Part One
In the 1970s I was a rookie TV news reporter covering crime and mayhem on the rough, tough ghetto streets of Detroit.
I watched the county morgue wagon haul away hundreds of black men, women—and children—in body bags. This was during the era when Detroit went from being the Motor City to the Murder City. I was reporting on the loss of black lives before there were hashtags, much less phrases like Black Lives Matter.
Because I covered crime, I spent a lot of my life in courtrooms. I know courts impact black lives more than they impact whites. I know all about grease-the-skids justice.
I’m telling you this because I’m about to step in to a mine field of politics.
After years of hearing that Black Lives Matter, I must say I am astounded. I’m astounded by the lack of outrage, the lack of action by American blacks over the relentless packing of our federal courts with extreme right-wing judges. These mostly-white, mostly-male legal zealots are going to influence more black lives than any police or vigilante shooting ever could. These are judges who think it’s their duty to get the federal government legal system off the backs of segregationists and White Supremacists. Yet, America’s blacks have been sitting on their hands—and other parts—passively letting it happen.
There have been media reports, but no mass public action. There are no marches, no protests, no boycotts, no national movement to protect civil rights from these judges.
If Black Lives Matter, where ya been?
Court-packing by the Bigot-in-Chief and the White Rights Party otherwise known as Republicans is, perhaps, the greatest assault on civil liberties and minority rights since the birth of the Civil Rights movement. It is a story of momentous importance hiding in plain sight.
Yet, the silence from the black population over court-packing could be likened to the silence of the lambs. Lambs quit screaming when they are slaughtered.
If Black Lives Matter, where ya been?
In early November, the President celebrated the 150th federal judge he has appointed to a lifetime job on the bench. One in every four federal appeals court judges is now an appointee of the man who called mostly-black Baltimore a “disgusting, rat and rodent-infested place.”
He’s named two hard-core conservative Supreme Court justices, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the federal system, cases begin at the local level in district courts. Decisions in federal district court are often challenged at the next highest level, the 13 courts of appeal which are divided regionally. There is the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court hears a very limited number of cases.
“And then there are the Courts of Appeal where the vast majority of cases are decided.
“One fourth of those judges are now Trump appointees and in under three years…Trump has named 48 judges to these courts. Compare that again to Obama, who named only 55 during his entire presidency. So, this will have a lasting impact. These judges will be there long after Trump is gone.”
—Kristin Tate, Columnist-The Hill
These judges are poised to wage a quiet counter-revolution to roll back a range of federal court rulings to the pre-Civil Rights days. They’re being given lifetime appointments week after week after week.
If Black Lives Matter, where ya been?
Court-packing has been a right-wing priority for years. The Congressional Black Caucus issues an occasional letter of opposition to nominees like Thomas Farr and Steven Menashi.
Menashi was confirmed,
Farr was not.
But the Congressional Black Caucus has done very little to mobilize blacks across the country against packing the federal courts with judges who want to curtail the federal government’s oversight of civil rights.
Senator Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party in general have done next to nothing to stop it.
They watched it for years but they can’t seem to figure out a strategy to disrupt court-packing.
Question for the Black Caucus and the Democratic Party:
If civil rights matter, if Black Lives Matter, where ya been?
Court-packing is a stack-the-deck scheme to turn the third branch of government—our judicial system—in to a right-wing fortress of power for decades to come. Remember, federal judgeships are lifetime appointments. Many of the appointees are in their forties.
The campaign to turn our courts in to bastions of conservatism is the work of an in-the-shadows group known as the Federalist Society. It is a group that views the states as sovereign and believes state laws should be the law in the rule of law.
The Federalist Society, personified by an extremist named Leonard Leo, has spent years raising hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a campaign to re-make the federal bench with judges who will view the courts as having limited authority over laws enacted by the states. Leo told the Washington Post years ago he envisioned a pipeline:
“…To create a pipeline that started in law school and then glided in to the legal profession by building a network or infrastructure of people around the country who could influence the major power centers of our legal culture.”
In terms of political power in Washington, the Federalist Society puts the National Rifle Association to shame.
You can march around after some black guy gets shot and killed and chant “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!” all you want. It’s attacking the symptom, not the disease. Unjustified police shootings are a symptom of an increasingly diseased criminal justice system.
Why aren’t you chanting Hey Hey Ho Ho when Radical Right lawyers are breezing through Mitch McConnell’s Senate on their way to the federal judicial bench?
You say Black Lives Matter? Where ya been?
Speaking of Mitch McConnell, all Americans who believe in an independent judiciary should be mounting a full-court press to get this Kentucky senator defeated in this year’s election. Senator McConnell controls all federal judicial nominations. He’s proud of his work to install judges who generally view national civil rights laws as federal government overreach.
“These young men and women will be on the U.S. Circuit Courts, remember these are lifetime appointments, for a very long time. I think it’s the single biggest contribution we’ve made to changing America in the future.”
—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) interview with EWTN Television
Why isn’t McConnell’s defeat a national campaign? Why aren’t you making plans now to have thousands of blacks descend on Kentucky in November and knock on doors to get-out-the-vote and provide rides to the polls for every black voter in that state?
Why aren’t white liberals who love to chirp that they deplore politicizing the federal court system, helping organize a blitz to get this menace to civil rights out of office?
If you want to stop the court-based assault on civil rights, Mitch McConnell needs to be defeated.
If Black Lives Matter, where ya been?
The popular word nowadays is woke. I have a message for black folks. You ain’t woke. How woke can you be when the Make America White Again Congressional warriors are working right under your noses to install judges who favor the Confederate states’ rights philosophy over national civil rights?
It’s the Silence of the Lambs.
I’m sure there are some who will lash out and call me Whitey, Honkey, Cracker, Mutha, everything but a child of God. But in terms of court packing, the question remains: If Black Lives Matter, where ya been?
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