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Gabourey Sidibe is afraid of the police in America and has never felt protected by them.

The Precious actress has stepped behind the camera to direct short film The Tale of Four, a 20-minute project which addresses issues such as race-based violence, fatal encounters with law enforcement and domestic abuse. Noting that the U.S. is great as long as youre white, Gabourey admits shes yet to feel safe in her home country as a black woman, and highlights the struggles people of colour face in her new project. I dont want to argue with anyone, or with Make America Great Again. I just want you to show me the facts, she shrugged to Refinery29. Because Ive always been afraid of the police. Ive never had the chance to see police as helpers. Its not my fault. Its where I was raised. Im from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Ive always felt like an oil stain that they needed to clean up and not a citizen that they felt obligated to protect." There have been a number of high-profile cases over the past few years that have drawn attention to the treatment of black people in America, notably the death of teenager Trayvon Martin, whose killer neighbourhood watchman George Zimmerman - was acquitted. This incident led to the launch of Black Lives Matter in 2012, but Gabourey, 34, is upset by how little coverage there is of female victims. "When we were shooting, there was the woman who was shot in front of her five-year-old, fatally; and her five-year-old was shot, too," she sighed. "Just a few days ago, there was a woman who was killed, who was pregnant, in front of her four children. I dont know if its equal or unequal to the black men were losing. But certainly I have the same amount of outrage." The Tale of Four, which follows the lives of four women who live in the same building, screened at Nantucket Film Festival on Sunday (25Jun17) and will be available to stream later this summer.

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Gabourey Sidibe: 'Police in America don't make me feel safe' - Star Magazine UK

Charlotte Observer (blog)

I detect a double standard on shootings, guns Charlotte Observer (blog) George Zimmerman could legally kill 17-year-old Trayvon Martin because of the concept of stand your ground, which has become the basis for laws in several states. His acquittal means a man can create a dangerous situation then cite that dangerous ... and more »

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I detect a double standard on shootings, guns - Charlotte Observer (blog)

By Osamudia James The Washington Post

"He was very honest." That's how one juror explained the decision last week to acquit Philando Castile's killer, Jeronimo Yanez, formerly of the St. Anthony, Minn., police department, of second-degree manslaughter. The implication: That Castile, the man he shot, was not as honest, not as innocent and not as good. That Yanez's fear of Castile was reasonable.

Before Yanez's trial, we witnessed the immediate aftermath of Castile's shooting live-streamed on Facebook. It triggered outrage across the country, prompting Minnesota's governor to initially ask, "Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver, were white?" before going on to answer, "I don't think it would have." This week, the public saw the dashboard camera footage Yanez's jury saw. It highlights Castile's manifestly appropriate response after being pulled over by Yanez, but it also amplifies Yanez's instantaneous fear, helping the jury conclude that he acted lawfully.

All of which underscores the commitment, ingrained into our moral imagination, to perceiving police officers as good, honest and reasonable, while perceiving black civilians as bad, dishonest and dangerous - the problem at the heart of Castile's killing, Eric Garner's killing, Samuel DuBose's killing and Walter Scott's killing.

Each of these killings was caught on camera, reminding us that despite the public-policy argument for wider use of body and dashboard cameras, police video will not deliver justice.

Much has been made of the introduction of dashcam and bodycam technology. Here, advocates have said, are the tools that produce the evidence needed to help jurors and the public come to a consensus about when police killings are, and are not, justified. "Put body cameras on every cop," argued Mark O'Mara, who represented George Zimmerman in his trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin, to "hold cops accountable for unjustified actions against minorities."

In recent years, as police killings of unarmed African Americans have become widely publicized, polls have shown that Americans support the adoption of the technology. And there are certainly examples of police departments that have effectively implemented their use.

I'm skeptical, though, because of what cameras cannot do: They can't upend the perception that black people present a threat that justifies the use of deadly police force, even when victims are running away, as in Scott's case. Videos won't stop an officer from imagining himself as "a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan" when engaging a black teenager, or from approaching a 12-year-old black boy as if he were a grown man. The knowledge that he was being recorded did not temper the overreaction of Yanez, a trained, armed police officer. Instead, Yanez immediately reached for his gun after Castile calmly and responsibly informed Yanez that he was carrying a firearm, and within seconds Yanez fired seven rounds in rapid succession into a car where a 4-year-old sat in the back seat.

This irrational fear doesn't only operate in police encounters. Look around at America's segregated settings for evidence: Parents use race as a heuristic for school quality irrespective of test scores, prompting whites to not only avoid majority-minority schools, but to fight attempts at public school integration. Homeowners use race when evaluating neighborhoods, characterizing neighborhoods as significantly less desirable places to live when more black people are featured in pictures of those neighborhoods. Just this week, a viral video illustrated the phenomenon of white patients eschewing care from doctors and nurses of color.

These racial perceptions have other material and unjust consequences. One 2014 Stanford University study found that Americans support more punitive crime legislation when they closely associate criminality with blackness. In a bittersweet change to drug policy, now that the country's opioid crisis is associated with white Americans, greater empathy informs our conversations about drug trafficking and substance abuse. And in the tense moments of a police stop, irrational and racialized fear turns deadly.

What becomes of a society where race warps the functioning of the justice system, where juries, observing these horrors on video, nevertheless deem fear of blackness reasonable? What happens when the killing of unarmed black people consistently and despairingly results in acquittals that leave black victims' friends, families and entire communities convinced that the system is incapable of delivering justice? Faith in our democracy, in our institutions and in each other dies a steady and certain death. In the wake of that death, white supremacy grows, destroying not only black lives but the lives of everyone else complicit in, or benefiting from, that destruction.

Video can't save us from this. Only a reckoning with America's fear of blackness can take us beyond the place where cameras leave us. In that new place, Castile, like his killer, might - must - also be understood in the first instance as honest, good and deserving of life.

Osamudia James is a professor and vice dean at the University of Miami School of Law.

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Opinion: Police video won't deliver justice - Port St. Joe Star

24 May 2017, 12:56 a.m.

The Black Lives Matter movement began as a hashtag in response to the killing of an unarmed black teenager.

New York: Black Lives Matter, the movement against racial inequality and police violence in the US which began as a powerful hashtag and became a global rallying cry, will be the 2017 recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize - the first time the often-controversial award has gone to a movement and not an individual.

The prize recognises the work of the amorphous racial justice movement that exists under the catch-all moniker, but has nevertheless managed to unite activists from around the world, including in Australia.

The phrase and hashtag was first used by activist Alicia Garza in a mournful, angry Facebook post following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, in 2013, for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The African-American boy was gunned down by the neighbourhood vigilante while walking home - unarmed - from a trip to a corner store.

"I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter," Ms Garza wrote at the time, "black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter."

The hashtag gained real prominence though in 2014, after the deaths of two unarmed black men during encounters with police - Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York - which further focused the national and international spotlight on police brutality and the killings of unarmed black men in the US.

The phrase, which is also the name of the civil rights activist organisation founded by Ms Garza and two other black female activists, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, has proved enduringly powerful.

It has been taken up by anti-racist movements around the world - including by protesters in Australia calling for an end to Indigenous deaths in custody - who feel the lives of black citizens are implicitly or explicitly treated as less valuable than others.

"For me there's a the level of unapologeticness about it," Ms Garza said of the phrase this week.

"In a context where we're often told, to not talk about race, that talking about race is somehow divisive, when in fact those of us who are on the losing end of racial relations want people to talk about it because we want to resolve the contradictions of some people having and some people not, of some people being discriminated against or being kept from opportunities."

Ms Garza visited Australia last year and observed some the parallels in the social and economic inequalities faced by both African-Americans and Aboriginal people, particularly on the issue of mass incarceration. Aboriginal youth in Australia are jailed at 24 times the rate of their non-Indigneous peers.

Ms Garza said though there was also a similarity in the attitudes of the broader ambivalence to this inequality.

"My impression being in Australia was that people now understand how important Indigenous rights are, but still I think there is a bit of a politeness around what is a pretty serious crisis, particularly just in relation to the conditions that Indigenous communities are facing."

"And I think it's similar in the US, where the way we talk about race here is that we've 'moved on' from it, when it's in fact very salient."

The phrase 'Black Lives Matter' has also permeated pop culture and been seized on and inverted by its critics, such as those who chanted 'Blue Lives Matter' at the Republican National Convention last year to affirm their support for police officers. A raft of provocative proposed state laws that aim to classify killing police as a hate crime in some US states have been dubbed "blue lives matter" bills.

The Sydney Peace Prize jury's citation for this year's winners applauded the movement "for building a powerful movement for racial equality, courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism. And for harnessing the potential of new platforms and power of people to inspire a bold movement for change at a time when peace is threatened by growing inequality and injustice."

The three women will travel to Sydney to accept the prize at the official ceremony in November, and to deliver the annual City of Sydney Sydney Peace Prize Lecture.

The Sydney Peace Prize prize is awarded each year by the Sydney Peace Foundation, which is located within the University of Sydney and receives support from the City of Sydney.

Past winners include prominent leftist thinkers including author and climate change activist Naomi Klein, journalist John Pilger and philosopher Noam Chomsky, as well as human rights campaigners such as author Arundhati Roy and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The story How three Americans won the Sydney Peace Prize first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

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How three Americans won the Sydney Peace Prize - Braidwood Times

By Osamudia James The Washington Post

"He was very honest." That's how one juror explained the decision last week to acquit Philando Castile's killer, Jeronimo Yanez, formerly of the St. Anthony, Minn., police department, of second-degree manslaughter. The implication: That Castile, the man he shot, was not as honest, not as innocent and not as good. That Yanez's fear of Castile was reasonable.

Before Yanez's trial, we witnessed the immediate aftermath of Castile's shooting live-streamed on Facebook. It triggered outrage across the country, prompting Minnesota's governor to initially ask, "Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver, were white?" before going on to answer, "I don't think it would have." This week, the public saw the dashboard camera footage Yanez's jury saw. It highlights Castile's manifestly appropriate response after being pulled over by Yanez, but it also amplifies Yanez's instantaneous fear, helping the jury conclude that he acted lawfully.

All of which underscores the commitment, ingrained into our moral imagination, to perceiving police officers as good, honest and reasonable, while perceiving black civilians as bad, dishonest and dangerous - the problem at the heart of Castile's killing, Eric Garner's killing, Samuel DuBose's killing and Walter Scott's killing.

Each of these killings was caught on camera, reminding us that despite the public-policy argument for wider use of body and dashboard cameras, police video will not deliver justice.

Much has been made of the introduction of dashcam and bodycam technology. Here, advocates have said, are the tools that produce the evidence needed to help jurors and the public come to a consensus about when police killings are, and are not, justified. "Put body cameras on every cop," argued Mark O'Mara, who represented George Zimmerman in his trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin, to "hold cops accountable for unjustified actions against minorities."

In recent years, as police killings of unarmed African Americans have become widely publicized, polls have shown that Americans support the adoption of the technology. And there are certainly examples of police departments that have effectively implemented their use.

I'm skeptical, though, because of what cameras cannot do: They can't upend the perception that black people present a threat that justifies the use of deadly police force, even when victims are running away, as in Scott's case. Videos won't stop an officer from imagining himself as "a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan" when engaging a black teenager, or from approaching a 12-year-old black boy as if he were a grown man. The knowledge that he was being recorded did not temper the overreaction of Yanez, a trained, armed police officer. Instead, Yanez immediately reached for his gun after Castile calmly and responsibly informed Yanez that he was carrying a firearm, and within seconds Yanez fired seven rounds in rapid succession into a car where a 4-year-old sat in the back seat.

This irrational fear doesn't only operate in police encounters. Look around at America's segregated settings for evidence: Parents use race as a heuristic for school quality irrespective of test scores, prompting whites to not only avoid majority-minority schools, but to fight attempts at public school integration. Homeowners use race when evaluating neighborhoods, characterizing neighborhoods as significantly less desirable places to live when more black people are featured in pictures of those neighborhoods. Just this week, a viral video illustrated the phenomenon of white patients eschewing care from doctors and nurses of color.

These racial perceptions have other material and unjust consequences. One 2014 Stanford University study found that Americans support more punitive crime legislation when they closely associate criminality with blackness. In a bittersweet change to drug policy, now that the country's opioid crisis is associated with white Americans, greater empathy informs our conversations about drug trafficking and substance abuse. And in the tense moments of a police stop, irrational and racialized fear turns deadly.

What becomes of a society where race warps the functioning of the justice system, where juries, observing these horrors on video, nevertheless deem fear of blackness reasonable? What happens when the killing of unarmed black people consistently and despairingly results in acquittals that leave black victims' friends, families and entire communities convinced that the system is incapable of delivering justice? Faith in our democracy, in our institutions and in each other dies a steady and certain death. In the wake of that death, white supremacy grows, destroying not only black lives but the lives of everyone else complicit in, or benefiting from, that destruction.

Video can't save us from this. Only a reckoning with America's fear of blackness can take us beyond the place where cameras leave us. In that new place, Castile, like his killer, might - must - also be understood in the first instance as honest, good and deserving of life.

Osamudia James is a professor and vice dean at the University of Miami School of Law.

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Opinion: Police video won't deliver justice - Holmes County Times Advertiser