Dec. 26, 2011

Military Families Celebrate the Reason for the Season
By Yanick Rice Lamb

Chief Warrant Officer Richard Bellamy and some members of his family at his warrant officer induction in Aberdeen. PHOTO: Afro American Newspapers

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspapers

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Rev. Raichera McCray pumps her fist in the air as she repeatedly shouts “Hallelujah! Hallelujah Jesus!” Her joy is contagious, and Reid Temple A.M.E. Church in Glenn Dale, Md. has already been primed by the cranberry-robed choir’s song of praise, For Every Mountain. She encourages congregants to have faith whether they have mountains of debt or family drama.

The theme of Rev. McCray’s guest sermon is I’ll Holla If I Want To, drawing from the book of Joshua and her own life.

These days, the 25 year old has a lot to shout about, she says. Just three days earlier, her husband, Ensign Byron McCray, returned home to her and their two babies from Bahrain in the Middle East.

“I thank God for my honey-bunny being back in the States,” Rev. McCray tells the Prince George’s County church on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

The McCrays are among many African-American military families relieved that their loved ones will be home for the holidays — a combination of tours ending in the world’s hot spots, but mostly a result of the end of the 9-year war in Iraq.

American families -- and Black families --have experienced monumental stress while trying to cope with fathers and husbands serving in Iraq.

As the conflict in Iraq intensified, Black Americans experienced varying amounts of grief and fear, according to mental health experts. Nobody is unaffected by war. In military families, however, there is the added fear for the safety of loved ones who may be or already have been deployed, as well as the potential challenges of coping as a single parent.

Mental health officials said some men and women who were impacted by the war in Iraq experienced problems that included, difficulty completing tasks, trouble concentrating, fear and anxiety about the future, apathy and emotional numbing, irritability and anger and sadness and depression.

In this time of heightened anxiety over the war with Iraq, mental health experts also say Black children experience fear and anxiety too. They’re seeing news reports and hearing people around them talk about the war and terrorist threats here at home. But unlike adults, children have little experience to help them put this information into perspective.

Whatever their age or relationship to adults who are involved in the war effort, experts say, children need to be able to express their feelings and concerns about the war.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have been welcoming soldiers back home and greeting their families for the holidays.

“Now it is up to us to serve these brave men and women as well as they serve us,” President Obama said in his weekly address, offering the “thanks of a grateful nation” as he made good on a promise made during his inauguration in 2009.

“More than 1.5 million Americans have served there with honor, skill and bravery,” he said of troops in Iraq. “Tens of thousand have been wounded.” The president also praised the families of the 4,500 who made the “ultimate sacrifice.”

Renee Harris of Laurel, Md., misses her cousin, Chief Warrant Officer Richard Bellamy, who has moved back and forth between Afghanistan and a U.S. Army base in Baumholder, Germany. Harris is praying for an end to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, but welcomed the news of those leaving Iraq. “I was just as happy like it was my family,” she said.

Harris reminisces about Bellamy’s “perfect smile” and laughter when they “crack on each other.” Bellamy is the family magnet who pulls his relatives together for Sunday dinners, cookouts and other gatherings when he’s home in Washington, D.C.

Bellamy talked about the importance of family in a phone call from overseas. “You try to get family time when you can get it,” said Bellamy, who missed out on key moments being in the military but now has his immediate family in Germany: his wife, Sherrie, sons, Kenyatta, 13, and Keyshawn, 10, and daughter, Layla, 4, who he saw briefly two-and-a-half months after she was born. “It feels like I’m still getting to know my baby girl.”

Despite the sacrifices and long days, Bellamy said, “I know that we are making a difference.”

McCray, who works on ships as a diesel mechanic and welder, has had similar experiences. A reservist now on active duty, he has served in Iraq, Kuwait, Germany and Italy as well as Bahrain. McCray witnessed the birth of year-old Byron Jr., but he just happened to be home on leave when his daughter, Skylar Alyse, was born two years ago. Then his two-week leave was suddenly cut short to five days.

He hasn’t been home for a full year of his three-year marriage, but he and his wife are making up for lost time. The McCrays celebrated Thanksgiving with their families in South Carolina, but they plan to spend a quiet Christmas, home alone in Maryland.

Dec. 26, 2011

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from GIN

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko might have cheered the movement of Occupiers now multiplying across the United States and abroad with the goal to obtain rights for the “99 percent”.

The Black Consciousness activist would have been 65 this week but his life was cut short at the age of 30 when he was murdered by apartheid-era police while in detention. Born on Dec. 18, 1946, he died on Sept. 12, 1977 in Pretoria.

By 1972, Biko had become one of the founders and later the first President of the Black Peoples Convention which retaliated against the Apartheid government using “black communism”, land restitution, and guerrilla warfare. 

In spite of government repression, Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement played a significant role in organizing the protests which culminated in the Soweto Uprising of June 16, 1976.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created after the end of minority rule and the apartheid system, reported in 1997 that five former members of the South African security forces who had admitted to killing Biko were applying for amnesty. Their application was rejected.

Nkosinathi BIko, CEO of the Steve Biko foundation, said: “Black Consciousness taught people about a positive sense of self and then tried to link that positive sense of self to an emancipation program. We need programs that will rekindle the consciousness of the citizenry in this country. We need a reawakening of the national consciousness.”

Dec. 26, 2011

Rev. Jesse Jackson Celebrated Abroad, Receives Honorary Degree from De Montfort University 

Civil Rights Icon Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. is bestowed with an honorary degree from De Montfort University in Leicester for his international human and civil rights efforts. In this photo, he poses with Professor Dominic Shellard, vice chancellor. PHOTO: Butch Wing

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from De Montfort University Leicester

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., revered by millions as one of the world’s greatest civil rights leaders, has received an honorary degree from De Montfort University.

He was honored during a special ceremony at the 12^th century St Mary De Castro Church, which is adjacent to the university campus in Leicester.

After receiving his award, known as “the great unifier”, told students: “I want you to face whatever challenges come your way, but have the mind to think it through. Have the courage of your convictions, see people as they are, have character, measure who you lift up, not how you climb. It is good to know, but even better to care. Keep your hopes alive and go forward with those hopes. Never go backwards because of your fears.”

He received a standing ovation lasting several minutes from an audience of more than 200 students, staff and people from the city of Leicester. There was then a performance by the DMU Gospel Choir before Jackson’s daughter Santita gave a moving rendition of an old Gospel song.

The Right Hon Keith Vaz MP opened the proceedings with a speech in which he praised Rev. Jackson for being one of the world’s great leaders and told the audience he would be putting Rev. Jackson’s name forward for a Nobel Peace Prize.

He added: “Martin Luther King’s famous dream has come alive and been kept alive by Rev. Jackson. Reverend Jackson, you have many, many friends here in Leicester and the rest of the country and we hope this honor will serve to create an even more unbreakable bond between you and the people of Leicester.”

De Montfort University Vice-Chancellor Professor Dominic Shellard then delivered a citation, telling the audience about Rev. Jackson’s 50 years of campaigning for civil rights in the U. S. and abroad.

Professor Shellard chose a quote from Jackson’s speech to the 1988 Democrat Convention when he put his name forward to run for president: “The only justification for looking down on someone is when you stop and pick them up.”

Professor Shellard said, “While we face the threat of a double dip recession, a collapsing Euro, protestors making a stand against oppression, inequality and poverty around the world, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are all one human race, we are no less a person than anybody else. In times of trouble, we need to support one another, pick one another up and, to use one of Reverend Jackson’s most famous phrases, ‘Keep Hope Alive’.”

Jackson responded, “I am honored to receive this award today. It is here to serve the higher purposes of the university which is that you, as young people, come along and have the power to change the world and make the world a better place.”

Jackson had spent the day at the university taking part in a national Home Affairs Select Committee conference in which he was the keynote speaker on the theme of Roots of Violent Radicalization.

The conference was attended by MPs from the select committee, as well as representatives from universities, prisons, the police, the probation service, religious organizations and think tanks.

The findings from the conference will be used by the select committee to inform the Government’s Prevent strategy, which aims to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.

During his keynote address to the conference, Jackson had used a football analogy to explain how to bring people together and move forward after watching Chelsea play Manchester City the night before.

He said, “There is a lesson from the world of athletics we can all learn from. The match between Chelsea and Man City involved a multi-racial body of athletes, speaking different languages but all joined by the same set of rules. They shook hands before the game, engaged in competition and then they embraced each other when the game ended. Those that won were ecstatic but knew there would be more games coming and those that lost were down, but not too much so. They lost their game but not their dignity. What made it possible for those young athletes was that when you play and the rules are made public, and the goals are clear and the referees are fair, then we can all make it.”

Dominique Whalen and his mother, Kimberly, share a happy moment as they, along with her 12-year-old son, pick up gifts from Families Forward. The family is just up from homelessness thanks to help from the D.C.-based organization. PHOTO: Barry Student

Dominique Whalen kept the faith through homelessness. 
PHOTO: Barry Student

The New Faces of Homelessness in America - the Family
By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – At this time of the year, many 20-year-olds have their minds set on the latest I-Phone, a certain brand of jacket or perhaps shoes that they want. But, such things are not priority for Dominique Whalen. He is different than a lot of youth his age.

Dominique’s Christmas and New Year’s wishes are a unique blend of, well, he just wants a permanent home. He simply wants the certainty that he, his mother and his 12-year-old brother will never be homeless again.

“It’s a rough road,” says the tall, charismatic young man who has lived in the streets, even separated from his mother, so that she and his younger brother could more easily find a place to sleep at night.

“I’m just happy to get past what we’ve gone through…So we can progress from there,” he says in an interview.

Dominique recalls when his mother suddenly lost her job at a Maryland Safeway where she’d worked five years. He learned quickly that he could not lean on his friends. In fact, he could not even relate to them.

“One minute I was living an everyday life of a teen-ager. The next minute, I have to think on my own. Your mind is a 24-hour grind, you have to know where you’re going to lay your head, what you’re going to eat, who to trust, survival instincts,” he said. “There were times when I‘ve cried. There were times I felt like suicide. There were times I felt like, ‘Why me. I’m young, I’m young’.”

Dominique and his family, once among the thousands of homeless across America, is now living in a transitional home. But, they still need a safety net just like the other 146 million families living at or below the poverty line, according to recent numbers reported by the U. S. Census Bureau.

This family’s safety net, like thousands of others over the past 26 years, was a Washington, D.C.-based organization called Families Forward.

Dominique’s frustration represents the pain of a family going through an economic crisis. But, Ruby Gregory, executive director of Families Forward, has another kind of pain.

“It’s indescribable the feeling that you have when you are trying to work with a family to find resources that will keep them off the street and you’re doing everything that you can and the resources just aren’t there; not only in the surrounding areas, but within your organization,” Gregory says. “It’s very frustrating. I wake up in the morning thinking how am I going to help our families today? And I go to bed at night thinking the same thing. What did we do that made a difference today and how can we do it different tomorrow?”

Families Forward is federally funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). But, the $292,000  a year for 36 families that HUD grants the organization to help pay rent for transitional housing is just not enough when there’s a waiting list of more than 50 additional families and no anticipated openings until April 2012. And in the current economy with people suddenly finding themselves out of work, Gregory says, the needs are well beyond simply housing.

Families Forward also struggles to provide help with job search, job training, entrepreneurial assistance and a clothes closet. It also serves 150 families with various needs other than housing.

Charitable contributions typically decrease during economic crunches. Still, Gregory has launched a drive by letter and on www.familiesforward.org requesting financial help from people who are willing to give simply because they recognize the need.

“The interesting thing is how the face of the homeless has changed over the last couple of years. We are now getting families that actually do have a significant history of employment. And due to the economic situation, they’ve lost employment or their hours have been cut. And so they’re finding themselves unable to afford the market rent that they’ve been used to paying,” Gregory says. “What we find a lot of times is that the families - some of them - are caught in the middle. The families have just a little too much income to get the resources or they’re destitute. There’s nothing in place for the families a lot of time who just need a little more to make ends meet.”

The families that Gregory describes are what she and others call “the working poor.” She stresses, “They are working … We have been struggling with this for so long.”

Dominique’s mother, Kimberly Whalen, lost her job at a Safeway grocery store four years ago where she had worked for five years. She struggled to keep her family living together, but resorted to staying in the homes of friends until about a month ago when she got help from Families Forward. The gregarious Whalen now works as a cook at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center as she strives to get back on her feet.

Her hopes are to now “become self-sufficient and to help other people who are homeless and get them on the right track like I did,” she said.

The Whalen family appears to be headed for a happy ending. But, Gregory reminds that there are thousands of other families out there who are still suffering. And even federally funded organizations like Families Forward will fall short unless they get the additional financial contributions they need.

“Whatever we go over our budget for subsidies, we have to raise,” she said. “Our challenge is finding rents that stay within our budget.”

Gregory knows well the needs of people and how those needs have changed over the years. She started as a bookkeeper with Families Forward 25 years ago when it was just a year old and called Consortium for Services to Homeless Families.

“I just loved what we do,” she said.

But as the needs increase, they are more and more difficult to meet. Having come up through the ranks, Gregory has acquired a unique and seasoned perspective on the issue of poverty in America.

“Everybody gives money and time to the shelters. I don’t think they recognize how important it is to put that money toward transitional housing because the families that we have in transitional housing are actually expected to pay utilities and to pay a portion of whatever they earn toward rent, so they’re just as needy – if not more – than the families that are in the shelters,” she explains.

Meanwhile, Dominique Whalen, one step up from homelessness, gives his remedy for holding on when there appears to be nothing to hold on to: “Faith. Faith,” says the 20-year-old. “Staying positive and just knowing to yourself it’s going to get better.”