ILLINOIS DOES A GOOD JOB WITH ITS SOCIAL SERVICES PROGRAMS

GOING TO WAUKEGAN TODAY TO TRY AND GET MY SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY INCOME SITUATION SQUARED AWAY.


THEY'RE ALWAYS EFFICIENT, KIND, AND HELPFUL.  WILL HAVE TO GET A HANDICAPPED STICKER ALSO.


WISH ME LUCK.


WHEN I GET TWO CHECKS, MY SSDI ACCOUNT WILL BE OVER $950 AND THAT MEANS I WILL BEGIN THE MARK GANZER TRAVELING ALL-STARS AND SINGING QUEENS TOUR!


HOT FUCKING DAMN!!

A fear is haunting (whatever remains of) the contemporary Left: the fear of directly confronting state power. Those who still insist on fighting state power, let alone directly taking it over, are immediately accused of being stuck in the ‘old paradigm’: the task today is to resist state power by withdrawing from its scope, subtracting oneself from it, creating new spaces outside its control -Slavoj Zizek, In Defense of Lost Causes It is September 1955, and Mamie Till Mobley chooses a glass-top casket so the world could see in the mutilated face of her son, 14-year old Emmett Till, the face of the enemy. “Let the world see what I have seen.” And now, where are the Mamie Till Mobleys to let the world see maimed, blinded, deformed, and mutilated Black young bodies and minds crippled by the institutionalization of racism? They appear in films like Precious as Black icons of post-racial rhetoric: inept and helpless. The would-be-Mobleys, as repressed and maimed as the children buried too early or the ones sent off to school on the first day only to be transformed into prison inmates before their 21st birthday - the would-be-Mobleys and their children have had their tongues removed, for if, as Martin Luther King noted, “a riot is the language of the unheard,” then it is the tongueless, today, who have preserved the “peace” for the liberal middle class. The liberal middle class no longer wants to know what is happening in the post-Civil Rights Era. It does not want to know police bullets destroyed Black activists, even while they slept. It does not want to know collapsed manufactories devastated Black families just one or two generations from the Jim Crow South. To use Zizek’s phrase, the refusal-to-know is championed by the middle class because the middle class just wants to “sustain its way of life” (In Defense of Lost Causes). This is why, he adds, it “tends to support the authoritarian coups which promises to put an end to the crazy political mobilization of society, so everybody can return to his or her work.” Was it the Black Power Movement, the Kwame Tures or Huey Newtons or Dr. Martin Luther King’s refusal to stop at integrated lunch counters and his call for economic equality and opportunities? Certainly King offered “a crazy political mobilization” of the poor and working poor. No wonder it has been forgotten, or does it rest there in that refusal-to-know paradigm? Was it this threat that disturbed the “peace” of the middle class? Where are the alternative, progressive media cameras now? I remember a documentary on the Civil Rights Era in which a white man pointed out that the white business community overseas was embarrassed when confronted with footage of buses on fire and bloody Black protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. Where are the alternative media cameras, the reporters, now when for years the middle class of the North, the Upper South, in conjunction with corporate-capitalists partners, effectively maim, torture, mutilate, and spiritually and physically murder the Black community. Liberal middle class is right. Bull Connors is gone and so is George Wallace. But we now have the Democratic Party, liberal educational institutions, and the alternative, progressive media. Well, no one knows what is going on. Or rather they know Blacks are problematic, criminal, and prone to violence. The good people have acted to control the situation with government-funded educational programs for young Black children, outreach programs for their dysfunctional family members, crime prevention programs for the Black teen, the counseling programs for ex-convicts and drug addicts, and, of course, prisons. In the state of Wisconsin, the Upper South, if you are enlightened enough to know what is going on there, the new governor who seemed to spring a surprise on the good folks was Rep. Scott Walker, Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Correction and the Courts. According to Capital Times writer, Steven Elbow, in 1999, Rep. Walker, Chairman of Corrections and Courts Walker, envisioned “a landscape dotted with shiny new correction facilities, built and operated by private prison companies” (“Aggressive Firms Plan More Prisons as State Resistance Crumbles”). Democrat Rep. Larry Balow of Eau Claire, the article continues, thought this was a great idea! The farm communities of Stanley, Boyd, and Cadott are “‘virtually dying.’” Resurrect them with the bodies of Black youth - also from dying or dead urban communities! The article continues: State Sen. Robert Jauch, also a Democrat, agreed. “‘Like it or not, prison industry is economic development.’” For whom? And will all of the rural employees be union workers? “‘Communities seek the development of prison construction because they recognize that family economic income, retail business and community development thrive as a result of these major economic development projects.’” In what world can private corporations and government consider the building of prisons positive development? Apparently, Dr. Martin Luther King’s concern about housing disparity has been answered: Vice President Jim Roberts of Dominion Venture Group of Edmund, Oklahoma is reported to have said “‘We have pioneered the concept of ‘Field of Dreams’ prisons…If you build it, he will come’” (“Aggressive Firms”). If we build it, the chosen will be found to fill it. If we destroy the chosen in plain sight, and then conceal the remains in coffins… This practice of disaster capitalism at home did not turn the heads of the liberal middle class in Wisconsin. The politicians never saw a crowd of 100,000 outside the Capitol in Madison to protest this outrage? Journalist, Senior Editor at The Nation, and resident of Madison, John Nichols, callsWalker a “mainstream conservative” (Democracy Now!). Meaning what? Was Rep. Walker, chairman of Corrections and Courts, a “mainstream conservative” too? What of the Democrats who supported the corporate capitalist prison projects inWisconsin? Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman, echoed the chant of theDemocrats who refuse to vote on Walker’s budget and who are currently in hiding inIllinois: “Shame! Shame!” It is a shame that Democrats did not stage such a protest when 6% of the Black population in Wisconsin represented 48% of the incarcerated (Gibbs Magazine: News, Opinions, and Ideas of African Americas,March 1-7, 2011). It is a shame that Wisconsin’s liberal middle class and its alternative media did not cry en mass “shame!” when, as In These Times writer, Roger Bybee, points out in his article, “Progressive Wisconsin? State Marked by Empty Factories, Full Prisons,” April 5, 2010, Wisconsin’s “black male incarceration rate” became the highest in the nation; “twelve times the rate of white men.”…We have pioneered the concept of ‘Field of Dreams’… Illusion represses reality: a restructuring of pension payments and health care benefits and a reduction of funding to Medicaid “will also allow” Gov. Walker “to spend an additional $21 million in the Department of Corrections” (Press Release, Office of the Governor, February 11, 2011). A restructuring of social services and educational funding will allow President Obama to request in the FY 2011 budget a record $671 billion for defense spending and $29.2 billion for the Department of Justice to house more prisoners (Justice Policy Institute Report, February 16, 2011). Obama’s budget exempts cuts to law enforcement agencies under Homeland Security. Walker’s budget exempts cuts to the police force… …We have pioneered a concept of ‘Field of Dreams’… All the hopes and dreams of the liberal middle class rest in these Field of Dreams in which America has buried the sons and daughters of the Mamie Till Mobleys. As a Black, I find it hard to recognize a difference between a Representative or Governor Walker and a Senator or President Obama! As Bybee states, “[a]t every point in the downward slide toward prison, African-Americans find less favorable treatment than whites.” For Black Americans, this “downward slide toward prison,” I argue, suggests a calamity of social, political, legal, economical, and cultural crises at the heart of every social, political, legal, economical, and cultural institution masquerading as fairness and equality for a post racial era discourse in which Blacks are depicted as having always been violent and, thus, criminal. But what better way for the liberal middle class to maintain the illusion of white supremacy! Yet, alternative media, controlled predominantly by white liberals, seems to have missed interrogating this illusion. Prisons, Howard Zinn writes in A People’s History of the United States, has long been an “extreme reflection of the American system itself”: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless ‘reforms’ that changed little. Dostoevski once said: ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’ Many have paid the price for the middle liberal class children to have a place in the sun. Employing the refusal-to-know paradigm institutionalizes the belief that Black children are inferior and potential criminals. Any Black is automatically criminal unless exceptional, that is, emptied of the desire for freedom. Our children are to be locked away to safeguard progressive capitalists’ fantasies. Peace! The rise of Jim Crow Black slave laborers will not be televised! Stay tuned to news from distant and faraway lands where the demands of colored workers are not an immediate threat to capitalism! Turn the bright camera lights on in Madison, Wisconsin, where an acceptablecritique of capitalism’s excesses, to use Zizek’s words, avoids confronting capitalism’s mechanisms, thus presenting a more “progressive framework” rather than actual fundamental change (In Defense of Lost Causes). The “honest reformers” of Wisconsin’s progressive Movement sought to fend off the rising tide of socialism, Howard Zinn writes (A People's History of the United States). Similar to the nation’s progressives, including Teddy Roosevelt, the progressives of Wisconsin recognized socialism as a threat to capitalism. Nationally, it was necessary for progressive movements, Zinn continues, to carefully plan and to wisely direct the effort “‘to instruct public opinion as to the real meaning of socialism.’” Progressives, writes Zinn, pushed reform not change in order to “restore some measure of class peace in a time of increasingly bitter clashes between capital and labor.” Recalling how the Black revolt of the 1950s and 1960s seemed to come as a surprise to Americans, Zinn argues (in 1980) that Americans should not have been surprised. “The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface” (A People’s History of the United States). But we are here now in 2011 and the target of that refusal-to-know paradigm in these last 30 years has been the “memory of slavery” and the memory of “segregation, lynching, [and] humiliation.” That memory, dislodged from its carrier and co-opted for the furtherance of capitalism is bound to leave the remains silent, as any good liberal knows! Perhaps when John Nichols reminds Wisconsinites and the world of the state’sprogressive spirit, maybe he is not misrepresenting the state’s proud tradition, after all. There is a history of maiming and mutilating honest protest. But the repressed Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, the true working class of this world, will rise up! BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels. Mar 10, 2011 - Issue 417  is published every Thursday Est. April 5, 2002 Executive Editor: David A. Love, JD Managing Editor: Nancy Littlefield, MBA Publisher: Peter Gamble Killed and Wounded in Afghanistan US Military Dead: 1441 Wounded: 9,256 Afghan Civillians Dead: 33,459 brought to you by Veterans for Peace

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” -James Baldwin “Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.” -Ralph Ellison In the U.S. political system, liberals and liberalism have always served to perniciously stymie people’s movements for real systemic change. The late English author, journalist, and satirist, Malcolm Muggeridge, described “liberalism” as “the great disease of our society,” and indeed it is. Liberals are important gate-keepers of and for this politically bankrupt system. Their role is now what it has always been, which is to ensure that superficiality is placed above substance. Thus, instead of demanding and organizing for real systemic change, liberals, utilizing various guises, pose as “progressives” or even leftists, and in so doing, neutralize the struggle for fundamental and real systemic change on the part of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. Malcolm Muggeridge had it quite correct when he further noted that “every time it [liberalism] has been applied, the consequences have been disastrous.” In other words, the political system is hideously kept intact under thefallacious auspices of there having been some kind of real versus superficial change having supposedly been brought about, thereby pacifying and stymieing the struggle for much-needed real, fundamental, systemic change. The talking head liberal pundits of the corporate-stream “news and analysis” media,and much of the so-called “alternative” media dare not point out the fundamental contradictions and hypocrisies of this U.S. empire’s political system. And they certainly dare not call for fundamental systemic change. Notwithstanding their ceaseless rhetoric, liberals repeatedly demonstrate that their foremost concern is to hold on to their own perceived systemic privilege. Only when their own economic privilege comes under assault will they sporadically and disingenuously embrace and parrot “progressive” and/or leftist sounding rhetoric meant to ensnare the undiscerning. They, in essence, pimp the pain of the people, hoping not tofundamentally change the system, but rather to be an integral part of it. This applies to liberals of all colors who, in fact, won’t and don’t hesitate to ignore and/or outright economically decapitate the poor and dispossessed masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow people, no matter what their rhetoric espouses. Even as conservatives and their other right wing allies seek to play on and manipulate the fears of everyday people, liberals seek to pretend that they areintrinsically somehow different. They are not. What they are is slicker - that’s all. They know full well that it is the system itself that must be fundamentally changed for the benefit of the masses of everyday people. They also know full well that superficial, window-dressing change is really no real change at all. This is why the bloody U.S. wars, waged and directed by the corporate / military elite, continue unabatedand, in fact, have intensified, with barely a peep from liberals who fancy that now they have a “black” president - mass murder, predator drone missiles, torture, extraordinary rendition, and hypocrisy abroad are just not important anymore. This is why corporate greed, mass incarceration, police brutality, home foreclosures, and the continued de facto shredding of the U.S. Constitution under the ‘Patriot Act,’ etc., are rampant here at home. But it’s okay, right? Now that there has been a superficial no change-changeof over two years ago, it’s all somehow okay. It’s not okay! As James Baldwin poignantly stated, “...anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Both the liberals and conservatives have “eyes,” but they resolutely choose not to look, not to see, and so they “invite their own destruction.” Liberals continue their insidious game of hypocrisy even though the fate of humankind and Mother Earth hang in the balance. Yes, “liberalism” truly is “the great disease of our society.” It is a terminal disease that needs to be confronted and removed. Right wing politicians in this nation have traditionally been, and continue to be,blatant purveyors of big corporate greed and war; but it is the liberals who facilitatethis continued cycle of insanity by way of their unabashed hypocrisy and theirrefusal to genuinely embrace the everyday people’s struggle for real systemicchange. In the words of Frederick Douglass, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” There is precious little time left, and no more time at all for liberal hypocrisy. We must be about the struggle - educating, agitating, and organizing! Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward! BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBSNews Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

Mar 10, 2011 - Issue 417

Toxic Cosmetics Marketed to Black Women Inclusion By The Reverend Irene Monroe BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Every International Women’s Day celebration, I delight in knowing I’m in a sisterhood with women across the globe, fighting for gender justice. But as lesbian women of African descent, my struggle for justice intersects several fronts. And often times, it’s not only the nationally organized visible and vociferous movements in our country such as the gay, or women’s or black civil rights movements. Sometimes, like today, my struggle begins in the morning, doing battle with the cosmetics and personal care products I use trying to present my best self publicly. I start my morning having to discern if the seemingly innocuous lock and twist gel I’ve been putting in my hair for years and the cocoa butter I’ve been putting on my face to smooth marks and scars and dry skin all my life are not toxic products marketed to black women. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC), a coalition of nonprofit organizations and concerned people like public health, educational, religious, labor, women’s, environmental and consumer groups, makes it their business securing the corporate, regulatory and legislative reforms to stop the beauty industry from using toxic chemicals that can cause hormone disruption, reproductive harm, immune system toxicity, and cancer, to name a few. In women’s products, like lead in lipstick, contaminants in bath products, and dibutyl phthalate (DBP), a reproductive and developmental toxin in nail polish, CSC aims to get companies to use safer alternatives and they have had astounding victories. The CSC consumer campaign began in 2002 with the release of a report, “Not Too Pretty: Phthalates, Beauty Products and the FDA,” highlighting the deleterious effects of off-the-shelf beauty products with phthalates, a family of industrial chemicals linked to permanent birth defects in the male reproductive system. Author Stacy Malkan of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” and co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, went knocking on the doors of the world’s largest cosmetics companies to ask these tough questions: “Why do beauty companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use chemicals that may contribute to that very disease? Why do products marketed to women and children contain chemicals and heavy metals linked to reproductive harm?” Since CSC’s “Not Too Pretty” report, they have done several campaigns and informative reports about toxic cosmetics and personal care products women use. The campaign targeted to black women is titled, “Not So Pretty.” While the intend of the campaign is to reach out to sisters like myself, the title of the campaign is not only a turn off, but also dredges up a painful historical and exploitative figure in black women’s lives- TheHottentot Venus. In May 2002, when the remains of Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman, derogatorily known as the “Hottentot Venus,” were finally repatriated to her homeland of Cape Town, South African, a collective sign of relief could be heard from women of African descent across the globe. No longer, many of us thought, would black women’s bodies be the spectacle for anthropological curiosities, scientific exploration or commercial exploitation to satisfy racist agendas or financial greed. From slave to traveling freak show performer, Baartman traveled throughout Europe from 1810 until her death 1815 as a human exhibition, because of her highly unusual bodily features - large buttocks and elongated labia. As a human exhibition, Baartman become not only the iconic image to denigrate black women’s beauty; hence, “not so pretty, but Baartman also became the symbolic vehicle, and commercial accessibility to experiment with any and all part of black women’s bodies. From “Circus Africanus” to present-day surgical theater and chemical warfare, the assaults on black women’s bodies are unrelenting. CSC’s “Not So Pretty” report is indeed not so pretty, when given the alarming data. I find out that, as a black woman, I’m disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals not only in my community, but also in my workplace. I am also informed that products specifically marketed to my population, like skin lighteners to smooth out dark marks and scars, and hair relaxers, hair sprays, hair lotions shampoos and even lock and twist gel, all contains a higher toxicity, and some of the most toxic chemicals than those marketed to the general population. According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, the early and life-long exposure to hair products - including heavy conditioners that contain placenta and other hormone-disrupting ingredients - may be contributing to the high rates of breast cancer in young African American women. Black women’s hair continues to be a contentious topic and tangled in politics. And the question about their hair, with which many may have to grapple, is the issue of safety. Is it better being nappy and natural than taking the risk of having silky straight hair with the various “creamy crack,” chemical straighteners? The most toxic hair relaxer on the store shelves today is Skin Deep calledAfrica’s Best “Organic” relaxer for kids! It’s an unregulated product raising another problem: toxic treatments being marketed to very young black girls at a time when their bodies are most vulnerable to harm. This morning, I wanted to feel pretty and worry free, so I sprayed nothing on my locks and put nothing on my face. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Clickhere to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Mar 10, 2011 - Issue 417

Toxic Cosmetics Marketed to Black Women Inclusion By The Reverend Irene Monroe BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Every International Women’s Day celebration, I delight in knowing I’m in a sisterhood with women across the globe, fighting for gender justice. But as lesbian women of African descent, my struggle for justice intersects several fronts. And often times, it’s not only the nationally organized visible and vociferous movements in our country such as the gay, or women’s or black civil rights movements. Sometimes, like today, my struggle begins in the morning, doing battle with the cosmetics and personal care products I use trying to present my best self publicly. I start my morning having to discern if the seemingly innocuous lock and twist gel I’ve been putting in my hair for years and the cocoa butter I’ve been putting on my face to smooth marks and scars and dry skin all my life are not toxic products marketed to black women. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC), a coalition of nonprofit organizations and concerned people like public health, educational, religious, labor, women’s, environmental and consumer groups, makes it their business securing the corporate, regulatory and legislative reforms to stop the beauty industry from using toxic chemicals that can cause hormone disruption, reproductive harm, immune system toxicity, and cancer, to name a few. In women’s products, like lead in lipstick, contaminants in bath products, and dibutyl phthalate (DBP), a reproductive and developmental toxin in nail polish, CSC aims to get companies to use safer alternatives and they have had astounding victories. The CSC consumer campaign began in 2002 with the release of a report, “Not Too Pretty: Phthalates, Beauty Products and the FDA,” highlighting the deleterious effects of off-the-shelf beauty products with phthalates, a family of industrial chemicals linked to permanent birth defects in the male reproductive system. Author Stacy Malkan of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” and co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, went knocking on the doors of the world’s largest cosmetics companies to ask these tough questions: “Why do beauty companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use chemicals that may contribute to that very disease? Why do products marketed to women and children contain chemicals and heavy metals linked to reproductive harm?” Since CSC’s “Not Too Pretty” report, they have done several campaigns and informative reports about toxic cosmetics and personal care products women use. The campaign targeted to black women is titled, “Not So Pretty.” While the intend of the campaign is to reach out to sisters like myself, the title of the campaign is not only a turn off, but also dredges up a painful historical and exploitative figure in black women’s lives- TheHottentot Venus. In May 2002, when the remains of Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman, derogatorily known as the “Hottentot Venus,” were finally repatriated to her homeland of Cape Town, South African, a collective sign of relief could be heard from women of African descent across the globe. No longer, many of us thought, would black women’s bodies be the spectacle for anthropological curiosities, scientific exploration or commercial exploitation to satisfy racist agendas or financial greed. From slave to traveling freak show performer, Baartman traveled throughout Europe from 1810 until her death 1815 as a human exhibition, because of her highly unusual bodily features - large buttocks and elongated labia. As a human exhibition, Baartman become not only the iconic image to denigrate black women’s beauty; hence, “not so pretty, but Baartman also became the symbolic vehicle, and commercial accessibility to experiment with any and all part of black women’s bodies. From “Circus Africanus” to present-day surgical theater and chemical warfare, the assaults on black women’s bodies are unrelenting. CSC’s “Not So Pretty” report is indeed not so pretty, when given the alarming data. I find out that, as a black woman, I’m disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals not only in my community, but also in my workplace. I am also informed that products specifically marketed to my population, like skin lighteners to smooth out dark marks and scars, and hair relaxers, hair sprays, hair lotions shampoos and even lock and twist gel, all contains a higher toxicity, and some of the most toxic chemicals than those marketed to the general population. According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, the early and life-long exposure to hair products - including heavy conditioners that contain placenta and other hormone-disrupting ingredients - may be contributing to the high rates of breast cancer in young African American women. Black women’s hair continues to be a contentious topic and tangled in politics. And the question about their hair, with which many may have to grapple, is the issue of safety. Is it better being nappy and natural than taking the risk of having silky straight hair with the various “creamy crack,” chemical straighteners? The most toxic hair relaxer on the store shelves today is Skin Deep calledAfrica’s Best “Organic” relaxer for kids! It’s an unregulated product raising another problem: toxic treatments being marketed to very young black girls at a time when their bodies are most vulnerable to harm. This morning, I wanted to feel pretty and worry free, so I sprayed nothing on my locks and put nothing on my face. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Clickhere to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Mar 10, 2011 - Issue 417

The Fight In The NFL is Just Another Side of Wisconsin The African World By Bill Fletcher, Jr. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

When I moved to DC from Boston I went to open a checking account at a local bank.  I brought a cashier’s check from my bank in Boston to deposit.  I naturally assumed that with a cashier’s check that I could immediately access my funds.  The customer service person disabused me of that.  She informed me that the bank would be holding onto the check for five days in order for it to clear.  I was perplexed and responded that since this was a cashier’s check and there should be no question as to its validity, why would they need to hold onto it for five days.  I will never forget her response:  “Because we can.” In watching the struggle that has been unfolding between the owners of the National Football League and the players - represented by the NFL Players Association - I have found myself remembering the words of the bank’s customer service person.  The dispute between the owners and the players has a level of absurdity to it because the owners cannot even state their case with a straight face.  With an average team worth $1 billion and $9 billion in revenue for the NFL, how could the owners possibly argue that they needed concessions from the players?  Not only that, but how could they think that a lockout would be justified? The bottom line is that it is not justifiable but it is explainable.  It is simple: because they can. What we are watching unfold in the dispute in the NFL is not about money any more than the events unfolding in Wisconsin concern money.  It is about raw power, justified to the public, of course, on the basis of alleged fiscal fairness and reality. The NFL owners want give backs from the players and they want an extension of the season to 18 games.  While many fans might want a little extra football, there is almost no discussion—except from the Players Association—as to the literal and figurative impact of the extension of the season on the players themselves.  As it is the physical impact of football on the players is something that has been underplayed in the mainstream media and only periodically surfaces as a major concern.  So, in effect, the owners want the players to concede funds and shorten their lives. But what they really want is to demolish the NFL Players Association, thereby leaving them with unbridled power over the sport.  There really can be no other explanation for their actions since this is not an industry that is either in decline or suffering from some sort of revenue shortfall. Therefore, the owners chose to go to war with the players.  Until the last two weeks the owners thought that they held all of the cards until Judge David Doty issued a decision eliminating the possibility of the owners accessing $4 billion in television monies should there be a lockout.  Let me clarify this because it is almost unbelievable.  Until Judge Doty’s decision the owners expected that they could access billions in television revenue even if there was no football to broadcast!  What a weapon to hold over the heads of the players.  With this weapon in hand the owners felt no particular need to pay any serious attention to negotiations.  In the aftermath of Judge Doty’s decision they have changed their tune…slightly. By the time that you read this piece there may be a settlement or a lockout.  What is critical to recognize, in either case, is that the fight that the NFL Players Association is undertaking is not a battle among the gods, but is actually a variant on the fight that has been taking place in state after state where the elite, and their political allies largely in the Republican Party, are attempting to strip working people of not only organization, but any power to assert their interests and rights.  While some NFL players make millions for the brief duration of their careers, and therefore live lives that are dramatically different from you and eye, the owners make billions.  And one of the things about capitalism is that the elite are never satisfied with what any average person would consider acceptable profits.  If the profits are not expanding, then the elite considers it a loss.  That is what we are witnessing unfolding on this side of the field. As crazy as it may first sound, the fight of the players is a fight that we should not only concern ourselves with, but a fight which we need to join.  If they can destroy the players and their union when the owners are rolling in money, what stops owners in other industries from moving against populations that they believe to be even more vulnerable? Are you ready for some football? BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president ofTransAfricaForum and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice(University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

The Limits of Tyrants Are Prescribed By the Endurance of Those Whom They Oppress The Color of Law By David A. Love, JD BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor

The Food Research and Action Center released a disturbing report about food hardship and hunger in the United States.   According to the report, nearly one in five Americans simply does not have enough money to buy food that they and their family need.  In 21 states, at least 20 percent of respondents said they did not have enough money to buy food in the past 12 months, while at least 15 percent of respondents in 45 states answered in the affirmative.  No part of the country is untouched by this crisis.  And yet, Tea Party-sponsored governors and lawmakers around the country will make no mention of this, as they channel their inner tyrant and slash state budgets at the expense of the poor and working people.  Megalomaniacs, they seem to derive pleasure from using their power to make people hurt - certain people, that is.  After all, their talk of fiscal responsibility is selective, as austerity is reserved for the poor.  The rich are not being asked to tighten their belt, but rather are being rewarded with tax breaks.  In that regard, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is doing exactly what his masters, the Koch brothers, instructed him to do.  When America, backward and crumbling, should be investing in infrastructure and technology to create jobs and promote growth, some governors reject high-speed rail projects and wear their ignorance as a badge of honor. Moreover, the concept of the budget crisis is being used as a subterfuge—a scam, if you will— to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.  And all the better for the extreme right if they can slip something devious like anti-gay language in the legislation when no one is looking.  Because that’s what tricksters do.  Unions have lost ground over the years, and not surprisingly, so too have working people, in terms of declining wages and a lower standard of living.  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others would make public unions the new welfare queens, the new bogeyman.  And we are supposed to believe that public school teachers are the new millionaires, getting rich at the public’s expense and breaking the backs of state budgets with their exorbitant salaries—if you consider $40,000 or $60,000 a lot, that is.  And when nobody is looking, the true millionaires and billionaires are making out like true bandits, taking away most of the nation’s wealth.  But people are starting to wake up, which is why they are engaging in nonviolent protest by the thousands in Madison and elsewhere in America.  They have much in common with protestors in Tripoli, Cairo and other nations in the Mideast, where the masses are divesting themselves of the mob bosses, potentates and presidents-for-life that have passed for leadership in that part of the world.  All they want is to be able to put food on the table, to feed their children.  But they are unable to do so.  Like Egypt’s Mubarak and Qaddafi, America’s Tea Party rulers - kleptocrats who feign populist tendencies - are driven by delusions of grandeur and utter contempt for the will of the masses.  When the people do not go along with the program, these authoritarian leaders maintain power by brute force, arrests or through the barrel of a gun - or at least consider it is an option.  The primary difference is that the Mideast rulers operate under no pretense of democracy.  Politics in the U.S. enjoys at least a democratic veneer.  And in a technical sense the electorate, however uninformed and prone to act in their own economic interests, actually cast their ballots for such walking disasters as Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, and Walker of Wisconsin.  But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen Uniteddecision, corporations and wealthy interests have unlimited influence over elections.  America really is owned by a handful of individuals, and the electoral system has turned into a tool to do the bidding of the oligarchs. So what is the real difference between an autocrat who holds no elections, or holds a sham election and declares victory, and an oligarch who purchases an election with cash and utilizes corporate cronies to rule by proxy?  When the poor and working poor cannot afford to feed their families, all bets are off.  Faced with rising inequality, oppressive laws and the naked greed of the powerful, people take to the streets.  Here in the land of opportunity, wealthy conservative interests are jonesing to destroy the unions, the only thing standing between them and unlimited political and economic power.  Who wins depends on how far the common folks are able and willing to take it.  Perhaps Frederick Douglass said it best: “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.  The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”  BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. and a contributor to The Huffington Post, theGrio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs atdavidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.