Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
The NAACP Does the Right (Left) Thing
Last Friday, the NAACP gave Van Jones its highest award, "The President's Award", and Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and Chief Executive Officer, explained it in advance, calling Jones "An American Treasure".
Jealous, explained the award in a press release and on the NAACP blog.
"Van Jones is an American treasure.
He is quite simply one of the few Americans in recent years to have generated powerful new ideas that are creating more jobs here.
He wrote the national bestseller, "The Green Collar Economy," which provided the definitive blueprint for retooling American industry to create pathways out of poverty and generate a national economic recovery. He was a driving force behind passage of the 2007 Green Jobs Act. In fact, Van’s ideas have helped lead to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs across the industrial Midwest and throughout the nation’s decaying urban and rural areas.
Van Jones also may be the most misunderstood man in America.
He went on to discuss the lie behind the smears and caricature of Jones in the media:
Far from the divisive caricature painted by some cable news outlets, Van has been one of America’s most effective and inspiring bridge-builders. He has successfully brought together labor leaders, business executives, civil rights champions, students and environmentalists to find creative solutions to the ecological and economic crises. His efforts earned him designation as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2004.
...
Through Green for All, and others organizations, Van Jones continues to work for an American economy that can thrive again — a nation whose prosperity reaches beyond Wall Street to Main Street and back streets. A country where jobs in installation, manufacturing and construction flourish again — to upgrade our homes to conserve energy, create solar panels, build electric cars, and manufacture wind turbines and smart batteries. Furthermore, Van is working to make sure that our country does not lose out to India, China or Germany in the green industrial race. His vision gives us a fighting chance to reclaim something we lost years ago, back when steel was king. In those days, blue-collar workers could support their families with their wages, and our nation was not the world’s leading debtor. Van’s vision, in short, is a vision for America restored to its place as the definitive world economic leader.
The racism behind the attacks against Jones, and the use of those attacks to target President Obama can be summed up by this editorial cartoon:
Jone's accepted the award gracefully, ending it with a humorous "shout-out" to Glen Beck whose vitriolic spewing against him was unparalleled.
First of all giving honor to God and also to my mother Loretta Jean Kirkendall Jones--let me get it right. Get that right, straight! I want to thank my beautiful wife and our two boys Matai and Cabral. I want to thank the staff and supporters of Green for All, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change, incredible freedom fighting organizations.
I also want to give a shout out and a salute to President Barack Obama. President Barack Obama who is a world class leader, a man who volunteered to be the captain of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, and we're still floating, and we're still floating. Let's stay with this president!
...
I have had 1,000 defeats in this past year, but I had one victory, and it's the most important victory to me: I don't hate anybody. I'm not mad at anybody, and I still believe in the politics of hope. I still believe! You can't take that from me. You can't take it from me.
And I know one thing, we have people in every community in America right now watching this program who don't have jobs, who are suffering, who are afraid, living in economic uncertainty, and I know there's a future out there for them where they get a chance to make the products of tomorrow. If we want the jobs of tomorrow, we have to make the products of tomorrow. There's somebody right now who's in Detroit, and they know how to make cars. They're a skilled machinist, but they're idle. Let them make the wind turbines and the smart batteries and the solar panels to repower this country. Let them work! Give them hope! Give them the opportunity!
There's somebody right now who's living in Appalachia, who's living in rural America, who's afraid she's going to lose her land because she doesn't have enough sources of income. Let her put those wind turbines up. Let her grow an energy crop. Give her the opportunity to hold on to her land and be a part of this energy revolution. Let's get everybody involved in repowering America in a clean way.
And for a country that beautiful, that prosperous, that innovative, that united, I am willing to walk through fire and brimstone and fire and brimstone until we get the job done.
The last thing I want to say is this. To my fellow countryman, Mr. Glenn Beck, I see you and I love you, brother. I love you and you cannot do anything about it. I love you and you cannot do anything about it. Let's be one country! Let's be one country. Let's get the job done.
According to Politico Glen Beck, in true spew form, responded to Jone's NAACP remarks, once again foaming at the mouth with the "C" word and questioning the POTUS as part of his package:
On his radio show Monday, Beck reciprocated Jones’ affection – kind of – before launching into a blistering attack on Jones and, by extension, Obama, alleging both concealed Jones’ alleged ideologies as part of a devious plan carried out "in the cover of darkness."...
"I do want to talk about one country," Beck said. "The question is which country do we want? The country that you're looking for is very different than the country I understand. It's a country that is very different than the country that most people understand. You, sir, are a self-avowed communist. You are somebody that wants to fundamentally transform America, and you're doing it through the guise of green jobs."
Highlighting Jones’ assertion that his past associations were fully vetted by the White House, Beck demanded of Obama "What is your radical end, Mr. President? We know now what Van Jones' radical end is. What is yours?"
Jones was interviewed by Karen Finney of The Griot, and he spoke of the significance of the award for him:
KF: What does the NAACP Award mean to you?
VJ: I'm most proud of this one. This is the oldest and most respected civil rights organization in the world, not just in the United States. Ella Baker, who is my hero, whom I named my civil rights foundation after, was an NAACP secretary. The NAACP played a critical role in desegregating the county I grew up in. My father in some ways was able to become an award-winning junior high school principal, in part because of the desegregation lawsuits that were brought by the NAACP in my home county.
He talked about his vision for the future, and how he sees communities of color, in their relationship to the Green Movement:
VJ: Our community starts the conversation in a different place. We tend to use words more like "positive", "natural", "healthy" -- those tend to be our code words rather than "green", but we're talking a very similar value set, a very similar set of products and services. From a cultural point of view, from an economic point of view, these ideas already have a much stronger foothold than most people know.
For instance, positive rap, positive hip hop, is increasingly taking on environmental themes. Will.I.Am and the Black Eyed Peas - they're on tour right now, one of the groups they're sponsoring as part of the concert is Green For All. You have Reverend Yearwood doing a clean energy bus tour with Al Gore's organization (RePower America) so there's something that's happening.
This is civil rights, the right to a healthy community, the right to have your kid be able to play without an inhaler in their back pocket. That is civil rights on a crowded, increasingly polluted planet.
Jones is currently, as of Feb 24th working again for The Center for American Progress, who announced it last week:
Today the Center for American Progress announced that Van Jones is rejoining the center as a Senior Fellow and leader of the Green Opportunity Initiative, a new CAP project.
"We are thrilled that Van Jones is joining us to spearhead a 'green opportunity' agenda to develop the policies and strategies that will ensure the clean-energy future brings not just climate stability and energy security, but also broadly shared economic prosperity," said Kate Gordon, Vice President for Energy Policy at CAP.
So congratulations to brother Van Jones, the NAACP and CAP from all of us here at Black Kos.
In my book "C" stands for The Color of Change.
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News by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Editor and Managing Editor
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New York Times: President Returns to Nigeria, but Not to Work.
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While President Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria returned home on Wednesday after three months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, a spokesman indicated that he would not immediately seek to reclaim the powers that Parliament transferred to his deputy two weeks ago.
Mr. Yar’Adua’s return in the early hours of Wednesday morning had raised concerns among diplomats in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, that a power struggle might unfold. Vice President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in two weeks ago as acting president.
In a statement quoted by news agencies, Olusegun Adeniyi, the presidential spokesman, said, "President Yar’Adua wishes to reassure all Nigerians that on account of their unceasing prayers and by the special grace of God, his health has greatly improved.
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New York Times: Questions Surface After Haitian Airlift.
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It was widely billed as the first uplifting story in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital: two young American women rescued 54 Haitian orphans in an airlift organized by Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and supported by top Obama administration officials.
More than a month later, Governor Rendell is enjoying a reprieve from months of negative budget news coverage, the local church that sponsors the American women’s work with orphans is reportedly receiving record donations and 42 of the orphans are in the care of American families who had applied to adopt them.
But for 12 of the children, last month’s airlift transported them from one uncertain predicament to another. As it turns out, those children — between 11 months and 10 years old — were not in the process of being adopted, might not all even be orphans and are living in a juvenile care center here while the authorities determine whether they have relatives in Haiti who are able to take care of them.
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Race Talk: Africa’s urban transformation: Signs of opportunity and hope.
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The people of Africa living south of the Sahara dessert desert (in the region commonly designated Sub-Saharan Africa [SSA], also a casual synonym for Black Africa) are in the midst of an urbanization revolution. People are moving into cities on the continent faster than anywhere else on earth. And within a couple decades all SSA countries will have more population living in cities than in rural areas, according to the 2006 UN Human Development Report.
The problem is that much of this urban growth has not resulted from an economic boom. Rather, what we have witnessed in the region over the last several decades is urbanization in the face of limited development. Faced with choices that spawn from a litany of problems beyond their immediate control or scale (weak agricultural sectors and economic performance, lack of intermediate cities and towns, growth of large cities with poor economic bases and municipal revenue capacity, increased global competition, less domestic protection, state privatization, decreased public spending, and more), people are searching for opportunity in large cities.
With cities unable to handle the population influx, urban migrants from smaller towns and rural areas wind up in extremely deprived, low income areas that are bereft of quality housing and adequate services such as safe water and sanitation, or adequate networked infrastructure such as electricity and transportation, among other challenges.
While the growth of cities and megacities (urban areas with over 10 million inhabitants such as Mumbai, Mexico City, Manila, Sao Paulo and Shanghai) and the so-called slums of urban poverty continue apace, the world is in reality trending towards convergence. Many of the countries classified by international bodies such as the UN and World Bank as less developed by income are nevertheless meeting the Millennium Development Goals, reducing child mortality, and raising the average standard of living for billions of people. Still, the reality is that this rapid urbanization in the face of limited development has particular challenges for African countries visible in the rapid urbanization of poverty and increasing inequality in cities.
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NPR: Manno Charlemagne: The Bob Marley Of Haiti
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Haitian musician Manno Charlemagne has been imprisoned, singled out on hit lists and forced into exile. They used to say he was like a ghost; that you only saw Charlemagne if he wanted to be seen. But now, two nights a week in a Haitian restaurant on Miami's South Beach, finding Charlemagne is not a problem.
Even though Florida hosts the largest Haitian-American population in the country, and Tap Tap boasts some of the best Haitian cuisine in South Florida, most of the customers at the South Beach restaurant aren't Haitian. General manager Gary Sanon-Jules says mostly it's locals, tourists and some regulars.
"And they do enjoy the music, but they just don't know this man's history," he says. "I had a friend of mine who came in one time and listened to Manno, and she thought that he was just singing about the most romantic thing."
Every Thursday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m., you can find Charlemagne here — hunched over a nylon-string guitar, crooning in Creole into a dented microphone.
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No need to understand Joe Stack. He was a killer. The Root: The Austin Plane Crash: White Man’s Anger, Black Man’s Death
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So let me see if I have this straight. Joseph Stack, an engineer and anti-tax activist gets good and mad, burns his house to the ground, jumps into his private plane, flies it into The Echelon building housing federal offices in Austin, killing Vernon Hunter, a 67-year-old IRS worker and injuring 13 more. This act of terrorism has some circles making Stack an ordinary guy who was fed up and pushed back like a patriot.
If his name wasn’t Joe Stack, but "Mohammad el-Akbar," would he still be considered an angry, white man instead of a bloodthirsty terrorist waging jihad against the infidels? We should know by now how differently the narrative of this story would play out.
The curious thing about this particular episode of extremist rage is why so many people want to sift not through the wreckage of the building, but through Stack’s manifesto/suicide note as if the mysteries of the Dead Sea scrolls and the Shroud of Turin are to be found by parsing every line.
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New America Media: For Ethnic Communities, a Year of Stimulus Not Enough.
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It’s been a year since President Barack Obama signed the $787 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus package. The largest public investment in America’s infrastructure since the Great Depression, Obama called it "the most sweeping economic recovery bill in our history."
But a year later, many Americans are still hurting. And while the Labor Department reports the unemployment rate for whites has begun to fall (to 8.4 percent in January), it continues to rise for ethnic minorities. For African Americans, it is 16.5 percent and for Latinos unemployment is 12.6 percent.
And the reasons for these disparities lie at least in part in the unfair and unjust way the stimulus package has been implemented.
A series of investigations coordinated by New America Media show that over the last year those dollars have systematically bypassed communities of color.
Consider the following: In the last year, 98 percent of stimulus contracts from the U.S Department of Transportation have gone to white-owned firms. Meantime, a new government-backed small business loan program created by the stimulus benefited white-owned businesses 91 percent of the time. These disparities run across almost every government agency that received money under the Recovery Act. Of the 630 grants given to arts organizations by the National Endowment for the Arts, for example, only 12 (less than 2 percent) went to Latino organizations .
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Smithsonian: The Kentucky Derby’s Forgotten Jockeys.
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When tens of thousands of fans assemble in Louisville, Kentucky, May 2 for the 135th Kentucky Derby, they will witness a phenomenon somewhat unusual for today’s American sporting events: of some 20 riders, none are African American. Yet in the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, 13 out of 15 jockeys were black. Among the first 28 derby winners, 15 were black. African American jockeys excelled in the sport in the late 1800s. But by 1921, they had disappeared from the Kentucky track and would not return until Marlon St. Julien rode in the 2000 race.
African American jockeys’ dominance in the world of racing is a history nearly forgotten today. Their participation dates back to colonial times, when the British brought their love of horseracing to the New World. Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson frequented the track, and when President Andrew Jackson moved into the White House in 1829, he brought along his best Thoroughbreds and his black jockeys. Because racing was tremendously popular in the South, it is not surprising that the first black jockeys were slaves. They cleaned the stables and handled the grooming and training of some of the country’s most valuable horseflesh. From such responsibility, slaves developed the abilities needed to calm and connect with Thoroughbreds, skills demanded of successful jockeys.
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Using government documents, author Angela Walton-Raji traced her ancestors to the slaves owned by American Indians Smithsonian An Ancestry of African-Native Americans.
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Angela Walton-Raji has been researching African-Native American genealogy for nearly 20 years and is the author of the book Black Indian Genealogy Research: African-American Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes. She recently presented a series of genealogy workshops at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the exhibit IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas. Walton-Raji’s ancestors are Freedmen, African-Americans who were slaves of the Five Civilized Tribes – the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Nations – in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma in 1907. The Cherokee freed their slaves in 1863, and after the Civil War, the other tribes did the same. All but the Chickasaw eventually granted Freedmen full citizenship in their tribe. In preparation for Oklahoma statehood, the U.S. Congress created the Dawes Commission, which was charged with dissolving collective tribal land ownership and allotting land to individual tribal members. Thousands of Freedmen came before the commission to prove their tribal membership and their right to a share of land. I spoke with Walton-Raji about her research.
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New America Media: Ethnic Seniors Grapple with Depression--Alone
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Editor’s Note: Serious depression is a growing problem for multicultural seniors. But unlike older whites, ethnic people 50-plus are blocked from treatment by poverty, limited or no insurance, lack of programs geared for them—and the stigma of mental problems that permeates many cultures. New America media senior editor Paul Kleyman begins his occasional series on mental challenges for ethnic seniors with this article on treatable depression. He wrote this story while participating in the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Managing her diabetes day-to-day is a constant struggle for Maria Carr. Like so many black elders, the 68-year-old San Franciscan must wrestle so much with the debilitating effects of chronic illness—the neuropathy that weakens her ability to walk or the continual pin pricks to test for blood sugar levels—that it gets her down.
It’s in those low hours that Carr’s thoughts often drift back to her "rotten childhood" on a farm in her native Jamaica and the constant verbal abuse she endured from her stepfather.
"People think about their past history," said Carr. "I’m prepared for the worst. I’m not in the best health, but my mind is still okay. When I get depressed, though, it’s very difficult. Sometimes I wish I could die."
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Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Contributor
I was saddened to hear of the death of the great poet, Lucille Clifton in last week's Tuesday's Chile. I have featured her work in this series earlier; but two poems that exemplify Clifton's Poetics are found in the following.
The first is her childhood memory of bigotry and how a mother's joy
conquers all. The second is what set Clifton on her own path to
poetry; her mother had written poems secretly and was offered a
collection of such to be published. Clifton's abusive father forbid
it. She chronicles her mother's reaction and her own resolve to honor
her.
memory
ask me to tell how it feels
remembering your mother's face
turned to water under the white words
of the man at the shoe store. ask me,
though she tells it better than i do,
not because of her charm
but because it never happened
she says,
no bully salesman swaggering,
no rage, no shame, none of it
ever happened.
i only remember buying you
your first grown up shoes
she smiles. ask me
how it feels.
fury
(for mama)
remember this.
she is standing by
the furnace.
the coals
glisten like rubies.
her hand is crying.
her hand is clutching
a sheaf of papers.
poems.
she gives them up.
they burn
jewels into jewels.
her eyes are animals.
each shank of her hair
is a serpent's obedient
wife.
she will never recover.
remember. there is nothing
you will not bear
for this woman's sake.
-- Lucille Clifton
-- "A Poet is at the same time a force for Solidarity and for Solitude." -- Pablo Neruda
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The Front Porch is now open. Come on up and "set a spell" with us, for conversation, and community. If you are new, introduce yourself and "welcome".
Some music for the porch today celebrates the birthday this week of Miriam Makeba, born on March 4th, 1932. She joined the ancestors on November 10, 2008. In memory of "Mama Africa".