Comments and submissions for Mt. Hope, East Side, Community Website
Rumours have it that the above link does not work properly, yet it seems to work OK whenever I check it or have others check it.
If the link does not work for you and you want to submit something to the blog use this email address:
blogsubmit@mthope-eastside.com
Posted at 5:24 PM | Website | Comments (0)
What Obama's Election Means to the East Side's Mt. Hope
Nearly a week after Election Day, I remain elated that Barack Hussein Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. His historic election is a landmark in the long march for equal rights for African Americans as important as the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Overnight, America's image in the world improved immensely.
Obama serves as a role model for young African Americans who now should be inspired to achieve anything they want to.
In Mt. Hope, they should now realize that their path to success lies not in becoming a professional basketball player or rap musician, but in education. They no longer have the excuse that their futures are dead ends so they might as well deal and use drugs. They now should see that their path out of poverty, low paying jobs, and substance abuse is through education, staying in school, and earning good grades. Obama, rightfully, is their hero. Now is the time to follow his example.
Peter Cassels
Posted at 3:42 PM | Politics | Comments (0)
East Side, Obama, and the End of Racial Politics
Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965: wrote a OP/Ed piece for the Wall Street Journal on what some term "the end of racial politics".
Williams gives us a brief synopsis of the Civil Rights Era and how voter rights served as a key strategy in turning segregation around. Voting rights, how precious: it's incredible to think that not that long ago many people did not have the right to vote, not only African Americans, but Women, and Orientals, and I'm sure I am touching only the tip of the iceberg.
But Mr. Williams soon turns to Barack Obama and has this to say:
And now comes Barack Obama, the son of a black Kenyan who came here as a scholarship student and his white American wife. There is no other nation in the world where a 75% majority electorate has elected as their supreme leader a man who identifies as one of that nation's historically oppressed minorities.
The idea of black politics now tilts away from leadership based on voicing grievance, and identity politics based on victimization and anger. In its place is an era in which it is assumed that talented, tough people of any background will find a way to their rightful seat of power in mainstream political life.
Mr. Williams does not declare the end of discrimination or bigotry, but rather accentuates the shift of focus:
Make no mistake, there is still discrimination against people of color in America. And inside black America, there is still disproportionate poverty, school dropouts, criminal activity, incarceration and single motherhood. But with the example of Mr. Obama's achievements, from Harvard Law to the state legislature, U.S. Senate and the White House, the focus of discussion now is how the child of even the most oppressed of racial minorities can maximize his or her strengths and overcome negative stereotypes through achievement.
The onus now falls on individuals to take advantage of opportunities. That begins with keeping families together and taking responsibility for the twisted "gangsta" culture that celebrates jail time instead of schooling. With Mr. Obama as the head of government, discussion of racial problems now comes in the form of pragmatic discourse for how to best give all Americans opportunty, for example, how to improve schools.
Mr. Williams's is an essay well worth reading.
What Obama's Victory Means for Racial Politics
Barack Obama's election is both an astounding political victory -- and the end of an era for black politics.
It is not even 50 years since a group of civil-rights workers challenged racial segregation on interstate bus travel. In 1961, a scared group of young Freedom Riders got on a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., to take a trip through Virginia and into the South. In Alabama the bus was bombed, its riders beaten so badly that some suffered brain damage. Attorney General Robert Kennedy worried that racial tensions could spark a second Civil War.
What happened next was the starting point for a uniquely American political movement that led directly to Mr. Obama's success. Bobby Kennedy proposed to his brother, President John F. Kennedy, that the civil-rights movement be redirected from violent confrontations with segregationists to voter-registration drives. The Kennedys feared sending voting-rights legislation to Congress, given opposition from Southern Democrats. But the Kennedys reasoned more blacks registered to vote would force Southern Democrats to change their segregationist attitudes.
Associated Press
Barack Obama responds to questions during a news conference in Chicago on Nov. 7, as Joe Biden, right, listens.
Kennedy got foundations to support a group called the Voter Education Project. That effort put money into civil-rights groups that worked on voter registration. Young people such as James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman went into small black towns in the South and challenged the white segregationist political structure by encouraging blacks to defy intimidation by racist sheriffs, employers and banks and fill out a voter registration card.
Those three young men were killed by segregationists. Others, such as Medgar Evers of the NAACP and Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper, carried on. Evers was killed. Hamer was beaten so badly that she "couldn't feel my arms." But she became a voice for a group of black Mississippians who challenged the seating of an all-white, segregationist delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention.
Hamer's efforts led to more voter registration drives to register blacks in the South, including in Selma, Ala. It was in Selma that Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested; he'd defied court orders by staging protests calling for federal laws protecting blacks trying to register.
In a letter he wrote in 1963 from a Birmingham jail, King had stated: "Give us the ballot." Now in a Selma jail he wrote: "Why are we in jail? Have you ever been required to answer 100 questions on government, some abstruse even to a political science specialist, merely to vote . . . this is Selma, Alabama, where there are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls."
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It
led to increased black political power, and to political appointees such as Solicitor General [and later Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall. The first black mayor of a major American city, Carl Stokes, was elected in Cleveland in 1967. The 1970s and '80s saw black politics emerge as a stable base for the growth of a large black American middle class with higher levels of education and income. Later barrier breakers included chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
And now comes Barack Obama, the son of a black Kenyan who came here as a scholarship student and his white American wife. There is no other nation in the world where a 75% majority electorate has elected as their supreme leader a man who identifies as one of that nation's historically oppressed minorities.
The idea of black politics now tilts away from leadership based on voicing grievance, and identity politics based on victimization and anger. In its place is an era in which it is assumed that talented, tough people of any background will find a way to their rightful seat of power in mainstream political life.
The Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons and Rev. Jeremiah Wrights remain. But their influence and power fade to a form of nostalgia in a world of larger political agendas, such as a common American vision of setting the nation on a steady economic course and dealing with terrorists. The market has irrevocably shrunk for Sharpton-style tirades against "the man" and "the system." The emphasis on racial threats and extortion-like demands -- all aimed at maximizing white guilt as leverage for getting government and corporate money -- has lost its moment. How does anyone waste time on racial fantasies like reparations for slavery when there is a black man who earned his way into the White House?
Make no mistake, there is still discrimination against people of color in America. And inside black America, there is still disproportionate poverty, school dropouts, criminal activity, incarceration and single motherhood. But with the example of Mr. Obama's achievements, from Harvard Law to the state legislature, U.S. Senate and the White House, the focus of discussion now is how the child of even the most oppressed of racial minorities can maximize his or her strengths and overcome negative stereotypes through achievement.
The onus now falls on individuals to take advantage of opportunities. That begins with keeping families together and taking responsibility for the twisted "gangsta" culture that celebrates jail time instead of schooling. With Mr. Obama as the head of government, discussion of racial problems now comes in the form of pragmatic discourse for how to best give all Americans opportunty, for example, how to improve schools.
The change in black politics has been slowly coming with the growing black middle-class. It now accelerates with Mr. Obama's victory. As King said at the end of the 1965 march for voting rights in Alabama -- when he reached the state capitol in Montgomery -- the result of black political participation is a "society that can live with its conscience." There are no quick solutions, he added, but no matter how difficult or frustrating there will be success because "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."
In terms of racial politics, the arc of justice took a breathtaking leap.
Mr. Williams, a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News, is author of several books, including "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965" (Penguin, 1988).
Source
What Obama's Victory Means for Racial Politics
From the Wall Street Journal
and RealClearPolitics
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Posted at 3:40 PM | Issues | Comments (0)
Technical Difficulties
The Website is having technical difficulties which is the reason for the dearth of recent posts.
I am working on a complete redesign of the site with some very advanced features and a more inclusive and user friendly interface for community contributions.
Stay tuned and we'll be soliciting your suggestions as the process develops.
Posted at 1:59 PM | Website | Comments (0)
Interesting East Side Search Terms
Below, find a few interesting search terms that people have used recently to access our Mt. Hope website.
Interesting.
I wonder what location they are referring to below? I know of only one that fits that criteria.
drug dealers who operate in broad daylight with the windows blocked with heavy doors and a garage around back where drugs are peddled and is the site of public drunkenness on a daily basis
And this is very interesting. God, I love monitoring the website stats.
why? my best guess is that [...] is the only east side neighborhood with a measurable african american demographic. drug dealing and dilapidated housing clearly in violation of criminal law and housing codes simply is not tolerated in other east side neighborhoods. institutional racism? call it what you will the situation exists. is this the fault of the african american community in [...]? i think not. the embedded drug trade in [...] is embedded in the political/social institutions in [...] who have enabled the drug trade to flourish. those who are part and parcel of the drug trade who masquerade as community activists and so-called pastors. preying on their own community contributing to black on black violence. the larger african american community in [...] are victims of these entrepreneurs who prey on their own people with drugs and death.
And finally:
people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we ve got these knuckleheads walking around
And here are some miscellaneous search terms:
kevin jackson s voting record providence
street home to notorious drug dealers who operate in broad daylight with the
brown sex powder party
bad student sexparty
forced to strip home invasion
providence apple crisp miriam hospital
kevin jackson city councilman landsaping money providence
she was forced to strip
how can i put a stop to my drug dealing kids father
embezzlement providence tax collector s office
brown university sex parties
can a girl get pregnant at the age of 17 in providence is it illegal
evil female pirate
mount misery hellhound
cracker
Posted at 12:59 PM | Crime | Comments (0)
Autumn in Mt. Hope
This is what autumn looks like around my house.
The Last Burning Bush
 of Lion-ps.jpg)
The Lookout.
Backyard
The Old Gentleman: Sterling at 16.
A crazy cat named Ulysses
Raspberries in November?
John Twomey
Posted at 11:04 AM | Community | Comments (0)
Renovation of Billy Taylor Park Kiddie Playground
Mt. Hope is finally joining the rest of the East Side with a state of the art kiddie playground in Billy Taylor Park.
Kudos to Councilman Kevin Jackson for securing the money for the project and to Bob McMahon, Parks Superintendent, for supervising the design and installation.
Our Mt. Hope kids deserve to be served at least as well as other kids on the East Side.
It's about time!
John Twomey
Posted at 3:51 AM | Community | Comments (0)
