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Study finds 95 percent of arrests in schools are black or Latino students

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Of the 16 judges sitting in the borough’s family court, only one is African-American and one is Hispanic.

By Stephen Witt
“We’ve now collected a year’s worth of data demonstrating how the impact of heavy-handed policing in city schools falls squarely on the shoulders of black students and young men, who are being subjected to a disproportionate number of arrests at school,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “If the Bloomberg administration is serious about helping young men of color succeed, then it must address these disparities and focus more resources on educating children, not arresting them.”
The legal organization recently found that the NYPD School Safety Division personnel arrested or ticketed more than 11 students each day in New York City public schools during the 2011-12 school year. More than 95 percent of the arrests were of black or Latino students; 74 percent were of males; and 1-in-5 was of students between the ages of 11 and 14.
Currently of the 16 judges sitting in the borough’s family court, only one is African-American and one is Hispanic.
As of press time, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) did not respond to inquiries regarding the lack of diversity on the Kings County Family Court bench.
Both the city’s Family Court and criminal court judges are mayoral appointments, although the state’s court system can also assign judges elected to preside over state, civil and Supreme Courts to criminal and Family Court as needed.
In Brooklyn, which is more than a third black, the only African-American sitting on the Family Court Bench is recently elected Manhattan Civil Court Judge William Franc Perry, who was appointed to Kings County Family Court earlier this year by New York State Unified Court System Chief Administrative Judge A. Gail Prudenti.
Of the 20 judicial appointments that Mayor Bloomberg has made to the city’s Family Courts, only one was African-American, this paper has learned.
That one Bloomberg appointee is Judge Edwina Richardson-Mendelson, who was appointed in 2003 and works in Queens Family Court. She is the only African-American judge of 11 in Queens Family Court.
Family Court judges hear a range of legal issues, including child abuse and neglect (child protection), adoption, child custody and visitation, domestic violence, guardianship, juvenile delinquency, paternity, persons in need of supervision (PINS) and child support.
A “juvenile delinquent” is someone at least 7 but less than 16 years old who commits an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult and is found to be in need of “supervision, treatment or confinement.”
Both Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association have recently called for more diversity in Brooklyn’s family court.

Guest View: Pudd’nhead Mitt and the Great Giveaway

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By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

The decision to add Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential campaign has, once and for all time, exposed the limp, rudderless vacancy that is the core essence of Willard Mitt Romney. Over the eighteen years he has been on the political stage, Mr. Romney has changed positions more often than most people change batteries. By tapping Ryan, and thus agreeing to take on the fourteen years of far-right baggage Ryan brings with him, Romney has all but announced to the world that he is folding his hand and ceding control of the party to the whacked-out denizens of his right flank.
Here is Paul Ryan in one sentence: He is an acolyte of Ayn Rand’s sinister school of thought that human beings are only worth what they can earn or be sold for in the marketplace, the author of the blueprint Romney used to craft his notorious budget plan to raise taxes on 95% of Americans while cutting taxes for those who share his rarefied financial atmosphere, the latest in a long line of brigands seeking to eviscerate Medicare and make growing old in America the equivalent of growing poor again, a job killer who wants to do away with Pell Grants in an age when educated workers are becoming harder and harder to find; a family friend of Big Oil, which explains his virulent hatred for any attempts to safeguard the environment, as evidenced by his oft-repeated claims that climate change is a giant conspiracy he says is invalidated whenever snow happens to fall, which explains his vote to overthrow the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution; his vote to block the USDA from preparing for climate change; and his vote to kill higher light bulb efficiency standards for reasons passing understanding; and let’s not forget that he was a member of that very, very, very special cadre of House Republicans who signed a bill to make fertilized eggs into people so as to outlaw abortion, in vitro fertilization and many forms of birth control.

To read more, go to http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10858-puddnhead-mitt-and-the-great-giveaway

View From Here: Romney/Ryan: A Dangerous Ticket

David Mark Greaves
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By David Mark Greaves

Sound the alarms and gird your loins! These are the best of times because the battle for the nation’s soul has been joined. The so-called “boldness” of the Romney-Ryan presidential ticket, is really a euphemism for the naked assault by what W. E. B. DuBois called the Planter Class, on the rest of us.
Of the Romney/Ryan package, Ryan is the most dangerous because while Romney makes skin crawl and you know to stay away, Ryan presents as such a nice guy that you hate to think bad things about him, but then he opens his mouth and reveals himself. And it is after that initial shock of the scales falling from your eyes that you see him for what he is, the embodiment of the wolf in sheep’s clothing ready to leap and rip out the guts of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and that‘s just for starters.
And it isn’t just Romney and Ryan that we would be contending with, we’ve warned of this many times before-, it’s the army they bring with them: the aides, appointees, consultants, think tanks, lobbyists, that all work together to promote a vision that sees any program that help to feed, clothe, educate, heal or improve the lives of the 99% as subject to cutbacks and cutoffs.
For non-whites, non-Christians and all poor folks, this is a time to be watchful and politically engaged because we are all under constant threat of becoming ensnared in that bit of bad cloth in the American tapestry that can loop around in a mean-spirited and destructive way, choking the life out of you one legislative act at a time.
They want to use the chains of debt and fear to make financial slaves of us all. Among that Planter class are people going “all-in” on this election, as exemplified by Sheldon Adelson, invariably described as a billionaire casino magnate, saying he‘s willing to spend whatever it takes to defeat President Obama. His goal is the same as that enunciated by Lee Strasburg portraying the criminal tactician Hyman Roth in The Godfather: Part II explaining what they had achieved in pre-Castro Cuba, “we have now what we have always needed, real partnership with the government.” A government in their pocket that gives them free rein to express the American legacy of taking what they want and removing those who get in the way.
Remember – This is going to be the election that sets the direction of the nation for our children and our grandchildren.
So, like Sarah Brinson (in photo, above) call all your friends and relatives back home, use Facebook and Twitter and reach across the country, let it be known far and wide and in as many creative ways as possible, that the word out of Brooklyn is to vote for President Obama.

Sarah Brinson: Get Ready, Get Set, Vote for Obama!

Editor, Our Time Press
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By Lucia Jean and David Soblick

Still Going Strong: Community activist Sarah Brinson (center), a retired educator, visited Our Time Press offices yesterday and was interviewed by David Soblick, left, and Lucia Jean, right. Ms. Brinson chronicled her journey from the 1960’s to now campaigning “for the best.” She also outlined her plans to push for President Barack Obama’s re-election in November. She said, “I am going the distance for Obama because I like his politics, I like his calling, I like his agenda. He’s a great husband, a great father, a great leader and a great man.” Photo credit: Tyler Benitez

President Obama has lived in the White House since before his election.
In Sarah Brinson’s Brooklyn-based “White House,” that is.
Obama has been a mainstay in Ms. Brinson’s white brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant – which has been adorned with posters, buttons, photographs, newspapers and virtually every piece of Obama campaign paraphernalia imaginable — since she his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
Ms. Brinson recalls the occasion clearly. “I was lying in bed watching the speech; he’s a very powerful speaker. When he said, ‘I am running for President of the United States.’ I said ‘I’m running with you!”

Ms. Brinson’s passion for politics has lasted far longer than the past 4 years and a single Presidential campaign. She remembers her first days as an activist in 1960, working to promote candidate John F. Kennedy.
The retired educator took it upon herself to motivate the people around her. “My mother, my mother-in-law, her close friends and neighbors weren’t even registered to vote. They had never voted in their lives.”
So Ms. Brinson rented a van to drive them to voting sites in their neighborhoods. “Black people were busy raising their children, working and going to church. For one reason or another, they weren’t able to be active in politics.”

The realities of daily life weren’t the only obstacles to voting in Brinson’s community. To even register to vote, they had to deal with the now infamous “literacy tests.” Among the questions on those tests, one remains clear in her mind even after all these years. “There was one question that I will never forget: ‘What color was George Washington’s white horse?’ It was such an obvious question, a degrading question. But we all, of course, could answer it correctly.”
Ever since, Brinson has continued to be active, leading Shirley Chisholm to become the first African-American woman in Congress and participating in Jesse Jackson’s Presidential campaign. She always had her sights set on the White House. “With Jesse Jackson, I thought, ‘He may not get it, but one day…’
In hindsight, she told us, she can see that Congresswoman Chisholm and Rev. Jackson laid a foundation. “When Obama came, I thought I owed it to them, to work for him.” So the victory in 2008 was a very emotional one for Ms. Brinson. “I always believed that I would live to see the first Black President.”

This postcard to Sarah Brinson from the nation’s First Family
arrived at the homes of millions of people, earlier this month.

As she gears up for the 2012 Presidential election, it’s clear her passion has only grown with time. She hands out flyers in her neighborhood, makes calls and plans to host a fundraiser at the “white house” with a goal of $200,000.
In the near future, she wishes to expand her operation, reaching out to parts of the neighborhood that have had low voting turnouts, and particularly to young people.  “I’ll work the bottoms off my shoes again, to get him reelected.”

“Ain’t I A Woman?”: Gender Discrimination at Medgar Evers College

Editor, Our Time Press
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Black women in the City University of New York (CUNY) are asking a timeworn question that has nagged us for centuries: “Ain’t I A Woman?” According to tradition, Sojourner Truth was the first to invoke that question in the year 1851 at a Women’s Rights Convention for fair and equal treatment of women. Concomitantly, her soul-stirring speech made visible the undervalued humanity of Black women. With the passing of the 19th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “Ain’t I A Woman?” should have retired gracefully to the annals of Women’s Rights History for its role of distinguished public service. However, a new generation of Black professional women at Medgar Evers College, one of CUNY’s senior colleges, has resurrected the refrain to lead their gender cause. Still embolden, what we have discovered is that “Ain’t I A Woman?” retains the moral fervor to ignite protest in defense of the equal treatment of Black women in the campus workplace.
At Medgar Evers College, named after the slain civil rights activist Medgar Wiley Evers, women faculty have organized to air their grievances at two recent Board of Trustees’ hearings in order to inform the CUNY brass that gender harassment at a University campus is unconscionable in the modern day workplace. Also, at the seat of Black elected officials throughout Brooklyn, female professors from the College, as well as some of their male colleagues, have gathered to testify about the disparaging behavior lashed out at the hands of Provost Howard C. Johnson, senior academic officer.
At the administrative level, Black women have been the primary targets of the Provost’s intimidation and bullying behavior. Refusing to recognize women as professionals and deserving of workplace respect and collegiality, Provost Johnson has carried on a protracted crusade to relieve women of administrative responsibility. Under his three-year leadership, he has acquired a reputation for removing us as chairs of academic departments, as deans, assistants, and associates of upper- level administrative staff. On principle, women’s leadership has been undermined within their departments in an attempt to discredit them as ineffective.
His latest threat is to remove all chairs who are assistant professors. The problem is that the only assistant professors remaining are women chairs. Clearly, he is more comfortable with men; his new hires speak loudly to that effect. In the 21st century, who would believe that top administrative management would eschew gender leadership diversity in the workplace unless the women in question agreed to act as dutiful “male” surrogates? But even such loyal subjects have discovered that they are not invulnerable to his gender contempt.
When women are removed as chairs, the Provost justifies their removal by articulating that they have been removed because of “educational matters.” How many women will have to be removed or forced out before CUNY recognizes that “educational matters” is only a pretext to abolish women’s leadership, as well as to invest all decision-making into the hands of the Old Boys’ network?
Although Black women have been the primary targets of the Provost, his treatment has proven that he practices equal-opportunity gender harassment. The CUNY Chancellery has not been so color blind. Unfortunately, it has demonstrated a discriminating posture that all women are not meant to be treated equally. For instance, when Provost Johnson intimidated a white female dean, CUNY Central stepped in swiftly, intervened “on her behalf,” and removed her from the very shadow of Medgar Evers College. As for the cry of Black women for relief from the bullying and intimidation, CUNY has yet to return a letter of acknowledgment, in spite of the fact that that the administration has been specifically contacted about this ongoing behavior. Over this 3-year period of time, the behavior of Provost Johnson has been sanctioned by the silence of President William L. Pollard.
Adding insult to injury, when a gender discrimination and harassment outcry was heard from female professors at Brooklyn College, the CUNY Chancellery acted quickly and promised them an investigation. At Medgar Evers, Black females are still waiting. Many have left the institution while waiting for redress, driven out by gender harassment. The promised benevolence and protection have yet to be ours to cherish as women professionals. Yet, on record, Medgar Evers College has more documented cases of gender and sexual harassment than any other college of CUNY. What this suggests, as has been true historically, is that Black women can be treated like mules and workhorses, despite our professional degrees, because our labor as well as our persons are undervalued and considered not deserving of professional treatment, even under the law.
Gender diversity in the workplace is an equal opportunity protection. When will CUNY obey the law and hold a perpetrator accountable, Black or White? Otherwise, CUNY is accused of a benign neglect which declares that open-season gender harassment is tolerated for Black women. “Ain’t We Still Women?”
Submitted by:The Concerned Faculty of Medgar Evers College

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