4 The Hampton Roads Messenger


Give Our Children the Gifts of Longevity and Dignity this Holiday Season


Editorial


European American police officers has been occurring more frequently than in the past. These officers are


sworn to protect and serve


everyone in their jurisdiction. If law enforcement officers in any American city or county are not protecting all citizens in an equitable fashion, the US Justice department should take action. The US Constitution offers all US citizens equal protection under the law, which includes protection against over zealous or racist police officers. If an officer’s fear of people with darker skin is so intense that he will commit murder by shooting first, knowing that no questions will be asked later, he should not be on the police force.


BY ANGELA JONES How long have young the United African


Americans been victims of violence at the hands of law enforcement officers throughout


States? The


short answer, for a very long time. This holiday season, African Americans can take a stand against police brutality against our youth, not only by marching in protest. We can protest unfair treatment by not spending our money this holiday season. Our children do not need material possessions from us, they need to know that we are making every effort humanly possible to keep them safe when they venture from the safety and security of home.


Some of our children are not even safe from being victimized at home. A seven-year-old African American girl was shot and killed by police while she slept in her bed. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was asleep when officers raided her Detroit home claiming to be searching for a murder suspect while her grandmother was asleep on the couch. Officer Joseph Weekley, the shooter, with a film crew in tow, was first to enter the residence after police threw a flash grenade into the home. The charges against Weekley were dropped in October 2014. If this travesty of justice is not worthy of protest, I do not know what is.


Recently, a 12-year-old American


boy, Tamir Rice,


African was


killed while playing with a toy gun in Cleveland. European American police officers did not survey the scene before they pulled their cruiser directly next to the child and began shooting. European American Office Timothy Loehmann began shooting


within two seconds


of exiting his vehicle. After fatally wounding Rice, an officer tackled and handcuffed Rice’s 14 year-old sister and placed her in the squad car with the officer who shot her brother.


The list African Americans killed


and brutalize by European American police officers continues to grow at an alarming rate. Over the last couple of years, it seems that unjustified violence against unarmed African Americans by


Across the United States, police departments do not reflect the makeup of the community they serve. That needs to change. When Michael Brown, an unarmed African American


death by a European


Volume 9 Number 4 Your Opinion Matters


Why I'm Thankful -- Reflections of a Farmworker's Son


BY LEONEL MARTINEZ


I lived on farm housing east of Lamont until I was about 11 years old, but more than four decades later, I still remember the hard lessons I learned there.


Next to a labor camp where farmworkers


lived off


and on throughout the year, our ramshackle 3-bedroom home was in constant need of repair. We nailed a tin-can lid around the pipe jutting from the kitchen wall so rats couldn’t gnaw their way inside by widening the gap between the wood and metal.


Pots and buckets captured the


teenager, was shot to American


police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, the town had a population that was 67% African American and yet only three of the 53 police officers were African American. If these statistics sound familiar, it is because they represent


something the United


States has accused other countries of perpetrating against populations when people of color make up the majority of the population but are controlled by a minority of white citizens; the term for this situation is Apartheid.


We must protest against apartheid and other injustices when they exist in our communities. When injustice is allowed to fester, it becomes a cancer that snowballs into something that will take decades or centuries to rectify. That is why it is important that we make an immediate effort to right the wrongs that are taking place in communities across the US against young African Americans. This holiday, rather than purchasing toys, clothes and shoes for our youth, why not show them that we care by opting out of the tradition of spending our hard earned dollars with retailers who are complacent about the injustices that plague our community, Black Friday sales were down this year and one cannot help but believe that it had something to do with the “Black-out” that called on African Americans to show their economic power and solidarity by not shopping on Black Friday. If the same call for a “Black-out” is made for the entire holiday season, I believe it would make a large enough impact to show that we care about our youth and we refuse to reward a system that allows them to be victimized. Even if you have already completed some of your Christmas shopping it is not too late to return material gifts and exchange them for a gift that will continue to give our children dignity and longevity; we can give them the gift of an economic protest against their oppressors.I am dreaming of a “Black-out” Christmas.


EFFORTS TO INTENTIONALLY SABOTAGE THE PRINTING, DISTRIBUTION OR REPUTATION OF THIS PUBLICATION IS A VIOLATION OF THE US CONSTITUTION’S PROTECTION OF FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND MAY CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF ANTITRUST LAWS. IF YOU KNOW OF ANYONE PARTICIPATING IN SUCH ACTIONS, PLEASE REPORT IT TO THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.


water that streamed through the roof during rainstorms, cardboard patched the holes in the walls, and winter nights were warmed with a rusty iron wood-burning stove that could have easily burned down the house.


But life in the middle of the camp


could also be a good teacher if you were open to absorbing its lessons. Here are some of the things I learned in the years I lived there.


Hard times always pass and often nudge your life in a better direction. If I had to describe my early childhood in one word, it would be this: lonely. I was an only child living out in the country with no regular playmates. But from that loneliness came something good.


Books became my friends. I was the son of migrant field


laborers who were only a generation or two from Mexico, so I struggled to learn English. But once I did, I immersed myself in the worlds created by authors like L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne and Bram Stoker.


And that led to a love for writing.


I’ve worked as a reporter for 15 years and a technical writer for 16, cobbling together sentences in a language that I once did not understand. I’ll never be wealthy or a celebrity, but words have paid the bills. I appreciate that more every year.


Yet I don’t think my writing


career would have happened if a lonely kid hadn’t once sought companionship in books.


Life is hard, but it will probably be harder without education. On many


seething summer afternoons, I watched my uncles and aunts trudge into the house after picking wine grapes all day,


spattered with covering


with purple fruit pulp, sweat-stained bandannas faces.


mud, their


hair


smeared and


They barely looked human. And I vowed that if getting a


college degree would ensure that I never worked in the fields for a living, I would do whatever it took to get one. So in 1983, I became the first in my family to graduate from college, motivated by the memory of my relatives pouring out their lives in the grape fields.


The world is filled with people


who are different than you; embrace it. Groups of farm workers from various parts of the world rotated through the labor camp at various times of year.


I watched the Filipino


farmworkers stage cockfighting matches (which I didn’t know were illegal), listened to the Puerto Ricans’ salsa music, and stuffed myself with the pan dulce (pastry) the Mexican laborers gave me when I was a toddler. I couldn’t afford to travel the world learning about different cultures and traditions, but slices of the world traveled to me.


Decades later as a reporter,


I received awards for articles that exposed readers to different races, classes and ethnicities, something I’m sure I learned to appreciate from my years at the farm labor camp.


After Sunday Mass a few weeks


ago, I drove by myself to the spot on the country road outside Lamont where the house I grew up in once stood. Cotton plants rippled in the breeze, but there was nothing left of the labor camp that shaped me.


Some of the experiences I had


there were difficult, but I hope they imparted a tiny bit of wisdom.


And for that I am grateful.


December 2014


Established 2006 Angela Jones, Publisher Chris Parks, Editor


Rae Willis, Graphic Designer Ida Davis, Contributing Writer


PO Box 10414 ● Norfolk, VA 23513


Sales and Information 757-575-1863 info@hamptonroadsmessenger.com Copyright pertaining to contents of this edition. All rights reserved.


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