Story Written by Monica RW at Independent Underground News & Talk and Independent Underground Radio LIVE
Picture of the Late Stephen Berry - Photo Credit - Family Photo
Picture of The late Stoni Blair - Photo Credit - Family Photo
Warning -- This post will not be a "feel good" let us all hug and sing kumbaya from the rooftops moment in time. Instead, this post will be a bit of truth about our so-called American society and its complete and utter failure to care two for poor African-American kids found in a freezer three years after their untimely and torture filled deaths.
The children - Stoni Ann Blair and Stephen Berry, and this is only a part of their story.
Where is the love? There is a popular R & B song by this name written in 1972 and sung by Artists Roberta Flack and the late great Donny Hathaway which won a Grammy. A modern day version was placed in rotation by the Black Eyes Peas in 2003.
Important lines from the lyrics of The Black Eyes Peas Song:
People killin', people dyin'
Children hurt and you hear them cryin'
Can you practice what you preach?
Or would you turn the other cheek?
Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
'Cause people got me, got me questionin'
Where is the love (Love)
Stoni Blair and Stephen Berry died. It is estimated Stoni and Stephen's deaths occurred upwards of three years ago. In a deep freezer which sat in the entryway of their Mother's Apartment complex ironically named The Martin Luther King Apartment homes.
MLK is crying tears from heaven to what occurred to Stoni and Stephen in a place named after this great civil rights leader.
Where is the Love? How exactly did these children end up in a freezer, dead. Stoni and Stephen's deranged biological Mother Mitchelle Blair put them there.
Photo Credit - USA Today - The mother of Stoni Blair and Stephen Berry, Mitchelle Blair charged with murdering her children after placing them in a freezer within her apartment. The Children were estimated to be dead in the freezer for at least three years.
And there they remained, with Blair's other two children passing by the freezer containing their late siblings bodies daily for at least three years. See, Blair's other children who have not been identified thankfully, were victims of extreme child abuse.
If these children where to "run and go tell that" who exactly would they run too?
Where is the Love? As Blair claimed she "homeschooled" all four of her children. Yes, homeschooled in Michigan where the law regulating any form of primary education schooling at home are as thin as a paper bag.
There are no real requirements, guidelines or policies to ensure children and especially poor African-American Children in Detroit are obtaining the proper education necessary to live productive adult lives.
Excerpt of an article by the Detroit Free Press Journalist Rochelle Riley on April 4, 2015:
Keeping up with children also isn't helped by Michigan's lax homeschool policies, which require very little. How lax? Parents are not required to register with the state. Parents are not required to tell school districts that they are pulling their children from the district. And school districts are not required to report homeschool cases to the state.
And you do not have to have even a bachelor's degree or teaching certificate to homeschool your children if you object to that training based on a religious beliefs.
Where is the Love? Michigan has a state government that by Statutory Law
Public Act 436 of 2012 are suppose to regulate and totally manage municipal fiscal, operational and governmental affairs with appointed self-described "Emergency Managers". Yet somehow did not consider the complete disappearance of two juveniles Stoni and Stephen from modern day existence, an emergency?
The City of Detroit had an "Emergency Manager" named former Jones Day Attorney Kevyn Orr, up until a magical federal Bankruptcy filing purportedly cured the financially strapped city of its ills while requiring elderly retirees to greatly share in the sacrifice.
The Detroit Public School System itself has been under some form or the other of "Emergency Management" for the past ten years and counting, and remains in debt to the tune of $350 million dollars and counting. These factors remain despite all of the so-called declared "Emergencies" in Detroit, where 1 out of 5 children live below the federal poverty index line. Still, the conditions Stoni and Stephen lived and unfortunately died within in did not warrant "emergency" status.
Where is the Love?As while Mitchelle Blair continued to collect State Assistance benefits for Stoni and Stephen for upwards of three years while these Angels were dead in a freezer within her home, no Governmental authority inquired to see the actual living and breathing presence of these children.
Not Michigan's Department of Human Services (DHS), not the State's so-called Child Protective Services unit and especially not Republican legislators making laws in Lansing, Michigan to cease and desist Cash Assistance Payments after 48 months for a lifetime in 2012. Counting back three years, Stoni and Stephen lost their lives in 2012.
Where is the Love? Due to children like Stoni and Stephen easily "getting lost" in the system as actual human beings while others tout "The Right to Life" for fetuses remain totally abyss to the suffering of born children who lived in this land we call "The Home of the Free, Land of the Brave.
Who exactly were brave for Stoni and Stephen? Worse, who cared?
Does the right to life for minors stop at birth or does it continue throughout their existence up until the time legality they are adults at the ripe old age of 18 years old. Neither Stoni or Stephen were past the age of majority and therefore were regarded as independent, self-sufficient, and responsible. In fact Stoni was estimated to be 15 and Stephen 9 years old at the time of their murders.
Yet, the same legislators mentioned above have formed a sardonicism filled piece of legislation named "The Parent Responsibly Act" or otherwise known as House Bill 4041 introduced by Republican State Representative Al Pscholka, chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
Excerpt from MLive Media Group Journalist Jonathan Oosting March 26, 2015:
"The best defense we have against poverty is a good education, and that can only happen if a child is in school," said Pscholka, R-Stevensville. "This bill is a last resort for individuals unwilling to cooperate with (the Department of Human Services). This is a long process.
House Bill 4041, approved in a 74-36 vote and now headed to the Senate, seeks to codify a DHS policy adopted in 2012. The legislation would allow for the eventual suspension of Family Independence Program cash benefits for a family if a child under the age of 16 fails to meet attendance requirements.
Pscholka, in earlier committee testimony and on the floor, noted that he was raised by a single mom in Saginaw but succeeded, in part, because she stressed the importance of education and drove him to school everyday."
Where is the Love? Again sardonicism by every meaning of the word at its finest. As State Representative Pscholka by act of sound legislation have done nothing to ensure the proper Appropriations of funding specifically designed to add the necessary teeth, authority and if necessary punishment to parents whose children are truant, and sadly in the case of Stoni and Stephen dead in a freezer, to Michigan's School Truancy Law.
Excerpt from the State School Act under MCL 388.1701 - Age of Attendance Policy:
"The law in Michigan governing compulsory attendance requires a parent, legal guardian, or other person having control or charge of a child age six to sixteen to send the child to school during the entire school year, except under the limited circumstances specified in subsection (3) of section 380.1561.
A child who was age eleven on or after December 1, 2009 or who was age eleven before that date and entered grade 6 in 2009 or later shall attend school from age six to eighteen.
The exceptions include, but are not limited to, sending the child to a
state-approved, nonpublic school or educating the child at home in an organized educational program. Although the compulsory school attendance law does not apply to children under the age of six, a child who is at least five years of age by December 1 of the school year and is a resident of a school district which
provides kindergarten work is entitled to enroll in the kindergarten [MCL
380.1147]."
Where is the Love? As to utter any words out of ones mouth to say Stoni and Stephen were receiving "an organized educational program" dead in a freezer would be on the level of blasphemy.
Instead these children were lost souls in a system where the motivation is profitably, performance testing and a complete dismantling of the Public Education System within the City of Detroit with a self-described charter school concept named an "Educational Achievement Authority" the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder (R) believes is a crowning success, is instead in reality is a complete failure.
Excerpt of an article by the Detroit Free Press Journalist Rochelle Riley on April 4, 2015:
Eric Fredlund was going for his twice-daily walk last week when a Detroit teacher called with the horrific news. A former student and her brother had been found stuffed in a freezer, allegedly killed by their mother.
"I was in shock," Fredlund said, "and I guess some of my first thoughts were, 'What more could I have done?' "
But when Stoni Ann Blair suddenly stopped coming to school, he did try to help.
Fredlund, who retired from Detroit Public Schools last September, reported Stoni's absence to a DPS attendance agent. That agent said he requested a bench warrant for the mother. Fredlund never learned what became of the warrant.
Weeks later, Stoni was still out of school and a frantic Fredlund called Child Protective Services, who told him something he says he has never forgotten: "In the state of Michigan, (a lack of school) attendance is not neglect."
Then Stoni was gone.
For more than 100 days, she didn't come back to school. That stretched to years.
***
That frustrated Fredlund, who said it is easy for children — sometimes going from the Education Achievement Authority school district to charter schools to DPS — to get lost in the system. He said that, some years, he wouldn't get a child's records for the school year until May."
Photo Credit - The Detroit Free Press - Former Detroit Public Schools Teacher Eric Fredlund raised questions about Stoni Blair's attendance at school. Fredlund inquires were not followed upon by Michigan's Department of Human Services or Children Protective Services.
As the Public School Teachers it appears Republican lawmakers seriously dislike, are the first ones to the call in the case of Stoni and if acted upon immediately her brother Stephen, when an anomaly occurs.
In this case, the anomaly was a child named Stoni repeatedly missed blocks of time from school, then months and next years; and the lame excuses was accepted by those in authority other than Fredlund, Stoni was being "homeschooled".
Being shuffled like cards in a deck within a failed system designed somehow to protect Stoni and Stephen's innocent souls, nearly no one cared except former Detroit Public School Teacher Eric Fredlund - who now questions what more he could have done. Yet, the actual investigation as much as possible was done Fredlund. The failure is directly pointed to the "responsible parties" within the entire governmental system itself.
And equal responsibility lays at the pillars of a oligarchy class based system were poor African-American children like Stoni and Stephen are treated either as profit tools for some charter school providers or churned to fin for themselves against a deranged Mother conveniently using the term "homeschooling" to cover up for their murder.
Many folks will ask what about Stoni and Stephen's other family members, and where were they? For instance the absentee fathers who planted a seed their lives to be born by Mitchelle Blair years ago or the relatives who should have noticed the absence of these children?
Yes, they deserve equal blame, however what about asking where was the breakdown in a system that at its core design should have protected Stoni and Stephen when neither no one else did?
Where is the Love? As a so-called business owner in Indiana can raise upwards of $1 million dollars for refusing to cater at a pizza business, the LGBT community, yet no one has yet to ask a simple question.
Can Stoni and Stephen receive a proper burial, along with their surviving siblings the decades of counseling which will be necessary to somehow deal with what unfortunately fell upon these young souls -- due to a uncaring system? This question along with Where was the Love for Stoni and Stephen, remains unanswered.
RIP -- Stoni and Stephen. RIP Little Angels.
