If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
This week's announcement that the Justice Department is going to drop its appeal against providing the morning-after birth control pill to anyone who needs it comes as such a welcome change that we feel the award is deserved.
To say all police officers in New York City take advantage of their power and persecute people of color would be absurd, but to say that none of them do like Mayor Bloomberg suggested is equally absurd.
The Bloomberg administration's attack on the judiciary signals a disturbing new track by the mayor and his team as they continue to cling to the notion that stop-and-frisk in its current form is being applied appropriately.
If we envision a better city in which all people are safe and free from discrimination and profiling, then we need laws protecting the communities who are most targeted. Our laws need to enforce non-racist, non-homophobic, non-sexist, non-transphobic and overall non-oppressive behaviors.
Under a new administration, stop and frisk would have probably been cut back to constitutional levels. And Bloomberg would not be sounding like Rudy Giuliani.
What the mayor offered New Yorkers Tuesday was a pep rally for his failing proposition that our city has to choose between better policing and safer streets, between saving lives and protecting our Constitutional rights.
Bloomberg and his crew have elevated themselves as the benevolent parents, empowered to restrict soda, discipline, and punish if necessary.
The New York Post proved last week their recklessness with the facts during the Boston bombings. Let's make sure they don't do the same thing in the important debate surrounding stop and frisk in New York City.
Stop and frisk is a valuable police tool, but its application should be amended to ensure that no one is stopped in violation of the Constitution. So how do we do that? We need to go straight to the root of why so many young people are being arrested: marijuana.
The belief that male "black teens" are inherently more likely to be criminals is ingrained in our society. It has seeped into our institutions in the form of racial profiling, and too often it poisons the judgment of those who are supposed to protect us.
The next day as my mother brushed my hair for school, I saw a different me in the mirror. At age 8, northern, white parents had spat on me and torn my clothes for trespassing what they saw as their "turf" and I saw as school. Now, touched by King, I felt cleansed.
For two weeks, I have sat in the lower Manhattan 15th floor courtroom of Federal Judge Shira Scheindin stunned at the testimony I was listening to with regards to "Stop and Frisk."
A shrewd move by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, appointing Phil Banks, a high-ranking black officer, as the NYPD's chief of department.
This week, I was joined in the studio by NYC Comptroller and newly declared mayoral candidate John C. Liu. Topics include the controversial "stop & frisk," housing and LGBT politics.
People arrested by NYPD for marijuana possession have spent 5,000,000 hours in police custody over the last decade.
In 1977, New York removed criminal penalties for private possession of marijuana and made possession in public view a criminal offense. For years, there were relatively few arrests in New York for possession of marijuana in public view -- 1990 saw about 1,000. By last year, that number had skyrocketed to 45,000.
