The never-ending fight for civil rights

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It was a milestone that came and went with minimal political fanfare, the 60th anniversary of the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.

Though the political world has had a lot on its mind, it’s important to remember just how revolutionary this sweeping legislation was, and how the rights conferred in it to Americans left behind must be constantly and fiercely protected.

Just as those resistant to American progress managed to replace Reconstruction with Jim Crow, violence and neglect for many decades until citizens nonviolently fought back during the civil rights movement, the powers behind Project 2025 and similar manifestos are architects of modern-day movements that would turn the clock back, and restore basic rights to the few.

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Jul112024 TAGS: , , , , ,

Rep. Alma Adams on House business and the state of her state

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Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat who represents the 12th District of North Carolina, wants to tell you and her constituents that, despite the dysfunction that makes the headlines, she and her colleagues have been attending to the people’s business. There are the issues close to her heart, such as affordable health care, closing the maternal health gap for minority moms and providing family care. There is her work supporting historically Black colleges and universities, healthy nutrition programs and more. So, what do we need to know?

Adams joins Equal Time to talk about bipartisan progress, election-year politics and the state of her battleground state.

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Jun282024 TAGS: , , , , ,

Will the real Donald Trump get the coverage he deserves?

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“Donald Trump tries courting Black voters at Detroit church with Michigan up for grabs in 2024 election” was just one of the headlines that the presumed Republican presidential nominee must have loved. The recent event drew lots of media attention, if only for its “man bites dog” novelty. It was Trump doing the unexpected, going after a constituency that the Democrats supposedly have locked up.

What a Trump thing to do!

The only problem with the stop was something that some but by no means all coverage bothered to note: A significant number of the attendees were white. Nothing wrong with that, of course. I’m sure the pastor of 180 Church welcomes all.

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Jun282024 TAGS: , ,

American history turned upside down — and that’s the point

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It turns out Nikki Haley stumbling over the cause of the Civil War was not a one-off.

The topsy-turvy twisting of American history, as it applies to Black Americans — their resilience and contributions despite injustice — is a tactic, a well-planned cynical one. And recent perpetrators don’t even have the decency to make a half-hearted attempt at backtracking, as Haley eventually and reluctantly managed to do after being called out on her amnesia about slavery.

Now politicians are standing proudly as they try to co-opt the language and history of the Civil Rights movement, which fought for equal rights for all and forced America to take a step toward living up to its ideals.

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Jun132024 TAGS: , , , , ,

Women’s voices on justice for Black men

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“We Refuse to Be Silent: Women’s Voices on Justice for Black Men” is a just-released collection of essays. Unfortunately, the need for such voices has been consistent and essential throughout America’s history. Thirty-five journalists, authors, scholars, ministers, psychologists, counselors and others raise their voices — now, and until solutions are in place.

Angela P. Dodson, the collection’s editor and the author of “Remember the Ladies: Celebrating Those Who Fought for Freedom at the Ballot Box,” is the guest on this episode of Equal Time; she is joined by New Orleans-based journalist Lottie Joiner, one of the book’s contributors. (Full disclosure: I’m also a contributor to the collection.)

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Jun102024 TAGS: , ,

Trump’s mini-mes in uniform are waging war on American institutions

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The scene would be funny if it weren’t so sad and dangerous: a lineup of grown men and women, the men dressed in matching dark suits and red ties, praising their leader and trashing the United States justice system when most should have been in Washington, D.C., doing their jobs.

Members of the Republican Party who say they believe in “law and order” should just stop using that phrase in their messaging, since they seem to believe the law only applies to other people and disorder is justifiable if it’s used to grab on to and maintain power.

In this land of “rugged individualism,” when standing up for truth and character is uplifted, even if it means standing alone, we instead saw men in the uniform of their leader Donald Trump. Some of them — former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida — were probably auditioning for the role of vice president on the Republican ticket. Others were there to get in front of the cameras and on the right side of the base.

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Jun102024 TAGS: , ,

Blocking voters you don’t like is a shameful American tradition

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After the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution — abolishing enslavement, awarding citizenship to Black Americans and guaranteeing their right to vote (Black men, anyway) — it was a time of progress and celebration.

African Americans were elevated to positions in cities, states and at the federal level, including American heroes such as Robert Smalls of South Carolina, first elected in 1874, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was well known by then, though. His sailing skills were crucial in a dramatic escape from enslavement that saw him hijack a Confederate ship he would turn over to the U.S. Navy.

But not everyone viewed the success of Smalls and so many like him as triumphs, proof of the “all men are created equal” doctrine in the Declaration of Independence. For some whites, steeped in the tangled myth of white supremacy and superiority and shocked by the rise of those they considered beneath them, the only answer was repression and violence, often meted out at polling places and the ballot box.

It didn’t matter that these newly elected legislators, when given power, promoted policies that benefited everyone, such as universal public schooling.

In incidents throughout the South, the White League and the Klan killed Black men who had the audacity to exercise their right to vote, intimidating and silencing those who considered doing the same. In the Colfax Massacre in April 1873, an armed group set fire to the Colfax, La., courthouse, where Republicans and freed people had gathered; between 70 and 150 African Americans were killed by gunfire or in the flames. In Wilmington, N.C., white vigilantes intimidated Black voters at the polls, and in 1898, in a bloody coup, overthrew the duly elected, biracial “Fusion” government.

Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” couching a return to white domination in the pious language of religion, not the first or last time God was used so shamelessly as cover.

The perpetrators then were Democrats, allied against Lincoln’s Republican Party.

Today, it’s most often Republicans — afraid they can’t convince a majority with ideas alone — who engage in tactics to shrink the electorate to one more amenable to a “Make America Great Again” promise, one that harks back to a time that was not so great for everyone.

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May092024 TAGS: , , , , ,

Playing by the rules? What a concept

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“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” All right, maybe people who said this or taught the saying to their kids as a sign of noble character never truly meant it. But they at least pretended to.

Are those times long gone? Well, a lot of folks who know better have been charged with trying to rig, not a game, but democracy. And, in some cases, their defiance of norms and laws is being rewarded and celebrated.

That certainly seems to have happened in Arizona.

Being indicted for involvement in a “fake electors” scheme to keep Donald Trump in the White House after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden did not hurt state Sen. Jake Hoffman at the Arizona GOP Convention over the weekend. Indeed, he was chosen as a Republican National Committee member.

“I’m humbled and honored to have been elected as the next RNC National Committeeman for Arizona!” Hoffman wrote on social media. “For the next 4 years I will work tirelessly to ensure that the RNC makes Arizona its #1 priority not only in 2024, but every year.”

When you consider what he is charged with doing in the 2020 election, Hoffman’s pledge, along with the fact that the term “fake electors” doesn’t need an explanation, presents a scary vision of the future. Being unhappy with the results of an election is understandable; subverting the will of your state’s voters to change the final score is not.

Hoffman will have his day in court, but he doesn’t seem one bit admonished by the charge as he carries that partisan energy into November. He was in good — or bad — company with others indicted not only in Arizona but also in Georgia for similar shenanigans, including former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Another defendant in the Arizona case, lawyer Christina Bobb, has found strong support in her party in her role as senior counsel to the Republican National Committee’s election integrity team.

That is not a joke.

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May022024 TAGS: , , , ,

Can a courtroom bring Trump’s larger-than-life personality down to size?

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“The Incredible Shrinking Man” is once again in the public eye. No, not the 1957 film that played on America’s fear of a radioactive unknown, as a hazy cloud turned its unwitting protagonist into a science experiment. Instead, the star of the 2024 show is a man many still fear — how else to explain his sometimes-hostile takeover of a major political party — who is becoming smaller and smaller as he sits behind a defendant’s table in a Manhattan courtroom.

Unlike the star of that unsettling 1950s warning, what landed Donald Trump in his predicament is no mystery. The case is somewhat complex, since it’s not about the what, a supposed payoff to an adult film star, but rather the why, to keep voters from punishing the man with visions of the presidency, and the how, by falsifying business records.

The players who will have their chance in the spotlight — the former fixer Michael Cohen, former staffer Hope Hicks, former tabloid guru David Pecker and the adult film actress herself, Stormy Daniels, to name a few — are all familiar parts of the world Trump created. So, it should be no surprise that this past is coming back to haunt him.

But what is a bit surprising is how quickly the man known for his bold, brash persona has been shrinking when faced with the harsh reality of a dreary courtroom and the rituals of a criminal trial.

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Apr242024 TAGS: ,

A reality check on crime and justice

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If it’s an election year, expect crime to be an issue. Candidates and parties draw conclusions with every headline, and exchange rhetoric that sheds more heat than light. But the history and reality of America’s criminal justice system is more complicated than a “tough on crime” slogan would indicate.

The just published “Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration” offers essays by scholars, advocates, people who have experienced incarceration and former law enforcement who make the case that public safety, justice and fairness are not only compatible as goals, but they can and must be achieved together. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the book’s editor, is the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where she leads the organization’s work to reduce America’s reliance on incarceration, and is the author of “Inside Private Prisons” (Columbia University Press, 2017) and a former prosecutor. She joins Equal Time to talk about why the book is especially timely in the present political climate.

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Apr192024 TAGS: , ,
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