We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, March 26, 2012

The New Jim Crow How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste

Click here to access article by Michelle Alexander from TomDispatch. (You will need to scroll down to the article following Engelhardt's introduction.)
In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” 
In my opinion, the impetus for this war on African-Americans, officially known as "War on Drugs", was the reaction of the One Percent's enforcers to black nationalism in the US after groups such as the Black Panthers in the late 1960s and early 1970s struck fear in the souls of the One Percent's thoroughly racist security services. 

If you have some doubts about my description of their security services being racist, please read the stories of two white women who were intimately involved with black nationalists: actress Jean Seberg (Played Out by David Richards) and Seattle area psychiatrist Stuart Jeanne Bramhall (The Most Revolutionary Act). The former allegedly committed suicide and the latter nearly did before she escaped to New Zealand where she is now living and working. Also read The Echo from Dealey Plaza by Abraham Bolden who was a black ex-Secret Service agent who was critical of the poor practices of the Secret Service in protecting JF Kennedy. For more background on CIA's drug running, Read Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou who wrote of journalist Gary Webb's attempt to uncover the CIA's importation of drugs in the 1980s and 90s. Gary Webb's journalism career was ruined and he later died from an alleged suicide.