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Well-known activists, politicians and celebrities were gathering Monday at a St. Louis church for the funeral of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot dead by a police officer two weeks ago. The list of VIPs expected to attend the service includes director Spike Lee, rapper Snoop Dogg, music mogul Diddy, comedian Nick Cannon.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The first African-American president in history. This is why he was elected! Grab the audio sound bites. Let me prove this to you. It's not just me saying it. This is Spike Lee, sound bites two and four. Last night Spike Lee, Anderson Cooper 95, and Cooper said, "Look, a study came out yesterday," Spike, old buddy, old pal, "about how people's perception of what happened here Ferguson and how radically they differ among African-American and Caucasian Americans. "Does it still surprise you," Spike, old buddy, old pal, "that there's a divide in perception and how Americans...

After a week of rioting and confrontations in Ferguson, Missouri, filmmaker Spike Lee said he hoped that "things will really blow up" if Officer Darren Wilson is tried and the people of Ferguson are unhappy with the verdict.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Filmmaker Spike Lee weighed in on the death of Michael Brown and said the “uprising” in Ferguson, Mo., is in response to years of racial tension and mistreatment towards the black community in the United States. “When people get to a point — to that tipping point — they can’t take it anymore,” Lee said on CNN on Tuesday, listing the tragedies involving Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Rodney King, and others. While he seemed to disapprove of looting and burning property, Lee also said that he “just hope[s] that things will really blow up if people aren’t happy with the...

On Tuesday #Anonymous released the private information of St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar and his wife and children. The group posted a link to the information in a tweet.

Via Variety: Spike Lee has been sued by an elderly couple in Florida, whose address he incorrectly identified as the home of Trayvon Martin killer George Zimmerman, according to court documents obtained by the Smoking Gun.

Although he no longer lives in the borough, anti-gentrification spokesperson Spike Lee insists, "Brooklyn is still going to be inside of me." And he inside of it: Lee's Do the Right Thing may be immortalized in true NYC-style — with a street sign. Brooklyn Community Board 3 has voted to approve renaming the Bed-Stuy block of Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street, where the movie was filmed, “Do the Right Thing” Way, in time for its 25th anniversary. The City Council has the final say, and it could be tough. "It's a bit complicated, because the City Council's...

With the lifetime ban by the NBA of despicably racist Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, the door is wide open to further sports bans on people who say offensive things in private. That, of course, is why Sterling was ousted. Everyone knew for decades that Sterling was a disgusting pig racist – he had federal lawsuits led by the Department of Justice against him for discriminating against blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in housing (one allegation in the 2006 DOJ lawsuit: he said black people “smell”). That would have been an excellent reason for ousting Sterling years ago. The NBA...

Spike Lee is likening Donald Sterling's racist and inflammatory remarks to those of a slave owner. Lee, speaking to CNN's Anderson Cooper, said that he believes the owner of the L.A. Clippers should be removed from his position within the NBA.

*Famed film director Spike Lee has expressed his desire to see the Trayvon Martin story told on the big screen. During an interview with theGrio, Lee commended 27-year-old new director Ryan Coogler for bringing his acclaimed independent film, “Fruitvale Station,” the Oscar Grant story, to the big screen. He expressed his admiration for the film while stating that the film business isn’t built in favor of young directors like Coogler to succeed. “Love it…. It’s great,” Lee said of Fruitvale Station. “But it’s something that I have been doing for 15 year [sic]. I teach film. That is my job...

The rise of Asian-Americans and their dominance in academia may be exemplified by the extraordinary performance of Asian-American students in New York City. How A Chinese Solar Giant Was Snared In An Italian Fraud Scandal According to recent media reports, Asian-American students account for almost three-fourths of the enrollment at Stuyvesant High School, one of the city's eight specialized, elite public schools that strictly use test scores for admission. Asians represent less than 14 percent of the city's entire public school student body, meaning they are disproportionately represented at Stuyvesant by a magnitude of about five. (In 1970, Asians accounted...

PEOPLE FROM all over Philadelphia came together Saturday to tell their stories about gentrification at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia. Organizers had issued fliers calling for an "emergency town hall" to confront a "crisis facing black Philadelphia: the demise of our neighborhoods." In gentrification, some neighborhoods are targeted for revitalization - but the new development leads to huge rent or property-tax increases that often force longtime residents out.

Spike Lee’s obscenity-filled tirade about the gentrification of inner-city neighborhoods — caught on tape and posted online in all its mother-effing glory — perfectly captured the bitterness, confusion and circular logic that sends most conversations about New York’s ever-changing neighborhoods down a blind alley. Lee’s torrent of cussing and complaints mostly focused on how well-heeled white newcomers have allegedly ruined Fort Greene, where he grew up. Much of what he said was hilarious (“Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning? It’s like the mother-effing Westminster Dog Show!”). But some of it was downright offensive (“You can’t just come...

NEW YORK — (TG) New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, acting swiftly in response to an emotional, expletive-littered denunciation of gentrification by perennially furious movie director Spike Lee, has issued an emergency directive ordering all refuse collected in the city to be dumped on up-and-coming Brooklyn enclave Fort Greene. The mayoral action is intended to address a number of concerns raised by Lee, a Fort Greene native, during a thunderous speech he delivered at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute on Tuesday. Lee, furious that white yuppies emboldened by a lack of violent crime now enter the neighborhood with impunity, delivered a...

Vandals targeted the former Brooklyn home of director Spike Lee days after a video of the director ranting against gentrification went viral. The vandals sprayed “Do The Right Thing,” on the front of the brownstone home in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. The message is the title of one of Lee’s best-known movies, which tackles the subject of racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Lee’s former home had part of the title written on the side of its stoop. …

It’s interesting that the director of the richest oeuvre of black films in the history of the medium doesn’t understand what the Civil Rights revolution was for. In his expletive-laced comments about the gentrification of Fort Greene during an interview at the Pratt Institute, Spike Lee seemed to think that what we Overcame for was to be grouchy bigots. Basically, black people are getting paid more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives for their houses, and a once sketchy neighborhood is now quiet and pleasant. And this is a bad thing… why? Lee seems to think it’s somehow...

His parents still live there. He still keeps an office there. But it's not the same neighborhood he grew up in, and his feelings about newcomers now inhabiting once-blighted parts of America's most-populous city like Fort Greene slapped many people in the face after the famed director went into an expletive-laced rant during an African-American History Month lecture on Tuesday. Spike Lee on gentrification "I grew up here in New York. It's changed," Lee said at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, an art, design, and architecture school. "And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the South Bronx,...

White liberals have been very good to Spike Lee, pouring money and praise upon him in return for the excruciatingly politically correct movies he directs. Here he returns the favor exactly as we have come to expect: Spike Lee went on a long-winded rant against gentrification in New York City on Tuesday night when he was asked to argue against the development of poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Harlem. … Lee pointed the finger at white New Yorkers who have moved into historically black neighborhoods and changed the environment, arguing that those changes have caused the areas to evolve into...

<p>The "Defend Brooklyn" hoodie that Spike Lee wore last night should've been a clear indicator regarding his thoughts on gentrification in the borough that raised him.</p> <p>Last night, Lee appeared at Pratt Institute for a Black History Month lecture, but the discussion quickly became a piercingly truthful rant from the opinionated auteur. Citing a New York Times article about the supposed good of gentrification, Lee unleashed a seven-minute tirade about how the changes in Brooklyn infuriate him, specifically the "Christopher Columbus Syndrome."</p>

The Brooklyn-raised director launched into an argument about the drawbacks of gentrification Compared Fort Greene Park to the 'motherf*****' Wesminster Dog Show' because it is so clean Lee was raised in Brooklyn but has lived in the Upper East Side since 2000 Spike Lee went on a long-winded rant against gentrification in New York City on Tuesday night when he was asked to argue against the development of poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Harlem. The director, who has focused on racial issues and gentrification in his films, blasted an audience member at the Pratt Institute who started defending the changes...