Keith Givan Excels at St. Leo the Great School

By Tasion Kwamilele

Keith Givan, raised by his grandmother Elenda Givan since birth, is a young boy who strives for excellence. Whether it’s the discipline he practices in his martial arts or his passion for academics, his commitment to achievement speaks highly of his character even though he is only 8 years old.
Keith attended New Day School Preschool, started by two women who had graduated from Cal State East Bay. It was here that Keith began to blossom, and his qualities of leadership began to flourish. By the age of 3, he began reading and could even count to 100.
Now attending St. Leo the Great Catholic School in Oakland, Keith continues to excel. His test scores in reading and comprehension, science and math are above average. In first grade, he learned how to write and began making detailed reports on various subjects, with vocabulary far beyond his years.

Youth Radio Photographer Ayesha Walker : UCLA and Egypt Bound

By Tasion
Kwamilele

For Ayesha Walker, a native of Richmond, CA, this is starting out to be a very good year.
Walker, 21, was recently accepted at UCLA, where she start in the  fall as a major in world arts and cultures.  Could there be anything greater?
How about a trip to Egypt?
On May 28, Walker will embark on a 19-day excursion to Egypt. She will fly to JFK airport in New York and then board an 18-hour flight that will take her to the motherland.
“I am very excited, but I don’t believe it will hit me until I am actually there,” she said.
A graduate of El Cerrito High School in 2006, she has been attending Contra Costa College and last year took a picture with  Barack Obama at the San Francisco’s Women’s Building.
The trip to Egypt began when her passion for photography brought her attention to an advertisement for individuals interested in traveling to the country on a photojournalism assignment.
Taken aback by the cost, $5,000, she hesitated but was not discouraged. She made up in her mind that she was going to go and began to do everything possible to raise the funds.
“My mother is my biggest support. My father passed away when I was younger, and my grandmother died last year. So only able to depend on my mother, I’ve always felt like my support system was minimal,” she said.
“But with the outpouring of supporters, I now know I have a huge support system,” Walker explained.
Her favorite number is nine, and this is  2009; maybe this trip was destined, she said. And with all the great opportunities coming her way, Generation neXt agrees and wishes Walker the best.

Celebrating Malcolm X

In honor of the 84th birthday of Malcolm X, May 19, Sylvie Bayeaux and The Malcolm X Theater Project present Michael Lange in a one-man performance re-enacting Malcolm’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech.
Michael Lange has made hundreds of appearances nationwide performing speeches of Malcolm X over the last two decades. Lange, an Oakland native, teaches at San Jose State.  He is an accomplished actor, playwright, director, and musician. He is also the son of author and former television personality, Jerri Lange, and brother of actor Ted Lange.
An Oakland performance will take place on Sunday, May 24, 2 p.m., at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St.  The cost is $15 or $10 for students and seniors at the door.  Advance tickets are available for $10 at brownpapertickets.com.
A San Francisco performance will take place on Saturday, May 30, 2 p.m., at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) at 685 Mission St.  The cost is included in the $10 general or $5 student and senior admission to the museum.
For information contact (510) 485-6338.

The Four Legends of Feminism

Schools Receive Federal “Solar Showcase” Grant

Berkeley, Oakland, and West Contra Costa Unified School Districts are receiving up to $500,000 in assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to adopt solar generation technology and develop master plans to speed the installation of solar power in schools across California and the nation.
The DOE Solar America Showcase award is intended to support companies and local government entities that are “highly committed” to adopt solar technology and to accelerate the installation of photovoltaic (PV) panels across the country.
The Sequoia Foundation’s application on behalf of the three school districts detailed a specific effort to evaluate the energy consumption and solar electricity generation potential on all schools and facilities within the districts.
School districts stand to save millions of dollars in energy costs – the result of energy conservation, better energy efficiencies, and renewable energy systems.
During the 18-month grant period, the districts will select one or more schools to become a “showcase” where the most efficient and effective solar arrays will be installed.
“Oakland Unified School District is excited to be a participant in this innovative coalition of school districts,” said OUSD Assistant Superintendent for Facilities Planning and Management Timothy White.
“This grant will provide the type of high level assessment necessary to pave the way for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvements throughout the district. We can’t wait to get started,” he said.

Oakland Joins Green Corridor Partnership

By Brian Lavelle

The East Bay Green Corridor Partnership will move to the next level this summer when six new partners join the project.
Last year, the mayors of Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and Emeryville joined the heads of UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to announce the partnership, which aims to promote economic development in the region based on new green technologies.
This June, the cities of Alameda, Albany, El Cerrito and San Leandro and the Peralta and Contra Costa Community College Districts will become members. Each partner will contribute $10,000 to hire a staff member who’ll be based at the East Bay Economic Development Alliance office in Oakland, according to Julie Sinai, chief of staff for Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates.
The partnership has already received a $147,000 grant from the federal government for job training and will compete for other funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “The fact that we’ve been doing this for a year has really positioned us well,” Sinai said.
The corridor’s vision calls for the partners to share resources, so that all could use the green job-training programs in Richmond and Oakland, for example, or Berkeley’s Rising Sun Energy Center, which employs young people to install energy-saving improvements in homes.
The Oakland Green Jobs Corps is currently training 46 students in green construction and photovoltaics. Students spend two days per week at Laney College learning mathematics and other necessary skills and three days at the Cypress Mandela Training Center in West Oakland learning job skills.
They have already completed a 16-week pre-apprenticeship training program. Upon graduation, students will be placed in construction and solar industry jobs.
Carol Browner, President Barack Obama’s Assistant for Energy and Climate Change this month visited the Cypress Mandela Training Center, saying,  “It is so impressive what you all are doing.” She called the Green Jobs Corps a model for the nation.
“It is both a privilege and an honor to be able to launch the Green Jobs Corps here through the City of Oakland under Mayor (Ron) Dellums with our partners Laney College and Growth Sector…. Students that come from disadvantaged backgrounds … will have an opportunity to make a livable wage through the Green Construction Jobs Corps,” said Arthur Shanks, Executive Director of Cypress Mandela in an interview with the Post.
The program will help reduce crime and unemployment in Oakland, Shanks added.
Richmond’s BUILD Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Skills & Solar Installation Training program has graduated 150 participants since its inception in April 2007. The program has an impressive 90 percent job placement rate at an average starting wage of $18.33 an hour. The job retention rate is 85 percent for program graduates.
Both the Oakland and Richmond training programs have received national recognition.
The green jobs movement received a boost recently when Oakland activist Vann Jones was named special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation in the White House.
Jones was a founder of the Ella Baker Center and of Green for All, a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.
“The debate over whether we can do right by the environment and right by the economy at the same time is over,” said Jones in an Earth Day statement.
Former President Bush had long claimed that the United States could not join other advanced countries in the Kyoto Protocols to reduce global warming because it would hurt the economy.

Oakland Museum Presents “African Presence in Mexico”

The Oakland Museum of California’s new exhibition, “The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present,” will examine Africa’s overlooked historical contributions to Mexican culture.
In 1609 Yanga, an African leader, founded the first free African township in the Americas, almost a century after Africans first arrived in Mexico (in 1519).
Africans have continued to contribute their artistic, culinary, musical, and cultural traditions to Mexican culture. The exhibition features paintings, prints, movie posters, photographs, sculpture, costumes, masks, musical instruments, and other examples of art and popular culture.
The exhibition was curated by Sagrario Cruz-Carretero of the University of Veracruz and Cesáreo Moreno, visual arts director at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago.
The bilingual exhibition features paintings, prints, movie posters, photographs, sculpture, costumes, masks, and musical instruments. “It’s a fascinating hybrid—a visual arts exhibition based on a cultural history,” says co-curator Evelyn Orantes.
The exhibition will be on view May 9 through Sunday, August 23. For information, go to http://www.museumca.org/exhibit/exhi_apim.html

INDICTED

Grand Jury Charges Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey in Chauncey Bailey’s Murder

By Thomas Peele,
Bob Butler and Mary
Fricker, The Chauncey
Bailey Project

A grand jury on Wednesday indicted Yusuf Bey IV, the scion of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, on three counts of murder for ordering the killings of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men in 2007, an Alameda County deputy district attorney announced.
The indictment of Bey IV, 23, includes charges with special circumstances — allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty against him. He allegedly told two of his followers that in exchange for killing Bailey, he would teach them how to file fraudulent loan applications that could reap hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Another man, Antoine Mackey, 23, was indicted on three counts of murder with special circumstances, including Bailey’s killing.
The grand jury also indicted Devaughndre Broussard, 21, in the killings Bailey and another man, Odell Roberson. His charges also carry special circumstances.
But Broussard, until Wednesday the only person charged in Bailey’s death, cut a deal with prosecutors in which he is expected to plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter in exchange for key testimony against Bey IV and Mackey.
In a statement to prosecutors last month, Broussard said Bey IV ordered him and Mackey to follow Bailey, learn his routine and then “take him out” before he could publish an article in the Oakland Post about the bakery’s troubled finances. Broussard said Bey IV promised the two help in securing loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars through fraudulent applications.
Wednesday’s indictments came just hours after a judge for the second time ordered Bey IV to stand trial in an unrelated kidnapping and torture case from 2007 for which he faces a life sentence if convicted. The attorney representing him in that case, Anne Beles, declined to comment on the indictment.
Broussard will receive a sentence of about 25 years in exchange for his admissions and testimony, his attorney, LaRue Grim, has said. Grim said his client is prepared to plead guilty next week.
Bailey’s sister, Lorelei Waqia, said she grudgingly approves of the plea agreement with Broussard because it strengthens the chances of convicting Bey IV and Mackey in her brother’s slaying.
Bey IV “and Mackey are more dangerous than Broussard. In the perfect world, he (Broussard) would get life but that’s how a plea bargain is: You have to give a little to get a lot. It’s worth it to get the other guys,” Waqia said.
Still, Waqia said, the charges will bring little solace.
“Anything that happened from the day he passed until now is not going to bring him back. So, for me, there’ll never be closure because I’ve lost a brother; my father has lost his namesake; his son, my nephew, has lost a father who was a mentor to him,” she said.
Bey IV and Mackey are scheduled for arrangement next week. Bey IV is in Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail on unrelated charges, but Mackey is in San Quentin State Prison on a burglary sentence.
The indictments of Bey IV and Mackey come after a lengthy re-investigation of Bailey’s killing by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
The Oakland police homicide investigator first assigned to the Bailey case, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, is suspended and the department is moving to fire him after he was found to have compromised the investigation and had undocumented contact with Bey IV against orders.

E.P.A. Clears Way for Greenhouse Gas Rules

By John M. Broder

The Environmental Protection Agency has formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that will lead to the regulation of the gases for the first time in the United States.
The E.P.A. said the science supporting the proposed endangerment finding was “compelling and overwhelming.” The ruling initiates a 60-day comment period before any proposals for regulations governing emissions of heat-trapping gases are published.
Although the finding had been expected, supporters and critics said its issuance was a significant moment in the debate on global warming. Many Republicans in Congress and industry spokesmen warned that regulation of carbon dioxide emissions would raise energy costs and kill jobs.
Democrats and environmental advocates said the decision was long overdue and would bring long-term social and economic benefits.

Oakland’s Pacific Institute Honored By EPA

In recognition of commitment to protect the environment and California’s vital freshwater resources, Pacific Institute researchers Heather Cooley, Juliet Christian-Smith, and Peter Gleick were presented with a 2009 Region 9 Environmental Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Pacific Institute in Oakland was specifically recognized for work that has altered how California approaches its water crisis, offering solutions to help keep the state’s vital agricultural sector thriving while still reducing groundwater overdraft and protecting the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem.
Forty groups and individuals throughout California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Pacific Islands, and tribal lands were selected for their commitment and significant contributions to the environment.
In September 2008, Institute researchers Heather Cooley, Juliet Christian-Smith, and Peter Gleick released a report quantifying the potential for water-use efficiency in California’s agricultural sector through the implementation of available, cost-effective water efficiency measures that many farmers are already successfully using.
The Pacific Institute report, “More with Less: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency in California - A Special Focus on the Delta,” has generated discussion around non-infrastructure-oriented solutions that have long been absent from management conversations during a pivotal time in California, when drought persists and solutions to the San Joaquin Delta crisis remain complicated.
The trio continues to work with on-the-ground stakeholders to investigate and help implement practical solutions to pressing water issues, meeting with irrigation districts, farmers, and community members from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley to the Imperial Valley. From stimulating management discussion, to meeting with growers, to creating actual planning and policy recommendations, Cooley, Christian-Smith, and Gleick has been a catalytic force as California grapples with its freshwater management problems.
“California’s Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura and other leaders throughout the state have stated that doing nothing is not an option. We agree,” said honoree Dr. Juliet Christian-Smith. “We will continue our work helping keep California’s vital agricultural sector thriving, recognizing the need to reduce groundwater overdraft, prepare for the increasing threats of climate change, and respond to the state’s water crisis.”

Next Page »