Racist sworn in amidst protest
Compiled by Oread Daily
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Dec. 7—
Commissioner Bill James, Republican, was booed as he took his oath of
office yesterday. James said last week in an e-mail to constituents,
“Most people know why CMS (Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools) can’t
teach kids within the urban black community. They live in a moral sewer
with parents who lack the desire to act properly. That immorality impacts
negatively the lives of these children and creates an environment where
education is considered ‘acting white’ and lack of education
is a ‘plus’ in their world.”
More than 400 people packed the swearing-in ceremony including many
groups from the black community and local black churches. Many of those
sat in the balcony with posters denouncing racism. Democrat Parks Helms,
who was chosen as chairman, asked the audience to welcome James’
family, and they applauded. When James began to introduce his children,
someone called out, “What about our children?” James said
he believed problems in urban black neighborhoods could be traced to
a high percentage of single-parent families and illegitimate births,
and quoted from a book on black families by the late Democratic Sen.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Later, he quoted from the Bible, Galatians
4:16. “Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the
truth?” he asked, to groans from the audience. When he said, “The
real cause of trouble in the black community is not so much segregation,
or lack of voting power,” someone in the crowd interrupted by yelling
“It’s people like you!”
Helms repeatedly tried to silence the crowd. When James finished, he
reminded them that James was allowed “that kind of speech,”
and “it’s up to us to hear it and move on.”
James, a Republican, represents a district in south Mecklenburg and
was unopposed in his bid for a fifth term last month. He has drawn heat
before for making inflammatory comments that are often directed at gay
or black people.
Last Friday African American leaders called for James’ resignation.
“It is our opinion Bill James is a racist,” said Lenny Springs,
a former member of the NAACP’s national board and a director of
supplier diversity for the Charlotte-based bank Wachovia. The Rev. James
Samuel, pastor of Charlotte’s Little Rock AME Zion Church, said
James needs to apologize to the black community and resign his seat
on the board. “By categorizing the black community as a moral sewer,
we are individually and collectively offended,” he said. “I
remind Mr. James that immorality is not the exclusive product of the
urban community, and morality is not the exclusive product of the suburbs.”
Springs said the NAACP plans additional action beyond the call for James’
resignation. “Most of the time his asinine statements don’t
even justify a response,” Springs said. “This time we are
just not going to let these statements go by.”
Sources: News 14 Carolina, Sun News (Myrtle Beach),WCOC-TV,
Wilmington Morning Star
Former Asheville recruiter reveals judicial
string-pulling
By Mike Ferner
Nov. 18 — He trolled for teenagers in North
Carolina high schools, barked orders at recruits in boot camp, and pulled
charred civilian corpses out of cars in Iraq. Now Jimmy Massey is making
good on his promise to tell the whole world what he learned as a Marine.
For the first 10 years, Massey loved being in the USMC. With a quick
mind and an easy manner, he and his superiors knew he’d make a
great recruiter. And by the luck of the draw, he was assigned to the
area around Asheville, NC, not far from where he grew up.
“It was an advantage being a recruiter in this area. I understand
the mentality of mountain people. When we’d talk about topics like
the economy and industry around here, I knew what people were talking
about. And too, people here usually don’t open up to strangers.”
Contrary to what some believe, Marine Corps recruiters don’t get
paid commission for going over quota, the 32-year-old former staff sergeant
explained. “My monthly quota was three in the summer and two in
the winter. You could get five one month but still go from hero to zero
next month when you started over again.”
Recruiters are, however, “one of only three Military Occupational
Specialties (MOS) in the Marines that get Special Duty Assignment (SDA)
pay - an extra $475 a month when I was in - to offset the
higher cost of living when you’re a recruiter,” he said. “An
E-5 recruiter would make about $1,500 every two weeks including SDA
pay. But being a recruiter is expensive. There’s extra costs. When
you’re a recruiter, you’ve got to play the part.”
Bling, promises, and the ‘moment
of truth’
“For example, you have to have a nice car - you can’t
go rolling down the street in some old family wagon. You can’t
be sittin’ there talking to a kid about financial stability and
driving an old Ford Ranger. That just don’t get it!” He said
he drove a Mustang for his personal car, and Army recruiters he knew
drove “decked-out Expeditions with 20-inch rims. You have to have
a little ‘bling’ [gold, jewelry, etc.] on you, that kind of
thing. I made sure I always dressed nice when I was off duty. You gotta
play the part. Young kids are really materialistic minded.”
Then there’s the everyday expenses of recruiting, “like taking
a guy to Hooters for some wings. The government gives me a credit card,
but it’s in my name and the bill comes to me. I have to pay it
and then get reimbursed.”
Often the biggest enticement a recruiter can offer young men and women
trying to escape poverty is the promise of job training, even more appealing
when it’s for a MOS in data systems, aircraft electronics, aircraft
crew chief, or other sought-after specialties. But as Massey acknowledged,
“The Marine Corps can guarantee you a job all day long, but that
doesn’t mean you’re going to actually get it.”
A common way to swindle recruits out of promised jobs is the “Moment
of Truth” exercise in boot camp. New recruits are taken to a room
where their DI (drill instructor) tells them to “really think about
it” and see if they’ve lied while enlisting or filling out
their application.
“They’ll ask the recruits if they lied about things like ever
having smoked grass, or maybe how many times they’ve smoked, and
ask them to raise their hand if they’ve lied any time in the recruiting
process,” Massey said. When the hands go up, the DI looks at them
and says, “Listen. This is what’s gonna happen now. You lied
to us. You can either quit in disgrace now, or since you signed a contract
to be a Marine, you can stay in, but we’re not going to let you
have the job you asked for.”
‘Investigations’ and private
eyes
“There’s a whole network within the community to enable recruiters
to make their quotas - the sheriff’s department, police department,
schools all the way up to the local congressional office.”
Massey recalled that at one point, “There was a congressional investigation
brought up against me. I enlisted someone who was handicapped. I should
have been in deep shit, but the Marine Corps swept it under the rug
by stating that the kid had fraudulently enlisted. I got a call from
Congressman Charles Taylor congratulating me on the work I had been
doing, and he sent me an autographed picture.”
“A recruiter is like a private eye,” Massey said. “They
know everything about the kids they’re recruiting.”
For example, he learned the names of virtually every graduating high
school senior in his seven-county district - about 1,000 youngsters
annually in that largely rural area.
And high school students weren’t the only people he got to know
well. “We knew the names of the district attorneys [DAs] in every
county and went to them to get certain charges reduced or dismissed
on kids we were recruiting. We took flowers to the secretaries in the
clerk of courts offices. The clerk of courts can make a lot of things
appear and disappear. We got to know people working in hospital medical
records so we could check out, say, if a certain kid had asthma or not.
We’d ask other kids ‘what about Johnny Smith?’ to find
out if he had problems or if he might be interested.”
He explained the Marines’ Systematic Recruiting method that includes
use of a working file of Prospective Applicant Cards on which information
is routinely entered. “I’d put all the information down that
I knew maybe Johnny Smith had some problems with the law. That’s
when I’d go to the DA and ask if Johnny was salvageable. If he
was, I’d tell the DA, ‘Well, I talked with Johnny and he’s
thinking of going into the Marine Corps.’ More likely than not
the response I got would be, ‘Oh yeah? Well, that’s just great!’”
Massey said three years as a recruiter taught him “the power of
the English language.”
“One way we used it was to identify ‘tangible and intangible
traits’ in applicants. We would use cards with words printed on
them, like ‘self confidence,’ or ‘financial security,’
and ask an applicant to pick ones they were concerned about. That way,
if a kid picks ‘self confidence,’ he’s telling you he
feels like he’s lacking in self confidence and you can work him
from that angle.”
For potential recruits with a record of criminal convictions, Massey
pointed out that, “Anything is pretty much waivable in the Marine
Corps - even up to one felony.”
Potentially life-threatening medical conditions were also waivable,
according to Massey. “Johnny might come to see me his senior year
and say, ‘Sarge, I’m wondering if I might have something that
might disqualify me. I’ve got asthma.’”
“I’d ask him if he uses an inhaler. If he answered ‘yes,’
I’d tell him that if he controlled it with an inhaler then he really
didn’t have asthma. Then I’d tell him to give me 10 pushups.
If he did that with no trouble, I’d say, ‘See, you don’t
have asthma!’“
He described his time as a recruiter as progressively more and more
difficult. By his last year at it, 2002, he was “tired of lying.
I felt like I was close to a nervous breakdown from the stress. I started
seeing a psychiatrist, was diagnosed with major depression and put on
medication for it. I wrote a letter to my commanding officer about how
Marine Corps recruiting should be changed to be more ethical. The Recruiter
Instructor they sent out to monitor my efforts ended up telling me he
thought it was one of the best statements anyone had ever written about
recruiting practices.”
Massey decided to quit being a recruiter but also to reenlist to get
back to “the regular Marine Corps duty” he enjoyed. Leaving
behind the deceit and stress of recruiting made him feel much better
- “good enough to get off anti-depressants.” But soon
he got orders to northern Kuwait and within two months was invading
Iraq with 130,000 other US troops.
‘We just lit ’em up’
As he made his way north toward Baghdad, through the towns of Safwan
and Basra, “our main job was to set up roadblocks. We had permission
to fire on anyone who got through them.”
It was this experience, barely an instant compared with his dozen years
in the Marines, that showed him a side of the military he’d not
seen as an instructor at Parris Island or a recruiter.
“In one 48-hour period, we killed over 30 civilians in vehicles
that got past our roadblocks. We just lit ’em up with gunfire.
But when we went to pull the charred corpses out of the cars we never
found any weapons. They were just civilians. I could start feeling the
depression come back. I knew what it was from.”
In a meeting one day, his lieutenant asked him if he was feeling OK.
Massey replied no, and told the lieutenant that “we’re committing
genocide and leaving enough depleted uranium around to continue genocidal
activity for a long time.”
“Do you really believe that?” the lieutenant asked.
“Yes,” replied Massey, “or I wouldn’t have said
it.”
“I knew my career in the Marine Corps was over at that point,”
he added.
Sent back to the States for medical reasons, Massey returned to the
Marine base at 29 Palms, Calif., and was told to report to the mental
health clinic. There, the first psychiatrist he spoke with told him,
“I don’t deal with conscientious objectors [COs].”
“I knew right away we were going to have a problem,” Massey
said, “because my response to her was, ‘Well, if you call
not wanting to kill innocent civilians being a CO’ and she came
back with, ‘Need I remind you that you are still in the military?’”
Refusing to back down, Massey retorted, “Woman, this isn’t
my military because the Marine Corps I enlisted in was run by the Geneva
Conventions. We didn’t kill civilians, and we damn sure didn’t
cover it up.”
Later, in a meeting with a senior non-commissioned officer (NCO), he
was asked, “What’s wrong?” But when Massey responded,
the NCO interrupted him so he could open a desk drawer and turn on a
tape recorder. Massey told the NCO he knew he was soon on his way out
of the Marines, and told him, “I don’t want your money. I
don’t want your benefits nothin’! Not with what y’all
did over there in Iraq killing civilians.”
Massey said he knew he would need an attorney before talking with his
superiors again, so he located one in a copy of the Marine Corps Times.
“Next meeting I had with the psychiatrist, my attorney talked with
her on the phone. She was completely different when she got off the
phone with him.”
Asked what advice he would give to a teenager thinking of visiting a
military recruiter, Massey thought a moment and answered, “Take
a veteran with you to the recruiter. We’re never going to stop
that one kid bound and determined to play Rambo, but getting the facts
out, educating kids on what really goes on is important. That’s
why I keep speaking out.”
Indeed, Massey put the Marines on notice just before he left. He informed
a colonel, “The moment I get out of here I’m going to tell
the whole world what I’ve learned.”
Source: CounterPunch
