What the Media doesn't want you to know about... Successful Black Community Gatherings

Blackstonian Exclusive

The Media "Black Out"
Good News is No News

While the media in Boston is eager to cover any and all instances of death and destruction in our community, they seem equally eager to ignore events in our community which are positive and peaceful.  We have all heard the sentiment "They won't tell about anything good in our community" and in this case in 2011 they have provided us with a major example of such lack of interest when our community puts our best foot forward.

I am calling on the community of Black Bostonians, "Blackstonians" to send in photos of these events so we can tell OUR OWN story. Send photos to: blackstonian@verizon.net

The media in Boston cannot simply tell one side of the story or provide their interpretation of our community.
Particularly when the events are just too big to ignore.

Saturday June 18th 2011
Juneteenth - Roxbury Homecoming
Franklin Park
estimated crowd 8,000

For years this event has gone on and brought together people from as far away as California to return home to Boston for what has become a Mega-Family Reunion with hundreds of Families and one day in Boston where everybody is Family. Never has there been so much as a fist fight. This is the single most beautiful day in the Black Community where babies, children, teenagers, 20 somethings, 30 and ups all the way to seniors of 90 + are all in attendance listening to music, reminiscing and eating good food. Some people would say, well there is no trouble there because the "Thugs" don't attend. Not true. Rather you can see people from every "Hood" in Boston who on this one day forget about all drama. This shows us a shining example that peace is possible.

Sunday June 19th 2011
Father's Day Cookout
Malcolm X Park
estimated crowd 2,000

Brought to you by "The X Men" The Father's Day cookout in Malcolm X Park has been going strong for 10 years.  It has been a blessing to watch a group of men from the Hood who have given back consistently with no fanfare, no thanks and little to no outside support. This is truly a For Us By Us event. Throughout the year these brothers dedicate themselves as coaches and mentors working with children from our community from all walks of life. This year I watched as they handed out at least 20 scholarships to schools ranging from North Carolina State to Yale University.  Once again, this community event is violence and drama free. In my several years of attending the only negative incident I have ever seen was caused by the Boston Police who chased a teen through the park spraying pepper spray which hit an infant, an elder and a single mother.  This event is one that everyone should not only attend but support! Contribute to the scholarships and donate food and money.

Other Noteworthy Events that took place over the Juneteenth/Father's Day Weekend were

Friday, June 17th 6/17
617 Day
brought to you by the folks at Six One Seven Live
A celebration of the Boston scene including Hip-Hop and more!!!
In the house was a who's who of Boston
Edo G., Twice Thou, Cool Gzus, Takeitha, D.L., Terryl Calloway and many more!!!

Sunday, June 19th
The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists
300 Walnut Ave.
also held a Juneteenth celebration with Art, Music, Poetry and more!!!
Hosted at the museum by Community Arts Elder
Edmund Barry Gaither

READ MORE - What the Media doesn't want you to know about... Successful Black Community Gatherings

New NAACP seeing more gay, diverse chapter leaders as group seeks to increase membership

New NAACP seeing more gay, diverse chapter leaders as group seeks to increase membership

By Associated Press, Wednesday, March 23, 6:52 AM

WORCESTER, Mass. — The NAACP’s newly revived Worcester chapter elected a 28-year-old openly gay black man as its president this month. In New Jersey, a branch of the organization outside Atlantic City chose a Honduran immigrant to lead it last year. And in Mississippi, the Jackson State University chapter recently turned to a 30-something white man.

Founded more than a century ago to promote black equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is seeing remarkable diversity in its leadership ranks — the result of an aggressive effort over the past four or five years to boost NAACP membership and broaden the civil rights organization’s agenda to confront prejudice in its many forms.

“This is the new NAACP,” said Clark University political science professor Ravi Perry, the new chapter president in Worcester. “This is a human rights organization, and we have an obligation to fight discrimination at all levels.”

NAACP branches have been recruiting gays, immigrants and young people who grew up in a world far removed from the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that outlawed school segregation. Now, leadership positions that were once held only by blacks are being filled by members of other racial or ethnic groups.

The group does not keep track of numbers, but in recent years NAACP chapters in New Jersey, Connecticut and Georgia have elected Hispanics as president. A white man was picked to lead the chapter in Aiken, S.C. And two years ago, NAACP members in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb, selected a Bangladeshi American to revive their long-dormant chapter.

“Some people mentioned that it wouldn’t be possible for me to be president,” said Victor Diaz, 32, a Dominican American who ran against an incumbent and was elected president of the Waterbury, Conn., branch in November. “But when I ran, I won 3 to 1.”

The push for diversity troubles some members of the NAACP’s old guard, who worry that problems in the black community may get short shrift. But some social scientists say the new diversity is merely a return to the group’s roots as a biracial organization.

In 1964, the NAACP’s membership peaked at 625,000 paid members. By the middle of the past decade, that had dropped to just under 300,000. Now it has reversed course and climbed to more than 525,000, in large part because of an increase in young members, group officials say. The NAACP said it does not keep track of the organization’s racial and ethnic breakdown.

Stefanie Brown, the NAACP’s 30-year-old national field director, said the under-25 crowd is the organization’s fastest-growing age group. In fact, the NAACP has slots on its 60-plus member board of directors reserved for people under 25. In addition, Brown said, young professionals under 40 are taking leadership roles — something that hadn’t happened until recently.

Some in the group say the diversity push weakens the NAACP’s identity. Jamarhl Crawford, editor of the Blackstonian, a Boston website that covers the city’s black population, said he fears it could “water down” the focus on problems in the black community.

“I think there’s going to be some loss there in terms of actual activism, actual protest” on behalf of blacks, said Crawford, a 40-year-old member of the NAACP’s Boston branch.

The diversity push was started a few years ago under then-NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Later, Benjamin Todd Jealous, who in 2008 became the group’s youngest leader at age 35, ramped up the effort and also urged the organization to take up gay rights.

“At our core, we want to end discrimination and have equality for all people,” Brown said.

In a reflection of how it has broadened its agenda, the NAACP came out against California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure banning gay marriage. Last year, it spoke out against Arizona’s anti-immigration law. It also strongly supported the federal DREAM Act, a proposal to give illegal immigrant students a pathway to citizenship through college or military service.

Perry, the openly gay chapter president, said: “I’m just one example of younger individuals who find a home in the NAACP for issues that they might represent.”

Patricia Sullivan, a history professor at the University of South Carolina and author of “Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement,” called the new push for diversity thrilling and said: “It’s really reflecting what the NAACP has represented historically and what its vision has been.”

Founded in 1909 partly in response to race riots in Springfield, Ill., NAACP begin as a coalition of black and Jewish activists with whites serving in leadership position in many chapters, and it was only later that it became a predominantly black organization. Sullivan also noted that the NAACP spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Tatcho Mindiola, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston, said that while some Hispanics were NAACP members during the civil right years, their election to leadership roles is a new phenomenon. Mindiola said the NAACP has won over some Hispanics because of recent positions it has taken on issues important to Latinos.

“The group has shown it is fighting for civil rights for all minorities,” said David Alcantara, 52, president of the Pleasantville-Mainland chapter in New Jersey. “And it’s time that all minorities support the NAACP.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/new_naacp_seeing_more_gay_diverse_chapter_leaders_as_group_seeks_to_increase_membership/2011/03/23/ABFL8gHB_story.html

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Mom: Shooting ‘one of the most horrific things I have ever seen’

Mom: Shooting ‘one of the most horrific things I have ever seen’
By Peter Gelzinis  |   Wednesday, October 27, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Columnists
It has become this city’s latest shrine to savagery.

Until last Saturday afternoon, it was a convenience store on Warren Street in Roxbury. Now it’s been hijacked by vigil candles and condolences scrawled in spray paint. Everything from “R.I.P. Mom!” to “Love Neva Dies, Only People Die,” now cover both the front of the store and the surrounding sidewalk.

Tahitia Milton, a 39-year-old mother of four, walked to the Quick Stop to pick up a few things Saturday afternoon, only to be cut down by a killer wielding a true weapon of war, an assault rifle.

“It was one of the most horrific things I have ever seen,” said one veteran investigator. Every bit as horrific as the sight of three adults and one toddler laying dead in the middle of a Mattapan street.

“It’s sad to say, but it’s almost as if people around here have gotten used to the gunshots and seeing people die in the street.” Like Tahitia Milton, the woman who volunteered that observation was also was a mother, who has made the same trip to the Quick Stop many times.

“By the time I got down there on Saturday,” she recalled, “they were lifting that gentleman, who I guess was behind the counter in the Quick Stop, out of a car and putting him in the ambulance. It was awful. But lots of people kind of looked at the whole thing as if it was just another episode of ‘Law & Order.’ .”

She drives her two children to and from school every day. She does not allow them out of the house unless she knows her kids are under the watchful eyes of a coach or a teacher.

“They ask me all the time, ‘Mommy, how come we can’t do this or that like other kids?’ I don’t know what to say to them, except that things are different for us. How am I supposed to tell them what happened to that woman just down the street?”

Bouquets of flowers were tucked into the grates that transformed the Quick Stop into a shuttered tomb. Asked how people cope with a neighbor — a mother being slaughtered as she carried a bag of groceries out of a store — the woman simply shook her head.

“That lady was somebody’s daughter, somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister,” she sighed. “Sure, there were people who must have seen it all happen. The sun was out. That police substation was two doors away. But it’s easier to go numb than to go to the police. The way things are going now around here, people just don’t think the police can protect them from the kind of stuff that happened in that store.

“So, you just try to get on the best way you can,” she said. “You live your life looking over your shoulder. It’s no way to live. But we don’t seem to have a choice. Each shooting seems worse than the one before.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1291801

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NPR commentator Juan Williams fired over Muslim remark

NPR commentator Juan Williams fired over Muslim remark
By Associated Press  |   Thursday, October 21, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Media & Marketing

Photo by AP (File)
LOS ANGELES — Longtime news analyst Juan Williams, who has written extensively on race and civil rights, has been fired by NPR after saying on the Fox News Channel that he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on an airplane.

NPR issued a statement late Wednesday saying his contract as a senior news analyst was being terminated after Williams’ comments Monday on "The O’Reilly Factor."

Host Bill O’Reilly brought on guests to discuss his own appearance last week on ABC’s "The View" during which Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set in protest of O’Reilly’s views on Muslims.

"Where am I going wrong here, Juan?" O’Reilly asked.

Williams, 56, responded that too much political correctness can get in the way of reality.

"I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the Civil Rights movement in this country," Williams said. "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

A phone message left for Williams at his home in Washington seeking comment was not immediately returned Thursday morning.

Before Williams was fired, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated.

"NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats," CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said.

Later Wednesday, NPR issued a statement saying Williams’ remarks "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

"Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret," NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in an e-mailed statement.

Williams was a longtime reporter, columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Post. He has written extensively on the Civil Rights movement, including a book on the African American religious experience and a biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Conservative bloggers defended Williams on Thursday, blasting NPR’s decision.

"All Juan Williams did is say both exactly how he feels and how many, many other Americans feel on this subject," wrote Erick Erickson on his "Red State" blog. "The man’s body of work makes clear he is no bigot. But we sure can’t offend Muslims can we?"

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1290410
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US wants stronger wiretap powers over Web Agencies say terror suspects evade scrutiny

US wants stronger wiretap powers over Web

Agencies say terror suspects evade scrutiny

By Charlie Savage, New York Times | September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations of the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark’’ as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking websites like Facebook, and software that allows direct “peer to peer’’ messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The legislation, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering technological innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications’’ and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution’’ — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,’’ he said.

“They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.’’

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,’’ said Valerie E. Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.’’

Investigators have been concerned for years that changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct surveillance. In recent months, officials from the FBI, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, the White House, and other agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.

There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations.

But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research In Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.

In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. It aimed to ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital networks and cellphones.

Often, investigators can intercept communications at a switch operated by the network company. But sometimes — like when the target uses a service that encrypts messages between his computer and its servers — they must instead serve the order on a service provider to get unscrambled versions.

Like phone companies, communication service providers are subject to wiretap orders. But the 1994 law does not apply to them. Although some maintain interception capacities, others wait until they are served with orders to try to develop them.

The FBI’s operational technologies division spent $9.75 million last year helping communication companies — including some subject to the 1994 law that had difficulties — do so. And its 2010 budget included $9 million for a “Going Dark Program’’ to bolster its electronic surveillance capabilities.

Beyond such costs, Caproni said, FBI efforts to help retrofit services have a major shortcoming: The process can delay their ability to wiretap a suspect for months.

Moreover, some services encrypt messages between users, so that even the provider cannot unscramble them.

There is no public data about how often court-approved surveillance is frustrated because of a service’s technical design.

But as an example, one official said, an investigation into a drug cartel earlier this year was stymied because smugglers used peer-to-peer software, which is difficult to intercept because it is not routed through a central hub. Agents eventually installed surveillance equipment in a suspect’s office, but that tactic was “risky,’’ the official said, and the delay “prevented the interception of pertinent communications.’’

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Nurses, Doctor Condemned to Death for Infecting 400 Children with HIV in Libya

AP

Dec. 19: Bulgarian nurses sit as the verdict of their trial is read out in the courtroom in Tripoli, Libya.

Tuesday , December 19, 2006

Six foreign health workers jailed in Libya for years on charges of deliberately infecting children with the AIDS virus were convicted and sentenced to death in a case that has long sparked international outrage and did so again Tuesday.TRIPOLI, Libya —
The United States and Europe had called for the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor, warning Libya that the ruling would affect relations. Already the long trial has held up efforts by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to repair his rogue image and rebuild ties with the West.
The nurses and doctor have been in jail since 1999 on charges that they spread the HIV virus to more than 400 children at a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi during a botched experiment to find a cure for the disease. Western nations blame the infections on unsanitary conditions at Libyan hospitals and accuse Tripoli of using the six health workers as scapegoats.
Bulgaria and the EU swiftly condemned the decision, and chief Bulgarian counsel Trayan Markovski said the defendants would appeal to the Libyan Supreme Court.
"Sentencing innocent people to death is an attempt to cover up the real culprits and the real reasons for the AIDS outbreak in Benghazi," said Bulgarian parliamentary speaker Georgi Pirinski.
EU spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said there was no immediate decision on EU action against Libya but said he "did not rule anything out."
Presiding Judge Mahmoud Hawissa took just seven minutes to confirm the presence of the accused — who all answered "yes" in Arabic — and read the judgement in the longest and most politicized court process in modern Libyan history.
The five Bulgarians and the Palestinian did not react. But the father of an infected child, yelled "God is great!" and "Long live the Libyan judiciary!"
Detained for nearly seven years, the defendants had previously been convicted and condemned to death, but Libyan judges granted them a retrial last year after international protests over the fairness of the proceedings.
An international legal observer, Francois Cantier of Lawyers Without Borders, promptly criticized the retrial as lacking scientific rigor. Research published this month said samples from the infected children showed their viruses were contracted before the six defendants started working at the hospital in question.
"We need scientific evidence. It is a medical issue, not only a judicial one," Cantier said after the verdict. His colleague, Ivan Paneff, said Lawyers Without Borders had tried to persuade the judges to commission international experts to investigate conditions at the hospital but "they refused."
Bulgaria's Pirinski made the same point in Sofia, saying: "The court has not taken into account the unquestionable judicial and scientific evidences for the innocence of the medics."
Libyans strongly supported a conviction. Some 50 relatives of the infected children — about 50 of whom have already died of AIDS — waited outside the court early Tuesday morning, holding poster-sized pictures of their children and bearing placards that read "Death for the children killers" and "HIV made in Bulgaria."
After the verdict, relatives at the court gates chanted "Execution! Execution!"
In Bulgaria, hundreds of people had staged peaceful protests in support of the five nurses on Monday.
Luc Montagnier — the French doctor who co-discovered HIV — testified in the first trial that the virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses began their contracts there in 1998.
More evidence for that argument surfaced on Dec. 6 — too late to be submitted in court — when Nature magazine published an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from the children.
Using changes in the genetic information of HIV over time as a "molecular clock," the analysts concluded that the virus was contracted before the six defendants arrived at the hospital — perhaps e0ven three years before.
Idriss Lagha, the president of a group representing the victims, rejected the Nature article, telling a news conference in London on Monday that the nurses had infected the children with a "genetically engineered" virus. He accused them as doing so for research on behalf of foreign intelligence agencies.
In testimony last month, the defendants denied intentionally infecting children.
"No doctor or nurse would dare commit such a dreadful crime," said nurse Cristiana Valcheva, adding that she sympathized with the victims and their families.
A second Bulgarian, Valentina Siropulo, testified that of her seven years in Libya, "I've spent only 6 months working as a nurse and the rest of the time in prison."
Gadhafi, who has been trying to refashion his image from leader of a rogue state, got his government to ask Bulgaria to pay compensation to the children's families.
But Sofia rejected the idea as indicating an admission of the nurses' guilt.

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