Black in Bed-Stuy: Another Kind of Non-Citizen
29 Jul
While all eyes are turned to Arizona for the (now partial) implementation of SB 1070, I found an interesting article in City Limits (a NYC-based public policy and urban affairs news site and magazine, which has gotten really good in the last year!) about a public meeting last night, where residents of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood voiced their concerns about policing, and the “stop and frisk” policies of the New York Police Department.
What’s interesting about this, or sad perhaps, is the ways in which Black people have to deal with law enforcement every day, and unless you’re shot dead, with very little public outcry. The testimonies from this town hall meeting recounted in the City Limits piece are heartbreaking:
Anger rattled his voice when he came to the microphone to tell a tale that has become all too familiar in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant. The police have been harassing him, he told the crowd, because he is a young, black male. In his hand, he held a baseball cap. His hair was cropped close to his head. He wore a long, white t-shirt and oversized jeans. He’s done nothing wrong, he said, but police have issued him 50 tickets he can’t afford to pay, accusing him of loitering, engaging in disorderly conduct and other minor crimes. “I’ve got fifty tickets in my house and I ain’t got fifty dollars,” he said…
…A woman said that she “would never call the police for any reason—if I was assaulted,” she said, “they would be the last people I would call.”…
…An older woman, a grandmother, said that she was beaten by police officers in 2008 when she could not produce identification. Both of her wrists were broken during the incident, she said…
…David Miller, who directs a hip hop TV show, said that his son was arrested on the streets of Bed-Stuy for lack of identification and was sent to central booking for 22 hours. “It’s like the South Africa pass laws,” he said. “We are simply not respected.”
I am not interested in an argument with the Left about all the organizing around SB 1070 because it is a disgusting and indefensible law by the legislature of Arizona, but I am here to suggest that the argument that the Arizona situation is one step towards a police state, is actually one step too late. These kinds of human indignities are already enshrined in law in cities all over the nation (including the half Black and 1/3 of NYC stop and frisks that happen to Latinos-largely of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent), and there are no calls for boycotting New York City, for example.
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