Gov. Paterson Impresses Diverse Audience at Brooklyn Town Hall Meeting: Commands Moment, Impactful on State Budget Crisis
A confident Governor Paterson was well-received at a Town Hall meeting about the New York State budget at Brooklyn's Borough Hall on Monday and no one can accuse him of sugar-coating the economic message. Paterson began with a brief historical analysis of how governments have changed the names of financial problems from Poland's Crisis of 1899 to the Great Depression of the 1930s to what is today called a "recession." The point of his lesson was that whatever it's called, the pain is the same. "A recession is next door," said the governor. "When you're the one who's lost a ...
Coalition Campaigns to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering
Senator Eric T. Schneiderman and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries joined forces with a statewide coalition today to announce a new organizing campaign plan to end prison-based gerrymandering in New York State before the 2010 Census. The coalition's goal is to organize across the state to pass Senator Schneiderman's bill that would require New York State to count incarcerated persons in their home communities-rather than in the districts where they are incarcerated-for purposes of drawing legislative district lines. If passed, it would be the first law in the nation to count prisoners in their home communities for districting purposes. "It's an absolute injustice that ...
Call Them Phenomenal, THESE DAUGHTERS of TUBMAN
"Freedom or die a slave!," declared Harriet Tubman (1819/20-1913) who freed herself and 300 others from enslavement in the mid-19th century. Tubman's legacy resounds today in the lives of heirs who move unrestricted and make choices with few constraints. Call them daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, aunts, educators, nurses, doctors, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, bakers, filmmakers, artists, chefs, librarians, homemakers, landowners, students, realtors, musicians, even First Ladies - in roles nonexistent for women of color in America at the time of Harriet Tubman's birth. Call them liberators, revolutionaries, strategists, rainmakers and deep thinkers (as Tubman was), qualities considered "uncharacteristic" for Black women even a little ...
Where to Count Prisoners Leads Concerns at Congressional Hearing on Census
Issue Impact Redistricting and Federal Funds Where prisoners are counted as living determines both electoral districts as well as how many federal dollars are available for everything from job creation to food stamps and other human needs. With 75% of prisoners in upstate New York coming from seven zip codes in New York City, it was an area of special concern at the congressional hearing of The Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee held at Brooklyn's Borough Hall this past Monday. [caption id="attachment_1454" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Witnesses on Census couting of group quarters and readiness: Census Director Dr. Robert Groves; Robert Goldenkoff, ...
Africans in the Americas-Parts 1 & 2
Historian John Henrik Clarke was fond of saying, "History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day." As history is now striking the millennium, it is as good a time as ever to take a brief look at Africans in the Americas during the past three millennia. The first explorers from Africa arrive on the north and south equatorial currents spanning the Atlantic Ocean between the African and American continents. Historian Ivan Van Sertima points to these forces as a natural conveyor belt between West Africa and the Americas. [caption id="attachment_1321" align="alignright" width="258" caption="Front view: ...
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Cheikh Anta Diop Celebrated
THE GREAT AFRICAN SCHOLARS DR. YOSEF BEN JOCHANNAN (“DR. BEN”), SISTER...
View From Here: Gentrification
“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” is the new exhibit...
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Everything But the Moan
We once visited a stockyard in Sioux City Iowa and spoke to some of the cattlemen...
View From Here: Governor Paterson on the Edge
Governor David Paterson’s problems are entirely of his own making. Interfering...
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“Conversations: Embracing Our African Roots….”
Why is it that in the 21st Century conflicts in African countries are still often portrayed as “tribal wars” in Western media and in some cases Africans are still referred to as “tribesmen”? Why do major media see no need to balance coverage of turmoil in African countries with some of the success stories that have also emerged? How... [Read more]
P.U.R.G.E. EXPANDING MISSION TO ELIMINATE GUN-VIOLENCE
2010 Speak-Out Campaign Launched from Calvary Fellowship AME Church Rest-in-peace elegies and images embellish exterior walls of buildings throughout New York City. To some these are fitting work-of-art memorials to lives once lived. But to so many others, like members of the anti-violence organization PURGE, founded in 1993 by community activist... [Read more]
View From Here – Help For Haiti
In this most calamitous of human tragedies in Haiti, the further devastation of people who already start from scratch, we’ve seen a global response of nations and individuals. If you’re in the search and rescue profession anyplace on the planet, or a medical professional able to travel and driven by a need to heal, Haiti is the Big One,... [Read more]
People Didn’t Believe This was The Big One
By Rachel Pratt and Garry Pierre-Pierre PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Marjorie Louis was sitting in her kitchen eating dinner when she felt the house shaking but she didn’t get up. “I didn’t think it wasn’t going to be serious…and was waiting for it to stop. But I noticed it wasn’t stopping and finally tried to get... [Read more]
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