Cross-posted on the Brave New Films Blog.
Regardless of how you feel about the legality/outcome of the Jena 6 situation, this is pretty twisted. It isn't funny to act out someone getting beat up. It also isn't funny to act out threatening someone with a noose. It also isn't funny to do it all in a mud-wrestling outfit that looks eerily similar to blackface (funny how the kid getting beat up didn't have on mudface, for all those who think the mud doesn't represent anything).
Facebook is great, isn't it? That's where we found all this.
One Love. One II.
Lately, I have been surrounded by engineers. For some reason, I have always gravitated towards scientific types, fascinated by how they manipulate and push the bounds of science and math. However, I believe that I am fascinated by the fact that they actually create and design things. I guess for that same reason I like hanging out with musicians and people who can draw. They create nothing and turn it into something. People who are always creating have this energy that is magnetic. So it got me to thinking, where am I creative and have I fully tapped into my creative potential?
Cross-posted at the Brave New Films Blog.
Minority owned and operated newspapers and radio stations play a critical role in the African American and Latino communities and bring minority issues to the forefront of our national discussion.
I am glad to see Obama be explicit here about the impact of media consolidation on minority communities. It is clear that the interests of minorities are not a particularly high priority in this administration, I hope that everyone's interests matter to the next President.
One Love. One II.
Cross-posted by Brandon at Michigan Messenger.
I borrowed the title of this article from a t-shirt that a friend of mine once wore. For far too many Michiganders, Detroit’s problems are wholly their fault and any help directed towards the city would be a waste. Often times, when people talk about disparagingly about Detroit, the conversation often focuses on Kwame Kilpatrick, the crime rate, and the quality of the school system. While you can find statistics to support anything you want, the energy invested in negativity should instead be spent on how to help Detroit because the fate of Metro Detroit suburbs is intimately tied to the fate of Detroit.
Cross-posted from the Brave New Films Blog.
My favorite member of the Supreme Court has been whining ever since his book was released recently. His latest rant is about his Yale Law Degree's lack of value.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a 15-cent price tag stuck to his Yale law degree, blaming the school's affirmative action policies in the 1970s for his difficulty finding a job after he graduated.
Thomas thinks that Black peopls should stop acting like "victims." He sure sounds like a victim to me here.
I'd graduated from one of America's top law schools, but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value.
This is stupid. "Racial preference" does not make dumb people smart; it gives all smart people a chance. Maybe there are professors that think of [the demon that is] Affirmative Action when handing out grades on mid-terms. I've never seen nor heard of one, and I had more than a fair chance of running into a few during my time at the University of Michigan from 2000 to 2005 (when our Affirmative Action policies were argued in front of the Supreme Court).
This crop of Republicans sure does whine a lot.
One Love. One II.
I have a speaking engagement tomorrow at the Communities Learning to Invest and Mobilize for Business rally in Milwaukee. I will be the Keynote speaker, so I am busy prepping and going over my notes. However, I will be sure to post the text of the speech tomorrow for everyone to see. So, if you are in desperate motivation NOW, either hit me up or hit the archives. 
.
Truth and Peace,
Steven M DeVougas
Cross-posted at the Brave New Films Blog.
Activist and Radio Talk Show Host Warren Ballentine has called for a Black out on Friday, Nov. 2nd. This is in response to, among other things, the domestic torture of Megan Williams, and the Jena 6.
From the release:
Until we have federal legislation in place regarding these hate crimes, as African Americans we need to band together to show our “Economic Power” by refusing to spend ANY money that day from fast food restaurants to gas.
There are calls for these sorts of actions all the time, and they are usually motivated by positive intentions: solidarity, taking a stand, being deliberate with your economic power. We see them on all sorts of issues, from gas prices to impeachment. These are all good things, but I question their effectiveness. For one, this sort of action can only successful if it is extremely specific and if it is sustained.
Here are B’s thoughts on the S-CHIP. He is dead on as usual.
I am so mad that Bush and Republicans dug their heels in to block passage of the S-CHIP program. Seriously, if you don’t have the number of your Congressman/Senator on speed dial, don’t talk to me. We spend daytime minutes to talk about the most frivolous things so please take 2 minutes to contact your Representative, provided they voted against the program, and give them the business like your cell phone carrier just overcharged you $200.
This is not just about the S-CHIP program, it is about all the issues you care about but only talk about with people who already agree with you. Progressive bubbles and echo chambers are not helping so I have come up with a new rule. Don’t profess any progressive policy goal unless you do three things,
The problem as I see it is that too many progressives never move past part 3.
Stay up fam,
Brandon Q.
I apologize for being incognito fam. I think the government is trying to shut me down because I have been unable to login to The SuperSpade (for weeks now). Garlin and Steve, thank you for holding me down. In other news, “President Bush says world leaders risk bringing about World War Three if they do not do more to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.” Are we using WWIII now? This to me is scary because it reminds me of the “mushroom cloud” that Condoleezza Rice often invoked.
This fear mongering by Bush and Co. must be confronted with truth, integrity and reason. I have said before that I am worried that Bush has no intention of leaving office and it is talk like this that reminds me why I feel this way. Seriously, when was the last time you heard of a President enter the lame duck stage of his presidency with so much bravado?
Stay up fam,
Check me out at MichiganMessenger.com
Cross-posted on the Brave New Films blog.
Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed were employed before the storm, with half of respondents holding full-time jobs. And 60 percent of evacuees polled were looking for jobs at the time of the survey.
"…lazy and reliant on government aid…" That's the same thing ignorant people think about poor Black folks in general, isn't it? I guess I should start believing in coincidences.
One Love. One II.
A group of concerned individuals and groups, including our very own Brandon Q., met last week to address issues facing inner-city Detroit: incarceration, the militarization of schools, etc. The Detroit Gathering as it is called, was inpsired by Harry Belafonte’s Gatherings for Justice. Belafonte met with the activists who would organize and participate in The Detroit Gathering this past June 2007.
On October 5th and 6th, participants in engaged in group dialogues and listened to performances and lectures all focused on a common goal: to transform social justice from an abstract ideal to a concrete, everyday reality in the city of Detroit.
The spirit of this meeting is in line with the purpose of this website. We want to translate the abstract into the concrete, the cloudy into the clear. There are issues that matter to each and every one of us, whether we realize it or not. This is changed by people coming together and sharing their experiences, their successes, their struggles, and their solutions. That was what the Detroit Gather was all about. That is what The SuperSpade is about as well.
One Love. One II.
Cross-posted from Brave New Films Blog.
It is one thing when nooses and other symbols of hate are put in random places: on your car, in your own backyard. It's another thing when nooses are hung somewhere to send a not-so-subliminal message, as they in Jena, LA. However, it is an altogether different and much more scary & sinister animal when nooses are placed at the door of a specific individual.
What the hell is this world coming to? I know it's cool to be overtly racist these days, but wow. I'm know lawyer or constitutional scholar, but this looks like clear and present danger to me. When you lay a knife by someone's bedside while they sleep, you send a message that says "I can and will hurt you." When you get a noose hung on your door at your office, it sends the message that "I hate you and want to do something about it."
Dr. Calvin Mackie responded on behalf of the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) late last week regarding the announcement by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to begin reducing the level of rental assistance that will be provided to hurricane victims through the Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP).
An excerpt:
While the Road Home is expected to deliver more than 90,000 grants to Louisiana homeowners by the end of the year and our programs to restore more than 30,000 rental units are in full swing, the bottom line is that not all of these units will be available before March, and we are still experiencing a severe housing shortage at every level.
When you have “severe housing shortages,” bad things happen: people get sick, crime increases, kids are left homeless and hungry. I thought Republicans were the party with the moral high ground; this sure doesn’t help promote families.
One Love. One II.
Cross-posted on the Brave New Films Blog.
Bill Cosby was on Meet the Press yesterday talking up his new book, Come On People, co-written with Dr. Alvin Poussaint. The show, surprisingly, spent the entire hour with the two men, jumping between issues addressed in the book. They talked about a fair amount, but the analysis given during this interview was as thin as the paper the text was printed on.
“Hindsight is 20/20″
I have worn glasses all my life. I have been nearsighted for as long as I remember. I thought I was ”fly” when I received my first pair of glasses, they made me look smart. They were huge with fuschia marble frames. When they got scratched on the playground, I still rocked them joints-even though I could not see a thing. Looking back, I looked like a clown, but in the fifth grade I did not know any better.
Cross-posted on Brave New Films Blog.
The newspaper Final Call has an interview with Megan Williams, the Black woman that was tortured and raped by 6 caucasians in West Virginia recently.
Williams described the part of the torture like this:
They kicked me in the head with steel toed boots, they hit me in the head with several objects, I remember seeing a knife, and they tried to cut my foot off. They told me that is what they did to Kunta Kinte when they cut his foot off so he couldn’t run and that is what they were going to do to me.
My calendar says it's 2007, but this makes me seriously wonder.
One Love. One II.
Cross-posted from Brave New Films Blog.
(h/t to Too Sense)
Just when you thought things might die down a little bit here, Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, the one who was cleared of adult charges and freed from jail following the rally in September, Bell has been sent back to jail.
While I think this is interestingly timed agree with Sharpton that [probably most of] the motivation behind this is likely in "revenge by this judge for the Jena Six movement," it does appear that at the end of the day his probation was indeed violated. That being the case, I can't get too mad; at least it's not an adult sentence. Now, why they tried to go for Bell's jugular instead of pursuing a more logical route is beyond most thinking, non-racist peoples' cognition.
I'm sick of consistent acts of justice being sprinkled with random acts of justice in this country. The promise of America is fairness, and fairness should be consistent. If it was, we wouldn't have ever had a Jena 6.
One Love. One II.
Cross-posted on Brave New Films Blog.
Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), was on MSNBC Wed, Oct. 10 addressing hate crimes in America. He called the Jena 6 situation a "learnable moment" for our nation with real consequences.
The key takeaway here is that racism and prejudice still exist in this country. However, this ignorance can destroyed with education and sensible dialogue.
One Love. One II.
The Center for Creative Voices in Media’s The Case for Universal Broadband: Now! study was released today. It says that this country needs everyone to have equal access to reliable high-speed Internet connections. I agree, and I think this is especially true for Black people.
Cross-posted by Brandon at The Michigan Messenger.
The lack of grocery stores and healthy food options in the city of Detroit are major setbacks in the city’s attempt to raise the quality of life and maintain a sustainable tax base. To address this issue, last week the NORR and the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce hosted a panel entitled, “What are the Issues in Attracting Grocers to Downtown Detroit?”
Detroit is in what many describe a food desert, a situation in which communities have little or no access to healthy food and where grocery stores are few and far in between. A report by the Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group found,
Over half a million Detroit residents live in areas that have an imbalance of healthy food options. They are statistically more likely to suffer or die prematurely from a diet-related disease, holding other key factors constant.
Cross-posted from the Brave New Films Blog.
Lots of things can characterize the state of affairs in this country over the last 2+ years: incompetence, hypocrisy, ignorance, corruption, straight-up evil. But a theme that has been overtly present in a very real way is, you guessed it, racism. Open, unapologetic, racism. Yes, it has become cool again to very visibly differentiate how non-white people are treated in this country ever since Hurricane Katrina. With nooses being hung all over the country like decorations, Black and Latin citizens being treated demonstrably more harshly in court proceedings, peaceful, thinking Black men being singled out and brutalized by Capitol Police, the largely unpublicized torture of a Black women in WV, and countless other evidence, it is clear that the more overt flavor of race hatred has taken the lead over it's covert cousin that was in the driver's seat since the end of Jim Crow. Read the rest of this entry »
What is the unforgivable sin for a black man? One would think calling a black woman out of her name, but apparently hip-hop and Isaiah Thomas have taken the sting out of that one. It used to be taboo to participate in interracial dating, but even that has lost its bite.
Actually, it is something a lot less politically charged than that or is it? It took me 24 years to figure it out, but the unforgivable sin for a black man is…to be unemployed. I did not realize it, now I am faced with the looming prospect of unemployment upon completing my post-graduate studies. And as the song says, I am living under pressure.
Up until this point, I have tried to be a pretty responsible guy. I have done my best to be the Dream of Dr. King and what not. But apparently, I did not realize how quickly that accounts for nothing when you do not have a J-O-B.
Have you ever noticed how much doubt, unbelief and insecurity is present in the world? I am amazed at how many people speak words of defeat and limitation, not knowing that they are creating their reality.
Why is it so hard to believe? Why is it so difficult to accept who we are? I was watching “30 years of Hip-Hop” on Vh1 and one point they constantly stressed was in the beginning, Hip hop was about authenticity and what you could bring to the table. I started to wonder what percentage of the population are truly comfortable in their own skin? I look around me and see that not many people are happy just being themselves.
How did this begin? Where did we learn that it was not ok to be who we are, with all of our perfect imperfections? I think it begins at school with peer pressure to be like the group. Then we enter the workforce and become assimilated to the culture of the company. Those who are good at it reap tremendous rewards, but those who do not risk being pariahs.
But as Jesus said, “what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul.” To me, this means not just your spirit, but your uniqueness or sense of identity. It is a tightrope that we all walk each day.
However, we must become comfortable with ourselves if we are ever to accomplish our purpose. We must embrace our originality. If we cannot break away from crowd and see who we really are, we will never have the conviction to do what is right or take a stand. The way to acceptance of self is to understand that even our flaws have a purpose and that we are works in progress. Be patient and follow your heart. Sometimes what is right for the crowd is not right for you.
Be the original you were called to be. Birds of a feather flock together, but the eagles don’t fly with the doves (c) Tracy Morgan.
Truth and Peace,
Steven M DeVougas
