October 08, 2015 

By Marian Wright Edelman 

NNPA Columnist 

Pope Francis speaks out faithfully and forcefully against poverty and has been called “the pope of the poor.” But on his first visit to the United States there was demoralizing news about poverty, especially child poverty, in our nation – the world’s largest economy.

Despite six years of economic recovery, children remain the poorest group in America.

Children are poor if they live in a family of four with an annual income below $24,418 –$2,035 a month, $470 a week, $67 a day. Extreme poverty is income less than half this.

New Census Bureau data reveal that nearly one-third of the 46.7 million poor people in the United States in 2014 were children. Of the more than 15.5 million poor children, 70 percent were children of color who already constitute the majority of our nation’s youngest children and will be the majority of all our children by 2020.

They continue to be disproportionately poor: 37 percent of Black children and 32 percent of Hispanic children are poor compared to 12 percent of White, non-Hispanic children. This is morally scandalous and economically costly. Every year we let millions of children remain poor costs our nation more than $500 billion as a result of lost productivity and extra health and crime costs stemming from child poverty.

The Black child poverty rate increased 10 percent between 2013 and 2014 while rates for children of other races and ethnicities declined slightly. The Black extreme child poverty rate increased 13 percent with nearly 1 in 5 Black children living in extreme poverty. Although the Hispanic child poverty rate fell slightly, Hispanic children remain our largest number of poor children.

Nearly 1 in 4 children under 5 years old is poor and almost half live in extreme poverty. More than 40 percent of Black children under 5 are poor and nearly 25 percent of young Black children are extremely poor.

New state data show child poverty rates in 2014 remained at record high levels across 40 states, with only 10 states showing significant declines between 2013 and 2014. In 22 states, 40 percent or more Black children were poor. In 32 states, more than 30 percent of Hispanic children were poor. And in 24 states, more than 30 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native children were poor. Only Hawaii had a Black child poverty rate below 20 percent while only two states, Kentucky and West Virginia, had White, non-Hispanic child poverty rates over 20 percent.

The rates are staggering, especially when we know there are steps Congress could take right now to end child poverty and save taxpayer money now and in the future. In CDF’s recent Ending Child Poverty Now report based on an analysis by the nonpartisan Urban Institute, we proposed nine policy changes which would immediately reduce child poverty 60 percent and Black child poverty 72 percent and lift the floor of decency for 97 percent of all poor children by ensuring parents the resources to support and nurture their children: jobs with livable wages, affordable high-quality child care, supports for working families like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), and safety nets for basic needs like nutrition, housing assistance and child support.

Congress must make permanent improvements in pro-work tax credits (both the EITC and the CTC), increase the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) benefit, and expand housing subsidies and quality child care investments for children when parents work. To complement gains in these areas and to reduce child poverty long term, we must ensure all children comprehensive affordable health care, high-quality early childhood development and learning opportunities to get ready for school and a level education playing field to help all children achieve and succeed in life. It is a great national, economic and military security threat that a majority of all children in America cannot read or compute at grade level and that nearly three-fourths of our Black and Latino children cannot.

Data show key safety net programs lifted millions of people, including children above the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) poverty line, between 2013 and 2014. These supports all reduced child poverty: SNAP (4.7 million people), rent subsidies (2.8 million people), and the Earned Income Tax Credit and the low-income portion of the Child Tax Credit (roughly 10 million people including more than 5 million children). There also is strong evidence these measures will provide long-term benefits for children.

We know how to reduce child poverty but keep refusing to do it. How can our Congressional leaders even discuss spending as much as $400 billion to extend tax cuts for corporations and businesses while denying more than 15.5 million poor children – 70 percent non-White – the opportunity to improve their odds of succeeding in school and in life?

We can and must do more right now as children have only one childhood.

Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.

October 01, 2015 

By JENNIFER PELTZ  

Associated Press  

First lady Michelle Obama has some advice for teenage girls: Don't shy from being the smartest kid in the class. And never mind what the boys think. 

“Compete with the boys. Beat the boys,” she told about 1,000 schoolgirls and young women Tuesday at an event aimed at publicizing her “Let Girls Learn” campaign to expand girls’ access to education in developing countries and encourage American girls to take advantage of their opportunities. But the first lady also gave some impromptu, personal pep talks on handling the pressures of adolescence.

On dealing with the frustrations, embarrassments and slights of high school: “I know being a teenager is hard,” but it’s temporary and not a template for the rest of life: “Half these people, you’re not going to know when you’re 60.”

And on whether being brainy comes at a social cost: “There is no boy, at this age, that is cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting your education,” the water pump operator's daughter-turned-Harvard-trained lawyer said. “If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the president of the United States.”

(To her point, the Obamas met well after high school, while both were working at a law firm.)

Mrs. Obama has made girls' schooling one of her signature issues during her husband’s second term, particularly after the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in April 2014.

After she and the president unveiled Let Girls Learn in March, she traveled to Japan, Cambodia and London to promote it and introduced an online offshoot recently at the Global Citizen Festival, asking concertgoers in New York’s Central Park to tweet photos of themselves with the hashtag #62MillionGirls. The number represents the number of girls worldwide the U.S. Agency for International Development has said are not in school.

Let Girls Learn involves hundreds of grassroots projects aimed at countering economic or cultural pressures that spur many girls to drop out — pressures such as early or forced marriage, fear for girls' safety as they travel to and from school, the expense of school fees, or societal beliefs that it’s less important to educate girls than boys.

And for American girls, “we want this to spur and inspire you to not take your education for granted” and to use it to help the cause, Mrs. Obama said at Tuesday’s discussion at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. Academy Award-winning actress Charlize Theron, who founded an AIDS-prevention charity in Africa, and former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard joined in the discussion, sponsored by Glamour magazine.

Firdaws Roufai, a 15-year-old sophomore at New York’s Central Park East High School, appreciated hearing the first lady acknowledge that being a teenager can be stressful.

“It encouraged me to keep going,” she said.

September 24, 2015

Special to the Sentinel 

On the eve the 50^th Anniversary Nguzo Saba 2015 Conference and Awards Luncheon held by the African American Cultural Center and the Organization Us, the Sentinel interviewed the central figure of this half century celebration and milestone, Dr. Maulana Karenga. An activist scholar of international recognition, Dr. Karenga is professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach. He is also chair of the Organization Us and of the National Association of Kawaida Organizations (NAKO), executive director of the African American Cultural Center and co-chair of the Black Community, Clergy and Labor Alliance (BCCLA). He is most widely known as the creator of Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles). Kwanzaa is a pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture and is observed by millions throughout the world African community. Moreover, Dr. Karenga is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles including: Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture; Maat, The Moral Ideal of Ancient Egypt; and Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle. His latest book published to mark this 50^th anniversary is Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, essays written during the Black Power Movement and reflective of his early and evolving philosophy of Kawaida.

LAS: Congratulations on your 50th Anniversary! There are many 50th Anniversaries this year, the assassination and martyrdom of Malcolm X; the Selma March; the Voting Rights Act; and the Watts Revolt. What makes this 50^th anniversary commemoration and celebration of the Organization Us, the African American Cultural Center and the introduction of your philosophy, Kawaida, and the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) unique?

DMK: Our project is unique because it includes, honors and builds on the legacy left by all those before us. Second, we have maintained an unbudging Blackness in our commitment to Black people, Black culture and Black struggle for a half century. Also our uniqueness is reflected in our resilience and endurance in the midst of savage government suppression; misinformation and disinformation; political opposition and character assassination; no big budget; and no assistance from the dominant society in terms of either funds or favors. And finally, our uniqueness is defined by our level of achievement through our overarching program of work, service, struggle and institution building on the local and national level.

LAS: What are the some of the major achievements and milestones that you commemorate and celebrate on this your 50^th anniversary?

DMK:  First of all, we commemorate and pay rightful homage to all our ancestors who taught us good, beautiful and dignity-affirming ways to understand and assert ourselves in the world. And we celebrate passing through tests of fire and furnace without being discouraged, diverted, dispirited or defeated in our active commitment to Black liberation, cultural revolution and radical social change. We have played a significant role in Black intellectual and political culture since the 60s, participating in virtually every major African-centered movement during this time from Black Power, Black arts and Black studies to Afrocentricity, the Million Man March and the reparations movements.

 Realizing with other liberation groups that we have to build and sustain the people as we fight, we committed ourselves to work, service, struggle and institution-building. Thus, we estab­lished numerous organizing initiatives and worked in cooperative projects to build institutions to provide affordable housing, accessible health care and quality education; end police abuse, establish economic cooperatives; increase political partici­pation and expand space for cultural grounding, creativity and performances.

Resisting unjust wars, we taught and practiced draft resistance, coopera­tively organized and held anti-war rallies and teach-ins against imperialist wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and supported the right of self-determination for all peoples. We advocated reparations and prisoners’ rights, trained Kasisi (chaplains) to counsel and advise prisoners and provided literature and lawyers where possible. We supported African liberation movements and pan-Africanist projects and built alliances with various Third World organizations engaging in the struggles that gave rise to and defined the times. And we continue to engage in these activi­ties and carry on the struggle on the various fronts. For we took and take the position with Paul Robeson that “The battlefront is everywhere, there is no sheltered rear”.

LAS: How have the Organization Us and the African American Cultural Center been able to survive and develop for over 50 years when most all the other organizations that began in the 60s have either gone out of existence or drastically changed their program?

Our capacity to sustain ourselves and develop ourselves over these 50 years is due to several things which we usually sum up as the quality of our leadership, philosophy and organization.  First and foremost is our groundedness in and commitment to our philosophy, Kawaida, and its core value system, the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles). Kawaida is an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world. It requires us to reach inside ourselves and constantly bring forth the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense. Our core value system, the Nguzo Saba, enables us to ground ourselves in the best of African ways and to enrich and expand our lives by practicing African values. Second, we are a small tightly knit, highly disciplined organization for struggle, committed to the liberation of African people and African cultural and ethical groundedness. Finally, we see leadership as a moral vocation to provide a philosophy, principles and program that not only satisfy human needs, but transform the people in the process, making them self-conscious agents of their own life and liberation.

LAS: Why did you choose the name Us for your organization?

DMK: I/we chose the name first to reflect the communitarian character of our organization. By that I mean, community-grounded, community-focused and community-committed. Second, it was to stress our commitment to cooperative practices. And third, it was to emphasize our commitment to collective work and responsibility, Ujima, the third principle of the Nguzo Saba.