Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 211

Leroy F. Moore Jr.: Three Generations of Black Men Against Police Brutality

Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

Artist and activist Leroy F. Moore, Jr. discusses police brutality, from the perspective of three generations of Black men.

After Practice of "Race-Norming" is Exposed, Black Former Players Remain Skeptical of NFL

"The NFL admitted it had been using a practice known as “race-norming," which made it harder for Black players to qualify for a payout if they have dementia. For more on what the NFL's admission means for Black players, The Takeaway's guest host Melissa Harris Perry spoke with Ken Jenkins, a former Washington Football Team running back, and Maryclaire Dale, legal affairs writer for the Associated Press and 2018 Nieman fellow at Harvard.'

“Takeover”: New Doc Chronicles Historic 1970 Young Lords Occupation of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx

'A new film called Takeover follows the 12 historic hours on July 14, 1970, when members of the Young Lords Party took over the rundown Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx in New York City. The Young Lords were a radical group founded by Puerto Ricans modeled on the Black Panther Party. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, a co-founder of the Young Lords, helped organize the action. Using archival footage and modern-day interviews, “Takeover” chronicles their resistance to institutions founded on wealth and white supremacy, and their collective struggle for quality, accessible healthcare. “The takeover really exemplified what the Young Lords were about,” says director Emma Francis-Snyder, who says she wanted to capture the heroism of the activists. “There’s so much emotion and planning and courage that comes along with direct action,” Francis-Snyder says. “We understood that to get the system to listen and change, you had to disrupt it,” adds González. “You had to find a way to force people to pay attention to the problems".'

Coffee & Books with Marc Lamont Hill: Incarcerated Writer and Journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal

'On this episode of Coffee & Books, host Marc Lamont Hill talks with internationally celebrated writer, radio journalist, organizer and inspiration for the prison lawyers movement, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been incarcerated for 40 years. Over a period of several months the two discussed the effects prison has on writing and being creative, the lack of access prisoners have to books and what role reading fiction has on the mind.'

Invisible Blackness – The Language of My Story, An Interview with Meshell Ndegeocello

'As a prolific multi instrumentalist and poetic intellectual, Meshell Ndegeocello’s music weaves together sensual sentiments, spinning storytelling and activism into its own (sub)genre of soul. In this episode host Adrian Younge speaks with Meshell about the concept of feminism, language and her role in the evolution of Black music.'

This is The Byline Project

'Because local stories matter! Okayplayer has designed The Byline Project, an innovative open-source digital tool that aims to empower newsrooms and storytellers to tap into their networks to discover local, culturally significant and politically important stories that serve the public Using The Byline Project’s direct-to-reporter tipping feature, the online community can financially support the content they find valuable.'

Photography As Collaboration: A Conversation with Titus Brooks Heagins

'In this virtual conversation, acclaimed photographer Titus Brooks Heagins speaks with Dr. Jayne Ifekwunigwe of Duke University. Heagins has been a professional photographer for just over two decades, but his work is built on a lifetime of habits: of seeing, of listening, and of building relationships. Heagins explores a selection of his photographs and discusses the role of photography in documenting racism and inequality, the power of photographs to carry family and community stories, and the experience of making photographs during the turmoil of 2020's global pandemic and civil unrest. Co-sponsored by the Forum for Scholars and Publics and the Power Plant Gallery at Duke University.'

Poets on Couches: John Murillo & Nicole Sealey Read Anne Waldman

'Series 2 of Poets on Couches concludes with John Murillo and Nicole Sealey on their couch, reading and discussing "How to Write" by Anne Waldman. In these videograms from The Paris Review, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances.'

Kiese Laymon: “We Must Be Twice As Good As White People to Get Half As Much”

'We sometimes hear of artists selling the rights to their work – but we rarely hear of them buying those rights back. That is what award-winning author and professor Kiese Laymon has done. Eight years after their original publication, he is re-releasing two books. One is his debut novel, Long Division. The other is a bestselling collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon speaks with Michel Martin of  about why revising these works was so important to him.' -- Amanpour and Company

Power and Pride to the People! by Ben Jealous

Power and Pride to the People! 

by Ben Jealous | @BenJealous | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

 

Happy Pride month to Black LGBTQ readers and to all of us who love LGBTQ people! 

 

June has become the traditional month for Pride celebrations in honor of the gay and transgender people, including Black and brown gay liberation and transgender rights activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who fought back against harassment and abusive policing in June 1969. These protests became known as the Stonewall riots. They energized the LGBTQ rights movement and gave momentum to the demands for full equality for LGBTQ Americans. 

 

Over the years, voices of clarity and conscience moved the civil and human rights movement to fully embrace the cause of LGBTQ equality. My mentor, the late civil rights champion Julian Bond, was clear that fighting for equality means fighting for equality for everyone. He knew that Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, was a gay Black man who changed history. 

 

Another history-making leader, President Barack Obama, signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. That law was named for two people killed in attacks fueled by bigotry—Matthew Shepard, a young gay man beaten and left to die, and James Byrd, Jr., a Black man dragged from a truck in a brutal lynching in 1998. 

 

Passing hate crimes legislation was a major victory, but fighting hate is unfinished business. Violence against Black LGBTQ people still takes far too many lives every year. 

 

We mourn our losses and reaffirm our commitment to fight bigotry. But Pride is also about celebration. We celebrate progress toward the full equality and inclusion of LGBTQ people in our communities and country. That progress can be seen in public attitudes. Huge majorities of Americans, including three-quarters of Black Americans, support laws that protect LGBTQ people against discrimination. 

 

One of my proudest moments as president of the NAACP was announcing the organization’s support for marriage equality in 2012. The press conference announcing that policy was emotional for me, because marriage equality is personal. My parents—my Black mother and white father—were confronted by laws that made it illegal for them to get married in some states. That was before the U.S. Supreme Court did away with state laws that banned interracial marriage in 1967. 

 

It took almost 50 years, and a lot of hard work by equality activists, before the Supreme Court overturned state laws that kept same-sex couples from getting married. That 2015 ruling was another milestone on the road to full legal and lived equality for LGBTQ people in this country. 

 

As we all know, progress often brings backlash. We see it everywhere. 

 

Black voters turned out in key states last year to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This year, Republican legislators are passing new voter suppression laws. They want to punish Black voters by making it harder to register and vote in the future. That’s why Democrats in Congress need to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

 

We’re also seeing a backlash against equality for all. Right-wing legislators are passing laws to restrict LGBTQ rights. Right-wing legal groups are pushing Trump-appointed judges to roll back legal equality. That’s why Democrats in Congress need to pass the Equality Act. 

 

You might hear some politicians raising false alarms about the Equality Act. Don’t listen to them. They told the same kind of lies when they were fighting the hate crimes law. And none of them came to pass. 

 

What has come to pass, thanks to Black voters and everyone who helped put the Biden-Harris administration in power, is a return to equality as U.S. government policy. The administration wasted no time reversing some of the Trump team’s attacks on equality. 

 

And last month a Black gay woman made history. Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre became the first openly gay Black woman to lead a press briefing at the White House. “Being behind this podium, being in this room, being in this building, is not about one person, it’s about what we do on behalf of the American people,” she said. 

 

It’s about what we do on behalf of the American people. That’s a good principle for all of us to embrace as we celebrate Pride and work to build a country in which we the people means all the people. 

 

***

 

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation. Jealous has decades of experience as a leader, coalition builder, campaigner for social justice and seasoned nonprofit executive. In 2008, he was chosen as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the NAACP. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he has taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

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