nytimes.com

Lester Rodney, Early Voice in Fight Against Racism in Sports, Dies at 98
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Lester Rodney, who occupied an unlikely niche in journalism — sports
editor of the American Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker — and used that platform to wage an early battle against baseball’s color barrier, died Sunday in Walnut Creek, Calif. He was 98.

His death was announced by his family.

Even in The Daily Worker’s heyday, during the Depression, the working
classes the newspaper championed were hardly lining up at newsstands for its box scores. But the paper, published in New York City, did have a sports section, run by Mr. Rodney, who was a card-carrying member, in the parlance of his day, of both the Communist Party USA and the Baseball Writers Association of America.

In the 1930s and early ’40s, Mr. Rodney, a grandson of Jewish immigrants from Europe, became an outspoken voice among sportswriters, apart from the black press, in condemning racial discrimination in professional sports.

Running a six-day-a-week Daily Worker sports section that he introduced in 1936, more than a decade before Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier, Mr. Rodney pressured the baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the major league club owners to end baseball’s racial barrier.

His columns cited the exploits of stars of the Negro leagues like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, and he quoted major league players
and managers praising the talents of black players to buttress his argument that they offered a vast talent pool. He publicized Communist-led petition drives aimed at ending the majors’ exclusion of blacks.

“Negro soldiers and sailors are among those beloved heroes of the
American people who have already died for the preservation of this
country and everything this country stands for — yes, including the
great game of baseball,” Mr. Rodney wrote in an open letter to Landis
published in The Daily Worker in May 1942. “You, the self-proclaimed
‘Czar’ of baseball, are the man responsible for keeping Jim Crow in our
National Pastime. You are the one refusing to say the word which would do more to justify baseball’s existence in this year of war than any other single thing.”

In recounting the mounting pressures baseball faced to end its color
barrier, Arnold Rampersad wrote in his 1997 biography “Jackie Robinson”
that “the most vigorous efforts came from the Communist press.”

Mr. Rampersad told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2005 that Mr. Rodney “was forgotten because he was a Communist.”

“But,” he added, “if Robinson was perceived by civil rights workers —
and especially by Martin Luther King — as a historical turning point,
anybody who facilitated the emergence of Jackie Robinson should be seen as one of the heroes of race integration.”

In his 1983 book “Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His
Legacy,” Jules Tygiel wrote that The Daily Worker and Mr. Rodney
“unrelentingly attacked the baseball establishment.”

Mr. Tygiel said that “the success of the Communists in forcing the issue
before the American public far outweighed the negative ramifications of
their sponsorship.”

Lester Rodney grew up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, became a Dodger fan, covered sports for the New Utrecht High School newspaper, and played basketball and ran track. His father was a staunch Republican who had owned a silk factory but was ruined financially by the 1929 stock market crash.

While Mr. Rodney was attending night school at New York University in
the mid-1930s, a young Communist Party recruiter handed him a copy of The Daily Worker. He found its limited sports coverage to be little more than a dull representation of the Communist line, viewing athletic
competition as a means of appeasing the oppressed masses. So he wrote a letter to the paper’s editor telling him to lighten up.

The editor invited him in for a chat and asked him to contribute sports
articles. Mr. Rodney was soon hired as the paper’s first sports editor,
at a time when the Communist Party was seeking to broaden its appeal in the United States by reflecting the interests of working-class men and women. Mr. Rodney joined the party because Daily Worker staff members were expected to do so.

“I never thought of myself as a ‘Communist sportswriter,’ ” Mr. Rodney
told Irwin Silber for his 2003 biography “Press Box Red.” As he put it:
“I was a sportswriter who happened to be writing for a Communist
newspaper. By the time The Daily Worker was something the players might react to negatively, they knew me as a sportswriter and a person.”

After Army service in the Pacific during World War II, Mr. Rodney
returned to The Daily Worker. He resigned from the Communist Party in
January 1958 when the paper suspended publication, its top editors
having refused to continue unwavering acceptance of the Soviet Communist Party line. (The American party later resumed putting out a newspaper under different names, the latest being The People’s Weekly World.)

Mr. Rodney moved to California and, after several years in advertising
work, became the religion editor of The Long Beach Independent
Press-Telegram. He retired in 1975.

He is survived by his daughter, Amy Rodney, of Santa Rosa, Calif.; his
son, Ray, of Fairfax, Calif.; a granddaughter, Jessie Amanda Rodney
LaGoy; and his companion, Mary Harvey. His wife, Clare, died in 2004.

Mr. Rodney looked back with pride on his long campaign against racism in sports. But he also displayed a wry side, as when he told Mr. Silber
about his first days as the Daily Worker sports editor, just before the
1936 World Series between the Yankees and the New York Giants:

“I remember my first headline: ‘Giant Power Threatens Yankees,’ in
60-point railroad Gothic caps. I also remember thinking what fun it
would have been if Cincinnati had won the National League pennant andthe headline said, ‘Reds Power Threatens Yankees.’ ”

From Bob Dylan’s just released Christmas album, a video for the song “Must Be Santa”.

Regardless, Dylan is fearless. Always has been as an artist.

cnn.com

Man who spent 22 years on death row is cleared

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former death row inmate in Tennessee has been cleared of murder, three years after the Supreme Court raised repeated questions about his conviction.

After 22 years on death row, Paul House was released on bail and has now been cleared of murder charges.

1 of 2 State prosecutors on Tuesday asked a judge to drop all charges against Paul House, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in 1986. Special Judge Jon Blackwood accepted the request.

House had been scheduled to be executed next month for the 1985 murder of Carolyn Muncey. He had been on death row for 22 years but was released on bail last year. He has multiple sclerosis and must use a wheelchair.

The high court ruled in June 2006 that House was entitled to a new hearing.

“Although the issue is closed, we conclude that this is the rare case where — had the jury heard all the conflicting testimony — it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror viewing the record as a whole would lack reasonable doubt,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-3 majority.

House’s appeal was championed by the Innocence Project, affiliated with the Cardozo School of Law in New York.

“In the three years since the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into this case and sent it back to the trial court, substantial additional DNA testing and further investigation have shown that he is innocent,” said Peter Neufeld, the group’s co-director. “Each time a layer of this case was peeled away, it revealed more evidence of Paul House’s innocence.”

Muncey disappeared from her rural Luttrell, Tennessee, home on July 13, 1985. Her body was found a day later, badly beaten and showing signs of a struggle. She had been raped.

House, who was on parole at the time as a sex offender, was questioned by police. He denied any involvement in the crime. He was a friend of Muncey’s husband, but claimed he was in his own house several miles away the evening of the murder. But prosecutors found a hole in his alibi, discovering that he had left his home the night of the murder and returned about an hour later with unexplained cuts and bruises.

Forensic evidence found Muncey’s blood on House’s jeans, but questions were later raised whether the samples were contaminated en route to an FBI lab for analysis.

Subsequent state-of-the art DNA testing conducted after the conviction showed that semen on the victim belonged to her husband, not House. Blood under her fingernails and cigarette butts discovered near the wooded crime scene also did not match the accused.

But prosecutors maintain that other evidence points to his guilt. Muncey’s family has also continued to believe that House was involved in the crime.

In 2005, House told CNN he did not rape or kill Muncey, and he wondered why he was still on death row.

“I guess that’s the million-dollar question,” he said.

While maintaining his innocence, he said that lying to police about his whereabouts that night was a big mistake.

Kennedy, in his 2006 high court ruling, offered an extensive summary of the facts of the investigation, especially the DNA evidence, which he said might point to “a different suspect.” Kennedy said jurors might conclude that Muncey’s blood found on House’s pants may have inadvertently spilled there during the autopsy or through mishandling by police at the crime scene.

District Attorney Paul Phillips wrote in his petition this week that he still believes House could have been convicted again in a new trial, “but the new evidence (including the forensic examinations) raises a reasonable doubt that he acted alone and the possibility that others were involved in the crime.”

But Phillips noted the “substantial sentence” House has served as another reason for the charges being dropped now.

“A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning and violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”

- Leon Trotsky

Nathson Fields is the 131st person to be exonerated and freed from death row.

Nathson Fields is also the 13th exonerated death row prisoner in Illinois.

Fields’ case is another typical case in the american justice system, filled with all the usual elements: racism, judicial corruption, prosecutorial misconduct, and on and on.

Nathson Fields is the 131st innocent person to be saved from the american death machine.

How many more lives will it take before the racist, unjust and barbaric death penalty is completely abolished for once and for all in the United States?

www.suntimes.com

Man formerly on Death Row acquitted in retrial

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Staff Reporter

A former high-ranking gang member sent to Death Row by a Cook County judge convicted of fixing murder cases was acquitted Wednesday for the double homicide he was imprisoned for two decades ago.

“I feel like my prayers have been answered,” Nathson Fields, 55, said after Judge Vincent Gaughan issued the not guilty verdict in the retrial. “It’s like a dream.”

The former El Rukn “general” spent 11½ years on Death Row for the 1984 murders of rival gang members Jerome “Fuddy” Smith and Talman Hickman.

Fields was granted a new trial in 1998 when the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that he and his co-defendant Earl Hawkins had been denied a fair trial since Thomas J. Maloney, the judge who heard the initial case in 1986, took a $10,000 bribe from Hawkins’ lawyer to acquit the two men.

Maloney later returned the money, convicted the men and sentenced them to death when he learned he was under federal investigation.

Maloney, who died last year, spent 13 years in prison for fixing murder cases.

Gaughan said Wednesday he found the prosecutors’ witnesses, including their key witness, Hawkins, incredible.

Hawkins, who admitted to killing 15 to 20 people, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of armed violence in exchange for his testimony against Fields.

“If someone has such disregard for life, what regard would they have for the oath?” Gaughan said, questioning Hawkins’ credibility.

Fields’ attorneys, Jean Maclean Snyder and Herschella Conyers, said the state’s attorney’s office should have dropped the murder charges over a decade ago.

“All along they knew these witnesses, to be charitable, were flawed,” Maclean Snyder said.

Fields has been living in the south suburbs since 2003, when he was released on bond. He plans to continue working on rehab construction and speaking to youths about the perils of crime.

Back from Spring Break today and I received some truly wonderful news.

ABOLITION IN NEW MEXICO!

www.abqjournal.com

BREAKING: Death Penalty Dead
By Dan Boyd

Gov. Bill Richardson signs death penalty bill, which ends executions in New Mexico.

Richardson announced he would sign the bill at a 6 p.m. press conference today in Santa Fe.

——————————

SANTA FE (AP) — Gov. Bill Richardson says he is signing a bill repealing New Mexico’s death penalty.

The bill replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The governor faced a deadline of midnight for making a decision on the bill that lawmakers sent him last week.

New Mexico is only the second state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

It joins 14 other states that do not have capital punishment.

New Mexico has executed nine men since 1933. The most recent execution was in 2001.

There are two men on death row whose sentences are not affected by the repeal.

This interview was published by the arts & culture website REVISTA Ñ which is run by the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín.

I haven’t seen too many interviews with Junot Diaz conducted entirely in Spanish.

An interesting range of topics from his latest novel, the immigrant experience in America, his use of Spanglish in his novel and more.

Hillarious!!!!!!

“Ser inmigrante es como ser alcohólico: eso nunca se quita”

Entrevista al dominicano ganador del Premio Pulitzer 2008, que estará en Buenos Aires para la Feria del Libro.

Logró reconocimiento y atrajo lectores con su primera novela, escrita en un inglés mezclado con castellano que refleja el habla de los inmigrantes.
Por: Patricia Kolesnicov

¿No era que un escritor era, justamente, alguien con gran, gran dominio del lenguaje? ¿Tanto que podían florearse por diferentes registros? Bueno, miren lo que le dice a Clarín Junot Díaz, el dominicano que ganó el año pasado el Premio Pulitzer (el premio literario más importante de los Estados Unidos) por su novela La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao:

—Los amigos míos dicen que hablo un español muertísimo y que también hablo un inglés muertísimo. Entonces, me parece que yo no tengo una lengua donde me siento muy cómodo.

Justamente. Cuando el jurado eligió la novela de Díaz, elegía un texto escrito en el inglés de un inmigrante “latino”, un inglés mezclado, revuelto con alguna de tantas versiones del español. Y elegía también el imaginario, los mitos, los miedos que esos inmigrantes cargaron consigo a través del Caribe. Y los nuevos, los que aprendieron en el Norte.

Díaz, el novelista incómodo en todas sus lenguas, estará en mayo en Buenos Aires para participar en la Feria del Libro, auspiciado por la embajada de Estados Unidos y Revista Ñ. Además de hablar en público y presentarse con escritores, viene a visitar amigos (“Toditos abogados”) y no está en sus planes nada como ver fútbol (“Soy muy aburrido”) ni recorrer ningún lugar en particular (“Yo prefiero la gente a los edificios”).

Desde que le dieron el premio, su libro -es su primera novela, antes había escrito cuentos- entró en las listas de best sellers en los Estados Unidos y su nombre recorrió el continente. ¿Por qué? El dijo por ahí que su historia “sólo podía ocurrir en (norte)América”. La historia del ascenso social. La historia de cómo el chico que creció en un barrio con vista a un basural se volvió un escritor consagrado. “Me da risa -supo decir-, cada vez que estoy en las reuniones de docentes del MIT, la gente anda como ‘Tengo un Premio Nobel’, O ‘Tengo un Premio Pritzker’. Y yo: ‘Mis padres fueron ilegales’”.

En breve (aunque la brevedad impide hacer justicia al libro): la novela premiada cuenta la historia de Óscar De León, un dominicano negro, gordo, y, palabra clave, nerd. Es decir, algo bastante parecido a un “traga”, que además tiene poco éxito en las relaciones sociales. En definitiva: alguien que rompe con el deber ser del estereotipo caribeño: seductor, canchero, deportista. Óscar (le dirán Wao por la pronunicación “latina” de “Wilde”) no es nada de eso. Y no, no le va bien.

Desde Estados Unidos, en el teléfono, Díaz empieza cauteloso, serio. Pero se irá soltando.

—¿Qué tiene que ver su vida con la de Óscar Wao?

—Uf, no mucho.

—Yo pensaba que un poco sí; usted fue a buenas universidades, se escapaba del barrio a la biblioteca…

—Imagínate, no conozco un escritor que no sea nerd. Yo soy nerd-nerd-nerd. Pero no tan nerd como Óscar. Hay niveles: si Óscar es un 8, yo soy un 3.

—Casi normal…

—La mayoría de mis amigos es un 1. No les encanta leer, no les gusta la literatura, no quieren saber de cómics. Dije que soy un 3, vamos a decir un 5, eso es más justo.

—¿Cuáles son sus características como nerd?

—Me encanta leer. Esa es la enfermedad que se me pegó. Mira, si alguien tiene un librero en su casa y, digamos, una botella de ron abierta, yo primero me acerco al librero.

—¿Cómo le dio esa enfermedad?

—Cuando emigré a Estados Unidos, yo tenía seis años. Creo que fue una reacción, una manera de sobrevivir, tú sabes, esa vaina tan difícil de la emigración, a veces un muchacho busca la forma de sentirse capaz, busca una forma de sobrevivir. La lectura me ayudó. Mira, yo vengo de una familia muy militar. A mis hermanos, a mi papá, la única vaina que les interesaba era el boxeo. Para mí, un muchacho sensible, festivo, eso era demasiado salvaje.

—¿Fue difícil en esa familia convertirse en escritor?

—Imagínate, coño. Me tenía que esconder de mi propia familia. Tenía que esconder los libros para que no se burlaran.

—Usted ganó este premio con una novela medio en español. ¿Mejoró la situación de los latinos en Estados Unidos? ¿Las segundas generaciones ya no tienen que abandonar el español?

—El público norteamericano se está acostumbrando a ver un inglés bien mezclado con español. Para un latino, eso significa que se está mejorando el ambiente, porque en los Estados Unidos hay un prejuicio contra el español bastante grande.

—¿Un prejuicio de clase?

—Claro que hay un prejuicio de clase, pero también hay un prejuicio contra el idioma. Yo veo amigos míos, que son riquísimos, blanquitos, que vienen de buenísima familia, y cuando llegan a los Estados Unidos, no hablan ni papa de español.

—Eso los vuelve negros…

—Se vuelven negros, o peor, se vuelven malditos ilegales. Entonces, hay ese prejuicio en la cultura en general. Aunque yo he visto muchos cambios, los Estados Unidos siguen siendo un país, una cultura muy, muy antilatina.

—Ni inglés ni español. ¿Quién entiende su libro completamente?

—Cuando una novela tiene personajes que le llegan a la gente, yo creo que los lectores aguantan mucha mierda. Aunque encuentren palabras que no entienden. Yo creo que gané este maldito público por mis personajes. Y creo que a mucha gente que ha leído esta novela no le importa ni culo la cultura latina, ni quieren saber nada con el español, pero aguantaron por los personajes.

—Y lo que no entendieron, lo imaginaron.

—Tú sabes cómo es eso de leer, el lector está acostumbrado a no conocer muchas palabras. Y hay gente a la que le encanta ver el español mezclado con el inglés.

—Obama también es un hombre “mezcla”. ¿Es un clima de época? ¿Se acabaron los “puros”?

—Yo no creo ser tan optimista. Una cultura como la de Estados Unidos tiene varias ramas. Una es ese punto de vista, que somos todos mezcladitos, que no hay nada que valga la pena que no venga de otras cosas, de diferentes raíces. Pero también hay zonas de la cultura norteamericana que sueñan con una cultura pura.

—Anglosajona.

—Pureza, blanquedad. Dos impulsos existen en Estados Unidos. Nosotros somos la generación que metió a Obama en la Casa Blanca. Pero también la que quiere botar a los inmigrantes. Y ahora… cuando la economía se pone malísima la gente inmediatamente le cae encima a los inmigrantes.

—¿Hay un deseo de quedarse afuera de esa sociedad anglosajona cuando se habla spanglish?

—¡Yo no hablo spanglish, mi amor! Yo soy el único de la familia que habla un español tan muerto, y eso porque me crié con morenos, con african-americans. Mis hermanas, sus hijos, toditos hablan un español perfecto. Y sus hijos no son nada de spanglishparlantes.

—Pero usted escribe en spanglish.

—Bueno, no, porque mira, no es spanglish. Pero hay muchísimos escritores que mezclan inglés y español y nadie les pega spanglish. Yo creo que lo que sucede en esta novela es code-switching (NdeR: la mezcla de varios idiomas en una frase) entre español e inglés. La nueva generación es completamente bilingüe, habla bien los dos idiomas.

—Es decir que usted no le tiene ninguna fe al spanglish como idioma.

—¡Pero por favor! ¡Nunca! No veo al spanglish como un idioma, lo veo como una etapa.

—¿Cómo se siente cuando va a Santo Domingo?

—Es muy complejo. Me siento un inmigrante. Pero de otro tipo que en Estados Unidos.

—¿En Estados Unidos todavía se siente un inmigrante?

—¡Claro! ¿Tú crees que cuando uno domina el idioma y conoce más o menos la cultura eso cambia? Ser inmigrante es como ser alcohólico. Eso nunca se quita. Mis hijos, si nacen acá, no van a ser inmigrantes. Pero yo, siempre. Siempre, siempre, siempre.

“If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

- Lila Watson