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It’s Time for a Black Woman on the Supreme Court 

Fortunately, there are plenty of Black women who represent the values of the civil rights community and are ready to serve.

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United States Supreme Court Building/ Wikimedia Commons

I am eager to see a brilliant Black woman serving as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. I hope to celebrate her swearing-in later this year.

If you’re thinking, “Did I miss something?” the answer is no, there is no vacancy on the Court right now.

But there has been talk that Justice Stephen Breyer, who is 82 years old, might step down after the current Supreme Court term ends in June.

Some activists and legal scholars are encouraging Breyer to step down now. That would give President Joe Biden a chance to fulfill his campaign promise to name a Black woman to the high court. And it would let a Biden nominee be considered by a Senate that is not controlled by Republicans.

Never forget that when Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell was majority leader, he abused his power to slow-walk President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. And he refused to allow the Senate to even consider Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland, leaving a seat vacant for more than a year.

That same McConnell did everything he could to pack the courts with right-wing judges during the Trump administration—including a third Trump Supreme Court justice who was rammed through the Senate just days before voters turned Trump out of office. Those Trump judges threaten the legal legacy of the first Black person to serve on the Supreme Court, the brilliant Justice Thurgood Marshall. And that threatens all of us.

As a Marylander with deep roots in Baltimore, I am proud that a native son of that great city was the first Black justice on our country’s highest court. As a lifelong civil rights activist, I am grateful that a strategist for the civil rights movement was given the opportunity to advance equality under law as a Supreme Court justice. 

As a Black man and father of Black children, I am thankful for the ways that Marshall changed history. And I am deeply committed to defending those changes at a time when they are under attack.

The threat to our lives, and to a multiracial, multiethnic democratic society, does not just come from violent white supremacists or abusive cops. It comes from Republican politicians whose response to high Black voter turnout in 2020 is to make it harder for many of us to vote. And it comes from judges who dismiss evidence of systemic racism and uphold voter suppression.

What better time to have a powerful Black woman on the high court as a voice for truth and accountability?

That is especially true now that another civil rights champion, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has left the court, and been replaced by a justice who does not share her values. We need someone to fill the shoes of both Marshall and Ginsburg, two of the most transformative lawyers in our nation’s history.

Fortunately, there are plenty of Black women who represent the values of the civil rights community and are ready to serve.

Black women lawyers are fighting for civil rights every day. Black women scholars are expanding our understanding of systemic racism and its impact on all of us. Black women strategists are defending voting rights. Black women activists are building coalitions and electing politicians who are committed to defending our rights and our communities.

Candidate Joe Biden demonstrated his recognition of the importance of Black women when he chose Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. And he excited many of us with his promise to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court. The American people made Biden president and made Harris the first woman, first Black person, and first Asian American to serve as vice president.

I am looking forward to working with President Biden to confirm to the Supreme Court a phenomenal Black woman who will champion the values of freedom, justice, opportunity, and equality at a time when they urgently need champions.

It will be a relief to see her take her seat. And it will be glorious.

Activism

How the Crack Cocaine Epidemic Led to Mass Sex Exploitation of Black People PART 3: The Case Against SB357: Black, Vulnerable and Trafficked

Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened up a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment continues to explore the history that led to this latest form of exploitation in Oakland.

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Sable tied up.
Sable tied up.

By Tanya Dennis and Vanessa Russell
Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, it opened up a Pandora’s box loophole that hinders the ability of law enforcement to halt human trafficking, especially of young Black and Brown girls. This segment continues to explore the history that led to this latest form of exploitation in Oakland.
It was 1980: The beginning of the end for the Black family and Black community as we knew it.
Crack cocaine was introduced to the United States that year and it rendered unparalleled devastation on Black folks. Crack is a solid smokable form of cocaine made by boiling baking soda, cocaine, and water into a rock that crackles when smoked.
The tremendous high — especially when first smoked — and the low cost brought temporary relief to the repeatedly and relentlessly traumatized members of the Black community.
What was unknown at the time was how highly addictive this form of cocaine would be and how harmful the ensuing impact on the Black family when the addicted Black mother was no longer a haven of safety for her children.
The form made it easy to mass produce and distribute, opening the market to anyone and everyone, including many Black men who viewed selling crack as their way out of poverty.
These two factors — addicted Black women and drug-dealing Black men — would lead to the street exploitation for sex as we know it today.
Encouraged to try it free initially, most poor, Black women in the 1980s used crack cocaine in a social setting with friends. When the free samples disappeared the drug dealer offered to supply the women crack in exchange for allowing him to sell their bodies to sex buyers.
The increase in the supply of women willing to exchange sex for crack — a.k.a. the “sex for crack barter system” — caused the price of sex to decrease and at the same time increased the demand for sex because more buyers could afford it.
The desperation of the women to get their hit of crack made them willing to endure any form of abuse and treatment from buyers during sex, including unprotected and violent sex.
It also pushed desperate Black women onto the street to pursue sex buyers, flagging down cars and willing to have sex anywhere actively and desperately. Street prostitution grew and buyers were able to buy oral sex for as little as $5.
This sex-for-crack barter system resulted in a dramatic increase in sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS, both of which are disproportionately represented among Black people.
It also resulted in unplanned pregnancies by unknown fathers, which then resulted in children born addicted to crack who were immediately placed in the foster care system where they were often abused and/or neglected.
For his part, the Black man who engaged in the mass production and distribution of crack was often killed by gun violence while fighting over drug territory or incarcerated for long periods of time as use and sales and distribution of crack carried longer sentences than powdered cocaine.
Crack unleashed an entire chain of new trauma upon the Black family which then all but collapsed under this latest social attack that had started with chattel slavery, followed by Jim Crow, redlining, school segregation, food deserts, et. al.
Exploitation was and is at the root of the crack cocaine epidemic. It is the latest weapon used to prey upon Black people since the beginning of our time in the United States.
The sex industry and legislation like SB357 have only increased harm to Black people who have been historically oppressed with racist laws and epidemics including crack. More must be done to restore the Black community.
Tanya Dennis serves on the Board of Oakland Frontline Healers (OFH) and series co-author Vanessa Russell of “Love Never Fails Us” and member of OFH.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tanya-Leblanc/publication/236121038_Behind_the_Eight_Ball_Sex_for_Crack_Cocaine_Exchange_and_Poor_Black_Women/links/0c9605162c8f362553000000/Behind-the-Eight-Ball-Sex-for-Crack-Cocaine-Exchange-and-Poor-Black-Women.pdf?origin=publication_detail

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of March 22 – 28, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March March 22 – 38, 2023

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 22 - 38, 2023

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Ben Jealous

COMMENTARY: Make Banks Make Good on Their Pledge to End Fossil Fuel Financing

ConocoPhillips needs more than the disastrous approval it won from the Biden administration last week to proceed with its Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope. It needs $8 to $10 billion to build 199 wells, hundreds of miles of road and pipelines, a processing plant, and an airstrip on 499 acres that are vital to caribou, migratory birds and indigenous people.

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Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.
Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.

By Ben Jealous

ConocoPhillips needs more than the disastrous approval it won from the Biden administration last week to proceed with its Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope. It needs $8 to $10 billion to build 199 wells, hundreds of miles of road and pipelines, a processing plant, and an airstrip on 499 acres that are vital to caribou, migratory birds and indigenous people.

While President Biden certainly could have stopped Willow, so can the financial institutions helping create it. Willow is just the most recent example of banks’ complicity in preserving fossil fuel extraction through a continuing flow of money to Big Oil and Gas — all despite pledging a year ago to pursue the net zero carbon emissions we need to save the planet.

That’s why I joined activists from Third Act Tuesday on a block in Washington to protest among the offices of banking giants Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo in our nation’s capital. Third Act is a group founded by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben to bring together Americans over 60 to campaign for a sustainable planet. While I’m still too young to join, I was part of demonstrations they organized at bank branches across the country.

We were there to call out these “dirty” banks’ practices and their unacceptable costs — both immediate and long-term. Right now, any money that goes to Willow and fossil fuel projects like it, is money that won’t be invested in a clean economy, particularly in fledgling companies that are finding sustainable ways to power the planet. It’s those jobs that Alaskans and their descendants really need.

Longer term, the banks’ lending will weaken the impact of an historic $370 billion investment our country will make in the next decade on green technology and alternatives to oil and gas. As those investments pay off, there will be less and less demand for oil coming from projects like Willow. But the supply will remain steady (for 30 years in Willow’s case). So, gas will be cheaper for the holdouts who continue to use it, making it even harder to push them to make the switch.

The situation got even more dire with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the shadow of doubt it unfairly cast on other regional banks. Banks of that size have been vital to the growth of the clean economy. For example, Silicon Valley reportedly financed 60% of community solar energy projects in which property owners jointly construct a solar facility to power their neighborhoods.

The consequence of the turmoil has been to concentrate even more power in the biggest banks. Bank of America, for example, took in close to $15 billion in new deposits in a matter of days after Silicon Valley was taken over by federal regulators.

That makes it even more imperative that we hold these banks to their pledges not to fund new fossil fuel projects (HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, is keeping that promise). Third Act has suggestions that most people can take to be part of that accountability — cut up credit cards issued by the banks and move deposits out of them, not into them. When more and more people do that, they will be strengthening the case of a small group of the banks’ investors who have begun introducing resolutions at shareholder meetings calling for an end to fossil fuel financing.

Throughout our country’s history, it’s been profitable to consider certain people and places as disposable. We know where continuing that unjust path will lead — to a planet that’s too polluted and too hot to be livable. We’ve passed the time when financial institutions can postpone an end to their investment in the climate’s demise. It’s time these dirty banks put their money somewhere else.

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January

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