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BEEU 2009 Semester One: Designed To Be 'Equal To The Task' "And that's why my number one priority coming in is making sure that we've got an economic recovery plan that is equal to the task," said President-Elect Barack Obama on the December 7, 2008 edition of Meet The Press. Those words, ‘e... [  more... ]

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Washington Times: Two Coloradans - Terrance Carroll (pictured) and Peter C. Groff - are about to make history as the first blacks to preside over both houses of a state legislature in the same session.

Los Angeles Times: Griffin Bell dies at 90; former attorney general and federal judge was at center of racial disputes


Lockhart: The Poor are Enslaved in America's Prisons. The Jamie & Gladys Scott Case.

Nolan Chart: The recent episode of Cynthia McKinney's defenseless ship getting rammed by the Israeli Navy reminds me of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty some forty years ago.


Fox: Cynthia McKinney Aboard Boat Headed for Gaza, Intercepted by Israeli Naval Force

Jacqueline Salit: How the Independent Movement Went Left By Going Right


Dawn Turner Trice: When Democratic U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush said last week that an African-American should fill President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat, he didn't mean just any black person. He meant an "authentic" black person.


Wall Street Journal: Rep. Joe Baca pushed legislation he said would "open the doors to the American Dream" for first-time home buyers in his largely Hispanic district. For many, those doors have slammed shut, quickly and painfully.


The Hill: Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are disappointed President-elect Obama did not appoint more African-Americans to his Cabinet.


Cherry II: Florida needs to build 19 prisons each with 1,300 beds in the next five years at a cost of $1.9 billion to handle prison population growth. Operational costs are an additional $26 million per prison per year.

Philadelphia Daily News: AT ONE END of Delaware County's rekindled debate over prison privatization, you'll find Wally Nunn, a tough-talking fiscal hawk and former county councilman. At the other, Fay Kallenbach, a bereaved mother.


Free Lance-Star: As president, Barack Obama should not neglect the invisible young men and women who are in our prisons.


Rushing: Racism in Police Departments Must Be on the National Agenda.


ProPublica: Responding to a ProPublica/Nation investigation into vigilante violence after Hurricane Katrina, Rep. John Conyers issued a public statement expressing concern.

Tulsa World: Taking a tougher approach, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has withheld more than $589,000 in payments to private prison operators in the past year because of staffing shortages.

Phoenix New Times: Arizona Felons Should Be Able to Vote More, Say ACLU


Times Picayune: Anh "Joseph" Cao beat long odds when he defeated Rep. William Jefferson to win a seat in Congress. His bid to join the Congressional Black Caucus might be even more difficult.

New America Media: Black/Brown Coalition Fueled Big Union Win. The successful union strategy relied on organizing resistance to immigration-related firings, and uniting a diverse workforce of African Americans, Puerto Ricans and immigrant Mexicans.


The Berkeley Daily Planet: More than 300 ’60s and ’70s era radicals and students not born until the ’80s gathered to hear strategies to end the cycle of criminalization of American communities and the re-volving prison door.


Charlotte Observer: Cornel West told a capacity crowd that the age of President-elect Obama is starting with a mess. “Right when things are about to collapse, you hand it over to the black folks,” West said.


TC Palm: Robert Lee Hall, a former mayor of Stuart and a convicted felon, has been accused of registering to vote by giving false information in order to vote in the general election.

The Sentencing Project: A broad coalition of 29 civil rights, religious, academic and justice organizations have asked the president to commute excessive sentences for low-level crack cocaine offenses.


Philadelphia Daly News: Plan to find ex-offenders jobs is, so far, tripping on hurdles. "If we want to drive the crime rate down in this city, we have to put these people back to work."


Columbus Dispatch: Obama's tough talk on NAFTA in question. Since his election, Obama has swerved on trade, surrounding himself with economic advisers who in the past championed NAFTA

Boston Herald: Some of Boston’s black leaders are outraged over WBZ radio’s decision to ax longtime talk host Lovell Dyett and are demanding that the station put him back on the air.


Multichannel.com: Washington D.C.-based Black Television News Channel (BTNC) announced Tuesday it has reached a multi-year carriage agreement with Comcast Cable for distribution in several of the MSO’s urban-based systems beginning in 2009.

The Hill: President-elect Obama does not expect to have an economic stimulus package to sign when he is sworn-in on Jan. 20, his spokesman said


Ron Walters: Who Will Get the 2.5 Million New Jobs?

Virginia Pilot: Barack Obama’s election as president is prompting major changes in the nation’s black press. The moves mark a return to a time when the black press — particularly magazines — were newsier.


Only Black Electorate Economics University Takes You Inside The Mind Of President-Elect Obama's Economic Advisers And What It Means For Oval Office Chess Playing. Raise Your Economic Knowledge In 2009. Enroll Today!

Wall Street Journal: The IMF's top economist generally endorsed the incoming Obama administration's approach to economic stimulus, and urged countries to consider offering a kind of "recession insurance" to companies and individuals.


New York Times: As Detroit Suffers, Black Workers Hurt.


Bloomberg: David Rosenberg drew on inspiration from market-rules theorist Robert Farrell and asset-bubble historian Charles Kindleberger to predict the economy’s demise this year.

Munn: Facing up to the signs of a full-fledged Depression


Hartford Courant: After almost two years on the market, 50 Cent has lowered the price of his Farmington mega-mansion from $18.5 million to $14.5 million, a 21 percent price cut.

Daily Press: Hampton, Va. spends tens of millions on construction, architecture, engineering, professional services, goods and supplies, but a very small percentage goes to businesses majority-owned by either women or minorities.


Steve H. Hanke: The credit triangle. Regardless of how low the Fed pushes interest rates, businesses and households are not inclined to take on more debt. Instead, they want to reduce their leverage and debt burdens.

USA Today: Economy to drive small business trends


Chicago Sun Times: Their year of buying black. Maggie Anderson, daughter Cara and husband John vow to buy only from black-owned firms in 2009.


St Louis Today: Roberts Hotel Indigo bash signals shift of power to black entrepeneurs in St. Louis

Washington Post: A Global Race to the Bottom Puts Progress at Risk. The talent and labor migration from the Deep South.


Washington Informer: Odessa Hopkins is president and CEO of Another Approach Enterprises (AAE), and recent winner of the Entrepreneurial Business of the Year award, by the Prince George’s Chamber of Commerce

AFRO: The current economic crisis has waged a particularly severe attack on the Black middle-class in the United States, experts say. Black-owned firms—a source of employment and revenue for Black communities—are also suffering

Black Voices: Black Owned Auto Dealers In Dire Straits. Now with the future of the Big Three hanging in the balance, thirty-eight years of developing minority auto dealer franchises have come to a sudden halt.


Eric_deCarbonnel: How Deflation Creates Hyper-inflation

Chicago Tribune: One after another, a long line of City Council members demanded that the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid committee hire more Latinos and blacks for its staff and give more contracts to minority-owned companies.

Reuters: Mortgage applications climbed last week, a trade group said on Wednesday, driven by demand for loans to refinance as government interventions helped drive down borrowing costs.


New York Post: Rap icon Doug E. Fresh - best known for his '80s hit "The Show" - has been socked with three foreclosure actions by banks looking to collect more than $3.5 million in unpaid mortgages on a trio of his Harlem homes.


New York Times: The Federal Reserve entered a new era, lowering its benchmark interest rate virtually to zero and declaring that it would now fight the recession by pumping out vast amounts of money to businesses and consumers.


Wall Street Journal: Gold Soars on Rate Cut. The gold market may now be looking beyond disinflationary data to the economic stimulus, and possible inflation, that may come from the rate cut.

Reuters: Wanted: Super-human technocrat to run New York Fed. "You need someone that is anchored by a solid analytical framework, because there are so many moving pieces right now. Without an appropriate anchor, the risk of whipsaw is high."


San Fancisco Chronicle: Early New Year's Day, a rookie officer with the BART police shot and killed an unarmed 22-year-old man on a platform at the Fruitvale Station.


Riley: The war on violence needs troops. The staff and supporters of Ford High School in Detroit are to be commended for their increased efforts to reduce violence at the school, site of the first killing at a Michigan school in eight years.

Courier-Journal: Effort to offer youth alternative to violence. Literature, art and shows will be campaign's focus


AJC: The Obamas are, therefore, either “an unrealistic ideal, a midcentury throwback, a false standard” or “an inspirational example of what the African-American family can be —- even a post-racial example of the new 21st century American Family.”

Buffalo News: Citing the disease’s role in destroying black families and taking a disproportionate toll on black men and women, the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS of Buffalo will host a community meeting at 6 p. m. Jan. 13


Yes! Weekly: Effectiveness of Gang Suppression Campaigns Questioned. In the case of the Almighty Latin King & Queen Nation the strategy has resulted in the organization’s leader receiving a flurry of charges, most of them dropped

Yes! Weekly: Security guard accused of assault no longer working at GSO Depot


Final Call: Mid-South Black males in state of emergency

Sacramento Bee: Deadly gang warfare playing out on Sacramento streets


Minister Farrakhan: "If you look at American society right now, something is wrong here. You have the greatest nation on Earth, but there is more insanity here than anywhere; more depression here than anywhere; more people incarcerated here..."

Chicago Tribune: Call her The Incredible Shrinking African-American Woman. In an age when the adult populations of most industrialized nations have grown significantly taller, the average height of black women in the U.S. has been receding


Boston Globe: Boston is among 6 cities that have seen the sharpest spikes in the number of young black males killing one another, an alarming trend that comes at a time when the state is cutting back on programs geared toward helping troubled youths.

News & Observer: One-man mission helped prisoners and children


Visit The Official Kwanzaa Website And Learn More About A Celebration Of Family Community And Culture


Washington Post: Civil rights leader James Bevel dies. "Jim Bevel was Martin Luther King's most influential aide," said civil rights historian David J. Garrow.


AJC: Culture clash: Diversity vs. security rules. Head Scarf Gets Muslim Woman Arrested. Forced to take off the pants, blouse and printed green and beige scarf she was wearing in exchange for a prison jumpsuit.

AP: Massachusets' juvenile detention centers are wrongly detaining arrested youths, lack trained staff and are placing children in inadequate facilities, according to a new report released today.

Chicago Tribune: Move is on to get black males to church


Christian Science Monitor: When a fourth-grader’s older brother is arrested for murder, the International Community School’s sense of a ‘beloved community’ means supporting the struggling families of both victim and shooter.


Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles County shelters brim with families. Vouchers for motel rooms are growing scarce as bad economy, bad weather take their toll.


LA Times: With unearthing of infamous jail, Richmond confronts its slave past. Black and white residents walk together across the excavated site where tens of thousands were imprisoned while they waited to be sold.

Baptist Press: "In the traditional black church, most people only attend the worship service. We need to move them beyond the experience in the worship service to become disciples"


New York Times: The number of black children being raised by two parents appears to be edging higher than at any time in a generation, at nearly 40 percent, according to newly released census data.


Read Cynthia McKinney's messages, including dramatic communiqués from her voyage on the SS Dignity to provide medical supplies for Gazans during the Israeli assault


Washington Post: White House Defends Its Peace Efforts In Darfur. Administration Plans To Airlift Equipment

Houston Chronicle: Globalization means Peruvian’s dream not all sweet


Prensa Latina: Several social organizations from Panama on Sunday voiced their solidarity with Cuba, in a statement marking the 50th anniversary of the Revolution.


Guardian: BBC gives 'too white' TV doll a darker face. Executives at BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, denied the doll had been lightened for commercial reasons


Egyptian Gazette: President Hosni Mubarak holds talks today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and a European troika delegation in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Is Egyptian diplomacy living up to old and new regional challenges? At times, but not always

AFP: Burundi and Uganda said Sunday they would withdraw their peacekeepers from Somalia if the African Union failed to boost troop numbers with the AMISOM mission there.


Foreign Policy: the Top 10 Stories You Missed In 2008. #5 "Russia Makes Play For Africa."


Wall Street Journal: As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. - America 'Disintegrates' in 2010


AFP: Security forces on Tuesday guarded Ghana's Electoral Commission headquarters ahead of the declaration of the winner of the presidential election as opposition candidate John Atta-Mills claimed victory.


Bloomberg: Rio Tinto Group, which is considering the construction of a $6 billion iron ore project in Guinea, said it will seek talks with the country’s military junta over plans to revise mining contracts.


AP: The African Union suspended Guinea on Monday after a coup in the West African nation.

Daily Trust (Nigeria): As the new Islamic year begins


Palm Beach Post: Cuban economy faces challenges


IPS: 'A Real Man Does Provide Care' Sonwabo Qathula is one of a group of men breaking gender stereotypes and earning respect while contributing to community welfare.


New York Times: White Farmers Confront Mugabe in a Legal Battle


VOA: President Robert Mugabe has said Zimbabwe must take over all foreign-owned companies and that even if an inclusive government is formed he will never allow any land seized from whites to be returned to them.


AFP: "Power-sharing isn't dead but Mugabe has become an absolute impossible obstacle to achieving it," said Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch Brown.


AP: The United States can no longer support a proposed Zimbabwean power-sharing deal that would leave Robert Mugabe, “a man who’s lost it,” as president, the top American envoy for Africa, Jendayi E. Frazer said.


AFP (Dec. 5): A summit of Central American leaders agreed to adopt a common regional currency and passport, among other measures to bolster regional integration in the face of global financial uncertainty, they said in a statement.

East Standard: Kenya walked a tight rope to regain peace


Prof. Horace Campbell: Mamdani, Mugabe and the African scholarly community


Obi Egbuna: Humanitarian Situation Linked to Sanctions


VOA: Rwanda's President Paul Kagame says it is about time Rwandans think about coming up with their own solutions for resolving the country's problems instead of depending on foreign aid.

Jamaica Gleaner: Government has been ordered by the Supreme Court to pay $40 million in damages to a 20-year-old man who was shot in the back by a policeman


Tripoli Post: President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa has expressed his joy for Libya’s commitment in sending food and chlorine to Zimbabwe; and discussed with Gaddafi the situation in Zimbabwe, DRC and Mauritania

Public Agenda: It appears the disability movement in Ghana may stay away from the presidential election run-off unless President John Agyekum Kufour inaugurates the National Council on Persons with Disability before the poll date of 28th December 2008.


Scialist Worker: Ecuador's rising struggle. Emmanuel Santos places Ecuador's decision to default on a portion of its foreign debt in the context of rising social struggles.


Daily Nation: President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga (pictured) on Wednesday signed the agreement which starts the process of establishing a local tribunal to try post-election violence suspects.


Valley Advocate: A memento from a war between its colonizers becomes a symbol. In Puerto Rico's public education system, American history is a requirement; Puerto Rican history is an elective. This is one way victors rewrite history.

Magharebia: Mauritania's Awlad Leblad: changing society through hip-hop


Cuban News Agency: Cuba's incorporation as full member of the Group of Rio was made official this Tuesday at the Extraordinary Summit of that Latin American and Caribbean mechanism for political consultation.

Granma Internacional: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has asked US president-elect Barack Obama to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, who is sought by the Venezuelan justice system for acts of terrorism.


AFP: Angola president arrives in China in search of investment. Dos Santos starts the four-day tour with talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, the foreign ministry said.

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