Monday, November 12, 2012
Sen. Rand Paul Compares SCOTUS Decision Upholding Obamacare To Pro-Slavery Dred Scott Decision
Sen. Rand Paul Compares SCOTUS Decision Upholding Obamacare To Pro-Slavery Dred Scott Decision: pSen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is not known for his measured understanding of the Constitution. He once suggested that Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution, and he opposes the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters because he believes allowing widespread segregation is “the hard part about believing in freedom.” Nevertheless, in a op-ed attacking the [...]/p
Friday, October 5, 2012
Why Are Bosses--And Lawmakers--Mistreating Pregnant Women?
Why Are Bosses--And Lawmakers--Mistreating Pregnant Women?:
Sun, 09/30/2012 - 11:33
The following article first appeared at Working In These Times, the labor blog of In These Times magazine. For more news and analysis like this, sign up to receive In These Times' weekly updates.
Whatever our political conflicts, we can generally agree that we should treat pregnant women nicely. We don't hesitate to help them carry their groceries or give them a seat on the bus. Yet when pregnancy comes up as a political issue, lawmakers are far more fixated on what an expecting mom's womb is doing, rather than her hands--as she slips the check under your plate and hopes for a decent tip--or her mind--as she loses sleep wondering whether she’ll lose her job as her due date nears.
Under current law, it's easy for bosses to mistreat pregnant women or force them off the job. Yet the men who run Congress are too busy sponsoring anti-abortion bills and slashing social programs, it seems, to protect pregnant women in the workplace. One of the many labor bills left off the congressional radar is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, (PWFA) which would help prevent pregnant women from being arbitrarily fired and make employers better accommodate them.
According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, the PWFA builds on existing anti-discrimination laws by extending specific protections to pregnant employees. The legislation directs employers to “make reasonable accommodations" for an employee or job applicant's limitations stemming from "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” unless this would pose “undue hardship” on the business. In addition, as the New York Times' Motherlode explains, the law would bar employers from "using a worker’s pregnancy to deny her opportunities on the job [or] force her to take an accommodation that she does not want or need.” The bill also directs the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to set regulations for implementing these laws, including “a list of exemplary reasonable accommodations."
It was introduced earlier this year in the House and this month in the Senate--and not surprisingly, faces pretty bleak odds for being enacted.
The bill expands on legislation passed in the 1970s that protects women from discrimination related to pregnancy. Those earlier policies have been interpreted in such a way as to let companies refuse to make reasonable adjustments for pregnant workers. Similarly, federal and state family-and-medical-leave acts protect women from discrimination related to a seeking medical care, including for pregnancy. But many expecting mothers are left unprotected by these measures; the FMLA for example covers only unpaid leave--not the paid leave time that's essential to protect the health of workers and their families--and generally only workplaces of 50 or more employees.
The PWFA would not shield expectant women from mistreatment altogether. The “undue burden” clause may give employers some leeway, for instance, to refuse to provide accommodations in job duties or schedules for a mom-to-be. Still, the measure would press firms to make sensible modifications for pregnant workers, such as no longer lifting heavy weights.
As with many women’s rights issues, this is also a matter of economic fairness. About 60 percent of women who gave birth in a given year also worked during that time, according to recent data; many moms are primary breadwinners, too. Making workplaces more pregnancy-friendly isn't about coddling women; it’s about putting pregnancy on par with other medical or physical challenges workers face. Sarah Crawford, director of workplace fairness at the National Partnership, noted in an email to Working In These Times:
Moreover, if a pregnant woman is unfairly fired, she may have trouble simply getting hired as a new mom, which some employers may see as a liability. (Not to mention affording quality child care so she can hold onto that new job).
The National Partnership also notes major health implications for women who lose a job during pregnancy, and for their babies: The stress incurred may raise “the risk of having a premature baby and/or a baby with low birth weight." If she can earn more before having the baby, she can potentially take more time off for maternity leave--meaning more time for bonding, breastfeeding and other essential nurturing tasks for parents that our labor structure tends to ignore.
Ironically, companies themselves suffer when they arbitrarily dismiss workers for pregnancy or childbirth-related reasons, because high workforce turnover is counterproductive in the long run.
Yet many workplaces still make women bear the brunt of the cost of childbearing. So next time you graciously offer your bus seat to a pregnant woman, just think about how our politicians fail to stand up for the labor rights of those who do the work of bringing us into the world.
Under current law, it's easy for bosses to mistreat pregnant women or force them off the job. Yet the men who run Congress are too busy sponsoring anti-abortion bills and slashing social programs, it seems, to protect pregnant women in the workplace. One of the many labor bills left off the congressional radar is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, (PWFA) which would help prevent pregnant women from being arbitrarily fired and make employers better accommodate them.
According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, the PWFA builds on existing anti-discrimination laws by extending specific protections to pregnant employees. The legislation directs employers to “make reasonable accommodations" for an employee or job applicant's limitations stemming from "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” unless this would pose “undue hardship” on the business. In addition, as the New York Times' Motherlode explains, the law would bar employers from "using a worker’s pregnancy to deny her opportunities on the job [or] force her to take an accommodation that she does not want or need.” The bill also directs the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to set regulations for implementing these laws, including “a list of exemplary reasonable accommodations."
It was introduced earlier this year in the House and this month in the Senate--and not surprisingly, faces pretty bleak odds for being enacted.
The bill expands on legislation passed in the 1970s that protects women from discrimination related to pregnancy. Those earlier policies have been interpreted in such a way as to let companies refuse to make reasonable adjustments for pregnant workers. Similarly, federal and state family-and-medical-leave acts protect women from discrimination related to a seeking medical care, including for pregnancy. But many expecting mothers are left unprotected by these measures; the FMLA for example covers only unpaid leave--not the paid leave time that's essential to protect the health of workers and their families--and generally only workplaces of 50 or more employees.
The PWFA would not shield expectant women from mistreatment altogether. The “undue burden” clause may give employers some leeway, for instance, to refuse to provide accommodations in job duties or schedules for a mom-to-be. Still, the measure would press firms to make sensible modifications for pregnant workers, such as no longer lifting heavy weights.
As with many women’s rights issues, this is also a matter of economic fairness. About 60 percent of women who gave birth in a given year also worked during that time, according to recent data; many moms are primary breadwinners, too. Making workplaces more pregnancy-friendly isn't about coddling women; it’s about putting pregnancy on par with other medical or physical challenges workers face. Sarah Crawford, director of workplace fairness at the National Partnership, noted in an email to Working In These Times:
The result for working pregnant women is that they are too often forced to quit or take unpaid leave because their employer denies them reasonable accommodations that are lawfully required for other workers with temporary disabilities.Losing work a double-blow for pregnant women who need to prepare financially for a new member of the household. Even if they're not outright fired, Crawford points out, "some employers force pregnant workers into unpaid leave prematurely, which means that women are forced to take a heavy financial hit just as they are about to give birth."
Moreover, if a pregnant woman is unfairly fired, she may have trouble simply getting hired as a new mom, which some employers may see as a liability. (Not to mention affording quality child care so she can hold onto that new job).
The National Partnership also notes major health implications for women who lose a job during pregnancy, and for their babies: The stress incurred may raise “the risk of having a premature baby and/or a baby with low birth weight." If she can earn more before having the baby, she can potentially take more time off for maternity leave--meaning more time for bonding, breastfeeding and other essential nurturing tasks for parents that our labor structure tends to ignore.
Ironically, companies themselves suffer when they arbitrarily dismiss workers for pregnancy or childbirth-related reasons, because high workforce turnover is counterproductive in the long run.
Yet many workplaces still make women bear the brunt of the cost of childbearing. So next time you graciously offer your bus seat to a pregnant woman, just think about how our politicians fail to stand up for the labor rights of those who do the work of bringing us into the world.
GOP Involved in Real Voter Fraud; Ignored by Fox News
GOP Involved in Real Voter Fraud; Ignored by Fox News:
Mon, 10/01/2012 - 06:27
Four years ago Fox News helped turn ACORN into a dirty word among conservatives by leading an often-hysterical right-wing crusade against the community activist group, charging it time and again with "voter fraud" on behalf of candidate Obama. In order to bolster its flimsy "voter fraud" attacks, the network repeatedly harped on reports that ACORN canvassers had submitted questionable voter registration forms.
Yet this week Fox has shown little interest in covering the unfolding story out of Florida, where the state's Republican Party has cut ties with a consulting firm accused of handing in more than 100 dubious voter registration forms.
From Tuesday night's Palm Beach Post:
Yesterday, Michael Isikoff reported that the registration troubles had spread:
The allegations lodged against Sproul's company are similar to the ones ACORN faced in 2008; workers submitted voter registration forms that contained dubious information. In `08, that was enough to light a short fuse on Fox News and within the right-wing media, as players rushed in to condemn the independent ACORN group as a corrupt and a criminal extension of the Obama campaign. (In 2009, a majority of Republicans believed ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.)
Note that in the unfolding Florida story, the firm in question was paid directly by the Republican Party and is accused of ACORN-like activities. But on Fox News, it's crickets.
In fact this morning, Brian Kilmeade hosted a Fox & Friends panel discussion about voter fraud. In 2008, the allegation that ACORN submitted questionable registration forms was routinely referred to and condemned as "voter fraud" on Fox. (To this day, Fox treats misaddressed voter registration forms as "fraud.") But this morning, Kilmeade and his guests made no mention of the fact that the Republican Party was just forced to fire a consulting firm for submitting potentially bogus voter registration forms; forms being reviewed by local law enforcement.
At Fox News, the hotbed for "voter fraud" stories, the embarrassing news from Florida is of little concern.
Yet this week Fox has shown little interest in covering the unfolding story out of Florida, where the state's Republican Party has cut ties with a consulting firm accused of handing in more than 100 dubious voter registration forms.
From Tuesday night's Palm Beach Post:
The Republican Party of Florida is dumping a firm it paid more than $1.3 million to register new voters, after Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher flagged 106 "questionable" registration applications turned in by the contractor this month.In an interview with blogger Brad Friedman, Bucher described the "similarities in the signatures and certain characteristics in the applications that were very disturbing" on registration applications collected by the firm. The "disturbing" defects on the forms included addresses of existing registered voters changed to commercial buildings or addresses and, "in some places, they were changing political parties."
Yesterday, Michael Isikoff reported that the registration troubles had spread:
NBC News has learned that four other Florida counties have also reported hundreds of possible fraudulent registration forms submitted by the firm, including apparent dead people being registered as new voters. Prosecutors in two counties are investigating possible voter fraud by the GOP consulting firm, officials said.And Thursday afternoon, Republicans in Colorado also pulled the plug on the voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, run by veteran GOP consultant Nathan Sproul.
The allegations lodged against Sproul's company are similar to the ones ACORN faced in 2008; workers submitted voter registration forms that contained dubious information. In `08, that was enough to light a short fuse on Fox News and within the right-wing media, as players rushed in to condemn the independent ACORN group as a corrupt and a criminal extension of the Obama campaign. (In 2009, a majority of Republicans believed ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.)
Note that in the unfolding Florida story, the firm in question was paid directly by the Republican Party and is accused of ACORN-like activities. But on Fox News, it's crickets.
In fact this morning, Brian Kilmeade hosted a Fox & Friends panel discussion about voter fraud. In 2008, the allegation that ACORN submitted questionable registration forms was routinely referred to and condemned as "voter fraud" on Fox. (To this day, Fox treats misaddressed voter registration forms as "fraud.") But this morning, Kilmeade and his guests made no mention of the fact that the Republican Party was just forced to fire a consulting firm for submitting potentially bogus voter registration forms; forms being reviewed by local law enforcement.
At Fox News, the hotbed for "voter fraud" stories, the embarrassing news from Florida is of little concern.
Jon Stewart on the Ridiculous 'Expectations Game' Before Tomorrow's Presidential Debate
Jon Stewart on the Ridiculous 'Expectations Game' Before Tomorrow's Presidential Debate:
Tue, 10/02/2012 - 07:46
On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked the common but horribly pathetic practice of campaigns lowering expectations for their candidates going into a debate. Both sides are guilty of this; the Romney camp is all over the media this week claiming that Obama will likely win the first debate, while some Democrats say Romney will do better. Among those Dems is former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who you might recall was pretty fired up about Obama at the DNC just a few short weeks ago:
As Stewart notes, "So all these guys have to do is show themselves to have a mild familiarity with the English language, and it's considered a win." American electoral politics, ladies and gentlemen!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't all tune in, if for no other reason than Romney's advisors have been feeding him "zingers" for weeks now. "I find the best zingers are the ones that you practice for two months," says Stewart. Indeed.
Watch the segment below.
As Stewart notes, "So all these guys have to do is show themselves to have a mild familiarity with the English language, and it's considered a win." American electoral politics, ladies and gentlemen!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't all tune in, if for no other reason than Romney's advisors have been feeding him "zingers" for weeks now. "I find the best zingers are the ones that you practice for two months," says Stewart. Indeed.
Watch the segment below.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Democalypse 2012 - Negate Expectations | ||||
| ||||
Why That Crappy Presidential Debate Won't Change Anyone's Mind
Why That Crappy Presidential Debate Won't Change Anyone's Mind:
Thu, 10/04/2012 - 02:50
This piece has been updated.
By most accounts, Wednesday night’s presidential debate was one of the worst anybody could remember. Moderator Jim Lehrer, anchor of the PBS NewsHour, seemed largely absent, President Barack Obama brought little fight to the game, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, presented a pile of lies that were left either unchallenged or ineffectively countered.
Add to that the barrage of numbers issued by each candidate, and you have the recipe for a very boring and dispiriting debate. And it was.
This first presidential debate in a series of three (heaven help us), which took place at the Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, probably didn’t change many minds. Election 2012 finds a more highly polarized electorate than normal; only 6 percent or so of voters are deemed “persuadable” by pollsters, and it’s unlikely that a majority of those undecided voters were even watching the debate.
On our highly polarized political landscape, debates are fought for the amusement of media industrial complex, and not for the voters. It’s part of the media’s jobs program for campaign consultants and former consultants who become ubiquitous on television as “expert” interpreters of what viewers witnessed on the debate stage.
But the narrative of the debate that is crafted by the media could have an effect -- not on voters’ determination of their preferred candidate, but on turnout. Unless the president steps up his game in the next two debates, those “likely voters” who tend to side with him just might decide not to show up on election day, because right now the two themes taking shape in the narrative are that the president lost the debate, and, thanks to the current craze for instant fact-checking, that Romney is a big old liar.
Of those two themes, only the first one is news. Fact-checker upon fact-checker has revealed many of Romney's claims, made throughout the campaign, to be untrue, so, big whup. That's the way the news business works.
Snap polls give Romney a big win
And that’s why devices such as CNN’s “snap” poll matter. Corporate media need to make even the most boring of political events seem exciting; how else will they get viewers to tune in. So instant polls of viewers’ reaction, along with on-screen dial scores of real-time focus groups have become regular features of television debate coverage. But what if the poll sample is just plain wrong?
At the Daily Kos, the blogger who writes as The Silver Monkey took a look at the internals (PDF - page 15) of CNN’s snap poll, which found that 67 percent of those watching the debate declared Romney the winner -- the highest percentage for a single candidate in any of their snap polling of previous debates. But look behind the curtain, and one finds the poll’s respondents to be nearly all white, Southern and over 50. Non-whites were so statistically insignificant as to register as “not applicable” when the numbers were assessed by race, as were samples of respondents from other regions of the country. Do they really believe that the numbers of northeasterners who watched the debate were next to nil -- or do they have a bad poll? UPDATE: The folks at the TPM, which keeps a close watch on polls say that CNN has shared more information with them, and the make-up of the polling sample used by CNN seems to be "very much line with normal standards for randomized sampling."
In contrast, the CBS News snap poll of uncommitted voters showed 46 percent calling the debate for Romney, 32 percent calling it a tie, and 22 percent for Obama. The CNN poll did not specify its sample as uncommitted voters.
Perhaps CNN was simply seeking to counter the current right-wing conspiracy theory that nearly all national news media polls are skewed in favor of Democrats, the news media being in the tank for Obama and all.
What about the 47 percent?
Polls aside, Obama seemed to have come to the debate with a determination not to seem too combative, in the hope that Romney would be his own worst enemy. During the debates of 2008, it was often said that Obama had a judo strategy, using his opponents’ weight against them, and perhaps that’s what he hoped to effect in Denver. If he did, it failed.
Perhaps the most damning event Romney has had to respond to in this campaign is the secretly recorded video of a fundraiser, exposed by Mother Jones, in which Romney asserts that 47 percent of the American people think of themselves as victims, and expect the government to provide for them. Yet, in a debate segment of the role of government, Obama never once uttered the words “47 percent.”
While the president did raise the fact that Romney’s lie that Obama seeks to cut Medicare by $716 billion, Romney simply repeated the claim later in the debate.
Obama’s overly-cautious tack likely stemmed from the fact that national and swing-state polls show him winning, and he doesn’t want to mess that up. But Obama’s recent advances in the polls likely have something to do with his populist rhetoric on the stump, and the recent stumbles by Romney -- especially the infamous “47 percent” video. Yet he failed to use either circumstance to his advantage.
Perhaps, given the racialized character of the presidential campaign since the very beginning of primary season, Obama was concerned about coming off as the right-wing caricature of himself, otherwise known as the angry black man. But if the sliver of undecided voters that concern him heard a more forceful Obama sounding more like he’s fighting for them, I’d imagine that they might enjoy seeing that Obama.
Obama did manage to thump Romney for his absence of detail in his tax plan, which the former governor sells as cutting taxes with no impact on revenue.
“At some point, the American people have to ask themselves: Is the reason Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret, is it because they’re going to be too good?” Obama asked. “Because middle-class families benefit too much? No.”
Obama also said that Romney’s “big, bold idea is ‘Never mind.’”
The comedian Chris rock suggested via Twitter that when, in the discusson of Romney's Medicare plan -- which Romney says won't change for people 55 and over, Obama cautioned people who are 54 or 55 to "listen up," he would have done well to also mention people who are, say, 47 -- just to get that famous number into people's consciousness.
Perhaps Obama should hire Chris Rock.
Killing Big Bird and an ode to bipartisanship
If Obama treaded lightly for fear of alienating those not solidly in his camp, Romney’s challenge appeared to be to seem reasonable to that tiny group of suburban swing voters, while throwing some red meat to his right-wing base.
For the base, Romney promised to pull federal funding for PBS -- meaning, one assumes, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the publicly financed entity that provides the Public Broadcasting System with an ever-dwindling percentage of its budget.
PBS is a favorite bugaboo of the right, whose leaders contend that its programming is hopelessly biased to the left. (Must be all that science programming. You know how they feel about science.)
Asked what he would do to trim the deficit, Romney began with this attack on PBS, addressing his comments to the moderator, who is employed by that network. “I’m sorry Jim; I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” Romney said. “I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.”
Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting actually accounts for around one hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Did anybody mention that? No.
Immediately, two fake Twitter accounts emerged under the Big Bird name, with @BigBirdRomney tweeting:
Then there was the racial dog whistle when Romney accused the president of lying, when Obama asserted that what's known of the Romney tax plan would raise taxes on middle class people. "I’ve got five boys, Romney said. "I’m used to people saying something over and over so I’ll believe it."
It was an especially audacious claim when one considers that if this race were to be settled by a truthometer set on Wednesday's debate, Romney would lose not just big, but huge.
But Romney also felt compelled not to present himself as the "severely conservative" former governor he's been telling the right-wing base he is, so he made a big show of talking about how he passed health-care reform -- anathema to the base -- in a bipartisan manner, working with a Democratic legislature. He then blamed Obama for passing his own health-care bill without Republican votes.
Did anybody care to mention the fact that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared as his number one goal not the passage of legislation, but that of making sure Barack Obama was a one-term president? No. Not the president, not the moderator.
The best Obama had to offer was this: "I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate..."
Do lies matter?
To their credit, mainstream media have created a whole new sub-industry of fact-checking speeches and debates, but it obviously doesn't matter. Why else would Mitt Romney conclude that a winning strategy is to repeat lies that multiple fact-checkers have concluded as such? This, after all, is candidate whose pollster, Neil Newhouse, told reporters, "We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
To wit, Romney's lie about Medicare cuts, which has been debunked by just about every fact-checking shop out there, was repeated by the candidate himself in the debate even after the president debunked it.
Which is not to say that Obama campaign is always pure. But when measuring pure mendacity, Romney is the clear sinner. Just look at CNN's fact-checks of the Denver debate. Of the five claims CNN fact-checked, Romney was found to untruthful in all, while Obama was found to be spinning a bit on his claim that Romney would rank Donald Trump as a small business.
This is the same CNN whose snap poll found Obama to have lost the debate by a wide margin.
In his book, The Political Brain, neuroscientist Drew Westen offered proof that voters make their decisions regarding candidates based on emotions, not facts.
Mitt Romney and his campaign operatives have apparently decided that the easiest way to manipulate those emotions is to lie. The task for Obama, then, is to speak to those emotions without lying. To do that, he'll have to talk about values, about the story of America as he sees it, and not just a statistic-laden laundry list of policies.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing: If you want to win, you can't let the other guy walk all over you.
By most accounts, Wednesday night’s presidential debate was one of the worst anybody could remember. Moderator Jim Lehrer, anchor of the PBS NewsHour, seemed largely absent, President Barack Obama brought little fight to the game, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, presented a pile of lies that were left either unchallenged or ineffectively countered.
Add to that the barrage of numbers issued by each candidate, and you have the recipe for a very boring and dispiriting debate. And it was.
This first presidential debate in a series of three (heaven help us), which took place at the Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, probably didn’t change many minds. Election 2012 finds a more highly polarized electorate than normal; only 6 percent or so of voters are deemed “persuadable” by pollsters, and it’s unlikely that a majority of those undecided voters were even watching the debate.
On our highly polarized political landscape, debates are fought for the amusement of media industrial complex, and not for the voters. It’s part of the media’s jobs program for campaign consultants and former consultants who become ubiquitous on television as “expert” interpreters of what viewers witnessed on the debate stage.
But the narrative of the debate that is crafted by the media could have an effect -- not on voters’ determination of their preferred candidate, but on turnout. Unless the president steps up his game in the next two debates, those “likely voters” who tend to side with him just might decide not to show up on election day, because right now the two themes taking shape in the narrative are that the president lost the debate, and, thanks to the current craze for instant fact-checking, that Romney is a big old liar.
Of those two themes, only the first one is news. Fact-checker upon fact-checker has revealed many of Romney's claims, made throughout the campaign, to be untrue, so, big whup. That's the way the news business works.
Snap polls give Romney a big win
And that’s why devices such as CNN’s “snap” poll matter. Corporate media need to make even the most boring of political events seem exciting; how else will they get viewers to tune in. So instant polls of viewers’ reaction, along with on-screen dial scores of real-time focus groups have become regular features of television debate coverage. But what if the poll sample is just plain wrong?
At the Daily Kos, the blogger who writes as The Silver Monkey took a look at the internals (PDF - page 15) of CNN’s snap poll, which found that 67 percent of those watching the debate declared Romney the winner -- the highest percentage for a single candidate in any of their snap polling of previous debates. But look behind the curtain, and one finds the poll’s respondents to be nearly all white, Southern and over 50. Non-whites were so statistically insignificant as to register as “not applicable” when the numbers were assessed by race, as were samples of respondents from other regions of the country. Do they really believe that the numbers of northeasterners who watched the debate were next to nil -- or do they have a bad poll? UPDATE: The folks at the TPM, which keeps a close watch on polls say that CNN has shared more information with them, and the make-up of the polling sample used by CNN seems to be "very much line with normal standards for randomized sampling."
In contrast, the CBS News snap poll of uncommitted voters showed 46 percent calling the debate for Romney, 32 percent calling it a tie, and 22 percent for Obama. The CNN poll did not specify its sample as uncommitted voters.
Perhaps CNN was simply seeking to counter the current right-wing conspiracy theory that nearly all national news media polls are skewed in favor of Democrats, the news media being in the tank for Obama and all.
What about the 47 percent?
Polls aside, Obama seemed to have come to the debate with a determination not to seem too combative, in the hope that Romney would be his own worst enemy. During the debates of 2008, it was often said that Obama had a judo strategy, using his opponents’ weight against them, and perhaps that’s what he hoped to effect in Denver. If he did, it failed.
Perhaps the most damning event Romney has had to respond to in this campaign is the secretly recorded video of a fundraiser, exposed by Mother Jones, in which Romney asserts that 47 percent of the American people think of themselves as victims, and expect the government to provide for them. Yet, in a debate segment of the role of government, Obama never once uttered the words “47 percent.”
While the president did raise the fact that Romney’s lie that Obama seeks to cut Medicare by $716 billion, Romney simply repeated the claim later in the debate.
Obama’s overly-cautious tack likely stemmed from the fact that national and swing-state polls show him winning, and he doesn’t want to mess that up. But Obama’s recent advances in the polls likely have something to do with his populist rhetoric on the stump, and the recent stumbles by Romney -- especially the infamous “47 percent” video. Yet he failed to use either circumstance to his advantage.
Perhaps, given the racialized character of the presidential campaign since the very beginning of primary season, Obama was concerned about coming off as the right-wing caricature of himself, otherwise known as the angry black man. But if the sliver of undecided voters that concern him heard a more forceful Obama sounding more like he’s fighting for them, I’d imagine that they might enjoy seeing that Obama.
Obama did manage to thump Romney for his absence of detail in his tax plan, which the former governor sells as cutting taxes with no impact on revenue.
“At some point, the American people have to ask themselves: Is the reason Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret, is it because they’re going to be too good?” Obama asked. “Because middle-class families benefit too much? No.”
Obama also said that Romney’s “big, bold idea is ‘Never mind.’”
The comedian Chris rock suggested via Twitter that when, in the discusson of Romney's Medicare plan -- which Romney says won't change for people 55 and over, Obama cautioned people who are 54 or 55 to "listen up," he would have done well to also mention people who are, say, 47 -- just to get that famous number into people's consciousness.
Perhaps Obama should hire Chris Rock.
Killing Big Bird and an ode to bipartisanship
If Obama treaded lightly for fear of alienating those not solidly in his camp, Romney’s challenge appeared to be to seem reasonable to that tiny group of suburban swing voters, while throwing some red meat to his right-wing base.
For the base, Romney promised to pull federal funding for PBS -- meaning, one assumes, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the publicly financed entity that provides the Public Broadcasting System with an ever-dwindling percentage of its budget.
PBS is a favorite bugaboo of the right, whose leaders contend that its programming is hopelessly biased to the left. (Must be all that science programming. You know how they feel about science.)
Asked what he would do to trim the deficit, Romney began with this attack on PBS, addressing his comments to the moderator, who is employed by that network. “I’m sorry Jim; I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” Romney said. “I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.”
Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting actually accounts for around one hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Did anybody mention that? No.
Immediately, two fake Twitter accounts emerged under the Big Bird name, with @BigBirdRomney tweeting:
@MittRomney just DM-d me. He told me if I don't shut my beak, he's going to tie me to the roof of his car. =( #DebatesAnd one called Silent Jim Lehrer began tweeting such gems as: "...I...so, I...guys..."
Then there was the racial dog whistle when Romney accused the president of lying, when Obama asserted that what's known of the Romney tax plan would raise taxes on middle class people. "I’ve got five boys, Romney said. "I’m used to people saying something over and over so I’ll believe it."
It was an especially audacious claim when one considers that if this race were to be settled by a truthometer set on Wednesday's debate, Romney would lose not just big, but huge.
But Romney also felt compelled not to present himself as the "severely conservative" former governor he's been telling the right-wing base he is, so he made a big show of talking about how he passed health-care reform -- anathema to the base -- in a bipartisan manner, working with a Democratic legislature. He then blamed Obama for passing his own health-care bill without Republican votes.
Did anybody care to mention the fact that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared as his number one goal not the passage of legislation, but that of making sure Barack Obama was a one-term president? No. Not the president, not the moderator.
The best Obama had to offer was this: "I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate..."
Do lies matter?
To their credit, mainstream media have created a whole new sub-industry of fact-checking speeches and debates, but it obviously doesn't matter. Why else would Mitt Romney conclude that a winning strategy is to repeat lies that multiple fact-checkers have concluded as such? This, after all, is candidate whose pollster, Neil Newhouse, told reporters, "We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
To wit, Romney's lie about Medicare cuts, which has been debunked by just about every fact-checking shop out there, was repeated by the candidate himself in the debate even after the president debunked it.
Which is not to say that Obama campaign is always pure. But when measuring pure mendacity, Romney is the clear sinner. Just look at CNN's fact-checks of the Denver debate. Of the five claims CNN fact-checked, Romney was found to untruthful in all, while Obama was found to be spinning a bit on his claim that Romney would rank Donald Trump as a small business.
This is the same CNN whose snap poll found Obama to have lost the debate by a wide margin.
In his book, The Political Brain, neuroscientist Drew Westen offered proof that voters make their decisions regarding candidates based on emotions, not facts.
Mitt Romney and his campaign operatives have apparently decided that the easiest way to manipulate those emotions is to lie. The task for Obama, then, is to speak to those emotions without lying. To do that, he'll have to talk about values, about the story of America as he sees it, and not just a statistic-laden laundry list of policies.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing: If you want to win, you can't let the other guy walk all over you.
Not Just Big Bird: 6 Examples of the Right's War on Beloved Children's Characters
Not Just Big Bird: 6 Examples of the Right's War on Beloved Children's Characters:
Thu, 10/04/2012 - 09:32
Mitt Romney's comments, during Wednesday night's debate, about cutting funding for PBS despite his “love” for Big Bird, immediately got a response from the Internet: FiredBigBird popped up on Twitter shortly after the comments and was quickly joined by Sesame Street colleagues FireMeElmo and FiredOscar, as well as BigBirdRomney.
PBS has long been a conservative target, despite the minuscule amount of savings that cutting it would actually produce. As Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos, “Romney's setting up the need for $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts. His answer? Fire Big Bird to save $445 million.” Big Bird and his cohort are just collateral damage in the Right's war on anything public; Romney can sadly shake his head and say that even though he loves Big Bird, the big yellow guy just has to go because of the deficits!
Whether Romney gets to fire Big Bird or not may be up to the voters this fall, but it's certainly not the first time right-wingers have painted a target on a fictional character. From children's books and movies to TV, conservatives—especially the religious right kind—have declared war on many a beloved character. Here's a rundown of the top 6 attacks on fictional favorites.
1. Harry Potter worships Satan!
Google “Harry Potter Witchcraft” and you'll find a plethora of Web sites from various ministries claiming that the multi-million-selling children's series is teaching children how to worship the devil and leading them away from Christianity.
Linda Harvey of Mission America claimed that Harry Potter was turning children to an especially dark source: therapy. No, really. “[T]he therapy that they need is to find special powers within themselves to battle the demons, real or imagined, out there, so they never look to Jesus Christ.”
Not to be outdone, televangelist John Hagee ranted:
2. Elmo will lead to gay male prom queens!
Yes, that's right. According to author Ben Shapiro (who wants to take Big Bird and Elmo “out back” and “cap 'em”), former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and of course, Sean Hannity, watching "Sesame Street" will lead to families embracing gender-neutral parenting, little boys playing with dolls, and yes, Blackwell claims, schools allowing gay boys to be prom queen.
Of course, it's Fox News, so none of them bother to explain what's wrong with any of that, but in their minds, it's terrifying.
3. Muppets hate capitalism!
In the most recent Muppets movie, the villain was an oilman named Tex Richman (subtle, that) who wanted to get rid of the Muppets theater to drill for the oil underneath. This, according to the Fox Business Network, means that the Muppets are wily socialists “using class warfare” and “trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism.” Obviously! Because oil is totally great, you need it to power cars and ambulances and stuff.
Tom Chivers at the UK Telegraph joked, “One only needs to look at A Muppet Christmas Carol to realise that the whole furry lot of them are anti-business, anti-the hard-working capitalist trying to make an honest living: demanding crippling impositions on small firms, like a day off for workers at Christmas.”
The only solution, Chivers noted, is for the right to cough up some counter-propaganda, “Putting the Fun in Hedge Funds” or something else. But Glenn Beck already had that idea, and it didn't seem to get anywhere...
4. SpongeBob Squarepants has a radical green agenda!
That's right, folks, SpongeBob is the reason your kids might be aware of this little problem called climate change. Don't believe me? Just ask Glenn Beck's site, the Blaze, which warns that the U.S. Department of Education is “indoctrinating children” with the idea that “man-made global warming” is a fact, using free books featuring the Nickelodeon character.
Fox & Friends got in on the SpongeBob bashing with a scary on-screen ticker declaring “SpongeBob's Bias." Gretchen Carlson complained that SpongeBob didn't show kids that global warming was “a disputed fact,” and Steve Doocy claimed that parents were uncomfortable with the “over-the-top green agenda."
5. G.I. Joe wants you to be part of a one-world-government nightmare!
Glenn Beck isn't only angry at Glee and SpongeBob. Nope, he's angry about the way the recent G.I Joe movie made the former military hero, star of a kids' cartoon and a heck of a lot of toys, into a “casualty in the war on the American way.”
Seriously.
You see, in the new movie, Joe is out of the Army, and according to Beck, “Hollywood now has him answering to some bullcrap international force like the U.N. We all know that the U.N. is a toothless bunch of pansies. They don't deserve somebody like Joe, even the little plastic version.” He followed that up with, “I believe some are trying to indoctrinate our kids into hating their own country, turning us into some one-world-government nightmare; hating America, turning it into a dirty word."
For Beck, G.I. Joe is a “symbol of national pride,” just like Superman, and you don't mess with those. (Nobody's told him that Superman was created by a couple of Jewish immigrants, right?)
6. Dora the Explorer is an undocumented immigrant!
This one's a bit disturbing, as my colleague Julianne Escobedo Shepherd pointed out earlier this year. Right-wingers took to posting a mugshot of cartoon character Dora, a young Latina, that had been doctored to give her a black eye and busted lip. The “charges” against her? "Illegal Border Crossing Resisting Arrest." (Oh, and the number they gave her? 666 666 666. Um.)
The images came up after Arizona's “Papers, Please” law was passed, and wound up in the middle of the debate over the issue—in part because Dora is bilingual and travels the world, apparently. Still, it's bad enough that a children's cartoon character became a target for the Right, but did they really have to beat her up, too? Sure, she's not real, but the fact that the response right-wingers have to an immigrant child is to want to see her with a black eye and bleeding?
PBS has long been a conservative target, despite the minuscule amount of savings that cutting it would actually produce. As Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos, “Romney's setting up the need for $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts. His answer? Fire Big Bird to save $445 million.” Big Bird and his cohort are just collateral damage in the Right's war on anything public; Romney can sadly shake his head and say that even though he loves Big Bird, the big yellow guy just has to go because of the deficits!
Whether Romney gets to fire Big Bird or not may be up to the voters this fall, but it's certainly not the first time right-wingers have painted a target on a fictional character. From children's books and movies to TV, conservatives—especially the religious right kind—have declared war on many a beloved character. Here's a rundown of the top 6 attacks on fictional favorites.
1. Harry Potter worships Satan!
Google “Harry Potter Witchcraft” and you'll find a plethora of Web sites from various ministries claiming that the multi-million-selling children's series is teaching children how to worship the devil and leading them away from Christianity.
Linda Harvey of Mission America claimed that Harry Potter was turning children to an especially dark source: therapy. No, really. “[T]he therapy that they need is to find special powers within themselves to battle the demons, real or imagined, out there, so they never look to Jesus Christ.”
Not to be outdone, televangelist John Hagee ranted:
“Think about that, we’re in a moral free fall where your children can be taught witchcraft by Harry Potter; that Heather has two mommies; you can substitute Christmas for a midwinter holiday, call it anything you want to but don’t call it Christmas, kick God out of the Christmas event; you can let your daughter go to school and she can get an abortion without your permission or without your knowledge but she cannot get an aspirin without your knowledge.”Hagee, you'll remember, is the pastor whose endorsement got John McCain into hot water because when he's not slamming Harry Potter, he's insulting the Catholic Church. At least Potter's in good company.
2. Elmo will lead to gay male prom queens!
Yes, that's right. According to author Ben Shapiro (who wants to take Big Bird and Elmo “out back” and “cap 'em”), former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and of course, Sean Hannity, watching "Sesame Street" will lead to families embracing gender-neutral parenting, little boys playing with dolls, and yes, Blackwell claims, schools allowing gay boys to be prom queen.
Of course, it's Fox News, so none of them bother to explain what's wrong with any of that, but in their minds, it's terrifying.
3. Muppets hate capitalism!
In the most recent Muppets movie, the villain was an oilman named Tex Richman (subtle, that) who wanted to get rid of the Muppets theater to drill for the oil underneath. This, according to the Fox Business Network, means that the Muppets are wily socialists “using class warfare” and “trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism.” Obviously! Because oil is totally great, you need it to power cars and ambulances and stuff.
Tom Chivers at the UK Telegraph joked, “One only needs to look at A Muppet Christmas Carol to realise that the whole furry lot of them are anti-business, anti-the hard-working capitalist trying to make an honest living: demanding crippling impositions on small firms, like a day off for workers at Christmas.”
The only solution, Chivers noted, is for the right to cough up some counter-propaganda, “Putting the Fun in Hedge Funds” or something else. But Glenn Beck already had that idea, and it didn't seem to get anywhere...
4. SpongeBob Squarepants has a radical green agenda!
That's right, folks, SpongeBob is the reason your kids might be aware of this little problem called climate change. Don't believe me? Just ask Glenn Beck's site, the Blaze, which warns that the U.S. Department of Education is “indoctrinating children” with the idea that “man-made global warming” is a fact, using free books featuring the Nickelodeon character.
Fox & Friends got in on the SpongeBob bashing with a scary on-screen ticker declaring “SpongeBob's Bias." Gretchen Carlson complained that SpongeBob didn't show kids that global warming was “a disputed fact,” and Steve Doocy claimed that parents were uncomfortable with the “over-the-top green agenda."
5. G.I. Joe wants you to be part of a one-world-government nightmare!
Glenn Beck isn't only angry at Glee and SpongeBob. Nope, he's angry about the way the recent G.I Joe movie made the former military hero, star of a kids' cartoon and a heck of a lot of toys, into a “casualty in the war on the American way.”
Seriously.
You see, in the new movie, Joe is out of the Army, and according to Beck, “Hollywood now has him answering to some bullcrap international force like the U.N. We all know that the U.N. is a toothless bunch of pansies. They don't deserve somebody like Joe, even the little plastic version.” He followed that up with, “I believe some are trying to indoctrinate our kids into hating their own country, turning us into some one-world-government nightmare; hating America, turning it into a dirty word."
For Beck, G.I. Joe is a “symbol of national pride,” just like Superman, and you don't mess with those. (Nobody's told him that Superman was created by a couple of Jewish immigrants, right?)
6. Dora the Explorer is an undocumented immigrant!
This one's a bit disturbing, as my colleague Julianne Escobedo Shepherd pointed out earlier this year. Right-wingers took to posting a mugshot of cartoon character Dora, a young Latina, that had been doctored to give her a black eye and busted lip. The “charges” against her? "Illegal Border Crossing Resisting Arrest." (Oh, and the number they gave her? 666 666 666. Um.)
The images came up after Arizona's “Papers, Please” law was passed, and wound up in the middle of the debate over the issue—in part because Dora is bilingual and travels the world, apparently. Still, it's bad enough that a children's cartoon character became a target for the Right, but did they really have to beat her up, too? Sure, she's not real, but the fact that the response right-wingers have to an immigrant child is to want to see her with a black eye and bleeding?
Daryl Hannah Arrested for Protesting Keystone Pipeline in Texas
Daryl Hannah Arrested for Protesting Keystone Pipeline in Texas: Daryl Hanna and Texas farm owner Eleanor Fairchild, 78 yrs old arrested on her farm for stopping TransCanada from destroying her land in Texas for the Keystone XL Pipeline
Thursday, October 4, 2012
In Honor Of National Public Lands Day: The Top Five Purposes Of Public Lands
In Honor Of National Public Lands Day: The Top Five Purposes Of Public Lands: pBy Jessica Goad Tomorrow is the 19th annual National Public Lands Day, the “nation’s largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands.” More than 170,000 Americans will volunteer their time helping to restore and conserve their favorite places. It’s a good time to reflect on why we have set aside more than 700 million acres of [...]/p
Poll: 72 Percent Of Swing Voters Say The Federal Government Should Do More To Promote Solar
Poll: 72 Percent Of Swing Voters Say The Federal Government Should Do More To Promote Solar: pAmericans like solar. They like it a lot. A new poll shows that 92 percent of registered voters feel it is either “very important” or “somewhat important” for the U.S. to develop more solar. Even more striking, the poll shows that 70 percent of voters believe the government should be doing more to help promote [...]/p
Epic ‘Dust Bowl Of 2012′ Expands Again
Epic ‘Dust Bowl Of 2012′ Expands Again: pThe latest weekly Drought Monitor update set another grim record. The brutal U.S. drought expanded to 65.45% of the contiguous U.S. — the highest ever in the Monitor’s 12-year history. The previous record was 64.8% — set just last week. In the third quarter alone, crop production dropped $12 billion “due to this summer’s severe heat and drought.” [...]/p
One Millionth Home Weatherized: Federal Efficiency Program A Winner On All Counts
One Millionth Home Weatherized: Federal Efficiency Program A Winner On All Counts: pby Richard W. Caperton, Adam James, and Matt Kasper Energy efficiency is a win-win-win for the United States. It saves homeowners money, it puts Americans back to work, and it helps avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. But energy efficiency investments are tough for some people to make because they typically involve relatively [...]/p
Avoiding Obama’s Mistake, Senate Candidates Slam GOP Opponents Over Climate Denial
Avoiding Obama’s Mistake, Senate Candidates Slam GOP Opponents Over Climate Denial: pThe less said about Obama’s inexcusably lame debate performance, the better. Kudos to team Romney for figuring out that in a nationally televised debate with only one, passive moderator, the winning strategy is the Gish Gallup: ”the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments” that there is no time [...]/p
Avoiding Obama’s Mistake, Senate Candidates Slam GOP Opponents Over Climate Denial
Avoiding Obama’s Mistake, Senate Candidates Slam GOP Opponents Over Climate Denial: pThe less said about Obama’s inexcusably lame debate performance, the better. Kudos to team Romney for figuring out that in a nationally televised debate with only one, passive moderator, the winning strategy is the Gish Gallup: ”the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments” that there is no time [...]/p
Bush-Appointed Judge Upholds Obama Administration’s Birth Control Coverage Rules
Bush-Appointed Judge Upholds Obama Administration’s Birth Control Coverage Rules: pOn Friday, Judge Carol Jackson, a George H.W. Bush appointee to a federal court in Missouri, rejected a Catholic business owner’s challenge to the Obama Administration’s rules requiring employer health plans to cover birth control. Like the many copycat lawsuits asserting similar legal claims, the plaintiffs in this suit argued that the birth control rules [...]/p
Income Support for Children with Disabilities: Moving Towards Reforms That Work
Income Support for Children with Disabilities: Moving Towards Reforms That Work:
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This year the nation celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Supplemental Security Income program, which provides income support to people with disabilities, including 1.3 million children. For families, the program is a lifesaver that allows for greater economic security as they provide family-centered care for their children. Despite its tremendous value, conservatives are targeting the program for reforms, some of which mirror what was done to programs like TANF. It is clear that this isn’t the way to go. The Children’s SSI program would benefit from some reforms, but ones that improve outreach to qualifying families, target resources to those most in need, and facilitate successful work outcomes.
This panel will discuss the challenges experienced by the families of children with disabilities, attacks on the SSI program, a blueprint for reform, and connections between SSI policy debates and those of other safety net programs.
Copies of The Family Consequences of Children’s Disability will be available for purchase at the event.
This panel will discuss the challenges experienced by the families of children with disabilities, attacks on the SSI program, a blueprint for reform, and connections between SSI policy debates and those of other safety net programs.
Copies of The Family Consequences of Children’s Disability will be available for purchase at the event.
The BRAD BLOG : CRIMINAL PROBE OPENED IN FLORIDA INTO ROMNEY-TIED FIRM AT CENTER OF GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
The BRAD BLOG : CRIMINAL PROBE OPENED IN FLORIDA INTO ROMNEY-TIED FIRM AT CENTER OF GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL:
via www.bradblog.com
An official criminal probe has been launched into the GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal we first reported just over one week ago. The investigation, confirmed by Reuters tonight, comes on the heels of an election fraud complaint filed on Friday by the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) after an initial batch of more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration applications were discovered in Palm Beach County. The forms had been submitted to the county by the RPOF after being collected by employees of Strategic Allied Consulting, a group hired by the party and headed by Mitt Romney's paid political consultant and controversial longtime GOP operative Nathan Sproul.
via www.bradblog.com
Stealth Inequities of School Funding
Stealth Inequities of School Funding:
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Too many children—often low-income children and children of color—are denied access to high-quality education because they attend schools that are underfunded and under resourced. All 50 states have adopted school-funding formulas—systems for distributing state aid—that are often aimed at addressing and reducing funding inequities. But many of these systems fail to achieve this goal and differences in per-pupil spending between low-income and high-income communities persist.
A new report from the Center of American Progress, “The Stealth Inequities of School Funding,” identifies often-overlooked features of school-funding systems that tend to exacerbate inequities in per-pupil spending rather than reduce them. They do so in ways that favor communities with the least need.
Please join the Center for American Progress for an event to examine these issues and their possible solutions. Opening remarks will be provided by Gov. Ed Rendell, who tackled these issues when he was governor of Pennsylvania. Professors Bruce Baker and Sean Corcoran will discuss the findings of CAP’s new report, and our esteemed panelists will discuss the importance of addressing funding inequity and the challenges facing reform efforts.
A new report from the Center of American Progress, “The Stealth Inequities of School Funding,” identifies often-overlooked features of school-funding systems that tend to exacerbate inequities in per-pupil spending rather than reduce them. They do so in ways that favor communities with the least need.
Please join the Center for American Progress for an event to examine these issues and their possible solutions. Opening remarks will be provided by Gov. Ed Rendell, who tackled these issues when he was governor of Pennsylvania. Professors Bruce Baker and Sean Corcoran will discuss the findings of CAP’s new report, and our esteemed panelists will discuss the importance of addressing funding inequity and the challenges facing reform efforts.
The Path to 270 Revisited: The Role of Demographics, Economics and Ideology in the 2012 Election
The Path to 270 Revisited: The Role of Demographics, Economics and Ideology in the 2012 Election:
Show Embed CodeIn November 2011 the Center for American Progress released Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin’s influential report, “The Path to 270.” That report argued that two large forces will ultimately determine the outcome of the 2012 election: the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate and the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states. With the campaign debate heating up and increasingly cast in ideological terms, it is time to revisit the basic questions posed by the original report: Will the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women, and secular voters that pushed President Barack Obama to victory in 2008 be sufficient and mobilized enough to ensure his reelection in 2012? Or will the Republican Party and its nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, capitalize on a struggling economy and greater mobilization from a conservative base that holds the president in deep disdain?
This panel will explore these and other issues surrounding the 2012 election as presented in a new paper, “The Path to 270 Revisited,” from Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress.
Download the event’s PowerPoint presentation (.ppt)
This panel will explore these and other issues surrounding the 2012 election as presented in a new paper, “The Path to 270 Revisited,” from Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress.
Download the event’s PowerPoint presentation (.ppt)
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As a society, we rarely take time to study the past and worse we frequently forget about important and tragic events.
Today we can reflect on an important and generally forgotten event:
the lynching of three black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac
McGhie, in Minnesota, this week in 1920. In Minnesota, these men were
the only blacks ever lynched.
The article below is based on and taken from an article I wrote which will appear in an upcoming book, the Encyclopedia of Disasters and Tragic Events and How They Changed American History.
After the Civil War ended racialized enslavement, African-Americans
still had it rough in the United States, very rough. Most historians
even say it was “worse” because whites now actively had motivations to
murder and hurt blacks in new and far worse ways and more often than
ever before.
One of the new forms of discrimination directed toward blacks after
the Civil War was lynching. From 1882 to 1930, there were 4,587 lynching
victims, 3,306 of these African-American—the vast majority of these
were in the South and only involved one victim.
I put this graph together to give you an idea of the number of
lynchings per year. I know it is hard to see, sorry. The blue line
represents white lynching victims, the red line black lynching victims.
(BTW, I am well aware of the very problematic nature of the labels
"white" and "black" - that's for another diary.) The graph starts with
1882 and goes to 1968. The vasty majority were from 1882 to 1930.
Although somewhat a debate over words, perhaps, a “lynching” was very
different than a “hanging.” A lynching would include extralegal mods
and mutilation of the body before and after the death, for example.
On June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, a mob of somewhere around six
to ten thousand men, women, and even children, gathered together to
murder three black men accused of rape. The total population was just
under 100,000 (with 495 blacks and 29,675 immigrants).
It all started twenty-six hours earlier when Irene Tusken, 19, and
her boyfriend, James Sullivan went to a traveling circus on June 14.
When Sullivan went to work that evening, he told his dad that Tusken had
been raped by a group of black men and that they had both been
attacked. His dad called the Duluth chief of police, John Murphy.
As miscegenation was a deadly “sin” and a most feared “crime,” Murphy
immediately responded. The traveling circus already sixty miles away
was ordered to stop. The chief of police and fifteen officers
subjectively selected forty of the 150 black circus workers as suspects.
After pressuring Tusken and Sullivan to pick the “guilty” men, after
they both said they didn’t know, six of these men were again
subjectively arrested and taken to the jail.
Paranoia, by word of mouth and newspapers, spread quickly through
Duluth. Details didn’t matter. Truth didn’t matter. An accusation of
rape had been made; therefore, someone had to be punished in their
minds. Even Dr. David Graham’s examination of Tusken and conclusion that
she had NOT been raped did not squelch the paranoia. People began
suggesting that the blacks who raped Tusken be lynched. Crowds formed
off and on throughout the day. Tension increased further after rumors
spread that Tusken had died from shock. The largest and most enduring
mob began assembling when a group of young men used their truck to drag a
long piece of rope with a noose on the ground while they drove around
town.
In virtually every similar situation, local, state, and national
officials, including religious leaders, overlooked lynch mobs and their
crimes and even encouraged them. In Duluth, the police provided a
surprising amount of protection for the accused blacks. Although
understaffed, underequipped, disorganized, and ordered not to use
firearms, police in Duluth actively tried to disband the mob by
reassuring them that justice would be served. As tensions escalated,
people broke into the police station and began tearing the building down
with bricks, chisels, and anything else they could retrieve. Police
used firehoses on the crowd. Undaunted, the crowd shouted and turned a
firehose on the police. Even local ministers were unsuccessful in
persuading the mob to disperse. Finally a few hours later, the crowd
seized complete control of the jail.
Following mock trials of no more than seconds, the extralegal mobs beat,
partially stripped, and hung Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac
McGhie on the light pole outside the police station at 11:30 p.m. and
left them overnight. Photographers took pictures of the dead bodies
alongside cheering crowds and made enduring postcards. The following
morning, people returned to collect any kind of souvenir possible from
the lynchings.
While all lynchings were tragic and generated responses, reactions
after the Duluth Lynchings were different and more extended. Previously
having thought that such extreme racism only existed in the South, the
nation reacted in horror upon seeing pictures and hearing about this
incident through media outlets. On June 16, the Minnesota National Guard
came to restore order. On June 17, the grand jury brought various
charges against some of the mob members: twenty-five for rioting and
twelve for first-degree murder. While only three were ultimately found
guilty, significantly for the time, three white men were found guilty,
though they were only convicted of rioting, with sentences of only about
a year.
Black males from the circus faced scrutiny again. Evidence still said
that Tusken had NOT actually been raped at all, but since such a charge
had been made, citizens of Duluth continued to believe it and had to
punish someone. The grand jury approved prosecution against seven
blacks. The NAACP provided three lawyers. In the end, a jury convicted
only Max Mason of rape and sentenced him to seven to thirty years in
prison. After serving less just less than five years, the court released
him and ordered him to never enter Minnesota again. For a time, rumors
spread in Duluth insinuating that all blacks would be lynched. Local
blacks responded by launching a chapter of the NAACP. Individuals
throughout the state pushed for antilynching legislation, which passed
on April 21, 1921. Although unsuccessful, attempts were also made to
codify a national antilynching bill. Nonetheless, approximately 20
percent of Duluth’s blacks moved elsewhere.
Over the decades, people suppressed the Duluth Lynchings from memory
and forbade discussion of them in schools. (I even know of one person
who grew up near Duluth a few years later who never heard about them.)
In a turn of events, on October 10, 2003, with thousands in attendance, the city dedicated the seven-foot-tall stone and bronze Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, located across the street from where these men were murdered over eighty years prior.
Although not as significant, a native of Duluth himself, Bob Dylan’s
“Desolation Row” (1965) serves as a partial reminder of this horrible
triple murder.
References/Further Reading:
Apel, Dora. “Memorialization and its Discontents: American’s First Lynching Memorial.” Mississippi Quarterly 61 (1/2): 217-35.
Fedo, Michael. The Lynchings in Duluth. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000.
Green, William D. “‘To Remove the Stain’: The Trial of the Duluth Lynchers.” Minnesota History 59 (1): 22-35.
Gustafson, Kristin L. “Constructions of Responsibility for Three 1920 Lynchings in Minnesota Newspapers.” Journalism History 34 (1): 42-53
Minnesota Historical Society. “Duluth Lynching Online Resources.”
And we must pay tribute to Billie Holiday
Also republished by
 |
| Minnesota Point from the hill above Duluth in 1875 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| Memorial (Photo credit: holisticgeek) |
 |
| English: Panorama of Duluth, Minnesota, c1898 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| African American and Hispanic American workers on strike against Kellwood, wearing placards that encourage support for better wages (Photo credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University) |
 |
| English: Photo of public lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas in 1893. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| A postcard of a Duluth lynchings, June 15, 1920 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| A man lynched from a tree. Face partially concealed by angle and headgear. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| A memorial in Duluth honors three workers who were lynched there in 1920. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
During this week in history: Rare Triple Lynching in Duluth, Minnesota
Share1
As a society, we rarely take time to study the past and worse we frequently forget about important and tragic events.
Today we can reflect on an important and generally forgotten event:
the lynching of three black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac
McGhie, in Minnesota, this week in 1920. In Minnesota, these men were
the only blacks ever lynched.
The article below is based on and taken from an article I wrote which will appear in an upcoming book, the Encyclopedia of Disasters and Tragic Events and How They Changed American History.
After the Civil War ended racialized enslavement, African-Americans
still had it rough in the United States, very rough. Most historians
even say it was “worse” because whites now actively had motivations to
murder and hurt blacks in new and far worse ways and more often than
ever before.
One of the new forms of discrimination directed toward blacks after
the Civil War was lynching. From 1882 to 1930, there were 4,587 lynching
victims, 3,306 of these African-American—the vast majority of these
were in the South and only involved one victim.
I put this graph together to give you an idea of the number of
lynchings per year. I know it is hard to see, sorry. The blue line
represents white lynching victims, the red line black lynching victims.
(BTW, I am well aware of the very problematic nature of the labels
"white" and "black" - that's for another diary.) The graph starts with
1882 and goes to 1968. The vasty majority were from 1882 to 1930.
Although somewhat a debate over words, perhaps, a “lynching” was very
different than a “hanging.” A lynching would include extralegal mods
and mutilation of the body before and after the death, for example.
On June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, a mob of somewhere around six
to ten thousand men, women, and even children, gathered together to
murder three black men accused of rape. The total population was just
under 100,000 (with 495 blacks and 29,675 immigrants).
It all started twenty-six hours earlier when Irene Tusken, 19, and
her boyfriend, James Sullivan went to a traveling circus on June 14.
When Sullivan went to work that evening, he told his dad that Tusken had
been raped by a group of black men and that they had both been
attacked. His dad called the Duluth chief of police, John Murphy.
As miscegenation was a deadly “sin” and a most feared “crime,” Murphy
immediately responded. The traveling circus already sixty miles away
was ordered to stop. The chief of police and fifteen officers
subjectively selected forty of the 150 black circus workers as suspects.
After pressuring Tusken and Sullivan to pick the “guilty” men, after
they both said they didn’t know, six of these men were again
subjectively arrested and taken to the jail.
Paranoia, by word of mouth and newspapers, spread quickly through
Duluth. Details didn’t matter. Truth didn’t matter. An accusation of
rape had been made; therefore, someone had to be punished in their
minds. Even Dr. David Graham’s examination of Tusken and conclusion that
she had NOT been raped did not squelch the paranoia. People began
suggesting that the blacks who raped Tusken be lynched. Crowds formed
off and on throughout the day. Tension increased further after rumors
spread that Tusken had died from shock. The largest and most enduring
mob began assembling when a group of young men used their truck to drag a
long piece of rope with a noose on the ground while they drove around
town.
In virtually every similar situation, local, state, and national
officials, including religious leaders, overlooked lynch mobs and their
crimes and even encouraged them. In Duluth, the police provided a
surprising amount of protection for the accused blacks. Although
understaffed, underequipped, disorganized, and ordered not to use
firearms, police in Duluth actively tried to disband the mob by
reassuring them that justice would be served. As tensions escalated,
people broke into the police station and began tearing the building down
with bricks, chisels, and anything else they could retrieve. Police
used firehoses on the crowd. Undaunted, the crowd shouted and turned a
firehose on the police. Even local ministers were unsuccessful in
persuading the mob to disperse. Finally a few hours later, the crowd
seized complete control of the jail.
Following mock trials of no more than seconds, the extralegal mobs beat,
partially stripped, and hung Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac
McGhie on the light pole outside the police station at 11:30 p.m. and
left them overnight. Photographers took pictures of the dead bodies
alongside cheering crowds and made enduring postcards. The following
morning, people returned to collect any kind of souvenir possible from
the lynchings.
While all lynchings were tragic and generated responses, reactions
after the Duluth Lynchings were different and more extended. Previously
having thought that such extreme racism only existed in the South, the
nation reacted in horror upon seeing pictures and hearing about this
incident through media outlets. On June 16, the Minnesota National Guard
came to restore order. On June 17, the grand jury brought various
charges against some of the mob members: twenty-five for rioting and
twelve for first-degree murder. While only three were ultimately found
guilty, significantly for the time, three white men were found guilty,
though they were only convicted of rioting, with sentences of only about
a year.
Black males from the circus faced scrutiny again. Evidence still said
that Tusken had NOT actually been raped at all, but since such a charge
had been made, citizens of Duluth continued to believe it and had to
punish someone. The grand jury approved prosecution against seven
blacks. The NAACP provided three lawyers. In the end, a jury convicted
only Max Mason of rape and sentenced him to seven to thirty years in
prison. After serving less just less than five years, the court released
him and ordered him to never enter Minnesota again. For a time, rumors
spread in Duluth insinuating that all blacks would be lynched. Local
blacks responded by launching a chapter of the NAACP. Individuals
throughout the state pushed for antilynching legislation, which passed
on April 21, 1921. Although unsuccessful, attempts were also made to
codify a national antilynching bill. Nonetheless, approximately 20
percent of Duluth’s blacks moved elsewhere.
Over the decades, people suppressed the Duluth Lynchings from memory
and forbade discussion of them in schools. (I even know of one person
who grew up near Duluth a few years later who never heard about them.)
In a turn of events, on October 10, 2003, with thousands in attendance, the city dedicated the seven-foot-tall stone and bronze Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, located across the street from where these men were murdered over eighty years prior.
Although not as significant, a native of Duluth himself, Bob Dylan’s
“Desolation Row” (1965) serves as a partial reminder of this horrible
triple murder.
References/Further Reading:
Apel, Dora. “Memorialization and its Discontents: American’s First Lynching Memorial.” Mississippi Quarterly 61 (1/2): 217-35.
Fedo, Michael. The Lynchings in Duluth. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000.
Green, William D. “‘To Remove the Stain’: The Trial of the Duluth Lynchers.” Minnesota History 59 (1): 22-35.
Gustafson, Kristin L. “Constructions of Responsibility for Three 1920 Lynchings in Minnesota Newspapers.” Journalism History 34 (1): 42-53
Minnesota Historical Society. “Duluth Lynching Online Resources.”
And we must pay tribute to Billie Holiday
Originally posted to Culture, History, Politics, and More on Wed Jun 13, 2012 at 10:58 AM PDT.
Also republished by
History for Kossacks.
Tags
I was in Duluth last winter
(6+ / 0-)
I can't remember the circumstances but I was definitely informed
about this event in the context of the city's campaign for racial
sensitivity.
"We are normal and we want our freedom" - Bonzos
Yep. There's been some renewed attention
(2+ / 0-)
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time. (Terry Pratchett)
Republished to History for Kossacks. nt
(2+ / 0-)
Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one. Which one seems unnatural now?
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Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
|
| Minnesota Point from the hill above Duluth in 1875 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
|
| Memorial (Photo credit: holisticgeek) |
|
| English: Panorama of Duluth, Minnesota, c1898 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
|
| African American and Hispanic American workers on strike against Kellwood, wearing placards that encourage support for better wages (Photo credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University) |
|
| English: Photo of public lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas in 1893. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
|
| A postcard of a Duluth lynchings, June 15, 1920 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
|
| A man lynched from a tree. Face partially concealed by angle and headgear. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
|
| A memorial in Duluth honors three workers who were lynched there in 1920. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
During this week in history: Rare Triple Lynching in Duluth, Minnesota
As a society, we rarely take time to study the past and worse we frequently forget about important and tragic events.
Today we can reflect on an important and generally forgotten event: the lynching of three black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, in Minnesota, this week in 1920. In Minnesota, these men were the only blacks ever lynched.
The article below is based on and taken from an article I wrote which will appear in an upcoming book, the Encyclopedia of Disasters and Tragic Events and How They Changed American History.
After the Civil War ended racialized enslavement, African-Americans still had it rough in the United States, very rough. Most historians even say it was “worse” because whites now actively had motivations to murder and hurt blacks in new and far worse ways and more often than ever before.
One of the new forms of discrimination directed toward blacks after the Civil War was lynching. From 1882 to 1930, there were 4,587 lynching victims, 3,306 of these African-American—the vast majority of these were in the South and only involved one victim.
I put this graph together to give you an idea of the number of lynchings per year. I know it is hard to see, sorry. The blue line represents white lynching victims, the red line black lynching victims. (BTW, I am well aware of the very problematic nature of the labels "white" and "black" - that's for another diary.) The graph starts with 1882 and goes to 1968. The vasty majority were from 1882 to 1930.
Although somewhat a debate over words, perhaps, a “lynching” was very different than a “hanging.” A lynching would include extralegal mods and mutilation of the body before and after the death, for example.
Today we can reflect on an important and generally forgotten event: the lynching of three black men, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, in Minnesota, this week in 1920. In Minnesota, these men were the only blacks ever lynched.
The article below is based on and taken from an article I wrote which will appear in an upcoming book, the Encyclopedia of Disasters and Tragic Events and How They Changed American History.
After the Civil War ended racialized enslavement, African-Americans still had it rough in the United States, very rough. Most historians even say it was “worse” because whites now actively had motivations to murder and hurt blacks in new and far worse ways and more often than ever before.
One of the new forms of discrimination directed toward blacks after the Civil War was lynching. From 1882 to 1930, there were 4,587 lynching victims, 3,306 of these African-American—the vast majority of these were in the South and only involved one victim.
I put this graph together to give you an idea of the number of lynchings per year. I know it is hard to see, sorry. The blue line represents white lynching victims, the red line black lynching victims. (BTW, I am well aware of the very problematic nature of the labels "white" and "black" - that's for another diary.) The graph starts with 1882 and goes to 1968. The vasty majority were from 1882 to 1930.
Although somewhat a debate over words, perhaps, a “lynching” was very different than a “hanging.” A lynching would include extralegal mods and mutilation of the body before and after the death, for example.
On June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, a mob of somewhere around six
to ten thousand men, women, and even children, gathered together to
murder three black men accused of rape. The total population was just
under 100,000 (with 495 blacks and 29,675 immigrants).
It all started twenty-six hours earlier when Irene Tusken, 19, and her boyfriend, James Sullivan went to a traveling circus on June 14. When Sullivan went to work that evening, he told his dad that Tusken had been raped by a group of black men and that they had both been attacked. His dad called the Duluth chief of police, John Murphy.
As miscegenation was a deadly “sin” and a most feared “crime,” Murphy immediately responded. The traveling circus already sixty miles away was ordered to stop. The chief of police and fifteen officers subjectively selected forty of the 150 black circus workers as suspects. After pressuring Tusken and Sullivan to pick the “guilty” men, after they both said they didn’t know, six of these men were again subjectively arrested and taken to the jail.
Paranoia, by word of mouth and newspapers, spread quickly through Duluth. Details didn’t matter. Truth didn’t matter. An accusation of rape had been made; therefore, someone had to be punished in their minds. Even Dr. David Graham’s examination of Tusken and conclusion that she had NOT been raped did not squelch the paranoia. People began suggesting that the blacks who raped Tusken be lynched. Crowds formed off and on throughout the day. Tension increased further after rumors spread that Tusken had died from shock. The largest and most enduring mob began assembling when a group of young men used their truck to drag a long piece of rope with a noose on the ground while they drove around town.
In virtually every similar situation, local, state, and national officials, including religious leaders, overlooked lynch mobs and their crimes and even encouraged them. In Duluth, the police provided a surprising amount of protection for the accused blacks. Although understaffed, underequipped, disorganized, and ordered not to use firearms, police in Duluth actively tried to disband the mob by reassuring them that justice would be served. As tensions escalated, people broke into the police station and began tearing the building down with bricks, chisels, and anything else they could retrieve. Police used firehoses on the crowd. Undaunted, the crowd shouted and turned a firehose on the police. Even local ministers were unsuccessful in persuading the mob to disperse. Finally a few hours later, the crowd seized complete control of the jail.
Following mock trials of no more than seconds, the extralegal mobs beat, partially stripped, and hung Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie on the light pole outside the police station at 11:30 p.m. and left them overnight. Photographers took pictures of the dead bodies alongside cheering crowds and made enduring postcards. The following morning, people returned to collect any kind of souvenir possible from the lynchings.
While all lynchings were tragic and generated responses, reactions after the Duluth Lynchings were different and more extended. Previously having thought that such extreme racism only existed in the South, the nation reacted in horror upon seeing pictures and hearing about this incident through media outlets. On June 16, the Minnesota National Guard came to restore order. On June 17, the grand jury brought various charges against some of the mob members: twenty-five for rioting and twelve for first-degree murder. While only three were ultimately found guilty, significantly for the time, three white men were found guilty, though they were only convicted of rioting, with sentences of only about a year.
Black males from the circus faced scrutiny again. Evidence still said that Tusken had NOT actually been raped at all, but since such a charge had been made, citizens of Duluth continued to believe it and had to punish someone. The grand jury approved prosecution against seven blacks. The NAACP provided three lawyers. In the end, a jury convicted only Max Mason of rape and sentenced him to seven to thirty years in prison. After serving less just less than five years, the court released him and ordered him to never enter Minnesota again. For a time, rumors spread in Duluth insinuating that all blacks would be lynched. Local blacks responded by launching a chapter of the NAACP. Individuals throughout the state pushed for antilynching legislation, which passed on April 21, 1921. Although unsuccessful, attempts were also made to codify a national antilynching bill. Nonetheless, approximately 20 percent of Duluth’s blacks moved elsewhere.
Over the decades, people suppressed the Duluth Lynchings from memory and forbade discussion of them in schools. (I even know of one person who grew up near Duluth a few years later who never heard about them.)
In a turn of events, on October 10, 2003, with thousands in attendance, the city dedicated the seven-foot-tall stone and bronze Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, located across the street from where these men were murdered over eighty years prior.
Although not as significant, a native of Duluth himself, Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (1965) serves as a partial reminder of this horrible triple murder.
References/Further Reading:
Apel, Dora. “Memorialization and its Discontents: American’s First Lynching Memorial.” Mississippi Quarterly 61 (1/2): 217-35.
Fedo, Michael. The Lynchings in Duluth. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000.
Green, William D. “‘To Remove the Stain’: The Trial of the Duluth Lynchers.” Minnesota History 59 (1): 22-35.
Gustafson, Kristin L. “Constructions of Responsibility for Three 1920 Lynchings in Minnesota Newspapers.” Journalism History 34 (1): 42-53
Minnesota Historical Society. “Duluth Lynching Online Resources.”
And we must pay tribute to Billie Holiday
It all started twenty-six hours earlier when Irene Tusken, 19, and her boyfriend, James Sullivan went to a traveling circus on June 14. When Sullivan went to work that evening, he told his dad that Tusken had been raped by a group of black men and that they had both been attacked. His dad called the Duluth chief of police, John Murphy.
As miscegenation was a deadly “sin” and a most feared “crime,” Murphy immediately responded. The traveling circus already sixty miles away was ordered to stop. The chief of police and fifteen officers subjectively selected forty of the 150 black circus workers as suspects. After pressuring Tusken and Sullivan to pick the “guilty” men, after they both said they didn’t know, six of these men were again subjectively arrested and taken to the jail.
Paranoia, by word of mouth and newspapers, spread quickly through Duluth. Details didn’t matter. Truth didn’t matter. An accusation of rape had been made; therefore, someone had to be punished in their minds. Even Dr. David Graham’s examination of Tusken and conclusion that she had NOT been raped did not squelch the paranoia. People began suggesting that the blacks who raped Tusken be lynched. Crowds formed off and on throughout the day. Tension increased further after rumors spread that Tusken had died from shock. The largest and most enduring mob began assembling when a group of young men used their truck to drag a long piece of rope with a noose on the ground while they drove around town.
In virtually every similar situation, local, state, and national officials, including religious leaders, overlooked lynch mobs and their crimes and even encouraged them. In Duluth, the police provided a surprising amount of protection for the accused blacks. Although understaffed, underequipped, disorganized, and ordered not to use firearms, police in Duluth actively tried to disband the mob by reassuring them that justice would be served. As tensions escalated, people broke into the police station and began tearing the building down with bricks, chisels, and anything else they could retrieve. Police used firehoses on the crowd. Undaunted, the crowd shouted and turned a firehose on the police. Even local ministers were unsuccessful in persuading the mob to disperse. Finally a few hours later, the crowd seized complete control of the jail.
Following mock trials of no more than seconds, the extralegal mobs beat, partially stripped, and hung Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie on the light pole outside the police station at 11:30 p.m. and left them overnight. Photographers took pictures of the dead bodies alongside cheering crowds and made enduring postcards. The following morning, people returned to collect any kind of souvenir possible from the lynchings.
While all lynchings were tragic and generated responses, reactions after the Duluth Lynchings were different and more extended. Previously having thought that such extreme racism only existed in the South, the nation reacted in horror upon seeing pictures and hearing about this incident through media outlets. On June 16, the Minnesota National Guard came to restore order. On June 17, the grand jury brought various charges against some of the mob members: twenty-five for rioting and twelve for first-degree murder. While only three were ultimately found guilty, significantly for the time, three white men were found guilty, though they were only convicted of rioting, with sentences of only about a year.
Black males from the circus faced scrutiny again. Evidence still said that Tusken had NOT actually been raped at all, but since such a charge had been made, citizens of Duluth continued to believe it and had to punish someone. The grand jury approved prosecution against seven blacks. The NAACP provided three lawyers. In the end, a jury convicted only Max Mason of rape and sentenced him to seven to thirty years in prison. After serving less just less than five years, the court released him and ordered him to never enter Minnesota again. For a time, rumors spread in Duluth insinuating that all blacks would be lynched. Local blacks responded by launching a chapter of the NAACP. Individuals throughout the state pushed for antilynching legislation, which passed on April 21, 1921. Although unsuccessful, attempts were also made to codify a national antilynching bill. Nonetheless, approximately 20 percent of Duluth’s blacks moved elsewhere.
Over the decades, people suppressed the Duluth Lynchings from memory and forbade discussion of them in schools. (I even know of one person who grew up near Duluth a few years later who never heard about them.)
In a turn of events, on October 10, 2003, with thousands in attendance, the city dedicated the seven-foot-tall stone and bronze Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, located across the street from where these men were murdered over eighty years prior.
Although not as significant, a native of Duluth himself, Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” (1965) serves as a partial reminder of this horrible triple murder.
References/Further Reading:
Apel, Dora. “Memorialization and its Discontents: American’s First Lynching Memorial.” Mississippi Quarterly 61 (1/2): 217-35.
Fedo, Michael. The Lynchings in Duluth. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000.
Green, William D. “‘To Remove the Stain’: The Trial of the Duluth Lynchers.” Minnesota History 59 (1): 22-35.
Gustafson, Kristin L. “Constructions of Responsibility for Three 1920 Lynchings in Minnesota Newspapers.” Journalism History 34 (1): 42-53
Minnesota Historical Society. “Duluth Lynching Online Resources.”
And we must pay tribute to Billie Holiday
Originally posted to Culture, History, Politics, and More on Wed Jun 13, 2012 at 10:58 AM PDT.
Also republished by History for Kossacks.
Recommended by ljcrazyhistorian
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