Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 913

Zerlina Maxwell on Steubenville Rape Trial & Teaching Young Men About Consent

Democracy Now
As the rape trial of two football players from Steubenville, Ohio continues, we speak to political pundit Zerlina Maxwell. Over the past week she has received racially fueled death threats for speaking out against rape. Maxwell, who is a rape survivor, appeared on a Fox News segment with Sean Hannity last week about the possibility of arming women to prevent rape. She said the responsibility should lie instead with men. In response to her remarks, Maxwell received a torrent of abuse on social media with commenters saying she deserved to be gang-raped and killed.

USA Swimming to Attend Sigma Gamma Rho Regional Conferences to Encourage Participation in the Sport of Swimming

 















USA Swimming to Attend Sigma Gamma Rho Regional Conferences to Encourage Participation in the Sport of Swimming
Colorado Springs, Colo. (March 13, 2013) – USA Swimmingand Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc, a historically Black service organization, today announced that as part of their on-going partnership USA Swimming will have a presence in their five regional conferences in March and April.
 
Each of the five regional conferences will include a Friday night public meeting that will incorporate a USA Swimming athlete or representative. Conference attendees will learn about the health and safety benefits of getting involved in the sport of swimming.
 
Two of the regional conferences will also feature a Saturday water safety lesson from USA Swimming. The kick-off event in Milwaukee, Wis., March 15-17, will feature 2004 Olympic silver medalist Maritza McClendon and National Teamer Ashley Wanland. The conference in Long Beach Calif., April 19-21, will also feature a swim clinic with 2012 Olympic gold medalist Jessica Hardy and McClendon.
 
“We look forward to teaching Sigma Gamma Rho’s members more about USA Swimming,” said Matt Farrell, USA Swimming Chief Marketing Officer. “This overall partnership and USA Swimming’s presence at Sigma Gamma Rho’s national conferences offers us the opportunity to uniquely reach thousands of families across the nation and teach them about the benefits of swimming.”
 
USA Swimming’s partnership with Sigma Gamma Rho is part of the organization’s on-going recruiting effort aimed at arming parents with the information and resources they need to get their children involved in the sport for its health and safety benefits.

“Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. is very proud about our partnership with USA Swimming,” said Bonita M. Herring, Sigma Gamma Rho’s National President. “When I heard the statistics, last summer, that seventy percent of African American children and 60 percent of Hispanic children don't know how to swim I was shocked. We know that our work with USA Swimming will focus on this issue and provide awareness to the communities that we serve.
We look forward to having these amazing athletes at our event.”

 The five regional conferences will run through the end of April and will stop in the following locations:
 

March 15/Milwaukee, WI Ashley Wanland/ Maritza McClendon Milwaukee Hilton
 
March 22/ Nashville, TN Tyler McGill/ Cullen Jones Franklin Marriott Cool Springs
 
April 5/San Antonio. TX Maritza McClendon Hilton San Antonio
 
April 19/Long Beach, CA Jessica Hardy/ Maritza McClendon Torrance Marriott South Bay
 
April 26/Boston. MA Alex Meyer Hyatt Regency Cambridge
 
By providing Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. chapters with resources and support to aid in educating its members on a local, regional and national level, USA Swimming hopes to educate the Sigma Gamma Rho community on the benefits of and opportunities available within the sport of swimming. This spring, USA Swimming and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. will also develop a sorority-specific call-to-action initiative that will focus on highlighting water safety on the grassroots level within their chapters’ communities.
 
For more information about Sigma Gamma Rho’s partnership with USA Swimming, visit http://www.usaswimming.org/swim1922

About USA Swimming As the National Governing Body for the sport of swimming in the United States, USA Swimming is a 300,000-member-service organization that promotes the culture of swimming by creating opportunities for swimmers and coaches of all backgrounds to participate and advance in the sport through clubs, events and education. Our membership is comprised of swimmers from the age group level to the Olympic Team, as well as coaches and volunteers. USA Swimming is responsible for selecting and training teams for international competition including the Olympic Games, and strives to serve the sport through its core objectives: Build the base, Promote the sport, Achieve competitive success.
For more information, visit http://www.usaswimming.org

 About Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. was founded on November 12, 1922 on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana by seven schoolteachers. The sorority’s aim is to enhance the quality of life in the community. Public service, leadership development and education of youth are the hallmark of the organization’s programs and activities.
To learn more about Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. and its service initiatives, log onto http://www.sgrho1922.org.

Press Contact:
Danny Astoria | Simone Smalls PR, Inc.   
danny@simonesmallspr.com| 917.388.3890
Simone Smalls | Simone Smalls PR, Inc.
simone@simonesmallspr.com | 917.388.3890

Diane Nash: Civil Rights and Women's Rights

Makers
Diane Nash talks about the Civil Rights Movement's connection to the women's movement and how The Feminine Mystique affected her.
***
Diane Nash, a Chicago native, first became actively involved with the Civil Rights Movement in 1959, when she enrolled in Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and came face to face with the pervasive segregation of the Jim Crow South for the first time in her life.  Her unyielding determination and courageousness, coupled with her “flawless instincts,” quickly made her one of the most respected leaders of the sit-in movement in Nashville. Nash's early efforts included orchestrating the first successful civil rights campaign to de-segregate lunch counters, as well as helping to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that became one of the most influential during the Civil Rights Movement. 

Ep. 1: Goma, Congo | Beat Making Lab | PBS Digital Studios

The Architects: Stephen Levitin (aka Apple Juice Kid) and Pierce Freelon

Mastermind of Videography: Saleem Reshamwala (aka Kid Ethnic)

PBS Co-conspirators: Matthew Graham and Lauren Saks

Editing Genie: Mandy Padgett

Musical Poetry: Beat Making Lab and Apple Juice Kid

Director of Innovation: Dana McMahan

Dream Team: Elliette Johnson, Ryan Levin, Pat Levitin

The Death of Black Radio

w/ Vy Higgensen, Bob Law, G. Keith Alexander, Ken 'Spider' Webb & Fred Buggs.

The Red Lipstick Manifesta

LC Coleman:
Learn more at http://www.coloredgirlconfidential.co... The Red Lipstick Manifesta is a love note to every career woman who has ever felt overwhelmed or discouraged or just plain not good enough; a love note to every woman has been told not to speak until she is spoken to... and then is never spoken to. Cheers to never giving up on yourself or your big, audacious dreams!

Black Students at the University of California at Santa Barbara Demand Institutional Changes

Press Release
From:
The Black Student Union and Associated Students Office of the Student Advocate at the University of California at Santa Barbara
Contact:  
Yoel Haile, ASUCSB Student Advocate General: advocate@as.ucsb.edu Taisonya Tidwell, Black Student Union Co-Chair: ttaisonya@yahoo.com George Jefferson, Black Student Union Co-Chair: Geox1200@gmail.com

Subject: Black Students Demand Institutional Changes
We, the Black Student Union and the Associated Students Student Advocate General, believe that the University of California, Santa Barbara must create and implement plans to recruit and retain Black students, staff, and faculty.
In 1968 there were about .04% Black students when they decided to take over North Hall and demanded the creation of the Black Studies Department and the Center for Black Studies Research along with other demands. 45 years later, there are only at 3.1% Black students. Clearly, the abysmal rate of growth, or lack thereof, is an urgent call to action for the institution.
These demands are coming from the Black Student Union and the Associated Students Office of the Student Advocate at UC Santa Barbara, whose views are embodied by the following quotes:
“The University of California Santa Barbara has to be called to demonstrate its so-called commitment to diversity and inclusion of all underrepresented students and particularly Black students. The time has come for a serious shift in priorities through the creation and implementation of concrete plans outlined in our demands to increase the number of Black students, staff, and faculty with the ‘fierce urgency of now.’” – Yoel Haile, ASUCSB, Student Advocate General
“The demands that we are making did not begin with us. These demands are inequality issues, amongst other battles that have been fought for constantly by black students. Now is a better time than any for the university to create sustainable systems of recruitment for Black students. This is a job that cannot be done by students alone. This is why we are requesting institutional support”—Taisonya Tidwell, Co-Chair Black Student Union
“It’s time that the Black student moves from being an ornament in highly decorated diversity university brochures to being actually considered as a substantial embodiment of UCSB scholarship by the administration.”—George Jefferson, Co-Chair Black Student Union
The Chancellor has been open to meeting with us and hearing us out, and we very much look forward to the next concrete steps he will take to address our demands.

Press Advisory and Release
The Associated Students of UC Santa Barbara Student Advocate General and the UCSB Black Student Union strongly put forth the following grievances to UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Yang.
Given the hostile racial climate throughout the UC system and a multitude of issues adversely affecting Black students here at UCSB, we as concerned leaders of the campus community have created this list of demands out of true concern for health of current and future Black students here at UCSB.   It is our belief that Chancellor Henry T. Yang must be called to action and held accountable in addressing the structural deficiencies and lack of institutional support for Black students on this campus. 
The structural changes we want to be addressed are as follows:
1.    We demand that the “Enhanced African American Recruitment Strategies” Plan drafted by admissions be implemented in its entirety with full funding from the Chancellor’s office. We maintain that none of the funding that is necessary to address our demands comes from the Student Affairs Division and that Student Affairs rightly manage the issues with new funding from the Chancellor’s office. The priority shift we are demanding must be on the institutional and structural level. There is no will power and concerted effort being put forth to recruit and retain Black students by the University.  We are cognizant of the University’s strong efforts to reach a system wide goal of 10% for out-of-state students and particularly international students, and 25% for Chican@/Latin@ students. While we applaud the University for striving to reach these goals, we see no such effort and energy being put forth to recruit and retain Black students on this campus. 
2.  We demand an aggressive recruitment of Black faculty in disciplines and programs outside of the Black Studies Department as well as within the Black Studies Department. Hold the deans in each college accountable for the recruitment of Black faculty but also provide incentives for activities that promote retention of Black faculty as well as their recruitment.  There is an inadequate number of Black staff and faculty on campus.  This is particularly relevant in the retention of Black students because the overall campus climate is racially hostile to Black students, and the presence of the current Black staff and faculty has been imperative in the retention of those of us who are still here.
3.    We demand the hiring of two full-time Black psychologists at UCSB.  We maintain that the funding for this  (which includes recruitment expenses) not come from Student Affairs Division for the reasons stated above. Currently, there is a critical need as we only have one Black Psychologist on campus. We as Black students need psychologists who share similar experiences in terms of racial discrimination and in dealing with the racially hostile campus climate at this University.
4.    We demand North Hall be re-named Malcolm X Hall in honor and respect for the Black students and countless student and staff allies who occupied North Hall and symbolically renamed it Malcolm X Hall in 1968.  Because of this student activism, the Black Studies Department and the Center for Black Studies Research was created at UCSB. We believe renaming North Hall will memorialize the history and contributions of Black students on this campus.
5. We demand a permanent, student activism-centered display inside of North Hall memorializing the history of the 1968 student takeover of North Hall, Currently a plaque has been placed outside of the inner side of the building, with the drawback that the history of UCSB, its students and its Black Students current and past is not properly memorialized. A student simply can enter and leave the hall without knowing the legacy of the building and its role in changing the curriculum and climate of UCSB. Inclusion of the memorial helps to highlight the role that Black, Chican@, and White students played in making the University’s boastful legacy of diversity a partial reality.
6. We demand access to the contact information (such as email addresses) of all self-identified Black incoming first year and transfer students to be available through student affairs mediums such as EOP or OSL so that we can conduct our own familial and individual-centered models of outreach. We are aware that retention of Black students is done in large part by current student leaders and their organized efforts. That being said, we need to be able to extend resources to our community more systematically and rigorously to increase the Black student presence and well being on this campus. 
7.   We demand access to Black Alumni through the implementation of a program that allows Black alumni to give directly to retention and scholarship efforts of Black students through both monetary and social networks. We want to ensure these additions are localized in the Black community so as to maintain and sustain our community.
8.      We demand that all of these be implemented within the next 3-6 months. 
BSU is sending out this press release, because we want to inform the UCSB student body of the steps we are taking to address issues of marginalization and systemic discrimination that we as Black students face at the university.  We want the entire student body to know what we are doing to promote a more inclusive and better -resourced campus for the underserved Black students, staff and faculty.   Moreover, we believe that increasing the presence and well-being of Black students on this campus will aid the entire student body as knowledge of diverse, and especially Black, peoples is critical to the education of all 21st century UCSB students. 
Ours is a call for support from the rest of the University to assist us with this project. As a follow-up to this press release, we invite all supportive members of the UCSB community to join us in a follow-up meeting to these demands with the Black Student Union on Tuesday April 2nd at 5pm in the UCEN Flying A room.
You can also support us by signing our online petition on this link. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/black-students-demand-institutional-changes/

Why the Obama Administration Should Support a Federal Job Guarantee Program

Why the Obama Administration Should Support a Federal Job Guarantee by Alan A. Aja, William Darity Jr. and Darrick Hamilton | HuffPost Black Voices
In the late 1970s, after nearly a decade of rising unemployment rates and high inflation, Congress passed the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act, better known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978. Signed into law by President Carter, the act empowered the federal government to spend proactively to increase consumer demand, with the ultimate goal of full employment for every able American. A lesser-known provision of the act, however, noted that if the private sector failed to respond adequately, the public sector would take responsibility for providing the missing work.
More than 30 years later, the United States sits at the supposed edges of the "Great Recession," triggered by the housing crisis of 2007. Despite claims of economic recovery, mass long-term unemployment remains high for skilled and unskilled alike, with African Americans and Latinos bearing a disproportionate burden. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the black and Latino unemployment rate for January 2013 was estimated at 13.8% and 9.7% respectively, compared to 7.0% for whites and the overall national rate of 7.9%. This comes amidst a barrage of reports underscoring the economic fall-out of the last decade: homelessness is at an all-time high in many U.S. urban centers, wages on average are the lowest they've been on record, and income and wealth disparities have widened to levels they reached during the Great Depression. To add insult to injury, corporate profits continue to soar, and the wealthiest top one percent of earners, those earning above $1 million, receive about one-third of the entire federal asset promoting budget in the form of tax subsidies and savings, while the bottom 60 percent of earners receive only five percent.
Despite these blatant inequities, there is no current discussion in Washington DC over a basic right to employment, nor has Congress nor the president raised the possibility of actually implementing a national policy based on the national law (Humphrey-Hawkins Act) that empowered them to do so. Instead, President Obama and Democratic members of Congress have succumbed to a Tea Party driven narrative that deficit reduction, or cutting spending, will revitalize the economy and lessen the national debt. This formula, known as "austerity economics," involves cutting spending on essential social safety nets and public services, while raising taxes on the working poor and middle class to pay back creditors. But if we've learned anything from recent events in Europe, "austerity economics" yields disastrous consequences, plunging countries into worsening unemployment, record poverty rates and growing civil unrest. More job loss means less tax revenue for the essential public services families and businesses depend on to thrive. Quite frankly, the U.S. cannot afford to follow suit.
We believe the Obama administration should ignore the irresponsible narrative of austerity-economics, and embrace instead a full-employment policy that would simultaneously address the national jobs crisis and prevent another economic recession. By creating a National Investment Employment Corps (NIEC), states and municipalities could develop inventories of needed jobs for all who are able to work, matching skilled and unskilled alike with full employment opportunities. Jobs would address physical and human infrastructure needs, including building, repair and maintenance of bridges, damns, roads, parks, museums, mass transit systems, school facilities, health clinics, child care centers, even restoration of our damaged postal system. Pay would range from a minimum of $20,000 to a maximum of $80,000, each job also providing benefits, opportunities for advancement, on-the-job training and professional development.
A national program of job assurance (instead of unemployment insurance) would provide meaningful employment in a variety of "public works" projects, while potential serving as the stimulus for the types of innovative, green technologies President Obama has often touted. The cost of a National Investment Employment Corps would be less than the first stimulus package enacted by Congress and vastly less than the $10-30 trillion awarded by the Federal Reserve to the very same investment banking community that caused the economic crisis in the first place. We calculate that if 15 million persons were employed at an average of $50,000 per person, the total expense of the program would be $750 billion. Consider that in 2011 alone, federal antipoverty programs (Medicaid, unemployment insurance, etc.) cost approximately $746 billion. Not only would a federal jobs guarantee drastically reduce antipoverty expenditures, but also if implemented correctly, its budget would swell or diminish in response to economic cycles (grow in recessions, decrease during prosperity).
President Obama holds the mandate, given overwhelming support from African Americans and Latinos during his 2012 re-election bid, to combat persistent unemployment in these communities. By ignoring the dangerous narrative of austerity economics and moving people toward full, permanent employment as mandated by the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978, we not only begin to address structural barriers perpetuating inter-group disparities, but we also eliminate the threat of unemployment for all Americans.
***
Alan A. Ajais an Assistant Professor and Deputy Chair in the Department of Puerto Rican & Latin@ Studies at Brooklyn College (City University of New York).
Darrick Hamilton is an associate professor of economics and urban policy at The New School, an affiliate scholar at the Center for American Progress, and a research affiliate at the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University.
William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is Arts & Sciences Professor of Public Policy Studies and Economics, Chair of African and African American Studies and director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University.

'I Can Fly Like a Bird in the Sky': Nikki Giovanni’s 'Truth'

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No one understood that better than Nikki Giovanni, when she went into the studio  more than 40 years ago to record <i>Truth is On Its Way</i>. </span></span></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">At the time, Giovanni was one of the most visible and provocative poets of the Black Arts Movement—Baraka, Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti), Sonia Sanchez and the late Henry Dumas are some of the others. The Black Arts Movement was premised on the idea of an art “for the people,” thus many of the movement’s artists sought to make an explicit connection to folk up on the boulevard (you can’t be on the boulevard if you don’t talk like you from the boulevard). For Giovanni though, it wasn’t just about the folk up in the club on Saturday night, but also the folk in the pews on Sunday morning.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">I was five years old when my mother walked into the house with a copy of <i>Truth is On the Way</i>. I’ve listened to the recording hundreds of times since then; indeed Giovanni’s cadences are incorporated in the rhythms of my own writing style. At the time I didn’t fully understand the genius of Giovanni’s vision—she was blatantly trying to bring the profane in conversation with the sacred, two decades before Kirk Franklin and later Kanye West would bring ghetto theodicy to the top of the pop charts. <i>Truth is On Its Way</i> features recordings of some of Giovanni’s signature poems, mashed over classic gospel recordings performed by the New York Community Choir (under the direction of Benny Diggs).<i> </i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;">Truth is On Its Way</span></i><span style="font-family: Times;"> opens with the classic “Peace Be Still,” written by the late Reverend James Cleveland. The song’s narrative is based on the idea of Jesus calming the sea during a storm (“the wind and the waves shall obey my will/ Peace be still!) and this was the perfect allegory perhaps for communities that were literally under siege during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Giovanni sought to make such a connection explicit as midway through the song she breaks into her poem “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve6Bs3... Pax Whitey</a>” taking aim at American hegemony: “and America was born/where war became peace and genocide patriotism/and honor is a happy slave/cause all God’s ‘chillen’ need rhythm.” </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="248" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ihra0STduy4" width="330"></iframe> </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">On the track “Second Rapp Poem” Giovanni pays tribute to the “real talk” activism of H. Rap Brown (the now incarcerated Jamil Al-Amin): “they ain’t never gonna get Rapp/he’s a note, turned himself into a million songs/Listen to Aretha call his name.” </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">And it was Ms. Franklin who inspired the album’s most poignant moment, via Giovanni’s “<a href="http://gettotheinside.blogspot.com/20... for Aretha</a>.” As the lead vocalist of the New York Community Choir mournfully sings “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” Giovanni gives praise to the woman who is, arguably, the most important and popular Black women artist ever. Written at the height of Franklin’s fame, Giovanni places Franklin within the context of great Black music (“pushed every Black singer into Blackness”) and the tragic lives of her artistic foremothers (“Aretha doesn’t have to re-live Billie Holiday’s life/doesn’t have to re-live Dinah Washington’s death”). The gravity of Giovanni’s poem is so clear forty-years later, as we've witnessed the slow demise and death of Whitney Houston.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;">Though Gil-Scott Heron and The Last Poets are often credited as the “god-fathers” of hip-hop, Giovanni, who recorded five albums in the 1970s, doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her influence. It’s a track like “<a href="http://nikki-giovanni.com/page_51.sht... Tripping</a>,” the only track on <i>Truth is On Its Way</i> not backed by Gospel music (though no less spirtual), that one hears the impact that Giovanni had on the poetic sensibilities of the hip-hop generation—the song is the very essence of an old-school rap boast (“the filings from my finger nails are semi-precious jewels”). </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="248" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/r1o5MNTIrOc" width="330"></iframe> </span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Ego Tripping” was eventually featured in an episode of <i>A Different World</i>, performed by the women in the cast and remixed by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFgZ1e... on their disc <i>Nia </i>(2000). And it’s clear that hip-hop’s poet laureate Rakim Allah must have been thinking about Giovanni’s line “I turned myself into my self and was Jesus” when he wrote “My name is Rakim Allah / And R & A stands for 'Ra' / Switch it around / But still comes out 'R'" on his classic “My Melody.” It’s about time we give Nikki Giovanni her due as a god-parent of hip-hop.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: small;">Earlier Version Originally Published @ Black Voices/AOL (2005) </span></span></div>

In Conversation: Alondra Nelson & David J. Leonard

"Great Conversations at Washington State University" -- Episode 2

On February 25, 2013, Dr. Alondra Nelson was interviewed by Dr. David J. Leonard at Washington State University (WSU).

During their conversation, they discussed various topics including an overview of Dr. Nelson's research, the Black Panther Party, the medical civil rights tradition, the Panthers in Seattle, the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, and social media.

Dr. Alondra Nelson is an associate professor of Sociology and Gender at Columbia University. David J. Leonard is associate professor and chair of the Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies department at Washington State University.

This project is coordinated by the WSU Culture and Heritage Houses, Marc A. Robinson