Commentary
On Bill Cosby, Voting Rights, And The Truth
Just remember the Republicans want to deny you a chair and some water while you wait in line to vote in some states. That’s where this country is these days.
After three years in prison, Bill Cosby, the man whose sexual assault conviction was overturned due to a procedural matter, is a free man.
When a district attorney in Pennsylvania made a deal not to prosecute Cosby on criminal charges back in 2005, Cosby couldn’t ‘take the Fifth’ in a civil deposition on the same charges. So, Cosby simply told the truth—that essentially, he used quaaludes and alcohol as his M.O. to have non-consensual sex with women. The deposition should never have been used in 2015 when a new D.A. decided to go after Cosby criminally. But it convicted Cosby, who was in prison until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided a deal was a deal.
And that is how you get this thing called justice in America. It takes the best attorneys and lots of money. Most of us don’t have that and will never see it. Cosby had it. He did serve three years, but he’s out now.
I feel for all the women who came forward after years of silence. I feel for the plaintiff in the one case, Andrea Constand.
But this is the law. We can change it. Or other Cosby victims—if time hasn’t run out–can come forward and lodge new cases. In the meantime, we should be happy the law works. Because most of the time, the wrongfully accused and jailed are not the Cosbys of the world, but the innocent nobodys who get a raw deal. The law works for us all.
Note that no one is saying Cosby is innocent. But it’s a tough lesson when the truth is revealed and can’t be used because of a D.A.’s blunder.
But it does fit in with where we are in this truth-forsaken country of ours.
When we stood on the Fourth of July among fellow Americans–after looking at the sparkle of peonies and coronavirus shapes shot in the air– did you ask yourself if our democracy was going up in smoke?
We have an ex-president who continues to upset the democratic equation by challenging the very fact that he lost the election fair and square last November. We know that to be as true as there are 50 states in our union.
But here we are in mid-2021, after the twin disaster of an actual pandemic and a political pandemic, that is four years of a president who, though out of office, is still hellbent on destroying our democracy. After all that, what are we left with? Not a sense of unity. Not in an America where no one can seem to agree on anything. Masks? Vaccines? The Constitution? Truth?
And let’s put aside hot buttons like abortion, policing, or race, for now. Let’s just think of practical matters like how do we fund and fix our infrastructure to make sure our country’s roads and bridges are safe for all?
Or how can we balance our priorities and close the income gaps that exist between the very wealthy and the very poor?
And then we have the basis of our democracy itself. How do we make sure that everyone gets heard in our country through the fundamental right of franchise? Not the right to open a Jollibee. a Panda Express, or a Popeye’s Chicken. I mean the right to vote. That kind of franchise.
Just remember the Republicans want to deny you a chair and some water while you wait in line to vote in some states. That’s where this country is these days.
On the other hand, if you maintain that the presidency was stolen last November from Trump, then you believe not only in the “Big Lie,” but in its enabler, the myth of voter fraud.
And then it’s likely you were either part of the insurrection of the capitol or supporting the violent actions to de-certify the election on January 6. Is all that worth investigating—to protect our democracy? But Republicans don’t think so.
They prefer the anti-democracy solution: to exclude people from voting by making the rules tighter and tougher so that even legally cast ballots are disqualified. These are laws that will likely hurt Blacks and other people of color disproportionately.
Last week at the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, six conservative justices (including the three Trump appointees) beat back the three liberal ones to side with voting restrictions. Already 17 states have restrictive laws, and now challenging any of them will be near impossible.
This is another blow to perhaps the single most important civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Weakened over the years, last week’s ruling is the alarm for Congress to take action and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in order to restore protections that would preserve our democracy.
As they say, keep your eye on the prize. Bill Cosby? Just a distraction. Let him defend Phylicia Rashad’s Free Speech rights to defend Cosby.
Right now, the fight of the ’60s has been renewed. The threats to our democracy are that real.
Commentary
Opinion: Lessons for Current Student Protesters From a San Francisco State Strike Veteran
How the nation’s first College of Ethnic studies came about, bringing together Latino, African American and Asian American disciplines may offer some clues as to how to ease the current turmoil on American college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war. After the deadline passed to end the Columbia University encampment by 2 p.m. Monday, student protesters blockaded and occupied Hamilton Hall in a symbolic move early Tuesday morning. Protesters did the same in 1968.
By Emil Guillermo
How the nation’s first College of Ethnic studies came about, bringing together Latino, African American and Asian American disciplines may offer some clues as to how to ease the current turmoil on American college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.
After the deadline passed to end the Columbia University encampment by 2 p.m. Monday, student protesters blockaded and occupied Hamilton Hall in a symbolic move early Tuesday morning.
Protesters did the same in 1968.
That made me think of San Francisco State University, 1968.
The news was filled with call backs to practically every student protest in the past six decades as arrests mounted into hundreds on nearly two dozen campuses around the country.
In 1970, the protests at Kent State were over the Vietnam War. Ohio National Guardsmen came in, opened fire, and killed four students.
Less than two weeks later that year, civil rights activists outside a dormitory at Jackson State were confronted by armed police. Two African American students were killed, twelve injured.
But again, I didn’t hear anyone mention San Francisco State University, 1968.
That protest addressed all the issues of the day and more. The student strike at SFSU was against the Vietnam war.
That final goal was eventually achieved, but there was violence, sparked mostly by “outside agitators,” who were confronted by police.
“People used the term ‘off the pigs’ but it was more rally rhetoric than a call to action (to actually kill police),” said Daniel Phil Gonzales, who was one of the strikers in 1968.
Gonzales, known as the go-to resource among Filipino American scholars for decades, went on to teach at what was the positive outcome of the strike, San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. Gonzales recently retired after more than 50 years as professor.
As for today’s protests, Gonzales is dismayed that the students have constantly dealt with charges of antisemitism.
“It stymies conversation and encourages further polarization and the possibility of violent confrontation,” he said. “You’re going to be labeled pro-Hamas or pro-terrorist.”
That’s happening now. But we forget we are dealing not with Hamas proxies. We are dealing with students.
Gonzales said that was a key lesson at SF State’s strike. The main coalition driving the strike was aided by self-policing from inside of the movement. “That’s very difficult to maintain. Once you start this kind of activity, you don’t know who’s going to join,” he said.
Gonzales believes that in the current situation, there is a patch of humanity, common ground, where one can be both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel. He said it’s made difficult if you stand against the belligerent policies of Benjamin Netanyahu. In that case, you’re likely to be labeled antisemitic.
Despite that, Gonzales is in solidarity with the protesters and the people of Gaza, generally. Not Hamas. And he sees how most of the young people protesting are in shock at what he called the “duration of the absolute inhumane kind of persecution and prosecution of the Palestinians carried out by the Israeli government.”
As a survivor of campus protest decades ago, Gonzales offered some advice to the student protesters of 2024.
“You have to have a definable goal, but right now the path to that goal is unclear,” he said.
About the Author
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. A veteran newsman in TV and print, he is a former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
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