Alzheimer’s isn’t stopping ex-model and former restaurateur Barbara Smith – known as B. Smith – from bringing awareness to the disease and the caregivers who play a vital role in the lives of those fighting it.
Smith and her husband, Dan Gatsby, have partnered with the Caregiver Action Network for a social media campaign designed to help caregivers of the nearly five million Americans battling the brain disorder.
They are urging people to share a memory or picture of someone who has or had Alzheimer’s on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest using the hashtag #Take1Moment.
In return, the campaign will give a “thank you meal” to a caregiver courtesy of Chef’d, a gourmet meal delivery service. They plan to give away 1,000 meals.
“Caregivers are like first responders in the family. They run to the situation as opposed to running away,” Gatsby told TheGrio.com on Monday, which is World Alzheimer’s Day.
“The thing about being a caregiver and the husband is that sometimes the roles get to be intermingled and you have to make decisions or you have to sort of be a parent at times,” said Gatsby, who has been married to Smith for 23 years and her caregiver since she was diagnosed four years ago.
“It can be a very stressful situation, but you have to learn to be patient,” Gatsby said. “We have such a strong love and commitment for each other that we work through those things.”
In November, Smith, 66, made headlines when she was reported missing from her Long Island home, but was found safely 14 hours later in a Manhattan diner.
Smith, who was the first black model on the cover of Mademoiselle in 1976, told TheGrio.com that she feels “great” and couldn’t fight this battle without her husband. He regularly encourages her to exercise and read. She also still enjoys cooking.
“He’s with me the whole time. I’ve been feeling good about all the things that we’ve been doing together,” said Smith, who hosted the popular TV show, “B. Smith with Style” and owned three southern comfort food restaurants (which have now all closed).
The couple said they’ve also gotten involved in the fight against Alzheimer’s because blacks are two times more likely than whites to develop the degenerative brain disease, which is the sixth leading cause of death in the country.
According to a study conducted in 2013 by the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging in Chicago, Alzheimer’s rates could nearly triple by 2050.
But Gatsby is hopeful the continued awareness can lead to a different outcome.
“I believe 20 years from now the kids are going to be saying, ‘I heard of Alzheimer’s, what is it?’ But we can only do that if we start now by talking about it and taking care of the people who are taking care of the people who have Alzheimer’s,” he added. “We’re going to find a cure for this.”
Smith, who has authored three books on cooking and lifestyle, is currently working on a new book about dealing with Alzheimer’s, which is due out in January. It will be co-authored with her husband.
But Smith isn’t waiting for the book to come out to send a strong message to people fighting Alzheimer’s.
When asked to share words of encouragement, Smith swiftly responded with three words: “Never give up.”
For more information about the campaign, visit caregiveraction.org.
article by Michael J. Feeney via thegrio.com
Posts published in “Adults”
After 10 years of searching for the young girl he rescued during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Master Sergeant Mike Maroney finally reunited with his “Katrina Girl.”
According to People, an emotional reunion took place between Maroney and LeShay Brown during a taping of “The Real” on Tuesday (Sept. 15). The reunion comes years after a photo of Maroney and Brown hugging captured the heart of the nation. Earlier this month, Maroney revealed that he finally found Brown.
Reminiscing over the embrace, Maroney said that Brown’s hug was a true inspiration. “If she’s strong enough to handle this, I can handle this,” the 19-year pararescue jumper told “The Real” hosts before he was “re-introduced” to Brown.
“I wish I could explain to you how important your hug was,” Maroney said to a choked up Brown after hugging her again. “Your small gesture helped me through a dark phase. You rescued me more than I rescued you.”
People notes that although times have been hard for the pair since Katrina, “The Real” came through big time with a $10,000 check for each family. Although she doesn’t remember much from the rescue, Brown spoke to People after seeing Maroney again, saying that what he told her “really means a lot.”
For the Air Force veteran, the reunion was a long time coming as he shared with Brown and her mother Shawntrell that that has “dreamt of this day for a long time” and that “finding you guys, and knowing you’re okay, has been a weight off my back.”
“I’ve rescued a lot of people, but there have also been a lot of people I couldn’t rescue, he mentioned to People regarding his job. “Life sometimes gets dark, knowing there are good people who love life and are happy, the resiliency that she had has been a strength for me.”
Brown and Maroney’s reunion will continue, as their families will see each other again in Brown’s adopted town of Waveland, Mississippi. In addition, the pair plans on keeping in touch with each other as Maroney revealed that he and Brown have already been checking in on each other through texting as well as “talking quite a bit.”
Read/learn MORE at People.
Read more at http://www.eurweb.com/2015/09/air-force-veteran-reunites-with-katrina-girl-on-the-real/#ZgTdL8SSw0ObWQ5i.99
President Barack Obama pressed on Saturday night for a greater focus on helping black women who are more likely to be stuck in minimum wage jobs, have higher rates of illness and face higher rates of incarceration than other women.
His speech delivered to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual gala was short on hard policy prescriptions aimed directly at black women. Rather Obama said that many of the proposals that his administration has championed, such as raising the minimum wage and criminal justice reform, would help close the gap between black women and their peers.
The president briefly acknowledged Hillary Clinton, his former Secretary of State who was in the audience and is campaigning for the presidency. Obama called her “outstanding” and noted that she could relate to first lady Michelle Obama’s concerns over the pay gap that women face compared to their male counterparts.
“We are going to have to close those economic gaps,” Obama said.
Obama spent a significant portion of his remarks making the case for criminal justice reform, which has become a core part of his agenda during his remaining days in office. His push to pare back the prison population by reducing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders has garnered some Republican support, but still faces a tough odds in Congress.
Obama, spurred by a series of high profile cases of apparent police abuse, has spoken far more forcefully in recent months about the impact of racial bias on policing. He bristled, though, at some media depictions that suggested that he was anti-law enforcement.
“We appreciate them and we love them,” Obama said of police officers. “They deserve our respect. I just want to repeat that because somehow this never gets on television. There is no contradiction between caring about our law enforcement officers and making sure the laws are applied fairly.”
He paused and looked out at the crowd. “Hope I am making that clear,” he said. “I hope I am making that clear.”
The focus of his remarks, though, was on helping black women. Black women are one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies and consistently vote at higher rates in national elections than any other demographic group. In 2012, they turned out at a rate of 70 percent for the presidential election and were crucial to Obama’s victories in key states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
Obama described the important and too often anonymous role that black women played during the civil rights movement and praised the recent push to put a black woman’s picture on the $10 bill. But he insisted that such symbolic actions fell short of what was needed. “We’ve got to make sure they are getting some ten dollar bills,” he said, “that they are getting paid properly.”
Obama made the case for better job training and more mentorship programs to encourage women of color to pursue careers in math and science. He noted that his wife often worried that she would be labeled too assertive or “too angry” as she pursued her career. His primary focus, though, was on black women who were struggling to get by on minimum wage salaries or trying to overcome abuse.
The president noted that the incarceration rate for black women is twice that of white women and described a “sinister sexual abuse to prison pipeline” in which traumatized women went on to commit crimes.
He called for more effort to stop violence and abuse against women “in every community and on every campus.”
WARREN, Mich. (AP) — Unable to have his way with Congress, President Barack Obama reached back to his roots as a community organizer and sought Wednesday to spark a national movement in support of his idea for free community college.
Congress has shown next-to-no interest in Obama’s $60 billion community college proposal, so he’s taking his case to the people. “It’s an idea whose time has come,” Obama told an audience at Macomb Community College. “It’s an idea that makes sense.”
Obama said six states and communities have created programs similar to what he proposed during his State of the Union address earlier this year, including one announced by Milwaukee on Wednesday. Lawmakers in more than 10 other states have introduced legislation providing for free community college, he said.
Getting an education is the best investment anyone can make for their and the country’s future, Obama said. “Education has always been the secret sauce, the secret to America’s success,” he said.
Obama announced that a new, independent “college promise” advisory board will work with various organizations to build momentum for the idea by highlighting programs that already provide free community college, and recruiting more states and communities to do likewise. It will be headed by a woman who Obama said is his “favorite community college instructor,” Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, and former Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer, a Republican.
Biden, who teaches English at a community college near Washington, D.C., traveled to Michigan with the president. “It’s important that you give your friends, your families, your classmates, a heads-up to join the movement to make two years of community college free because education is the key to America’s future,” she said while introducing Obama.
Obama also announced $175 million in Labor Department grants to help create 34,000 apprenticeship slots around the country.
Lauren, Ashleigh and Christian Conner have been studying music since they were toddlers. Violinists and a cellist, the trio of siblings has long had a heart for music. But when they moved to New York from New Jersey last year and saw the number of homeless people in the city’s streets, they realized they had a heart for much more.
“I saw [the homeless people] on the street and I felt sad for them,” Christian, 9, tells PEOPLE.
The three moved from Sussex County in October with their parents, Zenobia and Keith Conner. Zenobia says that from the moment the family got to the city, Christian wanted to help.
She tells PEOPLE that the young cellist would repeatedly ask her for money to give to the less fortunate and, after awhile, she said, “If you want to give some money to the homeless, then go out there and play your cello.”
And play he did. Christian and his sisters, 10-year-old Ashleigh and 11-year-old Lauren (both violinists), decided to take to the Fulton Street subway station to play music with hopes of raising enough money to give to the less fortunate. To see video of these amazing siblings busking, click here.
Last week, the three siblings set up their music stands in a corner of the bustling station. Ashleigh tells PEOPLE that on their first day, they played for two hours and raised a little more than $240. The three play works by composers like Beethoven, Bach and Karl Jenkins as onlookers in the station watch in amazement.
LeBron James realizes that it’s not just young teens in Akron, Ohio, who need a shot at an education, but also adults who haven’t graduated from high school with a diploma.
Last month, James announced that his LeBron James Family Foundation would provide $41 million to cover tuition at the University of Akron for 1,100 Ohio high school graduates.
Well, now James is making sure he helps those who may be the parents of some of those kids receiving the free college education. According to Cleveland.com, as part of a partnership with Project Learn of Summit County, which helps adults get their GED certificates, parents of the children enrolled in the LeBron James Family Foundation’s scholastic-mentorship program can get financial and emotional support to obtain high school equivalency credentials and learn other life skills.
Adults in the program will receive an inspirational letter from James, Hewlett-Packard laptops they can keep if they finish the classes and free bus passes and parking to attend class.
“We are so excited about the I Promise, Too program because a huge part of our foundation’s work [with children] centers around parent involvement,” Michele Campbell, executive director of the LeBron James Family Foundation, said in a news release. “This is an opportunity to help our parents make strides in their own academic careers so they are better equipped to help our students keep their educational promises. We can’t reach our students without their parents’ support, so this program is monumental for our families and their futures.”
article by Yesha Callahan via theroot.com
article by Yesha Callahan via theroot.com
NEWARK — Mayor Ras J. Baraka came into office last summer practically taunting his doubters. “Yeah,” he said in his inaugural address, “we need a mayor that’s radical.”
They had predicted that he would be anti-business and anti-police, that Mr. Baraka, the son of Newark’s most famous black radical, would return a city dogged by a history of riots and white flight to division and disarray.
A year later, Mr. Baraka is showering attention on black and Latino neighborhoods, as he promised he would. But he is also winning praise from largely white leaders of the city’s businesses and institutions downtown. He struggles with crime — all mayors here do — but he has also championed both the Black Lives Matter movement and the police, winning praise for trying to ease their shared suspicion.
The radical now looks more like a radical pragmatist.
Newark is still stubbornly two cities: gleaming new glass towers downtown, block after block of abandoned plots and relentless poverty in its outer wards, with five killings within 36 hours this month. But for all the expectations that Mr. Baraka would divide the city, those on both sides of the spectrum say that he has so far managed to do what his predecessors could not: make both Newarks feel as if he is their mayor.
Development plans are reaching into long-ignored neighborhoods. Projects stalled for years are moving forward, and new industries are taking root: a vertical farm, an incubator space and an investment fund for technology start-ups.
Mr. Baraka closed a $93 million hole in the city budget without layoffs. In June, Gov. Chris Christie agreed to start returning the schools to local control — something the governor had denied Cory A. Booker, Mr. Baraka’s more polished predecessor. The governor had rejected Mr. Baraka’s bid for control a year ago, deeming him “kind of hostile.”
“He’s like the local boy who grew up and said, ‘I need to fix my city.’ How do you not get inspired by that? How do you not root for a guy like that?” said Joseph M. Taylor, the chief executive of Panasonic Corporation of North America, which was lured to Newark by Mr. Booker. “I didn’t think anybody could top Cory Booker, but if anybody can, it’s Mayor Baraka.”
Not everyone is on board. Some local politicians, even those who support Mr. Baraka, say the positive reception partly reflects the low expectations set during a nasty election last spring, in which outside groups spent at least $5 million trying to defeat him. They say the talent pool at City Hall is shallow, and that Mr. Baraka has surrounded himself with friends and family members — in particular, his brother, Amiri Baraka Jr., who serves as his chief of staff — who engage in a kind of street politics that have dragged Mr. Baraka into distracting feuds.
The candidate Mr. Baraka defeated, Shavar Jeffries, continues to criticize the mayor’s inability to stanch crime, dismissing Mr. Baraka’s anti-violence rallies as empty gimmicks. And presuming Mr. Baraka can complete the return of schools to local control, they remain some of the nation’s most troubled and low-performing.
This Labor Day (September 7, 2015) Working Californians will hold Los Angeles’ fourth annual Nightshift concert featuring Godfather of Funk and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legend George Clinton with Parliament Funkadelic, Grammy-nominated singer and percussionist Sheila E., Jamaican reggae stars The Wailers, and the James Andrews New Orleans All Star Band.
Over 20 Southern California labor organizations, including IATSE, SEIU and Teamsters, will gather at L.A. Coliseum’s Exposition Park to celebrate and commemorate both the history and future of Labor Day. This concert will celebrate working families and labor victories made in the past year in the city of Los Angeles.
Concert performances will benefit Working Californians’ non-profit, which fosters social innovation and invests in improving low-income communities in Southern California.
Nightshift Labor Day Music Festival 2015
Exposition Park (Doors Open at 12:30pm) 700 Exposition Park Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90037
Tickets on-sale here: http://www.axs.com/events/280744/labor-day-music-festival-tickets
For more information about WCA : workingcalifornians.org.
Two brothers who were wrongfully imprisoned for three decades for a crime they didn’t commit just received $750,000 in compensation from the state of North Carolina—the highest-possible payout in such an instance.
Henry McCollum, 51, was present for the ceremony in which he and his half-brother Leon Brown, 47, were each awarded the maximum payout approved by state officials. Brown, however, remains in a hospital, where he’s undergoing treatment for mental health issues stemming from their imprisonment. The brothers were officially pardoned in June, which made them eligible for financial restitution.
They were released from prison a year ago after fresh DNA evidence emerged and exonerated them. The testing was performed by the state’s Innocence Inquiry Commission, whose purpose is to investigate disputed cases.
According to their attorneys, the brothers “were scared teenagers with low IQs” who investigators manipulated and berated, feeding them details before they signed false confessions for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in 1983. McCollum was the longest-serving inmate on the state’s death row, while Brown was convicted to life in prison. Both were attacked while serving their sentences, and Brown was repeatedly sexually assaulted by other prisoners.
The money will go into funds that will help the men and their families financially—something that has been difficult ever since the brothers’ release and subsequent difficulty readjusting to life on the outside.
article by Sameer Rao via colorlines.com
They were released from prison a year ago after fresh DNA evidence emerged and exonerated them. The testing was performed by the state’s Innocence Inquiry Commission, whose purpose is to investigate disputed cases.
According to their attorneys, the brothers “were scared teenagers with low IQs” who investigators manipulated and berated, feeding them details before they signed false confessions for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in 1983. McCollum was the longest-serving inmate on the state’s death row, while Brown was convicted to life in prison. Both were attacked while serving their sentences, and Brown was repeatedly sexually assaulted by other prisoners.
The money will go into funds that will help the men and their families financially—something that has been difficult ever since the brothers’ release and subsequent difficulty readjusting to life on the outside.
article by Sameer Rao via colorlines.com
Every day millions of parents struggle with transporting their children to and from school, extracurricular activities, and events. Whether it’s because they don’t have the time or could use a helping hand, managing a child’s daily schedule, as well as their own, can feel like a stressful part-time job. Enter KidzCab, a transportation service for children ages 4-16, providing a sigh of relief for many parents in the Michigan area.
“The idea for my company stemmed from a marketing assignment I had in school, where I had to come up with a product or service and write a paper on it. Once I started researching it, I thought maybe I could really create this,” said Aireal Taylor, the founder of KidzCab.
Fresh off the heels of resigning from her steady job in administration and accounting, Taylor is solely focused on running KidzCab full-time. She has 3 KidzCab vehicles. She’s booked for the mornings and afternoons for the entire school year, and she expects to average about 6 trips per day, per vehicle.
BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the ambitious leader to learn more about her entrepreneurial journey.
BlackEnterprise.com: What makes your business different than other child transportation-related businesses?
Taylor: We use a fleet technology system that tracks our vehicles in real-time and provides destination alerts to parents. We also provide booster seats for children; one less thing parents have to worry about.
Describe the long-term vision or goals that you have for your business?
I’d like to see Kidz Cab’s outside of almost every school in Michigan. I’d also like to begin offering franchise options in other states.