MLK Day 2012 & First Post (the low hanging fruit)

How bizarre to have the honor to be the first to post on this site, and no less than on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for 2012. As a white man from Arizona, one of the last states to implement today's holiday (they had to move the Super Bowl to get us on board!), it is with particular pleasure that I'm able to celebrate this day in Brooklyn (which was likely not as reluctant to celebrate Dr. King). As we enter the second month of occupation here in Brooklyn (starting, of course, in December 6th), a struggle the later Dr. King would certainly have supported (as part of his economic bill of rights), I plan to attend a meeting of the Organizing 4 Occupation group to witness a speech by international human rights attorney and once-close associate of Dr. King, Bill Pepper. Reportbacks to follow...

But since this is the first blog post for the site, and in an attempt to live up to the calls from activists from all quarters to be a Racial Transformer, I also feel an obligation to get the project rolling by picking up the ball. And where better to start any project than by picking off the low-hanging fruit? Mixed metaphors aside, the hope is that the other contributors to this blog will thereby be forced to step up their game and go after the real tough issues (not that the issues I've selected aren't tough, just that they've been trodden over so many times by others that having this blog get bogged down in them seems to be a misuse of its cultural resources). So let me start by quoting U.S. author and TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, who notes that

"Twelve percent of people who commit violent drug infractions are black. Fifty-six percent nonetheless of those who are prosecuted are [Black]. and something on the order of 75% of those who are imprisoned [are black]." Via Democracy Now!.

You can see him here with legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander, promoting her new book The New Jim Crow on how the War on Drugs, the prison industrial complex and electoral politics align to create a racialized system of oppression that achieves legally what Jim Crow laws were never able to.

So, to start this blog off right, and let's all say it together: The U.S. Criminal Justice system? Yeah, that's racist. The War on Drugs? Yeah, that's racist. The Republican Southern Strategy? Yeah, that's (covertly) racist.

And on this day of celebration let's all recognize just how far we still are from Dr. King's dream, and how much work remains to be done.