President Obama Continues His Failure To Create An Equally Representative Cabinet in His Second Term

 

 President Obama has put together an even less diverse Cabinet than in his first term. | AP Photo

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/obama-diversity-disappoints-again-90922.html

All,

This is yet another very bad sign that the President lacks the necessary vision and courage to do the right thing with regard to women and people of color in his administration.  Obama's decided indifference to properly defending and promoting not merely more 'diversity' (a much better phrase in this context would be true equality) in his cabinet but  also failing to properly promote the kind of truly progressive political talent among his senior advisor and White House  administrative staff positions as well--especially in the crucial areas of major public policy in both the domestic and foreign policy spheres--is downright indefensible at this point in his now clearly stalled second term Presidency.  There's simply no excuse for giving over 90% of these major positions to white males only.  In addition considering that only 39% of the white electorate voted for him in 2012 (a whopping 88% of Romney's final tally of 59 million votes--a grand total of 52 million white votes overall vs. the 34 million white votes that Obama received--created a massive landslide margin of 18 million more votes for Romney/Ryan that would have been absolutely devastating for this President if not for  the extraordinary support of African Americans (who voted nationally at a higher electoral rate than their demographic share of the national vote than white voters for the first time in American history in 2012!  and 94% overall with the highest share of the electorate in the entire country being cast by black women who voted 96% in favor of Obama.  Yet there are NO black females (and only two black men--Attorney General Eric Holder a carryover from 2008 in the Justice Department and the selection just last week of Anthony Foxx a 42 year old ex-mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina in the relatively insignificent position of--as far as creating meaningful and substantive public policy is concerned--of Secretary of Transportation in this 'new' cabinet and only two new women period--both white as well.  And this is in spite of the fact that nationally Obama beat Romney among women by a whopping 11 points, 55%-44%.  But what's strange about these very favorable stats for Obama is that even white women voters voted 56%-44% for Romney(!).   So it was black (96%), Latina (80%), and Asian American female voters (85%) who voted overwhelmingly for the President by a margin of 80% to 20% nationally which more than made up for and erased the big national advantage that Romney enjoyed among white female voters.  One would think that with these kind of huge numbers among people of color generally and especially women of color that Obama would feel some major responsibility toward these indispensable constituencies to make sure their demographic and ideological representatives were in important positions in his government's second term.  After all it would have absolutely impossible for Obama to win both in 2008 (where McCain/Palin received over 55% of the national white vote--as well as over 65% among white men) and re-election in 2012 at all without the huge voting blocs in his favor of people of color and women who were  collectively directly responsible for Obama being only the fourth President in the past one hundred years to win two terms for the Presidency with more than 50% of the national electorate both times  (the others are FDR, Eisenhower, and Reagan!).  One would have thought just from the perspective of practical political strategy--not to mention a genuine sense of political loyalty, consideration, and trust--that Obama who is opposed vociferously ON EVERYTHING by the entire Republican Party and the large  venomous Tea Party caucus in Congress which is made up of 99.9% whites (over 90% of whom are--like the overwhelming majority of Obama's cabinet members in both terms--white men) that he would finally act boldly and decisively on behalf of those who actually elected him...

So the real bottomline here as this and many other appropriately critical articles pointed out this week  is  that there is no excuse for Obama "failing" or rather choosing not to select black, Latino, and Asian American men and women for his cabinet and senior advisory staff--which contains only ONE black woman, Valerie Jarrett, and two other white women among a large group of white men who outnumber them 3-1 in these coveted and important positions in the White House as well.  What's even more pathetic is that as usual far too many liberals, progressives, and leftists alike have made too many indefensible excuses  for and  given servile "passes" to the President in the name of some distorted and badly misguided sense of racial or even gender "loyalty" that turns a blind eye to this kind of political and personal indifference and dismissal of the most important, necessary, and indispensable segments of his national constituency that had in two major presidential elections organized one of the most disciplined and successful campaigns in U.S. history.  But like always, once any politician begins blithely compromising, undermining, and routinely violating even their most basic and elementary principles (in this case Obama's often stated rhetorical desire in his political career--especially during his two unprecedented runs for the Presidency!--to have far more inclusion, equality, and "diversity" generally in government), one can safely and even cynically  surmise that his more general political and ideological agenda--and all that it allegedly stands for--isn't very far behind...Stay tuned...  

Kofi

Obama diversity disappoints again
By: Jennifer Epstein
May 5, 2013 

POLITICO

President Barack Obama completed his second Cabinet this week with a nod that might have been expected to delight women’s groups: he picked longtime supporter Penny Pritzker to serve as Secretary of Commerce, selecting yet another woman for a high-profile executive branch position.

Instead, the National Organization for Women’s response sounded a relatively ambivalent note. “Penny Pritzker Appointment is Good, But Still Not Good Enough,” the group said in its first statement. “More Women Should be in the Cabinet.”

There were, after all, just eight women among the 23 Cabinet-level officials in Obama’s first term. And that number will be even lower in his second.

After picking an all-white, all-male slate to fill departures at key departments including State and Treasury, Obama urged critics to be patient. Given time, he promised just before his second inauguration, he’d erase concerns sparked by an entirely white and male group of top picks.

“I would just suggest that everybody kind of wait until they’ve seen all my appointments — who is in the White House staff and who is in my Cabinet — before they rush to judgment,” he said. “Until you’ve seen what my overall team looks like, it’s premature to assume that somehow we’re going backwards. We’re not going backwards, we’re going forward.”

Now the second term Cabinet is complete, with final selections that include both Pritzker and Anthony Foxx, an African American, for Transportation secretary. Still, Obama’s put together a less diverse Cabinet than in his first term, when his picks were criticized for being too white and male. And quite a few of the people Obama had asked to hold off until the picture was complete say they they’re not so sure it was worth the wait.

Diversity woes may seem an unlikely headache for the nation’s the first black president. After all, Obama has appointed two women to the Supreme Court, including the first Latino justice, and his current Cabinet choices are only slightly less diverse than in the first term — itself second only to President Bill Clinton’s “Cabinet that looks like America” in terms of representation. Just a few months ago, the president made no secret of his interest in nominating Susan Rice, an African-American woman, to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

And there’s no denying the president’s picks for some of the Cabinet’s most visible roles — such as Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — come to their jobs after long and distinguished careers that make them logical picks for a Democratic president looking to stock his team with top talent.

But overall, there’s no denying the group he wound up with isn’t just less diverse than the current demographics of the country, and far less representative of the coalition of voters that got Obama reelected. It even falls short in virtually every category of the marks he set in his first term.

The failure of his quest to nominate Rice has resulted in an Obama Cabinet with no women serving in its top ranks — State, Defense, Justice, Treasury. With the exceptions of Valerie Jarrett, Jennifer Palmieri and Lisa Monaco, his senior advisers are nearly all white men. And so a group which had already been criticized for being too white and too male is about to become even more so.

If Foxx is confirmed, there will be three African Americans in the Cabinet, one fewer than before. The number of Asian Americans has dropped from 3 to just 1: first-term holdover Eric Shinseki, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. And if Labor Secretary-designate Thomas Perez is confirmed, the number of Latinos will have officially made an identical slide.

A White House official told of this story responded by sending dozens of statements from women’s, Latino and African-American groups that applauded individual picks. Those statements made no mention of the bigger diversity picture in the whole Cabinet, though some of those same groups have voiced concerns on that front.

Some advocacy groups admit that they’re holding the president to a higher standard, given who he is. Still, few of them are willing to let him off the hook, even with this week’s diverse picks still fresh in the headlines: it hasn’t escaped their notice that Obama’s inner circle and top officials have remained so consistently, predominantly white and male that it’s become the easiest punch line in town.

“I at least expected that more than a third of the jobs would go to women,” NOW’s president, Terry O’Neill told POLITICO. “Women should be half the Cabinet. We’re 51 percent of the population, and more than half of us voted for the president’s reelection.” Instead, women have been picked for just seven of 23 Cabinet posts.

O’Neill had asked the White House to appoint at least three women to occupy the Cabinet’s top spots and chair the Council of Economic Advisers. Women held two of the key four Cabinet roles when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and Christina Romer led the CEA.

“This is about who walks into the Oval Office every day and speaks to the president about policy, and the answer to that question is not that many women,” O’Neill said. “The people who have that level of access are almost exclusively male and that is a huge problem.”

Some African-American leaders echo those complaints. They point out that Obama isn’t just falling short of the standard he set during his first term — he’s failing to meet the mark set by President Bill Clinton 20 years ago, when African-Americans held five positions, including the then Cabinet-level post of drug czar.

“What we’re looking for is a government that at a minimum has been better than any other president has ever been on diversity,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “He’s not there yet, even though he’s African American.”

The nominations this week of Foxx and Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency — not a Cabinet-level position — were reassuring, Thompson said, but still not enough.

Leaders of some Hispanic and Latino groups, who have widely applauded the Perez nomination and are working to make sure the Senate confirms him, express similar frustration.

“It’s safe to say we’re a little disappointed by this new Cabinet,” said Rafael Collazo, director of political campaigns for National Council of La Raza, which also wanted to see three Latinos nominated to Cabinet positions. “It doesn’t look like there’s going to be an increase in diversity, and that’s what we wanted to see.”

Hector Sanchez, president of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, said he’s “a little bit concerned” that only one Latino has been nominated. White House aides, he said, had promised that the president would ultimately nominate two Latinos to Cabinet-level posts.

His group led a campaign after Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced their resignations to call on Obama to take “an historic step” and nominate Latinos to three of the 15 “traditional cabinet” positions. (The president’s nominee for energy secretary is Ernest Moniz, whose parents were from Portugal and who doesn’t consider himself Hispanic.)

There is still a bit of hope — Obama will need to make one more Cabinet-level nomination in the weeks ahead, for a new head of the Small Business Administration, and is expected to pick a Latino candidate. Still, “the window of opportunity is almost closed,” Sanchez said. “And we’re worried that we’re not going to have a fair representation of the Latino community in this administration.”

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said she was thrilled to see three Asian Americans in Obama’s initial first-term Cabinet — but had hoped that the president would nominate another Asian American to join Shinseki.

“Seventy-three percent of Asian-American Pacific Islanders voted for the president, they came together to support him and we just want to make sure that his Cabinet reflects that support and is as diverse as possible,” Chu said. The challenge for Asian Americans reaches deeper, she said, noting that by her count there are none serving as deputy secretaries or undersecretaries in the Obama administration.

One of the president’s most enthusiastic voting blocs would have been happy with even a lone representative in his second-term cabinet. Instead, gay groups say they are discouraged that no one who is openly gay has gotten a Cabinet-level post.

“It seems crazy to me that we have never in our history had an openly gay person in the Cabinet,” said Richard Socarides, who served in a range of Clinton administration posts, including outreach to gay groups. “It seems long past due. Second-term Cabinets are often an opportunity to go back and fix some of these injustices that are obviously not entirely President Obama’s responsibility, but that he should still be involved in righting.”

Gay rights advocates had made several recommendations, including two openly gay men already in senior administration posts: Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg for Commerce or U.S. trade representative, and John Berry, the former Office of Personnel Management director, for Interior secretary.

“I’m worried that (Obama) is not focused on this, and I hope he will focus on it before too long when there are other vacancies,” Socarides added.

But despite the rumbles of discontent from some advocates, others strike a pragmatic tone: they may not be thrilled, they say — but they aren’t unhappy either.

“Would we have liked an openly gay person in the Cabinet? Absolutely,” said Fred Sainz, vice president for communications at the Human Rights Campaign. “But we understand there are plenty of opportunities for LGBT people to have very prominent leadership roles throughout the administration,” he said, pointing to Hochberg, Berry and several others.

If they can’t get great results, say these advocates, they’ll settle for good enough. “We are moving in the right direction and we hope to see this tradition (of women in the Cabinet) get stronger and stronger with each administration,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List. “The more women that go through the pipeline of winning elections and having political jobs, the more we’ll see get to high places.”

Read more:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/obama-diversity-disappoints-again-90922.html#ixzz2SWkrKOIJ
 




© 2013 POLITICO LLC

The Legacy of Elegance Or How Duke Ellington (and His Music) Changed the World: A Tribute To A Master On His Birthday

All,

I submit the following question and perhaps even a wiseguy challenge to any and all possible doubters out there who should know better by now but perhaps don't (or sadly and to their own considerable loss maybe won't make the necessary effort to find out) and that is:  Just how great was (and is) Duke Ellington...really?  Well let's closely examine what the man and the visceral power, beauty,  elegance, and sheer majesty of his artistry as conveyed through music actually accomplished in the world during the 20th century and what it just as clearly and forcefully continues to teach and inspire us in the 21st.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington D.C.  After an extensive apprenticeship with a number of outstanding local teachers and musical mentors like the legendary African American classical composer and multi-instrumentalist Will Marion Cook, Ellington began his professional career as a pianist and orchestra leader in 1924 and kept his extraordinary orchestra playing and recording for an astonishing 50 years(!) until his death in 1974 at the age of 75.  During his prolific career Ellington wrote over 2,000 compositions and performed in all fifty states and throughout the world many times in such major international capitols as London, Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Rio De Janeiro, Mexico City, Toronto, Montreal,  Dakar, New Delhi, and Istanbul. 

Recognized by many critics throughout the world as one of the major and most important composers and musicians of the 20th century, Ellington's deep impact on other musicians and composers in many different genres of music has been immense and continues to this day.  Happy Birthday Duke!

Kofi

THE GENIUS OF DUKE ELLINGTON ON FILM AND VIDEO:

"It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing)"

(Originally composed and recorded by Ellington in 1931; this recorded film segment is from 1943)

"The Mooche"
(Originally composed and recorded by Ellington in 1928;  this recorded video version is from 1955)



"Take the A Train" 

(Originally composed by Billy Strayhorn for ellington's orchestra in 1941; this classic ensemble theme song version appeared on film in 1943)

 "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue"
(Originally composed in by Ellington in 1937; this recorded video version is from the mid 1950s)

"In a Sentimental Mood"

(Originally composed and recorded by Ellington in 1931; this classic version of the tune was recorded in 1962 and featured John Coltrane on tenor saxophone with Ellington on piano--appeared on the 1963 ABC-Impulse recording "Duke Ellington and John Coltrane" 

"Mount Harissa" from The Far East Suite composed by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn was recorded in 1966:

This 1952 recording includes 2 performances of Duke and his Orchestra, one on Jan. 7, 1952 and one on Aug. 12, 1952. 12 of his signature pieces are featured including Sophisticated Lady, Caravan, The Mooch, VP's Boogie, Solitude, Mood Indigo, The Hawk Talks, I Got It Bad And It Ain't Good, Bli-Blip, Flamingo, Cottontail and C Jam Blues (Hot Chocolate.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgcd40zigz0&list=PLE7E778C84423B0B8


 

Clarinet solo at the end was by Jimmy Hamilton.

Duke Ellington: Live in Holland, 1958. With Johnny Hodges (Alto Sax), Russell Procope (Alto Sax, Clarinet), Paul Gonsalves (Tenor Sax), Jimmy Hamilton (Tenor Sax, Clarinet), Harry Carney (Baritone Sax, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet), Cat Anderson, Harold "Shorty" Baker, Clark Terry (Trumpets), Ray Nance (Trumpet, Violin, Vocal) Quentin Jackson, Britt Woodman (Trombones) John Sanders (Valve Trombone), Jimmy Woode (Bass), Sam Woodyard (Drums) and Ozzie Bailey (Vocal).

http://www.redhotjazz.com/duke.html

EDWARD "DUKE" ELLINGTON (1899-1974)

Duke Ellington brought a level of style and sophistication to Jazz that it hadn't seen before. Although he was a gifted piano player, his orchestra was his principal instrument. Like Jelly Roll Morton before him, he considered himself to be a composer and arranger, rather than just a musician. Duke began playing music professionally in Washington, D.C. in 1917. His piano technique was influenced by stride piano players like James P. Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. He first visited New York in 1922 playing with Wilbur Sweatman, but the trip was unsuccessful. He returned to New York again in 1923, but this time with a group of friends from Washington D.C. They worked for a while with banjoist Elmer Snowden until there was a disagreement over missing money. Ellington then became the leader. This group was called The Washingtonians. This band worked at The Hollywood Club in Manhattan (which was later dubbed the Kentucky Club). During this time Sidney Bechet played briefly with the band (unfortunately he never recorded with them), but more significantly the trumpet player Bubber Miley joined the band, bringing with him his unique plunger mute style of playing. This sound came to be called the "Jungle Sound", and it was largely responsible for Ellington's early success. The song "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" is a good example of this style of playing. The group recorded their first record in 1924 ("Choo Choo (Gotta Hurry Home)" and "Rainy Nights (Rainy Days)", but the band didn't hit the big time until after Irving Mills became their manager and publisher in 1926. In 1927 the band re-recorded versions of "East St.Louis Toodle-Oo," debuted "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call", songs that would be associated with him the for rest of his career, but what really put Ellington's Orchestra over the top was becoming the house band at the Cotton Club after King Oliver unwisely turned down the job. Radio broadcasts from the club made Ellington famous across America and also gave him the financial security to assemble a top notch band that he could write music specifically for. Musicians tended to stay with the band for long periods of time. For example, saxophone player Harry Carney would remain with Duke nonstop from 1927 to Ellington's death in 1974. In 1928 clarinetist Barney Bigard left King Oliver and joined the band. Ellington and Bigard would later co-write one of the orchestra's signature pieces "Mood Indigo" in 1930. In 1929 Bubber Miley, was fired from the band because of his alcoholism and replaced with Cootie Williams. Ellington also appeared in his first film "Black and Tan" later that year. The Duke Ellington Orchestra left the Cotton Club in 1931 (although he would return on an occasional basis throughout the rest of the Thirties) and toured the U.S. and Europe.


Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Ellington Orchestra was able to make the change from the Hot Jazz of the 1920s to the Swing music of the 1930s. The song "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" even came to define the era. This ability to adapt and grow with the times kept the Ellington Orchestra a major force in Jazz up until Duke's death in the 1970s. Only Louis Armstrong managed to sustain such a career, but Armstrong failed to be in the artistic vanguard after the 1930s . Throughout the Forties and Fifties Ellington's fame and influence continued to grow. The band continued to produce Jazz standards like "Take the 'A' Train", "Perdido", "The 'C' Jam Blues" and "Satin Doll". In the 1960s Duke wrote several religious pieces, and composed "The Far East Suite". He also collaborated with a very diverse group of musicians whose styles spanned the history of Jazz. He played in a trio with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, sat in with both the Louis Armstrong All-Stars and the John Coltrane Quartet, and he had a double big-band date with Count Basie. In the 1970s many of Ellington's long time band members had died, but the band continued to attract outstanding musicians even after Ellington's death from cancer in May, 1974, when his son Mercer took over the reins of the band.


SUGGESTED READING:

Duke Ellington In Person by Mercer Ellington with Stanley Dance, Da Capo Press, 1988
Ellington: The Early Years, Mark Tucker, 1995
Beyond Category : The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington by John Edward Hasse (Introduction by Wynton Marsalis), 1995, Da Capo Press
The World of Duke Ellington by Stanley Dance, 1981, Da Capo Press
The Duke Ellington Reader by Mark Tucker, 1995, Oxford University Press
Duke Ellington's America by Harry G. Cohen, 2010,
University of Chicago Press
Duke Ellington and His World: Biography by A. H. LawrenceRoutledge, 2001

http://digital.vpr.net/post/reuben-jackson-duke-ellington

Friday Night Jazz

MONDAY

APRIL 29, 2013
Reuben Jackson On Duke Ellington

By REUBEN JACKSON

 

Credit AP
Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington was the composer of American jazz standards such as Mood Indigo, sumptuous extended works like The Afro Eurasian Eclipse, The Far East Suite and three Sacred Concerts. He was also the consummate multitasker.

If I learned anything during my 20 year stint as archivist and curator with the Smithsonian's Duke Ellington Collection, it was this: It was not uncommon for the Washington, D.C. native to juggle studio sessions, new compositions, interviews, meetings, concert dates, friends, fans and, yes, romantic interests. He was not the central casting isolated artist seeking the muse in, say, some remote corner of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Humanity was his Walden Pond.

Still, it's one thing to be a multitasker. It's another to multitask with the deceptively casual attention and intense focus Ellington gave to each part of his life. Ellington loved people; he said the key to accomplishing as much as he did was "mental isolation."

When cataloging the sound recordings in the Smithsonian's collection, I still wondered how he managed to gracefully handle dozens of inane press conference questions about "jazz," a word he abhorred, then lead his Orchestra through an accessible yet musically radical reworking of an Ellington standard like "Mood Indigo" a few hours later. I have no idea how he did this with such unfailing grace—and I probably never will.

As some of you in the VPR listening audience know, I am also currently employed as an English teacher at Burlington High School. On average, I see an average of 35 students with very different personalities, interests and needs every day. By contrast, Ellington worked with groups of varying sizes, skills, and issues (curmudgeons, kleptomaniacs, some addicts) for nearly 50 years. More importantly, he consistently got the best out of these ensembles. Even "students" who disliked him intensely reveled in the time spent with the man they called The Maestro. (And I have the nerve to pant like an exhausted marathon runner on Friday afternoon!)

If Duke Ellington were reading this, he might utter one of his frequently-used axioms: "Don't let your intelligence get in the way of your learning." With that in mind, I'll cease with the first person reflections (I've commented at length about Ellington and some of his contemporaries in this VPR Presents lecture), and share that which mattered most to Duke Ellington: The music.

Below you'll find video of a couple of my favorites and a bibliography of reading and listening.  You'll also hear something composed, performed or inspired by Ellington every week on my show.

-- Reuben Jackson, Host of Friday Night Jazz

Here's a solo piano rendition of "Le Sucrier Velour"—a movement from 1959's "The Queen's Suite."



The second Ellington composition is entitled "Chinoserie" It is the opening movement from 1971's "Afro Eurasian Eclipse"—complete with Ellington's silver, no, platinum-tongued introduction.




All are but a taste of the mad skills (as the rappers say) Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington possessed—and continues to share with the world.

Recommended Reading

Cohen, Harvey G. Duke Ellington's America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Ellington, Duke. Music Is My Mistress. New York: Da Capo, 1976,
Ellington, Mercer. Duke Ellington In Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Recordings

Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. The Ellington Suites.
Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. And His Mother Called Him Bill.
Duke Ellington-The Far East Suite-Special Mix 
TAGS:
Duke Ellington Public Radio Music Month VPR Blog Featured Program
 

Paul Krugman On the Ongoing (Un)employment Crisis in the United States and the Failed National Economic Policies Responsible For It

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/opinion/krugman-the-jobless-trap.html

All,

Once again Paul Krugman--one of the most important, courageous, and consistently clear thinking public intellectuals of our age in this country--tells us the complete and unadorned truth about the brutal dysfunction of our present economy (reinforced by the specifically  inept and/or cruel economic policies being devised by both political parties in response to the current crisis) and what it really means to the millions of human beings who are being systematically destroyed and exploited by it and them. What is invaluable about Krugman's typically prescient and irrefutable analyses is that he reminds us of the concrete and genuine human costs and consequences of insidiously abstract political decisions being imposed on the larger society without any regard for the actual destructive impact it is having on our daily collective reality.  It is this bedrock intellectual honesty and moral integrity that makes Krugman far more than just the renowned Nobel prize winning economist that he is.  It makes him and his work an exemplary example of what real leadership and a truly progressive social vision really is and can be...

Kofi

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman

The Jobless Trap
By Paul Krugman

April 23, 2013

New York Times

F.D.R. told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. But when future historians look back at our monstrously failed response to economic depression, they probably won’t blame fear, per se. Instead, they’ll castigate our leaders for fearing the wrong things.


For the overriding fear driving economic policy has been debt hysteria, fear that unless we slash spending we’ll turn into Greece any day now. After all, haven’t economists proved that economic growth collapses once public debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P.?

Well, the famous red line on debt, it turns out, was an artifact of dubious statistics, reinforced by bad arithmetic. And America isn’t and can’t be Greece, because countries that borrow in their own currencies operate under very different rules from those that rely on someone else’s money. After years of repeated warnings that fiscal crisis is just around the corner, the U.S. government can still borrow at incredibly low interest rates.

But while debt fears were and are misguided, there’s a real danger we’ve ignored: the corrosive effect, social and economic, of persistent high unemployment. And even as the case for debt hysteria is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed.

Now, some unemployment is inevitable in an ever-changing economy. Modern America tends to have an unemployment rate of 5 percent or more even in good times. In these good times, however, spells of unemployment are typically brief. Back in 2007 there were about seven million unemployed Americans — but only a small fraction of this total, around 1.2 million, had been out of work more than six months.

Then financial crisis struck, leading to a terrifying economic plunge followed by a weak recovery. Five years after the crisis, unemployment remains elevated, with almost 12 million Americans out of work. But what’s really striking is the huge number of long-term unemployed, with 4.6 million unemployed more than six months and more than three million who have been jobless for a year or more. Oh, and these numbers don’t count those who have given up looking for work because there are no jobs to be found.

It goes without saying that the explosion of long-term unemployment is a tragedy for the unemployed themselves. But it may also be a broader economic disaster.

The key question is whether workers who have been unemployed for a long time eventually come to be seen as unemployable, tainted goods that nobody will buy. This could happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can’t find a job, even if the real reason is simply the terrible economy. And there is, unfortunately, growing evidence that the tainting of the long-term unemployed is happening as we speak.

One piece of evidence comes from the relationship between job openings and unemployment. Normally these two numbers move inversely: the more job openings, the fewer Americans out of work. And this traditional relationship remains true if we look at short-term unemployment. But as William Dickens and Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University recently showed, the relationship has broken down for the long-term unemployed: a rising number of job openings doesn’t seem to do much to reduce their numbers. It’s as if employers don’t even bother looking at anyone who has been out of work for a long time.

To test this hypothesis, Mr. Ghayad then did an experiment, sending out résumés describing the qualifications and employment history of 4,800 fictitious workers. Who got called back? The answer was that workers who reported having been unemployed for six months or more got very few callbacks, even when all their other qualifications were better than those of workers who did attract employer interest.

So we are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans.

And let’s be clear: this is a policy decision. The main reason our economic recovery has been so weak is that, spooked by fear-mongering over debt, we’ve been doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says you shouldn’t do — cutting government spending in the face of a depressed economy.

It’s hard to overstate how self-destructive this policy is. Indeed, the shadow of long-term unemployment means that austerity policies are counterproductive even in purely fiscal terms. Workers, after all, are taxpayers too; if our debt obsession exiles millions of Americans from productive employment, it will cut into future revenues and raise future deficits.

Our exaggerated fear of debt is, in short, creating a slow-motion catastrophe. It’s ruining many lives, and at the same time making us poorer and weaker in every way. And the longer we persist in this folly, the greater the damage will be.

Armond White On the Films '42' and The Central Park Five'

http://www.nyfcc.com/2013/04/42-the-jackie-robinson-story-reviewed-by-armond-white-for-cityarts/

All,

My wife and I saw the new film '42' which is about the life and career of baseball legend Jackie Robinson last night and came to the exact same conclusion that Armond White did in his outstanding review--'42' is the best American film that we have seen in many years--especially a film focused primarily on a black character.  I couldn't agree more with White's typically prescient and insightful review.  This is a GREAT film that rather surprisingly manages to say something profound and honest about this country and sports that is usually ALWAYS MISSING from other films who take up these topics.  The lead  performances by the young black actor Chadwick Boseman (keep a sharp eye on this cat--I think we have another truly groundbreaking actor coming our way!) and of all people Harrison Ford who was far, far better playing Branch Rickey than in any film I've ever seen the usually hopelessly wooden,  one dimensional, and utterly mediocre actor play.  WHO KNEW HE COULD PULL IT OFF?  Certainly not I, but Ford actually did a very fine job.  All credit is due to the many fine actors in this wonderful movie and the writer/director Brian Helgeland who I think the Academy should just give the "best director" Oscar for 2014 right now.  That's my honestly heartfelt account of just how good and substantial his work (and that of his excellent DP) was.  Thus, a great review of a great movie is very appropriate.  I KNEW Armond would love this movie because like the actors, director/writer and the advisory role of the great Rachel Robinson herself (still absolutely regal, elegant, and brilliantly lucid at age 90!), White is a mature and visionary critic who has artistic and intellectual INTEGRITY AND PRIDE along with a profound UNDERSTANDING and KNOWLEDGE of the game that is essential to telling Jackie's truly heroic story in an intelligent, honest, and truly engaging cinematic manner...In other words--GO SEE THIS IMPORTANT FILM RIGHT AWAY.  YOU WON'T REGRET IT...
 
Kofi

'42': The Jackie Robinson Legend 
reviewed by Armond White

CityArts
APRIL 9, 2013
 
We are fortunate to be spared Spike Lee’s take on the Jackie Robinson story, which surely would have been spiteful: emphatic about race grievance and loaded with numerous Spikey tangents. But Brian Helgeland has fashioned 42, a superbly watchable tale, from Robinson’s groundbreaking desegregation of professional baseball through the machinations of farm system innovator Branch Rickey. It’s also a film about American spiritual history and destiny. The issues and emotions have a beautiful clarity.

Titled after Robinson’s player number (retired for all teams by the Major League Baseball association yet worn by players every April 15th–Jackie Robinson Day), 42 commemorates Robinson breaking the game’s color bar in 1947 as the first Negro playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Helgeland depicts this world-changing risk as a cultural story–not simply one man’s life story. Instead of biographical depth, 42’s character sketches sustain the same benevolence as the MLB’s memorial; its lively and vivid narrative celebrate the arduous steps of a social and moral revolution.

More than a baseball movie, 42 touches on the folktale qualities evinced in Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman) and Dodgers’ General Manager Rickey (played by Harrison Ford). Showing baseball as the medium of social change, its practice and rituals are understood as basic to America’s sense of capability despite prevailing social divisions. That explains Helgeland’s elastic, All-American sense of class. Robinson strides into the roughneck world of sport possessing higher personal principles. He and wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie) are already upwardly mobile; they need only the income and recognition that White Americans take for granted.

Helgeland’s respect for aspiration, which informs every scene, is central to the story’s concept. Rickey’s decision to integrate baseball has an uplifting, spiritual goal: “I don’t know who he is or where he is, but he’s coming,” Rickey says in 1945 and then after narrowing a list of prohibited Negro players, half-jokes, “Robinson is a Methodist, I’m a Methodist, God is a Methodist. You can’t go wrong, get him here.”

But Rickey’s also pragmatic: “Dollars aren’t black or white, they’re green.” His justifications are true to a folksy era far different from today’s avaricious secularism yet it’s authentic to a way of thinking and feeling that was intrinsic to the psychodynamics of that 19th century sport. This fact supports Helgeland’s unique historic fable quality (perfectly expressed in Sister Wynona Carr’s vintage gospel end credits theme “The Ball Game:” “Life is a ball game but you got to play it fair.”)

Now let’s get rid of any narrow-minded suspicion about Hollywood race stories always unequally pairing history’s Black sacrificial figures with dominant White cohorts. Helgeland’s even-handed vision of the Rickey-Robinson revolution enlarges it, taking in different aspects of America’s racial reality. Not merely the Jackie Robinson story, 42 relates tandem efforts and transformations by Rickey, Negro sports writer Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), assorted teammates (many brief, perfectly etched characterizations from Max Gail’s genial retired manager Burt Shotton, Chris Meloni’s virile Leo Durocher to Lucas Black’s affable Pee Wee Reese) and the crowds who fill the stands. This is the best casting since Cadillac Records; all profiles in courage.

The back office functioning behind America’s public face rarely gets shown but 42 appropriately reveals its significance, primarily through Harrison Ford’s undeniable appeal. Never credited for comic warmth, that quality distinguished Ford’s Indiana Jones from all movie action heroes. As Rickey, Ford’s elderly crusty growl is a homey voice of experience. Even Ford’s sly smile has spiritual authority which keeps Rickey’s personal confession (when Robinson asks him “Why?”) from being soggy or pious; it’s a perfectly balanced personification of wiliness and principle. Ford’s masculine affability confirms the noble essence of the civil rights movement, especially in Rickey’s warning to Robinson: “Like our Saviour, you’ve got to have the guts to turn the other cheek.”

Projecting magnanimous decency, Ford puts Rickey’s risk-taking and persistent urging in perfect balance to newcomer Boseman who portrays Robinson’s circumspect heroism. This isn’t a timid, nonthreatening Black man; he’s self-assured yet resentful of those who want to make him humble. Jeffrey Wright has played this Poitier complex but Denzel Washington never has. 42 is the first movie ever to show what it’s like for a Black man of intelligence to be disrespected by the White ruling class yet maintain his dignity and modesty. (42 has moments that compare to Poitier‘s recall of hearing a Hollywood technician call for “the nigger light” and having to endure the degradation.) Boseman’s wary intelligence conveys deep pride, a forgotten aspect of Black America’s still-gradual civil rights evolution.

Helgeland lets Ford/Rickey’s courage balance both the past era’s most advanced attitudes and the modern audience’s guileless ignorance of that history. The young Black actors–all ebullient, optimistic, determined–represent Blacks’ hopes while the familiar Whites personify fears. When 42 presents these details (as in Robinson and Reese‘s on-field pantomime), it surpasses Steven Spielberg’s morally arrogant Lincoln with its too-modern token Blacks and deified politician.

During a remarkable sequence of Robinson in the batter’s box being taunted by the Philadelphia Phillies’ racist manager Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) repeating only a few less N-bombs than Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Rickey transforms the attack strategically, sympathetically. This extraordinary assessment of how institutional racism was conquered by American fellow-feeling outstrips all Tony Kushner’s fancy wordplay in Lincoln. It is the essence of compassion, not smug literariness. 42 puts social progress in humane terms–on the ball field. in splendid deep-focus that keeps nature and human effort in lovely, balanced perspective.

Cinematographer Don Burgess makes 42 the most beautiful movie of 2013 so far. He photographs sunlight and water (when Robinson breaks before Rickey or finally showers among his White teammates) with true radiance. Nothing in Lincoln’s political contrivance is as resonant as Rickey confessing “Something was wrong at the heart of the game I loved and I had ignored it.” Kushner-Spielberg’s Lincoln never admitted such sorrowful complex. Lincoln pretended that political opposition was the essence of America’s moral progress when in fact it was only a power struggle; 42 is deeper and more honest in displaying how Americans changed through accepting skill, humanity, sympathy.

Helgeland has made a film totally without cynicism (and it’s a better approach to history than George Lucas’ lame Tuskegee Airman tribute Red Tails). Cynicism is what ruined Lincoln; cynicism was at the core of Kushner and Spielberg’s self-congratulatory warping of history–which was why liberals overrated it. Will Obama-era audiences appreciate 42’s richness with its deep understanding of how hard-won compassion has greater everyday effectiveness than the rule of law? Its splendid depiction of ball field effort? Or it’s unforgettable silhouetted fatherly embrace? These images test fairness within the glory of nature without the falsity of The Natural or Field of Dreams but like no movie since Robert Aldrich’s The Big Leaguer.

I’d like to describe more of 42’s wonderful scenes such as the shots of Robinson rounding the bases, focused on his “42” uniform imprint and its existential connotation like a Bresson icon, but viewers should discover such beauty for themselves. Rickey and Robinson may have been spiritual visionaries, but in this film they unite over the idea of being “built to last” by doing the right thing. Whatever 42’s fate in this cynical market, it is built to last.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

 

http://www.nyfcc.com/2013/04/the-central-park-five-reviewed-by-armond-white-for-cityarts/

All,

LIKE I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR OVER 20 YEARS NOW:  Armond White is the best damn film critic in this country and NOBODY ELSE is even close.  The true test of any real critic in any genre is not whether you always and under every circumstance "agree"/"disagree" with the analysis, exegesis, and insight that the critic provides but whether you actually LEARN SOMETHING new, interesting, thought-provoking, and USEFUL from his/her criticism. In other words:  Does the critic have intellectual, moral, artistic, and political COURAGE, HONESTY, INTEGRITY, AND DEPTH or not?  Armond is that very rare individual who never fails to display exactly that in every single critique and review he does.  He's one of the very few writers in America that I am in absolute AWE of.  White is a true MASTER at his craft and we're damn lucky/fortunate to have him...

Kofi 

'The Central Park Five'

Reviewed by Armond White

CityArts

April 16, 2013
 
Comedian Chris Rock embarrassed himself at this year’s New York Film Critic Circle dinner when presenting a prize to the Ken Burns film The Central Park Five. The black, Brooklyn-born Rock declared “It makes you think I was wrong. Burns shows we were all wrong!” about the April, 19, 1991 incident in which five black New York youths (Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yuself Salaam) were defamed in local news media after police intimidation had forced them into falsely confessing to the rape and near-murder of a woman then identified as “The Central Park Jogger.”

Rock’s unroyal “We” was politically submissive (and Burns repeated the trope in his acceptance speech: “Everybody in this room got it wrong”). It revealed how class prerogative is felt by cultural pets like Rock and Burns–financially well-compensated and publicly celebrated representatives of the social elite. It was apparent from his deferential presentation that Rock no longer identified with those black New Yorkers who held to their criticism of the crime investigation–particularly those outraged at how media coverage of the Central Park case typically treated it as an opportunity to further stigmatize, condemn and assert superiority over New York’s least powerful social groups.

Classic New York disposition talks back to authority and remains skeptical toward the media’s official versions of controversial social events; it preserves personal, complex, aggrieved, vexing, street savvy. The “Jogger” case (portrayed in tabloid headlines as the “wilding” incident, describing black youths marauding Central Park and terrorizing citizens) revealed a panicky power reflex. Police and media responded to hiphop culture by slapping back the rising social prominence of disenfranchised black youth and reasserting traditional racist fears.

Any sentient New York viewer, including Rock, should know these things. These were perceptions and projections that only the mainstream media–the voice of the empowered class–got wrong, perversely influencing legal and judicial process. Burns’ film doesn’t dig into this “court of public opinion” corruption; as in his PBS documentaries, he presents an “official” review of events that questions status quo media prejudices only in hindsight.

Rock internalized and accepted these preconceptions in his disloyal “we.” Rock’s “we” certainly did not include New York’s black-owned media like the weekly newspaper The City Sun that actively questioned police and media performance regarding the case. Rock also ignored the extraordinary Joan Didion essay “Sentimental Journeys” for The New York Review of Books that in 1992 laid out the Byzantine patterns of New York ethnic bias evident in social power, political influence and media practice.

By falling way short of Didion’s inquiry and her “J’accuse!” Burns’ doc 9 airing tonight on PBS) creates a worthless new myth that absolves citizen skepticism. He misuses his “official” status–just as Rock misused his celebrity status–to render independent thinking, political skepticism and ethnic responsibility impossible.

In The Central Park Five media-class imperiousness overshadows the story of the five youths as just another one of the eight million New York stories that never get told until too late. Burns glides past the years and opportunities stolen from these men; his close-ups stare back vacantly at the barely suppressed rage and inconceivable damage in their suddenly aged faces.
 
For Rock to ratify this indifference shows his own coolness to the abuse of authority that is part of New York class and race reality–realities Rock’s dubious stand-up humor turns into racially exploitive cynicism (quoted in a New York Times op-ed as recently as today). Burns inserts declarations of this cynicism by only a few of his “official” interviews. MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder says: “I want us to remember what happened that day and be horrified by ourselves. Because it really is a mirror on our society. And rather than tying it up in a bow and thinking that there is something that we can take away from it and we’ll be better people. I think what we really need to realize is that we’re not very good people. And we’re often not.” This “we” shit is editorial writer arrogance and it lacks spiritual compunction about error, sin, forgiveness and repentance.

Rock’s NYFCC testimony effectively denies that sense of voiceless vulnerability that the Central Park Five suffered and is every New Yorker’s fear–and tragic destiny. (To be media-voiceless is to be powerless in this town). A good doc-maker would explore this; Burns does not. Instead, he does the obvious prevarication: goes to a New York Times writer, the estimable Jim Dwyer, for authority. Yet, oddly, Burns never features Times reporting of the Jogger event to complete his chronicle of media coverage. Dwyer (Burns’ typical PBS-style, talking-figurehead) pronounces: “The coverage in 2002 [when Matias Reyes confessed to the crime] was worst than what had happened in 1989. More resistant to fact. More obstinate about being wrong…This was institutional protectionism that was going on…I don’t think the press faced its mistakes. I don’t think the police department faced the truth of what had happened because the truth of what happened is almost unbearable…They got stuck with the mistake and they’re still invested in that mistake.”

It’s too easy to say these things in reflection. Or disingenuously, as in Rock’s show of empowered-group ignorance. Our old enemy, liberal sentimentality raises its hypocritical head again as Burns recreates that warm, self-satisfied feeling of the Scottsboro case but this time without risking social censure or status. Rock and Burns are content to be both repentant and smug. The pity on view in The Central Park Five is not for any of the incident’s victims (or New York itself) but for Burns’ and Rock’s own class.
 
Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

LONG LIVE HERBIE HANCOCK! (b. April 12, 1940): LEGENDARY PIANIST AND COMPOSER, JAZZ INNOVATOR AND WORLD MUSIC PIONEER

 HERBIE HANCOCK

(b. April 12, 1940)

All,

The incredibly versatile and consistently creative Herbie Hancock (b. April 12, 1940) has been and continues to be one of the most important and influential pianist/composers in the world over the past half century. Still going strong at age 73 the ever youthful and dynamic Hancock has not only played on an astonishing number of outstanding recordings as a leader and sideman of many excellent ensembles since 1962 but has also played and recorded with an extraordinary and truly eclectic list of contemporary iconic musicians and composers that includes everyone from Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson, Grachan Moncur, Tony Williams, Joe Henderson, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman, Lee Morgan and Sam Rivers to Herbie's stellar six year membership in the famed Miles Davis "Second Great Quintet" from 1963-1969 that cemented Hancock's international reputation as one of the leading and most imaginative musicians and composers in the pantheon of the modern Jazz tradition since WWII. From this pinnacle of influence and inspiration Hancock has gone on to further excel in a very wide and broad array of musical styles and genres that often pioneered in the challenging creative synthesis of various styles of jazz with the best in pop, rhythm and blues, funk, and ethnic/world music traditions from the entire range of global styles and structural forms. Thus it is with great pleasure and genuine gratitude that we pay homage to the work and life of this artistic giant who continues to epitomize the very best in the always fecund African American tradition. Happy Birthday Herbie!...
 

Kofi

"Maiden Voyage"
by Herbie Hancock:



"Chan's Song"
by Herbie Hancock:



"Chameleon"
by Herbie Hancock:



 

A truly timeless master and an
amazing human being.

We kick things off with a short interview
with Herbie followed by hours of his music.

Today is Herbie's day. He has earned it.

http://jazzonthetube.com/videos/herbie-hancock/happy-birthday-herbie-hancock.html
 
- Lester Perkins
Jazz on the Tube

P.S. Please share Jazz on the Tube with your
friends and colleagues.

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock was born on April 12, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois and considered a prodigy as a child. When Herbie was eleven years old he performed a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Hancock began taking an interest in Jazz in his teens and transcribed records of Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans and also was into the vocal group the Hi-Lo’s. In his own words, “by the time I actually heard the Hi-Lo's, I started picking that stuff out; my ear was happening. I could hear stuff and that's when I really learned some much farther-out voicings -like the harmonies I used on 'Speak Like a Child' -just being able to do that. I really got that from Clare Fischer's arrangements for the Hi-Lo's. Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept... He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.” After high school Herbie attended Grinnell College where he double-majored in music and electrical engineering. Herbie quickly formed a reputation in Jazz in the 1960s performing with Donald Byrd, Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods and made his first album on Blue Note called ‘Takin’ Off’ in 1962.

Hancock’s first album caught the attention of Miles Davis and Herbie was asked to join his quintet in 1963 with Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Some of the classic albums recorded by the quintet include ‘E.S.P.’, ‘Nefertiti’ and ‘Sorcerer’ and he also appeared on Davis’ albums ‘Bitches Brew’, ‘In a Silent Way’ and ‘Tribute to Jack Johnson’ among others. It was Miles who first introduced Herbie to the Fender Rhodes and began his interest in electronic keyboards. During the 1960s Hancock also made many albums under his own name including ‘Empyrean Isles’, ‘Maiden Voyage’, ‘Speak Like a Child’ and others. Herbie also began his career in film composing the score to the film Blow Up and in television by composing the soundtrack to the show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. In the 1970s Hancock began experimenting more with electronic instruments in Jazz and formed a group with Buster Williams, Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, Bennie Maupin, and Dr. Patrick Gleason. Albums this group made include ‘Mwandishi’, ‘Crossings’ and ‘Sextant’. These experimental albums led to the creation of one of Herbie’s most successful groups, The Headhunters, with Maupin, Bill Summers, Paul Jackson and Harvey Mason. The Headhunters were well received and their first album, ‘Head Hunters’, was the first Jazz album to go Platinum. By the mid 1970s Herbie was traveling around the world performing for stadium sized crowds. Hancock also continued with acoustic Jazz in the late ‘70s forming VSOP with the members of the Miles Davis Quintet minus Miles.

In the 1980s Herbie continued with VSOP II with Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. In 1983 Hancock made an album with Bill Laswell called ‘Future Shock’ which went platinum and their hit song from that album “Rockit” won a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental and the music video won five MTV awards. Their follow up album ‘Sound System’ also won a Grammy. In 1986 Herbie won an Oscar for his work scoring the film Round Midnight. Highlights for Herbie in 1990s include his Acid Jazz album ‘Dis Is Da Drum’ in 1994 followed by ‘The New Standard’ with an all star band that won a Grammy in 1996. In ’97 Hancock and Wayne Shorter recorded a duo album called ‘1+1’ and the following year The Headhunters reunited and went on tour with the Dave Matthews band. Herbie’s most celebrated achievement of this decade is by far his 2007 album ‘River: The Joni Letters’ with Joni Mitchell, Wayne Shorter, Lionel Loueke, Dave Holland and Vinnie Colauita. There many special guests on this album as well including Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corrine Bailey Rae and Leonard Cohen. The album won a Grammy for Album of The Year and was the first Jazz album to do so in fifty years and only the second time ever a Jazz album has won the honors.

Herbie Hancock continues on making music and breaking barriers which only seem to exist for everyone except Herbie. The almost literally ageless Hancock has an unbelievable body of work and the thought that he is far from done is mind boggling. Herbie’s influence has reached nearly every genre of music in America and continues to simply make the music he wants to make in that moment without the rationalization that seems to hold back most others from reaching their potential. Herbie has won twelve Grammy Awards, an Oscar, NEA Jazz Masters Award, voted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame and so many others. I can’t wait to see what Herbie Hancock will do next.

“Practicing Buddhism has brought several revelations to me. One that has been extremely important to my own personal development and consequently my musical development — is the realization that I am not a musician. That’s not what I am. It’s what I do. What I am is a human being. Being a human being includes me being a musician. It includes my being a father, a husband, a neighbor, a citizen and an African-American. All of these relationships have to do with my existence on the planet."

“Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.”

“Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose.”

"Since time is a continuum, the moment is always different, so the music is always different.” – Herbie Hancock

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/jazz-legends-herbie-hancock-wayne-242396.aspx

February 26, 2013

UCLA Home Campus Directory
Media Contacts News Releases About UCLA

Jazz legends Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter named UCLA professors 
By Shilo Munk
January 08, 2013
UCLA

Renowned artists to mentor students as part of Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance's partnership with UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music today announced the appointment of multiple Grammy Award winners and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter as UCLA professors. The two jazz greats are part of the school's Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance.

This marks the first time these two artists have made such a major commitment to an educational institution, and the current class of students will be the first to learn from them on a regular basis.

"We are truly delighted to welcome Herbie and Wayne to the faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music," said Christopher Waterman, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, which houses the school of music. "The arrival of these legends marks an important step in the growth of UCLA's distinguished jazz program, which provides students with the opportunity to study with the renowned guitarist and NEA Jazz Master Kenny Burrell, award-winning flutist and composer James Newton and leading Los Angeles–based jazz musicians such as Dr. Bobby Rodriguez, Charley Harrison, Barbara Morrison, Michelle Weir, George Bohanon, Tamir Hendelman and Justo Almario."

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA is a two-year graduate-level program that accepts one ensemble of musicians for each class; the current class includes seven students. The students, known as Thelonious Monk Fellows, will be taught each month by Hancock and Shorter throughout the academic year. The two professors will share their musical philosophies and the knowledge learned from their years of playing with the architects of jazz, including Miles Davis and Art Blakey. Both will focus on composition, improvisation and artistic expression, working with the students individually and as a group.

Additionally, Hancock and Shorter will lead master classes open to all UCLA students. Since the program began at UCLA in September 2012, Shorter has already taught for eight days and participated in a public performance with the Monk Fellows, and Hancock has taught for three days. On Dec. 6, 2012, Hancock and Shorter joined forces to conduct a historic master class at UCLA. This April, the Monk Fellows will accompany Hancock and Shorter to Istanbul to participate in a global, televised performance marking International Jazz Day.

"Wayne and I look forward to working with and guiding the new class of Monk Fellows over the next two years," said Hancock, chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute. "These exceptionally gifted young artists are destined to become some of the most influential jazz musicians of their generation, and we are both looking forward to helping them forge successful careers in jazz performance. The mentoring experience will be profound for us, as well. The gift of inspiration in the classroom that develops from the master–apprentice relationship enhances our personal creativity on the bandstand and in the recording studio."

In addition to these two legendary artists, the Monk Institute program at UCLA has been expanded to include Billy Childs, a world-class composer and the recipient of a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship. Also instructing the Monk Fellows are internationally renowned improvisation educators Hal Crook, Jerry Bergonzi and Dick Oatts, all of whom add a new dimension to the program by sharing their comprehensive knowledge of jazz, addressing all elements of the students' playing and helping the students navigate the many styles and musical environments of jazz.

"When we established the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in 2007, one of our goals was to build on the stellar faculty and students in place and strengthen jazz as an essential, core component of the school's program," said Herb Alpert, chairman and founder of the Herb Alpert Foundation and principal donor to the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. "The addition of the preeminent Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance program brings a great richness of resources and talents to the mix, giving students even more opportunities to work with the world's great jazz artists."

All of the Thelonious Monk Fellows receive full scholarships, as well as stipends to cover their monthly living expenses. The students study individually and as a small group, receiving personal mentoring, ensemble coaching and lectures on the jazz tradition. They also are encouraged to experiment in expanding jazz in new directions through their compositions and performances. The current class will be the first to graduate with a master's degree in jazz performance from UCLA.

Since the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz launched its college-level jazz performance program in 1995, Monk Fellows have studied with world-renowned jazz artists Terence Blanchard, Ron Carter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jack DeJohnette, Barry Harris, Roy Haynes, Jimmy Heath, Dave Holland, Wynton Marsalis, Jason Moran, Danilo Pérez, Dianne Reeves, Horace Silver and Clark Terry, among many others. These jazz legends serve as artists-in-residence in the college program for one week each month.

Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance students and instructors present a number of major concerts and community outreach programs throughout the United States and overseas. International highlights have included performances at the celebration commemorating the 40th anniversary of the coronation of the king of Thailand, the Summit of the Americas in Chile before 34 heads of state, the United Nations' "Day of Philosophy" event in Paris sponsored by UNESCO, and the Tokyo Jazz Festival. The students have also participated in tours of China, Egypt, Argentina, Peru, India and Vietnam with Herbie Hancock.

"The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz is honored to have Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock joining the faculty of our college program at UCLA, where they will share their vast musical experiences and expansive vision for jazz, past, present and future," said Tom Carter, president of the Thelonious Monk Institute.

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz is a nonprofit education organization established in memory of Thelonious Monk, the legendary jazz pianist and composer. Monk was one of the primary architects of bebop, and his impact as both a performer and composer has had a profound influence on every genre of music. His more than 70 compositions are classics that continue to inspire artists in all disciplines. Monk believed the best way to learn jazz was from a master of the music. The institute follows that same philosophy by bringing together the greatest living jazz musicians to teach and inspire young people, offering the most promising young musicians college-level training by America's jazz masters through its fellowship program in jazz performance and presenting public school–based jazz education programs around the world. Helping to fill the tremendous void in arts education left by budget cuts in public school funding, the institute provides school programs free of charge and uses jazz as the medium to encourage imaginative thinking, creativity, a positive self-image and respect for one's own and others' cultural heritage.

The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music is devoted to the performance and study of music in all of its global diversity, including world music, popular music, jazz and classical music. The school's curriculum combines musical diversity, interdisciplinary studies, liberal arts values and professional training in a way that takes advantage of the school's position within a great research university. Students develop the practical and critical skills that prepare them for careers not only in professional performance and academia but in music journalism, the entertainment business, and the public and nonprofit sectors.

For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

How the Political Economies of Capitalism, Racism, and Rightwing Authoritarianism Are Destroying the City of Detroit

http://cityarts.info/2013/03/20/loot-of-the-world/

All,

Much more obviously needs to be said regarding the brutally sustained and relentlessly rapacious corporate, racist, and physical/spiritual/ideological assault on my hometown of Detroit that this article alludes to--and will be very soon by myself and others.  However in the meantime--if you haven't already--please read the following prophetic and truly profound books for the kind of crystalline clarity and essential depth of knowledge that will continue to be desperately needed as we fiercely struggle to save ourselves and all that we love and cherish from the absolutely ruthless and deadly forces of Capital and Plutocracy that are destroying this society and the rest of the world right before our very eyes...and pass the word...Our very lives depend upon it...

Kofi


THE ORIGINS OF THE URBAN CRISIS:  RACE AND INEQUALITY IN POSTWAR DETROIT
by Thomas J. Sugrue.  Princeton University Press,  1996

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE:  The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein.  Metropolitan Books  (Henry Holt and Company),  2007
 
DETROIT:  I DO MIND DYING  A Study in Urban Revolution
by Dan Georgakas and Martin Surkin.   South End Press,  1975.  Updated second edition, 1998

FLAT BROKE IN THE FREE MARKET:  How Globalization Fleeced Working People
by Jon Jeter.  W.W. Norton,  2009

PLANET OF SLUMS.  by Mike Davis.  Verso,  2007

DEMOCRACY, INC.:  Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. by Sheldon S. Wolin.  Princeton University Press,  2008

Loot of the World

by Emma Lockridge
March 20, 2013
City Arts:  New York's Review of Culture
  

Fate of Detroit’s premier art museum serves warning to the nation

The collective spirit of financially beleaguered Detroiters mirrors a declaration from Celie in The Color Purple: “I’m poor, black, my situation is ugly, but God, I’m still here.” While the people stay put in Motown, will the city’s art museum survive a fiscal meltdown or be dismantled?


In response to ongoing deficits and long-term debt, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has used an unpopular state law to appoint an Emergency Manager [EM] to right the ship in Motown. The EM supplants Detroit’s elected officials, including the mayor and city council, and can renegotiate union contracts, eliminate departments, declare a municipal bankruptcy and sell city-owned assets.

Assets? The Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the nation’s finest urban museums and a most beloved gem for Detroiters, could be put into play. People are concerned that the museum’s coveted collection could fall prey to art vultures to lower the city’s deficit. With more than a billion dollars in city-owned artwork that includes Van Gogh, Monet and Cézanne, speculation is brewing about whether the art would be sold, or pillaged as some think, to help meet Detroit’s deficit. Clarity on the art’s fate is hard to find.

“Anything of value will be looted. Detroiters will have nothing left,” is the view of longtime Detroit artist/activist Ifoma. “New Orleans had a natural disaster and got help. We’re having a disaster by neglect.”

Ifoma may have a point. When New York City was on the brink of financial ruin in 1975, then President Gerald Ford approved a $2.3 billion federal loan during a national recession. That same loan would total around $10 billion today. Detroit allegedly has a $327-million accumulated deficit and $14.1 billion in long-term bond debt, but there is no talk of a lifeline from Washington.

Detroit’s economic demise has registered on the radar of a street artist who has taken credit for a controversial sign reading “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” installed at the defunct Packard Automotive Plant in the city. Translated from German, the “Work Will Set You Free” was posted over entryways of concentration camps. The activist artist, using the pseudonym Penny Gaff, issued an explanation on Facebook.

“ARBEIT MACHT FREI was cruelly placed at the entrances of the labor camps in irony, with the knowledge that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope, only death,” Penny Gaff posted. “We whore our lives away day after day for corporations and the empty promises of the powers that be. We have become wage slaves, with no alternative, essentially reinstating forced labor.”

It was Detroit’s labor that wildly enriched some of the 20th Century’s wealthy manufacturing barons who donated artwork to the city’s main museum. Manufacturing has significantly dwindled and now the art may follow the painful exodus along with the sanctity of the people’s vote and their hope for self-determination.

Emma Lockridge is a freelance writer based in Detroit. She enjoys street art and visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The Inspiring Rise and Depressing Decline of Bronx based Environmental Activist and Grassroots Advocate Majora Carter

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/nyregion/a-hero-of-the-bronx-majora-carter-is-now-accused-of-betraying-it.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

All,

I was once a very passionate and avid supporter of Ms. Carter because of her obvious brilliance, exceptional organizing skills, and deep radical commitment to real political and economic change but it's painfully clear that she has fallen prey to the venal and corrupting forces of fame, $$$, celebrity, and social status at the expense of her community and her own (former) principles.  This is very disappointing and finally enraging news because this kind of rank opportunism and cynical self serving submission to the corporate forces that she used to oppose in the name of integrity, honesty, and  political/moral/ethical COURAGE is far too common these daze--and by far too many intensely ambitious and "accomplished" younger people of color I'm VERY sad to say--in this very shaky (and getting shakier) 'Age of Obama.' Carter's public demise and  narcissistic turnaround is a very bad sign precisely because she formerly inspired so many people throughout New York and nationally to organize and FIGHT for genuine social change from a truly effective grassroots perspective.  We can ill afford to lose this kind of leadership especially at the local community level but given what I've seen of this kind of self serving obsession with celebrity, money, and status (especially the rank and often delusional idea of 'being on the inside' among corporate and political elites) among so many younger people in the U.S. today I'm regrettably not really surprised...

Kofi    

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Majora Carter grew up in Hunts Point in the Bronx and later emerged as a fierce defender of its residents against urban blights.

Hero of the Bronx Is Now Accused of Betraying It
By WINNIE HU

April 4, 2013 

New York Times

Desperate to block FreshDirect’s move to their corner of the South Bronx, Mychal Johnson and his neighbors decided to turn to someone they hoped would help them take on the popular grocery delivery service and its political supporters. Their battle had become one of the most divisive in the Bronx in years, pitting promises of economic development against fears of lost quality of life.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Demonstrators outside the Bronx County Courthouse last month rallied against the relocation of FreshDirect.

So on a sweltering day last July, Mr. Johnson rang the bell at the Hunts Point office of Majora Carter, whose work as an environmental activist fighting for the South Bronx had earned her fame and fortune, including a prestigious MacArthur “genius” fellowship. Because she had started her career fighting truck traffic, he believed she would share their concerns about traffic and pollution from the relocated fleet of delivery trucks.

But as he waited on the sidewalk to ask for her help, an office worker opened the door just wide enough to tell him to put his request in writing. More than a week passed after Mr. Johnson and his group, South Bronx Unite, sent an e-mail inviting Ms. Carter to meet. Then the answer arrived. She would be happy to meet — for her usual rate of $500 for new clients.

“That was really a blow,” Mr. Johnson said. “Here’s this person who has won quite a few awards for being an environmental activist, and here we have some real environmental concerns, and we can’t even have a meeting without getting a template response with a price tag attached.”

Not long after, Ms. Carter was hired by FreshDirect to make the company’s case to the community.

The story of Majora Carter, 46, is one of the best known in the South Bronx. The youngest of 10 children, she grew up in Hunts Point and later emerged as a fierce defender of its residents against urban blights like truck traffic and garbage dumps. Smart and passionate, with a high-wattage smile for the cameras, Ms. Carter was soon touring the Arctic with former President Jimmy Carter, hosting a Peabody-winning public radio show, and commanding tens of thousands of dollars in speaking and consulting fees.

Ms. Carter’s meteoric rise also made her a polarizing figure. Many former allies and neighbors say that Ms. Carter trades on the credibility she built in the Bronx, while no longer representing its interests. They say she has capitalized on past good deeds in the way that politicians parlay their contacts into a lobbying career, or government regulators are hired by the companies they once covered.

“You can’t have it both ways,” said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. “Either you’re an honest broker and accountable to the community, or you’re working for a business interest and accountable to that.”

In a phone interview, Ms. Carter insisted that she had never stopped working to support the South Bronx. She said she would have supported FreshDirect even if she was not paid, saying that she had never been anti-business and that the company would create jobs, provide access to healthy foods, and promote local food-based businesses. “I thought that ultimately they would be able to provide a net benefit to the community,” Ms. Carter said.

She addressed the criticism by ticking off some of her many honors and noting her status as a “thought leader.” Her husband, James Chase — who tends to Ms. Carter’s public image as a vice president of her consulting firm — called charges that she was financially motivated “revolting.” Nothing has highlighted the division over her legacy like the continuing battle over FreshDirect. The planned opening of a new headquarters for the company in the Bronx escalated from a not-in-my-backyard campaign to an acrimonious debate over how to help an area struggling with high rates of unemployment, obesity, diabetes and asthma.

State and city officials promised the grocer a $128 million package of cash and tax breaks to move to a vacant site on the Harlem River Yard from a location it had outgrown in Queens, in an effort to keep the company from accepting subsidies to move to New Jersey. The announcement brought about immediate protests and eventually a lawsuit accusing FreshDirect and city officials of systematically understating traffic problems and other effects.

Class implications idled near the surface: FreshDirect had become a hit with Manhattan residents who paid a premium to have their groceries dropped off at their doors, but it did not serve most of the Bronx, including the very streets where the government-subsidized headquarters were planned. (The company eventually expanded deliveries to the rest of the borough and introduced a program to accept food stamps, both of which it said were planned.)

The criticisms even extended personally to Ms. Carter. Neighbors had long gossiped that she spent more time at her husband’s 1,500-square-foot, rent-stabilized loft in TriBeCa than at her own home in Hunts Point. That only changed, they said, shortly before she was hired by FreshDirect.

FreshDirect, which plans to move to the Bronx by 2015, entered into a one-year contract with the Majora Carter Group last August. (Neither Ms. Carter nor FreshDirect would disclose the amount of her contract.)

“Majora has been instrumental in introducing FreshDirect to the South Bronx community,” John Leeman, chief marketing officer for FreshDirect, said in a statement. “She’s helped us raise awareness about our plans to create jobs, increase food access, and move to a green transportation fleet among other things.”

Ms. Carter was once a person whom companies feared. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and Wesleyan University, she got started in community organizing at the Point Community Development Corporation, a respected nonprofit group in Hunts Point. Known for charming supporters and opponents alike, she relished the spotlight, unlike many of her fellow organizers who preferred to stay in the background. Her courtship of the news media helped bring new visibility to environmental injustices faced by poor communities.

In 1999, Ms. Carter was at the center of a community campaign to defeat a proposed waste transfer station in Hunts Point, which residents feared would result in more diesel truck traffic. At a meeting, she shouted at members of another community group, South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, for supporting the proposal: “You are accepting money from them and playing their community partner.”

“The ironies are just breathtaking,” said Mr. Bautista, who witnessed that confrontation. “The very thing she accused them of, she’s doing the same thing now. Talk about coming full circle.”

Ms. Carter explained that her opposition to a waste transfer station that would have overburdened the South Bronx with trucks hauling garbage did not compare with the advantages now being offered by FreshDirect. “That’s a very simplistic way of trying to look at a complex situation and, again, net benefit,” Ms. Carter said.

After founding Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit group focusing on work force development and environment, Ms. Carter won a prestigious $500,000 grant in 2005 from the MacArthur Foundation, which called her a “relentless and charismatic urban strategist who seeks to address the disproportionate environmental and public health burdens experienced by residents of the South Bronx.”

A few years later, Ms. Carter parlayed her newfound celebrity into a for-profit consulting company, the Majora Carter Group. Her company Web site says it is focused on creating green jobs and shows a long list of awards and honors, including being named among the “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” by Goldman Sachs last year.

“She put the Bronx on an international stage,” said Ruben Diaz Jr., the borough president, who bestowed a citation of merit in 2011.

As Ms. Carter’s reputation suffered among some of her old supporters, who said she had an irritating tendency to overstate her contributions, others insisted that she has been misjudged.

Stephen Ritz, the dean of students at Hyde Leadership Charter School in Hunts Point, said that Ms. Carter mentored his students and used her contacts at the Hunts Point market to help him secure a weekly donation of 1,500 pieces of fruit to the school. “I think there’s a lot of jealousy,” Mr. Ritz said. “It’s much easier to run your mouth than run a business.”

Since signing with FreshDirect, Ms. Carter has linked the grocer to a half-dozen groups like Health People, whose executive director, Chris Norwood, applauded Ms. Carter for forging public-private partnerships to benefit the local economy.

But the work has also eroded some of her connections. Her relations with the Point, where she got her start, have soured. And Sustainable South Bronx, the group that she founded and led until 2008, is now supporting South Bronx Unite, which is leading the effort to block FreshDirect’s move and has emerged as her most vocal critic.

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/nyregion/thecity/14majo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0k

Editor's note:  The following article was published in  the New York Times December 2008 when Ms. Carter was at the height of her public notoriety as a prominent community organizer and leading local activist on environmental, labor, and economic development issues 

James Chase
Majora Carter on the roof of her apartment building in Hunts Point.

The Green Power Broker
By MARGUERITE HOLLOWAY

December 12, 2008

New York Times

MAJORA CARTER, one of the city’s best-known advocates for environmental justice, was sitting on a picnic table in Barretto Point Park in the South Bronx under the intense lights of an NBC film crew.

On this late September afternoon, after a month of traveling, delivering speeches, serving as host of a Sundance Channel program and a Science Channel pilot, Ms. Carter was noticeably flagging. Yet her signature feistiness was much in evidence when the producer of the documentary for which Ms. Carter was being interviewed asked her to explain why global warming affects not just polar bears but people around the globe.

Ms. Carter responded by describing air pollution in troubled urban areas like Hunts Point, the South Bronx neighborhood where she was raised and currently works.

The producer rephrased her question, in response to which Ms. Carter snapped, “I don’t do that.”

If the producer had a specific response in mind, Ms. Carter added with an edge to her usually warm voice, she should feed her a line, which the producer did not. Then she elaborated on her argument, which is that if richer communities suffered from air pollution as much as poorer neighborhoods do, affluent citizens would long ago have fought for alternatives to fossil fuels.

Two months earlier, Ms. Carter had visited the land of those iconic polar bears, touring the Arctic with former President Jimmy Carter, Senator Tom Daschle and leaders of various political, corporate, scientific and nongovernmental organizations.

“It was the trip of a lifetime,” Ms. Carter said in one of several conversations about her work. “Look, there are just a handful of people who get to do that, and I am incredibly grateful to be one of the few. But at the same time, I didn’t need to go to the Arctic Circle to see the impacts of global warming. I am living it.”

In just over a decade, Ms. Carter, 42, has vaulted from working as a volunteer for what was a nascent organization called the Point Community Development Corporation and knowing almost nothing about environmental issues to becoming a nationally known advocate for environmental justice.

Her reputation was burnished in 2005 when she won a MacArthur Foundation award for her work at the Point and at Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit organization she founded after leaving the Point in 2001.

Now, after seven years at Sustainable South Bronx, Ms. Carter is starting something new. Over the summer, she formed a for-profit consulting company, the Majora Carter Group. Along with her husband, James Chase, who serves as the group’s vice president for marketing and communications, Ms. Carter hopes that community groups, institutions and corporations will hire her to help them solve environmental problems and create green jobs — employment that betters the environment, such as producing clean energy — so she can put to national and perhaps international use the experience she gained in Hunts Point.

By singling out individuals, the $500,000 MacArthur awards can sometimes engender resentment. Perhaps partly for this reason, Ms. Carter is a controversial figure in certain activist circles. A few of some three dozen people contacted for this article refused to talk about her or to describe their criticisms on the record. But many who have worked with her said her celebrity is deserved.

Ms. Carter’s fame is also proving somewhat double-edged for her start-up. She is in high demand for speeches all over the country, yet in the eyes of many she remains synonymous with Sustainable South Bronx, and it is taking time to establish a separate identity.

“Now I go and I talk about what I think I can bring to the rest of the world with this consulting firm,” Ms. Carter said one afternoon in her new offices at 901 Hunts Point Avenue. “And it is hard, because I am still so much seen as this ground-breaking visionary who ran community groups. And I am like, that is nice and all, but I am a groundbreaking visionary who has a consultancy.

“It is fun,” she added. “I am not complaining. I am just so tired I can’t keep my eyes open.”

On the Hustings

Several weeks before the NBC interview, Ms. Carter could be found leaning against a wall outside a conference room in the United Federation of Teachers building in Lower Manhattan, tugging off her brown suede heels and pulling on green Wellingtons — the very ones, she later confided, that President Carter had scuffed in the Arctic. “I’ll never wash them,” she said with a laugh.

Ms. Carter had just spoken about green jobs at a conference sponsored by the Center for Working Families, a New York State group formed in 2006, and her speech was emotional, as her speeches usually are. She invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and choked up when she described jobless men and women who have become environmental heroes by finding and holding green jobs in their community.

The talk seemed ill suited to the setting: Most of the people in the audience were activists, politicians and union and other organizers, many of whom regularly fight for social justice and know inside out the issues and struggles that Ms. Carter seemed to be urging them to embrace.

Yet for some, the speech resonated deeply.

“You are such an inspirational person,” one woman gushed as Ms. Carter suited up for the rain. “I teared up the whole time.”

“Thank you so much,” Ms. Carter responded, smiling with the warmth, earthiness and energy that strike many who meet her, qualities that have helped make her such a powerful leader.

Within a few minutes, Ms. Carter was dashing through a downpour to the PATH station in her waterproof black anorak, its hood snug around her dark hair, to address a symposium on green jobs in Newark. Under the netting cloaking the partially restored rotunda in City Hall, Ms. Carter gave the identical speech and choked up at the same point.

“I am proud to have started one of the first green-collar job training programs,” Ms. Carter declared in rousing fashion. Many in the audience nodded throughout the speech, then applauded wildly.

“She is so inspiring,” one woman said with a sigh to her son as they headed out into the wet Newark night.

Although just back from Stockholm and jet-lagged, Ms. Carter spent the next 10 days crisscrossing the United States, giving speeches in Washington, Indiana, Tennessee and North Carolina. The Majora Carter Group earned about $60,000 that week, said Ms. Carter, who charges $25,000 for some appearances, but the organization has a way to go before it can hire more people. Currently the paid staff consists only of Ms. Carter, her husband and Isabella Moreno, who is vice president for operations and client relations.

But the team was thrilled about the week’s big development. In North Carolina, Ms. Carter had impressed Willie Gilchrist, chancellor of Elizabeth City State University, who plans to hire Ms. Carter to develop a regional plan to create green jobs. The university would be the group’s first client.

The new consultancy “really plays to Majora’s strengths,” said Hugh Hogan, director of the North Star Fund, a New York nonprofit group that supports grass-roots efforts around the city.

“She knows how the system works,” added Mr. Hogan, who worked with Ms. Carter at Sustainable South Bronx and at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. And, he added with a laugh, “That woman has no fear.”

An example of this quality is still broadly disseminated on the Web: video of a Technology, Entertainment, Design conference shows Ms. Carter chiding Al Gore, who is sitting in the front row, for brushing off her offer of collaboration and instead directing her to apply for a grant.

A Girl From Hunts Point

Ms. Carter, the youngest of 10 children, was born in Hunts Point, a community, largely populated by blacks and Latinos, that is part of the infamous South Bronx. For decades it was plagued by poverty and violence, and many working-class families moved away during the 1960s and ’70s.

Ms. Carter’s family stayed. Her father worked as a janitor at the Spofford juvenile detention center; her mother raised her many children and then worked at a residence for mentally impaired adults. Although Ms. Carter says neither of her parents was particularly active politically, the neighborhood in which she came of age was steeped in activism.

Seemingly every few blocks, there is evidence of projects that community groups have successfully fought for, including, in the last two years, 2,500 units of affordable housing and plans for an additional high school, according to Roberto S. Garcia, chairman of Community Board 2. The Bronx River Greenway, a plan to establish 10 miles of paths and parks along the waterway, came about because some 60 public and private groups formed the Bronx River Alliance, said Linda Cox, the alliance’s executive director.

Ms. Carter, who studied acting and received a degree in film from Wesleyan in 1988, did not become involved in her neighborhood until she returned to live with her parents after graduating from New York University in 1997 with a master’s degree in fine arts.

“It was because I was broke,” she said of her return home. “It was just a place for me when I needed a place to stay.”

In 1997, she started working as a volunteer for the Point, which had been formed in 1994 to help revitalize the area’s cultural and economic life. Just as Ms. Carter started at the Point, the Giuliani administration announced plans to build a waste transfer station in Hunts Point, an area already riddled with waste transfer stations, a battalion of garbage trucks and the asthma-inducing exhaust they produce.

Maria Torres, president and co-founder of the Point, recalled that in the late 1990s an awareness of the local impact of environmental problems was relatively new to the organization, but that Ms. Carter, who had started out doing art and film projects for the group, readily took on these problems.

“She went out and did her research,” Ms. Torres said. “And she became very knowledgeable about things.”

First at the Point, then at Sustainable South Bronx, working with politicians and with South Bronx groups like Mothers on the Move and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, Ms. Carter successfully fought against the transfer station and lobbied for the creation of the Bronx River Alliance and new public green spaces in Hunts Point.

In 2003, along with Mr. Hogan and Annette Williams, Ms. Carter started a green jobs training program at Sustainable South Bronx. As of this winter, said Ms. Williams, who directs the program — now called BEST, for Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training — 112 people will have learned about invasive species, tree husbandry and other subjects related to restoration and ecology. Of these 112 graduates, Ms. Williams said, 95 have jobs and 8 have returned to school.

“It was the only program I ever heard of in my community doing what they were doing at the time,” said Penny Matta, who works for the Bronx River Alliance and the city’s parks department.
As a child growing up in Hunts Point, said Ms. Matta, 37, she was never aware of the nearby river.

“You couldn’t see the water from the road and, in that neighborhood, you didn’t go down there by yourself,” Ms. Matta recalled. “Now I bring my kids to remove invasives on the weekends. All three of my daughters have done water-quality testing with me.”

A Sharp Trajectory

Ms. Carter’s recognition of the link between environmental improvement and economic revitalization set the stage for her national prominence. Green jobs are a major campaign in the environmental justice movement. At a meeting last year of the Clinton Global Initiative, for example, Ms. Carter and Van Jones of Oakland, Calif., started a job-generating group called Green for All.

“It was at the time I began to want to move to a national level and so did she,” said Mr. Jones, author of “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems,” who got his start as a community activist in 1996 when he created the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. “At this point Majora is going to be focusing exclusively on her consultancy, but we are still going to be partners. She took her clout and helped get us up and running.”

To his mind, he added, “she is the Rosa Parks of the green jobs movement.”

For many who know her, Ms. Carter’s trajectory was inevitable.

“I always thought she had the capacity to be a real star, and the South Bronx — and the Bronx as a whole — needs a star, someone who makes it a little bigger,” said Dart Westphal, president of the Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a neighborhood improvement organization active in the north Bronx. “She is really smart and really beautiful, and she just has a certain star quality.”

Others say that Ms. Carter has achieved some of her fame by taking or getting credit for accomplishments or funding that haven’t been only hers to claim, or for projects that have not yet been completed, such as the Bronx River Greenway.

But in the opinion of people like Mr. Westphal, the resentment some feel toward Ms. Carter grows out of the hero narrative that Americans — and the nation’s media — often gravitate toward.

“Majora is like Paul Bunyan; the stories have become legendary in some cases,” he said. “It is not that Majora has done anything wrong; it is that some other people working aren’t getting so much attention.”

Omar Freilla, coordinator of the Green Worker Cooperatives in Hunts Point, agrees.

“There is always the tendency to spin what is a group effort into an individual effort,” Mr. Freilla said. “The backlash is that people who are part of the community start to resent the attention.”

Ms. Torres of the Point acknowledges that roles do sometimes get muddied in press reports, but says that ultimately Ms. Carter is responsible for setting the record straight.

Sitting in the conference room in her new offices one day not long ago, Ms. Carter discussed the resentment some in her community feel about her celebrity. At first, she became uncharacteristically silent, and neighborhood sounds dominated: cars and trucks, screeching brakes, sirens.

The suite of offices occupies the second floor of a two-story building, above an auto-glass repair shop and just a block from the Bruckner and Sheridan Expressways overpass. Rainbow curtains billowed out above the gray street, making each window a different bright color.

But Ms. Carter has not gotten where she is by sitting quietly.

“There is a light that comes to this community because of what I have done,” she said, her usual moxie restored. “I am in a completely different milieu right now, and if I didn’t take advantage of that, then I would be a fool. If I wasn’t flipping out about being away so much, I would be at the Clinton Global Initiative right now. Because I could do that. Because I know there are people there who would like to talk to me.

“That is what I do,” Ms. Carter said. “Am I supposed to feel guilty because I have those advantages?”



Marguerite Holloway, director of the science program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is working on a book about nature and cities to be published by W. W. Norton.