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Making careful brush strokes, Warren Stylez Harvey uses bold shades of blue in his bright Midtown studio. He's painting a young Gordon Parks holding a camera to his eye. The portrait is one of a series of 10, depicting filmmakers, actors and pioneers who are being inducted into the Black Movie Hall of Fame.

At 34, Harvey is a Kansas City artist to watch. His work appears in the TV drama Bel-Air, a reboot of the classic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Harvey was also one of six artists in 2020 who worked on the Black Lives Matter street mural project. At more than 300-feet, Harvey's mural, in purple, green and yellow, made a bold statement at 63rd Street and Troost Avenue.

Harvey's commission for the Black Movie Hall of Fame is his biggest project yet. The series includes portraits of Parks, Harry Belafonte, Kevin Willmott, Janelle Mone, Oscar Micheaux, Tressie Souders, Chadwick Boseman, Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker and Hattie McDaniel.

Harvey said the hours he spent working have taken his art to a new level and left him with a greater respect for history.

Its really helping me actually see more of what's inside me and what's possible," Harvey said. "But it also gives recognition to these these brilliant people that really paved the way for a lot of what is today.

The project involved research on Harvey's part. For him, finding the right image to represent each person was key.

"Some of them are pretty far back, so it was just an awesome opportunity to learn and to bring to life to what they've accomplished," Harvey said.

Of the 10 paintings, the Belafonte portrait is one of Harvey's favorites. He says depicting the actor, in character as the gangster Seldom Seen from Robert Altman's 1996 film "Kansas City," was challenging to get just right.

"It's a stained-glass type of feel with the lines, the separation of the colors, but also bringing those colors in together," Harvey said. "The focus is on Harry Belafonte, but in the background you still get the energy of the scene, and it really brings him out. It moves him into the forefront, just because of how it's been expressed."

Harvey said years of painting have taught him to trust his instincts.

"Just learning my voice, being confident, you know, because sometimes it's hard for an artist to find an authentic style," Harvey said. "There's so much art that you can see that can steer you in a direction of someone else's style instead of just kind of flowing with what feels right to you. And I'm grateful that I've taken that journey."

The project has opened a new chapter in his artistic career.

"These 10 years of being an artist are definitely paying off, and the sky's the limit, really not even the sky's the limit," Harvey said. "I think beautiful blessings are going to come from this."

Shawn Edwards, executive producer of Celebration of Black Cinema, unveiled the portraits Wednesday evening during a reception and movie screening at B&B Theatres Mainstreet Kansas City.

Edwards said the plan is for the portraits to hang in the The Black Movie Hall of Fame at the Boone Theater, located at 1701 E. 18th Street in the historic 18th & Vine jazz district.

Harvey's portraits give their subjects an iconic look, he said.

"They have that feel like they belong in in a cathedral," Edwards said. "There's a very spiritual connection with each of the pieces, and it's just great to see."

Since the hall of fame will be located in Kansas City, Missouri, all of the initial inductees have a connection to the area. Each has made a unique contribution in the history of cinemalike Micheaux, who is buried in Great Bend, Kansas.

"If you were to build any Black Movie Hall of Fame, you have to start with one person and one person only, and that's Oscar Micheaux, the grandfather of black filmmaking," Edwards said. "He was the Tyler Perry of his day. He wrote, produced, directed and distributed his own movies way back in the early 1900s."

Edwards said Harvey's portrait of Parks, a photographer and filmmaker, captured something of the man.

"His eyes sort of pierce your soul, and you can feel him thinking cinematically," he said. "You can almost feel his genius by looking at the portrait."

Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks is perhaps best known for the photographs he made for Life Magazine. He also directed "The Learning Tree" and "Shaft." Parks was one of the first filmmakers who advocated for other Black artists to work behind the camera on his films.

"What would Hollywood be like without Gordon Parks?" Edwards asked. "If there's no Gordon Parks, there's no Quentin Tarantino."

Also included is Willmott, an Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter. Willmott, a film professor at the University of Kansas, won an Oscar in 2019 for adapting "BlacKkKlansman" along with Spike Lee.

Edwards said that, when he commissioned Harvey, he was looking for a unique way to tell a story that is often overlooked.

"I wanted to be something that would be like visually stunning, something that would make you pay attention," Edwards said. "That's what you want from art. You want to be stopped in your tracks. You want your eyes to open just a little wider. And then we want you to stop and think and have a conversation about it."

Edwards said the Black Movie Hall of Fame, which is slated to open next year, is a way to honor pioneers of American cinema.

"We can't ignore figures like Oscar Micheaux and Gordon Parks, because they went through extraordinary odds so we could take things like a Tyler Perry movie for granted," Edwards says. "Those people should be talked about because it's not just Black history, it's history. What they did is important because, you know, they paved the way."

The portraits were unveiled March 30 at B&B Theatres Mainstreet KC in The Power & Light District in conjunction with Kansas City FilmFest International, Critics Choice Awards and Boone Theater Project.

Link:
A Kansas City artist paints film legends inducted into the planned Black Movie Hall of Fame - KCUR

Black Lives Mattershut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon, just days after California threatened to hold the charitys leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.

The move comes less than a week after aWashington Examinerinvestigationfound that BLM has had no known leader in charge of its $60 million bankroll since its co-founder resigned in May. California and Washington recently ordered BLM to cease all fundraising activities in their blue states due to the failure of theBlack Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement, to report information about its finances in 2020, the year it raised tens of millions amid the racial protests and riots that followed George Floyds killing.

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The donation button that used to be featured prominently on BLMs website was nowhere to be found as of Wednesday evening.

The California Department of Justice told theWashington Examineron Tuesday that BLMGNF is prohibited from soliciting donations so long as its status is listed as delinquent.

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BLM also received notice from the state of Washington on Jan. 5 to immediately cease all fundraising activities in the state. {snip}

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BLMs charity registration is also out of compliance in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Read more:
Black Lives Matter Shuts Down Fundraising Days After ...

The People's Convoy block the roads to protest against country's COVID-19 restrictions and mandatory vaccination in Washington, United States on March 16, 2022. (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

After weeks of slowly circling the Capital Beltway aggravating commuters, the so-called Peoples Convoy of MAGA truckers finally breached the D.C. city line Thursday, where they honked at residents, drove in circles, and were met with a very predictable Fuck off!

But at theirFriday-morning rally 70 miles away in Hagerstown, Maryland, the truckers made it clear they cared little for what the weirdos who live in downtown D.C. and cant even fly an American flag think. So organizers said theyll go on a little ride again through downtown D.C. and see what a Friday afternoon in the swamp looks like.

This time, theyve got more than mask and vaccine mandates on their minds.

Whats gonna happen up here in D.C., Black Lives Matter Street, were gonna take it back, said one of the protesters the organizers invited on stage to speak. All that paint is coming off that street, he said. Before I get put in my grave, its gonna get tarred and feathered.

The crowd cheered their approval of the idea. The protester was referring to Black Lives Matter Plaza, a two-block section of 16th Street in Washington D.C., where Black Lives Matter was painted in large yellow letters on the street in the wake of protests following the May 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of police. The plaza was officially renamed by Mayor Muriel Bowser in 2020.

Since the convoy arrived in early March, its been somewhat in search of a cause, with leadership pleading with the crowd to avoid going into downtown D.C.mainly to avoid being tricked into a Jan. 6-style event. Instead, their orders were to just loop the Beltway slowly. This week, apparently hearing all the power in Inside the Beltway, leadership and participants started to breakfrom that approach.

Over the last few days, several small groups had made their way downtown. At a Thursday morning meeting, leadership told protesters to form mini-convoys and go ahead and truck wherever they wanted. With the Beltway shackles removed, multiple members of the convoy finally decided to head straight downtown.

Video taken from downtown D.C. and posted to social media shows the protesters being sworn at, flipped off, and told to leave.

One video shows a man driving alongside the convoy and yelling at each of them (almost all have their windows down) to go home. When he reaches someone not with them, he apologizes.

Other videos show residents standing on the sidewalk yelling at the convoy to "fuck off."

One reporter on the ground said those who did make it downtown just did little loops and complained about parking. The protesters backed up traffic and the City of D.C. issued a warning to residents that because of demonstration activity expected on roadways in and around DC today, motorists should expect traffic delays.

The convoy arrived at a racetrack parking lot in Hagerstown on March 4 and has been driving and honking around the area ever since. The group, many of which are deeply entrenched in right-wing conspiracy culture, are protesting vaccine mandates and hoping the government will rescind the federal emergency declaration set in 2020 about COVID-19. Several politicians have met with the group, including Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Matt Gaetz.

While the group remains active, their numbers are dwindling as the days go by. A video of the Friday drivers meeting shows a sparse crowd significantly smaller than what the group had before.

Authorities had closed off several exits leading from the Beltway to the downtown core, but the drivers were able to find alternative routes. For the weekend, the convoy will be working without their de facto leader, Brian Brase, who announced hed be temporarily leaving the convoy to go see his family. Mike Landis, another key organizer, is taking the reins.

Were going to go down and were just going to keep annoying them and exhausting their resources and playing with them, said Landis Friday morning. Weve got nothing but time sitting here doing what were doing, thats why were here.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Continued here:
The MAGA Truckers Are Threatening to Take Back DCs Black Lives Matter Plaza - VICE

In the past five years, 172,039 people have been subject to strip-searches by the MetropolitanPolice while in custody,and9,088 were carried out on children. 2,360 of these searches were on children under the age of 15. These statistics,which have left us astonished, do not cover strip-searches in schoolssuch as that experienced by Child Q, a 15-year-old Hackney schoolchild who was removed from an exam and stripped by police, because her teachers thought she smelled of weed.In the subsequent safeguarding report, which was released this week, each detail of the case is worse than the last: the child was on her period when she was searched, she was asked to remove her sanitary towel and expose her private parts, she wasnt allowed to go to the bathroom despite multiple requests, and no appropriate adult (for example, a teacher) was in attendance during the search.

The individual trauma caused by incidents like this cannot be understated, and its important that steps are taken to address the significant harm that has already been caused. This incident took place in 2020, and two years on, Child Q is reportedly a changed person, struggling with eating, panic attacks and self-harm. Child Q writes in the safeguarding report: I cant go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up... I feel like Im locked in a box, and no one can see or cares that I just want to go back to feeling safe again, my box is collapsing around me, and no-one wants to help.

In the interest of aftercare, we demand to know what will be done in terms of support for Child Q and her family. Simultaneously, to understand how this incident came about, we must look at the bigger picture. This case, while being predominately framed as a safeguarding failure, exposes a number of disturbing issues relating to institutional racism, criminalisation of young Black people, and the normalisation of sexual violence within policing.

It is easy for politicians and the police to cast this incident as an unfortunate one-off in a police force that is otherwise keeping our communities safe. This is a gross misrepresentation of what the police do, and whose interests they protect. Racial and gendered violence including towards children is the police's modus operandi. Over a third of total strip-searches by the Met in the last five years were conducted on people from ethnic minorities, with the figure appearing to be even higher in east London. It is also well known that Black people in England and Wales are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. This affects tens of thousands of young people, but also includes children under the age of ten.

Then there are the chilling stories. Last year, a report revealed that unnamed police officers had exchanged jokes about raping women and killing Black babies. The public has also become more aware of police racism and misogyny through recent cases like that of Sarah Everard, who was raped and murdered by a police officer, and Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, whose dead bodies were inappropriately photographed by police and circulated on WhatsApp. All of this takes place in a climate in which the government is calling for more police funding, more police in schools in deprived areas, and is pushing through a policing bill that encourages more overlap between schools and incarceration.

Black children are not seen as innocent, vulnerable and in need of protection and safeguarding. They deserve better

The Child Q safeguarding report has recommended changes to process. Meanwhile, politicians have called for heads to roll. But neither of these changes will prevent incidents like this from happening again. Steps must be abolitionist in nature to truly address the deep-rooted nature of police racism and misogyny, which, as demonstrated by this case, takes aim at the most marginalised and powerless. In 2020, we gave funding to the Northern Police Monitoring Project, which is currently leading the No Police in Schools campaign with Kids of Colour. The project grew out of young peoples concerns that they were being increasingly criminalised in spaces of education, and centres their calls for the removal of police from schools. They know as well as we do that police do not keep us safe we keep us safe. This is why BLMUK also calls for divestment from policing, with funds distributed to local communities who know what they need.

In our work, we have seen time and time again that when youre Black, you dont have the same expectation to be safe. Black children are not seen as innocent, vulnerable and in need of protection and safeguarding. They deserve better than to be traumatised in the spaces that should nurture them, and then sent home alone. We are tired of the endless reports, apologies and promises to do better in the future. We are tired of lessons learned at our expense. Now is the time for radical change, that takes power out of the hands of the police and puts it back into our communities. In the words of Child Q: Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe, took me away from the people who were supposed to protect me and stripped me naked, while on my period... I need to know that the people who have done this to me cant do it to anyone else ever again.

Black Lives Matter UK would like to explicitly extend our support to Child Q and her family, who can contact us directly at any point while maintaining confidentiality, at: contact@ukblm.org

Continued here:
BLM UK on Child Q: we're tired of promises and apologies - Dazed

Features

With her classic book newly republished, former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown spoke to Yuri Prasad about life in the revolutionary group, and anti-racism today

Sunday 20 March 2022

Elaine Brown is one of the last surviving leaders of the Black Panther Party. The revolutionary group was famed for its uncompromising fight against racism and capitalism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In particular, the Panthers were known for their Marxism and for being prepared to bear arms.

Brown was a talented rank and file member who joined the organisation at its high point in 1968. She rose to become the editor of its newspaper, its minister of information and, ultimately in 1973, its chairwoman. As the group struggled to survive state assassinations, bomb attacks and FBIinstigated internal fights, Brown held the Panthers together.

She talked to Socialist Worker about revolution and the themes of her republished book, A Taste of PowerA Black Womans Story. We began by discussing the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And we talked about the differences between those fights and the struggles of fifty years ago.

I have said many times that I dont see where theres a movement here. Theres just a slogan, Brown declared. The only thing that is similar is the process of becoming aware of the conditions that cause so much pain.

For Brown the key questions are strategy and political organisation. In this she insists there are marked differences between what was happening in late 1960s America and what is happening now.

I dont see anything like the Black Panther Party or the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or the Southern Christian Leadership Organisation, or any other organisation that has been formed as a result of this collective rage, she said. Certainly not one that is actually addressing the causes of the problems. Who is dealing with all of the issues that George Floyds murder represents, which are the poverty of black people, the continued oppressive state, and so on? I dont see anyone challenging the United States government.

Brown has clearly thought hard about why no organisation emerged from Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. At its height this movement was able to mobilise thousands of people often in pitched battles with the police. There are things that are true today that were not true back in my day, she explained.

The conditions are such that a number of black people have arrived at a level of comfort. Theyre not really afraid of getting killed by the sheriff if they go out to vote. That comfort is something that the mass movements of the 1960s created, Brown thinks.

We kicked open doors to create these positions for elected officials who pretend to have some consciousness but dont do anything. And this comfort has in turn created a reliance on the system that promises to address all these ills without really demonstrating what unites them.

Its as though theyre not tied together, she added. And, because of that, they are not really talking about capitalism. Thats why it doesnt translate into anything concrete. Dr Martin Luther King talked about the urgency of now. Theres no sense of urgency now.

A second reason for the lack of organisation that Brown pointed to is fear. Nobody wants to give up anything at all to accomplish this. Nobodys willing to say, as Dr King said, and as we in the Black Panther Party said, Im ready to die for this. And people did diemy comrades and all the other people that sacrificed their lives.

Brown also highlights the way the establishment and the media have framed the discussion of the fight against racism in the 1960s and 70s. This has limited the narrative to one of democratic rights in the Deep South. We could see black people being hosed by the police. So today we think of civil rights as fighting against black people being hosed because thats what we saw via television.

Looking back to how she became a revolutionary in 1968, Brown said she felt there was very little choice for people like her. By the time I stumbled upon the Black Panther Party in Southern California, [party founder] Huey Newton had been involved in a shootout with police in West Oakland, she explained. He had become a national hero for black people. Not because he was a victim like George Floyd, but because he was alleged to have shot that cop that would have killed him.

Every one of the sisters that I knew were all tough broads. And we had to be tough when we joined the party. We didnt join for some man, we were revolutionaries.

Elaine Brown

I had been thinking that I was a conscious black person, doing my writing for the little newspaper in the Black Congress organisation I was involved in. Everybody was militant. Everybody was everything until the Black Panther Party came and drew a line in the sand.

They said, Well all this is nice, this conversation, but Huey Newton has just been charged with killing a cop. So youre talking about police brutality, youre talking about this stuff, but youre really not making a move. So the difference is now going to be that we have to take action.

The question the Panthers put was, according to Brown, Do you want to keep on playing around with what youre doing and thinking that youre doing something meaningful, now that you know it is not meaningful?

For Brown, the answers clear. What else can you do but surrender your life to the revolution? she asked. In the late 1960s as the revolution grew to embrace womens emancipation and gay liberation, the Black Panthers increasingly incorporated the issues into its programme.

The party was dominated by men. Even though there are people who would like to pretend that at some point it was mostly women, thats just not true, Brown insisted. But I would say that every one of the sisters that I knew were all tough broads. And we had to be tough when we joined the party. We didnt join for some man, we were revolutionaries.

The mainstream womens liberation politics of the time, represented by people such as Gloria Steinem and her Ms. magazine, wasnt arguing for fundamental change in America. They just wanted to make sure women broke through the glass ceiling, so that we too could oppress people and become corporate leaders like men did.

But the Black Panther Party, and the parties we were affiliated with, were the only organisations that identified the question of womens liberation and gay liberation as a part of our overall struggle.

Brown remains convinced that revolution should still be the aim for people fighting for change today. Is it a goal? All I know is that it is my goal. We will never be a free people without it, she exclaimed defiantly. The word might be confusing or scary. People like to think that its some kind of 1960s word.

But the bottom line is that the Empire of the United States, which has caused our enslavement, cannot continue like this. We cannot continue with this world system. Most people are poor, and yet some are so rich that it is almost unfathomable. But in order for them to have that wealth the rest of the people have to be poor. Its a requirement. Im not alright with the current scheme of accepting mass oppression and poverty.

Looking back at her time in the Black Panther Party, Brown is rightly proud of its achievements. My old comrades and I talk about it even now, and we say it was the best time of our lives and we were putting our lives on the line. We loved the party. We loved being in the party. We loved it though it was hard.

A Taste of PowerA Black Womans Story by Elaine Brown republished by Penguin Modern Classics available to buy for 10.99

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'Revolution is my goal'interview with former Black Panther Elaine Brown - Socialist Worker