Tag: education

Yo. You. Yea, you with DOC (Department of Corrections) printed on your back. Naw, don’t turn the page ... WAKE UP! Better yet, look around. Like what you see? I know the streets were live: Money was flowing, women were chasing, and the respect was there. But that’s over now. Are you really going to do all this time just to go back to what got you here in the first place?

Yesterday’s election results show Californians calling for additional cuts to the prison population and corrections budget while approving new taxes to save programs like education, welfare, childcare and healthcare. Voters resoundingly passed Proposition 36 by a 69 percent to 31 percent margin. Proposition 30 was passed by voters 54 percent to 46 percent.

New Orleans has become a national laboratory for government reforms. But the process through which those experiments have been carried out rarely has been transparent or democratic. The results have been divisive, pitting new residents against those who grew up here, rich against poor, and white against Black.

I would like to wish all the fathers a blessed and happy Fathers’ Day 2012. It is a hard time to be a parent of a youngster, not to mention an adolescent or youth. The challenges are great, in direct proportion to the rewards. I’d like to congratulate the young fathers who are stepping up and participating in their children’s lives, especially when society equates parenting with one’s largess or paycheck.

Brittany Crawford, 20, was killed in a fatal car accident on April 1, 2012. Her organs were donated, and her generous gifts saved the lives of four people. Her parents were led to start a foundation, “Give Life, Save Life,” a non-profit organization to focus on education and awareness of organ procurement and creating a database of African American donors.

Like the country it governs, Washington is a city of extremes. In a car, you can zip in bare moments from northwest District of Columbia, its streets lined with million-dollar homes and palatial embassies, its inhabitants sporting one of the nation’s lowest jobless rates, to Anacostia, a mostly forgotten neighborhood in southeastern D.C. with one of the highest unemployment rates anywhere in America.

In a protest spreading through Georgia’s prison system, inmates are striking for better conditions and to be paid for their work, which they're now forced to do for free. They've locked themselves down in peaceful protest but are being punished violently, some beatings resulting in broken ribs and one man beaten beyond recognition. Sign the petitions and learn other ways you can help.

Venezuela strives to protect its natural environment, better use oil resources to promote sustainable development and ensure that climate change remains a central topic of discussion requiring concerted efforts from the world’s countries.

Fighters for justice welcomed the guilty plea by a New Orleans police lieutenant Feb. 24 that he spearheaded a massive cover-up of the police shooting of six unarmed Black civilians as they walked across the Danziger Bridge Sept. 4, 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Saint Calogero, an African priest, is the patron saint of the Sicilian town of Agrigento. But in the 21st century, African refugees who traverse the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean Sea find Calogero’s city, indeed the entire country, unwelcoming, even hostile to them.

When Lenwood E. Johnson, the son of Texas sharecroppers, moved into Houston’s Allen Parkway Village project housing, the Freedmen’s Town section of the city had yet to be designated historic and the village had yet to be saved. By the end of the 1990s, the village was preserved and Johnson had proved to be something of an unlikely hero here in Houston’s 4th Ward, historically one of the poorest sections of the city – but always ripe for redevelopment because of its proximity to the downtown.

At his funeral service at St. Ignatius Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco this past Wednesday, Burl Toler was remembered as a humble, kind and upstanding man. Toler was that and more. He was a trailblazer in San Francisco athletics and education. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, May 9, 1928, Toler arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1947, after a brief stint at Lemoyne College. His family decided living in California would be a good move for him and joined his Uncle Louis King, an Oakland based entrepreneur.

Sister Linda Johnson has been a legendary educator in East Oakland since the ‘80s. At her school which is known as Umoja House, she has taught generations of students who have grown up to be productive members of their communities. As a community, we must make it a high priority to give our children the best education possible so that they can come back and help solve some of the problems that we have as a people.

The MAGIC Back-to-School Celebration and Backpack Giveaway, the largest of its kind in San Francisco, will kick off the academic year by distributing 5,000 new backpacks stuffed with school supplies to kids and teens tomorrow, Aug. 22, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at two locations: Bayview Opera House, 4705 Third St., and the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, 1050 McAllister St.

On Tuesday, Aug. 4, a federal three-judge panel ordered California to release 44,000 people in prison. Call and fax Attorney General Jerry Brown all day Friday, Aug. 7, and demand that he not appeal the ruling.

Neighborhood planning and oversight on needed infrastructure and services will keep the focus on regional needs and local job creation and work related income for workers, with job-oriented training and backup services like child care and transitional housing.