What Now? by James Clingman

Jan. 5, 2015

Blackonomics

What Now?
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - What a raucous, topsy-turvy, heart-wrenching, angry year we experienced in 2014. We had everything from the sadness of lives lost on airplanes and ferry boats, to the anger of Black men being killed and Black women being beaten by police officers, to the elation of a record-breaking stock market and the lowest gasoline prices since 2008. Certainly our emotions have been mixed as we witnessed a potpourri of ups and downs while we pondered the question: “What’s next?”

Of course none of us knows what will happen the next minute, much less the next year, but there are things we can do from day to day to solve some of our problems and improve our lot in life. I invite you to think about your personal and our collective situations, and make a commitment to do what you can to make the much needed changes we must have for self-empowerment and self-determination. After you seriously and honestly think about those things, I implore you to take appropriate action.

What happened during the past year is now a lesson for all of us, whether positive or negative. We must move forward. We cannot live in the past; we can only learn from it. In light of that reality, here are a few suggestions to help get you moving in a positive direction in 2015.

First and foremost, build, strengthen, and nurture your spiritual foundation. Be thankful for each day, and use it wisely. Stay informed with real news, not with mere views from talking heads. Remember that followers pick their leaders; it’s not the other way around, so pick leaders who work in your best interests rather than self-serving charlatans who are only concerned about themselves.

Make an even stronger effort to support Black businesses and, Black business owners, take care of your business by doing what you say you will do with honesty and professionalism. It’s tax time, so if you need a tax preparer use a Black firm; Compro Tax Service is an excellent and wise choice. Look online to find the office nearest you. Talk to your church leadership about joining or forming a local chapter of the Collective Empowerment Group (CEG), also found online.

Don’t waste your vote. Give it to someone who is not afraid to state their position regarding Black voters during the campaign and afterwards—and then fulfill their promises. If they fail to do so, don’t vote for them. Also, on the political side of things, stop putting the same old folks into office, especially if they have not delivered anything to Black folks and/or if they have been in their particular office for decades. Put some new “young-bloods” with fresh ideas into office. We will never be politically empowered until we start playing to win instead of playing just to play.

Find a Black certified financial planner and get involved in some level of investment in the stock market. As we are standing in line to buy Nike shoes, we should also be teaching our children how to buy Nike stock. Also, teach entrepreneurship to our youth. Let them know they can own a business even if they end up working for someone. Teach them early by using examples of young Black business owners like Jasmine Lawrence, Moziah Bridges, Cory Nieves, Omar Bailey, and many others you can find on the Internet.

Make it a habit to listen to the Carl Nelson Radio Show (1450AM WOL in Washington, DC or www.woldcnews.com), Brother Daren “State of the City” Muhammad in Baltimore, Dr. Rosie Milligan in L.A., Elliott Booker (Time for an Awakening) in Philadelphia, and other conscious and informative radio shows.

Finally, in response to the outrageous treatment some of us have received from the police and the criminal justice system, first, let’s boycott prisons, that is, stop committing crimes and putting yourself at the mercy of a system that cares absolutely nothing about you. Second, in addition to the protests the young folks are doing now, add a strategy, an end game that uses economic sanctions (No Justice, No Profit!) as leverage to get the CEO’s of various corporations to come out publicly and denounce the abuse being inflicted upon our people. Remember, it’s not simply about withdrawing our money just to hurt someone else; it’s about using that same money to help ourselves by building our own economic infrastructure.

Last but certainly not least, sign up as one the Million Conscious Black Voters and Consumers by going to www.amefika.com or contacting me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. One million Black folks willing to leverage our votes and our dollars can change our situation. Get involved in 2015; let your actions outweigh your words, and let’s move forward. Peace, love, and blessings to you in 2015.

Parade Queen Allowed to Ride 56 Years After Denial Because She is Black

Jan. 4, 2015

Parade Queen Allowed to Ride 56 Years After Denial Because She is Black

Black Pasadena Rose Parade Queen, Joan Williams.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The qualities that led Pasadena, Calif. city workers to choose Joan Williams as Miss Crown City and to ride on their float in the 1958 Rose Parade no longer mattered once they found out she was an African-American woman. As surprised as she was to have received the honor, she was doubly surprised when it was unceremoniously taken away.

But the ride she was denied in 1958 was finally realized this year when she took her rightful place, New Year’s Day, on the Pasadena city float by popular demand of local organizations and a rising tide of supporters as her story has become an international headline.

In the years since then, “Every now and then a reporter would call and ask for an interview, but after a while I felt I’d told that story enough. And even when I would talk to them, little would come of it,” Williams said.

But not this time. The front page of the Dec. 24 Pasadena Weekly, written by Justin Chapman, has traveled through the aid of social media to national and international news outlets.

It’s the same old story with different players, but the plot always includes a healthy dose of discrimination.

“I never told anybody I was White. I had pictures of my children on my desk. We had just moved to Pasadena and we were settling in,” Williams said. Beautiful letters of support had been submitted.

And all was well with her designation as Miss Crown City until a reporter came to her house and saw, “My very brown husband, and apparently went back and said, ‘Guess what?'”

When Jet magazine came to photograph her, the Mayor at that time refused to be in the photograph.

From that point, things changed in the workplace, from what had been wonderful working relationships to, “People refusing to speak to me, but I wasn’t going to let that make me leave because the income from that job was part of my family’s future plans,” she said.

As much as she forged ahead, she could not deny the pain it caused her.

“Yes I was humiliated and embarrassed. One minute I was representing them and the next I wasn’t. Nothing had changed in me,” Williams said. “The whole thing was the result of their assumptions, not of anything I’d done. I hadn’t pulled the wool over their eyes.”

And although she could very easily have let this current opportunity go by, she feels it can mean so much at this time in history.

“If I’d taken that ride in1958 it would have been just a ‘White girl on a float’ for the record,” she said jokingly, since they’d made that assumption. But in the light of Ferguson, the ongoing protests and the present racist atmosphere, it can mean so much more.

“Black lives do matter and this is another way of stating the case. This is not for me, but for the community and to demonstrate that I can be gracious and accept their apology,” Williams said.

While she’d much rather be making sure the black-eyes peas and greens are ready for the New Year’s Eve festivities, she’s making sure she has warm enough clothes for the unusually cold weather predicted for the parade. And she’s being interviewed non stop.

But she has no regrets and is enthusiastic about the young Black and Brown activists that populate Pasadena now, who demanded justice and an apology on her behalf.

“Inspiring Stories” is the theme for this year’s parade.

“When they told me I would be on the banner float, I thought that was very apropos.”

Temerity Julianne Malveaux

Jan. 3, 2014

Temerity
Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Patrick Lynch, do you remember Oscar Grant? And if you do, Mr. “leader” of the New York Police Department Union, why do you pretend not to understand the reaction that many African American people have to the police killing of black men? The official reaction to those killings and the arrogance with which many police officers (read Darren Wilson in Ferguson) respond to the fact that they have snuffed out a life.

If you don’t remember Oscar Grant, Mr. Lynch, I do. He was executed on the first day of the same month that President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, ordered from a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train in Oakland, California, and compliantly sitting on the platform when he and a group of friends were roughed up, and he was shot. Why? Because his murderer, Johannes Mehserle, said he mistook his Glock gun (with a weight of at least 28 ounces and perhaps as many as 38) for a Taser (which weighs seven ounces). Just days after the killing, on January 6, 2009, the San Francisco Chronicle described this fiction as “nonsense”, not only because firing a Taser has an entirely different protocol than firing a Glock, but also as noted by The Chronicle a Taser has to be turned on and off, and a Glock does not. Furthermore, Mesherle had used his Taser earlier in the same evening he killed Oscar Grant. He should have known the difference.

I think of Oscar Grant because I spent part of my end-year holiday in San Francisco and Oakland visiting my mom and family. I think of him because I have two nephews, 31 and 28 who regularly rode BART and had life threatening encounters with the BART police. I don’t think of Oscar Grant because of Michael Brown or Eric Garner, because I think of him every January 1. When we wish each other “Happy New Year”, I am bitterly reminded that he won’t have one. Oscar Grant was executed six years ago, and not much has changed in six years, sixty years or two centuries.

Where did the murderer Johannes Mehserle get his police training? In a crackerjack box or an amusement park? Oscar Grant paid the ultimate price, and his family, his baby daughter, paid the price for Johannes Mehserle’s ignorance and murderous actions. Meanwhile, Johannes Mehserle has been able to move through his life, often with the help and support of “law enforcement” agencies.

Johannes Mehserle was so arrogant that he refused to appear at an investigative meeting ordered by his superiors in early January 2009. He sent his lawyer instead and then immediately resigned from BART. It took nearly a month for the Oakland Police Department to arrest Mehserle. His crime was so egregious, his conflicting descriptions of it so glaring, that a judged set his bail at $3 million. He spent 11 months in jail before he was tried in Los Angeles, and he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, not murder. He was sentenced to a scant two years and served a meager eleven months in jail before he was released. Years later, Oscar Grant’s family and the several friends who were also brutally beaten received about $2.8 million in a settlement from a lawsuit. Then Johannes Mehserle had the temerity to appeal his conviction, with his attorney’s arguing, “All he did was make a mistake”. Blessedly, the State Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

The Mehserle attorneys showed as much a disregard for black life as the Mehserle execution did. Johannes Mehserle wanted to clear his record. What about Oscar Grant’s life? Patrick Lynch asked that New York protests stop to “respect” the lives of New York police officers so callously executed. With all due respect and with sorrow and horror, one might ask who ever stopped, paused, considered the life of Oscar Grant.

Mehserle and his team would argue that he is “remorseful” for killing Oscar Grant. He sobbed his way through his testimony in the trail that resulted in his conviction, but one might wonder whether his tears were genuine or designed to diminish or lower his sentence. The fact that he appealed his conviction suggests that his remorse was extremely limited.

Johannes Mehserle had the temerity to appeal his conviction, just as some in the New York Police Department had the temerity to turn their backs on their boss, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Temerity can be described as audacity, boldness, nerve, gall, and impudence. Or it can be described as a simple indifference to black life. That’s why it must be asserted that #Blacklivesmatter. The audacity of explanations, not the murders of Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and so many others explains some of the tension between African Americans and “law enforcement”. You see, while many police perceive most African Americans as potential criminals, many African Americans recognize police officers as potential Johannes Mesherle or Darren Wilson. If Patrick Lynch and his ilk want to stop the tension, perhaps they ought to eliminate their audacious disregard for black life.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based in Washington, D.C.

'Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, Jr.' is New York Times Bestseller; also NAACP Image Award Nominee

Jan. 3, 2015

'Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, Jr.' is New York Times Bestseller; also NAACP Image Award Nominee

barrybook

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The autobiography of the late D.C. mayor Marion Barry, "Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, Jr.," has made the New York Times Bestseller List, his family has announced.

The book has also been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. The 46th Annual Image Awards will take place on Friday, February 6, and is set to air live on TV One. Barry's book nomination falls under the category, "Outstanding Literary Work-Biography/Autobiography."

The book, released June 18, 2014, fulfills the dream of Barry to make the New York Times Bestseller List. He died Nov. 23 while still serving as a member of the D.C. City Council.

The autobiography is now listed on the "Bestseller List" under the category: "Race and Civil Rights," according to a release.

Barry traveled the country and throughout the Washington DC Metropolitan area, speaking and promoting his book at numerous book signings and events, including before a packed audience as part of 50th anniversary of the Washington Informer newspaper. The book has also been nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

"Mayor for Life" chronicles his 52+ year journey as a public servant and Civil Rights activist.

Five Keys to 'Keeping it Rich' by Zach Rinkins

Jan. 3, 2015

Five Keys to 'Keeping it Rich'
Sakina Cole Aims to Close the Wealth Gap

By Zach Rinkins

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Sakina Spruell Cole should have an “S” on her chest with a cape to match. Cole is a financial journalist, web series host, entrepreneur, mother and wife. After two decades of promoting financial literacy and economic empowerment, she is not tired yet. This Rutgers University alumna is armed with a purpose.

“I want to help close the wealth gap between people of color and mainstream communities,” says Cole, the CEO of Cole Media, Inc., a full-service communications company based in Newark, New Jersey.

Not one to merely talk about it, Cole acquired Minuteman Press of Flemington and created the Keeping It Rich brand of products to increase financial literacy within the general market. Those products include a blog, seminars, financial booklets and a web show that airs on BET.com.

“These financial products deliver much needed personal finance information to an audience in a lively, upbeat format so everyone can relate to it,” says Cole. “I try to share every bit of my own life when it concerns finances because people feel so uncomfortable talking about their own financial situation.”

Cole complied five keys to “Keeping It Rich.” They are defining your good life, investing in your financial goals, building your credit, owning something and hiring your staff.

Define

“People really need to define what the rich life is for you. For some people, the rich life is having $1.7 million. For others, it may be having a four-bedroom house with a white picket fence and enough grass for the dog to run around. It’s really important to stop and define what the rich life looks for you.”

Invest In Your Goals

“Figure out how much money it costs to secure your rich life. Understand the costs of your dream home or business. Then save and invest towards that paying for that dream.”

Build

“You have to build your credit. Because without credit you cannot do anything in America.”

Invest

“You need to own a home and/or a business. You will need assets that will continue to generate wealth.”

Hire

“A lot times we shy away from hiring people. But, we really need to hire people so that we can maintain and sustain our rich life. If you have four kids, you may need to hire a nanny so you can work harder and produce wealth for yourself and your family.”

Zach Rinkins is the Associated Press award-winning host/producer of the Rinkins Report. Find out more at www.RinkinsReport.com or on Twitter @RinkinsReport and Facebook @RinkinsReport