Nas and Black Feminism

"We were all scholars long before colleges." - Nasir Jones

Just wanted to share something that I hope all of you take to heart. Our lived experiences is true knowledge. I think Nas was reading some black feminist work. Audre Lorde and Patricia Hill Collins have been writing about this for the LONGEST time. However, I don't think this theory became widely known until a man put it out there. There's some sexism there, but I'm grateful that Mr. Jones put it out.

And I just had to share something deep from Nas. I just had ta rep my Queensbridge man.

No on 6 !

Hello World,

I decided to start a blog covering some critical issues around the world through my standpoint epistemology. I want to start the blog off with my two shiny pennies on California propositions. Each blog, up until Election Day, will cover propositions that are important to me.

I want to first talk about Proposition 6, Safe Neighborhoods Act.

Those supporting prop 6 say that this measure is "a comprehensive anti-gang and crime reduction measure that will bring more cops and increased safety to our streets and greater efficiency and accountability to public safety programs and agencies that spend taxpayer money." (http://www.safeneighborhoodsact.com/) Sounds like something that's going to help your community huh? Right...

• Prop 6 doesn't propose any change to medicate and cure the severely deep wound in our disastrous criminal justice system. It is a mere band-aid to the open war wound. The Safe Neighborhoods Act, which will cost $1 BILLION/year, if passed will reallocate funds from the California K-12 public school funds, higher education, health and human services, business, transportation and housing, and environmental protection in order to fund increase operations in jails and prisons. Okay. Just THAT alone demonstrates the clear flaw with prop 6. Money will be taken away from educating children and providing them with the necessary nurture to steer them away from violence and committing crimes. Instead of putting money into building more jails and prisons and increasing the operational costs of prisons (which private contractors and our government make so much dang money from!), put the money into the community! PREVENTION is the solution, not expansion of the criminal justice system. You wanna help victims? Education and organize our children for the good of our society.

• If that's not enough - prop 6 will also try 14-year old teenagers as adults and not as juveniles! Can you imagine KIDS navigating themselves through the court system? That's absurd and inhumane! ACLU should file a charge against the 750,000 people who signed the petition to support this measure.

• The measure also requires all those applying for public housing get criminal background checks. How can anyone get their life back on track if they don't have a place to live and can't afford their own place? Those released from jail or prison have a hard time getting a job as it is. The other issue is that if just ONE person in the public housing unit doesn't pass the check, the entire family is evicted.
  
  
• Local law enforcements can contact ICE about any undocumented immigrants they arrested.
  

I know y'all probably don't want to read long posts. There are MANY reasons why you should VOTE NO on PROP 6 and I can't cover them all on a blog. But certainly, we all need to make our educated choices. So you can research yourself, here are some links:

Rundown: ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=California_Proposition_6_(2008)
No on 6: www.defeatrunner.org/index.html
Yes on 6: www.safeneighborhoodsact.com/

Hope this was helpful!