By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: September 30, 2007

THE police officer had not asked my name or my business before grabbing my wrists, jerking my hands high behind my back and slamming my head into the hood of his cruiser.

“You have no right to put your hands on me!” I shouted lamely.

“This is a high-crime area,” said the officer as he expertly handcuffed me. “You were loitering. We have ordinances against loitering.”

Last month, while talking to a group of young black men standing on a sidewalk in Salisbury, N.C., about harsh anti-gang law enforcement tactics some states are using, I had discovered the main challenge to such measures: the police have great difficulty determining who is, and who is not, a gangster.

My reporting, however, was going well. I had gone to Salisbury to find someone who had firsthand experience with North Carolina’s tough anti-gang stance, and I had found that someone: me.

Except that I didn’t quite fit the type of person I was seeking. I am African-American, like the subjects of my reporting, but I’m not really cut out for the thug life. At 37 years old, I’m beyond the street-tough years. I suppose I could be taken for an “O.G.,” or “original gangster,” except that I don’t roll like that — I drive a Volvo station wagon and have two young homeys enrolled in youth soccer leagues.

As Patrick L. McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte and an advocate of tougher anti-gang measures in the state, told me a couple of days before my Salisbury encounter: “This gang-like culture is tough to separate out. Whether that’s fair or not, that’s the truth.”

Tough indeed. Street gangs rarely keep banker’s hours, rent office space or have exclusive dress codes. A gang member might hang out on a particular corner, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but one is just as likely to be standing on that corner because he lives nearby and his shirt might be blue, not because he’s a member of the Crips, but because he’s a Dodgers fan.

The problem is that when the police focus on gangs rather than the crimes they commit, they are apt to sweep up innocent bystanders, who may dress like a gang member, talk like a gang member and even live in a gang neighborhood, but are not gang members.

In Charlotte’s Hidden Valley neighborhood, a predominately African-American community that is home to some of the state’s most notorious gangs, Jamal Reid, 20, conceded that he associates with gangsters. Mr. Reid, who has tattoos and wears dreadlocks and the obligatory sports shirts and baggy jeans, said gangsters are, after all, his neighbors, and it’s better to be their friend than their enemy.

Sheriff’s records for Charlotte-Mecklenburg County show that Mr. Reid has been arrested several times since 2004 for misdemeanors including driving without a license, trespassing and marijuana possession. Despite his run-ins with the law, Mr. Reid said he had never been in a gang and complained that the police had sometimes harassed him without a good reason.

“A police officer stopped in front of my house and told me to come to his car,” he told me. “I said, no. They got out and ran me down. They did the usual face-in-the-dirt thing.”

Maj. Eddie Levins of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said that officers are allocated to different areas based on the number of service calls they receive, so high-crime areas are likely to get more police attention.

“Where there are more police, expect more police action,” Major Levins said. “Some people think ‘I can just hang out with this gang member as long as I don’t do any crime.’ Well, expect to be talked to. We can’t ignore them. In fact, we kind of want to figure out the relationship between all these gang members and their associates.”

Major Levins said that his fellow officers aren’t perfect and that he was aware of occasional complaints of harassment, but he said that most residents would like to see more police officers on the streets, not fewer.

Even Cairo Guest, a 26-year-old who complained he was handcuffed in his backyard, acknowledged that gang members in his neighborhood were “out of control.”

“There are a lot of guys out here doing stuff they shouldn’t have been doing,” Mr. Guest said.

Still, some civil rights advocates complain that the definition of a gang member is vague. Gang researchers find that most active members usually cycle out of their gangs within about a year. Even active participants might only be marginal members, drifting in and out of gangs, said Kevin Pranis, a co-author of “Gang Wars,” a recent report on antigang tactics written by the Justice Police Institute, a nonprofit research group.

Harsh penalties could actually reinforce gang membership by locking peripheral gangsters in jail with more hardened criminals, he said.

Suburban Salisbury, population 30,000, is about as far from the traditional ganglands of Los Angeles, Chicago or even Durham as you can get. But it has had an outsize voice in pushing for tougher anti-gang measures since a 13-year-old black girl was inadvertently killed there in a gang shootout after a dance party in March.

I arrived in Salisbury at midnight, figuring that gang members would be more visible after dark, and found a local hangout with the help of a cabdriver.

Striking up a conversation with young gang members in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar town is always a tricky proposition, but the one advantage I figured I had was that I am African-American. Brown skin can be a kind of camouflage in my profession, especially if you do a lot of reporting in minority neighborhoods, as I do. Blending in visually sometimes helps me observe without being observed.

But even when my appearance has been helpful, the benefits rarely survive the first words out of my mouth, which usually signal — by accent or content — that I’m not from around wherever I am.

“What’s The New York Times doing down here?” asked an incredulous black man. He and about a dozen other men were standing in front of a clapboard house in Salisbury. I observed several drug sales there within minutes of arriving.

“Man, you a cop,” said another. “Hey, this guy’s a cop!”

“You’ve got me wrong,” I said trying to sound casual as the men looked at me warily. I started to pull my press identification out of my wallet. “I’m a reporter. I’m just trying to talk to you about your neighborhood.”

In the distance I heard neighborhood lookouts calling: “Five-O! Five-O!” — a universal code in American ghettos for the approaching police. I thought they were talking about me, but thought again as three police cars skidded to a stop in front of us.

A tall white police officer got out of his car and ordered me toward him. Two other police officers, a white woman and a black man, stood outside of their cars nearby. I complied. Without so much as a question, the officer shoved my face down on the sheet metal and cuffed me so tightly that my fingertips tingled.

“They’re on too tight!” I protested.

“They’re not meant for comfort,” he replied.

While it is true that I, like many of today’s gang members, shave my head bald, in my case it’s less about urban style and more about letting nature take its course. Apart from my complexion, the only thing I had in common with the young men watching me smooch the hood of the black-and-white was that they too had been in that position — some of them, they would tell me later, with just as little provocation.

But here again I failed to live up to the “street cred” these forceful police officers had granted me. As the female officer delved into my back pocket for my wallet she found no cash from illicit corner sales, in fact no cash at all, though she did find evidence of my New York crew — my corporate identification card.

After a quick check for outstanding warrants, the handcuffs were unlocked and my wallet returned without apology or explanation beyond their implication that my approaching young black men on a public sidewalk was somehow flouting the law.

“This is a dangerous area,” the officer told me. “You can’t just stand out here. We have ordinances.”

“This is America,” I said angrily, in that moment supremely unconcerned about whether this was standard police procedure or a useful law enforcement tool or whatever anybody else wanted to call it. “I have a right to talk to anyone I like, wherever I like.”

The female officer trumped my naïve soliloquy, though: “Sir, this is the South. We have different laws down here.”

I tried to appeal to the African-American officer out of some sense of solidarity.

“This is bad area,” he told me. “We have to protect ourselves out here.”

As the police drove away, I turned again to my would-be interview subjects. Surely now they believed I was a reporter.

I found their skepticism had only deepened.

“Man, you know what would have happened to one of us if we talked to them that way?” said one disbelieving man as he walked away from me and my blank notebook. “We’d be in jail right now.”

By ORLANDO PATTERSON
Published: September 30, 2007

Cambridge, Mass.

THE miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. — where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder — and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.

What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.

How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?

Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.

But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.

Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer.

•

In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a “bitch” and a “ho” by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was “not as much … I’m sorry to say” for a black man to do so.

•

Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.

•

O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation’s recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia.

These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor. Isiah Thomas’s outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.

What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers — some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers — is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.

The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.

Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist.

Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”

by Army National Guard Spc. Eleonai “Eli” Israel

Two months ago, I took a stand that changed my life forever. As a Soldier, a JVB Protective Service Agent, and a Sniper with the Army who had been in Iraq for a year (running over 250 combat missions), I refused to continue to be a part of the occupation. I regret nothing. This is my story. Currently, as I write this I am sitting in Kuwait, on “stand-by” to return to the States sometime hopefully this week. After getting out of the brig last week, I’m now scheduled to be discharged from the Army within the month. I’m looking forward to joining forces with anti-Iraq-War movements, such as Courage to Resist and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

What led me to this place in my life?
Joining up, the first time

I joined the U.S. Marine Corps in the spring of 1999, the month of my 18th birthday.

I grew up in the custody of the state of Kentucky with little contact with my biological parents since I was 13. I had no family support system and ended up on the streets, doing what street kids do.

By 16, I had eased into hard drugs. I had not been to school since the first part of 9th grade, and I was short on about everything but street smarts, an untapped sense of ambition, and a tough guy attitude.

When I walked into the recruiting station I learned that in order to join the Corps, I would need either a high school diploma or a GED with a waiver-unless I also had certain college credits. When I told them that I was 16 and had only completed 8th grade, they quickly dismissed me, not expecting to see me again.

They were wrong.

Not only did I earn my GED, I also did a semester at the local college. A year and a half later the month I turned 18, March 1999, I walked back into the same recruiting station, spoke to the same recruiter, showed him my GED and my college transcripts and felt my first real sense of pride.

Thirteen weeks after arriving at Parris Island, I was changed forever. I graduated as the leader of a platoon squad with a meritorious promotion, and was now well on my way to a shining career as a Marine.

Then came September 11, 2001.
Re-enlisting for my country

Like many after September 11th I wanted to serve, again. I felt I owed something more to my country after my years of training. I trusted my president and my leadership to tell me the truth. I also trusted my own integrity. I knew that I would never willingly do anything that I knew to be immoral or wrong.

I re-enlisted in 2004-this time in the Army National Guard.

At the time I believed that those serving in the ‘global war on terror’ were doing so because they believed in what they were doing-not because they were under compulsion by a contract or retained by stop-loss. After having seen the situation on the ground, I now believe I was wrong. In 2006, I shipped out to Iraq.

In Iraq I was as a JVB Agent-the JVB (Joint Visitors Bureau) served as the protective service for “three star generals and above” and their “civilian equivalents”. This included the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, their equivalents in a number of our “allied nations”, and others. I trained for my job as part of this “special unit” prior to deployment, and I spent the majority of my tour in the company of the most powerful people connected to the “global war on terror”.

Even as a JVB agent, my primary job was still infantry. On days when we didn’t have any JVB missions, we would be called on for “search and cordon” operations and other infantry assignments. So, although I worked at the JVB, I was still on the roster of a sniper platoon tasked with various missions “outside the wire”-either as “sniper overwatch” or house raids.

I reasoned that my actions during these missions were justified in the name of “self-defense.” However, I came to realize my perception was wrong. I was in a country that I had no right to be in, violating the lives of people, and doing so without regard to the same standards of dignity and respect that we as Americans hold our own homes and our own lives to.
Destroying lives

I have taken and/or destroyed the lives of people who were defending their families from being the “collateral damage” of the day. Iraqi boys are joining groups like “Al Qaeda” for the same reason street kids in the U.S. join the “Cribs” and the “Bloods”. It’s about self protection, a sense of dignity, and making a stand.

The young man whose father and cousin we “accidentally” killed, and whose mother and siblings cry every time the tank rolls through the neighborhood, doesn’t care who Osama Bin Laden is. The “militants” we attacked were usually no different than an armed neighborhood watch group who didn’t trust their government. We didn’t trust the government either, and we put them in power!

Our own sacrifices, as tragic as they are (and they are tragic), are dwarfed in comparison to the carnage that has been brought on the Iraqi people.

“Success” in Iraq is not a matter of the number of coalition deaths “declining”. Success would be an end of the catastrophe we have inflicted on a entire society, and restoration of dignity and sovereignty.

Iraqis continue to die at a rate 10 to 20 times that of the coalition forces. In Baghdad alone, five years and $950 billion later, the population suffers power and water outages that last for weeks at a time. Meanwhile, we often impose martial law so that no one can leave. The day I saw myself in the hateful eyes of a young Iraqi boy who stared at me was the day I realized I could no longer justify my role in the occupation.

I envy the soldier who is able to see the injustice of this war from afar, and has the courage and conviction to take the stand against it. There will be those who criticize soldiers for being willing to weigh moral convictions against political ambition. What matters is making the stand. Whether you chose not to join the military in the first place, or you realized after joining that it fell short of the requisite levels of integrity, the moment you realize the truth is the moment to take a stand. My moment came with only three weeks of combat missions remaining during my one year in Iraq. Moral conviction has no timing.
Taking a stand

I informed my chain of command of my beliefs. I could tell from that first conversation that things were not going to go well. I told them that I believed our presence in Iraq was unlawful. I explained that I no longer believed in a policy of war and that I would file as a conscientious objector. Simply put, I could no longer in good conscience participate in a combat role against the Iraqi people.

Seconds after the words left my mouth, my life changed. Inside I had more peace than I had felt in over a year. I knew immediately that I had done the right thing. However, I was aggressively disarmed, confined, and shut off from contacting anyone, including family or an attorney.

I was illegally confined to a cot in an operations room, placed under 24 hour guard, and escorted to the bathroom before I was formally charged with refusal to follow an order two weeks later. I remained confined until I pled guilty (with little choice) less than a week after that. I was immediately sent to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait to serve 30 days in a military prison. I was just released from the brig the other day and I’m now in the process of being “kicked out” with an “Other Than Honorable” discharge. I regret nothing.

After I told my command my beliefs, and once they realized they couldn’t intimidate me and that I was serious, they decided that it was going to become an “information war”.

I had many anti-war friends from MySpace and other online networks that got wind that I was being mistreated and it circulated around the world, literally overnight. Before I knew it, I was dragged into the First Sergeant’s office and they began yelling and screaming about how their names were “all over the internet”. They didn’t try to deny what was being said about them-that I was being treated unfairly and that they refused to acknowledge my claim as a conscientious objector-they were simply mad about the exposure.
Military strikes back

The next day I was told that I had been “flagged” as an OPSEC (operational security) “concern”. No reason given. They were hostile and consumed with the task of making “an example” out of me, and they were looking for ways to ruin my reputation and credibility.

They spent days typing up pages of fabricated “counseling statements” to retroactively discredit my military record. The fact that there were no prior record of statements made these accusations obviously fake, and they knew it. They “needed more”.

They demanded repeatedly all of my Internet user names and pass words-MySpace, personal email, everything. All under the threat that “more charges” would be brought against me if I refused.

They wanted to read my emails, all my blogs, everything, in an attempt to find something. Anything they could use to make it look like I had been giving out classified information. They wanted to charge me and ruin my credibility as much as possible, and they desperately needed to be able to justify my illegal confinement.

Two weeks later, when they finally realized that they were not going to be able to charge me with “divulging intel”, they finally charged me with a series of “not following orders”. Not only did these include my refusal to continue combat missions, but ridiculous stuff like “not standing at parade rest” and “being late for work”. You get the picture.

My command eventually offered to “chapter me out” if I would immediately plead guilty to everything and accept a summary court martial. My options were clear. I could play ball, spend 30 days in a brig, and get my life back. Or I could let them put me back on a fully confined restriction for the next two months, while they took every opportunity to make an example of me-to show everyone in the battalion, “this is what happens if you oppose the war.”

I’ll let them think they won, for now.
Freedom

The truth will come out, and there is nothing they can do to hide it. The occupation is a disaster. I’m convinced that every day it continues that it makes America, and the Iraqis less safe.

Objecting to the war and standing up to the military was without question, one of the best decisions I have ever made. I made a stand that was the right one, and I have my freedom back as a bonus. Maybe ten years from now those of us resisting from within the military today will be seen as some of the first few to speak the truth and to follow up with action. Even now I have many to remind me that I’m not alone in my thinking, even a majority of Americans who know that all the pieces of this conflict simply don’t add up.

Seek the truth. Make the stand.

Courage to Resist
Iraq Veterans Against the War

Originally published on Sunday, August 12, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

“The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically . . . The complete education gives one not only power of concentration but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the Book of Genesis 25:29, Jacob was cooking a stew when Esau, his elder brother, came in from hunting, famished. Esau asked for some of the stew his younger brother was preparing. Jacob, the younger brother, being a shrewd boy, demanded Esau’s birthright in exchange for something to eat. Esau implied that his birthright couldn’t satisfy his hunger pangs. Still, Jacob insisted that Esau sell his birthright for some food. Esau did, and Jacob gave his elder brother some bread and lentil stew. Esau ate, drank, got up and went his way. Esau cared little for his birthright.

Today it can be argued that the masses have chosen to forfeit their inheritance for the crumbs of leisure. Their inheritance is the earth. Look what has happened to it. Go to Blockbuster and rent “An Inconvenient Truth.” The crumbs of leisure are the illusions of prosperity… when image is worth more than content.

By proxy people have given others the power to make decisions for them. This can be seen in the US electoral process and even the monetary systems of the world. Through the normalization of this process, the few have acquired power over many… to the tune where the decisions of the few cost the lives of millions. Polls may speak to a majority being against the war in Iraq, but yet we are still there.

We have become sheep led to the slaughter because we will not think for ourselves. We will not act on our common sense. Perhaps there is no more common sense. It could very well be argued that the masses have forgotten how to think.

There is no greater enemy to the status quo than the person who has the ability to think and act critically.

We are all responsible for defining the reality we live in. The quality of that reality depends on our investment in it. Things will not get better by waiting, by letting someone else decide or come up with the answer. This is your life - no one else’s to live. Do not be someone else’s game piece on their monopoly board. Join the revolution. Fight for your life before there’s nothing left to live for but a crack head’s dream.

Check these out:
A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking.

Or click here for resources on critical and creative thinking.

And here for over 100 free online tutorials on critical thinking, logic, scientific reasoning, creativity, and other aspects of thinking skills.

It seems that men are no longer entitled to their own opinions let alone the freedom of speech to express those opinions. After his comments on Late Night with Jay Leno, Hughley faced a terrific backlash from… people. I pause because so often are Blacks presented in monolithic terms that it gets quite sickening to hear the opinions of this group or that group spread over the entire population of Blacks in America like sticky peanut butter.

Because he thought the Rutgers team was ugly, he couldn’t say it? Was it irresponsible for him to share his opinion. His comments certainly instigated the sensitivities of his host. Look at Leno’s reaction. Black is still taboo - the elephant in the middle of the room. Thank God for people like D.L. who aren’t afraid to present their opinion even if it isn’t shared by everyone else. Who knows, he may have even been the voice of the “silent majority.”

Go here for reporting on the protest against Hughley’s remarks. Here is the video interview conducted prior to his performance in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Originally posted November 11, 2006 @ 12:32

So-called slaves were forbidden to read and write. The intention was to keep them ignorant - to restrict access to information that would deliver them from their condition (ignorance).

So-called masters could only maintain their position by keeping so-called slaves in their place. It was important to enculturate so-called slaves into believing that their condition was perpetual, natural and legal. To get so-called slaves to believe this, it was necessary to decieve them. Those who awoke from their deception were brutalized and terrorized back into submission if not killed outright.

Today it is often suggested that so-called blacks have traded in physical shackles for mental shackles - that slavery continues today in the form of mental slavery. Was there ever any other kind of slavery?

When Moses/Harriet Tubman ushered so-called slaves to freedom, some wanted to turn back - wanted to return to their so-called masters. What would possess a person to entertain such a decision?

What would make a slave content with being a slave?

Should a slave content with being a slave be freed?

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

When the emancipation Proclamation was signed, I am sure folks packed up whatever they could haul and set out to the magical land of Oz (the North). How far did they get before they realized they didn’t know where they were going? How many decided to go back to their so-called masters? How many continued on?

For those who continued on - was life any better for them?

Why would a slave be content with being a slave? Could it be because they wouldn’t have to work so hard, wouldn’t have to think, be responsible or look in the mirror?

Could it be because their were so many others willing to return to slavery that a sense of normalcy was created where their environment and company supported their decision?

Do slaves have a choice?

The processes necessary to create a mental and social environment where it is acceptable to be a slave in effect creates a new paradigm of existence - one wherein “living” is no longer important so long as one can be sedated…

Imbibing on the barbituates of bling bling, slaves sacrifice their future - their children - endorsing a system of existence that lowers the standards of integrity, self-respect, responsibility and spiritual maturation.

Truth seekers and truth tellers are castigated. Slaves propogate their own slavery. The cycle feeds itself until - generations later - what is left of a people is only a former shell of itself - the living dead.

Rise Lazarus!

Take up your bed and walk.