anatomy of a scenario

it wasn't what i thought it would be.

i expected something bigger, grander. a bit of flash, at least. what i saw was a sliver of a building next to an auto body shop -- weirdly appropriate, somehow -- that squatted on a narrow street near a four way intersection that demanded the cars stop several feet away from the red light so they could make turns without hitting each other. the LIRR was right there, hanging above us in this stealthy ominous way, racing by every so often, its parking lots sprawling across the street from the action, this infamous gentleman's club, and all of us.



all of us was ed durante our somewhat fearless leader, tanya the ever-present script lady and james at the camera and at the ready, with a host of black actors that have worked with ed before, for the most part. all of us were dressed in black, as per ed's request. all of us were a little freaked out.



all of this was for the sean bell film project, organized by ed. this was some fast and furious-ness at work here, creatively. all the directors were given the same rules: one day shoot, two charaters speaking, no more than 3 minutes long, delivered in 7 days, all of them done by early september.



for ed's piece, all of us had to learn a monologue from hamlet. this would have been a cakewalk for me under ordinary circumstances, especially since i took a shakespeare workshop earlier this summer with jeff at dog run rep. and what with all the work they had to do, one would think that the least i could do was learn my lines. but once i was actually in front of the camera, all i could think about was these three brothers in their car getting shot at 50 times by cops that never identified themselves. my anger had long since dissipated. i was swimming in iambic pentameter, drowning in so much feeling, choking back something that felt way more like empathy than anything else. shockingly, ed didn't yell at me. to tell you the truth, i think i kind of wanted him to. anything to shake my lines loose.

and oh, what a beautiful day it was. there was something ironic and depressing and black-hearted and foul about all that sunshine and the picture-perfect blue sky wonderment that framed it so incessantly. yeah, the sun wasn't helping me, either.

it got even worse when we began to talk amongst ourselves and share our feelings about what happened. it got grim when we put ourselves in sean's place. it was james (the actor) who really brought me down when he talked about his bachelor party and dissected how it could have happened to him or any of his fraternity brothers. it was strange, all of us wallowing in our makeshift grief on the sidewalk as the bright sunshine made everything gleam like something out of a disney movie. somewhere in there, i walked to the bodega on the corner and got a piece of fruit and some tea and someone told a funny story and everything got a little giddy, because every thing was so sunny and so dark and so abysmally strange.

when it was all over and we were finally left with the unspoken question -- where did they shoot him down, anyway? -- we collectively walked around the corner to find our answer.



i tried to leave the sunshine there but it followed me all the way back to a gentrified west harlem, chok full of way too many hipster white people and the overbearing police presence that they brought with them. and so did this weird, weird grief that sits on my chest like a playful 2 year old and leaves me feeling like i swallowed a cinderblock.

i don't know what to do about a police force that won't collectively think before it shoots, especially when their guns are aimed at black men, or a local/state/federal government that won't prosecute the police officers in question when they kill innocent black folk and call it a "horrible senseless tradegy" or "a terrible accident" or "a case of bad timing" or a "misunderstanding" and all of the other phrases they use to justify themselves. i don't know how to battle any of that.

i am beginning to think that art can affect change. i'm beginning to want to make art that changes things. being a part of that process in someone else's project/vision is an important step to make towards creating something powerful that's mine.

this is how it begins -- someone or something inspires me and i get ideas...

the sean bell film project

when sean bell was murdered by undercover nyc police officers nearly two years ago on what would have been his wedding day, the powers that be dismissed the entire incident and explained it away by blaming the victim. and just as in the amadou diallo case in 1999 wherein four cops opened fire simultaneously and emptied their guns on a stuttering african that spoke little or no english, all of the police officers were acquitted. there have been many more senseless killings, acts of aggression and the like but these two cases stood out for me because they seemed especially savage.

and yes -- i know that there are white people in this country who are convinced that they aren't at some sort of an advantage because of their race, but i don't hear tell of any of them getting shot at 41 times by cops just because they reached for their housekeys. if you are black, these streets are more than just dangerous. and if you are black and male, they can easily become a slaughterhouse.

once i got past my anger about all of this, i realized how frustrated i was. i wanted to do something, anything. write a song, maybe. make art.

a few days ago, i get a call from ed durante. he and a collective of filmmakers have formed the sean bell film project to (according to their press release) "create cinematic arts events that produce unique and nontraditional media coverage for human rights issues." brilliant idea. before he could tell me all the details, i said yes.

we're going to be shooting this weekend at the very location where the incident took place -- in front of the club kalua. each director in the collective will do a short of their own. ed wants to do a blip from hamlet, two very short male/female monologues. looking over the script makes me glad that i did that shakespearean workshop earlier this summer and warmed up to iambic pentameter all over again.

this is the way it happens -- you come up with great ideas and you find ways to execute them. all of a sudden, i'm a lot more hopeful and little less frustrated.

double yikes

what a hot stinking mess. a 22 year old rookie cop named patrick pogan (only 2 or 3 weeks on the job) slams into a peacefully protesting biker named christopher long out of nowhere, then lies about it in his written report, saying that the biker tried to run into him. his daddy is a retired cop that didn't hesitate to stick up for his foul behavior, so evidently this is the family business.

of course, they took his gun and his badge and now he's riding a desk. i'll bet you a dollar and a twinkie that he gets transferred to another precinct when all of this quiets down. he needs to get fired, with a quickness -- before he kills somebody.

read all about it here.

racial profiling, leonardo blair and the NYPD

i don't understand how any thinking american can possibly believe that we live in a democracy, that the system in place is fair and just (if we have the same level of education and experience, shouldn't we all get paid equally?) or that white privilege and racial profiling don't exist. i don't think there's any way that we can fix the problems in this country if we aren't willing to acknowledge them.

i know plenty of black men that have had this happen to them. for the sake of the entire NYPD, they'd better hope and pray that it never happens to me.

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'NY Post' Reporter's Racial Profiling Suit Counters 'Post' Editorial
By Joe Strupp
Published: May 07, 2008 3:32 PM ET NEW YORK

On the same day that a New York Post editorial claimed racial profiling was not a growing problem, one of the Post's own reporters filed suit against the city claiming to be a victim of such profiling. Leonardo Blair, 28, a Post staffer since May 2007, filed the lawsuit in U.S District Court in Manhattan, according to a copy provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The complaint claims Blair was subjected to racial profiling while walking from his car to his home in the Bronx on Nov. 28, 2007.

A Jamaican immigrant and graduate of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, Blair claims he was harassed by police while walking along the street with his then-fiancee. In the lawsuit, he alleges that Officer William Castillo, one of several defendants the reporter names, stopped him due to his dark skin color and without cause. "Officer Castillo angrily demanded of Mr. Blair whether he spoke English," the suit stated. "Mr. Blair, surprised by Officer Castillo's mocking tone, replied under his breath in Spanish that he did not."

Eventually, after being frisked, Blair was arrested, the complaint states. "Mr. Blair was not engaged in any illegal or improper activity, and nothing in his behavior or conduct would provide the basis for reasonable suspicion that he was engaging in any wrongdoing," the lawsuit contends. “Leo Blair was handcuffed and hauled to a precinct house for simply walking down the street,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “Walking while black is not a crime, and yet every year hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers are stopped, searched and interrogated by the police for doing just that. For justice in our city to be truly just, the NYPD needs to start treating all New Yorkers fairly, regardless of the color of their skin.”

Blair said in a statement: “The only reason why I declared to these officers that I was a reporter for the New York Post, that I was a graduate of Columbia University, is because I wanted it to end. I should not have to pull on cards to be respected as an individual.” Blair was issued two summonses, one alleging he disobeyed a lawful order and the other alleging he made “unreasonable noise.” A judge dismissed both summonses on Feb. 8, NYCLU stated. The NYCLU, in a statement, said it "is asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment that the defendants violated Blair’s constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. It also is asking that all records of Blair’s arrest, including those entered in the NYPD’s massive stop-and-frisk database, be sealed or expunged."

A New York Police Department Public Affairs spokesperson said the department does not comment on lawsuits. Ironically, the lawsuit was filed the same day that the Post editorialized in defense of police who have come under fire for alleged racial profiling. The issue was recently raised again after statistics released earlier this week revealed that New York City police stopped more people on the streets during the first three months of 2008 than during any quarter in the six years the police department has reported such data.

"Police overreach? Well, consider this: Last week, a killer said to be wearing a 'Team Fresh' gang T-shirt fatally stabbed an 18-year-old who was standing his own front porch. Isn't it a pity that the killer didn't encounter a stop-and-frisk team on his way to the scene of the crime?" the Post editorial said, in part. "Taken another way: How many young men didn't fall victim to weapons confiscated by the teams? A lot, we'd guess. If cops stand down, as critics demand, it'll be welcome back crime and chaos. And good-bye, peaceful New York."

Editor Col Allan and Editorial Page Editor Bob McManus did not immediately return calls from E&P seeking comment.

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Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.

sean bell protests start at 3pm today!

for interactive map, click here!

i don't know if you're aware of it or not, but there are pray-in protests scheduled at 3pm today in 6 strategic pockets in the city, led by al sharpton and sean bell supporters, as well as mr. bell's friends and family. the intent is to create enough of a furor peacefully to get the federal government to prosecute the police for violating sean bell's civil rights. ideally, the streets will be flooded with people in prayer from harlem to brooklyn -- but i'm not sure how viable that is when the police can arrest you if you are in a group without a permit or if you do not disperse when you are told to do so.

after the nonviolent protests of the 60s and 70s, the state, federal and local authorities know how to deal with this kind of outrage. they know how to process it through the jails and the court systems. and they have laws in place to prosecute them -- for nonviolent protesting. people who aren't involved and who could care less will inevitably feel beset upon -- because if people gather anywhere near the numbers that they're anticipating, it will bring rush hour traffic to a screeching halt.

i think the only way left to protest something like this is to write a song about it that everyone will want to hear and sing along to -- something that is so innocuous, they won't even know what they are singing about, until it's too late.

still and all, i think a pray-in protest is a noble gesture. and at least someone somewhere is doing something -- because dying in a hail of bullets is the last thing that sean bell deserved.

that's right. acquittal!

exactly 17 months to the day that sean bell was killed on the eve of his wedding day at his bachelor party, a judge hands down a verdict of not guilty on all counts for all three of the policemen involved in his brutal murder. they thought that he had a gun. they heard someone say, i'm gonna go get my gun. and that was enough. it was a 50 bullet barrage (50 bullets!) and -- surprise! -- a gun was never recovered on the scene. what's really surprising is that they didn't kill all of them.

the bottom line is, another innocent black man dies and no one is punished.

i understand that the police involved have supposedly proven that they didn't intend to kill mr. bell, but people go to jail every day for the rest of their lives for way less than this. we've all watched enough CSI and Cold Case Files (my personal favorite) to know that intent isn't enough to justify murder in the real world even if "i didn't mean to kill him" is all you have to stand on. there should be some sort of retribution in store for you if you take someone's life -- even if it is an accident, and especially if you're a cop.

white men rob, steal, murder. why don't we see more of this stuff happening to them? why are black men constantly in the crosshairs of some cop's gun in this city? why don't white men get shot at 41 times?

of course, now would be a wonderful moment for alicia keys (or any other hip-hop/r&b megastar) to write a powerful protest song about this, a la CSNY/neil young's "ohio" -- you know: something to get us thinking, something to unify us and start that pesky revolution she keeps going on about. after all, her latest media misstep says that's her intent, right?

where is public enemy when you really need them?