I don’t know how you celebrate the New Year in your family, and for many cultures today is not New Year’s day since world-wide there are many variations.
But in my family, who still hold on to traditions of the American south, it would not be New Year’s without black-eyed peas and ham.
Today’s NYT Editorial A Parting Shot at Women’s Rights is another reminder that though he is a lame duck POTUS, GWB is still in power and can decide to make the lives of women, particularly poor women worse, with an un-Merry Xmas gift to my sisters.
Undermining women’s reproductive rights and access to health care has been a pervasive theme of the outgoing administration. On his first full day in office, President Bush imposed the “global gag rule,” which prohibits taxpayer dollars from going to international family-planning groups that perform abortions using their own funds or that advocate for safe abortion laws.
During the primary battles and on through the GE, I realized that there is a lack of understanding among many progressives across the blogosphere about Puerto Ricans; those here on the mainland and those on the island.
Lumped into the demographic category of “Hispanics” or “Latinos”, Puerto Ricans here in the States tend to be a solidly Democratic voting block, but contrary to most assumptions that the entire community is clustered in the Northeast (New York, New Jersey, PA, MA, CT) the Puerto Rican diaspora has expanded over the years, and there are now growing communities in other locations. Florida is a case in point – contrary to the belief that the Spanish-speaking community of FL is solidly Cuban-American, Puerto Ricans are becoming a major force there, and helped win the state for Barack.
I would like to call attention to a new project – just launched last week, which will provide insights, news, analysis and information by and about Puerto Ricans.
The name of the site is US-PuertoRicans.org .
The Baltimore Sun had this news brief today:
Public radio cancels 2 programs, cuts 64 jobs
National Public Radio announced yesterday that it is canceling two programs and eliminating 64 jobs, blaming a “sharp” decline in corporate underwriting and other revenue…Many of the staff cuts were realized by canceling two shows, Day to Day and News & Notes. Both are scheduled to go off the air March 20.
While many of you are commemorating those friends and loved ones who died of AIDS today, and discussing the latest efforts in the world-wide pandemic, let us not forget a battle right here at home that still needs to be won.
The United States still has a policy that bans the federal funding of Syringe Exchange Programs (SEPs, sometimes referred to as NEPs – Needle Exchange Programs).
The most recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA) has a letter to the editor:
Syringe Access and HIV Incidence in the United States by Dr. Sharon Stancliff, from the Harm Reduction Coalition.
Now that we have been told that the Obama’s have selected Sidwell Friends school for their daughters, Sasha and Malia, I thought it might be interesting to explore the history of the school, which I was vaguely aware of when I lived in DC, and whose name had cropped up in my studies of the Society of Friends and their role in the debates over slavery and segregation in this country.
Not much information was available at Wikipedia but it gave me a starting point:
Sidwell Friends School is a pre-K-12 Quaker private school located in the United States with one campus in Washington, D.C. and one campus in the Bethesda unincorporated area in Montgomery County, Maryland.Sidwell was founded in 1883 by Thomas Sidwell. Its motto is Eluceat Omnibus Lux (“Let the light shine out from all”; it can also be translated as “by all,” an allusion to the Quaker concept of inner light). All Sidwell Friends students attend Quaker meetings for worship weekly.
Today’s Wall Street Journal had a disturbing article.
Larger Inmate Population Is Boon to Private Prisons
Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.
Disturbing to me, because at a time when our left of center community is focused on Gitmo, we tend to forget the inmates who are warehoused in our nations prisons, whose numbers are growing at alarming rates.
The United States already has this dubious distinction:
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2005). A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison. The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s incarcerated population
(Photo from AP Photo by Rich Pedroncelli)
One of the most delightful memories I have of my time spent in Washington DC during Jimmy Carter’s tenure, was his support for jazz while he lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
My most prized momento from that period is my invitation to a jazz concert on the White House lawn on June 18, 1978, held in honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival.
The Invitation
http://ap.google.com/article/A…
Activist-singer Miriam Makeba dies in Italy at 76
ROME (AP) – Miriam Makeba, the South African folk singer and anti-apartheid activist fondly known as “Mama Africa,” died early Monday in southern Italy after performing at a concert against organized crime, hospital officials said. She was 76.
The emergency room of the Pineta Grande Clinic, a private facility in Castel Volturno, near Naples, confirmed Italian news reports that the singer had died after being brought there.
The ANSA news agency reported that Makeba apparently suffered a heart attack just at the end of the concert, where she had sung for about 30 minutes to show solidarity for Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, who received death threats after writing a book about the Camorra, the Naples-area crime syndicate.
The news of Makeba’s death caused shock and grief in South Africa.
They are my mother’s family. They were held in bondage in Loudoun county. After emancipation they remained, to till the soil, to birth babies, to build walls and houses – many of which still stand today. They are buried in a quiet cemetery in the woods. Their spirit lives on in me. On this day, as I sit here watching with quiet joy, I see a change in Virginia, which I pray will change America, and change the world.
If you are voting in Virginia today, cast that vote for all those who came before, who never had the chance.
I want to share their stories here today, in hope that their dreams for the future of this land will today come to fruition.