POPLAR GROVE — Shayne Howe’s 17-year-old daughter ran screaming into the kitchen of their Hants County home shortly after midnight Saturday night as a man outside yelled: “Die nigger die.”

Howe grabbed a baseball bat and rushed outside to confront the man, who disappeared into the darkness.

On the lawn, a two-metre wooden cross was aflame and a hangman’s noose dangled from it.

“I just stood and watched it until the rope burned through and the noose fell to the ground,” Howe said Monday in an interview at his home on the Avondale Road near Newport Station.

Police are investigating a possible hate crime that has Howe and his family fearing for their safety.

Windsor District RCMP and general investigative services are investigating.

Sgt. Brigdit Leger, the provincial RCMP spokeswoman, said police don’t know how many people were involved but they suspect the man was not alone.

Howe, 31, originally from north-end Halifax, is black and his wife, Michelle Lyon, is white. The couple have five children from age two to 17.

They have lived in a bungalow on Avondale Road in Poplar Grove, a small community near the St. Croix River, for six years and have never had any trouble before.

“I’m scared,” Howe said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, whether to move. I don’t know what the next step is, or what’s going to happen.

“I don’t want to be here, (if) it means I’m not going to sleep at night.”

Howe said the children are terrified.

“They want to move. They don’t want to stay,” he said. “This is something kids shouldn’t have to experience.”

He said his wife grew up in the area and they have done a lot of work on the house. They’d like to stay.

“I’m a go-to-work, come-home kind of person. I don’t have troubles with anyone in the community,” said Howe, as he struggled to understand the nature of the threat, which came in the midst of Black Heritage Month in Nova Scotia.

Cross-burnings are usually associated with the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan in the American South of decades ago. But in October 1996, firefighters encountered a burning cross and racist graffiti at a pizza shop in Bible Hill.

“I have respect from everybody in the community,” Howe said of Poplar Grove. “I just don’t understand this.”

His wife is terrified.

“I’m mortified by this,” she said. “I have a lot of emotions.

“It’s scary, the kids are scared . . . scared is an understatement.

“I’ve secured my home.”

Lyon said she is looking to move because she fears the cross-burning might be just the beginning.

“For safety reasons, we have to take precautions,” she said. “This is heinous.

“We take shifts sleeping. Threats were made and we take them seriously.”

Lyon then burst into tears.

“It’s sad that somebody could do something like this to innocent people,” she said. “The kids are all very upset.”

Vince Upshaw, who works with the West Hants African Resource Centre, said Monday that news of the cross-burning shocked him.

“We’re trying to do things here to eliminate barriers,” he said.

Upshaw, from nearby Three Mile Plains, a community where African ancestry is common, said he has experienced racism throughout his life but the cross-burning is on another level.

“Imagine the impact this would have on a family, and the kids,” he said. “To me, it’s a message of hatred.”

Richard Dauphinee, warden of the Municipality of West Hants, said he has never heard of a cross-burning in the area.

“I think whoever did it is a sick individual, or individuals,” he said.

“I don’t want our community to be labelled by anything like this. I hope they’re caught and very quickly dealt with.”

Krista Daley, CEO of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, learned of the cross-burning from TheChronicleHerald.ca and called it “unacceptable.”

She said about 20 per cent of human rights complaints the commission sees each year are based on racism — what she called subtle forms, as opposed to overt racism — related to employment, services and accommodation. These typically involve policies that aren’t being properly implemented, she said.

“The fact that this type of overt, ignorant and intolerant behaviour would still be taking place is quite distressing,” Daley said.

“I think in terms of setting (us) back, though, the issue really is how do we handle this as a society? Do we equally feel outraged that this type of behaviour is still taking place, and to take some form of action from there.”

With Patricia Brooks Arenburg, staff reporter

( gdelaney@herald.ca)

Pt 1: randel gusto goes away and lets iZrEAL give his toughts on the africville reparations deal, irvin carvery & the africville genealogy society.

Pt 2 randel gusto goes away and lets iZrEAL give his toughts on the africville reparations deal, irvin carvery & the africville genealogy society.

i get a little more emotionally heated around the end and had to address some other things, like the african nova scotian school board

Pt 3:Black Community Wake Up
iZrEAL address the black community… WAKE UP! their still attacking our children and burning crosses on our lawns.

Africville offer tabled
Proposal includes land, $3m, two new buildings
By MICHAEL LIGHTSTONE City Hall Reporter
Sun. Feb 21 – 4:52 AM

A $3-million payout and a chunk of municipal land are among key parts of an offer city hall has made to compensate the former community of Africville, a meeting in Halifax heard Saturday.

But a show of hands indicating support for the proposed settlement showed the room was essentially divided, said a metro man who attended the information session.

Some attendees leaving the roughly two-hour meeting criticized the offer, which was presented by an Africville Genealogy Society official and the group’s lawyer.

Steve Brown, a former Africville resident, said about 75 people were at the closed meeting, held at a Halifax public library. When organizers asked for a show of hands accepting the offer, he said about half did so.

Society president Irvine Carvery refused to comment on the city’s offer, but he strongly disputed Brown’s version of the vote, saying, “The vast majority of the people put up their hands in favour of the package.”

He said that is the message that will be delivered to Halifax Regional Municipality officials. Regional council has dealt with the offer in secret but would have to ratify any agreement in open council.

Brown won’t endorse the municipality’s proposal, which includes an interpretive centre and a church to be constructed as stand-alone buildings, because he doesn’t think it is good enough.

He said the parcel of land being offered the historic black community amounts to a little over one hectare. According to minutes of an April 2007 genealogy society meeting, provided to people at Saturday’s compensation review session, roughly 1.6 hectares were being offered then.

Africville was demolished in the 1960s in the name of urban renewal and to make way for a Halifax Harbour bridge. It is now a national heritage site.

Negotiations between city hall and the society have been going on for years. Asked about the proposed $3-million compensation fee, Brown said he understood a substantial portion of that would have to go to the society’s lawyer for his 15 years of work on the Africville file.

He also said it’s too small a sum, considering the community of Upper Sackville got about $7 million in the 1990s for putting up with the municipal garbage dump for so many years.

“I don’t feel it’s an offer for the people” of Africville, said Brown, who was about five years old when his family was moved out of the north-end district, which is now Seaview Park.

“I feel it’s a plan for the city — big time — it’s a plan for them, not the people.”

Mayor Peter Kelly declined comment.

When asked if the Africville offer is an agenda-listed “legal matter” that will be part of a closed-door council meeting Tuesday, he said it “could be.”

The mayor has said he wants to see the redress issue finally put to bed.

Brown acknowledged there were a lot of questions asked of society officials at the meeting at the library. He said one person wanted to know if the city’s offer was time-sensitive or could community members take more time to digest the offer.

He told The Chronicle Herald he got the impression it had to be dealt with soon.

“It appeared to me like it was rushed,” he said.

But Carvery stressed that wasn’t the case, adding, the municipality did not impose a deadline.

“Our decision to hold our meeting this weekend was because that’s the best time for people to be available.”

Ottawa declared Africville a heritage site in 2002. A couple of years later, the United Nations urged a reparations agreement be prepared.

( mlightstone@herald.ca)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1168681.html

Throwback track! This was recorded in 2008 Unknown Mizery is no long affiliated with the SFA movement

TRACK FROM HELLAFACTZ- HARD 2B HUMBLE MIXTAPE FEATURING UNKNOWN MIZERY & LOGIKAL ETHIX FROM STOLEN FROM AFRICA. RECORDED IN HALIFAX NOVA SCOTIA AT THE VAULT STUDIOS BY BEATMASON. BEAT PRODUCED BY PAWL-E-FINGAZ.

homie is doing it up large! Hopefully I can find the Article and post that online!

rippin up the show!

Hellafactz with ED OG and Logik

Hellafactz with Masta Ace and Logik


Hellafactz with Producer Marco Polo

You already know what it is! You dont grind you dont shine! Big shouts to SFA east coast rep “HELLAFACTZ” for holding down at Revival thursday night !! Toronto was actually showing support for the 902! Screwface capital what? I told Hellafactz straight up, if can rock a Toronto show anywhere else in Canada is breeze! We had a great night! Feedback footage is coming soon!! SFA TV

Music video from North Preston reps! The eastcoast is canadas version of the dirty south. Southern hospitality out there for real!

Big tune right here! breaking down scotian black history! “Audio text book” what you know ’bout?