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Gabourey Sidibe's Speech On Confidence Is Incredibly Moving

By goodblacknews on May 4, 2014
GABOUREY SIDIBE CONFIDENT
We’re just going to say it: Gabourey Sidibe is awesome.
She’s made to put up with a lot, but she doesn’t let the haters get her down. Not anymore.
Once again, the 30-year-old actress proved why she’s one of the strongest women in Hollywood with a powerful and moving speech about confidence at the Gloria Awards and Gala in New York City on May 1.
Sidibe opened by declaring that she loathes questions about the source of her confidence.
“I hate that,” Sidibe told the crowd. “I always wonder if that’s the first thing they ask Rihanna when they meet her. ‘RiRi! How are you so confident?’ Nope. No. No. But me? They ask me with that same incredulous disbelief every single time. ‘You seem so confident! How is that?'”
After telling a story about the cruelty of children and the importance of thinking highly of yourself, she circled back:

“Gabourey, how are you so confident?” It’s not easy. It’s hard to get dressed up for award shows and red carpets when I know I will be made fun of because of my weight. There’s always a big chance if I wear purple, I will be compared to Barney. If I wear white, a frozen turkey. And if I wear red, that picture of Kool-Aid that says, “Oh, yeah!” Twitter will blow up with nasty comments about how the recent earthquake was caused by me running to a hot dog cart or something. And “Diet or Die?” [She gives the finger to that] This is what I deal with every time I put on a dress. This is what I deal with every time someone takes a picture of me. Sometimes when I’m being interviewed by a fashion reporter, I can see it in her eyes, “How is she getting away with this? Why is she so confident? How does she deal with that body? Oh my God, I’m going to catch fat!”

The former “American Horror Story” star went on to say that every day she went to school, people made fun of her, and that she had to go home to a place where everyone made fun of her as well. But when she moved in with her aunt, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, whom she described as a “feminist, an activist, and a lifelong friend of Gloria Steinem,” a portrait of her aunt and Steinem together gave her hope and strength.
The actress closed out her speech returning again to the question of confidence — something she hopefully won’t have to address again.

“How are you so confident?” “I’m an asshole!” Okay? It’s my good time, and my good life, despite what you think of me. I live my life, because I dare. I dare to show up when everyone else might hide their faces and hide their bodies in shame. I show up because I’m an asshole, and I want to have a good time. And my mother and my father love me. They wanted the best life for me, and they didn’t know how to verbalize it. And I get it. I really do. They were better parents to me than they had themselves. I’m grateful to them, and to my fifth grade class, because if they hadn’t made me cry, I wouldn’t be able to cry on cue now. [Dabs tears] If I hadn’t been told I was garbage, I wouldn’t have learned how to show people I’m talented. And if everyone had always laughed at my jokes, I wouldn’t have figured out how to be so funny. If they hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable. [Dabs tears] So when you ask me how I’m so confident, I know what you’re really asking me: how could someone like me be confident? Go ask Rihanna, asshole!”

To read Sidibe’s entire speech, head over to Vulture.
article by Stephanie Marcus via huffingtonpost.com

President Barack Obama Signs Actions Taking Aim at Gender Pay Gap

By goodblacknews on April 8, 2014
President Barack Obama greets people in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 8, 2014, during an event marking Equal Pay Day. The president announced new executive actions to strengthen enforcement of equal pay laws for women. The president and his Democratic allies in Congress are making a concerted election-year push to draw attention to women's wages. Lilly Ledbetter is at left in green. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Barack Obama greets people in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 8, 2014, during an event marking Equal Pay Day. The president announced new executive actions to strengthen enforcement of equal pay laws for women. The president and his Democratic allies in Congress are making a concerted election-year push to draw attention to women’s wages. Lilly Ledbetter is at left in green. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a concerted election-year push to draw attention to women’s wages, President Barack Obama signed directives Tuesday that would make it easier for workers of federal contractors to get information about workplace compensation. He seasoned his move with a sharp rebuke of Republicans whom he accused of “gumming up the works” on workplace fairness.
Obama made a clear partisan appeal to women as he issued an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their pay. He also directed the Labor Department to write rules requiring federal contractors to provide aggregate compensation data by race and gender.
“This is about Republicans seemingly opposing any efforts to even the playing field for working families,” Obama said at a White House signing ceremony, surrounded by women advocates and accompanied by Lilly Ledbetter, a woman whose namesake legislation on pay equity was the first bill Obama signed into law in 2009.
Obama’s executive order and directive to the Labor Department dovetailed with the start of Senate debate on broader legislation that would make it easier for workers to sue companies for paying women less because of their gender. That legislation is expected to fail, as it has in the past, due to Republican opposition.
White the president’s actions affect only federal contractors, those directives can have a wide and direct impact. Federal contracting covers nearly one-quarter of the U.S. workforce and includes companies ranging from Boeing to small parts suppliers and service providers. Such actions also can be largely symbolic, designed to spur action in the broader economy.

National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis Completes $27.5 Million Renovation, Reopens Today

By goodblacknews on April 5, 2014

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The Lorraine Motel in Memphis holds a historic place in world history.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated there on the hotel balcony near his room on April 4, 1968.  The site is now home to the National Civil Rights Museum and today, Saturday April 5, the museum will re-open to the public after $27.5 million of renovations.
“This museum after 22 years needed to be updated,” said Faith Morris, the museum’s director of marketing, governmental and community affairs. “[It] needed more technology, needed to be more engaging to a younger generation so that folks could really be a part of what the movement was about.”
The museum officially opened in 1991 and incorporates not only the historic motel, but the building across the street where James Earl Ray is alleged to have fired the fatal shot.
One new exhibit chronicles the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the economics of slavery in America from 1619-1861.  There is an entire exhibit space dedicated to the ‘Black Power’ movement and its influence on policy and culture.  Old exhibits have been enhanced with more audio/visual aids, touch screens and films touching on the different eras of the Civil Rights Movement.
Museum leadership said the renovations and fundraising efforts were critical to keep pace with the “2014 museum consumer.” The campaign to raise funds started in 2008 but because of the economic collapse, organizers regrouped in 2010 when conditions improved.
“People no longer want to walk through museums and experience a book on a wall,” said Beverly Robertson, the museum’s president. “When we opened in 1991, that was OK – because that was the museum experience. But times change. Technology changes.”
Robertson said it took “countless miracles” to raise the money and convince the museum’s board that the technological overhaul was necessary for the NCRM to thrive for many years to come. She said she is pleased with how well design teams, scholars, researchers and her staff adapted to the changing times.
“It’s a transformative experience,” Robertson said. “It’s an experience [visitors] won’t get anywhere else because it talks about the seminal events of the movement and it does it in ways that allows this history to resonate with those who are 8 years old or 80.”
article by Todd Johnson via thegrio.com

Joanne Berger-Sweeney Appointed Trinity College President, 1st Female and African-American to Hold Post

By goodblacknews on March 28, 2014

New Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney
New Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney

HARTFORD — Several hundred Trinity College students, faculty and alumni greeted Joanne Berger-Sweeney, named Thursday as the college’s first African-American and first woman president, with enthusiastic whoops and applause.  “How could you have a warmer welcome for someone?” said Berger-Sweeney, a dean at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “It’s not very often that I get to walk into a room and there’s a standing ovation.”  But then, she noted, to a roar of laughter, there were no seats in the room.
Berger-Sweeney, 55, a neuroscientist who was accompanied at Thursday’s announcement by her husband and two children, told the crowd she fell in love with Trinity the moment she first set foot on campus — shortly before New Year’s.  “We came through the arch … I looked to the left and saw the chapel, I looked to the right and saw this beautiful long walk, and I thought: I think I could be here,” Berger-Sweeney said. “… Some people may want to be on small bucolic campuses in Maine, but not me. I want to be right here.”
After that visit Berger-Sweeney decided to apply and emerged as the winner when the Trinity board of trustees Tuesday voted unanimously for her. She will be the college’s 22nd president.  Berger-Sweeney will take the helm at Trinity as it continues to grapple with financial challenges, a reputation as a party school, security concerns, campus climate and conflict with fraternities and sororities over policy changes.
“Trinity is a forward-looking institution that excels in liberal arts and sciences, and both are areas of excellence for Dr. Berger-Sweeney, who rose to the top of our highly competitive candidate pool,” said Cornelia Parsons Thornburgh, who led the search committee and will become chairwoman of Trinity’s board of trustees on July 1. “She impressed us with her strong academic credentials, curricular innovations, collaborative nature and enthusiasm for the Hartford community.
“I strongly believe that her vision of Trinity College as an elite liberal arts college with an urban pulse is one that will guide us, inspire us and lead us on a path to distinction and greatness,” Thornburgh said.  James F. Jones Jr., who has been Trinity’s president for a decade and will retire June 30, called the moment historic and said that Berger-Sweeney’s appointment brought him “an enormous sigh of relief” to know that his “successor is going to be a star.”
Berger-Sweeney, who has been dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts since 2010, brings with her experience that is relevant to Trinity, Thornburgh said. “At Tufts, she has proven herself in areas that coincide closely with, and are important to, Trinity: proximity to a city, a strong athletic tradition, budget and program coordination, an historical Greek tradition, and a deep appreciation for a liberal arts education.”

University of North Carolina Study Shows Housing The Homeless Saves Lives – And is Actually Cheaper Than Doing Nothing

By goodblacknews on March 25, 2014

n-SKID-ROW-LOS-ANGELES-HOMELESS-large570It’s cheaper to give homeless men and women a permanent place to live than to leave them on the streets.
That’s according to a study of an apartment complex for formerly homeless people in Charlotte, N.C., that found drastic savings on health care costs and incarceration.
Moore Place houses 85 chronically homeless adults, and was the subject of a study by the University of North Carolina Charlotte released on Monday. The study found that, in its first year, Moore Place tenants saved $1.8 million in health care costs, with 447 fewer emergency room visits (a 78 percent reduction) and 372 fewer days in the hospital (a 79 percent reduction).
The tenants also spent 84 percent fewer days in jail, with a 78 percent drop in arrests. The reduction is largely due to a decrease in crimes related to homelessness, such as trespassing, loitering, public urination, begging and public consumption of alcohol, according to Caroline Chambre, director the Urban Ministry Center’s HousingWorks, the main force behind Moore Place.
One tenant, Carl Caldwell, 62, said he used to go to the emergency room five to seven times a week, late at night, so he could spend the night there. “You wouldn’t believe my hospital bills,” Caldwell, who hasn’t had health insurance for years, told The Huffington Post. Caldwell was a teacher for 30 years and became homeless five years ago, when he lost his job and his roommate moved out.
While living on the street, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The disease was particularly challenging for Caldwell, who said he spent his days “trying not to get robbed or killed” and trying to find bathrooms and shelter from freezing weather. Since he moved into Moore Place when it opened in March 2012, Caldwell has gained a regular doctor and has undergone radiation. Now his cancer is in remission. Without having to worry about where he will sleep, he can take his medicine regularly and keep it in his mini fridge.
“Moore Place saved my life,” Caldwell said. “When you’re homeless, you are dependent on everybody. Now I am independent and can give back.” Caldwell said he regularly helps feed homeless people now and has reconnected with family members he hadn’t spoken to in years.
Chambre said she expects Moore Place tenants’ mental and physical health to continue to improve with consistent access to health care. “The idea of having a primary care doctor was just a fantasy when they were living on the street,” said Chambre. “Now they all have a regular doctor.”

Couple Who Met in a Homeless Shelter Pay it Forward, Help Others Transform Lives

By goodblacknews on March 16, 2014

Deven and Ressurrection on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. (Photo courtesy of Glory Soldiers Global)
Deven and Ressurrection Graves on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. (Photo courtesy of Glory Soldiers Global)

Homeless for three years, Ressurrection Graves vividly remembers the week she slept in her car, waiting for beds to become available at a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter. It was the week of Aug. 23, 2011, when a 5.8 earthquake shook the Virginia area and Hurricane Irene battered the East Coast with wind and rain.  “I prayed and was asking God how this could end,” she told TODAY.com. “It was like, ‘Make it stop!’”
When beds finally became available at the shelter, Ressurrection checked in. And there she met Deven Graves, the “kind” man with whom she would leave homelessness behind and start an organization that is helping people caught in a cycle of poverty, including more than 75 homeless individuals so far this year.
“I had this guy staring at me,” Ressurrection recalled of her first encounter with Deven. “It felt like he was looking into my soul. It’s certainly not what you’re expecting in the environment I was in.”
In an interview with TODAY’s Lester Holt on Saturday, Graves added to the story and said she “certainly did not go to a shelter to look for a man,” but the pair had an instant connection that she called “magical.”  Deven, a veteran, had a difficult time making the transition from military to civilian life. That and the death of a family member left him feeling “a little bit lost,” Ressurrection said. He was living at the shelter while working construction jobs and looking for something more permanent.
Deven wooed her over a game of chess, and asked if she would edit his resume. As an entrepreneurial-minded mother who owned her own massage business before she fell on hard times, Ressurrection was impressed. But she didn’t want to get serious until they were out of the shelter.  It didn’t take long. After a month, Ressurrection and Deven saved up enough money from their jobs to move out. Their first date was “romantic and affordable,” a picnic at a park near the water.
Five months later, Deven proposed. They decided to hold a wedding ceremony on a day of special significance: the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
So on Aug. 28, 2013, two years to the date after Ressurrection and Deven played their first game of chess, the couple exchanged vows on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial as they heard President Obama‘s voice echoing across the water during his speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
“I felt nothing but peace and joy,” Deven said. “It was a blessing.”

Wrongfully Convicted Man Glenn Ford Freed After 26 Years on Death Row

By goodblacknews on March 12, 2014

Glenn FordANGOLA, Louisiana (AP) — A man who spent nearly 26 years on death row in Louisiana walked free of prison hours after a judge approved the state’s motion to vacate the man’s murder conviction in a the 1983 killing of a jeweler.  Glenn Ford, 64, had been on death row since August 1988 in connection with the death of 56-year-old Isadore Rozeman, a Shreveport jeweler and watchmaker for whom Ford had done occasional yard work. Ford had always denied killing Rozeman.
Ford walked out the maximum security prison at Angola on Tuesday afternoon, said Pam Laborde, a spokeswoman for Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections.  Asked as he walked away from the prison gates about his release, Ford told WAFB-TV, “It feels good; my mind is going in all kind of directions. It feels good.”
Ford told the broadcast outlet he does harbor some resentment at being wrongly jailed: “Yeah, cause, I’ve been locked up almot 30 years for something I didn’t do.  I can’t go back and do anything I should have been doing when I was 35, 38, 40 stuff like that,” he added.
State District Judge Ramona Emanuel on Monday took the step of voiding Ford’s conviction and sentence based on new information that corroborated his claim that he was not present or involved in Rozeman’s death, Ford’s attorneys said. Ford was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in 1984 and sentenced to death.

Simmons College of Kentucky Wins Accreditation, Becomes only Second HBCU in State

By goodblacknews on March 12, 2014

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(From left to right) Simmons College Board Chair Rev. F. Bruce Williams, Rep. John Yarmuth, President Kevin Cosby and Senator Rand Paul. Photo by George Williams

LOUISVILLE – Simmons College has become accredited as the first private Historically Black College and University in Kentucky and is only the second HBCU in the state, along with Kentucky State University, a public institution.
“Simply put, accreditation is value,” explained President Kevin Cosby. “It is proof that Simmons has met national standards necessary to produce graduates who are prepared to enter into selected professions.” He explained, “The accreditation of Simmons College of Kentucky will have a ripple effect throughout west Louisville and the Commonwealth of Kentucky and is the most monumental achievement, by African Americans, to take place in the state in the last 100 years.”
Most HBCUs were founded in the post-Civil War era, when Blacks were not allowed to attend college with Whites. Today, many private HBCUs are struggling to remain keep their doors open. Last summer, St. Paul’s College, a private Black institution in Lawrenceville, Va., ceased operating after being in existence since 1888. Its 35 buildings and 183 acres have been put up for public auction.

Former Baltimore Black Panther Leader Marshall "Eddie" Conway Released from Prison After 44 Years

By goodblacknews on March 11, 2014

Marshall ‘Eddie’ Conway freed leaving courthouse w attorneys Robert Boyle, Phillip G. Dantes 030414 by Laura Whitehorn
As he leaves the courthouse a free man after 44 years, renowned political prisoner Marshall “Eddie” Conway is flanked by his attorneys, Robert Boyle and Phillip G. Dantes, and backed by supporters. (Photo: Laura Whitehorn)

A small hearing March 4, 2014, in an obscure courtroom at the Circuit Court for Baltimore City ended with the release of former Black Panther Marshall Edward Conway, who has spent nearly 44 of his 67 years in maximum security prisons. Eddie, as he is known to his thousands of supporters, entered the courtroom wearing a Department of Corrections sweatshirt, in handcuffs and leg chains, and walked out of the courthouse about an hour later in civilian clothes to greet a host of family, supporters and old friends:
“I am filled with a lot of different emotions after nearly 44 years in prison. I want to thank my family, my friends, my lawyers and my supporters; many have suffered along with me.”
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Marshall “Eddie” Conway headed the Black Panther Party in Baltimore.
Despite Eddie Conway’s insistence on his innocence, it took years for Conway and his attorneys to find a way to overturn his conviction. Finally, in May 2012, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Unger v. State that a Maryland jury, to comply with due process as stated in the U.S. Constitution, must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that someone charged with a crime is guilty before that jury can convict the defendant. What made this decision momentous for many people in prison, including Conway, is that it applied retroactively.
Robert Boyle and Phillip G. Dantes, attorneys for Conway, filed a motion on his behalf based on this ruling, arguing that the judge in Conway’s trial had not properly instructed the jury that this “beyond a reasonable doubt” proviso was mandatory for conviction. Based on this motion, they negotiated an agreement whereby Conway would be resentenced to time served and be released from prison. In exchange, Conway and his lawyers agreed not to litigate his case based on the Unger ruling.
As he walked away from the courthouse, Boyle said: “It’s a big day for Black political prisoners that one of them has finally gotten out. I feel that (the late mayor of Jackson, Mississippi) Chokwe Lumumba was speaking into the judge’s ear, to urge him to let this happen.”
Eddie’s attorney, Robert Boyle, said: “It’s a big day for Black political prisoners that one of them has finally gotten out. I feel that (the late mayor of Jackson, Mississippi) Chokwe Lumumba was speaking into the judge’s ear, to urge him to let this happen.”
Scores of former Black Panthers are serving virtual life sentences in prison, largely the result of the efforts of J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered his FBI in the 1960s and ‘70s to target the Black Panther Party – as revealed by the 1977 Church Committee Senate hearings. The first Panther chapter was started in 1966 in Oakland, California, but by the time a chapter was formed in Baltimore in 1968, the FBI had had ample time to insert more than its usual share of informants into the fledgling organization.
The FBI, moreover, often worked in league with various municipal police departments. As Conway wrote in his political memoir, “The alleged murder of police officers would soon take the place of the mythological rape of white women as the basis for the legal lynching of Black men.”

How Former Youth Gun Toter Camiella Williams Became a Gun Reform Activist

By goodblacknews on March 9, 2014

camiellaCamiella Williams grew up in a violent neighborhood in Chicago and bought herself a gun for $25 when she was in sixth grade. Tired of all the death and pain around her, Camiella has changed her life and is now working toward peace.

As an activist and gun reform advocate, the 26-year-old speaks about the ways people can reduce gun violence. She told MTV Act about her background, the reality of the underground market for guns and ways that our generation can truly make a difference.

ACT: You grew up around violence and were used to it. What experiences changed your views on gun violence and inspired you to make a difference?

CAMIELLA: My personal stories changed my views. I have been affected by gun violence directly and indirectly. I’ve lost loved ones to gun violence, and I’ve seen violence. My home was shot up before. My neighbors upstairs were shot and killed. The blood was still on my porch. Seeing all this is what made me want to make a difference. I got tired of going to funerals. I got tired of crying and living in sorrow. That’s basically what it was: You go to a funeral every other week.

ACT: Many people are unaware of the underground market for guns. Can you tell us a bit about it?

CAMIELLA: In the community I grew up in — Englewood, on the south side of Chicago — guns are very accessible because they were selling them in hole-in-wall restaurants and hole-in-a-wall apartments and unnamed convenient stores. If you want a gun, you can get a gun. You don’t have to have a FOID [Firearms Owners Identification] card, you don’t have to be 18 or 21. If you say, “Hey, I want a gun,” and you know somebody who can get you a gun, they’ll get it for you. 

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ACT: Some people feel that gun reform would infringe on their Second Amendment rights. What are your thoughts on this?

CAMIELLA: Gun reform will not infringe on Second Amendment rights. First you have to think about our rights to live in peace and be happy. The issue that people do not understand is that in order for these guns to become illegal, they were once legal. Meaning that someone — a straw purchaser [someone who buys a gun for someone else who can’t legally buy them or doesn’t want their name tracked] or a gun dealer — went and bought these guns and brought them back to the community and is there selling them. They look at it as, “You shot somebody? I sold you the gun, yeah, so what? You shoot somebody, that’s on you.”

For example, in 2006, Starkesia Reed was shot and killed in Englewood. Her shooter went to a gun dealer and bought an AK-47 [an assault rifle originally made for the military] for $150. He shot up the block and a bullet ending up going through her eye. When I went to court with the family of Starkesia Reed, the gun dealer testified, “Yeah, I sold him the AK-47.” And that was it. He knew [the killer’s] I.D. was fake, there wasn’t a thorough background check. He knew he didn’t look like a hunter, but he sold him the gun anyway. And now we have an innocent 14-year-old girl dead. The gun dealers are not being held accountable.