KONY – If You Haven’t Seen It, You Need To See It…Especially If You Care About Our Children

 

By The Grio

WASHINGTON (AP) — The voices demanding that Congress stop the brutality of African warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army belong to America’s children.

Just ask their parents.

“All three of my kids, in different context and different times, said, ‘So what are you doing about Joseph Kony and the LRA?'” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said in a recent interview. Coons, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, is father to twins Michael and Jack, 12, and Maggie, 11.

“Mom, you have to watch this video,” Mary Shannon, the 14-year-old daughter of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., insisted during a break from school. “It’s about Joseph Kony.”

Coons and Landrieu know all too well about Kony. The two senators have traveled to Africa and have heard firsthand about the killings and child abductions of tens of thousands in Central Africa, the young boys forced to fight as soldiers, the girls turned into sex slaves.

Today, the lawmakers’ children, and millions of others in the United States and around the world, are almost as well-versed about Kony’s 26-year reign of terror. A 30-minute video by the advocacy group Invisible Children to raise public awareness about the guerrilla group exploded on the Internet after its early March release. The Kony2012 video has been viewed by some 100 million on YouTube and shared on Facebook and Twitter.

“There’s 100 million people who know the name of a war criminal now that didn’t necessarily before, and that’s a good thing,” actor and activist George Clooney, who is part of a video on the humanitarian crisis in South Sudan, said in a recent interview.

The confluence of a compelling film focused on the fate of children, the power of social media to spread information instantaneously and an unprecedented global connection has turned Kony into a household name. High school and middle school students — some as young as 10, the same age as some of the LRA’s victims — are outraged that children are suffering.

 

BLAM Fam what are your thoughts?  Is it our responsibility to bring light to and give aid to injustices wherever they may be?  Should we stop meddling in the business of other countries?   Your thoughts?

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Trailer For New Movie – Sparkle (Starring Whitney Houston, Jordin Sparks, Mike Epps & Others))

 

“Sparkle” stars Jordin Sparks, Derek Luke, Whitney Houston, Mike Epps, Cee Lo Green, Carmen Ejogo, Tika Sumpter, Vickie Winans and Omari Hardwick. Additionally, R&B artist R. Kelly has signed on to write original songs to augment the original song score from the 1976 film by Curtis Mayfield.

This film will be the debut of R&B/pop singer and American Idol winner Jordin Sparks as an actress. Sparkle also marks Whitney Houston’s fourth and final feature film role; she died on February 11, 2012, three months after filming ended. The film will be dedicated to her memory.


President Obama And Attorney General Eric Holder Speak Out On Trayvon Martin Killing

By Daniel Klaidman

Eric Holder Jr. left the comfortable confines of the Justice Department for the Old Executive Office Building, where 150 black ministers awaited him. Outside, across the country, outraged African-Americans were massing to protest the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, demanding justice for the unarmed teen killed by a neighborhood-watch captain. Holder was coming to the long-scheduled session with the clergy to discuss voting rights and housing discrimination, among other civil-rights initiatives. But “I knew [Trayvon] would be on the ministers’ minds,” Holder told Newsweek.

As he strode into the ornate Indian Treaty room, it was on his mind, too. The nation’s first African-American attorney general had ignited a political firestorm only days after taking office in 2009, when he called America a “nation of cowards” for its unwillingness to speak frankly about race. He’d been chastised by the White House for his candor, and has been careful on the subject ever since. The political crosswinds surrounding the Martin case were tricky. Tread too cautiously, and the ministers—the moral force of a black community up in arms—could pounce. Lay it on too thick about ethnic identity, and critics could accuse the attorney general of race hustling.

Holder pledged swift action. The ministers were pleased. “They seemed assured by the promise of a thorough and independent review, and the fact that this was something that the A.G. had personally focused on,” Holder said. The Rev. Calvin Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, was in the room. “We listened very closely,” he said. Holder’s statement “gave us a sense of relief that finally something was being done that was independent of the Sanford police and the state of Florida, which made us say, ‘Great!’?”

But the delicate nature of the administration’s handling of the case became apparent when Obama offered his own public comment on the subject, saying “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” His remark, which drew wide praise for humanizing the tragedy, was also pilloried by Newt Gingrich. “Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK, because it didn’t look like him? That’s just nonsense, dividing this country up.”

Getting the balance right has been a constant, and historic, challenge for both Holder and his boss. “Given who I am, I am acutely aware of our nation’s historical, and current, struggle with issues of racial injustice,” Holder says. But “I understand that my personal focus must also be a broad one. I am the attorney general of the United States and the concerns of the entirety of our nation must be, and are, my primary responsibility.”

Obama and Holder have been wrestling with that balance since their earliest days in office. They are both black men raised outside the African-American mainstream (Obama as the son of a white mother and an African father; Holder’s family comes from the West Indies). Both worked their way into the top tier of America’s professional and political elite. They have led lives committed to racial progress and yet are wary of being defined by the color of their skin. And they are both married to smart, principled women who are themselves the descendants of American slaves and who in some ways act as their husbands’ consciences on race. (The wives are also good friends; the first lady sometimes stops by for “pizza night” at the Holders’ home.)

Both men have also felt the searing pain of racism. In Dreams From My Father, Obama writes about the time a tennis pro told him not to touch the schedule of games pinned up on a bulletin board because his “color might rub off.” When Holder was a young Justice Department lawyer, he had his own brush with racial profiling; he was stopped by police while dashing to catch a movie in Georgetown. They shined a floodlight on him and asked him why he was running.

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VIDEO: Oprah Winfrey Speaks Out About Trayvon Martin Case. Says It’s A “Tragedy And A Shame”

During an exclusive interview with “Extra TV,” Oprah Winfrey told host AJ Calloway: “It is a tragedy and it is a shame that we’re sitting here 33 days later and there hasn’t been an arrest, or questioning of what actually happened. It’s a tragedy and it is a shame and we all know it.”

Oprah also talked about her interview with the late Whitney Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristini and her decision to cancel Rosie O’Donnell’s show from her OWN Network. Listen in…

Roland Martin Says Black People Are Tired Of Having To Accomodate Racism

This past weekend, CNN’s Roland Martin spoke out about the death of Trayvon Martin and how African-Americans are tired of accepting racism.

 

Martin said Black people are tired of having to accommodate racism. Listen in and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Mom Says Teacher Told Son To Read ‘Blacker’

By Team BLAM

 

A Virginia high school English teacher is under investigation for allegedly asking the only black student in the class to read a poem in a “blacker” manner.

 

Jordan Shumate, a ninth-grader at George C. Marshall High School in Falls Church, Va., says he was reading aloud Langston Hughes’ “Ballad of the Landlord” when teacher Marilyn Bart interrupted him.

 

“She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black,'” Shumate told The Washington Post.

 

When the 14-year-old student declined to continue reading the poem, Bart read it herself to demonstrate what she meant.

 

“She read the poem like a slave, basically,” Shumate told the Post. When he asked whether she thought all black people speak that way, he was reportedly told to take his seat and reprimanded for speaking out of turn.

 

The poem was written in 1940 about a black tenant thrown in jail for challenging a landlord.

 

“It’s very, very unprofessional,” Shumate told WJLA-TV. “It should not happen. She didn’t do it to any other kids. Why did she have to do it to me?”

 

The student brought the issue to his mother’s attention after the teacher reportedly singled him out again during a lesson about stereotypes. Shumate said Bart asked him to explain why blacks like grape soda and rap music.

 

Shumate’s mother, Nicole Page, told WAMU that she is “very sad” for her “child’s loss of innocence” through the experience. The teacher had also previously asked the student to rap out a poem by black rapper and actor Tupac Shakur, Page said.

 

“We’re in 2012 with the first African American president,” Page told WJLA-TV. “In this era how could such a statement be made, particularly by an English teacher?”

Read the full story here.

VIDEO: Missing Boy Kidnapped By Godmother 8 Years Ago Is Found

By Team BLAM

I never cease to be amazed at the numbers of African American children that go missing. Their stories are often untold and their plight unknown. I don’t even recall hearing about this eight ears ago but, thankfully, this little boy was found. Listen in to this family’s story.

From Chron.com

Eight years after a baby boy mysteriously disappeared, his alleged kidnapper is behind bars and he could soon reunite with his Houston mother, KTRK-Channel 13 reports.

 

The child’s caretaker, Krystle Rochelle Tanner, was reportedly arrested on Monday in San Augustine County. She is now being held without bail, KTRK says. The boy was 8 months old when he vanished, CNN reports.

 

Tanner’s sister called police late Tuesday and told them the boy is with her in Houston, KTRK said; the boy’s mother, Auboni Champion, is now looking forward to his return after so many lost years. Champion called Tanner the godmother for the child, named Miguel. Champion will reportedly undergo a DNA test, but authorities are certain she’s the mother.

 

“We love him very much and we never gave up. That’s one thing I would never give up,” Champion said.

 

Champion, who says she now has five other children besides the boy, told CNN on Wednesday that she had asked Tanner, then a high school student, to watch her son overnight in 2004.

 

“I was having hardship at the time,” the mother said. “I asked her to watch him overnight, and when I came back … they were gone.”

 

Tanner was reportedly a neighbor.

 

San Augustine Chief Deputy Gary Cunningham told CNN that Tanner was arrested in connection with the boy’s kidnapping after CPS began investigating her in August. She was reportedly accused of “negligently supervising her children and an unknown 8-year-old child who had been physically abused.”

 

CNN says:

 

Tanner allegedly gave the child welfare agency’s investigators contradictory information about the 8-year-old boy, saying the child was hers and then wasn’t hers, that the child belonged to her brother or someone else, Cunningham said.

 

Cunningham told CNN that CPS called the sheriff’s office, and authorities started investigating in January after they couldn’t find the child.

 

The child welfare agency then provided sheriff’s investigators with a possible identity of the missing child, and San Augustine County prosecutors secured a warrant for Tanner, Cunningham said.

 

“We interviewed her again … and she provided additional information,” Cunningham said. “She admitted that she provided misleading information, which certainly supports our belief that she kidnapped the child.”

 

According to CNN, Houston police closed the abduction case in 2006 after prosecutors weren’t able to get police information clarifying the date the boy vanished. An Amber Alert was never issued, CNN says.

 

The mother says she never knew the case was closed, CNN says: “She called Houston Police several times to check on the case over the years and was always told she had a new police contact and the case had been assigned to someone else, the mother said.”

 

Child Protective Services is now reportedly making arrangements to return the boy to his mother. Champion told CNN she could see her child again “by the end of the week.”

 

HPD told CNN that the department is looking into the case, including why an Amber Alert was never requested.

Sneak Preview: Oprah Interviews Whitney Houston’s Family Tonight

TODAY, Sunday March 11, Oprah sits down with Whitney Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina; her sister-in-law, Patricia Houston; and her brother, Gary Houston, on a special episode of Oprah’s Next Chapter airing at 9/8c, only on OWN. Bobbi Kristina shares personal memories of her mom and how she would like the iconic superstar to be remembered. The family also addresses the rumors and speculation surrounding Houston’s death. Watch a sneak preview now.

VIDEO: Is This You? Dr. Phil & Deion Sanders Takes An Overly Competitive Mom To Task

By Team BLAM

Kia is a self-professed overzealous sports parent. Dr. Phil calls into question her sideline antics and Deion Sanders says she is certified crazy! Do you see yourself here anywhere? You may automatically say “Absolutely not!”

However, we all have the capacity to over do it with our mouths and our attitudes from time to time. And, it doesn’t matter how well intentioned we are–it still comes across the same way–annoying and over the top as hell!

Love what Dr. Phil says here: “When external motivation goes up, up, up internal motivation goes down! Marinate and meditate on that family. Remember there is a difference between SUPPORT & SUFFOCATION!


Have You Seen This Marriage Proposal? Young Black Folks DO Get Married!

By Team BLAM

Gotta love this young brother for his unique marriage proposal. This young man proposed to his girlfriend of 6 years and they are getting married this weekend. Congrats to them! I love how folks are recording their proposals these days. And when we find them we make sure to share it with you.   

What are your thoughts BLAM Fam?