Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

This year’s Kwanzaa celebrations took many forms in Brooklyn communities. These celebrations included the Kwanzaa Classic, a three-day tournament with over 100 kids from Brownsville, East New York, Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant participating in a basketball tournament. Prior to each game the youth were participating in a cultural forum regarding Black History and reflecting on the relevance of the Kwanzaa principles. The youth were quizzed on their knowledge of basketball greats like Bill Russell, Oscar Robinson and Wilt Chamberlain. Despite their keen interest in basketball, they did not do well on the quiz. The tournament, now in its second year, was sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Cultural Literacy Project and the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. This was a great collaboration, as Dr. Carter G. Woodson was a member of Omega Psi Phi and we intend to continue this event in the future.
On December 26th, the Kwanzaa Collective hosted their annual event at Boys & Girls High School. Percussionist Neil Clarke received an award at this event, finally giving him the recognition that he deserves as a premier African American percussionist. Mr. Clarke, a Bed-Stuy resident, currently performs with Randy Weston. Dr. Maulana Karenga (the founder of Kwanzaa) was at Boys & Girls on December 27, where we reflected on the principle Kujichagulia. This event was sponsored by the New York Chapter of NAKO under the leadership of Dr. Segun Shabaka. Dr. Karenga again challenged us to embrace the best of ourselves and our African brilliance. Next year is the Fortieth Anniversary celebration of Kwanzaa. We must again commit to holding steadfast to the Nguzu Saba (7 Principles) and make this a truly great year in developing African cultural consciousness. This work must begin January 2.
During Kwanzaa, we must reflect on our community’s strengths and weaknesses. In the past few weeks a few incidents have brought to light the problem of violence. In response, P.S. 21 hosted its Peace Rally on December 20, where students and parents took to the streets and made an impassioned plea to “Stop the Violence.” Students made posters which they hung up on the park’s fence. They performed a dramatic antiviolence skit, songs and we were treated to a performance by their step team. There were speeches in support of the call for peace by representatives from the Nation of Islam and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement. Also in attendance were Mr. Holder, principal of Boys and Girls High School, and members of his staff. All present were impressed with the rally and the expression of peace from our children. Our youth are once again showing us the way.
Security officer Vivian A. Samuels-Benjamin’s death after an altercation with a female student is a tragedy. While I am not aware of all the particulars, I know that it should not have happened. Our community has to address the issue of violence and respect, or the lack of respect for elders. The incidents at both I.S. 390 and P.S. 21 all took place during the holiday season during which we should be embracing a Kwanzaa value system. The Woodson Project intends to host a youth rally during Dr. King’s Weekend that will incorporate a cultural agenda to provide viable alternatives to violence in our communities and emphasize the significance of respect. We intend to use Dr. King’s holiday as a period of mobilization for launching the movement to teach black history and culture to our youth.
Congratulations to Nayaba Arende, who was recently named the Editor in Chief of the Amsterdam News. Naya is an award-winning journalist formerly with the Daily Challenge. This is truly great news for us in the activist community and I now look forward to reading the Amsterdam News every Thursday.

Roger Toussaint as Person of the Year
This year, EVERYBODY’S Magazine 2005 Person of the Year is Roger Toussaint, President of Local 100, the union that represents the transit workers of New York City.
Like thousands of other Caribbean immigrants, Trinidad & Tobago-born Toussaint came to the U.S. to get an education and remained to make a contribution.
Roger Toussaint is reminiscent of the late Peter Ottley, an immigrant from Grenada who made an impact on the labor movement in New York City and across the U.S.  Beginning in 1933 and ending in the 1980s, Ottley organized nursing home and hospital workers, elevator operators and hotel workers into unions. For the thousands of immigrants of today who keep New York City functioning – nurse’s aides, hotel and building janitors and cleaning women – they owe a debt of gratitude to Ottley, then-president of Local 144, for the relatively decent working conditions that they now enjoy in comparison to their earlier counterparts.

Like Ottley, Roger Toussaint is a man of principle who aggressively embraced the American credo of bequeathing a better future for tomorrow’s worker. By waging an honorable battle to maintain workers’ hard-won pensions and other benefits Toussaint and the Transport Workers Union(TWU) demonstrated that they are keeping alive the best traditions of the American labor movement.
Once the strike was called Mayor Mike Bloomberg and New York State Governor George Pataki waged a war of words against Toussaint. The mayor even used racial code words to refer the workers’ glorious struggle as “thuggish behavior” while reminding Toussaint that “This is a nation of laws.”
Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki conveniently forgot to remind New Yorkers and the nation that it was the “thug” Toussaint who, in 2002, in the wake of 9/11, accepted a modest contract for his union much to the chagrin of many union members who accused Toussaint of “selling out.”
Toussaint took the high road then. It would have been unprincipled, unpatriotic and not within the spirit of sacrifice for Toussaint and the TWU to call a strike when the city was still reeling from the attack.
Toussaint was right in 2002 for not calling a strike and he was right in 2005 when he called one.
We applaud Roger Toussaint for the dignified way he conducted himself during the 54-hour strike, his principled approach, his oratory and his effective communication of the transit workers’ demands. Moreover, we salute Mr. Toussaint and the selfless, valiant workers of the Transport Workers Union for standing up for the unborn and today’s workers by “resisting pension givebacks and the erosion or elimination of workers’ health benefits coverage.” Indeed, our Person of the Year is charting a course that we hope labor leaders throughout the nation will emulate.

The reason Roger Toussaint resonates with the African Diaspora of New York is because he is a leader in the mold of the people who have brought us thus far, and who we need to protect and see emulated.    Mr. Toussaint, like his namesake, Haiti’s great leader Toussaint-Louverture,  is smart, principled and strong enough to be grounded in struggle for people to be free of economic oppression, particularly in a system that wants to tend back toward slavery.  That is good news not just for Black people, but for all New Yorkers.   That is why he was attacked in the headlines of the Daily News and the New York Post.  These owners, managers and their rich White male friends recognize him as someone who marches to a very different drummer and they don’t like it at all.  Mayor Bloomberg’s furious outbursts, “thuggish, selfish, cowardly” was testimony enough to that fact but tabloid covers like “JAIL ‘EM” on Rupert Murdock’s New York Post and the “Illegal Transit Strike” logo on Mr. Murdock’s FOX NEWS, puts it in writing.
The biggest coming threat to their accumulation of money is paying for workers after they are no longer productive and providing them with health care.  During the days of outright slavery the owners could not sell an unproductive slave and yet could not free them, it would be a bad example.  So they were kept on at the plantation and we see representations of them today as Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, old but still useful around the house.
In 2006, the problem for the people profiting from the economic system will be baby boomers asking, “How will I be taken care of in my old age, what about my grandchildren and where is the profit of my human productivity going?”  Is it going back to the individual and the community in the form of a legacy of growth to leave behind, or is it being siphoned off by rich white men determined to get richer and have their children be richer still.
In this way the issue of pension benefits that Mr. Toussaint stood on transcends the time we are in because it confronts the flaw in the capitalist system, where everything has to make a profit, the profit must always grow, and it must always go to the owner.  Therefore, having to feed, clothe and provide health care when there is no production was a problem to the slave owner  then and is a problem in the boardroom now.   Especially today when reading cannot be outlawed, the issue transcends race and we live in what is called a democracy. 
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina washed away the illusion of economic equality and people across the nation saw there was no safety net provided by a caring government.  With Roger Toussaint and the TWU leaders taking the stand they did, 2006 opens on a high note of what unity, determination and courageous leadership look like, they were willing to confront the economic system with the concern for the “future unborn,” setting the bar for principles and qualities to look for in this coming election year.

Looking back to the year that was 2005, “Remembered Lives” devotes its first column of the New Year to a more expanded list of notables left behind. Of course, any such undertaking is enormously unwieldy and yet unpredictable. Our sincerest pardon for any significant omissions. RS

Obie Benson – Member of the Four Tops

Lamont Bentley – Actor (Hakeem on Moesha)

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown – Bluesman

Oscar Brown, Jr. – Musician, Songwriter, Playwright

R.L. Burnside – Mississippi Bluesman

Shirley Chisholm – Congresswoman

Kenneth Clark – Psychologist, Educator, New York State Board of Regents

Donn Clendenon – Mets M.V.P., 1969

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. – Attorney

Lyn Collins – Singer

Sonji Clay – First wife of Muhammad Ali

Ossie Davis –Actor, Humanitarian

Ray Davis – A Parliament-Funkadelic, founding member

Tyrone Davis – Soul Singer

Edward Dudley— Former Manhattan Borough President and Judge

Sadie Feddoes – Columnist, for New York Amsterdam News

Ibrahim Ferrer – Cuban singer, “Buena Vista Social Club”

Arthur Fletcher – Presidential Advisor to Richard Nixon

Shirley Horn – Pianist, Jazz Legend

Willie Hutch – R&B Singer, Composer

John H. Johnson – Founder, Johnson Publishing Company Ebony and Jet

Johnnie Johnson – Pianist, (Played with Chuck Berry, R&B Pioneer)

Vivian Malone Jones – University of Alabama, a first to integrate

Constance Baker Motley – Civil Rights Lawyer, First Black woman Federal Judge

Milton Obote – Two-time President of Uganda

Rosa Parks – Civil Rights Activist

Brock Peters – Actor

John Procope – (Businessman, Publisher of the Amsterdam News)

Richard Pryor – Comedian, Actor

Eugene Record – Lead Singer, Chi-Lites

Nipsey Russell – Comedian, Actor

Bobby Short – Cabaret Singer

Jimmy Smith- Jazz Musician, “King of the Hammond B3 Organ”

C. Delores Tucker – Founder, National Congress of Black Women

Luther Vandross –(Singer, Songwriter)

Stanley Tookie Williams – Author, Reformed Founder of Crips

August Wilson – (Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright)

Ronald Winans – Gospel Singer

Bruce Wright – Famed New York Judge

The City of New York declared that $1 billion dollars in revenue was lost this holiday season due to the transit strike. With many New Yorkers not going to work and even more not going to the stores, businesses were suffering from the discontinued service of the mass transit system.
City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. estimated that the strike would cost the city close to $400 million a day while Mayor Bloomberg urged New Yorkers to carpool and walk to work.
The city’s initial prospect of $400 million lost revenue a day was, according to economists interviewed for the MSNBC Web site, “too high and failed to account for such as employees working from home”. It was also noted on the site that Mayor Bloomberg lacked explanation for the overestimation of the original figure.
Besides the amount of lost revenue, it was claimed that small businesses were in danger of suffering the most from the transit strike. In actuality, small businesses thrived due to the gaining of patrons from bigger businesses. With the lack of transportation, customers decided to spend their money at local businesses rather than dealing with the hassle of trying to commute to the malls and department stores. Our Time Press decided to inquire about the effects of  the transit strike on our local community businesses.
“People from the neighborhood came here,” said Cae Byung of 4W Circle of Art, a gift boutique on Fulton Street. “They couldn’t reach other places.” 4W  was one of the stores that saw an increase in local patron sales.
Mimi Humphrey, owner of Freestyle Kids, a clothing store dedicated to children’s clothing, said, “I won’t say business was booming, but we did get some businesses because people couldn’t get to the malls.”
Even though some businesses saw an increase in foot traffic, others noted that   this was the Christmas season and people are going to come to the stores anyway, regardless of a transit strike.
“We couldn’t tell if business increased because of Christmas,” said Sara Richelson from The Green Grape, a wine and spirits store, it always increases around this time”. The Green Grape didn’t experience too many problems during the strike but they still had their share. “We weren’t affected because of local business but we had problems with shipments and employees not coming to work.”