"Stop 'Stop and Frisk!'"

[Friedrich]

Who or what you are -- or what you believe -- makes you guilty if you
are a young person of color or member of another suspect group in
today's America.

Whether you have done something illegal is irrelevant to this
assessment. "Trouble makers" (me) are in danger of facing retribution
for using their Constitutional rights. Americans' Constitutional
protections are given lip-service publicly, but are ignored in
practice. Censorship on-line and elsewhere is a fact of life. Lies
from public officials and cover-ups of crimes have become all-too
common. We have come to expect such behavior from politicians,
especially in New Jersey.

Since intimidation is not possible, against me, at this stage of my
life, I feel free to say some things that need saying: Racism is not
only still with us, but more sinister and insideous, partly because it
is hypocritically denied by its worst practitioners. ("Albert Florence
and American Racism" and "Give Us Free!" then "Justice For Mumia Abu-
Jamal.")

America's decline from core values is reversible, but not when loss of
freedoms is ignored or denied. We are a more frightened and LESS
secure nation today than we were on 9/11: Afghanistan is a disaster
and unwinnable nightmare; Iraq is a humanitarian catastrophe that has
resulted in the destruction of an ancient civilization along with the
blighting of millions of people's lives, including an entire
generation of children deprived of education and health care, or
proper nutrition, from whom future terrorists will be drawn.

The inequalities in wealth and power in America have become grotesque.
Republicans' "Let them eat cake!" solution to our troubles is a non-
solution -- combined with tax cuts for them making things worse.

Mr. Obama's apathy to some of the worst violations of human rights in
our history are "disappointing" at best, despite some genuine
achievements in his first term. Yet there is no one else to vote for.
Progressives are stuck with Obama. Sadly, many people -- including
Latinos and women -- may stay home during the next presidential
election.

I do not know whether censorship and plagiarism will permit me to post
this comment on-line. I cannot reach my own dashboard at blogger
because of state censorship. There is little difference between my
situation and the plight of bloggers in China or Cuba. In fact,
writers in those countries may be better off than I am since they are
rarely raped, stolen from, subjected to cybercrime, or worse, as I am.
("What is it like to be tortured?" and "How censorship works in
America.")

New Jersey's cabal of organized crime figures in government may
succeed in denying me the truth about my matters, but they are the
very people who tend to be indicted on a regular basis and may find
themselves disapproving of me from behind prison walls.

I will certainly never stop fighting this war for the truth about my
life. I reject absurd comments on my ethics from bribed judges, mafia
lawyers, crooked politicians and other denizens of Trenton's smoke-
filled rooms and Supreme Court chambers. ("Is Menendez For Sale?" and
"New Jersey's Child Sex Industry.")

Mr. Booker and Mr. Christie, rhetoric is not enough. More drastic
action is called for to end the nightmare of New Jersey's corruption
and complicity in obstruction of justice. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical'
Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

We cannot make our broken economic system more fair and efficient
while providing additional "goodies" for financiers on Wall Street:
"It's like asking a system of sharks to stop eating other fish. That
is a utopia that doesn't exist. We have to be capable of combining
political realism [with idealism about values.]"

Olivier Besancenot, "The Struggle Against Capitalism," in
"International Socialist Review," March-April, 2012, at p. 26.