Sustainable living. Saving the planet. Saving it for whom? African-Americans have to first make sure that while we work to save the planet for the year 2100 that we also work to insure our descendants are able to enjoy it. That date is only eight-nine years from now, just as we are only ninety-one years from 1920 and let’s see how far we’ve come in those last decades. In August of 1920, 25,000 people went to Madison Square Garden to hear Marcus Garvey, founder of the United Negro Improvement Association with four million members around the world. In addition to the famous, though ill-fated “Black Star Line” of cruise ships, Garvey founded “The Negro World” newspaper and his proposed Negro Factories Corporation was to “build and operate factories in the big industrials areas of the United States, the West Indies and Africa to manufacture every marketable commodity.”
Despite the white terrorism of the period, 53 lynchings in 1920 and race riots across the nation, African-Americans were able to capitalize on the non-competitive markets created by segregation and own banks, insurance companies, hotels, food stores and all other manner of businesses. These were all supported by Black people. The Harlem Renaissance of arts and literature was beginning in 1920 and in 1921 Shuffle Along was the first musical written, performed, produced, and directed by African-Americans on Broadway.
The eighty-nine years since then has not been a steady march forward.
All current statistics tell us that the elements that are associated with a sustainable population, good physical and economic health and supportive family units, are missing in the African-American community. Preventable diseases are the leading cause of death, high school graduation rates are under 50%, unemployment is over 50% and 70% of Black households are headed by a single parent. With those facts as underlying truth, there is no certainty that the next eighty-nine will not be a long, sad slide to oblivion despite the record number of Black politicians in office, or the achievements of individuals.
Any effort at environmental sustainability in the African-American community must also address the reality of the tenuous state of racial and cultural sustainability if it is to be successful. Old clothes and bits of material were recycled into quilts, and small garden plots were not planted for esthetics but to feed the family. These activities strengthened social connections and were not fads or impositions, but provided the foundations for memories and success stories that connected folks to a past that was grounded in mutual support and protection.
If there is to be passion about making the world safe for future generations, then there first must be a passion to insure that our descendants will be an integral part of that coming time, and not just fading reminders of what we once were.
View From Here – Green, Saving it For Whom?
Greenprint for Change The Sustainability Movement: Grassroots to Global – Pt. 1
Greenprint for Change – Part 1
Strategies for a Recalibration …
Climate change and the economic crisis are linked by the one element that created them: those who control the resources.
And it will take those who do not … those who believe in human capital, fostering an awareness of the importance of being in harmony with nature …to bail us out. As was repeated in many sessions at the recent high-level United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, we must go to the farmer
in Africa to find some of these answers.
There is an irony in going to that farmer; she subsists in areas where poverty and hunger are at some of the highest levels in the world. Meanwhile, according to a study by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, “Foreign nations are showing growing interest in Africa’s production base as they seek to secure their own growing needs for food, feed, fiber and fuel. These claims pose an additional threat to Africa’s food security. Proactive and timely adaptation measure, both technical and institutional, might help rural Africa to capitalize on this increased demand instead of becoming victim to it.”
So what does this have to do with changing lightbulbs, weatherizing windows, using real plates instead of paper, and recyclable grocery bags? More than you think. Central Brooklyn has severe health issues, high foreclosure rates, low income, and high unemployment. In Many respects, we are more Third World than not.
That farmer, bent over the soil, bringing life to a plot of land, is not so far from removed from us. “In fact, we (of Southern and Caribbean backgrounds) are the most environmentally-based people,” said Desmond Prince, a local green entrepreneur. “So our connection with the soil and with green is part of our heritage.”
Unfortunately, that history maybe getting blurred from the multiversity meltdown, and that could bring on a dynamic which would be tragic: the selling of “green” literacy programs or initial ancestral basic inventions back to us. If that happens, we will be worse off than ever. So that is why a Greenprint for Change needs to encompass something a little deeper than a grocery list of things to do … although they should be done.
The platform of this Greenprint will unfold over time; its core is grounded in changing value systems, recalling and respecting ancestral traditions, equalizing opportunity. It is a revitalization of the mind set, focus on things that need to be done to help the family, the community, the nation, our children survive beyond us. It is at that point we begin to think about how we will design our own sustainability futures and push for bold agendas, and not have designs or agendas foisted on us. .
Greenprint Strategies:
Education:
A series of Boot Camp courses on Sustainability or Green Tips and Techniques to all Block Association Presidents.
Revise the city’s school textbooks to reflect accurately the histories of Native Americans and
enslaved Africans and their contributions to the “planting” of New York. Also what they brought to
these shores that still survive.
Different communities sharing, through community board day-long conferences, how they are greening their neighborhoods, and sharing resources. (This could also occur with the Chamber of Commerce board and the membership of, say, the Bedford-Stuyvesant Lions’ Club.)
Neighborhoods should develop “green” partnerships with neighborhoods in other cities, again all for the purpose of sharing.
Information sharing would extend to family reunions; many families from Brooklyn travel South. They should tour the cities, and see what is being done or not being down to thwart the challenges of global warming. Develop Local Food recipes for a Family recipe book, and include family history.
Get junk food out of the schools, as State Sen. Eric Adams said at the Brooklyn Food Conference, recently. A door to door outreach campaign to fix the food system would begin to increase awareness of health sustainability.
The United Nations Millennium Development Goal is to halve poverty and hunger by 2015. Set a goal in your neighborhood for developing a Food Coop by that time, and another Farmers Market. UNEP says “25% of the world’s food production may become lost due to ecological breakdown by 2050.”
Micro-finance – utilizing small donations from block residents – a business for teen members of the Block Associations, as long as that business has a green aspect. Within legal restrictions, they could test the soil of a backyard and grow, then sell their produce to block members. Or write a book about the block which would include profiles of everyone who agreed in advance to purchase a copy.
Parents should demand agriculture, gardening, carpentry and other hands-on course be put back into the curricula, and this includes such “green” other “green” activities as home economics.
The U.N. delegate from Seychelles advised: develop a neighbor to neighbor food trading system: one homeowner grows tomatoes; plants okras; other collards, and they share with each other.
The U.N. delegate from South Africa said: If you see an empty unused lot, take it over. Just do it.
Organization like Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration might offer free Weatherization seminar, while Neighborhood Housing Services of Bedford Stuyvesant would offer Lead Prevention workshops – a t a Block Association meeting.
Universities should take an interest in priming the pipeline before children reach high-school with mini-institutes of science in the classroom or at a nearby center – free.
Local schools can connect with HBCU agricultural colleges for week-long summer NASA-like programs for young people and their parents. This could be by lottery with corporate sponsorship.
Every major corporation located in a striving neighborhood should invest in the environment of that neighborhood.
The Mayor should provide incentives for groups and blocks that engage in green/sustainable projects or develop their own plan for neighborhood sustainability.
Offer neighborhoods new learning opportunities to explore stimulating challenges – solving the crisis in Africa, interpretations of it through art and music, group discussions, create new ideas and engage young people in pen pal situations.
Technology companies can deploy their staffs to train in micro-green site development.
The City should create a Green Business Plan competition, open to all Block Associations, with start-up funding going to the best plan.
Universities receiving grant money for community work can split the money with the community, as well as resources and teaching labs. Sometimes, that translates to a couple of $100,000.
Greenprint for Change continues, in an upcoming issue.
Justice Sotomayor-Officer Edwards Making Connections
The connecting thread that weaves together the opposition to Hispanic Justice Sonia Sotomayor, describing her as a “reverse racist” and the shooting of African-American officer Omar Edwards by white officer Andrew Dunton, described as “a tragedy” with no racial overtones by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is the unbridled slaughter of the indigenous people of the western hemisphere and the three-hundred-year importation of Africans as the energy source, this was before electricity and oil, to allow whites to clear, plant and reap from the stolen land as they moved into the industrial age. Allowing the accumulation of capital and creation of physical and social-control infrastructure that would last for hundreds of years. Being ignorant of those facts and what they mean to current conditions is what is meant by being colorblind.
The truthful chord Justice Sotomayor struck when she said “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” was such that it has driven men like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Newt and others into near apoplectic fits, which is good, because then the masks fall and you can see them more clearly.
The shooting in Harlem was yet another incident of white officers shooting black officers, versus none of white or black officers shooting white officers and still Mayor Bloomberg says there is no racial pattern. This response by the mayor is so profoundly disrespectful of the African-American community, that it would not be surprising if the Mayor’s negatives rise, despite his billions of dollars, photo ops and the media he can buy.
On a crowded B25 bus in route to the wake on Wednesday, I overheard a man say to another passenger that the white officer had “reacted from his racial memory,” and that sounds like a succinct statement of the case. When that is owned up to and deeply addressed, then things will change.
City Mourns Loss of Police Officer Omar Edwards
In the wake of the recent tragic shooting of police officer Omar Edwards, 25, by a fellow cop, the NYPD is engaged in self-reflection: surveying undercover officers, releasing a guide for officers who confront other officers, reviewing rules and regulations and showing police training methods.
Today, as Edwards’ life is celebrated and his virtues extolled during funeral services at Our Lady of Victory Church on Throop Avenue, loss and sorrow overwhelm hearts: a wife loses a husband; children lose a father; a father and mother lose a son; siblings lose a brother; friends lose a friend; a team loses a player and on and on down the line – even the blue line.
Edwards, a Brooklyn resident, was shot and killed at 10:44 p.m. on East 125th Street in East Harlem by Officer Andrew Dunton one week ago today while chasing a man who broke into his car. Edwards was in street clothes and not wearing a bulletproof vest.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday that the current training video teaching officers how best to avoid problems in “confrontational situations,” will be replaced by another video that includes interviews and will be shown in every police facility in the city.
If only there were second chances, or life could rewind like videos. It would make it a lot easier for black officers who fear they might be mistaken for perpetrators or criminals and shot by their own; and officers who fear they might shoot an officer of color accidentally during a police action thinking that he might be a suspect.
So the shooting raises questions about race as well as procedure. Edwards joined the NYPD in July 2007. He was shot three times. The circumstances are under investigation.
At the urging of Black and Hispanic officers, Edwards will get a posthumous promotion to detective so that his widow, Danielle, and the couple’s two young boys can collect benefits based on the higher salary. What a price to pay.
Governor Paterson Comes to Brooklyn to Support Vann
(Photo Caption) Power Display: Governor David Paterson with Councilman Al Vann as Vann opens wha he reports will be his last campaign. The Governor was joined in his endorsement by State Senate Leader Malcolm Smith, Borough President Marty Markowitz, Stae Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Assemblymember Annette Robinson, Councilwoman Letitia James and a host of others.
Councilman Al Vann held what is said to be his last major campaign kickoff rally at the Lab community and entertainment complex on Harriet Tubman Boulevard/Tompkins Avenue in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant and it highlighted the strengths of his campaign.
The Councilman said he had been taught not to be a showoff but “I showed off a little this afternoon.” And he did, bringing thirty years of relationships, and a lifetime of mutual histories. Both Governor David Paterson and State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith were present at the event and both spoke of “standing” on Councilman Vann’s shoulders and how his stature (with them in the world of politics) is not something that comes easily. It was evident from their steadfast show of support in their remarks that their trust in his counsel gives the Councilman an uncommonly strong voice in Albany and New York City.
State Senator Smith joked, “I was a puppy when Vann was demonstrating in the streets,” adding that without Vann taking the lead, many of the big name politicians, in and out of the room, wouldn’t be where they are. “Vann knows where we’ve been and he knows where we’re going,” said Smith.
Noting Vann’s leadership on Black empowerment, Councilwoman Letitia James, who formerly worked for Vann, said “My DNA was crafted by Al Vann.”
State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, now Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Children and Families, Borough President Marty Markowitz, Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, Comptroller William Thompson, Council members John Liu and Bill DeBlasio, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and others spoke of Councilman Vann’s leadership on and behind the scenes on many challenges faced by the community.
Assembly member Hakeem Jeffries said that “two generations of leadership” were lifted up by Councilman Vann, and the audience of supporters, veterans of many of the community’s primary movements for the past 40 years, suggested an apparent — and perhaps this warrior’s only — challenge will be to bring the digital generation into the campaign.