This movie needed to be made. It really exposed a grave injustice affecting american people. i knew the problem was bad but I dint realize to which extend..Its disturbing to see peopele evicted of the hospitals because no money.. American can thank Michael Moore for this revealing movie, hopefully some politicians and journalists that care enough will capitalizes and try to revolution for a free health care on the US..

Crack cocaine is an epidemic in Toronto. Smokers care not for anything. Addicts smokes, in hallways, stairways, elevators of appartement buildings, this contribute to a corrupted air. Children are exposed to fumes and smokes, it is highly probable that by age 10 a kid has becomes himself an addict without really having smoked.. generation whom otherwise would had contributed to the welfare of other is ruined.

Friends:

I just caught a short commentary in the July 3 Chicago Tribune (see below) and the first thought that ran through my mind was -- yet another American dilemma. 

Contrary to what the author writes, the "root of the problem" is never "lack of planning and poor management," a point we plainly recognize where the richer end of so-called "mixed-income" developments is concerned -- no lack of planning and no mismanagement where furthering these interests is concerned.  

The author notes that "Public, private and charitable money has so far subsidized demolition of CHA buildings and spurred real estate development" -- of course, as this was the plan.

But as the poorer- and overwhelmingly blacker end of "mixed-income" developments have been left out of this plan (i.e., have been planned out of the plan), it is an aversion of the facts for the author to warn of "the same old refrain when it comes to public housing," namely, that "Chicago is busily spearheading a land grab and the poor are bearing the costs."

This was the plan from Day One onward: A land-grab where the Chicago Housing Authority's thousands of acres of low-income residential buildings once stood. 

Driving out poor black people; turning over the publicly-owned land to private developers for more affluent, largely white folk who want to move back into the city's ever-growing Central Area; and making sure that as few of the original poor black folk who used to live in the CHA's high-rises get back into the new "mixed-income" developments -- this plan has succeeded.  Not failed.

Who's fooling whom? -- Letters to the Chicago Tribune: ctc-tribletter@tribune.com.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Chicago Tribune
July 3, 2007
Breaking promises at the CHA
Many new units not going to ex-residents
Sudhir Venkatesh

Chicago is at the midpoint of the largest public works project since World War II. The demolition of 22,000 public housing units is part of an ambitious plan to revitalize blighted neighborhoods and offer new hope to the city's poor. Most Chicagoans have watched the high-rises being demolished. The signs of progress are clear in the townhouses and condominiums coming up near Cabrini-Green, the United Center and other parts of the West and South Sides.

The new development augurs change for the better, but behind the scenes, a far more troubling story is developing. To obtain r esident support as well as federal funding, Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago Housing Authority promised residents access to the newly built "mixed-income" developments. After relocating from the projects, CHA tenants had the choice to return and live among middle-class families in the developments. Ninety percent of CHA residents chose this legal right to return. But there are thousands who have been patiently waiting, some for more than a decade. Today, as the new mixed-income communities fill up, two-thirds of the CHA families on the waiting list find their applications are being denied. The CHA has hinted that it may look elsewhere to fill the units reserved for CHA tenants. This act would be a broken promise to the tenants.

Part of the difficulty for CHA families lies in the strict criteria built into the mixed-income leases, such as mandatory drug testing and 30-hour-per-week work requirements. Even though most applicants are actually viable candidates for the new apartments, they are getting caught up in the CHA's missteps. When an eligible CHA family cannot be found, the developers may turn over apartments set aside for the poor to higher-income buyers. For Chicago, this results in a further loss of affordable housing and lost opportunities t o create diverse neighborhoods.

The CHA's lack of planning and poor management is at the root of the problem. The agency has consistently failed to give tenants the necessary resources to help them qualify for a new unit. The CHA's service programs are underfunded, with less than 15 percent of tenants using them.

To make matters worse, the CHA has turned over its screening duties to private developers -- who themselves complain that they are not trained social workers and have no expertise in assisting low-income families. The CHA cannot simply withdraw and expect private market firms to act as effective social service agencies.

The mayor and the CHA must be held accountable for their promise that tenants will have access to decent, affordable housing.

In its defense, the CHA has had almost no civic and philanthropic support for family services. Public, private and charitable money has so far subsidized demolition of CHA buildings and spurred real estate development.

The CHA needs to get the mixed-income experiment back on track. Otherwise, we will hear the same old refrain when it comes to public housing: Chicago is busily spearheading a land grab and the poor are bearing the costs.

[ Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociology professor at Columbia University and has written about public housing in Chicago for two decades. ]  

Friends: 

Finally -- the voice of Europe's masses is heard!

"Financial Times/Harris Poll: EU Citizens Want Referendum on Treaty," Harris Interactive, June 18, 2007
"Europeans see US as threat to peace," Daniel Dombey and Stanley Pignal, Financial Times, July 1, 2007    

Good for the Europeans. -- But I think that all of this fine talk needs to be backed up with some concrete action.  A ban on international flights, for example.  Divestment of all U.S.-dollar-denominated assets.  And an absolute ban on purchases or transfers of U.S. manufactured arms and military-related materiel to any member state of the European Union. Also, the closing down of all U.S. military bases on EU territory.  And this just for starters. 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

JD:

Great stuff.  Thanks for highlighting it.

To reiterate:

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al. (No. 05-908), Chief Justice John Roberts, U.S. Supreme Court, June 28, 2007

Stephen Breyer's dissent is 76 pages long, and can be found on pages 109 - 185 of the PDF.  According to the New York Times, in reading from his dissent in Court, Breyer added that ''It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.''  ("Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration," Linda Greenhouse, June 29, 2007.)

Forget all of the legalese and precedents: The two most important passages in John Paul Stevens' dissent were these:

There is a cruel irony in THE CHIEF JUSTICE's reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955).  The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.”... This sentence reminds me of Anatole France's observation: “[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” THE CHIEF JUSTICE fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools

…………

The Court has changed significantly since it decided [School Committee of Boston v. Board of Education] in 1968.  It was then more faithful to [1954's Brown v. Board of Education] and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision.  

In response to these two quotes, the ingenuity -- indeed, the cunning -- of American racism is near limitless.  Recall, moreover, that Stevens was added to the Court in 1975, as a quote-unquote "conservative" justice.  

And this is the country that once lectured the South African regime about Apartheid!

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

I think an assumption of mine is that Education is key to Equal Opportunity. But equal education doesn't necessarily come from one generation of academic equality: it may trace back several generations, with each generation building on the prior one; making educational affirmative action pragmatic in addressing educational history and locale disparities. Yet, there may be a point to the Supreme Court's majority opinion that “binary” “white/non-white” & “black/‘other'” racial criteria are inadequate before the law, when it comes to diversity and affirmative action, as other demographics may come into play. These binary oppositions may be expedient in identifying general inequalities in historical educational equality in a certain locale and time (I think Justice Breyer claims they do fit the locales in question), but can “insultingly” (for some) fail as a general identifier of educational inequality, and especially fail as measures of diversity. (I put “insultingly” in quotes, because the system & history is at fault here, not any peoples in general—it can be insulting to say “you have an inferior educational history,” both to the well, and not well-educated; it can be like calling some “ignorant,” when in fact the system has created “victims” who may have not had equal tools of self-empowerment available for generations). The Supreme Court's majority opinion may be right to point out the School Districts' failure to aspire to an ideal (that would deal only with educational discrimination and/or diversity)—but the decision may fail to allow for some less than ideal pragmatic solution to the educational inequality; i.e. the “white/non-white,” and “black/‘other'” discriminators. One wishes the court would at least be satisfied with a more complex criteria for determining both diversity integration and affirmative action—that would not be too complex to implement in reality. Remarks on expediency v. ideals might have made a better dissenting, rather than a majority opinion here. (Maybe Justice Kennedy was trying to force a Change towards a more ideal equitable refinement of criteria, despite Justice Breyer's claims that the status quo may be apt in This situation). P.S.: Justice Stevens' Anatole France quote in his dissenting remarks was golden: “[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread”

“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Justice Breyer said. I think it is with these words that Justice Breyer may have been suggesting the senate was in effect mislead when now Chief Justice Roberts claimed his respect for the principle of “stare decisis;” and more “changes” may be in store ahead. What about affirmative action? To take the “high ground,” with Chief Justice Roberts saying, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race” is to step outside of history, and not try to correct imbalances due to past injustices. Is there no call for restitution (at a general level, despite a number of exceptions)? Busing children farther simply for diversity may be a good idea, but ultimately hopeless (there are entire regions that are heavily weighted towards certain demographics)—but the integration issue, as I understand it, has as much to do about fairness and affirmative action as it does about fighting segregation (but maybe I'm wrong on this case). Often people talk about core issues of giving everyone an equally excellent education—and ideally this would not require bussing kids from one neighborhood to another (which is common, when certain kids have special needs that only one school among many offer)—but until this is so, integration between different demographics seems like a good way to blend the educational disparities; and give students the opportunities afforded by diversity. (Maybe voters should be bused to different districts to get over political district gerrymandering too.) Why do we have “progressive” taxation? Will it next be deemed unfair to discriminate based on wealth? True, affirmative action might give an advantage to a few who don't need it (there's not enough affirmative action for the poor in general, imo)—but to not recognize that past injustices regarding race have NOT been completely resolved, is to be unfairly blind to all too recent history and the foreseeable future—and not to be impartial in this world, but rather impartial in some Utopia that doesn't exist (yet). I think I need to be clued in if the integration issue can be separated from the affirmative action issue (at all)—and if integration standards need be perceived as discrimination in themselves. Did the parents bringing up this case simply not want the hassle of busing their kids to another neighborhood? Or is it telling that their kids might get a lesser education? If the latter, then why would their claim to unfairness not be multiplied by the higher number of folks whose kids remain in the inferior education district. Ironically, the claim to unfairness would be a voice for those not winning the case: the question “why should my children go to an inferior school?” cuts both ways. Hopefully this issue could move people to funding education more equally across the nation, rather than any emphasis on local taxes, where poor neighborhoods get poorer education. But again, why isn't diversity a goal in itself too? This seems obvious to me, but one thing I learned as a youth at “Boys State” is that one person's “political common sense” is not necessarily another's—and hence not common at all.

An overemphasis on judicial activism to win political struggles no longer works. The gains made between 1954 and 1973 can best be protected by revitalizing popular support for them and not by expecting their defense (or more positive change) to come from Republican packed courts. A litigious approach not backed up by a substantial democratic "base" is setting ourselves up for future backsliding and channeling of energy into trying to hang on to whatever was once won.

Also, a politics that revolves around constitutional arcana and legalese isn't going to win us many friends in the voting public. Michael Moore's message--and the ethos it signifies--will resound with far more people. It's a shame there's no political organization to take up the struggle from there.  

Friends:

Although it is terribly misleading to portray this as a "liberal" - "conservative" struggle on the U.S. Supreme Court -- in truth, it is more a struggle in the degrees to which the institutions of the state are to be used to assist or to attack human beings -- Justice John Paul Stevens is a  ca. 1975 conservative, let us not forget -- nevertheless, the following commentary is quite helpful:

"In Steps Big and Small, Supreme Court Moved Right," Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, July 1, 2007 (as posted to Truthout) 

And I don't for one minute believe that we can neglect this deeply political apparatus. 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

JD:

Yes.  This is definitely what I had in mind:

"CounterAttack, Part One: How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career," Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch, December 17, 2004
"CounterAttack, Part Two: How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career," Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch, December 17, 2004

Thanks a million for finding it. 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. For a copy of the self-incriminating report that Cockburn and St. Clair discuss in the material hyperlinked above (i.e., self-incriminating in the sense of an artifact that illustrates an American dilemma):

The Washington Post
October 04, 1996, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
HEADLINE: Conspiracy Theories Can Often Ring True; History Feeds Blacks' Mistrust
BYLINE: Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post Staff Writer

When reports surfaced recently implying the CIA was behind the flood of cocaine into black neighborhoods of Los Angeles that ignited the 1980s crack epidemic, Donald Griffin was not surprised.

"It's something that has been happening for a long time," said Griffin, an African American who owns two barber shops in Baltimore. "I don't think it's anything new."

Neither the shortage of factual substantiation for the reports, published in August by the San Jose Mercury News, nor denials by government officials have had an impact on Griffin. In the African American community the allegations have hit a nerve, highlighting an inclination, born of bitter history and captured in polls, to accept as fact unsubstantiated reports or rumors about conspiracies targeting blacks.

"Over generations there has been a repeated demonstration that there is a basis in the black community for a feeling of attack, a feeling of harassment," said Yvonne Scruggs, executive director of the Washington-based Black Leadership Forum.

Significant numbers of African Americans, for instance, believe the government deliberately makes drugs easily available in their communities, introduced the AIDS epidemic to harm blacks and unfairly targets black elected officials for criminal prosecution, according to public opinion polls.

Many blacks have stopped buying certain soft drinks and fast foods after hearing rumors, fully believed by some, that the foods and beverages contained secret ingredients designed to sterilize black men.

Some black leaders have fed these fears. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, for instance, has long blamed the drug epidemic on the government and promoted the theory that AIDS is part of a government plot.

Conspiracy fears involving various arms of the federal government crop up all across America, from far-right militia groups to leftist fringe groups. And polls have shown large numbers of people view the federal government as a threat to their rights and freedoms. But these suspicions run much deeper among blacks, for whom, analysts say, the widespread distrust of the government dates to the legal sanctioning of slavery and has been kept alive by more than a few shreds of evidence.

Among the cases cited most frequently to explain those fears are disclosures that the FBI spied on civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., and infiltrated black militant groups in the 1960s in an effort to foment division. For years, many southern police departments were suspected of having ties to the Ku Klux Klan, a view sharpened by the cross burnings and other racist attacks on blacks during the civil rights era that often went unpunished.

Many African Americans in the District point to the 1990 FBI sting that caught Mayor Marion Barry smoking crack cocaine given to him by a former lover as an example of authorities going too far to bring down a black elected official.

Also, black leaders and academics cite the infamous Tuskegee experiment that ran for 40 years until 1972 and followed the progress of syphilis in 399 mostly uneducated black men who were left untreated -- contrary to their belief -- so that government researchers could track the natural course of the disease.

"It is not at all astonishing that people feel this way. It is just a continuation of what people have observed through the years," said Patricia A. Turner, a professor at the University of California-Davis and author of a book about rumor in African American culture.

Often, the history of victimization of black people allows myth -- and, at times, outright paranoia -- to flourish.

Many African Americans, for instance, believe that Charles Drew, the black Washington physician whose pioneering work with blood plasma saved thousands of lives, died after a car accident in 1950 because he was denied treatment at a whites-only hospital. But Drew actually died as white surgeons who happened to recognize him worked to save his life, according to a Drew biography. For African Americans, though, the myth fits a larger historical reality: that a man who had benefited medicine for all races died because of anti-black attitudes.

Sales of Tropical Fantasy, a soda produced by a firm that employs a large percentage of minorities in a depressed section of Brooklyn, N.Y., plummeted several years ago after mysterious leaflets appeared in black neighborhoods warning that the beverage was manufactured by the Ku Klux Klan and contained stimulants to sterilize black men.

Investigations found the claims to be as preposterous as they appeared. But sales recovered only after an extensive public relations campaign that included then-New York City Mayor David N. Dinkins, who is black, drinking a bottle of the soda for television news cameras. Similar unfounded rumors about Klan involvement periodically have plagued the Church's Fried Chicken chain and Snapple soft drinks.

Despite the long history of drug and other rumors in black communities, nothing has provoked such widespread interest and outrage as the Mercury News series about cocaine sales and the CIA. It has been seized upon by black leaders, provided a constant topic for black radio talk shows and been ballyhooed in local black newspapers across the country. The newspaper sent the stories out to African American opinion-makers and has put the articles on its Internet web site, where they have been widely read.

While the stories only implied a CIA link, they did echo credible evidence examined, but never fully resolved, by a Senate committee in the late 1980s of drug dealing by CIA-backed rebels seeking to overthrow the former leftist government of Nicaragua. The notion that the government -- or some powerful, unseen hand -- is involved in drugs fits the daily reality of many African Americans. Griffin, for instance, said that drugs are plentiful in neighborhoods that often are devoid of supermarkets and banks, and he has no doubt the government could do something about that if it wanted to.

"If you are going to advocate 'say no to drugs,' then do something about it," he said. ". . . If they put their mind to it, it could be stopped."

Whispers of a government conspiracy to dump drugs in black neighborhoods go back at least to the Vietnam War years. Then, the rumor was that heroin was promoted to squelch rising black militancy across the nation. No proof was ever presented, but that hardly mattered.

"I think these things are believed for a couple of reasons," said Jennifer L. Hochschild, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. "One, there is some real evidence of some of them. . . . Also, these things are taken to be illustrations of racism that blacks know to be true, but find it hard demonstrating."

The latest reports have been denied by the director of the CIA, who said the agency and its operatives had nothing to do with the spread of crack. He has asked the agency's independent inspector general to investigate the matter. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Attorney General Janet Reno also have promised investigations.

But the denials have not cooled the furor over the stories, which also is being fanned by seasoned conspiracy theorists, from political extremist Lyndon LaRouche to activist Dick Gregory.

Gregory -- who has blamed the King assassination on a tangled government conspiracy and attributed the string of black child murders that baffled Atlanta authorities before a black record promoter was arrested in 1981 to secret federal interferon experiments -- has been arrested in protests at the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

And Gregory said that is only beginning. "We're talking about demonstrations across this country," he said at a recent news conference. "Nothing in the history of this planet is as vile as what we're about to uncover. As bad as slavery was, white folks never accused us of jumping on the boat." But, he said, black people have been blamed for the scourge of drugs.

But deep concern over the CIA drug allegations is coming from more circumspect quarters as well.

Jesse L. Jackson is one of many African American leaders who have called for an investigation of the allegations raised in the Mercury News articles: "We must leave no stone unturned to either end the rumor or capture the culprits."

He said the idea that the CIA may have abetted drug dealing in the black community is "painful but believable." He said both the historical and "circumstantial" evidence leave him no other choice.

Joe Madison, an NAACP national board member, has dedicated his Washington talk show to the issue and has held news conferences to bring the issue into the national spotlight. He also has been arrested in protests staged in reaction to the reports.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke (D), a former federal and state prosecutor, fired off a series of letters to congressional leaders and fellow mayors asking for support in pressing for a thorough congressional investigation.

As is the case in many largely poor, black communities, Baltimore has been hard hit by drugs: An estimated one out of 14 residents in the city is an addict and some 56 percent of the city's young black males are in jail, named in warrants or on probation or parole -- mostly as a result of drug-related charges.

Civil rights leader Joseph Lowery, attending one of Madison's news conferences, also demanded an investigation. "We have never stopped believing for a moment that there was not some government complicity in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.," he said. "This is a continuation of government involvement in dastardly deeds."

Even if a major investigation into the allegations is done, it is unlikely to quell the certainty among many African Americans that the government played a role in bringing the crack epidemic to black communities. "Who in the world in the CIA organization is going to stand up and testify that this is true?" Griffin said. "I think it's a joke. I think the government will very well try to cover up the situation."

I'm not sure if this is the Whiteout chapter 2 excerpt you're looking for: http://www.counterpunch.org/webb12172004.html

Peter Ward:

Thanks for sharing your experiences in Brooklyn.  I can't address the local situation there, but what you describe about police enforcement and racially discriminatory "drug" arrests and incarceration are indeed quite routine for urban America.  As of June 30, 2006 (note that there is always a good 12 month time-lag in data such as this), there were a total 2,245,189 inmates locked-up in U.S. prisons and jails (Federal, state, and local).  This number is 2.8% higher than it was as of June 30, 2005; and in sheer terms, is higher than at any other time in U.S. history, having risen on an unrelenting basis for 30 years.  ("Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006," Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, June, 2007.)  Factoring-in the number of persons on probation or parole in the U.S. system of criminalization (sometimes referred to as the "adult U.S. correctional population"), which by the end of 2005 stood at 4,946,944 (or 4,162,536 adult men and women on probation, plus another 784,408 on parole ("Probation and Parole in the United States, 2005," Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, November, 2006)), we find that as of the year 2006, there were approx. 7.2 million adult men and women who had been drafted into the "U.S. correctional population."  (And by today, there most certainly is.)

According to the invaluable work of the Sentencing Project (see their "Racial Disparity" webpage ):

More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.

Like virtually every other U.S. law, the malicious, punitive aspects and mandatory sentencing associated with so-called "drug laws" are profoundly unjust, and wouldn't be fit for enforcement against rats and cockroaches, let alone human beings.

I'm not aware of an online source for Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout.  (If somebody can provide a hyperlink to a CounterPunch article related to this book, I'd appreciate it.)

But the original Gary Webb series has found an Internet home: "Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion," Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News, August, 1996 (as posted to the Narco News website).

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

It might not be too bad a thing for folks working for change to not get wrapped up around the axle over happenings in courts. Ralph Nader backhandedly acknowledged as much by doing more straight up politics than legal briefs after decades of effort in the latter arena.

Also, we won't have to suffer as much Court TV, celebrity "legal affairs correspondents", and more arid press releases, irrelevancies, and apolitical (or "apolitical--therefore extremely political" as Arundhati Roy put it) activism from lawyer led outfits like HRW, ACLU, etc. Or, at best their efforts would be put on the same plane as work of organizations like Red Cross and not be taken as somehow being the very spearhead of "civil society" politics.

Ajit:

Good to hear from you. -- We might adopt the principle you've just named -- i.e., Garbage-In-Garbage-Out, or the GIGO Principle --and see how far it applies to all of the phenomena more or less fairly identified with the "United States of America."  Nor am I joking.  Every time in recent years (i.e., since right-wing court-packing really came of age) when a Supreme Court decision went in a direction that I believe any decent society would affirm (e.g., Hamdi v. Rumsfeld et al., June 28, 2004; Hamdan v. Rumsfeld et al., June 29, 2006), I've always noted that we had very little reason to celebrate the decision, and even less reason to regard it as a case of the Court upholding "The Constitution" and U.S. law, as the simple addition of one or two more right-wingers to the bench, and it's bound to be reversed, no matter what.  Then what are we going to do? 

But we are already there, I'm afraid.  And the Supreme Court is hardly the place for us to turn for protection of our basic rights.  Much less emancipation from unjust laws and tyranny.  

Add to this the fact that the Supreme Court has elected to hear arguments in the American Gulag cases (i.e., roughly, to review the right of the U.S. Government to declare a person an "unawful enemy combatant," and to detain this person without trial), and we must face the fact that, sooner rather than later, the Court will be in a position to openly side with domestic tyranny.  Because the Scalia - Thomas - Roberts - Alito bloc belongs to the “long-wave” that the American political culture is undergoing.  And every little check on the domestic tyranny is overturnable, ultimately, before the altar of this Modern Prince.

  the U.S. Supreme Court's shocking yet inevitable 5-to-4 judgment yesterday that American "public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student's race" -- 

          When you have rotten justices you get rotten rulings. It's GIGO...Garbage In Garbage Out.

 

I live in a poor black neighborhood in Brooklyn and am now confronted on a daily basis some of the realities that I have hitherto only read about. Among these is the power of the New York police (undercover, presumably NARC units) to stop and search people on the street without anything describable as probable cause. There is currently an histeria about the loss of civil liberities, attributed to Bush, among the more privelged classes (i.e., middle-class liberals), but many, especially blacks, have never had civil liberties to begin with. The humiliation of being searched (as well as much worse abuses such as the CIA-sponcered crack epidemic of the 80's*) is normalcy for these folks, and has been since slavery was abolished and "the man" didn't know what do with the "restless negro."