Obama Pastor rips NY Times a new one, gently
Posted on March 22, 2007, Printed on March 24, 2007
http://www.alternetorg/bloggers/evan/49627/
March 11, 2007
Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959
Dear Jodi:
Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a "Spiritual Biography" of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.
For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run. I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing it would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn't I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family?
I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.
I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just "in word only."
I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked about Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.
Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack's spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, "What is that in your hand?," that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it "in his hand." Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.
As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on...
... Barack's taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print?
You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed "sound byte" and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.
I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation's first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.
Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama's "Spiritual Biography."
Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of "Hannity and Colmes" is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.
The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth.
I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or "spin" because you are more interested in journalism than in truth.
Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party's national "blog." The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior. Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!
Sincerely and respectfully yours,
Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. ,
Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Black Officers in Sean Bell Case
Have you had time to realize that 2 out of the 3 officers indicted in the Sean Bell murder in NYC were BLACK!?! One is 39 years old and the other is 28 years old. Apparently, not only white folks racial profile...
Damn shame.
Damn shame.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
CABRINI-GREEN HOMES
At Housing Project, Both Fear and Renewal
Article Tools Sponsored By
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 18, 2007
CHICAGO, March 17 — On a night of freezing temperatures, a bare-chested baby crawled alone along an open ninth-floor gallery at the Cabrini Green housing project, its wails piercing through a nearby apartment’s living room walls.
“Whose child is this?” Mattie Gibson shouted, darting from the apartment and peering into vacant units. “Hello? There’s a baby here!”
From a corner apartment, two little boys from a family of squatters emerged to take the child from Ms. Gibson’s arms.
“This is the kind of chaos all around here,” said Ms. Gibson, a payroll clerk who has lived here for 15 years. “No one seems to be listening. It’s like they all moved on.”
For the most part, they have.
More than a decade ago, when the Chicago Housing Authority began dismantling much of its notoriously dysfunctional stock, the worst of Cabrini Green was the first to meet the wrecking ball because it was considered to be among the most frightful addresses in the country.
For some families, it still is. Under the supervision of a federal judge, the demolitions have slowed while the residents of several deteriorating buildings and the Housing Authority negotiate redevelopment plans and where the displaced population will go.
In one 19-acre part of the project officially known as the William Green Homes, there were once more than 1,000 apartments in eight 15-story towers. Today, 176 families and an unknown number of squatters live there in three remaining buildings. At its peak, the entire Cabrini project was home to about 15,000 people in hundreds of row houses and towers. Many of those structures are long gone, or are awaiting rehabilitation or demolition.
The project was popularized by the 1970s sitcom “Good Times” as a neighborhood of strivers and funnymen, but reality was more cruel: Cabrini Green was the kind of place where a young boy could be killed by sniper fire while holding his mother’s hand on the way to school, as happened in the fall of 1992.
Now the neighborhood, near the intersection of Halsted and Division Streets on the North Side near downtown, is rapidly gentrifying with new condominiums and shopping strips, amenities that were unthinkable just a decade ago.
Though life in the project remains hellish — a woman recently fatally overdosed in the stairwell near Ms. Gibson’s door, and drug dealers sometimes take control of the building entrances — there is a feeling that the worst of the bad old days are over for the neighborhood at large. From the gallery outside her apartment, Ms. Gibson can see the gleaming lights of two new Starbucks, a Blockbuster and the shopping carts from a stylish grocery store.
Because of the changes, many public housing residents have refused to leave the area, where roots run generations deep. In 2004, the Local Advisory Council, which represents hundreds of residents, sued the Housing Authority over relocation plans from the city’s Plan for Transformation, a $1.4 billion blueprint for public housing renewal adopted in 2000.
Richard Wheelock, a lawyer for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, which represents the tenants, said the Housing Authority’s demolition program had far outpaced its construction, leaving families with few options beyond “equally dangerous and segregated communities” on the city’s West and South Sides. “The only leverage the residents have is to say we’re going to stay here until you build the stuff,” he said.
Mr. Wheelock also said that tens of thousands of displaced residents who meet certain standards have received federal housing vouchers, which allow them to move wherever they find a willing landlord.
About two-thirds of the displaced families with vouchers have indicated that they would prefer to return to traditional public housing, officials said. But the Plan for Transformation, a national model in its scope and original ambition, is off schedule and in need of more money. The goals were to demolish obsolete buildings and to break up pockets of poverty by incorporating public housing into mixed-income communities.
Seven years into it, slightly less than 30 percent of the new housing for those residents in mixed-income developments has been built or rehabilitated, according to the authority’s 2007 annual plan. That represents about 2,270 new dwellings for people with permanent relocation rights on a waiting list of 15,000 families. (And beyond those who were displaced by the demolitions, there are more than 90,000 people from the general public on another waiting list for public housing.)
Under the transformation plan, the Housing Authority also set out to rehabilitate 5,000 units of public housing for families by 2010. So far, 1,733 units have been delivered, the annual plan said. The time frame for everything has been extended to 2015.
The authority has produced housing much more quickly for its older citizens, rehabilitating almost all of the 9,438 units it promised. It has also rehabilitated more than 2,500 units for families in so-called scattered sites around the city.
“What drives us is money,” said Sharon Gist Gilliam, the chief executive of the Housing Authority. “If I could get my hands on a quick $2 billion we could get this done in three or four years.”
There are signs of hope: Just across from what remains of Cabrini Green are new mixed-income communities that are thriving as models for the future. Many more are on the way but housing officials point to rising construction costs as their main obstacle to a faster delivery.
With so much of the project gone now, residents said the problems have not disappeared so much as been concentrated. Housing officials insist that the buildings are well maintained and that there is a constant police presence.
The place tells its own story.
Drug dealers form thickets in the lobbies so deep that it resembles a crowded market. The elevators are often out of service, forcing residents into stairwells that addicts have claimed for their own purposes.
And then there are the squatters.
“I want to be out of here so bad,” said Sierra Milton, who lives on the 14th floor of one of the last towers. “There are people hiding everywhere, in the hallways, around the corners. I want to go because I’m scared. I’ve been living here since 1998 and this is the worst I ever felt.”
Nikia Evans was born on the fifth floor of the Green Homes because an ambulance did not make it to her mother in time. She is still there, along with her aunt and grandmother, waiting for a time and place to move. The uncertainty is unsettling.
“I heard that we were getting vouchers,” said Ms. Evans, who works at a catalog call center and qualifies for a voucher. “But I’ve heard so many stories I don’t know what to believe.”
Two doors down, Ms. Evans’s aunt, Thelma Hicks, 67, sought to reassure the family.
“If I had a choice, I’d stay here because this is my roots,” she said. “But we know things change. And we always have to be open to new things. It’s hard to deal with this but they say things will change for the best. We’ll see.”
Article Tools Sponsored By
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 18, 2007
CHICAGO, March 17 — On a night of freezing temperatures, a bare-chested baby crawled alone along an open ninth-floor gallery at the Cabrini Green housing project, its wails piercing through a nearby apartment’s living room walls.
“Whose child is this?” Mattie Gibson shouted, darting from the apartment and peering into vacant units. “Hello? There’s a baby here!”
From a corner apartment, two little boys from a family of squatters emerged to take the child from Ms. Gibson’s arms.
“This is the kind of chaos all around here,” said Ms. Gibson, a payroll clerk who has lived here for 15 years. “No one seems to be listening. It’s like they all moved on.”
For the most part, they have.
More than a decade ago, when the Chicago Housing Authority began dismantling much of its notoriously dysfunctional stock, the worst of Cabrini Green was the first to meet the wrecking ball because it was considered to be among the most frightful addresses in the country.
For some families, it still is. Under the supervision of a federal judge, the demolitions have slowed while the residents of several deteriorating buildings and the Housing Authority negotiate redevelopment plans and where the displaced population will go.
In one 19-acre part of the project officially known as the William Green Homes, there were once more than 1,000 apartments in eight 15-story towers. Today, 176 families and an unknown number of squatters live there in three remaining buildings. At its peak, the entire Cabrini project was home to about 15,000 people in hundreds of row houses and towers. Many of those structures are long gone, or are awaiting rehabilitation or demolition.
The project was popularized by the 1970s sitcom “Good Times” as a neighborhood of strivers and funnymen, but reality was more cruel: Cabrini Green was the kind of place where a young boy could be killed by sniper fire while holding his mother’s hand on the way to school, as happened in the fall of 1992.
Now the neighborhood, near the intersection of Halsted and Division Streets on the North Side near downtown, is rapidly gentrifying with new condominiums and shopping strips, amenities that were unthinkable just a decade ago.
Though life in the project remains hellish — a woman recently fatally overdosed in the stairwell near Ms. Gibson’s door, and drug dealers sometimes take control of the building entrances — there is a feeling that the worst of the bad old days are over for the neighborhood at large. From the gallery outside her apartment, Ms. Gibson can see the gleaming lights of two new Starbucks, a Blockbuster and the shopping carts from a stylish grocery store.
Because of the changes, many public housing residents have refused to leave the area, where roots run generations deep. In 2004, the Local Advisory Council, which represents hundreds of residents, sued the Housing Authority over relocation plans from the city’s Plan for Transformation, a $1.4 billion blueprint for public housing renewal adopted in 2000.
Richard Wheelock, a lawyer for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, which represents the tenants, said the Housing Authority’s demolition program had far outpaced its construction, leaving families with few options beyond “equally dangerous and segregated communities” on the city’s West and South Sides. “The only leverage the residents have is to say we’re going to stay here until you build the stuff,” he said.
Mr. Wheelock also said that tens of thousands of displaced residents who meet certain standards have received federal housing vouchers, which allow them to move wherever they find a willing landlord.
About two-thirds of the displaced families with vouchers have indicated that they would prefer to return to traditional public housing, officials said. But the Plan for Transformation, a national model in its scope and original ambition, is off schedule and in need of more money. The goals were to demolish obsolete buildings and to break up pockets of poverty by incorporating public housing into mixed-income communities.
Seven years into it, slightly less than 30 percent of the new housing for those residents in mixed-income developments has been built or rehabilitated, according to the authority’s 2007 annual plan. That represents about 2,270 new dwellings for people with permanent relocation rights on a waiting list of 15,000 families. (And beyond those who were displaced by the demolitions, there are more than 90,000 people from the general public on another waiting list for public housing.)
Under the transformation plan, the Housing Authority also set out to rehabilitate 5,000 units of public housing for families by 2010. So far, 1,733 units have been delivered, the annual plan said. The time frame for everything has been extended to 2015.
The authority has produced housing much more quickly for its older citizens, rehabilitating almost all of the 9,438 units it promised. It has also rehabilitated more than 2,500 units for families in so-called scattered sites around the city.
“What drives us is money,” said Sharon Gist Gilliam, the chief executive of the Housing Authority. “If I could get my hands on a quick $2 billion we could get this done in three or four years.”
There are signs of hope: Just across from what remains of Cabrini Green are new mixed-income communities that are thriving as models for the future. Many more are on the way but housing officials point to rising construction costs as their main obstacle to a faster delivery.
With so much of the project gone now, residents said the problems have not disappeared so much as been concentrated. Housing officials insist that the buildings are well maintained and that there is a constant police presence.
The place tells its own story.
Drug dealers form thickets in the lobbies so deep that it resembles a crowded market. The elevators are often out of service, forcing residents into stairwells that addicts have claimed for their own purposes.
And then there are the squatters.
“I want to be out of here so bad,” said Sierra Milton, who lives on the 14th floor of one of the last towers. “There are people hiding everywhere, in the hallways, around the corners. I want to go because I’m scared. I’ve been living here since 1998 and this is the worst I ever felt.”
Nikia Evans was born on the fifth floor of the Green Homes because an ambulance did not make it to her mother in time. She is still there, along with her aunt and grandmother, waiting for a time and place to move. The uncertainty is unsettling.
“I heard that we were getting vouchers,” said Ms. Evans, who works at a catalog call center and qualifies for a voucher. “But I’ve heard so many stories I don’t know what to believe.”
Two doors down, Ms. Evans’s aunt, Thelma Hicks, 67, sought to reassure the family.
“If I had a choice, I’d stay here because this is my roots,” she said. “But we know things change. And we always have to be open to new things. It’s hard to deal with this but they say things will change for the best. We’ll see.”
Friday, March 9, 2007
Can You Blacks Swim?
'Pride' delivers important message
By Sam Alipour
Special to Page 2
Black people can't swim.
It's that myth -- and, all too often, a reality -- that Jim Ellis has tackled for more than 35 years.
Ellis' story is at the center of "Pride," a film from Lions Gate and first-time director Sunu Gonera that chronicles Ellis' first year with the Philadelphia department of recreation, where he founded an African-American swim team in Nicetown, one of Philly's roughest neighborhoods. It was 1972 when the schoolteacher and former Cheney State swimmer first changed the lives of a number of troubled black inner-city kids by, in effect, tossing them into a pool.
Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard ("Hustle and Flow"), who plays Ellis in the film, has some familiarity with the challenge his real-life counterpart faces. During a recent conversation at a hotel in Beverly Hills, Howard admitted that growing up in Cleveland wasn't easy for a kid who liked to swim.
"Those inner-city pools are a nesting ground for death and harm," he recalled. "You'd get beat up. People urinated in the water. It wasn't a good place, so we didn't do much swimming."
Howard laid his hands on the table, palms down. By most standards, particularly those belonging to movie stars, Howard's digits are gnarly.
"I can box better than I can do anything else," said Howard, one of Hollywood's up-and-coming thespians. "So why do you think my knuckles are jacked up? That's what you had to do if you want to swim in those pools in Cleveland."
Lions Gate
Terrence Howard, left, plays Jim Ellis, who has taught swimming in inner-city Philadelphia since 1971.
Howard estimates that one in three of his black friends doesn't know how to swim. I tell him that of the dozen or so African-American Pro Bowlers I attempted to recruit for a shark-diving foray in Hawaii for an ESPN The Magazine story, only two were capable of not sinking to the ocean floor.
Forget a movie star's mangled knuckles. Mind the stats. Drowning rates in ethnic communities are nearly three times the national average. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African-American children are more than twice as likely to drown than white ones. Black children ages 10 to 14 are five times more likely.
"Something is drastically wrong," Howard said. "And U.S. swimming is being handicapped by it."
From Black History Month
• World-class swimmer Brielle White manages a grueling schedule with the goal of making it to the 2008 Olympics, writes Joseph Santoliquito.
• Swim coach Ellis still a source of pride in Philly.
The numbers back Howard up. Only four black swimmers have represented the U.S. Olympic team. The first male was Anthony Erwin, in 2000, when he won a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle. It wasn't until Athens in 2004 that the first black woman, Maritza Correia, qualified. She won a silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay.
"We only believe what we can see," Howard explained, citing track legend Jesse Owens' performance at the '36 Olympics. "Until Owens broke those records, we didn't know it could be done. We need one person to challenge and raise the bar." But here, there's hope. Ellis cites Correia and Cullen Jones -- the first African-American to break a long-course world record at the World University games -- as two of the brightest stars in USA Swimming's sky.
This, in part, is why Ellis agreed to a film based on his life: to help expand that list by ensuring that the next LeBron James will want to swim and not dunk. Good thing Ellis has some friends to aid him in his efforts. USA Swimming is already using the film to recruit swimmers and utilizing its real-life hero in PSA spots for "Make a Splash," a campaign aimed at reducing drowning deaths and drawing more children to the sport. And Ellis says Lions Gate, the studio behind the film, is planning to help raise funds for his club.
It's this grassroots effort that can help clubs like Ellis' the most. Like many inner-city pools, his Marcus Foster Recreation Center -- the one featured in the film -- is in need of repair.
Lions Gate
Ellis says his club is down to 30 members from as many as 150.
"Right now, we're down to 30 swimmers, from 150, and much of that has to do with the physical condition of the pool," Ellis said. "If you come in at 5 a.m. and there's no heat, that deters people.
"U.S. Swimming can use this movie to help attract inner-city youth, but you need a lot more than a movie to attract Afro-Americans to swimming. If we don't have the facilities, we have nothing."
It's quite a conundrum, and one often tackled by socially conscious filmmakers: Can a plight that begat a movie be eradicated by the movie's effort to raise awareness and funds? If so, then maybe myths can be dispelled, Ellis' pool will be full and USA Swimming can paddle a promising new course.
And then maybe one of George Clinton's creations will finally be saved.
On "Motor Booty Affair" by Parliament ('78), a critically acclaimed underwater-themed album that helped shape funk in the years to come, Clinton plays to stereotypes with his fictional character Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk (or "Devoid of Funk"), who hates to dance and -- on the track "Aqua Boogie" -- to swim. "I can't swim," the character crows, "I never could swim, I never will swim." Not if Misters Ellis and Howard can help it, Sir Nose.
By Sam Alipour
Special to Page 2
Black people can't swim.
It's that myth -- and, all too often, a reality -- that Jim Ellis has tackled for more than 35 years.
Ellis' story is at the center of "Pride," a film from Lions Gate and first-time director Sunu Gonera that chronicles Ellis' first year with the Philadelphia department of recreation, where he founded an African-American swim team in Nicetown, one of Philly's roughest neighborhoods. It was 1972 when the schoolteacher and former Cheney State swimmer first changed the lives of a number of troubled black inner-city kids by, in effect, tossing them into a pool.
Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard ("Hustle and Flow"), who plays Ellis in the film, has some familiarity with the challenge his real-life counterpart faces. During a recent conversation at a hotel in Beverly Hills, Howard admitted that growing up in Cleveland wasn't easy for a kid who liked to swim.
"Those inner-city pools are a nesting ground for death and harm," he recalled. "You'd get beat up. People urinated in the water. It wasn't a good place, so we didn't do much swimming."
Howard laid his hands on the table, palms down. By most standards, particularly those belonging to movie stars, Howard's digits are gnarly.
"I can box better than I can do anything else," said Howard, one of Hollywood's up-and-coming thespians. "So why do you think my knuckles are jacked up? That's what you had to do if you want to swim in those pools in Cleveland."
Lions Gate
Terrence Howard, left, plays Jim Ellis, who has taught swimming in inner-city Philadelphia since 1971.
Howard estimates that one in three of his black friends doesn't know how to swim. I tell him that of the dozen or so African-American Pro Bowlers I attempted to recruit for a shark-diving foray in Hawaii for an ESPN The Magazine story, only two were capable of not sinking to the ocean floor.
Forget a movie star's mangled knuckles. Mind the stats. Drowning rates in ethnic communities are nearly three times the national average. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African-American children are more than twice as likely to drown than white ones. Black children ages 10 to 14 are five times more likely.
"Something is drastically wrong," Howard said. "And U.S. swimming is being handicapped by it."
From Black History Month
• World-class swimmer Brielle White manages a grueling schedule with the goal of making it to the 2008 Olympics, writes Joseph Santoliquito.
• Swim coach Ellis still a source of pride in Philly.
The numbers back Howard up. Only four black swimmers have represented the U.S. Olympic team. The first male was Anthony Erwin, in 2000, when he won a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle. It wasn't until Athens in 2004 that the first black woman, Maritza Correia, qualified. She won a silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay.
"We only believe what we can see," Howard explained, citing track legend Jesse Owens' performance at the '36 Olympics. "Until Owens broke those records, we didn't know it could be done. We need one person to challenge and raise the bar." But here, there's hope. Ellis cites Correia and Cullen Jones -- the first African-American to break a long-course world record at the World University games -- as two of the brightest stars in USA Swimming's sky.
This, in part, is why Ellis agreed to a film based on his life: to help expand that list by ensuring that the next LeBron James will want to swim and not dunk. Good thing Ellis has some friends to aid him in his efforts. USA Swimming is already using the film to recruit swimmers and utilizing its real-life hero in PSA spots for "Make a Splash," a campaign aimed at reducing drowning deaths and drawing more children to the sport. And Ellis says Lions Gate, the studio behind the film, is planning to help raise funds for his club.
It's this grassroots effort that can help clubs like Ellis' the most. Like many inner-city pools, his Marcus Foster Recreation Center -- the one featured in the film -- is in need of repair.
Lions Gate
Ellis says his club is down to 30 members from as many as 150.
"Right now, we're down to 30 swimmers, from 150, and much of that has to do with the physical condition of the pool," Ellis said. "If you come in at 5 a.m. and there's no heat, that deters people.
"U.S. Swimming can use this movie to help attract inner-city youth, but you need a lot more than a movie to attract Afro-Americans to swimming. If we don't have the facilities, we have nothing."
It's quite a conundrum, and one often tackled by socially conscious filmmakers: Can a plight that begat a movie be eradicated by the movie's effort to raise awareness and funds? If so, then maybe myths can be dispelled, Ellis' pool will be full and USA Swimming can paddle a promising new course.
And then maybe one of George Clinton's creations will finally be saved.
On "Motor Booty Affair" by Parliament ('78), a critically acclaimed underwater-themed album that helped shape funk in the years to come, Clinton plays to stereotypes with his fictional character Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk (or "Devoid of Funk"), who hates to dance and -- on the track "Aqua Boogie" -- to swim. "I can't swim," the character crows, "I never could swim, I never will swim." Not if Misters Ellis and Howard can help it, Sir Nose.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
More Obama
CHICAGO, March 5 — The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama’s presidential announcement.Senator Barack Obama with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in a 2005 photograph.
After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.
But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.
“Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers.
Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.
But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.
“Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers.
Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. Mr. Wright did however, attend the announcement and prayed with Mr. Obama beforehand.
“Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself,” Mr. Burton said.
Instead, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Wright’s successor as pastor at Trinity, the Rev. Otis Moss III, to speak. Mr. Moss declined.
In recent weeks, word of Mr. Obama’s treatment of Mr. Wright has reached black leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and given them pause.
“I have not discussed this with Senator Obama in detail, but I can see why callers of mine and other clergymen would be concerned, because the issue is standing by your own pastor,” Mr. Sharpton said.
Mr. Wright’s church, the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ, is considered mainstream — Oprah Winfrey has attended services, and many members are prominent black professionals. But the church is also more Afrocentric and politically active than standard black congregations.
Mr. Wright helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington and along with other United Church of Christ ministers was one of the first black religious leaders to protest apartheid and welcome gay and lesbian worshippers.
Since Mr. Obama made his presidential ambitions clear, conservatives have drawn attention to his close relationship to Mr. Wright and to the church’s emphasis on black empowerment. Tucker Carlson of MSNBC called the precepts “racially exclusive” and “wrong.” Last week, on the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes,” Erik Rush, a conservative columnist, called the church “quite cultish, quite separatist.”
In Monday’s interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection.
“When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.
Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.” According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”
Source:
Monday, March 5, 2007
Black Men Revealed
Has anyone seen this "Black Men Revealed" show that is aired on TV One usually late at night? It is a roundtable of 4-5 Black men fitting silly ass steroetypes:
-the cheater, young playboy
-the old wise cat who has done everything and shuns the young ways of thinking
-the somewhat questionably gay dude
-the middle of the road, educated brother
-the hood nigga
-the host
They sit and play a faux game of bones while talking about the issues concerning Black men: cheating, relationships, sex, dating, homophobia, all this stuff. This show is the worst. It's like something white folks or women put together. Now some of the topics are good, but the guests are terrible. It's no one famous, just regular dudes. I think we should have our own segment, cause this shit they are doing is ridiculous....
Come to think of it, some of our topics might be ridiculous too, but still, we'd do a better job. Comments?
-the cheater, young playboy
-the old wise cat who has done everything and shuns the young ways of thinking
-the somewhat questionably gay dude
-the middle of the road, educated brother
-the hood nigga
-the host
They sit and play a faux game of bones while talking about the issues concerning Black men: cheating, relationships, sex, dating, homophobia, all this stuff. This show is the worst. It's like something white folks or women put together. Now some of the topics are good, but the guests are terrible. It's no one famous, just regular dudes. I think we should have our own segment, cause this shit they are doing is ridiculous....
Come to think of it, some of our topics might be ridiculous too, but still, we'd do a better job. Comments?
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Obama
Barack Obama's Ancestors May Have Owned Slaves
(AP) WASHINGTON Democrat Barack Obama, who would be the first black president, has white ancestors who owned slaves, according to a genealogical researcher.
The researcher, William Addams Reitwiesner, says the discovery is part of his first draft of research into Obama's roots. Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother was a white woman from Kansas.
Obama wrote in his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," that while one of his great-great-grandfathers was a decorated Union soldier, family rumors also say he is distantly related to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
Reitwiesner found in 1850 Census records from Kentucky that one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two black slaves — a 60-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman.
The Baltimore Sun first reported Reitwiesner's work and asked genealogical experts to review it, but they would not confirm the findings.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the senator's ancestors "are representative of America."
"While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in the Civil War," Burton said. "And it is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States."
Reitwiesner found that two other presidential candidates were descendants of slave owners — Republican John McCain and Democrat John Edwards.
source: http://cbs2.com/national/topstories_story_062150428.html
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