New York Civil Rights Coalition, Inc.

Read our open letter to the brass at MSNBC/Comcast regarding the race-baiting of the Networks's compensated-pundits

FULL TEXT: OUR OPEN LETTER TO THE BRASS AT MSNBC/COMCAST REGARDING THE RACE-BAITING OF THE NETWORK’S In an open letter to MSNBC TV executives, including to its owner's Comcast Corporation we have complained of race-baiting antics of its compensated-pundits. NYCRC Executive Director Michael Meyers ...

STACEY DASH'S RACE-CRAZED CRITICS "AREN'T CAPABLE OF SHAME"

The executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, Michael Meyers. an African American himself, denounces the racially-charged tweets from "race-crazed" haters that are being directed at African American actress Stacey Dash after Ms. Dash tweeted her endorsement of Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama.

Michael Meyers' statement follows:

"Those hateful zingers in the form of tweets, calling African American actress Stacey Dash vile names--such as 'ji***oo,' 'indoor slave', and that labeled her a traitor to her race--evinces an ugly mood in this nation on the part of racial fanatics and others who engage in unhinged racial calumny. They have directed such name-calling at blacks and whites who disagree with them on politics and candidates for elected office. Sadly, and weirdly, they think of themselves as the guardians and as the defenders of the so-called black race. But they are not representatives of any rational or ethnic community; rather, they, and their ilk, represent only ignorance, ugliness, and putrid bigotry.

"What is more, the race-crazed haters don't even know that there is no such thing as one's 'race' based on skin color. We all, regardless of our skin color, belong to the same race--the human race. And, as Stacey Dash has said, in defense of expressing her views, she is entitled as an individual to her own opinions without regard to her skin color and without being assigned or consigned to the community in which others insist she belongs and must identity.

"It is self-evident that those who have so despicably assailed Stacey Dash as not being 'black enough' are themselves not capable of shame. So, we who abhor and deplore racial calumny and the wickedness that such idiocy and hatred foment, are ashamed for them."

CIVIL LIBERTARIANS RESPOND to NY Daily News editorial on the NYPD killing of Reynaldo Cuevas. Read Michael Meyers' and retired ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser's separate comments on the Daily News editorial:

Michael Meyers:

How absurd, shocking and tasteless is your attempt to justify the unlawful racial profiling and stop and frisk practices of NYPD by connecting and "contexting" them to this police shooting and killing of Reynaldo Cuevas, the innocent captive, while he was escaping his captors. The race of these perps or of the people other perps ordinarily victimize, is irrelevant. A punk is a punk. And justice must always be served in a color-blind fashion. In this connection, civil libertarians don't scapegoat or presume either innocence or guilt based on anyone's skin color or contend, for that matter, that the color of the community in which a person is stopped, questioned and frisked justifies such police misconduct as racial profiling. The rule of law does not support racial profiling by the police or stops and frisks of persons based on generalized 'racial stats".

Will you stop at nothing at defending the whims and errant policy of Police Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg who have in effect commanded our police officers to disrespect and disregard the law as handed down by the United States Supreme Court?

Going back to the tragic death of Reynaldo Cuevas--which you might have addressed directly and wholly--he was shot and killed by a police officer who mistook him as a perp rather than as the victim and hostage he was--one explanation offered is that the cop's gun went off "accidentally." Did it? Or was Mr. Cuevas mistaken as a perp? Which is it--i.e. did the gun go off "accidentally" or did the police officer err in assessing the situation and mistakenly shoot the victim and captive, out of some belief that the victim was the perp? if so, why and in what circumstances? This specific shooting is subject to a review and that review should be undertaken without any prejudice or rush to judgment. Indeed, as that probe proceeds, one might ask "why" and "how" is it that the police officer who shot Mr. Cuevas is still "unidentified"? The police department, and the officer himself, must know the identity of the officer who shot Mr. Cuevas. Why doesn't the Daily News want to also know? Why aren't journalists asking the right questions instead of providing their rash, hasty answers and stoking racial hysteria about this "accidental" or mistaken shooting by a police officer of one of the hostages?

Michael Meyers, New York Civil Rights Coalition

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IRA GLASSER:

The Daily News editorial of Sept. 8, blaming Reynaldo Cuevas' being shot and killed by a police officer, in the course of responding to an armed robbery by others in Cuevas' uncle's store, appears to blame civil liberties advocates for this tragedy. The News asks: "Now, explain to us again how civil libertarians can be so pigheadedly opposed to the NYPD’s program of stopping and questioning individuals who appear to be acting suspiciously, and frisking those who show indications of being armed." Here is the answer, now pay attention carefully:

1. Civil libertarians are not, repeat NOT, opposed to stopping and questioning people on the basis of reasonable suspicion that they are involved, about to be involved, or know something about a crime. Such reasonable suspicion is precisely what the law requires.

2. Civil libertarians are not, repeat NOT, opposed to frisking those who are stopped who show indications of being armed; here again, reasonable suspicion that a person is armed and dangerous is precisely what the law requires to permit a frisk. But that legal requirement has been ignored by the police in hundreds of thousands of frisks, and have produced virtually no guns.

3. What civil libertarians ARE opposed to is stopping and frisking people who show NO indications that they are armed and dangerous. Last year there were 380,000 frisks, and guns were found in less than ONE-QUARTER OF ONE PER CENT of the frisks. The cops conducting those frisks couldn't have had reasonable suspicion that they were armed and dangerous, or else how were they wrong 99.75% of the time? In fact, they were stopping and frisking people on the basis of their being young and black or Latino, not because there was any reasonable basis to suspect them of being armed and dangerous.

And by the way, aside from correcting your utterly incorrect view of what civil libertarians do and do not oppose, and aside from emphasizing again what the law requires, it is well to remember, for those who pretend to care about public safety, that no one is made safer when the cops spend their time searching innocent people who are NOT ARMED. The policy and practice of searching innocent people who show no indication of being armed is both illegal AND NOT IN THE INTERESTS OF PUBLIC SAFETY.

Ira Glasser
Executive Director (retired), American Civil Liberties Union, 1978-2001

Three robbers were the true killers of Reynaldo Cuevas The shot that killed Reynaldo Cuevas came from a police officer’s gun, but responsibility for his death belongs to the three men who attempted to rob the bodega where he worked, one of them brandishing a gun.

"Barack Obama, Black Separatist?" ...Read Michael Meyers' seminal HuffPo piece on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans--an Initiative he criticizes as creating a "black corner" at the U.S. Department of Education. The piece also objects to Obama's waivers that relax the educational standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. Send this one around!!!

Obama's Executive Order Puts Blacks In the Corner At the U.S. Department of Education We need President Barack Hussein Obama's leadership in streamlining government and in reorganizing society on a nonracial basis instead of doing the same thing that his predecessors have done

Make a contribution to the New York Civil Rights Coalition and help fight racial prejudice! VISIT http://www.nycivilrights.org/donations

TEN YEARS AGO, our groundbreaking study uncovered systemic efforts to separate, stereotype and stigmatize entire minority groups on college campuses nationwide. Ten years later, has anything changed? Our staff is currently updating our original report, which you can read on our website: http://tiny.cc/r2v8gw

Gender segregation persists in our schools, perpetuating damaging gender stereotypes. Read this article discussing the popularity which "the pseudo-science of single-sex schooling" enjoyes among educators, and the successful efforts of anti-segregationists in fighting this trend.

School S*x Segregation Loses Ground | Womens eNews

READ OUR HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE AT: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-meyers/mayor-bloombergs-discrimi_b_922095.html

Make a contribution to the New York Civil Rights Coalition and help fight racial prejudice! VISIT http://www.nycivilrights.org/donations

WATCH: "Being a young black male is NOT a crime in America." Michael Meyers explodes the Bloomberg administration's rationale for its unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policies.

The Politics of Public Safety: WSJ Opinion New York Civil Rights Coalition president Michael Meyers on New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's defense of New York City's stop-and-frisk policies.