The National Urban League: next stop on the "get out the vote" train
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
We've already seen the NAACP put its muscle into the all out get out the vote campaign, which was dealt with extensively at their convention in Houston. I'm still replaying Rev. Barber's awesome sermon on "If we ever need to vote, we sure do need to vote now", which I've added a link to in my sig.
Now it's the turn of another of our oldest black organizations, the National Urban League, to increase the efforts.
History
The National Urban League (NUL), formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in the nation. Its current President is Marc Morial.
The Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded in New York City on September 29, 1910 by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, among others. It merged with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (founded in New York in 1906) and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1905), and was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.
In 1918, Eugene K. Jones took the leadership of the organization. Under his direction, the League significantly expanded its multifaceted campaign to crack the barriers to black employment, spurred first by the boom years of the 1920s, and then, by the desperate years of the Great Depression. In 1920 the organization took the present name, the National Urban League. The mission of the Urban League movement is "to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights."
Currently, the NUL has nearly 100 local affiliates in 36 states and the District of Columbia. They have made headlines recently due to the release of this report :
The Hidden Swing Voters: Impact of African-Americans in 2012
The report concluded:
We have clearly established that African-American voters tipped the outcome of the 2008 presidential election in several key states, and are poised to do so again in 2012. How this will manifest will depend on many things, but one important factor will be whether the extraordinary growth in turnout by African-American voters in 2008 will be replicated in 2012. The 2008 voter turnout rate was driven by historic factors that may not necessarily apply in 2012.
No matter what happens on November 6, 2012, one certainty is that the American electorate will continue to be more diverse. We estimated that 23% of those who are eligible to vote in 2012 will be African-American or Hispanic-an increase from 19% in 2000. We also estimate that this will increase to 25% in 2016.
The theme and focus of the upcoming conference will be
Occupy the Vote: Employment & Education Empower the Nation and they have already set up an "
Occupy the Vote Election Center".
Headlining the conventions speakers will be President Barack Obama. The President will address the Conference on Wednesday, July 25, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center at 9AM.
Plenary sessions and special events, including President Obama’s opening address, and State of the Urban League ceremonies and keynote, will be webcast live on www.nul.org.
I'm sure wingnuts will be delirious about the POTUS speaking there, but frankly I don't give a damn. If his speech draws attention to getting folks registered and out to the polls, as well as drawing attention to disenfranchisement efforts it's all good. The pundit class will find plenty to babble about, and the TM is already twisting the NUL report into predictions of doom and gloom about 2012 black voter turnout, giving a handful of black mouthpieces for the right lots of face time, but few of my peeps listen to those fools so it's all hot air.
I'll be tuning in, reporting on other events, and hopefully we can get a live-blog going.
Now we know our folks will not be gathering without some entertainment so the big show will be the “White Linen Night” Concert with Chaka Khan and Doug E. Fresh at the New Orleans Arena, Thursday, July 26,8:30 pm - 10:30 pm.
I guess we gonna beat box the vote.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Texas CASA, a nonprofit that supports 69 child advocacy agencies, is sponsoring a campaign to recruit more black volunteers. Houston Chronicle: Foster care group seeks black volunteers.
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Just minutes after Richmond resident LaQuita Starr graduated from a volunteer training program at Fort Bend Child Advocates Inc., she was hauled off to see a judge.
Starr hadn't broken any laws, but she did have a new set of skills as a court-appointed special advocate, serving as the voice in court for neglected and abused children placed in foster care.
Faced with a dearth of African-American volunteers, the judge summoned Starr because she was the only one available to take a case involving a black teenager removed from her home because of sexual abuse.
"That was a good confirmation of what I wanted to do," said Starr, who was looking for an opportunity to bring stability and healing to children's lives when she became a CASA volunteer nearly four years ago.
"This is the first time Texas CASA has done targeted recruitment," said CEO Vicki Spriggs. "We need to increase African-American volunteers. The number of African-American children in foster care is disproportionate to the general population, and it's not because African-Americans abuse their children more than anyone else."
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Roseanne Barr and Legendary Concert Promoter Leonard Rowe Talk about Racism in Hollywood. Race-Talk: Racism in Hollywood.
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Our guest was legendary concert promoter and long time friend and manager of Michael Jackson, Leonard Rowe.
Our subject: racism in Hollywood.
Both Roseanne and I were shocked, but not surprised by the things we were hearing from Mr. Rowe. And we were shocked, but not surprised by the document (s) Mr. Rowe had in his possession and that were filed with the Court, yet completely ignored by the Court, to date.
Mr. Rowe talked about the inequities he witnessed in the industry against black concert promoters during his 30-plus years in the entertainment business. Inequities such as: no black concert promoter, in the 114 year history of The William Morris agency, had ever been allowed to engage in a contract with a white entertainer or artist for a concert performance. Yet, in reverse, white concert promoters are able to engage in contracts with artists, of any race — black or white.
Another example: black promoters are required to pay a 50 percent deposit for the artist that they will promote for a concert. Yet, conversely, white promoters pay 0 to 10 percent as a deposit to promote any and all artist of their choice.
These are just two examples of the iniquities. There are many others, and those examples have been clearly illustrated in Mr. Rowe’s fourteen-year racial discrimination and antitrust lawsuit, against the “Hollywood” elite — The William Morris Agency and Creative Artists Agency. (See, Rowe Entertainment vs. The William Morris Agency).
Mr. Rowe’s lawsuit has the potential to chart a new path in which Hollywood conducts its business affairs – i.e., to do business with people with no regard to race. The laws of this country say that this must be done. Rowe also states that this is 2012, not 1912.
He also indicated that he felt compelled to come forward and confront this type of injustice in the entertainment industry or it will continue to go on.
Roseanne spoke from her own experiences in the business adding that racism is “built into the fabric” of Hollywood.
Roseanne and Rowe agreed that there are powerful people in the U.S. who do not want to see the Roseannes and the Rowes of this country come together to shatter the walls of discrimination.
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Having grown with The Cosby Show writer Reniqua Allen argues that these days, there's more multicultural casting in television and far fewer stories rooted in telling a multicultural story. Washington Post: Searching for a Contemporary 'Cosby Show'
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Instead of a real look at black culture, Hispanic culture or any specific culture, we get "uniculture." That's how Felicia Henderson, creator of the Showtime series "Soul Food" and a newly minted executive producer of a BET family sitcom "Reed Between the Lines," describes much of our current television universe. Henderson, who has served as a writer and producer for shows such as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "Gossip Girl" and "Fringe," says the major networks often show diverse casts, but not true cultural differences. "I celebrate multicultural casting, but my concern is that these shows and these characters are only physically multicultural, physically multiethnic," she says.
Network TV does feature sitcoms and dramas that attempt to talk about race and difference. For better or worse, some even make it a punch line, with race and ethnicity exaggerated for comic effect. We also see shows with black female leads, ABC's "Scandal" and NBC's upcoming drama "Infamous," along with mixed-race casts. But the worlds they pretend to inhabit are not ones in which anyone really lives. It's one TV cultural universe, with no room for ethnic difference, even among ethnic characters.
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Even the most powerful man on the planet is powerless before the Kiss Cam!
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As the U.S. economic recovery approaches its fourth year, the unemployment rate among blacks has started to rise again. Denver Post: Unemployment hitting Black middle class in the U.S.
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That rate moved from 13.6 percent in January to 14.4 percent in June, while the overall unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent to 8.2 percent.
Add in part-time workers who would rather be full time and workers who have stopped looking but would start again if opportunities improved, and the black underemployment rate is closer to 23 percent nationally, calculates the Economic Policy Institute.
State tallies of unemployment by race come out less frequently, but last year the average annual unemployment rate for black workers in Colorado was 14 percent, up from 12.8 percent the year before, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unofficial counts for metro Denver put the rate closer to 14.4 percent in June.
For the past 50 years, the unemployment rate for blacks in the United States has run at about double that of whites, a gap that has held up in good times and bad.
In Colorado, it stood at 1.8 times — 14 percent for blacks compared with 7.9 percent for whites — at the end of 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among the people who has stared across that wide divide is Montbello resident Narcy Jackson, who has struggled to replace a full-time accounting job he lost in 2009 at a local company.
"When they had to make choices, I was the odd man out," said Jackson.
Nicole Foucher, business development associate, right, helps William Beatty, 47, send the résumé for his job application by e-mail at Denver Workforce Center. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The anti-apartheid, white South African poet, writer and painter, Breyten Breytenbach, was exiled after marrying a French national of Vietnamese descent while studying in Paris in the early '60's. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and The Immorality Act of 1950 made it a criminal offense for a white person to have sexual relations with a person of a different race. He made a trip to South Africa in 1975, was discovered in the country, (it has been reported that the ANC betrayed him to the government because they didn't trust him), arrested and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for High Treason. Massive international intervention ultimately secured his release in 1982, he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship.
Nigerian poet, novelist and musician, Chris Abani has a prescience that is almost uncanny. His first novel, Masters of the Board, about a neo-Nazi takeover of Nigeria earned him praise as "... (A)frica's answer to Frederick Forsyth." The government, though, believed the book to be a blueprint for an actual coup and sent the 18 year old Abani to prison in 1985. After serving six months, he was released; but he went on to perform in a guerilla theatre group which led to his arrest and imprisonment at the notorious Kiri Kiri prison. He was released again, but after writing his play Song of a Broken Flute, was arrested a third time, sentenced to death and sent to the Kalakuta Prison; where he was jailed with other political prisoners on death row.
Languishing most of the time in solitary confinement, Abani was finally and fortunately released in 1991. He lived in exile in London until 1999, when he emigrated to the United States; where he currently teaches at UC Riverside in California.
With events in Egypt, Syria and the rest of the region unfolding because of the continuing Arab Spring; and the following poem written in 2006, it seems Abani's prescience is once again put to the fore.
Hanging in Egypt with Breyten Breytenbach
There are stones even here
worn into a malevolence by time
gritting the teeth and tearing
the eyes with the memory.
Out in the desert, the wind
is a sculptor working the ephemera
of sand. Desperately editing steles
to write the names of thousands of slaves
who died to make Pharaoh great.
It is a fool’s game.
And we are like the blind musician
at the hotel who tells us with a smile:
I’ll see you later.
The guard at the pyramid eyes me.
Are you Egyptian? he demands,
then searches my bag for a bomb.
At the hotel they speak Arabic to me,
don’t treat me like the white guests,
and I guess, even here, with all
the hindsight of history we haven’t
learned to love ourselves.
I cannot crawl into the tombs, and cannot
explain why. How do you say: In my country
they buried me alive for six months?
And so you lie and tell yourself this is love.
I am protecting the world from my rage.
Rabab tells me: We know how to build graves
here. I nod. I know. It is the same all over Africa.
Do you have a knife? Do you have one?
the guards at the museum ask Breyten and me,
searching us. We call this on ourselves. We
are clearly political criminals.
I trace the glyphs chipped into stone.
As a writer I am drawn to this. If I could
I too would carve myself into eternity.
Breyten watching me says: Don’t tell me
you’ve found a spelling mistake in it!
A line of miniature statues is placed
into the tomb to serve the pharaoh.
One for each day of the year. Four hundred.
The overseers are a plus. I think
even death will not ease
the lot of the poor here.
Statues: it seems the more I search the world
for differences the more I find it all the same.
Perhaps the Buddha was a jaded traveler too
when he said we are all one.
Mona argues about who should pay
to see the mummies. It isn’t often I can
treat a girl to a dead body, Breyten insists.
A woman nearby tells her husand she can see
dead bodies at work. Why pay?
Do you think she works in a hospital? I ask.
That or the U.S. State Department, Breyten agrees.
From the top of Bab Zwelia, flat rooftops
spread out like a conference of coffee tables.
Broken walls, furniture, pots, litter the roofs
like family secrets sunning themselves.
Two white goats on a roof chew
their way through the debris.
On the Nile, Rabab sings in Arabic, tells me
she wants to be Celine Dion.
She is my sister calling me home to Egypt.
Perhaps one day I will be ready.
For now it is enough to know I can
be at home here.
-- Chris Abani
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Front Porch Music : Chaka Khan