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In the aftermath of the recent killing of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, 148 artists showed work at the alternative art space Smack Mellon in a show entitled Respond. The show included a diverse group of artists who contributed a range of work that served to survey the national reaction to the black deaths that have incited the growing Black Lives Matter Movement.

Respond, in raising questions about the ongoing failure of the nation to protect its black citizens, also posed a question: Should black artists specifically respond to the historic, recent, and continued killing of innocent black men and women in this country?

We asked nine contemporary black artists to continue the dialogue that Respond started and to answer the following question: Do you think black artists should respond to the events surrounding the Black Lives Matter Movement?

Brandon Coley Cox, Untitled, 2014

Brandon Coley Cox

I found it very difficult to create anything at all after the nearly simultaneous indecisions happened around the murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown I want[ed] to act, and not to react, but to proact, but I wasnt sure how.

So I decided to speak to Garner and Brown. The first paintings I made were dedicatory and, in that, free of any concern of critical gazing. This act of dedication caused me to understand how I wanted to communicate to audiences at large through my creations. I began to understand that it was important to me to create a densely black aesthetic for myself, however I might conceive of it. Following a path of black self-reflexivity was more important than not. I took out all of the white. And other colors. They had been causing too many problems.

I reconsidered everything in my work with one key element in mind: that blackness matters. I now use that as a groundwork to begin creating my work instead of focusing on the distractions. I am more interesting than the distractions. I am more necessary than the distractions. My response to the Black Lives Matters movement was personal celebration and investigation all black everything!

Hank Willis Thomas, Two Little Prisoners, 2014, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Hank Willis Thomas

I dont believe anyone should do anything they dont want to do, unless they feel they must. I dont believe that having a specific hue of skin should obligate or validate what they make. I believe that the more voices that feel compelled to speak out against injustice, the better. The fact of the matter is that broad injustice takes place everyday and all the time. The question for me is, How do we find new and innovative ways to respond and call out when we are oversaturated with image, music, text designed to distract and nullify us? Im still in search of answers.

Titus Kaphar, 1968/2014, 2014, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Titus Kaphar

I think that the problems of this world will be a natural outgrowth of some artists practice and the celestial and ineffable will be the focus of others. Attempting to create mandates for the production of art in and of itself can be the death nail to creativity.

Jordan Casteel, Galen, 2014

Jordan Casteel

Whether black artists should or should not respond to the events surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement feels irrelevant. Black artists ARE responding. Each of us, through our various forms of expression, are contributing to an expanded notion of what it means it be black in America today. The basis of the movement is to draw attention to the value we place on life more specifically, black life. We can scrutinize societys value system by making a body human that has historically been seen as less than. It is the diversity of the Black artists voice that helps to emphasize our worth.

For me, as an artist who has experienced the world as a heterosexual cis black woman, it has felt important to share the story of my relationship(s) to black men/masculinity as a daughter, sister, lover, friend, and family member. I hope that through my personal lens, I can draw a viewer into an intimate experience they might not otherwise encounter.My portraits engage a viewer through observation of color, texture, environment, and gesture.

To some, my work may be speaking directly to the Black Lives Matter movement through its emphasis on humanizing black bodies, however, I think the way black artists continue to give to the Black Lives Matter movement is by sharing their individual voices in order to bring power and understanding to a united goal no one person is the same or should be judged as such.

A still from the film #Blackmendream, Shikeith, 2014

Shikeith

I recently was shared rare audio from a 1975 speech from Toni Morrison. During the speech, she states Accurate artistry proves racism is a public mark of ignorance, but a fraud The core of the Black Lives Matter movement is an expedition to extract the weeds of ignorance planted into the underpinning of America.

I realize, like many others, the humanity ascribed to Blackness has historically been determined through unenlightened, Manichean precepts that viewed Blackness as cursed. Addressing this neglect saw the Black populous of artists create written and visual art that speaks to and asserts a reality that blackness and humanity are not antithetical a Black being realized on their own terms. My socially engaged, art film #Blackmendream, uses new forms of virtual communication to illustrate this historic response.

It is critical that I as an artist continue to respond to the historic tropes that follow me, just as they followed Trayvon Martin to his untimely death. As a collective, I encourage artists of all backgrounds to continue picking at the weeds of ignorance, and planting the flowers of truth.

Rashaad Newsome

I think all humans should respond to the events surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. Given the fact that the dehumanization of black people permeates our society, I cant see how anyone could idly stand by. I think there are several ways that people can participate. Im not [preaching] on how you should do it but find a way that works for you and like Nike Just do it. Personally as an artist, a human and a black man, I felt an immense responsibility to say something.

Cameron Welch, Patchwork, 2014; Cameron Welch, Gaze, 2014

Cameron Welch

My initial instinct is to respond with a resounding, of course! But where does that sit in terms of how these objects are seen / where they end up? In my own practice, Ive responded to these events in terms of how the work is constructed. Aspects of the paintings that were once highly considered and manicured are now distressed and aggressive. Marks are made with footprints and detritus materials and shapes are violently sewn binding them against their will. Im angry about whats happened, I always will be. I feel that attacking parts of my practice allows for that to show in manners that cant be expressed vocally.

Clifford Owens, Performance Score: Rico Gatson, Five Minutes, performed on January 31, 2015 at Smack Mellon, photograph by Matthew McNulty

Clifford Owens

It seems to me that the question should black American artists respond to black lives matter is a matter of ones own sense of social responsibility. Black Lives Matter was not a movement, it was a moment that has already passed. American black artists are vested in the black lives matters movement as an image, and its a powerful image, a strong representation of blackness.

Im deeply suspicious of and somewhat cynical about the function of art in the black lives movement. Im suspicious about what motivates some black American artists to appropriate representations of the black lives movement. Im cynical that the image of the black lives movement is a merely a signifier that has lost its signified.

Sanford Biggers, Everyday a Sunset Dies (LKG), 2014

Sanford Biggers

No, not necessarily, but there are artists that have something to say about these events and they should. And therein lies the conundrum. To move beyond strictly race-focused conversations and allow for black artists to engage in more expansive dialogues around their work and practice is key.

In 2015, for us to still need to address the issues and importance of black lives in the first place, and to have to assert our very existence within American culture, is extremely problematic and actually quite shameful.

Read more here:
The Aesthete - Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter Movement is alive and well. If it has for the momentunder political attack and facing the winters sub-freezing temperatureswithdrawn from the streets, it has done so to plan a new stage in the fight for justice for African American victims of police racism and violence. As many as 400 people, mostly young people of color, attended the eight-hour long Black Lives Matter Gathering at the famous Riverside Church in Manhattan on January 30 where in workshops, trainings, and plenary sessions it seemed that a new direction was being set for the movement.

Looking around the room and at the stage during the plenary, it was apparent that this event signaled a turn in Americas social movements today. While there were people there of all ages, it was clear that this is a movement of the young, and while there were people of all races, it was also clear that this is a movement led by people of color and by African Americans in particular.

Millions March, New York City, December 13, 2014.

Black women took the lead in organizing the event, in the workshops, and in the plenary, where the dominant themes were the need for organization, program, and strategy. If they admire the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the activists of todays Black Lives Matter Movement believe they start at a higher political level, committed to full equality for women and the LGBT community. If some of those involved in Black Lives Matter got their first experience with a mass movement in Occupy Wall Street, they seem have now to have drawn the lesson that a movement needs a democratic organization, a list of demands, and a strategy that can organize the power to achieve them. If they still want no traditional leaders, they are interested in creating an inclusive, democratic, and collective leadership.

Most of the activists at the Gathering came from community- or campus-based organizations in the New York City area. And while every anarchist, socialist, or communist group seemed to be in attendanceand there are plenty of themthe most striking thing was the sense that the movement was greater than all of the groups, that it had its own independent life. These activists from the Black Lives Matter Movement in New York, made up of tens of thousands who had participated in protests throughout the city over the last several months, had come together at the Gathering to help the movement to find itself, to know itself, and to figure out where it was going. One had the sense of being present at an historic event, one that marks the beginning of new and significant developments.

The Black Lives Matter Movement emerged across the country in the fall of 2014 as thousands of people in scores of cities, organized by local groups or national networks, protested the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City. The December 13 Millions March in New York, a march of 50,000 organized by two young African American women, 19-year-old Synead (Cid) Nicholsand 23-year-old Umaara Elliot, was a high point in the movement.

But when on December 20 Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, a man with a long history of mental illness, first shot and seriously wounded his girlfriend in a Baltimore suburb and then killed twoNew York City Police Department officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, the situation suddenly changed. The New York police union, a number of politicians, and the media argued that the Black Lives Matter Movement was responsible for the killing and that the protests should stop. When Mayor de Blasio called upon the protestors to pause until after the police officers families had held their funerals, the protestors refused. We will not let recent tragic moments derail this movement, one protester shouted. This is the revolution and we will not be repressed.

Still, the change in the political climate caused by the killings of the police officers and the conservative pro-police and anti-movement rhetoric, combined with the arrival of winter and below-freezing temperatures, drove the movement from the streets. Organizers of the Black Lives Matter Gathering felt that this pause provided a moment for reflection, reorganization, and recommitment to the movements goals.

The Riverside Church, the site of many important social justice meetings and where Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous August 4, 1967 speech condemning the Vietnam War, provided space for the Gatherings 2:00 to 10:00 p.m. program of workshops, trainings, networking sessions, and plenary. The program began with six workshops: Independent Media for the Movement; Organizing Youth to Dismantle Oppression; From Ferguson and NYC to Palestine: Occupation, Racism & Militarized Policing; Running in Heels: Safety Strategies for LGBTSTGNC People of Color; Strategy, Tactics, and Movement Building; and From a History of Repression to a Future Liberation: Where do the Police Come from and How can they be Replaced?

The Strategy, Tactics, and Movement Building Workshop began with about 40 people in the room but ended up with closer to 100. Akua Gyamerah began the discussion by telling those present, We will need years of patient organizing. We need action, but also need to pause to analyze the situation. We need to ask how we can build, grow, but also how to sustain the movement. She suggested that the movement needed to be democratically structured and prepared to engaged in debates about different strategies in order to draw the lessons of its experiences. When she also argued that the movement needed to be independent of the Democratic Party, the room erupted in applause.

During the discussion speakersall men and women of coloroffered a variety of takes on the state of the movement. One woman talked about the how the Black Lives Matter movement had had a progressive role vis--vis the LBGT movement. Another woman was concerned that the various groups in the movement werent cooperating. Right now we are very much fragmented, she said. One man said, We need to protest everyday as well as organizing boycotts. One young woman from a town up the Hudson, said she liked the Ferguson idea of being decentralized but coordinated. One person argued for organizing around a few simple demands, while others thought the movement should be guided by the needs of societys most exploited and oppressed. And there were many other comments and observations. One had to be impressed by the respect speakers showed for each others views, though it was also clear that this was only the beginning of what would be a long conversation, and as Gyamerah suggested, there would have to be some serious debate over strategies, goals, and vision.

The sense that African American people have played and continue to play an important role and often the leading role in American history was a pervasive notion. Many speakers both in the workshops and in the plenary argued that when black people move, others usually move with them and that that is generally good for the country, that it leads to greater democracy and more power for working people.

The plenary session speakers were five black women: the chair, Prof. Johanna Fernndez of Baruch College; Danette Chavis, a founder of National Action against Police Brutality; Ansha Rose a 20 year old activist in the Black Youth Project; Thenjiwe McHarrison of Ferguson Action; and Colia Clark, a veteran civil rights activist and Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010 and 2012. The four movement leadersall of them powerful speakerswere asked by Fernandez to respond to the questions at the center of the Gathering: What is this movement? What do we learn from the past? Where do we go from here? What do we need to grow and win?

Chavis argued that the police had to be held accountable for their actions. This is not the 1960s all over again. Then there was a demand for laws, today we have the laws and they are being broken. She told the nearly 400 people at the plenary session, Something totally different is taking place in law enforcement today. Ever since the Twin Towers dropped, things have changed. Rights have been diminished. Muslims have been persecuted. Since September 11, 2001, she argued, in the eyes of government and the police, the American people have become the potential terrorists. Chavis told the young activists, In this fight all hands are needed. Protest. Boycott. We need to do it all. Hit em high, hit em low.

The plenary session at the gathering. Image from event Facebook page.

Ansha Rose told the group, We have to dispel the myth that police keep people safe. They keep some people with property safe and protect some people in government. But policing is discriminatory and used to control people. She also urged people to consider not only police violence but also structural violence in every aspect of the social system. To oppose such violence, she said, We need direct action; that is, confronting power outside of the prescribed channels. Rose told the group that it was important to be in an organization. Organizations last longer than movements, longer than campaigns, they sustain us through our lives, said Rose. She also argued for the importance of making demands. We need specific demandsand a step-by-step strategy to take power and to win our demands.

When Rose dismissed the notion that we live in a post-racial society, and criticized those who carried All Lives Matter signs in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, there was applause from the crowd. We have to fight to say Black Lives Matter even in this movement, she said. I believe in solidarity and in allies, but the word ally should be a verb. We need to have a discussion about what it means to be an ally, and to be able to listen to each other.

Thenjiwe Harris, who has been active in Ferguson, told the group, I didnt need a police union official to tell me they were going to make war on us. When they militarized the police, that told me that there was a war against our people. Today militarized weapons are in our communities and in our schools. In Ferguson they came out with everything they have. They will do it everywhere when the time is right. So we have to bring them everything weve got. The time for sitting on the sidelines is over, the question is: which side are you on?

Colia Clark, a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), began by saying that when she saw this new movement and couldnt identify any leaders, she thought to herself, thats like SNCC. Clark talked about American history, arguing that, The United States is not and has never been a democracy. For just that reason, she argued, we need to call for a Constitutional Convention to re-found the country. But before that, she told the Gathering, We need to call a convention of the 800 cities that joined the Black Lives Matter protests.

Johanna Fernandez ended the plenary session by stating, The moral assignment of this time is to bring revolution to this nation.

The Black Lives Matter Gathering was a signal event. No doubt it is only one of many such events large and small taking place across the country. The Gathering made clear that we not only have a new movement here, but that there is a new leadership. We are at the beginning of something big and important.

Dan La Botz is an editor of New Politics, where this article originally appeared, and a member of Solidarity in New York City.

Excerpt from:
Black Lives Matter Gathering Points to a New Direction for ...

COGIC Presiding Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr. Declares December 14th

Black Lives Matter Sunday

Memphis, TN (December 5, 2014) The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is hosting Black Lives Matter Sunday, to remind the nation how important the lives of African Americans are.

Sunday, December 14, 2014, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) will sponsor a day of prayer throughout its 12,000 congregations around the world, in honor of the two recent cases of African American men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, killed by police.

Presiding Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr. says, I watched, as did most of America, first the video of the incident, then the report of the Grand Jury in the Eric Garner case. I am saddened by the decision of the Staten Island Grand Jury to not indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo. With no indictment in two national cases in less than a two week period, and to hear and see Eric Garner, a father and grandfather, placed in a banned choke hold and repeatedly say I cant breathe, takes us back years in the struggle for equal justice.

Bishop Blake added, We must find a way, through Gods help, to continue the work of emphatically telling everyone that will listen that, Black Lives Matter!

COGIC is asking its pastors and members to wear black on the second Sunday in December to show solidarity. A special prayer will be given for all of the men present in the service on that day.

About the Church of God in Christ:

The Church of God in Christ is the fifth largest Protestant religious denomination and the largest African American church in the United States, with churches in 63 countries worldwide and an estimated membership of nearly 6.5 million members.

Originally posted here:
Black Lives Matter Sunday Church Of God In Christ

Deputy Christopher Newman killed Gregory Hill Jr., 30, in 2014 after a mother picking up her child at a school across the street called in a noise complaint.

Newman and another deputy responded to Hill's home, Hill partially opened the garage door, closed it and Newman fired four times, hitting Hill three times, including once in the head, according to court and police records.

No charges were filed against Newman, who said he shot Hill because he brandished a handgun. Hill's mother, Viola Bryant, filed a lawsuit against Newman and Sheriff Ken Mascara, alleging wrongful death, negligence, excessive force and violations of Hill's 14th and 15th Amendment rights.

Bryant also accused a SWAT team that responded to the scene of firing so much tear gas and causing so much damage to Hill's one-story home that no one can live in it now.

After 10 hours of deliberation last week, a jury found that Newman was not liable in Hill's death and that Mascara was 1% liable. Hill was 99% responsible for his own death, the jury ruled, according to court documents.

In deciding damages in the case, the jury awarded Bryant $1 for funeral expenses, and $1 for each child's "loss of parental companionship, instruction, and guidance and ... mental pain and suffering," verdict forms show. Hill's children are 7, 10 and 13.

Division of liability

Because the jury found that Mascara was only 1% responsible, the verdict was reduced to 4 cents, and then, because the jury found that Hill was drunk at the time, the final payout was nothing.

Mascara applauded the verdict, saying, "Newman was placed in a very difficult situation and like so many fellow law enforcement officers must do every day, he made the best decision he could for the safety of his partner, himself and the public given the circumstances he faced."

Attorney John Phillips, who represents Hill's family, called the ruling "perplexing" and questioned why the jury would award $1 for $11,000 in funeral expenses and another dollar for each child's suffering when it could have simply awarded no damages.

The jury consisted of one black man, two white men and five white women, he said.

Court rules forbid him from questioning jurors, so he can't get the answer to a question that's been dogging him: Were they trying to send him and the family a message?

"That a black child's pain is only worth a dollar is exactly the problem with the plight of the African-American right now. This says, black lives don't matter," he said.

Phillips plans to file a motion for a new trial in US District Court, and if that's denied, he will take it to the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

How it began

On January 14, 2014, around 3 p.m., a mother picking up her child at Frances K. Sweet Elementary School heard loud music blaring from Hill's home.

Testimony showed Hill was playing Drake's "All Me," a song rife with F-bombs and N-words. The mother took offense and called police.

Newman and Deputy Edward Lopez responded and knocked on Hill's garage door and front door.

"After Newman knocked on the doors, the garage door opened revealing Hill within the comfort of his own garage and home," the lawsuit alleged. "Upon information and belief, Deputy Lopez indicated loudly that Hill had a gun and then the garage door closed. Despite the door being closed, Newman fired his handgun approximately four times and killed Hill."

The bullet from the first shot got stuck in the door, Phillips said. The second and third hit Hill in the abdomen, and the fourth struck Hill's head, he said. Lopez did not open fire.

Not realizing Hill was dead, the deputies called for a SWAT team and snipers, according to the lawsuit. They kicked in doors and cut holes in the garage door, the suit claimed.

"Deputies shot tear gas canisters into the Hill home through many windows while severely damaging the windows and interior of the home and leaving toxic tear gas residue in the home," the lawsuit said.

Once inside, officers found Hill dead with an unloaded handgun in his back pocket, not his hand, court records show. Toxicology would later show Hill was intoxicated, to the point he could not legally drive.

Issues pushing attorney to appeal

Thirty witnesses were called during the trial, Phillips said, some of whom contested Newman's narrative that he saw a gun and that he demanded Hill drop the weapon before opening fire.

Among those was Hill's oldest child, 13-year-old Destiny, who was 9 at the time. She sat on a bench at the school across the street as the encounter unfolded. She testified that her dad's hands were empty, according to court records.

Responding to the lawsuit claim that Hill never raised his firearm or threatened deputies, Newman retorted simply, "Denied."

Phillips said he has numerous problems with the court proceedings, which will help form the basis of his appeal.

One is what he called the "evasiveness" of a police expert, who, despite answering defense questions, claimed to be hard of hearing when Phillips questioned him, the lawyer said. Phillips also alleged deputies changed their story about how Hill was holding the gun and whether he aimed it at Lopez, the other deputy.

He also said there was no blood spatter on the gun, which seems to back the family's claim that the weapon remained in Hill's pocket the whole time.

There were issues regarding timing as well, the attorney said. It was determined that Newman fired all four shots in less than 1.2 seconds, and an expert said the final shot to Hill's head would have immediately disabled his motor capabilities. This raises the question in Phillips' mind: How did Hill get the gun in his back pocket after he was shot?

Another factor prompting the attorney to seek a new trial is that the defense mentioned Hill was on probation for drug possession, which Phillips feels was meant to vilify Hill, as Newman had no way of knowing this when he responded. Hill's probation was also set to "automatically terminate" 11 days before his shooting, he said.

"This one'll haunt me for a long time if we can't get it reversed," he said.

See more here:
'Black lives don't matter," lawyer says after jury awards ...

April Goggans is an organizer, disrupter, single mother of one, proud southeast DC resident and a Core Organizer with Black Lives Matter DC. Her organizing work focuses on community power building, affordable housing and tenants rights, direct action organizing, intra-community violence, policing and police brutality. She recently launched #KeepDC4Me, a leaderFULL coalition that disrupts, confronts and dismantles systems of state sanctioned violence and oppression that displace and criminalize Black people while triggering intra-community violence in southeast DC through political education, building community power, and direct action. April has been organizing for more than 20 years and almost 10 of those years have been in southeast Washington, DC.

She is driven by the reality that respectability wont save us, and that our community already has all that it needs to address the critical issues we face.

April previously interned for the National Association of Blacks for Reparations in America and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. She also served on the board of directors of the National Association for Ethnic Studies. Additionally, April served as a charter school administrator and vocational specialist with vulnerable and dropout populations, and as a residential counselor for the care of pregnant and parenting, teens and their children.

As Tenants Association president at Marbury Plaza Apartments in southeast DC, April led a two-year rent strike resulting in a historic settlement with the owners, Attorney General of DC, and the Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs securing $5 million in property repairs and a 50-75 percent rent abatements for tenants.

April is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and a Union chapter Vice- President At-Large, Steward and Legislative Coordinator. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Black Studies, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology, and a masters degree in Clinical Sociology from the University of Northern Colorado. She is a Stryker Scholar and the recipient of two Departmental Scholar awards. She works and plays in Washington D.C. with her 19-year-old daughter.

More at aprilgoggans.com.

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