Black Mother Jailed For Sending Kids to White School District

Black Mother Jailed For Sending Kids to White School District An Ohio mother of two was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation after sending her kids to a school district in which they did not live. Kelly Williams-Bolar was sentenced by Judge Patricia Cosgrove on Tuesday and will begin serving her sentence immediately.

The jury deliberated for seven hours and the courtroom was packed as the sentence was handed down. She was convicted on two counts of tampering with court records after registering her two girls as living with Williams Bolar’s father when they actually lived with her. The family lived in the housing projects in Akron, Ohio, and the father’s address was in nearby Copley Township.

Additionally, Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward L. Williams, was charged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft, in which he and his daughter are charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for their girls. The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition.

At a time when the educational system in America is failing our children, particularly in poor communities of color, how could anyone penalize an African American woman for seeking a viable alternative to the failing schools in her neighborhood? It is no secret that the schools in white middle class communities are far superior to the public school system. Yes, this smacks of “separate but unequal”, Jim Crow revisited. What now will be the expectations of this woman’s kids when the are moved back to the failing schools they escaped? Before they went to the better schools they had nothing to compare their school to. Now they can compare and contrast the schools and know that the difference is dramatic. How will that make them feel? Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas decided in 1954, desegregating the public school system, has been reversed by the facts on the ground. The public school systems of this country are now as segregated as they were before Brown was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. But the integration of schools is not the only civil rights gain that has been erased on the ground. The other civil rights gains achieved by the struggle for civil rights have been effectively gutted. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, and the voting rights act of 1965 which eliminated barriers to the ballot box; they have all been more or less gutted by felon disenfranchisement laws that went unaddressed by the civil rights struggle, which left the battle field without addressing the issue of felon disenfranchisement, which now accounts for a major loss of political power to communities of poor people of color. Sending this mother to jail and stripping her of her career goals for trying to get her children access to good schools, then charging the father and daughter with fraud for the cost of the child’s education could only happen in America. This clearly shows that Jim Crow is not dead, he is alive and active. SOURCE: http://antikryptos.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/black-mother-jailed-for-sending-kids-to-white-school-district-2/

Prison reform: A smart way for states to save money and lives By Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan

I know you’ll want to read the great op-ed in today’s Washington Post that argues for smart criminal justice reforms. What makes it unique is that it is written by two well-known conservatives — Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan.  Both men are part of a new movement called Right On Crime that is bringing conservative voices to the criminal justice reform debate. We welcome their commitment to finding solutions that will cut prison costs and preserve public safety. An obvious one is reforming mandatory sentencing laws!

Happy weekend –

Julie

Washington Post
Friday, January 7, 2011

Prison reform: A smart way for states to save money and lives

By Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan

With nearly all 50 states facing budget deficits, it’s time to end business as usual in state capitols and for legislators to think and act with courage and creativity.

We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons. Several states have recently shown that they can save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison populations.

We joined with other conservative leaders last month to announce the Right on Crime Campaign, a national movement urging states to make sensible and proven reforms to our criminal justice system – policies that will cut prison costs while keeping the public safe. Among the prominent signatories are Reagan administration attorney general Ed Meese, former drug czar Asa Hutchinson, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, John Dilulio of the University of Pennsylvania, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Richard Viguerie of ConservativeHQ.com. We all agree that we can keep the public safe while spending fewer tax dollars if we spend them more effectively.

The Right on Crime Campaign represents a seismic shift in the legislative landscape. And it opens the way for a common-sense left-right agreement on an issue that has kept the parties apart for decades.

There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections – 300 percent more than 25 years ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American.

Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high, but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.

We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons. The criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.

Several states have shown that it is possible to cut costs while keeping the public safe. Consider events in Texas, which is known to be tough on crime. Conservative Republicans joined with Democrats in adopting incentive-based funding to strengthen the state’s probation system in 2005. Then in 2007, they decided against building more prisons and instead opted to enhance proven community corrections approaches such as drug courts. The reforms are forecast to save $2 billion in prison costs over five years.

The Lone Star State has already redirected much of the money saved into community treatment for the mentally ill and low-level drug addicts. Not only have these reforms reduced Texas’s prison population – helping to close the state budget gap – but for the first time there is no waiting list for drug treatment in the state. And crime has dropped 10 percent from 2004, the year before the reforms, through 2009, according to the latest figures available, reaching its lowest annual rate since 1973.

Last year we both endorsed corrections reforms in South Carolina that will reserve costly prison beds for dangerous criminals while punishing low-risk offenders through lower-cost community supervision. The legislation was a bipartisan effort with strong support from liberals, conservatives, law enforcement, the judges and reform advocates. The state is expected to save $175 million in prison construction this year and $60 million in operating costs over the next several years.

Some people attribute the nation’s recent drop in crime to more people being locked up. But the facts show otherwise. While crime fell in nearly every state over the past seven years, some of those with the largest reductions in crime have also lowered their prison population. Compare Florida and New York. Over the past seven years, Florida’s incarceration rate has increased 16 percent, while New York’s decreased 16 percent. Yet the crime rate in New York has fallen twice as much as Florida’s. Put another way, although New York spent less on its prisons, it delivered better public safety.

Americans need to know that we can reform our prison systems to cost less and keep the public safe. We hope conservative leaders across the country will join with us in getting it right on crime.

Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999 and is the founder of American Solutions. Pat Nolan was Republican leader of the California State Assembly from 1984 to 1988 and is a vice president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families that also works on justice reform.

It is time to move towards the one.

The inspiration for the title to this blog came from a book called towards the one, by Hazrat Inyat Khan, a Sufi. He saw human social evolution moving towards one people, one government, one race (the human race). That is a distant possibility. I share that same vision for movement building to dismantle the phenomena of the New Jim Crow; mass incarceration of African American males in America. To dismantle this new form of slavery will require us to come together, towards the one, to build the national movement to complete the unfinished business of the civil rights movement. Forty years of advocacy has produced nothing but incremental reforms that have done nothing but validate the racist criminal justice system. We need a new paradigm of struggle, we need to move towards one vision, one mission, and one movement.
Jazz