Here be dragons.

Free screening of The House I Live In on March 23rd at The Point CDC in The Bronx.

Following the film will be a discussion about “Stop and Frisk” with representatives from NYCLU, The Bronx Defenders, VOCAL, and more.

Limited seats, please RSVP by email at rsvpbronx@thehouseilivein.org

[source]

*PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY*

At Night I Fly: Images from New Folsom: Most of the prisoners at New Folsom, a maximum-security prison in Sacramento, California, are serving life sentences, and they must cope on a daily basis not only with the crimes they committed but also with prison’s punishing isolation, hopelessness, and violence. To that end, participants in New Folsom’s Arts in Correction Facilitation program learn to express themselves through poetry readings, gospel choirs, playing musical instruments, and discussion groups. Survival, however, is a deeply personal process that each must chart for himself. Eschewing a simple narration of redemption, Wenzler assembles a complex portrait of prison life. At Night I Fly won the Swedish Guldbagge Award in 2011 for best documentary

Film screening with the director, Michel Wenzer (Three Poems), and the producer, Tobias Janson (The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975). Following the film there will be a panel discussion involving prison educators, activists, students, faculty, and the public.

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

7 – 9:30 PM
Tishman Auditorium, 66 W 12th Street
Free and open to the public.

This will be the second screening of this film in the US!

http://www.facebook.com/events/214628198675511/

Sponsored by The New School: Lang Office of Civic Engagement & Social Justice and the Office of Social Justice Initiatives

The Silent March to End Stop and Frisk

A REMINDER!

[No noise makers or signs on sticks!]

——-

Join Civil Rights, Faith, Labor and Community groups in a silent march against NYC’s “Stop and Frisk” Policy! On Father’s Day, let’s stand together to show that New Yorkers refuse to let our children be victimized by racial profiling.

Father’s Day
Sunday, June 17th - march begins at 3 pm

Assemble on West 110th St. between Central Park West/8th Ave. and Fifth Ave.

Enter the assembly area from the west or from the north, NOT from the east!
You can begin gathering as early as 1pm, but remember - the march starts at 3 pm!
Closest subway stops: Cathedral Parkway (110 St) on the B and C trains, Central Park North (110 St.) on the 2 and 3 trains.
Please check subway schedules for any changes.
Contingents are being assigned locations within the assembly area. Please check back here in a few days for details.

March route

The march begins at 110th St. and Fifth Ave.
We will march south on Fifth Ave. to 78th Street.
Mayor Bloomberg’s mansion is on 79th St., just east of Fifth Ave.

REMINDER: this will be a silent march for the entire route!

What to Bring

Wear comfortable walking shoes.
Put on sun screen and/or wear a hat, especially if it is a sunny day.
Carry a bottle of water.
Posters, signs, banners - but remember that you cannot use wooden or metal sticks!

What Not to Bring

Do not bring any noise makers or musical instruments!

In contrast to previous demonstrations, we will march in silence as an illustration of both the tragedy and serious threat that stop and frisk and other forms of racial profiling present to our society. The silent march was first used in 1917 by the NAACP—then just eight years old—to draw attention to race riots that tore through communities in East St. Louis, Illinois, and build national opposition to lynching.

Now, 95 years later, you can join us in powerful protest to help end this great injustice and begin rebuilding national opposition to racial profiling.

If you’re outraged that police, security guards and even community watch volunteers in so many neighborhoods continue to treat young people of color differently, or if you’re concerned for your children, or your neighbors’ and friends’ children, then channel these emotions into action by joining thousands in calling for an end to racial profiling and the abuse of New York’s stop and frisk laws.

Silence is a powerful force that, like other forms of non-violent protest, holds a mirror to the brutality of one’s opponents. On June 17, we will hold up a mirror to New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy. It is not only discriminatory, it actively seeks to humiliate innocent citizens—particularly African American and Latino men—and criminalize otherwise legal behavior.

http://www.silentmarchnyc.org/

ACLU: Stop And Frisk Fact Sheet

NYPD’s Over-reliance on Stop and Frisk

The NYPD stopped, questioned and/or frisked over 508,540 people in 2006, an increase from just 97,296 in 2002.
Even using “the most liberal assumptions” about the national average when it comes to the rate of the public’s contact with police officers, the Rand Corporation’s study notes, New York should have had “roughly 250,000 to 330,000 stops rather than the 500,000 stops actually recorded.”
Only 10 percent of stops led to summonses or arrests. The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers questioned and frisked by the NYPD were engaged in no criminal wrongdoing.
As compared to a 1999 study by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, which reported that police stopped nine people for each arrest they made, twice as many people now are being stopped for each arrest.

Disproportionate Stops of People of Color

89 percent of those stopped in 2006 were people of color. 55 percent of the stops were of black people – more than double their percentage of the population – and 30 percent were of Latinos.
Stops of whites, who number about 3.6 million according to recent census estimates, amounted to only 2.6 percent of the white population. By contrast, stops of blacks, who number about 2.2 million people, represented 21.1 percent of the entire black population.
Residents of Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct and Harlem’s 28th Precinct had a 30 to 36 percent chance of being stopped and questioned by police in 2006. Citywide, the average was about 6 percent.
A total of 2,756 cops filed 54 percent, or approximately 274,000, of all stop-and-frisk reports in 2006. Of that group, 15 percent, or about 413 officers, stopped no whites.

Disproportionate Outcomes of Stops for People of Color

In 2006, 21.5 blacks were stopped for each arrest of a black person as opposed to only 18.2 whites stopped for each white arrest.
Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects.
Whites were stopped on suspicion of possessing a weapon at a rate lower than their weapon-possession arrest rate. Blacks were stopped on suspicion of possessing a weapon at a rate greater than their weapon-possession arrest rate. These findings indicate that cops were more often unjustified in stopping black people on suspicion of having weapons.

Disproportionate Use of Force on People of Color

Police used force – i.e. handcuffing, frisking, drawing weapon, restraining – about 50 percent more often on blacks than on whites in 2006.
45 percent of blacks and Latinos who were stopped were also frisked, compared with only 29 percent of whites.

Sources Used:
Gardiner, Sean. “Frisk Management.” Village Voice, 11 December 2007.
NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Reports, 2006 and 2007.
Ridgeway, Greg. Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2007.

Click here to download a PDF copy of the fact sheet.

spamusubi Asks:

What's "Stop and Frisk"?

jalwhite Said:

I’m glad that you asked this question!

Stop and frisk is the practice by which a police officer initiates a stop of an individual on the street allegedly based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Stops and frisks do not reduce crime and occur at an alarming rate in communities of color, who often feel under siege and harassed by the police. [Source: Center for Constitutional Rights]

More often than not, “reasonable suspicion” is defined simply as being a person of color. According to the NYPD’s statistics, this practice is predominately used on Black and Latin@ people and 9 out of 10 times those people are found to be 100% innocent of any crime. [Source: ACLU]

The threat of police searches and altercations loom constantly over Black and Latin@ folks and as a result makes us unsafe in our own neighborhoods.

Facts:

Articles on the topic:

Why Stop and Frisk must be stopped!

END STOP AND FRISK
SILENT MARCH AGAINST RACIAL PROFILING
           Sunday, June 17, 2012, 1pm
             (March steps off at 3pm)
          110th Street east of 5th Ave
JOIN CIVIL RIGHTS, FAITH, LABOR, AND COMMUNITY GROUPS IN A SILENT MARCH AGAINST NYC’S “STOP AND FRISK” POLICY! ON FATHER’S DAY, LET’S STAND TOGETHER TO SHOW THAT NEW YORKERS REFUSE TO LET OUR CHILDREN BE VICTIMIZED BY RACIAL PROFILING.
     WWW.SILENTMARCHNYC.ORG

SPREAD WIDELY!

               END STOP AND FRISK

SILENT MARCH AGAINST RACIAL PROFILING

           Sunday, June 17, 2012, 1pm

             (March steps off at 3pm)

          110th Street east of 5th Ave

JOIN CIVIL RIGHTS, FAITH, LABOR, AND COMMUNITY GROUPS IN A SILENT MARCH AGAINST NYC’S “STOP AND FRISK” POLICY! ON FATHER’S DAY, LET’S STAND TOGETHER TO SHOW THAT NEW YORKERS REFUSE TO LET OUR CHILDREN BE VICTIMIZED BY RACIAL PROFILING.

     WWW.SILENTMARCHNYC.ORG

SPREAD WIDELY!

STUDY: Brooklyn experiencing highest influx of white people in the U.S.

According to a recent look at Census data, more white people are moving to Brooklyn than any other area in the country.

Executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Michael Petrilli set out to find which neighborhoods where gentrifying (experiencing an influx of people with higher incomes into a lower income area) at the highest rate. However, since income data was not yet available for the year 2010 from the Census bureau so Petrilli measured it by the share of white people in the populations of different zip codes instead.

What he found was that four of the country’s 25 zip codes with the highest increase in white share of the population from 2000 to 2010 are in Brooklyn. Basically that means, white people are moving to those areas in Brooklyn at a faster rate than anywhere else in the U.S.

The four Brooklyn zip codes that saw the highest influxes of white people, in order, 11205 (Fort Greene), 11205 (East Williamsburg), 11238 (Prospect Heights), and 11237 (Bedstuy).

Other areas of the country that made the list include Columbia, SC; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Chattanooga, TN; and Portland, OR.

Petrilli acknowledged that this isn’t an entirely scientific study.

“I looked at zip codes (which isn’t perfect, because boundaries can change) and places with a large increase in the white share of the population (which isn’t perfect, because you’d really want to look at changes in income levels, but those data aren’t available yet for 2010),” he wrote.

But it at least provides a quick reference point for the ever-changing make-up of our country’s cities and population.

Quit it ya’ll

“What is Remembered: Life Story Approaches in Human Rights Contexts”

Columbia Center for Oral History 2012 Summer institute
“What is Remembered: Life Story Approaches in Human Rights Contexts”

MONDAY JUNE 4 — “ON TORTURE: A PUBLIC INTERVIEW WITH JAMEEL JAFFER”

Monday June 4, 6:00-8:00pm. Renown interviewer Ronald Grele interviews human rights and civil liberties attorney Jameel Jaffer in “On Torture: A Public Interview with Jameel Jaffer”

LOCATION: Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Annex, Morningside Heights Campus . Google Map, Campus Map.

Come watch the director emeritus of the Columbia Center for Oral History and one of the primary interviewers for the Rule of Law Oral History Project, Ronald Grele, interview human rights and civil liberties attorney and the Director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, Jameel Jaffer, about his litigating of ACLU v. Department of Defense, a FOIA lawsuit seeking records relating to the Bush administration’s torture program, his serving as a human rights monitor for the military commissions at Guantánamo, and his book, Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. MORE INFO HERE

TUESDAY JUNE 5 — “VIOLENCE AGAINST DISABLED WOMEN IN NEPAL”

Tuesday June 5, 4:15-5:30pm. Recipient of Australian Leadership Awards Scholarship and Lecturer at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, Neeti Khanal, will give a presentation focused on her recent work, entitled, “Violence Against Disabled Women in Nepal”

LOCATION: Columbia University, 203 Butler Library, Morningside Heights Campus. Campus Map.

Come listen to Neetie Khanal, Lecturer at the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Tribhuvan University in Nepal and recipient of Australian Leadership Awards Scholarship, give a compelling presentation focused on her recent work, entitled, “Violence Against Disabled Women in Nepal” as well as her experiences interviewing disabled women survivors of violence. Her past work includes an examination of Maoist women’s experience in armed conflict in Nepal. MORE INFO HERE.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 6 — “EXAMING THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE IN HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY, DOCUMENTATION AND JUSTICE- SEEKING”

Wednesday June 6, 6:00-8:00pm. Pamela Graham, Ramazan Aras, Michelle Brané, Sandra Coliver and Lisa Magarrell conduct a panel discussion “Examining the Role of Narrative in Human Rights Advocacy, Documentation and Justice- Seeking”

LOCATION: Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Annex, Morningside Heights Campus . Google Map, Campus Map.

Come participate in a panel discussion featuring Pamela Graham, Ramazan Aras, Michelle Brané, Sandra Coliver and Lisa Magarrell on the ethical, political and legal implications of using narrative, testimony and oral history in human rights contexts. Each panelist will explore how narrative connects informal and formal justice- seeking initiatives, and questions surrounding the use of narrative in pursuit of legal or political justice. MORE INFO HERE.

MONDAY JUNE 11 — “MIGRANT MUSIC IN ROME: THE NEW FOLK SOUNDS OF THE POSTCOLONIAL METROPOLIS”

Monday June 11, 5:00-7:00pm. Renown Oral historian and musicologist Alessandro Portelli will discuss his current fieldwork project “Migrant Music in Rome: The New Folk Sounds of the Postcolonial Metropolis”

LOCATION: Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Annex, Morningside Heights Campus. Google Map, Campus Map.

Come join us for an incredible public presentation by renowned oral historian and musicologist Alessandro Portelli about his current fieldwork project of collecting the music in Rome brought by multicultural migrants during the past 20 years as he notes on how it has changed the ethnic, linguistic and cultural make-up of postcolonial Italy.

TUESDAY JUNE 12 — “INTERPRETIVE LISTENING: DECONSTRUCTING THE LANGUAGE OF TESTIMONY”

Tuesday June 12, 7:00-9:00pm. Independent documentary filmmaker and Voices of Rwanda founder Taylor Krauss will discuss his work recording and preserving testimonies of Rwandans, in “Interpretive Listening: Deconstructing the Language of Testimony”

LOCATION: Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Annex, Morningside Heights Campus. Google Map, Campus Map.

Come be a part of a public presentation by independent documentary filmmaker and Voices of Rwanda founder Taylor Krauss as he discusses his work recording and preserving testimonies of Rwandans, ensuring that their stories inform the world about genocide and inspire a global sense of responsibility to prevent human rights atrocities.