At Wit’s End: Bloomberg and his street initiatives

Although there is great fun in skewering the Bloomberg Administration like a shish kebab at a Halal stand, there are a few things in which I agree with our billionaire mayor.
Among these items is Hizzoner’s fanatical approach to putting pedestrian-friendly streetscapes and bike lanes around the city.
It almost makes the city civilized.
I mention this because last week I met a friend who lives in the Bronx along 42nd Street for a few drinks. After Happy Hour ended at a watering hole, we went walking around and wound up along Broadway in that no-man’s-land between Herald and Times Square. Then we figured we’d have a nightcap before going in opposite directions on the subway.
Now, back in the day, this would mean getting some liquid refreshment at a bodega and then heading to a shadowy doorway on a side street toward Ninth Avenue.
But on this night, all we did was paper-bag it and sit outside at a table on one of those makeshift pedestrian lanes the Bloomberg Administration put on Broadway. It was very pleasant and there wasn’t a cop to be seen to bother us.
As it were the conversation drifted to cigarettes, and while I don’t smoke, my friend, who does, told me how some bodegas and people on the street are making a good living selling loose cigarettes. So the Bloomberg crackdown on and taxing cigarettes has actually created a new black market for vice.
Another nifty Bloomberg street initiative is how his administration is slowly turning city streets into bicycle highways.
True, I’d rather face a dozen thugs in a dark alley than a bicycle activist group from Park Slope, but I’m not so sure the New York time-honored game of jaywalking and dodging auto traffic is the way to go either.
It’s a question of safety. I’d rather be hit by a crazy bicyclist running a red light and going the wrong way on a one-way street than a two-ton auto while I’m darting across the street mid-block.
In theory, bike lanes also promote good health in that it promotes residents to get out on a bicycle and exercise. So I’m all for it.
I do draw the line on the two-lane bike highway on Prospect Park West, though. It slows auto traffic on the strip, and considering there are bike lanes in Prospect Park about 50 yards away, it seems a little over the top.
But for Park Slope bike advocates, it’s never enough and now they want to close all auto traffic in Prospect Park. Never mind that motorists living south of Prospect Park only use the lanes halfway during the rush hours. Or that closing these lanes during rush hours would only further clog streets like Flatbush and Ocean Avenues.
Which brings me to the last Bloomberg street initiative he’s trying to push – tolling the East River bridges to get into Manhattan.
The idea here is that tolling the bridges will create a revenue stream that can be pumped into making mass transit better. Somehow, I doubt the money will help residents who live in East Flatbush and Canarsie who take several buses and a train to get to work.
Bloomberg, though, is real creative at finding ways to raise revenue on the backs of working folks while saving money on cutting services for those same folks.
Meanwhile, you don’t hear a peep from the mayor on allowing a small increase on the taxes of the wealthy.
Then again, that’s the way a billionaire’s bread is buttered.

Concerns remain on day care cuts

Mayor Bloomberg restored his plan to slash over 16,000 day care slots last week, but at least one City Council member is saying his figures don’t add up.
Bloomberg cut the slots – that are a lifeline to working parents – in his preliminary Fiscal Year 2012 budget saying it would save the city $95 million. However, in his updated proposal he restored $40 million for some of the slots and shifted the bulk of the slots (10,500), to the Out-of-School-Time (OST) program.
The OST program would be for kids between the ages of 5-12. The 4,400 kids between 0-4 years of age would continue at the neighborhood-based day care centers.
“This proposal has raised more questions than it has answered, and it seems unlikely that a $95 million problem could be solved with only $40 million,” said City Councilman Al Vann.
Sources said Bloomberg’s new proposal didn’t address the number of local child care classroom-based centers that might be shuttered or how many jobs would be affected.
Additionally, Bloomberg’s proposal doesn’t address if local OST programs logistically accommodate a big influx of students. If they can’t it would affect parents’ ability to pick day care centers that are close to work, home or another child’s school.
“While the mayor restored some funding for child care services and has proposed to shift a significant number of children receiving services over to the Department of Youth and Community Development’s less expensive Out-of-School-Time programs, the feasibility and full impact of his proposal remains unclear,” said Vann.
The City Council and Bloomberg must agree on the FY 2012 city budget by July 1.

Black Films in New York City: A Couple’s Journey

Green Movements Grow in Central Brooklyn

Last weekend, November 19-21, the first annual conference to forge food, farming and policy solutions for the Black Community convened at Brooklyn College in New York City, convening farmers, gardeners, activists, students and community leaders from across the nation and around the world.
The 3-day conference, attended by more than 500 people, was hosted by Karen Washington of La Familia Verde and sponsored by Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an alliance of predominately Black urban farmers and food activists.  Farmer Devanie Jackson, who founded with her husband Rev. Robert Jackson the 5,000-square-foot Bed-Stuy Farm facility on Decatur Street in 2004, proudly represented the community in workshops and as a keynote leader.
Participants spent the first day mingling and the last day on a tri-borough tour of community gardens in the City, including the globally known Hattie Carthan Community Garden on Lafayette Avenue.  Other Brooklyn organizations represented at the conference included Weeksville Heritage Center and East New York Farms, among many others.

Participants and presenters came from far and wide to hear Will Allen, an urban farmer, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc in Milwaukee, WI,  and a MacArthur genius grant awardee, who opened the conference.  They also gathered to learn from the distinguished Ralph Paige, Executive Director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives of East Point, Ga., whose keynote closed the conference.

According to Ms. Washington, The conference, aimed to strengthen networks and inspire new ideas among people working across disciplines to address food-related issues that contribute to inequities in health, wealth and justice in black communities.  So why are we compelled to focus on food, farming and justice now, in these embattled times?  Allen and Paige both said in so many words, “we can not afford not to be concerned “about the inequities in a food system that is increasingly alienated from the needs of African Americans and dismissive of their demands.”
NBFC’s shared statistics that also answer the question:
· Our farmers are in peril:  ninety years ago, over 14% of U.S. farmers were African American. It’s now dwindled to about 2%.  In New York State alone, there are only 110 African-American farmers in 56,000.
· Our communities are malnourished and our collective health is suffering.  Nationally, the typical low-income neighborhood has 30 percent fewer supermarkets than higher-income neighborhoods. Nearly 50% of African American children will develop diabetes at some point in their lives. About four out of five African American women are overweight or obese.

· Our communities are dying: Deaths from heart disease and stroke are almost twice the rate for African Americans as compared to Whites.
But the beauty of the 3-day conference is that it offered proactive solutions, the kind that get your hands dirty. Some examples follow:
· Paula Thompson and Trineka Freeman from 42nd and Steele St Parking Lot Farm in Denver shared the story of how they took a parking lot back and made it their paradise.

· In ‘By Any Greens Necessary: Food as a Tool of Colonization and Joining the Resistance’, Jade Walker from the Mill Creek Farm and Chris Borden-Newsome led a discussion on the interconnectedness of oppressions.  They also taught participants how to challenge these negative systems.

· Youth from Brooklyn’s East New York Farms! Joined the conversation on ‘The Next Generation’ along with folks from Real Food Challenge.

·Tanikka Cunningham from Healthy Solutions led the discussion on increasing access to affordable food in communities of color.

· Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min (Muhammad), Minister of Agriculture and Farm Manager, Muhammad Farms of Albany, Ga., talked about the effect of USDA and other goverment policies on Farming and Urban Gardening.  He was joined by Gary Grant, President, Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association of Tillery, N.C.; Spencer D. Wood, PhD, Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS; and Barry Crumbley of the Intact Community Development Corporation in Mt. Vernon, NY.
· Michelle Hughs, Director, GrowNYC: New Farmers Development Program, presented some resources and support services available for all farmers on the local level.
Urban gardeners from Upstate New York and New Jersey, Black farmers from across the country representing the states Wisconsin, Michigan, Mississippi, California and and the nation of Canada learned how  a $5 per foot investment could convert an abandoned parking lot into rich farm land.
To a captive audience, Allen broke his success down to one phrase, “If you’ve got good soil, you can do anything.” Allen then detailed how soil was derived from composting dirt and garbage. “The key to good soil is garbage and access. I was walking yesterday and saw you all have a lot of garbage. For composting, it’s like a smorgasbord.”
The conference  – which featured over 20 breakout sessions on other topics like ending racism in the food industry and the resurgence of the urban black farmer in Denver and Detroit – came on the heels of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act which passed in the U.S. Senate a day before. Among other changes of note, the bill would make public a National Agriculture and Food Defense Strategy that may give opportunities for black farmers.
“This is just the beginning,” said Paige of the need to continue the talk around black and urban farmers.
At the conference, the 2010 Black Farmers & Urban Gardeners George Washington Carver Awards were announced.  Workshop subjects were compelling.  They included: Scaling Up! Creating 100,000 New Farmers: Local and National Resources for Rural and Urban Farmers, Designing Linkages between Upstate Farmers and Downstate Food Desert communities, Undoing Racism in the Food System:  Lessons from the Detroit Struggle, Urban Farming as a Framework for Wholistic Community Development, Young, Black and Gifted: Creating Niche Food Communities, The Next Generation: Youth Creating Food Change, By Any Greens Necessary: Food as a Tool of Colonization and Joining the Resistance and a Place for Us: Black Farmers in the Organic Movement.
For more information, visit: www.blackfarmersconf.org
(Publishers note:  Bernice Elizabeth Green contributed to Mr. Kene’s article.)

MacDonough Street Buildings Still Stand

New York City is a mosaic of stories.  And one of the most heartrending  yet heartwarming  can be seen in action on MacDonough Street, between Lewis and Stuyvesant Avenue in historic Stuyvesant. 
It began early Wednesday morning, January 20, when Mrs. Doreen Prince, owner of 331 MacDonough, awoke and could not go back to sleep. 
She got up to get a glass of water, and when she returned to bed, she smelled gas.  She went back to the kitchen and then decided to check the boiler. As she opened the door to the basement, the gas odor was powerful. 
She looked down the stairs, and saw the wall her building shared with 329 was now mostly a mountain of rubble and brick.  She could see into neighbor Robert Providence’s house through the gaping hole.   Even at that point it did not hit her how dangerous the situation was.  Stunned, she could only think of alerting her tenants and Mr. Providence next door.  But what was to develop into a nightmare unfolded very quickly. Within hours, it was determined that the two buildings were in eminent danger of collapsing under 100 tons of weight, that Mrs. Prince and her tenants, who left the building only with the clothes on their backs and their keys to the house, could not return. Ever.  The building would be demolished.   There were rumors the adjacent buildings sandwiching 331 and 329 might also be razed.
And the story had only just begun.
The buildings were slated to go down on Thursday in compliance with Buildings Department regulations concerning public safety.  And the tenants were restricted from entering the building to retrieve their belongings.
On Thursday, Mr. Providence secured a stay so the buildings would not be torn down.  On Friday another stay was granted until Monday.  On Monday, a stay until yesterday, January 27 when Justice Bert Bunyan ruled that  property owners’ structural engineers could have until Tuesday, February 2 to come up with a viable plan to save the structures.

It’s a story of people working together to find solutions; it is a story of compassion; it is a story where there are no enemies; it is a story about being on the brink; it is a story about “stuff;” keeping legacies alive, heritage intact and the quest to build new foundations; and more than bricks and mortar, it is ultimately the story, said 331 renter, Omalara Reginald Rose Deas, of grace under pressure. “And people.”

Two of those people were Lieselle Pascal, Mr. Rose’s neighbor, and Mr. Tim Lynch, a buildings forensic expert.  Mr. Lynch personally brought the tenants’ and Mrs. Prince belongings out of the building.  The very first items came from Miss Pascal’s apartment.

The cardboard box Lynch thought Miss Pascal requested contained the bible her grandmother had given her 10 years ago.  
Keedra Gibba of the December 12 Movement was seated comfortably in Bread Stuy Caf‚ at about 1pm, Friday (22), when 327 McDonough Street condo owner Suzette Hunte, entered and implored diners to come out to the  hearing that was taking place in an hour. Gibbs, without hesitation, responded to Miss Hunte’s “call to action.”

And then there are Krystal Coddett, Crystal Bobb-Semple, Eddie and Bea Atwell, Daniel and Jordana Rosen, Michael Charles, Doris Pinn, Dan Durett, Councilwoman Tish James, Kenny Kweku, Frantz, and Alan Greaves, Mrs. Prince’s son and stalwart protector — all playing a part in the drama.
The Department of Buildings told Our Time Press, “The stay on demolition has been extended to Tuesday, February 2. The buildings are being closely monitored, and there are no signs of movement at this time. The property owner will continue to submit monitoring reports to the Department. Meanwhile, the property owner (Robert Providence) must submit plans to the Department that show how the buildings can be stabilized.”  The results of the Tuesday hearing will be reported – and some of the individuals who brought the MacDonough Street story to this point will be introduced — next week in Our Time Press.

The Brooklyn That Can’t be Bought…

Mike Bloomberg’s first thoughts the morning after Mayoral election night might have wavered seamlessly between “ I won!” and “I almost lost!”  A bittersweet victory/defeat for the richest man in New York City, who lives in a world where powerful egos have no patience with almost losing.  He won 557,059 expensive votes to Democrat Bill Thompson’s low-cost 506,717.

That morning, our friend Robert Taylor woke up to a world that eludes the city agencies.  He was at peace padding his way from Brevoort Place to Clinton Hill’s Grand Avenue, as he does every morning.  “If it snows, I pick up a shovel and clean the streets for a few dollars. I just keep moving, but I keep coming back.”  Virtually homeless after losing his apartment on the avenue just after 9/11 due to escalated rents; Robert is accustomed to “street guy” references.  But he also knows how to train horses; he does not bet on them.  He sometimes entertains small crowds, outdoors, with his phenomenal classic music playing, when a used piano is dropped off at his friend Eddie Hibbert’s Antique warehouse down the street.

Mr. Taylor informed us that the Mayor shelled out about $200.00 per vote  for each of the more than half million votes he received, compared to his Democrat opponent Bill Thompson’s $14 each for almost the same amount of votes.  “But, remember, it’s not always about the money; it’s about what you want that money to do. When the stakes are high, you cast high bets to win at any cost.  He now has a lot of work to do to make true on those promises he paid for.”

On the north easternmost edge of Brooklyn, Mr. B., a block association president and former corrections officer agrees, but he still thinks arrogance, not money interfered with Mr. Thompson’s sure shot.  At his election site, the lever for DeBlasio was stuck, and the pollworker told him gruffly,  “Don’t worry ‘bout that, it’ll count.”  After putting his strength on that lever to bring it to its place, he informed everyone present what was going on.  “This ‘kiss-my-ass’ attitude – on the part of a lot of folks connected with the political process, including local elected officials, only succeeds in keeping voters away.  And it may have pushed votes away from Thompson.  People are turned off, they don’t want to participate. 

“At the community board meeting this week, a guy stands up and asks about construction jobs that are going to other ethnic groups who don’t live in the neighborhood; a weatherization official announces that it doesn’t make sense for owners of 2-family homes to apply for special funding, ‘especially,’ he said, ‘since you don’t use that much hot water anyway’, plus we learn about 75% of the program’s $10 million is available to owners of multi-family dwellings, well – that’s not us; then there’s these rezoning issues and whether or not certain areas of Bedford –Stuyvesant will be rezoned in accordance with the special interests of other ethnic groups in other areas.  Point is … if local politicians are servants of the public, they should come out of their comfort zones and get into the neighborhood and go to the people. Explain to them what’s going on.”

The 45-year-old block association president was recently stopped by police in Herbert Von King Park and asked to show ID because he was walking through the park at night, three nights before the election.  Officers apologized profusely after they discovered he was a retired Corrections Officer. “This is the way it is.  But attitudes across the board must change if they are to get the support from all of the people.

“Some of the young Turks seeking election against incumbents could have gotten a lot of mileage out of putting their weight solidly and visibly behind Mr. Thompson. There are so many lessons to be learned.”

It’s still no excuse for such a low turnout, says New York City Parks worker Earl Williams.  “When I went to P.S. 305 at 4pm to vote, there was no one there except the poll workers.”

It was chilly and dry the day after the election, and everyone had something to say abouthow Thompson should have won. Except, of course, the mainstream press, stunned that their polls didn’t get it right, and perhaps numbed by the same thinking as Taylor, Mr. B., Mr. Williams and Mr. Bloomberg: if Black people had turned out, in force, Thompson, who earned 50.9% of Brooklyn votes to Mr. Bloomberg’s 45.3%, would have enjoyed the landslide of the century.  For pennies on the dollar.  Lessons to be learned, indeed.

Thompson Offers Comprehensive Economic Plan For All New Yorkers

     New York has had eight years of what mayoral candidate Bill Thompson calls a “barbell economy” that “created low-paying jobs with no benefits on one end, high-paying jobs predominately in finance and business services on the other, and very few jobs in between.” According to Thompson, the “middle class, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and working families have been shut out.” Thompson has introduced a comprehensive plan “that focuses on  real solutions to create a diverse post-boom era economy that produces long-term, living-wage jobs.”

Thompson’s A New Direction for a New Economy has a three-pronged approach: make New York City a true center of entrepreneurial, small business growth; restructure our workforce development system to give New Yorkers the skills required to hold jobs that pay good wages; and include the entire city and all economic groups in the creation of long-term, living-wage jobs and career ladders to the middle class as a top priority.

In a recent presentation to the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, Bill Thompson spoke of the plight of New York’s historic Garment District as an example of how private sector jobs and businesses have been negatively impacted by current policies.  

New York’s world-class Garment District has traditionally thrived because of the close proximity of talent across the field – clothing designers, pattern makers, fabric manufacturers, producers of buttons, zippers and trim makers, garment manufacturers, showrooms and merchandisers, and fashion show operations. These entities require space to sustain and grow the industry. Thompson points to Bloomberg’s development and rezoning policies as a threat to the industry – an assertion supported by the Garment Industry Development Corporation.

According to Thompson, since 2002, nearly 2,000 acres of manufacturing zones have been rezoned for other uses. “To make matters worse,” said Thompson, “the city now wants to rezone another 1,800 acres – a combined 20 percent of our manufacturing acreage and 40 percent of already-built industrial space – despite the fact that many of our 7,000 manufacturers are looking to expand.” Thompson said he will “enforce existing zoning regulations that were established to protect manufacturers from real estate speculators who offer only short-term leases – a practice that has discouraged many manufacturers from locating in New York City.” Thompson would place a “moratorium” on the proposed rezoning of an additional 1,800 acres in manufacturing zones. He said he will also “work with manufacturers, the fashion industry and labor unions to arrange for up to one million square feet of dedicated garment manufacturing space in nonprofit buildings, the amount of space the industry says it requires to thrive and to expand.”

With help from low-cost financing and grants, Thompson said he will also “replicate programs like the highly successful Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center which helps nonprofits acquire, rehabilitate and renovate run-down industrial properties. These new centers will be designed for occupancy at affordable rents by small manufacturers and creative firms in fields such as architecture, design and high tech.” In addition, as mayor, Thompson said he would develop a centralized, online, searchable  database of all available commercial space under 5,000  square feet for small business tenants looking for open, small commercial space. He would also establish “Retail Retention Zones” which would offer incentives to property owners so that “independent retailers can compete for retail space with deep-pocketed retail chains and banks.”

To better support NYC’s small business and long-term economic health, “We must also help New Yorkers acquire the skills they need to compete for jobs created by these newly empowered businesses,” said Thompson. “Under Mayor Bloomberg, the current $925 million dollar city-administered [workforce development] system is uncoordinated and often at odds with itself.” Thompson’s office found “the system lacks a unifying mission, and that its 33 different programs report to three different deputy mayors with no reference to a citywide economic development strategy.” Specifically, Thompson said, “It’s incredible that the Department of Education’s Career and Technical programs – which trains thousands of high school students in everything from aircraft mechanics to computer technology – are entirely separate from the rest of the workforce development system, and that no one is in charge of coordinating the whole effort.”

Thompson said as mayor, he would establish a Mayor’s Office of Skills Development to ensure that “our city’s workforce development efforts are comprehensive, coordinated and focused on sectors where our city seeks a competitive advantage.”

Thompson’s support for small businesses as NY’s economic engine is concrete. According to Thompson, “Roughly 98 percent of New York City firms have fewer than 100 employees. These businesses account for almost half the city’s private-sector payroll.”

The Office of the Comptroller under Bill Thompson has paid particular attention to Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises. A recent audit found the Department of Small Business Services (DSBS) did not completely comply with Local Law 129, which was enacted in response to a disparity study commissioned by the NYC Council in 2005. The study found that there was a significant disparity in contracting opportunities afforded to certain M/WBE groups in the procurement of construction, professional services, standard services and goods. Local Law 129 was intended to address the disparities revealed by the study. As stated in the law, DSBS “shall administer, coordinate and enforce a citywide program established by local law for the identification, recruitment, certification and participation in city procurement of Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises.”

Thompson said, “The fundamental goal of the program is to increase M/WBE participation in the city’s procurement process, not merely to give these companies an opportunity to compete.” The Comptroller’s Review of FY 2008 agency purchases from M/WBEs found that of the 23 agencies that were required to submit an agency utilization plan, 12 agencies met a total of 21 prime contract utilization goals out of 241 applicable categories. The total value of the prime contracts entered into by these agencies was $369,417,386, with a targeted goal to spend $107,816,905 in contracts with M/WBEs. “However,” said Thompson, “the actual value of contracts with M/WBEs was a paltry 14 percent of that goal, or $14,882,561.”

Comptroller Thompson found several noncompliance issues of contractors that were discovered by DSBS, including: a prime contractor adjusted the subcontracting requirements of a contract without notifying the agency; no proof of payment to a subcontractor was provided by the prime contractor for two contracts; and a prime contractor did not meet its subcontracting goals.  The Comptroller’s Office surprisingly found that although noncompliance was discovered, DSBS never notified the audited agencies and contractors of the findings.  “If an agency is not made aware of the audit’s outcome, especially when there are findings of noncompliance, there is no way to ensure they know what is taking place and certainly have no means to ensure the problem gets rectified,” Thompson said. “Common sense was missing here.”

Thompson has made several recommendations, including that DSBS should: immediately meet with all agencies not meeting their goals to discuss ways that they could improve, and document the results of those meetings; at least annually review and document its review of the utilization of M/WBEs by the agencies subject to the local law requirements to determine if they are meeting the goals stated in their M/WBE utilization plans; meet and document its meetings with the agencies that are not achieving their M/WBE utilization goals to determine the reason(s) the goals are not being met and whether the agencies are making all reasonable efforts to do so. In addition, based on the results of these meetings, DSBS should determine whether any common factors exist among the agencies that may need to be addressed, and establish a system whereby audit findings are followed up with contractors (both prime and subs as appropriate) and contracting agencies in a timely manner.

Bill Thompson has established on the Comptroller’s website a list of procurement resources for Minority and Women-owned businesses.

Passing Notes

Ed Bradley, 65, a suave and streetwise reporter considered one of the best interviewers on television and the winner of 19 Emmy Awards for his work on 60 Minutes and CBS Reports, died of leukemia Nov. 9 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He lived in New York.
Bradley, the first African-American at CBS to be a White House correspondent and a Sunday night anchor, covered a broad array of stories with insight and aplomb during his 39-year career, from war to politics to sensitive portraits of artists. He won virtually every broadcast news award – some of them more than once.
Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Friday, November 10, 2006

Author Bebe Moore Campbell died of complications from brain cancer at her home in Los Angeles November 27. She was 56.
Bebe Moore Campbell was the author of several best-selling books that explored issues of race from several vantage points, including Brothers and Sisters, Singing in the Comeback Choir and Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine.

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer and a gifted pioneer in this white, male domain.
Her father was a shoeshine man who died when she was a child, her mother was a maid who brought her along on jobs yet Octavia Butler rose from these humble beginnings to become one of the country’s leading writers – a female African-American pioneer in the white male domain of science fiction.
Butler, 58, died after falling and striking her head Friday on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park. The reclusive writer who moved to Seattle in 1999 from her native Southern California, was a giant in stature (she was 6 feet tall by age 15) and in accomplishment.
She remains the only science fiction writer to receive one of the vaunted “genius grants” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a hard-earned $295,000 windfall in 1995 that followed years of poverty and personal struggles with shyness and self-doubt.
“People may call these ‘genius grants,’ ” Butler said in a 2004 interview with the Seattle P-I, “but nobody made me take an IQ test before I got mine. I knew I’m no genius.”
By John Marshall, P-I Book Critic

Benny Andrews, noted painter and visual storyteller, passed away on November 10. Born into a family of sharecroppers, Andrews grew up working in the cotton fields of Georgia and was the first in his family to graduate from high school in 1948. He spent his life painting works that addressed social issues such as the United States Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust, and the forced relocation of American Indians. Andrews was also a longtime teacher, having taught art at Queens College in New York City for thirty years and establishing an art program in New York State’s prison system.

Coretta Scott King, known first as the wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then as his widow, then as an avid proselytizer for his vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change, died early today, January 31, 2006, at Santa Monica Hospital in Baja, California, Mexico, near San Diego. She was 78. Mrs. King was admitted to the hospital last Thursday, said her sister, Edythe Scott Bagley. She died about 1 a.m., said Lorena Blanco, a spokeswoman for the United States consulate in Tijuana. Andrew Young, the former United Nations Ambassador and longtime family friend, said at a news conference this morning that Mrs. King died in her sleep.
“She was a woman born to struggle,” Mr. Young said, “and she has struggled and she has overcome.”
Mrs. King rose from rural poverty in Heiberger, Ala. to become an international symbol of the civil rights revolution of the 1960′s and a tireless advocate for social and political issues ranging from women’s rights to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa that followed in its wake.
She was studying music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1952 when she met a young graduate student in philosophy, who on their first date told her: “The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all.” A year later, she and Dr. King, then a young minister from a prominent Atlanta family, were married, beginning a remarkable partnership that ended with his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
Mrs. King did not hesitate to pick up his mantle, marching, even before her husband was buried, at the head of the striking garbage workers that he had gone to Memphis to champion. She then went on to lead the effort for a national holiday in his honor and to found the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, dedicated both to scholarship and to activism, where Dr. King is buried. The New York Times

Edna Lewis, the granddaughter of a former slave whose cookbooks revived the nearly forgotten genre of refined Southern cooking while offering a glimpse into African-American farm life in the early 20th century, passed away on February 13, 2006,she was 89.
Miss Lewis, as she was always called, died in her sleep in her home in Decatur, Ga., taking care of herself as she grew frail.
Despite a quiet demeanor, Miss Lewis had a reach that extended from her family farm in Virginia to left-wing politics in Manhattan to the birthplace of California cuisine.
Edna Lewis was born in a small settlement called Freetown in 1916, one of eight children. The farm had been granted to her grandfather, a freed slave. Growing, gathering and preparing food was more than just sustenance for the family, it was a form of entertainment. Without fancy cooking equipment, the family improvised, measuring baking powder on coins and cooking everything over wood.
She took a bus to New York when she was in her early 30′s, eager for work but restricted by the racial attitudes of the times.
In New York, she married Steve Kingston, a retired merchant seaman and a Communist.
In the mid-1970′s, while sidelined by a broken leg, Miss Lewis began writing a cookbook. With encouragement from Judith Jones, the cookbook editor at Knopf who also edited Julia Child, Miss Lewis turned her handwritten pages into The Taste of Country Cooking. In 1979, Craig Claiborne of the Times said the book “may well be the most entertaining regional cookbook in America.”
In a 1989 interview with the Times, Miss Lewis said: “As a child in Virginia, I thought all food tasted delicious. After growing up, I didn’t think food tasted the same, so it has been my lifelong effort to try and recapture those good flavors of the past.”
Miss Lewis will be particularly remembered in Brooklyn for her 5-year tenure as chef at the former Brooklyn landmark restaurant, Gage & Tollner’s.

Carl Brashear was the U.S. Navy’s first Black deep-sea diver. Years later, he achieved the status of Navy Master Diver, a rank reached by only a handful of the best divers in U.S. Naval diving history. But what makes Brashear’s accomplishment so unique is that he did it with only a 7th-grade education while having to surmount institutional racism in the Navy and the loss of a leg incurred while saving the life of another sailor.
The inspiring story of this true legend was told in the hit movie Men of Honor which starred Oscar winners Cuba Gooding, Jr.
By CDR (Ret.) Gregory Black, Black Military World (BMW) Founder

Gordon Parks, Sr., a versatile and prolific artist, warrants his status as a cultural icon. Parks passed away on March 7, 2006 at the age of 93. The poet, novelist, film director, and preeminent documentary and fashion photographer was born on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas, the youngest of fifteen children. Parks saw no reason to stay in Kansas after the death of his mother and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota at age sixteen to live with his sister. After a disagreement with his brother-in-law, Parks soon found himself homeless, supporting himself by playing piano and basketball and working as a busboy.
While working on a train as a waiter, Parks noticed a magazine with photographs from the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The photos by such documentary photographers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein led him to Richard Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices, other photo essays about poverty and racism, and the social and artistic voice he had been seeking. Parks bought a used camera in 1938, deciding on a career in photography. In 1941, Parks received a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation to work with Roy Stryker at the photography section of the FSA. In Washington, D.C., he trained as a photojournalist. He would work with Stryker for the next few years, producing work and honing the modernist and individualistic style he became known for by photographing small towns and industrial centers throughout America.
By the end of the 1940s, Parks was working with Life and Vogue and in that capacity, did some of his most famous work. Traveling the globe and covering issues as varied as the fashion industry, poverty in Brazil, the Nation of Islam and gang violence, and eventually celebrity portraitures, Parks continued to develop and create new ways to convey meaning through his work.
Branching out from his photography in 1963, Parks directed his first film, The Learning Tree, based on his autobiographical novel of the same name. His filmmaking career launched, Parks went on to direct many films, including Shaft in 1971. In addition to film, Parks has composed music and written several books including: A Choice of Weapons (1966), To Smile in Autumn (1979), Voices in the Mirror (1990), Arias of Silence (1994), and a retrospective of his life and work titled Half Past Autumn (1997), which was recently made into an HBO special. The History Makers

Katherine Dunham was well-known for bringing African and Caribbean influences into the European-dominated dance world. Born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, she was a success in dance recitals at school in Joliet, Illinois, where her father ran a dry cleaning establishment. She never thought about a career in dance, instead, she followed her family’s wishes that she become a teacher. As an anthropology student at the University of Chicago in 1935, she took her first trip to Haiti on a fellowship to study Caribbean culture and dance. The experience encouraged her, who was paying for college by giving dance lessons, to go into dance full-time. During her career, she choreographed Aida in 1963 becoming the first African American to choreograph for the Metropolitan Opera. She also did choreography work for such musicals as Cabin in the Sky. She appeared in several films including Stormy Weather in 1943 with Lena Horne and Bill Robinson and Carnival of Rhythm. She was also influential to such entertainers as Harry Belafonte and Eartha Kitt. A passionate civil rights activist, she refused to perform at segregated theaters. Katherine Dunham was honored numerous times during her career, with such distinguishable awards as The Presidential Medal of the Arts at the Kennedy Center Honors, The Albert Schweitzer Prize at New York’s Carnegie Hall on January 15, 1979, as well as awards from Brazil and Haiti. She passed away at a Manhattan, New York City, New York assisted-living facility.ÿ(bio by: C.S.)

James Brown passed on Monday, December 25, 2006, and he was more than “the Godfather of Soul.”
If there is a lingering popular image of who James Brown was, it is of that exotic, possessed entertainer. But that image is a clich‚. Brown was a great showman, but he was no cartoon. That he was demonized by legal troubles didn’t help. But he was no circus act.
The “Godfather of Soul,” who died in Atlanta at age 73, was one of the most important leaders of America’s Civil Rights movement during the second half of the 20th century.
He communed with presidents and elected officials of all political stripes, recorded groundbreaking Black-pride anthems, and may have saved Boston from being burned by rioters in the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King.
From 1965 onward, Brown often cancelled his shows to perform benefit concerts for Black political organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
In 1966, the song “Don’t Be a Drop-Out”, urged Black children not to neglect their education.
In 1968, he initiated “Operation Black Pride,” and, dressing as Santa Claus, presented 3,000 certificates for free Christmas dinners in the poor Black neighborhoods of New York City.
His funky 1968 anthem, “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” preached economic self-reliance and taught generations of hard-working Blacks it was time to “get our share.”
“We’d rather die on our feet than be livin’ on our knees,” he sang.
From the same era, Brown issued another manifesto, this time on male-female relationships: “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” Though it’s commonly mistaken for a chauvinist rant, the song is actually a plea for companionship, a lament about how all the power in the world “wouldn’t mean nuthin’ … nuthin’ … without a woman or a girl.”
“People already know his history, but I would like for them to know he was a man who preached love from the stage,” said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with Brown at the hospital. “His thing was ‘I never saw a person that I didn’t love.’ He was a true humanitarian who loved his country.”
Compiled from Chicago Tribune, Reuters, PBS, Forbes by blackmaleappreciation.blogspot.com