Page 19 - Florida Sentinel 6-18-19

National
Fatal Shooting Of Young Black Man Sparks Unrest In Memphis; 24 Officers Injured
Street In Front Of NASA Headquarters Renamed To 'Hidden Figures Way'
NASA has honored pioneer- ing mathematicians Kather- ine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson with a permanent tribute at the space headquarters.
The women, who were por- trayed in the critically ac- claimed film Hidden Figures, were also the inspiration for NASA's renaming of the street in front of its headquarters to Hidden Figures Way. Being the brains behind astronaut John Glenn's launch into orbit, the sharp and intuitive African- American women broke both gender and racial barriers all while influencing generations to come.
Members of the trio's legacy were in attendance at the reveal alongside Hidden Figures au- thor Margot Lee Shetterly and members of their family, NPR reports.
"Naming this street Hidden Figures Way serves to remind us, and everyone who comes here, of the standard that was set by these women, with their commitment to science and their embodiment of the values of equality, justice and human- ity," Shetterly said. "But, let it also remind us of the Hidden Figures way, which is to open our eyes to [contributions] of the people around us so that their names, too, are the ones that we remember at the end of the story."
NASA mathematician and aeronautical engineer Dr. Christine Darden attends an event honoring NASA's 'Hid- den Figures,' African-Ameri- can women mathematicians.
Ted Cruz, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on avia- tion and space, had a hand in introducing the bill regarding the street name change. It is re- ported that Cruz initially pro- pelled for the name change after watching the film–his mother was an elite mathe- matician at the Smithsonian during the same generation as the dynamic triad.
"Women and men across every racial and ethnic line have contributed to this incred- ible journey we're on and I think it is also vitally important that we send the message to lit- tle girls and little boys that there is no limit to what you can accomplish," Cruz said.
A bad situation is happening in Memphis where the Wednes- day night shooting of a young black man by a U. S. Marshals Service officer sparked violent protests that caused property damage and injuries to at least 24 police officers.
“Let me be clear — the ag- gression shown towards our of- ficers and deputies tonight was unwarranted,” said Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland (D).
It seems Mayor Strick- land’s concern isn’t as felt by other local leaders such as state Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D) who urged patience and de- manded a thorough investiga- tion into the killing.
“The community wants an- swers into tonight’s incident,” said Rep. Parkinson, who
also called for “complete trans- parency in the investigation of tonight’s officer involved shoot- ing.”
Specifically, the incident went down Wednesday evening around 7pm local time in the Frayser neighborhood of Mem- phis. The man killed, was iden- tified as 20-year-old Brandon Webber. He was being served multiple felony warrants by the Marshal Service’s Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force and other law enforcement agencies, according to police.
Earlier on Wednesday night, a man who claimed to be close to Webber posted a video to Twitter of him confronting po- lice officers who had formed a barricade in the streets.
“My cousin down there, lay-
THE PROTESTORS
BRANDON WEBBER
ing in the street!” the man yelled. “Laying in the yard!”
As darkness took over the city, news of the shooting began to spread through Frayser, protests broke out, resulting in a standoff between authorities and hundreds of inflamed resi- dents, the Post reports. On one side, police stood shoulder to shoulder holding riot shields. On the other were angry crowds, shouting at officers. Some protesters hurled bottles, rocks and bricks, police said.
The scene was definitely chatoc. In one instance, two men used a folding chair to smash out the back window of a police car. Another man ap- pears to spit at officers. It was captured on video and was spread on social media.
South L.A. Post Office Renamed
Report: Hundreds Of Police Officers Belong To Racist Facebook Groups
In Honor Of The Late Soul
Investigative journalists have discovered hundreds of law enforcement officers around the country who are active in members-only Face- book groups that are based on racism, hate and ... well, it would be nice to add a third thing here, but that’s about it.
Reveal, a news website run by the nonprofit Center for In- vestigative Journalism re- cently completed a monthslong investigation into police officers’ involvement with extremism on Facebook. The social media giant allows its users to create closed groups that share pictures, posts, and information among members who must gain per- mission from other members or administrators to see and post content within the group.
Before the Cambridge Ana- lytica scandal revealed that Facebook allowed people to download users’ data, forcing the platform to change its pol- icy, Reveal’s reporters quietly downloaded membership data from two categories of closed Facebook groups:
1. Extremist groups like “White Lives Matter,” “Ban the NAACP” and “Death to Islam
private online racism clubs, even offering their real identi- ties, names and photos. Once they were admitted, the group confirmed the identity of peo- ple who they suspected were current or former law enforce- ment officers. They ultimately found nearly 400 active users who fit that description.
Some of the extreme ex- amples they found were:
• Geoffery Crosby, a guard at one of America’s toughest prisons, the Angola Prison in Louisiana. Crosby al- legedly belonged to 56 extrem- ist groups.
• James “J.T.” Thomas, a detective at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Houston, who posted a meme of a black woman shortly after hurricane Harvey hit the city. His post said: “A reporter asked a black woman how many Churches had their doors open during the storm??? She said she didn’t know, she eats at Popeye’s.” Thomas was reportedly fired after Reveal notified Harris County officials. But during his appeal, he asked: “If you remove the black woman’s pic- ture, what’s racist about it?”
Singer Marvin Gaye
A post office in South Los Angeles has been rededicated in honor of the late Grammy- winning soul singer Marvin Gaye.
“Marvin Gaye's music has transcended generations and gave the ’70s and ’80s a sound,'' said Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), who in- troduced legislation to name the post office at 3585 S. Ver- mont Ave., adjacent to USC, as the Marvin Gaye Post Office.
Because of solo hits such as “How Sweet It Is,” “Ain't That Peculiar,” “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,'' “What's Going On” and “Sexual Healing” and his duet singles with such singers as Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, Gaye was dubbed “The Prince of Mo- town'' and “The Prince of Soul.”
He won Grammys in 1983 for best male rhythm and blues vocal performance and best R&B instrumental perform- ance for “Sexual Healing.'' Gaye, shot and killed by his fa- ther on April 1, 1984, one day before what would have been
MARVIN GAYE
his 45th birthday was posthu- mously elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.
In 2016, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“His music was cathartic,” biographer David Ritz said. “His songs were prayers, medi- tations, strategies for survival.'' The U. S. Postal Service issued a stamp in honor of Gaye on April 2, which would have been Gaye's 80th birthday, as part of its Music Icons series.
Undercover”
2. Private groups that
only allowed police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and/or cor- rections officers to join.
The journalists then wrote software that cross-referenced the two separate lists to see if any of the cops on their list also belonged to the cyber- hate groups. They expected that they would get a few hits. They got more than 14,000.
They acknowledged that there are tens of thousands of police officers on Facebook and thousands of Facebook groups with hateful ideologies, so it would have been impossi- ble to uncover all of the cops who are aligned with online racism. But Reveal’s reporters began a long process of apply- ing for “memberships” to the
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