Injustice of Apathy

May 17, 2011 - Primary Election Day


We were warned of the implications of not voting last November. One would think that we learned our lesson. One would be wrong.


The Rethuglicans and Tea Party-ites are not playing. 


To date, there are only two Blacks in the newly-elected Pennsylvania governor's cabinet, the one in is executive staff is a bodyguard and the advisory commissions on Asians, Hispanics and African Americans are now history (under the guise of budget cuts).


It seems as if I've signed more online petitions against legislative attempts to roll back the clock on Capitol Hill in the first five months of the year than any of the previous years combined. Yet when I cast my vote this afternoon at 5 p.m. the poll worker crossed off number 18 on her precinct tally sheet. Even my optimism won't allow me to be deluded in the hopes of mass absentee voting.


Is it possible that that there are no eligible voters in my community because they are all felons? Nope. They aren't registered? Maybe. Or is it despair and apathy? You betcha.


Sometimes its hard to muster enthusiasm for something as abstract as voting when you struggle with the immediacy of making it from day to day keeping the kids feed, clothed, paying bills, rent and daycare. This is not justification or an excuse. This is a reality in our inner city communities.


Voter apathy is the collateral damage of complacency, ignorance, laziness and a general lack of intelligence and an abundance of decaying brain mass from a lack of critical thinking.

My first drive by...

May 14, 2011

Well, I've just seen my first dead body in the street. Only took an hour for the police to put a sheet over the corpse. Young black male, no belt, faded sagging blue jeans, red shorts, grey wife-beater, very indigenous, wooly 'fro, face-down across the street from Ammons Community Center. DOA at 16:25. Drive-by, three shots.

It was a perfect spring day. Not too hot, just comfortable enough for kids to be outside playing. The little league games had just finished up, a great afternoon for hanging out. I was just getting my strength back after being waylaid by some kind of bug that snuffed out my voice for the better part of the week. I was following up emails and getting caught up on projects I didn’t have the focus or fortitude to complete and do a few loads of laundry.

I was in the midst of forward a link to an article about the return of urban radio to the airwaves when shots rang out. Three distinct pops punctured the slow urban samba of a late sunny afternoon, immediately followed by the screech of sudden departure by car.  An eerie stillness commandeered the neighborhood as I raced to my deck to see what could be seen.

A woman daintily pranced catty-corner to someone lying in the street next to the curb, face down. I realized that I was seeing the aftermath of a drive-by, only this wasn’t TV. I went back inside to call 9-1-1.

My hoarse voice calmly relayed the location and details after what seemed like an eternity of recorded messages urging me not to hang up. I gave the dispatcher my name, number and my cell number as I was going to see what else I could learn. He mentioned that several other calls were coming in about the same incident and suggested that I remain inside.

Ignoring the advice I grabbed my cell and keys, locked the door then went outside. Less than 500 feet away, near the intersection of Bedford Avenue and Kirkpatrick is where the young man lay in between here and there. I thought I saw him move.

The cops arrived on the scene just after I walked to the corner. People materialized from everywhere. A few appeared to know the young man. Police officers secured the area and shooed onlookers away. The yellow crime scene tape went up wrapped around utility poles. A pair of uniformed officers approached the young man. One examined him with gloved hands. Neither made an effort to attend to his injuries.

The crowd grew as onlookers gathered to watch and offered their commentary.

“It’s going to be a long, hot summer.” (It’s only May).

“There were a couple of women out here there other night fixin’ to knife-fight.”

“You can hear ‘em racing up and down the street all hours of the night firing guns.”

“When I heard the shots I immediately got down,” said one man casually as his leashed lapdog checked out the real estate.

Young mothers with their children strained to see who was lying in the street. One young lady was visibly distraught, repeatedly sobbing “On my god!” An middle-aged woman was hysterical in denial – “That can’t be… it be can’t be.” She had to be physically restrained as others attempted to comfort her.

The EMTs arrived in what seemed like about 20 minutes after the first shot was heard. They seemed to be slow motion –- there was no urgency at all. Maybe the call had become too routine.

The murmured conversations were broken by the drama of screams and cries of family members arriving on the scene cloaked in horror and disbelief.

The medical examiner’s vehicle pulled off just before 6 p.m. 90 minutes later, the neighborhood resumed its day in a grotesque normalcy of business of usual

“Testimony” is a stirring revelation

This review first appeared in the May 11-17, 2011 edition of the New Pittsburgh Courier

Although there is a script, there was so much more than mere theater on the stage of the August Wilson Center for African American Culture that May 6 evening. There was a rite of passage, a catharsis, a purging of the soul, a “laying on” of hands and healing of the spirit. It was a communal cleansing from a deathly conspiracy of deep silence finally unbroken in a story circle.

Uprise: Raising Black Men Project, is the culmination of months of discussions, interviews and documentation through an engagement process with local arts, social service, criminal justice and education organizations led by siblings Carlton and Maurice S. Turner, collectively known as M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), and recorded by videographer Christopher Ivey, yielded the ingredients for a hardy, spicy gumbo brewed by August Wilson Fellow (and New Pittsburgh Courier contributor) Tameka Cage served up —“Testimony.”

The stories of Pittsburgh’s Black men are rarely told, much less heard, as a first-person account. They are the aspirations of young men beginning to make their mark, those who grew up with and (or) without their father’s influence, the men who live the consequences of their choices and the ones who simply remember, recall and share their accumulated wisdom.

Cage’s script simmers with attitudes, differences, conflicts and commonalities and reaches a boiling point of truth, triumphs and tears much more potent than machismo and testosterone. The countenance and nuances of Black men season the directing by Mark Clayton Southers, AWC’s Artistic Director of Theater Initiatives, who likened the creative process to “an awakening.”

Southers called on his roots (and production team) from Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company to conjure the set of a community center basement in a former church that essentially projected into and made the theatre audience an “amen corner” as the onstage dialogue frequently drew a call of response.

“Testimony” is truly an ensemble piece drawing on the talents of local theater veterans, theatre “babes” who’ve grown up on the stage including Jonathan Berry, Jonas Chaney, David Conley, Lonzo Green, Michael Jackson, Carter Redwood, Devaughn Robinson, Leslie Ezra Smith, Khalil Stanback, Emmanuel Walker, Joshua Wilder and Broadway’s Tony Award nominee Anthony Chisholm.

“Testimony” serves as proof of the depth of the talent in Pittsburgh Black community. The portrayals on stage are not caricature or stereotype but bring a sense of tangible authenticity.

Fortunately for all of us, Uprise: Raising Black Men Project and “Testimony” will have an afterlife. The play and its creative process of story circles and interviews will be compiled on a DVD that will be ready for distribution in the fall; and something more profound can result if we truly discern what was presented—continuing of the dialogue presented on stage, moving past the misconceptions and misperceptions of our image of Black men and begin a new era of understanding.

TALKBACK - The actors and creators of UPRISE: Raising Black Men Project in dialogue with the audience after their performance of Testimony. (Photo by C. Denise Johnson)

Friday the 13th in Harrisburg - The Demise of Diversity

The Internet is truly illuminating. While surfing my Facebook page, I came across this nugget, posted May 13, 2011 on the PA Governor's Advisory Commission on African American Affairs’ profile:

Dear FB Family, our page will soon be taken down. As of the close of business 5/13/11, the staff has been relieved of duty. It has been a pleasure working on your behalf over the years.

In a separate email from GACAAA: Please direct any communication that you would normally send to our office to Luke Bernstein, deputy chief of staff. Luke oversees the Office of Public Liaison. According to page E2.1 of the Governor's budget proposal: "The Office of Public Liaison provides advocacy services for the commonwealth's Latino, African-American and Asian-American communities. The office also advocates for women and girls."

If I am reading it correctly, I am led to believe that the all of the Governor's Advisory Commissions as well as the Pennsylvania Commission on Women have been eliminated and now come under the purview of the Office of Public Liaison.

Putting aside my knee-jerk conspiracy theory response, I would assume that consolidation is a budgetary function, although I doubt that the specific needs of four distinct constituencies can be effectively addressed in the one office charged to recognize and promote the public advocacy of issues that affect every resident of the commonwealth.

Additionally, in light of this merger of the advocacy needs of every state resident, I assumed that there would be a wide range of ethnic and racial diversity of reflected in the make up of the Governors Cabinet and Executive Staff. I was exponentially wrong.

Going strictly by the posted photos on the Governor's Web Site, two of the 24 cabinet positions are held by Blacks - Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel and Inspector General Kenya Mann Faulkner. The Executive Staff is even more disturbing.

The lone Black member (Brian K. Westmoreland) holds the esteemed position of Personal Assistant to the Governor (not to be confused with the Executive Assistant to the Governor) - the brother is essentially Corbett's bodyguard.

Is the public aware of this situation? Is it possible to bring this attention of the community? The prospect of living under this kind of state government through 2014 does not bode well for the well-being of Black folks in this Commonwealth. I shudder to think what will trickle down from the top.

C. Denise Johnson

Hill District

Pittsburgh, PA