Tag: Punting the Pundits

Reporters need freedom to do their jobs, even if it means contacting unsavory characters

The U.S. National Security Agency placed an Al Jazeera journalist on a terrorist watch list on the basis of contacts he made with sources, according to an Intercept report published last week. The story should alarm the public about government threats to journalists and misuses of raw intelligence data.

Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, Al Jazeera’s Islamabad bureau chief, was identified as a member of both Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood by an NSA software program called Skynet that analyzes communication metadata such as phone contacts and location. On the basis of whom Zaidan telephoned, who called him and where the calls took place, Skynet labeled him a member of both organizations. The Intercept reported these findings on May 8 based on analysis of one of the numerous documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

One of those documents, an NSA PowerPoint slide listing Zaidan’s imagined affiliations, would be ridiculous if it weren’t so serious. This is how America’s intelligence apparatus with its massive funding, cutting-edge computers and armies of big-brained analysts identifies enemies of the state? Is it any wonder that so many civilians have been accidentally killed in drone attacks?

Robert Kuttner: Grand Theft Automated

The day after the New York Times published its stunning two-part exposé of labor conditions in New York City’s nail salons, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, nobody’s idea of a radical, discovered that he was sitting on power that he didn’t know he had. Cuomo ordered a crackdown against a broad pattern of thefts of wages that were hidden in plain view, had he bothered to look.

Cuomo’s new efforts will collaborate with an enforcement initiative by New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, two officials who don’t like each other and seldom work together. [..]

What’s occurring, belatedly, is growing recognition that America’s working people are getting cheated, whether retail and fast food workers earning too little to feed a family or immigrants being exploited in nail salons.

The press can help shed light on these abuses and government can use its executive power to crack down. But the pendulum won’t swing back because of some law of physics. A true transformation will require a broad social movement with the power to bring government back on the side of working families.

Michael Brenner: Osama Bin Laden — The Truth Be Told

Sy Hersh’s revelations about the systematic misrepresentation by the Obama administration of how it brought Osama bin-Laden to bay are causing a stir. Justifiably so. For they puncture the carefully constructed myth of how America revenged itself and renewed itself through this act of righteous justice. Moreover, the account of unsavory chicanery in high places once again spotlights the deceit that now is the hallmark of how our government works. [..]

The claim that the official U.S. version provides an honest, forthright accounting is no longer sustainable. The version offered by Zero Dark Thirty went a step further in substituting pulp fiction — of the mythological kind — for truth. It satisfies a gnawing hunger; it meets a powerfully felt need. It allows us to avoid coming to terms with how America went off the rails after 9/11. It fosters the juvenile in us.

The instinctive denial mechanism at work in the response to Hersh’s revelations tells us that we indeed are politically immature.

Andy Powell: The Arctic is Shell’s New Corporate Crisis

Twenty years ago, the oil giant Shell was plunged into a corporate crisis after it was internationally criticised for trying to dump the redundant Brent Spar oil platform in the North Sea and for being complicit in the murder of the acclaimed Nigerian activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa.

As Shell recoiled from the intense public scrutiny and criticism of these two events, the oil giant spent millions rebranding and rebuilding its image. It would take years for Shell to recover.

Since then, Shell has tried to argue that it is a responsible energy company, which is walking the tight-rope of sustainability on the one hand and society’s short-term energy needs on the other, which includes fossil fuels.

Its critics have always maintained that Shell has acted deeply irresponsibility over the last two decades, missing a golden opportunity to lead the oil majors into a clean energy era.

The NSA and its surveillance state supporters in the Senate are making a last ditch effort to prevent Congress from taking away any of the spy agency’s authority to snoop on innocent Americans, despite the fact that there is now broad support for NSA reform in Congress.

Earlier this week, the House overwhelmingly passed the USA Freedom Act, a bill designed – at least so its authors hope – to end the surveillance program of every American’s phone records that Edward Snowden first exposed in June 2013. The bill passed by a huge margin, partially buoyed by the fact that a recent court opinion makes it virtually impossible for the NSA to continue as is. As Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the Edward Snowden story, noted after the bill passed, the vote is a significant moment. It’s the “first time since 9/11 that powers justified in the name of terrorism will be reduced rather than increased.”

But unfortunately it also passed because the bill is so weak, it was hard for many to object to it. Intelligence officials told the Daily Beast’s Shane Harris that they can more than live with USA Freedom Act, calling it a “a big win” compared to what it could have been. Another unidentified former official said: “The NSA is coming out of this unscathed.”

Zoë Carpenter: Why Progressives Want to Rewrite the Rules-and the Story-of the US Economy

Tuesday was quite a day for the emerging progressive offensive on economic issues. That morning in Washington the Roosevelt Institute, led by Nobel Laureate and Hillary Clinton adviser Joseph Stiglitz, unveiled an agenda to “rewrite the rules” of the economy to address the imbalance between concentrated wealth at the top and stagnation at the bottom. A few hours later New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio stood in front of the Capitol, flanked by members of Congress, labor leaders, and activists, and unveiled his own 13-point plan to right the national economy. [..]

To build support for this aggressive policy agenda, progressives know that first they have to change the way we talk about inequality and its origins. More than simply laying out ideas, the two plans are meant to galvanize “a coalition that can change the national debate,” as de Blasio put it. From a movement-building perspective, the benefits of putting forward an expansive, rather than narrow vision of economic transformation are obvious; low-wage workers, immigrants, criminal-justice reformers, working parents, students, and many others might find a natural place in such a coalition.

Matthew Dowd: Honor the Troops, Question the War

I have come to the place where I believe the decision to go into Iraq was a huge mistake. Should have I asked more questions in the midst of all that? Yes. Should I have not have placed trust in the administration that they knew what they were doing? Yes. Can we honor our troops and still be opposed to this war decision and seek answers? Absolutely.

It is astonishing to me watching former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush lay out a confusing and convoluted answer to the questions surrounding the Iraq war. Of any question that you should be prepared to handle as the brother of the president who led us into this folly, this is one you should have thought about, soul-searched and come up with a clear and concise answer. [..]

The best way to honor our servicemen and women is to have a leader who clearly understands history, is willing to account for mistakes even if they are by a relative, and then annunciate how he would do things differently. People who fight for our flag and make this sacrifice want to believe that the truth matters, that government can be trusted and that leaders know what they are doing.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf) recently asked, “Which concerns you more: the income gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the country, or middle and working class Americans not being able to get ahead financially?”

If you understand how the economy works, that isn’t just the wrong question. It’s probably a meaningless one.

When asked this question, 68 percent of those surveyed said they were most concerned about the middle and working class not being able to get ahead financially. Only 28 percent were more concerned about the income gap — a major feature of what has come to be known as “wealth inequality.” [..]

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll’s question was asking whether people are more concerned with the income gap — a relatively abstract concept — or their current circumstances, which they themselves find frightening. When someone is living in fear, their own survival will always be their first priority.

Robert Reich: Making the Economy Work for the Many, Not the Few — Step 3: Expand Social Security

America is on the cusp of a retirement crisis. Millions of Americans are already in danger of not being able to maintain their standard of living in retirement, and the problem is getting worse.

You hear a lot about how corporations are struggling to make good on their pension promises, and how Social Security won’t be there for you in retirement.

Baloney on both counts.

Corporations are awash in money, and they could afford to provide their hourly workers with pensions when they retire. Years ago, they routinely provided “defined benefit” pensions – a fixed amount every month after retirement.

Nowadays most workers are lucky if their company matches what they’re able to put away. The typical firm does no more than offer a 401-K plan that depends entirely on worker savings.

But many workers get such low pay during their working lives that they haven’t been able to save for retirement.

Rebecca Solnit: One magical politician won’t stop climate change. It’s up to all of us

Lots of people eagerly study all the polls and reports on how many people believe that climate change is real and urgent. They seem to think there is some critical mass that, through the weight of belief alone, will get us where we want to go. As if when the numbers aren’t high enough, we can’t achieve anything. As if when the numbers are high enough, beautiful transformation will magically happen all by itself or people will vote for wonderful politicians who do the right thing.

But it’s not the belief of the majority or the work of elected officials that will change the world. It will be action, most likely the actions of a minority, as it usually has been. This week’s appalling Obama administration decision to let Shell commence drilling in the Arctic sea says less about that administration, which swings whichever way it’s pushed, than that we didn’t push harder than the oil industry. Which is hard work, but sometimes even a tiny group can do it.

Norman Solomon: No, CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Didn’t Get a Light Sentence

Yes, I saw the glum faces of prosecutors in the courtroom a few days ago, when the judge sentenced CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling to three and a half years in prison — far from the 19 to 24 years they’d suggested would be appropriate.

Yes, I get that there was a huge gap between the punishment the government sought and what it got — a gap that can be understood as a rebuke to the dominant hard-line elements at the Justice Department.

And yes, it was a positive step when a May 13 editorial by the New York Times finally criticized the extreme prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling.

But let’s be clear: The only fair sentence for Sterling would have been no sentence at all. Or, at most, something like the recent gentle wrist-slap, with no time behind bars, for former CIA director David Petraeus, who was sentenced for providing highly classified information to his journalist lover.

The President is angry at Democrats who won’t support this trade deal.

He should be angry at Republicans who haven’t supported American workers. Their obduracy has worsened the potential impact of the deal.  

Congressional Republicans have refused to raise the minimum wage (whose inflation-adjusted value is now almost 25 percent lower than it was in 1968), expand unemployment benefits, invest in job training, enlarge the Earned Income Tax Credit, improve the nation’s infrastructure, or expand access to public higher education.

They’ve embraced budget austerity that has slowed job and wage growth. And they’ve continued to push “trickle-down” economics – keeping tax rates low for America’s richest, protecting their tax loopholes, and fighting off any attempt to raise taxes on wealthy inheritances to their level before 2000.

Now they – and the president – want a huge trade agreement that protects corporate investors but will lead to even more off-shoring of low-skilled American jobs.

Jeffrey Sachs: Defend Workers and the Environment Before Voting Fast Track

esident Barack Obama is making a full-court press for two new international business agreements, one with Asian-Pacific countries known as Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the other with European countries known as the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). To secure these, he is calling on Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also known as “fast track,” so that when TPP and TTIP come up for a Congressional vote, they can only be voted up or down, without amendments.

Obama’s advocacy has included a recent report by his Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) on The Economics Benefits of U.S. Trade (pdf), and a visit to Nike headquarters in Oregon. At Nike, Obama portrayed opponents of Fast Track as “just wrong,” trying to preserve the status quo rather than join the 21st century. Yet the Democrats are so far not buying. They know that there is a lot of mischief and even danger lurking in TPP and TTIP as they are currently constituted, as both would give too much power to multinational companies at the expense of workers and regulators.

Ralph Nader: Auto Safety: Past Is Prologue

It doesn’t take a comprehensive examination of American culture to notice the all-too-commonplace glorification of war. Violent war movies and television shows routinely make big bucks for Hollywood. Video games called Call of Duty and Battlefield sell millions of copies each year. Even history books are filled with stories of “great” battles won and lost. There are even devoted Civil War reenactors!

We are quick to recognize and commemorate wars that took enormous amounts of human lives through acts of intentional violence from opposing sides. It is unfortunately quite rare to see the same public attention dedicated to campaigns where preserving human life was the only true objective.

Mary Turck: Stop the blame game over achievement gap

We need to invest in programs that help students learn and succeed, not argue about who’s responsible for failure

Debates about the shortcomings of K-12 education in the United States typically focus on identifying who or what is to blame for the achievement gap – the lower standardized test scores and high school graduation rates among students of color and those living in poverty. Often these discussions are not only misguided but also ignore strategies that lead to success in school, even for children who are living in poverty, discouraged by racism and inequality and stressed by family and community dysfunction. We need to learn from and replicate these initiatives instead of blame and shame schools, teachers and communities for gaps in achievement.

Students from low-income and minority backgrounds live with stress that affects individual learning and classroom behavior. For example, a study designed to identify stress in New York schoolchildren after 9/11 found that “the students’ sense of threat or insecurity stemmed not so much from terrorism as from exposure to violence, inadequate housing, sudden family loss, parents with depression or addictions and so forth.”

The United States has its second universal periodic review (UPR) before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday. Countries will be able to ask the U.S. questions and make recommendations about its implementation of human rights commitments made during its first review, which took place in 2010, as well as about other issues of concern.

At the top of the list should be Washington’s failure to hold accountable those responsible for the systematic torture carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency in the global “war on terrorism.” Five years ago, the U.S. accepted a UPR recommendation from Denmark to “take measures to eradicate” and “thoroughly investigate” all forms of torture and abuse by military or civilian personnel within its jurisdiction. But the only investigation into CIA torture conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice was limited in scope and closed in 2012 with no charges filed. Nor does it seem to have met basic standards of credibility or thoroughness; investigators apparently never bothered to interview key witnesses of the abuse: the detainees.

Zoë Carpenter: Rand Paul Is Fighting for Your Privacy-Unless You’re a Woman

“The right to be left alone is the most cherished of rights,” Kentucky senator and presidential aspirant Rand Paul said over the weekend in San Francisco. He was there to sell himself to the young tech elite as a civil-liberties crusader; the only candidate willing to take an uncompromising stand against government surveillance. He cares so deeply about privacy that he’s planning to filibuster the renewal of parts of the Patriot Act.

But the leader of “the leave-me-the-hell-alone coalition” is simultaneously, albeit more quietly, arguing that women should have little privacy in their healthcare decisions. “The government does have some role in our lives,” Paul said at a summit organized by the anti-choice Susan B Anthony List in April, by which he meant making abortion illegal. Paul describes himself as “100 percent pro-life.” Along with all of the other Republican presidential candidates he supports a bill that resurfaced this week in the House that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Recently Paul has become something of a champion for anti-abortion groups that are trying to reframe the abortion debate so that pro-choice views seem extreme. Pressed by reporters last month to clarify whether his support for abortion bans includes exceptions, Paul deflected the question by calling up the specter of late-term abortions. “Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it OK to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” he said to a New Hampshire journalist. No matter that only 1 percent of abortions in the United States occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy; claiming Democrats endorse the “killing” of babies is an easy way not to account for his selective support for personal liberty.

Kate Aronoff: Movement Builders Should Listen to Bernie Sanders – Focus on Mass Action, not Candidates

Is Bernie Sanders a more progressive presidential candidate than Hillary Clinton? Undoubtedly. Will he single-handedly catalyze a united left front in the United States? Probably not.

Unchallenged, Hillary Clinton is likely to run a campaign chock-full of populist optics, but thin on any real engagement with the issues that make progressives most nervous about her bid: foreign policy, welfare, corporate influence and more. Sanders, a registered independent, who caucuses with Democrats yet identifies as a democratic socialist, has been unafraid to talk about class inequality, even – heaven forbid – capitalism. He’s even started bringing a long-taboo word back into mainstream American political conversation: socialism.

As Ned Resnikoff points out for Al Jazeera, Americans’ stance toward socialism has been thawing since the Cold War. Between Occupy Wall Street, Kshama Sewant’s election to Seattle City Council, and – now – Sanders’ candidacy, it may finally be possible to de-link the “S Word” from the gulags and authoritarianism of the Soviet Union, and re-associate with such basic amenities as healthcare, education and housing. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, 49 percent of 18-29 year olds even have a positive view of socialism. With any hope, this year’s Democratic primary debates will challenge Clinton to choose firm sides on these issues, and maybe even build them into her platform in response to the vocal minority more endeared to Sanders’ populism than Clinton’s smug establishmentarianism.

A basic moral principle that most Americans agree on is no one who works full time should be in poverty, nor should their family.

Yet over time we’ve seen significant growth in the “working poor” – people working full time, sometimes even 60 or more hours each week, but at such low wages that they remain impoverished.

What to do?

One step is to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. This is winnable. A powerful movement is fighting for $15 an hour and they’re winning new laws in cities and states, and forcing companies to raise wages.

Wendell Potter: Court Case Shows How Health Insurers Rip Off You And Your Employer

If you think you’re paying too much for employer-sponsored health coverage, you might want to forward this to the HR department. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that your health insurer has been ripping off both you and your employer-to the tune of several million dollars every year-for decades.

Many Americans, according to various polls, blame Obamacare for every hike in premiums despite the fact that the rate of increase for most folks was actually greater before 2010, the year the law went into effect.

Health insurers are delighted that many folks blame Obamacare for rate increases because it deflects attention away from them and, according to documents made public in a recent lawsuit against a big Blue Cross plan, the questionable activities they’ve been engaging in for years to boost profits.

It turns out that one of the reasons workers have been paying more for their coverage is allegedly a common practice among insurers: charging their employer customers unlawful hidden fees.

John Dear: Everyone Has to Practice Nonviolence Now

The death of unarmed Freddie Gray in police custody and the subsequent riots in Baltimore demonstrate the profound systemic injustice in our country, as well as the complete misunderstanding and widespread hypocrisy about nonviolence.

Everyone has to practice nonviolence. Everyone. From the people on the streets to the police, to church ministers and parents, but also our media spokespeople and elected officials. Including the president. And the military. Everyone, everywhere. The days of war, killing, shootings, bombings, torture, executions and nuclear weapons are coming to an end. The days of violence are over. Everyone has to practice nonviolence. That is our only future–if we are to have a future. [..]

After Baltimore, Ferguson, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the evidence is in. Violence has failed. The days of violence and war are over. Dr. King and Gandhi were right; nonviolence is our only option.

Every one of us has to start practicing nonviolence. If we all take up where Gandhi and King left off, we can build a new grassroots movement of nonviolence that will lead to a new culture of peace.

Last year the vampires of finance bought themselves a Congress. I know it’s not nice to call them that, but I have my reasons, which I’ll explain in a bit. For now, however, let’s just note that these days Wall Street, which used to split its support between the parties, overwhelmingly favors the G.O.P. And the Republicans who came to power this year are returning the favor by trying to kill Dodd-Frank, the financial reform enacted in 2010.

And why must Dodd-Frank die? Because it’s working.

This statement may surprise progressives who believe that nothing significant has been done to rein in runaway bankers. And it’s true both that reform fell well short of what we really should have done and that it hasn’t yielded obvious, measurable triumphs like the gains in insurance thanks to Obamacare.

But Wall Street hates reform for a reason, and a closer look shows why.

Alexander Abdo and Jameel Jaffer: The courts stood up to NSA mass surveillance. Now Congress must act

One of the documents that Edward Snowden delivered to American journalists two years ago was a now-infamous NSA slide titled “New Collection Posture.” The slide summarizes, in surprisingly candid terms, the objective of the largest, most powerful surveillance agency on the face of the earth. ‘Collect it all’, it says. [..]

But perhaps the more immediate effect of Thursday’s decision will be on the debate now unfolding in Washington. The Patriot Act provision that underlies the call-records program is scheduled to sunset on 1 June, and over the next three weeks Congress must decide whether to reauthorize the provision, scale it back or allow it to expire. The appeals court’s decision should strengthen the hand of advocates who believe the revisions currently being considered by Congress don’t go far enough, and it should strengthen the resolve of legislators who have been pushing for more comprehensive reforms.

If Congress can’t coalesce around more comprehensive reform, the best course would be to let Section 215 expire. The intelligence community hasn’t even attempted to make a serious case that this authority is actually necessary. And as the recent ruling reminds us, it’s an authority that’s been grossly abused already and that could readily be abused again.

The court has done its part. Now it’s Congress’s turn.

Leo W. Gerard: Trade Abuse

America is in an abusive relationship with trade-obsessed politicians and corporations.

Despite their long history of battering the U.S. middle class with bad trade deal after bad trade deal, these lawmakers and CEOs contend workers should believe that their new proposal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will be different. President Obama and the CEO of Nike, a company that doesn’t manufacture one shoe in the United States, got together in Oregon on Friday to urge Americans to fall once again for a trade deal.  

The trade fanatics say everything will be different under the TPP – even though it is based on deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that lured American factories across the border, destroyed good-paying jobs and devastated communities. They plead: “Just come back for one more deal and see how great it will be this time!” And, like all batterers, they say: “Sorry about the terrible past; trust me about the future.”

This is trade abuse.

Dave Hohnson: Senate Fast Track Vote Tuesday — Where Is Clinton?

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled the voting process for trade promotion authority, commonly known as “fast track,” to begin as early as Tuesday. If passed, fast track prohibits Congress from amending trade agreements, no matter what problems might show up, and it requires that these agreements be voted on within 90 days, limiting the debate Congress is allowed to have while also prohibiting filibusters.

Passing fast track will essentially pre-approve the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “trade” agreement before the public gets a chance to know what is in it, as well as future trade deals, regardless of who is president or what the rigged, corporate-dominated negotiating process produces.

With a vote coming as soon as Tuesday, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has not yet spoken out for or against fast track.

Geoffrey R. Stone: Intelligence Gathering, Secrecy and the Congress Problem

In an important decision, a federal court of appeals held yesterday that the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata could not be squared with the legislation that was said to authorize it. [..]

But that left open the question, which is still unresolved, of how Congress itself can authorize programs that must be kept secret from our enemies and, therefore, from the American people. One answer, of course, is that the government should never have any foreign intelligence programs that have not been discussed openly and approved by the American people. The problem with that answer is that that “solution” would automatically render eliminate all sorts of surveillance programs that require secrecy in order to be effective.

Another answer is to figure out some way that Congress can have a meaningful role in deciding whether to approve secret foreign intelligence programs without at the same time destroying their effectiveness. That, of course, was the reason for creating the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. But, if their approval is not sufficient to reflect congressional approval, then another way must be found to enable the Congress itself to discuss, debate, review and evaluate secret foreign intelligence programs without destroying them in the process.

If the Scottish National Party was a small anti-austerity party that had never before made a real dent in British politics and suddenly shot into contention-grabbing dozens of seats away from the traditional parties and elbowing its way into position as the third largest party in new Parliament-the world would take notice.

Well, the Scottish National Party is a small-make that formerly small – anti-austerity party. And it just made a real dent, a huge dent, in politics with an epic electoral breakthrough. “The tectonic plates of Scottish politics shifted yesterday,” said SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon on Friday morning. The veteran British political commentator Andrew Marr declared as the election results came in that, “Scotland has moved decisively to the left.”

That move offers an important lesson for American progressives about going big in politics-especially anti-austerity politics. It is not just possible to run against the failed conservative policies of seeking to balance budgets with cuts to public services, attacks on public employees and their unions, and crude policies of privatization that redistribute wealth upward. It is necessary.

Leslie Savan: Who’s Really Laughing About the Invasion of Texas?

All week long we’ve been having a good laugh over Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordering the Texas state guard to monitor Jade Helm 15, a military exercise planned by the Pentagon to simulate “covert military operations” in Texas and seven other western states. The conspiracy theory on the right is that the operation is designed to “take over” Texas, which is funny because the state is actually already part of the US. The speculation that abandoned Walmart stores are being prepped to hold gun-lovers and patriots makes it only more hilarious because, well, don’t Walmarts already do that? [..]

But as Jon Stewart points out, these military exercises have been going on in Texas for years, and the Lone Star state has always welcomed them. Hmmm, what’s different now, he wonders, under a photo of our black president.

This is how ginning up the base works. If there’s a near-time analog, it would be the 24/7 coverage before the 2014 midterm elections about Ebola and the crazies’ theory that the feds were encouraging an epidemic in America by not quarantining anyone who set foot in West Africa. That was a bad joke, too, since, after all, nobody who had not been in West Africa or treated someone with Ebola had ever caught the disease. And the media coverage stopped on a dime when the election was over.

But, boy, did that coverage help drive racially biased voters to the polls.

Michele Chen: Devaluation of black lives starts in classrooms

Black students are disproportionately subjected to suspension and arrest

In New York City, where youth of color live under the shadow of stop-and-frisk policing and hundreds of children are jailed each year, school authorities recently promised to limit the use of metal handcuffs on students younger than 12 years old – unless absolutely necessary. Yes, that’s considered progress.

Since the Black Lives Matter movement exploded last year, the public spotlight has focused on violence against black youth in the streets. But the devaluation of black life often begins in the classroom – not at the hands of riot police, but through more subtle forms of force.

Black students are disproportionately subjected to disciplinary measures, ranging from suspension and expulsion to physical confinement or restraint – and sometimes arrest. Like zero-tolerance law enforcement, social control is the goal, though paradoxically, those disproportionately targeted for restraint typically come from the most disempowered communities.