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1)      Poverty: Last year, you were the first Democratic President since Harry S. Truman not to mention poverty during your State of the Union Address.  Please don’t make that mistake again.  Poor people do exist, no matter how much we think we can wish them away, and they must become part of the conversation.  If you can’t bring poor people to the table, then this gives every future president an excuse to ignore them as well.

2)  Existing Threats To American Civil Liberties: Your signature on the National Defense Authorization Act was probably one of the most un-American decisions made during your presidency.  The provision allowing Americans to be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism is simply frightening.  I can’t imagine how many lives will be ruined forever as a result of this new law.  Your liberal base may never forgive you for this one.

3) Poverty, Again: Oh yeah, I know I mentioned poverty earlier, Mr. President, but I’d like to make one more point if I may.  Income inequality is a huge problem along both racial and non-racial lines.  The gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow and the wage of the American worker has remained stagnant as corporate profits continue to shoot through the roof.   All of this creates a clear recipe for an unstable society and endangers the future of our country.

4) Our Uneducated Children (And Adults): You’ve done a good job of emphasizing the importance of fixing our dysfunctional school systems.  You might also be able to gain a few points by helping families deal with the spiraling cost of college education and massive student loan debt.  The inflation of educational costs has become too much for most families to bear.

5) Keeping America Healthy: Everything I just said about educational costs growing out of control, make that ditto for health care.  Americans can’t afford to get sick anymore, especially if they don’t have jobs.  With more and more Americans facing the despair of joblessness, the future becomes an economic abyss with no hope in sight.

6) The Justice System, Particularly The Prison Industrial Complex: Mr. President, there are millions of Black men who look just like you and are just as intelligent as you, rotting away in America’s prisons under unjust drug laws from the Ronald Reagan years.  Perhaps it’s time to end modern-day slavery and seek out serious reform.

7)      Poverty, Just One More Time: Oh yea, Mr. President, I hate beating a dead horse, but I’d like to mention one more thing about poverty.  Did you know that the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites has actually increased during your presidency?  I’m not sure if the dream of a first Black president included such a grim reality.  This problem is not as much of a reflection on you as it is on our nation’s long-standing commitment to butt-naked racism, but still, we must all face the issue head-on and not simply avoid the matter by arguing that the “rising tide will lift all boats.”

8)      Putting America Back To Work: We know that when it comes to getting elected, job creation is one of the most-important keys to success.  Thus far, your work on job creation has been mediocre at best.  America needs a strong vision for its economic future.  This is the year that I expect the economic tide to turn for our country, and this could keep you in the White House for another four years.  Let’s hope they are another four years of strong change for the country and not just another episode of self-absorbed, highly symbolic, political cronyism among the Harvard/Chicago political elite.

9) The Deficit: The spiraling national debt is one of the most-serious economic problems facing our government today.  Republicans blame your spending, but they are incorrect in this assessment.  Raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans is the only way to solve this problem, not taking support away from the most vulnerable.  The divisiveness of American politics gives a grim prediction on whether this problem can ever be solved, but it must at least be laid on the table for discussion in hopes that we can find a way to deal with it without allowing wealthy fat cats to walk away without responsibility.

10) Guts: You’ve become a better president over the past two years.  You’re maturing right before our eyes.  You seem to understand more clearly that some of your enemies will never learn to like you and that Americans are more willing to withstand a bad leader than a weak one.   I’d love to see a voice and vision that communicates that you are the tough leader that America deserves – one who can maintain the moral high ground and still be tough enough to stand up to a racist bully like Newt Gingrich.  Being the first Black president is not for the faint of heart, and not everyone wants to hold hands and sing “we shall overcome.”

So, taking a stand for what is right can go a long way … and it might even be OK to admit that you’re a Black man who seeks to confront some of the ills of racial inequality in America.  Some in our community want to compare you to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, but we must remember that Dr. King said and did what was right, even when it wasn’t popular.  That, my friend, takes courage.

Good luck, Mr. President, we’ll be watching.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University.  To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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After Obama sang the first part of Green’s “Lets Stay Together,” “I’m so in love with you,” the crowd broke out in cheers. Obama would say “those guys didn’t think I would do it” and referenced the Apollo character who would chase bad performers off stage saying “the sandman did not come out.”

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In calling for earth and heaven to “ring with the harmonies of Liberty,” they could speak out subtly against racism and Jim Crow laws—and especially the huge number of lynchings accompanying the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the turn of the century. In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as “The Negro National Anthem.” By the 1920s, copies of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” could be found in black churches across the country, often pasted into the hymnals. In 1939, Augusta Savage received a commission from the World’s Fair and created a 16-foot plaster sculpture called Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. Savage did not have any funds for a bronze cast, or even to move and store it, and it was destroyed by bulldozers at the close of the fair.

The lyrics are ones  of empowerment

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith
that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope
that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way
that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path
thro’ the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from a gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam
of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places
Our God where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world
we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

During and after the American Civil Rights Movement, the song experienced a rebirth, and by the 1970s was often sung immediately after “The Star Spangled Banner” at public events and performances across the United States where the event had a significant African-American population.

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In Maya Angelou’s 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the song is sung by the audience and students at Maya’s eighth grade graduation, after a white school official dashes the educational aspirations of her class

In 1990, singer Melba Moore released a modern rendition of the song, which she recorded along with others including R&B artists Anita Baker, Stephanie Mills, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jeffrey Osborne, and Howard Hewett; and gospel artists BeBe & CeCe Winans, Take 6, and The Clark Sisters. Partly because of the success of this recording, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was entered into the Congressional Record by Del. Walter Fauntroy (D-DC),^[3] as the official African American National Hymn.

he Howard Gospel Choir of Howard University sings “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (The Black National Anthem) at Jerusalemskirken (Church of Jerusalem) in Copenhagen, Denmark [Europe] as a part of our Northern Scandinavian Tour in February 2010.

A program at the community center, “Sessions LA” use hip-hop and deejay culture to teach them how to make beats using digital technology.

CNN reports:

Huang eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he began to volunteer with Sessions LA, which uses hip-hop to draw kids in and keep them from trouble. Huang helped to develop the program’s curriculum, and helped it grow. It currently serves about 15 kids, most of them Latino, black and Asian. They’re often the children of immigrants, and many have experienced trauma or abuse.

These are the kind of at-risk students, Huang said, who don’t usually have much to keep them busy.

Read More At CNN

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Nutter was angry that the three teenage shooting victims, who were between the ages of 14 and 16, were out a a Tuesday night looking for a fight on the night that they were shot.

CBS Philadelphia reports:

“Seven young people, somewhere between 14 and 16 years old, on a Tuesday night, a school night, are out in a car going to somewhere to have a fight with some other teenager. That is completely insane, it is irresponsible. Parents have to know where their children are and what they are doing,” the mayor said.

“Their little butts should have either been in bed, getting ready for bed, or doing some homework,” Nutter added. “Not out in a car, not in some other neighborhood, and not up to this kind of nonsense. I’m not your mom and I’m not your dad. We cannot completely legislate, or by policy, make people responsible for their children.”

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The settlement announced Wednesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is part of a national government crackdown on hiring policies that can hurt blacks and Hispanics.

EEOC officials said the company’s policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. The policy barred applicants who had been arrested, but not convicted of a crime, and denied employment to others who were convicted of minor offenses.

Using arrest and conviction records to deny employment can be illegal if it’s irrelevant for the job, according to the EEOC, which enforces the nation’s employment discrimination laws. The agency says such blanket policies can limit job opportunities for minorities with higher arrest and conviction rates than whites.

The company has since adopted a new criminal background policy and plans to make jobs available to victims of the old policy if they are still interested in jobs at Pepsi and are qualified for the openings.

“I commend Pepsi’s willingness to reexamine its policy and modify it to ensure that unwarranted roadblocks to employment are removed,” EEOC Chairwoman Jacqueline Berrien said in a statement.

Pepsi Beverage spokesman Dave DeCecco said the company’s criminal background check policy has always been neutral and that the EEOC did not find any intentional discrimination. He said after the issue was first raised in 2006, the company worked with the EEOC to revise its background check process “to create a workplace that is as diverse and inclusive as possible.”

“We are committed to promoting diversity and inclusion and we have been widely recognized for our efforts for decades,” DeCecco said.

He said the new policy would take a more “individualized approach” in considering the applicant’s criminal history against the particular job being sought.

Pepsi Beverages is PepsiCo’s beverage manufacturing, sales and distribution operating unit in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Under the settlement, the company will provide the EEOC with regular reports on its hiring practices and offer antidiscrimination training to its hiring personnel and managers.

About 73 percent of major employers report that they always check on applicants’ criminal records, while 19 percent do so for select job candidates, according to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.

But increased federal scrutiny of such policies has led some companies to reevaluate their hiring process. Pamela Devata, a Chicago employment lawyer who has represented companies trying to comply with EEOC’s requirements, said there has been an uptick over the past year in EEOC charges over the use of background checks.

“The EEOC has taken a very aggressive enforcement posture on the use of criminal background and criminal history,” Devata said.

The commission held a special meeting on the topic last summer, and Devata said employers have been expecting the EEOC to issue more specific guidance.

EEOC officials have said, for example, that an old drunken driving conviction may not be relevant to a clerical job, but a theft conviction may disqualify someone from working at a bank.

Julie Schmid, acting director of the EEOC’s Minneapolis office, said the EEOC recommends that employers consider the nature and gravity of offenses, the time that has passed since conviction or completion of a sentence, and the nature of the job sought.

“We hope that employers with unnecessarily broad criminal background check policies take note of this agreement and reassess their policies to ensure compliance” with antidiscrimination laws, Schmid said in a written statement.

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Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum sought to rally conservatives to his side after coming achingly close to victory in Iowa, saying he “hoped to surprise a few people just like we did” in the campaign’s first contest.

“This is a wide-open race still,” added former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who skipped the Iowa caucuses in hopes of making his mark in next Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Romney is the odds-on favorite to win the New Hampshire primary, though, and it is unclear how much campaign cash any of his rivals has available to try to slow or even stop his momentum. Additionally, in a measure of his establishment support, the former governor announced he would campaign with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Thursday, as he was joined by McCain in New Hampshire.

“The time has arrived for Republicans to choose a presidential nominee, a new standard bearer who has the ability and determination to defeat President Obama,” said McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and a man with a demonstrated appeal to the state’s independent voters.

Already, the Republican field of challengers was dwindling.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann ended her campaign after a dreary 5 percent showing in Iowa, the state where she was born.

After suggesting he, too, might withdraw, Texas Gov. Rick Perry decided otherwise. “Here we come, South Carolina!!!” he tweeted. That primary is Jan. 21, and will mark the first balloting in the South as well as in a state that is part of the Republican Party’s conservative, political base nationally.

Iowa, for months ground zero in the Republican race, yielded an almost impossibly close finish.

Romney emerged with an eight-vote victory over Santorum, whose grass-roots campaigning produced a late surge that fell just shy of victory. Texas Rep. Ron Paul finished third, followed by Gingrich, Perry and Bachmann.

A survey of Iowa caucus-goers highlighted the internal divisions in the GOP as it sets out to find a challenger for President Barack Obama in the general election campaign.

Romney, who campaigned as the man best positioned to defeat Obama, was the favorite by far among caucus-goers who said that goal was their priority. Paul was preferred by those who said what mattered most was backing a true conservative. Santorum ran particularly well among those who said they were looking for a candidate with strong moral character.

Paul outpolled his rivals among younger voters and gained an estimated 48 percent share of self-identified independents, a group that traditionally plays a major role in determining the outcome of New Hampshire’s primary.

“If you look to bringing new people in, the frustrated young people that Obama had, you have to look at my campaign. I mean that’s where the enthusiasm is,” he said.

McCain and Romney clashed sharply as rivals in 2008 before reconciling for the fall campaign.

The Arizona senator did well among younger and independent voters in his two New Hampshire primary campaigns. Now, in a supporting role, he said, “Our message to President Obama is, you can run but you can’t hide from your record.”

Romney was more scathing. Paraphrasing the president, he recalled, “He said, `If I can’t turn this economy around in three years, I’ll be looking at a one-term proposition.’

“Well, I’m here to collect,” he added.

Before leaving Iowa, Romney made the round of early morning interview programs, sounding at times more like an analyst of a race than a competitor.

“I think there’s a real boost coming out of Iowa, not just for me but also of course for Rick Santorum and Ron Paul,” he said.

At the same time, he brushed aside suggestions that his share of the vote in Iowa, less than 25 percent, was a sign of weakness.

“Ronald Reagan got 29 percent of the votes here and ultimately he was able to become our nominee,” said, referring to the 1980 campaign that put Republicans in the White House.

He had a stiffer response to Gingrich, who refused to extend congratulations in the wake of the Iowa outcome.

“I’m sure he’s disappointed in the results last night. But I expect he’ll go on and mount a spirited campaign,” he said.

Spirited might be an understatement, given the sharp escalation in rhetoric from the former House speaker in the final hours in Iowa. His campaign purchased a full-page advertisement in the Union Leader, New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, calling Romney a Massachusetts moderate.

Talking with reporters in Concord, N.H., Gingrich described himself as a “conservative leader for the last generation,” and depicted Romney as something entirely different.

“In that same time period, Gov. Romney was first an independent, then repudiated Reagan-Bush, then voted for Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate in the `93 campaign, then ran to the left of Teddy Kennedy and then became a moderate to run for governor in Massachusetts in 2002.”

Gingrich accused his rival of including state-funded abortions in the health care legislation he signed into law in Massachusetts and said he had “specifically designated Planned Parenthood as a part of Romney care, appointed liberal judges to placate Democrats and raised taxes on business…”

“I suspect it’s going to be a very lively campaign,” he added.

Gingrich was briefly the leader in opinion polls in Iowa, before his support eroded under the weight of attack ads by a super PAC run by Romney’s allies. Short of funds, the former speaker was unable to respond in kind, and declared he would run only a positive campaign.

Having jettisoned that approach, it is unclear how much money his campaign has left after Iowa, and how willing a separate super PAC set up to support him is to spend.

Personally, Romney was able to remain largely above the fray in Iowa’s ad wars, generally running positive commercials while his allies took on Gingrich and other rivals.

Except for appearing at debates, Perry is not expected to compete in New Hampshire, saving his energy and cash for South Carolina.

In bowing out, Bachmann bestowed no endorsement. Nor did she say if she intended to seek re-election to the House from Minnesota.

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The GOP presidential candidate clearly said, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” during a recent campaign stop in Iowa.

But Santorum denied ever making the comment during an appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor,” The Huffington Post reports.

“I looked at that, and I didn’t say that,” Santorum told O’Reilly. “If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — came out. And people said I said, ‘Black.’ I didn’t.”

And, even if he was referring to “blah people,” from which demographic do they come? Is this racial category (if “blah people” are a race at all) on the U.S. Census?

Give us a break, Rick.

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So she feeds 5-year-old Emily and doesn’t take her own medicine, fearing that the nausea she would get from taking the drugs without adequate food will make her too weak to look for work.

Prices for staple foods this year are almost twice as high as in 2009, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization says. The rising prices and a dwindling of funds for HIV programs mean countless poor families must decide whether to focus on the health of an HIV-positive adult or on a child’s hunger.

Valerian Kamito, a nurse at the clinic that gives Adhiambo her food, says some patients are refusing to start treatment for HIV and around a quarter of his 1,555 patients on anti-HIV drugs are now skipping their medication.

“They say they cannot take them on an empty stomach,” Kamito said. Before prices rose, he said, “it was very rare.”

HIV-positive adults need 10 percent more calories than other people just to maintain their body weight. Children with HIV need between 30 percent to 50 percent more calories than other children. They will lose weight and be vulnerable to infections without those calories, said nutritionist Kate Greenaway from the aid agency Catholic Relief Services.

Annual inflation in Kenya is around 20 percent, but wages haven’t kept pace. Around half of Kenyans live on less than $2 a day, including 52-year-old Adhiambo, who makes $1 each day she does housework.

“When there is nothing to eat, we go to bed hungry. I tell Emily it is because God did not send us food today,” said Adhiambo, motioning to a cardboard picture of Jesus on the wall of their corrugated iron shack.

“Emily stands before that picture and prays, ‘God, please remember to send us food tomorrow,’” said Adhiambo.

She had work for two weeks last month, but the younger women get most of the jobs. Adhiambo relies on her daily free meal of rice, beans and vegetables from a clinic run by Catholic Relief Services in the Mathare slum, though she sometimes misses that if she is searching for work. The staff there are trying to persuade her to take her anti-HIV drugs.

But Adhiambo carries the food home and gives most of it to Emily, who isn’t signed up for the CRS program, though workers there are trying to get her into it. The bright-eyed little girl in the torn blue dress is almost all that’s left of Adhiambo’s family. Adhiambo’s brother, two sisters and husband are all dead. Emily’s mother is alive, but ill. She refuses to be tested. Emily has been tested and is HIV positive.

Adhiambo needs to take drugs called anti-retrovirals, or ARVs, and so will Emily. Taken regularly, the medicine can prolong life by years, possibly decades. But if taken sporadically, the medicine will lose its effectiveness.

Patients say the medicine can cause nausea, fatigue, and diarrhea at first, especially if there is no food to go with it, said Greenaway. The drugs also cause a ravenous hunger as the body starts to recover. Adhiambo, afraid that the side effects will prevent her from working, refuses to take the pills.

The clinic gives 400 of its patients, Adhiambo among them, “prescribed food” to eat with their medicines so they’ll continue the treatment. But most take the meals home to share with their families, said Kamito. The program has a long waiting list. The financial crisis means there is no money to expand it.

Globally, there has been around a 10 percent decline in HIV/AIDS funding, said Michel Sidibe, the UNAIDS executive director. The world’s top funder of public health programs – the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – has disbursed $15 billion since 2002, but it cannot afford to pay for any new or expanded programs until 2014.

Poverty, meanwhile, continues to eat at the gains made by modern medicine in fighting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Twenty to 30 percent of HIV-positive patients in the developing world drop out in the first two years of treatment, said Nils Grede, the deputy chief of the World Food Program’s nutrition and HIV/AIDS unit.

“Barriers to continue the treatment … are often related to poverty. You don’t have the money to pay for the bus, you don’t have enough food, so you spend your time on trying to make sure that your family eats,” Grede told The Associated Press in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“People adhere much better to drug regimens when there is food,” said Greenaway. “But in poor families, that might mean mothers who want to stay strong have to decide whether to take something from their children’s plates.”

Adhiambo’s neighbor Ishmael Abongo, a 35-year-old father of four, must do just that. He and his wife Mary are both HIV positive, as is one of their sons. The whole family shares the clinic’s food. When he has found work, Abongo takes a bit of porridge from dinner and saves it for the morning so he isn’t too dizzy for a two-hour bus journey.

“I know it is important to take the drugs,” he said.

He recounted knowing four people who did not take the pills because they had no food. They are now all dead, Abongo said.

A clinic social worker visited Adhiambo in her tiny shack in December, trying to persuade her to take her medication or risk dying, and leaving Emily with no family to care for her. But Adhiambo was more worried about their present situation.

“What will happen to her if I take these drugs and I get sick?” Adhiambo asked, adding that if she can’t work or even walk because of side effects from the medicine they won’t have any food.

Eventually, Adhiambo stood up. She needed to find some clothes or a floor that needed washing. She was two months behind with the rent – $15 a month – and could be evicted.

The white-winged Jesus that Emily prays to was shown in the picture walking through a garden, nothing like the smelly alley outside the shack.

Words below picture said: “May my prayers come before you, that you heal me according to your will.”

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Niaira Taylor, the mother of a young black girl who wanted the Baby Alive doll for Christmas, was incensed over the discrepancy. When Taylor tried to purchase the doll, which was the number one item on her daughter Ahzhane’s wish list, the African-American version was priced higher than the same white doll next to it on the store shelf.

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