FRESHWINDSI COMMUNIT Y NEWS I JANUARY • 2015 ED IT ION I

NEWS FOR THE COMMUNIT Y BY THE COMMUNIT Y

Can You Believe A “Driving While Black” Arrest GAVE BIRTH TO THE KKK In 1866 ?

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO OUR

“PEACE” OFFICERS?

January 2015 | FRESHWINDS NEWS 2

FRESHWINDS

EDIITOR IN CHEIFNoreen Davis

EDITOR:The Community

CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Rev. Dr. Amber Rose

Professor Barry FruchterYvonne Phinizy LCSW

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Freshwind News

NEWS FOR THE COMMUNIT Y BY THE

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JANUARY 2015

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Dear Friends,

Despite the fact that this is the season of Thanksgiving, I write to you with a heavy heart. The failure of a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, to convict

Officer Darren Wilson of the murder of Michael Brown was both a travesty and a tragedy. The message that is conveyed in the taking of this young man’s life and so many others, without consequence is that Black lives don’t matter.

But, we know differently. All lives matter to God. In the words of the song that most of us learned as children, “red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight.” All people matter to God. And, we should matter to one another.

As Christians, we are to love one another as God loves us, unconditionally and sacrificially, regardless of race, creed, class or color. As Amer-icans, we pledged our “allegiance to the flag and to the Republic in which it stands - to be one na-tion under God with liberty and justice for all.”

So, even in the midst of our pain, our confusion

or whatever we are feeling, we must continue to fight for liber-ty and justice for all. We can march in protest. We can write letters, emails, facebook mes-sages and tweets expressing our concerns. We

must also vote and encourage others to vote and be empowered to help determine our/their com-munity’s destiny.

We must value everyone’s life and empower one another in order that we might see our own worth and dignity. America and the world are made stronger when all of its citizens are able to live out their lives and purpose to reach their full potential.

I invite you to join me in prayer for the Brown Family, the citizens of Ferguson,

PRAY FOR FergusonBY: ELDER NOREEN DAVIS

Editor in Chief, Freshwinds Community News

COMING SOON FRESHWINDSRADIO ON 247PRAISERADIO.COM

FRESHWINDS NEWS | January 2015 3

The first incident that we have been able to find of “driving while black” (DWB) took place in Memphis, Tennessee, in May

1866, and its outcome was truly terrible. Two horse-drawn carriages, one driv-en by a freed Black man and one by a White man, collided in the street. Police arrested the Black man and let the White go. “Black Union soldiers protested. A white mob quickly gathered and the in-cident exploded into three days of racial violence. Aided by city police and fire-men, white men brutally attacked black people throughout the city, killing 46 blacks and 2 whites. White mobs loot-ed and destroyed twelve black schools, four black churches, and hundreds of black homes.” (“They Called Them-selves The K.K.K.” Bartoletti p. 23). It is crucial to note that the KKK was found-ed a few weeks later in the nearby town of Pulaski, Tennessee. It was a secret society which became a paramilitary and political organization that believed in white supremacy. They used codes, handshakes and signals. They used stilts to look tall and had gloves the color of blood. Their white sheet costumes were meant to look like ghosts to intimidate freedmen and women. “The Ku Klux did not consider themselves law-break-ers but as law enforcers,” according to Ryland Randolph, Grand Cyclops of an Alabama den. The KKK’s violent night raids mostly took place during Reconstruction from 1868-1872. They used intimidation tactics to fight voting rights and land ownership.

Let us “fast-forward” from this first un-just arrest and unjustly treated protest (by war veterans, no less) to an incident that occurred on September 4, 2014 in Columbia, South Carolina, where Le-var Jones, a Black motorist aged 35, was pulled over by South Carolina Highway Patrolman Sean Groubert for driving without a seatbelt fastened. Groubert told Jones to get out of the car and then demanded his license. When Jones reached back into the car to get it, Grou-bert opened fire. In a dash-cam video, Jones is seen fully cooperating with the police officer, backing up, hands in the air when he is shot and falls.

Then from off-camera Jones is heard saying repeatedly “Why did you shoot me? What did I do wrong? I’m sor-ry! I’m sorry! What did I do wrong?” Amazingly, Groubert was FIRED from the Highway Patrol and charged with

counts of FELONY ASSAULT OF AN AGGRAVATED NATURE. If convicted, he could face up to twenty years in pris-on. Supposedly Groubert is suffering from PTSD from a prior shooting inci-dent. If true, he should not have been on patrol that day.

In contrast with the Michael Brown shooting, in which Officer Darren Wil-son of the Ferguson PD is still free and unindicted, (as of this writing), Sean Groubert is not walking the streets or riding the roads as a patrolman. This is an example of a chance for Lady Justice to prevail and keep her blindfold on! Luckily for Mr. Jones, Groubert was a poor shot and only one of his four bul-lets struck Jones, injuring him in the hip. Had all four of the bullets struck Levar

Jones (or if the dashcam had not been on), he might well be dead now.

Most people think that the KKK is still based in the South. Therefore , when, on August 23, THE ROYAL ORDER OF THE KU KLUX KLAN held a rally near Ferguson to raise money for Police Of-fice Darren Wilson, admitted shooter of the late Michael Brown, no one was sur-prised. But what people may not know is that Long island was a major center of Klan activity and Klan power before WWII and is alive and well here today.

During the 1920s. 1 in 7 people in the Nassau/Suffolk region was a member of the KKK. And don’t forget – that total LI population included African Ameri-cans, Latinos, Catholics, Jews, socialists,

Native Americans: all declared enemies of the Klan. Result: the true figure is nearer to ONE OUT OF THREE Long Islanders belonging to the Klan!!!!!

This sad history of our Island should not fool anyone into thinking “That was then; this is now!” The fact is that the KKK still exists in LI. It has only been two or three generations since its heyday in the 20s and 30s and it survived WWII to re-form in reaction to the Civil Rights revolution of the 50s-70s.It tried to stage rallies in the 80s and 90s. Interest in them among young people, exposed to the Klan pasts of their grandparents (as in Freeport where the firehouse held on to its collection of Klan regalia), has continued. And now a new generation, faced with the economic downturn of the 2000s, the nation’s first Black presi-dent, and a large influx of people of col-or seeking work in LI, expresses violent hatred and is therefore ripe for Klan re-cruitment.

The KKK thrives on fear, intimidation, cross-burnings, and lynchings. As re-cently as the early 2000s, the Klan was still hanging, burning, beating, and dragging Black, Brown, and any oth-er people opposed to their teachings. Banned in the late 1800s when the states themselves took over enforcing the race laws (the Black Codes, “Jim Crow,” or American apartheid), the Klan came roaring back after 1915 and the Hollywood blockbuster “The Birth of a Nation” which rekindled interest and roused the desperate White masses during the Depression. The Klan was a TERRORIST vigilante organization, if anything more violent than ISIS but, like them, using violent scenes as a recruit-ment tool. They operated at night with pure anonymity: white costumes and masks to hide their identities – which might well be those of “solid, upright citizens” during the day. The question then and now is, how can the authori-ties let them get away with their crimes?

The answer is that to some degree they ARE the authorities. Peter Novick, in a piece entitled “Blue by Day, White by Night,” has conclusively shown how many police operate on their own time as Klansmen, in effect breaking the law they have sworn to uphold and staining the reputation of their blue uniforms. We older folks can recall an infamous

Can You Believe a “Driving While BlaCk” arrest gave

Birth to the KKK in 1866 ?BY REV. DR. AMBER ROSE AND PROFESSOR BARRY FRUCHTER

This past month the KKK in west babylon have rised their ugly head, WHAT ARE WE DOING TO STAND UP AND DEAL WITH IT AS A COMMUNITY? Photo: Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

See KKK, on page 7

January 2015 | FRESHWINDS NEWS 4

FRESHWINDS NEWS | January 2015 5

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Daniel Schaefer is an LA/NYC based photog-rapher specializing in portraiture and docu-mentary photography. Find his work at Outlier Imagery

January 2015 | FRESHWINDS NEWS 6

By Elder Noreen Davis

On Friday, 12/4/14 Mr. Darryl Matthews (owner of Vidcom FirmWorks, Inc) called a NO JUS-

TICE/NO PEACE COMMUNITY RALLY.

Waiting for nobody to organize, HE SAID “ if no one stands with me I’LL STAND TOWARD CHANGE” and the clarion call went out on SOCIAL MEDIA AND WORD OF MOUTH THROUGH THE COMMUNITY and within less than 24 hours, the community came out and ex-pressed by NO WORDS BUT BY ACTION..

Remember,the major campaigns of civil resistance? Acts of non-vio-lent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations between activists and local government.

Remember, The Boycott such as The successful MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT (1955-56) in Alabama, and The Sit-Ins such as the Influential Greenboro Sit-Ins (1960) in North Carolina.

Remember, The Marches such as The Selma to Montgomery March-es (1965) in Alabama. They stood together and CHANGE HAP-PENED.

“LEST WE REMEMBER” #BLACKLIVESMATTER2014

LONG ISLAND

STANDING TOGETHER FOR CHANGE“LEST WE REMEMBER”

FRESHWINDS NEWS | January 2015 7

By Concern Citizen

By the time of the Michael Brown shooting, August 9, 2014, America had seen the effect the “stand your ground” law. Those

of us who challenge the fairness of this law have called for its repeal to no avail. Those Americans who support this law say that this is merely a matter of self defense, the right to protect yourself and your property. Many say that they are “fed up” with being forced to retreat when confronted by would be assailant. But the right to self defense is protect-ed both statewide and constitutionally. According to U.S. law the right to self

defense is “the right for civilians acting on their own behalf to engage in a level of violence, called reasonable force or defensive force, for the sake of defend-ing one’s own life or the life of another”. Why then, is there a need for another law protecting the right to self defense? How does the “Stand your ground law” differ from the already existing laws? Every law is written and presented to a gov-erning body for approval by people with predetermined thoughts on the subject. These thoughts are what can distinguish the “letter” of the law from the “spirit” of the law. What is the spirit of a law that states that there is no “DUTY TO RETREAT”, if the person “BELIEVES

THAT THERE IS AN IMMINENT AND IMMEDIATE THREAT OF SE-RIOUS BODILY HARM OR DEATH.” It is left to what that person perceives to be life threatening. Indeed there have been shootings where the victim was unarmed and in retreat as were both Trayvone Martin and Michael Brown; in fact young Martin was running for his life when pursued by his attacker. It was the perception of wrongness that led to his death; wearing a hoodie, walking in a white neighborhood, being young and being BLACK. So, it would seem that the stand your ground law empowers a would be “victim”, not just the right of self defense but also the right to pursue

and attack a would be “assailant” with-out consequence.

It is evident that the African Ameri-can community is not perceived in the same manner as are white communi-ties sometimes located just blocks away. Many civilians and those who are cho-sen to act as peace officers have a per-ception of Black communities that is most often tainted by bad publicity and years of institutionalized racism. It is ir-responsible of lawmakers to pass a law that allows acts of violence against those who are merely perceived as wrongdo-ers and can only prove to be dangerous to all Americans when injustice is met with injustice.

The Stand Your Ground Mentality

story from a town in the Mississippi Delta in the early summer of 1964. Two White boys from the North, Mickey Schwerner and Andy Goodman, joined forces with a Black man from Missis-sippi, James Chaney, to organize and to help Mississippians exercise their vot-ing rights. Just after arriving, the three rights workers were arrested by the po-lice on suspicion of trouble. The police held them without formal charge until midnight, at which time they were re-leased – right into the hands of Klans-men in a van conveniently waiting out-side police headquarters. Once in that van, they were tortured, mutilated, and killed, their bodies dumped in a swamp where they were recovered weeks later after a nation-wide uproar including Mrs. Schwerner walking into the office of President Lyndon Johnson and de-manding justice.

The key thing here is that the Missis-sippi police worked hand in glove with their friends in the Klan, stretching the law when there was no legal basis for prosecuting three men bent on helping people with their constitutional rights. They couldn’t get those guys legally, so they did it via the Klan. And of course when the “evildoers” were found, they could not be brought to justice, because “nobody saw anything, nobody said anything, nobody knew anything.” (Just think: if only we’d had dash-cams and iPhones 50 years ago!)

What was true in the Mississippi Delta 50 years ago has been true in many oth-er places since: in LA, Chicago, Phila-delphia, and LI, where the police treated the KKK with kid gloves while applying the full weight of the law to young men in minority communities. It seems not much has changed, only the outward forms. Many people remember that af-ter activists went after the Klan legally and financially in the 1990s and 2000s, former Klan leaders like David Duke went “legit,” exchanging their white robes for expensive suits and blow-dried hair and their cross-burning rallies for “get out the vote” electoral campaigns.

They vowed to “work within the sys-tem” but really, they had one eye open at night and one leg out the door, ready to ride again. And why not? They know that they can always count on some people in the police and armed forces to support them with a nod and a wink..

So when a situation like Ferguson, Crown Heights, or LA develops, gloves come off and the police are empowered to act as they really feel. Now, mind you, none of us wants to brand ALL law enforcement for the wrong headed ac-tions of a hard core of White suprema-cists and haters, the kind of person who would make a video purporting to show the president’s “birthplace” in Kenya and then go on to spout hatred at a con-vention. No, most police don’t start that way, and it makes perfect sense for us all to work for a more educated police force that actually reflects the multicolored, diverse nature of our communities. Peo-ple feel safer when protected by people who know where they’re coming from! But part of the solution is ending the problem: excluding professional racists (and their amateur friends) from police forces everywhere; this was done in Co-lumbia, SC. Significantly Groubert was found out because of the dash-cam in his vehicle. Those who break the law in its letter and its spirit have no business pretending to work for it. We can make a difference by “guarding the guardians” and insisting upon the hiring and pro-motion of fair-minded and law-abiding police officers. (The belated apology from Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson about the “f—ing tragedy” of Michael Brown is totally unacceptable, too little and too late.)

Going back to Long Island, when the KKK went through one of its down-turns, in the mid-30s, it received a new breath of life from the rise of the Nazi Party, which recruited large numbers in NYC and LI. Dedicated, like the Klan, to racism and anti-Semitism, it gained popularity in Nassau and Suffolk, cul-minating in the three or four year hey-day of Camp Siegfried in Yaphank.

There, thousands of young Whites were trained in the ideology and practices of Adolf Hitler, the SA (Storm Troopers), and the Hitler Youth. These Nazis pa-raded in Lindenhurst, Islip, Yaphank, Syosset – all across LI. The Nazification of the Klan (and the Klanification of the Nazis) picked up again after WW II and extended into the Civil Rights Era of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Nazi leaders like George Lincoln Rockwell and Dr. William Pierce competed with and took over Klan organizations such as the White Knights of the North Carolina Klan in the 70s and 80s.

Long Island has always been ripe for these extremists, because in its mod-ern form it was organized into White enclaves by a political class and a real estate aristocracy that was racist in its beliefs and motives. Levittown was in-famously excluding of all but “White, Causasian” families at its onset in 1946, and the rest of Nassau and Suffolk fol-lowed suit over the next thirty years. Public officials on the 60s and 70s open-ly boasted about keeping the LI counties “Lily White” and even leafleted White neighborhoods with crude racist pam-phlets assuring neighbors that the “n-s” would be “kept out of Nassau (and Suf-folk).”

Why should anyone wonder at the ex-tent and tenacity of KKK activity, then?

In the 60s, the Black Panther Party coined the famous slogan, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

But what IS the solution?

As Henry David Thoreau, the philos-opher and abolitionist said in 1848, all revolutions begin with refusal…the re-fusal to yield to evil. When a few people take a first step, this non-violent revo-lution is launched and the evildoers are put on notice. When the authorities join the protestors, the revolution is accom-plished; the evildoers are FINISHED. We must make it easier—by any means necessary -- for the police/government to refuse to yield to evil, to turn away from doing violence to their fellow

man and woman. Once they do so, the KKK is finished, and Long Island (and the USA) will be a better place! This is a fight we can all join today!

We can take our cue from the people of Hampton Bays. Recently a number of them, in one neighborhood, awoke to find plastic bags in their driveways filled with KKK leaflets, invitations to join the Klan, and crude racist cartoons. The leaflets were marked with the insignia of the LOYAL WHITE KNIGHTS CHAP-TER, KU KLUX KLAN, with a head-quarters listed in Pelham, North Caroli-na. They read, in part, “An Introduction to The Platform and Principles Of The Loyal White Knights Of The Ku Klux Klan.” and spoke in favor of ending all immigration other than that of White Europeans. The Loyal White Knights targeted Hampton Bays as a commu-nity dealing with an influx of people of color and “illegal immigrants” (undoc-umented workers), and apparently the KKK thought — WRONGLY! -- that their message would be well received. But instead, all the neighbors expressed outrage and not one joined the KKK. In fact, they called for the town authorities to launch an investigation into the KKK recruitment drive here.

Most chilling of all was the message heard by those who called the phone number in North Carolina given as the headquarters of the Loyal White Knights. It rejoiced at the killing of Mi-chael Brown in Ferguson and urgeWhites to arm themselves. The mes-sage ends “If it ain’t White, it ain’t right. White Power!”

After all this time, all this grief, all this heartache,. It is THIS we must still work to change! Since some police in Fergu-son are wearing “I Am Darren Wilson” bracelets, maybe it’s time for us to wear “We Are All Michael Brown” bracelets!

NEWSFLASH: CAPTURED - Eric Fre-in, the most wanted man in Pennsylva-nia, was captured WITHOUT A SHOT BEING FIRED after a 48 day manhunt!! Why was this accused state trooper kill-er subdued without bullets, when Mi-chael Brown received six???

KKK from page 3

January 2015 | FRESHWINDS NEWS 8

BY ELDER NOREEN DAVIS

While some may view this as simple semantics, I some-times wonder Whatever hap-pened to the term “Peace Of-

ficer” or “Officer of Peace” when referring to Police Officer? ( I may have just dated my-self).

Seems they preference the term “Law En-forcement Officer” now. The problem is that the term “enforcement” carries a negative connotation. In contrast, a “Peace Officer” conveys “keeping the peace”, which is not al-ways the same thing as “enforcing the law”. Is it time to reconsider the Militarization of American Policing?

But allow me to mention some particularly egregious recent examples of police action escalating and harming, rather than protect-ing and serving.

As just one example, we can point to the case in which a 90-pound, mentally-ill young man very recently was killed by three so-called law enforcement officers from three different agencies in Southport, North Carolina. He was apparently having a schizophrenic episode and brandishing a screwdriver when police arrived in answer to his family’s 911 call asking for “help.” The first two officers managed to calm the young man down, but the third escalated the situ-ation, demanding that the other officers use

a taser to subdue him. Once his body hit the ground the young man was brutally shot at close range by the third officer, for reasons that remain unclear.

As another example, we could note the beat-ing death of Kelly Thomas by police in Ful-lerton, California. The beating was seen as so brutal and unjustified by many members of the community that it led to the recall of three members of the Fullerton City Coun-cil who defended the police department in the wake of the beating.

So here we see modern police at work. Esca-lation. Aggression. A lack of common sense, making a bad situation worse. Overriding concern for the safety of police officers, re-gardless of the consequences for those being “protected.” These are not the hallmarks of peace officers, to put it mildly.

Another troubling development that demon-strates how far we’ve strayed from the peace officer ideal can be seen in the increasing militarization of local police departments. The Florida city of Ft. Pierce (population 42,000) recently acquired an MRAP vehicle, which stands for “mine response ambush protection” for the bargain price of $2,000. The U.S. military is unloading hundreds of armored tanklike vehicles as Operation En-during Freedom winds down — and it’s also unloading thousands of Afghanistan and Iraq combat vets into the ranks of local po-lice and sheriffs. The Ft. Pierce police chief

states, “The military was pretty much hand-ing them out. ... You know, it is overkill, until we need it.”

So how did we go from “peace” officers to “police” officers to “law enforcement” offi-cers anyway? How did we go from “protect and serve” to “escalate and harm”? And what is behind the militarization of police depart-ments and the rise of the warrior cop, as one writer terms it? Well, we should hardly be surprised, and we certainly don’t need a sociological study to understand what’s hap-pening. The deterioration in police conduct, and the militarization of local police forces, quite simply and quite predictably mirrors the rise of the total state itself. We know that state monopolies invariably provide worse and worse services for more and more mon-ey. Police services are no exception. When it comes to your local police, there is no shopping around, there is no customer ser-vice, and there is no choice. Without market competition, market price signals, and mar-ket discipline, government has no ability or incentive to provide what people really want, which is peaceful and effective security for themselves, their families, their homes, and their property. As with everything govern-ment purports to provide, the public wants Andy Griffith but ends up with the Termi-nator.

Excerpts taken from Jeff Deist book “Police state: Know it when you see it” 1/18/14

Whatever Happened To Our “PEACE” OFFICERS?