Brooklyn Ron is a veteran journalist now teaching journalism (as it is practiced and as it should be practiced) at Brooklyn College (in the Republic of Brooklyn, New York City)
Brooklyn Ron is a veteran journalist now teaching journalism (as it is practiced and as it should be practiced) at Brooklyn College (in the Republic of Brooklyn, New York City)
Carolyn A. Butts, founder
African Voices wrote on Facebook this evening:
"Baba Jitu K. Weusi, founder
of the National Black United Front has crossed over to the realm of the Egungun
(Ancestors) today. We are thankful for the contributions he has made to the
liberation of Afrikan People. He will forever be missed and loved. May
Olodumare, the Orishas & Egungun be pleased with his work."
Last month in Our Time Press, Jitu wrote one of the most deeply thoughtful and wisdom-inspired pieces of writing ever published in a newspaper.
Of his illness he wrote:
"This has been a difficult ordeal,
fraught with lows and lower lows. I have been faced with difficult decisions
regarding treatment options. I have had to confront head-on the aftermath of
brain surgery and the debilitation that follows.
"Since my arrival in the hospital I have
had to daily engage in a battle, a war, against cancer. It may have temporarily
taken away my ability to stand and walk to the bathroom on my own, but it has
not taken away my resolve to fight. And each battle that I have faced, I have
not faced alone. My family has been a constant source of support and
companionship, giving me strength to face each battle head-on. I have
also been blessed with home-cooked meals from my daughter-in-law Debbie
Campbell and my daughter Dr. Damali Campbell that greatly aided in my food
consumption and kept me strong during the chemotherapy."
Jitu, once known as Les Campbell, is a Brooklyn guy from the old neighborhood and he fought in the most notable battles of the latter twentieth century, for black empowerment and especially for the right of black boys and girls to have a decent education.
Here below is a video, uploaded a year and a half ago, of Jitu at Columbia University recalling the Columbia strike of 1968.
The News found (Daniel) Sbarra’s NYPD record, dating back to 2004, was more jailhouse than precinct house.
He cut his teeth in the Bronx before working some of Brooklyn’s toughest neighborhoods, including Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick.
“There’s a reason Brooklyn North Narcotics are called the ‘Body Snatchers,’ ” said civil rights lawyer Paul Hale, whose client recently won a $75,000 settlement, saying he was twice wrongfully arrested by Sbarra’s team.
“They don’t care if you’re innocent or guilty. They just want to make arrests at any cost.”
In Sbarra’s case, court documents revealed an assortment of jaw-dropping charges. Among the allegations:
- He and a second cop, with black tape over their badge numbers, called a young Brooklyn barbershop owner a “n-----” during a traffic stop in Bushwick. Settlement: $19,500, including $1,000 Sbarra had to pay out of his own pocket after the city, in a rare move, refused to represent him.
Sbarra was found guilty of departmental charges related to the incident...
...but “Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly dismissed all charges,” Sbarra said in a 2012 deposition.
[From Political Forum, for which see link below these paragraphs.]
The Tea Party stands for many things, but a big part of its message is that sending money to Washington amounts to the perpetuation of a dangerous welfare state that's intent on turning America into a helpless land where our lone skill is filling out the forms to go on the dole.
Isn't it reasonable to assume that people who hold such beliefs might feel additional motivation to pursue grey areas and loopholes at tax time? Wouldn't the people who oversee federal coffers have been derelict had they not at least had a good look?
This sort of thinking is pervasive among those inclined to caricature government as inherently demonic, which is to say, the sorts of people attracted to the Tea Party.
(Compiled from NPR and other reports. See links below.)
Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is
introducing legislation today that would let military
prosecutors — rather than commanders — decide whether to bring serious military
crimes to trial.
"If the convening authority is the only
decision-maker of whether a case goes to trial or proceeds and the only
decision-maker about whether to overturn a case, well, then all that training
and all those excellent lawyers and prosecutors you have don't ... make a
difference," Gillibrand sputtered during a committee hearing on sexual
assault in the military in March.
“It’s essential that we do this,” Ms. Gillibrand said.
“This has been elevated to national consciousness.”
She will seek to include her bill in the coming defense
authorization act. Should that fail, it will be up to Senator Harry Reid of
Nevada, the majority leader, to bring it to the floor as a separate measure.
The effort will be uphill. Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel, who appeared shaken and embarrassed by the findings released this week,
has expressed an openness to changing the part of the system that allows
commanders to overturn convictions and modify sentences. But in a Pentagon news
conference on Tuesday, Mr. Hagel remained opposed to the idea of taking
military justice out of the chain of command, saying that would have a negative
impact on good order and discipline.
Disgraced New York State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, who has been accused by several female staffers of sexual assault will not face criminal charges, a special investigator said on Wednesday, in a Reuters report.
The tale of Tupac
Shakur, who lived so fast and died so young, is at once more tender and more
tragic than that of the woman-hating thug we saw in stories about him.
Quiet as it was
kept, by the media and by Tupac himself, the effusively talented
singer/writer/actor was the heir apparent of a family of black revolutionaries,
most of whom wound up jailed, exiled, or dead during the 1970's and '80's.
His ties to the
remarkable Shakur family must have been a weighty psychic burden for the rap
artist. The individual members of the extended clan commanded almost mythic
respect from radicals of the black power period, especially in New York. This
defining part of Tupac's background, incredibly, has been generally glossed
over by the music and social critics trying to make sense of the contradictions
that permeated his life.
Given the
radical diehard commitment of those relatives, it is no wonder that Tupac
believed police agents were trailing him, like hunters after their prey. What
was truly amazing was the grace with which, as an actor and rapper, he tied
together feelings of love with the righteous anger that was a family legacy.
Tupac Amaru
Shakur was born in 1971 to Afeni Shakur, a Black Panther who carried the
rapper-to-be in her womb while she was in jail, accused in a bomb plot. The
Manhattan District Attorney tried to link 21 Panthers to the alleged plot, but
the prosecutor's office found itself red-faced when a jury quickly rejected the
charges. It is now believed the defendants were victims of an F.B.I.-led
attempt to neutralize Panther Party members across the country.
Afeni never
revealed publicly who Tupac's father was. But one thing she did acknowledge:
that the father was not Afeni's husband, Lumumba Shakur, who was the lead
defendant in the Panther 21 case.
Exhausted from
the trial and angry at the romantic betrayal by Afeni, Lumumba left his wife
and her newborn son; but Afeni quickly moved in with Lumumba's adopted brother,
Mutulu, who would become Tupac's stepfather and spiritual counselor for the
rest of the younger man's life.
Those who knew
the family describe Mutulu Shakur as the most influential male figure in
Tupac's life, the man who taught him to stand up for himself and never to back
down from a fight.
But Mutulu, later to
be known as Dr. Shakur, because of his training in acupuncture, was eventually
to be taken from Tupac. In 1986, he was arrested as the reputed mastermind of
the 1981 Brinks robbery, in which two Nyack, New York policemen and a Brinks
guard were killed. To this day, Dr. Shakur denies that he had anything to do
with the holdup, but he was nonetheless convicted and is now doing 60 years.
In an interview two
years ago at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., where he was being held at
the time, Dr. Shakur would not say if he saw Tupac during the years he was on
the run from the Brinks charges.
But it must have been
painful for adolescent Tupac to know agents were scouring black neighborhoods
all over the country looking for his stepfather. During this time, Afeni and
Tupac moved from Harlem to Baltimore.
In an added
trauma for Tupac, Lumumba Shakur, who remained on good terms with the family,
was found dead in Louisiana several days before Mutulu was arrested. Mutulu
says he suspects Lumumba was murdered by someone (perhaps a police informant)
who learned of Mutulu's whereabouts and decided to kill two birds with one
stone, taking the two brothers out of circulation.
By this time, at age
15, Tupac must have been thoroughly convinced that to be a Shakur was to
confront the possibility of death at an early age. He was learning such lessons
almost before he could walk.
In 1973, when
Tupac was a toddler, his uncle, Zayd Shakur, was traveling on the New Jersey
Turnpike with his companion, Assata Shakur, when they were stopped by a trooper.
In a shootout that followed, Zayd and Trooper Werner Foerster lay dead. Assata,
once known as JoAnne Chesimard, was wounded and later charged and convicted in
the killing of the trooper.
Taking the legend of
the Shakurs to new heights, Assata escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to
Cuba, where she is living now under a grant of asylum from the government of
Fidel Castro. Assata, dubbed the "soul" of the Black Liberation Army,
is arguably the most famous member of Tupac's extended family.
Even as he
climbed the ladder of stardom, and fought publicized battles with the law --
including the sex assault case and an allegation that he wounded a police
officer in Georgia -- -- Tupac stayed in close contact with his stepfather
Mutulu, talking with him by phone and seeking advice from him.
Mutulu (born
Jeral Wayne Williams) maintains he was having an impact on the young man,
guiding him from street instincts and post-adolescent confusion, into a more
coherent use of his energies. Mutulu praised the tender songs that Tupac would
write, the ones with positive messages about family life and responsibility,
like "Brenda's Got a Baby." Together, the stepfather and -son team
drew up a "Code of Thug Life," which was a list of rules discouraging
random violence among gansta rappers. All of this was done away from the glare
of media attention.
And perhaps
there was good reason why Tupac did not want to publicize his relationship with
Mutulu. He was already taking enough heat from local police around the country.
Why aggravate the situation by further provoking federal agents who might have
been monitoring Mutulu and his revolutionary associates?
After all, federal
authorities were known to be still interested in capturing Assata, who was
close to Mutulu. Assata says she escaped from jail in 1979 because she had
learned of a plan to have white prisoners assassinate her. Federal authorities
said Mutulu was part of the team that broke Assata out of prison.
It is
perhaps difficult for some to remember the passion that Assata and her
associates inspired in the law enforcement community. After I first wrote about
Assata in 1987, I did a phone interview with F.B.I. official Ken Walton, who
was prominent in the effort to capture her after her jailbreak. He told me in
measured, angry words that he "or somebody like me" will one day
capture Assata and bring her back to the States.
And so, given the
deep political implications, it is no surprise that Tupac largely kept that
side of his life private. Still, it should be pointed out that in at least one
song he wrote Tupac paid homage to the black revolutionaries of the '60's and
'70's. In "Words of Wisdom," at the end, as his voice fades out, he
recites a list of his heroes, among them Mutulu and Assata; and in an eerie
chant he refers to each of them as "America's nightmare."
If life as a
Shakur was difficult for Tupac, it took a great toll on Afeni also. She turned
to drugs to lift the burden, and during some of the singer's formative years
she was unable to give him the motherly attention he no doubt needed. Tupac
often expressed ambivalence about his relationship with his mother, but in a
testament to the power of the filial instinct, he worked hard to strengthen his
bond with his mother. Recently Tupac wrote a song, "Dear Mama," in
which he revealed the tenderness at the core of his feelings toward her.
As for the obvious anger that Tupac
evidenced toward police officers, painted in some songs as racists intent on
the destruction of black people, one could ask: How could he have felt otherwise?
