Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

Nobody ever said using drugs is a good idea, but it's a bad idea turned nightmare when it comes to sentencing, especially if you are Black and the drug is crack cocaine. That nightmare is otherwise known as "mandatory minimums."

It works like this: If you're sentenced for crack cocaine (which has historically been disproportionately used by African Americans), you'll be sent to federal prison for far longer than your (predominately white) counterparts caught with powder cocaine. Same drug, same crime, yet a vast difference in the time you must serve.

To be specific: Under current law five grams of crack cocaine and 500 grams of powder cocaine trigger the same five-year sentence.  Fifty grams of crack cocaine and five kilograms of powder cocaine trigger the same 10-year sentence.  This creates what is commonly referred to as the 100-to-one ratio between crack and powder cocaine. (Source: Families Against Mandatory Minimums)

But things are about to change.

Today Congress approved a bill that would begin to remedy this by narrowing the disparities between mandatory crack and powder cocaine sentences. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 will next go to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law.


This is a major victory for prison reform advocates who have long pointed out the injustices in mandatory minimums.


According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, The Fair Sentencing Act would:

• Replace the 100-to-1 ratio with an 18-to-1 ratio (28 grams would trigger a 5-year mandatory minimum and 280 grams would trigger a ten-year mandatory minimum)
• Eliminate the five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine;
• Call for increased penalties for drug offenses involving vulnerable victims, violence and other aggravating factors; and
• Require a report on the effectiveness of federally funded drug courts.  (Source: Families Against Mandatory Minimums)

 The Sentencing Project, a national advocacy organization for prison reform, makes clear what's happened as a result of the injustice of sentencing disparities for drug offenses: 

 "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."

They said this about today's vote:

"[We have] long advocated for the complete elimination of the sentencing disparity that has doled out excessive and harsh penalties, and created unwarranted racial disparity in federal prisons. Currently, 80% of crack cocaine defendants are African American, and possession of as little as 5 grams of crack cocaine subject defendants to a mandatory five-year prison term. For decades the controversial cocaine sentencing law has exemplified the disparate treatment felt in communities of color and the harshness of mandatory minimum sentences..."

But be clear about this bill -- a disparity will still exist (the quantity disparity between crack and powder cocaine would move from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1) and the law would not be retroactive for people currently incarcerated with unfairly long sentences under current law. Today marks progress but not the end of the fight for prison reform and fairer sentencing.

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said, "While the bill doesn't completely eliminate the unjust and unjustifiable disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine that has decimated African-American communities across the nation, it will go a long way toward alleviating some of the pain felt in these communities..."

Minnesota's Pam Alexandar was on the leading edge in identifying and seeking to remedy these disparities on a local level when she was a Hennepin County judge. In 1991, she dismissed charges against five African American men accused of using crack cocaine because they would have faced a minimum 10 year sentence versus a 5 year sentence if they had been caught using powder cocaine. Their lawyer argued that this sentencing disparity resulted a violation of his clients' equal rights protections because overwhelmingly users of crack cocaine were African American. Alexander agreed and her ruling was later upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court (The Minnesota Legislature later addressed the matter by raising sentences for powder cocaine users, further swelling prison ranks and dodging the problems with mandatory minimums in general).

I wonder what she thinks of today's vote? Does it feel bittersweet? My guess is that she sees this day for what it is -- an important step in the right direction, but with oh so far to go before racial disparities in sentencing are but a bad dream from an unjust past.


July 30 Update:
An article in the July 30 Star Tribune, Congress affirms Hennepin County judges call, answers my question about Pam Alexandar and what she thinks about the Fair Sentencing Act. It also affirms her groundbreaking work on this issue two decades ago. Saying she had foresight is an understatement!


From the Star Tribune story:

"In 25 years on the bench, former Hennepin County Judge Pamela Alexander received her share of death threats. But none came as quickly as the day in 1991 when she ruled that it was racially biased and unfair to order different sentences for possessing crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine.


"The minute I handed down that opinion and it hit the news, I got death threats before I left work that day," Alexander said Thursday. "They said, 'You're letting all black defendants go; you're horrible and you need to die.'''


Nearly two decades after her controversial ruling, Congress finally followed Alexander's lead this week and narrowed the sentencing disparities between those caught with crack and powder cocaine...

...Despite the validation from Washington, Alexander isn't one to gloat. In fact, she's feeling rather bittersweet. "It's significant, but I feel kind of sad for all those young people in that 20-year time frame who have gone to prison for 10 or 15 years when they might have gotten less time or treatment and could have been contributing members of the community," said Alexander, 57, who directs the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Council on Crime and Justice." 

Amen, Judge. Amen

An Angie Stone kind of sultry day

 It's an Angie Stone kind of day. Luscious. Thick. Juicy. Sultry. Sweet. Smooth. Ahhhhhh.


I've had this one in my head all summer. Still can't get enough of it.
"I Wanna Thank Ya" feat. Snoop Dog


Angie Stone feat. Alicia Keys and Eve on "Brotha Part II"


GREAT live performance of "No More Rain (In this Cloud)"


And tearing it up with Betty Wright on "Baby"


I had the good fortune to see her perform live at the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis a few years back. Small venue, adoring fans, hot summer night. Highlight was the entire crowd doing a version of the Electric Slide to her cover of "Funkin' For Jamaica." Wish I had that on video! At least it's in my head.

'The Kids Are All Right' transcends being queer

 

Opinion Synopsis: 
We liked it, but didn't love it. A good summer film. Had its great moments and its flaws. Great acting, funny dialogue, believable lesbians and their kids, too much time spent on the donor, happy ending. A nice comedy about a family. 

Mild spoiler alert! 
Stop here if you don't want to know any more before you see the film.


Character key:
Moms
Nic (Annette Benning), an OB-GYN doctor
Jules (Julianne Moore), trying to find herself via starting a landscape design business
Kids
Joni (Mia Wasikowska),18 and about to head to college
Laser (Josh Hutcherson), 15 and somewhat lost in teenage boyhood
Sperm Donor
Paul (Mark Ruffalo), donated sperm for the cash and because it was more fun than donating blood. 

We gave it a two thumbs up, but not two big thumbs up. It's the kind of film that would have been fine to wait and see on DVD or at the Riverview, our favorite discount movie house, but for the tiny detail that the plot is built around a family headed by two lesbians and their two teenage kids are products of artificial insemination via an anonymous sperm donor. 


Since we haven't had a movie like that before, the stakes on it are very high - perhaps too high - within the queer community, especially the lesbian parenting community, and we've flocked to see it, comment on it, review it, and to love it or hate it.


I saw it with my spouse Susan this week and we both "just liked" it. We already knew the plot twisted around the kids finding their donor dad and one of the moms screwing him. We already knew there was wild debate within the lesbian community about whether that (the "het sex" as it is called in shorthand) made the movie a Hollywood sellout that capitulated to straight people (note director Lisa Cholodenko is queer, so the naysayers were disappointed in her, too).


But what makes the movie remarkable is this: It is first a spot-on portrayal of the complexities of modern American family life and is second a lesbian flick. 

Read more about this point in these great reviews by Vikki Reich at Up Popped A Fox, and Dana Rudolph at Mombian. As lesbian moms raising kids now with partners/spouses the stakes are pretty high for them for this movie, and they bring great insights to their reviews as a result. (My now-adult kids were raised during my straight marriage and then while I was a single lesbian mom, so my own stakes were different.) A terrific review of the movie by (gay dad) Dan Savage that details how the director took brave risks, yet could have pushed the plot even further is up at the New York Times. For balance, an extremely negative review that trashes the movie for the het sex and perceived capitulation to Hollywood and straight people can be found on The Lesbian Mafia.


Back to my review.

Having lesbian parents at the center of this family comedy adds layers of richness for we queer women folks. The script is deliciously speckled with dialogue and moments that are absolutely familiar and specific to lesbian relationships. And Annette Benning and Julianne Moore both give great performances that render those moments perfectly. Moments that transcend the narrow cast of them being a white, upper middle class family. My spouse, who is black, didn't raise my kids with me, or have kids of her own said after the movie, "I felt represented." As in "a part of my queer self was in that movie and it was a refreshing change from movies like this where the parents are always straight."


We both were annoyed but not outraged when Jules cheated on Nic by screwing the sperm donor. It could have been a woman and it would have read the same for us. It was about the cheating first, and about a man second.


And to the complaints that the only hot sex is the het sex, we didn't see any of the sex as all that hot. It was what it was. And think about this: It's common for two people in long term relationships who are busy with life and kids to have less sex, less good sex, and to have strayed emotionally from each other. The sex between Nic and Jules was in fact well rendered in that context. 


Our complaints are this: We wish the movie hadn't wasted so much screen time on the donor and the relationships he has with each mom and the kids. He was an interloper in their lives (Nic in fact calls him just that towards the end). He did nothing positive by entering their lives (invited by the kids who sought him out) other than answer some questions about what the donor might look and be like, and how his genes may or may not be reflected in the kids. The mess created by his boundarylessness and clueless interloping predictably turns this family upside down and then they rise up together, stronger and renewed in their rock-solidness at the end (a tried and true plot line about family life). We got tired of him and wish all that was captured in half the time the movie wasted on it (maybe that's my nod to the Hollywood capitulation).


I wish Cholodenko would have delved more into the kids. I would have loved more of the day to day between Nic and Jules. More sly dialogue and plot twists about life as a lesbian-headed family. More representation.


What I liked best about the film, despite these flaws, was it's everydayness. For years we lesbians have endured film after film with the same old tragic plot line: A solidly lesbian woman falls in love with a straight woman, has a torrid love affair, the straight woman can't or won't leave her straight life and goes off into the sunset to wherever she came from leaving the lesbian heartbroken/bitter/longing-for-something-she-can't-have. (Okay, we've also endured too many movies where lesbian love is ruined by a man. But I just don't see this movie as that.)

We watched those lesbian movies because we were desperate to see something, anything, that represented us, however flawed. We crammed together in movie houses and collectively gasped at "the kiss," at two women kissing. At the moment to not be invisible. 


For me, the ordinariness of the queer family in "The Kids Are All Right" is what makes it groundbreaking. They/we are queer. They/we are here. And they/we are "just a family." That we are clamoring for more, some of us demanding more, says we've come a very long way from being satiated by just a kiss.

AARP strikes fear and denial in 50-somethings

It started with this simple photo posted on Facebook by a friend with this comment: "Gift from AARP"

What followed was the best comment string I've read in a while. Here's a few choice ones:

• We are not that old yet!
• I'm 51 and refuse to join.....
• Actually joining has its benefits. It is not an "old fogey" org. lol
• I didn't get a free gift :( I did get my card though) I didn't want to join that club :)
• (From her twin sister) I am not eligible to join yet! You have to be 50 and over :)
• I got my card, bag, insurance...well what do you say? denial is not healthy. lol
• I love AARP and I use it all the time for hotels and rental cars. Been using it for years y'all!!
• AARP is a synonym for Senior Citizen. You're going to receive more junk mail for Seniors like crazy!
• All come on...it's beneficial and outside of that awful fanny pack...the benefits are GREAT! Even discounts at the movies. Besides. We're the NEW 50 somethings...I don't remember when I was young that 50 look as good as WE look. Ummmm maybe the phrase "when I was young". I wonder what we look like to 20 somethings?

I've been throwing membership mailings from the AARP in the trash for over four years now. Why such fear and denial? The AARP is more than benefits; they also lobby for older Americans. They are on our side, and will be even more so as we age. 

Yet collectively, when that dreaded membership mailing arrives just at our 50th birthdays (the first of many pitches to older people we are going to receive), we collectively scream in our heads or out loud, "BUT I'M NOT OLD YET! I DON'T LOOK LIKE MY PARENTS DID THEN. NOT AT ALL! I'M STILL HIP! NOOOOO!!!!"

Oh denial, you are such a sweet, kind friend.

Fellow baby boomers, we need to get over ourselves. We are there. We are on the young side of old. Most of us have grown kids. Many of us are grandparents. I know, it is harder to admit in our 50s and this is not a pitch to join the AARP (but I'm going to finally do it as soon as I finish this post -- after checking the website they do have great benefits and you can even get deals sent to your smart phone). I'm just saying don't be afraid of what it represents in our lives. 

Then put on your best club clothes and get out there and get your dance on. So what if kids your kids' ages (or younger) are filling the dance floor (or you bump into your actual kids there). 

Now that's not denial, that's living! 

Just make sure your heels aren't too high so you can walk the next day.

Girl child at the lake

I'm just back from a week's vacation at "the lake," a time honored Minnesota ritual for anyone lucky enough to have a lake place in the north country, or at least access to one. In my case, it's my dad's place. I've been heading up north since I was eight or so, when my dad, his two brothers, and my grandpa bought a small cabin on a lake near Grand Rapids. They crammed us all in -- the aunts, uncles, cousins. Nearly fifty years later we all head there still, with our (now adult) kids and sprouting grandkids in tow. 

A few years back my daughter and I dipped her daughter's infant toes in the water, christening the first of the fifth generation to travel there. Now that infant is five and jumping off the dock, like I did, opening her eyes underwater to look at fish, and scratching mosquito bites by night. This trip she exclaimed, "Grandma, look at the sun on the water! It's making diamonds!" My heart lurched at our shared love of the "diamonds on water." A circle back to my childhood and forward again.

Back home, I remembered a piece I wrote years ago about being a kid at the lake. Nothing's changed except the generations.

Girl child at the lake

I am ten years old and standing on the end of the dock. High noon in July – 85 degrees. Bright sun, blue sky, gentle breeze. Sugar Lake. Sissebakwet the Ojibwe name. My blonde blonde hair waves and whispers gently against my sunburned cheeks. My thin, lean body stretches to the water and jumps in. Cool cool surrounds me, and soft sand tickles my toes. I glide up to the surface for air and keep my eyes right at the waterline to stare across the lake at its tree-filled backdrop. The air smells lakey – a mix of fish, water, weeds, trees. I dive down again, opening my eyes to look for minnow friends.

Everything is possible and I am lying in wait for what’s to come.

Later, stretched out on the dock, my belly pressing into the sun bleached, splintery wood planks, my back hot hot from the sun bath, I can’t feel the edges between sky, earth, water, me. We just are. I just am.

This place of grace, this state of grace is in me still. That girl child runs roughshod through my veins. We are singing loudly, she and I, like a choir praising the power and the glory forever and ever amen. We are swimming in clear blue water and sunning on the dock. We hold hands and giggle, lying in wait for what’s to come.

Everything is possible. Still.

 

Fear of a Black President

The Tea Party, which is the epicenter of post-racial right wing conservatism, is at its roots all about race. The party's supporters, (un)affectionately know as Tea Baggers, and others like them, are at their roots, all about race. About being racist. About "Fear of the Black Man."

And what set off their maelstrom of hatred and lunacy? Was it that their daughter married a black man? No. This is 21st century fear and loathing. It's their worst nightmare come true: "Their" country (not "ours") elected a black man president.

I am 54. Demographers say the U.S. will become majority people of color in about 30 years. I'm hoping I live to see it. In the meantime, this fear-hatred-take-back-what-we-think-we've-lost mentality is menacing to me. Because it could get ugly. Way uglier. The right is systematically organizing, using fear as their central tactic. And the crazies are getting crazier. The central theme? Everything Obama does is a conspiracy against white people. For real.

Tim Wise nails it. Read every word of his latest entry in his dairy: Black Power's Gonna Get you Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism.

Here's a few excerpts, but please. Read. It. All.

"Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism.

Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad.

What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?

Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?

No.

Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same?

No.

Was it the massive nationwide study that estimated at least 1 million cases of blatant job discrimination against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans each year, affecting roughly one-in-three job seekers of color?

No.

Is it the fact that black males with college degrees are almost twice as likely as their white male counterparts to be out of work?

No...

...Maybe it was because of those guys over at the popular right-wing website, FreeRepublic.com who called the President's daughter, Malia, "typical ghetto trash," and a "whore" whose mother likes to entertain her by "making monkey sounds?"

No.

Or perhaps they finally had enough when they heard about how Rep. Ciro Rodriguez was called a "wetback" by one of his constituents and told to go back to Mexico?

No.

Or maybe it was that lawmaker in South Carolina who called both President Obama and Republican Gubernatorial candidate (and Indian American) Nikki Haley, "ragheads?"

No...

...It is none of this. Neither the evidence of systemic discrimination against people of color in every walk of American life, nor the repeated examples of blatant racism directed towards people of color individually moves them.

But they're angry nonetheless about racism in America.

They're especially angry about the tax being placed on those who use tanning salons. Because this is racist. Against white people. No, seriously.

Oh, and the President criticized a white police officer for arresting a black man for a crime that, turns out, the black man didn't actually commit, according to state law. That Obama would do such a thing--namely, criticize an officer for making an unjustified arrest--means that white police officers are "under assault" from Obama, and that the President is trying to "destroy" the white officer, no doubt because he's white.

Oh, and since people of color disproportionately lack health care coverage, the President's plan for expanding coverage is obviously a racist scheme to get reparations for slavery...

...Oh, and the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. And she's a Latina, who notes that she sees the world through the lens of her experience, and that she hopes that experience would positively inform her decision-making. And that means she's a bigot. And the fact that Obama nominated her, as well as Eric Holder, proves that he "views white men as the problem" in America, and that the only way you can get promoted by Obama is "by hating white people."...

...Yes indeed, they all agree, Obama is a "reverse racist" who has a deep-seated hatred of white people...

...And for sure, Obama is the reason race relations are so strained: not because of the ongoing discrimination against people of color, which the data indicates is commonplace, or because of the incendiary rhetoric coming from conservative commentators...

...Or by a prominent conservative commentator insisting that white men are experiencing the same kind of oppression that blacks faced for years, even as that commentator has previously reminisced fondly about the days of segregation... 

...Or perhaps by having a right-wing talk show host announce a plan for conservatives to "take back the civil rights movement," and compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr. This, even though conservatives were almost uniformly opposed to the movement and King, and even though the talk show host's favorite authors, whose work he promotes regularly, viewed the movement as a communist conspiracy and referred to civil rights activists as animals...

...No, none of those things could strain race relations, or further racism.

And certainly not when compared to a tanning booth tax.

While on the face of it, these kinds of right-wing inanities may seem so absurd as to hardly merit being taken seriously, it's important to step back and think about the internal logic of even the most outlandish claims. I mean, no one can honestly believe that health care reform is reparations...

...But the intellectual strength of the claims is not the issue. It doesn't matter. From a political perspective, even the most insane-sounding claim about Obama's supposed hatred for white people makes sense. It's a perfect way to prime white racial fears and anxieties, to say, in effect, they're coming for your money white folks, and then your children. In a nation where the population will be half people of color within 25-30 years, and where the popular culture is now thoroughly multicultural (and thus many of the icons don't look the way they used to), and where the President doesn't fit a lot of people's conception of what such a person is supposed to look like, and where the economy is in the toilet for millions, playing upon white anxiety is the perfect recipe for political mobilization.

They've said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it.

Did you read that? One more time, for the record:  

"They've [white right wing conservatives] said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it."

Need a little something after reading all that? Me, too.

Here's Tracy Chapman's prophetic "Talkin' About a Revolution" to sip on.

LeBron James/Oscar Grant

As I sat in a bar tonight celebrating a friend's birthday the TV on the wall was broadcasting live the spectacle otherwise know as LeBron James announcing he will play for the Miami Heat. At about the same time my Twitter feed was lighting up with news of the insane injustice otherwise known as the cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant and got convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

Baratunde Thurston, aka Jack Turner at Jack and Jill Politics says it far better than I could, so here you go:

Oscar Grant will not be playing for Miami cause he was murdered by a cop

Excerpt:

In July 2010 America came to a standstill and watched television as Lebron James held a much-hyped press conference to announce he would be leaving Cleveland to play for the Miami Heat.  In January 2009 America came to a standstill and watched YouTube as BART transit officer Johannes Mehserle pulled out his gun, pointed it at an unarmed, pinned down Oscar Grant, and shot him in the back. Today, Cleveland wept as it lost a star basketball player. Today, Oakland wept as a Los Angeles jury returned a guilty verdict of involuntary manslaughter in Mehserle’s trial.

We have seen this movie before, and it’s genre is Horror, but it also goes by the labels Absurdity, Farce and Injustice...

...Two black men dominated the news this evening. Lebron James was honored with national attention as he announced his plans for future success. Oscar Grant was dishonored as his death was treated like a nuissance. Maybe Grant should have been a better basketball player.

 

I got nothing more for you but outrage.

And if you are not outraged then you have truly not been paying attention.

At all.

7/9 Update -- Read this fierce poem by outraged poet Christy NaMee Ericksen: My Son Runs in Riots

President Obama: Yes he is!

Need a list of our President's accomplishments to date to carry around in your back pocket? Well here it is, electronically anyway. Rachel Maddow brilliantly sums up the astonishing accomplishments of Barack Obama during the less than two years he has been in office.

Watch this clip and save it (or memorize it) should you need a reminder of how great this man is, and what he is doing to make our country (and our world) a better place. And Maddow doesn't even mention his nomination of two exceptional women to the Supreme Court (who are both young, with the potential to serve for years).

To my fellow progressive friends who complain he is not doing enough, that he has capitulated to the middle: Get over it.

That President Obama has accomplished this much after inheriting a nation in economic free fall and suffering from nearly a decade of repressive politics is astonishing. That he has accomplished this much while being under constant virulent attack from the far right, and while enduring the ugly onslaught of the overt and covert racism at the core of their tea bagging insanity, is the true measure of his character.

Maddow sums it up by saying, "The last time any president did this much in office, booze was illegal. If you believe in policy, if you believe in government that gets things done, cheers to that."

Amen, sister.