Greenfield Cop Publicly Displays Confederate Flag

A sergeant in the Greenfield police department hung a Confederate flag in his garage and left the garage door open so the flag was visible from the public road. In a photo, the flag appears to be about 25 square feet. A police sergeant is a boss of police officers. The flag was visible at 85 Shelburne Road. The sergeant is Daniel McCarthy.

Rally photo by Jobs With Justice.

The person who took the photo gave the Valley Post permission to publish the photo but asked that their name be withheld for their safety. The Greenfield police chief confirmed that McCarthy publicly displayed the flag.

On December 3, there was a rally during the evening rush hour at the Greenfield Town Common to call on McCarthy to remove the Confederate flag. The event organizer told the Valley Post about 65 people attended the rally. It was organized by the local chapter of Jobs With Justice, which has a web site at www.jwj.org.

On June 18, Dylann Roof, a white man, shot and killed nine African American people at a church in South Carolina. The New York Times published a photo of the killer holding a confederate flag.

Bruce Levine is a history professor at the University of Illinois. In June, Levine wrote, “The Confederate States of America firmly and emphatically stood for slavery and white supremacy from its birth. Modern-day racists like Roof who brandish Confederate symbols are not distorting their meaning. On the contrary: these racists stand squarely within the Confederate tradition.”

About 14 percent of Americans are black. About 38 percent of people in American prisons are black. No other nation on earth incarcerates such a high percentage of its people. As of 2008, the USA had about 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. "England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63." That's according to "U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations," an article by Adam Liptak that appeared in the New York Times on April 23, 2008. Those numbers were virtually unchanged as of 2013.

The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond explains why the average black person is much poorer than the average white person. Rich people can afford better lawyers.

While the chances of dramatically reducing the USA's prison population may seem small, in 1989, the chances of Nelson Mandela -- who was then seven years into a life sentence in prison -- becoming president of South Africa were also small. In 1994, Mandela was elected president and one of the world’s most brutal and racist governments was overthrown.

In the United States, 150 years ago, ending slavery and granting women the right to vote both seemed unlikely. Mass movements of ordinary people won justice.

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