The War on Drugs, and Militarized Police Departments' Targeting of Black Citizens: the Prequel
Check out this statement from one of Richard Nixon's most infamous enforcers, the late and unlamented John Ehrlichman:
“The Nixon Campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and Black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or Black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Let's hope this Nazi scumbag twisted slowly in the wind before he finally died.
Labels: John Ehrlichman, War on Drugs
posted by Tom Harper @ 4:44 PM
8 Comments:
Tom wrote:
“Let's hope this Nazi scumbag twisted slowly in the wind before he finally died.”
Oh Tom surly you remember when Haldeman and Erlichman were called “Nixon’s Nazis” or “Nixon’s German Shepherds” by the Press and Congress. Used to piss off the German community though I remember listening to the old white supremacist hotlines that denied they were German but in fact closet Jews.
Nixon promised the South not only to appoints SCOTUS Justices that would stop Bussing but that would bring back Pleussy (Jim Crow), Fortunately the Senate Blocked both of them (remember Roman Hruska’s famous line about being Mediocre?). To compromise Nixon gave us the moderate “Minnesota Twins” Warren Burger and Harry Blackman, Blackman was most famous for writing the majority decision for Roe V Wade!
Nixon’s largest Damage to Civil Rights was instituting the “Philadelphia Experiment” as Government Policy. No not the movie it was a standard which set a certain standard on percentages of people of color (Blacks at the time). He gave it the name “Affirmative Action” a term which previously meant an Affirmative way of finding discrimination. Instead of waiting for someone to complain you would go out and find patterns of discrimination. Nixon did it to get back at the Labor Unions who were filing suits against corporations for discriminating. Nixon figured he could turn the tides on them (and their long history of nepotism) and he could also start a white backlash against Civil Rights in whole. Today the term Affirmative Action is associated with “quotas” and “preferences” and gave the right wing a another reason to hate Civil Rights (remember they hated losing Jim Crow).
Erik
Affirmative Action=The War on Poverty. Same thing really insofar as either one was a positive move forward.
FYI-On March 6, 1961 President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which included a provision that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
I meant "neither one"
Erik: Most of Nixon's goon squad were also Christian Scientists (Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Krogh, among others), which stirred the ire of the Christian Science community. I have relatives who are Christian Scientists and I remember them being very defensive and pissed off.
I remember when Nixon's 2 SCOTUS nominations were blocked, and all the rightwing outrage about white southerners being a persecuted minority. I don't remember that line from Roman Hruska, but I do remember when a magazine -- New Times, which hasn't been around for decades -- had an article about the ten dumbest congressmen, and Hruska was at the top of the list.
Today's conservatives think Christian Scientists are whackos as do they with the Westboro Baptist crazies
WTF? Every Christian Scientist I've known has been very compassionate, non-judgmental and they're usually involved in volunteer/charity activities. Nice try though.
They are whackos
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