Category: Social Justice

From the Circle K near our Hampton Inn in Jacksonville Beach:

(Note that “EBT” is a way of accessing SNAP, formerly known as “food stamps”.)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

After listening to The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us, by Douglas Linder, a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, I’m thankful that we don’t have lynch mobs anymore.

The course covers United States v. Shipp, a criminal contempt case tried by the U.S. Supreme Court that grew out of the almost-surely-wrongful conviction and then lynching of Ed Johnson, a man whom multiple witnesses placed at his place of work when a woman was raped. From the course notes:

The first witness for the defense was Ed Johnson. Johnson spoke in what observers call “a strange voice” and grabbed the arms of his chair with both hands. He denied having attacked Nevada Taylor. Johnson testified that he spent the evening in question working as a poolroom porter at the Last Chance Saloon. He said he had arrived around 4:30 pm and stayed until approximately 10:00 pm, which would have made it impossible for him to rape Nevada Taylor at 6:00 pm. Thirteen witnesses followed Johnson to the stand. Each one swore that he had seen Johnson at the saloon during the time Johnson claimed to be there.

The defense moved on to attack the credibility of Will Hixson. One defense witness testified that two days after the rape, Will Hixson had asked him the name of a black man doing some roofing work at a church. When he told Hixson the roofer’s name was Ed Johnson, Hixson asked him for a physical description—an odd thing to ask about someone Hixson would then identify as the suspect.

The most dramatic event of the Johnson trial occurred on its third and final day. At the request of jurors, Nevada Taylor was recalled to the witness stand. During questioning, a juror rose and asked, “Miss Taylor, can you state positively that this Negro is the one who assaulted you?” Taylor answered, “I will not swear he is the man, but I believe he is the Negro who assaulted me.”

The juror was not satisfied. He asked again: “In God’s name, Miss Taylor, tell us positively—is that the guilty Negro? Can you say it? Can you swear it?” Tears streamed down Taylor’s face. She answered in a quivering voice: “Listen to me. I would not take the life of an innocent man. But before God, I believe this is the guilty Negro.”

The U.S. Supreme Court grants an appeal. The Chattanooga sheriff responds by sending all but one jail guards home for the night, a prearrangement with the mob leaders. The mob then breaks into the jail and drags Johnson out to be lynched off a bridge over the Tennessee River. Johnson died in an almost saintly manner:

Johnson’s last words were: “I am ready to die. But I never done it. I am going to tell the truth. I am not guilty. I have said all the time that I did not do it and it is true. I was not there … God bless you all. I am innocent.” When Johnson was dead, a leader of the mob pinned a note to his body: “To Justice Harlan. Come and get your [n-word] now.”

(Lawyers tend to be more plainspoken than laypeople. The professor actually uses the n-word both in the audio (bleeped out) and in the notes! He did not get the memo about Jonathan Friedland!)

The guys who faciliated the lynching and/or perpetrated it were sentenced to either 60 or 90 days in jail and then returned home to hero’s welcomes (a crowd of 10,000 welcomed Sheriff Joseph Shipp, for example).

So… this year I’m thankful that our society has moved beyond real-world lynch mobs, even if Facebook and Twitter can now facilitate virtual ones.

(The whole lecture series is worth buying, in my opinion just for this one lecture.)

Some of my Facebook friends posted in outrage over a synagogue in New York City being defaced with graffiti by a guy named “James Polite” (you can’t make this stuff up!). To them this was further proof of Donald Trump’s unfitness for the office of President. The Democrat-for-most-of-his-life and native New Yorker has been generating a tidal wave of Jew-hatred (especially bad because it takes away energy from the more important task of Israel-hatred to which many of these Trump opponents are devoted?) and plainly this graffiti incident was Trump-inspired.

The discussion motivated checking out “After Years in Foster Care, Intern ‘Adopted’ by City Hall Catches a Break” (nytimes, Dec 14, 2017):

In 2008, at a gay pride rally for Mr. Obama, Mr. Polite met Christine C. Quinn, then the City Council speaker.

Ms. Quinn still remembers their introduction on the steps of City Hall. “James was telling me his story,” she recalled recently in an interview. “And I said, ‘Do you have an internship?’ And he said ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well, you do now.’”

He interned with Ms. Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat, for several years, working on initiatives to combat hate crime, sexual assault and domestic violence. He also took part in her re-election campaign in 2009 and returned to help with her unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2013.

He was placed with a foster family in Queens. His mother regained custody of him when he was in the third grade.

But he felt pressure mounting as he neared his 21st birthday, which would mark the end of foster care services, including money for room and board.

Months before that birthday, a Brooklyn couple learned about the possibility of fostering him. The couple, Josh Waletzky and Jenny Levison, said they had wanted to foster an “L.G.B.T.Q. youth” on the brink of aging out of the system.

(in others, the expert on fighting hate crime is now accused of perpetrating one).

The article carries a fun correction:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incompletely to the type of youth whom Josh Waletzky and Jenny Levison sought to foster. It was an “L.G.B.T.Q. youth” on the brink of aging out of the system, not merely a gay youth.

Based on just this one article, let’s see how many adult New Yorkers were mining the resources of a black gay (or “LGBTQ”) youth:

• the mother (no father is mentioned and, depending on the income of their former sex partner, “single mothers” usually receive either welfare benefits, such as free housing, health care, and food, or child support cash under New York family law)
• bureaucrats in the New York foster care industry
• various foster parents, each of whom would be getting paid (table of rates by state)
• employees of the Children’s Aid non-profit org
• Christine C. Qunn, who got positive political spin from employing this guy
• the final foster parents who snagged the laurels associated with an “LGBTQ youth” only “months” before his 21st birthday.

I’m wondering if this shows a path to boost one’s social standing among Manhattanites. Foster a “child” from a fashionable victim group two days before the child turns 21. Then spin the tale of being a foster parent to an LGBTQ youth or South Sudanese refugee or former child soldier at cocktail parties, neglecting to mention that the foster arangement lasted only two days.

Related:

• “Cost for the government to paint over some graffiti: $52, 953”
• Latin graffiti at our local center for inculcating righteous political thinking (someone wrote “Memento mori” on the ground(!) near the school entrance)