Urban News Features

"I Can't Breathe" By Julianne Malveaux

Dec. 7, 2014

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'I Can't Breathe'
By Julianne Malveaux

“I can’t breathe,” gasped Eric Garner, again and again and again. “I can’t breathe,” he said, as several police officers were on top of him, choking him, pushing his head onto the concrete sidewalk. The man was not resisting arrest; he simply had the temerity to ask a police officer not to touch him. And because he was allegedly selling loose cigarettes, the life was choked out of him. No one tried to help him or stop the vicious assault (ruled a homicide by the coroner). Emergency medical respondents offered no assistance. Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” ought to motivate all Americans, not just African Americans, but Americans of conscience to breathe life and energy into a movement for justice.

Breathing ought to be a simple thing. Air in, air out. It’s not so simple when one’s neck is being choked. Not so simple when one’s spirit is being choked. The image of Eric Garner’s neck in a chokehold, the image of at least four white police officers on top of him, is galling. All the more galling is the invisible choking of spirit that comes when people cannot breathe, cannot speak, and cannot respond to injustice.

In historical contexts, how many were as free to speak as Ida B. Wells was when she fought against lynching. Even in her freedom, Wells was threatened and run out of Tennessee, but many feared to speak about lynching fearing the fact that they might be lynched themselves. Can’t breathe. Think of the many African Americans who have served in our armed forces, treated unfairly, serving nonetheless, often silent.

How can any of us breathe in an atmosphere of compounded injustice? How can we breath in an atmosphere of hypocrisy, when justice has never been blind? We live in a nation where a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, is shot because he has a toy pellet gun, not pointed at police. Hard to breathe when video makes it absolutely clear that it was not necessary for Daniel Panaleo to place Eric Garner in a chokehold. Hard to breathe when a grand jury comes to an incomprehensible decision, one that defies common sense.

Difficult to breathe when an elected official, Congressman Peter King (R-NY), chooses to blame Eric Garner’s death on his health. “If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this”, King told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. King fails to note that use of the chokehold was banned by New York Police Department rules in 1993. Instead, there is no shame, no condolence in his insensitivity and ignorance.

Can’t breathe. Whether he is svelte or obese, carrying a briefcase or a bag of skittles, wearing a Hermes suit or a hoodie, behaving respectfully or rudely, a black man’s safety cannot be guaranteed, especially when a white police officer is involved. The mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and wives of these men hold their breath, cannot breathe, except to pray for the safety of their loved ones. Would the system be fairer if a white man walking down Park Avenue had the same fears? Would the protests look different if those who were massacred looked different?

Can’t breathe. A metaphor for the African American condition, juggling the space between hopes and despair, between progress and regress. Who would have thought police violence against African American men would so visibly escalate at a time when our nation’s leader is an African American man. Can President Obama breathe, or is he in a figurative chokehold when he parses words about the murders of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and little Tamir Rice? Our President faced protest when he criticized James Crowley, the police officer that arrested Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on his own front steps in 2009. Now, he offers measured words in response to the outrageousness of grand jury failure to indict.

Attorney General Eric Holder has been somewhat less measured in his comments. The day after the Staten Island grand jury exonerated Daniel Panaleo for his murder of Eric Garner, Attorney General Holder announced Department of Justice findings of excessive force by the Cleveland police. Perhaps the Cleveland consent decree will be a first step toward cleaning up excessive police action around the country.

Eric Garner did not have to die. He did not have to stop breathing. Did his last breath bring life to a movement, or did he gasp that last breath in vain?

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based in Washington, D.C.

First Family at Christmas

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, daughters Sasha and Malia, Marian Robinson and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell participate in the National Christmas Tree lighting on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., Dec. 4.

PHOTO: Pete Souza/White House

Jesse Jackson: Mr. President, Come to Ferguson

Dec. 1, 2014

Jesse Jackson: Mr. President, Come to Ferguson

Jesse3

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Ferguson is too important to be treated on the margins. It is too important to lead the news one day, and disappear the next. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police response to the demonstrations that followed, the horror of a clearly biased prosecutor driving a grand jury to fail to make an indictment — all this isn’t simply about Ferguson. There is a Ferguson in every metropolitan area of America.

At times, a single incident throws a powerful light on a reality. Ferguson is one of those times. And to ensure that this reality is not simply discussed in passing, but dealt with, elevated to the top of the national agenda, President Obama should come to Ferguson.

In 1965, one week after the police riot that greeted peaceful demonstrators trying to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling on them to pass the Voting Rights Act, and making the electric promise that “we shall overcome.” Johnson knew that the Selma horrors exposed a reality that could no longer be ignored. It was time to act.

In 1967, after riots broke out in cities across the country, Johnson convened a commission headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner with a mandate to probe the causes of the riots and recommend actions so that these tragedies would not be repeated.

The Kerner Commission’s conclusion — that we were moving toward “ two societies, one white and one black, separate and unequal” — captured the nation’s attention. The commission concluded that African-Americans saw the police as an occupying force, dispatched to protect the privileges of whites, and insensitive to the protection of the minority community’s lives or rights. It found that disparate underlying conditions providing the kindling that could be sparked by incidents at any time, and that these conditions were present across the country, including racially segregated communities, scarred by inferior schools, high unemployment, inadequate public services from public transport to parks to hospitals.

The Commission called for action, and demanded that it be accompanied by a budget sufficient to make the necessary changes. The growing war in Vietnam squelched those hopes.

Twenty-four years later, after Los Angeles riots that followed acquittal of the four white policemen in the beating of Rodney King ended in 60 deaths and a billion dollars of damages the Christopher Commission was created to probe the causes, finding that not much had changed.

The country cannot afford neglect for another quarter century. It is time to act. President Obama should come to Ferguson. He should lay out the structural realities that lie exposed in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown — and that are common to cities across the country. He should demand action on an agenda for reviving these communities, and rebuilding trust and hope.

A high-level commission, chaired by distinguished bipartisan leadership, could probe the conditions that produce that shooting and others like it across the country. Its focus should be less on the behavior of police and more on the conditions of the community. It should assess the system of criminal injustice, but go beyond to the structural realities that create Fergusons. Its report should be clear and pointed; its reform agenda comprehensive, with a budget attached. The president should include that in his next budget, and call on Congress and the country to act.

Ferguson, like Selma, exposes injustice that has been building for years. The president’s engagement can make Ferguson, like Selma, a spur for long-overdue reform. The risks of failure are great. The first African-American president has understandable reluctance to challenge the country on civil rights or on the rights of black communities. His cautious speech after the prosecutor’s announcement of the grand jury decision reflected that.

But the risks were great when Eisenhower dispatched the troops to Little Rock to enforce school desegregation. They were great when Johnson promised to overcome in his speech on Voting Rights after Selma. Leadership involves taking risks. And the costs of acting, even if the Congress refuses to act, are far less than the costs of moving on from Ferguson until the next child is shot and the next impoverished and isolated community erupts.

Obama Promising Change in Police Violence as Citizen Protests Rage by Hazel Trice Edney

Dec. 2, 2014

Obama Promising Change in Police Violence as Citizen Protests Rage
By Hazel Trice Edney

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. meet with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, professor of criminology, law and society at George Mason University, and a former assistant attorney general, who will be co-chairing a Presidential task force on how communities and law enforcement can work together to build trust to strengthen neighborhoods across the country, in the Oval Office, Dec. 1, 2014. PHOTO: Pete Souza/The White House.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Outrage continues across the country this week over the epidemic of police violence, profiling and harassment of Black people. The consistent protests were sparked by the Aug. 9 shooting of unarmed Ferguson teenage Michael Brown.

Thousands of protesters in dozens of cities around the country took to the streets, Nov. 24, after Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who led the grand jury process, announced the decision of the jury of nine Whites and three Blacks not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, who killed Brown. The breakdown of the final vote remains a secret.

“As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color,” President Obama said in televised statements from the White House Monday evening, Dec. 1. “The sense that in a country where one of our basic principles, perhaps the most important principle, is equality under the law, that too many individuals, particularly young people of color, do not feel as if they are being treated fairly.”

President Obama’s remarks came after a day-long White House meeting with elected officials, community and faith leaders, and law enforcement officials “on how communities and law enforcement can work together to build trust to strengthen neighborhoods across the country.”

“When any part of the American family does not feel like it is being treated fairly, that’s a problem for all of us,” Obama said. “It’s not just a problem for some. It’s not just a problem for a particular community or a particular demographic. It means that we are not as strong as a country as we can be.”

But the President’s words and announcement of his plans may not be enough to quell the unrest. Even civil rights leaders challenge him on his actions. The Rev. Jesse Jackson this week challenged the President to go to Ferguson, a community writhing in pain.

“Ferguson is too important to be treated on the margins,” Jackson wrote in his weekly column, released Monday after the President’s White House meeting. The column titled, “Mr. President, Come to Ferguson” said, “There is a Ferguson in every metropolitan area of America…At times, a single incident throws a powerful light on a reality. Ferguson is one of those times. And to ensure that this reality is not simply discussed in passing, but dealt with, elevated to the top of the national agenda, President Obama should come to Ferguson.”

The president’s White House meeting came after a week of protests that erupted with peaceful marching; but also the burning of buildings and cars in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, after the grand jury announced it would not indict Wilson. Wilson, this week resigned from the police department. Spokesmen said he would receive no severance or other payments from the department.

President Obama said his meeting on Monday began “a process in which we’re able to surface honest conversations with law enforcement, community activists, academics, elected officials, the faith community, and try to determine what the problems are and, most importantly, try to come up with concrete solutions that can move the ball forward.”

President Obama announced:

A new task force that will listen to law enforcement and community activists and other stakeholders and report back to him in 90 days with concrete recommendations, including best practices for communities where law enforcement and neighborhoods are working well together.
The signing of an executive order that will prevent building a militarized culture inside local law enforcement agencies.
Expanded funding for local law enforcement for training, including up to 50,000 additional body-worn cameras for police and law enforcement.
The convening of a series of these meetings across the country, “because this is not a problem simply of Ferguson, Missouri, this is a problem that is national.”

Still, unrest appears to be growing as protests – both organized and spontaneous – continue around the nation. Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking to a crowd at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta this week, was interrupted by protestors, shouting, “No Justice, No Peace!” among other chants.

Holder announced plans to deal with racial profiling.

"In the coming days, I will announce updated Justice Department guidance regarding profiling by federal law enforcement. This will institute rigorous new standards — and robust safeguards — to help end racial profiling, once and for all," Holder said, according to reports. "This new guidance will codify our commitment to the very highest standards of fair and effective policing."

Whether initiatives by the Obama Administration will stop the protests is questionable at best. The anger is being fueled by decades of unchecked police brutality in Black communities with little acknowledgement of it.

"The Ferguson Grand Jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown is a miscarriage of justice. It is a slap in the face to Americans nationwide who continue to hope and believe that justice will prevail,” said CBC Chair Marcia L. Fudge in a statement responding to the jury’s decision. "This decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that Black lives hold no value; that you may kill Black men in this country without consequences or repercussions. This is a frightening narrative for every parent and guardian of Black and brown children, and another setback for race relations in America.”

On Sunday, Rev. Al Sharpton preached at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, where Michael Brown’s funeral and burial procession was held. Brown’s parents, Michael brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden attended the service. Sharpton also hosted a national conference call with over 150 ministers, who pledged to pause during their Sunday services to pray for justice and peace.

Sharpton and Brown Sr. then went to Rev. Carlton Lee’s The Flood Christian Church, which was firebombed the night of the grand jury decision announcement. The FBI is investigating the incident. Flood Christian Church is Michael Brown Sr.’s home church, he was recently baptized by Rev. Lee there; Rev. Lee is also the President of the Ferguson chapter of National Action Network, under Rev. Sharpton.

Meanwhile, the NAACP launched a “Journey for Justice” March on Saturday in partnership with a coalition of civil rights organizations. Marchers are on a journey from Ferguson to the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City, Mo. to “demand new leadership of the Ferguson Police Department, and wholesale changes to police and criminal justice processes and procedures to end racial profiling and police brutality.”

President Obama has promised change:

“This is a solvable problem,” he said. “Part of the reason this time will be different is because the President of the United States is deeply invested in making sure this time is different. When I hear the young people around this table talk about their experiences, it violates my belief in what America can be to hear young people feeling marginalized and distrustful, even after they’ve done everything right. That’s not who we are. And I don’t think that’s who the overwhelming majority of Americans want us to be.”

Baltimore Running Back Ray Rice Reinstated

Dec. 1, 2014

Baltimore Running Back Ray Rice Reinstated After Domestic Violence Incident

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from www.blackmansStreet.Today

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Ray Rice has been reinstated but it's not clear if it will be rice and gravy should an NFL team decide to sign him.
Four teams, including the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints, reportedly have expressed interest in Rice, a running back, but none of them are expected to sign him this late in the season.
The Baltimore Ravens said "Nevermore" to Rice and cut him in September after team officials saw a video of Rice and his then fiance, Janay Palmer, fighting in and out of an Atlantic City hotel and casino elevator. The couple is now married.
In the video Palmer is seen slapping Rice outside the bank of elevators, and again inside the elevator. Rice then hits Palmer with enough force to knock her out, according to a 17-page report issued by Judge Barbara S. Jones. Neither Rice nor Palmer were arrested.
Judge Jones reinstated Rice who had been indefinitely suspended by Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner. Goodell initially suspended Rice for two games.
Judge Jones said Rice did not mislead Goodell about the fight that occurred in February. "I find that the imposition of the indefinite suspension was arbitrary. I therefore vacate the second penalty imposed on Rice," Judge Jones wrote.