One Political Plaza - Home of politics
Home Active Topics Newest Pictures Search Login Register
Main
Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’
Page 1 of 2 next>
Jul 7, 2019 01:43:12   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html

Not only was she on the wrong side of history and not a progressive prosecutor, but she was also a lousy SF prosecutor and CA AG. She has shown herself to blow with the wind to further only one thing, herself and her political ambitions, for which she will say and do anything. She even had an affair with former CA house Speaker and later mayor of SF, Willie Brown, just to further her career in politics.

"The senator was often on the wrong side of history when she served as California’s attorney general."
By Lara Bazelon
Ms. Bazelon is a law professor and the former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles.

Jan. 17, 2019


Before she was a senator, Kamala Harris was an attorney general and district attorney who acted in ways that could hardly be described as "progressive," Lara Bazelon writes.
Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times


Before she was a senator, Kamala Harris was an attorney general and district attorney who acted in ways that could hardly be described as "progressive," Lara Bazelon writes.
Before she was a senator, Kamala Harris was an attorney general and district attorney who acted in ways that could hardly be described as "progressive," Lara Bazelon writes.CreditCreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — With the growing recognition that prosecutors hold the keys to a fairer criminal justice system, the term “progressive prosecutor” has almost become trendy. This is how Senator Kamala Harris of California, a likely p**********l candidate and a former prosecutor, describes herself.

But she’s not.

Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Consider her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011. Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.

Ms. Harris contested the ruling by arguing that the judge, whose husband was a defense attorney and had spoken publicly about the importance of disclosing evidence, had a conflict of interest. Ms. Harris lost. More than 600 cases handled by the corrupt technician were dismissed.

Sign Up for Jamelle Bouie's Newsletter
Join Jamelle Bouie as he shines a light on overlooked writing, culture and ideas from around the internet.


Ms. Harris also championed state legislation under which parents whose children were found to be habitually truant in elementary school could be prosecuted, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.

Ms. Harris was similarly regressive as the state’s attorney general. When a federal judge in Orange County ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional in 2014, Ms. Harris appealed. In a public statement, she made the bizarre argument that the decision “undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.” (The approximately 740 men and women awaiting execution in California might disagree).

In 2014, she declined to take a position on Proposition 47, a b****t initiative approved by v**ers, that reduced certain low-level felonies to misdemeanors. She laughed that year when a reporter asked if she would support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Ms. Harris finally reversed course in 2018, long after public opinion had shifted on the topic.

In 2015, she opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers. And she refused to support statewide standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers. For this, she incurred criticism from an array of left-leaning reformers, including Democratic state senators, the A.C.L.U. and San Francisco’s elected public defender. The activist Phelicia Jones, who had supported Ms. Harris for years, asked, “How many more people need to die before she steps in?”

Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.


Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly unt***hful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence.

That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by r****m and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went v***l, she reversed her position.)

All this is a shame because the state’s top prosecutor has the power and the imperative to seek justice. In cases of tainted convictions, that means conceding error and overturning them. Rather than fulfilling that obligation, Ms. Harris turned legal technicalities into weapons so she could cement injustices.


In “The T***hs We Hold,” Ms. Harris’s recently published memoir, she writes: “America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.”

She adds, “I know this history well — of innocent men framed, of charges brought against people without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate application of the law.”

All too often, she was on the wrong side of that history.

It is true that politicians must make concessions to get the support of key interest groups. The fierce, collective opposition of law enforcement and local district attorney associations can be hard to overcome at the b****t box. But in her career, Ms. Harris did not barter or trade to get the support of more conservative law-and-order types; she gave it all away.

Of course, the full picture is more complicated. During her tenure as district attorney, Ms. Harris refused to seek the death penalty in a case involving the murder of a police officer. And she started a successful program that offered first-time nonviolent offenders a chance to have their charges dismissed if they completed a rigorous vocational training. As attorney general, she mandated implicit bias training and was awarded for her work in correcting a backlog in the testing of rape kits.

But if Kamala Harris wants people who care about dismantling mass incarceration and correcting miscarriages of justice to v**e for her, she needs to radically break with her past.

A good first step would be to apologize to the wrongfully convicted people she has fought to keep in prison and to do what she can to make sure they get justice. She should start with George Gage.

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 01:44:32   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/2/kamala_harris_not_a_progressive_prosecutor?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=299bb88046-Daily_Digest_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-299bb88046-191715297

As Senator Kamala Harris rises in the early p**********l polls, she is facing increasing scrutiny over her record as a prosecutor in California. In 2004, Harris became district attorney of San Francisco. She held the post until 2011, when she became the attorney general of California. We speak with Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law. In January, she wrote a piece in The New York Times titled “Kamala Harris Was Not a 'Progressive Prosecutor.'” In it, Bazelon writes, “Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, as Senator Kamala Harris rises in the early p**********l polls, she’s facing increased scrutiny over her record as a prosecutor in California. In 2004, Harris became district attorney of San Francisco. She held the post until 2011, whereupon she became the attorney general of California.

We’re joined now by Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law. In January, she wrote a widely read article in The New York Times titled “Kamala Harris Was Not a 'Progressive Prosecutor.'” Bazelon wrote, quote, “Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”

AMY GOODMAN: Lara Bazelon joins us now from San Francisco.

Thank you for joining us, Professor Bazelon. Can you start off by going through Senator Harris’s record, starting with her being DA of San Francisco?

LARA BAZELON: Sure. So, she was elected in 2004. And she took a pretty courageous stance, initially, in that she didn’t seek the death penalty against a man who had been accused of murdering a police officer. And she did get a lot of blowback from that. Subsequently, she moved much more towards the center in many of her positions.

And two things happened in her tenure as DA that I think are worth mentioning. One is that there was a big crime lab scandal, whereby there was a lab technician who was using the drugs rather than testing them. And as a result, many, many convictions became tainted. And it turned out that her office had known for months—top attorneys had—and had not disclosed that information to the defense. And when a judge found out, she became quite incensed and wrote an opinion castigating Harris for allowing this to happen. Harris’s reaction to that was to try to get the judge disqualified by saying that she had a conflict of interest because her husband was a defense lawyer. That failed, and 600 cases were thrown out.

The second piece of her tenure that I think is important, that not a lot of people know about, is a case involving a man named Jamal Trulove. That case was tried by Linda Allen, who was one of Harris’s deputies. And the case against Trulove turned against a single eyewitness—turned on one eyewitness. It was a one-eyewitness-identification case. He was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life. And the court of appeals threw out that conviction, castigating what Allen had done as gross and egregious prosecutorial misconduct. They said that her closing argument was a yarn made out of whole cloth. Recently, Trulove sued the city of California—excuse me, the city of San Francisco and won a $13.1 million judgment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, you’ve also written about another case, George Gage. Could you talk about that, as well?

LARA BAZELON: Yes. And this is what prompted me really to write this piece. It’s Harris’s record on wrongful convictions. So, after Trulove, there was Gage, and there was Johnny Baca and Daniel Larsen and a man named José Luis Díaz. And in these cases, what happened was that Harris was at that point the AG, the top official in the state of California, the top prosecutor. And when these convictions came up, they had been handled by lower DAs, and it was her job to decide whether or not to defend them.

In George Gage’s case, he had been convicted, again, based on a single witness. It was his stepdaughter Marian, who accused him of sexually abusing her. And the case turned on Marian’s testimony. It turned out, after the verdict, that the prosecutor had suppressed a lot of material about Marian, including medical records and a note from her own mother saying, “My daughter is a pathological liar who lives her lies.” And rather than acknowledge that this really terrible thing had happened, that this prosecutor had held back information that might have swayed the verdict, what Harris’s attorneys went into court and did was say, “Look, George Gage,” who been forced to act as his own lawyer, “didn’t raise his claim in exactly the right way. And so, for this technical reason, you should affirm the conviction.” It went to oral argument, and the judges were very concerned about that position, told the deputy to go back and talk to a supervisor as to try to resolve the case, which was a signal to really get rid of it and do the right thing. And instead, Harris’s office doubled down. And George Gage is currently 80 years old. He is serving an effective death-in-prison sentence.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to an interview Kamala Harris did last month on Face the Nation with correspondent Ed O’Keefe.

ED O’KEEFE: You take your prosecutorial record against a push in your party for criminal justice reform. There’s a lot of concern among especially more liberal and younger parts of the party. You may not be the best person to do that, given that you were implementing those tough-on-crime initiatives as a prosecutor. Can they trust you to do that?

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: Well, here’s the thing. When I became a prosecutor and when I was elected district attorney and also attorney general of California, I implemented some of the most significant reforms to date during those years that had been implemented. Like I said, I created one of the first re-entry initiatives, that became a model—it was designated as a model in the United States for what law enforcement should do to be, as I call it, smart on crime. I was the first in the nation, leading the state Department of Justice in California—which, by the way, is the second-largest Department of Justice in the United States—to require my agents to wear body cameras. I created, as attorney general, the first-in-the-nation implicit bias and procedural justice training for law enforcement, knowing that that had to be addressed, which is the implicit bias that exists in law enforcement and the potentially lethal outcomes that occur from that.

ED O’KEEFE: So the concerns are overblown?

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: The concerns are overblown, yes. No question.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Senator Kamala Harris on Face the Nation, speaking to correspondent Ed O’Keefe. If you could respond to this, Lara Bazelon?

LARA BAZELON: Sure. So, you can hear her struggling to come up with a list. And she starts with her Back on Track program that she implemented as DA. This was a program that did help certain very select nonviolent offenders re-enter society. It affected a very small group of people.

She then talks about body-worn cameras. She was asked by the California state Legislature to support a bill to mandate all police officers wearing body-worn cameras, and she declined to do that.

With respect to implicit bias training, that is important. What’s also important, and I would say more important, is investigating officer-involved shootings. She was called upon by the Legislature to do that, and once again she declined.

And then, when you go down the list of the issues that we think about when we think about a progressive prosecutor, on every single one of those issues she was on the wrong side. And in some cases, her opponents ran to her left. So, for example, with marijuana legalization, in her run for re-e******n as attorney general, her opponent ran to legalize, she was against it. She’s since changed her position, now that the vast majority of the Democratic Party has moved in that direction. There are other examples, as well: her failure to support legislation that would reduce certain felonies to misdemeanors, going after parents criminally for having truant children. So, there’s a lengthy list of policy positions where there was the progressive path and there was the center-right path, and she did not take the progressive path.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole issue of parents with truant children and her policy of trying to prosecute them. I want to go to Kamala Harris’s 2011 inaugural speech as California attorney general, as she touted her truancy policy during her tenure as district attorney of San Francisco. This is what she said.

ATTORNEY GENERAL KAMALA HARRIS: We know chronic truancy leads to dropping out, which dramatically increases the odds that a young person will either become a perpetrator or a victim of crime. Folks, it’s time to get serious about the problem of chronic truancy in California. … Last year alone, we had 600,000 truant students in our elementary schools, which roughly matches the number of inmates in our state prison system. And is it a coincidence? Of course not. And as unacceptable as this problem is, I know we can fix it. In San Francisco, we threatened the parents of truants with prosecution, and truancy dropped 32%. So we are putting parents on notice: If you fail to take responsibility for your kids, we are going to make sure that you face the full force and consequences of the law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, that was Kamala Harris in 2011. What exactly did she do as DA in prosecuting parents?

LARA BAZELON: So, what ended up happening was that—and this actually took effect after she left and become attorney general—prosecutors then had the power, under this law, to prosecute parents for a misdemeanor for being essentially responsible for their children missing numerous days of school, the idea being that they would be scared into making sure that their kids actually did attend school. And some parents were in fact prosecuted.

And the pushback about this, I think, was on two fronts. One, it disproportionately impacted communities of color and parents of color, who were basically more often targeted by this law than people who were white. And, two, this idea that removing a parent from the home or subjecting them to criminal prosecution would be a tool to really sort of reknit a family, which I think is very questionable. There a lot of things going on when there are truant children, including poverty, drug use, different issues with kids. And it’s just not clear to many people who work in the juvenile space that the right answer to that is to criminalize the parents’ conduct.

AMY GOODMAN: And has she responded since—I mean, that was a clip in 2011—now that she is running for president and her record as being questioned on a number of these issues?

LARA BAZELON: Well, I mean, that, to me, has been what’s been frustrating, is that I don’t find her responses to be responsive to the questions that she’s being asked, and I don’t feel oftentimes that she’s being asked the hard questions. So, the Face the Nation clip is kind of the perfect example, where she’s thrown what I think is sort of a softball and then responds by ticking off a couple of accomplishments, that, when you look at them in the bigger context, actually aren’t that progressive.

And so, part of it is that she hasn’t been pushed directly to answer for truancy, for George Gage, for Jamal Trulove, for marijuana, for opposing testing in Kevin Cooper’s case. I mean, she’s not getting those questions, I think, directly and forcefully enough. But then also, disappointingly, I think she hasn’t reckoned with it and said, “Look, I am responsible for those decisions.” She has said, more broadly, “The buck stops with me. I was the head of my office.” But she needs to take that next step and acknowledge these specific things that she did, and reckon with that record.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Senator Kamala Harris speaking to reporters in January as she announced her candidacy for president. Senator Harris was asked about her role in defending the California Department of Corrections’ efforts to prevent t*********r prisoners from getting g****r reassignment surgery.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: I was, as you are rightly pointing out, the attorney general of California for two terms. And I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent, and I couldn’t fire my clients. And there were, unfortunately, situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs. And there—it was an office of a lot of people, who would do the work on a daily basis. And do I wish that sometimes they would have personally consulted me before they wrote the things that they wrote? Yes, I do. But the bottom line is, the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did. But on that issue, I will tell you, I vehemently disagree and, in fact, worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow t***sitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Senator Harris when she was announcing for president. She was speaking at Howard University. Professor Lara Bazelon, your response?

Continued

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 01:45:41   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Senator Harris when she was announcing for president. She was speaking at Howard University. Professor Lara Bazelon, your response?

LARA BAZELON: Well, I think what is important to do is to back up and talk about what the job of a prosecutor is. So, many people think that it is about convicting people. And it is not. It’s actually about doing justice. And that means that if you see something that is wrong, not just against your core principles but violates, for example, the Equal Protection Clause or the Due Process Clause, you are required, as the top prosecutor in your state, to stand up and say, “I won’t enforce this law.” And, in fact, that’s what she did in Proposition 8. So, to say, “I had these clients, and I had no choice but to take these positions,” is not correct.

So, I’ll give you this example. Proposition 8 was passed by California v**ers, banning same-sex marriage. When she was basically told that she needed to defend this law, she refused to defend it because it violates the equal protection law, in her opinion and actually as the Supreme Court later decided. So she had that option when it came to this t*********r surgery. She had that option when it came to the death penalty, when that came up, and a judge found that it was unconstitutional. She defended it. And her response has always been, “Well, these are my clients.” But, in fact, no, your job is to uphold the Constitution. And if you think these laws violate the Constitution, then you should not defend them.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you—in your op-ed piece, you say that the term “progressive prosecutor” has become a trendy subject these days. What do you see as what marks—would be some of the hallmarks of a truly progressive prosecutor in America in 2019?

LARA BAZELON: So, you’re right. It has become this real buzzword. And we just saw last week, with this insurgent campaign of Tiffany Cabán in Queens—this is someone who’s 31, a q***r Latina, a life-long public defender, never prosecuted a case. And she ran on a platform of dismantling our system of mass incarceration, decriminalizing certain crimes, not prosecuting certain crimes, ending cash money bill, which is essentially a criminalization of poverty because it says to people whether you can get out or not doesn’t really depend on anything other than your ability to pay, which means a wealthy person can be free and a poor person has to stay and languish in jail while their case goes forward. So, progressive prosecutors, they run on those platforms, and they also run, most importantly to me, on a platform of “We are going to correct wrongful convictions. And when people are suffering and dying in prison and they are innocent or they are wrongfully convicted because of corrupt official misconduct, we are going to uncover that, we are going to go to court, and we are going to do the right thing and undo those convictions.”

So, it’s a laundry list of policy positions. And they are brave and they are new in our system, because we’ve had, for so many decades, people running on who can be the toughest on crime. But a lot of Americans are getting really fed up with that, because it’s expensive, it’s ineffective, and it’s unjust and r****t. And so, these new prosecutors are embracing reform, and they are running and they are winning on that platform.

AMY GOODMAN: Lara Bazelon, we want to thank you for being with us, professor at University of San Francisco School of Law, director of the school’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Law Clinics. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Times, “Kamala Harris Was Not a 'Progressive Prosecutor.'”

Reply
 
 
Jul 7, 2019 02:10:29   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/2/kamala_harris_birther_attacks_black_identity?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=299bb88046-Daily_Digest_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-299bb88046-191715297

If they really want to stop online violence against women then they shouldn't sleep with other married Politicians, etc. to jump-start their career. Most of this whiny piece is much ado about nothing. They are using this tactic of making the old l*****t charge that the Trump family are r****ts and see if it will stick by rehashing old incidents. The bane of the internet!


New “Birther” Smear: Attacks on Kamala Harris Are Just the Latest in Trump Family’s R****t Record
STORY JULY 02, 2019
GUESTS
Shireen Mitchell


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: California senator and p**********l candidate Kamala Harris is riding a new wave of momentum following her debate performance last week, when she challenged Joe Biden’s past history of working with segregationist lawmakers and his opposition to busing to integrate schools in the 1970s. While Harris has jumped in several opinion polls, there’s been also a right-wing backlash online. On Thursday, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeted a message from an “alt-right” personality that read, quote, “Kamala Harris is not an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican. I’m so s**k of people robbing American B****s (like myself) of our history. It’s d********g. … Harris’ family were actually s***e owners.”

AMY GOODMAN: So the tweet said. Donald Trump Jr. reposted the tweet, adding, “Is this true? Wow.” Trump Jr. then deleted the tweet later that night, after coming under fire from several other 2020 p**********l candidates, including Joe Biden, who tweeted, quote, “The same forces of hatred rooted in 'birtherism' that questioned @BarackObama’s American citizenship, and even his racial identity, are now being used against Senator @KamalaHarris,” unquote. 2020 Democratic p**********l hopeful Julián Castro told CNN Donald Trump Jr. behaved like a coward.

JULIÁN CASTRO: This is a game that these folks play. They put something out there. You notice what he did. He tweeted it out, and then he deleted it, like a coward, so he can say, “Oh, that was just a mistake.” But he knows what he’s doing. He’s giving voice to these r****ts, you know, utterances about Senator Harris. You know, we need to dispel them immediately and condemn them and then not give them any more life, because they’re d********g.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s p**********l candidate Julián Castro.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Shireen Mitchell, founder of the group Stop Online Violence Against Women.

Shireen Mitchell, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you respond to this tweet and delete of Donald Trump Jr., and talk about this in the tradition of the Trump family, really, President Trump himself, just as a private New York developer, leading the “birther” movement against President Barack Obama, questioning where he was born?

SHIREEN MITCHELL: Yes. This is not just a pattern of this family, the Trump family. But please remember, Trump is also the one that tried to get five brown and black boys executed in Central Park. So, let’s not forget that this is a history within this family of r****m. The other parts of this are that we also need to remind ourselves—and also, they participated in housing discrimination. There were all kinds of legal ramifications about them targeting black and brown communities. So this isn’t new. So this is not a surprise to me or any—and it should not be a surprise to anyone else.

The ways in which they use our identity as a weapon to rally their base is very problematic and very consistent. So, Kamala Harris, being a woman of color and running for office and running against Donald Trump, maybe going forward, this is not a surprise that they would start this early. But also, be clear that this online harassment of black and brown women has been going on as a part of the e******n process and has been going on since 2013, as we tracked many of these behaviors of pretending to be black women, trying to defame or discredit black women. And this example is exactly that.

To say Kamala is not an American black when she was born in Oakland is ridiculous. But this harkens back to what was happening with Obama, as well, that his father was Kenyan, so somehow that made him not black enough, not born here, and he had to prove that he was. And that’s the part of the birtherism that was being expanded upon when Donald Trump himself started promoting that campaign, that Barack Obama had to explain his existence in this country.

I would say there is no other group that is constantly asked to identify as American, because we have the term “African American,” that somehow we are choosing African first. And that example is an example that happens in our community, but also it’s very much used as a weapon against us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Shireen Mitchell, what do we know about the person who actually posted the tweet, this Ali Alexander?

SHIREEN MITCHELL: So, what we found—what I found out, or as some of us were still digging a little bit deeper, this gentleman happens to be connected to some of the other right-wing groups and the “alt-right” groups, associations with Laura Loomer, Jacob Wohl. So, he is associated with—so, it wasn’t a surprise that Donald Trump retweeted him because he’s been a part of that community.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, your response to—well, this went before the tweet and delete of Donald Trump Jr. In February, Senator Kamala Harris spoke to The Breakfast Club. This is radio host Charlamagne tha God questioning Harris about memes circulating online about her.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: Another meme says, “Kamala Harris is not African-American. Her parents were immigrants from India and Jamaica, and she was raised in Canada, not the United States.” And it said “Fact!” That’s what the meme said.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: So, I was born in Oakland.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: Yeah.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: And raised in the United States except for the years that I was in high school in Montreal, Canada. And look, this is the same thing they did to Barack.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: Yes.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: This is—this is not new to us. And so, I think that we know what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to do what has been happening over the last two years, which is powerful voices trying to sow h**e and division among us. And so, we need to recognize when we’re being played.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: I’m glad you mentioned Barack because a lot of black people question if Barack was black enough. I see them doing the same thing to you. So, what do you say to the people questioning the legitimacy of your blackness?

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: I think they don’t understand who black people are, because if you do, if you walked on Hampton’s campus or Howard’s campus or Morehouse or Spelman or Fisk, you would have a much better appreciation for the diaspora, for the diversity, for the beauty in the diversity of who we are as black people. So, I’m not going to spend my time trying to educate people about who black people are.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Kamala Harris speaking on Breakfast Club, the radio show. Shireen Mitchell, your response?

SHIREEN MITCHELL: Yeah, I mean, she’s absolutely right. And one thing’s for sure. I’m also a graduate of a HBCU. And once you have that experience, you would never question what black identity is. The only people who make those—who question us like that are those who are from outside our community. And the other parts of that is, within our community, yes, we do have people coming from different walks of life, but that’s the same of any other community. There is nothing different about our community than others, but somehow it’s being used as a weapon.

It’s being used as a way to discredit us. It’s a use case in black identity being used as a weapon for not only to polarize the black v**e, but also to try to get other people too, quote-unquote, “h**e”—you know, I h**e to use “h**e,” but to make it look like we are the ones who are the threats, versus the threats that are upon us. So, the ignorance of what’s actually happening to us and how we’re being targeted, how—the example of what Donald Jr. did is an example of h**e. The example of what Trump did to those boys in Central Park—you know, When They See Us was the documentary about that—those are prime examples of ways in which we are not only questioned about who we are, but questioned about our loyalty to this country. And we were born here, so there’s no question about that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Shireen Mitchell, President Trump has also ridiculed Senator Elizabeth Warren and accused her of not being truly Native American. Now his son, Jr., raises questions about Kamala Harris. The whole issue of online attacks on women—and your organization, Stop Online Violence Against Women—can you talk about that and the impact that is having on the national discourse?

SHIREEN MITCHELL: Yes. I mean, again, we have a report that’s—we have a second report that’s coming out, but our first report revealed that the Russia interference that was in the Mueller report, that has been documented by 17 agencies, was literally an intense and focused target on black identity used as a weapon for v**er suppression. And that example is what we’re seeing right now. And you have to understand that even with the Elizabeth Warren aspect, that was a target to sow discord within the Native American community. So, if you look at this pattern, there is a targeted pattern of going after brown and black v**ers to interfere in the ways in which they decide to choose who they want to v**e for. And that, in itself, is one of the focus problems that we need to be paying attention to.

Our work showed that black women were being targeted as early as 2013. This was well before everyone understood what was happening in 2016. And yet we still are having this conversation as if this is new. This is not new. It’s been going on for years. What we’re learning is there’s a different way that we need to approach digital v**er suppression. And we need to pay attention to what’s happening to women of color, because they are the targets. Black women are trusted v**ers in our community. And if we are not paying attention to what’s happening to them or how they’re being targeted, we will have a problem going into 2020.

AMY GOODMAN: Shireen Mitchell, we want to thank you for being with us, founder of the group Stop Online Violence Against Women, joining us from Washington, D.C

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 04:36:50   #
debeda
 
dtucker300 wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html

Not only was she on the wrong side of history and not a progressive prosecutor, but she was also a lousy SF prosecutor and CA AG. She has shown herself to blow with the wind to further only one thing, herself and her political ambitions, for which she will say and do anything. She even had an affair with former CA house Speaker and later mayor of SF, Willie Brown, just to further her career in politics.

"The senator was often on the wrong side of history when she served as California’s attorney general."
By Lara Bazelon
Ms. Bazelon is a law professor and the former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles.

Jan. 17, 2019


Before she was a senator, Kamala Harris was an attorney general and district attorney who acted in ways that could hardly be described as "progressive," Lara Bazelon writes.
Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times


Before she was a senator, Kamala Harris was an attorney general and district attorney who acted in ways that could hardly be described as "progressive," Lara Bazelon writes.
Before she was a senator, Kamala Harris was an attorney general and district attorney who acted in ways that could hardly be described as "progressive," Lara Bazelon writes.CreditCreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — With the growing recognition that prosecutors hold the keys to a fairer criminal justice system, the term “progressive prosecutor” has almost become trendy. This is how Senator Kamala Harris of California, a likely p**********l candidate and a former prosecutor, describes herself.

But she’s not.

Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Consider her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011. Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.

Ms. Harris contested the ruling by arguing that the judge, whose husband was a defense attorney and had spoken publicly about the importance of disclosing evidence, had a conflict of interest. Ms. Harris lost. More than 600 cases handled by the corrupt technician were dismissed.

Sign Up for Jamelle Bouie's Newsletter
Join Jamelle Bouie as he shines a light on overlooked writing, culture and ideas from around the internet.


Ms. Harris also championed state legislation under which parents whose children were found to be habitually truant in elementary school could be prosecuted, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.

Ms. Harris was similarly regressive as the state’s attorney general. When a federal judge in Orange County ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional in 2014, Ms. Harris appealed. In a public statement, she made the bizarre argument that the decision “undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.” (The approximately 740 men and women awaiting execution in California might disagree).

In 2014, she declined to take a position on Proposition 47, a b****t initiative approved by v**ers, that reduced certain low-level felonies to misdemeanors. She laughed that year when a reporter asked if she would support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Ms. Harris finally reversed course in 2018, long after public opinion had shifted on the topic.

In 2015, she opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers. And she refused to support statewide standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers. For this, she incurred criticism from an array of left-leaning reformers, including Democratic state senators, the A.C.L.U. and San Francisco’s elected public defender. The activist Phelicia Jones, who had supported Ms. Harris for years, asked, “How many more people need to die before she steps in?”

Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.


Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly unt***hful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence.

That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by r****m and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went v***l, she reversed her position.)

All this is a shame because the state’s top prosecutor has the power and the imperative to seek justice. In cases of tainted convictions, that means conceding error and overturning them. Rather than fulfilling that obligation, Ms. Harris turned legal technicalities into weapons so she could cement injustices.


In “The T***hs We Hold,” Ms. Harris’s recently published memoir, she writes: “America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.”

She adds, “I know this history well — of innocent men framed, of charges brought against people without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate application of the law.”

All too often, she was on the wrong side of that history.

It is true that politicians must make concessions to get the support of key interest groups. The fierce, collective opposition of law enforcement and local district attorney associations can be hard to overcome at the b****t box. But in her career, Ms. Harris did not barter or trade to get the support of more conservative law-and-order types; she gave it all away.

Of course, the full picture is more complicated. During her tenure as district attorney, Ms. Harris refused to seek the death penalty in a case involving the murder of a police officer. And she started a successful program that offered first-time nonviolent offenders a chance to have their charges dismissed if they completed a rigorous vocational training. As attorney general, she mandated implicit bias training and was awarded for her work in correcting a backlog in the testing of rape kits.

But if Kamala Harris wants people who care about dismantling mass incarceration and correcting miscarriages of justice to v**e for her, she needs to radically break with her past.

A good first step would be to apologize to the wrongfully convicted people she has fought to keep in prison and to do what she can to make sure they get justice. She should start with George Gage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-... (show quote)


She is a self important, bloviating piece of crap. Anyone who watched the kavanaugh hearings should know that. " Do you still beat your wife, yes or no". Silly beeach

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 05:28:06   #
Smedley_buzkill
 
debeda wrote:
She is a self important, bloviating piece of crap. Anyone who watched the kavanaugh hearings should know that. " Do you still beat your wife, yes or no". Silly beeach


True dat. LOL

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 21:02:17   #
Larai Loc: Fallon, NV
 
Smedley_buzk**l wrote:
True dat. LOL


Amen to that!

Reply
 
 
Jul 7, 2019 21:13:22   #
Larai Loc: Fallon, NV
 
debeda wrote:
She is a self important, bloviating piece of crap. Anyone who watched the kavanaugh hearings should know that. " Do you still beat your wife, yes or no". Silly beeach


Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are those that feel the need to hyphenate their "title" If they were Born here, they'd just be Americans.. IF they came here seeking citizenship they are supposed to assimilate.. why is this important? It's always been a rather d******e way of describing one's self here in America as in setting themselves apart from being "American" but rather cling to the ideals that probably made them leave their homes entirely, in the first place, to be emersed in the great melting pot that is America.. I don't have any issue with LEGAL immigration, But if you come through the back door we are gonna hold you up until one of two things happen..your eligible for asylum or you get deported.. at least as far as my opinion goes..But God forbid any white folk say we are European American.. or just W***e A******ns we'd be harrassed forever as being "White Supremists" If I was to hyphenate my nationalities it would run an entire sentence.. Scot, Dutch (Father's side), French, English & Blackfoot..(mother's side)

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 21:16:53   #
debeda
 
Larai wrote:
Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are those that feel the need to hyphenate their "title" If they were Born here, they'd just be Americans.. IF they came here seeking citizenship they are supposed to assimilate.. why is this important? It's always been a rather d******e way of describing one's self here in America as in setting themselves apart from being "American" but rather cling to the ideals that probably made them leave their homes entirely, in the first place, to be emersed in the great melting pot that is America.. I don't have any issue with LEGAL immigration, But if you come through the back door we are gonna hold you up until one of two things happen..your eligible for asylum or you get deported.. at least as far as my opinion goes..But God forbid any white folk say we are European American.. or just W***e A******ns we'd be harrassed forever as being "White Supremists" If I was to hyphenate my nationalities it would run an entire sentence.. Scot, Dutch (Father's side), French, English & Blackfoot..(mother's side)
Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are th... (show quote)


I agree completely! To me the whole hyphen American thing is just another tool of the left to divide us. We need to go back to the old saying of "America - love it or leave it"!!! You're also right that w****s are discriminated against more and more

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 21:26:08   #
Larai Loc: Fallon, NV
 
debeda wrote:
I agree completely! To me the whole hyphen American thing is just another tool of the left to divide us. We need to go back to the old saying of "America - love it or leave it"!!! You're also right that w****s are discriminated against more and more


Yes. even by w****s.. We are denegrated for believing we can bring some semblance of America back.. We are denegrated as White people if we say we are christian.. don't believe in a******n, other than the mother's life.. I am sorry, This may sound harsh.. but little girls.. say 15 years old should be made to carry to term and give the baby up.. but sorry I don't feel much like paying taxes so little girls that used bad judgement can get an a******n mulitiple times on my dime..also harsh, this will maybe teach them a life lesson.. Keep your legs shut.. and then go smack the s**t outta the parent. Frankly, also don't wanna pay for some criminal's s*x c****e operation as they rotate outta prison.. NOT on my dime! Not footin the bill for a freakin life choice.

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 21:26:45   #
Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
 
Larai wrote:
Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are those that feel the need to hyphenate their "title" If they were Born here, they'd just be Americans.. IF they came here seeking citizenship they are supposed to assimilate.. why is this important? It's always been a rather d******e way of describing one's self here in America as in setting themselves apart from being "American" but rather cling to the ideals that probably made them leave their homes entirely, in the first place, to be emersed in the great melting pot that is America.. I don't have any issue with LEGAL immigration, But if you come through the back door we are gonna hold you up until one of two things happen..your eligible for asylum or you get deported.. at least as far as my opinion goes..But God forbid any white folk say we are European American.. or just W***e A******ns we'd be harrassed forever as being "White Supremists" If I was to hyphenate my nationalities it would run an entire sentence.. Scot, Dutch (Father's side), French, English & Blackfoot..(mother's side)
Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are th... (show quote)

I'm a German-Swede-LakotaBloodBrother-White-American.

Reply
 
 
Jul 7, 2019 21:28:53   #
Larai Loc: Fallon, NV
 
Blade_Runner wrote:
I'm a German-Swede-LakotaBloodBrother-White-American.


I'm adopted lakota.. as was my hubby

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 21:41:34   #
Larai Loc: Fallon, NV
 
Larai wrote:
Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are those that feel the need to hyphenate their "title" If they were Born here, they'd just be Americans.. IF they came here seeking citizenship they are supposed to assimilate.. why is this important? It's always been a rather d******e way of describing one's self here in America as in setting themselves apart from being "American" but rather cling to the ideals that probably made them leave their homes entirely, in the first place, to be emersed in the great melting pot that is America.. I don't have any issue with LEGAL immigration, But if you come through the back door we are gonna hold you up until one of two things happen..your eligible for asylum or you get deported.. at least as far as my opinion goes..But God forbid any white folk say we are European American.. or just W***e A******ns we'd be harrassed forever as being "White Supremists" If I was to hyphenate my nationalities it would run an entire sentence.. Scot, Dutch (Father's side), French, English & Blackfoot..(mother's side)
Something that has bugged the s**t outta me are th... (show quote)


I sat here and read that entire deal about Kamala Harris.. guess what I left with.. that B****s are still very r****t.. and its still all about them, They don't look at other say, nationalities, bc said nationalities that b****s denegrate as well as liberal w****s, when all is said and done are usually white, but anyone one of the chicks in that article says, black n brown people are being discriminated more so than anyone else. Just because some ancestor may have owned s***es is not on me.. and I don't owe anyone r********ns.. Not saying that my family owned s***es but I did have a relative on both sides of that war.. Life is a choice.. there have in the last say 30 years for sure that I know a ton of resources, that I as a tax payer have contributed to over the years, so that Black people can get up out of where they are whinin they are.. and get with the program... It can be done.. just ask a few very influential black Conservative men.. Ben Carson, Allen West just to name a couple that went on to make a life for themselves... So..s**t or get off the pot.. but be HONEST about it.. If you're black & stuck in the hood.. it's not on me it's on you. Life is about choices.. you can choose to get outta bed and be pissed off at the world for real or imaginary wrongs done you. or you can get up outta bed and thank God you're alive.. seems that most still feel the need to be victims rather than fighters.. tsk tsk

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 22:25:22   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
Larai wrote:
I sat here and read that entire deal about Kamala Harris.. guess what I left with.. that B****s are still very r****t.. and its still all about them, They don't look at other say, nationalities, bc said nationalities that b****s denegrate as well as liberal w****s, when all is said and done are usually white, but anyone one of the chicks in that article says, black n brown people are being discriminated more so than anyone else. Just because some ancestor may have owned s***es is not on me.. and I don't owe anyone r********ns.. Not saying that my family owned s***es but I did have a relative on both sides of that war.. Life is a choice.. there have in the last say 30 years for sure that I know a ton of resources, that I as a tax payer have contributed to over the years, so that Black people can get up out of where they are whinin they are.. and get with the program... It can be done.. just ask a few very influential black Conservative men.. Ben Carson, Allen West just to name a couple that went on to make a life for themselves... So..s**t or get off the pot.. but be HONEST about it.. If you're black & stuck in the hood.. it's not on me it's on you. Life is about choices.. you can choose to get outta bed and be pissed off at the world for real or imaginary wrongs done you. or you can get up outta bed and thank God you're alive.. seems that most still feel the need to be victims rather than fighters.. tsk tsk
I sat here and read that entire deal about Kamala ... (show quote)


Your right! Donald Trump Jr. re-tweeted something about Harris not being Black-American because she is Indian/Jamaican and had to remove the tweet. Too late. Even Black-American is an unnecessary hyphen.

Race is a social construct. There is only one race; Human. Ethnicity is a different matter. I don't go around saying I'm a #-American. Just American. This is the only country where you become an "American" citizen without a hyphen. Try doing that in Germany, China, Japan, or any other country. You will never be German, Chinese, or Japanese if you go to those countries.

Maybe only Aboriginal natives of First Nations are the only ones who can appropriate the title American. But do they want it? Isn't it kind of arrogant to call ourselves Americans when everyone living in the western hemisphere is technically American?

Reply
Jul 7, 2019 22:34:15   #
Larai Loc: Fallon, NV
 
dtucker300 wrote:
Your right! Donald Trump Jr. re-tweeted something about Harris not being Black-American because she is Indian/Jamaican and had to remove the tweet. Too late. Even Black-American is an unnecessary hyphen.

Race is a social construct. There is only one race; Human. Ethnicity is a different matter. I don't go around saying I'm a #-American. Just American. This is the only country where you become an "American" citizen without a hyphen. Try doing that in Germany, China, Japan, or any other country. You will never be German, Chinese, or Japanese if you go to those countries.
Your right! Donald Trump Jr. re-tweeted something... (show quote)


I agree with you there is only one: HUMAN!!.. The ones that are not white.. or even mixed seem way more concerned with ethnicity, are on the Left it would seem.. most of us have evolved past that..contrary to what the left thinks.. as far as I am concerned we all bleed red.. as far as muslims go.. I'm not bashing Where they came from, I am bashing their manifesto..Of k*****g all of us, Because we won't convert..They don't want to assimilate,They want to take over and make the US a Caliph**e!!... Wonder's if anyone really knows the fate of radicalized Americans..I'm gonna venture a guess and say they become suicide bomber fodder!..

Reply
Page 1 of 2 next>
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.
Main
OnePoliticalPlaza.com - Forum
Copyright 2012-2024 IDF International Technologies, Inc.