Proceeds will benefit the Visions to Peace Project!!

Presented by Heiress Entertainment: http://www.theheiresscompany.com/

Join Heiress Entertainment for the most sophisticated Thursday night event in the DMV……“Sophisticated Thursdays at the Boulevard”
Thursdays, 6 pm. – 12 a.m. at Karma Lounge, 800 G. Shoppers Way, Largo MD

Karma Restaurant and Lounge is the newest hot spot just off the beltway. You do not want to miss the sexiest event to hit Largo with music provided by DJ Bruce Lee and DJ Stylz!

FREE Admission ALL night with drink specials until 7PM.

On Thursday, Feb. 18 Wear RED, BLACK, or GREEN to celebrate Black History month. Proceeds will benefit the Visions to Peace Project!

For more information, contact Nic at (240) 305-0204 or Dwayne at (240) 398-9025.

Visit the Visions to Peace Project’s page on facebook (and become a fan!)

Also, check out the Visions to Peace Project’s web site: http://www.visionispower.org

A flyer for this Thursday’s happy hour is below!!

Hope to see you there!
Johonna

Happy Hour to benefit the Visions to Peace Project!!

Today, Friday, March 28, we will be at Metro TeenAIDS’ FreeStyle Youth Center to screen the film for the youth and staff there. We had a couple of shoots at Metro TeenAIDS during production of the film — an open mic where the song that opens the movie was sung by Neshea Jamison aka Sheabutter(fly) — and group interview with three young men whose stories and perspectives open and close the film.

Stories shared by youth in the documentary will also be featured in the opening of an exhibit on youth and violence prevention next week at Children’s National Medical Center here in Washington, D.C. The exhibit reception is Thursday, April 3rd, 5:30 – 7:30 pm. Visitors will be able to sit at interactive listening stations set up on laptop computers to view and hear stories from the project. I’ll be posting more details on this soon. Right now, this interactive multimedia installation will only be available at listening stations during the opening reception. The hospital needs desktop computers with large monitors to keep the listening stations up for the entire three months of the exhibition. Please let us know if you have the resources — e.g. computers to loan — to help make this happen. We would love to have the stations set up on Mac desktops with cameras built into the monitor so youth who visit the listening stations can add their own stories and visions.

In the midst of all of these screenings, we’re also still doing some post-production — mixing and mastering the sound, replacing a few clips, small touches….

For those of you who have seen the film already, please give us your feedback. We really want to hear from you and know what you think.

The feedback we have been given so far from folks that have come up to us after the screenings and people who’ve written us in emails has been really humbling. We’ve been getting requests from organizations to screen the film at their events and questions about when the DVD will be ready for distribution. It’s coming, y’all.

In the meantime, please us know your thoughts!

Sponsored by Justice Not Jails; National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; Department of Justice, Law and Society; Justice Policy Institute; and Office of Community Service.

Vision Is Our Power is a daring and thoughtful documentary on issues of violence against youth including gun violence, dating violence, and police brutality. In the video, youth and youth justice workers use poetry, personal stories and candid dialogue to reveal the many faces of violence against youth in order to spark new vision and hope for safety and justice.

The youth leadership team of the Visions to Peace Project consists of Leon Baldwin, Cornisha Turner, Laura Parish, and Marquise Johnson. They will be speaking on a panel following the screening, as well as Ngozi Agbara, a poet featured in the documentary.

Read on for more information on the entire eye-opening and dynamic program hosted by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and featuring a range of new video work by youth artists and activists!

You can also access a flyer at this link: D.C.s Young Filmmakers Flip the Script!

Wednesday, March 26 @ 7 p.m.

National Museum of Women in the Arts. 1250 New York Ave. NW

Sisters in Cinema: D.C.’s Young Filmmakers

Flip the Script!

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is pleased to present new video work created by local youth who use their productions to flip the script on adult-controlled media. For this program, youth leaders of the Visions to Peace Project came together in a media arts workshop to create a documentary that would go beyond the stories told about Black youth and violence in the mainstream media. According to 13-year old director Leon Baldwin, “Different kinds of violence affect youth everyday — domestic violence, police brutality, verbal abuse, and gun violence, as well as other types. This documentary exposes violence against youth. We reveal the violence that affects us.” Youth used video in the tradition of black women filmmakers — to bring about dialogue, learning, healing and social change. The program also features other videos created by youth that will educate, inspire and surely entertain. The screening will be followed by a discussion with young filmmakers in D.C., including creators of the works featured.

FREE.

NATIONAL MUSEUM of WOMEN in the ARTS Theater

1250 New York Ave., NW, Washington , DC

(Two blocks north of Metro Center )

All public areas of the museum are wheelchair accessible.

Unless otherwise noted, reservations are recommended for all programs. For more information: (202) 783-7370 or reservations@nmwa.org

I’ve been thinking a lot about how systems of oppression are fundamentally value systems… that is, the ways things are set up tell us who to value and who to devalue, who is valuable and who is worthless. Take white supremacy/racism for instance..white people are valuable, black people and other people of color are worthless. Or adultism – young people’s ideas, contributions, and very beings are devalued in relation to adults. Same with heterosexism..if you are straight, you are valuable. if you ain’t you worthless. You don’t even deserve to live.

Once we devalue people, once we devalue ourselves, once we devalue the communities and groups we are a part of or that others belong to, we buy into the disrespect, disempowerment, harm, and oppression that is part of being in a devalued group. We come to believe that the devalued (including ourselves) are not worthy of power, respect, protection, safety and in its most basest form, even life itself.

Violence and oppression are therefore, not only connected to systems of power and control, but also systems of value.

Within these systems, certain kinds of capital, characteristics or contributions can”buy” us some measure of value, although a temporary variety. For example, some Asians are seen as more intelligent and thus the “model minority, more valuable than other people of color, Black people (and other people of color) with lighter skin are often seen as more beautiful than darker-skinned people and thus seen as more worthy… Likewise, if you’re a black boy but you can ball.., if you got a lot of money….you see what I mean. These kinds of things seemingly add more value, but only a temporary and rather artificial variety.

And so I was really excited to discover this piece by Mos Def, in which he is also talking about how we see ourselves and how we value ourselves. Mos Def says that we will change for the better when we understand our value. I most definitely agree with the brotha. Yeah, it seems so simple and so obvious, but i do think we need to remind ourselves this all of the time and really think about what it means for how we live out our lives for ourselves and one another.

How do we build this knowledge of valuing people into our everyday lives and our movements for justice, freedom and peace?

And, Mos Def so importantly emphasizes that it is God who makes us valuable. We have to emphasize this too, that it is God who makes us valuable and we honor God when we appreciate and honor the value in ourselves and others. We cannot know this kind of deep value that has nothing to do with what we are wearing, or how we look, or where we live, or what we’ve been through apart from knowing that God has made us valuable no matter what!!

Here’s the words:

Listen.. people be askin me all the time,
“Yo Mos, what’s gettin ready to happen with Hip-Hop?”
(Where do you think Hip-Hop is goin?)
I tell em, “You know what’s gonna happen with Hip-Hop?
Whatever’s happening with us”
If we smoked out, Hip-Hop is gonna be smoked out
If we doin alright, Hip-Hop is gonna be doin alright
People talk about Hip-Hop like it’s some giant livin in the hillside
comin down to visit the townspeople
We (are) Hip-Hop
Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin where we goin
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin
ask yourself.. where am I goin? How am I doin?
Til you get a clear idea
So.. if Hip-Hop is about the people
and the.. Hip-Hop won’t get better until the people get better
then how do people get better? (Hmmmm…)
Well, from my understanding people get better
when they start to understand that, they are valuable
And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money
or cause somebody, think they sexy
but they valuable cause they been created by God
And God, makes you valuable
And whether or not you, recognize that value is one thing
You got a lot of societies and governments
tryin to be God, wishin that they were God
They wanna create satellites and cameras everywhere
and make you think they got the all-seein eye
Eh.. I guess The Last Poets wasn’t, too far off
when they said that certain people got a God Complex
I believe it’s true
I don’t get phased out by none of that, none of that
helicopters, the TV screens, the newscasters, the..
satellite dishes.. they just, wishin
They can’t really never do that
When they tell me to fear they law
When they tell me to try to
have some fear in my heart behind the things that they do
This is what I think in my mind
And this is what I say to them
And this is what I’m sayin, to you check it

All over the world hearts pound with the rhythm
Fear not of men because men must die
Mind over matter and soul before flesh
Angels for the pain keep a record in time
which is passin and runnin like a caravan freighter
The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked
But God is sufficient in disposin of affairs
Gunmen and stockholders try to merit my fear
But God is sufficient over plans they prepared
Mos Def in the flesh, where you at, right here
on this place called Earth, holdin down my square…

Let’s Talk Justice For All
By Denise Rolark Barnes
WI Publisher
Thursday, September 27, 2007

It’s time for young Black people to get their props. They deserve it.
Under the banner of non-violence and unity, nearly 50,000 of them gathered in Jena, La. to say “Enough is Enough” and to remind the nation that until there is justice for all, there won’t be peace for any.

And, it wasn’t only in Jena where the voices and the presence of young people were strong. Right here in the nation’s capital, on Capitol Hill, on school yards and in churches, throngs of young people gathered in order to have their say.

Young people are fully aware of the dual enforcement of the criminal justice system. A close listen to the messages in the much maligned rap music they play reveals a consciousness of a system that has notoriously been unfair to them because they are Black.

I asked a young friend of mine if he and his friends knew and understood the reason behind the outcry for the Jena Six.

“No doubt,” he clearly answered.

He happens to live adjacent to Condon Terrace, the neighborhood where 14-year old DeOnte Rawlings was shot and killed last week by an off-duty Metropolitan police officer, who believed that Rawlings had stolen a minibike from his home.

According to reports, when the officer confronted Rawlings, a shot was fired at him [the officer.] The officer returned fire, killing Rawlings and igniting a huge investigation in which the FBI is now involved.

“Do you or your friends see any connection between what happened to DeOnte Rawlings and Mychal Bell (one of the Jena Six who still sits in prison for the school yard fight with a White student?)” I asked my friend.

“Not really,” he said. “Those people were White; these folks were Black.”

Graced by a remarkable teaching moment, I said, “The races of the people may be different, but it is still the same justice or injustice system.”

Young people often but unexpectedly give us these opportune moments to share stories and offer perspectives that they may not otherwise listen to. When I get those opportunities, I jump in quick and jump out hoping that we have each shared something worth thinking about.

Over the years, large numbers of young Black teens have been caught doing some of the stupidest stuff you can imagine, including my own, and including the one who was standing in front of me.

I probed into this young man’s background which included three arrests, one for a stolen car when he was 14, and one that resulted in a charge and conviction as an adult. In each case, he was arrested, sentenced and served time in jail, released to a halfway house and placed on parole.

Today, thank God, at age 20, he has put the dumb stuff behind him and is working on becoming a responsible man. I applaud him.

But I asked him, “Do you think the consequences for the crimes you committed were fair?”

He hesitated and then said, “Basically, yeah.”

He then proceeded to educate me on how the justice system works for juveniles and for adults, a system, sadly to say, that he and many of his peers have become intimately familiar with.

And, then I asked him, “Do you think you would have faced the same consequences if you were…?”

“White?” he answered. “Oh, hardly. At most I would have gotten a tap on the hand or probation.”

So, together we pondered over why Mychal Bell is still in jail, and what the punishment will be for the rest of the Jena Six. We talked about whether death was the proper punishment for DeOnte Rawlings; and whether Michael Vick should be punished more.

And, what about the New Jersey student involved in the shooting at Delaware State, how much time will he see behind bars? And why isn’t the system fair when it comes to Black people? And what will it take to make a difference? And how can we keep our children from going to jail?

And…finally, we agreed, there is a connection between Mychal Bell and DeOnte Rawlings and every Black child who faces the criminal justice system.

Until there is justice for all, there won’t be peace for any.

On September 18, 2007, Deonte was shot in the back and killed by an off-duty police officer.

An officer with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department found his mini-bike missing. Off duty, he asked a friend and fellow cop to help look for who may have stolen it. They said they found Deonte on the bike. They said that when they went after him, Deonte shot at them and they shot back. They say that they didn’t murder 14-year old Deonte Rawlings. But, the stolen bike was found in Upper Marlboro and no weapon was found at the scene of the shooting. What did authorities find? Deonte’s body covered with signs that he had beaten.

You check the facts:

Off-duty officer kills teenager in hunt for stolen bike, NBC4.

Autopsy: Teen Shot in Back of Head By Police, Washington Informer

Emotional Vigil for Teen Killed by Police, WTOP

Police violence against youth is not at all a new problem. Facilitating Leadership in Youth surveyed over 500 D.C. teens, most whom live in Southeast, and found that many of them have experienced or witnessed harassment, brutality and other harm against youth committed by D.C. police officers. So, why is it that police brutality is not often mentioned as a form of violence against youth. Is it because the term, “youth violence” so often used in discussions about young people and violence does not allow us to consider common forms of violence not committed by another young person? Is it because youth themselves — especially the young people who experience this kinds of violence — are not at the center of the conversation? In order to create a comprehensive vision of peace and work for safety for all young people, we must break the silence on police violence against youth and work together for real solutions.

Police brutality is an old problem. Must we wait for deadly consequences to bring an end?

What do you think should be done? What is being done already?

Cops: Ex-Boyfriend Confesses to Killing NYU Professor’s Daughter

Slain NYU Student’s Boyfriend Implicates Self

Based on what we know so far, it seems that she is yet another young Black woman who is no longer alive because of intimate partner violence. Intimate partner violence refers the violence that goes on between people in close intimate relationships..for example between boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, and same gender relationships as well. When it comes to young people, people often use the term dating violence – violence between people who are dating each other.  Dating violence is the cause of a great deal of harm, abuse, injury and death to young people, especially young women. It happens in every community. As a Black woman, I am addressing this issue in relation to Black girls, young Black women and other young women of color. Tumi McCallum is one such Black woman.

The story of how Tumi was found is all too familiar to me. Neighbors smelled her decomposing body and called the building superintendent and then the police to investigate the smell. Candace Ritchie, my very close friend in college, was  also killed by her boyfriend and discovered the exact same way.  Days after Candace’s death in her own apartment, days after no one knew where she was, the stench of her dead body spreading through the building is what alarmed neighbors that something was terribly wrong.  Tumi and Candace were both 20 years old when they were killed. Candace was fiery, revolutionary, passionate about justice, forgiving, brilliant, serious, and fun. Seemingly, every molecule of her body was committed to social change and serving her Black community, especially young people. From what I’ve read about Tumi McCallum, she seems very similar.

Candace and Tumi were committed to working against the violence of the government and the violence of the criminal justice system. Sadly, they were not able to escape the violence in their intimate relationships. It is likely that Candace’s boyfriend didn’t mean to kill her.  She died as a result of suffocation. It seems he put a pillow over her face to drown out her cries and screams and  At any point, violence in relationships can turn deadly — whether intentional or not. We must recognize this.

There are far too many like Candace and Tumi. Many don’t have backgrounds that would attract the attention of journalists. Tumi was the daughter of two NYU professors, one who has done prominent political work in South Africa. Candace’s step father was a local politican. Yet despite some individual cases receive, when people think about the kinds of violence that impact young people of color, intimate partner violence is usually missing from the conversation. Why is this?

We need to have more conversations about dating violence in the lives of young people within our communities. We have to work to change the dynamics of interpersonal violence that operate in our everyday lives, while working to understand and address the underlying causes  and the overarching systems of violence in society — like racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and the criminal justice system.  We have to figure out ways of doing all of this at the same time because all of these issues of violence are connected. As advocate for women in prison, Tumi spent much of her young adult life working at these intersections. Let us honor her life work and legacy as well as that of my friend Candace and the many other young women of color who have died by discussing, creating, and practicing community-based ways to stop dating violence.

What if the neighbors of Tumi and Candace intervened? Decided to work with them and create a plan for how they were going to keep these young women safe? What if people decided to call the young men who killed them on their obsessive, controlling and abusive behavior? Told them it was not acceptable, that they would work with them to help them change or work with them to get them some help? They may have refused and this may not have worked. The truth is that there may not be one single action that would have saved their lives. But the power of many caring actions and interventions from many families, friends and neighbors could have saved their lives and others.

If you know violence is going on next door, in your apartment building, with a friend or someone else you know, then It IS your business. If you notice signs — someone’s intimate partner (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, boo, whatever!!) is overly controlling, suspicious, angry and jealous, this too is also your business. How dare we say that someone else’s life is not our business?!! Talk to other neighbors, talk to other friends, they see and hear what’s going on too. And ask them, let’s sit down and discuss what’s going on and figure out how we might be able to make this stop. This is not a call for groups of people to beat down abusers because we can’t end violence with violence.

No, this is a call for you to care.. that you could save someone’s life.

Johonna
Visions to Peace Project
www.visionispower.org

Here’s a statement about Tumi’s life and work as an anti-prison activist from someone who knew her best:

A message from Cassandra Shaylor at Justice Now, 8/9/2007:

It is with great sadness that we write to our allies and friends about the recent death of one of our former interns, Tumi McCallum. We hope to shine some light on the person Tumi was, particularly given the extremely limited discussion of her life in media coverage of her death.

Tumi came to Justice Now through a class she took with Julia Sudbury at Mills College. While working with us, she provided invaluable assistance to people in women’s prisons in a number of extremely important ways. As an advocate, she provided a vital lifeline to the outside for people in prison. She corresponded with people in women’s prisons facing severe and life-threatening medical problems,providing them with crucial information and advice. Even after completing her required hours for schoolcredit, Tumi continued her work with Justice Now, far surpassing what was initially required. Her commitment combined with her skills allowed her to take on more complex work.

Tumi advocated on behalf of a woman in prison who was in need of medical treatment but had been told by prison staff that nothing could be done for her. Tumi’s strong conviction that this was untrue led her, as an undergraduate, to research the law and determine that the prison was in fact unfairly denying treatment. Tumi also advocated for a women in prison suffering extreme medical neglect and identified her as a person who might qualify for alternative sentencing. If successful, this is a process that would allow the woman to be resentenced and released from prison. Because of Tumi’s identification of this woman’s situation, Justice Now currently is working to secure her release.

Tumi was a brilliant writer and a passionate advocate, all of which was tucked behind a humble and patient demeanor. She always had a smile on her face, and she approached all of her work with tremendous energy and careful attention. Through our Human Rights Documentation Program, she focused on the issue of hepatitis C and collaborated with a woman inside to write an opinion-editorial to accompany the upcoming release of our report on the pandemic of hep C in prison. As an example of her dedication and sensitivity, though the California Department of Corrections refused to allow her to visit the prison because she possessed a South African passport, she took on the challenge of taking the words of a woman with whom she could not visit face-to-face and turning them into a powerful article. Because she took great care to consider all available information from the woman inside, even without meeting her she was able to write a piece that our colleague inside felt fully represented her.

As someone who had experienced living under a police state as a child in South Africa, she had a long-standing understanding of policing and imprisonment, which, she argued, “worked at oppressing my community instead of making it safe and protecting it.” She was born at the end of the Apartheid system and was on the run with her family from the police, who were pursuing her mother for her activism against Apartheid for many years. She drew parallels between those experiences, the prison industrial complex in the United States, and the treatment of Black people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all of which fueled her passion for racial justice. She was fully committed to social justice work, in particular the struggle against the PIC. As she wrote in the last line of her letter requesting an internship at Justice >Now, “[this] is the ideal place for me to begin my activism against the policing system and to end violence against our communities.”

Tumi had plans to come back to Justice Now in the fall and had expressed her conviction that this was to be her life’s work. Her sharp political insights, her intense commitment to social justice, her quiet assuredness, and her generous spirit are a great loss to all of us. She will be greatly missed, and we join her family, friends, and the larger community of social justice activists of which she was a part, to honor her life.

In solidarity and in hope for a world without violence in all its forms,

all of us at Justice Now