When people start voting their conscience, when they start being aware of issues, when they start honest debate which requires a person to look at arguements that support their position as well as oppose it, then we will start having justice.

People don't get involved because the fear based messages work (if we don't fight them there we'll fight them here).

And if you think that predjidice against gays and blacks isn't one of the biggest reasons that republicans have the support they do, you might be missing the boat. I've talked to republicans who are concerned about the war but they are more concerned about gay marriage. What's up with that?

There is no peace without justice, and no justice if it is based on lies. AG

so it goes...

There is no justice because the system is broken, top to bottom

"The pump don't work cuz the vandals took the handles." All our institutions, including judicial, now serve the needs of corporate America. And the Constitution has been sold to corporate America for them to use to globalize the world. We were supposed to be a country, not an empire.
Hoa binh

In the streets!!!!!

But how do we fix it? This is a monumental task and undertaking akin to the moon landing. Does this country have the will to do it? It is easier said not to be afraid but there are active forces to make you afraid. How can we make our fellow Americans realize that we outnumber the ones that mean us harm?

You can't. You shouldn't. Sadly, I am serious too.

Our justice system doesn't run on trust but on conflict. It's adversarial, and when it leans in one direction or the other, it's because the weak side isn't fighting hard enough. More lawsuits and appeals, fewer plea bargains, demands, demands, and more demands are the force that can put things in balance.

And it's about Wesley Snipes, while not a single Wall Street thief is even indicted, nor Forbes 500 billionaires even audited; it's about Michael Vick, while the President - the President, goddamn it - proudly boasts his authorizing the torture-to-death of innocent-until-proven-guilty humans, not just a couple of dogs; and it's about McCrazy holding an all-white cult meeting in Selma, Alabama, and being applauded for it...

You should trust the American justice system because it holds out the promise of some day being administered fairly.

vmulier April 30th, 2008 4:08 pm:

"You should trust the American justice system because it holds out the promise of some day being administered fairly."

As this article deals specifically with African-Americans, wouldn't you agree that the "promise" you speak of was never made to African Americans.

But for the sake of argument suppose the "promise" was made. Firstly, when was it made? And second, how long should African-Americans wait for the fulfillment of that promise? Why should anyone, regardless of race, adhere to the norms of a society that denies them justice and only vaguely "promises" justice sometime in the future...when they are dead and have no use for it? If the promise was made to my generation and never kept (fool me once), wouldn't I be a fool to assume that the unkept promise would be honoured during my child's lifetime?

I understand the optimism of your post and the sentiment behind it. But justice, in my opinion, should not be hoped for; it must be provided in order for any rational individual (or group) to buy into a society.

Oh, if you were being sarcastic, please excuse my rant :)

Yes, and when you read, as I did yesterday, that yet another black man was freed by DNA, this after 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, you have to wonder how many others were innocent as the drugs dripped slowly into their veins.

What is it with the police? I can understand panicking at the sight of a few unarmed black men coming out of a club, whipping out my pistol and firing several times just to be sure...but fifty? Were they worried the victims might rise up as zombies and bite them?

Excuse me, but I'm white, and I would NOT call cops under any condition. I consider them 'armed and dangerous' - which they are - and can't imagine any perp that might be more dangerous than them. Oh sure, there are a few good ones here and there - but they still hide the felons in their midst behind that 'thin blue line' BS. Just like any other military organization - it's 'them' against 'us' - and 'civilians' are the enemy. Hell, even fireman are calling people 'civiians' now - and giving outrageous orders, backed by police who carry military arms.

This all started with those 'SWAT' teams and military wannabees who had nothing to do to get their rocks off after Vietnam - so they started the 'war on drugs' - and whoopee! - they have a civil war going, and they pick on the most vulnerable. Which is, unfortunately, mostly black in this country. But don't you think for one minute that you aren't a 'potential threat' to them, any time they say so. And dead people don't talk - and don't sue. Today's police - the 'enforcers' of the 'justice system' - are nothing more than domestic terrorists, or terrorist-enablers. That's fascism for you. And you'd better start learning more about fascism - because it's here to stay for a long time.

In terms of quantity, the cops in USA aren't as bad as some here suggest. Especially where I live, however (not NYC), cops kill far too many, as can be seen by the ratio of homicides by cop versus homicides of cop. I have been living in the same mid-sized city for over 20 years, the only cop killed by an assailant was a city resident killed by by a fellow cop in another county, who was shooting at a guy with a pellet gun. On the other hand, they've killed a bunch in the same time. As best I can tell, fratricide killings (cop v cop) run roughly 10% of fatal shootings of cops, and cops are 1/400 of the general population. Therefore, another average cop is 40 times more dangerous than an average non-cop is to a cop. (This considers shootings only, statistics are hard to get, and ignores suicide, the real big killer of cops.) On the other hand, to an average non-cop, the average cop is perhaps five times as dangerous as an average cop. These numbers vary greatly by race, and this analysis is overly simplistic, but the numbers are indicative.

Pitts is 100% right on about the trust factor. OJ Simpson was found not guilty in his criminal murder trial because the jurors felt almost all the prosecution witnesses lied on the stand, the senior folks to cover up their mistakes and the underlings to cover up for the bosses. (4 of the jurors wrote a book.)

The war on drugs has served to create 50% of all crime, and cause something like 1/3 of all homicides. Any student of US Constitutional history should know the story of Prohibition. How can it be Constitutional?

The Supreme Court says it all. If so many are so crooked at the top, how about the rest of the system? That includes the Senate, which approved these people.

I have always wanted to work for justice. It's important to recognize that justice and the law are distinct. Sometimes words matter, we need to realize that the term "criminal justice system" is an inaccurate description of the reality of our judicial system.

Given how the system is set up to work, there is very little reason for anyone who isn't of a certain class and race to trust it. It's flawed at best, and at worst it is doing exactly what it was intended to do. And that is true even if the design sort of just happened, following the flow of least resistance; i.e, that which favors the rich and the white.

In answer to the question, Mr. Pitts, "Where is Justice?" ... Justice is dead. And sadly, no, you can't trust the justice system.

I am not an anarchist or a libertarian. I do not think that government is inherently evil, or that even big government is a bad idea. However, I do think that it is unamerican to trust our justice system. I believe that we must be forever untrusting of it and always vigilant in our efforts to make it just. But do not despair. All of the fights most worth fighting are unwinnable. Keep the faith brother.

armybrat,

You wrote: "Excuse me, but I'm white, and I would NOT call cops under any condition. I consider them 'armed and dangerous' - which they are - and can't imagine any perp that might be more dangerous than them."

I have to agree. Back in the 1970s the cops had a slogan "When in trouble, call a hippie," which many of them apparently found humorous. But it sadly proved true for me. One time when I was a teenager my car died in a bad part of town past midnight and I flagged down a cop car that passed by. The two cops in the car searched me and my friend and my car and then gave me a test to determine whether I was impaired, and, being disappointed in finding nothing upon which to make an arrest, they laughed at us and told us we better get out of there as they sped off. Just as we were beginning to despair, a couple of friendly long-haired guys smelling of weed stopped and helped us get the car started again and we were able to get on our way.

My other memorable experience was when I was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time (the charges were soon dropped) and was treated like some sort of serial killer by the cops at the station. Not only did they steal the money out of my wallet, but they were incredibly insulting and engaged in non-stop bullying, and I was as much of a clean-cut upstanding white middle-class citizen as one could ever find. My eyes were opened.

I know that anecdotal experiences have limited value, but I have not been able to keep those two small experiences from coloring my perceptions, and I can hardly begin to imagine what it must be like to suffer such injustice and abuse on a steady basis as many inner-city individuals of color do.

The American justice system, at least in the state of Colorado, has nothing to do with justice. It's all about making money for the FOR PROFIT prison/probation system. And as such, it has NO interest in keeping people out of it's clutches, but rather to put them into it, FOR PROFIT.

A friend of mine was busted last August for growing his own medicinal cannabis, but the state, which has a medicinal cannabis law, doesn't see his reasons for growing it as being legit (depression and alcoholism - he hasn't had a drink in over 23 years, now). They came in with 12 armed, masked goons and ransacked his house, took his 8 plants (ONE of which was over 1 1/2 feet tall), and now he is on probation for two years, having to do brethalyzer tests, piss tests, and is having to pay over a third of what he makes to the country for fines. It's nothing but extortion.

Justice has nothing to do with it anymore. In this state we are 49th in education spending and 3rd in prisons. Anyone else see a major problem there?

What we have now is rich people who run a system that is designed to make them richer and ruin the lives of everyone else in the country.And while I do agree that it's worse for minorities, it's no great deal for white people, either.I've been saying for the last 20 years that the republicans won't be satisfied until half of us are in jail and the other half is watching them. That is the real republican full employment plan.

Until money stops being the thing that calls all the shots in this country, we are all in trouble, for one thing or another. It's too profitable for the system to not go out of it's way to screw whoever it can.

In answer to Mr. Ptt's question about American justice, it has been suborned at its highest level, the Supreme Court! It is exemplified by the US lawmakers and the criminal non-justice system. We see it in some of the candidates running for president and the media.

McCain and Clinton simply an extension of the Bush policy of the last seven years and a hope to continue the same policy. they include the "politics of fear" as Obama speaks of . The Fox network and these two politicians above and power brokers of the Rupert Murdoch style of revisionism in America and the world move us back toward the 1952 Australian style thought in foreign affairs and economics that will move to bring the world to extinction.

Clinton once again show her irresponsible thinking at any price to gain the American nomination to continue to lead the world to oblivion. I read with interest the comments of Americans. I consider myself a humanist and not one that has the USA tattooed to my backside although I gave three years to the military and so have a right to speak. Nationalism, is always based in me-firstism, let the rest of the world be damned mentality. Clinton is the new spokesperson for that idea and has now teamed up with the Fox network and the rabid so-called journalists who have helped diminish the America I once knew and fought to maintain. The way the rest of the world looks at the USA is colored by people like these at the highest levels of power.

The economic system that determines all peoples survival regardless of where they exist, also determines what a country will become, much of it the result of chance. In that regard the USA has been lucky, with well-worn imperialist ideas brought over with the Pilgrims. America has taken this country from the people who were here, the European model, without paying them. Some of us here know the story. The so called, "free market market system", formerly American capitalism, and now globalization into which it has now morphed. the US with its European allies has created the current means of controlling everything for the few. The G 8 has developed ever-greater means to develop these ideas and to take what it wants from the rest of the world and its own population.

The African Americans, the Africans, the Hispanics, Asians and Indians have been the slave classes that have built the white European and American wealth. The historic exploitation of the working classes of America brought from the world into its "melting pot" with the so-called freedoms and democratic ideals built from the blood spilled to form, compared to the European monarchies and divine kingship, so called Democracy unique in the world. The freedoms bought so dearly, were the first "Divine Kingship" of the "Robber Baron" and now, corporate power elitism.

To keep the masses quiet and to build the lives of Americans, consumer ideology supplanted education, the study human purpose, as a goal in itself. The economic forces, which have built their power, care little for human development and survival. They care largely for their continued power as an end in itself and for the few who have the most based on its protection with a huge military force, hence the oil wars in Iraq, this to support an auto centered disposable consumer society.

The expense of privilege in the community of nations may become the death of the globe and its entire people as a result of the American and European economic system, now out of control. Many American economists, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Stiglitz, and others view these historical developments as a threat to global harmony and survival.

American wealth once had an altruistic quality about it. The post-World War II USA, developed the Marshal Plan and cared about the condition of the world. Now the top one percent, those who have taken so much, continue to be supported by the thirty percent of Americans who still believe George Bush, and his myth of global superiority at the expense of the rest of the world. It is clare that to many of Clinton's opinions continue the Bush doctrine, of unilateralism.

We sit on the edge of an environmental and economic disaster. This American system is out of control and the economic meltdown will continue regardless of who occupies the Oval office. The only difference is that Obama is intelligent enough to know that there are fundamental change needed in the way America and the so-called "free world" do business.
Rev Wright, simply addresses continued black slavery in a world of exploitation of all people led by the US and now the power elite in collusion with the government to continue the "American Dream" mentality, represented now by corporate multilateralism and their wealth and power. Corporate elitism cares for itself alone at the expense of all people, the environment, the human experiment, its freedoms, and so called democratic ideals which has become nothing more than an oligarchy.

We should not be too pejorative about Rev Wright who simply rails against the exploitive aspects of the Western mentality and points out the deficiency in the USA of evolved thinking toward the slave classes and the human species. He, having been able to experience directly because of his skin color these abuses is perhaps too angry which limits his effectiveness. His experience in seeing the wreckage of black America and his intelligence, has caused him to take up the defense of the disenfranchised.

America has a history of caring about others, once a genuine American direction, led by people, despite their failings like: The Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and so many others who died for their belief in a better America and a better world, caring about humanity.

The media who carries their continued assault against those, who would in any way, attempt to include different thinking to bear on the so called "American Dream" which has become the world's nightmare must be seen by the masses for what it has become. The media must begin to understand its roll as an objective commentator to the necessary changes that must be made to the USA and the world if humanity is to survive.

The media above all must be changed once again to give democratic exposure to all important ideas. It must present an understanding of the complex thought needed to be brought to bear on global complex issues of survival. A departure from the simplistic superficial treatment ad-nauseam we witness each day which passes for news presented by the Barby-Doll class of newsreader called journalist.

JUSTICE is based on THE LAW. THE LAW is your guideline for activity. So if you live by THE LAW you should never have a problem with JUSTICE.
There is a whole bunch of people that have not studied THE LAW, so they will probably break a law...and if they don't learn quick, they will learn the hard way. If I have learned anything it is: watch your step and try with all your might to remain out from under any earthly authority.
When there is miscarriage of THE LAW & JUSTICE that is chaos. When THE LAW & JUSTICE is upheld honorably and fully that is beautiful.
Of course its a game. hahahaha
smillllllllleeeeeessss & kisssssssseesssss wild ;)

I do not think that you can trust the American justice. All you can do is try to make it just. If enough people wake up and start seeing what really is going on this world would be a better place. It is the citizens responsibility to fix America. The government is a wreck so long as we allow it.

Justice, along with Elvis and the "truth" have long ago "left the bldg".