Mediaboss Marketing

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

In the sweeping progressive movement to elect district attorneys to reform the criminal justice system, theres perhaps no greater prize than Los Angeles. Its home to the biggest district attorneys office in the country by far, and to the biggest jail system. Weeks after the March 3 primary, the final ballots are still being counted, but enough are in to know the next step, and progressives are cheering: Candidate George Gascn, running on a platform of lowering the prison population, clinched just enough votes to proceed to a runoff in November against the more moderate incumbent, Jackie Lacey.

In Los Angeles, the top two candidates in a primary qualify for a runoff unless one wins more than half the total vote. As of last Friday, Lacey, the first African American and first woman to serve as district attorney in Los Angeles, had received 48.7 percent of the vote. Gascon, the former district attorney in San Francisco, had 28.2 percent, and public defender Rachel Rossi had 23.1 percent. There were still about 20,100 ballots left to count as of late last week, but even if Lacey won them all, it would not be enough for her to meet the threshold to avoid the runoff.

Thank you, LA. I hope to earn your vote this November, Gascn tweeted Friday.

The district attorneys race in Los Angeles has been described by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors as the single most important DA race in the country. Its important not only because of the citys size, but also because Los Angeles sees so many police shootingsmore than almost anywhere else in the countryand because prosecutors at the district attorneys office decide whether to press charges against cops who kill. Lacey has faced protests for years from Black Lives Matter activists because her office has only filed charges against one of more than 500 officers who fatally shot people since she took office in 2012. Cullors endorsed both Gascn and Rossi, who each made police accountability a centerpiece of their campaigns. Jackie Lacey promised reform but has continuedfueling mass incarceration and destroying black and brown communities in Los Angeles, Cullors tweeted ahead of the primary.

Around the country, its rare for district attorneys to prosecute police, since the law is heavily weighted in favor of law enforcement. But district attorneys in other cities have lost reelection in recent years after police shootings of unarmed Black teens like Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald. It could be a real liability for her, Rachel Barkow, a law professor at NYU who writes about efforts to reform district attorneys offices, told me recently when I asked about Laceys campaign.

Gascns background is not what you might expect from someone championing himself as a reformist: He worked for decades as a police officer and chief before becoming San Franciscos district attorney in 2011. And like Lacey, he struggled with police accountability during his tenure. In fact, he did not charge any officers accused of fatal shootings. But in other ways, he proved to be a leader in the progressive prosecutor movement: He co-authored a ballot measure that reduced penalties for certain drug offenses, to keep more people out of prison. (Lacey opposed the measure.) In 2019, he supported state legislation that would make it easier for district attorneys to prosecute police. And unlike Lacey, hehas pledged to create a do not call list of disreputable officers, to avoid relying on their testimony in court proceedings.

Thetop candidatesalso diverge in other ways. While Lacey has sent 22 people to death row, all of them people of color, Gascn promises not to seek the death penalty. And though Lacey supports bail reform, she does not go as far as Gascn, who wants to abolish cash bail. Lacey has criticized Gascn for being soft on crime, citing rising car break-ins in San Francisco.

Before the runoff, Lacey will look to capitalize on her strong support from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and the local union that represents police officers. In a sign of how much is at stake for law enforcement in November, the union representing the LAPD has donated $1 million to an anti-Gascn super-PAC. Lacey, meanwhile, is benefiting from police donations: Almost all of the $2.2 million in contributions to outside committees supporting her have come from law enforcement unions.

Link:
The Single Most Important DA Race in the Country Is Headed to a Runoff - Mother Jones

After Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders was no longer the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Within four days of Sanderss Nevada victory, the Democratic establishment roused itself in a move publicly initiated by South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, privately managed by still unknown hidden actors, and culminating in the decisions by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out. Then, even more remarkably, the Democratic primary electorates in most of 14 states did their part eagerly and obediently: voting, in sum, to put Joe Biden in the lead. In the primaries since that point, Biden has moved further ahead. So far, the Democrats have produced a feat of coordination rarely seen, requiring mutual understanding among the principal actors and the sacrifice, or lowering, of ambitious hopes by the dropouts from the campaignall spurred by their ferocious dislike of President Donald Trump. The disdain is sharpened by the bitter pain for the party of government of writhing in the role of frustrated opposition for a joyless three years. Democrats rallied together just when everyone had said that party loyalty was killed by the primaries. Never Sanderswithout the sloganseems to have put Never Trump to shame.

Some Democrats wanted to deny Sanders the nomination because he would lose the election; others because he might win it. This desperate, combined fear of losing or spoiling an opportunity has brought stunning success for Biden, at least for the present. It is not difficult to see, nor partisan to say, that he is not a strong candidate, but if he can keep his calm, he may be the charm that defeats Trump. He is the lucky beneficiary of the united desire of most Democrats not to have Sanders as their candidate. African-American voters led the move on Bidens behalfa display of strategic prudence in a group that tends to vote together, usually regardless of what strategy might dictate.

Yet after Sanderss rise and probable fall, the question remains of how he got so far and why his socialist policies have been so persuasive. He remains in the game, having come a very long way from irrelevance and isolation as a senator ignored by colleagues, the single representative of a fringe party, and a socialist in the land of never socialism. He is very American in his refusal to be discouraged, and should he win, his persistence would be another chapter in the very American story of success against the odds due to persistence. As it now stands, he will not be the Democratic nominee, but his policies will be the Democratic platformdiluted, no doubt, but not opposed.

How to explain this rise among the young and those wishing to be young? Theres nothing new about Sanders except his sudden prominence. After all, he has been around for a long time, saying the same things about greedy corporations, the selfish rich, and war-mongering policies that he calls out now. Though experienced and shrewd in debate, in declaiming, he lacks style, wit, geniality, and foresight. His gestures consist of waving and pointing; his tone is grim, heavy, and accusingneither elevating nor ingratiating. He prefers anger to empathy, and his smiles are rare because, candidly, he finds nothing to smile at. Somehow, though, students like him as if he were a grouchy grandpa blessed by the fountain of truth. So, setting aside his personal character, let us look at the truth he presents to his followers and to the rest of the country.

Sanders stands by the truth that what we need is political revolution against the 1 percent and the establishment. He does not mention the well-offthe middle class, elsewhere called the bourgeoisiewho, as defenders of private property (rather than extreme wealth), are the usual enemies of socialism. It is hard to suppose that a country as large as the United States could be run democratically by the 1 percent without the connivance or enthusiastic support of a large fraction of the 99 percent. So, Sanders mostly aims his fire at the establishment that is defined more by stodgy self-interest than by extreme wealth. In fact, a good part of the establishment has been in the Democratic Party, and so unwelcoming to Sanders that he has kept out of it. The vagueness of the establishment contrasts with the exactness of the 1 percent, but at the same time, conjures up a network by which the 1 percent does its dirty work against the hapless 99 percent.

Sanders resembles Trump in his relentless attacks on the establishment. Trump challenged the Republican establishment, yet in his policies has been mostly a Republicanif with some rude adjustments in trade, alliances, and immigration that appeal to some, if not all, Republicans. These are not necessarily minor moves, but they are within the compass of innovation that any new Republican president might attempt. Trump has some accomplishments as well, though they always come lathered in the glaze of his self-praise. His particular criticisms of the Republican establishment come in the context of his more general violations of norms of civility and propriety that sustain both parties and set limits to their partisanship: this is the establishment implied and, in practice, taught by the Constitution. Whether Trump, with the formidable political skills he has shown, can weather more general disgust at these violations will be tested in the 2020 election.

Sanders will not face criticism for a challenge to manners, but he offers substantive policies much farther than Trumps from the thoughts of ordinary Democrats, represented so staunchly by African-American voters. Wedded in a lifelong marriage to these policies, Sanders is less of an egoist and opportunist than Trump, which saves him from shameless self-promotion but also allows him less room for maneuver. His attack on the Establishment is truly a revolution against the inequalities of private property and shows disregard, even denial, of the prosperity that they have produced. He is content with electioneering as opposed to violent coercion, and he avoids the language of Marxism as well as its claim to be science. He talks like the demagogues in the collegiate style of the late 1960s, though without violent language. He is not a Democrat, but having won so much support from Democrats in his domestic program, he shows where the party isand where it might be. In foreign policy, what is perhaps the true, hidden Bernie is revealed in his consistent partiality to Marxist regimes.

Democrats, let me suggest, are, have been, and will be the party of inclusion, the party of all as understood by the majoritythe peoples party. It is thus the party of the whole, of the community, emphasizing what is common to all. Since early in the twentieth century, Democrats have been in the grip of progressives not satisfied with the degree and extent of equality within and espoused by their party. With the help of (unequal) experts of many kinds in social science, progressives have sought to equalize every inequality that appears to stand in the way of true and lasting community. They have advanced their cause since the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, always on the attack, using legislation to enlist the government in their fight. The New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s are the high points of progressive achievement. But in 2010, with the government takeover of supervision of the nations health in Obamacare, that advance reached a pointof what, exactly?

Not a point of success, from which to look back on with satisfaction. The era of Big Government is over, proclaimed Bill Clinton in 1996, a little early. Health care then remained on the agenda. But now, the era of sizable advance seems over, and all that remains are incremental gains to already-established programs like the ones Hillary Clinton proposed in her 2016 campaign. Of course, the debt, deficits, and bureaucracy from Big Government are not over. The debt and deficits have been further entrenched by the successful Republican strategy of tax cuts; these have not starved the welfare state as intended, but their success inhibits Democrats and has hindered them in advocating new taxes since Walter Mondale tried and failed in his 1984 presidential campaign. The bureaucracy of Big Governmentthe deep state or the swampremains a target for Trump. And a reasonable accommodation between the desire for equality and the necessity of inequalitieseven inequalities necessary to produce the experts of Progressivismis left unexamined and unsought.

Thus, the drama or melodrama of Big Government is over, and only the costly fact remains. It is in good part popular, just as Democrats hoped and Republicans fearedtoo popular in its benefits even to touch. But to pay for it and to live with its irritating inefficiencies are not so popular. Republicans cannot dismantle Big Government and Democrats cannot take much pride in it; so, the two parties share and exchange victories in what seems to both a stalemate, and in which each party thinks the other has the advantage. In this situation of common dissatisfaction, the Democrats might have abandoned progressivism, declaring victory, but now wary of wonks and professors with their plans and programs. They could have returned to being the popular party they used to be, the party of the people as they are, not as they might be if instructed by the wisdom of experts to think differently and abandon both their prejudices and their common sense.

But the Democrats have not done that. Instead, they have raised their bet on progressivism and tried to revive it from its doldrums by increasing its ambition and changing its character. Never mind the burden of debt and the sludge of bureaucracy that accompany the welfare state. Its failures are not as disappointing as its successes. Ambitious persons, progressives or not, do not rest content with security; they want excess. Their youthful desire is fed with the promise of modern idealism to seek what is impossible and to glory in its unattainable perfection: a society without inequalities of wealth, without sexual harassment, without foreign enemies, and without Republicans, who stand for all the obstacles to perfection. So, the Democrats narrowed their focus to the richest of the rich, the 1 percentand they turned toward the foolhardy socialism of Bernie Sanders. In a time of peace and stable prosperity, lacking any excuse, they went left. They did this well before Trump appeared to goad them on.

Democrats have tried to stimulate their partisans by demanding higher taxes on the rich, the 1 percent. In this they are joined by those among the 1 percent who finance their party because they are actually very rich billionaire Democratsa phenomenon of our time. This new fact suggests that the Democrats might actually treat the rich as the goose that laid golden eggs, prudently exploiting them, contrary to the foolish practice of the owner of the goose in Aesops fable, who greedily opened it up and killed it. With a bow to this ancient moral lesson, Democrats should keep billionaires fat and happy by preserving and increasing their wealth, taxing it moderatelyas is done nowrather than taking it away. It is inconsistent to set a policy to exploit wealth and then take it away. Why not accept the rich as donors, as Sanderss campaign rivals have done? One should be honoring them in gratitude, rather than insulting them as predators. One could construct a House of Lords for the 1 percent to keep them proud and content.

This is, of course, an argumentum ad absurdum, refuting by exaggerating to the absurd. But that is just what Sanders is doing to the welfare state of the progressives. He has set goals for free benefits as if he were mocking the seriousness of the welfare state, upping the penny ante of its comparatively modest benefits that are already unaffordable. Some supporters speak sententiously of the ills of late capitalism, which is really hugely successful capitalism that has enriched allespecially the rich. Does it make sense to bankrupt it and replace it with late socialism? Late socialism lives its imaginary life off the riches of late capitalism but gets its moral support by criticizing the motives of its financiers. These are the very motives that it wants to plant in the minds of the poorto become effortlessly rich by living off others.

The exaggeration of the campaign to finance progressive big government out of the pockets of the 1 percent supplies a hint for understanding the sudden adoption of Sanderss socialism by so many progressive partisans, plus the surge toward the left by Democrats unable to swallow the whole pill but wanting its effect. Something new is wanted to enliven the progressive cause. At its time of high tide, it lacks the excitement that it could raise at its inception and at its peaks. One possible solution has been to veer off economics into identity politics. But identity politics, like the welfare state, seems to be at a state of repletion. The movement to gain civil rights for black citizenscivil rights in America, hence colorblindhas degenerated into Black Lives Matter, based on color and no longer devotedly American. Then identity politics spread to women and to gays, and recently has come to the struggling transgender people. To validate these claims on behalf of the vulnerable, experts in expressive categorization arose, their jargon replacing the equations of the progressive economists that gave advice to the welfare state.

Identity politics addresses speech, especially pronouns, rather than wealth, and it rules through political correctness. Yet, as with the welfare state, the identity state has gone about as far as it can go, and it lacks the popular touch of an appeal to the poor. Sanders and his late socialism dance with it, but only for a turn. After all, the main policy of identity politics, affirmative action, suffers badly from the moral taint of bourgeois careerism. It is inconsistent to attack the establishment and to claim places in it at the same time.

Another rival for socialism is the politics of climate change, combined with it in the Green New Deal. Progressives welcome hostile climate change because it emphasizes vulnerability, rather than strength, and extends universally to the human race rather than being confined to one country, like Sanderss socialism. Climate change requires scientistsanother set of expertsto monitor its advance and especially to defend its existence and its menace. In this task, as with progressive economics, bad news is good and joyful work. At the same time, climate change is said to be humanly causedthat is, by technologyand thus in the larger sense a consequence of science. Climate change is truly a postmodern concern about science, and the scientists who describe it are warning us against science, like the climate-change deniers. Sanders raises the specter of a bad climate, as he uses identity politics, only as additions to his economic case for socialism. He mentions neither the drawbacks of science nor Marxs praise of the exploitative marvels of capitalism.

In the same way, Sanders attacks Americas political system and yet asks for votes within it. Is not the establishment in that system mainly composed of those who have won elections in the past or have supported those winners? A more impartial view might suggest that the American system profits greatly from its supply of leaders in both parties with political experience, ready to argue in public and persuade in private. This supply, one could say, is our informal Senate outside the formal Senate, consisting of intelligent, and, to be sure, less-than-intelligent has-beens. These figures work with the media, another informal institutionan establishment against the establishmentcheering and damning with unending worry, whether partisan or not.

While in a reflective mood, one can look more deeply at Sanders and the Democrats. Anyone who thought socialism was gone for good, its reputation blackened by association with the murder of Communism and by the failures of its democratic variety in the welfare state, was wrong. Socialism has a permanent basis in our political nature, particularly in the nature of our liberalismthe generic liberalism of the great seventeenth-century philosophers Locke and Montesquieuthat proposes a society of individual rights and is held today in different versions by both liberals and conservatives. This liberal philosophy is always open to the criticism that individuals need to be made more equal so that they can form a true community. This is the path to the Left.

Yet there is also a permanent objection from the Right, that individuals must be treated differently according to their differing talents, virtues, and contributions. This is the path to the Right, to conservatism and, to the extremes beyond, to dictatorship. In our society, these two paths, though perhaps compatible in theory, will always lead in opposite directions, toward opposing communities of greater equality and greater nobility, each with its moderate and extreme versions. Our parties want progress, but toward different ends and with different means. To decide which is correct takes an exercise of prudence in the circumstances of the moment and with a view to what is lost as well as what is gained. Let us admit that Sanders has a point in the dissatisfaction he gives voice to but does not understand. He and his partisans need to get used to the continuing existence of the Right. On the right, there is or should be a resigned acceptance, under our common belief, of the unending challenge from its friends on the left. American self-government consists in continuing partisanship between parties understandably dissatisfied with it.

Harvey Mansfield is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Read this article:
Sanders's Revolution May Have Stalled, But His Platform Survives - City Journal

Illustration: Oscar Bustamante (The Root/G-O)Clapback MailbagEach Friday, we select the best (or worst) emails, tweets, DMs and comments from our readers and respond to them in the The Root's Clapback Mailbag.

Todays mailbag is dedicated to the people who are laughed at, made fun of and dismissed as a joke. Every day, the entire staff at The Root engages in a brutal act of bullying against certain members of our team. Its becoming institutional and Im tired of it.

Whenever any person suggests that we cover a story, the writers and editors here will belittle the suggested news topic and point out that we have already covered the story. They will smugly accuse the person of not reading The Root, as if they expect that person to read every story that we publish.

This has to stop.

To point out the ridiculousness of their bullying, todays mailbag will point out that there are a lot of people who may have missed something that we wrote. There is no reason to make fun of certain people just because they may have overlooked a news item that someone here wrote.

G/O Media may get a commission

I am certain people.

Todays mailbag is dedicated to me.

This content of this first series of tweets was also DMed to me concerning an article written by staff writer Joe Jurado:

Dear Max and 1onenine9,

I share your concern about the abolition movement getting no respect from this publication. I agree.

Even though the prison abolitionist movement has gained a lot of recent support, The Root has repeatedly ignored the newfound love for the movement. Sure, Joe Jurado wrote that article. Sure, we covered Ava DuVernays 2016 documentary about this very subject, which prompted many to take a look at the injustice of prison slavery.

Its not that we dont respect the work of abolitionists like Max Parthas. If we knew who he was, or even listened to his podcast, we probably still wouldnt care. But to be fair, there is a very good reason why we have overlooked those who have gotten on board the prison abolition moment.

Weve been talking about this shit since we existed.

Before people even knew what the phrase prison abolition even meant, The Root has been the leading vocal advocate for this issue. Before podcasts. Before you could tweet about it. Before you could DM me on Facebook.

Before Teen Vogue got woke and started writing about how icky prisons were, The Root was paying prison abolitionist scholars like Robert Perkinson to write about the issue a decade ago. Way back in 2011, we hired a law professor to write about mass incarcerations destructive toll on America. That law professor was Sherrilyn Ifill, who became the president of the Legal Defense Fundthe organization that took the lead in pushing the Obama administration to reduce the use of private prisons and end the use of mandatory minimums.

Five years before our co-founder Henry Louis Gates Jr. was the featured historian in 13th, Nsenga Burton wrote this in The Root:

The only thing sadder than having more men in prison now than in slavery during 1850 is that many dont understand that slavery is still legal within the prison system. Indeed, it is the only place where slavery is still legal in the United States. It is clear that our community is in trouble. What are we going to do about it?

Id challenge anyone to find any media outletblack or whitewho has covered mass incarceration, prison reform and the evil of Americas criminal justice system more extensively than this one. And were still writing about it every day.

Joe Jurado knows this.

Now, I havent specifically asked him about his motivation for writing the article that offended you. But I imagine, after seeing our stories on the use of prison labor to fight wildfires, after writing about people dying in prison, juveniles receiving life without parole, men who wrongfully spent decades in prison, others being executed for not killing someone, ex-felons losing their constitutional right to vote and the cruel and unusual conditions of prisons across America...

I imagine how Joe felt when one of our editors told him to write about the joyous occasion of Minnesota officially ending slavery. I imagine that he thought about the importance of this bill that will not have a single impact on Minnesotas use of prison labor. I imagine he wondered if hed be challenged to an open debate by a guy hes never met who just started doing a weekly podcast on the thing that he does every day and his company has been diligently working toward for years.

I dont know how Joe felt, but since you wondered how Michael Harriot felt, heres an exact transcript of my reaction after reading your tweet and your challenge to my coworker:

I mean, this is cool but it seems like one of those instances where folks are going to pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing.

Someone took offense to our article about Spades:

From: PatTo: Michael Harriot

Dear Michael,

I regard you as one of the best and most unapologetically fearless writers of our time. But sometimes I see stuff like this and wonder what youre doing. The country is going through one of the biggest events in history and your writing about Spades.

I know The Roots is not the NY Times but our people still look to you for information and in a lot of ways you drive the conversation. It would be nice to see yall care about black lives and not take everything as a joke.

Dear Pat,

Gregory Prince died.

Also, last week, the police got away with shooting and killing a black man. There was also a racist teacher at a school. Someone used the n-word against someone. Another person was discriminated against by their company. If I had the time or inclination to look, Im sure I could find the link to our stories about these incidents.

Id rather think about Fruity Pebbles.

When I was 12, my best friend, Gregory Prince, died during a sickle cell anemia crisis. He was really my first friend when I started going to school. He, and another one of my friends, Troy, were both nerds, as was I. Every day, Troy, Gregory and I would meet at our schools canteen, buy a snack (Gregory always bought the Rice Krispies Treats) and gather on this patch of grass and do nerd shit. We would read MAD Magazine, talk about whether wed go back in time or into the future if we had a time machine (the correct answer is backward) or argue about stupid shit.

One time, we tried to come up with the perfect snack. Troy said the perfect dessert would be a sweet potato cake. I argued that Krispy Kreme has already invented the perfect dessert but Gregory argued that making a Rice Krispies Treat out of Fruity Pebbles would be epic. While we all agreed that Fruity Pebbles is a top-five cereal (Capn Crunch Berries is No. 1, dont debate me on this), I insisted that Fruity Pebble treat would be too sweet. We never got to the bottom of it because the bell rang.

Also, Gregory Prince died.

Troy and I were both devastated when we heard about Gregory. We were both pallbearers at his funeral. But the scariest part about it was that I knew that Troy and I would have to eventually talk about it when we went back to school because Troy was one of those people who liked to talk about things.

On the first day back to school, I went to the canteen to buy my snack. It wasnt too weird that Gregory wasnt there because he often missed school when he was sick. Troy came up to me when I was in line and told me that I didnt have to buy a snack because he brought one from home that his mom had made for both of us.

She made the Fruity Pebbles treat!

After we sat there and ate them, I knew it was time for that conversation. Troy liked to talk about things.

You know what? Troy said. I think Gregory was right. This is the best one.

Then we started talking about whether wed rather have Knight Rider or James Bonds car. (Knight Rider is the correct answer. Dont debate me on this.)

And that is black life.

When we talk about blackness or say Black Lives Matter, we arent only talking about police brutality, racism or Americas 400-year inhumane treatment of black bodies. Blackness is not a death sentence. Black people are more than a sack of bones and flesh meant for whipping and shooting.

Blackness is also your aunt doing the Electric Slide at a family reunion. Its the soul-grabbing joy when the choir sings the a capella part. Its laughing on the porch eating sipping red Kool-Aid with an alive first cousin. Its running a dime on your neighbor at a cookout.

I love being black.

And if I am gonna have to talk about the pain, I have a responsibility to talk about the joy. Its quite literally why black lives matter. The failure to do both is why people get the impression that the whole of blackness can be summed up in conversations about poverty, violence and discrimination.

We are more than that.

And Fruity Pebbles treats are better than Rice Krispies Treats.

Dont debate me on this. I know its true.

Because Gregory Prince died.

And Black Lives Matter.

More:
The Root's Clapback Mailbag: What Is We Doing? - The Root

(NEW YORK) -- Marilyn Mosby is part of the 1% -- an elite group of 45 women of color among the nearly 2,400 elected prosecutors in the United States.

Usually being a part of an exclusive club is loaded with perks and in some cases inspires envy from those who yearn to join the ranks.

But for many of these pioneering women, the process has not only been fraught, but filled with outright danger, with people not only targeting them because they are women, but because they are black as well -- what some call misogynoir (a term coined by scholar Moya Bailey and creator Trudy that describes racism and misogyny towards black women).

Threats and challenges to their authority have come from a range of sources -- anonymous hecklers, public officials and even crossed racial barriers, according to voicemails, emails and interviews with several of the women.

Being in this club is also exceedingly lonely, the women and experts say, which has added to the anxiety of the daily difficulties they face in doing their jobs. As such, some have banded together in a Sisters Circle to support each other.

"I represent 1% of all elected prosecutors in the country," said Baltimore City's State Attorney Marilyn Mosby in an interview with ABC News.

ABC News interviewed a group of these top law enforcement officials to highlight the challenges they face both as women and minorities amid Black and Women's History Months. While many elected officials face threats and unhappy constituents, the challenges to this small group of women are unique, because of race and gender, experts say.

"Prosecutors are the ones who decide who are going to be charged, what they're gonna be charged with, what sentence recommendations they're going to make. They are a key and probably one of the most important and vital stakeholders within the criminal justice system," said Mosby who says she learned early how not to internalize receiving hateful, sexist and racist attacks.

"It's not even about you personally, it's about what you represent. And what you represent to the status quo...The keepers of the status quo, are tones that establish over the criminalization of poor black and brown people, mass incarceration," said Mosby.

Prior to the November 2019 election cycle, 20% of the population are women of color, but represented 1.87% of the 2,396 elected prosecutor titles -- district attorney, prosecuting attorney, county attorney, county prosecuting attorney, state's attorney, solicitor general and attorney, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign (RDC), a project with the Women Donors Network (WDN), the only organization believed to keep this recent data.

The numbers were lower in 2015, when Mosby was first elected - just 29 women of color, according to RDC (representing 1.3%).

Mosby says she had a mission to reform the criminal justice system in her city and at the age of 35 she beat an incumbent and became the youngest leading prosecutor in the country.

Shortly after Mosby's win, she met her idol who was also someone "who looked like myself," she said, former California attorney general and one-time Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. Harris was the first black woman to serve as the state's attorney general and the first woman to serve as district attorney for San Francisco, elected in 2003.

"I was so impressed by this woman," said Mosby.

But, Mosby's six-hour meeting with Harris couldnt prepare her for what was to come after she charged six police officers in connection to the April 2015 death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.

Gray was arrested by the officers for allegedly possessing a knife. A bystander captured the arrest on cellphone video, where Gray was seen dragged by two officers and put into the back of the police van. Gray later died from a spinal cord injury he allegedly suffered while in police custody. After three of the officers were acquitted after trial and one ended with a mistrial, Mosby dismissed the charges against the rest.

"I didn't anticipate the hate mail and the death threats and/or being thrust into the international spotlight," Mosby said.

Two days after Mosby announced criminal charges against the police officers, on May 1, 2015, she received an email with the subject "Obituary of Marilyn Mosby."

The email described Mosby being "gunned down in cold blood walking into the courthouse" and her husband, state delegate Nick J. Mosby was "found tortured and dismembered." The gruesome email ended with, "several family members, related to Mr. and Mrs. Mosby, have been reported 'missing', the police are not currently investigating and feel that none of the missing are significant."

The threats were turned over to investigators and no arrest were made, Mosby said.

Over the next five years, Mosby says she has received hundreds of sexist, racist and threatening messages accompanied with accusations of being anti-police -- a false narrative, said Mosby, who says she comes from a law enforcement family. Her dad was a police officer and her grandfather was one of the first African American police officers in Massachusetts, she told ABC News.

Even after the Gray case ended with no convictions in state court and no federal charges filed against the officers, Mosby says the hateful letters, voicemails, emails and social media posts continued.

"I'm not fazed by the hate and the political rhetoric and the implicit bias and the 'misogynoir' coverage that I have to deal with on a day to day basis, because that doesn't define me. It's -- it's bigger than me," said Mosby. "It's, not about me, it's about what I represent to a system that has been -- and it has disproportionately impacted communities of color for far too long."

Despite the threats, Mosby says she pursued her agenda, creating an alternative to incarceration program -- modeled after Harris' national "Back on Track" program -- for low-level felony drug offenders called AIM to B'More. And after the U.S. Department of Justice found corruption within the Baltimore Police Department's now defunct Gun Trace Task Force in 2016, she requested that almost 800 convictions tied to those officers be thrown out, according to the Baltimore Sun.

A year after being sworn into office, Mosby noticed a rise in black women running for and winning lead positions in prosecutor offices across the country.

"I...made a promise to myself that I would be supportive of black women in these positions," said Mosby. "And what I was able to do was to create a network of support... understanding and recognizing that, you know, some of the challenges and the obstacles that we go through on a day to day basis are unlike anyone else."

She created what she calls a "Sisters Circle," a support group for women of color leading criminal justice agencies. The group is comprised of Mosby and 11 other black women prosecutors.

Mosby's promise to support her fellow sisters in justice did not go unnoticed. In January, the "Sisters Circle" traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to support Circuit Court Attorney Kim Gardner, who was announcing that she had filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against her city, police unions and others for, the suit alleges, launching a racist campaign to push her out of office.

Prior to the press conference, 11 other prosecutors including Bronx County District Attorney Darcel Clark, not in attendance, signed a statement in support of Gardner.

"Although people aren't picketing in front of my house or sending death threats, it can easily be me one day," said Clark, a member of the "Sisters Circle" and the first black woman district attorney in New York State. "All it takes is one case for that to happen to me and if that does happen, I want them to be there for me like I am there for them."

Gardner, 44, is the first woman and black woman to lead the city's circuit court.

"I didn't know I was going to win...I never did a citywide race before," said Gardner, who received over 40% of the votes to win in 2016. "I was humbled and I am humbled."

Gardner hit the ground running after she was sworn in by teaming up with the Vera Institute of Justice's Reshaping Prosecution program that implemented reforms, policies and provide alternatives to incarceration.

"Justice is not just sending people to a jail cell, it's about how we don't do more harm to society and be ministers of justice," said Gardner.

So when Gardner received a complaint from a woman alleging that Missouri Governor Eric Greitens invaded her privacy by taking compromising photographs of her, felony invasion of privacy charges were filed against the governor in 2018.

Gardner alleges that a public relations firm hired by the police union coordinated an effort to ruin her reputation if she did not dismiss the charges against Greitens. The case was also investigated by the state's House committee and found the woman, who was Greitens mistress from a 2015 affair, "credible," Gardner said.

"Some told me I would lose my license and I would lose my career if I didn't do what they said, but I still went forward," said Gardner who endured protests outside her office and photos of her face attached to caricatures.

Greitens ultimately reached an agreement with Gardner's office in which he would resign from office and stipulate that prosecutors had enough evidence to go forward to trial, according to a court document obtained by ABC News, although prosecutors also acknowledged that the trial outcome was not certain.

Weeks after Gardner held the Jan. 14 press conference with "Sisters Circle" members Mosby, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachel Rollins and Orange/Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala by her side, she says she received anonymous hate mail at her office and placed on her car.

Gardner read one of the letters to ABC News in which she was called a racial epithet and the writer hoped the Ku Klux Klan hangs her from a tree.

"When you are trying to change the system, I knew it was going to be difficult, what I didn't prepare for was the racial divide that continues to say I can be controlled because I am a black female," said Gardner. "I knew I would get backlash, haters, the vitriol, people who been here in this office for 20 years said they never seen anything like this."

In response to the lawsuit, the police officer's union released a statement calling the discrimination allegations "frivolous, desperate and pathetic." In court documents, they denied all the allegation.

When Mosby returned back to Baltimore she received a racist and profanity-laced voicemail which she posted online with the caption, in part, "This is why #IStandWithKimGardner..."

Gardner said it's disturbing to still have to deal with racism in 2020. "It's troubling," she said but says she "fears no one."

Gloria Blackwell, senior vice president of fellowship and programs at the non-profit advocacy organization American Association of University Women (AAUW), which the mission is to advance gender equity for women and girls through research, education, and advocacy, said its no surprise that black women in leadership are faced with racist and sexist attacks.

"It's not an accident that we are talking about this still in 2020...It is rooted in racism and in a system that was created long before we got here," said Blackwell. "Black women are educated and we did everything we have been told to do to move in the professional world. Even when we get to those positions, we always find that we have to consistently prove ourselves...but we are stuck by people who control the narrative. It's a double bind in the workplace, someone once called it 'double jeopardy.'"

And Lisa Flores, a counseling psychology professor at the University of Missouri, said that the higher up women of color go, the more isolated they become.

"Moving up the ranks usually means being alone or being the one of the only because there aren't a lot of other women of color at higher levels to turn to for advice or to ask if something wrong is happening," said Flores.

When Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx decided to run for office, she says she was not attracted to the idea of becoming a politician, but rather improving the community she came from. Foxx grew up on the North side of Chicago in the Cabrini-Green housing projects, is the survivor of sexual assault and earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Illinois University and its School of Law.

Foxx, 47, says she became an attorney to advocate for children in foster care in the county's public guardian's office.

The longer Foxx was engulfed in the legal system, the more she says she saw and wanted to be among those who can make power moves to truly fix the system. In 2016, Foxx was elected as the first black female state attorney of the second largest prosecutor's office in the country.

"So when women of color are in a position to try to break down the narrative, barriers, and bring in policies to help everyone, they are looking at it as she's black and will only help black people," said Blackwell. "And because of that they have to tear that person down, question her qualifications, find ways to make others question why this person was elected in the first place."

In her first term, Foxx declined to prosecute over 5,000 low-level shop lifting and drug offenses and prosecuted fewer felony offenses that would have been pursued by the previous administration, according to an Oct. 2019 investigation by the Marshall Project. Many offenders were diverted to alternative treatment programs.

Foxx's policy changes and prosecution decisions became the topic of discussion for an anonymous pro-police blog where posters expressed offensive opinions about her. Throughout the blog, Foxx's last name is sexualized with an extra "x" at the end and she's often referred to as "Crimesha.

"Women of color are often the target of sexist and racist stereotypes -- it is a form of double jeopardy because they are members of multi-oppressed groups," said Flores. "The experience of white women and women of color are the same, but different because of the racism behind it."

"They would post that I'm a criminal, a thug...the name Crimesha is soaked in racism and misogyny, they even posted my address," said Foxx, before taking a pause to discuss the most high-profile case that pushed her into the national spotlight.

During the early morning of Jan. 29, 2019, Jussie Smollett, then an actor on the show "Empire," reported that he was allegedly the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack by two men. It was later alleged by the Chicago Police Department that Smollett was untruthful about the attack.

Foxx agreed to drop charges against Smollett in exchange for community service and forfeiting his $10,000 bond, a move that sparked outrage and criticism from across the country.

Smollett was indicted in February for making false reports to police that he was a victim of a hate crime after a special prosecutor investigated the state's investigation into his case. He denies the charges and stands by his story.

"We received so much hate mail and threats," said Foxx, adding that, a majority of the messages called her racial slurs and derogatory terms for a woman.

Foxx was most disturbed when a protest in front of her office in April 2019 was, according The Chicago Sun Times as well as witnesses and photographs from the rally, believed to be three white nationalists groups.

"It was scary...what did we do for white nationalists to get involved?" asked Foxx.

"I'm here to do a job...with the misogyny and the racism, you have to develop a thick skin and you wash it off, you have to brush it off as a part of the job," said Foxx, who is up for re-election this year.

Foxx, a member of the "Sisters Circle," says she is relieved that she is able to lean on other women in her position.

"The sisters in this circle are everything," said Foxx, who met Mosby while campaigning.

Here are some of the other women in this elite group and their experiences:

When Ayala was elected into office, she was the first black woman to earn that spot. Ayala did not imagine that halfway through her first term she would announce that she will not seek re-election.

Prior to Ayala getting sworn in, she says her passion was to become a sex crime prosecutor and pursing the prevention of domestic violence related homicides.

In 2016, the state's Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional and in Ayala's first days in office, she was greeted with 27 death penalty cases to re-evaluate.

"I was now asking 'why are we trying to legitimatize these cases?'" said Ayala, 45, who says she researched the issue and realized executions are "not a deterrent, it's all about vengeance."

When she announced she wouldnt pursue death penalty sentencings with first-degree murder cases, the governor revoked her office's right to prosecute those cases and gave them to a neighboring prosecutor's office.

When she sued the former Governor Rick Scott to get her power back to prosecute first-degree murder cases, $1.3 million was cut from her budget and she said she received death threats and a noose in the mail.

"This type of experience was more than just disagreement it was racially charged," said Ayala.

One of the online attackers was B. Stanley McCullars, a supervisor with the Seminole County Clerk of Courts, who ultimately was forced to resign from his job.

McCullars wrote on Facebook in 2017 that Ayala should be hung from a tree and receive the death penalty after she did not seek capital punishment for Markeith Loyd, who was accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend and a state trooper.

McCullars apologized, deleted the post and then went on to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and his former employer for violating his First Amendment rights.

"I had to testify in court that it was wrong to let someone have the right to say they have right to say that I should be killed. The federal judge threw it out," Ayala told ABC News.

McCullars has not filed an appeal, online records show.

Regarding the Loyd case -- one of three first-degree murder cases the governor revoked -- the state's Supreme Court ruled against Ayala.

"I knew I had a conflict I had to grapple with and I refuse to grapple when pursing justice," said Ayala who announced last May that she wouldnt seek reelection and be the signature to the "wheels of death."

Despite the higher court's ruling, Loyd did not receive a death sentence, but life without the possibility of parole.

Five months after Ayala filed the lawsuit against Scott, she decided to withdraw the claim and created a recommendation panel of seven assistant state attorneys which would decide if the death penalty should be sought for first-degree murder cases, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

"There still hasn't been a death sentence in my circuit and several cases were converted to life sentences since they took away those cases from my office," said Ayala.

Although Ayala is removing herself from the state attorney spotlight, she is not leaving the legal field. Instead she will focus on continuing to legally better the community with conversion programs and supporting crime victims.

Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey, 63, is the first black woman to oversee the largest prosecutor's office in the country with almost 1,000 attorneys on staff.

"From day one, when you first get this job, you have to know you have a target on your head," said Lacey. "You're making tough and hard decisions...There is never love for the district attorney."

She is up for re-election for her third term this year and is not immune to criticism. In fact, she says her biggest critics are activists with the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) for a number of reasons including what they say are the low number of police officers charged for allegedly killing people of color.

Since January 2012, the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office has filed one case involving an on-duty shooting by a Los Angeles County sheriffs deputy and three cases where off-duty officers were charged with murder, a spokesman with the prosecutor's office confirmed to ABC News.

The office's Justice System Integrity Division has released reports since 2016 of their investigations into police involved fatal and non-fatal shootings. In January and February, the office investigated 21 police involved fatal and non-fatal shootings and did not file any charges. There were also 11 in November and December 2019 that also resulted with no charges getting filed.

Lacey said during her two terms she has made efforts to bridge the gap with the community.

"I'm the first African American woman to hold this job and the first to open the door to talk to the community," she told ABC News during an interview in February.

At a 2018 town hall meeting, it turned into the audience calling her "the devil, guys in the front going gang signs and a woman having a child shouting 'you have to go!' it was out of control," said Lacey who left the building.

Following that hectic event, Lacey tried to have a smaller gathering with community leaders, but she said to no avail.

Since then, the activists have scheduled protests at Lacey's office and house for months demanding that she meet with them.

On the eve of primary elections on March 3, BLM activists showed up at Lacey's Granada Hills home early in the morning and rang the bell, according to police. The pre-dawn door knockers were met with Lacey's husband pointing a gun at the uninvited guests, demanding them to leave the porch.

The incident was captured on video and was posted on social media.

Lacey apologized for the incident at a press conference the following day and went on to win over 50% of the votes.

The chapter's co-founder Melina Abdullah said the protesters were "traumatized" and did not accept Lacey's apology. She didnt apologize to us, Abdullah said to the Associated Press. And an apology isnt enough. We need her to change. We need her to be accountable or she can retire."

Lacey, who has served as a prosecutor since 1985, said she doesn't allow "political pressure" to influence her to make decisions and has attempted to explain her position to the activists to no avail.

While she is not a part of the "Sisters Circle," it saddens her to hear what the other 1% are dealing with for doing their "calling."

Read the rest here:
For the few black women prosecutors, hate and 'misogynoir' are part of life - wcsjnews.com

In an area with such stark inequality as the Bay Area, with pressing human needs such as poverty and homelessness, why should foundations and philanthropists support artists and arts organizations? The answer to this question lies in how we consider artists and cultural workers in relation to the community, and how they help address these and other problems.

The arts provide a way to bridge gaps and amplify the voices of those who may not otherwise be heard. This is not new. Throughout history, artists have used their art to catalyze social movements, spark revolutions and change entrenched societal beliefs. These artists often emerge from current struggles and work to change narratives around racial inequity, community health, housing and economic displacement.

For example, throughout Oaklands history, activists have used their art to effect change. Groups from the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter to LGBTQ+ rights groups have often used creative expression as part of their tactics in Oakland and the Bay Area.

Today, Oakland remains a bastion of creative expression, with artist communities surviving in the area against great odds. The Joyce Gordon Gallery, the Betti Ono Gallery and the resident companies in the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts located in the heart of downtown Oakland helped mobilize the larger arts community in working with city officials to create legislation launching Oaklands first arts and culture district the Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD) along Oakland 14th Street corridor. The arts are of vital importance to Oaklands past and present. The arts foster community and create change toward a more just world.

In general, large and small arts organizations have struggled, yet small organizations led by people of color and LGBTQIA+ have struggled to sustain themselves and as a result many of them have closed their doors.

We are burdening organizations led by people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, and other marginalized people with the most onerous, time-consuming proposals for the lowest amounts of funding. This needs to change.

In California there are 103,191 arts-related organizations employing 545,627 people, with nearly 40,000 arts employees in San Francisco alone. As a way of supporting arts organizations working on the front lines of advancing racial and economic equity, the San Francisco Foundation Place Pathway launched the Artistic Hubs Cohort in 2013 and is now supporting a second cohort. AHC organizations such as Grown Women Dance Collective, consisting of dancers age 50 and over, is partnering with the East Bay Housing Organizations to create a dance piece to help organize affordable housing residents, many of whom are African American seniors. Additionally, in San Franciscos Chinatown, the Chinese Culture Center is hosting an international exhibit on LGBTQIA+ people in 2020 to highlight the narratives of this often overlooked Bay Area population.

Local and national funders play a key role in these organizations ability to create capacity, as do city officials and policymakers. However, people of color, along with other marginalized groups, face an uphill battle to receive funding for their projects. Even during what the United Nations has declared the International Decade for People of African Descent, organizations led by people of color have received, on average, only 10% of philanthropic dollars over the past few decades.

We need artists and cultural workers to help address serious, systemic challenges in the Bay Area, where extreme wealth coexists with extreme poverty. Actions that can help to improve these circumstances:

Funders and government should increase their investments in the small arts community

Funding applications need to be simplified and streamlined to create a level playing field for smaller arts organizations.

Funders should prioritize general operational support, capacity building and facilities grants so that more arts organizations can obtain the facilities they need in order to operate.

Voters and appointing bodies need to put arts and cultural leaders on school boards, commissions and funding advisory committees.

Because of their potential for integrating economic development, performing arts and human services, arts organizations are critically important voices in policy conversations around cultural economies, creative placemaking, restorative justice and community cohesion. Sitting at the table with policymakers and philanthropists in conversations about critical social issues is an important next step for arts organizations.

Maya Angelou once said that all great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike. It is often through artistic connections, speaking directly from the human heart, that we can cultivate change and transform the cultural narrative, perceptions and even policies.

Danny Glover is an actor and U.N. ambassador. Barbara Lee represents the 13th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Glover came of age as a young actor in the 1960s working with organizations like San Francisco Center for African and African American Art and Culture (now the African American Art and Culture Complex) and the Neighborhood Arts Program (NAP), which shifted the focus of the arts community to neighborhood centers that reflected the cultural identities of the local communities.

See original here:
How the arts foster community and create change - San Francisco Chronicle