Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Drawing on the case of women drug couriers and the politics of drug interdiction at the U.S. border, this paper examines the identity producing practices of U.S. illicit drug control policy as it relates to the production of a U.S. security state. Given the highly militarized discourses associated with the "war on drugs," I argue that those charged with border securitization at U.S. international airports struggle to make sense of women drug couriers because they do not fit the often hyper-masculinized images of the drug trafficking enemy. In the process of "making sense" of women drug couriers, I claim that they are constructed as victims or vamps--a take off of the madonna/whore dichotomy and the feminine counterparts to the masculinized enemy construction as well as that of the masculinist state protector.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Racialized women are frequently used at the lowest echelon of the drug trade hierarchy as “mules” – that is, as drug couriers who smuggle narcotics across borders. Although most of these women are driven by desperate circumstances, Canadian courts overstate their culpability for what they label “serious” and “violent” offences (R. v. Hamilton). The rigid application of sentencing principles of deterrence and moral blameworthiness has ensured that female drug couriers are disproportionately punished without any discernable impact on the availability of drugs.

In this presentation, I will explore how the harsh punishment of poor, racialized women for acting as drug couriers is symptomatic of a criminal justice system that resists, and ultimately denies, consideration of systemic discrimination in decision-making. This resistance deemphasizes mitigating factors that properly should be weighed in the determination of an appropriate sentence, and results in the overincarceration of racialized women and men. I will also consider the interests served by sentencing racialized women who act as mules to lengthy periods of incarceration. Through an application of the works of critical race theorists such as Guinier and Bell, I will explore how white communities benefit from the “othering” processes that construct criminality generally and drug offenders in particular.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Pittsburgh Courier was America's premier black weekly
between the war years (1919-1940). The paper was widely circulated not
only in the urban North but throughout the urban south and Midwest as
well. The Courier was "The voice" of black America, and its
editorials,
feature articles, and cartoons guided, explained, and directed public
opinion at home and abroad. At one point, the Courier had a larger
circulation in Florida than Pennsylvania.

Following a revolution in Haiti in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson
sent U. S. Marines "to teach the Haitians to elect good men." The
troops
arrived in 1915 and remained until 1934. Throughout this period, the
Courier
along with the Chicago Defender, Baltimore Afro-American, and Norfolk
Journal and Guide attempted to influence American foreign policy.
The Courier referenced the "archaic" foreign policy of Wilson, Warren
Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt. After Rothschild
Francis, the militant editor of the
Emancipator in St. Thomas, the U. S. Virgin Islands, was arrested for
publishing an article on civil rights, the Pittsburgh Courier made him
"a cause celebre."

After Herbert Hoover ascended to the presidency in 1929, the Courier
stepped up its attack in defense of Haiti. The Courier and the other
presses accentuated the "hypocrisy" inherent in American democracy,
the
loss of national sovereignty, the U.S. control of Haitian finances,
and
martial law. Meanwhile, the Courier aligned itself with national
organizations such e NAACP, and with national leaders such as James
Weldon Johnson, Mordecai Johnson, and W. E. B. Du Bois to push for
Haitianization.

But despite the Courier and the other presses efforts, the
adoption of a new constitution for Haiti moved slowly. On January 21,
1933, the Courier headlined: "Haitian Home Rule Still Idle." The U.S.
withdrew its troops in August 1934.

The above proposal was in part extracted from a published essay
titled: "The Response of the Black Press to the U. S. occupation of
Haiti, 1915-1934" which was published in the Journal of Negro History
in
1988 and reprinted in the first edition of the Journal of African
American History (JAAH) in Spring 1991. The committee may review the
entire essay at
http://www.clemson.edu/caah/africanamericanstudies/suggsart2.html

The above proposal will be a scientific examination of the Courier
only.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Bicycle messengers have been a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape since the 1980s. Using Sassen’s concept of global cities this paper attempts to explain the formation and persistence of the bicycle messenger industry. I argue that despite increasing importance of telematics bicycle messengers provide an essential economic function within global cities. This function comes from the ability to quickly deliver physical objects within a dense and congested urban environment.