No post today.

Still out of pocket.

A brotha has been busy.

Holla at you tomorrow.

Does just being black give the police "probable cause" to stop you?

The Field Negro education series continues.

So if you are reading this and happen to be black, you can relate to the experience of the Brown brothers in Colorado, recently.

"Two brothers, Benjamin and Ryan Brown, were stopped for DWB (Driving While Black) in Colorado Springs, CO.

 

Ryan, who was a passenger in the car, recorded the so-called routine traffic stop via mobile phone, in which officers gave no cause as to why their vehicle was stopped and the brothers subsequently detained.

 

On Tuesday, Roland Martin and the NewsOne Now Straight Talk panel discussed the disturbing Colorado Springs incident and how vitally important the cell phone recording of the incident was in bringing this injustice to the forefront.

 

As a result of the video, the ACLU of Colorado has taken up the Brown brothers’ case, citing they were handcuffed, searched, then detained without reason or fault.

 

During Tuesday’s NewsOne Now segment, panelist Avis Jones-DeWeever highlighted the ACLU’s Mobile Justice App that can be used to record an incident with law enforcement officers and then send the recording to the organization.

 

From aclu-mo.org:

The ACLU of Missouri Mobile Justice smartphone app was created to empower individuals to hold Missouri law enforcement agencies accountable for their actions. It has four main features:  

Record- allows citizens to capture exchanges between police officers and themselves or other community members in audio and video files that are automatically emailed to the ACLU of Missouri.  

Witness- gives citizens the option to alert nearby Mobile Justice App users when they are stopped by police so that they can move toward the location and document the interaction.

Report- gives citizens the option to provide a more-detailed account of their interactions with police in an incident report, which will be transmitted directly to the ACLU of Missouri.

Panelist Delegate Jay Walker, Chair of Price George’s County House Delegation, had some reservations about recording encounters with law enforcement.

 

He told Martin, host of NewsOne Now, that he was “conflicted” with the notion of citizens recording their encounters with law enforcement, saying, “with social media, everybody is trying to record everything right-away, but you’re going to have to go back to the type of protocol that you have to have with law enforcement when they come along.” [Watch video]

 

So after watching the video, what do you think?

Caption Saturday

I need a caption for this pic.

Spraying Taye.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"Minneapolis police are investigating an incident in which an officer pepper-sprayed a 10-year-old boy during a protest Wednesday night, the Star Tribune reports.

Approximately 100 people were protesting news that a white police officer who fatally shot Tony Robinson—an unarmed 19-year-old African American—would not be charged. According to the Star Tribune, the protest got “unruly” as protesters shut down two blocks in downtown Minneapolis.

Susan Montgomery, the mother of the boy who was pepper-sprayed, said that she and fewer than 10 protesters were standing together at the protest, including her son, Taye.
 

Montgomery said that a police officer drove up abruptly to the group with his sirens flashing, as if he were about to run them over.
 

“I was thinking, ‘This guy is gonna run us over,’” Montgomery said. “People started running. It seemed like he was mad at that point.”
 

Montgomery said that the police officer then stopped, got out of his car and began to pepper-spray the group.

“[He] just jumped out of his car and started spraying everybody,” Montgomery said. “The Mace just happened. It hit everybody in that area.”

When one of the protesters realized that Taye had been sprayed, they tried to tell the police officer, but they say the officer ignored them and kept on spraying the group.

Taye fell to the ground and had to have milk poured into his eyes at a nearby hotel.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s Office of Police Conduct Review has launched an investigation into the incident. During a press conference Thursday, Police Chief Janne Harteau asked witnesses to come forward to aid in the investigation." [Source]

Wow, young boys of color can't even buy a break in the land of Prince.  

Is Skittles a dangerous weapon in Louisiana?

It seems that Skittles® is in the news again.

"The second biggest school district in Louisiana has been hit with claims of racism and discrimination after many children, including an eighth grader allegedly detained for throwing candy on a school bus, were arrested for petty crimes.

The Jefferson Parish School District was named in a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center last Thursday, citing claims of police officers threatening children and making unlawful arrests, Vocativ reports. The arrests range from kids walking in the hallway without a pass, to talking back to administrators, having cell phones on campus (but not using them), and failing to follow the school’s dress code.

 

Eighty percent of the students arrested were African-American, although they only make up 40 percent of the school’s population. Latino students were also harassed about their immigration status – even though they are American citizens. Other students allegedly targeted included children with mental disorders.

 

In their report, the SPLC says the district has had problems for years, but it came to a head in 2012. One of the more puzzling arrests happened earlier this year, when an eighth grader was arrested and detained for six days for throwing Skittles on the school bus. A day after the incident, the child, who is African-American, was pulled out of class by an officer. Vocativ reports:

As the officer led the handcuffed teenager out of the school, both students and faculty heard him threaten to “beat the f*** out of [the boy],” or to have his son, who is about the same age, do it for him. The student, who is African-American, spent six days in a juvenile detention facility before seeing a judge, whose first comment was: “Am I to get this right? Are we really here about Skittles?”

Angry with the way they treated her son, the student’s mother later pulled him from the school.
The SPLC is demanding that the Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office investigate the school’s practices. They also want to work with the school and the DOJ to come up with better tactics to handle children without using force for minimal incidents.

“The Jefferson Parish Public School System has continued its destructive practice of arresting and jailing children for minor, and often trivial, violations of school rules and decorum,” said Eden Heilman, managing attorney for the SPLC’s Louisiana office. “It’s nothing less than a racially biased system of criminalizing African-American children.”

The school district has released a statement following the report and says they plan to work with outside agencies to resolve the issues.

“We are aware of and are very concerned by these allegations,” the statement reads. “We pledge to work closely with those agencies involved to quickly resolve any issues that we identify. We are committed to ensuring that our students have a safe, healthy environment and are treated equably at all schools.”

The SPLC hopes their words will turn to concrete change for the school district and its students." [Source]

I think it might be time for you Negro children to make another choice when it comes to candy.

This one clearly always brings bad luck.

A soldier and a child will not solve our problems.

"The Field Negro education series continues, because we are never as smart as we think we are.



I'm the girl that took the picture of the soldier and child in Baltimore that went viral. I meant to capture a sad moment, one of wasted resources and failure. Who knew that so many people think all of our race and economic problems could be solved if someone would just think to smile at a child?

The accusations of being a pot stirrer, a know-nothing liberal, and race-baiter have been coming at me almost faster than I can read them. Good. Keep it coming. You wouldn't hate me if I didn't make you uncomfortable.

Keep telling me to forget the misery and to just see the happiness. Keep criticizing me for bringing it up. Keep talking about it because that is the first step. But let's keep it real when we talk about it.


How can you look at that picture from Baltimore and think it shows a promising future? The problems leading up to this picture continue to be swept under the rug while people mindlessly smile over a picture of a child.

How about we focus on the fact that 86 percent of public school students in Baltimore get free/reduced lunch?

How about we focus on the predatory payday loan and checks cashed establishments that people in this neighborhood are subjected to, continuing the cycle of poverty they are in?

How about we focus on the fact that I took this picture on Fulton Ave about a month ago, and how it's pretty average for much of Baltimore:


I don't find my picture to be tragic because I hate the military or because I hate guns. It seems to me that 30 seconds of critical thinking would clarify that. I find it to be tragic because we don't give a damn about these communities until the destruction threatens the rest of us.

If this was a picture of a child on a field trip to the Pentagon, I'd see how it's cute. Adorable, even. But that isn't what this is. This is a community being told they are too vile and worthless for anyone to give a damn about them until they start to burn things down -- and even then, people only care long enough to be keyboard activists with uninformed opinions.

Baltimore has a lot of problems, but being a city full of people that want to loot and riot isn't one of them.

I think it's pretty clear why there was a riot on that Monday afternoon -- what did the police expect when they loaded up with riot gear, turned off public transit, didn't allow children to leave, and instigated pissed off kids? Yet here we are, painting Baltimore as a city of lawlessness.

If we're going to talk about lawlessness in Baltimore, let's talk about the millions of dollars used to settle and hide cases of police brutality.

I have watched news anchors and the Internet, in general, wonder why people felt the need to burn the businesses in the community, consequently limiting their own options of where to shop. Over my week in Baltimore, I listened to and talked to a lot of people, from those who were pro-riot to those who were pro-peace. The impression that I got wasn't that all people necessarily hate all businesses that aren't black-owned -- it's that they hate that the businesses won't pay living wages or promote people of color.

Without the ability to build capital (or even pay rent) and without the experience of being more than entry level employees, how are people supposed to start their own businesses? How will there ever be more black-owned businesses in primarily black communities?

In my opinion, the onus is now on wealthy business owners of all races in Baltimore and the surrounding area to do their part in making the city a more livable place. It's on the middle and upper middle class residents of Maryland to change the way things are run.

I saw an incredible amount of unity build up in one week of Baltimore protests -- a level of unity that is rare for any kind of movement. The revolution is here, and "us vs. them" is not going to be black vs white. It's going to the people who have hopped on board vs. those who haven't. Do not stand on the wrong side. Support the organizations that are on the ground making a difference. Support the organizations working to feed the hungry children of Baltimore and working to make the streets safe. Do not shop at places that do not allow their entry level employees to grow.

Nothing will change over night, but it's time we start working to provide education and opportunities instead of casting judgement when most of us can't even imagine what it would be like to live in West Baltimore." [Source]

Well, there is that whole interracial ebony and ivory thing. It all helps us to wrap our "post-racial" vibe into a nice little packet.

This author is obviously not playing along.

Party pooper.

*Pic from Huffington Post.

Strange fruit in Georgia.

"Southern trees
Bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
And blood at the roots
Black bodies
Swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin'
From the poplar trees.."

~Strange Fruit, Nina Simone~

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I hear stories like the recent one about Roosevelt Champion, I get a little nervous.   

"A black man who'd recently been questioned in connection with the death of a white woman was found dead hanging from a tree Monday morning in rural Greensboro, Georgia, police said. Local and state investigators said there was nothing to immediately suggest foul play.

Greensboro Police Chief Ossie Mapp told NBC News that a neighbor called 911 about 9 a.m. ET to report finding a body behind a house on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Police discovered the body of Roosevelt Champion III, 43, who Champion didn't live at the address in Greensboro, in east-central Georgia between Athens and Augusta, Mapp said.

       

Champion's body was suspended by tie-down strap similar to those used to secure cargo on the roofs of vehicles, Mapp said.

       

There were no visible wounds on Champion's body, his feet were scraping the ground and his knees were slightly buckled, suggesting that he hadn't been lifted into the tree, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Joe Wooten, who is in charge of the investigation. Wooten and Mapp said it's too early to determine the formal cause of death, which is pending an autopsy.

But Wooten said Champion was questioned at least twice last week in a homicide case involving the death of a white woman. In the end, no charges were filed, he said. Details of that investigation weren't immediately available.

       

"I understand that there is a lot of concern" in the community because the victim was a black man who was hanged in the Deep South, Wooten said. "Because of that, we're going to be as transparent as we can be."

       

Wooten said he was working closely with Mapp, the local chief, and that several people had already been interviewed in connection with Champion's death." [Source] 

 

Now it could be that Roosevelt had some issues, but as "Special Agent Wooten" said, this is the South we are talking about, and, well, there is a history.

 

Stay tuned.   

 

 

When the have- nots get resltless.

Now that those unrests seem to be over in Baltimore, it's time for the media to move on and find their next incident to drive their ratings.

This doesn't mean that there aren't the same issues remaining in that city that caused the natives to explode over the suspicious killing of a black man.

Sadly, I suspect that all those issues are still there, but unfortunately all we will hear out of Baltimore for the rest of this summer is where the Orioles are in the American East standings.

Anyway, I found a great article that addresses some of those very issues that I am referring to.

"Among the more annoying habits of a society appalled by social unrest is its casual dis of the poverty that causes it.

Discussing, dissecting and debating police violence and the angry reaction to it (now a weekly exercise) is the easy part. But the harder conversation means grappling with the devil in the socioeconomic details. One could even make the argument that, as a nation, we subconsciously prefer the endless Twitter-incubated scrap over police brutality because it keeps us conveniently removed from a much more critical examination of the tragic conditions people live in. Anything but that, right?

And yet Baltimore’s official 8.4 percent unemployment rate (pdf)—almost double the national average—still stands, at least according to the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Deeper analysis suggests that it’s worse than the feds let on, with less than 58 percent of working-age black men between the ages of 16 and 64 being employed, according to a 2012 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee multicity study (pdf)—compared with over 78 percent for their white counterparts and down from 73 percent in 1970. For black youths in Baltimore, the unemployment rate is 16.1 percent, 2 percentage points higher than the average national youth-unemployment rate and almost triple the overall national jobless rate.  

It’s not just Baltimore, either.

Still, politicians can cut up all they want on “thugs” as a way to appease powerful law-enforcement lobbies and panicky white voters. Or pacifying commentators can go to whatever length they think is necessary to placate ignoramus colleagues and friends who can’t understand why “black people keep burning up their neighborhoods.” Meanwhile, the majority of whites—70 percent of whom (pdf) consider racial discrimination in their local communities a nonproblem—can continue sticking their collective heads in the sand.

Despite all that, the pissy stench of poverty and hopelessness remains. The growing gulf of haves and have-nots is there, many gladly ignoring it while holed up in middle-class comfort zones.

In the case of Baltimore, how can you miss it, and how can you not want to talk about it? It’s Maryland’s largest city, accounting for 10 percent of the crab state’s population. But Baltimore also stands as a blemished statement on Maryland’s growing quality-of-life divides: 64 percent black, and a total citywide poverty rate above 25 percent (compared with the national rate of 15 percent.

 The city’s black poverty rate is just under 24 percent, much higher than the state’s black poverty rate of 14 percent.

“This is not new. It’s been going on for decades,” said President Barack Obama in a long response to reporter questions about Baltimore during a press conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “If we think we’re just going to send police in to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there, and if, as a nation, we don’t ask what we can do to change these communities, to help uplift these communities and give these kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem.”

He’s right. It’s definitely not new in Charm City, where poverty is just as prevalent today as it was in 1970—even more so in certain areas, according to a recent City Observatory report. Poverty in certain tracts of Baltimore has actually risen, with 55 areas considered “high-poverty.” Areas near locations such as the famed football and baseball stadiums are experiencing poverty rates as high...

... Baltimore’s poverty didn’t suddenly occur unnoticed or in a vacuum. Active suppression of a necessary tale-of-two-cities debate, because we’re afraid that it gives looters a pass, dooms us to perpetual failure. We can’t continue driving past and then fake confusion every time unrest occurs, especially when it has stared us down for this long. The solution must be a two-way street: We can’t expect civic control in economically traumatized areas if we’re not willing to offer a bit of civic consideration." [Source]



*Happy Mother's Day to all the Mothers out there holding it down. 

   

Caption Saturday.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: Maybe if you played a different song I can pick up the beat. 

How to stop being n/a.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"Black people have an awful lot to say about Ben Carson, even if President Ben Carson is pure fantasy. No reason to think otherwise: The legendary neurosurgeon’s bizarre quest for No. 1 gives us little confidence he’s pulling this one off. His Monday announcement in Detroit (you have got to watch it), including an offbeat circus collection of gospel Eminem and a bizarre drill show of aging, pot-bellied soldiers onstage, cements that view.

Does it really matter what African Americans think about Ben Carson? No, not really, so this Washington Post piece on the subject was probably an exercise in futility. Black people aren’t voting for Republicans anyway, much less participating in GOP presidential primaries.
 

Now, it goes without saying that black people made Dr. Ben. The wild success of Carson’s first book, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, the foundation for two decades of public life and a TNT movie, was pushed by black America’s once quasi-fanatic embrace of the Detroit native’s struggle-to-the-top story. You could find Gifted Hands in many a random black church and Sunday school as something of a second Bible.

But that was before folks got to know political Dr. Ben and that ill-fated 2013 National Prayer Breakfast babble where he blasted President Barack Obama’s health care law—with the president sitting right there watching. At that point, Carson went from favored black son of Motown to alien friend of Rush Limbaugh. With his edgy, oddball rants on race, constantly spiced with an incessant focus on the “black laziness” archetype, Carson only cares about what white conservatives think.
 

And why shouldn’t he? Carson’s blimp-sized brand appeal snags him 29 percent favorability ratings among black voters, according to last week’s YouGov poll (pdf)—just 1 percentage point of black support ahead of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). (Yes—apparently 28 percent of black voters see something in Ted Cruz.)
 

He doesn’t care because total black-voter participation during the 2012 Super Tuesday Republican primary was just over 2 percent. Two Southern states with massive black populations, South Carolina and Mississippi, each registered a 2 percent black primary turnout. Republican pollsters tabulating primary exit polls don’t even bother factoring in black voters, frequently classifying them as “n/a.”
 

Black America’s acute distaste for the Republican brand and its candidates is well-known and documented. There’s probably nothing wrong with that, considering the GOP establishment’s open hostility to black-favored policy outcomes.
 

Still, how you feel about a political party has little to do with whether or not it works for you. Like corporations mulling over markets, political parties operate as complex business operations with limited cyclical resources. While it’s incumbent upon all political parties like the GOP to pimp themselves in any election as a better ballot alternative, it’s also crucial for politically active populations to strategically position their interests." [More]

This is all very interesting. But it's something I have heard from quite a few black folks: As black people we need to consider voting for the republican candidates and register as republicans so that both parties will have to compete for our votes.

This of course is easier said than done.

I recently met a sharp republican brother running for council at large here in Philly.

He seemed to have his act together and we agreed on quite a few things about how to move our city forward and address the needs of the black community.

The thing is, though, that his party wasn't really supporting him. He was frustrated that he was not getting the support that he needs and was out on an island trying to spread their message.

"They (the party) would rather put their weight behind some white guy who is given them the same old same old. They just won't get behind someone like me."

That's really a shame, because if the republican party is serious about reaching out to minorities and improving the perception of their party, they will start supporting and putting their weight behind candidates like James Williams.

Building grass roots candidates from local communities is how they would start making inroads into our community. Not getting on some cable talk show and telling us how sincere they are about reaching out to people of color.

I am sorry, but candidates like Ben Carson, Allen West, and Herman Cain, are just not going to get it done.

Until the republicans in Washington realize this fact, we will always just be "n/a" in their book.
 

"Black spring"?

"Just moments after Marilyn Mosby announced charges against the six police officers involved in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, one of three co-founders of the liberation movement Black Lives Matter discussed the recent unrest in Baltimore, likening it to the 2010 massive protests against state violence in Egypt, Libya and other regions dubbed “Arab Spring.”

But Baltimore’s protests, often categorized as violence or riots without context, are America’s “Black Spring,” Alicia Garza explained.

So what is Black Spring? Against a backdrop of heavily armed National Guard troops and armored vehicles, Garza broke it down for NewsOne.

“What we know is that there is a Black Spring that is emerging where communities that have been under the boot of police terrorism, communities that have been attacked by poverty and unemployment are rising up, coming together and advancing new solutions and new visions and new demands to create a new world where Black peoples’ lives matter,” Garza said.

Gesturing towards the guardsmen occupying the city during Baltimore’s week-long state of emergency, Garza suggested that their very presence was state violence in action.
“[The National Guard] are standing between Black people and access to resources, they are protecting property rather than protecting the very people that make this city beautiful,” she told NewsOne.

“That is why this is a Black Spring because, quite frankly, communities who have been under the boot of occupying forces like the military and the local police force are rising up and saying ‘we’ve had enough.'”

“That is being led by young people, that is being led by women even though you may not be seeing that on television,” she added. “If we want justice for Freddie Gray, we also understand that we need to make sure people have access to food, we need to make sure people have access to quality education, we need to make sure that occupying forces leave Black communities and allow Black communities to thrive on our own terms.”

Garza, who traveled to Baltimore to support local organizations in “developing the movement growing here in Baltimore and increasingly the movement that is growing across the country,” is just one of the many women heading what is arguably the largest Black liberation movement in recent history. She, along with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, created #BlackLivesMatter in 2012 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Citing Black women making changes in the movement, Garza also discussed what it meant for her to see Mosby, also a Black woman, hand down the charges for the officers involved in Gray’s death.

“As a Black woman, I can say that I felt personally that that sister was opening a door for young people here to advance a new set of demands that changes the landscape here in Baltimore,” she told NewsOne.

Check out NewsOne’s exclusive interview above and visit the #BlackSpring hashtag to learn more about Baltimore’s uprising". [Source]

The Field Negro education series continues.