tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77865120011861108622023-11-15T10:51:32.678-05:00Midwest Center for Constitutional RightsThis Blog is dedicated to the Founder's idea that freedom of speech in America means more than providing mere lip service to the current powers that be and the status quo politics of the dayUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger150125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-39249705802593874102020-05-01T10:13:00.000-04:002020-05-01T10:13:01.088-04:00This week, on Tuesday evening, April 28th, 2020, I became the 2020 Democratic Nominee for the Democratic State House of Representative seat for the 96th District of Ohio.<br />
<br />
It was a hard long unusual and not ordinary primary given the covid 19 virus emergency interruptions and distancing requirements.<br />
<br />
All told however, it was most gratifying to win among the people and the common citizens of our Southeastern Ohio District.<br />
<br />
It wasn't without a fight and my young opponent fought hard and clean and performed well as a first time candidate at this level. I never took this election for granted and knew I was in a genuine race for a high seat in a State of Ohio government level office. I valued the opportunity to run for this office and saw the need for experienced and battle tested leadership to continue on with leading the Democratic banner in the State House from our region.<br />
<br />
Now, its time for the Jefferson, Belmont and Monroe County Democratic Parties to unify and come together so we can keep the seat that so many strong Democratic Representatives have maintained in the blue column for decades and most recently Jack Cera who has done a great job while serving the citizens of this District.<br />
<br />
We have an advantage; during this time of crises; As JFK often stated during his Presidential race, the Democratic party IS the party who created and originated unemployment insurance, the party of minimum wage and the party of worker's comp and all the social contract safety net programs like Social Security that are keeping this nation and this state and region running through this crises. <br />
<br />
We having nothing to apologize for as the programs that FDR, Truman and JFK and all those who followed created and developed and strongly support, are now operating in the manner they were first intended; to keep the nation safe, healthy and sound as possible during a national crises;<br />
<br />
We continued now, at this time in particular, need to work hard to make sure such programs are actually benefiting the people in need. and we need to do more also.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
But at this time, I want to take this moment and publicly thank once more, as I did in my interviews but the word didn't make it through the News editing rooms;<br />
<br />
First, I want to thank the Upper Ohio Valley Building Trades council and also the leaders at the IBEW electrical workers unions here in Steubenville and in Wheeling local 141. their support and endorsements came at critical moments in this primary and i appreciate deeply their acknowledgement of my life's work on critical issues important to the working men and women and to even our children for the past 30 years.<br />
<br />
I also want to dedicate this victory to my parents, Dominick and Theresa Olivito Sr. My mom is 93 and still alive and lives next door to me.<br />
<br />
My dad passed 10 years ago and i think of him every day and his great contribution to both the Ohio Valley, his hometown and to the State of Ohio''s judiciary and just his love for the ordinary and the sense of fairness and justice he brought to the bench and to all with whom he came into contact with.<br />
<br />
His sense of public service and his dedication to the same became widely known up and down the entire eastern Half of Ohio and he blazed a trail from the Beaches of Normady on D Day to the Battle of the Buldge...to winning the ability to enjoy the pubic trust for decades and grew our family name into one that today still holds so much value.<br />
<br />
Its a victory for him and my mother, I give the credit most for this opportunity and ability to serve the people of the 96th to what they did and what they stood for all their lives in making my win possible this past week.<br />
<br />
And I also want to give a clear credit also to my campaign manager and treasurer Robert Martin of Wintersville, Ohio who is the Wintersville Council President this year. <br />
<br />
Rob and his wife and family and his extended family were my main day to day supporters and he and Royal Mayo and my good friends from years back, were the one's who kept hope alive and gave me the encouragement when things seemed at times to be both challenging and just alot to continue with especially when there were days of doubt as this primary lingered on well past the original election night. <br />
<br />
Rob placed his professional and public position right next to mine and never waived once during some very challenging moments of this campaign. He always spoke of having hope and faith and putting all things in the hands of the Lord. His strong personal reputation only helped to bolster my own at critical junctures and when certain negatives were spoken about. Rob understood elective politics and he enjoys this win and deserves as much credit as anyone for his loyal support for me from the first hours of my decision to run for this office.<br />
<br />
Royal Mayo is more than a brother to me. What people don't know about Royal is he is the most caring and supportive friend anyone ever could have in this life. When my mother was placed in teh emergency room months ago, royal was there instantly for me and her. When I was in the hospital for three days right near the end of this campaign, in March, Royal made sure my mother ate, was kept company and he made meals to order and brought tears to my mother's eyes; hes a much better cook by far than I and he's the true son and brother of our Olivito family today. His voice is well known across the Valley and even in Columbus. and he and I, together know something about the eternal hunger for justice and equality as Jesus our Lord, Himself, often spoke of....<br />
<br />
Also, I want to mention my only son. Joshua He is a graduating senior from SHS and i'm so very proud of him and his class. With all those graduating seniors this year from our regional schools I understand well the disappointment with the restrictions placed upon your final months of your primary education. Nonetheless, it does NOT in ANY take away the long years of hard work and daily effort of getting up and heading into school not feeling great, not necessarily always prepared and oftentimes, just having to overcome so much more than many.<br />
<br />
To those who have overcome everything and are ready now to graduate into a new era and new life and new moment in your young journey, i say congratulations and so proud of you Joshua and all your classmates and friends. dont be deterred by this momentary setback. its what you have already accomplished and achieved that makes you the winner that you already were and are today. Joshua you are loved and promised everything best I can possibly give you and your grandfather would be so proud of you today and I know your grandmother on my side tears up at the notion you came through so much and are now graduating with honors.<br />
<br />
Thankyou finally and <i><b>most importantly</b><u><b> to the voters of the 96th District</b></u></i>. You are the reason why this democracy makes sense and keeps on going despite all the challenges that have faced our nation since its founding.<br />
<br />
its truly as the brilliant self taught man once spoke, its a government "of the people, for the people and by the people"...and if we continue to participate in this sometimes burdensome process of elections and crazy races, we will continue what makes this nation great...<br />
<br />
in closing, here on the Midwest Center's main blog page<br />
i just want to say again<br />
<br />
I am humbled by this win and will now work hard to make it a win in November so we can get the Ohio Valley back up and seriously progressing as it needs and should be. the people of this district are the hardest working, most serious enduring people one could meet anywhere. the sheer grit and determination of the citizens of this Valley have fought wars, made the steel and mined the coal and added to the intellectual and sports of our entire nation for decades. We have now been providing serious revenue to the State of Ohio so it can better operate. its time we focus on the continued progress of making our valley worthy of the people who work so hard and those youth who have sacrificed and worked hard to make it through to their graduation day.<br />
<br />
We all will have a 96h district graduation day, also, soon, come November and we will make our voices heard and i thank all of you for your support going forward.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-53238170798804565152017-01-05T22:01:00.001-05:002017-01-05T22:19:15.266-05:001997 -2017 The New Year Brings the 20th Anniversary of the DOJ Civil Rights Division Steubenville Consent Decree Re Its Police Depthttps://www.justice.gov/crt/united-states-district-court-southern-district-ohioeastern-division-united-states-america<br />
<br />
<br />
The Steubenville Consent Decree as it was called, was among the original pattern and practice police enforcement actions ever taken in US history under the then new law Public Law 94 and what is now termed 14141 pattern and practice Federal USAG actions....<br />
<br />
its critical to any student and serious advocate and/or educator or informed citizen or official to understand the historical context of this new federal authority and grant of oversight of American policing that began in the mid 90's under the Clinton Justice Dept with Janet Reno being the AG at the time.<br />
<br />
Steubenville was an unlikely city in many ways to come under such a major original federal enforcement action but given its deep history of such policing issues when combined with its rather troubled past and colorful history, it made sense given the circiumstances on the ground that created the basis for the Special Litigation Unit ...setting their focus on this small southeastern Ohio city on the Ohio River, not far from Pittburgh, Pa...back in the mid 90s when the US attorneys who were working at Justice and its Civil Rights Division were looking for a place to first apply, create and first both determine and accomplish what the both the limits of the law and its sweeping powers were designed to do: to eradicate bad policing methodologies and to create a new higher federal uniform standard of constitutional plicing for all the nation to uphold, see and enjoy;<br />
<br />
In 1997, it was a little known law and the enformcement action among most cities and journalists and scholars was a complete unknown at the time. Also unawares and unknown to most everyone in the storied civil rights movement and law schools and judgeships of America, was that there was a complete new legal authority and paradigm that was being both developed and applied by the federal government via the Civil Rights Division Special Litigation units newly minted powers....down, way down, into the locality of American policing among cities and towns, large like Pittsburgh and small like Steubenville. <br />
<br />
Very Very few, in 1994-7, knew that this paradigm shift had occurred. Few legal observers ever knew about it or even heard of it and particularly not even the nation's Federal Courts or its associates.<br />
<br />
But, then, in 1997, a very few, a limited rarified few, and the privileged advocates of STeubenville, Ohio, all three or four of us, understand what was about to dawn upon the citizens and the authorities of this small town and soon, from there, outward...towards ALL America. only a local lawyer, and his wife, and a african american city councilman and a handful of others, truly understood what was then happening in terms of this new federal authority breaking down upon the local officials like a virus bug just beginning to take hold inside our national bloodstream of american policing. Only a few understood its implications and among them, oddly were...those inside the movie industry and a few of those who had walked the walk in the 60's when their lives too were placed routinely in danger...just on behalf of those for whom they were advocating...<br />
<br />
But, in 1997, through the efforts of several, not the least a Columbus attorney with a obvious bent for the 60's kind of appearance and advocacy and from a handful of brave citizens and victims of this very seriously affected city on the Ohio, the final signatures were applied to the original consent decree; and it came to pass and the resulting enforcement action and its standards that were developed during this and another original decree in Pittsburgh Pa, were to become the "gold standard" of how to "do" and literally apply this new federal AG authority over such local law enforcement agencies and small to large city departments throughout America.<br />
<br />
It is with this new authority, that this nation once again has come face to face with ..lately through and by very graphic and sometimes very complex and disturbing events such as we witnessed in Ferguson and Cleveland with Tamir Rice and in Baltimore and New York and well beyond.<br />
<br />
Now, today, over 30 major cities have been investigated under this law and many have or were placed under such "decree's" from New York to Seattle to New Orleans and Cleveland most recently.<br />
<br />
Many other places have been provided with certain guidelines based on the developments under this law and many cities are clearly impacted and influenced strongly by its limitations and standards that have been recreated in many places many times over since the mid nineties..when the DOJ and a young lawyer from Steubenville were cautiously approaching the problem of unconstitutional and seriously degraded and brutal police misconduct occurring in the city on the River, known for its steel mills, Dean Martin and football (and a gal named Judy Jordan in her heyday of the 40'/50's with her ties to the New York mobs directly...)<br />
<br />
It is from the tangled downtown streets of this city that the legacy of the nation's FIRST FULLY DOJ "investigated" consent decree developed and originated from.... So, On the year of its Twentieth Anniversary...the DOJ's efforts and this milestone legal event still 'speaks'...<br />
<br />
<br />
it still has meaning and it still makes its impact both known and seriously engaged in the most substantial civil rights issue of modern american today...the "unfinished business of the civil rights movement" as Dr. King himself once said, before his death...<br />
<br />
modern era problem policing...to put it mildly...was first addressed by the federal government in a wholesale comprehensive definitive approach here. <br />
<br />
the Steubenville events, circumstances and those who were the key actors who helped it come about....are older but with us in number today; they have a story that is yet to be told...<br />
<br />
but its meaning is not NOT going speak to us...i believe...<br />
<br />
...for a very long time to come, as well...<br />
<br />
<br />
here is is...my friends, fellow advocates, and judges and yes ...my most ardent enemies and opponents; i give to you, once more....<br />
<br />
the milestone civil rights event of our city's legacy that will last ...as long as this city is here...<br />
<br />
with Love for the legal system...that my father himself...devoted so much of his life and times to and all those who in good conscience who ever advocated for the highest ideals of our nation and our legal system, in memory of Dominick E Olivito Sr...<br />
<br />
it is from him, my amazing father, the most humble yet best legal mind ever known and to my only son, where I fought hard...and tried, along with a few others, once upon a time, ....to give him (even before he was to be born,) a better city, country, and simply a better place...to live, breath and to enjoy his evenings...at home...<br />
<br />
with much Love...<br />
<br />
i post this post...<br />
<br />
richard a olivitoUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-37397413629518869282016-11-20T12:16:00.002-05:002017-01-05T19:35:47.880-05:00To My Midwest Center Friends, Members and fellow Readers and even Distractors: <br />
Its Time to Speak Again:<br />
<br />
<br />
Its been quite some time that I have added anything to the Midwest Center's official blog page.<br />
<br />
The year has expired like a winding road, with its variances and crazy electorial national politics, the routine mind boggling public comments combine with the mind numbing failure of local lawyers and judges and many others across the nation... who just simply fail their duty, their clients, the legal profession, the system of laws that are in place<br />
to protecct the most basic fundamental due process rights of ours.<br />
<br />
Its not only the citizens who are to blame for the recent elections, the disaffected white rust belt voter<br />
and those who have been left out of the elite media blitz we all have been so treated to for the past decade or so,<br />
<br />
We here who have been living in the fly over districts of America, have not only seen our jobs and our lives disenfranchised, lost, depressed, corrupted and uphended unlike anything many other places in this nation have not<br />
<br />
we also have been treated as "fly over" in terms of our civil liberties being ignored, trampled upon, mis treated and completely and forever jarred from us, by rude, crass, at times, ignorant eventual trump wanna bes, in office, locally across these midwestern states also. In particular..for this article...by the very third branches of our midwestern states that just delivered to America its stunning new world order...the presidency of Donald Trump and his rampant nationalistic fervor (fever?) pitched campaign that may lead to our first real serious experience with homegrown modern world fascism.<br />
<br />
In other words, this region is NO area of the country to be a civil rights lawyer or advocate as much as its not any place to be a liberal forward thinking politician or media reporter for major mainstream media.<br />
<br />
Its the fly over districts of America that have been left out, left behind, forgotten and simply trampled upon and as the Bi Coastal and the southeastern coastal regions of this nation grew exponentially not only in terms of population but jobs, nice condos, beautiful new shopping centers, beautiful landscaped as if 3d printer moulded dream home neighborhoods were simply shipped in and stamped down onto the Florida and Carolinas' east coast or the Georgia and Alabama coastal one's also ...<br />
<br />
But rather, its the places like Warren, Waverly and Cadiz Ohio, that grew this nationalism among others like it....where....but for the gas and oil industry fracking efforts of late, with its billion dollar injection of cash into this region, giving many a republican governor the chance to crow that he, not the Texas and Oklahoma industries brought jobs to this once totally defunked, once proud but down on its knees, rust belt 'appalachian' center of the universe<br />
<br />
it was here, where its hard working citizens were completely forgotten by the many ambitious politicians and wall street billionaires, of donald trumps cabinet, who sought political refuge in major corporate donors offices, in DC, and many of the east coast, west Coast and southern ocean view<br />
office buildings...<br />
<br />
Its for many a reason Donald Trump won this election this year; racism and xenophobia at clearly near its head and not without a good amount of mysiogeny.<br />
<br />
But, what else was there?<br />
<br />
There was this very extreme, long march to death, long in the tooth, well-developed institutional legal movement with its serious but intentional blundering and slouching ever growing tendency inside our midwestern state and FEDERAL COURT systems that have treated the citizens's individual rights as put forth by the Founding Fathers First Principles as if they were nice written tablets belonging to some archaic past archeological find, from a long ago extinct ancient culture which once roamed the North American continent...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The push and urge we see now taking actual real form and shape in our national elections and most disturbing to many inside our national government with Trumps' election did not begin with just the lost of jobs and long term unemployment, inside the underemployed midwest.<br />
<br />
Its also must give its salute to the Clinton era appointee federal judges who also treated the lowly citizens of Ohio Michigan and Kentucky and western Pa and many other such places across all of America, as if these people were something lesser, something other, something to use for cheap labor and/or to be used for heavy industry labor practices for three or four decades then to be discarded in their pensions as if they were mere fodder, food for the capitalist pigs who took their old tired worn out factories and moved them down south of the border, sometimes, just down to Georgia, or to the republican strongholds of Alabama and Tennessee...<br />
<br />
not always, just to Mexico necessarily but just across the Mason -Dixon line.<br />
<br />
and not necessarily to China (though so much was actually moved there)...but to Texas and South Carolina and Tennessee ...places where no union was ever truly welcomed..and never will be until Pat Robertson and Jesus together show up on their respective White Horses...<br />
<br />
<br />
(and I'm not sure who will be leading that amazing assembly either, after this past decade of the "great migration of jobs southward"....will it not CrefloDollar and his 30 million dollar yatcht crew'? or will it be the Only Son...?}<br />
<br />
not quite sure... after living thru these past years in the midwestern wilderness...<br />
<br />
The point being and I'm making this, as a civil rights lawyer who was shockingly 'defrocked' <br />
{never disbarred but just silenced}<br />
<br />
sometime ago now ...with the pain and suffering of how that was done to me, and with the shock of the same, fading, the pain a direct factor due to the once very high regard I once enjoyed and viewed along with the high institutional respect I held for the legal profession and the positions of higher laws and Courts I obtained from my own father, a former 32 year senior trial judge who loved his tomato garden more than any country club...and yet worked in every type of law and in 76 of 88 Ohio counties, from Cincinnati, to Chillicothe, from Columbus and Toledo to Cadiz and Marietta, from Dayton and Youngstown, to Steubenville, and Dillonville, Ohio<br />
<br />
yes....i have seen the beast arising inside this nation's heartland ...long before this national election ...<br />
<br />
and Ive had the hot breath of the beast of something "other", breathing down on me for years<br />
<br />
Not even this nation's highest officers or some of its Highest Government Agencies could stop nor prevent from happening what has happened to me.<br />
<br />
more importantly, most if not all, do not even care and no longer feel its even necessary to discuss<br />
<br />
but now, perhaps, because of the fears of millions and the threat to muslims and to mexicans<br />
and to so many lesbians and others...<br />
<br />
This American white male civil rights lawyers can share his story and have it become relevant<br />
...just maybe<br />
<br />
I knew something of what this nation is sensing today...sometime ago...<br />
<br />
it started long ago but it became very clear and personal to me<br />
when i was put through for about 3 to 4 years by the Ohio Supreme Court and a local democractic strongly hold's bar associations, about 9 years ago now,<br />
<br />
I witnessed and was afforded the private email account treatment, of<br />
<br />
how a high court was corrupted by lies and politicization and influenced by serious corporate creepy special interests and mere man's jealousy and yes, a good dose of midwestern institutional racism<br />
<br />
I witnessed personally, how easily it was for the highest courts of a entire state and region in both the state and federal judiciaries...<br />
<br />
to simply fail...their duty to uphold the concept and truth of what a highly devout christian 19th century figure once authored, fought for and himself paid a terrible price politically for getting into the constitutional framework of this nation. called the 14th Amendment.<br />
<br />
and soon afterwards, to witness it to be promptly forgotten and buried and much later, only resurrected merely in bits and pieces case by case, year by year almost a century later, in after a King and Kennedy arose,<br />
<br />
they were the ones who critically applied, what this single devout serious equality minded 19th white male from Cadiz, Ohio had envisioned for America....John Bingham's 14th...was the KEY to all of our modern notions of individual equality and due process rights...he authored the most important constituitonal amendment one may say, after the original 10 and the 13th which abolished slavery. it is easy to forget him. this nation did afterall for over a century after he wrote the same. and today??<br />
<br />
well, in many many cases, sadly its my experience, in many high courts today, they don't seem to wish to adopt even now, what this pious devout christian white male wrote;<br />
<br />
in many instances, the judges on high courts, in many instances are simply imposters<br />
<br />
...and have been for a generation now.. they are just as much responsible for the rise of any would be dictator whether or not its Trump or some other would be strongman, to rise in the near future, over America, for they themselves, these high courts, have invited in and conjoured up such a spirit of NON DUE process, with resulting shocking outcomes and surprising results...to what would to the ordinary citizen and American would readily think is only just and fair and equal<br />
<br />
the federal and state courts of America, particularly in the midwest regions of America have been well ahead of the national mood and curve in burying the individual rights contained in the 14th Amendment for years...<br />
<br />
in a significant manner, places and times, they have plowed the ground and seasoned the roots of the rise of a modern tyranny.<br />
<br />
its not the tyranny of old, like in France with Napolean or a Roman like Caesar..<br />
<br />
its not the third world dictator tyranny ...and its not even the garden variety Soviet style tyrant modern or former like Stalinists flavor;<br />
<br />
no rather, its a tyranny by another name, another form<br />
<br />
and its been welcomed in through the back door of the forgotten, over the heads of the millions found not fully nor gainfully employed in the bread basket of America..<br />
<br />
like Mike Moore, the middle finger of White working class people who were left out of their jobs and their lifestyles, having to watch their children go far away just to find life, not just a job..but life...<br />
<br />
were the one's who voted the neo con liberalism out of existence<br />
and it was Hillary who paid the price for it no doubt..<br />
<br />
but the darker impulses we see underlying the foundation and the true spirit of how this was appealed to, came from another more potent and much more powerful institution<br />
<br />
The federal and state and in some instances, the forgotten small town local courts who have treated individual rights as if they were so many plastic action figures on a children's gamestop table game...<br />
<br />
They created the legal judicially created form of today's heavily immunitized local and state acting officials that can not be very easily held accountable and therefore the did as the ancient scriptures would say " they did what seemed right in their own eyes...so says the Lord..."<br />
<br />
and for this reason.. the once held universal ideal that upheld the highest forms of constitutinality and all that flowed form those first principles and universal ideals meant, were no longer held as the boundaries and limitations upon a governmental actor, even as they acted wrongfully towards the citizens of their very government.<br />
<br />
so, the truth and the universal notion of individual rights, today, is weakened and no longer holds true,<br />
<br />
and with this, comes a rising up...of what always comes from the failure of the consensus of men and their rules, the breaching of the social contract in the form of a strongman arising who "will make the nation great again"<br />
<br />
this is the talk and language of all Musollini's.... the fascist rise was begun not with only dick cheney and Bush's waterboarding white house lawyers and AG...<br />
<br />
not only with what Snowden revealed to us about our own government's top down, complete capturing of every single keystroke on this computer I am writing on...<br />
<br />
but, also, it was given its legal and powerful impetus, the first and second and third, and thousandth and hundred of thousandth<br />
<br />
time, a judge, a federal magistrate, a hearing office a lawyer failed to grant a citizen their true 14 th Amendment Due Process...<br />
<br />
inside of a hearing that held in the balance their entire life, their life's work, their career, their reputation<br />
<br />
when high courts and high court appointed officials and hearing officers and lower courts<br />
<br />
lie and lie seriously and intentionally disassociate themselves from the very founding principles that create the basis for what the law is in our open society<br />
<br />
we have already taken the steps....to that which we see, hear and fear all around us today<br />
<br />
...in Germany, the tribunals who operated under a very highly developed set of laws before the rise of Nazism...were doing so under a formal Constitution and a formal set of due process standards.<br />
<br />
However, in order to politically please the higher ups and commands and the prevailing winds of the day, politically<br />
<br />
the courts of Germany long before the invasion of Poland, began to treat "the other" as if ...they were simply "fly over people"....to be stripped of their civil liberties, slowly almost hidden at first.<br />
<br />
it was then, they were lost Germany as a republic lost its soul, inside its own courts, well before the people embraced and longed for a leader, a Furher...to take them into the new millienial 1000 year reign of near heavenly rulership.<br />
<br />
it was the german nationalists who decided to short cut the treatment of the individual and his/her right to due process and the truth,<br />
<br />
that created inside the system for a rise of the Nazi party inside of Germany...<br />
<br />
and so...i fear and more than just intellectually surmise<br />
<br />
but i bear the very scars....of that which I write and speak herein<br />
<br />
when a nation and when a high court chooses to ignore the most fundamental due process guarantees to its citizens to those its considers public enemies and to those who dare to be different and who decide to put their careers on the side of the unpopular, the disenfranchised the poor and outkast<br />
<br />
then that nation no longer is operative of a truly open society Democratic in form but dangerously overpowering of the individual, within its truer self...<br />
<br />
in form we're a functioning democracy<br />
<br />
but many, many of my former clients, and acquaintances even today, i witness in my friends case...the housewife of a small town being tortured to death literally<br />
<br />
because of the failure of the local courts and the lawyers to a person, ...to simply do their jobs and to protect her civil liberties<br />
<br />
whatever she is into, what ever she does and doesn't do good or bad<br />
<br />
their abandonment wholesale...from high end super lawyers in Columbus, to the lowly bunch of local legalize<br />
<br />
its hard to witness once again...that which I myself endured ...not so many years ago<br />
<br />
and have to be treated to a front row seat<br />
<br />
while her...and my own<br />
<br />
and nearly every one i know...civil liberties, are being trampled upon, shorn, ripped into pieces<br />
and even mocked and treated with deliberate indifference<br />
<br />
not by the police outside....nor by the enemies from overseas<br />
<br />
<br />
but by those seated in black robes<br />
<br />
and those who bring their briefcases full of cookies and favors for judges<br />
<br />
around those land granted rural appalachian courthouses, built in an era, when america was just industrializing<br />
<br />
when Ameria's future wasn't as globally conceived<br />
<br />
When its better technologically days were just ahead<br />
<br />
when American's still believed....<br />
<br />
and when courts and lawyers, to a larger degree....<br />
<br />
had come from a place where a civil war over slavery and citizenship<br />
<br />
had just become....a recent faded memory<br />
but the afterglow<br />
made everyone realize then....as Lincoln stated in his final address<br />
<br />
we either get along and "treat all humans, equally...or we as a nation that is dedicated to freedom will perish from the face the earth"<br />
<br />
putting it bluntly if not paraphrased...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-10404684758313412102016-02-08T13:59:00.002-05:002016-02-08T15:18:14.166-05:00<strong><u>Update: Keturah Krankovich's Case's Plea: The Failure of the Local Criminal Justice System and The Media's Complicity In The Effort to Tear Down the Individuals' Right to Presumption of Innocence</u></strong><br />
<br />
Recently, a felony drug case that had been pending for over a year inside of Harrison County, Ohio was quietly, (very quietly) dismissed and all the pending aggravated drug trafficking and possession charges were dismissed. A plea instead was taken by the tired but still spirited Defendant, Keturah Krankovich, after she fought off the allegations that had taken on a life of their own inside the local court and also, oddly, the local media, including the everywhere local TV NewsStation, NewsNine.<br />
<br />
Keturah Krankovich in other words successfully defended herself against the powers that be and two separate indictments, a 10 month malicious prosecution, twice a week drug testing for 10 months and she defended herself against a three aggravated felony charge indictment and overcame all of these officials hot accusations against her, on January 19th. She won. In a word, she won against the greatest of odds after having spent tens of thousands of dollars, and retaining no less than three separate defense lawyers over the course of the past year.<br />
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She won because she would not give in and give up on her defense and her own statements. She won because she was committed to defending her professional background as a local experienced RN and she won for her young adult children who have had in her son's case, his own issues and serious problems. And keturah won because of her faith, not so much in the human system of laws, but in the Kingdom of God and His ability to still influence the affairs of men.<br />
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Keturah may have bended at times and she was made to endure things that very few mothers and career women and housewives would ever endure inside the same year. She was bruised and hurt by the local reporting and the relentless prosecution of something that ended up not having much if any official discovery and therefore evidence ever presented against her.<br />
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She won because she insisted upon her own rights to counsel, right to cross examine evidence, to have the state prove their hot and very damaging allegations against her and the imbalanced local prosecutor's seeming personal agenda in bringing such weakly supported allegations and then sustaining them for months, long after his own assistant had spoken to Keturah's various competent criminal defense attorneys for months, about how weak the case was, and how the case ought to be resolved and done so by either a dismissal and/or low misdemeanor.<br />
<br />
Its happened and she did take a "no contest" plea to a third degree minor misdemeanor non drug charge. She was NOT requested to take a plea to ANY DRUG charge whatsoever. She wasn't given any jail sentence and no reporting probation. She has no more drug testing to perform at all.<br />
<br />
And this win, and it is a significant win, is largely based on the complete lack of evidence that the State's case, inside the Harrison County Prosecutor's office had in prosecuting her for most of the entire past year. And its a material victory for her, despite the local media's constant attention to this case for months, as if it were a major felony drug case. Yet, when the case was resolved two weeks ago, very strongly and very much in her favor, the local media was not present, and/or either mainly silent and in effect, not so interested any more. After all, an American citizen who overcomes the most serious kinds of legal threats this nation's local governments can do to any individual, to any of u s citizens, just isn't news anymore, when the citizen wins and basically defeats the local powers that be who have made her withstand a year of hell itself, night and day for over 11 months.<br />
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In our nation anymore, its a total a crap shoot if American citizens can retained their fundamental civil liberties. Most women in Keturah's position would have given up and given in a very long time ago. The amazing thing about this case is the person who withstood all that the local prosecutor's and probation officers were willing to sustain for a year against her and do so, with strength, with courage and the kind of self-dedication and personal grit that it takes to stand up against the uneven balance of power that the individual has to face inside of our court system today. Keturah simply never give in completely to their serious high pressure and coercive tactics, for months, all the while she was undergoing the searing pain of a difficult unwanted personal divorce brought in part against her by a husband who stated repeatedly to her, "I can't be seen with you in public even."<br />
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This is what this young mother and woman who is an experienced RN has had to endure for the past year. Now, she is resting in the aftermath of having overcome the serious felony indictment and she is truly the victor. And its a victory not only for Keturah but for all of us, who believe in the constitutional rights of the accused in this country, a country supposedly based on the right of the accused to enjoy the right of presumption of innocence before being considered and promoted as guilty in the public square by a media that often simply is way to eager to buy every single thing the local police and prosecutors have to say. This case if anything, stands for the right to confront evidence that the state has brought against the beset individual and where and when it is completely lacking, the Defendant ought to win and/or achieve a significant outcome in their favor and Keturah certainly did. Her retained counsel often told her they thought they could win at trial and they knew the case was weak against her. But they all also strongly advised her to forego the rigors of a jury trial and the outside chance that the local jury system would be tainted by all the local negative media coverage that made her out to be less than innocent even though there was scant, if any actual direct evidence that the state ever did produce, even in its 10 month old delay in presenting to her, its discovery....there was so little evidence that the state would be able to present before a Jury, it was difficult for Keturah to take a plea. But given she would face no jail, no fines, and most importantly NO DRUG CHARGES WHATSOEVER, she took the minor misdemeanor and got the pressure over with and with this, begin to heal up from what was a ordeal that no one, much less a younger mother and wife going thru a painful time of personal life ought to have had to endure and do so, under our alleged 'best' legal system in the world, with the kinds of constitutional rights it is supposed to be based upon and deliver to the citizens of our nation.<br />
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Its a lesson learned and Keturah is now basically free from the terrible year long personal prosecution she has had to endure risking everything in her life, including her professional and personal life. She's learned some very important but difficult if not hard lessons about local prosecutors, local legal systems and just how bizarre a local small town criminal justice can become when they wish to create a threat to one's very liberty interest and life and family.<br />
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Its nothing one wishes to ever experience or endure. She once she has, she will never be quite the same and for this, we hope that by not giving in and not succumbing to the seriously over indictment felony charges and fighting the local powers that best she could, she has not only secured her own liberty interests once again, but in some significant way, she has helped secured all of ours in believing enough in herself and in her cause to not just take whatever dish the local prosecutors and authorities had hoped she would in furtherance of their own agenda and personal and political careers<br />
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The Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the 14th Amendment, written by Cadiz' hometown legendary 19th century congressman and lawyer, John Bingham, guarantee individuals in Keturah's status, this past year, the power of that which all of our Founder fathers fought for and believed in. Its what men died in World War II for at Normandy and beyond. Its the very basis of why our own Civil War was fought over; human freedom and human rights for all, equally.<br />
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It may seem odd to some, but in fact, every time someone is focused upon and indicted in this nation, all of these basic sacred rights are put to the test. So it was the same inside Keturah's year long felony drug prosecution. <br />
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It was terrible that she was treated by the local prosecutor and probation office AND THE LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE MOST PART, as guilty before proven innocent repeatedly and she was constantly pressured and threatened with jailing and was in fact, jailed twice by the local officials pre trial for allegedly violating the pre trial court drug testing program. One major problem with this; THEY NEVER PROVIDED ONCE EVEN ONCE THE EVIDENCE OF HER FAILED TESTS INSIDE THE COURT OF LAW!<br />
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ITs a very troubling day in America when a defendant has to argue for months and stand up and face jail time for simply wanting the state to present, not prove, just present its evidence against a defendant accused of serious crimes. When a defendant faces a multiple level felony indictment, one would expect the evidence of her infractions and the discovery that is accompanied to every single criminal case ever brought inside this nation, ought to be reasonably and quickly if not timely provided to the Defendant and her counsel. This NEVER HAPPEND INSIDE OF KETURAH's case for over 10 MONTHS!<br />
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This is the reason why Keturah's win....and her brining the state's railroad to a pause and finally to a stop against her on January 19th. She is one very seriously tired individual and she has paid out tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers, just to survive, to fight on and try to get her points across and to finally overcome all of this, this past year. <br />
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Yet, she has her pride intact and she owns her own reputation once again, despite the heavy media coverage of the state's allegations; She needs it to be more fully restored now, no doubt. She has her dignity and with this, she has stood the test and she literally helped all of us, who care deeply about the civil rights and constitutional liberties of our nation. Watching this from a certain third party distance and yet up close and personal with her at times, it is something else to try to express today, anywhere to just try to demonstrate and write about what it takes for one individual to assert ones' innocence and those all important constitutional rights before a Court of Law today in smallville USA, against a few select, highly personally agendized locally powerful local prosecutors and courts.<br />
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Its nothing small to be able to meet them on a field of battle and overcome their tactics and their unsubstantiated allegations. This has happened and it took everything inside of her to fight this fight<br />
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But now, for her, its the time to heal, a time to rest and for those of us who were near her, and watched having to endure this long night of the soul, we are left to only help watch and admire and help her realize and those watching from within the public who followed this case closely, and thru the media, to realize just how serious a win and overcoming this woman obtained not only for herself, but all of those who oneday just may find themselves unexpectedly in the same position as she did, one year ago this week.<br />
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Its an American narrative and nothing is more important than what she did to overcome this seriously falsely maintained criminal multi level felony prosecution which now is all dismissed and gone forever out of her life in the legal sense. The experience itself, of being so prosecuted, however, sadly, will never be.<br />
<br />
She has several things to do and she will get to them in due and reasonable time. But the war is over, the battlefield is now silent largely and she now is rebuilding her life. Its a time of gathering stones for Keturah and for some peace and quiet. Its also time for the government to leave her alone and let an American citizen, a young mom and career woman to get back to what can be called normalcy when things in this nation, are anything but normal given our present weakened constitutional framework within our courts today.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-61567931323463036992015-11-07T10:53:00.001-05:002015-11-07T10:53:17.199-05:00Doing what cops do besthttp://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-louisiana-city-marshals-face-murder-charges-in-childs-death/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-5870475890413937132015-10-24T06:13:00.000-04:002015-11-09T06:19:37.266-05:00Nightmare on Main Street: When Local Media and a Small Town's Local Prosecutor's Office team up to Make a Mountain out of a Mole Hill: The Curious Case of Ms. Keturah Krankovich of Harrison County OH Sometimes, in America, the flyover parts of hidden small sleepy town America, we find great and hidden things that help to build this nation and make it great again and again.<br />
<br />
And sometimes, in such same sleepy hollows we find very scary things that teach us, America is wrestling today with a very broken cirminal justice system, in direct contravention of the glory of the major contributions that such hidden places have provided via past great native American sons.<br />
<br />
In Harrison County, Ohio for the first part of the 20th century, the great find was coal and lots of it. Mines and strippers, not the kind we know today who dance themselves into heroin highs but actually the kind who made millions off of the natural resource most abundant and known to the national rise to industrial prominence across the world; king coal was found in abundance in Harrison County in the early parts of the 20th century and the rest as they say was history.<br />
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Before King Coal came along, however, something even more fundamental and more exacting and perhaps, way more important for all American's came from Harrison County, Ohio. This national treasure came in the form of a individual Antebellum and Civil War and ReConstruction Era Congressman named John Bingham. He did something for every immigrant, every grandchild of every slave man, woman, and child and just plain for every american alive today. He wrote the first main two clauses of the 14th Amendment and then guided them through passage over a contentious congress, those most important of all law and its modern foundations; the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Perhaps, the two most important Clauses of All Modern American legal jurisprudence {and easily the bane of all first year Constitutional Law Law Students studies.}<br />
<br />
And in doing so, Harrison County's greatest native political and social son gave all of us, a gift that never will stop giving until the Republic itself is no longer, the great guarantee that our first Bill of Rights will be forever incorporated into the lives of every individual, every person and every single criminal case that will ever be tried in America until its end.<br />
<br />
But, almost 150 years later, something again is now happening again in Harrison County that is serving this nation in a major national way again; the rise of the Southeastern Ohio oil and gas field and Harrison County is at the heart of this revival which is changing the face of our national and even international energy policy and transforming our national ability to become for the first time in fifty years a net exporter of natural gas and not an imagined dependent import as predicted by all the experts for the past forty years with all the dire consequences of what that may have portended for our country.<br />
<br />
But, this year, and for the Midwest Center's concern's, something is happening this year also in Harrison County that just isn't right. Something has been done to an individual that seems out of balance, out of whack and just not in keeping with the great tradition and major Bingham contribution to the bulwok of our American constitutionalism and criminal justice system. It begins and ends with what is happening to a local individual housewife, a career woman and mother and hard working individual who grew up on a large family's old farm, doing the things that so many homegrown towns' people of Cadiz and Jewett Ohio have done for decades if not for the past century or more; gathering up hay, running horses, picking the fall harvest, canning the same and just doing those things that all children do as they are raised on a farm in the otherwise rolling hills of southeastern, Ohio.<br />
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First, there was the son, a 18 year old, who had a beautiful young girlfriend with a drug problem. Then, it became his own serious drug problem and then, it became a problem w the law, for him and his beautiful girlfriend while living at the mother's nice large home in the country.<br />
<br />
The son was caught and charged along w the girlfriend with stolen property and theft. Both were charged and soon, the son was brought to court. The charges were about to be dropped to misdemeanors and the mother and step father, a pharmacist were going to fly him to Florida to get him into a major drug rehab center. (They had just discovered the week before, he was a IV heroin user.) <br />
<br />
But something would happen, on the way to resolving his first brush with the law; he had an arraignment hearing, he was suffering from a broken front tooth from a fall down directly on his head and mouth the week prior. He now had a dangling nerve on his front tooth and he was in withdrawls. <br />
<br />
He was in need of serious medical attention at the local jail and wasn't receiving anything for either his front tooth pain and/or his withdraw symptoms ,which were significant at the time.<br />
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Mom, who was a Acuity Care Nurse, making very good money while doing the late long 12 hour shifts helping human beings leave this earth in comfort and some measure of peace, was coming home from one of her particularly long series of such late night shifts and was very tired. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and get some rest, knowing her son's case was just beginning and that he had been accepted into the Florida rehabilitation center. <br />
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But something else was brewing along the same lines, which was in many ways unknown to her; Her marriage, which had not been a particularly easy one, nor without significant challenges, was about to take a very serious downward turn and in fact, one that it would never quite recover from; Her pharmacist husband of 10 years, was about to file a divorce unbeknown to her, that very same week. He had been thinking of this move for a couple of years in fact, and had, without telling her, consulted her two young children and said, he was about to seek a divorce from her;<br />
<br />
Elijah the troubled 18 yr old son and Vendela the slighter older daughter was told this several days by the departing husband, prior to the son's original appearance in court in Harrison County, Ohio's landmark turn of the century Courthouse.<br />
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Mom, however, was unawares even though she knew something wasn't quite right on their last family vacation to their favorite vacation family past time; skiing.<br />
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Mom had been 'absent' and not in a good way, as per the pharmacist husband who had consulted with lawyers for several months, if not years prior about seeking a divorce from her. He had had it; she was a load and although beautiful and well trained as a nurse and quite homemaker and good cook, the ever mindful of his professional standing husband had had enough of his trophy wife; she was just too much and he believed, also out of control.<br />
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But, Mom wasn't aware of this particular move and plan by the husband expressly, on the morning she came back from her night shift and was about to be called into the Harrison County Court by the son's lawyer for his arraignment. "You must come, you got to be here", she remembered being told. "It is important", so she did the motherly thing, despite her fatigued and the fact she knew her own mother, the son's maternal grandmother was going to attend that day's legal proceedings whether or not she attended.<br />
<br />
But mom went. Keturah loved her son and she would agree to show up for him even at this very preliminary event.<br />
<br />
Life is odd. Its the little moments and the little things that become a platform for change, major changes, good or bad.<br />
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Sometimes, things happen when we least expect it and sometimes, those closest to us, either lead us into doing things that otherwise, we would not even think of on our own, or against our better judgement.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, mothers have compassion on their kids when they see them hurting.<br />
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Sometimes, they react to the pain and voice of suffering coming from their one of their own, their only son.<br />
<br />
and sometimes, others take advantage of this moment and use it for their own purposes, in a very dark and deceitful manner.<br />
<br />
and sometimes, one is betrayed by a kiss, by the very one we were trying to answer his pain with a caring if not the most wise act requested by him.<br />
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This is where the nightmare begins and where precisely life for Keturah changed, forever.<br />
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It was in this cold dead of winter morning, inside a arraignment on several otherwise, not notable charges being brought against her son, at 18 years of age, when he was then that week accepted into a drug rehab facility in Florida. It was then, life for mom would because she answered the phone call from her young son's lawyer telling her to be sure to come to her son's preliminary proceeding that early cold morning in the country town of Cadiz, Ohio.<br />
<br />
Life would take a turn. At least for Keturah, she can always date precisely when it did for her; Many of us, never get this blessing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-70954436093248479602015-01-29T08:25:00.001-05:002015-01-29T08:25:55.604-05:00"Niggerization of America" - Cornel West<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bEScONfKqFk" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-86259469370823618062015-01-25T15:51:00.000-05:002015-01-26T01:42:09.552-05:00The Ninth Gets Real w Federal and State Prosecutors who Shave the Truth and Shape TestimonyThis is a critical case development, one that ought not to have had to take a US Federal Court of Appeals to make a statement. But in California, it did. And a message is being sent.<br />
<br />
Prosecutors have been shaving and shading the truth and testimony in criminal trials and other instances for decades and much has become a pattern and practice itself, all extremely dangerous and detrimental to American civil liberties.<br />
<br />
This is a great case precedent and legal development for those concerned about who is policing those who prosecute and police us... For too long, prosecutors have been getting away with murder when it comes to the truthfulness of their assertions and in court conduct and representations or should say, misrepresentations. People have gone to death row and to prison over such falsehoods, done almost without impunity or second thought in some jurisdictions.<br />
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In turn, this has allowed the prosecutors everywhere, to behave as if they are immune from what other counsel and defense counsel and lawyers are ethically bound by and have been seriously sanctioned because of similar use of damaging but false representations. <br />
<br />
Perhaps, finally, the Ninth Circuit has got it right, after so long. Just maybe, it will become the standard across this nation, if the other US Court of Appeals follow their lead. After all, its only justice and truthfulness we're talking about and a nation's civil liberties.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://observer.com/2015/01/breaking-ninth-circuit-panel-suggests-perjury-prosecution-for-lying-prosecutors/#.VMBR6St3An0.facebook">http://observer.com/2015/01/breaking-ninth-circuit-panel-suggests-perjury-prosecution-for-lying-prosecutors/#.VMBR6St3An0.facebook</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-84557492081487702612015-01-18T20:58:00.001-05:002015-01-18T20:58:26.023-05:00Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" I think his truest most powerful speech ever stated...and never...widely remembered by our national remembrance of him<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b80Bsw0UG-U" width="459"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-37282577373004347902015-01-17T15:13:00.004-05:002015-01-17T15:13:50.463-05:00Dr King's 1967 Speech against War and Racism and Militarism and US policy in Vietnam: The Forgotten Speech that Tells US Where King Was After Selma <a href="http://antiwar.com/orig/bromwich.php?articleid=12844">http://antiwar.com/orig/bromwich.php?articleid=12844</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-72683395482471226102014-12-19T22:36:00.001-05:002014-12-19T22:36:40.310-05:00Lyndal Kimble WarrenPolice Beating 7 2003 Warren Ohio Video was seen on GMA w Diane Sawyer July 1, 2003<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IlruaNxZpU8" width="459"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-68935295208990718892014-12-17T20:38:00.001-05:002014-12-17T20:38:37.633-05:00Is This A Silent Sign that Congress is Actually Listening to the First Major Police Protest Movement In American History?<a href="http://wzakcleveland.hellobeautiful.com/3635222/congress-passes-new-bill-requiring-doj-to-track-cop-killings/">http://wzakcleveland.hellobeautiful.com/3635222/congress-passes-new-bill-requiring-doj-to-track-cop-killings/</a><br />
<br />
Amazingly, Congress passes a bill requiring all citizen officer involved shootings data be collected and data banked. I'm totally amazed Congress, with a conservative House, passed this bill, even now<br />
this early into the movement. <br />
<br />
This bills passage is a great first initial step, that is necessary to even begin to talk about the issue of police shootings and use of deadly force. It had been passed before but quietly allowed to die off and never renewed. The FOP powers influence kept it down after W...let it die.<br />
<br />
But, now, suddenly Congress gets it and this is passed without ANY fanfare or even major media attention. Its almost eerie, but if its true, it signals this movement has already turned serious heads in the power structure of this nation, including among those who without any such public anger and protests would have never considered such a move or even thought it possible.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-79420631057809035712014-12-14T14:27:00.001-05:002014-12-14T14:41:08.889-05:00Misconduct isn't confined to Major Metro Cities: A Look Back at CNN's '99 Report on Steubenville, Ohio <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9911/10/police.misconduct/index.html?_s=PM:US">http://www.cnn.com/US/9911/10/police.misconduct/index.html?_s=PM:US</a><br />
<br />
Police Misconduct isn't anything new. Its not simply confined to the coastal big cities, LA, New York, Miami, New Orleans, Cleveland, Portland and then those internal major metros like Philly and Chicago and Cincinnati...<br />
<br />
It is found inside many smaller venues and has flourished for decade inside of many small towns of America.<br />
<br />
In fact, the nation's first pattern and practice civil rights investigation ever undertaken by the Department of Justice wasn't in New York or LA or Chicago or even a Pittsburgh or Cleveland.<br />
<br />
It happened right here in the upper Ohio Valley tri state former blue collar steel mill center called, Steubenville.<br />
<br />
It went deep here and it lasted for decades if not dating back to the prohibition era.<br />
<br />
The City's police were notoriously corrupt and notoriously brutal, and it involved both black and white officers on this hometown of both Dean Martin, the Wu Tang Klan and very close to the origins of "Play that Funky Music White Boy", Wild Cherry's Mingo Jct Ohio<br />
<br />
and its named Jefferson County Ohio for a reason....Tommy boy and George had both been here before and George helped defeat the French and Indians about a half hour away from here, before he revolted from his British masters and became the father of the American Revolution.<br />
<br />
Yes, Revolutions begin to happen in small towns oftentimes, first. Ferguson is just a recent event on the road to many prior smaller town "events" that have occurred, involving America's finest<br />
<br />
We began this journey here in Steubenville just about 20 years ago now. <br />
<br />
I lived to tell the story but ...barely and with not a little baggage and sacrifice.<br />
<br />
I also took this journey to another smaller, not very small, but definitely not a Chicago or New York or Boston...to another place in northeastern Ohio, ...another mill town, in 2003-7, when I became the lawyer for a young African American male, who was seen being brutally beat on a videotaped incident, on a sunny June say in front of his neighbors, about ten days after W declared victory for democracy in Iraq.<br />
<br />
Lyndal Kimble was the young man's name. His family and young daughters and neighbors, and about thirty others from a decidedly mixed black and white neighborhood stood by and watched in horror, until a young white female, a single mom and a nurse, who lived with her white mother and family directly across the street...cried out for the police to stop and urged others to call 911 and an ambulance appeared thereafter on the scene. ( This was the ONLY reason these three white police stopped beating Lyndal.)<br />
<br />
GMA and Diane Sawyer played the video taped brutal beating and nothing was ever the same again inside of Warren-Youngstown Ohio<br />
<br />
Nothing was ever the same again for Lyndal Kimble<br />
<br />
And nothing would ever be the same again...for me, a forty something white lawyer who again..brought the US Justice Dept Civil Rights Department into the hard and rough and tumble eastern Ohio cities and former mill towns, the rust belt of America<br />
<br />
but we did this, even under W...and with John Ashcroft at the helm<br />
<br />
And with this, we began a revolution of sorts. Its still going on and its still being fought; hard<br />
<br />
And it can be fairly said, we're not exactly wining this intense civil war....being fought just under the radar of most Americans and their Big Bang Theory TV lives<br />
<br />
Much has been lost, ...in terms of lives lost and legal challenges to the structural issues contained within modern day American policing. But progress is being made and our struggles began inside of the out of the way, Midwestern smaller cities and towns of America<br />
<br />
are where much of this present day fight was begun. <br />
<br />
The present day DOJ and Holder's civil rights division did not invent pattern and practice police misconduct investigations.<br />
<br />
In fact, they took a great deal of time, even getting into the fight, AFTER Holder was sworn into office at the nation's first black AG.<br />
<br />
{Holder in fact, was openly and strongly backed in fact by no less than, 17 top law enforcement agencies and organizations for this top AG position, as entered into the Congressional record by Senator Leahy of Vermont, his strongest and most ardent sponsor during his the Senate confirmation hearings. I and my elder father, a veteran highly respected judicial officer in Ohio, both knew then, our nation was in deep trouble, despite this promising start of the nation's first democratic president in 8 yrs.}<br />
<br />
But, Holder's Civil Rights Division has leaped up into the forefront today, of doing these pattern and practice investigations across America and they are enforcing such investigations inside many of our nation's largest cities and towns. But, first, they learned how to create such an enforcement schema and model, ...<br />
<br />
Right here, right along these ancient Indian lands, where the nation's earliest pioneers and pioneering abolitionists rose up to challenge slavery and its minions and society evils.<br />
<br />
It was here from Steubenville and the surrounding Midwest, the original DOJ civil rights pattern and practice investigation began.<br />
<br />
This is the truth. it did not begin in New York even though that City had Serpico, the 70's huge corruption heroin scandal and Philly has its brutal cops and Chicago has its brutal Police Commander and LA had its Daryl Gates and Ramparts Division.<br />
<br />
It happened here in southeastern Ohio first.<br />
<br />
And it wasn't convenient nor simple to do, then. It was an isolated region. There were no major tv stations, newspapers, <br />
<br />
No video taped beatings, nor any marches, no anchors doing cutaways from Steubenville. <br />
<br />
There were no marchers or public signs advocating against the police<br />
.... There were no legal experts debating the finer aspects of what is going on in Steubenville back twenty years ago as bad as it were.<br />
<br />
And there were no civil rights leaders who cared much for an Appalachian regional ethnic union and democratic voting oriented region.<br />
<br />
As for the local NAACP, it actually came out and publically denounced the one (white) lawyer who was actually trying to get the issue up and into the public light. (In fact, they openly backed the local brutal police chief and the Police Dept against the early allegations of police misconduct and calls for assistance for the officers who engaged in this conduct.)<br />
<br />
It wasn't an easy time. No one who lived through it was not deeply affected by this effort.<br />
Lives were changed and impacted and some were forever made to pay.<br />
<br />
For some their careers, reputations and even their lives, their relationships were never the same.<br />
<br />
Post Trauma came to those who fought these battles inside of this out of way small cities and towns along side the DOJ. Our only security except for our faith, was the invisible FBI cover we were told to us we were being granted but never once met in person nor ever spoke with except for the first calls they made to me.<br />
<br />
Many were scarred for life as a result.<br />
<br />
and yet...slowly, excruciatingly so...the investigation came to be and it resulted in the nation's first <br />
such fully DOJ investigated special litigation unit's 'findings' of a city that had "violated its citizens civil rights in a pattern manner for at least five years...or more"<br />
<br />
It was a huge vindication and victory for those of us, very very few in number who had labored in this effort in almost total isolation and enforced peer pressure and public disdain and anonymity <br />
for years. It also was something that caused waves across the entire spectrum of international human rights organizations and publications. The US itself, gave witness to what had happened inside of Steubenville Ohio in 1999-2000 before the UN Committee on Torture and Human Rights as well.<br />
<br />
What had been going on inside of our city and region's police department for decades and had become "tacitly approved" and part of the local "policy" of how police engaged our citizens...black white and red and yellow alike, had been decidedly suppressed and denied by nearly all local pd and city officials in public for years.<br />
<br />
This denial made it extremely difficult and even dangerous for and among those of us who took the brunt and bore this cross, <br />
<br />
So, this DOJ Civil Rights landmark event, represented to us, us few, a significant, huge and powerful vindication for all those years of advocacy and litigation efforts...in the hope of making "the invisible visible." It happened in part, by courage, by dedication and not a little by some type of miracle.<br />
<br />
In the end, it was Robert Kennedy and Ghandi and MLK's idealism as well as <br />
<br />
It was a personal faith, that....in the end...one could say, that made this occur given the geography and size and the critical severity of the issue that did arise on the banks of the ancient river that cuts eastern America's Midwest in half.<br />
<br />
It was God forsaken region for many decades.... at least up until the US Dept of Justice took a hard look at this seriously ethnically mixed, rough former labor union stronghold region and town.<br />
<br />
the River that Washington has crossed over and knew was formed in Pittsburgh at the Point, where the French Indian War was fought...<br />
<br />
That great river the Indian's named and once roamed and fished freely upon.<br />
<br />
It was on this river and in this 200 yr old mill town, that the Civil Rights Division came into and performed this powerful landmark civil rights effort.<br />
<br />
After these DOJ original efforts and findings, were announced in September of 1997,<br />
<br />
Many things were never again quite the same<br />
this was true for both those who fought the good fight....and for the city itself;<br />
<br />
This effort produced a milestone in both our personal lives and in many ways, inside of Steubenville, certainly its police department, in some ways.<br />
<br />
Problems remains and the public officials kept on denying the DOJ's efforts and findings yet they over time, came to a place of at least accommodation and realized they needed to come into the 20th century in some terms and applications inside of its police department. Many today would say...not much has actually changed given the same city fathers who brought in the consent decree are still voted every election into office today.<br />
<br />
But one thing did happen for sure. After eight years of federal oversight, and not quite completed consent decree compliance still to this day, young minorities and many whites, female and male, who were either subjects of and/or witnesses to police misconduct, who before dared to speak out against police brutality occurring in this rough and tumble racially divided mill town, not unlike todays' Ferguson in its police and political structure inside the city limits, <br />
<br />
were eventually protected, from the at least, the most serious use of force, false arrests, and patterned retaliatory and brutal and false police actions that were being done "routinely" for "years" as per the official DOJ findings<br />
<br />
...inside of Steubenville, Ohio <br />
<br />
This did change and it happened here first, as a result of the enforcement of Public Law 94 or what is commonly referred to today as an 14141 action.<br />
<br />
Its the story of a city's population that lived in fear of its police. Its the story of a citizenry that were coerced into silence, even its white citizens who wanted to try to speak out against the same.<br />
<br />
and its a story about how the US justice Department came to this forgotten, out of the way, small city known as "little Chicago" in its heyday for its strong ties to madams and mob bosses in Atlantic City to Chicago and Las Vegas...<br />
<br />
but up thru the mid 90's...it was very hard on its citizens who dared to act up and those who spoke up on behalf its brutalized victims. <br />
<br />
This did change in significant ways, ...given what a small number of people and two brave lawyers did inside this city, one the son of a prominent veteran local senior trial judge<br />
<br />
and this is the story...of how America and Eric Holder came to the place, where...<br />
<br />
we can today at least, in our most earnest but narrow of ways, ...begin the task of policing<br />
the<br />
American landscape ...called modern day law enforcement at all...<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-88302629387091510452014-12-08T11:14:00.002-05:002014-12-08T11:14:32.612-05:00The Revolution Has Begun: Civil Rights Police Misconduct Comes Out of the ClosetYears ago, as a solo white lawyer who as a son of a prominent judge, in a small eastern Ohio city, I began to take aim at this social evil of American out of control policing, I was both warned, and admonished...by many inside the profession and some ministers, good friends and FBI agents, musicians, and neighbors and others, to be very careful, that this is an explosive issue and that it often meant for a promising young lawyer, a road to nowhere and worse, a trip to the State Bar Disciplinary counsel.<br />
<br />
All of the negative things they said...came true; they were right. And I had a lot of time to ponder this issue for years away from the front lines and the battles I personally engaged in with this issue for better part of almost two decades in my law practice and in my private life.<br />
<br />
I was among the poorest of the poor many times, walking in their shoes so very often and even living within their homes and /or staying so close in contact with them, their lives and their struggles became interwoven with my own.<br />
<br />
"Richard, you are so involved and so close to these people," a judge once remarked to me, before a high profile criminal trial, "that we can't get the police into that street and neighborhood to investigate or search their homes".<br />
<br />
I smiled. He smiled too. It was well into my civil rights lawyering that this had occurred and much had already happened in my life and to me both professionally and personally as a result of this chosen path<br />
<br />
However, I remained resolute and the judge knew of what he spoke.<br />
<br />
A Civil Rights lawyer usually, fighting police misconduct, in the past, labored, in the dark and often in extreme isolation from both his peers and the 'nice' areas of the practice of law.<br />
<br />
Many times, you were shunned or simply looked upon as an 'outsider" as "rogue" or, worse...a lover of men...colored men or even worse...the poor.<br />
<br />
Judges oftentimes, not all of them by any stretch, but several key ones oftentimes, looked down upon me and were quick to point out my particular failings, because I was dedicated to this area of the law; my tie wasn't "appropriate" for one federal judge, thought it cost well more than his own that day I'm positive. On another day, I was deemed "a dishonor and disrespectful of Cleveland's finest"....<br />
<br />
On another day, I was jailed by this same judge...after winning a criminal defense verdict for a black male of trying to assault an officer w/ a deadly weapon...I won the case with the help of the fellow partner CPD officer...My reward by my judicial heavyweight peer that moment after a hard fought tense jury trial that week in Cleveland?<br />
<br />
I was sent to jail...that moment by this judge ..."for contempt, you defamed and disrespected Cleveland's finest"<br />
<br />
I spent that night in a maximum security lock up...behind an ALL steel Cuyahoga county jail, w/ the most violent of the violent. The guards on that floor carried fully loaded, safety off M 16s...and they cursed when they saw me and asked the intake officer "WTF is he doing here"...as they saw that I wasn't any thing resembling a true serious street threat...<br />
<br />
But many many other comments, experiences and narratives accompanied my legal career in doing civil rights work. I would not trade the experiences for the world. But it has never been easy, never been simple, never been even rewarding in many respects and certainly has cost me everything more than once or twice...and created immeasurable tension and problems in my private life, that go beyond anything that any one human can describe or narrate<br />
<br />
But, today...now...I see the youth and the middle and the blacks and the whites and all persons of many colors flooding into the streets of our major cities and towns and college campuses across America today, this November and this Christmas season...<br />
<br />
and I have to say....it makes me very proud; very pleased....<br />
<br />
I don't have to feel so alone as millions are being schooled and taught about the issue I devoted my life's work to 24 yrs ago.<br />
<br />
Its hard to put into words, what I am feeling and sensing. the long hours spent in trying to litigate even one civil rights case before a federal court is enough to make most lawyers never want to even approach or if they had, to remain at a very safe and non toxic distance to ever attempt again.<br />
<br />
I handled dozens of such cases and many of them very high profile. Thru the long hours, the hours spent alone, in some coffee shop trying to write yet another responsive brief or at my apartment leaving my family or my then wife or later, my young son, alone and by themselves for hours on end...while I plied away at trying to get my civil rights case to survive the incredible burdensome proofs and standards that the federal courts have erected over the citizens attempts at redress of their fundamental civil rights...is something I can never get back<br />
<br />
I can never quite gain back the time I lost in the aftermath of these cases, good or bad. It took me several years to even begin to learn how to truly litigation one these cases.<br />
<br />
I spent years in reading and absorbing and by trial and error, experimenting inside of federal courts, depositions and cases, probing, poking and re readling, like a scientists who is onto something major but can't quite find the precise point of entry to unravel the mystery that he /she knows is locked inside of this American legal jurisprudence called civil rights..<br />
<br />
Its a huge historical lesson and it is built on the backs of lawyers and judges and many others who came long before us today. this law is a constantly changing and constantly complex thing to enter into; police civil rights is a matrix and it involves the most fundamental question about our society, our history and our relationships to the modern society in which we both find ourselves and our national purpose.<br />
<br />
It rocks the individuals who are involved to their core. it rocks cities and towns to their very vitals, I have witnessed this numerous times. I have had clients who have after years of litigation have told me..."Richard, I wish you had never came into our lives...we love you man, we need you...but you have changed our world...our minds will never be the same and we cannot evermore look upon this society the same"<br />
<br />
this is the common experience of any one who has ever engaged in this burning issue of civil rights police misconduct in the modern era.. It will challenge every presumption one ever was taught or led to believe...black or white, rich or poor, national or green card holder.<br />
<br />
its a study in America herself and its relationship to the world. Our foreign policy wont look the same after you represent the poor before our federal courts. One's view of the justice system wont be ever capable of being the tower of justice and virtue and truth it represents to the outside world, after you take upon the burden of a widow who lost her husband to a unarmed highly questionable police officer shooting...<br />
<br />
You wont be unable to relate to those in jail quite the same anymore and you will look upon those who question nothing about society with a certain pity and sadness after you do this kind of work for several years, let alone for twenty.<br />
<br />
"its a long lonely road, Richard", said one very experienced veteran civil rights lawyer told me over the phone, as he noticed from a distance, I began to take the path of my promising young law career towards civil rights. "you will never feel like other lawyers again" <br />
<br />
He was right. it was true. Nothing ever was the same again, in my life...as I devoted myself to my early efforts at making the invisible visible<br />
<br />
but today, the revolution has begun, finally and I like an aboltionist of old who had labored in the field in season and out of season for years, in isolation, in disdain and in complete rejection by many....<br />
<br />
they saw that their life work ...wasn't after all those years..in vain... .despite the hardship their chosen adult path had resulted in for them.<br />
<br />
Dr. King said.."i may not get there with you...but my eyes have seen the promise land"<br />
<br />
And....its true... one has seen this vision ...long, long ago....once upon a time in America<br />
<br />
Every civil rights plaintiffs lawyer who has ever taken one of these cases seriously and litigated them for the purpose of vindicating his clients bill of rights, ...knows and understands, that he/she is basically fulfilling what this nation's purpose was created for; protecting and vindicating human rights for all<br />
<br />
And with this, comes the knowledge one is a idealists, in a very pragmatic, money driven profession and society; its a celebrity culture, materialistic to the core today.<br />
<br />
its not the era of Civil right movement; these are times when people flaunt their fourth and fifth mansions and their 20,000 rings and 1600000 dollar cars and their lear jets and 100,000 weekend at the super bowls; athlete make more money than any CEO today and<br />
<br />
the wealthy today, are far richer than nearly 9/10 of the rest of us<br />
<br />
Its not the civil rights era<br />
<br />
and some lawyers who actually today, still try to sacrifice themselves and their promising young legal careers to help others feel like this nation's promises mattered and their lives mattered and their rights were worth fighting either overseas or at home inside a federal court for... oftentimes, don't get compensated very well....<br />
<br />
But we do get the labeled and we are oftentimes not only sent to the back of the bus, we were completely disbarred, disrobed of even our dignity<br />
<br />
Such are not going to be held up before the world by anyone as a shining example to follow; few will ever want to follow in this type of "careerism"<br />
<br />
few will chose poverty and shame and disregard over the life of the kings of Egypt after law school <br />
<br />
But we too, as advocates are simply human, simply wanting to share in this life's better aspects and when after we have fought the good fight and done so for so long<br />
<br />
it becomes like a music of angels in the night...like poetry in motion...and a great, great comfort<br />
<br />
<br />
to see the youth of the Gen X and the Millenial generation come of age...and choose...out of all the issues that they could have chosen today...war, poverty, inequality of wealth, unemployment and underemployment<br />
<br />
the one issue this generation chose...to carry forth into the next generation...for years to come, is <br />
<br />
the one I chose on day in my first year of law practice, when a young black man I visited in his jail cell at the request of his mother, had had his face have torn, scraped and scarred because two white racist cops in my hometown, where my father was the senior trial judge and who had taught my siblings and I about the notion of fairness and the law<br />
<br />
brutally took him...and pushing him down onto the uneven broken glass pavement of my hometown's dirty, unmaintained sidewalk....kept his face to the ground and then literally used his face and head as if it were a broom...scraping his side of his head and face, all the way down about a city block on this uneven pavement with broken glass strewn all about<br />
<br />
In that moment, I saw the face of the Crucified, staring back at me. it wasn't any longer about a young black youth; or the polie<br />
<br />
it was about saving jesus...from any more suffering upon His Cross...<br />
<br />
and this is what propelled me and my young promising family name and career,,,nto the work for the poor<br />
<br />
I never forgot this young man and his experience. he was only 19. He wasn't violent. After his jail time after he was sent to prison, he became a problem...traumatized of course....post trauma is only reserved for those returning from the war..in this nation today<br />
<br />
but we dont' do analysis of those who are severely wounded and bruised and battered and assaulted without any cause...by our own police<br />
<br />
....these are the issues that inspired me...and propelled me forward into the life and work of a civil rights advocate for life<br />
<br />
and today...I see my sons and brothers and daughters...carrying on...this same effort and this same movement....<br />
<br />
that once inspired our former greatest leaders of this nation, from the Founders, to those leading up to the civil war, to Lincoln ...and onward...to the progressives and then into the modern civil rights era and the Kennedys and Kings<br />
<br />
today,,,we have a chance now to see how this nation reacts to yet another 'unfinished business' of the promise of democracy....<br />
<br />
we have another opportunity on the backs and feet of those who were killed or maimed and or abused by police everywhere...in this nation and the millions who are tuned in and turned on suddenly to this issue<br />
<br />
thank God for Ferguson's blackest most ardent serious even anger protesters...<br />
<br />
thank God for all those who have gone into the streets of our cities and towns; we just may save this nation from herself, just yet<br />
<br />
and all of it....makes me not only hear and see the coming of the Lord<br />
<br />
but, also...it makes me...feel...<br />
....less....as I once was told by a fellow civil rights lawyer many trials and many tribulations ago<br />
in my first years of this kind of work<br />
<br />
isolated, less overlooked, disdained, rejected and dishonored in my hometown, in my chosen profession and <br />
<br />
in my life<br />
<br />
I believe..today...we are witnessing the impulses of a democratic sentiment and spirit that will challenge the greatest power on earth...to make good on its promise...<br />
<br />
to bring justice to its people...again once and for all<br />
<br />
we will make it possible to make even the most cynical and hard hearted of judges and prosecutors...<br />
<br />
come to heed what true liberty what true law is for and what the meaning of law in America was decided purposed for and upon<br />
<br />
the individual and the inexorable march of one's civil liberties ...to be protected by and for the people....in the courtrooms of this nation...not because we are black or white or red or yellow<br />
<br />
but because we are human<br />
<br />
because we are Americans<br />
<br />
Because...we are a nation...dedicated to the highest of mankinds aspirations...not the medicore and common darkest aspects of human history with its travails and cries in the night<br />
<br />
this is not about any one case, any one legal argument<br />
<br />
its about the soul and character of a nation and its about<br />
<br />
the redemption of even one solo lawyer and his vindication.....as we witness the start of something new....<br />
<br />
something never quite seen before..in our generation and times<br />
<br />
and what we are seeing....is long, long overdue...but was certain to come...as some of us, who have labored long in the field of civil rights law<br />
<br />
have sense for sometime now....that this nation has a date with destiny....and if this nation's courts and its officials and its leadership...doesn't wish to manage and deal w/ this problem of entrenched police brutality<br />
<br />
inside its courts in a fair and appropriate and just manner<br />
<br />
than this issue...will cause the people of this nation to rise up...to want to see change<br />
and to bring about a fundamental re ordering of our national priorities<br />
<br />
we are witnessing the beginning I believe...the evolution and change and the revolution of<br />
a new generation breathing life again..into the old forms...of that status quo powers who want to keep a lid on things, who way...we will guide you, let us carry on for you because we know best how to do this<br />
<br />
and with this moment...I for one...can rest in peace...much much easier knowing my son...and his generation...will carry on in a nation where hundreds of thousands if not millions<br />
are not willingly to live in blindness and naivte about our nation's legal system...living in a hollow democracy where the people are reduced to subjects..not citizenship<br />
<br />
and where...our notions of fairness are not decided by law, but by men...<br />
<br />
and where no one no matter how many police there are..on our streets<br />
<br />
can feel safe...nor secure..in our homes and papers and belongings..<br />
because...we know something is wrong..something is seriously wrong when the police<br />
can commit murder and assaults and home invasions outside of the law, outside of the<br />
standards of community peace and reason<br />
<br />
and get full away with it, with impunity, over and over again for year after year<br />
this will eat us alive in this nation<br />
<br />
and other nations..will begin to see this and note, that what ever we profess around the world<br />
<br />
as our reason to be...we are failing that promise and proclamation horrifically here at home<br />
where it matters<br />
<br />
our greatest threat will never be from the outside or external<br />
<br />
but rather...from within, the apathy in the face of such huge human rights issues<br />
and our courts and prosecutors and legal systems deliberate indifference to the same<br />
<br />
I can however, take great comfort and hope...and see in this present moment...a hope for change<br />
a moment we can now get thru and make our nation a better place to live<br />
<br />
and one...which is more true and genuine for all people of color and class<br />
and one more just...in our times<br />
<br />
cynical men and some wise men will cast a long shadow on today's youth as they have<br />
lawyers like myself....<br />
<br />
they will deride you, they will tell you you're being naïve, you don't understand, you don't get what this world is about and they will tell you <br />
...stop being dreamers and stop trying to change the world<br />
<br />
there is crime out there...there is the good life waiting for you<br />
just go into your career and stop causing trouble<br />
<br />
....this is all the same things I and many others have heard for a generation or more now...they said the same thing during MLK days...and Robert Kennedy used to talk about the same kinds of things<br />
<br />
but today...we have a moment, an opportunity to change this nation...from within, from the ground up and from within ourselves<br />
<br />
and we can ....not not be down or cynical nor without our better selves...right now<br />
<br />
too much has been fought for...too much sacrifice has occurred...long, long into the night it is...for some of us<br />
<br />
but the cry of these oppressed and these idealistic youth..who seek and want to see change<br />
these are the future of this nation...this is what...always...and forever will propel America forward...<br />
<br />
it was in their youth, The Founders for large part...fought the revolution<br />
<br />
it was a young abolitionist name Lundy and then Garrison and then Douglass and many women...in their youth...<br />
<br />
like Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Grimcke sisters and many others....who helped a younger now older Lincoln into office<br />
<br />
and it was a younger Roosevelt who pumped energy into a dying nation and economy by granting the idea that people mattered, that a collective society was the better society<br />
<br />
and that is wasn't wrong to seek justice and equality and economic justice for young and old and those poor among us...as a government as a government for the people, by the people and of the people<br />
<br />
....Today...this moment...is almost revolutionary....we need to see it continue and I urge these present day young....to not only keep it moving...<br />
<br />
but..to reach for the stars...don't stop at one issue or some small compromise 'set of demands'...of any kind<br />
<br />
seek to change your government your nation...remake it...its your duty to do so<br />
<br />
Jefferson said so...in the Declaration ...he was in his thirties when he wrote that document which changed the world<br />
<br />
Don't stop at piece meal changes to the system. Tear it down and rebuild it....and do it better and make it better.. Don't allow the lawyer and talking heads tell you what is best or better<br />
<br />
remake it along the best the world and reason and humanity and Christianity and every major religion that is sincere and true has to say about treating one's neighbor as oneself would want to be treated this is the basis of all law<br />
<br />
"this is the law; love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself"<br />
<br />
this is it folks...its humanity.....Its nothing that can be changed that hasn't been focused upon before<br />
<br />
tear things down if you have to; Jefferson Franklin and Washington did but put something better in its place<br />
<br />
Lincoln did<br />
<br />
Many others have also inside of this nation, as it made its youthful way forward; unions were someone's dream in the early part of the 20th century; they became in a generation the means of growing the greatest middle class on earth<br />
<br />
child labor laws and women rights to vote to divorce were not always present or a reality in this nation<br />
<br />
but someone dreamed them and fought and sacrificed for them and they came....<br />
<br />
Slavery was terminated....it took 65 years...after the nation turned but 16 yrs old...to begin that effort...and it took hundred of thousands of lives....to do so<br />
<br />
Jim Crow took a century to end after the 14th amendment was passed. but a lawyer named John Doar ..w white man...from Maine....a republican....helped to lead the legal desegregation of the south...along with many many prior brilliant black lawyers...who opened the path for a Marshall and others to bring segregation to an end.<br />
<br />
its time...<br />
and I have waited for this moment...all my life....<br />
<br />
its only befitting to...see it come about...<br />
and with this...His servant can depart...in peace<br />
<br />
but not...before ...I see it come to fullUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-90902503005173864492014-11-27T14:21:00.001-05:002014-11-27T14:21:29.384-05:00After Ferguson's GJ Verdict: What's Next? MLK gives us his lasting perspective on social unrest"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."<br />
<br />
MLK jr<br />
<br />
In the wake of the Prosecutor of St. Louis and the GJ decision to issue a no bill against officer D Wilson, the nation has witnessed a coast to coast, north to south witness to the people's view of the injustice of police misconduct created by officers of the law, receiving a continual repeated pattern of "safe passage"...and "immunity" from state or federal criminal prosecution for their actions.<br />
<br />
The problem persists and this time, it seems, the youth and the social media inspired movements that are growing and showing their anger across American in the wake of this decision, is both real, genuine and inspired. <br />
<br />
Now, the question lingers...where does this movement go from here? Any movement needs leadership and wisdom and insight. What the possible demands for justice that such a nascent but obviously deeply felt and seriously inspired movement possess. What does this movement want to seek and ask if not create themselves. Now is the time for such a movement to grow and quickly<br />
develop into something more than just demonstrations and angry diatribes and outbursts across the land. <br />
<br />
I'm all for protests. I' m not for violence but I don't equate burning of cars and breaking glass on the same level of taking life and ending a 12 or 13 or 16 or 18 9r 19 year olds life as has happened just in the past days, weeks, months and year all either unarmed, truly not threatening nor in any kind of state of mind or position to want to truly cause harm to anyone, must less a police officer.<br />
<br />
When the system the courts, the legislature, the executive don't seriously address this problem, there will continue to be a sense left within the body politic of this nation that life is cheap and our constitutional rights are not very highly valued by those who are the very representatives of the state and system of law itself. this is the rub. this is far different an issue than that of rogue criminals taking over our streets and ending life.<br />
<br />
These are supposedly the "good guys"...who are acting more and more every year, every decade...like serious bullies, like serial abusers, ...who are terrorizing entire populations centers.<br />
<br />
And when the courts, federal and state or local, including their agents, like prosecutors often do, not always, but often do;....the red hot magma of social content begins to heat and in time, it will break through and begin to flow...into the streets and the living rooms and hopefully, if its guided well ...into the state and national offices and political leaders consciences, which are harder than the rock formations that create such underlying social and structural pressures to begin with.<br />
<br />
Police brutality is an enduring problem in the modern society everywhere, but especially here in America. Its roots are very deep. It begins with the rise of the modern day policing first created as an institution in Cincinnati and then New York. The FOP rise and its power influence inside of both political parties is hardly matched in significance and scope and yet is so often simply left out of the equation when it comes to discussing both the problems and the solution to this problem<br />
<br />
What King knew...was in any given situation involving social justice and injustice, if the people begin to truly feel that their voices can not be heard and are not going to be listened to, then rioting and seeking to demonstrate in less than a perfectly peaceful manner will occur and it isn't right to judge such actions harshly or even at all, unless one is willing to bring that same kind of serious judgment and critique to the very underlying social causes that bring about such rioting and serious unrest. King knew...by 1967, as he stated in a rarely shown but documented black and white interview done just before he was assassinated, that his earlier pure non violent methodology and serious pacifists approach...wasn't working in the face of the hard, extremely bitter northern metro city racism and classism and institutional opposition to true social change. he said so openly. <br />
<br />
And King himself began to realize by 1967, it was going to take much longer and a lot more of serious work, demonstrations and actions....to get things inside of much of the rest of the nation to change the way he had led the non-violent message and its work to change in the earlier aspect of the Civil Rights anti segregation movement that he oversaw before 1965.<br />
<br />
Today...we need the example of earlier Abolitionists, early political activists of the progressive era and all writers, journalists and others who were seriously critical of our not so open society from a day when America was first struggling with the major social evils of various eras and seasons of our young nation's history and discontent; the slave issue and the original abolitionists, the rise of "money interests" and the robber barrons, and their critics, the lack of worker protection laws, the strong opposition to unions and the women's suffrage movement; and all of these, including to the very still relevant debate of whether or not in America, the government ought to support a strong safety net for the poor and the elderly and the weaker members of society. These issues still create lots of tension across our nation. We need today, badly...those kinds of intellects, passionate advocates and leaders of a by gone era, to help guide this democratic constitutional crises out of and away from the shoals of those things that can sink any democracy in any era, at any time.<br />
<br />
But serial, patterned, historical police misconduct is almost in a category all by itself. I know.<br />
I've studied it since the early 1990's if not longer. Its been something that has been the calling of my life and most of my adult career's waking hours were devoted to date, to this issue. Its a unique problem of the past century inside of America<br />
<br />
And its no longer, with these riots and demonstrations happening this Thanksgiving week, 2014, that ought to be ignored or simply dismissed or allowed to discharge into another dark night; Something needs attention, like a sick patient in our nation and it needs serious immediate and actual hands on attention. <br />
<br />
If we don't seek to define the solutions quickly, this serious social injustice issue will begin as others, to rot our democratic society as it already has in truth. We need a doctor and we need one, not unlike Dr. King fast... to articulate the very language of the voiceless to the watching world in order for our society to not be nor remain a hollow shadow of its high precepts and pointed example for human rights around the world, that it so often acclaims and projects for the entire world.<br />
<br />
If we are to remain truly a nation of laws and not of mere men in blue, with their 40 calib glocks...we need to get this issue ....delt with without any further undue delayUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-26935502734323321422014-11-16T12:53:00.001-05:002014-11-16T12:53:10.932-05:00An Excellent Link for Those in Central Ohio {and elsewhere} relating to Present Policing Issue leading to Police State<a href="http://theweseeyouproject.blogspot.com/">http://theweseeyouproject.blogspot.com/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-79612766878050694812014-11-12T00:34:00.001-05:002014-11-12T00:52:47.148-05:00Jonathan Doar Original Civil Rights Division Lead Attorney under Robert Kennedy and Johnson Dies<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/john-doar-leading-u-s-civil-rights-lawyer-1960s-dies-n246606">http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/john-doar-leading-u-s-civil-rights-lawyer-1960s-dies-n246606</a><br />
<br />
<br />
In awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, Obama credited Doar with laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<br />
He recalled how Doar, with his hands raised, successfully pleaded with protesters following the 1963 funeral of civil rights leader Medgar Evers to go home peacefully rather than clash with heavily armed police officers.<br />
<br />
"He was the face of the Justice Department in the South. He was proof that the federal government was listening," Obama said.<br />
<br />
In the C-SPAN interview, Doar described the election of Obama as "rewarding" and marveled at the progress made toward racial equality since 1960.<br />
<br />
"Countless black citizens in the South couldn't vote. They were second-class citizens from cradle to grave. The discrimination was terrible, brutal. And to think, you know, that's over. It's done," he said.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-50827337635696926152014-09-26T22:34:00.000-04:002014-09-26T22:34:37.030-04:00Cleveland Is Under DOJ Pattern and Practice Investigation of its own; Ohio Leads the Way on Such DoJ Civil Rights Police Misconduct Investigations<a href="http://fox8.com/2013/03/14/justice-department-to-hold-press-conference-on-cleveland-police/">http://fox8.com/2013/03/14/justice-department-to-hold-press-conference-on-cleveland-police/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-87971551565530235142014-08-28T09:00:00.001-04:002014-08-28T09:00:17.386-04:00Perhaps a Clue As Why Ferguson and Mo Police have Issues: An Unconstitutional State Law re Use of Deadly Force?Last night, on CBS evening news a CBS reporter interviewed a state lawyer and police advocate and he tried to argue the case for the Officer involved in the shooting. In doing so, this local police advocate attempted to demonstrate that according to Mo state law, there is a justification or legal standard written into Mo law that says in effect, " an officer can use deadly force where in situations it is reasonable and where deadly force is required to ....make an arrest..." and it goes on.<br />
<br />
If this is the current status of Mo law, its plainly unconstitutional and directly in contravention of the US Supreme Court settled precedent on when and how deadly force may be used against a arrestee or fleeing felon.<br />
<br />
The Mo state law seems to justify the use of deadly force well beyond its legal limitations that are found in the US Supreme Court case of Gardner v. Tennesse which limited its use to instances of when an officers or others life is in "imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death". This is the brightline standard. There are no exceptions but it appears, Mo has tried and actually has placed an unconstitutional "line" or "clarification" into its state law on when an officer can use deadly force.<br />
<br />
Some may say its just nuance. In fact, it opens the flood gates to precisely the kind of wild shooting spree that happened involving unarmed youth Mike Brown and six year untrained Officer Wilson.<br />
<br />
Its apparent that if this interview is accurate and CBS did its homework, that this local state standad significantly and dangerously broadens the very legal limitation that the US Supreme Court in Gardner was itself facing and dealing with inside of a fleeing felony state or local law involving a black youth.<br />
<br />
The Supreme Court's standards are serious and yet flexible enough to allow for a lot of what is happening today by police involved shootings. Yet, to broaden this already quite flexible standard into an arena where "its justified for making an arrest...." as Mo state law seems to suggest and states, this then implicates the very definition of why the US Supreme Court had to make such a ruling and place limits on officer shooting citizens in our streets in the first instance.<br />
<br />
First, no state or local ordinance can trump the constitution. This ought to be understood. WE don't live inside a nation where there are fifty standards of when and how a car is allowed to crash into a crowd of people and one gets to walk away. There are not fifty standards of when a person points gun at an innocent unarmed non violent person and gets to walk away.<br />
<br />
Likewise, when a government agent is acting on behalf of the state, this by presumption and its very implications, triggers a national ...i.e. constitutional citizenship review of such any state actor conduct, that would by law supersedes any local custom or state law. Its basic fundamental human rights and constitutional law understanding. <br />
<br />
Today, nowhere in America, in a public setting, can you bar African Americans or Chinese or Native American Indians from public accommodations, such as lunch counters. This isn't capable of being done by local legal justification any more in this nation. Its a recognized constitutional right today. [and frankly has been for over 150 years, we just didn't enforce it since the passage of the 14th Amendment so the 64 civil rights act was passed.]<br />
<br />
And so it is, when a state government actor uses his weapon or gun of any kind to aim and then shoot a citizen, especially an unarmed one, as this act implicates by it very nature, when a citizen is living inside a purported democracy, a constitutional question of the first order.<br />
<br />
If it doesn't, then we don't live in a national constitutional structure anymore. There is no need to debate the issue; if there are fifty standards to be utilized when a state actor can take a citizens life, on the street without a court of law in a summary execution by his or her own determination of 'reasonableness' as I have heard many police talking heads say on national tv lately in the light of events in Ferguson, then, we may be able to do so, but then we are NOT living inside the same national citizenship as conceived by those who wrote the Constitution originally and certainly by the viewpoint of the person, who wrote the most important amendment arguably of our modern era.<br />
<br />
If it does raise however a constitutional question, then there can not be fifty standards or a thousand local standards of when a police officer can use deadly force, but rather, a single constitutional standard. There is one nation. There is one constitution and there is one national citizenship. And so, there is one standard to be applied across the nation, as to when the state actor, locally specified can take your life without a jury trial. <br />
<br />
This is basic to the fact of living inside a nation which promises by its constitutional framework, a national citizenship.<br />
<br />
John Bingham's notion of national citizenship contained in the 14th Amendment requires this kind of understanding of what it means to live under a constitutional framework as a whole nation under God and law.<br />
<br />
If we don't wish to recognize this standard any longer, for whatever reason, i.e. fighting crime, "giving police the tools they need" or "national security" etc.etc... {however you justify the same} then you are no longer operating or thinking from within inside the circle of creating and talking about a constitutional democracy, at least the same kind of one of how our framers and its most important amendments authors, conceived of it. <br />
<br />
CBS needs to go back and ask a few constitutional scholars and major lawyers about what this police apologist in Mo said on their national broadcast the other night. It went totally unanswered. It was seriously misleading and one sided. I'm appalled and amazed CBS would not bring in the "second expert" view and counter this very serious misguided and seriously misinformed and misled police official from Mo. and then, perhaps, now, we have discovered why Officer Wilson thought he could in fact shoot Brown in this manner, 'effecting an arrest'. Perhaps, Wilson was just trained to do this ...in contravention of national constitutional standards by those in superior positions to him.<br />
<br />
It would not be the first time, an officer on the beat was mis-informed and seriously misled by his training day officers and police defenders.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-79142652996380681862014-08-23T13:32:00.000-04:002014-08-23T13:32:19.841-04:00Gardner v Tennessee: The evolving standard of when Police Can Use Deadly Force<a href="http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6811&context=jclc">http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6811&context=jclc</a><br />
<br />
This case represents the landmark modern precedent on when a police officer or officers<br />
can use deadly force. <br />
<br />
The background of the case and how it arose is important to understand the precedent that was created. No "fleeing felon" can be shot dead just because he or she had committed a felony<br />
and its important to note, this was a critical bright light standard applied for the past 30 years<br />
although some courts and many police have tried to manipulate the standard into a lower<br />
level of when they can use their discretion.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-82721086616851152812014-08-21T20:55:00.000-04:002014-08-21T20:55:12.914-04:00Utah White Male is Gunned Down by Salt Lake City Cop: Questions Arise<a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58304981-78/police-taylor-lake-salt.html.csp">http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58304981-78/police-taylor-lake-salt.html.csp</a><br />
<br />
will this police killing of an unarmed white male in Salt Lake be viewed along with <br />
the Ferguson Mike Brown policing shooting? probably not, but it needs to be<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-5014102876117232014-08-21T09:13:00.005-04:002014-08-21T09:13:51.892-04:00A good primer on the rise of modern police misconduct in the US<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/police-brutality-jill-nelson/1003831491?ean=9780393048834">http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/police-brutality-jill-nelson/1003831491?ean=9780393048834</a><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-15988096203850135682014-08-16T18:31:00.001-04:002014-08-16T18:31:27.729-04:00Thousands protest in Times Square over Michael Brown shooting - Los Angeles News | FOX 11 LA KTTV<a href="http://www.myfoxla.com/story/26285412/nyc-protest-ferguson#.U-_bt4xX35w.blogger">Thousands protest in Times Square over Michael Brown shooting - Los Angeles News | FOX 11 LA KTTV</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-16070048539223810142014-08-16T17:54:00.002-04:002014-08-16T17:54:41.004-04:00Its a non racial issue, as much as it can be...A problem that cuts across all classes and racia divides actually<a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/1412236/dillon-taylor-police-shooting/">http://www.inquisitr.com/1412236/dillon-taylor-police-shooting/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7786512001186110862.post-82220010213982633152014-08-16T14:25:00.002-04:002014-08-16T14:25:53.981-04:00The Protest that the U.S.A has been long over due for<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/us/darren-wilson-identified-as-officer-in-fatal-shooting-in-ferguson-missouri.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/us/darren-wilson-identified-as-officer-in-fatal-shooting-in-ferguson-missouri.html?_r=0</a><br />
<br />
The protests in Ferguson and then copies throughout the nation...heading into the last weeks of August are but the outward boiling over of something that has been seething just beneath the surface of this nation for a very long time. Because of major political issues, Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, historical national elections and many other major 'crowded' messages that the American people have been subjected to for over two decades, this issue has been tramped down, stuffed and suppressed out of the way and off the radar<br />
<br />
Ferguson and what the police are doing there and others....has ripped off the lid...of a ongoing national debate at the grass roots level that is finally receive the kind of national attention that it needs and deserves<br />
<br />
and the growing popular unrest and protests over the same....are a good thing...not to be feared but embraced for change<br />
<br />
and...lets see how our nation's first African American President and Attorney General react...to the <br />
public outcry not only from little St. Louis 'burb America, but all across this national brutality landscape.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0