We want to thank Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for giving an outstanding overview of legal issues raised by litigation she has instituted against some of the nation's largest banks. Alleging predatory lending, and illegal steering of blacks and Latinos into sub-prime mortgage, Madigan is attempting to hold banks accountable for irresponsible lending practices that led to the world banking crisis. Madigan was in Atlanta for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition's 10th Annual Creating Opportunity Conference on October 16th.
Also in attendance was Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Loretta King, who detailed her efforts to curb racial profiling, involuntary servitude and voting rights infringement from her post in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Civil Rights Update with Loretta King
Constitutional Law Update
What Every Lawyer Should Know About
Equal Protection, Due Process and Diversity
Presented by the Citizenship Education Fund
Hyatt Regency Hotel
265 Peachtree Street, NE, Atlanta, GA 30303
For More Information, Call (404) 525-5663
Friday, October 16, 2009
12:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.
Luncheon
Guest Speaker - Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
12:00-2:00 p.m.
Loretta King, Esq.
Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Justice
2:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Co-Sponsored by Gate City Bar Association
Hyatt Regency
265 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30303
$100.00 includes program materials and lunch
CLE Credit Application Pending
To Register, Call 404 525 5663.
What Every Lawyer Should Know About
Equal Protection, Due Process and Diversity
Presented by the Citizenship Education Fund
Hyatt Regency Hotel
265 Peachtree Street, NE, Atlanta, GA 30303
For More Information, Call (404) 525-5663
Friday, October 16, 2009
12:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.
Luncheon
Guest Speaker - Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
12:00-2:00 p.m.
Loretta King, Esq.
Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Justice
2:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Co-Sponsored by Gate City Bar Association
Hyatt Regency
265 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30303
$100.00 includes program materials and lunch
CLE Credit Application Pending
To Register, Call 404 525 5663.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Bob Herbert on Racial Profiling
August 1, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Anger Has Its Place
By BOB HERBERT
Cambridge, Mass.
No more than five or six minutes elapsed from the time the police were alerted to the possibility of a break-in at a home in a quiet residential neighborhood and the awful clamping of handcuffs on the wrists of the distinguished Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
If Professor Gates ranted and raved at the cop who entered his home uninvited with a badge, a gun and an attitude, he didn’t rant and rave for long. The 911 call came in at about 12:45 on the afternoon of July 16 and, as The Times has reported, Mr. Gates was arrested, cuffed and about to be led off to jail by 12:51.
The charge: angry while black.
The president of the United States has suggested that we use this flare-up as a “teachable moment,” but so far exactly the wrong lessons are being drawn from it — especially for black people. The message that has gone out to the public is that powerful African-American leaders like Mr. Gates and President Obama will be very publicly slapped down for speaking up and speaking out about police misbehavior, and that the proper response if you think you are being unfairly targeted by the police because of your race is to chill.
I have nothing but contempt for that message.
Mr. Gates is a friend, and I was selected some months ago to receive an award from an institute that he runs at Harvard. I made no attempt to speak to him while researching this column.
The very first lesson that should be drawn from the encounter between Mr. Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, is that Professor Gates did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not swear at the officer or threaten him. He was never a danger to anyone. At worst, if you believe the police report, he yelled at Sergeant Crowley. He demanded to know if he was being treated the way he was being treated because he was black.
You can yell at a cop in America. This is not Iran. And if some people don’t like what you’re saying, too bad. You can even be wrong in what you are saying. There is no law against that. It is not an offense for which you are supposed to be arrested.
That’s a lesson that should have emerged clearly from this contretemps.
It was the police officer, Sergeant Crowley, who did something wrong in this instance. He arrested a man who had already demonstrated to the officer’s satisfaction that he was in his own home and had been minding his own business, bothering no one. Sergeant Crowley arrested Professor Gates and had him paraded off to jail for no good reason, and that brings us to the most important lesson to be drawn from this case. Black people are constantly being stopped, searched, harassed, publicly humiliated, assaulted, arrested and sometimes killed by police officers in this country for no good reason.
New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.
But this country is not interested in that.
I wrote a number of columns about the arrests of more than 30 black and Hispanic youngsters — male and female — who were doing nothing more than walking peacefully down a quiet street in Brooklyn in broad daylight in the spring of 2007. The kids had to hire lawyers and fight the case for nearly two frustrating years before the charges were dropped and a settlement for their outlandish arrests worked out.
Black people need to roar out their anger at such treatment, lift up their voices and demand change. Anyone counseling a less militant approach is counseling self-defeat. As of mid-2008, there were 4,777 black men imprisoned in America for every 100,000 black men in the population. By comparison, there were only 727 white male inmates per 100,000 white men.
While whites use illegal drugs at substantially higher percentages than blacks, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.
Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about race. So that leaves it up to ordinary black Americans to rant and to rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.
Op-Ed Columnist
Anger Has Its Place
By BOB HERBERT
Cambridge, Mass.
No more than five or six minutes elapsed from the time the police were alerted to the possibility of a break-in at a home in a quiet residential neighborhood and the awful clamping of handcuffs on the wrists of the distinguished Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
If Professor Gates ranted and raved at the cop who entered his home uninvited with a badge, a gun and an attitude, he didn’t rant and rave for long. The 911 call came in at about 12:45 on the afternoon of July 16 and, as The Times has reported, Mr. Gates was arrested, cuffed and about to be led off to jail by 12:51.
The charge: angry while black.
The president of the United States has suggested that we use this flare-up as a “teachable moment,” but so far exactly the wrong lessons are being drawn from it — especially for black people. The message that has gone out to the public is that powerful African-American leaders like Mr. Gates and President Obama will be very publicly slapped down for speaking up and speaking out about police misbehavior, and that the proper response if you think you are being unfairly targeted by the police because of your race is to chill.
I have nothing but contempt for that message.
Mr. Gates is a friend, and I was selected some months ago to receive an award from an institute that he runs at Harvard. I made no attempt to speak to him while researching this column.
The very first lesson that should be drawn from the encounter between Mr. Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, is that Professor Gates did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not swear at the officer or threaten him. He was never a danger to anyone. At worst, if you believe the police report, he yelled at Sergeant Crowley. He demanded to know if he was being treated the way he was being treated because he was black.
You can yell at a cop in America. This is not Iran. And if some people don’t like what you’re saying, too bad. You can even be wrong in what you are saying. There is no law against that. It is not an offense for which you are supposed to be arrested.
That’s a lesson that should have emerged clearly from this contretemps.
It was the police officer, Sergeant Crowley, who did something wrong in this instance. He arrested a man who had already demonstrated to the officer’s satisfaction that he was in his own home and had been minding his own business, bothering no one. Sergeant Crowley arrested Professor Gates and had him paraded off to jail for no good reason, and that brings us to the most important lesson to be drawn from this case. Black people are constantly being stopped, searched, harassed, publicly humiliated, assaulted, arrested and sometimes killed by police officers in this country for no good reason.
New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.
But this country is not interested in that.
I wrote a number of columns about the arrests of more than 30 black and Hispanic youngsters — male and female — who were doing nothing more than walking peacefully down a quiet street in Brooklyn in broad daylight in the spring of 2007. The kids had to hire lawyers and fight the case for nearly two frustrating years before the charges were dropped and a settlement for their outlandish arrests worked out.
Black people need to roar out their anger at such treatment, lift up their voices and demand change. Anyone counseling a less militant approach is counseling self-defeat. As of mid-2008, there were 4,777 black men imprisoned in America for every 100,000 black men in the population. By comparison, there were only 727 white male inmates per 100,000 white men.
While whites use illegal drugs at substantially higher percentages than blacks, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.
Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about race. So that leaves it up to ordinary black Americans to rant and to rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The President, the Policeman and the Professor
When we care as much about Joe Gates as we do about Skip Gates we will be well on our way to solving the racial profiling crisis in this nation. More sobering than a cold brew, 32 million Americans claim they have been racially profiled.
Perhaps some definition would help. Racial profiling occurs when a law enforcement official (consciously or unconsciously) uses race or ethnicity as a proxy for probable cause. Racial profiling also occurs when blacks, Asians, Latinos, Arabs or other persons of color are treated more harshly (by a black or white officer) than a similarly situated white criminal suspect would be treated.
I am glad that Skip Gates raised hell, and glad that the President called the police conduct stupid because it gives us an opening to talk about a serious, pervasive race relations problem in America. Ever the soldier/statesman, Colin Powell told Larry King that almost every African American (including him) has faced a situation where they believe their race/ethnicity gets them in trouble with the police. That is where we need to begin.
Too many whites act as if blacks who complain about police mistreatment are "playing the race card" or imagining disparate treatment. One study showed that blacks get stopped more often than whites on suspicion of drug behavior, but that whites are twice as likely to actually possess drugs as blacks are when stopped.
I don't mind the President's beer fest too much - what can it really harm? But what we really need is calm, rational research and investigation into why blacks and other persons of color perceive negative disparate treatment. If an officer makes a stop, but no arrest, the basic statistics on race, gender need to be recorded for future study. A statute that would do just that in Georgia cannot make it out of the Capitol basement hearing room of the non-civil judiciary committee.
We also need to explore whether police are obligated to give some basic information to suspects - something like Miranda. For example, the arresting officer could say, "Mr. Gates, you are being ticketed because you were weaving over the line. If you believe my assessment was incorrect you have the right to a trial before a judge or jury. We will not be able to settle this matter here. If you think I am being unfair to you, you can file an internal affairs report with my supervisor." So often we hear of situations that escalate from 0-60, resulting in arrest for offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to obstruction because a suspect's questions are ignored at the scene.
There is nothing wrong with the opposing parties getting together for a Bud Lite, but we need a policy response to the serious issue of racial profiling.
In what now seems prescient, for the past few months we have asked folks to share their racial profiling stories with us on the air at WAOK. A 60-year old bus driver says that he is routinely stopped on his way home after his graveyard shift ends while traveling through a mostly-white suburban neighborhood, by the same officer each time. A young man says that he has been stopped so many times that he has learned not to put fancy rims on his wheels or tint on his windows and never travel with more than one other person. And then there was the Columbus, GA, case a few years back resulting in death of a man with no weapon, no criminal history, and no probable cause. He was out late with friends in a fancy SUV. The police could not imagine that he earned the money for the car as an insurance salesman.
We have gotten so many calls, that we are hosting a public hearing for elected officials and the public - September 15, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. at Mount Ephraim Church in Atlanta. Stay tuned.
Perhaps some definition would help. Racial profiling occurs when a law enforcement official (consciously or unconsciously) uses race or ethnicity as a proxy for probable cause. Racial profiling also occurs when blacks, Asians, Latinos, Arabs or other persons of color are treated more harshly (by a black or white officer) than a similarly situated white criminal suspect would be treated.
I am glad that Skip Gates raised hell, and glad that the President called the police conduct stupid because it gives us an opening to talk about a serious, pervasive race relations problem in America. Ever the soldier/statesman, Colin Powell told Larry King that almost every African American (including him) has faced a situation where they believe their race/ethnicity gets them in trouble with the police. That is where we need to begin.
Too many whites act as if blacks who complain about police mistreatment are "playing the race card" or imagining disparate treatment. One study showed that blacks get stopped more often than whites on suspicion of drug behavior, but that whites are twice as likely to actually possess drugs as blacks are when stopped.
I don't mind the President's beer fest too much - what can it really harm? But what we really need is calm, rational research and investigation into why blacks and other persons of color perceive negative disparate treatment. If an officer makes a stop, but no arrest, the basic statistics on race, gender need to be recorded for future study. A statute that would do just that in Georgia cannot make it out of the Capitol basement hearing room of the non-civil judiciary committee.
We also need to explore whether police are obligated to give some basic information to suspects - something like Miranda. For example, the arresting officer could say, "Mr. Gates, you are being ticketed because you were weaving over the line. If you believe my assessment was incorrect you have the right to a trial before a judge or jury. We will not be able to settle this matter here. If you think I am being unfair to you, you can file an internal affairs report with my supervisor." So often we hear of situations that escalate from 0-60, resulting in arrest for offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to obstruction because a suspect's questions are ignored at the scene.
There is nothing wrong with the opposing parties getting together for a Bud Lite, but we need a policy response to the serious issue of racial profiling.
In what now seems prescient, for the past few months we have asked folks to share their racial profiling stories with us on the air at WAOK. A 60-year old bus driver says that he is routinely stopped on his way home after his graveyard shift ends while traveling through a mostly-white suburban neighborhood, by the same officer each time. A young man says that he has been stopped so many times that he has learned not to put fancy rims on his wheels or tint on his windows and never travel with more than one other person. And then there was the Columbus, GA, case a few years back resulting in death of a man with no weapon, no criminal history, and no probable cause. He was out late with friends in a fancy SUV. The police could not imagine that he earned the money for the car as an insurance salesman.
We have gotten so many calls, that we are hosting a public hearing for elected officials and the public - September 15, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. at Mount Ephraim Church in Atlanta. Stay tuned.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sonia Sotomayor's Candor is Refreshing
In 1880, Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of America's most reknown jurists described the law this way, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."
Apparently Sotomayor's critics disagree with Holmes. Her remark about wise Latina women being better judges than white men of the causes and cures of discrimination has caused great consternation in the rightwing blogosphere. How could she not bring her experience as a Bronx born-and-raised Puerto Rican to the bench? Isn't that the point of diversity? That out of our disparate stories we weave a basket strong enough to capture our diverse culture.
The subtext is clear, however. Only Latinas (and blacks) who disavow their connection to (and responsibility for) a shared minority American experience are trustworthy enough to hold high office. Thus Clarence Thomas and Alito get a pass, while Sotomayor is called a racist.
I can't wait for the hearings.
From the first of twelve Lowell Lectures delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on November 23, 1880, which were the basis for The Common Law.
Apparently Sotomayor's critics disagree with Holmes. Her remark about wise Latina women being better judges than white men of the causes and cures of discrimination has caused great consternation in the rightwing blogosphere. How could she not bring her experience as a Bronx born-and-raised Puerto Rican to the bench? Isn't that the point of diversity? That out of our disparate stories we weave a basket strong enough to capture our diverse culture.
The subtext is clear, however. Only Latinas (and blacks) who disavow their connection to (and responsibility for) a shared minority American experience are trustworthy enough to hold high office. Thus Clarence Thomas and Alito get a pass, while Sotomayor is called a racist.
I can't wait for the hearings.
From the first of twelve Lowell Lectures delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on November 23, 1880, which were the basis for The Common Law.
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