Activism
Community Leaders Respond to the Firing of Chief LeRonne Armstrong: MAYOR SHENG THAO IS WRONG
The Oakland NAACP and Community leaders are livid about Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s dismissal of Chief of Police LeRonne Armstrong. In a press conference just hours before the Police Commission could announce a report of their own, Thao stated she had lost confidence in the chief on February 15, Wednesday afternoon.
By Carla Thomas
The Oakland NAACP and Community leaders are livid about Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s dismissal of Chief of Police LeRonne Armstrong. In a press conference just hours before the Police Commission could announce a report of their own, Thao stated she had lost confidence in the chief on February 15, Wednesday afternoon. Armstrong who was placed on leave three weeks ago has been left in limbo over a police officer’s misconduct last year involving an accident in a police car and discharging a weapon in an elevator at headquarters. A report accuses Armstrong of not holding the officer accountable. Armstrong has reiterated that he was unaware of the report and by policy the incident is investigated independently.
A partial statement released by the City of Oakland Police Commission reads: “The Commission voted for a Discipline Committee to explore these issues and in particular the allegations against the Chief…the Commission was not informed of the Mayor’s decision to release the Chief before her press conference…We are sorry those an effective reform-minded Chief who led the OPD into compliance in the 51 out of 52 tasks of the Negotiated Settlement Agreement ”
Federal Monitor Robert Warshaw, who has overseen the Oakland Police Department for 2 decades, has amassed a small fortune at $100,000 a month of the city’s budget. With the Department just months away from having the federal oversight removed, and 51 of the 52 points within the NSA (Negotiated Settlement Agreement) complete, city leaders are now questioning how a police chief that has a track record of building community bridges and healing a city bruised by violence, could be disparaged and fired when he did nothing wrong.
Hosting a meeting in the Madeline Senegal Fellowship meeting room at his church, Acts Full Gospel Church of God in Christ’s. Bishop Bob Jackson recalled how he sent a letter representing over 30 organizations to the then mayor supporting Armstrong’s appointment to police chief two years ago.
“This is an injustice and the community has to rise up against this,” said Jackson.
“This is all unfair and we will continue to fight for our chief,” said Oakland NAACP president Cynthia Adams.
The NAACP is calling on everyone to join a rally at city hall at noon on Monday, February 20 to protest the mayor’s decision. By their standards, the chief should be exonerated, the confidential reports that were leaked should be investigated, the federal monitor who has been fired as a monitor in cities such as Detroit should be investigated, and the Police Commissions investigative reports should have had a complete due process that demonstrated again that Armstrong was not at fault. Armstrong thanks the community and city leaders for their support. “I really appreciate all of this support and your prayers. It’s keeping my family and I strong,” he said.
Leaders of the Chinese, Latino, church, business and Black community communities along with Oakland City councilmember Noel Gallo, former councilmember Oakland City Councilmember Loren Taylor among others, have come together again with story after story of how Armstrong was ever present in the community and a game changer who has transformed the community and police relations for the better.
“I’ve spoken about federal monitor Warshaw on a national level and have been told Warshaw should have never had the job and that he should be fired,” said Gallo.
Pastor Phyllis Scott, president of The Pastors of Oakland, spoke of a graduation in the community where Armstrong signed everyone’s diploma. “He has done tremendous work in East Oakland,” she said.
At noon on Thursday, small group of community members expressed their dismay of Armstrong’s firing outside City Hall at Oscar Grant Plaza. Oscar Grant’s mother, Wanda Jones, CEO of the Oscar Grant Foundation questioned why there are so many chief’s fired under the federal monitor. “Every time we get a new mayor, the police chief is gotten rid of and that’s unacceptable,” said Jones. “We know that mayor’s bring in their own staff, but the way the mayor’s gone about doing this is wrong. The chief should not have been fired.”
Community elder and historic Black Panther member, Rosalind Charlotte Patton said saw the chief’s firing on the news the night before and rushed to the rally with a sign in support of Armstrong. She said she wanted her voice heard even if she wasn’t a speaker bearing a sign stating: ” Mayor Sheng Thao you are dead wrong, the community supports Chief LeRonne Armstrong.”
Community leaders Seneca Scott, Loren Taylor, Brenda Grisham, Jorge Flores, and Antoine Towers also spoke at the rally in support of Armstrong.
Scott echoed the NAACP and community leaders is demanding the chief be exonerated, that the investigative reports that were leaked be investigated, and the federal monitor be investigated.
“We will continue to fight this,” he said.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024
To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.
Activism
“Two things can be true at once.” An Afro-Latina Voter Weighs in on Identity and Politics
“As a Puerto Rican I do not feel spoken to in discussions about Latino voters… which is ironic because we are one of the few Latino communities who are also simultaneously American,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, have American citizenship by birth but they do not have the right to vote for president if they live on the island. “I think that we miss out on a really interesting opportunity to have a nuanced conversation by ignoring this huge Latino population that is indigenously American.”
By Magaly Muñoz
On a sunny afternoon at Los Cilantros Restaurant in Berkeley, California, Keyanna Ortiz-Cedeño, a 27-year-old Afro-Latina with tight curly hair and deep brown skin, stares down at her carne asada tacos, “I’ve definitely eaten more tortillas than plantains over the course of my life,” says Cedeño, who spent her childhood in South Texas, among predominantly Mexican-American Latinos. As she eats, she reflects on the views that American politicians have of Latino voters.
“As a Puerto Rican I do not feel spoken to in discussions about Latino voters… which is ironic because we are one of the few Latino communities who are also simultaneously American,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, have American citizenship by birth but they do not have the right to vote for president if they live on the island. “I think that we miss out on a really interesting opportunity to have a nuanced conversation by ignoring this huge Latino population that is indigenously American.”
Ortiz-Cedeño, an urban planner who is focused on disaster resilience, homelessness and economic prosperity for people of color, says that political conversations around Latinos tend to shift towards immigration, “I think this ties back into the ways that our perception of ‘Latino’ tends to be Mexican and Central American because so much of our conversation about Latinos is deeply rooted in what’s happening on the border,” she says. “I don’t think that the Afro-Latino vote is frequently considered when we’re talking about the Latino vote in the United States.”
As Ortiz-Cedeño sifts through childhood photos of her as a happy teen dancing with the Mexican ballet folklorico group in high school and as a dama in quinceñeras, she reflects on growing up in South Texas, an area with a large population of white and Mexican-Americans. The Black population was small, and within it, the Afro-Latino population was practically nonexistent.
“It was interesting to try to have conversations with other Latinos in the community because I think that there was a combination of both willful ignorance and a sort of ill intent and effort to try and deny my experience as a Latino,” she says. “There are a lot of folks in Latin America who experience a lot of cognitive dissonance when they think about the existence of Black Latinos in Latin America.
Ortiz-Cedeño comments on the long history of anti-Blackness in Latin America. “Throughout Latin America, we have a really insidious history with erasing Blackness and I think that that has been carried into the Latino American culture and experience,” she says. “People will tell you, race doesn’t exist in Latin America, like we’re all Dominicans, we’re all Puerto Ricans, we’re all Cubans, we’re all Mexicans. If you were to go to the spaces with where people are from and look at who is experiencing the most acute violence, the most acute poverty, the most acute political oppression and marginalization, those people are usually darker. And that’s not by accident, it’s by design.”
Because of the lack of diversity in her Gulf Coast town, as a teenager, despite being the only Spanish-speaker at her job in Walmart, Latinos refused to ask for her help in Spanish.
“Even if monolingual [Spanish-speaking] people would have to speak with me, then they were trying to speak English, even though they could not speak English, versus engaging with me as a Latina,” she says.
“I think that the perception of Latinos in the United States is of a light brown person with long, wavy or straight hair. The perfect amount of curves and the perfect combination of Indigenous and white genes. And very rarely will people also consider that maybe they also have a sprinkle of Blackness in them as well,” she says. “Over 90% of the slave trade went to the Caribbean and Latin America.”
Ortiz-Cedeño remembers when a Cuban family moved in next door to her in Texas. The teen daughter had blue-eyes, blonde hair and only spoke Spanish, which caused neighboring Latinos to take pause because she didn’t fit the Latino “look” they were used to.
“People didn’t have an option to try and negate her [Latino] identity because they had to acknowledge her for everything that she was,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.
Later on, the girl’s cousins, a Black, Spanish-speaking Cuban family, came into town and again locals were forced to reckon with the fact that not all Latinos fit a certain criteria.
“I think it forced everybody to have to confront a reality that they knew in the back of their mind but didn’t want to acknowledge at the forefront,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.
Having gone through these experiences as an Afro-Latina, Ortiz-Cedeño says it’s easy for her to understand Kamala Harris’ mixed Indian and Jamaican heritage, “It comes really naturally to accept that she is both Indian and Black. Two things can exist at the same time,” she says. “I had a long term partner for about seven years who was South Indian, from the same state as Kamala Harris, so if we had had a kid, they would look like [Harris],” Ortiz-Cedeño jokingly shares.
She says she can relate to having to walk the road of people only wanting to see Harris as a Black American. The talking point about [Harris] not being Indian or not being Black, just deciding to be Black, is really disingenuous and cheap,” she says.
Ortiz-Cedeño believes that the Harris campaign has not capitalized on the vice president’s mixed identity, which could be vital in bringing together different communities to understand each other on a new level and allow for improvements on America’s racial dynamics.
As she rushes into a Berkeley Urban Planning Commission meeting straight out of Ashby BART station, Ortiz-Cedeño explains her love for talking about all things infrastructure, homelessness, and healthcare access. The topics can be dry for many, she admits, but in the end, she gets to address long-standing systemic issues that often hinder opportunities for growth for people of color.
Having lived through the effects of Hurricane Katrina as a child, with the flooding and mass migration of Louisiana residents into Texas, Ortiz-Cedeño was radicalized into issues of displacement, emergency mitigation, and housing at nine years old.
“I remember my principal had to carry her students on her shoulders and swim us home because so many parents were trying to drive in and get their kids from school [due to] the flooding that was pushing their cars away,” she recalls.
Her family relocated to Houston soon after Katrina, only to be met with a deadly Hurricane Rita. They wound up in a mega-shelter, where Ortiz-Cedeño says she heard survivors stories of the unstable conditions in New Orleans and beyond, which got her wondering about urban planning, a term she wasn’t familiar with at the time.
“I think that when you put people in the context of the things that were happening in this country around [these hurricanes], a lot of us started to really think seriously about who gets to make decisions about the urban environment,” she adds.
Watching the heavy displacement of disaster survivors, hearing stories of her Navy veteran father’s chronic homelessness, and her own mother’s work and activism with homeless communities in the non–profit sector put her on the path to progressive politics and solutions, she says. After attending college on the East Coast- where she says she was finally recognized as a Puerto Rican- and working in housing, economic development, and public policy, she returned to California to earn a Master’s in City Regional Planning from UC Berkeley.
Her vast interest in the urban success of underserved communities even took her abroad to Israel and Palestine when she was an undergraduate college student. “I’ve seen the border with Gaza, I’ve had homestays with farmers in the West Bank,” she says. “For me personally, Palestine is an issue that is really close to the heart.”
“I have a very intimate understanding of the conflict and I’m very disturbed by the way in which the [Democratic] party has not been willing to engage in what I would perceive to be a thoughtful enough conversation about the conflict,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. “The issue of Palestine is going to be one of those that is a make or break issue for her. It has not been one that has been taken seriously enough by the party.”
Ortiz-Cedeño is not under the illusion that one candidate will address every policy issue she wants to see tackled by the president. But she believes it’s better than what former President Donald Trump has to offer.
“Trump has made it very clear what his intentions are with Palestine, and what his relationship is with [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Ortiz-Cedeño says. “I understand the political strategy that many people are trying to engage in by withholding their vote, but I would also encourage them to re-engage in the political process.”
Casting her vote for Harris is a decision grounded in calculation rather than outright support. “I think I can vote in this election in order to have harm reduction… because I have deep care and concern for other communities that are going to be impacted by a Trump presidency,” Ortiz-Cedeño says.
She also hopes that American politicians will consider the nuance and perspective that Afro-Latinos bring to the table when it comes to politics, policy, and race in America, “When we don’t think expansively about who is Latino in the United States, the breadth of Latino experiences in the United States, we miss an opportunity to capture how diverse Latinos interests are politically.”
This story was reported in collaboration with PBS VOCES: Latino Vote 2024.
Activism
On Your November Ballot: Prop 6 Could End “Involuntary Servitude” in California Prisons
Proposition (Prop) 6 would repeal language in the California Constitution that prohibits “involuntary servitude except to punish crime.” Instead, it will replace it with language that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude absolutely.
By Edward Henderson, California Black Media
Proposition (Prop) 6 would repeal language in the California Constitution that prohibits “involuntary servitude except to punish crime.”
Instead, it will replace it with language that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude absolutely.
The amendment would also prohibit the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from disciplining any incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment and authorize the department to award time credits to incarcerated persons who voluntarily participate in work assignments.
To gain a greater understanding of the proposition and the experience of incarcerated individuals impacted by the current language, California Black Media spoke with Dr. Tanisha Cannon, Managing Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC).
“There are really two main messages for this to be a yes vote,” said Cannon. “The way that the Constitution names what’s going on in these prisons is called involuntary servitude. Involuntary servitude is just another name for slavery. That means that there’s a force and there’s coercion. So, the main message here is that involuntary servitude is slavery.”
So far, eight states, including California, have made provisions in their constitutions permitting involuntary servitude, but not slavery, as a criminal punishment. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states have “earned time” credits that are awarded for participating in or completing education, vocational training, treatment, and work programs. Time credits can later be applied towards early release from secure custody.
The Anti-Recidivism Coalition has also been on record supporting Prop 6, stating that, “More than 94,000 Californians are currently enslaved in state prison. African Americans account for 28% of the prison population despite making up less than 6% of California’s overall population.”
Of those roughly 90,000 inmates, the state’s prison system employs nearly 40,000 who complete a variety of tasks including cleaning, cooking, firefighting, construction and yard work. Most of these workers earn less than 74 cents an hour, excluding the firefighters who can make up to $10 a day. State law permits the corrections department to pay up to half of the current minimum wage in California ($16).
Eighty percent of the employees at LSPC have been directly impacted by the prison-industrial complex. Cannon’s brother works there as well and was in prison at the age of 16 experiencing first-hand how forced labor can negatively impact an individual’s psyche.
“My grandmother passed away and he received that news in the evening. On the outside, you’d get some grieving time. That wasn’t the case for him,” said Cannon.
“He had to wake up at five o’clock the next morning. So, imagine learning that the woman who raised you just passed away. You’re due for work at 5 a.m. in the morning to operate heavy machinery and you cannot say that you don’t want to work because there’s no excused absence in prison.”
So far, there hasn’t been any organized opposition to Prop 6 in California.
A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime and authorize the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to award credits to incarcerated persons who voluntarily participate in work assignments.
A “no” vote opposes amending the state constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
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