Getting Educators To Do The Math

Lucia McBath (aka Jordan Davis’ mom) joined a panel of presenters and scoped a national security threat. “I used to say to him: Jordan, you know, you’re just going to have to turn the other cheek, or what have you, because people nowadays will shoot you.”

By Stephanie A. Walker Stradford and Eric Stradford, USMC Retired

AMWS, March 30, 2014, Atlanta – The White House added fuel to fire for The President’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. Morehouse College co-hosted a two-day Summit on Educational Excellence for African Americans. The event headlined experts from the field, tweeters and streamers in the cloud, and even actors (Hosea Chanchez and Wendy Raquel Robinson) from The Game. A fortunate few even got close and personal with Usher’s New Look—making an impression, making a difference while maintaining a low profile.

Morehouse President John Silvanus Wilson Jr. summed up the event proclaiming Morehouse a “national epicenter” for addressing threats to historically disadvantaged American males. “At Morehouse, we stand for scholarship, service, and spirituality. We stand for excellence in all things that we do,” said Wilson.

The Morehouse Research Institute on the African American Male facilitated an event that was heavy on psychology but weak in math and science. They headlined Michael Skolnik, who describes himself as a 21st century civil rights leader. The Political Director to hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons is also President of GlobalGrind.com. Michael and Russell focus their work around three core themes: violence, poverty and ignorance.

Skolnick crunched some numbers that may have aroused the institute’s interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). But common logic for reframing conversations at Morehouse may come from the campus library. Young scholars, basing doctoral dissertations on the works of fellow Morehouse man, Martin Luther King, Jr., may indeed claim added value. However, they will need to do the math.

One quote from Dr. King’s last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY” grazed the surface some 50 years ago. “The poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate,” said Hyman Bookbinder, U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity. Dr. King warned that “No great victories are won in a war for the transformation of a whole people without total participation.”

No panelist or participant added more value to the conversation than Lucia McBath. The mother of murdered teenager Jordan Davis is adding value to a vision of her son’s future by helping others find value in their black sons’ lives. When viewed through the lens of an African American mother, no tool can quantify the devaluation of a child’s life. However, McBath offered one key factor. She said simply, “Jordan had value.”

The mathematical formula for countering Cradle-To-Prison Pipeline, Stand Your Ground, Voter Disenfranchisement and economic exclusion stems from the biblically-based question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” What might seem to be a logical response has been historically diluted by diverse agendas, compounded by complex lexicon, and delayed by simply denying its impact on national security.

The answer is “yes,” I am my brother’s keeper and the alternative can be devastating. For those Americans who choose CHAOS over COMMUNITY, the African American is hardly the threat to fear. You choose chaos, fear their God. It will rain and you will need a boat. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long (about 450 feet or 135 meters), fifty cubits wide (75 feet or 23 meters).

An economic capacity-building process developed by Youth Achievers USA Institute supports an affirmative choice for COMMUNITY. It values American citizens age 7-24 for their written goals in seven key areas of human development. Each seven-part vision of the future, compounded by a whole village of 20 caring adults quantifies a grassroots community reinvestment asset. The future asset can be measured by a minimum Money-n-the-Bank financial goal.

“Where do we go from here” starts with a realistic assessment of where we are. Once experts, scholars and politicians agree on what’s wrong, the rest of us can get on board to do our part. History supports a hypothesis that an African American life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is less than equal (<=) to that of a Euro-American.

This was hardly the intent of some good folks who got together on some Articles of Confederation. They later agreed on a common vision for America’s future. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Depending on the facts one chooses to believe, from John Hanson to Barack Obama, much of the American experience depends on measurable outcomes for the free Africans born here. Faced with Jim Crow segregation a short fifty years ago, We The People replaced Negro issues of that time by developing minority public policy. Today, an $18 trillion national debt shouldered by African American Barack Obama, presents another quantifiable factor for mathematical reasoning. Divide it by 300 million citizens and any math major worth his or her weight can come up with equal shares of about $60,000 per citizen.

President Obama’s vision of America’s future must build on progress to realize the nation’s full potential. A fully paid for Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative might be a good measure for where we are. The President’s $56 billion budget will add to the $18 trillion national debt, which offers some mathematically measurable point of where we go from here. We’ll also need to factor in George W. Bush’s bailout of the financial industry. The 2008 TARP program originally authorized expenditures of $700 billion. But, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act reduced the amount authorized to $475 billion.

In this case, the math supports a 395 year timeline where a black man’s value is less than fellow humans. Depending on whose keeping the books, President Obama may have saved taxpayers $225 billion from the original $700 billion authorized by his predecessor in the 2008 T.A.R.P. That $225 billion should more than enough to cover the $56 billion requested in the 2015 budget.

21st Century Freedom Riders…how #WeDaPeeps roll

By Stephanie A. Walker Stradford and Eric Stradford, USMC Retired

LEFT: #INGODWETRUST is today’s Learn-2-Earn lesson for youth. Yesterday, March 12, 2014, Freedom Riders were on the bus to their nation’s capital. photo @YouthUSA. RIGHT: Light of freedom — gone out. Perhaps in a supernatural show of favor, a shroud of darkness descended over the U.S. Capitol dome amid power outages throughout Washington, D.C. Wednesday night. @BuzzFeedStorm

AMWS, March 13, 2013, Washington, DC - Voting Rights advocates, commemorating the 49^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, rose early Monday morning to protest the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling in SHELBY COUNTY, ALABAMA v. HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL. Traveling by bus, vans, cars, and wireless internet, a new generation of Freedom Riders laid footprints on state capitols making their way from Montgomery, AL to the nation’s capitol.

SCOTUS ruled 5-4 on June 25, 2013 that Section 4 of The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional, stating, "The conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions." The majority opinion partnered Chief Justice John G. Roberts with Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito in a 21^st Century movement against all Americans. The white-sheet-to-black-robe-justice movement incited a counter “Saving OurSelves” (SOS) Movement against injustice, fighting for a range of causes stemming from the right to vote.

On the bus from Selma, a new generation of civil rights advocates tweeted and emailed their way to Capitol Hill demonstrating the use of Internet in lifting up their voices to the 113^th U.S. Congress. The legislative body, dubbed the “do nothing congress,” has received at least one issue around which they might rally COMMUNITY over CHAOS.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek,” said President Barack Obama.

YouthUSA has been working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to develop its historic evidence-based intervention into modern-day applications for Healing America. “Racism is alive and well,” said SCLC National President Charles Steele, Jr. “And, there’s a mean spirit going around where people are still trying to discriminate and destroy the heritage of African Americans.”

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation and others have signed on with President Obama to fund appropriate programs that help achieve “racial equity.” SCLC has been on the bridge for the last 50 years pleading for parity – equal justice and equal opportunity for all. The President’s “My Brother’s Keeper Initiative” establishes a White House Task Force to help connect means of One Nation Under God with historically unmet needs.

The Selma-based 21^st Century Youth Leaders Movement is sponsored by The National Voting Rights Museum. A partnership with Youth Achievers USA Institute (YouthUSA), a national 501c3 public charity, engages local youth in demonstrating that blind justice can and must be color-blind as well.

Dr. H. Benjamin Williams, a local SCLC chapter president, is spearheading a bottoms-up movement for historic civil rights organizations from Information to Operation. “Our mission is to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” he said. “America’s future begins on Our Street. That means putting our youth first, and banking on their futures because our national security depends on it. Their security demands intentional pro-social economic investment in their futures.

Needs of The One

“At times the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the millions, and in time the vision of the one, can move millions to the miracle.” -- Unknown

By Stephanie and Eric Stradford



As millions participated in a virtual March On Washington, Economist Yvonne R. Griswold, a national director for Youth Achievers USA Institute and fellow Youth Achiever John H. Bonds III, regional manager for Global Cleaning Services, LLC, engaged a Whole Village in Cobb County, GA to endow One Community Asset, The Joi Butler Fellowship of YouthUSA. Photo by Crystal Smith
 


AMWS, August 26, 2013, Atlanta – In the national demonstration for human rights, participants are most likely pressed toward the movement. The media mindset of the past has been to microwave the message for quick and easy consumption, mass marketing Cliffnote summaries to the millions and the millions who might follow them.

But for the 50^th Anniversary of the March On Washington, a message is getting through despite some bad habits of the past. Veteran leaders like Dr. C.T. Vivian and The Honorable John Lewis are tapping into endless possibilities for framing collective action by committing themselves to a common vision for America’s Future.

The Reverend Dr. Bernice A. King, Chief Executive Officer for The King Center offered some tangible guidance for moving the movement. In 1963, millions walked away with a common and sustainable reference to the March On Washington. Almost everybody looks back to part of a speech they remember as “I Have A Dream.”

In looking ahead, Bernice A. King is building on a message behind the media blitz of mass movement. The youngest daughter of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King has taken on the task of servant leadership for the remnant watershed factions of the historic American Civil Rights Movement. Her needs, perhaps inspired by the greatest quote from the 1963 #MarchOnWashington, are today among the most important reasons for the masses to march. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” said The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the youngest of three surviving offspring, her message has been simple, elegant and compelling. But, like her father and her mother before her, the message is still being met with unjustifiable resistance. The media can share blame with the masses because her message to herself has been simply, “BE A KING.” The difference made by half a century of growing up as children of the Civil Rights Movement is that everybody needs to be your daddy and your momma.


Her simple, humble request is for WE THE PEOPLE to follow some marching orders. Buy and read the book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King, Jr.  The 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington holds specifically inspiring significance for B. A. KING. Today, the masses must embrace the humility in the messenger’s enduring message.

Bernice Albertine King (born March 28, 1963) is today an American Baptist minister. She is the second daughter and youngest child of civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Her older siblings are Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and the late Yolanda Denise King. Bernice was only five years old when her father died and is the only King child to have become a minister.

Her daddy, Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was, to most of us, an American clergyman, activist, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has become a national icon in the history of American progressivism.

A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history. He also established his reputation as a radical, and became an object of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO for the rest of his life. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties and reported on them to government officials.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In 1965, he and the SCLC helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and the following year, he took the movement north to Chicago. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam".

King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., called the Poor People's Campaign. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting, and the jury of a 1999 civil trial found Loyd Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy against King.

King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor. A memorial statue on the National Mall was opened to the public in 2011.

Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?   READ THE BOOK!

National Security Policy for Children’s Defense

By Eric Stradford

AMWS, May 23, 2013, Atlanta -- As a seminarian, Ambassador Andrew Young studied the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi. He became certain it was possible to change society without violence. He also grew convinced that civil rights could best be achieved through politics. No investor in Young’s positive youth development envisioned him as a liability in a minus $16 trillion national economy. “The transfer of wealth and values is through the family,” said Young. “If you do not understand capital and capitalism, you are a slave.”

The 80 year old statesman for global human rights shared some personal insights on America’s children with practitioners and policy analysts gathered for a Research to Practice Policy Forum. The New Orleans native and Howard University graduate admonished advocates to consider some proven practices in developing and funding innovative approaches to raising children. Program planners from Youth Achievers USA Institute met like minds from Children’s Defense Fund, Goodwill, faith-based ministries, social justice and institutions of higher education to address a credible threat against American lives.

A Call To Action, facilitated by the Administration for Children and Families in partnership with The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, focused on the need to forge partnerships in support of family resilience. The policy shift from a social justice quagmire to an “intentional, pro-social approach for engaging American children in their own futures,” presents new opportunities for framing an inclusive national security mission.

“One of our greatest challenges is getting adults to work together for the benefit of our children,” said Michael Thurmond, interim Dekalb County, GA School Superintendent.

One mission concept is already formatted in a 2-hour mass media program and a 6-year old national campaign. The television program airs daily on HLN to raise awareness of issues affecting parenting in America. Anchor Kyra Phillips covers the nation's major news stories and explores more deeply how they relate to home, children and modern families.

The premise of the television program, “It takes a village to raise a child,” also identifies a community-based structure for sustainable, task-organized, homeland security operations. In a spirit of promoting win-win partnerships, Youth Achievers USA Institute adds to that premise, “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” A “Whole Village” is organized, equipped, and funded to meet the spiritual, physical, social, financial, educational, professional and recreational needs of an American child.

“No dream of a beloved community can endure the reality of a cradle to prison economy,” said Stephanie A. Walker Stradford, CEO, Youth Achievers USA Institute. “We cannot expect a profitable return on investment by investing negative value in negative behavior.” A partnership between HLN and Administration For Children and Families could add policy and practice to the promotion of “Raising America.” But the road from research and information sharing to policy and action will require a broader vision of inclusive economic security.

The Children’s Defense Fund, a non-profit child advocacy organization, has worked for 40 years to ensure a level playing field for all children. CDF champions policies and programs that lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education and a moral and spiritual foundation.

According to CDF, 1 in 3 Black and 1 in 6 Latino boys born in 2001 are at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime. While boys are five times as likely to be incarcerated as girls, there are also a significant number of girls in the juvenile justice system. This rate of incarceration is endangering children at younger and younger ages.

This threat on American lives is known to advocates as America's pipeline to prison — a trajectory that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment, and often premature death. Although the majority of fourth graders cannot read at grade level, states spend about three times as much money per prisoner as per public school pupil.

YouthUSA values each child as a “community asset” with 7-part vision of his or her own future. A free online application to THE ANNUAL YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS invites any family, local church, sorority chapter, fraternity chapter, or community organization to join a national call to mobilize America from research to practice. There has never been a shortage of resources in “One Nation Under God,” just resourcefulness.

Click here to see Marian Wright Edelman’s 2010 testimony.  On November 18, 2010, CDF President Marian Wright Edelman testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

 

 

The hearing entitled, "The State of the American Child: Securing Our Children's Future", brought together a distinguished panel of witnesses to testify on the dire state of our children during these difficult economic times and how citizens and lawmakers must act now to secure our children's future and our nation's future. Others on the panel included, Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy for the National Women's Law Center, Dr. Michael Casserly, Executive Director of the Council on Great City Schools, Peter Edelman , Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center and Faculty Co-Director, Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy, Jennifer Garner, Artist Ambassador, Save the Children and Dr. David Satcher, Director, The Satcher Health Leadership Institute and Center of Excellence on Health Disparities, Morehouse School of Medicine.