Going haunting tonight? Consider dressing as Rand Paul or Michelle Bachman. Please send pictures to the blog.
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Please post as comments here your prediction for tonight's World Series tie-breaker...
Dear White People, the first full length film release by Justin Simien is well worth the watch for anyone who cares about the state of race relations and identity politics in this complex nation of ours (assuming here that as I have exactly one person following this blog - thank you Paul T. - I'm not leaving out any international readers). As a first time effort Simien exhibits the common rookie mistake of stuffing too much into a crowded frame (sub-plots, back-stories, references and self-references) but the overall treatment of the interface between race/minority status and 1)power, 2)academia,3)pop culture, 4)commerce is spot on and very relevant. Think an early Spike Lee film done with a little less talent and a lot less angst. Also funny in a way that Lee can never deliver, as his work is always deliberately and understandably too heavy on message to let the humorous elements he mixes in come to the surface and breathe. Overall the acting performances are credible across the mostly twentysomething cast, with a less believable pair of deliberately parodied presentations of two older characters that still serve the story well. Go see this. (Paul, if you don't like it I'll refund your ticket and Judy's too- as I remember a contentious conversation we once had in SF over brunch about Lani Guinier and cumulative voting - same issues haunt this film sorry to say.)
Fall of 1989 with a newly minted law degree I was a founding staffer and Field Director for City Year, a model National Service pilot (predecessor to Americorps) that launched that September. My job was part Youth Worker part Community Organizer. I worked in every neighborhood across racially segregated Boston (being from Philadelphia I never adjusted to the racial disunity of Boston during the 5 years I lived there) - including Mission Hill where 25 years ago today the police began a violent dragnet aimed at the black residents there, described in the article linked here -
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/10/23/mission-hill-can-erase-charles-stuart-even-after-years/FNmeT6v5zzSLB3WkhBXLcO/story.html High Concept = A white guy killed his wife and set up every black man west of the Financial District to pay for his crime. Seems innocence is presumed for some and disregarded with respect to others. Bottom line the guy had to suicide via bridge-jump to get the police to put the crime back on him. Special thanks to my friend Tom Lowenstein for reminding me of this turbulent time. Seems things haven't changed much in a quarter century. I've followed this case for two decades+. Now discredited forensics are swapped out for a low rent jailhouse snitch on retrial? Absurd. Why does Ed Graf need to sacrifice his reputation after 25 years of wrongful incarceration in order to ensure his freedom? Because a jury, and a judge, fail to respect the presumption of innocence. Please read the Texas Observer article linked here:
http://www.texasobserver.org/jury-begins-deliberations-ed-graf-re-trial/ Note the sentence five paragraphs from the end - "Will the jury go with their heads or their hearts, with the scientific evidence or with their suspicions?" OK so now suspicion trumps the burden of proof? As reported by NPR All Things Considered this evening the jury went with suspicion and submitted a guilty verdict that went unrecorded in lieu of the plea. Disgusting and all too common - not just in Texas. I encourage readers to post their reflections on this film here as comments. I look forward to reading what you have to say.
You readers were promised movie reviews on this blog, but here we jump the gun with a PREVIEW of CITIZENFOUR. (you want a review writ large and long see: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/holder-secrets & you'll get a full treatment there.) This important work debuts commercially this Friday and it's an important historical data-point on the through-line connecting no-knock police home invasions, wrongful convictions, law officer perpetrated shootings of unarmed citizens and all variety of prosecutorial misconduct. NSA violations of peoples privacy shares with all these other examples of bad government behavior an emblematic factor: the failure to respect or even acknowledge the presumption of innocence intended to be sacrosanct in our social contract as a self-goverened people. Word to the wise - if we want to be presumed innocent we need to demand to be so presumed and presume of others accordingly. See the film please and spread the word.
In 1987 Wendell Berry proposed his "Rules for New Tools" to guide the adaptation and application of emerging technologies. Old tools should only be replaced with new ones if the new tool meets the following 9 tests:
1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces. 5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body. 6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools. 7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible. 8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair. 9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships. I (new author of this blog) have no smart phone. I could use some help getting noticed. Upcoming topics include wrongful convictions, recent exonerations therefrom, and advances of challenges to bad forensic science used by prosecutors at trials. Also news from death row and film reviews. Please encourage your friends to tune in.
Everyone who cares about individual rights, limits on the powers of the police and government, and the destructiveness of mass incarceration should read Alice Goffman's recent book "On The Run".
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AuthorJon Amsterdam is a Lawyer, Educator, Community Organizer and National Service Innovator who directs Communities Without Borders, a non profit organization he founded in 1996. Archives
January 2021
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