Tuesday, September 30, 2008

In September 2008, Real Mavericks Played With House Money And Won Big Time On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio...


One Full Year On The Air!!!



September 2008's Theme Is "Real Mavericks!!!"


Definition Of Maverick Courtesy Of Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary
Main Entry:
1mav·er·ick
Pronunciation:
\ˈmav-rik, ˈma-və-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Samuel A. Maverick died 1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves
Date:
1867

1: an unbranded range animal; especially : a motherless calf2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party


Some May Talk About It...Others May Walk Upon It...But W.E. A.L.L. B.E. About It!!!

With Great Rewards Come Great Risks...No Guts, No Glory...We Walk The Line And Do It The Maverick Way On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio...

Check Out The Line Up For Yourself...Be A Friend By Spreading The News!!!



9-28-2008~W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Free Troy Davis!!! Dismantling The 21st Century Prison Death Industry Complex...


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9-21-08~W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~The Jena 6: One Year Later...


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Sunday 9/14/2008~Urban Renewal & Creating Fair & Balanced Media On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio...


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Sunday 9/7/2008~Real Mavericks Repping On W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio!!!



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Get Involved

As Always You Can Catch Tha Artivist Presents…W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Radio Live Every Sunday By Clicking On The Following Link:
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W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Reps Black History 365 Days A Year!!!
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-all-be-news-radio-reps-black-history_29.html


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Celebrate Black History And Love All Day Every Day With Works By Tha Artivist:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/celebrate-black-history-and-love-all.html


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Buy The Award Winning James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant



*Named To The Smithsonian Institute's Jazz Books For Kids And Young Adults List*

Official Website:


Buy The Book @ Amazon.com


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Please Visit

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To Debate Or Not Debate....




Watch The First 2008 Presidential Debate




The First Debate
NY Times Editorial

The first presidential debate could not have come at a better time. We were afraid that the serious question of picking a new president in a time of peril, at home and abroad, was going to disappear in a fog of sophomoric attack ads, substance-free shouting about change and patriotism, and unrelenting political posturing.

The debate was generally a relief from the campaign’s nastiness. Both John McCain and Barack Obama worked to strike a more civil and substantive tone. And Americans could see some differences between the candidates on correcting the regulatory disasters that led to the Wall Street crisis, on how to address the country’s grim fiscal problems and on national security. There were also differences in the candidates themselves. Mr. McCain fumbled his way through the economic portion of the debate, while Mr. Obama seemed clear and confident. Mr. McCain was more fluent on foreign affairs, and scored points by repeatedly calling Mr. Obama naïve and inexperienced.

But Mr. McCain’s talk of experience too often made him sound like a tinny echo of the 20th century. At one point, he talked about how Ronald Reagan’s “S.D.I.” helped end the cold war. We suspect that few people under the age of 50 caught the reference. If he was reaching for Reagan’s affable style, he missed by a mile, clenching his teeth and sounding crotchety where Reagan was sunny and avuncular.

Mr. Obama has improved as a debater but needs to work on his counterpunch. Still, when Mr. McCain suggested that Mr. Obama was imprudent for talking publicly about attacking Al Qaeda sites in Pakistan, Mr. Obama deftly parried by reminding voters that his rival once jokingly sang a song about bombing Iran.

Mr. McCain came to the debate after one of the more ludicrous performances by a presidential candidate. With the markets teetering and Washington desperately trying to find a bipartisan solution, Mr. McCain tried to make the biggest question of the week whether he was actually going to show up for Friday’s debate.

Mr. Obama dominated the economic portion of the debate, arguing that the Wall Street disaster was the fault of the Bush administration’s anti-regulation, pro-corporate culture. He called for a major overhaul of the financial regulatory system. Mr. McCain stuck to his talking points, railing against greed and corruption. He showed little sign that he understood the fundamental failures in government illuminated by the market crisis.

Mr. Obama said that he would begin to address the country’s deep deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy, while cutting them for the vast majority of American workers. But he dodged the question of what programs he would have to sacrifice to help foot the proposed bailout’s $700 billion price tag. Mr. McCain dodged the same question with equal energy.

He clung to his argument that cutting Congressional earmarks — which amount to about $18 billion a year — and reducing waste and abuse would solve most of the country’s economic problems and allow him to continue President Bush’s catastrophic tax cuts.

It was disturbing to see that Mr. McCain seems to have learned nothing from the disastrous war in Iraq. He talked about recent progress there, which is indisputable, and his support for the troop surge that has brought down violence. But Mr. McCain still was talking about winning, rather than how he was going to plan a necessary and responsible exit. And he steadfastly refused to acknowledge that the decision to invade Iraq was an enormous mistake.

Mr. Obama offered no details on how he plans to get out of Iraq, but he offered an important truth when he said that the United States should never have invaded and can never win in Afghanistan as long as it is tied down in Iraq.

We didn’t hear nearly as much detail as we would have liked. But the debate was a move toward a serious discussion of this country’s many problems. Americans need to hear more of that, and less of the tactical sparring, before going to the polls.

The New York Times Copyright 2008

Their Eyes Were Watching GOD: How Zora Saved Eatonville....


Zora Neale Hurston, beating the hountar, or mama drum

Going Down The Road

In A Town Apart, The Pride And Trials Of Black Life

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Mayor Anthony Grant, front, was among the worshipers at the St. Lawrence A.M.E. Church in Eatonville, the first all-black town to incorporate in the country.

By DAMIEN CAVE

EATONVILLE, Fla. — Hidden in the theme-park sprawl of greater Orlando, a few miles from the shiny, the loud and the gargantuan, lies a quiet town where the pride and complications of the African-American experience come to life.

Eatonville, the first all-black town to incorporate in the country and the childhood home of Zora Neale Hurston, is no longer as simple as she described it in 1935: “the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, 300 brown skins, 300 good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools and no jailhouse.” It is now a place of pilgrimage. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Ruby Dee have come to the annual Zora! Festival in Eatonville to pay their respects to Hurston, the most famous female writer of the Harlem Renaissance.

And yet in many ways, the town she described — and made a tourist stop by including it in the Florida travel guide produced by the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project — remains a place apart. It is as independent, dignified and private as it was in the 1930s, when Hurston wrote that rural blacks in Florida often resisted sharing their true thoughts with the white man, who “knowing so little about us, he doesn’t know what he is missing.”

Even now, in a year when a black presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, has called for an open conversation about race, many here remain wary of the outsider’s gaze.

“We’re very cautious about how our story is told,” said Hortense Jones, 59, a lifelong resident and member of the town’s oldest church. “It needs to be right.”

Eatonville has long been defined as a paradox of triumph and struggle. It is both a historic model of black empowerment and a community of nearly 2,400 where the poverty rates are twice the national average. It is a literary hub but also an oak-shaded example of rural Southern black culture — sometimes disdained, sometimes praised — that was born of American slavery. Not surprisingly, residents here are both proud and protective.

And the concern about Eatonville’s image really began with Zora, which is all anyone here calls Hurston. She introduced the world to her hometown through heartfelt, dialect-heavy books like “Mules and Men” (1935) and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937).

Five paragraphs in the Florida guidebook transformed the town, just off Route 17, a road that runs through the oft-forgotten center of Florida into a stage of black history and human drama. Bold as a bass drum in both life and literature, Hurston led readers to the store owned by Eatonville’s first mayor, Joe Clarke, then veered into more private areas. “Off the road on the left,” she wrote, “is the brown-with-white-trim modern public school, with its well-kept yards and playgrounds, which Howard Miller always looks after, though he can scarcely read and write.”

She also mentioned the new husband of Widow Dash and wrote that Lee Glenn “sells drinks of all kinds and whatever goes with transient rooms.”

So in just a few hundred words, Hurston linked Eatonville with self-government but also illiteracy, remarriage and sex. Clearly, Fodor’s this was not.

In fact, it was not a portrait everyone appreciated.

“Zora told it like it was,” said Ella Dinkins, 90, one of the Johnson girls Hurston immortalized by quoting men singing off-color songs about their beauty. She added: “Some people didn’t like that.”

Hurston is still remembered here as a vivacious eccentric who frequently returned after her family moved to Jacksonville, Fla. Augustus Franklin, 77, recalled that when Hurston sped into town, she usually arrived without notice in a thumping Chevrolet, smoking and wearing pants in a town that even today prides itself on dignified dress. Most residents were fascinated, Mr. Franklin said, while many sneered.

“People were always glad to see Zora,” Mr. Franklin said. But, he added, rocking in his chair on a back patio overlooking Lake Sabelia, where Hurston was most likely baptized, “she never did stay too long.”

When Hurston died in 1960, she was poor and her books had fallen out of print. Along with much of the world, Eatonville seemed to have forgotten her.. Though she was once a literary star, a contemporary of Langston Hughes and the only black woman at Barnard College in the 1920s, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she had been living.

In Eatonville, there were no major memorial services, no grand public readings. “I don’t think they understood her contribution to the world or her legacy at all,” said Valerie Boyd, author of “Wrapped in Rainbows,” a Hurston biography published in 2003.

A turning point came in the 1980s. Orange County officials wanted to put a five-lane highway through town to replace Kennedy Boulevard, the community’s puttering two-lane main street. Orlando’s sprawl had already pushed Interstate 4 through the western edge of town. The proposal came as Eatonville was still recovering from a difficult period in its history.

Forced integration, among other things, had ended the community’s relatively idyllic isolation. In the 1950s, the fight over racial mixing brought hate to the community’s doorstep.

“During that time, a bunch of white boys, they would come through and throw oranges and things at people sitting down on the side,” Mr. Franklin said. “We actually had a lady that got killed from that once. They threw a watermelon out of the car.”

In a 1955 letter to The Orlando Sentinel, Hurston questioned the Supreme Court’s demand for forced integration, calling its decision in Brown v. Board of Education “insulting rather than honoring my race.” Residents now say that the desegregation of schools, while positive in some respects, diluted Eatonville’s cohesiveness and undermined the confidence of its youth.

“Black children were accustomed to being hugged — I remember this — you hugged your teacher in the morning, you hugged your teacher at night,” said N. Y. Nathiri, the daughter of Ella Dinkins and the executive director of Preserve the Eatonville Community, a nonprofit group.

That lasted, she added, until the teachers and students did not come from the same place. “You were not hugging your white teacher because your white teacher — I mean there’s a cultural divide there,” Ms. Nathiri said.

Civil rights, however, helped create space for many more Zora Neale Hurstons — black writers, actors and artists who rose above prejudice, like she did, with buoyant self-assurance and lines like: “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company! It’s beyond me.”

In 1975, the writer Alice Walker trekked to Hurston’s unmarked grave and began fighting to resurrect her reputation. Five years later, an acclaimed Hurston biography by Robert E. Hemenway hit bookshelves, reintroducing her to the American canon.

The highway project arrived just as Eatonville’s most famous daughter had once again found the spotlight. And this time, Hurston’s old neighbors saw her as a savior.

The community began planning in 1988 for a Hurston festival to show what the county could ruin with its highway. Thousands of fans came to the inaugural event two years later, and each January, many return for the celebration.

After several years, the county backed away from its road proposal. “The five-laning of the highway resurrected, it put in what you’d call warp speed, real civic pride,” Ms. Nathiri said.

Ms. Boyd put it more simply: “Zora saved Eatonville.”

Victory over the highway project has helped change the town’s self-image. Out-of-towners like Rachelle Munson, a lawyer who began coming to church here in 1993, started to appear in larger numbers, and residents started to revalue the past.

Eatonville joined the national historic registry in 1998. A new one-story library (named after Hurston, of course) opened in 2006 on a repaved and beautified Kennedy Boulevard.

Today, Eatonville remains a Florida anomaly: only six miles from downtown Orlando, it can, at times, feel like a back street in a summer rain, as small as it did when it was founded with just 27 black families in the 1880s. (It is 90 percent black today.) Outsiders who come looking for Eatonville’s story, its meaning, are often still treated with caution.

Advance permission is required for most interviews, and certain things — like the murals at Eatonville’s oldest church, painted by a white man, showing black men in the fields — are not allowed to be photographed.

Many in Eatonville, like Ms. Jones, a bold, confident teacher partial to bright red, still fear that their insular community will be misunderstood.

And yet, as the Hurston festival has expanded, a heightened level of hometown pride has also emerged. Young people, in particular, tend to see Eatonville as Hurston saw her entire race: beautiful, problems and all, no better, no worse and as proud, creative, hard-working, silly and mixed-up as other racial and ethnic groups in America.

It is sincere civic affection that can be heard in the voice of Mr. Franklin’s nephew, Edwin Harvey, 18, who plans to come back to Eatonville after college to work in local government or for the Police Department, which he said could use some help.

And even those who are younger, like Alondra and Alexia Kenon, 11-year-old twins from Winter Park, seem to have learned to describe Eatonville correctly.

“Most people, if they just drive through here, they’ll think, ‘Oh, this city is nothing compared to any of the other ones,’ ” Alondra Kenon said after church on a recent Sunday. “But if you actually stop and take a moment to look at the history, it’s a very nice city.”

The NY Times Copyright 2008

Palin: Not So Articulate & Clean...

Palin’s Words Raise Red Flags




Sarah Palin SNL Skit



The Real Sarah Palin On Foreign Policy




Entire Sarah Palin Interview With Katie Couric





By BOB HERBERT
NY Times Op-Ed Columnist

The country is understandably focused on the financial crisis. But there is another serious issue in front of us that is not getting nearly enough attention, and that’s whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president — or, if the situation were to arise, president of the United States.

History has shown again and again that a vice president must be ready to assume command of the ship of state on a moment’s notice. But Ms. Palin has given no indication yet that she is capable of handling the monumental responsibilities of the presidency if she were called upon to do so.

In fact, the opposite is the case. We know that there are some parts of Alaska from which, if the day is clear and your eyesight is good, you can actually see Russia. But the infantile repetition of this bit of trivia as some kind of foreign policy bona fide for a vice presidential candidate should give us pause.

The McCain campaign has done its bizarre best to shield Ms. Palin from any sustained media examination of her readiness for the highest offices in the land, and no wonder. She has been an embarrassment in interviews.

But the idea that the voters of the United States might install someone in the vice president’s office who is too unprepared or too intellectually insecure to appear on, say, “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” is mind-boggling.

The alarm bells should be clanging and warning lights flashing. You wouldn’t put an unqualified pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner. The potential for catastrophe is far, far greater with an unqualified president.

The United States has been lucky in terms of the qualifications of the vice presidents who have had to step in over the last several decades for presidents who either died or, in Richard Nixon’s case, were forced to leave office. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson became extraordinary presidents in their own right. Gerald Ford successfully guided the nation through the immediate aftermath of one of the most traumatic political crises in its history.

For those who think Sarah Palin is in that league, there is no problem. But her unscripted public appearances would lead most honest observers to think otherwise. When asked again this week about her puerile linkage of foreign policy proficiency and Alaska’s proximity to Russia, this time by Katie Couric of CBS News, here is what Ms. Palin said she meant:

“That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada.”

She went on, but lost her way midsentence: “It’s funny that a comment like that was kind of made to — cari — I don’t know, you know? Reporters ...”

Ms. Couric said, “Mocked?”

“Yeah, mocked,” said Ms. Palin. “I guess that’s the word. Yeah.”

It is not just painful, but frightening to watch someone who could become the vice president of the United States stumbling around like this in an interview.

Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin to explain how Alaska’s proximity to Russia “enhances your foreign policy credentials.”

“Well, it certainly does,” Ms. Palin replied, “because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there—”

Gently interrupting, Ms. Couric asked, “Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?”

“We have trade missions back and forth,” said Ms. Palin. “We do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to our state.”

It was surreal, the kind of performance that would generate a hearty laugh if it were part of a Monty Python sketch. But this is real life, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. As Ms. Palin was fumbling her way through the Couric interview, the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, the collapse of Washington Mutual, was occurring.

The press has an obligation to hammer away at Ms. Palin’s qualifications. If it turns out that she has just had a few bad interviews because she was nervous or whatever, additional scrutiny will serve her well.

If, on the other hand, it becomes clear that her performance, so far, is an accurate reflection of her qualifications, it would behoove John McCain and the Republican Party to put the country first — as Mr. McCain loves to say — and find a replacement for Ms. Palin on the ticket.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times

5th Annual College Preparation Program -- October 4, 2008 -- 9am-1:15pm

"Students Preparing for College and Scholarships: Why Community Service?" Saturday, October 4, 2008
9 am - 1:15 pm

East High School
3206 Poplar Ave
Memphis, TN


SPECIAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Dean James McLeod

Washington University in St. Louis

Vice Chancellor for Students and Dean,
Dean McLeod was appointed to the position of Vice Chancellor for Students and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, effective October 1, 1995. He joined Washington University in 1974 as an assistant professor of German, and served as assistant dean of the graduate school of Arts & Sciences from 1974 to 1977. From 1977 to 1987, he was assistant to the then Chancellor William H. Danforth. From 1987 to 1992, he was director of African and Afro-American Studies. In 1992, he was named dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. Prior to joining the Washington University faculty he was at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Dean McLeod did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College and graduate work at the University of Vienna and at Rice University in Houston, TX. His research includes the cultural history of turn of the century Vienna and post-war Germany. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and an NDEA (National Defense Education Act) Fellow. In 1991, he received the Washington University Founders Day Distinguished Faculty Member Award. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the St. Louis Art Museum, the American Youth Foundation, the National Council of Youth Leadership, Express Scripts Foundation, and the Churchill Center & School for Learning Disabilities. Dean McLeod and his wife, Clara, have one daughter, Sara, and reside in St. Louis.


Other Guests and Program Overview Includes:

Michael Adrian Davis
Master of Ceremony (MC)
Radio Personality -- Hallelujah 95.7 FM
US Congressman Steve Cohen
(Representing the 9th district of Tennessee)
Father of the TN Lottery













FELICIA ORR, HOPE SCHOLARSHIP REPRESENTATIVE FROM NASHVILLE
Dr. Kenneth Whalum – New Olivet Baptist Church

Overview of "Planning and Preparing for College"
(http://www.ctherd.blogspot.com)

Panel Discussion

College Recruiters:

Rhodes College, UT Knoxville, Christian Brothers University, University of Memphis (UofM), LeMoyne Owen, WUSTL John B. Ervin Program, Knoxville College, Memphis College of Art (MCA), Rust College, Bethel College, Southwest TN, National College of Business & Technology, Crichton, and UT Memphis

Organizations:

Youth United Way, Youth Leadership Memphis Development Institute,
MIFA Cool Program, College Bound of Memphis, Memphis Literacy Council, Shelby County Books from Birth, Gang and Narcotics Prosecution Unit, and more

Military:

US ARMY and US Navy

Monday, September 29, 2008

Justice Delayed: Some Thoughts On The Troy Davis Case...


By Ron Herd II a.k.a. R2C2H2 Tha Artivist



“In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."”

~Dr. King from the “I Have A Dream” Speech

“Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under”

~Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five from “The Message”

On Monday Sept. 29, 2008, The U.S. Supreme Court Decided That An Innocent Man On Georgia’s Death Row Will Live...At Least For Now...The Story Of Troy Davis , a poor innocent Black man who was wrongly convicted in the murder of a police officer almost 19 years ago based on faulty witness testimony and evidence is the bounced check of The American Dream...The Troy Davis travesty proves that being born poor and black are unforgivable sins in our society which can mean an automatic death sentence from The State...

Realize that Bro. Troy Davis is just one of many in this 'Just Us' System who have basically been railroaded by a system where race and class are the x-factors in determining guilt or innocence...TODAY HIM, BUT TOMORROW IT COULD BE YOU!!!

In a time where financial powerhouses are succumbing to the Great Depression II, the prison death industry complex is one of the fastest growing businesses in the U.S. and for that matter in the world...The U.S. holds 25% of the World’s prison population with an additional 4 million folks on probation and parole...The U.S. has the largest number of prisoners of anywhere in the world...We have more prisoners than Russia and China...Nearly half of the prisoners are Black and Brown, many of whom are in prison for non-violent drug offenses...There’s also a disproportionate number of people of color on Death Row...

By the way Black folks only represent 13 percent of the U.S. general population...

With an exception of a few states, more state budgets are going to the proliferation of prisons and juvenile detention centers than to education...On Wall Street, human misery is once again commercialized and privatized (don’t forget enslaved Africans were seen as human commodities to be traded and were directly involved in building Wall Street both economically and physically) by the trading of stocks linked to the prison death industry complex...Small town America where factories were once plentiful pre-NAFTA are now thriving on the prison death industry complex...Blue collar working class whites are being gainfully employed through the by product of the imprisonment of poor Blacks at an astonishing rate...This is the new plantation politics for the 21st Century...One man’s hell is another man’s heaven...

1 out of every 100 Adult Americans are in prison...We are living in a prison police state and many of us don’t even know it...The prisons that are being built are the new concentration camps of our society...The same contractors that are building state of the art prisons are also building state of the art public schools...As a matter of fact many of the new schools that our young people are attending look like prisons...

Unfortunately, the prisons seem to have a better attendance record than the schools...Black students are only graduating at a 50% clip nationally...Many of our graduates are already young parents and are functional illiterates...

The two twin towers of true empowerment, education and economics, are being undermined and under terrorist attack by dark external and internal forces that want to turn our citizens into mindless robots/ zombies willing to be used as the new fossil fuel in the burning furnace of empire and corporate greed...The American Dream is quickly turning into The American Nightmare...

Lack of education/knowledge can surely equal a physical as well as spiritual and mental death... Memphis, Tn, for example, in spite of being located in the richest country in the history of the world has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world...We are raising another generation mired in crime, poverty and death...We are in the process of eliminating the middle class and creating a permanent poverty/prison underclass in the richest nation in the history of the world...

In closing, I would like to say that 'freedom ain't free'...If Bro. Troy Davis is ultimately given the proverbial second chance what does he has to look forward to when he comes home??? As a symbol, a cause and a martyr he is great, but he is a flesh and bone man with shortcomings and needs...He deserves the right to the pursuit of his own happiness by having a job with a living wage, affordable adequate housing and universal health care...

We as citizens of this republic must be resolute in our aims for reconciliation, reparations and progress...This is about unified righteous struggle dismantling oppressive and repressive institutional racism and stagnation a.k.a. regime change...There isn't a price tag on justice, it's priceless...We can't expect to change the course of history by staying on the sidelines or by accepting mediocre play calling and play...Let's get in the game and be in it to win it...

W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special~Free Troy Davis!!! Dismantling The 21st Century Prison Death Industry Complex:

(Ron Herd II a.k.a. R2C2H2 Tha Artivist Is Author Of James Reese Europe: Jazz Lieutenant http://www.jazzlieutenant.blogspot.com. He can be reached at r2c2h2@gmail.com)

Saturday, September 27, 2008

R.I.P. Paul Newman...





Legendary Actor Paul Newman Dies At Age 83
Saturday September 27, 2008

Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as an activist, race car driver, popcorn impresario and the anti-hero of such films as "Hud," "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Color of Money," has died. He was 83.

Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.

In May, Newman he had dropped plans to direct a fall production of "Of Mice and Men," citing unspecified health issues.

He got his start in theater and on television during the 1950s, and went on to become one of the world's most enduring and popular film stars, a legend held in awe by his peers. He was nominated for Oscars 10 times, winning one regular award and two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including "Exodus," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Verdict," "The Sting" and "Absence of Malice."

Newman worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century, from Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his sidekick in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sting."

He sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood's rare long-term marriages. "I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?" Newman told Playboy magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray. They wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in "The Long Hot Summer," and Newman directed her in several films, including "Rachel, Rachel" and "The Glass Menagerie."

With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. "I was always a character actor," he once said. "I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon's "enemies list," one of the actor's proudest achievements, he liked to say.

A screen legend by his mid-40s, he waited a long time for his first competitive Oscar, winning in 1987 for "The Color of Money," a reprise of the role of pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson, whom Newman portrayed in the 1961 film "The Hustler."

Newman delivered a magnetic performance in "The Hustler," playing a smooth-talking, whiskey-chugging pool shark who takes on Minnesota Fats played by Jackie Gleason and becomes entangled with a gambler played by George C. Scott. In the sequel directed by Scorsese "Fast Eddie" is no longer the high-stakes hustler he once was, but rather an aging liquor salesman who takes a young pool player (Cruise) under his wing before making a comeback.

He won an honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft." In 1994, he won a third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his charitable work.

His most recent academy nod was a supporting actor nomination for the 2002 film "Road to Perdition." One of Newman's nominations was as a producer; the other nine were in acting categories. (Jack Nicholson holds the record among actors for Oscar nominations, with 12; actress Meryl Streep has had 14.)

As he passed his 80th birthday, he remained in demand, winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the 2005 HBO drama "Empire Falls" and providing the voice of a crusty 1951 car in the 2006 Disney-Pixar hit, "Cars."

But in May 2007, he told ABC's "Good Morning America" he had given up acting, though he intended to remain active in charity projects. "I'm not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to," he said. "You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that's pretty much a closed book for me."

He received his first Oscar nomination for playing a bitter, alcoholic former star athlete in the 1958 film "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Elizabeth Taylor played his unhappy wife and Burl Ives his wealthy, domineering father in Tennessee Williams' harrowing drama, which was given an upbeat ending for the screen.

In "Cool Hand Luke," he was nominated for his gritty role as a rebellious inmate in a brutal Southern prison. The movie was one of the biggest hits of 1967 and included a tagline, delivered one time by Newman and one time by prison warden Strother Martin, that helped define the generation gap, "What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate."



Newman's hair was graying, but he was as gourgeous as ever and on the verge of his greatest popular success. In 1969, Newman teamed with Redford for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," a comic Western about two outlaws running out of time. Newman paired with Redford again in 1973 in "The Sting," a comedy about two Depression-era con men. Both were multiple Oscar winners and huge hits, irreverent, unforgettable pairings of two of the best-looking actors of their time.

Newman also turned to producing and directing. In 1968, he directed "Rachel, Rachel," a film about a lonely spinster's rebirth. The movie received four Oscar nominations, including Newman, for producer of a best motion picture, and Woodward, for best actress. The film earned Newman the best director award from the New York Film Critics.

In the 1970s, Newman, admittedly bored with acting, became fascinated with auto racing, a sport he studied when he starred in the 1972 film, "Winning." After turning professional in 1977, Newman and his driving team made strong showings in several major races, including fifth place in Daytona in 1977 and second place in the Le Mans in 1979.

"Racing is the best way I know to get away from all the rubbish of Hollywood," he told People magazine in 1979.

Despite his love of race cars, Newman continued to make movies and continued to pile up Oscar nominations, his looks remarkably intact, his acting becoming more subtle, nothing like the mannered method performances of his early years, when he was sometimes dismissed as a Brando imitator. "It takes a long time for an actor to develop the assurance that the trim, silver-haired Paul Newman has acquired," Pauline Kael wrote of him in the early 1980s.

In 1982, he got his Oscar fifth nomination for his portrayal of an honest businessman persecuted by an irresponsible reporter in "Absence of Malice." The following year, he got his sixth for playing a down-and-out alcoholic attorney in "The Verdict."

In 1995, he was nominated for his slyest, most understated work yet, the town curmudgeon and deadbeat in "Nobody's Fool." New York Times critic Caryn James found his acting "without cheap sentiment and self-pity," and observed, "It says everything about Mr. Newman's performance, the single best of this year and among the finest he has ever given, that you never stop to wonder how a guy as good-looking as Paul Newman ended up this way."

Newman, who shunned Hollywood life, was reluctant to give interviews and usually refused to sign autographs because he found the majesty of the act offensive, according to one friend.

He also claimed that he never read reviews of his movies.

"If they're good you get a fat head and if they're bad you're depressed for three weeks," he said.

Off the screen, Newman had a taste for beer and was known for his practical jokes. He once had a Porsche installed in Redford's hallway crushed and covered with ribbons.

"I think that my sense of humor is the only thing that keeps me sane," he told Newsweek magazine in a 1994 interview.

In 1982, Newman and his Westport neighbor, writer A.E. Hotchner, started a company to market Newman's original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman's Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All of the company's profits are donated to charities. By 2007, the company had donated more than $175 million, according to its Web site.

In 1988, Newman founded a camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. He went on to establish similar camps in several other states and in Europe.



He and Woodward bought an 18th century farmhouse in Westport, where they raised their three daughters, Elinor "Nell," Melissa and Clea.

Newman had two daughters, Susan and Stephanie, and a son, Scott, from a previous marriage to Jacqueline Witte.

Scott died in 1978 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium. After his only son's death, Newman established the Scott Newman Foundation to finance the production of anti-drug films for children.

Newman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the second of two boys of Arthur S. Newman, a partner in a sporting goods store, and Theresa Fetzer Newman.

He was raised in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights, where he was encouraged him to pursue his interest in the arts by his mother and his uncle Joseph Newman, a well-known Ohio poet and journalist.

Following World War II service in the Navy, he enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he got a degree in English and was active in student productions.

He later studied at Yale University's School of Drama, then headed to New York to work in theater and television, his classmates at the famed Actor's Studio including Brando, James Dean and Karl Malden. His breakthrough was enabled by tragedy: Dean, scheduled to star as the disfigured boxer in a television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Battler," died in a car crash in 1955. His role was taken by Newman, then a little-known performer.

Newman started in movies the year before, in "The Silver Chalice," a costume film he so despised that he took out an ad in Variety to apologize. By 1958, he had won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for the shiftless Ben Quick in "The Long Hot Summer."

In December 1994, about a month before his 70th birthday, he told Newsweek magazine he had changed little with age.

"I'm not mellower, I'm not less angry, I'm not less self-critical, I'm not less tenacious," he said. "Maybe the best part is that your liver can't handle those beers at noon anymore," he said.

Newman is survived by his wife, five children, two grandsons and his older brother Arthur.

___

On the Net:

http://www.newmansown.com/

Friday, September 26, 2008

Show Us The Money...



By William Greider

September 24, 2008

Taxpayers should wake up the politicians and ask them to tell Wall Street: "We want the same deal Warren Buffett got." The Omaha billionaire announced he is playing White Knight to Goldman Sachs by investing $5 billion in the endangered investment house. What a big-hearted guy. Buffett is an old-fashioned capitalist who invests in companies for the long term and I am a big admirer. But Warren Buffett did not get to be a billionaire by committing public-spirited acts of charity. He plays to win.

So his deal with Goldman Sachs is carefully wired to produce gorgeous returns for Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Upfront, he gets a 10 percent ownership stake in preferential shares that will pay a 10 percent dividend--even if Goldman's stock price keeps falling. But Buffett also gets the right to buy $5 billion in common shares at below the market price. So if Goldman flourishes in these hard times, Buffett will win big as its stock price soars.

To sweeten his chances, the Omaha sage quickly announced that he endorses the $700 billion bailout plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson. Let's follow the bouncing ball. Buffett puts some of his capital at risk on terms that are smartly protected from loss. Then Buffett urges the taxpayers to put their money on the line too. Only the taxpayers don't have any deal. They are the naked investors in this drama, asked to put up many billions to rescue Wall Street firms with nothing more than a vague promise it will save the Republic. I am reminded of the oldest rule in the financial business: "Get it in writing."

Warren Buffett's intervention provides a clarifying moment because it demonstrates what's wrong with the bipartisan bailout Congress is preparing to authorize. There's nothing illegitimate in what Buffett accomplished. The overlapping terms and contingencies he secured for his capital are standard practice in Wall Street deal-making. Investment bankers work out the fine print and put it in enforceable contracts or the deal doesn't happen.

Hank Paulson
was a star in that world. When he left as chief executive to become Treasury Secretary in 2006, Goldman awarded him $110 million in cash to cover remaining stock options and restricted stock, in addition to $51 million to repurchase family shares. These payments were on top of the approximately $500 million in Goldman shares Paulson sold when he joined the government.

Doing hard-nosed deals in the Buffett style is essentially what the federal government should be doing now--bank by bank--as it intervenes to rescue the financial system from ruin. In our situation, the public treasury is the White Knight because private capital is afraid to play. The federal government has all the leverage it needs to demand very stern terms. That includes demanding an equivalent equity stake in banks or brokerages it assists, but also the power to impose explicit commandments and prohibitions on how these rescued firms must behave. The threat that banks will refuse to play is a meaningless whine from the banking industry. If bankers find a better deal from private lenders, they should take it. Otherwise, they are down the tubes.

The underlying power relationship in this crisis has been artfully obscured by the bailout sponsors because they decline to explain clearly what the bailout really is intended to accomplish. First, they said it was to restore calm in markets. Then they said it was the rotten assets centered in mortgage securities. But the problem is more accurately described as the great deflation of Wall Street's illusions--inflated prices, profits, deals, commissions and bonuses. You name it, they ran it up to stratospheric levels. Now the dream is dying and values are falling, but have not yet hit bottom.

To put it more concretely, the banks and investment houses have lost massive amounts of capital--a hole that is real, not psychological. Maybe $1 trillion, possibly twice that. We can't say exactly, because the banks have still not come clean and because assets in bank portfolios continue to lose value as housing prices continue to deflate.

The great capital losses mean Wall Street is sure to get smaller--a lot smaller--with fewer firms, less leveraged deals based on inadequate capital and a general retreat from its domineering role in economic life. Personally, I believe a smaller Wall Street will be good for the country, part of restoring balance to the damaged economy.

In any case, it is folly for Washington to imagine that it can--or should--simply replenish Wall Street's great loss. That essentially is what Paulson's blanket bailout attempts to do--restore conditions to "normal" by buying up the bad assets from banks at inflated prices. In other words, supply the missing capital that private lenders won't provide. Good luck with that.

"Normal" is not in the cards. Trying to accomplish this, given present realities is not in the country's interest. It also resembles King Canute trying to command the tides.

The real goal for government intervention should be to manage Wall Street's inescapble downward adjustments in ways as peaceable as possible. Stabilize the shrinking financial system so it will keep the the real economy going, that is, insure that credit and capital flows continue, while Wall Street is gradually cut down to normal size. There is real pain in that for everyone, but the objective is concrete and manageable.

Washington would exercise an activist supervisory role and offer deals in exchange for cooperative, compliant behavior. Bank regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, already do this with troubled banks; now they have to step up with a more forceful hand. Banking watchdogs estimate at least 100 (maybe 200) banks are already doomed to fail. But another 1,000 banks are still solvent but on the edge. These can be managed to safe ground with tougher regulatory controls and some aid. Subsidiary financial markets need similar treatment and liquidity injections if they seize up.

At center stage are the big, bad players--the mega-banks and some others--who took the extreme risks and are now conveniently described as"too big to fail." If that's so, then one goal of government should be to make them get smaller, either through market forces or by lawful edict. The public likewise needs a new federal agency to manage the deal-making--something like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the New Deal--and determine which major banks can be cleaned up and stabilized, which ones cannot. The objective is not to save everyone--that is not what the nation needs--but to wind up with a broadly balanced financial system, chastened by new rules and ready to serve the rest of us, rather than eat us alive.

Only the federal government can do this. But I am suggesting government should mimic the hard-headed assumptions and practices that are commonplace in Wall Street. Don't take wishful promises in exchange for your money. Insist on hedges to protect the broad public interest. And get it in writing.

Maybe Warren Buffett and some other trustworthy capitalists would come to Washington during this emergency and show government officials how to make real deals. These are savvy people. Many are genuinely interested in helping the country get out of this mess. We could offer them a dollar a year.

Update: After I filed the above, the New York Times reported that Bill Gross, managing partner of Pimco, the giant bond investment house, is offering to serve as expert advisor to help Treasury sort through the rotten bank assets. "If the Treasury wanted to use our help, it would come, you know, free and clear," Gross said. Like Warren Buffett, Gross is a brilliant capitalist who plays to win. I happen to know him and I trust him. He has an enlightened understanding of global capitalism, not just financial markets and monetary economics but the deeper tides of history. In fact, Gross should be the next president's pick for chairman of the Federal Reserve. I don't know his politics, though I assume he is Republican.

About William Greider
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and--due out in February from Rodale--Come Home, America. more...

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

9-28-2008~W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Free Troy Davis!!! Dismantling The 21st Century Prison Death Industry Complex...


One Full Year On The Air!!!



September 2008's Theme Is "Real Mavericks!!!"

Date: Sunday September 28, 2008

Time: 4PM C/5PM E/2PM P


Listen To The Show Live Online:


Topic: Free Troy Davis!!! Dismantling The 21st Century Prison Death Industry Complex



“In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."”

~Dr. King from the “I Have A Dream” Speech

“Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under”

~Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five from “The Message”

Some Words From R2C2H2 Tha Artivist:

On Monday Sept. 29, 2008, The U.S. Supreme Court Will Decide If An Innocent Man On Georgia’s Death Row Will Live Or Die...The Story Of Troy Davis , a poor innocent Black man who was wrongly convicted in the murder of a police officer almost 19 years ago based on faulty witness testimony and evidence proves that being born poor and black is a sin in our society which can mean an automatic death sentence from The State...This past Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008, Davis, who was due to die that evening, was spared by the U.S. Supreme Court...

Realize that Bro. Troy Davis is just one of many in this Just Us System who has basically been railroaded by a system where race and class are the x-factors in determining guilt or innocence...TODAY HIM, BUT TOMORROW IT COULD BE YOU!!!

In a time where financial powerhouses are succumbing to the Great Depression II, the prison death industry complex is one of the fastest growing businesses in the U.S. and for that matter in the world...The U.S. holds 25% of the World’s prison population with an additional 4 million folks on probation and parole...The U.S. has the largest number of prisoners of anywhere in the world...We have more prisoners than Russia and China...Nearly half of the prisoners are Black and Brown, many of whom are in prison for non-violent drug offenses...There’s also a disproportionate number of people of color on Death Row...Black folks only represent 13 percent of the U.S. general population...With an exception of a few states, more state budgets are going to the proliferation of prisons than education...On Wall Street, human misery is once again commercialized and privatized (don’t forget enslaved Africans were seen as human commodities to be traded and were directly involved in building Wall Street both economically and physically) by the trading of stocks linked to the prison death industry complex...Small town America where factories were once plentiful pre-NAFTA are now thriving on the prison death industry complex...Blue collar working class whites are being gainfully employed through the by product of the imprisonment of poor Blacks at an astonishing rate...This is the new plantation politics for the 21st Century...One man’s hell is another man’s heaven...

1out of every 100 Adult Americans are in prison...We are living in a prison police state and many of us don’t even know it...The prisons that are being built are the new concentration camps of our society...The same contractors that are building state of the art prisons are also building state of the art public schools...As a matter of fact many of the new schools that our young people are attending look like prisons...

Unfortunately, the prisons seem to have a better attendance record than the schools...Black students are only graduating at a 50% clip nationally...Many of our graduates are already young parents and are functional illiterates...We are raising another generation mired in poverty and crime...We are in the process of eliminating the middle class and creating a permanent poverty/prison underclass in the richest nation in the history of the world...

The two twin towers of true empowerment, education and economics, are being undermined and under terrorist attack by dark external and internal forces that want to turn our citizens into mindless robots/ zombies willing to be used as the new fossil fuel in the burning furnace of empire and corporate greed...The American Dream is quickly turning into The American Nightmare...

Please join W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio in dissecting the Troy Davis case and the growing Prison Death Industry Complex epidemic in our community with an all-star panel of guests which includes...

1.) Anti-Death Penalty Activist & Scholar Prof. Patrick Dyer

2.) Former Death Row Inmate & Activist Bro. Darby Tillis

3.) Bro. Julien Ball of The National Headquarters for The Campaign To End The Death Penalty


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*Bonus~The Angola 3's Robert King Wilkerson Interview


Bro. Robert King Wilkerson, a Black Panther & Prison Activist, spent 29 consecutive years of his life in solitary confinement in arguably America's most notorious and bloodiest prison, the 18,500 acre prison work farm known as Angola in Louisiana...His crime and reason for punishment??? Trying to better prison living and working conditions, stopping the sex slavery, rape and violence that was rampant in Angola in the 1960s and 1970s through political organizing and racial solidarity and integration...

Bro. Wilkerson's dedicated efforts were paying off...He was drawing major media and political attention to the horrible conditions of Angola...He was gaining support from influential people for his efforts...He was also making powerful enemies...

To slow him and the prison reform movement down, Bro. Wilkerson was framed for the murder of a prison guard...His fellow comrades Bro. Herman Wallace and Bro. Albert Woodfox were also framed for the murder of the same prison guard...Unfortunately, Bros. Wallace & Woodfox were also put into solitary confinement for nearly 36 consecutive years each!!! They recently got out of solitary confinement in March 2008 and are still waiting to be freed...

Bro. Robert King Wilkerson earned his freedom on February 8, 2001...He currently speaks around the world on behalf of his imprisoned comrades as well as other political prisoners of conscience still locked up in the world's biggest prison state, the U.S.A....The U.S.A. possesses 25% of the world's prison population (the most anywhere in the world)...Of the 2 million people locked down, half are people of color...The U.S.A. also have 4 million people on probation/parole...1 out of every 100 Americans are locked down...Sobering numbers...

Bro. Robert King Wilkerson makes a famous candy he created while in prison called 'Freelines' (similar to pralines and pronounced the same way)...You can order the deliciously sweet candy at his website http://www.kingsfreelines.com

For more information on 'The Angola 3' and how you can get involved please visit www.angola3.org


Don’t miss this show because we are truly living in the fierce urgency of now!!!

Spread The Good News!!!


****
Get Involved

As Always You Can Catch Tha Artivist Presents…W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Radio Live Every Sunday By Clicking On The Following Link:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe

Please Be Our Invited Guest By Calling Us Live @ 646-652-4593 Or E-mailing Us Your Questions And Comments @ r2c2h2@gmail.com


As Always Please Spread The Good News!!!



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W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Reps Black History 365 Days A Year!!!
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-all-be-news-radio-reps-black-history_29.html


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Celebrate Black History And Love All Day Every Day With Works By Tha Artivist:
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*Named To The Smithsonian Institute's Jazz Books For Kids And Young Adults List*

Official Website:


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