Nurses at Washington Hospital Center to Strike Tomorrow

Posted on March 3, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO LORI MARLOWE:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” – author and historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who has written on women’s labor history

“We’re fed up. The nurses are tired. We’re going to take a stand,” said Lori Marlowe, a 12-year veteran nurse in the cardiac unit and a member of the negotiating team for the more than 1,600 nurses at Washington Hospital Center (WHC). Friday, nurses at D.C.’s largest hospital, who are represented by National Nurses United (NNU), are going on a 1-day strike. At a press conference on Tuesday, Mayor Vincent Gray said, “We don’t want this to happen.” Gray said he wanted “to see people treated fairly” and that he was talking with both union leadership and hospital management. Continue reading →

Posted in Labor/Jobs | Comments Off on Nurses at Washington Hospital Center to Strike Tomorrow

Charlie Ericksen and the Hispanic Link News Service: 30 Years and 5,000 Columns

Posted on March 2, 2011 by admin

Charlie Ericksen, founder of Hispanic Link News Service

LISTEN TO CHARLIE ERICKSEN

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

Not one Hispanic journalist was nationally syndicated when Charlie Ericksen started the Hispanic Link News Service. There have been improvements regarding Latinos’ (under)representation in the media, at least partly because of the exposure Hispanic Link’s syndicated columns have brought to Latino writers over the past three decades and 5,000 columns.

At Hispanic Link’s office in downtown D.C., Ericksen said, “[Hispanics continue to be] badly under-represented, particularly since there’s been a big cut-down on the number of newspapers that exist. There are just so very few around and those that are around, for the most part, are trained by journalism schools and by city editors and editors of papers to write White, [that is] to cover things where they don’t really give you the depth and understanding that you need to have of the various cultures that comprise our country.” Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Media | Comments Off on Charlie Ericksen and the Hispanic Link News Service: 30 Years and 5,000 Columns

NAACP President Ben Jealous on Prisons, Organizing and More

Posted on March 1, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO BEN JEALOUS

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

“We can’t be the country that we want to be so long as we keep using prisons to solve every social problem,” said NAACP President Ben Jealous last March after a talk in Washington, D.C., a city where estimates are that three out of four young African American males will do time. “We’ve got to get back to doing the hard work of saving lives, of investing in redemption and believ[ing] that Americans are certainly no worse than every other person on earth.”

The money spent on prisons is “bankrupting our states. It’s bankrupting our public higher education system,” said Jealous. “In a state like California, UC tuition is going up… and there’s no way to explain that without acknowledging that California is one of five states that spends more on incarceration than public higher education… Literally, the prison budget has overwhelmed the public university budget in California [and] it’s doing that in states across the country.” Continue reading →

Posted in Prison, Uncategorized | Comments Off on NAACP President Ben Jealous on Prisons, Organizing and More

Activist/Organizer Larry Bryant On AIDS 2012 Coming to D.C. and the Mayor’s Commission on HIV/AIDS

Posted on February 28, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO LARRY BRYANT, PART 2

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

Friday, as the city’s leading provider of clean needles closed its doors, Mayor Vincent Gray announced that the District of Columbia will host the 2012 International AIDS Conference. AIDS 2012 is expected to bring to the District 25,000 delegates from almost 200 countries, as well as more than 2,000 journalists. Gray said, “I am excited to host this conference here in D.C. It’s a chance to share best practices, exchange expertise and it’s a chance for people to get to know our city.”

Larry Bryant, national field organizer for Housing Works and co-chair of DC Fights Back, said of AIDS 2012 coming to D.C., “I’m conflicted: Proud to have the conference coming to my city, our city. But I’m also ashamed that we have to go through these changes and clean up. I’m thinking of the days and weeks before inauguration and how we were busing homeless out of town, cleaning up the streets, particularly along Pennsylvania Avenue, for the cameras. That’s not us. We have to be better than that.” Continue reading →

Posted in District of Columbia, HIV/AIDS | Comments Off on Activist/Organizer Larry Bryant On AIDS 2012 Coming to D.C. and the Mayor’s Commission on HIV/AIDS

Gray Welcomes World AIDS Community to D.C.; Does Nothing to Stop Leading Clean Needle Provider From Closing

Posted on February 25, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO DAMI SMITH

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

Friday at 11:00 AM at the John A. Wilson Building, Mayor Vincent Gray will take part in a press conference announcing that D.C. will host the 2012 International AIDS Conference. “AIDS 2012 is expected to convene more than 25,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries, including more than 2,500 journalists,” according to the International AIDS Society.

Ironically, the press conference welcoming the world’s HIV/AIDS community to D.C. comes on the very day that PreventionWorks closes it doors, an outcome the mayor could have prevented. The Washington Post described the organization as “the leading provider of clean needles to drug addicts in the District to help stem the spread of AIDS… PreventionWorks has been distributing free needles for more than 12 years. It provides about one-third of the free needles in the city, distributing about 100,000 sterile syringes to 2,200 people last year.”
Continue reading →

Posted in District of Columbia, HIV/AIDS | Comments Off on Gray Welcomes World AIDS Community to D.C.; Does Nothing to Stop Leading Clean Needle Provider From Closing

Is HIV/AIDS a Top Priority for D.C.’s Leaders?

Posted on February 24, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO LARRY BRYANT, PART 1

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

PreventionWorks is scheduled to close tomorrow and D.C.’s top elected officials – who have been uninformed or misinformed – have expressed little-to-no interest in having the city step in to stop the shuttering of the imperfect, but invaluable organization.

Feb. 15, when asked about PreventionWorks’ imminent closure, Councilmember David Catania, chair of the Health Committee, said he was not aware of it, but would look into it. Mr. Catania’s lack of awareness was surprising since, five days earlier, in an article entitled “D.C. group will end needle exchange,” the Washington Post noted, “The leading provider of clean needles to drug addicts in the District to help stem the spread of AIDS plans to shut its doors by the end of the month, officials said.” Continue reading →

Posted in District of Columbia, HIV/AIDS | Comments Off on Is HIV/AIDS a Top Priority for D.C.’s Leaders?

ICC: The Road To Hell Is Paved

Posted on February 23, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO GREG SMITH

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

You can’t Save the Bay and Pave the Watershed at the same time. – Greg Smith

“My greatest regret is that we didn’t raise our voices higher more often and that we didn’t block bulldozers,” said Greg Smith, an activist who fought for nearly twenty years to stop the construction of the Intercounty Connector. At 6 AM this morning, the first 7.2 miles of the 18.8-mile highway was scheduled to open for traffic. “The only thing that would have stopped this highway would have been… the kind of campaign that Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi would have run, which is to shame these people and to make them look in the faces of the families whose homes they were destroying.”

The Washington Post noted, “When the first segment of a controversial new highway that will connect Montgomery and Prince George’s counties open… Maryland will have built what was once considered impossible in Washington’s congested suburbs: a six-lane, multibillion-dollar toll road across fragile streams, a stone’s throw from hundreds of homes. The full cost of the Intercounty Connector – the exchange of woodlands for asphalt; the effects on residents along its path; debt payments that could require raising tolls throughout the state – will be analyzed for years.” Continue reading →

Posted in Environment, Prince George's County | Comments Off on ICC: The Road To Hell Is Paved

Children and Media

Posted on February 22, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO MARY ROTHSCHILD, PART 1

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

“It’s not about the kids. It’s really about us,” said Mary Rothschild, founder and director of Healthy Media Choices. “[Studies] found [that] at the end of the TV Turnoff Weeks, when families had turned off television – now it’s so much more than television to turn off – it wasn’t the kids who turned it back on, it was the parents. We’re tired. That’s a perfectly legitimate thing. We need down time and we need to have strategies that allow us to have that down time. We need to take care of ourselves, but not at the expense of the child.”

“You really have to have a kind of media literacy framework for parents now,” said Rothschild. Parents need to be able to “look and see what it actually is [that their kids are watching]. It’s not just cute. It’s going to lead to products that the child wants and begs for that the family may not be able to buy. Continue reading →

Posted in Media, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Children and Media

Yes! Says No to Walmart

Posted on February 21, 2011 by admin

LISTEN TO GARY CHA

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

“Once they get their foothold in D.C. we can never go back,” said Gary Cha, owner of Yes! Organic Market, which has seven stores, all located in the District of Columbia. “Washington is a very small city to have four Walmarts… Having just one Walmart can have a devastating effect. I can’t imagine the lawmakers, the councilmembers, the politicians letting four Walmarts come to D.C.”

The Washington Post noted, “Last fall, Wal-Mart announced initial plans to open stores in Wards 4, 5, 6 and 7, and it has followed with a carefully orchestrated campaign to win support and disarm critics. It says that its stores would create 1,200 retail jobs… and would generate an estimated $10 million annually in tax revenue for the city.” Continue reading →

Posted in Labor/Jobs, Walmart | Comments Off on Yes! Says No to Walmart

Hardy Middle School Students Continue To Be Disrespected and Ignored

Posted on February 18, 2011 by admin

Hardy Middle School students testifying at the D.C. Council 2/12/2011. From left to right: Aziza-Imani Stewart, Carlos Hood, Desne Wharton, Deme Wharton

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

download mp3

Carlos Hood, an eighth grade student at Hardy Middle School, has a message for Mayor Vincent Gray: “Do you remember when you extended your hand towards our school? But… now a year later, that extended hand turned into a closed fist. And our school, it looks like it has been overseen and overlooked since the election.”

Joining Carlos in testifying about Hardy at a youth hearing at the D.C. Council last Saturday were classmates Aziza-Imani Stewart, and twin sisters Desne and Deme Wharton. The four eighth graders are among the Hardy students, parents and teachers who continue to call for the return of Patrick Pope, the popular former principal who was removed last year by then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Continue reading →

Posted in School Reform | Comments Off on Hardy Middle School Students Continue To Be Disrespected and Ignored