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To Kneel on Sacred Ground …

Bernice Elizabeth Green
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To Kneel on Sacred Ground …

By Bernice Elizabeth Green

Photo: Bernice Green
Several members of New York’s city council took a knee outside City Hall Wednesday to push back “on a system of supremacy … and oppressive policies,”
in the words of Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), and, later, inside the chambers, a number of them remained seated during the customary
pledge of allegiance.
Among those at the kneel-in were: City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-East Harlem); Councilman Williams, holding a Colin Kaepernick jersey
displayed between them; Majority Leader Jimmy van Bramer (D-Jackson Heights); and Council Members Helen Rosenthal (D-Upper West Side); Deborah
Rose (D-Staten Island), Inez Barron (D-Brownsville); Bill Perkins (D-Harlem); Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn); Donovan J. Richards (D-Queens); Julissa Ferreras-
Copeland (D-Queens), Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn), Antonio Reynoso (D-Queens/Brooklyn) and Andy King (D-Bronx), and Council Member I. Daneek
Miller (D-Queens); Dan Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) and Anabel Palma (D-Bronx).

Yesterday, fellow members of the New York City Council joined Jumaane Williams, 45th District, gathered in front of City Hall just across from the statue of Nathan Hale to “take a knee” in a show of solidarity with the purpose of denouncing racism, injustice and upholding the American right of freedom of speech.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee did the same, on Monday, on the Congressional floor and across the nation, others are doing the same.

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, began the silent protest of kneeling on the sidelines during the national anthem because of what he called the oppression of people of color in the United States — particularly the police shootings of many young, African-American men in the last few years.

He was met with resistance.

And on August 19, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, NYPD officers took a knee at Pier I in solidarity with the fired player’s real concern: the injustices that prevail and that are clearly denoted in the anthem, itself.

Last Friday night (September 22) at a political rally in Alabama, Trump attempted to steer the conversation away from Mr. Kaepernick’s intent.  He announced that NFL players should be fired for kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.  He also said, in a reference to Mr. Kaepernick: “Get that son of a b____ of the field.” And he did this while a humanitarian crisis is happening in Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“Protesting is probably the most American thing that one can do,” Councilman Williams, said at the press conference yesterday. “Everything we enjoy in this country is because of protesting.”

And the country is coming around; the conversation is on track, and good percent of the nation is taking a stance, by taking a knee for the constitutional rights of all Americans to protest and to speak out against racism.

But there was something more poignant about yesterday’s demonstration, it was a reminder that all of this was happening on sacred ground.  Historians have determined that City Hall is just a few feet south of the Colonial-era  ‘Negros Burial Ground’ considered the largest colonial-era cemetery for enslaved African people and ‘possibly the largest and earliest collection of American colonial remains of any ethnic group.’

These enslaved Africans – many young children worked unpaid, without health benefits of any sort, and who cleared the trees and made the pathway for the construction of Wall Street and all of the other buildings, including City Hall, living only to work.  It is estimated that from the mid-17th century to 1795, nearly 200,000 had been worked to death and were buried there.

A portion of the cemetery discovered in 1991 during an excavation along the short Elk Street – now African Burial Ground Way, was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior in 1993. A memorial was dedicated in 2007.  The tenth anniversary celebrations take place at the memorial site, now a Federal Landmark, next week.

By taking a knee and the inclusive comments they made at City Hall Wednesday, councilmembers showed support for the continuing struggle of Africans in the Americas, as well as for their storm ravaged brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

Among the Council members who knelt yesterday, in addition to Williams and Richards, were Inez Barron and Councilpersons Melissa Mark Viverito, Brad Lander, Julissa Ferreras Copeland, Debbie Rose, Carlos Menchacha, Antonio Reynoso and Andy King.

“Many of us made clear that this was not about the flag, this was not about patriotism, this was about pushing back on a system of supremacy, a system of oppressive policies that have been around in the country for a very long time,” said Council Member Jumaane D. Williams.

 

View From Here: Pop Culture President

David Mark Greaves
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View From Here: Pop Culture President

With the hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Florida and Texas, a nuclear North Korea, the eternal war in Afghanistan, Russian interference in the elections and the repeated failures on legislation and in the courts, our Pop Culture President and his rallying rabble of Alabama yahoos had a good time whoopin’ and hollarin’ calling Black men “s.o.b.s” and screaming how they should be fired for kneeling during the national anthem– in protest of the criminal justice system and police brutality.

And then, with 70% of the NFL being Black and the conclusive link between playing football and the brain injury known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), from repeated blows to the head, the president added to the insult by bringing his fists together to show a “beautiful hit” and says the league is being soft in their newfound concern for head injuries.

In disdain for human life in general and Black life in particular, Trump found a receptive audience in Alabama, where there were 347 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, according to information compiled by the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).   Alabama had its last lynching in 1981 by the Ku Klux Klan in Mobile. “This was not ‘frontier justice’ carried out by a few marginalized vigilantes or extremists,” says the EJI report, speaking of the early lynchings. “Instead, many African-Americans who were never accused of any crime were tortured and murdered in front of picnicking spectators (including elected officials and prominent citizens) for bumping into a white person, or wearing their military uniforms after World War I, or not using the appropriate title when addressing a white person.”

And now the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those picnickers were gathered around to hear what this loathsome, arrogant, preening and aggressively ignorant man, who is their champion, had to say.   This is the base of his base, and after enduring eight years of the measured thoughtfulness of President Barack Obama, they finally could exult in having someone who says he loves them for the white supremacists they are and who speaks to them with respect and in language they can understand.

This is what the Presidency of the United States has come to, a bastion of white supremacy that leaves you sputtering for ways to describe the depths to where the country is being taken by this snake-eyed delusional huckster, who leads like it’s all TV.

On the other hand, absent his divisiveness, we would not have felt the pride of watching Black men standing in support of each other. “We’re brothers. Mess with one of us, mess with all of us,” one said.   “A man doesn’t often get a chance to stand for something. This was my chance and I took it,” said another player.

And these men don’t just stand with each other, they stand tall with the communities they come from as well.

The magazine Bleacher Report lists the following: Miami Dolphins defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh donated $2.6 million to Nebraska in 2011 and $250,000 to his high school in 2013. The LeBron James Family Foundation focuses on children, with $41 million in 2015 to send 1,100 kids to school.

The Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson supports children with his “Why Not You” Foundation and the “Russell Wilson Hospital”.

Warrick Dunn has a Home for the Holidays program, which gives single parents a home.  Dunn has provided more than 100 homes for these families.

After Hurricane Katrina, he challenged each NFL player to donate $5,000, resulting in about $5 million being raised for Katrina relief.

Writing for Black Voices on the Huffington Post, Zahara Hill reported that Martellus Bennett of the Green Bay Packers pledged to donate all of the sales from his jersey to after-school programs. And his brother Michael said he’d be giving all of the money from his 2017 endorsement deals to charities that cater to minorities and the empowerment of Black women.

And Colin Kaepernick has donated $700,000 of his $1 million pledge to 24 organizations.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of men who compete on the field to win the game, and off the field to see who can be the most creative with their giving.

These are men in brotherhood with each other and with their people. And even when kneeling they are head and shoulders above that man in the White House.

And in all of this we see how unintended consequences are often lessons taught by the Lord working in mysterious ways. In throwing red meat to his hyena base, Trump has roused prides of lions who are stretching and flexing and hearing the call to come together. LeBron James has 38.6 million Twitter followers and Stephen Curry has 10.5 million. And one fact that cannot be contested is that these gentlemen know how to keep their eye on the ball. And when you add the players in all the leagues sending out Colin Kaepernick’s original message calling for racial justice to their fans of all races, even briefly, then we may see one of those unintended consequences that cause us to smile and say, “Oh, now I see what God was doing”.

 

 

 

What’s Going On

Victoria Horsford
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THE WEEK IN REVIEW

President Donald Trump has a cornucopia of problems, many of them self-created, others beyond his control. He has to countenance a divided nation, along class and race lines; the brinksmanship game with North Korea, securing borders for the US and its territories, a stalled legislative agenda; the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria on Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands; and his bellicose tone addressing the family of nations at the UN, implying that Iran and Venezuela could be American military targets.  He is always working to pacify his base and manufacture race divisions like his rants in Alabama on 9/22.

My four-year-old grandniece Jeannette Torruella, after listening to POTUS 45 on CNN on 9/22, asked her mother, “What is a son of a bitch?” She was parroting Trump’s words about a possible solution for NFL franchise owners concerned about football players who “take a knee” during the National Anthem. Trump’s talk evokes concern about Colin Kaepernick’s punishment by the NFL franchisers.   Yes, Trump’s remarks were racist.  About 80% of the NFL players are Black, many of whom “take a knee”. All of the franchise owners are white and there is no equitable owner/player distribution of revenues from America’s highest-grossing sport. Ironically, Trump’s remarks united the owners and the players about the knee ritual. That the football owner/player relationship has to change is inevitable.

On Monday, 9/25, LeBron “King” James called a press conference on September 25th to discuss and affirm how great America really is and it would be even better with a leader who unites people. Trump denies racist undertones in his “son on a bitch” speech. However, King James concludes: “He, Trump, doesn’t understand the magnitude, the power that he has for being the leader of this beautiful country.” More of the NFL, Black men and the plantation system played out in the 21st century.

VOTING/REGISTRATION

The NY September 12 Primary was another low-voter turnout misadventure. Mayor de Blasio clobbered his competition. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz won. Councilman Bill Perkins, whose district spans Central Harlem, got 50% of the vote from a field of 6 contenders. Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez won and will officially succeed his late boss Kenneth Thompson. A list of non-Democrat contenders (Republican, Liberal, et al.) for City Council seats in the November election is being prepared. The column will also report on NYS Supreme Court and NYC Civil Court contenders.

The NY Urban League’s Young Professionals group will host a series of voter registration drives throughout the five boroughs. It is a “Push for Millennial Votes”, which will be held on National Voter Registration Day, September 26-30, to qualify for the November 7th elections. Bronx, 1600 Webster Avenue, 9/26, 4-6:30 pm; Brooklyn, 2221 Church Avenue, 9/26, 5-8 pm and at Nostrand and Fulton, A, C subway stop; Queens, 9/26, 5-8 pm at 92-14 Roosevelt Avenue and 159-02 Jamaica Avenue; Staten Island, 9/26, 132 Canal Street, 5-7 pm; and Harlem, September 30, 2:30-5 pm at 253 West 125th Street in concert with the Apollo Theater’s Uptown Hall.   E-mail: Ypcivicseconco@nyulyp.org

LITTLE CARIBBEAN

On Thursday, September 28, a new neighborhood named “Little Caribbean” in Flatbush, Brooklyn comes to life.   Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and NY & Co. will be in attendance for the Little Caribbean kickoff celebration. The area will be a corridor where Caribbean business and culture will co-exist. The designation spans parts of Flatbush, southern Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.   Boundaries include Empire Boulevard to the north and the crossing of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenue to its south. The brainchild of Shelley Worrell of CaribBeing, the Little Caribbean neighborhood joins the city’s other culture pockets like Little Italy, Chinatown and Little Pakistan. The new Caribbean neighborhood figures prominently in the city’s tourism bureau, NY & CO. directory.

 There is a new kid on uptown’s restaurant block. It is HARLEM RENAISSANCE, located on 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue, owned by Cisse, Senegalese restauranteur, who also owns Ponty Bistro on 139th Street in Harlem. Cisse started hosting Harlem Renaissance restaurant soft openings since September 18.   Bon Appetit!

 BLACK BUSINESS

 The Initiative for Global Development(IGD) Frontier 100 Forum convenes October 4-6 in Washington, DC. The forum’s theme is “Growing the Middle: Investing in African Companies for the Continent’s Economic Transformation.” IGD Forum and invitational, frequented by African and global business leaders, will focus on increasing greater US investment in Africa and investment in African mid-sized companies for sustainable development and inclusive growth. Forum’s featured speakers include Dr. Benedict Okey Oramah, Africa Export Import Bank; Kenroy Dowers, Atlas Mara Ltd.; Bunmi Akinyemiju, Venture Garden Group.     [Visit IGDLEADERS.ORG]

ARTS SCENE

Executive Producer of the Apollo Theater, Kamilah Forbes, announced its 2017-2018 season, which opens with the NY premier of chamber opera, WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED, inspired by the 1985 crisis in Philadelphia with the standoff between the police and a Black Liberation group resulted in the deadly bombing of a residential neighborhood.   Opera credits include music by Harlem-based composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, libretto by Haitian-American Marc Bamuthi Joseph, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones (“Fela!” and “Spring Awakening”), conducted by Viswa Subbaraman. Opera is co-commissioned and co-produced with Opera Philadelphia and Hackney Empire.

The “Barbara Chase-Ribaud Malcolm X: Complete” exhibit at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, located at 100 Eleventh Avenue at 19th Street, Manhattan, runs through November 4. Social critic and Pulitzer Award journalist Les Payne, whose book on Malcolm X will be published imminently, will lecture at the gallery on October 12. [Visit michaelrosenfeldart.com

HEADS OF STATE

President Donald Trump hosted a lunch for the African heads of state during their visit to NY for the new UN General Assembly session.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and his Excellency Adama Barrow, President of the Republic of Gambia, co-hosted a Gambian Diaspora reception and Town Hall on Saturday, September 23 at PS 154, the Harriet Tubman Learning Center in Harlem.

His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, was in town for the UNGA session. He received an Africa America Institute Award on behalf of the people of Ghana at the annual AAI Gala.

His Excellency Goodluck Jonathan, former Nigerian President, was one of the honorees at the Kechie Project’s First Annual Dinner and Awards Gala, held at the Club Quarters Rooftop Terrace on September 22.

La Merica Sanemagogna

Marlon Rice
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La Merica Sanemagogna

The Italians are renowned for many things. For example, they are the pioneers of large-scale spas and hot bathhouses. Their cuisine is world-famous, with culinary inventions like pizza and Neapolitan ice cream having become American staples generations ago. The Italians are also known for their elaborate and rhythmic style of swearing. It is done with passion and bravado not unlike art, with each syllable fusing melodically with the next to form words that can offend, intimidate and charm a person all at once.

Upon their migration to America, Italians were met with the rudimentary language of English. Unlike the romantic language of Italian, English is more intricate and rigid, with less room for flair. This is very evident in the way that Americans swear. It’s nothing to it really, just a bunch of guttural snipes deprived of the honor and passion Italians bring to the sport. I mean, screaming Porca Puttana! is much more exciting than saying the American version.

During the turn of the 20th century, at the height of Italian migration into America, one of the most popular swear words in the English language was Son of a Bitch. It was used as a complete show of disrespect to whomever it was directed upon, invoking a slap in the face to both you and your mother, the latter being worthy of a fight at the very least. It was considered so disrespectful that Americans coined the subterm Son of a Gun as a way to lessen the blow while still making the same point. To our new Italian neighbors learning the English language the same way we all learn a new language, curses first, it became indisputable that Americans were amateurs at being offensive, no style, no depth and absolutely no flair. As a way to mock these cocky Americans for being so amateurish, Italians used the American term “son of a gun” as a term of offense to describe Americans. La Merica Sanemagogna translates to “American son of a gun”, but it means a person who is backwards, a failure at doing what he thinks he’s good at.

While speaking at a rally in Alabama, in an environment that better resembled a Tea Party, Alt-Right, Neo-Con campaign than an event organized for a sitting president, Donald Trump called out those athletes who have chosen to silently and peacefully protest during the singing of the National Anthem, saying, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag and say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! Out! He’s Fired’!”

Aside from being an obvious show of disrespect to the mothers of the athletes he singled out in his speech, our president’s language and tone at that rally and in most of his public speaking and Twitter rants is that of a hatemonger, a person bent on using negative emotive ideals and ignorance to incite division between those who think like him, and those of us who do not. It has become apparent in his 251 days in office that his motto of making America great again means to make it great for white men who still harbor radical racist opinions and values. He’s been doing a good job at it, too. According to Al-Jazeera, hate crimes against Muslims are up 91% versus this time last year. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 900 hate crimes committed in just the first ten days after Trump’s victory on Election Day. In his short time in the White House, he has made Muslims the enemy, a majority of the Arab world enemies, transgendered military personnel the enemy, women’s marchers the enemy, Arnold Schwarzenegger the enemy, the judge who blocked his ridiculous travel ban in February the enemy, and now it’s professional football players. Oh, let’s not forget Steph Curry, who Trump called out by denying his and his teammates invitation to the White House, an invite that the team was already rescinding. Anyone, at any time, can find themselves the focus of the wrath of our president’s Twitter fingers, something you’ve never said about any other president ever.

It would be quite comical if it wasn’t sadly so true.

We have a president that spends hours every day making aimless rants via social media, and then he doubles down on those rants with every public speech he gives. He is the most dangerous person to ever hold the office of POTUS. How dangerous? North Korea feels like Trump declared war, through a Twitter post. The Neo-Nazis and White Nationalist militias feel empowered because Trump has called them “good people”. Fires have been lit under potential rages that for generations we have worked collectively to quell, and all we can do as a people is keep our communities from burning from hate while we wait out this madman, hoping to God that something ends his reign now, before it’s too late.

Donald Trump is the textbook example of La Merica Sanemagogna. The American “son of a gun”, backwards in every way, a complete failure at doing what he thinks he’s good at. I can think of a bunch of other cuss words to use to describe him, in Italian and in English.

A Rally for Colin Kaepernick* Brooklyn Bridge Pier I September 14, 2017

Bernice Elizabeth Green
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A Rally for Colin Kaepernick* Brooklyn Bridge Pier I September 14, 2017

Speaker: Ret. Det. Graham B. Weatherspoon

Part IV of a continuing series

What we have in this country is the failure to study history; it’s not taught, it’s not studied.

Right there (pointing west) on the other side of the river is Wall Street. That’s where enslaved Africans were sold on the block in New York. The first (enslaved Africans) to come to this country were brought here to New York in 1626.

They were brought here before the Irish. They were brought here before the Germans. They were brought here before the Italians. They were brought here before the French. They were brought here before many of the people who think this is their country ever heard of this country.

Professional football is modeled after American slavery. You’ve got to think and analyze what’s going on. Where do these players start out? They start out on a farm team. What was a plantation other than a farm? Who worked on the field in that farm? People that looked like us.

Colin Kaepernick was called for such a time as this. God did not call him to be … a man of enlightenment for the people of the country and also for other professional football players to see. Just because you’re getting a check does not mean that you’re free; athletes are bought and sold.

There’s a big event every year. They call it the draft. That’s the block! And when they trade you, they tell you to pack up, go there. They don’t care about your wife, your family. You go there. It’s a slave system.

This country is founded and rooted in slavery and when you take the time to step back and think, you will see how much slavery is going on: mental, psychological, educational, financial. Every aspect of your being is controlled by it.

There’s been a lot of talk about Nazis. Adolf Hitler gave credit to where he got his thinking from. He wrote and said he got his ideas from the United States of America. He got it from the U.S. Congress in 1924. You wonder why you have quote-unquote Neo-Nazi. Because the chief Nazi developed his program by watching the people in this country.

Immigration laws were revoked in 1924 against people. Separatism. Racism — that’s what he modeled his agenda after. So, when we think about Nazism, let’s think about the United States and how we have affected and infected lives of people across the globe.

I served as a police officer and as a detective. I sent police officers to prison because they were not qualified; they were criminals. You see what that fool on the Hill in Washington did in that tirade he ran on Long Island with the Suffolk County Police Department! You see how they applauded him. Their own chief is sitting in prison for brutalizing a prisoner.

So, the clergy had better wake up! These photo ops and all this nonsense! Wake up! Your calling is to God. Not to America. Not to a flag. Not to anybody but God. And it is time people in this country stood up for what is right.

The philosopher (Edmund) Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men … and women … to do nothing”. You can’t be good doing nothing. Because if you’re not standing against evil, you are for it.

Colin Kaepernick, you were given the platform of football to elevate you to the level for people to know who you are. Now that they know who you are–moving to another level because you are speaking out for what is truthful and what is just. And what is beneficial for people at-large.

*******

* Last month, NYPD officers gathered in Brooklyn Bridge Park to show support for Colin Kaepernick, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers who has been, at this printing, banished by the NFL for sitting out the national anthem last season.

Organized by Sgt. Edwin Raymond, the rally featured speeches from retired NYPD officer Frank Serpico, City Councilman Jumaane Williams and others. The rally concluded with officers, supporters, media and others raising their fists and taking a knee in support of Kaepernick and his stance.

Part V of this series next week, October 5, 2017, presents the voice of Serpico, who was praised at the rally by Detective Weatherspoon. “Serpico inspired me to enter into law enforcement. A white man who I’ve respected for over 45 years! I will always respect him because he stood against the ills and the criminality in this country.”

 

 

 

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