Ferguson police execute an unarmed 17 yr old boy (Update: Ferguson police chief to resign 3/19)
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loyola llothta
☭☭☭
Mostly Black Cities, Mostly White City Halls
SEPT. 28, 2014
Cleveland Stroud, the only black Council member in Conyers, Ga., says whites have represented their changing constituency well. Credit Audra Melton for The New York Times
Since moving to this small city on the eastern flank of Atlanta’s suburban sprawl, Lorna Francis, a hairdresser and a single mother, has found a handsome brick house to rent on a well-groomed cul-de-sac. She has found a good public school for her teenage daughter.
Something Ms. Francis, who is black, has not found is time to register and vote. She was unaware that the most recent mayoral election was held last November.
“Life’s been busy — I’ve been trying to make that money,” Ms. Francis said one morning this month from her two-car garage, where she was micromanaging a particularly complex hairdo for a regular client. “And honestly, I only vote in major elections.”
That kind of disengagement is one of the many reasons that only one of the six elected positions in this municipality of 15,000 is held by an African-American, even as a wave of new black residents has radiated out from nearby Atlanta, creating a black majority here for the first time in the city’s 160-year history.
Disparities between the percentage of black residents and the number of black elected officials are facts of life in scores of American cities, particularly in the South. The unrest that followed the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., has emphasized how much local elections can matter, and prompted a push there for increased black voter participation.
The disparities result from many factors: voter apathy, especially in low-visibility local elections; the civic disconnect of a transient population; the low financial rewards and long hours demanded of local officeholders; and voting systems, including odd-year elections, that are often structured in a way that discourages broad interest in local races.
But Ferguson has become a vivid example of the way a history of political disengagement and underrepresentation can finally turn toxic.
“I have seen this time and again in my research,” Jessica L. Trounstine, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, said in an email.
“The event/situation seems sudden — but really the stage was set long before.”
Whites and blacks tend to agree that the situation is less volatile in Conyers, though many blacks cite frustrations over interactions with the police. But even here, differences in voting between the city and the county that surround it speak vividly to some of the broader issues.
The chief operating officer of Conyers, David Spann, a veteran city employee who is white, said that many of the city’s minority newcomers have, like Ms. Francis, found homes in a local rental market that has exploded in part because of the foreclosure crisis. The city’s homeownership rate is 38 percent, compared with a 66 percent rate for Georgia as a whole.
“When you have rental people, this is nothing against them, but they’re not as involved in the community,” Mr. Spann said.
The lack of local representation on city councils can have deep consequences.
City councils are one of the easiest ways for community members to enter politics. The nation’s municipalities spend more than a trillion dollars a year, and city councils have much say in how that is spent.
And Ferguson, where blacks said they were the victims of a system that issued more arrest warrants per capita than any other city in Missouri, is a prime example of how local governments can have huge impacts on people’s lives.
According to the International City/County Council Management Association, among 340 American cities where more than 20 percent of the population is black, two had councils on which blacks were overrepresented compared with their population; 209 were within one seat of their population; and 129 underrepresented blacks by more than one seat.
In Conyers, not everyone considers the underrepresentation to be a problem.
Cleveland Stroud, the sole black member of the City Council, argues that whites have remained in power in part because they have represented their changing constituency well.
The chief operating officer of Conyers, David Spann, said that many of the city’s minority newcomers are renters and not as involved in the community.
“Does a councilperson have to be black to represent black voters?” Mr. Stroud asked.
A number of blacks here said that they were generally pleased with city government. Eleanor Johnson, a 61-year-old chef, said that city officials were helpful to her as she set up her new restaurant, the Olde Town Bistro and Grill, in the historic downtown district. Today, she serves classic Southern cuisine — fried okra, baked chicken — to a clientele that is 85 percent white; she greets many of the customers by name.
“The only thing I can tell you is Conyers has been great to me,” she said.
White leaders here do not claim that the city, in a region where a half-century ago blacks had to drink from separate water fountains, has solved all of its racial problems. But they say that they are in fact an integrated community, particularly after a decade in which the black share of the city population shot from 33 percent to 57 percent. During the same time, whites dropped from 58 percent to 30 percent.
Still, a number of black residents here suspect that the city police tend to single them out because of their race. Demarco Hamm, 30, is a transportation supervisor at the county school district who typically drives to work in the pre-dawn darkness. Twice in the past year, he said, he has been stopped by white Conyers police officers, for what struck him as frivolous reasons.
But Mr. Hamm, a lifelong resident of Conyers, said he had not felt compelled to seek a remedy at the ballot box. He said that city elections, which are held here in odd years, separate from federal contests, are difficult to keep track of.
“It’s not broadcast,” he said. “It’s not like a presidential election.”
Voter turnout here tends to be low, and competitive black candidates have been scarce. The last citywide election, in November, attracted only 815 voters. Local elections officials do not quantify how many of those voters were minorities, but many here believe that blacks were probably more likely to stay home than whites.
In that race, Mr. Stroud and another Council incumbent ran unopposed, while the mayor, Randal S. Mills, handily defeated a black challenger who in 2009 pleaded guilty to a felony charge of theft by conversion.
Vince Evans, a 14-year Council veteran, said the city was full of black residents who would make great Council members. But few, he said, choose to run. “I don’t know why,” he said.
One theory is that many of the new black residents are working-class people who do not have the means or the time to run for office and serve on the Council. Members are paid $75 per month; white-collar professionals currently dominate.
Particularly among the poor, there is also a strain of fatalism. “This is the white man’s land,” said Vick Major, 22, who was on a run-down side street on a recent afternoon, with a pit bull straining on a nearby chain. “We stay out of everything.”
Eleanor Johnson said that city officials were helpful to her as she set up her new restaurant, the Olde Town Bistro and Grill, in the historic downtown district.
But experts see institutional issues as well as personal ones. Professor Trounstine and Zoltan L. Hajnal, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, who has written extensively about minority underrepresentation in politics, argue that moving local elections to even years, to coincide with federal elections, would help increase overall turnout, and increase representation of minorities on local governing bodies.
In Rockdale County, of which Conyers is a part, countywide elections are held in even years, and offer a compelling contrast with city politics. The county underwent a demographic shift similar to the city’s, with its share of black residents jumping from 18 percent to 46 percent between 2000 to 2010. The first black commissioners in county history were elected in 2008, most likely benefiting from the black turnout produced by Barack Obama’s first presidential bid.
In 2012, an all-black “Slate of Eight” candidates, all of them Democrats running against white Republicans, won most of the elected positions in county government. Before the election, a door-hanger was distributed with their faces prominently displayed, as well as the message “Support our President; Elect Rockdale Democrats on November 6th.”
One of the black commissioners, Oz Nesbitt Sr., recalled that in the 2008 election, a number of black residents tried to discourage him from running.
“They said: ‘Why are you doing this? You won’t win. They won’t vote for you. They won’t allow an African-American to be a commissioner of this county,’ ” he said. Eventually, Mr. Nesbitt said, a coalition of blacks and progressive-minded whites rallied around his candidacy.
In some quarters, however, whites openly worried about the ability of blacks to run things. After the 2012 election, Jonny Brown, a county board of elections member appointed by the local Republican Party, posted an online editorial comparing county government to a “little white plane” that took on more black paint over time and eventually crashed.
Professor Hajnal recommends changes in addition to even-year elections: adding partisan labels so voters have a better idea where candidates stand; having all council seats up for election at the same time rather than staggering them across two contests, so elections are more meaningful; and electing each council member by district instead of citywide.
An advisory panel convened by Georgia’s secretary of state found in 2012 that local elections would have greater overall voter turnout if moved to an even-numbered years, but warned that national races could “overshadow” the local ones.
Conyers officials have not considered changing the city’s election dates, Mr. Spann said. Council members are nonpartisan and elected by district.
Mr. Stroud, the black Conyers City Council member, said that no matter who was in office, some changes, like diversifying the city staff, could be slow going. Currently, 21 of the city’s 170 employees are black. But Mr. Stroud said that officials were not about to fire competent white workers just to get new black ones.
Diversifying the 60-officer police force has also been a slow process. Chief Gene Wilson said that despite overt efforts to recruit minority officers, he had been able to bring the number of black officers up only to eight, from three, in his five years in office. Chief Wilson said that it was hard to find good recruits, since qualified minority officers were in short supply, and in demand in so many other municipalities.
For now, a desire among blacks for more diversity in government has not been matched by efforts to achieve it.
In his modest rented townhome recently, Peter Vanderpool, 61, a Trinidad native of African descent, said that diversity could not happen without black participation in government affairs. “We’ve got a lot of young brothers out here, and they choose not to be in the police service,” he said.
Mr. Vanderpool also said that he did not vote in city elections. “To be very honest with you, I don’t know why,” he said. “I never paid any attention, really.”
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/us...?smid=tw-share
SEPT. 28, 2014
Cleveland Stroud, the only black Council member in Conyers, Ga., says whites have represented their changing constituency well. Credit Audra Melton for The New York Times
Since moving to this small city on the eastern flank of Atlanta’s suburban sprawl, Lorna Francis, a hairdresser and a single mother, has found a handsome brick house to rent on a well-groomed cul-de-sac. She has found a good public school for her teenage daughter.
Something Ms. Francis, who is black, has not found is time to register and vote. She was unaware that the most recent mayoral election was held last November.
“Life’s been busy — I’ve been trying to make that money,” Ms. Francis said one morning this month from her two-car garage, where she was micromanaging a particularly complex hairdo for a regular client. “And honestly, I only vote in major elections.”
That kind of disengagement is one of the many reasons that only one of the six elected positions in this municipality of 15,000 is held by an African-American, even as a wave of new black residents has radiated out from nearby Atlanta, creating a black majority here for the first time in the city’s 160-year history.
Disparities between the percentage of black residents and the number of black elected officials are facts of life in scores of American cities, particularly in the South. The unrest that followed the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., has emphasized how much local elections can matter, and prompted a push there for increased black voter participation.
The disparities result from many factors: voter apathy, especially in low-visibility local elections; the civic disconnect of a transient population; the low financial rewards and long hours demanded of local officeholders; and voting systems, including odd-year elections, that are often structured in a way that discourages broad interest in local races.
But Ferguson has become a vivid example of the way a history of political disengagement and underrepresentation can finally turn toxic.
“I have seen this time and again in my research,” Jessica L. Trounstine, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, said in an email.
“The event/situation seems sudden — but really the stage was set long before.”
Whites and blacks tend to agree that the situation is less volatile in Conyers, though many blacks cite frustrations over interactions with the police. But even here, differences in voting between the city and the county that surround it speak vividly to some of the broader issues.
The chief operating officer of Conyers, David Spann, a veteran city employee who is white, said that many of the city’s minority newcomers have, like Ms. Francis, found homes in a local rental market that has exploded in part because of the foreclosure crisis. The city’s homeownership rate is 38 percent, compared with a 66 percent rate for Georgia as a whole.
“When you have rental people, this is nothing against them, but they’re not as involved in the community,” Mr. Spann said.
The lack of local representation on city councils can have deep consequences.
City councils are one of the easiest ways for community members to enter politics. The nation’s municipalities spend more than a trillion dollars a year, and city councils have much say in how that is spent.
And Ferguson, where blacks said they were the victims of a system that issued more arrest warrants per capita than any other city in Missouri, is a prime example of how local governments can have huge impacts on people’s lives.
According to the International City/County Council Management Association, among 340 American cities where more than 20 percent of the population is black, two had councils on which blacks were overrepresented compared with their population; 209 were within one seat of their population; and 129 underrepresented blacks by more than one seat.
In Conyers, not everyone considers the underrepresentation to be a problem.
Cleveland Stroud, the sole black member of the City Council, argues that whites have remained in power in part because they have represented their changing constituency well.
“Does a councilperson have to be black to represent black voters?” Mr. Stroud asked.
A number of blacks here said that they were generally pleased with city government. Eleanor Johnson, a 61-year-old chef, said that city officials were helpful to her as she set up her new restaurant, the Olde Town Bistro and Grill, in the historic downtown district. Today, she serves classic Southern cuisine — fried okra, baked chicken — to a clientele that is 85 percent white; she greets many of the customers by name.
“The only thing I can tell you is Conyers has been great to me,” she said.
White leaders here do not claim that the city, in a region where a half-century ago blacks had to drink from separate water fountains, has solved all of its racial problems. But they say that they are in fact an integrated community, particularly after a decade in which the black share of the city population shot from 33 percent to 57 percent. During the same time, whites dropped from 58 percent to 30 percent.
Still, a number of black residents here suspect that the city police tend to single them out because of their race. Demarco Hamm, 30, is a transportation supervisor at the county school district who typically drives to work in the pre-dawn darkness. Twice in the past year, he said, he has been stopped by white Conyers police officers, for what struck him as frivolous reasons.
But Mr. Hamm, a lifelong resident of Conyers, said he had not felt compelled to seek a remedy at the ballot box. He said that city elections, which are held here in odd years, separate from federal contests, are difficult to keep track of.
“It’s not broadcast,” he said. “It’s not like a presidential election.”
Voter turnout here tends to be low, and competitive black candidates have been scarce. The last citywide election, in November, attracted only 815 voters. Local elections officials do not quantify how many of those voters were minorities, but many here believe that blacks were probably more likely to stay home than whites.
In that race, Mr. Stroud and another Council incumbent ran unopposed, while the mayor, Randal S. Mills, handily defeated a black challenger who in 2009 pleaded guilty to a felony charge of theft by conversion.
Vince Evans, a 14-year Council veteran, said the city was full of black residents who would make great Council members. But few, he said, choose to run. “I don’t know why,” he said.
One theory is that many of the new black residents are working-class people who do not have the means or the time to run for office and serve on the Council. Members are paid $75 per month; white-collar professionals currently dominate.
Particularly among the poor, there is also a strain of fatalism. “This is the white man’s land,” said Vick Major, 22, who was on a run-down side street on a recent afternoon, with a pit bull straining on a nearby chain. “We stay out of everything.”
But experts see institutional issues as well as personal ones. Professor Trounstine and Zoltan L. Hajnal, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, who has written extensively about minority underrepresentation in politics, argue that moving local elections to even years, to coincide with federal elections, would help increase overall turnout, and increase representation of minorities on local governing bodies.
In Rockdale County, of which Conyers is a part, countywide elections are held in even years, and offer a compelling contrast with city politics. The county underwent a demographic shift similar to the city’s, with its share of black residents jumping from 18 percent to 46 percent between 2000 to 2010. The first black commissioners in county history were elected in 2008, most likely benefiting from the black turnout produced by Barack Obama’s first presidential bid.
In 2012, an all-black “Slate of Eight” candidates, all of them Democrats running against white Republicans, won most of the elected positions in county government. Before the election, a door-hanger was distributed with their faces prominently displayed, as well as the message “Support our President; Elect Rockdale Democrats on November 6th.”
One of the black commissioners, Oz Nesbitt Sr., recalled that in the 2008 election, a number of black residents tried to discourage him from running.
“They said: ‘Why are you doing this? You won’t win. They won’t vote for you. They won’t allow an African-American to be a commissioner of this county,’ ” he said. Eventually, Mr. Nesbitt said, a coalition of blacks and progressive-minded whites rallied around his candidacy.
In some quarters, however, whites openly worried about the ability of blacks to run things. After the 2012 election, Jonny Brown, a county board of elections member appointed by the local Republican Party, posted an online editorial comparing county government to a “little white plane” that took on more black paint over time and eventually crashed.
Professor Hajnal recommends changes in addition to even-year elections: adding partisan labels so voters have a better idea where candidates stand; having all council seats up for election at the same time rather than staggering them across two contests, so elections are more meaningful; and electing each council member by district instead of citywide.
An advisory panel convened by Georgia’s secretary of state found in 2012 that local elections would have greater overall voter turnout if moved to an even-numbered years, but warned that national races could “overshadow” the local ones.
Conyers officials have not considered changing the city’s election dates, Mr. Spann said. Council members are nonpartisan and elected by district.
Mr. Stroud, the black Conyers City Council member, said that no matter who was in office, some changes, like diversifying the city staff, could be slow going. Currently, 21 of the city’s 170 employees are black. But Mr. Stroud said that officials were not about to fire competent white workers just to get new black ones.
Diversifying the 60-officer police force has also been a slow process. Chief Gene Wilson said that despite overt efforts to recruit minority officers, he had been able to bring the number of black officers up only to eight, from three, in his five years in office. Chief Wilson said that it was hard to find good recruits, since qualified minority officers were in short supply, and in demand in so many other municipalities.
For now, a desire among blacks for more diversity in government has not been matched by efforts to achieve it.
In his modest rented townhome recently, Peter Vanderpool, 61, a Trinidad native of African descent, said that diversity could not happen without black participation in government affairs. “We’ve got a lot of young brothers out here, and they choose not to be in the police service,” he said.
Mr. Vanderpool also said that he did not vote in city elections. “To be very honest with you, I don’t know why,” he said. “I never paid any attention, really.”
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/us...?smid=tw-share
the cac mamba
Veteran
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EDIT: posted already
Squirtle
Supreme Chancellor
You know that boy Wilson is scared to death to even leave his house, of course he won't go to that trial. If anything I take solace in the fact that his life is pretty much over. He's always gonna have to watch his back now.
Huey Shootin
Banned
your mind shouldn't be blown at CACS being CACS. The media pushes a CAC agenda. The government serves CACS. Black people need to stop expressing shock at what has been blatant from the time of slavery. They hate us and nothing will change until we start responding with violence. fukk protests, because who is going to listen to your protest?? fukk group economics, because you are still using CAC dollars. All that shyt means well, but it ignores the larger and more pressing issue. We are dying out here. Through discrimination, they are starving our community. We need to literally fight back and they need to die.They're basically being blatant with it, and none of these news agencies, federal gov't gives a fukk about it.
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loyola llothta
☭☭☭
Cat piss martini
Veteran
I told a cat here when that brotha in NY got
killed by pigs that they need to set shyt off because it
wouldnt fly here in St louis.
i got hit with: you nikkas wouldnt do shyt.
I got hit with: fukk outta here like ya'll would go at cops.
certain citys just aint gonna lay down once the button is pushed.
St louis/Chicago/Detroit/Los angeles/Oakland/New jersey etc.
we need to stop killing each other and put crosshairs on
those who want us dead because of the color of our skin.
loyola llothta
☭☭☭
FERGUSON CAUGHT GOUGING REPORTERS ON INFORMATION REQUESTS
Ferguson city officials are extorting large sums of money from individuals filing open records requests, the AP reported on Monday.
READ MORE
and the "not all white people response" of course just had to be said in this thread..
when white people say that shyt it a. makes it about themselves b. taking away from the realities of white supremacy and racism
it literally does NOTHING to challenge the ideas and to deconstruct racism or white supremacy.
@Sensitive Blake Griffin
an ally doesn't do that. an ally listens. it doesn't derail it into being about them.
when white people say that shyt it a. makes it about themselves b. taking away from the realities of white supremacy and racism
it literally does NOTHING to challenge the ideas and to deconstruct racism or white supremacy.
@Sensitive Blake Griffin
an ally doesn't do that. an ally listens. it doesn't derail it into being about them.
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loyola llothta
☭☭☭
loyola llothta
☭☭☭
Thats some fuk shyt
loyola llothta
☭☭☭
