The Board of Trustees of Weeksville Heritage Center is pleased to announce the promotion of Rob Fields from Interim President & Executive Director to President & Executive Director. Rob joined Weeksville in September from marketing industry trade organization the Association of National Advertisers, where he was Marketing Director.
“In just a few short months, Rob has earned the confidence of the board for the dynamic vision he’s laid out for Weeksville’s future,” says Tim Simons, Chair of the Board of Trustees.
It’s an exciting moment for Weeksville. 2018 marks the 50th Anniversary of its “rediscovery” in 1968, when the historic Hunterfly Road Houses were almost demolished and lost to history. In the coming weeks, expect a slate of new initiatives and programming to celebrate how far Weeksville has come over the last 50 years and the bright future it has ahead of it.
Sadly, a lot of Black people are celebrating the fact that Donald Trump, a.k.a. “Number 45”, kicked Omarosa to the curb. Or according to her, she resigned. That’s really “six of one thing, half a dozen of another”. The bottom line is, in Omarosa’s time of need, Black people feel they got the key to heaven’s pearly gates for beating this Black woman down like she stole something! I gotta tell ya, this kind of “Black Woman Bashing” by the Black community makes me sick to my stomach!! Anybody who knows me knows I am a rabid feminist!! I am extremely pro-women; in particular, pro-Black women. So I’m about to say something very unpopular right now but what the hell, that’s never stopped me before. My name is Lisa Durden and I support Omarosa in solidarity!
Something must be inherently wrong when the Black community embraces murderers like gang member Stanley “Tookie” Williams, after he founded the West Side Crips in Los Angeles and terrorized our community for years! I refuse to understand how the Black community can forgive and forget that abuser Chris Brown, after he beat the hell out of Rihanna so badly till her face was unrecognizable. It makes my #BrainBleed when Blacks, especially Black women, brag on social media about going to that accused child molester R. Kelly’s concerts. It puzzles me how Black people can rally around that accused rapist Bill Cosby in the name of legacy. And yet, Black folks vilify Omarosa for accepting a $180,000-dollar-a-year job with “Number 45”. Did Omarosa kill your momma?? Did Omarosa take your man?? Did Omarosa rape your child?? NO!! My sister Daphne will tell you that I am all about redemption and reciprocity. Yes, we all agree, Omarosa made a CLUCKED-up decision to work for Donald Trump, but I’d like to think she’s now contemplating the error of her ways. So, if we can extend grace to those miscreants, it’s only fair to do the same for Omarosa. Unfortunately, Black Male Privilege is real!!
With that said, why didn’t any of you good ole “God-fearing” Black folks, who threw shade toward Omarosa, drag boxer Floyd Mayweather for attending Donald Trump’s Inaugural loud and proud?? Why haven’t I heard a peep out of any of you so-called “appropriate” Black people about boxing promoter Don King supporting “Number 45”?? He’s even in pictures with Omarosa and Donald Trump and not as much as a whisper from y’all. Nobody in the “pristine” Black community clapped back when rapper Kanye West and former NFL player Terrell Owens supported Trump. Why aren’t any of you good “Christian, upstanding” Black folks angry at the caterer who got paid to supply the food for Trump’s Inaugural; the tech company who got paid to provide the audiovisual services for Trump’s Inaugural; the florist who got paid to provide the flowers for Trump’s Inaugural; and the venue that got paid to rent the space to Trump for his inaugural. By now, you see where I’m going with this. It’s painfully clear, you “Black Power” Blacks are perfectly fine with Black men all up in “Number 45’s” camp and “randoms” taking Trump’s money to provide products and services, but when Omarosa, a Black woman, gets paid by Trump for her skill sets, talents and intellectual property, she’s somehow a monster.
Yup, I am fully aware that “Number 45” is a racist!! That is not a secret. But let me ask y’all Blacks a question, “Did anybody throw you under the bus when you worked for a racist in order to pay your bills and feed your family”?? Cause the fact of the matter is, historically, Black people have worked for racists such as shining their shoes, cleaning their houses, cooking their food, taking care of their kids, sharecropping their land and driving Miss Daisy; all while being called “nigger’ in their face. But we understood then and we understand now why Black folks had to make those kinds of sacrifices. Well, sorry to break the bad news to y’all, but things haven’t changed that much. The fact is, every single Black person has, is, or will work for a racist white person in their lifetime because we are still not in the position, as a people, to be able to employ the entire Black race. Sure, we have a few uber-rich Blacks who own their own businesses, but there still aren’t enough Black-owned businesses to employ all 42 million Black people who reside in the United States. So please get off your hypocritical high horses and let Omarosa make her dough in peace.
Don’t get it twisted, I am very aware that a lot of Black people have been hating Omarosa’s guts from her character on “The Apprentice” and the “Celebrity Apprentice”. Yes, sometimes she appears to be clucked-up! Yes, she’s been perceived as ruthless! Yes, she is provocative! But so is Kim Kardashian. However, you don’t see white people excommunicating her from their white community. It’s interesting how white women like Kim Kardashian can be all up in sex videos with Ray Jay backing that thang up, taking back shots and pulling out the golden kneepads to service him and instead of the white community rejecting her, white men like the Ryan Seacrest’s of the world embraced her and gave her a huge reality show to make sure she was good!! When white women like Anna Nicole Smith are strippers and filthy-rich old white men like Howard Marshall take her off the poll, the white community gives her cheers, not jeers. Omarosa wasn’t “hoeing”! Omarosa wasn’t stripping! Omarosa wasn’t drugging! Omarosa wasn’t stealing! So, I am very disappointed that many Blacks, especially Black men, have the nerve to treat Omarosa like a stepchild when she simply took a job as the Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison for the Trump Administration.
Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly understand how Omarosa can rub some insecure people the wrong way. However, is her confident, larger-than-life personality a crime?? Rachel Maddow is as brash and crass as they come, and yet, instead of the white community being embarrassed by her, they gave her a big show!! Simply put, when the smoke clears, life is about self-preservation. And as Omarosa said in her “Good Morning America” interview with Michael Strahan, “When you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”. My melanin friends, that powerless position ain’t cute! Omarosa’s book deal is being inked as we speak, and I can’t wait to get an advanced copy; she will be spilling the Lipton Tea!!
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Lisa Durden, TV personality and subject matter expert in the areas of pop culture, politics and social issues, who’s an “A-Plus Panel” Contributor at My9’s “Chasing News. She also makes appearances on Dr. Oz, Pix11 Morning News, CT Style & Fox News Channel. Lisa’s voice is her activism!
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god….I could be the grandmum of the future King of England. I, a lowly, blue-collar, overeducated and undervalued woman from North Portland Ave. in the Fort Greene Projects of Downtown Brooklyn, could have spawned a daughter who would marry a prince who is only five to seven steps away from inheriting the throne, and if he and Meghan should have a child, he would be king….simple Fantasy 101. Why not? Indulge me, please.
When I saw that high school picture of Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, with the Angela Davis ‘fro, I knew we were one and the same; intelligent black women whose mission is to make the next generation better, more intelligent, more evolved than ours. We sacrificed everything for our children.
We are all Meghan’s mother. We, who worked so hard to bring up our little girls to be princesses. Okay, officially, she will be a duchess, that’s the same thing to those of us who live in our imaginations. We worked three jobs to send our kids to private schools, gave them ballet classes, braces, helped them with their homework and hired a tutor for their S.A.T.’s.
We sacrificed everything for our children so that they would grow up perfect and superior. Not “just as good as”.
Doria went through the same stages as many of us. We started with the Angela Davis afro and are now sporting braids in as many colors as we choose. We know that Yoga is the way and we are voracious readers. We can quote Malcolm Gladwell at every cocktail party we attend.
We acted in defiance of the “oh-so-charming” caricature of the contemporary Black woman who is sassy and tough as portrayed so many times on “Saturday Night Live”. We coped with the self-loathing, albeit funny, comedies of “Sanford and Son”, “In Living Color”, etc.
They were funny, Lord knows they were funny, but were these women the image we wanted for our girls? How many films centered on intelligent Black women verses “Booty Call” or “Precious”?
Let’s give a great big bravo to Meghan for not going “Ghetto Chic” and trying to pretend that all Black women are loud and churlish. After all, as an actress, that is where the money is. Most of the parts written for women of color, especially those on television (before Shonda Rhimes cast a spell on ABC and blessed us all with intelligent female roles), are for those with a big heart and tiny IQ, certainly those with a wonton sense of etiquette who are forced to drop their pants for a laugh, and a canned laugh at that.
A recent photograph of her mother Doria, posted by Meghan.
There have been other fairy tale stories like Grace Kelly and even Jamie Lee Curtis whose husband, Christopher Guest, turned out to be royalty. Black royalty is a tad more scarce, however.
Meghan will join a handful of other Black women who have chosen to join with royalty. Of that cadre of women only Countess Lei Von Habsburg from South Carolina and Princess Ariana Austin from Washington, D.C are fellow Americans.
When I was a little girl there was a 1949 movie called “Pinky”. It was about a biracial girl with a Black mother whose daughter looked white. Back then, we called her “light-skinned with good hair”. It was a remake of an older 1934 movie called “Imitation of Life”. In that movie, Fredi Washington, who was Black, played Peola, the daughter and Louise Beavers, who was also Black, played the mother. In it, Peola, the protagonist, moans, “I wish I were white” because of her untenable situation.
In “Pinky”, the mother was played by Ethel Waters and the girl was Jeanne Crane, who was white, or at least they said she was. Pinky, a nurse, falls in love with a doctor who does not know she is Black. The whole picture is about covering up being Black.
My mother stammered and welled up in tears as she tried to explain to me why it was bad to be Black. I never understood it, but I knew it was bad for my people and worse yet, bad for me.
Now, this miracle has happened, a “light-skinned girl with good hair” is not rejecting her doting mother, rejoices in being Black and the prince knows she is Black and loves her even more because of it; moreover, he wants the world to know it.
It is a testament to the racism of America that the very thought of this crumb of equality makes me want to cry; weeping tears of happiness and completeness. Finally, it is good to be Black!
As an American, I always pretended that I didn’t give a fig about royalty and privilege. I didn’t give a fig because I knew that it was a world that I would never be a part of. A world filled with elitism, raping, robbing, pillaging and destroying. After all, the English were responsible for many of the bad things in this world…need I mention the Middle East? Or the famous Churchill line about Gandhi being a half-naked fakir? Yet, they have done a lot of good things as well. Let us not forget, they freed their slaves 20 years before we freed ours, which is a whole generation of freedom which British Blacks received before American blacks.
Now that I could be the pretend mother of a princess, a real, honest-to-goodness princess, I am a lot more lenient about the negative side of “the Mother Country”. Harry is only five or seven steps away from being king. Any number of things could happen enabling Meghan to spawn the Black King of England—”The Quadroon King”. I go to sleep every night with that dream.
Oh, what a phony I was. This royalty thing is a magnet which attracts us commoners like Ulysses and the siren’s song.
Both Prince Harry and Prince William are trying their darndest to act like “regular guys”. They know the charms of the common folk. They are aware of the traps of nobility; and that is why we love them all the more.
So, what does this union mean for the world? It means there is hope. It means that Harry was intelligent enough to follow his heart as well as his head. It means that Meghan is brave enough to embroil herself in a family that lives on the front pages of tabloids every day. She knows that every word she says will be recorded and judged. It means that neither one of them can have a tiff in public or a fight at home. The pain of keeping up the smile must be exhausting. Yet, it is a small price to pay for the greater good they are doing.
We mothers who have sacrificed so much for our children are finally getting our due, thank you Doria, you are truly appreciated. On behalf of all the undervalued women from the Fort Greene Housing Projects, allow me to thank you for giving us enough material to dream about for a lifetime.
The just-passed Republican tax plan shows the same greed, self-service, and lack of empathy as President Trump and those around him. And yet more than those two sins, this change of tax laws is diabolical in its own special way. When the top .01% demand and get their tribute, they do it by inflicting pain and suffering while extracting the labor from the rest of the citizenry who they leave further behind in health, wealth and education, while seeking to genetically enhance their offspring. What kind of people would do such a thing, place money above humanity and the common good? Actually, that person is not rare in America. In his epic 1935 work, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880, W.E.B DuBois introduced them to us as the “Planter Class”, who were most ostentatious during those slavery times that former Senate candidate Roy Moore longed for.
And this kind of person, driven by an amoral greed, saw that there was a nation to be robbed, and it was now or never to pull off a heist for the ages. As Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican has said about the tax bill, “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,'” and they are adamant because, “83% of benefits go to the top 1%…it’s a monumental theft” as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, called this historic transfer of wealth, $1.5 trillion, to the very wealthiest.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries said that the so-called tax reform “Is all about showering millionaires and billionaires and huge corporations with a massive tax cut” and he cites as only one example of the unfairness the proposal by the White House that deductions for state and local taxes be abolished “for everyday ordinary Americans, but allow corporations to deduct their state and local taxes.”
And then it gets even more sordid with the already-wealthy in congress getting richer, and any soon to be out-of-work politicians are looking to the lobbying firms and their clients to make sure their life after politics is a comfortable one. They’re biggest fear is that failure to make possible employers happy, may leave them hanging their lawyer shingles on a storefront next to a deli. That isn’t the case of course, but all things are relative and that’s how employment outside the beltway will feel.
The second drama being played out
Speaking about how unusual this president’s first year has been, one CNN commentator likened it to the usual period after election saying, “and this was the honeymoon.” And this union between President Trump, Congress the Justice Department and the people. will turn even uglier if that legal force of nature, special counsel Robert Muller, tells Trump’s lawyers their client is a target of the investigation and they’d like to speak with him. That is when all hell will break loose in a historically nasty and dangerous divorce from an amoral and abusive spouse and his crew who would be using a spittoon at the bar if it wasn’t for appearances.
This will come as a disappointment to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been entertaining the world as he uses flattery like strokes of a bow, playing the fiddle-in-chief, the United States President, Donald Trump. Former Director of National Intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, explained it this way, “Putin is handling Trump like an asset… he’s a former KGB officer,” and Donald Trump is in his portfolio. And if we follow the line of thought of Mr. Clapper who knows more about these kinds of things than we ever will, then that portfolio contains not just the psychological and business profiles, but perhaps compromising material used to force Trump to, in effect, aid the enemy. If so, then Muller may come back with information that makes obstruction the easy way out.
It sounds crazy, but frankly all of this is crazy. 2018 will usher in the rapacious tax, the possibility of an unstable president being charged with obstruction, collusion or more, public lands being damaged for profit, millions of people losing health coverage, the federal judiciary continuing to be stacked with rightwing ideologues, and that’s just some of what we have to look forward to next year.
This is a time when we need to take deep and slow breaths, get out the marching shoes and placards and be ready for the worse, because it’s coming and God help the Union.
Tenants will be notified about service with letters and phone calls; Hotline to schedule appointments: 347-507-3684
Residents can make an appointment at any NYC Health + Hospital location across the five boroughs
NEW YORK––The New York City Housing Authority and NYC Health + Hospitals announced that starting on Monday, December 18th, the City will offer free blood lead level testing for the nearly 3,000 children ages 6 months to 8 years who live in more than 2,300 NYCHA apartment units that were painted in 2016 by workers without proper certification. While the risk of significant exposure from this work remains low, out of an abundance of caution, the City is offering free testing to children aged 6 months to 8 years old due to normal behavior that can result in ingestion of lead dust. Tenants in these 2,300 apartments will receive a letter under their door and phone calls with more information about how to schedule an appointment at any NYC Health + Hospital location across the five boroughs by using the City’s dedicated hotline.
“Resident safety is our top priority,” said NYCHA Chair and CEO Shola Olatoye. “We want to make sure families know about this free testing to address any concerns and provide peace of mind.”
“New York City has made great strides to reduce lead poisoning among children by working in partnership with families, health care providers and building owners,” said NYC Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett. “This free testing program will provide families in public housing the opportunity to learn more about their children’s health. As always, we ask that all parents with concerns about the health of their children speak with their pediatrician.”
“The health effects of exposure to lead are best managed early, so concerned parents are encouraged to take advantage of this free testing,” said Machelle Allen, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals. “If high lead levels are detected, follow-up is available. And we provide care to all, regardless of ability to pay.
Parents or guardians with children living in these 2,300 apartments can request a free blood level test by calling the dedicated hotline. Parents and guardians will need to bring their photo ID and will need to sign a form permitting their child to be tested as well as release of information. Any child with an elevated lead result will be connected to care.
Lead poisoning in New York City is at historic lows, and the number of children in NYC with lead poisoning has declined 69 percent since 2005. Residents concerned about their home or their children can learn more about the health effects of lead-based paint exposure by visiting DOHMH’s Lead Poisoning Prevention page at nyc.gov/lead. Residents can also call NYCHA’s Customer Contact Center at 718-707-7771 with questions about the Authority’s program to remediate potential lead-based paint hazards.
For more information, visit www.nyc.gov/nycha and for regular updates on NYCHA news and services.
