CDC Health System Struggling

Lawmakers express frustration over excessive outlays for prison health

Inmate medical care is budgeted at $1.5 billion for this year. A federal overseer recommends early release of chronically ill inmates as a way to cut costs.

(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times / June 10, 2010)

By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

January 27, 2011

Reporting from Sacramento —

Amid California's budget crisis, the receiver put in charge of the prison health system by a federal judge has spent $82 million on blueprints for medical facilities that have been largely scrapped, more than $50,000 a month on an architectural consultant and millions hiring medical professionals — more per inmate than in many other states.

After four years of pouring money into the system, however, receiver J. Clark Kelso told legislators Wednesday that he didn't know when the federal oversight might stop and suggested early release of chronically sick inmates as one quick way to cut costs.

Exasperated lawmakers, who have to pay the bills but have little say in how the funds are spent, questioned whether federal control is making prison healthcare any better.

"That's a source of great frustration," said Assemblyman Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento), chairman of the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review, who called on Kelso to account for the spending, which is budgeted at about $1.5 billion for this year. "As we watch the numbers go up, we can't tell if we're any closer to hitting the mark."

California's prison health system fell into receivership in 2006 after a federal court ruled the state had not done enough to improve conditions since a 2000 court ruling found that care behind bars amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

There were 48 "possibly preventable" deaths of patients in California's prison healthcare system in 2006, according to figures from Kelso's office. There were 43 such deaths in 2009. Asked how he measured progress, Kelso said the number of "likely preventable" deaths dropped from 18 in 2006 to 3 in 2009.

"Those are the ones where you look at the record and your jaw just drops at how bad the treatment was," Kelso said.

But as state leaders have struggled with historic budget deficits by making deep cuts in other services, they've had little choice but to write essentially blank checks for prison healthcare.

California prisons now employ one doctor for every 435 inmates, according to a report commissioned by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year. By contrast, Texas prisons — which were once in receivership but have since emerged — employ one doctor for every 2,000 inmates.

Dickinson decried what he called "galactic" differences between staff levels in California and in other states.

Assemblywoman Alyson Huber (D-Eldorado Hills) said that the state now spends about $14,000 on healthcare per inmate each year, while many Californians have no health insurance.

"I'm not happy about the fact that our incarcerated inmates are getting better healthcare than people who aren't incarcerated," Huber said.

Lawmakers also expressed frustration about money spent on grand projects that did not materialize.

After $82 million was spent between 2007 and 2010 on blueprints, environmental reviews and other plans for seven new medical facilities capable of treating 10,000 inmates, Schwarzenegger abandoned that ambitious plan, instead settling on one new medical facility in Stockton with about 1,700 beds. Three former juvenile prisons will also be retrofitted as medical facilities.

While gearing up for the proposed building boom, the state paid at least seven different construction consultants a monthly rate that amounts to more than $240,000 per year, according to an Assembly committee review of invoices. One of those contractors, Washington State-based architectural consultant Robert Glass, was paid as much as $50,600 per month last year.

"He was working extraordinary hours trying to put together all of the input we were getting from healthcare professionals into a plan," Kelso said of Glass' contribution. "An extraordinary fellow."

Glass did not return a call requesting comment.

Kelso noted that the contract Glass and other consultants worked under had been signed by his predecessor as receiver and that he had since done away with most outside advisors. Kelso took over the office from the original receiver, Robert Sillen, in 2008.

One way to reduce costs quickly, Kelso told legislators, would be to allow him to release the sickest patients, who consume a disproportionate amount of medical care.

"You let me unload 1,500 inmates, and I'll give you a 30% drop in costs," Kelso said.

A bill that allows some parole for medical reasons was signed into law last year, but it applies only to "people who are literally hooked up to machines, in comas, that sort of thing" Kelso said, and won't do much to lower the state's overall bill.

jack.dolan@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Demise of a death drug

 

States need sodium thiopental to perform lethal injections, but it's in short supply. Now what?

In response to violations of international human rights norms, Western governments are slapping sanctions on a rogue regime by halting exports of a deadly substance. That's nothing new; what is new is that the rogue nation is the United States.

The substance in question is sodium thiopental, a fast-acting anesthetic designed for surgery that has been put to a more sinister purpose in 34 states, which use it to numb condemned prison inmates before injecting another drug that stops their breathing and a third that stops their hearts. Sodium thiopental is very hard to come by because the only U.S. company that makes it has ceased production. Hospira Inc., unable to make the drug in the U.S., had hoped to manufacture it at a plant in Italy, but authorities there demanded assurances that it wouldn't be used for capital punishment. Unable to provide them, Hospira opted to get out of the business. Britain has banned exports of the drug to the U.S.

The United States is an extreme rarity among industrialized democracies for its embrace of the death penalty, which has been abolished in law or practice by 139 nations. That's why European countries are teaming up to stop exports of execution drugs to the U.S. — and that's throwing a wrench into the American machinery of death. Without a supply of sodium thiopental, many states will have to go through the lengthy process of revising their execution procedures. Executions have been delayed for five years in California amid lawsuits over whether the state's lethal injection method — which uses sodium thiopental — constitutes unconstitutionally cruel punishment. The state has an ample supply of the drug because it acquired 90 doses from Britain before London imposed its ban, but when that cache expires, the whole legal nightmare might start over.
If this were just a supply problem, it might be comparatively easy to solve. But lethal injection, considered the most "humane" way to execute criminals, comes with a host of other ethical, regulatory and legal challenges. Medical associations refuse to condone physician participation in executions, increasing the danger of botched procedures. The Food and Drug Administration wants nothing to do with lethal-injection drugs, refusing to verify the effectiveness of imports but allowing states to purchase them. Thus there is no way of knowing whether the drugs are producing the "painless" death they promise, or a torturous death forbidden by the Constitution.

Our biggest objection to the death penalty has nothing to do with death drugs. In an excellent but still imperfect legal system, it is impossible to determine guilt with 100% certainty, which is why dozens of death row inmates have been exonerated. Once a convict is dead, it's too late to set him or her free if new evidence materializes. Add to this the expense of the never-ending appeals process and the serious questions about execution methodology raised by the sodium thiopental fracas, and we have to ask: Is the visceral satisfaction Americans derive from killing convicted killers really worth its cost?

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Why Is Mental Illness Still So Stigmatized?

After the shooting rampage in Tucson, the parents of the accused gunman released a statement that included this: "We don't understand why this happened."

At this point we can only speculate what happened. There were a lot of red flags in the shooter's behavior leading up to the incident that indicated he was mentally unstable. His Internet postings suggested someone really struggling, though people shade things on the Internet. And, of course, there is that photograph of him -- head shaven, the look of possession, lips slightly smirking.

Yet no one aggressively tried to get this young man committed.

There are a number of things that may have conspired to keep him on the streets. One possibility is what we know may happen when many people have information and assume that another will react. An example is the case of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death near her apartment building in 1964. Her cries for help went unheeded by neighbors who heard them. Surely someone else will step in.

Another possibility is people might fear they will put themselves in jeopardy if they intervene. Will the dangerous mentally ill person come and get me?

Still another possibility is a person may be conflicted about intervening to put someone away: This would be a terrible thing to do to a person, and it should be done only if there's evidence of extreme dangerousness.

Or people don't recognize the signs of mental illness.

You will note that some of these possibilities turn on stigma -- that people who are mentally ill are dangerous, that holding a person in a mental hospital may somehow wrong the person, that failing to recognize the symptoms may be because people don't want to admit to something so stigmatizing to their family or friend - or even a stranger. Best to stay away.

In this case, the fallout of staying away was an act of extreme violence that unfortunately compounds the stigma of mental illness for all who suffer it.

Why is mental illness still so stigmatized?

People who wouldn't dream of saying a racial or ethnic slur glibly talk about nut cakes, lunatics and crazies. Perhaps they stigmatize the mentally ill because society always marginalizes people who are different. Or people may blame the person, not realizing that mental illness is a no-fault brain disease that you can't just will away. Then again they may feel unconsciously that they are to blame. Finally, people may have an unconscious fantasy that mental illness is actually contagious -- so one must stay away.

This is not just an academic exercise for me. I have struggled with schizophrenia for more than 30 years. My outcome has obviously been different than the accused gunman's, but I still suffered stigma. Possibly, like him, I was very resistant to the idea of being hospitalized when I was first ill. How could I bring such shame on my family and myself?

Friends sometimes looked confused or scared when I told them about my illness; and I lost some friends, which was very painful.

So, I understand first hand the effect stigma can have. Stigma is out there and it makes people feel damaged, lesser. It encourages people to be in the closet when being able to get help from friends, when one is suffering, is very important. Stigma's worst effect is that it deters people from accepting their illness and agreeing to treatment. If mentally ill people didn't have the added burden of stigma, maybe more of them would seek treatment. And then tragedies like the one in Tucson would be less likely to happen.

How can we combat stigma? More people coming forward to put a face on mental illness is important, though one must take care when doing this. A media that puts violence committed by people with mental illness in context -- most people with mental illness are not violent -- would be helpful. The media should also report more positive and hopeful stories.

This case will raise important legal issues, for example, whether severely mentally ill people should be ineligible for the death penalty, as some people with mental retardation and some young people are.

But in this moment, we should ponder how we think about and respond to people with severe mental illness. We need either to get them to seek treatment, or force treatment on them. And that will require all of us to resist stigmatizing what we don't understand.

Elyn Saks, professor at the USC Gould School of Law, is author of "The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness." A 2009 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, she is using funds from her "genius grant" to create the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics.

From Death Row to Hero

How Randy Steidl became the face of capital punishment repeal

BY BILL CLUTTER

At the State Capitol, former death row inmate Randy Steidl became the improbable champion in the successful campaign to get the General Assembly to abolish the death penalty. Now he is trying to persude Gov. Pat Quinn to sign the repeal into law. He traveled a long road from death row to Springfield’s halls of power.

We began working on Randy’s case in October 1991, after the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and set his execution date. Springfield attorney Mike Metnick, who earlier that year represented Alejandro Hernandez pro bono in the infamous Nicarico case, agreed to take on the cause of saving Randy’s life. Mike Metnick again volunteered his legal services without pay. The reward for that work finally paid off when the General Assembly voted last week to abolish the death penalty.
John Hanlon, now the legal director at the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at UIS, worked all night long in April of 1992 writing Randy’s petition for post-conviction relief in Mike Metnick’s law office, which was above the Vinegar Hill Mall. By 7 a.m. we had appended the affidavits supporting the facts that revealed Randy’s innocence. We placed the petition in the trust of our runner, Paul Wetmore, who drove it to Paris, the Edgar County seat, to be filed. It was the last day of the statute of limitations for filing the petition. If some awful auto accident had impeded its delivery, all appeals in Randy’s case would have stopped there.  The execution would have proceeded as scheduled. 

Within four months of our investigation on Randy’s case, we developed the evidence that a federal judge would later rely on to order Randy’s release 17 years after he was convicted. His case involved no DNA, which made the job that much more difficult.

 A copy of the petition made its way to Illinois Times. IT editor Fletcher Farrar assigned a young reporter, Wendy Stassel, and photographer Ginny Lee to accompany me to the condemned unit at Pontiac penitentiary so that Randy could tell his story. No one outside of Randy’s family and friends had heard about his case until it was published in these pages Sept. 9, 1993. Randy’s picture was on the front cover of Illinois Times. The story of his innocence was told in the press for the first time.

The story also told of the inept representation Randy received by his former trial counsel. That attorney later sued me and IT for libel.  He was not happy that the story suggested he was ineffective. Truth being a defense prevailed. The case was eventually dismissed.

A week after the story ran, I offered to “recycle” the batch of papers that were left at the newsstands.

With copies loaded in the trunk of my car, I headed to Chicago. That evening, I appeared before the board of directors at a meeting of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty. They were there to discuss plans to organize a candlelight vigil outside the Governor’s Mansion for John Wayne Gacy, whose execution was set for May 10, 1994. It was the face of Gacy, the most notorious serial killer that Illinois had seen in the 20th century, that made support for the death penalty so popular. I stood up, handed everyone in the room a copy of Illinois Times and pointed to the face of Randy Steidl. His should be the face of the abolition movement. I recounted our recent involvement in the case of Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez. It is the faces of the wrongly convicted that will persuade public opinion to support abolition of the death penalty.

Indeed, those were the faces former Gov. George Ryan pointed to when he declared a moratorium on capital punishment 11 years ago.

After the meeting, Rob Warden, now executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, pulled me aside and invited me to have a drink. On the walk over to the Billy Goat Tavern, made famous by “Saturday Night Live,” Rob revealed he wasn’t enthusiastic about their decision to hold the vigil for a guy like Gacy. His passion as the publisher of the Chicago Lawyer was to shine light on the cases of the innocent who populated death row in Illinois. It was his paper that first told the story of Brian Dugan’s 1985 confession to the murder of Jeanine Nicarico and the fact that prosecutors had convicted two innocent men but were willing to let them be executed as part of their coverup.

On Feb. 7, 1994, law professor Larry Marshall organized his first event at Northwestern to raise public awareness about the plight of his client, Rolando Cruz.  We circulated more copies of the Illinois Times article, which Randy’s mother had paid to reprint.

But a few months later, on May 10, the day John Wayne Gacy was executed, our office got a phone call from Pontiac. The warden informed us that Randy Steidl had been attacked in the yard and he was in their medical unit. Armed with a disassembled disposable razor, two men jumped Randy. One pinned his arms back while the other slashed the blade across Randy’s neck. A hit had been ordered on Randy’s life for his refusal to participate in the hunger strike that was organized on the row to protest Gacy’s execution.

One can imagine, given only that bit of news, the gravity of the call. It was the longest imaginable wait to hear word of his condition. Was his fate the same as the other condemned man, Gacy? It would take a few more minutes to learn that the blade had missed Randy’s carotid artery by a razor’s edge.

And so, again, Randy was spared to tell his story.

The next event organized by law professor Larry Marshall was in November 1998. I was invited to speak about Randy’s case at The National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty, an event that became the prelude to the creation of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.  There were 74 death row exonerees in the U.S. at that time.  That event brought together from all over the country investigators and attorneys, the people who worked to free the exonerated.   The highlight of the conference was when the exonerees, Rolando Cruz among them, entered the stage one-by-one, stopped at the microphone to voice the refrain, “If the state had its way I’d be dead today.”

Since that event, the number of death row exonerees has nearly doubled.  Now added to that list of the exonerated is the name of Randy Steidl.

An interesting twist of fate occurred right before that historic conference.  Illinois Times reporter Linda Rockey wrote an updated story on Randy’s case that caught the attention of Medill School of Journalism professor Dave Protess at Northwestern University.  At the start of the fall 1998 semester, Protess planned to assign a team of his students to investigate the case of Randy Steidl.

By this time law Professor Larry Marshall had joined the legal team to assist Mike Metnick and Kathy Saltmarsh in filing a federal habeas petition for Randy’s release from prison.  Protess was told to find another case to work on.  Protess asked Marshall about the case of Anthony Porter.

Marshall informed Protess that there was nothing in the record to suggest that Porter was innocent. He was 48 hours away from execution in September 1998 when the Illinois Supreme Court granted one last reprieve to explore the issue of his alleged mental retardation.  In a few short months, in February 1999, private investigator Paul Ciolino obtained a videotaped confession of the true perpetrator of that crime.  It was the final straw that broke the back of the death penalty in Illinois.

A few months later, the moratorium halted executions in Illinois.  Had Protess taken the more appealing case of Steidl instead, the history of the death penalty might have been different.

Protess was able to add a major contribution to Randy’s case, nevertheless.  He invited CBS’s 48 Hours to feature Randy’s case on national television.  The whole country would be watching.  It forced the Illinois State Police to seriously consider a written request I made to the director to re-investigate the case. E-mails that surfaced later reveal that the upper command at ISP decided to assign Lt. Michale Callahan to investigate “Clutter’s letter” just in case a “Mike Wallace type” starts snooping.  

Callahan resisted pressure from above to whitewash his review of the file.  He became a believer that Steidl, and his co-defendant, Herb Whitlock, were innocent.  When he requested permission to pursue an investigation of other viable suspects who were politically connected, Callahan received a lateral transfer by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s new director of state police.  He was removed from investigations and transferred to the traffic division.  His book, Too Politically Sensitive, provides a detailed account of what happened behind the scenes at ISP.

The following year, in May 2004, a federal judge ordered Randy’s release from prison.

And so when the vote was taken on the House floor, it was Randy Steidl standing in the gallery whom Rep. Karen Yarbrough, the sponsor of the bill, pointed up to in making her argument to lawmakers why the death penalty should be abolished.  For the last several months, Randy has been traveling the state telling his story as part of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty’s campaign to end capital punishment.   The vote total shot up to 59, then stopped one vote short of the 60 votes needed.  A procedural move was made to place the bill for reconsideration.  Two hours later, after intense lobbying by Randy and the Coalition, the bill was brought back to the floor.  Rep. Robert Flider of Decatur had a change of heart and switched his vote.  The bill passed and was sent to the Senate..

After two hours of debate in the Senate on Jan. 11, senate sponsor Kwame Raoul asked Randy to stand to give the last word.  Senator Raoul reminded the members of what Randy had said during his testimony earlier in the day before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave.”   The bill passed with 32 votes, with two votes more than was needed.

This historic vote by the General Assembly completed the circle of this story. Now abolition is in the hands of Gov. Quinn. History will look back a hundred years from now, and will compare the abolition of the death penalty to another abolition movement with strong ties to Springfield. It was the right decision then to abolish the practice of a person owning another person of color, though slavery was widely popular in some segments of the population in its day. And so the practice of the state strapping men and women to a gurney and controlling the decision to end life, at the risk of getting it wrong, should also be cast onto the trash heap of history.

Bill Clutter is a licensed private detective and is director of investigations at the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois at Springfield.  

SCCW

Stedapol CC Watt: Local Band We Love

18 JANUARY 2011 465 VIEWS COMMENTS (0)

My good friend Kevin Bronson at Buzzbands knows my tastes well – I love a good indie pop song and I am a sucker for soul music. When he dropped me an email sending me to a stream of Stedapol CC Watt’s “Samba Soul” I knew I was in for something good.

Stream “Samba Soul”

(go here to download the song for free as Today’s Top Tune for 24 hours only!)

When I got the full CD – “Glassell Park Grit” — it was the only thing I listened to for an entire weekend. It was soulful AND funky, an infectious combination, and seemed to fit every mood I was in, particularly the part of me that likes dancing around the house.

Stream “Down and Out, Hand to Hand”

Apparently Questlove is a fan and so is KCRW DJ Garth Trinidad. Now I’m excited to see what awaits as far as their live show goes. No dates scheduled soon, but since they’re an LA band I’ll be on the lookout!

RR

Share|

Killings down in Compton

Killings are down in Compton, Sheriff's Department says

Sheriff's Department says a city once noted for violence has seen a decline in homicides. Many residents say the fear is gone.

By Robert Faturechi and Ann M. Simmons, Los Angeles Times

January 18, 2011

Mary Lawson attests to just how much crime has dropped in her Compton neighborhood each evening when she and her husband go out to their front porch to sit.

For years, they avoided the porch, fearful of stray bullets and gang toughs. For the same reasons, her husband and other parents on their block insisted on driving their children to school each day.

The gunfire on New Year's Eve used to be so bad that the Lawsons would check into a hotel that night. This year, they stayed at home.

"We heard not one gunshot," Lawson, 67, said. "Now you don't have to be afraid of sitting on your porch, or going to and from your car…. You just don't have the fear there used to be before."

Last month, Los Angeles Police Department officials celebrated continued steep drops in crime across the city. On Monday, it was the sheriff's turn, as officials released figures showing that across Los Angeles County, homicides in regions patrolled by the Sheriff's Department had hit the lowest rate since 1965.

Beyond the statistics, the decline in crime has changed lives in many areas that have historically been among Southern California's most dangerous. Few have seen violence drop so far and so fast as Compton, a city long synonymous with gang violence and gangster rap.

Compton recorded 24 homicides in 2010, compared with 36 in 2009. The count is the lowest it's been in years — and far below 1991, when the city had 87 slayings. Other types of violent crime, including assaults and rape, are also down.

Sheriff's officials have attributed the decline to a decade-long effort to build bonds in the community in the fight against gang violence — and an infusion of extra resources when those efforts were floundering.

"This is the culmination of a long relationship," said Capt. Diane Walker of the sheriff's Compton station, which has patrolled the city for about a decade. "Residents aren't just calling us for emergencies anymore. They give us tips, they help us in crime prevention."

Cmdr. Todd Rogers said those ties have allowed deputies to focus on the "right arrests." "Initially we had to go in there, do a lot of arrests, take guns off the street … really saturate the area, really retake the streets," he said. "Enforcement is even more targeted now."

The effect can readily be seen on the city's streets, according to longtime residents.

"You see more people out and about," said Charles Davis, who served for several decades as Compton's city clerk. "You see a lot more people outside. There was a time when, if you had to be outside, you would be in your backyard, not your frontyard."

Minnie Jones, 84, a Compton resident since 1951, measures the changes by walks in the park.

In the late 1990s, she was strolling to a local park with two friends one morning when three youths approached and demanded they give up their money and car keys. Her male companion's car was stripped and her own car was later used in a robbery, she recalled.

Jones said the crime was traumatizing, but now, the park is once again hers.

"I'm over there all the time now," Jones said. "Yes, I do feel safer."

On Monday afternoon, Patricia Hardaway, 54, sat on a bench at Wilson Park as her granddaughter zoomed down a slide before running off with about two dozen other children. The trip, she said, would have been far less likely even two years ago. But times have changed. A security guard patrols the park, officials have installed new equipment and parents are coming en masse, watching over their children together.

"People used to come by looking for other gang members, she said. "This is where I bring my grandbabies, and I feel safe."

Sheriff's officials acknowledge that there's still much work to be done in Compton. Even with the latest drop, Compton's per capita homicide rate was still more than five times the national average. But compared to a recent peak of 65 killings in 2005, the decline is notable.

Many residents praise the Sheriff's Department for beefing up patrols. But others see a bigger shift in the role of gangs in the city.

More than a decade ago, amid high violent crime, the city disbanded its own police force and contracted with the Sheriff's Department. Though killings surged again a few years later, the Sheriff's Department brought more deputies, and violence quickly began to decline. Still, some city officials want Compton to have its own force again.

Many interviewed Monday said they're pleased with the sheriff's work, but not all residents were ready to give the department complete credit for recent gains. Although the sheriff's patrols played a role in pushing violence down, they say, a more profound shift in youth culture also has been at work. The lure of gang culture in a city once mentioned so commonly by gangster rappers like Dr. Dre and Eazy-E has diminished.

"People used to know us as the rap capital of the country," said the Rev. Alejandro Leon, a Compton pastor who mentors gang members and helps turn their lives around. "We had a reputation concerning gangs. Now gangs are not as active as they were. Many of the older gang members are in prison, or they're dead."

...Trail of Dead Documentary Segment

http://www.explodinginsound.com/2011/01/trail-of-dead-post-tao-of-dead.html

Hatred Paralyzes Life

Martin Luther King Jr.: 'Hatred paralyzes life'

January 17, 2011 | 11:52 am

In this photo from Dec. 21, 1956, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rides a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Ala., a momentous occasion that vindicated Rosa Parks after she refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955, marked a civil rights victory and sent a powerful message of hope. So, it is particularly heartbreaking to read "Black man's burden," an Op-Ed by Judy Belk that recounts how just 10 years ago (and 45 years after the above photo was taken) her 13-year-old son came to understand  racism while on public transportation. 

Racism is like that. A dripping faucet of sorts. You ignore it until you can't anymore. I so desperately wanted to slow down the inevitable. Stop the drip. Couldn't he have just one more year of innocence in which he could believe that his black skin was nothing more than what it is — a physical attribute rather than the definition to others of who he is and what he can or can't do.

But Ryan was already one step ahead of me in coming up with coping strategies.

"Don't worry, Mom, I figured out a solution. I just take out a book and start reading, which seems to make everybody relax." One woman, he said, even asked if he was enjoying a particular book as much as she did.

As a black woman who loves two amazing black men -- my husband and 23-year-old son -- I have seen again and again how society either assumes the worst of them or treats them as an exception to their race and manhood. It is a minefield black men must navigate.

In Honour of Martin Luther King

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.: Murals that conjure the great man, the enduring dream [Photo essay]

January 14, 2011 |  8:13 pm

Avalon Auto Repair, E. Colden Ave. at S. Avalon Bl, Los Angeles, 2005
Painted on the side wall of the neighborhood auto shop or the corner mom-and-pop store, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s image proclaims his place in the American pantheon. In some neighborhoods, he looks as if he might have had a Latin ancestor, and he makes common cause with the Virgin of Guadalupe and Pancho Villa. In other neighborhoods, he's accompanied by a stern Malcolm X or the pyramids of Egypt. Photographer Camilo Jose Vergara has been documenting such murals in Los Angeles and other American cities since well before the United States declared a holiday in King's name. Talisman, memorial and declaration of principles, the murals conjure the great man, the enduring dream -- and the power of the billboard.
--Photographs by Camilo Jose Vergara
Camilo Jose Vergara is a 2002 MacArthur fellow whose books include "American Ruins" and "How the Other Half Worships." camilojosev@gmail.com

Las Palmas Discount Market, 5600 Broadway, Los Angeles, 2010

Seafood restaurant, S. Normandie Ave at W. 47th St. Los Angeles, 1997
More murals after the jump» 

E. 76th Place at S. Central Ave., Los Angeles, 2009
Lupita's Discount Store, E. 55th St. at Compton Ave., Los Angeles, 2006

Private House, E. Palmer St. at N. Bullis Rd., Compton, 1998

Alley west of S. Avalon Blvd., near E. Colden Ave., Los Angeles, 1998

Ocean Tires #2, E. Colden Ave. near S. Avalon Blvd., Los Angeles, 2010

Paulina Variety Store, Compton Ave. near E. Vernon Ave., Los Angeles, 1997
RELATED:

Stedapol CC Watt continue to amaze...

http://www.swift.fm/questlove/song/17336/
http://stedapolccwatt.com
http://myspace.com/stedapolccwatt
http://last.fm/music/Stedapol+CC+Watt

The Paucity of Hope

After the Arizona shootings, can Obama—or anyone—bring America back from the brink?

By John DickersonPosted Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011, at 9:03 PM ET

Barack ObamaWho will be the Daniel Hernandez of this political moment? In the chaos that followed the shots outside an Arizona supermarket on Saturday, the young intern calmly sought out his boss and held her upright, pressing her wound and probably saving the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The political conversation could use that combination of wisdom and action. So far, the voices have been defensive, accusatory or noncommittal. The first two are unhelpful and the third is ineffective.

This tragedy has prompted not reflection but just another round of sparring. Some liberals quick to point the finger are linking 22-year-old shooter Jared Loughner to the Tea Party—showing the same lack of restraint and tendency to demonize their ideological opponents that they accuse the right of having. Some conservatives, meanwhile, were more concerned with the political consequences of this tragedy than with the possible impact of their rhetoric.

Is this a moment for the president to give a big speech? The suggestion feels old-hat. We turn to the president for everything. Gene Healy's book The Cult of the Presidency starts by poking fun at Mike Huckabee's promise to lead a "revival of our national soul" if he becomes president. If that's included in the job description, argues Healey, everything is. More relevant to this moment, perhaps, is the fact that President Obama's status as the nation's top Democrat might make it hard for a lot of people to hear what he says.

But Obama has some qualifications that go beyond his office. One of the themes of his campaign was the promise to restore civility and restraint to politics. This weekend's shooting may be waking a lot of people up to how far we have to go on both scores. Obama has been trying to lead in that direction for years now—he wrote a book about the lack of trust that has corroded the public debate and gave athoughtful speech about the power of restraint in particular with regard to abortion. The speech had something in short supply at the moment: honest self-reflection, including the admission of partial fault.

In the first hours of news after the shooting, there was no evidence of a connection between Loughner and the ideology of the right, but the accusations came anyway. Voices on the left started arguing the right was to blame for using the imagery of guns and war in relation to politics. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a fellow Arizona Democrat, blamed Palin.On Facebook this weekend the No. 1 question users are asking is: "Is Sarah Palin to blame?" Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, an elected Democrat, held a news conference Saturday and validated this view when he blamed the anti-government rhetoric for the shooting.

Conservatives were fighting back. Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips sent an e-mail that read, "In a moment, a leftist lunatic destroyed a half a dozen lives." Other conservatives started passing around a commercial in which Democrats used crosshair images and Obama's quote that Democrats will bring a gun to a knife fight. Sarah Palin's camp rushed to defend her use of crosshair symbols on a map targeting congressional districts, which included the one Giffords represented. "We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," said Palin spokeswoman Rebecca Mansour.

The idea that the left and right have both used violent images suggests a false equivalence. A few scattered examples from Democrats can't match the power of gun imagery on the right or the regular use of incendiary language about tyranny and insurrection. Politico's Jonathan Martin pointed out that Palin herself referred to the cross-hairs on her map as a "bull's-eye." But that doesn't mean Glenn Beck or Palin are to blame for this shooting.*

Perhaps the saving voice at this moment will come from a conservative who can make this distinction. Politico found a "senior Republican senator" who said, "There is a need for some reflection here—what is too far now?" What's admirable here is that this senator is willing to broach the idea that heated language on the right can be a problem without validating the idea that it caused the shooting. What's depressing is that this senator would not go on the record. It proves that the political penalty remains high for saying anything—not matter how obvious—that might inflame the armies of no restraint.

Any speech now, from the president or a top Republican, would have to go beyond merely saying, "Tone down the rhetoric." This doesn't mean that sanitizing political speech is the answer. Passion is inevitable and even necessary. (Besides which, there's no workable way to tamp it down. You can't station a TSA agent at the front of every debate.)

Still, thinking first in terms of restraint rather than attack, in crafting a political message or in a political debate, might mean taking a breath before you assume the worst about your opponent's motives. It might mean a pause to consider the danger of your own knee-jerk view of their ideas. Maybe they're actually capable of reasonable thought.

In honor of the victims of the shooting, Congress will observe a moment of silence tomorrow afternoon. Fitting but insufficient. What we need is a permanent moment of restraint.