[Community Announcements]
1. REMEMBRANCE: Videographer, CEMOTAP Member, D12 member and Guerilla Jounalism Class Member Brother Leon Muhammad AKA “Captain Leon” MADE HIS TRANSITION ON WED. 8-14-14. More to be announced about this later.
2. On Sun August 24, 2014 You are invited to a BEPAA Master Class on the question: “Can studying Black History and Culture really keep youngsters out of the criminal justice system.”
Attorney Roger Wareham, Attorney Lurie Favors, Educator Brian Favors M.Ed, M.S,Ed and Educator NYS Board of Regents Vice Chancellor Emerita, Dr. Adelaide Sanford will be among the people who address this question. We will also be showing the film Slavery and The Law, in order to further put the question into a context.
The program takes place at John Henrik Clarke House, located at 286 Convent Avenue, Harlem, NY 10031. Admission is Free. Please Call 347-907-0629 to RSVP
3. CEMOTAP MONTHLY MEETING — SPEAKERS TO BE ANNOUNCED
SATURDAY AUGUST 23 AT 2:00 pm, 135-05 ROCKAWAY BOULEVARD
SOUTH OZONE PARK, NY 11420
4. Night Talk…Live Thursday!
August 21, 2014 7PM – 9PM!
There have been 249 people killed by the police in NYC since the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. In 2012 alone the police killed 21 people, that’s
an average of 2 per month. 90% were Black & Latino
IS THE BLACK COMMUNITY UNDER SIEGE?
Talk Radio format with full audience participation
Hosted By Bob Law
Guest Include: New York Journalist, Attorneys, Community Activist, Black Police Organizations.
Free Admission. Doors open 6:30.
We begin 7:00 PM sharp. MIST Harlem
46 West 116 Street, NYC. (Between Malcolm X Blvd. & 5th Avenue)
646 688-5886
5. National Action Network
POLITICAL ACTON COMMITTEE. POLICE BRUTALITY FORUM
HOUSE OF JUSTICE 106 WEST 145TH STREET
IN THE VILLAGE OF HARLEM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 2014 AT 12:30PM
COME OUT AND LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!
TAKE THE 3 TRAIN TO 145TH STREET
Yours-in-the-Struggle,
Dawn L. Jones
Chair NANPAC
6. FROM BOB LAW
Up Above My Head I Hear Music In The Air
If one should desire to know if a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of it’s music will furnish the answer. — Confucius
Currently the airwaves are filled with messages that are violently anti woman, anti Black and in a real sense anti life itself. We are inundated with lyrics, dialogue, and images, from music videos, song lyrics and DJ comments that glorify violence while encouraging the degradation and exploitation of women, to video games that require that you kill people in order to stay in the game and move forward.
To understand our concern, perhaps it is helpful to understand the emotional significance and influence of music. As noted musician David Byrne has explained, music tells us things, social things, psychological things, physical things about how we feel and perceive our bodies, and it does it in a way that other art forms cannot. It is not only in the lyrics as Byrne and others have pointed out, it is also the combination of sounds, rhythms, and vocal textures that communicate in ways that bypass the reasoning centers of the brain and go straight to our emotions.
Poet Larry Neal, one of the architects of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s has said that our music has always been the most dominate manifestation of what we are and how we feel. The best of it has always operated at the very core of our lives. It is the music that can affirm our highest possibilities. That may be precisely why the best of our music is under siege.
It is also important to understand that in this society, music conveys social status. Being associated with certain kinds of music can increase your social standing, Consider the higher level of sophistication associated with opera or classical music, or the level of cool sophistication associated with the music of Coltrane, Monk and Miles.
Some have suggested that while we may indeed like the music, often what we really like is the company it puts us in. In this sense the music creates a community or life style that is validated by the acceptance of the music. It is the music that validates the “Gangsta”.
Currently the airwaves are dominated by a body of music, images and ideas that has established a code of behavior that denigrates women, and encourages the murdering of Black people. It is a lifestyle where all women are “Hoes” and “B—–s”. Consider this “gangsta” lyric. “I got a shotgun, and heres the plot. Takin Niggas out with a flurry of buckshots . Yeah I was gunnin and then you look, all you see is niggas runin”.
Music, images and dialogue that offers another view cant get reasonable airplay. Keep in mind that the airwaves are regulated by the FCC, a commission that was established in 1934 to regulate in the public interest. When George Bush installed Michel Powell as Chairman of the commission, in 2001, Powell said he did not know what in the public interest meant.
Since the 1996 telecommunications act which set the framework for deregulation, the FCC has been reduced to pablum serving only to sanction the acquisition of broadcast frequencies and license to the mega media corporations which has resulted in the concentration of media ownership into the hands of very few.
Under the major revisions of US telecommunications law, the first since the 1930s, members of the general public no longer have “legal standing” to challenge broadcast policy or to insure that the public interest is served. Now it is the licensee (station owner) that controls content.
Previously the station owners rented the airwaves, while the general public owned the airwaves. That is no longer the case. None the less the Federal Communications Commission is still directly responsible to congress, and since Black media ownership is a major casualty of deregulation, and since the diversity of opinion and ideas coming directly from the Black experience in the world are being removed from the marketplace of ideas, we have appealed to the Congressional Black Caucus in general and the New York congressional delegation in particular to urge congress to reexamine the current function and effectiveness of the FCC.
Our first appeal to the CBC was December 6, 2012, and in spite of additional attempts to reach members of the CBC, to date congress members, Evette Clark, Gregory Meeks and Hakeem Jeffries have freely dismissed our appeals to them.
Perhaps if there is a link established between the murderous video games and the young white boys who routinely walk onto a school campus or shopping mall with automatic weapons and open fire, congress might then act to reestablish some guidelines that would force broadcasters to allow for input from the community in the effort to balance what is being offered on Americas broadcast spectrum.
But as long as Black people, especially Black women are the primary victims of this insidious violence, even the increasingly irrelevant Black congressional leadership ignores us. Franz Fanon is correct, “Ultimately a people get the government / leadership they deserve” It is time to support the kind of leadership we truly deserve.
7. FROM BROTHER ZACH HUSSER – On My Brother’s Keeper
Dear Family of Friends,
I just read a great commentary by Brother Phil Jackson of the “Black Star Project” out of Chicago that gave Us a look inside to see what the “I’m My Brother’s Keeper” Initiative is all about. I agree 100% with every point that Phil Jackson makes concerning how President Barack H. Obama’s Administration mishandled the “My Brother’s Keeper Initiative” because No already established Community Groups doing Mentoring before My Brothers Keeper were invited to participate in this new effort by the President.
Why? It doesn’t make sense for those Groups that have been involved in the “Movement to Save Our Sons” for decades have not been included in any phase of My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. As Phil Jackson asked, Who are these folk who are now the operators of “My Brother’s Keeper?” So that you understand Phil Jackson’s comments and my agreement with those statements, please check out http://blackstarjournal.org/?p=4250 and give your opinions. We’ve come to far to be knocked out of the box by good intentions!!
Working Together Is What It’s All About,
Brother Zachary C. Husser, Community Organizer
‘My Brother’s Keeper’ initiative is destroying the Black male mentoring movement | Black Star…
By Phillip Jackson 07/25/2014 The White House’s “My Brother’s Keeper”…blackstarjournal.org
