Amid anger, a 'regal' presence

Nicole Paultre-Bell (c., in black scarf) leads demonstrators along Fifth Ave. yesterday.

The wedding registry at Tiffany's lists a Sean Bell and reports that he and his bride-to-be hope for a $155 crystal decanter and a $90 pair of Champagne flutes.

But the wedding date for this Sean Bell is listed as 5/26/07 and his fiancée's name is Lori Vialet. The Sean Bell who had demonstrators assembling just up Fifth Ave. yesterday was supposed to have been married on 11/25/06, but was killed early that morning by a hail of police bullets as he and two other unarmed men were leaving his bachelor party.

That Sean Bell's fiancée was Nicole Paultre. She has since legally assumed his surname, and she arrived for yesterday's demonstration as Nicole Paultre-Bell. The wedding ring on her finger was not some $12,000 diamond confection from Tiffany's, but one of a pair of gold bands that her groom-never-to-be shopped for on Jamaica Ave. in Queens hours before he was killed.

The two wedding rings were found by investigators in the bullet-riddled car and the Queens district attorney's office delivered them to the bride-not-to-be at her request. She placed one on Sean Bell's finger as he lay in his open coffin on the morning of his burial.

The twin ring on Nicole Paultre-Bell's finger glinted even in the shadows of the surrounding buildings at noon yesterday. She wore a stylish pale yellow coat, a long black scarf, black pants, black shoes as well as sunglasses that did nothing to hide her continuing sorrow.

Her mother was on her right, the two arm in arm. Farther over, Trent Benefield, who had been in the car with her fiancé, was in a wheelchair being pushed by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

The demonstrators had been given just a lane of Fifth Ave., and in the crush that accompanied the start of the march Sharpton was forced from the front along with Benefield. Nicole Paultre-Bell led the way under the giant snowflake hanging over 57th St.

The crush was now such that the police did not stop the marchers from taking all but a narrow corridor of the avenue as they continued past Tiffany's and its registry with that luckier Sean Bell.

Nicole Paultre-Bell continued to lead the way, which was exactly how it should have been because she has proven herself to be as magnificent a young woman as this city has seen.

When the tensions were mounting and passions were rising, this woman who had lost more than anybody went on television with words that leave every peace-loving soul in this city in her lasting debt. She said that her overall view of the police had not changed, that she did not hold every cop responsible, that she still believed justice would prevail.

"I'm really not angry," she said. "I'm more just trying to be strong and we just want justice. ... That's what we're praying for."

Now, she strode at the head of what was conceived as a silent march for justice, her soft slip-on shoes stepping on the white center line of the city's premiere shopping street at the height of the Christmas season. A media mob repeatedly blocked the way and nine cops in light blue jackets joined hands to form a moving line, keeping the way clear.

On she went past St. Patrick's Cathedral and Saks Fifth Avenue, a silent figure of love and loss leading a march whose participants also included Abner Louima and the Rev. Calvin Butts and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem). She was out of the shadows now, the sun on her fiercely tender face, her wedding ring glinting even brighter.

At the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, tourists turned to stare. Sharpton reappeared at the front, still pushing Benefield in the wheelchair as the march passed those lions named Patience and Fortitude outside the New York Public Library.

Sharpton appeared uncharacteristically close to humble in the presence of this intensely alive young woman who is so much stronger than any figure of stone. He seemed to cede her leadership of another kind.

"Regal," he would later say of her.

Nicole Paultre-Bell was indeed, all the way to the final block, when her right hand rose to touch that gold band on her left.

Ghetto Capitalism

Sudhir Venkatesh's new book unravels the mystery of the underground economy
By Patrick Radden Keefe

In his efforts to demonstrate that this shadow economy is anything but the desperate Hobbesian scramble an outsider might assume, Venkatesh can at times sound like Jane Jacobs extolling the civic merits of Manhattan's West Village. "Beneath the closed storefronts, burned-out buildings, potholed boulevards, and empty lots, there is an intricate, fertile web of exchange, tied together by people with tremendous human capital and craftsmanship," he writes. In this view, even Big Cat is a "stakeholder" in the neighborhood, with an interest in seeing norms adhered to and order preserved. "It's not a crack house," as an old Onion headline had it. "It's a crack home."

But these very bonds of mutual dependence that hold the neighborhood together can breed severe dysfunction and seriously compromise pillars of the licit establishment. Eunice, who sells soul food for a living, pays a teacher $20 a week to let her grandchildren out of school to make deliveries. Cops take bribes and enforce justice selectively.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Venkatesh's account is the role of neighborhood ministers. Clergy resolve disputes, but they don't do it for free. Numerous ministers accept "contributions" from gangs and drug dealers for their services. They take other forms of payment, as well; Bird, the prostitute, has serviced "most of the preachers in this community." Other ministers have been known to hide guns, drugs, and stolen property for a fee. Nannies rely on preachers for referrals to families but must pay a 10 percent commission. The residents are unshocked by all of this. They conclude that it would be impossible to navigate the community without making certain allowances. "We are poor people. And so are our ministers," one congregant says. "We need [a minister] to be our leader, not perfect or without sin."

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Bad Blood, Blood Diamonds & Why I Disagree with Russell Simmons- by Davey D

I watched Russell Simmons on CNN the other day and saw what many may have considered a strange sight. He was on there basically slamming the new movie 'Blood Diamonds' and demanding that its parent company Warner Brothers be responsible with what they put out there because it could unduly influence the public.

When I heard that, I said to myself, I will forever quote Russell whenever I engage some of these industry types about the type of material they are releasing to the public. After all if a big time music mogul like Simmons is calling for restraint and balance because he see the potential for undue effect, then its time for the industry to clean itself up. After all, who would know better?

But pushing that aside, this is not what that's about. In this CNN interview Russell said its important that all of us know our history. It is with that sentiment in mind, that I found it strange to hear Simmons defending the diamond trade in South Africa and Botswana, which were the two countries he recently visited on a 'fact-finding' mission.

Take Simmons' conclusion that the sale of "conflict diamonds" - used to finance the continent's bloody wars - has dropped to less than 1% since the Kimberley Process was set up in 2003 to stop the vicious trafficking in those gems.

"That's a funky number," Zwick said at his movie's Hollywood premiere. "That number comes from diamonds that are mined in countries that are 'war-declared.' Conflict diamonds are also mined in countries where there is not a 'declared war.' If you want to know about conflict diamonds, you don't go to Botswana and South Africa. You go to Sierra Leone and Angola.

Russell Simmons is being embarrassed."

"Damnit," said Simmons, when we relayed Zwick's dig. "Why did he say that?"

The music and fashion honcho admitted that his observations help to improve the image of DeBeers, which supplies his Simmons Jewelry. "They're smart businesspeople," he said. "But to suggest I'm a sellout is wrong. I'm not here to defend the past of these companies. I'm here to talk about the current reality. Diamonds pay for education and medical treatment in Africa."

Simmons charges that Zwick's movie, set in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, "scares people away from diamonds.

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Big Business and Science Education

Laurie David, who produced Al Gore's recent film "An Inconvenient Truth," wonders why the National Science Teachers Association rejected 50,000 free DVDs of the documentary for classroom use, yet it accepts millions of dollars in donations from Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil and other corporations seeking to expose students to what she regards as biased material promoting the firms' interests.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

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Back to the Supreme Court: racial balance in schools

On Monday, the court takes up cases from Seattle and Louisville on the role of race in school enrollment. By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor


WASHINGTON – America is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse countries in the world. Yet 52 years after Brown v. Board of Education - the landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down segregation - US classrooms are growing increasingly segregated.

In part, the racial divide reflects the persistence of segregated housing patterns and the stifling grip of poverty. But it also reflects national disagreement and confusion over how best to address the issue of race.

Monday, the US Supreme Court takes up two cases that confront the heated debate over race. On one side are those who believe affirmative action and other race-conscious programs are necessary to fight the effects of discrimination and inequality. On the other side are those who believe the Constitution mandates a colorblind approach to race relations - that government programs granting benefits based on a person's race are just as illegal as withholding benefits because of a person's skin color.

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