Author Archives: William Covington

Recently, in a repeat of actions reminiscent of college campuses 50 years ago, African American students have gathered in solidarity in an effort to change the learning institutions they attend, and these protests have gone viral. This week Our Weekly was able to interview an organizer at the center of the storm.

It’s Monday morning at a Los Angeles facility referred to as Youth Guidance Center (YGC), a state-funded residential facility for at-risk youth.

Steve Fuji closely studies the video on his laptop as he smokes his third cigarette and drinks green tea. The 77-year-old Japanese American is a sixth-degree black belt and teaches compliance techniques for the Orange and Los Angeles County probation departments, as well as a number of school district police agencies. Compliance techniques specialize in training officers to use pressure points to cause non-damaging pain that force compliance.

Early in the morning on Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast of the United States. As a result, the vibrant and cheerful city of New Orleans was quickly transformed into an underwater wasteland. In a matter of days, the world was reminded of mother nature’s devastating power and inevitability. As the storm progressed, historic landmarks were reduced to rubble; entire neighborhoods drowned under the overwhelming deluge of surging river water; lifeless bodies dotted the battered landscape; and throngs of displaced residents from the Lower 9th Ward and surrounding areas had to withstand inhumane living conditions before they were finally rescued and transported to safe zones. These heart-wrenching images won’t soon be forgotten by the American public. They illustrate the grim reality of human vulnerability and mortality.

Baldwin Hills resident Jack Horn places a leash on his daughter’s American Eskimo dog, while his wife looks at him and laughs. “You are going to walk the dog this morning?” she asks.

In the mid-1980s, the streets of Compton, Calif., were some of the most dangerous in the country. When five young men translated their experiences growing up there into brutally honest music that rebelled against abusive authority, they gave an explosive voice to a silenced generation. The movie—“N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton”—tells the astonishing story of how these young men revolutionized music and pop culture forever the moment they told the world the truth about life in the ’hood; they ignited a cultural war.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

The Hollywood film industry has churned out two movies this month covering the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged Black communities in the 1980s. One, a docu-drama produced for the big screen called “Kill the Messenger,” and the other is a documentary titled “Freeway: Crack in the System.”