Study: Blacks Four Times More Likely to Be Hate Crime Victims in LA County When Compared to Their Representation of That County's Population

For the full report, click on the title of this post.

Edward Dunbar Ed.D.
University of California at Los Angeles
and Pacific Psychological Associates

Findings from an ongoing study of hate crime occurrence in Los Angeles County are presented for the years of 1994 and 1995. Content analyses of data from the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission included 1459 hate crimes cases; this encompassed events reported to both law enforcement and community-based organizations. The behavioral analyses of the crime events were considered in terms of victim impact, as was determined via impairment ratings provided by Victim-Witness Assistance staff (a Los Angeles County agency). Key findings are highlighted below.

Severity of Impact

Findings indicated that base rates of victimization varied significantly by race/ethnic groups; most notably African Americans were four times more likely to be the victims of hate crime activity when compared to their demographic representation in Los Angeles County.

When comparing hate crimes motivated by race/ethnic, and religion to sexual orientation, hate crimes against gay men and lesbians were more severe (as measured by the behavioral characteristics of the event, e.g., more perpetrators, more serious attack).

When examining the hate crimes based on race and ethnicity, African Americans were the targets of more severe hate events, (e.g., physical assaults).

The majority of hate crimes were committed in public locations. Those which occurred in the victim's neighborhood were typically more violent.

Law Enforcement Reportage:

The behavioral analysis of the hate crime revealed that more severe hate acts (e.g. aggravated assault, sexual assault) were predictive of the victim not reporting the crime to law enforcement agencies.
It was found that in sexual orientation hate crimes, that significant differences for both gender and membership in a visible race/ethnic minority group were related to lower law enforcement reportage rates.
County Victim Witness Assistance staff also reported that few if any hate crime victims utilize state-funded medical and mental health services subsequent to crime victimization.
Perpetrator Behavior and Characteristics:

Less than five percent of the hate crime perpetrators were identified as members of organized hate gangs or associations.

Psychologists call for assault on hate crimes - From APA

While the story may have taken a new level of visibility recently in an article featured in this blog this report reveals that the mental health community has considered this matter as far back as 1998. The full report can be see with a click on the title of this post. For what has been done since then, keep your eye on this blog.

By Jeannine Mjoseth
APA Monitor staff

Hate crimes constitute a unique class of violence against a person's identity, demanding distinctive psychological, legislative and policy responses, psychologists said at a briefing co-sponsored by APA and the Society for the Psychology Study of Social Issues. The briefing, timed to correspond with a larger White House Conference on Hate Crimes, was attended by representatives from 24 House and Senate offices, including Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) who recounted his experience as a hate crimes survivor during the civil rights movement.

Four distinct motives underlie hate crimes based on sexual orientation, according to research by Karen Franklin, PhD, forensic psychology fellow at Washington University’s Washington Institute for Mental Illness Research and Training. Such hate crimes are motivated by self-defense, where perpetrators interpret the victim’s actions as a sexual proposition; ideology, where perpetrators view themselves as enforcers of social norms that deem homosexuality unacceptable; thrill-seeking, where perpetrators commit assaults to alleviate boredom; and peer dynamics, where perpetrators aim to prove their toughness and heterosexuality to friends, she found.

When addressing ethnically based hate crimes, the highest rate of crime occurs when nonwhites rapidly move into previously all-white enclaves, said Donald Green, PhD, professor of political science and director of the Institute for Social Policy Studies at Yale University. “It’s not just how white the neighborhood is but also how rapid the changes are,” he said. Green, who helped train the New Haven, Conn., police department how to deal with hate crimes, says such crimes probably will increase in the suburbs in the next few years as more minorities move there, and it is important for the police to be prepared and respond appropriately.

Victims of hate crimes undergo higher levels of psychological distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anger, than victims of other crimes, said Greg Herek, PhD, research psychologist at the University of California, Davis, who spoke on the impact of anti-gay/lesbian victimization at the briefing. Herek, whose research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, attended the White House conference as APA’s representative.

Hate crimes can cause victims to view the world and people in it as malevolent and experience a reduced sense of control, Herek said. According to his research, hate crime victims needed as much as five years to overcome the emotional distress of the incident compared with victims of nonbias crimes, who experienced a drop in crime-related psychological problems within two years of the crime.

“We need special policies for hate crimes because they have a special impact on the victim and the victim’s community,” Herek added.

Hate crimes occur in the context of ongoing harassment and are less likely than other crimes to be reported to the police, he said. For example, one-third of hate crime victims reported the incident to law enforcement officials, compared with 57 percent of the victims of random crimes, Herek found.

Lower levels of hate crime reporting is due, in part, to victims’ fear of future contact with the perpetrators, said Edward Dunbar, EdD, clinical psychologist, from the University of California, Los Angeles, who studied hate crimes in Los Angeles County. In the most serious cases of hate crimes, like sexual assault and assault with a deadly weapon, people are much less likely to go to law enforcement agencies, he said.

Legislation and APA action

At the White House conference, President Clinton commended a new federal bill (S. 1529) that would expand federal prosecutors’ ability to prosecute racially motivated violence by removing unnecessary jurisdictional requirements and make hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender or disability a federal crime. Both APA and SPSSI have been actively involved in coordinating the conference and promoting the bill.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), builds upon the 1994 federal Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act, which requires stiffer sentences for hate crimes in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim or the property belonging to someone based on actual or perceived race, religion or ethnicity.

To date, 38 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that intensify sentencing penalties if the defendant chooses a victim based on his/her perception of the victim’s race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender.

In 1991 APA approved a hate-crimes resolution urging Congress to recognize and address hate crimes as an important policy issue. APA’s resolution opposes harassment, violence and crime based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender or physical condition. APA also encourages researchers, clinicians, teachers and policy-makers to help reduce and eliminate hate crimes and to alleviate the effects on victims. APA has increased its role in promoting federal initiatives against hate crimes through the efforts of the SPSSI and its public policy office.

For more information on what APA is doing to combat hate crimes, contact Jeanine Cogan of APA’s Public Policy Office at (202) 336-6153.

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The Ads are out already. Peter Jackson for Best Director, Jack Black for Best Supporting Actor, Naomi Watts for Best Actress, and so on..

More Evidence Racism is A Sickness: "Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness" - Wash Post

Friday night at The Balboa Cafe in San Francisco, I ran into a woman who I have seen many times in public. She said "I see you all the time...I'm giving you my contact information, but just remember I prefer white men."

OK.

For every person, mostly white, I've encountered who was afraid to have more black friends, or made racially insenstive comments, or openly discriminated on the basis of race in the formation of friendships, I've always wondered what was going on mentally to cause this.

Or think about the SF 49ers video with the overtly racist content; the producers of that could be found to hold a form of mental illness. That goes for the San Francisco Police Video and the Stanford "Big Game" Video, too.

Well, it seems the psychiatric community has pondered this too. It could lead to a whole new classification of mental illness. I think it's a watershed development in that perhaps now people can indeed get help for being racist and stop being that way. Indeed, as our society becomes more diverse -- where people of all races are holding all kinds of jobs and intermarriage is more and more the norm, it's about time we as a nation and a world put the breaks on racist thought.

Because as our industrialized world becomes more diverse, those who have racist thought patterns will be the most uncomfortable in it, and that discomfort can be expressed in ways that harm others, from denial of employment to the most extreme example, murder.

Think about how much of our economic development has been hampered by racist thinking: whole communities suffering from under-development because some banks, ran by people with racists views, refused to invest in them. Consider that the entire history of the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazi groups (like the one marching in Toledo, Ohio) can now be reevaluated as that of a group of mentally ill people.

If there's some resistance to this within the psychiatric community -- as is the case with Dr. Paul Fink -- it may be because they don't want their own racist thoughts to be called into question.

Look, anytime a person avoids sitting next to you on a train because you're black and male -- even when you're wearing a suit -- that's certainly a mental problem on the part of the person.

I once tried this as an experiment on BART's (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Concord-Bay Point line in 1995. I got on at Civic Center during rush hour, and sat down.

The seat next to me remained empty for the next four stops before the train reached the point where it goes under the waters of the SF Bay. This, even as the train was getting crowded with workers, mostly white. I got off at Embarcadero, the last SF stop, back tracked (got on a train going back to Civic Center, and did the same thing six times. Only once was my seat occupied, and that was by a white man.

I've noticed that as blacks have become more part of the work force in downtown SF, that problem has occurred less and less -- but it still does happen.

This has terrible impacts on the self-esteem of the people who have to deal with the behavior. In my case, my defense mechanism has been to believe that I was far more intelligent than the people who acted that way, and therefore didn't need their company. But to be ostracized for being black -- for something you not only have no control over, but like being -- is purely mentally unhealthy.


Why?

Think about the extra and unncessary energy racist people spend just to avoid people who are different. Think about the women in modern society who remain unmmarried because they can't find a person within a certain racial group, when the man best for them may not be "the right color."

A woman friend, white, once told me about the "Angry White Woman" problem in San Francisco, because if they met someone who was white and male, that person may be Gay, or married, and then the woman didn't want to really date anyone who was Black or Asian. So, she makes herself unhappy and almost suicidally depressed.

All of this because of a racial / ethnic fear.

Now, you're going to tell me that's mentally healthy? Ha!

Here's the story:

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A01

The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.

These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.



Darrel A. Regier of the American Psychiatric Association favors research but says it is not clear that establishing a diagnosis would be useful. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
"He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.

If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish "ordinary prejudice" from pathological bias.

Several experts said they are unsure whether bias can be pathological. Solomon, for instance, is uncomfortable with the idea. But they agreed that psychiatry has been inattentive to the effects of prejudice on mental health and illness.

"Has anyone done a word search for 'racism' in DSM-IV? It doesn't exist," said Carl C. Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, referring to psychiatry's manual of mental disorders. "Has anyone asked, 'If you have paranoia, do you project your hostility toward other groups?' The answer is 'Hell, no!' "

The proposed guidelines that California psychologist Edward Dunbar created describe people whose daily functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups. The guidelines have not been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); advocates are mostly seeking support for systematic study.

Darrel A. Regier, director of research at the psychiatric association, said he supports research into whether pathological bias is a disorder. But he said the jury is out on whether a diagnostic classification would add anything useful, given that clinicians already know about disorders in which people rigidly hold onto false beliefs.

"If you are going to put racism into the next edition of DSM, you would have enormous criticism," Regier said. Critics would ask, " 'Are you pathologizing all of life?' You better be prepared to defend that classification."

"I think it's absurd," said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and the author of "PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine." Satel said the diagnosis would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. "You could use it as a defense."

Psychiatrists who advocate a new diagnosis, such as Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital, said social norms play a central role in how all psychiatric disorders are defined. Pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, Belkin noted, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted.

"Psychiatrists who are uneasy with including something like this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual need to get used to the fact that the whole manual reflects social context," said Belkin, who is planning to launch a study on pathological bias among patients at his hospital. "That is true of depression on down. Pathological bias is no more or less scientific than major depression."

Advocates for the new diagnosis also say most candidates for treatment, such as the man Solomon treated, are not criminals or violent offenders. Rather, they are like the young woman in Los Angeles who thought Jews were diseased and would infect her -- she carried out compulsive cleansing rituals and hit her head to drive away her obsessions. She realized she needed help but was afraid her therapist would be Jewish, said Dunbar, a Los Angeles psychologist who has amassed several case studies and treated several dozen patients for racial paranoia and other forms of what he considers pathological bias.

Another patient was a waiter so hostile to black people that he flung plates on the table when he served black patrons and got fired from multiple jobs.

A third patient was a Vietnam War veteran who was so fearful of Asians that he avoided social situations where he might meet them, Dunbar said.

"When I see someone who won't see a physician because they're Jewish, or who can't sit in a restaurant because there are Asians, or feels threatened by homosexuals in the workplace, the party line in mental health says, 'This is not our problem,' " the psychologist said. "If it's not our problem, whose problem is it?"

Opponents say making pathological bias a diagnosis raises the specter of social engineering -- brainwashing individuals who do not fit society's norms. But Dunbar and others say patients with disabling levels of prejudice should be treated for the same reason as are patients with any other disorder: They would feel, live and function better.

"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.

"When they reach that stage, they are very impaired," he said. "They can't work and function; they can't hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication."

Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.

"We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders," said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices."

* * *

Amid a profusion of recent studies into the nature of prejudice, researchers have found that biases are very common. Almost everyone harbors what might be termed "ordinary prejudice," the research indicates.

Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, a psychologist at Harvard, developed tests for such biases. By measuring the speed with which people make mental associations, the psychologists found that biases affect even those who actively resist them.

"When things are more strongly paired in our minds, we can respond to them more quickly," Banaji said. "Large numbers of Americans cannot as swiftly make the association between 'black' and 'good' as they can between 'white' and 'good.' "

Similarly, psychologist Margo Monteith at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that people can have prejudices against groups they know nothing about. She administered a test in which volunteers, under time pressure, had to associate a series of words with either "America" or a fictitious country she called "Marisat."

Volunteers more easily associated Marisat with such words as "poison," "death" and "evil," while associating America with "sunrise," "paradise" and "loyal."

"A large part of our self-esteem derives from our group membership," Monteith said. "To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It's likely a built-in mechanism."

If biases are so common, many doctors ask, can racism really be a mental illness?

"I don't think racism is a mental illness, and that's because 100 percent of people are racist," said Paul J. Fink, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. "If you have a diagnostic category that fits 100 percent of people, it's not a diagnostic category."

But Poussaint said there is a difference between ordinary prejudice and pathological bias -- the same distinction that psychiatrists make between sadness and depression. All people experience sadness, anxiety and fear, but extreme, disabling forms of these emotions are called disorders.

While people with ordinary prejudice try very hard to conceal their biases, Solomon said, her homophobic patient had no embarrassment about his attitude toward gays. Dunbar said people with pathological prejudice often lack filtering capabilities. As a result, he said, they face problems at work and home.

"Everyone is inculcated with stereotypes and biases with cultural issues, but some individuals not only hold beliefs that are very rigid, but they are part of a psychological problem," Dunbar said.

The psychologist said he has helped such patients with talk therapy, which encourages patients to question the basis for their beliefs, and by steering them toward medications such as antipsychotics.

The woman with the bias against Jews did not overcome her prejudice, Dunbar said, but she learned to control her fear response in social settings. The patient with hostility against African Americans realized his beliefs were "stupid."

Solomon discovered she was most effective dealing with the homophobic man when she was nonjudgmental. When he claimed there were more gays and lesbians than ever before, she presented him with data showing there was no such shift.

At those times, she reported in a case study, the patient would say, "I know, I know." He would recognize that he was not being logical, but then get angry and return to the same patterns of obsession. Solomon did not identify the man because of patient confidentiality.

Standing in the central yard of the maximum-security California State Prison with inmates exercising around her, Chaiken explained how she distinguished pathological bias from ordinary prejudice: A prisoner who belonged to a gang with racist views might express such views to fit in with his gang, but if he continues "yelling racial slurs, assaulting others when it's clear there is no benefit" after he leaves the gang, the behavior was no longer "adaptive."

Prison officials declined to identify inmates who had been treated, or make them available for interviews.

Chicago psychiatrist Bell said he has not made up his mind on whether bias can be pathological. But in proposing a research agenda for the next edition of psychiatry's DSM of mental disorders, Bell and researchers from the Mayo Clinic, McGill University, the University of California at Los Angeles and other academic institutions wrote: "Clinical experience informs us that racism may be a manifestation of a delusional process, a consequence of anxiety, or a feature of an individual's personality dynamics."

The psychiatrists said their profession has neglected the issue: "One solution would be to encourage research that seeks to delineate the validity and reliability of racism as a symptom and to investigate the possibility of including it in some diagnostic criteria sets in future editions of DSM."

Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, Dies

(12-10) 13:16 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.

McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.

Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.

The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.

"He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said.

When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view."

McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier.

Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.

Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets.

Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since.

"It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview.

"There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway — the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation.

"But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others."

Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on."

In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.

In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said that money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."

London's Double-Decker "Routemaster" Buses Retired - I Never Got to Ride One!

After 53 years of services, the famous London "Routemaster" Buses are being retired. I'm unhappy, because I never got to ride one at all! Of course, I've not yet visited London.

Richard Pryor Passes at 65 - A True American Icon

I just walked in the house, turned on my TV set, and learned that Richard Pryor passed away at 65. CNN's interviewing his wife Jennifer.

Pryor was a seemingly permanent part of the Zeitgeist, and was a big part of my life growing up in Chicago and then here in Oakland. It kind of feels like a part of my life has been ripped away. He was battling MS.
Pryor used his humor to reflect on race relations at the time. But, and as Martin Scorsese said, it was a savage -- and I would add, honest -- humor. It made people think and talk about what was going on, particularly in the 70s.

As Spike Lee just said, "it comes at you quick: Ossie Davis, Richard Pryor-- we're losing giants."

First the SF 49ers "Videogate", then The Racist Stanford Video Before "The Big Game" , Now The SF Police Video - All This Year. What's Going On?

At the start of 2005 the San Francisco Bay area was rocked by the revelation that the San Francisco 49ers created a racist and sexist "traning tape." Then, just before this year's Cal / Stanford "Big Game" a group of Stanford Students made a video said to be, again, racist and sexist. Now, the San Francisco Police Department's dark underbelly of racial intolerance is being exposed in the release of information on another video that is, yep, called racist and sexist.

Wait. This is the SF Bay Area, right? What's going on?

Well, my theory is that the kind of subtile racism Bay Area African Americans have always complained about has found its way into these videos and are quickly being exposed to the public in this Internet Age.

The fact that the general public was made aware of all three of theese videos just this year is no spritual accident, in my view. The arrows of policy and institutional reform point to the need to one-and-for-all solve this problem of racial intoleerance in our local institutions.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom should convene a Task Force on the Elimination of Racism and Sexism. I think it will be not only his most provacative action, but the most eye-opening. Mayor Newsom wiill find people and organizations running for cover or moving to prove that they are models of diversity and understanding. The effort would cut to the very core of San Francisco's culture and force the city -- and the Bay Area -- to take a hard look at itself.

Some will say that the videos "were all in fun" but that's the point: "fun" should not be obtained by hurting someone's feelings because they are minority, or female, or any person who -- until the last 30 years of economic advancement -- were not part of the socioeconomic mainstream. Yet, it seems to be some kind of sport in some circles to do this.

It's not right. Humor does not have to come from physical differences.

The San Francisco Bay Area should know better.

Oakland Creates Another White Elephant - The Case of The Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center

You know, with so many Oakland-related posts, I may create another blog on Oakland-related matters. I just don't know what to call it. Until then..

The Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center is an enormous building that sits on the western shore of Lake Merritt, and opposite Laney College. It has an 8,000 seat arena, a 2,000 seat auditorium, and with all of that, the City of Oakland can no longer afford to keep in open. The Oakland Tribune reports the Oakland City Council made that decision Tuesday night.

11th-hour plan can't save center
Oakland council decides the city doesn't have the money to keep Kaiser open after Jan. 1
By Heather MacDonald, STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND — A last-minute proposal from a Chicago-based consulting firm and the Peralta Community College District will not save the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center from being mothballed.
The Oakland City Council decided unanimously Tuesday night that the city simply does not have the money to keep the historic building's doors open after Jan. 1.

"We tried," said council President Ignacio De La Fuente (Glenview-Fruitvale), adding it would take a "miracle" to keep the center open.

Although International Facilities Group promised to operate the center with a subsidy of only $175,000, City Administrator Deborah Edgerly recommended the council reject the deal because the city would be on the hook if the center's performance failed to meet expectations.

IFG planned to rebrand the Kaiser center and make 10th Street Oakland's "Avenue of the Arts," tying together the Oakland Museum of California and Laney College.

The community college district would have used the center, which includes an 8,000-seat arena, the 2,000-seat Calvin Simmons Theater and two smaller ballrooms, as a performing arts center to showcase its theater and dance programs.

But the city would have had to give IFG, which was founded by the son of Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the center's $1 million budget up front, said Anne Campbell Washington, assistant to the city administrator.

"That puts all of the burden on the city," said Councilmember Pat Kernighan (Grand Lake-Chinatown). "We shouldn't risk all of our money."

Joseph J. Briglia, IFG president of business development, said the company would continue to work on a viable plan to keep the Kaiser center open, saying it is a valuable resource.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The City's never had a marketing plan for the facility, and I know the Convention and Visitor's Bureau could have determined a way to bring it into its efforts.

New Orleans East Side "A Wasteland" According to M. Barnett at www.mgno.com

Post by: Michael Barnett at www.mgno.com:

I made it back to New Orleans on Thursday afternoon and here were my initial thoughts:

I started my 1996 Honda Civic EX's engine at 0100 EST. I rocketed up I-75 to I-10 and then headed west on 10 all the way in. At 0900 CST, I hit the Twin Single Span across the Lake. Moments later I realized that New Orleans will never be rebuilt in my lifetime.

New Orleans East cannot be described; it can only be seen. You must drive through it. What you see on television is nothing. Nothing. You have not seen devestation until you have driven through NOE. There is no life -- mammalian, avian -- nothing outside the plant kingdom (and whatever mold falls into). It is uninhabitable and must be bulldozed. This will take decades. Yes, the cleanup will take decades. In fact, it's likely that the cleanup will never be complete.

I fully expect New Orleans to be a mostly dead city until I am an old, old man, maybe in my late 60s or my 70s. My guess is that no place on Earth compares to the ghost town of New Orleans East. Maybe some cities in the former Yugoslavia were close during the recent clashes. Close. But there, people still lived. No one lives in New Orleans East.

It's been something like three months and most and perhaps even all of Carrollton Avenue still has no functioning street lights; neither does Earhart Expressway.

Unreal.


It has been a week now, and I've had a chance to drive all around the city.
All I can say is that this place is broken down. Crushed. Demolished.
It is a moral lapse of the first order for politicians to keep telling people to come back. I am going to take some flack for telling the truth, but since that's what this blog is for, that's what I'm going to do. New Orleans is a wasteland. Sure, there are a lot of contractors out there trying to clean up, but it's barely making a dent.

You have to see it in person to understand. There are MASSIVE dead areas. Areas of several square miles which will have to be completely torn down. Hell, they ARE STILL FINDING BODIES in some areas.

The idea that this city is going to try to do Mardi Gras boggles the mind.

Anyway, a close friend of mine is trying to do the Lord's work in another brutalized area along the Gulf Coast. You can read what he's got to say in the email at the bottom of this entry. If you can do anything to help, it will be greatly appreciated. There is a link to the school and my friend's email included. Please help if you can.

From: eli lucas
To: Michael Barnett

Michael,
As per our conversation last weekend, I'm writing regarding
St. Clare Elementary School of Waveland, Mississippi. St.
Clare's beach-front location on the Gulf was in the direct
path of Katrina's greatest destruction. The school was
totally devastated - washed from the surface of Earth;
albeit their recovery thus far is amazing.

While New Orleans evacuees complain from afar about the lack
of improvement in New Orleans, St. Clare Elementary is
returning to business. To date approximately 85% of their
student body returned to class. St. Clare is neither
waiting for the FEMA elf, nor any other governmental agency
to rebuild their paradise. Funded solely by private
donations, St. Clare's new home consists of nineteen white
tents surrounded by total devastation. The link to their
website is http://www.stclareelementary.org.

Continued progress at St. Clare is not without costs.
Although the limited amount of tuition revenue thus far
fails to meet salary expenses, St. Clare accepts everyone
regardless of their ability to provide tuition. I hope your
readers will consider assisting in this remarkable
renaissance in Waveland. Donation information is included on
their web site.

Thank you for your help in this matter.
Regards,
Eli

New Orleans Police Misused Federal Funds - From "The Dead Pelican"

Police Commissioner Kevin Riley shown
According to the Dead Pelican website, the controversial New Orleans Police department deliberately overstated the number of officers to be paid by the federal government, and then gave more money to "connected" officers.

Here's the account from their website:

FEDS ASKING TOUGH QUESTIONS OF NOPD: INDICTMENTS PREDICTED XXXX DECEMBER 03, 2005 5:27 PM
**EXCLUSIVE! MUST CREDIT THE DEAD PELICAN!**

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Feds are asking a number of very specific questions of the NOPD, sources tell The Dead Pelican. Among the questions that the Feds are asking, one stands out: "Where are all these officers that we were paying you for?"

As reported earlier, it is widely known that NOPD's real troop strength has never been more than approximately 1000 commissioned officers but the "official" number (that is, the number given out by the Superintendent's office) has always been 1500 to 1700.

But The Dead Pelican has learned that the actual numbers are quite different.

The Dead Pelican has learned that the NOPD has been taking Federal money supposedly earmarked for hiring and training officers, and using it for things like overtime for "connected" officers, rather than hiring new officers.

And, of course, there is the "phantom officer" situation, that is, "officers" who drew and cashed paychecks but cannot be found to exist.

So now there is a lingering question: where did the money go? "Something this widespread and blatant can't go on without the Superintendent's knowledge and implied consent," said a source.

Insiders say that indictments are inevitable...

Developing...
----------------------
by Chad E. Rogers
DECEMBER 03, 2005
(c)THE DEAD PELICAN
http://www.thedeadpelican.com for updates

Sometimes I Think People Reserve Their Worst Behavior For You When You're Black and Male

Tonight, I just went down to The Alley, a local bar and piano establishment I visit, to have a good, basic chicken dinner. I didn't feel like cooking, and had enough of pot roast, steaks, and pasta. I wanted chicken.

Jackie, the owner and bartender, had my place read for me to sit -- and the meal prepared -- when I arrived. Ok. I was late, but I got there. So, I sat down to eat and to my joy, the Warriors basketball game was on. So, I was content, but I had one call to make, and it was an important one, so I got my cell phone to take action.

While I'm on the phone, someone yells "What's your name" and just as I'm getting up to go outside to hear the recording better. I motion that I'm on the phone, and go out. When I returned, I sat down to eat the meal I ordered. The matter of what the other person wanted to know seemed a distant memory to me -- not important.

So, I ate. Then, after a while, the person who was yelling at me, who turned out to be an older African American woman, again yelled -- yelled, "Married or Single?" And repeated it. So, I slowly turned and said "I'm eating and watching the Warriors" with a wink of an eye. She said some other words I didn't bother to comprehend, because I just wanted to eat -- ya know? As this is going on, Jackie's going back and forth pouring patrons drinks.

Finally, the lady asks Jennifer, who's the waitress, to tap me on the shoulder -- "The Black Man. Him," she says. So, I turn, and she asks me "What country are you from?" Well I was now deep in the middle of watching "The Best Damn Sports Show" and waiting for the segment featuring my friend, Fox Sports Analyst Jay Glazer. So, I was a bit annoyed, but said nothing. My gut told me that responding would not help matters and I just wanted to be left alone. Besides, something appeared to be wrong with her -- maybe it was the alcohol.

So after a while, she was finally leaving -- I guess -- but then doubled back and forced herself into my attention because she "Had something to say to me." I wanted to be left alone. I asked her -- several times -- to stop bothering me. I finally asked Jackie -- who seemed to be trying to ignore the whole thing. Finally I threatened to call the cops -- it was that bad. I told Jackie it was either her or me who would do so. All the time, this lady is yelling, and I'm asking her to stop and just leave. Wild.

Finally, she left.

What I didn't like was that because I'm a guy and black, it seems like it's OK if I get harassed. I really got after Jackie for allowing that to happen. Jackie felt there was nothing that she could do; that the lady was going to do what she wanted to do. But she could have asked the lady to stop.

About two years ago, I was at The Alley with my friend Setor, when a drunk white lady started saying all kinds of racist and offensive things. Eventually, she was asked to leave. That's what Jackie should have asked this lady to do.

I later learned that it was her birthday. But she certainly didn't do anything to make it a happy one for her and anyone else. Certainly not me.

Folks, if you see someone black and male being harassed for no good reason, jump in. Don't just let it happen. In my case, I was ready to send that lady to jail because her actions were so very threatening and unnecessary. And I would not begin to think of using violence -- calling the police was the best alternative.

I didn't like the scenario of someone black calling the police on someone else black and female, but the lady's behavior was so -- wild -- it was the only reasonable action to take. No one else seemed interested in stopping her,and I'm still puzzled by the whole thing.