-in-chief who acts as judge, jury, and (by proxy) executioner for drone targets around the world, and a POTUS who refused to bring criminal indictments against the Wall Street bankers who created the global economic crash in 2008.
Rule of law? Would you like me to sell you a nice bridge in Brooklyn?
In significant sections of our political economy, the rule of law operates as it should, allowing people to know what the rules are and to see them fairly enforced. But, like the myth of free markets, paeans to the rule of law – sincere, self-serving, or ceremonial – too often mask the naked exercise of power. They also trash the once-sacrosanct ideal that no one – rich or poor, black or white, government official or private citizen – stands above the law.
Even before Ronald Reagan named him a federal judge and then Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia added dramatically to this legal hocus pocus when, in 1982, conservative and libertarian law students at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago created the Federalist Society. Scalia served as one of the faculty advisors, along with his friend and long-time colleague Robert Bork.
The right-wing activists opposed liberal judicial approaches that had enlarged the federal government, reduced states' rights, and created “privacy rights” that the Constitution had never explicitly sanctioned. They hated legalized abortion and federal intervention to protect African-Americans, and they favored “traditional values,” unfettered campaign contributions, and an unrestrained right to bear arms. Presenting themselves as “strict constructionists” defending the true meaning of the Constitution, the Federalists framed their fight as a response to “judicial activism.” They insisted that the judiciary “say what the law is, not what it should be.”
Increasingly persuasive as American voters swung to the right, these arguments helped the Federalists become the country’s single most influential group of legal intellectuals. They essentially follow two overlapping schools of thought – or claim to. On the Constitution and its amendments, they base their decisions, they say, on the original intent of the framers and subsequent authors. The appeal is obvious. The Federalists appear to offer an objective way to make Constitutional decisions, which they contrast to the unavoidably subjective judgments of liberal judges and justices seeking to adapt what they call “a living Constitution” to situations that James Madison and John Adams could never have conceived of.
“It’s not a living document,” Scalia insisted. “It’s dead, dead, dead.”
Well, not quite. Take a look at Scalia’s classic 2011 interview in the California Lawyer. “In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation,” said the interviewer. “So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that,” replied the effervescent Scalia. “Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.”
Scalia appeared to be offering a principled and unfailingly democratic defense of Originalism. How then could he have joined in the majority decision in Bush v. Gore, which cited the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to override the voters of Florida and make George W. Bush president?
In 2011, journalist Robert Parry pointedly answered the question. He called Scalia a hypocrite. It’s difficult to disagree. But “Originalism” has hypocrisy built-in. Too often, neither historians nor lawyers know what all the different authors of any particular passage intended or how to weigh their differences. It’s largely guesswork and often – though not always – depends on the results a particular judge or justice wants.
“Judges are not competent historians,” explains circuit court judge Richard A. Posner, a Reagan appointee and one of the country’s leading legal authorities. “To put to a judge a question that he cannot answer is to evoke ‘motivated thinking,’ the form of cognitive delusion that consists of credulously accepting the evidence that supports a preconception and of peremptorily rejecting the evidence that contradicts it.”
Others may suggest a more straightforward view of how Scalia interpreted the ineptly drafted Second Amendment: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Did the framers intend the militia clause to restrict the right to keep and bear arms? Or did they want to preserve militias, now the National Guard, and also preserve the ancient English right for individuals to keep and bear arms? One can in all honesty read the text either way, and competent historians have no agreed-upon answer.
Scalia made his subjective preference clear in writing the majority decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, declaring that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual’s right to possess a firearm for self-defense or any other legal purpose. Liberal law professors, like Laurence Tribe and Sanford Levinson, had reluctantly come to the same conclusion, while two conservative federal judges – Posner and J. Harvie Wilkinson – condemned Scalia’s decision as activist and highly political. This was precisely how he and they saw the liberal creation of privacy rights and legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade. Leave both gun and abortion rights to the political process, Wilkinson and Posner argued.
A third case makes chopped liver of Scalia’s claim to “say what the law is, not what it should be.” In Citizens United, Scalia joined in the majority decision that the First Amendment guaranteed individuals and corporations the right to unlimited election spending.
University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos found this most instructive. “The men who drafted and ratified the First Amendment would have, it’s safe to say, been shocked out of their wits if someone had told them they were granting the same free speech rights to corporations they were giving to persons,” wrote Campos. “It would be hard to come up with a purer example of treating the Constitution as a ‘living document,’ the meaning of which changes as social circumstances change.”
Campos called Scalia “an intellectual phony.” That, too, would be hard to disagree with. I would only add that among the first to give prominence to the idea that money is speech were those activist liberals at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Was their reasoning any more objective than Scalia’s? Was it any closer to the rule of law?
Contrary to much that’s been written, Scalia called himself “a faint-hearted Originalist.” Over time he leaned more to “textualism,” which focused narrowly on what specific laws and contracts say – and emphatically not on trying to figure out what the authors intended. This was an even more objective way to make judicial decisions, he insisted. But he was equally ideological about that. His textualism “tilts toward ‘small government’ and away from ‘big government,’ which in modern America is a conservative preference,” wrote Richard Posner in his trenchant critique of Scalia’s “incoherence.”
But Posner goes beyond pillorying Scalia. He tells a needed truth about how his colleagues play the judicial game, liberals as well as conservatives. “Judges like to say that all they do when they interpret a constitutional or statutory provision is apply, to the facts of the particular case, law that has been given to them,” he explained. “They do not make law: that is the job of legislators, and for the authors and ratifiers of constitutions. They are not Apollo; they are his oracle. They are passive interpreters. Their role is semantic.”
Posner does not buy the pretense, not from Scalia or from any other judge or justice, left, right, or center. Neither should anyone else.
“Judges,” he wrote, “tend to deny the creative – the legislative – dimension of judging, important as it is in our system, because they do not want to give the impression that they are competing with legislators, or engaged in anything but the politically unthreatening activity of objective, literal-minded interpretation, using arcane tools of legal analysis.”
Rule of law? No, the rule of lawyers, with undeniable ideological, political, and experiential bias. This honest understanding should govern how the country chooses Scalia’s replacement and all the judges and justices to follow.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Galindez writes: Dolores Huerta is mistaken when she claims that supporters of Bernie Sanders shouted 'English only.' One person in that room uttered the words 'English only,' and it was the precinct chair, who said: 'We are going to go with English only, I'm sorry.'"
Dolores Huerta. (photo: Makers)
Nobody Shouted "English Only" at Dolores Huerta
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
22 February 16
et me begin by saying that I respect the lifetime accomplishments of Dolores Huerta. She is an icon in the labor movement, Cesar Chavez’s partner in the farmworker movement. I would not have objected to her translating at the caucus being held at Harrah’s Casino in Las Vegas.
She is mistaken, however, when she claims that supporters of Bernie Sanders shouted “English only.” One person in that room uttered the words “English only,” and it was the precinct chair, who said: “We are going to go with English only, I’m sorry.”
The room did get loud, but there was no objection to there being an interpreter; the objection was to having a Clinton surrogate on the stage. In the video above, you can hear “No” and “Neutral” being shouted. Nobody was chanting “English only.”
In an interview in The Washington Post, Huerta said, “The Bernie organizers were shouting, ‘No, no, no.’ Then a Bernie person stood up and said, ‘No, we need to have it, I can also do translation’ or whatever. The person who ran the caucus said, ‘Well, we won’t have a translator.’ The sad thing about this is that some of the organizers were shouting, ‘English only! English only!’ The Bernie organizers.”
Most of her statement is accurate, but the most serious allegation she made is not true. For the record, I shot the video and was centrally located in the room.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Davies writes: "On February 19, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that the musician Kesha must remain contractually bound to Sony and Kemosabe, the record label created and run by Dr. Luke (real name Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald), the producer who she claims drugged and raped her when she was 18 and continued to abuse her throughout their creative partnership."
The musician Kesha. (photo: Getty Images)
How We Failed to Protect Kesha
By Madeleine Davies, Jezebel
22 February 16
hat is the worth of a woman? What is the worth of her body, her safety, her heart, her career? And once you determine it, how does it hold up to the worth of a man, a business, a conglomeration? Or does it not hold up at all?
On February 19, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that the musician Kesha must remain contractually bound to Sony and Kemosabe, the record label created and run by Dr. Luke (real name Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald), the producer who she claims drugged and raped her when she was 18 and continued to abuse her throughout their creative partnership.
Judge Shirley Kornreich heard Kesha’s request for an injunction that would allow her to record outside Dr. Luke’s reach as a request not for physical, psychological and sexual safety but a request to “decimate a contract that was heavily negotiated and typical for the industry,” as Kornreich put it.
Kesha’s injunction request read, in part, “I know I cannot work with Dr. Luke. I physically cannot. I don’t feel safe in any way.” But that plain statement of absolute need doesn’t matter. Legally, in the moral eyes of the court, it’s the contract—the corporation—that comes first.
This is appalling, but it’s no break from tradition. The U.S. Supreme Court has already determined that corporations have similar rights to people, though if you look closely, you’ll find that theirs are far more enviable—especially compared to those of us who’ve been legally cursed with female bodies and female voices, which are meant to be soft and agreeable. Money speaks louder than you or I ever could in a courtroom, even if we were pop stars whose fans waited outside for hours to support us; corporate interests are louder than ethics and empathy, louder than autonomy, or self-determination, or basic rights to safety.
Kesha, a 28-year-old woman who’s been working in the music industry for a full decade, might think she knows what’s best for her. She might think it’s in her best interest to sever all ties with the man who allegedly raped and continually hurt her, but—really—what does she know? Sony’s invested $60 million in her career, their attorneys reminded the judge—what’s an emotional and physical violation compared to that?
“Our interest is in her success,” claimed a Sony lawyer. “Our interest is in Dr. Luke’s success. They are not in the least bit mutually exclusive.” In other words, we know what’s good for her. And what’s good for her is recording six more albums with a company that heard her claims of abuse and said, “Your story means nothing.”
That Sony would take this line of argument is gross enough, but far grosser is the fact that the court agrees.
“My instinct is to do the commercially reasonable thing,” ruled Shirley Kornreich as Kesha sobbed openly in the back of the room.
Commercially reasonable, yes. Contracts were signed. Kesha entered into a legal agreement with Sony and Kemosabe. But then again, Dr. Luke has a legal obligation to not rape or hurt anyone, even when it’s a young woman who’s been put under his creative and legal control.
When a contractual violation and a human violation are put head-to-head in court, an idealist would think that a human being’s safety takes precedence. A realist, however, would know better. The music industry, like many industries, is predisposed to favor its own safety: what’s “commercially reasonable” for Sony can frequently be at odds—in more cases than just Kesha’s—to the well-being of the women it signs.
Part of Judge Kornreich’s reasoning, in denying the injunction, was that Sony has agreed to keep Kesha’s work separate from Dr. Luke’s. But she’s still signed to his label, and her work still belongs to him. She remains the creative property of the man she says raped her. The ruling is so cruel as to seem almost mythological—Persephone stuck in hell as the result of a bad contract—but it’s not; the ruling is real.
It’s likely that “commercially reasonable” will almost always beat or “ethically reasonable” and is certain to beat “morally reasonable.” Our courts and culture have a hard enough time believing women’s accusations of sexual assault in the most clear-cut of circumstances, so what chance do we have at legal, emotional, and physical protection when details are contested and a corporation stands to lose millions? When a woman as powerful and high status as Kesha can’t win, the rest of us stand even less of a chance.
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acial segregation was not the law in the postwar North, but it was the reality. In virtually all aspects of life, Northern blacks encountered racism and segregation. Blacks who left the South found themselves forced to live in huge urban ghettos and educate their children in inferior schools. Skilled or professional jobs were reserved for whites. Blacks were constantly subject to white authority, especially police harassment.
he Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) has 
or almost 30 years, Justice Antonin ‘Nino’ Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench – a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions,” 
et me begin by saying that I respect the lifetime accomplishments of Dolores Huerta. She is an icon in the labor movement, Cesar Chavez’s partner in the farmworker movement. I would not have objected to her translating at the caucus being held at Harrah’s Casino in Las Vegas.
hat is the worth of a woman? What is the worth of her body, her safety, her heart, her career? And once you determine it, how does it hold up to the worth of a man, a business, a conglomeration? Or does it not hold up at all?
