Ellen Willis Quotes
The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.
Willis, Ellen. No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays. Wesleyan University Press, 1992.
The DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration.
She was commenting on the incident when in 2013, Congress awarded its highest honor to the 4 young Black girls who were murdered in Birmingham, Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights Movement by the KKK who set off a bomb in the 16th Street Baptist Church. The sister of Addie Mae Collins, one of the murdered girls, who herself was wounded in the bombing, refused the medal on behalf of her dead sister. She resented the fact that it had taken all these years for Congress to make this gesture and then would not do anything that might cost money such as monetary restitution. When the Muslim terrorists murdered people in the 9-11 World Trade Center attacks, Congress swiftly arranged for restitution payments to go to the relatives of the murdered victims and to those wounded. However to many people, when white terrorists murder black victims no restitution many comes forth—only a medal. See {634035} for the sister’s statement.
President Barack Obama had the week before, made a speech observing the fact that marijuana was less dangerous then alcohol.
Instead of standing and saluting as professional athletes have done for decades before games, he kneeled and refused to stand. This caused great public criticism but also some initial support. He was potentially risking his multimillion dollar salary as this technically violated his contract to avoid anything embarrassing to the team. He also donated $1 million to programs in the area that were working to enhance Black/white understanding. Even those who disagreed with his choice of protest defended his right to do so, and after the initial furor, public opinion, while not in agreement about his method, tended to support him for having the courage of his convictions and using his celebrity for a worthy cause. After sensing the public opinion, his team matches his $1 donation. Professional athletes both in the NFL and in other sports then began to do the same as a form of protest for the large, disproportionate, number of black men who were killed, mostly when unarmed, by police. The reference to the “paid leave” was the practice followed by most police departments—usually required by collective bargaining agreements with police unions—of placing police officers accused of committing violations of laws or regulations on paid administrative leave while all the investigations, hearings, and other processes . While this practice protected the rights of those police officers who were not guilty, it ended up paying brutal murders for a some time entire their case was decided or acted upon be the district attorney.
Ellen Jane Willis was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music critic. A 2014 collection of her essays, The Essential Ellen Willis, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
