For Suber, the organization that’s guided her on her journey and provided her with those role models, mentors and sponsors is the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association, which she now, perhaps fittingly, heads as chair of its board of directors, the second woman to do so in the organization’s 36 years of existence.
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On [last] Saturday evening, the University of North Carolina and Syracuse University will face off in the Final Four of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in front of tens of thousands of fans at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. The game will be televised on CBS, which along with Turner signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with the NCAA for the rights to the tournament in 2010. The Atlantic Coast Conference, to which both schools belong, will earn a record $40 million from the tournament. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim and North Carolina coach Roy Williams each reportedly earn about $2 million annually. Aside from scholarships, none of the players on either team will receive financial compensation.
Both Syracuse and North Carolina are emerging from NCAA compliance scandals. A 2015 NCAA investigation of the Syracuse men’s basketball program revealed “academic misconduct, extra benefits, the failure to follow its drug testing policy and impermissible booster activity.” The university voluntarily sat out last year’s tournament in an effort to avoid harsher NCAA sanctions; Boeheim was suspended for nine games earlier this season. North Carolina is awaiting the announcement of NCAA sanctions — which, conveniently, has been delayed until after the lucrative tournament — stemming from a decades-long pattern of academic fraud involving a “shadow curriculum” of fake classes taken by student-athletes.
The injustice, corruption and exploitation at the heart of college athletics are dissected in the new book “Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA,” by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera and New York Times contributing writer Ben Strauss. “Indentured” explores the history of big money in college athletics and the ongoing fight to reform the NCAA, an organization that Nocera and Strauss believe acts against the interests of the very student-athletes it sanctimoniously claims to protect.
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Inmates around the country have called for a series of strikes against forced labor, demanding reforms of parole systems and prison policies, as well as more humane living conditions, a reduced use of solitary confinement, and better health care. The Intercept: PRISONERS IN MULTIPLE STATES CALL FOR STRIKES TO PROTEST FORCED LABOR.
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The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution bans “involuntary servitude” in addition to slavery, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” thus establishing the legal basis for what is today a $2 billion a year industry, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research institute.
Most able-bodied prisoners at federal facilities are required to work, and at least 37 states permit contracting prisoners out to private companies, though those contracts account for only a small percentage of prison labor. “Ironically, those are the only prison labor programs where prisoners make more than a few cents an hour,” Judith Greene, a criminal justice policy analyst, told The Intercept.
Instead, a majority of prisoners work for the prisons themselves, making well below the minimum wage in some states, and as little as 17 cents per hour in privately run facilities. In Texas and a few other states, mostly in the South, prisoners are not paid at all, said Erica Gammill, director of the Prison Justice League, an organization that works with inmates in 109 Texas prisons.
“They get paid nothing, zero; it’s essentially forced labor,” she told The Intercept. “They rationalize not paying prison laborers by saying that money goes toward room and board, to offset the cost of incarcerating them.”
In Texas, prisoners have traditionally worked on farms, raising hogs and picking cotton, especially in East Texas, where many prisons occupy former plantations.
“If you’ve ever seen pictures of prisoners in Texas working in the fields, it looks like what it is,” Greene said. “It’s a plantation: The prisoners are all dressed in white, they got their backs bent over whatever crop they’re tending, the guards are on horseback with rifles.” In the facilities Greene visited, prisoners worked all day in the heat only to return to cells with no air conditioning. “The conditions are atrocious, and it’s about time the Texas prison administration had to take note.”
In 1963, in an effort to reduce the cost of running prisons, Texas began employing inmates to manufacture a wide array of products, including mattresses, shoes, soaps, detergents, and textiles, as well as the furniture used in many of the state’s official buildings. Because of labor laws restricting the sale of prisoner-made goods, Greene said, those products are usually sold to state and local government agencies.
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A GOP proposal to resolve the island's debt crisis would harm its economy, sideline its democracy, and boost corporate profits. The New Republic: Why Are We Colonizing Puerto Rico?
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One catalyst to the water crisis in Flint was the role of the city’s emergency financial manager, empowered by the state of Michigan to dictate practically every aspect of local governance. The financial manager wasn’t accountable to Flint residents, and didn’t have to worry about whether ignoring their concerns about lead-tainted water would harm future election prospects. Democracy in Flint, for all practical purposes, had been suspended by the state.
Now Republicans in Congress want to export this model across the Atlantic Ocean, to the island of Puerto Rico.Proposed legislation from the House Natural Resources Committee, ostensibly drawn up to rescue Puerto Rico from its debt crisis, imposes a federal oversight board that effectively turns the commonwealth into a colony. The result would spell disaster for vulnerable Puerto Rican citizens, and create a bonanza for private corporations looking to take over public functions. Worst of all, it would eliminate the basic principle of self-government Americans fought a revolution to win—only to now deny it to a vassal state, a century after the supposed end of our imperial designs.
Here is the quick backstory: After a decade of economic depression and encouragements by financial institutions to paper over it with borrowing, Puerto Rico carries $72 billion in “unpayable” debt. Successive local governments made plenty of mistakes to exacerbate the crisis. Congress played a role too, making shipping costs to the island larger and Medicare reimbursements smaller, along with many other rules that produced economic hardship.Unemployment on the island has hit 12 percent, and more Puerto Ricans have migrated away in the last two years than in all of the 1980s and 1990s combined.
One solution to the mess would be for Puerto Rico to file bankruptcy and restructure its debt. But peculiar rules disallow commonwealths from utilizing U.S. bankruptcy laws the way cities like Detroit have. These rules give so-called “vulture funds,” who have scooped up the Puerto Rican debt at a discount, the opportunity to demand repayment in full amid threats of a lawsuit. The vultures have little incentive to make a deal because the laws work so completely in their favor.
The Puerto Rican government has pleaded with Congress to help it weather the crisis, and initially House Speaker Paul Ryan promised legislation by the end of March. Today is April 1, and we’re only at the “discussion draft” stage. The real deadline is May 1, when debt payments totaling $2.4 billion begin to come due. Puerto Rico has defaulted on minor amounts of the debt on two occasions, paying off the rest by using funds earmarked for future creditor payments. But the island leadership has said it cannot make upcoming payments without a creditor deal or congressional action.
The House discussion draft, known as the “Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act’’ or PROMESA (Spanish for “promise”), would set up a Financial Oversight and Management Board for the commonwealth. This five-member board would by appointed by the president, but four of the five appointees would come from lists provided by the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader. No board member can be a Puerto Rican elected official or even a candidate for office; the governor of the commonwealth would sit on the board as an additional member, but have no voting rights.
In other words, Puerto Ricans would have absolutely no say over the oversight board. In fact, the board wouldn’t have to follow the laws of Puerto Rico. According to asummary of the discussion draft, the oversight board will be empowered to audit the Puerto Rican government (and would have subpoena power to compel documents), and to subsequently create “efficiencies and reforms” to address the debt crisis. Those are code words for austerity, which has already ravaged the island and worsened its economic prospects.
In other words, PROMESA is a recipe to rip away the sovereignty from Puerto Rico’s government and impose austerity solutions with no hope of escape. This is precisely the kind of counterproductive scenario that pushed Greece into depression. And inevitably, it would resolve the debt crisis on the backs of pensioners and ordinary Puerto Rican citizens, with the bondholders almost entirely protected.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
On the evening of 4 June 1968, at the age of thirteen, I accompanied my father to the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. For several years, he had been writing policy and research papers for the California State Democratic Steering and Platform Committees. I had walked precincts and volunteered at the Kennedy Campaign Headquarters in the San Gabriel Valley for the preceding two months, so as a sort of reward, I was allowed to stay up past my regular bedtime to go with my father to what was, we were certain, to be a victory celebration.
Dad and I had been at the Ambassador since around 8:30 p.m. It was a huge and boisterous crowd. Normally, I retired before 10 p.m., so by the time Kennedy entered the ballroom around 11:30 p.m., I was pretty bushed. His speech would be broadcast on the radio, so Dad and I headed home. On the way, we heard Kennedy and five others had been shot.
I was at a department store near our home, in the television department when the news of Martin Luther King's assassination was broadcast on 4 April 1968. Dad had been teaching his history classes at Cal State Fullerton that day and evening; and had not heard the news, so my revelation was the first he had heard of it. I never had seen my Dad cry, but he teared up when I told him. At that point, I had been a Eugene McCarthy aficionado, but I changed allegiances after listening, with my father, to Kennedy's speech in front of a black audience in Indiana, informing them of MLK's assassination.
The confessional literature of Proust, Henry Miller, Kerouac and so many others consumed much of my reading when I was younger. So much so that my own writing is stamped occasionally as, "confessional."
I think the label misses the point, though. What Confessional Literature attempts is to hold a mirror at society, culture and government. It attempt to show things as they are. The family, like sports is considered to be a microcosm of society as a whole. What you see in a society you see on a sports team, you see it in the extended family. The story of a nation is made up of the many paragraphs in which each family is a participle.
It is a story of many sins; some racial, some sexual. It is a story about the sins of power and the sins of apathy. And as much as some may deny it, it is the story of America, itself
I
Time unhinged the gates Of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown and Ellis Island, And worlds of men with hungers of body and soul Hazarded the wilderness of waters, Cadenced their destinies With the potters’-wheeling miracles Of mountain and valley, prairie and river.
These were the men Who bridged the ocean With arches of dreams And piers of devotion;
Messiahs from the Sodoms and Gomorrahs of the Old World, Searchers for Cathay and Cipango and El Dorado, Mystics from Oubangui Chari and Uppsala, Serfs from Perugia and Tonle Sap, Jailbirds from Newgate and Danzig,
Patriots from Yokosuka and Stralsund,
Scholars from Oxford and Leyden, Beggars from Bagdad and Montmartre, Traders from the Tyrrhenian Sea and Mona Passage, Sailors from the Skagerrak and Bosporus Strait, Iconoclasts from Buteshire and Zermatt.
II
These were the men of many breeds Who mixed their bloods and sowed their seeds. Designed in gold and shaped of dross, They raised the Sword beside the Cross.
These were the men who laughed at odds And scoffed at dooms and diced with gods, Who freed their souls from inner bars And mused with forests and sang with stars.
These were the men of prose and rhyme Who telescoped empires of time, Who knew the feel of spinal verve And walked the straight line of the curve.
These were the men of iron lips Who challenged Dawn’s apocalypse, Who married Earth and Sea and Sky And died to live and lived to die.
These were the men who dared to be The sires of things they could not see, Whose martyred and rejected bones Became the States’ foundation-stones.
III
Into the arteries of the Republic poured The babels of bloods, The omegas of peoples, The moods of continents, The melting-pots of seas, The flotsams of isms, The flavors of tongues, The yesterdays of martyrs, The tomorrows of utopias.
Into the matrix of the Republic poured White gulf streams of Europe, Black tidal waves of Africa, Yellow neap tides of Asia, Niagaras of the little people.
America? America is the Black Man’s country, The Red Man’s, the Yellow Man’s, The Brown Man’s, the White Man’s.
America? An international river with a legion of tributaries! A magnificent cosmorama with myriad patterns and colors! A giant forest with loin-roots in a hundred lands! A cosmopolitan orchestra with a thousand instruments playing America!
IV
I see America in Daniel Boone, As he scouts in the Judas night of a forest aisle; In big Paul Bunyan, as he guillotines The timber avalanche that writhes a mile.
I see America in Jesse James, As his legends match his horse’s epic stride; In big John Henry, as his hammer beats The monster shovel that quakes the mountainside.
I see America in Casey Jones, As he mounts No. 4 with the seal of death in his hand; In Johnny Appleseed, as his miracles Fruit the hills and valleys and plains of our Promised Land.
I see America in Joe DiMaggio, As his bat cuts a vacuum in the paralyzed air; In brown Joe Louis, surfed in white acclaim, As he fights his country’s cause in Madison Square.
I see America in Thomas Paine, As he pinnacles the freedoms that tyrants ban; In young Abe Lincoln, tanned by prairie suns, As he splits his rails and thinks the Rights of Man.
V
A blind man said, “Look at the kikes.” And I saw Rosenwald sowing the seeds of culture in the Black Belt, Michelson measuring the odysseys of invisible worlds, Brandeis opening the eyes of the blind to the Constitution, Boas translating the oneness in the Rosetta stone of mankind.
A blind man said, “Look at the dagos.” And I saw La Guardia shaping the cosmos of pyramided Manhattan, Brumidi verving the Capitol frescoes of Washington at Yorktown, Caruso scaling the Alpine ranges of drama with the staff of song, Toscanini enchanting earthward the music of the spheres.
A blind man said, “Look at the chinks.” And I saw Lin Yutang crying the World Charter in the white man’s wilderness, Dr. Chen charting the voyages of bacteria in the Lilly Laboratories, Lu Cong weaving plant-tapestries in the Department of Agriculture, Madame Chiang Kai-shek interpreting the Orient and the Occident.
A blind man said, “Look at the bohunks.” And I saw Sikorsky blue-printing the cabala of the airways, Stokowski imprisoning the magic of symphonies with a baton, Zvak erecting St. Patricks’s Cathedral in a forest of skyscrapers, Dvořák enwombing the multiple soul of the New World.
A blind man said, “Look at the niggers.” And I saw Black Samson mowing down Hessians with a scythe at Brandy-wine, Marian Anderson bewitching continents with the talisman of art, Fred Douglass hurling from tombstones the philippies of freedom, Private Brooks dying at the feet of MacArthur in Bataan.
VI
America can sing a lullaby When slippered dusk steals down the terraced sky; Then in a voice to wake the Plymouth dead Embattled hordes of tyranny defy.
America can join the riotous throng And sell her virtues for a harlot song; Then give the clothes that hide her nakedness To help her sister nations carry on.
America can worship gods of brass And bow before the strut of Breed and Class; Then gather to her bosom refugees Who champion the causes of the Mass.
America can loose a world of laughter To shake the States from cornerstone to rafter; Then gird her mighty loins with corded strength In the volcanic nightmare of disaster.
America can knot her arms and brow And guide across frontiers the untamed plow; Then beat the plowshares into vengeful swords To keep a rendezvous with Justice now.
VII
Sometimes Uncle Sam Pillows his head on the Statue of Liberty, Tranquilizes himself on the soft couch of the Corn Belt, Laves his feet in the Golden Gate, And sinks into the nepenthe of slumber.
And the termites of anti-Semitism busy themselves And the Ku Klux Klan marches with rope and faggot And the money-changers plunder the Temple of Democracy And the copperheads start boring from within And the robber barons pillage the countryside And the con men try to jimmy the Constitution And the men of good will are hounded over the Land And the People groan in the tribulum of tryanny.
Then Comes the roar of cannon at Fort Sumter Or the explosion of Teapot Dome Or the Wall Street Crash of ‘29 Or the thunderclap of bombs at Pearl Harbor!
VIII
I have a rendezvous with America At Plymouth Rock, Where the Mayflower lies Battered beam on beam By titan-chested waves that heave and shock
And cold December winds That in the riggings pound their fists and scream. Here, Now, The Pilgrim Fathers draw
The New World’s testament of faith and law: A government of and by and for the People, A pact of peers who share and bear and plan, A government which leaves men free and equal And yet knits men together as one man.
I have a rendezvous with America At Valley Forge. These are the times that try men’s souls And fetter cowards to their under goals. Through yonder gorge
Hunger and Cold, Disease and Fear,
Advance with treasonous blows;
The bayonets of the wind stab through
Our winter soldiers’ clothes,
And bloody footsteps stain the deep December snows.
Here, Now, Our winter soldiers keep the faith And keep their powder dry . . . To do or die!
I have a rendezvous with America This Seventh of December. The maiden freshness of Pearl Harbor's dawn, The peace of seas that thieve the breath, I shall remember.
Then
Out of yonder Sunrise Land of Death
The fascist spawn
Strikes like the talons of the mad harpoon,
Strikes like the moccasin in the black lagoon,
Strikes like the fury of the raw typhoon.
The traitor's ruse
And the traitor's lie,
Pearl Harbor’s ruins
Of sea and sky,
Shall live with me
Till the day I die.
Here, Now, At Pearl Harbor, I remember I have a rendezvous at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge This Seventh of December.
IX
In these midnight dawns Of the Gethsemanes and the Golgothas of Peoples, I put my ear to the common ground of America. From the brows of mountains And the breasts of rivers
And the flanks of prairies
And the wombs of valleys
Swells the Victory March of the Republic,
In the masculine allegro of factories
And the blues rhapsody of express trains,
In the bass crescendo of power dams
And the nocturne adagio of river boats,
In the sound and fury of threshing machines
And the clarineting needles of textile mills,
In the fortissimo hammers of shipyards
And the diatonic picks of coal mines, In the oboe rhythms of cotton gins And the sharped notes of salmon traps, In the belting harmonics of lumber camps And the drumming derricks of oil fields.
X
In these midnight dawns Of the vulture Philistines of the unquiet skies And the rattlesnake Attilas of the uptorn seas … In these midnight dawns Of the Gethsemanes and the Golgothas of Peoples,
America stands
Granite-footed as the Rocky Mountains
Beaten by the whirlpool belts of wet winds,
Deep-chested as the Appalachians
Sunning valleys in the palms of their hands,
Tough-tendoned as the Cumberlands
Shouldering the truck caravans of US 40, Clean-flanked as the lavender walls of Palo Duro Washed by the living airs of canyon rivers, Eagle-hearted as the Pacific redwoods Uprearing their heads in the dawns and dusks of ages.
-- Melvin B. Tolson "Rendezvous with America"
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