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Press Releases - Week of August 29th - Sept. 5th:
Movie
Reviews:
Reviewz from the Street, by Edwardo Jackson. Edwardo Jackson is
the author of the novels EVER AFTER and NEVA HAFTA, (Villard/Random
House), a writer for UrbanFilmPremiere.com, and an LA-based screenwriter.
Click
Here
Two
things happened in one day that tell much about the abysmal failure
of the Bush administration to get a handle on poverty in America.
The first was the tragic and disgraceful shots of hordes of New
Orleans residents scurrying down the city's Hurricane ravaged streets
with their arms loaded with food, clothes, appliances, and in some
cases guns, that they looted from stores and shops. That same day,
the Census Bureau released a report that found that the number of
poor Americans has leaped even higher since Bush took office in
2000. While criminal gangs who always take advantage of chaos and
misery to snatch and grab whatever they can, did much of the looting,
many desperately poor, mostly black residents, saw a chance to grab
items that they can't afford. They also did their share of the looting.
That makes it no less reprehensible, but it's no surprise. New Orleans
has one of the highest poverty rates of any of America's big cities.
According to a report by Total Community Action, a New Orleans public
advocacy group, nearly one out of three New Orleans residents
Being
Black in America is always such a convolution of emotions; Patriotism
versus Nationalism, Nation loyalty versus Race loyalty, Duty to
God's law versus the Compromise of Man's law, tolerance versus temperament,
appreciation versus frustration, advocacy versus silence, and it
goes on and on. Black Americans are not the only ones who have these
conflictions of emotion. We just tend to have them more frequently,
and more intensely, largely because we're more often put in "the
squeeze" of having to balance the "real" with the
"surreal," the optimism of a better life with reality
of a compromised life, pessimism that things aren't changing fast
enough with pragmatism that things are changing (sufficient or not),
and the sincerity that people trying to do something with the hypocrisy
of those who can do more aren't doing nearly enough. Black America,
most often doesn't know where to turn to address its problems, and
who to turn to in search of solutions. So when catastrophe hit us-as
individuals, or in the collective-we search for help from outside
our communities and from within, knowing that what is done will
be done out of either sincerity, frustration, or outrage, while
making black people real crazy in the process. In the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina, America, principally the government and the
media, got us lookin' real crazy right now. The role the rest of
us play will be crucial in the days to come........... Click
here to continue reading this article
"What we witnessed in Los Angeles was the consequence of a lethal linkage of economic decline, cultural decay and political lethargy in American life. Race was the visible catalyst, and not the underlying cause," - Dr. Cornel West on the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles from his book "Race Matters." How infallible those words were in 1992. How foreboding those words seem today when I look at the government's impassive and languorous response in helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi. The devastation. The disbelief. The despair. The displacement. The desperation. The deaths. This was a disaster of epic proportions. New Orleans experienced the brunt of the disaster with nearly 90,000 square miles of civilization literally reduced to the wreckage and rubble reminiscent of third world countries, displacing nearly 100,000 residents who were left to fend for themselves like wartime refugees, instead of enfranchised American citizens. The images of
thousands upon thousands of folks who had no choice but to seek
shelter in the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center was ominously
akin to images of black folks crammed in the hull of slave ships,
piled upon each living in intolerable conditions........Click
here to continue reading this article
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Looting
New Orleans and America's Proverty Crisis 
"Between
The Lines" Anthony Asadullah Samad 
Veronica's
View - by: Veronica Hendrix
