[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 91 (Thursday, June 24, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1401-E1403]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EXPOSING RACISM

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 24, 1999

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, in my continuing efforts to 
document and expose racism in America, I submit the following articles 
into the Congressional Record.

       HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)--The question of whether ex-cons 
     should be able to vote is becoming an issue in Pennsylvania 
     and nationally.
       Human-rights groups and prison-rights advocates plan to 
     challenge the law because of its ``racial implications,'' 
     said Pennsylvania Prison Society director William DiMascio 
     said.
       In addition, there is legislation in Harrisburg seeking to 
     overturn the law. And the chairman of the state Senate 
     Judiciary Committee, Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery 
     County, a former prosecutor, said he is ``willing to look 
     at'' a reconsideration of the law.
       State Rep. Jerry Birmelin, R-Wayne County, chairman of the 
     House Subcommittee on Crime and Corrections, said that while 
     he opposes inmates voting, he'd consider extending the vote 
     to ex-cons.
       Pennsylvania's law, which passed virtually unnoticed as 
     part of the 1995 ``motor voter'' legislation, bans felony ex-
     cons from registering to vote for five years after release 
     from prison. Before 1995, ex-cons could register as soon as 
     they got out of prison.
       The law's supporters, including state Attorney General Mike 
     Fisher, say criminals should pay for their crimes, and that 
     losing the vote is part of the price.
       ``Since the Legislature has determined a convicted felon 
     does not enjoy the same rights as people who are not 
     convicted felons, I have no problem with that,'' Philadelphia 
     District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said through spokeswoman 
     Cathie Abookire.
       The effort to eliminate the ban comes as the prison inmate 
     population rises to record levels nationally and in the face 
     of a new Justice Department report that says blacks are six 
     times more likely to be jailed than whites, and 2 times more 
     likely than Hispanics.
       It also comes as some Pennsylvania politicians become more 
     concerned about losing 100,000 potential voters because of 
     the ban.
       A state-by-state study by Human Rights Watch, an 
     international research group, estimates that 3.9 million 
     Americans currently are banned from the ballot box. About 13 
     percent of black men, more than 1.3 million men nationally, 
     cannot vote, according to the study.
       While the ban applies to anyone convicted of a felony, it 
     does not apply to people convicted or jailed on misdemeanor 
     charges. The only problem is that many minor criminals think 
     they also are forbidden from voting, critics say.
       ``We find ex-offenders and other non-felony folks under the 
     impression they can't vote,'' said Leodus Jones, director of 
     Community Assistance for Prisoners, a nonprofit advocacy 
     group. ``I really believe there are thousands in Philadelphia 
     alone.''
       Only four states--Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and New 
     Hampshire--allow inmates to vote.
       Estimating exactly how many Pennsylvanians are affected is 
     difficult due to recidivism and because no one adequately 
     tracks state, local and federal releases. The Pennsylvania 
     Commission on Crime and Delinquency offered ``rough 
     numbers,'' saying there are about 86,000 to 101,000 inmates 
     and ex-cons who currently cannot vote.
       The irony for those who believe the law is discriminatory 
     is that in the 1995 ``motor voter'' law the ban is a part of 
     what was designed to increase minority voting by making 
     registration easier. However, many lawmakers say they were 
     unaware of the felony provision, which was inserted at a time 
     the Legislature was being hurried, under a federal court 
     order, to pass a motor voter bill.
       ``We call it `the mickey bill,' because they caught 
     everybody asleep when they passed it,'' Jones said.
       State Rep. Harold James, D-Philadelphia, a former 
     Philadelphia police officer, said, ``When we voted on `motor 
     voter,' we didn't even know that was in there.''
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               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 20, 1999]

 Worker Bias Lawsuits Flood Agriculture Dept--Minorities, Women Allege 
                             Discrimination

                        (By Michael A. Fletcher)

       The U.S. Department of Agriculture is grappling with a 
     flood of discrimination complaints from minority and female 
     employees who describe the agency as a hotbed of racial bias 
     and harassment, where women assigned to remote work crews are 
     physically threatened by male colleagues and minorities are 
     routinely passed over for promotions.
       Minority and women employees have long complained about 
     what they call a deeply entrenched culture of discrimination 
     at the sprawling federal agency, which is often derided as 
     ``the last plantation.'' The problems have intensified in 
     recent months as more employees have stepped forward with 
     formal complaints, even as top USDA officials have 
     acknowledged longstanding civil rights problems. Earlier this 
     year, the agency agreed to a huge court settlement that could 
     result in hundreds of millions of dollars being paid to 
     thousands of black farmers for past discrimination.
       With a work force of 89,000 and a sweeping mandate that 
     includes administering farm aid programs, managing national 
     forests and running the food stamp program, USDA is one of 
     the federal government's largest departments. With many of 
     its workers deployed in rural outposts, critics charge that 
     USDA's rank-and-file often seems impervious to the civil 
     rights edicts that flow from the agency's Washington 
     headquarters.
       The agency is facing at least five class action or proposed 
     class action complaints, either in federal court or before 
     the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where groups of 
     female and minority employees allege that they have been the 
     victims of blatant racial bias or repeated sexual 
     discrimination and harassment. In addition, more

[[Page E1402]]

     than 1,500 individual employment discrimination complaints 
     are pending at USDA. And of the 1,800 cases resolved over the 
     past two years, more than 1,000 ended with settlements, 
     indicating that they had merit, said Rosalind Gray, USDA's 
     director of civil rights.
       Charges lodged against the agency either in lawsuits or 
     individuals' complaints run the gamut:
       In several bathroom stalls at USDA headquarters, someone 
     had scrawled ``NAACP'' and underneath it, ``now apes are 
     called people.'' Some employees say such graffiti is evidence 
     of workplace hostility  that the agency has not done enough 
     to address.
       Black and Hispanic employee complained about working in 
     rural offices under white supervisors who assign them few 
     important tasks or the kind of training that would put them 
     in line for promotions.
       Women such as Ginelle O'Connor, 42, who work as Forest 
     Service firefighters say they were subjected to a never-
     ending stream of taunts and sexually laced comments and even 
     threats of rape from male colleagues.
       The men ``were making bets on how they could get rid of 
     me,'' said O'Connor, now a USDA biologist working in Northern 
     California. ``But I was determined they weren't going to run 
     me off.''
       The settlement with the black farmers was part of 
     Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman's effort to ``change the 
     culture'' of the agency. ``For far too long USDA has been 
     ignoring serious, pervasive problems within our civil rights 
     system,'' he said.
       ``Clearly, Secretary Glickman is concerned by the number of 
     EEO complaints against USDA,'' said Tom Amontree, Glickman's 
     spokesman, noting that the department has ``resolved the vast 
     majority of the EEO complaints that were part of the so-
     called backlog.''
       Amontree said that Glickman ``is impressed with the 
     progress and the changes instituted'' under Gray. ``Under her 
     leadership, USDA is implementing procedures that will hold 
     people accountable, and the secretary will continue to keep a 
     close eye on that progress.''
       Despite Glickman's efforts, the barrage of slights, insults 
     and outright harassment over the years has helped foster a 
     culture that makes many female and minority employees at USDA 
     complain that they feel like outsiders on their own jobs.
       In a case now before the EEOC, a group of 300 African 
     American managers at the Farm Service Agency, the branch of 
     USDA found to have discriminated against black farmers, says 
     they have been repeatedly passed over for promotions in favor 
     of less qualified whites.
       Charles W. Sims Sr., 55, a program coordinator at USDA's 
     Washington headquarters, says he has been ignored for 
     promotions on more than 40 separate occasions over the past 
     18 years. ``Management will not tell me why they will not 
     hire me for a higher position,'' said Sims, who says that he 
     was given meaningless assignments after he began filing EEO 
     complaints against the department. ``They always tell me that 
     I'm a great employee, so the only thing I can surmise from 
     that is that it is a race thing.''
       During his 23 years at USDA, Carnell McAlpine, a program 
     complaint specialist in Alabama, said he has learned to 
     ``expect the worst'' from his job. He has been passed over 
     for promotions given to whites with less experience and made 
     to feel excluded from the flow of information.
       ``Those are the adversities a black person has to deal 
     with,'' McAlpine said. ``You just have to harden yourself. . 
     . . When I've had good things happen to me on the job, 
     I've learned to view them as surprises.''
       Harold Connor, 46, deputy director of USDA's Price Support 
     Division, says he has faced insults since his first days at 
     the agency. More than 20 years ago, it was the white local 
     farm committee member who vowed to ``go out the back door'' 
     the day Connor, who is black, entered the front door as a new 
     director in the St. Louis area. Now that he works in 
     Washington, the insults are often indirect: He was advised 
     not to seek promotions initially because he was too new. 
     Later, he was discouraged by superiors who said he had been 
     in Washington too long and that the agency needed fresh 
     thinking.
       ``You just kind of do a slow burn,'' he said. ``First you 
     doubt yourself. But then you realize it is not you, it's 
     them.''
       While some employee activists cite USDA as among the worst 
     federal agencies when it comes to civil rights complaints, 
     they point out that charges of racial and gender 
     discrimination are not uncommon within the federal 
     government. That is seen as a troubling reality because for 
     years federal employment was seen as a sure route to the 
     middle class for women and minorities, particularly African 
     Americans. Blacks make up 17.2 percent of the federal work 
     force, compared with only 10.6 percent of the U.S. labor 
     force.
       Groups of minority employees have filed successful class 
     action discrimination complaints against several federal 
     agencies, including the Library of Congress, the Army Corps 
     of Engineers and the State Department. Suits also are pending 
     at other agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and 
     the Department of Commerce. Black employees also allege bias 
     at the Social Security Administration [Details, Page A21]. 
     Activists call the complaints evidence of the growing civil 
     rights problems within the federal government.
       Many employee activists say that nowhere in the federal 
     government is the problem more pronounced than at the 
     Department of Agriculture, an agency whose roots reach deep 
     into rural America.
       While 20 percent of USDA's employees are minorities, whites 
     hold 91 percent of the senior management positions, a reality 
     that critics call a direct outgrowth of the agency's culture. 
     Some 80 percent of USDA's best-paid employees are men, 
     although women make up more than 40 percent of the work 
     force.
       USDA officials have pointed to enforcement of civil rights 
     laws as a priority in recent years. Since assuming his job in 
     1995, Secretary Glickman has convened a blue-ribbon panel on 
     the matter, ordered a civil rights review and reactivated the 
     agency's dormant civil rights office. Yet the problem 
     continues to grow.
       The employee complaints are buttressed by the findings of 
     the department's own civil rights task force, which two years 
     ago issued a report that described widespread bias both 
     within the department's work force and in its delivery of 
     programs to the public.
       The report was a key piece of evidence in a federal lawsuit 
     brought by black farmers. The farmers charged that USDA 
     officials unfairly discouraged, delayed or rejected their 
     applications for federal loans. The suit resulted in a 
     settlement that lawyers involved in the case said could 
     cost the federal government as much as $1 billion. A 
     federal judge approved the deal last week.
       Ironically, some USDA officials say privately that 
     Glickman's aggressive rhetoric and work to attack employee 
     complaints--the backlog of unresolved employee discrimination 
     complaints has been cut significantly during his tenure--have 
     opened the agency to more charges of discrimination. Also, 
     top USDA officials say their civil rights efforts have been 
     met with significant resistance.
       ``There are some people who don't want their way of life 
     changed,'' said Gray, who was appointed by Glickman to be the 
     department's lead civil rights enforcer. ``Their way of life 
     is based on their local culture, and we have a work force 
     that is spread out throughout the country.''
       While acknowledging the hurdles, some activists complain 
     that Glickman has not moved boldly enough. While he has 
     threatened to fire employees found participating in reprisals 
     against those who make discrimination complaints, few have 
     faced such punishment.
       ``The secretary is selling snake oil,'' said Leroy W. 
     Warren Jr., who chaired an NAACP task force that last summer 
     issued a critical report on employment discrimination in the 
     federal government. ``It is all good rhetoric. But I'm 
     waiting on the substance.''
       Similarly, many of the employees who have brought 
     complaints against the agency say they also are waiting for 
     justice.
       O'Connor, who joined a class action filed by female Forest 
     Service employees, said she faced harassment throughout much 
     of her 17-year tenure at the Forest Service. In 1982, she was 
     the only woman on the Fulton Hot Shots, an elite firefighting 
     brigade that battles blazes in national forests.
       One day, she made her way to the fire camp's bathroom for a 
     shower. She unwittingly dropped her panties on the way from 
     the shower. Hours later, she found her underwear flying on 
     the antennae of a fire engine. Her colleagues drove the truck 
     for a day before removing the underwear.
       For O'Connor and other women at the Forest Service, the 
     incident represented far more than a boorish prank: It was 
     another example of the harrowing sexual harassment and 
     hostility they had to endure.
       Lesa L. Donnelly, a 19-year Forest Service employee and 
     lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said some of the hostility 
     grew out of resentment of a federal court order requiring the 
     Forest Service to hire more women in its western region.
       In the wake of the order, she says, female firefighters 
     were threatened with being pushed into wildfires. They were 
     spit at and hit during physical training. Other women said 
     they were stalked or tormented with dead animals. Some were 
     allegedly left in the woods without transportation.
       The women's class action suit is in mediation and a federal 
     judge in San Francisco has set a May 26 deadline for 
     settlement efforts.
       ``We have heard horror story after horror story,'' said 
     Lawrence Lucas, president of the USDA Coalition of Minority 
     Employees. ``But unless people are held accountable, nothing 
     is going to change at USDA.''
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      Congressional Black Caucus Begins Police Brutaliity Hearings

                           (By Paul Shepard)

       WASHINGTON (AP)--Rep. James Clyburn pledges that the 
     Congressional Black Caucus' first hearing on police brutality 
     will yield more than a report that will sit on a bookshelf 
     and collect dust.
       ``We are focused on solutions,'' Clyburn, D-S.C., said 
     Monday. ``Panels like this often focus only on the horror 
     stories, but we are talking solutions. We need to stay 
     focused and achieve some meaningful results.''
       The caucus on Monday hosted the first of a planned national 
     series of hearings on police brutality designed to measure 
     whether the recent spate of high-profile deaths of young 
     blacks at the hands of police are an aberration or a 
     troubling new outgrowth of tougher policing policies 
     nationwide.
       Early in the five-hour hearing, the panel heard from 
     representatives of the civil rights

[[Page E1403]]

     community, including National Urban League President Hugh 
     Price and Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council 
     of La Raza.
       ``The problem isn't only excessive use of force but dragnet 
     techniques'' that include racial profiling of suspects on 
     traffic stops and the random stopping and frisking policies 
     employed by New York City police, Price said.
       Later, Bill Lann Lee, acting assistant attorney general for 
     civil rights, told the caucus members that although his 
     office is limited in its ability to bring federal 
     prosecutions in local police jurisdictions, it has reached 
     settlements with the cities of Pittsburgh and Steubenville, 
     Ohio, which were judged by the Justice Department to 
     discriminate in policing.
       Lee said investigations of the Washington, New York City 
     and New Orleans police departments are continuing.
       ``We have seen several tragedies in the last few months,'' 
     Lee said. ``We have to see how we as a nation as a whole 
     respond, not by pointing fingers but by moving forward.''
       Witnesses like Dorothy Elliott provided tearful testimony 
     of how their loved ones died at the hands of police. Mrs. 
     Elliot's son, Archie Elliott III, 24, was stopped by Prince 
     George's County, MD, police in June 1995 for driving 
     erratically.
       Police said Elliott, with his hands cuffed behind him in a 
     police car, pointed a gun at them. The official version of 
     events was that after refusing police orders to drop the gun, 
     Elliott was shot 14 times and died.
       ``You can call it a tragedy, but I call it a murder,'' Mrs. 
     Elliott sobbed. ``My son didn't resist arrest, My son's life 
     had value.''
       The shooting was ruled justified by authorities. Seated 
     next to Mrs. Elliott was Saiko Diallo, whose son Amadou 
     Diallo, a street vendor from Guinea, was killed Feb. 4 
     outside his apartment in the Bronx when four white police 
     officers fired 41 shots, striking him 19 times and making the 
     young immigrant a national symbol of police abuse.
       ``The police officers have been indicted for (second-
     degree) murder,'' Mrs. Diallo said in halting tones. ``But 
     they are still working full time with a full salary. This is 
     unfair, This is not right.''
       Additional hearings are planned for New York, Los Angeles, 
     Houston, Chicago and Atlanta.
                               __________
                               

           Bell Atlantic Workers Sue Company for $100 Million

                          (By Genaro C. Armas)

       Philadelphia.--A group of current and former employees of 
     Bell Atlantic Corp. filed a $100 million federal lawsuit 
     against the company Monday charging that a racially hostile 
     environment led to the suicides of three employees who worked 
     at a company garage.
       The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court alleges that 
     company executives did not do enough to stem the 
     discrimination allegations lodged by 10 plaintiffs against 
     two men who were supervisors at the garage where the suicide 
     victims worked. The three workers, all black males, died 
     between 1994 and 1997.
       The suit said the alleged harassment against the victims, 
     as well as other black workers in the Philadelphia garage by 
     white supervisors, Thomas Flaherty and Nick Pomponio, who 
     were named as defendants in the lawsuit, was so harsh that 
     some workers considered ``taking the laws into their own 
     hands.''
       ``But (they) opted to endure the suffering instead, 
     believing that Bell Atlantic would take the action it 
     promised to take (to investigate complaints and take 
     corrective action),'' court documents said.
       Both Flaherty and Pomponio have since been transferred out 
     of the garage, plaintiffs' attorney John Hermina said. 
     Flaherty, reached by phone, referred comment to corporate 
     attorneys. A number the company provided for Pomponio was 
     incorrect and he could not be reached for comment.
       Joan Rasmussen, a Bell Atlantic spokesperson in Arlington, 
     VA., said Hermina had tried to file a similar lawsuit in 
     federal court in Washington seeking class status but a judge 
     ``denied their claim of a pattern of discrimination.
       ``Bell Atlantic is proud of its record on diversity,'' said 
     Ms. Rasmussen, who declined to comment specifically on the 
     Philadelphia lawsuit because she had not seen it. 
     ``Discrimination is totally unacceptable in the workplace at 
     Bell Atlantic.''
       The lawsuit accuses the company of racial discrimination 
     and retaliation, negligence, breach of contract, and 
     intentional infliction of emotional distress.
       ``Bell Atlantic knew this was going on,'' Hermina said. 
     ``It's a culture of neglect, because apparently Bell Atlantic 
     felt that these African-American employees don't matter.''

     

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