National

A Push to Address Black-on-Black Violence

Published

10 years ago

June 2, 2015

Oakland Post

Yusef Shakur (center) counseling a young man [Courtesy Photo]

Yusef Shakur (center) counseling a young man. (Nick Kozak)

By Jazelle Hunt
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As cities across the country have mobilized massive street protests over police violence and misconduct, a familiar question has been raised by their opponents: Why does violence within the Black community garner less concern than police violence?

According to crowd-sourced database, Mapping Police Violence, 304 Black people died at the hands of police last year, 101 of them unarmed. But Black offenders were responsible for 90 percent of the nearly 2,500 Black homicide victims in 2013, according to data compiled by the FBI. Between 2002 and 2011, the homicide rate was 6.3 times higher for Blacks than Whites.

Detroit-based community organizer, Yusef Shakur is on a personal mission to end the community violence he once perpetrated. By the age of 19, he had co-founded a gang and was given up to 15 years in prison, where he met his father for the first time. Through positive guidance from his father and a personal decision to do better, Shakur left prison determined to repay his debt directly to his community.

“Urban environments are like a dried-up lake; so people turn on each other out of survival. They don’t know what they’re doing is out of hatred and anger, they take it out on the person that’s next to them, because they don’t know how to take it out on the people downtown in the City Council building,” he says. “They don’t know how to articulate themselves…how to organize a boycott, so you take it out on other folks. Throw in drugs, lack of education, guns all those things are a recipe for genocide.”

Shakur’s organization, Restoring the Neighbor Back to the Hood, seeks to rebuild a sense of community in the “Zone 8” section of Detroit through back-to-school bag giveaways, block parties, survival kits for indigent residents and families, and one-on-one mentorship. Fourteen years after his release, he is an award-winning organizer and remains embedded in his neighborhood as a positive influence, particularly on those who commit the crimes that have made Detroit infamous.

To him, the victims of these crimes are just as important as those slain at the hands of racist authority figures.

“When any [deaths] happen, there’s outrage. We know tons of people who get killed but the media doesn’t talk about it,” Shakur says. “There are folks who do candlelight vigils, folks crying on the floor and things, but there’s no media coverage. But if it’s a high-profile situation, that brings Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, then we see the outrage.”

Many of the stories that have become major headlines and have fueled national protests began as local efforts. Trayvon Martin’s murder, for example, only became a major media story after relentless social media campaigning and Sanford, Florida’s “Justice for Trayvon” protests spread across the country – and it still took 44 days of action to secure George Zimmerman’s arrest.

It was Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal that sparked the Black Lives Matter organization.

“The local is the national. There’s no way that there would be a national conversation about state violence if local residents in Ferguson and St. Louis didn’t take to the streets,” said Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the nationwide Black Lives Matter activist network, which began in 2012. “The other piece is, there’s lots of Black people, for the last 40 years, who have been figuring [out] how do we deal with harm inside of our communities.”

While the death toll of “Black-on-Black crime” is distressing, it is worth noting that most crime happens within communities and races. White offenders were responsible for 83 percent of White victims in 2013, and Latino offenders were responsible for 74 percent of Latino victims.

Cullors said that the tug-of-war between community violence and state violence is among the most common criticisms Black Lives Matter receives.

“The focal point is state violence, but that is not the end-all be-all. When myself, Alicia Garza, [and] Opal Tometi created Black Lives Matter, it was never just to talk about law enforcement or vigilantes. It was actually about a broader conversation about anti-Black racism and the impact in our communities,” she explained. “It’s about broadening what state violence means. If someone is homeless…if people in the community aren’t able to have jobs, that’s state violence.”

Shakur lives and works in the crosshairs between state and community violence. Sometimes, he uses the respect he’s earned in his neighborhood by inserting himself to break up fights and conflicts. But he’s also seen a police officer roll up to a group of young boys and hop out of the car to say, “I can’t wait to put you in prison.”

He believes that community violence and police/state violence are different issues that share a link as effects of White supremacy.

“Folks are not using a historical context. When Trayvon Martin gets killed or Michael Brown, et cetera, it reminds you of Emmett Till. It reminds you of your grandfather getting lynched. It reminds you of the reality of being Black in America,” he said. “But the work has to be twofold. It has to be 30 percent police, 70 percent on us. We have to do the work internally to restore interpersonal relationships. If we clean up what we have to clean up, it makes it easier for us to organize against the police, because the police are going to do what they’re going to do.”

Each of the Black Lives Matter co-founders is also a grassroots community organizer.

Cullors is a founding board member of Dignity and Power Now, a Los Angeles-based grassroots group working to empower incarcerated people, their families, and their communities. Alicia Garza has been involved in several grassroots groups across the Bay Area, including People Organized to Win Employment Rights, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, where she has held leadership roles. Opal Tometi is executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a New York-based Black advocacy group.

Cullors believes that community violence is largely a reflection of state violence, both literal and in the form of oppression. For this reason, the two issues, though separate, are not at odds.

“Much of the harm happening in our communities has a lot to do with the trauma of living in a racist, capitalist country. The trauma of not having a job, the trauma of not being able to feed your own children. The trauma of being abandoned at a young age because your family are drug users, the trauma of being in the foster system,” Cullors said.

She added, “Let’s actually deal with the root causes of that trauma. The fight around intra-community violence is a fight about not only the state…but our conversation – it looks like an internal conversation – is about what do we do to take care of ourselves. Where are the spaces that we fight for our communities to have what they need so we don’t harm each other? ‘Black Lives Matter’ means a new way of fighting for freedom.”

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Activism

OPINION: “My Girl,” The Temptations, and Nikki Giovanni

Giovanni was probably one of the most famous young African American women in the 1960s, known for her fiery poetry. But even that description is tame. The New York Times obit headline practically buried her historical impact: “Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81.” That doesn’t begin to touch the fire of Giovanni’s work through her lifetime.

Published

2 days ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

Nikki Giovanni. Courtesy of Nikki-Giovanni.com

By Emil Guillermo

The Temptations, the harmonizing, singing dancing man-group of your OG youth, were on “The Today Show,” earlier this week.

There were some new members, no David Ruffin. But Otis Williams, 83, was there still crooning and preening, leading the group’s 60th anniversary performance of “My Girl.”

When I first heard “My Girl,” I got it.

I was 9 and had a crush on Julie Satterfield, with the braided ponytails in my catechism class. Unfortunately, she did not become my girl.

But that song was always a special bridge in my life. In college, I was a member of a practically all-White, all-male club that mirrored the demographics at that university. At the parties, the song of choice was “My Girl.”

Which is odd, because the party was 98% men.

The organization is a little better now, with women, people of color and LGBTQ+, but back in the 70s, the Tempts music was the only thing that integrated that club.

POETRY’S “MY GIRL”

The song’s anniversary took me by surprise. But not as much as the death of Nikki Giovanni.

Giovanni was probably one of the most famous young African American women in the 1960s, known for her fiery poetry. But even that description is tame.

The New York Times obit headline practically buried her historical impact: “Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81.”

That doesn’t begin to touch the fire of Giovanni’s work through her lifetime.

I’ll always see her as the Black female voice that broke through the silence of good enough. In 1968, when cities were burning all across America, Giovanni was the militant female voice of a revolution.

Her “The True Import of Present Dialogue: Black vs. Negro,” is the historical record of racial anger as literature from the opening lines.

It reads profane and violent, shockingly so then. These days, it may seem tamer than rap music.

But it’s jarring and pulls no punches. It protests Vietnam, and what Black men were asked to do for their country.

“We kill in Viet Nam,” she wrote. “We kill for UN & NATO & SEATO & US.”

Written in 1968, it was a poem that spoke to the militancy and activism of the times. And she explained herself in a follow up, “My Poem.”

“I am 25 years old, Black female poet,” she wrote referring to her earlier controversial poem. “If they kill me. It won’t stop the revolution.”

Giovanni wrote more poetry and children’s books. She taught at Rutgers, then later Virginia Tech where she followed her fellow professor who would become her spouse, Virginia C. Fowler.

Since Giovanni’s death, I’ve read through her poetry, from what made her famous, to her later poems that revealed her humanity and compassion for all of life.

In “Allowables,” she writes of finding a spider on a book, then killing it.

And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened

For Giovanni, her soul was in her poetry, and the revolution was her evolution.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist, commentator, and solo performer. Join him at www.patreon.com/emilamok

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Black History

Book Review: In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World

It’s a tale of heroes: the Maroons, who created communities in unwanted swampland, and welcomed escaped slaves into their midst; Sarah Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus”; Marème Diarra, who walked more than 2000 miles from Sudan to Senegal with her children to escape slavery; enslaved farmers and horticulturists; and everyday people who still talk about slavery and what the institution left behind.

Published

2 days ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

Book cover. Courtesy of Smithsonian Books.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Ever since you learned how it happened you couldn’t get it out of your mind.

People, packed like pencils in a box, tightly next to each other, one by one by one, tier after tier. They couldn’t sit up, couldn’t roll over or scratch an itch or keep themselves clean on a ship that took them from one terrible thing to another. And in the new book “In Slavery’s Wake,” essays by various contributors, you’ll see what trailed in waves behind those vessels.

You don’t need to be told about the horrors of slavery. You’ve grown up knowing about it, reading about it, thinking about everything that’s happened because of it in the past four hundred years. And so have others: in 2014, a committee made of “key staff from several world museums” gathered to discuss “telling the story of racial slavery and colonialism as a world system…” so that together, they could implement a “ten-year road map to expand… our practices of truth telling…”

Here, the effects of slavery are compared to the waves left by a moving ship, a wake the story of which some have tried over time to diminish.

It’s a tale filled with irony. Says one contributor, early American Colonists held enslaved people but believed that King George had “unjustly enslaved” the colonists.

It’s the story of a British company that crafted shackles and cuffs and that still sells handcuffs “used worldwide by police and militaries” today.

Today, discussions about cooperation and diversity remain essential.

Says one essayist, “… embracing a view of history with a more expansive definition of archives in all their forms must be fostered in all societies.”

Unless you’ve been completely unaware and haven’t been paying attention for the past 150 years, a great deal of what you’ll read inside “In Slavery’s Wake” is information you already knew and images you’ve already seen.

Look again, though, because this comprehensive book isn’t just about America and its history. It’s about slavery, worldwide, yesterday and today.

Casual readers – non-historians especially – will, in fact, be surprised to learn, then, about slavery on other continents, how Africans left their legacies in places far from home, and how the “wake” they left changed the worlds of agriculture, music, and culture. Tales of individual people round out the narrative, in legends that melt into the stories of others and present new heroes, activists, resisters, allies, and tales that are inspirational and thrilling.

This book is sometimes a difficult read and is probably best consumed in small bites that can be considered with great care to appreciate fully. Start “In Slavery’s Wake,” though, and you won’t be able to get it out of your mind.

Edited by Paul Gardullo, Johanna Obenda, and Anthony Bogues, Author: Various Contributors, c.2024, Smithsonian Books, $39.95

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Black History

Ashleigh Johnson: Pioneering the Way in Water Polo

Ashleigh Johnson attended Princeton University, where she played for the Tigers and dominated collegiate water polo. During her time at Princeton, she became the program’s all-time leader in saves and was recognized for her extraordinary ability to anticipate plays and block shots. She was a three-time All-American and was pivotal in leading her team to multiple victories. Balancing rigorous academics and athletics, she graduated with a degree in Psychology, showcasing her determination both in and out of the pool.

Published

2 days ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

Ashleigh Johnson Photo: collegiatewaterpolo.org

By Tamara Shiloh

Ashleigh Johnson has become a household name in the world of water polo, not only for her incredible athleticism and skill but also for breaking barriers as the first Black woman to represent the United States in the sport at the Olympic level. Her journey begins as a determined young athlete to a record-breaking goalkeeper.

Born on September 12, 1994, in Miami, Florida, Ashleigh grew up in a family that valued sports and academics. She attended Ransom Everglades School, where she was introduced to water polo. Despite water polo being a niche sport in her community, she quickly stood out for her remarkable agility, intelligence, and reflexes. Her unique skill set made her a natural fit for the demanding role of a goalkeeper.

Ashleigh attended Princeton University, where she played for the Tigers and dominated collegiate water polo. During her time at Princeton, she became the program’s all-time leader in saves and was recognized for her extraordinary ability to anticipate plays and block shots. She was a three-time All-American and was pivotal in leading her team to multiple victories. Balancing rigorous academics and athletics, she graduated with a degree in Psychology, showcasing her determination both in and out of the pool.

In 2016, Ashleigh made history as the first Black woman to be selected for the U.S. Olympic Water Polo Team. Representing her country at the Rio Olympics, she played a crucial role in helping Team USA secure the gold medal. Her stellar performances earned her the distinction of being named the tournament’s top goalkeeper, further cementing her status as one of the best players in the sport’s history.

Ashleigh didn’t just stop at one Olympic appearance. She continued her dominance in water polo, playing a key role in Team USA’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Her ability to remain composed under pressure and deliver outstanding saves in crucial moments made her an irreplaceable member of the team.

At the age of 29, Johnson appeared in her third Olympiad in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Their first match was against Greece and the US team won easily and Johnson only gave up 4 points. U.S. Olympic head coach Adam Krikorian shared, “She’s an incredible athlete. She’s got great hand-eye coordination, great reflexes and reactions. And then she’s fiercely competitive – fiercely. And you would never know it by her demeanor or by the huge smile on her face. But to us, on the inside, we know how driven she is to be one of the best ever to do it.”

Team USA Women’s Water Polo ended their Olympic season in fourth place after a 10 – 11 loss to the Netherlands. Johnson only allowed 37 percent of the shots from the Netherlands.

Beyond her achievements in the pool, Ashleigh has used her platform to advocate for diversity in water polo and sports in general. As a trailblazer, she recognizes the importance of representation and works to encourage young athletes, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, to pursue their dreams.

Ashleigh has spoken about the challenges she faced as a Black woman in a predominantly white sport and how she turned those obstacles into opportunities for growth.