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A judge Thursday afternoon agreed to release the Black Lives Matter Charleston activist who was arrested after he attempted to snatch a Confederate battle flag from a protester.

Muhiyidin Elamin Moye, who also uses the last namedBaha, was charged with disorderly conduct and damage to personal property, according to a bond court judge.

The judge granted a personal recognizance bond. He would be required to pay $2,382 only if he doesn't appear for the next court date.

Moye's attorney, Cameron Blazer, argued that Moye is a low flight risk and is easily recognizable. Moye has "a long history of peaceable activism and demonstration," Blazer said.

"This incident was a product of a very unfortunate administrative decision that resulted in two opposing groups being positioned mere feet from one another," Blazer said.

Moye, 31, was seen Wednesday night running and leaping across police tape in his bid to grab the flag outsidethe Sottile Theatre at the College of Charleston, where Bree Newsome was speaking about social justice and activism at an event titled "Tearing Hatred from the Sky."

Newsome is best known in South Carolina for climbing a flagpole at the Statehouse in June 2015 and taking down the Confederate flag as lawmakers debated its removal in the wake of the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church. She was also arrested for her act of protest.

Moye appeared via live video stream in court. Shortly after appearing on camera, he tapped his temple with one finger, nodded to acknowledge supporters in the courtroom, and briefly raised a fist in the air. Three members of the local activist group Standing Up for Racial Justice, which raised more than $8,000 overnight to help with his court fees, were sitting in the courtroom to show their support.

"I didn't see any crime committed. I just saw a heroic event," said Mary Smith, a 25-year-old SURJ member and Trident Technical College student. "He pulled a Bree Newsome at a Bree Newsome event."

Three members of Moye's family also appeared in court to show their support. His sister, Kim Duncan, said the family is "behind him 100 percent." She did not attend the event Wednesday night, but when she saw video footage of her brother's flying leap, she said, "I didn't think anything of it. That's him."

Moye's jump has made him a minor internet celebrity. A clip of the incident titled "Just a guy taking down the Confederate flag on live TV" was the No. 5 ranked animated GIF on Reddit as of Thursday afternoon, and the sports-centric website Deadspin mentioned the clip as a possible "Sports Highlight of the Day."

Previously, Moye was charged with disorderly conduct in July after he disrupted a North Charleston City Council committee meeting. He was found guilty in his absence in August by North Charleston Municipal Judge Thad Doughty and forfeited $232 bail.

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Black Lives Matter activist freed, facing charges for snatching Confederate battle flag - Charleston Post Courier

A handful of members of the group Black Lives Matter Thursday protested outside North Charleston City Hall to demonstrate their concern about the arrest last week of six North Charleston High School students on a school bus.

Another dozen or more attended the City Council meeting, and several of them spoke out about how the situation could have been "de-escalated."

City police said some students fought each other on the bus, kicked the driver and blocked or attacked officers trying to break up the altercation. They also said they had to use physical force after students grabbed them, ripped off their body-worn cameras and charged at them.

But Jennifer Saunders, one of the people at City Hall, said she thinks the incident could have been handled better. "I read about the incident, and I'm really concerned. I think we can find reasonable ways to prevent the school-to-prison pipeline," she said. "Our children deserve better."

Local civil rights leaders in the wake of the incident last week said they supported the police.

James Johnson and Charles Tyler, with the National Action Network, and Pastor Thomas Dixon, founder of The Coalition: People United to take Back our Community said that the teens' actions cannot be tolerated. The praised police for preventing the situation from escalating.

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Black Lives Matter members protest school bus incident - Charleston Post Courier

One of the women who founded Black Lives Matter wants a grassroots movement to counter what she calls the suppression of African American opportunity.

Patrisse Cullors told an audience at Bradley University, todays political environment is not new. She compares it to the time when she grew up in the 1980s and early 90s.

Cullors says she was, a young child in Los Angeles witnessing the decimation of over incarceration and over-policing in my neighborhood, witnessing the decimation of a lack of reinvestment into black communities and I would argue a divestment from our communities.

The Black Lives Matter movement came to-be in the aftermath of Trayvon Martins death in Sanford, Florida. Cullors watched the proceedings on television, and remembers her feelings when George Zimmerman was found not guilty of Martins death. In that moment Cullors says she, witnessed a modern day lynching go without conviction, without responsibility and without justice.

Cullors says Black Lives Matter is designed to put the deaths of unarmed black men at the center of national attention. She told an audience of about 900 at Bradley University Thursday night it is important to build coalitions locally to create more opportunities for minorities, and to hold local officials accountable or to remove them from office.

Link:
Black Lives Matter Co-Founder at Bradley University - Peoria Public Radio

MONTCLAIR, NJ - Dozens of residents gathered at Union Baptist Church Wednesday to partake in a discussion about the Black Lives Matter Movement, entitled 'Toward an Understanding of Black Lives Matter.'

Rev. Dr. C. Vernon Mason,a formerlawyer and civil rights advocate, was in attendance to deliver a message at Union Baptist Church of Montclair. Best known for his involvement in several high-profile cases, he no longer practices law, but is now an ordained minister.

Mason spoke as part of the Interfaith and Ecumenical Series of Sacred Studies: Race, Justice, Liberation, where each session opens with prayer and Bible study, then a discussion on the chosen topic. Mason touched upon the U.S. election of President Trump, the civil rights movement, and made the connection to the black lives matter movement, ending with a spirited discussion about hope for the future.

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Mason said that, while there were many challenges with the current administration, that he was pleased to see the unity among so many in the nation, as he spoke of the Women's March on Washington on January 21. He addedhe was the oldest in the room and had lived through many marches, but none like that one. He added that the internet played a big role in the women's march extending to all 50 states across the U.S.,"I have never seen a march that size in my life. No one has." He statedthat the unity among people is a blessing in the midst of the current challenges.

Toward the end of the lecture, he opened the floor for questions and took the time to encourage those in the room to keep hope, faith and to stay active.

The next session in this series will take place on March 1 with Farriduddin "Farid" Frederick Johnson, who will discuss violence in sacred texts and society. Prayer meeting begins at 7:00p.m. and sacred study begins at 7:30p.m.

Originally posted here:
Dozens Gather in Montclair for Lecture on Black Lives Matter Movement - TAPinto.net

Rosa Alicia Clemente

In 1993, I was a student at the State University of New York-Albany when Dr. Marta Moreno Vega came to speak on our campus. Until that evening, I had never heard the term Afro-Latina. In fact, I had just learned what it meant when someone saidAfrican descendant. See, even though I had grown up in NYC and Westchester County, respectively, and completely embraced and understood that I was Puerto Rican, it was not until I went to college that I began to get to know who I TRULY was.

The year before, I had joined the Albany State University Black Alliance and, through my involvement with peers who were racially and politically conscious, I was exposed to the true history of mi gente (my people). This awakening of my racial consciousness would lead me to become an Africana Studies major and, to this day, I have been a scholar-activist in the field of Black studies. For me, it became clear that I was an African descendant, so I began to devour anything and everything I could, not only to learn the truth of who I was but also to confront the lies I had been told by my teachers, family and TV.

Although I began to identify as an African descendant, it was not until I joined the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in 2000 that I began to identify as Black, and identifying as such was not easy for me. In too many movement spaces, conscious gatherings and panels, I far too often was confronted and accused of selling out as a Latina. Without the mentorship of Marta and the late Richie Perez, as well as my comrades in the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and others, I could not have navigated conscious movement and personal spaces that sought to take away my Blackness. I have identified myself as a Black Puerto Rican woman since 2001 and to this day, it is not easy. Although many Latinx* people, especially younger ones, are now identifying as Afro-Latinx, I often wonder if it is easier to embrace cultural identifications as opposed to embracing Blackness not only as phenotype but also as a political signifier.

I cannot tell you how many times in the past few years I have been asked, Why are you here? You are not Black. Why are you here? You are a non-Black person of color. What many movement people, leaders, foot soldiers and woke folks fail to understand is that, in America, the binary of Black and white has always excluded Latinx people. One need only look at the media to see that, even in 2017, Blackness in America means African-American. Never are we as Black Latinx people represented in the media, and you will rarely find Africans and Black Caribbean people in dialogues and discussions about race.

Despite the growing numbers and growing racial consciousness of Afro-Latinx people, much of the prevailing discourse makes the assumption that we either have to subscribe to the dominant racial paradigm of African-American/white-American discourse or have to choose between our Black identity or our ethnic one. Going back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Pan-Africanism signaled for the first time an explicit, organized identification with Africa and African descendants and, more expansively, of nonwhite peoples at a global level. With the United States occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the ever-growing migratory presence of both populations in New York and other northeastern cities, the central cultural concern of Afro-Latinx became their relationship with African-Americans and, more globally, with an African diasporic world. This Pan-Africanist ideology was embodied most prominently by Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a Black Puerto Rican who took part in anti-Spanish liberation struggles. Schomburg, a collector and bibliophile of worldwide Africana experiences, contributed greatly to the burgeoning field of Black history. Schomburg lived his life on the color line. His direct knowledge and experience of racism, both in Latin America and the United States, and his alliances with other prominent African-American historians at the time was groundbreaking, and, at the end of his life, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg would identify himself as a Black man.

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As Black History Month ends, it is incumbent that we as Afro-Latinx people in the United States heed the work of Frantz Fanon, who wrote extensively about decolonizing the mind. It also is necessary that movement organizers, organizations and those that fight for social justice affirm and acknowledge a new generation of unapologetic Afro-Latinx, Black Latinxyoung people who are taking their rightful place in the Black radical tradition. As one of my favorite groups, the Welfare Poets, said on their album Project Blues:

Who we be? Who I be? Who we be? We be Isingular I, now the essence of los Africanos and that of lo Indio run within me. So, when you call me Spanish, all my purity seems to vanish because that is not who I be. So, dont refer to me with words that blur the trueness to my identity, defining me by a colonizers language, disregarding my family lineage, my ancestral heritage. Now, I be the rhythm of the Congo, played to an internal bomba, extending from Nigeria from a culture called Yoruba.

No one will ever stop my Blackness. It is who I be.

Rosa Alicia Clemente is a doctoral candidate at the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass-Amherst and was the 2008 Green Party vice-presidential candidate. You can read her groundbreaking article Who is Black?and much more at http://www.rosaclemente.net.

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Rosa Clemente: Can Afro-Latinas Represent Black Lives Matter? - Atlanta Black Star