According to Eric Garner’s mother Gwen Carr, the riots going on in Baltimore should serve as a wake-up call to lawmakers in New York that something needs to change.
Carr, along with several relatives of police victims traveled to Albany, New York Tuesday to demand that Governor Andrew Cuomo sign an executive order that would allow special prosecutors to step in to investigate police-related shootings, The New York Daily News reports.
She went on to say that many of the people who are rioting in Baltimore have reached a breaking point and in many ways, they are risking their lives to protect the lives of others who are in danger of being killed off by police in the future.
“It is very sad to see the city burning like that but sometimes people get so frustrated and they say enough is enough,” she said about Baltimore. “It just seems to me just watching it that they’re just laying their lives on the line to protect other people in the future.”
As for lawmakers, Carr had this to say: “They need to wake up and see what’s really going on,” Carr said. “What caused this to happen? That’s the question they should ask and then correct that.”
Governor Cuomo had initially proposed criminal justice reforms that include appointing a special monitor to review cases involving deadly police encounters but has not gone as far as to allow special prosecutors to step in.
Carr and others, however, did not feel that this would be enough. Following their meeting Tuesday, Alphonso David, counsel to the governor, said that Cuomo promised to approve special prosecutors if the Legislature did not pick up his plan.
“We had a productive meeting, where both the Governor and the families of these victims had a detailed and respectful discussion on how to best reform the criminal justice system,” said David. “The Governor believes that his reform package is a balanced approach that would correct real and perceived inequities that exist within the system and he is intent on passing them in the remaining weeks of the legislative session.”
“He made it clear that if these reforms were not approved by the Legislature, he would sign an order creating a special prosecutor for police-involved fatalities,” David continued.
In a perfect world, lawmakers would have begun paying closer attention to these police-involved killings a long time ago. Hopefully, Governor Cuomo keeps his word and lawmakers across the nation will follow suit.
In other news, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that she will be sending two government officials to Baltimore to meet with faith and community leaders, as well as city officials.
article by Jazmine Denise Rogers via madamenoire.com
NEW YORK (AP) — An emotionally charged series in New York City is exploring racial and social injustice through dance, photography and public dialogue.
Among the elements of the production opening Wednesday is a stirring performance by 21 African-American dancers whose style of street dance known as “flex” is inspired by events in their own lives as well as larger issues like police-involved shootings of blacks.
The 21 dancers, most of them men ages 18 to 32, will perform at the cavernous Park Avenue Armory as part of a series that includes a panel of experts exploring pressing issues of social and criminal justice and a photo installation described as the single largest documentation of juveniles in solitary confinement in the United States.
“Every one of them has lost someone to a shooting, frequently to a police shooting,” said Peter Sellars, a theater director known for stretching artistic boundaries and the co-director of FLEXN, which runs at the armory through April 4.
The dancers’ first workshop for the commissioned performance began in August — the same month Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two unarmed black men, were killed by police.
During the exercise, two dancers began chasing a third dancer to a far corner of the room where they pretended beating him. He didn’t get up, nothing was said “but everyone in the room knew that Eric Garner was on everyone’s mind,” Sellars said.
“Black young men are killed by police quite often and that story wasn’t going away . it became clear people were really outraged, people were saying something has to change,” Sellars said. “One of the reasons that art exists is to give people a way to express extremely difficult things without violence and to articulate complex feelings.”
“The protest march is powerful but then what?” he said.
FLEXN comes amid a national debate about revisions to police training and policy.
The dancers’ freestyling pieces are based on “flex” a street dance that evolved from a Jamaican style popular in Brooklyn dance hall in the 1990s. It involves a range of styles including flexing, gliding — and “bone-breaking” whereby dancers dislocate parts of their body to make moves “you could not imagine are possible,” Sellars said.
One dance in the production deals with a subway fare beater. A dancer enacts a man jumping over a turnstile and getting into an argument with a police officer. An ensuing altercation ends with the “perpetrator” being shot and leaving his body to comfort his parents.
“What we know is that among those most likely to be victims of violence are young men of color,” said Danielle Sered, director of Common Justice at the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice who will sit on a panel titled “Restorative Justice.” She said she was participating because it was her hope the 11-night series “will be able to raise the urgency of these issues in a way that is not just about the devastation but really pointed toward action.”
Each of the dancers also created a piece about solitary confinement after Sellars invited them to respond to the armory photo installation by Richard Ross, who spent eight years documenting juveniles held in solitary confinement in 34 states.
“Thank God the mayor says it will not happen to 16 to 17 years old,” Sellars said referring to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to eliminate solitary confinement for those inmates and phase out its use for 18- to 21-year-olds by the beginning of next year. He said the dancers’ exploration of the topic gives insight to an issue “that perhaps is easily debated . but we don’t actually realize the weight of.”
Prior to each performance, a half-hour discussion will be led by educators, community leaders and public officials on a range of topics, including reforming Rikers Island, community policing and stop and frisk. Among the participants will be “young people who have been through this and can speak about it,” Sellars said.
“Most Americans treat these issues of violence in black neighborhoods with an imaginary distance,” he said. “It’s extremely important to have personal and grounded views in what is going on day-to-day in these neighborhoods and to hear personal testimony from a range of people.”
Sered added that the combination of the arts and public conversation is “a powerful tool for conveying that — wherever we live and whatever our experience — these issues belong to all of us to experience, to think about, to grapple with and to change.”
article by Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press via bet.com
