In three dozen states, including Missouri, Indiana, and Arizona, Republican legislators emboldened by their 2010 victories have put forth a rash of legislation requiring drug tests as a prerequisite for receiving public benefits. Supporters say these laws are necessary to insure that taxpayer dollars are not being spent on illegal activities or to support drug dependence. Opponents say the laws are based on false assumptions and stereotypes about poor people and actually cost more to administer than they save. Florida found a way to avoid that particular problem, that state’s law required applicants to pay for their own drug tests and if they passed they could seek reimbursement from the state.

I could talk about the studies that demonstrate recipients are not more likely to use drugs than the general population; or the fact approximately 90% of people receiving cash assistance benefits are single mothers; or the fact that benefits have remained flat in most states for the past 15 years with the result maximum benefits are less than 30 percent of the federal poverty threshold in 30 states. But let’s get back to the urine…….

It seems to me the 4th Amendment protection against ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ by the state should certainly apply to the requirement that one surrender one’s urine (a bodily fluid like saliva, semen and blood) as a prerequisite to receive an entitlement. That’s what a federal court ruled when it struck down a pilot mandatory drug testing program in Michigan in 1999.

What compelling state interest is at stake that justifies requiring people to give up their right to privacy? Saving money? That’s the reason given by Florida’s Governor Rick Scott when he pushed thru Florida’s law, arguing drug testing would save money by disqualifying drug users who might otherwise receive benefits. In their own inimitable fashion Jon Stewart and his colleagues at the Daily Show demonstrated the absurdity of that position when Aasif Mandvi went to Florida to find out why Luis Lebron, a Navy veteran and public assistance recipient, won’t submit to welfare drug testing.:

A federal court ruled in favor of Luis Lebron and halted Florida’s drug testing program:

Judge Mary Scriven ruled in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 35-year-old Navy veteran and single father who sought the benefits while finishing his college degree, but refused to take the test. The judge said there was a good chance plaintiff Luis Lebron would succeed in his challenge to the law based on the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from being unfairly searched.

The drug test can reveal a host of private medical facts about the individual, Scriven wrote, adding that she found it “troubling” that the drug tests are not kept confidential like medical records. The results can also be shared with law enforcement officers and a drug abuse hotline.

“This potential interception of positive drug tests by law enforcement implicates a `far more substantial’ invasion of privacy than in ordinary civil drug testing cases,” said Scriven, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

The judge also said Florida didn’t show that the drug testing program meets criteria for exceptions to the Fourth Amendment.

Governor Rick Scott was left with some explaining to do when a state report found that only 2.5% of applicants for public assistance in Florida tested positive for drugs – far less than the national average of 9%. Furthermore, instead of saving money, the state ended up $200,000 in the red due to the cost of reimbursing poor people for unnecessary drug tests.

Florida’s experience apparently made no impression on Republican lawmakers in Indiana who just this week moved forward with a bill requiring drug testing as a requirement for public benefits. The bill had been withdrawn when a Democratic legislator successfully amended the bill to require state legislators to be drug tested too (a move which some claimed would be unconstitutional – Imagine that!) but to save it the proponent amended the bill to say that legislators would only have to be drug tested to receive special perks like parking and gym privileges…….. no wonder the public has no respect for public officials.

I think the most galling example of hypocrisy was provided by Rep. Kip Smith sponsor of a Georgia bill which would “require random drug testing” for people on public assistance, who failed his roadside sobriety tests when pulled over after driving thru a red light. For his failure to cooperate and for driving well over the legal level for intoxication, Smith was arrested and charged with DUI. I wonder if he can be required to attend a state-sponsored sobriety program as a condition for his continued employment……….

Similar measures are under consideration in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Michigan, Hawaii, Maine and Ohio. It’s important to note that for the most part these measures enjoy considerable public support. Most people agree with the argument that their tax money should not go to someone who uses drugs – never mind the drug most people test positive for is marijuana. An additional factor is the prevalence of work place drug testing which has become endemic in our society. The attitude of most people is, “If I have to take a drug test in order to get a job, why shouldn’t someone else have to take one in order to get public benefits?”. In a time of high unemployment and economic hardship it’s hard to proffer the typical civil libertarian argument that people have choice in the matter. The reality is not that clear………..most job seekers accept the need to give up their right to privacy in their person in order to obtain a job to feed and clothe their person and it’s really hard to argue with that……..

As with everything else related to the ‘war on drugs’ we have to ask ourselves what price are we willing to pay to be right? You may believe that it’s wrong for people to use illicit drugs, including marijuana but is it wrong enough to justify letting people go hungry, homeless, destitute and alone? What about their children? What options do they have? Is it fair to punish them for their parents failings? Don’t we ultimately end up paying for these people anyway whether in a homeless shelter, hospital emergency room, prison cell, mental hospital or the dozens or other places that serve as repositories for the people we’ve discarded and forgotten.

It the country that leads the world in punitive drug law enforcement it’s hard to perceive an environment that would accept the right NOT to be subjected to drug testing as a basic human right. However, as in many things related to drug policy we can learn a lot from our neighbor to the north. Canadians recognize drug addiction as a disability. The following is an excerpt from the Canadian Human Rights Commission Policy on Alcohol and Drug Testing:

Executive Summary
The Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability and perceived disability. Disability includes those with a previous or existing dependence on alcohol or a drug. Perceived disability may include an employer’s perception that a person’s use of alcohol or drugs makes him or her unfit to work. The Commission will accept complaints from employees and applicants for employment who believe they have been dismissed, disciplined or treated negatively as a result of testing positive on a drug or alcohol test. Workplace alcohol- or drug-testing policies that contain discriminatory elements may also be the subject of complaints. Because they cannot be established as bona fide occupational requirements, the following types of testing are not acceptable:
• Pre-employment drug testing
• Pre-employment alcohol testing
• Random drug testing
• Random alcohol testing of employees in non-safety-sensitive positions.

Maybe the GOP focus on urine is what’s causing their policy prescriptions to STINK SO MUCH!!!

Instead of testing the limits on how oppressive and intrusive we can be towards the poor, let’s test the limits of our compassion and their forgiveness……………..

The constituency of people that support marijuana legalization and/or ‘ending the war on drugs’ is as numerous (perhaps more so) and as committed to their issue as the members of the Tea Party. This constituency had been very energized by the Obama campaign in 2008 believing that he would be more amenable to drug policy reform, particularly with respect to marijuana. In the 14 states that have passed laws to legalize the medical use of marijuana, patients breathed a collective sigh of relief when the U.S. Justice Department issued a memo in 2009 indicating that enforcement against collectives lawfully serving medical marijuana patients was no longer a federal priority.

Buoyed by what appeared to be a favorable environment, reform advocates pressed forward with initiatives to regulate and control non-medicinal use of marijuana by adults. By highlighting the potential revenues derived from taxing marijuana to states facing severe budget crisis, support for the initiatives crossed over from the activist community to mainstream voters who saw no good reason to spend money enforcing laws against marijuana use when they could tax it instead. The growth in support for softening the punitive approach towards drugs spooked the prohibitionists who began pushing back harder. They set their sights on California, the state with the most entrenched, pervasive and powerful community of medical marijuana patients and providers.

As it turned out the faith of the drug policy reform community in the Obama administration was misplaced. Within a year federal prosecutors were advising officials in Oakland they could be prosecuted if they authorized large-scale marijuana production facilities in their city. Similar threats were made to officials in Washington, Oregon and Colorado. A few months ago prosecutors upped the ante when the threatened to use civil asset forfeiture laws to seize property of owners who rented to dispensaries or leased their land for medical marijuana cultivation. Banks were pressured to close dispensary accounts. As a result hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries across California have closed including some of the oldest and most established.

All of this has placed pressure on President Obama whose response has been to evade the issue. Since the beginning of his administration every online Town Hall meeting that has solicited questions from the public has seen the issue of marijuana legalization at the top of the list. This week’s online Q&A session sponsored by Google and it’s video division Youtube, was no exception. As reported in today’s New York Daily News:

YouTube’s top-voted question for the President came from a retired Los Angeles cop, Stephen Downing. He noted that Gallup polling now reveals more Americans supporting the legalization of marijuana than opposed to it, and asked, “What do you say to this growing voter constituency that wants more changes to drug policy than you have delivered in your first term?”

Yet Google ignored the query. Instead, its Q and A closed with participants peppering Obama with utterly inconsequential personal questions of the “boxers or briefs” variety.

A similar question was posed to Obama during an online town hall meeting early last year. There too, the question was posed by a retired police officer who became disillusioned with the war on drugs and joined Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). President Obama reiterated his opposition to drug legalization but acknowledged it is “an entirely legitimate topic for debate.

President Obama seems perplexed that he continues to be asked why the government won’t support medical marijuana, like he wishes the issue would just go away. I think this is in part, because he really doesn’t have a good answer which became obvious during another exchange with a voter asking about medical marijuana in the context of health care:

In the meantime, arrests for marijuana possession continue to comprise more than half (52%) of all drug arrests nationally. According to the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report police made 853,838 arrests in 2010 for marijuana-related offenses. The arrest total is among the highest ever reported by the agency and is nearly identical to the total number of marijuana-related arrests reported in 2009. Not surprisingly, despite the fact that whites use marijuana at higher rates than blacks, marijuana law enforcement continues to primarily target African-American and Latino youth.

No where is this more true than in New York City, which once again leads the country in marijuana possession arrests. As reported in today’s NYT low-level arrests for marijuana possession in New York City increased for the seventh straight year in 2011, the year-end arrest total was 50,684, up 0.6 percent from 2010, constituting more arrests than in the entire 19-year period 1978 to 1996 combined. Marijuana possession was once again the largest arrest category in the city last year, and the arrests cost the city about $75 million. Under Mayor Bloomberg, from 2002 to 2010, about 87 percent of those arrested for marijuana were black or Hispanic, while only 10 percent were white.

Yet, Bloomberg and his aides continue to defend the policy, minimizing the impact on poor black and Latino youth. As reported in the NYT:

Faced with criticism from members of the City Council and the State Legislature, aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have emphasized that few of those arrested on pot charges actually end up with criminal convictions because most cases are dismissed and sealed after one year. In effect, they say, the arrest process itself — which can stretch for 24 hours or more, under squalid conditions in holding pens — is the extent of the punishment.

Against the somewhat dubious claims of reduction in serious crime due to massive arrests for marijuana possession is the real evidence of harm to the hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino New Yorkers who’ve been arrested. The Bloomberg administration asserts the consequences for the people locked up have been minimal. Documented accounts are accumulating that such arrests have led to loss of employment, housing and for some noncitizens deportation and permanent separation from family and friends. Even without these common collateral consequences, there is harm associated with the entire process of arrest and pre-arraignment detention.

The experience of being handcuffed, placed in a police van (often to ride around for hours while police troll for more arrestees) arriving at a police station for processing – including mug shots, fingerprints and sometimes a strip search, culminating with up to 48 hours detention in a cramped, dirty and noisy cell is extremely unpleasant and traumatic. To minimize the significance of the experience, particularly on a young person with no prior interaction with the criminal justice system is callous in the extreme, particularly by a mayor who claims to care so much about New York City children.

African-American leaders have been slow to come to the issue but that tide is beginning to change. The chorus of leaders calling for an end to the drug war has grown dramatically aided in no small part by sister Michelle Alexander’s landmark book, The New Jim Crow, which placed the issue of the impact of the drug war on black communities squarely on the agenda. Last summer the national NAACP adopted a resolution calling for an end to the war on drugs. One of the reasons they cited was the unfairness of policing practices that target black youth for marijuana arrests despite the fact their rate of offending is lower than that of white youth.

Last fall I attended a meeting in Brooklyn, NY with the Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Gil Kerlikowske who wanted to discuss the administration’s drug policies. We talked about the high arrest rates of black youth for marijuana possession in many of our largest cities including New York City, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and L.A. (just to name a few). I asked whether he realized that many of the youth targeted for marijuana arrests are the same ‘at risk’ youth the administration claims it wants to help graduate high school. Kerlikowske ignored my questions. I honestly believe it never occurred to him to have those conversations, that’s how disconnected policymaking is when it come to law enforcement. No one ever asks whether there’s a conflict between federal law enforcement expenditures and other priorities (e.g. more books vs more prisons). It doesn’t make sense to me to spend billions to improve school retention rates and at the same time pursue law enforcement practices that drive many of those same youth out of school and hinder there future employability.

Yet this is our government’s policy, on the local, state and national level. The consequences of this hypocrisy are summed up quite nicely by of all people that ‘bleeding heart liberal John McWhorter……Smile’ who said the following:

In your heart of hearts, have you ever asked yourself why so many brown-skinned young men seem so fundamentally alienated from society, decades after the fading away of overt racism?

Imagine if your main contact with whites growing up was tense encounters with often surly cops. Not everybody can overcome imprinting experiences of that kind. And pretty soon, you even have influential writers like Charles Blow of The New York Times erroneously surmising that black New Yorkers are moving South not for the low cost of living, but to escape these stop-and-frisks.

Anti-weed laws muck up our societal discourse in infinite ways.

Now, when it comes to heroin or cocaine, opinions will differ as to whether they should be on sale at Duane Reade. But this war on weed is inexcusable.

An alternate America in which there were no reason to bust anyone for using or selling marijuana is utterly plausible — and better……………. Arrests like these will look as stupid in the future as gangsters having to ship liquor under cover of night does in “Boardwalk Empire” now.

I couldn’t agree more, let’s hope that future comes quickly, preferably during an Obama administration or else the President will continue to have a pot problem that may become a political problem.

The winner of the best documentary award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is Eugene Jarecki’s “The House I Live In” . The film is a searing indictment of the so-called ‘war on drugs’, a war the U.S. has spent more than a trillion dollars fighting over the past 40 years. The film raises important questions about the economic, social, human and moral costs of the drug war.

The economic costs since its inception exceed the amounts expended in Iraq; the human costs are tallied in the millions of nonviolent drug offenders cycling thru our criminal justice system; the costs to poor black communities are reflected in the reality that 1 in 3 African-American males will spend some period of their lives under criminal justice supervision because of the ‘war on drugs’; the moral costs are evident by the fact it’s almost impossible to find anyone (besides prosecutors and prison guards) who still support the war on drugs but people don’t see any clear path to ending it.

Eugene Jarecki is an amazing filmmaker, his previous films include Why We Fight, The Trials of Henry Kissinger and my personal favorite – Capturing the Friedmans. In The House I Live In, Jarecki frames his critique of the war on drugs inside the personal story of the African-American woman who helped raise him – Nannie Jeter, whose own son has succumbed to drug addiction and consequently inextricably caught in the criminal justice system. Their story is about two people who love each other and come to really know each other across the divide of race, class and privilege that delineates life in modern America. Yesterday Amy Goodman aired her interview with Eugene Jarecki and Nannie Jeter on Democracy Now!. The interview includes excerpts from the film, which I predict will be a commercial as well as critical success.

The second part of the interview is below:

Sorry to say but as Michelle Alexander argues forcefully in her bestselling book, Jim Crow is still very much with us and operating thru the criminal justice system. The criminalization of black males starting as young as 12 is not the result of their behavior or propensity towards criminality, it’s the result of public policies and law enforcement strategies that target them for surveillance and intervention. The public policy that is most responsible for the corrosive and explosive growth of the U.S. prison industrial complex is the 40+ years ‘war on drugs’.

The conventional wisdom is that the war on drugs is a failure and Jarecki shares that view, he believes drug abuse should be addressed as a public health problem as opposed to a criminal justice issue and points to the example of Portugal as a country that has successfully decriminalized drug possession.

One contributor to the film, Dr. Gabor Maté from Canada makes the case that the war on drugs is a success. It’s a success if you believe as I do that the real goal of the drug war is not to reduce the use and availability of drugs any more than the real goal of alcohol prohibition was to make people stop drinking. Sure, there are some people who truly believe we can achieve a ‘drug-free’ society, but most of us realize how futile and unrealistic that is in a society as dependent on pharmaceuticals as we are. If you believe as I do the real goal of the ‘war on drugs’ is social control and exclusion – then it’s an astounding success in controlling the poor and excluding those who have been denied a decent education and given instead America’s favorite degree for the black poor – a Prison House Diploma (PhD).

In honor of Black History Month, I begin this special series – 29 DAYS ON DRUGS……… Each day I will post a different story about some aspect of the ‘war on drugs’ with a particular focus on its impact on communities of color. I hope you’ll read the posts and share them with your friends. We need to get our people out of the ‘Big House’ and back into the homes they belong in with their family, friends and loved ones…..

I end with this quote from former President Jimmy Carter talking about why he endorsed the recommendations of the Global Commission on Drug Policy encouraging governments to experiment with models for legal regulation of currently illicit drugs:

The commission’s facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs … that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won’t turn to the United States for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!
Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets.
Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America’s drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

In this season of political obfuscation, comedians have stepped up to provide the consistently honest analysis of what’s really going on, with Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher leading the pack of people calling out the bullshit and reminding us that it stinks. Last week, Bill Maher did a superlative job of debunking the conservative left-wing Saul Alinsky conspiracy theory on his HBO show Real Time:

As frequently articulated by conservative Republicans, American exceptionalism asserts the U.S. has a divine right to be the world’s dominant nation; that our system of government is the best democracy in the world; that we are unique in protecting individual freedoms and liberties; and that we live in a just society. If Gingrich wants to assume the role as defender of “American exceptionalism” – I say, let him have it. ‘American exceptionalism’ is a concept that has outlived it usefulness, much like ‘manifest destiny’ and temperance.

While Republicans remain strident in their defense of ‘American exceptionalism’, this is yet another area where they are speaking to a diminishing audience. According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center the belief in American exceptionalism is declining:

[T]he current polling shows the American public is coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as superior to that of other nations. Today, only about half of Americans believe their culture is superior to others, compared with six-in-ten in 2002. And the polling finds younger Americans less apt than their elders to hold American exceptionalist attitudes.

This shift is driven in part by the fact it’s hard to keep believing in something when your experiences undermine that belief. Americans are no longer experiencing upward mobility, we realize this is not a country of ‘equal opportunity’; hard work and playing by the rules doesn’t always pay off and domestic law enforcement is being used to repress those seeking to exercise their constitutional rights. The following discussion with Professor Richard Wolff represents an excellent disquisition on the roots of ‘American exceptionalism and why it’s time has passed. Most importantly, Richard Wolff explains how our attachment to this belief keeps us locked into a cycle of spending and borrowing that is financially and socially crippling.

There’s another reason why Newt Gingrich should think twice about his constant references to Saul Alinsky. Some voters may be motivated to learn about Saul Alinsky and will find on examination that his views were closer to their own than Newt Gingrich. Saul Alinsky described his political motivation thusly:

“[The] eternal search for those values of equality, justice, freedom, peace, a deep concern for the preciousness of human life, and all those rights and values propounded by Judeo-Christianity and the democratic political tradition…. This is my credo for which I live and, if need be, die.”

Alinsky was a radical in the tradition of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Franklin – he held firmly to principles – believing that government existed in service of the people and he eschewed all forms of dogma, left or right. In the early pages of Rules for RadicalsAlinsky declared the following:  

I detest and fear dogma. I know that all revolutions must have ideologies to spur them on. That in the heat of conflict these ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth, and the keys to paradise, is tragic. Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement. The human spirit glows from that small inner doubt of whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world with cruelty, pain, and injustice.

Who do you fear, someone who believes the same things as Saul Alinsky or Newt Gingrich?

I could focus on the condescendingly ignorant statements made by Newt (the Snoot) Gingrich about poor children having no work ethic, a condition that would be cured by having them work in their local schools for meager salaries cleaning up people’s shit. When given the chance to take back, amend or soften these remarks Gingrich instead chose to double-down and twist the knife a little further in the backs of the poor, all for the sake of some redneck votes and the chance to smear Obama.

Or I could focus on the suggestion by Rick Santorum that unemployment benefits encourage people not to work therefore the time should be limited, like welfare benefits. Forget the fact that unemployment is still at record highs in many parts of the country and jobs are in scarce supply. Gingrich decided to raise him one by adding that receipt of benefits be contingent on participating in a ‘work training program’. Training for what jobs? Makes you wonder if any of these people have ever had to live on unemployment benefits?

I must admit my biggest ‘say what’ moment came when Rick Santorum attacked Romney for having a more liberal position than him on felon voting rights – pushing Romney to say he supports permanent disenfranchisement for people convicted of a ‘violent felony’. Does that mean he supports restoring voting rights to people convicted of drug offenses? How will that play in South Carolina?

I believe the most revealing moment of the night was when Rick Perry declared that “South Carolina is at war with the government and this administration”. The remark was met with rousing applause by the audience, including the state’s governor. I kept waiting to hear the Confederate Rebel yell, it was that surreal. It’s 2012 and yet to listen to the debate and that audience you would think it was 1912 and this was the Reconstruction South complaining about those uppity Northerners who run the federal government interfering with the state’s internal affairs. Who are they to tell the South how to deal with their lazy, shiftless ‘colored people’, who want more money for their work and don’t know how to stay in ‘their place’? I guess the battle for “redemption” is still on.

What’s striking to me is the virtual lack of media coverage regarding the substance of these statements. They’re generally characterized as giving ‘red meat to the base’, as if the substance of what’s said is unimportant, what matters is the audience reaction and whether they’ve scored any points. The significance of making that statement in South Carolina, the state that launched the Civil War, on the only national holiday honoring an African-American was as important as Ronald Reagan launching his presidential campaign by declaring “I believe in states’ rights,” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the city where Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered in 1964.

It’s not so much a declaration of war as a statement of fact. The GOP is at war with the government and, in particular, this administration. What’s interesting to me is that contrary to all appearances the GOP doesn’t really hate Obama because he’s black – their open embrace of Herman Cain and Allen West belies that claim. They hate him because he’s progressive, because he believes in the effectiveness and relevancy of government and he still has the support of the majority of the American people despite their best attempts to bring him down. Forgive the pun but he’s like Muhammad Ali – he looks pretty, he talks pretty, they can knock him down but they can’t knock him out!!!

At a time of severe economic pain, anxiety and heightened fears for the future the GOP has made a calculated decision to use Obama’s race to help stoke racial fears and class prejudice to their political advantage. Anyone in government knows the principal beneficiaries of domestic aid programs – food stamps, Medicaid, housing, WIC etc are poor whites and because of the recession that number has grown dramatically. A disproportionate percentage of blacks receive assistance – about 27% for food stamps – but cutting the program significantly would still hurt poor whites the most, particularly since most don’t live in areas with many supplemental social services like food pantries. Yet the GOP, with lots of assistance from the media has successfully framed the issue as one of giving ‘handouts’ to people unwilling to work who are being encouraged by government to become ‘dependent’ as opposed to fellow Americans being assisted by government from becoming destitute.

It saddens me that the Republican presidential candidates are using racial subtexts in their campaigns that are essentially a not-so-subtle promise to preserve white supremacy. Instead of addressing the issue of providing jobs and increasing economic security, the GOP candidates propose to make their voters feel better by making other people’s lives worse. GOP voters may not be rich, but at least they’ll still have the perceived advantages of being white in a country they still control. Romney is the most subtle and increasingly the most effective in projecting an image of ‘whiteness’ that appeals to many traditionalists, not just Republicans. As described in a recent article in the NYT:

[T]here has yet to be any discussion over the one quality that has subtly fueled his candidacy thus far and could well put him over the top in the fall: his race. The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.

Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America. ………….

Contrast that with Mr. Romney’s meticulously cultivated whiteness. He is nearly always in immaculate white shirt sleeves. He is implacably polite, tossing off phrases like “oh gosh” with Stepford bonhomie. He has mastered Benjamin Franklin’s honesty as the “best policy”: a practiced insincerity, an instant sunniness that, though evidently inauthentic, provides a bland bass note that keeps everyone calm. This is the bygone world of Babbitt, of small-town Rotarians.

Mr. Romney does not merely use the past as an inspirational reference point, as the other candidates often do. He conjures it as a total social, cultural and political experience that must be resurrected and reinhabited. He speaks of the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence as phases of national creativity that we are destined to live through again. He frequently accompanies his recitative with verses from “America the Beautiful.”

And while Mr. Romney may, in some people’s eyes, be a non-Christian, he is better than any of his opponents at synching his worldview with that of the evangelicals. He likes to present, with theological urgency, a stark choice between, in his words, President Obama’s “entitlement society” and the true American freedom of an “opportunity society.”

[A]s became immediately apparent in 2009, millions of Americans were unwilling to accept the basic democratic premise that Mr. Obama legally and morally deserved to sit in the White House — and that was before they confronted his “socialist” and “un-American” policy agenda.

Mitt Romney knows this. He knows that he offers to these people the white solution to the problem of a black president. I am sure that Mr. Romney is not a racist. But I am also sure that, for the many Americans who find the thought of a black president unbearable, he is an ideal candidate. For these sudden outsiders, Mitt Romney is the conventional man with the outsider faith — an apocalyptic pragmatist — who will wrest the country back from the unconventional man with the intolerable outsider color.

Contrast the attitudes and statements of Republican presidential candidates with this statement by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about confronting evil:

If we lack the courage to confront evil acts, or tendencies toward hatred and discrimination, both within ourselves and in society, they will spread unchecked, as history shows. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

A final thought: Note to Gingrich and Santorum – Enough with all the BS homilies about marriage as the guarantor of economic stability. In a nation with a divorce rate of 50% that’s really rich………. If you want to encourage marriage in low-income black communities, stop arresting and incarcerating our men!! That’ll do more to support stable relationships and families than any of the proposals I’ve heard from you to date………….

When I look at the Republican Party today, the cartoonish cast of characters that purport to be its leaders (either as presidential candidates or legislative officials), the hateful and ignorant rhetoric that substitutes for substantive policy analysis and the slavish devotion to positions that make no sense (e.g. rejection of climate change, the so-called ‘birther’ controversy, supply-side economics) it occurs to me the GOP has morphed from a legitimate political party into something that resembles a modern day cults.

I know this argument may strike many as exaggerated and ‘over-the-top’ even among those who love bashing the GOP, but before you dismiss this idea out of hand, let me list the common characteristics shared by cult-like groups and see if you think they describe the current GOP. While there is often fierce debate about which organizations/religions/groups can be legitimately characterized as cults, there is general agreement about the common characteristics of cults:

Some common characteristics of cults:

• Displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether alive or dead) regards its belief system, ideology, and practices as the truth and/or law.
• Polarized, us-versus-them mentality – demeaning those who do not share their beliefs, sowing fear and mistrust amongst their members about such people.
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
• Elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for its leader(s) and members who are on a special mission to save humanity.
• Teaching or implying that its exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary to achieve them.

Let’s see whether the current GOP exhibits these characteristics.

Displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leaders (whether dead or alive) and regards its belief system, ideology and practices as truth and/or the law.

It’s hard to dispute that within the GOP, Ronald Reagan has been accorded virtual demi-god status. Every major Republican leader has come and worshipped at the altar of Reagan, holding him up as the model for all would-be conservative Presidents. In many respects Reagan is for conservatives what Jesus is for fundamentalist Christians – an object of uncritical devotion tangentially related to the actual human being. Within this cosmology, Reagan single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union (effectively ending the Cold War), held the line against communist insurgents in Latin America, affirmed the role of Christian faith in the political mainstream and most importantly established the current orthodox belief that government is the enemy of the people and the only way to rein it in is to “starve the beast”. The following video produced by the Heritage Foundation in commemoration of Reagan’s centennial birthday presents Ronald Reagan as icon.

Celebrate President Ronald Reagan’s 100th Birthday

This deified version of Reagan ignores any facts (however well documented) that run counter to the narrative in the same way many fundamentalists conveniently ignore Jesus’ focus on charity, humility and generosity as the prerequisites for living a ‘Christian’ life. One of the many consequences of this revisionist view is that it’s enabled people who label themselves “conservative” to wear the Reagan mantle while embracing policies and tactics Reagan rejected while in power.

The relationship between today’s Republicans and Ronald Reagan was nicely summarized by Jimmy Carter during an interview earlier this year with Rachel Maddow about how the GOP has elevated Reagan to virtual sainthood:

Rachel Maddow – Jimmy Carter On GOP Elevating Ronald Reagan To Sainthood

[skip to 7min 23sec]

Polarized, us-versus-them mentality – demeaning those who do not share their beliefs, sowing fear and mistrust amongst their members about such people

This point hardly needs any demonstration. Almost everything the GOP does and says is polarizing and demeans all those who dare to disagree. What’s particularly pernicious about the polarizing tactics employed by the GOP is that it has expanded well beyond the normal political fights regarding opposing candidates and political power to impact almost every major issue of American life. How people view issues as basic as: scientific education (to teach or not teach evolution?); environmental protection (should business be required to pay for environmental damage and commensurate health consequences?); civic participation (should the government encourage voting?); unions (should workers have the right to organize and improve their working conditions?) are now driven by people’s political identification.

It wasn’t always that way, I remember when Republicans didn’t demonize teachers and public employees, I remember when Republicans supported extending the voting age to 18 year olds, I remember when Republicans like Richard Nixon supported the EPA and touted their record as protectors of land, waters and air.

How did we get to this point? The history is nicely summarized in a Time article entitled, American Discontent: The Problem with Washington Politics:

The first shirts-and-skins President was Ronald Reagan, the first truly conservative Republican elected in 50 years. But it was only after Reagan and his GOP successor, George H.W. Bush, left office that congressional Republicans realized they could use political polarization to stymie government — and use government failure to win elections. And with that realization, vicious-circle politics started to become an art form.

In the 1980s, discrediting government was not the strategy of the congressional GOP, for two reasons. First, the sorting out hadn’t fully sorted itself out yet: the Senate alone boasted moderate Republicans from blue states like Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Oregon, where activist government weren’t dirty words … Second, because Republicans occupied the White House, making government look foolish and corrupt risked making the party look foolish and corrupt too.

All that changed when Bill Clinton took office. With the GOP no longer controlling the White House, a new breed of aggressive Republicans — men like Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Trent Lott — hit on a strategy for discrediting Clinton: discredit government. Rhetorically, they derided Washington as ineffective and conflict-ridden, and through their actions they guaranteed it. Their greatest weapon was the filibuster, which forced Democrats to muster 60 votes to get legislation through the Senate … Merely declaring their intention to filibuster derailed any bill that lacked 60 votes.

In Clinton’s first two years in office, the Gingrich Republicans learned that the vicious circle works. While filibusters were occasionally broken, they also brought much of Clinton’s agenda to a halt, and they made Washington look pathetic….

With these acts of legislative sabotage, Republicans tapped into a deep truth about the American people: they hate political squabbling, and they take out their anger on whoever is in charge. So when the Gingrich Republicans carried out a virtual sit-down strike during Clinton’s first two years, the public mood turned nasty. By 1994, trust in government was at an all-time low, which suited the Republicans fine, since their major line of attack against Clinton’s health care plan was that it would empower government. Clintoncare collapsed, Democrats lost Congress, and Republicans learned the secrets of vicious-circle politics: When the parties are polarized, it’s easy to keep anything from getting done. When nothing gets done, people turn against government. When you’re the party out of power and the party that reviles government, you win.

What began as political tactic has become the governing (or non-governing) principle of the GOP – do not cooperate with the opposition on any issue for any reason even if it’s in the best interest of the country or what the majority of voters want. As famously declared by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – his most important objective is to “beat Obama and make him a one-term president.”

In order to avoid accountability for adopting a strategy of deliberate sabotage and obstructionism the GOP is constantly on the offensive – demeaning their opponents as ‘unpatriotic’, ‘immoral’ charlatans who only want to waste people’s money by giving it to the ‘undeserving poor’ in a misguided attempt to impose ‘socialistic’ views on the American people. The modern GOP has been both aided and guided in this goal by the Murdoch communications conglomerate and right-wing echo chamber who spew forth a constant stream of misinformation designed to sow fear and mistrust of anyone who is not an avowed conservative or any source of non-approved information. As noted by Media Matters for America the most recent survey about FOX viewers reaffirmed the results of numerous other surveys that consumers of this steady brain pablum are mentally malnourished:

The release yesterday of yet another survey indicating the more you watch Fox News the less they know, has once again shone a spotlight on one of the unique features that defines Rupert Murdoch’s cable news outlet – it is very, very good at misinforming people. And it’s very bad at reporting the news.

The fear and mistrust generated by conservative media found its highest expression in the emergence of the Tea Party. The Tea Party has been an ideal vehicle for conservatives to promote their anti-people agenda under the guise of populism. With help from the Murdoch empire the Tea Party and its political adherents in Washington and various states have accomplished the amazing feat of cloaking themselves in the mantle of the Founding Fathers who created government while working systematically to destroy it.

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished

This characteristic is the most common and also the most dangerous aspect of cults – the requirement both overt and covert that members accept without question the core beliefs, principles or ideology of the group. Adherence is usually enforced through methods that range from expulsion and shunning (Jehovah’s Witnesses) to physical assault and death (Nation of Islam and Malcolm X).

Over the past few election cycles the GOP has been effectively purged of moderates and is being driven by people who’ve embraced hard-right ideology. Anyone who deviates from the conservative line or suggest compromise will face political opposition and/or public criticism at the hands of conservative talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham and Pat Buchanan. For elected officials the threat of well-financed challengers has been an effective tool of thought control.

For those in the academic or policy world, other methods have been employed. The case of David Frum, speechwriter to George W. Bush is instructive. He recounts his personal experience in a must-read article entitled: When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?

Through the debate over health-care reform in 2009–10, I urged that Republicans try to reach some kind of deal. The Democrats had the votes to pass something. They could not afford to lose. Providing health coverage to all is a worthy goal, and the core mechanisms of what we called Obamacare should not have been obnoxious to Republicans. In fact, they were drawn from past Republican plans. Democrats were so eager for Republican votes to provide bipartisan cover that they might well have paid a substantial price to get them, including dropping the surtaxes on work and investment that supposedly financed the Affordable Care Act.

My urgings went unheeded, obviously. Senator Jim DeMint predicted that health care would become Obama’s Waterloo, the decisive defeat that would destroy his presidency, and Republicans accepted DeMint’s counsel. So they bet everything – and lost everything. A major new entitlement has been written into law, financed by redistributive new taxes. Changes in the bill that could have been had for the asking will now require years of slow, painful legislative effort, if they ever come at all.

Republicans hope that the Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act. Such a decision would be the most dramatic assertion of judicial power since the thirties, and for that reason alone seems improbable. Yet absent action by the Supreme Court, outright repeal of President Obama’s health-care law is a mirage, requiring not only 60 votes in the Senate but also the withdrawal of benefits that the American people will have gotten used to by 2013.

On the day of the House vote that ensured the enactment of health-care reform, I wrote a blog post saying all this -and calling for some accountability for those who had led the GOP to this disaster. For my trouble, I was denounced the next day by my former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal as a turncoat. Three days after that, I was dismissed from the American Enterprise Institute. I’m not a solitary case: In 2005, the economist Bruce Bartlett, a main legislative author of the Kemp-Roth tax cut, was fired from a think tank in Dallas for too loudly denouncing the George W. Bush administration’s record, and I could tell equivalent stories about other major conservative think tanks as well. [emphasis added]

Newt Gingrich, in a rare instance of political honesty and candor criticized the Paul Ryan proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher system as an attempt at ”right-wing social engineering,” which he considers not “any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.”  For speaking this truth directly, Gingrich was roundly denounced as a traitor by his fellow conservative Republicans. In a matter of days, Gingrich was forced to apologize and change his position in order to keep his presidential aspirations alive. This rigid political orthodoxy is not just problematic for the GOP as Frum points out, it has dire implications for our democracy:

The conservative shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology has ominous real-world consequences for American society. The American system of government can’t work if the two sides wage all-out war upon each other: House, Senate, president, each has the power to thwart the others. In prior generations, the system evolved norms and habits to prevent this kind of stonewalling. For example: Theoretically, the party that holds the Senate could refuse to confirm any Cabinet nominees of a president of the other party. Yet until recently, this just “wasn’t done.” In fact, quite a lot of things that theoretically could be done just “weren’t done.” Now old inhibitions have given way. Things that weren’t done suddenly are done.

Elitist – claiming special, exalted status for its leader(s) and members who are on a special mission to save humanity

The Reagan presidency coincided with the emergence of the religious right as a political force in the Republican Party. The alliance between traditional conservatives and the religious right has both strengthened and marginalized the GOP. In hotly contested races the GOP found it could win by using wedge social issues such as opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control to bring out committed single-issue voters.

In embracing the so-called ‘values voters’ the GOP also embraced positions and policies at odds with the rapid demographic and cultural shifts occurring among the populace. But instead of modifying or altering its positions to be more aligned with mainstream voters, the GOP has double-downed on its assaults on reproductive rights and alternative lifestyles as well as its opposition to any form of gun control. The debate about funding for Planned Parenthood was just the most recent iteration of the federal debate. During the first six months of this year 19 states enacted 80 new provisions to restrict access to abortion services.

Similarly with respect to LGBT issues, conservative Republicans have remained steadfast in their opposition to marriage equality and for repeal of laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Despite overwhelming evidence that they’re losing the public debate, the right adheres rigidly to its views on the pretext that its part of their divine mission to uphold traditional Judeo-Christian values and mores. While all the GOP presidential contenders have embraced conservative social positions, the two who most embody the rigid, evangelical wing of the Republican Party are Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman.

Rick Santorum Against “Privileges” for Gays

Michele Bachmann: Don’t Settle on Life and Marriage

Teaching or implying that its exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary to achieve them

One would think events of the past few years would engender a certain amount of reflection and humility in those who supported the policies that got us into this mess. Instead the GOP has engaged in the greatest feat of collective brainwashing since the demise of the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. As David Frum ruefully observes:

Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know – canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him – and yet that is done too.

In service to these beliefs the GOP has upped the ante on its extremist rhetoric and tactics. The repeated debasement and vitriol directed at President Obama rivals the response of southern segregationists to Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s purpose is to appeal to racial fears and further undermine the legitimacy of government.

After the election of President Barack Obama the GOP rediscovered the religion of fiscal austerity. Spurred on by Grover Norquist and other anti-tax crusaders, GOP officials in Congress and state houses throughout the country have insisted on significant cuts in government spending at the very time it’s most needed to address the country’s economic crisis. Unemployment is at record high levels and one in three Americans is living in poverty or near poverty, yet conservatives are against extending jobless benefits or increasing food stamp benefits.

Despite the continuing crisis with mortgage debt and foreclosures the GOP has rejected every effort to enable government to help people remain in their homes. Instead the GOP has engaged in political extortion, threatening programs for the most vulnerable and/or a total shutdown of government if its demands for further spending cuts are not met.  The GOP threatened to allow the  government to default on its financial obligations if it did not get its way. This manufactured ‘debt crisis’ resulted in a downgrade of the US credit rating for the first time in the country’s history. The willingness to take the economy over the cliff to prove a political point was anathema to the majority of the country, producing the lowest Congressional approval rating in history – only 9% of the public approves of the job Congress is doing – less than the percentage of people who believe Elvis is still alive.

However, to the GOP base these actions have received overwhelming support making heroes out of hard-liners like Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and most-notably Michele Bachmann. Bachmann helped found the Congressional Tea Party Caucus and has used the platform it provided to springboard her presidential bid. The Republican presidential debates have shown that rather than moderating their views to appeal to a national constituency, all the presidential contenders have tried to outdo each other in embracing right-wing views on health care, immigration, taxes, regulation, foreign policy, climate change, creationism, the death penalty, etc.  Most importantly, if elected they’ve all vowed to quickly dismantle government – their message in essence is: Put me in charge of government, so I can proceed to destroy it.

This is the political equivalent of saying I have to destroy your body in order to save your soul…

The GOP has made it plain that it is willing to destroy the essence of contemporary American society in service of its ideological vision of America. The modern GOP has no commitment to democracy. The GOP is not a political party – it’s a cult, masquerading as a political party where the only commitment is to attaining and maintaining power. POWER!!! That’s the ultimate goal here – political power which enables the further consolidation and protection of economic power by the top 1% that are the sponsors and funders of the GOP.  The GOP doesn’t believe it should abide by normal political rules. Elections can be rigged, undermined or stolen, and if all else fails – do everything you can to keep your opponents from voting – after all, it’s for a greater good.

Recent Wisconsin politics provides a blueprint of the GOP’s  national agenda – gain control of all three branches of government – executive, legislative and judiciary and then proceed to impose a strong conservative agenda.  The single-mindedness of Wisconsin Republicans in pushing their right-wing agenda despite vocal and active opposition is a reminder of what’s at stake.

President Obama was right in describing this as, ”not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time.”

To win this fight we have to understand the GOP is no longer the party we knew it to be. The modern GOP has become a cult run by extremists who cannot be reformed or negotiated with. I leave you with two historical facts: both Hitler and Mussolini were democratically elected to government as representatives of reactionary cult-like organizations masquerading as political parties.

Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it…

—-

Chapter 5 – Getting The Message

Getting the Message: Hip-hop Reports on the Drug War
Chapter 5: Hip-hop and the Drug War
by Deborah Peterson Small

Music and drugs are fellow travelers. Music is a universal medium of expression. Drugs have been used throughout human history by people of all ages. Both stir emotion and moods, and can alter one’s state of mind in minutes. Music is a particularly favored medium of youth. Throughout modern history music has provided a means for young people to express their concerns and angst. Illicit drug use is also a common experience of youth, particularly in the United States. According to the most recent Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey more than 45% of all high school seniors reported using an illicit drug in their lifetime. Consequently, it is no exaggeration to say that music, drugs, and youth travel in the same circles.

Hip-hop began as an urban movement encompassing rap music, break dancing, graffiti art, and fashion – created in New York City during the late 1970s, it reflected the hopes and aspirations as well as the many challenges facing inner-city youth. Its dominant feature is “rap” (performed by MCs – aka ‘masters of ceremonies’)—a discursive oral art form that traces its roots to the griots of West Africa.1 In its purest form, known as “freestyling,” rap is about creating extemporaneous poetry delivered to rhythmic beats. A rapper is distinguished by verbal agility, demonstrated in competitive ‘battles’. DJs (disc jockeys) create the soundtrack of hip-hop by sampling parts of existing songs, looping them, and adding new sounds to create music to rap to. Break-dancing is competitive street dancing consisting of elements demonstrating physical agility and strength. Graffiti is a popular method utilized by young urban artists to communicate identity, expression, and ideas through drawings, markings, and messages painted, written, or scratched on a wall or surface (in New York City, the surface was often subway trains).

The advent of hip-hop coincided with the escalation of the “war on drugs” in the United States in the early 1980s. In response to concern over growth of the illicit drug trade and increasing use of smokable cocaine (known as “crack” or “rocks”) in inner-city communities, Congress passed new laws that intensified the “war on drugs” and in short time, state legislators followed suit. At both the federal and state levels, lawmakers adopted expansive definitions of “drug-related crimes” and required imposition of harsh sentences aimed at keeping individuals with any connection to drugs behind bars for longer periods of time. Despite the reality of problematic drug use among every socioeconomic and demographic group, these new laws would be enforced most vigorously in poor black and Latino communities—with devastating effects on multiple generations of men, women, and children.

A frequent justification given by U.S. officials for enacting such “get tough” approaches is the need to protect vulnerable youth from drugs, drug sellers, and drug-related crime. Ironically, the expanding definition of “drug-related crimes” increasingly ensnared juveniles charged and prosecuted as adults for drug offenses. Not surprisingly, black youth are disproportionately represented among youth arrested and charged with drug offenses and among juveniles prosecuted as adults for drug offenses, despite consistent evidence that black youth have a lower rate of illicit drug use than their white counterparts. According to the most recent MTF survey:

Among the most dramatic and interesting subgroup differences are those found among the three largest racial/ethnic groups—Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics. Contrary to popular assumption, at all three grade levels African-American students have substantially lower rates of use of most licit and illicit drugs than do Whites. These include any illicit drug use, most of the specific illicit drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes.2 [emphasis added]

Over the past three decades, legislators throughout the United States have adopted a variety of policies that send more minority youth to criminal court. These measures include: lowering the age at which juveniles can be prosecuted as adults; expanding the categories of crimes for which youth are automatically prosecuted in criminal court; giving prosecutors the exclusive authority to decide which juveniles are charged as adults; and limiting the discretion of judges to overturn decisions by prosecutors and law enforcement officials. The effect of these policies has been dramatic, nowhere more so than in New York (the first state to adopt long mandatory drug sentencing) and California, which have the distinction of sending more young black and Latino men to prison each year than graduate from their state colleges and universities. Not surprisingly, New York and California have been at the center of major developments in the history of hip-hop.

Much has been written regarding the dramatic growth in the U.S. prison population; the role of punitive drug policies in fueling this growth; and the racially disparate consequences of drug law enforcement on poor black communities. In addition to the numerous books, articles, reports, and research studies chronicling these developments, stories of the drug war and its impact pervade hip-hop music. Anyone seeking to understand the effects of decades of drug law enforcement on poor minority youth should listen to the lyrics and music of the generations of young people who have lived on the frontlines of the U.S. “war on drugs.”

Delivering the Message: News from the Streets to the Ears of the World

Hip-hop was created by alienated and marginalized youth seeking to tell their stories. In the 1980s, rappers used hip-hop to express their disillusionment, despair, anger, and impatience about what was happening to them and their communities. Hip-hop music revealed the not-so-hidden consequences of growing income inequality.

One of the first consciously political hip-hop recordings was “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Released in 1983, it is a musical exhortation against complacency in the face of growing poverty and desperation. Its opening lines paint a bleak but honest picture of daily life in many ghettoized communities:

Broken glass everywhere People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care I can’t take the smell, I can’t take the noise Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice Rats in the front room, roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with the baseball bat

A later verse explains how childhood deprivation, living second rate, often leads to involvement in the criminal justice system. The lack of options for such children is acutely observed – their environment mirroring their future – one great big alley way.

You’ll admire all the number book takers Thugs, pimps, pushers and the big money makers Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens And you wanna grow up to be just like them