AIRPORT SECURITY: How did we create this paranoid mess?

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Security at Denver International Airport — a giant empire of bureaucratic overkill?    

Flying from Washington, D.C., to Albany, NY, a few weeks ago for July 4th, I could not help but be reminded of the monstrosity we have made of airport security in this country. 

This simple one-hour, non-stop flight turned into a multi-hour affair each direction.  Going north, the security screeners stopped the long line and made me pass multiple times through the metal detector before discovering my cough drops had foil inside the paper wrapper.  Going south, it was a cemamic coffee mug — a gift my sister made — that set off the machines.  Coming home from a vacation last winter, they stopped me to confiscate a plastic bottle of listerine and a jar of pineapple marmalade (both slightly over 3 ounces).  Then there was the day last February I flew on a business trip wearing a metal ankle brace (I had twisted it in a clumsy running accident) and, as a result, got the full crotch patdown.



Airport metal detector, 1973.

 But the July 4th trip reminded me of something:  It has now been 38 years (January 1973) since anyone in America has enjoyed the simple pleasure of walking onto a commercial airline flight without being searched by a metal detector.  I am old enough to remember what that was like.  As a result, I have always considered airport searches strange and intrusive, ever since the first time I walked through one of those contraptions at the Albany, New York, airport in 1973 flying off to law school.  

But anyone born since 1973 (or anyone too young back then to remember) has never known anything else their entire lives.  To them, airport searches are simply part of the world.  Water runs downhill.  TVs change channels by remote control.  And obviously you walk through a metal detector to get on a plane.  


I see this as a big deal change in America — the way we think about our personal freedoms.  Does anyone still remember the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution?  In case you forgot, here’s what it says:  “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,  supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized.”  

Today, we are all criminal suspects —  just because we show up at an airport.  Probable cause?  How silly.  How Twentieth Century !!

How this started:

It wasn’t always this way.  Before 1973, the big threat to jet airplanes came from hijackers — someone rushing into the airplane’s cockpit, pulling out a gun, and telling the pilot “Take this plane to Cuba.”  These were rare, about five per year, until the late 1960s when a spate of publicity made hijacking fashionable. The numbers suddenly jumped to 38 and 82 hijackings in 1968 and 1969. (And yes, some of these hijackings were actually ordered by the CIA as a covert weapon against Fidel Castro.)  


In late 1972, the Federal Aviation Admnistration decided to crack down on hijackers by requiring all airlines to start screening passengers and carry-on bags starting January 1973 — one of the later signature acts of then-President Richard M. Nixon.     It mostly worked at first.  There was a rush to produce thousands of new metal detectors to handle the traffic, but the basic screening remained a small inconvenience.  Hijackings dropped off, the Cold War ended, and the world seemed safe.
Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001.  All nineteen of the September 11 terrorists had managed to trick the airport security system that day, sneaking box-cutters and other weapons past the screeners to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  Not only did this reveal how weak the system was, but it showed just how crazy the bad guys had become.  No longer were we up against hijackers seeking asylum in Cuba.   Now, we were up against suicide bombers . 



How we use technology today in the TSA state.

Immediately, the system tightened.  Airline cockpit doors were ordered locked.  On flights into Washington, DC, passengers were barred from using the bathrooms during the last half hour.  Airport searches became major league, and passengers were ordered to start arriving two hours early before a flight to reach their gate on time.

Since then, each new incident has brought new rules.  After the shoe bomber, they made everyone take off their shoes.  After the shampoo bombers, they barred anyone from carrying liquids or gels over three ounces onto a plane, and required the smaller bottles be placed in separate clear plastic bags for inspection.  After the underwear bomber, they began the crotch patdowns and the scanners to see through clothes. 

Today, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which operates the system in airports across the country, is a $6.8 billion bureaucracy with 45,000 screeners, 1,500 inspectors, and 430 canine teams.  Add the private contractors, the hi-tech x-rays, scanners, and gun-powder sensors, and the police and military backups, and the taxpayer tab runs into tens of billions of dollars.  Then add all the lost time — the hundreds of millions of hours Americans spend each year waiting on line or milling around airports, a direct drain on the economy.  One study even found that between 2001 and 2003, airport security resulted in 2,300 traffic deaths from people rushing to airports to stand in security lines.

Security?  Or bureaucratic overkill?

Don’t get me wrong:  Terrorism is real, and letting a fanatic take control of a jet plane full of fuel and innocent passengers is unacceptable.  We need airport security screening, and we need to do it in smart and effective ways.  As for the TSA screeners, they are clearly good guys, doing tough jobs under high stress and almost always doing them well.  They keep us safe, they deter killers, and we all owe them a big thank you.

But this is still no excuse for the crazy mess we have allowed to evolve in the USA.  The cost — in money, time, and personal rights — is out of control.  There has to be a better way to police the sky against fanatics and psychopaths. 

Message from over-38 year-olds to under-38 year-olds:   It doesn’t have to be this way.

REALITY CHECK: Two cheers for the debt ceiling !!

Posted on by Ken Ackerman

Everyone complains about the debt ceiling.  And, yes, there’s plenty about it not to like:

  • Red Ink:  First, there’s the debt itself.  Today, the US government owes over $14.2 trillion to creditors and bondholders.  This is a remarkable amount of money — over $47,000 for every man, woman, and child in the USA, and higher than the country’s annual gross domestic product.  In its  235-year history, America has run up tabs this big only twice: during World War II and during the Civil War.  

          This time, we dug the hole with no war at all, with little or nothing to show for the money.  Still, it
          threatens to bankrupt the government and wreck the economy for decades.  Even more galling is 
          the fact that we licked this problem in America just a dozen years ago in the 1990s and stood on 
          the verge of endless surpluses.  How did we screw things up so badly and so fact?  

  • Legal tricks:  Then there is the ceiling itself — what looks like an arbitrary legal trick designed to embarrass politicians.  Unless Congress raises this legal limit from its current $14.2 trillion (which we reached a few weeks ago), the US Treasury is banned from borrowing any more money.  By early August, we will have emptied all the “rainy day” funds.  After that, when the next interest payment comes due on that enormous debt, the US government must default — something never done before in US history.  (Note the one technical exception: FDR in 1933 refused to pay interest on US bonds in gold, but paid instead in cheaper paper dollars.  See Perry v. United States, 294 U.S. 330 (1935)).  

           What will happen?  Calamity?  A stock crash?  Nobody really knows, but it won’t be pretty for 
           our collective credit score.

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com
  • The Circus:  Finally, there is the political circus in Washington, D.C. as leaders pontificate, posture, and generally fumble trying to avoid calamity — or at least prepare to blame someone else if it happens.  “No new taxes!!” say Republicans.  “Don’t persecute poor and old people,” say Democrats.  No retreat.  No compromise.  Damn the torpedoes.     

So why is this a good thing?


Yes, this is all bad, very bad.   But look more closely.   Is that not a silver lining I see amid this formidable bank of dark clouds?  Have you noticed that, as crisis looms, Congress, with the White House, is actually starting to do it’s job?


Some history

Here’s the point.  The debt ceiling is not just some crazy trick created my one group of politicians to embarrass another, while playing Russian Roulette with global finance.   The US constitution gives Congress, among other things, one very specific job: the “power of the purse” — that is, the responsibility  to keep the country solvent by (a) controlling spending and (b) controlling debt.  


This is no small thing.  Congress’s power over borrowing is written right at the beginning in Article I, section 8, the enumerated powers of the national legislature.  The very first one states:

  • “The Congress shall have the Power … to pay the debts… of the United States… To borrow Money on the credit of the United States.” 

Then, the very next section (section 9) makes Congress responsible for spending: 

  •  “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money, shall be published from time to time.” (sec.9)

[Don’t be fooled!  Some people claim there’s a “nuclear option,” language in clause (4) of the 14th amendment, that lets the President short-circuit the process and pay the debt by himself.  This is baloney.  Look it up.]


Up until World War I, Congress did its job very carefully.  It took the trouble to approve every single issue of bonds by the US government.  But in 1917, at the height of World War I, when credit needs were skyrocketing, Congress decided to simplify things by creating a single unified debt ceiling, allowing Treasury Department accountants to manage all US borrowing under a single umbrella.  

This was a fine idea.  But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.  


Over the next decades, Congress (pushed by Presidents) began changing the way the US government spends money.  Instead of approving specific line-by-line appropriations (which now account for barely 20% of Federal spending), it began making open-ended mandatory legal commitments, like medicare, medicaid, farm programs, and the other so-called entitlements.  If you qualify, then the government must pay — no matter how many of you there are.   As a result, when Congress passes a new entitlement, it has no idea what it will actually cost — just an educated guess called a “budget score.”


As a result, rather that knowing exactly how much borrowing to authorize each year when it passes an annual budget, Congress has gotten into the lazy habit of simply raising the debt ceiling whenever it happens to run out.  In fact, Congress has failed to enact any governmentwide budget at all for several years.  It has simply raised the debt ceiling.


Add to this chaotic process three final indignities: (a) the massive Bush-era tax cuts primarily for wealthy people, (b) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and (c) the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and related Great Recession, and the result has been a fiscal train wreck — from surplus to bankruptcy in the relative blink of an eye.


Doing their jobs?
  
So what can possibly be good about this?  Now, with disaster looming, leaders of Congress, along with Obama and Biden in the White House, finally have started to meet in order to try and cobble together a coherent budget plan: a way to control spending, control debt, and raise revenue.   Yes, they look too often like a dysfunctional circle of cranks, short-sighted, hand-cuffed by ideology, each side terrified of blinking first or looking weak. 


But at least they are doing their jobs as assigned by the Constitution.   Conservatives are right to refuse to expand debt without a plan to control spending.  Liberals are right to refuse massive program cuts without a plan to increase revenue and include the wealthy and corporate giveaways.  Both sides are right to bargain hard.   That’s what they’re elected to do.


At the end, though, comes the hard part: The art of coming together and finding common round.   Are they still capable of it?   


My own view is that Republicans, by signing iron-clad advance commitments against any change in taxes, no matter how small, are the main culprits in this stalemate.  And Obama hurt himself badly by caving to them last November and blessing an extension of the ruinous Bush-era tax cuts.  But that’s just me.


Success will be easy to spot in this drama: A large deal cutting debt and deficits over 10 years, fixing long-term programs like medicare and other “entitlements,” and including a rational tax provision.   Failure will be even easier to spot:  A default on the debt in early August, or a limp deal that fails to solve anything and simply extends the debt ceiling a few months, so the circus can start all over again.

What will it be?  I think they’ll reach a deal, but only after a default.  The debt ceiling can force politicians to do their job, but it can’t make them do it well.   Till then, enjoy the show.

GUEST BLOG: Wounded Knee Epilogue – Karla Fetrow on the incarceration of Leonard Peltier.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Leonard Peltier.

A big thank you to our friends at online magazine SUBVERSIFY: An alternative subversive perspective to Mainstream Media, which ran this piece last Friday (July 1) and gives us permission to share it here.  Karla Fetrow brings the Wounded Knee saga into the 21st Century with the tale of Indian activist Leonard Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) that conducted the Wounded Knee 1973 uprising, who in 1975 was accused of murdering two FBI agents under questionable circumstance (described below), and who remains in prison today.    

 Links to prior posts in this series:

                  —WOUNDED KNEE: Sacred ground for American Sioux Indians;
                  —WOUNDED KNEE part 1: The closing frontier;
                  —WOUNDED KNEE part 2: 1890 — The Massacre;
                  —GUEST BLOGGER: Marshall Matz on Indian uprising at WOUNDED KNEE, 1973
                  —WOUNDED KNEE: 1890, a take from Johnny Cash. 

The Elements of Special Prosecution



June 26th. marked the anniversary of one of the greatest infamies committed in contemporary times by the U.S. Government against its own First People. On that day, in 1975, federal agents entered the Sioux Reservation, purportedly to question a crime suspect. Their invasion dissolved into mayhem and overt violence. Their primary motivation, however, was as it has been since 1870; to coerce or persuade the property owners to sell their land for industrial and natural resource development; primarily in heavy minerals, including Black Hills gold. A gunfight broke out and two of the F.B.I. agents were killed. Three of the inhabitants were later arrested and charged with murder. Two of the defendants were acquitted through a self-defense plea. One was not. He was tried, found guilty, and given two consecutive life sentences. His name was Leonard Peltier.


Attempts to free Leonard Peltier of the charges that occurred under the same circumstances with the same anxiety to defend his own life, have repeatedly failed. His initial arrest and confinement caused a flurry of interest in Native American affairs. “Free Leonard Peltier” posters decorated the homes of political activists, protests lined the streets of major Universities, and a copy of “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” lay on the coffee table of every informed household.


What does the book, which is a historical account of the 1870′s US Government’s battle with the Sioux Nation have to do with Leonard Peltier? Quite a bit. In the late 1960′s, frustrated by decades of discrimination and intrusive federal policies, Native American community activists led by George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt met with 200 other tribal members to discuss these issues and the means of taking over their own destiny. Together, they created a new entity, a powerful voice speaking out against slum housing, joblessness and racist treatment among the First People. They became the foundation for the American Indian Movement (AIM).

The American Indian Movement opened the K-12 Heart of the Earth Survival School in 1971, and in 1972, mounted the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington, D.C., where they took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), in protest of its policies, and with demands for their reform.


Photo of Wounded Knee during 1973  protest/takeover.

According to the Minnesota Historical Library, “The revolutionary fervor of AIM’s leaders drew the attention of the FBI and the CIA, who then set out to crush the movement. Their ruthless suppression of AIM during the early 1970s sowed the seeds of the confrontation that followed in February, 1973, when AIM leader Russell Means and his followers took over the small Indian community of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in protest of its allegedly corrupt government. When FBI agents were dispatched to remove the AIM occupiers, a standoff ensued. Through the resulting siege that lasted for 71 days, two people were killed, twelve wounded, and twelve hundred arrested. Wounded Knee was a seminal event, drawing worldwide attention to the plight of American Indians. AIM leaders were later tried in a Minnesota court and, after a trial that lasted for eight months, were acquitted of wrongdoing.”


Wounded Knee is part of the eight district Pine Ridge Ogala Lakota Reservation. Leonard Peltier traveled to the reservation in 1975 as an AIM member to help try and bring a peaceful end to the violence. He became caught up in the conflict when the two FBI agents entered the reservation in search of a Pine Ridge resident named Jimmy Eagle, who was wanted for questioning in a robbery and assault.


The invasion of federal officers, which lasted well into the late nineteen seventies, continuing after the arrest of Peltier, is referred to by the Lakota tribe as the reign of terror. Fifty-six names are listed on a memorial page honoring the Pine Ridge members who had lost their lives during this modern day battle with US Government sponsored land grabbers. Fifty-six names that did not make the headlines, whose deaths were not investigated to discover the culpable, whose voices were not heard by the American public. The fight Leonard Peltier joined in was the same as the seventy-one day siege at Wounded Knee, the same as the one that silenced forever fifty-six members of his community, the same as the one in which two other men were arrested on charges of murder and later acquitted through a self-defense plea.


According to the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee website, “Key witnesses were banned from testifying about FBI misconduct and testimony about the conditions and atmosphere on the Pine Ridge Reservation at the time of the shoot-out was severely restricted. Important evidence, such as conflicting ballistics reports, was ruled inadmissible. Still, the U.S. Prosecutor failed to produce a single witness who could identify Peltier as the shooter. Instead, the government tied a bullet casing found near the bodies of their agents to the alleged murder weapon, arguing that this gun had been the only one of its kind used during the shootout, and that it had belonged to Peltier.

Later, Mr. Peltier’s attorneys uncovered, in the FBI’s own documents, that more than one weapon of the type attributed to Peltier had been present at the scene and the FBI had intentionally concealed a ballistics report that showed the shell casing could not have come from the alleged murder weapon. Other troubling information emerged: the agents undoubtedly followed a red pickup truck onto the land where the shoot-out took place, not the red and white van driven by Peltier; and compelling evidence against several other suspects existed and was concealed.”

The Poet Behind the Bars

Leonard Peltier is behind bars, but his voice has not been silenced. His book, “Prison Writings; My Life is My Sun Dance”, has received International acclaim, attracting even the attention of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth of Britain. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it: “A deeply moving and very disturbing story of a gross miscarriage of justice and an eloquent cri de coeur of Native Americans for redress and to be regarded as human beings with inalienable rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution. We pray that it does not fall on deaf ears. America owes it to herself.”


His list of achievements has been extraordinary:

  • In 1992 he established a scholarship at New York University for Native American students seeking law degrees.
  • Instrumental in the establishment and funding of a Washington (state) Native American newspaper by and for Native young people.
  • Has been the sponsoring father of two children in Childreach, one in El Salvador, and the other in Guatemala.
  • Has worked to have prisoners’ artwork displayed around the country and the world in art galleries in hopes of starting art programs for prisoners and increasing their self-confidence.
  • Has sponsored several clothing and toy drives for reservations.
  • Distributes to Head Start and halfway houses, as well as women’s centers.
  • Every year he has sponsored a Christmas gift drive for the children of Pine Ridge, SD. Organized and emergency food drive for the people of Pohlo, Mexico in response to the Acteal Massacre.
  • Serves on the board of the Rosenberg Fund for Children.
  • Donates his artwork to several human rights and social welfare organizations in order to help them raise funds. This most recently includes the ACLU, Trail of Hope (a Native American conference dealing with drug and alcohol addiction), World Peace and Prayer Day, the First Nation Student Association, and the Buffalo Trust Fund.



One of Leonard Peltier’s paintings: Grandma Jumping Bull.



By donating his paintings to the Leonard Peltier Charitable Foundation, he was able to supply computers and educational supplies such as books and encyclopedias to libraries and families on Pine Ridge.


By donating his paintings to the LPCF, he was also able to raise substantial supplies for the people of Pine Ridge after last year’s devastating tornado hit and caused a multitude of damage on the reservation.

He has been widely recognized for his efforts and has won several human rights awards, including the North Star Frederick Douglas Award, Humanist of the Year Award, and the International Human Rights Prize.

America’s Third World Citizens

Understanding Peltier’s passion requires understanding the conditions of the Pine Ridge Reservation. The 11,000-square mile (approximately 2,700,000 acres) Pine Ridge Reservation is the second-largest Native American Reservation within the United States. It is roughly the size of the State of Connecticut. According to the Oglala Sioux tribal statistics, approximately 1,700,000 acres of this land are owned by the Tribe or by tribal members.


The topography of the Pine Ridge Reservation includes the barren Badlands, rolling grassland hills, dryland prairie, and areas dotted with pine trees.


The Pine Ridge Reservation is home to approximately 40,000 persons, 35% of which are under the age of 18. The latest Federal Census shows the median age to be 20.6 years. Approximately half the residents of the Reservation are registered tribal members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Nation.


The median income of the Pine Ridge Reservation is $2,600 to $3,500 a year. The unemployment rate averages around 83-85% and can be higher in the winter when travel is difficult or even impossible. The average life expectancy for women is fifty-two years, for men, it’s forty-eight. The rate of diabetes and tuberculosis are eight hundred times the U.S. National average. The rate of cervical cancer is five hundred times the U.S. National average.


It is reported that at least 60% of the homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation are infested with Black Mold, Stachybotrys. This infestation causes an often-fatal condition with infants, children, elderly, those with damaged immune systems, and those with lung and pulmonary conditions at the highest risk. Exposure to this mold can cause hemorrhaging of the lungs and brain as well as cancer.


A Federal Commodity Food Program is active but supplies mostly inappropriate foods (high in carbohydrate and/or sugar) for the largely diabetic population of the Reservation. A small non-profit Food Co-op is in operation on the Reservation but is available only for those with funds to participate.


In most of the treaties between the U.S. Government and Indian Nations, the U.S. government agreed to provide adequate medical care for Indians in return for vast quantities of land. The Indian Health Services (IHS) was set up to administer the health care for Indians under these treaties and receives an appropriation each year to fund Indian health care. Unfortunately, the appropriation is very small compared to the need and there is little hope for increased funding from Congress. The IHS is understaffed and ill-equipped and can’t possibly address the needs of Indian communities. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Pine Ridge Reservation.


Living conditions are crowded. As many as seventeen people live in two and three bedroom homes, while homes built to contain six to eight people will have up to thirty inhabitants. Many of the homes lack adequate furniture, use their cooking stove for heat, and some have only dirt floors. Thirty-nine percent of the homes are without electricity. Sixty percent of the reservation families have no land-line telephones. Computers and Internet connections are rare.


Efforts to improve their living conditions by investing in businesses have been met with frustration. Currently there are no movie theaters, only one grocery store, one motel and a few scatter bed and breakfast arrangements. Several of the banks and lending institutions nearest to the Reservation have been targeted for investigation of fraudulent or predatory lending practices, with the citizens of the Pine Ridge Reservation as their victims.


Many wells and much of the water and land on the Reservation is contaminated with pesticides and other poisons from farming, mining, open dumps, and commercial and governmental mining operations outside the Reservation. A further source of contamination is buried ordnance and hazardous materials from closed U.S. military bombing ranges on the Reservation.


Scientific studies show that the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer which begins underneath the Pine Ridge Reservation is predicted to run dry in less than 30 years due to commercial interest use and dryland farming in numerous states south of the Reservation. This critical North American underground water resource is not renewable at anything near the present consumption rate. The recent years of drought have simply accelerated the problem.


Scientific studies show that much of the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer has been contaminated with farming pesticides and commercial, factory, mining, and industrial contaminants in the States of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Silent No Longer

The conditions of the Sioux reservation are not unique. To varying degrees, these conditions exist on nearly all the U.S. reservations. It is to this plight that Peltier and others like himself would address our attention. It’s not an appeal to assimilate into a society that rejects their cultural heritage, but an appeal to accept them complete with their culture. It is not an appeal for hand-outs but for fair business practices. It’s not an appeal based on abandoning their old ways, but one of incorporating modern technology and education for a new nation. For over a hundred years, Pine Ridge has defended itself against self-interested groups that sought to establish themselves from within. Now they are encroached upon by these same interest groups from without. They have been harmed. They have lost their means of livelihood, their health, their clean water, and yet they keep gathering. The community grows as their urban cousins leave the cities to join them. They gather because they must. Their desperation is a call to all who have been swept aside as unimportant, unsubstantial, inconvenient. They will be heard.


                     Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
                     But silence is impossible.
                     Silence screams.
                     Silence is a message,
                     just as doing nothing is an act.


                                            -Leonard Peltier-
 Leonard Peltier was born September 12, 1944. In 1977, at the age of thirty-three, he was sentenced to prison. In 2009, he was granted a full hearing before the United States Parole Commission. His parole request was denied. Peltier’s next scheduled hearing is set for July, 2024. Should he live that long, he will be eighty years old. He has already spent more than half his life in prison for a crime that began as a crime against the Native American people and that amounts to selective prosecution, suppression and the concealment of vital evidence. In the time he has spent behind bars, he has contributed more to the good of his country than most of our Senators, Representatives, Congressmen, diplomats, business owners and billionaires. He is a humanitarian, yet the humanitarian compassion of the US public has not freed him. He is an author, a poet, a craftsman, a spokesperson for human rights. History will not remember him as a murderer, but as a man who sought equality. The wounded hearts, suffering under the tyranny of corruption, will embrace him.


Whatever debts he owed society, Peltier has more than adequately paid them. Society owes him a debt in return. It owes him the safe guarding of the rights of America’s First People to thrive. It owes him recognition of his worth, which cannot be measured in terms of war against the Government of the U.S., or in personal wealth, but in his deeds. It owes him his freedom.

Karla Fetrow is head editor at Subversity.com.  Click here to enjoy a few more of her recent pieces.


 Resources:


http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/93aim.html

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/theman.htm

http://www.nativevillage.org/Messages%20from%20the%20People/the%20arrogance%20of%20ignorance.htm

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

              

WOUNDED KNEE: A few afterthoughts

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Three survivors of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, identified (left to right) as brothers White Lance, Joseph Horn Cloud, and Dewey Beard (Iron Tail).

 Since starting our June feature a few weeks ago on Wounded Knee, the 1890 massacre and 1973 revolt, we’ve found lots of comments on this issue.  Here are a few that caught my eye.  Enjoy:

  • From the band Redbone: their 2006 song Wounded Knee:

For FOURTH OF JULY: The Declaration of Independence

Posted on by Ken Ackerman

Fireworks, watermelon, hot dogs and beer may do it for everyone else, but no self-respecting history fanatic can survive the 4th of July without a good smash-bang reading of the Declaration of Independence, presented first on this day 235 years ago,  in 1776.   I give you three choices.   Pick your favorite and enjoy:


First, traditional, by an unidentified (though heroic) re-enacter in Philadelphia:

Next, jazzy, by The Fifth Dimension (1970):

Finally, Hollywood, by actors including Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas, Whoopi Goldberg, and others.


BOOKS: Clarence Darrow Twice.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Clarence Darrow in his natural habitat, a packed courtroom weighing life or death for two unpopular defendants, in this case rich teenage murderers Leopold and Loeb in 1924 Chicago.  

I recently had the honor of being asked by the new Washington Independent Review of Books to review the two new biographies of one of my unabashed favorites from American history, lawyer Clarence Darrow.  It ran this week.  Here’s what I came up with:
Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast
Andrew Edmund Kersten
Hill and Wang, 320 pp.
Clarence Darrow is a biographer’s gift. America’s premier lawyer, he lived a fantastic life, fraught with drama, epic achievements and stark character flaws ― all supported by a rich paper trail of letters, trial transcripts, speeches, memoirs and newspaper clips. He had an outgoing, sarcastic personality played by some of Hollywood’s best actors: Spencer Tracy (Inherit the Wind), Orson Welles (Compulsion) and Kevin Spacey (Darrow), among others.
Darrow is best remembered today for defending Tennessee high school teacher John T. Scopes in the 1925 “Monkey Trial,” in which Scopes was accused of violating a state law that barred the teaching of evolution in the classroom. Darrow turned the occasion into an epic clash of science against superstition (his view of religion) and got Scopes off with a $100 fine, later reversed on appeal. But this barely scratches the surface of Darrow’s career. Think of the dozen most important, high-profile legal contests in America’s last 150 years: Darrow appears in at least half of them.
How good was he? 


By the time he defended Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb ― two wealthy Chicago teenagers facing execution in 1924 for murdering Bobby Frank, a younger friend, on a lark ― Darrow had defended more than 100 capital cases and lost only one client to the executioner. He repeatedly defended the most hated, vulnerable people in society, making a trademark of facing down stacked prosecutions and public prejudice. Yes, he also represented plenty of gangsters, politicians, bootleggers and socialites ― someone had to pay the rent ― but he made his mark as Attorney for the Damned.
Darrow is one of the truly interesting people in American history, and if anyone deserves a new biography today, it is him. Now, after a long drought, we suddenly have two very good ones: John A. Farrell’s Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned and Andrew E. Kersten’s Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast. As they say, when it rains, it pours (though I do think it a bit unfair to each of these fine books that they are being released so closely back to back).
                                      


As they should, Kersten and Farrell both inevitably build their stories around Darrow’s famous legal cases ― a series of irresistible dramas, which trace the country’s own emergence into the modern age. Darrow lectured prolifically about philosophy and religion ― his views were mostly cynical and atheistic ― but he spoke most eloquently through the clients he chose to defend. They started with labor leaders such as Eugene Debs (future four-time Socialist candidate for president, charged with conspiracy for leading the 1894 Pullman Strike) and William D. “Big Bill” Haywood (founder of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, or “Wobblies”; accused, with two other defendants, in the 1905 murder of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg following a labor dispute and found not guilty) ― this at a time when working men’s efforts to assert collective rights against unfettered Gilded Age capitalism was the cutting-edge human rights issue in America.
Darrow defended self-declared Communists at the height of the post-World War I Red Scare. He defended Leopold and Loeb, plus a political assassin named Patrick Eugene Prendergast (convicted of murdering Chicago mayor Carter Harrison, in 1893), on grounds of opposing capital punishment. And, at a time late in his career, when he could charge exorbitant fees, he chose instead to defend Ossian Sweet, a Detroit black man accused of murdering a white man he shot while defending his house. Darrow won him an outright acquittal from an all-white jury.
It is no exaggeration that many of these confrontations were life-and-death, win-at-all-costs, bare-knuckled, adrenaline-pumping affairs covered breathlessly by newspapers coast-to-coast. As a result, this gave Darrow a unique platform to shape modern attitudes toward free speech, civil liberties, racial equality, criminal psychology, the death penalty, fair play for minorities and unpopular defendants, and the legal profession itself.
His dark side


Neither Farrell nor Kersten spares Darrow a good flogging for his many character flaws.  Darrow could be vain, self-absorbed and deceitful ― as in his womanizing and cheating on his second wife, Ruby, with young journalist Mary Field. He could be corrupt. After he defended the McNamara brothers, two union organizers, for the 1912 dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building, which killed more than 20 people (he pled them both guilty to life sentences), prosecutors charged Darrow with jury tampering. He denied it and won an acquittal in his first trial but escaped jail only by a hung jury in the second. Afterward, with a cloud over his reputation, Darrow justified the tactics. “Do not the rich and powerful bribe jurors, intimidate and coerce judges,” he asked in a letter.
Darrow could also be personally cruel with people he disliked.  Describing his sharp, embarrassing cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan ― the former presidential candidate who led the prosecution against John Scopes in the famous Monkey trial ― he admitted to a friend: “I made up my mind to show the country what an ignoramus he was and I succeeded.”
I particularly enjoyed John Farrell’s richly written and well-structured narrative. Farrell, a Washington-based political journalist (he recently joined the Center for Public Integrity as senior reporter) and biographer of former Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, manages to cut through the complexity of Darrow’s legal cases to expose the human dynamic, the core conflicts and underhanded courtroom tricks, as well as the deeper national issues at stake.
Andrew Kersten, professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin and author of three books on labor history, brings a sharp academic eye to the story. His writing is clear and efficient, and he lets the story shine through. He, too, presents Darrow warts and all, though he occasionally seems a bit too eager to forgive Darrow for his shortcomings.
                                        

Happily, neither book falls into the trap of trying to decipher “what would Clarence Darrow do?” about modern issues like the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Patriot Act or other elements of today’s War on Terror. Darrow was far too idiosyncratic for that. In real life, he constantly confounded his friends. He managed to forget all about civil liberties during some of the most shameful World War I-era crackdowns on dissent, and F.D.R. himself lived to regret putting Darrow on a 1930s New Deal program review board only to have Darrow publicly blast the program as autocratic.
For my money, there cannot be enough biographies, movies, documentaries, speeches or memorabilia about Clarence Darrow. And as long as we keep Darrow’s profile high in the American consciousness, it keeps the country and our civil rights safer as a result.

GUEST BLOGGER: Ken Briers on his 1952 Ford Customline Tudor sedan, still running.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Our 1952 Ford Customline Tudor sedan.  (Click on image for full size.)

This is a very special car.   Not many were sold and few survive.  But what really makes it special is its chain of ownership over 55 years: my father and me.  This was my father’s first new car, it became my first car, and it still runs today.

The Ford 1952 Customline Tudor sedan was an all-new product that year.  Ford had to delay its introduction until February due to production restrictions from the Korean Conflict.  This particular car came off the assembly line in Norfolk, Virginia.  My father, Roland Briers, bought it on December 10th, 1952, from Rowley Motors, in Catonsville, MD, for $2,414.53, with a down payment of $435.00.  He received an allowance of $389.53 on his trade-in, a 1939 LaSalle four door with a cracked engine block that my father had bought after being mustered out of the US Navy in 1945. 
How do I know this? I still have the original invoice!  Not only that, I have the 300 and 1,000 mile service receipts and the finance agreement.  My parents chose the Tudor because my brother Karl and I were five and six years old at the time. In those days, before child seats and rear door locks controlled by the driver, we had tried to climb out of the LaSalle’s back seat more than once.
Our first new car

Our 1952 Ford featured a new 215 cubic inch overhead valve six cylinder engine with 101 horsepower. It had a Fordomatic Transmission and two-tone paint (Shannon Green [dark] and Glenmist Green [light]).  Other options included a fresh air heater, turn indictors, a six-tube radio, and whitewall tires. The dealer installed seat covers and antifreeze, and applied undercoating.  From December 1952 until the summer of 1959, our family went everywhere in that Ford, including regular trips to Central Pennsylvania to visit relatives.
By 1962, when I was old enough to drive, my father and I worked together to spruce up the car with new seat covers, new frontend chrome, and a new, brighter coat of paint.  In 1965, my father transferred the title to me.
Ken (2nd from right, in cap and gown) standing with family, including brother Karl (also in cap
and gown), parents Helene and Roland (standing between their sons), and uncles Gordon and
Kenneth Briers (far left and right), at the 1969 graduation from U. of Maryland.   

I drove the Ford through high school and part of my college years.   When my brother Karl learned to drive, I gave him the Ford and bought myself a new 1965 VW 1200 Beatle.  A year later, we both transferred to the University of Maryland, and my brother bought a 1957 Chevrolet.  At that point, after owning it for 14 years, we all decided to keep our original 1952 Ford, but to store it in a rented garage.  

For the next 41 years, other than a move to Ellicott City, MD, it sat undisturbed.
The Rehabilitation.

Then, in summer 2007, my wife Sally suggested that we pull the old Ford out of storage and find someone to fix it up.  She wanted to drive it, and we both thought it would be great to display at shows.   So we asked Roger Bylsma, a friend at the Bay Country Region of the Antique Automotive Club of America (AACA), if he would like to do the work.   Roger agreed.  On August 12th that year, he and I drove to Severn, MD to pick up his son’s truck and trailer and continued on to Ellicott City to pull the old Ford out of storage.
After pumping up the tires, Roger and his son David winched the car on to the trailer, then Roger and I took off for his home in Hurlock.  When we got there, I washed the car and it looked surprisingly good for its age.  Over the next two months, Roger replaced all of the brake tubing, rebuilt the brake cylinders, removed the upholstery, washed it, and replaced the foam rubber padding.  Sally and I found new material for the door panels and we had Bonnie Cagle, of Wrights Wharf, MD, repair the seat upholstery, the door panels, and the arm rests. We also replaced two cracked windows with glass with original markings.
On Monday, August 27th, my cell phone rang.  Roger was on the line, and he asked me if I could hear the noise. He said: “That’s your engine, running!”  What a great sound it was to hear!

In late September, I got tags and ordered a set of tires.  Meanwhile, Harrison’s Transmissions, in Easton, MD, picked up the Ford to rebuild the transmission. It took a little while to find the right bands and seals, but they didn’t have to replace any of the metal.
We installed the tires on October 16th and the transmission was finished the next Friday.  After 41 years, my father’s 1952 Ford Customline was back on the road!
It’s first show

On Sunday, May 4th, 2009, after a bit more tinkering,  our newly reborn 1952 Ford made its debut at the AACA Bay Country Region’s annual Dust ‘em Off Tour.  Having completed the rehabilitation (Not the restoration!) of the car, we took it to the AACA Eastern Spring Meet, in Flintstone, MD, where it earned a Certificate for Historic Preservation of Original Features (HPOF).
On the outside, it looks like new, but underneath it is the same ‘52 Ford I had grown up with and learned to drive on.  I’m sure that my father (and my mother!) would be pleased.


Ken Briers is a former locomotive engineer and a railroad operations consultant who loves trains and old cars, particularly Fords.

FAMILY HISTORY- GUEST BLOGGER: Wendy Griswold on searching for deported Uncle Wolf Pfeiffer, 1906.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Photo of Wendy’s grandparents, Sarah Pfeiffer and Morris (Moshe) Blitz, with their oldest daughter Fanny, taken in New York City, circa 1903.  Of her uncle Wolf, there is no known photo.  







Like most Ashkenazi Jews, I was named for someone I never met, my great uncle Wolf (Velvel) Pfeiffer. I had spent years searching for records of him, but never made any progress until I figured out that everything my mother ever told me about our family history was wrong.

All I “knew” was that he came to Ellis Island with my grandparents, Moshe (Morris) Blitz and Sarah Pfeiffer Blitz, when they emigrated from Austria a century ago.  Wolf was my grandmother’s brother.  But the US government initially rejected Wolf because of a physical deformity.  Beyond that, it was all a blur.

Wrong Dates

 The first problem was the dates. My Grandmother always told us that she came over in “1898, the year McKinley was shot.” President McKinley, of course, was shot by assassin Leo Czolgosz in 1901, three years later, but I had a rough timeframe.

So I spent countless hours scouring the Ellis Island database but never found a trace of either my grandparents or Uncle Wolf. I checked records of arrivals via Canada and entry ports other than New York, but found nothing there either. Then one night, too tired to sleep and feeling adventurous, I plugged “Wolf Pfeiffer” into the Ellis Island database search engine and expanded the search dates well beyond 1902 – ignoring  the timeframe of family lore.

And there was his name, staring me right in the face: Wolf Pfeiffer, arrived at Ellis Island, November 3, 1906, on the steamship Bremen out of Hamburg, Germany. What’s more, the record showed him accompanying two children, not my grandparents. The two children were to be delivered to a brother of Wolf’s already living in the US. (Wolf and my grandmother had another brother? Who knew?)  It listed this brother’s address as 336 E. Houston St., which I knew as the place where my grandparents lived on the Lower East Side in New York City (and I have the birth records of their three oldest daughters showing that address).

Deportation

But what happened to Wolf? My scant knowledge of family legend led me to believe that he must have gotten into the country somehow, but the records disagreed: I found no further mention of him at Ellis Island, no trace of him at any other east coast ports, no census records, no naturalization records, no draft, death, burial, or voter records, no mention in city directories or phone books.

Growing desperate, I turned to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS — which today houses the Immigration Bureau and happens to have an excellent historical office) and submitted a FOIA request. I asked for anything they might have on a man named Wolf Pfeiffer, and provided all the particulars I could pull together. I waited, and waited, and … finally … got an answer. DHS had nothing, but they suggested I contact the National Archives (NARA) citing such-and-such a case number and ask them.

DISCOVERY

NARA – bless them — answered quickly. And what they had was a one-in-a-million shot: the record of a deportation hearing. Very few of the people rejected at Ellis Island knew enough – or were bold enough – to request a hearing. My grandmother – who it now appears had reached America a few years before Wolf, possibly via Canada – had been here long enough to know the ropes. My Uncle Wolf not only requested a hearing, but the file shows that he even managed to get a letter of support from a Congressman.

Reading the brief hearing transcript from 1906 is a chilling window on a long-ago disaster for my family. At the hearing, my grandmother testified and presented her bankbook to show the inspector that she could support another family member, and then the brother I had not previously known about testified that he could give Wolf a job. They deported him anyway. Why? Because the Ellis Island doctor found that Uncle Wolf had bad posture, a curved back. Because of this, the Ellis Island inspectors decided that Uncle Wolf would likely become a public charge and, as a result, could not enter the country. Instead, they decided to divide the family again and deport my uncle back to Europe.

Wolf may have hurt his case at the hearing with something he said.  Wolf doubtless spoke Yiddish, so we have these words through a stenographer, who had it from an interpreter:  “I did not care to come, only to bring these children,” Wolf is noted as saying.   But in my heart, I believe Wolf was rejected because he looked and sounded too much like an Eastern European Jew at a time when prejudice still flourished.  Had his name been William Piper, had he spoken with a different accent or cadence, we could have had a different outcome.

A hundred years later, I stood at Ellis Island, looking through a glass barrier at the room where the hearing had taken place, and held back tears.

The Mystery

So, after all the searching, I know one solid fact: Wolf was deported. What happened after that is a mystery. Did he return to America in first or second class rather than steerage? There would be no record. Did he enter the US through Canada? Did he never come back at all? Is that why there’s no photograph of him?

I have tried to trace my grandmother’s other brother and his children. So far, nothing. Perhaps the spelling of Pfeiffer was simplified or mangled in the documents, or the name Taube became Toby or Ruchel became Rose or Leib became Louie. Maybe they were missed or misspelled on the census. Maybe my research skills are not what they should be. 

I found a record of a Wolf Pfeffer arriving in Philadelphia in 1913, but his age is off by about 10 years. And then another long shot — I found a notation on the ship manifest of a relative who came later (another son of my grandmother’s previously-unknown brother) indicating that he had been naturalized. Perhaps I’ll get lucky tracking down his naturalization papers – which might lead me to census, marriage, and death records, and eventually to a living relative who is willing to talk to me.

But having converted a similar long shot into what is now a series of fun and rewarding relationships with many long-lost cousins on my father’s side, it’s a shot I’m willing to take.

And maybe someday I’ll find a photo and see the face of my namesake.

Wendy Griswold is a freelance writer and translator and passionate genealogist.

WOUNDED KNEE: 1890, a take from Johnny Cash.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman

 

Links to prior posts in this series:

               —WOUNDED KNEE part 1: The closing frontier;
               —WOUNDED KNEE part 2: 1890 — The Massacre. 



Before leaving Wounded Knee, here’s one more take on the 1890 story — from country singer Johnny Cash.   He recorded this song during a visit to South Dakota shortly after the 1973 American Indian Movement siege at Pine Ridge.  “Bigfoot,” whom Cash refers to, was another name for Sioux Chief Spotted Elk who led the Indians at Wounded Knee that day in 1890 and was one of the first killed in the encounter.   I’ve included the full lyrics below.   Enjoy.

WOUNDED KNEE
Johnny Cash – 1974  
Spoken: 
But the land was already claimed by a people when the  
cowboy came and when the soldiers came. 
The story of the American Indian is in a lot of ways a story 
of tragedy like that day at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.  


Bigfoot was an Indian Chief of the Miniconjou band,  
a band of Miniconjou Sioux from South Dakota land. 
igfoot said to Custer, stay away from Crazy Horse, 
but Custer crossed into Sioux land, and he never came back across. 
Then Bigfoot led his people to a place called Wounded Knee, 
and they found themselves surrounded by the Seventh Cavalry.  


Big Chief Bigfoot, rise up from your bed, 
Miniconjou babies cry for their mothers lyin’ dead.  


Bigfoot was down with a fever when he reached Wounded Knee, 
and his people all were prisoners of the Seventh Cavalry. 
Two hundred women and children and another hundred men 
raised up a white flag of peace, but peace did not begin. 
An accidental gunshot, and Bigfoot was first to die, 
and over the noise of the rifles you could hear the babies cry.  


Big Chief Bigfoot, it’ s good that you can’t see, 
revenge is being wrought by Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.  


Then smoke hung over the canyon on that cold December day, 
all was death and dying around where Bigfoot lay. F
arther on up the canyon some had tried to run and hide, 
but death showed no favourites, women, men and children died. 
One side called it a massacre, the other a victory, 
but the white flag is still waving today at Wounded Knee.  


Big Chief Bigfoot, your Miniconjou band 
is more ‘n than remembered here in South Dakota land.  
Big Chief Bigfoot, your Miniconjou band 
is more ‘n than remembered here in South Dakota land.

GUEST BLOGGER: Marshall Matz on Indian uprising at Wounded Knee, 1973.

Posted on by Ken Ackerman
Armed members of the American Indian Movement during 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Note the American flag hung upside down (distress signal), a frequent protest symbol during the late 1960s  – early 1970s.

Links to prior posts in this series:
               —WOUNDED KNEE part 1: The closing frontier;
               —WOUNDED KNEE part 2: 1890 — The Massacre.

On December 29, 1890, the American Seventh Cavalry committed a notorious massacre, killing at least 150 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children, at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee creek in South Dakota. This massacre ended the Indian Wars of that era and any resistance to moving the Plains Indians off their traditional land into reservations. Eighty-three years later, as a protest against decades of poverty, neglect, and broken promises, some 300 descendants of the original Wounded Knee Indians, calling themselves the American Indian Movement (AIM) took up arms and occupied the village of Wounded Knee. For 71 days, they held off the combined force of the US Marshal Service, the FBI, the US military, and state police, until leaders brokered a settlement.

Our Guest Blogger, Marshall Matz, had a unique role in this dramatic stand-off, which he shares with us today for the first time.

Wounded Knee is a small village on the Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation (Pine Ridge), the largest of nine Sioux reservations in South Dakota with a population of 10,000. Wounded Knee has always had special meaning to Indian people as the location of the famous 1890 massacre – their last armed confrontation with the US government. (See: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.)


In February 1973, to dramatize the plight of Indian people and pressure both Washington and the local Indian establishment for change, the American Indian Movement (AIM) took over Wounded Knee in an armed conflict. They seized hostages – local officials – and established an armed military perimeter around the village The US government, in turn, cut off food, electricity, and all roads into the town. Still, a steady stream of Indians snuck in to join the protest.


FBI car shot during Wounded Knee siege.

Gunfire between Indians and law enforcement broke out almost daily. The leaders of the 300 AIM members, Russell Means and Dennis Banks, brought in lawyer William Kunstler (then famous for defending anti-Vietnam War protestors in the Chicago 7 case) to represent them. They demanded investigations of corruption both in the tribal governments and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. Soon, the siege was making headlines around the world, gaining wide support. (That spring, actor Marlon Brando refused to accept his Academy Award for The Godfather in solidarity with the Wounded Knee Indians).

At the time, I was 27 years old and had recently moved to Washington from South Dakota to take a position with Senator George McGovern (D-SD), the recent Democratic presidential nominee, as Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition which McGovern chaired. The Senator had hired me after he “found me” in South Dakota, as he likes to put it, working as an attorney on the impoverished Indian reservations for South Dakota Legal Services. There, I had represented members of the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Sioux Tribes from an office at Fort Thompson. As a result, I had witnessed first-hand the rising Indian grievances, and Senator McGovern viewed me as one of his staff “experts” on the subject.


After the Wounded Knee siege had already lasted many weeks, the AIM Indian leaders decided to invite a group of Washington officials to help mediate a settlement. They invited the two South Dakota Senators, McGovern and Jim Abourezk (D-SD), and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to make the point that the Reservations were sovereign nations. Secretary Kissinger did not accept the invitation (if he ever received it). Instead, the third seat went to the Senate staff counsel — me.


I remember vividly being flown by Air Force jet from Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, D.C., to Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota. We were transferred to a helicopter flown directly to Pine Ridge, the “capital” or center of the Oglala Sioux Reservation. Here, the FBI agents took us by car ,across the stark, semi-desert landscape to a point just outside Wounded Knee itself. The FBI and AIM members had both established armed perimeters around the town, and between them was what both sides called “the DMZ” (demilitarized zone), as in the Vietnam War.


At this point, I remember the lead FBI agent telling the Senators (and me, the Counsel) that they could not protect us any further. If we proceeded into occupied Pine Ridge, it was at our own risk. I remember wondering if it was the first time the FBI had told two U.S. Senators that they could not protect them on US soil. For Senator McGovern, who had just recently experienced the heavy security of a Presidential campaign, it was the most striking.


FBI agents gave us a car and we drove forward. I sat in back, with Senator McGovern driving (if I recall correctly) and Senator Abourezk holding a white handkerchief on a stick through the car window to indicate that we were the negotiating team. All the while, I could see armed Indians riding horses on the surrounding hills.


And with that, we drove into Wounded Knee.

Wounded Knee is a small village with only a few buildings….a church, post office and small store (again, if my memory is correct). Wounded Knee was completely armed. All around town we saw young braves with rifles, posted at key locations. Somehow, in all this, I never felt any danger and I don’t believe the Senators did either, but we did not discuss it.

 

View inside the AIM leadership tent during the siege.

 

Also, all over town, we ran into newspaper writers and TV crews, many lugging around heavy cameras, lights, and other equipment. (There were only the three major TV networks at the time.) While the Indians kept the FBI out, they made a point to allow the media in, since publicity was a major goal of the siege. They wanted to bring attention to the plight of Indian people and the broken Treaties.
The Indians took us to a farm house for the actual discussions with AIM leaders and their legal counsel, Mr. Kunstler. I remember their starting the session with prayers in the Lakota language as is traditional of all Sioux meetings. Food and coffee was available, not a small point since food shipments had been cut off during the siege.

 

Once the talks began, both Senators participated in the discussion while I listened and tried to staff them as best I could. While McGovern was better known around the country, Senator Abourezk actually had closer ties to the Reservations having grown up “West River” — west of the Missouri River where the tribes were located. Senator McGovern is from “East River.”



The Senators promised to use their influence to bring the Indian concerns back to Washington. Ultimately, the siege ended peacefully. As the only staff person present, I served as a liaison to the press and tried to provide some historical understanding to the siege.. After the senators left, I stayed behind for several days, doing what I could to provide a presence and liaison to the Senators.


The Indians ended their siege in early May after 71 days – 38 years ago last month. What had they accomplished? Two of the Indian occupiers had died of gunshot wounds during the siege and a US Marshal was grievously injured. Two years later, on June 26, 1975, two FBI agents were killed near Wounded Knee and Leonard Peltier, an AIM member, was convicted.


The siege of Wounded Knee did provide greater recognition across the country of the difficulties facing modern American Indians. Presidents since that time have all (I believe) recognized the sovereignty of Indian Tribes with Presidential Proclamations pledged to interact with Tribes on a basis of “government to government.”


The sad truth, however, is that not much has changed economically since 1973 to improve the quality of life on American Indian Reservations. Today, unemployment on many Reservations is over 50% and can be as high as 80%. The poorest Tribes in the country are still those in the Missouri River Valley that are the most remote and furthest from major population centers that could allow for gambling or tourism to help the Tribe. This high unemployment cannot help but lead to a breakdown of the social fabric. Alcoholism, diabetes, infant mortality, and violence all far exceed the profile for the rest of the United States.


The United States continues to pay lip service to Indian rights, but has not appropriated the money needed or established the programs necessary to create a private sector economy on the Reservations and break the cycle of poverty. The sad legacy of Wounded Knee will continue until the United States government helps to replace the economy that was lost. The world may be “flat” with a global economy, as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman puts it, but that economy has not reached Indian Country, USA. The United States outsources to India but not to America’s Reservations.


Personally, I have remained involved with the Reservations. My law firm, OFW Law, today has an office on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation, which we represent in Washington, D.C. The Tribe has given me the title “Ambassador to the United States” and the office of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is referred to as the Tribal Embassy.


The Lower Brule Sioux Tribe is working hard to bring private business to the reservations as a spur to breaking the cycle of poverty. To do this, as one strategy, we are focusing our energy on trying to pass an Indian Agriculture Act that would bring many of the highly-successful US Government farm and rural development programs, administered by the Department of Agriculture, to the reservations. This, as a spur to private home-grown business, may well be the best hope for finally bringing a happy ending to the sad history of Wounded Knee, be it 1890 or 1973.

Marshall Matz practices law at OFW Law in Washington, D.C.  Visit him at OFWLaw.com.