Obama's First 100 Days -- The Black Agenda Report Card

The hundred day report card is an enduring tradition in American journalism for a very good reason. It's journalism's job to help citizens make sense of the world, to seek the truth and tell it without fear or favor no matter where it leads. Three months and a week into a new administration, everybody knows where the mens and ladies rooms are, most of the key hires are in place, and the bus has definitely cleared the station. There's plenty of evidence by now to assess where it's going, and whether it's anyplace we really ought to be headed.

Should We Grade President Obama on What He Promised, or on What People Need?
The answer to this should be easy. It all depends on whether we imagine government derives its authority from the blessedness of anointed men and women in office, or whether legitimacy comes from the informed consent of the governed. Most of us who were not home schooled learned it the latter way: governments are legit only insofar as they serve the people. Limiting the scope of a report card to what politicians promise confers upon them the power to lock down our collective imagination and deny our hunger and thirst for justice before we can even express it.

Why These Categories?
Because these are the issues that matter to our people. As the journal of African American political thought and action, they are what our authors write about every week.

1. Health Care Reform (9 points)
2. Creating New Jobs and Preserving Old Ones (5 points)
3. Fully Funding and Preserving Public Education (6 points)
4. War & Peace (9 points)
5. Transportation (5 points)
6. Caribbean and Latin America (4 points)
7. Obama's Africa Policy; Our Brotherman and the Motherland (5 points)
8. Wall Street Bailout (6 points)
9. Debt and Foreclosure Crises (6 points)
10. Investigating Bush-era Crimes (5 points)
11. Criminalizing Immigration, Militarizing the Border (5 points)
12. Broadband For Everyone and a Just and Fair Media (5 points)
13. Environment (5 points)
14. Agricultural Policy, and Policy Toward Black Farmers (5 points)
15. Mass imprisonment (5 points)
16. Employee Free Choice Act (5 points)
17. Urban Policy (5 points)
18. Privatization of Government Agencies and Services (5 points)

Details Here.

Alert: Important Book

Idren just finished "Coming Into Adulthood in Today's America" by M. Johnson-Smith (A Story of My Final 100 Days of College). i read. i smiled, i laughed, i thought and i read back & i smiled more. This is an honest, courageous & riveting book by a young brother who looks inward as he trods. M. Johnson-Smith writes vividly about America and adulthood but the core is a vital telling of those flows of black experience-african experience outside, even before America and adulthood. With humor & keen observation in his journalism, the author gives insight in 100 days (each chapter a day) on plain kickin' it with friends & family, moving in ultimately unsatisfying circles at work & college and leaving Boston for worldly connections in Ghana, West Africa. If you want to feel a young mind confronting the restlessness & excesses of the world with positivity & growing clarity, idren recommend this book. Highly.

Laugh or Cry?

We addicted to hormonized chicken. The result?

See the host brother's face from min 1:44 in video below:

Laugh. ...to keep from crying. ...then cry.

Pictures Speak 172k Words

Giant Marimba O' (smile).

Black Men e

Obama, first black US president was 20 years old 27 years ago. Given that, it is not ironical, & it is certainly understated that "Nationally, less than 60% of black men age 20 and older were employed in February, the lowest share since the government began tracking such data in 1972, and down from 66% a year earlier.” ~Peter S. Goodman in the Boston Sunday Globe on April 5.


Well designed information item here on cowardice.

Dave Chappelle - Native Americans

Awake or Asleep

How yehudim, greeks & romans, not to mention some weak-minded mn-nfr negroes, took the spirit* out of the ancient african spiritual system and normalized it, universalized it, & through it keep idren sleep-walking today, is reflected in these pictures separated by many-fold millenia but joined by deepest irony [or ignorance...or providence].

*& womban.

Pollution - BET, Awo.

"3 niggas were reading books...and one was smiling!"

Bconx Alert

"The release of the Fed’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial assessment of American financial trends, reveals that a focus on policy through a racial lens could come none too soon. The report found that, as a group, people of color held roughly 16 cents for every $1 held by whites in 2007. For Hispanics, the figure was 12 cents. For blacks, a dime*. And those figures were crunched before the collapse of the economy. Advocates fear that the gap probably widened since then because, while fewer minorities than whites own their homes, minority homeowners tend to have a higher percentage of their wealth wrapped up in their homes.

Similarly, blacks and Hispanics have fewer credit cards, but tend to drive up higher debts per card. As a result, said Jose Garcia, associate director for research and policy at Demos, a liberal policy group, “more of [minorities'] income goes to pay debt, and less goes to buy assets.” (article).

So, when a raging fever burns,
We shift from side to side by turns;
And 'tis a poor relief we gain
To change the place, but keep the pain.
~ Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs

*Remember the Grand Master Flash 'NYNY' lyrics?
On 42nd Street, lookin for some action
Women standing on the corner selling satisfaction
One young punk just leaning on the fence
Tryin' to make a dollar out of fifteen cents
Really is a prankster, tried to be a gangster
Real big wheel when a gun is in his hands
Just did a stick-up, just got picked up
One dead punk, killed by the man.

...everything ain't always what it seems...
...but'm down by law, & know my way around.

Pirates? Don't Believe the Hype. (AFRICOM)

Any y'all feel yourselves in any measure interested/curious by the Pirate story...don't get caught watching. If you felt any relief when you heard the word 'rescued', then put the little bby man in your brain in check. (blackhawk down in the 'jungle' once mo'gin'd).

The news of the brave New England Captain [us?] & the win against the (african) Indian Ocean 'Pirates' [them] must generate other ideas than 'courage'. How about 'foreigner PRETEXT' instead? No. Then we might ask questions bby won't answer. Like what exactly was the humanitarian cargo (gm-rice)? What is the root cause (vid) that these ex-fishermen are piratical? Who weaponized them? What resources are at stake (land & sea)? Does this general global excitement (hype) legitimize different new military & political foreign inroads to Africa? What will involve the legal processing of the last ‘pirate’? (...the sole alive was a 16 year old boy). Are there African pirates in Indian Oceans breaking American laws?

Criminal or Terrorist? Idren, in the very near future, you are about to be excited'd by Obama’s first state visit to Africa, the land of his father. You are also about to be hyp-ed by some other event terror-crime to occur in west africa (nigeria delta? ghana? liberia?). Please don't believe it, we must stop being force-fed camels as we strain our wine for gnats (so to speak). Try to remember only two words: PRETEXT & AFRICOM.

HIV Resistant People Found in Uganda

(New Vision) A small fraction of Ugandans have been able to naturally knock off HIV from their body, a development that could lead to an HIV vaccine, scientists have said.

Dr. Pontiano Kaleebu, an immunologist heading the Basic Sciences Programme of the MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), told Saturday Vision that an ongoing study and a previous one at the institute had unearthed signs that some Ugandans may be resistant to HIV.

They have special white blood cells that can only be produced when the virus attacks the body. However, even with the most sophisticated tests, HIV could not be found in these individuals, implying that the virus had tried to infect them but the immune system kicked it out.

"We are seeing some immune responses but it is still too early to see if there is a lot of meaning to these responses," said Kaleebu.

"Such people are of interest to many researchers worldwide."

At the AIDS Information Centre in Kampala, the UVRI scientists are studying 70 discordant couples to see if some of them are indeed resistant to HIV. These are couples that have had unprotected sex for more than a year, one partner has had HIV for long while the other has not become infected. "We have set up a clinic in Kampala where doctors and counsellors do a lot of counselling and give them condoms to reduce risky sexual behaviour," Kaleebu said.

Despite early signs of resistance to HIV, Kaleebu said meaningful results can only be released at the end of the study. The five-year research, expected to be completed in 2010, is sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health through the British Medical Research Council (MRC). It is part of a multi-country study coordinated by the US-based Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) and involving Oxford University of UK.

Prof. Heiner Grosskurth, the Director of the MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS, said: "A lack of ability to becoming HIV infected is extremely rare, but there is evidence meanwhile that people who have this characteristic exist worldwide, although in very small numbers."

Although they are so few, he said, studying them could generate new knowledge that would enable scientists to develop a vaccine. "Such work is going on with a lot of speed and effort in many countries, but there is no breakthrough yet! I think it will still take years until we have good vaccine candidates."

Earlier in 2002, Prof. Andrew Mc Michael of the University of Oxford and the late Dr. Anthony Kebba of UVRI announced that they had identified some eight Ugandans in Kampala and Entebbe, who were exposed to HIV but remained uninfected. One fifth of the discordant couples they studied showed some signs of resistance to HIV, but this required further confirmation. Mc Michael is involved with Kaleebu in the new study. Similar studies are going on in Kenya and the Gambia.

Kaleebu cautioned that nearly all people are vulnerable to HIV and Ugandans should not relax simply because a few individuals seem to be resistant to the virus. "It has to be clear that this apparent resistance is not a common thing. If you are HIV negative and your partner is HIV positive we cannot say you are resistant and you cannot become infected. If you continue to have unprotected sex you might become infected in the long run," said Kaleebu.

Indeed, in the late 1990s some people in Rakai were reported to have become infected with HIV after being discordant for many years. On discovering that they were discordant, scientists had advised them to begin using condoms. Later, some of those who declined to use condoms became infected. (more).

G20 Babylon Essence

"For it is the settler who has brought the native into existence and who perpetuates
his existence. The settler owes the fact of his very existence, that is to say, his
property, to the colonial system." ~Sartre, (preface of Fanon's The Wretched of the
Earth)

Pictures Speak 172k Words

Marlena I Want

Marlena I Want...
I want my people to be happy I told my little neice
But not Obama change happy
I mean truly happy
Not happy to be able to have the chance to finally get the opportunity to try to see the happiness on the horizon.
I mean not having your breast fondled during an arrest happy
I mean not having to teach the same brother every day who comes to you for you to have something for him because he is sick happy
I mean not having to teach black boys and girls that they are african and that is a good thing happy.
I want my people to be happy Marlena.
I want you to be happy chicken.
December 25, 2008

Livicate to Ant Martha - Quiet Music of an Intact African N8V R.I.P.P

Play:

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, strategems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.” – Shakespeare