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JENA, La. - Officials at a central Louisiana high school have banned T-shirts supporting six black students accused of beating of a white schoolmate, saying the shirts are too disruptive. About nine students at Jena High School wore the “Free the Jena 6” T-shirts Tuesday, and the slogan caused too much of a stir on campus, said LaSalle Parish Schools Superintendent Roy Breithaupt said.

John Jenkins said his three daughters wore the shirts to make a statement, not to cause trouble. “They weren’t doing anything other than wearing the shirts,” Jenkins said. “The school doesn’t have a dress code. They were covered. They’re trying to tell them what they can and can’t wear.” His son, Carwin Jones, is one of the six students charged with attempted murder in the December 2006 beating of 18-year-old Justin Barker. Barker was treated for a swollen and cut face and released the same day.

The attempted murder charges sparked outrage in the black community and drew attention from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now monitoring the cases. The Rev. Al Sharpton has also spoken up for the six students, saying the attempted-murder charges indicate a different standard of justice for blacks and whites.

One of the students, Mychal Bell, 17, was convicted on a reduced charge of aggravated second-degree battery and faces up to 22 years in prison. He had initially faced attempted murder charges. The other five teens are awaiting trial on attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

Racial tensions surfaced in Jena — a town of 2,900 with about 350 black residents — last fall, when students at the high school found three nooses hanging from a tree on campus. Three white students were suspended, but no criminal charges were filed.

Source: MSNBC

Some Highlights from Our September Issue…

NEW ORLEANS - Black contractors on Tuesday said they have been frozen out of the rebuilding of this city because federal agencies continue to dole out millions of dollars to large corporations. At a news conference, the local chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors called on Congress and federal prosecutors to investigate the contracting practices of the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The group also said they may resort to protests to get their message out.

“There’s something wrong with this cozy relationship between the Army Corps and major corporations,” said Ernest Stalberte, an association board member. Stalberte delivered his remarks in a parking lot in a hard-hit part of New Orleans and he was surrounded by large digging and dirt-moving equipment brought in by black construction companies to show off their companies’ prowess.

The government’s reliance on major companies, such as AshBritt Inc., Phillips and Jordan Inc. and ECC Operating Services Inc., to do the cleanup after Katrina has been a source of contention since Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. A congressional committee has been calling for government agencies to do more business with small companies. According to the House Small Business Committee, the Department of Defense awarded 8 percent of its Gulf Coast recovery contracts to small businesses in Louisiana between August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit, and Oct. 4, 2006. However, that number dropped to 1 percent since then, committee figures show. The committee only had figures for the Department of Defense as a whole, but corps contracts have far outweighed other military branches for Katrina work.

The corps disputes the committee’s figures and says that as of March 28, 88 percent of corps work has gone to small businesses in Louisiana. Kate Gilman, press secretary for the House Small Business Committee, said the corps’ figures are wrong because many contracts were incorrectly recorded as going to small businesses when in fact they did not. Kathy Gibbs, a corps spokeswoman in New Orleans, disagreed. “The corps has an excellent record of working with minority contractors,” she said. FEMA officials did not immediately respond with comment.

For black contractors, the recent cancellation of a $75 million home demolition contract for small businesses, in the works since October 2005, has become an incendiary decision. Stalberte said that if that contract had gone to local minority firms it would have had a ripple effect throughout the city. He said locals would have been hired and that would have helped the rebuilding. “We intend on fighting this to the death,” Stalberte said. “If we have to take our equipment, and our trucks, and our people and go to the Army Corps work site, and stop work from time to time, then we will do that.”

Source: MSNBC

When she was 18-years-old, Remi Nicole’s dad took her to Tiffany’s jewelery shop in London, telling her that she could have anything she wanted. Remi looked out of the window to see Noel Gallagher saunter past. She asked her dad to buy her a guitar instead. While most of her friends didn’t count rock bands among their idols, Remi was different. She wasn’t that bothered about hip hop, or R&B, or dance music. For her it was all about rock’n'roll. That’s why she wrote a song called ‘Rock’n'Roll’ (sample lyric: “I said I like to look good when I go on stage — strumming my guitar”).

A confident live performer, her North London vernacular and Althea & Donna-esque voice fit right in with the current musical climate of sassy, imperious female pop stars. But Remi’s songs (imagine catchy summer guitar melodies) have such personality they’re difficult to ignore.

Source

NEW YORK - A Who’s Who of black female pioneers was in the hallway inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, including former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun, billionaire Sheila Crump Johnson and Tony Award-winner Phylicia Rashad. And despite all their credentials, they all started applauding when Venus Williams walked past on her way to the court. “I wish I had more time to say hello, but center court’s calling,” Williams said. “It’s amazing, more than fantastic. Its very special.”

The women were in the hallway after taking part in an hour-long celebration of Althea Gibson, the daughter of sharecroppers in South Carolina who broke the color barrier at the U.S. Championships (now the U.S. Open) in 1950 and won the title 50 years ago. She was also the first African-American winner at the French Open (1956) and Wimbledon (1957). After that, no black woman won any of those tournaments until Serena Williams took the U.S. Open in 1999 and Venus Williams followed with the Wimbledon championship in 2000.

The sisters followed the ceremony with first-round matches in front of a night-session-record 23,737 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Venus Williams tied her career high with a 129-mph serve in beating Kira Nagy 6-1, 6-2 in 54 minutes, and Serena defeated Angelique Kerber 6-3, 7-5. The Williams sisters each have won one Grand Slam this year, and a combined 14 overall. Their opponents fell to 0-5 in majors.

Zina Garrison, the Fed Cup captain who has known the Williams sisters for 20 years, said success is not all they have in common with Gibson.

“The good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the one thing they’ve done is be true to themselves, and that’s what Althea stood for,” Garrison said. “You look at Venus and Serena, no matter what people throw at them, they’re very comfortable within their skin.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg began the ceremony, which featured 15 black women, each of whom achieved a first in her field. Former Mayor David Dinkins introduced a video tribute to Gibson, who died of respiratory failure in 2003, and Aretha Franklin belted out “Respect” before Gibson was officially inducted as the 15th member of the U.S. Open Court of Champions. Jackie Robinson’s widow, Rachel Robinson, also was in attendance.

“It was definitely a tough act to follow in a way,” Venus said. “It’s like, ‘OK, Williams can’t lose tonight.’ That was not part of the plan. It was supposed to be an all-American win tonight.” While the Williams sisters were the main attraction, Gibson’s influence was felt throughout the grounds. Eighteen-year-old Atlanta native Donald Young won his first Grand Slam match yesterday afternoon, then talked about writing a biography of Gibson in sixth grade. Another promising black player from Atlanta, 21-year-old Scoville Jenkins, preceded the Williams sisters on the Ashe court, falling in straight sets to top men’s seed Roger Federer.

“Anybody who’s remarkable like (Gibson) probably changed the sport for African-Americans. It’s unbelievable what you have to face,” Jenkins said. “For me to play on this day, it’s very special.” While Venus and Serena were winning, 22-year-old wild card Asha Rolle of Florida knocked off 2006 quarterfinalist Tatiana Golovin, the 17th seed, in three sets at Louis Armstrong Stadium. “It’s a wonderful win for (Rolle), and obviously a great night to do it,” Venus said.

Most impressively for Garrison, all the black women were cheered last night by an audience of all different colors and backgrounds - less than 60 years after Gibson wasn’t allowed to play in the national tournament, and Franklin had to go to grocery stores with her father on the road because she wasn’t allowed in restaurants. “(Gibson) probably died a little bit bitter because she didn’t feel like she got what she deserved,” Garrison said. “(Tonight) she would be extremely grateful and extremely proud. I can hear her saying, ‘Wow, about time.’ ”

Source: NY Journal News

Hi Everyone, we wanted to thank you for all participating in our survey! We received over 500 responses in the last two months! As we looked through some of the suggestions and responses, we thought it would be a great idea to answer some of the questions and concerns posed in your responses.

1. What is “news.info.gossip”? “New.Info.Gossip is our newsfeed area that is updated daily. We read through the top new stories that are related to our culture and articles/issues we think you should be informed about and repost it - just like any other newsfeed would do and we make sure we provide the source of the story as well. We update this section daily even though we are pretty busy working on the upcoming issue. We try to post lots of original content and articles, but we simply do not the have time, so we do quick blurbs on upcoming designers, beauty products, videos and more. Our site is really big and has lots of good content, so we like to hope you come back daily to read our monthly articles and features.

2. Is Clutch a blog? Not technically, at one time we were a print publication and as of this year decided to launch as an online magazine. We chose the “blog” format to create a dialog with our readers. So we just say we are a “online magazine in a blog format”.

3. Do you plan on becoming a print publication? Unfortunately, at this time we are not interested in becoming a print publication. With the recent closings of similar publications, we choose to be a online magazine to stay current, out of debt and alive.

4. Do you moderate comments? Yes, we do. In this day and age we understand we are always going to have someone who is either disrespectful to one of our readers or to us. If we see a comment, that should be addressed to us through email instead of in a comment, we delete it. Especially, if it has no purpose or is being said to be negative or bring negative energy. We are all educated adults and we like to have conversations, not yelling matches or passing of childish comments.

5. Why don’t you provide commentary on your posts? We don’t post commentary on news articles, because that would cause us to give our personal opinion. We all know that everyone has their own opinion on topics and issues and we choose to present the story and keep our personal opinions to ourselves.

6. Where is Clutch based? We are based in Atlanta. But, some of our staff members are in NYC, Detroit and L.A.

7. I would like to see more business and health articles. I did notice you had some, do you plan on offering more in the future? Yes! We are constantly trying to accommodate our readers with what they want to read, so look out for more in the upcoming months.

8. I think you all should have a reading area where you recommend and review books? Actually we do! It’s in our Life.Culture section under “Reading Department”. Check it out!

9. Can you please make the pictures bigger in the “news.gossip.info” section? Unfortunately, we can’t. This section has size specifications and we can only make images so big here…sorry :(

(Non-Survey Related) Things we would like to clear up and want you to know about us….
- we do not copy other sites. As Nas (the rapper) stated “no idea is original” so we don’t purposely post or copy content ideas or topics from other sites. We are simply too fly for that…

- We are you! The same age range, similar likes and dislikes…

- We support each and every magazine, blog, business and service that uplifts and empowers our culture and image.

Again, we want to thank everyone for supporting us! We are very small, but are trying our hardest to present you all with a quality online magazine. So if you have any suggestions or concerns please email us at feedback@clutchmagazine.com

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For 14 weeks this summer, 17 teenagers bypassed sleeping late to show up in a classroom at Carnegie Mellon University. They came on campus at 9 a.m. for five days a week to learn their way around the World Wide Web and get grounded in the basics of computer science. The 7-year-old summer camp, called InfoLink 100, is part of the tutoring and mentoring provided by 100 Black Men of Western Pennsylvania, a professional men’s civic organization.

The learning is supported by Carnegie Mellon and Highmark and is a free effort to boost the computer skills of inner-city African-American children. Studies show this demographic lags behind the cyber-learning curve of their suburban counterparts. “We’re in the computer age, so this gives them a big dose of it,” said Ron Lawrence, newly elected president of 100 Black Men of Western Pennsylvania. “This is preparation for secondary education. preparation for real life.”
When it comes to the ability to create and invent on the computer, education experts and social scientists say black children are in a cyber ghetto because they are far less likely than white students to use computers at home, on jobs or in school. As a consequence, they have far fewer computer-related skills and a diminished likelihood for income parity, according to the Chronicle of Blacks in Higher Education.

At Carnegie Mellon, InfoLink 100 plugs low-income youth into programs that emphasize information technology. The students spend 10 weeks in class and four weeks applying their newly honed computer savvy in Downtown businesses. When Mr. Lawrence talks about the digital divide he sounds like a man on a mission, sharing his hopes on how matters must be turned around. “This is serious,” he said. “At some point, there has to be some action, so this is why we’re involved with this program.”

Across the nation, 100 Black Men of America chapters have launched computer literacy training that targets young black men. The group 100 Black Men of Western Pennsylvania took root 21 years ago, joining a global brotherhood of 110 chapters of men who have pledged to roll up their sleeves to make a difference in their local communities. All volunteers, about 25 men belong to the Pittsburgh chapter; they are teachers, principals, engineers and health professionals.

The chapter provides mentoring at the Hill House every second Saturday of the month. Half of the charges are female and the other half, male. Many come from families who want the best for their children, but are challenged because they are raised without fathers, earn low wages, and struggle with low achievement and high drop-out rates.

The group is independent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, but draws many of the young people it works with from school referrals of students who are at-risk. The challenges are so serious that six 100 Black Men chapters have created charter schools to deal with low achievement and identity issues, said Mr. Lawrence, a director of transit marketing for Bombardier, whose job takes him frequently to the Middle East. A public school graduate, Mr. Lawrence, 61, grew up in Mississippi. He wants to re-create for the students the world he grew up in, where the teachers were nurturing and encouraging. At the Hill House, the group’s Saturday mentoring classes are small. The goal is to help youths become well rounded. They teach them networking techniques, health and wellness, economic development and proper etiquette, and hold them to an acceptable dress code.

In learning to deal with peer pressure, fractured families and sexual responsibility, the toughest lesson is teaching the children that not everybody is out to get them, said Wayne Walters, a principal at Frick International Studies Academy, who is a member of 100 Black Men. Mr. Walters, in his crisply pressed pants, frequently peers into the Carnegie Mellon computer lab to check on the students. “Teaching them self responsibility is important. They have to learn they have a part to play in their success by speaking well and having the right approach is necessary,” he said.

On a recent Monday morning, ithe students were taken through their lessons by Kerry Allen, an alumni of 100 Black Men. Mr. Allen, 20, studied at Point Park University and now designs Web pages and works at the Hill House teaching computer use. Above the hum of computers and the steady click-click of the mouse, Mr. Allen, in his smooth voice, steers the students through a conversation on polygon options, MS Access and MS Frontpage. One of the students hunkered over a computer is Nate Parker, 14, who will be a freshman at Allderdice High School.

Nate began selling “candy and stuff” in the sixth grade and was bitten by the entrepreneur bug. He now wants to own a clothing store. “Kerry is a good teacher,” said Nate. “I know the stuff he’s teaching me will make getting a job easier and will make my life better.”

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

(CBS) Nicole Sudler was a 28-year-old single mother when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I was shocked,” she said. “And I was very, very afraid.” Sudler had one of the deadliest and most aggressive forms of breast cancer. Some researchers are calling it “triple negative.” “It kind of made me feel like ‘Oh, God, my life is going to be over.’ You know, dating, it’s not going to happen anymore. Getting married? Probably not,” Sudler said.

This kind of cancer is a triple threat because it strikes early; it’s resistant to standard drug treatments; and more likely to kill. Its primary targets are young African-American women. Black women under the age of 50 are 77 percent more likely to die from the disease than white women of all ages. Patients like Sudler compel Dr. Funmi Olopade of the University of Chicago to figure out what is going on. “I’m motivated to go back to my lab and figure out: Why did that 20-year-old woman get breast cancer?” Olopade said.

Her quest for answers took Olopade back to her native Nigeria, where she’s discovered that African women share the same genetic predisposition to triple negative breast cancer. “Our work in Africa suggests it may also be more common for more women in Africa,” said Olopade. That may seem like a simple answer to what’s causing a serious problem. But when it comes to race and medicine, nothing is simple. “Race is not a scientifically determined category in the first place,” said Dr. Harold Freeman of the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention.

Poverty, culture and social injustice, not genetics, are behind the disparity, according to Freeman, who is also a senior advisor to the National Cancer Institute. The question is: Is it related to being black in and of itself, or is it related to the circumstances under which people live? Freeman fears suggesting there’s a genetic basis for the disease will revive racist ideas that blacks are biologically different and inferior. Olopade says it’s time to move forward. “I think, actually, genetics gets us to look beyond race,” said Olopade. For women like Nicole Sudler, any research that sheds new light on the deadly disease is welcome. “Help us with the research. We want to live, too,” she said.

Source: CBS News

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By KATY POWNALL, Associated Press Writer
At 12, Lucy Aol was clutching an assault rifle and preparing to ambush government soldiers. At 13, a rebel commander a decade older made her his wife. At 16, she was a mother. At 21, fresh-faced and beaming in a clean T-shirt and neatly braided hair, Aol is studying environmental health at college in Uganda’s capital, and planning to use her knowledge to improve the health of her war-battered nation. Aol has made a remarkable journey from child soldier to young woman with a future, but millions of children across Africa continue to be victims of war — orphaned, forced from their homes, denied education and, like Aol, forced to fight in the conflicts waged by their elders.

But slowly, the world’s campaign against the horror of child soldiery, and its pursuit of the perpetrators as war criminals, has begun to yield results. Girls are an estimated 30 percent of the young fighters. They face challenges boys don’t, such as rape and the stigma it inflicts, making it harder for girls to return to their communities. Aol was 12 when she was abducted by a feared Ugandan rebel group, forced to walk hundreds of miles to a base in neighboring southern Sudan and taught to use a gun. “We were used like slaves,” Aol said, staring at the wall of the cramped student dormitory at Kampala’s Mulago Medical College. “We used to work in the fields or collect firewood from 7 in the morning until 5 in the evening and we were given no food. If you made a mistake or refused, they would beat us … the three girls who were taken from my village with me were beaten to death.” “We were always moving with our guns but when you are so young they are very heavy and difficult to carry,” she said.

Aol was snatched by the Lord’s Resistance Army, rebels based in northern Uganda who are estimated to have abducted 25,000 children during their 20-year anti-government insurgency. Peace talks are under way, but pleas to free the children meet with denials they are being coerced into soldiery. According to Human Rights Watch, child soldiers play various roles, including spies, porters, mine sweepers, concubines as well as active combatants, often serving on front lines and sustaining some of Africa’s bloodiest and longest running conflicts. The number of child soldiers — defined in international law as children under 18 — cannot be estimated, humanitarian groups say. And though most are forcibly recruited, many join out of desperation. For those separated from their families or orphaned, enlistment may be the only way to get shelter, food and companionship.

Children are easily manipulated and can be groomed from an early age to obey instructions unquestioningly. Child protection workers cite numerous tactics used by ruthless commanders to coerce their young captives into obedience. In Sierra Leone, child soldiers were given a cocktail of gunpowder and cocaine before battle. In Liberia, they were forced to do things that would isolate them permanently from the community such as murdering family members.(

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In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a “whites only” shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn’t sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn’t care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree. (Please note, the tree above is not the tree, but a tree at Jena High School.)

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena’s black population didn’t take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could “end their life with a stroke of the pen.” Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.

To learn more about the case please log-on to…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6685441.stm
www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070629/NEWS01/706290325

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ATLANTA - U.S. women are dying from childbirth at the highest rate in decades, new government figures show. Though the risk of death is very small, experts believe increasing maternal obesity and a jump in Caesarean sections are partly to blame. Some numbers crunchers note that a change in how such deaths are reported also may be a factor. “Those of us who look at this a lot say it’s probably a little bit of both,” said Dr. Jeffrey King, an obstetrician who led a recent New York state review of maternal deaths. The U.S. maternal mortality rate rose to 13 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2004, according to statistics released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate was 12 per 100,000 live births in 2003 — the first time the maternal death rate rose above 10 since 1977.

To be sure, death from childbirth remains fairly rare in the United States. The death of infants is much more common — the nation’s infant mortality rate was 679 per 100,000 live births in 2004. Maternal deaths were a much more common tragedy long ago. Nearly one in every 100 live births resulted in a mother’s death as recently as 90 years ago. But the fact that maternal deaths are rising at all these days is shocking, said Tim Davis, a Virginia man whose wife Elizabeth died after childbirth in 2000. “The hardest thing to understand is how in this day and age, in a modern hospital with doctors and nurses, that somebody can just die like that,” he said.

Some health statisticians note the total number of maternal deaths — still fewer than 600 each year — is small. It’s so small that 50 to 100 extra deaths could raise the rate, said Donna Hoyert, a health scientist with the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate is the number of deaths per 100,000 live births. In 2003, there was a change in death certificate questions in the nation’s most populous state, California, as well as Montana and Idaho. That may have resulted in more deaths being linked to childbirth — enough push up the 2003 rate, Hoyert said.

Some researchers point to the rising C-section rate, now 29 percent of all births — far higher than what public health experts say is appropriate. Like other surgeries, Caesareans come with risks related to anesthesia, infections and blood clots. “There’s an inherent risk to C-sections,” said Dr. Elliott Main, who co-chairs a panel reviewing obstetrics care in California. “As you do thousands and thousands of them, there’s going to be a price.” Excessive bleeding is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death, and women with several previous C-sections are at especially high risk, according to a review of maternal deaths in New York. Blood vessel blockages and infections are among the other leading causes.

Experts also say obesity may be a factor. Heavier women are more prone to diabetes and other complications, and they may have excess tissue and larger babies that make a vaginal delivery more problematic. That can lead to more C-sections. “It becomes this sort of snowball effect,” said King, who is now medical director of maternal-fetal medicine at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

(Continue Reading…)