Sean Bell case--a letter from Al-Lateef D. Farmer

“Only in Cali/Where we riot, not rally…”
2Pac
I write this with the heaviest heart ever. I write this knowing that my human value as a Black Man means nothing in the eyes of the law, the government and the media. I write this with my veins full of anger and outrage that a judge can rule that there was no wrongdoing in a case where police officers Pigs kill a Black Man who was unarmed. I write this in a ball of confusion knowing that eyewitness testimony is hollow if the witness has had previous convictions. I write this perplexed at that blind bitch justice, who obviously is peeking through her blindfold. I write this dumbfounded that 50 shots at any target can be justified in anyone’s eyes.
The three police officers Pigs who killed Sean Bell after his bachelor party and hours before his wedding were just acquitted of the manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment charges they faced. Nicole Paultre Bell left the courtroom as the verdict was being read, saying “I’ve got to get out of here,” as she left. People scrambled in and outside of the courtroom, scuffled outside, the media stoked the burning anger and people everywhere had to hang their heads as justice again prevailed against a person of color.
A strange irony in my receiving this news is that I was notified of the verdict while attending a conference aimed at giving young, Black Men employable skills and providing them with the tools to navigate this world. I was next to Baruti Kafele when he received a text message and looked over to me and said that cops were acquitted. I quickly went to CNN.com on my cell phone and confirmed the news; we looked at each other, nodded and shrugged. That kind of defeated shrug that says, “They did it again.”
My eyes swelled with tears as I thought that we are still three-fifths of a man by de facto law. I hurt for the unwed bride who changed her name days after her love’s death, who will go to bed tonight with the pain so fresh in her heart. I wanted to weep for their two children who will never see their father again and how it will be years before they understand what happened today. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how one person can fire 31 shots at a target whose only crime to that point had been trying to escape the guys who may or may not have identified themselves as cops. That means he emptied his clip, reloaded and then nearly emptied it again! I was shocked and dismayed that Al Sharpton called for calm at a time when there needs to be an uprising.
All of these emotions ran through my body as I listened to a group of young men aged 11-14 sing a South African song with the lyrics, “…please remember me”. I wiped a few tears away as I realized that these youngsters with God’s gift of an angelic voice will one day be subjected to police Pigs saying they fit the description, plunging their rectal cavity, firing 41 shots as they retrieve their wallet or 50 shots as they attempt to drive in fear.
I am in no way an advocate of violence…yet rebellion in the face of injustice; I will ride and die with. The boiling over of years of frustration and anger of those on the lower rung of society needs to manifest itself in a cataclysmic demonstration that cannot be denied. The revolution must be televised! And podcasted, e-mailed, covered by the major newspapers and on your FM dial!
The fire this time should burn in Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, on Long Island and Staten Island! The fire this time should burn in Newark, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Memphis, Houston, Trenton, Miami, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Plainfield, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Oakland, New Orleans, Houston, Richmond, Baltimore, Charlotte, Birmingham, Little Rock, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Newport News, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. Hell, the fire this time should burn in Manhattan! It should burn where they shop, where they work, where the money is made, where the laws are passed!
The fire this time should burn in your favorite rapper! The fire this time should burn in actors, athletes, and singers! The fire this time should burn on college campuses! The fire this time should burn in Presidential hopefuls! The fire this time should burn in your church! The fire this time should burn on the front page of your favorite newspaper! The fire this time should burn in Spike Lee, Chuck D. and Danny Glover! The fire this time should burn in H. Rap Brown, Geronimo Pratt, Bobby Seale and Angela Davis! The fire this time should burn in you, because it damn sure burns in me!
---Al-Lateef D. Farmer

Politics and Education

I submitted the following piece to a newsletter that is supposed to be a sounding board for members of the community of scholars to which I have been assigned. Upon review, however, the Dean of the graduate school rejected the newsletter and also requested that the whole focus of the newsletter be revamped. I wasn't the only victim but her actions proved my equation to be absolutely correct.

G=P+k where P=.75 and k=.25

The equation is complicated, yet quite simple. If the marketing tools for graduate school promoted the equation, however, less people (I presume) would come. Or at least those who come would be more prepared for the truth about the graduate experience.


Graduate school! Nobody gets there without some degree of resilience, determination, and high scholastic achievement. Therefore, one would assume that graduate school—for those who choose to accept the mission—is manageable. Graduate school is the place where scholars can share ideas, debate topics of interest, and validate their theories/hypotheses. Therefore, as far as we are concerned when entering, G=K, where K=100%. Why then, is it that so many of my colleagues have faced such adversity and borderline depression when it comes to their fields of study? We have the equation to blame.


Graduate school, somehow, is the place where the most brilliant people play the most defensive roles. One’s work is constantly questioned. Your main task, while here, is to prove yourself. There is coursework for which you have to be on the defensive by showing that you have read, digested, understood, and can articulate material that you have probably seen many times before (and which probably has very little to do with your own research). Then there are comprehensive exams, where you have to defend your competence (with the material you have spent two years laboring over) to a few professors and hope that they are kind enough to allow you the honor of being called a “candidate”, rather than just a “student”. Further up the chain, you have to spend years laboring over data and other information and then pray hard that a committee of four agrees that it is safe for you to be granted the three beautiful letters of their co-ed fraternity.


We’ve all experienced meltdowns of some kind, where someone who doesn’t quite understand our experiences as mothers, fathers, children of ailing parents, aunts, uncles, immigrants, underrepresented groups of people, human beings with problems, seems to judge us unfairly. It is at that point that we all question our purpose for giving up a life of freedom to commit to the academy. It is at that point that we reconsider why we have elected to study in a town that is the “seventh cloudiest city in the United States with cold, snowy winters and warmer, wet summers.” Binghamton is not exactly the most felicitous place for young, underrepresented academics. Dubois’ double consciousness is always in full effect as we navigate the equation that is the antithesis of every true bookworm’s existence: We are used to having our work speak for itself. We have gotten this far by way of our academic achievement, not merely by who we know.


So how do we keep smiling and stay above water when professors question our abilities, when colleagues do not respect our perspectives and just label us as “other”, when people dismiss our contributions to the academy as “radical” or fail us for presenting ideas that challenge the status quo? How do we maintain healthy relationships with spouses and family in the face of such adversity and continue to focus on working ten times as hard to get five times as far as our counterparts? How do we truly get through this graduate experience? Well, a friend of mine recently met with her advisor to discuss why she had received low grades on a particular part of her comprehensive exam. His response was simple: He gave her the equation. This woman of incredible intellectual ability, who works on average, twelve hours per day on her academics was told that she needed to “make nice” with the faculty. “You don’t smile with them enough,” he said, “so they don’t know you.”


So, based on what I have deduced from this experience thus far, I realize that we come in with the expression in mind: G=k, where k=100%. However, after the first year or two, we come to the realization that g≠k but rather G-P=k. Graduate school is not a test of all you know. In fact, your knowledge is trumped by your ability to network with a few individuals with whom the power to determine your future lies. The graduate school experience at Binghamton, for some of us, indicates that knowledge is significant but more critical is one’s understanding of how to navigate “P” in order to earn Superdelegate votes into the co-ed fraternity. However, make no mistake about it; this kind of “P” is far from democratic.

Fear

Fear is a mind killer—Henry Ford

What are you so afraid of? What scares you more than a dark alley on a tranquil night, where black cats and mice roam? What scares you more than death staring you in the face? Life, that’s what!

Life scares you because you have to be strong every day that you live. You have to constantly figure out new ways to maneuver this place called earth, this thing called life.

We fear our own existence because people expect things of us; we expect things of ourselves that we aren’t sure we can truly accomplish.

So what are the consequences of this fear? We fight back at life!

We fight the people who love us, by telling them that they will never love us enough. We fight against those that don’t love us, by proving to them that we never needed them in the first place. We fight the nay-sayers, the haters, and the oppressors, showing them that schadenfreude is only an ungranted wish.

And then we fight our worst adversary: Our conscience.

That’s the fight that is the most intense, most heart-wrenching, and most painful. We fight our minds for telling us when to give up, when to start; for telling us that we can do something when physical willpower says “no”.

We fight ourselves when goals are not quite accomplished the way we expect them to be. We fight ourselves when we look into the mirror and realize that the innocence of childhood has been replaced.

We then wage a war between self and inner-self, the deadliest of battles known to man.

And when we’ve managed to annihilate our own selves, we get up, pinch ourselves, and then realize that we are still alive and that the battle of life is just a vicious cycle that we must be courageous enough to face, as long as heartbeats race and blood flows, because the only victory sweeter than beating our enemies, is that of self-realization.

No Child Left Behind--Lamont Carey

WHEN THE BULLETS FLY IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20070918_Willingboro_school_locked_down_after_gunfire.html
So why wasn't this on CNN? Why didn't the country freeze at the sound of this incident? I mean, we all know that Kanye West wasn't lying when he stunned the nation a few years ago on television when he said "George Bush does not care about Black people." But it's not just the President. 200+ kids would have lost their lives in an elementary school and nobody is fired up about it. All these innocent LITTLE children would have lost their opportunity to succeed and nobody is reporting it. The fact that school was open the next day is further heightens my level of anger and disdain at the Willingboro schools system. Surely, they can't assume that these children are used to the sound of gunshots and don't value their own lives. Had this happened in the white burbs then the children would have a week of on-going trauma therapy and myriad procedural safety drills. But it's as if they're assuming that black kids are immune to trauma. Imagine how they feel about going to school and hearing gunshots? Surely, some of them MUST be scared out of their wits. But nobody cares...If a tree falls in the woods kinda thing u know? Yeah well that's my two cents for today.

Blacks given the Emmitt Till treatment in 2007...

http://news.aol.com/story/nc/_a/details-emerge-in-horrific-torture-case/20070911152309990001

Racism is becoming more and more rampant in the United States. We cannot pretend that it no longer exists. We must fight against injustice and stand up for human rights. The Jena 6 case isn't unique. There are many such cases which are not publicized. We cannot allow history to repeat itself.

Globalization in Jamaica

America sneezes, Jamaica catches a cold. Sad.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5277094596195828118