OLÉ - The Innocence Project: "50 To 150 People In Alaska Prisons Are Innocent"

It's sort of like I ordered way more off the menu than I'm going to be able to eat.  Yesterday was the Pecha Kucha (pronounce in the four syllables you see) class and today began with the Innocence Project and the Pebble Mine.  And I seem to be coming down with a cold.  

But let me get a little up here since I didn't post yesterday.  Let's get some of the Innocence Project up.  This is the work of saints - helping people wrongly convicted to get out of prison.  The speakers were Mark Johnson, (sitting) the head of the board for the IP, and Bill Oberly the employee who does most of the work.  I took the picture after the presentation when they were answering individual questions.  

Every time I read about a prisoner getting out of prison after 10, 15, 30 years because of evidence that clearly exonerates them, or a confession by another of the crime, it breaks my heart thinking of someone taken from the family and thrown into a cell.  For example from The National Registry of Exonerations.

Many prisons are inhumane for guilty prisoners.  Imagine if you didn't do the crime.  

If imagining that is hard to do, watch Netflix's When They See Us*  about five teenagers who were imprisoned for a rape they didn't commit because of a prosecutor who coerced confessions and ignored evidence that didn't fit her story.   This is the story of the kids convicted of the Central Park jogger rape.  I confess, that I didn't want to watch it, but saw it was getting awards and so we decided to try the first episode.  It's mostly painful, but the actual rapists eventually confesses (after meeting one of the five in prison) and they do get out.  There's an extra episode which is an Oprah show of sorts (she was the producer I think) where all the actors who played the boys and their older selves are interviewed.  And then the original real prisoners are interviewed as well.  

*This is not a great link here, but when I link to Netflix, to goes to my subscription which won't work for others.  It may go to the right place for other Netflix subscribers, I don't know.  And reviews at Washington Post and New York Times have paywalls.  You might also want to check Wikipedia.  

It's pretty powerful, and one line from the film's director really caught my attention.  She challenged people who talk about the system being broken.  It's not broken, she said, it was designed that way.  And when it comes to people of color and poor folks that seems to be accurate.  

So that was my most recent connection to this sort of injustice and was good background for understanding the enormity of the wrongs that the Innocence Project tries to right.  

A little bit from today's class from my notes.  

Innocence Project's MISSION

1. Identify , investigate, and exonerate individuals who have been wrongly convicted in the State of Alaska
2.  Education - doing that today (at OLÉ).  Provide ed opportunities for advocates and for the public that foster a culture that champions the defense of the innocent.  
3. Implement policies, practices, and reforms  that will prevent wrongful convictions and hasten the identification and release of innocent persons.

Number 1 is the main priority.  

History

The Alaska IP is part of a national Innocence Network   All independent, but share experiences, best practices.  There originally was just one, but it became clear quickly that they couldn't cover the whole country.  A Northwest PI was started, but they couldn't even handle all of Washington, let alone the rest of their territory.  Alaska's Project Innocence began in 2006.  

The Project has 6 criteria for accepting cases.

1. Individual is incarcerated
2. Individual has at least two years remaining on sentence.
3. Factually, the client is actually innocent.  (They don't work on technical legal issues for people who aren't innocent.)
4. Evidence is available which may prove actual innocence
5. Individual has exhausted all court actions under the facts of the criminal conviction upon which the individual is incarcerated where the individual has appointed counsel as a matter of right
6. Notwithstanding numbers 1 through 5, the Board of the Alaska Innocence Project may accept any case at its discretion.  (but number 1 - actual innocence - is necessary)

They said that research suggests that 1-3% of people in prison are innocent.  Given Alaska's prison population, that means 50 - 150 people!   

The only people exonerated so far through the Alaska Innocence Project have been the Fairbanks Four, which is a big deal.  There are more potential cases in the pipeline.  

Here's a link to their website.  You can find more there.  We've got three more session on this topic.    

Sorry for such a truncated post, but really need to get to bed.  I have a 9am class on State and Federal Courts tomorrow and a 3pm class on Homelessness.  

Once Upon A Time I Thought I Might Catch Up. Fat Chance.

As I wrote the title, I realized we never can catch up in life, but I was referring to little things like writing blog posts and paying the bills.  Today was my wife's birthday.  We went for a movie and dinner.   It seemed like a good day to spend the early afternoon in a movie, but the rain had stopped and there were even breaks in the clouds when we got there.

 And the snow was mostly gone from the Chugach.


I've already  written about my mixed feelings about going to see Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.   Now that I've seen it, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have missed anything important.

Even though I've eaten at Musso & Franks, went to movies at the Bruin theater when I was a student at UCLA, and even interviewed George Putnam (there was an ad for his newscast on a bus stop) for my junior high school newspaper.  Putnam arrived in a gold limo - a Rolls, I think - and he smoked through the interview even though his bio said he didn't smoke. (At least that's what my memory tells me.)

The movie began in a Pan Am 747, which set alarms off right way, since the date posted was 1969.  I'd read that the period details had been carefully done.  And yes, I know some odd details.  In this case because I first flew on one of the early Pan Am 747 flights - from Honolulu to Tokyo - in March 1970. (I was flying from a Peace Corps training program I worked at in Hilo to the second part of the training in Thailand.)  Pan Am 1 and 2 had just started flying. I think it was Pan Am 1 that flew around the world toward the west and Pan Am2 to the east.  Did it start earlier in 1969?  I've now had time to look it up and the first commercial flight was in January 1970.

It wasn't a bad movie - though I generally skip movies with lots of violence - but it felt artificial throughout.  Cardboard.  I assume that was intentional since it was about Hollywood and all the phoniness of that life, but as the birthday girl said over dinner at the Thai Kitchen, with all the really good stuff we're seeing on Netflix, it just didn't cut it.

So I'm reduced to writing filler pieces like this because I just haven't had time to finish my thoughts on the Joseph Maguire hearings and several other drafts that probably will never get beyond that stage.  

And tomorrow I start a slew of OLÉ classes.  (Continuing ed classes aimed at retired folks at UAA.  I think they pay for themselves so maybe they won't disappear next year.)   I have an actual project in one that I need to spend extra time on and I haven't figured out what I'm going to do.  It's a Pecha-Kucha class - you present 20 pictures in seven minutes with narration of the story they tell. Well, I've got plenty of pictures, but organizing a compelling story is the challenge.  As I see it now, though I'll probably discover that was the easy part once I get the story figured out.

Other classes I enrolled in include:

• An Overview of the Pebble Copper-Molybdenum-Gold Prospect 
• The Innocence Project
• State and Federal Courts and Current Legal Issues
• Homeless, Homelessness and Finding "Home"

And a one time short class that's a trip to an Escape Room.

I'm hoping the classes will provide plenty of fodder for the blog.

While Death Penalty Executions Have Gone Down, Police Still Meting Out Death Penalty On The Streets

California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in California.

However, the death penalty is being meted out by police officers around the country.  And while convicted murderers and rapists are spared the death penalty, often innocent citizens are not.

2019
Killed By Police* lists 197 people who have been killed by police in the US this year (and we're only in the middle of March.)

Death Penalty Info lists 3 people killed so far this year as a result of death penalty executions.

2018
The Root tells us 2165 people were killed by police in 2018.
Mapping Police Violence puts the number at 2166 people killed by police in 2018.  They also have a lot of related information and graphics - including comparisons between cities, crime rates, and other factors which show huge differences.
The Washington Post lists only 998 people killed by police in 2018.   (Including 7 in Alaska.)  These are only people shot and killed by police.  The others include all deaths caused by police.

Death Penalty Info lists 25 people dying by state sanctioned death penalty executions in 2018.  (Of that number, 11 are identified as Black or Latino.  13 (more than half) were in Texas.)

	Killed By Police	Killed By Execution
2018	2166	25
2019	197	3

When police shoot and kill 'suspects' - the victim gets no  presumption of innocence, no trial, no jury. No appeal.  And police shooters almost never get prosecuted, let alone convicted.


OK.  Let's acknowledge that police have a difficult job.  They meet most of their 'customers' at some of the worst times in their lives.  They're asked to intervene in crimes being committed, often, by people with guns and other weapons.  They have to make fast decisions.   Most of us don't want to do these jobs.

Chart from PEW Research

Does It Have To Be This Way?

But when we look at the numbers, only a relatively small percent (less than 1/3) of police officers ever report firing their gun while on duty!  From the  Pew Research article (and reflected in the chart):

"To start, male officers, white officers, those working in larger cities and those who are military veterans are more likely than female officers, racial and ethnic minorities, those in smaller communities and non-veterans to have ever fired their service weapon while on duty. Each relationship is significant after controlling for other factors that could be associated with firing a service weapon." 

The article points out that there is no cause and effect relationship proven between these characteristics.

My main point for using the data is to show that the vast majority of police NEVER even fire their guns in the line of duty.

In a 2000 Associated Press article we get this quote:

"Well over 95 percent never shoot their weapons here," said New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

But we don't know if that's because they aren't ever in situations where they apprehend armed suspects or because they handle those situations differently from officers who do shoot.  (Well maybe someone does, but this study didn't make any such claims.)

But the data do suggest that shooting suspects is NOT necessary in most cases.

Are there ways to reduce the number of police caused deaths?

I would also suggest that officers who do kill suspects are also victims of systems that make that option more likely.  They see innumerable shootings on television, in movies, and in video games they participate in the shootings.  They are nearly all given guns, which makes shooting (rather than other options, like talking, like waiting, like non-lethal weapons) an easy option.  (We tend to use the tools we have to solve most problems.**)  They don't necessarily get adequate training for dealing with the mentally ill.  Internalized racism (again, television and movies play a big part here) will make many if not most officers more likely to assume the worst for suspects of color.  (And officers of color are also the victims of internalized racism so when they are the shooters it's not proof that racism wasn't involved.)

Use of Force Project offers specific systemic actions that reduce deaths by police.  (In this list the wording is reversed - what departments DON"T do that they should.  There's a lot of info on this site, including a long list of police departments (including Anchorage) and which of these these standards they meet.)

1. "Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
2. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
3. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor 
4. Failing to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles, which is regarded as a particularly dangerous and ineffective tactic
5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force
7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians"

I think it's important as fewer Americans die because of death penalty executions, to remember that in essence, police who kill suspects are, de facto, applying the death penalty.


Notes:

*Killed By Police lists a cumulative number for 2019 (197), but they don't for 2018.  Each page is a month, and so I looked for other sources rather than try to count each specific death they list.  The sources I used for 2018 did not have (at least I couldn't find) 2019 data.

**I learned about The Law of The Instrument long ago in a research methodology book  It goes something like this:  If you give a a child a hammer, it will find that most things need to be pounded.

Prepare For The Coming Fall Of Trump

Trump's past has been glossed over for many, but it seems to be bubbling up in the Justice Department.  If you want to understand how Trump got where he is and why that is soon to undo him, you need to dig deeper than social media and mainstream media.

I'd recommend a few sources of information to get you up to speed if you aren't already there.

This New Yorker article by Adam Davidson steps back then steps forward to explain why even Trump supporters will start having doubts when all the facts about his business dealings come out.  He talks about how, as a reporter in Iraq, he saw the inevitable, but it took the American public much longer to realize we weren't winning there.  Then he talks about studying the Collateralized Debt Obligations and realizing that the banking world was going to come crashing down.  Again before the public did.

"I thought of those earlier experiences this week as I began to feel a familiar clarity about what will unfold next in the Trump Presidency. There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his phones have been tapped, and his meetings have been monitored. Trump has long declared a red line: Robert Mueller must not investigate his businesses, and must only look at any possible collusion with Russia. That red line is now crossed and, for Trump, in the most troubling of ways. Even if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then had Mueller and his investigation put on ice, and even if—as is disturbingly possible—Congress did nothing, the Cohen prosecution would continue. Even if Trump pardons Cohen, the information the Feds have on him can become the basis for charges against others in the Trump Organization.
This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth."

Essentially, when the remaining Trump faithful see behind the curtain, they too will realize they've been swindled.  Eventually it happens to all frauds.  Watch as Toto pulls down the wizard's curtain.



Next, for those of you who have Netflix, the documentary series Dirty Money  ends with an episode on Donald Trump.  For those who have been paying attention there isn't that much new, but as names like Michael Cohen start getting more airtime, this gives some background on them and their relationship with Trump .  Just search for Dirty Money on Netflix, then go to the last episode of that series.  [I don't think I can link you straight to the movie within Netflix since you have to put in your passwords, so the link just goes to Netflix and you have to find Dirty Money episode six yourself.]

If you have more time, Netflix also has a four episode series called Trump: The American Dream.  This one gets much deeper into the Trump story.  (The use of superlatives to describe everything he does goes back a long time.)

Watching these videos will be like reading the program at the opera.  Soon the names and stories of Trump's henchmen and cronies will flash by in the news.  If you read the program now you'll know the backstories of these folks.

Just like with Nixon, there was a majority of Americans who stood by the President, simply because he was the President.  But slowly the circle around him got smaller and smaller as people in his administration were indicted.

At that time the Vietnam War also had the country polarized and those who held onto their belief in the President's innocence the longest were those who didn't want to believe these things about the president who was waging the war they so strongly believed in.

The details will be different this time round, but I suspect the end will be similar.  Nixon was much more traditional, much better informed about how Washington worked (he'd been a member of Congress and Eisenhower's vice president for eight years.)  Trump, I guess, believed that saying  "if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere."  He's in way over his head. And he has no self-control.   So his decline will  probably much more volatile.


And here are some posts I did to understand who Trump was back in 2016 that give background into his father and his mentor:

March 13, 2016:  To Know The Son, Know the Dad - So What Can We Learn From Trump's Dad?

June 24, 2016 -  "Roy Cohn was one of the most loathsome characters in American history, so why did he have so many influential friends?"] Roy Cohn was important in Trump's rise to power and appears in the videos.

November 6, 2016:    What A Trump Presidency Would Look Like   -  If you do your homework, some predictions aren't that hard.  I suspect many of you would have made similar predictions.  I'm comfortable pointing out what I said before we knew who won the election.

Racism Is Racism Is Alive

[Note:  This is an unpleasant topic, but please indulge me.  The history here helps put today's narratives and actions into sharp focus.]

I've done more reading and listening about racism than the average American.  (No, that's not like Trump saying "I'm the least racist person ever." First, having read more about racism than the average American doesn't take much reading.  But I've been involved with Healing Racism in Anchorage for many years and I've attended many workshops on racism as well.  So my claim is no boast, nor an exaggeration.)

Yet reading White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide makes me feel like I was totally not getting it before.  Even though I know a lot of what Dr. Carol Anderson writes about.  But she puts together the pieces like I've never seen before.  I've already posted about the first chapter which traces how the South basically reestablished slavery after the civil war, but a nastier, meaner form.

  They did this with laws that denied the rights of blacks guaranteed in the then new fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, with the help of US Supreme Court decisions that said the federal government couldn't interfere with states, even if the states were denying those newly won rights such as citizenship and voting.  They also did it with laws that required blacks to have work contracts with white farmers or mine owners.  If they didn't, they could be convicted for vagrancy and then as convicts, leased out to those same employers with no pay and no rights.  Those are just a few of the structural means of denying Southern blacks their rights.

As a friend warned, the next chapters get worse.  This is material most of us want to avoid confronting and our schools, media, and general disposition have made that easy.  I'm asking you to just take another five minutes to do what all American really need to do.  It's the first step of overcoming denial.  And if you're not in denial, the first steps to understanding the enormity of the mistreatment of blacks, not by individuals, but by a corrupt and evil system that established elaborate legal structures to keep blacks in shackles.

Chapter 2 is called Derailing The Great Migration - how blacks fled the South during WWI, enticed by promises of better jobs in the North and how the Southern states did all they could to prevent that exodus. Laws banning newspapers that recruited blacks to the north.  Stopping trains. And how housing discrimination in the North condemned blacks to live in overcrowded poor ghettos.  Part of the problem with our education on these topics is that we've only gotten the most generalized descriptions, like the beginning of this paragraph.  We haven't seen all the mutilated bodies hanging from trees or burnt alive.  If you see this book in a book store, read the end of chapter 2.  In my hard cover edition it starts at the bottom page 56,

"Tired of the cramped living conditions and exasperated with paying exorbitant rents for ramshackle housing that landlords refused to repair, black professionals sought to move away from Black Bottom."

It goes on to relate the stories of two black doctors in Detroit who moved into white neighborhoods.  The first moved out the first day when neighbors mobbed his house.  The second brought friends and guns to protect his property.  The black doctor and his family were jailed for inciting a riot and murdering a white neighbor.  Everyone lied about what happened - the police, the neighbors, etc.  Only because they had Clarence Darrow as their attorney did they win the case, after the first trial ended in a hung jury, but meanwhile his wife and daughter and friend all contracted tuberculosis in prison and died after their release.  And this was in the North.


Chapter 3 is about how, following Brown v Board of Education, Southern (and to an extent Northern) states essentially nullified that decision to integrate the schools by a variety of tactics from using public money to fund private white academies, to simply not funding education for blacks, to enacting a variety of laws that they knew were unconstitutional, but that they also knew would take years to grind through the courts, giving them time to figure out more strategies.  Meanwhile black students were deprived of a their rightful education.

I've rushed through chapters 2 and 3 because chapter 4 offers some insights that cut to the chase about why Americans are ignorant about the magnitude of the Southern mistreatment of blacks and horrific impacts it's had on African Americans.  And why African American mistreatment and abuse continues to this day.

Chapter 4 is called Rolling Back Civil Rights.  It's about 1965 now.

"The impact of this civil rights struggle had been slow but significant.  Inequality had begun to lessen.  Incomes had started to rise.  Job and educational opportunities had expanded.  And just as with Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and the Brown decision, this latest round of African American advances set the gears of white opposition in motion."(p, 99)

How?  First,  those who thought blacks were trying to get their rights too fast,  including Nixon, Reagan, and the Supreme Court, redefined what the civil rights movement was about.  

". . . centuries of oppression and brutality suddenly reduced to a harmless symbolism of a bus seat and a water fountain.  Thus when the COLORED ONLY signs went down, inequality had supposedly disappeared.  By 1965 Richard Nixon asserted, 'almost every legislative roadblock to equality of opportunity for education, jobs, and voting had been removed.'  Also magically removed, by this interpretation, were up to twenty-four trillion dollars in multigenerational devastation that African Americans had suffered in lost wages, stolen land, educational impoverishment, and housing inequalities.  All of that vanished as if it never happened."(p. 99)

To emphasize this point she quotes Patrick Buchanan.

"America has been the best country on earth for black folks.  It was here that 600,000 black people brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known." (p. 100)

So by taking down the "COLORED ONLY" signs, race was no longer an issue.  Sort of like, by electing a black president, race was no longer an issue.  But rather these events merely triggered more backlash against blacks.

"President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and affirmative action, which were developed to ameliorate hundreds of years of violent and corrosive repression, were easily characterized as reverse discrimination against hardworking whites and a 'government handout that lazy black people 'choose' to take rather than work.'" (p. 100)

 Second, was to redefine racism itself.

"Confronted with civil rights headlines depicting unflattering portrayals of KKK rallies and jackbooted sheriffs, white authority transformed those damning images of white supremacy into the sole definition of racism.  This simple but wickedly brilliant conceptual and linguistic shift served multiple purposes.  First and foremost, it was conscience soothing. . ." (p. 100)

Just as after World War II, there were no Germans who knew what had happened to the Jews, or who even were Nazis themselves [this is my insertion into Anderson's discussion],

"The whittling down of racism to sheet-wearing goons allowed a cloud of racial innocence to cover many whites who, although 'resentful of black progress' and determined to ensure that racial inequality remained untouched, could see and project themselves as the 'kind of upstanding white citizen[s]' who were 'positively outraged at the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan.'  The focus on the Klan also helped to designate racism as an individual aberration rather than something systemic, institutional, and pervasive.  Moreover, isolating racism to only its most virulent and visible form allowed respectable politicians and judges to push for policies that ostensibly met the standard of America's new civil rights norms while at the same time crafting the implantation of policies to undermine and destabilize the norms, all too often leaving the black community ravaged."(pp. 100-101)

Between the time I read this today and I started this post I read a couple of Tweets that remind me that this legacy is alive and well and still doing its evil in the United States today. From the Dallas News:

"In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel in San Antonio found that the maps gave Republicans an advantage in elections and weakened the voting strength of minority voters. House Districts in Dallas and Tarrant counties were among those in which the judges ruled minority voters had seen their clout weakened.
The ruling is yet another blow to the state in its six-year legal battle over the redrawing of the maps. Last month, the same court found that the state's congressional maps were drawn with intent to discriminate against minority voters and invalidated three congressional districts. And last week, a federal judge ruled that the state's voter ID law was written with intent to discriminate."

But like the delaying tactics to fight Brown v Board of Education, the redistricting was used for all the elections since 2011 and those candidates won't be unelected and their laws won't be invalidated.  So while this is a setback, there's new redistricting when the 2020 census comes out and so this will only, possibly affect, the 2018 and 2020 elections.  Cheating works.

This disenfranchisement of blacks continues.  And in 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled to end a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required pre clearance from the Justice Department before their redistricting plan could go into effect for a number of states including Texas and Alaska.  The court said the criteria set 40 years ago were out of date.  Just as Anderson tells us, they were arguing that the civil rights abuses had long ago ended.  But this decision - as well as the one for North Carolina  - show they haven't.  Had the Supreme Court NOT invalidating that section of the Voting Rights Act, Texas would have had to get the approval of the Justice Department before implementing their plan.  And that would not have happened under Obama's Justice Department.

But with Trump's Justice Department, would it matter?

The other Tweet was about Attorney General Jeff Sessions who said today,

"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and Constitutional power."

This language about amazement and 'an island in the Pacific' (the State of Hawaii) is just about right from a man born in 1946 in Selma, Alabama, who was in elementary school when Brown v Board of Education was decided and he grew up in as racist a state as there was.  Where his family was surely part of the outraged Southerners who did all they could to block school integration.  So, the legacy that Anderson writes about is now reincarnated as the highest law enforcer of our nation.  This isn't even about a legacy, Sessions was right in the middle of the most virulent racist state in his formative years.  And he's now our Attorney General in charge of enforcing laws to protect our rights.  Disgraceful!

There's also this story in today's LA Times on neo-Nazi attack on Jewish woman in Montana.  The same kind of harassment, though mostly today digital that Southern blacks and their allies were subject too, though it hadn't gotten to the point of physical violence.  Nevertheless, the result was what all terrorist action wants - to put fear into the hearts of its victims.


A few choice quotes from the book about some of our past presidents (and one of Sessions' teen heroes I'm sure) from these three chapters.

"At the behest of his 'great friend' South Carolina governor James Byrnes, Eisenhower hosted a small dinner party at the White House to explain to Chief Justice Earl Warren that Southerners 'are not bad people.  Al they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside big overgrown Negroes.'"

"During his 1968 presidential bid, Alabama governor George Wallace understood this resentment.[white resentment of black gains]  He had experience a startling epiphany just a few years earlier after trying to blok the enrollment of an African American student in the state's flagship university at Tuscaloosa.  For that act of defiance, the governor received more than one hundred thousand congratulatory telegrams, half of which came from north of the Mason Dixon Line.  Right then he had a revelation:  'They all hate black people, all of them.  They're all afraid, all of them.  Great God! That's it!  They're  all Southern!  The whole United States is Southern!"

"Using strategic dog-whistle appeals - crime, welfare, neighborhood schools - to trigger Pavlovian anti-black responses, Nixon succeeded in defining  and maligning the Democrats as the party of African Americans, without once having to actually say the words.  That would be the 'elephant in the room.'  In fact, as H. R. Haldeman, one of the Republican candidate's most trusted aides, later recalled, "He [Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks.  The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.'"

"The objective [of redefining racism] was to contain and neutralize the victories of the Civil Rights Movement by painting a picture of a 'colorblind,' equal opportunity society whose doors were now wide open, if only African Americans would take initiative and walk on through.  Ronald Reagan breezily shared anecdotes about how Lyndon Johnson's great Society handed over hard-earned taxpayer dollars to a 'slum sweller' to live in posh government-sbsidied housing and provided food stamps for one 'strapping young buck' to buy steak, while another used the change he received from purchasing an orange to pay for a bottle of vodka.  He ridiculed Medicaid recipients as 'a faceless mass, waiting for handouts.'  The imagery was, by design, galling, and although the stories were far from the truth, they succeeded in tapping into a river of widespread resentment." 

Not much different from what we see today, not only about black, but even more so about Muslims.

Principles And Verification Tasks For Journalists And Their Readers

I've mentioned I'm taking an online class called Journalism Skills for Engaged Citizens from the University of Melbourne.  Last week I got one of the optional books they recommend - Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel's The Elements of Journalism.  The copy I got from the library is a 2007 edition and given the changes in electronic journalism since then, I'm sure the newer version has been updated quite a bit.  Nevertheless the chapter on verification is still worth thinking about - both for journalists AND for readers (listeners, viewers, etc.)

Much of this stems from, according to the authors, a 1997 meeting of journalists concerned about the future of journalism in the age of digital and commodified journalism.  The meeting led to a group called the Committee of Concerned Journalists.  (I chose this link because it lists their principles of good journalism.)

In Chapter 4, they talk about verification being central in defining good journalism.  I'm going to offer several of the guidelines for journalists including techniques for verification.

Note:  I've done some editing because the authors have written quite a bit about each point and the one and two word titles don't necessarily capture the gist.  I've tried to give a slight bit more to aim the reader in the right direction.  I've added some links at the bottom* for a little more depth.

Let's start with "Intellectual principles of a science of reporting"

1. Do Not Add.  Never add anything that wasn’t there (don't make anything up)
2. Do Not Deceive.  Never deceive your audience
3. Transparency.  Be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives (more on transparency below.)
4. Originality.  Rely on your own original reporting (get the facts yourself, don't just rely on others, a particular issue in the age of 24/7 news and online rumors)
5. Humility.  Exercise humility 

 Transparency Questions

1. What does my audience need to know to evaluate this information for itself?
2. Is there anything in our treatment of this that requires explanation, including any controversial decisions made about leaving something in or taking something out?
3. Journalists should acknowledge the questions their stories are not answering. a. Misleading sources: Corollary to transparency. Truth goes both ways. Sources need to be truthful. Some say a misleading source should be revealed. Part of the bargain for anonymity is truthfulness.
4. Masquerading (getting stories with deception) - ok if you follow principles: Three Step Test:
1. Information must be sufficiently vital to public to justify deception
2. There is no other way to get the story
3. Journalist should reveal to audience whenever they mislead sources to get info, and should explain reasons, including 1. why the story justifies deception and 2. why there was no other way to get story.

I'd like to think that I've incorporated most of this in my blogging.  Some comes from having to verify in academic writing, some comes from my personal values of keeping the public interest in mind.  I know that I have often, for example, spoken to readers directly about how I've gotten a story, why I'm writing it a certain way, what cautions they should take interpreting what I've written.  The most typical warning I'd guess, has been reporting meetings when my fingers couldn't keep up with what was being said.  For example, from a redistricting board meeting:

"Below are my very rough notes.  Use with caution, until the official transcripts are available."

And finally I get to the list specifically addressing Verification.   There's a fair bit of discussion on the definition of 'objectivity' and whether a journalist can achieve it.  The authors say that the original use of 'objectivity' coming from Walter Lippmann and others, acknowledged bias in the writer, and offered 'objectivity' as a method that focused on techniques of verification that would unite journalists regardless of their bias.  (I would argue that even those techniques have their built in biases to be aware of, but that's for a different day and post.)


Techniques of Verification

1. Edit with skepticism - check line by line - how do I know this? Why should a reader believe it? what is the assumption behind this sentence? If the story says events may raise questions, who suggested that? Reporter? Source? Citizen?
2. Keep an accuracy checklist (See below - this is particularly useful for readers as well as journalists.)
3. Assume nothing.  (See Protess Method below)
4. Tom French’s red pencil - he made a check after each sentence if he’d double checked it.
5. Be careful of your sources  

Accuracy Checklist (useful for readers to think about when reading/hearing news stories)

• Is the lead of the story sufficiently supported?
• Is the background material, required to understand the story, complete?
• Are all the stakeholders in the story identified and have representatives from that side been contacted and given a chance to talk?
• Does the story pixies [pick sides] or make subtle value judgments?  Will some people like this story more than they should?
• Have you attributed and/or documented all the information in your story to make sure it is correct?
• Do those facts back up the premise of your story?  Do you have multiple sources for controversial facts?
• Did you double-check the quotes make sure they are accurate and in context?  

This is all good stuff for me (and other bloggers) to be thinking about.  I even put a note about originality in a story I posted recently about a Superior Court decision.  I was quoting the Alaska Dispatch's report, but couldn't figure out how to get the decision online.  I noted the journalist's need for originality and my attempt to get the judge's decision in my post.  Yesterday an attorney told me you can't get them online, you have to go to the courthouse and buy it.  I called the court just now trying to see if there was a way, but they haven't been able to point out a link to get the decision.  They connected me to the judge's assistant and I've left a voice mail message.


*Short of getting the book itself, ideally the most recent edition, there are websites you can check on to get a little more depth on each of these points than I'm giving.

On Verification - Transparency, Humility, Originality

Informing the News - an essay based on a book by that title also stems from the Committee of Concerned Journalists' work that overlaps a bit with the lists here.

Protess Method of Verification - a way of thinking about verification by the head of the Chicago Innocence Project.  It's the method he uses with students to determine which prisoners to work with on their appeals.

[I've made some typo corrections, some of which look like auto correct errors.  Others are mine.]

The Emperor's New Clothes: The Power Of Fairy Tales And Of Expectations

From The Classic Reader's version of Hans Christian Anderson's The Emperor's New Clothes:

"Many years ago, there was an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of new clothes, that he spent all his money in dress. He did not trouble himself in the least about his soldiers; nor did he care to go either to the theatre or the chase, except for the opportunities then afforded him for displaying his new clothes. He had a different suit for each hour of the day; and as of any other king or emperor, one is accustomed to say, 'he is sitting in council,' it was always said of him, 'The Emperor is sitting in his wardrobe.'"

Then two scam artists arrive in the capital and declare that they weave clothes out of an exquisitely beautiful material.  But more importantly, only the good and honest can see its beauty.  Those unfit for the offices they hold are unable to see it.

"'These must, indeed, be splendid clothes!' thought the Emperor. 'Had I such a suit, I might at once find out what men in my realms are unfit for their office, and also be able to distinguish the wise from the foolish! This stuff must be woven for me immediately.' And he caused large sums of money to be given to both the weavers in order that they might begin their work directly."

The weavers set up their looms and work late into the night.  The emperor gets curious about how things are going.  While he doesn't doubt himself at all, it seems more appropriate to send one of his ministers to check on the weavers.  The minister goes into the room and is startled to see no cloth on the looms at all.  He begins to question himself.  Am I not really wise?

"The impostors requested him very courteously to be so good as to come nearer their looms; and then asked him whether the design pleased him, and whether the colors were not very beautiful; at the same time pointing to the empty frames. The poor old minister looked and looked, he could not discover anything on the looms, for a very good reason, viz: there was nothing there. "What!" thought he again. 'Is it possible that I am a simpleton? I have never thought so myself; and no one must know it now if I am so. Can it be, that I am unfit for my office? No, that must not be said either. I will never confess that I could not see the stuff.'"

The weavers describe to the minister the intricate and beautiful patterns and colors and he listens closely so he can describe it accurately to the emperor.  They also ask for more gold and silk so they can finish the project, which they get.

The minister returns to the king and describes the magnificent new clothes.  Not much later a second minister is sent to check on the progress.  He too sees nothing and questions his own fitness for the office that pays him so well when he sees nothing and goes back to describe the amazing new clothes.

Word gets out in the city about the emperor's new clothes and everyone is excited, particularly about the fact that only the competent and honest can actually see the material.

When the emperor himself finally is presented the new clothes he is shocked.  What is this?  Am I unfit to be emperor?  When asked by the weavers what he thought, he smiled and said it was charming.  The rest of the courtiers smiled and competed in their praise of the new suit.

A city wide procession was held.  The streets were crowded.  Everyone buzzed and murmured when they saw the emperor.  Then there were shouts of how magnificent the new suit was.  But then the procession passes a child.

"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child. "Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another. "But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold. [emphasis added]

The Role of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales serve a significant function in the development of children and the passing on of cultural norms.  A number of articles, such as this one, talk about how they help children resolve inherent emotional conflicts.  One article I found, that gathers together many of the benefits, was a chapter subheading called,  "The Value of Fairy Tales In Education."  It listed:

• Fairy tales bring joy into child life.
• Fairy tales satisfy the play spirit of childhood.
• Fairy tales are play forms.
• Fairy tales give the child a power of accurate observation.
• Fairy tales strengthen the power of emotion, develop the power of imagination, train the memory, and exercise the reason.
• Fairy tales extend and intensify the child's social relations.

Fairy tales pose moral dilemmas for us along with an array of human qualities to overcome these dilemmas.  Fairy tales pass on cultural wisdom that we can apply to our daily lives as adults.

I'm assuming that some of you have thought about the Republican nominee and his supporters as you reread the Emperor's New Clothes.   And the various stories that are coming out that suggest that he is all hype and fiction.  Such as this Newsweek story that details the fictions of his fortune.  I would caution those looking for proof of Trump's duplicity to remember their own expectations when accepting the facts in the Newsweek story.  But also take note of the auther Kurt Eichenwald who has done groundbreaking financial reporting including the book Conspiracy of Fools on Enron.  

As more and more 'children' are saying out loud that the Donald has no clothes, more and more people are starting to question their beliefs.

The Role Of Expectations

But I want to share an incident that occurred the other day that demonstrates the power of mental expectations. (Or maybe just the declining quality of my mind.)

I drove to the market. I was taking an air mattress bed, something too big to carry on my bike, over to a friend, and getting some food on the way.  When I came out of the market, I walked over to where I had parked my car.  I was looking for my wife's car and couldn't find it.  Instead, there was a car exactly like my own car.  I was so committed to the idea that I came in my wife's Subaru that I thought, "Wow, there's a car like mine."  Then I looked at the license plate.  It was my car.  Yet my mind was tightly bound to the idea that I'd driven over in the Subaru.  (It uses less gas and so, if I need to drive, and my wife isn't using her car, that's the one I take.) And if I had the Subaru, then my wife must have had to use my car.  But why wouldn't she just call me, since she knew I was going to the market.  And as I was listening to the rings on the phone to ask my wife why she'd driven to the market, I suddenly realized - I had driven my car and not hers.  

As I say, this might just be an indicator that my mind is rapidly deteriorating, but even if that is the case, it still shows how powerfully an expectation can prevent us from seeing the obvious.  Whether it's racial stereotypes, political ideology, ego, desires, one's personal interests, or simple habit, we usually see what we want or expect to see.  

[I'd note one of the more literate discussions of fairy tales, by Meg Moseley, who, importantly, notes that often such tales carry forward cultural biases, like the idea that young maidens must wait to be rescued by handsome princes.]

Tim Wise - US is Snapchat Nation

[OK, this is rough, but if I wait to clean it up, it won't get up.  Gotta run to lunch and workshop.  Also there's video to be put up eventually.  Snapchat nation is explained near the bottom.  Typos will be corrected later, or not.]


Glad to be back in Alaska.  Anti-racism educator and writer from Nashville originally.  Working at schools, teachers, occasionally corporations, but I piss them off and they don't ask me back.  Seven books.

Today I want to do something a little different,  Books are fact and data driven which is useful in documenting.  But I know that for the most part, to create anti-racist movement it's not data, we didn't get into because we saw a position paper, but usually a personal story that was shared, that touched us not in the abstract way, but in the real way.  As a white guy, really good at abstracting this issue, even the people who want to make change.

I want to talk about the way the stories we white folks tell contribute to the problem.

Whites are people of the lie.  We've told ourselves so many lies that we no longer recognize truth from fiction.  James Baldwin said this long ago.  Speaking about black and white conflict.

People who imagine that history flatters them, and it does because they wrote it, are impaled like a butterfly.  They suffer from the being so embedded in a lie and suffer enormously from the incoherence this makes us.

I want to tell you three stories from my own life.

1.  My grandmother - incredible person and force in my life.  Come from messed up life.  Dad alcoholic.  Grandmother was my refuge from verbal violence.  She was also committed to equal rights.  Raised her kids right and had a big impact on me.  She had been raised in a very racist home - her dad was KKK in Michigan, Detroit.  GG father.  At 16 fell in love with my grandfather who was Jewish who lived in the black community.  She went to her dad one evening - either he was going to burn his robes and never go back to Klan, or she would burn them.  1936.  Back then girls didn't stand up to daddy.  GG Father took the challenge and accepted my grandfather.  That's the good part.

Toward the end of her life she began to develop alzheimer.  Both fascinating and terrifying process.  Stages of fear and anger and anxiety - you don't recognize people think they're trying to hurt you.  Saw her deteriorate.  Was tended by African American nurses.  In anger periods, would last hour at grandkids and nurses, this woman who made a stand against racism as a kid, as she deteriorated, she called those nurses - I won't repeat it, because you know.  When I asked doctors about the process we forget.  Dr:  Last thing you remember is the thing you knew best.  My grandmother knew racism best.

2.  My kid - now, about us.  We still have that virus.  Unless we are nurturing anti-racism.  Doesn't take us a  disease to make us angry and racist.  OK Tim, obviously your grandmother got taught that by her dad, but that doesn't apply to you.  My kids 14 and 12 now.  When 7 and 5, we watched a movie.  Heaven Almighty.  Morgan freeman plays God and he tells people to build an arc.  Kids had already seen it.  Rachel sees Morgan Freeman - is that really God?  5 years old, doesn't know better.  No, that's just an actor.  She says, Oh OK great.  Older daughter laughs at sister.  Rachel, that can't be God  - I knew I'd have to ask her why not and I knew what the answer would be.  I had a fantasy the answer would be great, like God is a woman.  But she was only 7.  She said, because God isn't black, God is white.  We don't have any pictures of God in our house.  But we can't protect our kids from all the images all over our culture.  Not only internalizing those white images of God, you internalize your superiority.  Blacks have opposite internalization.  If you have family who can overcome that, it doesn't make the internalized superiority go away.  None of us can be smug about who we think

3.  Me - this is mostly on video that will have to wait till I get it up.

The school got rid of his racist teacher, but my mom and I didn't see how the system itself, in its structure of different levels of courses that discriminated against blacks and favored the white kids.  We need to challenge our own narrative.

One more final story that speaks to the gaps in our knowledge.  Both daughters dancers.  Have to drive through public housing development, by definition is all poor and this one was predominantly white.  10 year old daughter asks, Why everyone in this neighborhood is black?   Good questions.  Most 5th grade classes don't teach this.  Older sister says, "Redlining."  How banks redlined neighborhoods to refuse loans to blacks.  Sister is right, but doesn't know why and talk about how history gets us to places.  It's not random.  These are outcomes of results of history.  Didn't lecture.  Just a two and a half honest explanation.  I don't think it was the first time she noticed it was a black neighborhood.  When you are the target oppressed community, you take the red pill (Matrix) and you're seeing the patterns.  But whites have the luxury of being on the blue pill.  Don't you see all this racism?  No, I don't see it man.    Kids don't have to be sociologists with PhDs, but they see these things.  Our kid had luxury of asking, because of what I do.  I asked parents about a week later.  There is only one honest answer about privileging and history.  Parents hemmed and hawed.  Or I don't want to burst the bubble of my child's innocence.  It's being burst every day.  Better we do it.  People say I shouldn't tell them about sexism because it will make it self fulfilling.  Hey, wouldn't send them down a dark alley with electronic fence at the end so they won't get neurotic.  No, they need to know for their own protection.

We've got to own the tuff that hurts.  Stop being snapchat nation, ok, but sending disappearing videos.  If Snapchat were a country, it would be the US.  What happened in the past is now gone and has nothing to do with today.

We're all privileged in some situations, if not white, then male, or straight,  or college educated, or able bodied.

Confessions Part 2 As We Leave Anchorage

I posted some thoughts on confessions just before boarding a plane to Seattle.  But I had more thoughts as we took off and before we got into the clouds.

Cook Inlet Ice as we take off

Making a Murderer is a disturbing yet compelling Netflix documentary series.  I gave some details of the confession - what it sounded like in the news and how it was actually obtained - in the previous post.

Here are some more thoughts the show raised for me.

Some specific issues for me:

The Certainty of the prosecutors and the defense attorneys.  The prosecutor and the investigators - even the initial court appointed defense attorney - were all certain that Steve Avery (Brendan's uncle) was guilty and that Brendan was an accomplice.  They didn't even consider other leads.  This certainty seemed to justify the way they got the confession.  They knew for sure that Brendan was guilty and they just needed to get him to admit it.  The defense attorneys were also certain.  The first court appointed attorney was sure of his guilt.  Later, the better attorneys who took over were sure of Steven Avery's and Brendan's innocence.  It's the job of the defense attorney to defend the accused.  But it's the job of the prosecutor to uphold justice.  His job in court is to present the evidence against the accused, but when information comes out that raises doubts, he should just relentlessly go after a conviction.  If the wrong person is convicted, it means the actual murderer is still loose and liable to find new victims.


Getting a Confession - How far to push?  If someone is guilty, it's better for the prosecution to get a confession.  It makes it easier to convict and you can get evidence on other culprits.  Prosecutors even make deals with suspects - 'We'll offer you less time in prison if you confess and cooperate with us on others involved in the crime."  It can also save the time and expense of a long trial if the suspect confesses and pleads guilty.  And if there is still an imminent danger - an unknown partner in crime still on the loose and dangerous - there is the added urgency of protecting people from harm right now.

Foraker and Denali Get Some Morning Sun

But what if the suspect is not guilty?  How far should the interrogator push?  This was a big issue with Guantanamo prisoners and waterboarding and other torture.  If the suspect is not guilty, one is inflicting unnecessary pain and/or anguish to an innocent victim or one gets a false confession when the suspect says whatever the interrogator wants him to say.

Findlaw tells us this was the reason for the protections against self incrimination in the US Constitution:

"The right against self-incrimination is rooted in the Puritans’ refusal to cooperate with interrogators in 17th century England. They often were coerced or tortured into confessing their religious affiliation and were considered guilty if they remained silent. English law granted its citizens the right against self-incrimination in the mid-1600s, when a revolution established greater parliamentary power.
Puritans who fled religious persecution brought this idea with them to America, where it would eventually become codified in the Bill of Rights. Today, courts have found the right against self-incrimination to include testimonial or communicative evidence at police interrogations and legal proceedings."

Getting a Confession - Use of Guile:  

Another issue is the use of lies to get a confession.  Interrogators led Brendan to believe that by telling the truth he would make his troubles go away.  He told them he needed to get back to school so he could turn in a paper and they implied that he needed to answer the questions first.  They asked if he wanted to go to prison for the rest of his life and when he said no, they said, then write down what you did.  They told him, "We know what you did, we just want you to say it."  Well, they didn't know.

About to fly up Eagle River valley 

Frontline tells a similar story about a girl name Troung:

"The detective also tells her that, if she confesses, they’ll “walk right out here, to special
crimes juvenile” to “talk to a social worker.” If not, he’ll consult with the medical examiner and start working on a murder case against her. . .
Finally Truong confesses, after being reassured by the detective that “maybe something good will come out of all this,” and that the courts will decide on what “treatment” she should get in the juvenile system. . ."

When you are dealing with a guilty suspect, you may have to use tricks to break them down and confess.  There are lots of strategies that we see in cop movies all the time, like Good Cop/Bad Cop.  But how does that work with the not guilty suspect?

The Frontline show goes on to say false confessions aren't as rare as people think.

"But are false confessions actually that rare? Brandon L. Garrett, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who recently wrote a book called Convicting the Innocent, says his research “suggests that innocents actually confess to a lot.” Forty of the first 250 people exonerated based on DNA evidence, or 16 percent, falsely confessed."

And why do people confess falsely?  They quote Troung about why she confessed, which sounds similar to Brendan's story:

So why did Truong confess to something she says she didn’t do? Why would anyone? “It was a pretty long two hours,” she told Boeri, “and all I could hear throughout those two hours was that they were going to give me help if I confessed.”

They falsely told her and Brendan that all they had to do was confess and they could go home.  In Brendan's case, that's all he wanted - to go home.  But they lied to him and chained him up and imprisoned him.  Is that kind of lying acceptable?

I think that different techniques are acceptable in different circumstances.  I'm not sure where the lines should be drawn, but introverted kids, like Brendan, with a low IQ and an inability to understand what is happening, are clearly on the no guile side of the line.  More important than locating that line, may be to insure that the person has an attorney present, though in Brendan's case, his attorney was part of the problem - enough so to be kicked off the case by the judge.

And over the Chugach 

Innocent or Guilty Presumption And The Need For Closure

We have trials to determine guilt or innocence.  The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  Yet in the Avery case and in Brendan's case, it's clear that even Brendan's attorney considered him guilty.  (see the previous post on this.)
The Sheriff - It's critical police keep open some doubt about the suspect's guilt, simply so they don't stop looking for other suspects.  In Steven Avery's case, the sheriff's office ignored a tip from the local police that there was another suspect they'd been surveilling, except for the time of the crime.  That other suspect eventually - after Avery served 18 years in prison - was proven to be the culprit.  And he committed more crimes in the meantime.  And Avery, through DNA tests was proven not to be.
The Victim's Family - They want to believe the person who did that to their family member has been caught and punished.  In the Avery/Dacey cases, the victim's brother was certain from Day 1 that Avery and Dacey (Kevin) were guilty.  They ignored the inconsistencies.  But the family really does have an interest in the real perpetrator being caught and punished.  In Avery's original conviction (when he was proven innocent later) the victim positively identified him.  But later on, when the DNA proved he hadn't done it, she apologized.
The Media - They want to sell advertising.  They have a strong incentive to report the most titillating stories they can.  The reports of Brendan's confession dripped with blood and sex and murder.  The reports made it sound like Brendan, after stewing on this for months, came in and spilled his guts.  There's no hint the police picked him up at school and painstakingly fed him the story they believed and manipulated him until he eventually wrote what they wanted him to write.  The media didn't ncecssarily presume guilt as much as presume that sensationalism gets ratings.  But in going for gore, they planted the the presumption of guilt in the minds of their viewers and probably in their own minds.


Need For Closure
I suspect that the quick presumption of guilt in this case reflected a very human need for closure.
The Sheriff - When a brutal crime is committed in a small town, law enforcement has to feel some responsibility for not having prevented it.  Thus the sooner they catch the culprit, the closer they are to redeeming themselves.  And there has to be at least subconscious antagonism toward the suspect for making them look bad.
The Victim's Family - They too want to put this to rest as quickly as possible.  Knowing the person who hurt or killed your family member has been caught and is being punished, for many, is a big part of the grievance process.  Retribution seems to be part of human society.  So much so that punishing the wrong person is not a worry for most victims' relatives.  I'm not saying they knowingly will accept any culprit to punish, guilty or not, but rather their need for retribution helps them see guilt, even in the innocent.
The Media - They probably have the least need for closure, as the 2014 Republican presidential race demonstrates.  As long as an issue gets viewers and sells advertisements, they'll feed it to us.
The Public - They share the police and victim's family needs.  They want to know the perpetrator is off the streets and they are safe so they can go on leading their lives normally.  They want to believe that justice will prevail.  They've watched enough police and lawyer television shows that they believe that in the end, the smart defense attorney will pull her client out of the fire.  Until they experience their own injustice at the hands of the police or the courts, they just want the culprit caught and punished and they don't probe too deeply into the matter.


One Other Issue - Media Manipulation Of Trials

My sense is that the filmmakers seriously made this film because they thought an injustice was done.  At least that's how it came across to me.  But how do any of us know whether they fairly represented all sides of this case?  Because they were taking the side of the economically and educationally poor, outsiders of this community against the establishment - particularly the sheriff department and the court system - that their motives are relatively clean.  But then, how poor are the Avery's?  They've got 40 acres of land, they've got a great vegetable garden.  Is there a bigger story that the filmmakers missed that someone is trying to get their land?  Probably not.  It's upstate Wisconsin and there is probably plenty of land available.  You see how many threads one could unravel and follow here?

The film makers here did a great job of mixing entertainment and documentary.  A documentary should be accurate and explain complicated relationships AND be interesting to the viewer so they watch the whole thing.  That happened here.  I know my wife and I were totally pulled into the story and we were rooting for the good guys and angry at the bad guys.  The filmmakers succeeded in their mission.

 But will others see this model and do similar types of films, but with a sponsored message?  Will corporations use this style to push their agendas?  Will criminal organizations make similar films to make their own members look innocent?  This documentary wasn't available when El Chapo met with Sean Penn, but maybe he was thinking along the same lines.

OK, there are all kinds of directions this can go.  Lots of issues.  But enough now.

Christie's Great Performance

I missed the news yesterday so I knew nothing about the emails from Chris Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly.  They indicate that the traffic study that jammed the nation's busiest bridge for a week and clogged the streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey was not the reason of the jam.

Instead it was done intentionally to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee who did not endorse Republican Chris Christie for governor.

I didn't know any of that when I got up this morning and my mom had on Chris Christie's news conference on CNN.

I haven't watched Christie closely.  I live in Alaska.  New Jersey's far away.  But my superficial knowledge was that he was the sensible Republican among those being mentioned as potential presidential candidates.  He worked with President Obama and praised his hurricane Sandy response just before the 2012 election causing other Republicans explode.  He seems to be able to work with Democrats and won reelection as governor by a wide margin in a Democratic state.  He was, I understood, the most likely Republican to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the question was whether he could survive the Republican primaries.

So that was the background I watched the news conference with.

I was impressed.  He sounded sincere.  He didn't seem to be using any notes.  He said the right things about his responsibility - he didn't know anything until yesterday, but he's the governor so he's responsible - and he'd fired the Kelly as soon as he learned about the incriminating emails.

He went on and on - almost two hours.  It was riveting television.  He was good.  He's obviously both intelligent and experienced.  In response to a question about why he didn't ask Kelly about what actually happened before firing her, he said he fired her for lying to him, not for what she did.  Since there were state and federal investigations already announced, if he questioned her it actually might be seen as inappropriate.  He mentioned his own experience as a prosecutor.

He expressed his sadness and disappointment with a close associate he trusted who lied to him.  

But we saw the Wolf of Wall Street the other night. Leonardo DiCaprio as Wall Street huckster Jordan Belfort makes me pause in my judgement.   Belfort could sell anyone anything.  There's a scene that everyone should see.  Belfort is starting his own brokerage firm and he's teaching his crew how to make cold calls to sell penny stocks - ones where the broker gets 50% commission - that are worth basically nothing.  He's got a client on the speaker phone and smoothly tells him the thickest lies about about the potential of the stock, while his body language to his employees tells the story about reeling in the fish and then screwing him.

Everyone should see this scene and have it implanted in their brain so that it rises to one's consciousness every time a car salesman, a cable tv or phone salesman or a stockbroker opens his mouth.  People should see DiCaprio thrusting his pelvis for his salesmen while he so sincerely assures the client that nothing could go wrong. 

I walked out of the three hour movie telling my wife that as skeptical as I already am, this movie makes it hard to trust any one.

And so that's what I brought to this news conference with Christie.  Christie's performance was perfect.  But I also wondered if he were thrusting his pelvis in his head.  There are so many questions.


Was Kelly the culprit or the scapegoat? 

How could he have a staff person he worked closely with for so many years who would lie to him like this?

How did he misjudge who she was so enormously?

Why would they jam up the 'busiest bridge in the world?' to punish a political opponent who, according to Christie, wasn't even on his radar?   This reeks of the kind of dirty tricks that, while both parties commit them, have become more associated with Republicans since Watergate and then the rise of Karl Rove.  

Politics attracts people who need or want power, power over others.  People who need power, I suspect, feel some inferiority, some lack, that this power will help them overcome, that will show others that they are somebody.  And such people seem particularly vulnerable to using their power inappropriately.  This was truly a petty act of retribution.  Petty only in the sense of inappropriately demonstrating one's ability to take revenge for some assumed slight.  But the impact on people was hardly petty.  I saw petty people like this with giant chips on their shoulders in 2011 when I blogged the state legislature in Juneau. 

Was this even a plot by the more conservative wing of the party to derail Christie's presidential campaign?  Or less likely, but plausible, a Clinton plot?

The biggest question outstanding seems to be whether Christie's performance today was genuine or whether he actually knew about this.  If he knew, and today's news conference was just a giant lie, I don't see how he can recover as a presidential candidate.  I don't see how he could stay in office in New Jersey for four more years.

If follow up investigations support his claims of innocence, I'd say today's performance shows him as a very competent leader.  People will still attack him for letting Kelly into his inner circle.  But lots of people have secrets that they hide from those around them and other politicians have had close aides resign because of scandals.

I would note that CNN had a feeding frenzy over this story, repeating parts of the news conference over and over again.  


[UPDATE 9pm - whatever the outcome, this political cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the NY Daily News is priceless:

click image to go to the source:  Bill Bramhall/NY Daily News

AIFF 2013: Two Fine Films: De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) and Hank and Asha

This is a continuation of this post on "What Makes A Good Film?"


My 1's (movies that had me walking out of the theater going 'wow!'):

7 Cajas (7 Boxes)

Die Nieuwe Wereld (The New World)

Hank and Asha

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (明天記得愛上我)


All four of these movies pulled me in so completely that I wasn't watching the movie making - all the technical stuff worked to tell the story, not distracted from the story (either because it was bad or so spectacular that it distracted.)

All four, I left the theater with the feeling of having seen a really good film.

Of the four,  I probably was the least swept away at the moment by The New World.  But it wouldn't let go of me.  Scenes kept coming back to me.  When I saw Hank and Asha I walked out pumped.  What a great film.  But then, I wondered was there enough depth?  Was this just a well made, but light romantic comedy?  The New World seemed more important, but I didn't walk out with the same elation.  Was I just being shallow?

At this point, I think they are both very fine movies.  The New World told a complicated story deceptively simply.  It quietly took us on a tour of two people's broken hearts.  We slowly learn about Mirte and Luc and their similar losses that allowed her to reach out to help him. At the same time helping herself.  On the surface though, it almost seems like a documentary about life at the airport's detention area for asylum seekers waiting for the decision whether they can enter Holland or not.  It's so understated.  Even the colors are muted.  One audience member told me his initial reaction was negative because there was no humor.  But the humor was there.  It was just so quiet.  Like a little dab of yellow in a grey-brown world.  For example - people are coming in the door at the end of the hallway where she's just mopped the floor.  She waves her hands at them to stay on the side - these are immigrants who probably don't speak Dutch.  She makes 'chhhhhh...chhhhhh" sounds at them.  An African stares at her as he walks down the hall.  She again goes, "chhhhhhh. . .chhhhhhhhhh."  He smiles and goes, "chhhhhhh. . .chhhhhhhhhh" back to her as though he were learning to say 'hello' in her language.   It's such intimate cross cultural communications that make this movie so powerful.  Two low level people in a political no-man's land at the airport, but not technically in Holland. In another scene, she catches him staring at her and she waves him off and tells him not to look at her.  He comes up to her and in complete innocence says, "I've never seen a white cleaning woman before."

This is a movie where you have to look closely or you'll think nothing is happening, but it's just happening at a lower volume and slower pace than we're used to in US film.  Slight gestures fill the screen with meaning if you're attuned to them.  When they get to the scene where she's washing the glass wall and he dances on the other side along with her motions it's like an explosion in another movie.

We get glimpses behind the scene in this asylum center - the workers making bets on who's lying, the attorneys trying to find ways to mesh the clients' stories with the specifics of the law, the impossible responsibility of determining if someone is telling the truth.  We see the healing relationship between the mother and her young son.     There's the motor bicycle she rides everywhere.  There's so much.  I was only able to see this film once and I know that a second and third viewing would reveal so much more I didn't see.

Actors Bianca Krijgsman and Issaka Sawadogo were superb.   This was, for me, one of the gems of the festival.


And then I saw Hank and Asha.  This is a feel good movie.  It's a video romance between two strangers, played by actors (Mahira Kakkar and Andrew Pastides) loaded with charm.  It's all told in the videos they - two budding film makers - send back and forth to each other between New York and Prague.  There's no nudity, no sex, no violence, just two well adjusted 20 somethings falling into an unexpected friendship that gets to the edge of something more.  Everything worked for me as they shared their lives with each other via video.  There's nothing heavy here, no imminent deportations, though there is appropriate cultural and parental conflict.  The epistolary film, that uses an exchange of videos rather than letters, is itself a comment on what we have lost as we've moved to instant global communication.   Everything worked for me.  The story, the characters (I never thought of the actors as actors it was so real), the way it was all put together seemed so natural.  We were simply eavesdropping as two people opened their video mail from their new found friend across the Atlantic.

The film makers - James Duff and Julia Morrison - were at the festival and I was able to learn more about the film.  You can see my video with them in Anchorage discussing the film here.  Most surprising was that the two actors only met after the filming was done. In fact Mahira did all her video in ten days in Prague before any of Andrew's video was made.  This speaks well to the scripting, the acting, and the editing.

James and Julia said Hank and Asha will be available on Netflix in April and people should put it on their lists now.  This is the kind of film I feel pretty comfortable recommending - it's hard not to like.  We did see this one twice and it held up nicely the second time.  I saw lots of things I'd missed the first time.

Next, two films that were not in competition because they were special selections - invited films, not submissions.