New York-based painter Kehinde Wiley‘s current exhibit Kehinde Wiley: Memling at the Phoenix Art Museum is attracting national attention, most recently via a mention in Time Magazine’s ‘Pop Chart’ in the March 18 issue. Wiley’s eight portraits take their poses and contexts from the works by the legendary 15th century Flemish master Hans Memling but Wiley has substituted contemporary sitters for the historical figures.
Posts published in “Adults”
The business community donated $8 million dollars worth of police cruisers and ambulances to Detroit to improve emergency response times, said Mayor Bing on Monday.
With the donation, the city of Detroit now has 23 new ambulances, allowing the city to replace its current fleet of ambulances which frequently break down.
“This is not about downtown; this is not about Midtown; this is about the neighborhoods, so we can go out into these neighborhoods and let our people know that we support them, and we have not forgotten about them,” Bing said.
Bing says this is an indication of how the city and business leaders are working together to fight crime in the city.
“We believe these additional vehicles will enhance the visibility of the police and fire efforts in the city of Detroit, improve safety and security in our neighborhoods and have an immediate and lasting impact for everyone who lives, works and plays in our city,” said Roger Penske, founder and chairman of Penske Corp., the Bloomfield Hills-based transportation services firm.
Pictures of the new vehicles shown at a press conference revealed that the cruisers added to the fleet were Dodge Chargers, Ford Tauruses and Chevrolet Caprices. The EMS vehicles were Horton Terrastar ambulances. The new cruisers and ambulances are being outfitted with new equipment and should be ready to use within the next two to four months.
article via yourblackworld.net
NBC Southern California – The gutting of Men’s Central Jail cells to be replaced with inmate classrooms is one element of a dramatic re-envisioning of the Los Angeles County jail system as proposed by Sheriff Lee Baca.
During his tenure, Baca has expanded educational opportunities for county inmates. Gutting the old central jail to make room for inmate classrooms would take the program to a new level.
Inmates who obtain their high school graduate equivalent degrees (GEDs) are more likely to find work when released into society, and less likely to re-offend, Baca is convinced.
The response to the county’s inmate educational program is “like nothing I’ve seen in my 47 years in law enforcement,” Baca told reporters Tuesday outside the County Hall of Administration. “It’s a good idea,” said one man following his release from Men’s Central Jail after serving a week for a drug violation. “Not everyone, but a lot of the men want to change.”
“Education can help,” said the former inmate, who declined to give his name. Other aspects of his plan include building a new central jail, repurposing Lancaster’s Mira Loma detention center, and transferring women inmates out of the Century Regional Detention Facility, either to Mira Loma or to the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic.
First lady Michelle Obama smiles during a reception for Ireland’s prime minister in the East Room of the White House on March 19, 2013 in Washington, DC. President Obama met with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny prior to the annual St. Patrick’s Day lunch hosted at the Capitol. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Michelle Obama marked the first day of spring with an early Easter celebration as she delivered holiday treats to military families and children. The first lady stopped by the Fisher House at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on Wednesday as families decorated Easter cards.
She asked the children if they were ready “to show me how to make some stuff.” Mrs. Obama, accompanied by first dog Bo, carried a basket full of cookies made by the White House pastry chefs in the shape of the Portuguese water dog. She also brought tickets for the families to attend the White House Egg Roll on April 1. The Fisher House program provides temporary housing for military families while their loved ones receive medical care.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press by Stacy A. Anderson via thegrio.com
Related Stories:
Evonne Lee, a dying cancer patient, got her wish Tuesday when she married her longtime boyfriend at the hospital where she is expected to die, WAVE 3 reports. Hospital staff at University Hospital in Louisville, Ky., consider Lee an inspiration for the way she is living the final days of her life; doctors have given her weeks to live. Lee and her new husband, Don Tyler, knew they would wed when they first first met some eight years ago. But when Lee was diagnosed with cancer last year, jumping the broom became a priority.
Tyler popped the question on Christmas Day. It was around that time that Lee’s health began to deteriorate. Here is some background on how Evonne has decided to make the best of the time she has left:
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A federal jury awarded $13.2 million to a former housing authority security officer Friday after finding two Cleveland detectives fabricated or withheld evidence at his 2000 murder trial.
David Ayers, 56, who spent 11 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, and several jurors wept as the verdict against detectives Denise Kovach and Michael Cipo was read in U.S. District Court.
“These detectives didn’t do their jobs at all,” juror Stephanie Kocian told The Plain Dealer in an interview. “They manipulated the evidence, and didn’t look at anyone else except the most convenient suspect to convict. The word ‘railroaded’ was thrown around the jury room during deliberations.”
At the time of his 1999 arrest, Ayers had been working for more than eight years as a security officer with the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. He was accused and eventually convicted of the beating death 76-year-old Dorothy Brown, who lived in a CMHA high rise in Cleveland.
Ayers continued to maintain his innocence, filing appeals while serving a life prison term for aggravated murder. He finally prevailed in 2011, when DNA tests proved that a single pubic hair found in Brown’s mouth did not come from him.
Billy Ray Harris’ story has inspired a windfall of donations.
When Kansas City homeless man Billy Ray Harris returned Sarah Darling’s engagement ring last month after she accidentally dropped it in his cup, it could have been the end of the story. Instead, the experience has changed his life. In the weeks since his good deed went viral, Harris has gained national attention, and supporters have raised over $175,000 for him to find a new home.
Something even more valuable happened: Harris is back in touch with his family, from whom he was estranged for the last 16 years. Amid the media storm around the engagement ring episode, Robin Harris, Billy Ray’s younger sister, happened to come across an article about her brother, and reached out to the local news station that first reported the story for help tracking him down.
“When I turned my head, I recognized the name, and I turned back around and I looked at the picture again, and it was my brother,” Robin told TODAY.com. “I called and I said, ‘that’s my brother. I’ve been looking for him for 16 years.'” Robin, who still lives in Texas where the family grew up, said she made repeated efforts to find her brother over the years, but had heard varying reports about his whereabouts, and was even once told that he had died.
“When I turned my head, I recognized the name, and I turned back around and I looked at the picture again, and it was my brother,” Robin told TODAY.com. “I called and I said, ‘that’s my brother. I’ve been looking for him for 16 years.'” Robin, who still lives in Texas where the family grew up, said she made repeated efforts to find her brother over the years, but had heard varying reports about his whereabouts, and was even once told that he had died.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwFEH_iaEAE&w=560&h=315]
Collaboration and entrepreneurship to help house America
America’s housing problems are daunting. Millions of families pay more than half of their income for a place to live. Rampant foreclosures have destabilized neighborhoods across the country and left millions of households owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. At the same time, federal, state and local resources for housing and community development are shrinking. As a result, organizations committed to affordable housing must be more entrepreneurial than ever.
The Housing Partnership Network improves the lives of millions of individuals, families and communities by sparking innovation and collaboration among 100 of the nation’s affordable housing and community development nonprofits. By incubating innovative joint ventures and creating ongoing opportunities for peer learning and collaboration, the Network helps its members realize significant economies of scale, achieve greater collective impact, and exercise greater influence on public policy. Collectively, the Network and its member organizations employ more than 13,000 people in nearly 200 offices, operating in 75% of the nation’s major metro areas and in every state in the country.
The Housing Partnership Network has a history of spotlighting critical problems and marshaling the expertise and resources needed to launch innovative, scalable solutions. For example, after the 9/11 tragedy, insurance premiums rose dramatically. The Network created a property and casualty insurance company that controlled costs for its members and now provides more than $7 billion of insurance covering 57,000 units of affordable rental housing.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpqx3Y3KSNQ&w=560&h=315]
Making pregnancy and childbirth safer
Every two minutes, somewhere in the world, a woman dies from preventable or treatable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. For every woman who dies, 20 more experience serious illness or disability. And every year, three million babies do not survive their first month of life.
When Family Care International was founded 25 years ago, the world was paying little attention to the hundreds of thousands of women who were dying each year. The first international organization dedicated to reducing maternal death, Family Care International helped put the issue of maternal health on the map. Now maternal mortality has been cut in half, but much work remains to be done.
Headquartered in New York City with locally-staffed offices in three countries in Africa and two in Latin America, Family Care International works in close partnership with governments, civil society organizations, donors, communities, grassroots advocates, and women’s groups. Pairing efforts to strengthen the capacity of local organizations, advocates, and governments with a powerful advocacy voice on the global stage, the organization works to ensure that all women have access to the maternal and reproductive health care they need. Doing so saves the lives and protects the health of women and improves the well-being and prosperity of their children, families, and communities.
Monday at Yale University, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander condemned mass incarceration of African-Americans as a form of legalized discrimination. (Photo/Maria Zepeda)
Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer who gained national renown after publishing the book “The New Jim Crow,” spoke to students and faculty at the Yale Divinity School Monday afternoon about the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States, which she described as a legalized form of racial discrimination. Because African-Americans make up a large percentage of America’s prison population, Alexander said millions of African-Americans nationwide are deprived of basic human rights to housing and employment, adding that the prisoners have fallen victim to the kind of racial discrimination that existed at the time of Jim Crow.
“We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it,” she said. “This is a system that has literally turned back the clock on racial progress in the U.S.”
Alexander said a series of American government campaigns to curb the illegal drug trade, commonly referred to as the war on drugs, is causing an unprecedented number of incarcerations, especially of people of color. More than 45 million people have been “swept into the system” for drug offenses, Alexander said, adding that the number of people currently incarcerated for drug offenses surpasses the number of people incarcerated for any one reason in 1980.
“We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it,” she said. “This is a system that has literally turned back the clock on racial progress in the U.S.”
Alexander said a series of American government campaigns to curb the illegal drug trade, commonly referred to as the war on drugs, is causing an unprecedented number of incarcerations, especially of people of color. More than 45 million people have been “swept into the system” for drug offenses, Alexander said, adding that the number of people currently incarcerated for drug offenses surpasses the number of people incarcerated for any one reason in 1980.