dailykos--2020-06-18--An “Autonomous” Three Block-Long Seattle Street
Threatens America – What?

President Donald Trump from his New Jersey private golf club tweeted this past Friday morning June 12 , that “ The terrorists burn and pillage our cities.
” He was referring to demonstrators occupying three blocks along a single street , in Seattle ’ s most culturally active neighborhood .
Trump demanded that the mayor and governor , “ Must end this Seattle takeover now !
” Or else he would call in the army .
What was he talking about ?
This national threat began on Sunday June 7 , when a small section of the Capitol Hill ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pike-Pine Corridor ) saw demonstrations outside one of Seattle ’ s five precinct stations .
Like other demonstrations held around the nation for over a week , people of all ages and races were in the streets supporting Black Lives Matter ’ s demand to erase racist policing , opening up the move to either defund or reduce police departments ’ budgets .
That Sunday the police said on Twitter that some people had thrown projectiles and fireworks at officers , although they did not provide any evidence beyond one what appeared to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they responded with pepper spray , blast balls and tear gas , which the mayor had previously promised to not use for the next 30 days .
But protecting themselves from thrown projectiles triggered an exclusion to that prohibition .
A councilmember who was had attended the demonstration said that that there were no threats to police safety .
It seems that the police over-reacted to the chants from the crowd , who pushed beyond the police barrier moving toward the East Precinct police station .
The only terror activity that occurred was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the demonstrators .
An unarmed twenty-seven-year-old Black man reached into the open window of the car as it was passing , grabbed the steering wheel and halted it from hitting people .
The driver pulled out a gun , shot and wounded the man as the car came to a stop .
The driver then left the car with gun in hand , walked over to a line of police standing nearby , surrendered himself and was arrested .
The next day , on Monday June 8 , the police emptied the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ critical equipment as they prepared to no longer defend the building .
They apparently thought it would be destroyed by the demonstrators , who were mostly residents of the East Precinct , some of whom live in multi-million-dollar mansions as well as in low-income social housing projects .
The precinct also has the highest concentration of apartments and small independent retail businesses in Seattle .
Historically it has been the city ’ s most liberal council district ; and since 2013 has repeatedly elected a Socialist Alternative Party member to the City Council @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funded business-community candidates .
By Tuesday June 9 , a loose conglomeration of demonstrators came together to use the former police street barricades to close off Pine street for a length of three blocks .
Although Trump tweeted : “ These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city , ” it is not even part of downtown .
It is a two-lane road lined with small neighborhood businesses and a park .
The area came to be called by the occupants as CHAZ , the Capitol Hill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a website .
However , the local conservative radio host Jason Rantz , interviewed by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday June 11 , said it was a violent place .
And that similar occupations to the one taking place in Seattle could happen in cities across the U.S. if the authorities allow it .
Although Carlson began the interview saying that Rantz was one of the few people he knew who had visited CHAZ , Rantz basically admitted that he had not been inside when he replied to Carlson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he said , “ Right now , it ’ s too violent for us to go in.
” He provided no examples of what kind of violence he was referring to .
The next day , Friday June 12 , having been a prior resident for decades in that neighborhood , I went to see what dangers lurked in a community without police patrols .
I casually walked pass by the CHAZ street barrier and the three community sentries , who sat off a way behind it , talking to each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was a wide-open passage , where I discovered that CHAZ had become a bit of a tourist destination for curious Seattle residents taking photos of all the posters , graffiti and the one-block colorful mural painted on Pine Street spelling out BLACK LIVES MATTER .
The businesses on the street were still open as was the park when I visited .
There was no sign of smashed windows or burnt buildings .
There had been no looting and there was no violence of any sort occurring .
There was a “ No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fruit , vegetables , snacks , umbrellas , hand sanitizer and water set up in the middle of their occupied territory .
There was also a covered truck converted into a People ’ s Community Clinic with its own emergency medical team .
There were many memorials to victims of police violence , along with were other little touches of an emerging community ; an open-air conversation café with sofas , a small basketball court , an improvised smoking corner , and a private food stall , the Dirty Dog hotdog stand , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most ambitious undertakings was begun by Marcus Henderson , who helped create the community gardens that occupy part of the adjacent Cal Anderson Park .
Henderson is typical of educated citizens who understand that disruptive moments like CHAZ offer a positive opportunity .
He had the knowledge for sustainable gardening from obtaining an Energy Resources Engineering degree from Stanford University and a master ’ s degree in Sustainability in the Urban Environment .
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan visited the gardens and met with Henderson the day after Trump had tweeted “ Take back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t do it , I will.
” In response , Durkan accused Trump of purposefully distorting the activities in CHAZ to fit his tough law and order mantra .
Trump may have also been watching Fox News , which was engaged in the same practice .
Thanks to an article by Seattle Times reporter Jim Brunner , it came to light that Fox ran digitally altered images in coverage of CHAZ .
Three separate photos were photo-shopped to create an image of a heavily armed man guarding the entrance to the zone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of CRAZY TOWN blazoned over a portion of it , showed huge flames pouring out of a building with a demonstrator running away .
But it was not Seattle , the photo was from a May 30 protest in St. Paul , Minnesota .
Fox and other outlets also jumped on a comment by a Seattle police commander suggesting protesters were extorting payments from businesses within CHAZ .
Seattle police Chief Carmen Best had to refute that statement , saying that it was based on rumor and social media .
“ We haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this occurring , ” she said .
Best also said that she did not want to abandon the precinct station but had to because of pressure .
However , she did not say the order came from Mayor Durkan , who did not say she made the decision .
I got the impression that internal pressure came from the police union ’ s members to leave the precinct .
This was particularly true when some councilmembers asked that the hard surface street barriers be removed that the police had set up to separate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next to their police station .
The police attitude that their station might be torched and that chaos and disorder would follow in the neighborhood by allowing protestors to peacefully demonstrate so close to them , was bolstered not only by the unsubstantiated comment from the police commander but also from comments made by a local police officer and the union ’ s president .
A resident of one of the nearby apartment buildings , whom I know very well , told me of her interactions with a police officer .
She was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Monday June 8 at noon asking people what was going on .
A police officer came by and announced , “ We are all pulling out , and you ’ re all going to be on your own .
We are not coming back in and you are not going to get help and bad elements will come in.
” Then he added , “ And who would want to work in Seattle [ as police ] ?
” On the same day , June 12 , that I visited CHAZ , Michael @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Officers Guild , told Fox News “ This is the closest I ’ ve ever seen our country , let alone the city here , to becoming a lawless state.
” It would lead one to believe that the police union had lost faith in receiving political cover for their use of excessive force , if the city council and mayor were to allow protestors so close to their precinct station .
Police officers in Seattle are not allowed to strike , but they may have actually adopted an old fashion factory “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know that they could no longer execute their usual police practices if they remained there .
The most recent turn of events came in an interview on Saturday , June 13 , where a person who claimed that he represented the Seattle Black Lives Matter group , said that the area popularized by the title CHAZ was not what their group was using to describe the street space that has been controlled by demonstrators since the police left their precinct station .
They don ’ t know who came up with that name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
That unknown group declared the name CHAZ and then spray painted the CHAZ slogans all around the area .
Instead BLM is calling this zone CHOP — Capitol Hill Organizing Protest .
They posted a tweet : Black Lives Matter @ djbsqrd “ WE ARE # CHOP not # CHAZ stop spilling lies and spreading this narrative of being autonomous ” The future of this urban resistance project , initiated by the Black Lives Matter movement , still has to be played out .
Organizers continue to push for their objectives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ website .
Talks and open-mike discussions occur regularly in large outside public forums on the purpose of this unique effort .
Overall , observers and participants will need to continue thinking about how claiming a portion of public space for an underserved and discriminated community can initiate effective social and political change , and not perpetuate the status quo or ignite a right-wing backlash that pursues further repressive policies .
Nick Licata is author of Becoming A Citizen Activist , andhas served 5 terms on the Seattle City Council , named progressive municipal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and is founding board chair of Local Progress , a national network of 1,000 progressive municipal officials .

President Donald Trump from his New Jersey private golf club tweeted this past Friday morning June 12, that “The terrorists burn and pillage our cities.” He was referring to demonstrators occupying three blocks along a single street, in Seattle’s most culturally active neighborhood. Trump demanded that the mayor and governor, “Must end this Seattle takeover now!” Or else he would call in the army.
What was he talking about?
This national threat began on Sunday June 7, when a small section of the Capitol Hill’s business district (known as the Pike-Pine Corridor) saw demonstrations outside one of Seattle’s five precinct stations. Like other demonstrations held around the nation for over a week, people of all ages and races were in the streets supporting Black Lives Matter’s demand to erase racist policing, opening up the move to either defund or reduce police departments’ budgets.
That Sunday the police said on Twitter that some people had thrown projectiles and fireworks at officers, although they did not provide any evidence beyond one what appeared to be a single candle. Accordingly, they responded with pepper spray, blast balls and tear gas, which the mayor had previously promised to not use for the next 30 days. But protecting themselves from thrown projectiles triggered an exclusion to that prohibition.
A councilmember who was had attended the demonstration said that that there were no threats to police safety. It seems that the police over-reacted to the chants from the crowd, who pushed beyond the police barrier moving toward the East Precinct police station.
The only terror activity that occurred was when a civilian driver headed his car into the demonstrators. An unarmed twenty-seven-year-old Black man reached into the open window of the car as it was passing, grabbed the steering wheel and halted it from hitting people. The driver pulled out a gun, shot and wounded the man as the car came to a stop. The driver then left the car with gun in hand, walked over to a line of police standing nearby, surrendered himself and was arrested.
The next day, on Monday June 8, the police emptied the police station of guns, files and critical equipment as they prepared to no longer defend the building. They apparently thought it would be destroyed by the demonstrators, who were mostly residents of the East Precinct, some of whom live in multi-million-dollar mansions as well as in low-income social housing projects. The precinct also has the highest concentration of apartments and small independent retail businesses in Seattle.
Historically it has been the city’s most liberal council district; and since 2013 has repeatedly elected a Socialist Alternative Party member to the City Council, over the opposition of much better funded business-community candidates.
By Tuesday June 9, a loose conglomeration of demonstrators came together to use the former police street barricades to close off Pine street for a length of three blocks. Although Trump tweeted: “These people are not going to occupy a major portion of a great city,” it is not even part of downtown. It is a two-lane road lined with small neighborhood businesses and a park. The area came to be called by the occupants as CHAZ, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, and they put up a website.
However, the local conservative radio host Jason Rantz, interviewed by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday June 11, said it was a violent place. And that similar occupations to the one taking place in Seattle could happen in cities across the U.S. if the authorities allow it. Although Carlson began the interview saying that Rantz was one of the few people he knew who had visited CHAZ, Rantz basically admitted that he had not been inside when he replied to Carlson’s question of what he saw inside CHAZ, he said, “Right now, it’s too violent for us to go in.” He provided no examples of what kind of violence he was referring to.
The next day, Friday June 12, having been a prior resident for decades in that neighborhood, I went to see what dangers lurked in a community without police patrols.
I casually walked pass by the CHAZ street barrier and the three community sentries, who sat off a way behind it, talking to each other. No conversation or ID needed. It was a wide-open passage, where I discovered that CHAZ had become a bit of a tourist destination for curious Seattle residents taking photos of all the posters, graffiti and the one-block colorful mural painted on Pine Street spelling out BLACK LIVES MATTER.
The businesses on the street were still open as was the park when I visited. There was no sign of smashed windows or burnt buildings. There had been no looting and there was no violence of any sort occurring.
There was a “No Cop Co-Op” covered stand offering free fruit, vegetables, snacks, umbrellas, hand sanitizer and water set up in the middle of their occupied territory. There was also a covered truck converted into a People’s Community Clinic with its own emergency medical team. There were many memorials to victims of police violence, along with were other little touches of an emerging community; an open-air conversation café with sofas, a small basketball court, an improvised smoking corner, and a private food stall, the Dirty Dog hotdog stand, among other things.
One of the most ambitious undertakings was begun by Marcus Henderson, who helped create the community gardens that occupy part of the adjacent Cal Anderson Park. Henderson is typical of educated citizens who understand that disruptive moments like CHAZ offer a positive opportunity. He had the knowledge for sustainable gardening from obtaining an Energy Resources Engineering degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree in Sustainability in the Urban Environment.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan visited the gardens and met with Henderson the day after Trump had tweeted “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will.” In response, Durkan accused Trump of purposefully distorting the activities in CHAZ to fit his tough law and order mantra.
Trump may have also been watching Fox News, which was engaged in the same practice. Thanks to an article by Seattle Times reporter Jim Brunner, it came to light that Fox ran digitally altered images in coverage of CHAZ. Three separate photos were photo-shopped to create an image of a heavily armed man guarding the entrance to the zone. Another image, with a caption of CRAZY TOWN blazoned over a portion of it, showed huge flames pouring out of a building with a demonstrator running away. But it was not Seattle, the photo was from a May 30 protest in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Fox and other outlets also jumped on a comment by a Seattle police commander suggesting protesters were extorting payments from businesses within CHAZ. Seattle police Chief Carmen Best had to refute that statement, saying that it was based on rumor and social media. “We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said.
Best also said that she did not want to abandon the precinct station but had to because of pressure. However, she did not say the order came from Mayor Durkan, who did not say she made the decision. I got the impression that internal pressure came from the police union’s members to leave the precinct. This was particularly true when some councilmembers asked that the hard surface street barriers be removed that the police had set up to separate the demonstrators from standing on the street next to their police station.
The police attitude that their station might be torched and that chaos and disorder would follow in the neighborhood by allowing protestors to peacefully demonstrate so close to them, was bolstered not only by the unsubstantiated comment from the police commander but also from comments made by a local police officer and the union’s president.
A resident of one of the nearby apartment buildings, whom I know very well, told me of her interactions with a police officer. She was standing in front of her building on Monday June 8 at noon asking people what was going on. A police officer came by and announced, “We are all pulling out, and you’re all going to be on your own. We are not coming back in and you are not going to get help and bad elements will come in.” Then he added, “And who would want to work in Seattle [as police]?”
On the same day, June 12, that I visited CHAZ, Michael Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, told Fox News “This is the closest I’ve ever seen our country, let alone the city here, to becoming a lawless state.” It would lead one to believe that the police union had lost faith in receiving political cover for their use of excessive force, if the city council and mayor were to allow protestors so close to their precinct station.
Police officers in Seattle are not allowed to strike, but they may have actually adopted an old fashion factory “walk-out” by letting the police chief know that they could no longer execute their usual police practices if they remained there.
The most recent turn of events came in an interview on Saturday, June 13, where a person who claimed that he represented the Seattle Black Lives Matter group, said that the area popularized by the title CHAZ was not what their group was using to describe the street space that has been controlled by demonstrators since the police left their precinct station. They don’t know who came up with that name and haven’t met anyone representing them. That unknown group declared the name CHAZ and then spray painted the CHAZ slogans all around the area. Instead BLM is calling this zone CHOP — Capitol Hill Organizing Protest. They posted a tweet: Black Lives Matter @djbsqrd “WE ARE #CHOP not #CHAZ stop spilling lies and spreading this narrative of being autonomous”
The future of this urban resistance project, initiated by the Black Lives Matter movement, still has to be played out. Organizers continue to push for their objectives, which are posted on the CHAZ website. Talks and open-mike discussions occur regularly in large outside public forums on the purpose of this unique effort.
Overall, observers and participants will need to continue thinking about how claiming a portion of public space for an underserved and discriminated community can initiate effective social and political change, and not perpetuate the status quo or ignite a right-wing backlash that pursues further repressive policies.
Nick Licata is author of Becoming A Citizen Activist, andhas served 5 terms on the Seattle City Council, named progressive municipal official of the year by The Nation,and is founding board chair of Local Progress, a national network of 1,000 progressive municipal officials.
Subscribe to Licata’s newsletter Urban Politics


dailykos--2020-06-19--Upside down priorities cripple higher education: faculty, students left behind

One of the truly frustrating things about working for reforms in higher education is to get our college and university administrators to put education first and not allow the resources of the institutions to get hijacked for other purposes .
The inability to focus on the real problems is widespread and yet the solutions are right there before everyone ’ s eyes .
They only require the courage to address them .
The Covid-19 crisis has shined a bright light on the routine and typical mismanagement of our private and public universities .
The pressure to treat our public colleges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ designed to produce profits does a great deal to undermine the academic mission and take attention away from the institutions ’ reason for existing .
Top academic administrators are thoroughly sucked into this vortex for several reasons , including that their training is designed to make them fit the corporate model .
Take one of the most popular handbooks for administrators , Business Practices in Higher Education : A Guide for Today ’ s Administrators by Mark A. Kretovics .
Published in 2011 , it is clear where the author stands : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is an industry and that individual institutions have operated like a business .
Our core business practice just happens to be that of educating students.
” [ 1 ] I think this commodification of education is in great part what has gone wrong .
It distorts what is actually a pretty simple function , teaching and research .
It also tends to remove the focus from educating students to all of the other peripheral functions of the university and promotes the idea that all of these activities – construction , education , non-academic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , real estate development , research , and climbing walls – are all of roughly the same value .
In reading through several books that have been published recently about the perceived problems in higher education and the need for “ reform , ” I am struck by the fact that the authors never focus on the real problems facing higher education .
These are , simply put , administrative bloat , runaway spending on construction , massive athletic department debts , and , too often , shrinking spending on instruction and its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with part-time faculty .
Lesson Plan : An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education ( 2016 ) , written by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson , specifically identifies as “ overblown ” some of these real problems in our public colleges and universities .
I think the main problem with this short book stems from the experience of both Bowen and McPherson .
They both have long administrative careers in elite private universities and not public institutions – Bowen at Denison University in Ohio and Princeton University , McPherson at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generated their perspective .
Both have had fine careers - Bowen rose to become president of Princeton and McPherson was president of Macalester .
The result of this is that they do not address the long-term decline in funding for public higher education as a problem that needs to be reversed and they suggest that administrative bloat and the student loan crisis are “ overblown.
” Instead , they posit that the solution is more tinkering with classroom education and teaching strategies .
They suggest “ innovative ” approaches will be found through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempt to address the real cost drivers .
And when they get to the concept of “ free ” or “ debt-free ” college , it is no surprise that they fail to recognize cost as a genuine problem .
They argue instead that some students “ don ’ t borrow enough ” and work too much ?
Again , there is a clear disconnect from the real world our students deal with and the perspective present in this study .
Further , they distance themselves from the ample critics who point to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with growth in administrative staff outpacing growth in faculty .
This is not just a faculty complaint .
The Goldwater Institute , a conservative thinktank , has published research in their report in 2015 : Administrative Bloat at American Universities : The Real Reason for High Costs in Higher Education .
Goldwater points out that between 1993 and 2007 the number of full-time administrators per 100 students rose by 39 percent while the numbers of those engaged in teaching rose only 18 percent .
[ 2 ] Bowen and McPherson argue that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staff .
While that may be true , neither the growth in “ non-administrative ” staff or the flat number of people they consider administrators , matched the absolute decline in faculty between 2001 and 2007 .
That is a decline in faculty despite enrollment growth of 28 percent between 2000 and 2016 , a point about which neither author expresses concern .
[ 3 ] Driving this must , at least in part , be a factor common in bureaucracies , outlined in Benjamin Ginsberg ’ s The Fall of the Faculty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University and Why it Matters ( 2011 ) .
When a new academic executive assumes his or her position , there is a natural drive to have “ reports ” or staff to supervise and must report to you .
It is often how academic bureaucrats define their status .
Expanding without restraint , this has led to enormous numbers of staffers reporting to various deans , associate deans , assistant deans , and vice and assistant provosts .
To try to cover up this problem by blaming it on the growing “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claim , of the expanded staffing is , at best , an inadequate explanation .
And in what is evidence that they go really off the rails is their call for more assertive presidential leadership while they attack shared governance .
It is clear that one of the real problems at our colleges and universities is a lack of competent leadership in the upper administrative reaches of our institutions .
In Ohio , two particular cases in point are Wright State University and the University of Akron , where repeated and self-inflicted blunders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ examples abound .
Yet , Bowen and McPherson suggest that even stronger executive leadership is needed and even less participation from the faculty is also necessary .
“ Presidents need to exert real leadership , and faculty need to contribute the knowledge and the enthusiasm for teaching that they possess.
” [ 4 ] The obvious problem here is that because there are so many examples across the country of the failures of presidents , administrators , and boards of trustees , it is absolutely essential that faculty are allowed a greater role @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basics and a focus on the academic mission .
Two other studies of higher education include Derek Bok ’ s The Struggle to Reform our Colleges ( 2017 ) and Jon McGee ’ s Breakpoint : The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education ( 2015 ) .
[ 5 ] Formerly president of Harvard University , Bok is another example of a president of an Ivy League institution who seems removed from the reality on the ground for the vast majority of public universities .
McGee has served private universities as a financial analyst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bok maintains in his introduction that there are so many promising innovations in teaching and learning relying on new technologies and research that they must be pushed into the classroom .
So , of course , exploration of these issues rather than addressing the real problems plaguing our public universities takes up much of the text .
There is an interesting chapter on the quality of higher education that reviews the question of whether students are learning as much now in college as they have in the past .
Bok concludes the studies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least some evidence that students are not learning as much as they once did .
Bok determines at the end of the chapter that the solution to this is to have more professors move to active learning strategies , like group work , in the classroom and away from passive learning strategies , like lectures .
The problem that Bok has to face when arguing that the solution is a change in teaching strategies is that if learning was good once with predominant lectures but declined while lectures were still predominant then what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ styles that caused the decline ( if there was a decline ) .
It was something to do with the students .
And what has been the biggest overall change for students ?
The skyrocketing cost of higher education ( caused by defunding at the state level and mismanagement at the administrative level ) has pushed students to work too much and borrow too much .
The days when a student could just be a student have largely disappeared .
Bok goes out of his way to argue that working more is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of us who teach at public universities , it is clearly the big reason that students can ’ t focus as much time on their studies as they once could .
Bok continues with some interesting chapters about the difference in perceptions between universities and employers on what students learn , the impact of for-profits on higher ed , and the ineffectiveness of performance funding on the state level .
But he provides no chapter on flourishing administrative bloat , grandiose construction projects , or runaway athletic deficits .
Both Bok as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do spend time on a bad idea about how to address putting more faculty in the classroom .
They both propose creating large full-time teaching corps of faculty out of the massive numbers of part-time teachers .
Cutting way back on the immoral exploitation of part-time faculty is a good idea but the authors argue that this group of teaching professors should not be granted tenure .
They reflect the too common notions held at our research universities that devalue teaching as part of the academic mission .
Being less important , tenure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The authors are clearly wrong on this point .
Tenure is the armor of academic freedom .
It is the ability to be protected for being arbitrarily fired because you said or wrote something unpopular .
These days , it is far more likely that tenure will be important to protect a teacher who said something provocative in the classroom in order to spur critical thinking and debate than for someone producing a heavily-researched piece on the Hanseatic League or gene-splicing .
Tenure is essential for faculty , both teaching and researching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some ways , is a symptom of the problem .
By seeing higher education as just another commodity in the marketplace , he addresses it with the same corporatized and distorted lens that has been the source of many of our problems over the last 20 years or so .
His best chapters are about the “ disruptions ” that have faced the country ’ s institutions of higher ed – demographic ( shrinking college age population ) , economic ( economic downturns and defunding from state legislatures ) , and cultural ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a broad-based education ) .
Sadly , for a book that might have focused on the economics of higher education , McGee missed a golden opportunity to focus on the triumvirate of financial problems – administration bloat , grandiose construction projects , and runaway athletic spending .
And yet not a word about those issues .
In conclusion , these studies , by top administrative leaders in higher education , are further evidence that our administrative class , for whatever reason , just doesn ’ t get it .
And , it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sampling of the many misguided books being produced about higher education that will never encourage the reforms so desperately needed .
It is undoubtedly true that our colleges and universities should have funding restored to them .
At present , the state of Ohio contributes less than 20 percent of the operating budgets of the state institutions .
Twenty years ago , that number was closer to 70 percent but more than 70 percent is now what students are paying for their education .
State funding is not the only problem .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis that institutions focus more of their revenue on the academic mission – and not peripheral activities .
Too often , we hear the university referred to as the “ enterprise ” by top administrators .
That is a sign that , amid all the pressure from the chamber of commerce , athletic boosters , and those with a “ edifice ” complex , they have lost track that our central job is teaching , learning , and research .

By John McNay
One of the truly frustrating things about working for reforms in higher education is to get our college and university administrators to put education first and not allow the resources of the institutions to get hijacked for other purposes. The inability to focus on the real problems is widespread and yet the solutions are right there before everyone’s eyes. They only require the courage to address them.
The Covid-19 crisis has shined a bright light on the routine and typical mismanagement of our private and public universities.
The pressure to treat our public colleges and universities as though they were corporations designed to produce profits does a great deal to undermine the academic mission and take attention away from the institutions’ reason for existing. Top academic administrators are thoroughly sucked into this vortex for several reasons, including that their training is designed to make them fit the corporate model.
Take one of the most popular handbooks for administrators, Business Practices in Higher Education: A Guide for Today’s Administrators by Mark A. Kretovics. Published in 2011, it is clear where the author stands: “It is my contention that higher education is an industry and that individual institutions have operated like a business. Our core business practice just happens to be that of educating students.”[1]
I think this commodification of education is in great part what has gone wrong. It distorts what is actually a pretty simple function, teaching and research. It also tends to remove the focus from educating students to all of the other peripheral functions of the university and promotes the idea that all of these activities – construction, education, non-academic staffing, teaching, athletics, restructuring, real estate development, research, and climbing walls – are all of roughly the same value.
In reading through several books that have been published recently about the perceived problems in higher education and the need for “reform,” I am struck by the fact that the authors never focus on the real problems facing higher education. These are, simply put, administrative bloat, runaway spending on construction, massive athletic department debts, and, too often, shrinking spending on instruction and its related problem, replacing tenure-track full-time positions with part-time faculty.
Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education (2016), written by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson, specifically identifies as “overblown” some of these real problems in our public colleges and universities. I think the main problem with this short book stems from the experience of both Bowen and McPherson. They both have long administrative careers in elite private universities and not public institutions – Bowen at Denison University in Ohio and Princeton University, McPherson at Macalester College – and this has apparently generated their perspective. Both have had fine careers - Bowen rose to become president of Princeton and McPherson was president of Macalester.
The result of this is that they do not address the long-term decline in funding for public higher education as a problem that needs to be reversed and they suggest that administrative bloat and the student loan crisis are “overblown.” Instead, they posit that the solution is more tinkering with classroom education and teaching strategies. They suggest “innovative” approaches will be found through technology. Again, there is no attempt to address the real cost drivers.
And when they get to the concept of “free” or “debt-free” college, it is no surprise that they fail to recognize cost as a genuine problem. They argue instead that some students “don’t borrow enough” and work too much? Again, there is a clear disconnect from the real world our students deal with and the perspective present in this study. Further, they distance themselves from the ample critics who point to administrative bloat as a real problem, with growth in administrative staff outpacing growth in faculty. This is not just a faculty complaint. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative thinktank, has published research in their report in 2015: Administrative Bloat at American Universities: The Real Reason for High Costs in Higher Education. Goldwater points out that between 1993 and 2007 the number of full-time administrators per 100 students rose by 39 percent while the numbers of those engaged in teaching rose only 18 percent.[2]
Bowen and McPherson argue that the non-instructional staffing growth are not really executive staff. While that may be true, neither the growth in “non-administrative” staff or the flat number of people they consider administrators, matched the absolute decline in faculty between 2001 and 2007. That is a decline in faculty despite enrollment growth of 28 percent between 2000 and 2016, a point about which neither author expresses concern.[3]
Driving this must, at least in part, be a factor common in bureaucracies, outlined in Benjamin Ginsberg’s The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why it Matters (2011). When a new academic executive assumes his or her position, there is a natural drive to have “reports” or staff to supervise and must report to you. It is often how academic bureaucrats define their status. Expanding without restraint, this has led to enormous numbers of staffers reporting to various deans, associate deans, assistant deans, and vice and assistant provosts. To try to cover up this problem by blaming it on the growing “professionalism,” as Bowen and McPherson claim, of the expanded staffing is, at best, an inadequate explanation.
And in what is evidence that they go really off the rails is their call for more assertive presidential leadership while they attack shared governance. It is clear that one of the real problems at our colleges and universities is a lack of competent leadership in the upper administrative reaches of our institutions. In Ohio, two particular cases in point are Wright State University and the University of Akron, where repeated and self-inflicted blunders have hobbled both universities. And more examples abound.
Yet, Bowen and McPherson suggest that even stronger executive leadership is needed and even less participation from the faculty is also necessary. “Presidents need to exert real leadership, and faculty need to contribute the knowledge and the enthusiasm for teaching that they possess.”[4] The obvious problem here is that because there are so many examples across the country of the failures of presidents, administrators, and boards of trustees, it is absolutely essential that faculty are allowed a greater role in leading the institutions back to the basics and a focus on the academic mission.
Two other studies of higher education include Derek Bok’s The Struggle to Reform our Colleges (2017) and Jon McGee’s Breakpoint: The Changing Marketplace for Higher Education (2015).[5] Formerly president of Harvard University, Bok is another example of a president of an Ivy League institution who seems removed from the reality on the ground for the vast majority of public universities. McGee has served private universities as a financial analyst rather than on the academic side.
Bok maintains in his introduction that there are so many promising innovations in teaching and learning relying on new technologies and research that they must be pushed into the classroom. So, of course, exploration of these issues rather than addressing the real problems plaguing our public universities takes up much of the text. There is an interesting chapter on the quality of higher education that reviews the question of whether students are learning as much now in college as they have in the past. Bok concludes the studies are not conclusive but do provide at least some evidence that students are not learning as much as they once did. Bok determines at the end of the chapter that the solution to this is to have more professors move to active learning strategies, like group work, in the classroom and away from passive learning strategies, like lectures.
The problem that Bok has to face when arguing that the solution is a change in teaching strategies is that if learning was good once with predominant lectures but declined while lectures were still predominant then what changed? It wasn’t teaching styles that caused the decline (if there was a decline). It was something to do with the students. And what has been the biggest overall change for students? The skyrocketing cost of higher education (caused by defunding at the state level and mismanagement at the administrative level) has pushed students to work too much and borrow too much. The days when a student could just be a student have largely disappeared. Bok goes out of his way to argue that working more is not an explanation. Yet, for those of us who teach at public universities, it is clearly the big reason that students can’t focus as much time on their studies as they once could.
Bok continues with some interesting chapters about the difference in perceptions between universities and employers on what students learn, the impact of for-profits on higher ed, and the ineffectiveness of performance funding on the state level. But he provides no chapter on flourishing administrative bloat, grandiose construction projects, or runaway athletic deficits.
Both Bok as well as Bowen and McPherson, however, do spend time on a bad idea about how to address putting more faculty in the classroom. They both propose creating large full-time teaching corps of faculty out of the massive numbers of part-time teachers. Cutting way back on the immoral exploitation of part-time faculty is a good idea but the authors argue that this group of teaching professors should not be granted tenure. They reflect the too common notions held at our research universities that devalue teaching as part of the academic mission. Being less important, tenure is not a necessary protection for teachers.
The authors are clearly wrong on this point. Tenure is the armor of academic freedom. It is the ability to be protected for being arbitrarily fired because you said or wrote something unpopular. These days, it is far more likely that tenure will be important to protect a teacher who said something provocative in the classroom in order to spur critical thinking and debate than for someone producing a heavily-researched piece on the Hanseatic League or gene-splicing. Tenure is essential for faculty, both teaching and researching.
McGee’s book, in some ways, is a symptom of the problem. By seeing higher education as just another commodity in the marketplace, he addresses it with the same corporatized and distorted lens that has been the source of many of our problems over the last 20 years or so. His best chapters are about the “disruptions” that have faced the country’s institutions of higher ed – demographic (shrinking college age population), economic (economic downturns and defunding from state legislatures), and cultural (increasing focus on job training rather than a broad-based education). Sadly, for a book that might have focused on the economics of higher education, McGee missed a golden opportunity to focus on the triumvirate of financial problems – administration bloat, grandiose construction projects, and runaway athletic spending. And yet not a word about those issues.
In conclusion, these studies, by top administrative leaders in higher education, are further evidence that our administrative class, for whatever reason, just doesn’t get it. And, it is important to recognize, this is just a sampling of the many misguided books being produced about higher education that will never encourage the reforms so desperately needed.
It is undoubtedly true that our colleges and universities should have funding restored to them. At present, the state of Ohio contributes less than 20 percent of the operating budgets of the state institutions. Twenty years ago, that number was closer to 70 percent but more than 70 percent is now what students are paying for their education.
State funding is not the only problem. It is crucial that in the covid crisis that institutions focus more of their revenue on the academic mission – and not peripheral activities. Too often, we hear the university referred to as the “enterprise” by top administrators. That is a sign that, amid all the pressure from the chamber of commerce, athletic boosters, and those with a “edifice” complex, they have lost track that our central job is teaching, learning, and research.
The nation deserves better.


dailykos--2020-06-19--Flip Everything: A Downballot Guide To Create a Blue Wave Everywhere!

It ’ s been a while since I ’ ve written any diaries for both personal and other reasons , but in my lurking across different Democratic supportive websites I ’ ve always seen the same question over and over asked by those newly activated and long time activists alike : What are the competitive races that need support ?
This question lead me on a search to find a resource that could be easily digested and shared among friends/family and networks for competitive races down ballot .
There was nothing even close .
And if there was anything down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So I decided to start a project to make it a bit easier for people to both understand and support the races that are an after thought of the presidential election .
It started with Senate seats and an idea to create an ActBlue fund with multiple races splitting every donation .
Congressional and special election races joined the project soon after .
The other question I saw frequently asked : What state legislative chambers can flip to Democrats ?
This led to the research and creation of Break The Gerrymander , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out which state legislative chambers by the data could be flipped and then also which races we would have to win in order to do so .
After completing that tall task I figured I was done , but then the thought occurred to me : What about all the other voters who live in states without flippable chambers ?
So I guess I took some crazy pills because I decided to do down ballot data research for every non Democratic governed state legislative chamber from Alaska to Wyoming and everything in between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d ever get this far and the small project has turned into a massive one .
I ’ m happy to say the project is now complete .
- Data from every election possible of potentially winnable races from Senate to state legislature across the country .
- Funds to support all these down ballot candidates .
- A volunteer from home weekly updated spreadsheet for activism opportunities ( Thanks to mtlebanonriseup for always updating it on a different website for that part ! )
.
Anything anyone could possibly want or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , from the seasoned professional to the newly political .
This project took over a year to complete from start to finish , so I hope people find use in it to help make a blue wave hit every state !
In the 2020 election let ’ s do all we can to Flip Everything !
Thanks everyone for reading , please feel free to bookmark and/or share !

It’s been a while since I’ve written any diaries for both personal and other reasons, but in my lurking across different Democratic supportive websites I’ve always seen the same question over and over asked by those newly activated and long time activists alike:
What are the competitive races that need support?
This question lead me on a search to find a resource that could be easily digested and shared among friends/family and networks for competitive races down ballot. There was nothing even close. And if there was anything down ballot it was only about 1 state. So I decided to start a project to make it a bit easier for people to both understand and support the races that are an after thought of the presidential election. It started with Senate seats and an idea to create an ActBlue fund with multiple races splitting every donation. Congressional and special election races joined the project soon after.
The other question I saw frequently asked:
What state legislative chambers can flip to Democrats?
This led to the research and creation of Break The Gerrymander, another piece of the project. Figuring out which state legislative chambers by the data could be flipped and then also which races we would have to win in order to do so. After completing that tall task I figured I was done, but then the thought occurred to me: What about all the other voters who live in states without flippable chambers?
So I guess I took some crazy pills because I decided to do down ballot data research for every non Democratic governed state legislative chamber from Alaska to Wyoming and everything in between. I didn’t think I’d ever get this far and the small project has turned into a massive one.
I’m happy to say the project is now complete.
- Data from every election possible of potentially winnable races from Senate to state legislature across the country.
- Supreme Court seats that could stop gerrymandering.
- Democratic nominee names and campaign websites.
- Funds to support all these down ballot candidates.
- A volunteer from home weekly updated spreadsheet for activism opportunities (Thanks to mtlebanonriseup for always updating it on a different website for that part!).
Anything anyone could possibly want or need to do activism wherever they are, from the seasoned professional to the newly political.
This project took over a year to complete from start to finish, so I hope people find use in it to help make a blue wave hit every state!
In the 2020 election let’s do all we can to Flip Everything!
Thanks everyone for reading, please feel free to bookmark and/or share!


dailykos--2020-06-20--Poll: With no mask on tonight, is Trump in effect saying “White Lives Don’t Matter” in Tulsa?

It ’ s been clear from the beginning that Trump would never wear a mask because it would muss his @ @ @ @ @ and his hair .
And he knows that his followers won ’ t either .
@ @ @ @ @ wearing a t-shirt that says : Their adoration now is more important than their survival @ @ @ @ @ back to haunt him ?
Is this the beginning of the end for his solid @ @ @ @ @ hat come to mean , “ Make America Gasp Again ” a month from now @

It’s been clear from the beginning that Trump would never wear a mask because it would muss his macho, his makeup, and his hair. And he knows that his followers won’t either.
He might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says:
“White Lives Don’t Matter”
Their adoration now is more important than their survival later. Will this come back to haunt him? Is this the beginning of the end for his solid base? Will the MAGA hat come to mean, “Make America Gasp Again” a month from now?


dailykos--2020-06-20--When Karma Strikes: The Facts And Law Of Berman’s Humiliation of Attorney General Barr.

The Trump Administration roils America from one Constitutional crisis to the next .
Today we deal with the attempted firing of Geoffrey Berman , the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York ( SDNY ) , a district known to be investigating Trump associates , including Rudy Giuliani .
The district also investigated , indicted , and convicted prior Trump personal attorney , Michael Cohen , while effectively naming Trump himself ( aka “ Individual One ” ) as an un-indicted co-conspirator to some of Cohen ’ s crimes .
In `` Friday Night Massacre fashion , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a press release saying that Berman was “ stepping down.
” This was a lie to the American people .
Berman is not “ stepping down , ” did not agree to any such thing .
Barr was trying to fire Berman .
Berman found out about this skullduggery only from the press release itself .
Berman then issued a statement making clear that he is not resigning , while insinuating that Barr ’ s attempt to fire him was an effort to obstruct politically sensitive investigations current underway .
This is Berman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are not well concealed : “ I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘ stepping down ’ as United States Attorney .
I have not resigned , and have no intention of resigning , my position , to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York .
I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate .
Until then , our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work with the men and women of this Office to pursue justice without fear or favor — and intend to ensure that this Office ’ s important cases continue unimpeded.
” What happens next ?
What will Barr do ?
It doesn ’ t help that Barr also announced he intends to replace Berman with a longtime friend who has never been a prosecutor .
In his press release , Barr did allow a transition period , saying the appointment of Berman ’ s replacement , Jim Clayton of the SEC , would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until then for this to get worked out .
On July 3d will Barr try to send U.S. Marshalls to forcibly escort Berman out of the office ?
I doubt it .
Keep reading .
Berman says he is not leaving until “ a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate.
” Does Berman have a legal basis to make that assertion ?
As it turns out , he does .
To understand how , we need to follow the path of how Berman came to hold his position .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Senate confirmation process by hiring people on an interim or “ acting ” basis coming back to bite him .
Berman ’ s position was previously held by Preet Bharara .
Bharara was dismissed from the position in a controversial purge of U.S .
Attorneys in March 2017 .
Given the controversy surrounding Bharara ’ s firing , Trump wanted to appoint a new person for the SDNY without going through the Senate confirmation process .
Berman , who donated to Trump ’ s Campaign and worked in the Trump transition team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interim United States Attorney for the SDNY .
Now we get into the law .
The relevant statute is 28 U.S.C .
§ 546 , providing for filling vacancies in United States Attorney positions .
Section ( a ) states that “ the Attorney General may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the office of United States attorney is vacant.
” That is what happened with Berman .
Attorney General Sessions appointed Berman as an interim United States Attorney to replace Bharara .
Trump never did , and still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. Attorney to fill the vacancy by going through the Senate confirmation process .
Section ( c ) limits such an interim appointment to either when a new United States Attorney is Senate confirmed , or 120 days , whichever is shorter .
Obviously that 120 days under Subsection ( c ) ( 2 ) has passed .
Time to move on to the very interesting Section ( d ) .
That ’ s what happened with Berman .
As the 120 days expired , the judges for the Southern District of New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the vacancy is filled by a person confirmed by the Senate .
Berman is perfectly within his rights to stay in his job until the vacancy is filled by a person confirmed by the Senate .
Barr and Trump may not like it , but that ’ s the law .
This was a high stakes move by Barr that smacks of desperation .
He put his credibility on the line , and was revealed by his subordinate to have lied to the American people as the subordinate publicly defies and taunts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know this was a risk , and he did it anyway .
Why ?
One explanation , hinted at in Berman ’ s statement , is that Barr knows of indictments coming down ( perhaps of Rudy Giuliani or members of Trump ’ s family ) that Trump wants to stop .
If so , this move was nothing short of obstruction of justice .
Barr ’ s only legal recourse is to have Trump formally submit Clayton ’ s name to the Senate for confirmation and ask Mitch McConnell to railroad it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk .
Some Republican Senators may not go along with it .
Names like Romney , Collins and Murkowski come to mind .
Again , Trump ’ s habitual circumventing of the Senate confirmation process presents us with a delicious and well deserved case of karma .
In the meantime , Berman stays right where he is until such confirmation actually happens .

The Trump Administration roils America from one Constitutional crisis to the next. Today we deal with the attempted firing of Geoffrey Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), a district known to be investigating Trump associates, including Rudy Giuliani. The district also investigated, indicted, and convicted prior Trump personal attorney, Michael Cohen, while effectively naming Trump himself (aka “Individual One”) as an un-indicted co-conspirator to some of Cohen’s crimes.
In "Friday Night Massacre fashion, late Friday night Attorney General Barr issued a press release saying that Berman was “stepping down.” This was a lie to the American people.
Berman is not “stepping down,” did not agree to any such thing. Barr was trying to fire Berman. Berman found out about this skullduggery only from the press release itself. Berman then issued a statement making clear that he is not resigning, while insinuating that Barr’s attempt to fire him was an effort to obstruct politically sensitive investigations current underway. This is Berman’s full statement and those implications are not well concealed:
“I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption. I cherish every day that I work with the men and women of this Office to pursue justice without fear or favor — and intend to ensure that this Office’s important cases continue unimpeded.”
What happens next? What will Barr do? It doesn’t help that Barr also announced he intends to replace Berman with a longtime friend who has never been a prosecutor. In his press release, Barr did allow a transition period, saying the appointment of Berman’s replacement, Jim Clayton of the SEC, would be effective July 3. We have until then for this to get worked out.
On July 3d will Barr try to send U.S. Marshalls to forcibly escort Berman out of the office? I doubt it. Keep reading.
Berman says he is not leaving until “a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate.” Does Berman have a legal basis to make that assertion? As it turns out, he does. To understand how, we need to follow the path of how Berman came to hold his position. This is a story of Trump’s avoiding the Senate confirmation process by hiring people on an interim or “acting” basis coming back to bite him.
Berman’s position was previously held by Preet Bharara. Bharara was dismissed from the position in a controversial purge of U.S. Attorneys in March 2017. Given the controversy surrounding Bharara’s firing, Trump wanted to appoint a new person for the SDNY without going through the Senate confirmation process. Berman, who donated to Trump’s Campaign and worked in the Trump transition team, was tapped for the job of interim United States Attorney for the SDNY.
Now we get into the law. The relevant statute is 28 U.S.C. § 546, providing for filling vacancies in United States Attorney positions. Section (a) states that “the Attorney General may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the office of United States attorney is vacant.” That is what happened with Berman. Attorney General Sessions appointed Berman as an interim United States Attorney to replace Bharara. Trump never did, and still has not, formally nominated a permanent U.S. Attorney to fill the vacancy by going through the Senate confirmation process.
Section (c) limits such an interim appointment to either when a new United States Attorney is Senate confirmed, or 120 days, whichever is shorter. Obviously that 120 days under Subsection (c)(2) has passed. Time to move on to the very interesting Section (d).
“(d) If an appointment expires under subsection (c)(2), the district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled.”
That’s what happened with Berman. As the 120 days expired, the judges for the Southern District of New York unanimously appointed him until such time as the vacancy is filled by a person confirmed by the Senate. Berman is perfectly within his rights to stay in his job until the vacancy is filled by a person confirmed by the Senate. Barr and Trump may not like it, but that’s the law.
This was a high stakes move by Barr that smacks of desperation. He put his credibility on the line, and was revealed by his subordinate to have lied to the American people as the subordinate publicly defies and taunts him in return. Barr had to know this was a risk, and he did it anyway. Why? One explanation, hinted at in Berman’s statement, is that Barr knows of indictments coming down (perhaps of Rudy Giuliani or members of Trump’s family) that Trump wants to stop. If so, this move was nothing short of obstruction of justice.
Barr’s only legal recourse is to have Trump formally submit Clayton’s name to the Senate for confirmation and ask Mitch McConnell to railroad it through. That strategy has its own risk. Some Republican Senators may not go along with it. Names like Romney, Collins and Murkowski come to mind. Again, Trump’s habitual circumventing of the Senate confirmation process presents us with a delicious and well deserved case of karma.
In the meantime, Berman stays right where he is until such confirmation actually happens.


dailykos--2020-06-20--Banking Apartheid, Debt Slavery, and Financial Lynching: Why People Riot

Kimberly Latrice Jones , a black author and screenwriter , was out filming anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests when she explained In a You Tube Video why the focus in all discussions on the rioting in the protests was wrong .
We should not focus on the what they are doing , she said , but the why they are doing it : “ Let ’ s ask ourselves why in this country in 2020 , why the financial gap between poor Blacks and the rest of the world is at such a distance that people feel their only hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the things that we flaunt and flash in front of them all the time is to walk through a broken glass window and get it , ” Jones continued : “ Why are people that poor ?
Why are people that broke ?
Why are people that food insecure , clothing insecure that they feel their only shot is walking through a broken glass window and getting it ?
” No doubt , that is the important question .
The African Americans live in an economic pressure cooker .
Economists churn out cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white and black median household net worth such as $ 171,000 whites and $ 17,000 for blacks .
But how did this happen ?
It was no accident .
Home ownership is the key to amassing wealth in any community including the black community .
For , not only can owners eventually reduce their housing costs , but pass on a considerable amount of capital to their children so they have a substantial down payment for a house themselves with easy to manage mortgage payments .
The bankers and real estate agents have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help the Black community achieve home ownership— and the government regulators assist by turning a blind eye to their tactics .
Here is a story of financial lynching and the way it has been done , generation after generation .
The biggest shock I got in my first years as a lawyer came with the realization that there were people who could make money on the backs of the poor .
Even if a poor person had saved only $ 100 , they knew how to grab it .
And these predators @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were an intricate part of the dirtiest market of all , the housing mortgage market .
The predatory practices in payday loan companies pale in comparison to those in the real estate and mortgage lending businesses .
There , they grab life savings .
Their vulture craft specializes in more than just perverting government programs designed to help the disadvantaged by creaming off the benefits .
It includes blaming them for the failure of the program with a “ you just can ’ t help these people.
” What I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those in the lower economic class , but 10 times over to African Americans .
The 2008 crisis gives us a window on how bankers destroyed the financial future of the black community and how the powerful banker lobby covered it up so the bankers could do it again .
Many commentators have exposed the racism in redlining , but there were far more destructive practices in mortgage lending that continued long after redlining was sidelined .
The media naïvely reported the bankers spin that the 2008 crisis was caused by poor people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in life by applying for mortgage loans they could never payback .
The Internet was rife with memes mocking these undeserving poor as NINJAs–no income–no jobs–no assets .
The bankers posed as soft-hearted fools who lent to these unworthies in the false belief that the housing market would always rise .
The banker spin gives the impression there were no lending standards , or they were severely lessened , but there were the commonsense ones that everyone understands .
The applicants needed to have a source of income adequate to cover the installment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an acceptable credit score , and few debts and such .
These lending standards , while lowered slightly , were never abandoned .
However , the loan officers were paid several thousand dollars a pop for successful applications .
In her book , All the Devils Are Here , investigative journalist , Bethany McLean , reports interviewing some recent high school grad loan officers pulling down $ 30- $ 40,000 a month .
Mary Garvin , who ran a business that involved advising car dealerships , told me that starting in 1999 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business as loan officers .
She knew if they were doing to mortgage sales what they had done with car sales , “ this won ’ t be some backdoor sale gone wrong , this will be a huge problem and show up on the national stage ” .
That proved to be an understatement .
Imagine the incentive when the pool of qualified applicants dried up .
Loan officers began to recruit unqualified applicants , dazzled the opportunity of buying a home in front of their eyes to get them to sign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officers altered the applications to make it appear that the applicants met the lending standards .
Law professors Kathleen Engel and Patricia McCoy investigations how loan officers continued the fervor of this modern gold rush after the supply of credit worthy applicants dried up in The Subprime Virus “ Brokers and lenders perfected marketing strategies to find naïve homeowners and dupe them into subprime loans .
Some hired “ cold callers ” who would contact homeowners to see if they were interested in a new mortgage .
.
.
Brokers and lenders .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to find homes with outstanding housing code violations , betting that the homeowners needed cash to make repairs .
They read local obituaries to identify older women who had recently lost their husbands , surmising that widows were financially gullible .
They also identified potential borrowers from consumer sales transactions .
For example , in Virginia , Bennie Roberts , who could neither read nor write , bought a side of beef and over 100 pounds of other meat from a roadside stand on credit from the notorious subprime lender Associates First Capital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrange the consumer loan , the loan officer from Associates learned that Mr. Roberts had no mortgage on his home .
He soon convinced his new client to take out a loan using the equity in his home .
Associates refinanced that mortgage ten times in four years .
The principal after the refinancings was $ 45,000 , of which $ 19,000 was paid to Associates in fees.
” There ’ s lots of corroborating evidence to what Engel and McCoy described .
To take a couple of examples : In 2005 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ story quoting former workers at Ameriquest , one of the largest U. S. sub-prime mortgage lenders until its dissolution in September 2007 .
One ex -employee , Mark Bomchill , told of relentless telemarketing to find dupes with the poorest credit .
Once the victims were found , the loan officers fudged the applications : “ They forged documents , hyped customers ’ creditworthiness and ‘ juiced ’ mortgages with hidden rates and fees.
” Another example : Eileen Foster was the vice president in charge of fraud protection at Countrywide Financial .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ fraud regarding subprime mortgages to her Countrywide superiors — all ignored .
In an interview on 60 minutes in December , 2011 , she told Steve Kroft of a typical finding when she inspected offices : “ All of the — the recycle bins , whenever we looked through those they were full of , you know , signatures that had been cut off of one document and put onto another and then photocopied , you know , or faxed and then the — you know , the creation thrown — thrown in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mentioned book , McLean devotes an entire chapter , I Like Big Bucks and I Can not Lie , to interviews with former employees from a range of banks with similar stories of loan officers fraudulently altering applications .
All this evidence of loan officer , not applicant , fraud was ignored by the commentators of influence who wrote the books and media columns about the 2008 crisis — for a purpose .
The public had to believe that the underclass was to blame .
It enabled the bankers to counter complaints from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement by pointing to this fake homeowner deceit .
For a recent and thorough academic study exposing the serious extent of fraud in the 2008 crisis see : John Griffin , Ten Years of Evidence : Was Fraud a Force in the Financial Crisis ?
The reforms after the Great Depression had directed the money to the homeowners and started an era of income equality that ’ s stretched until the Reagan years of the 1980s .
In 2008 , the Democrats had control of both House and Senate and passed the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buy the mortgages then give relief to the home owners .
The New York Times published the draft legislation .
However , once the allocation was approved and Treasury had control of the money , Treasury Secretary Hank P aulson directed that the money go straight to the banks .
There was no great outrage at the switch likely because the media and internet discussion focused on those irresponsible homeowners who had supposedly scammed the system to live beyond their means and didn ’ t see it happen .
Yet , when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2009 , 200 billion reamined that could have been redirected for homowner benefit .
However , they let the Paulson directive stay in place .
And , while another $ 96 billion had been earmarked for the homeowners , only 20 % got to them .
New Treasury Secretary , Democrat Timothy Geithner , intended that result .
As special investigative counsel Neil Barofsky reported , Geithner slowed the disbursement of the funds to allow the banks to organize foreclosures .
He had no intention of letting this money trickle down to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This delay allowed some senior bankers , such as Steve Mnuchin , to form corporations to buy the mortgages at $ .50 on the dollar , foreclose and evict to become super-sized corporate residential landlords .
Black home owners were transformed into rent paying tenants .
They could no longer amass wealth by owning a home ; that capital increase would now go to the bankers .
Geithner went to his reward with a lucrative position at a private Wall Street bank .
Mnuchin got to be Treasury Secretary as one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Washington swamp .
History Repeated Itself and Then Repeated Itself and Then… This was not the first time the banker-real estate industry cooperated in application fraud and blamed it on the homeowners .
In her book , Race for Profit : How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership , black academic Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor details their tactics exposed during the early 1970s in the country wide fraud involving the Federal Housing Authority ( FHA ) initiative to provide insurance for low down payment home purchases .
It was a two-step @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( ultimately you the taxpayers , dear readers ) and the black community .
In the first stage , real estate speculators ( often the real estate agent selling the house disguised by using a nominee ) would buy a dilapidated house at a low price , do some cosmetic changes such as carpeting over rotting floors and painting over evidence of termites and the like , bribe an FHA inspector for a good report , and sell it at an inflated price — a manoeuvre known as flipping .
Then the agent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a credit agency .
The bank would take the evidence at face value and submit this fraudulent application for FHA insurance .
FHA officers took bribes to look the other way .
Taylor ’ s investigation revealed that the false inspection reports we ’ re done in the black areas , White purchasers got accurate reports .
The purchasers could barely afford the mortgage payments ; they had nothing left for major repairs and soon defaulted on their mortgage .
The banks didn ’ t care because when the purchasers defaulted , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loan from the FHA .
The real estate agents benefited , not only from the blown up sale price , but because they would buy that house at foreclosure prices and use it in the same scam again .
Taylor observes , as I have also seen , that the sharks look for people who are likely to default .
As her research shows , their preferred victims were Black women .
Starting with the story of Janice Johnson , Taylor tells tales of a number of Blacks who were scammed in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the fulfillment of the American dream ; it was the beginning of an American nightmare .
Within days of moving into her new home , the sewer line broke , spewing wastewater all over the basement floor .
The electricity for the house was sporadic and haphazard .
There were holes and other irregularities in the foundation of the home .
All of the windows in Johnson ’ s new house were nailed shut and inoperable .
The floorboards in her dining room were so rotten that she feared her dining room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The compromised structure of the house was not the worst of it .
On Halloween night , Johnson ’ s son , Edward , woke up to find a rat in his bed .
Janice saw rats throughout her house , including in the kitchen and bathroom.
” Although , the real estate agent made a few minor repairs , he soon told her that the problems in her house were now her own .
They were “ homeowner ’ s business.
” There were a number of arrests , law suits and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while , those practices seemed to have diminished .
But , in the lead up to the 2008 crisis , they reared their predatory heads once more .
A 2001 , Senate Committee headed by Carl Levin ( D-Mich ) warned the same process had re-surfaced in a report entitled , “ Property Flipping : HUD ’ s failure to curb mortgage fraud.
” The regulators did nothing .
In 2004 , the FBI warned a Senate committee of the extensive insider fraud in the banking-real estate industry at the application stage : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to orchestrate the scheme by fabricating loan applications and the supporting documentation ( W-2s , tax returns , employment/income and bank verifications ) .
As a result , industry insiders were able to circumvent the safeguards of numerous finance companies.
” Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker told CNN , “ It has the potential to be an epidemic ” .
The regulators did nothing .
In 2008 , when that financial epidemic did strike , the regulators again did not investigate the fraud by the loan officers and the real estate agents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fraud was not a significant factor and , anyway , it was the homeowners who had committed the little fraud that had happened and who had duped the reckless and foolish but criminally innocent bankers .
Mainstream economists assisted by publishing complicated analyses blaming a long laundry list of factors that buried the role of fraud — if it was even mentioned .
Congress then passed the thousand page Dodd Frank Act as if complexity of legislation was proof of effectiveness — but with absolutely no mention of banker fraud .
This blaming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ equal transfer of assistance to the working and middle classes achieved by the reforms after the Great Depression , to the massive upward transfer of wealth through the banks in 2008 , and presently through the corporations in the Covid 19 stimulus programs .
At the present time the banks made high risk loans to corporations not home buyers .
The corporations are getting the stimulus money to repay banks for loans that should never have been advanced in the first place .
Details here .
The African Americans are told to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But they have been patient .
It ’ s been 60 some years since the promise of civil rights advancements from the days of MLK jr .
If there were any advancements , they have been undone .
Voting is of no help .
Neither of the Clinton or Obama administrations were effective in ending the serious income inequality that keeps so much of the Black community in poverty .
The black community ’ s leaders and advocates need to be heard and given access to the bank-real estate industry , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to correct the problems therein and undo the damage it has done to them .
We have to reflect on what MLK Jr. said : That a riot is the language of the unheard .
Peaceful protests and riots are both valuable .
Both lend different forms of agency to oppressed groups , and we have no right to dictate to them how to voice discontent when we haven ’ t been listening in the first place .

Kimberly Latrice Jones, a black author and screenwriter, was out filming anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests when she explained In a You Tube Video why the focus in all discussions on the rioting in the protests was wrong. We should not focus on the what they are doing, she said, but the why they are doing it:
“Let’s ask ourselves why in this country in 2020, why the financial gap between poor Blacks and the rest of the world is at such a distance that people feel their only hope and only opportunity to get some of the things that we flaunt and flash in front of them all the time is to walk through a broken glass window and get it,”
Jones continued: “Why are people that poor? Why are people that broke? Why are people that food insecure, clothing insecure that they feel their only shot is walking through a broken glass window and getting it?”
No doubt, that is the important question. The African Americans live in an economic pressure cooker. Economists churn out cold statistics telling a tale of disparity between white and black median household net worth such as $171,000 whites and $17,000 for blacks. But how did this happen? It was no accident.
Home ownership is the key to amassing wealth in any community including the black community. For, not only can owners eventually reduce their housing costs, but pass on a considerable amount of capital to their children so they have a substantial down payment for a house themselves with easy to manage mortgage payments. The bankers and real estate agents have successfully subverted any and all government programs to help the Black community achieve home ownership— and the government regulators assist by turning a blind eye to their tactics.
Here is a story of financial lynching and the way it has been done, generation after generation.
The biggest shock I got in my first years as a lawyer came with the realization that there were people who could make money on the backs of the poor. Even if a poor person had saved only $100, they knew how to grab it. And these predators were not limited too small cons, they were an intricate part of the dirtiest market of all, the housing mortgage market. The predatory practices in payday loan companies pale in comparison to those in the real estate and mortgage lending businesses. There, they grab life savings.
Their vulture craft specializes in more than just perverting government programs designed to help the disadvantaged by creaming off the benefits. It includes blaming them for the failure of the program with a “you just can’t help these people.”
What I’m about to relate here applies to all those in the lower economic class, but 10 times over to African Americans.
The 2008 Cover Up
The 2008 crisis gives us a window on how bankers destroyed the financial future of the black community and how the powerful banker lobby covered it up so the bankers could do it again. Many commentators have exposed the racism in redlining, but there were far more destructive practices in mortgage lending that continued long after redlining was sidelined.
The media naïvely reported the bankers spin that the 2008 crisis was caused by poor people trying to live above their proper station in life by applying for mortgage loans they could never payback. The Internet was rife with memes mocking these undeserving poor as NINJAs–no income–no jobs–no assets. The bankers posed as soft-hearted fools who lent to these unworthies in the false belief that the housing market would always rise.
Not so!
The banker spin gives the impression there were no lending standards, or they were severely lessened, but there were the commonsense ones that everyone understands. The applicants needed to have a source of income adequate to cover the installment payments, a good job history, an acceptable credit score, and few debts and such. These lending standards, while lowered slightly, were never abandoned.
However, the loan officers were paid several thousand dollars a pop for successful applications. In her book, All the Devils Are Here, investigative journalist, Bethany McLean, reports interviewing some recent high school grad loan officers pulling down $30-$40,000 a month.
Mary Garvin, who ran a business that involved advising car dealerships, told me that starting in 1999, car salesman were jumping into the mortgage business as loan officers. She knew if they were doing to mortgage sales what they had done with car sales, “this won’t be some backdoor sale gone wrong, this will be a huge problem and show up on the national stage”. That proved to be an understatement.
Imagine the incentive when the pool of qualified applicants dried up.
Loan officers began to recruit unqualified applicants, dazzled the opportunity of buying a home in front of their eyes to get them to sign an application form; then the loan officers altered the applications to make it appear that the applicants met the lending standards.
Law professors Kathleen Engel and Patricia McCoy investigations how loan officers continued the fervor of this modern gold rush after the supply of credit worthy applicants dried up in The Subprime Virus
“ Brokers and lenders perfected marketing strategies to find naïve homeowners and dupe them into subprime loans. Some hired “cold callers” who would contact homeowners to see if they were interested in a new mortgage . . . Brokers and lenders . . . scoured files at city offices to find homes with outstanding housing code violations, betting that the homeowners needed cash to make repairs. They read local obituaries to identify older women who had recently lost their husbands, surmising that widows were financially gullible.
They also identified potential borrowers from consumer sales transactions. For example, in Virginia, Bennie Roberts, who could neither read nor write, bought a side of beef and over 100 pounds of other meat from a roadside stand on credit from the notorious subprime lender Associates First Capital. In talking with Mr. Roberts to arrange the consumer loan, the loan officer from Associates learned that Mr. Roberts had no mortgage on his home. He soon convinced his new client to take out a loan using the equity in his home. Associates refinanced that mortgage ten times in four years. The principal after the refinancings was $45,000, of which $19,000 was paid to Associates in fees.”
There’s lots of corroborating evidence to what Engel and McCoy described. To take a couple of examples: In 2005, the L. A. Times ran a story quoting former workers at Ameriquest, one of the largest U. S. sub-prime mortgage lenders until its dissolution in September 2007. One ex -employee, Mark Bomchill, told of relentless telemarketing to find dupes with the poorest credit. Once the victims were found, the loan officers fudged the applications: “ They forged documents, hyped customers’ creditworthiness and ‘juiced’ mortgages with hidden rates and fees.”
Another example: Eileen Foster was the vice president in charge of fraud protection at Countrywide Financial. She reported massive incidents of loan officer fraud regarding subprime mortgages to her Countrywide superiors — all ignored. In an interview on 60 minutes in December, 2011, she told Steve Kroft of a typical finding when she inspected offices: “All of the — the recycle bins, whenever we looked through those they were full of, you know, signatures that had been cut off of one document and put onto another and then photocopied, you know, or faxed and then the — you know, the creation thrown — thrown in the recycle bin.”
In her above mentioned book, McLean devotes an entire chapter, I Like Big Bucks and I Cannot Lie, to interviews with former employees from a range of banks with similar stories of loan officers fraudulently altering applications.
All this evidence of loan officer, not applicant, fraud was ignored by the commentators of influence who wrote the books and media columns about the 2008 crisis — for a purpose. The public had to believe that the underclass was to blame. It enabled the bankers to counter complaints from the left like the Occupy Wall Street movement by pointing to this fake homeowner deceit.
For a recent and thorough academic study exposing the serious extent of fraud in the 2008 crisis see: John Griffin, Ten Years of Evidence: Was Fraud a Force in the Financial Crisis?
Hank Paulson: The bankers’ Republican man in the right place at the right time
The reforms after the Great Depression had directed the money to the homeowners and started an era of income equality that’s stretched until the Reagan years of the 1980s. In 2008, the Democrats had control of both House and Senate and passed the same relief, approving $700 billion to buy the mortgages then give relief to the home owners. The New York Times published the draft legislation. However, once the allocation was approved and Treasury had control of the money, Treasury Secretary Hank P aulson directed that the money go straight to the banks. There was no great outrage at the switch likely because the media and internet discussion focused on those irresponsible homeowners who had supposedly scammed the system to live beyond their means and didn’t see it happen.
Owners into Tenants
Yet, when the Democrats got control of the presidency in 2009, 200 billion reamined that could have been redirected for homowner benefit. However, they let the Paulson directive stay in place. And, while another $96 billion had been earmarked for the homeowners, only 20% got to them. New Treasury Secretary, Democrat Timothy Geithner, intended that result. As special investigative counsel Neil Barofsky reported, Geithner slowed the disbursement of the funds to allow the banks to organize foreclosures. He had no intention of letting this money trickle down to the homeowners so they could save their homes.
This delay allowed some senior bankers, such as Steve Mnuchin, to form corporations to buy the mortgages at $.50 on the dollar, foreclose and evict to become super-sized corporate residential landlords. Black home owners were transformed into rent paying tenants. They could no longer amass wealth by owning a home; that capital increase would now go to the bankers.
The bankers’ Democrat man in the right place at the right time
Geithner went to his reward with a lucrative position at a private Wall Street bank. Mnuchin got to be Treasury Secretary as one of Trump’s appointees to clean out the Washington swamp.
History Repeated Itself and Then Repeated Itself and Then…
This was not the first time the banker-real estate industry cooperated in application fraud and blamed it on the homeowners. In her book, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, black academic Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor details their tactics exposed during the early 1970s in the country wide fraud involving the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) initiative to provide insurance for low down payment home purchases.
It was a two-step process with two victims: the FHA (ultimately you the taxpayers, dear readers) and the black community. In the first stage, real estate speculators (often the real estate agent selling the house disguised by using a nominee) would buy a dilapidated house at a low price, do some cosmetic changes such as carpeting over rotting floors and painting over evidence of termites and the like, bribe an FHA inspector for a good report, and sell it at an inflated price — a manoeuvre known as flipping.
Then the agent would obtain a false credit rating from a credit agency. The bank would take the evidence at face value and submit this fraudulent application for FHA insurance. FHA officers took bribes to look the other way.
Taylor’s investigation revealed that the false inspection reports we’re done in the black areas, White purchasers got accurate reports. The purchasers could barely afford the mortgage payments; they had nothing left for major repairs and soon defaulted on their mortgage.
The banks didn’t care because when the purchasers defaulted, they could claim the full amount of the loan from the FHA. The real estate agents benefited, not only from the blown up sale price, but because they would buy that house at foreclosure prices and use it in the same scam again. Taylor observes, as I have also seen, that the sharks look for people who are likely to default. As her research shows, their preferred victims were Black women.
Starting with the story of Janice Johnson, Taylor tells tales of a number of Blacks who were scammed in this way. For her “homeownership was not the fulfillment of the American dream; it was the beginning of an American nightmare. Within days of moving into her new home, the sewer line broke, spewing wastewater all over the basement floor. The electricity for the house was sporadic and haphazard. There were holes and other irregularities in the foundation of the home. All of the windows in Johnson’s new house were nailed shut and inoperable. The floorboards in her dining room were so rotten that she feared her dining room table would collapse through the floor. The compromised structure of the house was not the worst of it. On Halloween night, Johnson’s son, Edward, woke up to find a rat in his bed. Janice saw rats throughout her house, including in the kitchen and bathroom.”
Although, the real estate agent made a few minor repairs, he soon told her that the problems in her house were now her own. They were “homeowner’s business.”
There were a number of arrests, law suits and imprisonments across the country. For a while, those practices seemed to have diminished. But, in the lead up to the 2008 crisis, they reared their predatory heads once more. A 2001, Senate Committee headed by Carl Levin (D-Mich) warned the same process had re-surfaced in a report entitled, “Property Flipping: HUD’s failure to curb mortgage fraud.”
The regulators did nothing.
In 2004, the FBI warned a Senate committee of the extensive insider fraud in the banking-real estate industry at the application stage: “Representatives of American Home Loans were able to orchestrate the scheme by fabricating loan applications and the supporting documentation (W-2s, tax returns, employment/income and bank verifications). As a result, industry insiders were able to circumvent the safeguards of numerous finance companies.”
Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker told CNN, “It has the potential to be an epidemic”.
The regulators did nothing.
In 2008, when that financial epidemic did strike, the regulators again did not investigate the fraud by the loan officers and the real estate agents. They let the public believe that fraud was not a significant factor and, anyway, it was the homeowners who had committed the little fraud that had happened and who had duped the reckless and foolish but criminally innocent bankers.
Mainstream economists assisted by publishing complicated analyses blaming a long laundry list of factors that buried the role of fraud — if it was even mentioned. Congress then passed the thousand page Dodd Frank Act as if complexity of legislation was proof of effectiveness — but with absolutely no mention of banker fraud.
This blaming the poor camouflaged a change from the equal transfer of assistance to the working and middle classes achieved by the reforms after the Great Depression, to the massive upward transfer of wealth through the banks in 2008, and presently through the corporations in the Covid 19 stimulus programs. At the present time the banks made high risk loans to corporations not home buyers. The corporations are getting the stimulus money to repay banks for loans that should never have been advanced in the first place. Details here.
The African Americans are told to be patient, just get out and vote. But they have been patient. It’s been 60 some years since the promise of civil rights advancements from the days of MLK jr. If there were any advancements, they have been undone. Voting is of no help. Neither of the Clinton or Obama administrations were effective in ending the serious income inequality that keeps so much of the Black community in poverty. The black community’s leaders and advocates need to be heard and given access to the bank-real estate industry, or else they’ll never be able to correct the problems therein and undo the damage it has done to them.
We have to reflect on what MLK Jr. said: That a riot is the language of the unheard. Peaceful protests and riots are both valuable. Both lend different forms of agency to oppressed groups, and we have no right to dictate to them how to voice discontent when we haven’t been listening in the first place.


dailykos--2020-06-21--Trump Supporters Dress As Empty Seats At Tulsa Rally

NAP has learned that thousands of Trump supporters came dressed as empty seats to the President ’ s Tulsa rally last night .
Further , all of those doing so were women !
They were all part of a new organization called Ladies In Empty Rally Seats ( LIERS ) .
NAP obtained an exclusive interview with LIERS President , Ima Haugesbutte , whose stunning bright blue jumpsuit really did greatly resemble an empty seat at Tulsa ’ s BOK Center .
Ms. Haugesbutte explained that LIERS is a group of women who wanted to show their support for Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Trump has made a lot of empty seats behind the desks of all those evil Deep Staters , ” said Haugesbutte , “ and we are just a group of nice , white , Christian ladies who wanted to honor that by appearing at the rally in empty seat costumes.
” Ms. Haugesbutte further explained that the LIERS deliberately chose to sit up near the top of the BOK Center to improve their visibility .
She believes the President looked right at them and waved as he began his speech .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of women support Trump .
“ Fake news polls say us ladies don ’ t support Trump , but every empty seat you saw in Tulsa last night was a woman , so that ’ s obviously a whole lot of women for Trump , ” she said .
We asked Ms. Haugesbutte if her organization would be making appearances at future Trump rallies .
“ Of course , ” she said , “ the more Trump LIERS we can get the better .
”

*A National American Press (NAP) Exclusive Report*
NAP has learned that thousands of Trump supporters came dressed as empty seats to the President’s Tulsa rally last night. Further, all of those doing so were women! They were all part of a new organization called Ladies In Empty Rally Seats (LIERS).
NAP obtained an exclusive interview with LIERS President, Ima Haugesbutte, whose stunning bright blue jumpsuit really did greatly resemble an empty seat at Tulsa’s BOK Center. Ms. Haugesbutte explained that LIERS is a group of women who wanted to show their support for Trump’s war against the Deep State. “Trump has made a lot of empty seats behind the desks of all those evil Deep Staters,” said Haugesbutte, “and we are just a group of nice, white, Christian ladies who wanted to honor that by appearing at the rally in empty seat costumes.”
Ms. Haugesbutte further explained that the LIERS deliberately chose to sit up near the top of the BOK Center to improve their visibility. She believes the President looked right at them and waved as he began his speech. She claims their high turnout proves lots of women support Trump. “Fake news polls say us ladies don’t support Trump, but every empty seat you saw in Tulsa last night was a woman, so that’s obviously a whole lot of women for Trump,” she said.
We asked Ms. Haugesbutte if her organization would be making appearances at future Trump rallies. “Of course,” she said, “the more Trump LIERS we can get the better.”


dailykos--2020-06-20--Banking Apartheid, Debt Slavery, and Financial Lynching: Why People Protest