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A Jewish Perspective on Race in America & the Continued Police Killings of Black Men

Stephen Witt
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49
A Jewish Perspective on Race in America & the Continued Police Killings of Black Men

By Kings County Politics News Service

Yossi Stern

In the wake of yet more police killings of black men, this time in Louisiana and Minnesota, some have been trying to pin blame on the Jewish State of Israel as the cause of this deathly police misconduct.

 

This included pro-Palestinian organizations that chanted in protests from Ferguson to Palestine, and most recently the New York University’s chapter of Students for Justice (SJP) in Palestine shared a post on its Facebook page claiming that “the same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians”.

 

The logic behind the SJP Facebook post was that the Jewish State is responsible for all actions taken by police in the United States because some police officers spend a few days training in Israel.

 

In response, OTP spoke with Yossi Stern, the retired longtime head of the Crown Heights Patrol and community activist that has long been working on the relationships between blacks and Jews.

 

“It is not unusual for some to be trying to blame the Jews and Israel for the police killings of blacks or what happened in Texas as they’ve been trying to blame the Jews for everything for the past 5,000 years,” said Stern. “Even trying to get Jewish viewpoints on the situation on first perception is divisive as if their collective views are any different from blacks or whites or Spanish. What is happening is a human issue.”

 

Stern said clearly the majority of police (for the most part) do a good job, but there is a long-standing undertone that they look at black men as suspects and they are guilty until proven innocent.

 

“This prejudgment is what causes these type of killings to happen. It’s been going on for years, but now because of social media it’s more visible and these incidents get even stronger emotional responses,” Stern said. “So, collectively, black people and minorities don’t trust the police because of their view of them when they approach a scene.”

 

Stern said a good example of this is the recent case where police stopped a black youth for riding his bicycle on a sidewalk, which is technically illegal and this gave police the right to stop him under probable cause. The first cop aggressively attacked the youth and when the second cop arrived, instead of saying something to the first cop, put the kid in a choke hold, he said.

 

“These type of incidents are not uncommon and have to change through a huge culture of understanding and education,” Stern said. “On the flip side, because police respond to calls in poor and minority neighborhoods where crime is higher, often their first response is to attack and then listen. This echoes (number one) of prejudgment and (two) the police want to defend themselves in case there’s a gun.”

 

“So the police overreact and then the community gets overdefensive. So much negative prejudgment on both sides is cocktail for disaster.”

 

Stern said while peaceful marches can help address the situation, blocking highways, chanting to kill the police and other such forms of civil disobedience is not the answer.

 

“What happens then is the police and the establishment harden their side and the civilians with legitimate issues harden their side and there’s destruction on both sides,” said Stern. “Without providing a clear path to solutions everyone gets hurt.”

 

Stern recommended that number one, the police hierarchy must provide better training to the officers, who often don’t come from the neighborhood where they police, on how to serve and protect the neighborhoods they cover. Secondly, community policing has to be brought back where cops walk the beat and get to know the community – places where people are friendly and good citizens and places that are trouble spots, he said.

 

“Thirdly, inner-city communities must set up monthly proactive town halls in schools, senior centers and community centers to aggressively get the community educated on laws and how the police work. Lastly, the level of distrust can only be broken and rebuilt if each side sees their faults that they carry. Refusing to acknowledge problems on both sides makes it hard to address them,” said Stern.

 

“The black community across the country can and should round up a thousand black attorneys to address the unfairness in America because it’s clear that blacks are being beaten by the greater system,” he said.

 

Stern said these aggressive approaches to meeting with both the Jews and blacks since the Crown Heights riots have helped quell misunderstandings and breaks down the barriers of bigotry.

Bad Times and Hard Work to Be Done

David Mark Greaves
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Bad Times and Hard Work to Be Done

 

By David Mark Greaves

Okay, we know we’re better than this as a nation and we have to hold firm to that thought as we work our way through these increasingly difficult times.

Sniper Micah Johnson was a man who snapped.   He was known to be unstable, and what led him to commit the horrifying and irrational killing of 5 police officers and wounding of 6 more because they were white was that festering instability combined with the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and the toxicity of racism that is embedded in America.  All of these deaths have broken the nation’s heart and caused many to wonder where we are headed, particularly now with that Fascist wanna-be Donald Trump trying to manhandle his way into the driver’s seat.

There are so many reasons for the situation we’re in that there is no point in finding some group to blame because there is enough to go around.

The police have a very tough job and they are not the enemy here and neither is the Black Lives Matter movement or those who respond with All Lives Matter.  All lives do matter, but it is Black lives that were bought and sold as products for hundreds of years.  It was Black lives that were lynched by the thousands, some at celebratory events attended by Christian families, none of whom thought Black lives matter at all.   Their descendants are still among us, and because the enemy, that mentality that allows  slavery and lynching, where black people are not seen as fully human, has not been vanquished. and although it is in the core of America, it is not a part of the American curriculum, but should be included as part of the Common Core because the study of that history helps explain where we are today.

When Mr. Castile informed the officer that he had a firearm, was that information taken, even unconsciously, as a reasonable cause to shoot him?   This would not seem possible if not another Black man with a gun in his waistband was killed while on the ground with no provocation.  Without the video, “a gun was recovered” makes any statement by the officers true.  How many times has a weapon on the scene been a “green light” in a race killing?   That is an impossible thought until last week.

But it isn’t just lethal force that is the problem.  A just-released study, “Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings”, found no discrepancy in the use of lethal force toward Blacks or whites, but it found that less than lethal force, the physical handling of teens,   is where much of the distrust on the street comes from.  And it suggests that swift and sure punishment not be limited to the use of lethal force, and that police training and intense work on community relations, can bring police and communities closer together.

And on the streets there needs to be a decrease in police encountering situations.  Young people have to have their lives crowded with positive activities and opportunities.  They should be too busy to be standing around with idle hands.   It should be becoming very clear in this presidential election year that there has to be new thinking and what was not possible six months ago is what has to be done today.  Public schools with excellent well-paid teachers, year-round extended hours, study hall, music, athletics, all of it poured in as an answer to the national emergency that is the educational disaster taking place in the Black community.  In this most political season, politicians must be made to understand that the condition of the education system is not only a threat to the community, but to their staying in office.

In New York City, blame for the economic conditions that create police encounters and encourages “lifestyles of the poor and hopeless”, extends to the expenditures of the city budget, where only .3% went to certified Black businesses in the last fiscal year.  And the MWBE program, with its roots in the theft of labor from Africans and the theft of land from indigenous people and the slaughter of both, is where Asians and white women receive over 85% of the spending.   This is the kind of thing that has to change.

After the mourning, there is a lot of work to be done.  Register and vote!  Election deadlines are on page 15.

 

WHAT’S GOING ON

Victoria Horsford
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96

 

By Victoria Horsford

 

RIP:   ROSCOE BROWN

 

Roscoe Brown

New Yorker extraordinaire Dr. Roscoe Brown, 94, died on July 2.  A Greatest Generation exemplar, Roscoe Brown was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, who were the first African-American military pilots in US history.  A squadron commander, Brown flew 68 combat missions and shot down two German jets during WWII.   He was the recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross Medal.  Brown earned a Ph.D. in Education after the war. He would become a household name in higher education, health and business initiatives. He was an NYU Professor before taking the reigns as President of Bronx Community College, a CUNY campus, for 17 years.  He was co-founder of the Sports Foundation and of One Hundred Black Men and was engaged in multiple health initiatives.

 

Dr. Brown did not have time for retirement.  He worked at the CUNY Graduate Center as Professor/Director of the Center for Urban Education Policy. He continued to host “African-American Legends”, a CUNY-TV Public Affairs show which airs weekly.  There was one unfinished business matter, Dr. Brown’s memoir, a  10-year work in progress.

 

NEW YORK CITY

 

Adriano Espaillat

Last week’s NY Congressional Primary was the end of an era!  NYS Senator Adriano Espaillat, who was born in the Dominican Republic, won the coveted Democratic race for  Charles Rangel’s 13th Congressional District seat.   He will no doubt win the general election, and he will become the first D.R.-born person to sit in the US Congress.

His victory accelerates the erosion of the Black Harlem political machine.  Representative Rangel endorsed NYS Assemblyman Keith Wright, an African-American, who lost by a narrow margin.  Political power in East, Central and West Harlem, the Bronx and Northern Manhattan, shifts from Blacks, who dominated that district since the 40s, to  Latinos, which according to the census records, represent 52% of the population. Low Black voter turnout and 9 Dem contestants attributed to Keith Wright’s loss.  In the general election, Espaillat will be challenged by Tony Evans, an African-American Republican, and Daniel Rivera of the Green Party.

 

What’s going on at NYCHA, the NYC Housing Authority, the nation’s largest inventor of public housing?   According to the Wall Street Journal story, “NYC To Sell Public Housing Stake. Developers  Pledge $100 in Renovations”, NYCHA is selling a 50% stake in 900 apartments in the  Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan  to private developers like L&M Development and BFC Partners. According to a NY Daily News story, NYCHA will pick private developers to manage and upgrade 21 apartment buildings.  The Bloomberg administration considered similar NYCHA/developers initiatives.

 

Maya Wiley

Maya Wiley, Chief  Counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, leaves this month to Chair the NYC Police Department’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, the watchdog group which investigates police on civilian misconduct.    The Police Benevolent Association is not happy about the  Wiley appointment.  Attorney Wiley will also start her career as a Professor at the New School University.

 

NEWSMAKERS

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu begins his 4-nation African tour in Uganda, where his brother got killed during the Entebbe crisis. His Africa itinerary also includes Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

 

RIP:    Patrick Manning, 69, died on July 2 after a long battle with leukemia. A parliamentarian for 44 years, Manning served three terms as Trinidad

Patrick Manning

& Tobago Prime Minister from 1991-1995 and from 2001 to 2010.    A protégé of Eric Williams, renown  scholar, architect of TT independence and its first Prime Minister,  Manning entered Trinidad-Tobago politics in 1971 as a member of the Peoples National Movement Party,

 

THE SUMMER READER

 

The 18th Annual HARLEM BOOK FAIR(HBF)  returns to the Schomburg Center for Black Culture, located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard, Harlem USA,  and along the 135 Street strip from Lenox to Eighth Avenues. The nation’s largest African-American Book Festival, the HBF is also the flagship Black Literary event in the Americas and will offer  exhibition booths, panel discussions, book sales and workshops.

 

Annette Gordon Reed

Newly published nonfiction book, “MOST BLESSED OF THE PATRIARCHS: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination,” by Annette Gordon-Reed and  Peter S. Onuf,

which centers on Jefferson’s life at his Monticello Plantation in Virginia.   Most blessed of the patriarchs is a Jefferson description.  A father, husband, slave owner who sired many slave offspring, he was a student of the Enlightenment. The co-authors say, “We wanted  to understand what  TJ thought that he was doing in the world…. what is going on inside his head”.

 

“WHITE TRASH:  The 400-Year Untold History of Class In America” by historian  Nancy Isenberg explodes many other myths about the  early European settlers who arrived in the 17th Century  in what is today’s USA.  According to a NY Times review, “The great majority of early  colonists were classified as   ‘surplus population and expendable rubbish’.”  They were rogues, vagrants and an assortment of convicts.

 

HOMEGOING is the debut novel by Ghana-born millennial Yaa Gyas, who was raised in Alabama.  It is a sweeping saga spanning a few centuries which begins with  two  half-sisters, unbeknownst to each other, in 18th century Ghana. One marries well to an Englishman, the other is sold into slavery and the plot twists through the Civil War, the Great Migration to 20th  Century Harlem.

 

Flo Anthony’s new novel, “ ONE LAST DEADLY PLAY”,  is a sequel to her mystery “Deadly Stuff Players, which centers on  a Black columnist and her crime-solving partner, an NFL Hall of Famer,  as they roam through the infectiously glamorous  world of elites and celebrities in NYC, the Hamptons  and beyond.   A seasoned entertainment journalist who is syndicated on radio and in print media, Flo Anthony also publishes BLACKNOIR Magazine.

 

Magazine:  Read the Town & Country magazine article OAK BLUFFS ON MY MIND.  “For more than a century, the African-American elite have flocked to the Martha’s Vineyard community.” Here, a few share their stories. Dr. Henry Louis  “Skip” Gates and Vernon Jordan are two of the MV storytellers.

 

                                                            CULTURE CLUB

 

The Harlem Opera Theater will present a FREE concert in tribute to the victims and families of the Orlando massacre at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church,  located at 420 West 145 Street, on Sunday, July 17 at 2 pm. Vocalists and musicians will perform.

 

The SHUFFLE ALONG Broadway musical door closes and another opens. The MOTOWN: THE MUSICAL returns to Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre,  opening on July 12 for 18 weeks.  Actor Chester Gregory plays Berry Gordy.

 

For two years, Hollywood fails to recognize Black excellence with its Oscar nominations, but it has $140 million to invest in a new feature film iteration of white supremacy with the release of THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, which opened on July 1. Wonder if Tarzan gets an Oscar 2016 nomination nod.

 

A Harlem-based entrepreneur, Victoria Horsford can be reached at vhorsford@aol.com.

 

 

CB3 … A Double Take on Postal Delivery Woes

Bernice Elizabeth Green
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42
CB3 … A Double Take on Postal Delivery Woes

 

By Bernice Elizabeth Green

Listening to, hearing and addressing the concerns of the public has been key to the success of CB3, one of the most powerful boards in the city.

 

Even when the going gets rough, and the rough gets stormy, CBS 3 members rarely lose sight of a singular purpose: the health and welfare, and growth and stability of the entire neighborhood. But then there’s the mail …

 

And that’s why it was with interest  we read the  DNAinfo.com story on the June 7 board meeting — the last of this season —  which we attended.

 

It was reported that according to “Bedford Stuyvesant residents” the  Shirley A. Chisholm Station at 1915 Fulton St. and the Brevoort Station at 1205 Atlantic Ave. as “the worst (branches) the worst in the nation.”

 

We attended the same meeting, and did not see Ms. Brunette Rene’s lone statement as a broad indictment placing the Chisholm and Brevoort station as the dirty lone wolves, at the head of the pack of more than 30,000 postal stations  across the nation.  There’s been apparent “suffering” for a number of years.  anxieties associated with missing packages, mis-delivered mails and more.

 

USPS area manager Derek Kelley, invited by Henry Butler to attend the meeting,  got the message loud and clear: do something and do it quick.  The “Or else!” was implicit in Ms. Rene’s comment, “poor Shirley Chisholm would be rolling in her grave.”

 

With much deliberation, he acknowledged that the problems presented to him in 2013 still exist. He took on the responsibility to improve the situation saying he would “hold people accountable,” address customer service complaints and fix what he can fix.

 

All things considered, we’re hoping that the DNAinfo.com headline does not provide an excuse for slate-wipers.   Who hasn’t felt the despair of mail sent to the wrong address, mail lost and poor attitudes.  But we would hate to see total replacement or a deconstruction of an office and they’re not given a chance to work it out.

 

The United States Postal Service employs more than 600,000 workers, making it the third-largest civilian employer in the United States behind the federal government and Wal-Mart.[

 

In a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Court noted: “Each day, according to the Government’s submissions here, the United States Postal Service delivers some 660 million pieces of mail to as many as 142 million delivery points.”[

 

The USPS operates one of the largest civilian vehicle fleets in the world. As of 2014, the USPS operates 31,000 post offices and locations in the U.S., and delivers 155 billion pieces of mail annually..

 

Community Boards, like 3 in Central Brooklyn, take into account the entire spectra of neighborhood issues and concerns related to the quality of residents’ lives, lifestyles, environs.  And they take it personal.

 

 

NYC Dept. of Health Flouting Its Own Lead Test Requirements

Akosua Albritton
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7
NYC Dept. of Health Flouting Its Own Lead Test Requirements

 By Akosua K. Albritton

NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) failed to ensure that all group day care facilities perform lead water tests and submit the test results to DHMH.  Rather, the agency directed personnel to input false data into the Child Care Activity Tracking System (CCATS) in order that the permit applications for renewing and new facilities could be completed.

 

DHMH monitors 2,279 center-based group day care programs operating throughout the five boroughs.  230 child care centers are located in Central Brooklyn of which 119 are located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant environs; i.e., within the 11216, 11221, and 11233 zip codes.  The Bureau if Child Care (BCC) is the division that is responsible for permit issuance and program operation assessments.

 

While drinking water sources maintain high standards, lead in NYC drinking water can occur due to the pipes and fixtures leading into and in buildings.  It was not until 1986 that the federal government banned the use of lead pipes in construction.  Further, the existing fixtures and soldering contain lead.  Therefore, it is important that testing is done in early childhood programs and schools.

 

It is the NYC Comptroller’s Office that uncovered the monitoring failure during its latest audit made public in a press release distributed June 24 and June 28, 2016.  Comptroller Scott Stringer writes in the audit’s cover letter, “It should not take an audit to ensure that a City agency is doing its job to protect our kids.  Unacceptable lead levels in drinking water are at or above 15 parts per billion.”

 

Some quarters may explain the noncompliance is due to the regulations not stating the frequency of the testing nor time when they should be done.  However, BCC and the day care facilities know the permit’s term duration is two years and the expiration date is printed on each permit.  Therefore, lead water testing and the nine other permit application requirements can be completed in advance of the given expiration date.

 

DHMH 1st Deputy Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, MD’s response letter to the audit is telling of the flouting of the required step:

 

“…We strongly disagree with the auditor’s opinion that these operational issues raise health and safety concerns…the most common cause of lead poisoning is related to paint, not water…”

 

The Comptroller’s audit involved a sample of 119 group day care with permits issued between August 29, 2012 and August 29, 2014.  Only 49 had permit applications with lead test results.  Ten within the sample were located in Brooklyn, three of which were in Central Brooklyn, i.e., located in the 11203, 11206, and 11221 zip codes.

 

The remaining 70 did not have lead water test reports.  16 within this set were located in Brooklyn, of which five are Central Brooklyn locations: 4 in 11203 and 1 in 11225.

 

The unasked question is why didn’t the centers do the lead water testing?  Was it a matter of cost?  The audit does not cover this.  Online shopping for lead water test kits reveal prices of $23.67 for kits containing two tests; $21.90 for a kit containing five tests; and $58.99 for a kit containing one test that is sent to a laboratory for results.

 

New York City residents can test the water in their homes for free.  Call 311 to request a test kit to be mailed to the residence.

 

The upshot to the audit is that DHMH/BCC concurred with the recommendation for the agency to consider modifying the lead water test requirement to clarify when it is required.  In fact, the requirement modification is up for a vote by the Board of Health September 2016.

 

Parents and guardians are urged to visit DHMH’s Child Care Connect web page where they can access a database that contains the names and addresses of group day care providers.  DHMH cautions, “A permit issued by the Health Department is not an endorsement.”

 

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