I believe an unlikely mix of alleged drug trafficking related politicos and alleged white nationalist related politicos united to elect the infamous “Bloc of Four” in the abysmal voter turnout election of 2005. During their four year term the drug business was good again and white nationalists used Coatesville as an example on white supremacist websites like “Stormfront”. Strong community organization and support from law enforcement, in particular Chester County District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll has begun to turn our community around. The Chester County drug trafficking that I believe centers on Coatesville continues and I believe we still have public officials in place that profit from the drug sales. But the people here are amazing and continue to work against the odds to make Coatesville a good place to live.
To understand contemporary politics you must understand right wing extremism.
"Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats shake their heads in confusion and fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of grassroots organizing, which is where all of this happens."
During the Great Depression American Fascism was explicitly Christian. In the 1950s it morphed into the John Birch Society.
The Christofascist base is now the supercharged engine of the GOP.They turn out to vote faithfully with religious fervor.
"When we showed up to city council, local political party meetings and tours of the Capitol we asked intelligent questions, were respectful and had a vested interest in how our local political machine ran. We impressed every government official and staff member with our questions, earnesty and demeanor. In short, we were sneaky and polite Trojan horses; we had an agenda. Yes, even as 15-year-olds. It was forcefully handed to us by the adults in our lives who had been preparing for this since before we were born.
I watched the Tea Party takeover and was surprised no one saw it coming. After all, this was part of the plan. Trump being elected is also part of the plan, although not Trump specifically; the true goal is Pence.
Christofascists have been wanting someone like Pence in the White House and, until now, didn’t have a way to get one in. They know Trump is easily manipulated and will change his mind with the wind if it makes him feel more powerful and famous. Trump couldn’t care less about policy, a fact he’s made quite obvious. The Right has given a tyrant power and fame; he will do whatever they want him to do in order to keep it. This way they can sneak Pence in on a piggyback while filling Congress with even more evangelical conservative Republicans. Compared to Trump’s abrasive and terrifying behavior, Pence seems much less threatening. This is not the case. Pence has a proven track record of legalizing discrimination and acting against women and marginalized people. Those of us who didn’t leave the far Right are being elected to federal positions or are taking over states and cities. With Pence in office, even the reasonable-seeming incumbents – who have been and are still at the mercy of the Tea Party – are growing more bold in their attempts to further the Christofascist agenda: To Take Back The Country For Christ.
This was the mantra we heard. This was our mission. This is how we were to win: Outbreed, Outvote, Outactivate. Every class, every event, every pastor or guest speaker reiterated this, choosing to risk the 501c3 status of their church to push their agenda. To take back the country for Christ, we needed to outbreed, outvote and outactivate the other side, thus saith The Lord.
Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats shake their heads in confusion and fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of grassroots organizing, which is where all of this happens. Republicans have a vast network of homeschoolers that HSLDA and others have given them to tap into as a source of free labor. Republicans in state governments are lax on homeschooling oversight because their Get Out The Vote base is made of homeschoolers thanks to Generation Joshua and Teenpact…
It is important to understand that they are coming at this from a place of passion and dedication. They have a fire in their bellies. While it looks like a bunch of backwoods hillbillies playing with guns to anyone outside, they are resilient and in it for the long haul. They want America to succeed, but in their America there isn’t room for anyone unlike them. There’s a reason Trump’s mantra stuck despite his deplorable behavior They think America was founded on conservative Protestant ideals because that’s what they’ve been fed, because that’s what aligns with their interpretation of the Bible and they will not go down without a fight."
Chester County, PA is one of the few counties in the U.S. that has verifiable paper ballots. Chester County is rare. Most of Pennsylvania’s elections are easy to hack and Russian Army intelligence knows exactly how to do it.
I believe Russia is attempting to control local & state elections.
Page views on my Coatesville Dems Blog, that is mostly about local politics & corruption, more than doubles because of views from Russia & former Soviet nations in the months before an election, then suddenly drops off after Election Day.
Coatesville Dems "Audience" showing which countries view my blog are here:
Our voting systems were designed to be easily hacked by Republicans.
SEE:
"While Diebold has received the most attention, it actually isn’t the biggest maker of computerized election machines. That honor goes to Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold’s."
"From a political perspective, Kirshbaum's concerns are understandable. After all, we are talking about providing a second opportunity for a presidential candidate whose "Freedom Party" was founded by former Nazis. But, as Brad Friedman has so frequently urged, election integrity is not about Left or Right. It's about right and wrong.
In that light, the July 1, 2016 decision issued by Austria's Constitutional Court represents a major victory for election integrity --- one that elevates what it describes as the fundamental prerequisite of ensuring "transparency in the establishment of the electoral result."
The court ruled that two individuals in each election district --- a chief and an assistant election officer --- must be personally present during the opening and counting of all mail-in ballots. Anything less opens up the prospect of a manipulated count.
Significantly, the party challenging the electoral result does not have to prove a manipulation of the result. If it was possible to manipulate enough ballots to alter the outcome, the official results must be set aside and a new election scheduled.
If applied by the U.S., the reasoning adopted by Austria's Constitutional Court would produce a fundamental and beneficial change in how our own elections are conducted..."
Also see Bentley ContextCapture drone 3D terrain model survey of the City of Coatesville brownfeild flats below.
MICHELS construction trailer in Coatesville, PA
“Mr. Simpson made a motion to approve the lease agreement between the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Coatesville and Michels Corporation for the property referred to as the “Flats”; Mr. Folks seconded the motion. Motion passed 3-2. Vice President Green and Mrs. Bookman were the dissenting votes.”
Discussion Item
1. Meeting Minutes
Vice President Green explained her reason for voting no for the flats lease. The reason
was to have additional time to understand the lease and have solicitor review. The City is
now committed.
President Lavender-Norris explained she did have time to read over and review. This is
why it was easy for her to vote.
Immigrant families are bringing back a legal local economy in Coatesville.
Coatesville is no longer an essential part of the drug cartels to street pipeline. The drug distribution network is everywhere & anywhere.
SEE:
Most of the drugs in Pennsylvania are now controlled by outlaw 1 % motorcycle gangs and street gangs. "Street Gangs" have morphed into transnational gangs. They use the internet and social networking websites. Some gangs operate as top down organizations. Others in small groups loosely linked together. They may link with similar organizations even across national borders to carry out a specific operation. When that operation is finished they disband.
The FBI nearly destroyed the old Italian/Sicilian Mafia. The few Philly area Italian Mafia made members that are left are into gambling, loan sharking, white collar crime and legitimate businesses.
Marijuana will soon become legal breaking a huge part of the war on drugs cartel-to street dealer- defendant- to lawyers & prosecutors income pipeline.
The new way to make money in Coatesville PA is back to the old way before Vietnam War Southeast Asia marijuana & heroin changed Coatesville to a drug distribution depot.
The lawyer/slumlords are now looking to a revitalized Coatesville and their slumlord property dramatically escalating in value.
Selling illegal drugs to make ends meet is normalized in Coatesville, PA and many other communities. "How else is a black man supposed to make a living?" is a frequent refrain. I think some of our Coatesville City Council people wink at those who sell drugs to friends to make ends meet and want to restrict police enforcing drug laws.
"But City Council President Patsy Ray defended Murray's reputation, going so far as to write the letter. The letter was part of a pre-sentencing investigation.
"I can confirm that (Murray) is a woman of great integrity, (and) is extremely dedicated to her family and neighbors ... I have not seen anything wrong with her behavior," Ray wrote in the Nov. 14, 2006, letter.
In the letter, Ray identified herself as a minister and councilwoman. Ray said she has known Murray for 15 years through the Home Gospel Mission.
"People in (Murray's) neighborhood look up to her for help ... In her neighborhood she was always the first to call the cops to make (sure) her neighborhood was (safe)," Ray wrote.
How can that be? Could someone dealing drugs from their home be the same person calling the police to make sure her neighborhood was safe?
In addition to the dozens of Coatesville residents upset with Ray's actions, even a county assistant district attorney questioned the appropriateness of an elected official coming to the aid of a drug dealer."
MORE AT:
When considering selling narcotics to make ends meet and hoping to not be arrested think about this:
Our narcotics laws were designed to perpetuate slavery and have done an impressive job perpetuating slavery.
"You said it started with Nixon. Give me a sense of the progression and how through each president since Nixon the incarceration system has been ramped up, and sometimes in unexpected ways. …
Some of our system of mass incarceration really has to be traced back to the law-and-order movement that began in the 1950s, in the 1960s. …
Segregationists began to worry that there was going to be no way to stem the tide of public opinion and opposition to the system of segregation, so they began labeling people who are engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience and protests as criminals and as lawbreakers, and [they] were saying that those who are violating segregation laws were engaging in reckless behavior that threatens the social order and demanded … a crackdown on these lawbreakers, these civil rights protesters.
This rhetoric of law and order evolved as time went on, even though the old Jim Crow system fell and segregation was officially declared unconstitutional. Segregation[ists] and former segregation[ists] began using get-tough rhetoric as a way of appealing to poor and working-class whites in particular who were resentful of, fearful of many of the gangs of African Americans in the civil rights movement.
Pollsters and political strategists found that thinly veiled promises to get tough on “them,” a group suddenly not so defined by race, was enormously successful in persuading poor and working-class whites to defect from the Democratic New Deal coalition and join the Republican Party in droves.
Unfortunately, this backlash against the civil rights movement was occurring at precisely the same moment that there was economic collapse in communities of color, inner-city communities across America.
In an excellent book by William Julius Wilson, entitled When Work Disappears, he describes how in the ’60s and the ’70s, work literally vanished in these communities. Hundreds of thousands of black people, especially black men, suddenly found themselves jobless.
As factories closed, jobs were shipped overseas, deindustrialization and globalization led to depression in inner-city communities nationwide, and crime rates began to rise. And as they rose and the backlash against the civil rights movement reached a fever pitch, the get-tough movement exploded into a zeal for incarceration, and a war on drugs was declared.
So there was a rising crime rate at that point, but over the last 40 years, the incarceration rate has pretty much been exponentially up. Has the crime rate remained high as well through that time?
Many people imagine that our explosion in incarceration was simply driven by crime and crime rates, but that’s just not true. That is sheer myth, although there was a spike in crime rates in the 1960s and 1970s. During the period of time that our prison population quintupled, crime rates fluctuated. …
Today, as bad as crime rates are in some parts of the country, crime rates nationally are at historical lows, but incarceration rates have historically soared. In fact, most criminologists and sociologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have moved independently [of] each other.
Incarceration rates, especially black incarceration rates, have soared regardless of whether crime is going up or down in any given community or the nation as a whole. …
Ironically, at the time that the war on drugs was declared, drug crime was not on the rise. … President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term a “war on drugs,” but it was President Ronald Reagan who turned that rhetorical war into a literal one.
At the time President Reagan declared his war on drugs in 1982, drug crime was on the decline. It was not on the rise, and less than 3 percent of the American population identified drugs as the nation’s most pressing concern.
So why would he declare an all-out war on drugs at a time when drug crime is actually declining, not on the rise, and the American public isn’t much concerned about it? Well, from the outset, the war on drugs had much less to do with … concern about drug abuse and drug addiction and much more to do with politics, including racial politics.
President Ronald Reagan wanted to make good on campaign promises to get tough on that group of folks who had already been defined in the media as black and brown, the criminals, and he made good on that promise by declaring a drug war. Almost immediately after his declaration of war, funds for law enforcement began to soar.
“I think the way in which we respond to drug abuse and drug addiction in these communities speaks volumes about the extent to which these are people we truly care about.”
But the crack epidemic hit after this declaration of war, not before. Many people assumed that the war on drugs was declared in response to the emergence of crack cocaine and the related violence, but that’s not true. The drug war had already been declared, but the emergence of crack cocaine in inner-city communities actually provided the Reagan administration precisely the fuel they needed to build greater public support for the war they had already declared.
So the Reagan administration actually launched a media campaign to publicize the crack epidemic in inner-city communities, hiring staff whose job it was to publicize inner-city crack babies, crack dealers or so-called crack whores and crack-related violence, in an effort to boost public support for this war they had already declared [and to inspire] Congress to devote millions more dollars to waging it.
The plan worked like a charm. Millions more dollars flowed to law enforcement. There was the militarization of law enforcement of the drug war as the Pentagon began giving tanks and military equipment to local law enforcement to wage this war. And Congress began giving harsh mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offenses, sentences harsher than murderers receive, more than [other] Western democracies.
And soon Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove they could be even tougher on them than their Republican counterparts, and so it was President Bill Clinton who actually escalated the drug war far beyond what his Republican predecessors even dreamed possible.
It was the Clinton administration that supported many of the laws and practices that now serve millions into a permanent underclass, for example. It was the Clinton administration that supported federal legislation denying financial aid to college students who had once been caught with drugs. It was the Clinton administration that passed laws discriminating against people with criminal records, making it nearly impossible for them to have access to public housing. And it was the Clinton administration that championed a federal law denying even food stamps, food support to people convicted of drug felonies.
So we see, in the height of the war on drugs, a Democratic administration desperate to prove they could be as tough as their Republican counterparts and helping to give birth to this penal system that would leave millions of people, overwhelmingly people of color, permanently locked up or locked out.
… Why should we care? Why should we pay attention to this?
I think most Americans have no idea of the scale and scope of mass incarceration in the United States. Unless you’re directly impacted by the system, unless you have a loved one who’s behind bars, unless you’ve done time yourself, unless you have a family member who’s been branded a criminal and felon and can’t get work, can’t find housing, denied even food stamps to survive, unless the system directly touches you, it’s hard to even imagine that something of this scope and scale could even exist.
But the reality is that today there are more African Americans under correctional control in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war began.
More black men are disenfranchised today as a result of felony disenfranchise[ment] laws. They were denied the right to vote in 1870, the year the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting the laws that denied the right to vote on the basis of race.
There are 2.3 million people living in cages today, incarcerated in the United States, and more than 7 million people on correctional control, being monitored daily by probation officers, parole officers, subject to stop, search, seizure without any probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
This is a massive apparatus, and that system of direct control of course doesn’t even speak to the more than 65 million people in the United States who now have criminal records that are subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.
The impact that the system of mass incarceration has on entire communities, virtually decimating them, destroying the economic fabric and the social networks that exist there, destroying families so that children grow up not knowing their fathers and visiting their parents or relatives after standing in a long line waiting to get inside the jail or the prison — the psychological impact, the emotional impact, the level of grief and suffering, it’s beyond description. And yet, because prisons are typically located hundreds or even thousands of miles away, it’s out of sight, out of mind, easy for those of us who aren’t living that reality to imagine that it can’t be real or that it doesn’t really have anything to do with us.
Michelle Alexander is a civil-rights advocate, lawyer, legal scholar, and professor.
Michelle Alexander is the author of the bestseller The New Jim Crow, and a civil-rights advocate, lawyer, legal scholar and professor. She spoke with FRONTLINE about how the war on drugs spawned a system dedicated to mass incarceration, and what it means for America today. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Sept. 5, 2013."
