Insight News ::: 6.10.13

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Timotha Lanae has fans overseas seeing RED MORE ON PAGE

June 10 - June 16, 2013

Juneteenth kicks off Twin Cities summer

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Vol. 40 No. 24 • The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • insightnews.com

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he 25th annual Twin Cities’ Juneteenth celebration takes place Saturday, June 15 at the North Mississippi Regional Park, 5114 North Mississippi Dr., Minneapolis. The festival takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Organizers say as one of the nation’s largest cultural

celebrations, the area Juneteenth celebration boasts an estimated attendance of more than 25,000 Minnesotans. This year’s theme is Remembering the Past, to Heal the Present to Succeed in the Future. Juneteenth is one of the most important cultural celebrations in the nation, as it celebrates June 19, the date that Union soldiers,

landed at Galveston, Tex. with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This word came two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves be freed. Emancipation became official Jan. 1, 1863.

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Cheerios TV commercial sparks heated conversation By Harry Colbert, Jr. Contributing Writer

Suluki Fardan

Left to right: Juanita Warren, Nii Ora Hokes, Spike Moss, Michael Chaney, Leola Seals, Mary Pargo, Sharon Glover and then State Representative Bobby Joe Champion in rear at the official proclamation bill signing by former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to commemorate Juneteenth in June 2010.

Editors note: Due to the complexity of the topic of blended families and interracial dating, Insight News has chosen to run a series of articles on the subject. Who knew a 30-second television ad about cereal could cause such a commotion? But that is just what the Cheerios spot, “Just Checking” has done, as it portrays a family of a biracial girl, a Caucasian mother and an African-American father. The ad, which has drawn more than two million hits on YouTube, (which has since disabled commenting due to a throng of racist comments

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Karamu Forum promotes civic engagement Notes on the struggle By Professor Mahmoud El -Kati

An ambitious civic engagement movement is being launched by several African American churches in collaboration with Solidarity, a social activist volunteer group. This collaborative effort towards community self-education, presented in a series of community forums, will begin at Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, Saturday, June 15, 10 a.m. – 12

Noon. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, a document signed by President Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863. This anniversary, along with the upcoming 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, will be used as a back drop to critical questions to be

raised at the forum. Together, the Proclamation of 1863 and the inspiring March on Washington represent two of the greatest events in our national heritage: The signing of the Proclamation by President Lincoln and the groundbreaking patriotic oratory of Martin Luther King Jr. These events are separated by 100 years and yet are joined at the hip in the

struggle against the institutions of enslavement and segregation, which was a legacy of slavery and the caste system. Discussion on two recentlyproduced Hollywood feature films, “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained,” will broaden the content of the forum. The release of these two films marks unprecedented territory for

the American film industry. Revealing anything of substance about American enslavement of Black People in Hollywoodproduced films has historically been an unmentionable; it has been a conspiracy of silence on the part of popular media. By presenting the question of slavery to popular

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700 Black mayors mean emerging political clout By George E. Curry NNPA Editor-in-Chief ATLANTA (NNPA) – Sacramento, Calif. Mayor Kevin Johnson, the newlyelected president of the National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM), told his colleagues that if they don’t improve the lives of their constituents, they don’t deserve to remain in office. “We got these good seats, we’ve been elected and we get honored and esteemed everywhere we go,” Johnson said at a luncheon here at the group’s 39th annual convention. “It’s not

just for us. It’s for the communities that we represent. Our obligation is to bring more and more people along. Because if we don’t do that, then we’re not fit for the seats that we hold.” Johnson, a former star NBA point guard for the Phoenix Suns, cited the enormous growth of the mayors’ group. He noted that the NCBM began as a small, Southern organization in 1974 and now is a national force with nearly 700 mayors in the U.S., representing 48 million people or 15 percent of the U.S. population. In recent years, it has expanded its international reach and now has more than 26,000 mayors on its

Courtesy of Passkey Choice Entertainment & Digital Media

NCBM President Kevin Johnson

roll, including many from Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, Columbia and throughout the Caribbean. “In terms of [population served], we’re bigger than Spain, Canada and Australia,” Johnson said. “Think about that. If we come together in numbers, we have that type of strength as an organization to do some remarkable things.” He continued, “The question we all have to ask ourselves is this: As African-American mayors, are our cities better off because we’re elected? Are the people we represent better off because we hold the seats that we hold?” In too many cases, Johnson said, the answer is no.

“Any category that’s bad, Black folks are at the top,” Johnson said. “Any category that’s good, Blacks folks, we’re at the bottom. That’s hard to do. We have somehow managed to do that. “If you think about obesity, which is bad, we’re at the top. If you’re talking about unemployment, which is not good for us, we’re at the top. If you’re talking about dropping out, we’re at the top. If you’re talking about teenage pregnancy, we’re at the top. If you’re talking about being a renter instead of a homeowner,

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Business

Education

Full Circle

Health

Transformational giving: No vision, no gifts

Student summit organizes for school discipline changes

We honor our fathers

The “All One Ocean” campaign

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