Jordan Miles - before
Jordan Miles - after
Justice for Jordan Miles
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
They say pictures are worth a thousand words.
The photos above tell a story repeated all too often in communities of color.
The tell us about walking while black.
They tell us about police brutality.
They tell us about racial profiling.
They tell us it doesn't make any difference if you are an honor student like Jordan Miles.
Unlike Trayvon Martin and so many others, Jordan Miles lived to tell his story. He lived to bring a civil suit against the Pittsburgh Police Department.
A civil suit because the 3 police officers who beat him have not been punished.
The only "good news" (if you can call it that) so far in all of this is that charges of escape, loitering, aggravated assault, and resisting arrest filed against Jordan Miles were thrown out by Judge Oscar Petite Jr in March of 2010.
His case is on trial right now.
Please go to Justice for Jordan Miles.
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Jasiri X tells the story of Jordan Miles, the 18 year old honor student who was brutally beaten by 3 undercover Pittsburgh Police officers while walking to his grandmother's house. "Jordan Miles" was mixed by Diezel and directed by Paradise Gray.
Here are the charges filed by Mile's attorneys against the City of Pittsburgh, and the three police officers—Michael Saldutte, David Sisak, and Richard Ewing.
STATEMENT OF FACTS
On or about January 12, 2010, the Plaintiff, Jordan Miles, exited his mother’s residence on Tioga Street in the City of Pittsburgh and began walking to his grandmother’s home located nearby.
After walking a short distance, the Plaintiff observed an unmarked vehicle speed toward him and swerve in front of the Plaintiff and came to a stop.
Occupying the vehicle were the individual Defendants dressed in dark clothing.
Once stopped the Defendants exited the vehicle, one of them yelling, “Where’s your money? Where’s the drugs? Where’s the gun?”and moved quickly toward the Plaintiff.
The Plaintiff believed he was going to be attacked and robbed so he began to run from the Defendants.
Plaintiff was able to go a short distance until he slipped and fell at which time the Defendant Saldutte grabbed hold of the Plaintiff.
Defendants Sisak and Ewing were punching and kicking and kneeing the Plaintiff. At one point, the Plaintiff’s coat was ripped off his back by one of the officers.
Defendants’ jointly and severally beat, kicked, kneed and choked the Plaintiff. Defendants repeatedly pushed Plaintiff’s face into the ground and pulled his hair from his scalp.
After handcuffing the Plaintiff, the Defendants pushed his face into the ground repeatedly and caused Plaintiff’s gums to be impaled with a piece of wood.
Plaintiff was eventually handcuffed believing that he was going to be kidnaped or killed began saying “The Lord’s Prayer” at which time the Defendant told him to “shut up” and choked the Plaintiff and then slammed Plaintiff’s face into the snow.
Plaintiff then began whispering his prayer when another Defendant told Plaintiff, “Didn’t he tell you to shut up?” and once again Plaintiff was choked and then his face was slammed into the snow and ground.
Plaintiff remained face down in the snow for a protracted period of time, he attempted to pull his head up from the ground and was hit with a hard object in the face.
Eventually, a City of Pittsburgh Police wagon arrived with uniformed officers. Plaintiff was transported to the Allegheny County Jail but officials at the jail directed Defendant City’s officers to transport Plaintiff to a hospital because of his obvious physical injuries.
Plaintiff required Emergency Room treatment at West Penn Hospital for a head injury, facial contusions, removal of wood impaled in Plaintiff’s gums. Plaintiff was subsequently treated in UPMC Shadyside for conjunctival hemorrhage, bilateral rib injuries, abdominal pain, bilateral hip pain, bilateral shoulder pain and hematoma.
Defendants’ jointly and severally decided to file a Criminal Complaint against the Plaintiff charging Plaintiff with loitering and prowling, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, and escape, while knowing Plaintiff did not commit those crimes.
Defendants jointly and severally in preparing the Affidavit of Probable Cause to support the Complaint against the Plaintiff willfully made false statements regarding finding a Mountain Dew in Plaintiff’s coat, knowing that no such bottle was found or ever existed.
Defendants’ jointly and severally knowingly fabricated witness Monica Wooding’s statement in the Affidavit to support a bogus charge of loitering and prowling against Plaintiff..
Defendants’ jointly and severally willfully fabricated a statement that Plaintiff “appeared to be under the influence of controlled substances” notwithstanding the police drug tests administered prior to the preparation of the Affidavit showed Plaintiff tested negative for drugs.
Plaintiff was arrested by Defendants without probable cause, knowing that the only crimes committed were those committed by the Defendants in beating Plaintiff to a pulp.
Defendants jointly and severally subverted and corrupted the judicial process, to charge Plaintiff with crimes knowing the charges were false and knowing the evidence was fabricated.
Defendants jointly and severally violated Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights by using excessive and unnecessary force in their apprehension, and post-arrest conduct.
Defendants jointly and severally caused Plaintiff to suffer severe and permanent physical and emotional injuries requiring medical treatment together with medical expenses. Further, Defendants’ said conduct caused Plaintiff loss of health and vitality, pain and suffering and humiliation.
I really don't have more to say.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Pictures of 70's Harlem. New York Times: ’70s Portrait of Harlem, Gathered for Today.
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One day in early 1969, a 16-year-old black high school student from Queens named David Smikle decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he had never visited. He’d heard on the radio that people were upset about an exhibition there, “Harlem on My Mind,” and he wanted a firsthand look.
To his disappointment, no protesters were outside the museum, which was under fire for excluding work by black artists in its portrayal of Harlem. But inside he saw something that left an indelible mark: walls plastered with blown-up photographs of ordinary black people that museumgoers seemed to find compelling enough to stand before and examine.
Ten years later, having changed his name to Dawoud Bey and studied photography at the School of Visual Arts, he made his debut with a solo show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Called “Harlem USA,” it consisted of 25 black-and-white photographs of neighborhood residents, like military veterans in a marching band and older women on their way to church.
Mr. Bey, who now lives in Chicago and teaches photography at Columbia College there, became a widely acclaimed portrait photographer, known for conveying a self-awareness and introspection in his subjects. His work has been shown across the United States and Europe and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum.
This summer at the Art Institute of Chicago, for the first time since the 1979 Studio Museum show, his Harlem series is being exhibited in its entirety.
“Dawoud Bey: Harlem USA,” at the Art Institute of Chicago: “A Man in a Bowler Hat” (1976).
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With the 2012 presidential election just around the corner with incumbent President Barack Obama bidding for his second term, Cindy Hooper’s Conflict: African American Women and the New Dilemma of Race and Gender Politics couldn’t come at a better time. The Grio: Cindy Hooper’s ‘Conflict’ captures power of the African American women’s vote.
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Divided into 12 well organized chapters, Conflict explores the emerging voting bloc of African-American women relative to the national political landscape, negotiating dual identities of race and gender and the glaring under-representation of African-American women in elective office proportionally. In addition to the difficult task of analyzing this voting bloc’s prioritization of race over gender or vice a versa in selecting representatives (as in the 2008 Democratic primary, which historically pitted a white female candidate, Hilary Clinton, and a black male candidate, Barack Obama against one another for the democratic nomination) Conflict also offers a clear and succinct refresher course on the electoral process, an assessment of the history of the civil rights movement and the struggle for the black vote, placing Hooper’s subject into an important historical context, and provides a thorough examination of the issues impacting and informing the votes of black women and the impediments to black women in seeking elective office.
While Conflict isn’t your colorful beach-read variety piece of writing (really how dynamic – however important – can anyone make paragraphs fat with statistical data?), Hooper’s accompanying analysis is engaging, accessible, and deeply significant. Her prose is injected with an underlying current of energy and optimism that makes this an important and empowering read. It should also be said that while some of the numbers do wash over you, others stand out with striking effect. For instance, did you know that even though this country elected its first black president in 2008, we have yet to elect an African-American woman as governor to any of the 50 states? How about the fact that to date we have only known six black senators to occupy seats in the Senate, and only one has been an African-American woman (!)?
Photo by The Grio
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As Election Day approaches, we’ve seen increased reporting on voter suppression schemes. Color Lines: Taking a ‘Freedom Ride’ Against Pennsylvania’s Voter ID [Photos].
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But we’re also curious about what’s happening at the community level, and sparking a conversation about why communities that are often either ignored or bashed by elected officials of all stripes would care about voting rights in 2012. Last week, I introduced you to Miracle Randle, a rising college senior whose own family history inspired her get involved to defeat a ballot measure in Minnesota what would require ID to vote. Over the coming weeks, we’ll introduce you to more community activists and bloggers, who will explain what draws them to work against voter suppression. Several of them are also joining our Voting Rights Watch 2012 team as community journalists, offering additional eyes and ears in their districts and states.
One of those team members is James Cersonsky in Pennsylvania. He works with Philly’s Teacher Action Group and Asian-Americans United around education reform and community-centered pedagogy. Aside from his activism, he’s also a writer who will be sending us missives about how everyday people in Philly are organizing around the state’s voter ID law. This week, as the state’s Supreme Court hears a case challenging that law, James joined a group of voters who evoked the civil rights era Freedom Rides to highlight the racially biased impact of the law. Here’s his report from the bus to Harrisburg.
‘I’m One Who Will Stir It Up’
Dispatch and photos from James Cersonsky in Harrisburg, Pa.
As Pennsylvania’s voter ID law was being fought inside the state’s Supreme Court this week, more than 1,000 people rallied outside the state’s capital in protest of the law, which may disenfranchise up to 43 percent of Philadelphia’s voters.
Shortly after the law passed in March, leaders from the Northwest Philadelphia Coalition started a neighborhood-based campaign called “Keeping my Vote”. Since then, the group has recruited scores of volunteers to organize neighbors around voting rights and ensure people have the right documentation to vote in November.
Leandra Hunter (left) won’t be 18 by November, but she’s enthusiastic about educating her peers on civil rights and civic engagement. (All photos by James Cersonsky)
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For most of her life, Keris Myrick has struggled with mental illness. Now board president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, she's pushing for better access to care. LA Times: Mental-health advocate is also a symbol of recovery.
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For much of her life, Keris Myrick has tried to silence the voices that filled her head with suicidal thoughts and repeatedly sent her to a psychiatric hospital.
But now, Myrick, 51, who has schizo-affective disorder, is embracing one voice that has grown loud and clear — her own. And as she becomes a symbol of recovery and strength in the face of mental illness, others are listening to what she has to say.
Members of the nation's largest mental health advocacy organization, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, recently elected her their board president, giving the Pasadena resident a critical role in pushing for education, policy changes and better access to mental health care. The position is on top of her full-time job as chief executive of a nonprofit that provides peer support to thousands with mental illness in Los Angeles County.
On a recent Saturday morning, Myrick stood confidently before several dozen people in South Los Angeles for a discussion about mental health disparities.
Keris Myrick talks with award recipient Rick Summerville at the 20th annual Project Return Peer Support Network's annual picnic in Long Beach. (Anne Cusack, Los Angeles Times / July 30, 2012)
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Many Haitians displaced by the 2010 earthquake are moving to crowded homes or slums. Others fare better with a rental subsidy, but it's temporary. LA Times: Haiti earthquake camps clearing out; problems now become hidden.
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Facing the crumpled remnants of the national palace, an expansive plaza is punctuated by trees, benches and statues of Haitian heroes. Students read in the shade, women gossip, children play soccer.
This serene picture in Port-au-Prince's central square might seem ordinary, but it is not. After a massive earthquake devastated Haiti's capital on Jan. 12, 2010, about 5,000 displaced people took shelter on the square, turning it into a crowded and dangerous new neighborhood.
Now, 2 1/2 years later, the plaza known as Champs de Mars has been cleared, save for a few straggling tents.
The number of displaced Haitians has dropped from 1.5 million to just under 400,000, according to the International Organization of Migration, changing the look of a capital whose landscape was defined for many months by piles of rubble and fraying tent encampments.
But the progress is largely cosmetic. Although a few camps have benefited from aid programs, a grave underlying housing shortage means that the majority of those who left the camps have disappeared into the overcrowded homes of relatives or constructed precarious shacks in hillside slums.
Charles Kerby, 6, walks through what remains of the St. Therese camp, set up for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake, in Petionville, Haiti, last month. (Dieu Nalio Chery, Associated Press / June 16, 2012)
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam,
Black Kos Poetry Editor
In the middle of August 1936, soldiers loyal to Franco arrested Federico García Lorca. Considered by many to be the premier poet of the early 20th century, Lorca wrote the following poem in 1929 while a student at Columbia University. It was published posthumously. The Gacela (gazelle) of the poem is a symbol for a young black man who was lynched in the state of South Carolina early in 1929; though it might have been a prescience of Lorca's own death. A few days after his arrest, he was executed and his books burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen. To this day, even after 35 years since Franco's death, the grave of Federico García Lorca remains a mystery.
Gacela of the Dark Death
(translated by Robert Bly)
I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
-- Federico García Lorca
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