iCelebrities Midterm

On any given day, at any given time, what you just saw is likely to happen to any young person of color in New York City. Let's illustrate:



Statistics and video are a form of passive participation. Not to say these don't give a sense of how some folks feel, but there are ways to measure feelings. Rap/MC-ing is one of those things, an art form born of marginalization, criminalization, and strife.



Look What It's Done
Now what am I supposed to do?/
When just seeing cops makes me emotional?/
I'm talking about the anger building/
When the cops post up outside your building/
Like they're waiting for action, something appealing/
One in the chamber, and no feelings/
No connections to the blocks they beat/
Don't ask why we don't respect cops we see/
Never mind the deaths, cover-ups, and dealings
Focus on the entrepreneurs and the beatings/
Cuz we can't chill up in a nice sedan/
When the police just locked up the Icee man/
It's, almost all good in the hood/
Til the cops get shook, and try to get you for good/
Slam you up against the car and push your face up on the hood/
Try to run away - they put two through your hood/
Then, two through your wrists, two through your kicks/
And put the passion of our youth on a crucifix/
Now, how am I supposed to be?
When the victims all look like you and me?/
What happened to serve and protect?/
Somebody's gotta pay, it's not over yet/

Art like this is inspired by acts like these:



and these:



this was last November, involving some of our schoolmates:



in Michigan:



in Seattle:



in the South: from 10sec. in jump to 3:40



more from the South:



in the UK:



Los Angeles:



this is alarmingly normal:

A Record Number of Stops

An August 14, 2009 press release from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is titled “Record Number of Innocent New Yorkers Stopped, Interrogated by NYPD During First Half of Year.” Based on figures from the NYPD, the NYCLU reports that in the first six months of 2009 alone, cops in New York City stopped more than 273,000 people who—according to the police themselves—were not violating any laws. This represents the highest number of innocent people stopped and questioned by the NYPD in six months since the department began keeping stop-and-frisk data.

From January to June of this year, the NYPD as a whole (including the various precincts as well as bureaus such as housing, transit, and narcotics) stopped and frisked 311,646 people, the overwhelming majority of them Black and Latino. Of that total, more than 9 in 10—or 273,556 people—were not arrested or given a summons. In other words, by the NYPD’s own admission, in just the first six months of this year they had stopped and searched close to 275,000 people who were not even alleged to have committed any crime. It should be pointed out that the actual number of innocent New Yorkers subjected to these stop and frisks is no doubt even higher, since the figure does not account for people who were wrongfully accused of a crime by the police.

The stop-and-frisk figures are undeniable evidence of racial profiling by the NYPD. Of the total of 311,646 people stopped between January through June 2009, 163,118 (52.3 percent) are Black and 81,210 (32.1 percent) are Latino, while only 29,782 (9 percent) are white. Compare this with the overall New York City population figures according to nationality: 24 percent Black, 28 percent Latino, and 35 percent white (the rest are Native American, Asian American, and others).

Breaking down the data a bit further, of the 163,118 Black New Yorkers who were stopped and frisked, 148,731 (91.2 percent) were neither arrested nor given a summons. Similarly, of the 81,210 Latinos stopped, 68,689 (84.6 percent) were neither arrested nor given a summons.

The figures for the first half of 2009 come on top of the statistics for last year, when the NYPD stopped and frisked a record total of 531,159 times—again, overwhelmingly targeting Black and Latino people.

Michael Moore takes a stab at it:



back to NYC:





While this may seem irregular or out of place to some of you reading this, it is fairly commonplace in urban areas, or any place with a concentration of people of color and a disproportionately white police force. I can speak firsthand to this, and to the extreme urgency this issue demands, but media speaks so much louder.

~Let the villainy ensue..