Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck, Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleSimplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
U.S. Prisons Thriving on Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests
    #19203057 - 11/28/13 11:12 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)


By Nat Hentoff
This article appeared on Cato.org on November 20, 2013.

A startling scandal in our so-called criminal justice system is largely unnoticed by most Americans because the media in all their forms ignore it. But the American Civil Liberties Union does not.

According to a June 3 report from the ACLU, the “over-policing” of marijuana use combined with “staggering racial bias” are leading to appallingly high numbers of incarcerated African-Americans:

“Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million pot arrests in the U.S. That’s one bust every 37 seconds and hundreds of thousands ensnared in the criminal justice system … Marijuana use is roughly equal among blacks and whites, yet blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession” (“The War on Marijuana in Black and White: Report,” aclu.org, June 3).

Citing the ACLU’s grim statistics, an August report from The Economist says, “blacks are almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession … in some places their arrest is over eight times more likely.

“People with criminal records risk losing public benefits, being kicked out of public housing and suffering permanent gaps in employment and earning prospects” (“Waking life,” The Economist, Aug. 24).

In other words, their lives could be essentially over.

The leading, continuing source of documented information on this brazen American prejudice is marijuana-arrests.com, “an online library about marijuana possession arrests, race and police policy in New York City and beyond.”

The site is part of the Marijuana Arrest Research project, which examines “race, police policy, and the growing number of arrests for marijuana possession and other victimless crimes in large U.S. cities, especially New York City.” The organization’s co-director is Harry G. Levine, a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York.

Furthermore, Levine, whom I interviewed when I was at The Village Voice for more than 50 years, has definitively reached a national audience in the Nov. 18 edition of The Nation magazine with his story, “The Scandal of Racist Marijuana Arrests — and What To Do About It.”

I admire The Nation for publishing this extensive array of revelations, but since its circulation is not extensive, I have chosen vital parts of it here as a public service. (As I used to tell my journalism students, I sure enjoy breaking scoops, but when another source has a crucially important story, it’s my responsibility to help circulate it.)

Writes Levine: “The vast majority (76 percent) of these arrested and charged with the crime of marijuana possession are young people in their teens and 20s.

“Over the last fifteen years, police departments in the United States made 10 million arrests for marijuana possession — an average of almost 700,000 arrests a year.”

I especially hope candidates for the presidency and Congress in 2016 hear this:

“Police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites in every state and nearly every city and county — as FBI Uniform Crime Reports and state databases indisputably show.

“States with the largest racial disparities arrest blacks at six times the rate of whites. The list includes Alabama, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin.”

If you live in any of these states, do you believe this should be the American standard of justice? Do those arrested for this “victimless” crime deserve to have their lives ruined forever? If you don’t think so, do you plan to organize and do anything about it — whether you are black, white or another race?

Thanks to Harry G. Levine’s report, let’s look at New York City, regarded by many tourists as the hippest city in America, and Chicago, which gave us the first black president:

“Since 1997, New York City alone has arrested and jailed more than 600,000 people for possessing marijuana; about 87 percent of the arrests are of blacks and Latinos.

“For years, police in New York and Chicago have arrested more young blacks and Latinos for simple marijuana possession than for any other criminal offense whatsoever.” (Italics mine.)

If you are black or Latino and have gone to any of the relatively few schools that actually teach American history, do you feel — after knowing these documented facts — that you still live in an America with a Constitution that’s fair to you?

Levine asks readers of all backgrounds to remember this: “Young whites (age 18 to 25), however, use marijuana more than young blacks, and government studies comparing marijuana use among whites and blacks of all ages have found that both groups use it at a similar rate.”

And here we come to the most basic source of accountability for this triumph of modern-day Jim Crow: “Such dramatic and widespread racial disparities are clearly not the product of personal prejudice or racism on the part of individual police officers. This is not a problem of training or supervision or rogue squads or bad apples.

“It’s a systemic problem, a form of institutional racism created and administered by people at the highest levels of law enforcement and government.”

Think hard about that. This entrenched Jim Crow system has existed much longer than the Obama administration. It’s far from the “new normal.” So how come We The People allow this to happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Oh, it’s the press having failed us. Yes, but are the great majority of American whites so distant from the lives of black and Latino parents, grandparents and siblings that they don’t hear about members of these families being forever marred by criminal records?

Any American of whatever race who feels disturbed or worse, sickened, by what Harry G. Levine has spent his life revealing should read his entire article in The Nation. Then they should confront their elected representatives with demands that they restore the victims of these vicious, un-American Jim Crow laws to full American citizenry.

November 20, 2013
Nat Hentoff | CATO Institute
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/us-prisons-thriving-jim-crow-marijuana-arrests


--------------------
Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

---

Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

---

Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."


Edited by Simplepowa (11/28/13 11:12 PM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineCaptainAhab


Registered: 12/25/09
Posts: 1,875
Last seen: 6 years, 24 days
Re: U.S. Prisons Thriving on Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests [Re: Simplepowa]
    #19203162 - 11/28/13 11:51 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

You think that johnny law is locking up scholarly black men on their way to the office? No. They're locking up hoodlums and scumbags wearing fubu and south pole shit.


--------------------


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineKonyap

Registered: 06/30/07
Posts: 33,945
Loc: Planet Piss
Last seen: 4 years, 3 months
Re: U.S. Prisons Thriving on Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests [Re: CaptainAhab]
    #19203209 - 11/29/13 12:18 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

best to lock em up to see if anything comes in on the scanner


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinedceodhz
Up And Coming

Registered: 10/19/13
Posts: 78
Loc: That's NO Moon
Last seen: 6 years, 4 months
Re: U.S. Prisons Thriving on Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests [Re: CaptainAhab]
    #19203811 - 11/29/13 07:15 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

CaptainAhab said:
You think that johnny law is locking up scholarly black men on their way to the office? No. They're locking up hoodlums and scumbags wearing fubu and south pole shit.




Actually yeah, Johnny Law in places like New York, routinely "Stop And Frisk" black men all the time on their way to and from the office. Scholarly or not, kinda hard to tell just by looking at someone. Unless you carry your degree with you everywhere you go?

Fubu and South Pole don't make someone a hoodlum or a scumbag. The same way skate brands, typically marketed to white kids, doesn't make them punks or hoodlums....its a style.




Edited by dceodhz (11/29/13 07:19 AM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibledeCypher
 User Gallery


Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
Re: U.S. Prisons Thriving on Jim Crow Marijuana Arrests [Re: dceodhz]
    #19207775 - 11/30/13 08:46 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Was reading the article to see if they included any mention of the actual frequency with which black individuals use marijuana compared to that of white individuals--thankfully, they did.  When backed up by the evidence, institutionalized racism such as this is rather disturbing.  :nonono:


--------------------
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck, Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Stoudamire is arrested on marijuana charges motamanM 3,498 3 07/09/03 08:31 AM
by Sev
* 55 Years In Prison For Selling Marijuana usefulidiot 3,064 14 08/28/09 02:03 PM
by UFOz8MyGoat
* Marijuana users see little time in local jail motamanM 1,025 0 08/25/05 09:58 AM
by motaman
* Former Dallas Cowboy Lauds His 20 Year Marijuana Use socratesmind 4,669 4 03/03/03 11:26 PM
by rhizo
* Marijuana behind 45 percent of U.S. drug arrests Le_Canard 1,308 3 05/04/05 06:01 PM
by hobgoblin
* TRICKERY YIELDS 61 ARRESTS IN LAURENS COUNTY motamanM 3,633 7 04/15/03 05:48 AM
by Seuss
* Don't treat patients using marijuana as criminals veggieM 1,009 1 04/09/05 08:05 AM
by SuperD
* Marijuana seed store raided, Emery arrested [CAN]
( 1 2 3 all )
veggieM 25,593 41 03/19/06 09:38 PM
by veggie

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
862 topic views. 0 members, 3 guests and 1 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.018 seconds spending 0.003 seconds on 12 queries.