Sunday, January 23, 2011

CAN THE STEELERS MAKE SHIFT OFFENSIVE LINE CONTROL THE JETS

BLACK BUZZ SPORTS NEWS SERVICE
WEXFORD, PA
January 23, 2011
BBSNS


 If the Pittsburgh Steelers can't control the line of scrimmage with their make shift offensive line and keep the pesky Jets off of Big Ben Roethlisberger it will be a very long day for the men of steel. Roethlisberger holds the ball too long and that could be the Steelers down fall.
All football games are won with the play of the lines on both sides of the ball and if the Steelers don't bring their A+ Special team crew to this Championship game the boys from New York might be going to Dallas.
Look for James Fairror to have one of his best games of his stellar career and Heath Miller's passing catching ability could be the key to the Steelers winning this championship.
The Jets Revis will be playing in front of his homies so look for him to have a break out game against the Burg.
The temperature around game time will be hovering around 15 degrees with a minus 2 wind chill factor which could be mean the team with the most accurate clutch field goal kicker and field position could decide this match-up.

 I think by far the Jets have a better running attack with LT, and Shonn Green and their Offensive line is one of the best in pro-football. Green is a more swift  harder RB than any Steeler running back, and he's from the Big Ten. 
The Steelers faithful better pray that Rashard " Doesn't run too hard" Mendenhall doesn't fumble the ball in key situations.

The team that wants this game the most and who plays error less ball will go the Super Bowl in two weeks. The Steelers have some of the most dedicated loyal fans in football so look for the Steele rs to have an advantage.
Pittsburgh fans are a little more hyper in their enthusiasm for their sports teams than those folks in Nap Town and Foxboro.
 The vastly overweight Coach Ryan is a " MISTER RUBBER NECK JONES" and hopefully the Steelers can send him all the way back to New York with a big fat lost.
What Pittsburgh team will show up? What Jet team will show up?

Friday, January 21, 2011

Black Buzz News Service
College Park, Maryland
January 21, 2011
BBNS


America’s Selective Sympathy for Loss of Life:
Life, Death and Racism


By Solomon Comissiong


January 8th 2011 will long be a day marked in infamy throughout the United States. Friends and family of the six Americans whose lives were tragically and needlessly ripped away, by a crazed 22-year old, may never recover emotionally. 19 people in all were shot, six fatally, by a mentally disturbed young man. This horrific incident cast sadness across the nation. The US corporate media, understandably, focused the bulk of their attention on Tucson, Arizona where the senseless crime occurred. Millions keep the victims in their hearts and minds. Many Americans rightfully mourned the dead and continue to pray for the safe recovery for those who survived their gun shots, including a US Congresswoman who sustained a devastating gunshot to her brain. This heinous crime took the lives of six people, including a nine year-old girl. This, in and of itself, is a tragedy beyond comprehension. The nation now tries to grip the gravity of this event and learn enough from it so that it may never happen again. Lawmakers will undoubtedly deliberate the ramifications of loosely kept gun “control” laws. The dreadful event of January 8th 2011 will not soon be forgotten, nor should it be. As reflection sets within, the author cannot help but ponder myriad disgraceful social realities that continue to plague America and her most disenfranchised. What kind of improved society would the US have if the majority of its citizens mourned the violent loss of innocent life in the same manner they did on 1-08-2011? What kind of world would it be in most Americans mourned the violent loss of innocent life regardless of what country they came from? These, indeed, are questions seldom reflected upon by many white Americans; however these same questions are often thought about by people of color throughout the globe.

Each year within the United States there are myriad black and brown skinned men and women who lose their lives despite being unarmed and innocent. In the black community we call this police brutality or police murder. It unfortunately has long become something that is commonplace within the stained fabric of America. There are far too many instances of police brutality for the author to mention throughout this essay; however I will give but a few examples. They are far from isolated or novel situations. On November 25, 2006 a young man named Sean Bell and two of his friends were shot 50 times by a team of plain clothed and undercover New York Police officers. Their crime was that of celebrating Bell’s bachelor party. None of the three young black men were armed in any way, shape, form or fashion, however they were gunned down like wild animals in cold blood. Sean Bell’s friends were severely wounded. Sean Bell was not so fortunate—he was killed. This crime in any sane or just society left Bell’s finance and child without a future husband and father.

On April 25, 2008 all three trigger happy police officers were acquitted by an amoral judge named Arthur J. Cooperman. The three officers were allowed to go free and live the rest of their lives; meanwhile Sean Bell’s life is no more. The black community in New York was rightfully outraged and protested. Black people throughout the nation were outraged. However, white America, as a whole was virtually silent. No 24 hour news coverage and no nationally televised memorial featuring the then US president George W. Bush. US senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama, callously said, “We’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down….Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive.” Who was Mr. Obama to say, “we respect the verdict that came down”? Barack Obama then, like now, never advocated for the black community. He has done everything he can to distance himself from the black community in order to curry favor with white America whose votes he was chasing after like cops chase black men. Given this blatant reality, who the hell did he think he was speaking for a bereaving black community? It was within their constitutional rights to assemble and peaceably protest the crime as well as the subsequent unjust verdict. There was no violence or rioting whatsoever. His comments proved to be as stereotypically prejudicial as that of many white Americans regarding black people. This fact makes the comparison between Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all the more absurd and insulting. Would Mr. Obama tell Dr. King not to protest in places like Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, over the reprehensible and inhumane treatment of African-Americans? Based on his repugnant and insensitive comments—-he probably would.

In the early morning of 2009 in Oakland, California a young (unarmed) black man by the name of Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer as he lay face down (handcuffed) on the cold pavement. He was shot execution style. He was pronounced dead later that morning. Despite the crime being filmed on two camera phones; the murderous police officer named Johannes Mehserle, was given a two year prison sentence with double credit for time already served. This reduced his pathetic sentence to 292 days for the 146 days he spent in jail during the trial. He, in essence, received less prison time than did the NFL football player Michael Vick—-for fighting pit bull dogs. Mehserle is eligible for release sometime in January 2011. Eyewitnesses even saw one of Mehserle’s goon police partners punch Oscar Grant in the face prior to handcuffing him as well as Mehserle calling Grant a “nigger”. Insult to injury is the fact that there were no African-Americans whatsoever on the jury during this farce of a trial.

Oscar Grant, like Sean Bell, is now dead. He was also a father. Where was the national outcry and nationwide mourning for the needless and violent loss of this man’s young life? Where was the corporate media covering this tragic story round the clock? They were nowhere to be found, much like justice in the black community. Despite the consistent actions of committed activists trying to bring attention to the case, and more importantly justice to the verdict, America did not collectively mourn the death of Oscar Grant.

On May 16, 2010 a seven year old girl from Detroit, Michigan was shot and killed by police officers in a botched raid. Blood thirsty Detroit police officers “mistakenly” and carelessly raided the home where seven year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley Jones lay sleeping. The Detroit Police officers claimed they were looking for the suspect of an alleged crime. That suspect was nowhere to be found. However, after the police fired a flash grenade in the home, they entered the front door and little Aiyana was shot in the neck by Officer Joseph Weekley. Coincidentally Officer Weekley is one of several police officers facing charges for the 2007 raid of a Detroit house where he allegedly shot two dogs and pointed his gun at children. Needless to say he has yet to meet justice in that case or the murder of the seven year-old black girl, Aiyana Stanley Jones.

Do you think there was a nationwide outcry riddled on every corporate news network for the violent loss of this innocent life? If you said yes, think again! The story received cursory coverage on “news” networks, at best. Not a damn word from President Obama condemning this heinous crime. Nothing! Little Aiyana is dead, just like Sean Bell and Oscar Grant.

These crimes are far from novel in America’s poorest communities of color. If they seem novel to you, then clearly have little day-to-day contact with these communities or with the people live in them. If you regularly watch (are programmed) by corporate media you also would have no idea the kind of routine terror black people face by way of many police officers (overseers). However, it is simply not just the corporate media or the cops’ fault that these kinds of crimes go unchecked every year in America, there is a much bigger culprit that sets all of these things in motion. Institutional racism and white supremacy work hand-in-hand in creating an ongoing system of injustice that disproportionately plagues communities of color. This is why the innocent loss of black life frequently goes overlooked by the nation, as a whole. An institutionally racist “justice” system creates the chessboards that use people of color as expendable pawns, day in and day out. The corporate media serve as a powerful apparatus within this diabolical system. They over represent people of color as perpetrators, all the while under-representing those same people as victims, especially when they are victims of unfettered police brutality. This has irrefutably created a warped national consensus that immediately gives the benefit of doubt to the police officer whenever a case of brutality occurs. Like Pavlov’s dogs, “mainstream” America mindlessly salivates whenever the corporate media beckons them to think a certain way. It is all a tangled web masterminded to deceive, obfuscate, and isolate.

Much of America has lost its humanity. The elephant is in the room regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not—-America is a structurally racist nation. And like a cancer it continues to metastasize each day we ignore it. This societal apathy regarding the plight of black and brown people in America, and their unequal status, allows racial injustice to build momentum like a snowball—-a very large WHITE snowball. Understanding this ugly fact we can see why “mainstream” white America would not mourn the loss of innocent black life in the same manner they do the loss of innocent white life. In America there is no equality in those regards, thus the killing of dogs carries a stiffer sentence than does the coldblooded police murder of an unarmed young black man. This is also why in 2011 black people are paid 62 cents to every dollar a white person is paid. This is the unfortunate truth of life in America even in 2011, with no tangible change in sight. However, just imagine just for a moment—-what kind of society would it be if each life, regardless of color, were treated equally. And then imagine what kind of world it would be if Americans, as a whole, gave a damn even about the loss of innocent lives outside of her manufactured borders. If so, we might place equal emphasis on the over one million Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives in a illegal and US taxpayer funded war. We might even care about the tens of thousands of Afghan citizens who were mercilessly killed by way of indiscriminate US drone and air-strikes. And what if Americans, collectively, gave a damn and were outraged at the fact their their government levied harsh sanctions on Iraq in the mid 1990s thus preventing clean water and vital medicines to enter the country(Iraq)? Oh…by the way, these sanctions directly caused over 500,000 (half a million) Iraqi children to DIE! When the then US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was asked by 60 minutes’ reporter Lesley Stahl, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”, her reprehensible response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” This just about sums up the sick social disease that plagues America from the inside out. When the US Secretary of State essentially justifies the direct killing of over 500,000 children in Iraq, without mass condemnation from the American masses; is a mark of the times that we may be living in a social hell. Perhaps the most sad thing about this…most of us do not even realize it.

If the vast majority of Americans truly were outraged, saddened and moved to some sort of progressive social action—undoubtedly it might be a much better world.

Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.blogtalkradio.com/Your-World-News) and www.yourworldnews.blip.tv.


7 Responses for “America’s Selective Sympathy for Loss of Life”

Paul Panza says:
January 21, 2011 at 2:54 am

We are what we eat. Our thinking, feelings and sense of justice are skewed by our poisonous corporate food. Usually Stupid Americans (USA) consume dead animals on a daily basis, without thought as to what kind of person they will become and how that effects the world at large. I feel sorry for those who have met injustice and death at the hands of the blue meanies. The officials of injustice are not worth one ounce respect. The soulless act of our elected officials condoning the murderous actions of police and military is another sign of our mad cow depravity.

Reply
kiksuya8610 says:
January 21, 2011 at 7:34 am

Thank you for this piece Brother Solomon! We are truly in a time of spiritual warfare where unfortunately many in this country have taken up the European notion of inidividualism to the extent that for most (mainly white) Americans the ends justify the means so long as it is against people they have choosen to other and deemed less than human. There is nothing wrong with being proud of where you come from, however, a true patriot is the one that looks at its countries actions and actively seeks to change the bad. When a people jusitifies the murder of innocent civilians simply because they are phenotypically different from them there is no explanation that can be given for that short of deep seeded racism that has been passed down from generation to generation from the illegal inception of this nation by muderous European colonizers.

The arguement here is not that we should not mourn the tragic events that occured on Jan. 9th, Sept. 11th or the Columbine shooting. Rather the issue is that why has the execution of black people in this country become common place and disregarded by most? Why are consistent shootings in Black and Latino schools not given the media attention and more importantly school board concern that white suburban schools get in the same situation? Why is the American double standard so severe that having military bases in other sovergin nations is not considered invasive but if that where even to be considered by another country, Americans would outcry foreign terrorism… Why do the lives of people of color in this country and outside continue to be devalued and ignored? Given the state of the world we live in it is important to take a moment of silence everyday to remember the innocent civilian lives that were unjustly lost that day to white supremacy and systematic racism. But more importantly there must be an outcry of righteous indignation by all of us each and everyday that in one form or another demands equality!

Reply
weilunion says:
January 21, 2011 at 9:18 am

Today, the 21st of January marks the fiftieth anniversary of the murder of Patricia Lumumba, elected president of the Congo. With the help of the CIA, the pawn and CIA asset Mobuto had Lumumba killed at the behest of the US government.

I mention this for Solomon is right; the selectivity of our grief is only surpassed by the hideous crimes of the government and corporations who own it.

When black leadres, be they King or Malcolm or Lumumba are executed there is no ‘day of mourning’ only a morning without a day. Black people are living today in a nightmare that is born out of the racism of America and the tragic events surrounding this new subjugation are hardly known by most Americans who are not black.

The tragedy is the violence that is not known, the violence that targets whole communities of black people and other people of color. Racism is the scourge and the consequences of it are being lived now as tragedy.

Reply
Pfarthing6 says:
January 21, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Race is one card to play. But there’s another. Personally, I don’t think it’s a race issue, except on an individual basis anyway. I’m sure there are a lot of bigot cops. But there are a lot of bigot black people too. Not my point however.

The difference between the tragedies you are comparing is not just white vs non-white. The difference is that in one, a lone gunman, a citizen, took innocent lives. In the other an authorized agent of the State did it.

For the first, it’s easy to sensationalize, easy to digest what’s right or wrong. We, as citizens, are not supposed to go around killing each other.

For the second, what’s right or wrong is not so black and white, seriously. Any public outcry (and there always is, it’s just not on the news) calls into suspect the the power of the State over it’s citizens. It questions authority. This is bad, this is not to be done, this will jeopardize the stability of the State.

The State does not criticize itself. The people who work for it, will not limit their own power. If it weren’t for our Constitution, we’d have a completely Totalitarian state of tyranny.

And another point, there are likely all manner of shootings of white people by state agents that you’d have to research. They get even less publicity than that of non-whites. You know about the non-white shootings exactly because of public outcry and some amount of at least local news attention, which you say doesn’t exist. It does exist. But again, why isn’t it like Columbine et al? Because as I said, it is not acceptable to demonize the State, but we can easily demonize a single shooter, who is already dead.

My suggestion then would be take a longer look at the race card you’re playing. Why are there so many non-white people shot? You can also ask why are there so many non-white people living in high crime areas where they are bound to come into conflict with cops? The answer is not as easy as just saying white people are bigots, which is pretty much what you’re article sums up to.

Reply
rabshakeh says:
January 21, 2011 at 12:51 pm

thank you for exemplifying white people’s inability/refusal to engage in critical reflection and introspection. your defensive posture and ignorant conclusions are typical of delusional americans and support the author’s position.

Reply
rabshakeh says:
January 21, 2011 at 12:45 pm

“…questions seldom reflected upon by white americans.” euro-americans, i.e. white people, are so morally depraved and spiritually bankrupt that any attempt at “reflection” on social issues is distorted by their pathological tribalism [white supremacy], obscene individualism, and malicious materialism. white people have succumbed to the dominant narrative of pax americana and are ardent disciples of the church of americanism. this renders them incapable of critical thinking and critical analysis, i.e. serious reflection or introspection. so in terms of the crises mentioned above, white americans feel no remorse about supporting a societal structure that systematically murders people, whether they’re little black girls in detroit, black men in oakland, or innocent women & children in vietnam, palestine, afghanistan, iraq, or elsewhere. rather than protest the murderous imperialism of their government, white people “pledge allegience to the flag” and sing “god bless america” and feel proud to “support the troops.” and failing to be, or even appear, duly “patriotic” is the cardinal sin for which there is no mercy – just ask jeremiah wright. white americans in general, and “christians” in particular are convinced of their superiority in relation to non-white peoples, especially to non-christian people of color, all of whom are basically expendable. yes, this is a sick, sick society. i am proud to be maladjusted.

Reply
Pfarthing6 is an idiot says:
January 21, 2011 at 12:46 pm

Pfarthing6 you are either intellectually dishonest or a mindless drone, either way you are a part of the problem. Why do you go do the math and compare the amount of police brutality cases there are in communities of color as compared to white communities and then look at the fricking clearance rate of those cases. People like you that seem to think that there is no such thing as institutional racism rampant in America dont give damn about black and brown people and you are very much a part of the problem. The author never stated that all white people were bigots. The problem he outlined is institutional! Its too bad you are incapable of reading and buttressing your claims with anything academic. Why? Because they dont exist. The research has been done you nit wit. They recently even looked at the stop and frisks policies of NYC and hope they overwhelmingly targeted blacks and Latinos. Read this you idiot:


New York Cops Stop Record Numbers of Blacks and Latinos – for Nothing
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Making a ‘furtive’ move or wearing a jacket the cops think is out of season is good reason to stop a person on the streets of New York.”
Even as civil libertarians push their suit to halt arbitrary stop-and-frisks, New York City cops are on the way to breaking all records [9] for sweeping Blacks and Latinos from the streets. According to the police department’s own data, at the pace they are going, cops will have stopped, questioned and frisked almost 628,000 persons by the end of the year – more than the whole population of Boston. Last year, stop-and-frisks numbered 531,000 – more than the population of Atlanta. In the years 2004 through 2008, the NYPD stopped almost two million people [10] on the streets. This may be the largest and longest sustained dragnet in urban history, including under conditions of martial law.
Despite all that police activity – and the seething anger it generates in targeted neighborhoods – only one out of ten stops results in an arrest or even a summons. But it’s not as if the police aren’t trying to arrest as many non-whites as possible. Blacks consistently number around half of those stopped by police – although making up only about a quarter of the population. Whites hover around 10 percent of those stopped on the street, while comprising 45 percent of all New Yorkers.
About one hundred thousand more people are stopped and frisked than are arrested the old fashioned way, based on probable cause. The street stops are supposedly based on the lower standard of “reasonable suspicion” – but it’s a reasoning only understandable to police and racists. In order to make the practice appear reasonable, the cops give out cards that explain the kind of behavior that supposedly leads to a stop-and-frisk. It includes [10]:
“carrying what appears to be a weapon”;
creating “sights or sounds suggestive of criminal activity” such as ringing an alarm, or running from a crime scene;
making “furtive movements”; and
wearing clothes “inappropriate for the season” or clothes “commonly used in a crime”
“In the years 2004 through 2008, the NYPD stopped almost two million people [10] on the streets.”
So, making a “furtive” move or wearing a jacket the cops think is out of season is good reason to stop a person on the streets of New York. In fact, any excuse will do, if you’re Black.

It is this type of institutionalized police behavior that leads inevitably to mass Black incarceration. The process begins with hyper-surveillance of Blacks and browns. Arbitrary stops lead to arbitrary arrests of the unlucky ten percent; to arbitrarily severe charges, followed by higher Black conviction rates and longer sentences under harsher circumstances. The end result is total community devastation. But it all starts with the cops on the block.
Crime has been way down in New York for a very long time. But that doesn’t matter to the police, who justify their racially selective behavior no matter what the crime rate is. If crime is up, that means more stops are needed. If crime is down, the cops say that’s because of the street stops. The only consistent factor is race – the defining element of American life.

When many Americans use the terms “police state” or “creeping fascism,” their point of reference is the Patriot Act or some other mechanism of the national security state. But for Black America, the police state is the daily reality of arbitrary, relentless stops on the streets of their own neighborhoods, or in the hallways of their own public housing projects.
When the numbers are tallied, they are expected to show that more than 600,000 people [4]were stopped by police on the streets of New York City, last year, 89 percent of them Black and brown. That’s almost six times the number of “stop-and-frisks” in 2002. Philadelphia stopped 200,000 people on its streets in 2008, twice the number as in the previous year. Los Angeles stop-and-frisks hit a quarter million in 2008, double the rate in 2002. And that doesn’t count the people stopped in their cars in L.A.
Stop-and-frisk is the race-based law of the land, the American police state in its most elemental, predatory form, a system of methodical mass racial profiling that debases and criminalizes all African Americans, and which now serves as the primary intake mechanism for the national policy of mass Black incarceration.
The legal justification for the mass stopping and frisking of Blacks roughly dates to the beginnings of modern mass imprisonment of Blacks. In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police can stop and detain citizens based on “reasonable suspicion” of involvement in crime, rather than the higher standard of “probably cause.” Of course, in a racist society, singling out Blacks for more intensive surveillance and questioning seems eminently reasonable. And when mass Black profiling ultimately results in far more Blacks being sucked into the criminal justice system, then the racist society concludes it was right all along – that African Americans are more prone to commit crimes. Mass Black profiling is guaranteed to find what it’s looking for: more Black crime. Mass Black profiling and mass Black incarceration are organic elements of the same, diabolical system that preys on African Americans as a group and makes the words “crime” and “Black” synonymous in the public mind.
“Mass Black profiling is guaranteed to find what it’s looking for: more Black crime.”
Nowhere is police predation more merciless than in public housing. New York City public housing is home to 400,000 people, 95 percent of them Black and Latino. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has filed suit, charging that police so-called “vertical sweeps [5]” from floor to floor of public housing buildings serve no legal purpose, and routinely subject residents and visitors to illegal stops and false arrests. Studies have shown that public housing tenants in New York are three times as likely to be stopped in their own complexes than people in surrounding neighborhoods with similar crimes rates. Police stops have doubled in public housing since 2004. Visitors are so harassed and intimidated by police behavior, many no longer visit their friends and relatives in public housing. The citywide public housing tenant organization says the perception among residents is that they are living in “penal colonies.” For millions of Black Americans, the Bill of Rights no longer exists on the streets and in the hallways of their city. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to http://www.blackagendareport.com/

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at http://draft.blogger.com/goog_2106627310
Black Buzz News Service
Charlottesville, VA
January 21, 2011
BBNS


Look at King's 'Own Words' Reminds Us of His Radical Moral Vision


January 20, 2011 — Celebrations of the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. tend to focus on his more tangible political accomplishments, like his "I Have a Dream" speech, the passage of the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, and his Nobel Peace Prize.


On Wednesday, an event at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, "King in His Own Words," dug deeper by examining some of King's own words and shed light on how the full extent of King's moral vision remains radical, even today, more than 40 years after his assassination in 1968.

Too often, Americans forget how all of King's accomplishments, and his ability to inspire millions to join his struggle for social justice and human rights – both during his lifetime and decades after his death – are rooted in his deep humanistic belief in the better nature of mankind, explained Michele Rubin, a literary agent for King's estate who has helped launch a new book series of his writings, the King Legacy Series from Beacon Press.

The full extent of King's moral vision still challenges today, she said.

Rooted in his life as a Baptist preacher and influenced by Gandhi and German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among others, King's radical moral vision was about human dignity, the human spirit, courage and relentlessness for peace in the face of violence, Rubin said.

His radical belief in human goodness and dignity, embodied in his own life, inspired millions to risk their lives and the lives of their children to end segregation and racial injustice in American society, she said.

The gift of great leaders is to show people what's wrong and explain how people can right that wrong, said Kent Germany, a former Miller Center professor who edited the Civil Rights volume of the Presidential Recordings Series. Germany, now an associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of South Carolina, played a few snippets from King's conversations with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, recorded on the White House's taping system.

King's moral vision went far beyond political struggles and legislative victories for racial justice. After the seminal civil rights victories – passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – King pivoted, speaking out against the Vietnam War and war in general, from a conviction that human rights include a right to live free from war, Rubin said.

His moral vision led him to draw attention to the afflictions of poverty by moving his family to a dilapidated neighborhood in Chicago, Rubin said. He advocated democratic socialism to achieve the radical redistribution of wealth necessary to end poverty. He talked about health care, day care, consumer debt and other issues that are now widely understood as middle-class concerns, but too often still remain obstacles to escaping poverty.

His vision became a global vision for human rights that extended far beyond race, far beyond anything America had ever seen, Rubin said. "His impact was to change not just the law, but the hearts and minds, and souls of Americans."

That's why his image as a warrior for peace and justice still reverberates around the world, she said. His influence was cited by leaders of the non-violent 1989 Velvet Revolution that overthrew communist rule of Czechoslovakia. He is a popular figure today in China among grassroots human rights activists.

However, the pieces of King's moral vision that remain radical even today, 42 years after his death – his advocacy of socialism and stances against war and poverty – are parts of his legacy that have been "airbrushed out of history," said audience member Paul Gaston, a U.Va. professor emeritus of history who took part in the Civil Rights Movement and hosted King during his 1963 visit to U.Va.

Rubin agreed, saying that the radical parts of King's legacy have been effaced by the notion that America has accomplished a sort of middle-class parity for African-Americans and other minority communities – which, he added, simply isn't true.

— By Brevy Cannon
Black Buzz News Service
Charlottesville, VA
January 21, 2011
BBNS

Barack Obama and the Burden of Race

Speaker: Thomas J. Sugrue


Date:       January 21, 2011

Description:

THOMAS J. SUGRUE is the David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Sugrue is the author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (2010) and Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (2008), a Main Selection of the History Book Club and a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His first book, The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1996), won the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Philip Taft Prize in Labor History, the President's Book Award of the Social Science History Association, and the Urban History Association Award for Best Book in North American Urban History and was selected a Choice Outstanding Academic Book, an American Prospect On-Line Top Shelf Book on Race and Inequality, and a Lingua Franca Breakthrough Book on Race.



This colloquium will be hosted by Brian Balogh, with comments from Claudrena Harold of UVa's Corcoran Department of History. RSVP required to 434.243.8726 or gage@virginia.edu.












Black Buzz News Service
Paw Paw, West Virginia
January 21, 2011
BBNS

The Obama scorecard

By Angie Drobnic Holan

Published on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 2:34 p.m.

At the halfway point in his four-year term, President Barack Obama has made substantial progress on hundreds of his 506 campaign promises. He passed an economic stimulus package that advanced dozens of promises, and he followed up with a sweeping health care overhaul that boosted many more.

And yet the Obama administration has sacrificed plenty of promises along the way, giving them up in political deals or putting them on the back burner. And now he faces a Republican-controlled House that could not only block progress on some promises now In the Works, but the GOP will seek to repeal the health care law.

Here's a tally of his progress overall and in key areas:

Tracking Obama's progress on the Obameter

                            All       Foreign  Health  Energy  Taxes  Military  Top
                        promises   Policy                                                  Promises


In the Works:     44%        45%     48%      57%     23%     48%       36%

Stalled:               15%        20%     13%        6%     18%     18%      16%

Promise Kept:     26%        24%     25%      21%     23%     30%      20%

Promise Broken:   7%          7%       8%        6%     15%       0%      16%

Compromise:        8%          4%       8%       11%    21%       3%      12%      

Total Count:       506           82          80        53        39          33       25

Thursday, January 20, 2011

America's "war on Drugs": CIA-Recruited Mercenaries and Drug Traffickers

Black Buzz News Service
Fryeburg, Maine
January 20, 2011

America's "War on Drugs": CIA- Recruited Mercenaries and Drug-Traffickers


by Michael Levine

When Nixon first declared war on drugs in 1971, there were fewer than 500,000 hard-core addicts in the nation, most of whom were addicted to heroin. Three decades later, despite the expenditure of $1 trillion in tax dollars, the number of hard-core addicts is shortly expected to exceed five million. Our nation has become the supermarket of the drug world, with a wider variety and bigger supply of drugs at cheaper prices than ever before. The problem now not only affects every town on the map, but it is difficult to find a family anywhere that is not somehow affected. (pp. 158, 159)


The Chang Mai factory the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. (p. 165)

My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was charged with investigating all heroin and cocaine smuggling through the Port of New York. My unit became involved in investigating every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement. We could not avoid witnessing the CIA protecting major drug dealers. Not a single important source in Southeast Asia was ever indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it. CIA-owned airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our “allies.” CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money. (pp. 165, 166)

In 1972, I was assigned to assist in a major international drug case involving top Panamanian government officials who were using diplomatic passports to smuggle large quantities of heroin and other drugs into the US. The name Manuel Noriega surfaced prominently in the investigation. Surfacing right behind Noriega was the CIA to protect him from US law enforcement. As head of the CIA, Bush authorized a salary for Manuel Noriega as a CIA asset, while the dictator was listed in as many as 40 DEA computer files as a drug dealer. (pp. 166, 167)

The CIA and the Department of State were protecting more and more politically powerful drug traffickers around the world: the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan, the Bolivian cocaine cartels, the top levels of Mexican government, Nicaraguan Contras, Colombian drug dealers and politicians, and others. Media’s duties, as I experienced firsthand, were twofold: first, to keep quiet about the gush of drugs that was allowed to flow unimpeded into the US; second, to divert the public’s attention by shilling them into believing the drug war was legitimate by falsely presenting the few trickles we were permitted to indict as though they were major “victories,” when in fact we were doing nothing more than getting rid of the inefficient competitors of CIA assets. (pp. 166, 167)

On July 17, 1980, drug traffickers actually took control of a nation. Bolivia at the time [was] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia’s democratically elected president, a leftist whom the US government didn’t want in power. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively, until it soon outstripped supply. This was the true beginning of the crack “plague.” (pp. 167, 168)

The CIA along with the State and Justice Departments had to combine forces to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never myself imagined ever writing. I detailed three pages typewritten on official US embassy stationary—enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists. I also expressed my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter, care of Newsweek. Two sleepless weeks later, I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang. It was DEA’s internal security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing to having sex with a married female DEA agent. The investigation would wreak havoc with my life for the next four years. (pp. 168-171)

In one glaring case, an associate of mine was sent into Honduras to open a DEA office in Tegucigalpa. Within months he had documented as much as 50 tons of cocaine being smuggled into the US by Honduran military people who were supporting the Contras. This was enough cocaine to fill a third of US demand. What was the DEA response? They closed the office. (p. 175)

Sometime in 1990, US Customs intercepted a ton of cocaine being smuggled through Miami International Airport. A Customs and DEA investigation quickly revealed that the smugglers were the Venezuelan National Guard headed by General Guillen, a CIA “asset” who claimed that he had been operating under CIA orders and protection. The CIA soon admitted that this was true. If the CIA is good at anything, it is the complete control of American mass media. So secure are they in their ability to manipulate the mass media that they even brag about it in their own in-house memos. The New York Times had the story almost immediately in 1990 and did not print it until 1993. It finally became news that was “fit to print” when the Times learned that 60 Minutes also had the story and was actually going to run it. The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, “There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It’s illegal [author's emphasis].” (pp. 188, 189)

The fact is – and you can read it yourself in the federal court records – that seven months before the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the FBI had a paid informant, Emad Salem, who had infiltrated the bombers and had told the FBI of their plans to blow up the twin towers. Without notifying the NYPD or anyone else, an FBI supervisor “fired” Salem, who was making $500 a week for his work. After the bomb went off, the FBI hired Salem back and paid him $1.5 million to help them track down the bombers. But that’s not all the FBI missed. When they finally did catch the actual bomber, Ramzi Yousef (a man trained with CIA funds during the Russia-Afghanistan war), the FBI found information on his personal computer about plans to use hijacked American jetliners as fuel-laden missiles. The FBI ignored this information, too. (p. 191)

Michael Levine is a 25-year veteran of the DEA turned best-selling author and journalist. His articles and interviews on the drug war have been published in numerous national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Esquire.

Black Buzz News Service
Charlottesville, VA
January 20, 2011

Carson: King's Mission Transcended Civil Rights Struggle

January 18, 2011 — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. should be remembered as a symbol of a worldwide social movement, not just as a civil rights leader, a leading King scholar and historian said Monday at the University of Virginia School of Law.


Clayborne Carson, a history professor at Stanford University and editor of "The Autobiography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," spoke before a packed Caplin Pavilion as part of the University's observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

It's important to remember that King's role in the Civil Rights Movement was made possible by the efforts of others, including Rosa Parks, who famously refused in 1955 to give up her seat on a segregated bus, Carson said.

"Think of that. Rosa Parks made Martin Luther King possible. Martin Luther King didn't make Rosa Parks possible," Carson said. "When she was sitting on that bus, her first thought wasn't to reach into her purse and get out her cell phone and call Martin Luther King and say 'Martin, what should I do?' She did what she had to do and that opened up the possibility for Martin Luther King to show those qualities for which we remember him."

Carson recalled attending the March on Washington in 1963 and hearing King deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Though they admired King, young people involved in the Civil Rights Movement at the time sometimes viewed him as too cautious, Carson said.

"I didn't even tell my parents I was going to go because this was my first great adventure as an adult, and it was because I knew that young people my own age, 19 years old at that time, were changing the world," he said. "And I never saw them as King's followers. And they never would have described themselves as King's followers. King was following them; that's the way they put it to me."

Though he was obviously an integral part of the civil rights struggle, King's stated mission was broader, Carson said. At his core, King was a minister who viewed social issues through a religious context.

"For him the Gospel was quite simple," Carson said. "It was the social Gospel; it was the Gospel that was conveyed in the Sermon on the Mount. And when he was a divinity student in his first year, he was asked to put down what was going to be his mission as a social Gospel minister. He said. 'My mission is to deal with unemployment, slums and economic insecurity.' Civil rights was not even on the list. That was Rosa Parks' contribution. She basically gave him another job."

Had King's mission centered solely on achieving civil rights victories, he could easily have retired from public life after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Carson said. Instead, King moved his family to a dilapidated neighborhood in Chicago to draw attention to the state of the slums.

Later, when King took a public stance against the Vietnam War, critics questioned him for speaking out in an area unrelated to civil rights.

"How did he respond?" Carson said. "He said, 'You haven't been listening to me. If you had been listening to what I've been saying, you would understand that this isn't a civil rights leader speaking out of turn about foreign policy. This is a social Gospel ministry preaching the word of God as I understand it. So you haven't been listening to me.'"

Beyond his immediate works, King served as the symbol of his movement in much the same way that Mohandas Gandhi or Nelson Mandela served in theirs, Carson said. Viewed in the broader historical context, the American civil rights struggle was just part of the larger worldwide movement toward justice and equality in the 20th century, he said.

"Try thinking of King in isolation from Gandhi and you can't," Carson said. "He got his tactics from Gandhi. He understood that he was learning from another movement, just as that movement learned from our anti-slavery movement. So Gandhi learns from Thoreau, we learn from Gandhi, and people in South Africa learn from Martin Luther King, and these ideas go around in the world."

Though those involved in the Civil Rights Movement are right to be proud of their accomplishments, leaders such as Gandhi, King and Mandela would likely say that there is still more to be done, Carson said. It was only in the 1960s that the U.S. first approached being a truly democratic nation in which all citizens had an equal voice, he said.

"So that experiment – the American democratic experiment – is about 50 years old," Carson said. "We're a young democracy trying to be an egalitarian democracy with cultural diversity, racial diversity, and we don't know the outcome of that experiment. And that's our challenge. It's those of us in the room, and particularly those who don't have grey in their hair, who are going to determine the outcome of that experiment."


– by Rob Seal
Black Buzz News Service
Charlottesville, VA
January 20, 2011

U.Va.'s Expanded Observance Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. to Feature Donna Brazile, Clayborne Carson, Julian Bond, Amiri Baraka and Others


"We must maintain faith in the future."
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
                    from his1963 speech at U.Va.'s Ol;d Cabell Hall

January 12, 2011 — The University of Virginia has planned almost two weeks of events in honor of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., including reminiscences about his 1963 visit to U.Va. and talks by well-known activists and scholars.

King biographer Clayborne Carson will speak on Jan. 17; national political adviser Donna Brazile will speak on Jan. 20; former NAACP president and King associate Julian Bond and Larry Sabato, both professors at U.Va., will introduce the film, "Freedom Riders," on Jan. 25; and poet Amiri Baraka will give a reading on Jan. 27. Also on Jan. 25, historian and U.Va. professor emeritus Paul Gaston, U.Va. alumnus Wesley Harris, and community member Eugene Williams will discuss King's 1963 visit to Grounds. Details on events can be found below.

U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan asked Dr. Marcus Martin, interim vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, to coordinate events "for a fitting community tribute to honor the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr."

"Since then, he and many members of the University and local communities have put together a compelling program of events that will explore Dr. King's extraordinary contributions," Sullivan wrote in an invitation e-mailed to the University community.

Scheduled from Jan. 16 to 27, the "Community Celebration: Faith in the Future" begins Sunday with the local commemoration at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church at 5 p.m., featuring speaker Maurice Jones, Charlottesville's city manager.

Community and University planning committees are organizing events, and dozens of offices, departments, schools and student groups at U.Va. are cosponsoring the celebration. Events [link to: www.virginia.edu/mlk/] will cover a range of topics related to King's ideas. Most activities will take place around Grounds; a few events and details are still to be determined, so checking the online calendar is recommended.

All programs are free and most are open to the public.

Donna Brazile and Politics

Brazile's talk, free and open to the public, will be held on Jan. 20 at 4 p.m. in the auditorium of the David and Mary Harrison Institute for American History, Literature and Culture and Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. She will speak on King's legacy as it relates to women in leadership.

A veteran Democratic political strategist, Brazile is vice chair of voter registration and participation for the Democratic National Committee and former chair of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute. Brazile, a native of New Orleans, worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she served as campaign manager for former Vice President Al Gore, becoming the first African-American woman to manage a presidential campaign.

Author of the best-selling memoir "Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics," Brazile is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for United Media, a columnist for Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine, and an on-air contributor to CNN and ABC, where she regularly appears on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

Clayborne Carson on King's Life


Carson, professor of history at Stanford University, will speak Jan. 17 at 4 p.m. in the Law School's Caplin Pavilion. Carson, editor of King's autobiography and papers, has devoted his professional life to the study of King and the movement he inspired.

Carson also founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford. Until 2009, he served as Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta and as executive director of the Morehouse King Collection.

Carson will also visit a January Term class in the Law School on "What Lawyers Can Learn from the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

When King Came to U.Va.

A discussion with alumnus Wesley Harris, Eugene Williams, a Charlottesville native, retired businessman and community activist with a record of fighting for equality for the local African-American community, and Paul Gaston, U.Va. professor of history emeritus, will be held at noon in the auditorium of the Harrison Institute / Small Special Collections Library on Jan. 25. They will talk about their experiences hosting King during his March 25, 1963 visit and speech on Grounds. U.Va. history professor and longtime civil rights activist Julian Bond will moderate.

Harris was the second African-American student to live on the Lawn and is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Williams has had a career in education administration.

Gaston, who taught history at the University from 1957 to 1997, wrote about racial segregation and social change in Charlottesville and at U.Va. in his 2009 memoir, "Coming of Age in Utopia: The Odyssey of an Idea."

Freedom Riders

Also on Jan. 25, starting at 6 p.m., politics professor Larry Sabato of U.Va.'s College of Arts & Sciences and Bond will introduce a free screening of the documentary film, "Freedom Riders," at the Paramount Theater.

From documentarian Stanley Nelson, "Freedom Riders" is the story of the more than 400 Americans who, in 1961, stared down the dangers of Deep South racial tensions to make a statement about segregation. Based on Raymond Arsenault's book, "Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice," the film offers interviews with many of the individuals involved, from the journalists who covered it and politicians who stood against it, to the riders themselves, who overcame pressure from all sides to earn the attention of the federal government in their struggle to desegregate public highway transit.

Amiri Baraka: Poet, Playwright, Activist

Amiri Baraka will visit Culbreth Theatre on Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. for a reading and discussion of his work. Born in 1934 in Newark, N.J., Baraka is the author of more than 40 books of essays, poems, drama and music history and criticism. He has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the U.S., the Caribbean, Africa and Europe.

His awards and honors include an Obie, the American Academy of Arts & Letters award, the James Weldon Johnson Medal for contributions to the arts, Rockefeller Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the poet laureate of New Jersey.

More Events

• Panel Discussion on Health Care Disparities
Jan. 17, 4:30 to 6 p.m., McLeod Hall Fenwick Auditorium
U.Va.'s schools of Nursing and Medicine will hold several events in honor of King, culminating in a panel on health care disparities in the U.S. It will feature Dr. Vivian Pinn, director of the National Institutes of Health's Office of Research on Women’s Health, and Dr. Louis Sullivan, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Pinn, the second African-American woman to graduate from U.Va.'s School of Medicine, will reflect on her experience early in her medical career as an underrepresented person. Sullivan, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will draw from his "Missing Persons" report to discuss the current status of those who are underrepresented in health care.

Deans Dorrie Fontaine of the Nursing School and Steven DeKosky of the School of Medicine will offer reflections on the discussion.

Also on Jan. 17, there also will be a student panel discussion in McLeod Hall's Fenwick Auditorium, from noon to 1:30 p.m., with graduate nursing and medical students. From 1:30 to 4 p.m., selected undergraduate and high school students will shadow doctors, nurses and other health practitioners and a chance to experience the Clinical Simulation Learning Center in the School of Nursing.

• Diversity in the Classroom as a Path to Better Learning
Jan. 18, 9 a.m., Monroe Hall, room 130
Kathryn M. Plank, associate director of Ohio State University's Center for the
Advancement of Teaching, will talk about inclusive education in the plenary session of the Teaching Resource Center's January workshop. [link to: http://trc.virginia.edu/Workshops/2011/JTW_2011.htm] Participants will explore the role diversity plays in teaching and how recognizing and including diversity can lead to improved student learning.

• The Civil Rights Movement in the Presidential Recordings Projec
Jan. 19, 11 a.m., Miller Center of Public Affairs
Kent Germany and Michele Rubin will talk about the relationship between King and President Lyndon B. Johnson that emerges in secret tapes recorded by Johnson. Germany, associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of South Carolina, edited the Civil Rights volume in the University of Virginia Press' Presidential Recordings Series. Michele Rubin, a literary agent at Writers House in New York, represents King's literary estate and recently launched the King Legacy Series with Beacon Press.

• Oratory Competition for Charlottesville High School Students
Jan. 19, 7 p.m., Rotunda Dome Room
Finalists will present their 750- to 1,000-word, five-minute original speeches answering the question, "How can the Charlottesville community do better to overcome the separate paths and unequal prospects of its students?"

• School Boards: Are They For You?
Jan. 19, 7 p.m., Burley Middle School Media Center
In 2011, there will be at least three vacant seats on both the Charlottesville and Albemarle County school boards. This panel discussion will focus on how to be a positive force and an activist and how to run for a school board, among other topics. Panelists are scheduled to include Tom Smith, former chair of the Fluvanna County School Board; Leah Puryear, member, Charlottesville School Board; Brian Wheeler, former member of the Albemarle County School Board; and a representative from the Virginia School Board Association.

• Panel Discussion: I Have a Dream: Visions of Engineering in the Twenty-First Century
Jan. 20, 5 p.m., Mechanical Engineering Building, room 205, Mechanical Engineering Building
Robert Bland will moderate a panel of faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, who will discuss their visions and ideas for broadening, diversifying and enhancing the field of engineering, both at U.Va.'s School of Engineering and Applied Science and nationally.

• Interfaith Worship Service
Jan. 23, 2 p.m., Jefferson Theater on the Downtown Mall

• Overcoming a Legacy of Distrust: Reflections on "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"
Jan. 23, 4 p.m., Paramount Theater
A panel discussion on Rebecca Skloot's book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," will include several speakers in addition to University Professor James Childress, director of the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life. Holly Edwards, Charlottesville's vice mayor and a public health nurse; Jeanita Richardson, associate professor of public health sciences in U.Va.'s School of Medicine; Patrick Tolan, director of Youth-Nex and the Center to Promote Effective Youth Development in U.Va.'s Curry School of Education; and Karen Waters, executive director of the Quality Community Council, will join Childress discussing lessons to be learned from the case.

A video summary of the book, about how the first immortal human cell line was created, will precede the discussion. The cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research – though the identity of their donor remained a mystery for decades. She was Lacks, a young black woman with cervical cancer. While trillions of her cells are used in the advancement of science, many of her family members continue to live without health insurance.

• Arthur Romano Presentation on Nonviolence Training and Education
Jan. 24, 4 p.m., Auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library
Romano is a World Peace Scholar in England and human rights activist who founded Youth for Peace, an Internet-based program for young people worldwide to share inspiration and information related to community projects.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The James S. Robinson Jr. Project Continues For 2011: Hill City Youth Municipaltiy, Friendly Service Bureau, Department of Public Safety, Activities Report for January 1946

BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
The James S. Robinson Jr. Project
Robinson Family Archives
Pittsburgh PA
January 19, 2011
( BBNS)

                               HILL CITY YOUTH MUNICIPALITY
                       Friendly Service Bureau D.P. S.

                             ACTIVITIES REPORT
                                     for
                                January 1946

                             James S. Robinson, Director

The activities of Hill City are rapidly increasing in numbers and attendance. The governmental departments and bureaus are operating in most sections of the area and there is, even at this early stage in our program, a noticeable decrease in delinquent activities in the areas where boys and girls are operating as Hill City agents.
We have now reached the point, where it is necessary to enlist the aid of interested people who are qualified to work with children, to assume the leadership of some of our groups. It is hoped that we shall be able to secure a worker from the City Bureau of Recreation to conduct hobby classes for those children who need " rehabilitation" activities.
    Mr. Raymond Harris, volunteer band and instrumental instructor, is doing a wonderful job with our military band. The members of the band, all of whom are beginners, hope to be ready for parade participation this summer and if they continue to improve as rapidly as they have in the past weeks, we feel that we will have an organization of which we can all be proud to call our own.
Hill City Court opened on Saturday, January 23rd. Those who attended were amazed at the efficiency with which the cases were handed. Judge McNaugher and Attorney Louis Little have agreed to help train these youngsters for the essential work they are to do. Other officials will be asked to assist us as soon as we reach our personnel quota.

                      SPECIAL EVENTS

On Tuesday, January 8, Hill City officials held their first general assembly. The program included selections by the military band, selections by a quartet, representing the Bureau of Investigation and the introduction of the Hill City officials. The highlight of the program was a most inspiring talk by Judge McNaugher. We were happy to have Councilman Wolk visit us and although he arrived too late to witness the assembly, he did tour the building and thus saw the facilities, with which we have to work.
     On Friday, January 25th, the Women's Auxiliary sponsored a game party for the parents in the district. This group is preparing to enlarge its membership and to broaden its activities in the community.

                          CLOTHING DRIVE
     In cooperation with the faculty and McKelvy school, Hill City took an active part of the clothing drive. While the collection was not extremely large, it was nevertheless, varied.

                            PUBLICITY
We realize that publicity plays a vital role in the success of any organization. In order to put our program before the public, we are starting a series of articles, accompanied by pictures of the various activities of Hill City. These articles will be carried by the local newspapers.
  On Monday, January 7, a cameraman of the American Newsreel Company, visited Hill City and made motion pictures of the activities in operation. These films will be shown in all sections of the country.
House groups in Hill City are raising funds to finance the printing of a booklet, giving in detail all the activities of Hill City, with pictures of each activity and group. This booklet will be distributed throughout the community and all other interested groups and individuals.

                               PHYSICAL PLANT
Minor improvements and repairs are constantly being made to the building. It will soon be time for spring cleaning and we are trying to have all renovations and repairs completed by that time.

                              DISASTER RELIEF
     In cooperation with the American Red Cross, members of families whose homes and possessions were destroyed by fire, were given temporary shelter for three nights. Other individuals secured temporary living quarters through our efforts. Food and clothing were provided by the Red Cross.

             STATISTICAL SUMMARY OF ACTIVITIES
Activity................................No. Sessions.........................Attendance

Women's Auxiliary               2                                               12

House Committee                 2                                               15

Recreation Committee         2                                                22

Wood shop                           23                                              273

Game Room                        23                                              803

Music Instruction                11                                              184

Vocal Instruction                 7                                                  49

Big Sister's Club                 3                                                  35

Bureau of Investigation      27                                                 445

Bureau of Police                27                                                 318

Mayor's Cabinet                25                                                  206

Council                              4                                                     36

District Attorney's Staff    26                                                    208
Total                               182                                                  2608

                       STATISTICAL SUMMARY OF CASES
Offense           Girls                    Boys             Total No. Cases

Larceny           1                          5                          6

Unlawful entry   1                        0                          1

Disorderly Conduct 3                   0                          3

Incorrigible           4                      2                          6

Fighting               7                       6                         13

Robbery               3                       0                          3

Carrying Concealed
Weapons                  0                    1                          1

Truancy                4                        5                          5

Attempting to en-
list in Navy by al-
tering age and
address                0                         2                           2
Total                   23                       21                         44


No. Referred to Juvenile Court ( Girls)                      4

No Referred to Juvenile Court ( Boys )                      2

No. Referred to Family Society                                   1

No. Referred to Hospital                                             1

No. Referred to Red Cross                                         15

No. held for Court                                                      5

No. enrolled in Hill City                                              7

No. enrolled in Crime Prevention Club                      31

                                                            Respectfully submitted
           
                                                            James S. Robinson, Director
                             

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

America Has Always Been a Violent Society Since Its Inception: Part II

BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
College Park, Maryland
January 18, 2011
( BBNS)

College Park-BBNS..Prince Georges County Maryland, just had 13 killings in 14 days and the weapons of choice were firearms. Unfortunately murders are a common occurrence throughout the USA.
The United States has been averaging 19,000 murders per year for the last three decades.
The Federal Bureau Of Investigation just reported this afternoon in Spokane Washington that they found a real live pipe bomb in a backpack on the MLK parade route which could have done serious damage to the participants in the parade.
4girls.jpg (39435 bytes)
What kind of a person would plant a bomb to kill another human being other than a mentally ill psycho terrorist, or a out of sync pathological bigot?
Remember the four little Black girls who were brutally murdered in the 16th. Street Baptist church bombing on September 15, 1963 in Birmingham Alabama. 
At a time when the United States is placing so much emphasis on fighting foreign extremist's the real threat can be found in the organized hate groups 
 ( Home Grown) and their many fellow travelers within the borders of the 50 states. These are the same group of people that holler that "they want their country back." "And they are prepared to use violence as a means to prove their point."
Remember the Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee massacres were Native American women and children were slaughtered and murdered like cattle, and now the revisionist historians have the gall and nerve to call those horrible massacres battles.

Monday, January 17, 2011

In the Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., We Honor Nine Dynamic Courageous University of Virginia Students Who Stood Up for the Building of a Larger More Appropriate Memorial to the Enslaved Africans Who Built Significant Parts of the Famous Rotunda

BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
JANUARY 17, 2011
(BBNS)




CHARLOTTESVILLE- In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the Black Buzz News Service is proud to announce its 2010 Stand Up For Justice Award to nine (9) highly intelligent, brave and courageous University of Virginia Students from the Enslaved Laborers Committee who vociferously advocated for the building of a larger more appropriate Memorial to the Enslaved African Laborers who built parts of the famous Rotunda and other significant structures on the grounds of the University of Virginia.  The committee is made up of members from the Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee, the Black Student Alliance, and the University and Community Action for Racial Equity (UCARE) 
The below mentioned UVA students are a shining example for students on all college campuses to emulate as they have taken assertive actions in their relentless quest to have a larger more fitting tribute to the Enslaved African Laborers in the building of Mr. Jefferson's Academic Village.
We commend your actions and congratulate you as you strive for excellence in all areas of your life. Your historical deeds have not gone unnoticed for you have laid the foundation for future students to follow in your footsteps to accomplish this mission.  What a wonderful legacy you are leaving to the entire University of Virginia community.


The 2010 Stand Up For Justice Award recipients are as follows:

1. Ms. Ishraga Eltahir, Fourth Year, Project Coordinator (UCARE intern)

2. Ryan Hicks, Fourth Year, Committee Member (Student Council Diversity Initiatives committee)

3.Alissa Morein, Third Year, Committee Member (Co-Chair Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee)

4.Annacrizelda Funtelar, Third Year, Committee Member (Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee )

5. Kyle Bancroft, Third Year, Committee Member (Black Student Alliance)

6. Jasmine Drake, Second Year, Committee Member (Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee)

7. Edna Turay, First Year, Committee Member (Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee)

8. Barkot Tesema, Third Year, Committee Member (Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee)

9. Carrie Filipetti, Fourth Year, Committee Member (Co-Chair Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee)

*Everyone should read/review the blog post titled " The University of Virginia should build a Larger Memorial To the African Slaves who helped  build the Rotunda and other Structures on the UVA campus" dated July 27, 2010 at http://blackbuzz.blogspot.com/



 
       

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Steelers Thump The Ravens 31-24

BLACK BUZZ SPORTS NEWS SERVICE
PITTSBURGH, PA
JANUARY 15, 2011
(BBSNS)

PITTSBURGH ( BBSNS) The Steelers rally to beat the Ravens on Ben Roethlisberger's to Antonio Brown 58 yard pass play with less than two minutes to go in the game thus ending the Ravens run in the playoffs.
Football games are won in the trenches of the line play and " The Second Steel Curtain Defense" held the Ravens to a total of 126 yards of total offense.
Each member of the new Steel Curtain Defense should be given a game ball and kudos to uncle Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers' offense for making the key plays in the clutch.
In order to beat the Jets or the Patriots the Steelers' will have to bring their A+  game and win the battle in the pits and make key field goals in the clutch and play error less ball. The Steelers' Mr. Suisham will have to learn that the play-offs is not the place to miss field goals. I also like to see the Steelers' get more depth on there kick-offs and improve on their kick coverage.
The Steelers coaching staff deserves a  B+ but the Special Team play must drastically improve and uncle Ben and the Mendenhall better learn how to hold on too the ball.
* I hope the Patriots beat that loud mouth Ryan's team ( JETS) all the way
 back to New York.

              JETS BEAT PATS 28-21 

FOXBORO- BBSNS.. The Jets sock it to the Patriots 28-21 as Mark Sanchez throws three touchdown passes and the Jets sack the overrated Tom Brady five times. Brady appeared to be out of rhythm the whole game as the loud mouth Jets won the battle in the trenches, and they looked very good running the ball.