Issuu

July 16, 2009

SERVING LOS ANGELES COUNTY WITH NEWS YOU CAN USE

Vol. XXX, No. 1136 FIRST COLUMN

Obama’s Visit to Ghana Slave Fort Steeped in Symbolism BY TODD PITMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

CAPE COAST, Ghana (AP) — From the rampart of a whitewashed fort once used to ship countless slaves from Africa to the Americas, Cheryl Hardin gazed through watery eyes at the route forcibly taken across the sea by her ancestors centuries before. “It never gets any easier,” the 48-year-old pediatrician said,

wiping away tears on her fourth trip to Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle in two decades. “It feels the same as when I first visited — painful, incomprehensible.” On July 11, Barack Obama and his family followed in the footsteps of countless African Americans who have tried to reconnect with their past on these shores. Though Obama was not See OBAMA VISIT, page 4

Photo Courtesy of TOMORROW’S AERONAUTICAL MUSEUM

A PROUD MOMENT — Kimberly Anyadike is greeted by her father, Charles, July 11 after landing her plane at the Compton/Woodley Airport in Compton. Anyadike became the youngest African American female to fly solo cross country in a trip that lasted 13 days. She was accompanied by an 87-year-old who served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, according to The Associated Press.

After More Than 40 Years, Watts Credit Union Closes BY CHICO C. NORWOOD STAFF WRITER

AP Photo/HARAZ N. GHANBARI

A HOMECOMING — President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters Malia and Sasha on a tour of the Cape Coast Castle in Cape Coast, Ghana, July 11.

After 43 years of providing financial services to low- and moderate-income residents in Watts and surrounding areas, the Watts United Credit Union was closed recently by the California Department of Financial Institutions. In a press release on the DFI

Obama Chooses Black Alabama Doctor as Next Surgeon General BY LAURAN NEERGAARD AP MEDICAL WRITER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama turned to the Deep South for the next surgeon general, choosing a rural Alabama family physician who made headlines with fierce determination to rebuild her nonprofit medical clinic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Regina Benjamin is known along Alabama’s impoverished Gulf Coast as a country doctor who makes house calls and doesn’t turn away

Dr. Regina Benjamin

patients who can’t pay — even as she’s had to find money to rebuild a clinic repeatedly destroyed by hurricanes, and once, even by fire. “For all the tremendous obstacles that she has overcome, Regina Benjamin also represents what’s best about health care in America, doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients,” Obama said July 13 in introducing his choice for a job known as America’s doctor. He said Benjamin will bring important insight as his administration struggles to revamp the health care system: Saying she “has seen in a very personal way what is broken about our health care system,” Obama said Benjamin will bring important insight as his administration tries to revamp that system. Benjamin called the job “a physician’s dream,” and pledged to be a voice for patients in need — and to fight the preventable diseases that claim too many lives (including nearly her entire family) each year. Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure, her only

brother of HIV-related illness, her mother of lung cancer “because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke just like her twin brother could” — an uncle now on oxygen as a result, she noted. “I cannot change my family’s past. I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation’s health care and our nation’s health,” Benjamin said. “I want to be sure that no one falls through the cracks as we improve our health care system.” The surgeon general is the people’s health advocate, a bully pulpit position that can be tremendously effective with a forceful personality. Benjamin has that reputation. Pushed by the need in her own shrimping community of Bayou La Batre, Ala., and its diverse patient mix — white, black and, increasingly immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — Benjamin, 51, has emerged as a national leader in the call to improve health disparities. See SURGEON GENERAL, page 5

Web site, insolvency was cited for the closure of WUCU, which had some $800,000 in assets and about 1,000 members. Chartered in October 1966 after the Watts Rebellion, the credit union grew to roughly $2 million in assets and more than 2,600 members in the 1980s and ’90s. The member service area was eventually expanded to cover the area bounded by the Santa Monica freeway on the north, La Brea Avenue on the west, Alameda Street on the east and Imperial Highway on the south. But over the past four to five years, the credit union had its ups and downs, said credit union board Chairman Dale Walker. However, three events led to the credit union’s demise, he said. The first event was when Western Corporate Federal Credit Union, known as WesCorp, was

placed into conservatorship by the National Credit Union Administration in March. The San Dimasbased credit union was one of the nation’s largest credit unions and held some of WUCU’s deposits. All of its branches will close down in 2010, according to its Web site. “They were like the credit union to credit unions. Each one of our members who were in our account, in essence, were members of their account,” Walker said. “So, we basically lost a portion of that money. Also, that was where the bulk of our outside investments were, so we would put our money in their account in order to get revenue that, we thought, was safe and secure.” The second event was the failure or inability of WUCU to take See WATTS CREDIT UNION, page 6

Photo by THANDISIZWE CHIMURENGA

CLOSING DOWN — A worker removes files wrapped in a garbage bag from the Watts United Credit Union in Los Angeles, located on East 103rd Street, on July 14. The credit union, one of several community institutions created in the wake of the Watts Rebellion, was closed due to insolvency, according to the California Department of Financial Institutions, which closed the credit union down.