The Anderson family - John, Maggie and daughters Cara and Cori - are "shopping black" for 2009.
FILE 2009/Staff




Wednesday, November 25, 2009

'Empowerment Experiment' is about self-help

Arlene Jones

Wednesday, November 25, 2009




I have a different criterion for buying what I need vs. buying what I want. When I buy what I need, I go out of my way to try to find something that was made in America - especially when it comes to houseware items for the kitchen and bath.

If the American economy is to remain strong, we have to support the remaining manufacturers in this country. I have found Pyrex products, Sterlite Plastics containers and rugs for the bathroom that are still made here. I found an entire Web site devoted to products made in this country, and I'm linking to it at my blog. Is there anyone in this country who can be mad at me for making that decision? Most likely no.

I thought about that last week Wednesday, I had the pleasure of being invited by the Kellogg Business School's Black Alumni Association to a reception they held for John and Maggie Anderson. To refresh your memory, they are the Oak Park couple who announced about a year ago that they would only buy from black businesses for one year. And just like I go out of my way to buy products made in America, they were going out of their way to spend their money with black businesses. How could anyone have a problem with that? But guess what? Some people did.

The Andersons have been continuously dogged out by some because of their decision. I am amazed at whites who holler and call their Empowerment Experiment (EE) racist. Every ethnic group in this country has made their community a success by pooling their resources, supporting each other and building wealth by shopping and networking amongst themselves. Yet when blacks espouse the same, it is somehow reverse racism. Why?

It wasn't long ago that the constant retort a lot of black people got from whites was about "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." Those whites would smugly recount how their immigrant ancestors had come to this country with nothing, didn't know the language and, one generation later, were successful. Well, I too can recall the days of thriving black businesses that could rival any other. I look back a generation and see a once-vibrant black economic force of Johnson Products, Soft-Sheen hair care, R.L. Dukes' Oldsmobile dealership, etc. ... all gone. I never saw the Cortez Peters Business School when it was on West Madison, but as a child I was so proud that a black man could type 225 words per minute.

Now within this same community, we have children growing up and during their entire childhood, they have never seen a business owned by a black person. Something is very wrong with that picture.

All the social programs and all the rhetoric in the world cannot save the black community until we save ourselves. And the first life-rope we need is to support the quality black-owned businesses that are in existence. It is an absolute disgrace that we can have a mega-church taking up an entire block and not have a grocery store on its first floor. It is a sin to spend the amount of money we do on hair care, yet almost every beauty supply store is owned by people who don't have black hair. It is the epitome of stupidity to listen while some blacks proudly say they won't patronize black-owned businesses while never asking themselves what if their employer looked at them and felt the same way.

Someone wrote on my blog that they feel offended by any sign that says "black owned." Well, I wonder if they feel as offended seeing the flag of Mexico on every Mexican restaurant or Chinese characters on every Chinese restaurant or the Italian flag on pizza places. I'll answer the question and say no. Those groups open up businesses in every community and never once are they concerned that their ventures won't be patronized by everyone in the area. Most whites shop with other whites because they own the businesses in their neighborhood. What the Andersons are doing with their EE is to get black people to do the same.

For the past four years, I have been doing my own version of the EE on a much smaller scale. I decided I would find a black manufactured product and support it over any other. My choice, Nubian Heritage Black Seed Soap. The product is 100% natural, smells good, leaves my skin feeling soft and smooth and is my small way of ensuring they get my money before anyone else does.

So to those who criticize what the Andersons are doing with their EE, if blacks don't support blacks businesses, who else will?








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Kellogg Black Alumni Honor The Andersons

The Andersons are the couple out of Oak Park who chose to "buy black only" for one year. That year is coming to an end and I was invited to hear their story as the Black Alumni from Kellogg honored them.

Mrs. Anderson is a dynamic speaker and should she decide to run for office (take heed Danny K Davis, Don Harmon, LaShawn Ford and Earlean Collins) you all would loose big time!

Am I the Only One Bothered By This

Now this is just pure speculation on my part, but I find it very interesting that the CPD would begin to track a cell phone signal. Besides the spot where Michael Scott died, it is also the location of the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza.

What if someone were to be on a rendeveouz with their "significant" other and in less than 8 hours of being "out of touch" the CPD starts a search for you?

There are still parts to this puzzel that needs to be addressed.

Black Folks Need To Stop Being In Denial

I went to bed around 5 a.m. Monday morning. For some reason I woke up an hour and a half later to turn on the radio and hear the sad news regarding the death of Michael Scott. It was shocking to hear not only that he was dead, but that it appeared to be a suicide.

Many of the people I spoke with were in disbelief and I can understand. No one wants to believe that someone as successful as Scott would kill himself when we have hundreds of folks who have so much less in terms of finances and opportunities who don't despair.

While I am not going to jump on the bandwagon and agree with the Medical Examiner that Scott's death was the result of a suicide, neither will I won't jump on the "black folks don't do that" bandwagon. Everyone wants people to behave in a textbook manner when it comes to situations that we don't fully comprehend. We want suicide notes, depressed behaviors and warning signs of impending doom. But if you follow the news like I do, then the black community has graduated from the "black folks don't do that" school of thought into the master's degree program of the "I'm no longer shocked that black folks are doing that" university.

Take, for example, serial killers. For years the FBI profile on them would be a white male, middle age, loner, etc. committing such crimes. Consider the D.C. sniper. Everybody was looking for a white man until John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were finally caught. Because they didn't fit the profile of someone who would probably be responsible, they were overlooked and their rampage continued.

What about the case of Anthony Sowell? After police went to his house to arrest him on rape charges, they found the decomposing bodies of three women. Further investigation revealed a total of 11 bodies in the home in various states of decomposition. And, yeah, Sowell is black.

How about the thought that only white people are "trailer park trash"? Well we do, too. I don't know how many of you have followed the story of Shaniya Davis. The 5-year-old girl was alleged to have been sold by her mother into sexual slavery. Her mother, Antoinette Davis called police and told them her daughter was missing from the trailer park where they lived. But the mother's story didn't hold water when surveillance footage from a hotel 35 miles away showed the little girl being carried into an elevator by Mario Andrette McNeill at the time the mother claimed the child was taken. Sadly, this little girl's dead body was found in a wooded area, her pregnant mother implicated in the crime.

In all the stories I mentioned, everyone who can't make sense out of them profess their disbelief. No one wanted to believe the D.C. snipers could have turned out to be black men. No one wanted to believe that Sowell, who lived in the neighborhood and was known to sit on his front stoop with a beer in his hand greeting his neighbors, was a serial killer. No one wants to believe that a mother can sell her daughter for sex and that the child predator who took the child would be a black man wearing dreadlocks.

Wake up, Black Folks! It's a slippery slope we tread when we so quickly put our minds forcefully into "denial mode." That is the same logic Gregory Brooks Sr. used in defending his son, Gregory Brooks Jr., who today stands accused in the murder of the McClendons.

And that is the same logic being used with regard to Michael Scott's death.

I have walked past the spot where Scott's body was found a number of times, around 2 or 3 a.m. when my old job called me in due to problems with the computer system. Not once in 15 years did I fear being by myself so late at night. Of course I was cautious, but I never saw the spot as dark and isolated. The railroad bridge where Scott's body was found faces two huge apartment buildings, as well as a smaller group of condominiums whose backside are composed of floor-to-ceiling window areas.

Like everyone else, I want more investigation into what happened and all security tapes reviewed. That area is also the location where the Dave Matthews Band bus spewed a load of sewage into the Chicago River splattering people in a tour boat below. That bus was captured on the video camera on the southwest side of the East Bank Club and was eventually used to implicate the bus driver.

We should be demanding that all security tapes from the surrounding area be reviewed to shed light on Scott's death.

Black people are no longer insulated from any mayhem that is committed in this country. And I can understand when people are skeptical. Just don't be in complete denial.

Father Kills Son -

There are so many ways to view this. But I am none too pleased with the mother for having kids by different men. The age differences is startling. And son confesses he needs help and the man who made him kills him, but where was he for the raising?

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Dad arraigned in son's killing; mom says she sought help for teen


BY TAMMY STABLES BATTAGLIA
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Jamar Pinkney Sr. stood stoically in a Highland Park courtroom today, silent as a judge ordered him back to jail without bond, accused of shooting his 15-year-old son in the head execution-style.

With waist-long dreadlocks, the postal carrier didn't flinch as his son's great-aunt wailed and had to be led from 30th District Court.


"This is the most horrible thing that's ever happened to him," Pinkney Sr.'s lawyer, Corbett O'Meara, said after the hearing, not addressing whether Pinkney feels any remorse about Monday's shooting. Pinkney Sr.'s preliminary exam is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 1 in 30th District Court in Highland Park.


"He's calm," O'Meara added. "He appears to understand what's going on."


Investigators say Pinkney was reacting with rage when he stripped his son naked, marched him outside the home of the boy's mother and executed him Monday afternoon.


Lazette Cherry, Jamar Jr.'s mother, said she wanted to get her 15-year-old son help when he came to her and said he had acted inappropriately with his 3-year-old half-sister.


There wasn’t a rape, Cherry said her son told her. But he confessed to his mother that he knew lying on top of the baby was wrong, she said.


So she called her son's father and told him what she believed happened in his home on Newport on Detroit’s east side.


“I called and told his father this isn’t something you sweep under the rug,” the devastated mother said today.


His father showed up at the house Monday afternoon with a gun, she said.


“He started beating him right here,” Cherry said from her living room. “I said, ‘No, please stop!’ ”


But the father marched Jamar Jr., a sophomore at Martin Luther King High School, outside.


“He got on his knees and begged, ‘No, Daddy! No!’ and he pulled the trigger,” she said. “There wasn’t nothing that my son wouldn’t do for his father. He loved his father so much."


The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office charged Pinkney Sr. with first-degree murder, punishable by up to life in prison. He's also been charged with three counts of felonious assault for pointing the gun at Cherry and two other people at her home before the shooting.


"No individual has the right to exact the death penalty on another no matter how reprehensible the behavior -- that is why we have laws," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said today in a statement announcing the charges.


“I hope he rots in jail,” Cherry said of the man she met while they worked at the post office. “He did not deserve that,” she said of her son.


As white teddy bears with red silk hearts bearing the words "I love you" sit on the grass next to her home where her son died, candle wrappers from a vigil held Tuesday night scattered around, Cherry still can't believe what happened.


"There's no justification for what he did, you know, downright shoot your child," she said, wondering aloud about her ex. "He didn't rape her or anything. So why did you have to come and take matters into your hands? We said we were going to get him help."


A fund has been set up to help the family with burial expenses for Jamar Jr. Donations can be made at the Charter One Bank branch in Highland Park.

Death of Michael Scott

I was shocked to wake up this morning and learn that Micheal Scott had died. I had been working on trying to get an appointment with him and now that seems so irrelevant. My condolences to his family.

But I'd like to remind you all of something. Several years back when the Dave Matthews Band bus dumped their sludge into the Chicago River, it was as the bus was heading westbound on Kenzie and the camera on the East Bank Club captured the image of the bus.

There is a camera on the southwest side of the building that points out towards Kenzie because of the stairs leading down to the Chicago River. Hopefully that camera plus the one on the storage facility and the cameras on the Apparel Center will shed some more light on what happened.

I have been in that area that time of the night/morning because when my job had problems and I had to work late, I would have to walk past late at night. Even with all the development in the area, it still is a pretty deserted location at night. But at the same time, there are tons of cameras in the area. The Apparel Center guard station has lots of cameras monitoring the site and the dock area too.

I wonder if Michael drowned or was he shot? The river at that point is not that deep. Lots of rocks that built up so that the water is only a couple of feet shallow at that point.


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UPDATED INFO AFTER I POSTED MY THOUGHTS. MICHAEL SCOTT WAS SHOT....


Cops: Preliminary investigation indicates Scott shot himself
November 16, 2009 9:53 AM


A preliminary investigation indicates Michael Scott, president of the Chicago Board of Education, apparently shot himself in the head along the banks of the Chicago River early this morning, sources say.

Scott's family had reported him missing on Sunday. Police used his cell phone to locate his body and his car behind the Chicago Apparel Center at 350 N. Orleans along the north branch of the river, police sources tell the Chicago Tribune.

He apparently fell forward after shooting himself, and the gun was found near the body, the sources say.

While police sources say it appears the gunshot wound was self-inflicted, the Cook County medical examiner's office was still conducting its investigation and hadn't determined how he died.

Scott's family had contacted police Sunday night when he didn't show up after visiting his sister at a South Loop care facility. The relative said he visited his sister regularly on Sundays and described him as a creature of habit. He was last seen about 6 p.m.

Around 3:15 a.m. today, police found Scott's blue Cadillac parked next to a trash bin yards away from where he was discovered along the river, police say. The car was winched onto a tow truck about 6:30 a.m.

Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart said in a statement that Scott recently told her he didn't think he'd be around much longer as board president, and that he viewed his appointment as being an interim one.

Stewart said she last spoke with Scott on Saturday regarding the upcoming school board agenda.

"I found Michael to be someone who worked with the union in a cooperative manner and who was willing to hear the other side of any issue," said Stewart. "I believe he was dedicated to doing what was best for the children in Chicago Public Schools and his death leaves a huge void to fill at a time when the Board desperately needs stability in its leadership."

Tariq Butt, a Chicago school board member who has known Scott for about 20 years, said he was shocked by the news.

"He's been a giant of Chicago civic life for many many years," said Butt. "It is very tragic news."

Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived at the scene about 7:25 a.m.

"I am stunned beyond disbelief," said Jackson, who said that he and Scott go back at least 25 years and praised Scott as a decent man and an excellent negotiator and problem-solver who got along with everyone. "What a Monday morning to wake up to."

"The suddenness of it ... midday has become midnight," he said later. "The sun has been eclipsed."

Scott had been board president for five years until July 2006, when then-board member Rufus Williams was appointed at his recommendation. His reappointment in February came about a month after Ron Huberman replaced former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan, now the U.S. education secretary.

Scott served in public posts under Mayors Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, Eugene Sawyer and Daley, who also has appointed him Park District board president and a member on the boards of the RTA and Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority.

Representatives of the Chicago Board of Education have not been available for comment so far this morning.

-- Pat Curry, Andrew Wang, Azam Ahmed, and Mark LeBien

What Would Happen In a Case like this Under HEALTH CARE REFORM?

London, England (CNN) -- A severely ill toddler at the center of a legal battle between his parents has died days after his father agreed to switch off his ventilator.

The 13-month-old boy, known as Baby RB, suffered from congenital myasthenic syndrome, a rare genetic condition that means he cannot breathe on his own.

Cristopher Cuddihee, a solicitor who represents the father, confirmed the baby's death early Sunday but did not provide any more details.

The baby's father had been battling his mother and the hospital in London's High Court because they wanted the child's life support switched off "in his best interests." He disagreed, saying the baby could play and recognize his parents. The father withdrew his objection Tuesday and allowed the ventilator to be switched off.

The hospital defended its stance in a statement last week, saying the baby's birth defect "causes severe muscle weakness, feeding and respiratory problems, and the disease is progressive."

Baby RB's lungs filled with fluid every few hours, giving him the sensation he is choking and causing the child to suffer, lawyers representing the hospital said in court November 2.

Ultimately, the father agreed with the mother and the hospital that the best thing was for the baby to die "in a planned way, with the administration of a large dose of sedative, the removal of the ventilation tube and his consequent death," Judge Andrew McFarlane said Tuesday.

The baby's parents, who are separated, cannot be named because of a court order protecting their privacy.