To help kick off a two-week-long national online conversation, TheLoop21.com hosted a forum Wednesday in NYC entitled The New Silent Killer: AIDS in Black America. The forum was centered around a panel discussion on AIDS education and awareness among African Americans and how our community can embrace the internet as a tool to inform and educate. You can see the full panel here.
HIV/AIDS has been around far too long. Although statistical data among other ethnic groups continue to show drastic decreases, the African American community continues to show alarming increases. I personally applaud TheLoop21.com in its effort in utilizing the popularity of the internet as a tool to start the conversation. After all, our future is at stake.
Although African Americans account for only 13 percent of the population, yet we account for more than 54 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections each year, according to a 2005 Centers for Disease Control report. AIDS was the leading cause of death of black women age 25 – 34.
This is the trailer for “Stand,” a new film which executive producer Tavis Smiley describes as “my new film exploring the Black male experience through history, politics, music and culture.”The film is slated to run at the end of May on TV1. Here’s the longer description:
It was the summer of 2008 in Memphis, birthplace of Blues. America was commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., against the backdrop of then Senator Barack Obama emerging as the first African American to become the Democratic presidential nominee. As America approached the historic presidential election, the national dialogue and debate intensified about race relations, politics and the legacy of the civil rights movement.
Broadcaster Tavis Smiley dissects this national discourse with ten Black male friends over several days during a special road trip through Memphis and Nashville. While visiting places like the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King died, and Stax records, credited with laying the roots of southern soul, Smiley and friends explore the diversity and complexity of the Black male experience in America past, present and future.
STAND reveals the journey of a unique group of scholars, musicians, comedians and social critics as they gather for a rare reflection of brotherhood while confronting their own roles and responsibilities as pioneers of social progress.
CAST:
Tavis Smiley, Dick Gregory, Michael Eric Dyson, Cornel West, Cliff West, Eddie Glaude, BeBe Winans, Wren T. Brown, Daron Boyce, Robert Smith and Raymond Ross. Special appearances by Sam Moore, Isaac Hayes and David Porter.
DETROIT — Two years ago, a charity called Women Arise went to the Hudson-Webber Foundation with a plea for help.
Hudson-Webber, a fixture in Detroit philanthropy, was a longtime supporter of the organization’s programs to help women rejoin society after being imprisoned. The foundation, however, did not typically get involved in the kind of messy personnel and financial problems that threatened Women Arise.
Some black clergy and community leaders are quietly building support for an unusual event designed to give public voice to the grief of relatives of young black men gunned down in New Orleans — an attempt, its organizers say, to urge the African-American community to rise up collectively against those who shoot up neighborhoods.
On Web sites and radio, in churches, in schools and community groups, organizers are circulating word to come to Armstrong Park, next to the French Quarter, Saturday at 10 a.m.
Adding to the chorus seeking an overhaul of the nation’s food safety system, a report issued Wednesday called on the Obama administration to put someone in charge of safeguarding the food supply and to create a Food Safety Administration.
The food safety system is “plagued with problems,” said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health, which released the report in conjunction with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Before Election Day, there was widespread suspicion that enough white voters would balk at voting for an African-American candidate for president that the polls would be proved wrong.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Barack Obama won a convincing popular and electoral victory Tuesday. According to exit polls, the Illinois senator did better with white voters than the past two Democratic nominees, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Vice President Al Gore, did in the 2004 and 2000 elections.
Tommy Cornelius and the other members of the Piedmont High School boys water polo team never expected to find themselves running through school in their Speedos to promote a bake sale across the street. But times have been tough since the school banned homemade brownies and cupcakes.
The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007. They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.
Harvey Shaw’s plans to move out of his parents’ house, finally, have been derailed. With a high school degree obtained belatedly at 21, he had held a full-time job for 26 months as a detailer at a car dealership here, sprucing up new and used cars.
But in early October, Mr. Shaw, now 24, recalled, “I came back from vacation, and they said they were cutting back and replacing me with part-time workers.”
Red Hook, an ancient finger of city waterfront that is lined with the husks of faded industry and old piers, sits two clear miles across New York Harbor from Wall Street. It is another galaxy.
There, on nearly three acres of asphalt that have been covered with 18 inches of topsoil, the Red Hook Community Farm operates in an economy that rises from the actual, not the imaginary: lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, collard greens, arugula, dandelion, radicchio, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, beets, radishes, squash, cucumber, zucchini, and beans and herbs — oregano, sage, thyme, mint, six different basils.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday said Latinos and African Americans must “face up to” existing racial strains over jobs, language differences and violent crime by addressing the underlying causes of those tensions, primarily poverty and the lack of opportunity.
At the same time Villaraigosa dismissed those who believe that such tensions define the relationship between blacks and Latinos “as if it’s endemic to our DNA to have conflict.”
Most U.S. mayors and city officials say poverty is a growing problem, with many families unable to get by, according to a survey released on Monday.
Some 90 percent of city officials in the National League of Cities survey of mayors and leaders of towns of 30,000 people or more say that during the last decade poverty rates have either increased or stayed the same in their towns.
School children across England will soon have their Body Mass Index (BMI) tested as part of a new effort to tackle the growing problem of childhood obesity. Parents will be sent a letter telling them whether their child is underweight, a healthy weight, overweight or very overweight. The letter will also include leaflets giving advice on eating healthily, physical activities their child might do and the risks of being overweight.
So, are parents really failing to notice their little angels piling on the pounds? Yes, says the U.K.’s Department of Health. “Today, when more children are overweight compared with previous generations, it can be harder for parents to objectively identify if their child is overweight,” says a spokeswoman from the Department of Health. “Research shows that most parents of overweight or obese children think that their child is a healthy weight. Some research showed that only 10% of parents with overweight or obese children described their child as overweight.”
African Americans are leaving San Francisco because of substandard schools, a lack of affordable housing and the dearth of jobs and black culture, according to a report by a committee looking into the exodus.
The African American Out-migration Task Force, put together by the mayor’s office last year to figure out what can be done to preserve the city’s remaining black population and cultivate new residents, presented its findings at a public hearing Thursday called by Supervisor Chris Daly.
Washington, D.C. - The turmoil of the mortgage market granted a temporary reprieve from hearing about the woes of America’s Rust Belt. That doesn’t mean things are better. Despite a decade of national prosperity, the former manufacturing backbone of the U.S. is in rougher shape than ever, still searching for some way to replace its long-stilled smokestacks.
Where’s it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities–Detroit and Flint–making the ranking.
Hate crimes in Los Angeles County rose to their highest level in five years last year, led by attacks between Latinos and blacks, officials said Thursday.
The annual report by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission showed hate crimes rose by 28%, to 763, with vandalism and assault leading the way.
In what commission Executive Director Robin Toma called an alarming trend, hate crimes based on race, religion and sexual orientation all rose, increasing against nearly all groups — including blacks, gays, Jews, Mexicans, whites and Asians — even as crime in general declined.
The fatal collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis a year ago jolted states into better inspections of the nation’s 600,000 bridges, but they aren’t coming up with the billions of dollars needed to ensure that all of them are sound.
The plunge that killed 13 people when the span crumpled into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1 was “a wake-up call” to take care of aging bridges, says Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. “We can’t wait for another Minneapolis.”
In Harlem, Marline A. Martin, the executive director of the Children’s Art Carnival, figures that losing her financing from the city’s Cultural Affairs Department means she will have half the number of students this fall in her school-day program for children whose schools don’t offer art.
Downtown, near Stuyvesant Park, Diane Fraher Thornton, the director of American Indian Artists Inc., squeezes dollars from her budget for a project of readings by Indian playwrights.
Ms. Martin and Ms. Thornton are among the dozen or so leaders of a coalition of arts organizations in New York City called the Cultural Equity Group. In a proposal to city officials the group asked for $15 million in the city budget that would go to so-called culturally specific organizations, serving blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and American Indians. The money — to be used for things like programs and administrative support — would be separate from financing awarded by city agencies, like the Cultural Affairs Department.
The United States is moving inexorably toward a future of greater diversity. Latest Census figures show that minorities make up 34 percent of the total U.S. population, numbering 102.5 million people.
Latinos especially gained ground in 2007 remaining the largest minority group at 45.5 million people. African Americans are close behind at 40.7 million. Minority groups are pushing statewide demographic trends. Four states and the District of Columbia have a larger share of minorities than non-minorities: Hawaii (75 percent), District of Columbia (68 percent), New Mexico (58 percent), California (57 percent) and Texas (52 percent). Close behind are Nevada, Maryland, and Georgia at 42 percent each.
Is America prepared to reap the benefits of diversity and embrace a bright future?
One issue that remains a stumbling block is the rate of incarceration for drug-related offenses. A May 10 editorial in The New York Times highlights two new reports by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch which show “large disparities in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug use.”
The editorial concludes that “all is not gloomy,” pointing to an emerging shift in policy toward drug treatment as an alternative to prison and to a change in federal sentencing guidelines.
Last month, there was also positive news with the signing of the Second Chance Act, a bipartisan solution that authorizes $165 million in spending per year to help released prisoners reintegrate into society.
At a time when one in nine black men aged 20 to 34 are serving time, along with 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men, we need to take stock of what can be done to tap the abilities and potential of all Americans. We’re starting to move in the right direction but it will take all of our efforts to ensure continued progress toward that bright future.
A new study in the journal Health Affairs says black and Latino children are more than 12 times as likely as white children to live in “double jeopardy”—to be poor and to live in neighborhoods with limited opportunity. The study argues that public health policies should:
“improve access to opportunity-rich neighborhoods through enhanced housing mobility, and increase the opportunities for healthy living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.”
The article is included in the March/April 2008 issue that focuses on health disparities and is based on results from studies of neighborhood opportunity in 100 metropolitan areas.
Some facts from the article:
Nearly 17 percent of African-American children and 20.5 percent of Latino children live in “double jeopardy,” compared to 1.4 percent of white children
The typical poor white child lives in a neighborhood where the poverty rate is 13.6 percent; for the African-American and Latino child, the rate is nearly 30 and 26 percent respectively
Differences between African-American and white children were most pronounced in Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago, and Birmingham, Alabama
Disparities between Latino and white children were most blatant in the communities of McEllen, El Paso, and San Antonio, Texas; and Los Angeles and Fresno, California
Problems and solutions to issues related to neighborhood opportunity and health were just some of the hot topics discussed at Regional Equity 08. We heard about the New Orleans Food and Farm Network and other efforts across the country that are helping low-income community residents find good food close to home. Can anyone recommend other articles or organizations focused on this work?
