Queens girl Alexa Gonzalez hauled out of school in handcuffs after getting caught doodling on desk

BY RACHEL MONAHAN

A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.

Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said.

"I love my friends Abby and Faith," the girl wrote, adding the phrases "Lex was here. 2/1/10" and a smiley face.

But instead of simply cleaning off the doodles after class, Alexa landed in some adult-sized trouble for using her lime-green magic marker.

She was led out of school in cuffs and walked to the precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours, she and her mother said.

"I started crying, like, a lot," said Alexa. "I made two little doodles. ... It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary." Alexa, who had a stellar attendance record, hasn't been back to school since, adding, "I just thought I'd get a detention. I thought maybe I would have to clean [the desk]."

"She's been throwing up," said her mom, Moraima Tamacho, 49, an accountant, who lives with her daughter in Kew Gardens. "The whole situation has been a nightmare."

City officials acknowledged Alexa's arrest was a mistake.

"We're looking at the facts," said City Education Department spokesman David Cantor. "Based on what we've seen so far, this shouldn't have happened."

"Even when we're asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail, and discretion used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary," said police spokesman Paul Browne.

Alexa is the latest in a string of city students who have been cuffed for minor infractions. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was placed under arrest for writing "okay" on her desk at Intermediate School 201. And in 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was cuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten.

A class action lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union last month against the city for using "excessive force" in middle school and high schools. A 12-year-old sixth-grader, identified in the lawsuit as M.M., was arrested in March 2009 for doodling on her desk at the Hunts Point School.

Alexa is still suspended from her school, her mother said. She and her mom went to family court on Tuesday, where Alexa was assigned eight hours of community service, a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience.

"I definitely learned not to ever draw on a desk," said Alexa. "They told me with a pencil this could still happen."

Council member Jackson kicks off tax season in Harlem

By Aaron Kiersh

New York City Council member Robert Jackson is kicking off the tax season—one street corner at a time.

Jackson, who represents parts of Morningside Heights and Harlem, declared a “kickoff to tax season” at 135th Street and Broadway on Friday afternoon, staging an informal press conference to emphasize the potential benefits of Earned Income Tax Credits for low-income constituents.

Joined by two Internal Revenue Service officials commemorating the IRS’ annual “National EITC Day,” Jackson distributed literature on the credit, which enables low-income Americans to earn a rebate on the wages that they’ve earned throughout the year, and discussed the potential windfalls available to working-class area residents.

“About one in four New Yorkers are eligible for EITC,” Jackson said, a Democrat in his ninth year on the Council. “Who are these people? These are typically the people spending the money in the local community stores. So I have to promote this in the community, because otherwise people might not know about it.” Jackson said that he chose this specific street corner to hold the impromptu conference because a large housing project adjoins the south side of 135th Street, and many Section 8 housing residents are eligible for the EITC.

Jackson, whose City Council district encompasses the Columbia campus, explained that he is now acting as something of a traveling pitchman for the EITC, describing the ins and outs of the credit at the community associations and Democratic club meetings. He said he is also promoting the EITC on his newsletter, which reaches 80,000 people.

“This is an extremely important process,” he said. “People need to know that they are entitled to it. Their elected representatives need to play a part in distributing the necessary information. I am going to be pushing this until the tax season is over.”

Harlem Costco Struggles to Catch On

MYFOXNY.COM -- Cotsco opened its doors to much fanfare in East Harlem in November 2009, but business has not been as brisk as the company had hoped, according to a report.

The store laid off 160 of its 453 workers in January. Many of those were seasonal workers, but even Costco admits it had hoped to retain many of them as permanent employees.

Crain's New York reported that some of the problems include the store's location, on the very east end of 116th Street, is nowhere near a subway stop. Also, unlike at Costco locations in Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, parking isn't free. Furthermore, some analysts say that Manhattan residents just don't have the room in their apartments for big, bulky packages of supplies

Racist NBC Lunch Menu Exposed by Tweeting Questlove

More good press for NBC today! At right is a photo snapped and posted on Twitter by Questlove, drummer for the Roots, NBC employee, and leader of the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon band. According to a person tweeting under the handle "nbcu" and purporting to be NBC's vice-president of communications Kevin Goldman, "The sign in the NBCU cafeteria has been removed. We apologize for anyone who was offended by it."
questlove [Twitter]

Racist NBC Lunch Menu Exposed by Tweeting Questlove

UPDATE: Cafeteria woman who planned menu speaks out!

Happy Birthday Rosa Parks!!!

Deb Price / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington -- The late civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks was honored today on Capitol Hill on what would have been her 97th birthday.

Senators, House members and friends gathered beside an enormous arrangement of red roses and a photo of Parks. That rose was named "the Freedom -- a rose in honor of Rosa Parks" two years ago.

"Happy Birthday, Rosa Parks," said Elaine Steele, the co-founder of the Detroit-based Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development.

Parks, of Detroit, died Oct. 24, 2005, after becoming a symbol of racial equality for her efforts to end segregation.

In 1955 in Montgomery, Ala., she refused to obey a white bus driver's order to give up her seat for a white rider, sparking the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott that eventually led to a victory at the Supreme Court that racial segregation of buses was unconstitutional.

Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and, after her death, her body laid in state at the Capitol Rotunda, the first woman and second African American to have been given that tribute.

"She sat down so we could stand up," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Detroit.

Also at the event from Michigan were Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing.

Other well-known politicians attending were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., the sole African American in the Senate; and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.

Stabenow called Parks "quiet but powerful ... (who) began a movement that has changed who we are for the better."

Conyers, who met Parks in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, joked that when he later employed her in his Detroit congressional office, he had to get used to how many people stopped by to see her, not him.

"I adopted a proper attitude for that," he said, sparking chuckles from the audience.

NY Firefighters help deliver twins for Harlem mom Pattie Jacob

BY OREN YANIV AND BILL HUTCHINSON

Firefighters twice the drama they were expecting Wednesday when they responded to a 911 call from a Harlem woman in labor.

When Firefighters John Behringer and Mike Schneider burst into Pattie Jacob's apartment, she was already cradling one baby in her arms and on the verge of giving birth to another.

"I looked at her, I looked down and she was holding the baby," said Behringer, 38, of Engine 37 in Harlem.

Schneider, 27, said he cut the umbilical cord on Jacob's son, but before he could exhale a sigh of relief, the second infant was on the way."I was crossing my fingers she would make it to the hospital," Schneider said.

Rushed to Harlem Hospital by ambulance, Jacob delivered a daughter, Madison, at 8:08 a.m., 64 minutes after her twin brother, Michael, was born.

Both newborns were placed in incubators but were listed in good condition. "I'm just so happy this is over," the exhausted mom said during a hospital reunion with the firefighters .

Jacob, 34, said her due date wasn't until March 9, but when she woke up yesterday at 5 a.m., she felt something wasn't right.

Her 8-year-old son, Maliq, asked if he should dial 911. Jacob told him no and sent him to school. But alone in her bathroom later, Jacob went into labor.

In excruciating pain, Jacob dialed 911 on her cell phone. The operator instructed her to wrap the baby in towels and assured her help was on the way.

When they reached the apartment building on Convent Ave. near 125th St., Behringer and Schneider did not know Jacob's apartment number. "I heard someone screaming," said Behringer, who tracked the noise to Jacob's second-floor home.

Despite her condition, Jacob managed to walk to the door and opened it. "We just helped her out," Schneider said. "She did all the hard work,"

Mount Morris Park Neighborhood Alert!!!!!!

MONDAY, FEB 1 -- Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association (MMPCIA) received the following information from Deputy Inspector Rodney Harrison, Commanding Officer of the NYPD's 28 Precinct:

On the evening of Saturday, January 30, in the vicinity of West 120 Street and Lenox Avenue there was a shooting. This is believed to be an attempted theft. The victim, who resides within the Mount Morris Park neighborhood, indicated that there were two perpetrators, who fled westbound on West 120 Street. The victim is in critical/stable condition at Harlem Hospital.

In response, MMPCIA would like to invite you to a special Safety & Security meeting next Tuesday, February 9 at the Harlem Library.

Deputy Inspector Rodney Harrison and Chief Phillip Banks will be on hand to discuss the incident, provide safety tips, discuss forming Block Watchers, register cell phones* and take any questions you may have.**

We hope that we you can join us.

MMPCIA Safety & Security Meeting
Tuesday, February 9 at 6:00 PM

Harlem Branch Library
Community Room, 3rd floor
9 West 124 Street, betw/Fifth & Mount Morris Park West

* Registration of cell phones is a new police initiative. Stolen phones that were registered may be tracked and the thief arrested. DON'T WALK AND TALK! You are a prime target for theft while walking and talking or texting!

Obama's First Year in Photos Exhibit Comes to Harlem

By John Del Signore

A year in the life of phenomenally photogenic President Barack Obama will be on display starting Friday at the NYPL's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The exhibit exclusively features 77 photos by Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza, beginning with the festive inaugural ball evening on January 20, 2009 and moves through the next 364 days. Many of these photos are on view to the public on the White House Flickr page, but if you want to rekindle your Ohhhhbama love with full size prints, now's the time!

The exhibit runs until April 18th, and is paired with a retrospective of work by illustrator and artist Jerry Pinkney, winner of the American Library Association’s prestigious 2010 Caldecott Medal. Pinkney’s watercolors illustrate a wide range of people, as well as major events in African-American history; from colonial times to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (Together, the Souza and Pinkney exhibits are called 365 Days: 390 Years in the Making.) About his work, Souza says "This administration has been far and away the most open about making behind-the-scenes photographs available right away to the public... My hope is that through these photographs you will have an inside look at what only I see every day."

SEE MORE PICS and article: Obama's First Year in Photos Exhibit Comes to Harlem

Riverton Houses in Harlem to Be Sold in Foreclosure

NEW YORK — A judge has ordered the foreclosure sale of the historic Riverton Houses, a middle-class Harlem apartment complex.

Residents have included jazz pianist Billy Taylor; former Mayor David N. Dinkins; and former Motown Records vice president Suzanne de Passe. Clifford L. Alexander Jr. also lived there; he was secretary of the Army in the Carter administration.

State Supreme Court Justice Richard F. Braun ordered a public auction to satisfy the owner's $240.6 million debt. Several groups have expressed interest.

Riverton was bought in 2005 by a company led by developer Laurence Gluck. It planned to replace rent-stabilized tenants with more profitable market-rate tenants.

Last month, it was announced that two massive middle-class complexes, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, would be turned over to creditors.

READ FULL STORY: Riverton Houses in Harlem to Be Sold in Foreclosure

Just Blaze Moves His Studio Operation To Harlem

By Allen Jacobs

Less than a week after it was announced that Just Blaze was closing down Baseline Studios, formal announcements were made today that the hit-maker for Jay-Z, Fabolous and Jay Electronica is moving his operation to Harlem, New York's Stadiumred compound.

Located at 1825 Park Avenue, the sixth-floor studio presently houses production companies responsible for over 15 Grammy Awards. Outfits such as Westward Music Group, Ariel Borujow and Sidney Brown, who have individually produced alongside and for Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, Kid Cudi and Diddy.

The studio was designed by Frank Comentale, responsible for designing such studios as The Hit Factory, Daddy's House and Chung King. Besides recording, the facility contains high-tech rooms for mixing and mastering.

Prior to Stadiumred's 2007 founding, the space was previously owned and used by Jazz legend Ornette Coleman.

Just Blaze reacted in a statement, saying, "I'm looking forward to setting up shop with the guys at Stadiumred. I've been in this business for 13 years and their vision and drive are the perfect compliment [sic] to what I look to build during the next phase of my career. I'm looking forward to creating something great with them. World domination coming soon!"

Just Blaze is presently at work with Jay Electronica and Eminem. There is still no word on the future of Baseline Studios.

ICU patients at Harlem's North General Hospital 4 times more likely to get deadly infection: report

BY HEIDI EVANS
Critically ill ICU patients at a Harlem hospital were four times more likely to get a deadly blood infection than the average ICU patient nationwide, a new study shows.

The Consumer Reports Hospital Ratings study, released Tuesday, says North General Hospital's so-called central line infection rate was 394% worse than the national average - and the worst in the city.

The community hospital reported 12 infections in 2008 for 1,462 "central line days" - the total number of days that ICU patients had the large IV catheters inserted in their neck or arm for fluids and medicine.

The city's best hospital was Richmond University Hospital on Staten Island, with a rate that was 82% better than average for its ICUs. It reported two infections for 4,862 central line days.

"Like all hospitals, North General takes central line bacterial infections very seriously," said Andy Brimmer, a spokesman for the hospital. "Thanks to our aggressive internal efforts, we have reduced the incidence of these infections. North General only had three central line bacterial infections in 2009, which compares favorably with hospitals nationwide."

The infections kill 30,000 people a year.

Medical experts say hospitals should have zero central line infections because they're preventable with simple, but disciplined, hygiene and sterile handling.

That means a commitment from hospital CEOs, nurses and doctors down to dietary aides and housekeepers to make it a priority, said Dr. Brian Koll, who is credited with running a model infection control program at Beth Israel Medical Center.

Other New York facilities that fared better than the national average: Coney Island Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn .

The four worst after North General were North Central Bronx Hospital, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, Queens Hospital Center and Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan .

Consumer Reports looked at central line infection data from 926 hospitals in the U.S., including 111 in New York State. New York is among 27 states that require its hospitals to report infection rates to the state health department.

Told of North General's 2008 ICU results, patient Candice Carter of Harlem was alarmed. "That's frightening," said Carter, 57, standing outside the hospital at E. 122nd St. and Madison Ave. "It does surprise me. I'm new to this hospital, but I've been very impressed with the care."With Bill Egbert

Read Full story: ICU patients at Harlem's North General Hospital 4 times more likely to get deadly infection: report

Heads bowed in prayer, Harlem residents 'Man Up' for safer neighborhood

BY PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY
In the 20-degree chill of a predawn January day, men bundled in overcoats and hats gather outside the subway station on Eighth Ave. and 155th St., greeting each other with hugs and handshakes.

"It's not that bad today," smiles the Rev. Al Taylor, pastor of Infinity Mennonite Church in Harlem, his optimism about the weather matching his hope for the community.

At 6:05, Taylor strides toward the entrance of the Polo Grounds Houses, 10 men keeping his brisk pace. The "prayer walk" has begun, as it has every Thursday morning for the last 18 months.

Taylor, 52, started the walks after four murders within months in the Polo Grounds - and there hasn't been a killing there since.

"They may do a good job policing, but I think God has something to do with it," Taylor says.

The men form a circle in the garbage-strewn lobby of 2931 Eighth Ave., putting their arms around each other's shoulders. Some are clergymen, some are reformed alcoholics and drug addicts, some are professionals. They are African-American, Latino and white.

A 12th man joins them just as Taylor intones, "Father, we thank you this morning . . . we come here to lift up this community . . . let your anointing flow through . . . every floor, every stairwell."

A chorus of "Jesus," "Amen," and "Hallelujah" follows.

Taylor's group is called "Man Up!" from the basketball court term: "You gotta man up!"

He points across Eighth Ave. to Rucker Park, the famed breeding ground for hoops stars, and says, "There's all richness happening over there, but over here, people felt neglected."

"Rev. Al, how about some luck?" asks a burly man on his way to the train.

"Can you pray with us?" Taylor replies.

"No, I gotta go, but give my mother some blessings."

The group stops in front of Mama's Fried Chicken just outside the project. People stare from the bus stop as the men again form a circle and Anthony Hunter prays.

"This is a spot for hustling, a lot was going on here," Taylor says.

Suddenly from down the block a man in black coveralls yells, "Yo, Jack! Yo, Jack!" and waves to one of the walkers, Pastor Jack Royster, who found Christ after crack addiction and prison.

"Come on, pray with us," Royster yells back, but the guy says he's going to work.

"Just a short prayer then," Taylor says, taking the man by an arm.

They all bow their heads outside 8th Avenue Gourmet as rap music blares from a car. A man in a ragged, dirty jacket shakes their hands and says, "God bless you."

They walk down W. 154th St., to Bradhurst Ave., under the Macombs Dam Bridge roadway, a desolate spot where a man was murdered, then to a parking lot in the Polo Grounds, where the Rev. Dimas Salaberrios leads the prayer.

READ FULL ARTICLE: Heads bowed in prayer, Harlem residents 'Man Up' for safer neighborhood

2/6: Career Day for Highschoolers at Riverside Church

from harlemworld

Saturday, February 6, 2009 will mark our Nineteenth Annual Career Day at The Riverside Church. This year we kick off-off our Career Day Weekend with a very special Praise and Worship Celebration on Friday, February 5, 2009 at 7pm, at The Riverside Church.

Our entire Career Day Weekend reflects our passion to help young people focus on developing passion and purpose in their vocational aspirations that will lead to a full and productive life. During our Career Day Weekend, ministers, mentors, youth and community leaders gather at Riverside Church to encourage urban youth to realize their potential for success in life.

Our Career Day Weekend continues to be one of the most exciting youth events of this church and community, and is open to youth of any and no religious affiliation, offering youth more than 20 different workshops and panel discussions representing a variety of professional fields of endeavor and we host several colleges and universities during the Career Day College Fair.

Please click the tab to register your youth or your youth group for Career Day....

Grace, Peace and Power,
Rev J. Lee Hill, Jr.

Diddy Reveals Plan To Launch Business School In Harlem

By Kadeem Lundy of ballerstatus.com

Sean "Diddy" Combs recently made a appearance on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, "AC 360", to discuss how his image affects people and his plans to recreate his image to leave a positive mark on society.

In the past, the has had brushes with the law, including gun possession and assault charges.

On the show, he spoke with guest host Wolf Blitzer about his desire to shed his bad boy image, and present himself as a role model in the fields of business and entrepreneurship.

One way Diddy says he'll make an immediate change is by establishing a business school to help train and educate the next generation of entrepreneurs. He says the school would most likely be located in Harlem, New York.

READ FULL ARTICLE: Diddy Reveals Plan To Launch Business School In Harlem

"It's more than just about business, there's more that I'm supposed to do, there's more that I'm gonna do," Diddy said. "I want to have an academy that's known for building leaders. I feel that's one of the things I can have an impact on."

In recent Diddy news, he was recently honored by BET, at their annual BET Honors ceremony, for his contributions to hip-hop and his entrepreneurship.
Diddy Reveals Plan To Launch Business School In Harlem

Firefighters rescue two people 'ready to jump' from burning Harlem brownstone

BY KERRY BURKE AND JOHN LAUINGER

Firefighters rescued two people desperately perched on window ledges as fire raged on the top floor of a Harlem brownstone Monday, officials said.

The stranded man and woman were screaming for help as firefighters arrived at the abandoned five-story brownstone at Madison Ave. and E. 127 St. at about 4:21 p.m.

"There were two people hanging from window ledges," said FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Hodgens. "They were ready to jump."

Firefighters scurried up a massive tower ladder and plucked the two people from the window ledges as thick, black smoke billowed around them.

"She jumped into my arms as quick as she could," firefighter Artie Kunz, of the FDNY's Ladder 14, said of the rescued woman. "It made me feel great."

People who crowded on the street to watch the drama unfold were stunned by the nick-of-time rescue.

"When they put up a ladder and pulled her off, a roar went up from the crowd," said Derrick Tate, a retired Corrections Department officer. "It was glorious."

Firefighter Al Grdovich said the woman thanked God as she was carried to safety.

"I believe God was on her side," Grdovich said.

Firefighters also rescued a woman who had gone into cardiac arrest from inside the building's fifth floor.

"They were trying to revive her on the sidewalk out front," Tate recalled. "It didn't look good."

Officials said the woman, described as being in her 50s, was taken to Harlem Hospital in critical condition.

Neighbors said people had been squatting inside the abandoned building.

There was a second fire on E. 127 St. near 10th Ave. at roughly the same time Monday afternoon. That blaze was quickly brought under control, and no one was injured, officials said.

“We Are The World” Remake Has Every Musician You Like

More than 75 artists, from Barbara Streisand to Kanye West to Justin Bieber, hustled over to the Jim Henson Co. recording complex in Hollywood yesterday to record the “We Are The World” remake. The song will air on NBC February 12, during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. But you don’t have to wait til then—after the jump, check out a preview of the music industry’s finest in the studio, and a complete list of those involved… including some surprise names.

READ MORE:http://blog.newsok.com/gossip/2010/02/02/details-on/

2/8: National African American Parent Involvement Day?

February 1, 2010 by WLKM

Monday, February 8th, will have special significance as National African American Parent Involvement Day (NAAPID).

Brenda McGowan, vice-president of the local (Michigan) branch of the NAACP, said, “This is our 11th year celebrating the acknowledgement that:

• African-American parents are their child’s first and best teachers
• African-American parents have the right and responsibility to become fully engaged in Community schools
• African-American parents want their children to succeed in school and in life
• African-American parents value education and know it to be the great equalizer.”

In a letter to parents, McGowan said the NAAPID Committee, in preparation for Visit-Your-Child-in-School-Day, “wants to thank you for your participation in years past and invites you to attend NAAPID 2010 on Monday, February 8th, from 9 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. We encourage parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and mentors of school-age children to go and visit the children in their classrooms that morning and get a feel for their school day. You’re also invited to stay for lunch at school if you choose. This year’s focus and theme is Minority Student Success: The Rationale for Education Reform.”

According to McGowan, NAAPID 2010 will also include a ‘community conversation’ around the award-winning CNN documentary “Black in America.” This aspect of the February 8th observance will be held at 6 p.m. at Family Education and Development Services, LLC at 2 North Main Street in downtown Three Rivers. McGowan said, “Please consider coming out and engaging in open dialogue regarding your experience with the American education system as an African-American student and as a parent. Refreshments will be served.”

McGowan said, “Parent Involvement Day is an annual event observed on the second Monday in February during Black History Month. Inspired by the Million Man March, Ann Arbor high school principal Joseph Dulin created the day with the goal of encouraging African-American parents to become more involved in their children’s education. This NAAPID call to action is designed to address and ultimately remove the gap in the academic achievement of African-American students.”

full article: National African American Parent Involvement Day

Raw Video: Miss Virginia Crowned Miss America - African American journalism student

Miss Virginia Caressa Cameron won the 2010 Miss America title Saturday night after strutting in a yellow dress, belting Beyonce's "Listen" from "Dreamgirls" and telling kids they should get outside more often. (Jan. 30)

By Frank James of NPR

Is Miss America a sexist relic of a bygone era? A lot of people would answer yes to that. I'm agnostic on the issue.

But televised beauty pageants were arguably the ancestors of the now dominant "American Idol" type of TV programming.

And there are still no doubt millions of people who are "into" them, including many women who should be respected for being smart enough to know whether or not such pageants demean and marginalize them.

So it's worth noting that there's a new Miss America. Her name is Caressa Cameron (that given name would work for a new car model) and she was Miss Virginia before being elevated by the judges who included Rush Limbaugh. The contest was carried Saturday night on TLC, the cable channel.

She's African American, a fact that seems barely worth mentioning anymore since the pageant has crowned other Miss Americas of color since 1984 when Vanessa Williams became the first African American to win the contest.

The Washington Post's Reliable Source reports that Cameron is from Fredericksburg, Va but was something of a carpetbagger, moving around Virginia in order to find the right springboard to propel her to the Miss Virginia title.

Cameron doesn't appear to have the strongest Beltway bona fides: She was crowned Miss Arlington last year -- but like so many pageant pros, her big win came only after jumping around from local pageant to local pageant (Springfield, Hanover County, Chesterfield County) in her four-year quest to win the state crown.

READ ALSO: Can Miss America Caressa Cameron Survive Tabloids?

United Federation of Teachers sues in effort to block closure of 19 city schools

BY MEREDITH KOLODNER- DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The city's teachers union will file a lawsuit Monday in a bid to block the closure of 19 schools - ramping up its already antagonistic relationship with City Hall.

The United Federation of Teachers lawsuit accuses the city of violating the state mayoral control law by failing to account for the impact of the shutdowns on the community.

Advocates complained last week that the Education Department did not give proper notice about replacement schools before the Panel for Educational Policy voted Wednesday to approve the closures.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was in talks about joining the lawsuit, sources said. NAACP officials refused to comment yesterday.

A UFT lawsuit last year over the proposed closure of three other schools led the city to abandon its plans. None of those schools is on the closure list this year, having all received A's on recent city report cards.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended the 19 closures yesterday - and slammed the UFT for feeding the frenzy at the raucous meeting at which they were approved.

"There are a lot of other people stirring this up," Klein said on Channel 7. "A lot of people who spoke at that meeting were union leaders and chapter leaders."

UFT President Michael Mulgrew acknowledged the union provided 50 buses for parents and teachers to travel to the Brooklyn meeting, but he denied that the thousands who attended were pushed by the union. "The fact that teachers and the community were standing together, that's what should be the takeaway for the chancellor," Mulgrew said.

The UFT is in a protracted contract dispute with the city.

Mayor Bloomberg said last week the union would have to accept 2% pay raises up to a maximum of $1,400 - or face 2,500 layoffs.

Harlem Leaders Worry African Burial Ground Will Be Completely Lost to History

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

EAST HARLEM — What is now the MTA's 126th Street Bus Depot was once a colonial African burial ground, say community leaders who fear the cemetery will be lost to history under a plan to rebuild the station.

The 17th-century cemetery once occupied a one-quarter acre lot on the original Elmendorf Reformed Church grounds, on First Avenue between 126th and 127th Streets, according to archival records. African slaves built the church in what was then Manhattan wilderness, as well as a surrounding village.

“When you think of African enslavement, you don’t think of New York City,” said resident Azure Thompson, who attended a recent Town Hall meeting on preserving the cemetery.

“This burial ground effectively rewrites history, showing that slavery wasn’t just in the south.”

But a proposal by the MTA to replace the bus depot, beginning in 2015, along with current works to expand the Willis Avenue bridge, have local leaders worried that New York will lose its connection with this history.

Elmendorf Church Rev. Patricia A. Singletary formed a task force to preserve the cemetery in 2008. The coalition has outlined goals to protect and commemorate the burial ground.

“A cemetery is a community, and we have to be good stewards,” Singletary said.

Archivists have identified some of the people buried at the site, drawing up family histories and starting a genealogical search for descendants. But the process of recovering remains has not begun.

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel have lent their support to the task force.
Mark-Viverito and Rangel have also called for work to be halted on the Willis Avenue Bridge expansion project until researchers can determine whether any historical artifacts would be destroyed by it.

In a statement issued to DNAinfo, a spokesman for the MTA said the authority had not been aware of the burial ground.

The MTA was open to discussions with the community over the replacement of the bus depot while maintaining the operating levels for bus service in the rest of Manhattan, said agency spokesman Aaron Donovan.

Harlem's Promise Academy students enjoy hot, healthy school lunch made from scratch

BY MARIAH SUMMERS

A handful of school kitchens are serving up lunches that are well ahead of the healthy curve - but nutritioun does not come cheap.

At the Promise Academy Charter School in Harlem, chef Andrew Benson and his staff cook from scratch specialties such as jambalaya with Swiss chard, and lemon pepper chicken with couscous and green beans.

The school, run by the Harlem Children's Zone, also offers a colorful salad bar teeming with fresh kale, carrots, broccoli, corn, and other veggies - some even picked fresh from the school's rooftop garden.

At a recent lunch, 8-year-old Jada Clarke of the Bronx devoured her home-made chicken with green beans and couscous.

"I love a lot of the vegetables here," said Jada, adding that she eats much healthier at school than at home. "I eat string beans, broccoli, carrots, and corn. And I love tomatoes - but that's a fruit!"

The fresh bounty comes with a steep price tag: The Harlem Children's Zone spends about $4.87 a meal, compared to the city's $1.

Across town one morning at the Calhoun School, an upper West Side private school that spends $3 per meal, large pots of lamb stew and fresh-made vegetable soup simmered next to a staffer who was stuffing whole wheat pitas with hummus, tomatoes and onions.

These options, along with two extensive salad bars - complete with pomegranates, persimmons, sea beans, squash, zucchini, tofu, and Brussels sprouts - were gobbled up by students, with some even asking for more.

At both schools, desserts other than fresh fruit are a rarity, and nearly all the food is preservative-free and delivered fresh daily.

Most kids said they don't miss the sugar or processed foods often found at schools.

"The food is really great, and it's different from what I eat at home," said Calhoun third-grader Gigi Eisler, who loves green beans and couscous, and on special days, grilled cheese.

"My mom makes healthy food that's almost as good."

Huge job program for teens facing ax in Gov. Paterson's budget cuts

BY MEREDITH KOLODNER - DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Proposed budget cuts would gut a program that provided 52,000 summer jobs to low-income city teens - putting even more pressure on households that are barely making ends meet.

Gov. Paterson's budget plan yanks all state funding - $19 million - from the city's Summer Youth Employment Program, which places teens in minimum-wage jobs at nonprofit organizations, private corporations and city agencies.

"Last summer, I took a load off [my mom's] chest," said Tamika Cruz, 16, whose mother is out of work and whose dad just took a pay cut.

With the economy in the tank, it's slim picking for out-of-work 16-year-olds.

"I just went job-hunting and all the stores - even the little stores - they're asking for at least 18-year-olds," said Tamika, a junior who lives with her parents, aunt and three siblings on the lower East Side.

"This year is the hardest out of all the others."

The $19 million proposed state cut, plus a dip in city and federal funding, means there's money for only 17,000 positions, about one-third of the jobs the program provided teens last year.

Last year, there were 139,000 applicants - up from 103,000 in 2008 - and the demand is even greater now, advocates say.

"This is a worthy program that we're just not able to fund given the current economic situation," said Jessica Bassett, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Budget.

Students say the extra money - they can make up to about $1,300 - makes a big difference.

"College is coming up and college isn't very cheap," said Sanata Traore, 16, who lives in the Bronx with her sister and mother, who works as a nurse's aide. "I'm trying to save as much as I can."

Joshua Brown, 15, of Harlem, works to help out his mom, who lost her job in September.

"I'm working now so she doesn't have to pay for everything - but I need something in the summer," Joshua said.

Advocates are concerned about possible ripple effects of unemployed teens.

"What are they doing with all that idle time? And what are they doing with that pressure for some kind of income?" asked Greg Rideout of the Henry Street Settlement.

"My assumption is that a lot of it ends up being not very good."

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Kindergarten classmates sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," Sunday afternoon, at the funeral for the little star with a giant heart.

If it wasn't for six-year-old Jasmina Anema, thousands of people would not have become donors, and hundreds of leukemia victims wouldn't have gotten their second chance at life.

A chance her mother not only dreamed of, but fought for each and every day.

Last year, Jasmina's desperate search for a donor attracted celebrities like Kelly Rowland, Rihanna, and the Naked Brothers Band.
Jasmina even went to Washington to visit the President, bringing even more attention to the need for bone marrow donors.
A little more than a year ago, Jasmina was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.

Chemotherapy and radiation replaced her once normal days of chasing butterflies in the park with her adoptive mother.

"She had one mother who gave her life and brought her into this world, and for that we are forever grateful. And, she had another mother who gave her the world, and a lifetime of love and laughter packed into six years," said Karen, a family friend.

For months they waited.

A long wait was further complicated, because Jasmina was adopted and African American, making the pool of donors even smaller.

When we first met Jasmina last year, her long curly black hair had fallen out, she had developed painful shingles, and sores filled her mouth.

Then in May, she got a near-perfect donor match.

Jasmina lived much longer than what doctors expected, originally giving her just a couple of months to live.

Her year-long battle ended Wednesday night, but her inspiration still lives on.

CLICK HERE for more on Jasmina's passing.

PROFILE: Judge on Police Brutality Trail in Brooklyn

By KAREEM FAHIM

The afternoon court session grew more heated in its final hour. Michael Mineo, who prosecutors say was sodomized with a police officer’s baton during a stop, faced tough questions about the extent of his injuries and whether he remembered the color of his blood.

In the middle of that critical testimony, a lawyer for the officer requested a recess. Justice Alan D. Marrus waved him off.

The lawyer asked again. “I must go, judge,” he said, suggesting that it was nature and not strategy guiding the request. Then he caught a break: The court reporter needed to change paper. So Justice Marrus grudgingly agreed to do what he had been loath to in his 24 years on the bench in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn: slow down the action.

“Go ahead,” he told the lawyer with a resigned shrug.

It is not that Justice Marrus, 63, is impatient, or does not believe in breaks, he said later in an interview.

“I try to run a trial on a schedule, and have a plan,” he said. “The jurors seem to like that, too.”

Justice Marrus arrives at the courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn at 7 a.m. and is usually sitting in his courtroom before the day’s proceedings begin. “I don’t make an entrance,” he said.

He tells lawyers not to show up late, and has been known to warn that if they do, he might seat the jurors without them. He often brushes off requests for sidebars, saying that most of the discussions can be public; but he also does it, lawyers suspect, because the sessions take up precious time.

Since 1986, by his clerk’s count, Justice Marrus has heard more than 550 cases. “He’s probably tried more cases than most trial judges in the city, if not the state,” said Barry M. Kamins, the administrative judge for criminal matters in the Second Judicial District of New York. “He runs a tight ship. And he keeps things moving very quickly.”

The latest case for Justice Marrus, which started more than a week ago, is a high-profile police brutality trial in which Officer Richard Kern is accused of repeatedly ramming a retractable baton between Mr. Mineo’s buttocks in the Prospect Park subway station and two other officers are accused of helping cover up the abuse.

On Monday, the judge will preside over what may be the trial’s most critical moments: A transit police officer, Kevin Maloney, is expected to break ranks and testify that he saw Officer Kern jab Mr. Mineo with his baton.

Surrounded by lawyers with outsize personalities, and confronted with an accuser whose testimony involved screaming and showing off tattoos, Justice Marrus has presided with a steady hand, unruffled by the drama or the public attention. He has warmed jurors each morning with a joke (“I’m still waiting to be discovered,” he said), smiled when lawyers made grand stands and calmed nervous witnesses.

READ FULL ARTICLE: Amid Drama of Police Trial, a Judge Unfazed

NYPD Commissioner: New Year's "Brutality" video doesn't tell story

By JANON FISHER and JOHN DOYLE
January 30, 2010
The NYPD yesterday defended itself against charges of police brutality as yet another videotape showing cops beating a handcuffed suspect surfaced.

The grainy security video, taken at 5 a.m. on Jan. 1, shows several officers punching and kicking a man identified by his lawyer as Nagi Benson, 30.

Benson and a friend who also claims to have been beaten by the cops say they plan to sue the city for $5 million.
But Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says there's more to the story than what's on the video.

"There was a large fight," he said. "One officer was punched in the face and another in the back of the head."

And police union President Pat Lynch said, "What is sometimes misunderstood is that necessary force looks violent and is never pretty."

The Brooklyn DA's Office is investigating the allegations against the department, which just last week suspended two Bronx officers caught on video beating a cuffed suspect.

Read more: NYPD Commissioner: New "Brutality" video doesn't tell story

NYPD Officer Allegedly Broke Boston Tourist's Leg During Arrest

By: Jeanine Ramirez
A Boston tourist says in an exclusive NY1 report that he is scarred for life after a New York City police officer allegedly brutalized him during an arrest last month. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez filed the following report.

When Anthony Daly of Boston visited the city last month, he walked around normally. But his leg was broken in three places on December 27, the night he was taken into police custody at a Midtown hotel, and now doctors now say Daly may never walk the same way again.

A security video from the Hotel Chandler shows one of the arresting officers kick Daly twice in the back of the leg while he was handcuffed, which sending him screaming to the hallway floor.

"Scared [expletive deleted]. Thought I was going to die," said Daly. "He broke my ankle first. And I said, 'If my ankle broke,' and he said, 'I'm not finished.' And he put his foot again and he broke the back of my leg."


In the video, Daly appears to be walking fine between two officers as they remove him from the hotel room until he gets kicked and kicked again. He never gets back up until emergency medical technicians arrive and lift him onto a stretcher, and put a splint on his leg, for a trip to St. Vincent's Hospital.

Daly underwent surgery and X-rays show doctors put in a titanium rod and screws.

"When I was in the room, the cop who broke my leg in the hotel was there with me all the time," said Daly.

Daly was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and harassment. Police told NY1 the arresting officer, Joseph Bonner, was just trying to sweep Daly's feet out from underneath him and that Daly might have already broken his leg trying to keep officers out of the hotel room.

Daly's troubles started at the bar of the Hotel Chandler on the night of December 27. Police say Daly was drunk and abusive and assaulted the bartender, the doorman and two patrons.

Daly admitted he was drinking and getting rowdy, and exchanged some words with Englishmen who were singing English football songs.

"I put my hands on their backs and just said, 'Sing it up boys, sing it up. That's all that's left of your little empire, soccer,'" said Daly.

He said he then went upstairs to join his wife Ellen in their room but soon police come banging.

"I said if you haven't got a [expletive deleted] reason to arrest me, why don't you get the [expletive deleted] out of here because I want to go to bed. He said, 'I'll think of a reason,'" said Daly. "And with that, Ellen got out of the bed and I put my hand up to stop him and say, 'Stay where you are.' And he just pushed the door and pushed me on top of Ellen."

Bonner's incident report says he witnessed domestic violence in the hotel room, a claim Daly's wife Ellen denies.

"He said at that point, 'That's it, he just shoved you. You're under arrest for domestic violence.' And I said, 'What are you talking about? He didn't shove me," said Ellen Daly.

The Dalys say they want the charges dropped and have filed a complaint of excessive force with the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board.

SEE VIDEO STORY: NYPD Officer Allegedly Broke Boston Tourist's Leg During Arrest

Hip Hop 4 Haiti Bring Together Philly, Harlem And Houston With Events

Hip Hop 4 Haiti is doing a series of events today, January 30, in observance of National Hip Hop 4 Haiti Day, which will be recognized in 30 cities across the nation.

In Philadelphia at The Arts Garage there will be a live internet concert broadcasted in 40 different cities. The benefit show is slated to feature the legendary "Schooly D", Sandman, Black Deniro, Daddy-O, Housewife, Hedonis, James Cagnie, E. Ness and more.

A New York event at the National Black Theater in Harlem is scheduled to include Syles P, Naughty By Nature, Saigon and NYOIL. "Our goal is to raise spirits and funds of at least $10,000. We are urging the entire community to come together and open their hearts and wallets for those who need our help. And of course this is Hip Hop so we're going in with both feet! Beats, Rhymes, B-Boys, DJ's and plenty of Knowledge for Self,” said NYOIL in a statement to the media. He continued, "Hip Hop is a family; we don't always see eye to eye and we are always arguing, like most families; but don't mistake that familiarity as breeding contempt. Understand that we bicker, fuss and fight because we are family, and at our essence we have immense love for one another and what we are all a part of. Now Haiti is about to see what that love that power can do when focused and applied toward a singular goal."

NYPD COP accused of raping teenage girl

By LIZ SADLER of NY Post

The city appointed two crooked cops to an elite task force and failed to properly train or supervise them, setting the stage for the sexual assault of a teenage girl, her lawyer charged yesterday.

Officers Andrew Johnson and Donald Nelson picked up a high-school senior on an East Flatbush street corner in 2006 for allegedly playing hooky and drove her home.

Hours later, Johnson, then an eight-year NYPD veteran assigned to the Brooklyn narcotics division, returned to the apartment in his own car and molested her, lawyer Seth Harris told jurors in his opening statement in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

"He takes up his right hand and waves a gun in front of her face. At that point, for a few moments, she stops resisting because she's terrified by the sight of this gun," Harris said.

"He pulls down her pants, touches her breasts and private parts."

The girl, now 21, and her mother are suing the city and both officers for $5 million. Nelson, 39, and the city have denied the suit's allegations.

Johnson, who pleaded guilty to official misconduct in the criminal case and was conditionally discharged, did not answer the civil complaint and faces a default judgment.

Defense lawyer Gail Goode conceded that Johnson is "a dog, a bad cop" and "a bad husband" but said he alone was to blame for the incident.

Goode also questioned the girl's claim that she suffered severe psychological damage from the assault, noting that she failed to immediately report it to her mom, who returned home less than two minutes later.

"You have just, for 14 minutes, had a guy pull a gun on you, a guy on top of you, a guy unbutton your blouse -- for 14 minutes -- and what do you say?" Goode said in her opening statement.

" 'Hi, Mama, how was your day?' "

Harris said the girl, now a college student, gave up modeling after the assault and was abandoned by friends who didn't believe her story.

He said Johnson, who had been placed on modified duty in 2004 for allowing a prisoner to escape and failing to report it, and Nelson, who had been suspended and arrested in 2000 for soliciting an undercover cop posing as a prostitute, never should have been chosen for the special unit.

"These guys are on the job, looking for girls -- that's what they're doing," Harris said.

Nelson, who is still a cop in Brooklyn, sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom.

Harris said Johnson is believed to be living in Florida.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: NYPD 'perv' blame

2 Guilty in Harlem Shop Holdup Stopped by Owner

Photo of shooting scene by 1010 WINS reporter Al Jones

NEW YORK (AP) -- The two surviving members of a group of would-be stickup artists thwarted by a shotgun-wielding business owner pleaded guilty Wednesday to robbery.

Shamel McCloud, 21, and Bernard Witherspoon, 22, were among four men who tried to hold up the Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corp. at gunpoint in August. Police said one of the restaurant supply store's employees was pistol-whipped before 72-year-old proprietor Charles Augusto Jr. fired the weapon he had gotten after an armed robbery 30 years before.

McCloud and Witherspoon were wounded. James Morgan, 29, and Raylin Footmon, 21, were killed.

McCloud and Witherspoon are expected to get 5-year prison terms at their sentencing, set for March 11.

McCloud's lawyer, Scott E. Leemon, called the episode a "drastic mistake" for McCloud. Witherspoon's lawyer didn't immediately return a telephone call.

Augusto said by phone Wednesday that he had hoped they would not be punished too harshly and feared prison would "mess them up."

Augusto, who wasn't charged with any crime, said he hoped never to use his 12-gauge shotgun in such circumstances again. But he remains prepared, should armed robbers strike a third time at the business where he has worked for nearly 50 years.

"If they come around, it's them or me, I'm not going to take that," he said.

READ MORE: Harlem Business Owner Shoots Would-Be Robbers; 2 Fatally

AUDIO: Cuomo to Sue Vantage Properties for dirty tricks against tenants

by Cindy Rodriguez
NEW YORK, NY January 29, 2010 —New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo intends to sue a major landlord in the city for allegedly harassing rent-regulated tenants.

Vantage properties owns about 125 buildings in Queens, Harlem and Upper Manhattan. They're accused of trying to push out long term rent-regulated tenants so they can replace them with high paying market rate tenants. According to Cuomo, they do this by filing frivolous lawsuits against them. In some cases, he says, they refuse to cash rent checks and then take tenants to housing court for nonpayment of rent.

In a written statement, Vantage says it looks forward to demonstrating to the Attorney General that its committed to both it tenants and affordable housing.

READ MORE: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo plans to sue Vantage Properties for dirty tricks against tenants

Law Has Little Effect on Early Release for Inmates

By CARA BUCKLEY

COXSACKIE, N.Y. — With his swollen legs and a throaty rasp that whistles like a kettle through his broken teeth, Eddie Jones is an unlikely man to make history.

He is 89 and dying, a former loan shark who, at 69, shot another man dead on a Harlem street in what he claimed was self-defense. Now he is serving a sentence of 25 years to life in a prison hospital bed in this upstate town, riddled with heart disease and probably cancer, though his doctors are not certain about the cancer because Mr. Jones has refused most every medical test.

Mr. Jones’s original parole date was in 2015, but he stands to go free in the coming weeks under a new state law that makes chronically as well as terminally ill inmates eligible for early release. Inmates must be deemed physically or cognitively unable to present a threat to society.

The law, passed with the state budget last April, expanded the eligibility list to add those convicted of violent crimes including second-degree murder (like Mr. Jones), first-degree manslaughter and sex offenses, so long as the ailing inmates have served half their time.

But despite fanfare within the corrections field about the humanitarian and financial benefits of compassionate release — New York is one of a dozen states that have expanded, enacted or streamlined programs over the past two years — the policy shift has had minimal effect. Experts attribute this to the fear that freed inmates, no matter how sick, might commit further crimes, as well as to the difficulty of placing dying criminals in nursing homes.

“The problem is, when we start trying to put people out, there are others in the community who are sure we’re trying to make more crime in the community,” said Dr. Lester Wright, chief medical officer for the New York State Department of Correctional Services. “We’re also competing for beds. Some people think my patients aren’t as valuable as other people in society.”

Read FULL article: Law Has Little Effect on Early Release for Inmates

Tea and Uncertainty For a Busy Harlem Family

By CONSTANCE ROSENBLUM

IN the living room of a century-old gray limestone town house in Sugar Hill, the Harlem neighborhood colonized by the city’s African-American elite, the Kogan family is enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning.

Paul Kogan, the vice president of an online computer gaming company, is pouring Assam black tea into white mugs emblazoned with photographs of three smiling children. These same children — Jacob, 14; Sasha, 12; and Leo, 3 — wander in and out as their mother, Deborah Copaken Kogan, a k a “Shutterbabe,” the title of her 2001 memoir about her experiences as a war photographer, calmly folds laundry. Splashes of color come from the vase of red tulips on the dining room table, which is made of old Indian railroad ties, and a bowl of clementines on a coffee table made of French tiles.

Except for the piles of socks and T-shirts, it looks like the ultimate Kodak moment. But the journey that led to this cozy domestic scene could not have been bumpier. And that journey involved seemingly every hot-button issue that arises when New Yorkers play the real estate game — sputtering careers (made tougher to navigate by the recession), the location and costs of schools, and fiercely held opinions about the appeal of various neighborhoods. Add to the list the demands of a three-child family, a parent who works at home (Ms. Kogan, a writer as well as a photographer, is completing her fourth book), and a few spectacularly wrongheaded real estate decisions, and you have the recipe for a quintessentially New York crisis.

“At one point, money was so tight that a couple of our friends sent us $10,000 checks, which made us feel both incredibly grateful and slightly pathetic,” Mr. Kogan said as he peeled a clementine. “It was truly our annus horribilis.”

The saga started in 1992. After various adventures around the globe, the Kogans, now both 43, rented a small, run-down apartment on West End Avenue for $950 a month. In 1995, married and expecting their first child, they bought a two-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive for $225,000. “First floor, dark, bus fumes,” Ms. Kogan recalled. “We vowed, never again.”

In 2001, by then with two children, the couple made what Ms. Kogan described as “the dumbest real estate mistake ever,” moving to a three-bedroom apartment at 94th Street and Broadway for which the monthly rent was $7,100. “It was like buying a small Korean car every month,” Mr. Kogan said.

The year 2002 found the family in a Classic 6 on West 96th Street. It was perfect in every respect, except for a third child on the way, Mr. Kogan’s losing his job, private school tuition for Jacob, a puppy who was methodically destroying the place, and a need for office space for Ms. Kogan. Add to the list a rent of $4,200 that eventually climbed to $4,600 and was headed for $5,000.

That period was shadowed by the illness and ultimate death of Ms. Kogan’s father, whose final words to his daughter were, “Promise me you won’t move those kids to Brooklyn.”

At this point in her life, Ms. Kogan had seen Harlem only through the windows of a Town Car. But she trolled Craigslist, met a few local residents, and in June of 2009, the family moved to the top three floors of the town house on St. Nicholas Avenue.

Their quarters, for which they pay $3,500 in rent, are rich with the trappings of a peripatetic life. There are posters from France, where the couple met, along with kitsch from Mr. Kogan’s native Russia, including an image of Lenin on a red velvet wall-hanging. In one bedroom is a wooden mask from the couple’s honeymoon in Bali; in another is the blanket Ms. Kogan slept on when she worked in Afghanistan.

Evidence of creativity abounds.

Though just a teenager, Jacob has a flourishing career as an actor, and in the family room hangs a poster for the 2007 psychological thriller “Joshua,” in which he plays the psychopathic title character. Jacob’s four guitars are stashed in a corner of his bedroom, and on a wall of the bedroom that Sasha shares with Leo hang examples of her artwork, including a moody image of a woman painted when she was 7.

Lining a long hallway are Ms. Kogan’s glossy black-and-white photographs of her family, interspersed with a few haunting images of her husband as a child.

The total effect looks lively and effortless. But in fact, the décor was largely achieved on a strict budget. Ms. Kogan did much of the carpentry herself; she attributes her skills to the fact that a great-grandfather was a carpenter in Kiev.

FULL STORY: Tea and Uncertainty For a Busy Family

Sharpton: Dumping Barron Will Haunt Quinn

BY ELIZABETH BENJAMIN

The Rev. Al Sharpton warned today that Council Speaker Christine Quinn's decision to oust Councilman Charles Barron from his chairmanship of the Higher Education Committee could hurt her down the road.

Sharpton declined to criticize Barron's replacement, Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, whom he called "a credible person".

But he suggested Quinn might not find black leaders like himself so welcoming when she comes calling for support of "things she wants to do in the future" - such as, say, a run for mayor in 2013.

"I think that down the road she will be reminded of this one thing I've learned in New York and national politics: Some things you just wait on. It comes back your way," Sharpton said. "We're not going anywhere...I've learned to be patient."

Sharpton indicated he has already started giving Quinn the cold shoulder in retaliation for her move against Barron. Unsolicited, he noted the speaker was at his MLK Day celebration in Harlem recently and didn't get a chance to speak.

"I just think we were busy," Sharpton said when pressed on whether he had purposely relegated Quinn to a bit part in the marathon event.
Last month, Sharpton and other black leaders held a City Hall press conference in hopes of pressuring Quinn not to bounce Barron. (Obviously, that didn't have much of an effect).

Sharpton can't feel all that upset about this, since it took a reporter's question to prompt him to slam Quinn on Barron's behalf. The committee chairmanships were voted on last week, and Sharpton didn't utter a word at the time.

READ MORE: City council re-elects Christine Quinn as speaker in a racially-charged session

Wyclef Jean Talks Haiti Relief in Harlem

Rev. Al Sharpton and other black religious leaders join in Harlem press conference

By GRACE WEST
Haitian-born singer and producer Wyclef Jean spoke in Harlem today about the relief efforts of his Yele Haiti Foundation and his recent trip to the country.

Many New York black clergy leaders, such as Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Herbert Daughtry joined Jean in the press conference at National Action Network’s House of Justice to pledge support to Yele.

Jean says he is working with his foundation to deliver cooked meals, water and medical supplies to earthquake survivors.
He also urged President Barack Obama to make a "sustainable commitment" to rebuilding the country during his State of the Union address.

Jean traveled to Haiti the day after the Jan. 22 "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon to raise funds for aid efforts.

The 37-year-old Grammy-winning artist was born in Croix-des-Bouquets just eight miles north of Port-au-Prince. The Jan. 12th earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people.

For more information or to donate, visit Help for Haiti.

City Panel Approves Closing of 19 Schools

By SHARON OTTERMAN and JENNIFER MEDINA of NY Times

In a contentious meeting that drew more than eight hours of public testimony, a city board voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 schools for poor performance, despite the protests from hundreds of observers who repeatedly drowned out the meeting with cheers, shouts and boos.

More than 300 speakers addressed the board, the Panel for Educational Policy, beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene. By the time the panel began voting at 2:40 a.m. they had heard a litany of complaints from hundreds of parents, students, teachers and administrators and just a handful of speakers who said they supported closing the schools.

But as expected, the panel overwhelmingly approved the closures recommended by the Education Department. The votes to close the schools fell along political lines, with the appointees of the Manhattan, Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn borough presidents voting against the closings while each of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s appointees approved them without question. Nearly every school shutdown was approved on a 9 to 4 vote, with the representative for the Staten Island borough president mostly siding with the mayor’s appointees, and the audience shouting “shame on you” and “disgrace.”

The panel has been widely criticized as a rubber-stamp to the Bloomberg administration and has largely held an obscure role in education policy. But under new laws governing the mayor’s control of the school system, the panel was required to make the final approval of closures of low performing schools, a centerpiece of the mayor and Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s effort to overhaul the school system.

“Listening means to hear but also to digest and allow the information to have an effect on our opinion,” said Dymtro Fedkowskyi, the representative from Queens.

Patrick Sullivan, who represents Manhattan on the board and has long been one of the few dissenting voices, pressed the mayor’s appointees to explain why they approved of the policy. “Is there anyone who will defend this?” he asked. All but one of the mayor’s appointees remained silent. “I can’t see how anyone can vote in good conscious,” Mr. Sullivan said.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: City Panel Approves Closing of 19 Schools

NEW VIDEO: NYC Mumia supporters rally in response to Jan. 2010 Supreme Court ruling

1/20/10 - Mumia supporters rally in NYC around the January 19th 2010 US Supreme court ruling granting appeal by prosecutors. The ruling brings Mumia closer to execution. Hip Hop Artist Immortal Techinque, a Baruch College professor as well as Danny Meyers of the National Guild of Lawyers are shown in this clip. For more information visit: freemumia.com

Tues Jan 26 PROTECT: The Harlem African Burial Grounds

from Harlem+Bespoke blog:

Tuesday, January 26th, 6:30 PM at the Elmendorf Reformed Church. The Elmendorf Reformed Church (ERC) Harlem African Burial Ground Task Force will host an informational Town Hall Meeting about the site of New York's second oldest burial ground for Africans in pre-revolutionary America. The "First Church of Haarlem," built its first house of worship at what is now the corner of First Avenue and 127th Street in 1665, and dedicated about a quarter-acre of the property for use as the "Negro Burying Ground," according to the church web site. Today the burial site is mostly covered by the NYCTA 126th Street Bus Depot, and possibly parts of 126th and 127th Streets just west of 1st Avenue.

Community members want to raise awareness and make sure that the government is conscientiously regarding the site since it is in the process of a major infrastructure overhaul. Politicians that will be in attendance include U.S. Representative Charles B. Rangel, State Senators Bill Perkins and Jose M. Serrano, City Comptroller John Liu, and Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer. The third incarnation of the Elmendorf Reformed Church is at 171 East 121st Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. The nearest subway is the 4,5,6 train is at 125th Street or 5 train at 116th Street.

NYC Men arrested for Candy possession, will file $2M suit

From the Daily News:

Cops accused Cesar Rodriguez and Jose Pena of having crack cocaine in their work van, but it was only coconut candy, they said Friday.

Charges were dropped after tests showed they were telling the truth, but the two men plan to file a $2 million suit against the NYPD.

"I spent five days in jail for possession of coconut candy," said Rodriguez, 33, an ex-con who works as a plumber's assistant.

He and Pena were parked near an Arthur Ave. bodega Jan. 15 when two police officers asked to search their green Chevy Venture van, the men said.

The cops found pieces of the crystalline candy - known as crema de coco and sold in bodegas across the city - in a plastic baggie.

Officer Anthony Burgos of the 48th Precinct arrested the duo for drug possession despite their insistence they were guilty only of a sweet tooth, Rodriguez said.

"I kept telling him it is candy," he said.

READ FULL ARTICLE: Bronx men to file $2M suit against city after cops arrested them for 'crack' that was really candy

Happy Re-Birthday, Apollo Theater!

Seventy-six years ago today, the Apollo Theater re-opened in Harlem. Before this date in 1934, the Apollo catered to an all-white crowd, left over from the theater's early days as a burlesque venue. Reflecting Harlem's rapid changes in the 1920s and 30s as the center of African-American life in New York, however, the new owners Sydney S. Cohen and Morris Sussman revamped and reopened the theater on January 26, 1934, for the first time offering entertainment for black audiences.

First on tap: Jazz a la Carte, with Benny Carter and his orchestra, the "16 Gorgeous Hot Steppers," vaudeville songstress Aida Ward, ballroom dancers Norton and Margot, plus the schlocky mystery film Criminal At Large.

Soon thereafter, Ralph Cooper Sr. would introduce a live version of his 'Amateur Night' radio contest. In November, that contest would be won by a young Ella Fitzgerald.

The Apollo was an all-day entertainment extravaganza in 1934. Doors opened "around 10 a.m. and offered four or five shows a day, starting with a short film, a newsreel, a featured film, followed by a revue," according to Robert O'Meally. [source]

from: The Bowery Boys, NYC History

7-Year-Old Raises Over $160-Thousand For Haiti Earthquake Relief

Talking about giving back, Charlie Simpson, a 7-year-old boy from England has raised over $160-thousand for the relief fund for Haitian earthquake victims.

The unselfish kid asked his mother if he could set up a sponsored bicycle ride around his local park in West London. Originally expecting to raise around $1,000 for UNICEF Haiti appeal with a 5-mile bike ride on Sunday, donations poured in from his webpage and are still coming.

His mother Lenora Simpson stated,

" He was really upset by the pictures on TV. He actually burst into tears. He sat on my lap and we had a chat about the things he could do. He decided to do the cycle ride and he made me do a sponsorship form and that was it. We sent it out on the web and it just went everywhere."
After posting on Justgiving.com, she added, "

"What started off as a little cycle round the park with his dad has turned into something a lot bigger than that and we can't believe it. He's done really well. He's worked hard and he's raised a phenomenal amount of money. He really felt strongly about this and thought that something had to be done. It was great to see him so motivated. I am extremely proud of our Charlie."

Buying Power of African American Consumers Approaching $1 Trillion in 2010

from Urbanmecca.com
With a population of 40 million and buying power approaching $1 trillion in 2010, African Americans are a key segment in an economy that increasingly depends upon the needs and preferences of multicultural consumers, according to “The African American Market in the U.S., 8th Edition” by leading market research publisher Packaged Facts.

“With such financial clout, marketing efforts to reach out to African Americans are likely to increase,” says Don Montuori, publisher of Packaged Facts. “Major consumer products marketers have begun to align their strategies with the multicultural majority emerging in the U.S. and some have even indicated that multicultural consumers have become their core focus as they strategize and set their sights on the next ten years.”

The African American population is smaller than the U.S. Hispanic market, but the disposable personal income of both African American and Latino consumers is projected to trend comparably over the next five years, with each experiencing cumulative growth of at least 28% from 2009-2014. Packaged Facts estimates that the buying power of black consumers in the U.S. will increase to $1.2 trillion by the end of the forecast period.

The African American consumer population has been hit especially hard by the recent recession, with unemployment rates for blacks exceeding that of any other major population group. Nevertheless, several sources cited in the report indicate that the sense of empowerment created by the election of Barack Obama has spurred blacks to adopt a more optimistic vision of the future than that held by other Americans. This includes greater optimism regarding their own personal finances and a general proclivity to agree that they are less likely to hold off making big-ticket purchases such as automobiles in the near future.
“The African American Market in the U.S., 8th Edition” focuses on how African American consumers are responding to the challenges of today’s economy as they shop in department stores, supermarkets, drug stores and other retail outlets as well as online and from catalogs. The report analyzes the forces shaping the purchase decisions of African American shoppers and sheds light on key areas such as how black consumers decide where to shop and what influences them while they are shopping. In addition, the report pays particular attention to the attitudes and behavior of affluent African American shoppers. Primary data on African American consumer behavior are drawn from the Summer 2009 Experian Simmons National Consumer Study (NCS).

Harlem Weighs in on Obama's First Year

Three generations in Harlem give different perspectives on Barack Obama's first year in office

Should the Census Be Asking People if They Are Negro?

By Barbara Kiviat

Use of the word Negro to describe a black person has largely fallen out of polite conversation — except on the U.S. Census questionnaire. There, under "What is this person's race?" is an option that reads, "Black, African Am., or Negro." That has raised the ire of certain black activists and politicians as the Census Bureau gears up to mail out its once-a-decade questionnaires. The controversy has been cast by many as an instance of a tone-deaf agency not keeping up with the times. In actuality, the flash point represents a much larger theme: the often contentious way the Census both reflects and forges our evolving understanding of race.

The immediate reason the word Negro is on the Census is simple enough: in the 2000 Census, more than 56,000 people wrote in Negro to describe their identity — even though it was already on the form. Some people, it seems, still strongly identify with the term, which used to be a perfectly polite designation. To blindly delete it is to risk incorrectly counting the unknown number of (presumably older) black Americans who identify with the term.

But the Census Bureau is aware that times are changing — and not just when it comes to the word Negro. As part of the 2010 Census, the bureau will test 15 major changes to questions about race and Hispanic origin. For each, approximately 30,000 households will receive a slightly different questionnaire so that demographers and statisticians can use data — along with follow-up interviews — to decide if the modification helps or hurts the accuracy and consistency of information collected. "We hope this will help us better understand the way people identify with these concepts," says Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census' racial-statistics branch. One change being tested: deleting the word Negro. Others include combining queries about Hispanic origin and race into one question and getting rid of the word race in the question altogether.

Those modifications could have a lasting impact on how Americans think about race. Census data underpin broad stretches of society, from federal regulations to corporate marketing strategies, and how data are framed when collected speaks to our collective worldview (both contemporary and historical). Consider that in a 2006 study of 138 censuses from around the world, New York University sociologist Ann Morning found that only 15% of those asking about ancestry or national origin used the term race. Almost all of those that did were former slave economies.

Read FULL article: Should the Census Be Asking People if They Are Negro?

The Harlem Flophouse featured in Dallas Morning News

The Harlem Flophouse

242 W. 123rd St.; 212-662-0678; www.harlemflophouse.com

No TVs or phones, but this 1890s brownstone offers plenty of atmosphere.

Harlem Flophouse
This Harlem Flophouse room is named for Billie Holiday's harpist Corky Hale.
The former government- run rooming house renovated and run by an artist and serious jazz buff is near the famed Apollo Theater and numerous jazz and gospel spots.

The four rooms with sinks have shared baths. Neat touches include restored tin ceilings, antique claw-foot tubs and feline greeter Calliope Katz, who has a Facebook page.

Breakfast isn't included. Traditional Southern brunch for two with all the trimmings is $100. More Southern cuisine is at nearby Amy Ruth's, where dishes are named for President Obama and other luminaries.

Rates run from $125 to $150 a night for a single (surcharge for additional people) Children younger than 12, free.


READ FULL ARTICLE: Make yourself at home in Manhattan hotels that have character

Costco Tells East Harlem That It's Laying Off 160 Workers

By Jon Schuppe

EAST HARLEM — Two months ago, Costco opened its first big-box store in one of Manhattan’s poorest neighborhoods, winning over residents by promising to hire locals.

Now many of those workers are losing their jobs.

Costco told community leaders by phone this month that it was laying off 160 of its 453 employees after its December sales fell short of expectations.

It remains unclear how many of the 142 employees from East Harlem are getting axed, but officials said they’ve heard from several already. They’ve demanded a meeting with the company to explain what’s going on.

“Any time you hear about job losses, it’s sad, to say the least,” Community Board 11 chairman Matthew Washington said. “A big part of us pushing this through… was that there was this deal in which all these jobs were going to come. When you’re here two months later and people have been let go, it’s certainly upsetting. Especially when we don’t fully understand why.”
So far, Costco has not responded to the board in any formal way. But the company seemed willing to consider seeking temporary subsidies from the city’s Human Resources Administration that could help them re-hire some of the locals, officials said.

Costco, which operates 566 warehouse stores worldwide, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The company reported this month that its global earnings in December had increased 11 percent, to $8.26 billion.

The 105,000-square-foot East Harlem store (about half the size of its typical outlet) opened to citywide fanfare on Nov. 12. It was the first tenant of East River Plaza, a new shopping outlet between East 116th and East 119th streets near the FDR Drive. Eventually, the center will include Best Buy, Marshalls and Target stores.

East River Plaza’s developer worked with the community board and a local non-profit, STRIVE, to make sure people who lived in East Harlem would be among the new hires. Officials said the agreement called for Costco to take 60 percent of its new hires from East Harlem. Costco also agreed to accept food stamps.

In return, the community board agreed to allow Costco to make overnight truck deliveries.

That agreement wasn’t legally binding, but was important to a neighborhood with a 17 percent unemployment rate and where a quarter of residents use food stamps.

That optimism started to fade after the opening. Many employees were told that their positions were “seasonal,” officials said. Customers complained about the price of parking. And the community board was disappointed that the percentage of local hires didn’t rise above 38 percent. Now they’re trying to salvage that number.

“Costco and other retailers are going to be there, and we want to have a good working relationship with them,” Washington said. “And we want to be able to put a dent in the unemployment rate in East Harlem.”

Parents, locals call for return of free student MetroCards

By Ray Katz
Skyla Williams, a kindergarten student, commutes into Manhattan.

Five mornings a week, Skyla and her mother, Autumn Alston, ride a bus from their home near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to Harlem Link Charter School on West 112th Street‑a bus ride Alston said is made possible by Skyla’s free student fare.

The elimination of free student MetroCards was voted through last month by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is scrambling to eliminate a $383 million shortfall in its budget. The cuts have ignited furious protest from local parents, students, school administrators and city politicians, who say that poorer students, especially from Harlem, will be left unable to get to school.

“I will be affected,” Skyla’s mother, Autumn Alston, said. “How is she going to get to school every morning?”

On Friday, the MTA announced revisions to its original plan that would restore service to a number of bus routes and one subway line, but included no changes to the student MetroCards cut.

“It’s enough to make a family move to the suburbs, where the thought of charging students to get to school is unthinkable,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in a statement. “We need to do better. Invoking a ‘kid-tax’ is no way to balance the budget, especially during a recession,” he said.

Still, local politicians expressed confidence that the students who rely on free MetroCards will soon be in the clear. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Christine Quinn, city council speaker, have both denounced the authority’s decision.

“They’ll go back,” said city council member Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side). “Those MetroCards will be back for students as long as we keep up the protests,” she added.
Students remained concerned that paying to get to school would leave attendance rates to suffer.

“If you think about it, half of the students might drop out,” said Michelle Delgadillo, a tenth grade student at the Academy for Social Action, on West 129th Street in Harlem. “How do you want us to get an education and learn if we can’t make it to school?

Eighty percent of students at Future Leaders Institute Charter School on West 122nd Street in Harlem use the free cards to travel to school each day, according to chief operating officer Patricia Charlemagne.

“This is really going to have a major impact, because a lot of these families don’t have the resources to drive their kids to school or the means to pay for a MetroCard,” said Charlemagne.

The MTA announced on Friday that it would be holding eight public hearings to get community input on the service changes that are also a part of the authority’s plan to close the budget gap.

Read FULL article: Parents, locals call for return of free student MetroCards

Harlem's famed Sylvia's soul food joint to begin home delivery in February

BY ERIN DURKIN

Hungry Harlemites craving chicken and ribs will soon be able to let their fingers do the walking.

Famed Lenox Ave. soul food joint Sylvia's will start home delivery next month, Crain's New York reported.

Sylvia's decided to get into the delivery game after customers clamored for it, Trenness Woods-Black, granddaughter of founder Sylvia Woods, told Crain's New York Business.

"We've never gotten the amount of calls for delivery that we did last year," she said.

The 48-year-old restaurant rolled out a curbside delivery service for patrons in cars last month, and home delivery will start in February.

Only customers between 110th and 145th Sts. can get barbecued ribs, black-eyed peas and biscuits brought right to their doors - although the restaurant will go farther south for a big enough order.

Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit got lunch for 40 delivered to his midtown office last week, Woods-Black told Crain's. "He's a new Sylvia's fan," she said.

Slavery in US Prisons?-A conversation with Robert King & Terry Kupers

This new video released by Angola 3 News is the third part of an interview conducted with Robert King and Terry Kupers in October 2009, in Oakland, CA. when King was in town for Black Panther History Month. In the first two parts King and Kupers discussed the psychological impact of imprisonment (watch here). In this new video, Robert King and Dr. Terry Kupers, argue that slavery persists today in Angola and other U.S. prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as "a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." As King says: "You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent."

read more: Angola 3 News

3 Cops Beat 18yr Old Violinist, Honor Student In Pittsburgh!

Sadly 2010 is off to a shakey start with the story of this horrific police beating of an young violinist Jordan Miles who just several months ago played for First Lady Michele Obama.


Read also: Police brutality charge by teen disturb mayor

AND: Mother alleges son brutalized by police

Stray bullet hits woman in East Harlem

BY JOHN LAUINGER

A 50-year-old woman was hit in the leg by a stray bullet as she strolled in East Harlem on Sunday afternoon, police said.

The woman, who wasn't named by cops, was walking on Third Ave. near E. 106th St. about 2 p.m. when she saw a short young man whip out a black handgun during an argument with another man, police said.

The woman and three 911 callers reported hearing three shots ring out.

"Next thing she knows, she was hit in the right knee," a police source said.

The gunman, described as an 18-year-old and about 5-feet-2, bolted down E. 106th St., the source said.

The victim was transported by ambulance to St. Luke's Hospital. Her injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Harlem charter schools…coming to movie theaters everywhere

A film premiering at Sundance from the director of "An Inconvenient Truth" strongly features Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone.

By Maura Waltz
As the Sundance Film Festival kicks into high gear this afternoon, mingling among the movie stars and directors will be a New York education celebrity — the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Geoffrey Canada.

Canada is attending the Park City, Utah festival for today’s world premiere of “Waiting for Superman,” a new documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar in 2007 for helming the Al Gore climate change film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Guggenheim’s film is one of two new documentaries that feature Harlem charter schools prominently and cast them in a glowing light. The other is “The Lottery,” which will be released in May and which follows a group of families seeking entrance into Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academies.

“Waiting for Superman” follows five children from around the country as they navigate the public schools system. None of them are Harlem Children’s Zone students, said an HCZ spokesman, Marty Lipp, but Canada offers commentary throughout the film. In an interview, Guggenheim calls Canada “perhaps the strongest voice” in the film.

Canada will also speak at the festival tomorrow on a panel called “Can’t Be Done!” The panel characterizes public education (along with poverty and global warming) as a problem conventional wisdom deems “too entrenched to remedy.” Canada will appear alongside Nobel laureate microcredit lender Muhammad Yunus and environmentalist Lester Brown to discuss how supposedly intractable problems can be solved.

Canada is a popular figure in the media, with observers like Anderson Cooper and David Brooks celebrating the Harlem Children’s Zone’s successes in boosting its Harlem students’ third grade test scores to above or beyond those of their suburban counterparts. But some critics, including GothamSchools commentator Aaron Pallas, wonder if it’s perhaps too early to conclude that Canada has solved the problem of public education.

While the first official screening of the film is today (even Canada hasn’t seen it yet, Lipp said), it seems clear that Guggenheim is firmly in the Canada fan club. The director is pitching the film as being about education reform, but he’s using the term “reformer” with a very particular meaning, one that has been hotly debated on this site. A promotional description of the film describes its slant this way:

[E]mbracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, and ultimately questioning the role of unions in maintaining the status quo, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have—in reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind.
In addition to Canada, the film also features D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates and KIPP co-founders David Levin and Mike Feinberg. This group, along with Moskowitz, Chancellor Joel Klein and Teach for America’s Wendy Kopp, all advocate broadly for high stakes accountability for schools and teachers and often clash with teachers unions.

When “An Inconvenient Truth” was released, it was accompanied by a strong off-screen anti-global warming advocacy campaign, and it looks like “Waiting for Superman” will have an off-screen activism element as well. (There’s already an advocacy social media site set up for the film where highlighted news headlines include Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s push to tie student test scores to teacher tenure.)

“Waiting for Superman” was the first Sundance film this year picked up for distribution by a studio and should hit theaters this fall.

Cop Caught on Video in 'Beating' - New York Post

Bronx cops is allegedly seen on video punching and kicking handcuffed suspect.

BLACK MALE SOPHOMORES: Jan 29 DEADLINE approaching for PAID INTERNSHIPS

PAID INTERNSHIPS AND HOUSING -----for anyone who may know a young college sophomore looking to get their foot in government. Attached is information about an internship program that serves African American males and provides networking opportunities, mentors, paid internships, and housing! -- various programs

Please pass this along to any deserving college sophomore. Thanks!


for more info visit: Institute for Responsible Citizenship

Charles B. Rangel Technology & Learning Center at The Armory | NEW BALANCE TRACK & FIELD CENTER

The Charles B. Rangel Technology & Learning Center at The Armory is a stepping stone of opportunity, equality and civic participation for youth, senior citizens, minorities and low-income people.

The missions is to serve as a focal point for job skill development, lifelong learning and community building.

Registration
Class registration must be done in person Monday-Friday from 11:00am to 6:00pm. There will be a $20.00 per-course registration fee (cash or check).

Community Access
Year-round the Charles B. Rangel Technology & Learning Center offer open access for the community to use the computers.

Monday through Friday
1:00pm - 4:30pm

Directions
Take the A or 1 trains to 168th Street, then walk one block west to Fort Washington Ave

Contact Us
TLC Director: Ruddy Cordero
212-923-1803 x27
rcordero@armorytrack.com
TLC Assistant: Domingo Garcia
212-923-1803 x28
dgarcia@armorytrack.com

website: Charles B. Rangel Technology & Learning Center at The Armory

Whites-Only Basketball League: All-American Basketball Alliance Bans Blacks, Foreigners

A whites-only basketball league aims to launch in twelve cities this summer, according to a report in the Augusta Chronicle. The All-American Basketball Alliance would also ban players born outside the United States.

The league's commissioner, Don "Moose" Lewis, claims that he doesn't "hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now." Thus, he says, the All-American Basketball Alliance would be "a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like."

The report includes additional shocking quotes from the commissioner:

Lewis said he wants to emphasize fundamental basketball instead of "street-ball" played by "people of color." ...

"Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?" he said. "That's the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction."


READ more here: Basketball league for white Americans targets Augusta

Coyote captured in Harlem

New York (CNN) -- One wily coyote traveled a bit too far from home, and its resulting adventure through Harlem had alarmed residents doing a double take and scampering to get out of its way Wednesday morning.

Police say frightened New Yorkers reported the coyote sighting around 9:30 a.m., and an emergency service unit was dispatched to find the animal. The little troublemaker was caught and tranquilized in Trinity Cemetery on 155th street and Broadway, and then taken to the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, authorities said.

"The coyote is under evaluation and observation," said Mary Dixon, spokesperson for the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Dixon said the coyote is a female, between 1 and 2 years old. She said the Department of Environmental Conservation will either send the animal to a rescue center or put it back in the wild.

According to Adrian Benepe, New York City Parks Commissioner, coyotes in Manhattan are rare, but not unheard of.
"This is actually the third coyote that has been seen in the last 10 years," Benepe said.

Benepe said there is a theory the coyotes make their way to the city from suburban Westchester.

He said they probably walk down the Amtrak rail corridor along the Hudson River or swim down the Hudson River until they get to the city.

New 6.1-quake hits Haiti, people flee into streets

Associated Press:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The most powerful aftershock yet struck Haiti on Wednesday, shaking more rubble from damaged buildings and sending screaming people running into the streets eight days after the country's capital was devastated by an apocalyptic quake.

The magnitude-6.1 temblor was the largest of more than 40 significant aftershocks that have followed the Jan. 12 quake. The extent of additional damage or injuries was not immediately clear.

Wails of terror rose from frightened survivors as the earth shuddered at 6:03 a.m. U.S. soldiers and tent city refugees alike raced for open ground, and clouds of dust rose in the capital.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday's quake was centered about 35 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of Port-au-Prince and 6.2 miles (9.9 kilometers) below the surface — a little further from the capital than last week's epicenter was.

"It kind of felt like standing on a board on top of a ball," said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Steven Payne. The 27-year-old from Jolo, West Virginia was preparing to hand out food to refugees in a tent camp of 25,000 quake victims when the aftershock hit.
Last week's magnitude-7 quake killed an estimated 200,000 people in Haiti, left 250,000 injured and made 1.5 million homeless, according to the European Union Commission.

The strong aftershock prompted Anold Fleurigene, 28, to grab his wife and three children and head to the city bus station. His house was destroyed in the first quake and his sister and brother killed.
"I've seen the situation here, and I want to get out," he said.
A massive international aid effort has been struggling with logistical problems, and many Haitians are still desperate for food and water.
Still, search-and-rescue teams have emerged from the ruins with some improbable success stories — including the rescue of 69-year-old ardent Roman Catholic who said she prayed constantly during her week under the rubble.

Ena Zizi had been at a church meeting at the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop when the Jan. 12 quake struck, trapping her in debris. On Tuesday, she was rescued by a Mexican disaster team.

Zizi said after the quake, she spoke back and forth with a vicar who also was trapped. But he fell silent after a few days, and she spent the rest of the time praying and waiting.

"I talked only to my boss, God," she said. "I didn't need any more humans."

Doctors who examined Zizi on Tuesday said she was dehydrated and had a dislocated hip and a broken leg.

READ FULL STORY HERE: New 6.1-quake hits Haiti, people flee into streets

MA, G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats; has implications for health care reform

MICHAEL COOPER of NY TIMES
Published: January 20, 2010
BOSTON — Scott Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts.
By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary.

With all precincts counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent.

“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.”

The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters.

There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month.

And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process.

Beyond the bill, the election of a man supported by the Tea Party movement also represented an unexpected reproach by many voters to President Obama after his first year in office, and struck fear into the hearts of Democratic lawmakers, who are already worried about their prospects in the midterm elections later this year.

Mr. Brown was able to appeal to independents who were anxious about the economy and concerned about the direction taken by Democrats, now that they control both Beacon Hill and Washington. He rallied his supporters when he said, at the last debate, that he was not running for Mr. Kennedy’s seat but for “the people’s seat.”

On Wednesday morning, he described himself as “someone who’s always been accountable and attentive and an independent thinker and voter, and looking at every single issue on its merits, whether it’s a good Democrat idea or a good Republican idea.” In an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show he cited taxation, government spending and terrorism along with health care as his priorities. “People are angry,” he said. “They’re tired of the backroom deals. They want transparency. They want good government. They want fairness. And they want people to start working and solving their problems.”

READ FULL ARTICLE: G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats

Jan 20th - Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal Take to the Streets in HARLEM

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal Take to the Streets the “Day After” in Response to Supreme Court Ruling; Critical Juncture in 28-Year-Old Death Penalty Case

PRESS CONFERENCE: 4:30 pm at Harlem State Office Building

RALLY: 4-7 pm

Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal Take to the Streets the “Day After” in Response to Supreme Court Ruling; Critical Juncture in 28-Year-Old Death Penalty Case

FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION
NEW YORK CITY
P.O. BOX 16, COLLEGE STATION
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10030

Hotline: 212 330-8029
Web Site: www.freemumia.com

For Immediate Release: January 19, 2010
Contact: Suzanne Ross (917) 584-2135
Pam Africa (215) 476-8812

Gov. Paterson rips report claiming he got cuddly with a woman at New Jersey steakhouse

BY Kenneth Lovett In Albany and Michael Saul

A defiant Gov. Paterson Monday blasted as bogus a report claiming he got cuddly with a woman over the weekend at a New Jersey steakhouse.

"The portrayal of that incident was such an outrageous lie," he declared during a Harlem news conference. "I'm really not going to give it any more oxygen than it has."

Paterson, with First Lady Michelle Paterson by his side, was firing back for the first time Monday.

A front-page report Sunday claimed he was seen nuzzling with a woman, identified as Jennifer Jones, 34, a married mother of three, at The River Palm Terrace steakhouse in Edgewater, N.J.

Jones has said she and her husband are old friends of Paterson, and that nothing untoward happened at the restaurant.

Paterson said it was not a romantic lunch, but he conceded he "sometimes" feels as if he can't catch a break.

In the past week, the NYPD detained his 15-year-old son for shooting dice, and new fund-raising reports showed potential Democratic rival Andrew Cuomo trouncing him in the race for campaign cash.

The beleaguered governor's public denial of the alleged Garden State t%EAte-à-t%EAte comes as two new polls reveal he's on the ropes politically.

READ FULL article: Gov. Paterson rips report claiming he got cuddly with a woman at New Jersey steakhouse

The Day Martin Luther King Jr. Was Stabbed in Harlem

Civil rights leader was signing books at Harlem store
By GABE PRESSMAN

On September 20, 1958, as Martin Luther King Jr was signing his newly published book at a Harlem bookstore, .a 42-year-old black woman, apparently deranged, suddenly started screaming and plunged a knife into the civil right leader's chest.

He was taken to Harlem Hospital, where a surgeon operated on him successfully. King's life was saved. And, a few hours later, I was allowed to interview the embattled minister.

King was just emerging as the leader of the civil rights movement in America. He had led the successful boycott of segregated bus lines in Montgomery, Alabama. He organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His ideology of non-violent resistance had led to his arrest numerous times. The Montgomery victory resonated throughout the world.

After managing to get into King's hospital room, I was amazed at how calm he was. He said that he had no bitterness against Izola Curr, the woman who stabbed him in the sternum. "I think she needs help," Dr, King told me. "I'm not angry at her."

As I look back at this episode, I am amazed at how easily I got into King's room. I cant remember whether I had a camera or whether I was using only a radio tape recorder. I remember that this happened during a heated political campaign between Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican candidate, and the man he was trying to unseat, Governor Averell Harriman. Both of them, I was told, telephoned the hospital to find out how King was doing.

King was not yet at the height of his fame but the candidates -- and their handlers -- knew he was an up and coming leader and they wanted to register their concern for him.

Years later, I remember how King became sympathetic to the anti-Vietnam War movement and he identified too with the anti-poverty campaign of President Lyndon Johnson. At one point, I recall, he wasn't doing too well politically with some black civil rights leaders. They felt he was too distracted and should concentrate on their concerns. For a while, he was virtually ignored by political leaders and journalists too.

It was some time in the middle 1960s that I heard that the minister was visiting some anti-poverty groups in New York. I set out for East Harlem on that day, where I found him at a storefront manned by a couple of people engaged in an anti-poverty program. There were no other reporters there.

A police car happened to pass by, noticed my camera crew and stopped. A sergeant stepped out and asked me what was going. "Martin Luther King is in there talking to some anti-poverty workers. Since he was stabbed on another visit to Harlem, maybe it would be a good idea if he got some protection."

I had no business suggesting how police should be deployed but I was young and brash in those days. The sergeant left but, a few minutes later, another squad car arrived and hung out near the storefront for the next half hour until King left.
I don't remember exactly what King said to me on that day. He clearly was advocating the need to fight poverty in our country. But, over the years and especially after his assassination, I came to appreciate the power of his words---words and thoughts that stand well the test of time.

Consider some:
"Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase....."
"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it..."
"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends..."
"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence..."
"We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools..."

Like many black preachers, King loved the stories in the Old Testament. On the night before his death, King recalled the story of Moses. After leading the children of Israel for 40 years through the desert, Moses had finally reached the promised land. God then told him he couldn't go into this land but would only be allowed to see it from a mountaintop.

In Memphis, on the night before he was killed, King declared prophetically: "I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man."

Gov. Paterson proposes record $134 billion state budget with major education, health care cuts

BY KENNETH LOVETT
ALBANY - Sucking on cigarettes and slurping sugary sodas could get a whole lot more expensive under Gov. Paterson's new budget proposal.

But even the "sin tax" hikes on top of a $1 billion boost in taxes and fees won't raise enough revenue to stave off sweeping cuts in school and health care spending in the $134 billion 2010-2011 budget.

"Since the day I became governor, I have warned that New York is facing an inevitable fiscal reckoning," Paterson said of his plan meant to close a $7.4 billion budget deficit.

"There are no more easy answers. We cannot keep spending money that we do not have."
Despite the dire warnings, the state's total budget would grow over the current year's plan by $787 million.

Smokers, already paying nearly $10 per pack in New York City, will be asked to pay $1 more, bringing the state's total excise tax to $3.75 per pack.

Paterson again proposed a one-penny per ounce "fat tax" on sugary soft drinks.

Still, Paterson is proposing $5.5 billion in "recurring" spending cuts.

Among the proposed cuts is $1.1 billion, or 5%, cut to school aid, with poorer districts getting cut less than wealthier ones.

He is also calling for $1 billion in Medicaid and health care savings, including cuts to providers and various programs, as well as enhanced Medicaid fraud recoveries.

A highly publicized 10% hike to the basic welfare grant that was scheduled to kick in the coming fiscal year would be reduced to 5% and the full 30% reduction would be delayed until July 2013.

CUNY would be cut $47.7 million and SUNY senior colleges $95 million, though they would be granted authority to set their own tuition rates under the plan.

Awards from the state's Tuition Assistance Program would be cut $75 per student.

Paterson is also seeking another $1 billion in state agency cuts, including $500 million in across the board cuts and $250 million in negotiated employee savings.

He will also seek prison closures, youth facility downgrades and agency mergers.

Paterson seeks to reduce the workforce by just 675 jobs.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: Gov. Paterson proposes record $134 billion state budget with major education, health care cuts

High court tosses ruling setting aside Abu-Jamal's death penalty in 1981 murder of Philly cop

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted an appeal by prosecutors and set aside a ruling that invalidated the death sentence of black political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

His case has become a prominent cause for many death penalty opponents.

In a brief order, the Supreme Court sent the case back to a U.S. appeals court based in Philadelphia for further consideration in view of the high court's recent decision in an Ohio case that had raised similar issues.

The Supreme Court in the Ohio case unanimously reinstated the death sentence of a neo-Nazi convicted of murdering three men. The court's action, which was not a ruling on the merits of the case, could lead to Abu-Jamal's death sentence being reinstated, too.

The appeals court had ruled that Abu-Jamal, 55, deserved a new sentencing hearing because of flawed jury instructions.

Abu-Jamal, a former member of the Black Panthers militant group, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for murdering white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in an early morning confrontation on December 9, 1981.

The officer was shot after stopping Abu-Jamal's brother for driving the wrong way down a Philadelphia street. Abu-Jamal, a former radio reporter who was arrested at the scene, has maintained his innocence.

Abu-Jamal's jailhouse writings about the justice system have drawn the attention of many people around the world. His case attracted the support of many death penalty opponents, foreign political leaders and Hollywood celebrities.

The flaw in the jury instructions related to whether the jurors understood how to weigh mitigating circumstances that could have resulted in a sentence other than the death penalty. Under the law, jurors did not have to agree unanimously on the mitigating circumstances.

Prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court the part of the appeals court decision that invalidated Abu-Jamal's death sentence. The Supreme Court last year let stand the part of the decision that upheld Abu-Jamal's murder conviction.

Read FULL article here: U.S. court sends back Abu-Jamal death penalty case

Also READ: Death sentence to be reconsidered for ex-Black Panther

AND: High court tosses ruling favorable to Abu-Jamal

AND: High court tosses ruling setting aside Abu-Jamal's death penalty in 1981 murder of Philly cop

ALSO SEE THESE NEW VIDEOS FROM MUMIA SUPPORTERS:

FOOTBALL 101 with NFL vet Roman O'Ben and NY Times Sports Columnist William Rhoden

WHAT: NFL vet ROMAN OBEN, and NY Times Sports Columnist WILLIAM C. RHODEN are coming to Globetrippin for FOOTBALL 101.

WHEN: It's this Thursday, Jan 21 (with a second one next Thursday) 8pm

WHERE: GLOBETRIPPIN Int'l Coffeehouse, Bookstore, Kazbah 1689 Amsterdam Ave, between 143 & 144

917-860-5629
www.globetrippin.com

$40 (Includes football booklet, food, recipes and tips to host the perfect Super Bowl party.)

This wonderful event, which doubles as a fundraiser to help keep my little coffeehouse open, is perfect for men, women and couples. Whether you know everything about football, need a refresher course, or want to finally understand the game, come and hang out with OBEN and RHODEN as they explain the basics and get you ready for the Super Bowl.

Press Conference Highlights from March on Justice Department for Mumia Abu Jamal

This clip contains highlights from speakers at a press conference held in support of Mumia Abu Jamal just before a march and rally took place at the US Justice Department. Activists travel to DC demanding justice in the case against Mumia Abu Jamal. "Still Here" Harlem Productions documents the journey from NYC. The Free Mumia Abu Jamal Coalition, Amnesty International, NAACP, and other concerned activists gather to deliver thousands of letters from all over the world in support of Mumia Abu Jamal and hopes of his release. They call on Eric Holder of the Justice Department to review Jamal's case. .... for more info visit freemumia.com...

FREE MUMIA: March on Justice Department for Mumia Abu Jamal

A "Still Here" Harlem Production - (allthingsharlem.com)

11/12/09 - Activists travel to DC demanding justice in the case against Mumia Abu Jamal. "Still Here" Harlem Productions documents the journey from NYC. The Free Mumia Abu Jamal Coalition, Amnesty International, NAACP, and other concerned activists gather to deliver thousands of letters from all over the world in support of Mumia Abu Jamal and hopes of his release. They call on Eric Holder of the Justice Department to review Jamal's case. for more info visit freemumia.com...

Also read: Supreme Court to rule on famed death penalty case

and Death penalty changes spur optimism

and Mobilize and Fight to Save Mumia's Life

and US Supreme Court to hold conference about Mumia Abu-Jamal's case

Percy Sutton's Funeral at Riverside Church In Harlem

Joseph "Jazz" Hayden attended Harlem's own Percy Sutton's funeral on January 6th, 2010 and presents this report from the pews.
Music by Stevie Wonder and Melba Moore. Words by Rev Al Sharpton and many others.

Supreme Court to rule on famed death penalty case

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court is expected on Tuesday to issue its latest decision on the fate of Mumia Abu-Jamal, arguably America's most famous death-row inmate, convicted of slaying a Philadelphia policeman, a crime he denies committing.

The court is due to rule on an appeal by the Philadelphia district attorney who is seeking to have Abu-Jamal executed and bring an end to a decades-long legal saga the inmate, a former journalist, wrote about while in prison.

Abu-Jamal, now 55, was convicted in 1982 of killing officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981. He has become an international cause celebre for the anti-death penalty movement whose supporters argue strenuously he did not receive a fair trial.

His backers say he was framed by police, that prosecution witnesses were coerced into false testimony and that ballistics evidence shows Abu-Jamal did not shoot Faulkner but that the murder was committed by another man who fled the scene.

Supporters also claim that Abu-Jamal, who is black, was the victim of a racist and notoriously pro-prosecution trial judge, the now-deceased Albert Sabo, who was overheard to say, "Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the nigger," according to an affidavit by a court stenographer.

Faulkner's widow, Maureen, and Philadelphia's Fraternal Order of Police oppose any clemency for Abu-Jamal, arguing his conviction has been upheld repeatedly by numerous courts, including the Supreme Court, over three decades.

They note that bullet fragments taken from Faulkner's body match the ammunition from the gun carried by Abu-Jamal who was earning his living as a taxi driver at the time of the killing.

If the Supreme Court rules in his favor, Abu-Jamal would get a new jury trial on the sentencing, but not his conviction.

But a defeat is likely to send the case back to an appeals court, whose ruling would be based on a new Supreme Court decision on jury instructions in another case, said his attorney, Robert R. Bryan.

Abu-Jamal has been in solitary confinement on death row since the conviction, and has been held since 1995 in a western Pennsylvania prison where he has written books and contributed to international journals and radio shows.

Outside the United States, Abu-Jamal's backers include the human rights group Amnesty International, which in 2000 called for a new trial, arguing his conviction and sentence followed "contradictory and incomplete evidence" in a trial that failed to meet minimum international standards of justice.

Local Politicians Gather At West Harlem Fundraiser For Haiti

see VIDEO here: Local Politicians Gather At West Harlem Fundraiser For Haiti

From NY1:
City and state elected officials turned out for a major fundraiser in West Harlem Friday to benefit victims of Tuesday's catastrophic earthquake.

The evening event at the Talay Restaurant on West 135th Street, called “New Yorkers For Haiti,” attracted a who's who of the city’s political scene, including Governor David Paterson, City Comptroller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and a number of City Council and State Assembly members

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer helped organize the fundraiser with help from the groups Haitian Roundtable and Hispanics Across America.

"Tonight is going to be about a commitment and a celebration and a rejuvenation and a dollar commitment to help people most in need in Haiti," said Stringer.

"I actually just got a text message from a doctor who is on the ground, who says they are desperate for doctors and nurses right now,” said Daphne Leroy of the Haitian Roundtable. “With each passing day, it is critical that we continue to do what we’re doing tonight, which is to really unite and raise funds so that we can start to rebuild the country.”

Before guests arrived and pledged with cash, debit cards and checkbooks, the event raised $85,000, with the majority coming from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations and $10,000 coming from the National Association of Supermarkets.

E. Harlem Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito Leads Trip to Puerto Rico to Meet Slay Gay Teen's Family

By Gabriela Resto-Montero - DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — A two-city delegation led by East Harlem City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito and Council Speaker Christine Quinn will head to Puerto Rico Jan. 19 to meet with the family of murdered gay teen Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado.

"We hope this visit shows that the Puerto Rican LGBT community is not alone," said Pedro Julio Serrano, a gay-rights activist who arranged the meeting. "To show that the family of Jorge Steven is not alone."

The partially burned, decapitated and dismembered body of Lopez Mercado was found near his home in Cayey in November.
The brutality of the crime mobilized the LGBT community in Puerto Rico and the United States to press authorities to try suspect Juan Martinez Matos under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

"The issue here is that, in Puerto Rico, there has never been a murder case categorized as a hate crime based on identity or sexual orientation," Mark-Viverito said.

The law was signed by President Barack Obama just a month before Lopez Mercado’s murder.

Martinez Matos was charged with the slaying after admitting he picked up Lopez Mercado, 19, thinking he was a woman. He later claimed he suffered a psychotic break when he realized Lopez Mercado was a man.

After a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, Martinez Matos, 26, was found fit to stand trial.

Councilmembers Rosie Mendez (D-Lower East Side), Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) and Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) will join Mark-Viverito and Quinn in meeting with the family, as will representatives from Chicago.

The Council hoped to show solidarity, but also to intensify pressure on Gov. Luis Fortuno to speak out against the crime, Mark-Viverito said.

Martinez Matos will next have a hearing of charges Feb. 2, according to Serrano. Under Puerto Rican law, hate-crime designation occurs at sentencing.

"We will remain vigilant until the very end," Serrano said.

Harold Ford attempts to shed 'carpetbagger' rap with meet and greet at Sylvia's in Harlem

BY MICHAEL SAUL of NY Daily News

Harold Ford chowed down on soul food at Harlem's famed Sylvia's Friday while a new poll gave Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand reason for heartburn.

The Marist Poll matchup showed Gillibrand with a 43% to 24% lead over Ford, a former Tennessee congressman who is still largely unknown to a majority of voters. But Gillibrand's approval rating among Democrats was just 31%.

Bradley Tusk, a Ford campaign adviser, said the Marist poll shows there's good reason Gillibrand should be worried about her would-be challenger.

"That's why their strategy is to try to prevent anyone from running against her - because once she has a challenge, she's clearly vulnerable," Tusk said.

Glen Caplin, Gillibrand's spokesman, shot back: "She's not paying attention to the polls, and a poll showing her up by a wide margin doesn't change that."

Ford does face a hurdle overcoming the "carpetbagger" rap. The poll showed 43% of Democrats less likely to support a candidate from outside the state.

Ford, who moved here three years ago and is considering a primary challenge to Gillibrand, continued Friday to introduce himself to New Yorkers.

After arriving at Sylvia's in a black SUV, Ford chatted up Manhattan Democratic Chairman Keith Wright over a lunch of catfish, greens and black-eyed peas.

Ford strode through Sylvia's dining room, greeting diners and looking very much like a candidate.

"I'm Harold Ford. How are you?" he said to diners. "What is your name?"

Wright is one of the few county leaders not pledged to Gillibrand. On his way in, he had nice words for the incumbent. Could he back Ford? "I don't know. Seems like a nice guy," Wright replied.

Ford told reporters that New York deserves a senator who "will stand up more, that will be more independent."

The ex-congressman refused to say whether he would support Gov. Paterson in the upcoming gubernatorial race.

In response to continuing criticism about his record from abortion-rights groups, Ford said he's pro-choice.

"I'd have a hard time going to my mama's house and have a hard going home to my wife's home, our home, if I were not pro-choice," he said.

FREE Jan 23- Voices of Youth at Harlem's Dwyer Cultural Center

Haiti earthquake struck as Harlem couple neared end of painstaking adoption journey

BY STEPHANIE GASKELL, NY Daily News
A Harlem couple in the middle of adopting two children from Haiti feared the worst when news of the quake broke and they couldn't reach the orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

Then came sweet relief after Duke and Lisa Scoppa finally got through and learned the little boy and girl they hope to bring to New York are fine.

But that was soon replaced by worry for the kids' safety and concern that the adoption would be delayed or derailed by chaos in the children's homeland.

"We are very distraught," Lisa Scoppa, 36, told the Daily News. "We were in Port-au-Prince just 10 days ago. And now it's all gone.

"It's completely heart-wrenching," she said.

The couple, who work in the film industry, were planning to travel to Haiti in the next few weeks for the last step in the painstaking adoption process: picking up 4-year-old Erickson and 4-month-old Therline.

When the monster quake struck, the orphanage - 15 miles from the epicenter - was badly damaged.

It took hours for the Scoppas to get through by phone, but they reached a staffer Tuesday night who had good news: Everyone had survived.

Still, the couple hasn't been able to talk to the kids, and they're particularly worried about the infant girl, who has been sick.

"She's so small and fragile," the mom-to-be said.

Read FULL story: Haiti earthquake struck as Harlem couple neared end of painstaking adoption journey

US Supreme Court to hold conference about Mumia Abu-Jamal's case

According to a posting yesterday on the US Supreme Court's website, the Court has scheduled a conference for this Friday, January 15, to discuss Mumia's case. Specifically, they are looking at the Philadelphia DA's request to have Mumia executed without a new sentencing hearing.

The Supreme Court has apparently been waiting for the ruling on the Spisak case, which was also released yesterday. In Spisak, the court ruled to reinstate Spisak's death sentence, but it is still unclear what impact this ruling will have. The common thread between Mumia and Spisak is the "Mills" precedent, and the Court yesterday ruled that Spisak's case did not meet the standards of Mills.

This is the link to the Supreme Court posting:

http://origin.http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08-652.htm

Here is a recent article by Jeff Mackler, explaining the importance of the Spisak case:

http://www.phillyimc.org/en/mumia-abu-jamal-faces-new-execution-threat


SOME BACKGROUND:

This past March, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new guilt-phase trial, but the Court has yet to rule on whether to hear the appeal made simultaneously by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, which seeks to execute Abu-Jamal without granting him a new penalty-phase trial.

In March 2008, the Third Circuit Court affirmed Federal District Court Judge William Yohn’s 2001 decision “overturning” the death sentence. Citing the 1988 Mills v. Maryland precedent, Yohn had ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Albert Sabo’s instructions to the jury were potentially confusing, and that therefore jurors could have mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to consider them as weighing against a death sentence.


According to the 2001 ruling, affirmed in 2008, if the DA wants to re-instate the death sentence, the DA must call for a new penalty-phase jury trial. In such a penalty hearing, new evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence could be presented, but the jury could only choose between execution and a life sentence without parole.


The DA is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court against this 2008 affirmation of Yohn’s ruling. If the court rules in the DA’s favor, Abu-Jamal can be executed without benefit of a new sentencing hearing. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the DA’s appeal, the DA must either accept the life sentence for Abu-Jamal or call for the new sentencing hearing. Meanwhile, Mumia Abu-Jamal has never left his death row cell.

http://Abu-Jamal-News.com

Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass, paralyzed in 1982 car crash, dies in Pa. hospital at age 59

Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass, paralyzed in 1982 car crash, dies in Pa. hospital at age 59
PATRICK WALTERS Associated Press Writer
11:01 PM CST, January 13, 2010

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A relative says soul singer Teddy Pendergrass has died in suburban Philadelphia at age 59.

The singer's son, Teddy Pendergrass II, says his father died Wednesday at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Pendergrass' son says his father underwent colon cancer surgery eight months ago and had "a difficult recovery."

The elder Pendergrass was injured in a car accident in 1982. He suffered a spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the waist down. He spent six months in a hospital but returned to recording the next year with the album "Love Language."

His son thanks all the fans of his father's music and says he will live on through his songs. He says the singer was loved by friends and family worldwide.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

TONIGHT: Paterson & Sharpton to hold VIGIL at Haitian Consulate

Reverend Al Sharpton and religious leaders to hold a unity vigil tonight for lives of those in Haiti outside of the Haitian consulate of New York.

WHO:
Reverend Al Sharpton, President of National Action Network
Religious Leaders
Governor David Paterson

WHERE:
Outside of the Haitian Consulate of New York
271 Madison Avenue
Between 39th and 40th
NY, NY 10016

WHEN:
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
6-7 pm

BACKGROUND:
Rev. Sharpton communicated throughout the night with Wyclef Jean who is in route to Haiti who asked for Rev. Sharpton and the community to lend support. NAN will hold tonight's prayer vigil and continue to mobilize financial support for Haitian relief.

Please also note: Rev. Sharpton will still appear with J.C. Watts in Harlem this morning at 10:30 a.m. to discuss Health Care disparities in communities of color

Twitter becomes key evidence in case after Jameg Blake charged with murdering friend, cops say

Jameg Blake, 22, shown here is accused of shooting and killing Kwame Dancy after the two childhood friends got into a tiff on Twitter.

BY MICHAEL J. FEENEY of NY DAILY NEWS

It started as a simple Twitter beef, 140-character spurts of anger by two young men who grew up together.

But the tough talk exploded out of cyberspace and onto the streets of Harlem, where a college student was gunned down feet from Gov. Paterson's home.

Now tweets sent by victim Kwame Dancy, 22, and accused killer Jameg Blake, 22, could become key evidence in a murder trial, the Daily News has learned.

Dancy's mother, Madeline Smith, is appalled Internet chest-thumping could have led to blood spilled on the sidewalk.

"That's not a reason to shoot somebody," she said last week. "That's crazy. I don't know what's going on with that Twitter thing."

Dancy, who was studying to be a nurse, was killed by a shotgun blast to the neck Dec. 1 across from Lenox Terrace in Harlem, where he grew up with his father.

Blake - who lived on the same floor as Dancy, one floor below Paterson in the luxury high-rise on W. 132nd St. - was arrested two days later.

Charged with murder, he pleaded not guilty Wednesday and was held without bail.

Police sources said the two had a rocky relationship and the Twitter messages they posted - with friends jumping in - only made it worse.

Hours before the shooting, Dancy may have taunted Blake with a tweet: "N-----s is lookin for u don't think I won't give up ya address for a price betta chill asap!"

Blake's Twitter account is also full of online disses, though only one tweet mentions Dancy by name: "R.I.P. Kwame" on Dec.3.

A police source said the messages may be subpoenaed to bolster the theory that there was bad blood between the two old pals.

But the Twitter beef wasn't the only strain; Dancy and Blake fought last summer over a girl in front of Lenox Terrace, sources said.

Despite the insults and fisticuffs, when Blake was collared, Dancy's mom was stunned.

"They were good friends, that's the sad part about it," said Smith, who is divorced from Dancy's dad and lives in Brooklyn. "Obviously, I didn't know him like I thought I did. I just want to ask him. 'Why? How could you?'"

She said her son had taken off a semester from Manhattan Community College and was training with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. He planned to return to school and get his degree.

He had tried to steer Blake - a high school dropout and father of a baby boy - to get his GED.

"They've been friends since they were kids. Kwame would often try to help when [Blake] was going through stuff - and this was his thank you?" Smith said.

Blake's arrest was particularly shocking because he showed up at Harlem Hospital after Dancy was shot and hugged his father.

"Either he wanted to see if he actually killed [Kwame] or he wanted to see if anyone knew he did it," Smith said.

Authorities have a witness who identified Blake as the gunman, and video shows Blake leaving Lenox Terrace around the time of the shooting with a bag large enough to hold a shotgun.

Records also show Blake used his phone around the time and place of the shooting. The murder weapon, a shotgun with a spent shell, was recovered with two shirts in Central Park.

Blake's parents and lawyer Thomas Klein declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Dancy's mom cries every night about her son.

"He said, 'Mommy, I'm going to be a nurse,'" she said. "And look at this - we'll never know how far he would have gone. His dream was snatched from him, over foolishness."

NY Gov. Paterson's son arrested, released

By LARRY CELONA, JAMIE SCHRAM and MURRAY WEISS

Gov. Paterson's teenage son was arrested today after cops caught him shooting dice on an Upper West Side street corner and possessing somebody else's debit card, sources said.

Cops grabbed Alex Paterson, 15, around 3 p.m. near West 61st Street after seeing him and four others shooting dice for money, the sources said. He is a student at the nearby Beacon School.

When asked for his ID, an officer discovered the debit card in another person's name, and he was taken in cuffs to the 20th Precinct for questioning.

The bank that the card traces back to said it was listed as lost/stolen, though no report of a stolen card could be found, the sources said.

Paterson was questioned and released into his mother's custody a short time later. It appears there was a juvenile charge filed, though the details were nto immediately clear..

The govenor's office released the following statement:
"Earlier today, Governor Paterson's son was taken into the 20th precinct and subsequently released to his parents. The Governor and the First Lady ask that their privacy is respected during this personal time."

Paterson lives with his parents in Harlem.


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bust_paterson_son_nabbed_and_later_ResbRwbU9uyjVzcauxMzhP#ixzz0cRjbBCbz

Many casualties expected after big quake in Haiti

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The largest earthquake ever recorded in the area shook Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital where people screamed for help. Other buildings also were damaged and scientists said they expected "substantial damage and casualties."

With communications disrupted there were no reports of deaths or injuries soon after the quake, as powerful aftershocks shook the country.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It had a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers). It was the largest quake recorded in the area, said USGS analyst Dale Grant, and the last major one since a magnitude-6.7 temblor in 1984.

An Associated Press videographer saw the wrecked hospital in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians. Elsewhere, a U.S. government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.

Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph, said from his Washington office that he spoke to President Rene Preval's chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp, just after the quake hit. He said Longchamp told him that "buildings were crumbling right and left" near the national palace. He said he has not gotten through by phone to Haiti since.

Don Blakeman, an analyst at the USGS in Golden, Colorado, said such a strong quake carried the potential for widespread damage "I think we are going to see substantial damage and casualties," he said.

The quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. Some panicked residents in the capital of Santo Domingo fled from their shaking homes.

In eastern Cuba, houses shook but no major damage was immediately reported. "We felt it very strongly and I would say for a long time. We had time to evacuate," said Monsignor Dionisio Garcia, archbishop of Santiago.

In Haiti, the extent of the damage was unclear. "Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official visiting Haiti. "The sky is just gray with dust."

Bahn said he was walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake. "I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said. "I just hear a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."

Bahn said there were rocks strewn about and he saw a ravine where several homes had stood: "It's just full of collapsed walls and rubble and barbed wire."

The U.S. National Weather Service issued a tsunami watch for Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, but said historically the region has seen few destructive tsunamis.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said U.S. officials were holding emergency meetings.
"We need to gather what information we can quickly. We will of course assist in any way we can," he said.

Felix Augustin, Haiti's consul general in New York, said he was concerned about everyone in Haiti, including his relatives.
"Communication is absolutely impossible," he said. "I've been trying to call my ministry and I cannot get through. ... It's mind-boggling."

President Obama to Harold Ford: Drop talk of running for Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate seat

BY Kenneth R. Bazinet and Thomas M. Defrank In Washington and Michael Saul and David Saltonstall, NY Daily News

The White House dropped a 2-ton hint on Harold Ford Monday: Steer clear of any primary against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, or risk President Obama's wrath.

With the ex-Tennessee congressman weighing a challenge against Hillary Clinton's replacement, Obama's top spokesman said the White House had no interest in trading in its favored Gillibrand for a new Ford.

"The White House is quite happy with the leadership and the representation of Sen. Gillibrand in New York," White House aide Robert Gibbs said.

Asked to handicap odds that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel or Sen. Chuck Schumer will use their clout to muscle Ford from the primary field, as they have with other would-be challengers, Gibbs smiled knowingly. "Stay tuned," he said.

While not necessarily fatal, the White House slap was an unmistakable hit on Ford as other top Democrats took their shots.

"I would suggest he would look for another state to run a primary," Gov. Paterson said in Albany, when reminded of Ford's anti-abortion views in the House.

Added Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem), chair of Manhattan's Democratic County Committee, "You can't just come off the planet Krypton and say, 'I am running for Senate.'

"I know it's been done before, but those people had the last names of Kennedy and Clinton," he added, referring to former Sens. Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

Gillibrand said during a political event in Albany last night that she's "very grateful" for and "appreciative" of Obama's support.

Ford, who was in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party while in Congress, lost a nasty U.S. Senate bid in Tennessee in 2006. He moved to New York three years ago.

Ford insisted on MSNBC's "Hardball" yesterday that he would not be swayed by Team Obama. "I have great respect for President Obama, and if I run and win, I look forward to working with him," Ford said. "But I will listen to voters in New York as I make this decision."

Experts said the combined Obama-Paterson punch would be tough for any candidate to overcome, much less a relative unknown with no political roots in the Empire State.

"Ford is now fighting the State House and White House at the same time - good luck," said the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato.

But yesterday's tussle underscored what many see as the underlying weakness of Gillibrand, who was handpicked last January by Paterson to fill Clinton's vacant seat when she became secretary of state.

Although aides said Gillibrand has raised a formidable $7.1 million in campaign cash since taking the job, much of it has come through Schumer's and Clinton's fund-raising networks. And while Schumer and the White House already have elbowed a number of other Democrats out of the race, some said they viewed Ford's candidacy as the most worrisome of all.

"Chuck is working his ass off to keep Ford out of this," a prominent New York operative said. "They [the White House and Schumer] know he'd be a big problem for them in a primary."

The source asserted that Gillibrand has been slow to build bridges within the party, particularly with downstate Democrats and minorities, and many believe she generally has failed to inspire much passion.

"Most politicians know how to make you think they're listening to you even when they're not," a New York Democratic consultant said. "She hasn't mastered that art."

Ford, who recently has worked as a political commentator for MSNBC, showed some deftness in getting off populist sound bites during his appearance on the network yesterday.

Asked by "Hardball" host Chris Matthews if he was a New Yorker, Ford said, "I live in New York. My wife and I plan to start and raise a family there. And I pay taxes there.

"And once you pay taxes there," he added, "you feel like a New Yorker."

READ FULL ARTICLE: President Obama to Harold Ford: Drop talk of running for Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate seat

KIDS EAT FREE: Harlem BBQ - during MLK week

Kids eat free at Harlem BBQ during Martin Luther King Jr. Week.

SCREENING Jan 13: BILL WITHERS DOCUMENTARY

STILL BILL
an intimate portrait of soul legend Bill Withers

a new documentary by Damani Baker and Alex Vlack

Black Documentary Collective at Harlem Stage*
Wednesday, Jan 13, 2009
7:30 pm

**$10**

Tickets available online:
http://www.harlemstage.org/calendar/details/38-still-bill
and at Harlem Stage Box Office at 212-281-9240

You know the music, now meet the man. STILL BILL is an intimate portrait of soul legend Bill Withers, best known for his classics “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean On Me,” “Lovely Day,” “Grandma’s Hands,” and “Just the Two of Us.” With his soulful delivery and warm, heartfelt sincerity,soul legend Bill Withers, best known for his classics “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean On Me,” “Lovely Day," “Grandma’s Hands,” and “Just the Two of Us,” Withers has written the songs that resonate deeply within the fabric of our times. Get a unique and rare look inside the world of this fascinating artist has written some of the most beloved songs in our time and who truly understands theheart and soul of a man.

Harlem Stage is at 150 Convent Ave, at West 135th Street across from Aaron Davis Hall

By Subway
1 to 137th Street at Broadway. Walk south to 135th Street and walk east two blocks to Convent Ave. and 135th Street. Entrance of both the Gatehouse and Aaron Davis Hall is located on Convent Ave.

A, B, C, D to 125th Street at St. Nicholas Avenue. Walk east one block to Morningside Drive. and 125th Street. Walk north to 135th Street and Convent Ave (Morningside Drive. turns into Convent Ave. past 127th Street). Entrance of both the Gatehouse and Aaron Davis Hall is located on Convent Ave.

*Founded by documentarian St. Clair Bourne, The Black Documentary Collective of New York (BDCNYC) provides filmmakers, video producers and media professionals of African descent, with the opportunity to network and promote each others’ work. For more on BDC, check our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/blackdocumentarycollective

Is Ultimate Fighting Coming to New York?

By: Nina Mandell

Mixed martial arts was quite the controversial sport in the mid-nineties, when John McCain branded it "human cockfighting." Since then, McCain has gone on to bigger and better things, the sport has reformed itself, and Dana White has amassed a multi-million-dollar fortune as the head of the UFC, cage-fighting's biggest league. But the sport still can't get past bans in eight states, including New York, which outlawed it in 1997.

Until now, perhaps. Looking for creative ways to solve budget woes, it's been reported that Governor Paterson will support legislation to legalize the sport. The UFC has had its eye on New York for quite a while, prompting the New York Times editorial board to call it "blood money" last January.

The Times, like many detractors, is disturbed at the brutality of the sport. But supporters argue that boxing is more dangerous. "It's pretty hard to sanction boxing and not sanction mixed martial arts," says Jon Wertheim, a Sports Illustrated senior writer who wrote a book on ultimate fighting last year. "There's no doubt if they held a card tomorrow at Madison Square Garden it would sell out."

So will it pass? Ultimate fighting, to non-fans, is hard to watch: It can be bloody, it takes place in a cage, and there are some gruesome injuries. On the other hand, this doesn't make it all that different from boxing, which is a time-honored tradition at the Garden and across New York. One assemblyman estimates that with the proper taxation, it could bring in $11.5 million per event for the city. "I'm not a mixed-martial-arts fan," said Upper East Side Democrat Jonathan Bing. "I don't watch every game, but I like Olympic-caliber athletes and I like the revenue it would generate."

And in a cash-strapped economy that's getting beaten to those millions by neighboring states (including New Jersey), isn't that worth the fight?

FREE Diversity Career Fair Jan 13

REGISTER BY Jan 12th

Is This KFC Ad Racist? [VIDEO]

Is this ad racist? Your opinion might vary depending on your cultural background … and that’s a new reality we’re facing in the YouTube era.

The Australian KFC ad in dispute (below) shows an Australian cricket supporter in a crowd of West Indian fans. Supposedly to make himself more comfortable amid the opposition supporters, he offers up a bucket of “crowd-pleaser” fried chicken from KFC.

The ad received no negative response in Australiawhere it aired, but it soon made its way to YouTube, where it caused controversy.

ALSO READ:

KFC's "Racist" Ad Reveals American Consumers' Ignorance

KFC Adds Another Secret Ingredient: What the Hell is Up with the Australia, Korea Commercials?

KFC Bows to Confused Americans on 'Racist' Ad

and this analysis:

Adding up family's year buying black

Oak Park, IL couple gave most of their business in 2009 to African- American stores
By Ted Gregory of ChicagoTribune

It's been a year since John and Maggie Anderson embarked on a controversial adventure in empowerment to spend their money exclusively with African-American businesses in 2009.

They've learned a few things, not the least of which was that they were a little naive.

"It was more difficult, to be honest," Maggie Anderson said as the year concluded. "We went out all starry-eyed."

As with most wisdom, the more meaningful lessons emerge from the more demanding struggles. So it was with the "Empowerment Experiment," said the Andersons, of Oak Park.

"There were certainly some challenges," John Anderson said. "But at the same time, the relationships we have cultivated -- not only with the business owners but also in mobilizing so many people across the nation who have embraced the message -- that's been the biggest blessing of this whole year. It has been a wonderful year."

The most discouraging challenge came in August, when the black-owned, full-service grocery store they would drive 14 miles to patronize closed. The couple also had to face jaded perspectives from other African-Americans who told the Andersons that black-owned businesses were inferior to white-owned enterprises and that the couple's over-arching goal of creating robust black businesses would never work.

And facing them at almost every turn was the insistence from some whites that the Andersons' experiment was an exercise in racism, a charge they reject.

The effort, particularly in the last three months, generated a great deal of momentum, the Andersons said. Maggie Anderson received an overwhelming response when she spoke at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. She also was the opening speaker at the Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce meeting in September.

A week later, she spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus' annual convention in Washington, D.C. Northwestern University's Kellogg Black Alumni Club honored the Andersons in November. Overall, John Anderson said, about 75 percent of the reaction the couple received was encouraging. The remainder was critical.

"There was a feeling that now we have really created a vehicle to force ourselves to look into the mirror and address some of the issues we don't want to talk about," John Anderson said.

Most notable among those issues, he said, was the belief among middle-class blacks that disassociation from African-American businesses is a sign of success.

"We're having those discussions much more often now," he said.

The Andersons have achieved academic and economic success after rising from modest beginnings. He's a financial adviser with degrees from Harvard and Northwestern; she's a business consultant who works from home and has a law degree and MBA from the University of Chicago.

They said they came up with the "Empowerment Experiment" to help solve persistent ills surrounding "underserved communities."

The Andersons note that African-Americans carry nearly $850 billion in spending power but that very little of that money circulates through those "underserved" communities. Most businesses in those neighborhoods are owned by people of other races who live elsewhere.

After their story appeared in the Tribune in March, the Andersons gained widespread media exposure. They were interviewed on CNN, Fox News and CBS Morning News.

One of those who jumped onboard the movement after seeing the CBS segment in July was Viel Robinson, of Greensboro, N.C.

"I thought, 'Wow, this is great,' " said Robinson, adding that she began making a conscious effort to support more black-owned businesses. "This is something I was already interested in anyway."

She said, however, that she found it "sometimes challenging" to find black-owned companies that provided goods she needed.

"I know that there's a lot of economic power behind the African-American dollar," she said. "If more of us thought about doing this, it could create a real spark."

Read FULL article here: Adding up family's year buying black

How is Obama doing with black voters?

Saved by the stimulus: Judy Dunlap (left), principal of Westside Leadership Academy in Gary, Ind., stands with three of eight teachers whose jobs she was able to preserve after last year’s package passed...John Smierciak/AP

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer Christian Science Monitor

When Barack Obama became president nearly a year ago, he took on a mountain of problems: an economy on the brink of collapse, two foreign wars, a persistent threat of terrorism on US soil.

But perhaps the most delicate challenge he faced – and still faces – centers on his own identity as America’s first black president. His election represented a major milestone, but certainly not an endpoint, in one of the core narratives of the American story: the battle for racial equality.

Now, embedded in the color of President Obama’s skin lie the aspirations of African- Americans, many (or most) of whom see his ascendancy to the Oval Office as a signal opportunity for Washington to tackle the persistent racial disparities in unemployment, poverty, access to healthcare, and educational performance.

In a way, Obama was bound to disappoint. Having run for president as a “postracial” candidate, touching on race only when necessary to appeal to the widest audience possible, Obama predictably has run his presidency the same way.

But that has not stopped some black leaders from voicing chagrin. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has said it’s time for civil rights leaders to start pressuring Obama.

When Obama delivered a speech on jobs last month, Rep. Barbara Lee (D) of California, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), said in a statement: “While we agree with the president that support for small businesses, infrastructure investment, and green jobs is essential, we also believe that much more needs to be done, particularly for those Americans who are hurting most.”

Black unemployment, around 16 percent, is nearly double that of whites.

In mid-December, 10 members of the CBC fired a shot across the bow by boycotting a key House committee vote and threatening to drop support for new banking regulations. The walkout worked: Money for unemployed homeowners and neighborhood revitalization was added to the legislation.

Other important black voices have defended Obama. Rep. John Lewis (D) of Georgia, a leading civil rights figure of the 1960s, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month: “He has taken a very simple position, which is a good position, I think: By helping all Americans, you help minorities.”

Another CBC member, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D) of Texas, has also come to Obama’s defense. In a recent interview with the Dallas Morning News, she called him a “miracle worker” in pulling the economy back from the brink.

Obama spoke forcefully on his own behalf in a Christmas week interview with American Urban Radio Networks, whose audience is heavily black. The president said that while he is prohibited by law from targeting legislation at any particular racial group, he feels he has done a lot that has benefited African-Americans, starting with the Recovery Act, which saved the jobs of teachers and firefighters, many of whom are black.

“Is there grumbling? Of course there’s grumbling, because we just went through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” he told American Urban Radio’s April Ryan. “Everybody is concerned about unemployment, everybody’s concerned about businesses not hiring, everybody’s concerned about their home values declining. And in each of these areas, African-Americans have been disproportionately affected.”

READ FULL ARTICLE: How is Obama doing with black voters?

Republicans cite Lott in calling for Reid to quit over Obama remarks

WASHINGTON AP – A double standard? Republicans seeking Sen. Harry Reid's resignation as majority leader over racial remarks he made about Barack Obama say yes — that Reid should be held to the same standard as former GOP Sen. Trent Lott, whose own racial gaffes cost him the Senate leadership in 2002.

Democrats say no, that Reid's comments — while unfortunate — were nothing like Lott's.

Reid apologized to Obama and a handful of black political leaders after a new book reported that he was favorably impressed by Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and, in a private conversation, described the Illinois senator as a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Obama, who tries to steer clear of the political thicket of race and politics, accepted the apology and said he wanted to close the book on the episode. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that the president "didn't take offense" at the comment.

Republicans were eager to keep the issue open Sunday, comparing Reid's remarks to those that cost Trent Lott the Senate leadership in 2002 and questioning why there was different reaction now.

Lott had cheered the 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond — a segregationist Democrat opposing President Harry Truman — during a 100th birthday tribute to Thurmond, by then a longtime Republican senator.

Lott, R-Miss., eventually apologized but resigned nearly two weeks later after a growing number of Republicans questioned his effectiveness, especially after he told Black Entertainment Television he supported affirmative action, no longer opposed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and would back programs aimed at minorities. He resigned from the Senate in 2007.
In Reid's case, at least so far, Democrats have been content to chide the Nevada Democrat and cast his remarks as inappropriate and, as Obama said, "unfortunate."

"There is this standard where the Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own," Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele, who is black, said Sunday. "But if it comes from anyone else, it's racism."

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement that Reid should step down, calling his comments "embarrassing and racially insensitive."

"It's difficult to see this situation as anything other than a clear double standard on the part of Senate Democrats and others," Cornyn said.

Former Rep. Harold Ford, an African-American who is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, called Reid's remarks "an unusual set of words."

But in an interview Monday on NBC's "Today" show, Ford said "I don't believe in any way Harry Reid had any racial animus. I think there's an important distinction between he and Trent Lott."

Blagojevich apologizes for 'I'm blacker than Obama' comment

from ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO — Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Monday that it was stupid for him to tell Esquire magazine that he’s “blacker than Barack Obama” and that he doesn’t believe it anyway.

In an interview on WLS Radio in Chicago, Blagojevich explained he was speaking metaphorically to the reporter whose story appears in the February issue of the magazine. He said his comments were made out of frustration with the way blacks and others who are struggling are treated by government.

“It’s a stupid metaphor to say I’m blacker than Barack Obama, that I apologize for,” he said. “It’s not appropriate for me, a white person, to stand out somehow and claim to be a black person, that’s just wrong ... I was expressing frustration that the policies of this new administration still haven’t really been focusing on the great deal of inequities we have in our society.”

In the article, Blagojevich refers to the president as “this guy,” and says Obama was elected based simply on hope.
“What the (expletive)? Everything he’s saying’s on the teleprompter,” Blagojevich told the magazine for a story that hits newsstands Jan. 19.

“I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived,” Blagojevich said. “I saw it all growing up.”

On the radio program, Blagojevich talked more about his childhood and how he saw the riots in Chicago in the late 1960s and the “white flight” from the city. He did not compare his childhood to that of Obama’s or any other black person.
Still, “I’ve always had a strong affinity for the African-American community,” he stressed, adding that when he was governor he appointed several more blacks to “important” posts than any of his predecessors.
The White House refused to comment.

The twice-elected Democrat was impeached and removed from office last year after federal prosecutors arrested him on corruption charges that included trying to sell Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat. He has pleaded not guilty.
Blagojevich continues to accuse prosecutors of persecuting him for routine political deals.

One of those deals, he said, was the possibility of naming Attorney General Lisa Madigan to Obama’s Senate seat in exchange for cooperation on important programs from her powerful father, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
He used an infamously coarse word to refer to the attorney general.

“If I can get this, how much do I love the people of Illinois to make that (expletive) senator?’” Blagojevich said.
Blagojevich is appearing on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” this spring and his trial is expected to start later this year.

State pols vow to crack down on 'nutcracker' vendors who peddle vodka-laced drinks to kids

Man identified as the owner of Score Shakes on St. Nicholas Ave. confronts Manhattan City Councilman Robert Jackson at news conference where a crackdown on 'nutcracker' sellers was pledged.

BY SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

State pols vowed Sunday to crack down on "nutcracker" vendors who peddle the vodka-laced fruit drinks to kids.

Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat (D-Washington Heights) and state Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan, Bronx) are proposing more jail time and stiffer fines for barbershops and bodegas that sell the sticky sweet booze - a practice exposed by the Daily News.

Shop owners could even lose their stores under the proposed legislative changes.

"There is a wide phenomena of business selling potent alcohol beverages to minors - it is so widespread that we have to stiffen the penalties," Schneiderman said outside Score Shakes on St. Nicholas Ave. - a natural juice shop that sold a Daily News reporter a frozen nutcracker last month.

The News reported last week that stores, mainly bodegas and barbershops, across upper Manhattan and the Bronx are selling the drinks to kids as young as14.

Right now, shop owners don't have much to fear if they are caught illegally selling alcohol. Although they could face 30 days in jail, police usually issue summonses, with fines ranging from $200 to about $1,000.

The State Liquor Authority can only go after stores that have a liquor license - which excludes barbershops and hair salons known to sell booze to minors.

The proposed change to the law means shop owners would face at least 60 days in jail if caught selling alcohol without the proper license.

If they sell to minors, the state would try to revoke their business license, officials said, and also charge a fine equal to three times the cost of that license.

Critics see a lose-lose situation with 15 city high schools on closure list

Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx could close soon.

BY MEREDITH KOLODNER AND RACHEL MONAHAN of NY Daily News

They saw it coming.

Officials at Norman Thomas High School warned the Education Department in 2004 that a spike in enrollment after other nearby schools were shuttered had created "an overcrowding situation that dooms us to failure."

Last month, their fears came true. It's now among 15 high schools slated for closure.

"Are they trying to fix the schools or ... trying to destroy them?" asked Nick Licari, a social studies teacher at the midtown Manhattan school.

The Bloomberg administration has closed 21 large high schools since 2002. Critics say those left standing have been flooded with students, causing enrollment to balloon, attendance to drop and crime to spike.

At Norman Thomas - where officials will hold a hearing about the closure tonight - a building meant for 2,000 students saw enrollment jump to 3,000 in 2005 after three large Manhattan high schools were closed.

"I think there was collateral damage to the remaining large schools," said Clara Hemphill, author of the "The New Marketplace" study for The New School.

Schools across the city have experienced a similar influx of kids after closures.

W.H. Maxwell Career and Technical Education High School in Brooklyn - or "Sardine High," as it was nicknamed - was the most crowded high school in 2003 and was deemed "failing" by the state after students from the shuttered Thomas Jefferson High School were dumped into it. Now it's on the closure list.

For Columbus High School in the Bronx - also on the closure list - the worst damage came in 2003 when the school was downsized and faced massive overcrowding. Criminal incidents quadrupled.

Interim Deputy Chancellor John White defended the school closings.

"The schools in question represent longstanding inabilities to deliver on the promise we make - to prepare kids for the next stage of their lives," he said.

Still, Hemphill and concerned educators wonder whether this new round of high school closings might inundate other large schools - Lehman and Truman in the Bronx, Boys and Girls in Brooklyn and Washington Irving in Manhattan.

"Washington Irving High School has risen to the need and to the challenge," said Gregg Lundahl, a teacher and union leader. "What we need is support from the Department of Education."

Black, Mexican-American Law School Enrollment Declining

from AFRO.COM- The number of Black and Mexican-American students attending U.S. law schools has decreased in the last 15 years, according to a new study, despite students in both groups improving their grades and LSAT scores.

From 1993 to 2008, the percentage of law school students from both ethnic groups declined even though Columbia Law School’s Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) found that 3,000 more first-year seats were available.

“Many people are not aware of the numbers, even among those interested in diversity issues,’’ Conrad Johnson, clinical professor of law who oversees the clinic, said in a statement. “For many African-American and Mexican-American students, law school is an elusive goal.”

A new report by the organizations revealed a 7.5 percent drop in African-Americans in the entering class of 2008 compared to 1993, and during that same time period, an 11.7 percent drop in Mexican-Americans.

Also in the past 15 years, Johnson said the number of law schools has increased from 176 to 200 but enrollment has still not increased among Blacks or Mexican-Americans.

“By analyzing enrollment figures over time and in light of common admissions criteria we are trying to inform the discussion about law school diversity,” he said.

Using data from the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), the Columbia clinic determined that 61 percent of Black and 46 percent of Mexican-American applicants were denied acceptance at law schools to which they applied from 2003 to 2008. White applicants were rejected at a rate of 34 percent.

“SALT is concerned about the trend because a less diverse body of law students leads to a number of poor outcomes, including a less diverse pool of lawyers and judges to serve the public, diminished faith in the administration of justice and a less productive, creative workforce,” Johnson said. “We need our students to see more than one perspective and develop their critical thinking skills. You can’t do that if all they see is the same small cut of society in class after class.”

Reid apologizes for 'no Negro dialect' comment

By Phil Elliot of AP -WASHINGTON – The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama's race during the 2008 presidential bid and are quoted in a yet-to-be-released book about the campaign.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments," Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were first reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

"I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama's legislative agenda."

Reid remained neutral during the bitter Democratic primary that became a marathon contest between Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Obama tapped as the United States' top diplomat after the election.

Reid's comments are included in the book, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press and set to be published on Monday. "Game Change" was written by Time Magazine's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann.
The book also says Reid urged Obama to run, perceiving the first-term senator's impatience.

"You're not going to go anyplace here," Reid told Obama of the Senate. "I know that you don't like it, doing what you're doing."
In another section, aides to Republican nominee John McCain described the difficulties they faced with their vice presidential pick, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Steve Schmidt, a senior member of Sen. John McCain's presidential team, is quoted telling Palin's foreign policy tutors: "You guys have a lot of work to do. She doesn't know anything."
The authors also quote Obama's initial reaction to McCain's selection of a little-known governor: "Wow. Well, I guess she's change."

Vice presidential nominee Joe Biden was direct. "Who's Sarah Palin?" the book quotes the then-senator as asking as they left the nominating convention in Denver.

Reid, facing a tough 2010 re-election bid, needs the White House's help if he wants to keep his seat. Obama's administration has dispatched officials on dozens of trips to buoy his bid and Obama has raised money for his campaign.
Recognizing the threat, Reid's apologies also played to his home state: "Moreover, throughout my career, from efforts to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry to opposing radical judges and promoting diversity in the Senate, I have worked hard to advance issues."

Even before his ill-considered remarks were reported, a new survey released Saturday by the Las Vegas Review Journal showed him continuing to earn poor polling numbers. In the poll, by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Reid trailed former state Republican party chairwoman Sue Lowden by a 10 percentage points, 50 percent to 40 percent, and also lagging behind two other opponents.

More than half of Nevadans had an unfavorable opinion of Reid. Just 33 percent of respondents held a favorable opinion.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: Reid apologizes for 'no Negro dialect' comment

Spotted: Alicia Keys Goes Live In Harlem

from MTV news:
Thursday night (January 7), Alicia Keys played a concert at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. Not only was the show available to those who bought tickets, but also to anybody who wanted to watch the free stream online. Billboard magazine's Web site let users watch the show from one of five angles set up throughout the theater, and in typical Keys fashion, she tore the house down with hits from the length of her career, including a healthy number of tunes from her recent album The Element of Freedom. It was the latest event in a busy week for Keys, who is set to perform on this weekend's episode of "Saturday Night Live" (former basketball star Charles Barkley will serve as host).

Eunice Johnson Dies at 93; Gave Ebony Its Name

By DENNIS HEVESI of NYTimes:
Eunice W. Johnson, the creator of the Ebony Fashion Fair, a celebrated annual tour of nearly 200 cities that has showcased haute couture and ready-to-wear fashion for a mostly African-American audience for more than 50 years, died on Jan. 3 at her home in Chicago. Mrs. Johnson, who was also one of the first entrepreneurs to market cosmetics made particularly for black women, was 93.

The cause was renal failure, said Wendy Parks, a spokeswoman for the Johnson Publishing Company, which publishes Ebony and Jet magazines and sponsors the Fashion Fair. Mrs. Johnson and her husband, John H. Johnson, who died in 2005, founded Ebony in 1945. It was Mrs. Johnson who suggested that the magazine, geared to black readers, be named for the fine-grain dark wood.

What started as a favor to a friend — production of a fashion show to raise money for a hospital in New Orleans in 1958 — evolved into a grand traveling tour that has brought the latest creations from designers like Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta and Valentino to runways throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.

Notable African-American models like Pat Cleveland, Judy Pace and Terri Springer have graced those runways. And the careers of black designers, including Lenora Levon, Quinton de’ Alexander and L’Amour, have been nurtured by the Ebony Fashion Fair.

One of the tour’s aims has been to bring attention to aspiring black designers. At the New York Hilton in 1974, for example, one showstopper was a white raincoat with loops dangling from the shoulders to hold an umbrella. The design, by a 17-year-old from Detroit, drew a standing ovation.

Over the years the fair has raised more than $55 million for civil rights groups, hospitals, community centers and scholarships.

It was not always easy. In the early years, when the chartered bus bearing the dozen or so models and the fashions selected by Mrs. Johnson stopped at gas stations in the segregated South, signs said, “No Blacks in the Ladies Room.”

Resistance also surfaced on renowned runways. “We were the ones who convinced Valentino to use black models in his shows back in the ’60s,” Mrs. Johnson told The New York Times in 2001. “I was in Paris, and I told him: ‘If you can’t find any black models, we’ll get some for you. And if you can’t use them, we’re not going to buy from you anymore.’ That was before he was famous.”

Something else perturbed Mrs. Johnson back then: the chore of mixing makeup colors to enhance the varied skin tones of her models. It gave her the idea of starting, in 1973, Fashion Fair Cosmetics, a prestige line that African-American women could buy, for the first time, in top department stores. Stars like Leontyne Price, Diahann Carroll and Aretha Franklin appeared in the company’s ads.

Within three years, the growing popularity of Fashion Fair Cosmetics prompted Revlon to introduce the Polished Ambers line for black skins, Avon to start Shades of Beauty and Max Factor to produce Beautiful Bronzes.

Eunice Walker was born in Selma, Ala., on April 4, 1916, one of four children of Nathaniel and Ethel McAlpine Walker. Her father was a physician, her mother a high school principal.

She graduated from Talladega College in Alabama in 1938 with a degree in sociology, and earned a master’s degree in social work from Loyola University in Chicago in 1941. She met Mr. Johnson at a dance in Chicago in 1940, and they married after she graduated from Loyola.

Mrs. Johnson is survived by her daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, who is chairwoman and chief executive of Johnson Publishing, and a granddaughter.

In 1942, with a $500 loan secured by furniture owned by Mr. Johnson’s mother, the Johnsons began publishing Negro Digest, a magazine modeled on Reader’s Digest. Within a year it had a circulation of 50,000. That inspired the couple to start Ebony, a monthly with flashy covers like those of Life magazine. Ebony now has a circulation of 1.25 million. Jet magazine, a weekly, was started in 1951 to highlight news of famous African-Americans; it now has a circulation of 900,000.

Mrs. Johnson, who was secretary-treasurer of the publishing company, continued to produce and direct the Ebony Fashion Fair through last year.

Over the years, hundreds of the shows have been held on Sunday afternoons, with women of all generations — many turned out in flowery hats, fine jewelry and proper dresses — leaving morning church services to get to the fair.

At the 1974 show in Manhattan, Mrs. Johnson drew a roar from the crowd when she stepped onstage during intermission and said that she could “run a fashion show from the audience.”

FREE WORKSHOP Jan 13: internet and your business

Harlem Business Alliance Wishes You A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Due To The Volume Of Interest In These Workshops,
Your RSVP Is A Must
Please Confirm Attendance By Contacting
Brittany Harte@
212-665-7010 or bharte@hbany.org
ASAP.......
The Workshop Is Filling Up Fast!!!!!!!

Mostly black New Orleans could pick first white mayor in decades

Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu campaigns in New Orleans, Friday, Jan.8, 2010. Landrieu, 49, a political veteran whose family has demonstrated broad, cross-racial appeal in New Orleans is running for mayor of the Crescent City. He is widely viewed as the front-runner in the race. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans’ black political base is one more victim of Hurricane Katrina. The storm decimated once-thriving black, middle-class neighborhoods, undercutting efforts by black candidates to raise money and build voter support.

All of this is coming into play as the mostly black city readies to elect a successor to the very-public political face during and since Katrina — Mayor Ray Nagin. There’s a good chance his successor will be city’s first white mayor in three decades.

Sensing the difficulty in winning, the most prominent black candidate bowed out of the race earlier this month. State Sen. Ed Murray acknowledged that it would have been difficult to beat Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the scion of a prominent white political family who have been popular among black voters.

While blacks still make up about 62 percent of the voter rolls, white candidates have gained traction since Katrina hit in 2005. Whites gained a 4-3 majority on the City Council in 2007, and a white district attorney was elected in 2008.

In the mayoral election, political analysts say race may be less of a factor as voters consider who can accelerate the city’s recovery and fight its high crime rate.

“I think African-Americans would prefer voting for an African-American, but one that they feel comfortable would do what has to be done” said City Constable Lambert Boissiere Jr., a former city councilman who was among black leaders who rose to power in the 1970s.

But for a candidate to convince voters he’ll get the job done, he has to know where to find them and what issues matter to them. Boissiere said that can be a challenge in some black middle-class enclaves and poor neighborhoods like the Lower 9th Ward, which are still struggling from the storm and remain thinly populated.

“You don’t know how to reach them,” Boissiere said.

Many residents who scattered, disrupting neighborhood political networks, haven’t come back. The city’s overall population, about 450,000 before the storm, remains down by more than 100,000.

Read FULL article here: Mostly black New Orleans could pick first white mayor in decades

"Harlem : Photographs by Ellen Fisch"

"Harlem - Photographs by Ellen Fisch" is presented from January 5 through January 30, 2010, with and opening Tuesday, January 5th from 6-8, at Jadite Galleries, 413 West 50th Street, New York. “Harlem,” an exhibition of photographs by Ellen Fisch, showcases the breadth and diversity of the influences of the Harlem Community on its architecture, gardens, architectural details and landmarks. Ellen Fisch has been a Premiere Portfolio Member at absolutearts.com since 2004 and is a regular featured writer at blog.absolutearts.com.

Ellen Fisch (www.absolutearts.com/ellenfisch), a well known photographer, has always had a special passion for the details of architecture, their relationships to their surroundings and their historical and cultural influences and derivations. She has dedicated herself to capturing the often-unnoticed details and juxtapositions that characterize public and private structures. Ellen Fisch creates a visual record and a living history of peripheral and central architectural elements that provide insight into the aesthetics of a community. The images that Ellen Fisch has preserved with her lens are infused with shadow and light, form and space, and her own artistic impressions to create photographs that not only capture the essence of the place, but are timeless testimonials to the Harlem Community.

A percentage of the proceeds will benefit educational and cultural activities in the Harlem Community

Developer secures funding for $28M low-income Harlem rehab project

By Amy Tennery, THE REAL DEAL

Ron Moelis, CEO & Chairman of L + M Development Partners, and 1428 Fifth Avenue
L + M Development Partners, a Larchmont-based firm specializing in affordable housing headed by Ron Moelis, has closed on $27.7 million in construction funding for the rehabilitation of a 120-unit affordable housing complex in Harlem at 1428 Fifth Avenue, David Dishy, executive vice president of acquisitions and investments with L + M Development, told The Real Deal.

Although the residential market is tenuous, Dishy said that the financial climate is amenable to this kind of project. Two years ago, Dishy said, his development group might have been priced out of a project similar to the one it's undertaking.

The rehabilitation project will provide new facilities and upgrades, for the Section 8 rental building between 116th and 117th streets, including a new roof, new EnergyStar appliances and a new building-wide ventilation system to improve overall air quality, he said.

Low-income housing rehabbing is part of a larger trend in New York City toward refurbishing rather than constructing, Dishy said, as preservation becomes an increasingly attractive option to low-income housing proponents.

"The city's focus on preservation is a function of… [getting] better bang for the buck," Dishy said, adding that he sees it as a viable option for other metropolitan regions.

The Harlem project, expected to be completed within a year, is being funded through tax exempt bonds, equity from low-income housing credits purchased by Goldman Sachs and a $1.8 million loan from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

The project will create 176 construction-related jobs, according to L + M.

Adjacent to 1428 Fifth Avenue is a vacant lot, which L + M plans to use for a separate mixed-income, mixed-use development. Although it is still in the planning stages, Dishy said that the building, to be constructed on a parcel his firm purchased for $5.1 million, will include some low-income units. That project is scheduled to be complete by mid-2011.

The former owner of 1428 Fifth Avenue, Metrovest, declined to comment on the development.

Developer secures funding for $28M low-income Harlem rehab project

Harold Ford May Challenge Gillibrand For New York Senate Seat

Just as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand thought she could breathe a little easier following news that GOP Rep. Peter King is "leaning against" seeking her senate seat in 2010, reports name Harold Ford Jr. as a possible challenger in a Democratic primary.

According to the New York Times:

About a dozen high-profile Democrats have expressed interest in backing a candidacy by Mr. Ford, including the financier Steven Rattner, who, along with his wife, Maureen White, has been among the country's most prolific Democratic fund-raisers.
Mayor Bloomberg, who has allegedly yet to warm to Gillibrand, is thought to be considering backing the 39-year-old former congressman.

Ford moved from Tennessee to New York following his unsuccessful 2006 senate bid.

Juelz Santana And Jim Jones Reunite Dipset For “Harlem Forever” [Uncut Video]

BY Justin Stewart from HIP HOP WIRED
When the ball dropped and the New Year arrived, many sat and waited on the Internet in anticipation for Juelz Santana's new mixtape The Reagan Era.

Needless to say, the tape still hasn't dropped, along with a slew of other artists that were meant to bring in 2010 with new material.

Even with that said, Juelz finds a momentary pleasure for the fans to nod their heads to be releasing the music video for “Harlem Forever”.

Looking to do a minor swagger jack from the young Drake, Santana uses his rendition to pay homage to his stomping grounds and had Jim Jones riding in the passenger seat..

Reform of New York’s Courts Stalls

Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell said that a proposal to reform New York State’s network of small-town courts is unlikely to pass this year.

By WILLIAM GLABERSON of NY Times

The most ambitious efforts in decades to reform New York State’s vast network of small-town courts — where sessions can be held in a garage, and where more than 1,450 judges who are not lawyers conduct trials — have stalled in Albany. Even a seemingly modest compromise, one that would allow a defendant to request that the judge be a lawyer, seems doomed, its sponsor says.

Just a few years ago, critics of the courts said major changes seemed possible after nearly 100 years of failed efforts. The Legislature and a judicial commission held hearings, and state court officials instituted reforms.

But efforts toward more extensive changes have recently slowed to a crawl. The seemingly simple idea that the local justices should have law degrees went nowhere. Now, even a compromise legislative proposal that would give people facing jail the option of having their cases transferred to a judge who is a lawyer is failing in Albany.

The proposal has been angrily opposed by the justices, who, in addition to conducting trials, also rule on search warrants and send people to jail. But it has also been opposed, though more quietly, by the state’s top court administrators, who often walk a tightrope as they work to keep the courts running. A sponsor, Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, a Manhattan Democrat, said it was unlikely to pass this year. He said colleagues had told him that it threatened the stature of the justices, who are often tightly woven into local politics.

“They say, ‘I’m getting a whole lot of pressure about a bill you have,’ ” Mr. O’Donnell said. Critics of the courts say the bill’s failure would signal an end to the latest effort to change the courts.

“If this minimal legislative initiative can’t succeed, the possibility of strong, efficient, constitutionally protective local courts will never happen in this state in my lifetime,” said Eve Burton, a lawyer who was a member of a state commission that studied the town and village courts in 2007.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: Reform of New York’s Courts Stalls