National
The Rev. Anthony Motley knows a thing or two about being truant.
“I was a truant twice. The first time after I got home, the truant officer was sitting in my living room,” the retired educator told his amused audience. “The second time after I skipped, the next day my pastor was sitting in my classroom,” he said to resounding laughter.
But having people other than his mother – who worked a full-time job admonish the mischievous youth for his indifference toward school, not only embarrassed him, it made Motley realize the seriousness of his actions.
“We’ve got to go into these homes. We’ve got to sit with these parents,” said Motley, whose sentiments were shared by the diverse crowd of more than 100 people. Despite the cold winds and steady rain, teachers, ministers, parents, students and community activists showed up Feb. 23 at Anne Beers Elementary School in Southeast with their attention focused on one thing: the truancy crisis in the District.
“Truancy is a complicated issue . . . however, it’s a core value that also affects graduation rates,” said panelist Ian Roberts, principal at Anacostia Senior High School in Southeast, who added that truancy is most rampant among ninth-graders. Roberts said that among reasons cited for students’ refusal to come to school are transportation issues and their parents’ job schedules.
As a result of having to get younger siblings ready for school, older children are often late, which in many cases has led to truancy, he said.
The two-hour forum was sponsored by the Hillcrest Civic Association and moderated by president, De’Andre Anderson. Other panelists for the meeting that attracted primarily residents from the affluent Hillcrest community where Mayor Vincent C. Gray and other city officials live, included District Family Court Judge Zoe Bush, D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At-Large), Beers Elementary counselor Jeffrey Brown, and Adele Fabrikant, who participated on behalf of Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
Truancy generally begins at the middle school level, and in D.C., students who miss at least 10 days of unexcused absences are classified as truant.
However, among the 2,000 students who are marked truant each day, a growing number are enrolled in elementary schools.
“It starts at that level, [increasing by] grade six and getting worse by the ninth-grade,” Fabrikant said.
Fabrikant also emphasized that reducing truancy is a shared responsibility, and that the chancellor is fully committed to providing resources needed to reduce the numbers.
Stating that the school day for D.C. students begins at 8:45 a.m. until 3:15 p.m., Fabrikant said there are specific guidelines school officials have to abide by in determining excused and unexcused absences.
She said however, that students who miss at least 60 percent of the school day will receive an unexcused absence for the entire day; and parents of students with five unexcused absences will be asked to participate in a truancy conference. Elementary and middle school students with 10 unexcused absences will be referred to the District’s Family and Child Services Agency for suspected educational neglect, and from there cases can end up in court.
“Very often, judges are constants in young people’s lives and we have dedicated and well-trained judges [to deal with truant students],” said Bush, who’s presided over the District’s Family Court for the past three years. “The judge is that person who pushes others to provide youth with the support and services they need to [offset truancy which is aligned with poverty],” Bush said. “But [we] can’t wait to cure poverty to address truancy, as one issue is just as complex as the other.”
Bush added that there are no simple solutions to eradicating truancy but with parents, teachers and school administrators and communities working together, the issue can be effectively dealt with.
“With real energy and focus, I think this is something that we can really turn around, although it will take a while,” Bush said.
Catania, who chairs the council’s education committee, believes one way to deal with truant middle schoolers is to bring in young mentors who students can more easily relate to. He also noted that home visits are helpful in determining barriers to school attendance, and that in many instances the visits have helped to improve attendance and test scores.
But while Catania said about 70 percent of parents have no legitimate reason for their children’s chronic absenteeism, Motley, also a family counselor, countered that most of the parents Catania referred to, know why their children are truant but won’t say so.
“Nine times out of 10 those parents don’t want to reveal the real reasons and it’s going to take more than asking the question one time [to get them to open up],” Motley said. “I’ve known that as a counselor, that what we see on the surface is not what’s really [going on].”
Brown, a former D.C. police officer, concurred.
“When you have a relationship with parents, you have a completely different environment and parents are more likely to give the real reason for truancy,” Brown said to nods of agreement from the crowd.
“It’s not one piece [for dealing with truancy] or the other, but if we don’t address it [starting at the elementary level] we’ll be back again and again discussing the same issue.”
Meanwhile, Henderson’s plan to close schools could lead to increased truancy.
Ward 7 activist Ron Moten denounced the chancellor’s plan to shutter 15 schools over the next two years, saying that action will certainly lead to truancy.
Moten said part of the solution lies in placing teachers in classrooms that students can relate to, and creating programs such as the student prayer breakfast at Ballou Senior High School in Southeast, that has attracted former truants back to the classroom.
“We did some out-of-the-box kinds of things,” Moten said of efforts at Ballou that date back to 2008, and helped to increase the graduation rate by 13 percent, he said.
“We taught our kids their history and what people went through so that they could have an education,” said Moten. “We kind of shamed them into taking education seriously.”
Two weeks ago, Julian Bond was one of 49 people arrested in front of the White House as they sought to push President Barack Obama to take greater action against climate change.
Bond is not content to rest on his laurels after a lifetime of activism and told an audience at Gallaudet University on Feb. 21 that those seeking social change have to continue to fight against the status quo.
"We have to hope that our fellow Americans feel the sense of outrage," he said. "Someone needs to make some noise, make some things happen."
Bond, 73, has been making things happen since he was a student at Morehouse University in Atlanta, Ga. In 1968, Bond was a founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), became the first African American put forward as a major party candidate for vice president and he was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bond served on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1998-2008. He is the recipient of 25 honorary degrees.
While the changes in society since the 1960s have been impressive, Bond continues to actively engage in issues of economic justice, civil rights and peace and remains an unabashed voice for the disenfranchised.
In each constituency, he said, African Americans and members of the deaf community share common experiences which are a part of their collective identities.
"There are differences in means but your goals are group-based and your futures linked," Bond said. "In the civil rights movement, we always thought that we were engaged in a larger and even more important struggle, engaged in a struggle for human rights which envelops every human being everywhere on the planet."
Almost 50 years ago, said Bond, Bayard Rustin – an advisor to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and organizer of the March on Washington – wrote that the movement was evolving from a protest movement into a full-fledged social movement.
"It was an evolution calling its very name into question. It is now concerned not merely with removing the barriers to full opportunity but achieving the fact of equality," Rustin wrote. "From sit-ins and freedom rides, we've moved into rent strikes, boycotts, community organizing and political action. And as King began to call for a more equitable distribution and railed against the Vietnam War, the movement continued to move beyond its original intent."
During the lecture, Bond laid out the context that led to the development of the modern civil rights movement and tied the movement to Gallaudet's Deaf President Now (DPN) movement.
Gallaudet is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the DPN movement this March. The protests on campus led to the appointment of a deaf president, I. King Jordan, for the first time at that point in Gallaudet's history. Bond, Angela Davis and other civil and human rights icons have lectured at the university to mark the milestone.
Bond discussed the impact of DPN on the lives of deaf people in the United States and the world, compared it to the arc of the civil rights movement and spotlighted a number of the transformative changes each has brought the United States. And while he describes himself as an eternal optimist, Bond acknowledged that a good deal of work remains.
"Movements forced elites to inaugurate reforms that would otherwise have been ignored," he said. "... Movements usually begin with a concrete precipitating event. For the civil rights movement, it was the arrest of Rosa Parks. The resignation of [former Gallaudet president] Jerry Lee could be seen as an important element."
All good movements, Bond explained, must continue to agitate, sustain morale, foster fellowship and develop tactics. Movements must also have catalytic leadership "who join the adventure without a foreseeable end," and also must have a strategy, plan and tactics to confront its oppressors.
"You have to hope and expect the movement to succeed and for it to effect change and provide relief from the injustices a group faces," he said.
The civil rights movement had within it all these elements and more, said Bond, as he and others on the frontlines battled a tripartite system of oppression – economic, political, and personal.
"It was state supported private terror and ritual human sacrifice carried out by the state and citizens," Bond said of the lynchings, beatings and brutality visited daily on African Americans and those who challenged segregation, racism and discrimination. "... No other ethnic group – except Native Americans – has experienced a comparable mix of xenophobic attitudinal and structural limitations and dictatorial constraints on their development. It is absolutely without parallel in the American experience."
Bond said people tend to look at racism in terms of individual behavior and actions but it's actually a complex set of societal attitudes and actions. He explained that there are two kinds of racist behavior, active and passive, and whether white people do it consciously or unconsciously, they all benefit materially and psychologically.
"For all their years in the United States, black people have struggled to find answers to a series of questions: how do we explain the position of blacks in society; who or what is the enemy and who are our friends; with whom can we join in coalition? What is the nature of whites? Are they naturally hostile to blacks? And is it impossible for them to abandon the benefits they receive from racism?" he asked.
"Unlike Polish Americans or Germans, Italian and Irish Americans – all of whom became colorful ethnic variations on the central All-American theme – African Americans remain the indigestible alternative. Unlike all the others, they refused to agree to white supremacy. And unlike all the others, black ethnic mobilization has been often characterized and demeaned as identity politics, somehow democratically illegitimate; while white variants like puritanism, the confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan, the Moral Majority, the Tea Party and others are simply ordinary expressions of democratic activism."
Gallaudet's president, T. Alan Hurwitz said he was surprise at the many parallels Bond made with the civil rights movement and the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
"I have to say I'm amazed at how many similarities he spoke of," Hurwitz said through an interpreter. "There are so many issues and challenges that we face. He talked about all people coming together. People came together 25 years ago and got what we sought to achieve."
Liletha Davison agreed.
"One of the challenges we face at Gallaudet is getting together and getting the staff to recognize and respect each other," said Davison, a staff program coordinator. "I'm trying to find some tools to make this happen. Did I hear what I wanted to hear? Yeah. He said push, push, push. I wanted an easy answer though."
Many minority students in higher education have had to endure the question, "Are you here because of affirmative action?" William Carter, a University of Pittsburgh professor and Dean of the School of Law, was one of them.
Affirmative action was created in the 1960s to address persistent discrimination against African-Americans and to level the playing field after the Civil Rights Act was passed to end the Jim Crow era, and continues to be used to address inequity today. However, recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court indicate affirmative action and the question asked of Carter and minority students throughout the country could soon be eliminated.
"What's going on there is the court believes part of its role is maintaining social cohesion," Carter said at a lecture for the School of Social Work's Center on Race and Social Problems. "So I believe what the court is doing is reinforcing its world view. And that world is a post racial society."
In his lecture, as part of the Reed Smith Spring 2013 Speaker Series on Jan. 30, Carter provided context for Fisher vs. University of Texas, an affirmative action case challenging admission policies at the University of Texas at Austin. Plaintiff Abigail Fisher, who is White, is alleging racial discrimination because she was denied acceptance to the university.
The current case is tied to the 2003 landmark case Grutter v. Bollinger in which the Supreme Court upheld the admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School. While college admissions policies using quota systems have been eliminated, Grutter v. Bollinger was upheld because the university was using race as one of many factors in considering applicants.
The same is true at the University of Texas where the top 10 percent of applicants are accepted regardless of race. While approximately 80 percent of applicants are admitted through this method, the remaining students are chosen based on talents, leadership qualities and family circumstances as well as race.
Carter believes Fisher v. University of Texas will result in a five to three vote striking down Texas' program. This mirrors a growing trend opposing affirmative action which included the 2012 decisions in Oklahoma and New Hampshire to end affirmative action in college admissions and employment.
"This is a combination of themes that some scholars have termed post racialness," Carter said. "That is, we have entered a post racial society where these measures are unnecessary because we have reached equity and counter productive because they create division."
Carter listed statistics illustrating a non-post racial society. These included the poverty rate for people of color being higher than that of Whites and Black families earning two-thirds less than White families.
However, opponents of affirmative action in higher education admissions, like Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, use the "mismatch theory" to demonstrate that these programs put minority students at a disadvantage. They believe accepting students to school where they are unprepared to thrive will hurt them in the long run.
"Part of the assumption is that those coming in are perpetually out classed and I don't know if that's the case," Carter said. "But if all we do is get them here so we have more colorful faces in the class, we have failed them."
Carter's expertise on the issue of affirmative action comes from his focus on constitutional law, civil rights, international human rights, and civil litigation.
A prominent state assemblyman from Brooklyn who wore blackface to a party he hosted to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim, said on Monday that he did not mean to hurt anyone.
Dov Hikind, a Democrat and a longtime power broker in the Orthodox Jewish community, donned an Afro wig, brown makeup, an orange jersey and sunglasses as part of a costume that he said represented a "black basketball player," according to the New Times.
"The main objective that I have is not to be recognizable," Mr. Hikind said in an interview. "Of course the intention was not to offend anyone. That's the last thing that I ever imagined that would happen, to be very honest. It never crossed my mind."
The Post further reported that Hikind had hundreds of guests to his home on Sunday, and as he said he had done in past years, he enlisted a professional makeup artist to help him with his costume. When his grown son, Yoni, asked him if he could post a photograph of the outfit on Facebook, Hikind said saw no problem with it.
But on Monday Hikind, who was quoted as saying, "there is not a prejudiced bone in my body," found himself at the center of an upheaval. He initially brushed off the commotion following The New York Observer's report on the matter, explaining in a blog that it was a product of "political correctness to the absurd."
(Source: New York Times)
Trayvon Martin was killed one ago year on Tuesday by George Zimmerman, the volunteer neighborhood watch guard who claims to have shot the 16-year-old boy in self-defense. Zimmerman was charged with murder and remains in custody while awaiting trial.
To mark the first anniversary of their son's death, Trayvon's parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, will participate in a vigil Tuesday evening in Manhattan as they continue to crusade for stricter gun laws. Also on Tuesday, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) re-introduced her bill to re-establish a popular federal grant program aimed at reducing racial profiling.
Norton's bill permits states to apply for grants to develop racial profiling laws, collect and maintain data on traffic stops, fashion programs to reduce racial profiling, and to train law enforcement officers.
Nearly half of the states participated in the program when it was in existence, which, Norton said, shows both the need and interest in tackling this civil rights issue.
Norton had the program included in the surface transportation law in 2005, but the program expired in 2009. Norton, a former chairperson of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, will try to get her bill included in the surface transportation bill Congress will be writing during this congressional session.
Meanwhile, the case which went on to draw national attention, focusing in part, on race relations. In addition, more photos, evidence and a new lawsuit tied to the case have emerged in recent months.
Trayvon and Zimmerman's paths crossed on Feb. 26, 2012, as the unarmed teenager was walking along eating a bag of Skittles in the moderate Sanford, Fla., community where his father lived. He was approached by Zimmerman and a tussle ensued.
Attorneys for Trayvon's family have accused Zimmerman of racially profiling the youth and shooting him "in cold blood." Zimmerman, who has insisted that Trayvon attacked him, said he is a victim, and that he had no choice but to shoot him.
During an April 29 hearing, Zimmerman's attorney plans to invoke the Stand Your Ground law, where a Florida judge could determine if the law applied to Zimmerman, possibly granting him immunity and averting a criminal trial.
"We just want to have that trial, and let the jury decide," Fulton told CNN. "And whatever decision comes out of that, we're going to accept that. We may not like it, but we're going to accept it."
(Sources: CNN, Reuters), Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton's Statement)
President Barack Obama met on Thursday with African-American leaders from various organizations across the country to discuss growing concerns regarding the nation's economic crisis.
During the gathering which focused on inequalities that at tearing apart black communities, Obama restated his commitment to increasing employment opportunities for those affected strongest by the economic downturn.
Among leaders in attendance were Rev. Al Sharpton; Avis Jones-DeWeever, executive director, National Council of Negro Women; Ben Jealous, president, NAACP; Judith Browne Dianis, co-director, Advancement Project; Melanie Campbell, president, National Coalition of Black Civic Participation; Rev Derrick Harkins, 19th Street Baptist Church; Ralph Everett, president, Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies; Wade Henderson, president, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; and Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks, executive director, National Black Justice Coalition.
In a statement, Rev. Sharpton commented on his meeting with the President, saying the group focused on voting rights:
"I and other leaders had a very significant discussion with the President about concerns in the African-American community and the civil rights community in general and most specifically about voting rights.
"Just yesterday the state of Virginia House of Delegates passed strict government photo ID requirements for voting. As states around the country engage in what we feel are voter suppression methods, next week the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about Section 5 of the Voting Rights act."
Alluding to the issues of gun control and unemployment, Sharpton said many black communities go unnoticed but suffer a disproportionate number of casualties from gun violence. "The President engaged us in a spirited conversation and seemed to be listening intently," he said.
Sharpton added that in dealing with unemployment, which disproportionately impacts African-American communities, "we must deal with job creation and job programs."
(Source: Newsone)
If the FBI and the federal government believed that imprisoning Angela Davis would scare her into disavowing her political positions and push her into hiding, the years since her incarceration are a clear illustration that that strategy failed.
Davis, a renowned author, educator and human rights activist, lectures widely in the United States and elsewhere around the world, speaking truth to power on issues of race, economic disparities, the vagaries of capitalism and the scourge of white supremacy.
Last Thursday, Davis, 69, addressed a standing-room-only crowd at Gallaudet University's Elstad Auditorium, about these issues but she returned often to the idea of intersectionalism. This is a term describing the reality that everyone belongs to one or more categories including race, gender and sexual orientation. Davis encouraged the audience to reach across artificial barriers to learn about each other and find common ground.
"... As someone who has studied feminist theory, I believe that we should think together things that are often kept apart," said Davis. "... the indivisibility of justice implies that we cannot separate different posits, different struggles. It is counter productive and contradictory to choose whether to support justice for people of color, for black people, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, or justice for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community. It is also wrong ..."
Davis said it's wrong for anyone who is able-bodied to believe that justice is on their side alone. She also said that while it's wrong to exclude deaf communities and the disabled from the "circle of justice," the discrimination against these groups will not be corrected if they are suddenly included in the mainstream.
Davis –Distinguished Professor Emerita of History and Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Clara and author of nine books – was at Gallaudet at the invitation of the University Office of Diversity and Inclusion as a part of Black History Month. Her lecture was titled "The Indivisibility of Justice."
The theme of her presentation, she said, came from a statement by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King that justice is indivisible.
"He said injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere and as people on this campus have demonstrated through the defense of the rights of deaf people and the foraging of a vibrant deaf culture, including a black deaf culture, history reveals the expanding parameters of justice," said Davis to thunderous applause. "We cannot [assume] that democracy can work if it is confined only to a specific group of people."
She used the 2012 election as an example.
"Affluent, white, straight, hearing men used to control this country. But the recent election showed that even though the majority of white men voted for Mitt Romney, they did not get their will," said Davis. "Ninety-seven percent of black women, 87 percent of Latina women and the majority of white women voted for President [Barack] Obama. This means that it's a new day in the United States of America."
The Birmingham, Ala., native said Black History Month is tied to struggles for freedom everywhere.
"Black History Month is the history of the quest for liberation and belongs to all of us who cherish history and ongoing struggles," she explained. "It's infused with the spirit of resistance and the activist spirit of protest and transformation. It's important to acknowledge these firsts but we celebrate black history because it's a centuries-old struggle to achieve and expand for all. Black history is American history. Black history is world history."
Davis remains deeply involved in movements for social justice globally. She is a vocal opponent of racism, white imperialism and mass incarceration. Much of her recent work has focused on the plethora of social problems associated with the rise of the prison-industrial complex, and the criminalization of black and brown people who are already most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.
She discussed the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment and generated audience laughter when she gently derided the Emancipation Proclamation.
"... How many of you celebrated? Many of you didn't because the Emancipation Proclamation [has] a fraudulent aspect," said Davis. "It really wasn't an act to emancipate the slaves. It was a military strategy, not a measure to free human beings from a racist, immoral system."
Davis laments that so few Americans know about Reconstruction, the period right after the Civil War which saw blacks assume political office, introduce new laws, progressive laws for women which allowed them to own property and become deeply involved in the struggle to provide education for all children in the South.
"This is the most radical era in the history of this country, and most know absolutely nothing about this short period," she said. "All of these efforts came during the era of radical reconstruction, Jim Crow and segregation. Everyone should be learning about this period."
Davis said the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery and voluntary servitude, is a critically important law which she credits Lincoln for. She said it's fanciful to believe that by simply signing a document freeing slaves, all the attendant strains of racism, discrimination and related ills would disappear.
"... In the mid-20th century, the movements for justice and freedom were necessary. There was slavery and abolition, and then there was the civil rights movement which would have been unnecessary if slavery had been fully abolished," she explained.
But what followed was a violent backlash against Reconstruction with the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, and the introduction of the punishment system in the form of massive prison plantations, the convict lease system and Jim Crow, Davis said.
These practices were the precursors to the prison-industrial complex that envelopes the United States at present, Davis said. The disestablishment of the welfare state and human services, the transfer of capital to profitable sectors of the economy, the decision by the political elite to abandon everything else and the privation of education, health care and the prison system are some vital reasons for the development of the prison-industrial complex, Davis added.
"It's the need to control and manage unemployed black bodies," she said.
While the U.S. comprises five percent of the world's population, Davis said, 25 percent of the (world's prison) population – 2.5 million people – is incarcerated and one in every 37 people are under the control of criminal justice agencies. Davis said she is dedicated to dismantling the prison-industrial complex and called on the audience to form mass movements to assert their rights and bring about change.
Angela McCaskill, Ph.D., a professor of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies, bubbled with excitement."It was awesome. I'm just so inspired. It's history happening here. I can't describe how her being here feels," she said. "The issues she raised were right on the money. I feel like I'm on Cloud Nine. I hope this will be a catalyst for more dialogue."
Faculty member Laurene Simms, Ph.D., agreed.
"It was fabulous, just awesome. I'm elated. She's just timeless. I feel like I'm in church ... it's a constant reminder to me that in terms of people, I have to treat everyone the same, regardless of who they are."
Beginning in 2007 and continuing through 2011, Illinois Congressman Jesse L. Jackson Jr. amassed a collection of celebrity memorabilia, furs, jewelry and furniture, according to the New York Times. The Post states that as a result of a lavish lifestyle of Jackson shared with his wife Sandi Jackson, he is expected to plead guilty in a case involving misuse of campaign money.
Jackson, 47, also reportedly used campaign funds to purchase a $5,000 football signed by U. S. presidents and two hats that once belonged to the late singer, Michael Jackson.
Also charged with conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and making false statements, Jackson resigned from his congressional duties in November in the wake of a federal investigation. According to federal documents, Jackson -- the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- was in direct violation of campaign finance laws.
He faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
The government has also filed charges against Sandi Jackson, a Chicago alderman, accusing her of filing false tax returns. Mrs. Jackson, who resigned her post in January, is expected to plead guilty and faces a maximum of three years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
The Post further reported that in July 2007, according to the investigation, Jackson had a $43,350 gold-plated men's Rolex watch that he had bought with campaign funds shipped to Washington from Chicago, and that about two months later, he obtained two pieces of Bruce Lee memorabilia with campaign funds, each for $2,000, from a dealer called Antiquities of Nevada. The Post report goes on to state several other purchases Jackson made from campaign coffers amounting to thousands more dollars, including mink furs and items that once belonged to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
(Source: The New York Post)
As the controversy over Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on large-sized sugary drinks continues, the New York NAACP has joined in the chorus against the ban and is backing a lawsuit saying that it's an unfair attack on small, minority-owned businesses.
Speaking on behalf of the chapter of the national civil rights organization, New York State Conference NAACP President Hazel Dukes said the soda ban is about economic fairness and that he's bearing down on small businesses while giving big corporations a leg up.
"As the new rules stand, small mom-and-pop stores in the city, which are disproportionately owned and operated by people of color, must comply with the law and suffer the financial consequences," she said. "Meanwhile, national chains like 7-Eleven, which can handle the financial loss, are exempt. You can't be serious about banning big sodas when you have a loophole for Big Gulps."
Dukes is specifically talking about bodegas in neighborhoods. She added that while sugary drinks and sodas are an issue when it comes to obesity, she thinks other steps should be taken to make people healthier, including limiting the amount of unhealthy food and providing more opportunities for physical activities.
"I live in Harlem, and when you go into the store, you usually don't see water first, you have to go to the back," she told the AmNews. "Sugary sodas are not the only thing contributing to obesity. We need more education about portions and about the other things we do. You have to take a holistic approach if you are serious about combating obesity, and the NAACP has been serious about it for the five years."
The NAACP has been on the receiving end of donations from major beverage companies, including Coca-Cola, which recently donated $100,000 to the organization for health initiatives, which Dukes pointed out.
A recent report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recommends making investments in obesity prevention in a way that matches the severity of the health and financial toll the epidemic takes on the nation. The report makes suggestions including fully implementing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, implementing new school meal standards and updating nutrition standards for snack foods and beverages in schools, and making physical education and physical activity a priority through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
In response to the New York NAACP's criticism, Bloomberg said in his weekly radio address that he disagrees with the organization's stance. The mayor even touted his family's "small donation" to the NAACP when he was a child and how he's always had a "soft spot" for the organization. Bloomberg went on to question "how they can look themselves in a mirror knowing they are hurting deliberately the life expectancy and the quality of life for the people that they're supposed to serve."
Bloomberg's soda ban was approved last year and restricts the serving of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in places like movie theaters, restaurants and bodegas. The ban goes into effect March 12.
In an aggressive speech Tuesday night that was partly reminiscent of the State of the Union address he delivered last year, President Barack Obama outlined plans to revive the American economy by encouraging Congress to avoid across-the-board budget cuts, rebuilding a thriving middle class with the creation of jobs, placing emphasis on better educational opportunities for the nation's youth and solidifying the country's infrastructure and thrusts aimed at helping struggling homeowners hold on to their homes.
Speaking before a joint session of the Congress for just over an hour, Obama who focused most of his talk on the creation of jobs, said however, that by the end of 2014, America would have completed its mission in Afghanistan. He added that at that time, some 34,000 U.S. troops would be back home with their families.
"By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over," Obama said.
Overall, the president said that since last year -- and despite episodes of gun violence in this country -- there still has been much progress to report.
"After years of a grueling recession, [millions] of new jobs have been created . . . the stock and housing markets are rebounding. [But while] the state of our union is strong, wages and incomes have barely budged," Obama said. "We need to restore the basic bargain that built this country . . . to make sure government works on behalf of many, not just a few."
Also, having touched upon other key points amid rounds of applause, Obama went on to state that the country needs to reach its deficit goal of $4 trillion, and that according to some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the Sequester legislation is seen as a bad idea.
On the matter of health care, Obama said people who care about issues such as Medicare, must be willing to embrace modest reforms, and that "the wealthy and most powerful" must do their share to help.
"Most Americans understand that we can't cut our way to prosperity," Obama said. "Everyone has to do their share."
He said that while the Affordable Healthcare Act helps to slow the growth of healthcare costs, he's open to additional reforms from both parties. At the same time, "we must keep promises we already made,"Obama said.
Obama added that now is also the best time for tax reform, saying that Americans deserve a better tax code that lowers rates for small businesses as opposed to supporting a shift to jobs overseas. Along those lines, Obama said it has become necessary to set party interests aside to save jobs and to increase the U.S. economy.
Said Obama: "Deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan. The North Star that guides our efforts is the creation of more jobs."
In rounding out his speech, Obama who referred to the recent shooting death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago and the December massacre of 20 Newtown, Conn., elementary school students, urged the Congress's vote on gun control proposals in order to honor "Americans whose lives have been torn apart" by mass violence.
"They deserve a vote," Obama said.
A body believed to be that of renegade former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner was found Tuesday evening in a burning cabin near Big Bear Lake, California, according to a CNN report.
Law enforcement sources said they were told by officials at the Los Angeles Police Department that it is Dorner's body. However, forensic tests will be needed to determine the body's identity.
The fire began after a SWAT team stormed a cabin near Big Bear Lake where a suspect -- who authorities said matched Dorner's description -- had holed up after a fatal shootout with San Bernadino County sheriff's deputies, a source familiar with the operation told CNN.
The cabin caught fire after police detonated smoke devices inside the cabin, the source said.
(Source: CNN)
(Question & Answer, Ngoc Nguyen, Interview with Julia Kumari Drapkin)
The iSeeChange almanac allows people to make observations about climate change in their own backyards and ask scientists questions directly. NAM's Ngoc Nguyen spoke with the project's producer, Julia Kumari Drapkin, about how this experiment in crowd-sourced environmental reporting is spurring conversations about climate change in rural Colorado and elsewhere.
What is the idea behind the iSeeChange almanac?
I've worked closely with scientists, had personal conversations with them and written stories about scientists and why they think the way they think. After all this time, we're still struggling with communicating climate change ... You can't narrow down very easily global climate change to individual community experiences. Like when Hurricane Katrina slammed into my hometown of New Orleans.... could you attribute it to climate change?
We are afraid to go into local experiences and attribute climate change to local experiences because we don't want to make a mistake. That's a good fear to have, but it prevents us from having conversations with citizens who may have climate change affecting their lives.
As a journalist, what were you trying to change about the way environmental news is communicated?
I realized that part of the problem is the structure of the way [journalists] report. Traditionally, a science story begins with a scientist making observations and asking questions. They answers questions in a research paper, and if I [the reporter] have time, I find a local anecdote to make that experience seem familiar. What if we reverse that process? What if we provide tools and mechanisms to make observations about what is changing in their lives?
How does the website work?
People go online and make observations and ask questions, and the questions are answered by the community, which includes scientists. As questions get asked, we come through every week and review the postings. Either the questions are answered by the community or scientists or we call a scientist and get them to answer specific questions. For example, if there's an early spring, what happens?
It's a socially networked almanac -- half journalism, half farmer's almanac. People keep detailed notes about farms and ranches, in the same way that a biologist would keep field notes. It's relevant to their bottom line. They derive their livelihood off the land so they pay attention to the way it changes. Even on Facebook, there's a weather journal. It's never been curated and shared.
What have you learned and what's been surprising about the project so far?
I learned that when you give the community the power to ask the questions, it's one of the most empowering things you can do. It's a powerful [reporting] tool and allows me to see what is happening in the community months before things break in the mainstream [media]. Communities could tip off their news if they had the tools to do it. I do believe in that process. When we launched the website, I remember, I received texts about wildfires and droughts in April 2012, long before wildfires and droughts made mainstream news and headlines. In Colorado, we saw a historic wildfire season and ...half the country is in a drought now.
The face of the environmental movement has been traditionally white, despite the fact that ethnic communities and immigrants have long championed environmental rights and protections, and polls find they want cleaner air and water and clean energy. How could the iSeeChange project change that?
I would say that immigrant communities are the ones who are the best positioned to see these microchanges in the climate because of their relationship to the land. One of the reasons iSeeChange works so well is because in Paonia, Colo., you have a natural resource community. People here live off the land. They derive their livelihood off the environment. Immigrant communities know that really well. In a way, it would be really interesting to have an ISeeChange in a Vietnamese community in coastal Louisiana who are attuned to microchanges in the environment over time.
You're in rural Western Colorado, so how do you talk about climate change there?
In ironic, because in Paonia, half the town are miners and the other half are organic farmers. We have a coal mine in town owned by Bill Koch. When we first started to promo iSeeChange, the radio station heard from some listeners that it was a misuse of resources. [In Paonia], there's a part of the community that doesn't believe in climate change. Mostly, people I am working with are white...they may not be wealthy, they may not buy into climate change, but they do pay attention to how the weather's affecting water [supply]...we all have common ground. Weather – it's a little bit 'Eliza Doolittle' -- you can talk to anyone, anywhere about the weather.
Right now, iSeeChange is locally focused [on Paonia, Colo.], but could it have a global lens as well?
Yes, right now, it's geared for the community. The weather feed has info relevant to the community. But we're getting clips everywhere. We got a post from Baltimore, saying that spring flowers were blooming earlier in Baltimore.
We envision websites for three environments – rural, urban and coastal. We're exploring how it could or should be modified for urban climate change, how it can be adjusted for coastal climate change.
Climate scientists say that weather is not the same thing as climate, but there's so much mingling of extreme weather events and climate change now in the minds of the public. There seems to be value in talking about climate change through weather, but is it also misleading?
Scientists are much closer to saying the weird weather is indicative of climate change. That's what the almanac is about. Extreme variability in the environment. This tool allows us to map the noise...we can see that sustained number of bizarre events at the same time is telling us something. For a drought series we did, we looked at the changes in the behavior of the jet stream has on heating temperatures in the Artic. Jet stream is the river of air and as it slows down...it can contribute to the weather pattern persisting. If dry weather is what we're seeing lately, it is more likely to continue to be dry and if it's more wet, it will continue to be wet.
So iSeeChange is recording what you call microchanges in the environment. Is it also mapping how people are adapting to the changes?
We're interested in that too. Scientist and ranchers and farmers are all seeing the same thing...farmers and ranchers are making a decision. What do they do on their farms and ranches? We're interested in mapping the decisions. That's a core question that ... iSeeChange tries to answer ... as the environment is changing, how are we changing too? That's the whole point of the project. A digital almanac...to document what 2012 has done to us, how it changed us.
We had a earlier spring, flowers grew earlier, markets weren't ready for some of the food, people ran out of water, they decided not to plant...people selling off [farm] animals right and left. This has been an epic year.
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