MILLION WOMEN RISE MOVEMENT

MILLION WOMEN RISE MOVEMENT

A Safe Place raises awareness of domestic and dating violence with 10th annual walk at Lake Merritt

A Safe Place raises awareness of domestic and dating violence with 10th annual walk at Lake Merritt

The City of New York Honors Legendary Singer Dionne Warwick

The City of New York Honors Legendary Singer Dionne Warwick: Entertainment legends are born with a special gift which allows them to display talents that resonate in the...

History! Army Selects First Black Woman As Two Star General

Written by Associated Press on October 3, 2011 10:06 am

FORT KNOX, Ky.— For Marcia Anderson, the promotion from brigadier general to major general validates the work of everyone who came before her.

Anderson on Thursday became the first African-American woman given a second star as a general in the U.S. Army during a ceremony at Fort Knox. It’s a day, Anderson said, that black soldiers who fought during the Civil War or the Tuskegee Airmen could never have imagined.
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“But, they still signed up and served,” said Anderson, who lives in Verona, Wis., when not on active duty.
Anderson, who will leave her post as deputy commanding general of the Human Resources Command at Fort Knox on Friday, received the promotion after a three-decade long military career. She is moving to the office of the chief of the U.S. Army Reserve in Washington, D.C.
Anderson’s father, Rudy Mahan of Beloit, Wis., served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, but never got to fulfill his dream of flying bombers. He drove trucks instead. It’s something Anderson attributes to the narrow options available to blacks at the time.
“There were just limited opportunities,” Anderson said in an interview after her promotion.
Her military career started almost by accident. When she was a student at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., Anderson signed up for ROTC after being told the “military science” course would fill her science requirement.
“I pretty quickly found out it was much more than a substitute for gym class,” Anderson said.
Ahe stayed with the military, fulfilling her eight year commitment before deciding to re-enlist in the reserves. Anderson, an East St. Louis, Ill., native, said she was a captain, working on training soldiers “just off the street,” when it occurred to her it was a job she enjoyed and wanted to keep doing.
“Before there is a war fighter, there is a trainer,” Anderson said. “I get really excited about training soldiers. I think it’s the best job in the Army.”
The military promoted Anderson periodically and, when she became a brigadier general, Anderson became the highest-ranking African-American woman in the Army. She arrived at Fort Knox about a year ago to work on combining the Army’s Human Resources Command under one roof from stations in Richmond, Va., St. Louis and Indianapolis.
Fort Knox Commander, Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, told Anderson she is “a role model, not only to me and those that worked with you, but to countless soldiers.”
“I am very, very grateful,” Freakley said.
Maj. Gen. Gina Farrisee, who oversees the Human Resources Command, said Anderson was tenacious and diligent in making sure soldiers got the information they needed.
“To me, it is very hard to fathom Human Resources Command without you,” Farrisee said. “This is going to be very hard.”
Despite the plaudits, Anderson never lost sight of what her father and others went through to make her career possible.
“This is for people like him who had dreams deferred,” Anderson said.

Tragic! HS Cheerleader Mysteriously Dies While Cheering

Written by Associated Press on October 3, 2011 11:16 am 

 

LOS ANGELES— When students return for school Monday morning at Washington Prep, they’ll be greeted by crisis counselors and missing one of their beloved classmates, a cheerleader who died after collapsing during a football game.

Angela Gettis, a 16-year-old sophomore at the school, was rallying the crowd Friday night in the fourth quarter of a tie game at Fremont High School when she suffered an apparent cardiac arrest, Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Tom Waldman said.
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The game stopped as coaches and trainers ran to help. Bystanders performed CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive. Gettis died about three hours later at a hospital, becoming the second teenage girl from Los Angeles district schools to die over the weekend after a dramatic campus incident.
School officials planned to discuss Gettis at a Monday morning news conference.
School district Superintendent John Deasy said the girl was “a wonderful young lady. It is a catastrophic loss for the school and for the community. My heart goes out to her family.”
Gettis was a good student, said officials at the inner-city school in a rough area of Los Angeles. She planned to attend college and wanted to major in forensic science, school principal Todd Ullah told KABC-TV.
At least two tribute pages memorializing the teen popped up on Facebook as news of her death spread.
Grief counselors and a makeshift memorial also await students at South East High School in South Gate, where a 17-year-old student was stabbed during a lunch break in front of many student witnesses.
The student, Cindi Santana, died at a hospital late Friday night, Deasy said.
Another student and an administrator who tried to help Santana had minor injuries.
Santana’s former boyfriend, 18-year-old Abraham Lopez, was being held on suspicion of murder, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. Deputies reached by phone did not know whether he had retained an attorney.

Disrespect Around the world for Our President

China’s “Obama Fried Chicken” Sign Offends Sharpton, African Americans

Written by NewsOne Staff on October 3, 2011 8:33 am

 

A fast-food restaurant in Beijing called Obama Fried Chicken was derided in America yesterday as a racist rip-off.
Its sign shows a grinning caricature of President Obama’s head on a skinny version of Colonel Sanders’ body.
Below it, written in Chinese, is the slogan: “We’re so cool, aren’t we?”
“It’s insulting, offensive and plays to racial stereotypes,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told The Post.
“What makes it even worse is that when we deal with this global competition between the US and China, for them to be mocking the leader of the free world, I find it even more appalling.”

Big Business Or Slave Labor? What Prisoners Make In Jail

Written by NewsOne Staff on October 3, 2011 2:59 pm

 

 

If you thought slavery or human exploitation was over, think again.

Many human rights organizations are condemining what they call human slavery in which Wall Street investors and big companies are investing in the prison industry as they don’t have to worry about strikes, vacations, compensation time or unemployment insurance. They dont have to deal with sicknesses or lateness. Many of these prisoners are threatened with solitary confinement if they refuse to work for these wages.
This also makes it very clear to people that there are more incentives to lock up people in this country. The US has become extremely attractive to companies who would usually use labor in 3rd world countries. They now look toward prison wages for all the advantages they offer a corporation. The U.S. is 5 percent of the world’s population, but comprises a quarter of all prisoners in the world.
Want to read more about this industry extensively? Click here
Check out some random facts about the prison labor industry and some of the companies involved in it.

• Starbucks contractor Signature Packing Solutions once hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees as did Nintendo with their Game Boys.
• Microsoft once had prisoners shrink wrap software
• In Texas, inmates produce brooms, brushes, bedding, mattresses, toilets, sinks and showers.
• Dell once had inmates recycle PC’s but a watchdog group pprevented them from doing so because it would expose inmates to toxins.
• Inmates have also produced missile cables. They also cut aircut components which pay them 7.00 an hour when on the outside union wages would be 30.00.
• California inmates sew their own garbs.
• Prisoners in Wisconsin once helped build a Walmart in 2005 until community uproar halted the program.
• Prison industry pproduces 100 pct of all military helments, ammo belts, bulletproof vest, etc.
• Private prisons pay from 93 cents to $4.73 per hour.
• Federal prisons pay from  93 cents to $1.25 per hour.

When Does Supporting Black Men Become Tiring?

Written by Tamika Mallory on September 30, 2011 1:01 pm

A few days ago, a couple of girlfriends and I got together for dinner to catch up, vent and let off some overheated steam. What started off as escapism from our every day battles quickly transformed into a precise focus on those very struggles.
‘Tamika, I want to talk about anything but politics, nothing serious please,’ is what they said.” But before you knew it, our discussion revolving around the men in our lives soon enough was fixated on the economy, jobs, housing, disproportionate incarceration rates – oh, and sex. As these external factors deteriorate, so too does family life, relationships and of course so too does the sex.  It’s time to be frank and honest ladies and gentlemen.
It’s no secret that the economic downfall of ’08 and the continued ramifications have affected us the most. With staggering unemployment rates that are double and sometimes triple the rates of joblessness among whites in some areas, a crippling rate of foreclosures, inadequate schools, reduced after-school programs and diminished opportunities overall, communities of color are bearing the brunt of this financial disaster.  And not surprisingly, more of our men are sometimes resorting to desperate means of providing for their families — and as a result — an astronomical number are finding themselves behind bars. The many that continually push to find legit work are losing faith as they are often the last ones hired in an environment where employers often look out for ‘their own’ first.
My friends and I, some who are married and some in serious relationships, all agreed on one thing:  we’re just flat out tired of trying to encourage these men out here. Even though we fully comprehend the dynamics at play that make it so extraordinarily difficult for our brothers to find work, we are simply exhausted from giving all of our energy and unconditional support – while at the same time holding down our own work. Black men often complain that we nag too much.  But what happens when the nagging stops?  Does that mean that we no longer care?  Or have we matured to a place of understanding what the other person may be going through? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between.
While we try to support our men both emotionally (and these days many times financially), we may be forgetting to take care of ourselves as well.  And with more men in jail, we’re clearly not receiving the attention we deserve, and let’s be honest there are also more and more women pleasing other women as a result. When men are broke or struggling, are we just no longer turned on?
The economic crisis clearly isn’t going to be resolved overnight.  But as we women continue to find strength to not only motivate ourselves but the men we love, we must also remind these men to get it together in order to keep the passion alive.  For not only is the Black family structure at risk, but so too is our physical bond as man and woman.  And who in their right mind wants that.