Permission to use from The RBG Environmental Restoration Agency
If you're not really the nightclub person but still want to help out, there will be a second event earlier Monday with The RBG Environmental Restoration Agency in Winnie Mandela Intergenerational Alternative School at 2:30 p.m., called Feeding Haiti.
Message from Montie's home office
I'm starting to see the differences in the way Chicago Public Libraries are going to operate in 2010. By now you probably know the library hours will be cut short in January 2010. Within the past couple months, Rogers Park library now puts books on shelves that are being held for library patrons instead of waiting in lines to decrease checkout times.
We already have the perks of reserving our own library books online instead of being on hold for a ridiculously long time. For those who want to reserve Internet computers, you can put in your own library card, check for availability and disappear until your reservation time. But oftentimes, while picking up books, I see those who are not computer savvy struggling to use computers and overworked librarians who don't have time to walk each person through the steps of reserving books and Internet time.
This is yet another advantage of the library--computer courses. The unemployment rate in November 2009 was down 10 percent with 15.4 million unemployed people in the
My older brother warned me about Ms. Ricks, my new third grade teacher, who loved to cuff people behind the ear when she was upset with them. But I was a studious kid and didn't look for trouble, so imagine my embarrassment when Ms. Ricks slapped me upside the head for not knowing the answer to a math problem. The class erupted in laughter, and I cried for the rest of class. Twenty-one years later, I still remember that. But when I read WISN's report about what happened to Lamya Cammon by her first grade teacher at
A
Photo courtesy of Ayesha Jaco
"Out of the 800 girls, 10 percent of those girls are in our program," Ms. Phillips, Parent Educator at
But the fact remains that there are still 115 teenage parents at the school and mentoring programs like the Lupe Fiasco Foundation, Daughters of Donia and Assist Her, Inc. have planned an event on Saturday, Dec. 5, to help change those statistics. The After I Met a Boy event will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., on Sat., Dec. 5, at Paul Robeson High School on
Mentor group representatives Samantha Coleman, MA, LPC (the Executive Director of Assist Her, Inc.) and Ayesha Jaco (the co-founder of the Lupe Fiasco Foundation and the founder of Daughters of Donia) have created the After I Met a Boy empowerment conference focused on sexual education, prevention and mentoring for the ladies of Paul Robeson High School.
"I had heard about the high pregnancy rate at the school and a light bulb went off," said Jaco. "In lieu of the killings that have been going on and stats that came out last year--one in four girls between the ages of 14 and 21 have an STD--I was wondering what I could do to help."
A A-likes reveal themselves to college crowd.
Pyramid Productions playwright Calvin Leroy King III presents "Crossed," a play about Black Greek life and the effects it has on a Greek pledge and his non-Greek friends and family. This play is being shown at the DuSable Museum of African-American History, 740 E. 56th Place at 7 p.m. on Nov. 27 and Nov. 28.
Special thank you to Sheila Black (Production Specialist of "Crossed" and a superb intern I met while working at the Chicago Defender) for sharing some of her photos.
Click here to read my review of this play.
Check out photos and video footage from the event below.
Ahmad Islam (left) and Sherman Wright (right) at the 40 Under 40 Honoree Reception
A commercial is a food or bathroom break for me. I usually don't pay attention to advertisements, but in the past few months I've noticed a pattern in marketing. It's not just the Walmart or McDonald's commercials. I'm seeing it in Tide, Pine Sol, Sprite, Lever 2000, Crest and the Roomplace commercials too. I'm seeing a boost in advertising visibility with African-American families, especially African-American fathers. Recently I saw an entertaining ad about relationships on the #65 bus after I left an appointment in the Chicago loop. I thought the ad was amusing and refreshing to see such a common moment in a relationship.
Photo by Shamontiel
I wonder if advertising agencies are starting to get the hint about diversity in marketing or did President Barack Obama's family have something to do with the diversity, but either way I love it. It's nice to see multiculturalism on camera. And this year is also an important year for African-Americans in the marketing industry, including
This two-team, African-American owned marketing company had their success honored this year on Crain's Chicago 2009 40 Under 40 list. I knew about their products and I saw some of their work, like the Sprite Step Off commercial, but I didn't know who the brains were behind these operations. I was delighted to be introduced to the owners of Commonground this week and talk to Wright and Islam about the change in faces, the increase in diversity in the marketing industry, and how
Neither owner is from
"My family is still from the
CNN featured Principal Steve Perry on "Black in America" Part 2
President Barack H. Obama voluntarily ran for the President of the
And while I respect Principal Steve Perry, of
However, that's not the norm in most public schools. So while he wants President Obama to set the example by sending his daughters to a public school, the teachers worldwide should also have the same professionalism and drive that Principal Steve Perry has. In 12 years of being in public school, I don't recall one of my teachers being so in love with their jobs that they got up and took students to school. Perry is jumping the gun by thinking every teacher is going to be like him.
When I was in high school, I loved chatting with a gorgeous gray-eyed young man in my homeroom named Jose. We met the first day of high school and stayed cool throughout the years until he was killed in an auto accident my junior year. I'd always ask him to say something in Spanish to me so I could translate it. I took Spanish classes throughout high school, and a good associate of mine named Angie (who also went to my alma mater Morgan Park) would hang out with me at the bus stop and I'd ask her to speak in Spanish too because I was trying to get better. I wanted to be bilingual, not just to talk to both of them because they were bilingual but just to learn something new.
Harold Washington Library
According to the Chicago Tribune, 76 branches of the Chicago Public Library system will have reduced hours from Monday through Thursday, opening an hour later (10 a.m.) and closing an hour earlier (8 p.m.). There will be no hour changes to the Harold Washington Library located in downtown
