| From the Villa ge of Brook ly n |
OUR TIME PRESS THE L OCAL PAPER WITH THE G LOBAL VIEW
| VOL. 22 NO. 20
May 17 – 23, 2018 |
Since 1996
Living While Black Donisha Prendergast and friends were surrounded by police as they left an airbnb.
View From Here ■■
By David Mark Greaves
D
eputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, addressing the graduating class of Campbell University School of Law in Raleigh, NC (see excerpts on page 8) spoke about consequential decisions versus random events that occur in life. Mr. Rosenstein rightly says, “You cannot control random events,” as though they arise from the purity of chaos. That is not the case and randomness differs depending on the world you inhabit. Random events are different for Black people. In our universe, the dice are loaded, the field tilted, and the historic, inherent and unseen random acts of racism by White people makes the air too thick to breathe. Once, while working for a major financial corporation, I found a binder of resumes of Black business school graduates at Columbia University. It was in the garbage. All of those hopes tossed because they were of no matter. Little things like that. Every day events that are
Mother and daughter handcuffed in Williamsburg, falsely accused of shoplifting.
called “random” but when exponentially multiplied and added to the systemic racism of institutions, well, that’s why the air gets thick and there is wonderment by all, that Black people can’t seem to get it together. Enter the smartphone and viral videos, delivering pixels of random acts that are filling in their spots, along with criminal justice statistics, mortality rates, health disparities, wealth disparities, education, lack of a two-parent home (although recent generations of young Black fathers are stepping up), the low rate of income, put them all together and the tip of the iceberg of racism confronted by Black people across the country begins to appear. And yet we survive and will thrive, because it is in our nature. Rosenstein is right again when he says there is no point in wasting time harping on random events. Our history has brought us here and we must live in this moment, fighting the battles we have been called to fight. We don’t get to pick them, they are the random assignments of Time.
Clara Walker Returns Pg 6
On this day in History: May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
Mekhi Lee, one of young men falsely accused of stealing from a Nordstrom Rack store.
Calling the police on Black family barbecuing.
White Woman Calls Cops on Black Family for Having BBQ in Park #BarbecuingWhileBlack becomes yet another police matter
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Kaitlyn D’Onofrio, diversityinc.com
t turns out barbecuing is also on the list of seemingly ordinary things Black people cannot do without having the police called on them. File that under #WorkingOutWhileBlack, #StarbucksWhileBlack, #NappingWhileBlack, #GraduatingWhileBlack, #ShoppingWhileBlack and #WaffleHouseWhileBlack. A family barbecue at a park in Oakland, Calif., was interrupted when a fellow park-goer called the authorities to break up the party. Michelle Snider, who is white, witnessed what happened and recorded the events on her cell phone. “This is exactly what is the problem with Oakland today,” Snider said. “This lady wants to sit here and call the police on them for having a barbecue at the lake, as if this is not normal.” The woman who phoned the police, and who has not been identified, called because the Black family was using a charcoal grill in the wrong area. KRON 4 reported: “According to an official Oakland Park and Rec map of Lake Merritt, there are six designated barbecue locations, three stationary charcoal locations, and three non-charcoal portable grill locations. “ Against the rules, yes — but a criminal matter? Apparently to the woman who took it quite personally. One of the men at the barbecue has been identified as Onsayo Abram. “She walked up, and she was telling me that it was illegal and against the law to have a charcoal grill at the lake,” Abram reported to the SFGate. “I proceed to tell her, ‘Hey, there’s not a posted sign. I believe I’m in the correct area. Go on about your day and leave
me alone.’ So she said, ‘No, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I’m gonna need you to shut this down, or I’m gonna call the police.’” Abram told the woman to do as she pleased, telling her “I’m gonna continue to enjoy my day.” Snider and her husband Kenzie Smith were also attending the barbecue. “She said that we were trespassing, we were not welcome, and then she turned back around and said, ‘Y’all going to jail,’” Smith told KRON 4. “I have seen people barbecue with charcoal for years,” said Smith. The same way people have used the restroom at Starbucks before making a purchase for years. Or worked out for years. Or graduated university for years. No arrests were made in this case. The woman who made the 911 call does not have the city on her side. Oakland City Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney told KRON 4 to reserve 911 calls “for emergency purposes” — not to be a nuisance. Cat Brooks, a candidate for mayor in Oakland, seems to understand the racial issue at hand. Oakland mayoral candidate Cat Brooks looks at the situation from a different angle. “When you engage law enforcement in these kinds of things you are opening the door for things to go very wrong, the potential for arrests like in Philadelphia with those two Black men or worse physical assault or death and I don’t believe in this day and age that white folks don’t know that,” she told KRON 4. The arrests at Starbucks in Philadelphia exemplified that. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said the manager who made the 911 call “never intended for these men to be ➔➔ Continued on page 4