Know your rights--and the duties of police officers

I recently met a person who is working in a restaurant. He is a white American, but most of the workers are Latinos. He has developed a problem with other employees. The other employees come in before their shifts begin, put on their uniforms, set up their stations, and otherwise work off-the-clock. He refuses to do that. He tells the others that he doesn't want to give his work to the company without pay, but they tell him he's lazy. They shame him, he says, and he really can't abide that so he will likely quit his job.

It is likely the Latinos have little concept of work as a timed endeavor. They probably consider that they come to work, do their job, and then leave, without any consideration of how long they have worked. Their concept of an hourly wage may be vague. The American man would have to explain these things—in fact, he has tried—but he has the weight of numbers against him. The other employees all have the same view of the situation. He might be able to persuade them one at a time, but is helpless to argue against them all together.

The American man would like to organize them, because he knows that unions are able to improve wages and working conditions. Many of his coworkers are undocumented, however. They refuse even to discuss such a prospect.

The American needs to connect with them. First, he needs to prove to them that he is not lazy so they will stop shaming him in the workplace. He should tell them he doesn't mind working at all, especially when he is working to better himself or others. He should offer to spend some time each day teaching them something they can use to better themselves or cope with society better.

One thing he could do is explain the concept of ICE holds. Immigration police (ICE) pick up suspected undocumented workers and hand them over to the police or sheriff to be held in prison until such time as ICE wants to move on their cases. This is called an ICE stop. Under US law, however, a person can only be held in jail for 48 hours without bringing a charge against him in court. Undocumented workers do not usually know this. They should also know that there are some public interest lawyers that will file a writ of habeas corpus for undocumented workers who are being held illegally. Usually, once a prisoner is released, he will not be deported. The telephone number of such a lawyer would be valuable to one of the American's co-workers. Once one of them, or one of their friends, is released from prison in this way, it is likely they will stop shaming him.

Many people, even Americans, do not know their rights when they are stopped by police. They are technically free to walk away, but sometimes it is not possible to insist on this right.

One right they do have is to be represented by an attorney. Even before they are under arrest, they should tell the police that their attorney warned them not to answer any questions until he is present. A person who is likely to be stopped should get in the habit of carrying an attorney's business card, in case the police ask him for his attorney's name and telephone number.

A person in not required by law to produce identification when asked to do so by the police. He is required to give his real name and address, however. Failure to do so may lead to an arrest.

The subject of a police stop should not offer any incriminating evidence. For example, if a policeman asks if a bag of drugs belongs to you, you should always say you don't know anything about it. Do not reveal the location of other evidence.

The police are permitted to lie to suspects. They may say it will go easier on you if you confess, or give them names of your friends. Don't believe them. A policeman may seem powerful, but he is unable to influence the court. The person who can do that is the prosecutor, but you should always have a lawyer talk to the prosecutor.

For more information on this topic, see ACLU's Know Your Rights pamphlet.

Meridian Consent Decree: How to handle troublesome students

Schools all over the country are having problems keeping kids in class. The policies of the Bush Administration, which made funding depend on raising test scores in a school, did not help. Administrators play games to raise the scores in their schools, using the following techniques:

• Suspend poor students on the day of the test. 
• Call in law enforcement to take poor students out of school and send them to reform school. 
• Refer poor performers to alternative schools. 
• Have the police handle discipline problems.

All these games have one thing in common. They all hurt students. Failure in school leads to failure in life. Poor students go right into the school-to-prison pipeline. The school system keeps running as usual but students fall between the cracks. No one notices they are missing until they turn up in juvenile court or in prison.

Basing school performance on a single, make-it-or-break-it test may have started with the Bush administration, but severe punishments for minor infractions started in the 1970s with the War on Drugs. Zero tolerance programs were introduced, where minor infractions were severely punished. The District of Columbia Municipal Regulations ("DCMR") contain a list of school infraction reads like a list of criminal charges. Students who break a certain set of rules receive minor punishments. Students who break more several behavioral rules receive more severe punishments.

The DCMR lists 12 Tier One infractions. Among these infractions are failure to complete a homework assignment, running in the halls, forgetting to carry school-issued i.d., inappropriate displays of affection, insubordination, and any kind of behavior that causes minor disruption to the learning environment. None of these infractions has any bearing on a student's ability to learn or academic performance. They are all the kind of rules that may be used to manipulate or coerce a student.

These rules are all subjective. A teacher or administrator has great latitude in deciding what constitutes an infraction and what doesn't. Bias-based decisions are the inevitable result. There is statistical evidence for such bias. Non-white students are many times more likely to be suspended or expelled for behavior that all students engage in. Once a student becomes identified as a problem he or she has great difficulty proving the contrary.

No educational system that relies entirely on punishment and coercion can be entirely successful. Most are complete failures. People do not respond well when their rights are taken away. Our country was founded on the principle that liberty--more personal freedom not less--is essential for democracy to succeed.

Education is not a new discipline. Teachers have studied the art of teaching for thousands of years. Many people know well how to teach, even some who work for the Department of Justice. The DOJ proved this by releasing a remarkable document, the Meridian Consent Decree, that describes in detail just what the people of Meridian, Mississippi, must do to improve their schools. The rules and ideas set out in this Decree would, if adopted by all school districts, ensure better schools and less racial bias.

The Justice Department investigated allegations that the Meridian School District gave black students harsher penalties than white students. Their study concluded that (a) nearly all the punishments meted out were exclusionary penalties, the kind that made it harder for those penalized to catch up to their classmates, and (b) black students received harsher penalties, including longer suspensions, than white students who had committed the same infractions.

The result of this law suit could have been a large monetary judgment against the school district because its policies and practices harmed the plaintiffs, students in the Meridian School District. Instead, the School District agreed to implement positive behavior interventions and supports as alternatives to a punishment-based system of teaching. The District also agreed to meet their obligation under Title 4 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer discipline without discrimination on the basis of race.

The School District agreed to treat minor infractions as learning opportunities instead of causes for punishment. In particular, the District will treat truancy and tardiness by investigating causes, together with teachers and family, before imposing any exclusionary penalties. The Consent Decree also provides a detailed description of due process rights provided to any student who is suspended or expelled from school.

All these regulations taken together should prevent the school from arbitrarily suspending students to improve the school's examination scores. The United States Government acts in a supervisory capacity to assure that all conditions of the decree are met. Taken together, the conditions of the decree act to replace a punitive, exclusionary environment with one where students' rights are respected and students' families are included in disciplinary decisions.

Alexandria: Speculators Destroy a Neighborhood

by Allan Masri and Holly Masri

JBG Corp. and the City of Alexandria are planning a huge urban redevelopment project for Alexandria West.   This area, which lies roughly between Beauregard and 395, is bounded by the Southern Towers Apartments on the north, and extends south and east past Holmes Run.  It has no name, so I will call it the Village. 

There is a considerable distance between the Village and Old Town Alexandria, both physically and in attitude. Old Town is prosperous, caucasian. The Village has a rich mix of nationalities and languages; nearly all of its residents are poor. Old Town is a warren of narrow streets and high brick walls. The Village is composed mostly of 3-story brick multi-family structures, interspersed with many lawns, trees, parking lots, and playgrounds. Old Town is aging, with an average of 2 persons per residence; the Village is growing, with an average of three persons per residence, many of them children.

The Village is a green and pleasant place.  Accessed by concrete paths and stairs, the apartment buildings are distributed across the contours of the rolling hills, with areas of trees and grass between them.   Children use the paths for riding bicycles and scooters, and for play.  Residents can use these paths for walking to and from parking lots, or to a nearby mall. Other walkable destinations are Chambliss Park, Dora Kelley Nature Park, and Winkler Botanical Preserve, as well as two schools and adjoining playing fields, a recreation and nature center, shopping center, playgrounds, and swimming pools.    The apartments are sixty years old, but adequate for the people who live here. Many are immigrants with nowhere else to go, but the place is livable and the people are friendly.  

The Coming of BRAC

In 2011, the Department of Defense placed its Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) project at the intersection of Beauregard and Seminary, about half a mile from the northern end of the Village. BRAC brought 6400 jobs to the area, with an average wage of $75,000 to $100,000. Alexandria's city government was gleeful about this, hoping to get $2 million a year in added tax revenues.

JBG Corp. was also gleeful. They manage 7,500 apartment units in the area, including 2,475 in the Villages. They got together with the Alexandria Planning Commission and came up with a plan to demolish the entire Village, leaving (perhaps) 865 "affordable housing" units, and replacing the rest with an unspecified number of "upscale" units . Note that there are approximately 850 ostensibly affordable units in the Village right now, thanks to some quick rent-raising by JBG. Two years ago there were 2,475 affordable units here-- three times as many.

 Not so overjoyed were the families that live in the Village. Many have already been forced out by the higher rents. All will eventually have to leave, although some may come back to rent the 865 affordable units, when they become available. But even these units are only hypothetical. Initially, JBG proposes to turn over 2 buildings with fewer than 100 affordable units to the City of Alexandria. There may be more later on--several years later on--but these may be appropriated by Alexandria City employees, who have a representative on the Affordable Housing Commission.

The Generosity of JBG

 JBG's company motto is "Building Smart, Thinking Green", but this is the company responsible for the concrete wasteland known as L'Enfant Plaza.  This new development they are planning will be less green than the one it is replacing. It will have less green space, thus adding to the urban heat island, and it will increase production of greenhouse gases.  The Village currently has buildings distributed over the rolling hills in a manner that conforms with the topography of the place. The blocks average 900 foot square, while the spaces between the buildings act as common areas with lawns, playgrounds, and trees. JBG's plan claims to preserve open spaces, but it will actually fill most of them with streets and more densely packed buildings. Some open spaces will remain, packed into the centers of the new buildings (on 400 foot square blocks); thus, these spaces will cease to be common areas, as they will only be usable by the residents/owners of particular buildings. 

 JBG's plan promises to provide a canopy of trees, but its initial action would be to cut down nearly all the trees on the property, some of them over 100 years old, as well as removing all trees and shrubbery from a currently wooded area on a steep slope. This plan risks erosion and directs increased runoff from streets and parking lots into the already stressed streams, Holmes Run and Turkey Run. In return for destroying all these trees and paving over another 20-50% of the property with streets, JBG plans to put in a green zone along Turkey Run, and to cede an additional 0.85 acre parcel elsewhere on the property to open space. But green zones already exist, throughout the Village. JBG will need to cut down numerous mature trees to attain the type of green zone illustrated in the plan. In fact, in the plan, the green zone is depicted with no trees at all.  The .85 acres of open space will not make up for the loss of up to 50% of the open space that now exists between buildings and between neighborhoods.

 JBG promises to deliver a community garden area. Such an area already exists. JBG promises to deliver a playing field. There are currently 3 tennis courts in the designated area where young men play soccer continuously after school. JBG will have to demolish the tennis courts to replace them with a field, thereby decreasing, not increasing, the available recreation space. But JBG intends to evict the soccer players, so preserving their tennis court is unnecessary.   

JBG has promised to limit the amount of grading done, but their street grid plan will be overlaid on the rolling hills of the site. A great deal of grading will be necessary to fundamentally transform the site from hills to flats.  But JBG will not consider leaving the site untouched or renovating existing buildings, because it intends to subdivide the property and build town houses. JBG intends to sell the townhouses for about $300,000 apiece, so if they build 3,000 townhouses, the sale should net them $9 billion. Naturally, JBG is ecstatic at the prospect.

The Villagers are Forced to Leave Their Homes  

While the JBG Plan claims that affordable housing in the area would eventually be eliminated anyway by market forces,  this is not true.  Many Villagers have already been forced out by JBG's rapidly-rising rents, but no market pressures are forcing JBG to evict 7,500 residents. The taxes have not been raised. The property is either owned outright by JBG or is being used to generate cash at historically low interest rates.

Like most stereotypical landlords, JBG just doesn't care about the people who have paid them rent for the last 50 years. Many of those people have already left, but some of the Villagers have lived here for 10 years or more. The Villagers have nowhere else to go. The Village contains 30% of Alexandria's low-income housing; when it is destroyed, many of the Villagers will have to leave Alexandria. They will take a part of the city's prosperity with them, for these are the people who do the low-paid jobs that keep the tourist-based industry of the town going. There will be no replacements, since there will be no housing for low-income workers. Without low-income workers, tourism will cease to be profitable. Many local businesses will fail. Ultimately, the downtown area will change from a vibrant place that tourists want to visit into a district of businesses and condominiums.

 The Alexandria City Council has completely failed to protect the Villagers from the predations of this giant corporation. The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful, not to facilitate the eviction of its residents when some corporation feels they are standing in the way of progress.  What JBG intends is not progress, but profit, and JBG's plan is not a futuristic one, as they would have us believe. The plan imposes on the city the same car-oriented non-solutions that have caused urban sprawl all across the nation. The plan solves all problems by installing more streets, more freeway ramps, more expensive homes located far from jobs and markets.

JBG's rationale for their plans makes no sense. BRAC has already flooded the streets with more vehicles and clogged the freeway entrances.  The plan presumes that the 6200 new employees at BRAC will all want to live in the Village, but this is unlikely. JBG's plan will bring yet more people and cars into the area and will make more streets for them. The plan also advertises improved buses and dedicated bus lanes, but middle-class commuters don't use buses.  Poor people do.

The plan includes some shops that it assumes will be used by area residents. These shops will have to compete with existing shops, however. The area has several shopping centers within a mile or two of the Village. No matter what grocery store is installed, four or five competing stores are nearby.

The plan also proposes improvements to the Landmark Mall, only a mile away. This mall, however, has been losing stores for several years. The mall cannot compete with other shopping centers in the area right now. The developers cannot assume that it will suddenly turn around, just because its renewed success fits into their plans.

 The City Council has been sold a bill of goods. When it should have been protecting its own residents, the council has permitted outside investors to move in with a plan that will fundamentally alter the character of the city. The City Council should locate its' conscience, and stop taking money from greedy speculators.

The Victims Protest

A recent meeting of the victim relocation committee (officially called the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee) was interrupted by about 30 Villagers of various ages clad in neon tee-shirts emblazoned with the name of their organization, Tenants and Workers United. These people did not want to wait for the end of the meeting to make comments, largely because many of their children were getting restless. A few young men and women stood up, and each made essentially the same comment: We have lived here for years, our children go to school here, we have jobs here, and we want to stay. The message was delivered with quiet defiance.

 After they left, the committee's chairman was indignant. He had never expected to be considered the enemy, he said. No, the committee was there to help people relocate. But the committee has become the spokesman for JBG, a giant corporation that clearly cares nothing for the suffering it is causing. The committee had better be ready to receive more protests of a similar nature.  

Arizona has passed a very bad law

The state of Arizona has recently passed a new law that persecutes latino-American citizens in the name of controlling immigration from Mexico.

Arguing about this law with conservatives makes my head explode.

This law is simply bad law. Only the Supreme Court can determine whether it is unconstitutional, yet one conservative after another declares it is constitutional. Evidently being a talking head on Fox gives you insight into the future decisions of SCOTUS.

But we can all see it is bad law, because it moves us closer to a police state, in which all private actions are closely watched by the police and no one is ever safe from police interference.

The law does not define what is "reasonable suspicion". It is vague and general, and relies on the discretion of the individual, unsupervised police officer. Whether there is proof the law will be abused is beside the point. The fact is, it could be abused, because it offers no guidelines for the police.

Some have assumed that the legislature would not have passed the law if they believed it to be unconstitutional. This is obviously not true. Laws are passed because the politicians believe their constituents want them passed. So this is a politically motivated law.

What is that motivation?

Many people of Arizona do not like latino immigrants. Furthermore, they have no objection to subjecting citizens of latino heritage to harassment by the police. So the legislature and governor scored political points by giving them a new law. Yielding to bigots and racists is not a good reason to create a new law.

Many people of Arizona are upset that the federal government has not resolved the issue of immigration. So the legislature passed the law to send a message to the federal government that immigration reform is necessary. By doing so, many of them must have realized that the states cannot legislate in areas where federal law takes precedence. Passing a bad law to punish the federal government makes no sense.

Many politicians of Arizona would like to make a popular gesture in an election year. This includes many Senators and Representatives, the very people that are responsible for making improvements to immigration laws. But these people are ducking their responsibility. Instead of taking responsibility for bad laws and making better ones, they blame the poor and powerless, the ones who are the targets of this very bad law.

This is a very bad law

1. Because it is at least partially motivated by racial hatred.
2. Because it is at least partially motivated by political animosity.
3. Because it permits the harassment and imprisonment of American citizens for the crime of being brown.