May, 2010
By admin
Randy Credico at the State Democratic Convention.
The above video is an excerpt from NY1’s interview with Randy Credico at the Democratic Convention in Rye. In this clip he is asked about what he thinks of the decision to bend the rules to allow all of the candidates for Attorney General onto the ballot.
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Although we sill have far less than a majority vote on this poll, it shows that people are listening to Credico 2010. It shows that even without the millions of dollars that Schumer will be investing in his campaign, our efforts (which have not even truly began yet) have already made an impact. I encourage more people to volunteer and help us win this election. http://www.siena.edu/sri
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Like many of you, we are dispirited by the ever-rightward lurch of the once promising Obama administration. As a result we view electoral politics more skeptically and wearily than ever. Nevertheless, we are challenging Charles Schumer for his United States Senate seat from New York for the very best of reasons.
If Mr. Schumer is unchallenged in the Democratic Primary there will be no opportunity for progressives to register disdain for his brazen work as a shameless apologist for multiple wars, state usurpation of our civil liberties, and further engorgement of the racist police/prison/military industrial state. Without a challenge from the left, Schumer will be permitted to whistle past the audacious bailouts of Wall Street and gargantuan banks — bailouts that are covered with Charles Schumer’s greasy fingerprints. If Schumer stands unchallenged in the September 14th primary, there will be no one to even suggest that New York’s disappearing middle class, and escalating numbers of poor face oppression and plunder that confronts them on behalf of Charlie’s rich but morally bankrupt cronies.
No one else is standing for truly progressive values against Schumer – except Credico2010. We are doing this duty because we feel we must confront New York’s senior Senator for his egregious neglect of the views and needs of so many of his constituents. We must see this through or he will be returned to Washington possessed of not even an iota of accountability to New York’s legions of true progressives. Worse, when he gets there, the corporate media will continue to inform us that the likes of Charlie Schumer represent progressive values.
With the help of a few dedicated and selfless individuals, we have managed to jump through every hoop and meet every requirement old school pols have placed in my way. To say we have run this campaign on a shoestring would be to seriously underestimate the cost of shoestrings. Nonetheless, to campaign in a state the size of New York is expensive– at least to a working class candidate such as myself. We are willing to continue to hold Chuck Schumer’s Guccis to the fire. But without an infusion of operating funds, we will be unable to continue to apply the heat. We know that times are tough and money is scarce. Were that not the case we wouldn’t be running a campaign meant to remind Senator Schumer that he had better start thinking in terms of the people who have been impoverished and victimized by his policies and the crooked cronies he services.
We continue to be taken seriously by not only alternative but the mainstream press. And on Monday May 24th, a new Sienna poll will be released featuring a one on one matchup of Credico2010 vs. Sen. Schumer.
On June 8 the hard part begins. It is the moment that tries peoples’ souls. It is the kickoff of the petioning drive to get on the primary ballot. This is a costly, labor intensive project. We will get the signatures but we will get challenged by team Schumer, who will spend millions to avoid a primary and a debate. THAT IS WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP. We need donations. Any kind of donation: Money, petitioning or organizing.
Here is a link to a recent interview on Capitol Tonight with award winning journalist Elizabeth Benjamin: http://capitaltonight.com/2010/05/randy-credico-hopes-to-unseat-schumer/
Filed in: Campaign News, Comedy, Press Releases, Uncategorized
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For Immediate Release Contact: Credico 2010: 212-924-6980
May 10, 2010 www.randycredico2010.org
New Ad Slams Schumer for Voting to Support
Odious, Xenophobic Arizona/Mexico Border Wall
and the Schumer/Graham National ID Card
New York – U.S. Senatorial candidate, Randy Credico today blast’s Senator Chuck Schumer in a full page ad published in todays El Diaro La Prensa New York City’s largest Spanish speaking paper. “I can’t believe that Sen. Schumer has teamed up once again with a Southern Republican to introduce legislation that is racist, discriminatory and intrusive,” said Credico,
Credico went on to say, “The big wall they are building is symbol of intolerance and insult to our neighbors to south especially becauset Mexico will be celebrating
200 years of independence this September 16. We can’t afford it monetarily or morally. As Reagan said to Gorbachev ‘Tear down that wall.’ It’s time to tear down the Mexican/Arizona wall!” “I believe the only solution is to give total amnesty to all. We are all god’s children and we are our brother’s keeper.” said Credico.
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Randy Credico vs Chuck Schumer and the Drug Laws (Part 2)
Politics, US — By Kathleen Wells on May 6, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Randy Credico is a former comedian turned political activist/drug law reformer who has worked as Director for the William Moses Knustler Fund for Racial Justice the past 12 years.
Now, he’d like to take on and challenge Senator Chuck Schumer for his seat in the Senate.
Part 1 of my interview with Randy can be seen here:
Kathleen Wells: I can hear the critics, and they would say that drug use causes a lot of crime in society, a lot of violence in society.
Randy Credico: Well, it does. The illegality of it is what creates the crime. If there was no money to be made off the drug trade, if, in fact, it was legal, those Mexican cartels wouldn’t be able to accumulate the kind of money, hence the power to corrupt the legislature and the police force and commit heinous crimes. That’s only because they’ve got the money resulting from the prohibition here.
That’s one of the reasons. Another one is we don’t have the resources to be prosecuting people for these crimes. Correctional Corporation, which maintains and builds and services prisons — their stock has gone up over 140% in a year and three-month period of time [the time that Obama has been in office]. You’ve got three million people in prison. It’s outrageous.
Kathleen Wells: Okay, so let’s go to the federal level. We talked about the state level, where we have the Rockefeller drug laws. But on the federal level, under the current federal law, a first-time simple possession of five grams of crack cocaine requires the same five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence as a person in possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine. In other words, a person would need to have 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to be penalized the same.
This was signed into law in 1986 by then President Reagan. It was the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. And the act established mandatory sentencing minimums including five-to-ten year minimums for distribution of illegal drugs and/or importation.
What we have today, moving it on up, is that black folks comprise 25% of crack cocaine users, but yet they account for 82% of all people in prison populations convicted of crack-cocaine offenses. So talk to me about how this federal law has jurisdiction over many of the folks convicted for crack-cocaine offenses. In other words, how does it trickle down to the states, this federal law?
Randy Credico: If [the feds] go into a project [with] a bunch of federal agents – say there are 40 kids working together with a gram of cocaine a week or whatever or crack — they get all 40 at one time, a big sweep and they netted very little cocaine, but they just added 40 people into the criminal justice system. And that’s how they work.
The state can get you too on that. The State can get you up to nine years for selling a dime bag of crack [At the] federal level, you’ve got that five-year minimum. And so they usually pick and choose who’s gonna take jurisdiction when they’re collaborating on a case.
This woman I know got 15 years-to-life for having four ounces of cocaine at J. F. Kennedy Airport in 1989. She was a mule, and [at] the state [level] you get 15-to-life. [With] the feds it was barely a crime — less than five years. So the state took it over, and they put this mother of five in prison – Melita Oliviera – for 15 years and destroyed all six of her kids’ lives.
Kathleen Wells: What was her name again?
Randy Credico: Melita Oliviera. Peruvian. Just coming back and somebody gave her stuff to carry, and she even showed it to the customs guys, and her life was a nightmare. They offered her three years in prison, [but] when she went to be sentenced, [thinking she’d] come back to finish cooking, the next thing you know she’s in a maximum security prison, with murderers, for 15 years. She got out on clemency. It was a case that we worked on, and she got out in 2001.
Kathleen Wells: So why is there that disparity between crack-cocaine and powder cocaine?
Randy Credico: Because of racism. Remember, when the Rockefeller drug laws went into effect in ‘73, [they were] also for marijuana. But Wall Street guys, rich people — their kids were smoking pot, and they had to change that immediately. So pot was not put on the same level. Possession of a small amount of pot is not a crime in New York. Smoking a joint in public is a $100 fine, but you get arrested if you’re black and you smoke pot in New York. It happens a lot. And they shake people down — 570,000 unprovoked stops and frisks without probable cause by the police in New York. That’s the ones that were recorded.
I hate using the word “ethnic cleansing,” but it has that smell to it. And a lot of people feel that we are in a police state on every level with the drug laws, with the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, FBI, IRS –there are so many levels of law enforcement in the United States that ICE — the racist ICE Units, it’s a policy that we have. Schumer hasn’t been good on that as well.
On a federal level, Schumer, the death penalty, which is racist, we know it’s racist. We’ve got a Supreme Court that upholds racist laws just like it did under Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision that 8-to-1 decision.
Kathleen Wells: Now today, as you mentioned before, that disparity, that sentencing disparity was 100- to-1. But today Senator Durbin has drafted or sponsored legislation which would reduce it to 18-to-1. Now, initially he tried to get 1-to-1. He tried to eliminate the disparity in its entirety, make it equal, 1-to- 1. However, Chuck Schumer voted against that decision to make it equal, on par. 1-to-1. Talk to me about this fact that Schumer voted against that. [The Bill modifying the ratio from 100:1 to 18:1 has passed the Senate and is now in the House.]
Randy Credico: Well, Schumer won’t even sign on as a sponsor of this bill, 18-to-1. He’ll vote for it. It’s gonna go through ‘cause it’s part of a spending bill. But he’s a really bad drug-war hustler. He had a press conference yesterday to get more money to stop the importation of drugs from Canada. It’s such a waste of time to get more money for law enforcement up there to track down people. It’s really like taking a shotgun and then trying to kill all the flies in a room. It’s a Popeye episode.
So Schumer is not good on race issues. He’s bad on the death penalty, he’s a law-and-order guy, and he’s got no blacks or Latinos in his office in New York or Washington. He doesn’t care. You know what I mean? He’s tied into the law enforcement guys. He gets money from Wall Street. He’s into the prison- industrial complex. Well, it’s blacks going to jail, you know. That’s really a code word for “Let’s put the blacks in prison.” Being tough on drugs — that’s what it is – a code word.
Kathleen Wells: And so you want to play this game? You want to be a part of this system?
Randy Credico: No, listen. Here’s what I want to do. I want to test it. I want to put a mirror in its face. If I win, I’m certainly not going to be a Schumer. I’m going to be true to my principles. I don’t have a machine behind me. Barack Obama had a machine behind him.
Kathleen Wells: But you’ll be one person in D. C.
Randy Credico: Well, maybe it will encourage other people to run. Now, do you know what happened in Massachusetts in 1855? Did you ever hear of the Hiss Legislature?
Kathleen Wells: No.
Randy Credico: In the wake of the Kansas/Nebraska Act, in the wake of all of the rendition trials there for fugitive slaves and the uprising particularly of one Anthony Burns in 1854, a man was rendition back to Virginia, and the entire state became so radical that the Abolitionists Movement voted in the following year the most radical, progressive state legislature in every office: the Governors office, the two Senate seats, Charles Sumner — all became part of this radical movement there. They instituted child labor laws; they integrated the school system. This is in Massachusetts, which has gone backward since then in many respects. They had personal liberty laws because back in Massachusetts at that time the senator who defeated the slave laws was Daniel Webster. All these old, lying hack politicians that were in Washington gave way to a new progressive. One guy wins, everyone else runs, and you have a progressive. It was a four-year experiment here, a five year experiment there, [which included] women’s property rights. It was all amateurs. And so that is possible; something like that is possible. If I run and do well, it may encourage other people to run. I have encouraged other people to run on every level and buck the Democratic hack system that we have in the State of New York.
Kathleen Wells: So your position is that the war on drugs has been a complete and utter failure?
Randy Credico: Look, we have to take a lot of the blame for the violence in Mexico, because [of] the prohibition here, just like Prohibition when it was repealed by Roosevelt. What happened? Violence went down in Chicago and across the country. If you’ve got something people want — something like alcohol, something like cocaine, something like marijuana — if you make it illegal, then someone’s going to sell that. If you made cigarettes illegal, imagine the black-market in cigarettes and the violence that would ensue on the turf of the distribution of cigarettes.
Kathleen Wells: And earlier you mentioned something about these ICE Units. Do you want to elaborate on that?
Randy Credico: The ICE Units round up poor people that are here working. We’ve got to just give amnesty. Everyone that’s here, have amnesty. They’re not taking our jobs; they’re doing our jobs. These are jobs that nobody wants, and they do the jobs here. They’re not committing crimes; it’s all garbage. You got prisons that are being built right now, capital construction on more prisons for people that get arrested. Like that complete lunatic in Arizona, Joe Arapio, who’s, as far as I’m convinced, as racist as they get and a sick man. I think he’s a demented individual — and racist. And maybe that’s the justification — that you’re rounding up a bunch of immigrants here, especially in Arizona with the land that used to belong to Mexico. It was grabbed away from them. So was California.
There are people complaining about the immigrants [but the land] was stolen from them. When Davy Crockett and all these guys went to Texas, they were fighting to expand slavery. That’s what that was all about. I know the history of Mexico. Bustamante had said, “No more slaves,” and abolished slavery when they got their independence from Spain. When Texas went from being a Republic to a Union state, that would have made them a slave state. And that caused a lot of problems. Mexico didn’t like that.
These ICE Units are aggressive. The ICE Units are bad.
Kathleen Wells: Some would say you have a very radical position. And some would say you have a liberal position. What do you think your chances are of getting on the ballot to…
Randy Credico: I know there’s a big difference between liberal and radical.
Kathleen Wells: There is a big difference. How would you…
Randy Credico: Chuck Schumer is considered a liberal. People say the liberal Senator of New York is Chuck Schumer.
Kathleen Wells: So how would you characterize yourself? As progressive?
Randy Credico: I would say I’m more of a utilitarian. And I’m into really progressive ideas. And Libertarian in some ways, I suppose. You know I’m going to get the Libertarian nomination, I think, tomorrow up in Albany. I agree with them on a great many of the subjects, issues they are concerned about. And I don’t know how I would define myself. Take a look at the positions: anti-death penalty, anti-war. I think I’m smart, and I’m humanistic.
Kathleen Wells: So, are you going to get on the Libertarian ballot? You’re going to run as a Libertarian?
Randy Credico: My foremost aim right now is to be on the Democratic ticket — I mean, on the ballot for the primary, a one-on-one with Chuck Schumer, and let the public have the opportunity to decide. And the Democratic Party, if they want to go with the old wine or the new wine, okay? Or the old whiner or the new whiner?
So they need something new. They needed an opportunity to express themselves. And then in the fall, [if] I don’t win the Democratic nomination, [but] I’m on the Libertarian line, you’ll see I get a great amount of votes in November. And then [Schumer is] going to have to worry about the Republican opponent.
Kathleen Wells: Okay. Well, you know what? I wish you a lot of luck and I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.
Randy Credico: Okay, Kathleen.
Kathleen Wells: Okay, bye-bye.
Kathleen is on Facebook
Written by: Kathleen Wells on May 6, 2010.
Filed in: Campaign News
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Kathleen Wells is on Facebook.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-wells/randy-credico-to-challeng_b_564039.html
by Kathleen Wells 5/5/10/
Randy Credico is a former comedian turned political activist/drug law reformer who has worked as Director for the William Moses Knustler Fund for Racial Justice the past 12 years.
Now, he’d like to take on and challenge Senator Chuck Schumer for his seat in the Senate.
Kathleen Wells: Randy, talk to me about the challenge you are mounting for the Senate seat of Senator Chuck Schumer?
Randy Credico: I’m running to get on the ballot against Chuck Schumer – on the Democratic ballot line for the primary in September. I am also seeking the endorsement of other parties, lest the Democratic Party pulls some tricks and tries to keep me off the ballot. I’ll probably have to go through the signature route. If I don’t make it that way, if I get challenged by Schumer, which I believe I will, then I will end up with the Green Party.
Kathleen Wells: So essentially you’re saying you have got to collect signatures and it may not…
Randy Credico: I have to collect 15,000 signatures, which is not really a tall order and would include half the congressional districts in the state — 200 signatures from 200 registered Democrats in 15 congressional races. And we’ve got 14 of those congressional districts that kind of border or [are] inside of New York City. So, it’s not that difficult.
Kathleen Wells: It’s not that difficult, but what is the likelihood of it happening?
Randy Credico: Well, it depends on how well I’m able to organize this group of supporters and volunteers that are joining my struggle to beat Chuck Schumer. He is basically a Blue Dog Democrat in the State of New York. And there are a lot of progressive Democrats, particularly in the primary, the activist Democrats who are not happy with Chuck Schumer. He has never faced a real test since he ran against D’Amato in 1998 and beat him.
Kathleen Wells: You’re a self-professed political satirist/impressionist and social activist. Tell me, what is your motivation to run for political office and specifically to run against Senator Chuck Schumer?
Randy Credico: Well, for many years I did political humor, I did impressions. I worked in Vegas back in the late 70s, mid 80s. Then I worked comedy clubs. I was on the Tonight Show in 1984 with Johnny Carson. And I was on the Charlie Rose show as a political satirist back in 1992, and I’ve done a couple of albums.
And in the last 12 years, I have done comedy sporadically, but also I ran an organization called the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. That was my primary occupation, and I worked within the criminal justice system in the state of New York, in particular [with] the Rockefeller drug laws. I also worked on a project in Tulia, Texas. Our organization spearheaded the movement to help release 46 mostly African-Americans in Tulia, Texas, who were hand guided into the prison system in Texas based on very racist drug operations, and we were able to get a victory down there. It was a lot of work. [We] spent three and a half years [and] a couple hundred thousand dollars that we raised making the video by Sara and Emily Knustler, the [younger] daughters of Bill Knustler, and getting a lot of media attention. [We] organiz[ed] “Mothers of the Tulia Disappeared,” which was the offspring of the “Mothers of New York Disappeared,” an offspring of the William Moses Knustler Fund for Racial Justice.
So I did that and then we got some changes in the laws in New York in 2004, 2005, and 2009 — not significant changes, moderate changes. It did lead to the release of a lot of people. The other day Anthony Williams got out [after spending] nineteen years for two dime bags. Of course, he’s black, and he was tried up in Albany County, beaten up by the police there. He just got out two or three days ago. I was not there for his release, [but I] wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about him.
The criminal justice system in the United States is a repressive, racist from-top to-bottom enterprise with 3 million people in prison in the United States. There are 70,000 [in prison] in New York, now down to about 61 or 62,000 — mostly black and Latinos. They keep saying the criminal justice is the best system in the world. I think it’s one of the worst systems in the world, because we’ve got so many people in prison — three times as many as China, and they’ve got four times or five times our population. We’ve got double or triple what Russia has [in prison].
Why am I running? I am at my wit’s end. You go to the courthouse, you watch a white judge, a white prosecutor, a mostly white jury giving heavy sentences to black women, black men, Latino men, Latino women — all poor. Their families are there, the mothers watching their kids being snagged away and taken up to Attica for, manufactured crimes. It’s so profound.
I figured Chuck Schumer would be the perfect person to run against to highlight the things that really do bother me. Chuck Schumer is owned by the banks, by Wall Street. I call him Dr. Bankenstein. He is owned by them. He’s responsible for, in 1999, [during] his first couple months in office, the repeal of the protective legislation, The Glass-Steagall Act, that prohibited commercial banks from making these wild investments. He did that at the behest of his owners, and then when they collapsed, he bailed them out.
So, I’m dealing with a very, very powerful figure. I’m really testing the limits of our democracy by running against him, particularly in a financial state like New York, and I think it’s imperative that somebody runs against him.
Kathleen Wells: Is your motivation the fact that you have worked as the director for the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice for 12 years? Is that your motivation, the criminal justice system? Or is your motivation the fact that Chuck Schumer is just all-powerful, omnipotent in New York?
Randy Credico: Well, it’s twofold. The criminal justice system has driven me to the brink where I don’t know what to do at this point. Schumer was on the House Judiciary Committee, and he helped put together mandatory minimum sentences, [and] and he denied restoring an extra appeal for people on death row in the Omnibus Crime Bill. You have to take a look at his record. And that’s a really racist position as far as I am concerned. Yes, it is about race.
Race in America is my number one thing. Bill Kunstler was my idol. He was a John Brown with a law degree. [When] I look at the criminal justice system right now [or] at the drug war, I look at them the same way I look at the Fugitive Slave Law. We have slave catchers coming in from Long Island into New York City as cops, and shanghaiing African-Americans into the criminal justice system, into the prison system.
Kathleen Wells: Let’s go back a bit. You said that the criminal justice system is racist. What I want to ask you is how do you define racism? And give me an example of seeing that racism played out.
Randy Credico: Well, I’ll just give you an example. Here in New York City, for example, only three or four percent of the people that go to jail for a drug crime are white, and 96, 97 percent are black and Latinos, and they’re all poor. So the juries are mostly white, the prosecutors are almost exclusively white, the judges are white — as white as can be — so you got this triangulation there. And the police are mostly white, from rural areas like in Long Island.
You have hapless victims that usually plea out. If they don’t plea out, they get a long prison sentence, and then they’re completely screwed for the rest of their life. Once they plea out to a felony, they’re under state control [much as] you had [under] slavery. After slavery, you had convict leasing, which has been described as worse than slavery, if you read Oshinsky’s book on it or the book by the Wall Street Journal reporter that’s called Slavery by Another Name. You had that up until 1941.
Franklin Roosevelt wouldn’t pass or try to pass an anti-lynching law because the people that were being killed were black. Take a look at the figures here. You hear cops talking to kids on the street; they use the N-word. They’re only targeting blacks and Latinos and young kids; it fills up this real monster of an enterprise. They keep this dirty engine going with black and brown flesh.
Kathleen Wells: Okay, but you know, I asked you to define racism. You’re a white man, and I’m…
Randy Credico: Racism? I’ve got my own level of prejudice. Everyone has a level of prejudice.
Kathleen Wells: But prejudice and racism…
Randy Credico: There’s prejudice and then there is racism. It’s this… I guess you would say it’s a hatred of another race.
Kathleen Wells: Right. But is this racism economic-motivated, psychological, sociological, biological? What is the impetus for the racism?
Randy Credico: Racism is in the fabric of the cloth of the nation. It goes [back to] the middle passage, to slavery, to convict leasing [to] Jim Crow. Jim Crow and convict leasing were simultaneous. Horrible period of time, just horrible! And now, it hasn’t changed. This country is so racist, and you have the drug laws that were initiated by Nixon and then Rockefeller and then Reagan.
These are planned schemes; they’re almost like what were called the Carlsbad Decrees, but only on African-Americans. They’ve got TV shows on it. You’ve got Cops, where this voyeur nation is seeing blacks and Latinos being shoved into the prison system. You’ve got MSNBC. In spite of their reputation of being a liberal news network, they have a show called Lockup.
There are so many prisons, but you know it’s primarily voyeurism of blacks and Latinos all over the country, and it’s an epidemic; it’s a sickness.
There have been some changes, but the beat goes on. Even though the Rockefeller drug laws have been amended slightly, but they have not been repealed. I’m for full repeal.
What’s the racism? America is one of the most racist countries in the history of the planet. Slavery was worse here than it ever was in Egypt or any other country. The Romans didn’t treat the slaves as the slaves were treated here.
How did slavery exist if it weren’t for racism? So you have 150 years later — not that long a period of time — a lot of hatred. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s a superiority complex.
You know it’s racist when you’ve been to the courtrooms like I have and you see the way blacks are treated like chattel. If they were all Italians or all Irish or all Jews only going to the prison system here, believe me, this wouldn’t exist. It’s just that there’s a collective racism in this country that allows this to happen.
I hear the way they talk — cops, judges. The whole system is corrupt, from top to bottom. And the only way it could exist is the level of racism that we have in this country. You have it in England; you have it in France; but it’s particularly vile in this country.
Kathleen Wells: So let’s talk about some specifics. You mentioned the Rockefeller Drug Law, and I know…
Randy Credico: That’s a state issue.
Kathleen Wells: That’s a state issue, I know, that…
Randy Credico: That’s a state issue.
Kathleen Wells: And I know that last April, it was reformed in your state. Now just let me give a brief overview as to the drug law — the Rockefeller Drug Law. It gave a penalty for selling two ounces or more of heroine, morphine, raw or prepared opium, cocaine, or Cannabis, including marijuana.
Randy Credico: Not Cannabis.
That’s been out since 1979. It was out early. It’s really cocaine and heroine and crack. And the crack and the cocaine are on the same level, something like the federal [law] where it was 100:1 and now [it's] 18:1.
Kathleen Wells: Exactly.
Randy Credico: Now it’s two ounces to sale, eight ounce possession, which will get you 15 to 25 years to life sentence. I see people get 62 years to life sentences because they get one for possession, one for sale [plus] the conspiracy rap. The judge would throw it all together and end up with 62 years.
They also had, until the laws were changed, what was called the Predicate Offender Law, which was from the same era, where if you sold a dime bag of cocaine you could have gotten [up to] 25 years, which is the same as [for] rape and second-degree murder. I saw it happen many times. Gary S. King is doing 12.5 to 25 years for attempted sale of a nickel bag. He is black, of course. Now you can get a flat one to nine years for selling a dime bag.
And this is not anecdotal. I can tell you a million stories like this with the raids on the homes by these white shock troops that go in with the no-knock search warrants, the stun grenades.
Kathleen Wells: What is your response to critics who say, “If you don’t do the crime, you don’t do the time?”
Randy Credico: I think it’s time for that hackneyed phrase to disappear from the American lexicon because these crimes are not really crimes. These are invented crimes. Many people smoke a cigarette or drink a beer or do drugs and it’s a social illness — drug abuse.
The economy is in such tatters that [some] people have no other way to make a living. What are you supposed to do? Just sit at home all the time since you’ve been written out of the economy? A lot of people just been written out of this economy, and they’re not allowed to jump into it. They’re not allowed to jump into the educational process. There’s so much discrimination and racism in the application of these laws.
So it’s okay to do the crime if you’re white and you got money, but it’s not okay to do the crime if you’re black and have no money? That’s the way it boils down.
And there are so many other kinds of moral crimes that are being committed by credit card companies, economic crimes committed by Wall Street, by the military. Those are real crimes. Killing a million people in Iraq — that’s a crime against humanity.
Kathleen Wells is on Facebook.
Crossposted from Race-Talk.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-wells/randy-credico-to-challeng_b_564039.html
Filed in: Campaign News