Sole Black Reporter Booted from McCain Event

Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Stephen Price was singled out and asked to leave the area reserved for media at a rally for John McCain in Panama City, Florida, on Friday. He had showed his media credentials and employee i.d. in order to enter the area when a member of McCain's security detail asked him to leave.

"I explained I was with the state press, but the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go," Price said.

When another reporter asked why Price was being removed, she too was led out of the area. Other state reporters remained.

Price was the only black reporter among those surrounding McCain's bus ... was he being "profiled"?

Tallahassee Democrat Executive Editor Bob Gabordi said the incident was unwarranted.

"We're deeply concerned and disturbed that our reporter — of all of those in that area — was asked to move," Gabordi said. "My understanding is that Stephen was the only reporter approached and asked to leave the area, and the only reporter in that area who is black. Another reporter who stood up for Stephen was then asked to leave."

Jonathan Block of the McCain campaign, who was not there at the time of the incident, expressed regret, but stated,

"I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that race had nothing to do with it."

Block said the area where Price was standing was restricted to members of the traveling national press corps that accompanies McCain on the campaign trail.

Wow. Really. There's this story line going around that McCain loves to be "unscripted" and was always wandering into unprepared situations, giving the impression of "getting down to the people." Why was the black man singled out? And then why was the other reporter ousted for defending him? Why couldn't they simply tell them right then and there that this area is restricted to press that travels with McCain, if that was, in fact, true???

I'm sure McCain really needs this sort of stuff to keep those "swing voters" wondering. First, he backs a bill in Arizona that would wipe out affirmative action as "quotas", a "reverse racism"-style proposition, to coddle the right-wing racist White First bloc. Then he accuses Obama of racism for mentioning in passing something that could be construed to mean Obama is black. And if McCain infers that he is older, we're supposed to accuse him of "age-ism", right? Now, his security detail is weeding out "suspects"??

And this isn't the first weird incident with McCain's security. Here you can check out how they kicked a librarian out of a public rally for holding a McCain=Bush sign, and charged her with trespassing.

The event, at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, was billed as 'open to the public.' Yet Carole Kreck, a 61-year-old librarian carrying a 'McCain=Bush' sign, was taken away by police [on orders from McCain's security detail] for trespassing. A police officer told Kreck:
'You have two choices. You can keep your sign here and receive a ticket for trespassing, or you can remove the sign and stay in line and attend this town hall meeting.'
Kreck received a ticket for trespassing and her court date is July 23.

Security trumps free speech. Security trumps reporters' access to a candidate. Dissent and being a person of color seem to always land in the world of "security risk". One of the Republicans' biggest ticket issues is "increase Security." It plays to fear. It plays to the military. But, as this incident is a small but notable example, it doesn't play to our higher goals of fairness, openness, and actual freedom (not rhetorical "freedom" as in "freedom fries"). For McCain, it's a pattern he can't break free from. For the rest of us, it's an election we must weigh in on, in historic numbers, for the other, security-by-freedom, not security-vs-freedom, side.

FBI's profiling of "Muslims" Is Racist, Oppressive, and Counterproductive

The FBI plans to "ethnically profile" Muslims in terror probes, an unconstitutional and dangerous Big Brother-style course. Why do neocons insist the only road to security is that taken by totalitarian dictatorships? Are they our new example of How to Run a Country and Secure Its Citizens? Don't they see they will become the problem, not solve it?
This article in Salon discusses the issue where the inimitable Juan Cole shows how this policy both violates the U.S. Constitution and at the same time does not help in the fight against terrorism.

The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.

Wait a minute! Is this the United States of America? What happened to the Bill of Rights here? Does it again apply to some and not to others? Many "conservatives" in days gone by, not so far gone in fact, thought blacks to be a "threat" to "security". Were not lynch mobs created ad hoc in order to "enforce" "security"? Security being in the mind of the enforcer, not the accused, of course.

Where did due process go? Shall we hold a funeral? Congress, I'm sure, is almost ready for that. Hopefully, Barack Obama is not.

The new guidelines would lead to many bogus prosecutions, but they would also prove counterproductive in the effort to disrupt real terror plots. And then there's Attorney General Michael Mukasey's rationale for revising the rules in the first place. "It's necessary," he explained in a June news conference, "to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence-gathering organization." When did Congress, or we as a nation, have a debate about whether we want to authorize the establishment of a domestic intelligence agency?

And this "technique" - ah, the all-forgiving word "technique! - is also against the law.

using race and ethnicity as the -- or even a -- primary factor in deciding whom to stop and search, despite being widespread among police forces, is illegal.

And ineffective, possibly even worse than ineffective:

If the aim is to identify al-Qaida operatives or close sympathizers in the United States, racial profiling is counterproductive. Such tiny, cultlike terror organizations are multinational. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a Briton whose father hailed from Jamaica, and no racial profile of him would have predicted his al-Qaida ties. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesman, is from a mixed Jewish and Christian heritage and hails from suburban Orange County, Calif. When I broached the topic of FBI profiling to some Muslim American friends on Facebook, a scientist in San Francisco replied, "Profiling Muslims or Arabs will just make al-Qaida look outside Islam for its bombers. There are many other disgruntled groups aside from those that worship Allah."

So we end up spreading the "message" of al-Qaeda as a means to fight oppression rather outside the Muslim world, as if they really needed another incentive to violence. Great! Now we give a carte blanche to the neocons who promote Islam-bashing and Islamophobia, while at the same time increasing the power and breadth of terrorist groups. Not to mention alienating moderate and progressive Muslims whose willingness to assimilate culturally with America without losing its soul would be dealt a severe body blow. Chalk one up to extremists.

Oppression creates more oppression, much in the way pedophiles sometimes create more pedophiles out of their victims, or victims of abuse becomes themselves abusers. Healing and conciliation, reaching out and diplomacy may not be the macho choice in this world of Supermacho choices (al-Qaeda itself appealing to the Supermacho thing, as well as the neocon knee-jerk "bomb 'em" response - 2 sides of the very same coin whose currency is worthless and economy-wrecking). Racists raise up more racists. Dialog and government-enforced civil rights legislation was the only help. The marketplace does not eliminate oppression, unless moved to do so by government. The right is wrong on this.

It is a mystery why the Department of Justice has not learned the lesson that terrorists are best tracked down through good police work brought to bear on specific illegal acts, rather than by vast fishing expeditions. After Sept. 11, the DOJ called thousands of Muslim men in the United States for what it termed voluntary interviews. Not a single terrorist was identified in this manner, though a handful of the interviewees ended up being deported for minor visa offenses. Once it became clear that the interviews might eventuate in arbitrary actions against them, the willingness of American Muslims to cooperate declined rapidly, and so the whole operation badly backfired.

I believe the mystery can be solved if one looks to the neocon influence and islamophobia. It's motivated by the same thing that motivates racists - fear, and the easy path of choosing to label large groups of people for blame and self-promotion. It's based on the notion that "we" are somehow superior to "them", those nasty "Muslims". It's based on seeing the flag as a symbol of superiority rather than a symbol of democracy and human inalienable rights. The neocons were pushing us into a near-totalitarian, racist direction - are we not ready to give that up to keep the real reason for our country's previously good reputation? And change the world opinion that we are just another huge, overblown, conceited, rich, unweildy, powerful oppressor nation.

Supreme Court OKs Racial Profiling

Either racial profiling is odious and unconstitutional, with personal and social consequences for communities of color — or it’s not.

On April 23, the U.S. Supreme Court, without any dissent, decided that it was not. The ruling obliquely, but forcefully, slammed the courthouse door on any attempts to challenge this widespread law enforcement practice.

... Read more ...