(NNPA)—Public policy is very important to us in many ways. Our economy, health, welfare, safety and general quality of life depends on good public policy which is fortified with laws, rules and regulations. Bad public policy can lead to financial disaster, sickness, danger and insecurity. Lately, our elected officials and advocates have been using “knee jerk” responses to problems that simply require common sense and direct action. Let’s look at some examples.

(NNPA) - "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."   Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  1963, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Tens of thousands of Americans have rallied in cities and towns across the nation in opposition to Arizona's ill-considered new immigration law.  SB-1070, signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23rd, gives the Arizona police unprecedented authority to question and detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Furthermore, the new law, reminiscent of South Africa's apartheid-era pass card laws, makes the failure to carry legal immigration papers a crime.

In our view, the Arizona law is fundamentally un-American and represents an enormous setback in the cause of equal justice.  It is a disaster in the making for people of color.  It opens the door to racial profiling.  And it leaves tens of thousands of innocent, legal residents vulnerable to harassment, detention and imprisonment based on nothing more than the color of their skin or the sound of their voice.  The bill should be repealed or overturned at the first opportunity.

In the meantime, the National Urban League has immediately suspended consideration of Phoenix, Arizona to host our 2012 annual conference. We will not consider holding our conference anywhere in the state as long as this unfortunate law remains in effect.  In addition, we are working closely with the Urban League of Greater Phoenix and the Tucson Urban League to respond to the law and protect Arizona's communities of color from unjust persecution.

There is no indication this law will have any effect on the problem it was designed to fix.  In fact, many people, including some law enforcement officials, believe it will make matters worse by taking attention away from fighting real crime to focus on the immigration status of law-abiding citizens.  Most people who are in this country legally, including natural-born citizens, don't carry papers to prove their legal status.  I doubt that all the members of the Arizona legislature could prove their residency status if they were stopped on the street at any given moment.  Would they be detained, possibly jailed, while their status is determined?  Most likely it would depend on the color of their skin.

President Obama has called the Arizona law "irresponsible" and said it threatens "to undermine the basic notion of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe."  We agree.  And the Arizona law is a wake-up call for the federal government to finally enact comprehensive immigration reform that honors our highest values and protects innocent children and families.  In the absence of federal action, a growing number of states are enacting or proposing similar patch-work bills that could impede the civil rights of legal residents.

Let's not forget that America is now and has always been a nation of immigrants.  Our diversity has been our great strength.  That is even truer today, as the challenges and opportunities of globalization bind us ever closer and make us more interdependent.  As Dr. King reminded us, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

by Dorothy R. Leavell

(NNPA) - Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey has introduced legislation that would devastate America's only African- American majority state or territory, the U.S. Virgin Islands. The territory's economic development initiatives play by the rules Congress established, will strengthen the local government's fiscal health and will keep jobs in the United States. We urge Menendez to reconsider his bill, which could force the Virgin Islands into economic ruin and was introduced to satisfy Puerto Rican demands.

Powerful Puerto Rican leaders are lobbying to overturn the Virgin Islands' public-private partnerships with two rum makers, Diageo and Fortune Brands. The agreements invest in the territory's rum industry for the next 30 years, growing rum-related local government revenue from $90 million to $240 million annually. Puerto Rico wants to see this money diverted from the Virgin Islands to its own coffers and is pressuring Congress to make it happen through a tax quirk.

We understand the politics involved and know that Puerto Ricans are influential. But there is no sugar coating the anti-Virgin Islands campaign: this is a Puerto Rican cash grab, clear and simple. After years of a "big brother"-"little brother" relationship, the smaller, less influential Virgin Islands now has made smart business decisions that will help it recover from the global recession. Puerto Rico is using its political heft and campaign dollars to try to push its little brother back down.

Congressman Don Payne, the Congressional Caribbean Caucus chairman and the first African-American to represent New Jersey in Congress, wrote to Menendez just days ago on the issue. He expressed concern about "unnecessarily punitive" legislation that could "create unnecessary havoc at a sensitive economic time." Virgin Islanders need Payne, who understands the challenges faced by the United States' Caribbean territories, to keep fighting for fairness. We hope others join him.

Diageo, whose contract to purchase Captain Morgan rum from a Puerto Rican rum maker expires in 2011, decided several years ago that it will leave Puerto Rico. Harming the Virgin Islands by blowing up the Diageo agreement will not bring the company back to Puerto Rico. But it might force Diageo to leave the United States and head to a foreign country, taking American union jobs and significant economic impact with it.

Menendez's legislation would retroactively cap the Virgin Islands' investments in local economic partnerships. That could unwind the deals, even with construction already begun, workers hired and bonds issued. The Virgin Islands' Governor John deJongh has been clear that his territory's economic stability is riding on these agreements. Numerous African-American members of Congress and business leaders agree. Will Menendez stop to listen? And if not, what is his plan to help the Virgin Islands replace the revenue lost if the deals are overturned?

The bill, named the "Reinvesting in U.S. Territories, Not Corporations Act," won't solve the economic problems in Puerto Rico, where Governor Luis Fortuno seems unable to prevent jobs from fleeing. And it will create decades of pain for the Virgin Islands just as it is poised to revive its economy. We think it should be called the "Un-American Act."

The National Puerto Rican Coalition's campaign against the Virgin Islands is infused with racial undertones. The group organized a national Hispanic boycott of Diageo and also is actively pressuring members of Congress of Hispanic background or with large Hispanic populations to attack the Virgin Islands.

A "black versus brown" economic war would be like quicksand. As the country struggles in the recession, the last thing we need is a fight between minority communities over economic issues. African Americans and Hispanics need every opportunity to head back to work, start or expand small businesses and get ahead as the recovery begins. That means uniting rather than letting special interests and lobbyists divide us.

If passed, Menendez's bill would sacrifice the interests of Virgin Islands' Black population to please Puerto Rico. Will he do the same in New Jersey, where the black and Hispanic populations are of roughly equal size? What about other states, or other industries, where African Americans are doing good things that could be undercut by damaging federal intervention.

Sen.  Menendez should listen to those warning of the consequences of retroactive legislation on the Virgin Islands' economy. We strongly urge him to reconsider and are confident the Senate will see his bill for what it is: bad legislation.

Dorothy R. Leavell is chair of the NNPA Foundation.

(NNPA) - A couple of weeks after the May 4, 1970 killings of four students at Kent State by National Guards troops during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, word spread throughout my high school regarding the killings of two Black students at Jackson State College (now University).  These students had been protesting the murders at Kent State, the Vietnam War and the racist harassment that Black students had been receiving in and around the campus.  The police responded to the protest with bullets, an act that was broadly condemned.

In contrast to the dramatic outpouring of anger and sadness that followed from the Kent State killings—including but not limited to student strikes across the country—there was no such outpouring in connection with Jackson State; there were no massive student strikes.  At my high school several Black student activists, most of us allied with the Black Panther Party, went throughout the school agitating for a walkout or, at least, a protest.  Our cries met with little response.  In my mind’s eye I can see one of our leaders addressing students in the cafeteria calling upon them to respond to these murders, only to be largely ignored.

The lack of response to Jackson State was not isolated to my high school. While it was certainly the case that there were responses, none of it came close to mirroring the response to the Kent State killings.  Much was made of this at the time, and then, as weeks became months, and months became years, Jackson State was largely forgotten.

The contrasting responses to Kent State and Jackson State said so much about race in the USA, and it will be interesting to see to what extent any attention is actually focused on Jackson State this month.  As too often happens, Black, Brown, Yellow and Red death at the hands of the forces of law and order may be viewed as unfortunate, if not tragic, but to a great extent not a source of outrage by white America.

The killings and woundings at Kent State were, simply put, not supposed to happen to good White students.  That the shootings could never be properly explained by the authorities compounded the problem for the entire country.  The murders at Jackson State, just as with the murders two years earlier at Orangeburg, South Carolina and two years later at Southern University in New Orleans, were the killings of faceless individuals who, in the minds of far too many White Americans, simply should not have placed themselves in harm’s way.

What White America could largely not accept was that Kent State happened because the Orangeburg Massacre had been permitted to take place.  The relative silence in the face of such a profound police injustice as was the Orangeburg Massacre of 1968 provided the grounding that made other such police atrocities possible.  Inevitably that would spill over into White America.  Yet, to the extent to which White America saw Kent State in isolation, it ignored it as part of a larger problem of police violence and state repression.

To put it another way, the outrage against the killings at Kent State was quite sincere, but it was outrage within a bottle that saw in such an atrocity an aberration from a system that was largely fair and just. Thus, Jackson State was not seen by White America as a continuation of state repression and police violence but more an example of the particular and peculiar forms of interaction that exist between Black America and the police in the USA, at least from the standpoint of too many white Americans, including otherwise liberal and progressive Whites.

We should use the month of May in order to commemorate the Kent State and Jackson State killings.  We should use this as a moment to discuss political repression in the USA, and the particular form that it takes when targeted at the activities of people of color.  The frustration and dismay that I saw on the face of the Black student leader who appealed—in vain—to his fellow students in our high school cafeteria to walk out in protest over Jackson State goes to the split that exists in a broad progressive movement in the USA.  This is a split where repression is often advanced differently and unevenly so that we all miss the fact, so eloquently articulated by Dr. King, that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, and the co-author of “Solidarity Divided.”  He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .