BLACK IN AMERICA- ARE WE VICTIMS, WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE?

from cryptaniteat12

Response to "CNN Presents: Black in America" a six-hour television event"

There’s a story about a young newlywed bride who is cooking a ham dinner. She prepares it by cutting both ends of the ham off before she puts it into the pot. The groom asks the wife why she cut both ends off. The daughter then asks her mother and she replies that was how her mother taught her. At that point the grandmother comes in and she is asked why both ends are cut off. The grandmother replied that she didn’t have a big enough pot.

Black America when do we take responsibility for our condition? How long will we keep cutting off both ends of the ham? You may ask- how do we keep cutting off both ends? Let me give just 13 examples of dysfunctional behavior that some of us perpetuate:

1) Refusing to finish at a minimum high school
2) Failure to turn the television off
3) Failure to choose healthy foods
4) Failure to exercise
5) Choosing consumerism over education
6) Failure to adopt a global perspective, understand our history and world history
7) Using racism and sexism as an excuse for not achieving
8) Living in denial versus confronting our deficiencies and institutional societal wrongs including racism and sexism inside and outside of the church
9) Choosing an underachieving noncommittal black man because he is black
10) Failure to get tested for HIV/AIDS, wear a condom or have your partner wear one
11) Limiting your choice to only black men
12) Forgetting the ancient landmarks that allowed our ancestors to survive slavery
13) Refusal to accept the need for and release ourselves to a higher power in our lives

Black America no one is going to save us, but ourselves. Let’s stop cutting off both ends of the ham because it is comfortable and everyone else is supposedly doing the same. (By the way is ham still a staple in your diet?)

Leave me some comments as to how we can think outside the box rather than cutting off both ends through black homicide, HIV/AIDS (the number one killer of Black women aged 25-34), under and unemployment, disproportionally high school dropout rate, 50% black single parental rate etc.

Stay Blessed!
Joyce
P.S. I'm glad Barack Obama's parents didn’t cut off both ends of the ham!
www.womensempowermentseminars.com

YES, THEY CAN! - HOPE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

Bronx students discuss Obama's race speech

From: BarackObamadotcom


Hi guys,
I came across this video and I was impressed by these students’ intense interest and views about politics in light of the Obama/Clinton race. What inspired me more was the hope and belief in the indomitable spirit of mankind and the American dream for all of its citizens.

This election has given me hope that King’s 40 year old prophetic dream that America will judge its citizens by their character and not their race or gender is about to be realized. Metaphysically 40 signifies completion. Remarkably, it is significant in Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other Middle Eastern traditions; it can also represent a rough calculation, a huge sum of units, or simply put a lot of something:

-"Forty days and forty nights" describes the period for which rain fell during Noah's flood
-"Forty days" was the length of the period that the twelve spies explored the Promised Land
-"Forty years" was the length of Israel's wandering in the wilderness. This period of years represents a generation, that is, the time it takes for a new generation to arise.
-Moses' life is divided into three 40-year segments, separated by his fleeing from Egypt, and his return to lead the people out.
-Several Israelite leaders and kings are said to have ruled for "forty years", that is, a generation. (Examples: Eli, Saul, David, Solomon.)
-According to the Midrash, Moses spent three consecutive periods of "forty days and forty nights" on Mount Sinai.
-Rabbi Akiva, the greatest expositor of the Oral Torah, only began learning how to read Hebrew when he was 40 years old
-"Forty days and forty nights" was the period Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness, after which he was tempted by Satan.
-Forty days was the period from Jesus' resurrection till his ascension into heaven.
-In modern Christian practice, Lent consists of the 40 days preceding Easter. -The dead are usually mourned for forty days in Muslim cultures
-Muhammad is said to be forty years old when he first received the revelation delivered by an angel.
-In the Yazidi faith, The Chermera temple (meaning “40 Men” in the Yazidi dialect) is so old that no one remembers how it came to have that name but it is believed to derive from the burial of 40 men on the mountaintop site.
-In Hinduism, some popular religious prayers consist of forty shlokas or dohas (couplets, stanzas).

Finally after 40 years, or essentially a generation later, Dr. King’s dream is being realized. It seems pretty clear that America will have a female or an African American as president. Let us learn from this historical moment the importance of instilling in the next generation the importance of not only the American dream, but their individual dreams. Although it may take time for us to realize our dreams, we must never give up on a heartfelt dream that benefits mankind. Defeat is not an option- when we persist through adversity, we will be Winners at life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce

Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union'

From: BarackObamadotcom

In case you missed Barack's historic speech- here it is! The annals of America's text books will record this as one of the greatest speeches in the history of America and the world.

Truly a house divided can not stand. There is power in unity. It is time that we unite not just for a better America, but for a better world! Science tells us that underneath our skin, we are truly one kind,- human kind.

It is time for us to fulfill God's mandate to be our brother's keeper, to lay down our weapons of warfare, to replenish and not deplete the earth and to be fruitful and multiply.

Stay Blessed!
Joyce


'We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.'

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

An Unsung Hero of Black History: Bayard Rustin

I want to thank a reader by the name of Joan Hervey who sent me this information about an unsung hero who also had a dream and who was instrumental and critical to the implementation of Dr. King’s dream. It’s written by Jennifer Vanasco and I have copied and pasted it below.

I hope you will see as I have discovered in my walk through life that it is important to focus on what binds us together as one instead of what separates us. Regardless of your political or religious views, what really matters is whether you have love for one another as Jesus instructed us to have.

I submit that the true test of what’s in your heart is whether you are truly your brother’s or sister’s keeper. Can you be that Good Samaritan that accepts someone from a different race, class or orientation, not because of legislation, but because of what’s in your heart? If we want to be Winners at life, we must focus on what builds up the human race not because it is politically correct, but because love is the more excellent way.

I Cor. 13 says it best:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up …. thinketh no evil;…And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Stay Blessed!
Joyce




Bayard Rustin had a dream, too

He Had a Dream
by Jennifer Vanasco, 365gay.com

He organized the 1963 March on Washington. He helped arrange the Montgomery, Ala. Bus boycott. He debated Malcolm X, learned non-violence directly from Gandhi's followers, went to jail for his civil rights protests, and is considered one of the architects of the black civil rights movement.

He was Bayard Rustin. He was gay. And he is all but forgotten during our country's annual January commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rustin was 17 years older than King, and had been working for the cause since leaving college. Born into a Quaker family in 1912 in a town where the Klu Klux Klan paraded proudly down the street on holidays and where blacks weren't able to take a seat in white restaurants or theaters, Rustin was soon convinced that non-violence was the answer to winning black civil rights. He traveled the country with the Fellowship of Reconcilliation, calling on "angelic troublemakers" to use their bodies to protest unfair conditions.

Rustin was athletic, polite and handsome. He was also completely unashamed of being gay. He met his first partner, Davis Platt, at a conference at Bryn Mawr College.

In the documentary "Brother Outsider," Platt recalls what Rustin was like: "Such intelligence, such a love of life, such a sense of humor, really a lot of wisdom. And he had absolutely no shame about being gay."

That comfort with his gayness ended in 1953 in Padadena, Calif., when he was caught by the police in the backseat of a car with two other men. His conviction for "sexual perversion" was to haunt him the rest of his life. It convinced him to tone down his sexuality in public, and was used by foes of the civil rights movement - notably Sen. Strom Thurmond (R- SC) - to try to convince the public that King was working with moral deviants.

Rustin was a long-time advisor to King - the documentary says that it was Rustin who really taught King the practical application of non-violence. Though all was not rosy, usually because of King's fears that Rustin would subvert the civil rights movement with his homosexuality. Though they were later reconciled, Rustin's strongest falling out with King, according to the documentary, came when Sen. Adam Clayton Powell threatened that he would accuse King and Rustin of having a sexual affair. King blinked, and friends recall Rustin as feeling personally betrayed.

While King inspired, Rustin's genius lay in the actual organizing of people and events. Rustin set up phone banks and transportation for the 1963 March on Washington, making the impossible possible. He insured that African-Americans around the country knew about the march, that every group that wanted a bus to Washington got one, and that no buses got lost.

King and Rustin were hoping for a crowd of 100,000 - instead, over 200,000 people from around the country packed the Washington Mall to hear King give his soaring "I Have a Dream" speech.

For the rest of his life, Rustin would continue his activism, working to end nuclear war, advocating on behalf of Soviet Jews and Israel, visiting refugee camps, and working with the gay and lesbian civil rights movement.

In 1977, Rustin met Walter Naegle in Times Square - they would be parters until R ustin's death of a ruptured appendix in 1987. Perhaps it was this relationship - and the changing times - that spurred him once again to be open about being gay.

Toward the end of his life, in 1986, Rustin said, "Indeed, if you want to know whether today people believe in democracy, if you want to know whether they are true democrats, if you want to know whether they are human rights activists, the question to ask is, 'What about gay people?' Because that is now the litmus paper by which this democracy is to be judged."

Bayard Rustin. An activist for civil rights for all.

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“Change is Gonna Come”

Change is Gonna Come (From: DesertRatDan youtube.com)

Yes, my friends we need a change- a real change! It’s time to unite as Americans, not as Blacks, Whites, Asians, Native Americans, but one nation under God. Science has empirically told us that underneath the skin we are the same. The animal kingdom does not discriminate among themselves because of the different hues that a butterfly, a dog, a cat possesses, etc. Why do we?

It’s about saving our natural resources- it’s been said that if we don’t learn to live together as one race- the human race, we shall perish as fools. We have been given the mandate to be fruitful and multiply the Earth. Not destroy it with toxic landfills, polluted waters, cities and neighborhoods on the verge of foreclosure and bankruptcy, students that can’t read or write, but have their own cell phones and I-pods. Who are they calling--the children in Africa, Asia, India that are starving, that would love the opportunity to attend school and eat the food that our children turn their noses up at? Parents- what are you teaching your children that will leave a legacy of goodwill and empowerment for the next generation?

It’s about not just saving America- but the world. It’s time for world leaders to come together and work collectively as one force for good. One man, one President is not the answer. We can elect someone who embodies this message, but the real change is needed within the heart and actions of each and every individual on this planet.

If you want to see things differently, if you want a better world, start with yourself and then the collective energy of others will form a synergism that will truly change the world. We must put down our weapons of warfare and pick up the mantle of peace, negotiation, compromise, love and forgiveness and share this Earth that all men and women are entitled to by their divine birthright. God told us that when my people who call upon his name would humble themselves and seek His face, then He would heal the land.

Yes we do need change, and a “change is gonna come,” but we must be the initiators in order to be Winners at life. Barack is right; change does come from the bottom to the top.

Stay Blessed!
Joyce

He That Wants To Be A King Must Be A Servant First!

Love is the key to making this world a better place for our children’s children. Mother Teresa exemplified this love by stepping out of her comfort zone and choosing to work among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Amazingly with no funds, she depended on God, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.

In 1950 Mother Teresa started her own order called, The Missionaries of Charity, whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. Her society has since evolved into The Society of Missionaries that have spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union, Eastern European, Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe and Australia.

Mother Teresa's work has been recognized and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

Until we have individuals that are willing like Mother Teresa to step out of their comfort zone, the status quo will continue. Mother Teresa did not wait until all her ducks were in a row. With only a desire and a passion in her heart to help the bruised and the broken hearted, Mother Teresa stepped out on faith and as she went along, help and support fell into place.

Rosa Parks, Dr. King and Mrs. King, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln and many others with only a dream and prayer stepped out on faith. Likewise, we must take our cues from them and use whatever is in our hands to bring our dreams into fruition. When we do this, then the forces of justice in the universe will align themselves and bring our dream(s)into fruition and make us Winners at life.

Stay Blessed!
Joyce

Click on the link below and reflect on Dr. King's definition of greatness.



Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.(To Serve) from: andyvivanco (youtube.com)

Dr. King Responded To A Macedonian Call- What Is Yours?

Dr. King, like Paul received a Macedonian call to come and help the bruised, the broken hearted and the captive prisoners. Paul was called to Macedonia, a Greek country much like the U.S. which was steeped in refinement, learning, wealth and culture. Although the Macedonians were religious, they had no knowledge of Jesus Christ.

It is one thing to know of Christ, and it is another to actually follow his teachings. Such was the case during the Civil Rights era. Many of our laws were in opposition to the Word of God that challenges us to love our neighbors and to be a Good Samaritan. Dr. King like Paul was sent to jail after receiving his call. Both Paul and Dr. King accomplished their missions and their sacrificial acts made it possible for many to know Christ and have a more meaningful life.

Have you heard your Macedonian call to help those who are bound in physical, emotional and financial chains? I challenge you to listen with your heart, to steal away to a secret place where God can reveal his specific plan for your life. He may not speak to you in a cathedral. It may be a homeless shelter, a prison or a classroom. It doesn’t matter where he chooses to speak to you. What’s important is that you know that it is His voice.

One thing you can be certain of is that His call won’t be a bed of roses, but the rewards are priceless and eternal. I guarantee you that when you respond to your Macedonian call you will be a Winner at life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce

Click on the link below as you reflect on how you can answer someone’s Macedonian call for help and be a resource for someone who is yearning to be free.


Nina Simone - I wish I knew how it would fell to be free from: scottie1989 (youtube.com)

Dr. King’s Use of Music To Overcome Depression & Adversities

Science is now verifying empirically what the Bible has long ago stated in anecdotes. Some of you may recall the story of how David used music to calm the beast in King Saul who wanted to kill him.

Intrinsic in the Civil Rights movement was the use of freedom songs that help bind the protestors together. It gave believers hope that the status quo would change and reflect the true meaning of America’s Constitution and its Judeo-Christian principals upon which this country was founded. It also inspired hope that the descendants of slaves, freedom fighters and those who had fought in America’s wars would be free in the land of their birth and have the same rights and privileges of any other American regardless of their race, color, national origin, or gender.

I want to share with you an article from About.com that scientifically confirms how the use of music can be used to overcome pain, depression, disability and increased the participants’ feelings of power:

Listening to Music Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Depression
From About.com
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by Kate Grossman,MD.
A study published in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that listening to music daily reduced chronic pain, made people feel more in control of their pain, reduced depression, and made people feel less disabled by their condition.

How the Study Worked
Researchers conducted a controlled clinical trial with 60 people who were recruited from pain and chiropractic clinics in Ohio. Participants had been suffering from a range of painful conditions (including osteoarthritis, disc problems and rheumatoid arthritis) for an average of six and a half years.

•Participants were divided into three groups of 20.
•Two of the groups listened to music on a headset for an hour a day.
•The third group did not listen to music and served as the control group.
•All three groups kept a pain diary.
•The first music group chose their favorite music to listen to. Choices included pop, rock, slow, melodious and nature sounds.
•The second music group was given relaxing music selected by the researchers.
Before the study began, the participants reported their average pain to be just under six on a zero to ten scale, with their worst pain exceeding nine. Ninety percent experienced pain in more than one part of their body and 95 percent said their pain was continuous.

Results of the Study
•The music groups reported a 12 to 21 percent reduction in pain. The control group reported that their pain had increased by one to two percent.
•The music groups reported 19 to 25 percent less depression than the control group.
•The music groups reported feeling nine to 18 percent less disabled than the control group.
•The music groups felt they had five to eight percent more power over their pain than the control group.

In a press release from the Journal of Advanced Nursing, Dr. Sandra L. Siedlecki, nurse researcher at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, stated, “Our results show that listening to music had a statistically significant effect on the two experimental groups, reducing pain, depression and disability and increasing feelings of power. There were some small differences between the two music groups, but they both showed consistent improvements in each category when compared to the control group.

“Non-malignant pain remains a major health problem and sufferers continue to report high levels of unrelieved pain despite using medication. So anything that can provide relief is to be welcomed.”

Co-author Professor Marion Good from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio added, “Listening to music has already been shown to promote a number of positive benefits and this research adds to the growing body of evidence that it has an important role to play in modern healthcare”

Sources:
Siedlecki, Sandra L. and Good, Marion. “Effect of music on power, pain, depression and disability.” Journal of Advanced Nursing Vol. 54.5. June, 2006: 553-562. Journal of Advanced Nursing Press Release, 5/24/06 This About.com page has been optimized for print. To view this page in its original form, please visit: http://chronicfatigue.about.com/od/research/a/musicstudy.htm. ©2007 About.com, Inc., a part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.

Why don’t you start off your weekend by reaping the benefits of listening to this relaxing music by Wintley Phipps entitled, "Amazing Grace History/"Amazing Grace". Remember you have the power within you to be a Winner at life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce



From: hoover4000 (youtube.com)

How Dr. King Overcame Adversities

It is interesting to study the past, particularly biographies of great men like Dr. King to see how they dealt with unjust situations. In a Playboy Interview Dr. King was asked the following in reference to being the acknowledged leader of the Civil Rights Movement and chief spokesman for the nation's then twenty million Blacks: “Are there ever any moments when you feel awed by this burden of responsibility, or inadequate to its demands?”

Dr. King responded, “… Sometimes I am uncertain, and I must look to God for guidance. There was one morning I recall, when I was in a Birmingham jail, in solitary, with not even my lawyers permitted to visit, and I was in a nightmare of despair. The very future of our movement hung in the balance, depending upon capricious turns of events over which I could have no control there, incommunicado, in an utterly dark dungeon…. It was then that President Kennedy telephoned my wife, Coretta. After that, my jail conditions were relaxed….The next day, word came to me from New York that Harry Belafonte had raised fifty thousand dollars…and if more was needed, he would raise that. I cannot express what I felt, but I knew at that moment that God’s presence had never left me, that He had been with me there in solitary.”

My friends, you too can overcome adversities by using the secret that Dr. King used. Actually it’s not a secret; it has been around since the beginning of time. It’s God in our midst who created the universe. A good father leaves an inheritance and a legacy to his children. The secret, the legacy is the Word of God, by which you are enabled and empowered to be the Head and not the tail!

It worked for Dr. King, Gandhi, Moses, Joseph, Jacob, Paul, Madame C J Walker, Helen Keller, myself and countless others. The choice is yours- if you trust him He will take your hand in the midst of your storms and make you a Winner at life! Click on the link below and meditate on this song that Dr. King loved and gave him strength to go on when all hope was lost.

Stay Blessed!
Joyce


From: ArchieB9876 (Youtube.com)

You Can Be King Or A Gandhi

Do you want to be great? Do you want to leave a legacy of love that impacts generations yet unborn? Do you want to leave an enduring footprint of peace, hope and goodwill towards all men? If your answer is yes, then you must be the first to serve others.

You see when you use your talents to serve and build up mankind you automatically become great, because you are uniting with the Creator who said, “be fruitful and multiply.” During this King celebratory season think of what you were put on this earth to do that will promote love and goodwill towards men.

What is your assignment- to clean up the environment, find a cure for cancer, HIV/AIDS, pray for the sick, sing love songs, encourage the lonely, or bring peace to the Middle East? What is your passion? What can you do that promotes peace? Will your memorial read that you made a decision to study war no more and chose to pursue peace? Deuteronomy 30:19 says to “choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

Click on the link below and enjoy Dinah Shore and Mahalia Jackson’s version of “Down By The Riverside” as you reflect on how you can be a Winner at life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce




From: gomezparkinson (youtube.com)

Happy Birthday Dr. King!

Thank you Dr. King for standing for truth, justice and the Word of God during a time when these beliefs were not embraced by the status quo. Thank you Dr. King for sacrificing your life and demanding that America live up to its Constitution for all its citizens. Thank you Dr. King for standing up for human rights for all of God’s citizens the world over.

Thank you for enduring those long, lonely nights away from the comforts of your family and home. Thank you Dr. King for refusing to render violence for violence in the face of hurling rocks, racial epithets, attack dogs and water hoses.

Your dream, your legacy lives on in the hearts, minds and souls of individuals all over the world. You have inspired me to greatness, to dream and do the impossible. I too believe that “the universe is on the side of justice, because of our cosmic companionship with God who is on the side of truth and justice.”

May we all strive to be like Dr. King and not judge individuals by their outward appearance, but by the content of their character. When we lay down our weapons of warfare and usher in truth and justice, we then will have peace in our homes, cities and the world. By laying down our weapons we will have fulfilled the command to be fruitful and multiply and will then become Winners at life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce


From: eekabostatic (youtube.com)

What Is It That You Need To Overcome?

Good Morning guys,

What is it that plagues you? What is it that you tried and tried to put behind you that keeps showing up like an ugly weed? Do you realize that you have the power within you to overcome any adversity in life?

At times in the course of life it is necessary to join hands with others to overcome adversities, particularly when they are of a deeply entrenched political nature steeped in unjust societal laws. Such was the case during the Civil Rights Era. But that is the past.

Now is the time to join hands and pray and fight for the lives and souls of our children and the children of the world. It is time to usher in righteousness (right living) if we want peace in our lives. Dr. King was right- you reap what you sow.

If you want to overcome addictions of any type you must take a stand and be willing to endure criticism, hurt, and pain to achieve your goal. What is it that you need to personally overcome in your life- depression, loneliness, discrimination, drug addiction, obesity, alcoholism, sexual addictions, unemployment, or under employment?

My friends I guarantee that if you join hands with the power of Christ within, you too will overcome any challenge you may face in life. Dr. King was right, we shall overcome, but there are some challenges in life that only a higher power can break the yoke of oppression. Listen and reflect on what this video tells us about our past, as you contemplate on your potential for greatness in the here and now. My friends I guarantee that if you trust God, he will empower you to become a Winner at life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce


From: riesen2b (youtube.com)

What's Wrong With Saying Merry Christmas?

When I was growing up one of the holidays I looked forward to was Christmas. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I grew up in Boston and Northerners are said to be as cold as ice. But during the Christmas season, this holiday melted many a personality and it seemed everywhere you went people greeted and wished you a “Merry Christmas.”

During the late ‘60s there emerged a political correctness era, but even then if you wished someone a “Merry Christmas” who was not a Christian, they were not offended and you apologetically responded back with a Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwaanza or Happy Holiday greeting.

As the world becomes smaller and smaller, we must stay true to our identity like the three Hebrew boys, but also see the common denominator in all religions and cultural celebrations. If we look at the major religious belief systems, the common denominator is - God is love. Let us focus on what binds us as opposed to what separates and divides us. Let’s finds ways to heal the broken hearted, feed the hungry, and protect the environment.

As we close out this year I want to wish everyone a Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwaanza or Happy Holiday greeting. You can be a Winner at Life!

Stay Blessed!
Joyce