A must read. Women’s March: January, 21, 2017. Pensacola, Florida.

-By Bob Zellner from his Facebook page. Bob Zellner is the organizer of the Ella Baker Organizing School South BOSS at North Carolina NAACP and former Field Secretary at SNCC.

The worst weather in the United States erupted this morning as our small band suited up to drive from Daphne, Alabama, my hometown, to Pensacola for the Women’s March. Tornado alarms screamed as we drove through rain and wind toward Morning Joe’s hometown.

Four women organizers in our crowded SUV talked to driver Kent about not hydroplaning. “Warning,” someone reminded us, “means there’s a twister on the ground somewhere nearby.” Another declared that if there were only a dozen people at the march, at least we would be there.

Nearing the end of Palafox at Luna Plaza in Pensacola we could make out rainbows of bright umbrellas and rain slickers, as small groups with dripping signs surged toward the troubled waters of the bay. The lightening cracking above raised signs and umbrellas ignited my moderate to severe PTSD. Dark clouds hovered just above the water while Kent eased the BMW into a miraculously open parking place smack in front of a café awning shielding a few huddled marchers. Being the only man in the car, I was soon ordered to jump out for updated news of the march and rally. Smiling folks said the platform speaking was postposed till 12:30 pm due to the lightening. Thinking we might relax, we breathed relief but seconds later a huge army of shouting women, men, young people, and children came barreling down the flooded street. Sally Pat suddenly bailed out, disappearing in a sea of soaked but happy folks.

Michele grabbed her “Keep Abortion Legal” sign along with one of the two available beach umbrellas while I latched on to the other. We left Kent and Pamela alone figuring out the SUV’s next move – give up a secure parking place or take a chance on finding one nearer the stage?

The protest river growing by the moment, we kept our phones as dry as possible, taking photos for Facebook and twitter. A multitude gathered where the sand met the bay, making me wonder how on earth there could be this many progressive people willing to risk death by lightening while protesting the new administration. This, in the conservative, extremist, Florida panhandle known worldwide as LA, lower Alabama?!

Something must be happening!

Bob Zellner

sncczellner@gmail.com

National universities plead to Trump on behalf of DACA, but…

Luis Gomez, a 21-year-old senior at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Following up on the previous post.

While the University of Illinois has turned a deaf ear to faculty, student and alumni calls for undocumented student sanctuary, Muriel A. Howard, the president of the American Association of State Colleges & Universities, voiced support for these students.

DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which Trump vowed to rescind as he campaigned for the presidency. DACA is the 2012 Obama directive that gave undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children a chance to work and study legally, without getting deported.

Howard sent a letter to Trump this week in support of the program. “Only through such a robust and accessible infrastructure for all of our people can America compete on the global stage,” she wrote.

However, after congratulating Trump on his election, the letter included this:

“We appreciate your most recent comments that immigration enforcement should focus on undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes.”

This statement is a straw man and feeds into the Trump racist statements about immigrants being rapists and thieves.

Reading this, I recalled the comments of Luis Gomez, a 21-year-old senior at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Gomez had been invited to join Mayor Rahm Emanuel and my Congressman Luis Gutierrez for a press conference on Chicago’s commitment to sanctuary.

Gomez surprised the Mayor and the Congressman by criticizing their selective sanctuary position.

“If unity is to be achieved, you need to stop categorizing and separating the undocumented community between deplorable and DREAMers,” Gomez said. “I demand that you stand for all immigrants.”

In a follow-up interview with In These Times, Gomez explained further.

Trump gave an interview saying that he was planning to deport or incarcerate undocumented immigrants with a criminal record. And his policy proposal wasn’t specific about which kinds of crimes they would target, meaning that some immigration violations could in fact become criminal, like returning to the United States after you’ve been deported. It could also include people who lost their way when they were younger, but now are in school—I know people like that who got in trouble with the law—and people who have been desperate because of their situation with no legal status and have resorted to means of survival that are not legal.

When I heard that Trump was planning to incarcerate and deport these people, I knew I had to do something. These people that I’m talking about, these are people in our communities, these are families, these are our friends. It’s important for me to speak for these people because if they deport everyone that I know and love, then there’s no point in saving me.

You need to protect us all, not just the people who you deem as deserving of being saved.

#TBT. Los Angeles. 1963. Fighting segregation.

From the book North of Dixie: Civil Rights Photographs Beyond the South.

In 1963, my friends and I left Fairfax High School with our school books. For weeks we traveled to the LAUSD offices in downtown Los Angeles for a “study-in” protesting our racially segregated schools.

I was fifteen years old.

We were also there to support hunger strikers from the Congress of Racial Equality protesting district lines that re-enforced L.A.’s racially segregated housing patterns.

From amazing photographs in a recently published book: North of Dixie: Civil Rights Photographs Beyond the South.

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I hate racial segregation. It’s in my DNA.

Back in 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled that when it came to race in America, separate but equal was the law of the land.

Apartheid was legal in this country until the Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson in 1954.

The named plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education was Oliver Brown.

Brown’s daughter Linda was in third grade at the time. She had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to her segregated black school one mile away. Linda Brown’s nearest school was a white school. It was seven blocks from her home.

Linda Brown:

… well. like I say, we lived in an integrated neighborhood and I had all of these playmates of different nationalities. And so when I found out that day that I might be able to go to their school, I was just thrilled, you know. And I remember walking over to Sumner school with my dad that day and going up the steps of the school and the school looked so big to a smaller child. And I remember going inside and my dad spoke with someone and then he went into the inner office with the principal and they left me out … to sit outside with the secretary. And while he was in the inner office, I could hear voices and hear his voice raised, you know, as the conversation went on. And then he immediately came out of the office, took me by the hand and we walked home from the school. I just couldn’t understand what was happening because I was so sure that I was going to go to school with Mona and Guinevere, Wanda, and all of my playmates.

Former Arne Duncan advisor and now Eli Broad funded ed reformer Peter Cunningham complain that the fight against desegregation is too hard and too costly. Better to return to accept the notion of separate but equal. More than accept it, they suggest it as a policy.

More proof that forced integration didn’t work. @mikeklonsky Lamenting segregation is just an excuse to avoid improving schools.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) August 16, 2016

My brother took this on yesterday.

Peter Cunningham’s latest apologia for school segregation, in U.S. News & World Report, is basically a defense of current reform policies that have been shown to re-segregate schools. It represents more than just the opinion of a lone education gadfly. Cunningham is paid millions to speak for some of the most powerful and wealthiest among those who influence national ed policy.

It’s run up the flag pole at a time when corporate-style “reform” has come under attack from civil rights groups and teacher unions, and appear to be losing their cachet, even within the Democratic Party establishment.

Cunningham tries to come off as a tormented soul, torn between his personal and “pragmatic” side, the latter arguing that ending poverty and integration are just too “politically difficult and financially expensive” and therefore, instead of spending hundreds of billions more to reduce poverty and reduce segregation, we should just “double down on our efforts to improve schools.”

At a recent DFER-sponsored forum at the DNC, Cunningham laid out his anti-deseg line in an obvious attempt to influence Clinton’s education agenda. He answered a question about school integration this way: “Maybe the fight’s not worth it. It’s a good thing; we all think integration is good. But it’s been a long fight, we’ve had middling success. At the same time, we have lots and lots of schools filled with kids of one race, one background, that are doing great. 

There nothing original in Cunningham’s comments. If they strike you as a throwback to Plessy v. Ferguson and the separate-but-equal doctrine, you’re definitely on to something. As we learned back then, when it comes to schooling, separate is never equal. Following the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, the difficulty and protracted nature of the struggle against de factosegregation and poverty has caused some to throw in the towel.

Cunningham is basically echoing the call of his boss at the D.O.E., former Sec. of Education Arne Duncan. It was he who tried to put the kibosh on a Justice Dept. civil right suit against the state of Louisiana, which would have blocked expansion of the state’s school voucher system.

Peter Cunningham does not just speak for himself. He represents the corporate school reform movement and those in Obama’s Department of education – and perhaps Hillary’s too.

Last week Cunningham lashed out claiming our lack of appreciation for the work Arne Duncan had done to improve teacher salaries and pensions had something to do with my brother’s DNA and mine.

Talking about our DNA.

Promoting separate but equal schools.

I don’t think I’m missing anything here.

Do you?

 

I was fifteen years old when they killed four Black girls in that Birmingham church.

Outside the funeral services for 14-year-old Carol Robertson, Sept. 17, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama.

On Sept. 15, 1963 a bomb went off in the 16th Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and killed 11-year-old Denise McNair, 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley.

Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were only a year younger than I was.

At fifteen I thought I was almost a man. But I wasn’t. I was just a kid. They were just kids.

I was obsessed by the bombing and its victims. They were girls. They were Black. They lived in the South. I was a boy. White. I lived in Los Angeles. While there were plenty of other horror stories that came out of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, few hit me as hard as this one.

Three Klansmen were eventually convicted of the act of terrorism.

Robert Chambliss wasn’t convicted until 1977. Bobby Frank Cherry wasn’t convicted until 2002. They both died in prison.

Thomas Edwin Blanton was indicted in 2000 and is still in prison. It took 38 years to get him there. He is still alive. He is 78.

Blanton has been in prison for 15 years and today he comes up for parole.

Blanton deserves a special place in hell when he dies.

He should die in prison.

Keeping retirement weird. Leonard Deadwyler.

Following the killings of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile this week, I heard somebody say that there was nothing new.

Only now there are videos.

Growing up in Los Angeles we had a police department that was headed by a guy named William Parker. His department was notorious for its racist treatment of African Americans, Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

In 1966 Leonard Deadwyler was driving his pregnant wife to a hospital. There were no hospitals in the Deadwylers’  South Central neighborhood. With his wife in labor, Leonard Deadwyler raced through the streets of L.A., speeding through some red lights. He was pulled over. With a gun already drawn, LAPD officer Jerold Bova reached into the car and shot and killed Leonard Deadwyler.

Bova claimed the car jerked forward, accidentally causing his gun to go off. Although there were no phone video cameras in 1966, there were plenty of witnesses that Bova had lied and that the car never jerked forward. Nor could anyone explain why Bova drew his gun and had it inside the car for a routine traffic stop.

Yet African American witnesses were not to be believed.

The community filled the Los Angeles court room for the Los Angeles Coroner’s inquest of the killing of Leonard Deadwyler.

A coroner’s inquest ruled in favor officer Bova and ignored the eye witness testimony. They ruled the killing was an accident.

Protests were held, organized by Students for a Democratic Society, which I was a member of, and civil rights organizations in Los Angeles’ Black community.

Following the ruling by the Coroner, the Deadwyler family sued. You may have heard of their lawyer:

Johnny Cochran.

One result of the suit and protests was that a hospital was finally built in South Central.

It is said that Cochran dates his true understanding of the role of the police in the African American community from his work on the Leonard Deadwyler case.

All that has changed is now there are videos.

Paul Ryan: “Sit-ins are bad for democracy.”

Last week I was at a gathering of old high school friends in Los Angeles. We graduated together 50 years ago.

We shared stories and Margaritas.

One of the shared stories concerned the sit-in that many of us who were members of the student branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) participated in in the hallways of the Los Angeles school district’s headquarters.

L.A. schools have a long history of legal and de facto segregation. In 1963 CORE was challenging district attendance lines that reinforced the city’s school segregation.

I was 15 in 1963. It was my first sit-in – though not my last – in pursuit of greater democracy.

So I had to laugh when Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan complained about the Democrats’ sit-in last night. Nobody expected the NRA-controlled Republicans who control the House to pass any restrictions on guns or on who owns them.

There is plenty that is wrong with the current proposals. They don’t go far enough. The focus on no-fly lists cause concerns about civil liberties and racial profiling.

Yet, I believe  that most folks watching things unfold over the past few days see it as a fight between those concerned with gun violence and those who do the bidding of the NRA.

Ryan attacked the House members sitting-in in the House chambers. He said they were bad for democracy. Nothing ever got accomplished by sit-ins, he said.

One thing for sure. Ryan is no historian.

Gary Tyler, free at last. Give a hand.

Gary Tyler today.

Last week I heard the news that Gary Tyler had been freed from a Louisiana prison after serving 41 years.

I nearly cried. Somewhere in a box of photos is a picture of a very young man knocking on doors on Chicago’s south side collecting signatures on a petition to free a sixteen year-old African American kid from death row.

I couldn’t find the picture. The young man was me.

I’m not a young man anymore.

And Gary Tyler is a long time from sixteen years-old.

Yesterday I received this email:

We’re sending this letter mostly to a group of long-time friends — people who will recognize the name “Gary Tyler”,  and recall the “Free Gary Tyler” campaign in which we were all involved in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Freedom and  justice for Gary was a cause we embraced for several years, long ago.  We were activists on his behalf.   For many of us, it was a shock to learn recently that Gary Tyler has remained in prison for 41+ years! — notwithstanding his innocence — notwithstanding that the 5th Circuit deemed his trial “fundamentally unfair” — notwithstanding that the Pardon Board three times recommended he be pardoned.   We moved on, yet Gary was seemingly unable to move on with his own life. (And yet, of course, he did — against all odds!  More on that later.)

Until now!  A recent Supreme Court decision declared Gary’s life sentence unconstitutional.  The Parish district attorney agreed to vacate his conviction if Gary would plead guilty to manslaughter,  which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years.  Gary agreed.  After 41 years in prison, Gary walked out a free man on Friday, April 29! Gary, who entered prison at age 16 under threat of the death penalty, is finally a free man at the age of 57!  Can you imagine what that will be like for him?!  Free at last, yes, but building a life from scratch as you approach 60 years old?     

There are far too many painful stories of innocent prisoners — mostly African-American — freed after decades in prison.  For Gary, there are allies who have been planning for this day for many years — lawyers and other supporters working on his behalf to ensure his smooth re-integration into the outside world — lining up jobs and other services.   The plan is for Gary to leave Louisiana and settle in Los Angeles, where he has some family and a dedicated support network.    

This is where we all come in!  A range of job possibilities have been lined up in LA,  plus some initial housing and other services.  But we need to think of the longer-term as well.  A Fund has been established under the auspices of the Liberty Hill Foundation to channel financial support to Gary for housing,  health care, clothing, insurance, transportation,  and the myriad other financial needs he will face initially and over the next few years as he builds a life having spent his entire adult life —  41 years —  behind bars. 

The Fund opened with $7,000; our goal is to raise $60,000. Money can’t right the enormous injustice done to Gary Tyler, but perhaps we can ease his road back to freedom. 

Contributions to this Fund are tax-deductible.  We hope you will give generously!   (See box, below.)

A little more on Gary: Gary is a pretty amazing man — a really lovely man.  A couple of years ago, a few of us had an opportunity to meet Gary and talk to him at length.  Yes, of course he wanted out of prison, but in the meantime he consciously eschewed bitterness and made more of his life than many people on the outside.  Angola Prison has some very unique programs, and Gary worked hard to positively impact the lives of others.  

He was a founder and long-time volunteer in  the hospice program (featured in the Oprah Winfrey/Forest Whitaker documentary Serving Life, and the subject of a book Grace Before Dying), served as mentor to younger prisoners,  was long-time president of the Drama Club (written up in the N.Y. Times, and the subject of a film documentary), etc.  He’s a good man, doing good work, and touching many lives.  He’s warm and funny and smart.  It was an honor to  meet him and begin to know him — as a person, not a cause. (We were all on the right side of this “cause”! — we can be proud of that.)  Now we need to help him in his transition.

Please help to support Gary Tyler now!   Give as generously as you can!  And please share this letter with a wide network to garner broad support!

Signed, 

Bob Zaugh, Los Angeles                                          

Pam & Steve White, Los Angeles

Barry & Paula Litt, Los Angeles                              

Elizabeth Stanley, Los Angeles

Jim & Janet Fennerty, Chicago                               

Amy Gladstein & Jim Reif, Brooklyn, NY

Holly & Will Hazleton, Atlanta                               

Bob & Joan Anyon, San Francisco

Karen Jo Koonan, San Francisco                            

Robert Perrone, Sacramento, CA

George H. Kendall, New York                                  

Mary Joyce Carlson, Washington, DC

P.S.  For those of you needing a brief recap of the facts of  Gary’s case, we’ve provided this addendum.  (The “Free Gary Tyler” site freegarytyler.com contains several articles. op-eds from the N.Y. Times, and a “Democracy Now” show about Gary.):

TO MAKE A DONATION: 1. CHECK: Checks should be made payable to “Liberty Hill Foundation.”  Please write “Back to Life Re-Entry Fund” on the memo line, and mail to: Liberty Hill Foundation 6420 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 700 Los Angeles, CA  90048  2. DEBIT OR CREDIT CARD**  Use this link https://www.libertyhill.org/backtolifefund or call Rodrigo Guardado at Liberty Hill Foundation at (323) 556-7212.  You can make a one-time donation or set up a monthly debit.   **These options will incur a fee of 3.3% for Visa/Mastercard (4% for AmEx).  The fee will be deducted from the donation, so please include the amount of the fee in the total to be processed.   3. AUTO BILL-PAY  Set up a no-fee automatic bill-pay to Liberty Hill Foundation through your checking account, for a one-time or monthly donation.  You can set the payment date and there is no fee. If set as a monthly donation, the bank will automatically send Liberty Hill Foundation a check every month (not an electronic wire).   The payee is “Liberty Hill Foundation” (address is 6420 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA  90048).  If there is room for notation, please indicate “Back to Life Re-Entry Fund.”  Liberty Hill Foundation’s Tax ID is 51-0181191. More about Gary’s Case

At age 16, in 1974, Gary Tyler was on a school bus with other African-American kids in rural Louisiana, involved in the integration of an all-white school.   The bus was surrounded by 100-200 angry whites shouting, throwing rocks and bottles. A shot was fired from somewhere and a young white boy was mortally wounded.  All black kids from the bus were searched and taken to the police station.  No one in the white crowd was searched.  (The bus driver and the kids on the bus maintain that the shot was fired from the crowd, toward the bus.)

The bus was searched for three hours and no gun was found.  Gary (who had lived briefly in Los Angeles before returning home to Louisiana) mouthed-off a bit to the cops,

telling them that the bullet-on-a-chain around his cousin’s neck meant nothing and had nothing to do with this situation.

This “sass” apparently caused the cops to zero in on him.  Attempting to extract a confession , the police beat Gary mercilessly for several hours, but he never confessed.  (He continued to maintain his innocence for 41years.  The recent plea deal which gained his freedom required a guilty plea to manslaughter.)  He was charged with murder, tried, convicted and sentenced to death within a year. 

Though no gun was found in the 3-hour search of the bus, the police later produced a gun they said was the murder weapon.  It had no fingerprints.  It was a gov’t-issue weapon that had disappeared from a shooting range used by the local sheriffs, and it subsequently disappeared from evidence.   A few kids from the bus testified against Gary.  They all  later recanted their testimony and described how they had been terrorized by the police, told exactly what to say, and threatened with prison themselves if they failed to implicate Gary.  

The judge instructed the jury that they could presume Gary had intended to inflict deadly harm — guilty until proven innocent, essentially.  Gary was sentenced to death — the youngest person on death row in the country.  He was spared the electric chair when Louisiana’s death penalty was declared unconstitutional; his sentence was commuted to life in prison.  No evidence, no witnesses, but 41 years later, he was still imprisoned, until now. 

Gary lived at Angola State Penitentiary — the largest maximum security prison in the country.  Of the more than 5000 inmates, something like 75% are black, the average sentence is 93 years, and most men will die there —  there is little hope for release.  As we mentioned, Gary was three times recommended for pardon by the Pardon Board, but each time the sitting governor failed to sign.  The 5th Circuit also ordered a new trial based on “fundamental unfairness” — but the state of Louisiana declined a new trial on a technicality. 

 Until 4/29, Gary had for many years lived a medium-security life within a maximum security prison.  He lived in an honor dorm, could walk around freely, and was able to leave the prison from time to time on “honor” jobs.  The Drama Club, under his leadership,  left the prison grounds for widely-praised performances in schools and churches around the state.  Gary’s pardon applications over the years were supported by the Warden and other prison personnel;  in the final hearing resulting in his release, his Petition was supported by strong affidavits from a former Warden and Assistant Warden, among others.

 Gary didn’t belong in prison — ever!.  Let’s support his transition back to life on the outside!