President Obama Challenged to Black-Off

by NONSO CHRISTIAN UGBODE

Newly-minted Republican frontrunner Herman Cain has filed official papers today challenging President Barack Obama to a “black-off.” Representatives at the Federal Office for Race Authentication and Ethnic Infringement confirm that Cain filed his official challenge on the grounds of “nickname authenticity,” among other allegations.

“Just ask him what his friends call him,” Cain says in defense of his challenge. “I have a real Black nickname, based on a very respectable classic black food item–Cornbread–and they call him what, ‘Barry’? Come on now! That’s not even a condiment.”

Cain seemed confident in his challenge on the heels of many racially-tinged controversial statements: first calling black supporters of Obama “brainwashed,” and now claiming Obama has “never been part of the black experience in America.”

“There hasn’t been a federally approved ‘black-off’ in decades,” recalls black historian Phillip Cuzo. “Malcolm X was rumored to be filing a challenge against Martin Luther King Jr., but he was advised against it when he learned Dr. King was actually an avid smoker of Pall Mall cigarettes, the 1960s equivalent of today’s black menthol Newport cigarettes.”

“President Obama has better things to do than stoop to responding to these baseless accusations,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. However, he did offer one simple phrase when asked if he thought Obama had a chance in the challenge, “Michelle Obama.”

According to the constitutional amendments governing racial authentication challengers get extra blackness points for spouses with pronounced posteriors, or “juicy doubles.” “And don’t let the black June Cleaver thing fool you,” Carney continues, “the first lady can throw down. Have you seen her arms!?”

Cain’s “black-off” request application includes a double dutch challenge, a trivia round for the movieFriday (including sequels), and a somewhat unclear section listed simply as “chitlin challenge.” Traditional “black-offs” usually take anywhere from two to three days for a verdict, accounting for CPT.

Godfather of soul to be honored as a radio pioneer

http://www.ajc.com

James Brown’ stations helped talent get started

By Susan McCord 

Augusta Chronicle

Known as the most-sampled artist in the world, James Brown also was a radio pioneer who will soon be honored for his work in this field.

Brown, who owned several successful radio stations during his life, will be inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame in Atlanta on Saturday. His daughter, Deanna Brown Thomas, will accept the award for her father.

“He wanted to be a positive image, especially for young African-Americans to say that, hey, these are the things that you can do and be successful,” said Brown Thomas, who had a 20-year broadcasting career that began at her father’s WAAW in Aiken, S.C.

Brown purchased and operated several stations, including WRDW-AM in Augusta and WJBE in Knoxville, which has call letters, assigned by the FCC in 1968, that stand for James Brown Enterprises.

Brown gave Augusta broadcaster Minnesota Fattz a start at one of his stations, and did the same for Augusta businessman Robert “Flash” Gordon, whom Brown made programming director at WJBE and was later his national programming director.

“He was always doing new things; he was always having new ideas about how a station could help expose more artists,” said Gordon, the former manager of James Brown Arena and longtime owner of Augusta’s two Pyramid Music stores.

Gordon spoke about his radio days with Brown in a 2008 music documentary.

“I got around the world on that DVD,” Gordon said.

Brown also owned WEBB, short for “We enjoy being black,” in Baltimore, and was co-owner with Pervis Spann of Atlanta’s WERD, which had been the first black-owned and -operated station, Brown Thomas said.

“He gave a lot of jocks, both black and white, an opportunity to work in radio for many years in different places,” she said.

Emmy-winning actor and Sirius Radio host Jay Thomas will be master of ceremonies at the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame ceremony.

The event, which is being held at the Hilton Atlanta/Marietta Hotel, is sold out.

For Politics in South, Race Divide Is Defining

William Widmer for The New York Times

Mayor Johnny DuPree of Hattiesburg is the Democratic candidate for governor in Mississippi, and is considered a long shot.

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By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - Ten miles south of Ronnie's Steak and Grill, where Johnny DuPree was making a recent appearance before the Rotary Club, lies the lonely road where three civil rights workers were killed by the Klan one June night in 1964 for registering blacks to vote.

The workers' cause won in the end. That Mr. DuPree, who is black, is running for governor is proof of that.

Seven miles to the southwest of Ronnie's lies the Neshoba County Fairgrounds, where Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with an appeal to disaffected Democrats.

His cause won, too. That Mr. Dupree, who is a Democrat, is considered something of a long shot here is proof of that.

In few places are the current woes of Democrats in the South in such clear relief as they are in Mississippi. It is here that a possibility long considered may soon become a reality, as Democrats ponder the prospect of becoming, definitively, the minority party - in both senses of the word.

At a glance, Democrats may seem to be in better shape here than they are in neighboring states. Republicans won a supermajority in the Alabama Legislature in the 2010 elections and took over the Louisiana Legislature a month later as a result of several party switches, while Mississippi Democrats still control the State House of Representatives. Unlike in Louisiana, Democrats in Mississippi have actually managed to field candidates for a few statewide offices in this year's elections, and hold the office of attorney general.

But the tale told by demographics is a stark one. Mississippi has, proportionally, the largest black population of any state, at 37 percent. Given the dependably Democratic voting record of African-Americans here, strategists in each party concede that Democrats start out any statewide race with nearly 40 percent of the vote.

That is a remarkable head start. And yet Brad Morris, a Democratic strategist, is being optimistic when saying this: "We've hit rock bottom."

Simply put, the votes Democrats count on automatically may be the only ones they can get.

Mr. Morris argues that the decades-old partisan realignment of the South has gone as far as it can go and that it will soon rebound.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine that Democratic support among whites could get any lower when, according to 2008 exit polls, only 6 percent of white males in Mississippi described themselves as Democrats.

But Republicans are not ready to concede an endpoint.

"There has been a significant political shift to the right," Frank Corder, a Pascagoula city councilman and conservative blogger, wrote in an e-mail, "and as the access to new media grows in the rural areas, political party identifications will change and we will see even more traditional Democratic strongholds turn red."

There are still such things as white Democratic strongholds in the South, believe it or not. They are run by the often long-serving sheriffs, circuit clerks and other county officials who have remained Democrats out of habit, family tradition, allegiance to the party behind the New Deal or a strategic aim to attract black voters.

These old-line Democrats persist in areas that are largely white, rural and conservative, but have mostly been untouched by the racial politics seen elsewhere in the South. Northeast Mississippi has long been such an area; nearly all of the local officials are Democrats, and Republican primary turnout is minimal. One State Senate district there, which is 92 percent white, elected a black Democrat in 2007.

And yet, said Ralph Coln, a retired electrical worker and a Democrat who lives in that district: "Eight to 12 years, Republicans will be running this county."

State Republican parties have been making an aggressive play for local offices, trying to persuade courthouse politicos that rather than having to campaign as Democrats to the right of the national party, they should simply become Republicans.

There is a sign that the partisan realignment in these rural areas is following the pattern seen elsewhere in the South, by starting at the top. The 225 counties where Senator John McCain's vote in 2008 was more than 10 percentage points higher than President George W. Bush's in 2004 were mostly in a stretch from Oklahoma through Appalachia, a region that is heavily white and rural.

Republican success at the local level has so far been limited: Democratic primary turnout is still far above Republican turnout in Mississippi.

But victories by attrition, combined with suburban growth and hostility to the Obama administration, continue to wring the Democratic Party of white support.

"I would say that with a very concerted effort and a little money, it is still salvageable," Marty Wiseman, the director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University and a Democrat. "But you give it 10 or 12 more years, even those who are hanging in there now are going to say that it is not worth it."

At that point, Professor Wiseman said, party identification will simply boil down to race. Republicans will have unchallenged statewide control, he added, but even the most innocuous of political debates will carry racial overtones, an unwelcome prospect for everyone.

Merle Black, an expert on politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said that point is arguably already here. In 2008 exit polls, he pointed out, 96 percent of self-identified Republicans in Mississippi were white. Nearly 75 percent of self-identified Democrats were black.

Henry Barbour, a lobbyist and a nephew of Gov. Haley Barbour, said this split was due to a genuine divergence in ideology, which happens to line up largely along racial lines. This will change, he said, as Republicans reach out to black voters.

"There's no question that blacks in great numbers tend to vote for the Democrats," he said, "but just like we've seen some of these changes at the local level, I think in 20 years blacks will be less beholden to the Democrat Party and they'll be more inclined to vote Republican."

Democrats say that while their party's decline in the South has several causes, including fund-raising problems and a failure of leadership, there is plenty of reason to believe that race is still the driving factor. They cite evidence both anecdotal, like the racial slurs still heard at the coffee shop, and statistical, like the large swings in certain areas away from Mr. Obama to a Republican candidate who, by most judgments, was less conservative than Mr. Bush.

"The facts speak for themselves," said Dick Molpus, a Democrat and a former secretary of state. "This is a racial divide by political party, and it does not bode well for our future."

Mr. DuPree, the mayor of Hattiesburg, does not raise the topic of race on the campaign trail, preferring to talk about job creation and health care. But in an interview here, he did acknowledge early resistance to his candidacy from some in his own party.

Democrats acknowledge that anyone from their party, black or white, would have a hard time winning this year's governor's race, which pits Mr. DuPree against Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant. But a worry persists that prejudice about Mr. DuPree could make a difference in close House elections down the ticket.

For this reason, Mr. DuPree said, some Democrats said it just was not his time.

"There will never be a time if you never do it," he said. "The reason the Republicans have been successful is because they never gave up, they kept trying. They're in the catbird seat now, if you want to say. There was a time when they were not. But they did not give up."

Contraceptive Used in Africa May Double Risk of H.I.V.

The New York Times

By PAM BELLUCK

Published: October 04, 2011

The most popular contraceptive for women in eastern and southern Africa, a hormone shot given every three months, appears to double the risk the women will become infected with H.I.V., according to a large study published Monday. And when it is used by H.I.V.-positive women, their male partners are twice as likely to become infected than if the women had used no contraception.

The findings potentially present an alarming quandary for women in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of them suffer injuries, bleeding, infections and even death in childbirth from unintended pregnancies. Finding affordable and convenient contraceptives is a pressing goal for international health authorities.

But many countries where pregnancy rates are highest are also ravaged by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. So the evidence suggesting that the injectable contraceptive has biological properties that may make women and men more vulnerable to H.I.V. infection is particularly troubling.

Injectable hormones are very popular. About 12 million women between the ages of 15 and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 6 percent of all women in that age group, use them. In the United States, it is 1.2 million, or 3 percent of women using contraception. While the study involved only African women, scientists said biological effects would probably be the same for all women. But they emphasized that concern was greatest in Africa because the risk of H.I.V. transmission from heterosexual sex was so much higher there than elsewhere.

"The best contraception today is injectable hormonal contraception because you don't need a doctor, it's long-lasting, it enables women to control timing and spacing of birth without a lot of fuss and travel," said Isobel Coleman, director of the women and foreign policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If it is now proven that these contraceptions are helping spread the AIDS epidemic, we have a major health crisis on our hands."

The study, which several experts said added significant heft to previous research while still having some limitations, has prompted the World Health Organization to convene a meeting in January to consider if evidence is now strong enough to advise women that the method may increase their risk of getting or transmitting H.I.V.

"We are going to be re-evaluating W.H.O.'s clinical recommendations on contraceptive use," said Mary Lyn Gaffield, an epidemiologist in the World Health Organization's department of reproductive health and research. Before the meeting, scientists will review research concerning hormonal contraceptives and women's risk of acquiring H.I.V., transmitting it to men, and the possibility (not examined in the new study) that hormonal contraceptives accelerate H.I.V.'s severity in infected women.

"We want to make sure that we warn when there is a real need to warn, but at the same time we don't want to come up with a hasty judgment that would have far-reaching severe consequences for the sexual and reproductive health of women," she said. "This is a very difficult dilemma."

The study, led by researchers at the University of Washington and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, involved 3,800 couples in Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In each couple, either the man or the woman was already infected with H.I.V. Researchers followed most couples for two years, had them report their contraception methods, and tracked whether the uninfected partner contracted H.I.V. from the infected partner, said Dr. Jared Baeten, an author and an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist.

The research was presented at an international AIDS conference this summer, but has now gained traction, scientists said, with publication in a major peer-reviewed journal.

 The manufacturer of the branded version of the injectable, Depo-Provera, is Pfizer, which declined to comment on the study, saying officials had not yet read it. The study's authors said the injectables used by the African women were probably generic versions.

The study found that women using hormonal contraception became infected at a rate of 6.61 per 100 person-years, compared with 3.78 for those not using that method. Transmission of H.I.V. to men occurred at a rate of 2.61 per 100 person-years for women using hormonal contraception compared with 1.51 for those who did not.

While at least two other rigorous studies have found that injectable contraceptives increase the risk of women's acquiring H.I.V., the new research has some strengths over previous work, said Charles Morrison, senior director of clinical sciences at FHI 360, a nonprofit organization whose work includes researching the intersection of family planning and H.I.V.

Those strengths include the fact that researchers followed couples and were therefore able to track transmission of H.I.V. to both men and women. Dr. Morrison said only one other less rigorous study had looked at whether hormonal contraception increased the risk of infected women's transmitting the virus to men.

"This is a good study, and I think it does add some important evidence," said Dr. Morrison, who wrote a commentary accompanying the Lancet article.

Although the study has limitations, including its use of data not originally intended to determine the link between contraceptive use and H.I.V., "I think this does raise the suspicion" that injectable contraceptives could increase transmission risk, he said.

Why that would occur is unclear. The researchers recorded condom use, essentially excluding the possibility that increased infection occurred because couples using contraceptives were less likely to use condoms.

The progestin in injectable contraceptives appears to have a physiological effect, scientists said. Renee Heffron, an epidemiologist and co-author of the study, said research examining whether the hormone changes genital tissue or vaginal mucous had been inconclusive. Studies in macaques found that progestin thins vaginal tissue, she said, "but studies among women didn't show the same amount of thinning."

It could be that progestin causes "immunologic changes in the vagina and cervix" or could increase the H.I.V.'s "ability to replicate," Dr. Morrison said.

At one point, the researchers measured the concentration of H.I.V. in infected women's genital fluid, finding "there was more H.I.V. in the genital fluid of those using hormonal contraception than those who aren't," Dr. Baeten said, a possible reason men might have increased risk of infection from hormonal contraceptive users. Those women "don't have more H.I.V. in their blood," he said.

The researchers also found that oral contraceptives appeared to increase risk of H.I.V. infection and transmission, but the number of pill users in the study was too small to be considered statistically significant, the authors said.

Previous research on the pill has been more mixed than with injectables, which could have a greater impact because they involve a strong dose meant to last for three months, Dr. Baeten said.

In another troubling finding, results from the same study, published separately, showed that pregnancy also doubled the risk of women's contracting H.l.V. and of infected women's transmitting it to men. That may partly be due to increased unprotected sex, but could also relate to hormones, researchers said.

But there are no simple solutions, the authors acknowledge. Any warning against such a popular contraceptive method may not only increase complications from pregnancy but increase H.I.V. transmission, too, since pregnancy itself may raise a woman's risk of H.I.V. infection.

First, the researchers and others say, greater emphasis should be placed on condom use along with hormonal methods.

Some experts, like Dr. Morrison, favor a randomized controlled trial for more definitive proof, but others question how to "randomize women who may have strong preferences about their contraception," he added.

Dr. Ludo Lavreys, an epidemiologist who led one of the first studies to link injectable contraceptives to increased H.I.V. risk, said intrauterine devices, implants and other methods should be explored and expanded. "Before you stop" recommending injectables, he said, "you have to offer them something else."

The Morehouse College Glee Club Is 100

Courtesy of Morehouse College

The Morehouse College Glee Club in performance in 1981. Wendall Whalum, at right, was the second of only three directors of the club in its 100 years of existence.

by Terrance McKnight

On Sunday night, 60 tuxedoed young African-American men will briskly walk down the aisles, onto the stage of New York's Lincoln Center and launch into a Norwegian folk song. It's the Morehouse College Glee Club, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary Sunday.

From their arresting entrance, the club's concerts are marked by energy and dynamic subtleties. Their programs include classical choral music, barbershop quartet, spirituals, arrangements and — always — "Betelehemu," the Nigerian carol they perform at every full concert. When they do that song, some of the singers come off stage shouting into the audience while African drums play at center stage, in front of the chorus. It's their show stopper. The Morehouse Glee Club has been singing "Betelehemu" for more than 50 years.

Morehouse College was founded in Atlanta in 1867, and it remains the only all-male historically black college in the nation. Almost from the beginning, the Glee Club members have been the school's official performing ambassadors. The club has earned an international reputation through its annual tours and has traveled through Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.

The Glee Club is known for its focused stage presence, musical precision, wide-ranging repertoire, distinguished alumni and its recording of "I'm Building Me A Home," which Morehouse alumn Spike Lee recorded for the opening credits of his 1988 film School Daze.

Thousands of students have come through the Glee Club. I sang bass when I was a student there. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a tenor in the club, and in 1968 the group sang for him at his funeral. Singing at a brother's memorial is a longstanding Glee Club tradition -– we call it closing ranks. The traditions are taken very seriously.

David Morrow, the Glee Club's current director, is only the third in the group's 100-year history. He took over when his teacher Wendall Whalum -– who had been there for 34 years –- passed away in 1987. Dr. Morrow says that the club's strength has been its continuity.

"The things that I feel now being in the centennial instead of planning for it," Dr. Morrow says, "are just a huge amount of happiness that I have some part in getting us to be 100 years old and feel successful and upholding the standards that were passed to me by my predecessors. I had some wonderful shoulders to stand on and I'm hoping that who ever succeeds me will find my shoulder as strong."

Some of the standards that Dr. Morrow inherited, and in turn teaches, go beyond music. In Glee Club, we were taught that being on time meant being a few minutes early and that our singing was a gift to the community. We were constantly reminded that some people in our audience may never have seen a group of black men in tuxedos, and so it was our duty to represent the highest standards of the college and of ourselves.

Former Secretary of Health Louis Sullivan also sang bass when he was at Morehouse. He attended this year's reunion in February.

"The Glee Club is really like a fifth fraternity on campus," Sullivan says. "You get to know people a lot. We traveled together, we've planned together — so this 100th anniversary is really truly a remarkable event."

The anniversary year officially began at the reunion, and when I speak with past and current members, adjectives like "commitment," "brotherhood" and "excellence" still resonate. James Grissom, a 2011 graduate and the group's vice president, says Glee Club has made him ready for the next phase of his life.

"Over the past four years, the music of the Glee Club, the ministry of the Glee Club, the discipline, have all been characteristics that have built me as an individual and as a man," he says. "This moment culminates all of that and as a reminder as a senior that as I move into the next phase of my life to take this discipline and this excellence that I've learned into every aspect of my life." [Copyright 2011 WQXR-FM]

Truth more terrifying than fiction

SAMIRA AHMED

http://www.spectator.co.uk

When I worked in Berlin in 1998 the trendy record store in the city’s gay-friendly Schöneberg district had a category called “schwarz” music. It took up a lot of the shop and seemed a bizarrely useless generalisation, given the huge popularity of both imported and home-made Rap music. There was even a whole cluster of GI rap stars – African American soldiers who stayed on after their tour of duty because of the huge German market.

But the record shop captured something of the unsettling oddness that persists in modern multi racial Germany’s mono-racial insistence on labeling and categorisation. Nowhere in Britain could you advertise a “washes whiter” detergent with a very dark skinned African born TV star as you could in Germany in the ‘90s.

Yet the German authorities are passionate about trying to internationalise their arts scene.  In Berlin in particular, writers and artists from all over the world are encouraged, often with grants and programmes to come and work there. Ghanian-Canadian Esi Edugyan’ssecond novel, the  Booker shortlisted, Half Blood Blues, is a product of an extended stay in Europe, and combines her love of jazz with a less well known aspect of Nazi persecution.

It started out as a factual book about the Rhineland “bastards” – mixed race Germans born of relationships between German women and French African soldiers after the First World War, “I was living in Europe at the time,” she says, “and being a black woman, feeling very visibly different...My thoughts turned naturally to wondering what became of those children during the fascist years.” She says while it wasn’t easy finding interviewees, she did correspond with an octogenarian who, as a child, had got through the Third Reich years by acting in Nazi propaganda films.

The novel tells the story of a Berlin based jazz band – non-Jewish, Jewish and black. Two are African American and one – Hiero Falk – is a mixed race German, who is the most in danger as they flee Berlin for Paris. When the “Boots” march into the City of Light, Falk is arrested and disappears; his fate, for most of the novel, is unknown.

Edugyan in the end chose to write a book about musical passion, not the history of black Germans. Louis Armstrong appears in the novel, and the intense prose is an impressive attempt to evoke the power of playing jazz:

“And then, real late, Armstrong come in. I was shocked. Ain’t no bold brass at all. He just trilled in a breezy, casual way, like he giving some dame a second glance in the street without breaking stride.”
The idea is a great one. Mainstream films have created fiction about how the Nazis treated what they regarded as "degenerate" music and musicians; notably Swing Kids (1993) and the German feature The Comedian Harmonists (1998).

So sold on its setting and its jazz theme, it is a shame that Half Blood Blues is not more ambitious. While the players symbolically attempt a jazz version of the notorious Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel, the novel settles for an unsatisfying mystery, glibly resolved after German Unification. Its narrator, Sid, is essentially Salieri to Hiero’s Amadeus in a retread of the Peter Schaffer play.

The most compelling aspect of the characterisation, though is the African American Sid’s awareness that he would rather stay in Europe, like Louis Armstrong and Josephine Baker, than return to the segregated hatred of the Land of the Free.

The reader is left wishing for a novel with the meticulous research and emotion of Andrea Levy’s outstanding Small Island. Levy powerfully evoked the clash of cultures in the treatment of black GIs stationed in Britain.

There is in all of us, a part that wonders how would I – my ethnic group – have been treated by the Nazis? And equally importantly, how would my neighbours have treated me in those extraordinary times?

At a mansion in Wannsee, on the rural outskirts of Berlin, you can see the conference table where the Nazis planned and launched their Final Solution like corporate executives at a luxury retreat. Individual pages of statistics are placed at each empty place. Most chilling to British visitors is the typed sheet which lists the estimated number of Jews in Britain in thousands; broken down by region into England, Scotland, Wales.

There were few black Germans of the interwar years in the first place, and so few survive, that their true story is harder to tell though Eduygan’s bibliography names 2 factual books on the subject. The novel only really comes alive in the final third, with its evocation of the panic that engulfs Paris as it falls to the Wehrmacht. We’ve probably seen it in a film or a book before but, as in Spielberg’s version of JG Ballard’s, Empire of the Sun – it is the facts of the fall of Paris or Shanghai that are the most compelling.

Vikram Seth’s Two Lives is a deeply moving biography of his Indian uncle and German Jewish wife who met in 30s Berlin. She made it to London, but her family was murdered in concentration camps. Its power is in what the years of mundane research and interviews uncover. Half Blood Blues suffers by using the Third Reich, ultimately, only as a backdrop. When it comes to the Nazis, the truth is always more powerful than fiction.

Bill O'Reilly, Tavis Smiley And Cornel West Have Fiery Clash Over Wall Street, Poverty

Bill O'Reilly welcomed radio host Tavis Smiley and Prof. Cornel West onto his Tuesday show. The resulting dust-up was nothing short of a cable news classic.

Smiley and West have become a bona fide double act, regularly making the cable news rounds. O'Reilly brought them on to discuss the Occupy Wall Street movement and poverty in America. He set up the conversation by saying that the two were overlooking key statistics in their battle against poverty that showed the problem to be as much one of "personal responsibility" as economic injustice. Then, he turned to West.

"Where am i going wrong?" he asked. West said that his "lens" was wrong, and that he was overlooking the widening economic inequality in America. "The oligarchs and plutocrats that you tend to want to promote rather intensely [are] not only doing well but been too greedy!" he said. "I don't think I'm promoting anybody who's doing untoward things," O'Reilly said. "We're talking about chronic excess!" West responded, causing O'Reilly to try to shut him up. "No filibustering here," O'Reilly snapped.

He said that what Smiley and West seemed to want was for the government to "forcibly seize" money from the rich and give it to the poor. "That's socialism and that's not going to work here," he concluded.

"It wasn't socialism when we bailed out the banks in the first place?" Smiley said. He started to say that O'Reilly had been "right" in a recent attack on Stanley O'Neal, the former head of Merril Lynch. O'Reilly misheard him.

"Lied about it?!" he thundered. "What do you mean i lied about it?!"

"I said you were right!" Smiley said. "R-i-g-h-t!" O'Reilly apologized, and assured his guests he was "calm." Things got a lot less calm right afterwards, though. Smiley asked why O'Reilly was focusing on O'Neal, one of the few black CEOs of a major firm, causing O'Reilly to shout, "we treat everybody the same here!" Smiley disagreed, and wondered why, when Occupy Wall Street protesters were being arrested, no "bankster" had gone to jail "to pay for his crimes."

"They didn't violate any laws!" O'Reilly said, prompting Smiley and West to essentially lose it. "OOOOOHHHHHHHH!" they both said together. "How do you know?!" West yelled. "There's been no investigations! Why would you say something like that?!"

"All right, knock it off!" O'Reilly fired back. "...You don't have any evidence!" West countered that, with no investigation, no criminality could be proven. "You take your law school at Princeton, you develop an illegality and I will put it on the air," O'Reilly said.

WATCH:

The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

In January, Ohioan Kelley Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in jail, three years of probation, and 80 hours of community service for having her children attend schools outside her district. Gov. John Kasich reduced her sentence last month.



http://online.wsj.com

School districts hire special investigators to follow kids home in order to verify their true residences.

By MICHEAL FLAHERTY

In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge that has landed several parents, such as Ohio's Kelley Williams-Bolar, in jail this year.

An African-American mother of two, Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school outside of their neighborhood. After spending nine days behind bars charged with grand theft, the single mother was convicted of two felony counts. Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it threatened her ability to earn the teacher's license she had been working on.

Ms. Williams-Bolar caught a break last month when Ohio Gov. John Kasich granted her clemency, reducing her charges to misdemeanors from felonies. His decision allows her to pursue her teacher's license, and it may provide hope to parents beyond the Buckeye State. In the last year, parents in Connecticut, Kentucky and Missouri have all been arrested—and await sentencing—for enrolling their children in better public schools outside of their districts.

These arrests represent two major forms of exasperation. First is that of parents whose children are zoned into failing public schools—they can't afford private schooling, they can't access school vouchers, and they haven't won or haven't even been able to enter a lottery for a better charter school. Then there's the exasperation of school officials finding it more and more difficult to deal with these boundary-hopping parents.

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates.

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students.

Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children.

In August, an internal PowerPoint presentation from the American Federation of Teachers surfaced online. The document described how the AFT undermined minority parent groups' efforts in Connecticut to pass the "parent trigger" legislation that offers parents real governing authority to transform failing schools. A key to the AFT's success in killing the effort, said the document, was keeping parent groups from "the table." AFT President Randi Weingarten quickly distanced her organization from the document, but it was small consolation to the parents once again left in the cold.

Kevin Chavous, the board chairman for both the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Democrats for Education Reform, senses that these recent events herald a new age for fed-up parents. Like Martin Luther King Jr. before them, they understand "the fierce urgency of now" involving their children's education. Hence some parents' decisions to break the law—or practice civil disobedience.

This life-changing decision is portrayed in Betty Smith's 1943 novel, "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," also adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. In the novel, Francie Nolan is the bright young daughter of Irish immigrants living in Brooklyn's Williamsburg immigrant ghetto in the early 20th century. An avid reader, Francie is crushed when she attends her local public school and discovers that opportunity is nonexistent for girls of her ilk.

So Francie and her father Johnny claim the address of a house next to a good public school. Francie enrolls at the school and her life is transformed. A teacher nurtures her love for writing, and she goes on to thrive at the school. Francie eventually becomes an accomplished writer who tells the story of her transformation through education.

The defining difference between the two schools, writes the novel's narrator, is parents: At the good school, "The parents were too American, too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the immigrants and the second-generation Americans."

Were Francie around today, she'd be sad but not surprised to see how little things have changed. Students are still poisoned by low expectations, their parents are still getting bulldozed. But Francie wouldn't yield to despair. She would remind this new generation of courageous parents of the Tree of Heaven, from which her story gets its title—"the one tree in Francie's yard that was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement." The tree, the narrator adds, "liked poor people."

The defenders of the status quo in our nation's public schools could learn a lot from that tree.

Mr. Flaherty is president and cofounder of Walden Media, which coproduced the 2010 documentary "Waiting for 'Superman.'"

Grandmother helping Chicago kids 'off the block'

CNN Hero: Diane Latiker

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Diane Latiker is reaching out to young people in her troubled Chicago neighborhood
• "Kids Off the Block" provides recreational activities and valuable life skills
• Latiker urges others in the community to listen to children and help them when possible
• Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2011 CNN Heroes

Chicago (CNN) -- In Roseland, one of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods, many residents stay off the streets to protect themselves from rampant gang violence.

But one grandmother opened her door and invited gang members to come inside.

"They say I'm a nut because I let kids into my home who I didn't even know," said Diane Latiker, 54. "But I know (the kids) now. And I'll know the new generation."

Since 2003, Latiker has gotten to know more than 1,500 young people through her nonprofit community program, Kids Off the Block. And she hopes that by providing them with support and a place to go, she is also bringing hope to a community in crisis.

"We are losing a generation to violence," said Latiker, who started the program in her living room.

According to Chicago Public Schools, 140 of its students have been shot since the school year started in September.

"How can a kid get a gun like he can get a pack of gum? It's that crazy," Latiker said.

Latiker, a mother of eight and grandmother to 13, has lived in Roseland for 22 years. She said she was once "young and dumb," dropping out of high school and having seven children by age 25. But she said that by 36, she had turned her life around: She got remarried and earned her GED. She had also given birth to her eighth child, Aisha.

This time, she said, she was determined to do things right.

Diane Latiker, 54, has become a mentor for local youth in her Chicago neighborhood.

But when Aisha became a teenager in 2003, Latiker worried that Aisha and her friends would fall in with a gang. After all, gang members lived next door, and there weren't many safe things for teenagers to do.

"I started taking (Aisha and her friends) to swimming and movies and whatever," Latiker said. "My mother saw that, and she said: 'Diane, why don't you do something with the kids? They like you and respect you.' "

Latiker was hesitant at first. She wanted to focus on being a grandmother and rebuilding her relationships with her older children. But after thinking and praying about it, she decided to make use of the natural rapport she had with young people.

"I invited them into my living room," she said. "They all started saying: 'I want to be a doctor. I want to be a rapper. I want to be a singer.' They didn't want to be out here running up and down the street. They wanted to be involved in something."

Latiker told them her house was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They could come over for food, or homework help, or just to talk about their hopes, dreams and fears. Kids Off the Block was born.

"It doesn't matter where they come from, what they've done," Latiker said. "We've had six gangs in my living room at one time. ... But that was the safe place. And you know what? They respected that."

As Latiker began to see positive change in many of the kids, she quit her job as a cosmetologist to focus on them full-time. She set up tutoring sessions with teachers and retired educators. She provided job interview training and opportunities to play football, basketball and soccer. Latiker and volunteers also started taking the kids on field trips to museums, movies, skating rinks, water parks and professional sports games.

Video: Memorial to 'shock community'

RELATED TOPICS

• Gang Violence
• Chicago
• Mentoring

In 2004, the group started traveling to other cities across the country, including Detroit and St. Louis, so they could talk to the young people living there.

The experiences "let them know there is something beyond their block," Latiker said.

Latiker has also made many personal sacrifices along the way. She sold the family television to put extra money into the program, and she gave away her dining room set to make room for a computer station.

"We moved into the dining room, and then we moved into one of my bedrooms," she said. "(At one point) there were 75 young people in my three rooms."

Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2011 CNN Heroes

In 2008, just when Latiker thought her home would burst at the seams, some potential donors came to her home for a visit. Impressed, several of them pooled their money to buy a bus for the program. But a few days later, Latiker learned the building next door was for sale -- for the same price as the bus.

"I prayed about it and finally called the donors and asked if the money for the bus could be spent on the building next door instead," Latiker said.

Her prayers were answered. The building was hers, and Kids Off the Block opened the doors of its new home on July 15, 2010.

"We call it The KOB Youth Community Center, and we invite everyone -- all of the youth in the community -- to come," she said.

With 301 members from Roseland, Latiker said the center has brought community outreach to "a whole new level." Every day, 30 to 50 young people show up at the center for tutoring, counseling or activities such as sports, drama, dance or music.

"KOB" caters to people age 11 to 24, but 80% of those in the program are male, Latiker said. She emphasizes activities that target males because they are most often perpetrating or confronting the violence of the streets.

Maurice Gilchrist, 15, is one teenager who credits Kids Off the Block with turning his life around. Gilchrist joined a gang when he was 12, and he says life in a gang meant looking behind his back every day.

"We always used to jump on people, rob everything, steal," he said.

Gilchrist discovered Kids Off the Block when he went to Latiker's house after school with a friend, Latiker's grandson. There, Gilchrist connected with others his age, ate pizza, did his homework, and talked with Latiker, who invited him to join the group.

Today, Gilchrist's grades have improved and he has set his sights on playing football in college. Without Latiker and her program, "I would be locked up, (or) dead, somewhere beat up, in a hospital," he said. "You name it, I would be there.

"Miss Diane, she changed my life. I love her for that."

For Latiker, opening up her door was the first step toward change. And she hopes other people will follow her lead.

"If we came outside, we could change so many things," she said. "This community -- if it was once vibrant and safe -- how did it get to this point? Because people started going inside."

To help "shock the community" into action, Latiker set up a stone memorial in front of the community center for all the young people who have lost their lives to violence since 2007. There are 220 stones lining the memorial, each representing a victim, and Latiker said they are still 150 stones behind.

Through her efforts, Latiker has become a voice for local youth and she wishes more people would take the time to listen to them.

"Our young people need help," Latiker said. "All of them are not gang-bangers. All of them are not dropouts. But the ones that are, they need our help. Somehow or another, something ain't right here. And why don't we ask them about it?"

Want to get involved? Check out the Kids Off the Block website atwww.kidsofftheblock.bbnow.org and see how to help.