I hope it's not all connected...

Newsvine - 9/11 Investigative Journalist Beaten By Undercover Cops Imamu Amiri Baraka, formerly Leroi Jones, ("United States writer of poems and plays about racial conflict (born in 1934)" - WordWeb) once was a professor at Stony Brook University in New York when I was attending grad school in anthropology. He went on to the official State of New Jersey poet, until 9/11/01. He wrote a poem expressing what he had seen reported in the papers, which resulted in an outcry that had him removed from the position, over basically repeating what he read in a local paper in my opinion. I can't believe we are becoming so narrow minded over the written word that goons and henchmen are harassing writers. They removed the NJ position in Aug. 2003 around the time his daughter was found shot dead with a companion. Officials think the shooting and the controversy were "unrelated". Yeah right, like being castigated by New Jersey, and the rest of the nation, in the state whose Governor was appointed to be US EPA head (Christine Todd Whitman, eminently qualified?) by President Bush wouldn't have any effect on my family, how about yours? I hope this stops in Chicago, where Black Panthers were once regularly spied upon and didn't start in NJ.