Eric, thank you for you comments. I have known the dark and light side of the Beys for over thirty years, as have many in the Bay, including police, social workers and politicians. This matter could have been cleaned up decades ago but people were silenced by fear. When I was prepared to approach Dr. Bey my advisers told me to leave it alone since the white man has a police force but was doing nothing, and even Farakhan knew but did nothing--even with his army. So no one is in denial. My eyes are wide open to what is going on in this community. And I say the Bey family needed help and none was there, so the sore continued to festor until it finally exploded.
Bey was probably no worse or better than the lot of Bay area leaders, including the political, religious and educators who are responsible for this climate of death and have no solution whatsoever when it is a simple matter of raising consciousness beyond vote for me I'll set you free, beyond Jesus saves, and why can't johnny read. This commlunity and America is suffering from a spiritual disease that will not be healed by more cops, more miseducation and more religious propaganda to prolong white supremacy.
If the police who you seem to support were doing their job this matter would have been solved 30 years ago.
As per Chauncey, of what importance was financial mismanagement vs tramutized human beings? This matter is far beyound fiances but of course this is important for those stuck in the mire of materialism and naked capitalism. Human beings don't matter, only the arrangement of finacial accounts.
You can knock the bakery for all its evil, but you have nothing anywhere in the Bay to equal what they tried to do even with their negrocities. When you find some holy men and women who will do things 100% right, drop me an email. I don't condone evil and wickedness for one minute, but those who have a real alternative to murder and drug dealing among our youth need to present their case. There will be no real solution until there are radical changes made in the spiritual condition of this community and nationwide, for that matter worldwide, for how can we sit back and allow Bush and his bandits to kill around the world but expect there to be peace in the hood. War and the ravages of war is all around us, in our families, in the minds and hearts of our children who see no solution to a problem but through violence. Keep walking around like we are in la la land rather than put on the armor of God and act like we are in a war zone and we shall see a continuation of murder and mayhem coast to coast.
--Marvin
Eric Arnold
marvin,
thanks for sending your eulogy.
while i feel your pain at the loss of chauncey and your conflict in reconciling your experience of the late dr. bey with his well-documented criminal activities, i cannot agree with all of the points you raise. it is possible you have yet to gain the perspective on this situation which would allow you to examine the facts from a rational viewpoint, unclouded by emotion or denial.
"it is possible (chauncey) was working on the wrong story or the wrong aspect of the story," you write -- implying that digging into what you characterize as "criminal activity, tax liens, and creditors" is somehow not the right thing for a community-minded journalist to do.
you also speculate that since a suspect was apprehended and a confession made within 24 hours, police "knew beforehand what was planned." you go on to question whether police "too wanted (Bailey) dead," a statement that doesn't seem to be supported by any concrete evidence whatsoever, and is pretty far-fetched, even for a black nationalist conspiracy theorist.
yet the facts here are brazen in their bluntness, to the extent where it is only the willfully blind who cannot see them.
once the police heard bailey was working on a story about your black muslim bakery, they had motive and opportunity for the crime. it is not their fault that the confessed killer was dumb enough not to dispose of the murder weapon and was easily located. that's not particularly great police work--it's what the police are supposed to do, in my opinion--but it does come as a relief to those, like daily planet columnist jesse douglas allen-taylor, who feared the murder would be yet another unsolved killing.
after d'allessandro broussard, the suspected triggerman, was arrested and charged with murder, police also charged yusef bey IV and several of his henchmen for kidnapping, carjacking and attempted murder charges. police statements and media reports have indicated that the carjackers were duped into committing a black-on-black crime by bey because they thought they were helping the bakery, when in reality, bey's sole motivation was his own personal financial debt. opd are likely well aware of numerous other crimes, including several unsolved murders, reportedly attributable to bey and his gang but unprosecutable bue to the reluctance of getting witnesses to come forth. with bey and his thugs of the streets, these investigations can no proceed.
in your letter, you strain to find the good in the bey family business, noting it helps "just released inmates" and "broken down dope fiends" find employment. correct me if i'm wrong, but apparently, these are the same people harming the community through robberies, murders, rapes, extortion, and other crimes. so, at what price does that loaf of bread or that fish sandwich really come? furthermore, i'd hardly characterize a business so poorly run (despite the support of city government and congressional representatives) it has to file chapter 7 as "successful," as you have. i'm also not sure how you think "this family, especially its children and mothers, could be healed" by any other means than the removal of bey and his thugs--their repeated abusers and the direct cause of their trauma--from society.
i cannot agree on moral grounds or any other that "the positives of YBMB outweigh the negatives."
the facts simply do not support this assertion, and imply that you, my friend, are too close to the situation to see it for what it really is.
if i may be perfectly honest with you, unwillingness to call out our sacred cows has long been a troublesome reality in the black community, even when evidence of those cows' unholiness becomes apparent. bailey should be commended for being a fearless crusader of truth, but the bey family does not deserve a "pass" for their wickedness, compounded by the fact that they have committed their heinous crimes under the aegis of religion and through deceiving the community of their true nature. To say that the community has failed the bey family, and not the other way around, seems to be the exact opposite of what has actually happened.
hopefully in time you will see this tragedy for what it is, not for what you wish it was.
-eric
--
Eric Arnold
Media Relations Manager
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
344 40th Street
Oakland, CA 94609
510.428.3939 x232 (office)
510.428.3940 (fax)
eric@ellabakercenter.org
http://ellabakercenter.org
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