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Human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s insightful TED speech from 2012 eloquently discusses the injustices of our current incarceration system and encourages us all to help change it. If you haven’t seen it previously, GBN guarantees the above video is fully worth twenty three minutes of your time. To learn more about Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, click here.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson; contributions by Gabriel Ryder
Posts published in “Videos”
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Although Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday will not be nationally observed until January 21st this year, we want to honor King today as well, on his actual day of birth. Learn more about this monumental agent of change, his life and work on biography.com, and watch his famous last speech “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” above.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
In this day and age, when we see stories about “the first African American” to do something. Today is the start of 2013 and these “firsts” are still happening across geographies and industries. One last one to cross off the list is “first African American to direct an animated film.” Peter Ramsey directed the DreamWorks film Rise of the Guardians, the blockbuster holiday movie that, over the course of its six-week release, has grossed more than $90 million. This week, it rounds out the top ten with $4.9 million, in a field packed with movies like The Hobbit, This Is 40, Django Unchained, and Les Mis.
Rise of the Guardians, is about a group of Immortal Guardians, including a tough-as-nails Easter Bunny and tattooed Santa Claus, who must protect the Earth from an evil spirit. The film has been a great success overseas, and has helped Ramsey’s profile rise in the past few weeks. The 49-year-old never finished college, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, but takes the time to speak to schoolkids, to let them know that this is something they can work towards.
“I want them to know they can do it. You can start with a piece of paper and a pencil. There’s no limit to the kinds of stories they can draw,” he says.
Above, CNN talks with Ramsey about his rise in the animated film industry.
Is Prince coming back around to the Internet? Five years ago, he went on a crusade against YouTube, threatening lawsuits against that site and others that made his copyrighted material available without permission. In 2008, he made sure every recording of his cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” was taken down from YouTube—even afterRadiohead asked that the recordings be put back up. In 2010, he declared the Internet “completely over,” like MTV.
But now he’s got a new music video, his first in a few years, and he’s put up an official version of it—on YouTube. Whatever the man’s feelings about online communication, he sounds great. The song is called “Rock and Roll Love Affair.” No word yet on whether a new album is imminent. Watch below:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEne4AoX_RU&w=560&h=315]
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There are some pretty amazing kids out there doing the best they can with whatever circumstances were given to them. In areas of the world where little to no technological advancement has occurred, ideas are being born without any mentors, tools, and/or resources.
PRODIGIES is a bi-weekly series on YouTube that showcases the youngest and brightest as they challenge themselves to reach new heights and the stories behind them. Kelvin Doe is a 15-year-old Sierra Leone native who admittedly loves inventing. He’s taught himself how to make things like batteries, FM radio transmitter, and a generator out of need for these things in his community.
He said that his community doesn’t have much electricity. The lights come on at night in his area once per week and then they don’t have any lights for the rest of the month. That led to his battery invention, so that his neighbors and family could use the battery to light their homes.
He’s known as DJ Focus because of a valuable radio program that he broadcasts on FM radio. He was able to create his generator for his station by using scraps. He chose that name because he said:
“If you can focus you can do invention perfectly.”
He started the station to give “voice to the youth.”
Kelvin was discovered by fellow Sierra Leone native, David Sengeh, who is a Ph.D. student at MIT. Sengeh directs Summer Innovation Camp in Sierra Leone and that is where he discovered Kelvin and his talents. When he saw what Kelvin was able to create simply using spare parts from trash in his community, he knew he was someone special.
R.I.P. Terry Callier, Chicago singer and songwriter, who in the 1970s developed an incantatory style that mingled soul, folk and jazz sounds around his meditative baritone (his most well-known song is “Occasional Rain”), then decades later was rescued from obscurity when his work found new fans in Britain. To learn more about his life and music, read the nytimes.com article about Callier here and watch his collaboration with English trip hop duo Massive Attack below:
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Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals pledge in the video above that for every Twitter ‘Retweet’ or Facebook ‘Like’, they will donate 25 cents to breast cancer charity. Please help spread awareness and raise funds!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCbiHSOf9nc&w=560&h=315]
Musical legend and activist Stevie Wonder has released a new song entitled “Keep Moving Forward” in support of President Barack Obama’s re-election. Listen by clicking above.
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Ninety-five years ago today, jazz trumpet innovator and bebop pioneer John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. Gillespie, who famously lead his own orchestra as well as recorded with Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, is best known for his compositions “Salt Peanuts,” “Woody N’ You” and “A Night In Tunisia,” as well as popularizing Afro-Cuban jazz in the United States. Learn more about his life and music by clicking here and watch his “Manteca” above.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson