Ben Jealous announces Father's Day Anti-Stop and Frisk March at Netroots Nation
Commentary By Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Those of us Black Kos community members who went to Netroots Nation (and a lot of us were there) probably all have different impressions to report.
I was overjoyed to hear NAACP President Ben Jealous announce a strong coalition of civil rights groups, people of color, unions, and LGBT groups who are joining forces on Father's Day in New York City to protest NY's draconian stop and frisk laws.
I plan to be there and hope to see those of you who are in the NY area.
It will be a silent march - down 5th Avenue, lke those held by the NAACP in the past.
The Facts about Stop and Frisk
In 2011, NYPD officers conducted 685,724 street stops, a more than 600 percent increase since Mayor Bloomberg’s first year in office when officers conducted 97,000 stops. More than 4 million people have been stopped under this administration.
The massive spike in street interrogations has done little to remove firearms from the streets, the ostensible reason behind the stop- and-frisk regime. Instead, the wholesale violation of civil rights has sown mistrust between police officers and the communities they are supposed to protect.
Nine out of 10 people stopped are totally innocent, meaning they are neither arrested nor ticketed.
No gun is retrieved in 99.9 percent of stops.
The proportion of gun seizures to stops has fallen sharply — only 780 guns were confiscated last year, not much more than the 604 guns seized in 2003, when officers made 160,851 stops.
Though they account for only percent of the city’s population, black and Latino males between the ages of 14-24 accounted for percent of the stops in 2011. The number of stops of young black men exceeded the entire city population of young black men.
You all know how I feel about coalition building.
This was great news.
LGBT Groups Condemn Stop and Frisk, Unveil National Coalition to Fight Racial Profiling, Police Harassment
New York, NY — On Tuesday, June 5, at the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, where a backlash against police harassment in June 1969 launched the modern LGBT rights movement, LGBT organizations from around the country joined civil rights leaders, labor leaders, and elected officials to announce support for the campaign against stop and frisk, and participation in the Father's Day silent march against racial profiling, which has been organized by the NAACP, National Action Network, and 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
The Stonewall gathering was convened by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which played a lead role in bringing LGBT organizations together to unveil this unprecedented national coalition that will apply a new source of pressure on the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg to curtail the stop and frisk policy. At the event, stop and frisk was criticized by a long list of speakers who called it both ineffective as a public safety tool and blatantly discriminatory against LGBT people and people of color.
It was a joy and a pleasure to once again hear Van Jones. The brother is fierce and he rallied us all to take on the Tea Party.
I was disappointed that our panel - Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere was not videotaped this year. I hear there is audio. I hope someone will tell me where.
Was good to see a message from the POTUS.
Though there were more poc's in attendance than any of the previous years, NN still needs to do better-especially engaging local folks.
Shanikka pointed out Lani Guinier was in attendance-she needed to be one of the keynote, or major speakers.
And though the Native American caucus was awesome-let's hope the 3rd try is the charm and our brothers and sisters get a panel next year in San Jose.
This years black caucus meeting was not only well attended, but there was forthright debate and discussion, from varying perspectives, on how we should move forward.
There was a major session on the Criminal Justice system which imho was not strong enough. Perhaps next year they can get activists like Angela Davis or Michelle Alexander.
HIV/AIDS was not really dealt with-though many of us concerned with this issue did manage to network.
I want to thank David (dopper0189) for pulling together and moderating a great panel again - and my fellow panalists - navajo, ian and shanikka.
Black Kos took a short survey while there - as soon as we can dopper will post the results.
Mostly I was elated to get to hug and hang out with many of you porch folks and to make some new friends as well.
Those of you who were there - please post your thoughts to the comments-those of you who couldn't be with us, hope perhaps we will see you next year.
I left out of there humming this tune.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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For those people so disapointed in Obama they're thinking of sitting this election out. Think of the Romney DOJ working WITH Governor Rick Scott. Colorlines: The Bizarre and Confusing Standoff Between Florida and DOJ over Voter Purging
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The state of Florida is defying orders from the federal government to cease a voter purging program they say they’re not conducting. Topping that, the state is seeking access to a federal database it already has access to. Still worse, Florida is saying that the Department of Justice’s enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act actually denies people their right to vote. A love bizarre.
The confusion began when Gov. Rick Scott’s administration introduced a program to the public last month that purports to identify “non-citizens” who might be registered to vote. Last week, the Department of Justice asked Gov. Scott’s Secretary of State Kent Detzner to stop the program because it appears to violate federal civil rights and voter registration laws, and because dozens of citizens eligible to vote kept turning up on the state’s “non-citizen” list. Scott and Detzner responded yesterday that they weren’t stopping anything, and that it’s the federal government who is violating laws by not granting Florida access to an immigration database so they can find more “non-citizens.”
The standoff has been all heat and no light around a poorly designed and poorly timed voter purging scheme. Meanwhile, the votes of thousands of Floridian U.S. citizens are threatened because of a pure hunch from Gov. Scott that aliens might be voting.
The whole mess started last month, or at least that’s when Detzner announced a “new Initiative to remove non-citizens from Florida voter rolls.” But the real genesis for the program was early 2011, right after Gov. Scott took office, when he had a side chat with his then-State Secretary Kurt Browning about “non-citizens” voting. Neither the governor nor Browning had any evidence of this actually being a problem, but Browning told Scott it was an issue anyway. So started a review of the state’s voter registration lists by state election officials.
So when did the program actually start? Well, it depends on who’s asking the question. A FAQ from Gov. Scott’s website, posted yesterday, reads “The process to remove non-U.S. citizens from Florida’s voter database actually began in Spring 2011.” It wasn’t publicized until May 9, though, which is when the state sent out letters to county supervisors of elections, who were directed to forward the letters to about 2,600 people the state suspected were “non-citizens.”
It’s safer to say the program began when the county supervisors received the letters, which was mid-May, because that started the clock on a 30-day deadline for the letters’ recipients to turn themselves in and prove their citizenship so that they wouldn’t be purged. Those 2,600 names came from a list of 182,000 people created by the Department of State (DOS) and the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV). This process apparently did begin early last year when DHSMV used their database of Floridian drivers licenses holders to find names of people who were not full citizens when they received their state ID
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Change New York City with the "Stop-and-Frisk Phone App" Ebony: SHOOT THE POLICE: Why Citizens Must Challenge Legal Police Harassment.
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I recently found myself in a conversation with three White males. As we made small talk, one asked me, “So what do you think of this Stop and Frisk thing?” I took a moment before responding and asked, “What do you think about it?” The questioner responded, “I don’t know. Seems unfair. But doesn’t it make New York safer?”
Unfair? Yes. A safer NYC? Definitely not. I reminded my chat mate that only 2 percent of stops result in contraband being found and that 88 percent didn’t end in any summons or arrest. I told them it by any metric it wasn’t effective policing but it could be seen as effective harassment of Black and Latino youth in New York City.
The men's eyes began to widen as I rattled off statistics and expressed my concern for my younger brothers and sisters who were too often viewed as the embodiment of delinquency by the New York Police Department. One man responded, “That sucks!” I responded, “Until people who are not likely to be stopped and frisked begin to conscientiously object to it, this practice is going to continue.”
One of the main issues with oppression is that it is most meaningful to those who experience it. If you don’t experience it, your privilege often blinds you to it's presence and/or convinces bystanders there is nothing they can do to help stop it. We all have a stake in ending oppression and making our communities more safe and livable. With the launch of the “Stop and Frisk Watch” app by the New York Civil Liberties Union there is a way for all of us to become involved in ending police misconduct.
When it comes to stop and frisk, a new generation of Black and Latino youngsters are coming of age believing that having their bodies constantly searched, their intentions questioned and feeling under siege in their own communities is normal, if not natural. For years now, the Center for Constitutional Rights has been pressing the NYPD to release information on their tactics of stopping and frisking on the streets of New York. Each subsequent year the numbers get worse, but there has been little collective response from New Yorkers or nationally.
Here is the link, it works on the Android platform: The “Stop and Frisk Watch” app
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Where Will CeCe McDonald Serve Her Time? Colorlines: The Devil is in the Details
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When I first heard that Crishaun “CeCe” McDonald—the 24-year-old black transwoman prosecuted for surviving a white supremacist and transphobic assault—would be housed as a man at the Minnesota state prison at St. Cloud, I felt panicked and pissed.
I wasn’t alone. On Twitter, The View’s Sherri Shepherd declared it “cruel punishment.” A Shepherd follower responded, “No no now, this is AWFUL! Seems like a definite death sentence for CeCe.” And the poet Ursula Rucker shouted (virtually), “There’s alot going on here…racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia…all equals one big fat INJUSTICE!!!”
While the “big fat INJUSTICE!!!” part remains a give-in among people with common sense progressive observers and advocates, I was surprised to learn that McDonald’s local supporters are in wait-and-see mode regarding her placement.
“So far, CeCe is doing pretty [well]. She has a relatively positive attitude and she’s been excited to see the support around her remaining throughout the process,” says Katie Burgess, the executive director of the Minneapolis-based Trans Youth Support Network. Burgess maintains constant contact with McDonald and she serves as a key strategist in what has become an international support campaign.
“People tend to think about how CeCe identifies as a woman and say she should be able to go to a women’s facility. But there’s really no history of transgender people being placed according to their gender identity. So once CeCe is placed in a permanent facility, she’ll look around and decide if she feels safe there. If she doesn’t, she’ll move forward with a civil suit against the Department of Corrections to be relocated to a safer place. That may or may not be a women’s prison.”
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Marvel comics in the Civil Rights era written by Gary Phillips who grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a mechanic and a librarian. LA Times: A noble Panther, a gritty Cage
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Their worlds reflected some of ours. It was particularly significant to us on Flower Street that Marvel was the first of the Big Two comics companies to have a black superhero in its pages. And what about that name? No, Marvel didn’t compare notes with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense; Marvel’s Black Panther showed up before Huey and Bobby were firmly on the scene, about the same time the brothers and sisters had it going on in the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (where the logo of the political Black Panthers originated). Even as coincidence it was part of the crackle in the air.
In “Fantastic Four” No. 52, July 1966, there was T’Challa, the warrior king of a scientifically advanced and hidden African kingdom called Wakanda. The heir to the Panther Throne, he outwits and defeats (temporarily at least) the Fantastic Four.
In this 1974 issue, Black Panther and the Falcon crossed paths. (Marvel)
The hero’s attack on the quartet was a ruse, as the Panther meant them no harm and was demonstrating his abilities for them as a tuneup to his real battle with his arch-enemy, Ulysses Klaw, the Master of Sound.
The visual I remember by artist Jack “King” Kirby in that issue (which was co-written with Stan Lee) where T’Challa removes his full-face mask revealing he’s black. Damn. Now that was different — a lord of the African jungle who wasn’t a white guy swinging from vines? The Black Panther would go on to headline several of his own titles and marry Storm, the X-Men member who controls weather and also hails from Africa.
In September of 1969, just a couple of months after a man walked on the moon, Marvel’s next black superhero takes flight in the pages of Captain America’s book: The Falcon. He became Cap’s partner in the 1970s as they channeled on the two-tone, crime-fighting buddy thing pioneered on TV’s “I Spy” and the Razoni and Jackson cop paperback series by Warren Murphy (which many cite as an inspiration for the “Lethal Weapon” film series).
But then came Cage — Luke Cage, written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by George Tuska (with subsequent issues drawn by black comics artist Billy Graham). He debuted in his own comic book, “Luke Cage, Hero for Hire,” in June 1972. Carl Lucas was a small-time Harlem hood doing hard time in Seagate Prison – framed by a rival for possession of heroin. Lucas volunteers for an experiment in cell regeneration conducted by Noah Burstein (this is comics, these kinds of experiments with futuristic-looking machinery and brilliant scientists go on all the time) to possibly reduce his sentence.
But a racist guard named Rackham has a history of run-ins with the inmate and sabotages the experiment, hoping to see the convict leave the cellblock in a body bag. But the resulting bombardment (of excited electrons and what have you) give Lucas super strength and steel-hardened skin. After taking care of Rackham, he escapes by punching through a brick wall. He returns to New York and adopts the moniker Luke Cage, a homage to his recent past.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about a former NFL player coming out of the closet The Atlantic: How Bigotry Works
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Former NFL defensive back Wade Davis, has come out the closet:
Davis had won over the locker room, which is the very reason he never uttered a word about his sexual orientation. "You just want to be one of the guys, and you don't want to lose that sense of family," Davis says. "Your biggest fear is that you'll lose that camaraderie and family. I think about how close I was with Jevon and Samari. It's not like they'd like me less, it's that they have to protect their own brand."
When I caught up with Kearse at the NFLPA's Rookie Premiere event in May, he still remembered Davis fondly a decade later. "That's my dog," Kearse said. He had no idea that Davis was gay until that event last month. "I know there have been a lot more than just Wade," Kearse said upon learning of Davis' sexual orientation. "It's just becoming more acceptable, which is a good thing so they can come out and not feel secluded."
Eddie George was on the other side of the ball with the Titans while Davis was there. The former Heisman Trophy winner didn't know Davis was gay at the time, but he feels a gay athlete on that Titans team would have been accepted. "I don't see it as a problem," George said. "I don't think it would have been a problem at all."
Eddie George is smart guy and I think it's good that both he and Kearse still embrace Davis. But I suspect it would have very much been a problem for Davis to come out a decade ago.
One reason why it's hard to see bigotry in people we respect and love, is that it's become a mark of shame. I would almost go so far as to say it's becoming a class marker, which is very different than saying that bigotry is restricted to a certain class. But we think of bigots we think of ignorance, stupidity, violence and a lack of decorum. No one really wants to associate their friends and family with those sorts of qualities.
This becomes increasingly true as the particular bigotry becomes less accepted, and shame comes into play. And so in the 19th century you virtually everyone you have any respect for, at some point, uttering kind words about white supremacy. I am not even convinced that everyone who spoke those words believed them. But the lack of shame frees us from having to analyze our impulses, and even when we have analyzed them we're still free to say what we want in order to be part of the crowd.
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One of the hardest coversations to begin. Colorlines: How to Talk About Race Without Getting Stuck in “Clybourne Park”
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Bruce Norris’ play “Clybourne Park” picks up the conversation about race where Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” left off. Nominated for four Tony Awards, this drama is set in fictional Clybourne Park—the Chicago neighborhood that represents the American dream to the Younger family of “Raisin.” The first act of the play simmers as the all-white community comes to terms with the idea of blacks moving into their midst during the 1950s. The second act explodes as the same neighborhood, now all-black and neglected, is “rediscovered” in the 1990s. Two affluent couples, one black and one white, face off over zoning laws. What begins as a negotiation over building codes develops into a screaming match about race, gentrification, and identity.
The two couples spend a great deal of time talking around the structural issues of racial change in the neighborhood. When race is finally addressed by name, both the actors and audience erupts. The talk of race sucks the air out of the room, exposing prejudice and insecurity underneath the studied colorblindness of the couples. Everyone ends up a victim; everyone ends up attacked. It’s easy to walk away from the performance skeptical about productive conversation between people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
But there’s another way to talk about about race, one that moves everyone forward rather than driving them apart. Just because we start from different points doesn’t mean we can’t come together and have an honest discussion. So here are four ways to not get stuck in Clybourne Park.
In “Clybourne Park,” at Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway, characters pick up the conversation about race where Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun” left off. Nathan Johnson
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A second generation of young, educated Ethiopian-Israeli adults who have grown up in Israel say they are still struggling to be accepted as Israeli, and are distancing themselves from the grateful passivity of their parents. New York Times: New Generation of Ethiopians March Toward Dream of Acceptance in Israel.
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Yetmwork Makurya, 35, had tears in her eyes as she spoke of her attachment to Israel. When she arrived as a teenager in 1991 on a secret overnight airlift from Ethiopia, she said, “Jerusalem and the land of Israel was my dream.”
Yet over the past three months Ms. Makurya has spent much of her time with an angry new generation of Ethiopian-Israeli activists on the sidewalk near the prime minister’s residence in central Jerusalem, protesting against unofficial but hurtful racism and discrimination.
“Here,” said Ms. Makurya, a mother of three, “everything is determined by the color of my skin.”
For many Israelis, the idea that Jews could be racist toward other Jews is anathema. The 1991 airlift, known as Operation Solomon, brought 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel within 36 hours and was greeted at the time with great celebration.
Natan Sharansky, the human rights activist who spent years in Soviet prisons before arriving in Israel, joined one of the flights.
In an interview on the 20th anniversary of the airlift last year, Mr. Sharansky, by then the chairman of the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency that deals with immigration, said with pride, “Black, white — there is no difference in the ingathering of exiles.”
As the dazed new immigrants descended the plane steps, many kissed the tarmac. Operation Solomon followed an earlier, smaller wave of clandestine immigration in the 1980s, involving a treacherous trek from Ethiopia to camps on the Sudanese border. Thousands perished along the way; Israel recently began honoring them with official memorials.
Armies of volunteers and organizations, and a plethora of programs largely financed by American Jews, helped ease the transition of the Ethiopians from the rural life to modern Israeli society. The government has also allocated significant resources to help them.
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'Small boys units' loyal to the former president Laurent Gbagbo reportedly formed for fighting in western Ivory Coast. The Guardian: Ivory Coast mercenaries train child soldiers for attacks across Liberia border.
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Militias loyal to the former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo are recruiting child soldiers in Liberia to launch attacks similar to that which caused the death last week of 15 people, including seven UN peacekeepers.
Child soldiers as young as 14 are being groomed in training camps and used as scouts in increasingly deadly attacks in the volatile west of Ivory Coast, witnesses said. Human Rights Watch said that youths aged between 14 and 17 were being trained.
"They call us 'small boys unit,' and we are always safe when we go to the war zones in Ivory Coast. I don't know the total that we have killed," a child soldier told the campaigning group.
Ivory Coast's rugged western region is a stronghold of Gbagbo, whose refusal to leave power landed him in the international criminal court last May after five months of post-electoral conflict dislodged him.
But neighbouring Liberia has been reluctant to clamp down on mercenaries notorious for recruiting child soldiers, while high-profile members of the regime's inner circle live unhindered in upmarket villas in Ghana despite international arrest warrants.
"There are training camps in Liberia, you can walk there in 20 minutes. They send boys over several hours before attacks, then they join in later," said Traore Adama, an Ivorian soldier who fled to Abidjan after attacks in recent months. "Youths can make up to a third of the attacking groups. Some of them are older teenagers but others are waifs you'd never imagine carrying guns."
Mercenaries using child soldiers are thought to be behind the attck on UN peacekeepers in Ivory Coast last week. Photograph: Luc Gnago/Reuters
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry EditorPower
The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.
I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles
and my stomach
churns at the imagined taste while
my mouth splits into dry lips
without loyalty or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
without imagery or magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying son with kisses
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.
A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queens
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove it. At his trial
this policeman said in his own defense
“I didn't notice the size nor nothing else
only the color”. And
there are tapes to prove that, too.
Today that 37 year old white man
with 13 years of police forcing
was set free
by eleven white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one Black Woman who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they had dragged her 4'10'' black Woman's frame
over the hot coals
of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go
the first real power she ever had
and lined her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.
I have not been able to touch the destruction
within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold
or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire
and one day I will take my teenaged plug
and connect it to the nearest socket
raping an 85 year old white woman
who is somebody's mother
and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed
a greek chorus will be singing in 3/4 time
“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.”
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