Hi,
This is Annelle. I thought it was fitting about the word of the day.
Because I am writing to apologize for a thoughtless act on my part.
I was supposed to go to the recording of Democracy NOW! this morning. I had received Kathy's helpful emails, I knew where and when. I was irresponsible and went out late, then stayed up later working on finals. This morning when my alarm went off I didn't hear it. I slept straight through.
I sincerely apologize to the class, particularly because I know that there were only a few spaces available to go, and I prevented someone else from going. For that I am truly sorry.
I also apologize to Kathy who organized this for us; thank you so much not only for helping to make this happen for us, but also coordinating the play at the Culture Project, our amazing guests, and the climate of our classroom.
Please forgive my carelessness.
Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!
Good luck with finals everyone!
Thanks,
Annelle
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
from Ellen
Hi everyone!
Below is my final piece, which Kathy asked me to post. I want to work on it a little more, so I may repost a second draft, but in the meantime:
Sitting here in a nearly empty newsroom, on the last night of daily production of a newspaper for which I have written over the past two years and for which I may never write again, I cannot pretend to be able to untangle my objective relationship with journalism from my subjective relationship with it. My future is wholly uncertain right now--I do not know which school i will be attending or even which continent I will be inhabiting come September, and I am also in the process of re-evaluating my professional goals. After six years, four newspapers, seven jobs and hundreds of articles, I am trying to discern whether or not journalism is the best, smartest and most responsible match for me personally and professionally. I am not ready to abandon it just yet--far from it--but it's a question that has come up as I am forced, more and more, to deal with my impending entry into the Real World and all of its pragmatic concerns.
Horace Greeley once said that "journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it." Over the past six years, journalism has killed me in innumerable ways. It has meant late nights and early mornings, countless sacrifices big and small. I have felt the impotence of knowingly committing myself to a field that is shrinking before my eyes, the shame and anger of seeing my stories torn apart by anonymous commentators on the internet, the exasperation of being edited. I have had to ask extremely difficult questions and have likely ruined more than a few people's days. I have been forced to confront and report on many of the world's injustices, as well as come to terms with my own limitations and flaws as a writer, thinker, reporter, perso. I have been, at various times, exhausted, tested, frustrated as hell.
But journalism has, as Greeley observes, kept me alive. It has inspired me, challenged me, changed me immensely. It has forced me to interact with and understand all kinds of people, often people whose life experiences, values and opinions differ greatly from mine and who I likely would never have come in contact with otherwise. Last fall, for example, I wrote an article about Juan, a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side who was being exploited by his boss. I found myself talking to and becoming incredibly attached to someone that I probably would never have even met if he weren't a source for my story.
But beyond all that it has given me, journalism keeps all of us alive--often metaphorically and sometimes literally. Journalism is putting your finger to the pulse of humanity; it is listening to and retelling countless people's stories. It is an incredibly optimistic and humanistic undertaking in that it is based on the notion that people matter, and that telling their stories is important.
In politics, progressivism is defined as the belief that problems can be fixed and governments can fix them. Journalism is, in this way, a truly progressive concept: at its core, journalism exists based on the belief that things can be changed, and that people can change them.
On the very first day of this class, Gabriela asked a question: What are journalists for? I readily admit that I am nowhere near anything resembling a succinct or complete answer to this question, but I think I'm getting closer. We are here to order reality, taking all of the information about a given event, person or subject, parsing it down to what's most important and packaging it in a way that is accessible to the public. We are here to use our power and our words and our voices to speak for those who have none of these things. It is our job to to organize and interpret and chronicle the world so others can change it. This is an immense responsibility.
It is not, I have come to believe recently, a journalist's responsibility to always be objective and detached. The journalists who truly inspire and affect me--Mike Davis, Anderson Cooper, June Jordan--violate every rule that journalists are meant to follow. They are anything but dispassionate, actively engaging with their subjects and their audiences. When Anderson Cooper broke down crying on live television during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, his tears revealed more about the crisis than any sound bite could have. When June Jordan interprets proposition 209 through the lens of her experiences as a black woman, the issue becomes all the more real for the reader.
This is not to say that journalism is perfect--in fact, it's the opposite: Journalism is an imperfect concept existing in an imperfect universe, and in some ways, it amplifies the world's inequality. The people who are voiceless and powerless are also the people who have less control of and access to the media. But the best journalists believe in at least attempting to mend these problems, and journalism rests on the idea that exposure and agency and things that should belong to everyone.
I am sitting here in this empty newsroom at the end of a rough night and an even rougher semester, looking out the eighth-floor window at a sky that is just beginning to show the magenta and orange of sunrise. I am sleep-deprived and hungry and, to be honest, slightly delirious, but can't help but find a metaphor here. Journalism is like the sun: essential, illuminating, life-giving, vital.
also, if any of you have any advice or comments, i'd really appreciate them. As I said, I'm not entirely happy with what I ended up coming up with and am looking to rework it, so if any of you have any ideas, let me know!
Below is my final piece, which Kathy asked me to post. I want to work on it a little more, so I may repost a second draft, but in the meantime:
Sitting here in a nearly empty newsroom, on the last night of daily production of a newspaper for which I have written over the past two years and for which I may never write again, I cannot pretend to be able to untangle my objective relationship with journalism from my subjective relationship with it. My future is wholly uncertain right now--I do not know which school i will be attending or even which continent I will be inhabiting come September, and I am also in the process of re-evaluating my professional goals. After six years, four newspapers, seven jobs and hundreds of articles, I am trying to discern whether or not journalism is the best, smartest and most responsible match for me personally and professionally. I am not ready to abandon it just yet--far from it--but it's a question that has come up as I am forced, more and more, to deal with my impending entry into the Real World and all of its pragmatic concerns.
Horace Greeley once said that "journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it." Over the past six years, journalism has killed me in innumerable ways. It has meant late nights and early mornings, countless sacrifices big and small. I have felt the impotence of knowingly committing myself to a field that is shrinking before my eyes, the shame and anger of seeing my stories torn apart by anonymous commentators on the internet, the exasperation of being edited. I have had to ask extremely difficult questions and have likely ruined more than a few people's days. I have been forced to confront and report on many of the world's injustices, as well as come to terms with my own limitations and flaws as a writer, thinker, reporter, perso. I have been, at various times, exhausted, tested, frustrated as hell.
But journalism has, as Greeley observes, kept me alive. It has inspired me, challenged me, changed me immensely. It has forced me to interact with and understand all kinds of people, often people whose life experiences, values and opinions differ greatly from mine and who I likely would never have come in contact with otherwise. Last fall, for example, I wrote an article about Juan, a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side who was being exploited by his boss. I found myself talking to and becoming incredibly attached to someone that I probably would never have even met if he weren't a source for my story.
But beyond all that it has given me, journalism keeps all of us alive--often metaphorically and sometimes literally. Journalism is putting your finger to the pulse of humanity; it is listening to and retelling countless people's stories. It is an incredibly optimistic and humanistic undertaking in that it is based on the notion that people matter, and that telling their stories is important.
In politics, progressivism is defined as the belief that problems can be fixed and governments can fix them. Journalism is, in this way, a truly progressive concept: at its core, journalism exists based on the belief that things can be changed, and that people can change them.
On the very first day of this class, Gabriela asked a question: What are journalists for? I readily admit that I am nowhere near anything resembling a succinct or complete answer to this question, but I think I'm getting closer. We are here to order reality, taking all of the information about a given event, person or subject, parsing it down to what's most important and packaging it in a way that is accessible to the public. We are here to use our power and our words and our voices to speak for those who have none of these things. It is our job to to organize and interpret and chronicle the world so others can change it. This is an immense responsibility.
It is not, I have come to believe recently, a journalist's responsibility to always be objective and detached. The journalists who truly inspire and affect me--Mike Davis, Anderson Cooper, June Jordan--violate every rule that journalists are meant to follow. They are anything but dispassionate, actively engaging with their subjects and their audiences. When Anderson Cooper broke down crying on live television during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, his tears revealed more about the crisis than any sound bite could have. When June Jordan interprets proposition 209 through the lens of her experiences as a black woman, the issue becomes all the more real for the reader.
This is not to say that journalism is perfect--in fact, it's the opposite: Journalism is an imperfect concept existing in an imperfect universe, and in some ways, it amplifies the world's inequality. The people who are voiceless and powerless are also the people who have less control of and access to the media. But the best journalists believe in at least attempting to mend these problems, and journalism rests on the idea that exposure and agency and things that should belong to everyone.
I am sitting here in this empty newsroom at the end of a rough night and an even rougher semester, looking out the eighth-floor window at a sky that is just beginning to show the magenta and orange of sunrise. I am sleep-deprived and hungry and, to be honest, slightly delirious, but can't help but find a metaphor here. Journalism is like the sun: essential, illuminating, life-giving, vital.
also, if any of you have any advice or comments, i'd really appreciate them. As I said, I'm not entirely happy with what I ended up coming up with and am looking to rework it, so if any of you have any ideas, let me know!
Sunday, May 4, 2008
I am Sean Bell
Hi everyone,
Hope your finishing up finals with a minimal amount of stress. Below is my final for this class which Kathy asked that I post. I'm meeting more and more people who aren't familiar with Sean Bell and I encourage you if you are not familiar with the case to read about it and draw your own questions about the type of country and world we are living in.
I am Sean Bell
How many shots does it take to kill a person? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty? It took one bullet to the chest to kill 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond. It took one bullet to the chest to kill 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury. It took four bullets to the back to kill Ousmane Zongo. It took 41 bullets to kill 23-year-old Amadou Diallo. It took 50 bullets to kill 23-year-old Sean Bell. How many shots does it take to kill a person? How many shots does it take for a police officer to kill a black man in New York City? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty?
I saw a man shot and killed. I was in Alexandria, or “Alex,” a black township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. I was walking with a friend through a market after lunch when we heard yelling from behind us. As we turned, a crowd of maybe 30 people rushed towards us. My friend grabbed my hand, yelled something in Zulu and pushed me around the corner of a building. We crouched. The crowd cleared. A black man ran past followed by two white cops with guns. With no warning there was a blast, then another, and another. The man stopped running. It took thirteen bullets to kill.
On an overcast Sunday in Harlem, two days after three detectives from the New York City Police Department were found not guilty of manslaughter and reckless endangerment after firing 50 shots into unarmed Sean Bell, a group of approximately 150 black people and one white person peacefully protested along Malcolm X Boulevard. As I stood with my black neighbors and listened to demands of justice, cries of anger, and moans of disbelief, I clung to the gentleman’s hand I was holding and cried. I cried for everything I do not understand. I cried for the anger inside me. I cried for a country that I want to believe in but cannot. I cried for a police system that cannot be trusted and a judicial system that delivers injustice. I cried for the body of a dead man I did not know. And with tears streaming down my face and my breathe coming in short uneven gasps, the man, whose hand I was grasping so tightly, offered me a handkerchief and told me, “You can cry, but Sean will not be the last, you may not want to waste those tears.”
As I gathered myself and the crowd moved forward down the street named after a man who was shot seven times and killed, a man with a young boy on his shoulders passed. The child held in his hand a sign with the words, “I am Sean Bell.”*
I am Sean Bell. I am white living in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. I am Sean Bell. I am middle class and college educated; I am Sean Bell. I am a woman; I am Sean Bell. I am a human being that believes in nonviolence. I am a human being deeply concerned. I am concerned about police brutality. I’m concerned about domestic violence. I am concerned about war and torture. I am concerned that we live in a world so inundated with violence that it no longer fazes us. I am concerned that another dead black man is just another dead black man. I am a human being that questions why two black cops and one white fired 50 bullets into an unarmed 23 year old who is only a year older than me. I am a human being but I am concerned because I am questioning what that means.
According to a 2006 United States Department of Justice Special Report, approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was used during 1999. The same report also highlights that in 2002 26,556 "citizen complaints" were filed at state and local law-enforcement agencies throughout the country. However, in only 8 percent of these cases was punitive action against the accused officer suggested and/or executed. These are the numbers of people who filed a complaint. In a report compiled by Human Rights Watch entitled, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, only 30% of people who have experienced police brutality in some capacity have filed a formal complaint.
I live in a city and a country where law enforcement is not just mistrusted by the black population, it is feared. To have black skin you are guilty until proven innocent. In 1999 when Amadou Diallo was gunned down by 41 bullets fired from four white cops, the murder was seen as a case of racial profiling. The racist undercurrent that fuels the NYPD was dragged through the media, city streets, and neighborhoods throughout the city. Waves of protest crippled city streets and the name Diallo is forever synonymous with racism and police brutality. As Diallo reached for his wallet, the police, assuming that a young black man in New York City carries a gun, opened fire and killed him. Nine years later Sean Bell still falls victim of racial profiling and racism in the police force however; two of the three cops responsible for his death are black. Unlike the shooting of Diallo, the media is presenting the Sean Bell case through the prism of police misconduct not through the lens of race. But regardless of the color of the shooting officers, Sean Bell died because he was a black man. It is a case of police brutality. It is case of extreme violence. It is a case of racism. Detective Michael Oliver, a white man, fired 31 bullets - he reloaded his gun. Look how far we have come since 1999 people say. This isn’t a case of racism, that’s behind us, black cops fired at Bell too. If Bell had been a white man would the police have been so quick to assume he had a gun? Would they fire 50 times? This is a case about the perceptions of black men. This is a case about shooting first and asking questions later. How many shots does it take to kill?
I teach high school students documentary film production in an after school program. One of my students says she is so used to the sounds of gunfire in her neighborhood that she hardly notices it anymore. Her family lives on the fourth floor of a building in the South Bronx. My student’s best friend lives on the first floor of a building in the same neighborhood and has had seven bullets shatter her home. My student is 16 and is tough. She says guns do not scare her and she is not afraid to die. We talked about Sean Bell. “The police will fuck anybody up if they feel like it, but that’s how it is. If I see one, I simply walk the other way, that’s just how it is.” She is 16 and she says she is not afraid to die. She is 16 and she is not afraid to die. She is 16.
I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old goes to sleep to the sound of gunfire. I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old has to act tough or be embarrassed to say she spends nights on the phone with her best friend telling each other stories of the trips they will take to Japan together as they fall asleep to the sound of each others voices and the gunshots in the background. My student’s brother and two uncles are in jail. How can it be that black men comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison? Where is the justice? What is justice? Sean Bell died because he was a black man. In this country black men are disposable. Black women loose their husbands, brothers, and sons. Black children loose their fathers. And the white population sleeps better at night. And we don’t want to talk about it but I do and I am infuriated. Some of my fellow white Americans would say that I’m being too harsh, that this is not always the case, things are not that “black and white.” These are bold statements I’m making but someone has to say them. It’s not everyone my fellow white American’s would claim. And I do truly want to believe that but I’m questioning.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to see someone without the lens of race? We cannot. Black skin means fear, means doubt, means you walk on the other side of the street, it means you lock your car doors in certain neighborhoods, it means you shoot first, it means you shoot 50 times. I do not think every white person in this country hates black people. I don’t even think a small percentage of white people in this country hate black people. What I do think is we are all to blame in the death of Sean Bell. By allowing these shootings to go unquestioned we all shot Sean Bell. By teaching our black children to be rappers and basketball stars in order to get out of the ghetto, we shot Sean Bell. By being impressed when a 15-year-old girl from Harlem is “actually articulate,” we shot Sean Bell. By not demanding that the resources in black and Latino inner-city schools be the same as white suburban schools, we shot Sean Bell. By not knowing the history of this country, the slave trade, or colonialism, we shot Sean Bell. By being quiet and comfortable, we shot Sean Bell.
The media wanted an outrage when the Sean Bell Verdict was read. 1000 police officers were present outside the courtroom, as Justice Arthur J. Cooperman of the State Supreme Court read, not guilt, not guilty, not guilty. Fingers hovered over camera record buttons, microphones quivered, as the media waited for the response, the black response. But nothing came. There were no unruly mobs, there was no violence, and thousands did not pour into the streets. But the black population took another bullet on Friday. The white population took another bullet. The country took another bullet. One in the heart, one in the mind, and one in the soul.
As the media questions where the public outcry is, reports like the one from National Public Radio entitled, “New York Largely Unmoved by Sean Bell Verdict,” suggests New Yorkers have finally rolled over and given up. “Acting White” blogger James Collier, a black man, suggested on NPR that 50 shots is poor marksmanship and says that shooting Bell was somewhat justifiable because he was drunk behind the wheel of a car. I just took another bullet. This country just took another bullet. If I were drunk driving would I be shot? Black writer Trey Ellis, in the same NPR discussion, talks about cynicism. He is not surprised by the seemingly quiet verdict because this type of behavior is expected from the NYPD whom we hold to a lower standard according to Ellis, black men are shot in New York City regularly. I want to scream. How is this possible! How can we hold police officers to a lower standard and accept that black men are just going to be shot in New York and no one is going to care. How can we hold the men and women who are sworn to serve and protect us to a lower standard than we hold ourselves? Don’t we all deserve the same level of respect and dignity? Aren’t we all human? I scream, what does that mean? NPR, I care. I AM MOVED.
People are questioning where the black leadership is? Reverend Al Sharpton is berating Barack Obama for calling for nonviolence and not being a strong enough voice of the black population. But if there is any hope for this country to move forward in our discussion of race we need not just black leaders standing up, we need everyone. Where is any type of leadership? What has Hillary Clinton said? We need somebody, anybody, to stand up and say that 50 bullets was 50 bullets too many! People expected Obama to stand up for the black community and I’ll agree he fell short as a candidate promoting change and conversation among the multi-races of America. But is should not just be Obama standing up. It should be Clinton, and McCain, and Bush. It should be every parent who has a child, every politician who represents his or her constituency, every teacher who has a student, every child who has a sibling, cousin, Aunt, or Uncle, every person who has a friend, loved one, or family, every person who wants to live in a country where people have the right to not be shot! How much longer are we going to let men, women, and children be killed because of the color of their skin? People are looking for leaders and we are in desperate need of someone, black, white, Latino, Asian, male, female, transgendered, whomever. Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough? Right now though we need to stop waiting around for a leader and begin to lead ourselves.
This is not just about Sean Bell. This isn’t just about police brutality. This is about the increasing amount of torture and violence in our world and how it is infiltrating how we live, how we see one another, how we think, how we move, how we breathe. This is about how we view one another with fear and assumptions. This is about how we communicate with each other and how we fail to do so. This is about my student in the Bronx. This is about my female students in South Africa who have to go to the community bathrooms as a group for fear of being raped in their own shantytown neighborhood. This is about my cousin in Iraq who is trained to kill brown skinned people. This is about not questioning injustices in the world because we are scared of failing. This is about being scared of the police, of arrest, of blacklists, of reputations. This is about being scared of our voices falling on deaf ears and the sound of silence when no voice is heard. This is about fear making hope seem impossible. This is about three bullets – one to the heart, one to the mind, and one to the soul. Three bullets to kill.
If we loose our ability to feel love, compassion, and happiness we take a bullet to the heart. If we loose our ability to think, to question, to speak, we take a bullet to the mind. If we loose our ability to hope, to dream, to clasp our hands together and pray for a better future, brown hand in white hand, black hand in red hand, then we take a bullet to our souls. We all took a bullet on Friday, April 25th, 2008 when the judicial system said 50 bullets in an unarmed black man goes unpunished. We can say the system is corrupt, that police training is inadequate; that there was a possibility Sean Bell was armed. We can also say no. I refuse to loose my voice. I refuse to be told that I don’t care that a black man needlessly lost his life. I refuse to sleep comfortably at night knowing that my neighbors, men and women I share walls with, laugh with, cook with, could just become another statistic, another disposable black American. If this was just a case of police brutality, that could have been me riddled with bullets on the Jamaica pavement. They would have shot me too. I could have been Sean Bell. I am Sean Bell. I am white. I am an American. I am a woman. I am Sean Bell and I refuse to take another bullet.
Hope your finishing up finals with a minimal amount of stress. Below is my final for this class which Kathy asked that I post. I'm meeting more and more people who aren't familiar with Sean Bell and I encourage you if you are not familiar with the case to read about it and draw your own questions about the type of country and world we are living in.
I am Sean Bell
How many shots does it take to kill a person? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty? It took one bullet to the chest to kill 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond. It took one bullet to the chest to kill 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury. It took four bullets to the back to kill Ousmane Zongo. It took 41 bullets to kill 23-year-old Amadou Diallo. It took 50 bullets to kill 23-year-old Sean Bell. How many shots does it take to kill a person? How many shots does it take for a police officer to kill a black man in New York City? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty?
I saw a man shot and killed. I was in Alexandria, or “Alex,” a black township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. I was walking with a friend through a market after lunch when we heard yelling from behind us. As we turned, a crowd of maybe 30 people rushed towards us. My friend grabbed my hand, yelled something in Zulu and pushed me around the corner of a building. We crouched. The crowd cleared. A black man ran past followed by two white cops with guns. With no warning there was a blast, then another, and another. The man stopped running. It took thirteen bullets to kill.
On an overcast Sunday in Harlem, two days after three detectives from the New York City Police Department were found not guilty of manslaughter and reckless endangerment after firing 50 shots into unarmed Sean Bell, a group of approximately 150 black people and one white person peacefully protested along Malcolm X Boulevard. As I stood with my black neighbors and listened to demands of justice, cries of anger, and moans of disbelief, I clung to the gentleman’s hand I was holding and cried. I cried for everything I do not understand. I cried for the anger inside me. I cried for a country that I want to believe in but cannot. I cried for a police system that cannot be trusted and a judicial system that delivers injustice. I cried for the body of a dead man I did not know. And with tears streaming down my face and my breathe coming in short uneven gasps, the man, whose hand I was grasping so tightly, offered me a handkerchief and told me, “You can cry, but Sean will not be the last, you may not want to waste those tears.”
As I gathered myself and the crowd moved forward down the street named after a man who was shot seven times and killed, a man with a young boy on his shoulders passed. The child held in his hand a sign with the words, “I am Sean Bell.”*
I am Sean Bell. I am white living in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. I am Sean Bell. I am middle class and college educated; I am Sean Bell. I am a woman; I am Sean Bell. I am a human being that believes in nonviolence. I am a human being deeply concerned. I am concerned about police brutality. I’m concerned about domestic violence. I am concerned about war and torture. I am concerned that we live in a world so inundated with violence that it no longer fazes us. I am concerned that another dead black man is just another dead black man. I am a human being that questions why two black cops and one white fired 50 bullets into an unarmed 23 year old who is only a year older than me. I am a human being but I am concerned because I am questioning what that means.
According to a 2006 United States Department of Justice Special Report, approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was used during 1999. The same report also highlights that in 2002 26,556 "citizen complaints" were filed at state and local law-enforcement agencies throughout the country. However, in only 8 percent of these cases was punitive action against the accused officer suggested and/or executed. These are the numbers of people who filed a complaint. In a report compiled by Human Rights Watch entitled, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, only 30% of people who have experienced police brutality in some capacity have filed a formal complaint.
I live in a city and a country where law enforcement is not just mistrusted by the black population, it is feared. To have black skin you are guilty until proven innocent. In 1999 when Amadou Diallo was gunned down by 41 bullets fired from four white cops, the murder was seen as a case of racial profiling. The racist undercurrent that fuels the NYPD was dragged through the media, city streets, and neighborhoods throughout the city. Waves of protest crippled city streets and the name Diallo is forever synonymous with racism and police brutality. As Diallo reached for his wallet, the police, assuming that a young black man in New York City carries a gun, opened fire and killed him. Nine years later Sean Bell still falls victim of racial profiling and racism in the police force however; two of the three cops responsible for his death are black. Unlike the shooting of Diallo, the media is presenting the Sean Bell case through the prism of police misconduct not through the lens of race. But regardless of the color of the shooting officers, Sean Bell died because he was a black man. It is a case of police brutality. It is case of extreme violence. It is a case of racism. Detective Michael Oliver, a white man, fired 31 bullets - he reloaded his gun. Look how far we have come since 1999 people say. This isn’t a case of racism, that’s behind us, black cops fired at Bell too. If Bell had been a white man would the police have been so quick to assume he had a gun? Would they fire 50 times? This is a case about the perceptions of black men. This is a case about shooting first and asking questions later. How many shots does it take to kill?
I teach high school students documentary film production in an after school program. One of my students says she is so used to the sounds of gunfire in her neighborhood that she hardly notices it anymore. Her family lives on the fourth floor of a building in the South Bronx. My student’s best friend lives on the first floor of a building in the same neighborhood and has had seven bullets shatter her home. My student is 16 and is tough. She says guns do not scare her and she is not afraid to die. We talked about Sean Bell. “The police will fuck anybody up if they feel like it, but that’s how it is. If I see one, I simply walk the other way, that’s just how it is.” She is 16 and she says she is not afraid to die. She is 16 and she is not afraid to die. She is 16.
I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old goes to sleep to the sound of gunfire. I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old has to act tough or be embarrassed to say she spends nights on the phone with her best friend telling each other stories of the trips they will take to Japan together as they fall asleep to the sound of each others voices and the gunshots in the background. My student’s brother and two uncles are in jail. How can it be that black men comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison? Where is the justice? What is justice? Sean Bell died because he was a black man. In this country black men are disposable. Black women loose their husbands, brothers, and sons. Black children loose their fathers. And the white population sleeps better at night. And we don’t want to talk about it but I do and I am infuriated. Some of my fellow white Americans would say that I’m being too harsh, that this is not always the case, things are not that “black and white.” These are bold statements I’m making but someone has to say them. It’s not everyone my fellow white American’s would claim. And I do truly want to believe that but I’m questioning.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to see someone without the lens of race? We cannot. Black skin means fear, means doubt, means you walk on the other side of the street, it means you lock your car doors in certain neighborhoods, it means you shoot first, it means you shoot 50 times. I do not think every white person in this country hates black people. I don’t even think a small percentage of white people in this country hate black people. What I do think is we are all to blame in the death of Sean Bell. By allowing these shootings to go unquestioned we all shot Sean Bell. By teaching our black children to be rappers and basketball stars in order to get out of the ghetto, we shot Sean Bell. By being impressed when a 15-year-old girl from Harlem is “actually articulate,” we shot Sean Bell. By not demanding that the resources in black and Latino inner-city schools be the same as white suburban schools, we shot Sean Bell. By not knowing the history of this country, the slave trade, or colonialism, we shot Sean Bell. By being quiet and comfortable, we shot Sean Bell.
The media wanted an outrage when the Sean Bell Verdict was read. 1000 police officers were present outside the courtroom, as Justice Arthur J. Cooperman of the State Supreme Court read, not guilt, not guilty, not guilty. Fingers hovered over camera record buttons, microphones quivered, as the media waited for the response, the black response. But nothing came. There were no unruly mobs, there was no violence, and thousands did not pour into the streets. But the black population took another bullet on Friday. The white population took another bullet. The country took another bullet. One in the heart, one in the mind, and one in the soul.
As the media questions where the public outcry is, reports like the one from National Public Radio entitled, “New York Largely Unmoved by Sean Bell Verdict,” suggests New Yorkers have finally rolled over and given up. “Acting White” blogger James Collier, a black man, suggested on NPR that 50 shots is poor marksmanship and says that shooting Bell was somewhat justifiable because he was drunk behind the wheel of a car. I just took another bullet. This country just took another bullet. If I were drunk driving would I be shot? Black writer Trey Ellis, in the same NPR discussion, talks about cynicism. He is not surprised by the seemingly quiet verdict because this type of behavior is expected from the NYPD whom we hold to a lower standard according to Ellis, black men are shot in New York City regularly. I want to scream. How is this possible! How can we hold police officers to a lower standard and accept that black men are just going to be shot in New York and no one is going to care. How can we hold the men and women who are sworn to serve and protect us to a lower standard than we hold ourselves? Don’t we all deserve the same level of respect and dignity? Aren’t we all human? I scream, what does that mean? NPR, I care. I AM MOVED.
People are questioning where the black leadership is? Reverend Al Sharpton is berating Barack Obama for calling for nonviolence and not being a strong enough voice of the black population. But if there is any hope for this country to move forward in our discussion of race we need not just black leaders standing up, we need everyone. Where is any type of leadership? What has Hillary Clinton said? We need somebody, anybody, to stand up and say that 50 bullets was 50 bullets too many! People expected Obama to stand up for the black community and I’ll agree he fell short as a candidate promoting change and conversation among the multi-races of America. But is should not just be Obama standing up. It should be Clinton, and McCain, and Bush. It should be every parent who has a child, every politician who represents his or her constituency, every teacher who has a student, every child who has a sibling, cousin, Aunt, or Uncle, every person who has a friend, loved one, or family, every person who wants to live in a country where people have the right to not be shot! How much longer are we going to let men, women, and children be killed because of the color of their skin? People are looking for leaders and we are in desperate need of someone, black, white, Latino, Asian, male, female, transgendered, whomever. Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough? Right now though we need to stop waiting around for a leader and begin to lead ourselves.
This is not just about Sean Bell. This isn’t just about police brutality. This is about the increasing amount of torture and violence in our world and how it is infiltrating how we live, how we see one another, how we think, how we move, how we breathe. This is about how we view one another with fear and assumptions. This is about how we communicate with each other and how we fail to do so. This is about my student in the Bronx. This is about my female students in South Africa who have to go to the community bathrooms as a group for fear of being raped in their own shantytown neighborhood. This is about my cousin in Iraq who is trained to kill brown skinned people. This is about not questioning injustices in the world because we are scared of failing. This is about being scared of the police, of arrest, of blacklists, of reputations. This is about being scared of our voices falling on deaf ears and the sound of silence when no voice is heard. This is about fear making hope seem impossible. This is about three bullets – one to the heart, one to the mind, and one to the soul. Three bullets to kill.
If we loose our ability to feel love, compassion, and happiness we take a bullet to the heart. If we loose our ability to think, to question, to speak, we take a bullet to the mind. If we loose our ability to hope, to dream, to clasp our hands together and pray for a better future, brown hand in white hand, black hand in red hand, then we take a bullet to our souls. We all took a bullet on Friday, April 25th, 2008 when the judicial system said 50 bullets in an unarmed black man goes unpunished. We can say the system is corrupt, that police training is inadequate; that there was a possibility Sean Bell was armed. We can also say no. I refuse to loose my voice. I refuse to be told that I don’t care that a black man needlessly lost his life. I refuse to sleep comfortably at night knowing that my neighbors, men and women I share walls with, laugh with, cook with, could just become another statistic, another disposable black American. If this was just a case of police brutality, that could have been me riddled with bullets on the Jamaica pavement. They would have shot me too. I could have been Sean Bell. I am Sean Bell. I am white. I am an American. I am a woman. I am Sean Bell and I refuse to take another bullet.
letter to village voice- i don't believe it was published
4/24/2008
Dear Editor,
In the past few years many institutions have felt the need to “go green” merely to appease the public, as waste is not an attribute that should be connected to an educated environment. However, students of NYU and I have found it necessary to act and demonstrate support as opposed to simply using the rhetoric of good practice. Although it is difficult to mobilize any small activity at a University as large as NYU, we created a campaign for Earth Day, titled Blackout NYU, intended to spark activism on campus and show the New York community that although we are young, we are not necessarily apathetic or complacent to issues confronting our world.
Political Journalism and Activism is a course offered by Gallatin School of Individualized Study that promotes the intersection of theory based and practice oriented work. As a class of fourteen, led by the Professor Kathy Engel, we tried to create a publicized campaign that would make the community focus on their energy consumption. Our ‘Blackout Squad’ ran classroom to classroom starting Tuesday morning, asking professors and students to turn off their classroom lights as a way of reinforcing NYU’s message of conservation. Surprisingly, a few professors gave us a hard time; one simply stated, “Go back to Gallatin,” in reference to the school’s liberal mantra. Generally speaking, the students themselves supported recognizing Earth Day and the symbol of their involvement.
In conjunction to that effort, we also engaged passers-by, in Washington Square Park, to reduce their carbon footprint. Participants were literally asked to draw a footprint in chalk and pledge a yearlong contribution/reduction. Most NYU students were open to this experience of creatively and consciously thinking about their individual greening efforts.
Overall, our group found that the students themselves are not as apathetic as the reputation that precedes us. Although we are a far cry from our parent’s anti-Vietnam War generation, we can politically organize just as efficiently. Our efforts were coordinated, almost exclusively, via the virtual arenas of email, blogging, telephone and radio interviews. My hope is that the Village, and the nation for that matter, becomes less accustomed to seeing college students as indifferent or unconcerned about political issues. Part of our challenge is to actually organize and implement the strategies or ideas that we think of and discuss on a daily basis. Another key to this is having faculty and our bureaucracy supporting the student’s voice.
Regards,
Judy Joslow
Dear Editor,
In the past few years many institutions have felt the need to “go green” merely to appease the public, as waste is not an attribute that should be connected to an educated environment. However, students of NYU and I have found it necessary to act and demonstrate support as opposed to simply using the rhetoric of good practice. Although it is difficult to mobilize any small activity at a University as large as NYU, we created a campaign for Earth Day, titled Blackout NYU, intended to spark activism on campus and show the New York community that although we are young, we are not necessarily apathetic or complacent to issues confronting our world.
Political Journalism and Activism is a course offered by Gallatin School of Individualized Study that promotes the intersection of theory based and practice oriented work. As a class of fourteen, led by the Professor Kathy Engel, we tried to create a publicized campaign that would make the community focus on their energy consumption. Our ‘Blackout Squad’ ran classroom to classroom starting Tuesday morning, asking professors and students to turn off their classroom lights as a way of reinforcing NYU’s message of conservation. Surprisingly, a few professors gave us a hard time; one simply stated, “Go back to Gallatin,” in reference to the school’s liberal mantra. Generally speaking, the students themselves supported recognizing Earth Day and the symbol of their involvement.
In conjunction to that effort, we also engaged passers-by, in Washington Square Park, to reduce their carbon footprint. Participants were literally asked to draw a footprint in chalk and pledge a yearlong contribution/reduction. Most NYU students were open to this experience of creatively and consciously thinking about their individual greening efforts.
Overall, our group found that the students themselves are not as apathetic as the reputation that precedes us. Although we are a far cry from our parent’s anti-Vietnam War generation, we can politically organize just as efficiently. Our efforts were coordinated, almost exclusively, via the virtual arenas of email, blogging, telephone and radio interviews. My hope is that the Village, and the nation for that matter, becomes less accustomed to seeing college students as indifferent or unconcerned about political issues. Part of our challenge is to actually organize and implement the strategies or ideas that we think of and discuss on a daily basis. Another key to this is having faculty and our bureaucracy supporting the student’s voice.
Regards,
Judy Joslow
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Leave the Talking Points at the Door
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
~First two stanzas of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
~First two stanzas of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”
I am an extremely political person. I love watching election returns, and hoping against hope that my candidate will come out the victor. I am physically unable, as many are, to be impartial when it comes to such matters.
Recently, I went to Philadelphia to campaign for my candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the recent Democratic primaries. I knocked on doors in two lower-middle class neighborhoods in Northeast Philly. Though I was inspired by the voters I talked to, there was an incident on the trip that, for the first time, really turned me off to the politics of politics. I was having a conversation with a 29 year-old Broadway producer, or so he said. (To be honest, I am unsure whether he was 29 or a Broadway producer.) He was an avid Hillary Clinton supporter. It was clear that he had donated the top amount to her campaign and had volunteered for her a number of times since the race began.
We got to talking and I asked whether he would vote for Barack Obama if Hillary didn’t end up getting the nomination. His answer: unequivocally NO. What’s more, he planned on using his “large gay income” to get at least 1 million voters in New York City alone to write Hillary’s name in on the ballot on election day in November. He told me that, although he wouldn’t vote for McCain, he would rather see him win so that Hillary would be in a prime position to run again, and win, in 2012.
After this conversation, we didn’t speak again for the rest of the trip.
It has taken me awhile to grapple with the fact that there are people out there who are prepared to see more harm done to the country in order to elect their favorite candidate. In a Gallup poll that was released at the end of March, 28% of Clinton voters said they would vote for McCain over Obama and 19% of Obama supporters said they would vote for McCain over Clinton. And this does not even take into account the Broadway producer-types who will write in their preferred candidate regardless. What is happening?
As of May 1, 2008, we have been in Iraq for 1,867 days. My two year-old cousin has never known a time when the United States of America has not been at war. John McCain has said that we could be in Iraq for another “hundred years.” To be sure, that would be another 36,500 days. As of the end of April 2008, 4063 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and it is estimated that anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 more soldiers have been wounded. These are men and women who are coming back from the region without limbs, paralyzed, both physically and emotionally. How many people do these deaths and these injuries affect? There is no way of knowing, but I would venture to guess tens of millions. And this is not even taking into account the million or more Iraqis, many who saw our invasion as a chance at true freedom, who have died since 2003.
Aside from the war, the problems facing us here at home have been monumental. We are in a subprime mortgage mess that the government relies on us to never quite understand. The dollar has dropped in value so much that it is now equal in value to 1.56 euros. The average price of a gallon of gasoline is $3.60 up from $1.46 when the Bush administration began. Over the past years, we have seen natural disasters unlike any in recent history. Hurricane Katrina ended the lives of at least 2,500 people. Although it has been forgotten by all but a few, the effects of that hurricane are still being felt in New Orleans and the surrounding areas.
Many of these facts come as a shock to most. Why is that? Why are we not ‘tying yellow ribbons ‘round our old oak trees’ and demanding that this war come to an end? Why are we not insisting that the government help bail out the American people, in the same way they bailed out Bear Stearns just a few shorts months ago?
Information starts and ends with corporations, who rely on ratings and readership to turn a profit. When Amy Goodman, host of the independent, corporate-free, newscast, Democracy Now!, spoke to my Journalism class last month, she stressed the importance of the ‘sound-bite’ to the mainstream media. She said that it is easy to pull out the now infamous Rev. Wright ‘God Damn America’ sound-bite and condemn him for saying it. To do so is missing the point. What we have to say cannot be summed up in 7 seconds. Maybe it takes 7 minutes, or 7 hours, or 7 days. More than this, though, it takes discussion. That is what is so often missing from the political arena: the ability to have a productive discussion.
I admit that many times I sit in my classes at New York University and wait for my opportunity to speak. I hear sound-bites from those around me and I react without listening to their full comments. I raise my hand, or I shout out, and nothing is accomplished because, more than likely, the person I am rebutting is busy conjuring up their next defense. Listening is boring, especially for highly opinionated people. I want to say what I mean and mean what I say and get others to mean what I say too. This is not the most productive way to go about a discussion, or to solve problems. Perhaps allowing someone to work out their thoughts, in a free-flowing way, and then allowing the next person to do the same thing, is a more effective strategy.
My own unwillingness to listen, though, is a microcosm of the type of ‘news’ coverage we see every day in the mainstream media, particularly on the three major cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC, and of course, Fox News. The formats of programs such as Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), Hardball with Chris Matthews (MSNBC), and Hannity and Colmes (Fox) are all the same. And the rancor has only gotten louder and more unbearable over the past months. The host introduces some inane issue, such as the recent Rev. Jeremiah Wright debacle, and then brings in a panel of ‘experts’ who supposedly all have different views on that issue. The problem is that very rarely is a productive discussion ever had. The panelists all come in with talking points and make sure never to defer from them. Each segment becomes a set of sound-bites strung together with the help of a semi-charismatic, mostly arrogant, host.
Perhaps the most troubling part is that some in the media seem to think that this is the best way to go about delivering the news. On April 30, Ed Schultz, a syndicated liberal radio host, appeared on David Gregory’s MSNBC slugfest Race for the White House. He was saying that now that Senator Obama had been so clearly damaged by the Rev. Wright controversy, it might befit him to go negative on Hillary Clinton, in order to change the subject. He went on to say that it would be nice if this would all go away but the “culture of the media” will not let that happen. Perhaps that is exactly what needs to change: the culture of the media.
June Jordan, the activist, poet, and hero, said that we must “tell the truth in order to change the truth.” The truth in so much of the media is that it is owned by powerful corporations. CNN is owned by Time Warner. MSNBC is owned by General Electric in conjunction with Microsoft. And Fox News is owned by News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch.) These three channels are staples in at least 50% of U.S. homes according to Los Angeles Independent Media. This means that five major corporations, along with Viacom/Westinghouse (CBS) and Disney (ABC,) control all the mainstream television news. What’s more, collectively, these corporations donated more than 8.4 million dollars to President George W. Bush’s campaigns. The breakdown is below:
Time Warner: 1.6 million
GE/Microsoft: 3.3 million
News Corp.: 2.9 million
Disney: 640,000 thousand
Although Viacom/Westinghouse doesn’t appear to have donated to the GOP, the Westinghouse Electric Company is part of the Nuclear Utilities Business Group of British Nuclear Fuels, of which Frank Carlucci is number one on the board of directors. Frank Carlucci is also a member of The Carlyle Group, which is one of the largest investment firms in the country and has made millions of dollars on government contracts having to do with the Iraq War and the supposed war on terrorism. According to Covenant News, the group, which has been active in setting up PAC groups to help elect George W. Bush, has made its money by, among other services, “providing logistics support to the U.S. military and making metal-bond structures in fighter jets and missiles.”GE/Microsoft: 3.3 million
News Corp.: 2.9 million
Disney: 640,000 thousand
The question then is, are we really willing to hand our freedom of speech over to just five points of view, especially five points of view that are all, at least ideologically, so seemingly similar?
Not all the news about the news is bad though. There are journalists and activists out there who are willing to take a stand against those who are hell-bent on manipulating information to make a profit.
Whether it be Emily and Sarah Kunstler, daughters of the legendary radical lawyer WIlliam Kunstler, and founders of “Off-Center Media,” who are practicing “propaganda journalism” by making advocacy videos on behalf of those who would not have a voice otherwise, such as a group of African American citizens in Tulia, Texas who were wrongfully accused of dealing cocaine based on their race. Whether it be Phil Donahue, the talk show legend, fired from MSNBC largely based on his anti-war views in 2003, who just made a film about a soldier who was paralyzed in the Iraq War, Body of War. Or whether it is a student in a journalism class who writes an article about how Earth Day came and went this year with very little fanfare from those in powerful governmental roles.
These people, along with many others, form a community that is insisting on change, a community that is ready, willing, and able to speak the truth in order to change the truth. They have “blue grit,” as author and radio host Laura Flanders might say. Traditional journalists they are not, but tradition is not what is important here. What is important is point of view. The news will never be objective. It is ever-changing, and if large corporations are able to dictate what voices they want heard, why can’t we raise the voices that we want heard even louder? Contrary to our culture of politeness, which is akin to the aforementioned culture of the media, there is no shame in opening your window and shouting like Howard Beale in Network, “I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!,” as long as we know why we’re mad, and what we can do to make change.
Being progressive is about appealing to the human condition, insisting on compassion and emotion. Amy Goodman is convinced that if people saw the atrocities of this war, things would be very different. If we were permitted to see the photographs of children lying dead on the street, of the coffins bringing our dead soldiers home, perhaps this war would not have escalated to its current level.
In order to appeal to others in this way, though, in order to expect others to be open to these images, we must not become so stuck in the minutia of our own ideologies. Having a favorite “horse in the race” for President is expected, and even encouraged, but in a time when so much is at stake, there comes a point when we must call for unity. We must look through the details and uncover the bigger picture. Imagine what the reaction from those who count on us not doing this would be if we actually did it. Let’s blind-side them. We have the tools we need; we just need to act. Let’s listen to each other, and together; we will rise.
Friday, May 2, 2008
from Kathy
To All: Wonderful writing about the Blackout. See WSN with Erin's piece. ANd someone please save me a copy of last week's with Annelle's piece. You made quite an impact!
See you soon!
See you soon!
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