Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

By Errol Louis

The Imus Mess
The sacking of Don Imus marks a welcome, high-profile victory for common sense and decency. After years of scattered efforts to hold Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the record business accountable for the negative images and messages they spew, the issue finally came to a head.
A key part of the equation that led to the firing of Imus is the presence of black execs at NBC, CBS and several of the biggest corporate advertisers on the networks. As the furor over Imus’ racist remarks increased, Ken Chennault, the CEO of American Express, announced that the company was pulling its ads. A few days later, Bruce Gordon, the NAACP president who sits on the board of CBS, said he thought Imus should be fired.
And the National Association of Black Journalists applied pressure on NBC and CBS to get rid of Imus.
Years of breaking down barriers and patiently building corporate careers has created a powerful and growing network of influence. As Imus discovered too late.
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The Wal-Mart Question
Wal-Mart’s recent announcement that it has given up on trying to open a store in Manhattan leaves open an important question: how do we get lower-priced goods to people in inner-city neighborhoods. Right now, the typical urban family is paying hundreds more than their suburban counterpart because the big retailers have a hard time getting a foothold in the city.
For years now, in every place Wal-Mart has looked for a home, labor unions, lobbyists and politicians have thrown up roadblocks, sometimes by passing zoning rules to exclude Wal-Mart’s trademark megastores.
The unions and politicians that worked so hard to keep Wal-Mart out of Gotham have a moral obligation to help low-income New Yorkers find another way to get low-cost goods.
The opposition to Wal-Mart by organized labor has been understandable, even commendable. The company is notorious for using union-busting tactics: In 2000, after a majority of butchers in a Jacksonville, Tex., Wal-Mart voted to unionize, the company simply stopped carrying fresh meat and fired all the butchers.
That hardknuckled approach goes hand in hand with offering lousy pay and skimpy benefits to employees. Many full-time Wal-Mart workers live near the poverty line and rely on government benefits or a spouse’s health benefits to get by.
So many women have complained about Wal-Mart’s job-assignment and promotion practices that more than 2 million women – current and former employees – have banded together in the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history.
But opposing Wal-Mart’s odious practices is only half the equation. The anti-Wal-Mart forces also need to face the fact that working families in our city, including union households, need price relief.
For decades, inner-city neighborhoods across America have watched supermarkets and retail stores vanish, leaving an impoverished captive audience with few choices of what to eat or wear.
Study after study has confirmed what inner-city residents already know all too well: It’s hard, and sometimes impossible, to find fresh, cheap produce in the ghetto. Some bodegas and small supermarkets carry organic and low-sodium foods, but not nearly enough.
Every serious discussion of the inner-city epidemic of chronic diseases like hypertension, obesity, diabetes and heart disease eventually bumps into the urgent need to make better and cheaper goods available.
Beyond the question of food is the simple, vital matter of helping poor people save money. A family that pays less for everything from diapers and baby food to coats, shoes and dresses can easily end up saving $400 to $500 a year – a significant amount for a household with $20,000 to $30,000 in income.
The unions and politicians who keep chasing Wal-Mart away should keep holding strategy meetings – this time, to work on ways to bring supermarkets, food co-ops, green markets and discount retailers to the city residents who need them most.
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Fight Back Against Gun Violence
More people die by gun violence in America than anywhere else in the civilized world – nearly 30,000 souls every year, an average of more than 80 deaths every day.
Recent casualties in New York City include Rowan Clarke, a restaurant owner killed during a recent home invasion robbery, and Courtney Atkinson, an airport skycap and father of six shot to death near his Queens home.
The death toll also includes Alfredo Romero, Eugene Marshalik and Nicholas Pekearo, all shot to death last month by a madman named David Garvin who had two illegal weapons and 100 rounds of ammunition. Police ended Garvin’s rampage by killing him.
In North Carolina, 40 kids under 18 were shot to death in 2005, a 50% jump from the year before. In Aurora, a suburb of Chicago, there have been 32 shooting incidents this year, triple the number last year. Four people have died so far. In Newark, a single 17-hour stretch last month saw nine people shot, one fatally.
And students at Public School 21 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, had to run for their lives when gunfire erupted just outside the school’s gates at 4:15 in the afternoon. Two teenagers were arrested nearby with a .357 magnum.
A common thread in the epidemic of gun violence is criminals’ easy access to illegal weapons, supplied by a handful of corrupt dealers. According to federal statistics, an estimated 60% of guns used in crimes trace back to just 1% of merchants. They tend to operate from states like Florida, Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Indiana that have lax gun regulations.
Nine out of 10 guns used in crimes in New York City come from out of state, leading Mayor Bloomberg to sue 27 out-of-state dealers for selling weapons without using legally required background checks, waiting periods and recordkeeping.
Recognizing the profound spiritual crisis that lies behind the statistics, a group called God Not Guns is calling on people of faith to use prayer vigils, teach-ins and other campaigns to stir the nation to action.
The group’s Web site (www.godnotguns.org) has a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who warned in 1963 that “by our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim; by allowing our movies and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing . . . we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.”
We have indeed. And there’s no better time to join the campaign to set things right.

By Aminisha Black

The Imus Affair
 Have we really left our children’s self-concept at the mercy of individuals such as shock jock Don Imus? Don Imus’ description of the Rutgers University female basketball team is the latest instant of individual (or private club) thoughts to slip into the public arena initiating yet another controversy. Ho Hum!!! If the protest was about needed FCC regulations, great.   But if the protest was about our children being devalued by Imus, rappers or anyone else – I say we need to take responsibility and change some of our habits, meaning our actions and our words.
 A major process ensuring the success of slavery was to implant a consciousness of personal inferiority. Here we are approaching the second century mark after Emancipation Proclamation and we’re still feeling inferior? It bothers me that we give folk like Imus so much power in impacting our children’s self-concept.  What is our role in their development?  What are we adults (parents, teachers, etc.) doing and saying in our daily contact with youngsters to let them know how special they are?  How are we modeling the spirit of Africans who were taken from their homeland, suffered and survived horrific physical and mental abuse? Who, in spite of the circumstances expressed their innate genius making valuable contributions to the very society that enslaved them. 
Personal Inferiority Perpetuated
Contrary to African tradition, American culture promotes competiveness, the better/best syndrome, placing money and status over family and human relationships.   We are conditioned to compare ourselves to others, striving to have more or be better than they are.  We pass this on to our children when we compare them to their siblings or to others – making them feel less than or for that matter better than others. We’re conditioned to judge, put folk down, even our children.  Too often they leave our homes angry or hurt and go off to school filled with hostility.  This is life in America period and descendants of slaves carry excess baggage in the form of post slave traumatic syndrome as defined by Dr. Joy Leary. 
 An uncomfortable truth is that we will continue to transmit feelings of inferiority from generation to generation until we uncover and heal the effects of the niggerazation process.  Our children are more likely to be devalued by personalized remarks made in our homes and classrooms on a regular basis than by random generalized remarks by media personalities or other folk they don’t know.  
Pamoja, my first-born took a human potential course in his late twenties.  There he uncovered a memory of his excitement about being placed in an Intellectually Gifted Class (IGC) in elementary school. My response was “all classes should be IGC classes”. My young son was left with “nothing I do matters” that although hidden, affected his life.  I sent my children through this course after I had uncovered a memory of crying to go with my mother to church and she not taking me because my hair wasn’t combed.  I had short, nappy hair and my father was trying desperately to comb it.  I was left with “I’m not good enough”.  Recalling that memory allowed me to work through buried emotions, heal the source of conflict with my mother.  It also allowed me to heal the conversations “not good enough” and ” failure” that stemmed from childhood and teen years. 
Dr. Leary’s Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome powerfully documents the lasting effects of trauma.   Her examples of inherited behaviors challenges us to look at what we do and what we say to our youngsters.  It’s a call for us to abandon the role of victim so they can reclaim their genius.
African philosophy acknowledged that every soul came with a purpose and was therefore a valued member of society.  Our job as parents is to be courageous enough to discover who we are so that our children will get who they are.  We must practice the Seven Principles daily, grounding them in  Kujichagulia so they  repel the notion that any person or group has the power to define them
PN Alerts! 
*NYC Youth – 14 – 21 – SYEP application deadline May 18th.  On-line filing available at www.nyc.gov/dycd  – seven week program – $7.15 per hour.
*Young Adults -out of school and debating whether to go to college? Check out City Year – volunteer work with weekly stipend, transportation and other benefits.  Visit www.cityyear.org or call Stephanie Gillette at 646-452-3633.
*On-line advice column for teens focusing on teen relationships and domestic violence at www.safehorizon.org
 *5O page Scholarship Directory listed by filing deadlines – by email only- parentsnotebook@yahoo.com.

While the faith community traditionally encourages generous tithing as a gift to the church, the leadership of the New Millennium sees it also as one strategic finance tool for building the giver’s personal legacy portfolio – a kind of mutual fund.
Earlier this month, that kind of thinking pervaded the 3rd annual Women in Leadership Lectures (WILL) empowerment conference, organized by The Reverend Barbara A. Lucas for clergy and lay leaders.  Women of all ages exploded into cheers and applause as speaker after speaker illustrated how discipline is at the core of both strong faith and solid finance management, with success and destiny manifested as the results.  “If we die with no property, we leave behind poverty,” said one leader.
“Our Women’s Economic Development programs create educated, well-informed individuals who prepare their financial portfolios, early in life, through personal savings and investments,” says Rev. Barbara, pastor of Agape Tabernacle International Fellowship, Inc.
“This year’s program was designed to arm women leaders with the information needed to economically strengthen their faith-based and community-based organizations, reduce debt, choose the most effective finance packages, become home and property owners, and, in the process, stay both physically and spiritually healthy.”
Rev. Barbara’s Women Organizing, Mobilizing, and Building (W.O.M.B.) brought together women clergy and lay leaders from around the country to present powerful insights and strategies for enhancing personal lives, families, and communities through strategic financial planning.  WOMB develops and supports women-friendly financial programs that promote financial security among women throughout their lifespan, and that help foster women. 
For this year’s conference, WOMB partnered with five powerful women to develop a comprehensive agenda that encompasses community-based funding strategies, spiritual and physical wholeness, homeownership, and real estate procurement.
Amens echoed throughout the hall, creating a revival atmosphere at the JP Morgan Conference Chase conference room at Metrotech in downtown Brooklyn; but the key directive to the audience was, “Let’s teach, not preach.”
“The lectures provided clergy and lay leaders a rare opportunity to network, to collaborate, to partner and to reflect, as they work together to develop an enhanced purpose and vision for their personal lives, their professional ministries, and their communities,” said Rev. Barbara, in a pre-event interview.
“Going into my mid-life years I realize more the importance of us, as older women, reaching out to our younger sisters and mentoring them about the importance of home- ownership and/or purchasing a piece of property-which should be part of every woman’s personal plan.
“Also, another challenge we as a people are faced with that precludes us from home- ownership is our low savings rate-I read somewhere that our savings rate is minus 2%. This oftentimes prevents us from coming up with the required down payment for property. Our people must come against this spending mentality that consumes our body and spirit, and prevents us from becoming the head and not the tail.
“In speaking with many friends and/or members of my congregation, there appears to be a problem within NYS as it relates to closing fees. Members of my congregation have often come against hefty additional costs at the time of closing. All costs relative to the property should be provided to the prospective owner prior to closing. No one should be confronted with large monetary surprises at the point of closing.”
As a response to a call to mobilize, in 1996, Rev. Dr. Barbara Austin Lucas founded Women Organizing, Mobilizing, and Building, Inc. (WOMB) – a faith-based, not-for-profit organization, purposed to assist women and their families through creative and needful programming and to improve their quality of life by the fulfillment of their destinies.
WOMB services thousands of women annually in the programming of five (5) service areas which include HIV/AIDS Prevention; African Women of The Diaspora Link-Up (A.W.D.L); Motivating Ourselves and Our Children: A Joint Agenda (M.O.J.A.); Sisters Strengthening Our Sisters (S.S.O.S.); and Women and Economic Development (W.E.D.).
Rev. Barbara has effectively established and co-founded ministries and programming that have been internationally recognized as models of vision and change. WOMB also sponsors several national and international initiatives such as The Annual Manifest Destiny Conference Series, The WOMB Investment Club, The Women in Leadership Lecture (WILL) Series, and The Destiny WalkT.
The Women in Leadership Lectures is a precursor to the four-day Annual MANIFEST DESTINY Conference, which will be held this year July 19th- July 22, 2007. For more information, contact:  718-237-4612, W.O.M.B., Inc., 2152 Ralph Avenue, PMB 501, Brooklyn, NY 11234 or visit the Web site at www.wombinc.org.

By Stan Kinard

The issue of misogyny in hip-hop must be addressed at this critical time in our history.  I don’t think most adults are really in tune with lyrics of many of the songs that our youth are listening to and singing.  This article is not about Imus but about us (Black Folks).  It is my opinion that this current generation of black youth is the most immoral ever and unless we address the immorality of our youth, they will self-destruct.  We need both an internal and an external strategy to address this problem.  The external strategy will address systemic and institutional racism.  It will confront        a school system that refuses to teach black children their history and a police department that profiles black youth, shoots black men and fires 41 bullets at Amadu Diallo for reaching into his pocket for keys to open the door to his own home; and fifty bullets at Sean Bell and his friends for enjoying themselves on a night before his wedding.  This external strategy has demanded the resignation of Police Commissioner Kelly, and was at the forefront of the fight to fire racist ass Imus from WNBC and CBS radio for his racist remarks against the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team.
The external strategy also demands that progressive persons of color obtain political power.  This can be done by supporting persons like Councilman Charles Barron in his quest to become the Borough President of Brooklyn, with the largest concentration of persons of African ancestry in the Western Hemisphere.  This position will give him a platform to address the issue of race in a manner that has never been done before.  The goal of activist groups like Operation Power is to influence government by promoting a human rights legislative agenda that addressing the issues of the war, international drug trafficking, police brutality, universal healthcare and mis-education. 
We must also develop an internal strategy that addresses the immorality of our youth.  While misogyny is clearly a manifestation of the racist and sexist structure of American society, the immorality of our youth is a problem that we must resolve.  Hip-Hop culture and not the black church or schools, has been the major influence in defining the culture of our youth.  We can no longer shut our ears to Hip-Hop lyrics and not listen to what our youth are saying.  The negativity and immorality of these lyrics has deeply penetrated the consciousness of an entire generation of our youth, and has become their cultural norm.  As vulgar as it may appear in the written word, I am challenged to present the lyrics to you in the raw way the are being presented to our children. 
“B—-s ain’t s– but hos and tricks” -Snoop Dogg
“I like them young, fresh and green, with no hair in between” – Biggy
“Get a bad yellow b—, make her drop them draws, middle finger to the law, I gonna show you how to ball;”- Rich Boy
Move b—, get out the way, Get out the way bitch, get out the way, Move b—, get out the way, Get out the way b—, get out the way …;”-Ludacris
“I’ve got hos in different area codes;” -Ludacris 
“I don’t know what you heard about me, but bitches can’t get a dollar out of me, no Cadillac, no perms you can’t see that I’m a mother—- P.I.M.P.”-50 cents 
Our children know the lyrics to all these songs.  They learn these lyrics in elementary school like we used to learn nursery rhymes.  They get their moral direction from these lyrics which are reinforced by music videos where what is said is acted out on television.  A spiritual and revolutionary cultural war must be waged to address this crisis in our community.  This must be a primary goal of the black church, black educators and activists who have the greatest capacity to wage this fight at this time.  You may call it Armageddon but currently, we are losing the war.

By Councilman Charles Barron

The genesis of Imus’ racism and sexism is not rooted in rap music. It did not come from listening to Snoop Dogg or 50 Cents.
He had the unmitigated gall to lecture us about the negative lyrics of rap artists, now that he is in hot water because of his outrageous denigrating, racist, sexist remarks about the predominately Black Rutgers women’s basketball team – remarks so repugnant, disgusting and sickening it doesn’t warrant repeating.
Don Imus is a repeating racist offender. This wasn’t the first time. He referred to the two Black women queens of tennis, Venus and Serena Williams, as animals who belonged in National Geographic Magazine. He called a prominent Black female journalist a cleaning lady. He dissed Maya Angelou. None of this happened because he was listening to rap music.
I will be the first to say that some rap music is vile, disgusting, misogynist, sexist, self destructive, hurtful, and embarrassing. We must continue to speak out against that kind of rap music and promote more positive rap on the airways.
But let’s put this in perspective. The “N” word didn’t originate from rap music. Denigrating Black women did not start with rap music. Rap music is only 30 to 40 years old. The “N” word and disrespecting Black women is as old as this country. It started with the racist white male founding fathers who Imus thinks like.
Remember George  Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson raped a 14 year-old enslaved African girl named Sally Hemmings. Remember the founding fathers called us Coons, Sambo, Savages, Animals, “B’s”s and “N’s.”  Jiggaboos, Imus, came from racist white men like you, not Spike Lee’s movie “School Daze.” By the way, Spike’s message in “School Daze” was to raise our consciousness regarding the internalization of our racist oppression, not to denigrate Black women as you did.
When Al Campanis said that Blacks don’t swim well because they lack buoyancy, he was fired. When Howard Cosell said a Black football player was running like a little monkey, he was fired. When Jimmy “the Greek” made racial comments about black athletes, he was fired. Iums, you continued in that racist tradition. These young dignified Black women and their coach from the Rutgers women’s basketball team did nothing to warrant these vile racist remarks from Imus. This came from the depth of his being. He is not a good man who said something bad. He is a racist, mean-spirited bigot, who got what he deserved from MSNBC and CBS.
MSNBC and CBS was under pressure from Black women in particular and women in general across this nation. They were under pressure from Black men who stood strong to protect their sisters, wives, mothers, and grandmothers. They were under pressure from Black leaders and presidential candidates. Certainly the dignified response of the coach and young women from this Rutgers team had an impact. MSNBC and CBS were also influenced by the internal discussions and pressure from their staff, particularly their Black staff members.
But make no mistake about it. It was the power of the people that forced major advertisers to threaten to pull their ads. Thats when MSNBC and CBS got the message. They were concerned about their pockets. Unfortunately, that’s what it takes for people in power to do the right thing.
The Imus situation has put racism and sexism, which permeates every institution in America, on the front burner as issues to be seriously addressed.