Florida Courier - September 7, 2012

9-11 anniversary

EE FR

PRESORTED STANDARD MAIL U.S. POSTAGE PAID DAYTONA BEACH, FL PERMIT #189

HAPPY 25th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, DR. GLENN CHERRY AND DR. VALERIE RAWLS CHERRY!

I saw the Twin Towers fall B4

SEPTEMBER 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

VOLUME 20 NO. 36

www.flcourier.com

ALL ABOUT RESPECT FAMU Drum Major Robert Champion’s sexual orientation was a factor in his decision to consent to hazing, says his best friend and band mate.

BY DENISE-MARIE ORDWAY AND STEPHEN HUDAK ORLANDO SENTINEL (MCT)

Florida A&M drum majors Robert Champion and Keon Hollis grew close in 2011, working together to direct the FLORIDA COURIER FILES school’s famous marching band.

As the Florida A&M University football season gets Yet one situation frustrated both underway, the criminal and civil cases surrounding young men as they tried to keep their the death of Robert Champion proceed. fellow musicians in line during last

Are White Americans convinced?

fall’s football season, according to a and the resignation of FAMU Presirecent affidavit by Hollis. Band mem- dent James Ammons and others. bers were challenging the newly promoted drum majors’ authority.

Sworn statement Hollis’ version of events leading to Lack of respect the tragic scene aboard Bus C on Nov. Hollis seemed too laid back, mel- 19 is contained in a three-page, typelow. Some band members disliked written statement that the OrangeChampion because he was gay and a Osceola State Attorney’s Office made public Tuesday. It’s the most detailed stickler for rules.

But the two knew there was one accounting of the thought process that sure way to capture the group’s re- went into Champion’s decision to put spect, especially among the band’s himself through the ritual beating.

Given under oath, Hollis’ statelargest and often rowdiest section: the percussionists. They had to cross Bus ment also describes in detail the beatC – a violent hazing ritual held on the ing that he and Champion took that bus that transported much of the per- night. It is part of a 104-page probable-cause document that outlines the cussion section to football games.

The beating would kill Champi- state’s criminal case against Dante on, leave Hollis aching and vomiting Martin, the unofficial “president” or in a hotel parking lot and lead to the leader of Bus C. Martin recently became the 12th arrests of 14 fellow marching-band member of the band to be charged members. It also would expose a violent culture in the band that had fes- with felony hazing in connection with tered for years, leading to the retire- Champion’s death. The 11 others ment of band director Julian White See RESPECT, Page A2

2012 U.S. OPEN / NEW YORK

Beating everyone in sight – so far

Obama having trouble with ‘Reagan Dems’ FROM WIRE AND STAFF REPORTS

By all accounts, the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., was going very well as of the Florida Courier’s press time late Wednesday night.

President Obama was already looking ahead to the convention’s end.

He is scheduled to return to Florida again to begin a two-day bus tour with stops at St. Petersburg College’s Seminole Campus and the Kissimmee Civic Center on Saturday and Melbourne and West Palm Beach on Sunday.

Four more years Capping off the first night of the DNC, First Lady Michelle Obama made a forceful pitch for voters to give her husband more time to complete the job they had elected him to do four years ago. In a speech that alternately stilled and electrified delegates, the first lady said President Obama was continuing to push forward with his agenda for change despite setbacks in his first term.

The DNC’s first Hispanic keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, acknowledged how difficult things have been in recent years while calling for Obama’s re-election. “The days we live in are not easy ones, but we have seen days like this before, and America prevailed,” he said.

Democrats sought to tamp down a pair of controversies as they gaveled open the second night of their convention Wednesday, inserting the word “God” into their platform and restating support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

See OBAMA, Page A2

SNAPSHOTS NATION | A3

Courier reporter’s unplanned adventure at DNC in Charlotte

FLORIDA | A6

Judge rejects higher tuition for kids of illegal aliens

FINEST | B5

Meet Sara

ALSO INSIDE

MARGOT JORDAN PHOTOS

Palm Beach County resident Serena Williams was buzzing through her women’s singles bracket in the U.S. Open as of the Florida Courier’s press time Wednesday night. Check flcourier.com for the final U.S. Open results.

Veterans leaving millions in unused benefits behind

BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Only a fraction of Florida’s 1.6 million military veterans get the benefits they’ve earned by serving, leading the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to launch a campaign to find those who should be getting millions of dollars left on the table.

Many of the state’s veterans are paying high premiums or out-of-pocket for health care and other services they should be getting for free from the government, retired Army Col. Mike Prender-

gast, director of department, said Wednesday.

Paying twice And many vets and their family members get services via other programs that cost Florida taxpayers needlessly.

“Any type of health care, counseling, education or other services that are out there (that veterans are getting through other government programs), that could get paid for by the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs, in effect means that potentially, our taxpayers are paying for that service twice,” Prender-

baseball bats. The skull of one victim, 45-year-old Norris Gaynor, a homeless veteran, was split as he slept on a park bench.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, the numbers of homeless families and children are growing – to one in three of the total homeless population.

Veterans make up more FLORIDA COURIER FILES than one in 10 homeless The state is reaching out to military vets who people.

have not claimed their benefits.

tion in violence against homeless people last year and drew national headlines in late May because of the bizarre “face-eating” attack on a homeless man in Miami.

Among the crimes law enforcement officials Focus on Vietnam saw was a 2006 cluster Florida led the na- of attacks by teens using gast said.

Florida has the third – largest population of veterans, but only 260,000 of the 1.6 million are drawing the benefits to which they’re entitled the agency says.

Vets hesitant The campaign will have a special focus on Florida’s 449,000 Vietnam-era vets, who make up more than a quarter of all veterans statewide.

Commander Mark Alvarez of the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in TalSee VETS, Page A2

COMMENTARY: CHARLES W. CHERRY II: RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A FREE BLACK MIND | A4 COMMENTARY: BRUCE A. DIXON: OBAMA AND ROMNEY’S POLICIES CLOSER THAN YOU THINK | A5

FOCUS

A2

SEPTEMBER 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Why I won’t vote, Part 1 Editor’s note: What follows are excerpts of a commentary NAACP co-founder Dr. W.E.B.Du Bois wrote in 1956.

Since I was 21 in 1889, I have...(voted) for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils. My action...had to be limited by the candidates’ attitude toward Negroes.

Of my adult life, I have spent 23 years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration. In the North I lived in all 23 years, covering eight presidential elections.

How I voted In 1912, I wanted to sup-

DR. W.E.B. DU BOIS GUEST COMMENTARY

port Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916, I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word.

In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti.

In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected.

In 1928, Negroes faced

absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South.

In 1932, I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt’s attitude toward workers most realistic.

Didn’t matter I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944. Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White primary.

Retired “for age” in 1944, I returned to the North and found a party to my liking.

In 1948, I voted the Progressive ticket for Hen-

ry Wallace and in 1952 for Vincent Hallinan.

In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist.

There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.

No third party On the presidential ballot in a few states...a “Socialist” Party will appear.

Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform.

If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist” and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things

as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state.

Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person. They may be in the pay of the United States government.

Preparing for war The present (Eisenhower) administration is carrying on the greatest preparation for war in the history of mankind...The weight of our taxation is unbearable and rests mainly and de-

OBAMA Both had been omitted from the original draft and Republicans had seized on the absence to question both the Democrats’ faith and their commitment to Israel.

Still not enough

Must work harder Working-class convention-goers say more effort is needed.

“I believe the president’s losing support among the blue-collar workers. A lot of people feel he promised a lot, and they’re angry,” said Bob Miller, an electrician from Hatfield, Pa. Many people Miller knows were already sym-

W.E.B. Du Bois was a founding member of the NAACP. This article was republished in Hartford Web Publishing. ing delegates how Obama pushed for the auto industry bailout, while Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was opposed.

They’re telling viewers how Obama would maintain current income tax rates for people earning less than $250,000. Romney would continue current, lower rates for everyone, including the wealthy.

The Obama forces tout the 2010 federal health care law, which should make it easier for millions to obtain coverage by 2014.

Romney wants to repeal it.

from A1

The convention boasts that four out of 10 delegates are African-American or Hispanic, and half are women. But though the DNC may be energizing women and non-Whites, it may not help them with the White working class.

“This is an issue we’ve been dealing with since the mid-’70s: How do you appeal to White males. And we’ve never come up with the right formula for it,” said Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina.

“Democrats have a problem with White middleclass voters,” added Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, which has studied that electorate in depth. “Those voters are very disappointed and very critical of Obama as president.”

liberately on the poor. This administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry.

Corporate wealth profits as never before in history.

We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing.

Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace?

Next week, Part 2: “Drop the chains...that bind our brains”

Ready to work

OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/MCT

Street vendors gather to sell Obama memorabilia outside the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. pathetic to Republican social positions – opposition to strict gun control, for instance – but backed Obama in 2008 because of his message of economic hope.

Obama rewrote recent political history that year.

Until the late 1970s, bluecollar Whites were usually strong Democrats. They tended to be labor union members, often with ethnic urban roots, and came from families that had voted for Democratic presidential candidates for generations.

A variety of factors pushed them away. Democrats became champions of affirmative ac-

RESPECT from A1 charged with felonies in Champion’s death were arrested in May. Two other former band members are charged with misdemeanor hazing.

‘Our brothers’ keeper’ In his statement, Hollis, 22, describes how his friendship with Champion, 26, evolved and why they felt compelled to submit to the hazing ritual together after the Florida Classic football game.

“We were ‘Squad Dogs,’ a term used to define the people who made drum major together. So that meant we were our brother’s keeper,” wrote Hollis, who was Champion’s roommate during the weekend in Orlando.

Hollis also explained the various reasons why he thought some band members disrespected them.

“Many people in the band were already in Bus C so those individuals would give us the hardest time and disrespect simply because we did not cross yet,” he wrote.

Hollis said he did not want to be involved in the hazing after the football game because he and some other band members were going out that night. But Martin reminded Hollis that the Classic, FAMU’s final football game of the year, was a last chance. If they didn’t cross Bus C then, they would have to wait until next year.

tion, which many Whites thought threatened their jobs and promotions. Cultural conservatives were often uncomfortable with the party’s pledge of easier access to abortion, gun control, and gay rights.

Democrats also seemed willing to keep tax rates up and to funnel dollars to the less wealthy – dollars that workers felt were often going to irresponsible people who were not working.

GOP advantage President Ronald Reagan successfully tapped this vein, creating an army of “Reagan Democrats,” a term that still lingers. Dem-

Both went ahead After performing at the Classic, the two men changed clothes in their hotel room and reluctantly agreed to cross Bus C. “I asked him if he was sure he wanted to do it and he stated, ‘Yea I just want to get it over with,’” Hollis wrote. “So then I took a shot of vodka and I and Robert went downstairs...”

Hollis explained how he boarded a bus that was “very cold” from the air conditioning and “very dark” because it was parked in a dimly-lit lot behind the Rosen Plaza hotel.

He described how he was instructed by Martin to sit with his head down on the left side of the bus and Champion was told to sit on the right as a young woman began taking her punishment before them in the Bus C ritual.

Beaten while sitting As the young woman made her way from the front of the bus to the back through a gauntlet of fists, feet, drumsticks, drum mallets and other items, Martin announced that Champion had not yet completed a different hazing ritual called the “hot seat.”

Typically, band members have to complete one or more rounds of the “hot seat” – being beaten while sitting – before they can cross Bus C. Champion withstood that beating before Hollis was directed to start crossing. He described the difficulty of moving through a crowd of fellow band members who were trying to beat him, hold

ocrats occasionally won them back in tough economic times. In 2008, Republicans struggled to only a 46 percent to 44 percent edge, according to Pew. This year, the Republican advantage has returned. A Pew survey released Aug. 23 found White workingclass voters this year preferring Republicans 52 percent to 40 percent.

The gain among Whites crosses many lines. Democrats gained a big lead among Whites with family incomes below $30,000 in 2008. Today, that lead is gone.

Whites earning between $30,000 and $74,999, gen-

him back and force him to the floor.

He described Champion’s struggle to make it to the back.

At one point, Champion fell, and the crowd dragged him back to the front of the bus to start over.

As Champion moved toward the back, two other drum majors started pulling Champion to help him along.

After the hazing, many band members returned to the hotel.

After repeatedly vomiting in the parking lot, Hollis went to lie down in one of the hotel rooms.

That is where he learned Champion was rushed to the hospital and later died.

Trials pending Circuit Judge Marc Lubet has set a hearing for Sept. 21 to discuss possible trial dates for the dozen former band members charged in Champion’s death. All but Martin have pleaded not guilty. Martin, charged with felony hazing late last month, has not yet entered a plea.

His attorney, Richard Escobar of Tampa, said defense lawyers will get their first opportunities next week to gather their own information about what happened.

They will begin taking depositions of several witnesses, including Orange County sheriff’s detectives and some of the band members who were aboard the bus but not charged.

“The public needs to not rush to judgment,” Escobar said.

erally considered the working middle class, had split between the two parties four years ago. Republicans now have a 17-percentage point advantage.

Getting them back The Democrats’ answer is that the convention is putting strong emphasis on economic security for the middle class and portraying Republicans as hopelessly out of touch.

“We’re going to have an honest conversation about where we were in 2008,” said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.

“We’ve made progress.”

Democrats are remind-

VETS from A1 lahassee said Vietnam vets are often wary due to how they were treated when they returned from an unpopular war.

“We weren’t that well received,” he said. “But times have changed.”

Alvarez also said that veterans’ services, both federal and state, are much improved since that time.

“The Department of Veterans’ Affairs is reaching out more than ever to veterans, to let them know what’s out there and how they can help,” Alvarez said. “And I think we’re getting better educated and not being so reluctant.”

Homeless vets Homelessness is another problem for veterans, especially those of the Vietnam era.

But according to Prendergast, the numbers have dropped in Florida thanks to an aggressive campaign by the federal government, dovetailed with state and local veterans’ programs.

“Just in the past year, our numbers have dwindled by about 2,000 who have reintegrated into their communities,” he said.

The state campaign is also reaching out to 140,000 women vets and to 231,000 veterans of Operations Iraqi Freedom

Dave Green is ready to spread the word. He’s president of United Auto Workers Local 1714 in Ohio, a crucial state where votes of his 1,500 members could help decide the election. The Lordstown, Ohio, Chevy plant, for years a popular presidential campaign stop, is running three shifts, up from one about four years ago.

Obama carried Ohio in 2008, but in 2010, Ohioans turned against Democrats and elected a conservative Republican governor and U.S. senator.

“A lot of people just thought the economy didn’t get good enough fast enough,” Green explained.

“And a lot still vote single issue, against gays, for God and for guns.”

Mark Z. Barabak of the Los Angeles Times and David Lightman and William Douglas of McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) contributed to this report.

and Enduring Freedom.

“Our needs are very different, depending on our stages of life,” said former Army Capt. Courtney Heidelberg, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

For instance, James Brian Fox, a returning Air Force vet enrolled at Florida State University, said he’s now able to get a higher education thanks to paid tuition and five years of free health care.

“To all the veterans out there who are thinking of maybe separating and going to school,” he said, “there are people here waiting to help you.”

An app for that Fox also noted that the veterans agency’s outreach campaign includes new media, which he praised for its effectiveness in connecting with his contemporaries.

“The mobile app is great,” he said. “Young people use the Internet for absolutely everything nowadays.”

Prendergast urged the loved ones of Florida vets to help them qualify for services – especially Vietnam-era vets.

They might not be ill now, he said, but in ten years they might be suffering from a disability related to their time in Southeast Asia, where they could have been exposed to herbicides like Agent Orange.

“Whatever branch of service we earned our stripes in,” he said, “we never leave a man behind – or a woman.”

september 7 - september 13, 2012

ELECTION 2012

A3

Courier reporter finds evening of adventure in Charlotte Editor’s note: On Labor Day, Florida Courier reporter Ashley Thomas was on a flight back to her home in Florida from Virginia when she ended up with a sevenhour layover in Charlotte, N.C., because of bad weather. Taking advantage of the time, she headed to Downtown Charlotte, the site of the Democratic National Convention.

long as the bus – Bus 1 – could drop me off there, I knew I’d be just fine. Wrong.

Optimistic Alaskan

“Welcome to Charlotte, host of the 2012 Democratic Convention. The local time is 6:15,” said the flight attendant as we arrived at the Charlotte-Douglass International Airport.

I reach for my cell phone to start tweeting for the Florida Courier’s twitter page (@flcourier).

As I step off the plane and walk up the Jetway, I wonder if huge signs would greet the delegates who Ashley were coming from Thomas all over the U.S. and its territories to the convention. Nope. At least not from terminal E.

Before boarding the bus, I bump into a gentleman outside who also appeared to waiting for a shuttle bus. He was wearing a volunteer tag and had some Democratic paraphernalia on so I decided to chat with him a bit.

His name was Jose Blanco and he had traveled all the way from Alaska to attend his first convention. Blanco said he wanted President Barack Obama to make it real clear why Mitt Romney was wrong and why he was right. I asked him his thoughts on why Romney was wrong and he responded “How much time do I have?” He then started talking about “the value of human beings” health care and jobs.

I also asked him about the possibility of voters not turning out the same in 2012 as in 2008, to which he said, “That is possible, but I’m a volunteer in Alaska and I hope to get people out, I’m optimistic.”

The next set of buses pull up and I bid Jose farewell. I find bus B1 and confidently step up to the door.

Feeling welcome

Missourians on bus

BY ASHLEY THOMAS FLORIDA COURIER

Downstairs is a completely different story. There are flags, streamers and balloons’ red, white and blue taffeta decorated plants everywhere. Many DNC volunteers are holding up signs.

Some signs are for “specialty transportation” guests while others just say “transportation.”

I walk over to a volunteer and ask where I can get more convention information and she points me to the DNC welcome desk.

Three volunteers – Reginald, Sharon and Lewis – greet me with a smile and start handing me stuff.

One item is the 2012 Convention Guide that had a bus route and map inside to help delegates find their way around the city.

After finding the hotel shuttle bus Florida delegates were assigned to, I decide to try my luck and hop on. I knew the delegates were staying at the Marriot. As

On the bus, there is a police officer to my left and a young man I learn is from Florida on my right.

Apparently most of the delegates flew in the night before or had earlier flights.

The officer tells the bus driver how “tight” security was in downtown Charlotte. He’s right.

On almost every corner is a cop, a firefighter, an EMT or a secret service agent. I later saw an officer peering through binoculars; he had a gun. I chose not to jaywalk.

While still on the bus I listen to the trio sitting behind me discussing social networks and how it helps get their message out. If I heard correctly, they prefer Twitter over Facebook. I ask them if I can snap a picture of them and one chooses not to be in the picture and the other two lean over in the aisle. I later find out they

ASHLEY THOMAS/FLORIDA COURIER

Mayor Sylvester James of Kansas City, Mo., is shown with Missouri State Sen. S. Kiki Curls en route to their host hotel aboard a shuttle bus provided by the Democratic National Convention. have traveled from Missouri and are State Senator S. Kiki Curls and Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sylvester James.

Lighting up the night We arrive as closely as possible to the host hotel, but its about seven blocks away. I drag my luggage behind me (thank God for rolling wheels) and pray that the rain stays away. I realize that the hotel we were dropped off at was a Marriot, but not the one I wanted.

The Florida delegates were at a hotel 10 blocks away. I reached for my flip-flops and kept it moving.

While walking through Downtown Charlotte, I passed a few vendors and stopped at the table of an Atlanta businessman named Abdullah. I decided to purchase a button that read “Say it LOUD, I’m for Barack and I’m PROUD.” The buttons were one for $3 or two for $5, but I just bought the one.

People were walking by in evening attire, and I wanted to know where they were going. Turns out there was an affair over at the Nascar Hall of Fame called “Light up the Night,” but it was invitation only. Hmmph.

The ideal classroom While still making my way to the Marriot with the Florida delegates, I passed a young lady who didn’t appear to be a local so I stopped her to chat. She was Atiya Clark from Rocky Mount, N.C., and this was her first convention.

The 18-year-old University of North Carolina student was at the event as a runner for Fox News.

As a political science major she explained how she was looking forward to her duties behind the scenes as a runner as well as the president’s upcoming speech.

I asked her about the potential lack of engagement from young voters during this election cycle. She said she thought it was “more important than in ’08. It affects everybody. Some people put it off as I’m young, I don’t have to vote, it doesn’t matter, but it does matter. Student loans, health care, our future.”

My thought on Atiya: That girl is going places.

Close look at ‘Not a perfect man’ I greet another vendor named O.O. “Everyone thinks I’m kiddin’ when I say my name is O.O,” he offers. He pulls out his passport. and I say “Oh?’’ And he says “O.O.’’

O.O. is selling art pieces that I found to be very unique and definitely conversation pieces. I focus on one particular piece about the size of a poster board. It’s the type of picture made up of many smaller pictures. The picture is a closeup of Obama and is titled “Not a perfect man.”

O.O. explains that “of course Barack Obama said that before he ran, ‘I’m not a perfect man and I won’t be a perfect president’ and he actually reminded people of that when he announced that he was seeking reelection. It (the art piece) is inspired by that quote. He said he also wanted to be surrounded by people of opposing views. The not a perfect man quote reminded me of the ‘I am a man sign’ of the sanitation workers, (in Memphis, Tenn.) I Googled civil rights and added pictures from the movement as well as those who are protestors.”

Florida hotel, finally When I finally make it to the hotel, I immediately spot Phil Giorno, the chair of the Volusia Florida Democratic Party. I am happy to know I’m at the right hotel.

I walk over to the lounge area and have a seat. Members from the Florida Black Caucus are chatting away.

“Yes, Obama is definitely going to win this one,” says one person.

“It’s going to be a tough one though,” pipes in another.

“Your hair is so nice. I haven’t seen it like that before,” chimes in another voice.

I love my sisters. We can go from one topic to the next and never miss a beat.

Don Miller from “The Don Miller” radio show comes over to chat with the Caucus members.

I then see Florida State Rep. Mia Jones of Jacksonville and DeLand County Commissioner Vonzelle Johnson. I was delighted to see so many strong Black personalities in the same room.

I chat with a passerby before realizing the time had drawn near. I had to get back to the airport. Charlotte was just a layover for me. And I’d just been told John Legend was the entertainment for the evening. Hmmph.

EDITORIAL

A4

september 7 - september 13, 2012

Romney should condemn voter suppression The Republican convention in Tampa touched on a date that has marked the depths and the heights of the African-American experience in this country.

On Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old African-American visiting his relatives, was brutally murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. His funeral — with an open casket that displayed the barbarity of the attack on him — attracted tens of thousands in Chicago and helped spark the growth of the civil rights movement.

On Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead the March on Washington, where he captivated a nation with the moral plea for the “dream.”

That peaceful and dignified gathering helped to enlist

systematically to restrict the right to vote by limiting early voting; requiring official ID; limiting hours of voting and voting booths — laws that have a disproportionTRICEEDNEYWIRE.COM ate effect on the poor, on African-Americans and other millions across the coun- minorities, on the young try on the side of civil rights. and the very old.

Two years later, President Lyndon Johnson signed What voter fraud? the Voting Rights Act. This Republicans claim this is not only protected African about fighting fraud but ofAmericans, but provided fer no evidence of the probfor multilingual voting and lem. One expert noted that protected the right of stu- you have a better chance dents to vote on campus. of being struck by lightning As they gathered, Repub- than discovering pollinglicans should have decid- booth voter fraud. ed whether their meeting In Pennsylvania, Mike would mark a new low or Turzai, the GOP House maa redeeming moment for jority leader, exposed the their party and the coun- purpose of the new ID retry. Across the United States, quirement: “Voter ID, which Republican state and local is going to allow Governor officials have been moving Romney to win the state of

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: CODE EASTWOOD

Christopher Weyant, The Hill

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 152 Democratic National Convention – As of Wednesday night, even Republicans were gushing about how great it was.

What do you expect with a good “Morehouse Man,” my friend Cameron Moody, in charge of putting the convention together?

The first lady’s speech was so good that the talking heads at Fox didn’t know what to say afterwards. Their only criticism: “She’s too pro-government.” Well damn, her daddy worked a ‘government job’ keeping water running in the city of Chicago to keep food on the table. But to the GOP, a city job ain’t a job. It also seems it’s Fox’s job to incessantly continue to tell us how bad everything is...

No doubt Bro. Prez’s speech will be fabulous. Am I the only one who hears the influence of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was the Obamas’ pastor for 20-plus years, in their oratory? Wouldn’t some of Wright’s speaking style rub off after hearing him every Sunday for two decades?

And isn’t it ironic that what most White folks love about Bro. Prez’s speeches comes from the preacherly influence of Rev. Wright? Wonder if the Obamas will ever thank him?

Michael Clarke Duncan, 1957 – 2012: His death shook up some of my 50-year-

quick takes from #2: straight, no chaser

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq. PUBLISHER

old-plus boys and me. I’m a year older, an inch shorter, but 55 pounds lighter (Duncan was 6’5,” 280 pounds when he died).

He worked out, lifted weights, went vegetarian, lost 35 pounds, got engaged... and still had a heart attack and died 50 days later of ‘natural causes’ at age 54. No autopsy, so we’ll never know what happened. Would a comprehensive physical – scans, stress tests, bloodwork, etc. – have revealed something that could have been corrected? Regardless, I’m getting checked...

Another thing: Duncan played against type late in his career. He wasn’t always big, Black and menacing; I recognized his baritone voice even in cartoons. Seemed like a great guy. Rest well, brother...

Contact me at ccherry2@gmail. com; holler at me at www.facebook. com/ccherry2; follow me on Twitter @ ccherry2.

Opinions expressed on this editorial page are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of the newspaper or the publisher.

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Pennsylvania, done.”

In Ohio, Doug Preisse, a Republican county chairman, hailed the decision to abolish weekend voting because “we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter turnout machine.”

Instead of increasing the vote, Republicans seem intent on constricting it. Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner argues this is on purpose: “Jim Crow has been resurrected.

This is by design. It’s not by accident.”

Mitt Romney should condemn these efforts to suppress the vote and call for their repeal. Earlier, Romney attacked an Obama lawsuit to protect early voting in Ohio.

The campaign statement claimed, in what the

New York Times editorialist called “an extraordinary lie” that Obama wanted to suppress veterans’ voting.

Romney must decide which side he is on: with the historic tide that has extended the right to vote or with those who want to roll back the clock to an old era of voter suppression.

This is not an abstract question. Tom Edsall, an astute columnist in the New York Times, has suggested that the Romney campaign is using two dishonest ads — on welfare and on Medicare — to turn the election into a “resource competition pitting middle class white voters against the minority poor.”

there seems to be no room for African-Americans such as Michael Steele, the former head of the party, or Colin Powell, a universally acclaimed leader.

This is likely to be a close election. Romney cannot want a victory built on voter suppression tricks. In a time of Gilded Age inequality, as representative of a party that seems intent on writing off the votes of America’s growing minorities, Romney should stand with King and the dream, not with the nightmare of a revived politics of division.

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. is president and CEO of the Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition. Click on Stand with King this story at www.flcouriAnd it is notable that, er.com to write your own as the convention opens, response.

Republican assaults on people of color From a Black camera woman being pelted with nuts at the GOP convention to private remarks from House Speaker John Boehner of aspirations that Blacks and Latinos won’t vote to Mitt Romney’s jokes about President Obama’s birth certificate, the Republicans have a talent for assaulting people of color and opening up wounds from a bitter past.

Recent actions off stage and on the big stage of Tampa demonstrate why The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll shows African-Americans giving zero percent of their vote to the Republicans in the November election. For me, this latest hurt feeling ignited with Romney’s recent statement in his hometown of Detroit about “no one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.’’

This was a sop to the idiotic birther movement.

Despite President Obama’s repeated display of his birth certificate, no proof is good enough for the right wing. These kinds of demands on Blacks to prove that water is wet resonate deep in our DNA. We can get the same degrees as Whites, pass the same tests and die in the same wars, but so often our credentials are often devalued or discredited in the effort to paint Blacks as “the other, the lesser, the outsider.’’

When this happened to President Obama, I felt like it was happening to me.

Feeding the animals

REV. BARBARA REYNOLDS TRICEEDNEYWIRE.COM

The hateful incident of Patricia Carroll, a Black camerawoman who works for CNN, only intensified the pain many Blacks have felt as they were undermined or thrown out of their own workplaces. Two Whites in the GOP convention threw peanuts at her saying ‘this is what we feed animals.’’

The culprits were reportedly evicted from the convention area by security officials, but for some mysterious reason their identities were not revealed. While this was apparently an isolated incident, to me it was reminiscent of how in 2010 right wing Tea Party protesters hurled the N-word at Rep. John Lewis (D. Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement and it shows how hard it is to rise above racial hatred in America.

Black apathy?

The crowning blow, however were the words of House Speaker John Boehner who reportedly told a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor that his party’s strategy for winning the presidential race does not rely on winning over more Black and Latino voters, but hoping they won’t vote at all.

He was reported as saying: “This election is about eco-

nomics. These (Latinos and Black) groups have been hit the hardest. They may not show up and vote for our candidate but I’d suggest to you they won’t show up and vote for the president either.”

Political strategist Faye Morrison says Boehner’s words go far beyond mere aspirations but underscore a national Republican strategy to suppress the Black vote “How dare Boehner push apathy as a strategy,” Morrison, fumed as she packed her bags to attend the Democratic Convention in Charlotte as a delegate. “This election is about the price paid by Dr. Martin Luther King, NAACP leader Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer and the hundreds of other Whites and Blacks who died for our right to vote. Voting is a way to make them – as well as ourselves – matter.

Apathy will only continue our suffering.”

In the highly charged patriotic setting of the GOP convention, nothing of course was said about the voter campaigns underway to suppress the AfricanAmerican vote - just another reason Blacks aren’t warm and fuzzy about the Republican Party.

Dr. Barbara Reynolds is a lecturer at universities and seminaries, an author of six books, and a book coach. Contact her via www.reynoldsworldnews. com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Worst hurricanes are political hurricanes During the last days of August 2012, a tropical storm tore through the Caribbean, clipped the South Florida coast and roared through the Gulf of Mexico on a direct path to a familiar place.

August 29th is my birth date and for some reason every time a hurricane appears in the gulf on that day it hits land in New Orleans, Louisiana and often brings a heap of death and destruction.

No one likes a hurricane.

If friends and family hear there is a hurricane anywhere near you they pick up the phone and call you to see if you’re all right. People worry when hurricanes develop because bad things happen. Hurricanes bring strong winds, heavy rain, storm surges that devastate beaches and shorelines, power outages and more.

Some say the worst hurricanes are political hurricanes! Yes, hurricane Isaac delayed the Republican Party convention in Tampa but all political parties create hurricanes.

When major political parties convene, political gatherings turn into political hurricanes. Bad things begin to happen. Political hurricanes bring strong accusa-

Lucius Gantt THE GANTT REPORT

tions, long winded speeches, dark, chilly and cloudy comments, dangerous debates, perilous thoughts and a flood of devilish political perpetrators!

A political hurricane can be deadly. Good government programs can suffer irreparable harm, good public servants can be bought and sold by rich and powerful interest groups and corporations and decent organizations and groups can be misled and ultimately divided and conquered by stormy and surging political platforms and policies.

Just as in real hurricanes, the seniors, the women, the weak and the poor can be hit the hardest and hurt the most. Those people are killed in political hurricanes because they don’t have the levees and storm wall protections that are also called lobbyists. They don’t have wealthy conservative benefactors that will keep the taxing political winds from hit-

ting the rich like the taxes hit and hurt the poor and middle class.

No one knows how much damage a political hurricane will do or who the hurricane will hurt the most.

Hell, with hundreds of political pundits and forecasters suggesting which way a political hurricane will turn, no one knows which political party or which politician will emerge from the hurricane as an election day victor.

Political hurricane trackers lie just like the weathermen lie that forecast natural hurricanes – no one knows what will happen in, during or after a political hurricane except for one thing.

After the American political hurricane season is over, no matter what, the American rich will be richer and the poor Americans will be poorer.

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

SEPTEMBER 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Obama and Romney’s policies are closer than you think Too much agreement between Republicans and Democrats has always been bad news for those at the bottom of America’s class and racial totem poles.

Back in 1875, Frederick Douglass observed that it took a war among the Whites to free his people from slavery. What then, he wondered, would an era of peace among the Whites bring us?

He already knew the answer.

A wave of thousands upon thousands of terroristic bombings, shootings, mutilations, murders and threats had driven AfricanAmericans from courthouses, city halls, legislatures, from their own farms, businesses and private properties and from the voting rolls across the South. They didn’t get the vote back for 80 years – and they never did get the land back.

But none of that mattered, because on the broad and important questions of those days, there was at last peace between White Republicans and White Democrats – squabbles around the edges about who’d get elected, but wide agreement on the rules of the game.

Like Douglass, the shallow talking heads who cover the 2012 presidential campaign on corporate media have noticed out loud the remarkable absence of disagreement between Republican and Democratic candidates on many matters. The list, from coddling Wall Street speculators, protecting mortgage fraudsters and corporate wrongdoers to preventing Medicare For All to so-called “foreign policy,” “free trade,” “the deficit” “clean coal and safe nuclear power” and “entitlement reform,” is clearly longer and more important than the few points of mostly race and style upon which they disagree. Here are 15 items: 15. Although unemployment is the highest it’s been since the Great Depression, the federal government should NOT enact any sort of WPA-style program to put millions of people back to work. Under Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, Depression-era unemployment was tackled head on by direct federal hiring to dig subways, build roads, schools, parks, sewers, recreational facilities and public buildings.

Oblivious of this history, Democrat Barack Obama maintains that only the private sector can or should create jobs.

14. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are “entitlements” that need to be cut to relieve what they call “the deficit.”

One of the first acts of the Obama presidency was to appoint a bipartisan panel stacked with “deficit hawks” like Republican Allan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles to recommend raising retirement ages and cutting back Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, and pass a law directing Congress to have an up or down no-amendments vote on its recommendations. Fortunately the “cat food commission,” as it was

BRUCE A. DIXON BLACK AGENDA REPORT

called, was deadlocked and offered none. But Obama and top Democrats, most recently House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, continue to express their readiness for some kind of “grand compromise” with Republicans on this issue.

13. Climate change treaties and negotiations that might lead to them should be avoided at all costs. Democrats admit that climate change exists and is manmade; Republicans say it’s a myth.

But both ignored the Kyoto Protocol and Obama, like Bush before him, has worked tirelessly to delay, derail and boycott any actual talks that might lead to constructive international climate change agreements.

12. NAFTA was such a great thing it really should be extended to Central and South America and the entire Pacific Rim. On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama sometimes mumbled about renegotiating parts of NAFTA. But even before the primaries were done, press reports had him assuring the Canadian government this was only campaign rhetoric. In four years he has pushed NAFTA-like “free trade” corporate rights agreements with South Korea, most of Central America, and is now secretly hammering out something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

11. Banksters and Wall Street speculators deserve their bailouts and protection from criminal liability, but underwater and foreclosed homeowners deserve nothing. Republicans think underwater homeowners deserve blame for forcing banksters to offer millions of fraudulent high-interest loans were then re-sold to investors around the world. Democrats think underwater homeowners deserve empty promises of help that never quite arrives for most of the foreclosed, the aboutto-be foreclosed, their families and communities. But both agree on free money for banksters and speculators, but no moratorium on foreclosures and no criminal investigations of mortgage and securities fraud.

10. Palestinians should be occupied, dispossessed and ignored. Iran should be starved and threatened from all sides.

Cuba should be embargoed, and Americans prohibited from going there to see what its people have done in a half-century free of Yankee rule. Black and Brown babies and their parents, relatives and neighbors should be bombed with drones in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and similar places. The politicians and corporate commentators have a misleading name for this. They call it “foreign

policy.” The realistic term for it is global empire.

9. Africa should be militarized, destabilized, plundered and where necessary, invaded by proxy armies like those of Rwanda, Ethiopia, Burundi or Kenya, or directly by Western air and ground forces, as in Libya. President Georgia Bush announced the formation of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command for the continent that has officially swallowed all U.S. civilian diplomatic presence. But only a Black U.S. president, even under the cover of “humanitarian war,” could have invaded an African nation and openly dispatched special forces to Central Africa.

8. U.S. presidents can kidnap citizens of their own or any nation on earth from anyplace on the planet for torture, indefinite imprisonment without trial, or murder them and neighboring family and bystanders at will. The distinctions between Republicans and Democrats don’t amount to differences. Republicans Cheney and Bush got their lawyers to say these things were OK and did them. Democrat Obama got Congress to enact ‘laws’ giving these acts a veneer of fake legality, something a Republican probably could not have done.

7. Oil and energy companies, and other mega-polluters must be freed to drill offshore almost everywhere, and permitted to poison land and watersheds with fracking to achieve “energy independence.” The Republicans say “Drill baby, drill,” but it seems only Democrats can chill out enough supposed ‘environmentalists’ to make this happen.

Obama campaigned on restricting offshore drilling four years ago, and reversed himself just before the BP oil disaster in the Gulf.

The White House cooperated with BP in lying to the public about the extent of the disaster and has shielded BP from paying anything like the value of actual damages incurred to livelihoods, human lives and the environment.

6. The FCC should not and must not regulate telecoms to ensure that poor and rural communities have access to the Internet, or to guarantee network neutrality. Republicans have always been in favor of digital redlining and against network neutrality. Barack Obama claimed on the campaign trail he’d take a back seat to nobody in guaranteeing network neutrality. But he appointed as FCC chair a man who helped write the infamous Telecommunications Act of 1995, which gave away the government-built Internet backbone to a handful of immensely powerful telecoms like AT&T and Comcast, and flatly reversed himself on network neutrality. The Department of Justice was forced to stop the ATT-T-Mobile merger by a storm of public outrage, but approved the Comcast-NBC deal.

5. Of course there really ARE

New York City becoming new ‘Dodge’ City Three weeks ago, New York City policemen killed a knife-wielding man in broad daylight in Times Square.

On that occasion, they had plenty of time to clear bystanders from their line of fire. Therefore, nobody was injured when two triggerhappy policemen fired 12 shots between them from just three feet away. Local authorities have not said how many of those bullets actually hit their target.

Two weeks ago, NYC policemen killed a gunman in broad daylight on the street outside the Empire State Building. On this occasion they had no time to clear bystanders from their line of fire. Nine people were injured when two trigger-happy policemen fired a total of 16 shots from just four feet away.

This second shooting began after a disgruntled exemployee exacted revenge by gunning down a former co-worker right there on the street (though without injuring anybody else). He had to have known he would be either arrested or shot dead on the spot. Indeed, he reportedly planned for the “suicide by cop” that followed.

ANTHONY L. HALL, ESQ. FLORIDA COURIER COLUMNIST

Cops praised NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg led a chorus of commentators heaping praise on the police for the way they performed on both occasions. But I see nothing praiseworthy about the police firing 12 shots to take down a mentally-ill man armed with nothing more than a knife. Even worse, it strikes me as not just reckless but incompetent that they sprayed so many errant shots at a standing target on the second occasion that nine bullets ended up hitting bystanders.

Clearly, given the ease with which disgruntled employees can get their hands on guns and “go postal,” the real shock is how rarely the police have to respond to such incidents. The irony is that the shooting at the Empire State Building demonstrates that the police pose far greater danger to the

public by the way they respond, than the incidents themselves pose in the first place. (In this case, the gunman never even fired a single shot at them.)

So instead of praising these policemen as heroes, Mayor Bloomberg would do more to ensure public safety by requiring all NYC policemen to take remedial courses in target shooting – and mental training to know when it’s time to hold fire. Assuming deadly fire was even warranted, both of these incidents should have ended with no more than two clean shots.

In the meantime, all pedestrians would do well to think of New York City as “Dodge City,” because dodging police bullets could become a way of life there.

Anthony L. Hall is a Bahamian native with an international law practice in Washington, D.C. Read his columns and daily weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

EDITORIAL

A5

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: ROMNEY, OBAMA AND WALL STREET

PAT BAGLEY, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

such things as “clean coal” and “safe nuclear energy.” Again, these are things Republicans have always pretended to believe. At the 2008 Democratic convention, Democrat Barack Obama joined them, declaring he intended to be the president of “clean coal and safe nuclear energy.”

Obama is building a wave of 33 nuclear plants across the country, the first two in mostly Black and poor communities of Georgia and South Carolina where leaky existing nukes are causing cancer epidemics. The people know these things are myths. But Republican and Democratic candidates for office, all the way down to state and county officials seem not to.

4. Immigrants must be jailed and deported in record numbers. On this issue, Republicans talk a mean game about sending them all back and jailing tens or hundreds of thousands along the way. But only President Obama has walked the walk, deporting over a million immigrants in his term in office, often with little or no due process and after housing many for months in atrocious privatized immigration prisons.

3. No “Medicare For All.” Forget about eliminating the Medicare age requirement so that all Americans would qualify. Republicans never wanted Medicare even for seniors, let alone everybody. Years ago, Illinois State Senator Obama was telling audiences that if they elected Democrats to Congress, the Senate and the White House, they’d get single-payer health care. But once in office, he excluded Medicare for All from the proposals on the table and enacted a national version of Massachusetts RomneyCare, requiring everybody to purchase private health insurance or be penalized.

2. No minimum wage increases for you, no right to form a union, no right to negotiate or strike if you already have a union, and no enforcement or reform of existing labor laws.

Again, Republicans have always opposed minimum wage laws.

Obama promised to boost the minimum wage his first two years in office while he still had majorities in the House and Senate.

But he didn’t do this or pass legislation beefing up the right to organize unions, which has been eroded under Democrat and Republican administrations alike.

1. The 40-year war on drugs must continue, and even mentioning the prison state is unthinkable. There are 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons and jails today, a per-capita total that beats the world. Politicians of both parties wag their fingers in multiple directions. But as Michelle Alexander points out, if the U.S. prison population were rolled back to say, only 1 million, the level it was about 1980, this would cost one million jobs; contractors, sheriffs, cops, bailiffs, judges and functionaries of all kinds would have to go out and find real jobs.

The rabbit hole goes still deeper. We didn’t have to stop at these fifteen points of Democrat-Republican agreement, but you get the idea. Just as in Frederick Douglass’s day, the more Democrats and Republicans agree, the worse it is for the rest of us.

No Black influence There was a time when Black America had its own principles, and formed the immovable leftmost rock of the American polity.

But in the 21st century, that rock has been dissolved by a tide of corporate money. With the rise of a cohort of Black corporate Democrats and a right-wing Black Democrat in the White House there is no longer even any vaguely leftish influence on Democratic party politics.

The House Progressive Caucus is the biggest in Congress, with over seventy members, but is powerless and irrelevant. Except for stylistic flourishes, the music they listen to and the color of some faces, the differences between Republicans and Democrats seem to exist mostly in political marketing campaigns and inside our own heads.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport.com.

Contact him at bruce.dixon@ blackagendareport.com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Young professionals empowering communities and changing lives Not all urban youth plan to get in line to buy Nike’s outrageously priced $315 basketball shoe when it goes on sale this fall. In fact, rather than focusing on false status symbols, during 2012 thousands of members of the National Urban League Young Professionals (NULYP) got in line to provide more than 50,000 volunteer hours in communities throughout the nation.

They also raised more than $382,000 to support Urban League affiliates across the country. They added 4,369 new members to their ranks. Their social media strategy increased their influence to over 1.5 million friends, followers and connections. And they are now playing a major role in the National Urban League’s Occupy the Vote campaign leading up to the November election.

MARC H. MORIAL TRICE EDNEY WIRE

becoming the choice of a new generation. These young people are infusing the National Urban League movement with new ideas and energy and we are giving them opportunities for leadership development and community service that are strengthening our organization and our nation.

At a time when many urban youth have been labeled as under-achievers and potential trouble makers, the NULYP, under the leadership of its dynamic president, Ms. Brandi R. Richard, is demonstrating the ability of urban youth, ages 21-40, to empower communities and change lives.

New movement Their mission is to supThe enthusiastic activ- port the Urban League ism of the NULYP is a clear Movement through volsign that “civil rights” is unteerism, philanthropy

and membership development. NULYP trains, develops and educates young professionals – the best, brightest and most dedicated – to take leadership roles within the National Urban League, the civil rights movement and society-at large. Its members are defining and leading the next generation civil rights agenda through 57 chapters across the nation.

Rather than putting false hope in fads like the latest overpriced basketball shoe, these young people are empowering themselves and their communities to expand opportunity and bring more people into the economic mainstream. I am proud of them and we are glad they are part of the National Urban League family.

Marc Morial is president/CEO of the National Urban League. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

TOj A6

NATION

september 7 – september 13, 2012

Judge rejects higher tuition for children of illegal aliens

BY JIM SAUNDERS THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – A Miami federal judge has found that Florida is violating the constitutional rights of American-born children of illegal immigrants by requiring them to pay higher tuition rates than other students at state colleges and universities.

The case, spearheaded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, centers on students who live in Florida and are U.S. citizens, despite their parents’ illegal status. Those students have been denied discounted, in-state tuition rates enjoyed by other students who graduate from Florida high schools and enter the higher-education system.

Each of the students was denied lower in-state tuition rates, and three either could not attend college or were forced to withdraw, the ruling says.

State law and regulations approved by the state Board of Education and the university system’s Board of Governors detail residency requirements for in-

state tuition eligibility.

In a 19-page order, Moore wrote that public higher education and reduced in-state tuition rates are “properly viewed as at-

names on diplomas, and it is Plaintiffs --not Plaintiffs’ parents, cousins, or siblings --who are entitled to the benefits conferred by such a degree,’’ he wrote.

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‘Additional obstacle’ U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore, in a ruling dated Aug. 31, said the state regulations violate equal-protection rights and create “an additional obstacle for plaintiffs (students named in the case) to attain post-secondary education from one of the state’s public institutions that is not faced by other residents.” “(Classifying) U.S. citizen students who reside in Florida according to their parents’ undocumented federal immigration status does not advance any legitimate state interest, much less the state’s important interest in furthering educational opportunities for its own residents,’’ Moore wrote.

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Decision praised Cheryl Etters, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, said attorneys were reviewing Moore’s ruling Tuesday. But in a court document filed last month, the state emphasized that the students are dependents of undocumented parents.

“The tuition rate for all students depends upon establishing legal residency, and the legal residency of all dependent students is based on their parents’ legal residency,’’ the document said. “Plaintiffs concede that they fully qualified as dependent children when making college applications relevant to this action.”

Moore’s decision, however, was praised by two Democratic House members who unsuccessfully proposed a bill this year that would have made such students eligible for instate tuition.

“I hope today’s ruling quickly ends Florida’s ridiculous policy of requiring U.S. citizens to pay expensive out-ofstate tuition Rep. Reggie rates simFullwood ply because of their parents’ legal status,’’ said Rep. Reggie Fu l l w o o d , D-Jacksonville, who was joined Rep. Hazelle in the proposal by Rogers Rep. Hazelle “Hazel” Rogers, DLauderdale Lakes.

taching to the student and not to the household.”

“It is the plaintiffs who, upon graduating from a post-secondary educational institution, receive their

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Public school grads Four of the named plaintiffs in the case were born in Miami and a fifth was born in California. They each graduated from Florida public high schools in 2010 or 2011 and made plans to attend Florida International University, Miami-Dade College or Palm Beach State College, according to Moore’s ruling.

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HEALTH FOOD || HEALTH TRAVEL | |MONEY SCIENCE | BOOKS | MOVIES | TV | AUTOS LIFE | FAITH | EVENTS | CLASSIFIEDS | ENTERTAINMENT | SPORTS | FOOD September 7 - September 13, 2012

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Book review: ‘Darkest America’ See page B3

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PHOTOS BY KIM JACKSON/FLORIDA COURIER

The Bethune-Cookman University Wildcats come from behind to defeat the Alabama State University Hornets on Sept. 2 at the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando.

The MVPs of the Sept. 2 game were quarterbacks Broderick Waters of B-CU, left, and Greg Jenkins of Alabama.

MEAC/SWAC CHALLENGE RECAP

Wildcats sting Hornets in season opener 17,410 fans watch as B-CU defeats Alabama State

BY ANDREAS BUTLER FLORIDA COURIER

Bethune-Cookman University rallied from a 21-point deficit to defeat Alabama State University 38-28 in the MEAC/SWAC Challenge at the Citrus Bowl on Sept. 2 in Orlando.

The game was aired live on ESPN as 17,410 fans watched the two HBCUS battle it out.

Louisiana Tech transferBroderick Waters threw for 110 yards with two touchdowns while running for 100 more with a score off the bench to garner MVP Honors for B-CU.

“I don’t mind playing from behind. This team has confidence in itself. We all are confident in each other” Waters remarked.

Waters replaced Jackie Wilson, who started the game but failed to conduct a scoring drive. Wilson did throw for 74 yards and run for 25 more.

“I have been told to prepare like a quarterback. I have played quarterback all my life. Coaches told me to be ready to play either quarterback or receiver,” said Waters.

Hornets start strong Alabama State (0-1) drove down the field to open the game, capping it off with a fiveyard touchdown run by Greg See MEAC/SWAC, Page B2

Plenty of excitement during first week of gridiron action COMPILED BY ANDREAS BUTLER FLORIDA COURIER

Tennessee State holds off FAMU One last defensive stand helped Tennessee State University defeat the Florida A&M University Rattlers 1714 in the ninth annual John A. Merritt Classic on Sept. 1 in Nashville, Tenn.

Tennessee State’s defense kept FAMU’s Damien Fleming from crossing the goal line on the final play of the game to seal the win.

The Tigers struck first on Michael German’s 22 yard touchdown pass to Devin Wilson to lead 7-0 in the first quarter.

Tennessee led 17-0 after a six-yard score from Trabis Ward with 4:11 to play in the third quarter. Ward finished with 128 yards rushing for Tennessee.

The score was 17-7 after a 13-yard touchdown pass from FAMU’s Tyler Bass to Travis Harvey in the third quarter.

FAMU cut the deficit to 1714 on Fleming’s eight-yard

HBCU FOOTBALL ROUNDUP touchdown pass to Michael Ethridge with 9:32 to play.

German threw for 263 yards with a touchdown and an interception for TSU. Fleming led FAMU with 119 yards passing with a score and an interception. He also ran for 52 yards.

The Tigers outgained the Rattlers in total yardage 401272, but they were penalized 20 times for 178 yards.

Eddie Rocker added 90 yards rushing and Harvey six catches for 52 yards for FAMU.

Lane tops Edward Waters Chris Rini threw for 107 yards with three touchdowns and ran for 53 more yards to help Lane College win its home opener 45-28 over Jacksonville’s Edward Waters College.

Edward Waters led 7-0 on Ralph Shuler’s three-yard

score with 11:52 to go in the first quarter.

EWC also led 24-21 on Ray Dukes’ nine-yard touchdown run with 12:41 remaining in the third quarter and 2824 after Anthony Wallace’s 10-yard score with 5:47 to go in the third quarter.

Lane College, based in Jackson, Tenn., went on to score the game’s last 21 points.

The Dragons outgained the EWC Tigers 366-225 in total offense. Lane College also forced EWC into five turnovers for the game.

Brandon Turman ran for 109 yards with a touchdown and Tony Goodman recorded 11.5 total tackles to lead the Tigers.

Dyron Speight added 107 yards passing, Eric Knowlton 88 yards rushing with three scores and Evan Yabu had two receiving touchdowns for the Dragons.

Alcorn State upsets Grambling Arnold Smith’s four-yard touchdown run with 1:33 remaining lifted Alcorn State University to a 22-21 win over See HBCU, Page B2

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALAN LESSIG

Members of the Howard University Bison football team celebrate after winning the second annual AT&T Nation’s Football Classic 30-29 over the Morehouse Maroon Tigers on Sept. 1 at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC.

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B2

SPORTS

SEPTEMBER 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

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Waters connected with Jhomo Gordon from 24 yards out with 5:53 remaining in the third quarter.

ASU fumbled on the ensuing kickoff as instant replay overturned an initial ruling on the field.

“We started well, but we didn’t finish. When you turn the ball over to a good team. it will make things hard on you. We had three turnovers in the second half,” stated Barlow.

MEAC leads series B-CU capitalized on Waters’ six-yard score to lead 24-21 with 4:28 to play in the quarter. The Wildcats never looked back.

It was the second consecutive year that B-CU won the MEAC/ SWAC Challenge. The Wildcats defeated Prairie View A&M 63-14 in 2011.

The Wildcats’ win also gave the MEAC a 6-2 advantage over the SWAC in the series.

Jenkins led the Hornets by throwing for 196 yards with an interception. He was also the team’s leading rusher with 39 yards along with two scores and was named MVP for his team.

“We are a fast-paced offense and we like to execute that way.

They held us up in the second half and the turnovers hurt too,” commented Greg Jenkins.

Eddie Poole added 102 receiving yards with a touchdown and K.J. Stroud four catches for 39 yards for the Wildcats.

Crowell, a Georgia transfer and 2011 SEC Rookie of the year, finished with 18 yards rushing and 17 receiving for the Hornets.

T.C. McWilliams added six catches for 89 yards with a touchdown, Jarred Neely five catches for 64 yards and Daniel Duhart threw for 57 yards and a score for ASU. Jarkevis Fields led the Wildcats defensively with 10 total tackles and a sack. LeBrandon Richardson added two sacks, Harold Love III a sack and a half and AlGhaffar Lane an interception for B-CU. Jimmy Daniels led Alabama State defensively with nine total tackles and a sack.

B-CU travels to Orangeburg, S.C. to face South Carolina State in its MEAC opener while ASU will host Mississippi Valley State in its SWAC opener.

PHOTOS BY KIM GIBSON/FLORIDA COURIER

Bethune-Cookman University’s 14 Karat Gold Dancers take to the field during the MEAC/SWAC Challenge on Sept. 2 in Orlando.

The dance team performs with B-CU’s marching band.

MEAC/SWAC from B1

B-CU quarterback Broderick Waters is MEAC’s Offensive Player of the Week. On Tuesday, he was named the National Player of the Week by Boxtorow. The 5-11, senior, Sarasota native picked up the award after completing 6-of-9 passes for 110 yards and two touchdowns, with no interceptions. He also rushed for another 100 yards and a touchdown in the Wildcats’ 38-28 victory over Alabama State in the MEAC/SWAC Challenge on Sunday.

Jenkins to take a 7-0 lead with 11:06 to go in the first quarter.

The Hornets capitalized off a Wildcat turnover on a muffed punt to take a 14-0 lead with 4:28 to play in the quarter after Isaiah Crowell’s two-yard score.

Jenkins’ three-yard score put ASU up 21-0 with 13:45 to play in the second quarter.

“We came out and fought hard early on. Then I think we got complacent and started feeling ourselves. They got some momentum and carried it the rest of the way,” commented Alabama State Head Coach Reggie Barlow.

Bethune-Cookman (1-0) responded with 38 unanswered points fueled by a fierce rushing attack.

“You can’t look to the end without going through the process. We have been telling our kids that we had to go through a process to reach our goals. We had to play every play and stay in the moment. It was tremen-

dous to see the fight in this team,” commented Bethune-Cookman Head Coach Brian Jenkins.

21-10 at halftime B-CU amassed 551 yards of total offense (367 rushing) in the game and had three 100-yard rushers. Along with Waters, running backs Isidore Jackson (123 yards) and Rodney Scott (103 yards, one touchdown) also eclipsed the mark.

ASU had 351 yards of total offense, including 253 yards in the air.

“They are a very good football team with a high octane offense.

They are a championship caliber team that will win a lot of games.

They are also very well coached.

I’m not surprised with their fast start,” mentioned Jenkins.

The Wildcats defense clamped down on the Hornets’ fast-paced spread offense from there on out.

Bethune-Cookman got a second-quarter touchdown run from Andronicus Lovette and a 20-yard field goal from Sven Hurd to get within 21-10 at halftime.

B-CU got within 21-17 when

HBCU

State-31, Delta State-23; West Virginia State-34, Johnson C. Smith-31; St. Augustine’s-28, Wingate-10; Winston-Salem State-28, North Carolina Pembrooke-23; West Alabama-44, Clark Atlanta-0; Chowan-70, Livingstone-35; Newberry-46, Elizabeth City State-20; Albany State-24, North Greenville-12; Virginia Union-28, Benedict-7; Stillman-28, Central State-27; North Alabama-31, Miles-30; Oklahoma State-84, Savannah State-0; Delaware State-17, Virginia Military Institute-10; Coastal Carolina-29; North Carolina A&T-13.

from B1 defending SWAC Champion Grambling State University (GSU).

Grambling State had one more chance to win the game but Fabian Carter’s 42-yard field goal attempt fell short as time expired.

GSU built a 21-9 lead through three quarters before Alcorn State rallied to score the game’s final 13 points in the final period.

Jeremy Runner ran for 166 yards with a score and Dawrence Roberts ran for 121 yards to lead the Tigers.

Anthony McGhee and Juwan Martin each added a rushing touchdown for GSU. Darius Smith threw for 102 yards and ran for another 34 with two touchdowns to lead Alcorn.

Arnold Walker added 56 yards rushing and Joe Prince 55 yards rushing with a touchdown for Alcorn.

This week’s top games Bethune-Cookman (1-0) at South Carolina State: It’s the MEAC opener for both teams. Both are two of the better HBCU programs.

This will be a dogfight or a catfight.

Florida A&M (0-1) at Oklahoma (1-0): Rattlers travel to Norman to face a top 10-ranked FBS team.

Edward Waters (1-1) at Morehouse (0-1): NAIA Florida HBCU heads to At-

Howard clips Morehouse Jamie Cunningham threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to David Wilson with 22 seconds remaining as Howard University edged Morehouse College 30-29 in the second annual AT&T Nations Football Classic at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. Cunningham, a true freshman entered when starter Randy Liggins Jr. was benched following a fumble that led to Morehouse retaking the lead at 23-17 on David Carter’s two-yard score with 4:18 to go in the third quarter.

Morehouse (0-1) retook the lead at 29-24 on Donnay Ragland’s 72 yard touchdown pass to Devon Mann with 1:54 to play.

Ragland threw for 238 yards with a score and Carter ran for 134 with two touchdowns to lead Morehouse’s Maroon Tigers.

Cunningham threw for

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALAN LESSIG

Tamar Braxton (“Braxton Family Values”), star of the upcoming WE tv reality series “Tamar & Vince’’ sings the national anthem at the second annual AT&T Nation’s Football Classic.

79 yards with a score while Liggins threw for 132 with two scores for Howard.

The Maroon Tigers topped the Bison 472-317 in total offense (218-106 rushing). Morehouse committed four turnovers while Howard had two.

Alabama A&M edges Tuskegee Vernon Marshall blocked Eduardo Mulliro’s 52-yard field goal attempt as time expired to preserve a 7-6 win for Alabama A&M Uni-

versity over Tuskegee University.

Tuskegee (0-1) led 3-0 on Mulliro’s 20-yard field goal with 1:17 left in the first quarter.

Alabama A&M (1-0) took a 7-3 lead on Deunte Mason’s five-yard touchdown toss to Montarius Smith.

Alabama’s Theron Rice blocked Mulliro’s 44-yard attempt with 6:29 to play.

Mason threw for 171 yards and ran for another 55 to lead Alabama. Mulliro added a 35-yard field goal

for the Tuskegee Golden Tigers in the fourth.

Other scores Norfolk State-24, Virginia State-0; North Carolina Central-54, Fayetteville State-31; Texas Southern-44, Prairie View A&M41; New Mexico-66, Southern-21; Concordia-20, Mississippi Valley State-19; Mississippi State-56, Jackson State-9; Arkansas Pine-Bluff-17, Langston-14; Bowie State-24, Assumption-20; Fort Valley

lanta to face a good Division II HBCU squad.

Hampton at Old Dominion: The Pirates almost beat Old Dominion last season. Can they duplicate that success and get a win?

It would be great for the MEAC and HBCUs if they do win.

Norfolk State (1-0) at Liberty: The No. 1 ranked HBCU plays a good FCS team. Another shot for the MEAC and HBCUs against other FCS programs. Norfolk is also ranked No. 24 in the FCS polls.

Mississippi Valley State (0-1, 0-0) at Alabama State (0-1, 0-0): Alabama should bounce back from last week’s loss to BethuneCookman in the MEAC/ SWAC Challenge in Orlando.

Alabama A&M at Arkansas Pine Bluff: The teams battle for early positioning in SWAC divisional races.

Jackson State at Tennessee State: The Jackson SWAC team gets a shot at an HBCU from the Ohio Valley Conference. The teams play each other regularly. Jackson State won last year 35-29.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Learning opportunities by and for older adults Hands-On Computer Training • Small Classes • Individual Attention

Liberal Arts Courses • Engaging • Enlightening • Entertaining

Lecture Series Social Events Fall Open House • Tues., Sept. 18, 9:30 a.m.

Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W. Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa Call 813-974-8036 or email ollivol@gmail.com to reserve space.

Find out more at www.usfseniors.org/06 USF is an EO/EA Institution

Ad 2562

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CALENDAR / OBITS

SEPTEMBER 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Orlando: Florida Sen. Gary Siplin will host a free housing workshop titled “Homeownership: The American Dream” on Sept.

29 at the Pine Hills Community Center, 6408 Jennings Road. Speakers will include Joyce Odongo of Wells Fargo Neighborhood Lift Program, Bobbie Thomas of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Marcia Miller of CredAbility, and Brenda Dollison of the HELP CDC organization. The pre-registration deadline is Sept. 21; however, on-site registration will be available.

More information: 407-2072071.

Ocoee: The City of Ocoee’s Human Relations Diversity Board will host its Third Annual Fiesta de Colores Sept.

15 from 11:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. at Bill Breeze Park, 125 North Lakeshore Drive, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. More Information: www.ocoee.org or 407-905-3100.

B3 Central Florida is seeking troop leaders, both men and women over age 18, to volunteer as positive adult role models for girls to build courage, confidence and character. Training provided.

More information: Kristie Wiley: 813-262-1765, volunteer@gswcf.org or www. gswcf.org/volunteer.

KELLY PRICE

A Forever R & B concert featuring Kelly Price, Dru Hill, Carl Thomas and Shirley Murdock will be held at the BankUnited Center in Coral Gables on Sept. 22 at 8 p.m.

AARON BING

Aaron Bing will perform at the Jacksonville Performing Arts Center Sept. 15 for an 8 p.m. show.

FRANKIE BEVERLY & MAZE

Frankie Beverly & Maze will be at the House of Blues Orlando Oct. 5 for a 7:30 p.m. show.

Jacksonville: “The Price is Right Live’’ presented by The Artist Series will be held Sept. 25 at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts. The interactive stage show will give contestants pulled right from the audience the chance to “come on down” to win appliances, vacations and even new cars. Tickets start at $32 and can be purchased by calling

904-632-3373 or visiting www.artistseriesjax.org.

Tampa: A Diversity Job Fair hosted by JobNewsTampa. com will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 12 at the Embassy Suites- USF Campus, 3705 Spectrum Blvd. Over 40 companies will participate. Ultimate Staffing will also be in attendance offering free resume reviews

for all job seekers. Attendees are encouraged to pre-register online at www.

JobNewsTampa.com.

will be at the Hard Rock Live Orlando Oct. 12 for an 8 p.m. show.

Jacksonville: Nephew Tommy of the “Steve Harvey Morning Show’’ and Friends will be live at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville Sept. 14 for a 7:30 p.m. show.

Jacksonville: The Back to Love tour featuring Anthony Hamilton and Estelle stops at the Times Union Center Performing Arts Moran Theater on Sept. 9 for a 7:30 p.m. show.

Orlando: Comedian Sinbad

Tampa: Girl Scouts of West

Jacksonville: Comedian and actor Kevin Hart will be at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts Oct. 12 for a 7 p.m. show.

Jacksonville: The Jacksonville Tattoo Convention featuring live tattooing by some of the nation’s top artists as well as contests, seminars, giveaways and more will be held Sept. 14 -15 at the Wyndham Riverwalk Hotel Convention Center. Price: $15 day pass- $35 weekend pass, tickets may be purchased at the door.

St. Petersburg: First Fridays are held in downtown St. Petersburg at 250 Central Ave. between Second and Third Avenues from 5:30 p.m.10:30 p.m. More information: 727-393-3597.

‘Darkest America’ delves into meaning of minstrelsy BOOK REVIEW

BY DR. GLENN ALTSCHULER SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

Review of “Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop.’’ By Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen. W.W. Norton & Company. 256 pp. $26.95.

In 1934, Zora Neale Hurston vented her spleen about minstrelsy. On stage, she wrote, Negroes were excused from popping their eyes only when they were rolling them in fright.

They say “ ‘Is you is, or is you ain’t,’ grab a banjo and work themselves into a sound sleep…. All of which may be very good vaudeville, but I’m sorry to be such an image breaker and say we just don’t live like that.”

And yet, in her own stories and essays, Hurston drew heavily on the Black minstrel tradition. In “Lawing and Jawing,” for example, Judge Dunfumy tells a lawyer, “Yo mouf might spout lak a coffee pot but I got a lawyer dat kin beat your segastuatin.” And, as she looked down her nose at the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Hurston claimed that “Butter Beans” and “Susie,” stars of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, were among the few performers “of the real Negro School” in New York City.

In a sense, Yuval Taylor, senior editor at Chicago Review Press, and Jake Austen, editor of Rocktober magazine, suggest, Hurston “wanted to have her watermelon and eat it, too.”

ted performers to “signify on” or even subvert the very social norms and practices they appeared to be exemplifying.

It isn’t necessarily wrong, they conclude, self-consciously opening up a “burnt corksullied can of worms,” to feel pride as well as shame for “humming ‘Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,’ chuckling at an Amos ‘n’ Andy dialect routine, or catching a Zulu coconut or a “Good Times’’ rerun.”

Dignified performances?

Pride and shame In “Darkest America,’’ Taylor and Austen demonstrate that minstrelsy (and its modern-day manifestations on TV sitcoms and in popular music) has a “complicated cultural history.”

Acknowledging that minstrelsy reinforced demeaning racial stereotypes, the authors claim that it also presented “a carefree life, liberated from oppression, responsibilities and burdens” and permit-

“Darkest America” covers a lot of ground: Taylor and Austen have interesting things to say about Bert Williams, Stepin Fetchit, Bill Cosby, Flavor Fav, Spike Lee and Tyler Perry.

Because the evidence is scarce, however, their assertions about the motives of performers and the response of (Black and White) audiences to minstrelsy are speculative.

Black minstrels may well have been performed with a wink, a shrug, and a signifying spirit. But it isn’t clear that Bert Williams was dignified “not just when he wiped off his blackface, but during his blackface act itself.”

Or that in “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” Louis Armstrong was celebrating American entertainment itself “rather than an actual plantation heaven.” And it seems a stretch for Taylor and Austen to characterize the “mumbling post-scripts”

Oscar nominee Michael Clarke Duncan dies at 54

BY DENNIS MCLELLAN LOS ANGELES TIMES (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — Michael Clarke Duncan, the tall and massively built actor with the shaved head and deep voice who received an Academy Award nomination for his moving portrayal of a gentle death row inmate in the 1999 prison drama “The Green Mile,” died Monday.

He was 54.

Duncan died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to a statement from his publicist, Joy Fehily. He had suffered a heart attack in July and did not recover.

A former ditch digger for a natural gas company in his native Chicago, Duncan began his Hollywood saga as a celebrity bodyguard in the Michael mid-1990s. He received Clarke his first big acting break Duncan playing a member of the drilling team sent into space to blow up an asteroid heading to Earth in the bigbudget 1998 movie “Armageddon,” starring Bruce Willis.

Gentle giant But it was “The Green Mile,” starring Tom Hanks as a death row prison guard in a Louisiana penitentiary during the Depression, that thrust the 6-foot-5, 300-plus-pound Duncan into the limelight.

He portrayed John Coffey, a gentle giant with supernatural powers who has been sentenced to death for the murder of two young White girls.

“There was something about him that I just couldn’t ignore,” writer-director Frank Darabont said of Duncan in a 2000 Daily Variety interview. “After his first reading, he kept haunting me.

Given that he was a fairly inexperienced actor at that point, obviously there was a concern about ‘Gee, how

would this guy do?’

“But once we put him on film, it became apparent that he was up to the task.”

Real tears Duncan credited acting coach Larry Moss with teaching him “how to dig within myself” for the heavily emotional crying scenes in the movie.

“I’m an emotional person, a very emotional person,” Duncan told the Chicago Tribune in 2000. “All those tears you see in the movie were mine.”

In 2002, two years after the Academy Awards ceremony, Duncan told the Orange County Register: “Realistically, I didn’t think I would win the Oscar, but the nomination was a personal validation for me. It proved to me that I was a good actor. More important, it showed other people that I was a serious actor.”

Film work Duncan later appeared in films such as “The Whole Nine Yards” (2000), “Planet of the Apes” (2001), “The Scorpion King” (2002) and “The Island” (2005). He also did voice work in films and television, including “Brother Bear” (2003) and “Kung Fu Panda” (2008).

He was born Dec. 10, 1957, and grew up on Chicago’s South Side. His father left the family when he was 6, and he and his sister, Judith, were raised by their mother, who steered him clear of gangs, drugs and alcohol.

Growing up, he harbored dreams of becoming an actor.

“Of course, people told me, ‘Mikey, you will never be an actor. You don’t have the look. You’re ugly,’ ” he recalled in a 2003 Chicago Sun-Times interview.

What helped him, he said, was that his mother “always told me to think ‘YCDA.’ That stands for ‘You Can Do Anything.’ ”

Attended HBCU Duncan attended Alcorn State Univer-

uttered by Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetchit) in racist 1930s films as “talking back” to Whites that is “borderline dangerous.”

Dangerous game Taylor and Austen remind us that Blacks enjoyed watching minstrel shows. They suggest as well that stereotypes “seemed less odious” when Whites were not watching them. But we really do not know all that much about the composition of audiences – and what they were thinking and feeling. Did blackface remind Blacks of good times? Codes of dignity, masculinity, and double consciousness?

Did some Blacks respond to minstrel shows by unburdening themselves of stereotypes or even “reclaiming” them? Do others, especially these days, enjoy embarrassing their bourgeois Black brothers, sisters and parents by airing “dirty laundry”? If so, why?

We live – and Taylor and Austen write – in deconstructive times. In-jokes, sarcasm, skepticism, cynicism, and self-parody dominate intellectual discourse and popular culture. In certain settings and with certain audiences, minstrels may have – and still may – supply balm for racist words and acts. But, let’s face it: They play a dangerous, dignity-denying game.

Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty dies of gunshot wound

sity in Mississippi but left before graduating to help support his ailing mother.

Back in Chicago, he began working for the gas company.

On the job, he talked so much about his dream of going to Hollywood and becoming an actor that his co-workers dubbed him “Hollywood Mike.” He finally quit his job and became a security guard for a traveling show. Once the show reached Los Angeles, he decided to stay.

Working first as a bodyguard for Martin Lawrence, Will Smith and other stars, he began landing small parts in films and television. In 1998, he played bouncers in “Bulworth” and “A Night at the Roxbury” and a bodyguard in “The Players Club.”

While making “Armageddon,” Duncan became friends with Willis, who was instrumental in getting him the role in Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s serial novel “The Green Mile.”

“Bruce told me, ‘Michael, I’ve just read this script and you are this guy John Coffey. I just know it,’ ” Duncan recalled in a 2001 Ottawa Citizen interview. Willis said he’d call Darabont — and he did, telling him that he had found the man to play the role.

Hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty, who helped launch the careers of rap superstars such as Missy Elliott, 50 Cent and LL Cool J, was found dead Aug. 30 at apartment in the Bronx, New York. He was 44.

According to MTV News, the music executive’s body was found with a gunshot wound to the head shortly before noon. Police explained that they discovered a pistol at the scene, leading them to believe that the wound may have been self-inflicted.

Lighty rose to fame in the 1980s working with New York’s DJ Red Alert, and served as the road manager for Boogie Down Productions, according to News One. He later joined Russell Simmons’ Rush Artist Management in 1989 and then launched his own firm, Violator Records, the following year.

Later in his career, Lighty went on to help launch the careers of artists including Mariah Carey, Nas, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and more.

More than ‘big tough guy’

‘Hip-hop hero’

“I’m used to being the big tough guy, the bodyguard type,” Duncan told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2000.

“I had never taken a role like this. I started reading the novel and couldn’t put it down. I got emotional while reading it.

Once I finished it, I said, ‘That’s me. I don’t care what I have to do, but I’ve got to play this role.’ ” As “The Green Mile” was about to open in theaters nationwide in 1999, Duncan told The New York Times, “This is really like a gift from God. I tell people, ‘It’s just like a cliche, but it’s true: In Hollywood, dreams can come true.’”

Besides his mother, Jean, and his sister, Judith, he is survived by his fiancee, actress Omarosa Manigault.

The New York Daily News reported that Lighty had been dealing with a myriad of personal problems including debt and a recent divorce from his wife.

“I am deeply saddened by the loss of a hiphop hero,” Russell Simmons said in a statement on his web site. “Chris Lighty has been a dear friend of mine since he was a kid. He was a brilliant partner in business and I was so proud of all that he had accomplished.

“He is an amazing example of how a passionate street kid from the streets can go to the most even-keeled, smart, thoughtful manager in the business and a generous philanthropist.’’

Simmons continued, “He was loved by everyone who knew him, including me. He will be missed greatly by all of us.”

NNPA NEWS SERVICE

Chris Lighty

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9-11 ANNIVERSARY

STOJ

SEPTEMBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

I saw the Twin Towers FALL Editor’s note: This is one story of an occasional Florida Courier series entitled ‘Survivor’s Stories, First Person.’ We highlight the lives of Floridians who have survived life-changing events, as described in their own words. Ed Hashey, formerly the Florida Courier’s creative director, survived the September 11 attacks, and for five years he was silent about what he saw. He spoke about 9/11 for the first time exclusively to the Florida Courier in 2006.

BY ED HASHEY SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

I

’ve had some tough experiences. But nothing prepared me for what would be one of the worst days in my life.

Still, I’m humble enough to know I can’t complain. I am alive, and lucky – and I feel somewhat guilty about that fact. For the last five years since witnessing that horrible event up close and personal, I have not complained. I remained silent out of respect for those who suffered and died, along with the anguished families they left behind.

I thank God for every day given to me, no matter how bad it gets sometimes. I know inside that it will never be worse than what unfolded in front of me on September 11, 2001.

Calm before the storm This story actually begins in 1999. I am a graphic designer and illustrator, and I was immersed in a freelance project to redesign the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) newspaper. This took me around the world, starting with the WSJ Europe publication in Brussels, Belgium in 1999, then to the Asian WSJ in Hong Kong in 2000, then finishing up at the WSJ’s New York office in 2001. Their headquarters are – were – located in the upper floors of 1 World Financial Center, directly across the street from what were the World Trade Center towers.

It was my sixth visit to Lower Manhattan. I decided to ask my wife Jeanne if she wanted to join me this time, as my birthday is September 13. We wanted to celebrate it together, especially since we didn’t see much of each other due to my busy schedule.

We flew in on the afternoon of September 9 into Newark, N.J., and stayed at a hotel in Times Square.

The following Monday was a normal opening workday. I took the Number 1 and Number 9 subway lines from Times Square to the WTC station at Cortland Street.

The weather was perfect outside. It was the typical WSJ workday; eight hours of work and a typical lunch at one of the hundreds of local restaurants.

After finishing my workday, it was back up to Times Square to spend the evening with Jeanne.

We dined at a simple pizza joint.

She told me she walked up and down Fifth Avenue all day, and her feet were killing her.

After asking her what she was doing for the next day, she said the hotel concierge gave her a bunch of coupons, including one for free admission to the observation deck of the World Trade Center. I replied, “Great. You can go up to the towers in the morning and do lunch with us after that. I can show you where I work.” We decided to get to bed fairly early, and leave around 7:30 a.m. on September 11 for 1 World Trade Center.

A normal day We woke up to a beautiful Tuesday morning, got breakfast, gathered our belongings and headed out for the day. We got about halfway to the subway station; Jeanne had a confession.

“I don’t think I can make it today,” she said. “My legs are killing me from all that walking yesterday.”

So I escorted her back to the hotel and she prepared a hot bath and turned on the ‘Today Show.’

She felt bad for bowing out at the last minute. I told her not to worry, and that we could try again tomorrow. I then headed back to the subway.

I was reading a book about the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry and listening to my iPod. It takes about 20 minutes to get down to Lower Manhattan from New Jersey.

I looked at my watch; it was 8:40 a.m., and my stop at Cortland Street was next.

Leaving the train, I walked up to the street exit, and right as I saw daylight, I heard a huge explosion and then many pieces of falling debris, some the size of car hoods, started falling around me and the large crowd of people with me at the station.

The noise hurt my ears and I could feel the heat from the fireball above. I fell down twice as the large crowd began to scramble for safety. What happened?

Witness to hellish destruction The mass of people in the train station responded by frantically reversing course and heading back into the train station, but there were too many people trying to exit. Many of us squeezed against the side of the World Trade Center complex, trying not to be hit by the falling debris. After about a minute, the debris stopped falling. I looked up and saw smoke and flames; the distinctive smell of kerosene lingered in the air. There were several parked limousines and cars damaged from the debris.

Broken shards of glass were everywhere, and some pedestrians were injured. A few paramedics arrived and began administering first aid. Police began setting up barricades, while firemen started driving up and pulling out fire hoses.

I decided to cross over Liberty Street. I looked up and saw the first tower engulfed in flames that quickly turned into thick black smoke. Eyewitnesses said a plane had crashed into the building. From our perspective, we were thinking it was a small plane, but I remember one man saying it was a jet. This made sense, as the explosion was huge. I knew this was the north tower, the one with the big antenna on top.

I decided to cross back over the street closer to Tower Two. Police arrived and instructed us to clear the area.

People die All of this time, my eyes were fixated on the damage above. To my horror, I started seeing people jump to their deaths. I have always wondered three things with respect to dying: first, what it would be like to die in a plane crash; second, what it would be like to die falling as we all have dreamed about; third, if we die before we hit the ground. But I never wanted to bear witness to any of it.

As each person fell, I started praying. Two men next to me argued whether the first object coming down was a body; after about three seconds, the argument was over. We were not sure where to go or what to do. People in the crowd screamed and gasped in horror as each person fell to TODD PLITT/KRT their death. Police and firemen alike were scrambling “Two men next to me argued whether the first for cover. Chaos ruled. object coming down was a body; after about Bodies were landing on awnings, on the cement three seconds, the argument was over.” pavements, on the shrubbery. Each time a body hit, it made a sound similar to that of a sack of flour hitlines. Then it became clear to me kept trying the phones but nothing ting the ground. There is no time that this was no accident. This was worked; all circuits were busy. to look away in a situation like this. terrorism.

I tried getting on the subway, There were mists of blood in the A wave of panic soon hit me. but electrical power had failed and air each time a body landed.

Were there more jets coming in? the subway system was on lockAlmost every person was alive Will the towers collapse and kill down. So I ran to my Times Square before they made impact, some us all? Are there bombs on the hotel room, which took about 30 kicking and screaming, others ground? How big is this attack? minutes. calm and choosing to land on their Reality hits backs. Others were smoldering Survival instinct When I arrived back at the room, and unconscious. Most poignant I felt a rush of adrenaline as I ran was a brave couple that jumped into an entryway of a bank across Jeanne was in tears. I gave her a together and obviously wanted the street. Flying debris destroyed big hug, and she felt me trembling. to somehow be in control of their the windows all around us. Cops Then we watched on the televiown fates. I remember the clothes and firemen were among the large sion in disbelief as the first tower they wore, and to this day I can- crowd of people running for their collapsed. Two thoughts came to not get the image of this one man lives. I ducked behind some ta- my mind: What happened to those in a plaid, outdated suit, orange or bles and waited for debris to stop firemen? Did they get all the peobrown in color. He was bald, may- falling, and I heard the distinctive ple evacuated in time?

I lay down on the bed and so be 50 years old or so. sounds of metal and broken glass many emotions flowed over me. I It is true what they say about ricocheting everywhere. shock. Everything in your brain The police regrouped and used learned that Washington, D.C. was starts playing in slow motion. This bullhorns to give evacuation or- under attack. My brother worked whole time I felt helpless, as if I was ders to either go up Broadway as a Navy corpsman in the White in a trance waiting for some logical or go over the Brooklyn Bridge. I House clinic. Was he OK? Evenend to the whole thing. starting walking briskly up Liberty tually, I did make contact with evStreet, and as I passed the entrance eryone, including colleagues at the Second tower hit area to Tower Two, I saw a fireman Wall Street Journal. And we were Then I heard a loud noise of an coming out with a very large Black all lucky. aircraft. A rapidly moving shad- woman on his shoulders.

I was sad, angry, nervous, and ow was visible in the sky. I looked She was moaning. He stood happy to be alive, but humbled up and remember seeing another her up against a round shrubbery and completely overwhelmed by large airline jet smash into the sec- pot, and I saw that her polyes- others’ deaths that day. I can’t stop ond tower. ter suit was melted to the back of seeing the visions of bodies falling.

This explosion seemed much her body. Pieces of melted cloth- I still pray for their families. closer. You could hear the jet en- ing and burnt flesh were falling off And then there is fate. What gines throttle up just before im- her. The fireman collapsed in ex- would have happened if my wife pact, and it slammed into the haustion. Then, about two dozen decided to visit the World Trade building so fast, it was just a blur. I of his colleagues went running in- Center’s observation tower that fell to the ground again, feeling the to the building in heavy gear. I had morning? For this, I have to beheat of the huge fireball that grew a real bad feeling that they were all lieve there are guardian angels. from the explosion directly above in grave danger.

They certainly had too much to me.

I realized I needed to get back to cope with that day.

The markings on the aircraft Jeanne to assure her I was safe. So I New York City was a ghost town were distinctly that of United Air- start running north up Broadway. I that afternoon. No whir of traf-

JIM WATSON/US NAVY NEWS/MCT

fic, only the constant wail of sirens heading south to the horror downtown.

Leaving the city It took us two days to get out of Manhattan. Luckily, Jeanne’s college roommate lived in Montvale, N.J. Our journey home started with a long walk to Madison Square Garden with our luggage, then taking the PATH subway train to New Jersey. The train stopped abruptly just before the Newark stop, and we had to evacuate due to a bomb threat.

We finally got picked up after a round of cellphone tag and arrived at our friend’s home, only to learn that four families on the block had family members missing. This humbled me quickly. The next day we drove back home to Sarasota, ironically the same place President George Bush was when he was notified of the attacks.

How 9/11 affected me I first thought this event would make me an angry, bitter person filled with hatred. But actually the opposite has occurred. I have a higher level of compassion for people, but with a resolve not to put up with nonsense or ever let my guard down. We live in a dangerous world, but we must live free.

I have come to terms with the reality that this will never leave my mind. Almost every day, something triggers a memory; the sound of a jet, anyone crying, movie trailers, etc. But I am more acutely aware of how precious everyone’s lives are, and will never take life for granted.

Even in the midst of the evil that happened that day, I saw much good. There were storeowners handing out flip-flops to women who abandoned high heels in panic. There were firemen and policemen who after several disruptions, kept regrouping and kept on trying. Many made the ultimate sacrifice. I remember an Asian paramedic cradling an elderly man who was bleeding from his head, comforting him. And most of all, I remember how compassionate people were in general, helping each other out despite the panic.

I have always felt that people’s true colors come out in times of crisis. I am a witness. The people of New York City shined that day, and continue to do so. They are all my heroes, and my heart goes out to anyone who was a victim of that day.

Ed Hashey, a Sarasota resident, now teaches third grade at Wakeland Elementary School of International Studies in Bradenton.

SToJ

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

SEPTEMBER 7 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Meet some of

FLORIDA'S

finest

submitted for your approval

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Think you’re one of Florida’s Finest?

E-mail your high-resolution digital photo in casual wear or bathing suit taken in front of a plain background with few distractions, to news@flcourier.com with a short biography of yourself and your contact information. (No nude/glamour/ fashion photography, please!) In order to be considered, you must be at least 18 years of age. Acceptance of the photographs submitted is in the sole and absolute discretion of Florida Courier editors. We reserve the right to retain your photograph even if it is not published. If you are selected, you will be contacted by e-mail and further instructions will be given.

Born and raised in Florida, Sara Hollywood enjoys working out and spending time with her family. She has been modeling for about three years and striving toward being on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Contact Sara at facebook. com/ sarahollywood or on twitter: @ MsSarahollywood.

Cristopher Gray is an aspiring model from Ormond Beach currently attending school in Los Angeles.

He can be contacted at mistirchris08@ aol.com.

sara

christopher Black camerawoman not surprised about RNC incident

Kelly Ripa is shown with Michael Strahan, who permanently replaces Regis Philbin.

Strahan gets seat next to Ripa Former NFL player named permanent replacement of Philbin on daytime show FROM WIRE REPORTS

NEW YORK – Former NFL player Michael Strahan was officially welcomed Tuesday as Kelly Ripa’s new co-host (and Regis Philbin’s permanent replacement) following nine months of on-air tryouts.

But what made this pairing the best match? Among 59 substitutes – some auditioners, others just filling in for fun – “there was definitely something special” in their chemistry, says Michael Gelman, executive producer of the newly retitled Live With Kelly & Michael.

“They’re able to have this fun, and they have a shorthand together, and it just works,” he says. “Having him come back all these times made it easier.”

Ripa warmly embraced Strahan after introducing him amid balloons and confetti on Tuesday: “Now it’s time for the new era of our show to begin.” And she said of her 6-foot-5 partner,

“It’s so nice to have a co-host who can literally sweep you off your feet.” (He did.)

Same formula In a news conference that followed, Ripa said the camaraderie is “spontaneous,” adding “we have similar senses of humor.”

Strahan says the chemistry is genuine: “You can’t get on live TV every morning and fool people. We’re two people who can laugh at themselves and laugh at each other.”

The show’s formula won’t change, though Gelman says he “can’t wait” to feature Strahan in the syndicated show’s annual Halloween costume party.

Strahan, 40, brought along his fiancée, Nicole Murphy (Eddie’s ex), and says the welcome “was a little overwhelming for about 10 seconds. And then when I was hugging Kelly, that’s when I was calming down.”

Not a big secret Though it was one of summer’s worst-kept secrets, Strahan’s selection a few weeks back prompted congratulatory messages, including some from other candidates, all of which went unanswered.

“I didn’t want to be the

squeaky wheel, so I just ignored everything,” Ripa says, adding that she stopped tweeting a month ago.

Strahan will continue to be a host of Fox NFL Sunday, commuting to Los Angeles on fall weekends, then return to New York to be with his “new TV wife.”

Strahan has co-hosted the show 20 times, most of them since Philbin left last November, and was shown in a clip from a guest appearance in February 2008, just after his New York Giants won the Super Bowl, saying he might someday like to replace Philbin. “I was joking!” he says now. “It was like a prophecy,” Ripa told viewers.

But Ripa says she mostly enjoyed the tryouts (except for one co-host she wouldn’t name) and says it “reminded me so much” of her own on-air tryout as a replacement for Kathie Lee Gifford. “I was having so many flashbacks of my life 12 years ago.”

Strahan is no stranger to television. In addition to his Fox duties, he starred in “Brothers,’’ a short-lived 2009 sitcom on that network, and has hosted cable reality shows.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

‘A wakeup call’

A Black camerawoman who works for CNN said last week that she was not surprised to have two people at the Republican National Convention throw peanuts at her and say “this is what we feed animals.’’

The two White people were immediately removed from the Tampa Bay Times Forum convention arena by security officials on Aug. 28 and their identities weren’t revealed.

The camerawoman, Patricia Carroll, wasn’t able to tell definitively where they were from.

“This is Florida, and I’m from the deep South,’’ Carroll, a 34-year-old Alabama native, told Maynard Institute blogger Richard Prince on Aug. 30. “You come to places like this, you can count the Black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don’t think I should do.’’

She said racism is a global issue and the incident could have happened on a street corner or at the Democratic convention, scheduled this week in Charlotte, N.C. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign said it has apologized to CNN for what happened.

“We find it absolutely deplorable. We condemn it in the highest possible way,’’ said Russ Schriefer, strategist for the Romney campaign.

CNN said Carroll was not interested in addressing the issue any further. She told Prince that she was hoping the story would go away.

“I can’t change these people’s hearts and minds,’’ she said. “I know who I am. I’m a proud Black woman. A lot of Black people are upset. This should be a wakeup call to Black people. ... People were living in euphoria for a while.

People think we’ve gone further than we have.’’

BET’s ‘106 & Park’ star moving on to E! After leaving his seven-Year stint as host of BET’s nationally syndicated show, “106 & Park,” Terrence Jenkins has wasted no time landing another gig. This week the E! Network has officially announced that the 30-yearold will join Giuliana Rancic as the new co-host of E! News.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jenkins will fill in for Ryan Seacrest’s vacant slot as the show’s weekday anchor beginTerrence ning Nov. 12.

Jenkins “Terrence Jenkins is a talented and well-connected television personality who will bring an original sensibility to our news programs,” E! President of network strategy Cyndi McClellan said in a statement.

Jenkins added, “I’ve always

had a passion for the wide spectrum of pop culture that E! News covers so well; I can’t wait to get started. I’ve had a great career so far, and it’s all been building toward this.”

‘Long way to go’ Similar to Seacrest, who will remain as the news programs managing editor and continue to host E! red carpet coverage, the New York native has a wellrounded resume, as he continues to perfect his burgeoning acting career. Last month he opened up to the Huffington Post on his transition from an on-air personality to an actor.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world honestly. Sometimes it’s very overwhelming being on the set,” he admitted. “It’s not just the lines, it’s making the character and going as an actor – it’s challenging. And that’s why I love it so much. I can host with my eyes closed, but when I’m on a movie set I really feel like I’m challenged.”

“For me, when I’m on a movie set it’s like going back to college.

I just learn and I’m really humble because I have a long way to go.”

FOOD

TOj B6

toj

SEPTEMBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

FROM Family Features

Don’t think you have time to make a delicious meal for your busy family? Think again; with these handy tips and easy recipes — which call for just four ingredients — you can get a satisfying supper on the table in no time. Make it even easier by including Minute® Steamers into your family’s favorite meals, for wholesome, hearty, time-saving dishes everyone will love.

Use these tips to make meal prep easier during busy nights:

Stock up Always keep some basic ingredients on hand to make last-minute cooking a lot easier.

• Frozen vegetables — Can be served as a side or added to soups and rice dishes.

• Broth — Beef, chicken and vegetable broths can be used to make soups and sauces, and to add flavor when cooking vegetables and rice.

• Add-ins — Nuts, sesame seeds, parsley, dried fruit and cheese can be added to main dishes, sides and salads to make them even more flavorful and nutritious.

Time savers Take advantage of grocery items that do some of the work for you.

• Frozen rice — For a tasty side or a starter for a full meal, try Minute® Steamers — exceptional-quality, flavorful rice that heats in the microwave in a self-ventilating steamable bag. It only takes four minutes to have one of six varieties on your dinner table.

• Pre-cut vegetables — Save some prep time by using pre-cut vegetables. Give them a quick wash and they’re ready to use.

• Pre-seasoned ingredients — Look for canned, diced tomatoes with garlic and onions, cheese made with jalapeño, or marinated chicken or pork cuts. These are all ways to add flavor without adding time.

Plan ahead If you have more time on the weekend, you can do some prep work to cut down on your weeknight cooking time.

• Prep ingredients — Chop vegetables and shred cheese, and keep them in storage containers or resealable bags in the fridge. You can also brown ground beef and cut any meats into recipe-ready pieces.

• Herb cubes — Put a tablespoon of chopped herbs in each well of an ice cube tray. Fill with either water or olive oil, then freeze. Once frozen, pop them out and store in a freezer bag — you’ll have fresh herb flavor in a flash.

• Cook once, eat twice — Double up on a recipe, then freeze one half for later. Or, plan a second meal around leftovers. For example, use Monday night’s taco meat for Tuesday night’s taco salad.

For more delicious ways to get a speedy supper on the table for your family, visit www.4ingredientmeals.com.

Simple, Time-Saving Solutions to Spruce up Rice

Basil Rice and Tomato Soup Serves: 4 (1 1/4 cups each) 1 bag Minute® Steamers Brown Rice 1 jar (24 ounces) pasta sauce 1/2 cup heavy cream 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

Prepare rice according to package directions.

In a large microwave-safe bowl, combine pasta sauce, cream and basil. Cover loosely and microwave on HIGH for 5 minutes, or until heated through. Stir in prepared rice.

Easy Arroz con Pollo Serves: 4 1 bag Minute® Steamers Spanish Rice 1 cup frozen peas and carrots, thawed 1 small tomato, diced 6 ounces (about 1 cup) cooked, diced chicken 1/4 cup sliced Spanish olives, sliced 1 green onion, sliced Prepare rice according to package directions.

In medium microwave-safe dish combine rice, peas and carrots, tomato and chicken. Microwave on HIGH for 2 minutes.

Add olives.

Tip: Garnish with green onions.

Tips: If a thinner soup is desired, add 1 cup heated chicken broth.

Serve with cheese crostini and olive tapenade.

Top with shredded Parmesan cheese.

Cheesy Chicken Broccoli and Cheese Casserole Serves: 4 1 bag Minute® Steamers Broccoli and Cheese Rice 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) cream of chicken soup 6 ounces (about 1 cup) cooked, diced chicken 1/2 cup milk Prepare rice according to package directions.

In medium microwave-safe dish, combine soup, chicken and milk. Microwave on HIGH for 2 min­utes. Stir in rice.

Don’t get caught in a dinner-as-usual rut — here are some quick and easy ways you can add a little flair to the family meal, without spending hours preparing dinner: Citrus Rice — To hot cooked white rice, add grated orange, lemon or lime zest for a fresh, lively taste.

Nutty Rice — To hot cooked brown rice, add peanuts, cashews, pine nuts or sunflower seeds; stir in dried cranberries or cherries for added flavor, texture and color.

Portobello Mushroom Rice — To hot cooked brown rice, add sautéed chopped portobello mushrooms and toasted chopped pecans. Top with crumbled feta cheese.

South of the Border Turkey Dinner Serves: 4 1 bag Minute® Steamers Brown Rice 1 pound ground turkey, cooked and crumbled 1 can (11 ounces) southwestern corn blend 1 cup prepared salsa Prepare rice according to package directions.

In medium microwave-safe bowl, combine turkey, corn and salsa. Microwave on HIGH for 2 minutes. Stir in rice.

Tips: Add 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese. nUse as filling in tortillas and top with shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes.

Roll into burrito-sized tortillas and serve with sour cream.