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Reverend Robert Waterman, senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church, has partnered with the NAACP Brooklyn Branch and Provident Clinical Society to host Health and Spirituality: A Day of Awareness.

  The free community health event was held at Antioch Baptist Church, Sunday, November 4, 2007 following church services.  Attendees had the opportunity to get free blood sugar, blood pressure BMI and cholesterol screenings as well as HIV Counseling.
 Brooklyn is burdened by high rates of disease and mortality, and should be a priority for national efforts to improve overall community health outcomes. As an example,  African-American men and women in this area have higher death rates from diabetes, heart disease, stroke and HIV/AIDS than their white counterparts.
 Additionally, more than 50 percent of Brooklyn residents are overweight or obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, being overweight or obese may lead to other diseases and health conditions, including hypertension, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.
 “Health and Spirituality: A Day of Awareness at Antioch Baptist Church offered tools and resources for empowering our residents to take charge of their health and wellness,” remarked Reverend Robert Waterman, senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church. “A successful change in health outcomes for Brooklyn residents requires commitment and involvement from community health leaders.”
Legendary actress and activist Ruby Dee said, “I’m not talking about young people right now because they have a whole life ahead of them.  I’m talking about us seniors, we can change things.”  And so saying, Ms. Dee, star of stage and screen for over 50 years, and with a new movie just coming out, urged the seniors to take advantage of their years.   “You can do anything you damn please.”  Urging them to remember their trials of their lives and use them as a source of strength to go forth and do good in the world, Ms. Dee minced no words.  “What else can they do to us?  Kill us?  You’re going to be dead anyway, so you might as well make it count.”
Ms. Dee went on to put her own spin on the necessity to adhere to programs for management of chronic diseases, saying, “We have to stay healthy to better manage our lives and better manage the next revolution that old people have to conduct.  Because as seniors, as elders, we have work to do.  We’ve been through enough and ought to have a little more sense than we’ve been seeing. We’ve got to stop these wars,” says Ms. Dee. We’ve got to get on the Internet.  Seniors have to connect   worldwide.  And if we connect soon enough, we’ll be able to get a few things going, the way we think they ought to go.  We’ve got to get our kids out of jail.  She spoke of the wonder of the human species and how its existence cannot be merely to “own things, eat, go to the bathroom and die.  We’re put on this earth to do something more than that.  We have to be powerful, to be proactive, and to understand our greatness as a species. We are the last bastion of human hope on this earth. We’ve got to stay healthy because we’ve got work to do.” 
Dee Bailey, executive director of the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, said, “HIV and AIDS is here.  One out of six African-American men is infected.  One out of 160 Black females is infected with HIV and AIDS.  In New York City alone we have 150,000 people infected with HIV and AIDS.  It’s an epidemic.  In 2008, my new motto is: “We all have AIDS.”
“Unless you are tested, the assumption must be that you have AIDS.  The only way to dispel that “terrible, terrible rumor is to get tested,” said Ms. Bailey, who then donated $10,000 to the HIV ministry of Antioch Baptist Church on behalf of her organization.
Participants in health education and screening organizations for this event included the NAACP Brooklyn Branch, Provident Clinical Society, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, American Diabetes Association, the Social Security Administration, EPIC and Pfizer.

Does sex really occur in prison? And is it just rape, as the federal government would like to believe, or also consensual?
In 2003, the Prison Rape Reduction Act was  signed into law. It required federal, state and local governments to work with the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics to study the number and effects of incidents of sexual assault in correctional facilities and hopefully provide accurate data for the first time on the actual number of incidents.
That year, the Congressional Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held hearings “to examine the issue of sexual assault within federal, state, and local correctional institutions and actions that are to be taken to address the issue.”
Many revelations came out of that hearing. Of over two million people incarcerated today, it is estimated that one in ten, or roughly 200,000, have been raped. Rape is recognized as a contributing factor to prison homicide, violence against staff and institutional riots. Not only does it cause severe physical and psychological trauma to victims, it increases the transmission of HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis and hepatitis B and C, all of which exist at very high rates within U.S. prisons and jails. Juveniles have a 20% chance of being sexually abused while incarcerated.
Testimony revealed inmates victimized by prison rapes are more likely to commit crimes when they are released. Inmates, often nonviolent, first-time offenders, come out of prison rape experiences severely traumatized. The high incidence of rape within prison also leads to increased transmission of HIV, hepatitis and other diseases outside of prison, which in turn imposes threats and costs to all of society.
Since enactment of the Prison Rape Reduction Act, Congress formed a commission and has held hearings all across the country.
What prompted the federal government to undertake a study of sexual abuse  in prisons?
In 2001, Human Rights Watch produced a sobering report- No Escape: Male Rape in U.S Prisons. No Escape is a comprehensive overview of the scope of the problem and made recommendations to the U.S. Congress, The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Dept., the National Institute of Corrections, State Depts. of Corrections, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and state and local prosecutors.
For those who are in denial, Human Rights Watch conducted  200 interviews with inmates from 40 prisons across the country who spoke of the horror.  An inmate in New York wrote: “When a man finally gets his victim, he protects him from everyone else, buys him anything, the victim washes his clothes, his cell etc. In return, the entire prison knows that this guy has a “Bitch” or “girl.” I’ve seen inmates attacked by two or three men at a time and forced to the floor while three men hold him down the fourth rapes him. I’ve known two men who have hung themselves after this.”
Another story from No Escape: “I had no choice but to submit to being Inmate B’s prison wife. Out of fear for my life, I submitted to sex, and performing other duties as a woman, such as making his bed. In all reality, I was his slave.”
And yet another: “Most of the prisoners who rape are spending 5 to life. And are a part of a gang. They look for a smaller, weaker individual. And make that person into a homosexual, then sell him to other inmates of gangs. Anywhere from a pack of cigarettes to 2 cartons. . . . No one cares about you or anyone else. If they show kindness or are trying to be helpful, it is only because they want something. And if they are offering you protection, you can guarantee that they are going to seek sexual favors. . . . When an inmate comes in for the first time and doesn’t know anyone. The cliques and gangs watch him like wolves readying their attacks. They see if he spends time alone, who he eats with. It’s like the Wild Kingdom. Then they start playing with him, checking the new guy out. (They call him fresh meat.)”
And another: “I was raped in prison from Feb. 1991 through Nov. 1991. From that, it left me H.I.V. -Positive.”
No Escape focuses on male inmate-to-inmate sexual violence, excluding incidents between corrections officials and issues with women inmates, which was the focus of a 1996 report entitled All Too Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons.          

No Escape reports “Prisoners may find themselves becoming another inmate’s ‘property.’  Forced to satisfy another man’s sexual appetites whenever he demands, they may also be responsible for washing his clothes, massaging his back, cooking his food, cleaning his cell and myriad other chores. They are frequently ‘rented out’ for sex, sold or even auctioned off to other inmates, replicating the financial aspects of traditional slavery. Their most basic choices, like how to dress and whom to talk to, may be controlled by the person who ‘owns’ them. Their name may be replaced by a female one. Like all forms of slavery, these situations are among the most degrading and dehumanizing experiences a person can undergo.” In addition, “Rape in prison can be almost unimaginably vicious and brutal. Gang assaults are not uncommon, and victims may be left beaten, bloody and, in the most extreme cases, dead.”
Inmate perpetrators of sexual violence do not consider themselves to be engaging in  homosexual activity, even though, by definition, it is. Both victimizers and the victimized  generally consider themselves heterosexual.  Dr. Divine Pryor, associate director of the NuLeadership Center at Medgar Evers College, a think tank working on criminal justice issues, when asked if rape goes on in prison, he said that sex is so common and casual in prison that much of it is mis-characterized rape.  Some engage in consensual same-sex activity because they are lonely. Others participate because it is the only available outlet for sexual tension.    Dr. Pryor says, “Gay for the stay” is what the men call it and do not consider themselves homosexual and they look for heterosexual experiences upon release.
The variety of means by which male inmates are sexually abused include coerced consent, violent or forcible assaults, coerced sexual abuse, slavery and imposition of power.
The psychological impact is pervasive. Once raped, inmates become trapped into a sexually subordinate role and become an object of sexual abuse.  Shame at the  “loss of manhood”, depression, anxiety and despair, suicide, anger and perpetuation of the cycle of violence are some symptoms. Other effects of prison rape are post-traumatic stress syndrome, rape trauma syndrome and the Stockholm Syndrome, when a traumatic bond is formed with the victim’s captors- who are not prison guards, but instead, cell mates.  (One inmate testified about fantasies of returning  back to prison for more sexual abuse. Is this why recidivism is so high?) Prisoners often harbor intense feelings of anger directed first at the perpetrators of abuse, but also at prison authorities who failed to react appropriately to protect them, and even at society as a whole. Some prisoners have confessed to taking violent revenge on their abusers, inspired both by anger and by a desire to escape further abuse.
The all-to-common occurrences of sexual abuse in prison leads to serious physical injury, which are not adequately addressed, or even taken seriously, by corrections officials. Opportunities for obtaining medical evidence for possible future prosecution are missed.  Inmates who take the risk of retaliation by reporting rape are told corrections does not get involved with “lover’s quarrels” and are counseled to “deal with it”.
A wide variety of sexually transmitted  diseases are transmitted and go untreated.
Compounding the problem is callous indifference within the justice system.  “Few local prosecutors are concerned with prosecuting crimes committed against inmates, preferring to leave internal prison problems to the discretion of the prison authorities; similarly, prison officials themselves rarely push for the prosecution of prisoner-on-prisoner abuses.  As a result, perpetrators of prison rape almost never face criminal charges.”  As long as the incidents take place behind bars, and the public is not affected, local district attorneys are unconcerned because inmates do not vote them into office.
There is also a lack of honest inmate orientation. One inmate testified: “I have been to 4 Ohio prisons and at no time was I ever warned about the danger of sexual assault. No one ever told me of ways to protect myself. And to this day, I’ve never heard of a procedure for reporting rape. This is never talked about.”
Very few states, including Virginia and Arkansas, provide information to inmates on how to avoid sexual aggression when entering prison. Virginia issues a handbook that includes “How to Avoid Homosexual Intimidation,” with warnings such as ‘don’t get into debt,’ and ‘don’t solicit or accept favors, property or drugs.’
Many groups have been advocating on behalf of inmates regarding the issue of inmate-to-inmate prison rape. Stop Prison Rape is a national human rights organization that seeks to end sexual violence in all forms of detention.
The AIDS Community Research Initiative of America released a report titled Prison Health = Public Health: HIV Care in New York State Prisons, and made numerous recommendations to the NYS Dept. of Corrections and former governor Pataki, who refused to provide condoms within prisons. The Prison Committee of ACT- UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) produced No Time To Lose: HIV/ AIDS and Hepatitis C in New York State’s Prisons. The NYS Defenders Association’s prisoners rights division has numerous links on its Web site addressing prison issues. The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons produced Confronting Confinement in 2006, connecting what happens inside with the health and safety of our communities. The report states: “What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. It comes home with prisoners after they are released and with correction officers at the end of each day’s shift.” Even Clarence Thomas, for once, got it right. He wrote a concurring  opinion in the 1994 Farmer v. Brennan, when the Supreme Court held that deliberate indifference to the risk of prison rape violates the 8th and 14th amendment to the United States Constitution.

What seems to be missing is coordinated advocacy from the group impacted the most- Black current and formerly incarcerated men. Gay men who enter prison remain gay when they are released. Heterosexual men who experience inmate-to-inmate sexual violence while in prison  come home to unsuspecting women and the community with myriad mental and physical issues. Formerly incarcerated  (and other) men who are living ‘in the closet’ or ‘on the down low’ waste their political power when they do not even advocate for themselves and what they need. The informal  policy of  ‘don’t snitch’ doesn’t help and is counterproductive. The whole community pays with the unchecked spread of HIV/ AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases as well as the relationship chaos created by untreated mental trauma caused by prison rape.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosted Science for Social Change: Understanding the Racial Achievement Gap. Keynote speaker was Dr. Roland Fryer, the NYC Dept. of Education’s first Chief Equality Officer. Hired to advise Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein on achieving equity in education for all city students and narrow the racial achievement gap, Fryer boldly proposes financial incentives for students that achieve certain academic milestones.
Dr. Fryer asserts there should be “more facts, less politics in education.” Although these facts should be obtained through scientific studies, Fryer warns to beware of “methodology”. He points to studies such as “Ice Cream Causes Shark Attacks”, “Doctors Cause Yellow Fever” and “Culture causes Achievement Gaps”. Fryer believes we need an “FDA of Education”, contrasting how medicines are studied for safety and efficacy prior to approval for consumption with the implementation of education programs that have not been analyzed for effectiveness.
Fryer earnestly stated, “I need your help” to improve education outcomes for all NYC students. According to Fryer, it seems education “is a product for producers, not the consumers. Our children are the consumers. We as a community have to decide ‘No more’.”
Fryer believes education is the “fundamental civil right.” The “huge disparities in outcome” created a “crisis.” Fryer stated “giving kids incentives for doing well in school makes education tangible.” He explained some children cannot see the long-term benefits of education because they have little or no models of how education leads to a successful, positive life.  You cannot ask children to “look down a path they have never seen anyone go down.” Children emulate what they see.  (A handful of middle school young ladies have told more than one educator they “don’t need an education.” Their life goal is to “have babies and get a project apartment.” No one has told these children that taxpayers- Black, white, conservative, liberal- are not  going to advocate for the building of more projects to house yet more single-parent welfare babies.) For Fryer, “short-term incentives bring long-term goals.” Fryer added, “Make no mistake, children on the Upper East Side have incentives for doing well in school.”
Dr. Fryer gave, by example, his incentive program currently being implemented in Dallas. Children are paid $2.00 a book as incentive to read. After reading the book, children take a test, and only after passing are they paid the $2.00. The Dallas program limits the $2.00 incentive to 20 books a semester. Dr. Fryer found some students read 36 books a semester; they were not paid for the additional 16. When Dr. Fryer asked one young man why he read the additional 16 books even though he would not be paid for them, the answer was, “I was not going to let my friend read more books than me.” Dr. Fryer smiled as he recalled this concrete way to develop an internalized  love of learning.
Dr. Fryer believes cost-benefit analysis and focus on the economic motivations of humans also applies to children. During an assembly at a NYC school currently implementing Fryer’s financial incentive program, a young man shouted out, “Dr. Fryer, now this is a program I like.”
Dr. Fryer feels so strongly about incentives he suggested an expansion. Mayor Bloomberg has recently consented to a pilot program that would award cell phones, free minutes, sports and concert tickets to all students in NYC’s 4 Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools and 20 schools affiliated with New Visions for Public Schools starting in January. There is a planned expansion of the program into additional schools next fall. Although Bloomberg maintains his administration’s  policy of not allowing cell phones in public schools will stand, the phones will be a powerful tool to motivate students.  
Fryer intends to “brand” academic success, not just with the phones, but with motivational text messages that encourage attendance, promote study and congratulate for achievement. It is hoped that icons of popular culture, such as Chris Rock and LeBron James, will send text messages to students for academic success. These phones may well become the next “must-have” among middle-schoolers.
Dr. Fryer’s childhood experiences led him to question whether the condition of Black communities can be entirely blamed upon racism, or can individual behaviors contribute to the situation.

Kidnapped by his father and kept from his mother, Fryer grew up in a sometimes-violent household with an alcoholic father. Most immediate family members on his father’s side sold drugs, went to prison and experienced premature death. A couple of near-brushes with law enforcement  convinced Fryer to concentrate on school. Fryer’s saving grace is his paternal grandmother – a schoolteacher and a strict old- school disciplinarian. His  grandmother taught him many life skills including the ability to compete.  A sports scholarship took him to college, where this high achiever found he had a natural affinity for math. He graduated from college magna cum laude in 2 1/2 years with a degree in economics; completed his dissertation in 3. Fryer is now at Harvard University, where he is assistant professor of economics and associate director of the DuBois Institute for African and African-American Research. Fryer’s academic acumen earned him many grants, fellowships and honors. Fryer knows first-hand the power of financial compensation coupled with good grades.
Considering where Fryer comes from, he can’t help being an “environmentalist”, believing that environmental factors contribute largely to the success or failure of Black students. Fryer boldly believes  financial incentives awarded  to minority students can produce better grades. 
Fryer applies his knowledge of advanced economics to apply cost-benefit analysis to a wide variety of sociologic studies, mostly with racial implications. He is unafraid to test common myths and assumptions. Most of his topics of interest come from growing up Black and his intimate knowledge of some aberrant African-American lifestyles.
Fryer writes of the Black-white test score gap, the Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names, both economic and empirical analyses of “Acting White” and  interracial marriage. With a mathematical eye, he parses segregation and affirmative action, political districting plans, the impact of crack cocaine on African-American communities and the Causes and Consequences  of Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Dr. Fryer’s Model of Social Interactions and Endogenous (originating within an  organism or part) Poverty Traps explains what happens in a community when individuals 1) invest  in and value group-specific knowledge (such as language and culture) at the expense of labor market success, 2) eschew immersion in group knowledge in favor of labor market success (by, for example, specializing in computer programming), or 3) either invest all of their energies into human capital, or they do not invest anything. Fryer’s model explains what happens when highly trained professionals in a group take advantage of desegregation, leaving pockets of poverty, as has happened with  African-Americans, American Indians,  Amish, Hispanics, West Indian immigrants, Sephardic Jews of Israel, Australian Aborigines and French Canadians, especially in Quebec and Montreal.
Information regarding Dr. Fryer’s financial incentive program is so tightly guarded, no information can be readily found on the NYC DOE website. Although privately funded, the program apparently has no name. Word is only schools with 80% or more Title l students (those entitled to free school lunch) are eligible to participate. Sadly, some schools with the requisite number of free-lunch eligible students did not qualify because not enough parents completed the school lunch forms. Published reports say the program awards $500.00 to 4th and 7th graders  for  satisfactory performance on standardized tests.
Those whose resistance-to-change in on automatic pilot tried to find logical reasons to reject financial incentives for children who strive for good grades, but they couldn’t. Teacher’s union members and a wide variety of community based groups tried to say ‘Children should acquire an education for education’s sake,’ but they don’t tell this to their own children, whose lives are programmed with test prep services, extra curricular activities, and ‘helicopter parents’- all with the goal of getting into the best colleges for recruitment into well paying jobs.
Dr. Roland Fryer is proof that an educated Black man is valuable. His financial incentive program for student academic success is guaranteed to produce many more.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosted Science for Social Change: Understanding the Racial Achievement Gap. Keynote speaker was Dr. Roland Fryer, the NYC Dept. of Education’s first Chief Equality Officer. Hired to advise Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein on achieving equity in education for all city students and narrow the racial achievement gap, Fryer boldly proposes financial incentives for students that achieve certain academic milestones.
Dr. Fryer asserts there should be “more facts, less politics in education.” Although these facts should be obtained through scientific studies, Fryer warns to beware of “methodology”. He points to studies such as “Ice Cream Causes Shark Attacks”, “Doctors Cause Yellow Fever” and “Culture causes Achievement Gaps”. Fryer believes we need an “FDA of Education”, contrasting how medicines are studied for safety and efficacy prior to approval for consumption with the implementation of education programs that have not been analyzed for effectiveness.
Fryer earnestly stated, “I need your help” to improve education outcomes for all NYC students. According to Fryer, it seems education “is a product for producers, not the consumers. Our children are the consumers. We as a community have to decide ‘No more’.”
Fryer believes education is the “fundamental civil right.” The “huge disparities in outcome” created a “crisis.” Fryer stated “giving kids incentives for doing well in school makes education tangible.” He explained some children cannot see the long-term benefits of education because they have little or no models of how education leads to a successful, positive life.  You cannot ask children to “look down a path they have never seen anyone go down.” Children emulate what they see.  (A handful of middle school young ladies have told more than one educator they “don’t need an education.” Their life goal is to “have babies and get a project apartment.” No one has told these children that taxpayers- Black, white, conservative, liberal- are not  going to advocate for the building of more projects to house yet more single-parent welfare babies.) For Fryer, “short-term incentives bring long-term goals.” Fryer added, “Make no mistake, children on the Upper East Side have incentives for doing well in school.”
Dr. Fryer gave, by example, his incentive program currently being implemented in Dallas. Children are paid $2.00 a book as incentive to read. After reading the book, children take a test, and only after passing are they paid the $2.00. The Dallas program limits the $2.00 incentive to 20 books a semester. Dr. Fryer found some students read 36 books a semester; they were not paid for the additional 16. When Dr. Fryer asked one young man why he read the additional 16 books even though he would not be paid for them, the answer was, “I was not going to let my friend read more books than me.” Dr. Fryer smiled as he recalled this concrete way to develop an internalized  love of learning.
Dr. Fryer believes cost-benefit analysis and focus on the economic motivations of humans also applies to children. During an assembly at a NYC school currently implementing Fryer’s financial incentive program, a young man shouted out, “Dr. Fryer, now this is a program I like.”
Dr. Fryer feels so strongly about incentives he suggested an expansion. Mayor Bloomberg has recently consented to a pilot program that would award cell phones, free minutes, sports and concert tickets to all students in NYC’s 4 Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools and 20 schools affiliated with New Visions for Public Schools starting in January. There is a planned expansion of the program into additional schools next fall. Although Bloomberg maintains his administration’s  policy of not allowing cell phones in public schools will stand, the phones will be a powerful tool to motivate students.  
Fryer intends to “brand” academic success, not just with the phones, but with motivational text messages that encourage attendance, promote study and congratulate for achievement. It is hoped that icons of popular culture, such as Chris Rock and LeBron James, will send text messages to students for academic success. These phones may well become the next “must-have” among middle-schoolers.
Dr. Fryer’s childhood experiences led him to question whether the condition of Black communities can be entirely blamed upon racism, or can individual behaviors contribute to the situation.

Kidnapped by his father and kept from his mother, Fryer grew up in a sometimes-violent household with an alcoholic father. Most immediate family members on his father’s side sold drugs, went to prison and experienced premature death. A couple of near-brushes with law enforcement  convinced Fryer to concentrate on school. Fryer’s saving grace is his paternal grandmother – a schoolteacher and a strict old- school disciplinarian. His  grandmother taught him many life skills including the ability to compete.  A sports scholarship took him to college, where this high achiever found he had a natural affinity for math. He graduated from college magna cum laude in 2 1/2 years with a degree in economics; completed his dissertation in 3. Fryer is now at Harvard University, where he is assistant professor of economics and associate director of the DuBois Institute for African and African-American Research. Fryer’s academic acumen earned him many grants, fellowships and honors. Fryer knows first-hand the power of financial compensation coupled with good grades.
Considering where Fryer comes from, he can’t help being an “environmentalist”, believing that environmental factors contribute largely to the success or failure of Black students. Fryer boldly believes  financial incentives awarded  to minority students can produce better grades. 
Fryer applies his knowledge of advanced economics to apply cost-benefit analysis to a wide variety of sociologic studies, mostly with racial implications. He is unafraid to test common myths and assumptions. Most of his topics of interest come from growing up Black and his intimate knowledge of some aberrant African-American lifestyles.
Fryer writes of the Black-white test score gap, the Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names, both economic and empirical analyses of “Acting White” and  interracial marriage. With a mathematical eye, he parses segregation and affirmative action, political districting plans, the impact of crack cocaine on African-American communities and the Causes and Consequences  of Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Dr. Fryer’s Model of Social Interactions and Endogenous (originating within an  organism or part) Poverty Traps explains what happens in a community when individuals 1) invest  in and value group-specific knowledge (such as language and culture) at the expense of labor market success, 2) eschew immersion in group knowledge in favor of labor market success (by, for example, specializing in computer programming), or 3) either invest all of their energies into human capital, or they do not invest anything. Fryer’s model explains what happens when highly trained professionals in a group take advantage of desegregation, leaving pockets of poverty, as has happened with  African-Americans, American Indians,  Amish, Hispanics, West Indian immigrants, Sephardic Jews of Israel, Australian Aborigines and French Canadians, especially in Quebec and Montreal.
Information regarding Dr. Fryer’s financial incentive program is so tightly guarded, no information can be readily found on the NYC DOE website. Although privately funded, the program apparently has no name. Word is only schools with 80% or more Title l students (those entitled to free school lunch) are eligible to participate. Sadly, some schools with the requisite number of free-lunch eligible students did not qualify because not enough parents completed the school lunch forms. Published reports say the program awards $500.00 to 4th and 7th graders  for  satisfactory performance on standardized tests.
Those whose resistance-to-change in on automatic pilot tried to find logical reasons to reject financial incentives for children who strive for good grades, but they couldn’t. Teacher’s union members and a wide variety of community based groups tried to say ‘Children should acquire an education for education’s sake,’ but they don’t tell this to their own children, whose lives are programmed with test prep services, extra curricular activities, and ‘helicopter parents’- all with the goal of getting into the best colleges for recruitment into well paying jobs.
Dr. Roland Fryer is proof that an educated Black man is valuable. His financial incentive program for student academic success is guaranteed to produce many more.

Commissioner Kelly Blasted for Rush to Judgement
By David Mark Greaves
We were startled to see 18-year-old Khiel Coppin’s blood still on the street Wednesday morning, two days after being shot by police who said he had refused to obey an order to stop walking toward the officers.  The officers say Coppin made a menacing gesture with what turned out to be a hairbrush, and they fired 20 shots from their positions of cover behind their cars.   After hitting Coppin at least seven times, the police then handcuffed the bleeding Coppin for transport to Woodhull Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.   
They had been called to the Medgar Evers Apartments at 560 Gates Avenue after Mr. Coppin’s mother, Denise Owens, contacted 911 because he was threatening her.  On the 911 call, Coppin could be heard in the background shouting that he had a gun.   On a second 911 call, Mrs. Owens told the operator that her son did not have a gun.  When the police arrived at the apartment, Coppin exited a window, and the deadly events unfolded. 
New York City Councilman Albert Vann, in whose 36th District the shooting occurred, noted that the only information available is what the police commissioner said.  “And he spoke before the district attorney had completed his investigation and before the autopsy.  So there is no verifiable information yet.   All we know is that Kheil Coppin is dead and that he was shot by police.  We know Kheil was a troubled young man and he should have been treated as such.”
A young man from the neighborhood, “Dublo 7,” said that “within the first 24 hours of the boy dying, Kelly said that the murder was ‘within departmental guidelines.’  All the information describing what happened is being filtered by the police.”   Asked what did happen, Dublo 7 said, “What happened was that individuals with a shield on their chests, let go 20 bullets in the direction of a young man and killed him.  If they took their badges off and did it, they’d be prosecuted for murder.”
Councilman Charles Barron said, “This is total madness.  The police are out of control.  Years ago a young Black man had a candy bar, they shot him. Then we had Randy Evans, years ago, had an Afro pick.  They shot him.   Amadou Diallo, they say he had a wallet.  They shot and killed him.  Brother up in Harlem, they say he pointed his finger.  They shot and killed him.  This is insane.”
That was a sentiment that resonated in the neighborhood.  “The cops, they crazy, they scaring us out here,” said Buddy Love, a young man from the same housing where the shooting occurred.  “They stop us for any reason.  They want us locked up.  They don’t like us. They’re grabbing us up.  Riding a bike on the sidewalk, throwing a cigarette in the street, spitting on the sidewalk, why do you want to lock us up for some little stuff like that?  They really think we’re that dangerous and it’s them that are dangerous. They walk around with guns.  Why you pull out your gun and all he had was a brush?”
Black elected officials and the leadership of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Greater Central Brooklyn, including local residents, grassroots, national and regional community organizations, are uniting in sympathy and open support for the family of Khiel Coppin. “We are committed to guaranteeing that justice will be served for Khiel and embattled young black men in Bedford-Stuyvesant and beyond,” said Councilman Vann, in announcing the major press conference to take place Friday, November 16th, steps from the site of the tragedy.  “As we express our sympathy, we also are speaking out to assure that there is a strong, unwavering voice for the voiceless everywhere.”
On the day we visited the shooting scene, the voice of Malcolm X was coming loud from  Efron Cherry’s car.   Efron, a street educator, not uncommon in the neighborhood, said, “We are a people that are in trouble and until we become a people that makes them respect us as the human beings we are born to be.   I’m out here not just to make the police realize that they’re wrong for pulling the trigger, I’m out here to tell my people that we’re wrong for not making them understand that as a people, we will not tolerate it.  Which means we will not do the things to ourselves that are making us weak.  We will not destroy us, and we will not sit back and let them destroy us.   That’s why I’m out here.” 
Councilman Barron says, “We should decentralize the police department and make it more responsive to the local community.  We should also be able to vote for the police commissioner.  It should be an elected position.”
Regarding “acceptable police guidelines, Barron said, “The police are going by their fear, their perception of a gun.  They do not go by the actual gun.  Their argument is that the police have only seconds to make that determination.  But why doesn’t that happen in the white community?  The Gideon Busch case in 1999 is the only time you heard about a white person being shot for no reason. (Officers said Busch was threatening them with a claw hammer.)  They seem to be able to make those determinations in the white community when they are apprehending suspects. 

Asked if there was a relationship between the fact of public housing, low income enclaves surrounded by homes and condos selling for $700,000. “absolutely.  I think the method of policing is to move us out of these neighborhoods.  Gentrification is coming hand-in-hand with police terror. It’s almost like they’re clearing us out for the white folks.  They’re using police harassment, housing policies-building 421a housing with 80% luxury and 20% affordable that you can’t really afford.  We’re number one cases of HIV/AIDS.   We have colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer.  We are the most unhealthy with the least health facilities.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of these things are happening at the same time.”  Wake for Kheil Coppin is Monday 3pm-9pm, Nazarene Congressional Church, 506 McDonough Street at Patchen, and the funeral is on Tuesday at 12 noon.