Archive (100)
Maternal Depression: Helping Mothers, Helping Children 
Marian Wright Edleman
Ellie Zuehlke and her husband had expected the birth of their long-awaited first child to be one of the happiest moments of their lives—until, somehow, it wasn’t. Instead, Ellie experienced severe postpartum depression that left her unable to care for their newborn son. To thousands of mothers, Ellie Zuehlke's story will sound sadly familiar. Ellie, a health care industry professional, was ultimately lucky. Though some mothers lose health care coverage shortly after giving birth, Ellie had health insurance and access to a qualified mental health provider and was able to get help quickly. As she explains, “Because I received prompt, appropriate treatment after the birth of my first son, we were able to greatly reduce the negative impact of my depression on my son. In addition, I was able to get the care I needed to prevent depression after the birth of my second child.”
Kenya: Attention African American Entrepreneurs 
Harry C. Alford
This week has probably been the most productive week of my career. We are just in awe of what we have learned about here in Kenya. This nation is facing the future with progressive thought and a desire for greatness amongst its people. Kenya Vision 2030 is an economic development program that will jettison the people of Kenya into a middle class nation. During the next 20 years they plan to modernize the nation and create an environment that is friendly to education, high technology, environmental responsibility, high employment and productivity.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.National African American Leadership Summit: Operational Unit
During the last 50 years, there has been a constant internal debate in Black America. The debate has been in the format of various African American leadership dialogues about the goal, objectives, national agenda, strategies, organizations, mobilizations, litigation, court rulings, legislation and mass movements for change all focused on advancing the interests of Black people toward freedom, justice, equality and empowerment. But inevitably the question of Black unity, in particular the issue of Black leadership unity, has always emerged in all of those analytical forums
It is unusual for us to use this space to direct our readers to another publication. However, Sunday's Washington Post editorial "When the rich get richer" A-20, deserves a read. The article discusses the increasing income gap between the rich and the poor, which even for the African- American middle class, the gap is wide. Many middle income African Americans find themselves only one paycheck away from being broke, homeless or poor. But the article points out that among the nation's rich, who represent 0.1 percent of earners, their income rose from 2.5 percent in 1975 to 10.4 percent in 2008. The article points to a report that shows where the average corporate executive's annual income has nearly quadrupled since the early 1970s while most earners income only "crept up" 26 percent. And lastly, the editorial confirms that this news is not new, but asks, "What to do about it."
I enjoyed reading the story, “Prince George’s Entrepreneur Set to Teach Financial Literacy to Youngsters,” published in the Washington Informer on Nov. 18. That’s a class that not only children can benefit from, but adults as well.
Good money management skills are acquired at a young age and without them – most will remain behind the curve. The fact that many African Americans did not learn the importance of saving has certainly put us in a precarious situation – especially during this economic downturn.
Marian Wright Edelman "Giving Black Boys a Strong Start"
When Shawn Dove was in sixth grade, the students at his New York City school were asked to decide which academic track they wanted to follow for the next two years. He decided to choose "major gym," just like the rest of his friends. But when he brought the form home to his single mother and said "Hey, Mom—can you sign this for me?," his mother said, "No—you're not going to major in gym! There's no future in gym. You're taking science and math." Shawn spent the next two years mad at his mother every day as he could hear the noise and laughter coming from the gym while he went 30 yards down the hall for math and science classes. But then when Shawn finished eighth grade, he understood. He and the other young people who had majored in science and math had the chance to move on to good high schools like Bronx Science, but Shawn realized those who had taken mostly gym weren't moving on to much of anything.
SYNOPSIS: Obama has been the best friend that gays have ever had in the White House, but his position on gay marriage is still evolving.
President Obama thundered to the throngs at the recent LGBT Leadership Council fundraising bash in New York. "I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every couple in the country," he said. This was not hyperbole that he had to shout to one of the country's most prominent, and influential gay rights groups to get gay activists off his back about his opposition to gay marriage.
Despite the withering heat he has taken for that opposition, Obama has been the best friend that gays have ever had in the White House.
He backed gay rights in speeches and legislation more than a dozen times as an Illinois state legislator and U.S. Senator. The record number of gay appointments, and the speed with which he's made them, were just the extension of his personal and political conviction that discrimination against gays is every bit the civil rights issue that discrimination against women and minorities is. He issued executive orders mandating that hospitals treat gay and lesbian couples the same as heterosexual ones, and at the same time expanded rights for gay couples who work in the federal government. He vigorously opposed Proposition 8, the California initiative that would have effectively banned gay marriage. He reversed his position on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and calls it abhorrent.
But he won't take the final step and flatly say 'I support gay marriage and will back every effort in every state to pass a gay marriage law'. This refusal mystifies, rankles and angers gay rights organizations and is the single biggest stumbling block to them giving Obama their full-throated, all-out backing.
Obama may in time back gay marriage -- he's said his position is "evolving" -- but it's not going to happen just yet.
This would require Obama to reverse not his political thinking, but his fundamental and personal beliefs. He made that perfectly clear in a blog talk last October when he flatly said he wouldn't sign on to same sex marriage because of his "understandings" of what traditional marriage should be. That's the decades old unambiguous and universally consecrated notion that marriage is and should only be between a man and a woman. It's not just an antiquated, bigoted, and rapidly discredited understanding that Obama refers to, and that he's still stuck on.
Obama is no different than many other fiercely liberal, tolerant and broad-minded African-American when it comes to diversity issues. But he, like many others, still can draw the line on gay marriage and that's fueled by deeply ingrained notions of family, church, and community, and the need to defend the terribly frayed and fragmented black family structure. This mix of fear, belief, and traditional family protectionism has long been a staple among many blacks and virtually every time the issue of legalizing gay marriage has been put to the ballot, or initiative, or a legal challenge, or just simply the topic of public debate, there has been no shortage of black ministers and public figures willing to rush to the defense of traditional marriage.
The warning signs that many blacks were susceptible to religious and conservative pitches to oppose gay marriage lit up in 1997. Then the late Green Bay Packers perennial all-pro defensive end Reggie White, an ordained fundamentalist minister stirred a firestorm when he took a huge swipe at gay rights and gay marriage in a speech to the Wisconsin state legislature. White became the first celebrity black evangelical to say publicly what many black religious leaders said and believed privately about gay issues. Few blacks joined in the loud chorus that condemned his remarks.
A year before White's outburst, a Pew Poll measured black attitudes toward gay marriage and found that blacks opposed it by an overwhelming margin. A CNN poll eight years later showed that anti-gay attitudes among blacks had softened at least publicly among many blacks. But the line continued to be just as firmly drawn on same sex marriage.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in polls in 2009 and 2010 found that blacks opposed same sex marriage by gaping margins over whites or Hispanics. The finding was even more striking in that Pew also found that for the first time in the decade and half that it had been polling Americans on attitudes toward gay rights, and that includes gay marriage, less than half of Americans opposed same sex marriage.
It's wrong-headed and wildly inaccurate to think that President Obama opposes same sex marriage out of narrow religious belief, conservative family upbringing, or a racial herd mentality that is unyielding on the traditional defense of family values. But it's just as wrongheaded to say that none of these things have and do weigh in the president's unwillingness to take the final step and say yes to gay marriage.
Time will tell when he will finally change, but that time hasn't come yet and there are reasons why.
"The Pledge"Mary Wright Edelman
Over this long holiday weekend, children will be gathering in towns and cities around the country ooh-ing and aah-ing over fireworks, marching in parades, proud of their heritage and proudly waving the American flag. Most of them still believe in the promise of America—a promise reflected in so many of the values and ideals that underlie the founding documents of our nation and the Pledge of Allegiance so many of us learned as children and repeated each morning in school. But today the promise of America's Pledge of Allegiance is in jeopardy for millions of our nation's children, and right now many of our elected officials are letting another pledge take precedence. Americans for Tax Reform, the organization headed by Grover Norquist, created the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" 25 years ago and now "asks every candidate for elected office on the state and federal level to make a written commitment to their constituents to 'oppose and voteagainst tax increases.'"
Mayor Vincent C. Gray
When I view the future of our city, I see sustainable jobs and smart economic growth with economic goals reflecting where we want to be in the next 5, 10, 20, and 30 years. I see a workforce-development system that has at it roots training and educational opportunities that prepare our residents with skills matching industry demands. I see strong career - technical education programs in our public schools and a public higher-education program that prepares residents to meet the demands of growth industries such as technology, hospitality and health care.
I see magnificent new office and residential buildings emerging in neighborhoods in every ward of our city. I see revitalized communities in everywhere and affordable housing so that our teachers, firefighters, police and other middle-class public servants can live in the communities where they work.
And I see the Anacostia as a grand waterway running through the heart of it all connecting the city - like the Seine in Paris or the Thames in London - rather than dividing it.
Askia MuhammadAn anthem to stand for
Mississippi is the place of my birth.
I spell: “M-I-Crooked-letter, Crooked-letter-I-Crooked-letter, Crooked-letter-I-Humpback, Humpback-I” Mississippi.
I have written poems, articles, radio commentaries, and even produced three radio documentaries about my home.
The Magnolia State was a dreaded destination during the Antebellum Era. Most famously like Uncle Tom, from Harriett Beecher Stowe’s epic novel about “Life Among the Lowly,” a slave had to have done something pretty awful to be sent to Mississippi.
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