By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on July 25, 2021 I took a short summer break from writing and posting my articles to enjoy some vacation time in scenic Anthony, New Mexico. The mountainous views and surrounding landscape are breathtaking. I enjoyed every moment of my outdoor activities during my week-long vacation. When I turned my attention back to what's happening in America, I observed the following truisms about the state of politics in America: 1. We are still in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic because Republican politicians have discouraged the wearing of masks and the massive national efforts to get Americans vaccinated. Now, there is a pandemic of unvaccinated Americans within the COVID-19 pandemic. We are also battling "Long-COVID," the "Delta Variant," and the "Breakthrough Virus," all because most Republican politicians never took the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. One thing is for sure in this politically-charged environment -- the COVID-19 virus and its variants do not care if we are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. 2. President Joe Biden continues to exhibit weak leadership with respect to protecting the voting rights of African-Americans and other Americans of color. Biden refuses to use the full power of his office to muster the support needed to pass new voting rights legislation in Congress to protect the voting rights of historically disenfranchised voters of color from the wave of restrictive and suppressive voting laws that are sweeping the nation in Republican-controlled states. President Lyndon B. Johnson set the precedent on how to use presidential power to win passage of civil and voting rights legislation when he twisted the arms of opposing southern senators to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The protections afforded to racial minorities and women under these Acts have been systematically decimated by right-wing conservative Justices who have been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Republican presidents since the 1980s. 3. President Biden orchestrated a photo op with the family of George Floyd at the White House in June, but he has yet to meet with the family of Army Private LaVena Johnson to assure them that he will: (a) unseal the Pentagon's classified file on her murder by former four-star general Kevin P. Byrnes on a military base in Balad, Iraq in July 2005, (b) investigate her murder and cover-up thoroughly, and (c) prosecute her murderer and those who covered it up. General Byrnes, who is white, murdered Private Johnson, who was black, after she inadvertently discovered him in a compromising position with his mistress while taking a break from her work as a telephone operator on the base. The Army's Chief of Staff had previously ordered Byrnes, who was married at the time, to end the illicit affair with his lover. Byrne, however, did not have the willpower to do so. When Private Johnson encountered the two lovers at night in a secluded section of the military base that was reserved for private contractors, Byrnes panicked, snapped, attacked, and killed her. Stunned in the moment, Private Johnson did not defend herself during this attack in which Byrnes fractured her neck and shot Private Johnson in the top of her head with his 9-millimeter service revolver. In August 2005, the Secretary of Defense and a top Pentagon official (a) briefed then-President George W. Bush on Private Johnson's murder, (b) promptly fired Byrnes from the Army, (c) subsequently classified Private Johnson's murder as a "suicide, "and (d) labeled her murder file as "top secret." The Pentagon's file on Private Johnson's "suicide" remains classified today, 16 years after her death. Private Johnson's homicide is the highest profile "Black Lives Matter" murder that has not been prosecuted. 4. President Biden's immigration policies are infected with the same latent racism that defines Republican immigration policies. Like their predecessors in office, Biden and Republican leaders in Congress welcome the steady stream of white migrants from European countries. Yet, they have a political problem in welcoming the "tired, poor, and huddled masses" from Central and South American countries. While these politicians focus on the growing stream of illegal migration on America's southern border, white Anglo-Saxon migrants continue to stroll into America illegally by simply walking across the thousands of miles of America's open northern border with Canada, all day, everyday without much of a hassle. This illegal migration on the northern border has gone on for hundreds of years, but our national politicians never talk openly about it. 5. President Biden has collapsed as an advocate for teaching the true history of how white men, including the Founding Fathers, mistreated and abused people of color and women in America for 400 hundred years. Biden has done absolutely nothing to attack the wave of so-called "memory laws" that have passed in Republican-controlled states. These statutes make it unlawful to teach public school students about the cruel and inhuman treatment white men have inflicted upon Native-Americans, African slaves, Asians, Hispanics, religious minority groups, gays, and women since they arrived in America in the early 1600s. Today, the teaching of any critical racial and/or gender subjects that make white students feel guilty about America's "whitewashed" and sanitized history is strictly prohibited under these "memory laws," which are patterned after the ones enacted in Nazi Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler. 6. We cannot tell who supports the police anymore. Republicans claim they are all for "law and order" when it comes to police brutality against people of color and social justice advocates. However, when former president Donald Trump's supporters violently attacked the Capitol in Washington, D.C. and the police officers who defended it on January 6, 2021, most Republican members of Congress abandoned their prior support for those police officers at a speed that would make Olympic sprinters proud. 7. Biden's Department of Justice continues its tacit acceptance of an all-white Alabama Supreme Court, all-white Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, and all-white Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in a state that has a 26.8% black population in 2021. All-white governmental bodies are fashionable again in Alabama and they appear to be immune from attack from Biden's Department of Justice. 8. Donald Trump's political appointees continue to run major federal agencies and safeguard Trump's policies, despite Biden's election win in 2020. Many of Trump's appointed COINTELPRO federal prosecutors are still embedded in the Department of Justice and are still persecuting innocent black citizens -- simply because nobody in the Biden administration will stop them. Furthermore, Michael Carvajal, Trump's director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP), is still running the show for Trump and is still protecting those BOP national vendors who contributed heavily to Trump's 2020 presidential campaign. The so-called "woke" movement, which is fading rapidly, never touched these "burrowed" pockets of Trump loyalists. 9. Biden, who owes his presidency to black voters who resurrected his politically dead candidacy during the Super-Tuesday Democratic primaries in March 2020, has rewarded blacks with only a few jobs in his administration, some photo ops in the White House, and the signing of symbolic proclamations and commendations. Meanwhile, it is business as usual for Wall Street and the tens of thousands of white vendors who are routinely awarded hundreds of billions of federal dollars in non-bid government contracts on an annual basis. 10. Black political figures in Washington continue to exhibit their collective political impotency and total lack of effective fighting skills in the national political arena. Nothing else can explain (a) why blacks did not receive a fair share of the $7 trillion dollars spent by the federal government to date to help our national economy recover from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and (b) why J. Edgar Hoover's name remains of the FBI Headquarters in Washington even after it was documented through internal FBI records that Hoover tried to force Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into committing suicide in 1963. Where is this generation's political equivalents to Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, U.S. Senator Edward Brooks, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall? Florida attorney Benjamin Crump cannot pull the black community's social and economic justice wagon by himself. These truisms (and many others) show who we really are as a nation. I am not interested in political correctness or political spin on these matters. Whether I am a free man or imprisoned inmate, I will continue to report the cold, hard truth about who we are as a nation. Anything short of this truth is a lie. A nation that perpetually lies to itself will eventually collapse. I am fighting to make sure this does not happen to America because I am an American who still believes we can be the greatest nation the world has ever known. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on July 2, 2021 In "Life at LaTuna," published on May 6, 2021, I described my job at the federal correctional institution at LaTuna where I clean tables and sweep and mop the floors in Section Two of the dining hall five days per week. I take extreme pride in my job performance and do it with a smile. The reason I do this job with a smile is because I am now doing the same job that one of the greatest heroes in my life performed when I met him in 1970. His name was Mr. Ramus Rhodes and he was the janitor at The University of Alabama School of Law while I was a student there from September 1970 to May 1973. I attended the law school on a desegregation scholarship from the NAACP's Herbert Lehman Fund in New York City. By education, Mr. Rhodes was a certified school teacher, having received his degree in education from Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. By occupation, Mr. Rhodes was the person who swept, mopped and cleaned the law school building (Farrah Hall) -- a job he had held for decades. He wore the brown khaki uniforms designated for black custodians, laundry room workers, grass-cutters, manual laborers, garbage men, and cafeteria workers so that white students, faculty, and professional staff members would know that these blacks had permission to be on campus. By the time Mr. Rhodes graduated from college, the all-white school board in Tuscaloosa had run out of money to hire "colored" teachers for the system's schools for "colored" students. So, Mr. Rhodes accepted the janitor's job at Farrah Hall in order to feed, clothe and house himself, his wife and their young children. His mother also worked as a custodian at the University for decades. My "Real" Law School Professor Was a Janitor-Warrior I am educated and trained as a licensed lawyer. Throughout my three years as a law student at Alabama, Mr. Rhodes, who had no formal legal training but had a brilliant legal mind, taught me how to use the law as a weapon to slay the dragons of racial segregation in Alabama and how to do so without fearing any man. I became proficient in this art of war against racial segregation and discrimination during my 48-year career. Mr. Rhodes was the best instructor at the law school and one of the best human beings I have ever met in my life. His mop closet was my real classroom. Through his life's experiences in overcoming intense racial discrimination, Mr. Rhodes' instructions on defeating Jim Crow-era laws and social customs in Alabama helped me in desegregating all of Alabama's 32 senior colleges and universities, all of its junior colleges and technical schools, 68 of its public K-12 school systems, and many municipal police and fire departments across the state, all in the face of massive resistance from the white oligarchy that ran the state. It also enabled me to curb the "out-of-control" fatal police shootings of unarmed black men while I served as the youngest city council member in Montgomery, Alabama's history from 1979 to 1983. Furthermore, this instruction prepared me to dismantle voter suppression structures like "at-large" voting schemes in statewide, county, and municipal elections that perpetuated the election of all-white government bodies. Mr. Rhodes' instruction on social justice also helped me to kill municipal "debtor courts" around the state that imprisoned blacks and poor white defendants in city jails who could not afford to pay their fines and court costs in routine traffic and misdemeanor cases. It focused me on pursuing and achieving equitable educational funding and unprecedented state-funded endowments for the state's two historically black colleges and universities -- Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University. Mr. Rhodes' lessons on perseverance helped me to achieve justice in the famous "Scottsboro Boys" rape case for the last known living Scottsboro Boy (Mr. Clarence Norris) 45-years after his arrest. In 1976, the state of Alabama Pardons and Parole Board formally declared Mr. Norris (and the other eight Scottsboro Boys) "innocent" of the capital charges of raping two white women on a freight train in Paint Rock, Alabama in 1931, and issued him a full and unconditional pardon. Mr. Norris' pardon was the only one ever issued to a former death row inmate based upon an official finding of "innocence." Finally, Mr. Rhodes' instruction on human rights helped me in my work with legendary civil rights attorney Fred Gray as we secured record-setting compensation in the late 1970s for the surviving victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. This was a case of human experimentation in medicine in which federal, state, and local officials deliberately withheld penicillin from approximately 600 poor black men in Macon County, Alabama from 1932 to 1972 in order to study the effects of untreated syphilis over time. The men were duped into participating in the study after these government officials deliberately represented to them that they would be treated for their syphilis. This representation was a 40-year lie. Trading Places Today, I am cleaning tables, sweeping and mopping floors at LaTuna as a "political prisoner." I wear the same brown khaki uniform that Mr. Rhodes wore as a janitor. I smile everyday while I do my job with the same pride, honor, and perfection Mr. Rhodes showed in doing his job. I call myself a "political prisoner" because the lead federal prosecutor who put me in prison -- Lloyd Peeples -- is the son of one of Dothan, Alabama's white oligarchy members who vehemently opposed my successful efforts to desegregate all of the public schools in the Dothan area in the late 1970s. After losing the desegregation fight, Peeples' father sent his son Lloyd to a "white-flight" private academy in Georgia. Lloyd Peeples later attended Washington and Lee University (which is named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee) where he, as an editor of the student newspaper, publicly railed against the university's efforts to increase admissions for women and blacks. In 2017, former president Donald Trump's Department of Justice hired Peeples (and other federal prosecutors in Alabama) to head up a renewed version of the Department's old COINTELPRO program to target, persecute, and prosecute black businessmen who operated highly successful and competitive mainstream businesses. This program ensnared prominent black business men like Chris Pitts (Montgomery), Jonathan Dunning (Birmingham), and me, among others, by filing trumped up criminal charges against us. And, like his deceased father, Peeples is reportedly very liberal in his use of the word "nigger" in private all-white settings. Like Mr. Rhodes, I am using my time at LaTuna to patiently mentor the next generation of social justice warriors. They are Latino, Native, Asian, and Black Americans, and indeed, even some down-trodden whites, many of whom have been failed by the federal criminal justice system. The inmates I am mentoring are mentally tough and have plenty of courage. And now, they are learning to overcome social injustices and systemic discrimination in all of its insidious forms, including racism. Using Ramus Rhodes' method of instruction, we now know what any one properly trained student of history and law can accomplish as a warrior for social justice in his/her lifetime. We can only imagine what dozens of mentally tough, courageous, dedicated, and properly trained social justice advocates can accomplish. Famed Selma, Alabama civil rights attorney J. L. Chestnut once told me, "Donald, you cannot represent black folks if you are scared." These men are definitely not scared, and neither am I. Right now, they are simply paying their so-called "debt to society." However, once released, the positive impact that these social justice warriors will have on society will be immediate, profound, and long-lasting. This is why I smile! All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 13, 2021 President Joe Biden's and Vice President Kamala Harris' newly announced "Do Not Come" policy for containing the surging migration by people of color from Central and South America to the U.S. southern border is racist, wrong, and possibly illegal. Migrants from any nation are entitled to apply for entry into the United States at any one of the country's scores of designated immigration centers. If these migrants meet the criteria for entry into the U.S., they are allowed by law to come into the country. The new "Do Not Come" policy was publicly announced for the first time by Ms. Harris during her trip to Guatemala and Mexico on June 7, 2021. The fact that Harris announced the new policy does not sanitize the racist nature of it. The United States' immigration policies have been racist throughout the history of America. Most of these policies are identified and discussed in an article titled,"The Uncomfortable Truth About America’s Immigration Laws," which was published on April 14, 2019. Click here to read the article. The Most Glaring Examples of White Racism in U.S. Immigration Policies The following represent some of the most glaring examples of white racism in America's immigration policies: 1. The federal government's passage and administration of the Homestead Act of 1862, which awarded 270 million acres of land that was seized from more than 500 Native American tribes through White-Indian wars and massacres of Indians by U.S. Calvary troops and local militias. These lands were subsequently awarded, at no cost, to nearly 3 million white peasants who were openly recruited to America from 1862 to 1986 via advertisements the federal government placed in European newspapers seeking white migrants to help America become a majority white country. 2. The federal government's passage and enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banned persons of Asian descent from entering the U.S. for a period of 80 years. Exceptions were made for Asians who worked for white companies as indentured servants. They were forcefully deported when their services were no longer needed. 3. "Operation Wetback", a 1950s-era racially derogatory named State Department program rounded up approximately 1.3 million persons of Hispanic descent who were living in America and deported them in railway cars to Mexico. Undocumented whites who immigrated to America through Mexico were not subject to deportation. 4. The strictly enforced and disproportionately limited immigration "quotas" the U.S. government has placed on migrants from countries where the indigenous populations are peoples of color, while openly and continuously welcoming Europe's "tired, poor, and huddled [white] masses" into America at Ellis Island have continued on an unabated basis. France thanked America for receiving white French peasants by giving the United States the Statue of Liberty. White Racism, Even When Announced by a Black Vice President, is Still White Racism Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the child of immigrant parents from Jamaica and India, has continued America's legacy of white racism in its immigration policies. While visiting Guatemala, Harris addressed the issue of surging numbers of migrants from Central and South America by stating loudly and plainly, "Do Not Come." Harris' announcement stunned everybody in the room. No U.S. president or vice president has ever told white, Anglo-Saxon migrants from Europe, "Do Not Come" to America. White immigration to America has been ongoing and surging since the first European settlers arrived in America in the early 1600s. In the late 1800s and 1900s, this surge included a large influx of Italian Mafia-affiliated figures and hundreds of thousands of known criminals from Eastern European countries who entered the United States via Ellis Island, Canada, and Mexico. They, too, were welcomed to America because they were white. If Vice President Harris needed a suitable venue to announce the Biden administration's new "Do Not Come" immigration policy, she should have done it while visiting one of the European countries that has flooded America with white migrants, both documented and undocumented. For the reasons specified below, Guatemala was absolutely the wrong venue for Ms. Harris' "Do Not Come" announcement. Harris' "Do Not Come'" Announcement Was Made at the Wrong Place and at the Wrong Time America has a long and ugly track record of fomenting chaos in Central and South America and other foreign countries through state-sponsored campaigns of assassinations of foreign leaders and the destabilization of duly elected national governments. More often than not, these actions furthered the interest of U.S.-based multinational corporations, rather than America's national interests. In Guatemala, in 1944, college students, urban workers, and members of Guatemala's middle class joined to overthrow a dictator and set up a democratic government. During the next ten years, elected governments extended the vote to native Indians, to the poor (largely synonymous), and to women; ended forced labor on coffee plantations; and enacted other reforms. All of this came to an end in 1954, when America's CIA threatened the government of Jacobo Arbenz with an armed invasion. Arbenz had antagonized the U.S.-based United Fruit Company by proposing land reforms and planning a highway and railroad that might break the company's monopoly. The United States chose an obscure army colonel as the new president, and when Arbenz panicked and sought asylum in the Mexican embassy, the U.S. flew its handpicked colonel to the capital aboard the U.S. ambassador's private plane. The result was a repressive junta that treated its Indian majority brutally for another 40 years. This history is beautifully and accurately detailed in James W. Loewen's book, "Lies My History Teacher Told Me," Simon & Schuster (1995, 2007). Guatemala was not America's first foray into the assassination of foreign leaders and destabilization of national governments. For example, the U.S. deposed Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran and installed the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi to the throne in 1953. America also rigged the 1957 election in Lebanon, which entrenched the Christians on top and led to the Muslim revolt and civil war the next year. Additionally, the U.S. coordinated and sponsored the assassination of President Patrice Lumumba in Zaire (or Congo) in 1961. Shortly thereafter, the CIA helped bring to power Joseph Mobutu, a former army sergeant. Furthermore, America repeatedly attempted to murder Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba and bring down his government by terror and sabotage. According to testimony from government officials before various U.S. Senate committees, the U.S. government attempted to kill Castro at least 8 times by 1965. America also brought down the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, solely because International Telephone and Telegraph was unsuccessful in its effort to defeat Allende in Chile's 1970 elections. In Chile, the United States blocked international loans to the country, subsidized opposition newspapers, labor unions, and political parties, denied spare parts to industries, paid for and fomented a nationwide truckers' strike that paralyzed the Chilean economy, and trained and financed the military that staged the bloody coup in 1973 in which Allende was killed. The U.S. also invaded Haiti in 1915 for the sole purpose of taking that nation's gold reserves from its central bank as an accommodation to the First National Bank of New York. This gold was never returned to Haiti. America also invaded Russia in 1918 at the request of Standard Oil of New Jersey after Russia's new communist government nationalized all petroleum assets. Russia has never forgotten or forgiven America for this commercially-driven invasion. In 1963, America's CIA toppled Iraq's Shiite prime minister, General Abdul Karim Qassem and installed Saddam Hussein to replace him. Hussein welcomed Western oil companies at first. A few years later, he nationalized the Iraq oil industry. Because Hussein willingly engaged in armed conflicts with Iran (an enemy of the U.S. after 1979), the U.S. removed Iraq from the list of known terrorist countries in 1982 so we could supply Hussein with military equipment, computers, scientific instruments, chemicals, and other goods for Iraq's missiles, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs during the 1980s. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency even supplied Iraq with the information it needed to help Iraqi forces use their chemical weapons on Iranian troops. After the Iraq-Iranian war ended, America continued to send Hussein weapons-grade anthrax, cyanide, and other chemical and biological weapons. Why America Meddles in the Internal Domestic Affairs of Central and South American Countries In 1931, Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler publicly and arrogantly summed up America's true reasons for meddling in the internal domestic affairs of Central and South American governments (and elsewhere) this way: "I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interest in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers... I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints." In other words, the United States assassinated foreign leaders and destabilized duly elected national governments to further the corporate greed of America's multinational conglomerates. Epilogue After crippling national governments around the world and causing endless cycles of political turmoil, economic instability, and violent factionalism in them for over a century, Vice President Harris somehow allowed her white foreign affairs advisors to commandeer her position and ethnicity to perpetuate America's ongoing white racism against the people of color whose countries were victimized by the United States' relentless campaign of state-sponsored assassinations and destabilization of national governments. I liken Harris' "Do Not Come" announcement and standard-bearer status to the situation Secretary of State Colin Powell faced when powerful white war hawks in President George W. Bush's administration lied to Powell about Iraq possessing nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction. Later, Powell found out that these claims were patently false. In fact, Bush went to war with Saddam Hussein to exact revenge after Hussein tried to arrange the assassination of former President George H.W. Bush during "Daddy" Bush's visit to Kuwait in 1993. Powell faced worldwide embarrassment and humiliation after the public learned he had been duped by Bush's war hawks. Ms. Harris is facing the same kind of embarrassment and humiliation. Rather than bearing the political cross of a new form of white racism in U.S. immigration policies, Ms. Harris should use the imprimatur of her office to help white Americans understand this brand of white racism and overcome it. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 23, 2021 I dedicate this photo to Lillian Bernice Varnado Watkins, my mother and one of my earliest heroes. A picture is worth a thousand words. When this photo was taken, I was 15-years-old and wearing a stocking cap on my head to make my hair wavy. I loved my mother and learned so much from her about our family's history in America. She was my first teacher and best friend for life. My momma and father gave my siblings and me the best childhood any kid could want. For this, we are eternally grateful. To this day, I miss momma dearly! All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 27, 2021 There has been a lot in the news lately about what white far-right conservatives in America have called a "critical race theory." They have railed against all efforts by today's public schools, historians, and journalists to present the naked truth about the atrocities, violence, and subjugation white Americans have committed against African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian-Americans since the 1600s. Much of this history is highlighted in my November 17, 2019 article titled, "Why America Can't Rid Itself of Its Racism Problem." White far-right conservatives have reduced the documented history of white America's systemic violence and sustained racial discrimination against these ethnic minority groups to a "theory," which they say must be rejected. If these documented injustices are recognized, accepted as true, and accurately reported in today's textbooks and included in current school and university curricula, these conservatives fear that white students: (a) might feel "guilty" about the misconduct of many of their "hero" ancestors who committed these barbaric acts, and (b) might be tempted to abandon the present-day vestiges of hundreds of years of systemic racial discrimination and violence inflicted upon America's racial minority groups by joining today's social justice movement. A few examples of the far-right's rejection of documented history includes the following: 1. Far-right conservatives reject the notion that white settlers from Europe ever mistreated Native-Americans. To the contrary, they insist that these settlers tried to peacefully co-exist with the "merciless Indian Savages" (as they are described in the Declaration of Independence). They claim that white settlers "discovered" America, even though it was occupied for a thousand years by 559 sovereign Indian Nations that inhabited defined territories from coast-to-coast. When these Native-American tribes resisted the forceful taking of their territorial lands to accommodate white settlers and their commercial enterprises, the white "Founding Fathers" and their offspring labeled them "Savages" and committed unabated acts of genocide against an estimated 60 million Native-Americans over a 400-year period that included thousands of massacres, starvation along the "Trail of Tears" and on designated "Indian reservations," and their widespread exposure to untreated diseases of European origin. Until the 21st century, American history books refused to present any information regarding the true nature and scope of the genocide, subjugation, and racial discrimination experienced by Native-Americans. 2. While far-right conservatives acknowledge that the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans occurred for hundreds of years in America, they paint an entirely different and benign picture of slavery. Theirs is Margaret Mitchell's romanticized view of slavery, as depicted in her 1936 novel, "Gone With the Wind." Mitchell believed that African slaves were happy and singing as they enjoyed free housing, food, clothing, and the full employment provided by their slave masters on Southern plantations. Today's right-wingers reject all claims that African slaves were abused by their white slave masters. These conservatives still believe that slavery is ordained by God in the Bible. They take pride in the fact that a form of pre-1865 slavery has been preserved in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and is routinely administered today by prison officials as punishment for state and federal crimes. 3. Far-right conservatives acknowledge that white European peasants were openly recruited by the federal government to come to America for 124 years, from 1862 to 1986, as part of the government's Homestead Act of 1862. Three million of these recruited white immigrants were awarded 160 acres of free land located between the Mississippi River and the California and Alaskan coasts. In all, these white peasants were given 270 million acres of free land that was taken by force, for the most part, from Native America tribes. This documented history of land confiscation from Native American tribes and the subsequent giveaway to whites is now being reduced to a "theory" by white right-wing conservatives. This whitewashing of history is analogous to what is occurring with regard to the January 6, 2021 violent Insurrection at the National Capitol. Today's white far-right conservatives have likened the Insurrection to a "normal tourist visit" of the Capitol. 4. Far-right conservatives pretend that "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, Oklahoma never existed. In fact, historians and journalists of their ilk suppressed the May 1921 massacre of 300 black Tulsa residents during the destruction of "Black Wall Street" by an angry white mob. No member of this mob was ever prosecuted for murder or the criminal destruction of property. Today's white conservatives have also downplayed the significance of "Black Wall Street" and the psychological and financial impact of its destruction on black America for the next one hundred years. 5. Far-right conservatives still attempt to justify the secret, federal and state government-sponsored, 40-year, inhumane medical experiments on 600 poor black Macon County, Alabama men from 1932 to 1972 during the now infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which ended only after it was exposed in the national media. Some of today's conservatives in the South still contend that the Study's unlawful medical experiments on unsuspecting human beings were necessary to understand the effects of untreated syphilis in the human population and actually advanced modern medicine. 6. Far-right conservatives claim that all-white appellate courts in Alabama, which has a 26.8% black population, are the product of smart political choices by the state's electorate and not racial discrimination embedded in the state's at-large voting scheme for appellate judges. They say the state's black population is happy and satisfied with a political structure that completely shuts out black membership on the Alabama Supreme Court, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, and the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, in addition to all of Alabama's state-wide Constitutional offices. 7. Far-right conservatives claim that blacks have enjoyed the right to vote in America since the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870 and they have freely participated in the political system since that time. These conservatives also claim that new voting laws are needed to promote election security in the wake of Donald Trump's sound defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They reject the notion that these new laws, which are sweeping the nation in states where Republicans control the legislatures, are strikingly similar in purpose and effect to the old 20th century voter suppression laws in southern states that imposed poll taxes on black voters and subjected them to literacy tests as preconditions for voter registration. 8. Far-right conservatives have portrayed today's non-violent "Black Lives Matter" movement in the same negative light that former FBI director and diehard racist Herbert Hoover, his federal law enforcement agency, and collaborating segregationist state and local governments did in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s as they attempted to discredit and destroy a host of black social justice activists and non-violent civil rights organizations. Some of the more well-known civil rights leaders and organizations that were targeted by Hoover's racist COINTELPRO counterintelligence campaign included: (a) A. Philip Randolph and the New York-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; (b) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference; (c) Mrs. Johnnie Carr and her Montgomery Improvement Association: (d) Julian Bond and John Lewis and their Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee; and (e) James Forman and his Congress on Racial Equality. In the view of many of today's far-right conservatives, the only good "Negroes" are dead ones and modern-day "Uncle Toms" like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is viewed by blacks and whites as the "gold standard" for "Uncle Tomism" in the U.S. This list of suppressed or whitewashed history is endless. The examples cited in this article illustrate the lengths far-right white conservatives will go to avoid and/or suppress the truth about systemic and historical racism in America. Unfortunately for these conservatives, their children's and grandchildren's generations are learning the cold, hard truth about systemic white racism through their independent research, self-taught online instruction, and the "critical race theory" that is emerging in textbooks and school curriculum. What is more, these children and grandchildren may be rightfully ashamed of the atrocities and sustained acts of violence committed by their ancestors for hundreds of years against people of color under the mantra of "making America great," but the knowledge they have gained from "critical race theory" will likely make them more enlightened adults in their daily interaction with America's various ethnic groups. In reality, the far right-wing white conservative pushback against the teaching of "critical race theory" is simply a renaissance of old-school white racism. Like uncomfortable stomach gas and diarrhea, this, too, shall pass. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 30, 2021 President Joe Biden must fire Michael Carvajal, right now. Carvajal is Donald Trump's handpicked director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Not only is Carvajal a failure as one of Trump's executive-level experiments in affirmative action, but he also allowed Biden to look foolish in the June 16, 2021 meeting between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. During the Geneva meeting, Biden warned Putin there would be "devastating consequences" should Alexei Navalry, an opposition leader in Russia, die in prison. Understandably, Putin was dismissive of Biden's warning because America's track record of prisoner abuse in federal prisons is nearly as bad as the Russian's. Like Russia, U.S. prisons hold scores of political prisoners. Most of them are the black victims of modern-day COINTELPRO federal prosecutors in southern states and complicit federal judges. On Carvajal's watch as BOP director, U.S. prison officials at FCI Manchester, Kentucky stripped male prisoners naked, physically restrained them with straps, and sprayed their testicles with burning chemical mace. Inmate James Summers (Reg. No. 51863-074) experienced this mistreatment in 2020 in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) at FCI Manchester. Thankfully, a prison guard reported Summers' abuse to BOP officials, but none of the guards who engaged in the mistreatment of Summers has been criminally prosecuted for torturing him. At the same prison and during the same time period, prison guards engaged in the vicious beating of inmates who were forced to walk backwards in a crouched position with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Yet, Carvajal did nothing to stop this prisoner abuse. It should be noted that Carvajal lacks a four-year undergraduate or post-graduate degree in prison administration and is eminently unqualified for his current job. Carvajal was elevated to the director's post because of his Hispanic background, his Republican leanings, and his willingness to serve as a political flunky for former Attorney General William Barr. Why Carvajal has not been fired by Biden since assuming office on January 20, 2021 is an open question. Pay-to-Play Scheme Beyond the routine administration of inhumane prisoner treatment at some federal prisons, public corruption has flourished under Carvajal's directorship. In "America First: The Political Scam of the Decade", published on March 25, 2021, I detailed a massive pay-to-play scheme that operates out of the BOP's Washington, D.C. office under the patriotic sounding political mantra of "America First." In reality, since 2005, the BOP has awarded 77 sole-source contracts to the Bob Barker Company in Fuquay, North Carolina to provide a wide range of products to all federal prisons. For clarification, this is not a company founded and run by Bob Barker of the "Price is Right" TV game show. This Bob Barker Company supplies the nation's 122 federal prisons with low-quality, high-priced, foreign-manufactured goods such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, shaving gel, body wash, soap, hand wash, shampoo/conditioner, grooming products, combs, brushes, clippers, lotions, toiletry items, hand sanitizers, OTC medicines, inmate uniforms, guard uniforms, other clothing items and undergarments, shoes, sheets/blankets, towels/wash cloths, laundry supplies, paper/writing supplies, reading glasses, plastic chairs/tables, mirrors, padlocks, handcuffs, leg irons, and a host of other foreign-made goods. Individuals affiliated with the Bob Barker Company have established a political slush fund that primarily benefits Republican candidates for the U.S. Presidency and Congress. In 2020, Bob Barker affiliated individuals contributed a total of $134,002 to political recipients. Of this amount, $124,963 (or 98.34%) was contributed to Republicans and $2,114 (or 1.66%) was contributed to Democrats. The company contributed $13,625 to the Trump campaign, $10,384 to the Republican National Committee, $8,050 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, $7,500 to Sen. Lindsey Graham's campaign, and $5,600 to Rep. Kevin McCarthy's campaign. Sen. Graham (R-S.C.) was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that has oversight of BOP operations during Trump's presidency. A listing of the Bob Barker Company's major political contributions to Republican and Democratic candidates in 2020 is identified in the "America First" article, as referenced above. A Criminal Investigation is Needed to Probe Widespread Corruption Within the BOP Biden's Justice Department needs to launch a full-scale criminal investigation into this ongoing pay-to-play scheme. It appears to be out of control. The probe should focus on the exchange of cash and other "things of value" that individuals affiliated with The Bob Barker Company may have provided to those BOP officials who draft the BOP's various requests for proposals for national contracting opportunities and those officials who administer the BOP's procurement of goods and services from outside vendors. Corruption at the BOP's Central Office dwarfs the fraud, waste, abuse, and public corruption reported in "OIG Complaint Reports Widespread Corruption at Talladega Federal Prison," published on November 7, 2020, and "Contraband Trafficking Ring Operated from Warden's Office, SIS Unit at FCI Talladega," published on December 27, 2020. Furthermore, Carvajal's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic cost the lives of 240 inmates. Despite Congressional action in enacting the CARES Act of 2020 to facilitate an anticipated large-scale transfer of non-violent federal inmates from low-level prisons and out-custody camps to home confinement during the pandemic, Carvajal single-handedly blocked almost all of inmate requests for compassionate release under the Act. This executive action allowed the BOP to continue charging taxpayers more than $39,000 per inmate housed in federal prisons and protected the flow of campaign money to Republican candidates from the Bob Barker contracts. Carvajal's Credibility on Capitol Hill is Shot Carvajal has repeatedly lied to Congress about the sad state of administrative affairs and financial instability at the BOP on multiple occasions. Carvajal's glaring incompetence has led to blistering criticism from Congressional Oversight Committee members in the House and Senate, as well as withering reports from the Department of Justice's Inspector General and the federal government's General Accounting Office. Carvajal is running a "clown show" at the BOP, as these choice words were used recently by William Barr to described another Trump fiasco (i.e., Trump's legal team for the 2020 election challenges). The question here is this: When will President Biden bring Carvajal's BOP "clown show" to an end? Finally, the staffing within BOP prisons is down by one-third, and the agency is near insolvency. The BOP may need an emergency allocation of federal funds, or bailout money, before the new fiscal year starts on October 1, 2021. As a result of Carvajal's colossal administrative failures and never-ending propensity to lie, his reputation for truth and veracity on Capitol Hill is as bad as Donald Trump's. Carvajal must be fired, now! All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 17, 2021 On August 28, 2019, I entered the Talladega Federal Prison Camp on a voluntary surrender basis. I became Inmate 36223-001, the Camp's only "political prisoner." Within minutes of entering the Camp's compound, I was greeted by Mr. George Dunn, Jr., the Head Orderly for T-Dorm. From August 28, 2019, to May 12, 2020, George Dunn and I were roommates. Dunn, who was 61 at the time, was a godsend. Standing 6'5" tall, Dunn was big in stature and intellect. He was well versed in history and current affairs. Dunn read a wide array of books and periodicals. He commanded the respect of the entire inmate population. He was familiar with my case from news reports. He knew I had been railroaded, and why. Dunn, who is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, had served nearly 11 years of a 15-year sentence on drug charges. Having served two thirds of his sentence, Dunn would have been eligible under the First Step Act of 2018 for a transfer to home confinement under the Act's Elderly Offender Program. Camp officials refused to give him home confinement because Dunn had been convicted in Atlanta Municipal Court in 1979 for a simple assault and battery charge. The charge grew out of a non-violent verbal altercation between 19-year-old Dunn and a white Atlanta police officer, who was a well-known racist. This officer repeatedly called Dunn a "nigger" while moving bystanders away from a downtown restaurant/club. Without access to a lawyer, Dunn paid a $50 fine to dispose of the case. Today, this 42-year-old misdemeanor charge bars Dunn's early release from prison. In early 2020, Dunn requested Atlanta mayor Keisha Bottoms to issue a pardon for his 1979 conviction. She refused, claiming the mayor's office lacked the power to pardon municipal court misdemeanor convictions. She is obviously misinformed. Every mayor in America holds this power. Yet, very few of them have the courage to use it. George Dunn and I became best friends at the Camp. On numerous occasions I watched Dunn speak up for inmates who were too weak or afraid to speak up for themselves when they were mistreated or disrespected by staff members. Dunn was routinely threatened and often rebuked by staff members in the presence of other inmates for advocating for better living conditions, improved healthcare, adequate cleaning supplies, and the respectful treatment of inmates. Dunn never backed down in the face of these threats. Dunn's courage was tested in March in a situation involving fellow dormmate Mack Smith. This elderly white inmate from Atlanta had been suffering for six months with non-productive coughing, constant fevers, immobility, and lack of bowel control. Dunn begged Camp executives to get Mack Smith proper medical attention. By the time they did, it was too late. Mack Smith died in a Birmingham, Alabama hospital on April 24, 2020. Dunn led a small, quiet memorial service for Mack Smith in T-Dorm the next day. After Mack Smith's death, George Dunn assisted me in preparing additional articles on Smith's illness and death. One of these articles reported that the U.S. government asked for and was granted permission to seal Mack Smith's medical records and autopsy report. Whether Mack Smith's death was preventable is an open question. The answer is now hidden behind a cloak of secrecy. In any event, Camp officials decided to punish George Dunn and me for highlighting the tragic conditions that led to Mack Smith's suffering and death. They were tired of dealing with our efforts to improve the Camp's living conditions for inmates. On the morning of May 12, 2020, security officials cleared out T-Dorm. During a search of the dorm, a white correctional officer "planted" a cell phone charger in the cell George Dunn and I occupied. The charger was "planted" while this officer was alone in our cell. He placed it in my locker. A charger is listed as an item of contraband by prison officials. We later learned that the officer who "planted" the charger was acting on direct orders from his superiors. Dunn and I were promptly removed from the Camp and taken to the maximum-security Special Housing Unit (SHU) at the Talladega Medium Security Prison. We were separated and placed in dungeon-like cells where we were confined 24 hours per day. A non-lawyer disciplinary hearing officer selected by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons heard our separate cases in sham hearings on May 20, 2020 that lasted 8-10 minutes. Dunn insisted the charger did not belong to him or me. I proved that the charger was not mine. The officer who "planted" the charger was not present for questioning. The hearing officer ruled against us and sentenced both of us to 30 days detention in the SHU. We appealed our cases. Our 30-day sentence expired on June 18, 2020, but we remained in the SHU for several months beyond this date as additional punishment. Dunn left the SHU and was returned to the Camp on October 8, 2020. I remained in the SHU until November 23, 2020, the date upon which I embarked upon a perilous 3 and 1/2-month transfer to FCI LaTuna with layovers in Atlanta and Oklahoma City during this journey. Had George Dunn lied and said the phone charger was mine, he would have been promptly released from the SHU and returned to the Camp. He refused to tell a lie on me to save himself. Likewise, I refused to lie on him, or plead guilty to something I did not do. Prison officials transferred me to the higher security LaTuna correctional facility even though I have "Camp" level custody classification points. The very Talladega prison officials who are the subject of my January 27, 2020 "fraud, waste, and abuse" whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General labeled me as the "greatest security" threat to FCI Talladega. These tainted prison officials used their management authority to (a) override the Bureau of Prisons objective custody classification point system and (b) transfer me to a prison 1,500 miles from my home. Their management override precludes me from returning to any federal prison Camp for two years from May 12, 2020. To this date, neither the Donald Trump nor Joe Biden Department of Justice has interviewed me about the widespread and well-documented public corruption and racketeering activities perpetrated by senior management level prison officials at FCI Talladega. I do not know if or when I will see George Dunn, Jr. again. He is a testament to the goodness in humanity. He always stands up for the "least of these" regardless of their race or circumstances in life. George Dunn knew that he would pay a price for standing up for Mack Smith, but he did it anyway. It was the right thing to do. It cost him dearly. To my friend George Dunn, Jr., I bid you a very public farewell. My God bless you! I will never forget your courage and compassion for humanity. Hopefully I will see you on the other side of midnight. We have bonded for life. You are a respected leader. George Dunn, Jr. was eventually transferred to a prison Camp in Florida and is doing well. He never lied on me or otherwise sold me out. On December 6, 2019, I published an article that announced a book I am writing titled "Manifest Injustice". This book profiles the cases of five inmates at the Talladega Prison camp who are truly innocent of the charges against them. George Washington Dunn, Jr.'s case is one of them. His case, along with the others, spotlights the gratuitous acts of judicial fluffery that too may federal magistrates, trial judges, and appellate judge perform on federal prosecutors during criminal proceedings. His case also documents the way prosecutors perpetrated "fraud on the court' in the name of law enforcement. Managing Editor's Note: Mr. George Dunn is now incarcerated at FCI Coleman in Florida. He is still working to secure a release to home confinement. Despite tremendous pressure from Bureau of Prison (BOP) officials at FCI Talladega to tell a lie that Mr. Watkins possessed a cell phone charger on May 12, 2020, Dunn refused to do so and was severely punished for not participating in the effort to frame Mr. Watkins. Likewise, Dunn never surrendered his manhood or dignity to the corrupt BOP officials who abused him at FCI Talladega. Even though they were the targets of administrative abuse by corrupt, inept, and mean-spirited BOP officials, Dunn and Mr. Watkins were able to help and/or free many deserving inmates at Talladega. They are now friends for life. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 10, 2021 There is no doubt that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race because he was the beneficiary of an extremely large turnout of the African American vote in swing states like Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021. His first 100 days in office and honeymoon with Congress are now over. To date, Biden has failed black America. Here is my list of the Biden administration's top ten failures to black America: 1. Biden has failed to track down and root out known white racists who were part of the Trump administration's Justice Department. These racists have burrowed their way into the Department as career prosecutors. They continue to wage a modern-day version of the FBI's COINTELPRO counterintelligence program that is designed to persecute and prosecute innocent African American social activists and political dissidents of color. In Birmingham, Alabama, for example, Biden's Justice Department continues to employ First Assistant U.S. Attorney Lloyd Peeples (2017 to 2021) as a federal prosecutor, despite Peeples' (and his family's) well-documented history of hostility towards African Americans dating all the way back to his childhood days. 2. Biden's Justice Department has failed to investigate and/or prosecute the four-star general Kevin P. Byrnes (ret.) for murdering Army Private LaVena Johnson in 2005 on a U.S. military base in Balad, Iraq. This is true even though General Byrnes, who resides and works in Huntsville, Alabama, was prepared to surrender to federal law enforcement authorities in Birmingham in 2016, rather than face the possibility of a publicly announced citizens' arrest in Huntsville, Alabama (which is permitted under Alabama law). Even though Private Johnson's murder is the earliest known and highest profiled "Black Lives Matter" case, the Pentagon's "Top Secret" file on Private Johnson's murder remains classified 16 years after her death and can only be released to the public with the personal approval of the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Biden has failed to order the declassification of Private Johnson's murder file. Private Johnson was a 19-year-old black soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Gen. Byrnes, who is white, was one of her commanding officers. 3. Biden has failed to take action to remove J. Edgar Hoover's name from the FBI Building in Washington. Hoover, the longest-serving FBI Director (1924 to 1972), was a notorious white racist. He was also the architect of the FBI's centralized COINTELPRO program from 1956 to 1971, which was aimed at discrediting and destroying civil rights activists and political dissidents. Hoover personally oversaw the FBI's failed effort to force Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., into committing suicide in 1963. This clandestine FBI effort was unsuccessful. Yet, Hoover is honored in Washington today with his name on the FBI's national headquarters building. 4. While Biden's Justice Department is investigating state and local police departments in Louisiana, Milwaukee, and Louisville regarding their policing practices, he has completely ignored the ongoing brutality and abuse of inmates in federal custody. These inmates are disproportionately African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian. One of the worst incidents of inmate abuse occurred at the federal correctional institution at Manchester, Kentucky in 2020 when inmate James Summers (Reg. No. 51863-074) was stripped naked, and strapped down while prison guards sprayed his genitals with pepper-spray to produce excruciating pain and agony. 5. The Biden administration continues to house federal inmates who are subject to Series 100 disciplinary action in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) "Special Housing Units" (SHU). These SHU are small cells that were originally designed for single-inmate occupancy, but now house two inmates who are locked down 23 hours per day for up to 13 months. This form of imprisonment is inhumane under any reasonable and objective humanitarian standard. Sadly, federal (and state) penal "slavery" is expressly authorized in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is one of the primary reasons why countries like Russia and China ignore U.S. Presidents when they chastise them for the inhumane treatment of their prisoners. The United States' hypocrisy in the treatment of federal prisoners is glaring and embarrassing. To make matters worse, the Biden administration continues the employment of Trump-appointed BOP Director Michael Carvajal, whose greatest attributes as the top BOP official are his ability to (a) hoodwink and mislead Congress about inhumane conditions inside many of America's 122 federal prisons and (b) protect the sole-source vendor contracts of the Republican Party-leaning North Carolina-based Bob Barker company. Individuals affiliated with the Bob Barker Company funnel money derived from the company's plethora of prison contracts to GOP candidates for the Presidency and Congress. 6. The Biden administration has failed to take decisive action to dismantle unconstitutional "at-large" voting schemes that result in all-white appellate courts (e.g., Alabama Supreme Court, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, etc.) in southern states where 26.8% or more of the population is African American. Far more black people utilize the appellate court systems in these southern states than the relatively small number of unarmed blacks who are wrongfully killed by police officers in those states. Yet, the Biden administration has failed to protect and vindicate the fundamental voting right of African Americans in southern states to have a fair chance to elect candidates of their choice to these all-white courts. 7. The Biden administration has failed to take the necessary executive action to ensure that African American contractors receive their fair share of the trillions of dollars in non-bid federal contracts issued by the U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Justice, Energy, Commerce, Transportation, and Health and Human Services. This executive action requires no Congressional approval, but it does require strong executive leadership. 8. The Biden administration has failed to include substantial urban renewal and development for communities of color in its $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. This failure of leadership threatens to trap low-income urban blacks in a hopeless cycle of dilapidated and substandard infrastructure for many decades to come. 9. The Biden administration has failed to allocate federal grant money to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) on an equitable basis with the federal government's traditional grants of federal funds to hundreds of historically white colleges and universities. HBCUs have always been underfunded by federal and state grant-awarding agencies. 10. The Biden administration has failed to award ambassadorships and executive foreign service positions to black presidential appointees beyond select countries in the Caribbean and Africa where the indigenous populations are peoples of color. Prestigious ambassadorships and executive foreign service positions for fully developed countries where the indigenous populations are predominantly white and/or Asian appear to be reserved for white diplomats and foreign service executives. It is too early to tell whether the President Biden administration has the courage or political will to correct these early failures of leadership. It appears that Biden's commitments to the black community are little more than lip-service and token gestures for public relations purposes. Biden can and should do much more for African Americans, who constitute his most loyal base of voters. With the possible exception of renaming the FBI headquarters in Washington, none of the items on this list of executive failures requires Congressional approval. All of them are doable and would assure the nation's African American community that Biden is very grateful for their political support. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 6, 2021 An Editorial Opinion In the aftermath of former police officer Derek Chauvin's April conviction in the George Floyd murder case, America has begun to explore anew, the long, well-documented, ugly, violent, and widespread racism blacks have experienced in America since we arrived here four hundred years ago as slaves. For many Americans of interracial goodwill, we are now "awakened" as a nation on the subject of race. In this awakened state, most white Americans today learned for the first time on Memorial Day weekend (via a powerful and enlightening CNN documentary last Sunday) that freed African American slaves founded a national finance and commerce center called "Black Wall Street" in 1906 in the Greenwood Community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, only to have it burned to the ground in 1921 by a violent white mob that killed at least 300 black Greenwood residents and destroyed all of its homes, schools, public library, businesses, banks, churches, automobiles, and private airplanes. To this day, the Tulsa Race Massacre is recognized as the worst case of domestic terrorism on American soil. Yet, not a single white Tulsa rioter was prosecuted for the murders and/or the massive destruction of property on "Black Wall Street." Not one dollar was paid by insurance companies to the Greenwood entrepreneurs and property owners who lost everything they owned. "Black Wall Street" was never financially rescued or revived by the federal and Oklahoma state governments. Indeed, up until the 1980s, blacks in Oklahoma and elsewhere in America were openly denied access to the nation's mainstream capital markets, financial institutions, and insurance carriers. America's Most Prominent Bastion of White Racism Today In 2021, one hundred years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, a prominent bastion of in-your-face white racism still exits in America, and it continues to undermine the public trust in our judicial institutions. This modern-day bastion of racism is found within the all-white membership structure of the Alabama Supreme Court, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, and Alabama Court of Civil Appeals in a state that is 26.8% black. These three appellate courts were all-white when I became a lawyer in Alabama in 1973 and they are still all-white 48 years later. During the past two decades, the state of Alabama has made no effort to alter the all-white makeup of these courts. In fact, the white oligarchy that runs Alabama and controls its future loves the all-white status of these appellate courts. This status ensures white-rule in Alabama's state court system. What is worse, no member of these three courts has spoken out against this modern-day version of judicial apartheid. Additionally, no member of the state's all-white state-wide constitutional offices or legislative branches has condemned this judicial apartheid, either. Likewise, the Alabama Bar Association is unwilling to criticize these all-white appellate courts because the organization was created to assist the Alabama Supreme Court in the exercise of the Court's inherent jurisdiction to admit attorneys to the practice of law in Alabama and to suspend or disbar them. In fact, the Bar Association owes its very existence to the Alabama Supreme Court. Finally, no federal judge has sought to dismantle this bastion of ironclad white-rule over 26.8% of Alabama's black citizenry. The one thing that unites the all-white Alabama appellate court judges with their colleagues on the federal bench in the state is their collective indifference to the plight of black Alabamians. Both of these judicial bodies practice the political doctrine of "benign neglect" when it comes to enforcing the constitutional rights of Alabama's black citizens. In the eyes of many black Alabamians, the three Alabama appellate courts appear to function much like a resurrected version of the old White Citizens’ Council that operated in Alabama from 1963 to 1975. The Council was charged with using the organs of government to (a) maintain control and dominion over black Alabamians and (b) thwart their quest for social, economic, and criminal justice. Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, Alabama has proudly boasted that it is the "Heart of Dixie" and "Cradle of the Confederacy," complete with all that these antebellum themes entail. None of the three Alabama appellate courts has a track record of safeguarding the constitutional rights of African American criminal defendants or civil litigants. All of them excel at using Southern-style intellectual acumen and creative judicial activism to undermine basic rights guaranteed to blacks (and other minorities) under the U.S. Constitution, as declared in judicial decisions rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court. None of these Alabama appellate courts has ever lifted a finger to save black defendants who were wrongfully convicted of capital offenses and sentenced to death. In a number of cases, DNA and other indisputable forensic evidence later confirmed that some of these defendants were actually innocent of the crimes charged. Since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, there have only been three black members of the Alabama Supreme Court. Justice Oscar Adams served on the Court from October 10, 1980 to October 31, 1993. Justice Ralph Cook served from 1993 to January 2001. Justice John England served from September 1994 to January 2001. No black Justice has been appointed or elected to the Alabama Supreme Court since 2001. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Civil Appeals have never had black judges. Lately, the Court of Criminal Appeals has used its judicial platform to browbeat black trial judges like Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd who have strived to follow the U.S. Supreme Court's most recent decisions in death penalty cases, rather than the off-base and politically motivated death penalty rulings issued by the Alabama Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals. The Alabama Bar Association did not rise in defense of Judge Todd, but I felt compelled to do so in an article published on May 3, 2021. After enduring all-white appellate courts in Alabama for the past 20 years, I have decided that if I do not speak up for the inclusion of black judges on the Alabama Supreme Court, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, and Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, nobody else will do so. My editorial opinion on this subject will likely upset the all-white members of these three Alabama appellate courts, as well as the oligarchy they serve, because these judges are very comfortable in their exclusive, protected, white judicial bubble within a 26.8% black state. Time will tell. Let us see. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on June 1, 2021 Light Watkins, my second son, released his third book last week. Titled "Knowing Where to Look: 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration" (Sounds True Publications, 2021), the book is a collection of stories, essays, and exercises to spark your creative instincts, activate your inner guidance, and enliven your dreams. Light Watkins is a world-renowned spiritual teacher who has spent most of his life learning how to seek out and tap into sources of inspiration. In "Knowing Where to Look," Light Watkins presents a trove of compelling inspirational materials to catalyze positive change and give you fuel to push through self-limiting beliefs. Of the 12 million books sold on Amazon, "Knowing Where to Look" debuted in the top 400 of these books. Currently, "Knowing Where to Look: 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration " is in the top 10 books listed in the "spiritual" category. "Knowing Where to Look" is Light Watkins' newest book. His first book was "The Inner Gym: A 30-Day Workout for Strengthening HAPPINESS " (Self-Published on Amazon, 2015). Light's second book was the bestseller, “Bliss More: How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying” (Random House, 2018). I am very proud of Light Watkins and his creative genius in the world of self-meditation and spiritual guidance. His books are easy to read, substantive in content, and life changing. They help you navigate adversity in your life with a positive and stress-free outlook. Light, 48, is and always has been a wonderful, gifted, loving, and well-travelled son who makes his dad, mom, and siblings extremely proud of him. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and published on May 28, 2021 The fight for criminal justice for innocent persons of color in the Deep South has always been a long and difficult road. On April 22, 2021, Montgomery, Alabama attorney Mark Englehart filed my Opening Appellate Brief with the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta to overturn the wrongful conviction modern-day COINTELPRO federal prosecutors secured against me for wire, mail, and bank fraud in March 2019 in Birmingham, Alabama federal court. The Brief is free of the usual taint spewed by local Birmingham-area news reporters like John Archibald and Kyle Whitmire, both of whom served the same journalistic function in covering my case for AL.com that their predecessors in the Birmingham-area news media served during the height of the FBI's racist and centralized COINTELPRO program against civil rights activists in Alabama during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. In 2015 and 2016, career federal prosecutors in Newark, New Jersey conducted a six-month objective review of the same business transactions that gave rise to the fraud charges Birmingham, Alabama-based modern-day COINTELPRO federal prosecutors lodged against me. The New Jersey federal prosecutors declined to indict me after carefully reviewing the evidence set forth in my Opening Brief, while the Birmingham prosecutors targeted me for persecution and prosecution as soon as they assumed office in 2017. They added my innocent son as a co-defendant in the futile hopes of pressuring me into a plea deal. Lead Birmingham federal prosecutor Lloyd Peeples and his family have a long and ugly record of open hostility to women and African Americans, dating back to the 1970s (for his father) and 1980s (for himself). The Brief speaks for itself. Mark Englehart is a true friend and the best appellate attorney in America. Mark sat by my side during my three-week February-March trial every day. Enjoy your reading this Memorial Holiday weekend! Click here to read the Opening Brief. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on May 26, 2021 Republicans are trying to whitewash the January 6, 2021 insurrection and riot at the National Capitol in Washington, D.C. by supporters of former president Donald J. Trump. They are now characterizing this violent event as a normal tourist visit of the Capitol. This whitewashing of the insurrection demonstrates, once again, why we cannot trust the history of America, as recorded by many white historians and political figures. Videos of the January 6th insurrection showed rioters with helmets, body armor, metal batons, signs proclaiming their desire to "Hang Mike Pence," Confederate flags, pepper spray canisters, and marijuana as they broke doors and windows inside the Capitol, attacked police officers, seized control of the Senate and House chambers, and destroyed Congressional offices, all while frightened Democratic and Republican legislators were fleeing for their lives. The insurrection was an organized rebellion that was designed to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election victory over Donald Trump by any means necessary, up to and including violence. It was planned by organizers who were paid by the Trump Campaign and incited by Trump himself. Despite the disturbing video evidence of the widespread violence at the Capitol and a Capitol police officer screaming for his life as the mob attacked him, Republicans in Washington and around the nation are trying to whitewash this violent event rather than find out the root cause for it and report the truth to the American people. In short, these Republicans are fully prepared to live with a lie about the events surrounding the January 6th insurrection rather than tell the cold, hard truth to the American people about what really happened that day, and why. American History is Full of Outrageous Lies American history is full of outrageous lies that were written by white politicians, self-appointed scribes, so-called historians, and news reporters like the Republicans in Congress, GOP Internet bloggers, and commentators on Fox News and News Max. These lies have been told in our history books for over 400 years. The best and most comprehensive documentation of lies regarding America's history is set forth in James W. Loewen's national bestseller, "Lies My History Teacher Told Me," Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995, Revised and Updated in 2007. Loewen's book presents everything our American history textbooks have gotten wrong over a 400-year period. White America's documented propensity to lie about history is one of the primary reasons I have recorded and published my family's history in America as persons of color who have been "slaves," freed men and women, pioneers, and notable "public figures" in the Deep South since the 1830s. In my own case, every newspaper in Alabama that has covered my career since I desegregated the University of Alabama's School of Law in 1970 was a formal participant in the FBI's COINTELPRO counterintelligence program that sought to discredit civil rights activists, political dissidents, and black business owners who could not be co-opted by Alabama's white ruling oligarchy. Declassified FBI documents reveal that white reporters from The Birmingham News, as well as local FBI agents and Birmingham-area federal judges, were the leading participants in Alabama's COINTELPRO program. Some of these groups have continued in their traditional roles in the Alabama COINTELPRO program for five decades after the FBI's centralized COINTELPRO program ended in 1971. This is one of the reasons why the public has never seen Birmingham News/Al.com reporters publish articles criticizing federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors in Alabama who target outspoken black elected officials, public figures, and business leaders for persecution solely because of their race. With the lone exception of former federal judge U.W. Clemon (Birmingham, Alabama) and senior federal judge Myron Thompson (Montgomery, Alabama), both of whom are black former civil rights attorneys, this also explains why nearly all federal sitting judges in Alabama today continue to coddle modern-day COINTELPRO federal prosecutors. In 2018, a well-known former federal prosecutor confirmed to me the COINTELPRO role traditionally played by Al.com reporters/columnists like John Archibald and Kyle Whitmire. Prosecutors in Alabama often used these local reporters, who are essentially spin-masters for the modern-day version of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, to poison the well of public opinion against targeted black public officials, public figures, and business owners long before an indictment is handed down in criminal cases against these COINTELPRO victims. Interestingly, Archibald and Whitmire have never criticized Alabama federal prosecutors for their glaring failure to prosecute Alabama-based Wells Fargo bank executives in connection with the bank's five-year nationwide crime spree (from 2012 to 2016) in which Wells Fargo publicly admitted to defrauding millions of its bank customers by creating more than two million unauthorized bank accounts in its customers' names for the sole purpose of bilking them out of hundreds of millions of dollars in unearned banking fees. Yet, Archibald, Whitmire, and other Alabama reporters have aggressively publicized the cases of innocent blacks like Montgomery, Alabama attorney Chris Pitts and Birmingham, Alabama businessman Jonathan Dunning, both of whom are black and were the unfortunate victims of "twisting" -- a practice used by COINTELPRO federal prosecutors to rig judicial proceedings by deliberately omitting pertinent facts and/or distorting favorable evidence that benefits innocent defendants in order to indict and/or convict them on fabricated financial fraud charges. "Twisting" is prohibited by statute in every state, but permissible in federal courts. The Truth is Available for Those Who Seek It Fortunately, the Internet provides an invaluable forum for interested readers to independently discover the unvarnished truth about American history. The public no longer has to rely on the embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, colossal misinformation, and outright lies that are spewed by misguided white politicians, historians, modern-day COINTELPRO news reporters, and biased presentations of historical facts in today's history textbooks. Whitewashing only succeeds when people of goodwill turn a blind eye to the truth. Sadly, many people cannot handle the truth because it shatters their negative stereotypes and misconceptions about certain groups of people that have infected their rational thinking for decades. The GOP has taken whitewashing one step further. They want Americans to ignore videotaped evidence and simply believe the Republican Party's false narrative of lies about the violent January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. All articles are shared on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to follow Donald Watkins, please click on these links and hit the follow button: https://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins https://twitter.com/donaldvwatkins