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| In New York City, a firebrand educator with ties to a white supremacist group is running a Bronx Catholic school where most of the students are black and Latino. Do you know who is running your children's school? | | | 
White supremacist principal
running Bronx school with majority black and Latino students BY Corinne Lestch DAILY NEWS WRITER Sunday, July 31st 2011 
Andrew Theodorakis/News - Frank Borzellieri, who tried to ban "anti-American" books and fire an openly-gay teacher as a Queens school board member, is the new principal of a Bronx Catholic school. A firebrand educator with ties to a white supremacist group is running a Bronx Catholic school where most of the students are black and Latino, the Daily News has learned.
Frank Borzellieri, 48, was quietly promoted to principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School two years ago - despite a history of controversial writings and campaigns, including a push to ban a biography on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 2004, Borzellieri wrote the book "Don't Take It Personally: Race, Immigration, Crime and Other Heresies," in which he declares "diversity is a weakness" and says the rising black and Hispanic populations in America will lead to the "New Dark Age."
He has also written frequently for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance, with which he is still "intimately involved," the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center says.
Borzellieri declined comment.
Mount Carmel pastor, the Rev. Eric Rapaglia, said he knew of Borzellieri's views, but didn't "see any cause for concern" when he hired him to run the 200-student elementary school.
"I knew of him from my last parish," he said. "Do I agree with all of it? No. But I think much of it is valuable and logical and reasonable.
"A lot of his ideas would actually benefit minorities," he added.
Borzellieri, who unsuccessfully ran for state Assembly in 1994 and City Council in 1997, previously made headlines as a school board member in District 24 in Queens, where he lives.
During his board tenure, from 1993 to 2002, he tried to:
·Ban literature he labeled "anti-American" from school libraries. His targets included books on different races and culture, and a biography of King. ·Remove an openly gay teacher and gay-rights activist from the classroom at Public School 199 in Sunnyside, and ban school employees from making any references to homosexuality. ·Introduce a resolution calling for students to be taught that U.S. culture is superior. Borzellieri's views rankled teachers at St. Barnabas School in Woodlawn, Bronx, where he taught English from 2006 to 2009. "You can't have someone with those beliefs or who writes that kind of stuff working at a Catholic school," said Annemarie Zagaglia, principal of St. Barnabas School during Borzellieri's time there.
When Rapaglia was the pastor of St. Barnabas, Zagaglia warned him that teachers had legitimate concerns about Borzellieri. She said Rapaglia "dismissed the whole thing, and that was the end of that."
Rapaglia became pastor of Mount Carmel - in Fordham, Bronx - in 2009 and hired Borzellieri as principal that year.
A former teacher at St. Barnabas said she alerted the Archdiocese of New York in 2007 that students had complained Borzellieri was using them as "research" for his books, but the teacher never got a response.
Archdiocese spokesman Joe Zwilling said there is no record of a complaint against Borzellieri, but said the matter is under review.
Zwilling added that sweeping changes in hiring parish principals went into effect in 2009 - right after Borzellieri got the gig.
"Previously, pastors had great leeway and discretion in the hiring of principals," Zwilling said. "That practice usually worked well, but we saw room for improvement."
Parents of students at Mount Carmel voiced concern after the Daily News informed them of Borzellieri's past.
"I've heard kids say they don't like him," said one mother, a Jamaican immigrant. "I was wondering where the heck he came from. He shouldn't be teaching here. He could look at kids differently because they're black. It's not fair."
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| Where are the innovators and fierce advocates for educating Black children? | | | 
We Need Oscar Micheauxs for School Reform  | | Oscar Micheaux |
By RiShawn Biddle July 29, 2011 When we think of black filmmakers, our thoughts turn to Tyler Perry, photographer-turned-director Gordon Parks, or even to Melvin Van Peebles. But long before Van Peebles even thought of directing a film, there was Oscar Micheaux, who successfully dramatized the lives of African Americans in the early part of the 20th century - and challenged the bigoted thinking of D.W. Griffith and Jim Crow segregationists in the American South with his 1920 classic, Within Our Gates - without any form of support from Hollywood's studio system. For school reformers, Micheaux's iconoclasm, entrepreneurial spirit and forceful dedication offers some lessons on the kind of driving forces we need to reform American public education.
At the time Micheaux started producing films, Hollywood had little use for African Americans and gave even less attention to the black experience. Save for the occasional Spanish-American War soldier, images of blacks were relegated to crude, bigoted stereotypes of being chicken thieves, maids and slaves supporting their Antebellum masters against northern denigration of their way of life. Those images became even nastier in 1915 when Griffith adapted notorious (and now-forgotten) preacher-turned-race propagandist Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman into The Birth of a Nation, Hollywood's first blockbuster film. The sellout crowds, along with the tacit endorsement of the film by President Woodrow Wilson, helped fuel a period of violent bigotry that included the revival and growth of the Klu Klux Klan as a major political force even in Midwestern and Eastern states such as Indiana and New York.
Stepping in to combat these stereotypes and American bigotry was Micheaux. He was an unlikely filmmaker. The fifth of 13 kids in a farming family who were adherents of Booker T. Washington's economic empowerment vision for advancing civil rights, Micheaux was sent out early to make his own way. As a teen, his dad sent him into the nearby town of Metropolis, Ill., to market and sell the family's vegetable harvest. By 16, he had moved to Chicago, where he would work in stock yards, steel mills and as a railroad porter. With a couple of thousand dollars in savings, Micheaux took his money and informal education about what it took to make things happen to tiny Dallas, South Dakota, where he became a homesteader and began writing stories about life as a black man in the western frontier for the Chicago Defender and other publications. From there, he became a best-selling author and book publisher, writing and printing books that portrayed the efforts of Black Americans to overcome official and de-facto bigotry and attaining economic success.
Micheaux wasn't the first to realize that offering black film goers a respite from the worst America offered at the time could be both profitable and powerful in overcoming bigotry. Just as Micheaux's first novel went to press in 1913, another writer, William Foster, had started his own studio and movie theater, followed by Luther J. Pollard four years later. Micheaux didn't recognize that he had the capability to get into the film business until two brothers in the film business, George and Noble Johnson, approached Micheaux about adapting his first novel for the screen. Driven by the belief that he should control the means of production for (and the resulting profits from) his own work, Micheaux successfully raised funds from local farmers to start his own studio. His first film, The Homesteader, would become praised as one of the best films about African-American life and became a beacon of pride for blacks tired of white racism.
By 1920, Micheaux stepped up his game and set out to challenge the very assumptions that far too many Americans without a (detectable) drop of melanin - especially Griffith and a now-near-dying Wilson - had blacks when he produced. The result of that work, Within Our Gates, was decried by whites at the time for its brutal portrayal of lynching - which took the lives of at least 4,743 blacks between 1882 and 1968 - and the terrorism of hard-working blacks by whites. It was such an affront to some that is was banned from some theaters; few versions remain available today. But for African-Americans, the film made clear the terror they felt after race riots in cities such as Chicago the year before - and served as a harbinger of the racial violence to come, especially the race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the destruction of Rosewood, Fla.
What Micheaux did was marry his passion for improving the lives of African-Americans with his entrepreneurial drive and business savvy. He saw what he was doing as both a moral cause - the uplift of Black America from the ravages of discrimination - and economic self-empowerment for himself and the people around him. From his studio in Harlem, he produced more than 44 films, many of which would feature complex characters that portrayed every aspect of black life and interactions with their white counterparts. As Tyler Perry would do eight decades later, Micheaux's films particularly appealed to middle class blacks, which both guaranteed profits and build and sustain an economic class that turned segregation on its head to form insurance companies, retailers and other forms of commerce.
 | | Paul Robeson in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul (1925) |
Given the lack of access to Hollywood's studio system - in which emerging, well-capitalized, publicly-traded giants such as Loews controlled both production (through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) and the movie theaters in which films were shown - Micheaux learned quickly how to be savvy in marketing, operations, and production. He timed the premiere of his first film to the arrival of black soldiers returning home after fighting in the First World War. Films such as Body and Soul and God's Step Children were often one-set affairs, condensing action and drama to a single take. To make films interesting in spite of their poor lighting, he had to develop new editing techniques. One was the cross-cutting, the concept of alternating the action in one scene with that in another. Film goers watching Within Our Gates got to watch the attempted assault of a young woman interspersed with a lynching, getting Micheaux's message and the accompanying dramatic effect. And while Micheaux could depend on well-trained actors such as Evelyn Preer and Harlem's Lafayette Players, he also had to another approach with which Perry would be familiar: Taking amateurs off the street and putting them in films, letting them learn on the fly, becoming confident, well-trained actors on the screen. For Body and Soul, Micheaux gave the lead role to an athlete and lawyer who left the legal field to perform on stage. That actor would be the legendary Paul Robeson.
All this savvy allowed Micheaux's company to survive the Great Depression even as most black studios and many Hollywood outfits either went out of business or were folded into better-financed outfits. It also helped him leave a proud legacy that helped change the world. By the time Micheaux died in 1951, he had managed to advance the slow integration of blacks in mainstream American entertainment and life. The success he had in catering to black audiences led whites (including the legendary John Houseman) to bring more blacks into mainstream theater and movie roles. Micheaux's work would help pave the way for Dorothy Dandridge to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the pre-Civil Rights Movement era, which in turn, paved the way for Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and other actors. Without Micheaux, there would be no Van Peebles or Gordon Parks, no Spike Lee or Tyler Perry. Even Oprah Winfrey, who has become as well-known for her business savvy (even bringing in her talent agent and manager in house in order to avoid giving them a cut of her earnings) as for her now-defunct TV show, has used Micheaux as a model for her work.  | | Evelyn Preer in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1920) |
One can say that Micheaux accomplished as much for Black America as Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And in some ways, he may done even more, especially for financial and social entrepreneurs regardless of their race or class. He proved that it was possible for anyone to be entrepreneurial, achieve greatness and even change communities and the world around them even if they don't immediately have access to resources.
And the same steps Micheaux brought to bear in his day must be used by school reformers today. It will take a collection of men and women with entrepreneurial drive, operational savvy and passion for overhauling education so that all children can succeed in order to take on the challenges of transforming a system that has poorly served so many kids for far too long.After all, reform efforts are wasted if they fail because of bad strategic, tactical and operational decisions. It will also take strong rhetorical and polemical engagement with education traditionalists - many of which are ready to engage in name-calling, sophistry and crude propaganda - in order to win the day. This means being thoughtful and forceful, willing to challenge one's own assumptions and strongly poke holes in myths, and even using media smartly in advancing support for school choice, teacher quality reforms and Parent Power.
Reformers must also be as savvy with economic, social and political resources as Micheaux had to be in his time. This means embracing what former Urban League president Hugh Price called the impromptu leaders, men and women who don't come out of Teach For America, may have never been in Education Pioneers and, perhaps, may not even have had an interest in education until they dealt with experiences involving their own kin. This is especially critical. If not for Virginia Walden Ford, D.C. would still be a Superfund site of American public education; without a Gwen Samuel, there wouldn't be talk about reform in Connecticut and Parent Power movements spouting throughout the country.
For school reformers, it means looking outside the box, looking for hires outside of the TFA alumni circles and putting those who are passionate about and committed to reform into their ranks. It also means working with grassroots organizations and churches, who want to improve their communities and realize that education is at the center of that renewal. And for charter school operators and other school turnaround players, it means putting parents at the head of education decisionmaking and governance. This includes putting parents and families on the boards and advisory councils of charters, and embracing the concept of allowing parents to plan out individualized education plans.
 | | Producer and director Tyler Perry |
This savvy use of resources extends to the possibilities that can come with digital learning and DIY education. For reformers and families, in particular, DIY education and digital learning offers the possibility of providing high-quality instruction and curriculum that can be tailored to every child's learning needs and, at the same time, provide those opportunities to all children no matter their racial or economic background. Even teaming up with bookseller giant Barnes & Noble to provide classes and textbooks through a $249 Nook Color (which can then be donated to poor parents in exchange for their commitment to creating classes and tutoring efforts in their neighborhoods) would be an incredible thing to do.
And finally, reformers must embrace their work as a moral force for lifting up communities the same way Micheaux did with his films. As Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone told education philanthropist Katherine Bradley when she began her school reform efforts a decade ago, it is critical to overhaul the schools at the center of the lives of children and their communities. Embracing Micheaux's stubbornly positive and positively stubborn vision will lead to better schools and better lives for all children, and help our poorest kids avoid the brutality of poverty in their adulthoods.
Now, more than ever, especially as education traditionalists find themselves on the wrong side of history, we need to cultivate more Oscar Micheauxs for the reform of American public education, and embrace the savvy approaches he took to advancing social opportunities for Black America.
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| Will your kids live a healthy life? | | | 
U.S. Minorities No Strangers to Health Ills They're more likely than whites to develop a number of chronic and deadly diseases
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) -- Though minorities in the United States face an array of challenges, chief among them may be personal health and well-being.
African Americans, Hispanic Americans and other minority groups are more likely than whites to develop a number of chronic and deadly diseases, according to mounting evidence.
Infant mortality, obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and communicable diseases are among the wide range of health issues for which minorities find themselves at greater risk than whites, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The evidence of health disparities would be easy to ignore were they not so well-documented," said Stephen B. Thomas, director of the Center for Health Equity and a professor of health services administration in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland. "Members of racial minority groups live sicker and die younger than their white counterparts."
Researchers have identified a number of factors that help create the various health disparities, among them location, socioeconomic status and access to health insurance and quality health care, said Garth Graham, deputy assistant secretary for minority health at the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.  | | Fruits and vegetables are essential for good health. |
"There are some common factors," Graham said. "There is no one common cause, but there are common factors."
The federal government has swung into action on the issue, creating a new institute within the National Institutes of Health to focus on minority health disparities.
The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which came into being last September as part of the government's larger health-care reform effort, has been charged with researching differences in incidence and prevalence of disease among America's population groups.
According to the CDC, health disparities that have been identified include: - Infant mortality. The infant death rate among African Americans and American Indians is more than double that of whites.
- Obesity. African Americans and Mexican Americans are more likely than whites in the United States to be obese, a condition that increases the chances of developing a number of other health problems.
- Diabetes. Hispanics in the United States are nearly twice as likely to die from diabetes as are whites. American Indians have a diabetes rate equal to that of whites.
- Cardiovascular disease. Death rates from heart disease are more than 40 percent higher for African Americans than for whites.
- Cancer. The death rate for all cancers is 30 percent higher for African Americans than it is for whites. African American women have a higher death rate from breast cancer, even though they are screened for breast cancer at nearly the same rate as white women. "More white women develop breast cancer, but more black women die from breast cancer," Thomas said.
Why is this happening?
Some health problems have been linked to genetic predisposition. For example, African Americans are more likely to have sickle cell anemia than other racial groups, Graham said.
But research has found that the problem of health disparities in America also involves a number of societal factors and problems.
Minorities, on average, occupy a lower rung on the socioeconomic ladder, which makes it difficult for them to get quality health care, Graham and Thomas said.
"You have more people who are working in jobs where they are not offered insurance or are offered inadequate insurance," Graham said.  | | Water is important for good health. | Location also plays a role. Minority groups tend to reside in places that do not lend themselves to healthy living.
"If you end up living in a neighborhood with no sidewalks, that makes it hard to walk for exercise," Thomas said. "If you live in a neighborhood rife with crime and violence, it's very difficult to feel safe to allow your children out to play."
Such places also are often "food deserts," where fast food is readily available but healthy options such as fresh fruit and vegetables are hard to come by, Graham said.
These areas are less likely to have many doctors' offices or health clinics, Graham added, further reducing people's access to health care.
Thomas also cites research that shows racism plays a role in creating health disparities. "It can be as blatant as minority neighborhoods that do not have doctors' offices in them, and it can be as subtle as not being able to speak the language of your Latino patients," Thomas said.
Overcoming these issues will be key in truly reforming America's health-care system and reducing health costs for everyone, he said. Programs are afoot to encourage doctors to take up shop in lower socioeconomic areas and to promote healthier lifestyle choices among minority groups.
"We cannot afford to have these populations suffer in a whirlpool of preventable illness and death," Thomas said. "This can no longer be, 'That's their problem.' It's all of our problem."
 | | Tennis, running, walking, swimming, bicycling, basketball, martial arts or any physical sport is good for your health! |
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| Eufaula, Alabama signs on for the Million Father March | | | .jpg)
Eufaula City School officials urge dads to get involved By Anastasia Scarborough Published: July 27, 2011 Eufaula, Alabama - Fathers of Eufaula City School students will have several opportunities to volunteer at their child's school during the 2011-2012 school year.
One way is through the "Million Father March." This program, launched by the Chicago-based Black Star Project, encourages fathers to escort their kids to the first day of class. The first day of class for ECS students is Thursday, Aug. 4.
 | | Toney Coleman volunteers at his son's school. |
This school year, states the NorthStar News & Analysis, the program also wants dads to volunteer 10 hours during the academic year at their child's school. The Black Star Project also urges big brothers, uncles, grandfathers, male cousins and other male figures to participate in the program. Emily Jackson, assistant principal at Eufaula Primary School, approves of the project.
"We would love for any dad to walk his children in for the first day," she states in a recent email.
The Million Father March begins Monday, Aug. 1 and ends Sept. 15. The program is now in its eighth year.
Another way dads can be active in their kid's school is through Eufaula Elementary School's FBI program.
FBI (Fathers Being Involved) will be in its third year at EES beginning Thursday. The program encourages students' fathers to volunteer at the school. This school year, EES Principal Reeivice Girtman says FBI dads will be required to volunteer for 15 hours. "Volunteering" could mean reading a book to his kid's class, chaperoning field trips, eating lunch with his child or grading papers.
FBI's counterpart program MIA (Moms In Action) offers volunteer opportunities for students' mothers. Parents that complete 15 hours of volunteer time get a free FBI or MIA t-shirt.
Since their inception in 2009, the programs have had 20 fathers and 15 mothers to participate. Girtman says that students seeing adults (especially male adults) that aren't faculty at EES walking the halls is very important.
"Many of our students don't have fathers in their homes. Father figures play a significant role in the lives of young children. Just seeing (adult males) walking around the school and being involved (in the school's daily routines) makes a big impression on our kids," says Girtman.
Those interested in participating in the FBI/MIA programs may contact EES at 687-1134, consult the EES handbook or attend the EES open house Tuesday, Aug. 2, at 5:30 p.m. at the Eufaula City Auditorium.
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The Million Father March is managed by The Black Star Project and sponsored by Open Society Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achievement. Please visit our website at www.blackstarproject.org to bring the Million Father March to your city or for complete information about the march. You may also email blackstar1000@ameritech.net or call 773.285.9600 for more information or to join the March. |
| Will U.S. university dollars re-colonize Africa and take the land from African farmers? "No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans, create jobs or improve food security." Obang Metho Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia | | | 
US universities in Africa 'land grab' Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out
 | | Photograph: Boston Globe via Getty Images |
John Vidal and Claire Provost guardian.co.ukWednesday 8 June 2011 20.18 BST US universities are reportedly using endowment funds to make deals that may force thousands from their land in Africa. Photograph: Boston Globe via Getty Images
Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.
Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world.
The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years. Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa's largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers.
Researchers at the California-based Oakland Institute think that Emergent's clients in the US may have invested up to $500m in some of the most fertile land in the expectation of making 25% returns.
Emergent said the deals were handled responsibly. "Yes, university endowment funds and pension funds are long-term investors," a spokesman said. "We are investing in African agriculture and setting up businesses and employing people. We are doing it in a responsible way ... The amounts are large. They can be hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not landgrabbing. We want to make the land more valuable. Being big makes an impact, economies of scale can be more productive."
Chinese and Middle Eastern firms have previously been identified as "grabbing" large tracts of land in developing countries to grow cheap food for home populations, but western funds are behind many of the biggest deals, says the Oakland institute, an advocacy research group.
The company that manages Harvard's investment funds declined to comment. "It is Harvard management company policy not to discuss investments or investment strategy and therefore I cannot confirm the report," said a spokesman. Vanderbilt also declined to comment.
Oakland said investors overstated the benefits of the deals for the communities involved. "Companies have been able to create complex layers of companies and subsidiaries to avert the gaze of weak regulatory authorities. Analysis of the contracts reveal that many of the deals will provide few jobs and will force many thousands of people off the land," said Anuradha Mittal, Oakland's director.
In Tanzania, the memorandum of understanding between the local government and US-based farm development corporation AgriSol Energy, which is working with Iowa University, stipulates that the two main locations - Katumba and Mishamo - for their project are refugee settlements holding as many as 162,000 people that will have to be closed before the $700m project can start. The refugees have been farming this land for 40 years.
In Ethiopia, a process of "villagisation" by the government is moving tens of thousands of people from traditional lands into new centres while big land deals are being struck with international companies.
The largest land deal in South Sudan, where as much as 9% of the land is said by Norwegian analysts to have been bought in the last few years, was negotiated between a Texas-based firm, Nile Trading and Development and a local co-operative run by absent chiefs. The 49-year lease of 400,000 hectares of central Equatoria for around $25,000 (£15,000) allows the company to exploit all natural resources including oil and timber. The company, headed by former US Ambassador Howard Eugene Douglas, says it intends to apply for UN-backed carbon credits that could provide it with millions of pounds a year in revenues.
In Mozambique, where up to 7m hectares of land is potentially available for investors, western hedge funds are said in the report to be working with South Africans businesses to buy vast tracts of forest and farmland for investors in Europe and the US. The contracts show the government will waive taxes for up to 25 years, but few jobs will be created.
"No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans, create jobs or improve food security," said Obang Metho of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia."These agreements - many of which could be in place for 99 years - do not mean progress for local people and will not lead to food in their stomachs. These deals lead only to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors."
"The scale of the land deals being struck is shocking", said Mittal. "The conversion of African small farms and forests into a n
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