DREAMERS ARE NOT ANIMALS NEITHER ARE THOUSANDS OF BLACK MEN INCARCERATED AND KILLED BY POLICE

DREAMERS ARE NOT ANIMALS NEITHER ARE THOUSANDS OF BLACK MEN INCARCERATED AND KILLED BY POLICE THE LAST 8 YRS WHILE OBAMA WAS IN OFFICE.


Sources: Huffpost, YouTube


****** The Black Male Incarceration Problem Is Real and It’s Catastrophic


“We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America.” President Barack Obama

In a recent article the widely held belief surrounding the number of black men incarcerated outnumbering the number of black men enrolled in higher education was refuted. The piece is titled “The myth that there are more black men in prison than in college, debunked in one chart”.The author appears to believe through proving this assertion about prison and education ratios to be inaccurate either a point of great progress can be demonstrated, or an overstatement of calamity about the state of African American men can be corrected.

Yet the real issue is the number of people in prison should never be similar to the number educated. For most in our country this in fact holds true, but for black men the two numbers are in fact close and that is the inescapable problem. The supposed myth on its face may in fact be incorrect. There may be more black men in college than in prison, but the truth still stands that there are a socially catastrophic number of black men behind bars in the United States. Let me give a bit of context for this discussion. Referencing the same article above

“The Census estimates that approximately 18,508,926 people in the U.S. population are black males, of all ages...The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Prisoner Statistics Program reports that in that same year, 526,000 were in state or federal prisons, and, as of mid-year 2013, 219,660 were in local jails, making for a total of about 745,000 behind bars”
To give a lens for viewing this data India is a country of 1.2 Billion people, the country in total only has around 380,000 prisoners. In fact, there are more African American men incarcerated in the U.S. than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined.

As stated by Nicole Porter in the piece“Politics of Black Lives Matter”

...countries have the policies and prison populations they choose. Between 1965 and 1990, a period during which overall and violent crime rates tripled in Germany, Finland, and the United States, German politicians chose to hold the imprisonment rate flat, Finnish politicians chose to substantially reduce theirs, and American politicians generally enacted policies that sent more people to prison, along with lengthened prison terms.
Today in the United States there are approximately 18 million black men, and nearly 161 million women of all races. According to the Sentencing Project the total number of women incarcerated in America is about 200,000. Even more shocking despite the population of black men being about a tenth the size, there are nearly 4 times as many black men incarcerated in comparison to women of all races in the U.S.

To give a more appropriate contrast than just black men in college and black men incarcerated, lets look at the debated education vs incarceration reality for white women and black men comparatively. According to the Census in total there are about 8.5 million white women in college, and there are just 60,000 white women incarcerated. For black men the numbers are as listed above, there are about 1.4 million black men enrolled in higher education, and a cataclysmic 745,000 behind bars, with another large sum on probation and parole.

So in the end the contrasting of college enrollment vs. incarceration is not the key comparative. While it is part of an analysis, only by applying it with more depth can we see a fuller and more accurate picture. It is more important to look at these rates and be honest about the advantaged, and disadvantaged. The key is that as then presidential candidate Barack Obama stated “We have more work to do...” We can only take steps and start this work by asking the hard question of why historical differences in both opportunity and misfortune have left us such a disparity in access to opportunity for all.

POLICE KILLED THOUSANDS OF BLACK MEN, LATINO LEADERS REMAINED SILENT, WHY??

POLICE KILLED THOUSANDS OF BLACK MEN, LATINO LEADERS WERE SILENT, WHY??

AS LONG AS IT WAS YOUNG BLACK MEN UNEMPLOYED AND MURDERED THE LATINO COMMUNITY REMAINED INDIFFERENT.

BUT WHEN TRUMP TELLS POLICE TO ARREST & DEPORT MS-13 GANG MEMBERS LATINO LEADERS SCREAM "BLOODY MURDER".

CAN YOU SAY RACISM & HYPOCRISY?


Sources: ABC News, BBC NEWS, CNN, Youtube


*****Why do US police keep killing unarmed black men?


Recent high-profile cases of unarmed black men dying at the hands of the US police have sparked protests and civil unrest in several American cities.

The deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray are - some claim - evidence of long-standing problems with police racism and excessive violence.

Four expert witnesses talk to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme, including the head of President Obama's taskforce on police reform, Charles Ramsey.

"I'm 24 years old. I'm a black man. It's incredibly depressing to see people just like me who have been killed.

"I started the project to provide answers in the wake of the shooting of Mike Brown. It's very heavy to read these stories, and yet it feels like the right work to do. It's important.

"There are statistics on all kinds of violent crimes. And yet, when it comes to people being killed by police officers, there's no data on that. So a light bulb went off in my head. I looked at two crowd-sourcing databases which collected all of the names. I then went through the media reports listing each of those people who were killed."

He counted 1,149 people of all ethnic groups killed by the police in 2014.

"I identified whether they were armed or unarmed. I identified them by race by looking at if there was an obituary or another picture of them online.

"In the aftermath of Ferguson [where the unarmed teenager Michael Brown was killed], there was this big question 'Is this a pattern, is this an isolated incident?' What [my data] shows is that Ferguson is everywhere. All over the country you're seeing black people being killed by police."

The youngest recorded was 12, the oldest 65. More than 100 were unarmed.

"Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people. More unarmed black people were killed by police than unarmed white people last year. And that's taking into account the fact that black people are only 14% of the population here.

"It goes back to this question of how do they perceive young black men? There's something in the US called Vision Zero, a commitment by mayors to achieve zero traffic fatalities in a specified timeframe.

"We haven't seen mayors step up and make clear commitments to eliminate the level of police violence in their communities. I think that says a lot about the relative value that they place on those constituents' lives."

"I'm a white, middle-class professional woman. I enjoy a great deal of privilege. And I certainly have the black crime implicit bias: I am more likely to see threat in African Americans than I would Caucasians.

"Racial profiling was the number one issue facing police [in the 1990s], and I came to understand two things. Bias in policing was not just a few officers in a few departments; and, overwhelmingly, the police in this country are well-intentioned. I couldn't put those two thoughts together in my head until I was introduced to the science of implicit bias.

"We all have implicit biases whereby we link groups to stereotypes, possibly producing discriminatory behaviour - even in individuals who are totally against prejudice.

"The original 'Shoot, Don't Shoot' studies have a subject sitting in front a computer monitor and photos pop up very quickly, showing either a white or black man. That man either has a gun in his hand or a neutral object like a cell phone. The subject is told 'if you see a threat, hit the 'shoot' key and if you don't see a threat, hit the 'don't shoot' key'. "

The studies suggest that implicit biases affect these actions - for example in some studies people are quicker to 'shoot' an unarmed black man than an unarmed white man. A Department of Justice report released in March looking at the use of deadly force by Philadelphia police, supports the idea that police are susceptible to implicit bias:

"One of the things they looked at is what they called threat perception failure. The officer believed that the person was armed and it turned out not to be the case. And these failures were more likely to occur when the subject was black [even if the officers were themselves black or Latino].

"Officers, like the rest of us, have an implicit bias linking blacks to crime. So the black crime implicit bias might be implicated in some of the use of deadly force against African-Americans in our country.

"An important message in our training is that stereotypes are based in part on fact, and we have to recognise this because in our country, people of colour are disproportionately represented amongst the people who commit street crime.

"That does not give you licence to treat every individual in a group as if they fit the stereotype, that's where we go wrong."

"The first rule of law enforcement is to go home at the end of your shift. The key principle is officer survival. That's what all training is designed to promote. But it ends up endangering civilians rather than preserving their safety.

"The warrior culture - the belief that police officers are soldiers engaged in battle with the criminal element - that has contributed to some shootings that were most likely avoidable.

"It starts in police recruitment videos that show officers shooting rifles, strapping on hard body armour, using force. That attracts a particular type of candidate, and the Police Academy further entrenches this.

"It teaches officers to be afraid by telling them that policing is an incredibly dangerous profession.

"Officers are trained to view every encounter as a potential deadly force incident: you walk up to a person who is loitering outside of a convenience store, their hands are in their pockets. You as the officer begin talking to them, and without saying a word they pull a gun out of their pocket and begin shooting you.

"Training involves an average of about 60 hours on deadly force - the use of firearms - and just over 60 hours on self-defence. Compare that to de-escalation conflict resolution training: the average there is only eight hours of training, and most of that is classroom-based.

"When the military is designing a mission, they have in mind the fact that they're going to lose soldiers. The police profession has strongly repudiated that notion. No officer fatalities are acceptable.

"If all of the states had the same approach and the same numbers of officer-involved homicides as the best states, the states that had the fewest, we could expect about 300 to 600 lives to be saved every year."

"We live in a society where everybody wants to point fingers, but we have a lot of deeply-rooted societal problems: poverty, education, poor housing stock.

"We've got to deal with the issue of extreme poverty. Philadelphia has the highest rate of poverty among US cities. You have an underground economy that supports many of these neighbourhoods - drugs, prostitution, illegal cigarette sales.

"Why are police in large numbers in some of these neighbourhoods? We have to deal with the reality that there's a disproportionate amount of crime occurring in many of these neighbourhoods.

"We've had several police officers shot and killed during the past seven years. I've had eight officers killed in the line of duty - five shot dead. So there is violence that takes place against police as well, and that needs to be taken into consideration."

To tackle the problem, he has divided Philadelphia into separate areas with their own teams:

"They have monthly community meetings to talk about crime and disorder. Cadets that come out of the academy are assigned to foot patrol right away, they don't automatically go into cars. So that they actually get to know people in these challenged communities, good folks that are there entrapped in certain conditions."

In response to the Department of Justice report criticising Philadelphia police's use of force, Commissioner Ramsey introduced new training that focuses on de-escalation, as well as armed response:

"Putting them in scenarios where they have to exercise good judgement and being able to critique that so that when they are in these real live situations, their reaction, their response, is really more consistent with what the actual threat is."

MS-13 GANG MEMBERS & DRUG CARTEL LEADERS ARE BEING PROSECUTED & DEPORTED AFTER 8 YRS OF ROAMING FREE

MS-13 GANG MEMBERS & DRUG CARTEL LEADERS ARE FINALLY BEING PROSECUTED AND DEPORTED AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF ROAMING FREE:

OBAMA & KEY DEMS ALLOWED MS-13 GANG MEMBERS TO COMMIT CRIMES AND BLAMED THOSE CRIMES ON BLACK MEN.

UNDER OBAMA TEMP AGENCIES AND OTHER EMPLOYERS HIRED LATINO MEN NOT BLACK MEN.

UNDER OBAMA POLICE WERE ORDERED TO ATTACK BLACK MEN WHILE IGNORING MS-13 GANG MEMBERS.

OBAMA & KEY DEMS DIVIDED THIS COUNTRY TO WIN 2016 ELECTION YET THEY STILL LOST.

TRUMP IS MAKING AMERICA SAFE AGAIN AND HEALING BLACK & LATINO COMMUNITIES BY PUTTING THINGS BACK IN ORDER.


Sources: Breitbart, Newsmax, Fox News, Youtube


**** Trump to MS-13: We’re Sending You ‘The Hell out of Our Country


Speaking at a rally in Harrisburg, PA, President Donald Trump assured American citizens that the Salvadoran gang known as MS-13 would be quickly removed from the country.

Following chants of “build that wall,” President Trump addressed the crowd in relation to the deadly Salvadoran gang MS-13:

“We will build a wall folks, don’t even worry about it. Go to sleep. As the final thing we needed, we need it.” said President Trump in relation to the wall, adding:

If the Democrats knew what the hell they were doing, they would approve it so easy because we want to stop crime in our country. Obviously, they don’t mind illegals coming in. They don’t mind drugs pouring in. They don’t mind MS-13 coming in.

We are getting them all out of here. Members of congress who will be voting on border security have a simple choice. They can either vote to help drug cartels and criminal aliens trying to enter the United States, like frankly, the Democrats are doing, or they can vote to help American citizens and American families be safe.

That is the choice.

President Trump continued:

At the heart of my administration’s efforts to restore the rule of law has been a nationwide crackdown on criminal gangs, and that means taking the fight to the sanctuary cities that shield these dangerous criminals from removal. The last very weak administration allowed thousands and thousands of gang members to cross our borders and enter into our communities, where they wreaked havoc on our citizens. The bloodthirsty cartel known as MS-13 has infiltrated our schools, threatening innocent children.

We have seen the horrible assaults and many killings all along Long Island where I grew up. We are seeing the vicious spread of transnational gangs into all 50 states and the human suffering they bring with them. I have been with the parents.

It is devastation. A very respected General recently told me that MS-13 are the equivalent in their meanness to Al Qaeda. My administration will not rest until we have dismantled these violent gangs, and we are doing it rapidly, and we are sending them the hell out of our country.

At this point, President Trump received. thunderous applause. He went on to say, “We are sending them back home where they belong. One by one, we are finding the illegal immigrant drug dealers, members and killers and removing them from our country. Once they are gone, you see what we are doing. They will not let them back in. They are not coming back.”

NO BLACK MEN WANTED, ONLY LATINO MEN FOR TEMP AGENCIES (CLASS ACTION RACISM LAWSUIT)

NO BLACK MEN WANTED, ONLY LATINO MEN FOR TEMP AGENCIES (CLASS ACTION RACISM LAWSUIT):

TEMP AGENCIES SUED FOR REFUSING TO HIRE BLACK MEN, HIRING LATINO ONLY MEN INSTEAD.

YET BLACK MEN BEING SENT TO JAIL FOR UNPAID DEBTS DUE TO UNEMPLOYMENT.

CALLING BLACK MEN LAZY, VIOLENT THUGS BUT WON'T GIVE THEM JOBS.


Sources: CBS News, Chicago Tribune, NY Times, NJ.com, The Advise Show, Youtube


**** Discrimination suit alleges black temp workers passed over for Hispanics


group of African-American men filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Chicago federal court alleging systematic discrimination by a temporary staffing agency and several of its clients they say passed over black applicants in favor of Hispanic workers.
The lawsuit against Personnel Staffing Group, which does business as MVP Staffing, is seeking class-action status. The clients named as defendants are Blommer Chocolate Co., Segerdahl Graphics, Mercury Plastics, MPS Chicago (which does business as Jet Lithocolor), The Penray Cos., ARI Packaging and Lawrence Foods.
The alleged discrimination took place at MVP Staffing's Cicero branch office, which the lawsuit claims was directed by clients not to send African-American workers to their companies for assignments.
Those wishes allegedly were communicated using code words, according to testimony from former dispatchers and on-site representatives given in prior cases and attached to the filing as evidence. For example, according to the lawsuit, "guapos," which translates to pretty boys, would be used to refer to African-Americans to suggest they don't want to do dirty work. The terms "feos" (translated to mean "dirty ones")," "bilingues" (bilinguals) and "los que escuchan La Ley" (referring to people who listen to Spanish-language radio station La Ley) were used to refer to Hispanic laborers, the lawsuit alleges.
Christopher Williams of Workers' Law Office, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said such a model is prevalent in the fast-growing temporary staffing industry, where competition between agencies puts pressure to keep wages low.
An immigrant-dominated workforce, with language barriers and legal status concerns, is less likely to complain about failure to pay overtime, workplace injuries, wage theft or overwork, according to Williams. He described dozens of white vans that pick people up in the Little Village neighborhood, populated mostly by Mexican immigrants, and drive them to the suburbs for jobs, while black applicants will show up early at the agency office and wait all day before being told there's no work.
"They get up early, they make their way there, they get there on the promise that there might be work for them," Williams said. "And they watch as it changes from a very mixed room in the morning to mostly African-Americans left in the afternoon."
Williams, who has filed several federal discrimination lawsuits against individual companies before Tuesday's class action, said the complaints have spurred some staffing agencies to hire more African-Americans, but cultural issues inside the companies create a revolving door. Because of the emphasis on Hispanic recruiting, often the company plant managers and assembly line leaders are Hispanic as well, and "they didn't want them there," Williams said.
A person who answered the phone at MVP Staffing said no one was available to comment. None of the other companies named as defendants in the lawsuit immediately responded to requests for comment.
In Illinois, the unemployment rate among blacks, at about 14 percent, is nearly three times that of whites (5 percent) and nearly twice that of Hispanics (7.8 percent), according to a May report from the Economic Policy Institute, which at the time said Illinois had the highest black unemployment rate in the country.
Williams, who has spent most of his career focused on immigrant workers' rights, said he sees the devastation of joblessness in black communities where there are already barriers to employment, such as criminal records, that leads to "a level of desperation."
"These (temp) jobs are the entry level to the entry-level jobs," Williams said. "They would be perfect for this class of people who make up the extremely large population (of people with criminal records) and they end up being denied these jobs."
Norman Green, one of the five plaintiffs, said he has felt the discrimination at MVP and other staffing agencies in Chicago.
He described arriving at the agency early, around 4 or 5 a.m., with his steel-toe boots on and ready to work, signing his name at the top of a check-in paper. He said he would sit for hours and wait while Hispanics would arrive and be sent out to work sites right away. But the agencies would tell him to come back, he said, so he would borrow from money from friends and family to make the trip and get there early only to sit and wait again.
"A lot of black people just sitting there mad that they can't work," said Green, 33, who lives in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. When he has gotten jobs he feels everyone is talking about him in Spanish, and "it's just uncomfortable."
Green said the pattern, based on the perception that blacks don't want to work, is "clear-as-day racist" and unfairly applied to him even though "every time I walk into a temp agency I work my butt off."
Green, who has eight kids, seven of whom live with him, said he lost faith in the temp industry and instead supports his family doing construction and other manual work for family members.
In an exhibit attached to the lawsuit, former MVP dispatcher Rosa Ceja testified that she had been yelled at by representatives of client companies when she assigned African-American workers to jobs and was warned by MVP managers and owners not to send blacks because MVP could lose the account if they did.
Another MVP employee, Pamela Sanchez, who worked as an on-site manager at a bakery named in a prior lawsuit, said in an exhibit that she was instructed directly by bakery employees not to send black workers and to "DNR" (Do Not Return) them on the rare occasions she did. She said she would review lists of laborers to be sent to a shift and if a name didn't sound Hispanic, she would cancel them, even once they had already been assigned, because she knew they would be rejected. She added that she was told to have black applicants complete criminal backgrounds disclosures but not Hispanics.
Williams estimated there could be 8,000 to 10,000 potential class members for Tuesday's lawsuit.
Andrew Wells, director of workforce development at the Chicago Urban League, said he believes hiring discrimination plays "a fairly big role" in persistently high black unemployment, which he links to high crime rates.
"You see so much chaos and violence in the community, that's because you're seeing so many people not working," said Wells, who is not connected to the complaint.
Wells said spotlighting discriminatory patterns is one step toward starting conversations across sectors — government, nonprofit and private — about how to address the problem. His organization also helps people build workplace skills, buy homes, rebuild credit and start their own businesses that employ people from the community.
"People should be employed based on their ability to do the job, their talent," Wells said.
The lawsuit comes during a heightened debate over immigrant labor as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office with promises of restoring American jobs.
Williams said there are plenty of jobs for everyone as the temp industry continues to expand, but hiring needs to be fair and better reflect the population that is applying. Currently about 70 percent of the population around the Cicero office is Hispanic and 30 percent is African-American, but 98 percent of job placements go to Hispanics, he said.
"If we can shift the balance, our hope is that the jobs continue to be available to anyone in the community who wants to work," he said.

MS-13 GANG VIOLENCE INCREASED UNDER OBAMA LIKE ISIL (BORDER PATROL)

MS-13 GANG VIOLENCE INCREASED UNDER OBAMA LIKE ISIL:

MS-13 GANG MEMBERS CONSIST MAINLY OF LATINO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

UNDER OBAMA MEDIA ONLY FOCUSED ON BLACK GANG VIOLENCE.

US TROOPS SHOULD PATROL TEXAS-MEXICO BORDERS.

TIME FOR GOP & DEMS TO UNITE AGAINST ALL GANG VIOLENCE.


Sources: Fox News, CBS, Business Insider, YouTube


***** How MS-13, One of America’s Most Dangerous Gangs, is Funded


President Donald Trump is ready to crack down on the infamous, money-making MS-13 gang, after a violent quadruple homicide in Long Island, N.Y. last week left four teenagers dead and badly beaten. Trump is promising to remove the gang from U.S. streets “fast.”


MS-13, a group that was started by Central American immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s, is known for its ruthless and violent tactics. Most of the founding members were from El Salvador and fled to the U.S. during the country’s civil war that lasted 12 years, from 1980-92. Since then the gang’s membership has ballooned to at least 10,000 members in the United States and more than 30,000 worldwide, according to the FBI and Treasury Department.

“[MS-13] is one of the most dangerous and rapidly expanding criminal gangs in the world today,” Philip Holloway, a legal analyst and former police officer, told FOX Business. “MS-13’s mottos is ‘Mata, roba, viola, controla’ (Kill, steal, rape, control),” he noted.

The gang has managed to expand its business tentacles into a variety of illegal activities, despite sanctions levied against the group by the U.S Treasury Department under the Obama administration. “They are involved in multiple crimes including murder, racketeering, drug trafficking, sex trafficking and human trafficking including prostitution,” Holloway said.

MS-13 also uses violence as a means for extortion, which constitutes much of its income, University of Houston sociology professor Luis Salinas told FOX Business.

“A lot of the violence is part of the extortion … and prostitution. Once they get here they get these individuals and extort money from their families. They’re also into extortion for protection of this neighborhood or that neighborhood,” Salinas said.

In 2015 the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of three members of the gang who were funneling funds back to higher-ups in El Salvador from prison. These actions were an attempt “disrupt” MS-13’s financial network by cutting off profits from illegal activities in the United States, the Treasury Department said. In 2012 the Obama administration designated MS-13 a transnational crime organization and implemented sanctions against six members in 2013.

While the U.S. government attempts to target MS-13’s earnings, targeting its culture is proving more difficult. The fierce loyalty among members is unique, Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, told FOX Business.

“They're very cohesive and often directed by imprisoned bosses in El Salvador to recruit and expand in American communities. That tends to mean there's an aggressive internal enforcement mechanism which equates to internal discipline involving physical violence and murder for disrespect or betrayal,” he said.

Membership in street gangs showed no signs of decreasing, according to the FBI’s 2015 National Gang Report, and MS-13 was identified as one of the top gangs involved in cross-border crimes. Recently, law enforcement has taken a tougher stance on making arrests; a move spurred by Attorney General Jeff Session’s focus on illegal immigrant crime, Hosko said.

“MS is a clear example [of illegal immigrant crime]. Affiliates would cross the border and make their way to American enclaves where they found friends and relatives living here already,” he said. “Citizenship is a combination of American born (many to illegals) and illegal immigrants.”

Salinas said about 60-70 percent of current U.S. members in MS-13 are immigrants, the majority of which could be illegal.

On Tuesday during an interview on Fox News, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he believes the gang “could qualify” as a terrorist group. In El Salvador, MS-13 has already been designated as a terrorist organization.

Hosko said President Trump’s administration is changing the narrative quickly for both gang members and law enforcement in the United States.

“[The FBI] believed that claiming of ‘credible fear’ of persecution, gang retaliation, other bad acts in their homeland to immigration authorities likely resulted in widespread release of bad actors into the U.S. as their claims were being evaluated. With Obama, that was acceptable risk. I think that's changing fast.”

.

UBER & ERIC HOLDER versus KASIM REED & RACIST FINGERPRINTS (JOBS)

UBER & ERIC HOLDER vs KASIM REED & RACIST FINGERPRINTS

WHY IS KASIM REED (BLACK MAN) FIGHTING SO HARD TO STOP UBER FROM HIRING BLACK DRIVERS?

ERIC HOLDER PARTNERS WITH TRANSPORTATION GIANT UBER TO HELP EMPLOY QUALIFIED DRIVERS.

Sources: AJC, Sacbee, YouTube

***** Former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder backs Uber in letter to Atlanta mayor

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has written a letter to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed in support of Uber, as the city considers regulations of Uber pickups at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

The Atlanta airport earlier this year proposed to legalize airport ride-share pickups and require fingerprint-based background checks for Uber X and Lyft drivers to pick up at Hartsfield-Jackson. Taxi and limo drivers who have long been fingerprinted say they want a level playing field.

Uber and Lyft have objected to the proposed requirement, saying they do their own background checks, which do not require fingerprints. The city of Atlanta is revising the airport proposal but has not said how it will change.

Holder, who was the nation’s first black attorney general, argues in the letter to Reed: “Requiring fingerprint-based background checks for non-law enforcement purposes can have a discriminatory impact on communities of color.”

Holder’s reasoning, also voiced by Uber: FBI records may lack information about the final outcome of some cases, and may not indicate if someone arrested was charged or convicted, so a fingerprint-based check “can prevent people from getting a job even if they were never found guilty of a crime.” That “disproportionately disadvantages people who have been arrested,” which “can have a discriminatory impact on communities of color,” Holder wrote.

Reed’s office and the airport acknowledged receiving the letter but declined to comment on it.

Holder, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 and left office in April 2015, works for law firm Covington & Burling LLP. The firm has a relationship with Uber that is also connected to Holder. Holder’s former chief of staff Margaret Richardson also now works at Covington & Burling and is a member of Uber’s U.S. Safety Advisory Board, providing “critical recommendations and counsel” to Uber.

Holder has written recent similar letters to officials in New Jersey and Chicago amid ride-share debates there.

And former U.S. Secret Service director Mark Sullivan also wrote a letter in support of Uber to Reed. Sullivan is also on Uber’s safety advisory board.

“In my opinion the City’s proposal to require a fingerprint-based background check for drivers doing pick-ups with Uber and Lyft at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlatna International Airport will neither increase nor improve airport security,” Sullivan wrote in his letter. He also wrote: “

Because there is a significant lack of information about the final outcome of cases, an individual may be prevented from a work opportunity even if he or she was never convicted or even charged with a crime.”

However, the state’s requirements for a “for-hire endorsement” on a driver license specify that in order to be eligible, applicants shall not have been convicted of a felony or crime of moral turpitude.

“The standards for the state level are a conviction,” said Georgia Bureau of Investigation director of privacy and compliance Dawn Diedrich. A plea of nolo contendere is also considered a conviction.

Diedrich said if there is an arrest on record without information about whether there was a conviction, “you can ask the applicant” if the charges were dismissed.