++ POSTED TO TH AFRICAN-AMERICAN GROUP ++ [View all]

[1StrongBlackMan]

(Because, frankly, I am wholly uninterested in hearing from the suddenly racially conscious among DU, who didn't give a good damn about this issue, but more importantly, the underlying issue, until it became useful in this primary season)

My thoughts on the DU mass incarceration wars:

It is completely, and wholly, disingenuous electioneering ... period!

I do not have a problem with HRC's support of the Crime Bill, nor Sanders' vote for the Crime Bill (even without the "nuanced" VAWA and Assault Weapon Ban, apologia). And here's why:

I lived through the Cleveland Crack Wars of the 80s. The Federal Crime Bill was the answer to the "cry of the people" trapped in crime ridden neighborhoods ... Just as O'Malley's enhanced policing measures were in response to the open air drug markets of B-More.

In both cases, the policy(ies) had the effect of tamping down the violence in Black communities ... BUT, to take a horrified stand, now, after more than 30 years, without consideration of what was going on in these communities, and particularly, without speaking a peep about the conditions that led to what is/was going on in those communities, betrays the BS of this "Concern".

Bottom-line, when a community is under siege to drive-byes, and the human wreckage, created by drug economies, largely, allowed to flourish, that community demands a response.

Re: The term "Super-Predator" ...

The only folks outraged by the term are people that have zero connection the affected communities (and people, with a political motivation for there outrage ... but, I repeat myself).

Anyone that was of age in Black communities during the 80s, knows of "super-predators" ... hell, we grew up with them, we watched them go off the rails, join/start/affiliate with criminal organizations (gangs), and grow into unconscienced shells of beings, one (violent) crime at a time, until prison, the grave, or psychotropic regiments, stopped them.

And as quiet as it is kept, this generation as its share of super-predators, and they are largely in urban and immigrant communities, for any number of reasons.

And, again ... the silence of what is/was going on in those communities, betrays the BS of this "Concern".

{I apologize for my spelling, punctuation and grammar; but, I will not apologize for the truth that I have lived.}