BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Matt Hern Writes With Bravado That Sports Do Matter

Wait a minute people:
Sports do have meaning

Engagingly written, One Game at a Time is motivated by the belief that sports do matter as much as sports fans think they do.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / December 12, 2013

[One Game at a Time: Why Sports Matter by Matt Hern (2013: AK Press); Paperback; 176 pp; $10.63.]

Earlier this fall the Boston Red Sox baseball team blew most preseason projections of their season all to hell when they bested the St. Louis Cardinals four games to two and won Major League Baseball's World Series.

Even though the team has already won two such championships this century after an 86-year drought, Boston fans (including myself) were quite ecstatic. As I write, the sports media are announcing the draws for football (that’s soccer to you folks in the U.S.) for the 32 national teams competing in the World Cup. Soon, even the non-sports media will be covering this event. Elsewhere in the sports world, basketball seasons are heating up and U.S. football seasons are cooling down, while ice hockey skates along.

I'm guessing about now some readers are already moving to the next article. After all, goes their thinking, sports are just another distraction. Why does anyone care?

I don't know the exact answer to that question. Nor, can I explain why I spend so many hours every summer watching, listening to, and umpiring baseball. However, there are a few writers currently around who continue to investigate that question. Writing in the tradition of The Daily Worker’s Lester Rodney and the Trinidadian CLR James, these writers attempt to place sports at all levels -- youth to college to professional level -- within the context of capitalist economics and the culture that grows from such economies.

I have reviewed a couple of leftist sportswriter Dave Zirin’s works, as well as Gabriel Kuhn’s top notch look at soccer titled Soccer vs. the State. These two writers take a serious and engaging look at the role sports play in making money for the neoliberal robber barons.

Zirin also champions individual athletes who use their notoriety to encourage gender and racial tolerance and even challenge imperial war. Kuhn has done similar work regarding various football players and teams. Between the two of them, the role played by professional sports in maintaining neoliberal economics and nationalist tropes is breached and examined.

Matt Hern is a sportswriter living in Vancouver, BC. His recently published title One Game at a Time walks into the terrain where sports and politics mesh, taking a look at some of the same issues his compatriots examine and exploring new ones. Hern’s view contains a bit more bravado than either Zirin’s or Kuhn’s, as if sports radio grew a brain while retaining its brashness.

Engagingly written, One Game at a Time is motivated by the belief that sports do matter as much as sports fans think they do. It’s just that they matter in ways not explored by the mainstream media and the advertising machine behind them.

Hern compares sports to other pursuits like music and theater. By doing this, he validates the multiple experiences associated with sports -- from participation at any level to viewing them and fandom -- while simultaneously critiquing capitalism’s manipulation of all the aforementioned pursuits in the name of maximum profit.

In other words, Hern extols the virtues of sports, yet takes capitalism to task for twisting their cultural value in a manner similar to capitalism’s manipulation of music, theater, and film. Instead of quality hip hop and rock, the masses get fed sexist nonsense and pop pablum promoting greed. When it comes to sports, we get corporatism, nationalism, overpriced cable television coverage, and tickets only the wealthy can truly afford; not to mention athletes afraid to speak out against wrongs for fear of losing their jobs and corporate sponsors.

Zirin has championed boxer Muhammad Ali as an example of a sports hero who rose above his game. Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that Ali is more famous for his presence and actions outside the boxing ring than for his feats within the ropes.

Hern adds to Zirin’s portrayal of Ali, detailing how his image has been watered-down and depoliticized, then writing “We have to be willing to read Ali as he was: defiant, radical, complex, devout, confusing, dangerous, and all the rest....” If we do this, then perhaps modern athletes will find the strength to replicate Ali’s militancy and courage. Then, sports can matter even more and for greater reasons than the reasons most fans currently care about them.

Matt Hern is a welcome addition to the growing team of sportswriters willing to move sports out of their current position that masquerades as being apolitical while actually being outrageously political in support of the status quo.

The excessive importance of sports in modern society is not going to go away. Therefore, it is crucial that those sportswriters whose writing challenges the conventional narrative accompanying the sports spectacle be read by as many people as possible. The crack they have created in the nationalist, pro-capitalist, homophobic, and even racist sports coverage too many fans have grown used to is finally shedding a little light on the cloistered world that is modern athletics.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, was published in 2013, along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Tom Hayden : Becoming Two Countries in 2014

Becoming two countries. Image from Shutterstock / sojourners.

The war for America:
Becoming two countries in 2014

Joined by a right-wing Roberts Supreme Court and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Right is consolidating its power on a scale not seen since the Jim Crow era of the Dixiecrats.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / October 3, 2013

The logic of voter turnout data all but guarantees right-wing Republican congressional victories in 2014 and a sealing of the divide of America into two countries for the foreseeable future.

White House operatives privately acknowledge that GOP gerrymandering plus low turnout make 2014 a war to keep the Senate Democratic and show gains while losing the House. There are eight battleground Senate seats where Mitt Romney won the popular vote in 2012 and incumbent Democrats are either retiring or vulnerable to defeat.

Even if Hillary Clinton manages to win in 2016, the battle for the House will favor the GOP since the current gerrymandered seats will remain intact until 2020, or even 2022. Assuming continued Democratic control of the White House and Senate in 2014, the opportunity to take back the Roberts Supreme Court may not occur until the next presidential term, as Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are both 77.

President Barack Obama was not wrong when he promised a single "red, white and blue America" in 2008. That is what a majority of registered voters want, but he underestimated the white sea of hate that would be generated from him among Republicans. His electoral advisors concentrated their brilliance on the national electoral map more than the states where Republicans took over in 2010.

Joined by a right-wing Roberts Supreme Court and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Right is consolidating its power on a scale not seen since the Jim Crow era of the Dixiecrats. Progressives, concentrated in Democratic-majority strongholds, will have to think strategically about how to save constituencies which have being left behind enemy lines for most of their lives.

Thanks to Howard Dean's Democracy for America, campaign resources are being invested in Virginia's legislative election this year, with Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to follow. These potential wins could minimize losses in the long term attempt to salvage the 2010s from a major Republican counterattack on the Thirties, Sixties, and the Obama era. Unfortunately, the failure already has been cemented by the reapportionment process.

The national Democratic strategy, such as it is, is to paint the Republicans as completely irresponsible, even insane, in an effort to encourage defections among moderate white voters and stimulate turnout among worried Democratic voters. While this strategy may be working among moderate voters, it also strengthens the Tea Party in the primaries of Republican districts and states.

The cold facts are these: in presidential election years, voter turnout ranges between 50 and 60 percent, while in mid-term elections it's in the high thirties. In 2010, turnout was 41.6 percent, meaning a disproportionate racial and economic minority took power in the House of Representatives and also gained control of the governors’ post and both legislative houses in 12 additional states. (See Elizabeth Drew's, "The Stranglehold on Our Politics," for a concise summary.)

The behavior of young voters, ages 18 to 29, is a stunning illustration of the pattern. According to the Center of Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, in 2008 youth turnout was 51 percent, which then plummeted to 22.8 percent in 2010, before trending back to 45 percent in 2012.

In 2010, while the Democrats won the popular congressional vote by slightly over 50 percent, GOP candidates were able to win 54 percent of the House seats while losing by 1.4 million votes overall. In Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats won the popular vote by 83,000 but the GOP wrested a 13-5 advantage in House races. In Michigan, Democrats led by 240,000 votes but the GOP took nine of 14 House seats.

Roe v. Wade "may be doomed," writes Drew. The Voting Rights Act already is badly gutted. New state laws are being promulgated in the swing states of Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio to make registration and voting as difficult as possible. It appears that any federal action on immigrant rights will include a delay in the path to voting for longer than a decade, preventing several million Latinos from voting, while a military "surge" is being implemented at the southern border.

Federal marriage equality benefits for LGBT couples may be jeopardized in states where gay marriage is banned. North Carolina, an Obama state in 2008, turned Republican by 2010, and is swiftly implementing new restrictions on abortion and voting rights despite massive protests. Arizona continues to be ground zero for vigilantes in the war against undocumented immigrants, and has succeeded in erasing Chicano Studies from state curriculums.

Since 2010 alone, 178 new anti-abortion measures have been adopted or are in the works. Michigan's gerrymandered legislature has successfully passed a right-to-work law. Twenty-seven states are resisting the expansion of Medicaid, and the majority are refusing to set up the insurance exchanges authorized by Obamacare. Those states are becoming "abortion-free zones," right-to-work states, and bastions of a resurrected "sovereignty" for whites and business interests on the defensive.

Public schools will struggle for resources in one America, while re-segregation and home schooling are completed in the other. As for the overriding crisis of climate change, the crisis of "two Americas" means that progress will occur through federal regulation combined with state action. The rest of the country will remain a Coal Zone filled with droughts, wildfires, and official climate denials.

There happens to be some "good news" in this polarization, since the libertarian Right tends to oppose foreign military interventions and Big Brother spying, while supporting the right to be stoned. A de facto coalition of the libertarian Right with the liberal Left has made progress possible on these important fronts.

The Right’s hatred towards Wall Street equals that of the Left. But the chasm on social justice is widening. Young people attracted to Rand Paul, and Ron before him, are ignoring the fact that libertarians would roll us back to the entire system of lunch counter segregation that was the focal point of the civil rights movement. The white "right to refuse service" prevails in their thinking over civil rights and due process protections.

There is no getting around the deep streaks of male chauvinism, Christian Triumphalism, plain racism, and market fundamentalism that mark so much right-wing rumination. Those divides are being institutionalized. Using the tools at their disposal, the right-wing Republicans are not trying to "take over" the United States as much as carve out a virtual country of their own based on states' rights and resistance to the national governing majority. They want to be able to live in an America where Barack Obama is a bad memory of an illegitimate president.

Can anything be done about this? In the short term, it is imperative that Democrats join Howard Dean in trying to retain their Senate majority and make gains against the gerrymandered legislatures. They should support Attorney General Holder in the courtroom battles against voter suppression. They should help make Obamacare succeed in as many states as possible. They should refuse to employ the deceptive terms "red" and “blue."

2016 will be a historic turning point as an American multi-cultural democracy steadily evolves on the basis of a massive demographic shift. Progressives cannot retreat into enclaves as long as millions of Americans are abused in zones under pro-corporate Republican rule.

Regulations established by the Obama administration must be implemented with the full force of the law in every state, not simply half the states. Progressive models can and should be erected in those states which become, in Justice Brandeis’ expression, "laboratories of reform," with climate change regulations being the clearest example.

Battles will rage over voting rights, women's rights, climate and environmental regulations, and immigration between now and 2016. The 2016 election will become a historic referendum on the future of America affecting the entire lifetimes of the younger generation coming of voting age.

Research by Emma Taylor, Research Assistant at the Peace and Justice Resource Center. This article was also posted to Tom Hayden.com .

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Marilyn Katz : A Different Path for Syria, and Hopefully for Chicago

Child at funeral in Chicago. Image from The Old Black Church.

And for Chicago?
A different path for Syria

Will U.S. diplomacy in Syria carve a new path towards peace at home and abroad?

By Marilyn Katz / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2013

CHICAGO -- The example of our leaders cannot help but guide the thinking of our youth: Might makes right and those who are "wrong" -- who disagree with our worldview -- are The Other, ever-more-easily transformed into an enemy to be dealt with by whatever means necessary.

I am more than pleased today. For the first time that I can remember, well at least since the Cuban missile crisis, the United States has chosen diplomacy over force to resolve an international conflict. We have taken a breath, stopped the worst of the bellicose rhetoric, put the guns away, and found a peaceful solution to what only a week ago seemed an irreversible march to war.

On a personal level I am relieved because I head to the Middle East a few weeks from now and didn’t relish the idea of adding a gas mask to my luggage.

As one, like many, whose support of President Obama is partially premised on his ability to discern the difference between a necessary and unnecessary war, I am relieved to see that leadership in action -- however late it was in coming.

But I also have another reason -- one closer to home. I live in Chicago, a city sadly now synonymous with gun violence. Much of my work is in communities where virtually every family has a family member, friend, or acquaintance who has been a victim (either as the shooter or the shot) of gun violence.

A few weeks ago I spoke at Stateville Correctional Center, an Illinois Maximum Security Prison, to a group of 40 men, ranging from about 25 to 70 -- virtually all of whom had been convicted of murder. We talked and they explained why they had killed. While some were at the scene of a robbery most said they killed to “protect the threads, wheels, corner, or women” they saw as within their defensible space, their world.

These sentiments and reasons were echoed in a discussion I was in recently with women from the South Side, who talked about the challenge they faced in keeping their remaining children, brothers, husbands -- and now even their girls -- out of harm’s way.

Unwilling to wait for and dubious about the prospects or effectiveness of congressional action, they spoke about their attempts to shield their young from a culture of violence -- on television, in the movies and on video games -- and their efforts to define manhood as something other than having the biggest gun.

As I drove home (ironically having to stop for 20 police cars racing to the latest shooting around the corner from the church where we had been meeting), I thought about what they had said and also about Syria, about Iraq, about Iran, about Grenada, about Vietnam.

As parents we try to model good behavior; through our actions we try to provide examples of how to deal with the hand that life has dealt. Yet we are not the only -- let alone the strongest -- influences in our children’s lives.

Our children, be they 10, 20, 30, or 40, have grown up in a context of non-stop war. They have watched not only “the axis of evil” but also their ultimate role models -- their presidents, from Kennedy to Johnson to Carter to Reagan to Clinton to Bush -- turn to weaponry to resolve disputes large (Iraq) or small (Grenada).

They have watched the creation of the “Other” whose instant demonization once they become the enemy somehow justifies and lessens the horror of the death and destruction they endure. They have watched government-sponsored assassinations, once considered shocking, become a topic for public conversation, with the details of who orders the “hit” and under what circumstances -- rather than the validity of the fundamental action -- the only question discussed.

And they’ve learned a new term, “collateral damage,” for the non-combatants -- the women and children killed. You know, those like the scores of Hadiyas hit by a misfired or stray bullet.

Youth might also notice how quickly our former allies (some would say puppets) -- from the Taliban to Saddam Hussein, from Noriega to Assad -- are transformed into dangerous monsters who threaten our very existence and must be eliminated (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally).

And while the territories and resources that the United States fought over are larger than the corner or possessions for which the young kill, the example of our leaders cannot help but guide the thinking of our youth: Might makes right and those who are “wrong” -- who disagree with our world view -- are The Other, ever-more-easily transformed into an enemy to be dealt with by whatever means necessary.

Urban youth might well (and do) argue in their defense that the threat they face each day is far greater and more imminent than those faced by the nation during the recent wars we’ve chosen to fight.

I no more than anyone else know if the diplomatic solution which our president and the nation have "fallen into" will work. The seeds of the conflicts in the Middle East were planted long ago when, with American complicity, France, England, and Russia redrew the map of the region to meet their own imperial needs.

That said, those who are tired of war abroad and on the streets of our cities should hope diplomacy carries the day. We must be openly supportive of the process, both for what it could mean for a resolution of conflict in Syria, but more importantly, for the lesson it offers those who will guide the future.

This article was cross-posted by the author to In These Times.

[An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, Marilyn Katz helped organize security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Katz has founded and led groups like the Chicago Women’s Union, Reproductive Rights National Network, and Chicago Women Organized for Reproductive Choice in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in 2002. The founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications, Katz can be contacted at mkatz@mkcpr.com. Read more articles by Marilyn Katz on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Harry Targ : Revisiting 'American Exceptionalism'

Beacon to the world? Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Was Putin right?
Revisiting 'American exceptionalism'

A better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 17, 2013

Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body -- a universal body -- of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind -- in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another -- this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursed it along many fascinating paths. -- Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 1959.

America’s destiny required the U.S. “...to set the world its example of right and honor... We cannot retreat from any soil where providence has unfurled our banner. It is ours to save that soil, for liberty, and civilization... It is elemental... it is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.” -- Senator Albert Beveridge, Indiana, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712, 1898.

President Vladimir Putin wrote in The New York Times, September 12, 2013, that “it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” This statement embedded in a generally reasonable statement about the instability of Syria brought an outcry from the liberal media elite and often-quoted academics.

For example a Bloomberg editorial refers to Putin’s “bizarre” “out-of date” analysis. Professor Fouad Ajami wrote that “Arab regimes of plunder and tyranny were both physically close to Russia” and the “lawless Kremlin model.”

Liberal commentators dwelled on the silly pictures of muscular Putin riding a horse without a shirt. Or they reminded viewers of Russia’s recent (and vile) homophobia. Or they referred to Putin’s pedigree as a KGB operative or as the ruler behind the throne manipulating the Russian electoral system in order to return to office after being replaced.

Even considering the source.
Image from Huffington Post.

Although critics were probably correct to challenge his claim that the recent gassing of Syrian citizens was done only by rebels, he did admit that the Assad regime in fact does have such weapons. But both Democrats and Republicans expressed outrage that anyone could challenge the idea that the United States is the “exceptional” nation.

Let’s be clear. United States foreign policy over the last 150 years has been a reflection of many forces including economics, politics, militarism, and the desire to control territory. The most important idea used by each presidential administration to gain support from the citizenry for the pursuit of empire is the claim that America is “exceptional”.

Think about the view of “the city on the hill” articulated by Puritan ancestors who claimed that they were creating a social experiment that would inspire the world. Over 300 years later President Reagan again spoke of “the city on the hill.” Or one can recall public addresses of turn of the twentieth century luminaries such as former President Theodore Roosevelt who claimed that the white race from Europe and North America was civilizing the peoples of what we would now call the Global South. Or Indiana Senator Beveridge’s clear statement: “It is elemental... It is racial.”

From the proclamation of the new nation’s special purpose in Puritan America, to Ronald Reagan’s reiteration of the claim, to similar claims by virtually all politicians of all political affiliations, Americans hear over and over that we are different, special, and a shining example of public virtue that all other peoples should use as their guide to building a better society and polity.

However, looking at data on the United States role in the world, the United States was at war for 201 years from 1776 to 2011. Ten million indigenous people were exterminated as the “new” nation moved westward between the 17th and the 20th centuries and at least 10 million people were killed, mostly from developing countries between 1945 and 2010 in wars in which the United States had some role.

In addition, world affairs was transformed by the singular use of two atomic bombs; one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, instantly killing 80,000 people and the other on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing another 70,000.

Comparing the image of exceptionalism with the domestic reality of American life suggests stark contrasts as well: continuous and growing gaps between rich and poor, inadequate nutrition and health care for significant portions of the population, massive domestic gun violence, and inadequate access to the best education that the society has the capacity to provide to all.

Of course, the United States was a slave society for over 200 years, formally racially segregated for another 100, and now incarcerates 15 percent of African-American men in their twenties.

The United States is not the only country that has a history of imperialism, exploitation, violence, and racism, but we must understand that our foreign policy and economic and political system are not exceptional and must be changed.

Finally, a better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities. Exceptionalist thinking separates us. Sharing what we have in common as human beings, both our troubles and our talents, is the only basis for creating a peaceful and just world.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Tom Hayden : Trayvon Martin and the Super-Predator Myth

Photo by Joshua Trujillo / AP Images / SeattlePI.com

The super-predator myth:
Trayvon died for our sins

The evidence of a violently divided America can be understood in the failure of the criminal justice system, where rationality and objectivity are supposed to prevail.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / July 23, 2013

For Trayvon Martin and his family I feel a sadness that will not lift. For America, I feel a dread that certain horrors repeat again and again, chief among them the murder of young men of color, not only with impunity for their killers but under the cover of judicial sanction.

A re-armed George Zimmerman walks free, after a trial in which references to racism were forbidden by the judge. The unarmed Trayvon Martin, under the interpretation of the law, had no right to stand his ground against an armed vigilante. The “incident” considered by the jury, according to the instructions given by the judge, began with a physical confrontation between Trayvon and Zimmerman, not when Zimmerman launched his armed pursuit, muttering, “Fucking punks. These assholes, they always get away.”

Trayvon died bravely. But is that the only option for the many who are targeted deliberately and gunned down from the Arizona border to the boroughs of New York? The norms are broken, the laws are futile, and the Black Panther Party no longer exists to serve notice of vengeance.

The evidence of a violently divided America can be understood in the failure of the criminal justice system, where rationality and objectivity are supposed to prevail. In the case of Trayvon and countless others, however, the courts are where objectivity comes to an end.

The six jurors almost surely did not see themselves as driven by racial prejudice or stereotypes, but were in the grip of those stereotypes unconsciously. In the same way, poll after poll of New Yorkers shows a deep racial divide over the police stop-and-frisk policy, with whites believing it to be justified and people of color sharply opposed.

For a short while it appeared that this case would be different. At first, Trayvon appeared to be a fallen angel, a good boy grabbing some Skittles and iced tea before watching television with his family, a young man with no criminal record, assaulted by a vigilante who was completely out of control.

But gradually the prosecutors and media began dropping suggestions that Trayvon was a potential menace. There was the hoodie. The use of marijuana. The school suspension. Not that these factual crumbs were evidence of anything. But the public and media perception grew that Trayvon was “suspicious," precisely the conclusion of George Zimmerman on that rainy and fateful night.

Altering this initial -- and accurate -- perception of Trayvon was necessary to reframe Zimmerman’s account of a struggle in which the killer feared for his life. Trayvon Martin had to fit the profile of a super-predator. Trayvon was no longer an innocent kid in the mainstream view; he was an aggressive young man who considered Zimmerman nothing more than a “creepy cracker.” Having super-masculine powers, his aggression could only be stopped by a bullet directly into his heart of darkness.

And where did the concept of the super-predator originate? One can find it from the beginning of slavery times, but its contemporary resurrection came from neoconservative intellectuals, not from Southern crackers. To be precise:

• In the 1980s and 1990s, the official “wars” against gangs and drugs were unleashed in America, resulting in what Troy Duster has described as “the greatest shift in the racial composition of the inmates in our prisons in all of U.S. history.” By the year 2000, the U.S. had 25 percent of the world’s inmates. The inmate population of California alone rose from 28,000 to over 150,000.


• Incidents like the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989 fueled the new racial hysteria. All charges against the so-called Central Park Five -- five early Trayvon Martins -- were not vacated until 2002.


• UCLA professor James Q. Wilson predicted in 1995 that a teenage crime wave was inevitable. He said Americans should “get ready” for 30,000 more “young muggers, killers and thieves than we now have.” This plague was as inevitable as demography, Wilson declared, the year Trayvon Martin was born.


• In 1996, Ronald Reagan’s drug war czar, William Bennett, and another top drug warrior, John Walters, wrote a book predicting that “a new generation of street criminals is upon us -- the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known.” Trayvon Martin was one-year-old.


• The Bennett thesis was based on an article titled, “The Coming of the Super-Predators,” by John J. Dilulio, in The Weekly Standard, the house organ of the neoconservatives. Dilulio predicted there would be an additional 270,000 juvenile super-predators who would “terrorize our nation” by 2010, just when a kid like Trayvon would turn 15 years of age. A few years later, Dilulio acknowledged that his research was all wrong, but by then it was too late.

Politically, the message of “the coming storm of super-predators” swept the nation. The leading perpetrators were New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and “Amerca’s cop” William Bratton, not George Wallace and Bull Connor. The super-predator concept was supposedly based on factual research, not age-old prejudice. Even today the image of what Bratton called “homeland terrorists” dominates the American imagination. The research overlays and reinforces the white subconscious to this day.

It is vitally important to understand, however, that the super-predator thesis was without intellectual justification and was promoted for ideological and partisan purposes. The reason that Dilulio rejected his own research was that it was based only on a demographic projection without any consideration of economic, educational, political, or other policy changes.

Only on this basis could a future super-predator be predicted while in diapers. Nothing in that child’s future -- jobs for their parents, a good pre-school experience, great teachers, nothing whatever -- could prevent the evolution into a beast. And since the teenage demographic was growing, the nation would be overwhelmed, as even Bill Clinton predicted.

The political purpose of the super-predator thesis, according to those like Bennett, was, first, to discredit the idea of rehabilitation, which was “emasculating” the criminal justice system. Instead the view was that youthful super-predators were incorrigible and infected with the disease of “moral poverty.” Private orphanages were often recommended as an alternative to prison.

The second political message was to demolish as “politically incorrect” the notions that poverty causes crime or that there was any such thing as disproportionate mass incarceration. The neoconservatives and their allies were employing public fear of violent crime to carry out their longtime agenda of slashing government social programs. Even prisons were to be privatized.

The neoconservative messaging was tremendously effective. Not until recent years, when the fiscal costs on states and municipalities grew too burdensome, has there been a lull and slight reduction in the incarceration rate, the highest or second highest in the world. The human damage is incalculable, so severe that even the right-wing Supreme Court of Chief Justice John G. Roberts has found California in systemic violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

(Some of the hunger strikers in California’s Pelican Bay prison have been in solitary confinement for decades, precisely because they are considered incorrigible super-predators. The official state hypocrisy is revealed by the policy of easing restrictions on inmates if and only if they provide evidence of gang affiliations among other prisoners with whom they are serving time. The point is that they are not “incorrigible” if they change their behavior by putting their lives at risk.)

The super-predator thesis is racism with a pseudo-academic cover. The irony is that our civil rights progress has driven prejudice underground, into the unconscious, into a discourse and vocabulary of denial. Perhaps I am being too generous, but I believe the judge, prosecution, Florida jury, and most of Mr. Zimmerman’s supporters perceive Trayvon Martin as a super-predator without being aware of the racial filter closing their minds. Those in the mainstream media, which did so much to bring awareness of the historic case, also are likely unaware that they, too, would be afraid of a Trayvon walking anywhere near them, especially at night.

How does one break the grip of what Michele Alexander calls this “new Jim Crow," if it is both covert and unconscious? First, we need to deepen our understanding that this is the way many in the Tea Party, the white South, and the Republican Party view Barack and Michele Obama. Not that the Obamas are lurking super-predators themselves, although millions of white Americans were stricken with ancient fear when O. J. Simpson -- in their eyes, the perfectly acceptable black man -- could kill his white ex-girlfriend and a white man in her presence -- in such a “savage” act. (See Gilligan, James. Violence, for a brilliant dissection of this point).

The OJ murder case marked the moment that awakened the white fear that even an educated black man was inherently suspicious. (See the 2009 case of Dr. Henry Louis Gates and the Boston police for another example.)

In other words, we need to “get over” the broad assumption that sadistic racism is a thing of the past, when in fact it might increase because certain white people are extremely threatened at the loss of their superiority. (See the 2009 Homeland Security Report on increasing violent threats, including assassination threats, because of the recession and election of Obama. The report was shelved under Republican attack.)

Screen showings of the new documentary, Fruitvale Station, about Oscar Grant who was killed by the Oakland BART police in 2009, and the Ken Burns film, The Central Park Five. Learn about and support juvenile justice organizations in your community. Demand that cities adopt gang intervention programs like those fostered in Los Angeles after decades of community pressure.

Organize the juvenile justice movement with a stepped-up attack on racial profiling, arbitrary stop-and-frisk, and mass incarceration. Demand accountability from the neoconservatives who fabricated the “super-predator” doctrine as surely as their propaganda about “weapons of mass destruction” or the sweeping authorization of the Global War on Terrorism.

Counter the propaganda that government budget cuts and free-market extremism will lift the underclass to a better future. Defend the New Deal as a great beginning, not the cause of our deficits.

Finally, consider building monuments and permanent memorials to the memory of Trayvon Martin. In his death, Trayvon becomes an iconic figure in our history and the future of the younger generation. His story, and the story of George Zimmerman’s trial, will be told and taught for decades to come.

The story will be as sharply contested as the verdict, and Trayvon’s supporters will need to claim his life and story as precious. Politicians at all levels can be challenged to commemorate his name. Public parks and school buildings can be emblazoned with his name as well. The photo of his young face should be included on the rolls of martyrs.

Let the rock be rolled back so his spirit can ascend, while his demonizers are sentenced to oblivion and shame. Let the world know: he died for our sins.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Progressive Sportswriter Dave Zirin Takes Off the Gloves

Dave Zirin: "Politics have always been a part of sports."

Rag Radio podcast:
Progressive sportswriter Dave Zirin
on the intersection of sports and politics

"Sports has become such a big business that the line between journalism and being a broadcast partner for all intents and purposes has been obliterated." -- Dave Zirin on Rag Radio

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / March 28, 2013

Dave Zirin will speak on the politics of sports at the Belo Center for New Media on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Monday, April 1, from 7-9 p.m., an event sponsored by the Texas Program in Sports and Media.

Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation and author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, was our guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 22, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Dave Zirin here:


Dave Zirin has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by noted sports journalist Robert Lipsyte. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin writes about the politics of sports for The Nation and hosts Edge of Sports Radio on Sirius XM.

Ron Jacobs of The Rag Blog called Zirin, "the man who politicized the sports pages," and The Washington Post described him as "the conscience of American sports writing." ("They didn't mean it as a compliment," Zirin told us with a chuckle.) Christine Brennan of USA Today called Zirin's Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, "the perfect book for our time in sports."

Zirin told the Rag Radio audience that the nature of sports journalism has changed dramatically in recent years. "Unfortunately," he said, "sports has become such a big business that the line between journalism and being a broadcast partner for all intents and purposes has been obliterated."

"I don’t think Hunter S. Thompson [who started out as a sportswriter] could have imagined a situation where the best journalists would work for places like the NBA.com, NFL.com, MLB.com."

Sports journalists need to be watchdogs, he said, because professional sports organizations represent "very powerful multi-billion dollar interests with tentacles in every aspect of our society."

In discussing his book, Game Over, about how politics has changed sports, Zirin says that “politics have always been a part of sports," but that things changed dramatically after the economic crisis of 2008. The owners, he says, “were freaking out about the loss of public subsidies which they had gotten used to over the last 20 years... And so they’re trying to figure out a way to restore profitability.”

“The most obvious thing is we almost lost the whole hockey season this year, we lost part of the NBA season last year, we almost lost the NFL season last year and the first quarter of the NFL season this year. And there were scabs -- so-called replacement referees who made the game unsafe -- and sometimes unwatchable.”

“When owners lock out players,” he pointed out, “they’re also locking out everybody that works in the parking lot, who works in the stadium, all the waiters and waitresses picking up an extra shift at the restaurants. And when you think that it’s our billions of dollars that go into building these stadiums... they’re not just locking out the players. They’re locking out all of us.”

Dave Zirin takes off the gloves.

When people ask him who his favorite sports owners are, “I always say, the Green Bay Packers. They’re the best 200,000 owners in sports. That’s a fan-owned team. And the difference is profound in terms of the relationship between the team and the community. The difference between a nonprofit that puts money back into the community, and a sponge that sucks money and resources out of the community.”

About violence in professional football, Zirin said that “trying to curb head injuries in the NFL is basically like trying to make a safe cigarette.” “It’s such a dangerous, violent game that your next play can always be your last, so they dehumanize the players. They don’t want you to get attached to them...” Players are “quickly ferried off the sidelines if they get hurt, brought to some back room so you don’t actually have to see the effect of the injuries…”

“You can’t really separate football from the violence,” he says, but he believes there are things that can be done, “like maybe having certified medical concussion experts on every single sideline in the NFL.” “One player said to me, 'You’ll know the NFL is serious when they propose reforms that actually cost them money.'"

Zirin is very critical of the hypocritical way major league baseball has handled the steroids issue. “It was either a situation of malign neglect or malignant intent,” he says. With “owners happily looking the other way, to make sure that the home runs would keep getting hit, the fans would keep coming to the park, and the game would keep growing.”

He is also critical of the baseball writers who are keeping deserving players like Jeff Bagwell -- “anybody who has a whiff of rumor about them” -- out of the Hall of Fame. “It is guilt by association, guilt by rumor, and guilt by innuendo,” he said, and smacks of Joe McCarthy.

Zirin discussed the story of Houston Rockets rookie Royce White who suffers from a severe anxiety disorder and has been “battling with the Rockets over how they would deal with his mental health.” As Zirin wrote in an article run on The Rag Blog, "For months, the 21-year-old has been sitting out the season in protest: a rebel with a cause." "White has become a crusader for change," he wrote, "calling out the NBA for disregarding mental illness and treating him like 'a commodity.'"

Zirin told the Rag Radio audience that White "has developed quite the radical consciousness. Just by standing up and just by the abuse he’s taken.” White “did an interview with ESPN and he said that the majority of players in the NBA are mentally ill,” but that they self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

“Mental health issues are nearly taboo to talk about in the world of sports,” Zirin says. It’s only “in recent years that players have begun to come out of this particular closet.”

Zirin says more women are actively involved in sports than ever before, but that there’s “less and less visibility. There’s less coverage of women’s sports now then there was 10 years ago. And less coverage 10 years ago then there was 20 years ago.”

He talked about a major study out of the Tucker Center at the University of Minnesota that asked the question, “Does sex -- and I think we can more appropriately say, sexism -- sell women’s sports? Are people more likely to watch women’s sports when women athletes dress up in certain ways?”

“They did this massive research project on this issue, interviewing tens of thousands of people, and what they came up with was that sexism actually hurts women’s sports. It makes people less likely to consume women’s sports.”

Zirin says that the LGBT movement has had a major impact on the sports world and he believes that there are gay athletes in pro sports who are on the verge of coming out publicly.

In an article about the recent rape trial involving football players at Steubenville High School in Ohio, Zirin pointed to “the bond between jock culture and rape culture.”

He told the Rag Radio audience: “I think that there is a connection. I think that men’s sports, with its combination of hero worship, of an emphasis on team and of men looking out for each other, and oftentimes looking at women as the spoils of being an athlete, can create a culture where women are seen as objects and where women can be seen as something to be taken.”

Zirin says that, “When you have a town like Steubenville, which is a town of 18,000 people, yet the stadium holds 10,000, When you have a school that’s been refurbished... and everybody walks around and says, ‘that’s because of Big Red football, that we got this money,’ and these kids walk around and adults kiss their butts, I think that’s a recipe for disaster.”

The problem, he says, is hero worship. And, as with the scandal at Penn State, “When a football team becomes the emotional, the economic, the cultural, and the social center of a community, the priorities spin out of whack dramatically.”

The worse thing about Stuebenville, he said, was that “there were 50 people who saw what was happening -- boys and girls -- and they all chose to do nothing.” But, he believes, “with the active intervention of coaches, of adults, that you can actually affect and change rape culture.”

There are a lot of positive things happening in sports, Zirin says. “I love the fact that LeBron James and the Miami Heat actually took a stand when Trayvon Martin was murdered by Robert Zimmerman, the self-appointed neighborhood watch leader. They all posed with their hoods on.”

And “the actions of the Phoenix Suns a couple years back in immigration solidarity, in protest of the horrific immigration laws in the state of Arizona, wearing jerseys that said Los Suns.”

One athlete Zirin admires is Houston Texans running back Arian Foster, who is “incredibly literate and erudite.” Zirin begins his latest book with a quote from Foster: “I heard Jim Brown once say the gladiator can’t change Rome. I love Jim Brown. But I disagree. I’ll die trying, my brother.”

And, Dave Zirin reminds us, we remember Muhammed Ali "because the 1960s were happening outside the boxing ring. And without that context of social struggle you’re not gonna have the athletes who can rise up and meet the moment.”

Winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism's 2011 “Excellence in Sports Journalism” Award, Dave Zirin hosts Sirius XM Radio’s popular weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio. He is also a columnist for SLAM Magazine and the Progressive and his articles frequently appear on The Rag Blog.

Zirin is a regular guest on MSNBC, CNN, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, NPR’s All Things Considered, and other major media outlets. His earlier books include the NAACP Image Award-nominated The John Carlos Story, Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love, and A People’s History of Sports in the United States, part of Howard Zinn’s "People’s History" Series.

Ron Jacobs wrote at The Rag Blog that “Dave Zirin takes on those people and institutions that have crippled sports in the name of profit and power while championing those athletes and others who have used their name and position to make sports a force for change.”

And New York Magazine's Will Leitch said that "Dave Zirin, as the years go by, sounds less and less like a politically slanted leftist rabble-rouser and more like the only sumbitch who understands what the hell's going on."

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, March 29: "Bronx Butch" poet, performance artist, and memoirist Annie Rachele Lanzillotto.
Friday, April 5: Anti-violence activists John Woods and Claire Wilson James about the issue of guns in schools and on college campuses.
Friday, April 12: Sixties activists and Yippie founders Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan.
Friday, April 19: Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Dave Zirin : Steubenville and the Bond Between Jock Culture and Rape Culture

Image from Serious Insanity.

The verdict:
Steubenville shows the bond
between jock culture and rape culture

''I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.'' -- Bob Knight, Hall of Fame basketball coach, 1988.

By Dave Zirin / TThe Rag Blog / March 21, 2013

Progressive sportswriter Dave Zirin will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 22, 2013, 2-3 p.m. (CDT), on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed live on the Internet. The show will be rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA, Sunday at 10 a.m. (EDT). Zirin will speak live at Chicago's Heartland Cafe, Sunday, March 24, at 3 p.m., and at the Belo Center for New Media on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Monday, April 1, from 7-9 p.m., an event sponsored by the Texas Program in Sports and Media.

As a sportswriter, there is one part of the Steubenville High School rape trial that has kept rattling in my brain long after the defendants were found guilty. It was a text message sent by one of the now convicted rapists, team quarterback Trent Mays. Mays had texted a friend that he wasn't worried about the possibility of rape charges because his football coach, local legend Reno Saccoccia, "took care of it." In another text, Mays said of Coach Reno, "Like, he was joking about it so I'm not worried."

In this exchange we see an aspect of the Steubenville case that should resonate in locker rooms and athletic departments across the country: the connective tissue between jock culture and rape culture. Rape culture is not just about rape. It's about the acceptance of women as “things” to be used and disposed of, which then creates a culture where sexual assault -- particularly at social settings -- is normalized.

We learned at the Steubenville trial that not only did a small group of football players commit a crime, but 50 of their peers, men and women, saw what was happening and chose to do nothing, effectively not seeing a crime at all.

We need to ask the question whether the jock culture at Steubenville was a catalyst for this crime. We need to ask whether there's something inherent in the men's sports of the 21st century, which so many lionize as a force for good, that can also create a rape culture of violent entitlement. I am not asking if playing sports propels young men to rape. I am asking if the central features of men’s sports -- hero worship, entitlement and machismo -- make incidents like Steubenville more likely to be replicated.

There are many germs in the Petri dish of sports. Growing up I had the great fortune of big-hearted, politically-conscious coaches, some of whom patrolled sexism in the locker room with a particular vigilance. As the great Joe Ehrmann has written so brilliantly, a "transformational coach" can work wonders. But different germs also exist. Ken Dryden, Hall of Fame NHL goalie, once said, ''It's really a sense of power that comes from specialness... anyone who finds himself at the center of the world they're in has a sense of impunity.''

On colleges, there is reason to believe that the same teamwork, camaraderie and "specialness" produced by sports can be violently perverted to create a pack mentality that either spurs sexual violence or makes players fear turning in their teammates. A groundbreaking 1994 study showed that college athletes make up 3.3 percent of male students but 19 percent of those accused of sexual assault. One of the study's authors, Jeff Benedict, said,

Does this study say participation in college sports causes this? Clearly, no. We're not saying that. We just think that at some point there is an association between sports and sexual assault... the farther you go up, the more entitlements there are. And one of those entitlements is women.

That was two decades ago but there is no indication that anything has changed. A February 2012 Boston Globe article about sexual assault charges levied against members of the Boston University hockey team, reporter Mary Carmichael wrote about the findings of Sarah McMahon, "a Rutgers University researcher who studies violence against women."

McMahon "said it is unclear whether college athletes are more likely to commit sexual crimes than other students. But she said her work had found a unique sense of entitlement, sexual and otherwise, among some male college athletes, especially those in high-profile or revenue-producing sports like BU hockey."

You can't extricate the entitlement at the heart of jock culture from McMahon's comments about its particular prevalence in revenue-producing sports. The insane amounts of money in so-called amateur athletics and the greasy desire of adults in charge of cash-strapped universities to get their share also must bear responsibility for rape culture in the locker room.

They have created a system where teenage NCAA athletes can’t be paid for what they produce so they receive a different kind of wage: worship. Adults treat them like heroes, students treat them like rock stars, and amidst classes, club meetings, and exams, there exists a gutter economy where women become a form of currency. You're a teenager being told that you are responsible for the economic viability of your university and everything is yours for the taking. This very set-up is a Steubenville waiting to happen.

If people think that this doesn't translate to high school, they're wrong. I spoke with Jon Greenberg, an ESPN journalist and also a graduate of Steubenville High. He describes a school "with a pretty high poverty rate" that was still able to get state funds to build "a swimming pool, a new on-campus gym, cafeteria and more." The dynastic "Big Red" football program drove those changes.

As Greenberg says,

The football players themselves, at least in my experience, weren't treated as heroes or above the law, but the team itself was put on a pedestal, especially when they were good... There are some very good people who played Big Red football and coached football. But there needs to be some changes, most importantly a very serious seminar, for all male students, on the definition of rape and similar curriculum.

In thinking about Steubenville, thinking about my own experiences playing sports, thinking about athletes I've interviewed and know, I believe that a locker room left to its own devices will drift toward becoming a breeding ground for rape culture. You don't need a Coach Reno or a Bob Knight to make that happen. You just need good people to say or do nothing.

As such, a coach or a player willing to stand up, risk ridicule, and actually teach young men not to rape, can actually make all the difference in the world. We need interventionist, transformative coaches in men’s sports who talk openly about these issues. We need an economic setup in amateur sports that does away with their gutter economy. But most of all, we need people who recognize the existence of rape culture, both on and off teams, to no longer be silent.

As for Steubenville, Coach Reno needs to be shown the door, never to be allowed to mold young minds again. Football revenue should go toward creating a district-wide curriculum about rape and stopping violence against women. And "Jane Doe," the young woman at the heart of this case, should be given whatever resources she and her family needs to move if they choose, pay for college, or just have access to whatever mental health services she and her family may need.

After the trial, testimony and verdict, they deserve nothing less.

This article was also posted to and first published at The Nation.

[Dave Zirin is sports editor at The Nation and the author of the new book, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down (The New Press). Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com. Read more articles by Dave Zirin on The Rag Blog.]

See "Dave Zirin, the Man Who Politicized the Sports Pages" -- Ron Jacobs' review of Zirin's latest book, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down -- on The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : 'Fearless' Yippie Pioneer Nancy Kurshan Battles Prison Behemoth

Nancy Kurshan speaks to the press during the Chicago Conspiracy trial, 1969. To her left is Anita Hoffman and on her right, Susan Schultz. Back row: Ann Froines, Tasha Dellinger, and Sharon Avery. Photo courtesy Nancy Kurshan.

An interview with Nancy Kurshan:
From Yippie street protest to
fighting the American prison behemoth

“The prisoner usually has no idea how long he or she will be there... The rules for exiting are unclear at best and impossible to comprehend at worst. I believe that control unit prisons are tantamount to torture and an abuse of state power.” -- Nancy Kurshan

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / February 28, 2013

Nancy Kurshan will be joined by fellow Yippie founder, Judy Gumbo Albert, as Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, April 12, 2013, from 2-3 p.m., on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the Internet. Also, please see Judy Gumbo Albert's photo essay, "Visiting Viet Nam, 1970-2013," published this week in The Rag Blog. Nancy and Judy recently returned from a trip to Viet Nam.

If someone asked me to describe Nancy Kurshan in a word, the word I would choose would be “fearless.”

Kurshan, now 69, and a founding member of the Yippies -- was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised by Old Left parents. She has been an activist since high school days. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t like prisons any more than anyone else I know, though she enters prisons almost routinely. You might well say that she’s leery about them. Indeed, she knows how antithetical they are to the very essence of the human condition, and yet how thoroughly they define the human condition. That’s what might be called the prison paradox.

If you’re reading these words in The Rag Blog you probably know that prisons are almost everywhere on the face of the earth. You may remember that zealous Puritan settlers constructed them when they arrived in America in the seventeenth century. “The founders of a new colony,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter,“ have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery and another portion as the site of a prison.”

Graveyards and jails, cemeteries and prisons invariably go together.

Over the past 400 years or so, Americans have never stopped building prisons and American prisons, such as San Quentin, Alcatraz, and Angola in Louisiana, are world famous because of the books and movies about them and because of the harrowing testimonies by prisoners themselves.

Ask Nancy Kurshan. She has the facts and the figures. She’ll tell you all about America and its prisons. No one builds prison better than Americans, she says. No one builds more prisons than Americans, and no one builds the new generation of prisons, often called “control units,” with the same gusto as Americans.

When I asked her recently about her own prison experiences, she told me that she once spent 24-hours behind bars in Chicago and that “it drove me crazy.” Kurshan has been arrested so many times -- at least 15 times by her own count -- that they tend to blur in memory, though she remembers the incarcerations that followed street protests in the 1980s: the occupation of a Marine Corps office on International Women's Day; a sit-in in the street that blocked traffic around the Federal Building in Chicago; yet another protest when she and others chained themselves to an African consulate.

Image grab from the Marion Daily Republican, Marion, IL, April 28, 1989. Image from Freedom Archives.

Kurshan has never allowed her own personal feelings about prisons to prevent her from protesting in the streets. And she has never allowed fear to stop her from aiming to dismantle the American prison behemoth that has grown bigger, meaner, and more vicious over the past several decades. A sense of boundless optimism carries her over immense hurdles.

Kurshan describes her work -- you can’t really call it “prison reform” -- in a new book entitled Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons that’s published by the Freedom Archives in San Francisco, and that has a trenchant introduction by Sundiata Acoli, who is currently “serving time” at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.

I realize that “serving time” is probably not the most effective phrase for me to use here. As American Indian Movement activist and long time federal prisoner, Leonard Peltier, once said, “a prisoner doesn’t do the time. Time does the prisoner.”

Readers can order Kurshan’s informative, energizing book here, and you can learn more about it online at the Freedom Archives.

In the preface to the book, Kurshan says that, “In the end we lost every large issue we pursued.” But she’s not discouraged. She explains that her book “tells the story of one long determined fight against the core of the greatest military empire that has ever existed on this planet.” She adds, “If activists who stand in opposition to what Malcolm X called the 'American nightmare' can benefit from reading this and can move ahead with greater insight and effectiveness, then it will be worth while.”

Kurshan ends her preface with a quotation from the African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, who insisted, “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.”

In this interview for The Rag Blog, Kurshan describes her political work and her thinking about prisons and prisoners. She also looks at her experience as a Yippie when one might say that she was a sweetheart of the Sixties. Her name and the name Jerry Rubin were nearly synonymous at the time of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial in 1969 and 1970. Rubin memorialized Kurshan in Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution. Now as then her Yippie heart beats strongly.

This interview was conducted soon after Kurshan returned from a 2013 visit to Vietnam 40 years after the signing of the Paris Peace Accord that ended U.S. military presence there. To say that she was “high” would probably be an understatement.

Nancy Kurshan in 2008. Image from TimeOut Chicago.

Jonah Raskin: Aren’t all prisons “control unit prisons”?

Nancy Kurshan: There are at least two ways to answer your question -- by the way, they go by various names: Secure Housing Unit (SHU), Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX), Supermax, and more. And remember there are variations from prison to prison. Still, a “control unit prison” is one in which all prisoners are locked in individual 9’ by 9’ boxes about 23 hours a day under severe sensory deprivation.

No fresh air. No natural light. The prisoner eats, sleeps, and defecates in a windowless cell. Meals come through a slot in the door. In some cases, the prisoner may be out of the cell for solitary exercise, but in other cases the exercise area is attached to the cell itself. There is restricted, or no, access to education and recreational facilities.

How are they different from “normal” prisons?

In most penal institutions, prisoners are in the “general population.” They live among other prisoners, take their meals in a social setting, have visitors (sometimes even conjugal visits), and participate in recreational activities with others. Some prisons offer education and training for jobs, though that’s becoming increasingly rare. A particular prisoner might be placed in solitary confinement as punishment -- “thrown in the hole” in prison vernacular. The entire wing of a prison might also be “locked down” after an incident.

Is it a question of the degree of harshness and punishment?

All prisons are grim. Nonetheless, a control unit prison is qualitatively different than the rest. Control units limit the prisoner’s connection, not just with other prisoners, but also with family and friends in the outside world. Often only family members can visit and then only if approved.

The number and length of visits are limited, and no physical contact is permitted between prisoner and visitor. Visiting takes place over a Plexiglas wall and through telephones monitored by guards. Prisoners are searched before and after visits. They undergo body cavity searches and are often brought in shackles.

Sounds like psychological warfare and brainwashing.

It’s an endless hell -- a living Kafkaesque limbo. The purpose of the control unit prison is to make the person feel helpless, powerless, and totally dependent on the authorities. A control unit institutionalizes solitary confinement as a way to exert maximum control over as much of the prisoner’s life as possible. This is long-term, severe behavior modification, and it’s the vilest, most mind- and spirit-deforming use of solitary confinement imaginable.

The control unit prisons probably cast a long shadow on everyone in prison, and perhaps on the whole society.

Control units have the affect of controlling prisoners in the general population. They’re meant to terrify prisoners so that they tolerate intolerable conditions. The federal prison at Marion, Illinois -- and the word “Marion” itself -- was meant to strike fear into the hearts of prisoners throughout the whole federal prison system.

Nancy with son, Michael Kurshan-Emmer, wearing a Sundiata Acoli t-shirt, at 1998 Washington, D.C., march to free political prisoners. Image from Freedom Archives.

Can you say more about the Kafkaesque aspect?

Inside a control unit, the prisoner usually has no idea how long he or she will be there. It’s an indeterminate sentence and the rules or guidelines for exiting it are unclear at best and impossible to comprehend at worst. I believe that control unit prisons are tantamount to torture and an abuse of state power.

Amnesty International recently released its 2012 report, “The Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California’s Security Housing Units,” in which the conditions in two California prisons -- Corcoran and Pelican Bay -- are described as “cruel, degrading and inhuman” and a violation of international standards. Readers can check it out at the Amnesty International site.

Are there political prisoners in the American penal system?

Absolutely. Let me name a few: Sundiata Acoli, who was one of the Panther 21 in the 1970s; Oscar Lopez Rivera, a Puerto Rican patriot; and Native American Leonard Peltier. They have all been imprisoned for over 30 years each! By comparison, Nelson Mandela, the world’s iconic political prisoner, spent 27 years in prison.

I recently traveled to Vietnam to participate in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords and met with people who were political prisoners in the Tiger Cages of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. Their situations were nearly identical to those of political prisoners in this country today. Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, and Oscar Lopez Rivera are probably the longest-held political prisoners in the world.

Albert Woodfox* has been in prison at Angola for more than 40 years. Warden Burl Cain, said he would never transfer Woodfox out of solitary because, as he explained, “He is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kinds of problems.”

What makes for a political prisoner? I ask because I often find it easier to recognize political prisoners in other parts of the world -- Ireland, Russia, and China -- than in the United States. I know individuals in the U.S. who began as conscious reformers and avowed revolutionaries and veered into crime -- theft, robbery, dealing illicit drugs, and more.

People have been arguing about the nuances of this for years, but generally speaking a political prisoner is someone who is imprisoned for his or her participation in political activity.

Why do you think that you chose to work with prisoners, to secure their release, and to protect them from the worse abuses of the prison system?

Once I was in prison -- as a result of my participation in the movements of the 1960s and 1970s -- it was difficult to turn away. At first, there were many amazing political prisoners that grabbed my attention. I felt that if our movement were to succeed, we could not abandon people behind bars. If we did, we couldn’t hope to move forward.

Imprisonment was chilling for everyone -- on the outside as well as the inside. To a large extent, Americans are afraid of prisons and political prisoners. I didn’t want to be one of them.

What did you learn as you became more involved?

That prisons are about racism and the social control of people of color. I felt that the work I was doing was an important way to be a principled anti-racist. It was also a way for me to express moral outrage about the fact that humans are treated worse than animals, though I don’t wish those same conditions on animals either.

When were you arrested and jailed in the 1960s and 1970s?

More times than I can remember. The first time was in 1967 for mass civil disobedience at the Pentagon. In 1971, I was arrested on the campus of Kent State for spray-painting the words “U.S. Out Of Laos.” I was charged with a felony -- malicious destruction of property with damage over $100 -- and told that they would break it down to a misdemeanor if I agreed to leave Kent, Ohio.

By then, I was happy to go. Our house had received bomb threats. Then, in the 1980s, I was part of a women’s group called “No Pasaran” and was arrested protesting U.S. wars in Central America. Most of the charges are not memorable. As I recall, they were for “disturbing the peace.” I got off completely, or had to pay a fine after pleading guilty.

What do you remember about your own jail time?

The Pentagon jail time, my first, was in what I call “white peoples’ jail.” There were about a thousand of us. The authorities created a men’s dormitory and a women’s dormitory. Ours was lined with hundreds of cots; I was there with Anita Hoffman. We stayed overnight, went to court, pled no contest, paid $25, and left. In Chicago in the 1980s, it was rougher. We were held at the lockup at 11th and State, like all other detainees, and single-celled with nothing to read and nothing but a bologna sandwich to eat.

We could talk to people across the cell, but I remember being cold and uncomfortable, lying on a cement bed. The guards were unresponsive to requests. You could call out to your heart’s content and they wouldn’t come. The longest time I spent there was about 24 hours and it drove me crazy. I can’t imagine what long-term solitary must feel like.

How do you feel about the Yippies now, looking back?

Nancy Kurshan and Jerry Rubin.

I love the Yippies! We were really onto something and reached many more people than we’re given credit for. Most Left history is written by people who were in what we considered the “straight Left.” They were not fond of us then and they still aren’t.

Our use of the media, creation of myths, comedy, and appeal to artists was fabulous. We levitated the Pentagon to allow the evil spirits to flee (clearly not high enough), ran a pig for President, and burned money at the Stock Exchange on Wall Street.

We also represented a segment of American youth that was in militant rebellion. We didn’t lead them. We were a part of them and we were not part of any official Left organization. Much of the Left dismissed the youth population. They criticized us for alienating older, middle class people. I think the youth movement was a vital engine of the anti-war movement, driving everything and everyone to the Left and forcing debate onto dinner tables.

Any criticisms?

My main issue, of course, is the sexism of the Yippies. But honestly, it was no worse than in the rest of the Left. Sexism was an Achilles Heel of the whole movement.

The Yippies seemed to me to be about couples -- you and Jerry Rubin, Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, Anita and Abbie Hoffman. What thoughts do you have now about sex and gender and power in the Yippie universe?

Yippies weren’t any more about couples than the rest of the movement. Male supremacy was "normal." I had been a political activist beginning in high school; then in the 1960s and 1970s my role in the movement was compromised. At times, I went to work every day so that Jerry Rubin and the guys who were living at our tiny apartment could be movement activists!

After work I shopped. Then I came home and cooked. Then the men treated us like gophers and we accepted it. It was hard to find one's own voice and it was easy to "stand by your man" when conflicts arose. Until the women's movement burst on the scene, there were awkward distances between women.

When Robin Morgan quit the Yippies and published "Goodbye To All That" in the underground paper, RAT, I was uncomfortable. I knew she was right about the big picture, if not everything. It was embarrassing and I didn't know what to do. Change can be confusing and uncomfortable. Morgan’s piece and my 1970 trip to Vietnam really pushed me to fight male dominance and find my own voice.

To get back to prisons. In what ways have they changed over the last decades?

Two things strike me. One is the massive incarceration of people of color. In 1994, for instance, there were 85,000 people in federal prisons. Today. there are 218,000. In state and federal prisons there are 2.3 million people behind bars. We are the “Incarceration Nation.”

Albert Hunt stated in The New York Times (November, 20, 2011) that, “With just a little more than four percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for a quarter of the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined.”

Prisons overflow disproportionately with black and Latino prisoners. According to the same New York Times article, “more than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.” One in every nine black children has a parent in jail!

What are the other trends?

The prison system has become much more punitive. When we began our work in the 1980s, Marion Federal Prison was the only control unit prison in the federal and the state system. When we argued they should shut it down, they argued that it would allow the rest of the system to function more effectively. We said no, it would function as an anchor and pull the whole system in the direction of tighter control. We would have liked to have been proven wrong, but unfortunately we’ve been proved right. Now, virtually every state has at least one control unit prison.

Is there hope?

Just recently there has been some motion. Two serious challenges have developed. One, that this form of imprisonment is too expensive. Our whole society is running out of money, thanks in part to our bloated military. Also, in some states, like California, prisoners have stood up by the thousands and said, “We won’t take it no more.”

There have been hunger strikes of 6,000 or more prisoners. Support on the outside has helped give voice to grievances. In response to hunger strikers at Pelican Bay, The New York Times, in an editorial on February 8, 2011, entitled “Cruel Isolation,” said, “For many decades, the civilized world has recognized prolonged isolation of prisoners in cruel conditions to be inhumane, even torture. The Geneva Convention forbids it.”

Is anyone rehabilitated through the effort of prison programs?

As Malcolm X said, “I ain’t never been habilitated, how can I be rehabilitated?” Sure, some people have come out of prison wiser than when they went in, or perhaps with some skills they didn’t have. But by and large, the problems are structural, not individual and have to do with whether or not society has room for ex-prisoners. Generally, when people get out of prison, no matter how good they are, their options are lousy. They face great obstacles.

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, shrewdly observed 150 years or so ago that, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” When you enter a prison what are some of the first things you hear, see, and feel?

Nancy in Hanoi, 2013, with
Agent Orange victims.

That Dostoevsky quote has always been a favorite of mine. When I enter a prison, I usually feel I’m entering a bastion of the military. There are gun towers, barbed wire, metal detectors, arbitrary rules, regulations, and tight surveillance. Then there are the pat-downs.

The first thing that comes to mind is that I’m on a slave ship -- a landlocked slave ship. The racial aspect is undeniable, from the waiting room to the visiting room. After all these years, you would think I would be used to it, but I’m not. For me there is no experience like it.

What degree of civilization would you say exists in the U.S.?

I would answer with a shrewd quote from Gandhi. When he was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, “That would be a good idea.” I’ve just returned from Vietnam, still a primarily agrarian, developing country. They have one of the lowest imprisonment rates in the world. Vietnam is a more civilized place than the U.S.

Since you're just back from Vietnam would you give us your impressions of the country?

Vietnam is beautiful and vibrant with more than half the population under 20. The legacy of the war is still enormous. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than on all of Europe in World War II. We visited the Highway 9 Cemetery of the Fallen Combatants where thousands of Vietnamese are buried. As I looked at the tombstones I noticed how very many were cut down in their youth. Somewhere between 2 and 4 million people were killed in the “American War” -- as the Vietnamese call it.

You met people and talked face-to-face?

Nearly everyone had a story to tell about their family's sacrifice, although they tell it after persistent prodding. We visited schools where children are suffering from severe birth defects as a result of the millions of gallons of herbicides such as Agent Orange that the U.S. used. These children are three generations removed from direct exposure!

We also went to what was the Da Nang Air Base during the war (now a regular airport) where the U.S. is just now beginning cleanup, 40 years later. That's a drop in the bucket because it's only one "hot spot" and to the tune of $43 million which is really nothing.

The country seems to have taken your breath away.

The experience was fabulous: the natural beauty and the energy and warmth of the people; the privilege to share in the celebrations of the Paris Peace Accords; the meeting with Madame Binh and many people who survived the Tiger Cages. I went inside the underground “Cu Chi tunnels” that testify to the ingenuity and determination of the Vietnamese to be free from of colonialism. Seeing the legacy of the war made me angry. I'm still processing my time in Vietnam.

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University and the editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

*UPDATE: As we went to press a federal judge ordered the release of former Black Panther and member of the Angola 3, Albert Woodfox. This is the third time Woodfox's conviction has been overturned in a federal court, but prosecutors successfully reversed the two previous court decisions and are expected to try once more to keep Woodfox behind bars.

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...