WB Sets Release Date For Jackie Robinson Biopic Starring Chadwick Boseman, Nicole Beharie bit.ly/J5KsOW

The Most Powerful Women You’ve Never Heard Of foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/…(FP) via @baldaufji

Atmospheric Trailer For Nonzee Nimibutr’s DISTORTION goo.gl/fb/a3P26

Watch Compilation From Wendell Pierce-Produced, Raisin-in-The-Sun-Inspired Drama Clybourne Park (Opens Today [4/20/2012]) bit.ly/J7q06Y

Cedella Marley, Daughter Of Bob Marley, Talks To S&A About Definitive Marley Doc (Opening Today) bit.ly/IDCQ8u

Why young Americans are driving so much less than their parents, via @Richard_Florida bit.ly/HEc0iz

Tuareg Rebels in #Mali Declare Independence: Part of an African Awakening for Self-Determination? owl.li/a9LsK

Delta State Government To Make Asaba The ‘Silicon Valley of Africa’? bit.ly/GSSZd2 by @techloy

“The White Savior Industrial Complex” = fabulous commentary from @tejucole on #stopkony & similar projects: bit.ly/GEJcHo

VIDEO: China’s investment in Ghana is ‘very welcome’ bbc.in/AF476W (BBC)

On African Americans, Mental Health and Suicide, by @AmyAlex63 & Alvin Poussaint amazon.com/Lay-My-Burden-…

Suicide and Black Men bet.com/news/health/20…

Nigeria’s Boko Haram: between rebellion and jihad bit.ly/wVFQTX (Reuters)

In Praise of Brain Drain: Want to help the developing world? Hire away its best minds bit.ly/rsYNEP (FP)

RARE 1983 PHOTO: David Bowie Rick James China Club Grammy and Grace Jones – bit.ly/yrpCdP

25 iconic Saul Bass title sequences in 100 seconds j.mp/uxgbPq

Great resource: Searching the Brain for the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving— NYTimes.comnyti.ms/tiiBnZ

A very interesting @nytimes article on contemporary African artists:ow.ly/aj9Fr

Brazilian Martial Arts Flick "Besouro" Gets Name Change For USA Release; Now Streaming On Netflix As "The Assailant" bit.ly/GPIdRX

The White Savior Industrial Complex bit.ly/GDMJ2z

INTERVIEW: After hearing the ‘kora’, Steven Pile decides to open a solar-powered music school in Gambia bit.ly/zQxA5v

7th Annual Women Of Color Arts & Film Festival Announces Opening, Closing, Centerpiece Films bit.ly/wQgewY

Rural African American Life In The 1930s-40s (wonderful color photographs) bit.ly/x1FE9K

Watch Trailer For Vin Diesel’s "The Ropes" Series; Season 1 Now Streaming On Netflix bit.ly/xnrsIZ

RT @Terencenance: Post-blackness is a car wreck between semantics and self hate. The whole concept should be re-names post-wackness

RT @Terencenance: The Help, Red Tails, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty and the Problem With Black Cinema tinyurl.com/7trds4x

RT @Skrap_Zemrag Why the Oscars should cast out "The Help" and welcome in "Pariah" bit.ly/xI6ZgM via@guardian

New Teaser For Kenji Kamiyama’s 009 RE:CYBORG goo.gl/fb/wuKGT

"Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone" Gets DVD/Digital Release Pickup And Release Date bit.ly/x1TGds

First Look At Danny Glover And Kimberly Elise In Upcoming Western "Hannah’s Law" bit.ly/zneruJ

Top Grossing Films Of 2011 + Top Grossing Films With Black Characters In Starring Roles bit.ly/sB0ANl

25 iconic Saul Bass title sequences in 100 seconds j.mp/uxgbPq

Here are my talking points for the upcoming talk. I do not expect to hit even 5% of what’s written here but this may serve as guide for what I should have said. As always, when I send you something I welcome feedback—I’ve never expected to grandstand and perform alone. Just like any child at play, I have the traditional expectation that, whatsoever I do, others can do just as well and often better.

General Preamble

• The “mainstream” is a polluted river, an unsustainable environment. Speaking “outside of the mainstream” often means you are investing in the future of universe—not your next paycheck.
• Most technical people “of color” worked in cultural isolation and risk getting too comfortable with being alone or functioning in a social scene where they are the only person “of color.” The need to be collective is not just a pretty ideal from the 1960s. It is a mental health exercise.
• The ethnic origin of my intellect is not European—this is not an outburst of irresponsible hatred but a carefully considered revelation that has taken decades for me to see.
• Recommended reading Black Life in Corporate America. This book takes testimony from the previous generation.

Answering Dr. Shani

• My current title is “Silverlight Consultant”—I’m a contractor for 20^th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment. I am not a permanent employee—this means that I have to pay for medical insurance with my own money. This also leads me to the topic of “at will employment”—which means that I can walk in to the office on any work day and be told that my contract is cancelled. Since the end of legal slavery in the United States, it’s an American tradition to find me early and often to tell me that my contract is cancelled!
• My educational journey—and my professional career—are dominated by Black women. This means that—as far as I am concerned—I have a classical African education. When I went to UCSB, I knew I was there because they had all of the material equipment—access to physical resources. All of the metaphysical came from deliberate preparation and attention from my family and the Black activist educational community of that time. When crack cocaine hit hard during my teens in the 1980s all of this went away—and the extreme isolation began which has never ended to this very day.
• The first person to help me was my mother. All people come through women so it is natural that women should know all people—this is fundamental theme of traditional, pre-Columbian Black Africa—and this ancient ideal was glimmering faintly and brightly in my mother. My mother taught me personally how to read. As far as I am concerned, it is a sign of wealth and prestige for a child to be taught directly by his parents—this working class American tradition of parents leaving their children with strangers for hours per day for years is the greatest rip off of “modern” humanity. My father made it possible for my mother to teach me because he went to work to provide a home for my older brother, me and my mother. My father was an aircraft mechanic for Western Airlines—so as a child I could look up at the sky, see a huge airplane and know that my father worked on it to make fly. We often forget that Compton has an airport—my father was flight instructor there for years (my father’s teacher, by the way, was taught by one of the Tuskegee Airmen). My father built a train set that took up half the garage for me and my brother—so I was motivated to become technical at an early age. I used to sit out by myself there in that garage in my robe and pajamas trying to get the trains to run—this is the earliest stage in my life where having technical skills became important to me. My father is also a Bible scholar and he unintentionally introduced me to critical thinking and literary criticism by going over scripture with me. But then my mother and father divorced—my brother flipped out and became “the man of the house” which led him to gangs and then crack cocaine hit… My mother and father were both teachers. My mother got her teaching credentials and masters so she was very involved in the K-through-12 educational scene of the 1970s and 1980s. My mother became a nerd of sorts about finding often very exotic educational programs for children—she even barged her way into getting me into the Korean YMCA one summer! There were two very important institutions she got me into: The Museum of Science and Industry and the King/Drew Medical Magnet—both of these environments exposed me formally to the world of computers.
• The traditions of the place we now call Africa are the key to my personal sanity—my personal mental health—and the deep reservoir of biofuel that powers my intellect. This power allows me view the Western world from outside of its worldview—and inside of it simultaneously. To give you an example of how far you can fly with such personal, internal freedom I remind us of the name Kwabena Boahen of Stanford University. He says plainly, “there is not enough Africa in the computer.” See his TED Talk that took place in 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania.

Wednesday, February 8, 8pm PST @Blog Talk Radio Online

Hosted by Kinte K. Furgeson

Live listener call in #424-222-5228

Shani Byard, Ed.D., Founder/Executive Director

Message Media Ed—School of Black Leadership in the Digital Age
A unique learning center designed to close the digital divide
and advance leadership and innovation in the African American
community of South Los Angeles.

4923 W. Adams Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90016 323-708-2526

http://MessageMediaEd.org

Center Hours: Tues-Fri, 3-8pm (*unless otherwise noted)

we need more teen coming of age films for young black girls. #intheworks

 @timoreilly Tim O’Reilly

Fascinating account of how big hospitals drive up healthcare costs, and claim false savings against inflated numbers http://bit.ly/ymCnTd

 @SafeRoutesCA California Team

County Dept of Public health finds cost to build a Walkable and Bikeable SoCal in 25 years: $40B http://wp.me/p16qn2-LM

 @uogbuji Uche Ogbuji

I’m pretty impressed with Chinwe Azubuike’s work. Definitely a Nigerian poet to watch http://africanartists.blogspot.com/2008/06/poetry-by-chinwe-azubuike.html #poetry #nigeria

 @B2science Biosphere 2

RT @rellimluap: New blog post: Biosphere 2 and the joy of failed experiments http://shar.es/f1B4Y

 @africatechie African Entrepreneur

In Praise of Brain Drain: Want to help the developing world? Hire away its best minds http://bit.ly/rsYNEP (FP)

 @timoreilly Tim O’Reilly

Depressing chart showing overlap between Goldman Sachs and the Treasury Department and White House http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/fh4eca65e4.png via Russ Nelson

 @questlove Questo of The Roots

THIS is the number one entry in my greatest #JamesBrown performances. Live on The TAMI show http://youtu.be/b2nybY647F0

 @timoreilly Tim O’Reilly

Very cool visual perception demo. Motion-induced blindness http://michaelbach.de/it/mot_min/ #scifoo

 @timoreilly Tim O’Reilly

Damon Horowitz explains why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities http://bit.ly/nMutQE

@davewiner Dave Winer ☮

Why I Am Never Going to Own a Home Again. http://r2.ly/8ffj

 @engadget Engadget

Tesla CEO Musk says the days of batteries are numbered, ultracapacitors will power us into the future http://engt.co/dOCB12

 @engadget Engadget

NASA’s MESSENGER begins orbit around Mercury [3/18/2011], will start beaming back science early next month http://engt.co/eu5FkO

 @engadget Engadget

GE’s new phase-change based thermal conductor could mean cooler laptops — literally http://engt.co/fNxZ7b

 @CharlesSchwab Charles Schwab Corp

Accrdng to @usedgov the avg cost of tuition @ 4yr public college is ~15K. Read up on diff types of savings plans http://cot.ag/eqiq1D ^LT

The Brecht Form, a “place for people working for social justice, equality and a new culture,” features a lecture by Dr. Gerald Horne, “The Counter-Revolution of 1776?”

Live event tomorrow:

Double Book Party

Distinguished Professor Gerald Horne’s latest publications: Fighting In Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii (University of Hawaii Press) and Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation (NYU Press)

Friday, January 13th. 6–8pm
25 Broadway, 7th floor. Directions: One block
from the 4, 5 Bowling Green Stop, and the R Rector Hall Stop.
Reception and book signing to follow book talk.

Fighting In Paradise

Powerful labor movements played a critical role in shaping modern Hawaii, beginning in the 1930s, when International Longshore and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) representatives were dispatched to the islands to organize plantation and dock laborers. They were stunned by the feudal conditions they found in Hawaii, where the majority of workers–Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino in origin–were routinely subjected to repression and racism at the hands of white bosses.

The wartime civil liberties crackdown brought union organizing to a halt; but as the war wound down, Hawaii workers’ frustrations boiled over, leading to an explosive success in the forming of unions. During the 1950s, just as the ILWU began a series of successful strikes and organizing drives, the union came under McCarthyite attacks and persecution. In the midst of these allegations, Hawaii’s bid for statehood was being challenged by powerful voices in Washington who claimed that admitting Hawaii to the union would be tantamount to giving the Kremlin two votes in the U.S. Senate, while Jim Crow advocates worried that Hawaii’s representatives would be enthusiastic supporters of pro-civil rights legislation.

Hawaii’s extensive social welfare system and the continuing power of unions to shape the state politically are a direct result of those troubled times. Based on exhaustive archival research in Hawaii, California, Washington, and elsewhere, Gerald Horne’s gripping story of Hawaii workers’ struggle to unionize reads like a suspense novel as it details for the first time how radicalism and racism helped shape Hawaii in the twentieth century.

Negro Comrades of the Crown

While it is well known that more Africans fought on behalf of the British than with the successful patriots of the American Revolution, Gerald Horne reveals in his latest work of historical recovery that after 1776, Africans and African-Americans continued to collaborate with Great Britain against the United States in battles big and small until the Civil War.

Many African Americans viewed Britain, an early advocate of abolitionism and emancipator of its own slaves, as a powerful ally in their resistance to slavery in the Americas. This allegiance was far-reaching, from the Caribbean to outposts in North America to Canada. In turn, the British welcomed and actively recruited both fugitive and free African Americans, arming them and employing them in military engagements throughout the Atlantic World, as the British sought to maintain a foothold in the Americas following the Revolution.

In this path-breaking book, Horne rewrites the history of slave resistance by placing it for the first time in the context of military and diplomatic wrangling between Britain and the United States. Painstakingly researched and full of revelations, Negro Comrades of the Crown is among the first book-length studies to highlight the Atlantic origins of the Civil War, and the active role played by African Americans within these external factors that led to it.

In essence I prayed that 2009 would be my worst year of not just the decade but of my whole life. The audacity! 2010 was better (especially from a financial point of view)—but the imperial year 2011 was the worst of the three. The world is in turmoil and that sheltered child, Bryan, must remember that he has not been sheltered for over two decades—and that child no longer exists.

2011 was a year of survival—like reggae-music-lyrics of survival—even like Blues lyrics of survival. I can only sit here and write this because the year has ended with a positive twist (especially from a financial point of view). But the twisting is only around promises. Any serious reconstruction (especially from a financial point of view) begins next week. “The eagle flies on Friday” as the Blues lyrics say—and next Friday promises reconstruction. But the “civil war” is just beginning.

Just in case your life is as sweet and fuzzy as Georgia peaches here are a few links from around the world to put my words into not the rasx() context but your context:

• Americans
• Climate change hits Africa
• Murder, Suicide Top Medical Deaths in Pregnancy
• Declining numbers of blacks seen in math, science
• UN: At Least 1 Million Zimbabweans Facing Hunger
• Greenhouse gases rise to record high
• Former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel dies
• Cape Verde
• Dominican-Haitian Activist Sonia Pierre Dies At 48
• Girl driving buggy in Amish Ohio area fatally shot
• Prius Envy or Hybrid Hatred? Something Is Fueling Attacks on Toyota’s Mileage Star
• Philippines floods declared a national calamity as death toll rises
• Silent flood misery for 1.8M in Cambodia, Vietnam
• Dalai Lama blames suicide protests on Chinese “cultural genocide”
• Bank of America pays $335m damages for charging minorities higher interest rates
• Hopeful News For Treating Depression: Study Fails To Find Differences In Therapy, Meds, Placebo
• Pasadena on emergency footing as powerful winds whip Southern California (VIDEO)
• Nigeria Christmas Day Bombings Kill at Least 26 in Three Cities
• Sodium-Saturated Diet Is a Threat for All
• Why is Windows Phone 7 Failing? Former General Manager Explains
• Why Schools Don’t Value Spatial Reasoning
• Steve Jobs’ “Lost Interview”
• Baron Munchausen actor John Neville dies aged 86