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Making Umoja A Year-Round Goal

Aminisha Black
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“There was this old Mohawk elder talking to his grandson.  He says that there is a fight going on inside him.  He said it is between two wolves.”

One wolf is evil:  anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego… The other wolf is good: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith….The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The old Mohawk simply replied, “The one I feed”.  Author unknown

The role of elders has traditionally been that of providing guidance based on their years of experiencing and learning life lessons and passing them on to the offspring of the village, that is prior to slavery when knowing that they were contributing to the future of the village was considered a duty as well as reward.  Post-slavery, the village has become mere blocks where different families live but healthy relationships  are nonexistent and while there are some where adults form block associations, youth are generally not the focus.  Considering statistics whether on gangs, gun violence victims and perpetrators or incarceration, we’ve got work to do- we must save our children.

Like the Mohawk elder, we must choose the winner of the fight between wolves.  Today, one wolf’s highest-held value is in the possession of objects, regardless of who is hurt or destroyed in the pursuit.  Our offspring join the invaders because it provides income that otherwise would not be available.  However, this catering to “possessions of objects” leads to hostility, violence and wars where countless lives are lost while “Thou Shall Not Kill” is recited on Sunday mornings.   While relationships were the highest-held value among Africans, the horror of slavery has left open wounds in need of healing for generations.   The challenge and opportunity for African-Americans is to take on the challenge of recapturing that once-held value and commit to healing relationships and the place to start is with self.  In fact, the only place to start is with self.

Our children, filled with promise waiting to be discovered and unleashed, are instead being murdered on our blocks by other children or police, serving time in prisons, existing between feuding parents and surrounded by adults who show contempt.

An Umoja Assignment for Parents and Adults who interact with Children – How often , if ever, have you been told that the act of forgiveness  is an exercise that benefits the one doing the forgiving?    Years ago, this biblical exercise was introduced in a workshop.  When asked the number of times to forgive “7 times 7”?  The response was “No 70 times 7”.

Since we’re preparing to launch a personalized Kwanzaa, let’s begin early with some forgiveness exercises.  Make a list of the people with whom you have issues, dislike or just plain hate, including why. Taking one at a time, write I forgive (name) for (whatever act or words) 70 times for 7 days.  Repeat writing sentences.

While we’ve been conditioned to think that forgiveness was a favor being bestowed on the other person, we experience the freedom that the one doing the forgiving receives.   Finally, we usually have no idea what it’s like for the other person, nor do we care.  We have been conditioned in an “I” culture and we only know our feelings, our opinions and because we think those are the only valid ones, we spend a lifetime defending them.

As African-Americans, we have a lot at stake in the area of relationship.  Given our situation in this country, given the agreement that unity is needed to make changes, we’ve got to turn some long-standing attitudes around because they don’t work.  We can’t continue turning out robots who measure success by how much money they earn or the degrees and titles they hold.

Our existence depends on our redefining success to mean our ability to be in nurturing and cooperative relationships first with our children, our mates, ex-mates, other members of our families and the community at large.  Bottom line is focusing on what we have in common and not the differences and accepting( without scorn) if there’s nothing in common.  We will have mastered the task of building community by honoring relationships and building a community that will nurture our future.

Guest View Why We Need Outdoor Education …

Editor, Our Time Press
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More Than Ever!

 

Photo: Courtesy of GCAMP

By Morgan (Sankofa) Powell

Outdoor education supports parents and other guardians by making arts, physical activity, civics and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) accessible to youths otherwise limited by their social circumstances.

Moments spent in park settings nurtures the timeless needs of our children even as schools are transformed into test-taking factories.  Gardens offer time and space to enrich all that’s gradually displaced indoors as music, art and even recess are either reduced or replaced.  Replaced by what?  Answer: test prep to satisfy federal policies like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top even as our increasingly complex world requires the critical thinking and sense of personal efficacy factory environments destroy.

The better elements of yesterday’s civics, shop and home economics must now advance as lively membership meetings/public events, volunteer days and cooking/canning classes.

Today’s citizen ought to regard our public open spaces – from nature preserves to community gardens and nature centers – as sources of a four-season wonder.  These modest places betray their potentially exalted function in society as crucibles of democracy, citizen science and heritage.

(Mr. Powell is a horticulturist and landscape designer with over a decade in the trade. He is a blogger at Outdoor Afro, and will be writing recurring articles on Science, Nature and the Environment for Our Time Press. He can be reached at www.facebook.com/BronxRiverSankofa.)

Every Garden a Library: Outdoor Education in Brooklyn appears on Page 8.

Bed-Stuy Mobilizes To Bring Gifted & Talented Program Back To Community

Stephen Witt
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City Councilman-elect Robert Cornegy & P.S. 308 Principal Dr. George Patterson lead the charge

By Stephen Witt

 

Pictured from left to right are City Councilman-elect Robert Cornegy, P.S. 308 Principal Dr. George Patterson and P.S. 308 PTA President Lawana King.

There was a time not too long ago that P.S. 308’s Gifted and Talented (G & T) program was a source of pride to all of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Neighborhood kids that passed the entrance exam and attended the school, and their parents, were lauded on the streets and in the churches as accomplished individuals within their community.

But then the Bloomberg Administration took over the Department of Education in 2001, slashed P.S. 308’s budget in 2008, took away the Gifted and Talented program and put a charter school on the third floor.

The many academic and chess trophies the school had won over the years were boxed up and put in the basement, and along with it, much of P.S. 308’s long distinguished history of educating Bed-Stuy’s brightest young minds. Meanwhile, with no G & T program in the community, local students that passed the G & T exam were taken out of the neighborhood to attend the G & T program in other communities around the city.

This may soon change, however, as incoming City Councilman-elect Robert Cornegy and P.S. 308 Principal Dr. George Patterson are determined to bring the G & T program back to the school.

“It’s a travesty of what happened to the good schools in this community, and putting a charter school in P.S. 308 was a slap in the face,” said Patterson, whose father, Oliver Patterson, was a leading Bed-Stuy educator and civil rights activist for many years.

Patterson recalled how former P.S. 308 Principals Dr. Evelyn Castro and Dr. Gail Bell-Baptiste ran both the G & T program and the school successfully for many years.

However, when Patterson took over the school a year and a half ago, it received a D grade on the city’s annual report card.

Patterson immediately brought the trophies up from the basement and put them in a glass case at the building entrance, and with the help of a dedicated faculty, the school received an A on their report card released just last week.

Patterson said several school staff members understand how the G & T program works and have the skills to prepare the young students to prepare for the test, in which students must score 90 or better to get in the citywide G & T program, which is for kindergarten to fourth grade.

Poverty has a lot to do with kids getting into the G & T program, as you have to bring up the emotional intelligence, he said.

Cornegy, whose wife was in the G & T program at P.S. 308, said he envisions the school becoming a pipeline for Bed-Stuy’s G & T children throughout the district. Cornegy said he also spoke with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), which ran a very successful and well-attended mentoring program this summer, and they expressed a willingness to mentor some of Bed-Stuy’s G & T children.

Both Patterson and Cornegy also want to improve the special education program at the school as well, and sees the G & T program running in a more integrated way.

Entrance to the city’s Department of Education’s (DOE) Gifted and Talented programs are based on verbal and nonverbal assessment tests given to children as young as four.

This year, there are 34 Gifted and Talented programs at schools in every Brooklyn district except District 16, which is made up mainly of Bed-Stuy.  District 20 schools, which are mainly made up of Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, have 10 or slightly less than a third of the borough’s Gifted and Talented programs.

This includes the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, which is one of the city’s five magnet Gifted and Talented schools drawing children from across the borough and city. Seventy-five percent of the students attending this school are white and 13 percent Asian, six percent are black and six percent are Hispanic.

Department of Education (DOE) spokesperson Harry Hartfield said two weeks ago the reason Bed-Stuy didn’t have any Gifted and Talented programs were because they lacked the students that could pass the test.

Hartfield did not return repeated requests for more information on the number of Bed-Stuy students that passed the G & T exams and now attend a program in another district. Hartfield also failed to answer any questions about P.S. 308 at deadline.

NASA At Medgar

Editor, Our Time Press
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Faculty and Students Reach for the Stars

Three African-American Science Ph.Ds lead MEC’s NASA partnership into the future!

by Morgan Sankofa Powell

Dr. Shermane Austin’s recent research went public at Medgar Evers College (MEC) on Thursday, November 14. This distinguished computer scientist, her students and scientist colleagues joined together with NASA officials to celebrate a Crown Heights success story.  Great anticipation surrounds their package of finely tuned battery and solar panel-monitoring instruments.  This payload will be rocketed into low Earth orbit come December!

Dr. Shermane Austin, Director, CUNYSAT program and Professor of Computer Science at MEC

This achievement displays the impeccable creativity and analytical force housed at the intersection of Crown Street and Bedford Avenue.  Dr. Shermane Austin, Director of the CUNYSAT program and Professor of Computer Science at MEC reflected, “It is really exciting to come full circle on this project.  This has been a learning process for both faculty and students and we are really excited about the upcoming launch”.  The CUNYSAT Microsatellite program began with a Minority-Serving Partnership Award from the NASA National Space Grant Program in 2009.  The proposal was submitted in conjunction with Cornell University, where the NASA New York State Space Grant Consortium is based.

CubeSats (small satellites) are launched into orbit by NASA at no cost to selected colleges and universities under a workforce training program called ElaNa.  Medgar Evers College is the first predominantly minority institution chosen for this initiative.  CUNYSAT-1 included student participation from several CUNY campuses, including: Medgar Evers College, the City College of New York, the College of Staten Island, Queensborough Community College and Brooklyn College.  Students from Cooper Union, the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Cornell University also participated in CUNYSAT-1 development.

MEC faculty mentors included Dr. Leon Johnson (astrophysicist), Dr. Armando M. Howard (climatologist) and computer scientist Dr. Shermane Austin – all African-American — among others.  In the glow of this developing Medgar benchmark, we asked Dr. Johnson to provide some history.  He said that 1993 was the genesis year of MEC’s engagement with NASA.  He had gotten involved in a project active at schools like Brooklyn College and Columbia University which laid the groundwork for NASA grants coming to MEC within the following 24 months.  Dr. Austin was at City College back then and remembers the sonic boom of the moment as other CUNY schools parlayed new NASA research grants thereafter.  The future is bright, MEC has more in store.

“I am so proud of what these students and our faculty have accomplished on this project.  I hope that they will be an encouragement to other minority students considering entering the fields of science and technology.  We have a great Science, Health and Technology program here at Medgar Evers College and these students and this faculty are proof that we are heading in the right direction.”  — Dr. Rudolph Crew, President of Medgar Evers College

View the MEC laboratory where the CUNYSAT-1 program lives at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/meccunyphotos/sets/72157637088270745/

Of Note: 2013 is the 50th Anniversary of Civil Rights champion Medgar Evers’ martyrdom.  He is survived by Myrlie Evers-Williams, who has been involved with MEC over the years.  His legacy includes a level of access to higher education – diligently worked for by his and succeeding generations – not available to him.  The CUNYSAT-1 program is a worthy honor, indeed.  Black New York climbs in achievement, too with numerous victories from the archives of NASA.  Consider George Peterson of Scarsdale, NY who processed lunar pictures at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Those photos were used to help select our country’s first moon landing site in 1969. 

Local Elected Officials Demand Atlantic Yards’ Affordable Housing Now

Mary Alice Miller
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The Incredible Shrinking Promises at Forest City Ratner

By Mary Alice Miller

In response to Forest City Ratner Companies’ (FCRC) announced plan to sell 70% of its Atlantic Yards equity( worth $3 billion) to Greenland Holdings — a Chinese-based developer — city, state and federal elected officials representing the area are calling for Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to defer approval of the equity sale.  “Our state government cannot allow Forest City Ratner to cash out on the Atlantic Yards project before the majority of the public benefits have actually been delivered,” said Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee.

The elected officials and a coalition of community groups call on Forest City Ratner (FCRC), Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to accelerate the delivery of the 2,250 units of affordable housing promised at the site and acknowledge in the newly required environmental impact statement, the socioeconomic damage to the community from the delay.

The coalition also presented demands that must be met before FCRC is allowed to sell a majority interest in the project:

1) ESDC defer approval of any sale of Forest City Ratner’s interest in the Atlantic Yards project until after a study of alternatives to expedite construction, consistent with the order from the New York State Supreme Court, has been completed.

2) That ESDC make any sale of Forest City Ratner’s interest contingent upon a written commitment to deliver the affordable apartments planned for the Atlantic Yards project in the time frame in which they were originally promised.

3) That the Governor, ESDC and Forest City Ratner publicly commit to improving the accountability of the Atlantic Yards project to the public, stating their support of legislation to create a dedicated local development corporation to oversee the project until its completion whose board includes directors appointed by the elected representatives of the people of Brooklyn.

“The reason why New Yorkers invested over $700 million in tax subsidies and abatements is because we wanted to build a home court advantage for Brooklynites, men and women who made Brooklyn what it is today,” Assemblyman Walter Mosley said.  Mosley called for real commitments on affordable housing and “remedial measures put in place if those commitments are not met.”

Assemblywoman Joan Millman noted the success of Barclays Arena with the Nets and the Islanders soon to come. But, “The promise of affordable housing convinced many elected officials, including myself, to support the project.” She added, “I can’t imagine what interest Greenland has in low-income working families in Brooklyn. I can’t imagine they have any.”

“In full disclosure, I never was an advocate of this project. I never thought this was going to yield for us as much as we wanted to see come out of a project of this magnitude in terms of jobs and housing, affordable housing. Obviously, the disappointment for me goes very deep,” said State Senator Velmanette Montgomery. She added, “In the beginning, we as a community requested that this project be broken up so we could have a number of developers bidding to create a plan that was commensurate with what the community would like to see. We were not against development, but we were for equitable development so that the entire community’s interests would be realized. That never happened.”

“The governor should consider not-for-profit organizations to build the affordable housing, organizations that have a track record of doing it on time and consistent with the needs of the community,” said City Council member and Public Advocate-elect Letitia James. “It is time that we focus on the needs of the residents of the city of New York. It’s time that we stop appealing to real estate brokers and real estate interests in the city of New York. The people have spoken. They spoke on Election Day loudly and clearly.”

At the time Atlantic Yards was approved in 2006, Forest City Ratner Companies committed to completing its arena and 16 towers with 2,250 affordable apartments by 2016.

However, in 2009, FCRC renegotiated the timetable for the project so that it could delay completion until 2035. A state court ruled that ESDC illegally approved the 2009 change, but construction of affordable housing at Atlantic Yards has continued to languish, with the first units not expected to be occupied before 2015.

Atlantic Yards has received $100 million in state and $236 million in New York City funding to date. Yet, the only promise delivered thus far is the Barclays Arena.

In 2004-06, 15,000 construction jobs were promised. Only 607 were delivered as of September 2013, with 196 hired from Brooklyn. Ten thousand permanent jobs were promised; 1,240 were delivered while 219 were lost. 2,250 units of affordable housing were promised (none have been delivered yet) while 171 were lost.

When the project was approved in December 2006, the arena and 16 buildings were promised for delivery by 2016; at the 2009 project closing the arena and 3 buildings were promised by 2022. Regarding residential units, 6,430 units were promised by 2016, downsized to 1,005 by 2022. Affordable housing units: 300 promised by 2022, down from the 2,250 that were promised by 2016. Initial payment for MTA rail yards was supposed to be $100 million at the 2006 approval; at the 2009 closing, the initial payment decreased to $20 million.

New York City’s direct subsidy was $100 million in 2006; by 2009 closing, it was $236 million. In 2006, 10,000 permanent and 15,000 construction jobs were promised; an annual average of 3,600 is projected for the first 30 years. The projected 10-year construction duration was extended to 25 years with more extensions possible. And the arena economic benefit was projected at $25 million over 30 years but the NYC Independent Budget Office projected a net loss of $8 million over 30 years.

Of the units to be built, only 10 of the 35 affordable 2-bedroom units will be offered to families making an average Brooklyn income. In addition, FCRC has decided to build mostly studios and 1 bedrooms instead of 2 and 3 bedrooms for families.

“The time for promises has ended,” said City Council member and Public Advocate-elect Letitia James. “There will be no new deal without a project agreement with the community that includes a firm timeline.”

 

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