Katy, Barr the door

Bill Knight column for 7 27, 28, or 29, 2020            

Attorney General William Barr might look a bit like Fred Flintstone, but the Rubble his Stone Age approach to justice is leaving behind is not Barney.

His Department of Justice’s priorities are now Trump’s priorities. Barr is acting as Trump’s personal lawyer, not the nation’s, and he’s signaled that federal involvement in issues related to the President are off limits, whether tax-related matters or action by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani or, now, sending secret federal law-enforcement personnel to cities to attack, abduct or intimidate nonviolent demonstrators.

Last week, four former presidents of the D.C. Bar Association signed a letter calling on the group to investigate Barr for ethical violations including dishonesty and failing his oath to uphold the Constitution.

This week, Barr is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, which is discussing the politicization of the Justice Department. They’ll surely ask why he:

* falsely framed the Mueller Report as an exoneration,

* criticized an Inspector General’s report on the Russia investigation, plus DoJ’s own probe and prosecution of wrong-doing that Trump called a hoax,

* helped purge the FBI of people not deemed to be “loyal” to Trump,

* dropped charges against Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI,

* reduced sentencing for Roger Stone, convicted of lying, witness tampering and obstruction, but whose prison term was later commuted altogether by President Trump (especially since Barr supposedly argued against back-tracking Stone’s prosecution, which Barr reportedly termed “righteous,” and in his confirmation hearing told Senators that a President pardoning someone in exchange for not incriminating the Commander in Chief “would be a crime”),

* oversaw the release of Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to witness tampering and conspiracy and was also convicted of bank fraud, tax evasion and hiding foreign bank accounts, but had his sentence commuted to house arrest over COVID-19 concerns (though comparable inmates weren’t offered the deal),

* launched an investigation into Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, subverting U.S. intelligence findings,

* removed prosecutors Jessie Liu (Washington, D.C.) and Geoffrey Berman (New York),

* ordered federal law enforcement personnel to gas peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square so Trump could walk to a nearby church for a photo holding a Bible, and

* circumvents Congress’ bipartisan criminal-justice reform.

Conflicts of interest seem to swirl around Barr. In 2017 he was hired by Caterpillar to examine the federal case against the Illinois company for using foreign subsidiaries to avoid paying U.S. taxes (despite Barr’s law firm’s involvement in the strategy). Now he’s reportedly questioned U.S. Attorneys’ looking into allegations of campaign fraud and extortion within his boss’s operation.

Meanwhile, an Appeals Court last month heard objections to Barr’s Flynn Forgiveness Express by Judge Emmet Sullivan, who accepted Flynn’s original guilty plea. In a 2-1 vote it ordered the dismissal anyway. In Appellate Judge Robert Wilkins’ dissent, he said Sullivan “must be given a reasonable opportunity to consider and hold a hearing on the government’s request [to drop charges] to ensure that it is not clearly contrary to the public interest.”

This month, Sullivan asked Washington’s full, 12-member Circuit Court of Appeals to hear his request.

In the Southern District of New York, Berman this month told Congress that Barr lied in conversations about changing the office, seeking Berman’s resignation so Trump loyalist Jay Clayton (who’s not a prosecutor) could replace him. If Berman resigned, the administration assumed their choice could take over. If Berman was fired, the prosecutor said, his assistant Audrey Strauss would succeed him (which is what eventually happened). Plus, even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) conceded that the precedence of Senators from a nominee’s home state clearing the move (and New York Democrats’ Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer are unlikely to OK Clayton).

As far as criminal justice reform – which through 2018’s First Step Act started to relieve overcrowded prisons and improve federal sentencing guidelines – Barr has issued federal charges in connection with recent civil uprisings instead of the more appropriate state charges, leading legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker to comment “The Attorney General has expressed nothing but contempt for more civilized approaches to law enforcement.”

Former Deputy Attorney General Donald B. Ayer, who served President George H.W. Bush before Barr was there, was more direct in recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I believe William Barr poses the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law,” Ayer said. “That is because he does not believe in its core principle that nobody is above the law.”

This isn’t animation; it’s animosity.

Sandburg’s 1918 advice to the press

Bill Knight column for 7-23, 24 or 25, 2020

Reading the 101-year-old “Chicago Race Riots” by Illinois’ Carl Sandburg – who died 53 years ago this week – is a shocking work of journalism. The 82-page book shows racism we feel isn’t new and provokes thoughts about today’s press.

Another piece by the newspaperman (whose Pulitzers were for poetry and history) offers recommendations for journalists’ preparation – timely as many colleges are sacrificing arts and sciences to stress vocational efforts.

In an in-house magazine for Scripps' Newspapers in 1918, Sandburg listed “Books the newspaperman ought to read.”

Starting in journalism in 1904 with a column for his hometown daily in Galesburg, Sandburg in 1906 moved to Chicago, where he wrote for local magazines; in 1907 he went to Milwaukee and worked as a reporter and as a political organizer. He returned to Chicago in 1912, working for a few papers until landing at Scripps’ ad-free Day Book newspaper. It folded in 1917, but not long after, the Chicago Daily News hired him.

Sandburg “offered a counterpoint to those who would advocate a passive approach in reporting and to those who would let entertaining chatter and diversionary gossip masquerade as worthy content,” says Duane Stoltzfus in “Freedom from Advertising: E.W. Scripps’s Chicago Experiment.”

“His approach required finding the larger meaning in a news story,” Stoltzfus said.

For Scripps, Sandburg wrote, “The bookworm lives with books: the newspaperman lives with events. The newspaperman in a way is a book-maker. Language is his handy tool. He needs a few good books to live with rather than many to idle with.”

Sandburg suggested 10 readings to prepare journalists:

Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and pacifist who wrote about World War I. Sandburg wrote, “In the book written by Barbusse, ‘Under Fire,’ is the humility of the true reporter, the eyewitness whose honesty enables the reader to feel that he sees vividly where the reporter saw vividly.”

Letters and speeches of Abraham Lincoln. “Newspapermen touch and handle the public mind more closely than any other group of workers,” Sandburg wrote. “Newspapermen have it as a responsibility, to tell the people what is going on in the world.

Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” A free-verse poet, Whitman was also a newspaperman. Sandburg wrote, “Young reporters and certain romantic oldsters get the habit of thinking there are women in Paris, Vienna or Moscow more wicked and mysterious than any women to be found in Toledo, Des Moines or Pasadena. That the people in our hometown are as important, complex and interesting as any people 1,000 miles away or 1,000 years ago is the feeling and viewpoint Whitman gives.”

The Bible. “Like newspapers, the Bible is full of contradictions,” he wrote. “It has more prophecies of new things upon the Earth than any other book. The Bible is pre-eminently a reporter’s book, the work of many reporters.”

Friedrich von Bernhardi was a Prussian general who wrote 1911’s “Germany and the Next War,” advocating a policy of aggression. Sandburg wrote, “The technique of conquest [and] the justification of autocratic militarism are voiced here authentically and convincingly. He is worth dipping into, for assurance as to what democracy is not.”

Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” Hugo was a French author and social-justice activist. Sandburg wrote, “ ‘Les Miserables’ has the solemn frenzy of the agitator. Never is he sorry for the People.”

Henry David Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord River.” Thoreau was an author and abolitionist who advocated civil disobedience. Sandburg wrote, “Monotony kills. Thoreau could sit right up to monotony and make it do tricks.”

The Industrial Relations Report came from Congress’ 1912 Commission on Industrial Relations after years of labor upheaval. Its definitive report was an 11-volume document written by commission head Frank Walsh. Sandburg wrote, “The combination [of all these recommendations] would not be the all-around equal of the material which may be mined from the report. Read the words of dreamers, men who have pictures in their heads of a reorganized industrial world, what they say about getting bread, peace and land for everybody.”

Epictetus’ “Enchiridion.” A 1st century Greek philosopher, Epictetus embraced the “Stoic” perspective, endorsing simplicity and concluding that external events are beyond human control, so people should strive to be masters of their own fate when possible, care for others, and accept whatever happens when fate determines otherwise. “In the midst of the contending currents of democracy we must be wise to the other fellow,” Sandburg commented.

Auguste Rodin’s “Art.” A French sculptor, Rodin was the father of modern sculpture, remembered for “The Thinker.” Sandburg wrote, “Art is anything you do that you don’t have to do in order to get by.”

“Much is required of us newspapermen if we would really understand the people,” added Sandburg, whose 1918 passport application stated, “I am a newspaper man.”

Civil Rights leader from Illinois passes the torch

Bill Knight column for 7-20, 21 or 22, 2020

           

Ten years ago, the Rev. C.T. Vivian gave a presentation at Western Illinois University, where I worked, and said, “I never would have been who I was if not for Macomb, Illinois.”

In a conversation two years later, I asked him about that comment. He smiled and said, “You can come from almost anywhere and do almost anything if your heart and soul are in it, even make things a little better.”

After decades of making things better, the Civil Rights pioneer died Friday at his Atlanta home at the age of 95.

Born Cordy Tindell Vivian in Boonville, Mo., Vivian and his moved to Macomb, when he was 6.

After graduating from Macomb High School in 1942, Vivian studied at WIU, where he also wrote sports for the Courier student newspaper. In 1945, he moved to Peoria, first working at Carver Community Center and later at the Foster & Gallagher mail-order company. He also became more involved in the church and in local efforts to desegregate restaurants (his first protest was an integrated demonstration at Barton’s Cafeteria, which had refused service to African Americans).

Although now recalled for his presence and leadership in the Civil Rights movement from Birmingham to Selma and far beyond the South – from sit-ins, boycotts and marches to arrests, incarcerations and assaults –the Baptist minister was a champion of nonviolence. Living in Nashville in 1959, Vivian met the Rev. James Lawson, who was teaching principles of nonviolent direct action to activists with the Nashville Student Movement including John Lewis, who’d become head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and eventually a Congressman.

“Nonviolence is the only honorable way of dealing with social change, because if we are wrong, nobody gets hurt but us,” Vivian told Civil Rights activists, reported by Taylor Branch in his 2006 book “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.”

“And if we are right, more people will participate in determining their own destinies than ever before,” Vivian added.

Vivian, Lawson, Lewis and others participated in 1960’s three-month campaign to desegregate Nashville lunch counters, and the effort succeeded.

Other successes came, but there were prices to pay. Attacks by mobs and police using billy clubs, fire hoses and dogs all helped change the nation enough to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act a year later. Other moments in Vivian’s momentous life:

* 1953: The Peoria chapter of the NAACP makes him an officer.

* 1955: With support from Mount Zion Baptist Church and his employer Helen Gallagher, he starts at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville.

* 1961: Vivian is beaten as part of the Freedom Ride to Mississippi organized by CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality).

* 1963: Vivian helps organize Tennessee’s delegation to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and he joins King’s staff.

* 1964: He’s one of many Black protestors at a St. Augustine, Fla., beach beaten by gangs of whites, who almost drown Vivian.

* 1965: With a Southern Christian Leadership Conference voter-registration drive in Selma, where more than 1,000 Black citizens had been prohibited from registering, Vivian asks Sheriff Jim Clark to let dozens of African Americans to come out of the heat into the courthouse, and the 220-pound Clark punches the slender organizer and has Vivian arrested.

* 1966: Vivian moves to Chicago, where he launches the Coalition for United Community Action, a group of dozens of organizations.

* 1970: The first of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s colleagues to write a book about the movement, Vivian releases “Black Power and the American Myth” (one of many other writings, including the preface to Felix Armfield’s “Black Life in West Central Illinois”).

* 1977-78: He establishes Black Action Strategies in Atlanta and helps found the National Anti-Klan Network, which evolves into the Center for Democratic Renewal.

* 1987: Vivian receives an honorary doctorate from WIU.

* 2003: The City of Macomb names the roadway through WIU's campus C.T. Vivian Way.

* 2013: President Obama awards Vivian the country’s top civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Vivian in 1999 told Peoria Journal Star reporter Pam Adams that his advocacy for the poor and marginalized stemmed from the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount.

“It's the most profound, the most deeply spiritual – not just religious, but spiritual – piece of material in one hump in all humanity,” he said. “It's the higher mathematics of spiritual life.”

Heart and soul.