(The following article was originally posted on the "Support Chuck Turner" blog)
Reflections from Behind the Wall
Topic: Anatomy of a FrameUP
In last week’s first installment of Anatomy of a FrameUp, I outlined my background and lifetime of service. My purpose was to put US Attorney Sullivan’s sting and frameup in the context of my life’s work. This week I will focus on the day of the arrest and my reflections on it. Each of the remaining installments will have three segments. The first will be a narrative describing what happened in that particular segment of the experience and my reflections on it. The second will be an analysis examining what we may learn from my experience regarding the method of operation of US prosecutors; their police force, the FBI, and the court system. The third will focus on proposals for actions in our ongoing fight against prosecutorial terrorism.
Installment 2: Keystone Cops Strike Again:
A) Narrative:
On November 21, 2008, at 6:16 a.m. I was confronted in my office at City Hall by 10 white men and women, some in police uniforms. One of them barked at me, “Hang up the phone”. I had been talking with my wife, Terri, who had called me 10 minutes earlier, saying that the FBI had just come to our house to arrest me. My first response was “Well it finally happened” and we both laughed since Terri had been saying for years that my political work would result in my being killed or put in jail.
My second response was “Why are they going to arrest me.” She said she didn’t know and went on to say that they forced their way into the house when she told them that I had left for work. She was still relating her experience with them when the FBI accompanied by Boston Police burst into my office and ordered me to hang up the phone.
The large officer at the edge of my desk who had told me to hang up the phone, then ordered me to stand up and put my hands behind my back. As I followed his instructions, I started to laugh which infuriated him. “What are you laughing at?”, he shouted. I replied, “You would never understand”.
The situation was obviously a serious one. At the same time these ten “public safety officers” standing around me in my small office getting ready to handcuff a 68 year old, black, 9 year City Councilor, and lifelong activist seemed so ludicrous that I couldn’t help but laugh. It seemed that somehow I was playing a part in a grade C detective movie or perhaps even a Keystone Cops movie.
At that point, the leader of the group said move and I and the pack of “public safety officials” began to move out the door, some in front of me and some behind. As we walked down the hall to the elevators, I wanted to ask how much each of them earned per hour because it seemed like a tremendous waste of tax payer money. Did they think I was going to make a break for it and they needed ten officers to take me down? Even if they thought I was going to perform an act of civil disobedience, they wouldn’t need ten officers.
When the elevator arrived, it seemed that they all wanted to ride with me so most of us crowded into the elevator and rode to the first floor level where we walked out to the parking area where I saw a traditional red Ford parked and waiting for us. The young, male FBI agent who had interviewed me three weeks before said “Get in the car”. I turned my back to him so he could take the cuffs off, when he again barked “Get in the car”. I then realized that they were playing “We’ve caught the dangerous criminal who will make a run for it, if we take the handcuffs off”. Or maybe it was the “Now that we have arrested this arrogant, loudmouth “Negro” politician, lets show him whose in charge and how difficult we are going to make life for him”.
Regardless which scene they (the young female agent who had also interviewed me was by then standing beside him) were playing, the best thing to do was to try to make myself as comfortable as possible, hand cuffs and all in the back seat of their car. As I listened to them talk, it became apparent that they were getting ready to take me on a 45 minute ride to Worcester, MA. Apparently US Attorney Sullivan had scheduled my arrest to take place on the day that the judge magistrate who would arraign me was at the Courthouse in Worcester.
After about twenty minutes of trying to get comfortable with my hands cuffed behind my back, I started to have the urge to ask if they could at least loosen the cuffs. However, it occurred to me that their objective was to make me as uncomfortable as possible. So it was clear that the best thing to do was to suck it up and understand that my discomfort was miniscule compared to what others endure at the hands of “public safety officers” every day.
Unfortunately, when we arrived in Worcester, they couldn’t find their way to the court house. They kept asking questions of the person on the other end of their radio unit but it didn’t seem to do any good. However, after what seemed to be a half an hour, finally we arrived at the Worcester federal court house and parked in the back. The female officer opened the rear door and said “Get out”. I thought for a moment about resisting and forcing them to have the court officers carry me out of the car into the jail. But then an internal voice said what would be the point or value of an act of resistance at this point.
Sitting in the barren jail cell, with no idea of my crime, I felt very alone. I had no idea what time I would go before the judge. However, I knew I had to find some way to keep myself calm until that moment. Remembering Nichiren Daishonen, the Buddhist monk who had been imprisoned for his views, I began to chant “Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo” the powerful chant he had developed. After a few minutes I would pause and then begin again.
After about an hour or so, I began to hear this strange clanging against the bars and realized that I was not alone. I assumed that the clanging was a message to stop chanting. At that moment, I was in no mood to take his or her feelings into consideration. I rationalized that whether s/he realized it, my chanting was helping both of us.
Eventually, I dozed off and was awakened by a guard saying that my lawyers had arrived. It was now two thirty. I was told that in a half hour, I would be led into court to begin the most difficult ordeal of my life. While I was being moved to Worcester, Terri had been contacted by Kazi Toure and Steve Kirshbaum, political allies, who when they heard I had been arrested secured legal assistance.
Kazi worked as an investigator for Barry Wilson, a local criminal lawyer, who agreed to represent me at the arraignment. Steve, a steward of the School Bus Drivers Union, asked John Pavlos, also a criminal lawyer, to join Barry. Also through the bus drivers union and the International Action Center, Steve organized a group of men to provide security on the porch of our house bringing a sense of relief to Terri who was being barraged by the ever present, ever insistent press.
In the short time we had before going before the magistrate, John and Barry showed me the affidavit that the prosecutor had given them. The affidavit said that I was being charged with extortion, three counts of lying to the FBI officials who had interviewed me three weeks before, and conspiracy with Senator Dianne Wilkerson, the first Black female state senator. There were also two pictures of a black hand putting something in my hand. I couldn’t see the person’s face but the picture on the wall led me to believe that it had been taken in my district office.
The affidavit identified the hand as belonging to US Attorney Sullivan’s cooperating witness who they only identified as a community business person. The senator and I were accused of being in a conspiracy to extort money from him. The charges of lying to FBI agents were based on the fact that when I was interviewed three weeks earlier on the day of the Senator’s arrest for taking bribes, I was asked three questions by the officers. Did I know a local businessman, Ron Wilburn? Did Mr. Wilburn ever offer to give me a fund raiser? Did Mr. Wilburn ever give me money? To which I answered No, No, and definitely Not. How could I been given money by a person that I didn’t even know. My answers to these questions increased the number of my crimes (counts) from two to five.
After talking briefly about the procedures of the court process and agreeing to meet the following Sunday, the three of us proceeded to court. When the court officer opened the door to the court room, what I saw almost brought tears to my eyes. The court room was filled. There were my wife and one of my daughters in the front row. Around them and back of them were a myriad of other friends and supporters. Despite the fact that Sullivan had arranged that the session would be held 45 miles away from Boston, my family, friends, and supporters were still there with me in my time of need. The moment just confirmed what I have always said, “Our greatest asset in the struggle for justice is the love and support of each other”.
As I turned to look at the judge and prosecutor, I was amazed by the smirk on the face of the person who would be presenting the government’s case, Asst US Attorney McNeil. I assumed he was thinking, “Now we’ve got you!” I said to myself “But you’re not going to keep me without the fight of your life” and smiled back. The formalities went quickly. The prosecutor read the charges. I plead not guilty. The judge said some other things that I don’t remember and released me on my own recognizance with the reminder that if I broke any of the conditions, I would not only go to jail but forfeit a $50,000 bond which meant to me that I would have to give the government $50,000 which would have been an impossibility.
Moving out of the court room surrounded by friends and family, someone said that the Boston City Council President Maureen Feeney had announced at noon that she was stripping me of my Council Committee seats and inviting me to meet with the Council on Monday, the next working day, to decide what they would do. I said to myself, “It’s amazing, a year ago, I went to Maureen as a representative of Team Unity, the four Boston City Councilors of color, and said that if she ran for President, we would support her because we thought she would be a fairer Council President than Councilor Flaherty. Now that’s she President, she’s tried me before I have even been indicted. Looks like we made a bad assumption about fairness.”
Before I could think any more about the irony of her actions, the doors to the outside were opened and in front of us were lights, cameras, and reporters shouting, “Do you have a statement. What have you got to say”. Understanding that to say nothing would be taken as an admission of guilt, I went to the battery of mikes, thinking that it was amazing that during my nine years as a Councilor, I would be lucky if any reporters showed up to cover what I thought were important news stories. Now that I am accused of being a corrupt politician, they all want to hear what I have to say.
So I made it short and sweet. “Let me be clear. I am not guilty of any of the charges. I have served the people of my district with integrity over the last nine years and intend to continue. And Council President Feeney has no right to take away my Council powers, I haven’t even been indicted.” Then it all became a blur as we moved to get into the car and drive to Boston to prepare for Monday’s confrontation with Council President Feeney and the Council.
B) Analysis:
1) Psychological Warfare:
The first piece of advice that my lawyers gave me was that the objective of those who I was fighting, the US Attorney and the FBI, was winning–not justice, not truth, not honest evidence–winning by any means necessary. As I talk with the men with whom I’m incarcerated, they say that their experience confirms that fact. I’ve heard estimates of the federal conviction rate that run from 92% to 98% with the vast majority of the convictions coming through the accused pleading guilty to try to get a lower sentence because of the fear of trying to fight.
One of the reasons, I believe, that there is a fear of fighting is that the key strategy employed is to convince the person that they have accused that there is no way to win so why even try. Even the way that I was arrested was designed to psychologically intimidate me and establish their power in my mind. It was also racist because it was not used with white elected officials arrested in Boston in the past.
In the cases of both the Senator and I, the FBI came to our houses a little before 6 in the morning, at a time when people are either still asleep or just waking up. Their purpose is to conduct the arrest at a time when the person is not fully conscious. This enables them to more easily implant the thought that they are too powerful a force to resist and creates a fear that further weakens resistance.
Since I was at the office when the FBI came to my house to arrest me and was warned by Terri that they were on the way to the office, they did not have the psychological advantage of surprise and disorientation when they arrived. However, their arrest strategy had other elements designed to psychologically intimidate. Sending 10 “public safety officers” to arrest a 68 year old City Councilor is absurd unless the point is to psychologically intimidate through a “show of force”. Then to have me stand up and be handcuffed made no sense unless their objective was to reinforce the thought that regardless of what position I held before they came, now I am a criminal and under their complete control.
The fact that they initiate the arrests at such an early hour also creates an additional psychological advantage for them. The wait between arrival at the courthouse jail at 6:30 or 7:00 o’clock in the morning and the arraignment that will probably occur in the late afternoon is also psychologically disruptive. The person therefore has to cope with a long period of time without support during which anxiety is bound to develop with a psychologically weakening effect
The staging of the arrest on a day when the judge was in Worcester, 45 miles away from Boston, I believe, was also part of their psychological design. Having me arraigned in a City a significant distance from Boston, they thought would cut down on the number of people who could come to support me as well as give me psychological strength. The implied message of this action was, “You might have support but we can find ways to cut you off from that support, anytime that we choose.”
The other crucial element of their strategy is to begin a process of convincing the public that the person is guilty before there can be any possibility of defense. This element is put into action through their ally, the media. Less than 2 hours after my arrest, the media locally and nationally were carrying the story of my arrest with pictures allegedly showing the crime taking place.
To reinforce the psychological imprint of the early news release, US Attorney Sullivan called an early morning press conference at which he told what I call “The Big Lie” in my next installment. The purpose of the lie was to hide the fact that the criminal scenario had been arranged by him not the Senator and I as he alleged in the affidavit and press conference.
If Sullivan had told the truth in the press conference, I couldn’t have been charged with conspiracy. How could the Senator and I be conspiring to extort money from Ron Wilburn, when Sullivan had been paying Wilburn, the alleged extorted businessman, for over a year to carry out a sting to entrap both of us. As I said earlier, the objective is not justice but winning. To tell the truth would have exposed his plot to frame me. But more about the “Big Lie” in the next installment.
2) Media: The Storm Troopers of Federal Prosecutors’ Psychological Warfare:
While the US prosecutors have direct control over the FBI to aid their efforts, they have indirect control over the media whose hunger for breaking news leads them to publicize the stories of the prosecutors without critical analysis. After the “reporters’ write what they have been given by the prosecutors to convict the defendant in the court of public opinion, the columnists follow up by giving their views to further convince the public that the FBI “Got the right man” or “woman”. All of this often before there has even been an indictment, as in my case.
The other role played by the media in the terror process is to incessantly hound the person and h/er family. It is hard to describe the feelings caused by having tv trucks and reporters’ cars outside your house from early in the morning to late at night. The incessant knocking on the door. The hounding while at work to answer their questions as if you owe them. The knocking on neighbors’ doors to get their opinions. In my case, reporters even called relatives in my home town to get their reaction before I could talk with them.
For me, it was particularly galling because in the past when there were important issues I wanted the media to cover, they acted as if I didn’t exist. However, now having an opportunity to ridicule and harass me, they were constantly at the door. The effect is a emotional wearing down not only through the intensity of their presence but also through the negative stories put in the press as well as on tv and radio. All of this takes place before the defense lawyers even have an opportunity to see the evidence. I believe this barrage of negative energy and coverage is one of the reasons why the federal prosecutors have such a high percentage of those accused taking a plea rather than going to court.
3) The Counts (Charges):
The charges themselves play a key role in the psychological warfare, through the number of counts and the description of the counts. For example, I was charged with extortion which made people think that I was being accused of threatening or coercing, Mr. Wilburn in some way. However, on the first day of the trial, the Judge explained to the jury that to find me guilty they did not have to find that I had put any pressure on Mr. Wilburn. In fact, I didn’t even have to ask him for anything (which I didn’t). All that was needed under the extortion law for me to be found guilty was for me to have been given something with the understanding that it was being given for me to take a particular action. When I heard the judge’s statement, I assumed that the law and its name had been designed by J.Edgar Hoover so that he could take down any elected official he didn’t like.
As I said above, the conspiracy charge would have been exposed as a lie if the truth about Ron Wilburn had been told by the US Attorney at the press conference. By keeping the conspiracy charge alive for two and a half years, they were able to cover the lie but by the time I went to trial, that charge had been dropped. So when the prosecutor admitted on the first day of the trial that Wilburn had been paid $30,000 by them to operate a sting, the fact that they had lied about the conspiracy was irrelevant because there were only four charges and extortion was not one of them. One of the four charges of course was extortion for allegedly accepting a thousand dollars in return for calling a hearing regarding discrimination in the distribution of liquor licenses. This was a hearing that the FBI admitted on the stand they did not want to take place because of the fear that it would embarrass the members of the Licensing Commission.
The other three counts (charges) related to the visit by the FBI agents on the day of the Senator’s arrest. Since I had nothing to fear as far as I knew, I agreed to meet with them. If I had exercised good judgment I would have refused to meet with them until I had consulted with an attorney. It is obvious now and should have been obvious then that the only reason the FBI would visit me on the morning of the Senator’s arrest would be to tie me into her case. The fact that I didn’t exercise good judgment I have to admit is one of the key reasons why I am writing this from a federal prison. Let that be a warning to all. If the FBI come calling, immediately call your lawyer.
The essence of the meeting was their asking me three questions. Do you know Ron Wilburn? Did Ron Wilburn offer you a fund raiser? Did you accept money from him. As I said earlier in this installment my answers were no, no, and certainly not. Even today I don’t remember the twenty five minutes we spent together as he carried out his instructions from his FBI handler. Yes, I’ve seen the pictures. Yes, I’ve listened to recordings of two conversations that lasted about 25 minutes and I’ve seen the transcript of our five minute conversation on the day that it is alleged that he gave me a $1000. But I still don’t remember meeting him. Even he admitted at trial that we had never met before he initiated contact at the request of the FBI. However, those three responses to their questions led to my being convicted for four felonies rather than one and added to their ability to put me in jail for 36 months. The judge also added another unofficial count by saying that he knew I had committed perjury when I testified in my own defense and used that “unofficial count” to add to my time of incarceration.
C) Actions:
I recommend six actions that needed to counteract the prosecutorial terrorism practiced by the prosecutors and the FBI. First, the most important action to stop prosecutorial terrorism is to start a national campaign to create a law that makes it legal for prosecutors to be criminally charged as well sued for misconduct. At the present time prosecutors can Not be sued for conscious or unconscious acts of misconduct. The rampant prosecutorial terrorism is a logical consequence, I believe, of the desire of prosecutors at the federal, state, and local level to win by any means necessary and the inability to take legal action against them. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Even federal judges are relatively powerless to punish federal prosecutors for their misconduct. In Massachusetts, Mark Wolfe, Chief Justice of the Federal Bench, a former federal prosecutor, in 2007 asked the Bar Counsel of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers to take disciplinary action against Jeffery Auerhahn. a veteran federal prosecutor. Asst US Attorney Auerhahn had withheld key evidence in a Mafia case in the 1990s. The panel established by the Bar Counsel took no action until the end of 2010 when they recommended that he be suspended. I am not sure whether that recommendation was approved.
In January 2009, two months before Sullivan resigned to become a law partner with John Ashcroft, former US Attorney General, Chief Justice Wolfe wrote a 42 page memorandum to Sullivan threatening to censure Asst US Attorney Susan Sullivan (no relation) or the US Attorney’s office or both based on her failure to disclose that a Boston police officer gave testimony in court in a Dorchester drug case that contradicted what the officer had told her on many occasions.
Expressing his frustration with continuous prosecutorial misconduct, he stated in the memo, “The egregious failure of the government to disclose plainly material exculpatory evidence in this case extends a dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations of the government’s duties to disclose in cases assigned to this court”.
To reinforce his frustration, he listed nine major cases he presided over during the last two decades in which prosecutors working for US Attorney Michael Sullivan and his predecessors allegedly withheld important evidence. In several cases, he said the misconduct led to mistrials and convictions that were overturned (Boston Globe, January 27, 2009).
Interviewed by Johnathan Saltzman of the Glove after the memorandum was issued, Wolfe said that his only successful sanction in cases of prosecutorial misconduct over two decades occurred in 2002, when he ordered an inexperienced prosecutor to attend a seminar on wrongful convictions after the lawyer repeatedly withheld critical evidence.
It seems clear that if the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Federal Bench has not been able to appropriately sanction misconduct on the part of prosecutors working for US Attorney Sullivan and previous US Attorneys, we can not expect federal judges in general to stop prosecutorial misconduct. We have to demand justice. We have to demand that prosecutors not be allowed to be above the law; that they be held accountable for their actions. The only way to accomplish this is to pass a law making it legal to criminally charge them as well as sue them for prosecutorial misconduct such as the lie that US Attorney Sullivan sent around the country on November 21, 2008 regarding my arrest.
Second, I think we need a campaign to require federal prosecutors to present to the court at the time of arraignment a statement of the procedures used in the arrests and an explanation of why those procedures were used. I believe this is a critical element in curtailing their use of psychological warfare as well as racism in handling arrests. Forcing them to expose to the court and the public how they conduct the business of arrests, I believe, will force them to end the double standards as well as the terror tactics that we have seen practiced in Boston and elsewhere.
Third, we need to require that affidavit which give the information regarding the crimes that led to the arrest be sealed until the trial begins and that similar action be taken regarding indictments based on grand jury proceedings. The public has a right to know the charges leading to the arrest. However, if there is any validity in the concept that a person should be viewed as innocent until s/he has been convicted by a jury of peers, the prosecutors and media have to be stopped from trying the defendant in the court of public opinion. Also, the sealing of the documents will stop prosecutors from using the pre trial media as a way of building their public image, heightening the possibilities for career advancement. This law would also have to carry criminal penalties for anyone distributing or publishing information from sealed court documents.
Fourth, the area of compiling the counts (charges) needs to be carefully examined for possible reforms. As said above, I believe the counts are part of the psychological warfare process. I couldn’t understand why the prosecutor and FBI kept searching for the book in which Ron Wilburn said he had written his telephone number on the day that he allegedly gave me $1000. I thought that if it could be found, it would actually support my contention of innocence since the jury would question why I was asking him for his telephone number if I had called him four hours before, giving him the signal to bring me $1000. Later, I realized that they would have used it to give me another count which would strengthen in their eyes the credibility of their case and increase the time that I would have to spend in jail if found guilty.
Fifth, we need to consider reforming the grand jury process that leads to indictments moving the court process to the pre trial stage. As now structured, particularly at the federal level, the prosecutors are in complete control of the process and spend months working with the grand jury. This naturally builds a strong relationship between the prosecutor and the grand jury which strengthens their willingness to support the government’s perspective. At the very least, people summoned to testify need to be allowed to have their lawyer present. At this time, only the person summoned is able to be in the grand jury room.
Sixth, we need to begin to train activists to understand psychological warfare; how it’s used; and how to resist it. It is understandable that our educational institutions don’t prepare us to develop our mental capabilities so that we are not susceptible to their psychological terror tactics. We have to appreciate that we are at war with those who use their power to create psychological havoc and mentally coerce people into a mindset where they are afraid to fight back against oppression. We have to arm ourselves with a science of the mind that will enable us to control our emotions even in the face of tactics designed to destroy our psychological stability.
Clearly, the fight to end prosecutorial terrorism will be long and hard. However, if America is to be strengthened as a democracy where the people in reality are in control, we have to develop a criminal justice system that focuses on justice.
Next Week’s Installment: The Big Lie
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Imprisoned Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner's June 24, 2011 Message From Behind The Wall
(the following article was originally posted on the "Support Chuck Turner" blog)
Reflections from Behind the Wall:
Topic: Anatomy of A FRAME UP!
This is the first installment in an eight part series in which I
discuss my two and a half year experience with the Justice Department
that has led to my being a convicted felon at the work camp at USP
Hazelton, Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
Installment 1: A Lifetime of Service
My first reaction was that I was dreaming; no, I was having a
nightmare but I couldn’t wake up. After a lifetime of fighting for
justice, I was in handcuffs being led out of City Hall. I didn’t even
know what I was being accused of. Later, it became all too clear, not
only from the prosecutor describing me as a corrupt politician but
also from the newspaper headlines the next morning screaming that I
had been indicted for conspiracy to extort money from a local
community business man and lying about it to the FBI.
How could this happen? I knew I hadn’t done what they said but there
were the camera trucks in front of our house. Reporters knocking at
the door, urging me to talk to them as if it was my responsibility to
answer their questions. Sure, they were just doing their job but they
were part of an establishment that I had been fighting for decades.
Yet, here they were ridiculing me, mocking me, gloating over my
alleged hypocrisy. I felt like Alice in Wonderful and I had no idea
how to get out of the rabbit hole.
The situation was totally absurd. Just eighteen months ago I had
declared my intention to launch a Peace and Prosperity Campaign. I had
said to my constituents that after eight years in office, I was
convinced that we needed to revise our strategy. It was not enough to
organize and fight against the external forces of oppression, those
who believed they had the right to abuse us. It was not enough to use
the City Council process to establish new laws and regulations. We had
to recognize that we had to do for self. We had to be the source of
our strength and development.
We had to recognize, I said, that through our own individual and
collective actions we had to create the foundation for the future that
we needed and desired not only for ourselves but also for our children
and their children’s children. I argued that we needed to recognize
that the prosperity that we hungered for as a community and
individually could only be realized by establishing peace in our
community and dedicating ourselves to using our talents and resources
to regenerate ourselves. I said we needed a Campaign for Peace and
Prosperity. We needed to put into action a pledge to constantly work
to develop ourselves and our community. There was even a motto, “Do No
Harm”.
I wondered what would be the questions in the minds of people who had
heard and remembered my call. What would be the thoughts of those who
had slowly begun to get involved in the strategy I was urging? While I
was trusted in the community that I had lived and worked in for over
forty years, how would they withstand the media bombardment. How would
they resist the accusations that their Councilor was an extortionist,
conspiring with our first female black state senator to extort money
from a local businessman, attempting to get a liquor license for a
club that he planned to open in the community’s new and first hotel.
What could I say to my constituents that could allay their fears and
doubts? How could I convince them that I was not a hypocrite? I knew I
was innocent but I also knew that the constant barrage of convicting
information would make even those close to me wonder what had
happened. At least, I knew that eventually the truth would come out
and I would be able to laugh at what a horrible mistake had been made.
I hadn’t done what they said so how could I be convicted. Even the
FBI’s affidavit was full of holes that would allow my lawyer to
quickly end the nightmare.
Yet, today 31 months after my arrest, I am an inmate at the Hazelton
Federal Prison work camp in the mountains of West Virginia. I am
ending the third month of my 36 month sentence. Despite my optimism
that the truth would come out; despite the fact that the U.S.
Attorney’s Cooperating Witness said in the Boston Globe 6 months after
my arrest that as far as he was concerned I was innocent, naive but
innocent; despite the constant display of support from friends,
constituents and allies before, during, and after the trial; and
despite over 700 letters to the judge saying that I should be put on
probation, here I sit a convicted felon.
However, I have learned during my 71 years that the art of living is
not demonstrated by how you celebrate your victories but by your
ability to turn seeming defeats into victories. Yes, I feel battered
but certainly not broken. The struggle for justice is a continuing one
and my commitment to devote my life as a warrior to that struggle
still burns bright. The question as always is what to do and as usual
the answer is clear. Even before I entered USP Hazelton I knew I
needed a plan to guide my actions. My plan would have to focus on
preparing myself to reenter the struggle stronger on every level than
when I left. It would have to enable me to continue to share my
thinking with my community, and finally it would need to enable me to
fulfill a commitment made to my community at a rally in front of my
community office six days after my arrest on the day before
Thanksgiving, 2008.
At the rally, energized by having survived a plot initiated by the
City Council President (and others I assume) to drive me from office
on the day after my arrest, I decided to focus on the opportunities
that the situation presented us. I urged my supporters to build a
communications network among friends, coworkers, and colleagues. I
talked about talking points that they should raise to counter the
media’s incessant attacks on my character. It was an opportunity, I
declared, to stimulate critical thinking and increase our community’s
capacity to see through the smoke screens put out by the
establishment’s mouthpieces.
I emphasized that while I was fighting for my survival, the struggle
is more important than anyone one individual. I stressed that those of
us who commit ourselves to struggle for justice have to be prepared to
use the attacks to strengthen our community despite the casualties
that will inevitably take place. From that perspective, I knew that
regardless of what happened to me, i had a responsibility to turn this
attack into a learning experience through which we all could learn and
grow.
Since it was obvious that US Attorney Sullivan and his police force,
the FBI, were conspiring to frame me for a crime that I didn’t commit,
I pointed out the golden opportunity we were presented to examine up
close and personal how they operate. They continuously study us to
assess our strengths and weaknesses. We should do no less if we are
serious in our pursuit of justice. Through such a rigorous analysis
and examination of their tactics, we could help our brothers and
sisters in the struggle become wiser in evading the “criminal justice
system’s” continuous attempts to thwart justice and use prison to turn
us into a permanent underclass and thus re enslave us.
With this focus on education, I will share with you each week over the
next seven weeks an installment exploring the twists and turns of the
Frame Up that led to my incarceration. As with all initial attempts to
deepen understanding of our experiences, I know that there will be
gaps and issues that others will see the need to explore. The
objective of this exercise is to stimulate our thinking and sharpen
our ability to critically analyze the stratagems that are used against
us. It is clear to me that if we are to be successful in ending the
use of the “criminal justice system” to perpetuate injustice, we have
to sharpen our thinking so that we can act more effectively.
In 1975, there were 500,000 people of all races in jail in this
country. Today, there are 2.3 million and the numbers are growing.
Over a million are of African-American descent. The correction
officers union, I’ve been told, is the fastest growing union in this
country. It is clear that if we are to lay the foundation for justice
for future generations we have to stop the prosecutorial terrorism
that is plaguing us all. In that spirit, please view this as an
initial attempt to use my personal experience to broaden the needed
national dialogue on how to end this terrorism.
In the remainder of this installment, I am going to share my
background and the life of activism that it inspired. I have always
believed that a fundamental principle of organizing is that the
organizer should not be the focus. Campaigns are successful when the
focus is on the goals to be achieved, the plan to achieve them, and
the process of analyzing successes and failures. Too much attention on
the organizer is distracting and dims the organization’s focus.
However, since one of the objectives of former US Attorney Sullivan’s
plot was to create the image that I was a fraud, hypocrite, and
fundamentally corrupt, I think it is important that I begin by helping
people better understand who I am.
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. I was blessed to have been
born into a family that had two predominant passions–a thirst for
knowledge and a desire to serve. Education was the “family business”
on both my mother’s and my father’s side of the family. My mother’s
mother was a teacher who became an elementary school principal. My
mother was a school teacher and my brother became a college professor
and dean. My father’s father was a high school biology teacher by day
and a scientist by night having earned a PHD in Zoology from the
University of Chicago in 1907. Upon his death in 1923, he was honored
by the St. Louis Science Society for his work on animal behavioral
psychology. Later the City of St. Louis named a school after him.
While education was viewed as a service, other members of the family
found other ways to serve. My mother’s sister was a social worker,
focusing her work on children. Her brother, my uncle, was a
landscaper. My father was a pharmacist and owned with his brother, my
uncle, a drug store that had the unique feature of having a pharmacy
on one side managed by my father and a bar on the other, managed by
his brother. Other members of the family sorted themselves out along
the same lines of education and business with service to our people as
the link. One of my grandmother’s brother was at Niagra Falls in 1909
as a participant in the founding of the NAACP.
My father and mother divorced when I was young and I grew up in
Cincinnati with my mother and her family while my father lived in
Chicago where he operated his business. Given Cincinnati’s location on
the Ohio River, I remember as a child hearing stories of my
grandmother going with friends and her children down to the landing
where the river boats would bring new arrivals from the South. My
grandmother’s purpose was to welcome the new families into Cincinnati
and help them establish a new life as part of the community. I
remember going with my family to Ms. Stewart’s Home for Young Women
which was a boarding house for young “colored” women coming to
Cincinnati. Outings to Ms. Stewart’s where we would have dinner with
the young women were a delight not only because of the food but also
because of the beautiful young women and delightful conversations.
While I grew up with a sense of community, sharing, and service, there
also was the other side of life for the African-American community.
The time was the 40s so segregation was the way of life once you
crossed the river and it had a strong influence on life in Cincinnati
despite the strong and wealthy Jewish community that flourished in the
city. The local amusement park was not integrated until I was 10 years
old and I grew up hearing stories of the times when you couldn’t try
on clothes in a store or had to sit upstairs in the movie theatre.
Black children living in a public housing development in a white
neighborhood were bussed to a black school miles away.
By the time I was a teenager, overt discrimination was not legal in
the city; yet that didn’t prevent the manager of a coffee shop in
downtown Cincinnati refusing me service when I was 13 and looking for
a job in the market area. When she asked me to leave because they
didn’t “serve Negroes”, I said that the law said I didn’t have to
leave so she called the police. Upon arriving, the policeman
apologized to her that there was nothing he could do. She then closed
the coffee shop. By that time, I was enjoying the game and waited
until she opened and again entered. At this point, she decided I think
that business was more important than showing me who was in control
and served me.
So I grew up in two worlds: one warm, supportive, and nurturing; the
other cold and hostile. That is not to say that there were no shades
of grey. I went to an integrated high school where I had friends of
all races. I participated in organizations designed to bring people of
all races together to understand our differences and to work
collectively on the problems confronting us. Yet, the sense of living
in two worlds was always there. Even more disturbing was the fact that
there were constant reminders that as African-Americans, we had to
understand that we were inferior. It was even said that the Bible
documented the sin that had led to our eternal inferiority. Yet, my
mother was the youngest graduate of the University of Cincinnati,
graduating at 18 in 1928 until my brother graduated from U.C. in 1947
at 16. It all seemed like a bad dream–a nightmare in fact.
With an ingrained two world perspective, I headed off to Harvard at 18
with a full scholarship in my pocket. My years there resulted in a
Harvard BA in government and a thorough exposure to the glories of the
Anglo-Saxon culture and its contributions to the world. In addition,
it further ingrained the fact that I lived in two worlds that did not
mesh. Probably, the most frustrating part was that with a Harvard
degree, I was viewed as having a excellent education. However, given
the constant emphasis on the inferiority of my people, I gained no
knowledge that helped me understand why this Christian nation behaved
in such a devilish way. I was looking for answers to the questions:
Where do we come from; why are we here; and where do we go after our
spirits leave our bodies. They were questions that I thought were
reasonable for an educated man but Harvard had no answers.
So off into the world I went. Harvard degree at the bottom of a box of
books. My family’s warning imprinted on my mind. Despite the
impressive individual accomplishments that family members had
achieved, there was a constant reminder that what we had accomplished
had only been possible because of the sacrifices and struggles of
countless unknown others who had laid a foundation upon which we could
build. In other words, no matter how much individual success and how
many accomplishments I might achieve, they would have no meaning if
the accomplishments didn’t create a base that future generations could
use in the continuous struggle for justice. “To whom much is given,
much is expected.”
I didn’t know what I was to do but at least I had a standard to
measure my success. Having majored in government and thinking that law
might provide the framework for the service I was seeking, I headed to
D.C., ironically arriving on August 23, 1963. Thus, I had the
opportunity to stand with hundreds of thousands and hear Dr. King and
others give the call to action. A few days later, I was able to get a
job as a reporter on the Washington Afro-American newspaper that
granted me access to downtown and uptown life.
It was a fascinating opportunity to be in what seemed to be the hub of
the universe, chronicalling the change happening around us. However, I
soon bored of writing about what others were doing. As if life felt my
need, in November I ran into a college classmate and Alpha brother,
Bill Strickland, at a SNCC convention I was covering who asked if i
was interested in joining him in New York as editor of the newsletter
of the organization he was heading, the Northern Student Movement
(NSM). NSM had begun as a northern group of students providing support
for the movement in the South. However, Bill and others had changed
the focus to organizing in black communities of New York, Chicago,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Hartford, Conn.
Again, while editing was interesting, when the opportunity to join a
rent strike organizing project in Harlem came, I went. I joined with a
group of young organizers who were apprenticing with Jesse Gray who
had been using the rent strike tactic to challenge landlords for
decades. In 1964, the courts had declared the strategy legal as long
as certain guidelines were followed. So into the streets of Harlem we
went ready to organize all those who previously had been afraid but
needed change.
After a few weeks, the romance wore off. Despite deplorable conditions
and the new law, we encountered people’s internal resistance to
change. Hearing our frustrations, Jesse would patiently say to us,
“People know when they are ready. You don’t. Your job is to test their
readiness. If they aren’t ready, move on”. As my experience grew over
the years, I began to understand how that philosophy had enabled Jesse
and others to maintain their energy and optimism despite the
frustrations and slowness of the process.
From Harlem, I went to Hartford to replace the director at the NSM
project in Connecticut’s capital city. The challenge of building and
maintaining a multifaceted organization was fascinating and
frustrating. We organized around a variety of issues from slum
landlords to job discrimination, raising money to pay ourselves when
national funds ran scarce. Challenging people to stand up was
exciting as well as grueling work. However, it came to a screeching
halt when a demonstration we organized to confront police brutality
led to confrontations between the police and community, resulting in
my arrest and the arrest of others in the organization and community.
We were charged with sedition and a variety of other charges that
hadn’t been used since the Sacco and Venzentti days. In view of the
media focus around outside organizers, the national organization
suggested that those of us who were not from Hartford should leave
until the trial to allow for the situation to cool down. Given that
there was an NSM project in Boston’s black community I went there. By
the time the cases were heard and I received probation, I had obtained
a job as an organizer with a local poverty program and was ready to
plant my roots in Roxbury, the heart of Boston’s black community.
During the three years between my leaving Cambridge in 1963 and
returning to Boston in 1966, I gave up the idea of becoming a lawyer.
While organizing was tough, demanding work, I was convinced that
organizing people always needed to be at the core of my work. I had
come to realize that through organizing I would be able to meet my
family commitment to have my life’s work have benefit and meaning for
the African-American struggle for justice. It was also beginning to
become clear that organizing could be a means to bring together the
two worlds that I lived in. Perhaps, most important, it satisfied my
growing appreciation for our human ability to create new realities as
we come together to focus our physical, mental, emotional, and
spiritual energy on a common purpose.
During the last forty five years, I have been driven by a desire to
both fight back against oppression and to demonstrate the power of
organized action to bring justice. My motto could have been, “Have a
need, let’s organize”. Organizing the burning of trash as a community
worker in Lower Roxbury in the late 60s led to an agreement with my
boss to leave the organization but pushed the City to clean an area,
ignored for years.
The need for unity in the late sixties in the Black and Latino
community led to the formation of the Boston Black United Front which
became the voice of the progressive community of color in Boston. A
highway threatening our community spurred the development of Operation
Stop, the joining of a regional transportation alliance against the
highway, and the formation of the Southwest Corridor Land Development
Coalition which produced a plan that guided the development of the
land once the Governor rerouted the highway around Boston.
The need for a greater share of the construction jobs in Roxbury
stimulated the development of a state wide black, Latino, and Asian
alliance, The Third World Jobs Clearing House with offices in Boston,
Cambridge, Worcester, and Springfield that operated for five years
until the Reagan administration eliminated the funding base.
At the same time the need for a multiracial political alliance in
Boston to protect affirmative action in the construction industry led
to the formation of the Boston Jobs Coalition, an alliance of black,
white, Latino, and Asian community groups, that led the fight for a
local jobs policy, guaranteeing a share of all City financed and aided
projects to Boston workers of all races, people of color, and women.
This policy, linking affirmative action to residency, became a
national model that is used today in cities across the country under
the name, the First Source Program.
My need to see workers develop economic power by pooling their talents
led to my becoming education director of the Industrial Cooperative
Association, a nonprofit consulting firm, focused on aiding workers in
the formation of businesses that they could own cooperatively. I then
spent the next five years helping workers throughout the country
develop the capacity to be owners as well as workers.
Organizing around the need for a community voice in the land use
decisions in Roxbury led in 1983 to Mayor Flynn granting the Roxbury
Neighborhood Council a guaranteed role in all land use decisions and
granting five other communities the right to establish such Councils
with similar powers.
The need to assure that community workers would get jobs as part of
the Boston Jobs Policy led to the formation of the Greater Roxbury
Workers’ Association which became a major force in securing
construction jobs for community workers for the next fifteen years.
Frustration with the level of violence in the community and the need
to develop strategies to change the thinking of the perpetrators led
me to take a job as a counselor and eventually a manager at Emerge,
the nation’s first organization to provide counseling services to men,
convicted of domestic violence. My objective was to develop an
understanding of the psychological dynamics that lead to violence in
order to develop behavior modification strategies.
The need to educate the community on the devastating effects and
extent of domestic violence in the community, led to the development
of the Community Task Force on Domestic Violence, as a vehicle through
which education and organizing could be initiated.
After 35 years of fighting against injustice from outside of
government, a need to strengthen organizing in the community led me to
attempt to use elective office as an organizing tool. In 1999, I ran
for and won a Boston City Council seat representing the community in
which I had lived and worked for decades.
Once in office, the need for a vehicle through which to link my
political representation to community organizing led to the
development of the District 7 Roundtable, a monthly forum bringing
residents and activists together to discuss issues, exchange ideas,
and develop policy initiatives that could lead to political organizing
and legislative action.
The 2000 Census showing that people of color were now the majority
population in the City put a spotlight on the need for more political
operational unity. To strengthen the unity between groups and people
of color, the institutes at U Mass Boston focused on the black,
Latino, and Asian communities sponsored a conference which led to
organization of the New Majority Coalition.
The need to end the discrimination against those with criminal records
led to the formation of the Boston Workers’ Alliance (BWA) which
played a leadership role in the development and passage of a state law
combating such discrimination as well as removing the question of
criminal conviction from the state job application.
Knowing that political victories alone are not enough, the BWA in its
six year history has also established a worker staffing agency to
provide income to the organization and jobs for its members. In
addition it has helped its members establish businesses based on the
philosophy that a job is not enough.
The recognition of an opportunity for additional community resources
in an era of shrinking dollars led to my advocacy for the City to
lease rather than sell City owned land in Roxbury designated for
economic development. Eventually the City agreed to the policy on the
city owned parcels in the Dudley Square area and to share the lease
fees with the community. Negotiations are now taking place regarding
the size of the community’s share and the vehicle for the
determination of use and distribution of the funds.
Obviously, those of us who seek to institutionalize the practice of
justice in this country are far from our goal. Therefore, the struggle
for justice and a civilized society must continue through the
development of new forms of organization and strategies. As Maulana
Ron Karenga said in the January 11, 2011 issue of the Final Call,
“…to be organized is to be in ongoing structures that harness our
energies and house and advance our interests and aspirations and unite
us into an aware and active social force for African and human good in
the world”. Former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has
temporarily succeeded in removing me from the front lines of the
Boston struggle for justice. However, while I rest and prepare myself
my return to the battle, others are continuing relentlessly to
struggle to make Boston and this country a beacon for the practice of
justice throughout the world.
As I look back over my 48 years of activism, I realize that I have
been walking in the footsteps of my grandfather, Charles Henry
Turner*, for whom I was named. His passion focused on studying the
behavior of mice, roaches, insects of all kinds, and particularly bees
and ants with their highly organized group behavior. He focused his
life on understanding the behavior of life forms that many consider as
“pests”, unwanted intrusions into their space rather than seeing them
as my grandfather saw them, as an essential aspect of God’s creation.
My passion has been and continues to be the study of the innate
ability of human beings to create new realities through organized
action. Because of my African-American ancestry, I have focused on the
demonstration of those capabilities by those human beings considered
by many in this country as inferior life forms, an unwanted intrusion
into their space. Hopefully, we will soon learn to recognize all human
beings as beings created “in the image of God”, each possessing a
divine creative spirit.
A Luta Continua–The Struggle Continues,
chuck
* The following books have more information on my grandfather’s scientific work:
1) Bug Watching with Charles Henry Turner, Michael Elsohn Ross, 1997
(A children’s book)
2) Selected Papers and Biography of Charles Henry Turner, 1867-1923:
Pioneer of Comparative Animal Behavioral Studies,
Professor Charles Abramson, The Edward Mellon Press, 2003 (An
academic study of his life and work including a history of
the Troy-Knight-Turner Family that I wrote at the author’s request)
Next Week: Installment Two: The Keystone Cops Strike Again
Reflections from Behind the Wall:
Topic: Anatomy of A FRAME UP!
This is the first installment in an eight part series in which I
discuss my two and a half year experience with the Justice Department
that has led to my being a convicted felon at the work camp at USP
Hazelton, Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
Installment 1: A Lifetime of Service
My first reaction was that I was dreaming; no, I was having a
nightmare but I couldn’t wake up. After a lifetime of fighting for
justice, I was in handcuffs being led out of City Hall. I didn’t even
know what I was being accused of. Later, it became all too clear, not
only from the prosecutor describing me as a corrupt politician but
also from the newspaper headlines the next morning screaming that I
had been indicted for conspiracy to extort money from a local
community business man and lying about it to the FBI.
How could this happen? I knew I hadn’t done what they said but there
were the camera trucks in front of our house. Reporters knocking at
the door, urging me to talk to them as if it was my responsibility to
answer their questions. Sure, they were just doing their job but they
were part of an establishment that I had been fighting for decades.
Yet, here they were ridiculing me, mocking me, gloating over my
alleged hypocrisy. I felt like Alice in Wonderful and I had no idea
how to get out of the rabbit hole.
The situation was totally absurd. Just eighteen months ago I had
declared my intention to launch a Peace and Prosperity Campaign. I had
said to my constituents that after eight years in office, I was
convinced that we needed to revise our strategy. It was not enough to
organize and fight against the external forces of oppression, those
who believed they had the right to abuse us. It was not enough to use
the City Council process to establish new laws and regulations. We had
to recognize that we had to do for self. We had to be the source of
our strength and development.
We had to recognize, I said, that through our own individual and
collective actions we had to create the foundation for the future that
we needed and desired not only for ourselves but also for our children
and their children’s children. I argued that we needed to recognize
that the prosperity that we hungered for as a community and
individually could only be realized by establishing peace in our
community and dedicating ourselves to using our talents and resources
to regenerate ourselves. I said we needed a Campaign for Peace and
Prosperity. We needed to put into action a pledge to constantly work
to develop ourselves and our community. There was even a motto, “Do No
Harm”.
I wondered what would be the questions in the minds of people who had
heard and remembered my call. What would be the thoughts of those who
had slowly begun to get involved in the strategy I was urging? While I
was trusted in the community that I had lived and worked in for over
forty years, how would they withstand the media bombardment. How would
they resist the accusations that their Councilor was an extortionist,
conspiring with our first female black state senator to extort money
from a local businessman, attempting to get a liquor license for a
club that he planned to open in the community’s new and first hotel.
What could I say to my constituents that could allay their fears and
doubts? How could I convince them that I was not a hypocrite? I knew I
was innocent but I also knew that the constant barrage of convicting
information would make even those close to me wonder what had
happened. At least, I knew that eventually the truth would come out
and I would be able to laugh at what a horrible mistake had been made.
I hadn’t done what they said so how could I be convicted. Even the
FBI’s affidavit was full of holes that would allow my lawyer to
quickly end the nightmare.
Yet, today 31 months after my arrest, I am an inmate at the Hazelton
Federal Prison work camp in the mountains of West Virginia. I am
ending the third month of my 36 month sentence. Despite my optimism
that the truth would come out; despite the fact that the U.S.
Attorney’s Cooperating Witness said in the Boston Globe 6 months after
my arrest that as far as he was concerned I was innocent, naive but
innocent; despite the constant display of support from friends,
constituents and allies before, during, and after the trial; and
despite over 700 letters to the judge saying that I should be put on
probation, here I sit a convicted felon.
However, I have learned during my 71 years that the art of living is
not demonstrated by how you celebrate your victories but by your
ability to turn seeming defeats into victories. Yes, I feel battered
but certainly not broken. The struggle for justice is a continuing one
and my commitment to devote my life as a warrior to that struggle
still burns bright. The question as always is what to do and as usual
the answer is clear. Even before I entered USP Hazelton I knew I
needed a plan to guide my actions. My plan would have to focus on
preparing myself to reenter the struggle stronger on every level than
when I left. It would have to enable me to continue to share my
thinking with my community, and finally it would need to enable me to
fulfill a commitment made to my community at a rally in front of my
community office six days after my arrest on the day before
Thanksgiving, 2008.
At the rally, energized by having survived a plot initiated by the
City Council President (and others I assume) to drive me from office
on the day after my arrest, I decided to focus on the opportunities
that the situation presented us. I urged my supporters to build a
communications network among friends, coworkers, and colleagues. I
talked about talking points that they should raise to counter the
media’s incessant attacks on my character. It was an opportunity, I
declared, to stimulate critical thinking and increase our community’s
capacity to see through the smoke screens put out by the
establishment’s mouthpieces.
I emphasized that while I was fighting for my survival, the struggle
is more important than anyone one individual. I stressed that those of
us who commit ourselves to struggle for justice have to be prepared to
use the attacks to strengthen our community despite the casualties
that will inevitably take place. From that perspective, I knew that
regardless of what happened to me, i had a responsibility to turn this
attack into a learning experience through which we all could learn and
grow.
Since it was obvious that US Attorney Sullivan and his police force,
the FBI, were conspiring to frame me for a crime that I didn’t commit,
I pointed out the golden opportunity we were presented to examine up
close and personal how they operate. They continuously study us to
assess our strengths and weaknesses. We should do no less if we are
serious in our pursuit of justice. Through such a rigorous analysis
and examination of their tactics, we could help our brothers and
sisters in the struggle become wiser in evading the “criminal justice
system’s” continuous attempts to thwart justice and use prison to turn
us into a permanent underclass and thus re enslave us.
With this focus on education, I will share with you each week over the
next seven weeks an installment exploring the twists and turns of the
Frame Up that led to my incarceration. As with all initial attempts to
deepen understanding of our experiences, I know that there will be
gaps and issues that others will see the need to explore. The
objective of this exercise is to stimulate our thinking and sharpen
our ability to critically analyze the stratagems that are used against
us. It is clear to me that if we are to be successful in ending the
use of the “criminal justice system” to perpetuate injustice, we have
to sharpen our thinking so that we can act more effectively.
In 1975, there were 500,000 people of all races in jail in this
country. Today, there are 2.3 million and the numbers are growing.
Over a million are of African-American descent. The correction
officers union, I’ve been told, is the fastest growing union in this
country. It is clear that if we are to lay the foundation for justice
for future generations we have to stop the prosecutorial terrorism
that is plaguing us all. In that spirit, please view this as an
initial attempt to use my personal experience to broaden the needed
national dialogue on how to end this terrorism.
In the remainder of this installment, I am going to share my
background and the life of activism that it inspired. I have always
believed that a fundamental principle of organizing is that the
organizer should not be the focus. Campaigns are successful when the
focus is on the goals to be achieved, the plan to achieve them, and
the process of analyzing successes and failures. Too much attention on
the organizer is distracting and dims the organization’s focus.
However, since one of the objectives of former US Attorney Sullivan’s
plot was to create the image that I was a fraud, hypocrite, and
fundamentally corrupt, I think it is important that I begin by helping
people better understand who I am.
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. I was blessed to have been
born into a family that had two predominant passions–a thirst for
knowledge and a desire to serve. Education was the “family business”
on both my mother’s and my father’s side of the family. My mother’s
mother was a teacher who became an elementary school principal. My
mother was a school teacher and my brother became a college professor
and dean. My father’s father was a high school biology teacher by day
and a scientist by night having earned a PHD in Zoology from the
University of Chicago in 1907. Upon his death in 1923, he was honored
by the St. Louis Science Society for his work on animal behavioral
psychology. Later the City of St. Louis named a school after him.
While education was viewed as a service, other members of the family
found other ways to serve. My mother’s sister was a social worker,
focusing her work on children. Her brother, my uncle, was a
landscaper. My father was a pharmacist and owned with his brother, my
uncle, a drug store that had the unique feature of having a pharmacy
on one side managed by my father and a bar on the other, managed by
his brother. Other members of the family sorted themselves out along
the same lines of education and business with service to our people as
the link. One of my grandmother’s brother was at Niagra Falls in 1909
as a participant in the founding of the NAACP.
My father and mother divorced when I was young and I grew up in
Cincinnati with my mother and her family while my father lived in
Chicago where he operated his business. Given Cincinnati’s location on
the Ohio River, I remember as a child hearing stories of my
grandmother going with friends and her children down to the landing
where the river boats would bring new arrivals from the South. My
grandmother’s purpose was to welcome the new families into Cincinnati
and help them establish a new life as part of the community. I
remember going with my family to Ms. Stewart’s Home for Young Women
which was a boarding house for young “colored” women coming to
Cincinnati. Outings to Ms. Stewart’s where we would have dinner with
the young women were a delight not only because of the food but also
because of the beautiful young women and delightful conversations.
While I grew up with a sense of community, sharing, and service, there
also was the other side of life for the African-American community.
The time was the 40s so segregation was the way of life once you
crossed the river and it had a strong influence on life in Cincinnati
despite the strong and wealthy Jewish community that flourished in the
city. The local amusement park was not integrated until I was 10 years
old and I grew up hearing stories of the times when you couldn’t try
on clothes in a store or had to sit upstairs in the movie theatre.
Black children living in a public housing development in a white
neighborhood were bussed to a black school miles away.
By the time I was a teenager, overt discrimination was not legal in
the city; yet that didn’t prevent the manager of a coffee shop in
downtown Cincinnati refusing me service when I was 13 and looking for
a job in the market area. When she asked me to leave because they
didn’t “serve Negroes”, I said that the law said I didn’t have to
leave so she called the police. Upon arriving, the policeman
apologized to her that there was nothing he could do. She then closed
the coffee shop. By that time, I was enjoying the game and waited
until she opened and again entered. At this point, she decided I think
that business was more important than showing me who was in control
and served me.
So I grew up in two worlds: one warm, supportive, and nurturing; the
other cold and hostile. That is not to say that there were no shades
of grey. I went to an integrated high school where I had friends of
all races. I participated in organizations designed to bring people of
all races together to understand our differences and to work
collectively on the problems confronting us. Yet, the sense of living
in two worlds was always there. Even more disturbing was the fact that
there were constant reminders that as African-Americans, we had to
understand that we were inferior. It was even said that the Bible
documented the sin that had led to our eternal inferiority. Yet, my
mother was the youngest graduate of the University of Cincinnati,
graduating at 18 in 1928 until my brother graduated from U.C. in 1947
at 16. It all seemed like a bad dream–a nightmare in fact.
With an ingrained two world perspective, I headed off to Harvard at 18
with a full scholarship in my pocket. My years there resulted in a
Harvard BA in government and a thorough exposure to the glories of the
Anglo-Saxon culture and its contributions to the world. In addition,
it further ingrained the fact that I lived in two worlds that did not
mesh. Probably, the most frustrating part was that with a Harvard
degree, I was viewed as having a excellent education. However, given
the constant emphasis on the inferiority of my people, I gained no
knowledge that helped me understand why this Christian nation behaved
in such a devilish way. I was looking for answers to the questions:
Where do we come from; why are we here; and where do we go after our
spirits leave our bodies. They were questions that I thought were
reasonable for an educated man but Harvard had no answers.
So off into the world I went. Harvard degree at the bottom of a box of
books. My family’s warning imprinted on my mind. Despite the
impressive individual accomplishments that family members had
achieved, there was a constant reminder that what we had accomplished
had only been possible because of the sacrifices and struggles of
countless unknown others who had laid a foundation upon which we could
build. In other words, no matter how much individual success and how
many accomplishments I might achieve, they would have no meaning if
the accomplishments didn’t create a base that future generations could
use in the continuous struggle for justice. “To whom much is given,
much is expected.”
I didn’t know what I was to do but at least I had a standard to
measure my success. Having majored in government and thinking that law
might provide the framework for the service I was seeking, I headed to
D.C., ironically arriving on August 23, 1963. Thus, I had the
opportunity to stand with hundreds of thousands and hear Dr. King and
others give the call to action. A few days later, I was able to get a
job as a reporter on the Washington Afro-American newspaper that
granted me access to downtown and uptown life.
It was a fascinating opportunity to be in what seemed to be the hub of
the universe, chronicalling the change happening around us. However, I
soon bored of writing about what others were doing. As if life felt my
need, in November I ran into a college classmate and Alpha brother,
Bill Strickland, at a SNCC convention I was covering who asked if i
was interested in joining him in New York as editor of the newsletter
of the organization he was heading, the Northern Student Movement
(NSM). NSM had begun as a northern group of students providing support
for the movement in the South. However, Bill and others had changed
the focus to organizing in black communities of New York, Chicago,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Hartford, Conn.
Again, while editing was interesting, when the opportunity to join a
rent strike organizing project in Harlem came, I went. I joined with a
group of young organizers who were apprenticing with Jesse Gray who
had been using the rent strike tactic to challenge landlords for
decades. In 1964, the courts had declared the strategy legal as long
as certain guidelines were followed. So into the streets of Harlem we
went ready to organize all those who previously had been afraid but
needed change.
After a few weeks, the romance wore off. Despite deplorable conditions
and the new law, we encountered people’s internal resistance to
change. Hearing our frustrations, Jesse would patiently say to us,
“People know when they are ready. You don’t. Your job is to test their
readiness. If they aren’t ready, move on”. As my experience grew over
the years, I began to understand how that philosophy had enabled Jesse
and others to maintain their energy and optimism despite the
frustrations and slowness of the process.
From Harlem, I went to Hartford to replace the director at the NSM
project in Connecticut’s capital city. The challenge of building and
maintaining a multifaceted organization was fascinating and
frustrating. We organized around a variety of issues from slum
landlords to job discrimination, raising money to pay ourselves when
national funds ran scarce. Challenging people to stand up was
exciting as well as grueling work. However, it came to a screeching
halt when a demonstration we organized to confront police brutality
led to confrontations between the police and community, resulting in
my arrest and the arrest of others in the organization and community.
We were charged with sedition and a variety of other charges that
hadn’t been used since the Sacco and Venzentti days. In view of the
media focus around outside organizers, the national organization
suggested that those of us who were not from Hartford should leave
until the trial to allow for the situation to cool down. Given that
there was an NSM project in Boston’s black community I went there. By
the time the cases were heard and I received probation, I had obtained
a job as an organizer with a local poverty program and was ready to
plant my roots in Roxbury, the heart of Boston’s black community.
During the three years between my leaving Cambridge in 1963 and
returning to Boston in 1966, I gave up the idea of becoming a lawyer.
While organizing was tough, demanding work, I was convinced that
organizing people always needed to be at the core of my work. I had
come to realize that through organizing I would be able to meet my
family commitment to have my life’s work have benefit and meaning for
the African-American struggle for justice. It was also beginning to
become clear that organizing could be a means to bring together the
two worlds that I lived in. Perhaps, most important, it satisfied my
growing appreciation for our human ability to create new realities as
we come together to focus our physical, mental, emotional, and
spiritual energy on a common purpose.
During the last forty five years, I have been driven by a desire to
both fight back against oppression and to demonstrate the power of
organized action to bring justice. My motto could have been, “Have a
need, let’s organize”. Organizing the burning of trash as a community
worker in Lower Roxbury in the late 60s led to an agreement with my
boss to leave the organization but pushed the City to clean an area,
ignored for years.
The need for unity in the late sixties in the Black and Latino
community led to the formation of the Boston Black United Front which
became the voice of the progressive community of color in Boston. A
highway threatening our community spurred the development of Operation
Stop, the joining of a regional transportation alliance against the
highway, and the formation of the Southwest Corridor Land Development
Coalition which produced a plan that guided the development of the
land once the Governor rerouted the highway around Boston.
The need for a greater share of the construction jobs in Roxbury
stimulated the development of a state wide black, Latino, and Asian
alliance, The Third World Jobs Clearing House with offices in Boston,
Cambridge, Worcester, and Springfield that operated for five years
until the Reagan administration eliminated the funding base.
At the same time the need for a multiracial political alliance in
Boston to protect affirmative action in the construction industry led
to the formation of the Boston Jobs Coalition, an alliance of black,
white, Latino, and Asian community groups, that led the fight for a
local jobs policy, guaranteeing a share of all City financed and aided
projects to Boston workers of all races, people of color, and women.
This policy, linking affirmative action to residency, became a
national model that is used today in cities across the country under
the name, the First Source Program.
My need to see workers develop economic power by pooling their talents
led to my becoming education director of the Industrial Cooperative
Association, a nonprofit consulting firm, focused on aiding workers in
the formation of businesses that they could own cooperatively. I then
spent the next five years helping workers throughout the country
develop the capacity to be owners as well as workers.
Organizing around the need for a community voice in the land use
decisions in Roxbury led in 1983 to Mayor Flynn granting the Roxbury
Neighborhood Council a guaranteed role in all land use decisions and
granting five other communities the right to establish such Councils
with similar powers.
The need to assure that community workers would get jobs as part of
the Boston Jobs Policy led to the formation of the Greater Roxbury
Workers’ Association which became a major force in securing
construction jobs for community workers for the next fifteen years.
Frustration with the level of violence in the community and the need
to develop strategies to change the thinking of the perpetrators led
me to take a job as a counselor and eventually a manager at Emerge,
the nation’s first organization to provide counseling services to men,
convicted of domestic violence. My objective was to develop an
understanding of the psychological dynamics that lead to violence in
order to develop behavior modification strategies.
The need to educate the community on the devastating effects and
extent of domestic violence in the community, led to the development
of the Community Task Force on Domestic Violence, as a vehicle through
which education and organizing could be initiated.
After 35 years of fighting against injustice from outside of
government, a need to strengthen organizing in the community led me to
attempt to use elective office as an organizing tool. In 1999, I ran
for and won a Boston City Council seat representing the community in
which I had lived and worked for decades.
Once in office, the need for a vehicle through which to link my
political representation to community organizing led to the
development of the District 7 Roundtable, a monthly forum bringing
residents and activists together to discuss issues, exchange ideas,
and develop policy initiatives that could lead to political organizing
and legislative action.
The 2000 Census showing that people of color were now the majority
population in the City put a spotlight on the need for more political
operational unity. To strengthen the unity between groups and people
of color, the institutes at U Mass Boston focused on the black,
Latino, and Asian communities sponsored a conference which led to
organization of the New Majority Coalition.
The need to end the discrimination against those with criminal records
led to the formation of the Boston Workers’ Alliance (BWA) which
played a leadership role in the development and passage of a state law
combating such discrimination as well as removing the question of
criminal conviction from the state job application.
Knowing that political victories alone are not enough, the BWA in its
six year history has also established a worker staffing agency to
provide income to the organization and jobs for its members. In
addition it has helped its members establish businesses based on the
philosophy that a job is not enough.
The recognition of an opportunity for additional community resources
in an era of shrinking dollars led to my advocacy for the City to
lease rather than sell City owned land in Roxbury designated for
economic development. Eventually the City agreed to the policy on the
city owned parcels in the Dudley Square area and to share the lease
fees with the community. Negotiations are now taking place regarding
the size of the community’s share and the vehicle for the
determination of use and distribution of the funds.
Obviously, those of us who seek to institutionalize the practice of
justice in this country are far from our goal. Therefore, the struggle
for justice and a civilized society must continue through the
development of new forms of organization and strategies. As Maulana
Ron Karenga said in the January 11, 2011 issue of the Final Call,
“…to be organized is to be in ongoing structures that harness our
energies and house and advance our interests and aspirations and unite
us into an aware and active social force for African and human good in
the world”. Former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has
temporarily succeeded in removing me from the front lines of the
Boston struggle for justice. However, while I rest and prepare myself
my return to the battle, others are continuing relentlessly to
struggle to make Boston and this country a beacon for the practice of
justice throughout the world.
As I look back over my 48 years of activism, I realize that I have
been walking in the footsteps of my grandfather, Charles Henry
Turner*, for whom I was named. His passion focused on studying the
behavior of mice, roaches, insects of all kinds, and particularly bees
and ants with their highly organized group behavior. He focused his
life on understanding the behavior of life forms that many consider as
“pests”, unwanted intrusions into their space rather than seeing them
as my grandfather saw them, as an essential aspect of God’s creation.
My passion has been and continues to be the study of the innate
ability of human beings to create new realities through organized
action. Because of my African-American ancestry, I have focused on the
demonstration of those capabilities by those human beings considered
by many in this country as inferior life forms, an unwanted intrusion
into their space. Hopefully, we will soon learn to recognize all human
beings as beings created “in the image of God”, each possessing a
divine creative spirit.
A Luta Continua–The Struggle Continues,
chuck
* The following books have more information on my grandfather’s scientific work:
1) Bug Watching with Charles Henry Turner, Michael Elsohn Ross, 1997
(A children’s book)
2) Selected Papers and Biography of Charles Henry Turner, 1867-1923:
Pioneer of Comparative Animal Behavioral Studies,
Professor Charles Abramson, The Edward Mellon Press, 2003 (An
academic study of his life and work including a history of
the Troy-Knight-Turner Family that I wrote at the author’s request)
Next Week: Installment Two: The Keystone Cops Strike Again
Saturday, July 9, 2011
`Democracy Now!' Show Funder Censors Anti-War Journalist John Pilger
According to the Lannan Foundation's Form 990 financial filing for 2008, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! Productions was given three grants, totaling $375,000, by the Lannan Foundation. And that same year the Lannan Foundation also gave three grants, totaling $545,000, to The Nation/Nation Institute alternative left media group and three grants, totaling $475,000, to Foundation for National Progress/Mother Jones magazine.
But the Lannan Foundation apparently doesn't want to allow anti-war journalists who criticize the Democratic Obama Administration's failure to end the endless U.S. military intervention in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Libya-Yemen-Somalia to speak too freely in the United States these days, as indicated by Australian anti-war journalist and anti-war filmmaker John Pilger's recent experience with Democracy Now!'s foundation funder. In an article, titled "The Strange Silence of Liberal America," that was recently posted on the Global Research site, Pilger wrote the following about how the Lannan Foundation apparently operates these days:
"The War You Don’t See" is available on www.johnpilger.com
John Pilger is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by John Pilger
(Not surprisingly, neither The Nation, Democracy Now! nor Mother Jones magazine has apparently provided its readers, listeners or viewers with much information about either the historic or current business activities of Lannan family members or about which transnational corporate stocks are contained in the investment portfolio of the Lannan Foundation. Yet, according to its Form 990 financial filing, on December 31, 2008 the Lannan Foundation owned $942,000 worth of Microsoft stock, $953,683 of Disney Company stock, $1,267,640 worth of Wells Fargo stock, $1,389,789 worth of Coca-Cola Company stock, $1,580,982 worth of Wal-Mart stock and $44,145 worth of Goldman Sachs stock.--bf)
But the Lannan Foundation apparently doesn't want to allow anti-war journalists who criticize the Democratic Obama Administration's failure to end the endless U.S. military intervention in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Libya-Yemen-Somalia to speak too freely in the United States these days, as indicated by Australian anti-war journalist and anti-war filmmaker John Pilger's recent experience with Democracy Now!'s foundation funder. In an article, titled "The Strange Silence of Liberal America," that was recently posted on the Global Research site, Pilger wrote the following about how the Lannan Foundation apparently operates these days:
"The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free speech. The foundation’s website says it is `dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity and creativity'. Authors, film-makers, poets make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Rockefeller and Ford.
"Lannan also awards `grants' to America’s liberal media, such as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of the magazine Mother Jones), the Nation Institute and the TV and radio programme Democracy Now! In Britain, Lannan has been a supporter of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, of which I am one of the judges. In 2008, Patrick Lannan personally supported the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, he is `devoted' to Obama.
"On 15 June, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a platform with the distinguished American journalist David Barsamian. The foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film, The War You Don’t See, which investigates the false image-making of war-makers, especially Obama.
"I was about to leave for Santa Fe when I received an email from the Lannan official organising my visit. The tone was incredulous. `Something has come up,' she wrote. Patrick Lannan had called her and ordered all my events to be cancelled. `I have no idea what this is all about,' she wrote.
"Baffled, I asked that the premiere of my film be allowed to go ahead as the US distribution largely depended on it. She repeated that `all' my events were cancelled, `and this includes the screening of your film'. On the Lannan website `cancelled' appeared across a picture of me. There was no explanation. None of my phone calls was returned, nor subsequent emails answered. A Kafka world of not-knowing descended.
"The silence lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the foundation put out a brief statement that too few tickets had been sold to make my visit `viable' and that `the Foundation regrets that the reason fr the cancellation was not explained to Mr. Pilger or to the public at the time the decision was made'. Doubts were cast by a robust editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican, The paper, which has long played a prominent role in promoting Lannan events, disclosed that my visit had been cancelled before the main advertising and previews were published. A full-page interview with me had to be hurriedly pulled. `Pilger and Barsamian could have expected closer to a packed 820-seat Lensic [arts centre].'
"The manager of The Screen, the Santa Fe cinema that had been rented for the premiere, was called late at night and told to kill all his online promotion for my film, but took it upon himself to re-schedule the film for 23 June. It was a sell-out, with many people turned away. The idea that there was no public interest was demonstrably not true.
"Theories? There are many, but nothing is proven. For me, it is all reminiscent of the long shadows cast during the cold war. `Something is going to surface,' said Barsamian. `They can’t keep the lid on this.'
"My talk on 15 June was to have been about the collusion of American liberalism in a permanent state of war and the demise of cherished freedoms, such as the right to call government to account. In the United States, as in Britain, serious dissent – free speech -- has been substantially criminalised. Obama, the black liberal, the PC exemplar, the marketing dream is as much a warmonger as George W. Bush. His score is six wars. Never in US history has a president prosecuted as many whistle-blowers; yet this truth-telling, this exercise of true citizenship, is at the heart of America’s constitutional first amendment. Obama’s greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the United States, including the anti-war movement.
"The reaction to the Lannan ban has been illuminating. The brave, like the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, were appalled and said so. Similarly, many ordinary Americans called into radio stations and have written to me, recognising a symptom of far greater suppression. But some exalted liberal voices have been affronted that I dared whisper the word, censorship, about such a beacon of `cultural freedom'. The embarrassment of those who wish to point both ways is palpable. Others have pulled down the shutters and said nothing. Given their patron’s ruthless show of power, it is understandable. For them, the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote, `When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.'
"The War You Don’t See" is available on www.johnpilger.com
John Pilger is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by John Pilger
(Not surprisingly, neither The Nation, Democracy Now! nor Mother Jones magazine has apparently provided its readers, listeners or viewers with much information about either the historic or current business activities of Lannan family members or about which transnational corporate stocks are contained in the investment portfolio of the Lannan Foundation. Yet, according to its Form 990 financial filing, on December 31, 2008 the Lannan Foundation owned $942,000 worth of Microsoft stock, $953,683 of Disney Company stock, $1,267,640 worth of Wells Fargo stock, $1,389,789 worth of Coca-Cola Company stock, $1,580,982 worth of Wal-Mart stock and $44,145 worth of Goldman Sachs stock.--bf)
Friday, July 8, 2011
Black Worker Jobless Rate: 16.5 Percent Under Obama & GOP House of Representatives
Between May and June 2011, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all Black workers in the United States increased from 16 to 16.5 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration and the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives; while the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all white workers in the United States increased from 7.7 to 8.2 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The number of officially unemployed African-American workers increased by 134,000 (from 2,838,000 to 2,972,000) between May and June 2011, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of officially unemployed white workers in the United States increased by 722,000 (from 9,618,000 to 10,340,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data..
The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19 years of age jumped from 40 to 45 percent between May and June 2011, while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white youths between 16 and 19 years of age increased from 20.6 to 24.8 percent during this same period.
The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age jumped from 13 to 13.9 percent between May and June 2011; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 16.7 percent in June 2011. The number of unemployed Black female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 79,000 (from 1,172,000 to 1,251,000) between May and June 2011, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of unemployed white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased by 205,000 (from 3,753,000 to 3,958,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.
Between May and June 2011, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 11.1 to 11.5 percent; while the number of unemployed Latino or Hispanic workers increased by 125,000 (from 2,518,000 to 2,643,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, during this same period. The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latina or Hispanic female workers increased from 11.1 to 11.4 percent between May and June 2011; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic male workers in the United States was still 9.8 percent in June 2011. According to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, the official unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youth between 16 and 19-years-of-age jumped from 26.1 to 35.4 percent between May and June 2011; while the number of unemployed Latino or Hispanic youths increased by 130,000 (from 236,000 to 360,000) during this same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.
For all U.S. workers (male and female) over 16 years-of-age, the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate increased from 8.7 to 9.3 percent between May and June 2011; while the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all male workers over 16 years-of-age increased from 9.2 to 9.6 percent and the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all female workers over 16 years-of-age increased from 8.3 to 9.1 percent during this same period. Between May and June 2011, the official total number of unemployed U.S. workers over 16-years-of-age increased by 988,000 (from 13,421,000 to 14,409,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 8, 2011 press release:
The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19 years of age jumped from 40 to 45 percent between May and June 2011, while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white youths between 16 and 19 years of age increased from 20.6 to 24.8 percent during this same period.
The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age jumped from 13 to 13.9 percent between May and June 2011; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 16.7 percent in June 2011. The number of unemployed Black female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 79,000 (from 1,172,000 to 1,251,000) between May and June 2011, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of unemployed white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased by 205,000 (from 3,753,000 to 3,958,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.
Between May and June 2011, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 11.1 to 11.5 percent; while the number of unemployed Latino or Hispanic workers increased by 125,000 (from 2,518,000 to 2,643,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, during this same period. The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latina or Hispanic female workers increased from 11.1 to 11.4 percent between May and June 2011; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic male workers in the United States was still 9.8 percent in June 2011. According to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, the official unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youth between 16 and 19-years-of-age jumped from 26.1 to 35.4 percent between May and June 2011; while the number of unemployed Latino or Hispanic youths increased by 130,000 (from 236,000 to 360,000) during this same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.
For all U.S. workers (male and female) over 16 years-of-age, the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate increased from 8.7 to 9.3 percent between May and June 2011; while the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all male workers over 16 years-of-age increased from 9.2 to 9.6 percent and the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all female workers over 16 years-of-age increased from 8.3 to 9.1 percent during this same period. Between May and June 2011, the official total number of unemployed U.S. workers over 16-years-of-age increased by 988,000 (from 13,421,000 to 14,409,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 8, 2011 press release:
“…Since March, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 545,000, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.4 percentage point…
“The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks increased by 412,000 in June. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was essentially unchanged over the month, at 6.3 million, and accounted for 44.4 percent of the unemployed…
“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged in June at 8.6 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job…
“In June, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey…
“Among the marginally attached, there were 982,000 discouraged workers in June…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…
“Employment has been essentially flat for the past 2 months…Government employment continued to trend down…
“…Employment in temporary help services changed little over the month and has shown little movement on net so far this year…
“Employment in government continued to trend down over the month (-39,000). Federal employment declined by 14,000 in June. Employment in both state government and local government continued to trend down over the month and has been falling since the second half of 2008…
“Manufacturing employment changed little in June…Employment in this industry has been flat for the past 2 months…
“Construction employment was essentially unchanged in June….Employment in construction has shown little movement on net since early 2010…
“In June, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased…”
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Imprisoned Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner's June 13, 2011 Message From Behind The Wall
(The following article was originally posted on the Support Chuck Turner site)
Reflections from Behind the Wall:
Topic: Preview of Anatomy of a FrameUp
June 13, 2011
Dear Supporters,
I was arrested by the FBI on November 21, 2008 at 6:15 a.m. at Boston
City Hall where I had served as a City Councilor for 9 years. At 3
p.m. on the same day, I was arraigned before a judge magistrate in
Worcester, MA, 45 miles from Boston, on one count of extortion, 3
counts of lying to FBI agents, and 1 count of conspiracy. On October
29, 2010, I was convicted of 1 count of extortion and 3 counts of
lying to FBI agents. The conspiracy charge was dropped without
explanation. On January 25, 2011, I was sentenced to 36 months in a
federal penitentiary. The sentence was based on my conviction on the
four counts and the judge’s assertion that I had perjured myself when
I took the stand to testify in my own defense.
Today I am in my 11th week at the work camp at USP Hazelton in
Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, where 130 men convicted of nonviolent
financial crimes serve as the work force for the Hazelton prison
complex, composed of a women’s medium security prison with 1000
inmates and a men’s maximum security prison with 1700 inmates. Based
on the Bureau of Prison Sentencing Monitoring Computation of
3-31-2011, I will be released on November 2, 2013 if I maintain my
good time.
Due to my financial insolvency, I applied for a court appointed
appeals lawyer and was fortunate to have the appeals court appoint,
Attorney Charles Rankin of the firm of Rankin and Sultan. Attorney
Rankin is a prominent Boston appeals lawyer. Based on his reputation,
I am convinced he will make an excellent presentation of the appeal.
However, I believe I have a responsibility based on my experience with
the Justice Department during the last two and a half years to show
how U.S. Attorneys and their special police force, the FBI, use their
law enforcement powers as well as media and political relationships
to eliminate those who they view as a threat or as not cooperating
with their political objectives.
I made this promise to my supporters at a rally in front of my Roxbury
office on the day before Thanksgiving 2008, a few days after my
arrest. I think I have enough objectivity now to effectively make such
a presentation. Each week for the next eight weeks, I will send an
installment of what I am calling, “Anatomy of a FRAME UP”. My purpose
is not to prove my innocence. While I am innocent of the crimes of
which I was convicted, I understand that regardless of the outcome of
my appeal, I will always carry the label of being a convicted felon.
Fortunately, I have learned through my 48 years of activism that it
does not matter what people label you as long as you live by the
principles that you believe are appropriate for a civilized society.
I realize that there is a danger in accusing a former member of the
Justice Department of what i view as a crime, especially while I am
under the control of the Bureau of Prisons, a bureau of the Justice
Department. However, I have spent my life urging those who are being
oppressed to stand up, speak the truth, and fight the power despite
the dangers. I have pointed out that justice can only result when
those experiencing injustice loudly and publicly oppose the forces
perpetuating it. How can I do less at a time when the “criminal
justice system” is so ruthlessly taking away the liberty of my
brothers and sisters of all races. We must all do what we can to fight
“Prosecutorial Terrorism”. It is our responsibility to free our
country of this cancer. We owe it to our future generations,
particularly those of us who have experienced their terrorism.
What follows are the titles of the eight installments and a brief
summary of what will be the focus of each.
Installment I: A Lifetime of Activism:
Since US Attorney Sullivan alleged that my crime was a betrayal of my
public trust as an elected official, I feel it is necessary for me to
share my background that led to a life time of activism; the nature of
that activism; what led me to run for political office at age 59; and
how I carried out those responsibilitIes for nine years before I was
convicted of being a corrupt public official and removed from the City
Council by a vote of my fellow Councilors 11-1 (I couldn’t vote).
Installment 2: The Keystone Cops Strike Again:
My arrest was obviously a very serious matter. At the same time, the
way they handled the arrest of a 68 year old activist and respected
public official seemed to me at the time and today as a scene out of a
grade B FBI movie of the 40s. However, it also had shadings of the
slapstick comedy of the Keystone Cops movies of the 20s. Their
behavior certainly did not seem appropriate for Justice Department
officials handling the arrest of a fellow officer of the government.
Installment 3: The Big Lie:
A few hours after my arrest on November 21, 2008, US Attorney Sullivan
called a press conference to announce that I had been arrested for
conspiring with a black female state senator, Senator Dianne
Wilkerson, to extort money from a Roxbury business man, Ron
Wilburn,who was trying to obtain a liquor license. However, since US
Attorney Sullivan had authorized in March 2007 the hiring of Mr.
Wilburn to attempt to entrap the Senator and I, he was obviously lying
about the participants in the conspiracy. He was the chief conspirator
using the FBI, his staff, and Wilburn to attempt to create a crime
around the Senator and i. I believe Sullivan’s lying to the media
about the background of my arrest is what should be prosecuted as wire
fraud. Unfortunately US Attorneys can not be tried for the crimes they
commit “under color of law”.
Installment 4: A Jury of My Peers:
Less than five hours after my arrest, almost as if synchronized with
the US Attorney’s press conference, the then President of the City
Council, Maureen Feeney, having consulted with Mayor Menino’s lawyer,
William Sinnott, announced to the press that I was being stripped of
all my City Council Committee responsibilities and would be invited to
a special meeting of the City Council the following work day when the
Council would determine what action to take based on the accusation
that I had committed a crime. She backed away from her plan when she
saw five hundred of my supporters come to City Hall to attend the
meeting that i had requested be open to the public. However, she
continued her quest by getting the Mayor hire a lawyer to gather
evidence and explore althernatives at $500 a hour. Fortunately, the
new Council President Ross rescinded her actions.
Installment 5: What First Amendment?:
Infuriated with the fact that I had been challenging the actions of
his office since the day of my arrest, US Attorney Sullivan had Asst
US Attorney McNeil file a motion on January 5, 2009 requesting that
the presiding magistrate approve a gag order to silence me. The order
which the magistrate approved required that all the evidence in the
case be withheld unless I signed a gag order saying that I would not
publicly discuss anything in the evidence. I refused to sign for the
following reasons. First, I was running to retain my Council seat and
believed I had a responsibility to my constituents to speak to the
issues involved in the case. Second, I believed I had a responsibility
to defend my first amendment rights. The third reason was that since
the US Attorney had begun the public discussion of my case, by showing
alleged evidence of “my crime” to the media, I didn’t think that I
should be denied the opportunity if I chose. This led to the U.S.
Attorney’s office withholding their “evidence” from my lawyer for 10
months until I won the election and signed the order.
Installment 6: The Three Ring Circus:
This installment will focus on the trial. Its title does not refer to
Judge Woodlock’s handling of the trial. I use the term because at a
circus, the action takes place in three rings. During my two week
trial, there were three elements/rings that served from my perspective
as the foundation of my conviction for a federal crime: a)Judge
Woodlock’s explanation to the jury that while I was being charged with
extortion, I did not even have to ask for money in order to be
convicted on the charge; b) My decision that as a public official I
had to take the stand despite my lawyer and the judge urging me not to
do so; and c) The testimony by a liquor wholesaler that if Mr. Wilburn
had obtained a liquor license, and if he had opened a club, and had
bought liquor from the wholesaler’s 0firm, the alcohol would have to
come from out of state. The fact that the alcohol would have had to
cross state lines gave Sullivan the opportunity to use his federal
powers to initiate a sting regarding the issuance of state liquor
license to entrap the Senator and i
.
Installment 7: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury:
I will use this installment to present the evidence, seen by the jury,
that should have convinced them of my innocence. I will present the
evidence in the form of a closing argument to the jury. I will also
point out in that argument the relevance to my innocence of the fact
that U.S. Attorney Sullivan built his public justification for my
arrest around the lie that Senator Wilkerson and I conspired to extort
money from Mr. Wilburn. How could I be in a conspiracy with the
Senator to extort money from Mr. Wilburn when the evidence presented
at the trial shows that the FBI instructed Mr. Wilburn to suggest to
the Senator that they involve me in the scheme that he was creating to
entrap the Senator.
Installment 8: I Warned You:
The jury found me guilty of one count of extortion of $1000 and three
counts of lying to federal officials when I told them that I did not
recognize their picture of Mr. Wilburn or remember any interactions
with him. Despite the fact that I had never been convicted of a crime,
either state or federal, other than civil rights protests and had 700
letters of support urging that I be given probation, I was sentenced
to 3 years in jail and three years probation. I will use this last
installment to show how they used my assertion of innocence before the
trial as well as on the witness stand to justify a sentence that many
view as cruel and unusual punishment for a crime I didn’t commit.
I debated whether to include an installment on my ouster from the
Boston City Council on Rosa Parks Day, December 1, 2010. I have
decided to not include it in the “Anatomy……” since it was an
action initiated not by the US Attorney and the FBI but by Council
President Ross, supported by Mayor Menino and his lawyer, William
Sinnott. In addition, my lawyer, Chester Darling who is representing
me in my challenge of the legality of the Council ouster, says that
the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) at the request of the Chief Justice
of the Massachusetts Federal Court Mark Wolfe will hear our arguments
regarding the illegality of the Council’s actions and the erroneous
advice of Counsel Sinnott either in September or October. So I will
hold any discussion of this until after the arguments before the SJc.
Next week: Installment 1: A Lifetime of Activism
Reflections from Behind the Wall:
Topic: Preview of Anatomy of a FrameUp
June 13, 2011
Dear Supporters,
I was arrested by the FBI on November 21, 2008 at 6:15 a.m. at Boston
City Hall where I had served as a City Councilor for 9 years. At 3
p.m. on the same day, I was arraigned before a judge magistrate in
Worcester, MA, 45 miles from Boston, on one count of extortion, 3
counts of lying to FBI agents, and 1 count of conspiracy. On October
29, 2010, I was convicted of 1 count of extortion and 3 counts of
lying to FBI agents. The conspiracy charge was dropped without
explanation. On January 25, 2011, I was sentenced to 36 months in a
federal penitentiary. The sentence was based on my conviction on the
four counts and the judge’s assertion that I had perjured myself when
I took the stand to testify in my own defense.
Today I am in my 11th week at the work camp at USP Hazelton in
Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, where 130 men convicted of nonviolent
financial crimes serve as the work force for the Hazelton prison
complex, composed of a women’s medium security prison with 1000
inmates and a men’s maximum security prison with 1700 inmates. Based
on the Bureau of Prison Sentencing Monitoring Computation of
3-31-2011, I will be released on November 2, 2013 if I maintain my
good time.
Due to my financial insolvency, I applied for a court appointed
appeals lawyer and was fortunate to have the appeals court appoint,
Attorney Charles Rankin of the firm of Rankin and Sultan. Attorney
Rankin is a prominent Boston appeals lawyer. Based on his reputation,
I am convinced he will make an excellent presentation of the appeal.
However, I believe I have a responsibility based on my experience with
the Justice Department during the last two and a half years to show
how U.S. Attorneys and their special police force, the FBI, use their
law enforcement powers as well as media and political relationships
to eliminate those who they view as a threat or as not cooperating
with their political objectives.
I made this promise to my supporters at a rally in front of my Roxbury
office on the day before Thanksgiving 2008, a few days after my
arrest. I think I have enough objectivity now to effectively make such
a presentation. Each week for the next eight weeks, I will send an
installment of what I am calling, “Anatomy of a FRAME UP”. My purpose
is not to prove my innocence. While I am innocent of the crimes of
which I was convicted, I understand that regardless of the outcome of
my appeal, I will always carry the label of being a convicted felon.
Fortunately, I have learned through my 48 years of activism that it
does not matter what people label you as long as you live by the
principles that you believe are appropriate for a civilized society.
I realize that there is a danger in accusing a former member of the
Justice Department of what i view as a crime, especially while I am
under the control of the Bureau of Prisons, a bureau of the Justice
Department. However, I have spent my life urging those who are being
oppressed to stand up, speak the truth, and fight the power despite
the dangers. I have pointed out that justice can only result when
those experiencing injustice loudly and publicly oppose the forces
perpetuating it. How can I do less at a time when the “criminal
justice system” is so ruthlessly taking away the liberty of my
brothers and sisters of all races. We must all do what we can to fight
“Prosecutorial Terrorism”. It is our responsibility to free our
country of this cancer. We owe it to our future generations,
particularly those of us who have experienced their terrorism.
What follows are the titles of the eight installments and a brief
summary of what will be the focus of each.
Installment I: A Lifetime of Activism:
Since US Attorney Sullivan alleged that my crime was a betrayal of my
public trust as an elected official, I feel it is necessary for me to
share my background that led to a life time of activism; the nature of
that activism; what led me to run for political office at age 59; and
how I carried out those responsibilitIes for nine years before I was
convicted of being a corrupt public official and removed from the City
Council by a vote of my fellow Councilors 11-1 (I couldn’t vote).
Installment 2: The Keystone Cops Strike Again:
My arrest was obviously a very serious matter. At the same time, the
way they handled the arrest of a 68 year old activist and respected
public official seemed to me at the time and today as a scene out of a
grade B FBI movie of the 40s. However, it also had shadings of the
slapstick comedy of the Keystone Cops movies of the 20s. Their
behavior certainly did not seem appropriate for Justice Department
officials handling the arrest of a fellow officer of the government.
Installment 3: The Big Lie:
A few hours after my arrest on November 21, 2008, US Attorney Sullivan
called a press conference to announce that I had been arrested for
conspiring with a black female state senator, Senator Dianne
Wilkerson, to extort money from a Roxbury business man, Ron
Wilburn,who was trying to obtain a liquor license. However, since US
Attorney Sullivan had authorized in March 2007 the hiring of Mr.
Wilburn to attempt to entrap the Senator and I, he was obviously lying
about the participants in the conspiracy. He was the chief conspirator
using the FBI, his staff, and Wilburn to attempt to create a crime
around the Senator and i. I believe Sullivan’s lying to the media
about the background of my arrest is what should be prosecuted as wire
fraud. Unfortunately US Attorneys can not be tried for the crimes they
commit “under color of law”.
Installment 4: A Jury of My Peers:
Less than five hours after my arrest, almost as if synchronized with
the US Attorney’s press conference, the then President of the City
Council, Maureen Feeney, having consulted with Mayor Menino’s lawyer,
William Sinnott, announced to the press that I was being stripped of
all my City Council Committee responsibilities and would be invited to
a special meeting of the City Council the following work day when the
Council would determine what action to take based on the accusation
that I had committed a crime. She backed away from her plan when she
saw five hundred of my supporters come to City Hall to attend the
meeting that i had requested be open to the public. However, she
continued her quest by getting the Mayor hire a lawyer to gather
evidence and explore althernatives at $500 a hour. Fortunately, the
new Council President Ross rescinded her actions.
Installment 5: What First Amendment?:
Infuriated with the fact that I had been challenging the actions of
his office since the day of my arrest, US Attorney Sullivan had Asst
US Attorney McNeil file a motion on January 5, 2009 requesting that
the presiding magistrate approve a gag order to silence me. The order
which the magistrate approved required that all the evidence in the
case be withheld unless I signed a gag order saying that I would not
publicly discuss anything in the evidence. I refused to sign for the
following reasons. First, I was running to retain my Council seat and
believed I had a responsibility to my constituents to speak to the
issues involved in the case. Second, I believed I had a responsibility
to defend my first amendment rights. The third reason was that since
the US Attorney had begun the public discussion of my case, by showing
alleged evidence of “my crime” to the media, I didn’t think that I
should be denied the opportunity if I chose. This led to the U.S.
Attorney’s office withholding their “evidence” from my lawyer for 10
months until I won the election and signed the order.
Installment 6: The Three Ring Circus:
This installment will focus on the trial. Its title does not refer to
Judge Woodlock’s handling of the trial. I use the term because at a
circus, the action takes place in three rings. During my two week
trial, there were three elements/rings that served from my perspective
as the foundation of my conviction for a federal crime: a)Judge
Woodlock’s explanation to the jury that while I was being charged with
extortion, I did not even have to ask for money in order to be
convicted on the charge; b) My decision that as a public official I
had to take the stand despite my lawyer and the judge urging me not to
do so; and c) The testimony by a liquor wholesaler that if Mr. Wilburn
had obtained a liquor license, and if he had opened a club, and had
bought liquor from the wholesaler’s 0firm, the alcohol would have to
come from out of state. The fact that the alcohol would have had to
cross state lines gave Sullivan the opportunity to use his federal
powers to initiate a sting regarding the issuance of state liquor
license to entrap the Senator and i
.
Installment 7: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury:
I will use this installment to present the evidence, seen by the jury,
that should have convinced them of my innocence. I will present the
evidence in the form of a closing argument to the jury. I will also
point out in that argument the relevance to my innocence of the fact
that U.S. Attorney Sullivan built his public justification for my
arrest around the lie that Senator Wilkerson and I conspired to extort
money from Mr. Wilburn. How could I be in a conspiracy with the
Senator to extort money from Mr. Wilburn when the evidence presented
at the trial shows that the FBI instructed Mr. Wilburn to suggest to
the Senator that they involve me in the scheme that he was creating to
entrap the Senator.
Installment 8: I Warned You:
The jury found me guilty of one count of extortion of $1000 and three
counts of lying to federal officials when I told them that I did not
recognize their picture of Mr. Wilburn or remember any interactions
with him. Despite the fact that I had never been convicted of a crime,
either state or federal, other than civil rights protests and had 700
letters of support urging that I be given probation, I was sentenced
to 3 years in jail and three years probation. I will use this last
installment to show how they used my assertion of innocence before the
trial as well as on the witness stand to justify a sentence that many
view as cruel and unusual punishment for a crime I didn’t commit.
I debated whether to include an installment on my ouster from the
Boston City Council on Rosa Parks Day, December 1, 2010. I have
decided to not include it in the “Anatomy……” since it was an
action initiated not by the US Attorney and the FBI but by Council
President Ross, supported by Mayor Menino and his lawyer, William
Sinnott. In addition, my lawyer, Chester Darling who is representing
me in my challenge of the legality of the Council ouster, says that
the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) at the request of the Chief Justice
of the Massachusetts Federal Court Mark Wolfe will hear our arguments
regarding the illegality of the Council’s actions and the erroneous
advice of Counsel Sinnott either in September or October. So I will
hold any discussion of this until after the arguments before the SJc.
Next week: Installment 1: A Lifetime of Activism
Sunday, July 3, 2011
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