T-Pain’s new chain makes my soul cry. Why? Just… WHY?????

Tonight I’ll be appearing on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the piece I wrote on the community that beat up the rapist of an 11-year-old girl.

George Tiller’s death should have civil rights activists up in arms. Where are they when black women’s lives are at stake?

Black Silence and the Abortion Debate
By Salamishah Tillet

During the 2008 presidential campaign, it seemed—for a whimsical, idealistic, brief moment in time—that abortion had become a non-issue. Among the most riveting exchanges on the topic came when Barack Obama responded coyly to mega-church pastor Rick Warren that it was above his “pay grade” to answer a question about when a fetus is entitled to human rights. The whole exchange was incredulously reasoned and cordial.

Over the past several weeks, however, we’ve been reminded that abortion remains a devastatingly controversial issue for Americans. And whether anyone is talking about it or not, it remains a pressing civil rights concern for African-American women. Where are our civil rights leaders when we need them?

Three recent events have brought abortion back to the center of our national conversation, the most recent and brutal: the murder of Dr. George Tiller [1], one of the few brave doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions. The physician, who has been targeted by dangerous anti-abortionists for years, was gunned down in his church on Sunday in Wichita, Kan. While Tiller’s murder shocked the nation, heat around the issue had been building for weeks, prompted first by President Obama’s unusually straightforward comments on abortion [2] during his commencement address at Notre Dame, then by his nomination to the Supreme Court of Judge Sonia Sotomayor [3], who has yet to formally indicate her position on the issue.

These three coincidences in timing might not a conspiracy make, but they should give pro-choice advocates great cause for alarm. On one hand, there seems little to fear from President Obama himself. On his second day in office, he signed a memorandum that rescinded the Mexico City Policy, also known as the “global gag rule,” [4] and lifted a ban on U.S. funding for international health groups that perform abortions, promote legalization of the procedures or provide abortion counseling.

On the other hand, pro-life pundits and activists recently touted the Gallup poll result that 51 percent of Americans consider themselves “pro-life” and just 42 percent say they are “pro-choice.” While many, such as Charles Franklin of Pollster, [5] object to this poll as an outlier, conservatives are touting the data as a moral “tipping point” by claiming this is the first time a majority of the country has stated a personal objection to abortion since Gallup polls began tracking the data 15 years ago.

Regardless of the validity of the poll, the murder of Tiller, the obscurity of Sotomayor’s position and this allegedly new “majoritarian” view suggest that Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision, remains at risk.

While abortion is rarely seen as a civil rights issue, the dismantling of Roe v. Wade would have dire consequences for African-American women. The roots of reproductive injustice for black women date back to the nation’s founding, for enslaved women had no control of their reproductive rights and often were forced to bear children in order to replenish their slave master’s labor force. Dorothy Roberts writes in her book, Killing the Black Body, [6] that slave masters considered black women “objects whose decisions about reproduction should be subject to social regulation rather than to their own will.”

For the rest of the story, click here.

Just something to make you feel at the beginning of the week.

GM’s Newest ‘Deal’
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col. writ. 5/28/09]

As the prospect of GM (General Motors) being forced into bankruptcy looms closer, the company (as well as the government) enters yet the next phase in a long, bitter and seemingly intractable war against workers — and not just members of the UAW (United Auto Workers).

For the courtroom represents a battleground more vicious than any negotiating table, for there, the rules are (to borrow a phrase from segregation days) ’separate and unequal.’

That’s because civil laws favor corporations.  How could it be otherwise when lawyers are trained in corporate and contract law — and rarely, if ever — labor law? Under bankruptcy law, prior contracts can be broken, and new arrangements made, as long as creditors  and investors get paid.

What of a man or woman who has spent decades at work for the company? Isn’t that an investment?

To the investors and bondholders that is irrelevant.

They, and the White House, will have driven GM into bankruptcy court, not UAW, which has bent over so far backwards they’re in knots.

In Sept. 2007, UAW signed a “landmark” pact with GM, in which the union assumed massive health care costs under what’s called VEBA (volunteer employee benefit association).  According to the terms, GM donates cash or stock to the UAW to administer VEBA, and GM agrees to the present work force of 73,000 workers.  The VEBA contract was for 4 years, expiring in 2011.

Two years later, and tens of thousands have been laid off.  Even before bankruptcy proceedings began, UAW heads were being pushed to accept GM stock (now around $1.40 a share) and corporate debt, instead of cash to run VEBA, and urged to accept “immediate cuts” to retiree benefits at the insistence of Timothy Geithner’s Treasury Department, citing GM’s “financial difficulties.”

GM, we tend to forget, is a multinational, which builds and sells cars in Mexico, Canada and Asia.  And while sales have indeed slumped in the Americas, sales are hot in Asia.

In China, the world’s  most populous market, an American car is still a status symbol, and China’s economy is still the healthiest on earth, growing at an annual rate of 6%.

Moreover, while jobs are being lost in the U.S., and retirees’ benefits are slashed, the bailout billions will fuel GM’s efforts overseas, where, for example, a Chinese auto worker earns $3 an hour, versus $54 an hour for an American.

Does that make economic sense?  Only when the bottom line is the be-all and end-all of existence (as in capitalism).

Meanwhile, six top GM execs recently sold all of their GM stock, sending a signal of imminent bankruptcy.

Having eaten the goose of GM profit, they leave the bones.

–(c) ‘09 maj

[Announcement: Mr. Jamal's newest book, Jailhouse Lawyers (S.F.: City Lights Bks., 2009) has recently been released.  The stirring foreword is by renowned human rights scholar/activist and prison abolitionist, Angela Y. Davis.  The book examines the profession of jailhouse law, as practiced by prisoners, often fighting for other prisoners, against the State. Available from: www.citylights.com ]