Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions:
An Enforcer of White Supremacy and Extreme Patriarchy

November 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This week, Donald Trump selected the longtime Alabama white supremacist (and U.S. senator) Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to be the next Attorney General of the U.S.

Sessions first gained national attention in 1986, when he was nominated for a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan. In his confirmation hearings, it was exposed that in 1984, when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama, Sessions led the prosecution of three Black civil rights workers for attempting to register Black people to vote in areas of Alabama where virtually no Black people had been able to vote, near the infamous town of Selma. They faced 100 years in jail. The three were acquitted by a jury in four hours.

In his confirmation hearing, an associate testified that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases.

A Black former assistant U.S. attorney testified that Sessions "stated that he believed the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation PUSH and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values." And that Sessions said he believed the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he learned its members smoked marijuana, something the former assistant U.S. attorney testified was not a joke, but something he took as "a serious statement" of Sessions' views. Sessions made this contemptible statement about the KKK in the aftermath of a trial of two Klansmen for slitting the throat of a Black man in Mobile, Alabama.

Sessions' nomination was rejected by a majority-Republican Senate committee. Only two nominees for federal judgeships had been rejected by the Senate in 50 years.

Soon after, he became Attorney General in Alabama, and then a U.S. senator.

Enforcer of Fundamentalist Patriarchy

Sessions opposes Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that established a woman's right to abortion. Sessions voted to defund Planned Parenthood. And this was not just to prevent women from terminating dangerous or unwanted pregnancies with abortions. Sessions opposed funding for Planned Parenthood period.

Sessions opposes the right to marriage between same-sex couples and has voted to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban that. He voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act that says violence against people because of their race, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity is a crime. The Human Rights Campaign dubs him an unambiguous "anti-gay rights" legislator with a 0% record on gay issues.

* * *

Jeff Sessions is a lifelong racist; he is steeped in the culture of white supremacy, and has for decades used the powers of his offices to impose it.

He has contempt for immigrants, and thinks that all immigrants, whether legal or "illegal," create "cultural problems" in this country.

He has voted to restrict abortion rights at every opportunity he's had, he has "given a pass" to violent assaults on abortion clinics, and doesn't think grabbing a woman's genitals is sexual assault.

Donald Trump said he is "unbelievably impressed" with Sessions and on the basis of this record announced he will nominate him for Attorney General of the United States.

 

 

For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.