Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

not an Easy Course
From: baccustd@aol.com
Does anyone care how Black men are portrayed in songs? I haven’t heard any supposedly conscious people address that one yet.  
“Our daughters should have a better choice of men, and it starts with men no longer addressing Black women as b****’s and h*’s.”
She also writes the Black man is “responsible for the success or failure of [the Black] relationship.” At least he should do his part.
The statement above relieves Black women of all responsibility in relationships. Wow!!!
How the times have changed. Everyone used to say that men were chauvinist but the pendulum has swung.  Women verbally abuse men at every chance they get in every forum. Women do nothing wrong, ever.
Let’s get the pendulum stable in the middle and stop blaming one side over another in relationships. Stop playing the victim role and properly assume your participatory behavior in relationships. PLEASE PEOPLE!!!! 

From: Pearl, Jr.
There is going to be opposition because the same mental condition that persists to get us where we are today is the same mental illness that doesn’t see the error of their ways. It’s the man’s fault for the most part, for sure!
Men are leaders, providers and protectors and Black men are failing miserably at doing their duties. The saddest part of all is that they don’t even know what is right anymore, nor do they care.We are living in the era of the Arrogance of Ignorance. So, just know we will get opposition so filled with anger because they can’t accept criticism due to their lack of immaturity.
We certainly have work to do.TOGETHER, WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.  GREAT ARTICLE!!!!

From: Mary Alice Miller
What you write is nice… when are the admittedly decent guys going to step up and school the out-of-order brothers?
Not yet has the original issue been addressed or admitted- the ubiquitous disrespect of Black women  by Black men described in the article.
Admittedly, women school the young ones. When are the decent men going to step forward and establish order in the Black community?
Not just rhetoric, but stepping to the out-of-order brothers who cause the majority of mayhem in our communities.
This is what the sisters are asking for. We have been patiently waiting for this to occur.
Men in other communities establish and enforce community standards for the benefit of all living there-even if they have to use a baseball bat, or most recently this week, Councilman Vallone and the Assemblyman for Bayside, Queens set up a cash reward for the capture of a male who raped one of their women in an alley. Those men have established community standards and let it be known what is unacceptable in their community.
For us, community standards starts with treating Black women with respect. How hard is that? Why the resistance? Don’t decent Black women deserve respect from our brothers?
We deserved respect (by word and deed) from our brothers. The blanket, blatant disrespect is too common and causes all sorts of problems that racism doesn’t cause, and the government can’t cure (even if it wanted to, which many of us doubt).
From: Mary Alice Miller
No woman is trying to define what a ‘real man’ is. Observation of male culture in other communities (and what they actively establish as community standards) shows everyone that black male culture is lacking.

Your solution is to “get  rid of him”. Do you really mean we as a people should get rid of the black males who are problems. How do you propose we do this. Who will address him with ‘sympathy” and teach him how to be a REAL MAN?

From: baccustd@aol.com
That was taken out of context. No, I do not mean get rid of the Black males who are problems. If I meant that I would also say the same thing about the Black females who are problems. Together that would be a whole lot of getting rid of.  I’m talking about if that woman knows he is not going to help support her then he should not be who she wants. She should get to stepping.  As for your other question, there are males around all of us who are stand-up guys. Whether it be your father, brother, uncle, cousin, neighbor, friend, barber or teacher. These are the people who can teach the brother the error of his ways.  Just to give you an example. We all did not have the perfect mother like everyone claims, but there was another female around who taught that female how to be a woman, whether she listened to that lesson or not is another story. It is the same with men.
I hope you see that all I am saying is that if you throw all your weight on one side and ignore the problems on the other side, then all your doing is putting off the work that needs to be done on the other side.
From Mary Alice Miller:
No woman is trying to define what a “real man” is. Observation of male culture in other communities (and what they actively establish as community standards) shows everyone that black male culture is lacking.
Your solution is to “get rid of him”. Do you really mean we as a people should get rid of the Black males who are problems. How do you propose we do this. Who will address him with “sympathy” and teach him how to be a REAL MAN?

From: baccustd@aol.com
If kids are in foster care it is both parents fault, right (if they are alive)? Seems simple to me.
There are many men who take care of their families and many of them, at an ever increasing rate, that are single fathers. Where is the acknowledgment of this? It seems like you and others like you get off on stepping on the necks of men. Find another way to get off sis!!!
-The vast number of Black women with HIV/ AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases were/ are infected by their Black male partners (who somehow think regularly wearing a condom is a responsibility that is worse than catching and spreading disease).-
So again, the women do not share responsibility in 1) making sure he has a condom on, 2) choosing a partner that has some sense instead of dating the same brother with a different name and the same dumb traits.
-The vast number of Black women who have abortions were impregnated by their irresponsible non- condom-wearing Black male partner. A woman who aborts her child may know in her heart that her partner is not going to help her raise his offspring to adulthood. Too many Black women already do this by themselves.-
Again, only the men are irresponsible for the woman getting pregnant. Silly notion! If she knew in her heart as you say, then why is she with him? Riddle me; who is dumb in that equation? With knowledge comes responsibility. If you know, then act. Get rid of him.
There are always two sides to a story and you seem to choose the same side every time. Why is that? The evenhanded person looks at both sides and creates the best solution to the problem. They do not pound on one side of the scales to help throw off the balance and make the other person feel like they did no wrong.  I guess since you know me, you know I haven’t addressed the negative stereotypes in songs. I do that every day. As a matter of fact, this is helping address it now. 

I do hold other intelligent men partly responsible for this phenomenon because most of them won’t speak up and defend each other on these topics. Men would rather let women rant and rave about these things, ignore them and handle it a different way themselves but sometimes you have to get in the conversation to let them know the other side of the game. That’s why you have all of these women trying to define what a “real man” is instead of men defining it. If a woman should define what a man is, then by the same reasoning, men should define what a “real woman” is.  You know women do not want that. In summary, try to find a more holistic approach to Black male and female relationships. It usually is not just one person who is the problem in these cases. In therapy, the first thing they tell you is to stop pointing the finger outwards and start pointing the finger inwards. This will allow you to stop playing the victim role, empower yourself and find better solutions to the problem. It is both genders’ responsibility, not just one. If one person needs to be addressed then usually sympathetic understanding helps change that person more than trying to beat them down psychologically. Peace

Profound Ramifications for Politics in Brooklyn and Beyond
When the US Supreme Court returns from its summer recess in October, one of the cases on its docket is NYS Board of Elections v. Margarita López Torres. What started as one minority woman’s quest to become a NYS Supreme Court Judge has morphed into a large-scale fight- pitting the brightest minds in NYC, NYS and the USA against each other.
In 2004, Judge López Torres went to federal District Court in NYC asking for a change in the way candidates for NYS Supreme Court are placed on the ballot. Her case was heard by U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson, who defined the issues as the following: “The plaintiffs [Judge López Torres and several other individuals] in this case claim that New York State’s electoral process for the office of Supreme Court Justice violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.” (The First Amendment states that ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.’ The Fourteenth Amendment states ‘…No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’)
Judge Gleeson goes on to explain: “Specifically, [Judge López Torres] claim[s] that the system both deprives voters of the right to choose their parties’ judicial candidates and imposes insurmountable burdens on challenger candidates who seek a major party nomination without the support of the local Democratic or Republican Party leaders.”
Judge Gleeson then goes on to define the solution Judge López Torres requests by bringing this situation to court: “The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the New York’s judicial convention system is unconstitutional and a preliminary injunction directing the New York State legislature to create a new system. In the meantime, and for as long as the legislature fails to do so, the plaintiffs request that this court direct that Supreme Court Justices be nominated through direct primary elections.”
Judge Gleeson held a hearing that spanned 13 days and generated 10,000 pages of documentary evidence. After oral arguments from both sides, Judge Gleeson wrote in his decision: “The plaintiffs have demonstrated convincingly that local major party leaders – not the voters or the delegates to the judicial nominating conventions – control who becomes a Supreme Court Justice and when. The highly unusual processes by which that extremely important office is filled perpetuate that control, and deprives the voters of any meaningful role. The result is an opaque, undemocratic selection procedure that violates the rights of the voters and the rights of candidates who lack the backing of the local party leaders.”
The NYS Supreme Court is a highly coveted position. It is the trial court with the broadest jurisdiction (authority). It can hear both civil and criminal matters, except claims brought against the state. Supreme Court is the only court that can grant a divorce, annulment or separation. The NYS Supreme Court’s jurisdiction creates heavy caseloads and demands a large number of judges.
NYS Supreme Court Judges serve for 14 year terms, as do Surrogate’s Judges. In Brooklyn, there are only two Surrogate’s Judge positions, who are elected through the petition, primary and general election. By contrast, there are 52 Supreme Court Justice positions in the 2nd Judicial District, which covers Brooklyn and Staten Island. NYS Supreme Court Judges are the only judges in NYS who are elected through the judicial convention process. Judges of the Court of Claims, which only hears cases brought against the State of New York or certain agencies, are appointed by the governor and serve 9-year terms. Family Court Judges serve 10-year terms. Within NYC, Family Court Judges are appointed by the mayor; Outside NYC, they are elected. NYC Civil Court Judges are elected for 10-year terms; they handle civil matters involving amounts up to $25,000 as well as issues involving real property within NYC. The Housing Part of NYC Civil Court hears landlord-tenant cases and promotes enforcement of housing codes. Housing Court Judges are appointed to 5-year terms by the administrative judge of the Civil Court. NYC Criminal Court Judges are appointed by the Mayor for 10-year terms.
Judge Margarita López Torres has a stellar professional history. She started as a substitute teacher with the NYC Board of Education, then attended Rutgers U. School of Law. After graduation, López Torres worked for 13 years as a staff attorney for several legal service organizations.
Judge Gleeson’s District Court decision describes in detail Judge López Torres’ experiences in her quest to become a Supreme Court Judge.

In 1992, López Torres became a candidate for countywide Civil Court Judge in Brooklyn. The Kings County Democratic County Committee supported her candidacy, and being uncontested on the primary ballot, she was elected in the Nov. 1992 general election.
Shortly after she was elected, López Torres was “told by [Clarence] Norman, the county leader, and Vito Lopez, her district leader, to hire a particular young attorney as her court attorney. The directive came in a Nov. 4, 1992 letter to López Torres from Steven Cohen, a Brooklyn Democratic Party official.” Judge Gleeson explains the importance of a court attorney to a Civil Court Judge. A court attorney “provides help in all phases of managing and deciding cases.” López Torres looked into this prospective court attorney’s qualifications and references, and after an interview, decided he was “unqualified for the position… she hired a qualified attorney for the position.”
This is where things get interesting. According to the case record, “This was perceived by Norman as an act of defiance. In December of 1992, Norman chastised López Torres for not hiring the young lawyer he had sent to her, telling her that she did not understand how the process worked. He directed her to fire the attorney she had hired. When López Torres refused, Norman told her she would not become a Supreme Court Justice.”
“At approximately the same time, [Vito]Lopez, the district leader who had assisted López Torres in becoming a Civil Court judge, angrily confronted López Torres about her refusal to hire the attorney sent by ‘County,’ i.e., Norman. Her ungratefulness to Norman had made Lopez look bad. To fix that problem, Lopez directed López Torres to redeem herself by firing her court attorney and hiring ‘County’s’ choice. She again refused.”
The story goes on: “In June 1995, Lopez gave López Torres another opportunity for redemption: if she hired Lopez’s daughter, a recent law school graduate, as her court attorney, Lopez would get López Torres nominated to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court that the party leadership had earmarked for a “Latino.” López Torres declined, refusing to fire the qualified attorney she had initially hired to the position. From that point forward, Lopez never supported the judicial aspirations of López Torres, and indeed he worked against her in 2002 when she was reelected to the Civil Court.
According to Judge Gleeson’s decision: “In 1997, López Torres first sought the Democratic nomination to the office of Supreme Court Justice. She requested a meeting with Norman, who met her on August 22, 1997 in Junior’s Restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Norman reminded López Torres that her failures to hire as her court attorney the people sent to her by party leaders had been a serious breach of protocol. López Torres replied that she was at that point between court attorneys and was willing to consider a qualified applicant referred by Norman. Norman told López Torres that she needed to obtain the support of the “Latino” district leaders.
“Three weeks later, however, Norman placed an urgent call to López Torres, demanding that she remove her name from consideration at the upcoming nominating convention. Her failure to do so, Norman declared, would be a direct challenge to him. An open convention involving the competing nominations of more candidates than vacancies was “not the way it works,” according to Norman. López Torres declined, expressing the naive view that she had a right to seek the nomination at the convention even without Norman’s support. At the convention itself shortly thereafter, Norman was proved correct, as not a single delegate proposed López Torres for nomination.
(Case note: “Lopez’s daughter was hired by another Civil Court Judge in Brooklyn who was subsequently nominated and elected to the office of Supreme Court Justice.”)
“López Torres tried again in 1998, when she applied to, and was interviewed by, the Kings County Judicial Screening Committee. In late September, before the nominating convention, she tried repeatedly to ascertain the results of that process, i.e., whether the screening committee had reported her as qualified. Neither Jerome Karp, the chair of the committee, nor Norman would provide that information, so López Torres ended her bid for the nomination.
“In January 2002, López Torres renewed her effort to obtain the Democratic nomination for Supreme Court Justice. She contacted Norman and Karp to tell them so and to commence the screening process. Karp responded that the screening panel would consider only candidates referred by Norman. Norman made it clear that he would not make such a reference.
In February and again in May of 2002, he told López Torres that his concerns with her candidacy had nothing to do with her qualifications, but rather arose out of her disloyalty – her failure to hire the people sent to her by the party leadership and her refusal to withdraw her candidacy in 1997.
“Without the support of Norman, López Torres’s efforts to obtain a nomination at the 2002 convention were doomed. Her name was placed in contention by a supportive delegate, but the overwhelming majority of delegates voted instead for the package of candidates
supported by Norman.

(Case note:”While she was petitioning to get herself on the primary ballot for Civil Court in 2002, López Torres tried to include on her petitions slates of delegates to the judicial convention as well. It was a difficult task. Other elected officials who appeared with her on joint petitions and who supported her for Civil Court were reluctant to support her delegate slates because Supreme Court Justice positions were supposed to be “decided by the district leader and the county leader.” López Torres amassed many signatures [about 30,000], but they were virtually all from only eight Assembly Districts. Only 17 of the 47 delegates on the petitions, 15 of whom [from two ADs] ran without opposition, were elected.
(Case Note: The defendants’ claim that López Torres simply didn’t try hard enough to obtain the nomination [in 2002 and other years], like their attack on her qualifications, is meritless.”)
“Norman was not content to simply block López Torres’s effort to be elected as a Supreme Court Justice. In that same year, she was up for reelection to the Civil Court, and he chose to have the Democratic Party in Kings County support another nominee, an unusual tactic that evidenced the party leadership’s overt hostility toward López Torres. Elections for that judicial office, as discussed earlier, involve a primary in which a challenger candidate like López Torres can appeal directly to the voters. López Torres did just that, and she not only prevailed over the party leaders’ preferred candidate in the primary, but she received more votes in the general election for Civil Court (200,710) than any of the Democratic candidates for Supreme Court Justice received on the same day.
“In January of 2003, López Torres again wrote to Norman and Karp, declaring her candidacy for the office of Supreme Court Justice and requesting to be considered by the screening committee. At that time, it remained the policy of the committee to screen candidates only at the request of Norman or his Republican counterpart. Norman, who faced mounting criticism of the process, allowed the screening committee to interview López Torres. However, Norman still refused to support López Torres. In a meeting on June 6, 2003, he reiterated his displeasure at her refusal to withdraw her candidacy in 1997. He also stated that López Torres did not have sufficient support. Since she had been the leading vote-getter among elected judges in Brooklyn just six months earlier, Norman was not referring to support in the electorate.
Rather, he was referring to the only support that matters when it comes to Supreme Court Justice candidates in the Second District – his own and that of the district leaders. Norman summed up his position by telling López Torres that ‘County,’ i.e., the leadership of the Kings County Democratic County Committee, would only support candidates who support ‘County.'”
“As described above, López Torres’s efforts to identify and lobby the delegates to the 2003 convention were frustrated by both the timing of the relevant events and the antipathy of  the party leadership. At the convention, two delegates attempted to nominate López Torres. The effort failed, and the convention nominated the package of candidates endorsed by Norman. In a letter to his fellow district leaders, District Leader Ralph Perfetto explained that he voted against the “highly qualified” López Torres because she was an “ingrate”; she had “courted Vito Lopez to support her for Civil Court, but then decided she didn’t need him anymore and denied his daughter a job.” “Too many judges have the same attitude towards district leaders,” Perfetto lamented. He offered to take a polygraph test on the question whether Norman and Lopez had influenced his vote, and denied “any ‘deals’ or conspiracy.”
“López Torres’s seven-year effort to obtain her party’s nomination for Supreme Court Justice is the selection process in microcosm. The path to the office of Supreme Court Justice runs through the county leader of the major party that dominates in that part of New York State. Without his or her support, neither superior qualifications nor widespread support among the party’s registered voters matters.” (Since initiating her claims regarding how NYS Supreme Court Judges are placed on the ballot and subsequently elected, Judge Margarita López Torres has gone on to be elected in 2006 to Surrogate in Kings County without the help of the Kings County Democratic County Committee.)
Gleeson ordered that “the defendants (the New York State Board of Elections and others) are enjoined from enforcing New York Election Law §6-106, and from using the existing procedures set forth in New York Election Law §6-124 for major party nominations for the office of Supreme Court Justice. Until the New York legislature enacts another electoral scheme, such nominations shall be made by primary election. The petitioning requirements that will attend those primary elections shall be set forth in a subsequent order, after parties have had the opportunity to be heard.”
The NY State Board of Elections appealed Gleeson’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which upheld the District Court decision. The NYS Board of Elections appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear the case during its 2007- 08 term.
(Note: When asked why the state legislature did not take up the issue of judicial conventions and how NYS Supreme Court judicial candidates are placed on the ballot as suggested in Judge Gleeson’s decision, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries said once the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take the case, the NYS Assembly chose not to duplicate efforts.)

Festival at LIU’s Brooklyn Campus, September 27-30Irene Cara Honored,’70s Salute, Bollywood Film Premiere
September 10, 2007 (Brooklyn, NY)
  Cinematic works by more than 30 women filmmakers hailing from India to Brooklyn will screen at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. Oscar-winning actress and singer-songwriter Irene Cara will be honored, as will Susan Robeson, co-founder of Third World Newsreel and arts promoter Kojo Ade. On Sunday, September 30th, the festival hosts the U.S. premiere of Kadamtole Krishna Nache, a Bollywood film written and directed by Suman Haripriya. Councilwomen Letitia James and Inez Dickens will attend the award ceremony later that afternoon.
LIU Brooklyn’s Media Arts Department and African Voices magazine are co-sponsoring the four-day festival at the campus’s Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts from Thursday to Sunday, September 27 to 30. LIU’s Gender Studies Department is offering a four-session, one-credit certificate course in connection with the Festival. From Mammies to Action Heroines: A Celebration of Sistas in Cinema, Art & Politics begins Saturday, September 22nd, 12-2:30pm and is open to the public. The downtown Brooklyn campus is on the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush Aves. For ticket prices and schedule visit www.kumbletheater.org or www.reelsisters.org, call 718 488.1624 or 212865.2982.
Reel Sisters’ 10th Anniversary theme is, From Mammies to Action Heroines: A Celebration of Sistas in Cinema, Art & Politics. On Thursday, the festival kicks-off with a feature presentation of screenwriter J.E. Franklin’s classic Black Girl, a 1972 film directed by Ossie Davis that celebrates the aspirations of three generations of women. It will be followed by “From Pop to Politics,” a panel discussion on the roles of actresses such as Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson and the 1970s blaxploitation era.
On Friday, Reel Sisters salutes young filmmakers Nicole Franklin and Kim Singleton. A screening of their work will be followed by a live performance by the Double Dutch Divas and a ’70s-themed after-party. Other Festival favorites such as The Wedding Proposal, Brooklyn’s Bridge to Jordan and The Healing Passage, will be featured in the 10th Anniversary retrospective.
On Saturday and Sunday, features and shorts such as: American Red and Black, about the complex issues of combined African and Native heritage; Silent Choices,” about African-American women and abortion; AWOL about a woman soldier who flees Iraq; Black Girl’s Face R. Kelly, in which Black women discuss the controversial R&B singer; Hurricane Katrina: Life After the Storm, and Bragging Rights, a documentary on the New York City stickball. Saturday night features a popcorn screening of Sparkle, featuring Ms. Cara, Lonette McKee, Phillip Michael Thomas, Mary Alice and Dwan Smith. The festival closes with a fun and fabulous 1970s Hair Show sponsored by Khamit Kinks salon. Audience members are invited to come dressed in their best 1970s gear and hair (10-inch Afros are allowed)!
Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival is supported in part by the New York City Council and Speaker Christine Quinn, Council Member Inez E. Dickens, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Target, Brooklyn Arts Council, Comfort Inn Brooklyn, Long Island University Gender Studies Dept., Khamit Kinks Salon, Penn State University, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and KISS-FM.

From an early age, Steve Biko showed an interest in antiapartheid politics. After being expelled from his first school, Lovedale, in the Eastern Cape for “anti-establishment” behavior, he was transferred to a Roman Catholic boarding school in Natal. From there, he enrolled as a student at the University of Natal Medical School (Black Section). While at medical school, Biko became involved with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). But the union was dominated by white liberals and failed to represent the needs of black students, so Biko resigned in 1969 and founded the South African Students Organization (SASO). SASO was involved in providing legal aid and medical clinics, as well as helping to develop cottage industries for disadvantaged black communities.
In 1972, Biko was one of the founders of the Black Peoples Convention (BPC), working on social upliftment projects around Durban. The BPC effectively brought together roughly 70 different black consciousness groups and associations, such as the South African Students Movement (SASM), which played a significant role in the 1976 uprisings, the National Association of Youth Organizations (NAYO), and the Black Workers Project (BWP) which supported black workers whose unions were not recognized under the apartheid regime. Biko was elected as the first president of the BPC and was promptly expelled from medical school. He started working full time for the Black Community Programme (BCP) in Durban which he also helped found.
In 1973, Steve Biko was ‘banned’ by the Apartheid government. Under the “‘ban” Biko was restricted to his hometown of King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape – he could no longer support the BCP in Durban, but was able to continue working for the BPC – he helped set up the Zimele Trust Fund which assisted political prisoners and their families. (Biko was elected Honorary President of the BPC in January 1977.)
Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977 under apartheid-era antiterrorism legislation. On 21 August 1977, Biko was detained by the Eastern Cape security police and held in Port Elizabeth. From the Walmer police cells he was taken for interrogation at the security police headquarters. On 7 September, “Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, after which he acted strangely and was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him (naked, lying on a mat and manacled to a metal grille) initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury.”
By 11 September Biko had slipped into a continual, semiconscious state and the police physician recommended a transfer to a hospital. Biko was, however, transported 1,200 km to Pretoria – a 12-hour journey which he made lying naked in the back of a Land Rover. A few hours later, on 12 September, alone and still naked, lying on the floor of a cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage.
The South African Minister of Justice, James (Jimmy) Kruger, initially suggested Biko had died of a hunger strike and said that his death “left him cold”. The hunger strike story was dropped after local and international media pressure, especially from Donald Woods, the editor of the East London Daily Dispatch. It was revealed in the inquest that Biko had died of brain damage, but the magistrate failed to find anyone responsible, ruling that Biko had died as a result of injuries sustained during a scuffle with security police while in detention.
The brutal circumstances of Biko’s death caused a worldwide outcry and he became a martyr and symbol of black resistance to the oppressive apartheid regime. As a result, the South African Government banned a number of individuals (including Donald Woods) and organisations, especially those black Consciousness groups closely associated with Biko. The United Nations Security Council responded by finally imposing an arms embargo against South Africa.
Biko’s family sued the state for damages in 1979 and settled out of court for R65,000 (then equivalent to $25,000).
The three doctors connected with Biko’s case were initially exonerated by the South African Medical Disciplinary Committee. It was not until a second enquiry in 1985, eight years after Biko’s death, that any action was taken against them. The police officers responsible for Biko’s death applied for amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings which sat in Port Elizabeth in 1997. The Biko family did not ask the commission to make a finding on his death.
    “The Commission finds that the death in detention of Mr. Stephen Bantu Biko on 12 September 1977 was a gross human rights violation. Magistrate Marthinus Prins found that the members of the SAP were not implicated in his death. The magistrate’s finding contributed to the creation of a culture of impunity in the SAP. Despite the inquest finding no person responsible for his death, the commission finds that, in view of the fact that Biko died in the custody of law enforcement officials, the probabilities are that he died as a result of injuries sustained during his detention.”
1. From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa report, published by Macmillan, March 1999.africanhistory.about.com/library/biographies/blbio-stevebiko.htm

Need for Low Power Community Radio is!
Bruce Dixon
Local lawmakers in Atlanta, Dallas and other cities pretend to address crime and destructive aspects of corporate-delivered youth culture by targeting the appearance of black youth – with local ordinances to file or jail the wearers of sagging pants and exposed thong straps.  But the public airwaves over which commercial youth culture is delivered are owned by the people and regulated by their elected representatives.  If regulators and legislators did their jobs, would the odious fare of BET, MTV and their commercial radio clones be the only messages permitted to reach the ears of young people?
The Low-Power Community Radio Act in Congress right now is a real solution to the problem of getting more positive choices and voices on the radio.  So why aren’t black leaders rallying people around it?
 “It’s really legislative malpractice, that targets and criminalizes young black males who consume a cultural message conveyed to them by BET, by MTV, by black commercial radio and other corporate for-profit media….”
In case you missed it, local lawmakers around the country have come up with a brand-new answer to corporate youth culture and its glorification of prison, booty-shakin’ drug slinging and nihilism.
It’s also a proven way to get their names in the news for taking a stand. Their new approach to these problems has found its way to the legislative dockets of dozens of communities.  Their solution?  A legal ban on sagging pants that expose underwear, with fines and/or jail time for those caught wearing their pants too low. The bans are on the legislative dockets in Atlanta and Dallas and have already passed in several Georgia and Louisiana cities.
“It’s a profoundly backward idea,” according to Dr. Jared Ball, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, and a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Green Party.  “It’s really legislative malpractice, that targets and criminalizes young black males who consume a cultural message conveyed to them by BET, by MTV, by black commercial radio and other corporate for-profit media.  Local lawmakers who want to address the nihilism, the self-hatred and the disrespect spread by corporate media should instead zero in on the corporate media that make billions of dollars every year spreading those messages, instead of aiming the police, fines and jail at those who consume the messages.”
Atlanta City Councilman C. T. Martin, local sponsor of that city’s sagging pants law, claims that his intention is not to target black youth, or to jail offenders, but rather to start public conversation, to as he put it in a public meeting on September 5, “…continue the work [TV actor Bill] Cosby started.”

“Then it’s the wrong conversation to start and the wrong work to continue,” says Dr. Ball.  “The public conversation we need from lawmakers is not more of this tired noise about ‘what’s wrong with these young folks?’  The correct conversation starts when we ask how come these destructive but highly profitable messages of self-hatred are practically the only ones our media regime allows to reach the ears of young people over the public airwaves – the public airwaves which are owned by the people and regulated by their lawmakers.  Legislators should be targeting the profitable pipeline, not the consumers at the end of it.”
Dr. Ball is on to something here.  Media mediate public consciousness.  The song “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” didn’t win the Hip-Hop Award – it won the Academy Award in 2005.  Instead of regulating the clothes young black people wear, lawmakers should be regulating the media, ensuring that more positive and constructive messages are allowed the chance to compete for the ears of our young people.
There’s bipartisan legislation in Congress right now that would do exactly that.
The Local Community Radio Act of 2007 (HR 2802/S. 1675) sponsored by Reps. Mike Doyle and Lee Terry and Sens. John McCain and Maria Cantwell will open up licensing for hundreds, perhaps thousands of not for profit, locally owned FM low-power radio stations in rural, urban and suburban locations across the United States. This legislation will enable thousands of community groups across the country to start their own FM radio stations.
If the recent history of not-for-profit community radio is any guide, those stations will be only too eager to provide the programming Americans want but cannot get from the owners of commercial radio and TV.  They’ll cover local news, which is altogether absent from broadcast commercial radio. And they will broadcast the work of local and other artists who cannot get airplay on for-profit commercial radio either because their music isn’t commercial or “gangsta” enough or because they can’t afford the payola (bribes) required at commercial radio stations.

The Local Community Radio Act and the low-power FM station licenses it would provide, each with a three-to-five mile broadcast footprint, are real legislative and regulatory answers to the problem of negative and degrading imagery in the media.  Local community radio is a real and substantive answer to payola, too.
The black stake in low-power FM radio is particularly stark.  In the real world there are thousands of hip-hop artists with intelligent, positive messages who can’t reach young audiences because the lawmakers and regulators haven’t done their jobs and constructed a media regime which allows the public to make choices in its own interest.
As Davey D pointed out in Black Agenda earlier this year,  “…while 58 percent of blacks between ages 15 and 25 listen to hip-hop daily, most are dissatisfied with it. They find the subject matter is too violent, and women too often portrayed in offensive ways… Blacks are used largely to validate musical themes being marketed to the white mainstream.
In other words, while 90 percent of commercial rap artists on TV and radio are black, the target audience lies outside the black community… commercial hip-hop has become the ultimate minstrel show, and rap artists are pushed by the industry to remain perpetual adolescents.”
We should not expect to hear much about this legislation or about the revolutionary prospect of locally owned low-power FM radio on the corporate TV or radio news, or in the newspapers.  The private owners of newspapers, of radio and TV station licenses decided long ago that the less thought public gave to questions of media ownership and regulation, the better off we would all be.
When the FCC considered lifting the few remaining limitations on how many radio stations a giant corporation could own in a single market or nationwide, you scarecely find a newspaper story on it.  TV and radio coverage were entirely absent.  Still, more than a million people offered comments opposing further consolidation of radio station ownership.  The 2006 federal legislative push by phone and cable companies to kill network neutrality on the internet and remove from local jurisdictions the power to regulate their own broadband futures has received next to no coverage in the corporate press either, but FreePress <http://freepress.net/> and others generated a million petition signatures against it anyway.  Sadly, the campaign to do the same thing state-by-state has been covered even less.
“If you’re disgusted with the choices some of our young people seem to be making, it makes sense to aim our ire at the media regime and the message it conveys.”
So Atlanta’s Mr. Martin and the other lawmakers who insist legal sanctions on youthful clothing choices are the answer may be smarter than they sound. While their approach is guaranteed not to solve any problems, and their “conversations” are all about regulating or blaming the consumers of bad messages instead of regulating the messages and those who profit from delivering them, they seem to understand one thing very well.
They know what will get picked up in the corporate evening news and talk shows.  They know what the topics of the corporate-funded “brain trust” panels at the Congressional Black Caucus’s Legislative Conference later this month will be.  They understand that big media would rather limit the conversation to “What’s wrong with those kids?” and steer public attention away from how we can achieve a fair and equitable media system that meets the public needs.  They seem to understand that it’s easier to flow with the owners of media than with their nominal constituents.
“If these lawmakers had any sense of responsibility,” according to Dr. Ball, “they wouldn’t be coming up with more excuses to target, to further criminalize and profile black youth based on the way they look.  They would be promoting  the Local Community Radio Act.  They would be boosting and popularizing constructive nonprofit media, which provide voices and choices opposing the destructive ones put out there by privately owned media like Radio One, Clear Channel, MTV and BET.  They’d be chasing real solutions instead of the same old stuff.”
Again, we think Dr. Ball has it right.  If you’re disgusted with the choices some of our young people seem to be making, it makes sense to aim our ire at the media regime and the message it conveys, instead of concentrating exclusively on the consumers of that message.  It’s time to call your representative in Congress.  Demand that they sign on to and support the Local Community Radio Act, HB 2802 in the House of Representatives and SB 1675 in the Senate.
What members of the CBC are actually for more voices and choices on the radio, and which ones are fine with the way it is now?  How many of them will be at the FCC hearing in Chicago on September 20?  These are some of the questions those of us who will be attending the Congressional Black Caucus’s Legislative Weekend this month will put it to some of our African-American members of Congress in person.
Bruce Dixon is the Managing Editor at Black Agenda Report, and can be reached at bruce.dixon@ blackagendareport.com.