Re-asserting the cultural revolution in the National Occupy Movement

Waging and winning the cultural revolution means throwing off oppression by convincing the people that the interests of the ruling 1% are opposite, not identical to those of the 99%

by Zaharibu Dorrough, J. Heshima Denham, Kambui Robinson and Jabari Scott of the NCTT Corcoran Security Housing Unit (SHU)

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Michael Zaharibu Dorrough and his family are not the sort of patriarchal, authoritarian family that prepares children to confuse the interests of the ruling 1 percent with their own interests and to submit to oppression without protest.

Steadfast greetings, brothers and sisters. Our love and solidarity to you all. We felt it appropriate to open this statement with Dr. King’s call, which has been applicable to any given period where injustice is rife. We felt compelled to provide some necessary clarity and context to the struggle taking place.The National Occupy Movement has been magnificent in how it has changed the framework in which the discourse on unequal distribution of wealth must be made. But in order for the movement to develop into the popular movement that it must become to effect permanent and meaningful change, the slogan, “We are the 99 percent,” must become a reality. It is imperative that both Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Occupy the Hood (OTH) struggle together to form a popular movement.

It is crucial to any lasting progress that we reignite the cultural revolution that was started early in this nation’s history but never fulfilled: John Brown’s revolt, Thomas Dorr’s rebellion, the civil and human rights struggles of the 1950s-‘60s, the armed revolts throughout this nation’s history, including the rebellions in Watts, Oakland (Kambui and Jabari’s hometown), Harlem, Detroit, Cleveland (Zaharibu’s hometown), Chicago (Heshima’s hometown), and Kent State, to name a few.

These struggles laid the foundation for the cultural revolution that the U.S. was in the process of undergoing up until the later 1970s. No society can make the necessary transformation from a capitalist, patriarchal, authoritarian, racist, sexist, homophobic, unjust one to one in which democratic ideals can prevail and fulfilling one’s potential is actually possible and encouraged without undergoing a cultural revolutionary transformation.

We are not talking about what kind of government we want; that can and will occur in time, and you will know when that time comes just as you knew that the time had come to fight this battle. A cultural revolution occurs during the transitional stage in the struggle and consists of people from different cultural – i.e., racial, ethnic, religious – backgrounds and schools of thought varying politically, economically, socially, spiritually, intellectually, educationally and sexually all coming together to realize a vision for the kind of society they want to share and live in. It is quite possibly the crucial step in a society transforming itself. That’s exactly what was underway toward the mid- to late 1970s.

We believe that because of the overall political immaturity of all but a few of the liberation groups at that time, the movement was not able to develop into a cohesive popular movement. As a result, groups were crushed, individuals either went into exile, were assassinated or imprisoned, while a lot of others in the movement were co-opted by the system.

Billions of dollars were spent on social programs during the Johnson administration. Yet most, perhaps all, of these programs no longer exist. The cultural revolution of that time – traditionally called the “social revolution” – was re-characterized as the “sexual revolution” by the ruling class, reduced to a period of time in which citizens engaged in promiscuous sex – nothing more.

It was part of the ruling class’s effort to de-legitimize the efforts made by those brave citizens who dared to struggle! Simultaneously, they were re-enforcing the puritanical component of the authoritarian mass psychology. It was also the intention of the ruling class to re-write the historical record of the period, thus depriving future generations of a historical record to build on.

There is already an understanding of the underlying conditions that are responsible for so much misery, and those conditions have always existed, but what is not as clear is why have so many accepted these conditions for so long? We will try to address that here.

But what must be clear at the outset is change, developing a popular movement, must consist of OWS and OTH forging meaningful coalitions with one another. Coalitions that recognize that this struggle is not a “white” struggle; it is a people’s struggle.

The Occupy Movement is not a “white” struggle; it is a people’s struggle. The middle class must be prepared to take the necessary steps to reach these goals and that includes reaching out to the underclass.

It must be recognized that in order for OWS to mature into a popular movement, the participation of OTH is required. Those citizens within OTH, the leadership, must mobilize with OWS. This is a protracted struggle. The middle class must be prepared to take the necessary steps to reach these goals and that includes reaching out to the underclass and OTH. OTH must see that it is in their interests to reach back and unite in this struggle.

What is a cultural revolution?

But what is it that we are struggling against? Exactly what is a cultural revolution? Why is it necessary, and what does it entail? How can it be waged successfully?

The answer lies in the nature of the struggle of the National Occupy Movement itself, the struggle between the interests of the ruling 1 percent and those of the 99 percent. It is a struggle between ideas that have been imposed on the people as a direct result of the changes in economic modes of production and the people’s unconscious acceptance, support and identification with those ideas and new ideas that reflect these warped artificial psychological structures in favor of those that free them from an exploitive political and economic relationship that serves a wealth elite.

It must be understood that our movement will NOT succeed in effecting a fundamental change in the mass psychological structure which supports this exploitive relationship. This is the core purpose of a cultural revolution, to eradicate unprogressive values, tendencies, sentiments and modes of thought. But before we can expound upon the characteristics of the cultural revolution, we first need to clearly analyze the core impediment to the successful conclusion of attempted cultural revolutions in the past.

The chief obstacle to the realization of progressive social change here has always been the patriarchal authoritarian psychological structure of reactionary men and women in the U.S. These concepts may be complex for those new to them, so we’ll attempt to be as clear and brief as possible.

For most of U.S. capitalist society’s existence, it has brutally exploited the labor, ideas and political will of the vast majority of its population to maintain and expand the wealth, power and privilege of a greedy elite ruling class the movement has identified as the 1 percent. It has been this way for hundreds of years and each time progressive social forces have attempted to cast off this yoke of oppression or move the nation closer to the idealistic sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence, those forces have been repressed, not simply by the ruling 1 percent and its tools, but by vast segments of the oppressed masses themselves.

What causes this illogical contradiction? What prevents the socio-economic situation they’re suffering through from reflecting the psychic structure of the masses? Again and again, throughout the history of progressive social movements, we see the economic and ideological situations of the masses in the U.S. not coinciding and in fact being at considerable variance. The socio-economic reality of the people is not directly and immediately translated into political consciousness; if it were, the social revolution would have been realized years ago. The answer lies in the unique historical processes that forged the character structure of the average Amerikan worker.

That process began with the introduction of patriarchy as the dominant force in social ideology in Europe and its impetus toward authoritarian control of every aspect of social life of the remaining members of the family unit, especially as it relates to the negation of natural social and biological processes. In the figure of the “father” the authoritarian ruling class has its representative in every family, so the family unit becomes its most vital instruments of power.

This patriarchal authoritarian process’ chief component is puritanical repression, and this is also the manner in which the ruling 1 percent chains the ideological structure of the lower middle and middle classes to its own interests. Unlike patriarchal authoritarianism, puritanical repression as a tool of mass social control is fairly recent – in the last 300 years.

If we analyze the history of puritanicalism and the etiology of the repression of natural human biological expression, you’ll find its origins aren’t at the beginning of cultural development. No, it was not until the organized establishment of patriarchal authoritarianism and the class system that puritanicalism starts to assert itself and begin to serve the interests of the ruling 1 percent in amassing material profit.

There is a logical reason for all of this when seen from the perspective of the thriving exploitation of human labor and the apparent enthusiasm of the people to accept that exploitation. You see, the ruling 1 percent very rarely need to resort to brute force to maintain control of society, as the owners of the means of production prefer to employ their ideological power over the oppressed as their primary weapon, for it is the ideology of puritanical patriarchal authoritarianism that is the mainstay of the ruling elite.

The ruling 1 percent very rarely need to resort to brute force to maintain control of society, as the owners of the means of production prefer to employ their ideological power over the oppressed as their primary weapon.

It is within the authoritarian family that the merging of the economic arrangement and the puritanical structure of society takes place; religious and other puritanical interests continue this function later. Thus, the authoritarian state has an enormous stake in the authoritarian family; it becomes the factory in which the state’s structure and ideology is molded.

Man’s authoritarian psychology is thus produced by embedding these puritanical inhibitions, guilt feelings and fear of freedom to experience natural forms of human expression. The suppression of one’s economic needs compasses a different psychological reaction than one’s natural human drives.

The suppression of one’s economic needs usually incites resistance, while the repression of natural biological needs removes those desires from the consciousness, embeds them in the subconscious and erects a “moral defense” against them, and in so doing prevents rebellion against both forms of suppression. The result is the inhibition of rebellion itself.

How the 1 percent suppresses the cultural revolution

In the average Amerikan, there is no trace of revolutionary thinking. It is this process that has strengthened political reaction in the U.S. and made far too many victims of economic inequality here passive, indifferent and apolitical. It has succeeded in creating a secondary force in man’s mind, an artificial interest that supports the authoritarian order of the ruling 1 percent.

In the average Amerikan, there is no trace of revolutionary thinking.

Yes, most are truly “trapped in the matrix.” This is observable at every level of this capitalist society. It is the conservative who first suggests reactionary repressive measures or curtailing civil liberties in the face of civil disobedience or broad political dissent. The Occupy Movement continues to experience this firsthand at the hands of national police forces.

The Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition here in the Corcoran State Prison SHU and in Pelican Bay continues to experience waves of retaliation from state prison industrialists. This “fear of freedom” is inherent to the authoritarian character structure of conservative man.

The conflict that originally takes place between natural desires and authoritarian suppression of these desires later becomes the conflict between instinct and morality within the person. This, of course, produces a contradiction within the person. Since man is not only the object of the historical processes that created the economic and ideological influences of his social life, but also reproduces them in his activities, his thinking and acting must be just as contradictory as the society from which they arose.

The U.S., for instance, is a society founded on the premises of “equality, freedom and the unalienable rights of man,” yet its formation, history and modern structure contradict this. When we speak of the realization of U.S. “manifest destiny” or the development and maintenance of its global hegemony, we are speaking of the systematic genocide of Native Americans, the organized theft of Native land, the slavery and brutalization of Africans and New Afrikans, the maintenance of institutional racism and sexism, imperialist war mongering, state-sponsored kidnapping, torture and targeted assassinations, suppression of sexual democracy, state imposition of religious moral imperatives that deprive others of their equal rights, the naked exploitation of human labor and suppression of organized labor, and the mass incarceration of the poor and people of color – all while espousing the ideas of “opportunity, fairness and equal protection under the law.”

This is the historical legacy of contradiction in the development and maintenance of U.S. society. These same contradictions are reproduced in the psychic-structures of its people.

Should the middle strata of White Amerika lose these warped concepts of “morality” to the same degree it continues to lose its intermediate position between the average worker and the upper class, this would seriously threaten the interests of the ruling 1 percent. You see, lurking also among this strata of the people, ever ready to break free of its reactionary tendencies, is the inherent revolutionary imperative of their socio-economic situation.

This is why since the start of the 2008 recession the FCC and virtually every segment of public and private enterprise has increased its push for “morality” and “strengthening traditional marriage,” because the authoritarian ideology and family unit forms the link from the wretched social reality of the lower middle class to reactionary ideology and social conservatism: The ideology of the 1 percent.

Where this ideology is uprooted from the compulsive family unit, the authoritarian system is threatened. They sense it on the horizon, and historically this is when the greatest ideological resistance asserts itself.

The socio-economic exploitation of the 99 percent, in its myriad manifestations, would not be possible without the psychological structure of the masses that accepts that status quo.

It is when the economically disenfranchised and dissatisfied classes begin to organize themselves, begin to fight for socio-political improvements and begin raising the cultural level of the broader masses that these authoritarian “moralistic” inhibitions set in. The bottom line here is every social order produces in the masses of its members that structure which it needs to achieve its main aims.

The U.S. is no different. The socio-economic exploitation of the 99 percent, in its myriad manifestations, would not be possible without the psychological structure of the masses that accepts that status quo. There is a direct correlation between the economic structure of capitalist society and the mass psychological structures of its members, not only in the sense that “the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class,” but more essential to the question of a resurgence of the cultural revolution in the U.S. is that the contradictions of the economic structure of society are also embodied in the psychological structure of the subjugated masses.

The role of the cultural revolution

Which brings us to the cultural revolution itself. The role of the cultural revolution is to uproot these old unprogressive ideas and values which have served to keep us shackled to the legacy of oppressive relationships that define the majority of U.S. history and usher in new values which reflect the universal mores of freedom, justice, equality and human rights.

A cultural revolution is a reconstruction of a people’s way of life in order to move them to a given objective; it forms a new historical continuity in which re-evaluation of self, the people and the society compels us to cast aside historical revisionism. It will place the political power back in the hands of the people, rescue democracy from the stranglehold of corrupt political influences and corporate super-PACs.

The role of the cultural revolution is to uproot these old unprogressive ideas and values which have served to keep us shackled to the legacy of oppressive relationships that define the majority of U.S. history and usher in new values which reflect the universal mores of freedom, justice, equality and human rights.

A true cultural revolution entails more than simply chanting slogans, protest actions, hunger strikes or occupations. It’s more than changing our looks or altering our polling strategy to more closely reflect support for those issues dear to the movement. No, it entails changing our core psychology, how you think, changing your conduct and activities, your interactions and methods in order to transform society as a whole.

Cultural values are produced by economic and political systems. As we struggle against the institutional inequalities inherent in the U.S. capitalist arrangement, we will lose the cultural values of that system and will forge more humane values as the basis of new political and economic relationships. Such a revolution must encompass the common man and woman, illuminating for them the inherent interests in this national transformation of values and how it will positively impact their lives and the lives of their friends and loved ones. This is the reason the National Occupy Movement must organize and grow together.

Cultural values are produced by economic and political systems. As we struggle against the institutional inequalities inherent in the U.S. capitalist arrangement, we will lose the cultural values of that system and will forge more humane values as the basis of new political and economic relationships.

This calls for unity, the conscious development of united fronts and strategic alliances that grow deeper and richer as they experience trials and adversity, pass through ease and danger. Essentially this process IS the cultural revolution.

What must be understood is these different groups represent different class interests, political interests and economic interests and have different ideologies. It is the reality of this dynamic that has been the basis for the divide and rule politic that has governed life in this society and most others since the rise of monopoly capitalism. It is the basis of the primary contradiction now.

We have demonstrated how for the vast majority of this nation’s history, the ruling 1 percent has been successful in convincing desperate segments of society to identify their interests with the ruling 1 percent’s. Playing on “this” economic class interest of the middle strata or “that” religious moral lean of the lower middle strata, all along ensuring that whatever the ultimate outcome, their interests, the interests of the 1 percent elite, will be preserved as the ruling interests.

For the vast majority of this nation’s history, the ruling 1 percent has been successful in convincing desperate segments of society to identify their interests with the ruling 1 percent’s.

They’ve been consistently able to do so despite centuries of material evidence of their duplicity because they’ve been capable of maintaining control of not simply the context of these national discussions, but of the apparatus in which they’ve been held – corporate mass media – and the very cultural values upon which those discussions are based.

There is a relevant maxim which states, “The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.” The current struggle we are waging now in the National Occupy Movement, prisoner hunger strike solidarity movement, anti-imperialist movement etc. is a manifestation of the people’s consciousness that their interests and the interests of the ruling elite are not the same interests and in fact are and have always been diametrically opposed.

Winning the cultural revolution

It is for this reason that corporate entities, government officials, their police forces and corporate-owned mass media have made a collective and coordinated effort to downplay, discredit, underreport, dismiss, brutally attack, pass laws against and ultimately crush the movement before it can lead to a true cultural revolution which could force upon them a progressive transformation in the nature and structure of U.S. society.

This has been the historical trend in the U.S.:

• The gains of “Reconstruction” for New Afrikans were erased by the “1877 Compromise” that paved the way for Jim Crow and Lynch Law;

• The 1839 Anti-Renters Movement was crushed by brutality under the guise of law by 1845;

• Thomas Dorr’s rebellion for election reform in 1841 was crushed by 1842 and buried with the Supreme Court decision in Luther v. Borden in 1849;

• The Labor Movement of the International Working People’s Association of Albert Parsons and August Spies was crushed at the Haymarket Massacre on May 4, 1885;

• The aborted cultural revolution led by the Socialist Party and IWW in the 1900s was crushed by reform and brute force like the 1913 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado;

• The potential cultural revolution of the Civil Rights Movement was aborted by co-option, reform and assassinations;

• The cultural revolution of the late ‘60s to late ‘70s, which encompassed the Black Liberation Movement, Women’s Rights Movement, New Left Movement, Prison Movement, American Indian Movement and Anti-War Movement was systemically crushed by the FBI’s counter-intelligence program, superficial reforms and brutal, bloody force.

Cultural revolutions of these types in the U.S. historically all have a central purpose: to destroy the oppressors’ conditioned mores, attitudes, ways, customs, philosophies and habits that the dominant power base has instilled in us which allow these exploitive and repressive relationships to exist.

A cultural revolution is a revolution of one’s values, and the ruling 1 percent recognizes your values dictate your actions. They also realize where such a transformation in your worldview would lead; it was even noted in the Declaration of Independence: “(A)ll experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

A cultural revolution is a revolution of one’s values, and the ruling 1 percent recognizes your values dictate your actions. As long as the ruling 1 percent can keep you convinced that its values and interests are your own, you will continue to suffer oppression without protest.

As long as they can keep you convinced that the interests of the ruling 1 percent are your own, you will continue to be content to suffer the “evils” that you have without protestation. Thus, at all costs they must ensure you don’t realize that the values that have been instilled in you for generations – those of greed, racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, elitism, naked self-interest, religious intolerance, classism and thinly-veiled hypocrisy – were instilled to ensure you never realize you’ve long since been “reduced under absolute despotism,” and the political and economic choices available to you, no matter what your decisions, favor their interests first, and whatever interests support theirs most effectively secondly.

The entire purpose of socio-economic stratification and institutional racism is to ensure the ruling 1 percent can maintain control with “a minimum of force, a maximum of law, all made palatable by the fanfare of unity and patriotism,” as Howard Zinn wrote in “A People’s History of the United States.”

Brothers and sisters, this will not be easy because the most vital battles will have to be waged within you. But the reassertion of the cultural revolution is necessary if the movement is to realize actual success and not become just another footnote in the crushed movements of American history.

We will stand with you, wage struggle with you, but in the final analysis only you, the people, the 99 percent, can hoist this banner and carry the cultural revolution to its victorious conclusion – and on the other side a new and brighter world for us all. Until we win or don’t lose.

For more information on the NCTT (NARN (New African Revolutionary Nation) Collective Think Tank) Corcoran SHU and its work product, contact:

• Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Kambui Robinson, C-83820, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Jabari Scott, H-30536, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #63, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

 

Slavery on the new plantation

by Kiilu Nyasha

A youngster in a Georgia forced labor camp around 1932 is subjected to an ugly form of punishment. – Photo: John Spivak

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same, but with a new name. They’re practicing slavery under color of law.”– Ruchell Cinque MageeThe 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within the confines of prison: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It was adopted Dec. 6, 1865.

Even before the abolition of chattel slavery, America’s history of prison labor had already begun in New York’s State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817. Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a factory within its walls. Later, in the post-Civil War period, the “contract and lease” system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ prisoners and sell their products for profit.

Today, such prisons are referred to as “factories with fences.”

The convict-lease system

In Southern states, Slave Codes were rewritten as Black Codes, a series of laws criminalizing the law-abiding activities of Black people, such as standing around, “loitering,” or walking at night, “breaking curfew.” The enforcement of these codes dramatically increased the number of Blacks in Southern prisons. In 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 convicts, 1,124 of whom were Black.

The lease system provided slave labor for plantation owners or private industries as well as revenue for the state, since incarcerated workers were entirely in the custody of the contractors who paid a set annual fee to the state, about $25,000. Entire prisons were leased out to private contractors who literally worked hundreds of prisoners to death. Prisons became the new plantations; Angola State Prison in Louisiana was a literal plantation and still is except the slaves are now called convicts and the prison is known as “The Farm.” (A documentary of that title is available on DVD and online.)

The inherent brutality and cruelty of the lease system and the loss of outside jobs sparked resistance that eventually brought about its demise.

One of the most famous battles was the Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891. When the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. locked out their workers and replaced them with convicts, the miners stormed the prison and freed 400 captives; and when the company continued to contract prisoners, the miners burned the prison down. The Tennessee leasing system was disbanded shortly thereafter. But it remained in many states until the rise of resistance in the 1930s.

Strikes by prisoners and union workers together were organized by the then radical CIO and other labor unions. They pressured Congress to pass the 1935 Ashurst-Sumners Act making it illegal to transport prison-made goods across state lines. But under President Jimmy Carter, Congress granted exemptions to the act by passing the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which produced the Prison Industries Enhancement program, or PIE, that eventually spread to all 50 states. This lifted the ban on interstate transportation and sale of prison-made products, permitting a for-profit relationship between prisons and the private sector and prompting a dramatic increase in prison labor which continues to escalate.

As the leasing system phased out, a new, even more brutal exploitation emerged – the chain gang. An extremely dehumanizing cruelty that chained men – and later women – together in groups of five, it was originated to build extensive roads and highways. The first state to institute chain gangs was Alabama, followed by Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana and Oklahoma.

Arizona’s first female chain gang was instituted in 1996. Complete with striped uniforms, the women of a Phoenix jail – to this day – spend four to six hours a day chained together in groups of 30, clearing roadsides of weeds and burying the indigent.

Georgia’s chain-gang conditions were particularly brutal. Men were put out to work swinging 12-pound sledge hammers for 16 hours a day, malnourished and shackled together, unable to move their legs a full stride. Wounds from metal shackles often became infected, leading to illness and death. Prisoners who could not keep up with the grueling pace were whipped or shut in a sweatbox or tied to a hitching post, a stationary metal rail. Chained to the post with hands raised high over his head, the prisoner remained tethered in that position in the Southern heat for many hours without water or bathroom breaks.

Thanks to a lawsuit settled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama’s Department of Corrections agreed in 1996 to stop chaining prisoners together. A few years later, the center won a court ruling that ended use of the hitching post as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

In response to the demands of World War II, the number of both free and captive road workers declined significantly. In 1941, there were 1,750 prisoners slaving in 28 active road camps for all types of construction and maintenance. The numbers bottomed out by war’s end at 540 captives in 17 camps.

The proliferation of prisons, jails and camps

Books by George Jackson – best sellers when they were published – remain very popular with today’s prisoners; but in California, possession of his books or even a clipping from the Bay View containing his name can result in punishments as torturous as indefinite solitary confinement.

In the 1940s, California Gov. Earl Warren conducted secret investigations into the state’s only prisons, San Quentin and Folsom. The depravity, squalor, sadism and torture he found led the governor to initiate the building of Soledad Prison in 1951.Prisoners were put to work in educational and vocational programs that taught basic courses in English and math and provided training in trades ranging from gardening to meat cutting. At wages of 7 to 25 cents an hour, California prisoners used their acquired skills to turn out institutional clothing and furniture, license plates and stickers; seed new crops; slaughter pigs; and produce and sell dairy products to a nearby mental institution.

Within a decade this “model prison” at Soledad had become another torture chamber of filthy dungeons, literal “holes,” virulently racist guards, officially sanctioned brutality, torture and murder. Though prison jobs were supposed to be voluntary, if prisoners refused to work they were often given longer sentences, denied privileges or thrown into solitary confinement. Forced to work long hours under miserable conditions, in the 1960s, “Soledad Brother” George Jackson organized a work strike that turned into a riot after white strikebreakers tried to lynch one of the Black strikers.

The Black Movement’s resistance, led by George Jackson, W.L. Nolen and Hugo “Yogi” Pinell, eventually brought Congressional oversight and an overhaul of California’s prison system, according to “The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison” by Min S. Yee.

California’s prison population has risen exponentially to approximately 174,000 prisoners crammed into 90 penitentiaries, prisons and camps stretched across 900 miles of the fifth-largest economy in the world, as Ruth Gilmore’s book, “Golden Gulag,” reports. That number can be doubled or tripled by those on other forms of penal control, such as probation, parole or house arrest.

Since 1984, California has erected 43 prisons – and only one university – making it a global leader in prison construction. Most of the new prisons have been built in rural areas far from family and friends, and most captives are Black or Brown men, although the incarceration of women has skyrocketed. Suicide and recidivism rates approach twice the national average, and the state spends more on prisons than on higher education. (The seeming contradiction between 43 as the number of new prisons and 33, the total number of prisons in California, is explained by additional buildings constructed at a given prison complex.)

Between 1998 and 2009, the CDCR’s budget grew from $3.5 billion to $10.3 billion (the latest figures available). At the overcrowding peak in August 2007, the department had 72 gyms and 125 dayrooms jammed with 19,618 inmate beds.

“They provided an accurate and extremely graphic example of the crowding and inhumanity that engulfed the entire system,” said Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office in Berkeley, which sued to force the state to ease crowding as a way to improve the treatment of sick and mentally ill inmates.

The privatizing of federal and state prisons

Under court order to reduce overcrowding, by 2009, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had transferred 8,000 prisoners to private prisons in four states –Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Arizona, among the most virulently racist states in the country. The rest of the prisoners released from state prison in order to comply with the court ordered reduction were transferred to county jails. Currently, the inmate population is about 142,000, and CDCR must remove another 17,000 prisoners to reach the June 2013 court deadline.

At the peak of overcrowding, prisoners filled every empty space. This is the state prison in Lancaster, near Los Angeles, in 2008. – Photo: Spencer Weiner, AP

In 1985, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger lauded China’s prison labor program: “1,000 inmates in one prison I visited comprised a complete factory unit producing hosiery and what we would call casual or sport shoes … Indeed it had been a factory and was taken over to make a prison.” Burger called for the conversion of prisons into factories, the repeal of laws limiting prison industry production and sales, and the active participation of business and organized labor.Heeding the judge’s call, California voters passed Proposition 139 in 1990, establishing the Joint Venture Program allowing California businesses to cash in on prison labor. “This is the new jobs program for California, so we can compete on a Third World basis with countries like Bangladesh,” observed Richard Holober with the California Federation of Labor.

Currently, California’s Prison Industrial Authority (CALPIA) employs 7,000 captives assigned to 5,039 positions in manufacturing, agricultural service enterprises, and selling and administration at 22 prisons throughout the state. It produces goods and services such as office furniture, clothing, food products, shoes, printing services, signs, binders, gloves, license plates, cell equipment and much more. Wages are 30 to 95 cents per hour before deductions.

For the state’s highest wage, $1 per hour, prisoners provide the “backbone of the state’s wildland firefighting crews,” according to an unpublished CDCR report. The California Department of Forestry saves more than $80 million annually using prison labor. California’s Department of Forestry has 200 fire crews comprised of CDCR and CYA (California Youth Authority) minimum-security captives housed in 46 conservation camps throughout the state. These prisoners average 10 million work hours per year according to the CDCR.

“Their primary function is to construct fire lines by hand in areas where heavy machinery cannot be used because of steep topography, rocky terrain or areas that may be considered environmentally sensitive” – i.e., the most dangerous fire lines.

This prisoner is working for Furniture Medic, which describes itself as one of the world’s largest furniture repair and restoration companies.

Now at least 37 states have similar programs wherein prisoners manufacture everything from blue jeans to auto parts, electronics and toys. Clothing made in Oregon and California is exported to other countries, competing successfully with apparel made in Asia and Latin America.One of the newest forms of slave labor is the U.S. Army’s “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” to “benefit both the Army and corrections systems,” according to its official Army website, by providing “a convenient source of labor at no direct cost to Army installations,” additional space to alleviate prison overcrowding, and cost-effective use of land and facilities otherwise not being utilized.

“With a few exceptions,” this program is currently limited to prisoners under the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) that allows the U.S. attorney general to provide the services of federal prisoners to other federal agencies, defining the types of services they can perform. The program stipulates that the “Army is not interested in, nor can afford, any relationship with a corrections facility if that relationship stipulates payment for civilian inmate labor. Installation civilian inmate labor program operating costs must not exceed the cost avoidance generated from using inmate labor.” In other words, the prison labor must be free of charge.

The three “exceptions” to exclusive federal contracting are as follows: 1) “a demonstration project” providing “prerelease employment training to nonviolent offenders in a State correctional facility” [CF]; 2) Army National Guard units, which “may use inmates from an off-post State and/or local CF”; 3) civil works projects that require such services as constructing or repairing roads, maintaining or reforesting public land, building levees, landscaping, painting, carpentry, trash pickup etc.

This Civilian Inmate Labor Program document includes in its countless specifications such caveats as “Inmates must not be referred to as employees.” A prisoner would not qualify if he/she is a “person in whom there is a significant public interest,” who has been a “significant management problem,” “a principal organized crime figure,” any “inmate convicted of a violent crime,” a sex offense, involvement with drugs within the last three years, an escape risk, “a threat to the general public.” Makes one wonder why such a prisoner isn’t just released or paroled. In fact, the “hiring qualifications” make me suspect the “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” is a backdoor draft, especially considering a military already stretched to its limit.

Note: When I tried to find an updated web page on the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, there was none. The date remains 2005 for its latest report. Could the latest data be classified?

The Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a nonprofit Justice Department subsidiary that does business as UNICOR, was created in 1935 and began supplying the Pentagon on a broad scale in the 1980s.

The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. but reached its height in 1990 under Bill Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. In fact, President Clinton accomplished a record $10 billion prison building boom in the 1990s.

His program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Department’s contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates, according to Global Research, 2008.

By 2003, there were 100 FPI factories working 20,274 prisoners with sales totaling $666.8 million. And currently FPI employs about 19,000 captives, slightly less than 20 percent of the federal prison population, in 106 prison factories around the country. Profits totaled at least $40 million!

In 2005, FPI sold more than $750,000,000 worth of goods to the federal government. Sales to the Army alone put UNICOR on the Army’s list of top 50 suppliers, ahead of well-known corporations like Dell Computer, according to Wayne Woolley, Newhouse News Service.

In 2011, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report that exposes how private prison companies are “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report notes that while the total number of prisoners increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, respectively.

Government spending on so-called corrections rose to $74 billion in 2007. And in 2011 the two largest private prison companies – Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) – made over $2.9 billion in profits. These corporations use three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions and networking. They succeeded in getting Arizona’s harsh new immigration laws passed and came close to winning the privatization of all of Florida’s prisons.

A relatively new ordering tool used by BOP (Bureau of Prisons) is GSA Advantage! the federal government’s premier online ordering system that provides 24-hour access to over 17 million products and services, solutions available from over 16,000 GSA Multiple Award Schedules contractors, as well as all products available from GSA Global Supply.

UNICOR improved its method of breaking down and recycling the components of computer monitors and TVs after a series of articles in the Bay View by a former federal prisoner revealed the previous process that required prisoners with no protective gear to smash the glass screens by hand, causing unnecessary injuries and exposure to carcinogenic chemicals.

Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Army’s Communication and Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., has shipped more than 200,000 radios to combat zones, most with at least some components manufactured by federal inmates working in 11 prison electronics factories around the country. Under current law, UNICOR enjoys a contracting preference known as “mandatory source,” which obligates government agencies to try to buy certain goods from the prisons before allowing private companies to bid on the work. This same contracting restriction applies to state agencies.The demand for defense products from FPI became so great that “national exigency” provisions were invoked so the 20 percent limit on goods provided in each category could be exceeded. The rules were waived during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Private manufacturers say they’ve been hurt by such practice, as they are unable to bid on various products.

According to the Left Business Observer, Federal Prison Industries produces 100 percent of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services, 93 percent of paints and paintbrushes, 92 percent of stove assembly, 46 percent of body armor, 36 percent of home appliances, 30 percent of headphones, microphones and speakers, 21 percent of office furniture, plus airplane parts, medical supplies and much more. Prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

By 2007, the overall sales figures and profits for federal and state prison industries had skyrocketed into the billions. Apparently, the military industrial complex (MIC) and the prison industrial complex (PIC) have joined forces.

The PIC is a network of public and private prisons, of military personnel, politicians, business contacts, prison guard unions, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers – all making big profits at the expense of the poor people who comprise the overwhelming majority of captives. The fastest growing industry in the country, it has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites and mail-order and Internet catalogs and direct advertising campaigns.

Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ labor lobby for longer sentences in order to expand their workforce.

Replacing the “contract and lease” system of the 19th century, private companies that have contracted prison labor include Microsoft, Boeing, Honeywell, IBM, Revlon, Pierre Cardin, Compaq, Victoria Secret, Macy’s, Target, Nordstrom and countless others.

In 1995, there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, private companies operate 264 correctional facilities housing some 99,000 adult prisoners. The two largest private prison corporations in the U.S., GEO Group and CCA, are transnationals, managing prisons and detention centers in 34 states, Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

A top performer on the New York Stock Exchange, CCA calls California its “new frontier” and boasts of investors such as Wal-Mart, Exxon, General Motors, Ford, Chevrolet, Texaco, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon and UPS. Currently, CCA has 80,000 beds in 65 facilities, and GEO Group operates 61 facilities with 49,000 beds, according to Wikipedia. [Editor’s note: for updated data, check CCA and GEO websites]

Employers (read: slavers) don’t have to pay health or unemployment insurance, vacation time, sick leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign inmates as they so desire, and can pay the workers as little as 21 cents an hour. The inmates cannot respond with a strike, file a grievance, or threaten to leave and get a better job.

On Sept. 19, 2005, UNICOR was commended for its outstanding support of the nation’s military. The deputy commander of the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia (DSCP) presented the Bureau of Prisons director with a “Supporting the Warfighter” award. The award recognized UNICOR for its tremendous support of DSCP’s mission to provide equipment, materials and supplies to each branch of the armed forces. “We at DSCP are very appreciative of UNICOR, especially with our critical need items. With more than $200 million worth of orders during fiscal years 2004 and 2005, UNICOR has not had a single delinquency.”

Mass roundups of immigrants and non-citizens, currently about half of all federal prisoners, and dragnets in low-income ‘hoods have increased the prison population to unprecedented levels. Andrea Hornbein points out in Profit Motive: “The majority of these arrests are for low level offenses or outstanding warrants and impact the taxpayer far more than the offense. For example, a $300 robbery resulting in a five-year sentence, at the Massachusetts average of $43,000 per year, will cost $215,000. That doesn’t even include law enforcement and court costs.”

Nearly 75 percent of all prisoners are drug war captives. A criminal record today practically forces an ex-con into illegal employment since he doesn’t qualify for legitimate jobs or subsidized housing. Minor parole violations, unaffordable bail, parole denials, longer mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws, slashing of welfare rolls, overburdened court systems, shortages of public defenders, massive closings of mental hospitals and high unemployment – about 50 percent for Black men – all contribute to the high rates of incarceration and recidivism. Thus, the slave labor pool continues to expand.

Among the most powerful unions today are the guards’ unions. The California Corrections Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) wields so much political power it practically decides who governs the state. Moreover, its members get the state’s biggest payouts, according to the L.A. Times: “More than 1,600 officers’ earnings exceeded legislators’ 2007 salaries of $113,098.” Base pay for 6,000 guards earning $100,000 or more totaled $453 million, with overtime adding another $220 million to wages. One lieutenant earned $252,570; that’s more than any other state official, including the governor.

California’s per prisoner cost has risen to $49,000, and that figure doubles and triples for elderly and high-security captives. That’s enough money to send a person through Harvard!

The National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA) is an international nonprofit professional association, whose self-declared mission is “to promote excellence and credibility in correctional industries through professional development and innovative business solutions.”

NCIA’s members include all 50 state correctional industry agencies, Federal Prison Industries, foreign correctional industry agencies, city and county jail industry programs, and private sector companies working in partnership with correctional industries.

Chattel slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between the slaves and the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as the “Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman with support from her alliances with abolitionists, Black and White. It only makes sense that this new form of slavery must produce prison abolitionists.

As George Jackson noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald in the spring of 1971: “I’m saying that it’s impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters. … We have to prove that this thing won’t work here. And the only way to prove it is resistance … and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from the street. … We can fight, but the results are … not conducive to proving our point … that this thing won’t work on us. From inside, we fight and we die. … (T)he point is – in the new face of war – to fight and win.”

Power to the people.

Kiilu Nyasha, Black Panther veteran, revolutionary journalist and Bay View columnist, blogs at The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha, where episodes of her TV talk show, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, along with her essays are posted. She can be reached at Kiilu2@sbcglobal.net. This essay, originally written in 2007, was updated in March 2012.

 

Ruby Dee set to perform at the Apollo

By Bill Carpenter

Jackson Advocate Guest Writer

The Dallas-based Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) is presenting the living Mother of Black Theatre, Ruby Dee, in a special evening of spoken word at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY on Mother’s Day – Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. EST. Dee will speak the word and tell the truth in this culturally entertaining experience of music and spoken word.

“Ms. Dee is a shining example of African American culture and history,” says TBAAL Founder and President Curtis King. “It excites me to see her still performing so masterfully, and I am certain the audience will be just as excited to be in the presence of one of our country’s foremost living legends.”

The legendary actress was raised in Harlem and began her career there as a member of the American Negro Theatre. Over the years, Ms. Dee has appeared in such stage productions as “South Pacific” (1943), “Anna Lucasta” (1944), “Purlie Victorious” (1961) and “Checkmates” (1989). However, it’s her 1959 portrayal of Ruth, the long-suffering inner-city wife of Sidney Poitier’s character, in the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” that made her a star. It ran on the great White Way for two years and was then made into a 1961 film for which Ms. Dee won a National Board of Review Award as best supporting actress.

In the ‘60s, Ms. Dee co-starred in several television series ranging from dramas to the primetime soap opera “Peyton Place” and the daytime soap, “Guiding Light.” In the years since, she (often with her late husband, actor Ossie Davis), has appeared in dozens of motion pictures such as Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” and episodic television shows like “Golden Girls.” She’s earned seven Emmy Award nominations, including a win for a 1993 performance on Burt Reynolds’ “Evening Shade” sitcom and for a 1991 role in the telefilm, “Decoration Day.” Ms. Dee’s 2007 role as Mama Lucas in the 2007 film, “American Gangster,” starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, earned her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress.  In 2004, Ms. Dee and Mr. Davis were recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors and she shared a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album with Ossie Davis, “With Ossie And Ruby: In This Life Together.”

Tickets are available online at http://www.Ticketmaster.com and the Apollo Theater Box Office (212) 531-5305. The Apollo Theater is located at 253 West 125th Street, New York, NY 10027.

 

Black lawyers to challenge status quo

by caines

This is shaping up to be an interesting year. There are three Black women running for election this year to be judges: Teretha Lundy Thomas, Tanya Brinkley and Greer Elaine Wallace. Thomas, the first Black woman to win a county-wide election and become a judge, has been challenged by a Cuban attorney, John

Reginald Clyne, Esq.

Rodriguez. Rodriguez is counting on a money advantage and his friends in Hialeah and Miami Lakes. Thomas is betting on 20 years of excellent service as a lawyer and judge. This challenge to a well-respected jurist has many Black lawyers seeing red because it is reminiscent of the repeated challenges to Black judges. Most recently, Judge Shirlyon McWhorter was unseated by a Cuban-American woman, Patricia Marino-Pedraza. Marino-Pedraza was notable because of her lack of experience; she had never tried a jury trial before she became a judge. God must have a sense of humor because now she is being challenged by another Cuban lawyer, Frank Hernandez.

Brinkley has taken the plunge and is already running like a veteran. The $180,000 she has raised thus far will make her tough candidate to beat. She is in an open seat against Enrique Yabor. Finally, Wallace, wife of Mayor Otis Wallace, has jumped into the judicial mix against Arthur Spiegel and Andrea Wolfson. Many believe that strong name recognition in South Dade gives her a real chance of winning. In a three-way race, Wallace stands a better chance of winning because the two Jewish candidates will fight over the Jewish vote and she should get all of the Black votes.

In a major turn of events, three Black lawyers have challenged State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. Roderick Vereen, past president of the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. Bar Association and a well-respected criminal defense attorney has jumped into the democratic primary. Michele Samaroo and Omar Malone are write-in candidates. The result will be a closed Democrat primary where registered Black Democrats outnumber registered Hispanic democrats. Vereen could win and become the first Black State Attorney in the State of Florida. Fernandez Rundle has traditionally had strong support among Black voters but it remains to be seen if Blacks will give her the nod or a well-respected Black candidate?

Race and ethnicity are critical factors in our county’s elections, especially in judicial races. In this case, Fernandez Rundle hits two ethnic constituencies — Hispanic and Jews; Vereen will take the Black vote. So it comes down to who will turn out to vote? In the general election with President Obama on the ballot, Black voters will turn out in record numbers. But will they turn out during the primary? Some say voters will turn out strong in the State Attorney race because of the Trayvon Martin case, the number of unprosecuted police shootings of Black men and the anger over the witch hunts of Michelle Spence-Jones and Reverend Gaston Smith. Blacks better vote or be prepared to shut up and bear it for another four years.

 

Street Corner Renaissance takes ‘doo-wop’ to new levels

by heard

Group fuses intricate melodies with songs of cultural awareness

During the 1940s and well into the 1960s, it was common to see Black men standing on street corners in cities like Chicago, New York and even Compton – but they weren’t there to kill time or to participate in criminal actions. Rather, they were putting together nonsense syllables with a solid beat and intricate four-part harmonies to create a sound that quickly dominated the music scene. Today, that unique style has been given new life due in part to the talents, efforts and dedication of five men collectively known as Street Corner Renaissance. They are following a tradition of Black artists that include The Ink Spots, The Mills Brothers, The Chiffons and Little Anthony & the Imperials.

Group founder Maurice Kitchen hails from Chicago, the city where the historical Black newspaper The Chicago Defender is reported to have first printed the term “doo-wop” in 1961.

“I was a 53-year-old insurance agent and woke up one day with the realization that the clock was running out for me and that I still hadn’t done what I really wanted to do with my life,” Kitchen said. “Like the other members of the group, we all loved doo-wop and had kept the music in our hearts. Some of us were already doing things like music theater and some singing but I doubt we ever believed that we could make a living by doing what we loved the most. It’s amazing that now we are actually living our dreams.”

 

Seizing the moment pays off 

Street Corner Renaissance, whose members’ ages range from 50 to 72, recently released their second CD, “Life Could Be a Dream.” Their members, besides Kitchen, include:  Kwame Alexander, Charles “Sonny” Banks, Anthony “Tony” Snead and Torre Brannon Reese. They have opened for everyone from Chuck Berry and Kool and The Gang to Stevie Wonder and Take Six. And they’re fresh off an impressive appearance at the Seabreeze Jazz Festival in Panama City, Florida.

“We’ve set ourselves apart from others that inspired us like The Soul Stirrers or The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi because we have a continuous bass movement — the bass is our foundation,” they said. “And we try to be more entertaining — we want to create an experience for our audience.”

Ironically, the group got its start after being asked to perform doo-wop music during a weekend African market event. Soon after, the phones started ringing and they realized that they might be on to something. Since then they have traveled the globe, bringing their unique spin on songs by artists that range from Michael Jackson and the Beatles to of course, the more traditional doo-wop groups of yesterday.”

Elder statesman Banks, 72, said singing doo-wop is “like breathing.”

Alexander says he hopes their success will remind others to never give up on their dreams.

“If we can do it, anyone can as long as they remain hopeful,” he said.

For more about the group, go to http://www.streetrenaissance.com.

By D. Kevin McNeir
kmcneir@miamitimesonline.com

 

Reservation 13: The Debate Continues

The debate between neighborhood activists and city leaders over a plot of land in Southeast Washington rages on despite a redevelopment plan that has been in place for more than a decade.

Reservation 13, near RFK Stadium in, presently houses the District’s largest homeless shelter, the D.C. Jail and a drug treatment facility.

Villareal Johnson, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 7, where Reservation 13 is now located, said the community needs to have greater involvement in the process before the Gray Administration makes a decision on what should be done with the property.

“I think there is a desire for the residents of Ward 6 and 7 to have more input on what will happen to Reservation 13,” Johnson, 34, said.

“The residents in the wards want to be a part of the final decision-making process.”

In 2000, then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams shuttered D.C. General Hospital because it was viewed as a stain on the city’s financial portfolio.

In October 2002, the D.C. Council approved a master plan that would redevelop the 50 acres, known as Hill East, into a mixed-use urban waterfront community that would include some retail and residential components, but would be noted for its tree-lined public streets, recreational trails and waterfront park lands. However, the plans never materialized because of other development priorities of both the Williams and Adrian Fenty administrations.

Last year, redistricting led to a boundary change which moved Reservation 13 from Ward 6 to Ward 7. Ward 7 is represented by D.C.

Council member Yvette Alexander (D), who faced severe criticism and intense opposition because Ward 7 residents felt that she didn’t fight hard enough to ensure that that parcel of land stayed in Ward 6.

Earlier this year, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) made overtures to Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder making it clear that Reservation 13 would be available under the right conditions to the team. Gray, 69, and Evans said if the Redskins chose to relocate their training facility to Reservation 13, the move could jump-start economic development in the area.

At a March 22 meeting at the D.C. Armory, Gray and Evans, along with D.C. Council members Michael Brown (I-At-Large) and Alexander got an earful from residents of both wards, who said that they did not want

the Redskins at Reservation 13 and that they want to stick with the master plan.

Francis Campbell – an advisory neighborhood commissioner for 6B10 in which Reservation 13 is located – said that the master plan should be carried out.

“For Reservation 13, we the residents of this area want an urban waterfront with a medical complex, retail, housing and a farmer’s market,” Campbell, 60, said. “We want an area that is bikeable and walkable and would give the city a tax base.”

Campbell said the Redskins moving to Reservation 13 would be a moot point because of zoning regulations enacted in 2008 that call for the area to be specifically for a school or a health care facility.

Besides, Campbell said, the master plan states that any recreation facility would have to be publicly-owned.

“The Redskins is not publicly owned,” he said. “It is owned by Dan Snyder and we in the District should not line Dan Snyder’s pockets.”

However, the D.C. Council and Congress have the power to adjust plans for Reservation 13 if they see fit, with or without community input.

Tony Wylie, a spokesman for the Redskins, said no definite plans have been made for the team to come to Washington.

“We are considering all options at this time,” he said. D.C. Council member Vincent Orange (D-At-Large) agrees that the master plan should stay in place.

“The plan works for those who live in the vicinity,” Orange, 54, said. “Throughout the years, there have been numerous charrettes in the communities surrounding Reservation 13 and it is important that the citizens remain a part of the process [and] on how it develops.”

Johnson said the Redskins, though he loves them as a team, should not be at Reservation 13. “I don’t think a training facility alone can produce the effect that we want,” he said. “I would like to see affordable housing take place there and perhaps even a Wegmans as an example of quality shopping.”

Orange, a hard-core sports fan, said a training facility alone is not sufficient. He wants the entire Redskins organization, including a privately-funded stadium, to relocate to Reservation 13.

Orange remains adamant about his position.

“A practice facility will not be enough to generate the type of money that the District needs,” he said.

However, Terence Green, who lives in the Fort Dupont section of Ward 7, supports a Redskins training facility at Reservation 13.

“Something has to be done with that property,” said Green, 49. “It’s an eyesore and the Redskins move would bring money and jobs to the

city that is desperately needed.”

Johnson and Campbell said the D.C. Jail, the drug clinic and the homeless shelter need to be relocated – and that they say, is the real problem.

“Of course, you are not going to see a jail, the methadone clinic or a homeless shelter in Georgetown,” Campbell said. “We need to find a suitable location for those amenities.”

Johnson, agrees saying a search should be conducted by city officials to find other places in the city to relocate those facilities.

Victor Hoskins, the deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said he intends to schedule a meeting with the residents of Ward 6 and 7 to discuss what they think should happen with

Reservation 13.

“There is a master plan in place and we are going to go back to the community with Alexander and [Tommy] Wells to hear what the residents want,” Hoskins said. “What started this was when two developers made inquiries about the land. We have made no commitments to anyone about what will happen there outside of the master plan.”

Doxie McCoy, a Gray spokesperson, said the process is still in its early stages.

 

Henderson, Gray Introduce New Plan for D.C. Schools

The chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools and the mayor presented a new plan to improve student performance, increase math and reading proficiency on standardized tests and boost graduation rates.

Chancellor Kaya Henderson and D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray announced a five-year strategic plan, titled “A Capital Commitment,” which is an aggressive effort to rebuild the public schools system, during a press conference at the John A. Wilson Building in Northwest on Wed., April 18.

“This is the last year of the five-year plan that my predecessor [Michelle Rhee] put into place a few years ago,” said Henderson, 40.

“We want to build on those achievements that have taken place such as hiring staff for schools, paying people on time, and making sure that students have textbooks. We want to move more aggressively and urgently to promises that we made to our stakeholders that our students will be better educated.”

The plan will help guide spending and programming decisions through 2017 and some of the goals include: increasing District-wide math and reading proficiency to 70 percent while doubling the number of students who score at advanced levels of proficiency; improving the proficiency rates for the 40 lowest performing schools by 40 percentage points; increasing high school graduation rates from 53 to 75 percent; ensuring that 90 percent of students like the schools they attend; and increase overall District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) attendance.

Gray, 69, backs Henderson fully.

“As I said in the State of the District Address in February, every child in every neighborhood in our city deserves the opportunity to gain a first-rate public education,” he said. “This plan will move us into the District’s next phase of school reform, building on our recent successes and capitalizing on the dramatic population and economic growth our city has seen in recent years.”

One way to reach the goals of the plan is to extend the school day and school year.

“We have found that school ending at 3 p.m. does not work for anyone,” Gray said. “By having an extended school day, we can have after-school programs that can help our students academically.”

On the matter of year-round school, he said that the late August to June time frame is “an agrarian concept” that is outdated.

“We need to rethink these truisms,” he said.

Matilda Carter, a parent with school-aged children, agrees.

“I am for a longer school year 100 percent,” Carter, 46, said. “We need longer school days because so many of our youth are latchkey children [because] they have nobody to go home to after school. A longer school day would reduce crime and keep them involved at least until 6 p.m. when the parents come home.”

One aspect that is undefined in Henderson’s plan is the closing of some schools. The chancellor said that part of the plan will be addressed in the near future.

Henderson said that parental involvement and making sure that high school students will be ready for standardized tests for higher education will be priorities.

“We have to engage parents differently,” she said. “When parents are involved, children do better and so do the schools.”

Henderson said that she’s working on a pilot program to have a firm that prepares suburban students for college admission standardized tests work with District students.

Washington Teachers’ Union president Nathan Saunders said that the plan is headed in the right direction but needs to go farther.

“To improve the quality of education of all students, it is imperative for schools to spend more time on tasks and less time on testing,” he said.

“We must acknowledge that education not only happens in classrooms, but also in our homes and communities, making it essential to secure and maintain the support of teachers, parents and students as the plan is implemented over the next five years.”

Carter, a resident of Kingman Park in Ward 7, said that Henderson is on the right track.

“Our children must be able to compete in a global market,” Carter said. “It takes a village to raise one child and parents and teachers have to work together to ensure a quality education for all of our children in the District of Columbia.”

 

Measuring, Not Marketing, Key to New Baker Initiative to Transform Communities

• Written by  Steve Monroe,Special to The Informer

Marketing campaigns are out, measurable programs are in. That’s the word from Prince George’s County government officials as they launch their Transforming Neighborhoods Initiative to create safe, thriving communities under the administration of County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D).

After several years of what some say were “feel good” projects such as “Livable Communities” and slogans like “Gorgeous Prince George’s,” Baker and Chief Administrative Officer Bradford Seamon have pledged this new initiative is a different breed of cat.

The effort utilizes data and action plans and will get help from the CountyStat initiative Baker announced last month. CountyStat is a statistics-based program that includes data gathering, research and development, coordinating key agencies on key issues, aligning resources and measuring results.

“This is about making a positive impact in these communities … I believe this initiative will help transform communities throughout Prince George’s County,” Baker said in announcing the Transforming Neighborhoods Initiative before a capacity crowd of county officials, law enforcement personnel and residents April 18 at Oxon Hill’s Glassmanor Community Center.

“This effort grew out of last year’s successful Summer Crime Initiative led by the police chief and his staff. When we evaluated the crime statistics … it was determined that we needed to take a broader approach, a more holistic approach to addressing some of the challenges in our communities. Today is about neighborhoods and our plan to be proactive ,” said Baker.

Key indicators to be measured

The six areas chosen for the first phase of the initiative, Langley Park, East Riverdale/Bladensburg, Kentland/Palmer Park, Suitland, Hillcrest Heights/Marlow Heights and Glassmanor, were chosen, according to information from Baker’s office, “because they substantially affect violent crime rates Countywide … Violent crime was chosen as our lead indicator … because of its overall impact on investment in the County by businesses, developers and potential new residents. Education was a close second …”

Seamon said that day, “this initiative will achieve this vision by making progress in the seven priority areas … a thriving economy, great schools, safe neighborhoods, high quality health care, effective human services, safe and clean environment and high performance government.” Key initiative indicators to gauge progress are violent crime, property crime, 3rd and 5th grade reading and math scores, school absentee rates, foreclosure rates, concentrations for Section 8 housing, income levels, pedestrian deaths/injuries and residents on public assistance.

Team leaders for the initiative include seasoned officials like Carla Reid, deputy chief administrative officer for Economic Development and Public Infrastructure; Betty Hager Francis, deputy chief administrative officer, Health, Human Services & Education and Barry Stanton, Deputy chief administrative officer, Public Safety.

M. H. James Estepp, president and CEO of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable, said, “The major difference between [the earlier] programs is I largely didn’t see them as being action-based. This one involves all agencies and has measures to determine success … it’s a real action plan whereas the others seemed largely for public consumption.”

Larry Spriggs, chairman of the Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the announcement of the initiative, saying in a statement, “… the effort to improve the quality of life should be commended … and we have those areas that we want to improve to make them more attractable and a desirable and comfortable place to live … “

 

The Other America, 2012: Confronting the Poverty Epidemic

A homeless man reads his book outside a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

by Sasha Abramsky
Clarksdale, Mississippi, might seem an unlikely starting point for a meditation on twenty-first-century American inequality. After all, the music the town’s fame rests on is born of the sorrow and racial exploitations of another century. Clarksdale proudly markets itself as the home of the blues: the world’s best blues musicians still come to jam in the little Delta town where W.C. Handy once lived, where Bessie Smith died and where Robert Johnson supposedly made his infamous pact with the devil at a crossroads on the edge of town.

But Clarksdale is also the site of a very different crossroads, one in many ways emblematic of what America is becoming: a place of stunning divides and dramatically disparate life expectations between rich and poor. The side streets of central Clarksdale are lined with tiny, dilapidated wooden homes. Most residents here make do without basic services and amenities, including anything beyond a bare-bones education, and many lack access to the broader cash economy. In contrast, the stately old townhouses in the historic district—places where several Mississippi governors grew up, where the young Tennessee Williams ran around while staying with his grandparents—look like the scenic backdrop to a romantic film set in the antebellum South. And the newer, more palatial mansions in the suburbs ringing the town could serve as staging grounds for a reality TV show on the nouveau riche.

In the poorer section of Clarksdale, in a subsidized housing unit about the size of a small boat’s cabin, lives 88-year-old Amos Harper, a jack-of-all-trades who grew up in a sharecropping family. Harper spent decades doing everything from farmwork to interstate tractor-trailer transport. These days, he gets up early to supplement his $765 monthly Social Security check, collecting cans from the gutters and trading them in for 49 cents per pound. When he isn’t doing that, he’s mowing lawns and running errands for several of the town’s richer residents, including Bill Luckett.

Luckett and his wife live in a huge house designed by architect E. Fay Jones, a Frank Lloyd Wright mentee. Every detail, from the high ceilings to the sunken rooms, has been carefully planned. The larger-than-life home complements the larger-than-life persona of Luckett, a burly 64-year-old attorney and real estate developer with a shock of gray hair who is “president of everything from a country club to a hunting club,” as he puts it. Luckett serves on a state legal aid board and various educational advisory boards, and he counts among his acquaintances some of the country’s top politicians and entertainers.

He also considers Harper a friend, although, as Luckett would be the first to acknowledge, the friendship is deeply unequal. Until age slowed him down, Harper would routinely show up at the Ground Zero blues club, a raucous place Luckett owns with actor Morgan Freeman, showing off dance moves that Luckett says are some of the best in town.

For Luckett, Clarksdale’s imbalances are indicative of broader fissures and inequities in Mississippi—and, he believes, across America. Angry at the way the political system is ignoring poverty, Luckett ran for governor last year on an anti-poverty and invest-in-education platform. He came in a strong second in the Democratic primary, though in a state as heavily Republican as Mississippi, that didn’t necessarily count for much. “I’d never intended to get into politics,” he explains over a glass of red wine in one of his living rooms. But, he says, lack of investment in public education, an increasingly regressive tax system and other challenges pushed him into the fray. “America has never had as greedy a top 1 percent as we have now. The inequality has reached dangerous proportions.”

Unfortunately, Luckett is a rare exception in Mississippi politics. The state’s leadership is exemplified by ex-governor Haley Barbour and current governor Phil Bryant, who both won election by forging alliances between country club denizens and the culturally conservative white working class, which both preach the virtues of shrinking government, rolling back regulations and cutting social services. “When you get a white guy walking out of his rusty trailer into his pickup truck and he’s got a Vote Republican placard in his yard, then you’ve reached the height of stupidity,” Luckett says.

Sadly, this too is reflective of the nation. At a moment when the wealthy flourish atop a sea of state subsidies (with the tacit compliance of many of the working poor), while the poor are barely protected by a frayed social safety net and often disengaged from the decision-making processes that structure their lives, confronting the root causes of poverty is particularly daunting and increasingly urgent.

* * *

For years, the story of poverty in America has been swept into the nether regions of our collective consciousness. Now, however, a new opportunity has opened up to place poverty and inequality center-stage again. Fifty years after Michael Harrington brought the “invisible poor” out of the shadows in his classic exposé The Other America, another generation is discovering that many parts of the country, and many demographic groups, are impoverished. And the issue is, thankfully, being reinjected into the national conversation. With the high visibility and popular support of the Occupy movement—and with the presidential campaign shaping up as a contest pitting the interests of the 99 percent against those of the wealthiest 1 percent—the poor stand at least some chance of having their issues aired once more.

Over the past year, I have interviewed hundreds of impoverished Americans about their experiences. Many of them I met on a 3,000-mile drive in December through the Southwest and South. Their voices are powerful, as are the statistics that tell the collective story of economic hardship in the United States. For although the economy has sputtered back to life in recent months, 8.3 percent of the workforce remains unemployed, and millions more have opted out of the job market altogether over the past few years. Perhaps an even starker measure of America’s poverty problem can be found in “food insecurity” data: after decades of success fighting hunger, the country is sliding back; ever more families cannot feed themselves. Forty-six million Americans subsist on food stamps, an increase of more than 14 million over the past four years, at an annual cost to the government of about $65 billion. The Food Research and Action Center estimates that another several million are eligible, making do without government assistance. FRAC found that only 40 percent of food stamp–eligible residents of San Diego are using the program. In Denver the figure is 46 percent; in Los Angeles, 56 percent.

As poverty spreads, it is carving broader arcs of desperation throughout the country. In the wake of the housing crisis and the lengthy recession, with its jobless aftermath—along with the drawn-out collapse of many employment sectors and the decline in purchasing power of wages in many other sectors—a rising number of Americans are struggling to make it from one paycheck, or unemployment check, to the next. People who used to have modest degrees of security in regions traditionally more affluent than the Delta are seeing that security erode. Below them, people who had long had minimal levels of security are seeing their most basic needs going unmet as they fall through gaping holes in a shredded safety net. Relative hardship and absolute destitution are, in other words, on the march.

Once-booming economies like Nevada’s have shrunk to levels of unemployment and homelessness not seen since the height of the Great Depression. Once-proud industries have been brought low. Once-booming real estate ventures—in Florida, Arizona, Nevada, California—are ghost towns. “Poverty is creeping into the diminishing middle class,” notes Iray Nabatoff, a beret-wearing community advocate who runs a social services organization in the town of Arabi, in Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, and who is vice-chairman of a group called Unified Non-Profits of Greater New Orleans. “It’s everywhere. I don’t think we’ve ever seen poverty to the level we’re now seeing.”

As in Harrington’s day, a disproportionate share of the nation’s poor are African-American and Latino. More than a quarter of blacks and Latinos live below the government-defined poverty line (about $11,000 per year for an individual, $23,000 for a family of four), compared with 12 percent of Asian-Americans and slightly less than 10 percent of whites. Among African-Americans and Latinos, the slide into poverty has been marked by a concomitant collapse in assets. This past July the Pew Research Center released an analysis of government data that concluded that the median wealth of white households was a staggering eighteen times that of Hispanic households and twenty times that of African-Americans. Fueled by disproportionate home foreclosures and underwater mortgages among these minorities, this trend indicates a reversal of decades of progress toward reducing such inequalities. “From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households,” says the report, “compared with just 16% among white households.”

Although poverty is borne more heavily by minorities, that doesn’t mean that it is only, or even mainly, a “minority problem.” In fact, about 47 million Americans—of all colors, ethnicities and backgrounds—are living at or below the poverty line. (That figure is up from 37 million before the recent housing crisis.) Of these, more than 20 million are living in what’s called “deep poverty,” with incomes that put them and their families at below 50 percent of the poverty line. More than 16 million children in the United States, 22 percent of the country’s kids, live in poverty, the highest total since 1962 and the highest percentage since Bill Clinton took office in 1993.

* * *

Even these sorry numbers, however, don’t tell the full story. Additional millions of men, women and children in America are living below what economists like Dean Baker, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, term a “living wage” threshold. Too affluent to qualify for most government assistance programs but too poor to make ends meet, they are working at jobs that provide few or no benefits and are thus perpetually at risk of falling into devastating debt.

Take, for example, Albuquerque resident Megan Roberts, a young mother whose husband worked as a diesel mechanic for a trucking company, and whose family was kicked off Medicaid when he received a small hourly raise. Megan’s appendix ruptured while she and her family were temporarily living in California’s Central Valley, and they were bankrupted by close to $100,000 in medical bills. When she later developed cancer, they faced an additional $186,000 in unpayable debt.

Millions of workers and their families are similarly vulnerable to such mundane changes as a slight decline in the number of hours per workweek or an extra few cents per gallon in the cost of gasoline. Many are elderly, forced back to bottom-of-the-economy jobs because of the low dollar amount of their Social Security checks and/or the collapse in value of their investments following the events of 2008.

One such person is 67-year-old Mary Vasquez, whose Social Security check is $600 and whose rent is $500. A tiny woman, her health broken by cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure and a multitude of other ailments, Vasquez works as a phone operator at a Walmart on the outskirts of Dallas. In the first eleven months of 2011, she earned slightly under $23,800. After taxes, exorbitant health insurance premiums and automatic deductions to buy Walmart stock—a faux-savings option that the mega-company strongly encourages its employees to take, although most of them are too poor to retire on these savings—she netted $15,887. A large part of her salary went for medical expenses not covered by Medicare or her Walmart healthcare plan; much of the rest went to pay down usurious payday loans she’d accumulated in recent years as her health declined.

Sitting in a union hall in the suburb of Grapevine, Vasquez (one of a handful of employees working to unionize her workplace) explains that she skips “mostly breakfast and sometimes lunch.” As a diabetic, she is supposed to eat fresh produce. Instead, she says, “a lot of times I buy a TV dinner; we have them on sale for 88 cents. A lot of times, food, I can’t pay for.”

Another American who struggles to put food on the table is Jorge, a 57-year-old who migrated to the United States from Mexico in 1982. Jorge (who doesn’t want his last name used) lives with his wife in the large Chaparralcolonia, an informal settlement of trailers, small houses and shanties near Las Cruces, New Mexico. Many of the roads are unpaved; many homes are not on the sewage or natural gas systems. There is a jarring contrast here between the ugliness of the settlement and the beauty of the desert landscape.

“There’s a lot of deterioration of the trailers,” Jorge says in Spanish. “In winter, pipes explode because of the freeze. I don’t have water right now. Heating is so expensive, with propane gas. Those who have little children, they have to use it, but it’s so expensive.” A volunteer firefighter, he adds, “We see a lot of accidents with water heaters and explosions with the propane tanks.”

Jorge recently had to give up his construction job because of worsening diabetes. These days he lives on $592 a month in disability payments, as well as his wife’s income from a part-time job. With no access to credit, the couple have been forced to borrow from payday loan companies, routinely paying $600 back on a $200 loan to pay their bills. The hole gets deeper with each new loan. They had to cede their car titles to the loan companies to guarantee their debts. This sort of situation is ubiquitous in the colonia. In fact, payday loans were one of the nation’s few growth industries during the recession.

Jorge and his wife volunteer at the Chaparral food pantry. Sometimes, he admits, they are forced to use its services themselves. “We go monthly. We get cans, bread, meat, fruit sometimes. Sometimes we don’t eat, or limit our food. Sometimes we just have two meals. One meal. The illness, diabetes, I need three meals. Sometimes I can’t complete the nutritional requirements. That’s just how it is.”

* * *

In New Mexico, which registers second worst in the country in poverty and sixth worst on inequality indicators, economic hardship is so widespread that the crisis is becoming increasingly unavoidable in political discussions. “On a day-to-day basis,” says Kim Posich, executive director of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, “people are doing without—doing with less access to healthcare, less access to food and nutrition. These are things that affect you in profound ways. There are communities in New Mexico that the school buses won’t go into—you can’t get emergency vehicles into—because the roads are in such terrible shape. They have to borrow a truck to go out to a source of water, and pay to stick somebody’s hose into a tank on the back of their truck—just to have water to bathe and to drink. We’re talking very basic amenities. We’re talking about a level of poverty, in the colonias, that we often see in third world nations. In New Mexico, 130,000 people live in colonias.”

To counter poverty and its causes, Posich’s organization is pushing to protect the state’s Medicaid program from proposed cuts (lack of affordable healthcare is one of the primary reasons people slide into destitution). The center is also working to shore up food-assistance programs and to ensure that the Affordable Care Act is implemented in the state. Longer term, Posich and his colleagues are pursuing a living-wage campaign and aiming to shift the debate on taxes to reflect principles of fairness and equity for people at the bottom of the economy. “Certainly we want people to be able to earn an income in New Mexico that will have them be financially stable,” Posich says. “You can’t live in New Mexico and be earning less than $36,000 a year if you’ve got a couple kids, and be able to survive your car breaking down or being out of work for a couple weeks because you have the flu.”

There are myriad signs that poverty and equity are starting to figure more prominently in national politics, too. In recent years, legislators’ willingness to confront the crisis and craft innovative solutions to it was hampered by venomous anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric from the right, and by conservative oratory that blames the poor, often in barely camouflaged racial terms, for their misery. Even as national unemployment and poverty figures reached alarming highs during the recession, Democrats shied away from tackling the issue. President Obama repeatedly emphasized his commitment to protecting the struggling middle class, but he never pushed Congress to come up with a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy.

The Progressive Caucus attempted to buck this trend last year when it introduced a People’s Budget, which emphasized infrastructure investments over tax cuts for the wealthy. And when the Occupy movement descended on Wall Street in the fall, the terms of the debate shifted radically. Suddenly Democrats were keen to jump on the bandwagon. In fact, President Obama launched his re-election campaign with a series of speeches decrying the country’s growing inequalities and increasingly regressive tax codes. In Osawatomie, Kansas, the president declared that the growing chasm between rich and poor was “the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class,” he said, “and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.” Since that speech, Obama has repeatedly struck a more radical economic note than he did in the first three years of his presidency.

Some Republicans, sensing that their constituents have drawn connections between their financial struggles and an economy apparently rigged to favor the wealthy, have strained to show their concern about America’s growing income divisions. It goes without saying that they have failed miserably. Witness the symbolic GOP bill in Congress to ban millionaires from getting food stamps—a ham-handed attempt to shift attention away from the causes and conditions of poverty and toward frauds supposedly bilking the government and the taxpayer. It was a stunt, and a stupid one, since access to food stamps is restricted to those at or below 130 percent of the poverty line. But it did show that the GOP is feeling the heat, finally realizing that being defined as the party of multimillionaires is a liability.

It was in this context that Mitt Romney’s presidential primary opponents attacked him for his role in taking over underperforming companies and throwing workers out of their jobs. The spectacle of Republicans ganging up on Romney for being a “vulture capitalist” was surreal; those same politicians spent much of the primary season in a competition for least compassionate conservative. Early on, Romney—who has repeatedly touted his extraordinary wealth as testimony to his dynamic personality—stumbled into an admission that he’s “not concerned about the very poor” and then offered an equally out-of-touch clarification that he really meant that poor Americans have a strong safety net to fall back on. Newt Gingrich decried a culture that gives people food stamps instead of enforcing a “work ethic,” and lowered the racebaiting bar by labeling Obama the “food stamp president”—code that Gingrich’s overwhelmingly white Southern supporters understood all too well. His equally unempathic rival Rick Santorum notoriously promised a crowd in Iowa that under his presidency hard-working (presumably white) taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay for nutritional assistance for do-nothing blacks. Come the general election, the GOP’s inability to understand the struggles of millions of ordinary Americans could well come back to haunt the party.

* * *

The Occupy movement has been far more effective than Washington at highlighting the extent of poverty and plutocracy in America. But Occupy, too, has struggled to connect with the people it claims to speak for. As I traveled the country interviewing people living in poverty, I was struck by how few were involved in the movement. Many had little or no awareness of it. Others had heard of it and generally supported its aims—but many seemed alienated by its imagery. “I am scared that all of it is for naught at this point,” explained Lauren Kostelnick, a New Mexico massage therapist and food co-op worker who earned about $13,000 in 2011.

“They’re really not aware of what’s going on in the country right now, in terms of the politics around food stamps, the Pell grant, things like that—things that will really influence their lives,” says Gloria Dickerson, a middle-aged businesswoman who has returned to her childhood home, the depressed Mississippi Delta town of Drew, to work with the underprivileged. “They’re trying to survive day to day, to put food on the table.”

The disenfranchisement and pervasive sense of loneliness among the poor is, of course, well-known. Fifty years ago, Harrington wrote eloquently about the extreme isolation of America’s “invisible land”; and nearly forty years before that, Bessie Smith famously sang, “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” Today, whether the poverty is total or relative, whether it is in a desperate inner city or a depressed suburb, many of the psychological costs are the same. A poor person in America is deeply, profoundly alone.

One sees this loneliness in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans—a world of people abandoned by the body politic in the wake of natural disaster, left to fend for themselves. There, just three miles from the thriving tourist hub of the French Quarter, lie street after street of destroyed, gutted houses and acres of overgrown lots where there once stood stores and homes, churches and schools. It is an apocalyptic landscape, yet it is also strangely invisible—off the beaten path, hidden from the decadent, jazzy splendors of Bourbon Street, a place of national shame all too easy to forget.

In pre-Katrina New Orleans, Census Bureau data showed that 50 percent of African-American children under the age of 5 were living below the poverty line. That figure was terrifyingly high—but not as high as the current estimates. Post-Katrina, the Census Bureau found that the figure had spiked to more than 65 percent.

Darren McKinney, a middle-aged man on disability and food stamps who has spent the past six years working to salvage some of the Ninth Ward’s wooden homes, calls it “a ghost town at nighttime.” When we met, he was sitting on a concrete slab that used to be the base of a house on Caffin Avenue, taking a break from working on a graffiti-covered hull. “I feel depressed,” he said. “But I try to keep positive to get through the rest of the day.”

And one also sees this loneliness a thousand miles west of the Big Easy, in the southwestern corner of Texas. Every day, thousands of visitors, migrant workers and would-be immigrants cross the Rio Grande on two of the international bridges that connect Juarez, Mexico, to El Paso, disgorging near Ninth Avenue, a long, seedy-looking thoroughfare that runs parallel to the international border. All along that street, in plain view of the barbed wire–surrounded Department of Homeland Security compound, migrants sleep. Come midnight, they wake up to seek out the street’s omnipresent labor contractors. If they’re lucky, the migrants get put onto trucks at 3 am and driven to work in fields throughout southern Texas and New Mexico.

And so it makes sense that Ninth Avenue is where Carlos Marentes, a onetime political cartoonist who migrated to the United States in the early 1970s, runs a community center for impoverished farm laborers. There, they can get a free meal, a place to sleep, some hand-me-down clothes and a bathroom. Evenings, before the midnight stampede, dozens of men, women and children doze back to back in its halls and offices. Some of the migrants have lived at the center for years.

For Marentes, the border wars and the immigration debate are largely missing the point: his clients are doing work that others don’t want to do, for wages others wouldn’t accept. Not only do they face persistent hostility simply for being in the country; they also find their wages increasingly bid down because so many agricultural jobs are being done by machines. “You have an oversupply of labor,” he explains. “That is a condition the employers take advantage of. The result is, the farmworkers are the poorest of all the workers.”

Fidencio Fabela, who lived at the community center for years before moving into a small apartment, and who still gets up in the middle of the night to hire himself out to contractors, says, “I work in anything from the chili harvest to preparing the lettuce harvest, and in the cotton fields cleaning the rows of leaves.” A short, wizened, toothless septuagenarian with the wrinkled face of someone who has spent decades working under the hot sun, Fabela notes that “at this age, I don’t have steady work. I just get temporary jobs. I get $8 per hour. The work starts around 6 and goes to 2 or 3 in the afternoon.” Onion harvests, he declares, are the hardest. “You’re bent over. People in that harvest don’t last. It gets so bad that after a little while you can’t sit down.”

When Occupy El Paso asked Marentes to come speak to them, he leapt at the chance. “I told them,” he recalls, “that the 99 percent did not include farmworkers. No matter how hard they work, they cannot enter the 99 percent. They are at the margins.” The average income of a seasonal farmworker in the El Paso area, he noted, was about $6,000 per year, “not even close to the so-called federal poverty income guidelines. As hard as they work, attempt to do something, they cannot even come close to the poverty line.”

In recent years, says Marentes, too many politicians have acted “as the foremen of the rich.” Now, with more people regarding poverty as a moral cancer, a growing chorus of voices is urging the political classes to get serious about tackling the country’s profound levels of inequality.

“We think that one of the basic problems, or manifestations of one of the basic problems, is this growing divide between the wealthiest and the poorest in our country,” avers Kim Posich. “That’s the biggest challenge, as I see it. How do we provide opportunity for the poorest of our population to be able to establish a stable livelihood? How do we develop assets? Decent wages?”

As Jessica Bartholow of the Los Angeles–based Western Center on Law and Poverty puts it, surely the wealthiest nation on earth can make some bare minimum guarantees to our population: not that everyone will end up affluent or even comfortable, but that no one should have to live on income that is less than half the federally defined poverty level. Ensuring a basic level of assistance above 50 percent of the poverty line, she argues, should be a national entitlement. If we allow the number to drop below that, she explains, “we’re putting kids in extreme danger—they’re going to the hospital more often, missing school, missing opportunity at a great rate.”

For years such aspirations, modest as they are, have been seen as politically improvident. The result has been a growth in inequality not experienced in this country since the 1920s. Now, however, significant movements are growing up to highlight these problems and to challenge the notion that such divisions are somehow an inevitable byproduct of modernity. The movements are young and somewhat inchoate; they are, however, vital. America’s democratic culture cannot be restored to health unless we acknowledge the scale of poverty and start developing big-picture strategies to tackle the epidemic.

Sasha Abramsky

 

What Teachers Want

A classroom in St. Paul, Minnesota. (AP Photo/ Jim Mone)
by Dana Goldstein

It is difficult to generalize about the opinions of any group as large and diverse as public school teachers, of which there are about 3.2 million. But it can’t be good news that a survey of teachers released in March by MetLife found the lowest job satisfaction numbers since 1989, with just 44 percent of respondents describing themselves as “very satisfied” with their classroom careers, down from 59 percent in 2009 and 62 percent in 2008. According to MetLife, nearly a third of public school teachers are considering leaving their jobs.

Some will cry “good riddance.” The contention that large numbers of teachers lack ambition and are insufficiently committed to raising student achievement—and should therefore be replaced—is common among politicians and has helped to fuel the standards and accountability school reform movement.

But a review of the best evidence on teachers’ sentiments shows that educators are not unhappy because they resent the new emphasis on teacher evaluations, a key element of President Obama’s Race to the Top program; in fact, according to a separate survey of 10,000 public school teachers from Scholastic and the Gates Foundation, the majority support using measures of student learning to assess teachers, and the mean number of years teachers believe they should devote to the classroom before being assessed for tenure is 5.4, a significant increase from the current national average of 3.1 years.

But polling shows teachers are depressed by the increasing reliance on standardized tests to measure student learning—the “high stakes” testing regime that the standards and accountability movement has put in place across the country and that Race to the Top has reinforced in some states and districts. Teachers are also concerned that growing numbers of parents are not able to play an active role in their children’s education, and they are angry about the climate of austerity that has invaded the nation’s schools, with state and local budget cuts threatening key programs that help students learn and overcome the disadvantages of poverty.

The MetLife poll found large majorities of teachers reporting budget cuts, teacher layoffs, increased class sizes and more students than ever experiencing behavioral challenges, inadequate healthcare and family poverty over the past year. Teachers are not imagining these problems. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, thirty-seven states have cut education expenditures this school year, and, given the depletion of the property taxes that fund most school programs, districts can’t make up the difference on their own.

The horror stories are everywhere. This school year 292 districts are on a four-day school week. In California nearly half of schools have cut art, music and drama programs since the recession, and the same number have laid off school psychologists, nurses or guidance counselors. In Brooklyn a chess club at a high-poverty middle school won the National High School Chess Championships in April; as it turns out, it is at risk of having its funding cut. Across New York City, 700 school support staff, who often work with special-needs kids, have been laid off.

There is a mantra in education reform: “money doesn’t matter.” It is usually backed by citing data showing that scores on the gold-standard National Assessment of Educational Progress have remained essentially flat since the 1970s, even though state education spending grew. Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek, a fellow at the libertarian Hoover Institute, has been making this argument for three decades in academic papers, op-eds and courtrooms, where he is often called to testify in defense of unequal school funding schemes in which rich towns receive disproportionate state aid compared with their high-poverty peers.

But Hanushek’s argument has been discredited. While not every dollar a school spends directly improves academic outcomes, a new report from Rutgers school-finance expert Bruce Baker finds certain kinds of money very much do matter: extra funding for higher teacher salaries and more equitable distribution of resources between rich and poor districts, for example, are correlated with higher student achievement, especially for the neediest kids. After reviewing the body of research on school finance, Denver Judge Sheila Rappaport ruled in December that Colorado’s school funding system violates the state’s constitutional promise of “uniform” educational opportunity for all children. During the trial, Hanushek testified on behalf of the state. But Rappaport noted in her ruling that “Dr. Hanushek’s analysis…defies logic and is statistically flawed.”

It is irksome to have to cite so much evidence to support what teachers and parents know just from looking at local schools: that a depletion of financial resources can take a serious toll. And make no mistake—in this unstable climate, children will be hurt if large numbers of frustrated teachers quit the classroom. A new paper by researchers at the University of Michigan, Stanford and the University of Virginia found that high teacher turnover in elementary schools has a negative effect on students’ math and English achievement, regardless of whether the teachers who leave are considered especially good at their jobs. Evidence like this has left some education reformers worried that they have talked too much about removing bad teachers from the classroom and not enough about respecting the good ones and keeping them there. In February the Gates Foundation convened a meeting of teachers in Scottsdale, Arizona, to send the message that their “voices matter” and that the foundation “honors” teachers’ “insight and impact.” Gates also broke from some of his allies in the reform movement, like New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, to decry the public release of teachers’ value-added ratings, which are based on their students’ standardized test scores and have high error rates.

The Obama administration is also trying to do a better job of reaching out to teachers. Its new teacher-quality proposal is nicknamed the Respect Program, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan launched the Respect Project to involve more teachers in conversations about education policy-making.

Ultimately, though, these feel-good measures can’t make up for a basic lack of resources in many schools. Policy-makers from both parties have asked teachers to support stricter checks on their autonomy, even though they’ve cut the professional development and support services that help teachers teach. It is remarkable that teachers don’t protest more—but that probably has to do with how busy most of them are doing one of the toughest jobs in America.

 

Immigration: “Green Card” Permanent Residence (Frequently Asked Questions)

by Safiya Byars, Esq.

For this month we will be discussing some common questions that we receive from prospective clients who are getting ready to pursue their permanent residence “green card’ through their spouse.

1. Question:  I am engaged and my fiancé and I want to know more about the immigration process to obtain my permanent residence.

Answer: Great Question. The best time to learn about the “green card” process for a couple is when you are engaged. The immigration process will not actually begin until you are married.  However, for newlyweds Immigration always evaluates the couple’s relationship prior to their marriage as well as after they have tied the knot.  The immigration process will begin with the filing of your immigration petitions. The second step is the pending phase where you can continue to build your case in anticipation of your interview. The third step is the “green card” interview. Based on the unique facts of my clients’ cases I usually discuss the processing times and our case strategy at our consultation.

2. Question: My husband and I are newlyweds and we are trying to figure out how to start the immigration process.

Answer: The best way to start the immigration process is to start gathering all of your personal items such as your birth certificates, passports, visa, I-94 card, marriage certificate, divorce decree(s) if any. The next step is to schedule a consultation to gain detailed information on the immigration process.

3. Question: I entered the United States on someone else’s visa and now I am getting married to my wife and I want to apply for permanent residence in the United States. Can I apply for permanent residence?

Answer:  Generally individuals who have legally entered the United States and are now married to US citizen may apply for permanent residence despite the fact that they have overstayed their visa or they have worked without immigration’s permission. However, the key point is that the applicant is required to prove legal entry. If you entered on someone else’s documents then this is not legal entry. If there is no legal entry the applicant will have to explore some other options in order to gain permanent residence through his/her spouse.

4. Question: Presently my driver’s license is expired and I need to work. Will I be able to obtain my work permit and get a new license while my green card case is pending?

Answer: Generally the answer is yes. If you are eligible to apply for permanent residence “green card” in the United States Immigration will provide you with a work permit while your case is pending. Once you have received your work permit you may present that document to your local DMV office to obtain a new license.  If you do not have a social security card you may also present your work permit to your local social security office to obtain a social security number.

5. Question: I have heard from many individuals that the immigration process is very long. If I hire an attorney will my processing time be reduced?

Answer:  Whenever you submit your  petition to Immigration there is a suggested processing time based on Immigration’s current workload. The processing time can be drastically extended if you did not submit a complete application or if your documents have not established that you are eligible for your benefits. As a result of that Immigration may request additional documents or send a notice that they intend to deny your case. All of these actions will delay your case and add to your processing time.  For our clients we work to ensure that they receive the shortest processing times by preparing their case to avoid the unnecessary delays due to Immigration’s request for evidence and Immigration errors.

6. Question: My husband and I have already attended my green card interview. However, we just received another notice for a second interview. What is going on? Why does Immigration want to interview us again?

Answer: The second interview is what is normally known as the “fraud interview.” This mean that Immigration does not believe that there is sufficient evidence or testimony to prove that you and your husband have a genuine marriage. At this point, you will need to rebuild your case to now convince the Immigration Officer that you are in fact a real couple. This is a very high burden. You should consult or hire an attorney immediately. We handle “fraud interviews’ on  a consistent basis and we have been successful.

7. Question:  My wife and I applied for my permanent residence and my case was denied. Should we file an appeal or should we just reapply?

Answer: The decision on whether or not to file an appeal or re-file your case is based on the reason for the denial of the first petition. If Immigration denied your case over a minor procedural issue and they made an error I would suggest an appeal. If Immigration denied your case because you did not prove that you were eligible for your benefits it may be beneficial to re-file your case or file an appeal. The best way to decide on this matter is to consult an attorney.

8. Question:  If my permanent residence case was denied will I be deported?

Answer: Excellent question! The answer is yes and no. Once your immigration case is denied Immigration can forward your file to the Immigration Court for removal proceedings. In that case you will be required to go to court and prove that you have legal status or that you are reapplying for legal status. In some cases your immigration file is not transferred to the Immigration court and that allows you time to decide if you wish to file an appeal or re-file your case with immigration. Ultimately if you are placed in removal proceedings and you have no legal status and you have no way to acquire any legal status the Immigration court will order removal. If you have a denied case your best option is to consult with or hire an attorney to help you to either file an appeal, re-file your case, or defend you in Immigration Court. My firm handle all of these matters.

Bonus: If you are engaged or married and you wish to learn more about the “green card” process contact our firm for a free teleseminar where we will answer your questions and provide you with some helpful tips on acquiring your new immigration status.
Disclaimer: This article is a broad overview and is provided as a public service. This article is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship. Any reliance on the information contained herein is taken at your own risk. The information provided in this article should never replace informed counsel when specific immigration-related guidance is needed. 

 

 

Top U.S. Cities for Women’s Well-Being Ranked

By Hajer Naili

WeNews correspondent

Where are the top cities in the U.S. for women to live? A study released today picks the best and the worst places for a woman’s well-being.

 

Washington, D.C. on Shutterstock

(WOMENSENEWS)–Washington D.C., San Francisco and Boston came out on top as the best three cities to live as a woman, according to the study released today by Measure of America.

In these top three metro areas, women live longer, earn more money and have higher educational attainment.

Conversely, women in six metro areas—Detroit, Pittsburgh, Tampa–St. Pete (Fla.), Houston, San Antonio and Riverside–San Bernardino (Calif.)—are not doing as well as the typical American woman.

The study, called “Women’s Well-Being: Ranking America’s Top 25 Metro Areas,” gauged women’s well-being by using the American Human Development Index, which is comprised of official government data in health, education and living standards. The combination of these factors results into a single number that falls between 0 and 10. In this case, data came from either the U.S. Census Bureau or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The overall American Human Development Index reaches 5.03 and 5.0 for the overall U.S. women’s score.

Unlike other studies looking at gender inequality, this one examines the disparities between different groups of women, explained Kristen Lewis, co-director of Measure of America based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“By studying differences between groups of women, across race and region, patterns begin to emerge that can inform policymaking discussions and highlight areas that require resources and attention from the public and private sectors,” added Sarah Burd-Sharps, also co-director of the organization in a press statement this week.

Women in Washington, D.C., which has the highest ranking, earn the most money in the country, with median personal earnings of $37,657. They have an American Human Development Index score of 6.8.

Women in San Francisco, which ranks second, has an American Human Development Index score of 6.72. That city has the highest life expectancy in the country, 84.5 years.

Women in New York City-which ranks fifth with an American Human Development Index score of 6.14–have a life span of 83.4 years and median personal earnings of $31,554.

In contrast, bottom-ranked Riverside-San Bernardino (Calif.), which has an American Human Development Index score of 4.54, fares much worse for women. One-in-five women there have never completed high school, and the typical female worker earns about $22,300—wages on par with those that prevailed in the nation as a whole in 1970, the study shows.

The study also underlines considerable health disparities between women of different racial and ethnic groups. For example, Asian American women are the longest-lived women of any ethnic or racial group, with a life expectancy of 88.6 years. They outlive African American women, on average, by 11 years.

African American women in Pittsburgh have a life expectancy (75 years) comparable to that of women in developing countries, such as Honduras or Jamaica. They live five years less than African American women typically do in Boston (80.2 years)

A seven-year gap also separates the longest- and shortest-lived Latina women. In Chicago, their life expectancy is just shy of 90, whereas in San Antonio, it is 82.8.

The range in female life expectancy is smallest for white women, 3.6 years. White women live the longest in San Francisco, 83.9 years and the shortest in Houston, 80.3 years.

Photo Credit: Washington, D.C. on Shutterstock

 

African Americans Turn Headlights on Sex-Traffic

By Margaret Summers

WeNews correspondent

Brook Bello had all trappings of a successful career. But the actress-poet-filmmaker also had a horrible childhood secret. Now she’s teaming up with the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute to talk about sex traffic.

(WOMENSENEWS) — African American film artist Brook Bello, whose toned, slim build and close-cropped blonde hair belie her 40 years, has appeared in TV commercials and dramas, such as the science fiction program “Stargate SGI.”

She was featured in the 1995 futuristic movie “Strange Days,” starring Angela Bassett and Ralph Fiennes. She has also authored a book of poems, “To Soar without Leaving the Ground.”

 

Despite her achievements, Bello was desperately unhappy for many of these apparently successful years. She had a horrific youth hidden deep inside her. Often, to block it out, she numbed herself with drugs and alcohol. She fought the impulse to take her own life.

Bello had been one of the millions of women and girls in the U.S. and internationally who are abducted, duped or coerced into selling sex for their “owners'” profit.

For years she said nothing, but now she’s going as public as she can.

Bello has written, produced and directed a documentary film, “Survivor: Living Above the Noise,” in which she tells her own story as a sex trafficking victim, as do others in the film. The documentary takes the viewer to Bahrain in the Middle East, one of the global hotspots of the practice, where Bello went to recover from her experiences and learn about the impact of sex trafficking on women and girls there.

She is also partnering with the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute to expose the problem of sex trafficking in the African American community. Bello and the policy institute, founded in 2009 in Washington, D.C., are planning nationwide discussions and screenings of her film, which will be shown next month at the 65th Cannes Film Festival.

Keeping a Special Eye

Ka Flewellen, co-founder and executive director of the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute, says African Americans must keep a special eye on trafficking victims who are women and children from the African diaspora.

“We will mobilize women of African descent within the U.S. to participate in a special hearing this fall on Capitol Hill, in an effort to develop a public policy response,” Flewellen said. “Sexual slavery and trafficking aren’t just international occurrences.  They happen in our communities here in the U.S. We must eradicate these practices.”

As a vehicle for sharing her experiences and raising awareness of sexual trafficking, Bello said her documentary has helped her healing process.

“Through the film, I speak for those who didn’t make their way out,” Bello told a gathering in March of African American female leaders convened in Washington, D.C., by the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute. “I speak for the prostitutes on the street.”

Bello said that like most sex trafficking victims, she was abused and sexually assaulted as a child. “There was violence in my family.  My mother was a highly educated woman, but she lived with a lot of pain. I had four stepfathers.  She was beaten regularly, so much so that there were times I couldn’t recognize her face. Then, when I was 11, I was raped.”

She said she started drinking to ease her pain, and when she felt she could no longer stand the violence at home, she and a friend ran away to Los Angeles, where she started working for a madam as a prostitute.

“They kept me high on Quaaludes and heroin,” she said, so she would keep working in order to buy drugs and earn money for the madam.

Eventually, Bello and her friend escaped. They hitchhiked to Las Vegas, then to New York, where Bello was arrested at 16 for prostitution. Upon release, Bello moved back to Los Angeles and began her acting career.

“I was always good at accents and characters,” Bello told the Washington gathering.

Losing herself in film roles helped her pretend her earlier life of sexual abuse and victimization hadn’t happened. But denial and delusion didn’t help. “I was gripped by fear.  I tried to commit suicide.  I didn’t know how to talk to people.”

Producing the film and founding the nonprofit Above the Noise, which assists sex traffic victims, helped Bello overcome the years of abuse and victimization.

1.75 Million Internationally

The numbers of women and girls involved in sex slavery are hard categorize, since they are often included with statistics for other forms of involuntary labor and smuggling undocumented immigrants across borders.  But in 2009 UNICEF estimated that 1.75 million women and children have been trafficked for sexual purposes internationally.

U.S. State Department data indicate that between 14,200 and 17,500 women and children are trafficked in the U.S. annually. Most are between 12 and 14 years old.  Increasingly, boys between 11 and 13 are also trafficked.

Sexual trafficking of women and girls is highly profitable. A 2008 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that trafficking in Europe alone generates $3 billion per year.

Children are usually abducted from their families or sold to traffickers by parents or guardians to pay off a debt.

Women are often tricked into sex slavery.

“A well-dressed man might approach a family in Nigeria, for example, and say that their daughter is eligible for a full scholarship to study in Paris,” Ellyn Jo Waller, wife of the pastor of Philadelphia’s Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, told those at the gathering.

From there Waller described a typical scenario. The man will pay the daughter’s airfare and arrange for her identification papers and passport.  At the airport, he will take the daughter’s papers from her for “safekeeping.” After landing in France the daughter is abducted and told that she has to sell sex.

At that point she is cut off and without any options, said Waller. “The daughter is trapped in a country where she knows no one, doesn’t speak or understand the language and is afraid to report her situation to authorities.”

 

Children’s Rights Improving – Clarke

Clarke

Alessandro Boyd, Gleaner Writer

FORMER CHILDREN’S Advocate Mary Clarke said last Thursday that Jamaica has come a far way since Independence as it relates to children’s rights,

“These are things we must celebrate and recognise pertaining to children and our achievements since Independence,” Clarke said during a seminar, which explored whether Jamaica’s social policy has achieved anything since Independence.

The seminar was held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston, and was organised by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and EconomicStudies, University of the West Indies.

“There is the shift in attitude from them being the deviant troublesome to the child with rights and, more important, life. We cannot forget our duty as adults, families and the Government … however, we must ensure that these rights are upheld and the solutions we are finding to these severe problems are put into effect,” said Clarke.

Severe challenges

She said there may be severe challenges and difficulties such as child abuse that need to be addressed, but we should not allow this to cloud our achievements as a nation. One such accomplishment, she said, is the shift in attitude towards juvenile delinquency.

“The only perspective on child delinquency was from the remedial aspect, they were viewed as deviants and the only method of ‘fixing them’ was placing them in institutions,” said Clarke, Jamaica’s first children’s advocate who is now retired.

Clarke said subsequent to achieving Independence, a five-year plan was drafted for the period of 1963-1968.

The plan stated that ‘deviant behaviour among children has principally been treated institutionally and since there are insufficient means of employing prevention, the emphasis will continue to be institutional care’.

“The tone itself displayed how the children were regarded and what little rights they had,” Clarke noted.

She told the audience that the beginning of the human-rights approach in dealing with children was sparked through the 1978 development plan.

Clarke said this plan stated that ‘help was a fundamental human right’, with the main goal being to develop adequate preventative service that the family needed.

“There was a shift in emphasis over the 15-year period since 1963, evidence of the beginning of a rights approach with plans for prevention and dealing with children were beginning to surface. They were now treating the families as well, as they realised they played an important part in raising the child. This is a major shift as opposed to the first plan, which was centred around punishment for the deviant child,” Clarke added.

She said by 1991 the ratification of The Convention of the Rights of the Child law was a new approach towards children. This was an approach aimed at prevention and improving the quality of life of children. Clarke said the passage of the Child Care and Protection Act (2004) was also significant.

Hermione McKenzie explored the topic of ‘Foundations of Jamaica’s Social Security System’; Dr Pauline Knight examined ‘The impact of Education on the goal of ‘Education for All’, and Faith Innerarity looked at ‘The evolution of the social protection system in Jamaica: from Residualism to the Rights-based Approach.

alessandro.boyd@gleanerjm.com

 

Expo Jamaica Maintains Huge Following

Lorna Godfrey enjoys a rum punch at Expo Jamaica held at the National Arena in St Andrew yesterday. – Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

With an almost cult-like following, Expo Jamaica has won the heart of hundreds of persons both locally and overseas.

Still decked out in her church garb and sipping on a drink of the good old Jamaican rum punch, 56-year-old Lorna Godfrey was one of hundreds who just could not resist showing up at the event at the National Arena yesterday.

“I remember started coming in here to sell from in the early 1990s. Those days, I used to work at a factory, then about six of us as friends decided to come here and sell on the outside. I have been coming here every year from then,” she told The Gleaner.

Taking a break from her business, the vendor made it clear that she was on a mission to sample all the delights that were being served at Expo Jamaica 2012.

“So far, I sample a little rum punch, little chicken and Lite Malta,” she said.

From her utterance, it was clear that that it was the malta beverage which had captured her taste bud.

Many changes

For someone who has been visiting the event for 20 years, Godfrey is more than qualified to speak on the changes it has undergone since its inception.

“A lot of changes have taken place. When I just started coming here it was free, we never have to pay any money like the $600 they are charging now.”

“Back then, you never used to have so much things, it was mostly like Jamaican biscuits and juices, but now we have different people coming in with different products like beds, clothes and all of that,” the quinquagenarian said.

Brian Pengelley, president of the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association (JMA), said “We want Jamaicans to know the variety and the extent of the great products that are made in Jamaica.

“There is no excuse for people to be buying products that are imported when we are actually making those good products right here in Jamaica,” the JMA president told The Gleaner yesterday

Pointing to the financial strain facing the country, Pengelley said the event is one step in the direction to help put the country on a path to financial growth.

The event yesterday drew hundreds who came out to grab hold of the different offerings.

Colour booths with Jamaican T-shirts, beverages, food and furniture were on display for all to see.

 

EUR Book Look: ‘The Black Church: Where Women Pray and Men Prey’

by EurPublisher

*OAKLAND, CA — Author and blogger Deborrah Cooper examines how women are treated in black churches by men waging war on them using God as a weapon of mass destruction. In a controversial new book entitled The Black Church: Where Women Pray and Men Prey, Cooper outlines how black women are indoctrinated into becoming servants of God, of men, and of their communities often to their own detriment.Black women, says Cooper, are brainwashed into living a dormant existence where they sit passively, trusting in God and waiting for Him to intervene in their lives and make things happen. “Living a life of inaction cripples black women, and is inextricably linked to a slave mentality – a condition of learned helplessness.” She notes that black women are shockingly passive in the face of neglect and abuse, having been primed by church doctrines to be submissive and docile. “Black women seem to just cope with life… to be afraid of having big dreams, of agitating on their own behalf, and of demanding change and respect. This leads to normalization of pain and acceptance of disrespect in myriad forms as they soldier on, praying for a blessing to give them relief instead of making change themselves.”

No stranger to controversy concerning the black church, Ms. Cooper sparked a heated debate on websites and social media sites in 2010 with an article entitled The Black Church – How the Black Church Keeps African American Women Single and Lonely Cooper accused traditional African American churches of being responsible for the high numbers of single black women in the U.S. The author focused a critical eye on the conservative, outdated policies and behaviors mandated for women by black spiritual leaders that limit women’s options and keep them focused on serving the church instead of serving themselves. Scheduled for release in May 2012, The Black Church: Where Women Pray and Men Prey expands on her original claims with a more comprehensive analysis of church policies.

In the book Cooper explains that the long-term survival of civilized societies has always been predicated upon establishing structures which provide for the protection and care of women and children (with men providing such protection); however, African American societal roles are instead structured to protect and care for the men, with the welfare of the women and children sacrificed in the process. She believes that at the center of this societal breakdown are the black church and its traditional structure which emphasizes male-dominance and Pastor worship, while simultaneously mandating female subjugation and submission. Should evolved black women separate from the black church?

Deborrah stated “it’s a realistic option that black women should consider. I believe black churches intentionally keep women single… after all, churches would suffer if more women got married or devoted their time and money to themselves or their children. I also think many church leaders take advantage of black women through prosperity doctrines, tithing and other such nonsense that is not theologically based. If you cannot teach prosperity gospel in Romania, South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa because their economy is stagnant, then you cannot rightly promote that doctrine anywhere. It’s not biblical. Black pastors are becoming millionaires from pimping black women in the last legal con game that there is – church. The women may not be on the corner, but these guys are pimping them just the same. How the church pimp game is run is detailed in what I call ‘the 10 Step Plan to Turning a Woman Out.’

The chapter entitled “Pray, Pay & Obey” examines the black church’s historical role of representing ‘community interests’ which Cooper says really means that black churches harness women’s energy, money, talents and bodies for male-centered interests. “The concept of female submission is very dangerous to black women” Ms. Cooper added. “Men feel entitled by misquoted scriptures to demean, degrade and use women in any way they please. When a woman feels defeated, weak and insignificant, she also feels helpless – incapable of defending either herself or her children against men lest she go against the word of God. When a woman turns over her power to a man, his quest for even greater dominance may result in his use of religion to justify emotional, verbal, physical and even sexual abuse. Sadly, such behaviors are very common in black churches.”

Cooper continued “I am regularly stunned at how many of my very accomplished and educated female friends repeat line and verse how women should be subservient, quiet, and “below” a man because that’s how God intended it. They hang onto their Pastor’s words as if they were straight from the lips of God, rather than rely on their own judgment and common sense. Words spoken have great power… the power to heal or harm, empower or invalidate, enlighten or deceive. Fear is one of the most powerful ways of controlling people. False prophets calling themselves Pastors twist “facts” to fit their agenda, thereby preying on the fears of African American women across the country. Such behavior must stop. When black women hurt, the black family suffers.”

THE BLACK CHURCH WHERE WOMEN PRAY AND MEN PREY will soon be available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and on Lulu.Com .

TITLE: The Black Church – Where Women Pray and Men Prey
GENRE: African American Culture, Women’s Issues
PUBLICATION: May 2012
PRICE: Paperback: $18.99
AUTHOR: Deborrah Cooper
ISBN: 978-1-105-63687-5
PAGES: 202

For more information log onto www.deborrahcooper.com.

 

This is the color of the new outer-borough taxi

since RTWT is NJ/NY based, this is important news to share.

Photo credit: NYC Mayor’s Office

It’s lime-green, it shuns Manhattan, it’s … a taxi?

Officials unveiled the city’s new outer-borough cab Sunday, which Mayor Bloomberg dubbed “The Apple Green Boro Taxi.”

“For decades, the goal of bringing better taxi service to residents and visitors outside of Manhattan eluded the city,” Bloomberg said Sunday. “At long last New Yorkers in all five boroughs will have safe, comfortable, less costly and legal street-hail service.”

Taxi and Limousine Commisioner David Yassky called the green cab “pleasing to the eye, easy to see from a distance,” adding that it “blends well with the urban landscape.”

Despite opposition from many yellow cab medallion owners, the TLC approved new rules earlier this month to let the city begin issuing permits to let livery cabs legally pick up street hails outside Manhattan. Up to 6,000 cabs can begin applying for the $1,500 permits next month, which only give drivers permission to pick up fares in the outer boroughs or North of East 96th and West 110th Streets. The first set of cabs will hit streets by the end of June, and 20% of them must be wheelchair accessible under a stipulation in the new law, which was brokered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Traditional yellow cabs will retain the exclusive right to get passengers in midtown and downtown Manhattan and at area airports. Both the yellow and green cabs will calculate fares using the same metered system.

Yellow cab owners were livid with the TLC’s decision, saying it would hurt their business and lessen the value of their medallions. The Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade filed a lawsuit earlier this month asking a judge to toss out the new law permitting the outer-borough cab fleet.

“The city sold the exclusive rights of street hails to medallion owners,” said Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the group. “In one fell swoop, in the bill that was passed in Albany in the dead of the night, that right was taken away from all medallion owners.”

But the TLC countered by saying only a tiny fraction of yellow cabs’ pickups were outside Manhattan, forcing New Yorkers to illegally hail a livery cab an estimated 100,000 times each day. It also promised that drivers busted trying to pick up a fare in prohibited areas would be fined hundreds of dollars and have their cars confiscated.

— Up to 18,000 permits for outer-borough cabs will be issued in three phases over the next three years.

— At least 3,600 of the outer-borough cabs have to be wheelchair accessible; the city will offer a $15,000 subsidy for drivers who get accessible cabs to help cover additional costs.

— The city hopes to raise more than $1 billion by adding 2,000 new yellow cabs. All will be wheelchair-accessible.

 

Government’s Tough Task

St George Jackson (left), chairman Special Constabulary Force, with Daisy Coke, actuary, at the Special Constabulary Force Association Forum on Pensions and Pensions Reform last year.- file

Balancing public-sector pensions while avoiding high risks

The absence of pension reform in Jamaica is likely to result in instability in economic growth, fiscal deterioration, inflation and exchange-rate depreciation.

That is just the plain facts, and those risks are clearly unacceptable.

The Government, with its resource constraints, is now faced with the tough task of balancing public-sector pensions while ensuring that the risks pointed to above do not materialise.

The Government opened discussions on pension reform with the tabling of its Green Paper No. 2-2011.

Various responses have been tabled with several proposed approaches, including changing the type of pensions and/or modifying the terms of existing schemes.

The Gleaner Council dedicated its deliberations to this important matter of pension reform and we present our findings and recommendations in this week’s submission.

 

The Jamaican Government operates an unfunded pension model.

Therefore, lump sums paid on retirement and pensions for public-service retirees and their dependants are paid from tax revenue.

The Government does not operate a special pension fund, as obtains for private-sector pension funds or the National Insurance Fund that are established to meet the promised benefits for retirees and their dependants.

With a funded model, benefits are sourced from the investment of regular contributions; therefore, the investment performance is an important source for payments.

Note that even for those public-service pension plans with mandated employees’ contributions, no money is accumulated.

The unfunded pension model has been a common vehicle of pensions for government employees and works under certain economic and demographic conditions. Unfortunately, it is unsustainable when those conditions no longer apply.

In other words, when the total pensions become too great a proportion of government revenue, that cost becomes a burden.

When the pension cost is an increasing proportion of the revenue, it can become an unbearable burden.

The demographic factors that make pay-as-you-go schemes tolerable are when we have, say, four or more working people in the public-sector for every public-sector pensioner and when the pensioner does not live too long.

strain on the system

When the working people supporting the pensioners are falling and the pensioners are living much longer than expected, that puts a strain on the system and leads to instability.

Under the current public-sector model, promised benefits have two components of cost: the cost of benefits based on past service and the cost of each additional year of service.

The past-service liability, termed the ‘implied debt’, currently stands at a staggering $223 billion or 18 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Each extra year of service adds annual costs of $5.4 billion or 0.4 per cent of GDP. These costs will increase dramatically if nothing is done.

Jamaica’s pension debt is not counted as part of the publicly highlighted debt-to-GDP ratio of some 130 per cent.

This level of real total indebtedness of 148 per cent (explicit debt of 130 per cent + implied debt of 18 per cent) of GDP represents an unquestionable danger to our already small and fragile economy.

As debt-to-GDP ratio increases, so does the instability because the GDP does not rise in line with or faster than the debt.

 

Comcast and NBC volunteers to give back to the community

Universal Earth Week

NYC Councilman Robert Jackson, City Year New York representative Jordan Halane, NBC 4 New York President and General Manager Michael Jack, NYC Housing Authority board member Margarita López and President and General Manager of Telemundo 47 Carlos Sanchez kicking off the community event on stage at the Green is Universal Earth Week event at Manhattanville Houses in Harlem, NYC. Photo credit: Heidi Gutman/NBCUniversal

By Yacine Simporé Special to the Amsterdam News

As part of Comcast Cares and Green Universal’s Earth week, about 67, 000 volunteers from NBC and

Comcast gathered on April 20th to renovate housings projects in Manhattanville

The Day’s events were led by NBC host Georges Oliphant and with the participation from Michael Jack, president and General Manager of NBC 4 New York, Carlos Sanchez President and general Manager of Telemundo and many other guests.

“Harlem has always been the green jewel in the crown of Manhattan. By revitalizing the aged infrastructure at the Manhattanville Houses and providing our residents with a beautiful new urban landscape, we ensure that our green tradition will live on. I am so happy to join with Comcast and NBC Universal as they give back to the community of Harlem,” said Assemblyman Keith Wright, Chairman of the New York State Assembly Subcommittee on Public Housing who attended the event said in a press release

 

Ohio natives John Glenn, Toni Morrison to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former Ohio Sen. and astronaut John Glenn will be among 13 people who will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President Barack Obama announced Thursday.

Novelist Toni Morrison, a Lorain native, also will receive the medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Obama will present the awards at the White House in late spring.

Other recipients will include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the late Girl Scout founder Juliette Gordon Low and NCAA women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt.

“These extraordinary honorees come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, but each of them has made a lasting contribution to the life of our nation,” Obama’s announcement said.

Glenn, a 90-year-old native of New Concord, Ohio, served as a Democratic U.S. senator for 24 years.

Before that, he was an astronaut and U.S. Marine aviator who served in World War II and Korea. Fifty years ago, he became the first American to orbit the Earth. In 1998, at age 77, he became the oldest person to visit space.

PD fileToni Morrison

Glenn said in an interview Thursday that he was surprised when the White House called him a few weeks ago to inform him that he would receive the medal.

“I appreciate it very much,” he said. “It is a great honor.”

Last year, Glenn received a Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol, along with Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. Earlier this year, he was honored on the 50th anniversary of his historic space flight. And last week, he participated in the festivities when the Space Shuttle Discovery was retired to the Smithsonian Institution.

“I wish the shuttles were still flying,” said Glenn, who flew on Discovery in 1998. “Now we are not able to go into space in this country on our own and have to pay the Russians to take our people up to the International Space Station. I think the decision was premature, but I guess we will recover from it.”

NASA renamed its Cleveland-area research center after Glenn, and Ohio State University named its school of public policy in his honor. Glenn teaches seminars at the school. He and his wife, Annie, split their time between Ohio and the Washington, D.C., area.

Morrison, 81, the author of works including “Song of Solomon,” “Jazz,” and “Beloved,” has won both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. She worked for Random House publishing and taught at universities including Princeton and Yale.

“People say to write about what you know,” she told an Oberlin College audience last month. “I’m here to tell you, no one wants to read that, ’cause you don’t know anything. So write about something you don’t know. And don’t be scared, ever.”

When Morrison visited the college, the Toni Morrison Society, a literary group dedicated to scholarly research of her works, announced it was establishing its residency at Oberlin.

The other award recipients will be: Israeli President Shimon Peres, former Justice Department civil rights crusader John Doar, epidemiologist William Foege, United Farm Workers of America co-founder Dolores Huerta, World War II Polish Underground officer Jan Karski, and Gordon Hirabayashi, who defied the forced relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Karski, Hirabayashi and Low are receiving the medal posthumously.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: seaton@plaind.com,

 

NAREB® State Of Housing In Black America Issues Forum To Highlight Congressional Perspective On Foreclosure And Housing Crises In African American Communities

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — The foreclosure, neighborhood blight and natural disaster crises are having a disproportionate impact on minority communities, and minority-owned real estate businesses across the nation. As a result, the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB®), the oldest African American trade association of real estate business owners and professionals in the country, have positioned themselves with members of Congress, minority businesses, and granting agencies like the Salvation Army, to face these challenges head-on. The public is invited to learn more about these challenges and solutions, inclusive of a Congressional perspective, at NAREB®’s “State of Housing in Black America Issues Forum” (SHIBA) on Wednesday, May 2, 2012, 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. at Howard University (Cramton Auditorium, 2455 Sixth Street, N. W.).

The Forum will feature interactive panel discussions with industry professionals and experts, and local and national political and community leaders, who will provide an in-depth analysis of research data, along with possible solutions, as it relates to foreclosure mitigation, neighborhood blight and disaster recovery, including the groundbreaking $1.8 billion Homeowner’s Assurance Program (HAP).

The event is free, and will feature Congressman Elijah E. Cummings (MD), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as the featured guest speaker, and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, who will deliver opening remarks.

“NAREB® has seen the impact of Congress, especially the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, on homeownership solutions in the past,” says NAREB® President, Julius Cartwright. “We recognize the importance of providing Congress with accurate and detailed information and recommendations on how to improve housing conditions in not only low and moderate income neighborhoods, but the surrounding communities as well. The mortgage fall-out has required federal intervention and private sector participation and capital, but many solutions have not been effective enough – – especially in minority communities. It is integral to NAREB®’s efforts, and in the best interest of our nation, that all of us work together on this.”

For more information, visit http://www.narebSHIBA.com

        Media Contacts:
        Gina M. Hobbs                   Alexandria Johnson Boone
        Cell:             (216) 469-4848                  Cell:             (216) 513-6258      
        Phone:             (216) 391-4300      , ext. 303 Phone:             (216) 391-4300      , ext. 305
        gina@gapcommunications.com      alex@gapcommunications.com
        ghgapcomm@aol.com               gapcomm@aol.com

SOURCE National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB)

Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

 

For TV, black is the new green

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Three African-American-focused nets bow, with more on horizon

By PAIGE ALBINIAK

BET ordered a second season of romantic comedy ‘Let’s Stay Together,’ about the relationships of five African Americans, following the network’s success with UPN ‘Girlfriends’ spinoff ‘The Game.’

A convergence of timing and opportunity are about to bring BET and TV One plenty of company in the black TV universe.Four new African-American-focused networks are in the process of launching, with Bounce TV already online and Magic Johnson’s Aspire planning to premiere this summer. Soul of the South, a regional network, is busy clearing affiliates. Sean Comb’s Revolt, with a focus on music and pop culture, plans to be on the air in 2013.

One of the reasons for the influx is due to the terms of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in January 2011. To complete the transaction, Comcast made a deal with the FCC and the Dept. of Justice to launch 10 minority-owned channels over the following eight years. The first four include Aspire and Revolt, as well as two networks targeted at Latinos.

Last September, a coalition led by Martin Luther King III launched Bounce TV. That network is carried on digital tiers by Fox affiliates and other TV stations covering 60% of the country and 75% of African-American households. Soul of the South, also is seeking clearances on digital tiers, focusing its distribution in the Southeast and Northern cities that have large black populations, with a goal to bow on at least 50 stations in a two-wave platform.

“We plan to launch in two phases of 25 stations each, and it could be a bit more than that,” says Edwin Avent, Soul of the South’s CEO. The first phase will launch this spring, and the second will be in late summer or early fall, Avent says.

Aspire, which Comcast announced late last year, is slated to launch on its cable systems this summer, and will partner with GMC (formerly the Gospel Music Channel, and a minority partner in the venture) on back-office operations, such as marketing and sales. Aspire will be based in Atlanta next to GMC so the two can share services, but Aspire is owned and operated, and is the vision of Magic Johnson Enterprises, says David Siegel, vice chairman of GMC.

Revolt execs declined to be interviewed, maintaining they are yet too early in the process of building the net.

Since local stations have digital spectrum to fill, now seems like the right time to launch new channels. The four networks will join the two major players in black TV: BET and TV One, and those networks’ digital siblings, Centric (a mix of interview- and music-driven shows, movies and library titles like “The Cosby Show”) and TV One High Def.

Siegel says the black audience is particularly underserved, given its viewing habits.

“African Americans spend more time watching television than any other group,” he says.. “I think that part of (the reason these audiences were underserved) is that networks and producers felt that African-Americans were happy or satisfied with general-market television and didn’t feel that their interests and tastes included any special needs, which I think to a large degree was not correct.”

Moreover, the black marketplace is large, with money to spend. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans compose 13.6% (or 42 million people) of the U.S. population. It’s a group that has $836 billion in buying power, reports Target Market News, a publication that covers the black media marketplace. The black population in the U.S. is growing, but slowly: It’s expected to increase to 15% of the population by 2050.

In recent years, media companies have focused more on Latinos who, at 50.5 million people, make up 16.3% of the U.S. population, a number that is expected to grow to 30% by 2050, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Still, with nearly $1 trillion of spending power behind them, African Americans also have caught media companies’ notice.

“There are four cable networks serving 42 million African Americans, but there are 75 cable networks targeted at serving 50 million Hispanics,” says Eric Holoman, president of Magic Johnson Enterprises and chief operating officer of Aspire. “People fold African Americans into the general-market audience.” While Hispanic networks are naturally more prevalent due to language considerations, black networks aim to bridge a cultural gap.

“Since last September, we’ve done several focus groups, and what people told us they thought was missing in the marketplace was positive family entertainment for African Americans, content that both children and parents can watch together,” Holoman says.

That’s also been the finding of the established black networks, BET and TV One. Both networks have made moves in that direction, although each is going about it a little differently.

BET — the veteran by a longshot, with 32 years under its belt, and the top cabler among 18-to-49-year-old African-Americans for the past 12 years — has had breakthrough success over the past two seasons with its acquisition of “The Game,” a black sitcom that the CW dropped in May 2009.

While the show, a spinoff of UPN’s “Girlfriends” featuring a group of women who date professional football players, may not exactly be family fare, it set basic cable records with a debut audience of nearly 8 million viewers when it premiered new episodes on BET in January 2011, after having aired on the network in syndication since February 2009.

“This was a true case of audience demand,” says Matthew Barnhill, BET’s executive vice president of corporate research. “Our audience literally demanded we pick up ‘The Game’ after the CW dropped it.”

That move has given BET the incentive to add more original laffers.”Let’s Stay Together,” a romantic comedy about the relationships of five young African Americans, premiered with “The Game” in January 2011 to 4.4 million viewers, and is back for a second season. In October, BET launched “Reed Between the Lines,” starring Malcolm Jamal-Warner and Tracee Ellis-Ross, and renewed it for a second season in April. At this year’s upfronts, BET will be announcing more moves into original scripted dramas and movies, Barnhill says.

TV One, which has been in business for eight years, also is adding originals, but it’s focusing on crime and justice as well as sitcoms, says Wonya Lucas, TV One’s president, who joined the network eight months ago from Investigation Discovery.

“We are going into categories that typically attract African Americans on other networks,” Lucas says. “African Americans are very interested in the Trayvon Martin case right now, and they watch a lot of ‘CSI’ and ‘Law & Order.'”

To that end, TV One will launch “Unresolved: Celebrity Cases” in the fourth quarter of this year, and it’s returning series “Find Our Missing,” hosted by “Law & Order’s” S. Epatha Merkerson.

TV One also is dipping its toe into original sitcoms. Three are in development for next year: “The Rickey Smiley Show,” starring the radio personality playing a character that’s a lot like him; “Belles,” set in an upscale soul food restaurant; and “Church Folk,” about a family forced to leave their mega-church in Los Angeles and return to the South.

Of the new networks, Bounce is the most established, and has launched with a mix of acquired series, such as “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” “Soul Train” and “Judge Hatchett”; classic movies, such as “Glory,” “The Wiz,” “Mahogany” and “Do the Right Thing”; and sports — specifically football and basketball — from historically black colleges and universities. Bounce also would like to get into the boxing business, says Ryan Glover, the network’s president.

Bounce expects to head into original programming this year, with efficiently produced series such as videoclip shows, standup comedy, sketch shows and musicvideo programs.

“Our plan is to stick with the formats that we know, attach great talent to those ideas and produce them in a smart and compelling way that we know will work for our audience,” Glover says. “We aren’t going out and creating scripted dramas or scripted sitcoms at the moment. Those are costly and difficult to produce.”

Bounce has started the process of being Nielsen-rated nationally, but numbers are not yet available.

Aspire has a gameplan that aims to feature economically produced originals, with nights dedicated to different genres: independent and short films and documentaries; major Hollywood features; musicvideos, performances and documentaries; sitcoms; and the arts, such as theater and dance, Siegel says. Each night will be hosted by a celebrity. Many of the network’s programming announcements will come in the next few weeks, Holoman says.

Finally, Soul of the South plans to program its network like a local TV station, only aimed at a black audience.

“We think there’s a 25-54 audience seeking programming that speaks to their needs on an everyday basis,” Avent says.

Still, all of these new networks may want to heed the words of Oprah Winfrey, who is finding the launch of another new network — OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network — far more difficult than she expected.

“The idea of creating a network was something that I wanted to do,” Winfrey recently told Gayle King, the new co-host of CBS’ “The Early Show” and Winfrey’s longtime best friend. “Had I known that it was this difficult, I might have done something else.”

Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

 

Register TODAY! Conference on Breast Cancer & African Americans in Oakland – May 5

A special community event focusing on breast cancer disparities in African-American populations in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area returns May 5 to The Cathedral of Christ the Light Conference Center in Oakland, Calif.

The event – the 2012 Annual Conference on Breast Cancer & African Americans – is hosted by the Stanford Cancer Institute’s Community Partnership Program. The all day conference will disseminate breast cancer education and information that is culturally-tailored to African American-populations in the area, in an effort to reduce disparities and the burden of cancer among this population. Topics include proper breast health; breast cancer risks, prevention and early detection; nutrition; physical activity; management and reduction of stress; spiritual and psychosocial support; family health history; and more.

The public is invited to attend the conference. Registration fee is $20 per person and includes breakfast and lunch, keynote presentation and lectures, health exhibits/resources, musical entertainment, networking opportunities, tote bag and raffle prizes.

The registration deadline is May 1, 2012.

Pamela Ratliff is the Sr. Community Partnership Manager for the Community Partnership Program of the Stanford Cancer Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. There she is responsible for the administration and dissemination of cancer education through annual conferences, lectures, and seminars across the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.

She offered the following as to what women of color don’t always realize when it comes to the disease:

They can survive and live a long, happy life with breast cancer and a diagnosis does not mean it is an automatic death sentence.  Women must be encouraged to visit their doctor for regular, scheduled check-ups and to make breast health, clinical breast exams and mammography screening a part of their preventative health.  And to complement these efforts, add doing monthly breast self exams to familiarize themselves with potential changes in their breasts.

Early detection is the key that can potentially save one’s life and improve chances for survivorship.

Early registration is encouraged and scholarships are available to support attendance by those experiencing financial hardship from the African-American community. (NOTE: Contact Pamela Ratliff at pratliff@stanford.edu or            (800) 383-0941       if would like to request a scholarship – Do Not register on the site.)

Originally published and cross-posted at myshadesmagazine.net.

 

Walter L. Gordon Jr. dies; groundbreaking lawyer in era of segregation

Attorney Walter L. Gordon Jr. in the mid-1940s. “His personality was dynamic, plus he was good on the law. With that combination, he was unbeatable,” retired L.A. County Superior Court Judge William C. Beverly said. (Walter L. Gordon Jr./William C. Beverly / April 28, 2012)

A mentor to those who followed in his footsteps, he ran a practice on L.A.’s Central Avenue for 65 years.

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times

April 29, 2012

The legal establishment in Los Angeles was segregated in 1937 when African American attorney Walter L. Gordon Jr. pulled on a childhood connection to set up his new practice. The former newspaper carrier was given office space “three steps” from the pressroom of the California Eagle, a black weekly founded in 1879 by an escaped slave.

The newspaper’s location proved fortuitous. It was on Central Avenue, “the city’s black thoroughfare,” Gordon later said, and he benefited from being one of the first black lawyers to hang a shingle in the city’s African American community.

He kept his practice in the neighborhood for 65 years, defending the famous — jazz singer Billie Holiday was a steady client — and untold lesser-known names often facing criminal charges.

Gordon, who was 103, died April 16 at California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family announced.

He once estimated that there were only 30 African American lawyers in the state when he entered the profession, and he made a point of mentoring those who followed him.

When veteran civil rights lawyer Leo Branton Jr. arrived in Los Angeles in 1949 to practice, “there were no black law firms, only individual practitioners. The white law firms were not hiring black lawyers, and the L.A. County Bar Assn. had a ‘Caucasians only’ clause in its constitution.

“Young black lawyers had no place to go, had it not been for Walter Gordon. He was a mentor to almost every lawyer who came along during the first five years I was in practice. He made a tremendous contribution,” the 90-year-old Branton said.

In the early 1940s, Gordon represented dozens of railroad dining-car waiters whom the government wanted to penalize for not reporting their tips. When the tax-evasion case was settled, each porter was ordered to pay a $25 fine.

During the same era, he defended a group of black deputy sheriffs who made an off-duty arrest while armed and were prosecuted for carrying weapons.

“In those days, black deputies were not allowed to carry guns on or off duty,” Gordon said in 2008 in an L.A. County Bar Assn. publication. “In our argument we went back to the ancient common law of England where a sheriff could be punished for not carrying arms at all times because he would not be able to protect the king’s peace.” The deputies were exonerated.

Gordon successfully defended Holiday in the 1950s after she was accused of assaulting a white patron at a local nightclub who heckled her as she sang “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching. The judge deemed the audience member a troublemaker and threw out the case, Gordon later said.

“He had a heavy volume of cases. People would line up around the block,” retired L.A. County Superior Court Judge William C. Beverly said last week. “His personality was dynamic, plus he was good on the law. With that combination, he was unbeatable.”

Born June 22, 1908, in Santa Monica, Walter Lear Gordon Jr. was the only child of Walter Gordon and his wife, Vertner. His father delivered mail on horseback in South Pasadena and later went into real estate.

Growing up, Gordon sold papers outside meetings of the Los Angeles Forum, a civil rights organization. He later traced his interest in the law to the public speaking skills of the black attorneys he overheard there.

After graduating from high school, Gordon worked in a cargo ship’s mess, traveling through the Panama Canal, and lived in Boston for two years.

He attended USC for 18 months but in 1932 transferred to Ohio State. After a semester there, he was admitted to the university’s law school and received his law degree in 1936.

While establishing his practice, he began collecting photographs discarded by the California Eagle and eventually built an archive of nearly 800 images that he donated to UCLA‘s Charles E. Young Research Library. The majority of the photographs are from the 1940s.

“As an attorney, he traveled between boundaries, but he felt it was important to document his stratum of society, the people who were college-trained and in the professions,” said Susan D. Anderson, curator of the library’s Los Angeles collection. “He knew if he didn’t devote himself to documenting these people, no one would remember it.”

In 1945, Gordon bought a lot across the street from the newspaper and built the office where he practiced into his early 90s.

When his parents were found killed in 1949 in their Highland Park home, “he basically stopped taking violent criminal-defense cases and moved to representing bookmakers and a less-violent clientele,” said Lorn S. Foster, a Pomona College professor who had extensively interviewed Gordon.

Married four times, Gordon had three children with his second wife, Anne, and a high-profile divorce from his third wife, Ethel Sissle, a showgirl previously married to composer Noble Sissle. Media coverage of their 1951 divorce noted that Gordon did not have to pay her alimony but had offered her “$200 a month for six months if she made no future reference to their life together.”

His fourth wife, Clara, died in 2006 after 50 years of marriage, and his daughter, Anne, died in 2010.

His son Walter L. Gordon III, an attorney, is married to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Teresa Sanchez-Gordon. He is also survived by another son, James; two grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

At 100, Gordon said he felt himself slowing down but still kept abreast of major legal decisions. And he said in the 2008 interview: “I make sure I catch ‘Judge Judy’ every day.”

Services will be held at 11 a.m. May 7 in the chapel at Angeles Rosedale Cemetery, 1831 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

 

North Jersey leaders look to improve relations between black community, law enforcement

BY KAREN SUDOL

STAFF WRITER

THE RECORD

WESTWOOD – Police officers, church leaders and Bergen County residents gathered Saturday to discuss the at-times strained relationship between law enforcement and the African-American community and how to improve it.

KEVIN R. WEXLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Shirley Smith of Englewood listening at Mount Zion Baptist Church. The 2 1/2-hour discussion was prompted by Garfield and Florida shootings.

Anthony Cureton, an Englewood police sergeant and president of the NAACP’s county chapter and the Rev. Barry R. Miller, an Englewood police detective, led the 2½-hour discussion at Mount Zion Baptist Church that was prompted by incidents like the fatal shootings of Malik Williams in Garfield and Trayvon Martin in Florida.

“I think it’s important for law enforcement and the community to interact,” Miller said at the event attended by 30 people including Bergen CountySheriff Michael Saudino, Westwood Mayor John Birkner, Jr. and Westwood Police Chief Frank Regino.

“Information is power,” Miller added, “and if sometimes we can understand why law enforcement does things a certain way, it takes away that thought which is: ‘We’re doing it just because.’ It’s also important for law enforcement to talk to the community and find out why do certain segments of the population think or react a certain way.”

Miller, the church pastor, touched on situations where residents and police interact and why officers react in a certain way during calls.

For example, he explained that, by law, police officers must arrest anyone who has violated a restraining order, even in instances when the victim has reunited with the offender but failed to have the order lifted.

“We want people to understand that there is another side to this,” Miller said. “When we see you together and know there’s a restraining order, we’re required to act.”

He also talked about motor-vehicle stops and offered tips for drivers to avoid any problems when they are pulled over and believe they are being singled out: Never get out of their cars during traffic stops unless asked because it could be perceived as a threat and never refuse to provide documents to police.

Community members used the occasion to ask questions, make suggestions and air their concerns.

Bernice Click, a resident of Hackensack, said she participates in a neighborhood block watch program in her town and suggested more be established to bolster those relationships.

Desiree Dubose of Westwood told the group that when she was growing up and visited nearby towns or different sections of the borough, she often felt as though police were following her.

“Being an African-American woman, I have felt that fear toward law enforcement because of my experiences and I don’t want to pass that along to my child,” she said. “I don’t want him to be afraid of law enforcement. I want us to be able to come together and get along and support one another and I want to get the fear off of my shoulders.”

No one, regardless of race, should be made to feel uncomfortable visiting another area of town, she said.

Regino, the police chief, responded that Westwood officers have gotten to know the children in town and are aware of who lives in the community.

Cureton also said that, in the Williams police shooting in Garfield, the NAACP chapter spoke to the family, set up a meeting with the Garfield governing body and sat down with Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli — all within a week of the Dec. 10 shooting.

Williams fled police headquarters after turning himself in on a warrant, leading to a chase that ended in a nearby garage, authorities have said. Two officers shot him when he was found wielding unspecified tools, Molinelli said.

Reaching out as the chapter did to establish relationships with those involved in the case and learning what happened prevented misinformation from being disseminated, Cureton said.

At the forum’s end, the mayor said more outreach and participation in similar forums are needed.

“Racism exists in 2012 and it’s very unfortunate but the only way we can begin to disassemble all the barriers is through education,” Birkner said.

Email: sudol@northjersey.com

 

Ice Cube reflects on how the LA riots changed rap

Ice Cube performs live on stage during Supafest 2012 at ANZ Stadium on April 15, 2012 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

By Courtney Garcia

On the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots, Ice Cube remembers where he was when the uprising broke, and how hip hop fueled the insurgence

Twenty years ago, when the L.A. riots were ignited on April 29, 1992, a single man’s life became catalyst for a rap revolution led by Ice Cube and a handful of other hip-hop icons. By the time of Rodney King’s beating, rap had already put its stakes firmly into the American musical underpinning, giving birth to both intellectual discourse on race relations and social injustice, as well as unabashed verbal rebuke in the form of gangsta rap. Loud, observant, and demanding attention, gangsta rap, in particular, became soundtrack to this era of racial instability, believed by many to not only have led the nation in cultural exploration, but to have actually prophesized the insurrection.

A prominent voice in the movement, Cube became a rapper and actor who pioneered this subgenre of west coast hip-hop with his anti-authoritative gang of poetic nihilists, N.W.A.. At the time of the riots, he was onto his own initiative, releasing solo records and focusing on a burgeoning career in the movie business.

“I was actually in a movie meeting when the fight broke out,” Cube told theGrio, backstage at K-Day’s annual Krush Groove concert in Hollywood, on the eve of the riots’ 20th anniversary. “When I heard the verdict, I really wanted to end the meeting, you know? I really wasn’t into it after that. And I was on my way home, and you know, I could hear things going down…on Florence and Normandie…. I was like basically, ‘What did they expect to happen?’ It was like a big slap in the face.”

For the entertainer, the riots were the inevitable result of America’s callous disregard for the black community, a by-any-means-necessary approach to prevent the silent removal of an African-American thread in the country’s cultural weave. It was never why, only when. N.W.A.made that clear from the onset, and Cube furthered the storyline throughout his own work.

On his 1991 album, Death Certificate, his second release as a solo artist, the rapper discussed many tensions that would later lead to this outburst, specifically in his song, “Black Korea.”

He explained, “You could feel the tension, could feel the heat in the community. Feel people getting fed up. You know? The police really had carte blanche in our neighborhoods till we did the song “F**k tha Police” then people really started to actually look at what they were doing. And then the Rodney King incident came out to really show [it]. So, we had been talking about this all along, that it was happening. We had talked about it on my record “Death Certificate,” which was in ’91. We talked about the tension between Blacks and Koreans, Latasha Harlins…She got shot in the back of the head over some orange juice by a Korean store owner. These kinds of things were starting to fuel animosity and blame and just nastiness.”

The riots initially broke due to public outrage over the acquittal of four policemen caught on tape abusively beating King with their batons, while other officers watched on with no regard. Six days of looting, pillaging and extreme murder ensued, becoming more than merely a statement for King, but one for everyone he represented. After the third day, most of the violence had been extinguished, but the message lived on through rap’s most diligent leaders.

Among the most forthright of music mercenaries, Cube led the way with tracks like “We Had to Tear This Motherf**ker Up,” a song he considers to be most monumental and reflective of the era. Beside him were artists like Tupac Shakur, Ice-T, and Dr. Dre, bringing the context of economic turmoil and youth indignation into the limelight with their expressive beats and rhymes. Others like Public Enemy were screaming just as loudly from the opposite coast, telling the world to “Fight the Power” and “Bring the Noise.”

“There was gang truce records, you know, records that really tried to grab the spirit of the riots and what it was about,” said Cube. “It wasn’t about burning buildings, it was about justice. You know, for not just Rodney King, he’s just the spark. Justice for all the Rodney Kings that’s out there that didn’t get on camera, didn’t get on film. At a certain point, people just get so fed up they get violent.”

Yet such momentous rage and subsequent retaliatory action may not have had the lasting impression many activists sought. In the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death twenty years later, the haunting parallel cannot be overlooked. Shot carrying skittles rather than orange juice, and detonating a nationwide rekindling of racial confrontation, Martin’s death begs the question of whether the U.S. has come full circle since the warfare of the early ’90s.

“I think we’re sort of in the same place we were. I think that people make a lot of money on us being separated, and those people are still in power and they haven’t moved, and things are pretty much the same,” commented Cube, who famously noted in his track, “Wicked,” that there would one day be a sequel to the riots.

He added, “You still see justice being handed out slow when it comes to black Americans…but I think that arresting George Zimmerman was a big step in showing, you know, we just want the same justice that everybody else want. We’re not asking for anything more.”

Follow Courtney Garcia on Twitter at @courtgarcia

 

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa

by Ann-Marie Nicholson, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

“The writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society’s weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.”Nigerian environmentalist, author, and television producer Ken Saro-Wiwa lived and died by the words above. Born on October 10, 1941, Kenule “Ken” Beeson Saro Wiwa was an Ogoni (an ethnic minority in Nigeria). Ogoniland, located in the Niger Delta, is rich in oil that has been looted by the petroleum industry — with the explicit consent of the Nigerian government — for decades. As a result, the Niger Delta is listed as one of themost polluted places in the world; its population is poor and powerless.

Saro-Wiwa spent a great deal of his life and resources trying to fight against the environmental destruction of the land and waters of Ogoniland. He founded the non-violent organization Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) as a way to bring international attention to the plight of his people. An outspoken critic of the Nigerian government and the multi-national oil companies, Saro-Wiwa was arrested and detained numerous times on bogus charges. A prolific writer, he authored many books about his imprisonment, such as Before I am Hanged and A Month and a Day.

In 1994, the Nigerian government under General Sani Abacha charged Saro-Wiwa and eight others with inciting the murders of four conservative Ogoni chiefs. Despite numerous evidence of witness tampering, the nine men were convicted and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. In his closing statement, Saro-Wiwa called out both his government and the Royal Dutch Shell Company:

I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated… I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is on trial… On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence.Despite international outcry and numerous threats of international sanctions, on November 10, 1995, Nigeria summarily executed Saro-Wiwa and his eight co-defendants.

Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Wiwa, along with international human rights groups, sued Shell for human rights violation inthe Niger Delta and a host of other crimes in connection with Saro-Wiwa’s and other civilian deaths. In 2009, Shell settled the case for $15.5 million USD days before the trial was set to begin in New York City.

Although Shell ceased its operations in Ogoniland in 1993, the environmental damage has not been undone and other oil companies continue to exploit the region.

Today, Saro-Wiwa is remembered as an international symbol of environmental causes.

Resources: Books

• A list of materials available at NYPL

Websites

• Center for Constitutional Rights and EarthRights International: The Case Against Shell
• openDemocracy: America in Africa: Plunderer or Partner?
• Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization: Ogoni
• The Right Livelihood Award: 1994 — Ken Saro-Wiwa † / Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Nigeria)
• National Geographic: Nigerian Oil
• Remember Saro Wiwa
• Last Interview, November 1995

 

JAMAICA NEWSWEEKLY For the week ending April 27th, 2012

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THIS WEEK”S SUMMARY
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DOCUMENTARY ABOUT MARLEY ATTRACTS FANS—04/21/12
A crowd of reggae fans attended a screening of a new documentary film about BobMarley, the reggae legend and iconic figure responsible for the global reach of the musical genre. The documentary, entitled “Marley,” received high praise from the Jamaicans who watched the film. The premier was attended by former prime ministers and business leaders, as well as Marley’s widow and other members of the family.

BARTLEY CALLS FOR MORE ATTENTION TO SPORTS AND CULTURE—04/21/12
Jamaica’s director of culture, Sydney Bartley, believes that the education system in the Caribbean has failed in regard to sports and culture. According to Bartley, who spoke at the University of the West Indies Department of Creative and Festival Arts Th?nk Conference, the biggest failure in the Caribbean educational system is how it ignores the things that people do best. Sports and culture have been relegated to the status of extracurricular activities, but should be given as much time in the classroom as science and math.

MURDERED JAMAICAN GIRL TRYING TO HELP FAMILY—04/22/12
Amelia Pitterson, 18, had just made a down payment on land for her family in an attempt to lift them out of poverty. Before this dream could be realized, however, Pitterson was murdered in her house in St. Catherine. Pitterson worked at the Bank of Jamaica and was trying to relocate her mother from the squatter settlement where she lived to a home of her own. While a neighbor heard a commotion during the night when Pitterson was murdered, the girl was not found until after seven the following morning by an older sister. Pitterson believed that education was the key to getting out of poverty and tried to help others follow her path. Pitterson’s boyfriend has turned himself in to police for the crime. A memorial service is planned.

FOREIGN VISITORS TRAVELLING TO JAMAICA FOR HEALTH CARE—04/23/12
The public health care system in Jamaica is often criticized, but it appears that it is good enough for people living in other Caribbean nations and in the United States. Jamaica receives many foreign visitors who come to the island for medical treatment. According to Dr. Neville Graham, the medical director of EMedical Global Jamaica Ltd., a firm that provides emergency medical evacuations, said his company brings more people into Jamaica for treatment than Jamaicans it transports to other hospitals overseas.

ATTORNEY HOPES MYRIE CASE WILL RESULT IN CHANGES—04/24/12
Michelle Brown, a Jamaican lawyer, is hoping that the case of Shanique Myrie will end discriminatory practices in the Caribbean region. Myrie has brought suit against the government of Barbados in the Caribbean Court of Justice for an incident occurring at the Barbados airport in which she alleges discrimination. Brown said the case could be a turning point in regard to discrimination and they way people are treated throughout the Caribbean.

VACCINE COVERAGE IMPROVING IN JAMAICA—04/25/12
Jamaica is taking steps to improve the vaccine coverage of the nation’s children. According to Dr. Fenton Ferguson, Jamaican Health Minister, 100 percent of children received vaccine coverage for tuberculosis in 2011. Additionally, in that year, 92 percent coverage was obtained for polio, diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. Eighty-eight percent vaccine coverage was achieved for mumps, measles, and rubella. These figures showed improvement from the coverage rates of 2009.

POWELL FIRED AS LEADER OF RADA—04/26/12
Al Powell, who had been the executive director of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, or RADA, was fired from his post. He was dismissed immediately upon an audit of the agency, which found worrisome factors. The audit discovered that there was no documentation of his credentials on file at RADA. Also, the audit concluded that Powell misused the government credit card issued to him. Additionally, Powell hired private attorneys to handle a matter involving the dismissal challenge of a finance director rather than using the legal officer of the Agriculture Ministry. This cost RADA nearly $4 million.

JAMAICANS WHO TRAVEL TO U.S. TO SEE INCOME DISCLOSED—04/27/12
Jamaican individuals who frequently travel to the United States, such as athletes, pilots, and merchants, will see their incomes and savings above US$50,000 disclosed to the U.S. government under a new law. The measure, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), is designed to catch tax avoiders, and it means the U.S. will have more data than the Jamaican government concerning the financial and spending patterns of Jamaicans, even those who do not hold green cards.

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JAMAICAN DIASPORA NEWS
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“HATE-MAIL” TRIAL TO BEGIN—04/22/12
Some of the most prominent and well-known politicians and business people in Jamaica are involved in a trial to be held in a Florida court. In the trial, Jamaican-born Florida lawyer Professor David Rowe will face former information and telecommunications minister of Jamaica Daryl Vaz, in a lawsuit arising from so-called “hate-mail” that allegedly libeled Vaz and other individuals. Rose could also face additional lawsuits from P.J. Patterson, Audley Shaw, Bruce Golding, and others, who were alleged to have been libeled in the widely circulated e-mail that claimed the officials committed bribery, money laundering, and corruption and had close connections with criminals.

CRICKET MATCH TO MARK JAMAICA’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY—04/23/12
The Jamaica 50 cricket match is one of several official events scheduled to mark the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence in the United Kingdom. The match was launched at the Kia Oval in Kensington, South London and was patronized by the Jamaican High Commission and Victoria Mutual Finance (UK) Ltd. The match will feature Jamaican Legends XI versus England Veterans XI in a Twenty20 match. Hundreds of Jamaicans and other Caribbean nationals are expected to attend the event, which is seen as a precursor to the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

JAMAICAN-BORN POET TO WRITE PIECE FOR CULTURAL OLYMPIAD—04/24/12
Ita Gooden, Jamaican-born poet who resides in the United Kingdom, has won the opportunity to write a verse for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Gooden is one of 12 individuals across the UK who have been selected to write a special poem to celebrate the event this summer. Gooden, a nurse and midwife, was selected to represent the West Midlands. The poetry project is sponsored by the National Lottery to focus interest on its investment in sports and the arts. The verses will be showcased at Olympic Park during the 2012 games in London.

RECKORD HONORED IN CHILE—04/25/12
Christopher Reckord, the Bin 26 director and wine contributor to the Jamaica Observer Life section, has been given the “Order of Bernardo O’Higgins” by Chile’s ambassador to Jamaica, Alfredo Garcia. Reckord was honored for his efforts to promote and educate the world about Chilean wines. In his speech conferring the Order on Reckord, Garcia called him a “Renaissance man” and a man who is sensitive to the welfare of his fellow Jamaicans.

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CARIBBEAN NEWS SUMMARY provided by Caribbeantopnews.com
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FUGITIVE BRIT EXTRADITED BY DOMINICAN REPUBLIC—04/21/12

ACTOR SEAN PENN PLANS TO STAY IN HAITI “FOR THE LONG HAUL”—04/22/12

SIX PEOPLE DIE OF CHOLERA IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC—04/23/12

UNITED STATES TO INVESTIGATE DOMINICAN SUGAR ABUSES—04/24/12

TRINIDAD TELEVISION HOST ACCUSED OF BROADCASTING ASSAULT IMAGES—04/25/12

MARRERO, OLDEST FORMER MAJOR LEAGUER, CELEBRATES 101 YEARS—04/26/12
Visit Caribbeantopnews.com for the weekly Caribbean News Summary, Caribbean Events & Announcements and Caribbean Recipes.

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BUSINESS NEWS SUMMARY
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CARIBBEAN AIRLINES TO MAKE JAMAICAN PILOTS REDUNDANT—04/21/12
Caribbean Airlines (CAL), which is owned by Trinidad, plans to make all of the positions of pilots represented by the Jamaican Airline Pilots’ Association (JALPA) redundant in May 2012. Sixty-four of the 75 JAPLPA members work for CAL, which also operates Air Jamaica. CAL issued a statement to advised pilots based in Kingston of the company’s decision. Critics of CAL see the move as an attempt at union-busting by critics.

MANUFACTURERS OPPOSE LEAVING CARICOM—04/24/12
The president of the Jamaica Manufacturers Association (JMA), Brian Pengelley, has warned that leaving the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will not resolve issues related to trade imbalance and that leaving the membership of CARICOM would be a drastic measure that would require serious consideration. Gregory Mair, opposition spokesman on industry, commerce and energy, has questioned the benefits to Jamaica of remaining a member of the Caribbean Community.

EXPO JAMAICA 2012 RECEIVES REGISTRATION FROM ALMOST 400 BUYERS—04/25/12
The buyer recruitment drive conducted by the Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO) has secured the participation of almost 400 local and international buyers for the Expo Jamaica 2012 trade show. According to JAMPRO, 390 buyers from 21 nations will participate. Nearly 200 of the buyers will come from overseas. The record number of buyers recruited from major markets around the world indicates the major appeal of products from Brand Jamaica, said Sancia Bennett, president of JAMPRO.

BEACHES RESORT OWNER EXPLAINS WHY HE HIRES JAMAICANS—04/26/12
Gordon “Butch” Stewart, owner of Beaches Resort, says he has tried to hire local people on Turks and Caicos to work at his resort, but he has had to recruit suitable workers from other locations. He says that recruiting workers from other countries is not a preference, but a necessity. Certain positions must be filled to operate the resort, and if islanders are not willing or able to do the work, he has to find individuals who are. Stewart created a controversy when he said he planned to hire 150 Jamaicans to work in the Turks and Caicos resort, bringing the total number of Jamaicans at the resort to 500.

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CARIBBEAN TECHNOLOGY NEWS SUMMARY provided by Caribbeantopnews.com
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GOVERNMENT IN JAMAICA WANTS EMERGY COST SAVINGS—04/21/12

CARIBBEAN NATIONS BEGIN TO TRANFORM LANDFILLS INTO ENERGY—04/22/12

FIRST MOBILE APP INTRODUCED IN GRENADA—04/26/12

BARBADOS RECEIVES HIGHEST RANKING IN REGION IN INFO TECH REPORT—04/27/12

 

Visit Caribbeantopnews.com for the weekly Caribbean News Summary, Caribbean Events & Announcements and Caribbean Recipes.

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ENTERTAINMENT
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NEW MIX TAPE RELEASED BY VOICEMAIL—04/21/12
Jamaica’s dancehall duet singers Voicemail has released a new mix tape in advance of a new album to be available in the summer of 2012. The mix tape is called “Journey Continues,” and it was mixed by Kurt “The Party Animal” Riley, a popular radio deejay. Kevin Blair of Voicemail says the album is still being fine-tuned, but the duo wanted to keep their fans entertained until the album comes out, so they released the mix tape.

MELDA GRAHAM PROMOTES “OLE TIME” JAMAICAN CULTURE—04/22/12
Melda Graham, a retired teacher living in St. Elizabeth, is a cultural ambassador for Jamaica who wants to impart something of the “ole time” island. She is passionate about educating the public about Jamaican culture wherever she is and uses any opportunity to inform people about Jamaican history. She is aided in her efforts by a collection of artifacts that include a “chimmy” (an enamel potty), an old tailor iron, a clay pot, a Telefunken radio, and a dulcimina grip. Childhood memories fuel her desire to promote the retention of Jamaican cultural practices. She appears at trade shows and other events to communicate her information.

BUSY SIGNAL HONORS HIS ROOTS WITH NEW ALBUM—04/24/12
Jamaican artiste Busy Signal has bone back to his roots with traditional reggae musicon his new album. The album was recorded in Tuff Gong studios in Kingston. It was produced by Shane Brown and Errol Brown and offers songs characterized by hope, love, and liberation in the traditional style.

ASSOCIATION BIDS FAREWELL TO TYRONE BLAKE—04/26/12
Tyrone Blake of Merritone Disco received the respects of the Jamaica Association of Vintage Artistes and Affiliates (JAVAA). With the passing of Blake, another part of the rich musical legacy of Jamaica is gone. Merritone Disco represented a key part of the island’s popular music culture since the 1960s, and the sound system created by Tyrone’s father Val Blake continued to be influential into the present day.

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SPORTS
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JAMAICAN INTERNATIONAL INVITATIONAL GIVE PREVIEW OF LONDON 2012—04/22/12
The Jamaica International Invitational in Kingston will provide those eager for the 2012 Olympics to get a peak at Jamaica’s top athletes. Usain Bolt will participate, along with several Olympic and World champions including Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Asafa Powell. The event will be held in National Stadium on May 5, 2012.

KERRON STEWART WINS—04/23/12
Olympic bronze medalist Kerron Stewart became the fastest Jamaican woman in the 2012 season in the 200 meters with a win at the War Eagle Invitational track and field meet in Alabama. Stewart ran the distance in 22.79 seconds. Jovanee Jarrett and Eric Keddo of Jamaica also won their events, Jarret with a long jump of 6.60 meters, and Keddo in the male 110-meter hurdles with a time of 13.97 seconds.

JAMAICAN ATHLETES IN PENN RELAYS HONORED IN NYC—04/24/12
Jamaican athletes on their way to competing in the Penn Relays Carnival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were treated to a welcome lunch at The Dream Restaurant in New York City. The restaurant is owned by Mark Clarke of Trelawny, Jamaica. Over 50 athletes are representing Jamaica at the 118th staging of the Penn Relays Carnival.

WOMEN WIN OVER SRI LANKA—04/26/12
Shanel Daley and Anisa Mohammed steered the West Indies Women to a victory over Sri Lanka in the first one-day international meet at Kensington Oval. The West Indies Women had an 88-run win over the Sri Lankan team, with Daley making 63 of 97 balls and the Windies Women made a 228 for six off their 50 overs. Taylor and Daley added 68 for the second wicket, providing the best platform, and Mohammed took five wickets for 34 runs from her 10 overs.

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JAMAICAN JOBS
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PROJECT MANAGER

VICE PRINCIPAL

PRODUCTION MANAGER

FORESTRY DEPARTMENT SALES AND MARKETING

MARKETING AND PR SPECIALIST

 
Visit JAMAICAN JOBS.

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DEVOTIONAL
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“Not My Will, But Thine, Be Done”

At some time or the other we have all heard it. To pray effectively is to pray in the will of God. If we regard God as our Source of the good and necessary things in life, as well as we should, James tells us there are two reasons we do have the things we need: “Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:2b-3, KJV). Bible Expositor John Gill states that to ask amiss is to ask “not in the faith of a divine promise; nor with thankfulness for past mercies; nor with submission to the will of God; nor with a right end, to do good to others, and to make use of what might be bestowed, for the honour of God, and the interest of Christ.” To that end some of us end our prayers with the words of Jesus, “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42b). But just exactly does that mean?

The life of Jesus while He was on earth was a pattern of wanting to do only what God wanted done. To His disciples He affirmed, “My meat [purpose] is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work” (John 4:32). In other words, His sole purpose was to do the will of God (see also Hebrews 10:5-10), and everything about Him and His life lined up with that purpose. Even when facing death by what was then the most cruel of methods, crucifixion, He yielded Himself to the will of the Father. Fast forward over two thousand years later and there you are in prayer. You have a laundry list of petitions of things you really need. Do you trust your own judgement or do you trust God that what He wants for you transcends anything that you could ask or imagine for yourself (Ephesians 3:20)? It is not easy to yield our will to that of the Father; just ask Jesus. His Gethsename struggle was of such that “there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:43-44). Yet for those who desire to be in the nucleus of God’s will, is there really any other way to pray? The flesh that seeks to satisfy itself is constantly at war with the Spirit that strives to do the will of God (Galatians 5:17).

Some of God’s finest statesmen of our times have said much on the issue of praying in the will of God. Pastor and author A.W.Tozer puts it this way, “To pray effectively we must want what God wants-that and that only is to pray in the will of God.” Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, late Anglican dean of Johannesburg, reminds us, “You are not drawn to God primarily for your own benefit but for His.” Evangelist R.A.Torrey states, “The chief purpose of prayer is that God may be glorified in the answer.” And here we are thinking it is primarily about us and our needs.

“Not my will, but thine, be done.” Seven important words we need to bear in mind the next time we come to our Lord in prayer. While He can work all things for our good, it is never is about us; it must always be about Him, His will done His way in our lives.

 

 

FIRST ‘MISS BLACK FRANCE’ PAGEANT NOT SO WELCOME IN PARIS

Source: French24.com

By Brande Victorian

In America we’re used to events, competitions, and celebrations that openly recognize black beauty but in France that type of movement isn’t nearly as widespread or as accepted. As the country’s capital city of Paris prepares to host its first ever ‘Miss Black France’ pageant tomorrow, questions over the necessity and the effect this event could have on race relations are brewing.

Despite having the full approval of the French Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN), the organization’s founder and president Patrick Lozès said the pageant is hardly “progressive.”

“This logic is detrimental to the values of French society,” he said. “If I think that there are not enough Black people in the most prestigious schools and companies, am I going to go create establishments exclusively reserved for Blacks?”

Historian Pascal Blanchard, a specialist in immigration at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, agrees and went so far as to call the initiative “stupid” and “dangerous.”

“I know that in the US, there are ethnic beauty contests. The fact that they’re tolerated doesn’t change my mind,” he said. “Anytime that anyone, no matter where in the world, talks to me about a contest reserved for a specific racial category, I hit the roof!”

Lozès went a little off center when he talked about concerns that the pageant could make people more defensive considering the country is on the brink of receiving results from the first round of it’s presidential election, saying:

“I’m afraid that all of that will make French people even more defensive at a time when the National Front is more popular than ever. It’s a contest that stipulates that white women are not welcome, which is very disturbing. This initiative could be perceived as a hostile event that will further erode national unity.

“Everything possible must be done so that these people recognize themselves as French, and not as Black people living in France,” he added. “We can’t start having ethnically exclusive contests if our ultimate goal is to have all-inclusive national contests. It’s a serious strategic error.”

I hardly think the contest expresses the sentiment that white women are not welcome but the point of presenting a united French nationalist front in the midst of recognizing black women is an interesting one. That’s all promoter Frederic Royer wants in the first place:

“The purpose of this beauty contest is to shine a light on the many Black women in this country who are rarely given any media attention,” he said. “The Miss France competition is not nearly representative enough of modern France.”

That’s a point non-black women would simply never understand.

Do you think naysayers have a point about the downsides of the pageant?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

 

CARIBBEAN NEWS SUMMARY for the week ending April 27th, 2012

by admin

FUGITIVE BRIT EXTRADITED BY DOMINICAN REPUBLIC—04/21/12
Michael Brown, the fugitive multi-millionaire fraudster, has been extradited to Britain by officials in the Dominican Republic. Brown was arrested in January 2012 in Punta Cana where he had lived under the name of Darren Nally. Brown is accused of defrauding four clients out of $62 million and was sentenced to seven years in jail in 2008 in absentia after his fraud conviction in the United Kingdom.

ACTOR SEAN PENN PLANS TO STAY IN HAITI “FOR THE LONG HAUL”—04/22/12
American actor Sean Penn is no longer living in a tent in Haiti, surrounded by people displaced by the 2010 earthquake, but he has not lost interest in the condition of the country and its people as it tries to rebuild. Penn says he has put down roots in the country, making it his second home. His role has evolved from leading a group of volunteers to becoming a member of the president’s advisory panel and addressing investors as a representative of Haiti. Penn is now an ambassador-at-large for President Michel Martelly. He is the first non-Haitian to receive this title.

SIX PEOPLE DIE OF CHOLERA IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC—04/23/12
According to health officials in the Dominican Republic, six people are dead after being sick with cholera in a village in the northern part of the country. They are investigating the new outbreak of the disease, which has been attributed to rain-damaged sewer pipes. While hundreds of individuals sought medical treatment after the announcement of the deaths, only 17 remain in the hospital. Health care workers are looking for new cases of cholera and disinfecting the drinking water in the region.

UNITED STATES TO INVESTIGATE DOMINICAN SUGAR ABUSES—04/24/12
Investigators from the United States Department of Labor plan to investigate allegations of forced labor in the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic. According to the U.S. Embassy, the Labor Department’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs will partner with the government of the Dominican Republic to investigate charges brought by a Roman Catholic priest, Christopher Hartley, who worked with individuals in the Dominican sugar industry. Hartley says the major growers tolerate forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor. Most sugar workers in the country come from Haiti.

TRINIDAD TELEVISION HOST ACCUSED OF BROADCASTING ASSAULT IMAGES—04/25/12
Ian Alleyne, a popular television host in Trinidad and Tobago, has been charged with a violation of the nation’s sexual offenses law. Alleyne, who hosts “Crime Watch,” is charged with using images of an attack on a child in his TV broadcast. This is a violation of the country’s Sexual Offenses Act. Alleyne is also charged with resisting arrest.

MARRERO, OLDEST FORMER MAJOR LEAGUER, CELEBRATES 101 YEARS—04/26/12
Conrado Marrero, the oldest living former big league baseball player, is celebrating his 101st birthday in Cuba. Although he is hard of hearing and blind and has been confined to a wheelchair since breaking a hip in 2011, he still remembers playing for the Washington Senators in the United States. He is known as “The Peasant of Laberinto,” the farm in Central Cuba where he grew up. In his major league days, he was known as “Connie,” and he speaks with pride of his years playing baseball with the Senators.

ATTORNEY HOPES MYRIE CASE WILL RESULT IN CHANGES—04/24/12
Michelle Brown, a Jamaican lawyer, is hoping that the case of Shanique Myrie will end discriminatory practices in the Caribbean region. Myrie has brought suit against the government of Barbados in the Caribbean Court of Justice for an incident occurring at the Barbados airport in which she alleges discrimination. Brown said the case could be a turning point in regard to discrimination and they way people are treated throughout the Caribbean.

VACCINE COVERAGE IMPROVING IN JAMAICA—04/25/12
Jamaica is taking steps to improve the vaccine coverage of the nation’s children. According to Dr. Fenton Ferguson, Jamaican Health Minister, 100 percent of children received vaccine coverage for tuberculosis in 2011. Additionally, in that year, 92 percent coverage was obtained for polio, diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. Eighty-eight percent vaccine coverage was achieved for mumps, measles, and rubella. These figures showed improvement from the coverage rates of 2009.

POWELL FIRED AS LEADER OF RADA—04/26/12
Al Powell, who had been the executive director of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, or RADA, was fired from his post. He was dismissed immediately upon an audit of the agency, which found worrisome factors. The audit discovered that there was no documentation of his credentials on file at RADA. Also, the audit concluded that Powell misused the government credit card issued to him. Additionally, Powell hired private attorneys to handle a matter involving the dismissal challenge of a finance director rather than using the legal officer of the Agriculture Ministry. This cost RADA nearly $4 million.

JAMAICANS WHO TRAVEL TO U.S. TO SEE INCOME DISCLOSED—04/27/12
Jamaican individuals who frequently travel to the United States, such as athletes, pilots, and merchants, will see their incomes and savings above US$50,000 disclosed to the U.S. government under a new law. The measure, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), is designed to catch tax avoiders, and it means the U.S. will have more data than the Jamaican government concerning the financial and spending patterns of Jamaicans, even those who do not hold green cards.