Vol. 49 No. 22
September 20, 2018 - September 26, 2018
This publication is a Certified DBE/ SBE / MBE in the State of California CUCP #43264 Metro File #7074 & State of Texas File #802505971 Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or words or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
COMMENTARY: I Fought for our Country — Now NFL Players are Kneeling for me
Editor in Chief’s Corner Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com Clifton Harris Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News
Ohio Judge Resigns After Video Shows His Hands Around Black Woman’s Neck National News
By Samuel Innoncent
I’m a veteran of the U.S. Army. So it may come as a surprise that the day I read about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, I could not have been prouder. I was proud because after serving my country for seven years, it felt like someone was finally looking out for me. As someone who served as a sergeant in Afghanistan, only to take a civilian job helping veterans upon returning home, I fully understand patriotism. I work hard to embody it every day. That’s precisely why I think it’s so important to stop mischaracterizing Colin Kaepernick’s movement as unpatriotic. Players are not kneeling to protest the national anthem, as they’ve explained time and time again. They are kneeling to say that the ways in which police officers and the criminal justice system treat African-Americans (people like me and my family) constitute a national crisis. I’m grateful for the players’ decision to take a knee. Because when many people set eyes on me, the first thing they see isn’t someone who may have missed his sister’s wedding, lost his father, and buried several friends during his tour of duty. They don’t see a former combat medic who’d risked his life for their country or a man whose seven years of honorable service didn’t include a moment to grieve. Instead of a veteran, they see a Black man first and foremost. And in 2014, police saw a potential criminal. The awakening came only a few years after leaving the Army and returning home to my beloved New York. I’d enrolled in college, one of the major steps for reintegrating back into society after
U.S. Army Veteran Samuel Innoncent service. My new dream was to work on local policy. I commuted daily from the Bronx to Manhattan to attend my classes at City College of New York. One night, during the twoblock stroll from the subway to my apartment, New York Police Department officers stopped me in my path. I fit the description of someone who’d just committed a crime, they said. “What was the crime?” I asked. They said they couldn’t tell me. When I asked if the description was for someone who looked like me (someone wearing a shirt and tie) they said I would have to call the station to find out. I was then put against a wall and searched. I felt humiliated and helpless. It was only when they asked for my ID that they saw my veteran status at the top of it. Finally, the degrading and unwarranted search came to an end. They told me to have a nice day. A part of me wanted to dismiss what had just happened to me as an isolated incident. But I knew that this practice disproportionally occurred in poorer neighborhoods and over-
whelmingly targeted young Black men. A report by the New York Civil Liberties Union showed that innocent New Yorkers were subjected to stop-and-frisk tactics more than five million times since 2002, with people of color comprising the vast majority. These racially discriminatory NYPD stops were ruled unconstitutional in 2013, but this year officials revealed that Black New Yorkers were still eight times more likely than white residents to be arrested for low-level marijuana charges, despite the groups using it as similar rates. Tragically, racially biased policing isn’t contained to my hometown and leads to deadly consequences across America. Last year, a journalistic investigation found that Black people were shot more often than White people by police, although Black people were less likely to be found with a weapon. When I left to join the military, it wasn’t for me. It was for my family and loved ones who I would leave behind. I felt like I was doing my part, so they wouldn’t
have to live in fear of events like 9/11 happening again. But my service in Afghanistan hasn’t made my family safer from the people sworn to protect us in our own backyards. So yes, I was proud of players like Colin Kaepernick, Eric Reid, and Olivier Vernon because I knew how few people would be willing to risk their careers to shed light on issues that are urgent for people of color but that others often sweep under the rug. I’m proud that when Americans tune in to be entertained, the players in turn make the world more cognizant of the need to change how law enforcement operates. The players are not disrespecting veterans by kneeling. My local Veterans Affairs hospital in Brooklyn has slowly shut down parts of the facility and forced veterans to seek care elsewhere. This truly is disrespectful and not the promise that this nation made to its service members. Disrespect is the struggle that veteran charities face when trying to raise money. If you feel that forcing America to grapple with its continued systematic oppression of racial minorities is disrespectful, take a deeper look at why it bothers you. I pray that one day my fellow countrymen will see me for who I am: a veteran and a Black man who wants to be treated the same as everyone else—whether I’m in uniform or not. I fought for our nation abroad, and now the players fight for my inclusion at home. (Samuel Innocent is a former Army combat medic who served in Afghanistan and a Pat Tillman Foundation scholar.) This article originally appeared in the Nashville Pride.
Camille Cosby Appears at Judicial Conduct Review Board By Stacy M. Brown,NNPA Newswire Correspondent@StacyBrownMedia
Camille Cosby enters Montgomery County Courthouse with Bill Cosby during his assault trial in April. Camille Cosby has filed an official complaint about her husband’s judge to the Judicial Conduct Review Board of Pennsylvania. One week before iconic comedian Bill Cosby faces sentencing in his assault case and just a week after defense attorneys filed a motion asking for Judge Steven T. O’Neill to recuse himself, Camille Cosby arrived in Harrisburg, Pa., seeking relief. “The public, and Mr. Cosby, were entitled to know about Judge O’Neill’s bias before the
judge made these rulings,” Camille Cosby said. “That this judge would hide his bias and decide that his rival, the former D.A., could not be trusted to give truthful testimony, shows that the judge let his own personal feelings override Mr. Cosby’s right to a fair trial. If a judge would do this in a case as high-profile as this one, then he cannot be trusted to be a fair judge for anyone else either.” The former D.A. Bruce Castor told NNPA Newswire that he was “disgusted” by the prosecution
of Cosby after himself promising the legend years ago that if he sat for a deposition and waived his right to remain silent, his words could never be used against him by any future D.A. The current D.A., Kevin Steele, ran an election campaign on the grounds that he was going to “get Cosby,” and received the support of Cosby accuser Andrea Constand in his campaign bid. “What is happening to Cosby, as bad a man as he undoubtedly is, should never happen to anyone in America,” Castor said. “I’m 36 years in the justice system, much of it at a pretty high level and I’m disgusted that any citizen entitled to the presumption of innocence has been treated this way,” Castor said. Legal experts also have expressed concern that O’Neill refused to rule on whether the 12year statute of limitations in the case expired, thus avoiding any prosecution of Cosby. Instead, he sent the matter to jurors, who didn’t appear to consider it. Last week, Cosby’s attorney Joseph Green filed a motion aimed
at getting O’Neill to recuse himself and appoint another judge to consider the case. Green argued that the case has to go back to when it started in early 2016 when Cosby repeatedly sought to get the charges thrown out and the judge to step down. O’Neill repeatedly denied his motions. Green said recently uncovered facts suggest O’Neill was biased against Cosby from the beginning due to a long-standing political feud with Castor that the judge failed to disclose after he was assigned the case. The feud stems from a late1990s political campaign between Castor and O’Neill in which Castor supposedly engineered a campaign dirty trick that damaged O’Neill’s professional reputation, Cosby’s motion asserts. This colored O’Neill’s rulings against Cosby’s motions, Green argued because Castor was an important witness who testified about why he decided not to prosecute Cosby on the Constand accusations in 2006. “During the hearing, Judge (continued on page 7)
Video footage shows Michael Bachman grabbing Kassandra Jackson Hamilton, OH — Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Magistrate Michael Bachman has stepped down from his post to avoid “further consternation” after a video of him chasing down and grabbing a Black woman by her neck went public. The judge claims he was only trying to calm the woman who was “loudly screaming” in the court hallways, but many believe that her being Black was a factor in the altercation. On September 4, Kassandra Jackson went to the courthouse to try filing a protection order, a document sought by people being threatened or stalked, but the court staff told her she was late for the 8 a.m. deadline. In the video, she could be seen arguing with them before leaving. Bachman, who heard the noise from inside his courtroom, went outside, pointed his finger, and followed her. He caught up to her and they walked back to the courtroom together until Jackson tried to turn to a different hallway. That’s when Bachman grabbed her neck and shoulder, redirected her to the courtroom, and sat her on the jury box while she was tearing up. Jackson, a 28-year-old Black woman, said she thought he came after her to help. Instead, Bachman held her in contempt of court and sentenced her to 10 days in jail — three days for her “disrespectful and disruptive behavior” outside his courtroom and seven more for resisting the deputies whom Bachman ordered to arrest her. It wasn’t the first time Jackson had an encounter with Bachman. Last year, she also sought a protective order, Bachman denied, and she allegedly slammed her hand on a wall placard. He then sentenced her to five days confine-
ment. In both cases, Bachman described her as “belligerent.” While Bachman says he does not remember the incident last year, he told The Cincinnati Enquirer, “I suppose it shows… she is a person who has now shown on at least two occasions has no sense of decorum or respect for the courts.” Jackson, a mother of two, was released after two days after Judge Kim Wilson Burke ordered the contempt charge dropped “for good cause.” Meanwhile, Bachman resigned last week. He said, “I resigned in order to save the court further consternation. But had I known it was going to become public, I would have defended myself in the investigation.” He insisted he was just trying to calm the woman down. “I wish there was sound with the video so you can hear how she yelled at the top of her lungs,” he said. “I could not hear the defense attorney questioning a witness.” Moreover, William Gallagher, a Cincinnati defense attorney who was in Bachman’s courtroom during the incident, said Bachman has a “low tolerance for rule-breaking.” He added, “I don’t think we should be locking up all the people who yell in our courtroom hallways.” Valerie Overstreet, Jackson’s neighbor described her as a loving, single mother. “People get emotional… but that doesn’t warrant people treating (others) like a criminal off the street.” Overstreet’s partner, Lori Asbury, who is Black, cannot help but think that bias may have been a factor. “You can’t erase race as an issue,” she said. “It’s easier: ‘She’s lowerclass, (in) poverty, and OK, she’s black. She’s expendable.'”
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