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Discussion Spotlights Vagaries of the Criminal Justice System and Media Complicity

NNPA NEWSWIRE — On a recent afternoon, a distinguished group of panelists spent almost two hours in a conversation exploring the Central Park Five case, the public furor, the effects on the defendants and particularly, the role local and nation media played in creating and driving the narrative. The panelists were participating in a monthly series called “What’s the Story? Criminal Justice and Local News” hosted by The Marshall Project. The discussions feature prominent Americans looking at how to create and disrupt narratives around criminal justice. The series is sponsored by the Public Welfare Foundation.

Published

5 years ago

August 20, 2019

Oakland Post

On a recent afternoon, a distinguished group of panelists spent almost two hours in a conversation exploring the Central Park Five case, the public furor, the effects on the defendants and particularly, the role local and nation media played in creating and driving the narrative. The panelists were participating in a monthly series called “What’s the Story? Criminal Justice and Local News” hosted by The Marshall Project. The discussions feature prominent Americans looking at how to create and disrupt narratives around criminal justice. The series is sponsored by the Public Welfare Foundation.

By Barrington M. Salmon, NNPA Newswire Contributing Writer
@bsalmondc

Ava DuVernay’s searing and powerful Netflix miniseries “When They See Us” has reignited a often rancorous debate about criminal justice, its deeply exploitative nature, the embedded systemic racism and who’s most affected.

As more than 25 million people watched the four-part series recently, America’s penal system came under intense scrutiny from supporters of the penal status quo, those seeking radical reform, and a growing number of critics who’re calling for abolition of the entire system.

In 1989, Yusef Salaam, 15, Kevin Richardson, 14, Korey Wise, 16, Antron McCray 15, and 14-year-old Raymond Santana, Jr. were falsely convicted of the brutal rape and assault of Trisha Emili, a white investment banker. The boys spent between seven and almost 14 years in prison.

Salaam, one of the Exonerated Five and a panelist who discussed the media’s role in the notorious Central Park Five case, said bluntly during the question-and-answer section that the criminal justice system must be abolished. He comes from a unique perspective, having spent seven years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

“The criminal justice system needs to be dismantled,” Salaam told a rapt audience at Google headquarters in downtown Washington, DC during the July 16 discussion. “The slave trade moved right into the criminal justice system which runs us down, jails us, kills us. The Central Park Five is one worm out of a can of worms … it definitely needs to be abolished.”

He is not alone.

All over the country, individuals, groups and organizations like Color of Change and BYP 100 Chicago are working for and demanding change; imagining a just, vociferously challenging the conventional wisdom around crime and punishment; organizing, mobilizing the public to vote for reformist district and state attorneys and voting out prosecutors like Anita Alvarez in Chicago and Robert McCullough, both who refused to prosecute the cops who killed Lauan McDonald in Chicago and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

What was soon very clear is what is already known: that the vast majority of the 2.3 million people entangled in the criminal justice system are Black and brown people and increasing numbers of non-white children and Black women. Although the United States comprises less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it has the dubious distinction of having 25 percent of the world’s people behind bars, well ahead of China, India and Russia. In addition, about 7 million formerly incarcerated individuals are under the control the prison system whether it’s probation, parole or some form of monitoring and surveillance.

The miniseries – which recently received 16 Emmy nominations – details the harrowing experience of these young boys’ childhoods which was snatched by an over-zealous district attorney, police investigators who played hard and fast with the rules and a relentless criminal justice system which has and continues to swallow up Black girls, boys, men and women. Spurred on by District Attorney Linda Fair stein, cops subjected the boys to between 14 and 30 hours of interrogation, pressure and manipulation, eventually coercing confessions from them. They were eventually exonerated for the crime in 2002 when Matias Reyes, a serial rapist, confessed and DNA evidence taken from the victim confirmed he was the assailant. The charges were completely vacated and in 2014, the five men were awarded $41 million from the city although city officials never admitted culpability.

“It was tremendously dangerous, devastating and overwhelming at the same time,” Salaam recalled. “400-plus articles were written in the first two weeks. I remember seeing video. Our innocence got little or no attention. It was a whisper. I remember hearing my mother ask if the rats could hear.”

“The damage was done to us. They pulled the fabric and left gaping holes.”

LynNell Hancock, a former New York Daily News reporter, said she feels mortified when she recalls what transpired.

“It’s really hard to see,” she said after watching a clip showing the skewed racist coverage and bloodlust on television and in the newspapers. “I feel overwhelmed with shame. Every time I see it, I wonder what it felt like for Yusef and his family.”

Hancock, director of the Spencer Fellowship for Education Journalism, a program that supports the work of mid-career journalists to study at Columbia and produce significant works of journalism on education topics, said she was transitioning from the Village Voice to the Daily News when the story broke and watched as editors and reporters competed to be a part of what became a huge story.

“Going to the Daily News was like going to another planet,” she recalled. “The Village Voice was a writer-driven newspaper. The Daily News was a hothouse with a lot of competitive, mostly white men, a lot of great reporters and intelligence. It was an editor-driven paper, very controlled from the top and they decided early one to embrace the narrative of the police.”

Salaam, a motivational speaker, activist and educator, said the detectives who investigated the rape and beating of the jogger made sure that he and the other four were set up to take the fall in a case that riveted and angered New York City’s primarily white residents.

“… Our only crime was that we were born Black and brown. In the US we are expendable and are supposed to be at the bottom. They abolished slavery but they had a loophole – prison,” he said. “In our jury pool and the judge, the bias (towards us) was coming through the lens of the media and the police department. The Manhattan North detectives who interrogated had to have been on the force for at least 20 years to be in that unit. These were individuals who should have known better, should have done better.”

Despite signing confessions, Salaam said there were glaring inconsistencies as well as the absence of physical, forensic and DNA evidence which the current climate would have easily uncovered.

“All kinds of inconsistencies were there,” Salaam explained. “If we had social media then, it (the case) would have been blown out the water. Social media would have brought the inconsistencies out.”

Salaam said had no idea when he picked up by police officers that his life was about to change in irreversible and irreparable ways.

“My mother said she was born in the Jim Crow south and told me never to talk to cops, to let them kick the door down,” he said wit a wry smile. “(But) as a 15-year-old, I thought I was old enough to talk to the cops. I thought I’d be home before my mom got home. But I ended up spending seven years in prison.”

“Corey wasn’t on the list but he went with his buddy and ended up serving 13 years. Yet in the whole midst of things, he became the magic piece that freed us. I bumped into members of the original Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. It informs how I teach children.”

Norris West, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s director of Strategic Communications and a former journalist with the Baltimore Sun and Toledo Blade, said he has seen several instances of police chiefs and departments creating a negative narrative to paint all Black men as criminals.

“I grew up in Philadelphia and Chief (Frank) Rizzo weeded Black cops out of his force,” West recalled. “He made Black men strip naked in the street. There was a climate created and a narrative advanced. He stripped away their humanity before removing their clothing. It didn’t happen in a vacuum. The media plays a part in this.”

“The media often paints with a broad brush. And more often than not, white people have a different way of looking and writing about Black people.”

Hancock said she is troubled that no one seems to have learned from the egregious miscarriage of justice.

“I thought the exoneration would cause a tsunami all up and down the ranks of newspapers and police departments etc.,” said Hancock, a reporter and writer specializing in education and child and family policy issues, who has taught journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism since 1993. “There has been no self-examination. I didn’t remember how young you guys were. It wasn’t primary but it should have been.”

“I know more about how false confessions happen.”

Hancock said as many as 40 percent of false confessions are from juveniles.

“You guys looked tall and looked like adults,” she said to Salaam. “Wilding had a life of its own in the media, in policy and academia. They began using kids’ names, there was the super-predator narrative and born out of this was a new breed of criminal juveniles and fear took over.”

Every single state in the country began passing draconian laws to imprison primarily Black children, trying teens and preteens as adults, Hancock said.

“Now, they know it’s been very damaging. It’s being rolled back but the damage is already done.”

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PRESS ROOM: Top Climate Organizations React to Trump’s Executive Orders Attacking Health, Environment, Climate and Clean Energy Jobs

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Published

1 week ago

January 31, 2025

Oakland Post

Voice concerns about the New EPA Administrator

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump wasted no time implementing the Project 2025 playbook. Within his first hours as the 47th President, he issued executive orders aimed at dismantling crucial climate, health, and economic protections, which could have dire consequences for the country and the environment. His actions of disservice to our communities on the first day of his presidency coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day which was meant for service and reflection. The policies introduced by President Trump, along with his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, stand in stark contrast to the spirit of Dr. King’s commitments to service others and improve society.

Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “The new administration has moved to undo hard-earned generational progress like Justice40 that was created to ensure every American has an opportunity to be healthy and thrive,” said Dr. Margo Browne, Senior Vice President of Justice and Equity, at Environmental Defense Fund. “These actions threaten the rights of tens of millions of Americans to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and use products free of toxic chemicals, particularly those people whose zip code or race add undue burdens.

We must stay focused. Leaders change, but our work remains the same. And we will do everything we can to uphold the progress made with our partners and allies and to uplift the people on the frontlines fighting for equity every day.” “As we enter into an era of weaponized phrases and issues, we must remember that environmental justice means that all people should have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment,” said Leslie Fields, Chief Federal Officer, WE ACT For Environmental Justice. “Trump’s day one acts – including rescissions of nearly 80 vital executive orders while adding dozens of new, anti-democratic orders – roll back popular policies that promote clean, renewable, and affordable energy. These actions also place vulnerable communities in even greater danger from pollution and the dire, real-time consequences of the climate crisis. In the face of these assaults, we will not stop pursuing justice.”

“The President of the United States is elected to lead and protect all Americans,” said Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club. “Donald Trump promised to be a president who fights for working families, but his bluster of action shows he’s fighting harder to protect corporate polluters and their profits, all at the expense of our health, our safety, and our jobs. The American people want cheaper energy bills, safe drinking water, and clean air. Donald Trump should listen and offer actual solutions instead of exploiting their pain for political gain while he further lines the pockets of the wealthiest instead of American workers.”

On the Confirmation of Lee Zeldin, 17th administrator of the EPA:

“Lee Zeldin’s confirmation as EPA administrator is a catastrophic blow to the health of Americans, the climate, and the economy,” said Margie Alt, Director, Climate Action Campaign. “Under Zeldin’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency will no longer protect the American people and our communities – it will protect polluters. Zeldin’s public statements and record make it clear he will implement Trump’s anti-science, anti-clean energy Project 2025 agenda, prioritizing the interests of oil and gas CEOs at the expense of the clean air, water, and energy that Americans overwhelmingly support and rely on. Americans deserve an EPA administrator who will prioritize the health and safety of families over polluter profits. Zeldin’s confirmation is a tragic failure for all Americans.”

“The new head of the EPA must ensure that neither he nor the President denies vulnerable communities their most basic rights—the right to breathe clean air, drink water free from poison, and live on land that does not make them sick,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, Executive Vice President, National Wildlife Federation. “Environmental Justice is not a privilege; it is the foundation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To neglect it is to abandon the people who need protection the most.” “Confirming a director who normalizes baseless conspiracies, while failing to earnestly accept the facts of climate change, is a threat to the health of everyone in the United States and especially the most vulnerable Justice 40 communities,” said KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director, Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Lee Zeldin is the antithesis of environment and climate justice. We are amid a climate crisis that demands a protector, not a big oil pawn.” Climate Action Campaign is a vibrant coalition of advocacy organizations working together to drive ambitious, durable federal action to cut carbon pollution, address the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and accelerate the transition to clean energy.

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2025 We Proclaim It

NNPA NEWSWIRE — In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand.

Published

1 week ago

January 31, 2025

Oakland Post

By Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead

Former Georgia Representative Julian Bond and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver once said that when Rosa Parks chose to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted, and everything changed.

A gear-shifting moment.

In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand. It happened in 1850, when Harriet Araminta Tubman, a year after her self-emancipation, chose to go back to Baltimore, Maryland, to help lead her niece and her niece’s two children to freedom. A gear shifted. It happened in 1770, when Crispus Attucks, a Black and Indigenous sailor and whaler, chose to get involved with the growing kerfuffle in Boston. In 1864, when the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops marched from Camp William Penn through the streets of Philadelphia on their way to fight, gear shifted.

When Mamie Till told them in 1955 to leave her son’s casket open so that the world could see what those white men had done to her son, a gear in the machinery of the universe shifted, it happened again in 1966 with Kwame Ture and Mukasa Dada’s declaration of Black Power after the “March Against Fear.” In 2014, after police officers killed unarmed Eric Garner in New York and unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Black people came together under the banner and hashtag of Black Lives Matter to march, protest, and demand change. Gears shift when we choose to fight, when we choose to stand up, and when we refuse to back down. The moral arc of the universe does not bend on its own toward justice, it bends because we push it and because we are willing to continue to do it until change does happen.

In 1926, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson—the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the son of formerly enslaved parents, a former sharecropper and miner, and the second Black person to receive a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University—sent out a press release announcing the first Negro History Week, a gear shifted. He chose February because the Black community was already celebrating the historic achievements on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (2/12) and Frederick Douglass (2/14). Dr. Woodson did not wait for the celebration of our history to be proclaimed, he proclaimed it. He did not wait for someone to permit him to celebrate what we had contributed to this country, he celebrated it. Dr. Woodson understood that Black parents had been teaching their children our history since we arrived in this country. Our stories and achievements had been carried by the wind and buried in the soil. It had been whispered as bedtime stories, spoken from the pulpits on Sunday mornings, and woven throughout our songs and poems of resistance and survival. America did not have to tell us who we were to this country; we told them.

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America did not have to tell us that we built this country, our fingerprints are etched into the stone. America does not have to proclaim Black History Month, we proclaim it. We live in the legacy of Dr. Woodson, and as we have done for 98 years, we will celebrate who we are and all that we have accomplished. We stand at the intersection of the past and the future; what we do at this moment will determine how the next gear shifts. The 2025 Black History Month theme is African Americans and Labor, which focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people and the transformational work that we have done throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. We are celebrating our visible labor—from the work we did back then to build the White House to the work we do right now to hold the White House accountable, from repairing the roads to teaching in our schools, from stocking shelves to packing and unloading trucks; from working in the federal government to our ongoing labor in the state and local offices—and, our invisible labor—from raising and teaching our children to caring for our aging family members, from finding ways to practice revolutionary self-care to finding ways to hope beyond hope in a country that frequently targets and terrorizes Black people. We bear witness to what it means to work hard every day and to get sick and tired of working so hard.

As the president of ASALH, one of the many legacy keepers of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, I am excited to proclaim and uplift the start of Black History Month 2025. I believe that ASALH is a lighthouse that you do not notice until you need it. When boats are caught in a storm or fog, they look for the lighthouse to help guide them safely back to the shore. We have been standing as a lighthouse proudly proclaiming the importance of Black History and helping people to understand that it is only through studying the quilted narrative of our historical journey that one can see the silences, blind spots, hypocrisies, and distortions of American history. We do not celebrate because we are given permission, we celebrate because we are the permission givers. We do not wait for Black History Month to be proclaimed, we proclaim it. We do not wait to be seen, we see ourselves. We do not have to be told the story of America because we are writing it, we are telling it, we are owning it, and we are pointing the way to it. We invite you to join us as we once again celebrate and center the incredible contributions that Black people have made to this beautiful and imperfect nation.

Dr. Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead is the 30^th person and the eighth woman to serve as the national president of ASALH. She is a professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and the host of the award-winning radio show “Today with Dr. Kaye” on WEAA, 88.9 FM. She is the author of the recently released “my mother’s tomorrow: dispatches from Baltimore’s Black Butterfly” and a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She lives in Baltimore with her family.

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Black Reaction to Trump DEI Blame on The Plane Crash

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet

Published

1 week ago

January 30, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

“We are dealing with a vicious adversary,” according to Rev. Al Sharpton, the head of the National Action Network speaking of President Donald Trump and his hate diatribe Thursday morning. President Trump blamed DEI, the Obama and Biden administrations along with former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg for the deadly midair crash over the Potomac last night. 67 people died after an accident between an American Airline Plane and an Army Helicopter. When asked why President Trump thought diversity had something to do with the crash, he said,” I have common sense and most people don’t.” Reverend Al, who is investigating the impact of the Trump anti-DEI efforts in retail believes Trump is “obsessed with race” and he is a “raw, insensitive, uncaring man.”

Former Secretary Buttigieg immediately went to social media making a statement saying, Trump should be leading, not lying.” Buttigieg also fact-checked Trump saying we grew Air Traffic Control and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.” Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) / X During Trump’s rant on DEI at the White House briefing room podium, he asserted, “the FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says, the FAA says, people with severe disabilities, the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in, and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so.” Trump went on to say the prior administrations felt those departments were “too white.”

According to reports FAA staffing has been an issue since Inauguration Day January 20, 2025. Also, Elon Musk, the head of the White House Office of Government Efficiency is reported to have asked the head of the FAA to resign. Musk FAA Ax Former Black Obama Administration Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx exclusively told this reporter after the Trump statements,” I would caution against any definitive conclusions until that work [investigation] is done by trained, experienced professionals.”

Foxx, who also worked as a transportation consultant in the Biden administration admonished the Trump address saying, “There is no sugar-coating the tragic midair collision that occurred last night. In my experience, safety has always been the number one focus of the Federal Aviation Administration.” Foxx says there is a safety mission to be completed after this tragedy. “There is a well-practiced root cause process that has been taken in the past. It should be used now with competent professionals. A comprehensive, fact-based investigation will answer the many questions we all have. It would also help guard against future accidents of this type,” according to the transportation expert.

Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet. When it comes to the president’s corrosive comments, reaction has been swift from the civil rights community. In a statement from the President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, “The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior.” Johnson told this reporter in a text message, “The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”

As Trump worked to distract with his words on DEI, the questions still abound as to what caused the deadly plane crash. Former Sec. Foxx, immediately following the fatal crash last night said. “My worst fear is that something happened with the avionics. I hope and expect that this is not the case. But most aircraft these days run in a form of GPS. Could a warning system have failed? But then, how can two systems fail? That leads to some even more grave concerns about interference with the systems. There are many other potential causes.”