Black Clergy Launch Movement For Families
New America Media, News Report, Kenneth Kim , Posted: Feb 29, 2008
Editor’s Note: Frustrated by the political establishment’s failure to address the concerns of black families, a group of African-American clergy members called upon their communities to tackle those issues themselves at a rousing prayer vigil in South Los Angeles. The vigil was part of the national Equal Voice for America's Families campaign, sponsored by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which aims to build support for a national platform created by families. New America Media's coverage of this issue is underwritten by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Photos: Jun Young Suh.
LOS ANGELES -- Frustrated by the political establishment’s inability to deal with challenges facing American families -- and black families in particular -- a group of African-American clergy members in Los Angeles are tackling those issues through the collective power of the African-American faith community.
Baptist Church, prays for racial justice.
On a February evening, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches, a coalition of small- and medium-sized churches that is spearheading the effort, led a prayer vigil at Victory Institutional Baptist Church in South Los Angeles.
The vigil was one of many events connected with the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Equal Voice for America's Families campaign, which aims to build support for a national platform created and advanced by families, and build a movement to sustain long-term change.
The Equal Voice Campaign is holding approximately 40 town halls across the country, each with a different, local face. In Los Angeles, that face was 150 clergy members as well as members of 14 local African-American churches coming together to offer their prayers, call for the churches to return to their historical roots as the voice of the community and to set the community’s own agenda, which included serious concerns about health care and education.
“Our hope is not in political parties, governor, mayor, Congress, or president. It is in Jesus Christ,” said Reverend Welton Pleasant, Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches board president and pastor of South Los Angeles Baptist Church.
Gospel Choir respond to a roll call.
There is nothing new about African-American churches trying to address social, racial and economic injustice through the divine power.
But, according to Reverend Pleasant, what makes this current effort different from the past is its action plan. African American churches will step in as a collective power, offering hands-on help. In the process, Reverend Pleasant said, the community will transform, and the churches will grow spiritually as well.
Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches recruits small churches and provides services that are not otherwise easily available to them. Among these are training in church leadership, grant writing and financial management. The group also offers services such as employment assistance to ex-offenders, and fatherhood and youth development programs.
Baptist Church in New York prays for social justice.
Although the prayer vigil may have had a political bent, a traditional Christian liturgy -– including the Lord’s Prayer and Gospel readings -– took place amid a series of intense performances by a gospel choir.
The ceiling of the worship hall evoked the shape of the Ark, lending the place the feel of a sanctuary. Beside the altar were an electric piano, a bass, a drum kit and microphones.
After prayers led by seven pastors, as well as an Imam from a local mosque, the 25-member Trinity Baptist Church gospel choir sang, and some of the participants stood with their arms and hands stretching upward in joy.
to the pastor's speech.
Clergy, laymen and laywomen sat side by side for more than two hours, praying together and clapping to gospel music, not hesitating to say aloud, “Amen.”
They prayed for racial and economic justice, an opportunity for equal education, affordable health care and recognition in the political decision-making process.
They also offered prayers for the husband of one of the members of the congregation who has been in jail on a million-dollar bond since December 2007 for allegedly brandishing a weapon at motorists on an Orange County freeway two months earlier. According to his wife Elise, the motorists weren’t sure if they saw him wave a gun at them, and the police who raided the couple’s home never found the weapon allegedly involved.
During the prayer, the keynote speaker encouraged the participants not to question God’s ability to make the impossible possible.
As if shrugging off any doubt as to whether the churches could live up to the expectation raised by the event, Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood of St. Paul Community Baptist Church in New York read from Mark 6:30 that Jesus fed five thousand with two fish and five loaves of bread.
“There is something that the politicians can't offer us,” he said. “That is the spiritual dimension. Creating effective social justice ministries must be done through the church. And it begins with your absolute faith in God’s ability,” said Youngblood.
Photos by Jun Young Suh.
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User Comments
Dr. Wylmarie N. Sykes on Mar 04, 2008 at 09:21:55 said:
GIRL & GANG FACTS
Dr. Wylmarie N. Sykes, Chairman
Operation Safe Child
www.opsafechild.org
wyl@aol.com
P.O. Box 810
Maywood, IL 60153
GANG FACTS
Let us dispel some of the myths and false rumors about the money to be made from selling drugs. Research shows the following:
First of all:
1. Gangs exist for the sole purpose of recruiting ignorant young people to go out on the streets to sell drugs so that higher ups can make a few dollars off of them. In other words, People are asked to join gangs in order for the gang to make money off of them. People are recruited to join gangs so that gangs can put them out on the street to sell illegal drugs.
2. A person that joins a gang can expect to be picked up by police and arrested within six months.
3. Drug pushers do not earn big money. People on the street selling drugs earn about $3.50 per hour. Wal-Mart and McDonalds workers earn $6.50 to $8.00 per hour. In other words, the lowest paid legal workers earn twice as much as illegal drug pushers and they don’t have to go to jail for it.
4. Wearing a hat backward and tilted to one side is a gang sign and can get a person beaten up or shot because they are showing wrong gang signs. In other words, wear your hat straight and your pants up.
5. Gangs tend to recruit people who drop out of school or who are loners or who have been abused and who are very angry.
6. People who join gangs give away their future opportunities. They go to jail, get prison records, and then are prevented from getting good paying jobs.
7. Joining a gang causes trouble for the whole family.
8. Gang members and drug pushers have to pay lawyers, bail, and then they lose whatever job they did have. Drug sellers’ automobiles and property gets confiscated.
9. If a gang member and drug pusher starts using drugs then they are poisoning their body and poisoning their brain.
10. Illegal drugs produce the ‘high’ feeling by poisoning the brain.
11. If a girl joins a gang, several things happen. A girl gang member can expect to become a paid or unpaid prostitute. She can expect to have a baby soon. She can expect to get a disease. She can expect to get incurable AIDS. She can expect to spend many years in jail. She can expect to remain poor for most of her life. Boys who join gangs can expect the same things.
12. There are many better choices than gangs.
13. Make friends with good people who will not drag you down, but who will help you up.
14. Stay in school. Attend school every day. Get into after school activities and sports. Study.
15. Learn skills. Learn a trade.
16. Go to college. College graduates earn $2,000,000 extra dollars. The more education you get, the more you earn.
17. Get a job and then be a dependable worker.
18. Be honest. Use good character habits.
19. Be grateful. Focus on the positive. Worship.
20. Always try to do the right thing.
People who do wrong pay for it a long time and pay for doing wrong in many more different ways than what they expect.
Please forward this and share this information with everyone you know and especially every young person and teenager.
Anyone that refuses to share this information with young people is in collusion with the drug pushers and is undermining our society.
Dr. Wylmarie N. Sykes, Chairman
Operation Safe Child
www.opsafechild.org
wyl@aol.com
P.O. Box 810
Maywood, IL 60153
THE MISSION OF OPERATION SAFE CHILD
A NON-PROFIT 501 C3 CIVIC ORGANIZATION
Operation Safe Child is a collaboration between the local government and the local school district. The primary mission of Operation Safe Child is to keep children safe by teaching them what to do in dangerous situations such as abduction attempts, illegal drug activity, gang activity, and when they are home alone. Operation Safe Child also teaches children good character habits and to think critically about the ultimate end results of criminal activity. The purposes are to reduce crime in the community and to encourage the students to grow to become productive citizens. Although the Advisory Council for Operation Safe Child provides some instruction, the majority of the instruction is provided by Officers from the Police Department.
R. Lee Gordon on Mar 02, 2008 at 09:45:43 said:
Believing the best way to uplift youth is better education, UniTee Design, Inc. (UDI) is on a mission: to rebuild African-American unity in our schools and communities primarily through the development, support and funding of more effective educational opportunities for today’s young generation.
-->A youth education and ethnic empowerment enterprise with offices near Detroit, Atlanta, and in New York City, UDI’s primary product and service offerings are youth enrichment (i.e., educational programming and motivational speaking), and ethnic apparel design, production, distribution and sales.
UDI uses designs that feature the red, black and green (RBG) colors associated with African-American culture. “UniTee Shirts” and “UniTee Bands” teach our children of a rich cultural history, heritage, and the many, significant achievements of their ancestors, to build and strengthen within them higher levels of self-esteem and self-identity.
Several RBG designs also incorporate the words “pride, power and purpose” (the 3P’s) that serve as positive life principles. The 3P’s provide an opportunity to help youth overcome real-life issues such as broken homes, tough streets, gun and domestic violence, and drugs. They are also used to promote the importance of education to help children become more resilient to the multitude of negative circumstances and influences they often face.
UDI supplies positive reinforcement for our youth by using the RBG colors and 3P’s, and then delivers “alternative” education programs to help them identify a specific purpose in life. These programs are typically developed based on direct feedback from youth as to what their interests are to better engage their motivation, participation and improvement.
R. Lee Gordon, UDI’s president, says there is a growing movement to better the condition of African-American youth through better education. “By proactively seeking out and engaging the multitude of entities and individuals who share our mission and value our vision, we can overcome fragmentation, create consolidation and build a national coalition to propel our ability to deliver more effective educational options to the maximum number of youth. Thus, we are willing to work with anyone who will help us support, develop and fund youth education programming that empowers the lives of our children.”
UDI has alliances with positive organizations, agencies and groups throughout the country including:
The Single Parent Resource Center
The Hip Hop Congress
Children and Youth Prevention Services
The African American Music Association
The Blackstar Project
Project 2019
The Youth Leadership Program
The International Men of Excellence
Welcome To Harlem
Motor City Blight Busters
H.U.M.S
The company is currently establishing a national network of “Purpose Providers” consisting of concerned citizens, college students, communities and groups to strengthen youth education advocacy.
UDI also uses a variety of fundraising, cross-branding and cross promotion strategies, as well as live event and online product sales, to fund and develop youth education programs.
Currently teaming with Eastern Michigan University (EMU), UDI is developing a national model that will forge partnerships between colleges and universities, and community agencies. It is also establishing a national peer mentor project initiative that will match college students with high school students, and high school students with grade school students, to empower students to strive for and achieve higher education goals that will result in improved academic and professional outcomes.
Some of the current programs developed or supported by UDI include:
A self-defense and safety awareness program developed in cooperation with The Detroit Threat Management Center helps school-aged children feel more assured and able to protect themselves in their communities by gaining the skills and strategic thinking needed to do so, while fostering self-discipline and respect.
The Model Student Fashion Career Development Program introduces the world of fashion to schools via instructional photography, videography, fashion design, modeling and hair and make-up styling. The program is also structured to reinforce overall academic performance.
Public Art Workz is a summer camp that teaches creative arts and merchandising to inner-city youth. UDI and BlightBusters (a Detroit-based not-for-profit organization) are organizing a major fundraiser in June 2008, featuring Motown recording artists, The Miracles and The Contours, to support this important program.
UniTee Design products are currently available at Spectacles and Naim’s Unique Designs in Detroit, Phat Gear in Atlanta, EMU, Wayne State University, and major national distribution is slated for early spring. Several joint ventures are in the works with The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, HBCU Kidz, The Detroit HBCU Network, and others. UDI is introducing new apparel designs and product lines to include sweatshirts, sports jerseys, baseball caps, etc., and will produce “Purpose Provider” (“edutainment”) events throughout the country.
The urgency to achieve higher levels of academic and professional successes for our youth is obvious. Thus, we welcome collaborations towards a common cause and for a greater good.
R. Lee Gordon
UniTee Design, Inc.
www.uniteedesign.com
rgordon@uniteedesign.com
Toll Free: 888.OUR.RBG.TEES