Tag Archives: civil rights

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Saturday I was back in Pennsylvania talking to voters, this time in a more conservative suburban part of Plymouth Meeting. My most interesting encounter was with a 76 year-old Democrat who declined at first to mention any particular issue she concerned about but volunteered that she and her husband would vote for Kerry. Then as I was leaving, she asked if she could get my opinion on something “as a young person.” I watched her visibly struggle to describe the incident that had struck her – Kerry’s mention of Mary Cheney in the debate – and finally explain it as his reference to her being “I forget the word…um, a girl who has a girlfriend, if you know what I mean.” She was clearly troubled by the concept, and I braced myself for a difficult debate about it.

Figuring it was best to answer the question she’d explicitly asked – what I thought when Kerry mentioned her, I responded with something like, “Well, I don’t think it’s particularly necessary or gracious to bring up an opponent’s family member if they haven’t already. And I don’t think it was necessary to make his point, which itself was a good one. But I think the Cheneys complaints about it seem incredibly shallow given that they didn’t seem to have a problem when the Presidential candidate on their ticket tried to write an ammendment directed against their daughter into the constitution.”

She nodded as if carefully considering what I was saying, and it was clear that she agreed with one part and disagreed with another. And then she said something that blindsided me: “It seemed to me like he really cared about her. It seemed like he really was concerned about what she’s going through and he was trying to understand. And that really impressed me.”

Coming from a woman who couldn’t bring herself the use the word lesbian, they were very moving words to hear. I don’t know what they mean for the struggle for the White House. But in the struggle for legal equality in this country, it’s hard to see them as anything but a good sign which speaks to the desire even among many of the Americans who can’t yet reconcile themselves to other lifestyles to see leaders who respect and understand those who practice them. That is, if we’re swaying the 76 year-old white Pennsylvanian women, we’re on the right track.

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Today I was discussing with a Professor the psychic wages of constructing the civil rights movement as a spontaneous outpouring against injustice rather than the carefully planned series of organizers campaigns in was, in that the former makes it easier to abrogate one’s responsibility to support the work of organizers for justice today. One of the most incredible of those organizers, then and now, is the Reverened James Lawson, who writes on Labor Day:

Service sector work today is increasingly the province of a caste, of men and women deemed unworthy of basic human rights. It matters not how hard they work nor how valiantly they strive: they are condemned, as are their children and their children’s children, to forever toil in the wilderness. The promise that defined life in America for so many generations and that gave this nation a true “middle class” does not extend to them: work hard, play by the rules, and you will get ahead. But Labor Day is not the time for lamentation over what was or even what is. Let us be inspired, instead, by those who have a vision of what can be and, moreover, are pursuing their vision with strategy and passion. Hotel workers are being arrested in the streets of Los Angeles. They are marching in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and many other cities in North America. What do they want? You may not yet be aware of it, but a powerful idea has gripped the minds of tens of thousands of these “outcast” service workers, and it will not let them rest. They believe their labor should and can lead to a better life, and they intend to make that happen. After all, Jesus of Nazareth said, “The laborer deserves his wages.” In the last century, the “outcast” workers in low-paid, dead end manufacturing jobs organized unions. They turned those jobs into the foundation of America’s middle class. Today, hotel workers are organizing to redefine the nature of their jobs and open up their opportunities.

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A Dkos poster replies to me:

If you think drug laws are unfair, work to change the drug laws so that drug offenders are no longer convicted felons.
But don’t let convicted felons have a position of fiduciary trust in the voting process. Let them have jobs, apartments, let them vote, yes. If this bothers you, ask yourself: would you want a convicted felon (and I don’t mean a drug offender; I mean a child molester, white-collar criminal, or gunpoint robber) to be president? I wouldn’t. Sure, maybe his rehibilitation made him especially wise, but I wouldn’t want to take a chance. The risk is just too great. And where did Nader or the firm he hired find 19 convicted felons to put on payroll? Did they recruit especially for that demographic?

Would I vote for a convicted felon for President? Well, it would depend on what his platform was, who he was running against, and (to a lesser extent) the circumstances under which he became a convicted felon. Would I want to be denied the chance to vote for that candidate by having him purged from the ballot? Sure as hell not, no matter who he is.

For those who don’t know, the proportion of convicted felons among young men of color in many communities in this country – including some here in Florida, where I’ve been registering voters the past few weeks – is as high as one in four. So no, you don’t have to be looking to find them. As for fiduciary trust, there’s no justification for barring felons as a class (and let’s be honest about the size and demographic of the class we’re talking about) from working for the government, from voting, or from working to give those who desire the chance to exercise their democratic right to sign their name to a petition. What the process needs is oversight of signatures as they come in, not purges of the people who collect them.

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An outrageous and deeply cynical comment by Kos, who should know better:

In addition to suspect signatures, entire reams of signatures can be invalidated if the person collecting them is a felon. Turns out that out of the 122 paid people who gathered the Nader signatures, at least 19 are confirmed felons. One of them was convicted for forgery. Considering that these same felonious petitioners were also soliciting signatures for an anti-immigrant initiative and an effort to invalidate Arizona’s clean election law, invalidating those petitioners and their signatures may actually serve triple duty, helping defeat Nader’s cynical presidential effort AND two nasty Republican-backed ballot efforts.

Not much new to say about this. Voting for Ralph Nader is, I firmly believe the wrong choice for someone concerned with progressive change in this country to make, and overlooks the tremendous difference between the greater and lesser of the two evils for those most directly affected by government policy be it creating jobs, protecting the right to organize, keeping bigotry out of the constitution, or sustaining the earth. But how should Kerry supporters respond? By organizing voters behind the Democratic candidate, and organizing the candidate behind a progressive agenda which co-opts Nader’s issues rather than demeaning his supporters. Not by drawing from the other side’s playbook by seeking out ways to disenfranchise voters by narrowing their democratic choices. Kos, unfortunately does this and descends one step further by lauding Democrats for taking advantage of this country’s abysmal treatment of former convicts, a group whose make-up (in case Kos has forgotten) is disproportionately minority, disproportionately poor, and shamefully swelled with first-time non-violent drug offenders. Felon disenfranchisement is the closest parallel this country maintains to a poll tax. Progressives should be working to undo it, not to exploit it for electoral gambits.

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A silly comment from Atrios, who should know better:

Ignore the spin on this poll. 50% of Hoosiers support gay marriage or that thing which is just like gay marriage with a different name.

The poll in question indicates that while only 19% support equal marriage rights, another 31% support civil unions. That 31% is, as Atrios notes, good news. But as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force demonstrates succinctly in this chart, civil unions are not “just like gay marriage with a different name,” not only because symbolically they serve as separate but equal institutions but materially because they provide no iron-clad legal guarantee of access to the 1,000-some rights associated with marriage. Civil unions are certainly progress, and support for civil unions represents progress in the battle for hearts and minds, but let’s keep our eye on the prize and not collapse the distinction.

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The Times’ write-up of tonight’s debate suggests that Kerry and Edwards, both of whom oppose both gay marriage and a constitutional ammendment to ban it, chose to stake out less than bold stances on the issue:

“What’s happening here is this president is talking about, first, amending the United States Constitution for a problem that does not exist,” Mr. Edwards said. “The law today does not require one state to recognize the marriage of another state.”

Mr. Kerry, of Massachusetts, attacked Mr. Bush for raising the issue in the first place.

“He’s trying to polarize the nation,” Mr. Kerry said. “He’s trying to divide America. You know, this is a president who always tries to create a cultural war and seek the lowest common denominator of American politics, because he can’t come to America and talk about jobs.”

Needless to say, being told that your rights needn’t be excised from the constitution because they don’t yet pose much of a threat of being realized anyway is, one suspects, less than comforting to millions of gay couples in this country. And while there is of course truth in the oft-repeated argument that the Republicans exploit social issues to distract people from their economic interests, you don’t win people over to your side by telling them that your stance on the issue isn’t something they should be concerned about. Kerry deserves credit for voting against the Defense of Marriage Act, and it was good to see Edwards try to position himself to Kerry’s left on the issue by offering greater certainty that he would vote against it today, but there remains a serious lack of moral leadership on this issue.

Kerry was right on target, on the other hand, on the death penalty, saying pretty much exactly (with the exception of his support for executing convicted terrorists) what every Democratic candidate should when asked why he wouldn’t want to see perpetrators of heinous murderers killed:

“My instinct is to want to strangle that person with my own hands,” he said. “I understand the instincts, I really do.” He added: “I prosecuted people. I know what the feeling of the families is and everybody else.

“But we have 111 people who have been now released from death row ? death row, let alone the rest of the prison system ? because of DNA evidence that showed they didn’t commit the crime of which they were convicted.”

Edwards, unfortunately, took this one as a chance to move to Kerry’s right.

Then there’s this troubling continuation of Kerry’s muddled record on trade:

On trade, Mr. Kerry was asked to square his support for inexpensive clothes and goods from overseas for consumers with his support for labor unions seeking better wages and job protections.

“Some jobs we can’t compete with,” he said. “I understand that. But most jobs we can.” Mr. Edwards seized the issue, as he sought to draw a sharp a contrast by noting different votes the two men have cast on trade pacts over the years.

Kerry did get something else right though:

Mr. Kerry was then asked to name a quality of Mr. Edwards’s that he wished he had himself, but appeared not to entirely grasp the question. “I think he’s a great communicator,” Mr. Kerry said. “He’s a charming guy.”

Looking at the transcipt, Sharpton effectively called Edwards on his support for the PATRIOT ACT:

I don’t see how anyone that supports civil rights could support the Patriot Act. You talk about a difference of direction, Senator Edwards, the Patriot Act…The Patriot Act that you supported is J. Edgar Hoover’s dream. It’s John Ashcroft’s dream. We have police misconduct problems in California, Ohio, Georgia, New York, right now…And your legislation helps police get more power. So I think that we’ve got to really be honest if we’re talking about change. Change how, and for who? That’s why I am in this race.

And he provided the needed historical perspective on gay marriage:

I think is not an issue any more of just marriage. This is an issue of human rights. And I think it is dangerous to give states the right to deal with human rights questions.

And Kucinich (who, incidentally, captured 30% of the vote for second place in Hawaii) tried, with limited success, to focus the debate on the policy differences between the four candidates rather than the personal differences between two of them:

I think the American people tonight will be well- served if we can describe, for example, why we all aren’t for a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system. I think the American people will be well-served if we can describe why, for example, Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards are not for canceling NAFTA and the WTO, as I would do, because that is how you save the manufacturing jobs. And I think they’d be well-served if they would be able to see the connection, as I will just explain, between the cost of the war in Iraq and cuts in health care, education, job creation, veterans’ benefits, housing programs. See, this debate ought to be about substantive differences which we do have.

And I have the greatest respect for Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry, but we have substantive differences along these lines that I think it would help to explicate here tonight.

He hit this one just right:

Well, I’m glad to point out something that all those people who don’t have health insurance and all those people who have seen their premiums go up 50 percent in the last three years already understand. And that is that Washington right now is controlled by the insurance interests and by the pharmaceutical companies. And our party, our Democratic Party four years ago, John and John, I went to our Democratic platform committee with a proposal for universal single-payer health care. And it was quickly shot down because it offended some of the contributors to our party.

I just want to state something: We must be ready to take up this challenge of bringing health care to all the American people. And that’s what I’m asking everyone here to make a commitment to. Single payer…

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In today’s Times Reagan archivist Kiron K. Skinner takes the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to claim MLK as Reagan’s soulmate:

Dr. King invoked God-given and constitutional rights in defense of extending civil rights to every man. He believed in his country’s distinct ability to maintain a steadfast commitment to its values even when institutional realities pointed in other directions. Dr. King personified the American creed. That it was Ronald Reagan who bestowed on Dr. King the honor of a national holiday should no longer come as a surprise.

Skinner acknowledges that Reagan first came under the national radar pushing the explicitly anti-Civil Rights Goldwater candidacy, but argues that Reagan’s personal sympathetic behavior towards Blacks and his shared vocabulary of God, democracy, and constitution constitutes more common ground than division. It’s an absurd argument which depends on the falacious reasoning that

In the president’s mind, the values Dr. King championed trumped political differences.

The distinction between “politics” and “values” is always suspect, but few times has it been manipulated more cynically than here in arguing that whether or not Black men and women are to be systematically discriminated against in all spheres of life on account of race and poverty is a more superficial issue than whether the American constitution is suitable for appeals to political change.

Skinner obscures the historical Reagan, who kicked off his Presidential Campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights activists had been brutally murdered, with a call for “states’ rights” and an excoriation of “welfare queens.”

And Skinner obscures the historical King, the radical who deserves celebration today, who wrote:

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.”

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There are moments when Yale’s leadership takes significant, even potentially unpopular progressive stances in line with the best values of the University. While they tend to be on symbolic issues – like reimbursing lost financial aid for students with drug possession charges – and exclusively on national and international debates rather than local struggles, they should be acknowledged, both because credit should go where it’s deserved and because it’s nice sometimes to be able to be proud of the leadership of this institution. While there’s certainly much more Yale could do to defend its non-discrimination policy, the letters released to the YDN, showing a nearly two-decade struggle with the Pentagon over the incompatability of the army’s hiring practices, Yale’s non-discrimination policy, and military recruitment on campus, are a nice break for those of us used to only seeing Levin directing pithy and blistering rhetoric at the working people of this University.

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Today the ACLU announced a major lawsuit against secret service limitations on protests at Bush appearances. I saw this in person with the PA ACLU when Bush came to town this summer. The most aggregious and obvious violation is the pattern of allowing pro-Bush activists closer to Bush than anti-Bush activists. This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with imagery. At risk of sounding subversive, I have to wonder, kind reader, if you were trying to shoot the President, which crowd would you be trying to infiltrate?

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A few personal experiences and impressions of the past 72 hours:

The eight Yale retirees (three of whom had to leave for medical reasons, five of whom held out for the full 24 hours) are real heroes whose perseverance is a model to all of us and whose victory presses the movement forward and raises the bar for everyone within it – and within this community. Their victory demonstrates the combination of strategically savvy and symbolically appropriate tactics, solidarity of workers, clergy, students and community, media scrutiny, organizing strength, sheer numbers, and iron will necessary for a victory like hasn’t been seen here since the ’84 strike. The whole episode, from the moment the eight declared that they weren’t leaving David Swenson’s office without a meeting to the moment that – poised to arrest them – Yale announced that it would instead grant their request, also dramatized both the shameful lengths to which Yale will go to perpetuate injustice and the potential and urgency to save Yale University from the Yale Corporation. The three times I was turned away and/or threatened with arrest by Yale police for trying to enter the Investment Building with hoagies for the retirees – who’d been hold up in the office for hours without food or use of the bathroom for several hours at this point – spoke volumes, as did the necessity for New Haven police to take jurisdiction because my University refused to allow food or bathroom facilities to a few elderly employees who showed up after decades of service to the University to confront the man who’s been quietly investing their pension fund in insider trading rather than in decent pension offers for the next generation of Yale workers. It was the sight of fifteen riot police entering the building to drag out five senior citizens, however, that was most deeply infuriating, and Yale’s last-minute realization that to have them do so would shame Yale’s leadership such that it would become more difficult to carry forward its regressive agenda was small comfort. It’s shameful that when light and truth rear their heads at Yale, Yale tries to lock out the light and starve out the truth.

The TV media did a better-than-usual job of covering the sit-in, in part because it was visual and in part because of Rev. Jackson’s presence. The most salient facts – why the retirees went in, that they won, and that Yale was poised to have riot police drag them out – came across on pretty much all the channels. The print media, including the YDN, was unfortunately dismissive of the drama, giving on average a sentence at the end of an article contextualizing the strike about a successful sit-in calling for a meeting but giving no sense of how or why it happened – or that it lasted 24 hours.

As in the last strike, few experiences are more powerful than walking the lines and talking to workers about why they’re out and what they’re fighting for. There are few ways someone in this city of any political perspective (including, perhaps, readers of this site) could be doing with an hour on a weekday morning than talking to the men and women who, yet again, Yale has forced to the point of challenge and personal sacrifice for lux and veritas. I met a fourth grader who’s walking the picket lines for the fourth time because, he explained, of a very greedy man who isn’t very good at sharing his toys.

Jesse Jackson, Emelio Hernandez, David Lee, and others have brought home over the past few days a point that cannot be emphasized enough: the civil rights movement cannot be separated from the movement for economic justice without destroying the integriy of the movement and insulting the dignity of those who compose it. On day after the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, this point has a particular urgency. It’s strange how much more easily middle class Americans tend to believe that the liberty of bosses is contingent on their right to private property than that the freedom of workers is contingent on their right to wages. A classmate once accused me of disgracing the memory of MLK by wearing a pin with a photo of him at an SEIU 1199 rally (the union he often described as his “favorite union”). When I asked how it was inappropriate to celebrate a photo of an event that actually happened he suggested that MLK must have been caught by coincidence standing in front of an SEIU podium. To say that where a woman can sit on a bus is a moral issue but whether she can raise enough money to feed her family is merely a political question is a convenient but fundamentally unjust contention.

Today was one of the most intense freshman move-in days Yale has seen. The civil disobedience was of a much more serious and more dramatic character than last September, and the picket lines were some of the thickest and loudest I’ve seen here. The UOC gave out several hundred copies of our new pamphlet to freshmen and families, most of whom came off understandably as mostly overwhelmed, confused, anxious, and eager to get more information. Yale forced our table off of Old Campus on the grounds that, in the words of Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg, we were there “to bias freshmen, not to orient them.” Meanwhile, the Office of New Haven and State Affairs had three tables set up trying to get students on board with their agenda of condescension and division by giving our lollipops and tape measures. And the crew team had a thirty foot boat in the middle of campus. Yale police also stopped us from entering dorms to poster; one man told me I wasn’t allowed to enter with the poster I had and when I asked whether I could go in to put up, say, a capella posters, he referred me to his boss, who told me no one was allowed to enter with any kind of poster and then asked to see my posters. When I confronted Dean Brodhead about this he told me that I wasn’t being forced off of Old Campus myself, and so democracy was intact.

As we already knew, Scott Marks is a much better speaker than Jesse Jackson; John Wilhelm is a much better speaker than John Sweeney; Howard Dean is a much better speaker than Joe Lieberman.

Yale’s last minute decision to postpone tomorrow’s freshman invocation, an event which to my knowledge has never been cancelled in the University’s history (including during, say, World War), on the grounds of “the threat posed by our unions,” represents a resounding acknowledgement by Yale that contrary to their publicity, business is not going on as usual here, and the crisis is not under control. John Wilhelm was right to say, of of Yale’s prior claims that hardly anyone was out on strike and there was no disruption, “That’s exactly the problem – you do all the work here, and Yale can’t see you.” He also added that – as Yale’s contract offer makes clear – Yale can’t count. This was abundantly clear when Yale produced statistics purporting to show that strike turnout was low which left out 800 Yale workers – guess where they were? Perhaps one of them was Associate VP for New Haven and State Affairs Mike Morand’s secretary, who despite getting ample exposure to Yale’s side – which Conroy et al claim the union leadership is blinding the workers to – is out on strike.

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To those of you sent here when you googled…

aclu supports internment camps
Sorry, but no. Zinn argues that in the 50s the ACLU “withered” and muffled its criticism of McCarthyism to remain politically viable – heavy charges that I don’t have the background to support or refute. But the ACLU was one of the few groups to visibly and stridently condemn the Japanese interment – raising the contemporary ire of Ann Coulter, who argues that it’s hypocritical for a left organization to support J. Edgar Hoover’s left stances (opposition to internment) and not his right ones (opposition to privacy and democratic oversight). I should apologize for already having given her argument too much ink back in July when she wrote it – as well as her equally silly one that since Democratic FDR shamefully caved to conservative animus towards Japanese-Americans in supporting internment, Conservative Republicans must be the real defenders of civil liberties. For anyone who still believes Coulter that FDR and the ACLU (and, for that matter, everyone from Bill Clinton to Cynthia McKinney) get their marching orders from the same playbook (care of Karl Marx), I should perhaps also clarify that the ACLU also opposes HOLC red-lining and the racial segregation of blood donations.

Kissinger the war crimminal

That about says it right there. That, and lemme know if you want to take a trip with me to look through his archives after his death for some tidbits about the full depravity of the man.

IBEW chatroom

Is there one? Hot. Sign me up.

Ed Rendell hoagie photo

Populism is not about eating a hoagie better than John Kerry (although I don’t know who eats a hoagie worse than John Kerry). Populism is about wanting to see the Democratic Leadership Council go the way of the AFL-CIO’s CIA-tool the AIFLD. Populism is most certainly not having the DLC choose Philadelphia for its annual celebration of prostitution to big business and scorn towards the American people to celebrate you as the kind of Democratic candidate that will reassure the bosses that they have nothing to worry about from the Democrats. Oh yeah – and the Philly soft pretzel is the real icon, not the hoagie or the cheesesteak.

Matt Naclerio

Should run for Mayor of New Haven.

Katie Krauss

Should’ve gone for Ari Fleischer’s job while it was still open.

Schwarzengger and antisemitism

The most thorough and judicious article-length discussion of Schwarzenegger’s relationship with Kurt Waldheim I’d say is Timothy Noah’s here. Schwarzenegger’s refusal to condemn a member of the Wehrmacht “honor list” for the Kozara massacre – or even his actions – raises troubling questions about his political courage and his sense of justice. Although on the question of how he’d govern the state of California, this is more disturbing.

auth cartoon philadelphia inquirer israel, auth antisemitism, etc.

I think I spilled enough (virtual) ink on this here. Josh Cherniss’ thoughts to which I was responding (a response to my original piece here), are here. If he posts a response to mine, it’ll be posted here – I suspect we’ve both exhausted the topic for now however. If you’re one of the several who entered one of the searches above and you want to talk more about it, lemme know.

Al Franken and Arianna Huffington’s political show in bed

It’s been too long. Bring it back. Maybe we could get Arianna Huffington, Cruz Bustamante, Peter Camoje, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Simon, and Gary Coleman in bed together on TV – who says the American people don’t have the patience for substantive political coverage?

verizon cwa strike

Read about smart tactics, support from Senators, and what you can do to help.

arianna huffington verizon

Know something I don’t?

Lynda-Obst Bitch

Now I don’t know the woman personally, but that’s just not nice.

Interfaith religious symbol

I have been known on occasion to refer to James Baldwin as God…But I have to say Jim Lawson really wowed me this weekend. So he may be my nominee. Unless you found this site thinking it was an interfaith religious symbol, in which case sorry to disappoint…

And for all of you who came here searching for

wild bouquet

If you’re looking for a gift, get something here. Trust me – it’ll make him/her swoon. Or buy me something and make me swoon…

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Coming before President Bush’s desk soon will be the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which passed both houses unanimously last Friday. From a press release from Human Rights Watch, which was instrumental in the crafting and passage of the legislation:

“For far too long the United States has ignored the brutality of prison rape,” said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S.Program. “Sexual violence – indeed, any violence – should not be part of anyone’s prison sentence. This legislation puts prison staff on notice that they can no longer turn a blind eye to rape.”

The Prison Rape Elimination Act would initiate a series of efforts to track and curtail the incidence of rape in prisons and jails.
The legislation requires the collection of national statistics on the prevalence and effects of rape; directs the Department of Justice to provide training and technical assistance to federal, state and local officials responsible for addressing prison rape; authorizes federal grants to support state and local programs to prevent and punish prison rape; and provides for the reduction of federal prison funding for states that do not control prison rape. The National Prison Rape Reduction Commission, a federal body created by the legislation, will spearhead the creation of a comprehensive report on the subject and issue recommendations to be
used by the Attorney General in generating national standards to detect, prevent, and punish prison rape.

“The unanimous passage of this bill is an extraordinary accomplishment,” said Fellner. “If implemented fully and effectively, it will be a first step towards ensuring that prison sentences are not sentences to sexual violence and abuse.”

HRW wrote a damning report on prison rape, No Escape, in 2001.

A Florida prisoner whom we will identify only as P.R. was beaten, suffered a serious eye injury, and assaulted by an inmate armed with a knife, all due to his refusal to submit to anal sex. After six months of repeated threats and attacks by other inmates, at the end of his emotional endurance, he tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor. In a letter to Human Rights Watch, he chronicled his unsuccessful efforts to induce prison authorities to protect him from abuse. Summing up these experiences, he wrote: “The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it’s indifference.”

…Prison authorities, unsurprisingly, generally claim that prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse is an exceptional occurrence rather than a systemic problem. Prison officials in New Mexico, for example, responding to our 1997 request for information regarding “the ‘problem’ of male inmate-on-inmate rape and sexual abuse” (the internal quotation marks are theirs), said that they had “no recorded incidents over the past few years.”
…Yet prison authorities’ claims are belied by independent research on the topic. Indeed, the most recent academic studies of the issue have found shockingly high rates of sexual abuse, including forced oral and anal intercourse. In December 2000, the Prison Journal published a study based on a survey of inmates in seven men’s prison facilities in four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility. A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated. Of these, over 50 percent had submitted to forced anal sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.

An internal departmental survey of corrections officers in a southern state (provided to Human Rights Watch on the condition that the state not be identified) found that line officers — those charged with the direct supervision of inmates — estimated that roughly one-fifth of all prisoners were being coerced into participation in inmate-on-inmate sex. Interestingly, higher-ranking officials — those at the supervisory level — tended to give lower estimates of the frequency of abuse, while inmates themselves gave much higher estimates: the two groups cited victimization rates of roughly one-eighth and one-third, respectively. ….

It’s a relief to know that stopping prison rape, at least, is a human rights cause that none of our legislators are willing (publicly) to stand against. The passage (once signed) of this legislation is an important step. There are more difficult ones to follow.

Counterpunch has several strong pieces on the topic.

Joanne Mariner:

The hostility with which some prison authorities reacted to the draft legislation suggests the extent of the official unwillingness to acknowledge the problem of prison rape. According to Reginald Wilkinson, head of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction — which is, ironically, one of only two state prison systems to retain the now old-fashioned concept of rehabilitation in its name, if not in its practices — the idea that prison rape is common is “a flat-out lie.”

Steve J.B.:

The Prison Industrial Complex is supported by tax dollars. It operates the way that it does because people don’t object. I was in prison for shoplifting. Should I have been locked in a cell with a guy twice my size and weight who was doing life for a violent crime?

I don’t object to having been incarcerated for committing a crime. But I don’t think it was right that I was made a gift to another inmate.

I don’t think that “Prison Bitch” is a very funny song.

Alex Coolman:

Martha Stewart’s name hasn’t been dragged into this newest rape “joke” because she’s a woman and our society now understands that the rape of women isn’t funny.

But in Borowitz’ hands, the rape of men in prison is once again being treated as fodder for cruel, inane humor instead of what it really is: one of the most appalling, institutionally ignored abuses of human rights in this nation.