I’m wondering if there is any real crime in Flint. Ofcourse I know the answer is to this question is yes so then the next question becomes  “do the cops in Flint not have more to worry about than the harm of saggy jeans”. Who hires these idiots, everyday people are being murdered, raped and a host of other violent crimes and you want to harrass people who wear their pants sagging.

It’s indecent and immoral, ok I hear you but what about the drugs being sold on the streets of Flint, the armed robberies, crimes that actually affect the well being of our communities. Make those crimes your priority not saggy jeans which is no more than a tacky fashion statement that I myself used to partake in.

Unless the real reason behind this saggy jeans thing is more remniscent of the broad view of racial profiling. The broad definition allows that you utilize race and other factors; ie. geography, dress, location, age and other factors to profile certain individuals. People who don the style of baggy, saggy jeans are more likely than not, young black males so this would give the police ammunition to approach young black males. Why? Because they fit the description and by wearing these saggy jeans, they are breaking the law.

So maybe the police chief has bigger hopes in mind. Maybe while taking these young black men off the streets for such a petty crime they will find drugs or some type of other criminal activity afoot during their harassment of these males. Just something to ponder!

Michigan police chief: Wear saggy pants, get arrested Flint’s top cop calls it ‘immoral self-expression,’ but others fear racial implications By BRYN MICKLE Newhouse News Service Published on: 06/27/08

This city’s new police chief is saying no to crack.

Interim Flint Police Chief David R. Dicks announced this week that officers will begin arresting people wearing pants or shorts that sag too low, exposing rear ends. “This immoral self-expression goes beyond free speech,” Dicks said in a statement released Thursday.”It rises to the crime of indecent exposure/disorderly persons.

” It’s a style that irks many — a few cities nationwide have outlawed the rear-revealing pants (the Atlanta City Council proposed a ban amid much debate, but the plan was ultimately tabled). However, the order also raises serious questions about how it would be enforced, whether it disproportionately targets young black men and whether ultra-low riders should be considered constitutionally protected.

Is Dicks going too far?

Greg Gibbs, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney in Flint, said how people wear their clothing is a form of expression but cautions that not all of those forms are protected by the Constitution.

“The issue is: Does it violate the First Amendment?” Gibbs asked.

Some Flint residents are all for busting those who go bottoms out. “It’s overdue,” said Sam Berry, 73, of Flint.

Gwendolyn R. Allen, 72, of Flint agreed: “It’s so disgusting … It’s disgraceful.” Claude Carter, 49, of Flint sees the issue differently, though. He said wearing pants in that manner is a fad — not a crime. “I see young and old wearing their pants that way,” said Carter. The crackdown on buttocks is an apparent response to “significant” complaints from citizens, according to Dicks. Under the chief’s orders, any sworn officer who sees “sagging/exposing buttocks” will have probable cause to make an arrest under the city’s disorderly person ordinance — a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and three months in jail.

Flint NAACP President Frances Gilcreast is no fan of the style but worries about police focusing on young black men.

“My concern is how (the policy) will be applied equitably,” Gilcreast said. Some Flint police officers, however, aren’t too sure how they will enforce it. “What about ‘plumber’s crack’?” said Keith Speer, president of the Flint Police Officers Association. In the past, Speer said, officers would issue warnings if too much skin was showing but reserved the handcuffs for full moons. “Most of the time, if they’re wearing sagging pants, they’re also wearing boxers,” he said. Memo notwithstanding, Speer doesn’t expect any big changes in how officers handle the issue. “It’s like issuing a memo telling officers to enforce the law,” Speer said. “Are we going to get a memo every time somebody complains?”

Misunderstood: A Hustler’s Tale

Driven by dreams of material things
Cant blame em; on TV that’s all he seen
Takes more than a reckless spirit
To build a crack empire
Learn the ways of the street fast
Or your life will soon expire
Fiends is clickin’ to what they got on 43rd
So you set up shop next to the woods on 45th
House in the cut you don’t want no shit

Takes more than a reckless spirit
To do what your doing
More like economics and trade agreements
In that language you’re fluent
If only Columbia or Harvard came to the hood
Maybe this young man wouldn’t be misunderstood
With these practices
You’d be a top CEO
But instead we’re relegated to the streets
It ain’t fun out here
Everybody’s packing heat

So you wholesale your product
So all the abusers come to you
Now their consumers
Are your customers
And everybody knows you
Business is good, assets and such
Be careful brother, don’t press ya luck
You got big dreams
To get ya family out the hood
Never was too flashy
But now your rims are what make you look good
Just some more attention
Before they wave ya ass goodbye
Coppers watching, enemies plottin’, snitches will end ya life

He coulda been bigger than John Rockefeller
Coulda taken his charisma
And used it for something better
The world judges you
For serving with hope with despair
The streets is watching
You cant sleep
This lovely crack house
Is surrounded by fiends
Your enemies creep with guns
With ambitions to blow holes in your dreams
Yet the cops pick you up
Putting football numbers behind this big dream
Too many keys to count
You’re on your way to the bing

Don’t get me wrong, they crooked too
You ain’t got no boats
To get all these drugs through
All them drugs they caught you with
Didn’t even make it to the precinct
They supply your competition
And our communities are still bleeding
Only if Penn State and Temple
Came to the hood
Maybe this young mans life
Wouldn’t be so misunderstood

People have it confused; if you and your man do a crime and you get caught and he doesn’t and you tell. THAT’S SNITCHING! You chose that lifestyle, you are only telling because you got caught. However if a little girl gets shot in the street and you say you’re not going to “snitch”, a. that’s not snitching, b. you’re a punk and you’ll end up dead soon enough. See because you chose not to snitch you bring death to your own front doorstep! 1

START SNITCHING

We see it glorified in old mob flicks, rap records hail it as the sin of all sins; the number one code of the streets; “don’t snitch”. LOYALTY, I understand the concept very well, but when does it border stupidity and become a cause in fact of the violence and destruction of our neighborhoods. The “Stop Snitching Campaign” was subliminally etched into our minds long before the celebrated t-shirts with stop signs and the word snitching embedded within. Well please forgive me, for I am about to break the ultimate code of honor, I’m about to become the rat of all rats, because my charge for us as a community is to… “START SNITCHING”.

There, I said it, START SNITCHING, start snitching if you want your children to live to see past their elementary school graduation. Start Snitching if you want to stop living in fear as you walk to the corner store. This is heavy, because as a people we have a strong distrust for law enforcement. I mean, why wouldn’t we, after seeing many of our leaders crippled by this system of American Justice. We vividly remember news clips of the Civil Rights Era, watching police officers brutally attack people of color with water hoses and K-9 dogs? Many of us can attest to the “random” car stops, the harassment and brutality that our people face on a daily basis from those who are supposed to protect and serve. Yet I still say START SNITCHING, far too many of our children are becoming victims in the crossfire of drug wars, domestic disputes and other various forms of crime that begat violence.

What do you tell a mother who just lost her 6-year-old child to gun violence and you know what happened? What do we put on your grave when you’re no longer here, “here lies a good man cause he wasn’t no snitch”. No, more like here lies a coward who was too afraid to take ownership of his community and protect the lives around him. Now you’re thinking, “I‘m not snitching because then they are going to come and get me”. I agree, and sadly once again law enforcement does an awful job at protecting those who come forward with the truth. There is power in numbers, if we take a stand as a people we can combat these atrocities. We can put pressure on the legislators to create better programs for those who come forward, put pressure on city hall to allocate sufficient funds to the police department for such programs. Once we become aware of our power we won’t have to live in fear, we will begin to think for the system and have our thoughts implemented, as they should be in the first place. We elect, key word “elect” public officials, they are in their positions to serve us. So if we don’t feel safe it is our duty to get that message across to those who we have elected to make us feel protected. We can employ “effective snitching” by going to city council meetings, arranging town hall meetings and charging elected officials with doing their job and implementing programs that will make our streets safer. Our taxes are what pay the salaries of these elected officials and law enforcement personnel, so essentially they work for us, its time that we remind these people who write their checks and demand that produce results!

I’m talking about taking a stand for the well-being of the children we are raising. We know exactly what goes on around the way from violence to drug dealing and we even know what times it is more probable that these crimes occur. Effective snitching means as a community going to these elected officials and providing them with this information, demanding that they not only look at the information but that they create a plan of action to address it. Jail time is supposed to serve as a deterrent for crimes committed, meaning if you do the crime you do the time. By not snitching and taking a blind eye to the crimes within our neighborhoods, we are sending our people the message that what they’re doing is right and will be tolerated. We’re saying there’s no reason to think before you act because no one is going to tell so you don’t have to worry about prison time. No wonder the murder rates are so high, we have sent a message that people can be killed and we will protect the killers by keeping silent. START SNITCHING, effective snitching, lets be a catalyst for the change that we wish to see in our communities. Let’s Make It Happen!

Cedric D. Shine

City of Ruin

Torn by a situation, life is everything you make it, everything you will it to be.
Young black men wine and cry about the knowledge their fathers never taught them.
Beautiful black women confused by what their daddy didn’t show them.
Moms play a Part TOO!
Young black men spoiled by their mothers attention and affection. Longing to be spoiled by their women in a similar fashion. Sometimes creating unrealistic goals of a relationship that is supposed to be reciprocal.
Young black girls caught up by their mothers imperfections. Either they were silent so she learned nothing or they spoke chords of wrongness and those chords echoed into empty halls of mindlessness that became stone.
So what is this confusion, these mind games, these strange feelings. I call it
LOVE

Photo courtesy of New York Times

Wear all black on Monday for the injustice verdict in the Sean Bell case Please pass this on to anyone who can receive a text.

I received this text message numerous times throughout the course of the weekend and again I ask “Is wearing all black the new activism”. Has wearing all black taken the place of such notable activism as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I remember back when the Jena 6 movement was thriving and we were all wearing black as a means to show the masses our “black solidarity”. I participated and heard many say that they felt good walking into their corporate offices and seeing other people of color representing the injustice that was being served in Jena. But does our action stop there, does what we wear really signify that an injustice has been done?

So today I woke up and threw on my black shirt and my black Chuck Taylor sneakers in memory of the brother Sean Bell. I walked into my classroom and unlike that glorious Jena day, barely any people of color were wearing all black. What does wearing all black mean anyway; do the people who we want to see our solidarity even know that we are wearing this color to represent the fact that a brother was murdered by the NYPD. That yet again the NYPD walked out of a court of law not guilty of all charges. My own Constitutional Law professor had no idea who Sean Bell was and that this verdict had drastically affected the lives of many people. He was unaware that many young brothers and sisters had taken to the streets and were seeking Justice for the loss of yet another young talented black man. He definitely had no idea why one of his students had on black today; all he wanted to know was if I was familiar with the material that will be on his exam next week.

I checked through my usual news media outlets hoping that I would see something in the headlines about the injustice the Bell family was served this past Friday. Instead, I was inundated with news of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Democrat Primary’s, but there was no sign of any measures that would be taken towards the Bell family finding JUSTICE. And why should their be, a brother is dead and we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. More concerned with celebrity gossip than the fact that black men can be killed in this country and their murderers receive absolutely no punishment.

The NY Times had a brief article about this issue however, and it largely dealt with the few people who were outraged by the verdict and were protesting in Harlem yesterday. One of the brothers on the bull horn asked “why aren’t more people out here”. The days of marching and blocking traffic for a day or two didn’t work then and they will continue not to work now. All the police do is re-direct the traffic and the protest becomes more of a nuisance than a movement that affects change. So what my generation has come up with as a means of fighting injustice is wearing all black; then we are really fighting institutionalized racism and brutality, we’ll show em!

Wrong, we need a strategic effort on a variety of fronts to fight the injustices that are facing our people. I refuse to believe that we are as lazy as the Civil Rights Guard of Leadership paints us. No we are not lazy at all, we are the internet generation; the text message generation. All of that to say we have the fastest and often most effective modes of communication to get messages across to our peers and move in a organized manner. We have to fight these different injustices on many different fronts. The Judge who rendered the verdict; we have to find out if he was elected or appointed; if elected we make sure that those who are eligible to vote in that district show up in record numbers to relieve him of his position.

Let’s take it back to the boycott days since the loss of revenue is the only thing that makes politicians and businessmen understand that we are angry about something and are seeking some type of remedy. This shouldn’t be hard to do because we are spawning into a recession anyway and people are already strapped for cash. We need to find out exactly what businesses that if we stopped patronizing would affect Michael Bloomberg the fastest. Once those major businesses are affected they will call up their high powered friends ad say “hey we have to do something about this’ its affecting my pocket”! You see when when we start to use our creativity and organize our efforts we begin to fall upon the ears who really create change in our cities. Maybe then the NYPD will stop believing that it is perfectly fine and legal to kill young black men. But if all we are doing is wearing black; trust me the courts, the politicians, the police and definitely the law are not hearing our voices.

We need to tap into the resources in our communities who have the know how and ability to propose legislation for stricter monitoring practices over the police departments who brutalize communities of color. All cops are not the scum who murder and harass people of color so we need to reach out to those who are fed up with their colleagues behavior and off the record find out what we can do to upset their internal situation that will help us make the changes we wish to see. I could write on for days about different measures that we could take however my one voice will not create this change. Our collective voice will not change these scenarios but our collective voices coupled with our strategic collective actions will create this change. In memory of Sean Bell and all of the other forgotten fallen soldiers; please let’s Make It Happen!

ps. I will be at the Black and Male In America Conference the weekend of June 15 - 17 in Brooklyn, NY. I think we all need to be there!

New York Pricks & Dicks at its finest are no more than the murderers of a young family man with ambitious goals and aspirations. Truth is, I am Sean Bell, my brothers and friends are Sean Bell, and you too could be a victim of unjustifiable force by the people who your tax dollars pay to serve and protect; thus making you Sean Bell.

I pray that this time we really do wake up and take this for the issue that it really is. This is not a race issue on it’s face; why yes racial politics are part of the reason things went down the way that they did. However, now that two young girls are being raised without their father we have to look deeper within ourselves, past our skin color and see that this is a humanity issue. Why are young black men’s lives disposable? We get so caught up between black and white that we do not realize that their is a power structure in this country that oppresses people. It often privileges people of caucasian backgrounds and oppresses people of color.

New York Pricks & Dicks serve as an oppressive force upon the many young black males who live within the city limits. In an attempt to “promote safer neighborhoods” they are trained to act a certain way in neighborhoods that are closer to the poverty line than those which are not. You never hear about some wild white boys getting shot in a barage of bullets in a white neighborhood. Why? Because that would be unacceptable to the power structure.

If we think back to the days of slavery you had the slave master but he often had an overseer; an Uncle Tom who he would use to keep negroes in check. Detective Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and all of the other black police enforcement who continuously use excessive force on public enemy #1; the black man, are those same Uncle Tom’s. This serves two purposes; 1.) the power structure is still able to control minority men and keep them in check. 2.) They use people who look like them so that their racist power structure is not undermined by political correctness. It looks so much better when its blacks killing blacks rather than whites.

This is not a race issue, this is a humanity issue. White people who are tired of being benefactors to such a racist system and receiving the privilege of not having to be victims of this system should stand with people of color fighting these injustices. This is not the America Barack Obama speaks of; but this is the America that many of us know too well. Couple Hope, Change and groups of different ethnic and racial groups together towards humanitarian issues such as police brutality and we can fight to make this the country the way we would like to pretend that it is!

My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,

then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2: 1-5

The book of Proverbs is rich with guidance and tutelage on how to be filled with wisdom and enjoy life. So for me today’s scripture is more of a series of steps that will guide us to wisdom and happiness.

Pardon me, while writing this message I just received terrible news and I would be untrue to myself and my walk with our Creator if I did not address how I am feeling. I still feel that the word gives us an understanding for life, the word gives us wisdom and knowledge so that we may grow and live harmoniously in this world. But the word also tells us “thou shall not kill”, and we live in a time where the life expectancy of young black men is getting lower and lower everyday. A pastor once said that the church has left black men in the cold; that as a group of people we do not reach out to our brothers on the corner. He may have been right!

Sean Bell was murdered in cold blood by people who were supposed to protect and serve him. As people of God we have to stand up against these injustices; it says right there in the bible “Thou shall not kill”. It does not say you can kill if you are a cop, you can kill if you are the Supreme Court and the Constitution holds you to be the interpreter of the land. I am thankful for the Lord and his words though, because right now as I am filled with frustration and quite frankly rage I looked back up to the original scripture. We will get through such hardships together because we accept the Lord’s word, and we turn our ears toward wisdom and understanding. We fear our Lord, and find knowledge in his teachings and though it looks like the other team is winning. We will prevail, I believe that in my heart; it’s raining today but the sun will shine again. We must try to change the tides, change the tides to the wisdom of God because these evil spirits can claim any one of us at any given time. I love you because you love yourself, you love God and thus you love me. Peace and Grace be unto you.

By any means necessary

This is sick! I am reminded of Amadou Diallo right now and Brother Abner Louima who were both brutalized by the NYPD. Brother Diallo did not get to keep his life, Mr. Louima received significant amounts of money in a civil case to settle his grief however money does not take away the pain of being a second class citizen.

My prayers go out to the Bell family and I pray all of our lofty businessmen and entertainers will set aside monies to make sure Sean Bell’s children can afford a college education. It is this type of injustice that polarizes people of color and makes us not feel “AMERICAN”. When a man is killed in cold blood because “he fit the description” how can we not get angry? My stomach turns at the thought of those PIGS as Fred Hampton would have called them. Black cops at that, many of us young black men know that we would rather deal with white cops than black ones. There seems to be an excessive need to control when the officer is black and the harassment turns so ugly when it comes from someone who used to fit the description just like you. I will be fair in this assessment and not call all cops or all black cops for that matter horrible. However, here is my message to the police, NYPD and the other police forces of this nation, you are judged by your weakest link and the brutal murders and corrupt policing efforts that the NYPD and some of you use needs to come to an end!

How many mothers have to bury their sons, how many men have to be harassed and brutally beaten before you change your racist measures. We will not riot and destroy our neighborhoods; no we are smarter than that! We will find justice though, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

R.I.P. Sean Bell

This is a very touching picture; it’s symbolic to me for so many reasons. I feel like I was that same little boy when Barack gave his speech at the Democrat National Convention and the headlines read “A Star is Born”.

I was that same young man when Barack won Iowa; a majority caucasian state. It showed me progress; it did not show me that we are there, but it said that we are rising.

Win, Lose, or Draw Barack Obama stands as a monument to young men and women of all cultures and creeds. He holds a special place in the hearts of young black men who have been assassinated in our society via the media, institutionalized racism coupled with our own mistakes. As I sit here writing this blog; I am still inspired, inspired by this image of a young black boy looking into the eyes of a transcendent leader and deep in his heart feeling YES WE CAN!

R.I.P JOSHUA SIMMS

Words can’t express a mother’s pain when her child is lost. Lost to the senseless violence and killings that are frequent amongst young black men today in America. Today I asked myself, why, and if not why how. How can we help, how can I help, is it worth the energy, will people listen? I am sure that it is worth the energy, to save what many are calling an endangered species; the young black male in America. A close friend asked me yesterday, why do you write, what is at your core? I didn’t know how soon I would be able to show her my answer rather than tell her. Why you ask, because that picture above us, that young man’s soul prayerfully resting in heaven could have been me. It can be any one of us who walk this earth searching for a better way. And because it could be us, might be us, this is even more reason why we must stand against the death of our people.