Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
An Open Letter to Howard Dean.
Dear Dr. Dean - I worked in the World Trade Center.
You sir, have decided to side with the racist, bigoted, xenophobic, anti-Islamist rabble who have made a mockery of the WTC rubble, and what will take place in the area of NYC which once was the home of the towers.
Above is a photo of me in a headwrap - which I wore to work almost daily.
The gele is an African traditional headcovering, which does not make me Muslim, but I am often perceived to be of that faith. I remember making friends with a street vendor, who parked his refreshment stand outside of 2 WTC, where the offices of my former employer, NDRI had the entire 16th floor. He was from Pakistan, and as I would greet him, buy my chili dog and munch, he would smile and chat. He thought I was Muslim, and admired my headwrap. I told him my husband's name - Nadhiyr, and he said it was a good Muslim name.
Some of my co-workers were Muslim. Many of the people who came to work in the area, rode the subways, drove the cabs, maintained the bustling area were also of the faith. Sadly, they too died on September 11th, along with countless other New Yorkers.
My birth city, New York is home to Muslims of all colors and ethnicities.
I know West African Muslims, East African Muslims, Puerto Rican Muslims, Chinese Muslims. Arab Muslims and African-American Muslims.
Columbia University's School of Middle Eastern Studies is the home of the Muslims in New York City Project who 10 years ago took on the task of documenting New Yorks diverse Islamic population.
They published this data:
Before 1970 there were fewer than ten mosques in New York City—now there are well over a hundred, indicating the rapid growth of New York City's Muslim population. This was one of the findings released April 30 by researchers from the Muslim Communities in New York City Project, which held a day-long conference at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) to present their results. The Muslim Communities in New York City Project is the most extensive research ever undertaken on New York's Muslim communities. Funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation, researchers spent three years canvassing all five boroughs, mapping the areas where Islamic communities are centered and conducting focus-group research with the community members.
The group presented the results of the mapping research. One of the larger concentrations of Muslims is in the Bay Ridge neighborhood in Brooklyn, with other major centers in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The group found 28 mosques in Queens, 27 in Brooklyn, 20 in the Bronx, 17 in Manhattan and eight in Staten Island; however, all participants said they thought they had underestimated the number of mosques, because worshippers often set up small mosques in their apartments that are not visible from the street. The mapping was undertaken between 1998 and 1999, when a research team of graduate students canvassed nearly every neighborhood in the city's five boroughs to record the location of mosques, Muslim-owned stores, professional offices, and service and cultural centers. They then built a database and generated maps to assess Muslims' visibility in the city. These detailed maps were shown for the first time on April 30.
Because there is no census data on religion (the government is prohibited from collecting information on people's religious affiliations), there is no official count on how many Muslims are in New York City, but the researchers estimate that there are about 600,000 Muslims throughout the five boroughs.
Clearly, those numbers have grown since then.
But I don't really want to talk about numbers.
Dr. Dean, you had a lot of fans in the progressive movement. I say "had" cause you now have one less. I read your remarks carefully, and ones that you have made subsequently.
You Sir are a bigot, and a hypocrite.
These are your words:
This is about ending the poisonous atmosphere engendered by fear and hate, and in order to do that there has to be genuine listening, hearing and willingness to compromise on both sides I personally believe that there are other possible solutions that could result from such a process and that a genuine exploration of those possibilities is something we ought to try.
Bullshit. You are contributing to the vile and poisonous atmosphere that is worse than the original tragedy that befell us.
Hate and hate mongers can never be given a pass. And you sir have just bought a ticket on the Hate Train, joining the ranks of those who target difference instead of embracing diversity.
Progressives don't support racism - in any form.
Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama for their stance.
So I'm wrapping my head this morning,like many of my sisters, and heading off to teach school. If someone asks me if I'm Muslim, I may just answer yes.
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News by dopper0189
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Why Obama keeps religion quiet. President Obama has made a choice to keep public expressions of his religious faith to a minimum. Washington Post: Obama keeping public expressions of religion to a minimum
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As he flew aboard Air Force One to Chicago on his 49th birthday earlier this month, President Obama dialed three Christian pastors to pray with him.
On an airborne conference call, he kidded with the religious leaders about being abandoned by his wife and daughters, who were away on vacation and at camp. As he celebrated his birthday, he was in a reflective mood. He told them he wanted to pray about the year that had passed, what's really important in life and the challenges ahead.
"That was simply something that he wanted to do at his initiative because it was important to him," said Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor who was on the call and who is part of a small circle of spiritual advisers who frequently talk to Obama by phone.
The prayer session, which was not publicized and which neither the White House nor the ministers sought to bring to light, reflects Obama's decision to keep his public expressions of religious faith to a minimum. Hunter said the president often reaches out to pastors for private spiritual conversation.
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The historian and author of an important meditation on the hip-hop aesthetic talks to The Root about the meaning of President Obama's 2008 election, the problems of black leadership and black self-definition. The Root: William Jelani Cobb on Obama and Black Leadership
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Dr. William Jelani Cobb, one of the country's most visible African-American intellectuals, is an associate professor and chair of the history department at Spelman College in Atlanta. His meditation on the hip-hop aesthetic, To the Break of Dawn, is one of the most important texts on this cultural phenomenon.
In his latest book, The Substance of Hope, Cobb turns his attention to the 2008 election, the political climate preceding the election and his own involvement as a delegate for the state of Georgia. (He blogged for The Root from the Democratic National Convention in 2008.) His training as a historian comes to bear as he asks, What does this all mean? And where do we go from here?
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A national report says a quarter of middle and high school students say both are present on their campuses. LA Times How Widespread Are Gangs and Drugs in Public Schools?
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More than a quarter of public middle and high school students say both gangs and drugs are present at their campuses, according to a survey released Thursday by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
Those roughly 5.7 million students nationwide are also more likely than their counterparts at private and religious schools to smoke, drink and use drugs, said Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and founder of the center, which has been surveying youth for the last 16 years.
Califano said the survey illustrated "a trajectory of tragedy for millions of children and their parents."
Forty-six percent of teens report gangs at public schools, compared with just 2% of teens at private and religious schools. Forty-seven percent of public school teens said drugs are used, stored or sold at school, compared with 6% of private school students.
The "most disturbing finding," Califano said, is that 1 in 3 middle school students say drugs are used or sold at their school — a 39% increase since last year.
Not everyone reacted with alarm.
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The Root: Welcome to the Underground Pledging Season!
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Ah, it’s time to go back to school, and boy, have you had a great summer as a black Greek! You’ve chilled with your frat or sorors, attended umpteen Divine Nine picnics, and fallen in and out of love with that guy or girl you met on Facebook. But now it’s time to box everything up, kiss Mom and Dad goodbye, and get back to your dorm or apartment.
But what folks don’t know, or like to talk about, is that the beginning of the school year is also the beginning of the most important task on the unofficial black Greek fraternal calendar. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the start of the Underground Pledge Period!
Wait, we’re not supposed to talk about that, right? Whenever I lecture on college campuses, the black Greeks are adamant about maintaining the public stance that hazing has no place in their organization, and that their chapter doesn’t participate in such barbaric activities.
Uh-huh. Yeah, right.
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Are HBCU traditions at odds with freedom of expression? EbonyJet: A Modern Morehouse Man.
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DO CLOTHES REALLY MAKE THE MAN?
They do if the man is a Morehouse Man. That’s the overriding opinion of school administrators, faculty, alumni and students who put the brakes on "feminine gender expression" last school year after a group of students showed up to class reportedly wearing tight jeans, blouses, pumps and purses. The cross-dressing students not only prompted a new dress code of sorts at the historically Black all-male school in Atlanta, but they also ignited a debate over everything from homophobia to masculine decorum to freedom of expression.
AT ISSUE: Exactly what does it mean to be a Morehouse Man in 2010?
The Morehouse legacy in molding Black students into leaders is well known. The school is the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson and Spike Lee, to name a few. It is one of the few colleges in the country where students regularly wear suits to class. The school’s Web site boasts that its mission "is to develop men with disciplined minds who will lead lives of leadership and service. ... Morehouse is an academic community dedicated to teaching, scholarship, and service, and the continuing search for truth as a liberating force. ... The College seeks students who are willing to carry the torch of excellence and who are willing to pay the price of gaining strength and confidence by confronting adversity, mastering their fears, and achieving success by earning it."
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Race Talk: Race, lies, and videotape
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Is "post-racialism" and "racism denial" in America related to the much more widely studied and deadly virus, "genocide denial," only less sever?
Wikipedia states:
"Most Holocaust denial claims imply, or openly state, that the Holocaust is a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples."
Change the words a little and you have a description of the group that is at the forefront of racism denial in America, namely, the Andrew Breitbart wing of the Tea Party movement, about which can be said:
"Most racism denial claims imply, or openly state, that claims of racism are most often hoaxes arising out of a deliberate liberal/black conspiracy to advance the interest of blacks at the expense of white peoples."
Like racism much "racism denial" operates below the surface of society. To see if I could bring some of it to the surface I submitted the letter below on the "Send us your feedback" page of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government web site.
Dear Andy,
Your tricknology was amazing:
■ Use a doctored videotape that falsely portrays this black woman government official, Shirley Sherrod, as guilty of racism against a white farmer facing foreclosure
■ Put the false accusation out in the blogosphere, let Fox News fan the flames, and liberals in the Obama Administration fired her before they investigate the accuracy the videotape
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Gov. David Paterson took a stand for electoral fairness this month when he signed legislation that bans prison-based gerrymandering — the cynical practice of counting prison inmates as "residents," to pad the size of legislative districts. New York Times: An End to Prison Gerrymandering.
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Prison-based gerrymandering mattered little when inmate populations were small. But by the 1990s, when more than a million people nationally were behind bars, lawmakers had perfected the art of inflating the political clout of underpopulated areas by drawing legislative districts around prisons.
More than a dozen New York counties with large prisons already take inmates out of the count when they draw districts for county offices. According to an analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative, a New York-based research group, seven New York State Senate districts could now have trouble meeting federal population requirements, which means that those districts will have to be drawn along different lines.
The new law could lead to a political realignment in places like Rome, the upstate city where inmates at the Mohawk and Oneida correctional facilities make up about half the residents of one City Council district. Currently each resident there has twice the voting power of a resident who lives elsewhere in that city.
Republican politicians who represent upstate prison districts have predictably tried to portray the new law as a power grab by New York City Democrats. But only about half of the nearly 60,000 people held in New York prisons come from the city while nearly 40 percent of inmates are from upstate areas. They will now be rightfully counted in the places they come from — and to which they will eventually return. By upholding the principle of one person, one vote, the new law will benefit citizens in all parts of the state.
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Know your enemies! The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. The New Yorker: Covert Operations
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On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.
The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.
One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.
With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a "kingpin of climate science denial." The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
We are not born American, anymore than we are born Christian, Muslim or Jew. We are not born a Hindu or a Jain, a Sikh or an Atheist. We are not born French, Ugandan, Chinese or Uzbek. We may become those things in time, but at birth, we are from Dust. When we die, we become Dust. Can anyone really, with the naked eye, divide one particle of Dust from another? Can our differences be so great that those differences are easily made out in a maelstrom of particles dusted across the Universe? What does it mean then, to be American? To be French or Ugandan? To be Chinese or Uzbek? What does it mean to be a Christian, a Muslim or a Jew? A Hindu or a Jain? A Sikh or an Atheist? Human ego, small-minded bigotry or national identity might demand that we are special; the few among the many. But as it was in the Beginning, so it shall be in the End; we are nothing more than...
Common Dust
And who shall separate the dust
What later we shall be:
Whose keen discerning eye will scan
And solve the mystery?
The high, the low, the rich, the poor,
The black, the white, the red,
And all the chromatique between,
Of whom shall it be said:
Here lies the dust of Africa;
Here are the sons of Rome;
Here lies the one unlabelled,
The world at large his home!
Can one then separate the dust?
Will mankind lie apart,
When life has settled back again
The same as from the start?
-- Georgia Douglas Johnson
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A note from Deoliver47:
The front porch is now open.
Please watch this video if you haven't already seen it.
I may be late to the porch today, because my class gets out late, but keep my chair warm.
Dee