Chicago
Commentary by Chitown Kev
Many times since November 4, 2008, I’ve asked myself the question: What place other than my adopted hometown, Chicago, Illinois, could the first African-American President of the United States have possibly come from?
My home state of Michigan? I don’t think so.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts? Maybe.
The American South? I doubt it; too many institutional barriers remain for the South to be the home base of an African-American President or a black United States Senator or (Virginia’s Douglas Wilder notwithstanding) a black governor (maybe Virginia, nowadays?).
California? Maybe. In fact, that might be put to the test sooner than we think.
Not that Chicago doesn’t have it’s problems.
Chicago remains the most racially segregated city in America. The Chicago Police Department is corrupt to the bone; even some of the city’s own law enforcement officers acknowledge that fact. Racial minorities have borne much of the brunt of that corruption and brutality at the hands of the Chicago Police Department.
And while Chicago Machine politics are a shadow of what they once were, The Machine is still a force to be reckoned with.
After all, Chicago is called “The Windy City” for a reason (several, in fact).
(Interestingly, I often think of Chicago’s “rival cities” as being New York, Detroit, and St. Louis but never Cincinnati. You learn something new every day.)
Make no mistake about it; Chicago, Illinois can be criticized for many reasons. And, in fact, many Chicago-ians do bash the city early and quite often.
At least I know that I do. Don’t get a Chicago-ian started on parking tickets, for example (I know, the parking tickets thing is pretty universal, but
But for all my city’s faults…don’t bring that bullshit here.
You will get checked.
Real quick. This from In These Times:
Congratulations to the people—young and old, Black, Latino, Asian and White, Muslim, Christian and Jewish. They did what neither his competitors nor the Republican Party have been able to do—still the voice and the vitriol of Donald Trump.
The protestors, a loose amalgam of labor, women, immigration, students and Black Lives Matter activists, didn't do it through violence, or shouting. No dirty tricks—just the old fashioned way. They organized.
It all began early this week with an online petition to the University of Illinois-Chicago to deny Trump the use of the publicly-supported facility on the basis that the rally posed a threat to the security and safety of students. This, tactic, in turn, led to two others. First, using their extensive email lists, they encouraged us to secure tickets through Eventbrite. It ensured that opponents of Trumps' racist, anti-choice, anti-immigrant policies and statements could secure seats in the pavilion. It appears that hundreds, if not thousands, took the opportunity to secure a free ticket. I know that I did. Trump was denied the backdrop of 10,000 adoring supporters. Second, they organized dozens of civil, women’s, labor and immigrants’ rights organizations to protest outside of the venue and to reflect the vision of the diversity and unity that makes our cities and our nation great.
And they succeeded. Faced, not with the threat of violence but lack of control of the message or the montage, Trump retreated. What is now clear is that the answer to the rise of Trump is, as always, organizing for action.
You’d think that Donald Trump would have known; after all, Chicago has never particularly cared for Donald Trump, anyway.
I do agree with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Donald Trump probably did know how his traveling circus of racism, bigotry, and know-nothing-ism would be greeted here and he decided to do it anyway.
What should surprise me (but didn’t) is that some in the MSM characterized the Chicago political action last Friday as a “riot.”
I am not even going to dignify that with an answer or with the relevant Chicago history; I’ll simply say that the concern of the national media is duly noted.
True enough, I have personally found much of this political primary season to be frustrating and depressing. Some of the more darkly cynical opinions that I have about the American political process have returned full-force.
I do have to say that it is highly...ironic, that one of the most darkly cynical (in terms of political life) cities in the entire world also has made me break out in one of the few smiles this entire campaign season.
And it is the city that I call home, Sweet Home Chicago!
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News Round Up by dopper0189, Black Kos, Managing Editor
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Last Friday was “match day” for New York City’s eighth graders, when they found out whether they’d been admitted to one of the city’s elite high schools. And not shockingly, the numbers were appalling when it came to diversity.
There are nine of these selective high schools in New York City. At eight of them, students take a test to get in, and at one—La Guardia High School, which specializes in the performing arts—students must audition. Of the schools that “test in,” black and Latino students will likely make up no more than 4 and 6 percent, respectively, of the student populations next year. Yet across the city, those two groups make up 70 percent of the public school population.
At lower Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High, for example, just 23 black and Hispanic students won seats in next year’s freshman class—compared with 178 white students and 682 Asian students. At Staten Island Technical High School, not a single black student was offered a place. It’s not just that these rates are bad—they’re actually getting worse. Stuyvesant admitted 31 black and Hispanic teens last year. Staten Island Technical High School offered a place to nine black students.
New York City isn’t the only city with selective public schools, of course, although the admission requirements vary tremendously, even within school districts. With that in mind, I undertook an unscientific survey of selective schools in a range of other cities, to see if they’re doing any better or worse.
The result? There is no normal. Other schools show discrepancies comparable to those in New York, while some come closer to mirroring the demographics of their school districts. But overall, many selective schools we looked at have demographics that fail to match those of their broader district.
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An assassin who killed an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa in 1993 has won parole, igniting bitter memories of racial unrest during white rule as well as fresh scrutiny of the punishment for crimes committed in that era.
A Pretoria judge ordered that Janusz Walus should be given parole within two weeks. His killing of Chris Hani stirred fears of all-out racial conflict at a time when delicate talks about a democratic transition were under way. Hani was head of the South African Communist party and of the military wing of the African National Congress, which became South Africa’s ruling party.
While Nelson Mandela and other leaders at the time managed to dampen the anger affecting the country, and euphoria ran high after the first all-race elections in 1994, the country still grapples with its troubled legacy. Recently there have been calls for prosecutions of figures from the apartheid-era government, reflecting a belief that the drive for reconciliation let some perpetrators off the hook and failed to improve the lives of many in the black majority.
The news that 60-year-old Walus, who has served 23 years of a life sentence, would be freed on parole this month is likely to add to the anger.
Hani’s wife, Limpho Hani, criticised the white judge who heard an appeal from Walus’s lawyer and overruled the South African justice ministry’s refusal to grant parole.
“She is nothing but a racist,” Hani’s wife said in an interview. “To her, black lives don’t matter. She hardly made mention of my husband’s murder in her judgment.”
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Amber Cove, which opened in October, is the latest of several private ports being built in the Caribbean by cruise operators. The lines like the facilities, because they can market them as exclusive destinations and keep much of the revenue from souvenirs, piña coladas, and paddle board rentals. Carnival expects more than 350,000 guests to disembark this year at Amber Cove, one of its six similar facilities in the Caribbean. Guests can still leave the compounds, either on prearranged excursions—many sold by Carnival—or in taxis that wait just beyond the gates.
Geneva-based MSC Cruises is building what it says will be the largest cruise-line-run island, the $200 million Ocean Cay in the Bahamas, slated to open in December 2017. The company is replanting 80 species of local trees, building a 2,000-seat amphitheater for outdoor shows, and constructing a wedding pavilion. MSC is also creating a land-based version of the exclusive “Yacht Club” section of its ships that will include butlers and a private beach. “We’re taking this to another level,” says spokesman Luca Biondolillo.
Cruise lines have invested in private ports of call since Norwegian Cruise Line purchased Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas in 1977. NCL plans to open its latest, the “eco-friendly” Harvest Caye in Belize, in November as part of $400 million in upgrades to ships and shore facilities.
The walled-off ports aren’t always a respite from the real world. In January, Royal Caribbean Cruises suspended a stop of its Freedom of the Seas in Labadee, its private port in Haiti, after locals protesting the presidential election surrounded the ship in small boats. And not every cruiser welcomes the trend. “I felt cooped up in a very contrived and carefully constructed piece of land,” says Abigail Jones, a blogger who visited Amber Cove last year. “I felt as though I wasn’t in the Dominican Republic, because everything was completely Americanized.”
Carnival is facing opposition from some residents of the Bahamas over its plan to build a private stop that could supplant tourist traffic from nearby Freeport. While Carnival and other lines say they hire locals and buy regional goods, the company-run facilities can steal business from nearby merchants and restaurateurs, says Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a geography professor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., who studies the industry. “The cruise lines have been very good at capturing that revenue for themselves, and less goes to the local economy,” he says.
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Kathreen Khavari, who wrote and stars in the sketch, told Colorlines that she created it out of frustration with society's "double standard when it comes to race." Color Lines: Roles Reverse When Club Bouncers of Color Profile White Man in New Comedy Sketch.
We see proof every day that people of color—really, people of any marginalized group—are held to a double standard, perceived as individually culpable when another in their group does something awful. Iranian-American actress Kathreen Khavari told us as much in a statement for "Racial Profiling," a new satirical video she stars in and scripted. She described her motivation for the sketch, which depicts a White male clubgoer being harassed as a suspected mass shooter, as follows:
I filmed this sketch at the YouTube space in Los Angeles last fall, with some friends and actors that I brought together after the idea came to me out of the frustration I felt towards our society's/media's double standard when it comes to race (and gender, but that's a different story). Excuses are always made for Caucasians who commit atrocities, but people of color who do the same are immediately painted with a very broad and prejudiced brush. We live in an extremely tense international climate, and people who are quick to place blame on the "other" should really take the time to reflect on their own hypocrisy.
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Let's start at the beginning.
Kathryn Finney started The Budget Fashionista, a blog all about being fabulous on a dime, in 2003. By 2004, Finney's site became one of the first major fashion blogs on the web and she was able to blog full time and her accolades as a "Master Of Cheap Chic" grew so large, she was able to sell it and put her focus on getting more women of color in tech.
In 2012, she founded digitalundivided (DID), a social enterprise which finds, trains, and supports innovative women of color, who are leaders and entrepreneurs within tech. DID also develops programs, projects and forward thinking initiatives that bridge the digital divide. Their mantra is go big or go home, and that's exactly what Finney is doing, going big!
DID succeeds in finding black and Latina women tech founders with high growth companies and game changing ideas, connecting them to an unmatched network of investors, mentors and influencers, developing their startup toolkit and leadership skills and supporting their entrepreneurship journey from the build phase to exit.
In short, DID wants to even the playing field for women of color in startups and tech and their announcement at SXSW is certainly proof that they have. DID is launching an innovation center in Atlanta, Georgia called BIG Innovation Center.
This 6000-square-foot space will be the first innovation center for black and Latina women. It's home to the BIG accelerator program, a 16-week accelerator program for high growth companies led by women of color, which will receive funding from the newly launched Harriet Fund. Led by investment guru, Gayle Jennings O'Byrne and Finney, the Harriet Fund and the Harriet Angels Syndicate is the first venture fund focus on investing in exceptional black and Latina women founders.
"This has never been done for black women before," Finney told us exclusively. "First we quantified the problem with our #ProjectDiane research study and now we're solving it via BIG Innovation Center!"
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The true beginning of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" is the protagonist recalling the humiliation he endured in the awarding of his, "scholarship." An eloquent public speaker, after his eloquent speech, the protagonist was then led to a smoke filled room for a little blind folded Battle Royal boxing before being forced to scramble across an electrified rug and grasp for fake gold coins.
I sometimes stumble upon those cage fight matches on those certain sports channels while scrolling through the cable media guide. I'm often reminded of the Battle Royal scene in "Invisible Man," but I'm also reminded of Ancient Rome and blood lust and pawns on a blood stained 3 acre chessboard. I'm reminded of Jack Johnson and Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali on a hot Philadelphia night.
And I am reminded of a concrete hardened city encased within a lace work of crumbling concrete interchanges and overpasses and a people blind folded in a Great Battle Royal on a blood stained chessboard that is a 3 acre electrified rug and fake gold coins for heart attacks and diabetes while the Climate heats up and the seas evaporate in a steamy cloud of vaporized salt and sand melted to colored glass.
Urban Warming
Stoned by no Rosetta, merchants allowed through the fence learn to misspeak “black speak,”
in Edgar’s harbor village, at HipHop Fish & Chicken on Route number 4 × 10.
“Baby Girl” becomes XX. “My Man” assumes all XY.
For salt & pepper curls, & baby stroller crowds, their broadcast is the same:
“Baby Girl, your diabetes is ready.” “Main Man, your stroke order is up.”
They know their audience: french fried lives, french fried luck, french fried us.
They know corner markets of cornered markets, seldom scale the wall. Their shit
is always hot. Their shit is always cheap. Their shit is
always landmark of poison in pens, along with: windows wearing boards, hubcaps
leaning curbs, the sound of “bitch,” the sound of “mother- fucker,” the sound of “niggah”
sounding off, projectile vomiting from children’s lips — our hush puppy young, made beasts
behind these bars. Some days you will see them, dirt bike knights, riding Edmondson
Avenue, armor-less. They are wheelies, jousting against traffic, wheelies, jousting against stop-
lights, gas tanks bleeding out on stretchers, as sirens serenade, metal flies hover. There are
skeletons of chickens scattered on the ground. There are meeting bones of children fractured in the street,
cordoned off.
This is urban warming. This is underwear in exhibition, pants saddened to sag, hanging off ass
cracks, like wet clothes on a line. This is the ecology of locks, since our country is locks, since our
color is locks, since this block is locked. When your order is up, you will eat anything tossed inside
the cage.
-- Truth Thomas "Urban Warming"
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