2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Clinton Legacy Is Black Impoverishment—so Why Are We Still Voting for Hillary?
From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies that Bill Clinton enactedand Hillary Clinton supporteddecimated black America.BY: MICHELLE ALEXANDER
The Root, Posted: Feb. 10 2016
EXCERPT...
And it seems that were eager to get played. Again.
The love affair between black folks and the Clintons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president. He threw on some shades and played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. It seems silly in retrospect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a popular slogan was Its a black thing; you wouldnt understand, Bill seemed to get us. When Toni Morrison dubbed him our first black president, we nodded our heads. We had our boy in the White House. Or at least we thought we did.
Black voters have been remarkably loyal to the Clintons for more than 25 years. Its true that we eventually lined up behind Barack Obama in 2008, but its a measure of the Clinton allure that Hillary led Obama among black voters until he started winning caucuses and primaries. Now Hillary is running again. This time shes facing a democratic socialist who promises a political revolution that will bring universal health care, a living wage, an end to rampant Wall Street greed and the dismantling of the vast prison statemany of the same goals that Martin Luther King Jr. championed at the end of his life. Even so, black folks are sticking with the Clinton brand.
What have the Clintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political risks to defend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up to right-wing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a new era of hope and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization, globalization and the disappearance of work?
No. Quite the opposite.
CONTINUED...
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/02/the_clinton_legacy_decimated_black_america_so_why_are_we_still_voting_for.html
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)by Ansel Herz
The Stranger Jan 29, 2016 at 12:09 pm
Acclaimed "The New Jim Crow" author and Ohio State University professor Michelle Alexander, one of the first to draw the nation's attention to the mass incarceration problem, posted this to her Facebook page yesterday:
If anyone doubts that the mainstream media fails to tell the truth about our political system (and its true winners and losers), the spectacle of large majorities of black folks supporting Hillary Clinton in the primary races ought to be proof enough. I can't believe Hillary would be coasting into the primaries with her current margin of black support if most people knew how much damage the Clintons have donethe millions of families that were destroyed the last time they were in the White House thanks to their boastful embrace of the mass incarceration machine and their total capitulation to the right-wing narrative on race, crime, welfare and taxes. There's so much more to say on this topic and it's a shame that more people aren't saying it. I think it's time we have that conversation.
Hillary strongly advocated for her husband's 1994 crime bill, which built more prisons and extended prison sentences (and which Bernie Sanders voted for). Alexander recounts Bill Clinton's seminal role in creating "the current racial undercaste" in her book:
In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he. True to his word, just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton chose to fly home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning. After the execution, Clinton remarked, I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say Im soft on crime.
Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal three strikes and youre out law, which he advocated in his 1994 State of the Union address to enthusiastic applause on both sides of the aisle. The $30 billion crime bill sent to President Clinton in August 1994 was hailed as a victory for the Democrats, who were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own. The bill created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and expansion of state and local police forces. Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has observed, the Clinton Administrations tough on crime policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.
Clinton eventually moved beyond crime and capitulated to the conservative racial agenda on welfare. This move, like his get tough rhetoric and policies, was part of a grand strategy articulated by the new Democrats to appeal to the elusive white swing voters. In so doing, Clintonmore than any other presidentcreated the current racial undercaste. He signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which ended welfare as we know it, and replaced it with a block grant to states called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). TANF imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, as well as a permanent, lifetime ban on eligibility for welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offenseincluding simple possession of marijuana...
CONTINUED w/links etc....
http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/01/29/23497407/new-jim-crow-author-michelle-alexander-on-hillary-clintons-embrace-of-mass-incarceration
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)in the wake of Reagan and HW, it could have been a LOT worse. Clinton in this view had to make concessions to the crazy racist right to prevent the new Jim Crow from going farther than it already did (essentially instead of condemning 30% of black men into permanent 2nd class non-citizenship, it could have been 50-60% of black *people* and all the gains since the Civil Rights movement being completely taken away).
I disagree with the premise but there it is.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)SCantiGOP
(13,871 posts)Please ignore that first rude response to your reasoned and thoughtful post. To say that the Clintons "decimated black America" and that "their legacy is black impoverishment", while knowing what the Republican agenda was at that time, is just too ridiculous a notion to take seriously.
Unfortunately, many in the Sanders camp lose all objectivity and nuance when they think they can score a point against Clinton. That is why a Democratic site like this is suddenly full of hysterical unfounded rants against the Clintons and President Obama.
And on edit: welcome to DU. Things will calm down here after the primary is over.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Once elected, Bill Clinton had nothing to lose from defending POC against racist attack. At the very least, he could have pointed out that most of the RW memes about AA's(especially the ideas that crime, out-of-wedlock births and welfare abuse were "black things" .
Nobody who wanted people on welfare to be punished just for being on welfare(and no, this isn't racial-most people on welfare were and are white, actually)was going to vote for any Dem. If you hated the poor, you weren't going to care about the environment or reproductive choice.
He could have mobilized the anti-racist half of the country to defend basic decency on all of this.
Response to forjusticethunders (Reply #2)
Post removed
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)That I *agree* with the compromise that "respectable" black people made with the Establishment, or with the triangulation that followed. I don't. I want the triangulation to end and a new New Deal consensus to be formed, without the racial or cultural baggage of the old one.
Last time I checked the Clintons weren't for a 21st century New Deal.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)used to justify screwing millions of people, and it is a lie. Otoh, he made it acceptable to write such things about black folk. I would have found it either too condescending or worse. There was no such agreement with the people who we now neglect.
By the way - who the fuck are "respectable" black people " and who decides? You?
The only reason he did it was lobbying and to pander to donors and the wealth. He lied to the country to do it. Then again, the words lying and Clinton often are used together. He made it cool to beat up on black folks, to neglect them and their families for the profit of a few. And made it easier for so-called liberals to swallow screwing over their black neighbors without feeling so bad. As you demonstrate.
...
"Just before the New Hampshire primary, Bill Clinton famously flew back to Arkansas to personally oversee the execution of a mentally impaired African-American inmate named Ricky Ray Rector. The New Democrat spoke on the campaign trail of being tougher on criminals than Republicans; and the symbolism of the Rector execution was followed by a series of Clinton tough on crime measures, including: a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes; new life-sentence rules for some three-time offenders; mandatory minimums for crack and crack cocaine possession; billions of dollars in funding for prisons; extra funding for states that severely punished convicts; limited judges discretion in determining criminal sentences; and so on. There is very strong evidence that these policies had a small impact on actual crime rates, totally out of proportion to their severity.
There is also very strong evidence that these policies contributed to the immiseration of vast numbers of black (and also white) Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder, according to the well-known conclusions of journalists, academics and other criminal justice experts. Federal funding for public housing fell by $17 billion (a 61 percent reduction) under Bill Clintons tenure; federal funding for corrections rose by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to Michelle Alexanders seminal work, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The federal governments new priorities redirected nearly $1 billion in state spending for higher education to prison construction. Clinton put a permanent eligibility ban for welfare or food stamps on anyone convicted of a felony drug offense (including marijuana possession). He prohibited drug felons from public housing. Any liberal arts grad with an HBO account can tell you the consequences for poor, black American cities like Baltimore. As Alexander writes, More than any other president, [Clinton] created the current racial undercaste.
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/13/the_clinton_dynastys_horrific_legacy_how_tough_on_crime_politics_built_the_worlds_largest_prison/
That lying traitor to our country hurt, permanently and directly, tens of millions of people, and the rest of us by extension. I won't have anything to do with him or anyone who consorts with him ever again.
You can keep your excuses.
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)I am just pointing out that many upwardly mobile, "respectable" black people WENT ALONG with the lie. I've grown up and been in both poor and middle-class black communities. Growing up, my black parents would point out to me black people getting imprisoned for decades over drugs and calling them "worthless thugs" as a warning to me. They were wrong, but it is a fact that many black people tacitly went along with the mass incarceration regime, they went along with the Reagan neoliberal paradigm after (and to an extent before) Clinton repackaged it for a more "diverse", and a lot of that support for that paradigm still exists today especially with older black people.. Does that make it right? No.
There was always been a divide between Black people who wanted to fight the system, and who wanted to survive in the system by going along with it. This was just the most recent example.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)And how we have been moved to the right for decades now. Always by the threat of something worse.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)I have been trying to understand this paradox for a long time. That helps.
I have thought that a lot of poor white people vote against their interest in an effort to mentally distance themselves from the people and circumstances that define their lives. Do you see something similar among Black Clinton supporters?
Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)asuhornets
(2,405 posts)"Take your bullshit elsewhere" --- who the hell are you? You take your bullshit elsewhere..
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Finance Authority/ADFA during the administration of Gov. Bill Clinton and First Lady. Many black families should have benefitted from the ADFA. They didn't
Gray Money
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/gray_money.html
Gail Sheehy's 1992 article about the First Lady is also informative in the context of the hyperlink in the OP.
What Hillary Wants (Gail Sheehy 1992)
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/05/hillary-clinton-first-lady-presidency
dsc
(52,162 posts)what's the matter was Goebells to busy being dead?
Goebbels, as in the Nazi war criminal? Please tell me you meant another Goebbels?
I'd suggest deleting that post, because it's obviously rude, and on top of that, violates the terms of service here.
dsc
(52,162 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Then you are hardly qualified to comment on... well much of anything political. I mean, if you're that myopic.
SCantiGOP
(13,871 posts)This same thing has been posted on Free Republic. What conclusion should one draw from that?
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)That it was posted on free republic?
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)who knew?
TheFarS1de
(1,017 posts)Well done on trivialising genocide .
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Nedsdag
(2,437 posts)Why are we still voting for Hillary?
farleftlib
(2,125 posts)I just ordered The New Jim Crow from Amazon and I can't wait to read it.
She really nails it:
We should have seen it coming. Back then, Bill was the standard-bearer for the New Democrats, a group that firmly believed the only way to win back the millions of white voters in the South who had defected to the Republican Party was to adopt the right-wing narrative that black communities ought to be disciplined with harsh punishment rather than coddled with welfare. Reagan had won the presidency by dog-whistling to poor and working-class whites with coded racial appeals.
TM99
(8,352 posts)of the Third Way triangulation.
Give something only on the surface to the rubes on both sides while you and your crony buddies laugh all the way to the neoliberal economic paradise of free trade, slave labor, mass incarceration, a dumbed down electorate, and a dying middle class. You can't have a banana republic with a strong middle class.
Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)Thanks for the thread, Octafish.
jhart3333
(332 posts)cannabis_flower
(3,764 posts)at Texas Southern University at a Drug Policy Reform Conference. I agree with her entirely. The drug war is every bit as much the New Jim Crow and more.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow
By Michelle Alexander
EXCERPT...
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decadesthey are currently at historical lowsbut imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone account for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population and more than half of the increase in the state prison population.
The drug war has been brutalcomplete with SWAT teams, tanks, bazookas, grenade launchers, and sweeps of entire neighborhoodsbut those who live in white communities have little clue to the devastation wrought. This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.
That is not what you would guess, though, when entering our nations prisons and jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, African Americans comprise 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.
This is the point at which I am typically interrupted and reminded that black men have higher rates of violent crime. Thats why the drug war is waged in poor communities of color and not middle class suburbs. Drug warriors are trying to get rid of those drug kingpins and violent offenders who make ghetto communities a living hell. It has nothing to do with race; its all about violent crime.
Again, not so. President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixons White House Chief of Staff: (T)he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.
A few years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets of inner-city communities. The Reagan administration seized on this development with glee, hiring staff who were to be responsible for publicizing inner-city crack babies, crack mothers, crack whores, and drug-related violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media sensation, bolstering public support for the drug war which, it was hoped, would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.
The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers and users would be regulars in newspaper stories and would saturate the evening TV news. Congress and state legislatures nationwide would devote billions of dollars to the drug war and pass harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimessentences longer than murderers receive in many countries.
CONTINUED...
http://reimaginerpe.org/20years/alexander
WillyT
(72,631 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)because context seems to escape Hillary supporters (except when it's defending getting payola from Wall Street)
Bernie Sanders voted AGAINST a 1991 Crime Bill that was mostly focused on mass incarceration and get tough policies.
He repeatedly spoke about the danger of focusing on get tough policy aimed at African Americans, and appealed over and over that government focus on rebuilding urban communities.
In 1994, the bill he voted against came back up for a vote, THIS TIME bundled with the Assault Weapons Ban and the Violence Against Women Act. Essentially a poison pill and Bernie swallowed with reservations. You can criticize him for that, and I think that's fair.
What he DIDNT do, is uncritically stump for the same bill, using language that would have made Nixon blush.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)the record here, and so I hope you are prepared to copy and paste this over and over again.
BainsBane
(53,035 posts)but if votes don't matter, nor does Clinton's vote for Iraq. She didn't stump for the war, but she did vote for it, just like Bernie voted twice for the crime bills.
Funny how easy it is to explain away Bernie's votes, when people love nothing more than to take a quote from Clinton out of context and ignore her voting history, except on Iraq where it suits them.
People own their votes. Period. Clinton owns her war vote. Bernie owns his votes for the crime bill, for immunity for gun corporations, against the Brady Bill, the many votes against immigration reform and the vote to protect the Minutemen. That his rhetoric diverges so sharply from some of his voting record doesn't excuse those votes. It ought to prompt a voter to think carefully about what to take seriously. I myself don't put much stock in politician's promises and campaign rhetoric. I care far more about what they accomplish and what their voting records reveal. That is how their priorities are demonstrated.
cui bono
(19,926 posts)What was in there that Hillary HAD to vote for and then just accepted such a huge thing as giving up her constitutional obligation to have the power to declare war, the power that she voted to give away to the dumbest president we've ever had?
What else was in there that made that an okay thing to do?
.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)No war has had any progressive results since World War II.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)She lobbied for it as First Lady, which was worse.
iamthebandfanman
(8,127 posts)Shes been hugging black folks so that means she will do good for them ! duh!
its really sad to see so many people enslaved by the political elite to be swayed to vote for someone who has 'flip flopped' countless times on numerous issues.
WE MUST BREAK FREE FROM THE POLITICAL ELITE!
WHERE EVER THEY MAY COME FROM!
840high
(17,196 posts)stupidicus
(2,570 posts)because most of the AA community hasn't been educated on the many and varied failings of the Clintons of this sort, as is the case for far too many voters period.
Fighting the rightwingnut machine in the Bush years prevented this kinda critical examination and the sharing of it in the proportions necessary.
Persondem
(1,936 posts)Black child poverty rates were very high (nearly 50%) when the Clintons moved into the White House. They dropped for the next 10 years then basically leveled off. They only rose recently with the 2008 Great Recession but they are still way below what they were in 1992. Clinton's policies DID NOT result in an increase in Black poverty. And besides it was BILL not Hillary so this is wrong on at least 2 levels.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/14/black-child-poverty-rate-holds-steady-even-as-other-groups-see-declines/
monicaangela
(1,508 posts)Policies that still have and effect on the African American community today. This isn't about the conditions during years they were in office, it is about the disastrous policies they implemented that did harm to the entire nation. Yes it was during Bill Clinton's administration, but as he said and she agreed, we got two for the price of one. She promoted his policies as much as he did.
Persondem
(1,936 posts)only really increased when the recession of 2008 hit. This whole meme is based on a very false premise.
monicaangela
(1,508 posts)poverty rates fell? If it is then yes, poverty rates fell for everyone during his administration. However, his policies, NAFTA for example caused more harm than good. Oh, of course by the time it started to increase poverty in the black community and the rest of the nation he was out of office..
In terms of U.S. politics, the passage of NAFTA signaled that the Democratic Partythe progressive side of the U.S. two-party systemhad accepted the reactionary economic ideology of Ronald Reagan
A North American Accord was first proposed by the Republican Reagan in 1979, a year before he was elected president. A decade later, his Republican successor, George H.W. Bush negotiated the final agreement with Mexico and Canada.
But the Democrats who controlled the Congress would not approve the agreement. And when Democrat Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, it was widely assumed that the political pendulum would swing back from the right, and that therefore NAFTA would never pass. But Clinton surrounded himself with economic advisers from Wall Street, and in his first year pushed the approval of NAFTA through the Congress.
http://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/
Actually Persondem the Clintons have been worse for the black community, for the country than some republican presidents were. What difference if there was a temporary improvement in poverty levels during his presidency, he fixed that and good by signing the NAFTA agreement, implementing his welfare to work policies and last but not least passing his 1994 crime bill. Please don't try to convince me that the Clintons have somehow been good for African Americans, they have not. I lived through their presidency and remember the effects of their policies.
nc4bo
(17,651 posts)I've always thought of NAFTA as the gift that keeps giving. Its full effect wasn't immediately felt until years later.
Just thinking outloud.
Persondem
(1,936 posts)There was a net loss but not people touting that fact ignore the jobs it created and only look at the negatives without the mitigating effects of the plusses. Tech companies added hundreds of thousands of jobs for example.
nc4bo
(17,651 posts)cui bono
(19,926 posts)in the US?
.
monicaangela
(1,508 posts)Not only did NAFTA harm Americans, it impoverished Mexicans and many other disadvantaged populations around the world. Thanks to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)A lot of the programs the Clintons supported had various time limits in them before they started hurting people.
For example, a bill that passed in 1996 that has a 5-year implementation window obviously is not going to start hurting until after Clinton left office.
YCHDT
(962 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)libtodeath
(2,888 posts)monicaangela
(1,508 posts)Michelle Alexander makes the case against the Clintons:
kgnu_fan
(3,021 posts)iAZZZo
(358 posts)(excerpted)
Spike Lee is the latest black public intellectual to endorse Bernie Sanders and to question the sanity of black voters and politicians pledging their allegiance to the Clintons, who have done as much harm to black America as any living political couple. Ive said it before and Ill say it again: I am mystified by robust black support for Bill and Hillary Clinton. (emphasis added)
......................
Bill Clinton governed through playing to white fears by hurting, locking up or even executing black Americans. He left the campaign trail in 1992 to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a black man so mentally incapacitated, he reportedly did not eat the dessert from his final meal because he was saving it for later. When in office, Bill Clinton ended welfare for poor children and destroyed countless black families through a crime bill even he now admits made mass incarceration worse, while Hillary Clinton would go out and whip up support for this accelerated disenfranchisement and marginalization of black America, even when it meant referring to children as superpredators.
The case against Clintonian neoliberalism is compelling. I am glad to see black thinkers making a case for Sanders democratic socialism and its potential to address structural racism as an alternative. If anyone is smart enough to effectively make Sanders case to black America, it would be the intellectual leaders who have endorsed him thus far.
.................
Much less intellectually sound are the arguments of Clintons black surrogates. When she was endorsed by the corporate-funded Super Pac of the Congressional Black Caucus (not by the CBC itself or by its members), the only reason seemed to be political expediency. The black members of congress seemed intent on maintaining their relationship within the Clinton power structure, no matter how deeply invested it may be in white supremacy. Like Clinton, much of the CBC is beholden to Wall Street. So Sanders with no connection to Wall Street or to a global foundation ripe for harvesting political chits offers CBC members little possibility of power except by way of his gamble for the White House.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Liberal_Stalwart71
(20,450 posts)Feigned concern about black America and the issues that concern us is duly noted.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)That's how bad it was and remains, and that's how much better the Clintons' wishy-washiness looked and still looks in comparison.
brooklynite
(94,597 posts)...you should hoof if down to South Carolina. Apparently they need to be told how "misguided" their voting intent is.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Bet you dollars to donuts were we in the same room, you would never think to tell me where to go.
brooklynite
(94,597 posts)...about the political choice of over 1 million African-American voters?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)You'd be too much of a coward to tell me to leave the country to my face.
brooklynite
(94,597 posts)I have no idea what you're referring to. I said you should go to South Carolina (and since we've been overtaken by events, the other Southern States Clinton won), and tell the African American voters who supported Clinton how ignorant they were.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I took it the wrong way. Sorry. And I still think you wouldn't tell me to hoof it to my face.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Jitter65
(3,089 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Like everyone else there are those who still support them as we all did for a while, but that support is eroding so fast. As it has with so many Dems.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)Thanks for the thread, Octafish.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)"Both Clintons declined to be interviewed or comment for this article."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/clinton-money
polly7
(20,582 posts)Published on
Thursday, March 03, 2016
by Common Dreams
'The things were doing arent just wrong because were doing them to kids, theyre wrong because were doing them to humans'
by Nika Knight, staff writer
?itok=puANpQEJ
54,000 youth are incarcerated in juvenile prisons in America on any given day, according to a new campaign to reform the system. (Photo: Richard Ross/Youth First)
"Youth First argues that the current system "isn't safe, isn't fair, and doesn't work" and advocates for a new model of treatment for youth convicted of crimes, including involving family in a treatment plan that emphasizes rehabilitation and prevention. The group also argues for closing incarceration facilities and using the resultant savings to fund new community-based programs."
"Support for Youth First's reform proposals was robust even among those who have been victims of crime and those who have family members who have been victims, the poll found. Crime victims do not support the "tough on crime" rhetoric and punishment-based programs that were touted by U.S. politicians in recent decades, which were responsible for the corresponding dramatic rise in juvenile incarceration rates, the group said."
snip~
"Beaver described mentally ill children being placed in isolation units in lieu of treatment, legally-mandated school hours being called off for days at a time because of "lack of security staff," and kids doing nothing for 12 hours a day but sitting in a tiny windowless room watching "a box TV with about four channels." This is not to mention the violence, the ever-present threats of sexual assault, and the prevalent use of chemical and physical restraints by correctional officers in youth detention centers also cited by Youth First in its reform initiative."
"Youth First also announced the release of an online mapping tool that allows visitors to explore the racial disparities of youth incarcerationchildren of color are incarcerated at far higher rates than white children charged with the same crime, the data showed. Its mapping tool also brings to light the surprising number of enormous detention centers built for children in the 19th century that are still in use today."
Full article: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/03/stop-locking-children-americans-say
bbm
I don't get it either. From indiscriminate profiling by LE to indiscriminate sentencing by the courts to the profit-prison system that often not only ruins one life, but a whole family left behind as well - keeping many of those convicted from ever being able to vote again, get decent employment - and the racial disparities pointed out above for children - why are Clinton policies supposed to be so good for people of colour? I honest to god don't understand.