Excerpt from Kevin Powell’s piece, That Sickening Feeling Again, at the Root

Plain and simple, racism creates abusive relationships. It does not matter if the perpetrator is a white sister or brother, or a person of color, because the most vulnerable in our society feel the heat of it. Real talk: this tragedy would have never gone down on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or in Brooklyn Heights. I am not just speaking about the judge’s decision, but the police officer’s actions. Those shots would have never been fired at unarmed white people sitting in a car. Until we understand that racism is not just about who pulled the trigger in a police misconduct case, but is also about the geography of racism, and the psychology of racism, we are forever stuck having the same endless dialogue with no solution in sight.

And until America recognizes the civil and human rights of all its citizens, systemic racism and police misconduct, joined at the hip, will never end. That is, until white sisters and brothers realize they, too, are Sean Bell, this will never end. Save for a few committed souls, most white folks sit on the sidelines (as many did when we marched down Fifth Avenue in protest of Sean Bell’s murder in December 2006), feel empathy, but fail to grasp that our struggle for justice is their struggle for justice. They, alas, are Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo, and all those anonymous black and brown heads and bodies who’ve been victimized, whether they want to accept that reality or not. And the reality is that until police officers are forced to live in the communities they police, forced to learn the language, the culture, the mores of the communities they police, forced to change how they handle undercover assignments, this systemic racism, this police misconduct, will never end.

And until black and Latino people, the two communities most likely to suffer at the hands of police brutality and misconduct, refuse to accept the half-baked leadership we’ve been given for nearly forty years now, and start to question what is really going on behind the scenes with the handshakes, the eyewinks, the head nods, and the backroom deals at the expense of our lives, this systemic racism, this police misconduct, these kinds of miscarriages of justice, will never end.

Our current leadership needs us to believe all we can ever be are victims, doomed to one recurring tragedy or another. It keeps these leaders gainfully employed, and it keeps us feeling completely helpless and powerless. Well, I am neither helpless nor powerless, and neither are you. To prevent Sean Bell’s memory from fading like dust into the air, the question is put to you, now: What are you going to do to change this picture once and for all? Mayor Bloomberg said this in a statement:

“There are no winners in a trial like this. An innocent man lost his life, a bride lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief that those who knew and loved Sean Bell suffer.”

No, the grief will never end, not for Sean Bell’s parents and family, for his fianceé and children. But Mayor Bloomberg, you, me, we the people, can step up our games, make a commitment to real social justice in our city, in our nation, and, for once, penalize people, including police officers, who just randomly blow away lives. Sean Bell is never coming back, but we are here, and the biggest tragedy will be if we keep going about our lives, as if this never happened in the first place.

And a long as we have leadership, white leadership and black leadership, mainstream leadership and grassroots leadership, that can do nothing more than exacerbate folks’ very natural emotions in a tragedy like this, we will never progress as a human race. Instead a true leader needs to harness those emotions and turn them into action, as Dr. King did, as Gandhi did. In the absence of such action, so many of us, especially us black and Latino males, will continue to have a very nervous relationship with the police, even the police of color, for fear that any of one of us could be the next Sean Bell.

It is my distinct pleasure to introduce you to Omar Freilla and the Green Worker’s Cooperative.

Reposted from black and green

In case anyone has been under a rock, the three police officers who murdered Sean Bell in a storm of 50 bullets were acquitted of all charges - all of them.

When I heard the news, about 85% of me shrugged it off as I said to myself “I’m not surprised”. I’ve grown up in the shadow of police brutality. I’ve seen it and felt it at random moments on the street and at protest marches. Every so often a friend (always a shade of brown) will tell me about being stopped and frisked by the police. I’ve been stopped and frisked myself. I’ve followed the names of the young men and women killed by the NYPD ever since I was 14. And like lots of folks I’ve been in the countless marches and vigils that honor their memory. I didn’t think more bullets than the 41 used to kill Amadou Diallo near my home could be fired at a person. This time it was 50. That unsurprised 85% of me has gotten used to the “not guilty” verdicts that always follow. The cops always walk. Sometimes they even get an award or a promotion. Unlike that part of me that expected the worst, about 15% of me expected things to be different this time. Fifty shots was irrational, crazed, sadistic. Detective Michael Oliver, the one who fired 31 of the 50 shots, had just returned from serving in Iraq. Surely the judge would see that Oliver had gone ballistic and thought he was back in Iraq, that Bell was human. This time, they ought to be convicted of something, anything. This time it would be different.

I expect the abuse. I despise it, but I expect it. And then I keep hoping that things will be different. And when they’re not I still don’t call it quits.

I wonder if this is what a battered wife feels like.

When I heard the news that the cops had been acquitted, my mind also heard another story, it said “you don’t matter”. It was like Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” comment in the aftermath of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. But this time the story I was hearing wasn’t coming from George Bush. It was an entire court system saying to me “you don’t matter”. It’s a story I’ve heard repeated over and over. I remember hearing it when I was ten years old, living next to the Cross Bronx Expressway and looking up at the abandoned buildings with painted scenes on the boarded-up windows (drapes, potted plants, and silhouettes painted to trick passing commuters into thinking the buildings were occupied). I thought to myself “why don’t they spend money to fix them instead?”, what I heard back was “you don’t matter”. I remember visiting Baton Rouge, LA twelve years ago and seeing how close poor Black families lived to oil refineries that dominated everything in site and at night looked like their own New York City skyline - families whose members were dying left and right from cancer. The sound I heard from the refineries was “you don’t matter”. When a state environmental regulator considering her support for a permit for a 5,200 ton-per-day waste facility in the South Bronx said “the City is like a body, and every body needs a colon”, I heard a very loud and clear “you don’t matter”.

On a certain level, all of us who hear “you don’t matter” when we listen to the news or go about our daily routine, live with trauma. The fact that some of us actually take steps to change the world around us is a testament to the fact that away from courts; schools; work; welfare offices; other government agencies; and the media, there is another story being told, one that says “you matter”. I hear it in old Civil Rights songs. I hear it today among the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico. I hear it from the members of the ReBuilders Source Cooperative in the South Bronx. I hear it from people chanting “Green Jobs, Not Jails” across the country. I hear it from the grassroots community-based groups everywhere that call for environmental justice.

I often imagine that if “you matter” had always been the dominant story, global warming wouldn’t be an issue. After all, where is all that pollution coming from other than in places where “you don’t matter” is the ever-running story on the news.

I’m tired of hearing that I don’t matter. I’m tired of being abused and accepting it.

There is another story that needs telling. And we who are making another world possible are going to tell it.

“As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Excerpted from The Most Durable Power, a sermon delivered November 6, 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama

From my heart to yours…

My hood feels like it is intensifying; the sirens are constant, the police are everywhere, and the suffering runneth over. All the while the gentrification machines are threatening our right to exist in this physical place.

The Sean Bell case; a ringing alarm to the state of systemic injustice and the very tragic and personal ways in which it manifests. I am experiencing a strong wave of rage, grief and profound sadness as the verdict feels directly connected to a plot that is centuries old. A plot we all participate in.

Food shortages, climate ruin, war…

I have been feeling a lot of anger and despair…

I’m not feeling the love and hope of the Obama experience. Long gone is the glow of the race speech.

How to reconnect to the source to provide fuel for potential transformative action?

I noticed today that I move into despair when I try to resist what I am feeling. If I can embrace the sad, mad, anger, whatever and ride it… fully step into it and honour it without judgment… I can move through it. I don’t leave it behind… but it sort of integrates and maybe strengthens. It’s in the struggle to ‘keep it together’ or ‘mature’ or ’spiritual’ when I AM NOT feeling that way where I get caught up. If I resist ‘what is’ in any way… suffering and loss of energy. If I have the courage to just be with what is there, to fully feel what is there, the feelings shed their negative attributes and power over. They transform into healthy energy. Energy that can fuel action. Actions that have the potential to create radical change in our systems and societies.

I want to act… but I’m not feeling the love. I’m not connected to any source. I’m drained. And I’m triggered. How to recenter?

Here’s what I have noticed in myself:

1) Feel my emotions deeply and with self-compassion
2) Share them in all their guts and glory with those dear and trusted
~ somewhere in that process a shift occurs and I am liberated from the despair. I can find love authentically now that I have honoured and integrated the pain and rage ~
3) Brainstorm my actions - what I am committed to doing? - what can I let go?
4) Focus and define clear action steps forward

thanks for being there breathing your breaths.

complex and simultaneous realities…

how do we hold…

this truth…

and this one?

warning… this is intense… prepare yourself…

Alfonso Cuaron’s short film based on Naomi Klein’s book—The Shock Doctrine.

Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

US President George W. Bush (C), Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon (R) and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper (L) use shovels to pick up dirt as part of a tree planting ceremony in honor of Earth Day at Lafayette Square in New Orleans, Louisiana.

That’s a bizarre scene.

A really deep discussion is going down at Open Democracy

The idea that the targeted largesse of the super-rich can unlock the problems of global development and progress is a potent influence in the world of philanthropy, business and government. How valid is it?

Michael Edwards opens a new debate with a searching scrutiny of the arguments for extending business principles into the worlds of civil society and social change.

He argues that:

* The hype surrounding philanthrocapitalism runs far ahead of its ability to deliver real results. It’s time for more humility

* The increasing concentration of wealth and power among philanthrocapitalists is unhealthy for democracy. It’s time for more accountability

* The use of business and market thinking can damage civil society, which is the crucible of democratic politics and social transformation. It’s time to differentiate the two and reassert the independence of global citizen action

* Philanthrocapitalism is in part a symptom of a profoundly unequal world. It hasn’t yet demonstrated that it provides the cure

So here’s the 55-trillion-dollar question (the amount of philanthropy that is projected to be created in the United States alone over the next forty years): will we use these vast resources to pursue social transformation, or just fritter them away in spending on the symptoms?

The stakes are extremely high, so let’s have a global public debate to sort out the claims of both philanthrocapitalists and their critics.

There are papers written in response. The two women contributors, Kavita Ramdas with Philanthrocapitalism in Denial and Karen Weisblatt’s Individual giving, collective action are on point.

The NYPD’s murder of Bell and attempted murders of Benefield and Guzman are NOT isolated or random events. They represent the continued targeting of communities of color by the police and the lack of accountability for police misconduct and abuse.

“We ask police to risk their lives to protect ours,” said an assistant district attorney, Charles A. Testagrossa, in his closing arguments. “Not to risk our lives to protect their own.”

Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
The crowd gathered at the Queens Criminal Court building reacted on Friday morning to the verdict in the Sean Bell shooting trial.

“They got away with murder in there,” said Calvin B. Hunt, a man in the crowd, which continued to spill into two of the three westbound lanes of Queens Boulevard, slowing traffic to a crawl.

William Hargraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem brought his 12-year-old son, Kamau, to the courthouse this morning. He said this verdict parallels the outcome of previous police shootings of black men. “Connect the bullets,” he said. “How many times did they shoot Diallo? Forty-one times. They were acquitted. They got a pension.”

His son said: “I think it’s not right, because they shot him 50 times. They knew he was hurt, and they kept shooting him. He didn’t even have a gun.”

more at The Root and Racewire

Sean Bell, with fiancee Nicole Paultre and their daughter

Associated Press

Photo: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

Riot police detain a student during a protest in Santiago, Chile.