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Posts published in “Protests”

Duke University Debuts Website Documenting SNCC & the Voting Rights Struggle

By goodblacknews on March 12, 2015

Vq1ywrurDuke University in Durham, North Carolina, has just debuted a new website documenting the struggle of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to secure voting rights for African Americans. The site, entitled “One Person, One Vote: The Legacy of the SNCC and the Fight for Voting Rights,” went live one week before the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.
Students and faculty at Duke University worked with veterans of SNCC and other civil rights leaders to develop the website. The site includes a timeline, profiles of the key figures in the struggle to secure voting rights, and stories relating to the struggle.
5193ppoofzL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Wesley Hogan, the director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and the author of Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), stated that “this is an enormous achievement, to find ways to bring these experts who were so central to the voting rights struggle, into the formal historical record through their own words and on their own terms. The project comes at a moment when our nation is both commemorating key victories of the civil rights movement and seeing those victories challenged by new restrictive voting laws in many states.”
 
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article via jbhe.com

University of Oklahoma Fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon Shut Down for Racist Chant (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on March 9, 2015

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Last night, according to CNN, the national chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity shut down its house at the University of Oklahoma after a video of its members chanting racial epithets surfaced on the internet.  University president David Boren said the university’s affiliation with the fraternity is permanently done as a campus group called for the expulsion of fraternity members.

The members have until midnight Tuesday to get their things out of the house, university  Boren said in a Monday afternoon news conference.

“The house will be closed, and as far as I’m concerned, they won’t be back,” he said, adding that the university is exploring what actions it can take against individual fraternity members.

The video showing party-bound fraternity members on a bus Saturday clapping and pumping their fists as they boisterously chant, “There will never be a ni**** SAE. You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me” found its way anonymously to the school newspaper and a campus organization, which both promptly publicized the nine-second clip.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDObfdw22s&w=560&h=315]

By Sunday night, SAE’s national chapter had suspended the University of Oklahoma members and threatened lifelong suspensions for anyone responsible for the chant, but Boren took it a step further.

President declares ‘zero tolerance’

First, he appeared at a campus rally and told students over a bullhorn, “I have a message for those who have misused their freedom of speech in this way. My message to them is: You’re disgraceful. You have violated every principle that this university stands for.”

In remarks to a reporter from KOKH-TV, he said the SAEs were no more on the Norman campus.

“All of our ties to that organization on our campus are severed, and I’ve given them till midnight tomorrow night to get their things out of the fraternity house. After that time, it will be totally closed and they’ll have to make special arrangements to even get their belongings out of the house,” he told KOKH. “And as they take their belongings out of the house, I hope they reflect on what they’ve done.”

In a statement that mirrored what he told students earlier, Boren said the fraternity members’ behavior is not indicative of what University of Oklahoma students represent.

“Real Sooners are not racist. Real Sooners are not bigots. Real Sooners believe in equal opportunity. Real Sooners treat all people with respect. Real Sooners love each other and take care of each other like family members,” he wrote.

At his news conference, he added that those responsible “don’t deserve to be called Sooners. They’re misusing our name.”

How it surfaced

The student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, received the video in a Sunday email, said print Editor Katelyn Griffith. The fraternity celebrated its Founder’s Day on Saturday, and the video showed members traveling to a formal event that evening, she said.

“We decided that this was definitely a story they needed to cover without question,” she told CNN. “This was something that we knew wouldn’t be tolerated by the students at OU and the university at large.”

Unheard, a campus organization launched in response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, received the video Sunday via anonymous text and immediately moved to “let our community and our university know that this behavior is not tolerated, that’s it’s unacceptable and it’s extremely, extremely offensive,” said the group’s co-director, Chelsea Davis.

This mentality is not new to campus, Davis told CNN, but it’s the first time people have been caught on video. She said the only acceptable response is to expel — not suspend, as that would send the wrong message — all the students involved.

“I was hurt that my fellow peers that I walk to class with every day, people that I see every day, could say such hateful things about me and my culture, about my friends, about my brothers and my sisters,” she said.

In his news conference, Boren said the school was looking into punishing the individuals involved, especially against those “who have taken a lead” in the chanting. While expulsion is an option, any punishment must be “carefully directed” if it’s to pass constitutional muster. One key will be whether the offending students created a hostile environment on campus, he said.

Boren emphasized that “there is no room for racists and bigots” at Oklahoma.

That sentiment echoed throughout campus, as a large crowd of students attended a protest at the university’s North Oval, some of them arriving with tape over their mouths with the word, “Unheard,” written across it.

Other students took to social media to express their disappointment, with one person urging students to change their profile picture to an image that says in Sooner crimson, “Not on our campus,” the “ou” in “our” offset in gray. OU is shorthand for the University of Oklahoma.

‘Racism is alive’

Unheard posted the video online Sunday with the comment, “Racism is alive at The University of Oklahoma.” It was addressed to @President_Boren, the university president’s Twitter handle. Boren quickly threatened to throw the fraternity off-campus if the allegations were true.

The SAE’s national chapter also moved promptly, saying in a statement it had closed the chapter “following the discovery of an inappropriate video.” The group further apologized for the “unacceptable and racist behavior of the individuals in the video.”

“I was not only shocked and disappointed, but disgusted by the outright display of racism displayed in the video,” SAE national President Bradley Cohen said in a statement.

A group of students gathered to pray over the racist insults. One of them told CNN affiliate KFOR-TV he was “nauseated, frustrated,” but he was happy with the SAE headquarters’ decision.

“We should be past this. This is disgusting,” he said.

Spray paint marked a wall of SAE’s fraternity house at the university. “Tear it down,” the graffiti appeared to say. Police posted squad cars in front of the house.

Talib Kweli’s Action Support Committee Raises Over $100,000 For Ferguson Activists

By lorilakinhutcherson on February 17, 2015

Talib Kweli Rare Portraits Gravitas
In the wake of former officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Ferguson, Missouri teen Michael Brown that left Brown dead and Wilson a free man, dozens of protestors and organizers took to the Missouri streets. Some were pepper sprayed and even arrested, and in the midst of the unrest, hip hop artist and activist Talib Kweli helped establish a The Action Support Committee. The Committee aimed to raise $25,000 and disperse the money in the form of grants to those in need. Kweli addressed the Committee’s goals via the following written statement:

These are young men and women who have put their lives on hold to stand up for all of our freedoms. The overly militarized police force in Ferguson has attempted to criminalize them by harassing and throwing them in jail for exercising their right to peaceful protest. We hope these funds help to empower.

Led by Kweli, Donna Dragotta, and Autumn Marie, the Committee’s GoFundMe campaign surpassed the $25,000 goal and raised $112,052 before the fundraising campaign ended in January. The first $48,800 funding phase will be distributed as follows:
Jail & Bail Fund ($35,000), Artists as Tutors ($2,000), Revolutionary Reading Program ($2,000), Tech Impact Initiative ($2,000), Latino youth leadership program Juventud Raza Unida ($2,000), The Transitional Housing Program ($2,000) and Bereavement Fund ($3,800).
Additional funds are scheduled to be distributed to the Action Support Committee’s Revolution School and programs “committed to sustaining the recent momentum of social justice organizing.”
article by Omar Burgess via elev8.hellobeautiful.com

Dartmouth College to Launch 10 Week #BlackLivesMatter Course

By goodblacknews on February 7, 2015

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#BlackLivesMatter grew from a hashtag to a movement and is now a college course at Dartmouth College.

This spring, the Ivy League college will offer a new class, “10 Weeks, 10 Professors: #BlackLivesMatter,” which will examine race, violence and inequality through current events and throughout history.

The 2014 deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York during confrontations with police sparked conversations on social media and protests around the world, including Dartmouth’s Hanover, New Hampshire, campus.

“Even though we might be sort of cloistered away in the ivory tower or something, we felt very much moved by, incited by, inspired by a lot of the activists’ work following the failure to indict Darren Wilson after the events in Ferguson,” said Aimee Bahng, an assistant professor of English at Dartmouth. “We wanted to not leave this behind after winter break.”

Then, around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Missouri Rev. Starsky Wilson, co-chairman of the Ferguson Commission, spoke with Dartmouth faculty about “teaching Ferguson.” By the end of Wilson’s two-hour workshop, faculty members were already brainstorming how to integrate the events and the response into coursework and campus life.

The result was a teaching collective that draws faculty from geography, history, English, math and other areas, and the idea for an interdisciplinary course crafted and taught by all of them. The course is also expected to draw outside speakers and to explore ways to engage the community beyond parading professors in front of lecture halls.

“There is a special energy around this,” said Abigail Neely, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth. “It’s designed to transgress the boundaries between disciplines in an effort to do some really deep, sustained critical thinking about some of the most important issues in the country and world at this moment.”

The course came together quickly with support from college leaders and Dartmouth’s African and African-American Studies Program, Neely and Bahng said. Enrollment opened on Friday, but faculty members are still finalizing the syllabus and deciding how many students will be admitted.

An early lesson is expected to focus on St. Louis and its racial history. Another will consider poetry, prose, music and religious sermons. Still others will look at how events in Ferguson were documented through different media and how black activism has evolved, “from hip-hop to hashtags.”

As word spread about the course, there’s been an outpouring of support on campus, Bahng and Neely said. Far more than 10 faculty have signed on — as of Wednesday, 21 are “thinking together, teaching together, working together” — and students have approached to ask whether they can sit in on the course, even if they aren’t enrolled.

In planning the course, “we’ve already begun the work as a teaching collective,” Neely said. “I’m so excited to see what happens when the students join.”

article by Jamie Gumbrecht via cnn.com

Judge in South Carolina Throws Out Sit-In Convictions for "Friendship Nine"

By goodblacknews on January 28, 2015

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A judge in Rock Hill, S.C., vacated the convictions of nine black men who were arrested in 1961 for sitting at a whites-only lunch counter. (Photo by Megan Gielow for The New York Times)

Rock Hill, South Carolina (CNN) A South Carolina judge on Wednesday threw out the convictions of the Friendship Nine, who were jailed in 1961 after a sit-in protest in Rock Hill, South Carolina, during the civil rights movement.

“Today is a victory in race relations in America,” said Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said in a news conference following the ruling. “It is a new day.”

The prosecutor who pushed for this momentous day, 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett of Rock Hill, cited King’s father when explaining to CNN on Tuesday why he was motivated to take up the cause of the Friendship Nine: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

The proceedings began at the Rock Hill Law Center with Municipal Judge Jane Pittman Modla reading from the original court record for each of the men. She asked each of the seven men in attendance — one has since died, while another had transportation issues — to stand as their names were called.

“Offense: trespassing. Disposition: guilty. Sentence: $100 or 30 days. Condition: sent to the chain gang,” she said for each of them, reading from the 1961 docket.

Retired state Supreme Court Justice Ernest Finney, who was the men’s defense attorney in 1961, entered the motion to have the sentences tossed out. The 83-year-old required help standing and propped himself on the table in front of him as he spoke.

“May it please the court, today I’m honored and proud to move this honorable court to vacate the conviction of my clients. These courageous and determined South Carolinians have shown by their conduct and their faith that the relief that they seek should be granted. I move for the convictions entered in 1961 to be vacated.”

New Yorker Magazine Cover Depicts Martin Luther King Jr., Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin & Mike Brown

By goodblacknews on January 17, 2015
Cartoonist and illustrator Barry Blitt is best known for his work with The New Yorker, and his latest cover for the magazine depicts Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a re-imagining of images seen in photos from the Selma-To-Montgomery march events. In the illustration, Rev. King is seen walking —  arms locked — with slain Staten Island, N.Y., resident Eric Garner and fallen NYPD officer Wenjian Liuwith, slain Black teenagers Trayvon Martin and Michael “Mike” Brown in the background.
The image is enhanced due to the inclusion of the American flag behind the marchers, and the serene look on the faces of the figures invites a moment of reflection of what was lost. Blitt was inspired to draw the cover for the New Yorker’s upcoming cover story, “The Dream Of Reconciliation,” because of the Selma marches. With King’s birthday on Jan. 15th, and the upcoming recognition of the civil rights leader this coming Monday, the timeliness of the illustration is noteworthy.
From Blitt and the New Yorker:

“It struck me that King’s vision was both the empowerment of African Americans, the insistence on civil rights, but also the reconciliation of people who seemed so hard to reconcile,” he said. “In New York and elsewhere, the tension between the police and the policed is at the center of things. Like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Martin Luther King was taken way too early. It is hard to believe things would have got as bad as they are if he was still around today.”

As the nation continues to grapple with the loss of Martin, Garner, Brown, Liu and his partner Officer Rafael Ramos, there is a collective outpouring of grief and questions that are still yet unanswered. Blitt, in his words, seems to recognize the weight of his art and the inquiries it will surely spark in the days to come.
article by D.L. Chandler via newsone.com

Gamers Unite To Raise Money For Eric Garner’s Family With #Spawn4Good Event on January 17 & 18

By goodblacknews on January 13, 2015
Protest Continue Across Country In Wake Of NY Grand Jury Verdict In Chokehold Death Case
Ever since the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice—all unarmed Black men killed by the hands of police— have swept social consciousness, there has been a sense of growing helplessness and frustration in the Black community. This frustration was ignited with the refusals of grand juries to indict police officers that led to a wave of protests around the globe. Social media and technology played a large role as users adopted the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #icantbreathe as their rallying cry. Even the hacker group Anonymous took up banners in search of justice. Now gamers are making their voices heard with #Spawn4Good, gaming charity event against police brutality.
The #Spawn4Good event— taking place January 17 and 18— invites gamers all over the world to stream on Twitch in an unprecedented act of solidarity to reflect and take a stand against the unequal treatment of people of color at the hands of law enforcement.  The initiative will also raise funds through CrowdRise with the donations being distributed to the Eric Garner Fund, and The New York Lawyers Guild.
#Spawn4Good is the brain child of Kahlief Adams, Owner and Editor in Chief of SpawnPointBlog.  Along with the podcast Spawn On Me, the site spotlights people of color in the gaming industry. When asked why he chose gaming as a platform, Adams said, “Gaming is and has been a part of our lives since we were very little, and it only feels natural to help in this way. We’ve seen the awful reshaping of what the term “gamer” has been over the past year with the #GamerGate & #NotYourShield debacles and felt like this was a way push back against the consistent apathetic feelings we see in our own gaming communities when it comes to issues of racial disparity and injustice.”
“There was a bigger uproar over the last Destiny update than there was over any of the issues facing gamers of color and their communities and we feel like that needs addressing.”
Adams joins a growing movement of people accepting the evolving notion of gaming as more than just a male teenager’s pastime. With 59% of Americans playing video games and the average age being 31 according to the Entertainment Software Association, the look of the gamer is changing and driving change not only in pocketbooks but in social issues. Engaged gamers have been motivated to donate more than 101 billion grains of rice through the World Food Programs online game FreeRice, the annual Awesome Games Done Quick Event raised over $1,000,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation in a live streaming event and there are organizations like the annual Games for Change Festival that showcase games developed for education, activism and that effect social or environmental change.
For those interested in taking part you can donate via CrowdRise, watch the Twitch stream on (SOM) & (SOM2) or can spread the word at @spawnonme on Twitter and by using the tag #Spawn4Good.
article by Ian Freeman via theurbandaily.com

Ferguson Protesters Stall Opening of Missouri Senate Session

By goodblacknews on January 8, 2015
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The start of Missouri’s legislative session was interrupted Wednesday by demonstrators who chanted and unfurled banners in the Senate while protesting the fatal Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown.
Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who was presiding over the chamber, said demonstrators were violating Senate rules of decorum and ordered proceedings suspended while police cleared people from the visitors’ galleries. The Senate resumed after about 30 minutes, but no one was allowed to return to the visitors’ section.
Protest leaders and a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety said no one was arrested.
Demonstrators vowed to return to the Capitol throughout this year’s session as lawmakers consider numerous bills stemming from the Aug. 9 shooting of the black, unarmed 18-year-old by officer Darren Wilson, who is white, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. A grand jury decided not to charge Wilson, who later resigned.
“Our hope is they take what we did seriously,” said one of the protest leaders, Kayla Reed, of the Organization for Black Struggle. “What people need to understand is that 152 days into this, we’re not stopping — we’re really just getting starting.”
Demonstrators distributed a 28-point plan for changes to police practices, including “anti-racism training,” greater citizen oversight of police agencies and an end to the police acquisition of military-grade equipment.
As the Senate convened, chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “No justice, no peace” echoed from the hallways into the chamber. Both chants have been common rallying cries at protests in Ferguson and across the nation by people who believe minorities are too often the targets of overzealous police.
Dozens of protesters intermingled among relatives and friends of newly elected Missouri senators who were seated in the visitors’ galleries to watch lawmakers take the oath of office. They unfurled several banners. One said, “Swear to protect the people.”
Kinder, a Republican, banged the gavel and declared that protesters had “rudely inserted yourself into the solemn proceeding.” But protesters continued with chants — “It is our duty to fight for our freedom” and “Black lives matter” — as they were escorted from the chamber.
article by David A. Lieb, AP via bet.com

Carl Jones' Animated Musical "The Wizard Of Watts" Airs Saturday on Cartoon Network, Takes on Police Brutality

By goodblacknews on January 5, 2015
“The Wizard of Watts,” an animated musical coming to Adult Swim on Saturday, tackles police brutality during a charged time. (Credit: Adult Swim) 

LOS ANGELES — “The Wizard of Watts,” a coming animated television musical, was conceived two years ago as a big, fat gob of raucous entertainment wrapped around a nugget of racial commentary.

Then, with the musical’s animation already far underway, Ferguson, Mo., became a flash point, starting a national debate about race, overzealous policing and the need for officers to wear body cameras. Then came the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” and the broader protest against police brutality.

Suddenly, “The Wizard of Watts,” with its devastated black neighborhoods and army of pigs, took on greater weight. How the musical will be received by viewers at a racially charged cultural moment is anyone’s guess. But when it arrives on Cartoon Network’s after-hours Adult Swim block on Saturday, “The Wizard of Watts” will at the very least become one of those eerie instances of art accidentally mirroring life.

The primary villain in the Magical Land of Oz-Watts, where the story takes place, is a vicious pig clad in riot gear. Water does not neutralize this Oz villain; instead this baddie gets melted with a camcorder. “Oh, no! Not an irrefutable visual record of my illegal actions!” the anthropomorphized pig wails as he turns to mush at the musical’s climax.

Even Carl Jones, the director of “The Wizard of Watts” and one of its writers, was surprised at hitting such a cultural bull’s-eye.

“I take pride in tackling things with my gloves off, but animation takes such a long time to produce that you usually don’t end up being all that current,” he said.

Mr. Jones had noticed on social media how African-Americans were increasingly using cellphone cameras as “protection from police, like as a weapon,” he said.

“Nobody was talking about it and so I decided we had to take it on,” he said.

Cleveland Browns Wide Receiver Andrew Hawkins Offers Thoughtful Rebuke After Police Union Slams T-Shirt Protest

By goodblacknews on December 18, 2014
Cleveland Browns player Andrew Hawkins on Dec. 14, 2014
Cleveland Browns player Andrew Hawkins on Dec. 14, 2014

After police unions slammed his decision to wear a T-shirt protesting the police shootings of two black people in Ohio, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins gathered the media to explain himself more fully.
Hawkins outlined his rationale, speaking without notes, according to ESPN Cleveland reporter Tony Grossi. He touched on his own upbringing and the role of his children in his lengthy comments.
“I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do,” Hawkins said. “If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that.”
Below is his statement in full:

“I was taught that justice is a right that every American should have. Also justice should be the goal of every American. I think that’s what makes this country. To me, justice means the innocent should be found innocent. It means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment. Ultimately, it means fair treatment. So a call for justice shouldn’t offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology.“To clarify, I utterly respect and appreciate every police officer that protects and serves all of us with honesty, integrity and the right way. And I don’t think those kind of officers should be offended by what I did. My mom taught me my entire life to respect law enforcement. I have family, close friends that are incredible police officers and I tell them all the time how they are much braver than me for it. So my wearing a T-shirt wasn’t a stance against every police officer or every police department. My wearing the T-shirt was a stance against wrong individuals doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons to innocent people.
“Unfortunately, my mom also taught me just as there are good police officers, there are some not-so-good police officers that would assume the worst of me without knowing anything about me for reasons I can’t control. She taught me to be careful and be on the lookout for those not-so-good police officers because they could potentially do me harm and most times without consequences. Those are the police officers that should be offended.
“Being a police officer takes bravery. And I understand that they’re put in difficult positions and have to make those snap decisions. As a football player, I know a little bit about snap decisions, obviously on an extremely lesser and non-comparative scale, because when a police officer makes a snap decision, it’s literally a matter of life and death. That’s hard a situation to be in. But if the wrong decision is made, based on pre-conceived notions or the wrong motives, I believe there should be consequence. Because without consequence, naturally the magnitude of the snap decisions is lessened, whether consciously or unconsciously.
“I’m not an activist, in any way, shape or form. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I keep my opinions to myself on most matters. I worked extremely hard to build and keep my reputation especially here in Ohio, and by most accounts I’ve done a solid job of decently building a good name. Before I made the decision to wear the T-shirt, I understood I was putting that reputation in jeopardy to some of those people who wouldn’t necessarily agree with my perspective. I understood there was going to be backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down I felt like it was the right thing to do. If I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward, and I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward.
“As you well know, and it’s well documented, I have a 2-year-old little boy. The same 2-year-old little boy that everyone said was cute when I jokingly threw him out of the house earlier this year. That little boy is my entire world. And the No. 1 reason for me wearing the T-shirt was the thought of what happened to Tamir Rice happening to my little Austin scares the living hell out of me. And my heart was broken for the parents of Tamir and John Crawford knowing they had to live that nightmare of a reality.
“So, like I said, I made the conscious decision to wear the T-shirt. I felt like my heart was in the right place. I’m at peace with it and those that disagree with me, this is America, everyone has the right to their first amendment rights. Those who support me, I appreciate your support. But at the same time, support the causes and the people and the injustices that you feel strongly about. Stand up for them. Speak up for them. No matter what it is because that’s what America’s about and that’s what this country was founded on.”

article by Dylan Scott via talkingpointsmemo.com