African Americans

Rapper-activist Chuck D: Challenge authority, consumer culture

By Carla Meyer
Published: Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 3B

In the two decades Public Enemy frontman Chuck D has rapped and lectured about fighting the power, rap music has been swallowed by the mainstream, record companies have lost ground to the Internet, and the United States has elected an African American president.

Yet Chuck D, 49, the rapper, author and activist in town Thursday night to speak to California State University, Sacramento, students, still delivers what is in essence the same message: challenge authority and the consumer culture and make the most of educational opportunities.

In other words, as he told the crowd of 1,200 at the University Union during a free-form, humor-filled talk, "Have full capacity of yourself and do not be a robot."

That means always questioning what one is being fed, whether it is by MTV or people using the catchphrase "post-racial."

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies---or else? The chain reaction of evil---hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars---must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Today, I wept as my forehead was pressed against the wall of glass partitioning me and other National Civil Rights' Museum goers from the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, lie after he was shot down by an assassin's bullet on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tn. I wept for perhaps the greatest American civil rights' leader, but also for the man who had begun (against the wishes of many of his colleagues) to vigorously not only speak out against the murder in Vietnam, but also strenuously against militarism, which he called in his Building the Beloved Community (which I feel is King's opus) speech delivered at Riverside Church in NYC exactly one year before his death: one of the greatest of "evils" along with racism and poverty.

I also wept for my son, Casey, who was killed on the same day (April 4th) 36 years later and thousands of miles away. Dr. King and Casey were killed by the same evils: militarism, racism and poverty. Casey was killed by the racism of genocide against the Iraqi people; obviously gross militarism that led our nation to Iraq in the first place; and the poverty of being from a working class family that couldn't afford to send him to university. All of these factors combined also, obviously, killed Dr. King.

RESULTS FROM THE SACRAMENTO BLACK POLITICAL CONVENTION

On Saturday, September 21, 2008, the Congress of African People’s hosted a second Black Political Convention at Faith Fellowship Community Church in North Highlands. Participants discussed and voted on candidates and measures which will appear on the November 4 Presidential ballot.

A sample of the ballot results are as follows: for the presidential office, 90 votes cast for Barack Obama, 9 for Cynthia McKinney, 7 for Ralph Nader, 3 for John McCain and 2 for Alan Keyes. On the US Congressional District, District 3, 61 votes for Bill Durston, 21 votes for Dina Padilla, and 5 for Dan Lungren.

[I'm going in reverse order with this - last first - because I didn't have time to hit on this when it came out last Friday. Click the picture below for video of the Rev. Ashiya Odeye and the link below for the story and videos of both the Rev, and Jim Updegraff, ACLU Chairman of the Board, Sacramento Chapter]

Council To Discuss Police Racial Profiling

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A report that suggests Sacramento police have been involved in racial profiling will be discussed tonight by the City Council.

A study released last week found that African-American drivers were more than twice as likely to be pulled over by police compared to non-black motorists. The study found Hispanic drivers are more likely to be searched after they are stopped.

[...]

Jim Updegraff of the local American Civil Liberties Union said the city now needs to root out officers involved in racial profiling. He said more training is needed and some offending officers may need to be fired.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg because the report only deals with motor vehicle stops and it doesn't deal with the most stops that happen, which are the ones that happen to the kids and people on the street or on their bicycles and things like that," the Rev. Ashiya Odeye from the ACLU said.

[...]

The City Council will meet at 6 p.m. at City Hall, located at 915 I St

[Agenda]

http://www.kcra.com/news/17167028/detail.html

Editorial: A dysfunctional death penalty serves no one

Study shows that California's capital cases are plagued by problems and errors

Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, July 6, 2008

Story appeared in FORUM section, Page E6

Proponents and opponents of the death penalty should all be able to agree with the chief finding of the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice: As it is administered in California, the death penalty is dysfunctional. It is an expensive and frustrating judicial exercise that satisfies no one, not defendants, victims' families, taxpayers nor the justice system itself.

Only 13 people in California have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. With 673 condemned prisoners awaiting execution, California has the largest death row of any state in the country, but convicts are much more likely to die while awaiting appeals than to be executed.

For the very few who are put to death, it takes on average 17.2 years to carry out an execution after a death penalty has been pronounced, the longest wait of any death penalty state in the nation. Those condemned wrongfully can wait more than a decade to have their cases reviewed. Since 1978, the federal courts have ordered new trials in 38 of 54 death penalty appeals in California, an unacceptable 70 percent error rate.