2012

(The following post was first published by First Of The Month – www.firstofthemonth.org – on December 2012.)

It was Election Day morning, a week and a day after Hurricane Sandy had wreaked havoc on the tri-state area – seventy-two hours since my home’s electrical power had been restored - and there was what the local television forecasters called an “unseasonable” chill in the Canarsie, Brooklyn air. November nippiness or not, there was work to be done. Important work. After all, there was a Presidential election today.

I put on my heavy denim jacket and walked to my local polling place – the place where I have voted my entire adult life – the public school across the street from my house. As I’ve done for decades, I opened the school doors and followed the posted signs with the big, black arrows on them to the cafeteria.

This time – for the first time - I walked in to a madhouse. A plethora of disjointed lines with dissatisfied folk were demanding answers. I went up to a woman with a badge and asked her which was my voting line. She pointed to the line nearest to me. I got on it and, over a half-hour later, spoke to another woman seated behind a picnic table. She asked for my address and name. I gave it and stood silently while she rifled through a large book full of names and addresses. Unfortunately, mine was not among them. She then referred me to another table in the far corner. I went there only to discover another thirty minutes later the folks at that table didn’t have my information either.

Onward if not upward, I was sent to another table. This one was located catty-corner from the first one I’d been to and again, I relayed my information. The woman at this table looked in another huge book, did not find my name and address, excused herself and came back with another large tome. She asked me to repeat my address again. I did. I watched over her right shoulder as her right index finger slowly scanned the page in front of us. Then it stopped on a number and she looked up at me to inform me that my polling place had been moved some six blocks away to the middle of the Breukelen Projects.

“That’s crazy,” I responded, “I live right across the street and I’ve voted here my whole life.”  I also told her that I hadn’t been given any written notification concerning such a move. So, I asked, how could such a thing happen? She then lowered her voice. “It is crazy,” she said. “It’s almost like they’re trying to discourage people from voting.” She then grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled down an address. “Please, please, please, promise me that you’ll go here to vote,” she implored. “It’s important that you do.” As I took the paper from her hand, an older woman turned to me and spoke. “I live in the projects ten blocks away and they told me over there that I had to come here and vote. It’s ridiculous what they’ve doing. Ridiculous.” I nodded and left.

Now, a smidgen of regional history. The Breukelen – pronounced by neighborhood denizens as Brook-line – projects is considered by many local residents as a bit rough. Hence, its nickname of Crook-line, a sobriquet designed to create fear in some and a sense of class superiority in many of its bordering homeowners. Regardless, it is without a doubt a most curious choice to send redistricted voters. My response? I just buttoned up my jacket to the top and walked to the address I had been given: a community center smack dab in the – where else? - center of the projects.

The mood inside was light years away the chaotic cafeteria I’d just left. The lines were orderly and the room was quiet. I got on a line I hoped would be my last of the day. This one was for folks whose last name began with letters M to Z. In front of me was a teenaged girl wearing a pink bomber jacket and pink pants. Her attention seemed to be solely focused on the smartphone in her hands.

In front of her was a middle-aged couple who had turned out for the turn-out. The woman was wearing a brown leather coat cinched with a belt tied tightly around her waist. Her hair seemed to have been recently coiffed because she kept patting the air around it with cupped hands as if she wanted to touch it but remembered in mid-pat not to do so.

The man had on a black leather peacoat, black Nikes with sandy brown shoelaces, a sandy brown track suit - the jacket zipped halfway up his chest - made of velveteen and a canary-yellow turtleneck. He was rocking black sunglasses and a black leather fedora which had on the left side a series of rhinestones that spelled out in capital letters: OBAMA.

In front of them was an elderly lady who was engaged in spirited conversation with two equally aged – male and female – poll workers. I glanced to my right behind me. A long line was beginning to form. (Must be a whole lot of M through Z’s in my ‘hood, I thought)  Behind them were six privacy booths where people were filling out their ballots. I looked left. There was a young brother showing those with finished ballots how to run them through the scanners.

Coming from the scanners, having just finished the process was a heavy-set Latina in a motorized wheelchair. She had on a black down coat, grey ski cap and grey sweats. She pulled up to the stylin’ couple ahead of me. They exchanged pleasantries. Then the Latina spoke: “I told them niggas hangin’ out in front of my building that if I can drag my fat white ass in this chair down here to vote, they’ve got no excuses not to do the same.” The couple nodded in agreement. “Got to,” said the man. “It’s important,” added the woman as she got called forward by the two elderly poll workers.

A twenty-ish young lady in a grey leather jacket and grey kerchief on her head came into the room and made her way to the teenager in front of me. The teen – for the first time since I’d been behind her - took her eyes off of her phone and said hello to the slightly older woman.

“Shit is crazy,” her friend said in response as she began to rattle off tales of the trouble people were having in the neighborhood trying to vote. “That’s why I came here first thing this morning and insisted you come,” she concluded. “I’m here,” the teen said quietly as the A through L finally began to fill up next to us. “You should be here,” her friend responded with a correcting tone, “this is important shit. They’ve trying to steal this election and we can’t let that shit happen.” As she finished her sentence, the middle aged couple passed us with their ballots.

The two elderly poll workers then called the teen to the table. The teen paused and took a deep breath. Her friend gave her a comforting pat/shove in the back and pushed her towards the table. “You’ve got to forgive me,” she said, “this is my first time voting.” The poll workers smiled. “Nothing to worry about,” said the woman. “Just take your time,” said the man.

As she stepped forward, a slight commotion appeared to break out in the A to L line. A man in the back of the line began to complain that an elderly lady clutching a walker had cut to the front. “But I’m old,” she said in a weak voice, “I can’t stand for long.” The man in the back of the line began to respond until a young tall brother in the front, stepped out of the line, took a step towards him and spoke. “I let go her in front of me,” he said. Then he thumped his chest with his right hand for emphasis. “Me,” he repeated. Then he turned to the elderly lady and with his left hand cradled her right elbow. “Just take your time,” he softly told her as a slight smile came over her face, “you just take your time.”

The Hoodie

(The following piece was originally published by First Of The Month – www.firstofthemonth.org – on April 2012.)

A fox tail dangling from a leather belt. A key chain dangling from a leather belt. A leather belt with a personalized name buckle. Low top red Converse sneakers. High-top black Converse sneakers. Green suede Puma sneakers. Clamshell white Adidas sneakers. White Nike basketball athletic footwear. Blue chinos with the orange stripe running down the side. Black “overlap” slacks with two overlapping seams running down the side. Black “AJ’s” slacks with white thread running down the side. Denim jackets with the sleeves cut off. Leather vests worn without a shirt. Leather motorcycle jackets. Leather blazers. Leather pea coats. Leather bomber jackets. North Face jackets. Shearling jackets. Black Bally boots with a Cuban heels. Army jackets. Combat boots. Doc Martens.  Black baseball caps with the letter X emblazoned on them. Black caps and jackets featuring the logo of the Oakland Raiders. Hockey jerseys. Baseball jerseys. “Throwback” basketball jerseys. Starter jackets. Gold chains. Floppy denim hats. Tan Timberland work boots.

Hoodies.

The preceding was a roll-call of clothing items that during my lifetime have been identified by the mainstream media as criminal attire. Anyone wearing this garb, the powers-that-be informed the populace, was sending out a signal that they were ‘up to no good’ and were soon going to commit a felonious act. (It’s an argument designed to bolster police “stop-and-frisk” policies.) Of course, the fact that this apparel was primarily worn by Latino and African-American youth – who began many of the aforementioned fashion trends – served to bolster their supposition. After all, what ethnic groups do we see on television being arrested and arraigned on a nightly basis?

Then came the killing of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin by 28 year-old George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida on February 26^th of this year. The facts – as culled from various news sources – appear to be this: Martin – visiting his father – was coming back from the store when spotted by Zimmerman who was part of a neighborhood watch group. Zimmerman followed Martin. A confrontation may or may not have ensued and Martin – holding Skittles, an iced tea and on a cell phone with his girlfriend – was shot dead by Zimmerman. 

This dreadful event has for a multitude of valid reasons – race, vigilantism, the initial bungling of the case by the Sanford police department, the constitutionality of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law among them – gotten considerable national attention. As many folk of color have noted, there are, unfortunately, Trayvon-like tragedies in their communities on a regular basis. This is, therefore, that rare opportunity to discuss them while also seeking to see justice served. All of this, again, part of a valid and necessary dialogue.

Then came Geraldo.

Soon after the Trayvon Martin case began to break nationally, Geraldo Rivera – according to a transcript posted online – said this on his home network Fox News: ‘I’ll bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way.”

In the world-according-to-Geraldo, half of the problem with today’s world is the way young men dress. As the 68 year-old Rivera pointed out, hoodies have been worn by – and I am paraphrasing - by everyone that has ever stuck up a convenience store and such notorious criminals as D.B. Cooper and the Unabomber.

Rivera’s outrageous and, I suspect, calculated comments predictably caused a firestorm which then led him to a series of semi-apologies first to outraged viewers then finally to the bereaved Martin family themselves. But one thing had been accomplished. Geraldo Rivera had captured the nation’s attention once more. For a short time, he had become the story.

This may be hard for some people to believe – especially those who remember him from the live The Mystery Of Al Capone’s Vault debacle in the mid-80’s - but there was a time when Geraldo Rivera was considered to be a serious journalist. In the early ‘70’s – after a stint as an attorney who had been affiliated with the progressive Latino organization The Young Lords – Rivera joined New York City’s Eyewitness News on Channel 7 as a correspondent. Part of the hook, back then, for the Eyewitness News format was to have a variety of ethnic types as on-air reporters to reflect the city’s diversity. Rivera not only fit the Latino demographic but with his flair for undercover operations became their de facto Serpico breaking such stories as the abuse to the mentally challenged going on in the Staten Island hellhole known as the Willowbrook State School in 1972.

By the mid-70s, Rivera had graduated to a late-night ABC show entitled Good Night America where along with celebrity interviews; he aired the first look at the Zapruder footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination. But after a few network battles, Rivera left ABC and by the mid-80s was hosting the high–rated syndicated Al Capone special where millions of viewers found out that after two hours of Rivera’s purple-prose build-up that the Capone vaults contained ……nothing. (A metaphor of Rivera’s career if ever there was one.)

Soon after that Rivera went over – in Jedi-speak – to the dark side. He hosted a contentious daily talk show entitled – what else? – The Geraldo Rivera Show  where the highlight in a decade-long run was the host getting his nose broken by a flying chair thrown by a white supremacist during a brawl. There was a half-hour nightly program Now It Can Be Told which presaged the modern predilection of television tabloid journalism and his cable show Rivera Live which devolved into a circus during the year-long O.J. Simpson trial. (Although, there was a memorable postscript where a stunned Rivera, doing a live remote from a Washington D.C. African-American church whose parishioners had held a fundraiser to support the acquitted Simpson, ended up being repeatedly and wittily lambasted by the congregation) After being denied the opportunity to cover the Iraq War by his NBC bosses, Rivera bolted for Fox News where he has remained ever since.   

The unfortunate arc of Rivera’s career has even been more magnified in the last few months because of the deaths of two great television journalists: 80 year-old Gil Noble and 93 year-old Mike Wallace. Noble had since 1967 been the host of Like It Is arguably the most influential African-American program ever broadcast. Through Like It Is, Noble had provided a forum for political folk from Stokely Carmichael to Al Sharpton; celebrities from Harry Belafonte to Sammy Davis Jr., historians, poets, artists and produced outstanding documentaries on both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King while all the time maintaining a delicate journalistic balance of asking his guests tough, fair questions. Wallace brought a bulldog tenacity to 60 Minutes grilling his subjects regardless of political affiliation and often cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

Rivera had the raw skills to be either Noble or Wallace but chose not to. Hell, he could have even been Dan Rather who’s another flamboyant reporter with a knack for injecting himself into the stories he’s covering. But where Rather and Rivera differ is Rather usually brings the viewer back to the tale being reported. He’s rarely bigger than the story. Not so, Rivera. He had to traduce the Travyon Martin tragedy to a ridiculous, even bigoted observation to garner attention. The funniest thing about all of this? This is from a man whose weekend television show on Fox News is entitled Geraldo At Large and who wrote a 1991 autobiography called Exposing Myself. Two titles which conjure up echoes of criminal behavior. I mean, who’s profiling who here?