New York
Hakeem Jeffries: Brooklyn’s Barack Obama?
Is Hakeem Jeffries Brooklyn’s Barack Obama? The young New York assemblyman running for the seat held by retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D) shares some surface characteristics with the president. “They’re both African-American, they’re both strikingly handsome, and they’re both highly intelligent,” said former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Jeffries supporter. “Both of them [...]
Chamberlain case spurs black officers’ call for probe
Black law enforcement leaders, along with Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., on Monday called for County Executive Robert Astorino to appoint a civilian oversight committee to review complaints against police, pointing to the shootings of African-Americans by police officers. “We’re here today to say: Enough is enough,” Damon Jones, the head of One Hundred Blacks in Law [...]
Report Finds Stop-and-Frisk Focused on Black Youth
A new analysis of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics found that officers performed more searches on young black men last year than the total number of young black men living in the city. The report released Wednesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union looked at police data on the 685,724 stops recorded [...]
Black Politicians Fear the Loss of a Prized Pulpit in Harlem
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. knew what his priorities were when he campaigned to become the first congressman to represent a new district centered in Harlem. “I will represent the Negro people first,” he said during the campaign in 1944. “I will represent, after that, all the other American people.” In the decades since, the so-called [...]
New York’s Towns Stepping Down
New York Rep. Ed Towns will not seek reelection in 2012, several Democratic sources said on Sunday night. Towns, 77, was first elected to the House in 1982 and eventually rose to become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Towns had insisted in recent months that he would seek a 16th term, [...]
