Current Events in Civil Rights

If you are curious about all of the references of outrage circling this week in your favorite social media forum - here are updates since last week on some standing civil rights events in our national news:

1. FLORIDA: Yesterday. George Zimmerman (the defendant in the Trayvon Martin shooting case) was acquitted. This is the same case (white adult shoots and kills an unarmed black teenager) that was only prosecuted after public outrage (because Florida has a 'Stand Your Ground' law, and Zimmerman's actions were initially determined by local police to be a clear-cut case of self-defense). 

2. FLORIDA: Back in March and upheld in April/May, Marissa Alexander is sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot at an abusive spouse in her home (against whom she already had a court issued order of protection). In her case the 'Stand Your Ground,' law was deemed to not apply, and because her case is aggravated assault with a firearm and not self-defense, the minimum sentence is 10-20 years. Marissa Alexander happens to be a woman of color. 

These two cases occurred in the same state, both prosecuted by State Attorney Angela Corey, and yet they settled to two opposite extremes of acquittal and over-sentencing (all allowed in our justice system, all equal on paper). The problem isn't the letter of the law - it's us, people, and our role and how we choose to engage or disengage in specific incidents. It's not coincidental that issues like this segregate along race and gender lines. Those rifts in equality are disappointingly basic in the fabric of our society. 

3. CALIFORNIA: The Sacramento Bee (but not CNN) covers that coerced sterilization of prisoners isn't just for the victims of mid-century eugenics programs in Virginia and North Carolina. Despite the sterilization laws being revoked 30 years ago (after rampant abuse), it's still happening today. There's no dearth of this - my Reader archives are full of small (but rarely nationally visible) articles about non-consensual sterilizations of immigrant women and prisoners. But if you search for "illegal sterilization," you see old articles about the historical programs (which were effectively anti-Black, anti-Latina, anti-poor and anti-immigrant) and you see wing-nut declarations that we should go back to that heyday... but only very directed research will net you modern, researched articles about current events. So, that's meta-upsetting. 

4. TEXAS: Dear Lord, Texas. Skip the hoopla about what's more dangerous on the Legislature floor (sugar? tampons? or firearms?). That's infuriating, distracting chaff. Furthermore, it's intended to be distracting because talking about superficial outrages changes national news visibility into deeper issues. Winnow it. The important news coming out of Texas is that HB-2 passed the House and the Senate. All of those incredibly tight restrictions on abortion access in Texas that were filibustered several weeks back have made it through the legislature and will in all likelihood be signed into law. HB-2 is restrictive because it basically increases the safety requirements for clinics to a point where few-to-none can legally operate in the grand state of Texas. 

5. OHIO: Governor John Kasich just signed new, highly restrictive abortion laws in place that are structured around requiring patient transfer agreements for abortion clinics and hospitals (and then making it impossible to have those agreements in place). Similar in impact to HB-2, that new law is going to vastly curtail safe access to abortion in Ohio. 

6. NORTH CAROLINA: Is following in the same track as Texas and Ohio and just passed the same sort of law as HB-2, and all this has happened THIS WEEK. If you need a common name for this type of legislation, let's just call them 'Red Tape Laws' - because that's what they are. Roe v. Wade provided legal access to abortion in this country, but these laws add enough red tape to make it unfeasible for everyone who needs it. So when you strip off the misleading arguments about safety, you see that outcome of this legislation is to make abortion more unsafe. Why? Well, restricting access to legal, medical abortions does nothing to decrease the national rate of abortion. The only thing that's shown to decrease the abortion rate (in the US and in the EU, historically) has been comprehensive, forward-looking sexual education and access to affordable birth control. So, let's do the math on the mass balance - if the incidence rates stay the same and the access to safe procedures is decreased, then the numbers of unsafe procedures will only increase.

The Civil Rights Era wasn't just something that happened in the 60s to end Jim Crow laws. The Women's Rights Movement wasn't just about suffragettes getting the vote. Roe V. Wade is technically in force, but the spirit of it is being eroded, along with everything it meant for women's rights. This is a serious problem. What are we going to do?

Well, first we've got to calm down. We've got to look at the meat of the issues - the source and not the symptoms. And then we've got to get organized. 

LINKS:

NYTimes: "Zimmerman is Acquitted in Killing of Trayvon Martin" 

CNN: "Florida woman sentenced to 20 years in controversial warning shot case"

CNN: "Trayvon Martin case has a tough, controversial prosecutor"

Sociological Images: "Stand Your Ground Increases Racial Bias in 'Justifiable Homicide' Trials"

The Sacramento Bee: "Female inmates sterilized in California Prisons without approval" 

The Huffington Post: "Mexican Americans Sterilized Disproportionately in California Institutions, Study Says"

The Huffington Post: "Yes Virginia, Your Reproductive Rights are Compromised"

UIC Archives: "Sterilization Abuse: A Task for the Women's Movement"

Human Organization: "A Glass Half Empty: Latina Reproduction and Public Discourse"

CNN: "Texas abortion bill a step closer to law"

The Washington Post: "What makes Ohio's new abortion law unique" 

NYTimes: "North Carolina House Passes New Restrictions on Abortions"