Talib Kweli Talks 'Stop-and-Frisk' @ City Hall

Animal New York

ANIMAL spoke with Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli about the NYPD, stop-and-frisk, and what artists can do to raise awareness about social issues in their communities. Kweli was at City Hall Park to speak at a rally hed by the NYCLU and several other organizations in support of the Community Safety Act, a package of bills that would protect New Yorkers against unlawful searches, establish an Inspector General’s office to independently oversee the NYPD, and ban officers from profiling people based on race, religion, ethnicity, age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, immigration or housing status, language, or disability. City Council will hold a legislative hearing on the Community Safety Act October 10.

Actor J.D. Williams—The Wire's Bodie—on the NYPD "Stop & Frisk" Policy

Democracy Now 

J.D. Williams, an actor who played drug dealer Preston "Bodie" Broadus on the hit HBO series, The Wire, took part in Sunday's New York City march against the NYP'D's stop-and-frisk policy. "It's a sad thing that becomes kind of natural with young black men," Williams says. "It becomes second nature with us, in a way that we expect to be stopped or we expect to be bothered or we expect to be harassed."

Resistance to NYPD's "Stop-and-Frisk" Policy Comes to DC as Lawmakers, Groups Urge DOJ Probe

DemocracyNow 

Dozens of New York lawmakers and several advocacy groups are convening on Capitol Hill today to call on the Justice Department to investigate the New York City Police Department's controversial "stop-and-frisk" policies. Last year the NYPD stopped, frisked and interrogated people nearly 700,000 times -- mostly black and Latino men. In all, there were more stops of young African-American men than the total of population of that group in the city. "This is not about criminals -- this is about a generation that has been criminalized, targeted and brutalized by the police," says organizer Jamel Mims, a victim of stop-and-frisk. We're also joined by NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, who is helping to organize a silent march against racial profiling in New York City on Father's Day, June 17. "This is the biggest, most aggressive racial profiling problem that we have in this country, and it just has to be stopped," Jealous says.

Remembering Diallo

Bassey Ikpi's tribute to Amadou Diallo on Def Poetry Jam.