Berkeley NAACP Leader Sticks To Claim That Police Kill African Americans

February 29, 2008

NBC 11

Berkeley’s NAACP President has reiterated his claim that the city’s police are deliberately shooting and killing African Americans.

Allen Jackson made the controversial remarks earlier this month after Anita Gay, 51, was shot and killed by a Berkeley police officer who was responding to a domestic disturbance call.Other NAACP members are distancing themselves from Jackson’s remarks but he told NBC11 that he is standing by his words.

“One is too many, two is well too many,” Jackson said. “I am saying we (are) not going; that the police can not continue to do this as business as usual.”

Click here for more…

Black Clergy Launch Movement For Families

February 29, 2008

Kenneth Kim, New America Media

Frustrated by the political establishment’s inability to deal with challenges facing American families — and black families in particular — a group of African-American clergy members in Los Angeles are tackling those issues through the collective power of the African-American faith community.

On a February evening, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches, a coalition of small- and medium-sized churches that is spearheading the effort, led a prayer vigil at Victory Institutional Baptist Church in South Los Angeles.

The vigil was one of many events connected with the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign, which aims to build support for a national platform created and advanced by families, and build a movement to sustain long-term change.

The Equal Voice Campaign is holding approximately 40 town halls across the country, each with a different, local face.

Click here for more…

First black woman will lead California Assembly

February 29, 2008

Nancy Vogel, Los Angeles Times

With a resounding “aye,” the state Assembly on Thursday elected Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, as its 67th speaker.

“I am deeply honored and deeply humbled by the trust you have placed in me,” Bass, 54, said moments after the vote that will vault her to one of California’s most powerful political positions. She will be the first African American woman to hold the job.

The daughter of a mail carrier and a homemaker, Bass grew up in the Venice-Fairfax area and worked as a physician assistant and community organizer before her 2004 election to the Assembly

Click here for more…

Measurable progress

February 29, 2008

Michelle D. Bernard, Washington Times

In the mid-1960s, inner cities around the country exploded in violence. Americans were shocked and scared. In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Commission Report, which ominously warned that America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” We have come far since then, but still have far to go. Our goal must remain to be one nation with equal opportunity for all. That objective is achievable, but requires more hard work by all of us.

Forty years ago, the civil-rights movement was struggling against institutionalized discrimination throughout the South. Lynchings, white-only restrooms, segregated schools and lunch counters were a plague upon the nation. Crime, drug abuse, illegitimacy and dependency were spreading throughout black neighborhoods. Poverty was the inner-city norm, with declining hope for the future.

Click here for more…

Voting for change in Jasper: If political parties don’t divide vote, notions on gender and race often do

February 29, 2008

BENNETT ROTH, Houston Chronicle

Nearly a decade has passed since this small Southeast Texas town drew national scrutiny after James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death by three white men motivated by racial hatred.

This week, around the corner from the courthouse where two of the three men were convicted, black and white residents were lining up to cast their early votes in a presidential election that some hope will signal a new era in race relations — in the Piney Woods of Texas and across America.

Joe Clyde Adams, a black member of the City Council, said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama had inspired many in this town of 8,000, almost equally divided between blacks and whites, to vote in the Texas contest that could propel him to the Democratic nomination.

Click here for more…

Next Page »