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Katrina Evacuees a year later: Bed-Stuy Helps them on the Road to Self-Sufficiency

David Mark Greaves
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Front Row: Richard Davis (2 Davis children), 2 Parker children, Joetta Rogers, Angela Lopez, Ivy Barbier. Second Row: 2 Davis children, Benetta Davis, Dina Thavares, Haiti Thavares, Arlene Richards, 2 children, Ivy Parker, Aileen Bodiwala. Back Row: Alfred Tumblin, N/A, Veronica Ogden, N/A, Gerry Carter, Oma S. Holloway, Jesse Scott, Herman Joseph, Ade Herbert, N/A, Dee Bailey, Colvin Grannum, Job Mashariki, Councilman Al Vann, Johnnie Rogers, Desmond Bodiwala.

Waters have receded from Hurricane Katrina, and yet still caught in the backwash are over 250,000 former residents of New Orleans who remain scattered throughout the country, trying to rebuild their displaced lives.
But hard times are not unknown to central Brooklyn and for sixteen of the displaced families who made it here, there was a safety net put into place by those who knew how to do it.   The 36th Council District Katrina Relief Effort, organized by Councilman Al Vann, was woven together from existing institutions and programs operated by individuals with experience in helping those with disrupted lives.
“We share and recognize the devastation you have gone through and with all the problems we have in Brooklyn, we still found it necessary to open up our minds and hearts to you,” said Dee Bailey, Executive Director of the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS of New York City, at the second Katrina holiday program held December 19 at Restoration Plaza. 
Family Dynamics Outreach Coordinator Kahdijah Suluki was one of those on the frontlines working with the families helping with housing, employment and helping guide them through the labyrinth of services available in New York.  Family Dynamics Executive Director Oma Holloway says that her agency, one of the consortium of agencies providing assistance, was able to have Kahdijah accompany the participants to the HRA offices to access the numerous benefits that are available.  They have also helped with MetroCards and other services as the survivors make the transition from surviving to self-sustaining.  “Kahdijah has been phenomenal in terms of helping to navigate the system to make sure the Katrina evacuees are receiving the benefits that they qualify for.” 
One of the participants in the program is A. B., a widow originally from Bombay, India, she arrived in New Jersey in 2004 and was working and living at the Grand Palace Hotel in New Orleans in 2005, just in time to meet Katrina.  “When the hurricane hit, it was very scary and the food ran out after about three days,” said her son “Michael” (name has been changed). “It was a blessing just to survive the whole hurricane situation,” continued “Michael”, “and it has taught me to be more confident and has given me even more motivation to succeed.”  “Michael” is an aspiring automobile engineer who is now a 10th -grade student at Paul Robeson High School where he finds the teacher “excellent and very committed to their jobs.”    Eileen is now employed and they are living in a housing unit managed by Black Veterans for Social Justice.

Veronica Ogden and son Alfred Tumblin

 We first met evacuee Veronica Ogden in September of 2005, three days after her arrival in New York.  At that time she told a crowd assembled beneath the tent at Restoration Plaza that she was from the 13th Ward in New Orleans and had originally evacuated from there “with clothing for three days because we thought we would be returning to our beautiful life back home.”
Looking back over the past year, Veronica said, “It was so inspiring when we came here last year to find so many people gathered to help the Hurricane Katrina evacuees and to be the recipient of all the support that was given.  Since then, it’s been up and down.  We’ve settled into an apartment building managed by the Black Vets for Social Justice and have a very nice place.  I’ve been traveling back and forth to New Orleans over the past year.  I was there for the mayoral election.  Also there for my interview with the Road Home Program.  But they’re dragging their feet.  I’m ready to return.  We’ve put a lot of our own money into gutting out our home but our roof is still not repaired. 
“The government gave the states money to help homeowners rebuild but they are sitting on it and that’s what’s preventing us from going back.  Many people would like to return. I’ve done everything required of me and now we’re just waiting for Governor Blanco to release the funds so we can get the contractors in to begin rebuilding.  I hope the politicians in Louisiana get on the governor’s case before our property is declared blighted.  Because that’s what they want to happen.”
As a seamstress and fashion designer, Veronica was self-employed and operated her own business before the storm.  Speaking of the options she’s seen on her visits back home, Veronica says, “There’s a lot of work down there but there is no place to live.  The places that are available are at triple the original rent.  New York has been good to me and I’m so blessed to be here and we appreciate so much everything that has been done for us to make our lives comfortable.”

Oma Holloway, Executive Director of Family Dynamics, far right, helps with the gifts.

“The hurricane was a sobering experience to say the least, we felt we had been abandoned as Americans,. ” noted Ms. Ogden’s son, Alfred Tumblin.  We feel as if we just got off the boat in a new country and are waiting for citizenship.  We don’t feel like Americans.  After having pledged allegiance to the flag since being in preschool, you always felt that allegiance would be returned but I don’t feel that has been the case and that has broken my heart.  But as things progress and people help us get on our feet, we feel more like our old selves.
An aspiring novelist, Alfred was able to save the several computer disks that held his first work, Recession of the Magi.  He says it’s a “gothic” work about the descendants of the three kings in New Orleans.  “It’s 408 pages and was released in June.  Saving the disks and being able to use the few that were damaged “has given me a sense of accomplishment.” Web site: www.alfredltumblin3.com
Jesse Scott,  Class of ’64 Boys High Guys and Friends is a group of sixteen graduates of the old Boys High, a group of guys who give something back. 
“We hope to have this evolve into an emergency preparedness unit for our community so that when we encounter a crisis or emergency, we’re ready to respond. So, something else is coming out of being helpful to our brothers and sisters.”
Both Job Mashariki, coordinator of the project and  CEO of Black Vets for Social Justice and Councilman Vann expressed understanding of those who are concerned that with so much existing need here in Brooklyn, that resources are being used to help new arrivals.  “We had to balance the help we gave them with those who said, We have problems and we’ve been here all along. But this grew out of our humanity as a community and from this we’re able to build an organization that will be better able to help our own community. 
Seeing the failure of the federal government to be able to offer timely assistance, they pointed out that this experience puts into place a system of self-help that sharpens the ability to deal with a sudden local crisis.  Mashariki said that, “If we had to deal with a blackout, a gas explosion, a toxic train derailment, our community isn’t prepared for that.  We’re relying on the fire department, Homeland Security and outside sources.  So,  after this experience with Katrina we’re looking at what could happen and how we could be prepared for future disasters.”

Activists in Seattle Join International Call For Starbucks to Play Fair

Editor, Our Time Press
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The iconic image of Ethiopian coffee farmer Gemede Robe graced Oxfam-produced fact sheets, postcards and poster boards (like this one in Seattle). Robe inherited his coffee field from his father. He hopes to pass it on to his five children one day.

By Don Rojas

Thousands of activists, Ethiopian-Americans and coffee lovers in more than a dozen countries-from New Zealand to Scotland to the US-visited
Starbucks stores on Saturday, December 16.
Activists from Seattle’s Ethiopian community, local group Fair Trade Puget Sound and Oxfam demonstrated  outside the Westlake Center Starbucks in Seattle to protest against the company’s refusal to recognize the rights of Ethiopian coffee farmers. This was part of a day of action to send a message of solidarity with Ethiopian farmers to the coffee giant.

In Seattle, WA, activists gathered outside Starbucks’ flagship store. Led in part by local Ethiopians, they talked with customers about why they support Ethiopia’s ownership of its coffee names.

More than 89,000 people in 70 countries have now joined Oxfam’s campaign by faxing Starbucks CEO Jim Donald, asking the company to stop dragging its feet and to support Ethiopia’s ownership of its coffee names. Last Saturday’s international action is further proof of the strength of support worldwide for Ethiopia’s attempts to help millions of farmers who produce world-class coffee but who continue to live in poverty.
In Seattle, activists leafleted and carried the image of an Ethiopian coffee farmer on sandwich board fronts, with the backside reading, “For every cup of Ethiopian coffee Starbucks sells, Ethiopian farmers earn 3 cents. Tell Starbucks: Honor your commitments to coffee farmers.”
In addition, an Ethiopian coffee ceremony took place in the city’s Westlake Park. A traditional part of Ethiopian culture, the ceremony is often done for visiting friends or on holidays, and is considered a blessing for those participating.
“The strength of feeling about this issue is obvious from the number of Starbucks customers who have spoken out already,” said Seth Petchers, Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign coffee lead. “Knowing that farmers only receive around three cents for a three- dollar cup of coffee leaves a bitter taste with customers.”
“Starbucks must demonstrate that their much-publicized commitment to the welfare of the farmers who provide it with world-class coffee is genuine by acknowledging Ethiopia’s own

Activists visited four shops in Leeds, England. They spoke with local media and handed out about 300 postcards to Starbucks CEO Jim Donald.

ership of its coffee names and signing the agreement on the table,” concluded Petchers.
On 26 October, Oxfam launched a campaign to encourage Starbucks to sign a licensing agreement with Ethiopia. The agreement would acknowledge Ethiopia’s ownership over its specialty coffee names, Harar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe. Ownership over the names would result in greater control over how the beans are marketed and the price of the beans, which would ultimately result in a great share of the profits getting back to the 15 million poor people in Ethiopia who are dependent upon the coffee sector.
For more than a year, Ethiopia sought a dialogue with Starbucks about supporting the country’s efforts to return more of the price of its coffees in world markets to the farmers who produce them by seeking trademark rights for Sidamo, Harar and Yi

Activists visited both Starbucks in Nottingham, England, handing out information about Ethiopia’s work to get control of its coffee names.

rgacheffe coffees. Despite its professed commitment to farming communities, Starbucks has continually rejected Ethiopia’s requests to resolve the trademark issue, and has refused to sign a royalty-free licensing agreement that would recognize Ethiopia’s right to control how its own coffee names are used.
A press release issued by the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office shortly after a meeting late last month between the Ethiopian Prime Minister and Starbucks CEO Jim Donald acknowledged that while the meeting with Starbucks was an encouraging step, “Starbucks has not yet recognized Ethiopia’s trademark ownership of the specialty coffee names.”
Legal and intellectual property experts have supported Ethiopia in its approach, expressing the opinion that the trademark and licensing project is a viable solution to the poverty that plagues Ethiopian farmers. Trademark protection for Ethiopia’s coffees has already been recognized in several European countries, as well as Canada and Japan.
In addition to public events, activists throughout the world will be taking individual actions and visiting their local Starbucks to talk to baristas about the Ethiopian trademark issue. To take action, please visit, www.oxfamamerica.org/starbucks

Passing Notes

Editor, Our Time Press
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Ed Bradley
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.”
ByJo hn 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

Shows To See And Those We Treasured

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Cast of Plantanos & Collard Greens

By Linda Armstrong

Although there were a lot of marvelous things that happened regarding Black Theatre in 2006, what I want to start this column off with are letting you all know the incredible shows that you are still able to see. Of course, there is the phenomenal musical, “The Color Purple,” playing at the Broadway Theatre, which has an amazing storyline, great songs and a magnificent cast. It is unbelievable to watch this cast of African American performers bring this story alive. Another fantastic Broadway production, which features both an African American and African cast is Disney’s “The Lion King” playing at the Minskoff Theatre. Off the Broadway path, there’s a very humorous production that speaks a lot of truths about the relationships between Latinos and African Americans-“Platanos & Collard Greens.” That production, which has been playing off and on for the past three years will be on stage in February and March. It will be presented at Baruch College in Mason Hall Theater, located at 17 Lexington Avenue. For more information about the production visit its website at PlatanosandcollardGreens.com. A play that is an indictment on the New York City Public School system is “No Child”, written and performed by African American, Nilaja Sun. It is playing an opened-end run at the Barrow State Theatre, located at 27 Barrow Street at 7th Avenue.
Signature Theatre Company is presently showing a riveting production of “Two Trains Running” as it dedicates its entire season to the works of the late, great August Wilson. The production has a cast that will blow you away and is showing at the Peter Norton Space, located at 555 W 42nd Street through Jan. 27. That production will be flowed by “King Hedley II” in February. The first production off this three-play series was “Seven Guitars”, which was superbly acted and featured the unforgettable direction of Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who had won a Tony when he starred in the production on Broadway. Any opportunity to see the fabulous writings of August Wilson one should jump at.
New Federal Theatre, which ended this year by doing Ed Bullin’s play, “The Taking Of Miss Janie,” which after 30 years, still proves to be relevant, will be doing a retrospective on several works written by Ntozake Shange, including “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf,” in February. Call New Federal Theatre for more information.
There were so many stirring productions in 2006, but one that immediately comes to mind came from Brooklyn’s very own Billie Holiday Theatre, under its producer, Marjorie Moon, who also directed the play. The production which was both informative and incredibly moving and someone that will stay with me for some time, was “Storm Stories,” which shared the real life trauma of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The production was written by Judi Ann Mason, whose family lived in Louisiana and she received first hand accounts from her brother who was interviewing victims of the Hurricane and was eventually found dead in his apartment. Fairly new production companies like Take Wing And Soar Productions delivered an amazing rendition of the restaging of “Oedipus”, which was entitled, “The Darker Face of the Earth.”

Daniel Beaty in “Emergence-See”

African American, Sarah Jones made her mark on Broadway as her one-woman show, “Bridge & Tunnel” kept being extended and she not only had a caricature drawn and displayed at Sardi’s Restaurant, prior to the Tony Awards ceremony, it was announced that she would receive a special Tony Award. Another African American made her mark on Broadway as LaChanze walked away with the only Tony Award received for “The Color Purple,” as she won for her triumphant performance as Celie.
This was a wonderful year for several African American veteran stage actors. Roz Ryan totally took the house down with laughter as she starred in “The Pajama Game,” on Broadway with Harry Connick Jr. and she also reprised her role as Matron Mama Morton in “Chicago.” Actress Jenifer Lewis joined an all-star cast that included Meryl Streep, as she starred in the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare In The Park production of “Mother Courage And Her Children.” Eartha Kitt enjoyed a stint on stage as “Mimi Le Duck.” Daniel Beaty finally got the chance to let his piece “Emergence-See” happen at The Public Theatre and it was “Magnificent.”
The Broadway musical “Chicago” was a very popular musical vehicle for several African American actors/singers in 2006, in addition to Ryan, the show was used by Usher to make his Broadway debut and he was amazing. Obba Babatunde also starred in the show as lawyer Billy Flynn. The show also featured the amazing talents of Brenda Braxton as one of the star women killers on Murderess Row.
On a sad note 2006 marked the final departures of both August Wilson and theater veteran director Lloyd Richards.
In 2007 make one of your resolutions to see more Black Theatre.

In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war

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Salim Lone Tribune Media Services
Published: December 26, 2006

NAIROBI: Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush Administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.
As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.
The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of the world’s poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.
An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists.
With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.
The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to “restore peace and stability.” But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peacekeepers in 1993 when 18 American soldiers were killed.
Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary – because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.
The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia’s archenemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.
If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.
Ethiopia is at even greater risk as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts by the Ogadenis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.
The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.
Salim Lone, who was the spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq in 2003, is a columnist for The Daily Nation in Kenya. This Global Viewpoint article was distributed by Tribune Media Services.

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