GEORGIA SLAUGHTER-HUGHES is Riding Easy at 97 with the Help of Family & Friends

Do you have a “bucket list”?    Georgia “Auntie” Slaughter-Hughes, who recently celebrated her 97th birthday, has one filled with wishes and chutzpah.  Last Christmas, in a conversation with one of her nephews, she revealed her lifelong desire to ride a motorcycle, and he did everything to make it happen. So Saturday, August 7, Mrs. Slaughter-Hugjes fulfilled her bucket list dream — as you can see in the photo, thanks to the kindness of Bro. Kenneth Washington, a local biker, and a member of Bridge Street AWME Church. Auntie is still very active at her Stuyvesant Heights Christian  Church  and  with the seniors at the church’s  senior center.   She says she most enjoys  spending time with her family, especially the youngest members. But the biking was a major highlight of her long life. Of her experience, she exclaimed, “I GOT MY WISH!”, “I GOT MY  WISH! God is so good”! “I am so thankful to the persons who made it possible for me to have this wonderful opportunity,” she added. “Thanks to all who came out to root me on. I didn’t realize that there was so many people who cared about me. I am so blessed (to have this experience, and for having my niece, Charlene Smith, who has been taking such good care of me since the passing of my husband 6 years ago.   Ride on, Mrs. Slaughter-Hughes. Ride on.

Primary Stands in 10th Congressional Race: Towns Withdraws Challenge to Powell’s Petitions

What a difference a week makes! In the past seven days, Kevin Powell’s tax problems were revealed, Ed Towns’ returned from a congressional delegation overseas, and both parties found themselves in court.
First things first: Congressman Ed Towns campaign withdrew a challenge to Kevin Powell’s petitions on Wednesday. Bernard Alter, attorney for the Towns campaign, stood before Honorable Michelle Weston and said, “Your Honor, on behalf of my client, we wish to withdraw this matter.” Judge Weston asked Powell campaign attorney Ezra Glazer if he had any objections. “No, Your Honor,” said Glazer. With those few words, the case was dismissed.
The Towns campaign change-of-heart came after grueling testimony solicited from  two  young Powell campaign volunteers on Tuesday afternoon. “It was a tough moment for our volunteers, who are in their 20′s. They were shaken up,” said Dan Campanelli, Powell campaign manager. “We didn’t pay anyone. They are volunteers, young people trying to get involved with democracy.”
Gene Johnson, Deputy Campaign Mgr., braced himself for hours of testimony on Wednesday morning. After a welcome break in court proceedings, Johnson was visible relieved.
After the decision, Alter made this statement: “We tried and didn’t succeed. We will now put it in the hands of the electorate. We will let the voters decide.” Asked why the Towns campaign withdrew, Alter said, “It is in the interest of democracy.”
Campanelli said, “Kevin Powell is pleased justice has been served. We are looking forward to focusing our campaign back on the streets where we need to be.” Powell gave this statement: ” This failed fishing expedition was nothing more than an attempt to distract the good people of the 10th Congressional District from what isn’t happening here in Brooklyn and hasn’t happened in 27 years under Congressman Ed Towns: a discussion about how the government can work with the people to bring jobs, education and community healing to those most in need.”
On Sunday, Congressman Towns arrived fresh from a whirlwind delegation to Afghanistan, Turkey, Germany and Israel. On WWRL Monday,  Towns stated the trip’s purpose was to “visit with the troops and look at the contracts. There are a lot of contracts. There should be some question as to whether they are providing the services they are supposed to provide. Also, it seems people are getting the contracts and not providing the work or doing what they are supposed to do.”
November 2009, Chairman Towns wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates requesting “a list of all current Department of Defense contracts that have been awarded for work being performed in Iraq and Afghanistan.” There is no indication the Oversight Committee received the requested information. Yet, upon his return, Towns expressed optimism about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. He stated, “It is only a matter of time before General Patraeus has things under control.
This is in sharp contrast to Towns’ vote in favor of a March 2010 resolution put forth by Rep. Dennis Kucinich calling for President Obama to end the U.S. involvement with Afghanistan by years end. Towns was one of 65 U.S. Representatives who voted in favor of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. On WWRL, Towns admitted voting against the war, but said, “After going and seeing it, I sure don’t know what victory means, but I think they should make life better for the people of Afghanistan.” C
Last Friday brought news of Kevin Powell’s tax issues. Published reports stated Powell owes the IRS an estimated several hundred thousand dollars. In a published statement, Powell explained how he got into financial trouble and said he is negotiating with the IRS regarding the actual amount due.

View From Here: Jim Webb is Right – Diversity Programs Are Too Diverse

Virginia Senator Jim Webb has come under fire for his Wall Street Journal article, “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege”, where he argues that  “America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all ‘people of color’ are unfair. They should end.” 
We’re glad Jim Webb said it because he’s absolutely correct.  In a former career in the moving industry, we would see government contracts go to large companies owned by white Cubans who qualified as  “minority” contractors with economic resources far outdistancing their African-American competitors.   Sometimes you would go into a bid conference and see a list of eligible minorities and wonder, “What the hell is going on here?” 
This is not redress because someone doesn’t like your color or ethnicity, you have to apply to another door for that.  These programs grew out of the theft of services from African-Americans forebears held in captivity and worked as slave labor.  These programs are for their African-American heirs, and not every non-white person from across the planet.
As Webb says, “The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top, still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.”
In the commentary about Senator Webb’s article, there is an attempt to both raise ire of progressives and immigrants at the notion of ending diversity programs and at the same time use “Myth of White Privilege” as a way to get African-Americans to dismiss the argument before they hear it, because they know it ain’t no myth, but it does put all white folks in the same basket and they don’t all belong there, at least not all the time. 
Webb says, “In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.  How so?
“Lyndon Johnson’s initial program for affirmative action was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions in order to eliminate “the badges of slavery.” Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socioeconomic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.
 And despite the headline, Webb does not deny white privilege, he just does not call it that.  Instead, he acknowledges the existence of a ruling “white elite”, observing that “the Old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves.”  
He then goes on to note other markers of the stratification of white society such as a 1980-2000 survey of college degrees obtained by white Baptists, 18.4%; Irish Protestants, 21.8% and compared it to the “national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.”
We would add that the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances shows that “the wealthiest 1 percent of families owns roughly 34.3% of the nation’s net worth, the top 10% of families owns over 71%, and the bottom 40% of the population owns way less than 1%.”  
Webb says, “Policymakers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policymakers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus, nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business start-ups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.
“Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.”
There is nothing in the senator’s article that suggests anything but the acknowledgement of the debt due African-Americans and the necessity of continuing programs that remediate it.  Immigrants should not be able to come and make claim to remedies for a wrong — slavery, Jim Crow and all the rest — that they had not endured.  Yes, other discrimination exists, but find other remedies.  The government programs for “minority” contractors should be for African-Americans because their ancestors had their human capital taken and invested in building the roads and ports and growing and harvesting the crops that built this nation.  That’s the work these programs were supposed to compensate for.  The problem is that when they were devised, lawmakers could not bring themselves to  enacting programs that were just for African-Americans.  As a result, they increased the attraction of the United States, while at the same time perpetuated the weakening of a significant portion of its intellectual and human capital and now they complain about immigration. 
Maybe the country will come to the point of looking at the world from a global perspective, knowing that we can only participate in this galloping race to the future, by paradoxically turning inward and strengthening our core human capacity so that we can engage other nations with a citizenry that has fully-realized its human potential.  So let’s take another look at the diversity programs, of course being mindful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis Tear Down Fences on Broadway

Time is running out to check out Denzel Washington’s powerful performance in the hit revival of Fences.

His acclaimed role as patriarch Troy, in the first Broadway revival of August Wilson’s classic drama, has earned him amazing critical raves, sold-out performances, and a prestigious Tony Award for Best Actor in a Drama. Fences is running at the Cort Theater until July 11.

After a five-year lapse from the New York theater, the two-time Oscar winner (Glory and Training Day) and New York metro area native has returned triumphantly to the stage. Now, its under the direction of Kenny Leon, who won acclaim bringing Sean Combs to Broadway in the Tony winning revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun. Leon, now Broadway’s leading African-American director, was mentored by both Wilson and Lloyd Richards, Wilson’s longtime director who headed Yale University’s drama school and directed the original production of “Raisin in the Sun.” Leon, the director of August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” of plays at the Kennedy Center, had been nominated for Tony Awards for August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” and “Radio Golf.” Through his brilliant production of “Fences,” the play picked up a coveted Tony Award for “Best Play Revival.”
Weeks before the star-studded opening of “Fences,” I found myself sitting at a roundtable interview at Sardi’s Restaurant with Washington and the cast. It gave me flashbacks to attending a special 1987 press dinner with August Wilson, James Earl Jones, director Lloyd Richards and the original cast of “Fences” at the Alconquin Hotel, another legendary theater gathering space.

I had covered Washington during his New York Off-Broadway theater days at the Negro Ensemble Company and Woodie King’s New Federal Theater. Back in the late 70′s and early 80′s, Washington was considered a major New York theater actor. He was a leading actor in high profile Off -Broadway productions like his Obie Award -winning performance in the Negro Ensemble Company production of Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play, which earned a Pulitzer Prize (he revived his role on film in “A Soldier’s Story”). Portraying Malcolm X in Laurence Holder’s “When The Chickens Come Home to Roost,” produced by Woodie King, mesmerized audiences, including a young Spike Lee, who later cast Washington in his Oscar-nominated role of Malcolm X.

Yet his Broadway turns in the Ron Milner-Woodie King production of “Checkmates” and later in the drama “Julius Caesar” received little accolades.

The idea to come back to the New York stage began when Hollywood producer Scott Rudin brought Washington a screenplay of “Fences” and tried to persuade him to make the film. Instead, it compelled Washington to read August Wilson’s play.

“I went and read the play and cried. Then laughed. It’s a great, great, great, great play,” recalled Washington, casually dressed in jeans and a tee shirt and still strikingly handsome in his fifties.

“Very rarely to you get to work and interpret the work of a master. A grand master. And August Wilson is one. He is Eugene O’Neill. He is Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. It’s a masterpiece,” Washington stated. “I’ve been around. I’ve read a lot of plays and screenplays. “Knowing he’s gone and I fortunately got a chance to meet him. You can feel him. His plays are spiritual.”

The international movie star likes his new role being back on the New York stage. “What I love about theater and what I love about it now, given the position that I’m in, is that it gives me a chance to be one of the guys,” he stressed. “I’m another member of the cast. I have a role to play. This is what I love.”

“This is how I started as an actor in the theater right up the block at Lincoln Center,” he explained. “When I left New York in 1982, I was doing a Pulitzer Prize winning play. I had just done When The Chickens Come Home to Roost and followed that up with A Soldier’s Play, which won a Pulitzer Prize. I left to go to LA to do what I thought was a 13-week job called St. Elsewhere. Four kids and 25 years whatever years later, I started working my way back. I never really felt that LA was my home. New York is my home. Now we have a home here.”

Although at 55, he is a similar age to James Earl Jones, when Jones created Troy on Broadway, Washington brings a different type of theatrical magnetism to the role.
“They are specific about this African American family, but the themes are universal. The husband and wife relationship, the bitterness of the husband about not being successful in life, dreams deferred, and the father and son relationship,” said Washington. “All of those themes-black, white, blue, green and yellow-we all relate to them.”
Viola Davis, who portrays wife Rose, was undeterred about possible comparisons with actress Mary Alice, who was in the original production. Davis is a Broadway star and August Wilson favorite. She won a Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Wilson’s King Hedley II and grabbed Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for his drama Seven Guitars.

“It’s always easier when people have no expectations, because then you are always going to be surprised,” said Davis, who believes the audience has to be open. “You have to come with a blank slate and then you have to allow whatever the actors are doing to infuse you, to move you.”
The Julliard trained actress has been appearing in TV and films since 1996. She’s been featured in director’s Steven Soderberg’s Traffic and Syriana and Jim Sheridan’s Get Rich or Die Tryin.’ Also, she’s been popular with Black directors like Denzel Washington’s Antoine Fisher, George Wolfe’s Nights in Rodanthe and Debbie Allen’s Lifetime film The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life is Not a Fairy Tale.
Yet, it was her heartbreaking performance in the film Doubt as the mother of the lone African American child in a strict Catholic school in the sixties that earned her national acclaim. The scene stealing performance with Meryl Streep scooped up Oscar, Golden Globe, SAG and Critics Choice Awards nominations. Audiences can currently see her on HBO’s United States of Tara and the Tom Cruise movie Knight and Day. This summer, she plays Julia Roberts’ best friend in the highly awaited Eat Pray Love.
Returning to the work of August Wilson and creating such a poignant performance as Rose in Fences has won the actress raves and another Tony Award. “We all have a little Wilsonisque in us,” explained Davis. “Because it’s our experience. It an African-American experience. Our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers our grandparents.”

Through The Night Will Touch You!!

If you ever wondered what Black men struggle with in our communities, wonder no more. Go and see Through The Night at the Riverside Theatre. This newest play written and performed by the talented, versatile Daniel Beaty, is a story that lets you know some of the plights that Black men live through on a daily basis.
Beaty portrays six Black men and four Black women and does each character with such a heartfelt realism you will surely be touched by the problems and distress which plague their hearts. Beaty decided to write this play after reading a National Urban League report about the “State of Black Males in the U.S.” The report painted a bleak picture of a future filled with failure and incarceration. Beaty’s characters have issues, but also find ways to survive through their issues. The beauty of Beaty’s writing is that all his characters are intricately connected. There’s Mr. Rogers, an owner of a health food store in the ghetto; his intelligent and sensitive 10-year-old son Eric; his wife Sarah who believes in his dram of this business; his ex-con employee Dre; Dre’s pregnant girlfriend Kim; Twon, a neighbor who is graduating from high school and is going to Morehouse; his mother; the neighborhood church  pastor Bishop, his wife Ellen, their son Isaac and his boyfriend-Allen.
The story that Beaty weaves so well will have you mesmerized. From the opening scene, this incredible playwright creates characters that are so layered. As he changes persona, everything transforms into the specific character-body language, tone, voice, use of language and facial expressions. Now, some may say this is a given for any actor, but when you experience Beaty’s delivery you will realize he takes creating and performing characters to an elevated level.
I’ve tried to whet your appetite, but haven’t shared the meat of the production because the flavor of his poetry, singing and acting is a theatrical fare you need to savor first hand. Just know you will laugh a lot, you will cry some, but you will be completely engrossed from the beginning to the end.
The show is playing four more performances on June 6, 7 and 8. This is a show that not only shares the struggles of Black men, but their triumphs and the extremely critical role that a strong, loving, supportive Black mother or wife can play in the life of a Black man.
To buy tickets call 212-870-6784. This show is appropriate for teens and older. This play is powerfully directed by Charles Randolph-Wright. The show is being presented as part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Riverside Theatre and the 46th Anniversary of the New Heritage Theatre Group.

Black Shows And Performers Grab Tony Nominations
The Tony Award nominations are out and African-American productions and performers are faring very well. FELA, the musical produced by Jay-Z, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and Alicia Keys is up for Best Musical; Best Book of a Musical-Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones; Best Direction of a Musical-Bill T. Jones; Best Choreography of a Musical-Bill T. Jones; Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical-Sahr Ngaujah; Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical-Lillias White; Best Scenic Design of a Musical-Marina Draghici; Best Costume Design of a Musical-Marina Dragnici; Best Lighting Design of a Musical-Robert Wierzel; Best Sound Design of a Musical-Robert Kaplowitz; and Best Orchestration of a Musical-Aaron Johnson.
Fences got 10 nominations which included: Best Revival of a Play; Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play-Denzel Washington; Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play-Viola Davis; Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play-Stephen McKinley Henderson; Best Direction of a Play-Kenny Leon; Best Costume Design of a Play-Constanza Romero; Best Scenic Design of a Play-Santo Loquasto; Best Lighting Design of a Play-Brian MacDevitt; Best Sound Design of a Play-Acme Sound Partners; and Best Original Score Written for the Theatre-Branford Marsalis.
Memphis-received eight Tony nominations: Best Musical; Best Book of a Musical; Best Original Score Written for the Theatre; Best Direction of a Musical; Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical-Chad Kimball; Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical-Montego Glover; and Best Orchestra.
In the plays Race and Superior Donuts African-American actors David Alan Grier and Jon Michael Hill respectively both received Tony nominations in the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.
The Tony Awards will air live on CBS, Sunday, June 13 from 8pm-11pm. Watch and root for your favorites.

View From Here: Terror in the Gulf

The oil gushing from a well a mile underwater is the result of  an amazing feat of engineering that private industry has achieved and only they have the engineering technology, robotic submersibles working at the drill head and controlled from a room in Houston, Texas for one example, to even begin to stop it.   The Obama Administration has very smart people giving advice and support as they work their way through the unique and “unprepared for” engineering predicament their expertise and technological hubris has led to.
This piercing of the earth and continuing another 35,000ft. through rock to tap a toxic substance that Mother Nature surely thought she had safely tucked away, has allowed us to see oil in its purest form-as a destroyer of life.  It is akin to an underwater radioactive bomb, destroying life throughout the water column and a way of life all along the coastline. 
We see independent reports with estimates ranging between 25,000-90,000 barrels of oil a day being released and spewing into the Gulf.  Much of it is being dispersed into droplets too small to see, too small to rise to the top but able to be caught in ocean currents fouling life cycles from plankton to people and from the wetlands of Louisiana on to Florida and possibly around and up the East Coast.
President Obama has to bring a full light on the situation in the form of an official revision upward of the estimate of the gusher and a radical recalibration in the level of his response such that the perception of government is changed.   If current efforts, what the industry calls a “top kill” fail to stop the discharge, Obama can keep his cool but he’ll have to do it at a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting where they treat the Gulf Coast as a third front for all appropriate resources.  Have Drones monitor the oil above and below the surface and put the images on YouTube. Break protocol on nuclear subs and announce there’s one in the area full of scientists.  Call in the Marines.  Have troop trucks on the highways headed for the coast.  Show them marching down to the shoreline with shovels, oil-absorbent material and buckets of Dawn.  Let the debate be if the administration went “over the top” in its response to protecting the coastline and the nation’s security.  Less than that and the possibility exists that Obama will spend the rest of his presidency in explanations instead of cheers.

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View From Here: Henry Louis Gates and His Sad Sense of History

What a strange history lesson Henry Louis Gates gives in an April 23 New York Times Op Ed.  He begins “Thanks to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics – the fact that he is African-American and president – Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.”

First of all, Barack Obama is not an African-American in the sense that it is being used here, as a descendant of people held as slaves.  His family history and his genetics did not pass through the physical and emotional trauma sustained for several hundred years.

Secondly, Gates says “There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.”

And for the rest of the long piece, he spends his time making the argument that it was Africans who sold other Africans to the slavers and therefore the blame for slavery cannot be attributed only to the Europeans which makes the question of who to go to for reparations such a problem for Gates.   What nonsense is this?  When there is a civil lawsuit for compensation, no one goes after the perp with no money.  The Africans may have been paid with some golden trinkets, and maybe African-Americans could make a case for dual citizenship and special trade opportunities, but the true wealth of the slave trade was made here, stateside.  This is where the human capital of Africans working as slaves was invested.

Before electricity and oil, it was the slave who supplied the energy to clear the land, build the roads and load the ships.  and perform all other things necessary to bring a nation into being on land that had been stolen from a decimated indigenous people in their first encounter with the Europeans.

Never mentioned in Gates’ piece are the 60% of the nation’s exports that were slave-produced or the banks, still existing, that handled that money and profited on those deals. He doesn’t speak of how the money made from slavery and the taxes on that money nursed this nation through the agricultural age and into the age of industry.  That’s the debt that’s owed.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Gates chose this time in the nation’s history for his musings.  There is an ugly part of the American nature showing itself, carrying guns to political rallies that bear an eerie resemblance to the pictures of the crowds at the lynching parties from a time not all that long ago.  In Arizona, a new law  says if a law enforcement officer thinks someone is not a citizen, that person can be stopped and asked to show identification papers, like in the old movies with the Nazi street patrols.  This is not the time to forget or excuse what evil ordinary people are capable of.  It is a time to hold them accountable, lest they do it again.

On Healing: It’s All About Love … and Natural Spaces

Have you ever had to do something for someone you loved that you never imagined? Going out of your way and exhausting every option, draining yourself physically and emotionally? Stopping only for a second at a time to think about your actions and if they will ever really make a difference? Doubting that what you’re doing is right? I had the honor of meeting a man who has: Rupert Isaacson, the UK-born, now Texas resident behind the upcoming PBS documentary The Horse Boy – A Memoir of Healing based on Isaacson’s book of the same title. 

Isaacson’s story is intense.  It gives outsiders an inside look on Isaacson and his wife’s struggle to cope with his son Rowan’s autism, and seeking treatment for it. When he sees his son connecting with a neighbor’s horse, it sparks an idea: “What if I take him to a place where horses and healing come together?”  
In asking him some of the obvious questions like What did your wife say? How did Rowan feel? What did you expect? , we learned that the answer was also obvious yet universal:  “It’s all about love, and you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do.”
So this man, his wife and child traveled halfway around the world (to Mongolia) for some healing and did it with faith and love. During their travels, they experienced rough times, conquered long journeys and most importantly stuck together and made it through. They accomplished what they set out to do.
But I couldn’t help but wonder how others in MY community can seek this healing in faraway lands.  In other words, we just can’t up and go.  Lack of funds is the primary reason, but an important and real reason.  So I asked him, “What about us? There are many young children here with autism and other disabilities that we just can’t treat.  Nothing seems to work and parents and caregivers are running out of hope. What can we do?”
Without hesitation, Isaacson, 43, said: “There seems to be a medical and spiritual dilemma in these times. Everyone has their own relationship with who ever or whatever it is that they believe in, and I believe that God takes care of God’s self, so one has immediate access to Him at all times.”  After all, he implied, we are reflections of Him.”
So, are you saying they should seek God? “  I asked.”
Well, if God is who they believe in, they should.  But what I’m saying is you don’t have to travel physically to go on a journey.”
Pointing to our many brownstones surrounding Von King Park Cultural Arts Center where the screening and Q&A took place, earlier this week he said: ” You don’t have to travel across the world, you can do it in your living room, your own space, and STILL make a difference.” Tammy McKnight, Deputy Manager of Von King Park and one of the event coordinators agreed, revealing to us that there are special needs people who work at the park, and feel at home there because they feel they are part of the family, and have something to give. I learned that Rupert, a serious tree hugger who walked down Throop Avenue to pass the time between screening sessions, and identified every plant he passed, spent a lot of his youth on Navajo Reservations.  He loves nature and eco-tone subtropical environments.  As an example of how we can start the process of healing where we are, he indicated that the park’s grass and trees where the interview took place, offered a perfect natural setting. The book is out in stores now and the film will be airing sometime in May 2010 on PBS. Remember, it’s all about love! (Jessica Medina, also known as Lyric Marie, is a junior reporter/writer and editorial assistant for Our Time Press.  She comes to us from the Vannguard Young Adult Internship Program.)    By Jessica Medina (Lyric Marie)

Bios of the Phenomenal Women

MAITEFA ANGAZA (Judith Halsey) is the editor of African Voices, an acclaimed nationally distributed Black literary and visual arts quarterly magazine. She is the author of “Kwanzaa: From Holiday to Every Day,” (Dafina Books, 2007), which climbed to #1 on the amazon.com “Holiday Books” page a few months after its publication. She is the proud former executive editor of the award-winning, now defunct newspaper, The City Sun and also worked as an editor at The Daily Challenge, both New York City publications.
As an independent editor she provides a wide range of services for clients. She has worked on fiction and non-fiction book projects and both print-related and web-based content. Her writing experience includes published and contracted work in publicity, public relations, business, entertainment, health, spirituality, advertising and electoral campaigns. Many of her profiles, features, investigative news articles and arts reviews have been published in Essence, Black Issues Book Review, The Network Journal, The Amsterdam News, Our Time Press, Dance Attitude and other magazines and newspapers. She has been interviewed on cable television and many times on radio.
As a founder, along with veteran news anchor Melba Tolliver, of the annual program, “Heads Up! A Soulful Celebration of Our HAIRitage,” Ms. Angaza helps women of African ancestry to celebrate their natural beauty. This mission is also at the heart of the upcoming film, “In Our Heads about Our Hair,” for which she serves as co-producer.
In addition, Ms. Angaza has provided publicity services, public relations writing and speech-writing to a small roster of clients. Her most recent work has been on behalf of the ARTCURIAN project/gallery launch and the groundbreaking exhibition, “Artists Speaking for the Spirits.” She’s also done publicity writing for Circle of Sisters Expo, the International African Arts Festival, Arabesque Books and other concerns.
Ms. Angaza sits on the board of the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, which showcases the work of women of color filmmakers from around the world through an annual weekend conference and a few small events at other the times of the year. She also serves as a member of the board of African Voices Communications, which, along with publishing African Voices magazine, also offers several school-based and other literature-focused programs throughout the year and produces the annual Ellie Charles Artist Awards, which has honored people such as Toni Morrison, Gordon Parks, Nancy Wilson, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Walter Mosley and others.
As a member of the board of the Kalabash Food Coop, Ms. Angaza is helping to bring sustainable and affordable organic produce and other health-related items to the Central Brooklyn community. She is also a member of the Park Slope Food Coop’s Diversity and Equality Committee. As a founding member of Sumfriends, Ms. Angaza is dedicated to helping to secure financial support from the community for those facing health-related crises. She remains a proud founding member of Andsister, a collective that befriends and supports women in memory of remarkable friends who have made their transition.  kwanzaabook.com

Nayaba Arinde  joined the Amsterdam News in December 2005, as the editor after several years as Senior Reporter at the Daily Challenge, the City’s only Black daily.

Nayaba is a multiple award-winning journalist. She is a three-time A. Philip Randolph Messenger award winner in the civil rights story category. The last three years she has won first place the New York Association of Black Journalists.

Nayaba has hosted radio shows in England: the BBC and KISS FM,  and WBAI in New York.   A published poet and short story writer, Nayaba enjoyed a radio career both in the UK and in US; and as an activist she is no stranger to rallies, protests and grassroots organizing for a host of issues.
After successfully battling breast cancer in 2007, Nayaba is now adjusting to living with MS and raising her two beautiful daughters.
She holds a degree in English/History and Education from Manchester University.  “I love my work: bringing the information to the people, and advocating for our local, national and global community,” said Nayaba. “I feel blessed and privileged to be the editor of this historical newspaper. Imagine the rush-if you would, of not only being able to report the everyday news, but to be able tell stories like the journey and victory of the election of Barack Obama. The joy and pain is ours and we tell our stories in our way in the best way we can.”

AMINISHA BLACK has integrated her parental experiences with human potential trainings and a Masters Degree in Human Services to create a vision and vocation of discovering and unleashing the innate genius of parents and youth.  The mother of five adult children; all professionals, who are community-oriented and socially-conscious, she is also “Nana” to eleven grandchildren.  Aminisha’s interest in parenting was spawned in the process of rearing seven children and continues with observing her grandchildren.  She dedicates her work to her two oldest sons, Pamoja and Amani, who are deceased.
As founder of The Parent’s Notebook, Aminisha developed The Self Esteem Project and Parents Empowered for Student Achievement (PESA), designing and facilitating workshops for parents, parent leaders and staff at the NYC Board of Education, Newark and Irvington, NJ public school systems, Save the Children, Inc., Child Development Support Corp., The Salvation Army, Manhattan Children’s Psychiatric Center, Pius XII and New York Mission Society – to name a few.  In contract with United Way of New York City, she conducted a school-based parent involvement   program in a Brooklyn Middle School, successfully increasing parent participation and training parent leaders.
As Education Director of the Parent Advocacy Center of Medgar Evers College, Aminisha coordinated parent trainings for public schools throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  In that capacity, she developed the training curriculum and contracted consultants who delivered workshops on School Governance, School Report Cards, School Structure, Title 1 and School Wide Programs, Budgetary Effects on Student Learning, Group Dynamics, Stress and Time Management among other topics needed for effective advocacy.
Aminisha’s column The Parent’s Notebook can be read biweekly in Our Time Press. Earlier columns and articles have appeared in publications such as The Daily Challenge, Uptown Xpress, The Lefferts Place News, Essence Magazine, Kuji Magazine, Amsterdam news, The Beacon, The National leader and Single Black Parents.  Aminisha’s public service announcements, Developing Self-Esteem in African-American Youth were aired daily on WLIB-AM – New York City.
Working with community youth she has organized Reading Clinics, Basketball and SCRABBLE tournaments in Brooklyn, NY and South Carolina.  The Moses-Groce Memorial Basketball Tournament was launched in 1995 and in 2008 the Moses-Groce Word Power League introduced its SCRABBLE Showdown in Brooklyn.
Aminisha was an active member in The EAST organization and Vanguard Independent Democratic Association (VIDA).  She served on the executive committees of parent groups at Uhuru Sasa, Al-Karim, Summit, Satellite East, Tilden and Boys and Girls H.S.  She was elected to the county committee in the 56th Assembly District as well as CDA’s Area Policy Board (Fort Greene, Bklyn).
In the Lefferts Place Civic Association (LPCA) Aminisha was founding Editor/Publisher of The Lefferts Place News (1978-1999) and also held offices of Youth Committee Chair, vice-president and in 1994 was elected president of the revived block association and served until 1999. She is a current member of LPCA and the Pendleton Community Center in Pendleton, SC, her hometown.
Aminisha is the recipient of  awards from Grace Agard Harewood Center (2009), Filomeno Family (2009), Bethel SDA Church Community Award (2008), Yusef Iman Memorial Unsung Hero Award (2007), NYS Assembly Proclamation (2007), Dedication to Education of Our Youth -Silver Spring Baptist Church, Pendleton, SC (2001), Asante Sana Award – EAST Family Kwanzaa Committee (2000), Sheroes Award – NYC Council (1999), Community Service Award – Women in Jazz (1999), Outstanding Community Activist (Lefferts Place Civic Association (1997), Essie Mae Niland “Reclaiming Our Community” Award (1995), Paul Robeson H.S. PTA (1993), Fannnie Lou Hamer Award-Center for Women’s Development, Medgar Evers College (1991) and numerous Certificates of Appreciation.
CAROLYN A. BUTTS is the publisher/founder of African Voices, a leading non-profit arts magazine devoted to presenting fine art and literature by artists of color. Founded in 1992, African Voices will celebrate its 20th Anniversary in 2012. She has served as an assistant press secretary to former New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall and a press aide to former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger. A former New York Post reporter, Carolyn was featured in Ms. Magazine’s October/November 2001 “Women to Watch” column for her outstanding achievements.

She has worked on many projects to increase the visibility of African-American artists in literature, film and art. In 1996, Carolyn co-produced a short film “Underground Voices” with Reg E. Gaines, the Tony-nominated writer of “Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk.” Footage from “Underground Voices” aired on the PBS special “I’ll Make Me A World.” She is also working on her first feature length documentary Imhotep Gary Byrd: The Drum Master, a portrait celebrating the pioneering radio show host/producer of “The Global Black Experience.” An unsung heroine, Carolyn is the founder the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series (www.reelsisters.org), an annual Brooklyn-based festival that highlights opportunities for women of color in the film industry. In 2010, Reel Sisters will be held from October 16-17 at the Kumble Theater (Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus). Editor Chris Gore lists Reel Sisters under the categories of Best Black Film Festivals and Best Film Festivals for Women in the Ultimate Film Festival Guide. 

In 2008, Carolyn organized several public events and book discussions around Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded African Voices a Big Read grant to promote the reading of Ms. Hurston’s classic novel, one of 16 books that are included in a national effort to encourage literary reading.

She is a behind-the-scenes newsmaker and organizer who has organized events with such prominent guests as Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison, actress/activist Ruby Dee, actor Laurence Fishburne, Mayor David Dinkins, Photographer Gordon Parks, poets Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, actress Phylicia Rashad and award-winning authors Walter Mosley and Wole Soyinka.  She also helped design and organize former Comptroller Carl McCall’s popular “Empower Your Future: Savings & Investment Conference.”

Her dedication to public service and the arts has won her many awards including the Ageis Society’s African-American Achievement Award (2001), NAACP’s Women Making History Award (2000) and The Network Journal’s 40 Under 40 Award (1999).

In her free time, Carolyn enjoys reading, writing and traveling. She lives in Brooklyn with her soul mate and loving husband Carl Schmalenberger.

GAYLE DeWEES began her journalism career at the New York Daily News in 1993, after having been a fulltime mom for five years.  She previously worked for six years in the music business for Bet-Car Productions and Lil Jay Productions, companies owned by the late jazz great Betty Carter.   Gayle did management and bookings for the Grammy Award winning artist, who was a bridesmaid at the journalist’s wedding.  Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, she says she got hooked on jazz while singing with the Brooklyn Tech H.S. chorus.  Currently, Gayle writes for the Daily News’ “Faces & Places,” “At a Glance,” “Faith in the City,” and “What’s On for the Weekend.”  The Park Slope resident is the mother of twins, age 21.

 

GLORIA DULAN-WILSON was born and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is very proud of being of  African American and Cherokee/Creek Indian Heritage.  She attended all Black schools before, during and after  Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS.  She is one of the fortunate few African Americans who attended all Black schools with all Black teachers, administrators and staff; and benefited from an Afro-Centric educational curriculum, which provided all the requisites of euro-american education, but emphasized it in the context of African/African-American and American Indian history.  I.e., “all that we learned was tied back in to its relevance to us as people of African heritage”.

A lifelong bookworm, she learned to read at the age of three.  She was part of a group of students who were tracked from 2nd grade through senior high.   She attended Dunbar Elementary School (named after the great Black poet, Paul Lawrence Dunbar – “we used to recite all his poems!”), where students were required to keep scrapbooks on Black people no matter where they were in the world, and write about their accomplishments (or tragedies). “We were required to give a report on our clippings every week, and write a report on what their accomplishment (or problem) meant to us and to other Black people.”  Along with her peers of “Talented Tenth Students (named for WEB DuBois philosophy), they studied Africa, the Caribbean and Black people worldwide.  As part of their education, all the students had to perform for Negro History Week, write essays, or make speeches about why it was important to know Black history. “We sang ‘Negro Spirituals’ and sent contributions of 25 cents to Carter G. Woodson in Washington, DC to help with the preservation of the history of Negro Life and History (he was still living then)”.

Involved in the Civil Rights Movement from the age of 10, and Black Power Movements, from age 20, she has participated in sit ins, marches, demonstrations, protests, and other action oriented activities designed to bring parity to African Americans who have suffered under defacto and dejure slavery, From sitting at lunch counters, to being frozen out by air conditioners; to being dragged out of Spring Lake Park (Oklahoma amusement park that discriminated against African Americans); to being sprayed with bug spray, Ms. Wilson’s current views on racism is to recognize that it is alive and well thriving in America; Black people, like other races and nationalities, have to make their own progress because of and in spite of it, without being subservient to a standard or criteria that in the main insults us or depicts us as inferior.

Gloria attended Moon Jr. High School, named for Dr. E. C. Moon, Jr., the first Black Principal in Oklahoma City. With affinity for sciences – she excelled in biology, dissecting frogs, worms, hearts, etc.- and was an A student in History, Social Sciences, English, and Algebra. She admits to also having the worst case of acne that dogged her to her adulthood.

She graduated from Douglass Senior High School, (which was named after Frederick Douglass while he was still living). Douglass High, which is now nearly 125 years old, was founded by Black educators for Black students in Oklahoma City, prior to the Oklahoma Run, which stole land from the thousands of Black and Indian families that had resided there for decades.  Douglas’ curriculum was on WEB DuBois’ talented tenth theory, was far ahead of what most others were learning in other schools throughout Oklahoma, Black or white.  So much so that 95% of the students who graduated went to college; and 90% of those students were advanced placement students, and were able to begin their majors in their freshman year.  Instead of separate but equal, Black education exceeded  Oklahoma City Board of Education, to such an extent, Douglass High grads threatened to burn the school down rather than have it integrated with the lower level of education most whites received in their schools.

Emanating from a family of educators and doctors, Ms. Wilson broke ranks with the rest of her family and was the first to attend college outside of Oklahoma, choosing to attend Hampton University in Hampton VA, instead.  Starting with a major in Cultural Anthropology, with a minor in Sociology, she was privileged to meet and interact with Margaret Mead, who served on the Board of Trustees for Hampton at the time.  Ms. Wilson had the privilege of meeting the late Thurgood Marshall, who addressed the graduating senior class.  She loved Hampton, her Home by the Sea, but unfortunately, owing to her  long term involvement as a civil rights activist, she was expelled from Hampton for participating in a protest that locked the college president, Jerome Holland and some members of the administration in the administration building, after being denied permission to participate in the march on Selma, Alabama (Hampton students were told they would be immediately expelled if they participated).

She was recruited into Lincoln University, PA, for the same civil rights activism, and graduated with a major in Sociology, and double minor in African/African American (including East & West African Ethnology, Swahili (2 years).  At Lincoln she was  Peer Counselor to African Students from Non-independent African Nations (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Southwest Africa (Namibia); Congo.  She was privileged to have met and taken special classes with Oliver O. Killens, Langston Hughes, and playwright Ron Milner, who was a protégé of Hughes at the time.  But the big thrill of her life was to have met and sat at the feet of the great and charismatic Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (shortly after his censureship from Congress).  Dr. Charles V. Hamilton, co-author of Black Power (with Stokely Carmichael) was her mentor as well as her Political Science professor (Hamilton served as legal counsel for SNCC – the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). She was a member of the Pan African Students Union, and was the first two co-eds on campus to get a “natural” which she still wears to signify her pride in her heritage as a Black woman.  Ms. Wilson graduated from Lincoln University, BS Sociology.

Prior to moving to New York City, she served as employment development counselor with Manpower Inc, and the Philadelphia Employment Development Commission (City of Philadelphia), helping “hard-core unemployed people received the on-the-job-training to develop career track skills; and then provide permanent job placement.

She initially served as Director of Student Activities for students in the SEEK Program at CCNY; then later at Brooklyn College as academic counselor, providing stipends, non-matriculation opportunities, and motivational support for students, helping them make non-traditional decisions about career choices.

Though most call her a journalist, Ms. Wilson considers herself a feature writer instead.  Beginning as a broadcast journalist in the 70′s while living in California, she quickly found that the mainstream media was not interested in portraying Black people in any light other than that which had already been stereotypically set in place. So after a few tries at serious media including working with KHJ-TV, KABC-TV, she tried her hand at production.

Starting as script secretary and production assistant to Norman Lear, one of her favorite comedic writer/producers on a production that was ahead of its time: The Baxters (which as ahead of its time by 15 years, dealing with drugs, homosexuality, chronic and fatal illness, education, with a comedic flair.  Other productions credits included:: Detective School: One Flight UP; Garretts Girls (later known as The Facts of Life); King Kong (licensing and legal department); Different Strokes.

During her  “Hollywierd” she  realized that they in large measure shape the images Black kids see throughout the world, and began working with Black artists and writers to impact those images. Mamie Clayton, and her son Avery,  had a collection of vintage Black movies dating back from the early 1900′s produced and written by Oscar Michaux; vintage cowboy movies such as Bronze Buckaroo (Herb Jeffries); God’s Trombones; Black and Tan Fantasy (Duke Ellington and Nina Mae McKinney), film festivals were held so that adults and youth alike could become aware of the great producers amongst us.  Met the great Clarence Muse, actor, artist, speaker, who talked about Black Hollywood and TOBA (Tough on Black Artists).

During her stay in California, Gloria was elected  Town Council Representative three terms in Altadena, CA, with a constituency 175,000 primarily African American residents.  She is credited with having saved the northern portion of Altadena from the geographical, environmental and economic racism being visited upon them by the majority white Pasadena community which had tried to annex the unincorporated community in order to dump unwanted or undesirable elements in the majority Black areas. Neighbors included Nichelle Nichols, JiTu Kumbuka; Ivan Dixon, Letta Mbulu, (many other East Coast Blacks hiding out in the mountains trying to get over severe cultural shock of moving from New York to California).

Taking on the challenges of predatory zoning policies which would have turned a community park into a dumping ground and waste treatment plant in the middle of middle classed homes; educational apartheid, where schools in the African American communities were not receiving the services and materials other schools received in more affluent areas; transportation disconnect — where no public transportation was provided above a particular street; postal facility and other essential service closings — where the US Postal service was going to remove their services requiring residents to go to Pasadena to receive mail. As a result of her unorthodox methods in conjunction with her constituents, where she declared that if they wanted things changed, they had to show up when she called upon them, rather than waiting for her to do all the work, she had a 90% participation rate in hearings with zoning boards and  LA County Board of Supervisors — causing the park to be  restored, community center opened, and waste treatment center moved to outlying area; in addition to having the USPS construct two new postal facilities built and remodel the dilapidated one.  Local schools received the upgrades, and regular visits by Ray Cortines, then superintendent of schools.  She served on Prop A transportation committee for California.

Gloria got her first start as the journalist we know of today as a result of a series of letters she wrote in response to the escalating problems that were taking place in the Sudan in the mid 80′s.  Initially the concern was about the distorted information coming out of the mainstream press.  She wrote a series of letters to the Amsterdam News to the late Bill Tatum.  She likewise wrote letters to Andrew Cooper’s City Sun, one of the more militant voices of the Black community of the day.  She was hired by Carl Offerd to write small pieces for the New American, and later was asked by Kermit Eady, founder of the Black United Fund, to do a series of articles for the Metro Exchange.  Simultaneously Ms. Wilson was serving as spokesperson and account executive for the Black United Fund of New York and addressing organizations and groups throughout the state in the pursuit of raising funds for the benefit and expansion of the Black Community to help itself.  Somehow the column on BUFNY morphed into her becoming editor of the Metro Exchange, where she met Victoria Horsford and Audrey Bernard, two Black female journalists she admires greatly.

Gloria has been feature writer for The Daily Challenge News, The African Sun Times, Black Star News, The New American, Metro Exchange, The New York Beacon, Amsderdam News (special features), Positive Community (magazine), Altadena Star Times (California).  She received her training and FCC broadcast license from the KIIS Broadcasting Workshop (California), as a broad cast journalist and D.J/on air personality.  And rounded out her journalistic techniques at Pasadena City College: Broadcast TV and Radio Journalism Forensic Reporting Radio/TV Programming & Production; script supervision; copy writing, etc.

In terms of her own journalistic style, she states:  “I write like I talk because I started out as a broadcast journalist.  I can hear the conversation and commentary as I write the story, so I write like I’m talking to the reader.  I also try to inform, and cause a paradigm shift, as opposed to parroting what the mainstream says.  I’m not trying to write to please whites, or be super militant, but I am trying to reach my own people and debunk the distortions they constantly and continuously bombard us with.  So, yes, my views are slanted — I am pro-us; I reserve the right to be the partisan press (just like they do) because I live here too, right along with the rest of us.  What affects my people affects me too.  So I do not pretend to be objective.  I am a Black woman, with Black children, living in a Black community.  My people come first.  That’s why I call my self Eclectically Black.  So don’t expect me to be the one to put a brother or sister down just because the rest of the world is doing so; I really do operate from a different standard.  I am more likely to give us the benefit of trust rather than doubt.  Am I blind to our problems – No!  We have a lot that we have to deal with to get back on track.  But by the same token, we are the only people who have ever gone through the horror and trauma and still have some semblance of humanity.  We are strong, we are powerful.  We are survivors.  We are beautiful. Now need to be healed and made whole.  And that’s the message I try to communicate every time I write.  I love us!! 

She has interviewed such greats as President Barack Obama (2004 after the Kerry speech) and 1st Lady Michele Obama (prior to the election);  former Ghana President Jerry John Rawlings and 1st Lady Nana Rawlings, the late Percy E. Sutton, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson,  Bill Cosby, former Mayor David N. Dinkins, Danny Glover, Diana Ross, Sarah Dash, Patti LaBelle, Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, motivational speaker Les Brown; Rev. Calvin O. Butts, Stedman Graham, Cong. Donald Payne, former Newark Mayor Shape James, Russell Simmons, Kimora Lee Simmons, Kanye West, Gil Scott Herron, Roy Ayres, Roy Innis, among others.    

As former Housing Coordinator for the City of Jersey City, former Executive Director of BNIA and Vannguard in Brooklyn, and consultant to the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), Ms. Wilson has worked tirelessly to make homeownership and quality neighborhoods a rule, rather than an exception.  In New York City, where a 250 square foot apartment can rent for the price of two mortgages, many residents are barely able to make ends meet, and are forced to chose between food on the table and roof over head.  Ms. Wilson believes that in America, the most technologically advanced, opulent culture in the world, everyone deserves a decent place to live; there should be absolutely no homelessness; no one should ever live in squalor.  She is currently working to establish NACA offices in Brooklyn to provide foreclosure prevention as well as underwrite mortgages for first time homebuyers. 

Ms. Wilson’s interest in Black home ownership stems from the greatest landgrab ever to take place in US history: the Oklahoma Run, which saw so many people of Indian heritage pushed off their land in 1889, including many members of her Grandmother’s family (who have been relegated to so-called reservations thruout the US); the fact that most Blacks in the South worked the land but did not own it or benefit from it; and the fact that most African Americans in the north are subjected to unscrupulous landlords, substandard living conditions, over priced housing with few, if any of the amenities that should go with the price points they pay. 

The single mother has successfully raised three children, Kira, Rais and Adiya,  who each graduated college and are pursuing their own careers, and raising their own families. A New Yorker by choice, Ms. Wilson resides in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

Her Blog, www.gloriadulan-wilson.blogspot, is subtitled ECLECTICALLY BLACK(c), because it encompasses Black people regardless of their status, geographical location, orientation, or pigmentation.

FERN E. GILLESPIE is a communications executive, whose expertise in feature writing, public relations, marketing, youth issues, multicultural/diversity issues, and radio programs spans over 25 years.

Ms. Gillespie is the recipient of the top 1995 New York Association of Black Journalists Award for Arts & Entertainment Coverage in a Newspaper for her column Culture & Flash, for the New York-based weekly The City Sun.  She has written articles for Essence, Black Enterprise, Heart & Soul, Upscale, The Crisis, Emerge, Ebony Man, Today’s Black Woman, Howard University Magazine, Black Collegian, Amsterdam News, The New York Times Syndicate, The New York Daily News, The Asbury Park Press, and other publications. She is a former associate editor for The Crisis and former editor of the Jackie Robinson Foundation’s college scholarship newsletter. Currently, she is the PR rep for the New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council and editor of their online newsletter NewsLink. She also writes a cultural column for About Time…magazine.

Since 1985, when she was assistant director of public relations for the NAACP under Benjamin Hooks, Ms. Gillespie has held public relations executive positions on the agency, corporate and non-profit level. She was director of public relations/marketing for Huggy Bean, the award-winning Black character doll from 1991 to1994. From 1996 to 1998, Ms. Gillespie directed public relations for The Studio Museum in Harlem.  She has directed major public relations campaigns for New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs and for seven years was scriptwriter/PR rep for Johnson Publishing, Inc.’s EBONY Outstanding Women in Marketing & Communications Awards. Since1994, she’s served as a PR account director, manager, account supervisor, and consultant for UniWorld Group focusing on branding multicultural campaigns for corporate clients: Con Edison, Nutrament, Kraft Foods, TLC Beatrice International, AstraZeneca, Disney, GlaxoSmithKline, UniverSoul Circus, Ford Motor Company, Home Depot, Colgate-Palmolive, Microsoft, Burger King, US Marine Corps, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (African Burial Ground) and United Negro College Fund (An Evening of Stars).

A specialist in youth issues, from 1987 to 1990 she served as executive director of the non-profit organization Children’s Express of Newark, the New Jersey bureau for the Emmy and Peabody award-winning international youth news service by young people ages 8 to 18.  She has been featured discussing youth issues in New York-area media outlets: New York Times, New York Daily News, Newark Star Ledger, Asbury Park Press, WPIX-TV, WNET-TV, WNYW-TV, and WNBC-TV.

In 1976, Ms. Gillespie began her career as a radio producer and on-air host for Washington, DC’s WHUR-FM.  At New York’s WMCA-AM, she produced top talk personalities Barry Farber and Barry Gray.  She also produced New York’s early Black-oriented talk shows at WWRL and WLIB hosted by Vy Higginsen, Gary Byrd, Judy Simmons, and Pablo Guzman.  In 1981, she co-developed and produced National Black Network’s “Night Talk with Bob Law,” the first coast-to-coast African American radio talk show.  She was the radio producer for “Imhotep Gary Byrd at the Apollo Theater;” The United Negro College Fund’s 1986-87 Lou Rawls’ Parade of Stars celebrity PSAs (CEBA winner); and the General Motors’ 1993 national radio profile series Roads to Success.

Ms. Gillespie is also a craft artist, whose work has been featured in Essence, Black Elegance, Essence By Mail, and The Studio Museum in Harlem Store. She is listed in Who’s Who of Executive Women and holds a BA in Print and Broadcast Journalism from Howard University. She is currently writing Handcrafted with Soul, a book about Black women craft artists. fernegillespie@aol.com
DR. BRENDA GREENE is Professor of English and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. Professor Greene’s research and scholarly work includes composition, African American literature, and multicultural literature. Greene is author of “Beside Still Waters: Memories of the Paden Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color” in Black Issues Book Review July-August 2005. She is editor with Smith and Gordon of the And Then They Heard Our Thunder 2003 and 2004 Proceedings from the National Black Writers Conference. She is also co-editor with Elizabeth Nunez of Redefining Ourselves, Black Writers in the Nineties, Peter Lang Publishers (1999) and co-editor with Lil Brannon of Rethinking American Literature, National Council of Teachers of English, (1997).

She has over 18 publications in English Studies, a number of grants and over 40 presentations in these fields. Her most recent grants were from the National Endowment for the Arts for the National Black Writers Conference and from the Nathan Cummings Foundation for the North Country Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color. She was a featured scholar on the award-winning Annenberg/PBS video production, Teaching Multicultural Literature in the High Schools. She is also a Leadership Associate for the National Network for Educational Renewal. Greene holds a Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Education from New York University. She is currently working on a memoir and on a book in English Studies.

In her role as Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature, Greene has continued the tradition of holding the National Black Writers Conferences (NBWC’s) that have been given at Medgar Evers College since 1986. Since the Center’s inception in 2003, Greene has directed two NBWC’s conferences, one focused on “Literature as Access” and one focused on the life and work of John Oliver Killens, writer, activist, and mentor.

The most recent NBWC had over 40 writers and scholars who participated in panels, workshops, and readings on the theme: Black Literature: Expanding Conversations on Race, History, Identity and Genre. Panelists included Marita Golden who delivered the address on the Conference theme, Haki Madhubuti, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Walter Mosley, Samuel Delany, Walter Dean Myers, Quincy Troupe, Ishmael Reed, Elizabeth Nunez, Willie Perdomo, Valerie Boyd, Staceyann Chinn, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes, Herb Boyd, Christopher John Farley, Sheree Rene Thomas, Abiodun, Jacqueline Woodson, Toni Blackman, Lindamichelle Baron, Obery Hendricks, Carl Hancock Rux, Javaka Steptoe, Ellease Southerland and Camille Yarbrough, among others. Dr. Myrlie Evers-Williams, wife of the late civil rights activist, Medgar Wiley Evers, was the Honorary Conference Chair.

Currently, Greene serves as project director for several literary programs which provide high school students with access to the black literary arts. In addition, she has collaborated with various organizations to produce author programs such as the Brother to Brother Literary Symposium, the Gwendolyn Brooks Symposium and the North Country Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color.

Greene also hosts a weekly radio program, Writers on Writing, which features writers from the African diaspora discussing their work and their lives. The show is broadcast in the studios of Medgar Evers College and airs over WNYE, 91.5 F.M.

MONIQUE GREENWOOD was born in Washington D.C., one of five children. Her family had lived in the area for several generations, and Greenwood spent her childhood in Washington. Greenwood was inspired by her grandfather’s success in a business field dominated by white business owners. His example proved to her that racial discrimination could not stop a man who had the determination to succeed. Greenwood’s own personal determination was clearly evident in her magna cum laude graduation from Howard University. She then earned a graduate degree from the Simmons School of Business in Boston, in a unique program for developing managers aimed at educating women for the business world.
Much of Greenwood’s early business success was in magazine publishing. She worked for 15 years at Fairchild Publications, whose magazines included Women’s Wear Daily, often considered one of the most important harbingers of women’s fashion and beauty. Among Greenwood’s achievements at Fairchild was the 1985 creation of Children’s Business, a monthly trade magazine that provided information about a wide range of children’s apparel and other products. In 1996 Greenwood moved to Essence magazine, where she began as both the lifestyle director and the style director. Two years later she became the executive editor at Essence. By early 2000, Greenwood had been promoted to editor-in-chief of Essence.
In 1989 Greenwood married Glenn Pogue, the son of an army officer. Greenwood and Pogue soon purchased a brownstone in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, a historic neighborhood of 200,000 people. Greenwood and her new husband immediately began restoring their new home. Soon after their daughter was born, they spotted a Victorian mansion, one of the few stand-alone structures in their neighborhood of brownstones.
Greenwood’s new bed and breakfast had 18 rooms, and most of them needed extensive work before the business could open. Greenwood and her family moved into the building and immediately began work. In July of 1995 the Akwaaba Mansion Bed&Breakfast opened for business. Greenwood’s inn has been featured in several national publications, in films and commercials, and was a featured home on the Home and Garden Television Network program Restore America.
The renovation of a local hardware store turned the property into an elegant 72-seat restaurant called the Akwaaba Café. The restaurant, with its mix of traditional southern foods and Caribbean choices proved to be another successful venture. In 1999 Greenwood and her family opened Mirrors Coffee House, with decorating suggestions provided by Greenwood’s young daughter
In June of 2001 Greenwood and her husband opened another B & B called Akwaaba by the Sea, in an 1850s Victorian building in Cape May, New Jersey. Eventually Greenwood and her husband opened other B & Bs and spread their ventures beyond New York and New Jersey. They have also licensed the Akwaaba Cafe and plan to start a chain.
In 1992 Greenwood published her first book, Go On Girl! Book Club Guide to Reading Groups. She is also the co-founder of the Go On Girl! Book Club, the largest African-American book club in the United States, which has more than 400 members and 32 chapters. Greenwood’s second book was the successful Having What Matters: The Black Woman’s Guide to Creating the Life You Really Want. Greenwood is currently writing another book, to be titled Life Under New Management: How to Fire Your Job and Become Your Own Boss.  www.akwaaba.com

JANEL GROSS is the Managing Editor of the Afro Times, a weekly, general interest newspaper that’s published as part of the Challenge Newspaper Group. The Afro Times has served the African American community since 1952, covering local, national and international news and politics.

As Managing Editor, Janel takes pride in providing local writers and photographers an outlet for getting a perspective on stories that’s often overlooked by mainstream media. When not at her desk, Janel enjoys spending time with her son, Jason, in their Fort Greene neighborhood, and she has been an active parent with the Brooklyn Titans sports teams and the 78th Precinct Youth Programs.

Janel grew up in St. Albans, Queens, graduated from Jamaica H.S., attended Howard University and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). She is a proud charter member of the Psi Lambda Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., which celebrated its first anniversary on Feb. 7, 2010.

Janel’s civic and community activities also include membership in the Brooklyn Chapter of Jack & Jill of America, where she has served as Public Relations officer, and Kadence LLC, where she is an organizer of its annual Prom Dress Giveaway.  Janel is also a former vice president of the Thomas Boyland Annual Scholarship Fund.

VICTORIA HORSFORD is a New York based  multi-tasker immersed in the worlds of media,  business management, and real estate brokerage.  She is also a journalist.  Her myriad interests run the gamut from arts and entertainment, to business, politics, health, media and to international affairs.

A journalist whose essays have been published in Our Time Press, the KIP Business Report, the NY Daily News, the NY Post, the Amsterdam News, MBM and Black Star Magazines, Black Star News, and the tbwt.com,  Ms. Horsford’s  weekly “What’s Going On”  column, an eclectic mix of politics, business, people in the news, and events calendars,  appears in the NY Carib News, the NY Beacon and the African Sun Times, an occasionally Harlem News.  She also writes profiles, opinions and long-form essays about current events and about her travels to Brazil, Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. Her e-flashes reach thousands, locally and worldwide such as business leaders, mainstream and ethnic media, academics, entrepreneurs, celebrities, professionals, and to a list that she customizes which is e-flash topic appropriate.  Ms. Horsford has profiled and/or written for a handful of media moguls who are among the 2010 Von King Park Phenomenal Women Awardees.

A public relations denizen since 1972, Ms. Horsford cut her professional teeth at film industry behemoth, Columbia Pictures, where she wore many management hats and played a key role in the development and execution of film production and distribution campaigns for “The China Syndrome”  “Stir Crazy; “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” The Deep,” “California Suite,” “The  Way We Were,” “Kramer Vs Kramer,” “Gloria,” “The Greatest,” and “Tootsie.” During her Columbia watch, she generated many Time, Newsweek and People Magazine cover stories and dozens of New York Times Arts and Leisure articles.   She worked closely with film moguls and legends such as Michael Douglas,  Richard Pryor, John Cassevetes,  Peter Guber,  Sidney Poitier,  Jack Nicholson, Gordon Parks, Jr., Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis,  and Sydney Pollack.

Ms. Horsford founded Victoria Horsford Media Group, VHMG, a public relations and media management consulting business in 1985.  Branding, media planning and strategies, agitprop marketing and are some of her business’ key components.  A partial roster of clientele includes The Modern School, the Lorraine Monroe Leadership Institute, Bank Street College; the Richard Pryor film, ” Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling;” Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It; the NY African Film Festival; Harlem’s Mobay Uptown and Shawnee’s On Seventh; and Brooklyn’s Le Grand Dakar restaurants; the Apollo Theatre; and Motown Records.   The VHMG arts and entertainment clients include the Roger Furman Theatre; Woodie King’s New Federal Theater; Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre; and Vy Higginsen’s Mama Foundation Enamored of arts.

Later, the VHMG, would add  the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone; the Harlem Business Alliance; Health Watch; the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce; the UniWorld Group;  Ford Motor Company/HBCU competition;  the African Development Group and Shared Interest to its diverse client roster.

A YMCA Black Achiever Awardee, Ms. Horsford served on the boards of  the  East Harlem Tutorial Program and the Roger Furman Theater Group. Her media outlets are used to advocate for community empowerment and development. She will launch her news info website this summer.  She uses her media outlets to advocate for community empowerment and development.   Her professional memberships include the NY Association of Black Journalists, (NYABJ), the Black Public Relations Society of NY, and the Harlem Arts Alliance.  She completed her studies in Politics and International Affairs at NYU and began graduate work in anthropology at the New School University. www.facebook.com/people/Victoria-Horsford/683129561

MARGOT JORDAN, the photojournalist and producer,  documents prestigious publicity events, festivals and public relations projects worldwide. She’s always on the go photographing major celebrations of arts, culture, news, politics, entertainment, travel, sports, fashion and spirituality. Her photos can be seen in some of the top dailies, magazines and websites, including those dedicated to urban and African American subjects.

Margot’s love affair with photography was sparked at age 14 with her Dad’s gift of a “brownie” camera. Today, her news and special event coverage takes her around the globe and into such esteemed publications as Ebony and JET Magazine.
A radio broadcasting and communications veteran, Margot has worked behind the scenes as producer of the KISS FM Wake Up Club where she wrote comedy bits, booked fantastic guests and kept New Yorkers on their toes each and every morning by supervising each and every element on this #1 morning show. Always in the know, Ms. Jordan also wrote the entertainment report for Wendy Williams. A move to talk radio found Ms. Jordan producing The Joan Rivers Show, Weekend with Joan Hamburg and Arthur Schwartz, Food Talk, Health Talk w/ Dr. Ronald Hoffman and more. Previously, Ms. Jordan interned and worked at WABC TV Eyewitness News, including a stint as a production assistant at Like It Is. She credits Melba Tolliver, LaVerne Harvey, Naimah Fuller and Marquita Pool as her influences. The transition to photography was simple; Ms. Jordan always carried a camera. She was dubbed “Lois Lane” in her south east Queens high school and kept taking photos for local newspapers after school. Her camera served her well capturing in-studio guests and antics on remotes in Kingston, Jamaica, The Bahamas and other exotic places. After many transitions in radio, Margot made a home on the photojournalistic scene. In between photo assignments, and lots of travel, she embarks on pr campaigns for various causes and entities.
In 2002 Ms. Jordan embarked on a publicity campaign of her own, promoting a man very close to her heart. McNeil Jordan, a native of Barbados turned 100 on Christmas Day. The story was picked up around the world making “Grandpa Jordan” a bit of a celebrity. He was seen on major television stations and made front pages news in countless newspapers.
Margot is very happy behind the camera and uses her major network system to keep abreast of todays culture. It makes for captivating images of the movers and shakers, ordinary citizens and newsmakers.
This amazing lady is always looking for new opportunities and exciting ways to chronicle life’s adventures digitally. You may see her on the sidelines at a NY Jets game, in the photographer’s pit at The US Open, behind the scenes at Super Bowl events or the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn. By the way, Ms. Jordan does get to go in front of the cameras on occasion – you can see her in action as a model on NBC Today April 5th, and September 25, 2007.
Go to www.nypresslady.smugmug.com to view her photo galleries

 CLAUD LEANDRO is presently serving as the Program Director at One Caribbean Radio 97.9 HD2, the only 24-hour Caribbean-centric radio station on the cutting-edge, digital HD platform. She is a founding member and Program & Cultural Director of Caribbean Media Enterprise, a New York-based Production and Public Relations company established to provide information about and cover all aspects of the Caribbean/West Indian immigrant experience. Ms. Leandro started her career in broadcasting at the Guyana Broadcasting Service, in South America, and later worked as an announcer/producer at Radio Antilles in Montserrat, in the Caribbean. She produced and presented radio programs on WBAI 99.5 FM and Air America 1190 AM and contributed to The Caribbean News Report on the Tony Brown Empowerment Show on WWRL 1600 AM. She served as guest host on Caribbean Forum on WNYE TV. Ms. Leandro worked on the editorial page at the now-defunct New York Newsday and as a copy editor at Merrill Lynch and Bear Sterns financial companies. A published poet and playwright, one of her plays toured the Caribbean in the 1990s to critical acclaim. As a stage performer, she has worked with such playwrights as Sullivan Walker and Pritha Singh.  She is a co-founder of Claudron Productions.
    
SUSAN McHENRY has worked since 1987 as a key editor for pioneering magazines that served untapped reader sensibilities among African Americans and all women. She is the Founding Editor of Black Issues Book Review (BIBR), a bimonthly magazine of news, features and reviews on books by and about people of African descent (which published from January 1999 until January 2008). In 1989, she also helped the late Wilmer Ames launch the acclaimed monthly African-American newsmagazine Emerge. In addition she has been a senior editor at Ms., Working Women, and Essence magazines. She lives in Brooklyn and currently works as parish secretary of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Park Slope, and contributes articles to The Dominion, the monthly newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island.
ROSALIND KILKENNY McLYMONT is the editor-in-chief of The Network Journal, a New York-based business magazine for Black professionals and entrepreneurs. She is the author of the newly released, award-winning non-fiction title, Africa: Strictly Business, The Steady March to Prosperity (The Network Journal Communications Inc., 2009), and the groundbreaking novel–Middle  Ground (Beckham, 2006). She is also a partner in McLymont, Kunda & Co., an international trade and business development strategy firm serving clients in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean.

McLymont has more than 20 years’ experience as a writer, speaker and adviser to small and medium-sized companies on global business and entrepreneurship. She was an international trade reporter and ultimately managing editor at The Journal of Commerce, one of the United States’s oldest daily newspapers, which specialized in international shipping and trade. Her coverage earned her  critical acclaim in the annual Media Guide to America’s top financial writers, frequent appearances on CNNfn to comment on the impact of global events on U.S. trade, a guest column in America Economía, a leading business magazine in Latin America; and guest lectures at New York University’s graduate  program in Latin America and Caribbean studies. Her articles on international business appeared in such publications as The Journal of Commerce, World Trade, Business Standards, Minority Business Entrepreneur, Transport Topics, Quality Digest, and Shipping Digest.

An authority on emerging markets and business development, McLymont provided entrepreneurship training for African women through the United Nations Development Program’s Gender Program, and for women in Russia through the Alliance of Russian and American Women. She provided expertise on accessing U.S. markets for the American and African Business Women’s Alliance conference in Botswana in 2002; was an adviser to the Institute on African Affairs; and served as an executive board member of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation.

Prior to becoming a journalist, McLymont taught English and French in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is a past fellow of the European Community Visitors Program, was named a “Woman History Maker” by the Caribbean-American Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, and has received awards from the New York Association of Black
Journalists, the International Black Women’s Congress, the CEJJES Institute, the National Minority Business Council, the New York Regional Chapter of the National Association of
Health Services Executives, and the City of New York Office of the Comptroller.

McLymont was born in Guyana and speaks French and Spanish. She has a master’s degree in journalism from New York University, a bachelor’s degree in French from The City College of New York, and a Certificate in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Madrid. She has a Black Belt in T’ai Chi, which she teaches in New York, and is a certified ZUMBA GOLD fitness instructor.

FAYBIENE MIRANDA is co-host and co-producer of Global Medicine Review. She is a published poet, lyricist and performer. She is highly regarded for her community based participation, activism and involvment with Brooklyn’s Ifetayo Cultural Arts Facility where she mentors their Little Sisters Pre-teen Rites of Passage Program, oversees the Creative Toddler Program as teacher and is Director of the award winning Ifetayo Youth Ensemble. She was recently the recipient of Ifetayo’s Founders Award for her dedication and service to community as a techer, mentor and artist. Her creative credits include a collaborative publication: Sun and Moon, with Mutabaruka, a featured poet in Itations of Jamaica and I RasTafari (the trinity publications), a compilation of Jamaican poets of distinction, Professor Kamau Brathwaite’s publication Savacou, an anthology of Caribbean women writers that included the renowned poem “I Am That I Am.” She has appeared with Mutabaruka, The Last Poets, Sandra St. Victor, Yewande, the Black Rock Coalition, Atiba Wilson and The Family Stand and her own band Highly-I produced by her husband Moonie Pusey, lead guitarist for the Grammy award-winning Steel Pulse. Her first recording “Prophecy” is still considered to be a collector’s item and listed as one of the top 100 reggae musical recordings by Island Records 25 years of Reggae music anthology. She is currently compiling selections from the Global Medicine Review archives of poetry which she creates weekly on topics reflecting healing, love, liberation and spirituality.

MARCIA PENDELTON has worked as an arts management professional for over 20 years. Since founding Walk Tall Girl Productions, Inc. in 2000, she has provided marketing, group sales, audience development, communications, producing, and education services for both commercial and nonprofit ventures, with special emphasis placed on the theater. Her work has been highlighted by the media including: The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Newsday, The Positive Community Magazine, ABCNews.com, Black Enterprise.com, Centric’s Leading Women series,  and Rolling Out Magazine. Her groundbreaking work in marketing theater to new audiences has been honored by The Black Public Relations Society of New York and New York’s Audelco Awards.
From Broadway, to Off-Broadway, to national tours, to regional theatre, to black regional theatre, to urban theatrical productions, Pendelton’s creative audience development and marketing initiatives have introduced thousands of people to the magic of live theatre. She has worked on behalf of award-winning theatre artists including Lynn Nottage, Bill T. Jones, Tracey Scott Wilson, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Tyler Perry, George C. Wolfe, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Regina Taylor, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Jeffrey Wright, and such music moguls and artists as hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, and rapper/actor Mos Def.
She has produced entertainment, education and cultural programs for internationally renowned institutions including the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and for public servants Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and New York State Assemblyman Roger Green. She has lent her sales and marketing skills to the worlds of dance and music by working for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, The Joyce Theatre, Sweet Honey In The Rock and The Funk Brothers (Standing In The Shadows of Motown). Other clients have included: The Vineyard Theatre, Manhattan Theater Club, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, HARLEM STAGE, Urban Bush Women Dance Company, Lincoln Center Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, Blackbird Productions, HERE Art Center, New Freedom Theatre, The Culture Project, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, Carnegie Hall, New York Association of Black Journalists and many more.
Pendelton’s work as an independent producer includes the Annual Fort Greene, Brooklyn Juneteenth Festival, “A Conversation with bell hooks and Kevin Powell: Black Men and Masculinity,” and My Soul To Keep, a performance and dialogue series that focuses on art and spirituality. In addition to her work as a marketer and producer, Marcia has also shared her knowledge and experience with aspiring arts management professionals by teaching Marketing the Arts at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Several years ago, Marcia became a licensed group sales agent and established WTG Group Sales. That client base includes the National Association of Minorities In Communications, New York University, Jewish Community Relations Council, MTV Networks, Project Green Hope, Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Bread and Roses Cultural Project of the Hospital and Home Health Care Workers Union among others.
Pendelton earned a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Saint Joseph’s University (Philadelphia) and a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Management from the University of Maryland at College Park. She is a member of the Black Theatre Network, Theater Communications Group, the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Audience Development Committee. She currently resides in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, NY and is an active member of Emmanuel Baptist Church.
LUPE TODD is a journalist, media relations and communications expert and a leader in national urban affairs and designing successful media outreach campaigns in the political arena.  She is Vice President, George Arzt Communications, Inc., works with political clients, elected officials and non-profit organizations to implement and execute winning political and media campaigns. The broad range of strategic goals includes (but are not limited to) campaign media management, crisis management, public relations and media training. She also works with clients in the evolving government and community landscape to affect a complete political strategy. In the spring of 2008, she began work on the expansion of the firm through a new Web site, logo and other branding formulas, including a new social media division for the firm. This division is dedicated to social media marketing and direct mail. The social media division, new Web site and logo were launched in January 2010 and have already provided new clients and additional income for the firm.

From December 2006-December 2007, she was press secretary and official spokesperson to Mayor Cory A. Booker of the City of Newark, NJ, and managed a staff of five press officers. As an example of Lupe’s creativity, she developed a media campaign prior to the opening of the Prudential Center to spur new visitors to the area to take mass transit to the Prudential Center in order to reduce traffic congestion. She created a traffic alert system in Newark dubbed “SlowGo Traffic Alerts” to announce to the public any congestion in the city and/or best alternate routes. As a result of this successful campaign, more visitors traveled to Newark via NJ Transit for the opening of the arena.  SlowGo Traffic Alert continues to be used in the city whenever a confluence of traffic is expected.
 
For two years, August 2004 to November 2006 at Dan Klores Communications, she worked with a team of public relations officers to develop a wide range of smart, aggressive and inventive public relations and marketing campaigns on behalf of several clients including but not limited to: Ken Burns/PBS, Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), General Motors, and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Vote or Die! Campaign.

Prior to Dan Klores Communications, she was a press officer from July 2000 to August 2004 for the City of New York.  Prior to that position, for three years, she was Director of Communications for then City of Buffalo Councilmember Byron W. Brown.  Also in the Buffalo and Greater Niagara Region, from 1995 to 1997, she worked for the Convention and Visitors Bureau in sports and multicultural conventions.

Her campaign experience includes work on the many campaigns:  Clinton/Gore ’92 and ’96; Charles Schumer for Congress; Eliot Spitzer for Attorney General, Byron W. Brown for City Council, Kevin Parker for City Council, Hakeem Jeffries for Aseembly, Jacqueline Williams for Civil Court Judge, Rep. Edolphus Towns, Bill de Blasio, John Liu and Councilman Al Vann.

Lupe received a B.A. in Public Communications from the State University of New York at Buffalo.   She’s a member of the Caribbean Sports Association, the Women’s Sports Foundation and is a1994 All American basketball player.

DR. TERESA WILLIAMS-TAYLOR is owner and publisher of New York Trend newspaper and CEO of TTW Associates, near Great Neck, NY, a publishing and international consulting firm. Since 1987, New York Trend, the largest black owned newspaper in Long Island, has earned recognition a New York City, Nassau and Suffolk counties of Long Island.  Dr. Williams is a graduate of Columbia University and has held management and counseling positions in the corporate sector.  Dr. Williams earned two master’s degrees in psychology ad management and a doctorial degree before age  30.She incorporated her business at age 22.  She has served as a professor in the SUNY and LIU systems, and is a board member for the Program in African American Studies at Princeton University.  She is the mother of three children. www.newyorktrendonline.com

Teacher Accused of Writing Racist Blog

Fifteen-year-old Sojourner James, a smart and bubbly sophomore At The High School of Graphic Communication Arts (HSGCA) has many friends. But she refuses to go to her science class after reading a nasty blog in March mentioning her on the adult lurkingglass.com.
High school is a place where students should feel safe, welcomed and most of all respected. Some students at HSGCA said they don’t feel respected because a teacher at the school allegedly wrote racist remarks about her students.
“Don’t forget- THE Sojourner <B>SO BLACK<P> attends my school!” the blog said. “And the crazy bitch is in my class.”
Fatoumata Toure, 15 wasn’t expecting to read a blog with her name in it referring to her as “a ghetto bitch.” It wasn’t until she was told by a friend, Tanazurae Rivera, 14, who discovered the blog by searching her own name on Google.
The blog listed a bunch of students’ names identifying their race and making critical analysis about them. According to the students’ names in the blog, it became obvious to them that the blogger had to be their science teacher Kristine Sakariasen.
“It’s not a coincidence [that all these students' names are in the blog]. All of these kids are on her roster,” James said.
In fact, Rivera said she saw photos of Sakariasen on the blog’s profile.
“There were pictures of her and her friends, a picture of her pushing a rock,” Rivera said. “She even had the same Northface [jacket] on that she wears to school.”
After the blog was discovered, a group of students confronted Sakariasen asking her about the blog. A student who was part of that group said she denied all allegations and even called the principal to make complaints about the students because she felt threatened As a result, a meeting was conducted with the principal, the assistant principals, Sakariasen and a few students.
The meeting was dismissed and the principal told students the matter would be investigated.  When Principal Jerod Resnick was asked about the investigation, he refused to comment.
The Department of Education verified that the situation is under investigation. ”
“We take this matter very seriously.” Margie Seinberg of the Communications Department said. “The allegation was brought to the principal’s attention; he referred the matter to the special commissioners’ office.”
Investigators questioned some of the students and the teacher. But, Sakariasen wouldn’t use the word investigation but that it’s merely being “looked at.”
Some of the students said there’s been no talk about the investigation, which gives them the impression that situation is being “swept under the rug,” said LaiElle Whitaker, 15.
A teacher in the school said the language in the blog suggests that the writer is an adult. The blogger mentioned a student named Adonis saying, “Adonis NOT BLACK AND NOT AN ADONIS.” The average New York City high school student might not know that Adonis is a Greek God who is known for his good looks. That’s why they think that only a well-rounded, college educated individual would be more likely to know about Greek mythology.
Juanita Gatling, 18, along with a math teacher don’t believe that Sakariasen wrote the comments. They said they don’t think that she would put her job at risk by writing a public blog displaying racism.
“We shouldn’t have to go on a scavenger hunt looking for [the blogger],” said Liza Marie Polanco, 14. “They should just come forward.”
Sakariasen didn’t admit that she wrote the blog, but she didn’t deny it either.
“The idea of me being a racist made me sick,” Sakariasen said.

By Nyiesha Showers

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