On President Obama's Speech from the bridge in Selma Alabama

President Obama delivered a fine speech at the notorious bridge in Selma Alabama. He spoke at length of the need for ordinary citizens to work toward fulfilling the promise and spirit of America. I take him at his word. I'm proud that he is our President. And I'm baffled at how some people vilify and criticize every thing he does or even proposes doing. In his speech from the bridge he reminds us of where we were as a country and a society fifty years ago.

If you'd like to hear for yourself what he said you can find it here…

https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/civil-rights/selma?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email443-text1&utm_campaign=selma

But I thought I'd remind the President of People who are working for justice and change today. I tried to make a case for all those political prisoners in the "war" on drugs. John Knock is one of many who are locked up for no good reason. They are being held because politicians think it makes them look good to be "Tough on Crime". They won't be released because almost no one has that authority. 

The Power to correct this sort of injustice is rested solely in the hands of the Chief Executive of our country. For whatever reasons this power is rarely used. But that doesn't mean never used. In the world of hope and change it means keep working on it.

This is my next letter to the President. I'm beginning to like this new hobby of mine…

March 14, 2015

President Barack Obama

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr President,

I watched your speech from the bridge in Selma. Thank you for making it available online.

Your delivery was inspirational. You made a number of excellent points concerning what it means to be American. Where we come from and the spirit that brought us here. The responsibly handed down to us and that we must continue to work toward fulfilling the aspirations of the founders. That there are still struggles to work on.

You spoke of the need for citizens to stand up for what is right. I agree with this completely. Even a casual observer can see there is still a need for work toward equal protection under the law.

I will tell my Congressman that I support STRENGTHENING the Voting Rights Act. As for participation in our Democracy, that's what the rest of this letter is about. 

As you pointed out in your speech, the marchers were confronted by the police who were backed up by the establishment. They were derided and denigrated and despised by the law and the customs of society. Through their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater purpose they eventually won the changes to law that we must all continue to defend and protect.

Where in our system of government is the branch for fairness? Who has the constitutional imperative to fix injustice? When citizens are imprisoned using unjust laws who can remedy that? I suppose you know that it is you Mr. President. The head of the executive branch is given that power and also that duty. 

In my last letter I told you about the horrific sentence handed down to my Uncle John for a first time non-violent marijuana only offense. (Two life terms plus twenty years in prison.) He (my Uncle) would be the first to point out that he is not alone in receiving an excessive prison sentence. You might know by now there are a number of others who have received Life For Pot. As per your speech, I wish to express my opinion that this is not justice. These sentences do not fit the crimes. 

The pretext that "mandatory minimums" is founded upon is wrong. In a misguided effort to curb the discretion of Judges who might be too "lenient" Congress prescribed specific penalties which Judges would have to impose. Prosecutors could then use the threat of harsh penalties to force plea bargains. The effort was misguided because Judges are tasked with deciding what an appropriate sentence/punishment would be for any given case. By taking Judges out of the sentencing equation Congress has created a serious problem with fairness in our Justice System. Prosecutors are not motivated to be fair, they are tasked with winning. 

I know there is no place for cynicism in politics. As you said, "We can afford neither complacency or despair." Citizens who are working toward changing unfair laws also know that this struggle can take decades. The Senate and the House have never been known as fast moving institutions. We know it takes years (maybe decades or centuries) to get laws corrected for the sake of justice and fairness. There are at least 20 people serving life for marijuana crimes. Hundreds more are serving de-facto life sentences for marijuana crimes. These are people who will die before they would be able to complete their sentences. More information has been collected and posted on the web site:

www.lifeforpot.com

This has been painstakingly researched and assembled by the sister of my uncle. Through her work and organizing many of these problems are being talked about now. I believe this is exactly the sort of commitment and citizenship you spoke about in your speech at Selma. Of course we need to organize and vote. We need to tell our representatives in government what we expect from our government. Slowly over time we hope they listen and we hope they act. 

The un-justness of our Judiciary is a special kind of problem. It has come about through ill-conceived laws. While they were well intentioned, the un-intended consequences are clearly injustice. 

Thankfully this is a problem well within your power to correct. You can fix this with a stroke of your pen. You can grant Clemency to people serving Life Sentences for cannabis offenses. It is an amazing power to have. I trust that you will do what is right. 

I thank you for being our President

Sincerely Yours,

Tom Walters

My New Letter Writing Hobby

If I simply judge the traffic this site is getting I can see that nobody is interested in this topic. That's OK. We all have our own interests. I will confess it's been quite sometime since I last attempted to post anything here. It's also OK. I'm not picking on myself either. But now I have returned with yet another big idea.
And so now... in spite of Popular Demand. I'm proud to reveal my New Initiative in political commentary and sophisticated rhetoric.

A Groundbreaking Exercise in Futility!

Soon To Be Ignored. 

The One, Of Many…

Letters to our President.

First, some background.
I 've gotten on the White House emailing list and every few days they email a new press release. In the most part they are informative and interesting. I don't mind getting them, if I did I'm sure I could opt out. On occasion they invite commentary and actually solicit my opinion. I'm sorry to say I haven't replied to any of these invitations yet. But sometimes you get an idea that won't go away. Like, I wonder what sort of letter to the President might get his attention. 
And
I wonder how many letters can I write before they ask me to stop? 
Do they have the right to tell me to stop? 
What about insulting or threatening?
I seem to remember hearing that threats to the President are against the law. I don't want to be accused of any wrong doing. I hope I'm writing well enough to be understood. But one never really knows.
And so in order to be more clear and transparent, I'm going to post these letters here in my google blog. I'll also send them via-USPS. And just to be sure somebody reads them I'll send them via email.
I think it's great to have all these delivery options and it also makes editing and "re-interpreting" my work a little more difficult.
I can imagine a person like Winston Smith toiling away in the Ministry of Truth, revising my words to fit some previously un-known thought crime, while my original writings vanish silently into the memory hole. I don't really believe anyone would care that much, but one never really knows…
I really don't want to find myself locked up in Cuba…. just because they "said so" (that's all the "due process" needed for your certain types of people).
Yes I'm slightly paranoid, I believe it's partly genetic. Some buried sequence in my DNA.  I just have to live with it.
So much for the paranoid reasons of multiple distribution. The practical concerns dictate that I get these words to as many people as possible. So potentially I could reach the entire online community of millions. The practical result is more like 4 possibly 5 people.
(You, dear reader, are just one of a very select few.)
And now with absolutely no more fanfare I'm proud to post my very first Letter to the President.

March 1, 2015

Mr. Barack Obama

President

United States of America

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr President,

I support you in your efforts to keep families together. I see what you are attempting with emigration reform and  the use of executive orders to bring fairness and reason to the problem of un-documented workers and their families. 

Your opposition is playing on fear and bigotry. It wraps itself in the cloak of “Law and Order” only to gain popular support. They don’t offer solutions. Their course of non-action results in status quo, non-workable, non-solutions to documenting the un-documented. And still they continue to portray you as giving largesse to un-deserving criminals.

I’m sure you know all this. But the marketing of the problem and it’s solutions seems to lose focus as the opposition in Congress focuses on “Law and Order” and punishing (or at least not rewarding) those people who have made their home here in spite of not having their papers in order. I think you might tell the public that you are not the sort of leader who will advocate putting millions of un-documented workers on busses and trains and shipping them to places where they don’t really want to go. Your mandate implied that you will work with the best minds and leaders to find common ground solutions to the problems everyday people face. If you can work with Congress, that would be a plus but for the sake of your party and our nation I think putting your opposition on the spot is an effective technique. 

After looking at the facts, I have found many miss-leading talking points by your opposition. It is a shame you don’t have the resources to spin their miss-characterizations into a public shaming of them. The media can and should be held accountable for what they say and HOW they say it. It didn’t take much time to see that you are not offering to give out federal benefits to the un-documented but this is a major fear your opposition plays on. They seem to take every opportunity to make outlandish claims just to energize the “conservative” base. I think your office needs to counter those claims but also call out people for opinions being reported as facts. It is not enough to assume the majority will see through the bigotry. 

Typically headlines from the Washington Post and Fox News claimed that you were offering federal benefits to “illegal immigrants” reading the stories, revealed that you were not actually doing that. I realize the sensational need to get attention and thus the miss-leading headlines. But people jump to conclusions based on those headlines and then use those conclusions to continue polemic commentary and opinion pieces in a reactionary feedback loop which only serves their interests, and makes people more fearful and ignorant. 

The same tactics which got my Uncle sentenced to 2 life terms in prison + twenty years. (Just in case he was able to die in prison and be re-incarnated and raised from a baby through his entire second life in prison, I suppose. But it still doesn’t make sense).  It might be law, but then again it might be the way a law is used. 

I understand you have some experience with interpreting Constitutional Law. Wouldn’t two life in prison terms seem excessive, even unusual to you? It is difficult to find anyone else who has received this sort of sentence for a similar crime. But once someone is characterized as a “drug smuggler” people stop listening. The prejudice of “criminals doing the time for doing a crime” is activated. Nothing to look at there, move along. I suppose there are Supreme Court rulings declaring that no amount of prison time can be judged as cruel. Even if one is convicted based only on hearsay testimony and testimony bought and paid for or coerced from “witnesses” who are trying to avoid punishment for their own crimes. Nothing unusual about that any more? 

I do understand you have no shortage of problems to address. Immigration is certainly a serious problem. I commend you for taking an executive action aimed at helping those people who are here with less than proper legal status. I see your struggle with the opposition who have vowed to oppose every initiative you take. I also see a prison sentence so extreme that normal every day people don’t believe it. 

I hope you heard Bill Maher ask you to free the federal Marijuana prisoners. I also support that executive order. I’m sure a silent majority would support it as well. As you might already know, it is the right thing to do. Keeping these people locked up for possessing, using, distributing or (in my Uncles case) just knowing people, does nothing to make our country or our people safer. It just wastes money on prisons. And it also makes people see a system which is demonstrably un-fair. 

I could go on about why I support your Presidential Commutation powers. You are the last resort when things are beyond fixing through the established judicial procedures. I don’t see Congress as capable of fixing anything in this political environment. The power vested in the Executive branch and your office in particular is vital for our country to function as a fair and just democracy. 

To sum up my comments to you, I congratulate you on your decisions to use your Executive Authority. I hope you will exercise that authority to correct as many wrongs as you see fit to address. Your detractors are never going to accept any action which you propose. They are determined to oppose you in principle on anything and everything. I will assume it is because of your affiliation to the Democratic party. They have entrenched constituencies and media outlets determined to miss-characterize you and your initiatives. But when you do things to help real people and work to solve the problems of our nation you earn the good will and gratitude of all Americans. 

Sincerely yours,

Tom Walters