News & Public Affairs
Uhurus react to police suspensions listen
08/22/08 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Friday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Javon Dawson, African American, Race, civil rights, discrimination, racism, Uhurus, St. Petersburg Police
Two St. Petersburg Police officers were suspended Thursday for allowing their personal feelings to influence a decision to tow a truck in June.
The parked truck displayed posters supporting Javon Dawson, who had been shot and killed by a police officer a week earlier. One officer was suspended without pay for 20 days and the other for seven. Today, WMNF spoke with Nyabinga Dzinbahwe, press secretary for the Uhuru movement.
“I think what would effectively act as a deterrent for police o...
3 commentsJudge postpones Al-Arian trial
08/08/08 Mitch E. PerryWMNF Drive-Time News Friday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Sami Al-Arian, civil liberties, Race, racism, immigration, ICE, Muslims, USF, human rights, terrorism
The next trial of former USF professor Sami Al-Arian has been postponed after a judge raised new doubts about the validity of the prosecution.
Al-Arian had been scheduled to go on trial next week in Virginia on contempt charges after refusing to testify to a federal grand jury about a case unrelated to his original terrorist related charges. But today, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema overruled prosecutors' objections and postponed the trial indefinitely. In doing so, she questioned w...
Be the first to commentAl-Arian finally closer to freedom? listen
07/11/08 Mitch E. PerryWMNF Drive-Time News Friday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Sami Al-Arian, civil liberties, Race, racism, immigration, ICE, Muslims, USF, human rights
Yesterday, a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, order Sami Al-Arian released on his criminal contempt charges, but refused to block immigration authorities from detaining him before he is to be deported.
The U.S. government agreed to "expeditiously" deport Al-Arian in 2006, once he finished serving his criminal sentence in a terrorism support case. He was arrested in 2003.
But over the past couple of years, as he served his time for pleading guilty to one charge of materially suppor...
Be the first to commentUhurus hold conference on economic development
06/23/08 Jamie KidderWMNF Drive-Time News Monday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: African American, Development, Race, Rays stadium, St. Petersburg Police, Tropicana Field, Uhurus, economy
Yesterday in St. Petersburg, the Uhurus met in St. Petersburg to talk about the city’s economic development plans and the Rays ballpark proposal.
The Uhuru Movement in St. Petersburg is a group dedicated to the unity of Africans internationally. They met yesterday at the Uhuru House in South St. Petersburg, where they hosted a conference about the economic development projects in St. Petersburg, the primary one being the construction of a new waterfront stadium.
Local business owners s...
Be the first to commentGroup hires lawyer for shooting witnesses listen
06/12/08 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Thursday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Javon Dawson, police violence, African American, Race, civil rights, discrimination, racism, Uhurus, St. Petersburg Police
This morning, supporters of Javon Dawson, a teen who was shot and killed by a St. Petersburg police officer last Saturday, unveiled their “Justice for Javon Dawson Committee.”
Omali Yeshitela is the Chair of the African Peoples’ Socialist Party. He said Dawson’s death was unnecessary and blamed the police.
The St. Petersburg Police claim that Officer Terrance Nemeth fired two shots after Dawson aimed a gun at him. They released photographs of a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver with...
4 commentsForum on race, religion in media held in Tampa listen
05/30/08 Jamie KidderWMNF Drive-Time News Friday Listen to this entire show:
Last night in Tampa, a public forum was held to discuss the issues of race and religion in the Media.
The Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists, along with the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), hosted last night’s panel discussion.
The panel consisted of Ahmed Badir, a local civil rights activist and president of the Tampa/Hillsborough Human Rights Council. He is also the host of WMNF’s True Talk, which airs Friday mornings from 11 to noon.
Other panelists include...
1 commentsForum addresses healthcare gap listen
05/12/08 Jamie KidderWMNF Drive-Time News Monday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: race, healthcare
Last week in St. Petersburg, a community forum was held to discuss strategies for eliminating the healthcare gap between blacks and whites. Author and lawyer Vernellia Randall was the keynote speaker.
Randall is a law professor at the Dayton School of Law in Ohio and the author of Dying While Black, a book that examines the healthcare crisis among minorities in America. She spoke on Friday at a community forum at the James P. Sanderlin community center in St. Petersburg about what she ca...
Be the first to commentAl-Arian ends hunger strike listen
05/01/08 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Thursday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Sami Al-Arian, civil liberties, Race, racism, immigration, ICE, Muslims, USF, human rights
Former USF engineering professor Dr. Sami Al-Arian suspended his most recent hunger strike on Monday and has since been moved from solitary confinement to the general population of the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Al-Arian has been in jail for more than five years; he completed his sentence last month yet he remains in jail awaiting the deportation called for in his plea agreement, said Mel Underbakke, who is with Friends of Human Rights.
Al-Arian ended his hung...
Be the first to commentOn race and reconciliation listen
05/01/08 Seán KinaneWMNF Drive-Time News Thursday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: African American, 2008 election, Barack Obama, Charles McKenzie, District 55, Race, Stetson, civil rights, discrimination, history, racism
The racially divisive history of the United States, and more importantly, how the country can heal from centuries of violence and racism, were topics of discussion in St. Petersburg on Wednesday Evening. WMNF’s Seán Kinane reports on the final installment of Studio@620’s Roundtable on Social Justice Series, which addressed race and reconciliation.
During the recent controversy over excerpts of sermons by Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, some have said that the black...
1 commentsMedia critic's take on Obama controversy listen
03/24/08 Mitch E. PerryWMNF Drive-Time News Monday Listen to this entire show:
Tags: Barack Obama, Race, Media
For more than a week, national cable and broadcast news outlets played video snippets of remarks by Barack Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, leading to a drop of support for Obama in some national and regional polls.
Eric Deggans, the media critic for the St. Petersburg Times, writes on his blog that after observing longer video passages of some of Wright’s speeches, reporters are absolutely not giving full context to this story.
Deggans acknowledges that the imagery of an an...
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