OpEd

Guest Columnist

Julianne Malveaux

Melvin Van Peebles, Creative Genius

One of the first Broadway plays I ever saw was Melvin Van Peebles' "Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death." A. Robert Phillips, who led the Black Talent Program at Boston College, arranged for a group of us undergraduates to attend the play, have dinner and enjoy New York City. I was riveted by the powerful play, a series of vignettes performed by a talented ensemble who combined laughter, irony, pathos and more to present a slice of Black life.

Two things stayed with me after all these years. One is a scene where a woman is on a ledge or balcony, and people are urging her not to jump. Her reply, "I ain't leaping; I'm just leanin'. This is the coolest place in town." The play closed with something of a curse on white America. "Put a curse on you. May all your kids be junkies, too." And now, thanks to opioids, many of them are.

We lost a giant when we lost Van Peebles on Sept. 21, a giant and a multitalented man who acted, directed, wrote, starred, produced, composed and played music and more. He was a man who loved Black people and was determined to present us through Black eyes, not white ones.

He also had an unusual sense of humor and was so deliberately provocative in his film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" that the New York Times described the movie as "an outrage." But I remember seeing the film, rooting for Sweet Sweetback, on the run after he killed white police officers who were beating a Black man and standing, like the other audience members did, to applaud when the film was over.

Some credit Van Peebles with the Blaxploitation genre, but he was so much more than that. Sweetback, to me, was about portraying a different power dynamic than one we were used to in 1971. In Sweetback, you saw a community sticking together, cheering their anti-hero who used everything he had, including his body and his sexual prowess, to elude the oppressor. In 1971, few Black folks were willing or able to give so-called law enforcement officers any pushback, especially on-screen (the Black Panther Party had been pushing back since its inception). Sweetback was, if nothing else, a paradigm shift.

Before Sweetback, we saw docile, humble, polite Black men, like Sidney Poitier in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" or "Lilies of the Valley." We saw exotic Black men like Harry Belafonte. And if we go back to Paul Robeson, we saw masterful, but nonthreatening, Black men. We never saw a man quite like Sweet Sweetback.

Thanks to Van Peebles, though, we began to see a series of them.

Guest Columnist

David W. Marshall

Law and Order Also Means the Police Policing Themselves

I wish Cariol Horne was on the scene when Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes. If so, George Floyd may be alive today. There is a very high possibility that had Horne been there in 2020, an effort would have been made on her part to stop Chauvin. While Derek Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, three other officers were charged with aiding and abetting. There are times it is necessary for the police to police themselves.

Former Buffalo, New York, Police Officer Cariol Horne, who is Black, was in a very similar situation in 2006. She intervened to break up a confrontation between Greg Kwiatkowski, a fellow White officer, and a Black suspect named Neal Mack involving a chokehold. "Neal Mack looked like he was about to die," she stated in 2020. "So had I not stepped in, he possibly could have. He was handcuffed and being choked."

While Mack contends the officer saved his life, Horne was terminated when it was determined that her use of force was unjustified. She was fired from the Buffalo Police Department two months before being eligible to receive her full pension.

Waterloo, Iowa is a city of 67,000 residents and has a long history of tensions between the police and the city's Black community. The Black community makes up 17% of the city population. On June 1, 2020, Joel Fitzgerald became the first Black police chief in Waterloo. Soon after being sworn in as chief, the reform-minded Fitzgerald supported numerous changes. The changes, which are meant to transform the department, includes the banning of chokeholds, outlawing racial profiling, requiring officers to intervene if they see excessive force, and investigating all complaints of misconduct.

Guest Columnist

Hazel Trice Edney For a Public Health Expert, Stroke and Seizure Become Real

Since she was a little girl, Thometta Cozart has looked up to her father as hard-working, humble and soft-spoken; yet a fun-loving man who is often the life of the party.

“He’s always been the center of our family for events, parties and celebrations,” she recalls. “And he gives to his detriment,” she said, describing his generosity and self-sacrificing nature.

Named partially after him, Thomas, and her mother, Loretta, Thometta is their only child. She recalls him working long hours on construction sites to install electric poles and lines. In her mind, he was a pillar of strength.

But in May 2019, he suffered a hemorrhagic (bleeding) stroke. In a sense, they drew closer with the uncertain prognosis. Would he face long term paralysis? Would his speech be slurred? How much would this debilitating stroke affect the future of a man who has served as a surrogate father to so many?

Because of her job as multicultural outreach and health equity director of the Epilepsy Foundation, Thometta Cozart knew how to prepare for potentially the worst outcomes. With proper nutrition, intense physical therapy, cardiac care and medication, her father had a fighting chance to recover and live a good life.

A realist who often leans on her faith, she also knew that the kind of stroke that her father had suffered - the ischemic stroke caused by blood clots- increased the chances that he might experience seizures in the future.

Seventeen months later, on Oct. 10, 2020, her fears were realized. Thomas Cozart, with no history of seizures or epilepsy, had a seizure while at home watching TV with a friend who noticed that his eyes had rolled to the back of his head, he had begun to convulse and was in a state of confusion. His friend called an ambulance, and was able to recall the seizure first aid resources Thometta had offered her family.

Once again, her education and experience kicked in. Because she knew that strokes are a major contributor to how African Americans develop epilepsy, as her father’s chief

MALVEAUX Page 53

Along with the efforts to improve policing came the expected backlash. Current and former officers are not only opposing the reforms, but fighting the removal of the police insignia which resembles a Ku Klux Klan dragon.

Waterloo is no different than most other police departments. The clash between an entrenched blue culture versus the changes needed to hold officers accountable is a main reason

MARSHALL Page 53

EDNEY Page 53

Guest Columnist

Marian Wright Edelman

Congress, Don't Play Political Football With Children's Futures

As Congress continues to negotiate and finalize a budget reconciliation package, we must ensure the needs of children are not sacrificed to protect rich individuals and corporations. Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put America's most vulnerable children and families first, advance racial equity and make a down payment on ending child poverty. Last week the House sent the Senate a strong package which would extend the expanded Child Tax Credit and ensure more children have access, invest in preventing eviction and homelessness, extend free school meals to 9 million more children, create a pathway to citizenship for many, establish universal paid leave, guarantee access to free, high-quality preschool, and more. We must now ensure the Senate does not weaken or cut these investments. Two- and 3-year-olds have no politics and we must reject any leaders who for any reason play political football with our children's lives and our nation's future.

The greatest threat to America's economic, military and national security comes from no enemy without but from our failure, unique among high income nations, to invest adequately and fairly in the health, education and sound development of all of our young. This year has been a turning point. Our nation made investments in anti-poverty programs that mitigated the impacts of the pandemic and helped millions of children escape or avoid falling into poverty. We can now see those investments working. We have come so far, and we must insist political leaders in every party at every level commit to finishing the task and ending child poverty for good.

Investing in children is not only the right but the smart and cost-effective thing to do. In CDF's 1994 report "Wasting America's Future," great MIT Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow presciently wrote: "For many years Americans have allowed child poverty levels to remain astonishingly high — higher than for American adults, higher than for children in nations that are our competitors, higher than from the entire period of the late 1960s and 1970s, a period when we had less wealth as a nation than we do now, and far higher than one would think a rich and ethical society would tolerate. The justification, when one is offered at all, has often been that action is expensive: 'We have more will than wallet.' I suspect that in fact our wallets exceed our will, but in any event this concern for the drain on our resources completely misses the other side of the equation: Inaction has its costs too. … As an economist

EDELMAN Page 54

Guest Columnist

Roger Caldwell

Black Lives Matter and the Color of Your Skin

There is a pervasive sickness in America, and it is called white supremacy and systemic racism. These ideologies are invisible, and many Americans now believe that success has nothing to do with the color of an individual's skin. Discrimination no longer exists, and everyone has the same opportunities.

It is very easy to get caught in this frame of mind, because you can look at the millions of people of color who are a success in one generation. Instead of challenging and fighting racism, they put the blame on the person.

On many different levels, people of color are advancing, and there is much to be proud of. There are now more children of color being born than white children each year, and white people are concerned with their existence. "White supremacy or White supremacism is the belief that White people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them," states Wikipedia. "The belief favors the maintenance and defense of White power and privilege. White supremacy has roots in the now discredited doctrine of scientific racism, and was a key justification for colonialism."

The Democrats would want Americans to think that in 2021, only Republicans are the only party that is racist, but racism is systemic and institutionalized. When white folks get together, there are always the Black jokes, and the jokes about how fast Black men can run.

Many would think that Black jokes are harmless, and they would never say them in front of their Black friends, but sometimes other words slip out. There is something fundamentally different about being born white, and more doors are opened, from the start.

Some call it "white privilege" and it is a benefit that is enjoyed by all white folks, and it does not matter if you are a Democrat or Republican. There is a cultural thread that runs through the society, and whites take advantage of all these benefits. White privilege is an aspect of white power, and all white people have the ability to pull out their white power card.

History in America has demonstrated that white citizens will make war, and justifying horrific atrocities against Black people, including lynching. Even after slavery was abolished, there was still lynching, and many today believe

CALDWELL Page 54

Askia-At-Large

Askia Muhammad Glad My Mother Didn't Get an Abortion

One of my first, and most chilling, experiences as a young member of the Nation of Islam, selling the Muhammad Speaks newspaper door to door, was about 52 years ago.

A woman in Milpitas, California, a tiny suburb of San Jose, in tears when she saw me that day. She had purchased a newspaper from me and had been traumatized by an article by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, condemning abortion as "murder."

The article caused her to change her mind and not have an illegal (at the time) abortion she had contemplated. Then, she was afraid for her future, and uncertain if she had made the right decision to carry her pregnancy to term.

Before that, I wasn't aware of how gut-wrenching such a decision was in a woman's life. Birth control, pregnancy, pregnancy prevention, and pregnancy termination were relatively fresh topics in the national conversation then. The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision would not be rendered for another three years, and there was much mystery and intrigue involved. So-called "back-alley abortions" in unsupervised clinics were not only illegal, they were dangerous, even life threatening to the mother.

A few years earlier, maybe it was my first serious girlfriend — the memories blur — I was told that she had gotten an abortion of our baby. I felt a dull ache at the news, but I supposed I was relieved, not necessarily sure I would want to have this person and our offspring in my affairs in perpetuity.

Now, I get it. An abortion not only removes a fetus from a woman's womb, it also severs the bond between the woman and her paramour. Often that is a good thing — for example, a pregnancy caused by a rape. During slavery, enslaved persons were often forced by the masters, often just for sport, and there was nothing those women could do except bear the unwanted child.

Also, more often than we want to admit, family members, stepfathers, uncles, even older siblings force themselves on vulnerable girls, impregnating them. That's incest, and it's despicable. There should be a remedy in such tragic cases.

But more often, even with widespread availability of contraception, abortions are performed as a birth-control measure, rather than

ASKIA Page 54

EDITORIAL

ACC Riverboat Excursion Is a Quick Fix for What Ails Ward 8

Residents of D.C.’s Ward 8 feel besieged by the impact of poverty, crime, limited amenities, and subpar schools, to name a few of the concerns expressed often in community meetings and other gatherings. With the recent uptick in violent crime and murders happening nearly every day, more neighborhoods are adorned with balloons and ribbons tied to light poles and trees in honor of the dead than with flowers and gardens to beautify the community simply. It often feels like a dangerous place to live until a walk around the block, any block, reveals someone new. Ward 8 is gentrifying, and it can be seen in the “For Sale” signs going up and the high home prices residents are paying. Once one becomes an engaged resident of Ward 8, they begin to see what others don’t. They see a community that works together, supports each other and builds together.

Ask anyone that attends the monthly Anacostia Coordinating Council (ACC) meetings or boat ride held annually on the first Saturday in October. It’s a ‘must do’ and a sold-out event attracting city leaders, community activists, politicians, artists, business professionals, students, Blacks, Latinx, Asians and Whites, LGBTQ, young and old, and physically challenged. Established in 1983, ACC has served the community under former D.C. At-Large Councilmember Arrington Dixon, longtime community leader and ACC Executive Director Phillip Pannell, and current ACC Chairman and businessman Lamont Mitchell, along with an active board of directors. Last weekend, more than 200 people presented their COVID-19 vaccination cards before boarding the Spirit cruise boat for a trip along the Potomac River.

A violinist, a poet, a soulful songstress, and one of the D.C.s top Go-Go bands performed on every level while guests talked politics, of course. But more talked about their organizations and what they are trying to do to benefit the community. Some stopped talking entirely and claimed the dance floor to join a line dance like the Electric Slide or the Cupid Shuffle with folks like Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, or former MPD Assistant Chief Diane Groomes, head of the Wharf Security and Public Safety team.

What happens on the boat ride doesn’t stay there either. Guests leave feeling recommitted to the programs, opportunities and ideas to help make Ward 8 a better place to live. It’s where they go to get that shot of hope that confirms the work they do together in Ward 8 will make a difference one day. WI

No One Wants to Be Homeless – But Those Who Are Need Help

Whenever the conversation turns to the issue of homelessness, there are always those who flippantly describe the scores of men, women and, yes, even children, who are homeless as individuals who “prefer” being without a place to live.

It’s a belief that’s unfounded and downright ridiculous. And we’re sick and tired of hearing it.

Certainly, there are those who suffer from mental illnesses and who are living on the streets of the District and other cities across the U.S. For them, it may be impossible to refute such ludicrous claims which conclude that they chose to be homeless. But for the thousands of others, the vast majority, being homeless has never been their desire nor a choice they made. In many cases, their current condition occurred due to circumstances well beyond their control.

Perhaps they are homeless because the breadwinner of the family has either departed, become incapacitated, been remanded to the prison industrial complex or has died.

Perhaps they have found it impossible to secure employment that provides enough income to pay for housing.

And let’s not forget that here in the District, despite the celebratory mood that the mayor maintains as new “affordable housing” is touted with ribbon-cutting events and photo-ops, there’s still not enough for those who need it most.

In a nation with so much wealth and so many wealthy citizens, we should all feel a sense of shame that there are so many people who are hopeless, helpless and homeless.

And if you believe that people “enjoy” being homeless, just try walking in their shoes for one day and night. Better yet, try it for a weekend. Brave the elements, face the dangers that comes with being confronted by strangers with bad intentions. Handle being thirsty and hungry without the ability to reach into your refrigerator for a quick repass. Try using the bathroom or washing up when you don’t have a bathroom, a shower or soap and clean water at your disposal.

The Bible, in a passage attributed to Jesus, advises, “when you cared for the least of these, you cared for me.”

The least of these have been asking for help for far too long. Let’s end homelessness once and for all. We can do it – if we really want to. WI

Policing the Police

I don't know why I’m surprised at the internal racism and sexism that’s being alleged at the Metropolitan Police Department, but I guess I’m naive. Ten Black women see fit to file a class-action lawsuit against the department — that can’t be ignored. There must be an investigation and the truth shall come out.

Lynn Uliear Washington, D.C.

TO THE EDITOR

Words of Wisdom

Last week’s Words to Live By really stuck with me, “It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.” The words of Floyd Patterson from 1964 were very simple, but profound, which I find is often the best way to reach people.

Julian Cress Washington, D.C.

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