Time to rebuild lives, not just keep tabs on youth?
LOS ANGELES (FinalCall.com) - Some 300 probation officers, law enforcement personnel, child welfare workers, and politicians gathered at The California Endowment March 17 to discuss building a network between the community and local government to help rebuild the lives of youth and adults on probation. The “Rebuilding Lives” summit is part of an 18-month transformation planned for the...
Interview: Apartheid in the name of medicine
FCNNEWSSOURCE (FinalCall.com) - In many ways, community epidemiologist Yaa Simpson and ethicist Harriet A. Washington think alike. So when Ms. Simpson invited the noted author to address an audience in Chicago at a National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day event, Ms. Simpson knew what to expect. “Her task was to layout why Blacks fear medical research,” said Ms. Simpson, who held...
Be your best you!
All of us were placed on this planet for a purpose. A person who is blessed to find his gift and his or her purpose is a truly blessed person indeed. Sometimes we may find we have a gift, but we don't know how to use it to help others and to be a testament to the...
New York gets first Black governor
NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) - David Alexander Paterson, 53, has become the first Black governor of the state of New York, the third Black man since Reconstruction to serve in that capacity. Deval Patrick is presently the governor of Massachusetts, and L. Douglas Wilder served Virginia, leaving office in 1994. The Brooklyn-born Harlem raised governor is married to Michelle Paige Paterson...
Community mourns young ‘hero’
Gang shootings stun Los Angeles (FCN, 03-20-2008) LOS ANGELES (FinalCall.com) - Thousands of relatives, friends, teammates, politicians and community leaders commemorated the life of Jamiel Andre Shaw II (Jas) during a March 11 memorial service at the West Angeles Cathedral. The 17-year-old was allegedly shot and killed by a Latino gang member on March 2, just doors from...
Presidential debates too narrow, say media critics
WASHINGTON - U.S. media critics, foreign policy experts and human rights advocates are accusing the moderators of this year’s televised presidential debates of asking trivial questions designed to produce conflict, rather than addressing the country’s most pressing issues. Danny Schechter, editor of Mediachannel.org, a media watchdog organization, said the failings of the candidate debates “lie with the whole process,...
Charges dismissed against the Black Riders Liberation Party
LOS ANGELES (FinalCall.com) - Prosecutors have dismissed gang enhancement charges against members of a revolutionary liberation group that are awaiting trial on alleged illegal weapons charges. The dismissal comes one week after members of the Black Riders Liberation Party (BRLP) and other police brutality groups demanded their freedom at a press conference in Leimert Park on March...
Muslims push for public school holidays
NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) - A New York City councilman and 12 colleagues have sponsored a resolution calling on the state to require the Department of Education to incorporate the Muslim holidays of Eid Ul-Fitr and Eid Ul-Adha as observed holidays in the city’s public school calendar. Immediately Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Resolution 1281 a “slippery slope,” saying students cannot afford...
Court strikes down home schooling in Calif.
Home Schooling: Fastest growing way to educate children (FCN, 09-28-2006) LOS ANGELES (FinalCall.com) - Parents in California launched a petition drive to home school their children March 13 after the California Court of Appeals ruled they have no legal right to teach their children at home without credentials. The Feb. 28 ruling reversed a previous Superior Court decision stating...
Job bias charges rose in 2007
FCNNEWSSOURCE Discrimination, not illegal immigration, fuels Black job crisis (FCN, 05-10-2006) WASHINGTON , D.C. - Discrimination complaints increased, with the biggest single-year rise since the early 1990s, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. With nearly 83,000 discrimination charges filings in 2007, the numbers were the highest since 2002 and up by nine percent over the previous year, the EEOC reported....