nakedcrip:

firesandwords:

readnfight:

And if anyone wants to read about what’s going on in my neighborhood and what I’m starting to feel doomed about, here. I don’t like dogs to begin with, never have, but especially when a suburb with its own notorious drug problem (but it’s mostly white kids so we don’t talk about it) has sent a K-9 unit into my neighborhood and the dog is barking outside my window at 5 a.m. while people are being pulled out of bed and I don’t know who they’re going after or why.

The largest-ever federal criminal sweep in Connecticut history netted 35 more alleged crack-dealing New Haven gang members Tuesday, and at least one man was hauled out of bed in a case of mistaken identity.

The fast-paced day began with predawn busts in the Fair Haven and Dwight-Kensington neighborhoods as well as some suburban communities. It continued with dozens of assembly-line appearances in U.S. District Court on Church Street, featured a near-brawl on the courthouse steps, and concluded with the state’s top prosecutor joining federal and local police officials in declaring victory.

“This,” the prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Fein, said at a 3 p.m press conference, “is the largest federal criminal case in state history.”

The operation is called “Operation Bloodline.” The federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) ran it along with New Haven’s cops. Police from Hamden, North Haven, Milford, Ansonia, North Branford, and Branford took part, too.

It began a little more than a year ago, targeting the group accused of dominating the New Haven crack trade and having a hand in much of the tit-for-tat deadly violence on the streets: the Dwight-Kensington-based Tre Bloods gang.

Building on intelligence gathered by New Haven cops and DEA agents, the investigators had a potent weapon in their arsenal: court-authorized wiretaps on 22 different telephones.

They gathered enough evidence to obtain 105 indictments on charges related to crack and powder cocaine dealing as well as marijuana and oxycodone peddling.

Last Thursday agents conducted a sweep that netted the 32 arrests. (Another 14 defendants were already in court on other charges.)

…

Most of those arrested were indicted on charges of taking part in a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. They face minimum sentences of 10 years in jail, up to life; and up to $10 million in fines. Some face heroin and powder cocaine charges as well as possession with intent to sell narcotics and possession of illegal firearms.

“We put a big dent in the gang violence in this city,” New Haven Assistant Police Chief Archie Generoso declared Tuesday. “We’re going to continue doing that. We’re not going to stop here.”

One of my friends who has been stressing about this with me pointed something out: a combination of New Haven police plus several other towns, plus the DEA, got most of these indictments based mostly on wiretaps over the course of a year—but the best they were able to get on the majority of the people was conspiracy. How guilty am I supposed to think anybody is, if the most you can catch over a year of spying is conspiracy?

well put. the neighborhood is one of the last few spots in the city that is close to yale & downtown and is relatively affordable. pike international has been buying up lots and houses left and right and all of their ad’s refer to blocks around here that aren’t even that close to downtown as ‘minutes from yale’, ‘minutes from downtown/shopping districts’, ‘looking for young professionals’. the school of architecture just dropped an incredibly unfitting house down the street thats being advertised as such in yuppie cafe’s and shortly after the house was put on the market, the house next-door was foreclosed on.

it’s pretty clear that land-grabbing, in a city where yale owns 1/4 of the (most expensive land) yet pays no taxes on it is one of the many incentives to the raids happening in this part of town..

The first steps towards “gentrification” are made in combat boots.

This is a pattern that is only becoming solid for me now. I’ve been living in this neighborhood for 5 years now, in 3 different buildings, and they’ve each had some amount of cops running through the place. At the first apartment, it was in the aftermath of immigration raids in town; a year or so after I’d moved out, the building was sold and all the tenants, almost all immigrants, were evicted illegally so the building could be rehabbed and rented exclusively to Yale students.

In my mind the drug raids now and the immigration raids we had a few years ago are pretty similar and connected. So far the difference is that immigrant communities and Latino communities mobilized really strongly and really quickly, and the NHPD passed a general order to not collaborate with ICE. Black communities here are more fractured than that (especially since it was a raid on just one gang). I’d really like to see us step up against raids like this instead of accepting it as what happens—and I think some of us are working on making that happen.

No patience anymore for people who say gentrification isn’t a big deal. This shit is violent. I wasn’t ever skittish in my neighborhood before the way I have been since the raids.

And if anyone wants to read about what’s going on in my neighborhood and what I’m starting to feel doomed about, here. I don’t like dogs to begin with, never have, but especially when a suburb with its own notorious drug problem (but it’s mostly white kids so we don’t talk about it) has sent a K-9 unit into my neighborhood and the dog is barking outside my window at 5 a.m. while people are being pulled out of bed and I don’t know who they’re going after or why.

The largest-ever federal criminal sweep in Connecticut history netted 35 more alleged crack-dealing New Haven gang members Tuesday, and at least one man was hauled out of bed in a case of mistaken identity.

The fast-paced day began with predawn busts in the Fair Haven and Dwight-Kensington neighborhoods as well as some suburban communities. It continued with dozens of assembly-line appearances in U.S. District Court on Church Street, featured a near-brawl on the courthouse steps, and concluded with the state’s top prosecutor joining federal and local police officials in declaring victory.

“This,” the prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Fein, said at a 3 p.m press conference, “is the largest federal criminal case in state history.”

The operation is called “Operation Bloodline.” The federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) ran it along with New Haven’s cops. Police from Hamden, North Haven, Milford, Ansonia, North Branford, and Branford took part, too.

It began a little more than a year ago, targeting the group accused of dominating the New Haven crack trade and having a hand in much of the tit-for-tat deadly violence on the streets: the Dwight-Kensington-based Tre Bloods gang.

Building on intelligence gathered by New Haven cops and DEA agents, the investigators had a potent weapon in their arsenal: court-authorized wiretaps on 22 different telephones.

They gathered enough evidence to obtain 105 indictments on charges related to crack and powder cocaine dealing as well as marijuana and oxycodone peddling.

Last Thursday agents conducted a sweep that netted the 32 arrests. (Another 14 defendants were already in court on other charges.)

…

Most of those arrested were indicted on charges of taking part in a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. They face minimum sentences of 10 years in jail, up to life; and up to $10 million in fines. Some face heroin and powder cocaine charges as well as possession with intent to sell narcotics and possession of illegal firearms.

“We put a big dent in the gang violence in this city,” New Haven Assistant Police Chief Archie Generoso declared Tuesday. “We’re going to continue doing that. We’re not going to stop here.”

One of my friends who has been stressing about this with me pointed something out: a combination of New Haven police plus several other towns, plus the DEA, got most of these indictments based mostly on wiretaps over the course of a year—but the best they were able to get on the majority of the people was conspiracy. How guilty am I supposed to think anybody is, if the most you can catch over a year of spying is conspiracy?

I posted this link on facebook today, pointing out that Shepard Fairey has made his career from exploiting work by people of color, that he’s been allowed status as a gallery-worthy artist for doing what is considered vandalism when done by youth of color (and let’s face it, with considerably less talent), and that I’m disappointed that Ebony missed the opportunity to commission a piece by a Black artist. A white dude responded that he understands it’s problematic, but maybe it’s a good thing to make a piece that “transcends racial lines”. I have been on edge with race shit lately, enough that I haven’t been able to write anything. I’ve seriously been race-depressed and feeling like people of color are fucking doomed—my students are proof that we aren’t, but they’re also stressed out with end of the year catching up or giving up, and realizing all that they should be taught but aren’t.

So my roommate made me a cup of coffee and I spit all this out finally in response to the dude on facebook:

————————————

I can see where you’re coming from and appreciate the sentiment, but I think it still misses the point. Heads up though, because I am having an even more race-anxious couple weeks than usual, so this hits a raw nerve for me.

First off, it definitely isn’t the only piece of art I’ve seen about Trayvon; that’s part of why it’s disappointing. Black artists respond to our conditions all the time and are often passed up on commissioned work and other opportunities. Most other magazines (read: white-centered media) doing this wouldn’t faze me, but I would expect better from a magazine like Ebony. There’s actually a portrait of Trayvon in the hallway at the school where I work that a Black girl made for an art assignment, and it’s infinitely more moving than something sterile and disconnected like this. And that isn’t the only piece I’ve seen some of my students make about this, but when they do it they are making art about their own experiences and their communities’ experiences and how disempowered they usually feel in a city like this. Once I get my silk screen stuff set up better, I promised to help some students make “DON’T SHOOT ME” hoodies they designed—that’s what we’ve come to. At the very least I want to affirm their idea that they don’t deserve to be profiled, followed, shot, and then posthumously vilified—something I don’t have to put energy into affirming in my white students, and something that no one had to affirm in Shepard Fairey.

But about making it more palatable for white audiences (who are specifically NOT the audience of Ebony, and it’s rare to pull off media that isn’t implicitly geared toward white audiences), I think that’s really dangerous and disrespectful. Black people need space to mourn and defend ourselves and take care of each other. I spend way too much time fretting over my brother and my students and my neighborhood and all the ways they are targeted for this kind of violence. Trying to make race less a part of the telling of Trayvon’s story is dishonest. It doesn’t even make sense. It isn’t a story that transcends race, because it isn’t a story that would happen to just any youth regardless of race. Racial profiling isn’t a universal experience, and neither is the picture the media tried to paint of him being a “thug.” None of that would have happened to a white kid, and pretending it does is an insult to what youth of color deal with.

If white people need to be eased into respecting, understanding, and listening to Black people’s lived experiences, then go ahead and do the work of easing them into it, but don’t expect us to tell our stories dishonestly to make them easier to swallow—we don’t have the luxury of toning shit down when we’re living it. It honestly scares me that we’ve internalized white people’s desire for us to whitewash and tone down our stories so much that we’re now doing it in our storytelling to each other in our own media.

I’m kind of unsure about the thing about Fairey’s Obama posters being iconic. Of course they are, but Obama means lots of complicated things for Black people that he doesn’t for white people. Again, not feelings and experiences that are going to transcend racial lines. You might have said more than you realized by choosing the word “iconic”—these are more than icons to Black people. (ETA: I’m pretty grumpy about Obama personally, but again, it’s way more complicated than an icon can be and I can understand Black people who support him for equally complicated reasons.)

And it’s specifically because of Fairey’s race politics (or lack thereof) that I don’t respect him as an artist. You can read a whole lot more on Fairey’s exploitation of people of color’s art and histories here: http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

Federal agents and DEA just came through my neighborhood and arrested over 100 people, almost all black men, including some I know. Yale and its real estate interests are literally demolishing Black kids’ playgrounds and Black families’ houses to make condos. My students are at the point in the school year where they’re realizing just how much they’ve been denied by the school system and learning how to point out the whitewashing of their textbooks (well, if we had the money for textbooks). This is the shit I’m losing sleep over. I can’t guarantee my students that they will be safe from racial violence, since many of them have experienced it already, or that our school will value their lived experiences as young people of color, but I’m at least not going to be dishonest with them and pretend we’re not talking about race when we are, that we’re not talking about violence when we are, or that we need to put anything on hold for white people’s idea of what’s polite and palatable and slowed down enough. Our shit is way too urgent for that.

teenboystuff replied to your post: got into an argument with my parents about referring to black americans as a group called the ‘black community’ I was wondering if you know of resources about why or why not this would be a racist assignation. the context was in referring to voter demographics and I got fed up with them referring to black obama supporters as ‘the black community.’ in lieu of resources, maybe just an opinion?

This isn’t a problem specific to the black community (it works here because it’s not a generalization!)—folks are just so general about everything. They want to lump women together, men together, gay people together and speak for all of them.

Okay, sure. But we are talking about generalizations made about a group of people oppressed by race. I could also argue it’s unfair to make generalizations about cats or sandwiches or whatever, but that is beside the point right now.

The point was the way black people are constructed as being two dimensional—same class, same appearance, same interests, same intelligence level (or assumed lack thereof), same influences, and in this case same political opinion. Look at the lack of dimension black people are allowed on TV or in the news, look how many stories are told about black people in popular music, look how black characters are developed in books. Look at racial profiling and the prison industry. Look at neighborhood segregation. Hell, you should (hopefully) flinch when black people are confused for one another for no reason beyond them each being “the black one.”

So yes, you are correct that many groups of people are lumped together without basis. But that really doesn’t matter right now, because we are talking about a specific effect of a specific oppression, one that non-black men, non-black women, non-black gay people, non-black anybody do not deal with, so those other groups are really not relevant here. It’s not just a coincidence that this happens.

Audre Lorde (via unapproachableblackchicks)

One of my students decided we should both read Native Son. I finally finished it this weekend. This is exactly what the entire book makes me think about, particularly how black men are capable of victimizing other black people in order to assert their masculinity, out of the fear of emasculation.

(via strugglingtobeheard)

I guess around the same time as white Occupiers were outraged about a white unemployment rate that is high but still less than half the black unemployment rate i.e. never.

I’m going through labor statistics and making posters. Ready to blow up some one dimensional bullshit.

bell hooks (via hiphopcheerleader)

Exactly what I’m thinking about / trying to put together / some time going to write about

(via strugglingtobeheard)

I want to demand bigger, but I am not Trayvon’s family. But I am a big sister and cousin and teacher and neighbor. Hopefully I will never be the family of the next Trayvon.

But would this be justice? Is that all we mean when we demand justice? Of course that isn’t all, or shouldn’t be, but would a prison sentence be justice enough for us to settle for? Or can we keep demanding bigger, unattainably big conceptions of justice?

Saturday night thoughts / why I haven’t yet said much about Trayvon / what I’m wrapping my head around eventually

queerandpresentdanger:

In Secret Documents, Anti-Gay Marriage Group Looked To Divide Gays, Blacks

cognitivedissonance:

Who’s shocked? National Organization for Marriage (NOM) sought to continue “fanning hostility” and aimed to “sideswipe Obama” by finding “attractive black…

I know this is old news in internet time but I’ve been working a lot this week and writing nothing. So basically Human Rights Campaign announced finding these documents that this anti-gay marriage was trying to divide black people and gay people (pick sides, y’all! one or the other) around marriage equality bills and such. But by being the ones to break this story, HRC is able to make it look like they weren’t also actively doing the same thing. I don’t know anything about NOM really, so I don’t know if I’ve ever seen or heard this kind of shit out of them. But I have seen and heard this exact shit out of HRC and other mainstream gay marriage activists. They’re doing the same damage, if not more by pushing gay rights in a distinctly anti-black direction. And they’re doing it based on glaringly false statistics and racist stereotypes.

I hate this where two people do the same thing, maybe from different angles but essentially the same thing, and then one runs off and tells Mommy on the other one as though they aren’t both guilty. So both HRC and NOM are anti-black and can easily erase and vilify black people? Big news. If HRC is so much better than using anti-black divide and conquer tactics, they need to step up and prove it because that’s way too much of what I’ve seen out of them.

so-treu:

jonesydaking:

baddominicana:

so-treu:

chocolatecoatedraindrops:

so-treu:

everyone is like “omg nicki is ruining music” but she’s like, no worse of a rapper than big sean or fucking tyga.

yet they’re hip hop’s next generation. right.

I think she is worst than Big Sean or Tyga, because at least they’re still doing rap music. Nicki is blatantly selling out right in front of our faces

what the fuck does selling out even mean

this. and how are those dudes NOT selling out.

hello anti-black misogyny!

Selling out is when you say something like “But im still hood Hollywood couldn’t change me”, But now you making songs like Starships and where Pink and Green wigs 

i don’t think you understand how the music industry and capitalism works.

[I deleted a gif because I hate them always. Sorry.]

Why are neon wigs automatically signs of selling out? Usually black girls who wear weird colors in their hair or weird haircuts are labelled ghetto; of course when white girls do it, it’s edgy or hip. I was just at the hair store and it was full of neon wigs and weaves. I am dyeing a chunk of my hair blue as I type.

Most of mainstream hip-hop is based on imagery far more than actual life experience. If you can tell a story, you tell it, regardless of whether it’s actually yours. Rick Ross was a CO who stole the name of the black man scapegoated as solely responsible for the crack epidemic. Lauryn Hill was in Jack & Jill. Kanye’s mom was a college professor, as is Talib Kweli’s dad. Jay-Z took the name of an older rapper he was confused with. Lots of commercial rappers admit to mixing their own stories with those of people around them, or telling stories to represent other people.

I have been a hip-hop nerd all my life but really don’t care how authentic people’s individual stories are if they’re honest about it and doing what they can to represent their communities’ stories. Like making storytelling about more than just yourself as an individual and more about your community or black people in general.

However, of course the music industry doesn’t want to put up rappers as our griots. That might be way too empowering for black people. So the focus stays on individual stories and exaggerated hardcoreness. But I would like to see more rappers take on the role of griot and tell stories that need to be told; many do.

The other thing here that irks me is this idea that black women shouldn’t be eccentric. I don’t like Nicki much as a rapper, but I really appreciate anyone who can make space for black girls to be weird. I could have probably felt better about myself as a scrawny weird little black girl in neon clothes if I’d had more examples around of that being okay, so I totally appreciate that. And now working with teenagers, I can see many of my students who are goofy energetic eccentric noisy bad-ass black and latina girls who appreciate having an example of someone who is loud and sexy and gross and weird and doesn’t give a fuck all at the same time. Especially since society tells them that whatever of those things they try to be, they’re wrong.

Maybe it’s because I come from a family of eccentric creative black people (jazz musician, classical musician, journalists, couple of painters, creative writers, plus my grandma performing Shakespeare monologues from memory at the dinner table), but I fight hard for black people being able to be weird and goofy and creative. And we have a long history of being creative and weird and supporting individuality, and I want to see the cultures that we make, such as hip-hop, support that.

Plus, white punk and white pop have never had anything on Screamin Jay Hawkins or Little Richard or Mellie Mel, so anyone who thinks we’re ripping off white cultures or selling out by being our weird selves is wrong.

newwavefeminism:

things are never as simple as we make it seem. this is a conversation that is constantly being had. I even remember LGBT activsts who were of color expressing frustration that the campaigns that they worked on NEVER went to reach out and include communities of color. Even when the issue was constantly being brought up.

Like when prop-8 activists were organizing against the measure, very little attention was given to communities of color, all the money time and energy was spent educating and reaching out to everyone else. But then when the polls came back and it turned out that a significant amount of POC voted for it, everyone was calling to declare all POC hypocrites. When privilege is that institutional and invisible, it becomes “lets hold these communities that we deliberately held resources from as the poster child of bigotry!”

I really like all this about communities of color hanging on to queer people for the sake of community; I’ve seen the same thing happen plenty of times. Which is part of why I get extra mad when white queers wanna tell me their friends are all white because POC are so homophobic. It’s just fucking false.

BUT! I remember after Prop 8 passed, and white LGBT groups like HRC were blaming black people for voting for it. And it turned out later that 1) HRC never really organized in black areas, like you said above, and 2) the numbers were really flawed. Black people voted for Prop 8 in roughly the same numbers as other racial groups. The stronger correlation was not any one race voting for it, but active churchgoers voting for it; black people have higher rates of being active in a church. Amongst churchgoers, black people voted for it at lower rates.

The other thing that mainstream LGBT groups failed to mention is that even if all the black voters in California turned out to vote and they all voted in favor of Prop 8, there wouldn’t be enough of them to change the direction of the vote. Black people alone couldn’t account for anything near a victory for Prop 8—again assuming all black people voted for it, when actually 58% did.

California also has a huge black prison population, who can’t vote, and a huge black population on parole, who also can’t vote. So among black adults, 7.6% are disenfranchised based on felonies.

So in conclusion, everything is always complicated. But seeing the rhetoric around this as it happened and the completely faulty logic blaming black people was a turning point in how much I felt I could trust white LGBT groups and organizing, even when they swear we’re on the same side.

howtobeterrell:

How come our language (African American language)has 5 present tenses?

Where they do that at?

karnythia:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

poemsofthedead:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

liquornspice:

What I learned from tumblr/Native American studies classes: the only “invisible” Indians who matter are white ones. This anon msg was sent to Jal.

I like your blog but you always go to far with Black stuff. The statistics about Native women being abused do you think that includes you? Would you be targeted because your Native? No. You look Black and your not Native-passing. I think you waste to much energy trying to prove something that can never be proven because it does not exist. You should not cry you should focus on your experiences instead.

I want to break things.

Every sentence of what you just wrote was fucked up — from start to finish. And not just fucked up — disgusting too.

I agree.

I’m posting this here because I need Natives to see it. I don’t know if a Native person said it. I don’t at all. But I need EVERY pale-damn-near-white-passing-Native to see this, and I want to know how many people are going to shower love on Jalwhite and brutally attack this anon.

I will reblog all day and fucking wait.

As a pale Native, I will be the first to say that I BET it was a Native who sent it to her and this shit needs to stop. Everything about that message was wrong in every possible way and Natives need to back the fuck up with that shit.

Like I said, just gonna be reblogging this ALL DAY LONG. :D

I’m not even shocked anymore when I see anti-black stuff from other POC, especially when it is directed at Black NDN’s. Ugh, I want to hug her & beat them with statistics.

I’m not going to derail this to talk about myself, but it is precisely because people mistake me for (and therefore treat me as) any kind of person of color besides black, that I go extra hard for black women. “Going too far with Black stuff?” DOES NOT COMPUTE.