Demanding the Truth About American War Crimes--Frank Rich Weighs In

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html?partner=rss&emc=rss


All,

My man Frank Rich who IMO remains by far the best, most thorough, and intellectually reliable political journalist in this country today delivers the goods again. Check out this Op-Ed folks...Rich embodies the truism that a truly great writer illuminates and educates where lesser scribes merely posture and pout...

Kofi



May 17, 2009

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush
By FRANK RICH
New York Times


TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.

That’s why the president’s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven’t started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here’s a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come.

There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

The GQ article isn’t the only revelation of previously unknown Bush Defense Department misbehavior to emerge this month. Just two weeks ago, the Obama Pentagon revealed that a major cover-up of corruption had taken place at the Bush Pentagon on Jan. 14 of this year — just six days before Bush left office. This strange incident — reported in The Times but largely ignored by Washington correspondents preparing for their annual dinner — deserves far more attention and follow-up.

What happened on Jan. 14 was the release of a report from the Pentagon’s internal watchdog, the inspector general. It had been ordered up in response to a scandal uncovered last year by David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times. Barstow had found that the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective “military analysts.” Many of these propagandists worked for military contractors with billions of dollars of business at stake in Pentagon procurement. Many were recipients of junkets and high-level special briefings unavailable to the legitimate press. Yet the public was never told of these conflicts of interest when these “analysts” appeared on the evening news to provide rosy assessments of what they tended to call “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”

When Barstow’s story broke, more than 45 members of Congress demanded an inquiry. The Pentagon’s inspector general went to work, and its Jan. 14 report was the result. It found no wrongdoing by the Pentagon. Indeed, when Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize last month, Rumsfeld’s current spokesman cited the inspector general’s “exoneration” to attack the Times articles as fiction.

But the Pentagon took another look at this exoneration, and announced on May 5 that the inspector general’s report, not The Times’s reporting, was fiction. The report, it turns out, was riddled with factual errors and included little actual investigation of Barstow’s charges. The inspector general’s office had barely glanced at the 8,000 pages of e-mail that Barstow had used as evidence, and interviewed only seven of the 70 disputed analysts. In other words, the report was a whitewash. The Obama Pentagon officially rescinded it — an almost unprecedented step — and even removed it from its Web site.

Network news operations ignored the unmasking of this last-minute Bush Pentagon cover-up, as they had the original Barstow articles — surely not because they had been patsies for the Bush P.R. machine. But the story is actually far larger than this one particular incident. If the Pentagon inspector general’s office could whitewash this scandal, what else did it whitewash?

In 2005, to take just one example, the same office released a report on how Boeing colluded with low-level Pentagon bad apples on an inflated (and ultimately canceled) $30 billion air-tanker deal. At the time, even John Warner, then the go-to Republican senator on military affairs, didn’t buy the heavily redacted report’s claim that Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were ignorant of what Warner called “the most significant defense procurement mismanagement in contemporary history.” The Pentagon inspector general who presided over that exoneration soon fled to become an executive at the parent company of another Pentagon contractor, Blackwater.

But the new administration doesn’t want to revisit this history any more than it wants to dwell on torture. Once the inspector general’s report on the military analysts was rescinded, the Obama Pentagon declared the matter closed. The White House seems to be taking its cues from the Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan. “Sometimes I think just keep walking,” she said on ABC’s “This Week” as the torture memos surfaced. “Some of life has to be mysterious.” Imagine if she’d been at Nuremberg!

The administration can’t “just keep walking” because it is losing control of the story. The Beltway punditocracy keeps repeating the cliché that only the A.C.L.U. and the president’s “left-wing base” want accountability, but that’s not the case. Americans know that the Iraq war is not over. A key revelation in last month’s Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees — that torture was used to try to coerce prisoners into “confirming” a bogus Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to sell that war — is finally attracting attention. The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become.

And I do mean bipartisan. Both Dick Cheney, hoping to prove that torture “worked,” and Nancy Pelosi, fending off accusations of hypocrisy on torture, have now asked for classified C.I.A. documents to be made public. When a duo this unlikely, however inadvertently, is on the same side of an issue, the wave is rising too fast for any White House to control. Court cases, including appeals by the “bad apples” made scapegoats for Abu Ghraib, will yank more secrets into the daylight and enlist more anxious past and present officials into the Cheney-Pelosi demands for disclosure.

It will soon be every man for himself. “Did President Bush know everything you knew?” Bob Schieffer asked Cheney on “Face the Nation” last Sunday. The former vice president’s uncharacteristically stumbling and qualified answer — “I certainly, yeah, have every reason to believe he knew...” — suggests that the Bush White House’s once-united front is starting to crack under pressure.

I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

We Must Demand that President Obama Release ALL Information regarding U.S. Torture and War Crimes!

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/white-house-wants-a-delay-in-the-release-of-detainee-photos/?nl=pol&emc=pola1

All,

This is a horrible decision and there is no justification for it whatsoever except rank political cowardice on Obama's part. To now simply renege on his earlier commitment to release the photos not only makes him look both weak and afraid of the GOP led rightwing's reaction to investigations of military torture but it feebly attempts to give the absolutely false impression that not releasing these photos would somehow be in the best interests of the country and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as though NOT holding the government and the military completely accountable for widespread and highly illegal and immoral actions against military prisoners would somehow tamp down "anti-American opinion." This self serving and opportunist "argument" makes no sense whatever.

The ACLU is 100% correct in their critique of the President's decision (see their statement in the article below). My hope is that some independent investigative journalist(s) will soon get access to these photographs and release them without the interference, sanction, or censorious control of either the White House or the U.S. military.

Kofi


May 13, 2009

Obama Tries to Block Release of Detainee Photos
By JEFF ZELENY
New York Times


President Obama said on Wednesday that he is seeking to block the release of photographs that depict American military personnel abusing captives in Iraq and Afghanistan, worrying that the images could “further inflame anti-American opinion.”

As he left the White House to fly to Arizona for an evening commencement address, Mr. Obama briefly explained his abrupt reversal on releasing the photographs. He said the pictures, which he has reviewed, “are not particularly sensational, but the conduct did not conform with the Army manual.”


He did not take questions from reporters, but said disclosing the photos would have “a chilling effect” on future attempts to investigate detainee abuse.

The president’s decision marks a sharp reversal from a decision made last month by the Pentagon, which agreed in a case with the American Civil Liberties Union to release photographs showing incidents at Abu Ghraib and a half-dozen other prisons. At the time, the president signed off on the decision, saying he agreed with releasing the photos.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said that the president met last week “with his legal team and told them that he did not feel comfortable with the release of the D.O.D. photos because he believes their release would endanger our troops.”

Mr. Obama has examined a sampling of the photographs within the last two weeks, Mr. Gibbs said, as he “spent some time reflecting on” the case to make the decision that was announced Wednesday.

Mr. Obama advised his top military commanders about his decision in a meeting on Tuesday at the White House. Several military officials had argued against the immediate release of the photographs, saying such action could harm American troops in the field.

“The president strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing U.S. forces,” the official said, “and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Officials said that one argument made to delay releasing the pictures was that the missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan were entering risky, new phases. In Iraq, American combat forces are withdrawing from urban areas and are reducing their numbers nationwide. In Afghanistan, more than 20,000 new troops are flowing in to combat an insurgency that has grown in potency.

At a Defense budget hearing on Capitol Hill later on Wednesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated that the White House might appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. “I believe that’s under consideration,” Mr. Gates told the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Gates also said that he had changed his opinion about releasing the photographs because of the strong views of his commanders. “Both General McKiernan and General Odierno have expressed very serious reservations about this and their very great worry that release of these photographs will cost American lives,” Mr. Gates said.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said earlier that Generals Odierno, McKiernan and also David Petraeus “have all voiced real concern about this. Particularly in Afghanistan, this is the last thing they need.”

Mr. Gates shared the concerns of his commanders about the impact of the photo release on the troops and the battlefield, and had had a “multitude of conversations” with Mr. Obama on the issue.

The Pentagon’s decision to release the pictures came after the A.C.L.U. prevailed at the Federal District Court level and before a panel of the Second Circuit. The photographs were set to be released on May 28. But as that date approached, a growing sense of unease among military officials was expressed to Mr. Gates, who relayed the concerns to the president.

Many also recalled the Abu Ghraib photographs, showing prisoners naked or in degrading positions, sometimes with Americans posing smugly nearby, caused an uproar in the Arab world and concerns within the military that the actions of a relatively few service members had tainted the entire forces.

In this more recent case, the A.C.L.U. argued that disclosing the pictures was “critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse,” said Amrit Singh, who argued the case on behalf of the group before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

The A.C.L.U. sharply criticized the president’s decision. In a statement, its executive director, Anthony D. Romero said:

“The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government. This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration.

“It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact and document gets known – whether now or years from now. And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration’s complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them. Only by looking squarely in the mirror, acknowledging the crimes of the past and achieving accountability can we move forward and ensure that these atrocities are not repeated.”

A senior administration official said that the president met last week with his legal team and reached the conclusion that the interests of the military and the U.S. government would not be served by releasing the photos.

“The president would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos,” the administration official said. “That is why the Department of Defense investigated these cases, and why individuals have been punished through prison sentences, discharges, and a range of other punitive measures.”

The next step was not immediately clear. White House officials said a court filing was due on Wednesday, which would outline the administration’s legal approach.

During the court case, defense officials had fought the release of the photographs, connected with investigations between 2003 and 2006, on the grounds that the release could endanger American military personnel overseas and that the privacy of detainees would be violated. But the Second Circuit, in upholding a lower court ruling, said the public interest involved in release of the pictures outweighed a vague, speculative fear of danger to the American military or violation of the detainees’ privacy.

One Pentagon official involved in the discussion said the photos show detainees in humiliating positions, but stressed that they were not as provocative as pictures of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib.

The official said the photos show detainee nudity, and that some include images of detainees shackled for transfer. Other photographs show American military personnel with weapons drawn and pointed at detainees in what another official said had the appearance of “a war trophy.”

One argument made by Pentagon and military officials who oppose the release is that they do not contribute to public knowledge of American policy, as might the release of other memos by the Office of the Legal Counsel. One example cited in internal discussions was the series of riots that followed publication of cartoons by Danish newspapers that were viewed as hostile and insulting to Islam.

The release of these detainee photographs, Pentagon and military officials said, would only serve to provoke outrage and, in particular, might be used by violent extremists to stoke attacks and recruit suicide bombers. Military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan were said to be particular targets of such attacks, but officials said that civilian targets might be chosen by extremists, as well.

In a letter dated April 23, Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States Attorney in this case, wrote to Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District, to say that the Pentagon had agreed to release 44 photographs involved in the case, plus ”a substantial number of other images” gathered by Army investigators.

Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker contributed to this post.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/a-hollow-and-horrible-equ_b_203817.html

All,

Cusack is not only one of my favorite actors but more importantly his eloquent and powerful statement below is 100% correct and I emphatically agree with every single syllable of it...Thanks John...

Kofi


John Cusack
Filmmaker
Posted: May 15, 2009
Huffington Post

A Hollow and Horrible Equivocation

If I had the President's Blackberry, I would send this.

President Obama,

On Wednesday you reversed your administration's promise to finally release pictures of detainee abuse.

The release of the photos was won by ACLU lawyers who have fought to bring to light the full extent of the brutality and torture that U.S. Army and intelligence services have perpetrated against human beings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and at CIA "black sites" around the world. Torture that was sanctioned and effectively legalized under the former administration, and that, if we are to be honest, most Americans knew -- or should have known -- was being carried out in our names.

Only now is the knowledge starting to give rise to the widespread outrage and calls for accountability that such crimes against humanity deserve. Growing numbers of citizens are demanding the independent investigation and prosecution of the members of the Bush administration responsible for the vitiation of fundamental legal principles like habeas corpus and the flagrant violation of both international and domestic laws against torture. The pundits, hacks and shills who dismiss these calls for investigation and prosecution -- integral to any serious definition of accountability -- disgrace themselves and their country.

The situation in which we now find ourselves is so bizarre, it's hard to fathom. New revelations continue to surface -- we learn that Vice President Cheney's office ordered and specified how a man was to be tortured, and mounting evidence suggests the United States tortured to extract false confessions that would justify preemptive war on Iraq. Yet a Democratic president leads a Democratic congress to whitewash institutionalized torture and in effect trash any conceivable notion of the rule of law, all in the name of "looking forward."

And now we hear that the administration will block the release of new evidence in this hideous criminal conspiracy. Now you, the president who came to power with promises of transparency and change, say you don't want to release the photos because they "will further inflame anti-American sentiment" and endanger U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ACLU lucidly replies:

"It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact and document gets known -- whether now or years from now. And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration's complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them."

Maybe, Mr. President, you've succumbed to all the fear-mongering that the Bush administration and Republican Party sold for so long. Most Democrats have been silent enablers so consistently -- maybe we've all bought into it. We know the truth but we still can't admit it; just as for years signs and traces of torture performed in our name were there, we saw without seeing, and knew without knowing. When those first photos from Abu Ghraib were broadcast around the world five years ago, we told ourselves the sadism was the work of just a few maniacs. When we heard the privatization frenzy that spread like a cancer through the Bush years extended even to interrogation -- effectively making torture its own nightmarish "cottage industry" -- we looked away. And now our first official response is to let it all slide... and just move on.

If we do, we are truly lost. This kind of willful collective blindness must not endure, and it must never happen again. It's not enough to be against torture, in this new political moment when speaking out against it is suddenly in vogue. All the information now so readily available contradicts all the official narratives: that we didn't know, a few bad apples, that those responsible have already been investigated and punished. And then there's the outrageous substitute for a narrative, the debate about whether or not torture works. It's a question so insane, it probably makes bin Laden grin like a Cheshire cat.

So, if torture works, we should... perfect it and use it? Complete insanity.

We must finally be able to look at the photos and see and understand that the broken and humiliated bodies of men half-way around the world depicted therein represent not only the systematically applied U.S. policies, but also the horrible and likely inevitable ramifications of military occupations of other countries.

We hope, Mr. President, you will lead, but the Constitution doesn't allow you to obstruct justice... The Department of Justice must act with conviction and follow the law.

We understand the enormous pressures and complexities you confront everyday. But the old defenses for these crimes sound hollow and horrible coming from your lips. You are defending the indefensible.

Releasing all the photos depicting detainee abuse and initiating an independent inquiry and prosecution of those responsible at the highest level is the only way forward.

This is not an issue of partisan politics. It's a police matter... the investigation of a crime scene in which many more of us are complicit than is comfortable to recognize.

Sincerely,

Your name here.

Renewing the Fight for Civil Rights: New U.S. Attorney General Takes A Stand

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/04/30/obamas-justice-department-renews-the-fight-for-civil-rights.html

All,

This statement by Eric Holder-- President Obama's new Attorney General (and the first African American to hold this position in American history) is long overdue especially given the horrific and unrelenting violations of the human and civil rights of African Americans, other minorities, women, and others over the past eight years of the Bushwhacker administration. Let's hope that Mr. Holder seriously means what he says and is fully committed to acting on his stated public position. We all really need it.

Kofi

Obama's Justice Department Renews the Fight for Civil Rights

The administration is expected to prosecute discrimination cases more vigorously than its predecessor



By Alex Kingsbury
Posted April 30, 2009
U.S. News and World Report

It is a telling reflection of the priorities of the last president that one of the few civil rights cases before the nation's high court this year is a reverse discrimination case. It concerns a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who say they were unfairly denied promotion as a result of affirmative action gone awry. The Obama Justice Department came out in favor of New Haven in the case, a sharp departure from the past eight years, which saw the government pursue a growing number of these reverse discrimination cases, even as traditional civil rights cases declined.

Eric Holder, the country's first black attorney general, made his priorities clear from Day 1, telling department employees that the United States is a nation of "cowards" when it comes to issues of race. The Obama administration is widely expected to prosecute discrimination and civil rights cases more vigorously than its predecessor. Civil rights cases, which tend to be controversial and divisive, have traditionally focused on voting rights, housing, and employment matters but can cover all kinds of discrimination, from race to religion to disabilities.

The renewed focus on civil rights comes at a particularly pivotal moment because of the upcoming 2010 census. The updated population figures are used to conduct a comprehensive redrawing of political districts that will most likely be hotly contested, and the data also are used to monitor and enforce civil rights laws in areas like housing, lending, education, and voting.

Beyond the census, issues like racial profiling and police abuse are expected to receive new attention under Obama. Indeed, one of the first civil rights cases filed by the new attorney general came against a former Texas police officer accused of racially profiling Hispanic motorists. In addition, the Justice Department is likely to back new laws to make voter registration more uniform, congressional staffers say.

Holder has a lot of work ahead of him. Under George W. Bush, the Justice Department was better known as a battleground between political appointees and career civil servants than for its frontline work in civil rights litigation. It took six years, the controversial firing of nine U.S. attorneys, and Democratic control of Congress for a series of investigations to reveal numerous instances of inappropriate politicization.

By the end of two terms, the Bush administration had altered the mission of the Justice Department's legendary Civil Rights Division. Between 2001 and 2005, the division brought only a single case of employment discrimination (a reverse discrimination case, like that of the Connecticut firefighters) and no cases of voter discrimination on behalf of African-Americans. Instead, resources were directed toward immigration enforcement, human trafficking, and issues of religious free speech, all of which had traditionally been handled by other divisions.

"Racial balancing." In his budget, Obama included an 18 percent boost in funding for the Civil Rights Division. But the office could face an uphill battle because of the large number of conservative federal judges appointed over the past eight years. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, for instance, is an outspoken opponent of "racial balancing." In March, the high court ruled that certain oversight provisions in the 1965 Voting Rights Act don't automatically apply in voting districts where minorities make up less than one half of the population.

In addition to the pending Connecticut case, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a Texas case that challenges whether election procedures in 16 states should still be subject to federal supervision under the Voting Rights Act. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, whose state's elections are currently supervised by the Justice Department, says Obama's election shows why the protections afforded to minority voters are no longer needed. For his part, Obama has pledged to "reinvigorate federal civil rights enforcement," in particular, prosecuting more cases of voting discrimination against blacks.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2009/03/12/why-eric-holder-says-civil-rights-is-his-top-priority-after-the-bush-years.html



Why Eric Holder Says Civil Rights is His Top Priority After the Bush Years

By Alex Kingsbury
Posted March 12, 2009
U.S. News & World Report

If the nation's new attorney general wanted to get people's attention on the subject of race, lambasting Americans as "cowards" was a headline-grabbing first step. In the wake of the election of the nation's first black president, its first black attorney general delivered a powerful indictment on race relations. "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," Attorney General Eric Holder told Justice Department employees in a speech in February marking Black History Month.

As the country's top lawman, Holder is now in a position to tackle racial inequity. But first, he'll have to rebuild the stable of government attorneys who specialize in prosecuting complex discrimination cases. Under the Bush administration, political appointees effectively chased away the bulk of the experienced attorneys in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which handles cases of discrimination in housing, employment, and voting rights. During the past eight years, more than half of the division's career staff left or was reassigned, and its focus shifted away from traditional civil rights cases. Remaking the division is "Priority 1 right now," Holder told the National Association of Attorneys General last week. "Some of the stuff that I learned in the transition reports were frankly pretty shocking," he said. "We're going to need help as we try to reinvigorate, rebuild what has always been a great division but that has suffered a lot in the last eight years."

More broadly, the Justice Department was ground zero for a series of the most contentious fights between Bush administration political appointees and career civil servants. Yet it took six years and the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for Congress to launch investigations into activities at the department. Even now, lawmakers are still trying to get answers from former White House staffers, including Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, about the role of politics in those dismissals.

The machinations at the Civil Rights Division never received the same level of public attention as the fired attorneys. But the woes of the legendary division, which enforced school-desegregation busing and affirmative action, do illustrate the corrosive impact that political appointees can have on the business of an agency, according to investigators. "The division was the flagship of enforcement of civil rights, and now it's not even a shell of its former self in reputation or in practice," says Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Investigations by the Justice Department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that political appointees improperly hired lawyers based on their political views and pushed out or reassigned senior staff attorneys. In addition, the division's new hires had far less experience with civil rights cases than those hired under previous administrations, according to statistics released by the Justice Department. The inspector general's report even concluded that a former chief of the Civil Rights Division made false statements to Congress about the hiring practices and said that the combination of his actions rendered him "unsuitable for federal service." The investigations led to a new policy compelling political appointees to receive briefings on prohibited personnel practices.

The Bush administration fundamentally altered the division's mission. Between 2001 and 2005, the division brought only a single case of employment discrimination, and no cases of voter discrimination, on behalf of African-Americans. Instead, division resources were directed toward immigration, human trafficking, and issues of religious free speech, all of which had traditionally been handled by other divisions. As Holder put it during his Senate confirmation hearings, "In the last eight years, vital federal laws designed to protect rights in the workplace, the housing market, and the voting booth have languished."

For Holder, civil rights have long been a personal issue. In 1963, his sister-in-law, Vivian Malone Jones, had to be escorted to her college classes at the University of Alabama by U.S. marshals. Braving protests by angry crowds and the state's governor, George Wallace, she was one of the first two black students to attend the school.

The Civil Rights Division, which Holder has called the "conscience of the Justice Department," has around 350 lawyers who manage litigation relating to everything from housing to voting rights. Created in 1957, it was charged with enforcing an ever changing landscape of civil rights legislation. Since then, its mandate has expanded beyond racial issues to include discrimination based on gender, sex, handicap, religion, and national origin.

The Necessity of Asking & Telling: Why President Obama Must Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Human and Civil Rights of Gay and Lesbian Citizens

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/07/AR2009050703055.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/us/politics/07obama.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

All,

Like the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle as well as the many other ongoing fights over the economy, the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan/Pakistan, the national budget, universal health care, education, new energy policy, etc. the President will not be able--nor should he be able-- to simply sidestep the pivotal constitutional and moral issue of equal human and civil rights for gays and lesbians. It's way past time for the American government and the Obama Administration --as well as the rest of us --to honestly face up to the crucial necessity of fully embracing and defending the bedrock political, moral, and ethical maxim/principle that says that for any one of us to be free then everyone must be free. That we must all finally come to openly recognize and apply this fundamental truth when it comes to our fellow human beings who are not heterosexual is not just a major litmus test of our politics but of our humanity...

Kofi

P.S. Check out the fine piece below by African American journalist and columnist Eugene Robinson (who just won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for journalistic commentary last week)


MIA On Gay Marriage
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Washington Post

Believe it or not, often I can see the other side of an argument. I know that tough gun control laws save lives and make our communities safer, for example, but I also see clarity in the Second Amendment. I support affirmative action, but I realize that providing opportunity to some worthy individuals can mean denying opportunity to others. Thinking about some issues involves discerning among subtly graded shades of gray.

On some issues, though, I really don't see anything but black and white. Among them is the "question" of granting full equal rights to gay and lesbian Americans, which really isn't a question at all. It's a long-overdue imperative, one that the nation is finally beginning to acknowledge.

Before his inauguration, President Obama called himself a "fierce advocate of equality for gay and lesbian Americans." Now, with the same-sex marriage issue percolating in state after state and with the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy ripe for repeal, it's time for Obama to put some of his political capital where his rhetoric is.

On Wednesday, Maine became the fifth state to legalize gay marriage; similar legislation in New Hampshire has been sent to the governor. Politicians in Washington who want to avoid what they see as a dangerous controversy have a convenient escape: They can say that the marriage issue should be left to the states and that the question of whether a legal gay marriage in one state should be recognized everywhere has already been addressed by Congress and ultimately will be settled by the courts.

But that's a dodge, not a stance. It certainly can't be confused with leadership.

Favoring "civil unions" that accord all the rights and benefits of marriage -- but that withhold the word marriage, and with it, I guess, society's approval -- amounts to another dodge. I'm concerned here with the way the law sees the relationship, not the way any particular church or religious leader sees it; that's for worshipers, clergy and the Almighty to work out. Marriage is not just a sacrament but also a contract, and the contractual aspect is a matter of statute, not scripture.

Obama took the "civil unions" route during last year's campaign and has stuck with it. While I see the political calculation -- that was basically the position of all the major Democratic candidates -- I never understood the logic. If semantics are the only difference between a civil union and a marriage, why go to the trouble of drawing a distinction? If there are genuine differences that the law should recognize, what are they?

It seems to me that equality means equality, and either you're for it or you're not. I believe gay marriage should be legal, and it's hard for me to imagine how any "fierce advocate of equality" could think otherwise.

Obama sensibly advocates the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." He should press the case by publicly reminding opponents of letting gays serve openly in the military that their arguments -- it would hurt morale, damage cohesion and readiness, discourage reenlistment -- are often the same, almost word for word, as the arguments made 60 years ago against racial integration in the armed forces. It was bigotry then, and it's bigotry now.

Obama should also make the obvious case that forcibly discharging capable, fully trained servicemen and servicewomen for being gay, at a time when our overstretched military is fighting two big wars, can only be described as insane.

What the president shouldn't do is stay away from the marriage debate on the grounds that it's not a matter for the federal government. For one thing, he's on record as favoring repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- a law that blocked federal recognition of same-sex marriages and relieved states of any obligation to recognize out-of-state gay marriages.

Does Obama's stance in favor of repeal mean that he believes the federal government should recognize same-sex marriages? Does he also believe that, say, the state of Alabama should recognize a gay marriage performed in Iowa? If so, what is the practical difference between this position and just saying in plain language that gay marriages ought to be legal and recognized in all 50 states?

I'm not being unrealistic. I know that public acceptance of homosexuality in this country is still far from universal. But attitudes have changed dramatically -- more than enough for a popular, progressive president to speak loudly and clearly about a matter of fundamental human and civil rights.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com


WHITE HOUSE MEMO

With Gay Issues in View, Obama Is Pressed to Engage
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: May 6, 2009
New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama was noticeably silent last month when the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

But now Mr. Obama — who has said he opposes same-sex marriage as a Christian but describes himself as a “fierce advocate of equality” for gay men and lesbians — is under pressure to engage on a variety of gay issues that are coming to the fore amid a dizzying pace of social, political, legal and legislative change.

Two of Mr. Obama’s potential Supreme Court nominees are openly gay; some advocates, irked that there are no gay men or lesbians in his cabinet, are mounting a campaign to influence his choice to replace Justice David H. Souter, who is retiring. Same-sex marriage is advancing in states — the latest to allow it is Maine — and a new flare-up in the District of Columbia could ultimately put the controversy in the lap of the president.

Mr. Obama’s new global health initiative has infuriated activists who say he is not financing AIDS programs generously enough. And while the president has urged Congress to pass a hate crimes bill, a high priority for gay groups, he has delayed action on one of his key campaign promises, repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule.

Social issues like same-sex marriage bring together deeply held principles and flashpoint politics, and many gay activists, aware that Mr. Obama is also dealing with enormous challenges at home and overseas, have counseled patience.

But some are unsettled by what they see as the president’s cautious approach. Many are still seething over his choice of the Rev. Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who opposes same-sex marriage, to deliver the invocation at his inaugural, and remain suspicious of Mr. Obama’s commitment to their cause.

In the words of David Mixner, a writer, gay activists are beginning to wonder, “How much longer do we give him the benefit of the doubt?” Last weekend, Richard Socarides, who advised President Bill Clinton on gay issues, published an opinion piece in The Washington Post headlined, “Where’s our fierce advocate?”

The White House, aware of the discontent, invited leaders of some prominent gay rights organizations to meet Monday with top officials, including Jim Messina, Mr. Obama’s deputy chief of staff, to plot legislative strategy on the hate crimes bill as well as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Among those attending was Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, who said afterward that while the gay rights agenda might not be “unfolding exactly as we thought,” he was pleased.

“They have a vision,” Mr. Solmonese said. “They have a plan.”

While Mr. Obama has said he is “open to the possibility” that his views on same-sex marriage are misguided, he has offered no signal that he intends to change his position. And as he confronts that and other issues important to gay rights advocates, he faces an array of pressures and risks.

Anything substantive he might say on same-sex marriage — after the Iowa ruling, the White House put out a statement saying the president “respects the decision” — would be endlessly parsed. If Mr. Obama were to embrace same-sex marriage, he would be seen as reversing a campaign position and alienating some moderate and religious voters he has courted.

And if he appoints a gay person to the Supreme Court, he would be viewed by social conservatives — including many black ministers, another of his core constituency groups — as putting a vote for same-sex marriage on the highest court in the land. Two gay women, Kathleen M. Sullivan and Pamela S. Karlan, both of Stanford Law School, have been suggested as potential nominees.

“That would be tantamount to opening the gate for the other side,” said Bishop Harry J. Jackson Jr. of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., who is organizing protests in Washington, where the City Council passed an ordinance this week recognizing same-sex marriages in other states. “If he meant what he said about marriage then I think he has got to stand up and be a president who acts on his beliefs.”

Some say change is inevitable, not only for Mr. Obama but also for other Democratic politicians who have embraced civil unions but rejected same-sex marriage. Now that the Iowa ruling has pushed the battle into the nation’s heartland, the issue will inevitably come up during the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential campaign.

“We’ve elected probably the most pro-gay president in history; he’s very good on the issues but he is not good on gay marriage,” said Steven Elmendorf, a gay Democratic lobbyist. “From the gay community’s perspective, he and a lot of other elected officials are wrong on this. My view is that over time, they’re going to realize they’re wrong and they’re going to change.”

Mr. Obama has chosen a number of openly gay people for prominent jobs, including Fred P. Hochberg as chairman of the Export-Import Bank and John Berry to run the Office of Personnel Management. And he is the first president to set aside tickets for gay families to attend the White House Easter Egg Roll.

But on legislation, allies of Mr. Obama’s are not surprised that he is charting a careful course. In addition to calling for the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military, Mr. Obama supports a legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that said states need not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Opponents of same-sex marriage say that is an inconsistency.

Tobias Wolff, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was Mr. Obama’s top campaign adviser on gay rights, said the president needed time to build political consensus.

“I think he has a genuine sense,” Mr. Wolff said, “that in order to move these issues forward you need broader buy-in than you are going to get if you poke a stick in too many people’s eyes.”

Why the Selection of a New Supreme Court Justice by President Obama Promises To Be A Real Challenge and Opportunity for the U.S. Left

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/02court.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

All,

This upcoming battle over President Obama's potential nominee for the Supreme Court in light of David Souter stepping down promises to be one of the most important political and ideological battles of Obama's presidency and a crucial test of whether his administration is fully prepared to go all the way to secure the appointment of a new Justice who will be an unequivocally progressive/liberal voice who will fully and vigorously protect and defend the human and civil rights of national minorities, women, labor, children, and consumers against the ongoing legal assault on these citizens and their rights by the current heinously rightwing court led by the despicable likes of Justices Anthony Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alioto, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Further this fight (along with the looming fierce political battles over the crucial need for widespread governmental regulation of the banks, lending agencies, and financial investment institutions, passing a massive national budget as well as major reform for a new national health care plan, energy and environmental policy, and education--from preschool levels to college-- ) clearly indicates that the American Left (as relentlessly immature as it is) has its work cut out for itself and yet can still make a major contribution toward WINNING these very important and necessary battles IF it can ever seriously wean itself off the deadend infantilism of mindless carping and moaning about the perceived and actual limitations and shortcomings of Obama's personal political and ideological personality and identity long enough to do THE REAL WORK they should actually be engaged in with respect to these major issues and concerns. This means that what the Left and other progressives/radicals SHOULD be focused on instead is doing the hard and necessary work of intelligently organizing, educating, and mobilizing working people, minorities, women, and liberal middle and upper middle class professionals alike in a national broadbased COALITION of American citizens who know that the proper fight now (and forever) is with and against the dangerously reactionary--which is to say the thoroughly racist, sexist, homophobic, and imperialist Republican Party and the endless number of well financed independent rightwing organizations and academic/activist propagandists who we all had better believe are going to vociferously oppose any and all attempts by President Obama's administration as well as more the rest of us to move even a milimeter in the direction of genuine progressive change on these and other issues.

So the fight for "change" in this context is for once crystal clear and generally unambiguous--which in itself is a pleasantly refreshing change. To say that EVERYTHING depends on the independent quality, depth, and breadth of our collective national political and ideological response to the massive challenges before us is a huge understatement. This series of battles will truly require us all to THINK HARD AND LONG about precisely where we want and need to go and actually make the supreme effort to do so as well as indicate how, when, and where we want/need to actively support and defend Obama's reformist initiatives and conversely when and where we need/want to oppose them. This will of course require a truly sophisticated and nuanced theoretical, strategic, and tactical maturity, depth, understanding, and commitment that goes far beyond mere nitpicking, faultfinding, and masturbatory exercises in service to the false consciousness of "purity", moronic self righteousness, and dogmatic "infallibility" that the U.S. Left in general spends far too much valuable time, energy, and resources stupidly indulging in--especially now that Barack Obama is President.

What we all have to remember is that we have much bigger and far more important fish to fry than merely berating the Obama Administration and other Democratic Party liberals (and neoliberals) for being what and who they are (and are not). So let's all be critically and intelligently engaged at a level of discourse and activism that will actually lead us in a specific and mature direction for once. As always it's up to us...

Kofi



May 2, 2009

Washington Prepares for Fight Over Any Nominee

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — The nation’s capital geared up Friday for a battle over a Supreme Court vacancy that appeared likely to test President Obama’s success at skirting divisive social issues, with conservative groups saying they viewed the opening created by the retirement of Justice David H. Souter as an opportunity to regroup after a series of political setbacks.

Even as Mr. Souter delivered a letter to the White House formally disclosing his intention to step down at the end of this term, liberal and conservative leaders prepared for another of the intense battles over Supreme Court appointments that have marked the past 20 years in Washington. Mr. Souter — though appointed by a Republican, the first President George Bush — has been a part of the liberal bloc of the court, so Mr. Obama’s appointment is unlikely to shift the ideological makeup of the court.

Mr. Obama, who was president of the Harvard Law Review and taught law at the University of Chicago, praised Mr. Souter’s tenure, and laid out what he was looking for in making a nomination.

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook,” Mr. Obama said during an unscheduled appearance in the White House briefing room. “It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.”

That formulation — echoing what Mr. Obama had said while campaigning — stirred concern among conservatives, who said it signaled that the president would nominate an activist judge with an expansive view of the Constitution. Anticipating that line of attack, Mr. Obama also proclaimed that his nominee would be someone “who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he had urged Mr. Obama to meet with Republicans and Democrats to discuss prospective nominees before making his selection. Mr. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said he intended to have confirmation hearings completed before the court convenes in the first week of October.

Asked whether he expected a reprise of the contentious nomination battles, Mr. Leahy replied: “I would hope not. But lately they have always seemed to be.”

Mr. Obama faces intense pressure to choose a woman for the vacancy, and lesser pressure to pick a black or Hispanic justice. There is only one women on the court now, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who underwent surgery in February for pancreatic cancer.

Among the candidates under consideration — a group that includes white, black and Hispanic judges and lawyers — are Sonia Sotomayor, who sits on the federal appeals court in New York, and Judge Kim M. Wardlaw, who is on the federal appeals court in California. Other leading candidates include Leah Ward Sears, who is the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court; Kathleen M. Sullivan, a professor at the Stanford Law School and former dean there, and Diane P. Wood, a judge on the appellate court based in Chicago.

Mr. Souter, 69, announced the end of his Supreme Court career, which began in October 1990, in a two-sentence note that was devoid of any sentiment. The vacancy leaves the White House facing another big task, at a time when Mr. Obama and Congress have been grappling with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, two wars and a potential flu pandemic. By occupying the Senate and the White House with an ideological battle, the drama of filling a Supreme Court position seemed likely to risk complicating what Mr. Obama had intended to be his major initiative in the months ahead: passing health care legislation.

Supreme Court battles have proved fertile ground for conservative and liberal groups to raise money and rally the troops, and conservatives leaders said they were heartened by the prospect of this fight.

“There could not be a better issue to latch on to for a Republican renaissance to start building on — drawing some distinctions on issues,” said Wendy Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative organization. “I hope for and I expect a fight.”

A coalition of conservative legal activist groups has spent the first months of the Obama administration researching the backgrounds and records of prospective nominees and charting the best ideological line of attack, said Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, one of the conservative groups.

Mr. Levey said the groups now expected Mr. Obama to nominate a candidate who supports abortion rights, and were focusing on other “the issues that are really in play,” like same-sex marriage, gun rights, religious rights and the death penalty, in preparing for the nomination battle.

The conservative groups have agreed to divide up responsibilities for researching potential nominees and have completed about 30 dossiers, he said.

As a senator, Mr. Obama voted against President George W. Bush’s two nominees, John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr., and backed unsuccessful efforts to filibuster their nominations.

“I trust the president will choose a nominee for the upcoming vacancy based on their experience and even-handed reading of the law, and not their partisan leanings or ability to pass litmus tests,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

Senior White House officials said they had been aware for weeks that Mr. Souter intended to step down at the end of the term. They said preparation for filling a vacancy had begun in the early part of the transition process, and that Mr. Obama had given them a list of names to check even before his inauguration.

On Thursday, before receiving official word from Justice Souter of his intention to step aside, senior White House officials met in the West Wing to begin mapping out a strategy for how to get a nomination through, officials said. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who voted on six Supreme Court nominations during his time in the Senate, will advise Mr. Obama as he makes his choice, aides said, but his role will largely be limited to helping the nominee through the confirmation process.

Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were prepared for this fight and were ready to use the resources of Mr. Obama’s political organization, including its expansive e-mail list, to rally support for whoever he nominates. Liberal groups said they were gearing up not only to fight conservatives but also to make certain Mr. Obama puts forward a liberal choice.

David D. Kirkpatrick, Neil A. Lewis and Charlie Savage contributed reporting.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

African American Abolitionist and Feminist Sojourner Truth Honored at the U.S. Capitol

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/04/michelle_obama_10.html

All,

Michelle Obama Honors Another Great Black Woman--the legendary abolitionist and sufragist Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)

Kofi


POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE
The Boston Globe

Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor April 28, 2009

For one of the few times as first lady, Michelle Obama today highlighted the history she is making, speaking of her own family's journey as she helped to unveil a statue of abolitionist Sojourner Truth -- the first black woman to be so honored at the Capitol.

"I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the first lady of the United States of America," Obama said at the new Capitol Visitor Center.

An early crusader for giving women the right to vote, as well as ending slavery, Truth met presidents Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1870. She tried to vote on two occasions, but was turned away both times.

"One can only imagine what Sojourner Truth, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman...would have to say about this incredible gathering, just looking down on this day, and thinking about the legacy she has left all of us -- because we are all here because, as my husband says time and time again, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Sojourner Truth," Obama added.

Her full remarks are below:

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm not going to talk long because everybody has said just about everything that can be said. But let me tell you something, I am proud to be here.

I want to congratulate everyone who was a part of making this day possible: the NCBW, all of the elected official, C. DeLores Tucker, her family, the family of Sojourner Truth. It is just a sheer delight to have you here witnessing this.

But let's just think about this day and this gathering. It is so good to see this hall filled with so many strong women -- a few brothers in here, a few people -- (applause) -- but such a diverse group of people crowding this hall. And one can only imagine what Sojourner Truth, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman -- and we all know a little something about that, right -- (applause) -- just to imagine what she would have to say about this incredible gathering, just looking down on this day, and thinking about the legacy she has left all of us -- because we are all here because, as my husband says time and time again, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Sojourner Truth. (Applause.)

And just as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott would be pleased to know that we have a woman serving as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the First Lady of the United States of America. (Applause.) So I am proud to be here. I am proud to be able to stand here on this day with this dedication.

And just as many young boys and girls have walked through this Capitol -- I see them now, and they see the bust of suffragists and hear the stories of the struggles of women, what they had to endure to gain the right to vote -- now many young boys and girls, like my own daughters, will come to Emancipation Hall and see the face of a woman who looks like them. (Applause.)

And all the visitors in the U.S. Capitol will hear the story of brave women who endured the greatest of humanities -- indignities. They'll hear the story of Sojourner Truth who didn't allow those indignities to destroy her spirit, who fought for her own freedom, and then used her powers, young people -- then she used her power to help others; who fought for the right to vote and for the rights of all women.

The power of this bust will not just be in the metal that delineates Sojourner Truth's face; it will also be in the message that defines her legacy.

Forever more, in the halls of one of our country's greatest monuments of liberty and equality, justice and freedom, Sojourner's Truth story will be told again and again and again and again. So now let's get on with unveiling this statue. Thank you so much.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Sojourner Truth (1797 – November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843, of Isabella Baumfree, an American slave, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York. Her best-known speech, Ain't I a Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

She was one of thirteen children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree, who were slaves of Colonel Hardenbergh. The Hardenbergh estate was in a hilly area called by the Dutch name Swartekill (just north of present-day Rifton), in the town of Esopus, New York, 95 miles north of New York City.[1] After the colonel's death, ownership of the family slaves passed to his son, Charles Hardenbergh. [2]

After the death of Charles Hardenbergh in 1806, Truth, known as Belle, was sold at an auction. She was about 9 years old and was included with a flock of sheep for $100 to John Neely, near Kingston, New York. Until she was sold, Truth spoke only Dutch.[3] She suffered many hardships at the hands of Neely, whom she later described as cruel and harsh and who once beat her with a bundle of rods. Truth previously said Neely raped and beat her daily. Neely sold her in 1808, for $105, to Martinus Schryver of Port Ewen, a tavern keeper, who owned her for 18 months. Schryver sold her in 1810, for $175, to John Dumont of West Park, New York.[4] Although this fourth owner was kindly disposed toward her, his wife found numerous ways to harass Truth and make her life more difficult.[2]

Around 1815, Truth met and fell in love with a slave named Robert from a neighboring farm. Robert's owner (Catlin) forbade the relationship; he did not want his slave to have children with a slave he did not own, because he would not own the children. Robert was savagely beaten and Truth never saw him again. Later, he died from the previous injuries.[5] In 1817, Truth was forced by Dumont to marry an older slave named Thomas. She had five children: Diana (1815), fathered by Robert; and Thomas who died shortly after birth, Peter (1821), Elizabeth (1825), and Sophia (ca. 1826), fathered by Thomas.[6]
[edit]Freedom

The state of New York began, in 1799, to legislate the abolition of slavery, although the process of emancipating New York slaves was not complete until July 4, 1827. Dumont had promised Truth freedom a year before the state emancipation, "if she would do well and be faithful." However, he changed his mind, claiming a hand injury had made her less productive. She was infuriated. She continued working until she felt she had done enough to satisfy her sense of obligation to him by spinning 100 pounds of wool.

Late in 1826, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. She had to leave her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties.[3]She later said:

“ I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right.[3] ”

She found her way to the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagener, who took her and her baby in. Isaac offered to buy her services for the remainder of the year (until the state's emancipation took effect), which Dumont accepted for $20.[3] She lived there until the New York State Emancipation Act was approved a year later.

Truth learned that her son Peter, then 5 years old, had been sold illegally by Dumont to an owner in Alabama. With the help of the Van Wageners, she took the issue to court and, after months of legal proceedings, got back her son, who had been abused by his new owner.[2] Truth became the first black woman to go to court against a white man and win the case.

Truth had a life-changing religious experience during her stay with the Van Wageners, and became a devout Christian. In 1829 she moved with her son Peter to New York City, where she worked as a housekeeper for Elijah Pierson, a Christian Evangelist. In 1832, she met Robert Matthews, also known as Matthias Kingdom or Prophet Matthias, and went to work for him as a housekeeper.[2] In a bizarre twist of fate, Elijah Pierson died, and Robert Matthews and Truth were accused of stealing from and poisoning him. Both were acquitted and Robert Matthews moved west.[3]

In 1839, Truth's son Peter took a job on a whaling ship called the Zone of Nantucket. From 1840 to 1841, she received three letters from him, though in his third letter he told her he had sent five. When the ship returned to port in 1842, Peter was not on board and Truth never heard from him again.[2]



On June 1, 1843, Truth changed her name to Sojourner Truth and told her friends, "The Spirit calls me, and I must go." She became a Methodist, and left to make her way traveling and preaching about abolition. In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization supported women's rights and religious tolerance as well as pacifism. There were 210 members and they lived on 500 acres (2 km²), raising livestock, running a sawmill, a gristmill, and a silk factory. While there, Truth met William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. In 1846, the group disbanded, unable to support itself.[3] In 1847, she went to work as a housekeeper for George Benson, the brother-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1849, she visited John Dumont before he moved west.[2]

Truth started dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert, and in 1850 William Lloyd Garrison privately published her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave.[3] That same year, she purchased a home in Northampton for $300, and spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts.


In 1851, she left Northampton to join George Thompson, an abolitionist and speaker. In May, she attended the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio where she delivered her famous speech Ain't I a Woman, a slogan she adopted from one of the most famous abolitionist images, that of a kneeling female slave with the caption "Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?"[7]

Reminiscences by Frances Gage
Akron Convention, Akron, Ohio, May 1851:

"There were very few women in those days who dared to "speak in meeting"; and the august teachers of the people were seemingly getting the better of us, while the boys in the galleries, and the sneerers among the pews, were hugely enjoying the discomfiture, as they supposed, of the "strong-minded." Some of the tender-skinned friends were on the point of losing dignity, and the atmosphere betokened a storm. When, slowly from her seat in the corner rose Sojourner Truth, who, till now, had scarcely lifted her head. "Don't let her speak!" gasped half a dozen in my ear. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great speaking eyes to me. There was a hissing sound of disapprobation above and below. I rose and announced "Sojourner Truth," and begged the audience to keep silence for a few moments."

"The tumult subsided at once, and every eye was fixed on this almost Amazon form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eyes piercing the upper air like one in a dream. At her first word there was a profound hush. She spoke in deep tones, which, though not loud, reached every ear in the house, and away through the throng at the doors and windows."[8]
Over the next decade, Truth spoke before dozens, perhaps hundreds, of audiences. From 1851 to 1853, Truth worked with Marius Robinson, the editor of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, and traveled around that state speaking. In 1853, she spoke at a suffragist "mob convention" at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City; that year she also met Harriet Beecher Stowe.[2] In 1856, she traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to speak to a group called the Friends of Human Progress. In 1858, someone interrupted a speech and accused her of being a man; Truth opened her blouse and revealed her breasts.[2][3]


Truth delivered her best-known speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention. The speech has become known as Ain't I a Woman? after Truth's refrain.[9]

“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about? " That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne five children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or Negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full? Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it. The men better let them. Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say. ” --Sojourner Truth

Truth sold her home in Northampton in 1857 and bought a house in Harmonia, Michigan, just west of Battle Creek.[3] According to the 1860 census, her household in Harmonia included her daughter, Elizabeth Banks (age 35), and her grandsons James Caldwell (misspelled as "Colvin"; age 16) and Sammy Banks (age 8).[2]


During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army. Her grandson, James Caldwell, enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1864, Truth was employed by the National Freedman's Relief Association in Washington, D.C., where she worked diligently to improve conditions for African-Americans. In October of that year, she met President Abraham Lincoln.[2] In 1865, while working at the Freedman's Hospital in Washington, Truth rode in the streetcars to help force their desegregation.[2]

Truth is credited with writing a song, "The Valiant Soldiers", for the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment; it was said to be composed during the war and sung by her in Detroit and Washington, D.C. It is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body" or "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". [11] Although Truth claimed to have written the words, it has been disputed (see Marching Song of the First Arkansas).

In 1867, Truth moved from Harmonia to Battle Creek. In 1868, she traveled to western New York and visited with Amy Post, and continued traveling all over the East Coast. At a speaking engagement in Florence, Massachusetts, after she had just returned from a very tiring trip, when Truth was called upon to speak she stood up and said,

“Children, I have come here like the rest of you, to hear what I have to say.[12] ”

In 1870, Truth tried to secure land grants from the federal government to former slaves, a project she pursued for seven years without success. While in Washington, D.C., she had a meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant in the White House. In 1872, she returned to Battle Creek and tried to vote in the presidential election, but was turned away at the polling place.[9]

Truth spoke about abolition, women's rights, prison reform, and preached to the Michigan Legislature against capital punishment. Not everyone welcomed her preaching and lectures, but she had many friends and staunch support among many influential people at the time, including Amy Post, Parker Pillsbury, Frances Gage, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Laura Smith Haviland, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony."[12]

Several days before Truth died, a reporter came from the Grand Rapids Eagle to interview her. "Her face was drawn and emaciated and she was apparently suffering great pain. Her eyes were very bright and mind alert although it was difficult for her to talk." Truth died on November 26, 1883, at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek, beside other family members.


1862 -- William Story's statue, The Libyan Sibyl", inspired by Sojourner Truth, won an award at the London World Exhibition.[3]
1892 -- Albion artist Frank Courter is commissioned to paint the meeting between Truth and President Abraham Lincoln.[2]
1981 -- Truth is inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.[2]
1981 -- Feminist theorist and author bell hooks titles her first major work after Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech.
1983 -- Truth is in the first group of women inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in Lansing.[2]
1986 -- U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring Sojourner Truth.[2][13]
1997 -- The NASA Mars Pathfinder mission's robotic rover was named "Sojourner" after her.[14]
1998 -- S.T. Writes Home appears on the web offering "Letters to Mom from Sojourner Truth," in which the Mars Pathfinder Rover at times echoes its namesake.
1999 -- The Broadway musical The Civil War includes Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman. On the 1999 cast recording, it was performed by Maya Angelou.
The leftist group the Sojourner Truth Organization is named after her.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates her as a renewer of society on March 10, with Harriet Tubman.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Sojourner Truth on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[15]
2004 -- The King's College, located inside the Empire State Building in New York City, has a house system (modeled after Oxford University's), and each house is named after an influential leader. In 2004, they voted to name one of the houses 'The House of Sojourner Truth'.
She is commemorated in a monument of "Michigan Legal Milestones" erected by the State Bar of Michigan.[16]
She is also commemorated together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer and Harriet Ross Tubman in the calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church on July 20.
The Library at the State University of New York at New Paltz, in New Paltz, New York, is named in her honor.
2009 -- The first black woman honored with a bust in the US Capital.[17]
[edit]Books

Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave (1850). Dover Publications 1997 edition: ISBN 0-486-29899-X Penguin Classics 1998 edition: ISBN 0-14-043678-2. Introduction & notes by Nell Irvin Painter.
University of Pennsylvania online edition (html format, one chapter per page) University of Virginia online edition (HTML format, 207 kB, entire book on one page)

Carleton Mabee with Susan Mabee Newhouse, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York and London: New York University Press, 1993) ISBN 0-8147-5525-9 Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996) ISBN 0-393-31708-0 Jacqueline Sheehan, Truth: A Novel (New York: Free Press, 2003) ISBN 0-7432-4444-3 Erlene Stetson and Linda David, Glorying in Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-87013-337-3

References ^ Whalin, W. Terry (199ŵ7). Sojourner Truth. Barbour Publishing, Inc.. ISBN 9781593106294. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q "Amazing Life page". Sojourner Truth Institute site. Retrieved on December 28, 2006. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Sojourner Truth page". Women in History site. Retrieved on December 28, 2006. ^ "State University of New York at New Paltz". On the trail of Sojourner Truth in Ulster County, New York by Corinne Nyquist Librarian, Sojourner Truth Library. Retrieved on March 6, 2008. ^ "Sojourner Truth page". Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Retrieved on December 28, 2006. ^ Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (Norton, 1996), p. 19. ^ "Virtual Exhibitions - artifacts of the Abolitionist movement page". Daughters of the American Revolution site. Retrieved on December 28, 2006. ^ "Sojourner Truth page". Women History. Retrieved on December 28, 2006. ^ a b "Sojourner Truth Page". American Suffragist Movement. Retrieved on December 29, 2006. ^ "Sojourner Truth Page". Fordham University. Retrieved on December 30, 2006. ^ "Documenting the American South". Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Retrieved on November 7, 2007. ^ a b "Sojourner Truth page". Sojourner Truth Biography. Retrieved on December 28, 2006. ^ Scott catalog # 2203, first day of issue on February 4, 1986. ^ NASA, NASA Names First Rover to Explore the Surface of Mars. Accessed December 4, 2006. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8. ^ Michigan Legal Milestones. ^ PRNewswire. Pelosi Remarks at Sojourner Truth Bust Unveiling, Retrieved on April 28, 2009. ^ Wood, Norman B. White Side of a Black Subject Chicago: American Publishing, 1897. sourced from "Portrait page". UTOPIA.utexas.edu. Retrieved on December 30, 2006.

The Global Significance of Michelle Obama

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/28/first.lady/index.html#cnnSTCText

All,

The enduring political and cultural importance of Michelle Obama's central role as U.S. 'First Lady' both in this country and abroad cannot be overstated. As an independent, socially conscious and highly accomplished woman whose grace, style, intelligence, compassion, and mature authority marks everything she does, Michelle Obama has become an inspiration for millions of women (and men) across the globe. Both the President and this nation are very fortunate to have her because of the strength, commitment, and clarity she brings to her multiple positions and roles as social and cultural activist, mother, wife, and important public liasion for the White House.

Kofi





Why Michelle Obama inspires women around the globe

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Michelle Obama inspires women of color around the globe
Indian woman: 'She is a new face for India'
First lady's dark skin and modest upbringing gives women hope
German woman: 'She's the perfect blend of power and civility'

April 28, 2009
By John Blake
CNN


(CNN) -- Heather Ferreira works in the slums of Mumbai, India, where she has watched thousands of women live under a "curse."

The women she meets in the squalid streets where "Slumdog Millionaire" was filmed are often treated with contempt, she says. They're considered ugly if their skin and hair are too dark. They are deemed "cursed" if they only have daughters. Many would-be mothers even abort their children if they learn they're female.

Yet lately she says Indian women are getting another message from the emergence of another woman thousands of miles away. This woman has dark skin and hair. She walks next to her husband in public, not behind. And she has two daughters. But no one calls her cursed. They call her Michelle Obama, the first lady.

"She could be a new face for India," says Ferreira, program officer for an HIV-prevention program run by World Vision, an international humanitarian group. "She shows women that it's OK to have dark skin and to not have a son. She's quite real to us."

Those who focus on Michelle Obama's impact on America are underestimating her reach. The first lady is inspiring women of color around the globe to look at themselves, and America, in fresh ways.

"She might be the first woman of color that females in male-dominated countries have seen as confident, bright, educated, articulate and persuasive," says Barbara Perry, author of "Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier."

A symbol for women around the globe

The notion of a woman being a first in anything is alien in many parts of the world. Millions of women struggle against sexual violence, discrimination and poverty, several women activists say.

But Michelle Obama offers a personal rebuke to that message. Her personal story -- born into a blue-collar family; overcoming racism and once even making more money than her husband -- makes her a mesmerizing figure to women across the globe, says Susan M. Reverby, a professor of women's studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Reverby says this is the first time many women have seen their class and color reflected in America's first lady. Watch how Michelle Obama has done during her first 100 days »

"This is someone who appeals across the usual divides," Reverby says. "She is a celebrity you can imagine being, not a celebrity you have to watch from afar."

A hint of Michelle Obama's global appeal came recently when she spoke at an all-girls school in London, England. The students came from various backgrounds: Muslim, Christian, black and white. Yet they all surged forward, shrieking and even crying, as they hugged the first lady.

Thu Nguyen, a native of Vietnam, wasn't at the London school, but she experienced a similar sense of elation when Obama became first lady.

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In her native country, she says women "are not human beings." But when Obama became the first lady, Nguyen called her niece and told her that any hard-working woman could become the first.

Vietnamese women can identify with Michelle Obama, Nguyen says.

"We have a yellow color because we're Asian, so we felt a bond with [Michelle] Obama when she became the first black first lady," says Nguyen, who works at a nail salon in South Pasadena, California.

Some women's identification with the first lady, however, goes deeper than skin color.

Sue Mbaya of Nairobi, Kenya, says the first lady inspires African woman to assert themselves in their personal and professional lives.

Many African women are conditioned to be subservient, she says. They're prevented from rising to management positions in the workplace, and their families often relegate them to taking care of household tasks while sending their brothers off to school.

But Obama is a high achiever who didn't intimidate her husband, says Mbaya, a native of Zimbabwe who is the advocacy director for World Vision's Africa's region.

"I've always liked knowing that she was Barack Obama's supervisor when they first met," Mbaya says. "He once said that he wouldn't be where he is without his wife. That really appeals to me."

Women in the West also find inspiration in Obama.

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, who lives near Munich, Germany, says the first lady impresses German women because she is a powerful public figure who doesn't seem threatening. German history is marked by charismatic leaders who wielded personal power for malevolent ends, she says.

"She's the perfect blend of power and civility. That's important in German culture," says Hohlbaum, author of "The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World."

How does Michelle Obama define herself?

While other women have defined Obama's appeal, the first lady is refining her role.

She has talked publicly about the pressures military families face. She has encouraged healthy eating by planting a White House garden. She's opened the White House to ordinary people and children. Service to community and family seems to be her theme.

She recently drew the most attention for what she did, not said, during a visit to London. She briefly embraced Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, breaking royal protocol. The Queen, however, according to press accounts, responded warmly to the first lady's embrace.

Obama has often been compared to another regal woman: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But Autumn Stephens, author of "Feisty First Ladies," says that Obama reminds her more of former first lady Hillary Clinton.

"But Hillary really downplayed the mom part whereas Michelle has really played it up," Stephens says. "She is straddling both worlds."

In a poll of first ladies, certain women are invariably cited by historians as the most noteworthy: Abigail Adams, Lady Bird Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt, who is widely considered to be the most influential first lady, Stephens says.

Where would Stephens rank Michelle Obama?

"She's got the whole package," Stephens says. "She's in a class by herself." E-mail to a friend