American Record Holder Sanya Richards-Ross was at the Michael Johnson Classic in Waco Texas and competed in her first 400 Meters of the year blazed the race in an outstanding 50.18. Ross took to Twitter stating this was the first time she “opened-up” in the quarter so fast.

2004 Olympic Champion in the 100 Meters Hurdles Joanna Hayes at the prime age of 35 years old came out of retirement to compete at the Mt. Sac Relays in California and ran a blistering 12.70 for second place.
Allyson Felix, arguably the USA’s most decorated athlete in the 200 & 400 Meters, ran the 4×100 Meter Relay at the Mt. Sac Relays. Felix, a southern California native, returned to the track she has run on since being a teenager. She made a brief cameo as she anchored the Kersee All-Stars team of Ginnie Crawford, Jeneba Tarmoh and Dawn Harperto a win in the 400 relay in a time of 42.87.

Also at the Relays, four-time long jump world champion Brittney Reese broke the meet mark with a jump of 23 feet, 4.5 inches. Carol Lewis had set the record of 22-10.5 in 1984.

Jeremy Wariner has won four Olympic medals (three gold, one silver) and six World Championships medals. He is the third fastest competitor in the history of the 400 Meter event with a personal best of 43.45 seconds, after Butch Reynolds, and Michael Johnson. Injured last year, Wariner is looking to be among the best again. However, after running at Mt. Sac Relays, he had to settle for second place in a time of 44.96 behind Britain’s Martyn Rooney who ran 44.92.

After settling for bronze medals in both the 100 and 200 in Beijing, Walter Dix is gearing up for repeat performances in London. He put together a good effort in his race. The former Florida State star shrugged off a slow start to win the 100 in 9.85. The wind-aided time is the world’s fastest mark this year.
Other noteworthy results:

Jason Richardson, the reigning 110 hurdles world champ, ran 13.20 to break the meet mark of 13.22 set by Larry Wade in 1999.

Four-time long jump world champion Brittney Reese broke the meet mark with a jump of 23 feet, 4.5 inches. Carol Lewis had set the record of 22-10.5 in 1984.

At the Kansas Relays, Bershawn (Batman) Jackson ran the fastest time in the world this year to win his seventh 400-meter hurdles title. His time of 48.20 seconds was also a Kansas Relays record, breaking his own mark set in 2008.

Two-time Olympian DeeDee Trotter won the women’s 400-meter dash in 50.94 seconds, also the second fastest time in the world this year behind Richards-Ross.

ScholarshipTidbits
Thaddeus Hall is going to be a Gamecock. The Thomas Jefferson senior basketball star made his decision Thursday night, saying that South Carolina worked hard to recruit him. “They were pushing hard to get me and I respect that,” Hall told a reporter. “They said they’re going to put the ball in my hands.”

Sports Tidbits
Look for our Olympic Trials coverage leading up to the London Olympics exclusives and for my exclusive blog for the London 2012 Independent newspaper.

Exercise/Healthy Tidbits
Every week I will be adding to my healthy tidbits:
Work up a sweat.
Vigorous work-outs – when you’re breathing hard and sweating – help your heart pump better, give you more energy and help you look and feel best. Start with a warm-up that stretches your muscles. Include 20 minutes of aerobic activity, such as running, jogging, or dancing. Follow-up with activities that help make you stronger such as push-ups or lifting weights. Then cool-down with more stretching and deep breathing.
Get fit with friends or family.

Being active is much more fun with friends or family. Encourage others to join you and plan one special physical activity event, like a bike ride or hiking, with a group each week.

Eating & Exercising! It’s MY LIFEStyle LifeFITNESS
For more information or questions, please contact dd@dianedixonfoundation.org.

The Citizens Committee for Children study also found that despite the recent influx of wealthier people and trendy shops to the neighborhood, Bed-Stuy’s overall concentrated poverty rate rose from 38.0 percent in 2000 to 43.2 percent in 2006-2010.

The report comes on the heels of the latest State Labor Department unemployment statistics showing New York City’s unemployment rate increasing to 9.8 percent far surpassing the national unemployment average of 8.4 percent in the month of March. This includes a 10.8 percent unemployment rate in Brooklyn.

“The increasing poverty rate in our city, and especially in Black and Latino communities, is an issue that has been at the forefront of my committee’s agenda,” said Vann, chair of the Council’s Community Development Committee. “While the Bloomberg Administration has held big announcements to unveil anti-poverty initiatives for young children, the working poor and disconnected youth, the mayor has simultaneously cut programs and opposed policies that benefit these same populations.”

Calls to Bloomberg’s press office were given over to the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) for a response, where a spokesperson downplayed the State Labor Department statistics as based on a smaller and less reliable sample than overall job growth.

“We are encouraged that New York City’s private sector continues to add jobs, which is really the best sign of the health of the City’s economy,” said EDC Spokesperson Patrick Muncie. “Improving employment opportunities for all New Yorkers remains our top priority going forward, and we are continuing our work towards this important goal.”

Ironically, Vann’s war of words comes on the day that Bloomberg vetoed on City Council bill and vowed to veto another measure that requires some larger companies doing business with the city to pay a fixed livable wage – far above the state minimum wage – to their employees.

“Those bills – the so-called living and prevailing wage bills – are a throwback to the era when government viewed the private sector as a cash cow to be milked, rather than a garden to be cultivated,” said Bloomberg in announcing his veto.

“When it comes to creating jobs, government is not the architect of the economy – that’s the private sector’s job. I believe government has an obligation to set a minimum wage – but beyond that, private businesses should be free to make their own decisions,” he added.

Bloomberg noted that developers walked away from a deal at the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx because they would have been forced to bring in only businesses that paid a set livable wage. He suggested that the development would have brought hundreds of jobs to the Bronx, which has the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate of any county in the state at 13.6 percent.

“I will not sign legislation – no matter how well-intended – that hurts job creation and taxpayers,” said Bloomberg.

But Vann, who co-authored the measures, said the mayor’s cuts to funding for child care and after-school programs – and opposition to laws that move working people closer to earning self-sustaining wages – have been devastating.

“In order to achieve any success in the fight against poverty, we need a stronger commitment from our mayor to policies and programs that we know are crucial to preventing and reducing poverty,” said Vann.

Local Brooklyn poet Tracy K. Smith was awarded the prestigious prize on April 16 for her book Life on Mars. She first learned of her winning from her husband, who had just read it on The New York Times Web site.
“This news is particularly elating because I think of the book as a tribute to my father, who passed away in 2008,” Smith told reporters of her third published collection.

In taking the honor, the Pulitzer Prize Committee called the book “a collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain.” The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry recognizes a prestige volume of original verse by an American author. The poems in Life on Mars are of another universe, very sci-fi and futuristic. They explore the dark moments of human life on Earth in the present day.

For example, one poem tells of a daughter imprisoned in the basement by her own father; another focuses on celebrity culture; and another finds the poet losing her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.

MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF STARS (excerpt)
My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit-up whenever anyone would ask, and his arms would rise

As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied
postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di.
Rock Hudson died.

We learned new words for things.
The decade changed.

The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,
The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

—from Life on Mars

The New York Times reviewed Smith’s award-winning work as lyrical and rhythmic, stating it embodies the same qualities as masters such as Lorca. At times political, whimsical and always meditative, they speak largely to the role of art and to the conception of what it means to be American, dealing with the “evolution and decline of the culture we belong to.” Her work explores also the dichotomy between the ordered world and the irrationality of the self, the importance of submitting oneself willingly to the “ongoing conflict” of life and surviving nonetheless. For Smith, in her own words, poetry is a way of “stepping into the mess of experience.”

Life on Mars follows Smith’s 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet’s second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for Poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African-Americans. The Body’s Question (2003) was her first published collection.

Smith is a native of Falmouth, Massachusetts but was raised in northern California by a family that has “deep roots” in Alabama. She started her writing journey as a poet at Harvard University, where she graduated from in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in English, American literature and African-American Studies. She then completed a MFA in creative writing at Columbia University in 1997. From 1997 to 1999 she was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. She has taught at the City University of New York, the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University.

In 2006, Smith joined the faculty of Princeton University, where she teaches creative writing. Smith’s numerous awards and honors include receiving the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writers Award and a 2005 Whiting Writers’ Award. She was also selected to participate in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, which recognizes rising from around the world.

New York State Senator Velmanette Montgomery

If you give control to a person whose entire career is spent using and analyzing data, then don’t be surprised when all they [Bloomberg and the DOE] care about is data,” says Jim Vogel, a spokesmen for Sen. Montgomery. “Children now spend almost one third of their day just doing test prep.”

Under the proposed Senate bill the city would create an independent NYC Board of Education panel, to replace the current Panel for Educational Policy, which is spearheaded solely by the Mayor and the DOE.
The new board would have the authority to appoint the NYC Schools Chancellor and have control over educational policy. The bill would also allow parents and community education professionals to have a greater voice in the education process.

“Mayoral control does not work.” said Montgomery, “Control of our schools must be put back in the hands of educational professionals who have a deep understanding of our children’s needs—and the skills to produce positive educational outcomes.”

The proposed legislation also requires the new Board of Education to be comprised of individuals appointed by several entities that include: each borough president would get to appoint one member, the city council would appoint four members, and the mayor would appoint four members.

Among the stipulations for appointment are that some members would have to have a child currently in city schools.

“We need parents involved in their children’s education. We need schools that are focused not solely on test results, but on providing the best education. We need a Board of Education focused on an environment supportive of the achievement of all our children. This bill will provide for all these things,” said Montgomery.

The proposed bill would also require that the new board chooses the NYC schools chancellor. Under Bloomberg, every chancellor he has appointed had no background in professional education, which is required by the state for all schools chancellors, but the mayor received waivers to bypass the rule.
Opponents of the measure argue that this would take the system back to the “dysfunctional days” of the old Board of Education when there were too many local sub-departments and corruption.

“This legislation is an anarchist’s dream,” said Joe William, of Democrats for Education Reform.
“Have people forgotten about the corruption? It took forever to get anything done.” wondered Bay Ridge Sen. Martin Golden (R).

Sam Anderson from the Coalition for Public Education said the bill merely tweaks what’s already in place.
“It will not address the issue of who has the power to govern the DOE and eliminate the privatization of our public education system,” said Anderson.

The Mayor’s office has also charged that the legislators are doing the bidding of the United Federation of Teachers, who has seen their influence dwindle under Mayoral control, rather than serving the interests of students. But, as Vogel insists, “This isn’t about going back, but about moving forward.”

“I don’t really know too much about this issue,” said Gwendolyn Brown, a parent at P.S 289 George V. Brower in Crown Heights. “But I think it’s a step in the right direction.”

Under current law, Mayor Bloomberg’s control of the public school system is not up for renewal until 2015.

News that the congressman would not seek another term came just one day before the petitioning deadline, which raised quite a few eyebrows. Speculation that his petitions might not have passed muster came from someone within Towns’ East New York base. The source said the congressman’s petitions from the East New York section of the district looked strong, but while technically having enough signatures from the Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill areas, there may not have been enough signatures from those areas to survive a challenge.

Rep. Towns’ position was complicated by his home being drawn outside the new district. He could have proceeded forward. State law only requires that a candidate reside within the county and the state during a campaign. If the incumbent had moved forward defending his seat and survived the primary and general election he would have had to make other arrangements regarding his legal address.

The congressman’s wife might have been another factor. It is said she encouraged him to consider retiring. At age 77, it is not unreasonable for the congressman to enjoy time with his wife, children and five grandchildren.

Another factor might have been the untimely death of Donald Payne, a New Jersey Congressman who served for 23 years. “Donald Payne and I were the same age. Donald Payne and I were very close,” Towns said. “We talked about things we wanted to do after we finished Congress.”

During the campaign, Congressman Ed Towns had been promoting his seniority as an asset. During the 111th Congress, he served as Chair of the House Oversight Committee and to make his point recently brought an Oversight hearing to Borough Hall. During his tenure as Chairman of Oversight, Towns refused to issue subpoena records involving Countrywide Financial, a company that played a major role in contributing to the subprime mortgage crisis. It was later revealed that Towns had two mortgages with Countrywide designated with the company’s V.I.P. preferred customer status.

When Republicans gained control during the 112th Congress, Towns was not asked to become Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee. Instead, the position was given to Rep. Elijah Cummings, who uses high-profile aggressive methods to challenge Chairman Darrell Issa on numerous issues, a sharp contrast to Ed Towns’ low-key style. In particular, Cummings’ persistence found that the ATF Fast and Furious gun-walking program in which guns trafficked into Mexico leading to the deaths of several law enforcement officers was not an initiative conceived by high-ranking Dept. of Justice Obama Administration political appointees. Instead, the reckless operation was limited to ATF’s Phoenix Division and began during the previous administration.

The retiring congressman has not made an endorsement in the race, although there is speculation he will do so. If Rep. Towns does make an endorsement, the likelihood that his choice would be Charles Barron is slim to none. It is common knowledge that there has been an ongoing bitter rivalry between the Towns and Barron camps.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, along with Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, announced the $132.6 billion spending plan last week.

Parker said he had two problems with the budget, including going back to the 20-year-old perception that the budget process boils down to three people in a room making all the major decisions on how money is allocated and spent.

“For people to act on what we are going through now is not the same dysfunction we experienced previously is a disservice to the voters of the state,” said Parker.

Parker said the second problem he had with the budget is that whole groups of people were being excluded along race, gender, class and disability lines in the budget process.

“The process is far narrower than it should be. We have representative government across the state drawn in districts that allows as many different types of people to be represented as possible, and then they get to Albany to do the budget, and it filters down to three white guys making all the decisions. This has a negative impact on outcomes,” said Parker.

Parker said this type of budget process this year led to the state not addressing such important budgetary issues as the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, in which lower-income school districts were supposed to get more funding.

Other issues the budget and/or the state didn’t address included legislation backing the federal Dream Act, which would give long-term immigrants more legal rights – especially in New York City, which has the largest immigrant population, said Parker.

“We also failed to put together a proper renters protection unit even after we promised to do it, and we’re still fingerprinting for food stamps,” said Parker.

Parker said his vocal opposition to the budget process is part of his job.
“I’m providing an opposition to the Republican majority in the Senate, which is non-representative, and for the system to be more inclusive so that the people I represent have a seat at the table,” Parker said.

Every vote counts
After one of the most heated elections in southern Brooklyn history, Republican David Storobin clung to a one-vote lead over City Councilman Lew Fidler to replace convicted felon and former Sen. Carl Kruger in a special election for the 21st Senate District seat.

According to the latest unofficial city Board of Elections results, Storobin had 10,900 votes to Fidler’s 10,899.

After the election night two weeks ago, Storobin had a 120-vote lead that jumped to 143 the next day after workers from the Board of Elections completed a paper ballot recount. However, that lead shrunk to a single vote after 700-plus absentee ballots and affidavits were tallied.

But this race is more likely to be decided by court-appointed referees than by vote recounts as lawyers for both Storobin and Fidler are claiming more than 300 of the votes were phony.

Odds and ends
Despite several political pundits playing down a possible fourth candidate joining the already-crowded June Democratic primary for the newly created 8th Congressional District, several sources say one will emerge in the next week.

Both the Kings Highway Democratic Club and the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club are actively looking for a candidate more familiar with issues in southern Brooklyn, said one source.

Thus far, the candidates include incumbent Congressman Ed Towns, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and City Councilman Charles Barron.

Meanwhile, Jeffries continues to pick up union support, most recently from the city Transit Union.
Towns, though, continues to have strong support in Canarsie and Flatlands – and in particular the support of Mercedes Narcisse, who is expected to make a strong run for City Councilman Lew Fidler’s 46th District seat.

“Canarsie is the most black neighborhood in all of Brooklyn,” said Narcisse spokesperson and longtime political operative Michael Roberts. “We continue to support Congressman Towns and we will deliver for him in the 46th Council District.”

A staggering 750 homeowners from Bedford-Stuyvesant are on the verge of losing their properties due to the city’s tax lien sale.

When property owners do not pay their property taxes, and/or water, sewer and other property-related charges, the city can file a legal claim for collection called a tax lien.

The property owner’s debt includes unpaid taxes and charges, as well as the associated interest. Any property owner that owns two- and three-family homes and owes $2,000 and a year in water/sewer charges, $3,000 and a year in taxes and $1,000 and a year in property-related expenses (emergency repair loans), that property is eligible for the lien sale.

The issues some property owners are facing is the lien sale notices and where the published list can be found. The list is posted on the Department of Finance (DOF) Web site as well as in local newspaper, but some senior and/or disabled homeowners aren’t able to access the Internet to check the list, leaving them unaware of sale or blind to the fact their property is eligible for sale.

The timeline for notices of the sale are as follows: the initial 90-day notice, which can be found in local newspapers; 60-day notice; 30-day notice, which will be posted again on April 13. There are also two notices mailed directly to the said eligible property.

There are three ways to avoid having property sold. Pay the charges in full, set up a payment arrangement with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which handles sewer and water charges, or find out if you qualify for one of the following exemptions: Senior homeowner exemption (SHE), Disabled homeowners exemption (DHE), real property tax credit for homeowners, veterans exemption and active-duty military personnel.

The deadline to resolve and avoid the sale is May 17.

“If you have received a lien sale notice, or if the property was on a published lien sale list, it is best to act immediately,” explained April Tyler from Comptroller John Liu’s office at the recent Community Board 3 meeting.

That said, the main issue that Bed-Stuy is focusing on is awareness of how tax liens work.
“Help is available and it’s within the community,” said community activist Brenda Fryson. “The church families need to be involved and neighbors need to come together on this.”

Fryson said “people need to understand the importance of awareness, especially for the seniors.”
For 11 years, the Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Inc., in collaboration with community partners, have been actively notifying homeowners (primarily the seniors) with information on the assistance programs available.

“A large number of the lien sale list consists of seniors with water liens,” said Brownstoner President Ava Barnett. “For that reason, the Brownstoners of Bed-Stuy have developed door-to-door outreach programs visiting about 90 percent of the listed homeowners and delivering packages with details of the lien sale and ways to get help, allowing these older homeowners to keep their properties.”

Barnett also credited City Councilman Albert Vann as being instrumental with the outreach program.
“Councilmen Vann was the only Council member who voted against this bill presented by the DEP to place water liens on properties,” Barnett said. “He (Vann) also implemented the notification policy, which forced the DEP to formally notify homeowners of their debt in addition to their property being placed on the lien sale list. In the past they did not have to notify residents.”

Local community officials and a host of community partners strongly encourage any resident in question or who needs assistance to attend the Help Night from 5-8 pm on May 2 at Restoration Plaza.
For more information below are other contacts concerning tax liens:

NYC Department of Finance’s (DOF) Web site to find out if your property is on the list

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/property/property_bill_taxlien.shtml

Go to the check the eligibility checklist

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/pdf/lien_sale/exemption_checklist.pdf

NYC Department of Finance Outreach Unit (212) 440-5408
NYC Department of Finance Senior Ombudsperson (212) 440-5407
NYC Department of Environmental Protection (water/sewer) (718) 595-7000
NYC CVomptroller’s Office (212) 669-3916

In fact, there seems to have been a doubling down on racist rhetoric, actions and policies by white supremacists who are euphemistically called members of the Tea Party, ultra-conservatives or the Republican right wing.

The atmosphere of the media is permeated with their oily smog of propaganda always driving the national discourse, whether on labor policies, education, health care, voting rights, criminal justice, or any other public policy, toward the conditions extant during that Golden Age of white supremacy, slavery.

They reveal themselves in the voter-suppression laws, in the attacks on education, and with the so-called “stand your ground” legislation that allows the use of deadly force in self-defense of a perceived threat. (This means that if the middle-aged African-American woman who jumped back in startled fear when I entered a late-night elevator many years ago had a gun, she would be able to claim “stand your ground” as a defense as to why she shot me.)
This is an instructive piece of legislation because it is so powerful that it allows a man who took someone’s life in an extraordinarily incriminating way, to avoid arrest.
This legislation, and others like it, is the brainchild of a particularly nasty lesion on the political scene, the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a conservative think tank whose Web site claims that “To date, ALEC’s Task Forces have considered, written and approved hundreds of model bills on a wide range of issues, model legislation that will frame the debate today and far into the future. Each year, close to 1,000 bills, based at least in part on ALEC Model Legislation, are introduced in the states. Of these, an average of 20 percent become law.”

ALEC has major funding from David and Charles Koch, the right wing billionaires who have been causing havoc across the nation with their use of money to influence public policy.

The only way that entities such has these are going to be defeated is by substituting people power for the Koch brothers money. The results of their efforts have real-life consequences as personal as the justification for the shooting of young Mr. Martin, as a suppressed black and brown vote and as a newly-privatized school.

Money and technology have given these folks a head start in their relentless efforts to change the nation’s laws, and it is ever more imperative that eligible voters be registered, educated and active political participants. If they are not, we will find ourselves with fewer rights, less education and taken back to a darker and more dangerous country.