Death of a Hero

I don't usually cover the local murder beat for various reasons. However, the visual presentation of the Timothy Barbour vigil by freelance photgrapher Abdul Sharif was particularly moving. Barbour, 26, a father of three, was shot and killed last Saturday when he intervened to stop a fight on a TARC bus.

The C-J's Jessie Halladay reported yesterday that TARC officials are paying for Barbour's funeral. On Sunday, police arrested a suspect, 22-year-old Apollo Avery on charges of murder, first-degree assault and several counts of wanton endangerment.

From JPG Mag:

What would you do if you were headed home on the bus after a hard day of work and you noticed a man using foul language and becoming physically aggressive towards a group of teenage girls? Would you sit back and do nothing while letting the situation continue? Or would you step up and put a stop to the harassment you see taking place?...

Timothy's actions more than likely saved the life of one if not all of the teenage girls involved in that heated argument. But, unfortunately, his heroic actions led to the end of his own life.

The question from Sharif's photo essay is on the forefront of many minds. The fact that Barbour's heroism was met with a bullet secures and augments for many the Hobbesian feeling of helplessness and lawlessness in pockets of West Louisville. Better to mind your own business, lock your doors, and look the other way. Leave the death and the dying to the police, the media and the activists.

I see it different.

The Barbour shooting further illustrates there's a choice to be made in black communities locked in the forgotten American inner-city. It is not a simple one, but it is there nonetheless. It is a choice Barbour made with his life. His sacrifice is an activism that is priceless. We can let the drugs, the criminals, or 'the Game' consume our neighborhoods or we can fight back. The choice is staring us in the face.

ATL's 'Soulja Girl': "Hip-Hop made me do it"

ATL police are looking for 'Soulja Girl', the young Atlantan who has gained viral video infamy for harassing and threatening an elderly woman. Once they find this crazy bee-yatch, I guarantee her defense will be: "Hip-hop made me do it".

After watching this video, I'm disgusted. Every stereotype of the hip-hop generation -- young, brainless, profane, gaudy -- versus the civil rights generation is on display. Worse than her inexcusable behavior are the dozens of people who sat by and did nothing. As Edmund Burke stated: “The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” Sadly, incidents by these type of social terrorists occur more often than not.



UPDATE:

She's been found and arrested (thank you white Jesus!).

"According to Sandra Rose, 'Soulja Girl's' family called into a local Atlanta radio station V-103 to let everyone know that “Soulja Girl” is a good woman but is unfortunately suffering from bipolar disorder and has not been taking her meds."

Break out the violins. She's bipolar, so what!?! Let that be your grandmother she was going off on. By having medication and not taking it she's responsible.

Ready, Set, Obama

Barack's in Louisville today, which means downtown Louisville will be a cluster &$#% from 3pm til 8pm. Sorry Obamaniacs, he'll probably lose the Bluegrass to Hilary. Politically KY is old, white and uneducated --- her base!

Though he's already got two Bluegrass superdelegates (Rep. John Yarmuth and Rep. Ben Chandler), Hilary's got three. KY Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo endorsed Barack over the weekend, but sorry again Obamaniacs, Mongiardo is not a superdelegate. That would be our commander-in-hick, Gov. Steve Beshear, who is keeping up the Kentucky tradition of staying neutral.

Anyway, this essay on B. Hussein Obama in Esquire by Charles P. Pierce is a must read. My favorite line thus far: The war in Iraq is the powerful bastard child of the Iran-Contra scandal, which went unpunished. Zing!

Pierce writes with such clarity and wit and cynicism, this is why I write. The essay looks at Barack's entry into the American public scene as the so-called hope-monger and the context of the crumbling American empire. I'd say it is one of the best pieces on Barack thus far.

From Esquire:

“Yet, even as we speak,” Obama said, “there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spinmasters and the negative-ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America.”

(A month later, at the Republican convention, the cynic saw fat little delegates and their fat little wives wearing Purple Heart Band-Aids to mock John Kerry’s war wounds. He saw the Swift Boat ads. The country bought it. The country moved on.)

“There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America, there’s the United States of America.”

(Three months later, the cynic watched black voters be systematically disenfranchised in key precincts all over the country. There was no anger. There were no demonstrations. There was no great rising in defense of a fundamental right. There was, instead, nothing. The country bought it. The country moved on.)

“The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans and blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states. We are all of us one people, all of us defending the United States of America.”

(Over the next several months, the cynic watched as the Republicans masterfully used the threat of gay people getting married to gin up turnout where they needed it the most. It was a creepy, shabby election that wasn’t about anything that was really happening in the country. The country bought it. The country moved on.)

Urban decay in West Louisville

Since the city-county merger of 2003, Louisville has been eager to join the fraternity of medium sized American cities. Key to that has been the redevelopment of vital downtown locations. Creating Waterfront Park and 4th Street Live!, demolishing the Clarksdale housing projects being demolished to create Liberty Green, has all been a movement to attract suburbanites and urban professionals back into the heart of the city.

The new Louisville we're trying to become is a city incomplete, still under construction. But one where there's an ongoing debate about what to do with I-64 and a future downtown stadium. And let's not forget the 'Possibility City' campaign.

There's another story, however. It's a part of the Louisville-Jefferson County merger either forgotten by city fathers and mothers or something that was never included in the original plan.

And freelance photographer Abdul Sharif, is committed to telling that side of the story.

"For many people, the scenes of boarded up houses and vacant graffiti ridden businesses in the West End have become a norm," Sharif said in an interview with The SOULution. "I believe that when something so detrimental starts to become so normal, people start to become desensitized to it." Introduced to photography by his 9th grade Spanish teacher when he attended Shawnee High School, Sharif believes accentuating the problem of decay with visual documents will re-awaken the entire city to what some of Louisville’s urban areas truly look like.

"I only hope that my photos can bring about awareness to some of the social, and economic issues that are facing certain urban areas in the city of Louisville."

Sharif's photo essay @ JPG Magazine:

These photos represent a community in need. A community that is headed on a downward spiral. True, not all homes in West Louisville are boarded-up. But to ignore the areas of West Louisville that are decaying, would be like a teacher turning his back on one of his student that cannot read because he or she has nine other students that can.

Check out Abdul Sharif's work here, here and here.

Hillary's white appeal

The black blogosphere is livid about Hilary Clinton's USA Today interview.

Even though Barack is leading in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won and -- according to ABC News -- superdelegates, his appeal isn't broad enough.

"Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." - Sen. Hilary Clinton

As dnA from Jack&JillPolitics said, I guess the rest of us are sitting on the porch eating watermelon and plucking banjos.

Hilary's latest yardstick is no subtle dog whistle like her husbands, "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina" comment. This is a giant race-baiting bullhorn. Mike Barnicle got it right, Race Is All The Clintons Have Left.

From The Huffington Post:

Now, faced with a mathematical mountain climb that even Stephen Hawking could not ascend, the Clintons -- and it is indeed both of them -- are just about to paste a bumper sticker on the rear of the collapsing vehicle that carries her campaign. It reads: VOTE WHITE.

I'm not surprised. The history of the Black Freedom Struggle is never aligned permanently with any political party no matter how long voting trends last. Democrats return to their Dixiecrat roots when it fits their electoral needs. Here's the problem, Sen. Clinton (supporters).

From Steve M:

According to CNN's 1996 exit poll, Bill Clinton lost the white vote (Dole 46%, Clinton 43%, Perot 9%). He lost the white male vote by an even larger margin (Dole 49%, Clinton 38%, Perot 11%). And he lost gun owners badly (Dole 51%, Clinton 38%, Perot 10%). However, Clinton won the popular vote overall

In 2000 -- when Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes -- he lost white males to Bush by a whopping 60%-36%, according to CNN's exit poll. He lost men overall 53%-42%. He lost whites overall 54%-42%.

For the past forty years it has been common knowledge in American politics that Democrats cannot win the presidency without the black vote. Hilary's numbers have been Reaganesque. She's alienated that vote further. For a new generation of black voters with no agenda ties to the Democratic Party or the Clinton years, this is damning.

What Use is a Black President?

Though Barack Obama's electoral support among black voters is cosseted between 85-90%, legitimate criticisms of him in the black public sphere is more common than one might think.

These opinions are muted for a variety of reasons. The avalanche of Obamania among black supporters -- which I participate in at times -- is a leading cause. It may have buried Tavis Smiley. Being the single greatest "positive" black male role model in U.S. history has been the black bourgeoisie's dream on how to crash the political glass ceiling. Watching Barack Obama can warm the heart of even the most racially paranoid black cynic.

Still, we rarely if ever hear critiques of Barack mainly because of the limited space afforded to only a handful of black thinkers. With fewer participants being solicited outside the usual punditry, views become easily sliced. If you criticize Barack, you must either support Hillary Clinton, John McCain or be a Barack hater. Those offering meaningful observations about the pitfalls of an Obama Presidency are generally unknown to the public.

One of my favorite Obama critics is political scientist Michael C. Dawson, author of the integral book, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary Political Ideologies. Dawson has written several stinging pieces on Barack and the black vote (see: He's Black and We're Proud), but his most recent article for The Root, End Games: How he black pawns got pushed off the board, should raise as many questions as it does eyebrows.

From The Root:

"Sen. Obama is playing his own brand of risky politics. As he works to maintain white support, he is forgetting his black base. Just a week ago he urged voters to "respect" a New York judge's racist verdict allowing the police killers of Sean Bell to walk. His message was not unlike Booker T. Washington's admonishment to black Atlantans a century ago to respect the law in the face of a deadly pogrom. Black rights were sacrificed in the name of electoral expediency. And Obama is resorting to the same expediency now...

Obama did not find it necessary to condemn a justice system that ­still does not punish agents of the state who kill black men and women whose only crime is being black. (In Chicago we have had black women shot down in the same manner as Sean Bell.) I will not respect a verdict that once again demonstrates, all too clearly, the continued lack of full citizenship rights for black people in this country.

Like Booker T. Washington a century earlier, Obama chose to emphasize the need to be "calm" over expressing outrage at yet another deadly taking of black life. He, too, has taken the electorally "safe" road."

I've defended Barack when he's faced this type of criticism. No, I don't posit he's a radical in hiding (i.e. The Spook Who Sat by the Door). I recognize he's running for U.S. President, not Black Panther Party Chairman. We want him to deliver some militant quote because so much of black politics and leadership is based upon crucifying someone on a cross of rhetorical martyrdom. Whomever plays the dozens with white America the best is awarded with fond memories, usually posthumously.

Think about all the people who cheered Malcolm X during his auditorium speeches but never joined or volunteered to help his group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). As The Last Poets rhymed, "they loved to hear Malcolm rap but they didn't love Malcolm."

It is paramount that Barack is pushed on urban policy issues more forcefully by black voters and scholars. Constituencies are obligated to do more than simply vote in the 90 percentile for a candidate, believing his or her office seat will equal liberation.

A review of the rise of black mayors showed us the pitfalls of relying on politicians to single-handedly fix collective, systemic, and behavioral problems. After hurricane Katrina, Jerry G. Watts wrote an open letter, "What Use Are Black Mayors?" that highlighted those false hopes.

From The Black Commentator:

"First and foremost, we need to bring under scrutiny all of those analytical paradigms that presume that blacks (always imagined as a collective horde) collectively gain political inclusion or incorporation when black elites enter the ranks of a city’s governing elite...

Part of the problem is that too many black political scientists continue to treat black elected officials as if they are part of an insurgent political formation. This is nonsense. Regardless of their rhetoric, black elected officials are, in varying degrees, part of the political establishment."

This is not about hating on Barack. It is about raising awareness to the importance of maneuvering pieces in the chess game known as American politics. I'm supporting Barack because he's a valuable piece on the board. No piece is worth losing the whole game. And as Dawson suggests, "The criticism of Senator Obama must continue when he takes positions that are detrimental to progressive causes and the black community."

Either play or get played.

Video of Philly police beatings

Message: Philly PD ain't nothing to %@#$ with. Though fifteen officers have been taken off the street as a result of the videotape, this is unsettling to say the least.



From CNN:

An internal investigation is under way into the videotaped beatings of three men by several Philadelphia police officers, according to Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

The video, shot by WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, shows at least a dozen police officers pulling the men -- who were suspected to have been involved in a shooting -- out of a car after a vehicle chase Monday night.

At least eight officers are seen either kicking, punching or striking the suspects with batons while the men lie restrained on the ground.

The atmosphere in Philadelphia is a perfect storm for this type of brutality. The murder rate and brazen criminal activity puts citizens on pins and needles. As a result we often support an unchecked police force. Add to that a slain police officer, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinsk, was shot and killed last weekend.

Dumbing it down in L'Stylz Magazine

When L'Stylz Magazine publisher Chekata Tinsley and its editor-in-chief, Afrykah WubSauda, approached me about writing a column for their hair magazine, I hesitated.

If you haven't noticed, I'm not the most commercial friendly writer in town.

Tinsley and WubSauda, however, are anything but shallow merchants. Their partnership at L'Stylz has combined Tinsley's entrepreneurship with WubSauda's activism to create one of Louisville's most promising publications.

Flip past the glitter and you'll find a quarterly magazine that has a tidy layout, crisp photography and burgeoning features on African-American topics. Sure there are a few hackneyed editorials, but overall it's a breath of fresh air in the smog of African-American journalism in Louisville.

It already rivals The Louisville Defender, which has tumbled clumsily from a once proud newspaper to a clerical photo gallery.

Besides Dr. Ricky L. Jones' monthly LEO column, Betty Baye's weekly C-J column, and Javacia Harris' blogs at Velocity, there are few options for readers seeking black folk in print. Even less who own and operate their own publication.

Anyway, I decided there's always a need -- even if just to be obnoxious -- to invade pop culture forums. So for their Derby issue L'Stylz collaborated with the conductor of the ol' SOULution to unleash the "Dumb it Down" column.

Excerpts below:

"...dumb it down.

We hear it so often that it has become social gospel. It's a position that believes nuanced conversation, opaque ideas, and complex words are beyond comprehension for the masses. As a writer I've encountered several editors from various sorts of publications who insist readers shrink from thorny words.

Therefore, writers must boil all prose down to a linguistic penury that befits kindergarteners. Others advocate this position thinking you're afraid, and for the sake of sparing your ego the embarrassing task of learning something new in your journey from womb to tomb, we shall dumb it down.

Both positions, I believe, are the true measure of an elitist. One insists you are too stupid to learn, the other posits you are a coward. Here are the scholarly morsels, dumbass..."

Of course I addressed hip-hop:

"...I find it troubling that hip-hop has partnered with anti-intellectualism when there's richness in the pulpits of many influential bases of the culture. Among many enthusiasts, the willingness to trade lyrical excellence and content for monetary reward is shameful.

As Jay-Z rhymed in "Moment of Clarity", so succinctly, "I dumb down for my audience, and double my dollars."

At the grassroots level many hip-hop representatives eclipse their more enlightened backgrounds to present audiences with a crasser version. In my hometown of Louisville, KY, for example, DJ E-Feezy (Eric Sanders), who deejays the most popular hip-hop show on WGZB-B96.5, from 7 p.m. to midnight five nights a week, has an unfettered pulpit of influence. Yet one night while discussing the presidential campaign Sanders said, "I don't like to talk politics on my show."

That's odd, considering Sanders graduated from college with an undergraduate political science degree. It was good enough to study Plato, Rousseau, Locke and Mann, for four years but forbidden to disclose to a mass audience. Maybe it won't sell, but to say hip-hop audiences can't understand complexity is contrary to hip-the work of its iconic figures and founders, who increased the English language's ability to deliver political, cultural and social messages cryptically. If anyone has ever listened to a Wu-Tang record, can they honestly argue the hip-hop audience was bred upon simplified lyrics and ideas?"

To order a copy, contact L'Stylz here.

Does Eight Belles matter more than Kenneth Chandler?

I'm sorry, I care more about a human than a horse.

From MSNBC via WLKY-32:

"[Louisville] Metro Police are investigating a fatal accident involving an off-duty officer and a man on a bicycle.

The collision happened around 5:15 a.m. Sunday in the 4400 block of Dixie Highway. Police said the 3rd Division officer hit and killed a bicyclist. The coroner said Kenneth Chandler, 56, died of multiple blunt force injuries. Authorities said there were no witnesses to the crash."

I understand why the national media paid more attention to the tragic death of filly Eight Belles. It was an on-track death at the KY Derby. It was a sorrowful ending to an otherwise promising narrative for Derby '08.

However, local coverage of Eight Belles eclipsed the death of Kenneth Chandler, who was killed after being hit by an off-duty LMPD officer.

My tipping point on the matter was when the C-J produced an awkward video montage for the horse that was rightfully ridiculed by Stephen George over at LEO.

From LEO's General Sense of Outrage:

"...the folks over at Sixth and Broadway had to go and cheapen the damn thing by creating a video montage of Eight Belles working out, complete with sentimental piano music, awkward cuts to slow motion and closeups of things like the horse's name tag."

Seriously, does Eight Belles matter more than Kenneth Chandler? This is what David Simon was crucifying with his critique of the media in the 5th season of The Wire.

This is embarrassing.