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Faith Leaders Ex-Offenders Keep it Real on Gun Violence, Offer Counseling & Encouragement

Bernice Elizabeth Green
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By Bernice Elizabeth Green

Last Saturday, August 25, Rev. Diane Hodges and Rev. Bruce William, soldiers in Prison Ministry, who delivered the word of peace and healing to hardened criminals hardened lives  to young troubled…. joined the Ethelyne Henderson Women’s Missionary Society and the Bridge Street Prison Outreach Ministry Outreach Ministries of Bridge Street AWME Church to  host a dynamic, emotion-filled workshop on gun violence in the community.
AS the faith leaders touch the community, so on Saturday, these former offenders reached the audience, with their powerful testimonies.  It was not the usual sanctuary solemnities; it was real talk, about their real lives, with all concluding with the reality of what will happen if we do not deal with the situation now.
The event theme, “Educate to Eradicate,” underscored the message of the day delivered in the church’s Richard Allen Hildebrand Fellowship Hall by former convicts and street-gang members who have “been there.”
Hosted by evangelist Hodges, a member of Bridge Street who is based in Utica, NY., the afternoon event comprised a speakers  forum,  Q&A and giveaways to the children of school supplies and books.
“Historically, Bridge Street Church has always been a proactive church that seeks to address all issues affecting our parishioners and the community in which serve,” noted the event program.  “Today, our primary goal is to provide our youth with the information on the negative impact of gun violence on family, friends and the community.  We aim to offer some solutions on how and why not to get involved in any illegal activity.  We also encourage our youth to set educational goals, and to study hard to achieve those goals so that they will be equipped for life’s journey.”
Bridge Street, according to the program, is blessed with an array of ministries that are available to meet the emotional, physical and spiritual needs of o (the)congregation and the community, says in the program, David Cousins, Pastor church pastor.
“With the pants sagging, gangs taking over, hard to be positive about anything.”  His turning point came about when he lost everything he had… , in one day.  Your life can be changed in a moment.” For good or for bad.
Also, says Rev. Hodges, you can’t talk about harsh things nicely.  It’s gotten rough, and times have changed.  Beyond scared straight tactics, it’s telling it like it is. “The flip side of this is we must speak from the heart.  “We stop the violence by doing what we ‘re doing today: educating the community and letting them know. The alternatives, and the biggest alternative is lack of access to education.
“I’m a product of the 60’s, my daddy was a Baptist preacher and he took us on a whole lot of marches.” says Rev. Hodges .  “Are we sitting in church every Sunday churching ourselves, caught up with tricks and playing games, walking around pretending we don’t know because t s didn’t happen in our homes.It’s not about us, it’s about the children.
To connect with  Rev. Hodges, call: To reach  AmentA counselors, call David A.D. Bowles, 347-942-6458.

Kings County Politics

Stephen Witt
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By Stephen Witt

Succeeding Vito as county boss
In Brooklyn, where elbowing your way into politics is the norm, the Kings County Democratic Party Chair has always been the boss.
Picked from among unpaid male and female Democratic Party Assembly District leaders, the boss holds great sway on judicial candidates, patronage jobs and steering both money and contracts to favored nonprofits.
In this role, recently dethroned Kings County Democratic Party boss Assemblyman Vito Lopez was as “old school” as they come. He dealt from a strong hand, and demanded and received party loyalty from North, Central and South Brooklyn.
Lopez rewarded allies with head-of-committee stipends, jobs for connected people, and support to favored, well-moneyed attorneys who wanted a judgeship.
He also steered millions of dollars in contracts to favored nonprofits including the one he formed – The Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Center.
But being the Democratic Party boss in Brooklyn carries with it a target on your back.  Journalists, young up-and-coming politicians and political reformers all go after you. In this measure, Vito Lopez was a warrior. He excelled in fighting against enemies and rewarded loyalty.
It’s something of an irony that what brought Lopez’s demise was sexual harassment in the workplace and not felony corruption charges, which befell his predecessor, Clarence Norman.
But Lopez isn’t one to go quietly into the night. He denies the allegations, insists he will remain an assemblyman and only went so far to say he won’t seek reelection as county chair – a post he’s held since 2005.
Lopez’s resignation now opens the door for the borough’s district leaders to pick a new party boss, and several sources say the front-runner is District Leader Frank Seddio, who comes out of Canarsie’s powerful Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club.
Seddio, a former assemblyman and surrogate court judge, is said to have locked up a good portion of district leader votes in South Brooklyn including the Italian, Irish and Jewish enclaves of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay, Mill Basin, Marine Park and Borough Park.
While Seddio is the front-runner, he’s not a lock and several sources in Central Brooklyn’s black political community think it’s time for another black party boss.
“Some of the black district leaders would like to see black leadership once again, said one source. While there is a rule that the county leadership must come through the ranks of county leaders, it is more a rule and not a law.
Sources said the main name being floated is Crown Heights Assemblyman Karim Camara, who while not a district leader, remains a popular consensus builder in Central Brooklyn.
For Camara to have a chance, he will need the support of the party reformers, and district leader Chris Owens, one of the reformers, said an alliance is possible.
“I could see it, but there would have to be a direct understanding between the two groups of what the expectations are. The reformers’ expectations are to see the at-large district leaders to go, changes in transparency and changes in the judicial selection process, he said.
Meanwhile, District Leader Jo Ann Simon has already announced that she would like to be the first female party boss.
“It’s time for a woman absolutely, said Simon, who has been a district leader since 2004. “There’s a crying need for someone who can bring people together. This has been a divided county for far too long and in the last few years it’s become even more divided.
Either way, Borough President Marty Markowitz sees Lopez stepping down as a positive for Brooklyn politics.
“Last Friday, I called on Vito Lopez to ‘do the right thing’ in the best interest of  Brooklyn, state and national Democratic organizations. I am relieved that he did the right thing today by announcing he will not seek reelection as county chair of the Kings County Democratic Committee, said Markowitz.
“Now we must unite as a party and move quickly to find a successor with just over two months to go before this November’s important election to re-elect President Barack Obama to a second term.

CORRECTION
In last week’s KCP, it was incorrectly stated that Assemblyman and Democratic Party nominee Hakeem Jeffries remained neutral in the male 50th Democratic Assembly District leader race between Lincoln Restler and Chris Olechowski. In actuality, Jeffries publicly supported Restler several weeks ago.

The Only Big Idea Coming Out Of The Romney-Ryan Camp Is the Big Lie

Editor, Our Time Press
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By Michael Tomasky

The addition of Paul Ryan was supposed to infuse the Romney campaign with big ideas that would be argued in big debates with the Democrats, but so far, Michael Tomasky writes, all the GOP campaign has done is grossly distort the truth.
When Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate, we were told we were going to get the Big Debate on the Big Questions we’ve all been waiting for. Well, so far, it isn’t quite working out that way. The distinguishing fact of the Romney-Ryan campaign thus far is the extent to which it is built on outright lies in a desperate attempt to avoid honest debate at all costs. The Romney-Ryan strategy is the farthest thing in the world from a Big Debate. Instead, they muddy the waters as much as possible and lie as much as possible, and hope the press doesn’t call them on it and hope voters buy it.
The most blatant lie about Obama concerns the welfare rule change, which the Romney campaign is still pushing in a new ad. The Romney ad campaign says exactly the opposite of what the new rule stipulates. PolitiFact called the first Romney ad “Pants on Fire,” and Glenn Kessler gave it four Pinocchios. But now here they come with a second ad saying that Obama “ended the work requirement.” Plainly and provably not true.
This is not normal. Normal is to stretch the truth. The Obama campaign stretches the truth in trying to connect Romney more directly than it should to Bain-related layoffs that happened after 2002. That’s your basic reach, and the campaign has been called on it. But it’s not a total lie. There is some little grain of truth there, that “Mitt Romney’s company” oversaw such-and-such layoffs, as there usually is in attack ads, even the most vicious ones. The Willie Horton ads were, after all, true. Racist, but true. But the Romney welfare ads have no grain of truth at all.
For the full article, go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/21/the-only-big-idea-coming-out-of-the-romney-ryan-camp-is-the-big-lie.html
Newsweek/Daily Beast special correspondent Michael Tomasky is also editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Follow Michael Tomasky on Twitter at @mtomasky.

News Briefs 8/30/12

Stephen Witt
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City mum on Sumner Armory
The city Department of Homeless Services (DHS) issued a terse “No comment” regarding their intentions of use for the Sumner Armory on Marcus Garvey Blvd.
Currently, DHS contracts out a small part of the armory to a local nonprofit organization to house a 200-bed homeless shelter for men. The community would like to see part of the armory have community use like the Park Slope Armory.
Community Board 3 Chair Henry Butler said the community would probably have to wait for the Bloomberg Administration to leave office before they can again approach the subject.

Stop-and-Frisk set for federal court
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin set a March 18, 2013 trial date to hear a 2008 Federal Civil Rights lawsuit alleging the city’s NYPD used racial bias in its controversial stop-and-frisk policy.
Last May, Scheindlin ruled that there was “overwhelming evidence” in granting the lawsuit to become class action due to the thousands of stop-and-frisks of people of color.
Last year, police conducted 685,724 stop-and-frisks. According to the lawyer for the plaintiffs, 85% of the stops were black or Latinos.

Prostitution in Clinton Hill park
City Councilwoman Letitia James said her office has been flooded with calls that prostitution and drug use is running rampant in Crispus Attucks Playground on Fulton St. and Classon Ave. this past Monday.
The NYPD has arrested 18 hookers in the area over the past two months, cops said. “In the morning there’s condom wrappers that are lying around,” 88th Precint Police Capt. Scott Henderson told reporters.
Parks Department employees are supposed to lock the park’s front gate each night at dusk but that doesn’t always happen, community activists said.
“I’ve seen it open at 9 p.m., and I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in drug paraphernalia,” said John Katsos, who heads the community group Friends of Crispus Attucks Park.

Public Schools open next week
The city’s public schools are set to open on Thursday, September 6 with  regular school hours.
Several of the city’s CUNY colleges already opened this past Monday.

West Indian Day Parade organizers say the 45th annual event will be the best ever

Editor, Our Time Press
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By Amelia Rawlins

Colorful handmade costumes, cultural foods and island music are all again expected for Monday’s West Indian-American Day Parade – the largest parade in New York City.
“ We have done extensive planning and we have been working closely with the NYPD and the Fire Department and they are prepared to handle any situations that will occur,” Bailey said. “Things are looking good and we are anxiously looking at an exciting weekend starting tomorrow; the best is yet to come.”
“My expectation remains the same as it’s always been,” said West Indian-American Day Carnival Association President Thomas Bailey. “Incidents do occur, most of them we have no control over. In many instances the violence is not related to the parade.”
The parade has been the highlight of the year since its conception in 1969 representing islands including Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Barbados and Grenada, to name a few. Each year, the parade brings in between 1 and 3 million attendees, making it the largest celebration in New York.
“The world focuses on us and we work hard to make sure that the event will go well,” said Frank Seddio, partner and founding member of the law firm of Seddio & Carone, PLC. “The goal is to have a safe event and that all the hard work that has been done will be seen during the parade.”
Seddio, who has been an active member of the parade for 41 years and originally served as the police coordinator for the event, says that the real test will be this weekend with the Brooklyn Museum events.  “I am convinced we will have a good year this year,” he said.
This weekend’s festivities are set to start with Saturday’s annual Kiddie Carnival, a Dimanche Gras on Sunday and the J’Ouvert parade, a celebration of steel pan drums that kicks off the main parade beginning at 11am on Monday.
The parade route starts on Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway and then goes down Eastern Parkway towards Flatbush Avenue and finishes at Grand Army Plaza.

For more info www.wiadc.org

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