Artwork by Emory Douglas
May 24: Birthday of Comrade Emory Douglas, revolutionary artist, former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party, and driving force behind the BPP newspaper.
NYC: Judge Grants Class-Action Status to Stop-and-Frisk Suit
A federal judge on Wednesday granted class-action status to a lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics, saying she was disturbed by the city’s “deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.”
The decision by the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, of Federal District Court, (see also below) provides possible legal recourse for hundreds of thousands of people who have been caught up in the department’s increasingly vigorousstop-and-frisk practice, which critics say unjustly ensnares blacks and Latinos.
Over the weekend, the police disclosed that they had made more than 200,000 such stops in the first three months of 2012, placing the Bloomberg administration on course for the largest number of annual stops in the 10 years the department has been measuring them.
In granting class-action status to the case, which was filed in January 2008 by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of four plaintiffs, the judge wrote that she was giving voice to the voiceless.
“The vast majority of New Yorkers who are unlawfully stopped will never bring suit to vindicate their rights,” Judge Scheindlin wrote.
“[D]eeply troubling apathy” indeed.
Memories Of Grandma Silvia, And Slavery's Legacy
via @NPR:
“And that’s where I was going to be introduced to my great-grandmother, Silvia,” she says. “She was 106 years old. And I just did not want to spend time with a senile old woman.”
When she arrived in Farmerville, La., Ellaraino first spotted her great-grandmother on the front porch of a log cabin.
“She had a slender, you know, almost frail frame,” she says. “But I still found her to be regal-looking. And at night, she would tell her stories.”
Those stories included descriptions of what it was like to grow up as a slave — and to adjust to life after emancipation.
“When the Civil War ended, she was my age. She was 16,” Ellaraino recalls Silvia telling her. “She said, even though she had freedom, not knowing how to read and write made her feel like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing.”
Hear/Read the rest (click above)
(Source: jmjafrx)
1.WE WANT FREEDOM.
We believe that freedom is only possible through individual and community self-determination. In order for the black community to achieve self-determination all systems of oppression must be dismantled.
2. We want a reformation of the criminal justice system, the abolition of the prison industrial complex and the implementation of community based models of justice and accountability.
This system has routinely targeted Black folks in the form of police brutality and covert corruption in the penal system that has led to the mass incarceration of Black people. The prison system violates human rights, causes the separation of families and capitalizes off the neo-slave labor of Black and Brown bodies that has been the basis of a profitable prison industrial complex.
3. We want control over our reproductive health and believe it is essential to building and maintaining strong black communities.
The United States government has, from its inception, consistently attempted to regulate, scapegoat and profit from the reproductive capabilities of black people. The denial of reproductive justice and autonomy began during slavery and continues today in the form of sterilization abuses, purposeful prescription of harmful contraceptives, and the targeting of black women as eugenicists for demanding access to safe and legal abortions. We demand an end to the pathology and criminalization of black motherhood and families the right to affordable and safe reproductive health care for all.
4. We want an end to all forms of physical, emotional, and sexual violence against black children.
We oppose the continued removal of black children from their homes by state agencies and see it as a part of a continued assault on black families and a form of cultural genocide. Children in general, and black children in particular, are seen as less than human which makes them easy targets in a system where dependence is seen as weakness and vulnerability. Therefore we recognize that dismantling systems of oppressions that promote hierarchies of dehumanization are in the best interest of black children. Specifically we want to break the cycles of violence that exist in our communities.
5. We want media to reflect the diversity of who we are, to include our voices, value our bodies and our stories.
We believe that the media both mirrors and shapes society. Therefore there is a need to develop a critical eye towards our media consumption, as the media is a system that perpetuates oppression. We believe in a shared responsibility to consume, demand and create the messages and representations that truly reflect our humanity.
Rest at the link. Credit notes from original post = This twelve point platform was created by the Black Feminist Working Group (BFWG). (Iresha Picot, Kimberly Murray, Tiamba Wilkerson, Nuala Cabral, Darasia Shelby and Ladi’Sasha Jones). This document is inspired by the work and legacy of the Combahee River Collective and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
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