NYC: Stop-and-Frisk Class Action update / FAQ
If you are Black or Latino and you believe you were illegally stopped, questioned, or frisked by New York City police officers between January 31, 2005 and the present, you may be a member of the plaintiff class in CCR’s federal class action lawsuit, Floyd v. the City of New York.
If you believe that you are a class member, please call 212-614-6497 or email floydsqf@ccrjustice.org and provide your name, email and telephone number, and someone from CCR will contact you within the coming weeks or months.
Please read and share this FAQ which will answer many of your questions regarding the lawsuit and provide you with additional info.
I should lastly say
That since this has all gone down the narrative of African Americans and not just people in the diaspora of African descent. I will say that I believe African American culture is a vast, expansive culture unto itself and should be treated as such. A rich history of language, culture, music, literature, spirituality. And it’s always being devalued (especially in the realm of supremacy where it is being co-opted and mocked). And there should be an active push to preserve and be proud of that culture. Damn, so many have been uplifted and found themslves through African American writers, musicans, political figures etc etc
And so when I see people actively rejecting that, as if it’s not a part but it’s own autonomous form of African identity. It’s saddening, because it’s very much alive and flourishing.
I think this whole debate is veering into other territory. But what is it to be African in the diaspora? That is complex and there is no simple answer. But one answer that many Africans living in their culture and having access to the continent. They’re saying you can’t just take symbols from an assortment of groups and then place it as a symbol of ‘Africa’. I think the distinction has to be one’s own historical African and understanding of heritage, but the acknowledgment that the continent is still moving.
There is more access to information in this internet age, as so many always say when others ask to help educate them. You just have to create a space where you are coherent about the justified sentiments of those who feel their own cultures are being treated as an aesthetic motif to a wider historical narrative, as opposed to the very real struggles they face today. How do you make that a dual experience, where one doesn’t feel as if they are infringing on the other?
Listen, talk, understand and move beyond this existential concept of a continent, to one that is real.
I should lastly say
That since this has all gone down the narrative of African Americans and not just people in the diaspora of African descent. I will say that I believe African American culture is a vast, expansive culture unto itself and should be treated as such. A rich history of language, culture, music, literature, spirituality. And it’s always being devalued (especially in the realm of supremacy where it is being co-opted and mocked). And there should be an active push to preserve and be proud of that culture. Damn, so many have been uplifted and found themslves through African American writers, musicans, political figures etc etc
And so when I see people actively rejecting that, as if it’s not a part but it’s own autonomous form of African identity. It’s saddening, because it’s very much alive and flourishing.
I think this whole debate is veering into other territory. But what is it to be African in the diaspora? That is complex and there is no simple answer. But one answer that many Africans living in their culture and having access to the continent. They’re saying you can’t just take symbols from an assortment of groups and then place it as a symbol of ‘Africa’. I think the distinction has to be one’s own historical African and understanding of heritage, but the acknowledgment that the continent is still moving.
There is more access to information in this internet age, as so many always say when others ask to help educate them. You just have to create a space where you are coherent about the justified sentiments of those who feel their own cultures are being treated as an aesthetic motif to a wider historical narrative, as opposed to the very real struggles they face today. How do you make that a dual experience, where one doesn’t feel as if they are infringing on the other?
Listen, talk, understand and move beyond this existential concept of a continent, to one that is real.
